Memory Seed

by Stephen Palmer

  ‘Ask away, my little hour-glass.’

  ‘I’ve got a friend outside in your courtyard. She needs a safe room for a week. No, no, wait a moment, let me finish. She needs your top safe room and you’ll be paid in advance for the whole stay.’

  Dhow-lin slapped her palm on the bar. ‘A week? Let’s see what’ll pay for that.’

  Zinina hesitated. ‘Well, I don’t actually have it on me at the moment. But listen, I’ll bring high-class pyuter bits. Whatever you want, I’ll fetch it. Only let me bring her in, please, I–’

  ‘Make it a double memory-case. Just because it’s you.’

  Zinina smiled and touched Dhow-lin’s wrinkled hands. ‘Thanks. I’ll nip round the kitchen door, yeah?’

  ‘Key to the top garret’s by the oven.’

  Zinina slipped through the revolving door behind the bar. The kitchen smelled of herb pastry, rice and onions. Nobody was around. She unlocked the rear door, hissed at a miserable-looking Arrahaquen, beckoned her inside, then relocked the door. With Arrahaquen looking on, she took the key that was hanging over the oven then led the way to the top floor.

  The stairs of the Spired Inn were crooked and creaky. Sounds of hand drums and wailing ibex flutes faded as they ascended, through the first and second storeys, the third, the fourth, until they reached a landing containing four gigantic pine cupboards and a trapdoor. Zinina pulled out a ladder from one of the cupboards. ‘This is how to get into the garret,’ she explained. ‘Don’t worry, it’s a lovely room. I did my first drugs up there. Oh, don’t fret. It was nothing serious, just flutterwing and a few snowflake pills.’

  The garret was a large room with two south-facing windows.

  ‘You get a fabulous view of the Cemetery and the Gardens,’ Zinina said conversationally, worried by the expression on Arrahaquen’s face. ‘You can even see people going in and out of the Cowhorn Tower.’

  ‘Charming,’ remarked Arrahaquen.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Zinina said, ‘and I’ll be back in about an hour. We should think about disguising you somehow.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Arrahaquen said, mournfully. ‘Goddess, I hope I’ve done the right thing.’

  Back in the common room, Zinina reassured Dhow-lin about the payment, then left the inn and hurried back to the house. Graaff-lin lay asleep in her bed, but her fever seemed to have died down. Zinina placed two bottles of water at her side for when she woke, along with a box of nut biscuits and the valise. Then she studied the aamlon rigs. One double memory-case. That would be tricky. She had no option but to vandalise one of the rigs, for Graaff-lin would refuse to help if asked. Still, Arrahaquen’s need was greater. Zinina poked around inside the rig unit that Graaff-lin used least, finding the appropriate piece of technology and popping it out of its holder with a squelch. Packing a case of spare clothes, she departed the house.

  When she arrived back at the inn, Arrahaquen had already swept the dusty garret floor, cleaned the windows, rearranged the couch and the two tables, and pulled up a floorboard to expose the mainline pyuter sockets. ‘You really have made yourself at home,’ Zinina commented.

  ‘I’ll be here for a week.’

  ‘Yeah. Anyhow, here’s some clothes. I been thinking. You ought to go as an acolyte of Rien Zir.’

  Arrahaquen considered this.

  ‘Sure,’ Zinina continued. ‘Round here is practically Rien Zir territory. You won’t be questioned by Citadel snoops.’

  ‘I suppose so. Tashyndy certainly has sway over officials. Perhaps I could dress as a minor priestess.’

  ‘You’ll need a wig and some jewels.’

  ‘A wig will just get infected,’ Arrahaquen pointed out. ‘I’m not a proper member of the temple, just a lay worshipper. I have to be sprayed to go through the ferns at the entrance–’

  ‘You can get wigs with antiseptic linings. Hoy, you don’t realise just what I can do here. Somewhere on the third floor is Oq-ziq, the best house thief in these parts, and she’s an expert on disguise.’

  Arrahaquen shrugged. ‘I’ll leave it all to you.’

  ‘That’s the way. I know everything round here. Oh, by the way, while you’re here your name’s Haquyn.’ With that Zinina stepped down the garret ladder and returned to Dhow-lin, who was stocking up the bar kilns.

  ‘Here’s your payment,’ Zinina said casually.

  The old aamlon sniffed, then took the memory-case.

  ‘This’ll be useful, sly-girl. I’ll take her vittles up myself. I’ll make sure she’s all right. She in trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but she’ll cause you no trouble.’

  ‘Good.’

  Zinina looked up and down the bar, then lowered her voice to say, ‘Is, um, is Oq-ziq still in her old room?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’ll just nip up and see her.’

  Zinina climbed the stairs to the third floor and, at a door marked with a crayfish rampant, gave the inn’s triple knock to reassure Oq-ziq that a friend had arrived to see her. A gentle ‘Come in,’ was her reply.

  She entered a jannitta paradise. Soft, circular rugs covered the floorboards, and there were sheets of embroidered muslin hung on every wall, giving the impression that the room was part of a dreamscape. Bright colours reflected light from a score of anjiqs. Furniture consisted of a huge couch, some wooden trunks and, more interesting, a central table, at which the lissom figure of Oq-ziq sat.

  She was examining pyuter hardware with a glass lens in her good eye; a green patch covered the other. Her costume consisted of a string vest and curly-toed slippers. Oq-ziq was stone deaf. Over both ears were curled the macabre shapes of pyuter-ears, black blobs like slug corpses.

  They spoke in their native tongue. ‘It’s only me,’ Zinina said, sitting next to Oq-ziq and catching the pungent odour of the table’s aromatic wood.

  ‘Hello! What brings you here?’ Oq-ziq was pleased to see her. A broad smile lightened her face as she took out her monocular.

  ‘It really has been too long,’ Zinina said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Very well. Of course, that is the flippant reply. How could I be well at such a time as this?’

  Zinina nodded, conflicting feelings running through her: sorrow at being away from old friends, pleasure that she was remembered. She glanced at the oddments on the table. ‘Still running your old scam?’

  ‘Let’s say that there’s no shortage of houses to enter. No, I get by. Dhow-lin looks after me very well.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. Oq-ziq, I’ve a favour to ask. I hope you don’t mind.’

  Oq-ziq shook her head.

  ‘I’m sheltering a friend here. She’s in trouble. She needs a disguise.’

  ‘You sit beside the expert. Only Ghaajeer-lin was better than me, and she is dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘’Flu brought on by pestilence. It may come to us all in the end.’

  Zinina shivered. She hated talk like this. In her dreams the personification of the pestilence would stalk her through Kray, an insect-legged harridan wielding a scythe following a jannitta child. Now that was a nightmare. ‘Poor Ghaajeer-lin,’ she said. ‘Anyhow, is there any hope of help? We thought she could be disguised as one of Rien Zir’s priestesses.’

  ‘Hmm. Is your friend conversant with that faith?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, sure.’

  ‘Then a braided wig and some cheap gold jewellery should suffice. I have face paints. Come and fetch me after tonight’s music is over.’

  ‘I will. Thank you, Oq-ziq.' They touched together the backs of their hands in the traditional jannitta way, then Zinina left.

  The evening came and went, and soon the Spired Inn was quiet. Zinina returned to Oq-ziq’s room. Oq-ziq wrapped a silk scarf around her shoulders, this covering most of the string vest, pulled on a pair of knickers, and picked up her disguise kit. ‘Ready,’ she said.

  The high winds and torrential rain had induced another power cut, and every photoplankton tube was dim. Using oil lam
ps they made their way to the garret, where Zinina introduced Arrahaquen and Oq-ziq to one another.

  Oq-ziq began her craft. Taking Arrahaquen’s chin, she first examined every feature with half-lidded eyes, humming and muttering to herself in jannitta, stroking blemishes, scratching away flakes of green, feeling the consistency of the skin on Arrahaquen’s scalp, until she seemed satisfied. She unrolled the disguise kit to reveal a multitude of sticks, mirrors, brushes and much more – including, Zinina noticed, a blonde braided wig. Plaited or braided or even crimped hair was authentic Rien Zir style.

  ‘This will be no mere pargeting on the wall of some Citadel doss house,’ Oq-ziq said as she cleaned Arrahaquen’s head with alcohol. ‘I shall transform you into a priestess. You have a pretty face, Haquyn. I shall make you beautiful.’

  Arrahaquen glanced at Zinina, but said nothing. ‘You’re looking at a real craftswoman,’ Zinina told her.

  Oq-ziq first changed the shape of Arrahaquen’s eyebrows using a soft pencil, then accentuated the skin under the brow and under the eye with waterproof kohl. The eyelid she shaded pale green, the eyelashes she thickened. ‘All this will last for a week or so,’ she said, ‘even through the worst Kray storm. After then, if the disguise is still needed, come and see me.’ Oq-ziq then discoloured Arrahaquen’s teeth, which, because she was of the Citadel, were clean. She then attached the wig to Arrahaquen’s scalp. The effect was dramatic.

  ‘But it’s hair,’ said a worried Arrahaquen.

  ‘This is an antiseptic wig,’ Oq-ziq replied. ‘I know hair attracts all kinds of infection, but this is special. Don’t worry. Also, this jewellery oozes tiny amounts of disinfectant, so no germs or viruses will bury themselves under it and get into your system.’

  Arrahaquen stood. ‘Practise a different walk,’ Oq-ziq advised, as she rummaged inside a felt bag. ‘Haquyn, do you know what these are?’

  ‘Antiseptic spectacles?’

  ‘Yes. The finishing touch. Are you by any chance defective of vision?’

  ‘I think I’m a little short-sighted.’

  ‘Short-sighted, hmm,’ Oq-ziq said, replacing the spectacles and offering her a second, gold-framed pair. ‘Try these on.’

  ‘Ooh, it’s strange. Yes, things are clearer. I can see proper lines at the edges of things. I'll wear these.’

  ‘Good. Now nobody will recognise you. Of course, it would be inadvisable to approach Rien Zir’s temple, since they won’t know you.’

  Zinnia laughed. ‘A fine priestess you look, too.’

  Oq-ziq kissed them both goodbye, wished them luck, then departed the garret, leaving Zinina pleased but Arrahaquen looking uncomfortable.

  Zinina laughed once more. ‘Describe to this heathen the mysteries of Rien Zir the Orgasm Witch, O hirsute Haquyn.’

  ‘It’s not funny. I could be killed. You and Graaff-lin might be in danger.’

  ‘I know how to look after myself.’

  Arrahaquen looked pensive.

  ‘The ficus seeds are nearly grown,’ said Zinina. ‘We’ve got to use them soon.’

  ‘And to do that we have to enter the Citadel,’ Arrahaquen said. ‘This is what growing the ficus seeds was all about. But we cannot use underground tunnels again.’

  Zinina felt nervous, speaking so openly to Arrahaquen; but Arrahaquen was also a deserter. ‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘Uqeq’s nasty little weasel’ll be watching them.’

  ‘Nor can we go through the Wall. I would be spotted, maybe you would too.’

  ‘Then over? But how?’

  ‘We could fly.’

  ‘You are joking, I hope.’

  ‘It’s our only option, Zinina. I have a cousin, Melinquyl, at the Temple of Balloon Love...’

  Zinina grinned. ‘Balloons! We could balloon over, you reckon?’

  ‘No harm in asking.’

  ~

  Zinina returned to Graaff-lin’s house, leaving Arrahaquen to recuperate. The potency of Graaff-lin’s drugs had effected a definite recovery, and the aamlon insisted that she was well enough to undertake a balloon flight – if it could be arranged. Zinina knew that they needed her.

  Later, she met up with Arrahaquen on Sphagnum Street.

  Following the main thoroughfares of Westcity down through the Carmine Quarter, they struggled towards the Temple of Balloon Love. Countless defender groups, armed with saws, machetes and cannisters of verticide, jogged north, as lightning flashed from black clouds hanging heavy over the sea.

  ‘This place is safe, is it?’ Zinina asked.

  ‘If you really don’t want to come in, you don’t have to,’ Arrahaquen replied.

  ‘I only hope this works.’

  Zinina pulled her hood tighter against the storm-driven deluge. Buffeted by gusts they hurried south, until the temple appeared around a corner. It stood off the street, a dome the size of twenty houses, with a spiral spire on top. Multi-coloured slabs covered every external surface, a mosaic of diamonds and triangles here and there interspersed with archaic writing about the function of balloons in society. Obscene graffiti had been scrawled on the lower surfaces by those Krayans who resented the freedom of the aerial priestesses.

  Arrahaquen stood at the porch, listening to the sounds of metal gongs and chimes being struck in devotional synchrony. In the porch green zone they took off their boots and socks and rolled their leggings up to their knees, then put on air-soled sandals made of rush fibres. All this was required by custom.

  A bald pyuton dressed in a black cloak approached them as they finished their preparations. ‘May I help you?’

  ‘I’m here to see the priestess Melinquyl,’ Arrahaquen said, conscious of her disguise and the impassive gaze of those plastic eyes.

  ‘I’ll take you to her,’ came the reply. ‘Follow me.’

  On noiseless bare feet, the pyuton led them into the main hall. In fact, this was the entire temple and it boasted no objects or furniture, no pews or altars. The hall was vast and reverberant, its floor covered with tiles depicting arcane diagrams, the walls multi-coloured as outside. A hundred or so people milled about, apparently without aim, but Arrahaquen knew that they were following the floor diagrams. ‘Watch carefully where you tread,’ she told Zinina. ‘Position is everything here. Some pathways are sacred, others are for outsiders like us. Just follow the pyuton.’

  Zinina nodded. She felt disconcerted by the intense religious air of the place – the black-cloaked acolytes tracing intricate paths, eyes to the ground, with gum-laden censers in their hands delivering smoke to the atmosphere. Occasionally she would jump, startled, as a free-floating dirigible puttered overhead.

  Arrahaquen had been here a few times, though not recently, so she was prepared for the lengthy wandering that had to be undertaken before Melinquyl was found. She waved across a line of people in the adjacent lane, but her cousin did not recognise her.

  At last they reached Melinquyl, and the pyuton stalked off. She was sitting cross-legged in a circle zone, and she indicated that they too should sit. Wearing a black robe and a turquoise bandana over her scalp, she looked younger than her twenty-six years – a feat that, in Kray, was both remarkable and suspicious.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s me,’ Arrahaquen hissed, pulling the long hair of her wig into a pony-tail.

  Melinquyl, startled, put her hand to her mouth, eyes wide in her characteristically innocent way. ‘Arrahaquen,’ she said. ‘But... I never knew you were one of–’

  ‘I’m not. It’s a long story. This here is Zinina, a friend. I’m here to ask a favour of you.’

  ‘Oh, a favour?’ Melinquyl seemed almost upset, like a frightened child, and her slim body visibly tensed.

  Arrahaquen continued, ‘I want you to pilot a balloon over the Citadel Wall and land it on a building in the aamlon sector.’

  ‘I see.’ Melinquyl kept her face set and her reaction concealed. ‘I can’t do it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t be dangerous,’ Arrahaquen insisted. ‘
The route I’m thinking of is between the high buildings at the east of the Citadel, and at dead of night.’

  Melinquyl shook her head. ‘No. It sounds dangerous to me. The Citadel Guard at the east gate would see us.’

  ‘No, they wouldn’t. They’re in a blind spot.’

  ‘I can assure you,’ Zinina added, ‘that your Balloon Love networks would be superbly augmented by our payment.’

  Melinquyl shook her head, but then paused. ‘I suppose I should do it… for my temple.’

  ‘Yes,’ Arrahaquen said. ‘We’ll pay you well, and in advance.’

  Melinquyl did not contradict her.

  Arrahaquen relaxed. ‘Thank you. I knew you’d help us.’

  Melinquyl managed a smile.

  They departed the temple, having arranged a date, time and place to meet Melinquyl and her balloon: three days hence, at midnight, in a demolished house off Cliff Lane, at the very southern edge of the city. Melinquyl’s sudden change of mind caused Arrahaquen no qualms.

  Outside the temple they agreed to go their separate ways. Briefly they discussed what they needed to arrange, then Arrahaquen talked more about her departure from the Citadel, and Zinina described her trek in the Andromeda Quarter. Arrahaquen was intrigued by what she heard. ‘You said something about Arvendyn earlier,’ Zinina remarked.

  ‘Oh yes, Arvendyn. I was chipping out some data in the Citadel. Arvendyn has a long and interesting history. According to Uqeq the spymistress, she’s working for Taziqi, the Goddess’ High-Priestess herself, in their pursuit of the Silver Seed. So your discoveries at the old temple become very interesting. Also, Arvendyn is reckoned to be something to do with the Phallists, but that’s debatable. I’m not sure they even exist. I once did some work trying to uncover that group, you know, before I worked on active defender groups under my mother. And finally, Arvendyn is listed as one of the Defenders of the Cowhorn Tower.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘It’s an honorary title, but it means she devotes some of her time to the upkeep of the tower.’

  Zinina pondered this. ‘So is there a connection between the Cowhorn and Rien Zir’s temple?’