The Red Queen (43 page)

‘The androne has stopped!’

‘Oh, that happened a few hours ago,’ Swallow said, frowning. ‘I thought the androne must be broken but God said it lacked power, and that sunlight would restore it. But why did it summon us, for clearly it has not reached Westside.’

Suddenly, utterly unexpectedly, Ahmedri’s face appeared in the screen. He was frowning and he moved very close. For a moment he seemed to peer out of the screen into our faces, though his expression – squinting, curious, wary – did not suggest he saw us. Nor did he hear us, for when I cried out his name in shock he did not react at all. As he moved away a little, I saw a livid claw scar down the side of his face, and above it a streak of pure silver shone in his hair. Other than that, he looked much the same as when I looked on him last, which was a great relief, for this was the first moment in which I was able to be sure that years and years had not passed while we had slept in cryopods.

‘So, Monster, what has happened to you?’ Ahmedri asked, and I gasped to hear his voice, even though I had known we would hear whatever the androne heard, because earlier I had heard its steps and the endless hiss of wind moving sand over sand. The tribesman’s voice was almost shockingly familiar as he went on, talking more to himself than to the androne. ‘Have you broken after all these many moons of hunting us, when at last I decide to face you to see how it is that you speak with the voice of the Seeker I seek? But perhaps I was mistaken and misheard. This desert has a way of brewing dreams and nightmares out of nothing.’

There was weariness in his voice and also something I had not heard in him before, a wry patience tinged with amusement. This, even more than the scar, the lines, the streak of silver, spoke of how much time had passed since we had seen one another.

‘God, can you speak to him? Can I?’ I demanded urgently.

‘It is impossible for the androne to speak or to enable the technician to hear what you say until its solar array is powered, User Seeker. Unit A is merely open to me, and I can only show what it sees and hears. It cannot perform any of its active functions.’

‘Ye gods, this is infuriating!’ I swore, watching Ahmedri reach up to wave his big hand in front of me, clearly trying to see if the androne’s eyes would respond. He stepped back, looking around, suddenly wary. ‘If he leaves . . .’ I stopped, for he was muttering something, glancing sideways and down. I felt suddenly certain that he was speaking to someone. Then Ahmedri moved out of sight, and I groaned aloud.

‘We will find him again if he leaves,’ Swallow assured me, laying a hand on my shoulder. ‘The best thing is to know he lives and that he is not an ancient greybeard. I can tell you now that was my great fear.’

‘Mine too, truly, but listen, he is talking again,’ I urged. Swallow fell silent at once, but unfortunately the words were inaudible. ‘God, can you make it louder,’ I cried.

‘. . . have done with her and the others?’ Ahmedri’s voice suddenly boomed out. ‘Perhaps this is some sort of trick to catch us, too, but if so, it seems you are caught in it, Monster.’ A silence, then, ‘Well, we have waited so many moons for a sign, and you are nothing if not that. Shall we wait an hour or so and see if you come back to life?’ A pause, in which he glanced away.

‘He
is
looking at someone,’ Swallow said.

‘To one of the beasts, maybe, since he is looking down and he gets no answer,’ I said. ‘Darga perhaps.’

‘Or Gavyn. Or why not both of them, or all of them, come to that?’ Swallow demanded, his eyes sparkling. ‘Gavyn would not speak.’

He was right, yet my instinct insisted that he was accompanied by only one other – there was something about the intimacy of that single direct glance – as if he met the eyes of another for a moment. And he had left with Darga. Still it was truly wonderful to know that Ahmedri was safe and had waited for us. Best of all, when we met I would be able to tell him that I had found Miryum, although I had not actually set eyes on her yet.

‘God, how long would it take for the androne – Unit A – to come back here from where it is, if it wakes at dawn? Will it wake at dawn?’

‘No, User Seeker. It will require two hours of sunlight to gain power enough to return to Midland.’

‘It doesn’t seem like it has much strength,’ Swallow said disparagingly.

‘Unit A has been out surveilling the catchment area for twenty days,’ God said. ‘Its memory is almost full. It requires maintenance. When fully powered it can remain active for thirty days with incidental solar replenishment.’

Swallow rolled his eyes at me. Then he yawned. Realising he looked tired, I suggested he go and get some sleep. In the morning, he could go up to the surface and begin preparing a camp, and I would go down to Sector C. ‘I want to locate the cryopod Miryum is in before Ahmedri gets here, and try to reach her mind.’

‘You be careful inside her mind,’ Swallow said, suddenly serious, and I wondered if Iriny had ever told him that she had almost dragged me to my death with her, when I had entered her mind after rescuing her from the Herder flame.

Swallow went out, and almost at once, I heard a soft movement. I sat up, staring at the dunes on the screen, listening hard. I offered a fervent wish-prayer to see one of the beasts come into view.
Maruman!
my heart yearned.
Gahltha!
But instead, I heard a faint snore that told me Ahmedri had made use of his formidable ability to sleep anywhere, anytime. I laughed softly and relaxed. It was not carelessness in him to sleep, for, like a cat, he could wake at the slightest movement, or after whatever interval of sleep he had decided upon. Straaka had been the same. This mastery of sleep was trained into all tribe children. I yawned and relaxed, deeply relieved that he really did mean to wait for a time at least. I knew I might have gone to my bed or back to the main chamber, bidding God alert me if anything happened, but somehow I could not tear myself away from the still desert, the knowledge that just out of sight lay Ahmedri and at least one other of our long-lost companions.

While my eyes remained fixed on the screen, my mind roamed over all I had learnt that day and since coming to Habitat, sifting and sorting and matching this with that, speculating about small details. I made no effort to direct my thoughts or force them into any pattern; I let them drift and move like the sand.

Finally I fell to thinking of Tash, and the problem of getting God to release her, for seeing that Ahmedri lived he could definitely take her with him to the Land. It might be possible to find some way to disable the thing that had been planted in her, and in all of us, but if God had not agreed to it the computermachine was like to oppose her leaving and use the andrones to prevent it. The safest course would be to find a way to convince God to let her go free.

I had hoped to find something from Hannah that would help me in this, but I had not found a single thing scribed by her in Kelver Rhonin’s workspace, and precious little of his, either. But I did know that Hannah had convinced the computermachine to create Habitat, despite it refusing at first. I simply had to find an undeniable rational argument that would convince it to free Tash.

Feeling my way into the problem, I asked God how Hannah had gained User status. ‘User Hannah had a guest authorisation, coded to Kelver Rhonin’s credentials, which gave her limited access to some of my functions, save those that would contravene my primary directives and the programming connected to them. It did not allow her to command the resurrection of the sleepers in the cryopods but User Hannah was able to input data that led to retrieval of the obsolete programs cache, and the eventual initiation of the Habitat variation.’

‘Explain what that means,’ I interrupted. ‘What data did she put into you?’

‘User Hannah input data detailing the original INES program, focusing on the requirement for regular and sensitive interaction with human users. She then required data about the modifications made by Prime User Kelver Rhonin to compensate for the lack of human contact in the case of a Class B Cataclysm resulting in major loss of life locally or globally. There were none. She located several smaller system failures and data assessment flaws and asked me to collate this with information concerning the lack of human interaction since the departure of Kelver Rhonin. This data revealed that there had been a small distortion arising from lack of human contact, which would result in increasing system error, until final catastrophic breakdown. There was a 76 per cent probability that system malfunction was either responsible for the failure of some cryopods or the failure to detect design flaws. I informed User Seeker that the projections she had entered had not taken into account her own presence and my interaction with her, which would enable gradual correction of deviations. She agreed but pointed out her imminent expiration.’

I thought about this. ‘So, it was not exactly that the cryopods were flawed so much as that Hannah used them to prove to you that you needed people, and the only way to get them was to resurrect the sleepers?’

‘Affirmative, User Seeker,’ God said crisply. ‘User Hannah input that utilisation of the archived Habitat variation would both save the endangered specimens in the flawed cryopods from destruction without contravening the program, and enable me to engage in corrective interaction with humans.’

There was something in what it had said that suggested a possibility to me, but before I could grasp it, something flashed across the screen of the monitor. I leaned forward at once, peering into the desert. Had a lone
rhenling
flown by? Or Gavyn’s owl? The little creature had flown off before we entered the
graag
, but maybe it had come looking for Gavyn. Better still, maybe it had found the boy and he was the person Ahmedri had looked at. All at once I realised I could no longer hear the tribesman snoring. Was it possible he had crept away? I told myself that Swallow had been right, and that we would find the tribesman if he left. I looked to the horizon on the screen and all was darkness. There was no way of telling which direction the androne was facing.

I sat for a little longer then realised there was no point in sitting there for hours staring at nothing, I might just as well get the papers and maps I had been studying earlier and pore over them while I waited.

I went through the main chamber and into the passage leading to my chamber, retrieved the maps and papers and returned, noting that the walls of the main chamber now offered a slow and undulant patterning of blues and greens that made it seem as if the whole place was immersed in water. Dragon must have been experimenting. A thought floated into my mind as I passed through the main chamber, and I stopped and voiced it. ‘God, could you tell me how to get from here to Islak?’ That was the name of the place where God said that Eden was located.
Gadfian
territory.

‘I can generate a map that will show the route, User Seeker, but coordinates for Eden and other places on the route, including distances between places, will be based on pre-Cataclysm maps,’ God said in its smooth, mellifluous voice.

My momentary elation faded, for by all accounts the world was much altered since the Beforetime, but still, a Beforetime map would have some features that would allow us to orientate it, and at the least it would give us a direction to travel in. And if I could locate Eden, then I would know I was not far from Sentinel. ‘I would like the map to show Eden,’ I said.

‘Eden?’ Dameon echoed.

I swung round to see the empath emerge from the other entrance to the main chamber. Despite my apprehensions about him, I had to smile to see his ginger hair sticking up in all directions. But as he drew nearer I saw with some consternation that he was very pale. I took his arm and led him to sit at the table, asking if I had woken him by talking to God.

‘It is time I got up, but I am still weary,’ he said.

He
had
slept long and yet I thought that he looked a good deal more than merely weary. There were dark shadows about his eyes and in them. I pushed away guilty, accusatory thoughts of Balboa, fearing his empathy would divine them and force him to think of the treacherous Speci woman. Getting up, I bade him make himself comfortable. ‘Have some of the food Ana and Tash made last night. It is delicious and Swallow said you ate nothing before you slept.’

He heaved a sigh and said he did not feel hungry but he would eat something if I cared to get it for him. He must have felt my anxiety then, for he smiled a little and said, ‘I am fine, truly Elspeth, save that my head aches as if someone hit me with a rock. That is what woke me.’

I piled a plate with the choicest of the fare and gave it to Dameon. He meekly took the fork I pressed into his fingers and scooped up a listless bite, then he lifted his brows and ate the rest with a good deal more enthusiasm. I was relieved to see the colour returning to his face and only when he had got some way through the meal did he stop to ask again about Eden.

‘I know from my Beforetime dreams that Eden is on the same landmass as Sentinel, and God told me when we were in the Galon Institute that Eden is in a place called Islak. It was apparently remote Gadfian territory in the Beforetime, which suggests it was not much inhabited. The thing is, I am beginning to wonder if that is not where Kelver Rhonin was headed after he found there was no link to a govamen computermachine to be found in Northport.’

‘To Sentinel?’

‘No, to Eden. He had a close friend who worked there. I found some of the friend’s letters to him scribed after he had got to Eden. But before that he was at Hegate.’

‘Hegate?’ Dameon asked, sounding somewhat bewildered.

I forced myself to slow down. ‘Hegate turns out to be the name of the place at Inva where the Beforetime Misfits were held prisoner. Anyway, Doctor Elke Erlinder worked there for a while before being shifted to Eden. He actually worked with Doktaruth . . . Ah, Doctor Ruth!’ Now Dameon looked completely confused. I laughed and reached out to lay my hand over his arm. ‘I’m sorry. I just realised something, but the thing I am trying to say is that if we can get to Eden I think we can find our way from it to Sentinel. And this Erlinder worked at Eden, but his sister was at Sentinel and I would bet anything that he knew where Sentinel was.’