The Dark Citadel (The Green Woman) (4 page)

The private
apartments
of the Lord High Protector of Providence would have surprised, not to say
shocked, the casual visitor, had a casual visitor ever been admitted. The
Parliament Building, that some referred to as the Protector’s palace, was the
same soulless grey concrete structure of all Providence’s public buildings,
simply a shade taller. Armed guards flanked each staircase and each lift.
Officials scuttled about their business, doors opened and closed with barely a
click. Harsh white light flooded the building uniformly, revealing identical
grey corridors bathed in a death-like silence.

But behind the sleek, steel doors of the lowest
level, below the storerooms, archives, boiler rooms and maintenance areas,
deeper beneath the earth than anywhere else in Providence, beyond the
morgue-light and the silent guards, lay a flickering half-darkness. Filled with
shifting shadow and dark red light, this was the place the Protector called his
Inferno
.

The faint sound of panting from strangled throats,
gasps and twitterings of despair, seemed to emanate from the banks of darkness
like the ghost of perverse
Musak
. The
air was thick with whisperings, though not a living soul could be perceived. No
living soul had ever penetrated the Protector’s private realm and returned to
tell what they had seen. Certainly not the Ignorant children picked up in the
gutters for the amusement of whatever it was lived in its deepest depths. Not
even the Protector knew exactly what happened once their bare feet pattered
across the threshold and the steel doors of the inner sanctum closed firmly
behind them. But he heard their childish pleading and the piercing shriek of
their last moments, and his eyes glittered with a mad delight.

The apartments of the Protector contained a remnant
of the world that was lost. Just as the crystal Hemisphere preserved the
remnants of humanity, the steel doors enclosed a fragment of the oldest times,
the oldest dark magic. In later times it had come to be called Hell. But the
Protector knew that what coiled and murmured in the bowels of Providence was a
miniscule sample, a grain of sand in the desert compared with what lay beyond
the Hemisphere. The Protector’s secret was a mere jot compared with the
immensity of the suffering and agony the bombs had torn from the heart of the
world. Beyond the Hemisphere lay utter despair.

Through the months of the war, while the bombs
destroyed the world, Providence crouched beneath its protective double domes of
steel and clear crystal. When the end was over, the outer steel Hemisphere was
rolled back to reveal a universe of sunless destruction. The leaders of the
city had known the reign of light was over, and the rule of darkness had begun.

The present Lord High Protector was a worthy
successor to those enlightened earlier leaders. Not only did he recognize the
supremacy of darkness, he had succeeded in making contact with the power that
had grown like a fungus in the decaying carcass of the outside world. He had
burrowed deep into the afflicted earth and released the presence that lurked
there. Soon the fears and terrors of the dark night of earliest humanity would
take form and engulf the world, and the Protector intended to ride on the crest
of the triumphant wave.

The Elders were welcome to their Wise God, to
mutter their prayers and bless the bowed heads of their slow-witted flock. They
could pretend all they liked that their Wise God inspired the laws and
traditions of Providence. He knew the Wise God was pure invention, delusion if
he was feeling charitable. The Protector recognized the real force that powered
the broken world, and he intended to befriend it before it claimed all that was
left. This little cocoon of fear, where he was Absolute Master, Lord, God, was
but a beginning. First the other memories of before had to be
destroyed—the memories of the light. And the woman who held those
memories in her poor, addled mind had slipped from his grasp.

In the warm darkness, the Protector paced to and
fro. His plump face frowned as he considered his options. The Arch Demon who
called himself Abaddon was flexing his muscles. He demanded the destruction of
the keeper of the memories, claimed her power was growing in a green place
beyond the northern mountains, demanded the hostage be brandished to draw her
into the open, prematurely, before her power was completed. A good plan, as far
as it went.

The problem was; the Protector did not exactly
trust the Arch Demon. Who would? He had a long history of betrayal. Once the
hostage had been used and the memories destroyed, why should the demon king
keep his bargain to share power with the Protector? What was to stop him simply
smashing Providence into dust?

The Protector had a better plan. For the moment,
the hostage was quite safe in the tender clutches of her givenparents, an
ignorant schoolgirl with no more notion of her past or her future use than a
chicken sitting in its cage. The Protector would use the hostage in his own
good time, to draw out the keeper of the memories, the Green Woman as she
styled herself now. But he wanted the green witches alive. Both of them, she
and the brat she spawned. The memories had a nasty habit of being handed down
from mother to daughter, starting with the arch whore herself, Eve!

The Protector had spent many pleasant hours
devising a means of gagging the two bitches without obliterating the memories
completely. Drugs and possibly blinding should do it. Once they were under his
control, the mere threat of releasing the memories of the world of light would
be enough to keep Abaddon in his place.

Smiling to himself, the Protector sat down at his
desk of sumptuous red mahogany and composed a message. He would bring out his
hostage in public all right, in a spectacle that would leave history itself
gasping in horror. Wherever she was, the green witch, she would not fail to
hear the cries of agony. And mingled with the voices of the victims would be
the supplications of her own child—because the hostage was her daughter
Deborah.

Footsteps
echoed in
the empty corridor of the Sainted Elders Boys’ High School as a slim,
dark-haired boy hurried, as quickly as he could without actually running, to
his class.

“Hey, boy! You’re late!”

“Sir?” The boy stopped. Obviously he was late. He
wasn’t training for a race walking competition, was he?

The heavy-set man in the white robes and baggy
white trousers of a supervisor glared at him, his arms folded across his fat
chest. “The principal is about to begin.”

Zachariah must have looked blank as the supervisor
jutted out his chin and rolled his eyes.

“The passing out ceremony, remember?”

“But I’m not leaving, sir. My mathematics teacher
said—”

“Zachariah, son of Helios Deodato, roadmender?”

Zachariah nodded, his tongue seemed frozen to his
palette.

“School’s finished for you, my lad. Your maths
teacher must have got you mixed up with one of the High Caste kids.”

“But Master Achilles said the engineering school
would take—”

The supervisor unwrapped his thick arms and raised
a hand. Zachariah knew what that meant and stepped back out of range.

“Main assembly hall! And jump to it!”

* * * *

With the piece of paper, his job assignation, clutched savagely in his
hand, Zachariah turned for home. Behind him, a bunch of boys with similar bits
of paper laughed and a few shouted after him.

“Snotty little bastard! Thought you was too good
for us didn’t yah? Thought you’d be off to do ’gineering or sumfink with the
HCs, yah stupid little bollocks!”

The handful of High Caste boys in the class had
been selected to train as physicians, engineers, or accountants. They looked
the other way, not joining in the taunting. It was beneath their dignity now.
Zachariah, as from the end of the week, was a road mender like his givenfather.
He was a nobody.

The bell of the small local temple began to toll
for evening prayers, and men, hastily washed and changed from their work
clothes, poured out of the tenements in the seedy area on the way to devotions,
adjusting prayer shawls and the obligatory white skullcaps. Zachariah dragged
his feet, his eyes fixed on the ground, drawing the disapproving glances of
some of the men. He slouched into his own doorway as the main door was flung
open, and a small wiry man hurried out. Zachariah found himself in a head-on
collision with his givenfather. The little man clicked his tongue in an
expression of distaste, and a hard hand caught Zachariah behind the ear.

“Will you never learn the times of devotions? How
many years have you idled home and had to run to the temple with the dirt of
the streets on your hands and face?”

“Well it won’t happen again,” Zachariah shouted,
his dark eyes deep pits of rage, and held up the crumpled paper. “From next
week there’s no more school for the likes of me. All I’m fit for is to fill
potholes with asphalt and reset cracked paving stones!”

Helios narrowed his eyes at the implied insult then
slowly nodded his head. “First thing tomorrow you get yourself down to the
House of Registration. You’ll need a work card, your first job assignment, and
don’t forget, a new ration card. You’ll be a worker—no more kid’s rations
for you. Oh, and you’ll need to go to the clothing distribution centre to get
your work clothes.”

Zachariah looked at the older man coldly, at his
watery eyes glittering with cupidity. More ration points, a wage coming in at
last. He turned into the doorway in disgust. He knew what Helios would do with
the extra points, drunken old get.

“Get yourself presentable and down to the temple.
I’ll see you there.”

With a final glare, Helios turned and hurried off
down the street, leaving Zachariah to plod up the four floors to the apartment.

He closed the door with an irritable slam,
startling Bricta, his givenmother, who pivoted her bulk to glare at him. She
wouldn’t ask what was the problem. As far as Zachariah could remember she had
never asked him about anything. They had never liked one another: she because
Zachariah had been foisted on her when her own son died of a brain fever, he
because he had been wrenched from his own mother and reallocated when his
father was killed in an accident at work. He’d had a little sister too, Sarah.
He remembered her name and that she had black pigtails and laughed a lot.

But that was all. He never knew which family took
her, was never supposed to care. He often told himself he didn’t, but it wasn’t
true. He remembered being happy, and although he clung to it, the memory was
fading like a pleasant dream. He wondered dismally if he would ever know how it
felt again.

His givensister had married, so it was just the
three of them now: his sharp, irascible givenfather; his bovine givenmother who
rarely spoke except in sighs; and Zachariah, dark, smouldering and furious with
life, the Wise God, and the Giving.

Bricta snorted a greeting and carried on stirring
the soy gruel. Zachariah splashed water on his face and dried himself hastily.
He grabbed his prayer shawl from the back of the door and threw the hateful
piece of paper that signalled the end of his schooling forever onto his bed and
closed the door. He still saw it though behind his eyes, and the image taunted
him all the way to the temple. Tomorrow it would be transformed into a prison
sentence. Tomorrow it would be registered and there would be no going back,
ever. A life of Helios and Bricta until he was forced to marry a cow-like girl
just like his givenmother.

The subject of women was the only point on which
Zachariah found himself agreeing with the Elders. Which was why the idea of an
imposed marriage made him so bitter. If the Elders were so convinced of women’s
natural mediocrity and sinfulness, why did they force intelligent boys to
marry? Zachariah would have liked nothing more than to devote his life to
research, discovery, or invention. His mother, the real one, the one who he was
sure had loved him, used to say he had an inquiring mind, that he should work
hard at school.

The memory of his birth mother came back to him
with such unusual clarity it brought tears to his eyes. He wiped them away
hastily, but the germ of an idea was there, behind the pain and the
desperation. Tomorrow might not be such a black day after all.
 

* * * *

Since the day his family was split up, since he and Sarah were dragged away
by the guards, Zachariah had carried with him the memory of the suffering in
his mother’s eyes. Mothers were not supposed to feel affection for their
children, but he could not explain the warmth that came from her any other way.
Her gentle eyes watched over his dreams at night, and he still heard the
murmuring of her voice as she told him stories to help him go to sleep. He had
vowed that one day he would find her. As he set out the next day for the House
of Registration, Zachariah’s heart pounded with excitement. Perhaps that day
had come.

The House of Registration was where the vital
statistics were kept, including all changes of name, status, and address. On
the dreary morning Zachariah went to register as a worker, it was full of men
registering births, their children’s weddings, or the collection of a
givenchild. The same clerks dealt with everything. There was no joy in the
House of Registration and very little sorrow. It was not manly to show emotion.
The clerks used the same bland tone with everyone, whether it was to register
the death of a stillborn child or the loss of a family ration card.

The clerk clicked open Zachariah’s file and was
about to make the changes to his status and print him out his new cards, when
Zachariah coughed.

“Excuse me, but there’s someone waving to you over
there.”

The clerk peered across the hall. “Where? I can’t
see anyone.”

“No, he’s stopped now. He thinks you’ve seen him.
He’s gone back into the office right over on the left, by the door.”

The clerk frowned. “The supervisor? What does he
want now? As if I haven’t enough to do.” Muttering in annoyance, he got up and
made his way across the room.

Zachariah flipped the screen around. He had all of
thirty seconds to read as much of the file as possible before the clerk
realised he had been tricked and came storming back in a fury. He wasted the
first seconds staring in stunned disbelief at the paucity of the data on his
file. How could a human life be reduced to so few words? The file gave his name
and date of birth, and the names of his birth mother and father. He had been
their first child. The date of his father’s death followed, then his own
reallocation to new givenparents and change of name from Deodato to Givenchild.

There was nothing else. Nothing that hinted a
family had been destroyed, nothing to mention that Zachariah Givenchild had
ever had a sister called Sarah, that their mother had been dragged from them
and forced into a marriage with a complete stranger. The injustice of it
brought the sting of angry tears to Zachariah’s eyes. He shook them away and
glanced over the partition wall of the cubicle. The clerk was obviously looking
for the supervisor.

Feverishly Zachariah typed in his mother’s name.
The screen changed to reveal a list, a long list of what looked like dozens of
Brigid Deodatas! He scrolled down the list, too fast, and had to backtrack,
looking for the only exact date he had, a date he would never forget—his
mother’s second marriage. The fateful date caught his eye. He checked the rest
of the data: Brigid Deodata’s dates of birth, marriage, and birth of her
children. A son, Zachariah, was first—he had the right Brigid.

Next entry, dated three years after his own birth, was
the birth of a son, Ishmael. So Sarah was not his real sister? He had a
brother? How come he had never known?

He blushed with shame because he knew the answer:
he had known, must have done. Even a ten-year-old would have noticed his sister
was officially called Sarah Givenchild. He just hadn’t cared enough to
remember. Nobody ever cared.

A second wave of anger and helplessness hit him as
he wondered where his brother was now, and how he could find out. But the
unusual sound of raised voices across the hall tore him away from his
speculations—the clerk had discovered the trick. His supervisor was next
to him holding a phone to his ear. The man was speaking quickly, angrily.
Zachariah almost panicked; telephones were rarely used in Providence and only
in emergencies. He was in deep trouble.
  

It didn’t matter though; he had it. He clicked on
the link, and his eyes homed in on the only detail he wanted to
know—where the guards had taken his mother when her family was dispersed.
He had seen his mother’s new address. His hand reached out to press the key to
clear his mother’s file, when a message flashed across the screen:
Access error.

Then another:
Security
check
.

The screen froze. He punched the key, but nothing
happened. He could neither close nor open files—access had been shut down
completely. He glanced up at the clerk. He was hurrying over, an unpleasant
grin on his face.

Zachariah’s eyes flew to the exit. It appeared to
be clear. He bolted, leaving the precious information starkly visible, the
cursor fixed in place, the address underlined in red, for even the fool of a
clerk to see.

* * * *

Zachariah ran through the dusty streets in the direction of the builders’
quarter. If he was quick he could surely get there before the guards. His mind
was a pitched battle of conflicting emotions: elation, apprehension, shame, and
fear. He knew what he had done was unheard of and possibly unpardonable. He
didn’t feel like a rebel or a subversive, nor did he feel ashamed that he
wanted to find his mother. She was the only woman he had ever felt close to,
the only one he had ever respected, and they had taken her from him. Instead of
his calm, comforting birth mother, they had given him Bricta. Bricta was no
different from any of the slow-moving, dull-witted females who bore
Providence’s children.

There were so many things he didn’t understand. As
he pounded along the uneven paving stones, pushing against the flow of workers
going home, he found himself looking furtively at unknown faces and wondering
if this man or that loved his wife, his children, his parents, or was he as
indifferent to them as the Elders would have him be. Most of the faces were
closed and weary-looking. Zachariah doubted love played much part in their
lives.

The workers would have to wash and change and hurry
to the temple for evening devotions before they even thought about anything
else. They would go home and eat and fall into bed with the hollow ache of
dissatisfaction, without even asking after wife and children. The dull, grey
routine had become what they cherished most, a refuge from despair. Hoping and
dreaming were too painful: emotions hurt.

His heart thumping as he neared the right street,
Zachariah wondered what he would say and what would happen next. He dared not
slow down in case the fear that was filling his belly made him turn and run
back to the meagre comfort of the apartment with Bricta and Helios. He had to
find his mother now. Right away. Before he lost his nerve. He turned into his
mother’s street at a run.