The Red Queen (17 page)

‘All I can say is that God has terrible taste!’

It was mid afternoon and, wishing the hours away until Tash came, fearing she might not come at all, I had spoken the thought aloud. I was startled at the sound of my voice in the silence, and then uneasy that whoever was listening or would listen to my words would judge them a mockery of God and decide I was a bad Speci. But at the same time, I felt again the absurdity of the thought that the Tumen would listen to every word uttered in Habitat.

Restless, I took up a little rush broom that stood in the corner and began to sweep out my hut. Then I stopped as it struck me with the force of a blow that if Jacob Obernewtyn
had
reached Pellmar Quadrants, he might have been captured by the Tumen, too, and put into Habitat. In which case he would have died here, and so his body must be buried
here
! This thought left me breathless, for if the grave markers in the burying ground bore names – as surely they must, given that the Beforetimers had shared that custom with us – I would find his body even as Straaka had bidden me do.

And I would have found Cassandra’s key.

I was standing there almost panting with excitement, my heart pounding, for if I was right, it meant that Atthis might have known that Hannah failed to foresee Jacob would leave Obernewtyn with Cassandra’s key, and that he carried it into the mountains when he left Obernewtyn a-seeking his dream city. It was even possible that this was why she had wanted the wolves along – she had known they would lead me into the realm of the Tumen, who would take me prisoner and put me in Habitat.

The more I thought of it, the more certain I was that Atthis had not warned me nor told Maruman to warn me about Habitat, because she had known I needed to get into it if I was ever to find Cassandra’s key. It was even possible she had contrived for the others to be trapped in Habitat so that I would have help to do what needed doing. The realisation that I might have been pursuing my quest even though I believed myself to be hopelessly diverted from it, filled me with giddy relief.

I realised I had begun to pace in my excitement, still clutching the broom. I set it aside and forced myself to sit down, reminding myself that nothing happened quickly in Habitat. Indeed it was like to take some effort to find Jacob’s grave marker, given that generations of Speci had died in Habitat. We would have to dig up Jacob’s bones from ground that was dry and rock hard, once we had located it. I did not like the idea of disturbing a grave, but I would not let squeamishness get in the way of my quest. On the other hand, the Speci were likely to object to a body being dug up unless I could come up with some plausible reason for it. Fortunately it sounded as if the burying ground was remote and separated from the sleeping huts and the communal buildings by the crops, so we might manage to do what needed doing in the middle of the night. It would have to be done without saying a word, in case the listeners heard digging sounds and wondered at them, but it would not matter if they could not identify the diggers.

I heard the sound of footsteps outside and turned, smiling in delight at the thought that Tash had come early. But it was the dour Balboa who entered instead of sweet-faced, diffident Tash. Nor did the Speci’s expression lighten when her eyes found mine in the dimness. My heart sank, but I forced myself to maintain my smile as I came to greet her, and when she sneered in response, I ignored it and asked eagerly if she had come to test me on the Covenant.

She looked near to choking with dislike, but her words were flat and emotionless. ‘Tash is busy,’ she said. ‘I am to test your knowledge of the Covenant and see to your exercise today.’

My heart sank. ‘Tash was going to take me to the Hub . . .’ I began.

‘I don’t have time to take you anywhere. You can do the exercises she taught you while I watch. But first I will test you.’

I did not have to pretend my disappointment, and my anger began to burn as I saw from her sly smile that it pleased her. I wondered how many times in life I would be the victim of someone who derived pleasure from causing pain or discomfort to others. I had to drop my eyes, for I dared not show my anger to her, knowing it did not match the gentle, willing character I was pretending to be. If she got the slightest hint I was hiding my true self, she would never rest until she had exposed me. I itched to coerce her, not to find out why she acted in such a way, but simply, primitively, to punish her. I felt the dark power at my core stir as it sometimes did when I was possessed with rage, and though I had learned that I could control it, it shook me that the Speci had managed to rouse it with her petty malice.

I drew a deep breath, reminding myself that I now knew I was engaged in my quest, even here, trapped in Habitat. I would be an utter fool to cause trouble with some sort of stupid outburst that might cause my movements to be scrutinised or limited.

‘Do not snivel,’ Balboa snapped, obviously taking my bowed head as a sign that I was cowed. Her spite cooled the vestiges of my outrage, for I would not give her such power over me.

I composed my face into a woebegone mask, lifted my eyes to hers and said meekly, ‘I just wanted –’

‘I don’t care what you wanted,’ Balboa said. ‘Do your exercises, but first, get me water. It was a long hot walk from the dye hut and you ought to be glad I am not forcing you to walk to the Hub, for the light would surely blind you.’

I forbore to say we had planned to walk to the Hub at dusk, or to remind her that she had said she would test me first, and meekly got her water, wondering what had put her in such a towering temper. Certainly not a simple resurrectee with no power over anyone else. ‘Is Tash sick?’ I asked, not because I thought she was, but in order to provoke the Speci woman to talk.

She made me wait while she drank, then gave me a look of loathing. ‘How should I know? Get on with your exercises.’

I moved the bed and table, pretending to be weak so that she had to get up and help me shove them to the side. Every action she performed caused her to simmer with rage and it occurred to me that there might be something wrong with her. She took the chair against the wall and sat while I proceeded to go through the exercises Tash had shown me, taking care to be slightly hesitant and occasionally clumsy. For a time, Balboa pretended to ignore me until she grew bored with the pose and began to criticise and belittle me in the guise of instruction. I pretended to believe she was trying to help me, and was rewarded by her expression of frustrated fury when I thanked her for her support. The angrier she became, the more my own anger cooled, and I began to wonder what was behind her mood, and if it could be manipulated. When she had finished testing me on the Covenant, sneering at my every mistake, she demanded more water.

‘Did Sikoka change his mind about wanting me to go to the Hub today?’ I asked innocently as I brought it to her.

Balboa’s eyes widened and she ground her teeth audibly. Then she said I was a fool and had misunderstood. She had merely needed to assure herself I was fit for the proposed walk. She did not want to repeat the mistake made by Swallow and Tash. I told her happily that Tash had already assured Sikoka I was fit to go anywhere in Habitat after dusk.

‘So can we go to the Hub?’ I asked eagerly. Habitat dusk was a good hour away and I prayed I had not misjudged her impatience.

Balboa rose, glared at me in wordless fury and then stalked from the hut. I restored the bed to its place then lay down on it. The exercises had not tired me, but dealing with the incomprehensible malevolence of the Speci woman had drained and depressed me. I allowed myself to drift off to sleep, hoping I would dream, but once again if I did I had no memory of it when I woke with the slightly thick head that comes from sleeping deeply for a short period. The pale gold light leaking into the hut through the window slats told me it was nearing dusk, unless I had slept through a whole night, but it did not feel like dawn.

I got up and went outside, wondering if I had been wrong in thinking Balboa would not dare to disobey what I had implied was an instruction from Sikoka to take me to the Hub. I doubted she would have questioned him, but if she had I would simply claim to have misunderstood the Committee spokesman. I had no doubt he would believe me, for the Habitat Elspeth was timid and often confused.

It was a beautiful clear evening, despite the heat, and I sat on the bench under my window, marvelling that I had never seen a single soul going to or from any of the neighbouring huts. The most likely explanation was that newcomers were placed among the two hundred or so empty huts in Habitat. Setting down the mug of water I had carried out, I noticed a clay bowl filled with very small polished plums on the end of the bench.

I picked it up, wondering who had left them. The bowl offered no clue because no one owned such things in Habitat. Nor was there any reason one of the Speci should leave me a gift, since I was unknown to almost all of them. I could not see the Committee members who had been schooling me in the Covenant going to the bother of bringing me plums, and if they had, why not give them to me? The obvious answer was that Dragon or one of the others had brought them – Swallow, since he was working in the fields. The other possibility was that Tash had left them. The shy gift befitted her, and might even be some sort of apology for her failure to come to the Hub with me or for subjecting me to the repellent Balboa. Or Balboa herself might have been given them to bring to me. It would be just like her to leave them outside in the hope they would spoil before I found them.

I yawned, deciding it was a very small mystery and not worth mulling over so intently. I thought, as I had thought before, how strikingly still it was in Habitat. I could not hear a single voice or sound other than my own breathing. Not the call of a bird nor even, in this moment, the whirr of a beetle. It was the first time I had been conscious of the lack of birdlife, but now I thought of it, I was sure I had not heard a bird sing the whole time I had been in Habitat. Swallow had said there were no animals in Habitat and the Tumen had told me animals were not captured any longer, but how could a wall keep birds out? There were definitely insects in Habitat, for I had heard the hum of a bee only moments past. It made sense since the teknoguilder Jak had once delivered a fascinating talk explaining that plants and insects needed one another to survive, let alone thrive. Birds were not necessary in the same way, but given the presence of insects and certainly of fruit, like the plums, there ought to have been birds aplenty swooping in and out of Habitat. We had several pear trees in Rangorn, growing at the back of our cottage, and my mother had been constantly trying to find ways to discourage the birds from eating them.

Perhaps it was the blanket of static I had encountered trying to farseek out of Habitat that caused birds to veer away, and no doubt the Tumen had brought in insects, if they truly were essential. Maybe somewhere in Pellmar Quadrants was a garden such as I had seen in the lowest level of Oldhaven.

I took up one of the plums and was about to bite into it when a movement at the edge of my vision caught my eye. I turned my head and was startled to see two women making their way along the wall path carrying buckets. They must have gone to get water from the well Ana had mentioned, and were now returning to their own row of huts. Neither had glanced in my direction and I guessed they had not noticed me sitting quietly on the bench in the fading light. To my surprise another woman appeared, coming in the other direction and turning to hurry along the path leading towards my hut. It took me a moment to realise it was not a woman but a girl, and that girl was Dragon! With a rush of delight, I set down the bowl of plums and rose so quickly I overturned them.

After we had embraced fiercely we offered one another a stiff greeting for the sake of the listeners, then Dragon announced baldly that Balboa was ill and had asked her to bring me to the Hub.

‘I thought I might as well bring you supper, too, since that was supposed to be my job this evening,’ she added, showing me the basket on her arm.

‘Is it all right for you to go with me?’ I asked, more than delighted to find Dragon replacing Balboa, but I did not want her to get into trouble.

‘Only adults work in the afternoons,’ she answered cheerfully. ‘We younglings usually go to one of the work huts and learn something new, but it is not an assigned activity. In any case Balboa asked me and the Covenant requires that all Speci be willing to offer aid to one another.’ She gave me a smile of mischief at the conclusion of this little speech and I saw again how she teetered on the verge of womanhood.

I would have given much to be able to ask her to sit down and tell me what she remembered of her childhood, but knew that we must play our parts for the time being. I felt less fractious at the limitations preventing us from speaking openly now I knew that we were actively engaged in my quest after all, and I was looking forward to telling the others, especially Swallow, for it would surely ease his simmering frustration.

‘Let’s go straight away,’ Dragon said eagerly. ‘You can eat when you come back. It’s better not to go too late anyway because the blossoms come out and I don’t like the smell.’

‘All right,’ I said equably, and scooped up the dusty fallen plums before taking them and the basket of food inside.

‘Are you well enough?’ Dragon asked belatedly when I came back out. ‘I am supposed to ask if you can walk with only one person to lean on.’

‘I can hobble along,’ I said mawkishly, and winked at her. In truth I could have skipped as we set off towards the wall.

‘We just go right at the wall path instead of left to go to the Hub,’ she told me.

I kept my hand on her shoulder as we walked in case anyone was watching, but I could easily have managed alone. We walked in silence, which was preferable to maintaining my simpleton persona, and by the time we were making our way along the wall path, the light had developed a ruddy cast. We passed several rows of huts, which looked exactly the same as those we had passed walking in the other direction, and I wondered if these were deserted. After a time, the lines of huts came to an end but the path continued beyond them to what looked from a distance to be a wall of green that ran, so far as I could tell, from one side of the Habitat wall to the other. Closer to the wall the solid stretch of green separated into a phalanx of fat fluted green columns, each as wide as the trunk of a solid tree, that branched at head height into thick green arms. These branched again into smaller and then smaller arms. The surface of the entire plant was a fur of prickles in which occasionally a dark glossy brown protuberance showed. It was not until I noticed that one of these brown nuts had split to allow a thick white frill of blossom, that I realised these were the cacti Swallow had mentioned.

‘It is not far from my hut,’ I said, wondering why I had been told the walk to the Hub was too far for me to manage.

‘The cacti grove is very big,’ Dragon said. ‘In the time before, it would have been called a forest. The cacti deeper in have more arms and they are much higher, though Ana says they are still not trees.’

Dragon’s care in using Speci terms startled me almost as much as the idea of a forest within the walls of Habitat. But having seen the garden deep under the earth at Oldhaven, complete with enormous trees, I withheld my doubts. After all, I could not see the wall beyond the higher cacti because of the gathering haze above them, and so the grove must be deep.

As we set off along the path that cut into the cacti, Dragon told me earnestly that the pod cases were valued because once the oil in them had been extracted, it could be turned into a very quick and effective numbing lotion. This puzzled me, for surely the Tumen would provide whatever medicaments the Speci needed. Indeed, hadn’t someone said that medications were sometimes requested of God?

‘We must keep to the path.’ Dragon broke off her lesson to gesture at the wide, gravelled walk that meandered out of sight between the cacti plants and I wondered if she was trying to support my role of simpleton by explaining the obvious. As we set off she told me that the cacti thistles were coated with venom that could put you to sleep with a scratch, and that more than a scratch would kill you if the prickles were old. It seemed the cacti shed them seasonally. As if I had looked fearful, Dragon assured me that the path had been designed to ensure no one got close enough to the cacti to be fuddled by their perfume, let alone pricked by their deadly thistles. That was one of the reasons people stayed away on darker nights. A stumble might bring you close enough to a blossom for its perfume to befuddle you and then you might walk into a plant.

We walked for almost an hour, seeing nothing but cacti and occasionally a glimpse between them of the towering wall far enough in the distance that I began to have a sense of the immense size of Habitat. No wonder they had not wanted to bring me to the Hub the first day. In truth I hoped it was not too much further for I was beginning to tire. The path, which had started out wide enough for us to walk side by side, abruptly narrowed, so that we were forced to walk in single file. Then it began to loop and coil circuitously, again for no discernable reason. The whole while Dragon droned on about the multitude of uses to which the cacti and its parts could be put. It transpired that the plant was the principal source of food within Habitat, and that as well as being the source of a numbing potion, the needles could be boiled to produce a bleach that would whiten cloth or, treated differently, form a powerful glue. It could even be used to produce silk, which was used to make clothing for the darkmoon ceremony and for bonding ceremonies. In addition, a branch broken off would regrow, so there was never any need to plant more of the cacti. The broken arms never produced another flower nut, however, so the flowering arms were never harvested.

I was genuinely amazed at the breadth of her knowledge about the cacti, though when I murmured something about her knowing a lot, she gave me a pointed look I could not decipher, and said lightly that she was glad to give me the benefit of all her learning. Unable to work out what I had missed, I merely thanked her. Privately, I wondered if anyone was really listening to us, deep in the cacti forest as we were. There might be devices planted in the ground, as the others thought, but the idea that every conversation in Habitat was being listened to by dutiful Tumen had begun to seem absurd. Yet presumably the others had tested the path and found it to be so. I reminded myself soberly of the dead Speci and the need not to take the caution of my friends lightly.

The main thing I needed to concentrate on now, even more than finding a way out of Habitat, was Cassandra’s key. It was a pity I had not asked to go to the burying field first, but it was too late now, and we still had to find a way out, though it was possible there would be instructions about how that could be managed with Cassandra’s key.

The path brought us close by a cactus with three of the white flowers and I gagged at the foetid odour emanating from them. It was exactly like the smell of sweaty feet. Astonished, I looked at Dragon, who was now holding her nose. Seeing my expression she dissolved into silent laughter.

‘The smell gets worse before it gets better,’ she murmured.

I meant to scowl at her, but trying to hold my nose got in the way, and I, too, wound up stifling laughter. I had no idea what the Tumen would make of our laughter, for it would be audible despite our attempts to be quiet. Fortunately laughter was not actually forbidden. At least there was no rule about it in the Covenant. On the other hand there were clearly a great many rules and traditions, the breaking of which, if not forbidden, was severely frowned upon.

‘The smell is truly awful but actually harmless,’ said Dragon as we continued, ‘although when the moon rises and it goes from hideous to lovely – that is when it is dangerous, because there is something in the sweetness that muddles your mind and makes your eyes go strange. The sweeter the scent the stronger the poison, the Speci say, though the blossom is not poisonous at all.’

‘A complex plant,’ I murmured soberly. ‘What happens to the scent when the moon is not full, or if it is darkmoon?’

‘It doesn’t . . .’ Dragon began, then she stopped and pointed. ‘Look.’

I looked to see a building through the cacti that reminded me of the Taillard Observatory into whose stone floor Jacob had carved a message for Hannah, telling her he was bound for Pellmar Quadrants. Like that building, this one glowed white as the cacti flowers, and had a domed roof that seemed a curved extension of the walls, although it was a much smaller building – in truth not much bigger than a hut.

‘The Hub,’ Dragon said. ‘You won’t see the doorway until we get nearer.’

We continued along the path, which looped widely around the Hub, and I saw the slot-like roof window Ana had described. I noted too, that, just as Swallow had said, there were no visible joins or seams. And even if there had been a secret door, what use would it be when all it would lead to was the silent, bristling cacti forest on all sides? I saw that my theory of Tumen creeping secretly through the cacti to the Hub was completely impractical, given how closely the plants grew. In some places plants were meshed together, and there would be no getting through them without a knife. If the Tumen approached the Hub in this way, their passage would have been evident, even if they remained safe from the cacti’s perfumed wiles and poisons in their shining suits.

The doorway to the Hub turned out to be a simple rectangular opening one step up from ground level. There was nothing but darkness visible within. I asked Dragon about this and she said there was no light inside because anything but natural light hurt the cacti. This was obviously another incentive for the Speci to visit the Hub in the morning or at dusk to see if their prayers had been answered, for at night, it would be harder to see, save when the moon was full, and then, the cacti flowers were at their most dangerous.

Approaching the door, I saw the walls of the Hub were thick but not so thick as to conceal a tunnel or a hidden chamber where one of the Tumen might hide if surprised by a Speci, unlike the wall surrounding the black city on Herder Isle. Nor were there any visible joins.

Dragon entered and was swallowed by the darkness. Entering after her, I could sense her standing to my right, but I stopped to wait for my eyes to adjust. It was not true dusk yet and after a moment, the light falling through the roof window enabled me to see that there was nothing in the Hub save an enormous block of pale stone directly beneath the roof window – the altar where I had been laid out by the Tumen, I thought, remembering the stabbing brightness of the light when I had opened my eyes for the first time. It was a stone monolith that could not have been lifted by a dozen strong men.

I felt all over the top and sides of it and around the base, confirming for myself that it was definitely a solid block of stone, but unlike the stone that formed the Hub, the walls of which were smooth as a pebble from a stream, the altar was rough, cold and slightly greasy to the touch. I felt my way around the inside of the Hub, reaching up as high as I could to search for niches. There were none. It truly seemed that the Hub had been cut from a single block of stone. Certainly there was no secret way the Tumen could have entered, and nowhere to hide within it, save cloaked in darkness. But the hours the Speci came to the Hub were limited by a number of things, and I thought the Tumen would have plenty of opportunity to enter Habitat somewhere else, make their way along the path to the Hub, and then depart.

The question was, where did the Tumen enter Habitat?

Obviously they would not enter the common area or the crops or the burying ground, since they would have to pass through the inhabited huts and public areas in order to get to the Hub. The logical and safest means for the Tumen to enter the Hub would be through an entrance hidden in the wall somewhere around the cacti forest. It would have to be at a place where the path was accessible, unless there was a hidden path. But there was another possibility.

‘Does the path go on past the Hub?’ I asked.

‘It does,’ Dragon confirmed, her voice echoing slightly. ‘It goes to the cacti drying racks and the vats for boiling the needles. Then it goes around the wall after that, past all the rows of huts on the other side until it comes to the healing hut. But it is little used because it is almost double the distance you travel by going the main way from the common to the Hub.’

‘The other end comes out close to the healing hut and that’s near where the Committee meet?’ I asked, silently daring my listeners to make of that what they would.

Dragon frowned but she answered lightly, ‘It does, but the Committee generally don’t use it. It is the Speci who bring the cacti produce to the storage huts who mostly use it.’