Genetopia (15 page)

The Riverwalkers waited on the oil-calm waters of a holding bay until a sullen-looking foreman gestured to them that a berthing space was clear. Instantly, the mutts started working their treadles and the boat glided up to butt softly against the pliant wall of the jetty.

Flint climbed out. He struggled for calm, tried to find his solid centre and let its influence spread, but it was futile.

In Farsamy, at last, he wondered what he would find.

~

“Is this Carnival?” asked Flint, uncertainly, some time later.

Away from the docks now, they passed along narrow streets, through jostling crowds, past stalls and basket-laden vendors, the air pierced by their insistent cries and calls. The press of people and activity here in Farsamy made Beshusa seem little more than an overgrown village in comparison.

Tallofmind shrugged, his head tipped to one side in a noncommittal gesture Flint had come to recognise in the old Walker. “It always feels like Carnival in Farsamy,” he said. “It’s the crowds, the scale of things–everything done bigger.” Then he added, “But yes, Carnival is about to begin.”

They continued on foot through the city. After some time of silence, Tallofmind glanced up at Flint and said, “The Riverwalkers take rooms in a hostel by the Sentinel. I hope you will join us, Brother Flintheart.”

Flint met Tallofmind’s look. He nodded. “Thank you,” he said, grateful that his fellow traveller had voiced what had lain unspoken between them. Now that they were in Farsamy, their journey together was over. Flint might just as easily leave the Riverwalkers now, never to set eyes on them again, but he knew that would be unforgivable. “I am a Riverwalker,” he added, which was what Tallofmind had really meant: no Riverwalker could be alone in the city. He was still among friends.

~

The hostel overlooked a narrow, cane-straight stream which cut through this part of the city, passing under streets and buildings only to re-emerge a short time later. It carried refuse and effluent from the podhuts, already part-digested, providing food for street rats and gulls and many smaller creatures. Across the stream, there lay a small area of gardens, tended continually by a team of small mutts, and in the gardens’ centre lay the sprawling mass of what the Farsamies called the Sentinel.

The Riverwalkers looked on the creature with caution and, Flint surmised, a distinct element of mistrust. It was what they called a wisdom machine, and what Flint would call an Oracle. He felt their attitude understandable: the only wisdom machine his companions knew, after all, was the Lost Oracle to the south of Restitution–a perverted and corrupted monstrosity, luring sentient beings from all around with its siren pherotropic lures.

But Flint had grown up at ease with Oracles, and now he felt drawn to the Sentinel’s sanctity and insight into the ways of humankind.

He tried to ignore any intimations of wrong-doing as he left his companions practising Lordsway in the hostel yard, and headed across the narrow bridge to join the queues for the Sentinel.

If Amber had come to Farsamy, if by some chance she remained a free person, then Flint knew it likely that she would seek out an Oracle for guidance and comfort.

He stood behind a family group, come from a small settlement in Gossamer Heights. “Look,” the old matriarch said, taking Flint’s hand and pointing it towards the craggy horizon. “See where there is a nick in the skyline, just to the right of the highest point?” Gossamer Heights formed an irregular horizon above the city, lumps and crags making it hard to identify any one highest point. Flint nodded, and the woman continued, “That is where Farsamy Way passes through the hills and drops towards the city. And that is where we make our humble home.”

“I came by river,” said Flint.

“Walking!” cackled the old woman, pleased with her own wit.

Flint smiled. “My sister may have come by the Way, though,” he went on. “She is so high, has chestnut hair to her shoulders, eyes yellowed by childhood illness. I don’t suppose...?”

The woman considered, then shook her head. “Many pass through at this time of year,” she said. “The city is a big place.”

That realisation was still only starting to settle around Flint: to find one person among so many!

He thought of the Riverwalkers, practising Lordsway. He sought the Joyous Breath and held onto it, calming himself.

Slowly, the queue shuffled forward.

~

Close to, he saw that the Sentinel had grown itself according to an entirely different scale, compared to any Oracle Flint had previously encountered. Its great, swollen body bulged and pulsed, its bulk divided into many smaller compartments, much like the cells of a podhut.

It disturbed Flint, for some reason, to see similarities between Oracle and podhut, although each was part plant, part animal, part other, built by the Lord to serve the needs of humankind.

A sphincter opened and the matriarch entered the Sentinel, having allowed the rest of her family to enter before her.

Flint waited, and a short time later the sphincter of another cell opened. He stepped forward, dipped his head, and climbed inside.

Sweet scents stole into his being. Trumpet flowers and sweetwater, honey and bracket ceps. Smothering him with calm.

“Tell me, master.” The voice was soft, reassuring. “Tell me of the world.” This Oracle did not convey the usual sense of eagerness, and Flint knew that it must not hunger for input in the same way that Trecosann’s Oracle did. But it wanted to know, still: it did not want to know of the world, but rather of
his
world. He sensed it as some kind of machine, fuelled by knowledge and understanding, using diverse inputs to compute its insights and wisdom.

A Riverwalker’s understanding, he realised: he was seeing it as a wisdom machine and not the quasi-mystical all-knowing figure he had grown up with. Understanding pulling the clouds from before his eyes.

And then its pheromones did their work, teasing at his senses, tugging at his emotions.

He leaned back, felt steady pulsings against his spine, warmth.

“I am Flintheart,” he said drowsily. “Flintheart of the Riverwalkers, Flintreco Eltarn of Trecosann. I come here looking for my sister, Amberlinetreco Eltarn.” He thought of his sister, then, of her face, the chirpy facade she always put up to protect herself from the world. He thought of her as a child, curled up on the Leaving Hill, willing herself to be taken up to join the spirits of the Lost where she believed she belonged.

Instead, he saw Tarn, laughing and cursing amiably; he saw Callum and Petria; he saw Mesteb of Greenwater, and Janna and Hillery, too.

“They are here?” he asked. “They have been here?”

“Sentinel is one of several,” said the dreamy voice inside his head. Flint had a sudden understanding of a network of Oracles through the city, smartfibre roots penetrating beneath the podhuts and streets to join them up. Not here, then, but other Oracles in Farsamy had held audience with members of the Trecosi delegation to Carnival.

He had known they would be in Farsamy, but it comforted him to know that they were not close, that they were staying elsewhere in the city.

He would see them, he knew. He had to. But he preferred it to be at a time and place of his own choosing.

He pictured Amber again. “My sister...?”

Nothing.

“She travelled by river, down the Elver. I think she has been enslaved or bonded.”

Still nothing.

Soothing scents, enfolding him. Telling him nothing he did not already know.

He left Sentinel some time later. He walked through the gardens, through neat rows of low hedges, beneath withy arches twined with vines and drape moss. He came to the cane-straight stream and looked down, watched rats tugging at what looked like the purple shell of a decayed fleshfruit.

Back at the hostel, he stood alone in the yard. In his head he found the beat, the pulse of Rhythm and Clouds, and his hands sliced the air as his mind found calm and clarity. Emptiness his only comfort.

Chapter 12

“Flight of Eagles,” said Judgement, and the Riverwalkers changed movements and rhythm smoothly, as one, to the beat of Judgement’s bone drum.

Dawn’s light spread silver across the city’s rooftops. The Riverwalkers had been practising Lordsway since before the rising of the sun, and would continue for some time yet. Ritual discipline seemed to take on a new significance for them when they were away from their home.

Flint remembered this, now, from the old preacher Knowsbetter’s visit to Trecosann many years before. He remembered the children crowding together, watching curiously as the old man, dressed only in a tangled loincloth, had practised these same movements, eyes seeing some distant place.

Flint wasn’t concentrating.

He was not moving with smoothness and continuity–the independent movements of his limbs were not uniting in a single, flowing motion.

The rhythm evaded him.

He stopped, exhausted by his exertions. Usually, after practising Lordsway, he would feel exhilarated and energised.

The others continued, and Flint left the yard.

Pulling his cloak about him, tightening the cord at his waist, he headed out into the streets of Farsamy, felt their tight-packed cobbles beneath the soles of his feet. The streets were busy already, people heading purposefully in this direction and that, readying themselves and their city for Carnival.

Pausing by the front of the hostel, he heard the soft slap of bare feet on stone behind him and he turned.

Tallofmind stood before him.

“I’m sorry,” said Flint. He felt as if he was deserting his friends, betraying their trust in him. “I’m not worthy of your faith.” He slapped the side of his head with the heel of a hand. “I can’t concentrate.” The discipline Sister Judgement had taught him had deserted him this morning.

Tallofmind gave his tipped-head shrug and smiled. “Find your sister, Brother Flintheart,” he said. “Carnival awaits.”

~

The Riverwalkers’ hostel was situated some distance from the city centre, but as soon as he set out Flint was aware of a sense of hyperactivity in the streets. He did not know what the city was normally like, of course, only that this tension and excitement could not be the normal state of things.

Soon, stalls lined every street, bedecked with canvas canopies in an array of colours and patterns. Entire buildings had been erected wherever space allowed, sometimes encroaching out into the street itself, an exotic assortment of speed-grown podhuts and lean-tos built from cane and canvas and smartfibre sheeting.

Traders sold rugs woven from tufted fibre that changed colour depending on the light; rings, necklaces and brooches made from living fibres; jewellery that would grow with the owner, adapt itself to his or her moods; body artists painted faces and hands... Flint looked closer here, as he came to a stall where a beautiful young golden-skinned woman painted flowers on another woman’s cheeks. Skin bubbled under the artist’s brush, blistering into a staggering reliefwork of petals and buds.

Changing vectors!

The artist was painting with vectors, modifying the skin itself to give her artwork life.

The artist smiled at him. “I’ll make you a crocodile,” she said to him, voice low, seductive. “I’ll give you scales, sir.” She gestured to a man seated at the back of her stall–a Mollahdic preacher, Flint saw. “It’s all certified safe,” she continued. “Changes localised, decorative, fall away in days. You want me to make you someone new?”

Flint backed away through the growing press of the crowd. The artist was probably Trecosi, given her abilities with the changing arts, but her skill was not one practised in his part of the clan.

~

He sipped buttered tea from a stall somewhere near the city centre. He felt confused, his head crammed with images from the morning’s exploration. Stalls selling fine leatherwear and bonework; performing dogs and goats tuned to the sound of their masters’ drums and guitars; soothsayers, preachers, card-readers and psychics, each selling promises of truth and insight. The latter had tempted him, even though he did not believe in their arcane arts.

Now he paused before a troupe of what he had at first taken to be some kind of performers: an old man in a lawman’s painted and feathered finery, sitting before a man and a woman, the two arguing and pleading. It was a public arbitration, he realised, the couple laying their differences before the lawman and the audience, settling their marital differences as a form of public entertainment. Perhaps–it was not clear to Flint. So much that he had seen this morning seemed alien and bizarre to him.

A short time later, he came to a quieter place, some kind of roadside shrine, its air of peace and calm in stark contrast to its clearly rapid construction from ribcanes and banana leaves, lashed together to shield occupants from the day’s sun.

A bald woman sat cross-legged within. It was hard to tell if she was young or old. Her skin was smooth as that of a fleshfruit, almost unnaturally so. He wondered how True she was, how crafted.

Flint entered, bowed his head, sat.

The shrine’s peace was welcome after the hustle of the Carnival streets. He raised hands, palms together, above his head and took the Joyous Breath. Solidity, deep in his abdomen.

Opening his eyes some time later, he saw that the woman was studying him, patiently.

He lowered his hands and bowed his head towards her.

“It is not often that a Riverwalker takes the peace of the All,” she said. Her accent was peculiar–southern, Flint guessed.

He looked around. He didn’t recognise the figures represented by the statuettes, or the significance of the pictograms daubed on the back wall.

“I... I don’t think I am a true Riverwalker,” he said. “I’m not very good at it.”

“Faith is not a skill,” said the woman. “It is not a test, despite what your people say. Faith
is
.”

“I’m looking for my sister,” said Flint. “She went missing. She may have been abducted. I think she is in Farsamy, but I have no idea how to find her.”

The woman touched the corner of one eye with a fingertip, then her lips. “Look and ask,” she said. “And pray. How would one know your sister?”

“Average height,” said Flint. “She has chestnut hair and her eyes are jaundiced from childhood illness. Her name is Amberlinetreco Eltarn.”

The woman shook her head apologetically. “I have not seen her,” she said. “There are many Trecosi at Carnival, though. Most have stalls in Willow Square.” Then she went on, “And if your sister has had the misfortune to be taken against her will as you suggest, then you should go to Sun Street and the Pillories. Mutts and bondsmen are traded there, and freemen seek indenture.”

Flint bowed his head. He rubbed his eyes with knuckled hands, then stood and backed out of the shrine, muttering thanks to the woman as she, in turn, called blessings upon him in a singsong chant.

~

Much of Farsamy followed a grid plan of streets and blocks, but Sun Street cut through the centre in a great diagonal slash. Many of the buildings here were constructed from stone, with podhut extensions grafted on and fibre reinforcements and modifications. The street’s blackstone surface was wide and smoothed with age, packed so tight with stalls that even hand-drawn carts had trouble navigating a route.

Towards the northern end of Sun Street the stalls gave way to a series of low, fenced enclosures, some covered with canvas canopies, others exposed to the day’s sun. The air here was heavy with animal smells, the press of bodies around the enclosures thick and eager.

Flint took a deep breath and tried to calm himself.

He heard a jabber of raised voices, a thick, southern accent letting loose a torrent of angry Mutter, a rapid clapping of hands to attract attention. A man in the nearby enclosure gesticulated at a group of mutts, cowering in the far corner. They were simian creatures: round, button eyes and compressed faces, thick black fur covering their bodies. The man spat something brown into the dirt and continued his tirade.

Flint turned away, pushed through the crowd.

At the next enclosure he saw more simians. These mutts were barely waist-high to him, their opposable toes giving them advantage in the fruit plantations.

He moved on.

In the next lot, the mutts were almost indistinguishable from True humans. Seven males and six females with pups stood silently, obediently, current bids chalked on the wall behind them.

“Walk!”

The command came from a man in the crowd, and instantly the mutts fell into step with each other, completing a tight circuit of their enclosure. They moved well, and would fetch a good price.

Some time, much later in the morning, Flint came to an area where men and women stood on small boxes, calling to the crowd, offering themselves into service. True humans with no clan affiliations or ties, Flint realised, seeking to become bondsmen. With chilling clarity, he realised that this might, ultimately, be his own fate.

He passed slowly through the crowds, studying everyone, asking questions of anyone who would listen:
so high ... eyes jaundiced by childhood illness ... Amberlinetreco Eltarn, True daughter of Clan Treco
.

~

Willow Square was only two blocks from the main mutt-trading centre on Sun Street. It made sense for the traders from Trecosann to make their base here, as their expertise lay in the gennering arts and their main products were lines of change: not so much selling changed mutts and beasts, as displaying the kinds of changes their skills could induce in the hope of striking agreements to govern longer term trade.

Flint spotted his father–only two stalls distant! He felt no need to seek the calmness of the Lordsway, he realised. He was icily calm already.

He paused in the shelter of a sweetmeat stall.

Tarn lolled on a stool by an enclosure that contained three young mutts. Flint recognised them as among those that had been dipped on the day Amber had disappeared. One was barely more than a pup and completely hairless, sitting, rocking back and forth and singing softly–an oddity, a freak put here to attract attention. The other two were of a kind: probably no more than seven or eight years old, they were broad across the shoulder, heavily muscled. It was a type which had much potential for future use, Flint saw. It made him think of two of the fallen faithwalkers back at Restitution.

Someone came and spoke in Tarn’s ear. Cousin Hillery: grinning, enjoying the freedom of Carnival, wearing a fold-around cloak that exposed a diagonal wedge of midriff and drew the eyes of Tarn and other passing men.

Flint approached.

Hillery stepped back from Tarn, giggling, and moved away.

Tarn did not recognise him at first: a bearded stranger in the Carnival crowd. When he did, he sat upright abruptly, eyes widening. “You...” he gasped.

Flint nodded. “I am still looking for Amber,” he said. “Have you heard anything of her?”

Tarn rubbed at the black stubble on his chin. Finally, he shook his head, words clearly evading him.

A big, hirsute man in a golden cloak joined them. “Mesteb,” said Flint, in greeting.

Again, there was a pause before his cousin from Greenwater recognised him. “Flint,” he said, then. “I told your father you were coming to Farsamy. You...” He gestured at Flint, a wave of the hand indicating his clothing and the beads in his hair.

“I travel with the Riverwalkers,” Flint said. “I left Greenwater with traders who turned on me. They were Lost. I thought you were more careful about who you did business with.”

Mesteb shrugged. “Your Aunt Clarel arranged passage for you,” he said. “I will warn her.” After another pause, he added, “No sign of your sister, hmm?”

Flint removed Amber’s bracelet from his wrist. “I have this,” he said, holding it out towards Tarn. “Do you recognise it?” Blankness. “It’s Amber’s. I believe that she lost it in Tremellen.” He did not need to expand on that: Tremellen could only imply the haul-boat trade.

“I think she’s here in Farsamy.”

Mesteb nodded. “I will look out for her,” he said. Then he added, “Will you come back to your family after Carnival, Flint?”

“Family?” burst in Tarn. “Look at him, Mesteb! He has turned his back on the clan and gone with the evangelists.” He leaned forward and spat at Flint’s feet. “He is no more Clan Treco than his Lost sister.”

Eyes peering up at Flint, watching for reaction, looking for another fight.

Flint held his breath, found solidity. He turned his gaze pointedly away from his father and addressed Mesteb. “I have clan news to pass on,” he said. “Rendeltreco, a young woman from Tremellen, found judgement before the Lord at the Riverwalker town of Restitution recently.” In response to a blank look, he clarified: “She died.” He remembered the pale young woman, sweat darkening her sandy hair, eyes jammed shut, torso twitching. He remembered the wild bucking of her body, the sharpness of pain in her animal cries, the bones shifting beneath his hands as he tried to restrain her.

He remembered fleeing into the night, running from change.

“I would be grateful if you would pass on word to her family,” he concluded, swallowing drily.

He turned and left, not even looking back when he heard the low rumble of the two men’s voices, the word’s “seed patch” amongst others with which his father taunted him.

If these men were representative of Clan Treco, then it was an affiliation Flintheart of the Riverwalkers no long wished to claim.

~

That night, when he had eventually tired of his search, he ate with the Riverwalkers in their hostel near to the Sentinel Gardens.

No one asked him about his day: if he needed to share his experiences he would tell them. That was the Riverwalker way.

They knew, anyway. They could easily tell from his withdrawn mood that he had found no success.

He drew solidity from their company, and then he went out into the gardens to find peace in solitude. Long queues waited by the Sentinel, but that did not interest Flint tonight. He sat beneath scented trees and tried not to think too hard about the future and the near certainty of the failure of his quest to find poor Amberline.