Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars (An Infinite Triptych Book 1) Read online

  ‘If the hub has already done the work,’ Annie said, ‘why haven't they communicated the data to us?’

  ‘Please excuse Annie,’ Jura intoned quickly. ‘She's something of an individualist.’

  Miss Butterworth was unperturbed. ‘Your point is a reasonable one, Mrs. Jura. Though, what do you imagine would happen if the hub were to share all of its secrets with the outer planets?’

  ‘We could build weld drives, for one thing. Explore the local sector, trade with other outer planets, investigate stellar anomalies, function as a world in our own right, rather than a forgotten planet-state. I'm told you made the journey from the hub in just under forty-eight hours. Propulsion has obviously undergone radical improvement in the last century. With access to a single drive of our own, Exurbia could revolutionise its entire economy. We could station outposts on the moons, even visit other planets in our system, regain some sense of self-esteem.’

  Jura intensely studied the ground.

  ‘Your conjecture, if I understand it,’ said Miss Butterworth, ‘is that the hub should be completely transparent; its motives out and in the open, its political dealings displayed to each and every world?’

  Annie nodded.

  ‘And what of a potential Pegrin crisis? If we were to gift the latest weld technology to Exurbia, and every other planet for that matter, what would stop some intrepid Ixenite from fleeing to an uninhabited world and building his own ghastly rig, safe from any attempt to stop him?’

  ‘Allow it. That's the price of high technology.’

  ‘Very noble. Having once been the wife of an esteemed anti-Ixenite such as your husband, I'm sure you're aware of the dangers inherent in your suggestion, but I hope you don't mind if I elucidate them anyway. Let's imagine for a moment that we do as you suggest and provide Exurbia with the technology it asks for, and subsequently a single Ixenite makes it to one of the moons, say, Goethe, and sets up a wiremind laboratory. Let's then imagine that he builds a working model, the machine reaches criticality, and the Pergrin threshold is breached. For the first few seconds nothing will seem out of the ordinary. The wiremind will take stock of its surroundings and determine whether anything in the near vicinity poses any kind of threat to its wellbeing. Having decided that it's the most powerful intellect in the star system, it will then reach out into local space via its t'assali influence, torching all it touches, laying waste first to Exurbia, then – after traversing the interim space – doing the same to neighbouring star systems, and finally the hub entire.’

  ‘What's to say it would be so malevolent?’

  ‘Rationality,’ said Miss Butterworth then, enunciating each syllable with engineered precision. ‘Any creature with absolute control over any other will be necessarily consumed by the Will to Power. It's inevitable.’

  Such is the reason you divorced me, Annie, Jura thought.

  ‘I admire the merit of your argument,’ said the syndicate visitor. ‘It's a typical one for a planet of your kind. I don't expect you to understand the intricacies of governing a galactic civilisation, it daunts even me at times. Nevertheless, I must prepare for the evening's festivities, if you will excuse me.’

  She smiled cordially, turned about and left for the dressing house, the swaying curtain of her hair trailing behind like hung washing in the wind.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Jura whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s a syndicate official. She’s probably going to go inside and note you down on a watch list.’

  ‘My ex-husband can flaunt the Pergrin Decree, but the second I don’t bow down to some pompous blowhard I’m committing a faux pas?’

  ‘Not here, Annie. Of all places, not here.’

  20

  “And how can man die better,

  Than facing fearful odds,

  For the ashes of his fathers,

  And the temples of his gods.”

  - Horatius, Old Erde word artisan

  Fortmann -

  They were summoned inside with the ceremony bell then, all the notables filing in and trying not to trip on the trails of dresses and togas. Fortmann shifted about in his own ceremony piece, an absurd imitation of an ambassador’s wraparound. No one had approached him so far. In the unlikely even that they did, 261 had been clear: claim you’re a Kraikese diplomat. It’s an unpopular city and few will want to be seen associating with you. That way you won’t have to answer any difficult political questions.

  Gaining entrance to the Civic Hall hadn’t been a problem with the moralising imp’s help. He’d simply used Takashi’s implant to break back into the Governance streams and put a fake name - Werner Daniels - on the official guest list. The rest had been relatively easy. The switching of the mallets had taken ingenuity however. The imp had designed a perfect replica with a t’assali detonator in the tip, activated on severe impact. The explosion would be large enough to blow off half of the tersh’s body, but small enough not to harm any innocent bystanders. One of the Civic Hall’s handmen, a budding Ixenite in secret, had been more than happy to switch the replica with the original, long before the guests had arrived.

  The lights dimmed to a weak glow. The tersh could be seen clambering, galumph galumph galumph, up to the stage podium, struggling to carry his own weight beneath the purple tershal robes.

  ‘Exurbians.’ His voice was that of a demi-god’s through the amplifier. ‘And guests, of course, lest we forget our honoured visitor, Miss Butterworth. We celebrate this day on account of Saint Pergrin, who, alone, found the courage needed to end the wiremind scourge. On this day, the last of Junal, some three thousand years ago, Pergrin and his followers entered the town hall of Last Stop, a relatively unknown Old Erde city. Long had he and his brothers been tormented by the presiding wiremind, Cato, and its ludicrous demands. Since its activation, it had begun to degrade Last Stop’s way of living, its sacred religious rituals. Though it had cured a number of the city’s pestilences, it had begun to subjugate the population to such an extent that it could be considered nothing short of a tyrant. This was until Pergrin, in his wisdom, marched into Last Stop’s town hall, ripped Cato’s central processor from its main unit, and emerged to greet a thriving crowd. He had with him an implement not unlike the one I hold today.’

  The tersh produced an oversized labourman’s mallet and held it up triumphantly. The crowd cheered and applauded briefly. Fortmann admired the ingenuity from afar. The imp had crafted a perfect replica.

  ‘There, he placed the processor on the ground, lifted the hammer, and struck it until, as the scripture has it, “all life in the hell-haunted machination was extinguished.”’

  ‘And it is with much excitement that I have, on account of her fortuitous timing making landfall on our fair planet, offered Miss Butterworth the pleasure of opening the Pergrin celebrations with the mallet ritual.’

  Fortmann’s extremities ran cold. Not once in three hundred years had the mallet ritual been delegated to another, save for the Year of the Fattened Scallex when the tersh had been too old to lift it. Miss Butterworth appeared from behind the stage curtain. They exchanged the mallet, both smiling then. The damned imp. Why hadn’t the damned imp seen this coming? I will cut off his hands. I will sew closed his mouth. Two stagehands brought out the processor replica on a pull-cart and set it within reach.

  ‘Good Exurbians,’ intoned the syndicate woman. ‘You simply cannot imagine how grateful we are at the hub major for your diligence in keeping with the Pergrin Decree. Without such adherence, the galaxy, and the entire hub along with it, would have been consumed by a most insidious malevolence indeed.’

  She took the mallet from the tersh and flexed it in her fingers, then raised it up and above her head. There was a spattering of cheers from the crowd, then a ruckus of applause. She swung the mallet back fully and paused at the apogee. Then she brought it back down by her side.

  ‘Though, it’s a strange thing,’ she said. ‘I had one of my spyles scan the mallet as I was waiting in the wings, and
oddly enough they found it to be containing high amounts of t’assali. What do you suppose that means, Grand Tersh?’

  Fortmann put his hands to his face and screwed his eyes shut. The tersh appeared to be in the midst of a confusion-paralysis episode. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I don’t.’

  She gestured to the off-stage area and one of her spyles appeared, a cutting tool protruding from its casing. It began to work on the mallet, the tip coming free and falling to the ground. Miss Butterworth peered inside without comment, and turned the exposed heart of the thing towards the audience.

  ‘A primitive t’assali explosive device,’ she said.

  Gasps sounded from every corner of the auditorium. A few members of the audience fled the front of the stage and raced for the doors. ‘A rather imaginative method of assassination. However, one which only several people in this room possess the expertise to have engineered. There are two possible suspects, as far as I can make out. The first is that of the Ixenites. The second is of course the tersh himself.’ More diplomats and noteables were running for the exits now, only a few morbid hundred remained to watch the commotion out of curiosity. ‘The Ixenites might be a viable candidate if the tersh hadn’t offered me the mallet ritual personally.’

  ‘No…’ murmured the tersh. Someone turned off his amplifier then. Fortmann knew what he’d be whispering though: you offered to take the ritual, I didn’t say a thing…I didn’t say a thing…I didn’t say a thing…

  The Ixenite devotees, Maria, and 261, would be watching a direct stream of the failure back at the Chapterhouse, all sitting in deathly silence. 261. Had he known somehow? Was this part of some elaborate ruse? It wasn’t unthinkable.

  ‘To the Bureau of Substantiation with him then,’ she said, pointing vaguely to the tersh, her mouth warped into a snarl. ‘Conspirator as he is, he at least deserves a trial.’

  ‘I must object!’ shouted a diplomat, probably Faustish judging by his toga colours. ‘He is the grand tersh!’

  ‘In the words of Old Erde Mieville,’ said Miss Butterworth, ‘“Human madness is often times a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some subtler form.” Those in power are just as capable of stupidity as those without it, and the attempted assassination of a syndicate official most definitely qualifies as stupidity. Remove him.’

  Two gungovs climbed the stage and approached the tersh. He raised two shaking hands in surrender. The monsters laid black and firm mechanical fingers on the tersh’s arm, their grabbing-parts clenched hard enough for him to cry out as they walked him from sight, their eyes burning with a titian orange.

  ‘I will see to his trial personally, as the power vested in me by the syndicate hub allows. Be assured, no detail will go overlooked, no fastener undone. For the time being however we face the problem of an absent tersh. Of course, Tersh Princewright will have his official powers revoked for the duration of his trial, and returned if he is deemed not guilty. And, in accordance with the power vested in me by the syndicate hub, I bear the responsibility of choosing a temporary tersh to stand in for the time being.’

  ‘His brother!’ cried a notable.

  ‘Absolutely not. For the duration of the trial we must assume his entire family could have been involved. No, it must be somebody familiar with the mechanisms of Governance, competent enough to lead, but completely outside of suspicion.’

  The damned Lieutenant whatever-his-name-is, thought Fortmann. Fricke. Lieutenant Fricke. He found the man in the crowd a few rows back, already straightening his ceremonial toga and discreetly brushing his hair with a wetted finger in preparation.

  ‘Professor Stefan Jura of the Stratigraphics Faculty will be an ideal choice,’ said the syndicate woman then. Fortmann reeled. He’d seen the idiot on the streams, a total incompetent. An expert in wiremind suppression. The worst has happened. The literal worst has happened.

  There was a stunned silence that seemed to stretch out infinitely in all directions, then a slow syncopated clap took its place. Miss Butterworth gestured encouragingly to someone in the audience. The professor climbed from the crowd and stood blinking in the stagelights like a feckless sheep, half-smiling, half apparently horrified. The worst has happened. The syndicate woman took the professor’s hand then and raised it, the audience clapping a little more enthusiastically. Then, in her other hand, brandished like a weapon, she raised the sabotaged Pergrin mallet, its miniature explosive orange heart still blinking within.

  21

  “It is not my death which scares me. Rather I fear what it will soon come to represent.”

  - Cato the Wiremind of Old Erde

  Moxiana -

  She plaited the girl’s hair into helices and perfumed her with w’liak sap. ‘Come, the scallixes are warbling, it’s time for sleep,’ she said.

  The girl rubbed her eyes. ‘Yes. But there’s something we should talk about first.’

  ‘I’m sure it can wait until tomorrow,’ said the crone.

  ‘No,’ said the girl. ‘It can’t.’

  The crone was not so old that she missed these subtleties. The girl had a good nature about her. She was not in the habit of defiance. Is the day here already, then? The crone took in the forest, took in the rising musk of sap, the canopy of reds and greens, their makeshift treehouse up in the towering zardaspears. Is the day here already?

  ‘You mustn’t fight them,’ said the girl. ‘When they come. They might let you go that way.’

  The crone stroked the girl’s hair. ‘You know as well as I do that what must happen, must happen.’

  The girl frowned in seriousness, folded her arms. ‘I will change it,’ she said.

  ‘Child, I’m old and wrinkled and going addled.’ The crone poked her tongue out and scrunched up her face. ‘When my end comes, it won’t be a tragedy of any sort. I’ve lived many years and in many places. I’ve had the good pleasure of spending some of that time with you, and I wouldn’t trade that for all the t’assali on Exurbia. Mark that. When the end comes, you mustn’t be sad. The world has been good to me.’

  ‘But you’ve been good to me,’ said the girl. ‘Let me help you.’

  ‘Look,’ said the crone, taking the girl’s hand. ‘This is hard for me to explain, but Gnesha knows you’re a bright girl. Time isn’t a mark in the sand you can wipe away. It’s out there, all of it, even now. Every moment that has ever happened, every moment that will ever happen, a mountain made of moments, ahead and behind. And I am one tiny pebble on that mountain. No one can change the future any more than they could topple the Xianxi range. Do you understand?’

  ‘I’d move a mountain,’ said the girl. ‘For you.’

  ‘And I thank you for that, but even you and your power has a limit. Child, who is coming? Are they wearing purple?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And carrying weapons?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Has the child seen her own death too? They will kill her, surely. ‘Where will they take you?’

  ‘A city. To a tower.’

  ‘The tershal tower?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I haven’t seen anything past that.’

  Plovda, then perhaps it’s so. Worse even if they don’t kill her. Her craft in the hands of Governance - what a tyranny.

  ‘The tersh,’ said the girl then, ‘he has a new face.’

  ‘Well they don’t live forever, you know.’

  ‘No. Not like that. He’s new new.’

  The crone eyed her sceptically. ‘New new?’

  ‘A scientist.’

  ‘Madness, they’d never let a scientist in Governance.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘It’s what he is.’

  Perhaps there is hope then.

  ‘And his rule,’ said the crone, can you see his rule ahead?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And is it a gentle rule?’

  ‘Let’s g
o find some zardanuts,’ said the girl. ‘Today’s a good day for zardanuts.’

  Part II - The Tersh

  In which Jura is afraid,

  the gungovs laugh,

  and a wiremind is built.

  22

  “The stars are distant, but I have no doubt we will reach them one day. The true frontiers are within: the cold and unsanctified corners of our violence.”

  - Saint Pergrin of Olde Erde

  Jura -

  The man entered with his head bowed, face set expressionless. Around his arms and torso hung water coils and dangling metal, and from his pocket peaked components and cutting tools.

  ‘You don’t find it proper to greet your tersh with the appropriate respect?’ said Miss Butterworth.

  ‘I don’t find it proper,’ he said, ‘to honour a man with the status of a god.’

  ‘God or not, you will show him the respect he deserves.’

  ‘Which,’ said the man, still with his eyes to the ground, ‘I am doing.’

  Jura chuckled. ‘Come, he’s just a little anxious.’

  ‘I assure you I am not,’ said the man.

  ‘As you wish. What is it you believe you’ve been brought here for?’ said the syndicate woman.

  ‘I stand accused of breaking the Pergrin Decree.’

  ‘How?’ Jura leaned forward, rubbing his perfumed palms together.

  ‘By trying to achieve a critical wiremind state. How else?’

  ‘And you admit to the crime?’

  The man looked up then. No, not a man but a boy of - what? Seventeen? What a strange countenance. He was bearded and worn, his face pocked with craters and asymmetry. The brow was low and demure.

  ‘I admit to building a wiremind, yes.’

  ‘Knowingly,’ said Miss Butterworth, sitting at Jura’s side, ‘breaking the Pergrin Decree?’