Читать книгу Banner of Souls - Liz Williams - Страница 15

CHAPTER 2

NIGHTSHADE

Upon the day of her nineteenth birthday, Yskatarina hastened through Tower Cold, heels tapping across the metal floor, sending out glassy codes to the ever-present listeners, the ears of the Elder Elaki. Devices flickered within the walls, monitoring, reporting back. They could be fooled, and she had learned how to do so, but Yskatarina could still hear them at night—or, perhaps more accurately, when she slept, for there was no such thing as day on Nightshade. And sleep was fitful, often disrupted by the murmuring, spined embrace of the Animus. The Animus’s needs were becoming insistent. He was, after all, a male.

Yskatarina did not mind, however. She had needs of her own, and moreover, it marked the Animus as something that was truly hers, even though they were both supposed to be the property of the clan. Her aunt was always trying to make more: coaxing embryos out of the growing-skins, mingling monkey and dragonfly and bee, scorpion and marmoset with the old genes of Earth. But although the Animus had been a success, the great-eyed, thorn-armed creatures lived for no more than a night before expiring with a sigh.

Elaki made others, of course: the mute-kin that worked on the production lines, the disposable workers who were sent out into the Sunken Plain. All of these beings slid without difficulties from their growing-bags, overseen by the mourn-women. But these were lesser creatures, with limited sentience or none at all, and they did not live long. The Animus had been her greatest success, and Yskatarina knew that this infuriated Elaki. She was aware that her aunt had tried to replicate the Animus, scraping off cells, carefully experimenting with shed fragments of scale and skin, but the clones never seemed to take. She was unsure whether the Animus could feel true amusement, but on the news of yet another failure, Yskatarina thought that he had. But to dwell on this more closely would have meant criticizing her aunt, and Yskatarina found this too hard. The guilt at her own disobedience often came close to overwhelming her.

She ran a hand down a nearby tapestry, as if admiring it. The tapestry glowed briefly, the nerve-threads woven within it sending out ambiguities, false information, bewilderment to the ever-present spy-eyes. She knew that it would give her no more than a minute’s grace, but it was enough to slip behind the tapestry, out of the sight of the spies, and into the glassy hollow of the wall. From here, she could make her way up Tower Cold to the genetics lab. Here, she was forced to double over, for the labyrinth of the wall was really only large enough for a child. But even at nineteen, Yskatarina was more flexible than a whole adult. An artificial arm could be unscrewed, or legs removed to permit her to snake through gaps, like a grub within a hive. And she wanted to find out what Elaki was really planning. Her aunt, on the previous night, had told her little: only that a child had been grown on Earth that would somehow be a threat to Nightshade.

“But who grew the child?” Yskatarina had asked.

“Our enemies,” Elaki answered.

“But who are they?”

“Let me tell you a story,” Elaki said. Yskatarina settled down to listen, for she loved her aunt’s tales: the story of how the Ship of Elders had fled from Earth to Nightshade a thousand years ago, bringing their forbidden males with them, the perils they encountered on their long journey, how the ship sacrificed itself to grow the little colony . . .

But the story that Elaki now told was different.

“A hundred years ago this clan held key information about modifications to the human genome, prepared by its greatest scientists—two sisters, of Tower Cold.” A pause. “My sisters. We worked together, united, while the other clans sank into an atrophied insularity from which they have never emerged. And together, it was we who contacted the Kami, and learned so much thereby. Together, we developed the paradigms of haunt-tech. But when our clan offered that technology to the Martian Matriarchy, there was—a disagreement. The sisters and their Animus—for they had only one between them—fled to Mars in a prototype haunt-ship, taking the data store with them. They vanished for many years and I believed them to be dead. But recently I have tracked them down, to a place called Fragrant Harbor. It seems they have been biding their time, plotting against me, preparing a weapon.”

“What kind of weapon?”

“The girl whom you are to kill.”

“How can a girl be a weapon? And why do you not go to Earth and kill them? Why not slay this child when it is still in its bag?” Elaki scowled and Yskatarina added, panicking, “I do not mean to criticize, please do not think that. Only—”

“It is a fair question,” Elaki said, somewhat grudgingly. “I could not get near them. They know me too well, and—apart from yourself—they know those close to me. They have been keeping an eye on those members of our clan who inhabit our Mission on Earth.”

“Could not someone there hire an assassin?”

“I do not wholly trust those at the Mission,” Elaki said after a pause.

“Why not?” Yskatarina frowned. She remembered the group who had left for Earth some years before: nine sisters, all with a faint look of Elaki. They had terrified Yskatarina, but she could not have said why.

“You would not understand. I need someone on whom I can rely.” The tight porcelain skin of Elaki’s face seemed to soften. “Someone whom I love, Yskatarina.”

And Yskatarina, flattered beyond words, asked no more questions.

But now, no more than a day later, those awkward issues were starting to chew once more at the edges of her psyche. Where had the Kami come from, for instance? And what was the nature of the transformation that she and the Animus had undergone? Yskatarina’s love for her aunt was as strong as ever, but she could feel cracks beginning to appear.

She made her way to the slits in the wall, painstakingly carved with a diamond knife over the course of a single night, years ago now. She had been ten. The Animus had kept watch. She had never regretted the risk she had run, though if her hands had been made of flesh, they would have bled. It had felt, however, as though her heart itself had begun to weep blood, her implanted conscience reminding her in an incessant internal whisper of how much she owed her aunt, how greatly Elaki was loved, almost to the point of worship.

Almost, but not quite.

She put an eye to a crack and peered through. There was Elaki, wrapped in a black shift with a tall medical cowl, moving slowly about the laboratory.

Beyond her aunt’s shoulder, Yskatarina caught a glimpse of moving starlight: a ship coming in over the wastes of Nightshade. Within the growing-tanks, things twitched long limbs. A black spine crept over the lip of a tank. Elaki batted it back. Yskatarina frowned; it looked too much like the Animus.

Isti was there, too, the ever-present shadow at her aunt’s heels. Yskatarina did not know what kind of thing Isti was, whether machine or bio-organism or hybrid. He was short and squat, with thick fingers and a squashed face. But his loyalty to Elaki was certain, greater even than Yskatarina’s own.

“He is bound to your aunt, as I am bound to you,” the Animus had said once, as it clumsily wielded the brush that tore at Yskatarina’s long black hair.

“As we are bound to each other,” Yskatarina had said, gently reproving. She stared into the dark wells of her own reflection, and would not look up at the Animus. The brush had tugged and pulled, but the Animus said nothing.

“What if Yskatarina fails?” Isti asked.

“To kill the girl? She will not fail. But I will give her an additional incentive. If she fails, I shall tell her I will have her Animus taken away and returned to the vat.”

Yskatarina felt her heart grow cold and still within her.

“Would you do such a thing? It is the only success of its kind.”

“I will sacrifice it if I have to. But I do not expect it to be necessary. The threat should be enough to secure Yskatarina’s complete cooperation.”

“Have you told her exactly why the girl must be killed?”

“Of course not. Yskatarina is loyal to me—I made quite sure of that—but there may still be cracks in the black light programming. I do not want her to start thinking, Isti. She shows enough signs of it already. I have told her enough of the truth, which appears to have contented her.”

Listening in the walls, Yskatarina thought of losing the Animus and had to clench her teeth against her tears. Yet her conscience chattered and whispered within: You know your aunt has only your best interests at heart, that she is all-wise; you know that you must love her—must love, must, must . . .

I have told her enough of the truth . . .

Conflict chattered and hammered inside her head, bringing lightnings of pain in its wake. The cracks were widening. With a great effort, Yskatarina shut off the inner voice and made her way unsteadily down through the walls. But as she went, she told herself that she would not let Elaki take the Animus from her, whatever she had to do to prevent it.