The Red Queen (24 page)

Noticing the bush we had sat under the first night, I changed direction, and went to sit in the shade beneath it. It was so pleasant that I decided to release the coercive net and have a nap, allowing my body to deal with my misuse of it. If someone found me, I would explain that I had felt faint and dizzy. It might even be one of my companions and I would be able to tell them what I wanted. The sooner I did so, the sooner they could begin digging. Then I could concentrate my whole being on finding a way out of Habitat, just in case Hannah had not left us any advice with Cassandra’s key.

In the end, it was Swallow who found me, curled up asleep. I heard a familiar voice speak my name and opened my eyes to squint up at a dark shape against the dazzling sun and sky, which then resolved into Swallow.

‘Are you well?’ he asked.

‘Thirsty,’ I rasped and would have risen had he not squatted down, unhooked a metal water flask from his belt, unstoppered it and offered it to me. I took it gratefully and drank almost the whole contents in one long draught. It was obviously a Beforetime flask and I wondered why the Speci were given such elegant and costly water flasks while being forced to make their own clothes. How did the Tumen decide what could be brought into Habitat and what must be produced by the Speci for themselves?

‘Very thirsty,’ Swallow observed drily, taking back the empty flask. ‘What have you been doing that has so left you so parched?’ Then he examined me more closely. ‘Other than spending too much time in the sun without a hat.’

‘Oh,’ I said, lifting a hand to my face. No wonder I felt as if my cheeks were glowing. ‘Can you sit for a bit?’

‘Not really,’ the gypsy said ruefully. ‘I am only up from the crops because I had a message to deliver to the Committee. I was on my way back when I noticed you lying here.’

Without further ado I told him about my trip to the burying fields, the exchanges with Balboa and my discoveries and speculations. Then I told him about the plums and dreamtravelling and he asked a good many questions about the settlements I had seen outside of Habitat, agreeing that it did not sound as if any of them were Pellmar Quadrants.

‘But as to Hannah being in that grave,’ Swallow said, ‘you do realise a lot of what you are saying is guesswork?’

‘I know it, but I just feel so strongly that the grave is important, which is why I want you and the others to open it and see what is inside. I leave the planning of it to you. With luck it will hold two sets of bones and Cassandra’s key.’

‘What about the scribing on the marker –
beloved daughter
?’

‘It could be some sort of code, or even something Hannah asked for, for some sentimental reason connected to her past. But maybe it is even more obvious than that – someone in Habitat came to think of her as a daughter.’

Swallow looked sceptical, saying if Hannah had come to Habitat, she would have been closer in age to a grandmother.

‘We don’t really know how old she was,’ I said impatiently. ‘The thing is to look inside the grave. That is what I want all of you to concentrate on. Can you do that?’

‘We will manage it,’ he said. ‘What of you?’

‘I want to go to the Hub and make a wish-prayer that will bring a Tumen into Habitat,’ I said. ‘I know you have spied on the Hub, but I will be able to use my Talent passively to sense if anything is moving around in the cacti grove, even if I can’t see them. I’ll also try sending my spirit out again beyond the walls of Habitat when I can, in the hope of actually catching a Tumen coming here, so we can get some idea in which direction Pellmar Quadrants lies.’

‘If you go to the Hub now, you will have to come back for your nightmeal, unless you go now and say you are feeling ill. That would fit with your plum story. And lying in bed will enable you to do some dreamtravelling.’

‘I can’t do that again so soon,’ I said. ‘I think I’m a bit sunstruck. I will leave that and visiting the Hub for another night.’

‘That is best, especially if Balboa is making a fuss,’ Swallow said. ‘But as for those plums, they are perfectly good to eat in the normal way of things, which means the ones left for you were definitely dipped in some foul thing. Fortunately, it is not for you to figure out what happened, and you can play the simpleton to your heart’s content. Finding out who drugged you and why is Committee business. Of course it may simply be that you are allergic to them, for I can’t see what anyone would have gained in giving them to you.’ He glanced around restlessly. ‘I ought to get back to the crops. I will tell the others everything you have said. Ana will be elated, for she was certain Hannah had come here when we saw the grave, until we saw the words about the daughter, and the age. It did not occur to either of us that the dates might refer to the time in Habitat. You say Dameon knows all of this?’

I nodded. ‘All but that I think Jacob’s bones and Cassandra’s key are in Hannah’s grave, for he left before I realised the numbers on the grave markers were not ages.’

‘Did he tell you we have started stockpiling supplies?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘though I asked him about that, for I don’t know where else we can get supplies, beyond this place, given that the settlements are deserted.’

‘Water is the main thing, for we can last a while without food,’ he said. ‘And weapons.’

I stared at him in surprise as he explained that they had managed to secret a few knives under their mattresses. He wanted to get some poles and thin rope, too. The knives could then be fastened to the poles to turn them into spears or the poles could be used as weapons in their own right.

I had not thought of weapons, but I said that I hoped we could avoid any confrontation, for I doubted knives and poles would be any match for the Beforetime weapons to which the Tumen had access.

‘They will be amenable enough once you coerce them,’ Swallow said.

‘If
I can coerce them,’ I reminded him.

‘I had forgotten they have ways of blocking Talent,’ Swallow said, sounding disgusted.

‘Never mind that now,’ I replied. ‘One last thing I wanted to tell you. Before I went flying out of this place, I made contact with Miryum. Not with her waking self but with her dreaming spirit. Her mind is caught in a dream. I can break it but . . .’

Swallow gave me a warning look that silenced me, and a moment later two men crossing the common in the direction of the crops spotted us and hailed him. He muttered a curse as he rose and bade me farewell before hastening to join them. I watched them vanish into the crop line, not with regret, but with a sense of rising excitement, for after so much waiting and creeping about, it finally felt as if something was beginning to happen.

Getting to my feet, I realised I felt much better for my sleep under the shrub. My body had clearly dealt with the residue of dizziness and nausea I had released from the coercive net, and with any remnant of the plum drug, for I was steady on my feet and quite clear headed. On impulse, I decided that, after all, I
would
go to the Hub.

It was nearing midnight when I was finally approaching the domed building surrounded by towering cacti.

I had spent some time locating the soft-voiced woman who had bandaged my head in the kitchen. I told her my head was hurting and that I felt very tired. She exclaimed at the redness of my cheeks and the bump, which I had forgotten about, and then scolded me when I told her I had fallen and then had not worn a hat when I had walked to the far end of Habitat. It was she who suggested I miss the evening meal and go to lie down, saying I was obviously sunstruck and probably slightly concussed besides. She even prepared some food for me to take back to my hut in case I was hungry, and I ought to have been pleased, for I was so hungry my stomach was cramping, but the food in Habitat was so unappetising I was almost sorry she had bothered.

She had bidden me come and see her before the second sitting for firstmeal on the morrow, and she would check my head. She had said nothing of Balboa, and I hoped this meant the Speci girl had thought better of reporting me to the Committee. After all, I had not truly done much other than to behave erratically. I had no doubt she would want revenge, but she would exact it in some more direct way. I had gone back to my hut and lain down to sleep, imposing a command that would not let me sleep too long. When it woke me, I was alert and much refreshed. I had eaten some of the food I had been given, then I had made my way to the Hub, taking care to stay on the path.

I had not thought to consider what I might ask for, so when I entered the Hub, I stood gazing indecisively at the stone altar for a time. It looked impressive, lit by moonlight, and I tried to decide what request would be answered. Too late now to wish I had thought to ask Swallow what sort of things had been successfully requested in the past.

Suddenly I thought with a flash of irritation of Balboa, telling me to ask God why there were numbers at the bottom of the grave markers, which reminded me of the Tumen asking me if I wanted to speak to God. Prompted by frustration and a mad impulse, I said aloud, ‘I wish to speak to God.’

The walls hummed and to my amazement, a smooth female voice answered. ‘God hears, Specimen Elspeth. Speak.’

My knees all but buckled under me with shock, and I caught hold of the altar to steady myself. It was not only that a voice had responded to me, but that I
recognised
the voice!

‘Ines!’ I whispered, feeling almost boneless.

‘I am a modification of the INES program with a standard voice component, Specimen Elspeth,’ answered the voice I had first heard in the Beforetime complex under Oldhaven. The voice of a computermachine!

‘Why . . . why did you answer when I asked to speak to God?’ I asked, my voice sounding thin and unsteady.

‘I have been programmed to respond to the name God.’

God was a computermachine!

‘Who
programmed you?’ I asked. ‘I mean who made it so you would answer me?’

‘Prime User Kelver Rhonin designed the modification of the INES program which he named God, and activated me in primary mode, Specimen Elspeth. This enables basic operation, but does not include speech. Full activation, including speech recognition and response potential, was initiated by User Hannah.’

‘Hannah!’ I breathed incredulously. ‘
Hannah
programmed you?’

‘User Hannah spoke the codename God and input the authorisation codes that enabled her to be identified as a user, Specimen Elspeth. This allowed her to activate my full programming. She did this and then ordered me to take control of the Pellmar Quadrants and establish a computer connection to a government terminal. This required a routing through Quadrant Four, as government links stream through the primary node there, but the connections between Quadrants One, Two and Three, and Quadrant Four were severed. In order to connect to a government terminal then, the link between all quadrants must be repaired. Also, there would have to be a viable connection between Quadrant Four and a government terminal; if it were not active, it would need to be activated manually.’

I could barely grasp what the voice was telling me, but the fact that Hannah had communicated with God was a good deal less of a shock than it might have been if I had not seen her grave. But I knew that she had been here before because Jacob had scribed of it. Indeed, that very fact might have been what had enabled her to come here after she had returned to the Land after the Great White. It was quite likely that Hannah had spoken to this Kelver Rhonin or to one of the other Beforetimers that had set up God, and aside from being as knowledgeable as all Beforetimers seemed to have been about computermachines, she must have acquired information enough while she was with them to perform the tasks God attributed to her.

But how had she gone from commanding God to dying in Habitat? And what of Jacob and Cassandra’s key? I thought about what God had told me about her.

‘Did Hannah . . . User Hannah tell you why she wanted to communicate with a government terminal?’ I asked, choosing my words carefully and saying them in the same clipped way as God and the Speci, for Dell had told me that her conversations with Ines, particularly in the beginning, needed to be clear and very precise.

‘User Hannah did not express her reasoning to me, Specimen Elspeth,’ God said.

Of course she didn’t, I thought. There would be no point in her confiding in a computermachine. I shook my head, reminding myself that for all the wonder of what I had discovered, I had come to the Hub for a reason, and I had just discovered the means by which we could learn exactly how to escape.

I gathered my thoughts, then I said, ‘God, tell me how the Tumen get in and out of Habitat.’

‘Those which specimens call Tumen enter and depart Habitat via the Hub, Specimen Elspeth,’ answered God.

I suppressed a surge of impatience, for Dell had said over and over that the secret of communicating successfully with a computermachine lay in learning to understand its language and terms so that you could formulate questions that it would understand how to answer, and whose answers you would then be able to understand.

‘Tell me about the Tumen,’ I temporised, wondering why the computermachine was calling me Speci
man
instead of Speci woman.

‘Those devices the specimens call Tumen are three hundredth generation Xzon government-issue andrones with modifications that enable self-repair and the replication of degrading parts, Specimen Elspeth. They have an achievable command range of one hundred kloms from the prime command terminal in this quadrant.’

I had to sit down, for my head was spinning. ‘Are you saying the Tumen are . . . some sort of
machine?
’ I asked in disbelief.

‘The original Xzon andrones were simple purpose-built synthobot units designed along humanoid lines, with a limited number of additional functions that would enable them to search for and transport living survivors of Cataclysm to the Pellmar Quadrants, and install them in cryosleep pods, once the search and rescue program was activated.’

‘So . . . the Tumen took me and my friends captive and put us into cryosleep pods because they were just . . . following their program. But who activated their program? The same person who activated you? This Kelver Rhonin?’