Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy)

by Gillian Andrews

  “How far is it to Rexel?” asked Diva.

  Six bit his lip. “About sixty kilometers,” he said. “It’s where we lived until we were four. They will have gone back to the birth shelter. It’s on the edge of the habitable zone. It’s the only place they could have got medicine. But I don’t think the matron would give them any, not at our age.”

  “Well?” said Diva coolly. “What are we waiting for?”

  “If Eight was sick, how could she have walked sixty kilometers?” He gave a swallow.

  “‘If Sacras were Almagest, would Lumina exist?’” she quoted, and then answered her own question. “Nobody knows.” She thought for a moment. “Let’s gather as much fruit as we can, and then make a start. The longer we hang about here, the longer it is going to take to get the answers you need, Six.”

  He nodded. They spent the next hour getting provisions, and then struck camp. It was still early in the morning, and a fine mist was hanging over the rough terrain. Grace thought of the eerie clarity of Valhai, and her heart contracted. She wondered when she would see it again. It was great to be visiting other planets; something she had never dreamed of, but she missed Valhai so much it was a physical pain, a dull throb that never went away. She concentrated on putting foot after foot, and tried to like the dense vegetation of Kwaide.

  It took them two days to reach the birth shelter; drab, damp days that made only Six feel at home. He seemed to soak up the dampness like a sponge; despite the worry about his sisters something inside him thrived on the moisture and the cold.

  Towards the end of the second day a low building came into view. It was made of concrete slabs, grey and forbidding. There was a metallic mesh running around it to keep its occupants inside. Six made them go all around it warily first. When he was satisfied he led them up to the front gate, and rang a large electric bell, which they could hear faintly ringing inside the building.

  After some minutes a thin, scared woman came to the gate.

  “What do you want?” she whispered. She kept her head down, and avoided looking at them directly.

  “Matron,” said Six.

  “Matron is not available,” she said by rote, and gave a practiced little curtsey.

  Six narrowed his eyes. “Fifteen?” he asked, hardly able to believe that this was the same girl that he had known ten years ago. Then, she had been six, two years older than himself. Now, the thin white face was lined and drained of all feeling. She looked about forty.

  She seemed to shrink into herself. “Don’t know,” she whispered.

  “Don’t you remember me? Six?”

  “Don’t remember, sir.” And she gave another little curtsey.

  Six touched her arm, which caused her to cringe away from him. “Please, Fifteen, please help me, I am looking for my sisters.”

  The girl started and her eyes moved from side to side, still looking at the floor.

  “You must remember me, we used to play together.”

  “Don’t remember, sir.”

  “What on earth has happened to you? Why won’t you speak to me?” he asked. “Where are my sisters? You must have seen them. I know they came here.”

  “She is terrified, Six,” said Grace. “Let me talk to her, maybe she won’t be so scared of me.”

  “I used to play with her!” Six said, standing back, feeling useless.

  “Yeah,” drawled Diva, “you probably leave all your playmates in a catatonic state. She only had to put up with you for four years, which explains how she survived at all.”

  Six gave her a look.

  “What?” asked Diva.

  “Just looking at a person whose parents wanted to throw her to the Tattula cats, is all.”

  “Not true. My mother didn’t!”

  “. . . Since we’re on the subject of success,” added Six.

  “Why don’t the two of you go and find us some food for tonight?” suggested Grace. “And leave me alone with this girl, to see if I can find out what happened to your sisters?”

  They went off, still hotly debating the point.

  Grace took the girl by the hand and led her over to a rock, just beside the gate. The girl submitted meekly to her guidance; she wasn’t scared of Grace.

  “I won’t hurt you,” Grace told her. She thought the girl seemed simple, rather than maltreated.

  They sat down and Grace made the girl a chain of the little flowers which grew all around them. The girl managed a smile as she put her hands out to receive it.

  In return, Fifteen passed over a bunch of clover to Grace, who smiled her thanks. Things, she felt, were progressing. After another brief wait, she spoke to the girl out loud.

  “Do you remember Six?” she said in her soft voice.

  A brief pause . . . and then a brief nod.

  “Ah, I thought so. Then you must have known Seven and Eight too?”

  Another small inclination of the head.

  “Did you talk to them when they came back . . . one or two years ago?”

  Fifteen’s eyes widened and shifted from side to side, but then she nodded cautiously.

  “Matron wouldn’t let them in, I suppose?”

  There was a long pause. Then the girl spoke, unwillingly. “She let Eight in. She was sick.”

  “Is she still here?”

  The girl looked around furtively, and then nodded. “Yes.”

  “But Seven went away?”

  “She waited outside the gate for a long time, but then some Elders came, and they made her go with them.”

  “Where?”

  “Benefice.” Just saying the word seemed to terrify Fifteen, for she jumped to her feet, spilling all the flowers. She looked around her again, and then gave Grace a curtsey. “Goodbye, miss,” she said, and then retreated through the gate, locking it. She scurried back inside the ugly building.

  Grace thought she was giving Six good news when he got back, so she was surprised to see the colour drain out of his face. “Benefice!” he muttered. Diva and Grace stared at him. “The city of the Elders,” he said. “If she went to Benefice she will be dead – or as good as.”

  “Why?”

  A muscle moved in his jaw. “Because the only way a no-name may exist in Benefice is as an untouchable.”

  “What do they do?” asked Grace.

  “They clean the sewers. They don’t live for long, because of the diseases they catch. I don’t think we will find my sister alive.” His voice grated.

  “You must go and find out,” said Diva.

  “Yes.” Six nodded. “I must.” Then he looked at Grace and Diva. “But you two mustn’t come. You would get infected in the effluent conduits.”

  “Where you go, we go,” said Diva, after looking at Grace, and catching her quick nod.

  “No!”

  “We will dose ourselves up with a prophylaxis of antibiotics,” Diva said. “We brought plenty from Sell.” She signed rapidly on her bracelet of orthogel. “Arcan, can you send us some over?” She sent him a picture of where they had been stored. A moment later a small bubble appeared in front of them containing two small jars. Grace was looking confused, and Diva had to explain how she and Six had asked Arcan to remove the medicines as they had salvaged, together with with all the valuables they had been able to get their hands on.

  “But the artifacts belong to my family!” She objected.

  “You are your family now,” Diva told her. “And anyway, it technically all belongs to the Sellite government, so we stole it from them and not from your ancestors. In any case, the only family you have left has been banished to Cesis with no money, so you might want to share the booty with them!”

  “Oh.” Put like that, Grace could see the force of the argument. “You are right. Thank you for thinking of all that.”

  “Our pleasure. Actually it was Vion’s idea. We didn’t have time to save a big proportion anyway, but there should be enough for you and your brother during your lifetimes.”

  “Not enough to make Amanita happy?”
hazarded Grace.

  “Definitely not enough for that!” said Diva, taking the two vials out of the bubble and slipping them inside her tunic. She gave Six a nudge, and he came out of his reverie.

  “Sorry.” He shook his head slightly. “I was kilometers away.”

  Diva gave him a punch on the arm. “Wake up, nomus! You know one of your sisters is here, and alive. That is good news!”

  Six gave a bitter glance at the low building. “I suppose,” he said. “Though it isn’t going to be easy to get her out of there.”

  “She is alive and warm and has food,” insisted Diva.

  “Easy to see you were never in a birth shelter!” said Six. “Food is not the right name for what you get inside that place.” He nodded towards the low building.

  “But she is alive!”

  Six’s expression lightened at last. “You’re right. That is great news. I just have to get her out of here.”

  “We have to get her out of here,” corrected Diva.

  Six smiled. “We have to get her out of here,” he repeated. “Sacras knows when.”

  “Cian didn’t form in a rotation,” pointed out Grace.

  “We’ll come back for her.”

  “Sure will,” said Diva. “For now, let’s get on our way to Benefice. It can’t be as bad as you make out!”

  Benefice was an ugly, dirty city. It spread out over two thousand square kilometers of Kwaide, and was home to millions. These millions lived packed into low rise concrete blocks or the tiny shanties which existed alongside the effluent conduits.

  Six had quite lost his usual banter. It was a somber figure who led the three of them into what was known as the wastelands. The landscape became dominated by huge cement tubes, protruding out of the ground, as they made their way further and further into the entrails of the huge city, hub of Kwaide. As they progressed they came across more and more untouchables; ragged people who scurried out of their way like Xianthan roaches under a flarelight.

  Six looked closely at every face he saw. Neither Grace nor Diva understood why he didn’t ask any of the untouchables at first. Later they realized that none of them could speak. It was Six who explained why. “The gases burn the vocal chords,” He told them. “After six months they lose their voices completely. The untouchables don’t communicate with each other.”

  “Then how will we find her?” asked Grace.

  “I am hoping that I will somehow know it when we get near Seven. She is my twin, you know . . . they both are.”

  “Did you feel it back at the birth shelter?” Grace was curious.

  Six nodded. “Yes. But I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it or not. It didn’t seem to work until we were right in front of the building. Even then I wasn’t sure . . . it had been such a long time. Two years!”

  “You’ll feel it when we get close to her, Six.” Grace hugged his arm. “I am sure you will!”

  Chapter 30

  THEY SPENT THE first day in the wastelands with no success. Six would not let them drink from the communal fountains, so they made do with a few pieces of fruit each, reserving what little water they had for later. Even eating was an unpleasant experience. The untouchables smelt the fresh fruit, and gathered around them making mewling sounds and holding out their hands. Grace found it hard to eat in front of so many skeletal onlookers.

  “Eat, Grace!” Diva chided.

  “It sticks in my throat!” she said.

  “I know. Mine too. Try to block them out. We are not going to change anything with one apple. They need a thousand orchards!”

  “I know that. I still can’t seem to get the pieces down!”

  “Yes you can. We have to keep our strength up. We owe that much to Six.” Diva gave the Kwaidian a sideways look. He was sitting apart, as had become his custom, no trace of the bravado he usually showed.

  Grace followed her gaze, and nodded. “I know. Very well.” She went back to the task of chewing her apple. “Who would have thought that eating could be so difficult!”

  The second day they ventured even further into the wastelands. Every step showed more wretchedness.

  “How can these people function like this and still be alive?” asked Diva.

  “How would you know?” To everyone’s surprise Six snarled at her. “You have no idea what it is like to be an untouchable. Your family expect their servants to lie down and die for them, don’t they? What could one lower life mean to you?”

  Diva went white. Six had never spoken to her in that tone. She got up abruptly and walked away. Grace kept her silence.

  “Lady privilege!” Six glared in Diva’s direction and then threw a rock at a nearby conduit.

  Grace pulled out the flasks of antibiotics and made them take their daily dosage. It was a way to bring them back into the same space, although mentally Six was worlds away. He tossed back his medicine. He was so wired that Grace could sense the hatred running through his veins. It was a physical presence amongst them. Diva gave Grace a grey smile and then turned, ostensibly to study the nearest pipeline.

  Unmentionable sights became commonplace that day. They found bodies left to rot on the streets. They saw acts of brutal indifference that seared the soul. Grace continually had to brush back tears which came to her eyes. Diva passed through all of the squalor, her face set. Six irradiated a kind of impotent wrath which kept him going at a pace the two girls could hardly follow.

  They found no trace of Seven on the second day, either. The stench and the foulness which surrounded them was beginning to have their effect on Grace, who found herself physically nauseated. After two days her appetite had disappeared totally, and she existed only on sips of water from time to time.

  Six and Diva were more sanguine about their surroundings, but tempers were growing progressively frayed.

  “I suppose you think I should apologize,” Six said to Diva, in an aggrieved sort of tone.

  “You suppose right, Kwaidian.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t be so . . . so . . . superior.”

  “I am not!”

  “You are so! You act like the whole world was made just so that you could be the centre of attention!”

  “On Coriolis, it was!”

  “Not any more, it isn’t. Tattula cats, remember?”

  “Of course I remember, imbecile! So what?”

  “So you should have changed. But you haven’t. You go right on lording it over all of us. You aren’t so special any more, are you?”

  “Did I ever say I was?” Diva demanded, hand on hip.

  “You don’t have to say it!” blurted out Six. “It is obvious in the way you walk!”

  “Oh, pardon me! I’m so sorry if the way I walk upsets his royal nomus,” Diva flared.

  “You stalk along on those interminable legs of yours as if the whole planet belongs to you.”

  “I wouldn’t have this awful planet as a gift.”

  “Not up to your usual standards, your ladyship? No facilities, perhaps?” Six accused scathingly.

  Diva looked around her deliberately, one eyebrow sarcastically in the air. “If this is an example of the facilities on Kwaide, no-name, then . . .”

  “Shut up, both of you.” Grace got to her feet. “If you can’t stop quarreling about everything, then just keep silent, right?”

  “I didn’t start it!” groused Six.

  “I suppose I started it!” Diva said.

  “Females never know when to shut up,” he said.

  “Well, of all the . . .” And Six was forced to duck hurriedly rather than be hit in the face by a very soft and mushy peach. At least that made them all laugh again.

  They went on, but the hopes of ever finding Seven were diminishing rapidly. They had almost explored the whole of the wastelands, with no sign of her.

  Suddenly, Six stopped. It was so abrupt that Diva, who was right behind him, bumped into him.

  “What in Sacras is the matter now?” she demanded.

  “Don’t you come with brakes?” he a
sked.

  “Enough, you two,” said Grace, holding up one hand. “Peace! What’s the matter, Six?”

  He shook his head. “I think I felt her – my sister, I mean – but it was very weak, and I might have imagined it.”

  “You are the only chance we’ve got,” Grace pointed out. “So go with your nose . . . you have some sort of a connection with both your twins, so you should feel her if she is near.”

  Six wrinkled his nose doubtfully. “I might,” he agreed. “But I have been away such a long time now . . . I did think I felt Eight in the birth shelter, though.”

  “Well, which direction?” demanded Diva.

  Six tugged at an imaginary forelock, and bowed her in front of him. “This way, m’lady. Would you be wanting the dirty streets swept before you tread on them, your worshipfulness? Or should I be throwing down the rose petals so that modom doesn’t have to smell the nasty planet?”

  “I wish!” said Diva. “This place is prehistoric. Somebody definitely ought to do something about it.” And she strode off in the direction Six had indicated.

  “She’s right there Six,” said Grace. “Somebody definitely ought to do something about Benefice.”

  “It’s number one on my list,” Six said grimly.

  They walked without stopping for another couple of hours, and then Six held up his hand again.

  “The feeling is stronger,” he said. “I’m almost sure she is here somewhere . . .”

  The three looked around. Their walk had led them out of the wastelands, into an area of low rise flats, not of very good quality, but a million miles better than anything they had seen behind them. The blocks were clean, if spartan. Six led them towards one of the blocks, and then, with much hesitation, into the lobby and up the rough concrete stairs. He closed his eyes, as if listening to an interior voice, and then rang the bell on one of the flats in front of him.

  “. . . who would come at this time of the evening.” The girl who opened the door was talking over her shoulder to somebody behind her, out of sight of the three newcomers at the door.