Memory Seed by Stephen Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

and the lamp. It was a claustrophobic place, chaotic and unpleasant. They began to walk, but soon the heat made Zinina’s jump-suit unbearable. Graaff-lin was sweating, and her face was flushed dark in the blue light, as though she was bruised.
    ‘Gotta take this off,’ Zinina gasped. She flung aside her protectives and struggled out of the one-piece, folding both and stowing them on a power converter, then pulling her boots back on. Graaff-lin did likewise, and Zinina was surprised to see that her underwear was rather more colourful than her personality. In fact, it seemed of jannitta origin. Zinina, by contrast, wore a single vest garment, grey and sweaty. Graaff-lin was very thin, her hip-bones clearly defined, her thighs thin, ribs showing, and Zinina found it hard to mask the revulsion she felt at the sight. Graaff-lin showed no womanly belly, and Zinina wondered if the aamlon was sterile. Most probably she was. They walked on. In underwear and high boots they both looked silly, and they laughed at one another.
    After an hour Zinina was disconcerted to see a black hatch that signified the entrance to the Citadel. She had never walked this tunnel – and now Graaff-lin had spotted the confusion that plagued her.
    ‘Zinina, I thought you remarked that we would climb up underneath the Citadel?’
    ‘I did… we should have. We must be at the same level as the ordinary city, unless there’s been a tiny slope up all the way.’
    Graaff-lin pointed. ‘That is the correct hatch?’
    ‘Sure. I know it. I’ve seen plans, pictures. See that number? Hatch DDG/54. That’ll take us into the Citadel pyuter zone.’
    Graaff-lin seemed unconvinced.
    ‘Look,’ Zinina said, adopting a wheedling voice, ‘I’ve seen this hatch lots of times. There’s a little tunnel, then we drop down into a chamber. I’ve never been inside, but it’s there. We’ve come this far, we gotta go on.’
    ‘All right,” said Graaff-lin, ‘but you go first.’
    Zinina pulled off the hatch, reached inside for the security bud, and squeezed to disable the alarm. She jumped inside, trying to impress Graaff-lin with her physicality in order to reassure her, and turned to help her friend up.
    ‘That’s it. Just follow me,’ she said.
    Zinina crawled to the end of the tunnel. There was a hatch at the end, which she pushed off.
    ‘Rien Zir! The whole place is gold.’
    She jumped out of the tunnel into a chamber like the inside of a honeycomb. The floor was pitted, and the chamber’s three exits seemed to lead off at odd angles. It was as if the place had been moulded by the work of some giant insect burrowing at random. The walls, which on one side were thin enough to be translucent, were covered with cryptic bas-relief designs in such a way that the surfaces were all mellow ochre, but the raised edges were crimson. Looking close by a wall gave the strange impression of the structure curving in the opposite direction to that of reality.
    The chamber was empty. Zinina took out a purse of miniature catseyes and placed one at an exit. ‘This is so we don’t get lost,’ she explained.
    Graaff-lin produced a map pyuter from her kit and clipped it to her bra strap. ‘This will map us automatically. I thought we agreed to use it?’
    Zinina, who distrusted much technology, particularly the older things that nobody knew how to work any more, glanced at the pyuter. Sceptically she replied, ‘If you don’t mind we’ll use both methods.’
    Graaff-lin agreed, but was clearly irritated.
    They walked into the next chamber. There was a sweet odour in both chambers – not honey, rather something more herbal, that reminded Zinina of her days patrolling the Citadel. She wondered if it was a drug. ‘I wonder if we’re far under the Citadel,’ she mused. ‘Nobody except them in the Red Brigade is supposed to know how many floors there are underneath the streets. I reckon we’re right in the heart of the place. I reckon this whole tumulus is bubbly