Memory Seed Read Online Free PDF Page B

Earth is having fun, we say,
    and we are all the prey.
    This place is full of rot, we say,
    goodbyes ring out today.
    So drink and sod it all, hurray!

CHAPTER 3
    There was nobody else in the crimson-carpeted hallway. Arrahaquen paused at a gilt mirror to look at herself.
    She saw a woman, thirty years old, almost six feet tall with a figure best described as voluptuous, bald head shining, brown eyes round and sad and accentuated with kohl, lips full. All Kray blots covered by cosmetics. She twirled once or twice, to look from the other angles. Hmmm... The black shorts and blue woollen jacket that she wore seemed a little loose.
    Someone coming. She hurried back to the operations room, opening the door with her optical key.
    Pyuters chattered and sprays of bio-memory hanging from the ceiling throbbed with blue light. Underneath all this eight people worked, among them Ammyvryn, who today wore a simple blue jumpsuit. ‘I’m back,’ Arrahaquen said, smiling.
    ‘You’ve been a long time.’
    ‘Mother, this is Defender House. I’m not likely to be ambushed in the lavatories.’
    Her mother scratched a spot on her chin. She looked old, wrinkles beginning to acquire those lines of green that meant her one claim to Krayan beauty, the clear complexion, was gone. She had not depilated her scalp for some time, and a fuzz of brown hair made her look even more dishevelled. Only adepts of the Goddess could keep their hair in Kray.
    Eventually Ammyvryn said, ‘Never mind all that. Are we ready with the new defender schedules?’
    Arrahaquen glanced over at the wall-screen. ‘No.’
    Her mother thumped the oaken desk in front of her. ‘They get slower every day. It’s the pyuter hearts. Deese-lin and Spyne know how to steal all the pyuter power!’ And she thumped the desk again, as if that would solve her problem.
    Arrahaquen stroked her mother’s shoulders. ‘Just wait. I’ll slip into the gazebo if you like, to check progress.’
    ‘Don’t bother,’ Ammyvryn grumbled. ‘And me with a full meeting in half an hour.’
    ‘I saw Uqeq as I went out,’ Arrahaquen said.
    Her mother seemed flustered. ‘How did she look? Did she say anything?’
    ‘She looked pensive.’
    Ammyvryn got up and paced around her daughter. ‘There’s been an accident outside, in the city. A hang-glider crash. I think it’s serious, and the agent hasn’t reported back. Uqeq will harangue us about it.’
    ‘I haven’t heard any rumours.’
    Ammyvryn stopped, and Arrahaquen found herself staring into those watery green eyes.
    ‘Give your mother a call, Arrahaquen. Yes, call her on the networks, secure line, and ask her if she saw anything a couple of nights ago. Any gas flares, that sort of thing. Do it now.’
    ‘All right.’
    Ammyvryn tightened her creaky leather belt. ‘I’d better prepare for the Portreeve.’
    Arrahaquen departed for the communications cellar, but her mother was not answering calls and the Observatory pyuters refused to say what she was doing. So Arrahaquen left a message, then departed Defender House for her own rooms. A clock chimed the hour.
    She walked across the top of the Citadel, rain pounding the perspex streets, making the packets of light within them seem like angelic mercury rolling hither and thither on their speed-of-light errands. Here in Om Street, where the buildings were only a few storeys high, walls on both sides flickered, but as she walked downhill to the north, and entered Rosinante Street, the great towers to either side rose up into blackness and even seemed to curl over and threaten her. She reached the block of flats that held her own home, and walked to the top floor.
    She crept into the hall: silence. She made an electronic survey: nothing present. In the lounge burned an incense stick, inserted into the urethra of a gold phallus. The blue carpet was bald in places, but these patches were covered by jannitta rugs made circular in the shape of daisies. The place was full of furniture, but