“Clear,” Nuïy confirmed.
Deomouvadaïn attached a portable subnet clone, such as littered the Tech Houses, to his static clone and the delicate task began. Nuïy analysed the fragments of data passing into his ears until he lost touch with the cellar, existing only in the landscape of his memory.
Beep! Kirifaïfra.
“Stop!” he yelled.
“Hmph,” Deomouvadaïn said, “that took some time. Now, then. Give me the code.”
Nuïy tapped it out against an improvised drumhead made from catskin, and then Deomouvadaïn pulled the data, sending it to a speaker.
A soft voice said, “Kirifaïfra, two-one-nine-gee. Total weight eighty grammes. Plot two. Age, twenty eight. Father deceased, mother deceased. Veneris agent D. E. six-oh-three. Reports indicate origins with the Herb Smokers? See also Vishilkaïr. End.”
Deomouvadaïn considered what he had heard. “Hmph. So the boy lives in Veneris and is an agent of the Delightful Erection. Interesting.”
“What does that mean?”
“D’you not know? The masculine force those clerics venerate wants to bind all men to it. They’ve agents everywhere, especially in the Woods and around the edges of crone urb. Vagrant and beggar men tend to congregate there. They’ve got a power base in the Cemetery.”
“What a shame we are banned from departing the Shrine,” Nuïy remarked.
“We’ll see. I’ve friends.”
Nuïy frowned. “What friends?”
Deomouvadaïn coughed, spat into his handkerchief, then sat back to say, “I’ve been around, Nuïy Pinkeye. In my youth I was a boxer. I cheated. Fought with lead in my fists. But my pals respected me for it, because it made me win. So I forged a net of contacts. When I came here twenty five years back, I knew I could return to them. I will. Soon I’ll have men up in crone urb, finding things out. Hard men.”
“Good,” Nuïy said. “The sooner we discover what the flower crash is, the better.”
“Hmph. My guess is that Kamnaïsheva and the plotters have something to do with it. But we’ll beat those plotters yet.”
“We will,” Nuïy agreed. “But we are tied here.”
“We’ll begin with Kirifaïfra. I’ll wager he has no guardian. Men beholden to the Delightful Erection never do. That’ll make my men’s search easier. They’ll start in the Cemetery, asking after a group called the Herb Smokers.”
“And then?”
Deomouvadaïn grinned. “Then a bit of mayhem, and the boy is transferred to Emeralddis. Then he talks.”
CHAPTER 14
Manserphine knew resistance was a waste of time, so she followed the two Sea-clerics as they skirted the autohives, tracked the river south, then passed through the East Tunnel into Aequalaïs. As she had expected, her two captors were incapable of speaking in anything other than their own language. She wondered what would happen when she reached the Shrine, for as far as she knew only Fnfayrq spoke intelligibly. Krshnaq the Wavetide Cleric and particularly Klnorq the Seastorm Cleric, ruler of the Shrine, would disdain all non-oceanic modes of language as impure.
Through warm drizzle they walked, the river to their left choked with seaweed, to their right the reflective buildings of the urb glittering through the downpour. They turned a bend in the road, crested a dune, and then Manserphine saw the Shrine of the Sea ahead, like golden fungus against the leaden ocean. She stopped, her heart beating fast. She knew that these could be her final steps on free land. The guards waited, then, when she did not move, gestured her on, saying, “Ssu ta, na whoy, la, la!”
Sadly Manserphine followed them up the sandy track to the Shrine of the Sea.
Close up, the Shrine astonished her. The pictures she had seen did no justice to the intricate engravings made with chisels in the gold-plated domes, to the fine workmanship of hardpetal lintels surrounding windows and doors, and to the size and blunt power of the defending wall, and Iron Maw, its black gate. It seemed they were expected. Iron Maw opened a few feet with a screeching as of banshees, then closed after they stepped through. A salt encrusted yard greeted them.
Manserphine took a few moments to get her bearings. The nearer domes were pierced by single doors, open and unguarded, while the central dome rose up to the spire they had seen before, now bowing and clattering in the strong sea wind. From balconies, clerics and other inhabitants of the Shrine looked down.
Manserphine was taken inside and led into a maze of black stone tunnels that twisted in irregular patterns, past open halls slopping with dirty sea-water, through chambers of mutated seaweed, along ledges, and through doors made of metal bars. The place was gloomy, lit only by methane torches burning from nozzles set in the walls. Initiates wearing sweaters and breeches passed them, speaking in their rhyming tongue. The gloom was not helped by the uniformly black garb of the clerics, alleviated only by the twinkling circlets that they wore on their brows. After fifteen minutes the guards stopped before a cell door, which they opened. Manserphine walked in.
They departed. She was left to listen to reverberating voices and the distant rumble of the sea. Her cell was large, its further end a pool that seemed to lead down into underwater tunnels, in the dry half a bed with rough blankets, a chamberpot, and a hardpetal table on which some water pitchers and bowls of dried seafood had been placed.
A few hours remained before midnight. Manserphine had expected to see Fnfayrq, but the hours passed and she lay in blank insomnia, waiting to hear the sound of a key at her door. Every now and again she would look through the barred window, but the corridor outside was black and empty, just the faint glow of a methane flame visible a few yards to the right. As night passed, the Shrine quietened, until all she could hear was the sea.
Eventually she slept, for just a few hours.
The further wall had a single open window a handsbreadth wide, through which starlight shone. As dawn made the western sky behind it glow, she woke.
Voices and clunks and booted feet once again reverberated through the Shrine. She was hungry. The water was pure, and she drank a goblet before examining the food. Three bowls contained fried strips of seaweed, a dark kelp bread, and boiled beach-potatoes, wrinkled like old apples. She tasted a bit of each. It was wholesome, though pungent fare.
Morning became noon, then afternoon. She heard boots in the corridor outside and then the welcome sound of a key at her door. Settling her hat firmly over her head, she stood to greet Fnfayrq, as the Shoreline Cleric entered the room and relocked the door.
They faced one another. Fnfayrq gestured at the bed and said, “Soft, soft sand, so good to relax in.”
Manserphine sat, and Fnfayrq sat next to her. Keen to complain of her incarceration, Manserphine said, “Delicate clams pulled from their dens, oh, how can they be eaten?”
Fnfayrq replied, “Our ocean is endless, natural rhythms bend even people to their vastscape of whims.”
So the Sea-Cleric was just doing her duty, or so she claimed. Manserphine decided not to waste time circling the issue. She wanted to know why she was here. “No clam pulled from it shell survives, slow agonising death under the starlight, if not pierced by the beak of a gull.”
Fnfayrq shrugged. “You, lover, you become dazzling sun bright in the mind, oh, so unexpectedly.”
Manserphine frowned. The Sea-Clerics knew of her abilities—how, she had no idea—but Fnfayrq seemed to be saying here that they knew of recent changes in the quality of her visions. Avoiding the familiar tense in order to show her anger, she replied, “Is it fair, is it sunny-calm, when a fish loses its shoal?”
Fnfayrq’s face became grim. “Oh, ocean is all there is.”
That would be her excuse through all discussions. The ocean had its reasons, and those reasons justified the means. Manserphine sighed, stood up and walked to the water at the end of her cell, where she stamped a few times, showing again her frustration. Fnfayrq took her arm and led her back to the bed.
“All fish know the greater shoal,” said Fnfayrq, “oh, vast numbers,
swimming the sea, each one a microcosm of the whole.”
Yes, all was linked, but that in Manserphine’s view was not reason enough for an abduction. Besides, what mental links could there be between herself and the Sea-Clerics? She replied, “A sea-eagle might kill an osprey.”
Fnfayrq was not impressed with this insult. Standing, she indicated that they should walk to the door, which she unlocked to lead Manserphine into the corridor.
“Where leads the beach?” asked Manserphine, wanting to know where they were going.
“Fine, warm pools litter our shore, oh such slippery rock surrounding them.”
This unclear answer did little to improve Manserphine’s mood. She could not help but remember how her family had been tormented in earlier decades by these clerics, and now it was happening all over again. Of course, there were other links—the insects, the mermaids—and she wondered if there lay the answer to her life’s dilemma.
Through black corridors they walked. Fnfayrq strode proudly through the endless tunnels, clerics and laity standing aside for her. The smell of the sea grew strong, but then Manserphine detected another odour, one reminding her of Novais. Was it flowers? Surely not. Although she had seen mutated kelps and weeds with flowers, fragrance was a rarity here.
Fnfayrq stopped at a door. The odour of flowers seemed to seep out from under it. Fnfayrq took off her cloak and boots, then unbuttoned and removed the thick crimson waistcoat that lay underneath, indicating that Manserphine should do likewise. Manserphine hesitated, but was eventually persuaded to remove her cloak and boots, to shiver in her flowing and slightly damp dress. Fnfayrq wore just a leotard, revealing an athletic, feminine figure, her skin tanned and flawless. Despite being taller, Manserphine looked like a half starved teenager beside her.
Fnfayrq opened the door and they stepped into a chamber.
Too much to take in. But Manserphine immediately knew that here lay the link with her mermaid visions.
The centre of the round chamber contained a pool of steaming softpetal in which the mermaid floated. A tiled floor lay around it. The atmosphere was tropical, heady with scents, clouds of faintly coloured vapour rising and falling in spiral eddies. The walls were solid hardpetal, in places punctured by single flowers, root fibres, and nodules into which screens had been plugged. This was a computational chamber. But the many insect pens attached to the wall by cables puzzled her.
Manserphine walked around the pool to study the face of the mermaid. She floated near vertical, her face free to the air, eyes closed as if in an ecstatic dream. She wore a skintight suit. From her new position Manserphine could see more, for the pool was semi-solid and had acquired shear planes separating more and less dense volumes. The suit seemed to be taking away the wastes of the mermaid’s body; probably it also fed, for there was what appeared to be an intravenous drip. Manserphine noticed that the softpetal was like jelly where she floated, so that if she moved she would do damage.
The mermaid did not move except to breathe. It was indeed the mermaid of Manserphine’s earlier visions.
Fnfayrq followed as Manserphine explored. Still they had said nothing to one another. Manserphine examined the insect pens, to find they were generic bees of superior quality, modified so that their transfer functions were not limited to their own memory capacity—hence the cables, which presumably connected to local networks. But why?
Fnfayrq smiled and removed the silver circlet at her brow. There on her forehead lay a flowery tattoo like Manserphine’s.
After the initial shock, Manserphine asked Fnfayrq, “All Sea-Clerics in repose, make the bargain, see those burrowing under necromantic shores?”
Judging by her face Fnfayrq had not heard of the Cemetery beasts. And yet there was technology here related to that of the Cemetery; she had endured one piece upon her wrist.
Manserphine tried again. “Oh, so many fish reflectively swim, what sea-scents pass from lateral line to lateral line?”
Fnfayrq nodded, taking one of the bee-cables. “Our pool, so deep, so strong, yet oh so malleable, how many currents flow inside its depths, we look up, uncountable stars beneath our awe-teared eyes.”
Manserphine understood. This was the semi-reality experienced by Zoahnône when she was a network entity. It was operated and used by the Sea-Clerics. Such potential! If every cleric had an interface lurking behind their circlet, what power could they wield in the networks of Zaïdmouth? It did not bear thinking about.
But what was the connection with her visions? She asked, “This nereid, so sea-young, hips and breasts, oh, find slumber and see visions of what may one day come to be.”
Fnfayrq did not answer immediately. Instead she looked out over the pool at the face of the mermaid, before she lay on her side and, smiling, glanced across to Manserphine, who knew that now came the crux of the matter.
Fnfayrq began, “Lover of mine, oh, so bright in the mind, all fish spawn in the ocean, great currents unguessable by we two.”
Manserphine frowned, interrupting Fnfayrq’s attempt at flattery. “Slumber, slumber!”
“We feel our insects, lover, we smell the fragrance of our sea-less air,” said Fnfayrq. “Beauteous fragrance, come memory, come oh memories, well up like rising whales, now can so many stars above the pool be seen by those upon our shore.”
Was it possible? Manserphine now found herself able to link the clues that had puzzled her. Scents produced by the hardpetal that happened to be near her at the time of her visions were memnonic flags, able to trigger equivalent visions should they be smelled by another endowed as she was. The accuracy would be far from perfect, but clearly it was enough for the Sea-Clerics. She looked at the mermaid and understood the nereid’s role. Submerged half-conscious in the softpetal—the physical form of the semi-reality—she would be able to grasp the same future possibilities as Manserphine by smelling the same fragrances. As Zoahnône had pointed out, such possibilities were available to more than just Manserphine—they did not exist in her mind. And the insects speeding south were now explained as the carriers of the scent information. Such information would be passed on, reformulated and emitted by the hardpetal around the pool, then smelled by the mermaid. Doubtless she then described what she experienced. And so, by such methods, the Sea-Clerics were able to experience something of Manserphine’s visions.
One final deduction. This mermaid, like herself, was sensitive to future configurations of the networks. Suddenly Manserphine considered family tales. She shivered. Could there be a genetic link? Zoahnône had hinted as much.
Now Manserphine felt uncomfortable. She stood up and walked to the door, hoping that Fnfayrq would follow her and they could leave. But Fnfayrq lay at her ease, hand on hip, by the pool. The door was locked.
Manserphine returned to sit beside the Shoreline Cleric. The softpetal vapour in the air was making her dizzy, and she remembered the damage done by the softpetal impregnated dress—the dress that these clerics had created and hoped she would wear. Wanting to get to the bottom of that matter, she said, “The beauty of our bodies, firm under another human hand, soft fabrics like velvety seaweed carressing our skin, the jellyfish cannot escape.”
Fnfayrq frowned, as if recalling an irritating memory. “Evolution in the sea,” she replied, “so harsh, oh, so many crustaceans are now just fossils in the cliffs.”
So, Fnfayrq was not afraid to admit failure. But what had they intended in giving her the dress? To make her question more forceful, she decided to use the familiar tense. “More velvety seaweed on my skin, lover, like familiar fingers, standing upon the shore gazing at the stars wondering how the brightness in my mind can burn more lustily.”
But Fnfayrq just looked Manserphine up and down with curiosity, her lips pouting. Manserphine hoped she had not gone too far; these clerics were promiscuous, and it was not impossible that even one brief meeting and a little familiarity would be considered enough for sex to follow. Again she shivered. In her cell she would be an easy target for Fnfayrq. There were
plenty of herbs to make her both docile and passionate.
At last, after a considerable pause, Fnfayrq said, “Our nereid, float like a radiolarian, limbs so outstretched, mind so clear, so dreamy, yet how many dreams are forgotten amidst the fragments of consciousness caught between slumber and life?”
Manserphine knew then that her guess was correct. The Sea-clerics had hoped that by surrounding her in softpetal her visions would be made more intense. They were wrong: it had interfered with her body’s perceptions. And now, with the onset of change, the memory link had served its purpose, but the Sea-Clerics wanted more. This explained why they had abducted her, to experiment upon, because a new phase of visions had come to her in which the mermaid did not figure.
She told Fnfayrq, “In the vastness of ocean the electric eel cannot mate with the blue whale.” There. That was a refusal to co-operate that nobody could fail to understand.
Immediately Fnfayrq stood up. Manserphine followed suit. Fnfayrq said, “The electric eel lives in caves, look how a rock fall encases it inside mother rock.”
Manserphine’s heart sank as she followed Fnfayrq to the door. Her refusal had brought politics into the relationship. However, sex was now out of the question. The next cleric up, Krshnaq, would become involved.
~
She stayed in her cell for the next four days. A few hours after dawn a guard would bring food—good food, and lots of it—and a new chamberpot, warm bedclothes when one day it was cold, even sea-poetry written on pages of blanched and rubberised kelp. They intended no mistreatment. And yet… The most peculiar thing was the sound of drumming that went on for hours, intensified and clarified when she stood on her bed and laid one ear against the ceiling stones. Arhythmic drumming.
On the fifth day Fnfayrq appeared at her door and told her that a meeting was in progress at which her attendance was required. Manserphine had been watching rain fall from grey stormclouds, and despite her apprehension was keen to leave the confines of the cell. Once more she navigated the black corridors of the Shrine, splashing through flooded passages, crossing floors slippery with algae and weed, once accidentally crushing a crab under her bootheel, a mistake that Fnfayrq luckily did not notice. She climbed stairs, guessing that she must be in the central dome, for she was ascending very high.
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