The Red Queen (34 page)

It was because of Ari-noor and Ari-roth, I thought. I would never be able to see ship fish as ordinary beasts, having met them and known them.

‘This was a pond,’ Dragon said suddenly, pointing to a shallow recessed area tiled green and silver in the centre of the foyer, the design a glimpse of what I guessed must be the vast greatfish shipfolk talked about.

‘A pond?’ Tash asked her friend, gently. I was very relieved to hear her speak, though in fact her words were slurred.

‘There was a pond like this in my mother’s audience room, only the design was of a flying fish with golden scales,’ Dragon murmured.

Tash shot me a puzzled look, clearly wondering if Dragon had fallen into delirium. But for me, her words confirmed once and for all that the long-suppressed memories of her childhood as the daughter of the queen of the Red Land were finally accessible to her. But now was not the moment to quiz her about the past.

The androne led us to the other side of the foyer where two low, wide steps brought us down to a crescent-shaped area where a seamed metal door in a curved wall was guarded by immense stone men even bigger than the androne kneeling on a raised platform. For a startling moment I thought it was one of Cassy’s statues, but closer to, I saw that it was the work of someone else. Yet it seemed to me there was something of Cassy in it, as if the person who had created it had learned from the same teacher, or had studied
her
works closely. Even the design – that of a man on the verge of leaping up – reminded me of the glass statue Cassy had created of a woman with all manner of beasts seething about her. Me, I remembered with the same little shock I always felt at being presented by fate with absolute proof that my face had been known in the Beforetime.

The doors of the elevating chambers split open, but when I tried to enter, Tash froze, stopping and releasing Dragon so that I was suddenly supporting her alone.

‘What is it?’ I asked her, puzzled.

‘I can’t,’ she said backing away. ‘Not again.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I tried to soothe her. ‘It is all utterly strange, I know, and I felt as you did the first times I had to go into an elevating chamber. But in just a moment we will all be somewhere where we can take care of Dragon’s wound and we will talk.’

Tash shuddered and reiterated desperately, ‘I can’t!’

I sighed, remembering she had vomited, and asked the androne how many levels we had to go to reach Kelver Rhonin’s residence.

‘The apartment of Kelver Rhonin is on the first floor on this building and can be reached by the emergency exit stair. Do you wish to use the stairs, User Seeker?’

‘Just one flight of steps,’ I said. ‘Dragon?’

‘I feel strange, and for a while I thought I would faint, but I feel steadier now,’ Dragon said. Her words were still slurred but she sounded a good deal more alert than she had done before.

‘Very well, androne,’ I said. ‘Lead us up to the residence of Kelver Rhonin.’

‘I am sorry,’ Tash said with a shudder. ‘I just could not go into one of those moving boxes again.’ We followed the androne along a hall at the top of a flight of stairs.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Dragon said stoically. ‘Nothing is wrong with me.’ In truth she was walking more steadily now, but even so, I wanted to get her to a place where she could rest.

The androne led us past one door to another at the end of the hall, and stopped.

‘Here is the apartment of Kelver Rhonin,’ it announced in its pleasant emotionless voice as the door opened, again seemingly of its own accord, and I wondered if all doors in this strange place opened when someone approached them, for surely God could not be controlling the whole level.

‘I hope there is water, for I am thirsty,’ Dragon said, and that made me aware of my own thirst.

‘Androne, is there water in here fit for drinking?’

‘Yes, User Seeker,’ the androne said. ‘There has been a constant supply of water to this apartment since Kelver Rhonin inhabited it.’

There was something odd about this response, but before I could figure out what it was, the androne stepped through the door. I followed it into the short bare hall beyond the door, then all three of us gasped as the walls came immediately and startlingly to life, glowing with a pattern of radiant golden colour that reminded me of sunlight filtering through leaves moved by the wind. To my amazement, I realised I could hear exactly that – leaves being shuffled by the wind.

The androne did not react at all to this display of sound and light, but Tash and Dragon gazed around in wonderment. Then Dragon reached out a finger to touch the wall and I had a vivid memory of her as a child, reaching out to touch my bare wet belly with a grimy finger after I had lured her from the ruins at Oldhaven. She cried out in shock, and I saw, as she had done, that the pattern of light and shadow on the wall
had reacted to her touch,
as if she had pushed her hand into a cluster of real leaves.

She looked at me and said, ‘The shadows are not of real leaves and yet they act as if they are the shadows of something real. How is that possible?’

‘The walls of all residences in this building have sensitive hologram displays,’ the androne said, blinding all of us.

I bade it extinguish its headlight, for we no longer needed it. The moment it faded, the pattern of leaf shadow and sunlight on the walls became even richer and more detailed. I gathered my wits and bade the androne lead us to the place where we could see to Dragon’s healing, whereupon it continued along the hall and into a room with a high-domed ceiling. Once again, as soon as I stepped into the room, the walls and roof glowed with sunlight, shadow and leaf play. Dragon came after me and gazed about, then knelt to touch the floor, which had changed from a flat smooth whiteness to polished timber boards, pale and narrow with an intricate, almost lavender grain.

‘There are no joins,’ Dragon said, looking up at me. ‘It’s not real either.’

‘Androne, why did the walls and floor change when we entered?’ I asked it.

‘Domestic holos in the rooms in this residence were manually set by User Hannah. Like air and heating, they operate through sensors that detect human presence,’ the androne replied in its perfectly neutral voice. ‘Do you wish to change the enviro-holos, User Seeker?’

I shook my head and said that I did not want to change anything. It fascinated me that the pattern we were seeing had been chosen and seen by Hannah Seraphim. I crossed to a row of large windows along the side of the chamber, where the soft green light emanating from the walls and roof spilled into impenetrable blackness. The light was not strong enough to illuminate even the nearest building. I pressed my face against the glass, and cupped my hands around it, but still I could see nothing.

I had a sudden startling vision of how we would have looked to someone gazing out from a window, seeing us as half-lit ghosts hurrying along the raised black road in the wake of the androne, its reaching beam striking out ahead of us.

‘These are cookers like the ones in the Habitat kitchen,’ Tash said.

I turned to see that she and Dragon had been exploring a series of boxes fixed to the wall facing the dark windows, above and below a long bench. Dragon seemed much better and more alert than she had until now, though blood still glistened at her temple.

‘How could they bear to live without sunlight?’ she said.

It was not really a question, but I said, ‘I am sure they did not. They probably had some way to light Midland, just as there was a way to light Newrome. Something that was like the sun.’

Dragon slanted a look at me. ‘Why don’t you ask God to make it light, then?’

It was a good idea. I turned to the androne and said, ‘Can God light the whole of Midland?’

‘The Night/Day program can be implemented, User Seeker,’ God responded, the smooth voice of the computermachine coming not from the androne but seemingly from the air around us.

‘God, how are you here?’ I asked.

‘I have extended my control to the mainframe at the command of User Hannah, and so I am able to access and operate all programs within all of the levels of Midland, including the Night/Day program.

‘Will you do it, then,’ I asked.

‘The program cannot be initiated instantly without draining power from such essential services as the arc force field protecting Habitat from anomalous fliers, the pumps bringing water to Habitat wells and those supplying fresh air to Midland. In addition, cryosleep pod back-up generators would shut down.’

‘So you can’t do it,’ I concluded, disappointed.

‘The Night/Day program can be implemented in two hectocycles, if the solar wafer array in surface sector D is deployed,’ God continued. ‘Do you wish to pursue this program, User Seeker?’

‘I do,’ I said, not completely sure what I had agreed to. ‘As long as no one is likely to be harmed because of it.’

‘The first instruction coded into any computer program is to do no harm to any human save by authorised government override, User Seeker,’ God said. ‘By all reasonable projections, this action will do no harm to any living creature.’

‘Good,’ I said, reassured that I would not inadvertently do something that endangered the Speci. ‘God, can you have the androne show us where the healing things are, here?’

In answer, the androne crossed the chamber we were in and passed through a door on the other side. I hastened after it, with Dragon after me. The moment I passed through the door, the walls of the hall I had entered lit up with the same moving leaf play as in the other chamber. We passed a darkened room where I caught a glimpse of a bed, then the androne stopped beside a door leading to a bathing chamber with an enormous oval bowl big enough for two people to sit in comfortably and one of the upright plast cupboards the Beforetimers used when they wished to have water rain onto them from above as they bathed.

‘The medical kit is in the bathroom cabinet,’ the androne said.

I stepped into the bathing room, and the walls and ceiling glowed softly to life, this time with plain light though it was golden rather than harsh and white. A long bench was fixed to the wall facing us, with a small bowl-shaped depression over which crouched two of the complex metal devices I recognised from Oldhaven as water levers. There was one of the miraculously clear Beforetime mirrors fixed to the wall above the bench, which showed me how truly filthy and bedraggled Dragon and I looked. And weary.

The androne directed me to a box fixed to the wall, which turned out to be a cupboard containing bandages of all sizes as well as all manner of bottles and jars containing liquids of different hues or perfectly regular shaped pills. There were also many sheets of silver that bulged with what the androne told me were pills that would help someone whose heart was weak. Startled, and wondering how a pill could strengthen a heart, I questioned it until I had located a small bladder of salve that would prevent infection and inhibit pain, though Dragon insisted she was not in pain.

I wanted to wash the blood away to see the wound properly, so I pressed and pushed on one of the levers until it gave out a rattling cough and spat out a bubbling gush of yellowish water. My heart sank, but almost at once the water ran clear. Nevertheless, I asked the androne if the water was safe to drink. It seemed likely, given what God had said about Midland being built over a subterranean water source, that the pipes that carried water might have been damaged by the same event that had cracked the enormous pipes of the
graag
. But the androne assured me that God had ensured the supply of water to Kelver Rhonin’s apartment was safe. I motioned Dragon to quench her thirst, and when she finished I bent and drank my fill. Tash had not followed us and I guessed there must be similar levers in the kitchen where she would drink.

I tested the taps, twisting and pulling until the water grew hot enough to give off a cloud of steam, then I bade Dragon wash well and I did the same. Once my hands were clean and dry, I carefully bathed the wound until I could see the jagged, deepish cut. It needed stitches and I bemoaned the lack of a needle, but Dragon pointed to a tube and said she recognised it as the God stuff used by Committee healers in Habitat to close cuts. Squeezed into a wound that had been cleaned and sprinkled with disinfekan, she said the sides could simply be pressed closed.

‘But it must have been here a terribly long time,’ I muttered. ‘Androne, are you sure this medicine will do no harm to Dragon?’

‘The disinfectant will cleanse the wound, User Seeker,’ the androne said.

I cleaned the wound again, ignoring Dragon’s hiss of pain, sprinkled in some of the disinfekan and then squeezed a thin line of God stuff into the gash. It was thick and yellow but when I pressed the wound together, it melted, and when I released it a minute later, the wound stayed closed.

Impressed, I decided we would take the entire contents of the healing cupboard with us when we left Midland, after discerning the purpose of everything. I would delegate this task to Ana, who had been a midwife in the Land, and was the closest our group had to a proper healer. Ahmedri would have been even better, for as a tribesman, he had been trained in healing arts, but we had yet to find him. In truth, I felt sure that he, Gavyn and the beasts would be waiting for us when we got to Northport, because aside from feeling sure that Maruman and Gahltha would not leave me, I did not believe Ahmedri would leave until I had shown him where his brother’s body lay.

The androne interrupted my thoughts to say that God had instructed me to use a small round mental tube on the cleaned and closed wound. I followed its instructions carefully, and was startled when a fine pale-pink mist flowed out with a loud hiss to cover the wound. Dragon gasped with surprise, as the pink gruel that covered the wound hardened into a pink plast that looked so like skin, one might imagine the wound had healed instantly.

‘How do you feel? I asked.

‘Better,’ Dragon said, then she whispered, ‘We ought to take some of that healing stuff with us when we go.’

‘I thought the same,’ I said. I did not whisper for I thought it quite likely God had taken in every word we had said since leaving Habitat, through the androne’s perceptions or from any of these rooms, since it had addressed us in the main chamber of the apartment, so it was safe to assume it would be able to do so in any of these rooms. Indeed, now that I thought about it, I felt sure Kelver Rhonin would have ensured it, since he had created God.