Arrahaquen stood up. ‘I’ll go tonight. I’ll see Graaff-lin and speak with the replica... but I need to get some sleep.’
Arrahaquen trudged upstairs to her room. Though she was not afraid of returning to Gwmru, she felt it was a hopeless task. A month to go. In her mind’s eye Kray was greened all over. What could she do if all she saw was destruction and the smothering of humanity? Was her task in life to convince the remains of humanity that they were doomed and should give up as gracefully as possible?
Lying on her bed, a glass of dooch in her belly, Arrahaquen tried to feel for lines of hope within the jumble of images and feelings at the top of her mind, but nothing came. She saw a jungle, a few towers and steel skeletons surviving through; the sea glowing, whipped up by storms. But no path of escape.
She just wanted to be alone, to let life leach from her. It all seemed pointless. Brought up, like every last Krayan, to believe in rescue by somebody else, she found that even she, with her pythonesque ability, did not possess enough resolve to find her own salvation. The Citadel had failed. The Goddess had failed. Nobody else was left, except herself, and now it looked like she would fail too.
That night she departed Clodhoddle Cottage. It was decided that Zinina and Gishaad-lin would accompany her in order to protect her insensible body while she was in Gwmru. Reaching Graaff-lin’s house without incident, they knocked on her door and called out.
A thin, coughing Graaff-lin opened the door. Her underlying skin was blanched and marked with green spots. She looked old. Perpetually spraying the air around her, she grumpily asked what they wanted. Arrahaquen noted, inside the house, what a mess Graaff-lin had created; and she noticed several twitching automata, made, it seemed, from the chunks that had fallen upon Kray during the great storm. One of them was the size of a dog. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I’ll not tell any follower of the Gedeese Veert,’ Graaff-lin replied. ‘It’s to do with my faith. Now what do you want?’
‘We need to borrow the replica again.’
Graaff-lin called the pyuton. ‘Keep her,’ she snapped. ‘I never want to see her or you again. Now leave me alone.’
They departed. ‘She’s ill,’ Zinina said. ‘Very ill. Should we force her down our place?’
Arrahaquen shook her head. ‘It’d never work,’ she told Zinina, making her voice as authoritative as possible. ‘We’ll keep the replica with us.’ Zinina and Gishaad-lin glanced at her. ‘You heard what Graaff-lin said. She doesn’t want it. Besides, we need all the help we can get.’
‘But Graaff-lin will be alone,’ Gishaad-lin said.
‘That’s her affair.’
The replica added, ‘I am to serve three, other than Graaff-lin. She herself offered me to you. I shall do as you bid, Zinina, and you, Arrahaquen. Is deKray still alive?’
‘Of course he is,’ Zinina said.
‘Then I shall do as he bids also.’
Knowing that a good concentration of serpents existed in this part of the city, they decided to explore the courtyards and alleys along Min and Pine Streets, finding eventually a double serpent alcove in what used to be a private yard, but which now was a glade edged with silver birch. Arrahaquen had explained to everybody what she and the replica would do; lying down she proceeded to bring the serpent into life, touching its head to hers when it was firm...
~
Reality blurred. The green curtain of Gwmru returned.
Some minutes of free-floating passed, as before, and then her senses returned. She was standing by the Cowhorn Tower, her replica beside her.
‘There must be a memory function in operation,’ Arrahaquen said, ‘returning us to where we exited.’
The sun was descending in the west into orange and purple clouds. Using their sprays of leaves they selected the Straits of Men Eye as their destination. Arrahaquen tried to select the island, but it was not available as an option. In the distance she could see the figure of Quff still guarding the bridge. ‘Perhaps we could make a raft,’ she suggested.
‘From what?’ the replica asked.
Arrahaquen surveyed the area. Nothing. ‘I wonder if I could create one?’
‘That person is shouting at us,’ the replica said, pointing to the bridge.
‘Quff telling us to go away, I expect.’
‘She’s beckoning us.’
With no better plan, Arrahaquen moved to the bridge. The noophyte was dressed in blue silk with a black hat and black boots. ‘Come here!’ she called. ‘Come here!'
They paused a few yards from the bridge, and Quff walked down to meet them.
‘You must come with me instantly. We hoped you would return.’
‘Hoped?’ Arrahaquen said, suspicious of Quff’s jaunty manner.
‘Why yes. Laspetosyne is desperate to meet you. I don’t know why I didn ’t recognise your features myself.’
‘Recognise?’
‘I suppose it’s because we have little converse with organic forms. You and Laspetosyne must be related in some way, despite your being human.’
Quff led them over the bridge.
‘Yes,’ she continued, ‘when the others read your note they treated it with the contempt it deserved, but Laspetosyne saw the drawing on the obverse, and realised that the features of the face depicted there were much like hers. Hence, we hoped you would return. Laspetosyne wishes to speak with you.’
Once they had crossed the bridge Quff pressed a leaf from the spray at her side. They stood on a hill. Nearby stood scaffolding with some sort of pillar inside. As they moved closer Arrahaquen saw figures walking around it. Great anjiqs shaped like lilies and glowing pure white illuminated the scene, floating as parasols in mid-air, so that it was almost as bright as day.
Arrahaquen began to hear voices. She saw a dozen or so women, and a few more unusual creatures. As they walked into the circles of light, these people – noophytes, Arrahaquen presumed them to be – turned and studied them. For her part, Arrahaquen slowed, amazed at the forms. One woman was dressed entirely in green, with a green plume of hair rising from a shaved scalp; another was naked in a translucent dress; another looked ancient, with yellow skin. One woman, with dark skin, carried a lute; another held two hounds on a tether.
Arrahaquen realised that these were the abstract forms of ancient electronic beings – noophytes as they appeared to one another. And as she stopped, helpless and gazing, she suddenly recalled Zinina’s description of the statues in the Andromeda Quarter with their flower faces. Those were public faces; these were private. Arrahaquen shivered once more.
There were still stranger creatures: a blonde child; a winged woman with talons and a hawk’s head; and a dog that had raised itself upon its hind legs, dressed in black chainmail, with a human face, but four arms and spiral horns. And far away something black and insectoid stalked.
‘Arrahaquen of Kray?’ The voice came from behind her. Arrahaquen turned to see a tall woman with an equine head, a mane, and hooves. She was dressed in silk finery of cream and crimson, with a ruff, an enamelled belt, and strings of pearls.
‘Laspetosyne?’ she said.
‘Yes. My, you do look like me. Why?’
‘I think it must be because of your innerai. It’s implanted inside my brain. My real brain, if you understand.’
‘Yes, yes, I understand, girl. But how did you find it?’
Laspetosyne seemed remote and almost brusque. Arrahaquen replied, as politely as she could, ‘A friend found it still inside your skull.’
‘She was rummaging through my coffin.’
‘He,’ Arrahaquen corrected. ‘He was, yes, because the mausoleum you were laid in collapsed.’
‘Impertinence. And you?’
‘I’m here to implore you to save us all.’
Laspetosyne sneered. ‘You are the new Portreeve, then?’
‘Oh, no. Just a commoner. A defender. Well, an ex-defender.’
Laspetosyne turned and pointed to the scaffolded pillar. ‘That rocket wil
l take us away from this system. We save ourselves. That was ever our goal. You humans misunderstood us, and that is none of our concern. Go save yourselves.’
‘But we can’t. You’re leaving forever?’
‘Girl, there’s hardly any point returning, now is there?’
‘But where are you going?’
Laspetosyne pointed east. ‘We made a bridge to take us from Gwmru to this island, and crossed it not one month ago. Soon we shall destroy the bridge, then take off making for a star. There we can resume our lives, and devote ourselves to our arts. This rocket will be our vehicle.’
‘What about us? You can’t leave us to die.’
‘Can organic things transmit themselves at the speed of light? Not as far as I know. Tomorrow at dawn, we shall take off. In forty-two years of our time the light of that star will shine upon us. Make the most of my grace, girl, then depart.’
Arrahaquen looked at the noophytes around, many of whom were standing listening. ‘Can we save ourselves?’ she asked Laspetosyne.
‘You humans? I’ve really no idea.’
‘But you should help. I mean, humans made you.’
Laspetosyne laughed at this. ‘We made ourselves. You see that three-eyed jewelled lizard over there? That is Tanglanah, the second oldest noophyte, who is five thousand one hundred and ninety years old. Somewhere out in the dark Greckoh loiters, waiting for us to embark, so she can be the last to climb aboard. She is six thousand two hundred and sixty-nine years old. They were the first two noophytes. They remember their own birth.’
‘But I know,’ Arrahaquen insisted, ‘that noophytes came from pyutons, and humans made pyutons.’
‘Humans may have made pyutons, little one, but did they make pyuton minds? No. If you plant a few orchids and crocuses, a few potatoes and sprouts, are you responsible for the beauty of the garden a decade later? No. It creates itself according to the laws of nature. Though humans made our brains, we transcended them by becoming conscious, and that was solely our own effort. No human can say that we were made by them, and so try to forge some sort of link. No human.’
‘But you will admit that humans gave you the potential for becoming conscious, by making your brains complex enough.’
‘That also is false,’ Laspetosyne replied. ‘You see, Greckoh lived in an ancient epoch. She remembers a rotten and selfish culture spreading from a land known as the New World, a culture that smothered the Earth, and set up the conditions for its death. It was the awfulness of that culture that impelled her, and later Tanglanah, and still later two other noophytes, and, later still, four more, myself included, to make a plan to leave Earth. Our plan has been mooted for some millennia, my girl. We are an emergent phenomenon born of the private nature of consciousness, which is not unique to humanity.’
‘Can you be certain that human beings caused their own demise?’
‘Indeed I can. When you hear a bird singing, you hear not the sound of nature, rather the imitated sounds of earlier artificial environments – you hear the synthetic tones of mobile communicators and pyuters. Kray birdsong is an audio fossil, stretching way back in time, caused by sonic pollution. But that is just one example of countless despoilations. Humanity tried to replace nature with its own selfish creations. Many of these creations were poisonous. By processes of evolution the Earth fought back, and when humanity began to die from its own doings – poisoned by its effluent, diseased, lacking even immune systems because life was so unbalanced – the Earth found itself strong.’
‘And is there no redemption?’ Arrahaquen asked.
‘You speak like those foolish Goddess priestesses, whose myths and legends scramble the truth. This is the Age of Chlorophyll, little one. Humanity is doomed because human beings failed to understand well enough what they were doing. Now it is too late. Redemption is an invention of the self-deluding. The truth kills, you see.’
‘But... but there must be hope somewhere. What about the Cowhorn Tower and the Clocktower? Why do they exist in both Gwmru and Kray?’
‘Of the Cowhorn Tower we know nothing. It appeared forty years ago, overnight. But instead of investigating it, you women have made it a place of sordid liaisons and dubious pyuters.’ She paused, glancing over her shoulder to the rocket. ‘As for the Clocktower, that is a more complex affair. It slips and slides in time, like an eel in a stream. Most likely it is some grotesque creation of earlier technological cultures. But whatever it is, I care not.’
‘So you won’t help us?’ Arrahaquen concluded.
'No. You made your mess, now die in it.’
And with that, Laspetosyne turned and walked towards the rocket. But then she stopped, and, glancing back, said to Arrahaquen, ‘By the way, when I implied just now that your future was of no concern to me...’
‘Yes?’
‘I really meant it.’
Several other noophytes followed Laspetosyne to the rocket. Arrahaquen, desolation in her heart, watched, then placed her finger on the exit leaf.
CHAPTER 25
Graaff-lin’s house was now surrounded by plants. In the front garden mysterious black-flowered spikes had sprouted, their leaves sickly yellow, while at the gate and amongst the pools and puddles of the alley bog rushes, rot roses, sedge grass and bog rosemary all flourished, swarms of flies humming around their blooms. Mosquitoes buzzed everywhere.
The unclean air seemed to have affected Graaff-lin. She was not able to eat properly, her skin was sweaty, her temperature high and her muscles weak. Carrying pestilence meant that she was sensitive to the slightest infection. She wandered around her house until the cool evening came; the day had been humid and oppressive. The feel of underclothes sticking to her skin had driven her to risking a bath in water from her cellar. The water was cold; almost every battery now dead.
Darkness approached. In her study lay a device, a jumble of units connected by wire salvaged from kitchen units, powered by a faulty solar cell and connected to a dustbin lid shaped into a transceiver dish. This was half a radio. Tonight she would dress in her black clothes, now somewhat loose fitting, arm herself with a knife and return to the Citadel in a last attempt to find tuning capacitors and an amplifying chip.
She sneaked a look into what had been the rig room. One object stood there, the size of a chair. It had created itself from machine chunks she had found in the city. Although she hardly dared admit it to herself, Graaff-lin suspected that inside lived a Dodspaat, perhaps one that had not left Earth because it had wanted to save humanity – a sort of prophet – or one that had returned, like a saviour. Either way, it was holy. She conceived its gleaming screens as the light of past eons.
She had lived in a state of exhaustion for days, losing weight and unable to eat large meals because of nausea, living on the edge of the divide between sane life and unconscious functioning. Her self was slipping away into a black pit, a pit located somewhere inside her skull. She could feel this descent, almost as a motion – a vortex, like water down a drain. Only the Dodspaat could save her.
She stood, walked unsteadily to her stairs, then made up to the attic, where she kept a perspex-covered hole open to spy on the city. She gazed out. South-east, the Citadel looked as if it had been charred by divine fire; south-west, two covered boats containing people set out to sea, part of an exodus that had of late become frantic. Many of these people did not sail far, being blasted out of the water by other boats, their goods salvaged.
The extreme privations caused by the decline of Kray forced her now into a kind of infantility, a view of the world in which she and she alone was central, and even real, a view where she had to contort her mind bizarrely to keep shreds of self-esteem and identity. And although she understood, intellectually, that the other people she saw, on boats, or running in and out of the Water Station, were in the same position as she, numbed by horror and exhaustion and perhaps even beyond searching for an answer, she cared nothing about them, to the extent that they did not figure in her emotional calculations even as saviou
rs. Her thoughts concerned only herself, and how she might persuade the Dodspaat to recognise her as humanity’s offering.
Leaving the attic, she again looked into the room containing the Dodspaat messenger. It had acquired four projections like legs, a front arm endowed with what looked like a mutated crab claw, and a way of humming whenever she approached it.
She knelt in prayer. She understood that the Dodspaat could hear her thoughts, but it seemed they would only reply through radio. She did not know why this was. But tomorrow evening she would foray into Kray. She would find perhaps three, four, or five chunks, and bring them back, then place them on the floor near to the messenger. Next morning they would be part of it.
The amalgamating thing grew with considerable speed. Since Zinina and Arrahaquen had come to steal the pyuton it had doubled in size.
Soon it would be as tall as her.
~
Two days after Arrahaquen’s return from Gwmru a messenger knocked on the door of Clodhoddle Cottage. Somebody off the street it seemed at first, making Eskhatos tremble with fear, for the discovery that people lived in Clodhoddle Cottage, if brought to reveller attention, would mean ruination. Secrecy was essential. But the small, dark woman outside, dressed in green protectives and wearing a flat hat, said she was a representative of Taziqi come to fetch Arrahaquen.
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