Surqjna feinted, but Arrahaquen jumped aside then made a swishing attack of her own. The creature now battled with the replica.
Surqjna stepped back. On the ground, six creatures appeared. They skittered around and Arrahaquen saw that they were scorpions, spiders and a snake. The instruments of the attempted assassinations.
All was clear. It was Surqjna who had been behind the whole plot. She had needed access through Arrahaquen to select parts of the Citadel network, parts perhaps only the Portreeve had known of in their entirety. A dead Arrahaquen could cause no trouble afterwards. But now the departure of the noophytes had radically changed Surqjna’s plans, and she needed Arrahaquen alive.
Arrahaquen felt anger flare up inside her. She felt a righteous invulnerability come to her aid. ‘You’ve really made a mistake now,’ she yelled. The giant insects closed. ‘You’ve made me angry!’ Without thought she squashed the insects. Before her eyes an invisible hand crushed their bodies, leaving brown chitin and puddles of fluid. Surqjna stared.
The other fight ceased. They all looked at the destroyed insects. Arrahaquen felt nothing but a desire to beat Surqjna about the head and the body, to crush and hurt her; and this the invisible force conjured by her fear and loathing did, subduing Surqjna to the ground, where she lay head in hands, calling for mercy. Arrahaquen, seeing the consequences of her anger, felt sudden shame.
‘Release us now,’ she demanded, standing over Surqjna with her rapier at the pyuton’s throat.
‘But–’ Surqjna began.
‘Now,’ Arrahaquen repeated, ‘before it’s too late.’
A pale leaf appeared before Arrahaquen’s eyes, grown from the bud on the tip of her spray. The replica pointed to it. ‘Look, an exit leaf. Press it.’
‘But who are you?’ Surqjna wailed, staring at the two of them. ‘Are you Arrahaquen?’
Arrahaquen pressed the exit leaf. Her last glimpse was of Surqjna choking.
~
Suddenly she lay flat on her back in a dark doorway, cold, stiff, rain pouring over her and the noxious effluent of a blocked drainpipe spraying her face. Remembering where she was, she pulled the serpent from her forehead and, with some difficulty, managed to stand up. She felt chilled to the bone, sick and dizzy. Her mouth felt hot however, her tongue was bloated, and her throat hurt: infection.
Surqjna lay still. Her face seemed older, and her body thinner. Arrahaquen had nothing with which to destroy her, so she looked around: still nothing. But the doorway in which they had lain seemed rickety. She pulled at a loose jamb, and the structure creaked. It was damp and rotten. She tugged some more, until, with a snap, the whole doorway and all the bricks surrounding it crashed on to Surqjna.
CHAPTER 22
Zinina and deKray followed their instructions exactly. Three hours after Arrahaquen left with Surqjna (Zinina had sent a rude jannita sign after her erstwhile leader when she was not looking) they were walking along Cod Row, a silent and dark Citadel behind them, until they saw a low brick arch with the sign ‘Driftwood Passage’ hanging vertically from one nail. Once, rich independents had lived here, but now the steep alley was home only to velvety balls of fungus and some animal bones. The houses were all unlit, standing off the passage set in their own gardens. The fifth belonged to Eskhatos.
The Holists lived in a large stone house. Windows blacked out to avoid reveller attention, its front had been splashed green to give the effect of an abandoned home uncared for. In fact, every external wall was hosed down once a month with verticidal foam. Realistic plastic roses hung from window ledges, while the garden had been allowed to grow unchecked. A camouflaged path to one side was the only entrance, a final touch being dustbins on their sides, spewing refuse and syringes, as if some reveller horde had already ransacked the place. Zinina led deKray along the path, bending down to avoid microwires attached to alarm sensors indoors and pointing out an apparently random arrangement of mossy terracotta pots which were actually cases for mines. The verdigrised statue, she explained, had long since had its eyes replaced by intelligent cameras connected to the house security rigs. At the door she pressed a button four times. Around the back, a dog started to bark.
‘This dwelling is vast,’ deKray said.
‘Most of the rooms are for the pyuters.’
‘Indeed, the great job of holistic analysis,’ he said, impressed and, Zinina knew, looking forward to meeting the Holists.
Qmoet opened the door and, after looking deKray up and down, took them through to the common room.
Zinina rarely saw deKray nervous, and when he was it was because of other people – a symptom common in Kray, with the impossibility of living a normal life with normal human contact. Love, the old saying ran, had become lost along the way. She smiled at the five faces looking her way and said, ‘This is my lover, deKray.’ She took his hand in hers. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, they know all about you.’
‘Not all about me,’ he quipped, the sweet in his mouth clacking against his teeth. ‘Would smoking be acceptable here?’
Eskhatos stood. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘do light up.’ She leaned upon her stick, Zinina noticed. This redoubtable woman who had led the Holists for almost twenty years had wrinkled skin, bent posture, green-splotched skin and missing teeth, but she was dressed as if for an official function, in cream silk and red slippers, with a black skull cap on her head. ‘If I cough,’ she told deKray, ‘it’s because of age, not because of smoke.’
‘Very well,’ deKray replied; and he almost bowed.
Zinina led him to the four others, all of whom remained seated. ‘This is Ky, our holistic synthesist.’
‘Hello,’ Ky said, her antiseptic half-moon glasses twinkling in the anjiq light.
‘And this is my dear, dear old friend, Gishaad-lin,’ Zinina continued, bending down to give and receive a hug.
‘A good evening to you,’ deKray said.
Next, Zinina indicated Reyl, who tonight seemed tired and older than her nineteen years. The lilac jumpsuit she wore appeared faded, tears at its shoulders suggesting a fight. ‘Reyl is in charge of secrecy here, and security, and she also used to be in charge of people in our pay up the Citadel.’
‘I see,’ deKray said, nodding. He took a puff at a now lit cigarette.
‘And this is Qmoet.’
This completed the roll-call. Eskhatos took a sip from the steaming mug of mulled wine at her side and said, ‘For now you may use the room at the top rear of the house. You had better run along and make yourselves more comfortable. It would be nice if you cleaned yourself up. We keep a tidy home, here.’
‘We will,’ Zinina said. She felt pleased. She knew they had both, for the moment, been accepted.
‘But first,’ Qmoet said, ‘what news of the pythoness?’
‘She went off with Surqjna as planned. She could be back any minute, or she might be days. We’ll just have to wait.’
‘Hmmm,’ Eskhatos said. ‘Well, we are keeping a continual look-out. You two get some sleep, now. I’m thinking of turning in myself.’
Zinina bade them all good night, then led deKray up to the top floor and along to the very end of the south wing, where a solid oak door seven feet high stood.
The room was cold and draughty. A high ceiling bore the remains of an ancient mural, while mildewed paintings hung from every wall. It was a large room, thirty feet on a side, the entire width of this wing, with a four-poster bed against one wall and a cast-iron fireplace at the other. Draped linen and bare floorboards, covered only here and there by threadbare jannitta rugs, gave the impression of etiolated grandeur. By the side of the bed lay a pyuter rig and screen, and a table with a pitcher of water and two glasses.
‘I like it,’ said deKray. ‘Will we be residing here, then?’
‘I hope so,’ Zinina said, hugging him fiercely. ‘They’re a high-flown fivesome, they are. Really, I only know Qmoet and Gishaad-lin well.’ She hugged him once more. ‘Do you really like it?’
‘I do. Oddly enough, it reminds me somewha
t of the living room at the house in Cochineal Mews.’
Zinina relaxed. She had worried over this moment.
‘What of comestibles?’ he asked.
‘A cellar down below, very well stocked.’
He sat on the bed. A draught came from under the door. ‘Good. We shall return to my house and transport the remaining necessities, the more important of my books among them.’ He paused. ‘I do not imagine that we could bring them all here.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Zinina said, as deKray threw a cape at the door to stop the draught.
He examined the dusty black cloth stretched over the window. ‘What a shame we can never look out, however.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Zinina said, ‘we’ll go for a walk.’
‘A walk?’
‘A walk. I want to show you one last thing.’
‘What?’ he asked.
‘It’s a surprise.’
~
They spent most of the next day talking with the Holists, except Reyl who was out working, and Zinina was pleased to see that all, with the possible exception of Gishaad-lin, were comfortable to be in the same room as deKray. When they found out for themselves the extent of his book-learning they were also happy to involve him in the conservation. By late afternoon the rain had stopped and Zinina led deKray down to Mossy Row. Arrahaquen had not returned from Gwmru.
The sea pounded the beach far away. It was low tide. DeKray looked at her as if to query her sanity. ‘We are to walk here?’
‘Yeah. Look, there’s a safe path. Come on.’
‘But it is the beach. It is not safe.’
‘We’re both armed,’ Zinina replied, trying to tug him to the head of the path. She pulled at the ties of her backpack. ‘Got spare needles in here, and a knife and stuff.’
‘It is a steep incline,’ he pointed out.
‘It’s safe, I told you. I’ve been up and down it lots of times.’
He stalled. ‘But it is so risky.’
‘Oh, give over moaning. This might be your last ever walk along the beach.’
‘It will be if we die here.’
Eventually he was persuaded to descend to the beach, and Zinina knew that she would be able to work on him some more. She knew that he was too polite to refuse her when she pleaded. Pleading always worked, Zinina had found. They reached the beach and paused to look around.
‘Is this not far enough?’ he said.
Tugging him along the sand, Zinina did not bother to answer, because she knew that in ten minutes he would be his normal self, having relegated their disagreement to the back of his mind. This he did frequently, giving in unless the issue was of real importance to him.
‘What do you make of it here, then?’ she asked.
He looked along the beach. ‘Nothing, as of this moment.’
She followed his gaze. A long line of sea debris, in places as high as their waists, stretched out, marking high-tide. Much of it was wood and the eviscerated bodies of sea creatures, but in the material closer to hand she could see machine oddments, including some of those strange technological chunks that had fallen in bilious slime during the great storm.
She kicked a pile of wood. Something rocketed out into the air past their noses, leaving a whiff of salt, then exploded with a crack. They looked up to see pieces of bladder falling to the sand.
‘Please do not attempt that again,’ said deKray.
‘We’ll see,’ she replied, hoping to provoke him.
Arm in arm they walked on. Soon, from the expression on his face and the relaxation of his arm, she could tell that he was, like her, enjoying the walk. This had been the point; a last sensual experience.
‘I wonder what Graaff-lin is doing,’ she said.
‘Who knows? Nobody has visited her for some time. Mayhap her food and water is running out. She may call for more, if she is alive. Perhaps she is dead.’
‘You don’t know that.’
He shrugged. ‘I would not be surprised.’
‘I don’t think she was brought up to cope with this,’ Zinina continued, waving her free hand at the city. ‘I always thought there was a volcano plugged up inside her.’
‘She is merely deluded, like all worshippers.’
‘Yeah... still, maybe we ought to visit her.’
He did not answer immediately. Then: ‘Perhaps we ought to. Eskhatos could send out a team to visit her abode.’ As though his thoughts were elsewhere he nudged the remains of a box. Several yellow creatures like upturned cups scuttled out, leaving orange trails as they sped toward the sea. They paused to watch.
From the north came a scent of lemon. Zinina pointed out a phalanx of parasols. They were floating seeds, risen from the bogs of Kray’s northern hills, their luminous orange gills smudged by mist and drifting smoke. With a hiss of perfume from their gas tanks they landed on the beach, points ramming into the sand. Here, they would germinate.
Zinina sighed. ‘Do you reckon we’ll survive?’ she asked. It was a question she had put to him many times, under various guises. Sometimes she had the impression that her attraction to him was rooted in this need to find somebody who might provide an answer, and since their minds were as dissimilar as rock and leaves, his fascinated hers.
‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I do not think we can speak about the unspeakable. Yes, we have seen Kray gradually declining, and we can guess how it will end. But still we cannot consider our personal demises.’
‘I just think we have to.’
‘But is that psychologically feasible? No. Maybe in two weeks our food will run out. Yet in that time we could be poisoned, or shot, or die of cholera.’
‘But if we don’t know how it’ll end, I can’t rest.’ Zinina pondered what she had just said. ‘Maybe that’s a good thing. I’m hopeful.’
He nodded. ‘In one way, a strictly statistical way, so am I. Both of us utilise the same mechanism of denying the truth to ourselves. You are unduly optimistic, I am unduly the other way.’ He laughed. ‘It is much the same ploy.’
‘But Arrahaquen’s different,’ said Zinina. ‘Have you noticed what she does when you talk to her about preparing for the worst? Rien Zir, I hate these phrases. Preparing for death. Yeah, she just goes into another world, you can see it in her eyes, specially now she’s prophesied things and got them right.’
‘I wonder how she visualises her own demise? I wonder if she has seen herself dead in some alley, mangy dogs sniffing at her corpse, a green patina upon her skin. Rain pouring.’
Zinina recalled something Arrahaquen had once said: ‘I can’t visualise myself in future memory, but I can see my own grave-stone, and it’s pretty.’ She replied, ‘I think Arrahaquen’s odd. But I think she might save us, somehow.’
Zinina fell silent. She realised that those feelings which she had wanted to explore were located in hidden territory. Only at the moment of death would she feel them – really feel them. She did not fear death, rather she feared the fear preceding it.
‘I hope we die together,’ she said. ‘No, really. I don’t want it any other way. Or next best, I hope I die first.’
He laughed. ‘That is what I hope for myself. So it had better be a simultaneous operation.’
At this, she felt very close to him. ‘Do you love me?’
‘Not as you would think of it.’
Zinina had already guessed this, and had for a considerable time been prepared for such an answer. It hurt her only as a pinprick hurt her skin. ‘Why not?’
‘I just can’t do it. You know.’
She nodded, gazing out to sea. ‘I suppose I do.’
‘I can only do it in negative terms. By that, I mean I can only imagine the feelings, the ones you were referring to, when you are not there. When you are, it is impossible.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Or at least too hard to try. Maybe I have not tried. Do you follow?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Zinina, kissing him. Without speaking they lay on the ground, uncovering just enou
gh of themselves to remain safe, and began to make love, Zinina on deKray, while the smell of the sea and the sound of the waves passed over them.
‘Wait,’ said Zinina. She opened her backpack and produced four leather straps each sewn with twenty or so silver bells. ‘Jannitta custom,’ she explained, tying the straps to her wrists and ankles so they jangled as she moved. ‘So that people know what you’re up to and that you want privacy.’
He chuckled. Their passion increased with the sound of the bells.
Later, deKray stood, then took her hand and pulled her off the sand. They wandered on. Some way along the beach she noticed a wilting plant, a variety of foxglove. Circling it, she tried to remember what it reminded her of. DeKray eyed her. ‘I can’t remember, I can’t remember,’ she muttered to herself. Then, with an ‘aha!’ she pulled the whole plant from the beach to reveal roots knobbled with saucers – the piezoelectric transducers of pyuton joints.
Further on they came across what looked like a heap of wood chips glued with sap. Zinina examined it, then stiffened, wafting air from a hole into her nostrils. ‘It’s a sea bee hive,’ she said.
‘Come here,’ deKray said, holding out his hand.
‘No,’ she replied, waving him away, ‘it should be safe. Remember the reveller proverb, '"If you can hear the bees you can taste the honey."’
‘Revellers,’ scoffed deKray. One of the bees, blue and green and as long as his thumb, flew into the air.
Zinina said, ‘It’s based in truth. They’re dozy this time of the year. It’s when they’re quiet you have to run, because they’re listening to their new queen larvae. Want some honey?’
‘I would not pilfer,’ deKray warned.
Zinina ignored him. As a girl she had made trips with her grandmother-guardian along Westcity beach, to collect honey from beach hives, and she knew what she was doing. Scraping away the top debris cover she peeled one of the hive layers back, to reveal what seemed a wax pebble, one end of which she took between her fingers to pull out two dripping laminae. The honey was white streaked with blue. She held one out to him while she let the other drip into her mouth. ‘Quickly!’
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