Glass (22 page)
Authors: Stephen Palmer
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Cyberpunk
At this, the congregation began to murmur. Dark glances and silent looks of antagonism were sent up to him on waves of lunar fervour. ‘My good people,’ he continued, ‘it is a damnable shame that these purges should continue. Why, when you see a dead gnostician in the street, do you not wonder if it is capable of feeling, even of proper thought?’
They did not like this. Pikeface was on his feet. A baying had been set up at the back of the crowd. Dwllis, with horror, realised that he might have made a mistake.
‘I can prove that they are conscious,’ he shouted. ‘It is the truth, I say!’
Boos and catcalls now, and from the back a hand-thrusting mass salute of mob aggression.
Dwllis made one final stand. ‘Do not let ordinary thought rule your lives. The gnosticians are like us, and may not be killed with impunity, for such is murder! Defy the purges!’
Glowing yellow crescents began to hit him, thrown by jeering lunar acolytes. Pikeface roared, ‘Begone, wretch! Leave or feel my wrath.’
Dwllis ran down the aisle. A few in the crowd tried to trip him, but he moved too quickly, dodging the yellow crescents. A man tried to throw a punch at him, luckily missing.
Dwllis staggered out of the Archive, a crowd of twenty on his tail. Two dark-cloaked figures sprang upon him. He could not hear what they said over the din of the city. Then a smoke bomb was thrown. Fumes everywhere. He tried to resist, but the two attackers dragged him down an alley. Coughing too much to oppose them, he wriggled, but could not get free.
A woman’s voice in his ear: ‘Stop twisting, you idiot.’
Cuensheley. Dwllis got to his feet, to be tugged along the passage.
The other woman shouted, ‘Fop features!’ That was Ilquisrey.
They ran to the end of the alley. Dwllis turned, seeing no pursuit. They hurried on, up the glittering Broom Street, up Marjoram Street, along Peppermint Street, then made at a more sedate pace back up to the Rusty Quarter, pausing only to cower amongst piles of glass shards when an aeromorph swept by on clouds of ozone.
Cuensheley had handed him ear-muffs.
Idiot,
she signed.
Fop features,
Ilquisrey added, an expression of fury on her face.
Can’t you get anything right?
Dwllis refrained from signing an answer. At the Copper Courtyard he left them without a word, throwing only an expression of distaste in Ilquisrey’s direction. He wanted nothing more to do with them.
But worse was to come.
Turning off Sphagnum Street, he saw orange-suited Triaders crowding around the door of the Cowhorn Tower. Concealed behind a spray of blue leaves he watched as the scimitar-wielding bullies dragged Crimson Boney out, shortly followed by Etwe. Etwe they kicked up the path to the Swamps with what seemed a chorus of jeers.
Crimson Boney, struggling, was held by two Triaders. A third cut off his head with a single scimitar stroke.
Dwllis could not hold back a cry of pain, of horror. City clamour camouflaged him. Shocked to the core he stood staring. The Triaders gestured to a dark-robed man who emerged from behind dense foliage. Smiling, he shook the hand of the Triader butcher. Dwllis recognised him as the grandson of his predecessor.
Umia had acted. Dwllis had been replaced.
Sickened, too stunned to move, Dwllis watched as the grinning Triaders jogged down the path and then, after looking up and down the street, hurried south. Dwllis was left with a chill in the pit of his stomach and the dread image of the execution in his mind.
He stood still as rock for ten minutes. The locale was deserted. Illuminated cracks between the tower’s exterior tiles indicated that the new Keeper was exploring his territory. Dwllis shivered and cursed as he imagined what would be found. Doubtless he would be reported and then hunted down.
But Crimson Boney lay dead. Gnosticians, Dwllis knew, did not bury their dead. Instead their out-city dwelling agnostician relatives, they who nurtured the pod-born gnostician infants for the first three years of life, dealt with matters of the deceased. Agnosticians made globular glass coffins in which all bodies were encased, gnosticians’ and their own.
Dwllis ran up to the tower and pulled Crimson Boney’s body into undergrowth, returning for the head, which had been kicked aside. Hidden, he wrapped the corpse in his cloak, before dragging it down to Sphagnum Street. A few starving outers signed at him, but otherwise he remained unmolested as he pulled his load up to Marjoram Street, and then along to the gate. The snoozing Triader sentries did not notice him.
He left the corpse under a tree, knowing that soon an agnostician would spot it. On the ground around him lay broken clay fishes. For some minutes he pondered the gnostician ritual of breaking a clay fish when entering the city – fish that were reformed and carried outside when leaving – and the images of Crimson Boney’s legend returned to his mind. What was the clue that he had missed?
With no home, his only option was to return to the Copper Courtyard, a prospect he did not relish. But it had to be done. If he was not yet a fugitive he was certainly no longer an independent. Cray records would be amended either with the word lesser, or, more likely and more devastating, the term outer. His social position had been ruined. There was no going back.
He pushed the attention-pad at Cuensheley’s side door. Tears came to his eyes; not for himself, but for Crimson Boney. The gnostician had been a friend. Dwllis had enjoyed the company of only a very few friends during his life, and Crimson Boney he had hoped to come to know. That was impossible now.
Cuensheley invited him in, hugging him when she saw his tear streaked face. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, over and over.
After wordless sobbing, Dwllis, half ashamed at himself, half uncaring that he had wept, described what had happened. Cuensheley, though she shed no tears, was moved. They hurried up to her bedroom.
Chewing welcome qe’lib’we, Dwllis agreed that, as he was now homeless, he would have to stay with Cuensheley. To her credit she did not crow at this news, nor even smile. But Dwllis dreaded the consequences. It was as if he was being assaulted from all sides: pursued by an amorous Cuensheley, wanted by the Triad for sedition, chased by Pikeface and the lunar mob for perfidy. In one evening he had been destroyed, and he knew that never again in his life would he hold the high status of his years so far. He was but a disadvantaged beggar now, no better than the wretched urchins praying for alms outside the Archive of Gaya.
CHAPTER 19
Now that the truth of Tanglanah and Gwmru had been revealed, Subadwan found life in the Baths almost unbearable. Dwllis had deserted her for lunar places, Aquaitra she hardly trusted, and there were at least two people who wanted her either captured or dead. Only Liguilifrey and Calminthan did she trust.
On static haunted city network screens she watched pictures of the four aeromorphs pillaging the streets. Many outers had died. In the air, bats flown by the Triad’s foremost pilots engaged the aeromorphs in combat, losing decisively owing to the resilience and agility of the aeromorphs. Through nocturnal days many aerial battles were fought, always ending in a fountain of chiroptera sparks and aeromorph victory. Below, entire streets were turned to shattered lanes through which Crayans struggled, hands wrapped, faces masked against glass. The alleys around the Baths were themselves vitrifying.
Then there were the reports of a new plague. Vitrified houses were transmuting, becoming ochre yellow. None of the official stations reported it, but many local broadcasters illegally operating on the wire noted and mentioned the phenomenon. And they reported human susceptibility. Subadwan’s stomach turned when she saw a close-up of a human body, yellow tinted yet translucent, solid like a statue of a torture victim.
~
One evening, she spent a few hours bathing. Other bathers were few in number, too frightened to risk the streets. Subadwan, swimming around the pool periphery, fretted as she considered what Tanglanah might be doing.
She realised that Umia would have an answer. Umia was her only option. Decision made, she left the pool and dressed in her city one-piece, hurrying along to the outer doors, where Calminthan, an expression of curiosity on her face, watched her leave. By chance friends of Umia were in the street, and soon she was walking alongside them down Buttercup Street, and then Malmsey Street.
The lack of people made her notice the subdued din. Some Crayans had stopped wearing ear-muffs, and it was said that vitrescence was now spread wide enough across the city for it to affect the noise produced by machines and electronics. If that were true, then half the city must have succumbed. Certainly, many houses, even along Malmsey Street, were darkly glittering like obsidian shells. But some were covered in another substance, this ochre keratin, and these houses were notable because outside their fronts lay the sallow corpses of vermin, animals, and even some people. It seemed the ochre plague attacked everything it touched.
Soon Subadwan saw ahead the Archive of Noct: her old home. She smiled to see it again. Inside she was led through dark corridors, up wide flights of steps carved from black-silver, and along passages dusty with the effluvia of incense burned down below, until she was pushed into the spherical chamber of Umia.
He stood waiting for her. The men at her side unbuttoned her one-piece and ripped her vest off her back.
Except that it was not her vest. Instantaneous mental adjustment changed her perspective. She saw Umia, his chamber, smelled its rank odours. She saw the statue of Noct. Why had she come to this place?
She had been tricked.
She spat at Umia and said, ‘So you managed to violate the privacy of the Baths a third time.’
‘Indeed,’ Umia said.
Subadwan sneered at the old rogue. How he had performed his trick she did not know, but she did know that her life hung in the balance. She buttoned up her suit. ‘Gaya save me,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me you still want me on the Triad?’
‘It is the law. The Lord Archivist of Gaya must be one of the five.’
‘It’s an abomination,’ Subadwan replied. ‘I’ll never serve under it. I’m human! And Gaya represents freedom.’
‘The freedom of the deluded,’ Umia remarked. He sat at a desk with some difficulty, as if he was tired.
‘What are you going to do with me, you vile lump of dirt?’
Umia smiled, shook his head, and looked up at the statue of Noct. Nervously Subadwan also looked at the figure, then down at the malodorous garden below. Rumour had it that the bodies of enemies made fine compost.
‘You leave me no choice but to tell you that you are no longer the Lord Archivist of Gaya.’
‘What?’
‘This morning I received an application from one Aquaitra of Gaya, claiming the title of Lord Archivist and asking me when the next meeting of the Triad might be.’
Subadwan could not help but laugh. ‘I don’t believe it. It’s a trick. Just another–’
‘It is true, Subadwan. You have just refused for the final time the lawful post of the Lord Archivist of Gaya. One has supplanted you who accepts this post. I draw the obvious inference.’
‘Prove it,’ Subadwan said.
‘I do not have to. Your status no longer warrants it.’
Subadwan, confusion mounting in her mind, shook her head. ‘All right, if that’s the case, you can free me. You don’t need to bully me any more.’
‘And neither am I obliged to let you loose into the city.’
Subadwan stepped back as if physically struck. Her body went limp. The spherical chamber, the entire building, seemed to close in around her tiny frame. ‘What, then?’
Before Umia could reply a commotion at the door disturbed them. Heraber, Umia’s deputy, struggled with a blue-gowned woman, who when she sprang into the chamber was revealed as Aquaitra.
‘Lord Archivist!’ Umia said, startled. He looked about him, as if for support, and took a step backwards.
‘Reeve,’ Aquaitra said, ‘I apologise for my wild entrance, but I had to see you. I have a claim on Subadwan. I must have her.’
‘Have her?’ Umia seemed helpless, as if unable to cope.
‘Indeed!’
Umia waved his deputy away, then turned to face Aquaitra. ‘What claim do you have on Subadwan?’
‘Subadwan is a former Lord Archivist of Gaya who departed us in an indecent manner. Our laws dictate that she must answer to a Gayan court, to explain her behaviour.’
Subadwan stared astonished at her friend. ‘Aquaitra, it’s me,’ she said. ‘Don’t you recognise me?’
‘Quiet,’ Umia demanded.
Subadwan ignored him. ‘Aquaitra,’ she implored, ‘you know this is Umia’s doing. He forced me out of the Archive and he tricked me into coming here. Can’t you see that?’
Aquaitra sent her a cold glance. ‘You deserted, Subadwan. That deed has to be dealt with.’
Umia coughed, trying to return the conversation to himself. ‘Subadwan is mine,’ he explained to Aquaitra. ‘I am the Reeve of Cray and when Cray’s laws, which override those of your establishment, are broken I have the authority to say what happens.’
‘I will have her,’ Aquaitra repeated. ‘You are free to watch from the public chambers of our Archive, if you wish.’
Dumbfounded by Aquaitra’s confidence, Umia began to flounder. ‘I am the Reeve. I will speak with my advisers on the matter. Subadwan’s fate will be postponed for now.’
‘But–’
Umia had regained the initiative. Calling for Heraber, he turned away from Aquaitra and refused to listen to her pleading.
Subadwan meanwhile stood in shock, her gaze alternately on Umia and on the flushed and angry face of her former friend.
‘Aquaitra...’ she whispered.
Heraber had emerged to lead Aquaitra away. Umia called for the three burly Triaders who had brought Subadwan into the Archive of Noct.
‘What will you do with me?’ Subadwan asked.
‘You used to come here, daughter of Brynnon. You remember the place known as the Eyrie, I imagine?’
‘You’re not putting me up there?’
Umia glanced at his Triader henchman. ‘Take her away.’
The three Triaders grabbed her without ceremony, hurting her wrists and shoulders, tugging her so her joints clacked. She cried out in pain.
‘Enjoy the next few decades,’ a chuckling Umia called out.
Subadwan struggled, but her captors were labouring pyutons with muscles like coils of steel. In their grip she stood no chance. High up she was taken, feet dragging through dust-choked passages, thumping up crooked stairs. She was lifted through a series of trapdoors, until at last she was thrust in front of a door.
It was unlocked with a giant fishtail and she was cast into the room beyond.
One of the Triaders joined her. ‘We are not barbarians,’ he said. ‘Twice a day food will be sent up here by lift, water too. That circular trapdoor covers a hole. The hole is your lavatory. You can see there are basins here for washing.’ He unbuttoned the mid-section of his suit and for a ghastly moment Subadwan thought he was about to assault her. But he brought out a slim tube from some inner hip pocket. ‘This is an infinite pen. It will never run out. You can use it to write on the walls, or perhaps to decorate them. But remember you’ll be here for the rest of your life.’ He grinned. ‘So don’t finish too early.’
Another Triader popped his head through the door. ‘If you get bored, think of Gaya, eh?’
‘Bye, now.’
The door slammed shut. With a clunk its mecho-magnetic lock was set.
Subadwan gazed witless at the room around her. It was four yards square, a sash window fused shut at one end – the west end, judging by the lamp-encircled area of blackout that must be the Empty Quarter. From this highest tower of the Archive she could see most of Westcity across a strip of roof and a balustrade. A dome-shaped skylight gave her an almost panoramic view of the heavens. And there, as if to taunt her, hung the Spacefish.
Objects were few: four basins, some cloths, one chair with an old cushion, and she had the pen and the clothes she now wore. How would she wash her clothes?
She did not really believe she was here. The interview had been so quick. She could scarcely remember the walk down from the Baths.
She checked the two exit points: the lavatory hole and the lift door. Both were made of steel, the former too small to squeeze through, the latter tall, but too narrow. No chance of escape, then. She had heard of the Eyrie in her childhood and knew its reputation. Most probably there was more than one room designated so, since at any one time the Triad would have more than one prisoner suitable for solitary confinement.
Sitting in the chair, she passed a difficult night. When the red clouds of dawn came she saw through the window the silken wings of bats roosting upside down from the balustrade, their glittering control panels twinkling, the rusting mouths of their engines gently fuming. Behind inch-thick panes of glass twitched eight black escape routes. Perhaps the sight of them was part of the torture.
The bats snuffled, fidgeted, then, as the gloomy dawn turned to pitch-black day, they slept. Subadwan watched them, then turned away. She did not know what to think.
Food arrived, as promised. On a scrap of a cuff she wrote ‘I accept Triad membership,’ putting the note into the lift before the automatic door closed.
The food was fair: parsnip bricks, mint mash, peach granules. There were eight brass pitchers of water tall and narrow enough to pass through the lift door. With a sigh Subadwan realised that her new life had begun. When she lifted the lid to the hole there emerged the smell of anaerobic decay.
The day passed slowly. The shifting Spacefish, just visible as a glowing crescent through the grimy air, allowed her a sense of passing time. When her evening meal arrived there was no note. Nobody came to reply to her message.
How long would she be forced to remain here? A week? A month? She could not imagine a solitary month. Yet they had said she would be here for the rest of her natural life.
Next day she received her visitor, but it was the last person she expected to see.
Her father arrived alone. In one hand, Brynnon held the unlocking fishtail, in the other lay a Noct text. He was of ordinary looks, but he had a way of grimacing and pulling at the hairs of his beard that caught the eye. He looked at her in silence, then shut and locked the door, cracking the fishtail in half then putting the pieces in separate pockets.
‘Hello father,’ Subadwan said, wearily. Already the grim expression on his face had caused emotions within her – fear, anger, perhaps a little excitement. ‘Have you come to release me?’ she asked, trying to settle her face into neutrality.
‘Only the Lord Archivist has the power to release you,’ Brynnon replied. He stared at her. ‘You can be candid with me. You can relax.’
Why had he said that? Normally he would launch straight into his complaint. Subadwan felt the weight of his vexed looks upon her. She could not relax, not ever, for past experience had taught her that at some point, sooner or later, he would lash out like an angry animal. She tried to think of something unimportant to say.
He spoke as she drew breath. ‘Why are you here, Subadwan? What crime have you committed?’
The assumption of guilt irritated Subadwan, and she felt the force of sarcasm rising within her. ‘I think I’m guilty of free thought. It’s difficult to say with Umia, isn’t it? You’d know, of course.’
‘Free thought? But Noct understands free thought.’
‘Oh, yes, free thought from useless books.’ Already Subadwan could feel her annoyance increasing, and her desperation. ‘Umia wanted me to join the Triad. I refused.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the Triad is just a tool of the Archive of Noct. I’m not going to be the stooge of a dictator.’
Brynnon sniffed, as if giving her words short shrift. ‘Better a living stooge than a half-living Eyrie captive, surely? You realise, of course, that the chances of you being let out of this place are slim?’
‘I’m not stupid.’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps that was always your problem. You have an excellent opinion of your own intellect.’
‘Not quite so good as the opinion you hold of your own.’
‘So is it to be like this between us?’
‘Gaya love me,
you
started it.’
He actually smiled. As if reminiscing – though Subadwan could tell he was acting – he said, ‘That was always what you used to say when you knew you were wrong. You started it.’
‘Go away father, if you’re determined to be an utter fool.’
His tone hardened. ‘
Father
is it? Subadwan, you won’t be telling me to go away in a few years... if I come to visit you.’
‘If? So you’re just going to ignore me?’
