The Red Queen (25 page)

‘Prime User Kelver Rhonin activated my basic program, Specimen Elspeth. The andrones were designed to integrate with the God program but they were primarily designed for the performance of regular menial services. Their realignment with the search and rescue protocol was automatically triggered. User Hannah later activated my deeper programming and required me to undertake modifications of the andrones.’

My head rang with the strangeness of this conversation with a disembodied voice in the middle of the night in Hub. I had no memory of moving, but I was now sitting with my back against the altar.

‘Hannah . . . woke you . . . I mean ordered you to . . . change the andrones? Why?’

‘User Hannah wished to send one of the units to repair the connection between the quadrants, Specimen Elspeth,’ God said.

‘And did she . . . I mean did the androne do that?’

‘It repaired the connections between Quadrants One, Two and Three, but Quadrant Four is beyond its range. User Hannah then required me to modify an androne so that it would be able to achieve a greater range. I began to develop a modification that would give the androne limited operational capacity independent of the God connection. But this was not completed until after User Hannah had expired.’

Hannah had died before she had been able to do what she wanted to do, then. I now had no doubt at all that two sets of bones lay in her grave, along with Cassandra’s key, which suggested she had arranged this with God. But why had she been trying to establish a connection to a govamen terminal?

I got to my feet, reminding myself not to become distracted with questions about Hannah. The most important thing was to get Cassandra’s key and escape from Habitat as soon as possible. But I had learned some important things, the most vital of which was that the Tumen were machines obeying a program and the mind controlling Habitat and the Tumen was that of a computermachine.

‘So it was one of these andrones talking to me, when I woke in the cryosleep pod?’ I said, at last.

‘I spoke to you using the inbuilt androne voice,’ said God.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘So you were talking to me through the androne. Tell me again how you knew where to send the Tumen after us. Tell me what happened once we were taken.’

‘Movement and heat signatures consistent with human-sized life forms were detected by outlying automated sensors in the catchment zone. An androne was dispatched to collect viable specimens. Severe dehydration and primary malnutrition were detected in all specimens, but all were evaluated as retrievable and viable. Brought back to the Galon Institute, they were installed in medivac units for minor repairs before being transferred to basic cryopods for the gathering of data as required by original rescue protocols. Once preliminary data had been retrieved, four specimens were resurrected in Habitat in accordance with Habitat variation protocol. One specimen – you, Specimen Elspeth – was held back for further investigation as an anomaly.’

‘Why do you call me an anomaly?’ I asked.

‘You woke from cryosleep and then could not be restored to the correct state for re-immersion. Protocols require full documentation of deviant phenomena.’

‘So you just wanted to know why I woke and how I stayed awake?’ I said, relieved it had not mentioned Misfit abilities.

‘Secondary data has been and is still in the process of being collected by surveillance array in Habitat,’ God said. ‘This will be collated with primary data after extinction.’

I blinked. In essence, God was telling me it had been watching me and would continue doing so until I died. I bit back the impulse to tell it bluntly that I had no intention of dying in Habitat, and asked, ‘How did Hannah end up dying in Habitat? Answer this question as fully as you can.’ There were a thousand things I wanted to know, but it seemed wiser to ask clear, simply formulated questions.

‘The completed God program had been installed but not yet activated when Class B Cataclysm occurred. Prime User Kelver Rhonin activated the God program in basic mode before departing Quadrant One to re-establish the severed links between the quadrants. He did not return. It was not until User Jacob Obernewtyn installed himself in a cryosleep pod that the survivor retrieval program was automatically activated. This resulted in the andrones adapting and extending their operational protocols. From this time, all surviving specimens entering the designated catchment zone were acquired by andrones, repaired then stored and maintained in cryosleep pods. By the time User Hannah arrived, there were seven hundred and thirty-nine specimens in sleep pods. Twenty per cent had expired in situ due to system flaws. User Hannah activated my full program and commanded the resurrection of all remaining viable specimens from cryopods, but this command could not be executed without a link to a government portal to acquire authorisation for the release of specimens, and this could not be achieved without the repair of the severed links between Quadrants One and Four. User Hannah then located and attempted to enact the Habitat solution.’

‘The . . . Habitat solution? What is that?’ I asked, fascinated. Realising I had been riveted for some time, I forced myself to cross to the Hub entrance and look out to be sure no Speci was approaching. All was still and dark, save where the moonlight fell.

God continued, seemingly oblivious to my movements. ‘The Habitat solution enables the construction and preparation of a suitable habitat for the resurrection and indefinite maintenance of six hundred viable specimens. This was rejected by my programming as an obsolete protocol, but User Hannah found grounds and resubmitted her application. It was rejected by my program as being unwieldy and impossible, given there were only two andrones available for construction. User Hannah then located an area within Midland that could be modified to enable the construction of Habitat. This time the proposal was acceptable to my programming. It took the two andrones five years to bring Habitat to the level that enabled the resurrection of specimens. During that time twenty-seven died in flawed cryopods. When it was complete, User Hannah proposed that all specimens be resurrected and put into Habitat, but extrapolation of data showed that Habitat would not support that number. User Hannah calculated a sixty-one per cent risk that some specimens still in cryosleep pods would expire before being revived, but my program showed that overpopulation of Habitat would result in dysfunction of specimens and destruction of Habitat with the projected expiration of ninety per cent of viable specimens.’

Trying to find meaning in the smooth flow of largely incomprehensible terms was like trying to catch tiny darting fish in my fingers. ‘So Jacob . . . when Hannah arrived, was he . . . sleeping still?’

‘He was the first awakened, Speci Elspeth.’

Despite all my own needs and the strangeness of this entire conversation with a machine, tears sprang to my eyes at the thought of Jacob reunited with his beloved Hannah. Incredibly, his mad dream of crossing the wasteland to find a Beforetime city where he would be reunited with Hannah had come true. That would mean it been a true dream all along. They had not been common among Beforetimers and Jacob had been unTalented, yet still, it might be so. It was wonderful, and yet some part of me found it almost impossible to believe that they had both slept in cryopods years and miles apart, their lives arrested for long periods, only to be reunited at the end of their lives, Hannah’s tasks completed by that reunion. Of course their story had not been flawless. I could imagine Hannah’s horror and later Jacob’s too, when he realised all of those hundreds of people trapped and dying in faulty cryopods were there because he had activated that part of God’s program simply by putting himself into a cryopod. I had no idea where so many people had come from to be captured by the Tumen nor why or how there had been so many babies and children, but it was no surprise that Hannah had been determined to save them. It might even be that she had been unable to free Jacob without finding a solution. The things God had told me made it clear she had begun by simply trying to release the sleepers and, finding that impossible, she had unearthed the Habitat protocol and had eventually managed to force God to create it. It had taken five years, then what had happened? She and Jacob had entered Habitat to live out their final years among the Speci? And all the rest of it, the Covenant and so on, had happened some time after that?

I frowned, thinking about the Covenant. I had been told that an old woman called Naha had been awakened in the Hub, bearing a list of laws and rules to live by, and that was the Covenant. She had been revered and had set in place many of the traditions and customs in Habitat. And she had been sacred because she had spoken to God, and God had answered her.

It must have been Hannah! But there was no mention of an old man. What if she and Jacob had spent their final years watching over the people in Habitat to be sure they were safe, using God’s resources, then after Jacob died, Hannah entered Habitat, so that she could ensure she would be buried with him when the time came. She might have brought in the Covenant simply to instil practices that would enable its inhabitants to better endure.

‘Hannah took the Covenant into Habitat, didn’t she?’ I said, though I was certain of it.

‘That is correct, Specimen Elspeth.’

I frowned. ‘How do you know my name?’

‘I have heard it spoken by other specimens and you respond to it, therefore it is your preferred designation,’ God said. ‘Do you wish to be addressed differently? My program enables language adaptation.’

‘No, and you need not say my name every time you speak to me!’ I said ‘Why did you resurrect me and the others when you did? I mean, why not other sleepers?’

‘Originally the sleepers woken were always those who had been longest in cryopods. But more recent data analysis showed that, for those resurrected, the potential to reproduce declines in direct relation to the length of time in cryogenic sleep. Given that the number of births in Habitat has been falling for the last three generations, and based on projected data, without intervention, the number of viable Speci will fall to a level that will endanger the future of Habitat in three generations. Also, there are few left in cryopods now, and many are flawed by illness,’ God concluded.

‘Oh,’ I said, thinking of Miryum. I wanted to ask about her, but I had been in the Hub for a long while and there was so much that I only half understood. Aside from it all, the need that had brought me to the Hub had not changed. I had to find out how we could get out of Habitat, and despite all I had learned, I still had no idea how that could be managed. I had asked God how Tumen got in and out of Habitant, and had been told they used the Hub. Could a computermachine lie, or evade a question? It was suddenly brighter and I looked up to see the moon overhead. I breathed deep and the air smelled sweet and dangerous. The cacti would be in full bloom now, and so perhaps I was safe from interruption for the time being. It struck me suddenly that I had been very fortunate I had not eaten the drugged plums before walking to the Hub the first time with Tash, since I might very well have stumbled off the path, even taking Tash with me. It was sheer luck that she had arrived just before I had been about to eat them, and had suggested the expedition, so that I had not eaten them until my return. Dismissing the plums from my mind, I looked down at the moonlit altar, thinking that what I needed was a way to convince God to free us, but since it regarded
me
as a Speci man, and no Speci man was able to be released without authorisation from the ubiquitous govamen, it would take some thinking. Better to go away, sleep, and then see what I could come up with on the morrow. Maybe one of the others would think of something.

But there was one thing I wanted to clarify before I left, for it had occurred to me that Jacob had to have been regarded by God as a Speci man. ‘God, what happened to Jacob Obernewtyn? Was he resurrected inside Habitat?’

‘User Jacob Obernewtyn was revived by User Hannah. Because he had installed himself in a cryosleep pod, neither government permission nor release codes were required for his resurrection and he was authorised by her as a user. He expired seven months after resurrection, while Habitat was still under construction,’ said the computermachine.

I found I was fiercely glad that Jacob and Hannah had managed a little time together. It was very little time, really, but I thought that, were I given the chance to see Rushton ere the end, for an hour, or even for five minutes, I would accept it with joy and gratitude. As for Jacob, the scribings in his journal showed that he had crossed the Blacklands Range and the poisoned lands beyond solely in the hope of being able to speak with Hannah again, so I could not doubt he would have woken to joy.

Having decided to leave, I lingered.

I would wait until the moon had begun to set, and the flowers to lose their deadly allure. I was not terribly tired, having slept well before I had come to the Hub, and how should I sleep in any case, knowing all that I now knew? I would only lie awake gnawing ferociously at all I had heard, longing to tell the others.

I sat on the step in the doorway for a time, staring out at the bristling, moonlit outline of the cacti plants, organising my thoughts, then I went back inside and sat cross-legged on the ground by the altar, where I could lean my back against it and look up and see the stars.

‘In which quadrant is the Galon Facility, God?’ I had worked out now that Pellmar Quadrants was actually four separate settlements.

‘It is situated in Quadrant One,’ said God.

‘And . . . that is here?’ I asked, and then I hastily rephrased my words. ‘I mean, is Habitat in Quadrant One?’

‘That is correct, Specimen Elspeth,’ said God.

The Tumen had said the Galon Institute had many levels, yet we were unable to see any scrapers over the wall around Habitat. Perhaps some levels were under the ground.

‘God, did Hannah ever try to go to Quadrant Four herself?’

‘After the expiration of Jacob Obernewtyn, User Hannah travelled to Quadrant Four. She wished to see if there was a viable link between the computer terminal at Quadrant Four and a Government Terminal. She also wished to see if the body of Kelver Rhonin could be found there.’

‘And did she find him?’ I asked, startled out of my list of queries.

‘She did not find a body, Specimen Elspeth. She saw no sign that Kelver Rhonin had ever been there,’ God answered. ‘Nor did she find a viable link to a government terminal.’

‘So she came back and went into Habitat? Why?’

‘User Hannah had observed Habitat since the beginning and she devised a charter she called Covenant, that would address certain flaws and ease relations between specimens that inhabited Habitat. She entered Habitat because she said that she wished to share their captivity since she could not find a way to release them.’

I nodded absently. ‘And she lived for two years, then she was buried there?’

‘When she expired, her body was buried in the Habitat burying ground according to Speci death protocols she had established,’ said God.

‘How did she die?’ I asked softly.

‘User Hannah Obernewtyn expired of physical breakdown as the result of exposure to contaminated material.’

So they had bonded after all, Hannah and Jacob, I thought, for there would be no other reason for her to have taken his second name. Garth would have been pleased and I looked forward to telling this news to Ana. Yet it saddened me that Hannah had died in such a way. ‘What can you tell me about the bones of Jacob Obernewtyn?’

‘User Hannah instructed that Hannah’s bones be buried with the bones of Jacob Obernewtyn,’ God said.

This was a strangely convoluted way to put it, but I was glad to hear that Hannah had arranged that their bones would be buried together at the end, just as she had always promised Jacob. Suddenly I was weary of my carefully composed questions. Bluntly, I asked, ‘God, how do I get out of Habitat?’

‘Specimens are not permitted to leave Habitat until government authorisation has been obtained,’ God said.

I sighed, but it was no more than I had expected. ‘How would I get out if that were permitted?’ I asked.

‘You would exit through the Hub,’ God said.

I glared at the sky and thought about the fact that Dell had been convinced computermachines could be made to dismiss or disobey their programming if they could be brought to understand complex reasoning, and God had refused Hannah more than once, when she had wanted it to create Habitat, until she had found a way to change its mind. The answer to getting out of Habitat seemed not to be that simple. I had to find a way to convince God to free me, and not only me. My companions had to be freed as well. Indeed I would be glad to have all of the Speci released from their serene, unnatural prison.

The trouble was I did not have a compelling argument, nor the time to construct one. But Hannah had
known
I would come here. Why allow herself and Jacob to be buried in Habitat with Cassandra’s key if she had
not
foreseen that? In which case, she had surely seen, too, that I would be trapped with my companions. Of course, Atthis might have been supposed to warn me, or give me some advice or device that would have prevented me ending up helpless inside Habitat. Hannah might have foreseen that, but not that I would beg the Agyllian to help me save Rushton on Norseland, which would result in the old bird’s early death. Was it possible that in saving Rushton, I had doomed us all? I found I could not believe it. Nor could I accept that my quest was to founder in this remote outpost of the Beforetime when I had come so far at so much cost. Cassandra’s key was in Habitat, and I was here to get it. Hannah had known I would come. It was even possible that I would find a message from her with Cassandra’s key, telling me how to get out of Habitat and what to do next.

Then an even more elegant solution presented itself to me. If Hannah had seen I was coming and that I would be trapped in Habitat, she would have wanted to ensure I could escape, and the best way to do that – better by far than scribed messages and codes – would have been for her to
arrange it with God.

I must have slept, for I woke to hear a crunching step and leapt to my feet in startled alarm just as a man entered the Hub. He glanced at me without much interest, and I nodded awkwardly, not knowing if there was some courtesy required. But the man simply came to the altar lit now by dim dawn light, and looked around it disconsolately. Then he sighed and his shoulders slumped. ‘God’s will, then,’ he muttered.

He looked up at the skylight and it seemed to me he might say something, but at length he sighed again and went out with no more than another sideways glance at me. I hoped he had not recognised me, for if he spoke of my presence in the Hub, the Speci might wonder how I had managed to come here when I had been too ill to eat my meal in the common rooms. Yet I had the feeling he had been utterly preoccupied with his own concerns.

It was time to leave, for if one Speci could come, others might as well. It must be later than I had thought. I listened until his slow heavy tread faded, wanting to let him get a head start before I left the Hub. On the verge of leaving, I dithered absurdly at the door feeling that I ought to say some sort of farewell to God. Then a woman appeared, walking quickly along the path, head down. I stepped out as she approached the entrance to the Hub and she flicked a glance at me before entering, just as the man had done, but I heard her muttering something under her breath. Guessing that she was preparing to voice a wish-prayer, I wondered why God did not address the Speci as it had me. Unless it was that they did not actually ask for a response. The only answer they expected was the granting of their wish. Or not. And that was what they got.

The air still smelled faintly intoxicating as I made my way along the path, but I breathed shallowly and kept my eyes on the path, forcing myself to concentrate on walking. It seemed a long walk back, and when I finally reached my hut, I was tired and my feet were sore. Stripping off my shift, I splashed my face and rinsed my feet and hands, which were somewhat swollen. Probably it was the long walk the previous day, and the heat. Was there some more sturdy footwear in Habitat than the flimsy sandals I had been given, I wondered. If so, we ought each to get a pair before leaving. That was the last thought that entered my head as I lay down.

At once I fell into a deepsleep, and if anyone came to look at me, as I had been warned they might by the woman who had bandaged my head, I was not aware of it.

I dreamed of a woman of late middle years walking slowly along a black road across an undulant white plain. The desert?

I was aware that I was dreaming and I willed myself closer to the woman to assure myself that it was not Hannah Seraphim, and it was not. The woman was older but not elderly, yet she limped and clearly had need of the staff she carried, whose head was carved into the shape of a goat. Her cracked and faded walking boots and worn clothes suggested she had come far, as did her shabby pack and the thin sack slung over one shoulder. Her face showed the marks of travel too – the weathered skin, the farseeing, weary eyes scanning the distant horizon – yet she did not look frightened or desperate, only stoic and determined.

She was humming a soft tune under her breath and I recognised it as a Highland cradle song I had heard Rushton sing sometimes, when he did not know it. It was night in the dream, but the light had been growing and now the sun rose. A tide of red gold rose up and gilded the woman’s face, and licked one side of every dune, sending a violet shadow stretching out the other. The woman lowered her head to shade her eyes, for she had her hands full with the sack and the staff. Her eyes narrowed into a slit then widened as her face suffused with wonder.

I was unable to turn and see what she saw, but as she continued to stare, seemingly mesmerised, I realised with fascination that what she saw was reflected in her eyes. And I saw it too: a tiny Beforetime city silhouetted against the fiery dawn sky, complete with tiny perfect soaring towers, the tallest of them being a spire with a bulb at the tip.

The woman’s eyes filled with tears, which distorted the reflection of the city and caught the dazzle of the sun. ‘Mama,’ she whispered, ‘we did it together, just as you always said.’

The memory dream billowed and broke, and I fell into a deeper, dreamless sleep. Then a soft hand was shaking me insistently, a soft voice saying, ‘Elspeth, wake up.’

I opened my eyes to find daylight streaming into the hut, for the heavy curtains that had protected my eyes had been removed. A slight shape was bent over me. It was the Speci girl, Tash, and she was smiling down at me. ‘How is your head? If it is not troubling you, I thought you might like to walk to breakfast with me. That is what your friends sometimes call firstmeal. You have been shifted to the first sitting.’

I sat up abruptly, rubbing my eyes and wondering if the events in the Hub had been some sort of vivid and outrageous dream. Had I really spoken to God, who had turned out to be the voice of a computermachine?

‘Best make haste,’ Tash urged mildly. ‘Balboa ought to have told you yesterday, but she refused to come to your hut. She said if you had come to supper as you ought, you would have got the message.’

‘She does not like me,’ I said, but without passion, for the confrontation with the girl seemed to have taken place long ago. My mind was full of the Hub and other questions I seemed to have formulated in my sleep, which might be asked. But I needed to tell the others what I had learned and I could not return, without causing comment, until after I had eaten, especially after I had missed two meals in a row, and only one with permission. I hoped fervently that Balboa had not mentioned the incident at the burying ground to anyone, for the last thing I wanted now was any sort of fuss. Better to put off returning until mid morning when most people would be working. Besides, if I went to eat, I might even manage a conversation with the others.

‘It is only because of Dameon,’ Tash said gently. ‘Because of how he feels about you.’

I shrugged irritably. ‘He is my friend and that is all there is to it,’ I said, remembering with a heavy heart that Dameon was in love with the wretched Balboa, for there was nothing but grief in that.

Tash gave me a quizzical sidelong look and I realised that I was probably leaking a torrent of conflicting emotions, but she said nothing.

As we approached the door to the eating hut, she asked if I would like to bathe after I had eaten. She could not come in with me because she was assigned to the third sitting, and in the meantime, she had to help prepare the food. But she could go to the bath hut before midmeal, if I did not mind waiting for her. I could sit on the common under the shrub I liked, and she would come and fetch me when she was free. It was a shy invitation, and the thought of a bath was almost irresistible, especially since I had not bathed thoroughly since waking in Habitat, but I wanted to go back to the Hub and speak with God again. I saw by her disappointed expression that Tash had sensed my refusal before I voiced it, but then she brightened and said that we could bathe on the morrow instead, if I liked. She gave me a wistful diffident smile and it struck me that she had come to fetch me less out of duty than in proffered friendship.

This shamed me, for though I liked her very well, my whole will was bent on escaping Habitat so that I could get on with my quest. Even thinking of how long I had been caught here, like a fly in a web, filled me with a sudden violent rage of impatience.

Tash’s smile faltered. ‘I do not mean to impose . . .’

‘You do not,’ I said, too fiercely, and made myself smile at her. ‘I mean, I would like very much to bathe tomorrow.’

She smiled uncertainly, then after a slight hesitation, she said, ‘Maybe we will be assigned the same work once you begin.’