The Red Queen (10 page)

There was a slightly raised smooth grey path running along the base of the wall. There were no lightpoles illuminating it, but there was enough light from the ones near the huts for me to see the wall was formed of some dense, grey material that might be stone but was more likely a Beforetime material. Certainly it was too smooth and slippery to climb without hacking out foot and handholds, and given the strength of Beforetime building materials, it was quite possible that even an axe would make no impact.

Swallow and Dameon carried me with them onto the path and went left, following in the wake of Ana and Dragon who had gone a little ahead. I gathered myself and asked, ‘Where . . . are the gates?’

‘There is no gate,’ Swallow answered. ‘When the govamen signals God that the world is clean, the Tumen will open the wall.’

I thought I must have misunderstood. ‘How are the resurrected brought into Habitat if there is no gate?’ I asked.

‘God needs no gates,’ Dameon said flatly.

As we moved along the wall, we passed row after row of huts, all facing one another across crushed-stone paths lit by dim blue lightpoles. No wonder Swallow had spoken of the difficulty of finding his hut.

‘How much further?’ I asked, only to have Swallow bid me hold my tongue, adding that it would be inconsiderate to wake the Speci sleeping in the huts.

Ana turned back to frown at him, before assuring me gently, ‘It is not far now, Elspeth.’

I had given up trying to work out if the abrasiveness between them was real or pretence, but Ana had spoken truthfully, for moments later the path we had been following came to an abrupt end at the edge of an expanse of ground. Another path ran left to a group of large and more complex huts, several of the doors and windows of which glowed with the unmistakable warm yellow light of natural flame – cooking stoves or lanterns, I guessed, but I could not look at them for long. Even at a distance, the brightness of them made my eyes water.

‘They are the public huts,’ Dameon said. ‘It is very late but there are always people assigned to work through the night, and some of the Speci will be in the bathing hut.’

‘We won’t go closer than this tonight, for the sake of your eyes,’ said Swallow. ‘We will just go onto the common and you can rest a while.’ As if it had just occurred to him, he suggested Ana and Dragon go and see if they could beg a bite to eat from the kitchen. ‘We will take Elspeth over to where the shrubs grow to wait for you. Their scent is very pleasant.’ Ana produced a shawl from her basket and gave it to him, suggesting he stretch it out so that I could lie down on it, then the two women hurried off towards the lighted huts.

Clearly they had plotted the whole expedition in advance, including the little additional quest for food, and I wondered how they had managed it when they could not speak openly. Then I wondered again who they thought was listening and if there truly were machines or devices about that would pick up Talents. Certainly I had seen no sign of anything on our walk that looked like a Beforetime machine. But I held my tongue as Dameon and Swallow struck out across the dark expanse, bearing me with them. I was astonished to realise that the smooth expanse of ground was actually a springy carpet of grass or moss. The green smell of it was intoxicating.

Dameon murmured that we needed to bear further right, and Swallow obeyed without a word. A few steps later, an enormous shaggy shrub loomed up before us. It was nothing but an unruly black shape in the black night, but its scent was strong and sweet. Swallow let Dameon bear my weight a moment while he spread out Ana’s shawl and then they lowered me onto it. The moment I was lying flat, the sick dizziness faded.

The two men remained standing, and I saw that they were looking back the way we had come. I turned my head and could just make out the lit windows and doors of the public huts, far enough away not to hurt my eyes.

‘The hut nearest the path we were on is the bathing hut,’ Swallow said, squatting down and pointing. ‘There is a well between it and the cookhouse which stands next in the row. The big hut beside that is where meals are eaten, though it is also permitted to carry food out to eat on the common. The little huddle of huts next to it are food-storage sheds. Then comes the washhouse where there is another well. Next to that are the dye house and pottery. You can’t see from here, but nearest the far wall is the healing hut and alongside that is the meeting hut of the Committee. Ordinary Speci are forbidden to enter the meeting hut, and are not permitted to go into the healing hut, save if they are brought in with a serious illness or injury by one of the Committee. Lesser hurts are generally dealt with in the bathhouse or in sleeping huts. There are others but that will do to be going on with. Try to remember all of the things we have been telling you so that if anyone asks, you can say we were instructing you on the layout of Habitat tonight.’

Before I could think how to ask if it was safe for us to talk openly, Swallow gave a piercing whistle that made me jump, then I heard Ana’s muted cry. Before long, she and Dragon arrived carrying a basket from which they unpacked a very small replica of the lightpoles near the huts. It was dark until Ana pushed it into the soft ground, whereupon it began to give off the same mild, painless blue lume as its larger siblings. It lit up the faces of my companions, and I saw with a thrill of excitement that all their expressions were alive with a combination of excitement and apprehension; all save Swallow, whose face positively blazed with triumph.

It was he who sliced a look at me, and said the words I had longed to hear: ‘Now we can talk.’

I opened and closed my mouth but found it too dry for me to speak. Laughing a little, Ana produced a water bottle from the basket, and as she fed me a mouthful, Dragon spread a cloth and began removing and opening parcels of food. I coughed and spluttered at the bitter, unfamiliar taste of the water, but Ana shook her head and patted my hand soothingly.

‘Have no fear,’ she assured me. ‘It is merely laced with a herb that will stimulate your mind and senses, otherwise you will fall asleep and this opportunity will be wasted.’

‘We can’t stay here too long,’ Swallow explained.

Ana gave him a level look. ‘It would have been wiser to wait a few days until she is stronger.’

‘No,’ I rasped, trying to marshal my thoughts so that I could ask the questions I most wanted answered before we ran out of time. ‘Why is it safe to speak here, but not in the hut?’

Swallow gave me a glimmering flash of his old sardonic smile. ‘You do wake with your wits about you, don’t you?’ Then he sobered. ‘There are only one or two places in Habitat where it is safe to speak, and this is one of them. Anywhere else, God hears every word we say.’

‘God,’ I echoed in flat disbelief.

Untroubled by my tone, Ana handed out rounds of some sort of flat bread that the others accepted with surprisingly little enthusiasm, though they ate readily enough.

I shook my head when Ana offered one to me and said, ‘Surely you don’t mean you are actually afraid
God
will hear us!’

‘Elspeth, it does not matter who listens – the Speci say God is listening but the point is that any words spoken in Habitat are heard,’ Swallow said shortly. ‘Unwise criticism of the Committee or the Covenant or curses against God – blasphemy the Speci call it – are all heard. We know it because the Committee always knows when something is said that ought not to have been said. They claim that God tells them and then they mete out punishments for minor wrong speaking. In the case of larger transgressions, God acts directly. In the same way, wishes spoken aloud to God, if they are reasonable, are usually answered.’

I gaped at him. ‘Wishes?’

‘The Speci call such wishes prayers – they are spoken aloud for God to hear – and God responds to them . . . most of them, anyway. If I want a new ploughshare or a stone to sharpen it, I need only pray aloud, to find it delivered a few days later to the Hub.’

I was so dumbfounded by his words that I could not think of a single sensible response.

‘We found this place by wishing,’ Ana said, a rare mischievous glint in her eyes. ‘We went about wishing for this and that, until we found a place where wishes went unanswered. It would have been too dangerous to speak curses or blasphemies, but eventually we found a place where we dared to utter mild curses and then terrible blasphemies, and the Committee knew nothing of them.’

‘Two places,’ Swallow said mildly. ‘This is the easiest of the two to reach, but we cannot afford to come here too often as a group because it is visible from the public huts. And aside from the fact that the Committee are not comfortable seeing us together, God might notice. Mostly Ana and I come here together, pretending it is our favourite place. The rest of the time we use signal speech to communicate anything dangerous.’

‘What . . . where is the . . . other place?’ I asked.

‘It is right at the end of Habitat beyond the crops, near the burying field. It is more private to meet there, but it is difficult to find the time to go there because it is far and we do not have much free time.’

‘This is the first time we have all met to talk in ages,’ Dragon said, beaming at me.

‘I don’t understand about God granting wishes,’ I said.

Ana would have answered but Dameon cut in to say with gentle authority, ‘Let us try to be orderly, for there is a lot to tell. Swallow, you had better explain this.’

The Twentyfamilies gypsy nodded. ‘Elspeth, I have heard prayers uttered in a field of wheat, with not another soul to hear but me, and a few days later, what has been requested appears in the Hub.’

‘God answers their prayers?’ I asked sceptically.

‘Well, someone does,’ Swallow said. ‘Our captors, is my guess. We believe that whoever built Habitat must have laid a web of Beforetime listening devices into the ground and buildings.’

‘None of this place is natural,’ Ana said. ‘Look at this grass. It never grows any longer than this and despite the barren stony ground about the huts, the dirt here and under the crops is rich and loamy. There is a place for everything and everything is in its place. You can see why the Speci believe Habitat was God’s doing.’

Swallow stiffened and hissed at the others to be careful, for voices carried at night. He was looking back the way we had come and I turned my head to see a little cluster of lights moving towards the wall path we had come along.

‘It is only people leaving the bathhouse,’ Ana said, but softly.

‘They will see us if they look in this direction.’ I nodded to the small blue lightpole Ana had pushed into the ground.

‘Our being here is no secret,’ Ana said. ‘You would be surprised how many eyes watched from darkened huts as we passed. But it does not matter because all know the Committee has charged us to work together to bring you to fitness and full knowledge as soon as may be, and the newly resurrected are often walked on the common at night when their eyes are still too sensitive to endure daylight or even a full moon.’

‘Even so, we must not stay here long,’ Dameon said.

‘How dangerous are the Speci?’ I asked, thinking of Tasha.

‘I do not think them dangerous at all,’ Swallow said flatly. ‘They are passive and peaceable, but from time to time, a Speci will die a horrible, violent death, like that man I told you about, and everyone accepts that he was a bad Speci.’

‘The Tumen . . .’ I began, but Swallow cut me off with a cold bark of laughter.

‘The Tumen are as much a myth as God,’ he said. ‘The killings are the doing of our captors, or of the Committee obeying their command. The Committee believe it is God issuing the commands of course. That much is clear in their aura. I would give much to get inside the Committee hut to see what means they have to communicate with God. But the closest I have managed is the healing hut.

‘And for that he had to all but cut off a limb,’ Ana said sharply.

Swallow shrugged. ‘I cut my leg deeply enough to produce a river of blood, so that there would be an excuse for me to be taken to the healing hut. I was in no danger.’

‘You could have bled to death, you fool,’ Ana snapped. ‘And all for nothing. I told you that there was no way to get from the healing hut to the Committee meeting hut and how were you to do it when you could not walk in any case?’

‘I may have been more impatient than wise,’ Swallow admitted wryly.

‘And all the bodies of the dead are found in the same place?’ I asked.

‘Always in the crop fields,’ Swallow said, all trace of humour gone from his face.

‘I found one not long after I woke,’ Dragon said in a subdued voice. ‘At first I could not even tell if it was a man or a woman . . .’ She shuddered.

‘It makes no sense,’ I muttered, thinking of the cool and tranquil Tumen who had fed me sips of water. ‘What use would there be in committing any murders, let alone such violent ones?’ I looked at Dameon. ‘How often do the deaths occur?’

‘Not often,’ Ana said. ‘But people talk about them so much you feel they happen all the time.’

‘The Committee encourages gossip about the murders,’ Dameon said. ‘People who are afraid are more biddable.’

Was that it, I wondered – the Tumen killed some of the Speci horribly to keep the rest docile, the mutilations being object lessons, rather than an expression of sadism or rage? But from what the others said, the Speci were already a docile and obedient lot. The long-dead Naha and her Covenant had seen to that.

‘Look,’ I said, and heard the edge in my voice. ‘You’ve all been here long enough to become enmeshed in what goes on, but the fact is that I have a quest to fulfil and that means I have to get out of here.’

‘You think I didn’t try?’ Swallow snapped. ‘It was all I thought about before Ana woke.’

‘I am not blaming you,’ I said firmly. ‘But you said we didn’t have much time, and I need answers to some specific questions.’ I wanted simply to farseek them, but none of the others had raised the subject and if there were devices that could detect Talent, they would likely operate throughout Habitat. That left words spoken aloud. ‘First, what is your last memory of Gavyn and Ahmedri?’