The Red Queen (53 page)

Whether it was my sending or Damon’s empathising, her expression changed, grew less distraught. ‘That is true. It seemed a lifetime that we dwelt in that strange realm he showed me, where we could be together, the living and the dead . . . yet there came a day when he said it was wrong for a living woman to love the spirit of a man . . .’ She faltered and tears welled from her eyes.

‘You became ill,’ I said gently. ‘You were found by a . . . a machine man.’ I sent her a picture of the androne finding her body, picking it up and bringing it to Midland, to distract her, but because it was easier to show her than to tell her, I let the vision continue, showing her herself, lying in a cryopod. Taking Dameon’s advice, I showed Ana, Dameon and the rest of us travelling over the desert before being caught in a storm and being found by the androne and laid in cryopods, too. It was a simplified version of our journey but there was no need to tell her about the Speci and Habitat.

‘I woke myself from the sleep imposed by the cryopod, even as you did,’ I sent. ‘I was able to get the others out. Then we found you.’

‘I dreamed that Dameon was calling my name,’ she sent wonderingly. ‘But . . . there was another dream . . . you were a cat?’

‘That was your visiondream,’ I said. ‘A story your mind told itself. You were trapped within it and I entered it to free you from it, then Dameon helped me to find the cryopod you were in.’ I explained that God was merely the name of a computermachine voice like Ines at Oldhaven, then hesitated, feeling her confusion. There was no picture I could show her to clarify my meaning because I had never actually seen the computermachine containing the God program. Also I knew from experience that she must be exhausted from waking herself, but the thought of the time limit imposed by the Endrax virus made me press on. ‘Miryum, we came across the mountains and the desert seeking a key that will help me to reach a computermachine called Sentinel, which has the power to bring about a second Great White. I have to make sure Sentinel can never be used. Straaka came to me in spirit and asked me to help you because the key we sought was in the very place where you were being held in sleep. He told me that you knew something that could help me in my quest to stop Sentinel. Do you know what that is?’

‘The . . . a Guanette bird came to me,’ Miryum said, and my heart leapt like a salmon. ‘It . . . it said you were the Seeker and you had a quest to save the world . . . Oh I wish I might have come with you, for you will have need of a knight on such a quest . . .’

I could not let her be diverted. ‘What did the Guanette bird tell you to tell me?’

‘It spoke of a key . . . two . . . keys, or two parts to the key that must be put together to be used or used together. Alpha and omega – Beforetime words for a beginning and an ending. One without the other is useless because of the back door made by . . . by the Beforetimers. Or maybe that was something else.’

‘Two parts . . . to Cassandra’s key?’ I asked, trying to make sense of it.

‘The bird did not speak of Cassandra, but only of a key . . . keys and a back door.’ Her mindvoice was thin with exhaustion and I knew I could ask no more of her. Nor could I tell myself that her memory might be clearer the next day, for things learned on the dreamtrails had a way of turning elusive when you brought them to the waking world. Like dreams remembered after waking, they were as hard to grasp as smoke, or fine sand.

I told myself it did not matter. Surely the true and full meaning of Miryum’s message would become clear in time. The main thing was that, as I had hoped, the part she had to play had been played. She had told me what she had been given to tell. But there was something else that I had to ask before I could let her rest, a promise that needed keeping.

‘Miryum. Straaka’s brother, Ahmedri, is with me. He has come very far and has endured great hardship to find Straaka’s bones so that he can return them to their land, to be buried in the spice groves with the bones of their ancestors. Straaka spoke of it while he lived, and I think it was very important to him. Do you know where his bones lie?’

A flare of anguish filled her mind.

‘Miryum, we know that you took Straaka’s body from the White Valley,’ I sent, to prompt her.

‘I do not know what I thought to do. The foul treachery of Malik and then seeing Straaka die . . . I could not think.’

‘You carried his body into the mountains. Linnet and the other coercers found your tracks,’ I prompted her again gently, feeling Ahmedri willing her to speak.

‘I carried Straaka’s body towards the mountains, yes. It was cold, but soon his flesh began to decay. The smell was foul but I cared not – I was half mad with guilt and despair, I think. One night Straaka came to my dreams and bade me take his body to the hot springs at the foot of the mountains so that his bones could be bleached clean of corruption, in the way of his people. I obeyed, and when there was nothing of him but bones, I carried them with me up into the mountains. We . . . that was when he came to me and carried me from my body. My spirit . . . By day I walked in the mountains and foraged for food and drink and made camp, and then I lay down at night and slept and he came for me and we journeyed far and long. Day began to seem the dream, the nights were so vivid . . .’ She stopped for a long moment and then said, ‘One night as I slept, flying creatures attacked and I was near killed. I would have died, save that I had a fire and was able to hide in a crack and use a flaming stick . . . I was sick for a time and lost. But when I was well again and slept, Straaka came to me and gave me words to say to unmake the binding that held his spirit to mine. He said it was not right that our spirits were bound. He blamed himself for what had happened to me. I . . . I refused. In my sickness, I had dreamed of a Beforetime city beyond the mountains . . . it was a dream I have had many times in my life, even as a child. It always fascinated me and now I thought . . . if I went to that place, the shining people who dwelt there would be able to resurrect Straaka from his bones. I thought that was why I had dreamed it, in answer to a need that had not yet come. I went on through the mountains, convinced that place must lie somewhere beyond them, since it was not in the Land. I was seeking a sign that would show me how to find it. Then one day I came to a Beforetime place in the mountains. I had been following a broken Beforetime road and the building was at the end of it. It was broken, too . . . a ruin, but night was near and I took refuge in it, for I had come to fear the flying beasts. The floor was cracked and as I slept, a beast came sliding from it, a foul serpentish thing with long narrow hands and terrible claws. I fled and only then realised I had left the bones – his bones – behind. I could not go back for them because the creature was there and would kill me instantly. I waited many days, hoping it would leave to hunt, but it did not go out. That was its lair, or part of it, for it had been somewhere else when I entered the building to begin with. Deeper down in the earth. I resolved to wait until it retreated into the nether part of its lair, so that I could go in and get the bones. But I began to be ill. The thing had bitten me . . . I . . . was very confused and I obeyed when Straaka commanded me to leave his bones. I did not know where I went, but in time I came down from the mountains and to the Blacklands. There was a man . . . a metal man.’

Anticipating her next question, I told her that the metal man was merely following a program established aeons past by Beforetimers, which required it to rescue people it found and put them in cryopods.

‘There are others . . . I know,’ she sent, unexpectedly. ‘The sleepers . . .’ I felt the crushing weight of her sorrow and confusion and was suddenly filled with remorse for the necessity of questioning her so ruthlessly so soon after waking.

‘Sleep now,’ I said, pitying her for what must yet be told, yet knowing it was too soon. I felt her mind fall obediently away from consciousness, and then I looked at the two men; Dameon’s expression was unreadable, Ahmedri’s too, yet there was pain in the empath’s face, and I wondered if he thought of Balboa. I wanted to tell him she did not deserve his love, but I said nothing.

‘If she must stay in this place, I will stay with her,’ Ahmedri said.

‘Must she?’ Dameon asked me. ‘Stay here, I mean? Of course I cannot see where we are, but there is no warmth here nor any comfort to be had, if your emotions are anything to go by.’

‘You see truly, as always my friend,’ Ahmedri told him gravely. ‘This is a cold dead place. Elspeth, ask you this computermachine if my brother’s woman can be taken up onto the skin of the world where there is sunlight and wind and the sky. At least until this sickness she carries becomes dangerous to those about her.’

God unexpectedly answered the tribesman directly, saying that Miryum would not be contagious for some time and so she could go up to the surface for now. But there were treatments that would enhance and hasten the return of her control over her body and she would not have the benefit of these things once she was removed from the resurrection laboratory, for some pieces of the equipment required were too delicate and finely balanced to be moved without harm, while others were too big or simply would not work if taken from their place. Also, Unit A androne was undergoing minor repairs and maintenance, and having its memory drained, while Unit B androne, now designated Hendon, was in the process of being adapted for our journey to Northport, having its range extended and its memory enlarged to enable God to input instructions and directions that would enable it to do all that had been promised. This meant there would be no possibility of moving Anomaly Miryum until late the following day.

I opened my mouth to respond, but Ahmedri said to me very sternly that he would decide, for he was Miryum’s brother by Sadorian lore. ‘Very well,’ I said.

‘It is my duty and my privilege to care for my sister,’ he said, less harshly. He looked up and raised his voice. ‘God, hear you. I will wait until these treatments have been completed. How long will it take? But I do not need these machine men to bring her to the surface. I will carry her up myself.’

‘If she is not required to walk, Technician Ahmedri, she can be readied to be moved tomorrow at midday,’ God said. ‘But her eyes must be shielded.’

Ahmedri nodded. ‘I will prepare a comfortable dark place for her that can be opened to the light when her eyes are able to endure it, and I will tend her and guard her until she must be returned to these chambers so that she will not infect others with her sickness.’

‘She need not be brought back to the resurrection chamber,’ God said. ‘A portable biohazard chamber can be erected on the surface of Midland so that she need not be moved when her sickness reaches the third stage. Unless she is to be returned to a cryopod.’

‘I am not sure that would work unless Miryum chooses it,’ I said, wondering suddenly if God had understood that. After all, it knew that neither I nor Miryum could be forced to accept cryopod sleep. Perhaps it had ceased regarding either of us as humans subject to the requirements of its programming. It would not be stubborn as a human might be, but rational in its response to something that did not do what it was meant to do. Being a machine, it would accept what was not able to be managed without any sense of frustration. Was
that
why it was allowing Miryum to be taken out of the Galon Institute? Of course Miryum must have an implant in her wrist, but she was not tagged and God had not suggested it.

‘We might as well go back up to Kelver Rhonin’s residence and tell the others what has happened,’ I said. ‘Miryum won’t wake again for some hours now, and we can have God alert us the moment she does.’

But Ahmedri reiterated his decision to remain, at least until he could speak to her. Then he would go up and prepare a place for her. I thought about the pain of the needles I had endured during the treatment that had given me back the use of my body and tongue, and of how it would alarm the tribesman to see the coercer writhing and screaming. I forced myself to describe what I had endured so that he would be prepared and felt a light sweat break out on my body as I spoke, but Ahmedri answered stoically that he would stand fast, as long as he knew the pain she endured was not harmful.

Dameon asked me to wait a little, for he could exert some empathy to put Miryum in a very serene state before we left. It would deepen her sleep and help her to endure the pain I had described. I nodded and Dameon settled himself on the ground by the cryopod again and suggested Ahmedri finish his story, for what he would do did not require much attention.

The tribesman shrugged and this time sat down cross-legged. Perhaps he was glad not to think about Miryum, for he launched at once into his tale again, saying that on the second night of his journey following the
efari
, he found the wolf was suddenly loping along beside him.

‘Once I got over the shock of it, I was glad of his company, and his loyalty, but worried too, for I did not want to lead him into harm. I also feared what would happen when daylight came, since the eyes of the Brildane cannot tolerate the light. The
efari
had got some way ahead while I had stopped to greet the wolf, and now as I straightened and began to follow again, it vanished over the lip of a dune. When, after some time, it did not come up the other side, I slowed and approached the top of the rise warily, fearing it had spotted us.’

Coming to the top, Ahmedri saw that the
efari
had come to a halt with its back turned to them. He watched the armoured man, for so he thought him, for a long time, then, to his utter astonishment and without any warning,
my
voice had come booming out. At first he had some thought I was inside the armour, then he thought it a trick. The wolf had snarled and laid back its ears, but after some time, I ceased to speak.

‘The rest you know. Eventually I approached the machine man and it brought me to a different settlement and Swallow came out to greet me,’ Ahmedri concluded.

‘So it was the wolf you were looking at,’ I murmured. ‘What happened to him when you came here?’