Memory Seed

by Stephen Palmer

  She found herself lying on a couch. She was warm. Her toes and her fingers ached. Her face ached. Her eyes ached.

  She sat up. Around her, in a sumptuous room, were her friends.

  Tashyndy and Qmoet sat together, the Kray Queen engaged in some ritual of the Goddess with green circles drawn around her.

  Qmoet gazed at Ky’s kit, a part of which lay in her hands.

  Zinina lay on another couch, also wrapped but in her own sheets.

  Two jacqana – one missing a leg, the other its basket – lay immobile nearby.

  ‘Where are we?’ she said.

  Qmoet ran over. ‘At last you’re awake. We’re still in this place. You’ve been out almost an hour.’

  Arrahaquen looked over to Ky’s kit.

  ‘She was dead,’ said Qmoet, nodding.

  ‘I think I shot her–’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ Qmoet said. ‘Ky was probably killed by a laser shot.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Revellers.’

  Arrahaquen lay back. ‘They must have been looking for shelter in the only place left standing. But they would never have entered.’

  ‘Will we be here for ever now?’

  Arrahaquen did not answer. ‘Is Zinina still alive?’ she asked Qmoet.

  ‘Her wounds haven’t reopened.’

  Tashyndy said, ‘I think she might be recovering. Her breathing is faster, her pulse quicker.’

  Arrahaquen felt numb to everything. Her ability to pull precognition lines and arrays from the top of her mind was defeated here by exhaustion and a sense of cloying uncertainty, like a fog rolling in from some uncharted, inner sea. Inside the Clocktower an hour had passed; inside her mind, weeks seemed to have dragged by... dark weeks.

  Suddenly a wave of emotion caught her, like submersion in hot water. She had never felt her self-possession smothered so vigorously. A fit of sobbing took hold. Vision blurred, she wept, her body gasping, though she could feel Tashyndy holding her steady. Heat suffused her.

  Images of the foyer entered her mind, though they were devoid of real people and populated mostly by shadows, as though she had forgotten that others depended upon her. All that existed for her was the fountain of grief, of awe, swirling around the foyer in a vortex, herself at the centre. She felt Tashyndy’s strong arms hugging her and heard her voice calling, ‘Arrahaquen, what is it?’

  It was like a lifeline. Tashyndy’s face appeared.

  ‘Is she still with us?’ Qmoet asked.

  Hot, salty water stung her cracked lips, moistened her mouth. Her constricted throat and heaving chest tried to produce more words. Once again she was submerged into grief.

  ‘DeKray’s dead,’ she said at last.

  ‘Yes, he is.’ Tashyndy sat at her side, and hugged her once more. ‘Somebody shot him.’

  ‘He’s lying outside, dead.’ Arrahaquen could not bear to see in her mind’s eye the awful image.

  How could she explain to them what he had done? His sacrifice was to trigger the building of the Cowhorn Tower. The copper pear he had given to the surgeon Myshelau had contained the building’s genetic code. DeKray may have been fertile, but the human seed which had be stored in the Cowhorn Tower would ensure the survival of humanity. What use would Kray have for a fertile man? He hadn’t been able to see the Clocktower because he was no longer part of Kray’s future.

  Arrahaquen, with a final flood of emotion, understood that she was the vehicle of salvation, while deKray was its source. She knew that those secrets that had died with him were lost forever.

  ‘This tower is our escape,’ she said. ‘Tashyndy, how did the Cowhorn Tower look when you left your temple?’

  ‘The Cowhorn Tower was as strong as ever,’ Tashyndy replied.

  Arrahaquen stared up at her. ‘Was it?’

  ‘Why, yes.’

  Arrahaquen felt sudden excitement. She tried to get up. Her body would not remain still. ‘It’s out there now, awaiting us!’

  ‘Calm yourself,’ Tashyndy said. Qmoet tried to hold her down.

  ‘No! We’ve got to get down to the foyer again, right now. We’ve got to leave.’

  ‘Leave?’ they cried. ‘Back into the storm?’

  ‘The storm is over.’

  She stood, and, though it pained her, hobbled to the steps.

  ‘Quickly,’ she said. They glanced at each other, at a loss. ‘Quickly!’

  Tashyndy and Qmoet looked doubtfully at one another. Moments passed. Arrahaquen stood firm. They stood as two groups in opposition.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Tashyndy. ‘We can’t go into the storm again. We’ll die.’

  ‘Trust me,’ Arrahaquen said.

  Again the pair eyed one another. Tashyndy said to Qmoet, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I am past thinking,’ Qmoet sighed, tears falling down her cheeks.

  Tashyndy pondered. Arrahaquen knew that here lay the final decision. ‘I am the last Kray Queen,’ Tashyndy said. ‘I represent the women of Kray–’

  ‘But not the people!’ Arrahaquen said. ‘DeKray was a man.’

  ‘But you said he was not part of us.’

  ‘He is part of us in that what he did helped us. He unknowingly sacrificed himself for our future. You must follow me, for what he did means we can live.’

  Qmoet walked over to where Arrahaquen stood. Tashyndy stood firm.

  ‘Come on,’ Arrahaquen said.

  Silence. The tower walls broadcast nothing of the weather outside. Still Tashyndy stood, her head bowed, her eyes closed.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she said. ‘You said this tower was our place of salvation. How can we leave it?’

  A voice from behind them.

  Arrahaquen stared. ‘Zinina!’

  Zinina was barely conscious. ‘Go with Arrahaquen,’ she repeated, ‘go with her, go with her.’ Her pale hands fluttered around the sodden blankets.

  Again Tashyndy closed her eyes. ‘I’ll go,’ she sighed.

  Without delay Arrahaquen turned, allowing Qmoet to help her downstairs, while Tashyndy carried Zinina as best she could. The jacqana staggered behind. They ignored the machines of the second floor and made straight for the main door.

  Arrahaquen sobbed without hope... without reason. Her body felt as weak as it had ever done. Hands – she could not tell whose – held her upright.

  ‘Now!’ she cried.

  Qmoet flung open the door.

  Bright sunlight made her wince.

  Pulling their few remaining satchels, they all stumbled out of the Clocktower.

  Arrahaquen, unable to see, fell to the ground. She smelled grass. It was warm.

  ‘It’s going!’ Qmoet gasped.

  Arrahaquen turned and, fingers shielding her eyes, looked up at the Clocktower. She could see sky through it. Blue sky.

  It faded...

  Then vanished.

  Arrahaquen got to her feet. ‘It’s gone forever,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t exist in this time.’

  ‘This time?’ Tashyndy queried.

  ‘The Clocktower has propelled us over the end of Kray. This is the future. This was what I couldn’t remember all that time. I think the noophytes remembered some of it too, but they didn’t want to be part of it.’ Arrahaquen surveyed the land all around. Kray, and yet not Kray…

  They stood near a shore. The blue sea was dazzling, with brilliant flecks of light where the sun reflected off it. Behind them, hills rose to gentle peaks. The sky was pastel blue, with white clouds. Judging by the sun it was early afternoon.

  ‘Look.’ Arrahaquen pointed to the sky. ‘The Spaceflower’s gone.’

  ‘Look over there,’ Tashyndy countered, pointing north.

  Arrahaquen looked.

  ‘Is that the Cowhorn Tower?’ said Qmoet.

  It seemed so. Far away, across a bubbling river, Arrahaquen saw a dark building. It stood in roughly the right place.

  ‘It is,’ she said. ‘I told you! It’s there for us. It’s why deKray couldn’t
come with us.’

  They walked across fields to the Cowhorn Tower. Used to the terrifying fecundity of Kray they were at a loss in this pale, tame land. The grass seemed paltry, the bushes small and the trees, without their usual threat, seemed tiny and stunted. Arrahaquen looked around her and wondered how anything could grow so feebly.

  As the sun set, stars began to appear.

  They were thirsty and hungry. With only eleven bottles of water unopened, they knew they would soon have to drink river water. For some time the taboos created by life in Kray stopped them, but Arrahaquen, taking the lead, let them watch as she cupped her hands in the clear, cold water, and drank. Then she took off her clothes and bathed. The others followed suit.

  Food was more difficult. They had saved a few boxes. Arrahaquen knew that soon a life almost as difficult as that of Kray would begin, for they would have to forage, just as the first women of the human race had done.

  ~

  Zinina stood at the cliffs. It was midnight.

  Her life had been dislocated. Already, though only half a day had passed, she had wept a week’s tears for deKray. A part of her lay unburied, rotting, who knew how many years in the distant past.

  And the world around her was strange.

  When Arrahaquen came to stand by her, she said, ‘Almost everything I knew has gone.’

  Arrahaquen nodded. ‘Our friends. Our city.’

  ‘We’re not the only ones starting again,’ Zinina said. ‘Your Rien Zir’s been reborn, don’t you see? The old Rien Zir’s gone – the violent, poisonous one. Now we’ve got a gentle daughter.’

  Arrahaquen said nothing.

  Zinina gazed out over the sea. ‘We can stop running, at last.’

  Bonus material

  TALES FROM THE SPIRED INN

  THE GREEN REALM BELOW

  Through the rain Kytanquil could see the aquamarine lamps of the Spired Inn like corpse lights floating around a mausoleum. The inn was a tall, domed structure with a single door, to which she ran as the wind blew drizzle into her face. It was the last centre of culture in this northerly district of the dying city of Kray.

  And it was her home, for Kytanquil was the daughter of Oq-Ziq, notorious thief and local ambassador for the jannitta culture, and Balgydyal, notorious lecher and ambassador for nothing.

  Inside the hall she stuffed her boots into an antiseptic bin, pulled off her film protectives and dressed in a white shift and slippers that she withdrew from her kit, belting the shift with string and inflating the slippers with a minipump. She opened the door into the common room and strolled in. Dark alcoves of oak surrounded her, their carven sides flickering as a multitude of giant candles sputtered and hissed. A few locals drank dooch from tankards. At the bar she saw the innkeeper, Dhow-lin, a crusty old woman dressed in the traditional smock of her aamlon culture.

  This was through force of circumstance a cosmopolitan inn, where melancholy Krayans mingled with exotic jannitta, who were in turn mellowed by the intense, almost elegiac musicality of the aamlon. Kytanquil, never quite at home with any of these cultures, nevertheless found the mixture a comfort, for her personality was not sober, not passionate, nor yet profound. She was a drifter. Not a loner, but a misfit.

  Her appearance caused a trio of priestesses from the Temple of Youth to stare at her. She was unusually tall, her short, bleached hair slicked back with antiseptic gel, her sad, dark eyes – identical to her mother’s – like anti-lamps in a bright face. She ignored the priestesses, and they returned to their whispered conversation.

  Dhow-lin greeted her. ‘Come along. Drink?’

  Kytanquil approached the bar and replied, ‘Is she in?’

  ‘No. Out raiding some unsafe homes wired off by defenders this morning. Four or five families forced south to the refugee streets.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Kytanquil nodded to the bottles of mootsflosser. She enjoyed a special relationship with Dhow-lin on account of her mother, allowing her such luxuries as credit and free board. ‘Make it a big glass.’

  Swilling the creamy liqueur around her goblet, she surveyed the clientele. Apart from the priestesses, all were locals. She turned back to the bar, only to see Dhow-lin’s hand waving a slip of plastic at her. ‘I forgot, this message came for you.’

  Only one symbol had been printed on the fragment, a red splotch looking like a leaf. She did not recognise it. But her bracelet did.

  It had been a present from a mysterious relative, an object she had owned since her rite of puberty, a wide bracelet of gold, copper and silicon with an object embedded in it like a soft emerald. Now that dark jewel glowed, and as she waved the slip at it bright green beams burst out. One of the decorative frills beside the jewel moved to become a slit, and before she knew it the slip was being ingested by the bracelet, until all that was left was the smell of lavender incense. The whole incident lasted just seconds.

  ‘What did it do?’ Dhow-lin asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kytanquil replied, ‘I had no idea it was active.’

  Dhow-lin was unimpressed. ‘It’s trouble, that’s certain. Throw it. It’s useless for bartering and it ain’t a weapon.’

  ‘It is an heirloom,’ Kytanquil pointed out.

  ‘An heirloom that even Kray’s greatest cat-burglar can’t identify,’ Dhow-lin scoffed, adding in a sing-song voice, ‘That’s dangerous.’

  ‘My mother doesn’t know everything.’

  Dhow-lin’s response was cut short when another slit opened up and a translucent orange wafer slid out. It fell to the bar with a metallic plink.

  Dhow-lin gasped. ‘A Garden fret!’

  Kytanquil did not recognise the phrase, but she understood the shock in Dhow-lin’s voice. ‘A what?’ she asked.

  After a pause, Dhow-lin said, ‘A call from the secret inhabitants of the Garden. They want to meet you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nobody but them can know, can they? They’re the ultimate secret society, older by far than the Phallists, more skilled than the Club of Shadowy Thieves. You better go.’

  ‘But where exactly?’ Kytanquil asked.

  ‘Go to the Greenhouses, that’s my advice. But don’t tell nobody I said so.’

  And so Kytanquil found herself outside the Spired Inn, looking south, wondering what to do.

  Only one thing to do. Prepare weapons and locate the Greenhouses.

  ~

  The Garden was shunned by all in Kray, too dangerous to cross, with its sucking marshes, carnivorous plants, and razor flowers that leaped from the ground to cut out the eyes of the unwary. So Kytanquil followed its southern wall, until she saw the single safe area, a zone of grass by a gate, at its far end the twinkling panes of the Greenhouses. She called out her name and purpose, but nobody answered. Slowly, she walked up to the nearest Greenhouse, and entered.

  A man stood up from behind a wooden box. Kytanquil jumped, one hand at the dagger on her belt. He was dressed in a leather apron and boots, under these muddy protectives rough garments of denim. She could not see his eyes, for they were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses so polished they reflected every gleam of candle and lamp. When he smiled, she saw teeth filed to points.

  ‘Hello,’ he said in a deep voice. ‘Who are you?’

  In silence Kytanquil held up the orange wafer.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Then welcome to our realm! I am Awanshyva.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘The Advocate of the Plants.’

  Kytanquil looked at him, dread making her skin crawl. Bloodstains marked his clothes, and his teeth were decayed to the colour orange. ‘Why did you call for me?’ she asked.

  He seemed not to have heard her. ‘I am ashamed to admit that in my youth I did eat plants. But now I am wholly carnivorous. The destruction of Kray, which is the final city of humankind, is an end I pray for every night. Ah, yes.’

  Kytanquil cringed and took a step back. Time to depart.

  ‘But there is need of you,’ Awanshyva said, his voice suddenly loud,
‘for you wear the bracelet of–’

  ‘This bracelet?’ Kytanquil interrupted, raising her arm. ‘You know what it is?’

  ‘Not yet. Now is the time to find out. Follow me.’

  He turned, and like a zombie began to trudge deeper into the greenhouse. Kytanquil hesitated, then gripped tight the handle of her dagger and followed, thinking that they would go deeper into the Garden. So she was surprised when he stooped to pull up a metal cover in the earth, then drop into the chamber below. She was left peering down into the pale green gloom, in which Awanshyva stood like a troglodyte, his wraparound shades reflecting the peppermint light provided by countless tiny fungi.

  ‘Come,’ he said.

  Kytanquil felt torn. Afraid of the man, yet impelled by the curiosity in her drifting spirit, she hesitated on the brink of the hole, before gripping her dagger still tighter and jumping down. ‘Don’t even think of touching me,’ she warned. ‘I was trained in steel combat by Oq-Ziq, my mother.’

  ‘That is a lie,’ Awanshyva countered.

  Shocked by his certainty, Kytanquil found no reply.

  ‘Dead, you are useless,’ Awanshyva remarked. ‘Now follow me, and please do not fear.’

  So Kytanquil followed. At the end of the chamber stood the remains of a door, which Awanshyva smashed aside with his fists. He led the way into a tunnel that after a hundred yards opened out into a chamber filled with rotten wood. Luminous orange and green fungi lit the place. At the further end lay another manhole cover, which Awanshyva prised open. A ladder of rusting iron led the way down into blackness. Kytanquil took a flashlight from her kit and peered into the depths, but it was too deep for her weak beam to penetrate. A claustrophobia born in the bottomless pit enveloped her.

  Without a word Awanshyva began to clamber down the ladder, leaving Kytanquil no option but to follow. She descended miner style: one hand behind, one hand in front of the ladder. Occasionally she would stop to close her eyes and draw a few deep breaths. The cold was intense.

  After some time she heard boots striking a wet floor. She pointed the flashlight down to see a wide ledge damp with slime. Stepping off the ladder she kept hold of one rung, for the lip of the ledge was a sheer drop into blackness that even Awanshyva avoided.