The Red Queen (38 page)

‘Did Kelver Rhonin have any idea who attacked Sentinel, God?’

‘There were many opponents to the Sentinel Project among the five powers, but Prime User Kelver Rhonin was unable to obtain any specific information about the nature of the incident, its cause or the perpetrators, because computer links to the government computers were disrupted. He believed that the links were never re-established because there was no one from the government left to do so.’

A sudden notion came to me. What if the Sentinel at Inva had been completely destroyed by whatever had been unleashed? Might not BOT, lacking guidance but activated, attack broadly and indiscriminately? God had spoken of the original Sentinel being in a testing
phase
when Kelver Rhonin had come to work at the Galon Institute. I knew Sentinel had been about to be tested because of my past-dreams of Cassy, but it had not occurred to me that a number of tests might be carried out over a period of time. Perhaps that was the period during which the remote base had been established, with a computermachine ready to serve as home to the final and complete Sentinel program. If the Sentinel at Inva had been destroyed, it must be that a version or a copy of the program had been taken to the remote installation and fed into that computermachine, which had been waiting ever since to be awakened, like Miky and Angina’s sleeping princess.

I felt a stab of sadness, thinking of the twins, and of the part I had played in Angina’s death, and the darker thought that I was a destroyer too, for it was not my part to wake Sentinel but to ensure it could never wake.

I licked my lips and then asked the question that mattered most.

‘God, where is Sentinel located?’

‘The pilot Sentinel program was located at the Uropan Government Research Complex of Hegate, at Inva in New Scotia, where it was developed. The location of the permanent Sentinel base is classified,’ God said pleasantly, implacably.

‘Do you
know
where the permanent site for Sentinel is, God?’ I asked, thinking that if it did know, I could try to find a way to convince it to tell me.

But God said, ‘I do not have that information, User Seeker. Prime User Kelver Rhonin also sought this information but he had no access to government terminals and so failed to find an answer.’

The news that Kelver Rhonin had been trying to find out where Sentinel was startled me out of my disappointment, and I was about to ask God if it knew why, when I head a soft step behind me.

‘Elspeth?’ I turned to see Dragon, her red-gold hair a fiery lopsided tangle. ‘Is it morning?’

‘Hard to tell, but you look half asleep still and since we have to wait till the others wake, you might as well sleep as long as you can,’ I said.

‘Did you sleep?’ She sat down, rubbing at her eyes. Her face was swollen lump where the thing thrown by the Speci outside the Hub had struck her. It was only lucky it had not struck her in the soft part of the temple, or the eye.

‘I did sleep, but thirst woke me and then I wanted a bath. I will show you later how it all works. But we need to find some warmer clothes if we are going to be able to move about in this place.’

She grimaced at the mention of bathing, and then said, ‘After you went to sleep God sent some clothes and food. I forgot to tell you. It’s over there in bundles. We were too tired to unpack them last night.’

‘
God
sent them? How?’ I asked.

‘The androne brought them. Unit B. God said the other one is called Unit A.’ She had started to rise but I waved her back down. ‘Leave it. How does your head feel?’

‘Last night it hurt terribly and I could not seem to think or hear or see very well, but it doesn’t hurt now except if I touch it,’ Dragon said. She got up restlessly and went to the window, gazing out at the darkness beyond it. ‘So much has happened so fast, after all that time in Habitat when nothing at all happened. It’s as if I need to think about it before I can stop thinking about it, if you know what I mean.’

I laughed a little, loving her quirky vividness all the more because I had been deprived of it for so long.

She looked at me. ‘You know it all started after you woke in Habitat.’

I said nothing and she heaved a sigh and went back to staring at the darkness. ‘It was a dream that woke me, just now.’

I wanted to ask what she had dreamed, but there was something sad and closed in her expression that made me certain she was dreaming about Matthew. I had no idea how she felt about what had happened between them, now that she was older. Had the more mature young woman she was becoming absorbed and comforted the hurt and angry child she had been? Had she forgiven Matthew? My discomfort about prying into emotional matters kept me from asking. I told myself that if she wanted me to know what she had dreamed, she would tell me.

She turned to me, her blue gaze very direct. ‘Elspeth, what is going to happen to Tash? God does not call her a technician. She calls her a Speci.’

This was something I had not allowed myself to think about, especially after my conversation with God about the tags in the resurrection chamber at the bottom level of the Galon Institute, nor was it something I wanted to discuss with God listening. Not until I had thought about it very carefully. ‘One thing at a time,’ I said firmly, pointedly.

She frowned, then her eyes widened and she nodded, glancing around. Her face changed again and she turned, looking around her properly, astonished and delighted. ‘The walls have changed!’

‘I changed them. At least I asked God what else it could offer. It seemed too early for sun dappling. Change it back if you like. Or there are other possibilities.’

She shook her head. ‘I like it, though somehow it reminds me too much of the real world and that makes me miss it all the more because, while this looks lovely, it is not real. There is no smell and no wind. I don’t much like this Midland, truly. Even if there was something like sunlight here, as God says, it would not be true sunlight, and the air smells strange. I wish we could leave.’

Now she sounded so much the mutinous child that I had to smother a smile lest she think I mocked her reflections. In truth I shared her feelings about Midland. ‘We must wait until the others awake, and in the meantime, we are safe and fed and comfortable and we will have time and the means to sort out provisions.’

‘I know we are lucky,’ Dragon said soberly. ‘I wonder how Maruman and the horses and Darga have managed all this time. And what about Gavyn and Ahmedri? They might find water but what would they eat?’

‘The beasts are probably better at surviving than we humans are. Horses can sniff water over very great distances, and the dogs will tell them if it is safe to drink. Maruman will hunt mice or other small creatures, and as for Ahmedri, he is desert born and probably the best of us to be out there. And Rasial will take care of Gavyn.’

‘I know Gavyn and Rasial are all right,’ Dragon said lightly. ‘I dreamed of them once in Habitat when I was sick and had a fever. There was a pack of people like them, only they didn’t have wings, and Rushton was with them.’

I stared at her, but her thoughts had gone elsewhere. ‘Tash and Ana and I can find provisions. God says there is a storage and she will guide us to it and get Unit B to help carry things. It will give us the chance to explore a bit, too, if I can convince Tash there is nothing to fear outside of this place.’

Dragon was fearless, I thought, because she had lived among the ghosts of the ancient past in the ruins at Oldhaven. Solitude and the lost Beforetime were nothing to her. I said mildly, ‘Hard to blame Tash for feeling uneasy. This must be utterly strange to her, and remember she had only just discovered that almost everything she thought to be true was a lie. But she will get used to it. Humans are nothing if not adaptable. That said, I need to get to Northport as soon as possible to get Cassandra’s key. If we are lucky, the others will be there.’

‘Is that what you think?’ she asked.

I looked at her, thinking of her dreams. ‘What do you think?’

She turned again to look out the window, or maybe she was studying her own pale reflection. ‘Once, before I woke in Habitat, I dreamed of Darga and one of the horses – I could not tell which – all alone in a Beforetime city like the one you described when you saw Maruman prowling, but in my dream he was not with them and neither was Ahmedri. I dreamed of Rasial and Gavyn, too – not in their dream form but in reality. It was night and they were by a vast lake of shining water. So I was thinking that maybe the others are all in different places.’ She turned to look at me. ‘I was thinking it would be silly to go all the way to Northport and then find some of the others are in one of the other parts of Pellmar Quadrants, closer to Midland. Though maybe it doesn’t matter if we are to come back this way after we get Cassandra’s key.’

‘That is an excellent thought about the others,’ I said, because although I was convinced the others were in Northport, there was no evidence for it and I did not want to worry her by admitting openly that I did not have the slightest idea where we were to go after Northport. I turned and said in a slightly louder voice, ‘God? Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, User Seeker,’ God answered patiently, its feminine voice still lowered. ‘What do you require?’

I was about to ask it to send one of the andrones to the two nearest settlements when a notion came to me to test the deductive intelligence of the computermachine. ‘Did you just hear what Dragon said?’ I asked.

‘I hear everything, User Seeker,’ God answered.

That made my skin rise into gooseflesh for some reason, but it also gave rise to another thought. ‘Can you hear everything in Subio and . . . whatever the other settlement is? Not Northport.’

‘Westside,’ God said obligingly. ‘But I cannot utilise any capacity in these two quadrants, because the links between them and Midland are inactive. They can be made active but only from Northport.’

‘Oh that’s right,’ I said, disappointed. I had forgotten it was not only Northport that God could not reach.

‘Can you send one of the andrones to Northport, God?’ Dragon said suddenly.

I opened my mouth to suggest she speak in a more formal way, but to my surprise God responded at once. ‘Yes, Technician Dragon. An androne could go there. The distance to both quadrants is within the range of an unmodified androne. In fact both andrones have traversed the settlements often, when searching for specimens.’

Dragon giggled. ‘It sounds so funny to be called Technician Dragon. I don’t even know what a technician is exactly.’

‘Someone who serves the Seeker,’ I said firmly, a little alarmed by her frankness. What if God decided she was not a technician after all? Or what if she mentioned the others and God decided
they
were Speci. It seemed foolish to fear a machine and yet it had almost more power over us in the subterranean settlement than in Habitat. But Dragon’s chatter had allowed me to think how to mention the others. ‘God, I have several technicians who were not with me in Habitat. I need to locate them, for I will need them in order to complete my mission to . . . to prevent a Class A Cataclysm. I want you to send one of the andrones out immediately to discover if my other technicians are in either of those places.’

‘How do you wish the androne to proceed in the search for your technicians, User Seeker?’ God asked.

I relaxed a little. ‘I want . . . Do they . . . can the andrones speak very, very loudly?’

‘Androne audio levels can be adjusted to full and augmented, if necessary.’

‘Good, then I want you to send an androne out, first to Subio then to Westside. I want you to have the androne walk all about the settlement saying this very loudly: “I, Elspeth Gordie, am seeking my friends, Ahmedri and Gavyn, and the beasts that travel with them. If you hear this message, please follow me. I will lead you to Elspeth Gordie. I will do you no harm.” That is what I want it to say, God, and when it has said these words, I want it to say them again, over and over the whole time it is walking. Once it has walked around for long enough that anyone in the settlement could have heard it, I want the androne to make three widening circles around the settlement doing the same thing, in case my technicians are camped in the desert outside one of the settlements. This should be repeated at Westside. Can this be done, God?’

‘Yes, User Seeker,’ God said. ‘Do you wish the androne to use its voice or to broadcast a recording of your voice?’

‘My voice, yes, that would be perfect,’ I said, marvelling that God had taken my voice even as the small computermachine in the Earthtemple had done. God bade me repeat the words and I spoke as myself, summoning the others to me.

‘How queer they will find it, to hear your voice coming from the androne,’ Dragon said, when it was done.

‘At least they will know there is no need to fear the androne,’ I said, but mindful of Dell’s warnings, I thought I would need to be very sure the androne would do them no harm. ‘One other thing, God,’ I said. ‘Remember that those who respond to my summons are not Speci . . . specimens. They are my technicians, and you must ensure that the androne you send understands it is not to attack them, or in any way harm or incapacitate anyone who responds, human or beast. It is merely to lead them back here, to allow them to follow it. Is that understood?’

‘Understood, User Seeker,’ God said, and surely it was my imagination that it sounded more crisp and cold than when it addressed Dragon. But maybe that was just a reflection of my tone.

‘God, is there some way for the androne to bring my technicians into this level of Midland without bringing them through Habitat?’

‘There are several entrances to Midland that can be utilised, User Seeker,’ God said, though it did not say where they were. Was that because I had not specifically asked, or because it intended to prevent one or more of us leaving? Surely it must be the former, since it had already told me that Hannah had bade it do everything to help me and nothing to hinder me in my quest, once I had identified myself. It was ironic that after all our desperation to get free of Habitat, we might have entered another kind of prison, though my fear was that this was only a prison for Tash. I set that matter aside to be puzzled over later, wondering suddenly if the androne would have answered directly if it were asked to go to Subio and Westside. I could not work out if it had a separate intelligence from God. It seemed to me that God always stepped in when a more complex answer was required, and yet was not God controlling the androne? How much autonomy did an androne truly have?