Memory Seed by Stephen Palmer Page A

slumped back into her chair. ‘Yeah. But I’m not a reveller now.’
    ‘You aren’t a reveller, I can see that, and I won’t think of you as one,’ Arrahaquen assured her.
    Zinina grimaced. ‘And what have you learned of Graaff-lin?’
    ‘She is a priestess of the Dead Spirits, quite high up judging by the quality of the rigs in this house. I’ve also noticed that you two haven’t known one another for very long.’
    ‘How can you tell that?’ Graaff-lin asked.
    ‘I just know. Now, about Arvendyn. She was ill?’
    ‘We happened across her,’ Zinina said, her self-assurance gone. She seemed limp. ‘We took her in to be made better.’
    Arrahaquen realised that now would be a good time to depart, in order to give the women a chance to recover. There would be time later to find out what they knew. ‘It must be well past midnight,’ she said. ‘Our two seeds will be fully grown by the time Vert Day arrives. I’d like us to use them together, if possible, though of course we’ll have to see what happens in the meantime. I intend to broadcast the Portreeve’s plan right across this city, before it’s too late.’
    ‘That seems laudable,’ Graaff-lin remarked.
    Arrahaquen stood, then walked to the green zone in the hall, saying, ‘I’ll set up a code that you can call if you want to speak to me. It will be secret between us three. I’ll call it... ficus. ’ She paused, then asked Zinina, ‘By the way, how did you come to know about the properties of the ficus seed?’
    ‘I was on patrol up the Citadel one time and I came across the body of a defender. It was one of Uqeq’s spies. Anyway, I found a crocus bulb in her kit. I forgot about it at first, but then decided I may as well see what it would grow into. It was a data packet. Yeah, I learnt a lot from that bulb.’
    Arrahaquen pulled on her protective clothes, then opened the door. Outside, standing in the puddles, she said to them both, ‘I’ve risked a lot to find you. When I heard that you’d got a seed I couldn’t believe it. Anyway... that’s all done, now. I’ll be in touch.’
    Zinina nodded, thoughtfully, but said nothing. Graaff-lin smiled, waved, and said, ‘Auveeders, Arrahaquen. Au nah site.’
    ‘”Until next time”,’ Arrahaquen translated. ‘Good-bye.’
    She splashed through the garden and departed. It had stopped raining. Pausing in the alley, she gazed upward at a halo of light, a pale shape that gave silver linings to the lower clouds. It was the Spaceflower. Like the bell of an alabaster bloom it hung above Kray, apparently only a few hundred miles above the city, glowing softly with light reflected from the sun.

CHAPTER 6
    Brought up by her cleric mother Veerj-lin, priestess of the Dodspaat, it was not surprising that Graaff-lin had come to believe that the key to her salvation lay with the Dodspaat, with their whispers and clues in the listening modules of the temple on Onion Street. Life in Kray was for her a great question that required a fabulous answer; and that answer she would find in the Dodspaat, as they revealed their secret knowledge from the other side of the grave and hence allowed the fittest of humanity to escape this doomed city. Of course, nobody except High Priestess Katoh-lin knew who the Dodspaat were, or had been, but to Graaff-lin, and to all the other priestesses and lay members of the temple, they represented the promulgators of historical knowledge.
    So when Zinina appeared, and then Arrahaquen only a week or so later, both at this momentous time for Kray, she knew she must turn to the Dodspaat. And then there was the strange discovery of noophytes uncovered under the Citadel. The flurry of events had knocked her backwards.
    The Dodspaat must explain everything. In particular they must explain what a serpent had told her when enquiring about the meaning of the word dwan. ‘This is the language of the hearts, of which no human may speak.’ She had recorded this conversation – and if