The Red Queen (22 page)

Elated I forced myself to talk of my pledging then, prattling on about my audience with the Committee until my own ears tired of my voice. We got deep enough into a shaded path that ran between a cornfield and some other tall crop that I could no longer see the public huts when I glanced back, and I ceased my chatter. All was silent but for the whirr and buzz of invisible insects. Dameon said nothing aside from the odd encouraging murmur and we passed thus through a series of fields of low-growing crops, where we could see people working here and there in little groups. Beyond these fields was another tall stand of plants bearing dark serrated leaves with furred undersides. I did not recognise these or the crops on the other side, which had clearly been burned off, but I noticed the path was bordered by a line of dark, scraggy-looking bushes beneath whose leaves grew clusters of the same dark plums I had eaten to such ill effect. I wanted to ask about them, but I could not think how to do so easily when I could not simply point them out to Dameon, and then we had passed them.

We came to a place where the path split into three. So far, Dameon had made me tell him when the path split, and after stopping to tell me where each led, he had always preferred the middle track. But when I described the intersection ahead this time, Dameon said, ‘I work in a drying shed left of this forking. The middle trail leads to the great well and the fruit orchards. That is where Swallow and Ana are working today. There are no proper fruit trees in Habitat but there are miniature trees that grow normal-sized fruit and most of the rest is grown along the wall on vines. The way to the burying field is the right path.’

We continued right and now it was Dameon’s turn to talk as he outlined the various ways fruit was grown and then dried or boiled and sealed into pottery crocks, how a certain number of perfect seeds from all crops were kept in an heirloom vault, while samples of those that deviated were brought to the Committee to be offered to God.

‘Blood and seeds.’ I murmured. ‘How are such things offered to God?’

‘That is Committee business,’ Dameon said.

He fell silent again then, and I took my cue from him and said no more, half stupefied by the rich, slightly sticky air among the crops, heavy with the scents of the earth and growing things and ringing with the endless, whining hum of insects. We came quite suddenly to the end of the crops, and I saw that the fertile loamy earth overlaid a pale, hard, stony ground studded with bigger bone-white rocks that glittered slightly in the sunlight. This stretched away in a flat barren plain and just visible through the dazzle and shimmer of heat in the air, I could make out the wall of Habitat.

It was closer to midday now and though the light was very bright, my eyes had ceased to water, but the top of my head felt as if it were on fire. Dameon was taking out a kerchief and tying it over his head, so I pulled off my tunic and used several knots to fashion it into something like the head garb Sadorians wore when they crossed their desert lands. No doubt it looked lopsided and queer, but I did not care, and if Dameon had been able to see, he would not have cared either.

‘Where now?’ I asked.

Dameon asked if I could see two standing stones. At first I could see nothing, but at length, squinting and half guessing, I thought I saw them rising in the middle of the plain to the right – two squat tors.

‘The burying field is directly beyond them,’ he said.

It took us a good halfhour to reach the stones, which were still a fair way from the wall, and I wondered if I had misunderstood, for I had thought the burying field ran up to the wall. I could see a row of grave markers as we approached the standing stones. They were laid on the ground rather than standing up, as in the Land, and there were fewer than I had imagined. It was only when I reached the standing stones that I saw the ground sloped down and there were literally thousands of markers lined up in neat rows with narrow paths winding through them. ‘Ye gods,’ I muttered.

Dameon said nothing but laid his hand on the right standing stone and, removing his arm from my grip, set off along one of the several paths leading away from the stones. Following him, I wondered if he was worried about getting back to his workplace in time, but quite soon he stopped at a small mound someone had made out of stones in a depression, and said abruptly that he needed to rest for a bit. He sat down.

I went and sat down too, and he grinned at me. ‘We will not be able to stay too long, but here, for a little, we can talk freely.’

‘This is the other deaf place?’ I asked.

‘The only other one we have found so far,’ he said.

‘All right, then before anything else, let me tell you that I am almost certain Miryum is in Pellmar Quadrants, in the Galon Institute in a cryopod.’ I told him quickly of my dream, resisting the temptation to make physical contact and simply show him. I was not quite ready to take that risk yet. ‘I don’t know why the Tumen didn’t wake her in Habitat. It may be because she is ill and they cannot heal her or because she gave herself away as a Misfit before they had the chance to resurrect her in Habitat. The govamen was always interested in Misfits in the Beforetime and the Tumen have probably taken over their fascination. Though I can’t see how this fits with the deaths in Habitat of people who were Misfits. I want to talk to you all about that, but for now, the other main thing is that last night I dreamtravelled beyond Habitat – there is only a small settlement outside the walls and I don’t think it is Pellmar Quadrants because it was deserted. There are two other settlements some distance away, one about the size of the other two put together, but they are deserted too.’

‘You
dreamed
of these settlements?’ Dameon asked.

I sighed inwardly, and reminded him of my dream encounter with Straaka’s spirit. ‘I was in spirit-form and in a spirit place when I made that journey. But I can also travel in spirit outside of my body in the real world, though nothing looks as it does to my waking eyes, and I am like a ghost to waking people . . .’ I thought of telling him about Angina and my part in the lad’s death, but shied away from relating that grim, sad tale, telling myself there was no time for it. Instead I told him about entering Miryum and finding myself in her distorted dream world. ‘If I can bring her out of the dream, she may be able to fight the cryosleep as I did, and wake, but she will be very weak. It may be that she will be able to tell us how to break free and to find her, then it will be up to us to rescue her.’

‘What of the Tumen?’

‘I don’t know how we will deal with them. Maybe that is one of the things she will tell us,’ I said, no more satisfied with my answer than he seemed to be.

‘Will she remember her dream when she wakes?’ Dameon asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

I saw that he was fascinated by the idea of dreamtravel, but I cut off his questions and conjectures, telling him I would answer them all when we had the time and leisure for it, but we must concentrate on essentials, given that he had to leave soon.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘So, if you are right and the settlements about this place are empty, where do you think Pellmar Quadrants lies?’

‘It can’t be too far away, given that the Tumen come here regularly, unless they have some sort of Beforetime wagon. It might even be how they got all of us to Pellmar Quadrants.’

He nodded. ‘So it might be a good distance away. Well, if you are right about Miryum being there, we have to get to Pellmar Quadrants for her sake, as well as to find Jacob Obernewtyn’s grave.’

I gave a gasp, realising I had not told him the most important news.

‘Dameon, I think Jacob is buried here,’ I said. ‘That is why I wanted to come, to see if I could find his marker. Though . . .’ I glanced around at the vast number of markers.

‘What makes you think he is buried in Habitat?’

‘Think of it,’ I said. ‘He was looking for Pellmar Quadrants and it is likely the Tumen took him prisoner just as they took us and Miryum. Then they would have resurrected him in here.’

‘It would make sense of this senseless time, if the reason for coming here was connected to your quest. But how utterly strange to think he was here and lived this same life we have been living,’ Dameon said.

‘Of course it is just a guess, but I feel sure I am right,’ I said. ‘The problem is, how to find it, given the number of markers there are. I did not expect so many. There must be thousands of them.’

‘Generations of Speci,’ Dameon said.

‘Well, if it is here, and I am sure it is, I will find it if it means looking at every one of them,’ I said determinedly. ‘But then we will have to dig up the grave and that is like to cause trouble among the Speci, not to mention being difficult with ground as hard as this.’

‘It would disturb the Speci, if they knew of it, but we could probably manage to come and dig it up at night,’ Dameon said thoughtfully. ‘You really think that Cassandra’s key will be in the grave?’

‘I know it is there,’ I said.

‘Did you speak with Straaka again?’ Dameon asked eagerly.

‘I did not see him this time. It may be that his spirit has found release while we slept in those cryopods.’ I glanced back towards the crops. ‘I want you to tell the others in signal speech all that I have told you, and ask them to begin hoarding food and supplies for when we do get out of here. They will need to have something to carry them in, too. And we are going to need water.’

‘But . . .’ Dameon began.

I laid a hand on his. ‘I know it will not be easy, but we must prepare as best we can. It may be that we will have to capture one of the Tumen so that I can coerce them. One will enable us to get to the others and then we will have a guide.’

‘Did you see how we can get out of here?’ Dameon asked.

‘That is the one thing I did not see clearly, but tonight when I sleep, and every night I can manage it, I will fly to see what I can learn. But I will need to have someone watch over my body. Tash found me unconscious this morning, before I could return to my body, but I told her I had fallen. Luckily I had a bump to validate my story.’

I did not want to waste time or worry him by telling him about the plums, and after all, they had done no permanent harm.

Dameon stiffened.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I have just remembered. Swallow and Ana came here a lot in their early days and Swallow once said he saw a marker with the name Hannah scribed on it.’

‘Hannah?’
I echoed, startled. ‘Not Hannah Obernewtyn?’

‘Just Hannah,’ Dameon reiterated. ‘Probably it is no more than a coincidence. There is a Matthew in Habitat and even another Dameon.’

He was right, of course, for how could it be Hannah Seraphim? I knew from Jacob’s journal that he had left Obernewtyn alone, while Hannah had likely still been sleeping in her cryopod in Inva. She had obviously never made it to Obernewtyn after the Great White, else Jacob’s journal to her would not have been waiting for me to find. But what if Jacob had asked that this be scribed on his marker, as some sort of memorial to his beloved Hannah.

‘Did Swallow say anything about where Hannah’s marker was?’ I asked.

Dameon frowned. ‘I can only remember him saying that it was one of the older markers. I don’t know how he knew that but I do recall we talked at the time about the possibility of it being your Hannah buried here. Swallow said it could not be the Hannah who foresaw your coming, because of the words scribed under the name.’

‘What words?’

‘As I recall, we were interrupted before he could say, but you could find Swallow and raise the matter casually.’

‘I could,’ I said, ‘but now that I am here, I want to wander about a bit. I might even stumble on it.’

‘You
might,’ Dameon said. He turned his face to the sun with a measuring expression. Remembering I had intended to ask if he meant to petition the Committee to bond with me, I thought of Balboa, and went on to ask if he had led her to believe there was something between us. I wanted to be absolutely sure that it would be the right thing to do.

‘What makes you ask such a thing?’ Dameon asked rather stiffly.

Puzzled by his reaction, I said, ‘I am not reproaching you. Balboa seems very determined and it is a good way to discourage her.’

I saw a rare but distinct flash of anger on the empath’s face, and he said coolly that love might not be so easily discouraged. I stared at him. ‘But surely it is not love, for Balboa hardly knows you.’

‘Does not love sometimes strike from the clear sky like a bolt of lightning, unheralded and utterly unexpected?’ Dameon asked. ‘Was it not so with Rushton and you?’ His question confused me, for while it was true that I had felt something potent when I first set eyes on Rushton, I had not known it was love for a long time.

Then it came to me with a shock that my earlier speculations had been right, and Dameon had spoken so because he felt something for Balboa!

‘Dameon . . .’ I began, dismayed, and with some awkward notion of comforting him for the fact that he should finally feel something for a woman in such unpromising circumstances. But he held up his hand and said with sudden finality that he was glad I had made my pledge as it would give me more freedom of movement, but that we should say nothing about blood offerings until we saw the result of the offering made by Ana and Swallow.

‘Truly I hope we will be long gone before they need to resort to a false bonding,’ I said, relieved to have abandoned the subject of love and Balboa. ‘No wonder Swallow is so desperate.’

‘He will be very glad to know we are here for a reason,’ Dameon said, still somewhat stiffly. ‘Come, let us walk back to the standing stones and I can make my way back along the path to the fields alone, while you make a search. We will have to guard our words again, of course.’

‘All right,’ I said. I thought I should say something about Balboa, but the empath’s expression was closed and remote. It was no surprise when he offered his arm, and I took it, that I could feel his emotional shields were formidably composed.

We walked slowly up the sloping path between rows of markers, all lined up neatly alongside one another. My mind reeled at the number of years and the lives they represented.