Flowercrash by Stephen Palmer Page A

glanced inside the inn. “I think Kirifaïfra is still winding his pigtail. Vain man.”
    “A man is coming with us?”
    “Do you object?”
    “I am yours to command. But it is unusual.”
    Manserphine uttered a single humourless laugh. “He and his uncle are both unusual men. Quiet, now, here he comes.”
    Kirifaïfra was dressed in a woollen greatcoat, black knee boots and a red scarf that he coiled around his neck. On his broad back hung a rucksack. He grinned.
    “I’ll take that as the signal to move off,” Manserphine said.
    For some time they did not speak, as they trod the streets of the urb trying to avoid flowers deactivated by frost that flopped from the central aisle to outer paths. The extreme narrowness of the streets made walking difficult. Overhanging buildings reduced light to gleams and beams. But once they were away from Veneris they struck a path that led west around the autohives, and Kirifaïfra began to chat about the weather, the likelihood of snow, and the possible date for spring and the reactivation of the flower networks. He estimated that day as a month ahead. Manserphine thought six weeks.
    After an hour they saw the Water Meadows ahead, snail-infested flats stretching as far as the eye could see. Beyond, just out of sight, lay Aequalaïs.
    “Here we come to our first decision,” Manserphine said. “Do we go across or under?”
    “Let us check the nearest tunnel,” Aitlantazyn suggested. “I can see the dark hemisphere of an entrance not a quarter of a mile away.”
    This they did. A foul breeze rose up from the entrance, but still Aitlantazyn led them down the crumbling stone steps to the tunnel mouth, gesturing with her free hand for them to stay back. She took a torch from her pocket and spoke to it, whereupon it produced a cone of light. The tunnel looked clear, though a few inches of water sloshed inside it, and algae of all species hung in strings from the walls and roof. Aitlantazyn gestured them on, shining the torch on anything ahead that might offer danger.
    The tunnel was long. After fifteen minutes they still could not see the end, and Manserphine began to feel uncomfortable, but then she saw a light ahead, and she splashed past Aitlantazyn. The gynoid stopped her, grabbing her shoulder with a single, immense hand. “Not yet,” she whispered. She walked on ahead and when certain it was clear waved them on. They ascended the steps and looked out over Aequalaïs.
    Covering the shallow slope down to the sea Manserphine saw scores of buildings, all glassy and bright and perfectly cuboid, reflecting the rays of the sun so that it was like confronting a garden of mirrors. The broad streets between these tower blocks ran with water. All were devoid of people. They saw nothing of flowers, just verges of green dotted with white salt marks. Above them, gulls flew, keening as they wheeled about, while at their feet, in innumerable brackish pools, they saw crayfish, aluminium crabs, and the shifting rainbows of anemone tentacles.
    “Who lives here?” Kirifaïfra whispered into her ear.
    “Strictly speaking nobody lives here permanently. Most of the people are based in the Shrine of the Sea, which is huge.” She pointed east. “It must be over there, behind the dunes. But there are roving bands of people who dwell in these buildings, living off the sea. If you look on the horizon you can see some of their fishing smacks.”
    “What do you know of these people?”
    “Not much. They are as isolated as the Sea-Clerics. Although there are tales of attacks, they will leave us alone as long as we don’t threaten them. Their lives are too precarious to consider aggression. No, it is the Shrine of the Sea that we must be careful of.”
    “Then we will be. What do we do now?”
    Manserphine considered. “Let’s walk towards the sea. We are looking for winter flowering blooms—I want to sift a few networks. Eventually I’d like to access the Shrine networks, but we’ll have to