Glass (17 page)

CHAPTER 16

Was that Liguilifrey’s eyes in the bathkin’s pink, wet mouth? The creature slunk along a corridor, stomach to the floor and eyes wide, its orange fur bristling. Subadwan stopped. It
was
the avian pyuter, ripped and shredded by tiny teeth.

Subadwan made to catch the creature, but, agile as an insect in flight, the bathkin darted around her hand, slipped by, and disappeared into the maze of tunnels around the Osprey Chamber, giving a mewling cry as if in triumph.

Subadwan was suddenly frightened. She ran to the front of the Baths, where she found Liguilifrey sitting calm, bath towels in her lap, a stick of perfumed plastic poked into a lapel hole. But her pyuter eyes were perched upon her shoulder.

Relaxing, Subadwan approached. ‘I thought I saw your eyes, caught like vermin by one of the bathkins.’

‘My eyes are fine,’ Liguilifrey said, smiling.

Absent-mindedly, her train of thought broken, Subadwan gazed at the avian pyuter. With something of a stern gaze it turned to her. It just stared. Subadwan shivered. The eyes were beady bright, the beak sharp as a needle, and when it opened its mouth to squawk its tongue was... black?

Her muscles acted with reflexive speed. She slapped the thing off Liguilifrey’s shoulder, causing the masseuse to shriek, clasp her face and fall to the floor. The eyes’ wings were raised, as if for flight. Yelling, Subadwan tried to kick it aside, to disable it, break it, but it jumped, flapped, then rose. It seemed huge.

Subadwan knew instinctively that it was a beast of Noct. Now it was three feet high and growing, expanding, hissing, eyes fiery, its beak a foot long like the serrated scimitars of the Triaders. Its taloned wings created evil-smelling gusts of air, and its feet clawed with glinting steel and flexed with spasmodic fury. Subadwan retreated. Liguilifrey lay on the floor, rolling about with her face in her hands, groaning.

Subadwan had never seen a shape changer. Deadly spirits they were, pyuter-driven carbon and silicon, their brains wired to know only greed. Some were too wild to tame: they were shoved into the pyuter networks like banshees forced into Cemetery mud.

Subadwan carried no weapon. She did not know how to defend herself. The beast screeched and began a diving attack.

‘Gaya save me!’ she cried.

From out of the marble wall a white creature leaped as if spring-loaded, with fangs of aluminium and eyes of beryl.

‘Gaya save me,’ Subadwan repeated.

The two beasts fought. The Noct spirit shed black blood that spurted like hot wax, solidifying where it hit cool marble. The Baths creature seemed hard as titanium, but it was slower. It hunched down and lashed out, whereas the Noct beast attacked with chaotic fury, with talons, razor beak and wings. When the opposing bodies clashed, sparks fountained into the air, sparks that soon gave the atmosphere a smoky, fetid cast, so that after some minutes of screaming battle there was little Subadwan could see except turbulent smoke.

Then there was only silence. Liguilifrey appeared, pulling herself blind along the corridor. Subadwan took her by the hands and dragged her away. ‘What happened?’ Liguilifrey gasped. ‘I’m blinded.’

‘Gaya love me, you can’t see anything?’

‘Nothing.’

Subadwan groaned as she pulled her friend away. The smoke was clearing, allowing her a view of a body strewn like rags on the tunnel floor, surrounded by sooty debris. The Baths creature was gone.

Liguilifrey was clearly in shock, and Subadwan sat her up against a wall. ‘Your eyes must have been substituted by the spirit of Noct,’ she said, glancing back at the damaged corridor. ‘No doubt the thing would have pounced on me when it was ordered to. I told you Umia would do his utmost to capture me.’

‘But I’m blind, Subadwan, I’m blind.’

Subadwan hugged her friend. ‘I know. We’ll have to evolve another pyuter for you as soon as possible. In my Archive there are nano-machine tanks that can create the bodies of pyuters from DNA recipes. I control them, even though I’m stuck here. We’ll get you eyes, Liguilifrey.’

‘But they were
connected
to me.’

Subadwan glanced at the face of her friend, and wondered just what the link had been. ‘If eyes can be made once,’ she said, ‘they can be made twice.’

Liguilifrey seemed unhappy, but she made no further comment. Subadwan left her and returned to the scene of the battle. The rags had sublimated, leaving only a dark stain in the shape of a pedician. Shuddering, Subadwan returned to Liguilifrey and guided the masseuse to the Osprey Chamber, where they both sat.

Liguilifrey said, ‘What will you do now?’

‘What will you do?’ Subadwan countered.

Liguilifrey was passing through shock. But she had no tear ducts. Her voice was thick with emotion and she waved her head from side to side, as if trying to sense the room around her by means of echoes. ‘I’ll have to call in Calminthan,’ she said. ‘We'll have to arrange new procedures.’

‘l’ll try to help,’ said Subadwan. ‘I’ll call Gwythey now.’

But her second deputy was not answering, and the Archive help screen seemed different somehow, as if it has been tampered with. For some time Subadwan ricocheted around the city networks trying to contact her Archive, but every system looked scrambled, and some of it was meaningless static.

Returning to the distressed Liguilifrey upset her further. If something had happened at her Archive, she ought to be there. A quick visit should be safe, so long as she left the Baths in disguise…

But she possessed the headmerger, and it contained vital information. She could not risk losing it. She decided to put it on.

Comforting Liguilifrey, she robed herself, taking a hood from stock, and light shoes in which she could run if need be. There were no weapons inside the Baths, but she took an epidermal scraper which could be used as a blunt dagger. Thus equipped she made for the front doors.

The streets outside were crowded despite it being early, and they overflowed with lunar jetsam.

A tall figure stood on the opposite side of the street.

Tanglanah.

She was waiting with pyuton patience, arms folded. Subadwan pulled her hood down, but she had been spotted.

Tanglanah approached. Angrily, Subadwan said, ‘What are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you we wanted nothing to do with you?’

‘I must have misheard,’ Tanglanah answered.

Subadwan, lost for words, just wanted to lash out. ‘I want you to leave me alone. I’m not interested in your Archive. What is safekeeping, anyway? Have you bothered to explain it to your followers, or do they just listen with deaf ears?’

Tanglanah paused long enough for Subadwan’s alert senses to capture and record the hesitation. ‘Safekeeping is important.’

‘I know that.’

‘We preach the wisdom of safety.’

‘You’re floundering,’ Subadwan accused, mocking Tanglanah in words and in tone.

‘No,’ Tanglanah insisted. Again the pyuton paused, before saying in a quiet voice, ‘Why be so harsh? Are we not both of an exalted order? We should work together, you and I.’

Subadwan managed a laugh, though she felt only apprehension. ‘So you’re not going to tell me why the safety of Crayans is so important to you?’

‘I will if you want me to, but I do not think you really want to know.’

‘I do want to know, but it can wait.’

‘That smacks of contrition,’ Tanglanah remarked.

‘It might do had I sinned. But I think I’m entitled to enquire about your little library of fantasies.’

‘It was the timing that stood out.’

Subadwan shrugged. She was almost enjoying the tussle. ‘It would stand out to one whose plans were coming to fruition,’ she remarked.

‘If you still do not trust me, do not joust with me.’

‘So now you’re trying to make me feel inadequate. I have many powers, Tanglanah.’

This remark, casually uttered, made Tanglanah again hesitate for some time. Then she said, ‘Do you have the shell I gave you?’

‘Not on me.’

‘It matters not. You do possess it though.’

‘Yes.’

Tanglanah is afraid of me, Subadwan realised. Into her mind came other tiny clues to the dark, yet conscious being inside Tanglanah’s alloy skull. She understood that, despite the pyuton’s social poise and intelligence, she, small Subadwan, had influence. Yes, Tanglanah was old and she was only twenty-five, but she possessed qualities that the pyuton did not.

‘I don’t trust you,’ she told Tanglanah. ‘As we speak my deputy is looking for glass shells, so I can test yours against real ones.’

And then...

Subadwan slid into a Crayan landscape, as if into a pool of water. Behind her the Baths shimmered into nothingness, leaving a plastic field covered with darkness. Above, a blue, green and white disk sailed high. All around stood the familiar buildings of Peppermint Street and, a little way off, Arrowmint Street: dark streets, not flashing with motes at the speed of light, though some were marked with signs glowing like fluorescent paint under an ultraviolet lamp. Most disconcerting was the quiet, as if her amplifiers had broken. Silence unnerved her. All she could hear was the soughing of the wind, and far off the sea, ghostly and discomfitting enough to make her shiver.

She waited for something to happen.

Nothing did, and there was no sign of Tanglanah.

After a minute she noticed that nearby a ball of air was flexing, glittering red, then transforming – and Tanglanah appeared from it, seated and with eyes closed, like a coal from a fire. She rose in one balletic movement. ‘We are here,’ she told Subadwan.

Subadwan answered, ‘It looks like Cray.’

‘Does that surprise you?’

‘Can’t you tell I’m surprised? What have you done? What’s happened to Cray?’

Tanglanah said, ‘This was not of my doing. Gwmru has imposed itself upon the city.’

‘But what’s happened?’

‘Cray is a city composed of memory. These memories are organised in subtle ways, following their own rhythms, some of which are ancient. Every now and again two sundered halves interfere constructively, and this is the result. A new Cray has temporarily appeared.’

‘How long will it last? Am I safe?’

Tanglanah ignored the questions. ‘I must go now. I have much still to see.’

Subadwan felt free to goad and press Tanglanah to the limits of endurance. ‘You must have seen this before if you’re as old as you say you are.’

‘I did not say how old I was.’

‘You were too frightened to,’ Subadwan retorted. ‘I know you’re hiding something.’

‘Very well,’ Tanglanah said, ‘if age interests you, know that I am five thousand, seven hundred and thirty-two years old.’

This declaration was unexpected. Subadwan did not hide her reaction. There was no point. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, wondering why she had not thought to ask that question before.

‘I am graceful Tanglanah, Lord Archivist of the Archive of Safekeeping. That is who I am. Now let us walk awhile.’

They began to stroll westward down Peppermint Street. It was eerie walking down a street devoid of people. Subadwan found herself unable to imagine five thousand years, she who had been indoctrinated into the belief that Cray was five centuries old, but she did feel some awe at the presence by her side. Tanglanah had always emanated mystery, and the knowledge she had just gained made the pyuton still more mysterious.

‘You’ve wanted me to experience this for some time, haven’t you?’ she said.

‘My original bargain was for us to help one another,’ Tanglanah said. ‘Let me be plain. I will show you Gaya if you will show me what I seek. That is all.’

‘What exactly is it you’re looking for?’

‘I do not know. That is the problem. I have lived here so long–’

‘So that’s why you told me your age,’ Subadwan interrupted, realisation dawning. ‘I
need
to know because of my task.’

‘My problem is that I am too familiar with Gwmru to see its flaw.’

‘Flaw?’

‘Some presence invisible to me lives here. You must locate it for me. Your fresh human eyes will spot it. In turn, I will show you Gaya, for I know exactly where Gaya is.’

Subadwan nodded. ‘So, will you follow me around the city, or do you want me to search alone?’ She indicated the glowing signs. ‘Do I follow these?’

‘We all search alone,’ Tanglanah said, softly.

Subadwan waited for more, but there was nothing. ‘I’ll just go then,’ she said, realising that Tanglanah could see nothing of the luminous tracks.

At the bridge over the river she turned, to see that Tanglanah had gone. She felt cold. The still air, the calm, the hush, these symptoms of a city either at peace or dead did nothing to calm her nerves. Apprehension made her jumpy. Most alarming was the lack of people, despite the number of houses and buildings built off the street. Far off, she could glimpse the roofs of landmarks: the chimneys of Westcity Power Station, the spires of the Water Purification House, far, far to the east the spiral ramparts of the Archive of Vein Extraction. Oddest was her view of the Swamps, here just a watery bog with a clear river running from it, snapping fish swimming like dark arrows.

She did not know what to do. This presence: was it real? Was it a trap?

She looked beyond the walls of the city. Northward loomed a hill with vertical cliffs, a rough geological cylinder, casting and covered by shadow. The plateau at the top, however, showed tiny lights – blue, purple, glittering white, all moving, as of a camp of people. Subadwan watched for a few moments, estimating the number of lights at a dozen. Faint, at the limits of hearing, she thought she detected voices.

As she surveyed the city she decided that the fluorescent marks were worth following, particularly since they seemed invisible to Tanglanah. She crossed into Westcity, then, at Culverkeys Street, turned south, taking the turning into Hog Street and crossing the river once more, then walking along to Min Street. There was not one soul in sight. The sound of her own footsteps, a sound inaudible in Cray, unnerved her, and she slowed as she turned into Violin Street, the circular roads of officialdom just a few minutes away.

She stopped to listen. Ahead she saw the curvaceous roof of the Archive of Noct, here missing its pale plant cover, though none the less frightening for that. She inched forward, noticing that the luminous marks were coming to a focus.