The Red Queen (42 page)

Nevertheless, I asked, ‘Did Elke Erlinder know the whereabouts of Sentinel?’

‘Prime User Kelver Rhonin asked this of Elke Erlinder, who replied that although Sentinel base site was classified and no one was supposed to know where it was located, he believed that it was quite close to the Eden Facility.’

‘And where is Eden?’ I demanded eagerly.

‘It is located in the remote Gadfian territory of Islak.’

Gadfian
territory, I thought, taken aback. I thought of the deserted Gadfian settlements at the edge of the destroyed and broken land not far from Sador, which had failed because they were sited on tainted ground. I had never seen them, although Jakoby had described them well, but I could not imagine Sentinel would be there. Belatedly, I realised God must be speaking of pre-Cataclysm lands; God must mean the untainted Gadfian land from which the slavemasters occupying the Red Land had come, for that
had
apparently been a remote part of Gadfian territory in the Beforetime.

It might even explain why Cassy had allowed herself to be carried off by Gadfian raiders. Perhaps the small computermachine in its case in the Earthtemple, with its message to me, had actually come from the Sentinel Complex!

I ought to have felt relief, but all I could feel was dread and dismay at the thought that I might have to travel into the heart of the Gadfian domains.

‘Elspeth?’

It was Swallow. I sat up straight in my seat and found my neck was aching and my arm was numb where it had been pressed between my head and the narrow table beside the bed in my sleeping chamber. After we had returned from the Galon Institute, Ana had begun setting up the other end of the process that would enable God to send the visions from the large screen in the Galon Institute to the small screen in one of the rooms of Kelver Rhonin’s residence. I had wanted to help, but in the end none of us could properly understand the computermachine’s instructions, save Ana. In the end I had left her with Swallow, who would help as best he could, and had come to my chamber to study the notes and maps I had brought with me in the hope of figuring out where Eden was – a tedious and ultimately fruitless business, though I had not gone through every scrap of paper yet.

‘I fell asleep,’ I said, unnecessarily, my voice a dry rasp. I stood and stretched, immediately feeling more alert. ‘Has Ana got it working properly yet?’ She had already managed to get several flashes of what the androne was seeing – enough for us to gauge that it was still crossing the desert and that there was nothing in sight. But it had been afternoon then and from the darkness at my windows, it was now night, true night, if Ana was right about the cycle of moon and sun inside Midland matching the real cycle outside.

‘It has been working for hours but the androne has not yet reached Westside. You missed the Midland sunset. It was very pretty.’ His tone was dry.

‘I suppose I could simply ask God to make it sunset again so I can see it,’ I said. I yawned and my stomach rumbled loudly.

Swallow grinned. ‘Exactly the subject I came to enquire about. Tash and Dragon have made a marvellous meal out of what looked to me to be nothing more than dust and stones. The whole time she was eating it, Ana gave God the sharp edge of her tongue about the quality of food being fed to the Speci!’

‘You have eaten?’ I asked, following him along the hall to the main chamber.

‘Only Dragon, Tash and Ana ate. I went back after a little to keep watch on the screen. Ana forbade us to wake you but that was hours ago and I want some company while I eat.’

‘Where are the others?’

‘Ana and Dragon have gone off exploring with the androne and Tash was very weary after cooking and went to bed.’ He frowned. ‘Dameon went to bed early as well. I thought to wake him when we ate but he seems a bit spiritless since we were resurrected . . . I will not say he is ill but he is not himself. Perhaps whatever the Speci gave us to make us sleep affected him more strongly than the rest of us. That is what Ana thinks. In any case, come and eat and keep me company. Unless you truly are still too weary.’ His expression was suddenly serious and his eyes sharpened in that particular way that told me he was scrying out someone’s aura.

‘I’m fine,’ I said tersely, ‘and I am hungry.’

In truth, what I felt in that moment was guilt, for I was certain Dameon was suffering because he would never see Balboa again. He had not even had the chance to make some gesture of farewell. It was no use telling myself that it might be best under the circumstances. I wanted to speak to him about Balboa, but what could I possibly say to salve his grief? Especially since I did not think the Speci woman worthy of him and would be hard-pressed not to speak of the fact that she had spoken against me, thereby implicating him and the others. Besides, it mattered not that she was unworthy – his love was as whole and pure-hearted as Dameon himself.

Entering the main chamber, I was struck by the sight of Midland, bathed now in ethereal moonlight. There was a fat, false moon shining softly in the midst of a sprinkle of stars and I wondered vaguely if it was a copy of the real moon shining on the roof of the vast cavern containing this level of the settlement, then I wondered if Maruman would loathe this pretend moon as much as he hated the real thing.

Thinking of the old cat, I ached fiercely for his soft weight in my arms and in my mind, and suddenly I felt a surge of impatience to get out of Midland and get on with my quest. I crossed to the windows and stared out, noting there was no movement at all, not the flight of a bird nor the drift of cloud. All was still.

‘A beautiful dead city,’ I murmured.

‘Not dead but stillborn,’ Swallow said, coming to stand beside me. Puzzled, I looked at him and he shrugged. ‘I thought of it just now, gazing out as you are doing, and so I asked God. Apparently no one ever lived here, other than a few technicians and workers for periods of time, and a few people like Kelver Rhonin.’

‘No one in all Midland?’ I asked in disbelief, and suddenly I remembered that God had spoken of workers and technicians when I had asked about the people in Midland, but I had merely assumed it had been referring to the Galon Institute. It had not occurred to me that it had meant there was no one else in all of Midland.

‘In all the Pellmar Quadrants,’ Swallow said. ‘God told me the settlements were created by a group of people who wanted to try to live differently from other Beforetimers. Radical Utopians, it called them. Everyone was to earn the same basic coin whatever their work, and everyone would serve the settlement in many capacities, both important and menial. Also, everyone would learn all the time and people would own very little.’

‘It sounds very like Obernewtyn,’ I said, ‘except that there are no beasts or green and growing things.’

‘Ana thinks there would have been, in time,’ Swallow said.

‘So why was it never inhabited?’

‘It ought to have been,’ the gypsy said. ‘They were supposed to come here, the makers and all those who had agreed to commit to the ideals of the place, chosen by lottery from all over the world so there would be no favouritism as to sex or age or land or wealth. The people behind the Pellmar Quadrants were very wealthy people of great influence and great idealism. They wanted the Pellmar Quadrants to be governed according to their Utopian ideals. That meant they had to be freed from the need to obey the ordinary laws and rules of the surrounding land, which belonged to one of the five powers. So they made a bargain with the Uropan leaders. They could run the Pellmar Quadrants as they liked, so long as they were not actually planning to take over Uropa. In exchange, two govamen projects were to be located here – one was the Galon Institute, which was to investigate and research ways to rescue people from devastated areas without risking other people, or in case there were no people left who were able to help. God says the Pellmar people voted at once to accept that because it fitted their ideals. But the other part of the bargain concerned a cryopod storage –
not
the one that would be part of the rescue program but a vast storage that was to house cryopods containing volunteers. The trouble arose because the Uropan govamen wanted a secure storage to which the Utopians would have no access. It was the secrecy that bothered the Pellmar Quadrants people. It went against their ideals. But the Pellmar experiment hinged on govamen allowing the inhabitants complete autonomy. Finally it was decided that since those in the cryopods were already in them, and would remain unconscious for as long as they were housed in Pellmar Quadrants, an agreement could be struck. That happened just before the Great White. Time enough for the occupied cryopods to be installed here, but too late for the people who were to inhabit Pellmar Quadrants.’

‘So the people God has been resurrecting . . .’

‘Were originally people rescued by the andrones,’ Swallow said. ‘But the babies and children that have been resurrected in more recent times are almost all from the Beforetime storage. God doesn’t know why they were put into cryopods, since so many were too young to have volunteered and I can’t see their parents choosing such a fate for them. When Hannah found a good many had died because the cryopods were flawed, this enabled her to convince God to create Habitat, but you know all of this. Once all of the rescued people had been resurrected, God started resurrecting the adults from the storage, but a lot of them were sickly or unable to cope with a world so changed from the one they remembered. Eventually God started resurrecting the babies and children, and that was a lot more successful. When they grew up they bred well and often and they adapted better because they had nothing to compare Habitat with. But there are some sections of the cryopod storage that have not been touched at all. The special anomaly section is one of these; apparently anyone who shows anomalous abilities in Habitat is brought out and put there. This is connected to some instruction God has about special anomalies, which it won’t discuss. The other anomalies are in Section C, and I think all of them are sick in some way that could be cured if God had access to a govamen computermachine. Apparently it would not need a person to communicate with at all. It only needs access to the govamen medical storage to get what it needs.’

‘God told you all of this?’ I marvelled.

Swallow gave me a dry look and said it was Ana who had worked out most of it from God’s answers to
his
questions. ‘It is a wonder to me how swiftly she grasps the gibberish God speaks.’

‘I would love to know why babies and children were put into cryopods in the Beforetime, but it seems unlikely that we will ever know the truth of it,’ I said. ‘At least the special anomalies removed from Habitat are safe, even if they are asleep, for it is likely that most of them are Misfits.’

‘All the more reason to find a govamen computermachine so that God can be instructed to wake and free them,’ Swallow said.

I nodded absently, thinking about Kelver Rhonin and wondering if he really had travelled beyond Northport in search of a workable govamen computermachine, and what his purpose had been, if there were only a few people in the Pellmar Quadrants when his world ended. For what need would there have been to reconnect an empty settlement with govamen? Unless he had hoped to issue an invitation to survivors.

‘Prime User Kelver Rhonin, and isn’t that a mouthful to hear again and again,’ Swallow said, shaking his head. ‘It is hard to believe he lived here alone, even in the Beforetime.’

I glanced at the gypsy, wondering what he had seen in my aura that had allowed him to guess so accurately what I had been thinking. Then I took in his words and said, ‘There must have been a few other people here when the Great White came: technicians and workers, and there might have been people visiting, not to mention the Utopians themselves, and I daresay govamen people came from time to time to talk with Kelver.’

‘According to God, there were quite a lot of people here towards the end of the Beforetime, all making final preparations for the habitation ceremony,’ Swallow said. ‘Then there came a day when the place was emptied out of all the workers, just after the govamen cryopods were brought in and installed – everything was ready for the ceremony – there were to be a great number of visitors and the first inhabitants were to come. That is when it happened – the Great White. If it had been a sevenday later, all of those people would have been here, safe. Instead, there truly would have been only a handful of people here, and my guess is most of them took off as soon as they could, striving back to their loved ones and their lives, never knowing it was all gone. God was not a witness to it all, of course, because it was only active in the Galon Institute and here, and the cryopod storage. After Hannah woke it properly and had it create Habitat, it gradually took control of all this level of Midland, then all of the levels. A lot of what it knows comes from the other devices it swallowed up.’

That was the Ines part of God, I thought, created to be hungry for knowledge, to draw in and seek out information, to analyse it and make connections.

‘Don’t fall into one of your daydreams,’ Swallow chided. ‘Come and eat. Your stomach is rumbling so loud I can’t hear myself think, and the food is getting cold.’ He drew me to the table and I saw that a feast had indeed been laid out. I sat down and Swallow gave me a plate, then took one for himself. ‘I was not hungry in Habitat, but I have an insatiable greed for food that tastes of something. The odd thing is that Tash finds the food very queer and over spiced.’

‘She is accustomed to the blandness of Habitat food,’ I said, taking spoonfuls of what looked like a creamy porridge, and adding a dollop of what was surely stewed apple, a handful of nuts, a spoonful of thick cream. ‘Where did all of this come from in a city where people did not live?’ I muttered, around the first heavenly mouthful. There was no answer from Swallow who was too busy eating.

It was God who interrupted the blissful feast.

‘User Seeker, you asked to be notified if Unit A managed to make contact with any of your technicians,’ it said.

I forgot my stomach at once as I rose and tried to speak. Swallow handed me water and watched me choke it down, wondering aloud why the computermachine had not contacted him as he had asked, if the androne had reached Westside. God answered that Ana had asked it to summon us. Together, we hurried to the small chamber where God had made it possible for the little computermachine to show what the large one had shown. The small screen was still showing empty desert, now dimly lit by starlight. Then something struck me.
Nothing was moving.