The Red Queen (47 page)

‘We will have to bring up these cryopods one by one, since Hendon can’t possibly carry more than one,’ Ana said. ‘That will take days or weeks or months. Depending on our luck.’

‘I believe I will be able to identify her here,’ Dameon said gently.

I stared at him. ‘How?’

‘I think I could feel her if I get close enough,’ the empath said. ‘As it is, I can feel a multitude of emotions, all oddly muffled and all from people unknown to me. These must be the feelings of the sleepers. I believe I will recognise Miryum’s emotions when I am closer to her.’

‘But how can any of these people be feeling anything if they are asleep?’ Dragon asked, as I began to lead Dameon over the rows of cloudy faces under the floor.

‘Those that dream, feel,’ Dameon said. ‘And we know that Miryum is dreaming. Now hush, little one.’

We moved ever deeper into the red-tinged mist, silent but for the padding of our soft, thick-soled Beforetime boots on the hard floor as we wove back and forth. After a time, Dameon began to shiver with cold, as did I. Even warmly clad, we could not stay here much longer, I knew. In truth we ought probably to leave and come back when we had warmed up, but when I tried to say so to Dameon, he shook his head.

‘Hush, dear one, let me do this thing I alone can do.’

It was more than an hour later and I was beyond cold when Dameon found Miryum.

Ana and Dragon had gone back up to the residence to check on Ahmedri’s progress, and to keep Tash company. There had been some difficulty when I asked the androne to escort them up, for it had been unable to leave us. But after some argument, God agreed to let them go up alone because, as Ana pointed out, as long as they did not get out of the elevating chamber on the way up, technically they were not in classified space.

The androne remained with us, standing by the elevating chamber, unmoved by the cold. From time to time, I had shut myself in the elevating chamber to get warm, but Dameon had refused to take a break, insisting he was being kept warm by searching. I had forborne to point out that I had walked alongside him the whole time and had been chilled to the bone, because he was clearly determined not to stop until he had found the coercer.

When Dameon stopped at last, I had been walking beside him and I was so stupid with cold that I assumed he meant to admit defeat. But he only said thickly, ‘She is here.’

The cold was nothing to me then. I let go of his arm and knelt beside the pale blotch at his feet. It was an indistinct face, no different from any of the other blotches. I looked up into the empath’s pale, composed face and asked, ‘What do you feel from her?’

‘Fear,’ Dameon said, grimacing. ‘Impatience and desperation. Sorrow.’

I thought of the golden giantess with her winged crown, and wondered what was happening in Miryum’s inner dream. I remembered suddenly that she had told me of a Guanette bird that had told her a blind prince would come to wake her. I had thought it mere dream gibberish but here was blind Dameon, whom Miky and Angina had once transformed into a prince, locating the coercer when no one else had been able to do so. Had Atthis sent this image as a message of reassurance to the coercer, lying in her profound sleep? Or was it that Miryum herself had experienced a futuretelling dream and reconfigured it to fit her visiondream.

Heart hammering with hope and trepidation, I laid my hands flat on the icy surface above the indistinct face and closed my eyes the better to concentrate. I formed a probe shaped to Miryum’s mind, and then I reached down through the floor of glass and the cryopod and into the sleeper within it. To my disappointment, but with not much surprise, I could barely detect the pulse of a life, let alone identify it.

I opened my eyes. ‘It is no use, Dameon, I can’t reach her,’ I said. ‘I can’t even feel it
is
her. Maybe if I could touch her. Since you can at least feel her, could you try to empathise to her?’ I asked, standing up.

‘I will try,’ he said, slurring his words a little. ‘What shall I send?’

‘Hope, courage, warmth.’

He nodded and I helped him to take my place, laying down my tunic for him to kneel on, and setting his hands on the floor over Miryum’s face. He did not close his eyes. For him, the gesture would have been pointless. But he grew very still and intent. I watched with bated breath, until suddenly, Dameon gave a cry and fell like a stone onto the hard, cold floor.

‘When will he wake?’ Dragon asked, looking at me with the woebegone face of a child.

I gazed down at Dameon’s still, beloved face, the freckles standing out starkly against his pale skin, and did not know what to say.

‘Do not fear for him,’ Ana told us both firmly, having decided against going to the surface when God alerted them to what had happened. ‘God says he fainted from overlong exertion in the cold, and she had no reason to lie, nor any capacity, I think. Once he has had a good sleep, he will wake.’

I was less sure of that, but there was no point in worrying the others. I smiled reassuringly at Dragon, who had said she would sit with him, telling her to come and find me, or one of the others, when she needed a break. Back in the main chamber Ana offered to heat me a bowl of soup, saying it would warm me from the inside out. I accepted and she gave me a sharp look as she bustled about the kitchen.

‘What is it you fear?’

I sighed. ‘That Miryum lashed out at Dameon. She is very powerful.’

‘She would never harm him.’

‘
If
she recognised him and did not cast him as an enemy in her dream,’ I said.

‘You will know better when he wakes,’ Ana said in her brusque kindly way. ‘Better now to do what can be done, and concentrate on our trip. I need to know once and for all if the supplies we have been amassing need to last us only to Northport and back, or if we will travel on from there.’

‘I have to speak to Ahmedri and Miryum before I can know what we will do after leaving Northport. But maybe you can prepare supplies for a long trip, since we will need them either way.’

‘What of the map you asked God to make?’ Ana asked.

‘It would have been ready, but I asked for something more. You will recall that Ahmedri took it upon himself to draw a rough map as we passed out of the known lands?’

She nodded.

‘I told God I want it to take that into account as well, and I asked it to include any knowledge it could cull from the andrones’ memory of trips beyond its reach, before it limited their range. Then I spoke to it of the Red Land and the Land and the Norselands, so that it can include them as well. I am hoping Ahmedri will still have the maps he made of our journey here, so that God can include those as well.’

‘It will be the most accurate map of the world that exists,’ Ana said. Her face lit up. ‘I will ask God to make one for Ahmedri as well as for us. We can make a parting gift of it.’

‘That is a fine thought,’ I said, though it saddened me deeply to think that even though we would be reunited with the tribesman, we must all too soon be parted, and likely this time forever. Somehow I had forgotten that we would have to part. Strange now to remember that I had so disliked him to begin with, or that he had been so stiff and coldly furious with me.

Yet in spite of the heavy knowledge of the partings that lay ahead of us, and Miryum’s deadly sickness, despite Dameon’s unconsciousness and knowing nothing of the fate of Maruman and the other beasts, or of Gavyn, for the first time since waking in Midland I felt truly purposeful. We had been trapped for many months, some of that time in enforced sleep and some of it in Habitat, and now we were in Midland – not prisoners exactly, but somehow caught up here, too. Not all journeys were physical, of course. I had come very far in my journey of knowledge during my enforced stay in Pellmar Quadrants. I had learned much of Hannah and Jacob, and there was Cassandra’s key waiting for me at Northport, not to mention whatever knowledge lay within the minds of Miryum and Dragon. I had learned that Sentinel was in the same land as Eden and that both lay in Gadfian land, and now Ahmedri was to be restored to us, with whatever knowledge he could offer.

But sooner or later I must come to Sentinel and there was no doubt in my mind that it would be a hard journey, and a long one, and I was impatient to be moving.

I thought of Ana’s absurd notion of using a glide and realised that, without my wishing or willing it, the thought had taken root in my mind. Yet I said nothing of it aloud for fear of inciting another passionate argument from Ana. For there were many obstacles to the plan, despite God’s all-too-ready answers. For one I wanted to know what had become of Kelver Rhonin, whose plan it had first been, before I decided anything. I would wait until we had reached Northport and had finally claimed Cassandra’s key before I made up my mind. But no matter what we found, we would reconnect the settlement of Northport with Midland before we left, if it was possible, in case we stumbled on a govamen terminal further in our journey and could use it to reach out to other computermachines. I had no thought of being capable of managing such a thing, but fired with zeal to free the sleepers and the Speci in Habitat, and to heal those people lying frozen in Sector C, Ana was determined to manage it, should the possibility arise.

She came back with her own bowl of soup and called out to Tash to join us when she was done. The Speci girl was kneading bread, and turned her head to say composedly that she would wait and eat with Dragon. Ana shrugged and asked what I planned to do about Miryum, once God had her brought up to the resurrection chamber in the Galon Institute.

‘If you commanded God to begin her resurrection this second,’ she went on, ‘it would be completed by tomorrow night, but she would not be able to move easily or speak for some time. And what about the sickness she carries?’

‘She will not be infectious for some time,’ I said. ‘But I mean to enter her mind before I ask God to resurrect her, draw her from her dreamvision, if she is still locked inside it, and speak to her.’

‘You will tell her of the sickness she carries?’

‘First I must discover what part she is to play in my quest, if she knows it. Then I will ask her about Straaka’s bones, for Ahmedri’s sake. Only after these things will I speak of the sickness.’

‘If she can answer you while she is in cryosleep, maybe you need not resurrect her at all,’ Ana said.

‘She might have to wake in order to uncouple Straaka’s spirit from hers, though it may be that he has already freed himself,’ I said. ‘In truth, I think she will choose to be woken for a time, given it may be long ere she can be wakened safely again.’
If
, I thought, but did not say.

‘What if the part she is to play in your quest is not a thing to be told but a deed to do?’

I sighed. ‘Then we will have to think how she can travel safely with us. I mean so that you and the others who go with us will be safe.’

Ana looked thoughtful. ‘You know when Dragon and I were looking through the enormous storage God directed us to, I saw plast suits that God said had been created to protect Beforetime scientists from infected things. I had thought of taking some of them, if we had to cross poisonous terrain. If Miryum wore one of those, her infection ought to be trapped inside it and there would be no need for her to remove it, for the suits can deal somehow with waste and a person wearing it can even eat and drink.’

‘That is useful to know,’ I said. ‘But my hope is that we need not take her with us, for once the sickness begins to develop, she may suffer terribly.’ I was thinking of Domick and the thought sapped my appetite. Pushing away the remainder of my soup, I stood up, saying I would go and see how Ahmedri was getting on, then sit with Dameon so that Dragon could come and eat. Ana hastily spooned up the last of her soup saying she would go with me. I asked Tash to join us, but she answered composedly that she would heat some soup for herself and Dragon.

Troubled by her growing withdrawal, I told myself that Dragon would come to me if her friend were truly distressed. I forgot all of my apprehensions when we entered the room where the screen sat, for it now showed the distant outline of buildings on the horizon beyond low sand dunes glowing white and almost without shadow.

‘That must be Midland!’ Ana said. ‘They are almost here!’

We sat in the two seats facing the table upon which the screen sat, and watched for a time in silence. Then Ana asked God if the settlement we could see was Midland. When God confirmed it, she looked over her shoulder and said to me, ‘It’s just that I can’t see any sign of the wall about Habitat.’

I realised she was right, for it ought to have been well and truly visible rising above the settlement clustered about the edges of Habitat, and I wondered if the wall was being cloaked by some device.

‘It is very strange to think we are seeing Midland for the first time from the outside, though we are within it,’ Ana said. ‘I wish we could go up and wait with Swallow. It looks like day and night out there, but it is not true day or night, and somehow my body knows it. It smells wrong and it feels wrong. I long for sunlight that has heat in it, and a wind that blows sand hard enough to scour my face.’

‘I would like to go up myself, but I need to tend to Dameon and Miryum. You could go up. God will direct you.’

‘I am afraid if I go up now, I will not be able to make myself come back down, and somehow until we can all go up, it would feel like a betrayal to go just because I desire it.’ She gave me a look that told me she was referring to Dragon.

‘It may be that we will regret the loss of the comforts here, once we are travelling again,’ I said.

That made her laugh. ‘You are right at that, for I already regret the loss of the cooking boxes and water that flows hot and cold into a bowl or in a warm waterfall onto my head, and the privies that are a wonder and a mystery.’ Ana got to her feet. ‘Is there aught you want doing? Otherwise maybe I will go back to the storage and do some more rummaging.’

‘In fact, there is, and you can do it while you rummage,’ I said. I told her about the missing memory seed. ‘I am hoping the sword and our other things are with Ahmedri but I had the memory seed on me when I was taken captive. It is the key to the Sentinel complex and so vital to my quest that I ought to have been looking for it all along. Now that I let myself think about it, I think I have delayed looking because it is such a tiny thing and truly I fear it might be impossible to find. It seems likely to me that God would have destroyed the clothes I wore.’

‘Even if the clothes were rags, God would not have destroyed them,’ Ana said triumphantly. ‘God told me that it was one of the philosophies of the Beforetimers that they wasted nothing. All non-perishable human artefacts are transferred to Incidental Storage G in readiness for recycling. The clothes are likely there. Of course there will be a vast mass of them, but if the memory seed is there, I swear I will find it. If it is not there, we simply have to go back to your so-called rescue and see what else might have been done with it. I can do that with God’s help, for her memory is such that she might even remember it.’

‘But wouldn’t it have been the androne that captured us that would remember?’

‘Of course, but when an androne’s memories are full, God takes them into herself so the androne will have space to remember more things, and also, to keep them safe in case something happens to it. So all that they do and see becomes part of her memory.’

She had spoken yet again of God as a
she
but I had ceased to feel the need to correct her. What did it matter if she spoke of God and the androne as if they were living beings if it meant she interacted with both of them better than any of us? That might be why Dell had done the same, I remembered, as had many at Oldhaven.

After she had gone, I turned my thoughts to the other thing I had been avoiding, the problem of what was to happen to Tash.

I had come up with a plan that would keep her from being put into a cryopod or into Habitat as a null. But it was a delicate matter and would want some finessing.

I decided now was as good a moment as any and I began by asking God outright, for the first time, if there were any circumstances under which it would release Tash into my care and allow her to leave Pellmar Quadrants with me. God answered unhesitatingly that only a message from the govamen could free the Speci from its care. It was no less than I had expected so I asked calmly what it had planned for her then. God answered that information was still being gathered via the tag and other external data-collection sources in order to ascertain if Specimen Tash was a special anomaly or an ordinary specimen. Once this had been established, she would either be put into a cryopod and stored until such time as the govamen authorised her release, or she would be eventually returned to Habitat.

Having confirmed what I suspected, I planted my carefully constructed seed. ‘God, tell me more about your need for human interaction.’ I knew what I wanted to know, but I needed to draw the knowledge to the front of God’s mind.

‘The Ines program, upon which the God programme is built, is specifically designed for human interaction, which it requires for correct functionality. User Hannah discovered the failure of Prime User Kelver Rhonin to prepare a compensatory addendum in case of an event that deprived me of all human contact. Her research and mine revealed that this lack had resulted in a slight deviation in my programming that would increase exponentially over time. User Hannah input that awakening the rescued specimens in Habitat would save them from the flawed cryopods and provide human interaction, enabling correction of the deviation.’