Glass (11 page)

Then: ‘You heard the news, sir?’

Dwllis shook his head. ‘What news would that be?’

‘Lord Archivist of Selene has been assassinated. Fishtail in the back, they say. Rumours of two factions scrapping, sir, and a monster come to be a demagogue. Pikeface, they do say.’

Dwllis, recalling how he had last seen Lord Archivist Querhidwe, said, ‘That is most awful tidings.’

‘Makes three in two days, that does.’

‘Three?’

‘Yes, sir. Surely you’ve heard what happened at Gaya’s?’

Dwllis shook his head again, mouth open.

‘That Rhannan and that Aswaque assassinated by scalpers. Dreadful scenes, sir, makes me shiver just to think about it. Forty-odd people killed in the crush afterwards.’

Numbed, Dwllis leaned against a polythene wall. How much had he missed? ‘But… but has anybody been caught?’

‘Not that I’ve heard, sir, no. But I have heard tell of all the other Archivists upping their security. Stands to reason, of course.’ Coelendwia stopped chattering to point down the path. ‘Who might that be, eh?’

A cloaked figure was striding up towards the tower. Dwllis recognised the rough garment style but could not place it.

‘It’s one of them druids,’ Coelendwia said.

He was correct. Dwllis stepped forward a few paces to meet the man. ‘I am the noble Keeper of the Cowhorn Tower,’ he said.

The druid stopped just two yards away, but, illuminated only by light escaping from inside the tower, he remained a shadow without identity. When he spoke, however, Dwllis recognised the voice of the druid they had met before. ‘I am Hedalgwadey. We are known to each other.’ He handed Dwllis a small silver fishtail on the end of a chain. ‘This is for you. The electronic sister whom we shall soon inter bequested it to you. You are required at the interment, which takes place tomorrow night.’

‘Hedalgwadey,’ Dwllis mused. ‘So you trust me now.’

‘You are Dwllis?’

‘I am. But how could you know that my attendance is required at the interment?’

Hedalgwadey replied, ‘There is more than one channel of communication between pyuterkin. Some channels we eavesdrop upon. Those with sufficiently sensitive ears can hear the soughing of innumerable electronic tides, which are the memories of the city broadcasting their speed of light whirr. That is how we know which bodies to bring to the Cemetery.’

On impulse, Dwllis placed the chain around his neck, so that the chill metal fragment rested between his collarbones. ‘And this?’ he asked, a forefinger against his breastbone.

‘The bequest was made before Querhidwe’s demise.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Druids know these things.’ And with that, Hedalgwadey was gone.

Dwllis was disconcerted enough by this visit for him to delay his return to work. Besides, he was finding one-handed life difficult: how much easier it would be if Etwe were here to open things for him, to hold things, to stand conveniently by. How much he regretted his temper. He could not quite accept that she really was gone.

Throughout the next day Dwllis found himself troubled by such thoughts, and as dusk approached, the gloom of the day brightening into ruddy haze, he felt he fully understood the consequences of his action. In fact, part of his enlightenment was that action
had
consequences.

When night arrived, so did Hedalgwadey. The druid was dressed in a brown robe wire-belted, carrying a wooden lumod and a sickle. Dwllis, nervous for no reason he could think of, brushed specks of dust from his costume and studied the druid’s manner and posture for signs of criticism. After a significant pause, he asked, ‘Do you think this outfit suits?’

It was simple grey cotton – his most elegant cuts worn with blue ankle boots. The silver fishtail he wore outside his jacket. Hedalgwadey muttered, ‘It’ll pass.’

Dwllis closed and locked the door to the Cowhorn Tower, lit up the
Absent
sign by touching a button, then, pressing speech amplifiers over his ears, followed Hedalgwadey to the Cemetery. Sphagnum Street, already choked with cables and pipes, was further littered with cheap moons on sticks, the thoroughfare looking as if some surreal tide had left erratically glowing flotsam. But the clerks still prattled and the people still listened, symbols in hands, unless they were harassed by noctechnes. Dwllis noticed that there were two types of moon, waxing and waning, the holders of which seemed to be in opposition, and seeing this he was reminded of Coelendwia’s remarks concerning two duelling factions.

He had no idea what to expect in the Cemetery. So far as he knew, only druids and other pyutons witnessed interment, and for a few mad moments he wondered if any augmented gnosticians would be present.

Inside the Cemetery, walking along muddy paths between megaliths tall as trees, Dwllis asked one question. ‘Excuse me, but how do you come to be a druid? How does anybody?’

‘We are appointed by elder druids who enjoy access to the secret thoughts of the great country to which the minds of so many electronic sisters travel. These thoughts give clues to the identity of druids to be, these being boys of between eight and eleven years. Such boys are taken to the Cemetery to begin their novice years. Any failing become Swamps fodder, or are thrown to the mercy of the streets.’

‘Are only boys allowed to be druids?’

‘Just as pyuterkin are almost all female. It is cosmic balance.’

‘And what is this great country?’

Hedalgwadey replied, ‘Every now and again it imposes itself upon Cray, according to the rhythm of an arcane cycle.’

Dwllis said nothing more before arriving at the stone circle in which the interment would take place. A double ring containing two small rings seemed to be the form, but Dwllis could see little since light was provided only by iron braziers. These braziers emitted the odour of nuts. All around, the standing stones glowed dull red. They seemed like fingers emerging from the sodden ground, he but a toy in some subterranean giant’s palm. He felt a chill upon his skin.

There were fifteen, perhaps twenty other druids present inside the circle, some dressed in brown, some in black, some in white. All carried sickles. Now Hedalgwadey had shown him to his place he could see Querhidwe’s body lying on the ground, dressed in a temple gown, the fishtail still in her back. It was ghoulish, as if she had been dropped there without ceremony.

One of the white druids looked into the sky and began altering the controls of a box he carried. Dwllis glanced up, saw aeromorph lights, hazy behind engine fumes, and saw, lower down, a few bats. There was a rainbow flicker as some unlit aerial vehicle reflected Cray light.

He looked to see who else had been invited, noticing Tierquthay, small and white-fuzzlocked, bottle-bottom spectacles perched on the end of his long nose. He was hunched over as if the weight of his elevation to Lord Archivist had already left its mark. He also spotted Tierquthay’s deputy Iquinlass, who had spoken to him at Selene’s Archive. Apart from these two the circle contained only druids. Hedalgwadey returned to stand at Dwllis’ side.

The white-robed druid took from his box a black object. At first Dwllis thought it was a mask, but when he threw it into the air with a shout it expanded and left a white trail: a headbreaker. Dwllis froze. But the device, as if it were a dud, flopped upon Querhidwe’s head and remained still. The druid made a sign and the headbreaker split Querhidwe’s cranium in two.

Everybody relaxed and began chatting. Hedalgwadey said, ‘The first part of the ritual is over. You have witnessed what very few outsiders have witnessed.’

‘I still cannot believe I was asked. What happens now?’

‘The cranial pyuter will extract certain veins, from which neural fibres will be grown, fibres that will connect the pyuterkin to a ganglion. Watch as the process begins.’

Dwllis did watch. The headbreaker, falling off the skull like a green leaf in autumn, was collected by the druid, and something tiny that Dwllis could not see was placed into a beaker of jelly. Intense light was shone upon this beaker by means of five lumods thrust into the ground around it. The white druid placed his box close by, then sauntered off.

‘Is that your chief?’ Dwllis asked.

‘We have no chief,’ Hedalgwadey replied, a trace of surprise in his voice. ‘You outsider folk may need your absurd hierarchies, but we do not. In death we are all equal. When you live with death you achieve an appreciation of equality.’

Neural fibres were now emerging from the jelly, twisting this way and that but growing ever nearer the box, like worms. When they reached the box they paused, but then, invigorated, carried on growing until they reached the plastic-splintered rent in Querhidwe’s head.

‘And now?’ Dwllis asked.

‘The fundamental output devices inside the pyuterkin’s brain are connected to the ganglion. The veins control the system. Now be quiet, for the moment of connection arrives.’

Dwllis shivered. He felt that a necromantic deed was here being enacted. It was perverted, sickening, this meddling with brains and self-motivating technology. It could not be right. Damn,
why
had Querhidwe requested his presence?

The white druid knelt at the ganglion, now a mass of damp tendrils exposing only one part of the box – a grille and a dial. First checking the state of the body and the beaker, the druid raised his hand to touch it. Other druids closed in. Hedalgwadey motioned for Dwllis to move in so that he stood only a few yards away from Querhidwe. Everybody was leaning in, as if to watch. The white druid touched the dial, then turned it.

Dwllis wore high-quality linguistic amplifiers, capable of dragging the quietest mumble out of Cray’s clamour. He heard a whine, a buzz, and then… what was that sound? The druids relaxed, smiled, but listened. Dwllis heard a soughing, the most peaceful, hypnotic ambience he had ever experienced. It was a sound like the crash of waves mingled with the swish of treetops, a sound that brought images small and vast, botanic and universal.

The white druid said, ‘The interment is done. This electronic sister has passed away. Bring on the barrow stones.’

Hedalgwadey led Dwllis out of the circle. ‘Now we build the barrow,’ he said.

‘Tonight?’

In reply Hedalgwadey pointed to the heavens. Dwllis saw a dozen pink lights hanging over the Cemetery. They dropped and became giant bats with rotors, carrying megaliths in nets. Dwllis gasped in a moment of recognition. The Cowhorn Tower stood close to the Cemetery. Many times in earlier years he had seen these lights through night haze and wondered what they were. Even as a teenager, living alone in Cochineal Mews, he had seen them and thought them some foreign breed of aerician.

The bats, under druidic direction, placed their loads, flying off when the nets had been cut. As an operation it was organised to perfection. The noise was loud, but no worse than city din without ear protection. After an hour a barrow had been made around Querhidwe’s body, with only the roof and one wall-stone remaining to be added.

Hedalgwadey led Dwllis into the barrow, first allowing the other druids, Tierquthay and Iquinlass to enter. Iquinlass stared at Dwllis when she recognised him, but since Dwllis kept his right hand in his pocket she did not notice his injury. Then the white druid said, ‘We shall listen to the sounds of the afterlife.’

He turned the ganglion dial. The soughing sound surged, then quietened, and Dwllis realised that the druid was trying to maximise its volume. Because he stood at the back he was able to whisper at Hedalgwadey’s cowl, ‘What is that ganglion?’

‘A radio receiving the other side.’

A voice: deep, cracked, old. The barrow stones shielded Dwllis from city echoes, allowing him to hear clearly. It said, ‘I speak to the successor of Querhidwe, O new Lord Archivist of Selene. Use the gnosticians! Care not what they are, but extract what you may from them. Though they are a scourge, they hold secret knowledge that must be retrieved. Heed not the tenets of Gaya, for the memoirs of Gaya are fantastical, baroque lies, designed to confuse, misinform, and manipulate. Be one with empty Selene! And now, I must depart, and consider what else to do…’

So they filed out of the barrow. Already, bats were hovering above the stone circle with megaliths and keystones for the roof. Dwllis took a deep breath and allowed Hedalgwadey to guide him away.

They stood on a hillock just outside the circle, watching everybody disperse. ‘That is all, outsider,’ Hedalgwadey said.

‘But I still do not understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘Who was that speaking to Tierquthay?’

Hedalgwadey replied, ‘A spirit of the afterlife.’

‘But who?’

‘There are a number of spirits. Interference means that the broadcasts are not always of good quality. We are but observers of that other world, not inhabitants, and so I cannot say precisely who it was. However, you will recall the grotesque creature with the black bag of a body that I mentioned in our earlier meeting. Probably it would have been her. But come now, you must leave the Cemetery.’

‘But I must know what is going on here!’

Hedalgwadey stood absolutely still. Then in tones almost sarcastic he said, ‘Some of these spirits we have seen in the lens. If you truly have seen yourself in that necromantic device then maybe you know more than you realise.’

Dwllis wondered if this druid was hiding the truth. Convinced now that the Archive of Selene was at the bottom of all that had happened to him – and of much that was happening to the city – he felt that he needed to find out as much as possible. But in twenty minutes he would be at the Cemetery gate, alone.

~

Dwllis departed the Cemetery deep in thought. He kicked aside wires, lunar rubbish, clumps of soil and grime, metal boils and blisters from the city’s aching walls, ignoring every mendicant outer, until he reached the path up to the Cowhorn Tower. He stopped, then hurried on to the Copper Courtyard.

It being well past midnight the courtyard was locked up, but Dwllis, knowing that Cuensheley would get up for him, persuaded the pyuter system to rouse her. In minutes she was at the entrance, unhappy, dressed in a black gown.