Memory Seed by Stephen Palmer

inside, don’t you?’
    ‘It certainly might be.’
    They explored further, Zinina dropping catseyes at the borders between chambers. As they penetrated further, the rooms began to contain things, pyuters mostly, or so Graaff-lin said. There were clusters of giant mushrooms with perspex tops, spirals of ultramarine weed hanging from the ceiling and pulsing with light – optical processing units, Graaff-lin said, grown from the seeds of mutated banana trees – and there were many screens, each individual, each flickering with multiple layers of information, like the turbid depths of a river. Zinina pressed her eyes against these screens to see the deepest layers possible, but she always received the impression that much more knowledge dwelt inside the velvety disks.
    Graaff-lin settled in a chamber that contained a pool surrounded by mushroom-pyuters. ‘I think it is time to tap into their sources,’ she said.
    ‘Go ahead,’ Zinina encouraged, sitting cross-legged to keep watch, a thrumming needle rifle in her lap.
    Silence fell. Graaff-lin spoke to the pyuter networks, pressing portions of the perspex occasionally, but mostly communicating in aamlon. Zinina recognised many words because of their similarity to Kray tongue. She kept one eye on a small screen nearby, mounted on a pole.
    Graaff-lin didn’t speak for a minute, then said, ‘This is becoming very complex. I’m not sure what I’ve discovered... What time is it? Is it time to go?’
    ‘An hour or so left,’ Zinina replied.
    The minutes passed. Zinina estimated that the night had three hours to run. She looked around. The nearest wall was eggshell thin, light from behind making it glow and sparkle like jaundiced opal. She turned her gaze to the screen. A sentence flashed by.
    ‘Graaff-lin?’
    ‘Mmmm?’
    ‘I thought it said “dwan” just then.’
    Graaff-lin paused. She seemed tired. There were black circles under her eyes, and those eyes seemed to have lost their shine. ‘It may have. Wait, there may be a lexicon. I suppose I could ask.’
    ‘Yes, ask.’
    ‘A dwan, apparently, is a garden for noophytes.’
    ‘And what’s a noophyte?’
    ‘I don’t know. It is not listed. But look at this map.’
    Zinina moved closer to the screen. ‘This is the Citadel, this circle here. What do you suppose all these lines are, radiating out from it?’
    ‘Dunno.’
    ‘I think they’re pyuter mainlines. I’m going to take a copy of this.’
    Graaff-lin rummaged through her kit once more and produced a sheet of plastic, which she shook the dust from. ‘This will copy the screen. It’s the old saliva type. Would you, er, mind?’
    Zinina did not follow. ‘Mind what?’
    ‘Just spit on it. I’ve got a touch of ‘flu, you see.’
    Zinina spat on the plastic, and was disconcerted to see a faint green trail as the saliva fell. Graaff-lin shook the sheet and the fluid spread like a drop of oil on water. Then she pressed the plastic to the screen, waited, and pulled it off. There was a crackle of static.
    ‘There.’ Graaff-lin held it up to the light. A colour copy of the pyuter image had been made.
    ‘What else have you discovered?’ asked Zinina.
    ‘These noophytes seem to be repositories of knowledge. But information is limited. It is almost as if the noophytes navigate the shafts and lodes of data in this place, and have a say in how it exists.’
    Zinina shivered. She felt cold. ‘You mean they’re alive?’
    ‘I think probably not, although one seems to have been given the name Laspetosyne... Laspetosyne, the name means nothing to me. Most likely they are gargantuan memories that have some sort of defence system. This makes a sort of sense. She who controls knowledge controls people. Knowledge is domination, Zinina.’
    ‘Look some more,’ Zinina urged.
    Graaff-lin did so. As the hour came to a close, however, she gasped, and sat back from the mushroom she was talking with.
    ‘What?’ Zinina said, clutching Graaff-lin’s