The Red Queen (23 page)

‘Swallow said it was a daunting sight,’ Dameon murmured, clearly empathising my feelings.

‘How is it that there are names on the graves?’ I asked. ‘I thought the Speci did not scribe.’

‘They don’t but they don’t make the markers either,’ he answered. ‘When someone dies, the body is laid on the altar in the Hub. A day later, there will be a marker scribed with the name by the body.’

I remembered the Tumen then, talking of retrieving the bodies of dead Speci in order to get any final information from them, then returning them for burial. But Dameon had said nothing about bodies being taken, and it was too late to ask any but indirect questions. I had to resume my dullard guise.

Another question occurred to me and I decided to risk asking it, though I did so as simpleton Elspeth. ‘Do the Speci read?’

‘They do read and in fact they can scribe, though they do not do so on paper or parchment. They . . . we use tabyls, and books may be taken into the tabyl from the babel towers. They are a marvel, truly. They are located in one of the public huts you have not yet seen and there are computermachines in the wall where you can read stories or see them in pictures. The same stories can be absorbed by tabyl and examined anywhere in Habitat.’

I determined to examine these babel machines, but in the meantime I bent down to read the scribing on one of the graves, wondering if a Tumen had cut the words, and why. The name on the marker had been meticulously scribed, probably by some version of the tiny chiselling device Jacob had employed to leave his message for Hannah in the observing house in the mountains.

‘Amula Arrondottir,’ I read the name aloud for Dameon’s benefit. ‘Eighty-seven years. Are the ages of the dead always scribed on the marker?’

‘I think so,’ Dameon said. ‘It is a pity the Tumen did not also scribe the cause of death as we do in the Land. But we can be fairly sure this woman did not die of old age, for the Speci regularly live to a hundred.’

I noticed a line of letters and numbers at the bottom of the marker and knelt to study them. ‘What do you suppose that means?’

‘What?’ Dameon asked.

‘There is a tiny line of numbers and letters on the bottom of the marker,’ I told him. He shrugged and I leaned close to study them for a moment longer, trying to catch hold of a thread that had niggled loose in my mind at the sight of them. It would not come clear and I straightened and moved to the next marker. I read, ‘Heffen Craig, one hundred and three years. There are a line of numbers and letters at the bottom of this marker too.’

I checked but they did not proceed in sequence from the numbers and letters on the previous marker. I continued along the row, reading names and ages aloud. Almost all of the Speci whose graves I read had lived well past a hundred, which was a testament to the care the Tumen took of their flock.

‘Flock’ was not a word I would usually have applied to a group of people, but there
was
something about the Speci that reminded me of placid easygoing sheep, who felt safer in a group than apart. Yet the word did not truly fit this situation, since a shepherd traditionally derived some benefit from his flock, and as far as I could see the Tumen got nothing out of the Speci, unless information could be called a crop.

‘Someone approaches,’ Dameon said suddenly.

To my dismay, I turned to see Balboa, motionless between the standing stones, gazing towards us. As we approached, she fixed Dameon with a beseeching look he did not see, then she said, panting slightly, that she had begged one of the others to swap a morning for an afternoon. He could not see her face, of course, but from the discomfort in his expression I guessed he felt the force of the emotions behind that desperate expression somewhat more than he liked.

I did not know what to do, for although Dameon had obviously decided not to act on his feelings for the Speci woman, he would not want her to be hurt. I released my light hold on his arm and forced myself to say with more welcome than I felt, ‘We were just looking at grave markers.’

She might have been deaf for all the heed she paid my words. She moved to Dameon and took his hands in hers, saying, ‘Reni told me you mean to cohabit with her. That you have been waiting for her! But she is a fool and she will bear fools. And it is not as if she loves you!’ She threw me a spiteful look before turning back to Dameon.

‘Balboa, please stop!’ the empath said in a peculiar strangled voice. He wrenched his hands free and, passing her, went up and through the standing stones.

I wanted to go after him but the Speci woman rounded on me and snarled, ‘This is your fault! If you had not come he would have asked to make the blood offering with me. I wish you had never come! I wish you would get the red token and die.’

I forbore to retort that she was the fool, since I did not love Dameon any more than he loved me, but of course I could not do that, if pretending affection for me was the way the empath had chosen to mask his feelings for Balboa. I said abruptly, impulsively, ‘I just wanted him to show me where the older grave markers are.’

Balboa stared at me, then all the rigid fury in her expression relaxed into a sullen listlessness. She shrugged and said dully, ‘I’ll show you.’ She turned and set off along the left path, and walked straight along it moving swiftly all the way down the slope. After a brief hesitation, I trotted after her, following her through the rows of markers. She did not speak again or look at me, until we had reached the wall. I was half trying to think of something to say that would ease her hurt, not for her sake, but for Dameon’s, but now she turned to the right and began to walk along the bottom of the great slope, which was marked by the wall.

Glancing down at the grave markers, my heart leapt, for they definitely looked more weathered. Balboa really was taking me to the older markers, and not simply leading me astray. I slowed slightly, seeing that, unlike the newer-looking ones, these older ones occasionally bore small phrases as well as the name of the grave’s inhabitant and the length of time they had lived. I would have liked to linger and read all of the scribings, but Balboa was walking swiftly, no doubt propelled by her misery.

Finally, she stopped and watched morosely as I caught up. I thought she would make some accusation or simply scream insults at me, but instead she pointed to a grave at her feet. ‘The ones from here are the oldest graves.’

Fascinated, I came to look at the grave she was indicating. All were clearly old. Studying the names, I wondered how they had come to be captured and resurrected, and if they had been taken soon after the Great White. Balboa followed in my wake – I could feel her eyes boring into me – and I wondered if she had some notion of attacking me. Covenant rules forbade any Speci harming another by violence or any other means, but I had no doubt violence did occur here.

I thought of the plums then, but one step later all thoughts of poisoned plums and the Speci girl and even Dameon were swept from my mind, because the name on the next grave I read was Hannah. The sight of it took my breath away. For what chance was there that, among all these thousands of graves, I should come upon this one almost at once? Yet how could it be Hannah Seraphim here? Then I remembered that Swallow claimed it could not be our Hannah because of the words scribed on the grave marker. I looked down and saw the line denoting the years lived by a Speci. It was scribed as two years. Further down, on a more weathered part of the marker, I saw words. Leaning near to make them out, I read them.

Devoted daughter.

My heart sank. Obviously, as Dameon had said, this was the grave of another Hannah, a child. I gritted my teeth and told myself Jacob’s grave was here and I would find it. The fact that it would be an older grave would make my task easier.

‘Why do any of you care so much about a dead Speci you never even met?’ Balboa asked petulantly. ‘She doesn’t matter any more.’

I was too devastated to pay any attention to her bitter words. I had been a fool to think it would be so miraculously easy. The chance that had made Balboa lead me here had been as sour as the girl herself.

I drew a deep breath to calm myself, for it was not Balboa’s fault that I had become so stupidly excited, and all was not lost since I had only to keep looking until I found Jacob’s grave. Yet why was I so sure it was here? No one had told me so, after all. I had deduced it because Astyanax had told me to find Jacob’s grave when I woke, and I would find Cassandra’s key. But he might simply have meant to find the grave after I left Habitat. I had been stupidly beguiled by the idea that the time we had spent in Habitat had been part of the fulfilment of my quest. Because if it
was
mere mischance that had brought us here, then the months of captivity were no more than a ghastly waste of time. I might even have failed in my quest, for we still did not know how much time we had spent in cryosleep before being resurrected in Habitat.

Maybe it had been a good deal more than mere months.

Suddenly the fact that I had not heard from Astyanax or Maruman or Gahltha since waking, and even the disappearance of Straaka, began to take on a horrible significance. I told myself I had dreamed of the others at Obernewtyn and they had scarcely aged at all since I had last seen them. Years had not passed.

Unless my dreams had been of the past
 . . .

What if, like Hannah and Cassandra, I had woken to a world in which all those I had known and cared for, save my equally deluded companions, were long dead? What a foul irony if the Speci were right, and the world
had
fallen because Ariel had destroyed it? But no, he had said himself that he could not act without me. On the other hand, if I failed to end the risk posed by Sentinel, I had been told that eventually others would come who would be able to wake the computermachine and unleash the deadly potential of BOT, the Balance of Terror. What if so much time had passed that this dark futuretelling had transpired and Habitat was truly all that remained of the world?

I shook my head at the unravelling absurdity of my speculations, for Atthis had told me there would be
nothing at all
left, if BOT unleashed the weapons it controlled a second time, at the behest of Sentinel. No Tumen and no Habitat. Therefore the world had not ended. ‘I am a fool,’ I muttered, and sat down bonelessly on the ground beside the grave of a poor dead unknown child called Hannah. My eyes filled with tears. I fought them, knowing I must not behave with such desperate abandon, especially in front of Balboa of all people. She would report me for it and I would have to find some way to explain myself. I would tell them about the plums, I decided. I would say the drug in them had muddled my wits. Then I remembered my wits were already supposed to be muddled.

I started to laugh at the absurdity of this thought and saw Balboa watching me with a combination of irritation and astonishment. ‘You must be mad,’ she said with satisfaction.

‘The dead matter,’ I mumbled. My eyes fell on the row of numbers and letters at the bottom of the marker and I pointed to them apathetically and asked what they meant.

She shrugged and said with a sneer, ‘Why don’t you ask God if you want to know so much?’

Something in me that was wound too tight gave way and I snarled, ‘It’s just as well God knows something since the Speci seem to know nothing at all!’

Balboa recoiled in shock. Then she gave me a look of breathtaking hatred and stalked off back up the slope, taking the most direct route through the grave markers to the standing stones. Abruptly my hysteria ebbed and I realised my head was spinning and that my body had not been quite under my control when I sat down. It must be that the heat of the long hot walk was affecting me. I ought to have worn a hat the whole way, just as Tash had advised. I looked at the ramrod stiff back of the departing Speci girl and hoped she would seek Dameon out to announce that I had gone mad. He would be able to soothe her empathically. But if she went straight to the Committee, I would have to explain myself.

I looked again at the offending marker, marvelling that I had been brought undone so dramatically by the realisation that it was not the grave I sought. If Jacob’s grave was here, I would find it by persistence, not by a wondrous accident.

I got to my feet and was assailed by dizziness. I really ought to have told Dameon about the plums – I would, the next chance I got. And I would also need to find some way to apologise for my insensitivity over Balboa. I disliked the girl nearly as much as she disliked me, but at least I understood now why she felt as she did, and no matter what I thought of her, if Dameon cared for her, then she must be worthy of his love. No wonder he was so stricken while we were plotting to free ourselves from Habitat, when it meant he would be parting from the girl forever.

I walked a little way along the row of grave markers towards an area of shade cast by the wall further along, constructing a coercive net to contain my dizziness, thinking I would sit and rest for a while before going back. I glanced down, and saw the name Emer Kell scribed on a grave marker. Underneath it, the life span showed three years. I stopped, thinking how queer it was that there should be two children buried so close to one other. I looked at the next grave and saw that the life span of its inhabitant had been ten years. The grave next to that one marked a life of eleven years. Was it possible some sort of plague or sickness had killed a lot of children?

Another possibility occurred to me and I continued along the row examining the life spans on grave after grave, dozens of them. All had short spans and none more than twenty years, which meant that either a great many of the first Speci had died prematurely, or the markers recorded not years of life but years
in Habitat
.

I looked at more and more graves, until many rows out from the wall I began to come to the graves of people who had lived a hundred and more years. By my reckoning, this must be the second generation of Speci, born of those who had died. I went back to Hannah’s marker, now certain that the woman buried in it had not been a child, but had lived two years after being resurrected. But was it Hannah Seraphim’s grave? Now that my head was clear – the muddled dizziness contained by the coercive net – it seemed unlikely. Yet I could not shake off the feeling that it was significant that I had come upon it so quickly. I sat back on my heels and considered the possibility that Hannah had come after Jacob just as he had prayed she would do. She might have dreamed that he had left Obernewtyn, taking Cassandra’s key. She of all people would know its importance to my quest. Of course, it would make more sense if, rather than trying to go after him, she had gone to Cassandra to have her change the clues. But what if it had been too late and Cassy had already let slavers take her? She had not been a young woman, but she had been incredibly resourceful and determined, and strongly Talented. And she had possessed all of the knowledge of the Beforetimers to help her. If she had made up her mind to try to reach the place where Jacob had died to retrieve his bones and Cassandra’s key I could not doubt that she would have found a way to do so and to leave the key where I would find it, when I followed Jacob’s trail.

But what did the weathered inscription mean, if this
was
her grave marker? Her father and mother had been many lifetimes dead by the time she woke after the Great White, and according to Garth’s obsessive research, Hannah had left her family behind in Tipoda when she travelled to Uropa as a young woman to work in the Reichler Clinic, so she could not have been very attached to them. But perhaps she had thought longingly of them at the end of her life.

I could almost hear Maruman’s voice in my mind, snarling at me to stop gnawing and fretting. He would have been right if he were here to scold me. The only way to be sure whether or not this was Hannah’s grave was to dig it up. If Hannah alone lay within, there would be no way to prove anything, save that she was not a child. But if there were two bodies, and one had Cassandra’s key about its neck . . .

I got to my feet, reminding myself that, despite everything, I would have to deal with whatever Balboa was setting in motion.

I looked down at the rock-hard earth. It was hard to imagine how the Speci managed to dig a single grave in such unforgiving ground, let alone hundreds and hundreds of them. No doubt they had some device to help them, but the others might have to bring water to soften the ground enough to get a shovel into it, and they would probably need a pick for the stones. It would likely take several days and they would have to take turns and work in shifts. They would need to go carefully, too, for the bones would be fragile and perhaps Cassandra’s key was, too, given that it had come hidden in or with a glass statue. It was likely made of some clear material that would be hard to see. I needed to explain all of this to the others before they started digging.

I cast one final look at Hannah’s grave marker and then at the endless rows of markers stretching away on all sides, fixing its location in my mind, then I set off along the path that led most directly to the standing stones, thinking about the journey Hannah would have made, if it truly was Hannah who was buried here. Where might she have found Jacob’s bones? She would have had to find his body, for he had worn Cassandra’s key about his neck and nothing else would have remained of him by that time. The getting of the bones must have been a sad and ghoulish business, yet perhaps she had felt it was the fulfilment of a sacred trust, for had she not told him their bones would lie together at the end? Even if she had only loved him as a dear friend, she had made him a promise, and perhaps she had been glad to be able to keep it. It was strange to think that in coming to Pellmar Quadrants, she had been revisiting somewhere she had been in the Beforetime. It must have been eerie to return to a place where there had once been life and people she had come to know, and to understand that every one of them was dead, either from the Great White or old age. The Tumen must have been inhabiting the city, of course, or their predecessors, for how else would she have got into Habitat? I doubted she would have allowed herself to be captured; her powers had been too great. Most like she had come to the settlement openly and had spoken with whoever was in charge. And told them what? That she wanted to be buried with some bones and a Beforetime device inside Habitat? Surely they would have thought her mad, unless she had coerced them.

I passed though the standing stones, and set off across the plain that shimmered in the sunlight, allowing the coercive net to absorb its effects on my body. I thought that it was a pity Jacob had not been captured by the Tumen and put into a cryopod, so that Hannah could come along years later and awaken him. They might have entered Habitat together, with Cassandra’s key, knowing I would come along one day to retrieve it. It would have been beautiful to imagine them having a few last sweet years together before being buried in the same grave, just as Hannah had promised. As long as Jacob still had Cassandra’s key, they would have known they had done all they swore to do for the Seeker to come. They could have enjoyed the peace of those final years, knowing their task had been completed honourably. Jacob had been a good bit older than Hannah, of course, but events would have closed the gap in their ages.

That was a ballad-song ending, of course, and not the sort that occurred in real life. The reality was that I knew nothing for sure, yet by the time I had passed through the crops and reached the common, I felt purposeful and decisive. I had a plan of action, even if it was limited. I was tempted to seek out Dameon to tell him what I wanted and to find out if Balboa had come to him, but the memory of our last encounter troubled me. I disliked Balboa intensely, yet I had to accept that Dameon cared for her. That meant I would be the reason my dearest friend would be parted from the first woman he had come to love. The fact that it was not my fault but a sacrifice demanded of him by my quest, to which he had committed himself, made it even harder. But I refused to dishonour him by imagining that he might regret his commitment, let alone recant it. To know Dameon was to know that he would never do a thing that would shame him. Perversely, that only made his love for Balboa all the harder to accept, for she seemed to me to be the opposite of all the things that made him what he was. But as Rushton had once said to me, matters of the heart were not sums that could be neatly solved. Love was a mystery and that was all there was to it.

Coming to the common and stepping back out into the radiant heat of the early afternoon, I abandoned my conjectures. Although the coercive net was still absorbing the effects of the sun, my face was beginning to feel red and tight, for the tunic head covering had not shaded it. Lack of water would account for some of my weakness, but I had missed a meal, too, and I would likely be scolded for it. I did not have the energy to face having to explain myself just yet, especially if Balboa had already complained about me.