Glass

by Stephen Palmer

  Subadwan ripped down the curtains at the back of the podium and covered both bodies. She caught sight of a plastic-armoured doorwarden. ‘Open all doors,’ she shouted. ‘Get the other doorwardens. Issue emergency orders, everyone out of the Archive. Take anybody living to the hospice wardens. Take the bodies outside, cover them. Find two plastic coffins. Quick, do it!’

  ‘At once Lord Archivist.’

  ‘And don’t call me Lord Archivist!’ Subadwan yelled after the man.

  ‘Subadwan, you are,’ Aquaitra insisted.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ Subadwan said. She now felt an urge to leave the podium, leave the chamber, so that nobody would be able to stare at her. ‘Direct the doorwardens,’ she told Aquaitra.

  ‘But the assassin–’

  ‘Gaya’s love, the assassin’s long gone! Now do what I say.’

  Aquaitra nodded – it was almost a bow – then ran off. The hall was quietening, only a few hundred people clustered to the rear, some still shouting, others staring back at the stark scene.

  Hardly able to breathe, Subadwan ran all the way to the apex of the Archive, where she stumbled into Rhannan’s room and slammed shut the door.

  She sat, not in Rhannan’s chair but in the chair that always stood on the opposite side of her desk. Golden light shone bright. Subadwan had no idea how to dim it. At the table of brews she poured herself more spearmint alcohol, but then found herself unable to drink it. She did not know what to do; what to feel. She worried that she felt nothing. Then, walking around the chamber in a circle – not realising this was what she was doing – she worried what people were thinking below.

  They would be thinking of her, of course. All thoughts would ascend to this chamber. But Subadwan just wanted to remain alone. She scribbled a note on a sheet of plastic and stuck it to the outside of the door: No entry. I will appear shortly. Do not knock. No pyuter messages.

  But as she sat down again, a husky pyuter voice said, ‘The Reeve is on line, Lord Archivist–’

  ‘Don’t–’ Subadwan stopped herself.

  ‘The Reeve wishes to speak.’

  Subadwan sighed. ‘Let him through.’

  A vertical gel-screen became illuminated, tiny imperfections giving the face of the old man depicted there an aqueous image, distorted in waves. The age of the screen made his skin sallow and his wrinkles brown.

  ‘Lord Archivist Subadwan,’ he said, ‘I have just heard the terrible news.’ He paused. ‘I am talking to the Lord Archivist of Gaya, am I not?’

  ‘You are, Reeve.’

  ‘Of course, we must make immediate arrangements for you to be inducted into the Triad–’

  Subadwan uttered a single laugh. She felt sudden anger. ‘Gaya praise us, don’t think you can inveigle me into your web of corruption. I refuse utterly.’

  Umia seemed surprised. ‘Do I hear aright?’ For some seconds the sound transmitted from the Archive of Noct seemed to die, before a hum returned, and Umia said, ‘The law states that the Lord Archivist of Gaya be a member of the five. You have no option but to become one of the Triad. Doubtless you are shocked, and that is why your manners have temporarily failed you.’

  Subadwan, the anger within her making her voice quaver, replied, ‘I shall never be one of the Triad. Never, never. It’s an organisation of partisans and fools. I shan’t attend a single meeting, even if you name me the fifth member against my will.’

  ‘This cannot be,’ Umia said, shaking his head.

  ‘Do you think I don’t know what this is all about? You’re afraid of our Archive. And you’re afraid what will happen if you can’t control it. That’s why you’re making this call.’

  ‘I will leave you for now,’ Umia said with dignity. ‘You have not heard the last of this matter, be assured.’

  The Reeve’s call left Subadwan with raw nerves, numbness already departed. She felt no sorrow, only anger. And in her mind there formed an inkling of pressures to come.

  ‘Lord Archivist Querhidwe wishes to speak with you,’ said the pyuter. Its throaty voice, designed to soothe, only irritated her.

  Subadwan’s defocussed gaze traversed the chamber. Though it had been created from plastic, fat lumps carried accidentally from walls lower in the Archive had formed greasy spots, so that parts of the chamber looked diseased. The furniture was of clumsy design. Subadwan felt an urge to recreate the entire place.

  Frustrated, she sighed. ‘I suppose I’ll have to hear what the pyuton’s got to say.’

  Querhidwe’s face appeared on screen. ‘My dear Subadwan,’ she said, ‘a minion has just informed me of what has happened. My commiserations. Terrible, quite terrible. Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Querhidwe nodded. ‘As I thought. Rhannan and I had many agreements, Subadwan, and I expect these to be continued–’

  ‘Expect nothing,’ Subadwan snapped. ‘I’m not Rhannan.’

  Again the inscrutable pyuton nodded. ‘You are Subadwan, of course. Still, you are a function of your Archive, an official figure, the mortal figurehead in fact–’

  ‘I should have thought you had enough problems with bullying freaks in your own Archive, never mind harassing me!’ Angrily, Subadwan slapped her hands on the table. ‘Pyuter, terminate this call.’

  Querhidwe’s face vanished.

  ‘There is a call from the Senior Administrative Officer of Triad Tower.’

  With a yell Subadwan flung a tankard at the screen, but it bounced off. ‘No more calls!’

  ‘Lord Archivist,’ said the pyuter voice respectfully.

  The numbness had gone. Already shock was over. Subadwan felt immense anger, and fear at what this anger might do. The assassinations had propelled her, a twenty-five-year old, into a position she did not want. Responsibility could oppress.

  First, she had to stop people calling. The pyuter voice emanated from a stack of rigs, so she initiated a recording for general release to the networks. As she spoke she signed, for non-lipreaders watching on public city screens.

  ‘Crayans. Rhannan and Aswaque have been assassinated by headbreakers at the Archive of Gaya. There is no news on those responsible. In due course the investigation will become public. I, Subadwan, am the Lord Archivist of Gaya. Aquaitra is Second Archivist. The Archive of Gaya will reopen tomorrow.’

  As Subadwan finished she heard the sound of boots outside her door: people reading her note. She waited, but nobody knocked. They were shuffling around outside, though, and she did not want that.

  ‘Tell the people outside to go away,’ she told the pyuter.

  A muffled voice relayed her commands. Footsteps sounded, then receded. Breath held, Subadwan listened. Nobody there. She was alone again. It was what she needed.

  Until the scarlet clouds of sunset dissolved into purple gloom Subadwan stayed in the apex chamber, thinking of what had happened, drinking enough alcohol to calm herself, though not enough to dull her thoughts, letting her mind sort out its own chaos. After dusk, she knew she was the Lord Archivist. The truth lay in her mind and shock could not blunt it any more.

  People looked at her askance when she reappeared. Doorwardens and recorders prowled the deserted, echoing building, but many of the Archivists were also present, typically talking in small groups as if with nothing better to do. They fell silent when Subadwan approached. ‘Carry on,’ she told them, not stopping.

  It was Aquaitra she wanted. She needed to talk with her deputy; and there was the matter of the Third Archivist to appoint. That would have to be poor Gwythey, middle aged and shy, who like herself would not want the sudden responsibility.

  Aquaitra appeared from a door. ‘Over here,’ Subadwan called.

  Aquaitra approached, placing her hands on Subadwan’s shoulders in respect. Unexpected, the gesture embarrassed Subadwan. They stood alone in a low-roofed chamber. She found that she was trembling. She had thought that all her feelings were done with, gone, expressed, but it seemed not.

  ‘Who did it?’ asked Aquaitra. />
  Subadwan had thought little on that question, just as she did not want to think about the black faces, the blood, those moments of shock. ‘An assassin,’ she replied.

  ‘What will we do?’

  ‘Appoint Gwythey. Put the bodies in the coffins. I’ll arrange their interment, you deal with the Archivists and the rest. You tell them what happened.’

  Subadwan felt hot tears falling down her cheeks. The emotion made Aquaitra cry. Together, hugging each other, they wept. It was the knowledge that they were in charge that brought the emotion. Subadwan thought she had accepted it all, but she had hardly started. She had witnessed an atrocity. Shock had numbed her, now pain had arrived, and loss, and a strangely precise sense that she was somehow alone and socially isolated.

  After a few minutes Aquaitra departed and Subadwan dried her tears. She knew there were more to come.

  Finding Gwythey, she appointed the pale woman Third Archivist, ignoring formal rhetoric apart from the ubiquitous shoulder-salute. This laying on of hands she would have to get used to, since Gaya demanded it. Gwythey was too shocked to say very much, not even asking for details of the assassination. She accepted her appointment with a nod and a frightened expression. Subadwan wept again.

  The rest of the day passed with speed. Subadwan tried to organise her tasks, but it was impossible with people arriving all the time – this to do, that to do – and the memory of what had happened hanging over everything. It was an hour after midnight before she realised the day had passed.

  She hardly slept that night. Only as the first light of dawn appeared in the east did she doze off for a few hours.

  Much had been accomplished. No bodies remained inside the temple. Every trace of blood had been cleaned away. Rhannan and Aswaque lay in their coffins, already sealed by glow-torch into their biodegradable final resting places, ready for Gaya to reabsorb them back into her body during decades to come. A crowd of some two hundred Crayans stood in the Archive yard, curious, voyeurs all of them, but they learned nothing from the well-muscled doorwardens who stood like doom-statues at the public entrance.

  Thirty-six people had been crushed to death in the public chamber. All had been returned to their families except one unidentifiable woman. Her face was too disfigured to recognise, and she had been carrying no fishtail. Some said she was the assassin, a suicide, but Subadwan immediately silenced such talk and had Gwythey give the unfortunate a pauper’s burial.

  The daily dissemination was due at noon. Subadwan, expecting a full house, was surprised when only a few hundred people turned up, though when she considered events from their point of view she realised that fear must have kept them away. In tremulous voice, aware of her tiny figure, of her inexperience, and her youth, she performed the speaking as best she could. The worst moment came when she dropped her goblet of water. Aquaitra jumped to her assistance, saving a few drops, which Subadwan, red-faced, drank.

  Time seemed to slow. Still battered by tasks she had to perform, now and then weeping in silence, Subadwan nonetheless could look at the assassination from a distance – as an event that lay in the past and did not embrace her with arms of terror. The Archive she imagined as a hill of miniatures below her. So much to do. So much activity. She decided she would be a delegating Lord Archivist.

  She dozed during the night. Still she had not been home to her own house. She had lived hour-to-hour.

  In the morning Rhannan and Aswaque were due to be buried. Subadwan called Aquaitra to the apex chamber. Aquaitra, if her dark-encircled eyes were a symptom to be judged, had also slept little during the past two days. Seeing this, and the expression of lost hope on her face, Subadwan fell to crying, and for some minutes both Archivists were unable to speak. But Subadwan knew that grieving was unavoidable.

  ‘The burial,’ Subadwan began, pouring them both an iced drink.

  Dubiously looking at the blue brew, Aquaitra said, ‘Should we be drinking alcohol on this particular day?’

  ‘One won’t harm,’ Subadwan said. ‘The burial will start at noon. I’ll have to lead it, with you and Gwythey–’

  ‘Is she coping?’

  ‘Gaya save me, I’ve hardly had time to see her. You noticed anything?

  Aquaitra shook her head. ‘She’s always been quiet.’

  ‘She been crying?’

  ‘I don’t know, ’Dwan.’

  Subadwan sat down in the seat behind Rhannan’s desk. Her desk. ‘I’m going to change all this,’ she said.

  ‘I will help you.’

  ‘Thanks. Do you want to stay in your own room?’

  ‘I think–’

  ‘You can if you want to,’ Subadwan said. ‘We could put Gwythey in my old room.’

  Aquaitra nodded, saying, ‘That would be best.’

  ‘It’s bad, isn’t it, us talking logistics, room changes, when Rhannan and Aswaque are in their coffins?’

  ‘The work of administration has to be done, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. But it’s bad.’

  Silence fell upon the chamber. Both women sipped at their drinks.

  ‘Aquaitra?’ said Subadwan, cautiously.

  ‘Yes?’

  Subadwan could not quite decide how to phrase the question. ‘Um, do you know anything, any snippets of gossip, about who did it? You heard anything–’

  ‘Not one word, ’Dwan, not one single word. Everybody is as shocked as we are. I saw nobody at the back of the hall, only the smoke trails.’

  ‘I saw them flash by.’

  ‘Did you? Oh, ’Dwan…’

  Subadwan shrugged. ‘Done now. Gaya’s love, but headbreakers are expensive pyuters, aren’t they? Whoever fired them didn’t want mistakes. Those things don’t fail, do they?’

  Aquaitra, face blanching, murmured, ‘I imagine not.’

  They finished their drinks. ‘Come on,’ Subadwan said. ‘Time to bury them.’

  Arm in arm they walked down the central staircase. Both had dressed in ceremonial blue gowns upon rising. Gwythey and all the other clerks, also in blue, joined them as they descended, followed by a train of scribes and recorders, forming by the time they stood at the lowest level a throng of a hundred and twenty people. There, each guarded by a doorwarden, lay the two white coffins.

  Subadwan turned and indicated which clerks should lift the coffins. Subadwan leading, the coffins behind her, behind them the rest of the mourners, a single-line procession formed heading east along Lac Street, the short lane terminating at the Swamps. It took only ten minutes. Gloomy Crayans lined the street on both sides, their faces lit only by glittering motes in the perspex under their feet. Above, the sky was night dark, and the coffins seemed to glow in contrast, as though Gaya was already absorbing vital essences.

  The Swamps were Cray’s natural system of corpse removal, but it had been noticed that bodies were not sinking as once they used to. Many said this was because there had been an overload.

  At the Swamps there lay a low wall. On the other side black gel bubbled in a few liquid places, a layer of dust and grime on top criss-crossed with animal tracks. To Subadwan’s left two bodies lay half submerged, limbs and head visible, skin black as soot. The vermin of this place ate only each other, never touching human flesh. These corpses were pristine.

  Subadwan looked at the faces of the chief mourners. There was Reeve Umia’s representative, Heraber pyuton of Noct, and there stood Querhidwe, just behind her two leaders of the lesser Archives, Arqu of the Archive of Vein Extraction and Drellalleyn of the Archive of Perfume; and just arriving Ffenquylla of the Archive of Wood.

  Subadwan glanced at other faces. All wore linguistic decoders over their ears so that none of her words could be lost to city clamour. ‘Where is Tanglanah?’ she called.

  No reply.

  A few people looked around as Subadwan called again, ‘Where is Tanglanah of the Archive of Safekeeping?’

  Nothing. Just noise.

  Then Subadwan said, ‘We’ll give her five minutes.’

  The minutes
passed like hours. Everybody was embarrassed, studying their boots, checking their pockets, whispering to their friends, comrades and kin. Subadwan stared over the Swamps, not angry, but sad that Cray’s ancient code had been flouted. Far away, like a single glow-bean floating on a breeze, she saw a lamp emitting purple light. She wondered how that light forced a way through the sombre mists, how it navigated the gloom. Then, briefly, she saw the silhouette of a figure on a punt. It looked human, cloaked and hooded. Dark fog closed in. Had that been one of the druids?

  A voice at her ear: Aquaitra. ‘Your five minutes have passed.’

  Subadwan blinked, departed her reverie. She looked around. ‘Is she here?’

  Aquaitra shook her head.

  Subadwan turned to the coffin bearers and said, ‘Drop them in the Swamps.’ As the clerks did this, she intoned:

  ~

  ‘Gaya, We bring bodies

  for you to eat.

  Gaya, We bring sentience

  for you to keep.’

  ~

  The ritual was short, but had Rhannan and Aswaque been even a little less important they would not have been inside coffins, and then the ritual would have been still shorter.

  The coffins lay slowly sinking upon the gel as the mourners dispersed. Gaya required Subadwan to leave last, and so, ten minutes later, she departed the Swamps and followed Aquaitra and Gwythey down Lac Street.

  ‘I wonder what could have made Tanglanah stay away from the burial?’ Aquaitra asked, not addressing her question to any particular listener.

  Subadwan answered, ‘I don’t know. I doubt it’s significant.’

  Gwythey seemed uncertain. ‘It’s a new cult, Safekeeping. She’s not important.’

  Subadwan said, ‘I think she’s very important.’

  Back at the Archive, Subadwan was able to relax for an hour in her chamber. Determined to remove Rhannan’s aura from the place, she changed the position of every item of furniture, except the vertical screen and the great stack of pyuters that stood immovable by the door. For a moment she stood before these pyuters, stroking the rough slabs of protein, the prickly interfaces, wondering what lay inside, wondering why they remained unconnected to the Archive systems and the city networks.