The Red Queen (5 page)

The young woman shrugged, said, ‘All right, princess, I’ll go with you to free the bird. Ish, I got this. You go to Hannah.’ She pressed the memory seed into his hand, bidding him fiercely to give it to Hannah the minute he saw her. ‘I’ll let her know when we’ve finished and she can guide us to the rest of you. Tell her to stay open to me.’ Cassy set off again.

Ishmael caught hold of the other girl’s arm as she would have followed, saying fiercely, ‘Never you mind that bird, you take care of
her,
Violet.
Seeker
gonna need Cassy more’n any bird or memory seed, far as I can tell. Hannah seen a whole slew a new stuff and she say without Cassy, the Seeker ain’t worth shit. They two halves of the whole and who gonna use dat memory seed if she not there to make sure it come to the Seeker’s hand in time.’

‘Wake Elspeth,’ said a soft, familiar voice, and the dream dissolved.

I woke to find the surface under me hard and cold. This and the lack of restraining bands told me I had been moved. I was relieved to find that I could open my eyes but I could see nothing more than the dark cloth lying over my face. There was light enough beyond for me to make out the rough weave and I tried and failed to lift my hand to push it away. My inability to move frightened me, but perhaps I had made some movement, for the cloth slipped from my face and a terrible, blinding radiance speared painfully into my eyes. I would have screamed and clapped my hands over them, if I could. As it was, the only thing I could do was to close my eyes again, and even then, they burned and watered.

‘She is awake!’ It was Dragon’s voice, full of yearning and love.

Despite the wild rush of joy I felt at hearing her and knowing she was awake and safe, I did not dare open my eyes again, for I could see the intensity of the light through my eyelids. But I longed to see her and to ask her what had happened to her and how she had come to be here.

‘I know you are anxious about her, Dragon, but we must be patient,’ Analivia said kindly as the cloth was laid over my eyes once more. ‘The fact that she slept longer than us means she will likely take longer to wake.’

‘I thought she was awake,’ Dragon said, sounding disappointed.

Though I could not speak to either of them, I was elated to find them alive and unharmed. But why was I unable to move when the Tumen had told me the painful treatments I had been subjected to would restore my muscles?

‘She is weeping,’ Swallow said.

Three of them, I thought, and felt a soft breath fan my cheek.

‘Elspeth, if you are awake, try to speak or move something, but whatever you do, don’t open your eyes,’ the Twentyfamilies gypsy urged softly.

I wanted to laugh and say his warning had come too late, but my body remained leaden and unresponsive. I heard Swallow sigh and then warm, strong fingers clasped my limp hand.

‘You are right, Dragon,’ Dameon said, his dear voice pitched low. ‘She can hear us.’ My heart leapt because of course
he
would know I was awake, especially with physical contact to enhance his empathy. He went on in his gentle cultured voice, ‘Elspeth, be calm. This is nothing. We have all endured the numbness and weakness you feel and we are all recovered. For now, only rest and know that we are so very glad to find that you, too, were chosen.’

Chosen?
I thought, and wove a farseeking tendril to ask what he meant, at the same time, marvelling that it had not occurred to me to do so at once. To my delight, the tendril formed easily and I revelled in the supple strength of my mind as I reached out to Dameon.

‘It is good to hear your voice, my dearest friend,’ I farsent him.

Hearing his grunt of discomfort I realised that I had forgotten to temper the force of my sending. I was sorry to have hurt Dameon, but I could not help relishing my Talents and having the full use of them again, if not of my body. Only now could I admit to myself that I had been deathly afraid that the Tumen or his people had permanently damaged my mind.

‘Dameon,’ Swallow’s voice was sharp, ‘there is no way you can know if she is awake.’ Which was odd, because of course there was.

‘I meant only that
I
could hear before I could speak, when I was resurrected,’ Dameon responded smoothly. ‘So maybe Elspeth can hear us, too, even if she cannot respond.’

I was confounded by his words, because I
had
responded and he had heard me. I was about to farseek him again to ask what the hell was going on when I felt the fleeting touch of a finger on my lips, an unmistakable warning to be silent, and since I had not uttered a word aloud, I must take it as a warning not to farseek.

The thought that revealing myself as a Misfit would endanger me sent a chill down my spine, but how could anyone know I was exerting a Talent save the recipient of a sending? Unless the Tumen had a Beforetime machine that could detect the use of Misfit powers. Certainly the govamen had been interested in Misfit powers, but so far as I could remember from what the Tumen attending me had said, his machines had registered only that I had woken from cryosleep when I ought not to have done. He had not accused me of using Misfit powers to resist the cryosleep pod. He had said I was an anomaly, and that God required anomalies to be thoroughly investigated. He had spoken of assembling the means, even as he had drugged me to sleep again. So perhaps there was some sort of device trained on me that had the power to detect Talent, and that was why Dameon had warned me not to farseek him. Perhaps the contact when I had farsought him had been too brief to register. Dameon had used his empathy, too, but it might be that the device was focused solely on me, or that it could not detect the use of empathy. Certainly the Herders’ demon bands had not blocked empathy. Dameon claimed this was because empathy worked at some deeper level than coercion and farseeking. He had been sure that futuretellers would not be affected by demon bands either, though there had been no safe way to test his theory.

Whatever the truth of it, I would restrain myself until I could learn more of our situation. At least I could make passive use of my Talents to learn something of my surroundings. It did not take me long to discover that, far from being outside in the blinding sunlight as I had imagined, I was in a small, high-roofed chamber with Ana, Dameon, Dragon and Swallow. This meant the light that had blinded me must be unnatural. My senses told me there was no one in the chamber but me and my friends, unless the Tumen really did possess the ability to shield their minds.

‘Elspeth?’ Dragon cried suddenly. My other hand was taken in a hot sticky grip and pressed to a warm, damp softness. It twisted my heart not to be able to respond physically or mentally to the girl, but even if I dared to risk farseeking her, it would be pointless given the powerful unconscious shields her mind always threw up.

‘Go gently, little one,’ cautioned Analivia. ‘Remember how hard it was when you woke.’

‘We need to tell her . . .’ Swallow began.

‘We should tell her something of Habitat,’ Dameon interrupted, with an urgent authority that surprised me. ‘Even if she is too confused to take it in, the sound of familiar voices will reassure her.’

‘Very well,’ Swallow said stiffly. ‘You start.’

I thought he had addressed Dameon, but it was Analivia who spoke.

‘Elspeth, we are within a high wall that encircles a settlement the size of Guanette. It is very hot and dry here, for it never rains, but there are heavy morning dews and three wells with plenty of fresh water. There are no true trees growing within the wall, but there are good crops and a grove of strange plants the size of small trees. Water must be hauled up in buckets . . .’

‘Many hands make light work,’ Swallow interjected in a grimly cheerful voice.

‘As far as we can tell,’ Analivia continued, ‘the water supply is free of taint. Certainly all of the vegetables and fruits we recognise are normal-sized and, as you know, outsize growth is one of the first signs of taint.’ There was a little pause during which I imagined her looking around at the others, questioning. Perhaps one of them nodded to her to go on, for she did so. ‘None of us was conscious when we were brought here so we have no idea exactly where we are or what is outside the wall around Habitat. But there are no scraper ruins visible beyond it, nor any mountains or high ground. The people here say there is nothing but poisonous white desert on all sides.’

People? I thought and willed Analivia to speak about them, but she began describing the crops growing inside Habitat. My thoughts turned to the city Jacob Obernewtyn had spoken of in his journal. He had described it as rising up from a white desert but he had said nothing of that desert being poisonous. Of course he could not have known such a thing from a dream. Later, he had scribed of it as Pellmar Quadrants and the Tumen had said Habitat was in Pellmar Quadrants. But if we were in Jacob’s city, surely scrapers would have been visible beyond the wall around Habitat. Certainly the scrapers I had seen in my dream of Maruman would have been visible above any wall.

All at once it struck me that the Tumen had
not
said Habitat was in Pellmar Quadrants. He had said
the Galon Institute
was in Pellmar Quadrants. I had assumed Habitat must be close if captives were put there to wake, yet it might be far from Jacob’s city.

I thought of the things Rheagor had said of the Beforetime city where his ancestor had been held captive, and wondered if he had not escaped from Pellmar Quadrants, but had been released because the Tumen had decided there was no use gathering animal survivors when Eden did not send anyone to collect them. Ana was still speaking, and realising that she had begun to talk of the other inhabitants of Habitat, I listened intently.

‘. . . inhabitants of Habitat call themselves the Speci,’ she was saying. ‘None of them knows any more than we do what is outside the wall, because all but seven are descended from the first Speci chosen by God generations back. Six of the seven who are not descended from Speci inside Habitat were resurrected as children too young to have any memory of their lives before. There is only one man here who was resurrected as a youth, but that was more than seventy years ago, and his mind is clouded with age. Almost all of what the Speci think about the world beyond Habitat comes from things told to them by a woman they call Naha. She was not among the first comers, but Habitat had only existed for a couple of generations when she was resurrected. She is long dead of course, but the Speci revere her because they say it was she who convinced God to save enough of humanity to repopulate the world again. That is what she told them and she knew everything about Habitat, even the names of the Speci and things no one but God could know about them. She told them that beyond the walls surrounding Habitat was a ruinous wasteland where nothing could survive. She told them they had been chosen by God to be saved, so that when the world was clean again they could go forth and reinhabit it.’

Frustrated that Ana had segued into mysticism and superstition, I mustered my will and managed to croak, ‘Others . . .?’ My throat felt as if I had swallowed broken glass.

‘She spoke!’ Dragon cried in astonishment.

‘That is impossible!’ Ana muttered. ‘None of us could speak for days and days after waking!’

‘Get some water,’ Dameon commanded with uncharacteristic sharpness. He released my hand and my head was lifted, a mug pressed against my lips. I drank, reminded irresistibly of my Tumen attendant.

‘Not too much at once,’ Analivia cautioned, in a gently authoritative voice, and I had a fleeting, vivid memory of her talking with wretched self-loathing and grief about her treatment at the hands of her foul brother, Moss, whom she had slain to save Dragon. There was no trace of that broken woman in Ana’s voice now, though.

‘It is better not to speak yet,’ Dameon advised me so firmly that it was clearly a warning. ‘As to your question, we do not know what became of the beasts that accompanied us. But there are no animals within Habitat.’

He had not mentioned Gavyn or Ahmedri, though he must know I had been asking about them as well as about the beasts, and there must be a reason for his reticence. Of course I knew as well as the others that the world beyond the walls was not a poisoned wasteland. Ahmedri and then Gavyn and Rasial had left the camp we had made, which must have been within the catchment area the Tumen had mentioned. The likelihood was that Ahmedri and Gavyn had gone beyond it, and so had escaped detection and capture. Perhaps the Tumen would go a-hunting if they learned of their existence. ‘How long . . . have you been . . . here?’ I asked.

The silence that met my question was profound. I was about to reassure them that I knew I had slept for three months, when Swallow spoke.

‘I was the first of us to wake in the Hub a six-month and two sevendays past,’ he said. ‘I feared the rest of you dead, so you can imagine my relief when Analivia turned up almost a month later with no idea how much time had passed. It was the same when Dragon appeared and then with Dameon. And now, you are here.’

I could barely take in that I had been asleep for
over six months
! But why had the Tumen told me I had been asleep three months?

Swallow went on heavily, inexorably. ‘The thing is that there is no way of judging how long I slept
before
being awakened. I have no memory of what happened before I was . . . chosen, and I had no sense that more than a day or so had passed, but it was the same with the others, even Dameon who came almost two months after Ana.’

My stomach lurched as if I had stepped off a cliff as I remembered that the Tumen had told me I had been asleep three cycles
since the last waking
.

‘This is too much and too fast,’ Dameon said, and I guessed he felt my panic.

There was a silence in which I could imagine an exchange of looks between Dameon and Swallow, then the gypsy said firmly, ‘If I were Elspeth, I would want to know everything there is to know. It near drove me mad lying there aware and awake, with no idea of what had happened to me or where the rest of you were.’ I heard the sound of movement and when he spoke again his voice was closer. ‘When I first woke, I couldn’t move at all of course, but the Speci tending me told me it was always like that in the beginning, when people are resurrected. When I could speak, I asked how long I had been unconscious and I was told that I had been asleep since the death of the world, and that I lived only because God had chosen to save me. When they said everything beyond the wall around Habitat was poisoned, I told them it was nonsense. Where I came from, many people had been born since the end of the Beforetime. They dismissed my memories as dream gibberish, saying many resurrected adults awoke with minds confused by imagined pasts. They insisted that the world beyond Habitat had been fit only for fell mutants for many hundreds of years and that I was one of the few who had been chosen by God to be saved when the end came, and that if the world
were
habitable, God would have opened Habitat so the Speci could go forth and multiply, just as the Covenant promised. I did not argue for I could see they were speaking the truth as far as they understood it.’ There was a slight emphasis on his words, reminding me that like many Twentyfamilies gypsies, Swallow could literally
see
the energy given off by people and animals, and long experience had taught him to recognise the changes that occurred when someone lied. However a person could say a wrong thing and seem to be telling the truth if they believed what they were saying.