Memory Seed

by Stephen Palmer

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ Arrahaquen replied. ‘We know so little about the origin of the Cowhorn Tower. All I know is that it built itself – it’s a heuristic building. The problem is, who did it and why. Not to mention how they had the technology. I personally think nobody in all the Citadel could have created it.’

  With that thought ringing in her mind, Zinina left Arrahaquen and began her walk into Eastcity. The wind lashed rain into her face and broken slates lay on the ground. She wondered whether Melinquyl’s balloon would be able to cope with such weather.

  CHAPTER 10

  It was not only to Arrahaquen that the Citadel officials had to attend. The power cuts were increasingly frequent. The food being doled out on both sides of the river was now so processed it had lost all hint of texture and colour to become an indeterminate grey gruel with lumps. Along Judico and Mandrake Streets in the Citadel Quarter there was fighting between revellers joined by stoned independents and a patrolling defender group, riots that started because Eastcity Water Station was forced to close due to mains fractures.

  For three days Arrahaquen remained unearthed. Her disguise held good. Graaff-lin, as predicted, recovered rapidly with the help of her drugs, and tweaked the Citadel networks to transform Arrahaquen into Haquyn the independent. Zinina oscillated between Graaff-lin’s house and the Spired Inn.

  On the day of the second mission into the Citadel, Arrahaquen rose and prepared her clothes, kit and other equipment, and then with Zinina plucked the two ficus pyuters from their earth, brushing off loose soil and pulling out the now shrivelled roots. One hour before midnight they were walking through drizzle along Cliff Lane.

  From the Green Quarter, invisible through the rain despite its altitude, came the sounds of mortar and gunfire. They saw no bursts of flame, and no smoke, but it was clear that more fighting had broken out. Arrahaquen knew that, as the green wave moved south through a now defenceless city, violence would arrive with it like storm crows, and she saw mental images of street gun battles, blasted bodies, and through it all the tough, and most probably smug, isolation of the Citadel.

  Melinquyl too had heard the mortar explosions. However, standing by her balloon in the midst of four walls which had once been a house, she confidently reassured her passengers that no shell or laser ray from the Green Quarter would bring down the balloon. ‘This is Juo,’ she said, indicating the balloon. ‘Juo must be treated with respect. Before you climb in, I’d like you to bow once.’

  Quickly they performed the ritual, then climbed into the basket and lay on the yielding jannitta cushions that Melinquyl had spread over the rush and plastic matting. It was a tight squeeze.

  ‘That little battle will be useful,’ Zinina remarked as Melinquyl loaded information into her pyuter by means of a copper liana. ‘It’ll turn the gate guards’ attention north.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Melinquyl. ‘That will assist us, no doubt of it. Now, are we all ready?’

  Everybody was. Melinquyl cut the restraining cords and the balloon rose. Arrahaquen felt her body pressed against the basket and, although the experience was not unlike ascending in a Citadel lift, her head spun as the balloon rotated in the air. Zinina seemed happy enough, but Graaff-lin’s face was blanched and her mouth remained shut. Melinquyl said nothing as she made occasional adjustments to the path steered by her semi-sentient balloon.

  Lying below the rim of the basket, Arrahaquen fumbled in her backpack and pulled out a short metallic tube.

  ‘What’s that?’ Zinina asked.

  ‘A periscope.’ Arrahaquen extended it and looked into the digital screen, ignoring the distance, temperature and infra-red data at the edges and concentrating on the centre. However, because of the swaying of the balloon, she could see only blurs and the occasional lamp – black and grey, then red lines, then a burst of blue. Keeping as low as possible, they approached the eastern part of the Citadel, silently wafting over mossy roofs with shattered solar panels, until they were only a stone’s throw from the eastern gate itself. Arrahaquen steadied her arm against the basket and searched for it. There it was, a flash of red and yellow and sparkling steel. Then they were over the Wall, navigating between the tall blocks of the Citadel’s eastern sector, now rising, now slowing down, now almost motionless.

  ‘Ready to land,’ said Melinquyl.

  They braced themselves. Melinquyl was aiming for the roof of a pyuter warehouse, a twenty-storey structure with an old sign upon its top, a V of metal that would halt the balloon.

  Arrahaquen heard the screech of plastic and metal upon tiles as the basket hit the roof. Then, with a dull thud, they hit the sign and crashed to a halt. Everyone was thrown against the front of the basket.

  ‘Safe?’ Arrahaquen asked, breath momentarily knocked from her lungs.

  ‘Oh, very safe,’ Melinquyl replied. ‘You had better move quickly.’

  They disembarked, at Melinquyl’s request bowing once more to Juo. Zinina knew where they were, and she led Graaff-lin away. Arrahaquen handed a laser revolver to Melinquyl. ‘This will kill. If you’re attacked, leave at once.’

  Melinquyl nodded calmly. ‘The moment you’re gone I’ll attach springy restraining cords and prime Juo’s helium. I’ll be away in seconds if anyone discovers me.’

  ‘Good. Don’t be afraid to use that revolver. Even ordinary Citadel defenders won’t hesitate to attack you.’

  ‘I shall be safe. I’m rather stronger than you think.’

  ‘And if we’re not back within five hours, leave.’

  ‘I will leave,’ Melinquyl confirmed.

  Arrahaquen gave Melinquyl a peck on the cheek – her skin was chill from the wind and rain – and left to join the other two.

  They descended using escape ladders at the rear of the building, forty flights in all, until they stood a few feet above the rear alley. Although this was only a passage off the main Citadel streets, Arrahaquen could still see flickers of light passing below its resin surface. ‘Shhh!’ She had heard a noise.

  Zinina listened. ‘Drone?’ she said.

  Arrahaquen nodded. Seconds later a turtle-shaped drone with a yard-long aerial appeared, trundling towards them, flurries of light in the street underneath following its path like luminous crustaceans tailing a boat. It passed underneath their position with a characteristic tinkling patter, caused by its thirty mechanical legs, then disappeared into a gutter.

  ‘Quick,’ Arrahaquen told Zinina, ‘lead on to the signal house, then I’ll take over.’

  They had planned their route carefully, checking every detail. Through the dark they walked, their boots clicking on the alley covering, until Zinina whispered and pointed at a dark building set in a courtyard. No illumination aided their sight. Only by light reflected from the glowing streets above them could they see vague shapes and shadows. They dared not risk lamps.

  ‘That’s the signal house,’ Zinina whispered. Graaff-lin held back a sneeze. ‘All the buildings in this sector get their emergency messages from that place. There must be a shaft down to the bowels of the tumulus, but where it is...’

  ‘I’ll find it,’ Arrahaquen replied. ‘I know the signs.’

  Zinina led them around the courtyard to the signal house, stopping by the nearest window. It was pitch black. Drizzle fell, smelling of sea slime. Arrahaquen heard a faint clink of metal as Zinina took out her jemmies and lock-screws.

  More clinks, and a hiss from Zinina. Then a rattle. ‘Got it,’ Zinina said. She opened the window and they entered the house.

  Arrahaquen switched on her low-intensity torch. It whined, grudgingly, and she thumped it. The whining stopped. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘let’s find some signs. Follow me.’

  She knew what to look for. Somewhere in the building there would be a door labelled “BF” – Below Fifth. Banks of seedling pyuters emerging from grow-bags lay scattered around the place, many linked by gel-dripping cables to their larger counterparts, those standing like trees in the centre of each room. Blue, green and violet sparks pulsed
through these machines, occasionally too a storm of white light, indicating the passage of a digital network patrol, or shunting data fossils.

  Arrahaquen searched every room until she found the label. Part of it had fallen off. In silence, she pulled the door open. An unlit corridor painted black and descending at a steep angle awaited them. ‘Down there,’ she said, trying to mask the tremor in her voice. ‘Everyone ready?’

  She led them down the passage, switching her torch to a brighter mode. At the bottom she paused. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘get out your torches. We’ll be looking at the floor around each door. There’ll be about fifty in this zone. Most of them lead to storage, pyuter memory halls, that sort of thing, but one will go right down. In front of that door you’ll see tiny splinters of gold flickering in your torch beam.’ Both women nodded.

  Fifteen minutes passed. Then Graaff-lin ran up to Arrahaquen. She had found something. Locating Zinina and following Graaff-lin to the spot, Arrahaquen checked the floor around a tiny black door and saw the gold splinters left by the boots of superior pyuter officials. A surge of excitement and fear made her pulse quicken. Her legs felt wobbly again. ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘We follow this all the way down.’

  Trying to hide her trepidation, Arrahaquen turned the door handle and pulled. She saw an organic tube of ochre plastic leading away, bending here and there, until it dipped down, out of sight. It seemed to be letting in light from its exterior, as though it was translucent.

  ‘Looks promising,’ Zinina remarked. ‘Come on.’

  They followed the tube, which looked as if it had been moulded by air, like the lava tubes around volcanoes, but it showed no exits until its very end, where there were six doors. Arrahaquen chose one at random and opened it.

  Soft golden light. They had arrived. Arrahaquen had never seen anything like it. In the room before her lay a single pool surrounded by blue mushrooms, its water black as a starless sky.

  ‘This is the place,’ Graaff-lin whispered. ‘Dodspaat haamen, it’s just like before...’

  Soberly, Arrahaquen said to the aamlon priestess, ‘This is your time now. Zinina and I will guard you. If you need help, call.’

  Graaff-lin attached the map pyuter programmed from their previous mission to her sleeve and led the way through a series of bubble rooms. To Arrahaquen, with their delicately patterned walls, their bizarre pools and mycological screens, the webbed mycelium that linked separate growths together, the chambers were astonishing. At the end of each chamber Zinina peered into the next, looking both for people and the insectoid machines that had found them last time. But the whole place was empty, or at least empty so far.

  Graaff-lin settled in a large chamber, seating herself at a mushroom screen the size of a table, placing her satchel to one side and her anti-viral aerosol to the other. Two pools lined with PTFE bricks lay in one half of the bubble, while the other was empty. On this side, the walls were wafer thin.

  Arrahaquen watched the two exits, the thin wall, and Graaff-lin, who began muttering to the pyuters and nodding to herself. At last, she took out the two ficus units that had been so carefully grown over the past weeks. Blowing the dust from their central interfaces, she slid them into the screen’s own interface. Now, Arrahaquen knew, the units would begin their work as network spies.

  Time passed. A lot of time. Arrahaquen glanced at the chronograph set into the cuff of her shirt: one hour forty-five minutes gone. About two hours left in this place.

  ‘There are twenty, maybe twenty-one, noophytes living,’ Graaff-lin announced suddenly.

  ‘Living?’

  Graaff-lin paused. ‘I think they are a variety of Citadel network creature. A bundle of knowledge. It’s so difficult to tell. It’s like trying to listen to one woman speaking in a room of shouters. But these noophytes are definitely part of the plan. They’re arranging some kind of jump. Our ficus units are trying to talk to them – oh!’

  Graaff-lin sat back, then scrambled to her feet, jabbering in aamlon. Arrahaquen ran over to her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  As she gripped Graaff-lin’s arm she saw that the two ficus units were twisting themselves out of their interface sockets. One had grown an arm, which was reaching out for the other. Zinina too had run over to watch. The first unit, now damp, dribbling yellow liquid down the sides of the mushroom screen, was growing, visibly expanding and producing two more arms, and a growth of hair. The other unit was similarly growing, but had changed into a spindly framework, like a wrought-iron gate. The units linked their appendages. Both were now producing droplets of liquid from their surfaces and the hair of the first was dark with dampness. Within seconds, after what seemed to be a struggle, the two were one shape, a wet blob with six skinny appendages, each stuck into a screen interface. The thing had a screen, a touch-pad, and what seemed to be a lipless mouth.

  It lay twitching. Information flickered within the screen below it. They stood quiet, watching.

  ‘The units do not want to alter the Citadel system,’ Graaff-lin said. ‘They have restructured themselves into a nest of networks.’

  ‘Why?’ Arrahaquen asked.

  ‘Because there is so much data here, a lone structure would stand out amongst the stratified circuits of eons past.’

  Arrahaquen asked, ‘Have we lost them?’

  ‘No, they are still working for me. Oh, look.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The screen just wrote “pyuter heart” when it should have been “noophyte.”’

  ‘Are they the same, then?’ Zinina asked.

  ‘They must be,’ Graaff-lin agreed. ‘That word “dwan” must belong to the noophyte machine code. No wonder I wasn’t supposed to know it. When I used it, I set off alarms in the heart of the Citadel. Dodspaat! The Red Brigade themselves must know!’

  Arrahaquen comforted her. ‘You’re still alive, Graaff-lin, and they haven’t found out about us.’

  ‘But still... maybe spies at my temple know. I could have been killed at any instant.’

  Arrahaquen refused to countenance this. ‘Carry on with your search. We need to know what the noophytes are planning. What sort of jump do they have in mind?’

  Graaff-lin returned to her work, though she seemed wary of the pulsating lump that had once been two. Now and again the lipless orifice would squeak what seemed to be sentences. Minutes passed, and time began to run out.

  And then Graaff-lin began to wail. Arrahaquen, who stood nearer, ran over and shook her shoulders. ‘Shhh! Graaff-lin, what’s the matter?’

  ‘My temple. It’s just...’

  ‘Just what?’

  Graaff-lin stared at the mushroom screen, eyes wide, horrified by something. Arrahaquen looked down into the multiple layers of information that lay open like sheaves of translucent paper, to see names, faces, and finally Katoh-lin herself.

  ‘Goddess,’ she said, letting Graaff-lin go and bending over the screen.

  ‘What is it?’ Zinina asked.

  ‘Graaff-lin’s boss, she’s in the Red Brigade. Goddess, look! The Dodspaat temple’s just a front. Katoh-lin is Head of Religious Manipulation.’

  Zinina glanced at Graaff-lin, who was staring blankly at a wall. ‘She’s in shock.’

  Arrahaquen ignored Zinina, returning her attention to the screen. According to the data flowing past, the Dead Spirits, worshipped for centuries, were the noophytes, the pyuter hearts who had devised the Portreeve’s plan. But they spoke only gibberish to ordinary folk. It was almost too incredible to believe.

  A rifle shot rang out. Arrahaquen twisted around, pulling her own weapon out from its holster. Zinina had fired at an object in the nearer archway... two of them. Arrahaquen dived behind the screen, rolled to its edge, then fired.

  They were pyutons, but macabre, like metal skeletons. Zinina was now on her stomach behind a pool wall, shooting and cursing.

  One was hit. It swayed, raised its five arms, then fell, crashing to the ground where it fragmented into a wave of tiny pieces, c
hittering across the floor like a wave of manic spiders. Arrahaquen, who had encountered the modular nature of the more ancient Citadel technologies, was unsurprised by this, but Zinina was frightened and repelled. With disgust on her face she backed away, jumping up and down when the automata skittered near her.

  Arrahaquen shot the second unit down, and golden sparks flew from the wall behind. The same fragmentation happened. In seconds, every portion of floor was alive with automata. Zinina screamed and ran into the adjacent room. Arrahaquen, crunching the things beneath her boots, grabbed Graaff-lin’s arm with one hand and the ficus unit with the other but, growling, it refused to move.

  There were more noises from the archway as more pyutons appeared. Arrahaquen dragged Graaff-lin to the chamber where Zinina stood staring in terror at the creatures. Turning, she fired at one, then snatched the map from Graaff-lin’s sleeve.

  ‘They’ll report us immediately,’ she told Zinina. ‘We’ve got to run. Here’s the map. Get us back. I’ll be behind you with Graaff-lin.’

  ‘Slap her,’ demanded Zinina, taking the map. ‘Wake her up.’

  Arrahaquen did so, but Graaff-lin did not flinch. She seemed to be in a trance. ‘Go!’ Arrahaquen yelled, pushing Zinina on.

  They ran.

  If they sprinted without stopping, they would be in the upper levels by the time the Citadel Guard were alerted. That gave them perhaps a minute to make it to the outside of the signal house. Not enough time.

  Arrahaquen was beginning to struggle. Graaff-lin was running like an animated doll, taking no decisions of her own. Arrahaquen tugged and pulled as Zinina found the ochre tunnel.

  The door at the end was closed. Zinina opened it carefully and listened. All clear. They ran on, following corridors, Arrahaquen becoming short of breath. Zinina sped way ahead, urging her on.

  At last they reached the external door. The signal room was unlit and empty. No sounds of danger. They clambered through the window.

  Once they were outside, Arrahaquen paused to catch her breath, her limbs heavy, lungs aching, throat sore, eyes watering. She coughed up phlegm. Zinina appeared unruffled, as poised as a gymnast.