The Red Queen (58 page)

My horror of the monstrous little creatures had increased since I realised they might carry diseases, even if not the one Miryum had. But we saw no
rhenlings
the next night either. Just on sunset, with the sky a glory of scarlet and gold and pink above, the androne stopped and God’s voice came smoothly from it, announcing that we had reached the limit of its range and that the androne was now switching to its auxiliary programming. It did not bid us farewell or wish us luck, and why should it, for it was a machine, made by people long dead.

And so, we left the realm of God. Now all that we had known lay behind us, with only the unknown ahead. And yet even as the androne began to bear north, the sun westered and I saw that it approached a horizon that had turned dark and jagged, and it came to me that I was once again looking at the Black Mountains.

We were nearing the end of our third day of walking across the white plain and the sun was beginning to wester when at last we spotted the unmistakable shapes of Beforetime buildings on the horizon.

The walk from Midland had seemed unending, maybe because the hard white plain was truly featureless, save for the occasional narrow cleft that opened like a dark and sneering mouth in the blazing whiteness. In its monotony it reminded me of the sea, and I remembered that Straaka had once spoken of the kamuli beasts that inhabited the desert lands as ships of the desert.

We kept well away from the black crannies, despite our longing for a bit of shade, ever mindful of
rhenlings
. There was no chance they would fly during the day, and indeed from what I understood, they could not, but if any of us had fallen into a rift and chanced to touch one of the creatures, it would have our scent and be able to track us when darkness came.

Aside from all of us suffering headaches from the blinding light, the parting from Ahmedri, Miryum and Tash had left me feeling emptied out and gloomy, and I was sure the others felt the same. It was very hard on Dameon, who must bear the brunt of our heavy moods, and no doubt he already felt the same wrench at leaving our friends as I did.

The nights had brought a cessation of the relentless radiance and the dry, burning heat, but soon it became cold and the ground was too hard to let anyone sleep well or deeply without preparations that would take longer than they were worth. Nevertheless, we stopped when the moon was not in the sky, sitting a little way from the androne, very still and quiet, in case some beast blundered into one of the rifts and set off a swarm of
rhenlings,
and even when we walked with the thin moon moving over our heads, we did so quietly, with little speech, for we knew only the sun or the full moon would stop them from rising once they were roused.

Not that we saw a single beast or bird, for all Ahmedri’s warnings.

With the moon in the sky, we walked on. It was hard to believe anything lived in that bleak land, white and hard as bone, and indeed Dragon named it the Bone Plain, so that was the name Ana carefully scribed onto the map that night using a little pointed metal pen, for she had taken on Ahmedri’s office herself.

To make up for the lack of proper sleep, we stopped for an hour or so at the hottest point in the day, even as we had done when crossing the desert after we had emerged from the
graag
, but this time it was the androne rather than Swallow and Ahmedri who erected a simple canopy of a light and marvellous design, under whose dense shade we slept an hour or two, far more soundly than during the night.

We walked swiftly, despite the heat, but although no one complained at the pace I set, I found myself feeling increasingly irritated and impatient, biting my lip to stop myself snarling at my companions for the slightest irksome thing or demanding that we go more quickly. I told myself it was ridiculous to be impatient when we were moving at a good steady pace, but I could not seem to help it.

At mid morning on the third day I noticed a dark unravelling cloud in the east when we set off after our break and wondered if a storm was brewing. Yet I had seen clouds the day we left Midland, and nothing had come of them. A storm might account for my edginess, and there was good reason to be uneasy, for if the clouds swelled enough to blot out the fingernail moon, the
rhenlings
might fly. Yet we had not seen a sign of the creatures since leaving Midland, and the androne had assured Ana that we would reach Northport before dusk and be safe within the protective mantle cast by the device Hannah had set up when she had gone there with Jacob ages before.

I wondered idly
why
she had set it up. Had the
rhenlings
already been a threat by the time she woke from the cryopod in Hegate at Inva, or had she prepared the device against my future need? Again I thought how strange it must have been to live a life in which so much of your time was devoted to the doings of a person who did not yet exist. Had she been so sure I would even agree to do the task that I alone might succeed in doing? The world must have seemed so precarious to her, when one person alone would have the possibility of preventing its end, and she not yet born or committed to that task.

As the day wore on, the others often eyed the dark clouds, which mounted ever higher, covering more and more of the sky. Then in the afternoon, we saw the buildings. I felt sure it was Northport. To my surprise, Dameon disagreed, pointing out mildly that the buildings Dragon had just described to him might be the remnants of a smaller settlement or some kind of way station, for by his reckoning, we were still well short of dusk and the few buildings did not sound much like they were part of a very large settlement. Was not Northport supposed to be many times greater than Midland, with a good deal more of itself showing above ground?

I realised he was right, but also that we had the means of confirming my guess.

Ana must have had the same thought, for she said, ‘Are those buildings ahead of us the north part of Northport, Hendon?’

‘They are the leading edge of Quadrant Four, also known as Northport, Technician Ana,’ the androne responded in its pleasant, passionless voice.

‘It did not take so long after all!’ said Ana triumphantly. ‘We will easily get there before the fox comes and a good thing too, for tonight will be the first night of darkmoon.’

‘The fox?’ I echoed, puzzled.

‘Garth told me the Beforetimers call the hour before dawn the hour of the wolf, so I have decided that the hour before dusk will be called the hour of the fox, because it is so often red and always beautiful.’

‘I have always liked the ambiguity of twilight,’ Swallow said rather dreamily. ‘It is neither one thing nor the another. Like a fox seems to be partway between a cat and a dog.’

Maybe because
you
are never one thing or the other, I thought but did not say. I noticed Ana glance at him, a strange expression on her face. It was impossible to tell if she liked him more or less than before they had been in Habitat. Dameon might know, but his face was turned towards the settlement, his blind eyes fastened on it, though what he saw I could not guess; something he saw with vestigial spirit eyes, maybe.

I turned my own gaze to the roil of clouds that had knitted up into a thick black tangle now covering fully half the sky. They did not look like storm clouds so much as the agitated edge of a sea of night flowing up strangely from the east. But we would reach Northport ere they overcast us, if ever they did, and it would be some time after that before the sun set.

In a little while a wind began to blow, not gusts but a steady force like a single endless exhalation. There was a chill in it as well as the scouring grit of sand particles. We quickened our pace, and we were a good bit closer to the settlement when Swallow stopped and said, ‘I can make out a long line of high buildings with one tower higher than the rest. It has a queer bulging tip but nothing beyond that. If you have no objections, I’d say we camp here and enter the settlement on the morrow, for we know nothing of it.’

‘We have God’s map of the city,’ Ana said rather indignantly.

‘We do and I do not impugn it in any way,’ Swallow told her with a flash of his old dry wit that made her scowl. ‘I only meant that we do not know what inhabits the place.’ He looked back at me. ‘Think on it. A settlement full of dark crannies and gaps, and Ahmedri impressed upon all of us very strongly that there are many creatures that inhabit this terrain, for all it seems so bare and empty, and most are dangerous by his account. If we stop here we ought to be close enough to the buildings to be protected from
rhenlings
by the device Hannah set up, but far enough from them that we have half a chance to defend ourselves if something comes out of the city.’

‘I don’t understand why the device would keep off the
rhenlings
, but not other creatures,’ Dragon complained.

‘The thing that keeps off the
rhenlings
works by sound, and according to God,
rhenlings
are the most dangerous thing out here,’ Ana explained.

‘But why didn’t Hannah just get God to make something that would keep all creatures out of Northport and the other settlements in Pellmar Quadrants?’ Dragon asked.

‘Dear one, if God made a force that kept out all beasts, then it would keep
us
out, because for all that we humans forget it, we are only another kind of beast,’ Dameon said mildly.

Swallow and Ana were looking at me, waiting for me to have the final word, I knew. I looked at the buildings. My eyesight was not as good as Swallow’s, but I could see no other buildings
behind
those in the front line either, yet these buildings were true scrapers and far more formidable and imposing than the low cluster of eroded and sand-scoured buildings on the surface of Midland. Compared to these soaring scrapers, Midland was no more than a large village, at least above ground.

I felt a renewed surge of impatience, wanting to get into the settlement to look for the beasts, but at the same time, I felt uneasy. ‘We will camp here then,’ I said. ‘If it is close enough for us to be protected from the
rhenlings
.’

Ana nodded absently, saying we were well within the range God had outlined to her. Swallow glanced assessingly at the black mantle of clouds covering the east and beginning to spill into the west where a narrowing span of blue still showed, and the red-gold sun sent out a stream of light across the white plain, turning it to bronze.

‘Shall we chance a fire?’ Swallow asked. ‘It would be good to prepare a proper meal, even a soup against the cold of night, though the smell of food might draw some creatures out.’

Ana laughed. ‘If the fire itself does not deter them, Hendon has the means to protect us.’

I fought off an impulse to bid them cease their endless chatter for I was struggling with a powerful urge to change my mind and tell them we must go on into the city proper. At the same time, when I looked at the buildings, my heart misgave. I let the thought of soup distract me from my contrariness, for I was hungry and heartily sick of the hasty fare we had eaten since leaving Midland.
Spoiled
, I jeered to myself.

A fire was swiftly and efficiently built by the androne at Ana’s command. It used a mound of very light pebbles it took from a sack on the pallet, then to our amusement and astonishment, it lit the pile using a flint device at the tip of one of its fingers. Instead of producing a spark, it created its own little flame!

Ana rummaged in her pack for some food and the few simple utensils she had carried with her in case there was a chance to cook, and remarkably soon Swallow was stirring a pot of soup while she cut thick slices of bread, saying we might as well eat the last of Tash’s lovely bread before it grew stale. The combined scents of cooking and Tash’s bread made my stomach rumble as Dragon and I rolled out bedding with Dameon’s help. I found myself wishing it was Ahmedri preparing the meal. It was not that Ana or Swallow lacked skill, but the tribesman had great gifts for both the cooking of delicious food and the doing of it in difficult places. But even more than the loss of his cooking skill, I felt the breaking up of our company that his loss signified.

It was odd to feel his absence so keenly, given that we had been parted from him for many moons, indeed for more than a year, and had only been fleetingly reunited. But he had been part of our company from the first, and he was the first we were to leave behind; moreover, this was the first journey we had made without him.

‘You are thinking of Ahmedri,’ Dameon said, when we came to sit by the fire on the cushions the androne had set out. When I had seen them packed, I judged them a needless luxury, but now I was weary from walking and their softness was pleasant, as was the heat of the fire and our first proper meal since we had left Midland.

‘I am,’ I said.

‘I miss him, too,’ Dragon said. ‘And Tash. It seems impossible that I will never see her or talk to her again. She and I talked more than I have ever talked to anyone else. She asked so many questions about how I managed when I was a child in the ruins and about Obernewtyn and the Land. But most of all she asked about the Red Land and about my mother and father. She has no memory of her own parents and was always wondering why they let the govamen put her to sleep.’ She looked at me. ‘She said you told her she should try to learn the truth of it from God. I think she means to try. Oh I wish both of them could have come with us!’

‘Then Miryum would be alone,’ Dameon reminded her gently, patting her hand, for she sat beside him. ‘For myself, I am glad to think of the three of them together, providing solace and friendship. Miryum might oppose Ahmedri, but she will be unable to help herself warming to Tash. She has a gentle healing manner about her. And Ahmedri is much kinder than he seems. They will do well together.’

‘Do you think she will let herself be put back to sleep?’ Dragon asked.

‘I hope so, but I don’t know,’ I said.