Glass

by Stephen Palmer

  ‘Several, sir.’

  ‘A freshly shaven face impresses the opposite sex, I have found.’

  Coelendwia seemed puzzled. ‘Yes, sir.’

  Leaving the tower door ajar, Dwllis asked Etwe to give copies of the lens images to the Triader, so that he knew what to aim at, before sending a message of thanks to the Triader authorities. He returned to tell Coelendwia, ‘The thing we have seen is large, some variety of apparition from the miasmas of the Swamps. It’s nothing weaponous, you understand, but damnably fearsome. It is fifty feet in diameter, Coelendwia, and floats like a bubble.’

  ‘Is it something you recognise?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then knowledge be your best weapon, sir.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, that is the case,’ Dwllis murmured, gazing down on his new aide. ‘Now, good night. Awake me only if the lens approaches the tower.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Goodnight, sir, and sleep well.’

  Dwllis locked the tower, then retired with Etwe to their chambers, where he ate supper and read books. Later he manicured his nails and brushed the clothes that he had worn during the day. An hour before midnight they retired to bed.

  ‘Are we safe here?’ Etwe asked as they lay side by side under thin blankets.

  ‘Of course we are,’ Dwllis replied. ‘The Triader owns a spark rifle. Besides, do we not lock up every night?’

  Dwllis turned to stroke Etwe’s blonde hair, which lay flowing over her pillows. Her grey eyes were closed, but he knew she was faking repose.

  ‘Are you cold tonight?’ she asked. Her voice seemed to quaver around the room.

  ‘What do you mind?’ Dwllis replied. He took one arm in his hand. ‘There are temperature receptors in this, but no blood. Does a bit of cold hurt you? Or do your polymer nerves relay it just as figures?’

  ‘I was concerned for you.’

  Dwllis lay back. ‘I am well enough. Good night.’

  CHAPTER 5

  Some days after the meeting with Tanglanah, a few hours before midnight, Aquaitra arrived at Subadwan’s front door. Subadwan looked out in great surprise. ‘Aren’t you meant to be at your special council group?’

  ‘Yes I am,’ Aquaitra replied, clearly agitated. ‘That’s why I ran here when you called. What’s–’

  ‘I’ve not called.’

  ‘You didn’t call? Yes you did. What’s the matter, ’Dwan, what’s happened?’

  Subadwan laughed. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You called me, frightened–’

  ‘I didn’t call you.’

  Aquaitra grew angry. ‘You did! We spoke, ’Dwan, you said it was desperately urgent, those were your exact words.’

  ‘I didn’t call you.’

  ‘You did.’

  They stood bristling at one another. Subadwan shrugged, then said, ‘You’d better run back, else your group’ll think badly of you.’

  ‘Do you mean I’ve come all this way for nothing?’

  ‘Gaya love us, I didn’t call you, Aquaitra!’

  Without another word Aquaitra turned and ran off. Puzzled, and worried by the anger shown by her friend, Subadwan retired into her house.

  At the Archive next day Aquaitra remained distant until the afternoon, when she told Subadwan that her council group, at which she was being considered for special honours, went badly. She accepted that Subadwan had not called, but took no blame, and seemed wary when the topic of the call came up. To make matters worse, Subadwan accidentally smashed a memory fishtail belonging to Aquaitra, which for some reason had moved inside its cubby hole so that when the door opened it fell to the ground. Seething with frustration, Aquaitra left early. It seemed to Subadwan that somebody was trying to cause friction between them.

  There came a final blow. Rhannan had arranged for herself, Aswaque and Subadwan to meet Lord Archivist Tanglanah later that night to discuss Archive relations. She shrugged. She would have to go.

  The tiresome day left Subadwan in no mood for further intellectual jousting with the suave pyuton, but as early evening merged into late she found herself waiting with her superiors on waste ground by the Ulcerated Courtyard, between the two Archives. ‘Did Tanglanah give you any hint as to what she wanted to discuss?’ she asked.

  Rhannan grumpily replied, ‘I only agreed to it to stop her and that cursed adjutant of hers, Laspetosyne, from bothering us. Once this is over I’m going back to the Archive, and we’ll have no more wheedling calls from oh so graceful Tanglanah.’

  Aswaque added, ‘No, she did not set an agenda, except to remark that relations between our two Archives were frosty enough to need thawing.’ He nodded to himself.

  ‘Whatever that means,’ Rhannan muttered.

  Subadwan noted two tall, cloaked figures walking up the lane toward them. ‘Well, here they are.’

  ‘Mind your tongue,’ Rhannan said. ‘I’ll do the talking.’

  Tanglanah’s face was impassive as she approached, her manner calm, but Laspetosyne’s spiky hair seemed ruffled, as if she had run.

  Tanglanah spoke with a haughty air. ‘I am glad we could find neutral ground on which to discuss our future,’ she began. Pointing at the door of the building next to them she said, ‘Let us retire inside, there to talk.’

  Rhannan suspiciously appraised the one-storey metal house. ‘Is this some hide of yours, Lord Archivist?’

  ‘Please call me Tanglanah. We are friends here, or, at least, not enemies.’

  ‘You haven’t answered the question,’ Aswaque grunted.

  Tanglanah walked to the door and opened it. ‘It is perfectly safe.’

  ‘For humans as well as your kind?’

  ‘For all. The public city map, as you well know, refers to it as a warehouse for articles of toughened clothing. It is no property of mine.’

  Subadwan followed her superiors into the house. Tanglanah led the way, while Laspetosyne closed the door. They found themselves in a single room lit by glow-bean chandeliers, dust on the floor, cardboard boxes all around. Various small creatures scuttled away as they moved in. Tanglanah placed five boxes in an exact pentagon, then sat on one. Laspetosyne followed suit. Subadwan waited for Rhannan and Aswaque to sit before taking the final box.

  A curious and rather embarrassing silence then followed. Tanglanah gazed at all of them with her mesmeric eyes, before glancing to Laspetosyne. Subadwan imagined telepathic messages being sent. She shivered.

  There came a knocking sound. ‘What was that?’ Aswaque asked, glancing at nearby holes nibbled into the walls.

  ‘Just ferrophagic vermin,’ Laspetosyne said.

  ‘I heard nothing,’ said Tanglanah.

  ‘You have good hearing?’ Rhannan asked, adding a sarcastic edge to her voice.

  ‘I have the most perfect hearing in the world,’ Tanglanah answered. ‘It has been tested to seventy thousand cycles per second.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I can catch the encrypted conversations of bat gliders as their pilots hover above the city simply by angling my head in the correct direction.’

  Rhannan laughed as if giving this no credence, but the boast clearly made her nervous, as no doubt it was intended to. ‘Can we get on with whatever it was you wanted to discuss?’ she said. ‘Then perhaps you can leave us to our work.’

  Tanglanah nodded. ‘It was a question of status.’

  Abruptly, Laspetosyne stood and shuffled a pace towards Rhannan, who sat at her side. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘is that an attachment you are wearing?’ And with one swipe she pulled off a wig.

  Rhannan exploded. ‘What do you think you are doing?’ She snatched the wig and tried to put it back, but in her anger she dropped it. Subadwan, who had before now idly speculated on Rhannan’s scalp, sat in astonishment, mouth open. Aswaque was his usual unemotional self.

  Rhannan stood and pushed Laspetosyne back to her box. ‘That is enough! No more of this nonsense. I forbid you and any of your pathetic cronies ever again to contact my Archive. All the systems will
be set to bar you.’

  They looked at her as if uncaring.

  ‘Did you hear? Nothing more!’

  With clicking fingers she gestured for Aswaque and Subadwan to join her departure. They made for the door. But as Rhannan reached out for the handle Subadwan felt her body tip forward. The metal floor was breaking into fragments. Suddenly she felt cold air at her face and it was dark – too dark for an ordinary street.

  Subadwan hung hundreds of feet in the air. The metal building must have risen as they talked.

  Falling. Falling fast!

  She was plummeting to the Earth.

  Rhannan and Aswaque fell at her side. Screeching voices reached her through the tearing wind.

  Smells of burning, soot and dust.

  The city lay in darkness below her, only its streets visible, like the irradiated veins of a supine creature. Subadwan could see great areas stark black, where no streets led.

  Clawing, cycling at the air, she fell, trying to paddle in a motion that must have been wired into her brain, trying to push the air away from her.

  If only she could fly!

  She groaned as an invisible mass pressed against her chest. It knocked the air from her lungs.

  The rushing at her ears lessened. She understood without thought – just from the feel of pressure upon her torso – that she was not free-falling any more. She was flying.

  Like suddenly weighted scraps of cloth, Rhannan and Aswaque dropped into sooty clouds below her, and vanished. Subadwan had no time to consider upon what part of Cray they would meet their deaths.

  Unable to determine why she was not falling with them, Subadwan instinctively stretched out her arms and legs, and after a few seconds of flinging her limbs into contorted positions she found a face-down posture that allowed her to descend as gently as a piece of tissue paper.

  There was too much fear inside her to think. Below, her superiors already lay smashed.

  After a minute she saw that the city was near. Before she knew it she was trying to avoid the flat roof of an alley building.

  Too late. Curling into a ball she hit the roof.

  She passed through it.

  Her feet felt heavy as lead. Blood rushed from her head; or seemed to. She staggered, held out a hand, and found a wall to lean against. She was standing at the door of the warehouse, Rhannan and Aswaque – white-faced – at her side.

  Subadwan turned and ducked, expecting attack, but the building was empty. A noise above her made her look to the ceiling. Something arachnid and pyuter-metallic scrabbled through a hole in the roof, then, like an aerician, spread polythene wings and flew. She knew it must somehow have created the illusion they had just experienced, or at least been the channel along which the illusion passed.

  Rhannan walked out into the street, Subadwan and Aswaque following. Rhannan looked up at the flying device. ‘Some pyuter spy,’ she said. ‘Bat spawn most likely. Well, that is the last time any of us will have contact with the Archive of Safekeeping. They are a cult of lunatics. Aswaque, you will return to our Archive and instruct all systems to repel any network tainted with the Archive of Safekeeping. Subadwan, return home and prepare a report for internal viewing.’

  Subadwan respectfully placed her hands upon Rhannan’s shoulders, then dropped them, and asked, ‘What happened?’

  Rhannan hesitated, then said, ‘Doubtless some trick of Tanglanah’s. We may never find out.’

  ‘Tanglanah is a bully,’ Aswaque echoed.

  Subadwan saw then that neither of her superiors had any understanding of the brief period they had just spent in an artificial country, and the realisation made her feel both frightened and emboldened. She asked Rhannan, ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘I am going straight down to the Archive of Noct to demand a meeting with the Reeve. This anti-human harassment has got to stop. I won’t leave until I have assurances, whether he likes it or not.’

  ~

  Tanglanah returned to the Archive of Safekeeping, walking into a room whose walls were padded plastic, glowing gold and silver as if veins coiled and writhed underneath. At a wave of her hand these images cleared like evaporating mist, to reveal a Crayan landscape, dark, motionless and gloomy.

  In a plaza, a hemispherical shape lay, insectoid feet outstretched, mandibles extended, as if it was a tank of war in repose. Tanglanah looked at it for a few moments, then said, as if to the wall, ‘Bring constructive interference!’

  The picture came to life. Feet scraped the resin of the plaza ground, and mandibles quivered. What was two dimensional acquired depth. The black creature twitched, then moved.

  ‘Tanglanah?’ it said.

  ‘Greckoh. I bring news.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We have found our subject.’

  A shiver seemed to pass through Greckoh’s chitinous body, as if its ahuman mind had caused an electronic ripple. ‘Good. Was it one of the superiors?’

  ‘It was Subadwan.’

  ‘What ability did she show?’

  ‘She has the imagination necessary to fly. She was very quick, as if she flew by instinct, though I had already detected something of her vigour during our earlier conversation. The irony is that Subadwan is the one we require, yet her potential marks her out as dangerous to us.’

  ‘She is but a human.’

  ‘Yet a human we need.’

  Greckoh paused before remarking, ‘The long wait is over. Now the flaw in Cray has fully manifested itself and we have chosen Subadwan, we can start to work in earnest.’

  CHAPTER 6

  During the week after Coelendwia’s arrival the lens appeared most nights. It would emerge from the mists of the Cemetery or the Swamps, sometimes floating up to the Cowhorn Tower as if it wanted to get inside. Brave Coelendwia stood his ground by the door, but the object harmed nobody.

  The attraction of the lens to the Cowhorn Tower was unmistakeable. Furthermore, it soon became apparent that only Dwllis could see the spectral images it showed. These images were of a dark, urban landscape occasionally the setting for the figures of women. Once or twice Dwllis saw these figures in detail, but he recoiled from the baroque, sometimes macabre images. Coelendwia stared at the lens for hours, squinting to see in the darkness, but he could make out nothing. Despite its silence, Dwllis felt that the lens was taunting him with its presence, goading him to act. Until he understood its origins, however, he had no idea what he should do.

  Dwllis’ troubles were legion. Crimson Boney was bringing antique memories every other day, leaving Dwllis with the unsettling feeling that here was an intelligent gnostician. When Crimson Boney burbled and purred at him it was as if the gnostician were speaking – actually trying to converse. Dwllis was shocked by the thought that the gnosticians might be more advanced than people had realised. The fact that Crimson Boney seemed to have some connection with the Archive of Selene only made things more baffling, and far more worrying.

  Added to this was the problem of Cuensheley. One day Dwllis met her at a food parlour. The only other person in the parlour was its owner, Belh.

  He had been buying provisions – apple bricks, gums of basil, rosemary and spearmint, jars of orange foam, and a good number of mushroom powdercakes, to which he was partial. Cuensheley must have followed him in. If only she would leave him alone. Finding himself short of triad tokens, he heard Cuensheley offer to pay.

  ‘Good day, Cuensheley,’ he said, ‘it really is no trouble.’ He realised that he would lose face whether he put food back or asked for credit. Her presence bothered him.

  ‘I must pay, I must,’ she insisted, laughing at his confusion.

  Dwllis felt his face become hot. ‘The Triad runs the food parlours and gives us their tokens,’ he said stiffly. ‘Would you have me break the law through an accidental oversight?’

  ‘Why are you so worried?’ Cuensheley replied, taking his basket. ‘I’ll pay for these.’

  Dwllis looked at Belh. He wanted to stop Belh accepting Cuensheley’
s tokens, but that would be impolite. He struggled to control himself.

  Belh asked, ‘Is there anything else, Dwllis? We’ve got some nettle bars–’

  ‘Does he like them?’ Cuensheley asked.

  Dwllis felt anger welling up. He replied, ‘That will be all, Belh.’

  ‘Where do you think this food comes from?’ Cuensheley asked him. ‘It’s made in Triad factories and distributed by Triaders. You surely don’t think they’re going to notice if you pay over their own tokens a day or two late?’

  Dwllis, as embarrassed as he had ever been, said nothing.

  Cuensheley then said to Belh, ‘Put in a few nettle bars.’ She turned to Dwllis. ‘Don’t worry that somebody’s being nice to you.’

  Dwllis caught Belh glancing at them. Immediately Belh looked down at his token register. The atmosphere of the parlour being too tense, Dwllis walked outside.

  A minute later Cuensheley stood at his side. He had to lipread what she said because of the noise; their hands loaded with baskets, sign language was impossible. ‘This is too much for me to carry,’ she said. ‘Would you help me back to the courtyard, please?’

  Dwllis was a master of etiquette. He could not refuse. He wondered if she knew that fact, and was deliberately shaming him. ‘With pleasure,’ he said, taking two of her baskets. They walked along Sphagnum Street side by side. People will notice this, Dwllis thought, and wonder if they were having an affair.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ said Cuensheley.

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I’m having a music evening at the courtyard tonight, and I want you to come. Consider that an official invitation.’

  Dwllis said nothing.

  ‘You’re not afraid to come, are you?’

  ‘Afraid?’

  ‘You don’t seem to like me.’

  ‘I am partnered,’ Dwllis said, hoping that was enough.

  ‘To a pyuton,’ Cuensheley pointed out.

  ‘Etwe and I love one another.’