Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars (An Infinite Triptych Book 1) Page 16

  ‘By a syndicate warfleet, yes.’

  ‘Else it would have reached the syndicate hub.’

  ‘Well, Professor, let’s entertain, for a moment, the possibility that she might be lying. Isn’t it just the kind of horror story you’d tell if you had an anti-wiremind agenda? And even then, let’s pretend she’s being totally honest with us. Let’s pretend that wireminds automatically turn on their planets. Why would she come here to help us build one?’

  Jura ran his eyes across the basket at the base of the machine. Only the crooked spokes of the outline had been built so far. ‘It isn’t a wiremind,’ Jura said quietly.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s an amplifier of some kind.’

  ‘Of what kind?’

  ‘I’ve told you too much already. Continue with your work, this is getting us nowhere.’

  ‘You don’t know, do you? You have no idea.’

  ‘Continue with -’

  ‘I’ll tell you what it is, because I’ve had full access to the blueprints and it’s obvious. The machine is a focus point. Something, or someone I suppose, is placed inside the basket. When the ambrosia goes critical, it becomes contiguous with all points in spacetime simultaneously.’

  ‘Absurd.’

  ‘You know it isn’t. Whatever rides along with it will be dispersed equally across the field. The exomaterial field itself won’t achieve full consciousness beyond, say, three pergrins. Whatever is placed inside the field, however, will be projected onto the Up.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call it that.’ A childish occult term.

  ‘The Up, Professor? What would you have it named?’

  The bane of my miserable life. Jura shrugged.

  ‘Well,’ said Mcalister, ‘it isn’t of great importance what we call it. The point is that we know what the esteemed Miss Butterworth has in mind. She’s not here to build a god. She’s here to make one of a man. Isn’t that ironic? Who gets to be the pioneer, do you think? Who gets to take that first journey in the basket? Is it you, Professor? As her lover, I mean.’

  Infernal oik. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘As her lover, Professor. Will you be given preference on account of you being her lover?’

  ‘Don’t comment on matters you don’t understand.’

  ‘They’re the only matters worth commenting on.’

  Mcalister stood defiantly now, arms at his side, chest protruding, his breath regular and assured.

  ‘Just what is it you want?’ Jura said.

  ‘The same thing you want, Professor.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘Freedom from the itch. Doesn’t it just haunt you?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘The pull of the gestalt. I don’t know anything that tugs harder.

  ‘Who gets eternity?’ sung a shrill voice. Lords, no. Not now.

  ‘Who gets the urn?’ sung another, even higher. The syndicate woman’s spyles wound down in a helix from the ceiling.

  ‘How long have you been there?’ said Jura. ‘Waiting in the eaves like devious little bats.’

  ‘Who gets eternity?’ they sung together, clashing at a semi-tone apart. Mcalister was watching them thoughtfully as they flew about his face, extending and retracting their cutting-parts like a playful cat’s claws.

  ‘Who gets the urn?’

  ‘Fiesty, aren’t they?’ said Mcalister.

  ‘We have special instructions,’ said the first drone. ‘From our lady.’

  ‘Special instructions,’ said the second. ‘To open you up if you’re rude.’

  ‘To…open me up?’ Mcalister said.

  They juddered their cutting-parts in a frenzy, in and out, the gauge wheels whirling.

  ‘And you have been very rude. Very rude to the professor.’

  The boy kept his eyes on Jura. ‘We were talking, as friends.’

  ‘You weren’t saying very friendly things,’ said the second spyle.

  ‘He gets the urn!’ said the first. ‘The urn for him!’

  Both brought out enormous gleaning bifurcate blades and raised them to Mcalister’s face. A look of repressed panic flashed across it.

  ‘He’s a student of mine,’ said Jura. ‘An old friend.’ One of the blades moved cleanly into Mcalister’s neck and drew a small blot of blood. ‘More than that,’ said Jura hurriedly, ‘he’s an asset to the cause, and Miss Butterworth will be very angry if you damage him. Especially if you kill him.’

  ‘But he’s mischievous,’ one said. ‘He’s plotting.’

  ‘He’s indispensable. Grand Socratic Butterworth said that herself. Indispensible.’

  The drones paused in their flight for a moment, retracted their cutting-parts and turned their eyestalks on Jura.

  ‘You are also mischievous,’ said the first.

  ‘You are also plotting,’ said the other.

  ‘Begone with you, return to your keeper, she waits in the tershal hall.’

  They circled back up into the ceiling and disappeared through a cavity. Mcalister tried to staunch the blood flow, his neck covered in streams of it then.

  ‘I'm sorry,’ said Jura. ‘They’re Plovda’s little menaces. Evil.’

  ‘Old Kreole, the history teacher,’ Mcalister said, his face a little pale, but the expression resolved. ‘He used to say one should judge a man by his guard dogs. And what strange guard dogs your lover keeps, Professor.’

  28

  “All systems tend towards absolute perfection, if granted sufficient time and resources.”

  -The Book of Truisms

  Fortmann -

  Early evening, the moons riding up gingerly on the horizon, a few transport pods leaving lazy contrails in their wake. In the projects, defiance beat like an anvil, the Ixenites toiling in double-time, working through steam, working through fear and foolhardiness. Many were young, the elders having been rooted out by the gungovs in their raids. And in the basements, in the attics and the hidden passages, the barebones of god were being assembled, secured with bolts and sticking fluid.

  On Hoyle Street, a gungov put an explosive kick through a shack door. T’assali shot then from its eyes and its fingers and its chest and evaporated the entrance entirely. A young girl screamed from the end of the hall and ran for cover, taking the stairs in double jumps. The rest of the group entered.

  A hundred koels south, the expedition climbed the steep hill in swaddled rags, trudging through the evening like old women, heads ducked and bobbing. The foot sores were sore enough not to mention anymore, their pack straps cutting welts into their shoulders. Bucephalia was little more than a thumbnail on the horizon, the orange vented steam trails of t’assali hanging over it like a spectre. Fortmann imagined the one-two beat of his footsteps were tribal drums, that they were all elsewhere, that they were fed and watered and bound for bed.

  ‘Another two koels, and we’ll be at the lip of the corridor I think,’ said 261.

  From behind, the imp’s stature was enormous now, that of a bear. I could do with some of that testosterone synthesiser myself, thought Fortmann. Then aloud: ‘Well, I don’t see a damn thing. We could be walking right into the gnashing jaws of death for all you know.’

  ‘Fortmann,’ Maria said, scolding.

  I am Seer. You shan’t talk to me in that manner, bed shared or no bed shared.

  ‘Well, what’s the guarantee? How do you even know where this place is?’ he said.

  ‘I was privy to a large quantity of classified information during my time in the cave. The Corridor of Screaming Bark came up from time to time,’ said 261.

  ‘Then you know what it is?’

  ‘Reports were often vague.’

  ‘Oh, superb.’

  ‘Fortmann,’ Maria said again, and broke from his side to walk among the rushes. The Zdrastian still kept position at the back of the line, quiet as he had been the entire journey. Mr. Covert Woof - tissue paper secured about his paws as usual - trotted faithfully at his master’s
side, pausing occasionally to sniff at screeshrubs and mottlebarbs.

  ‘Exurbic Special Security often spoke informally of their terror at approaching the corridor, as well as supposed episodes in which personnel had gone missing,’ said 261. ‘Though in all likelihood, we’re probably safe.’

  Perhaps the synthesiser did something to his faculties. Twenty-four years in a concrete box, then being suddenly pulled out and dosed with chemicals could have taken its toll on the man.

  ‘We’re probably safe? What do we have that an official tershal security detail doesn’t?’

  The imp stopped at a highledge and seemed to sniff the wind then. He ran two brazen hands through his long brown hair and eyed the valley below.

  ‘I have had a considerable amount of time to think about the corridor, as well as the t’assali events on Exurbia.’

  ‘What does t’assali have to do with it?’ Fortmann said.

  ‘A great deal. To begin with, the Ayakashi always strikes with apparent volition behind it. It has never, as far as I’m aware, acted without purpose or intention. There is a strong likelihood that it is either a creature in its own right, or being controlled by a pilot of some sort.’

  ‘Pilot?’ Maria said.

  ‘And I believe the Ayakashi is steered by a similar force to that which guides the gungovs.’

  ‘They seem like robots,’ offered the Zdrastian weakly.

  ‘Possibly. We know at the least that the gungovs are operated by t’assali. On occasion they have even tried to communicate, though in very rudimentary ways. There’s ample evidence to suggest that they’re being piloted remotely also.’

  ‘By the same entity?’

  ‘Highly unlikely. The gungovs are faultlessly faithful to the tersh. The Ayakashi, however, has made several attempts on Bucephalia, as well as levelling Xianxi, a tershal stronghold against the rogue city states. There are at least two sources of power.’

  All three of them moved to the ledge. The epicforest lay below, stretching koel after koel into the far distance.

  ‘What did she say to you, 261? The imp woman,’ Maria said.

  ‘Very little, and nothing of much substance or use for the occasion at hand. But enough to confirm that I have made the right decision.’

  ‘Decision?’

  ‘In staying with your cause.’

  ‘In fairness,’ said Maria, ‘you didn’t have much choice.’

  Idiot, what are you filling his head with? Fortmann thought.

  ‘There has been ample chance to have you incarcerated or your location reported to Governance at the very least,’ said 261. He spoke without malice. ‘Every day, in fact, has brought with it a new opportunity to reveal my location to Governance. The pass-string on your stream terminals took me less than three minutes to override. The Ixenite guarding my apartment is Staren York, a man that repeatedly came up involved with quandaries while I was in the cave; there was every chance to blackmail him into aiding my escape. The t’assali beacon on your rooftop -’

  ‘All right,’ said Fortmann gravely. ‘Understood.’

  ‘I resisted the urge to return to the cave partly out of curiosity for your intentions, and partly out of my recent disdain for Governance. However, the female imp showed me more than I needed to see to confirm my allegiance. You have only my word of course, but I hope this will suffice. It is unlikely that I would have helped you this far had my loyalties still laid with Governance. I know what you did to Takashi however.’

  Fortmann saw the man in his mind, still alive even now somehow, lying slack-jawed on the medical table back at the Chapterhouse, wires sprouting from his head like an eccentric cat’s whiskers.

  ‘If you do anything like that again, I will withdraw my help immediately. Barring that however, you have my full compliance.’ Maria rubbed his back and put her head on his shoulder.

  ‘Thank you, 261,’ she said.

  ‘And what exactly did the woman imp show you?’ Fortmann said.

  ‘The gestalt,’ said 261.

  ‘What do you mean, she “showed it” to you?’

  ‘It would be difficult to describe. In short, despite your somewhat dubious moral practices, she convinced me that I should do all I can to usher in what you refer to as “the Up.”’

  This is just the kind of ruse a dupe like him might pull, exactly the kind of nonsense he would spout. ‘Then you will help us build a wiremind?’ Fortmann said.

  ‘I will help to put you in a position where it could, in theory, be possible, yes.’

  The sun had almost all but disappeared, the moons were reigning now. Fortmann surveyed the constellations. Phorell and Xerxes shone to the north, marking the route to the hub. All those weld fissures the visiting crafts had left over the centuries, what if they were visible? Would the night sky just be one open gash? We have ripped the firmament apart for the sake of our stupid disaporas.

  ‘Though we will need to pass through the corridor first,’ the imp added. ‘I will be completely honest, partly because it is in my nature, and partly out of my concern for you all. We may well be walking into danger. The female imp admitted that she was unsure what lay beyond the corridor, though we both know that it is somehow connected to the Ayakashi. We are not the first to have supposed this. In the Year of the Flaunted Sickle, a small party of climate scientists and security personnel attempted to pass through the corridor, harbouring similar suspicions to mine about what lay beyond it. I have heard their last transmission myself, and it is not a pleasant one.’

  ‘What happened?’ said Maria.

  ‘Unknown. They were all almost certainly murdered, not more than three minutes into entering the corridor. Judging from the background sounds, they were all disemboweled or fatally mutilated in some way.’

  A bundle of scallixes rose glowing from a grasspatch.

  ‘That fills me with boundless confidence,’ said Fortmann. ‘Gnesha’s highest blessings upon you.’

  ‘Fortmann,’ Maria groaned.

  ‘The imp women could just as well be leading us into certain death. She’s cunning isn’t she, just like you. She knows what we want. She knows what we’d do for it.’

  ‘The alternate imp is following the gestalt. She won’t bring us to harm.’

  ‘We are all following the gestalt,’ said Maria then, the lacklustre gone from her voice suddenly. ‘For better or worse, through calamity and wicked circumstance, through the age before ages and the age upon now with its many chronicles and revisions. We all follow the gestalt with its burning in our cells, and the ancestors of our cells, and the earth on which walked our ancestors, and the men of Old Erde and the beasts before them. As the scallix looks for pollen, so do we look for our deliverance, and our providence among the flowers, and nothing can stop or hope to stop, or even truly wish to stop if it so understood, the rising shout of complexity’s progress in the world, in the yonder. What little bits we are. What little components switching on and off like diodes. What little villages our lives are on a map too big to navigate by. But there is a destination nonetheless.’

  They stood in silence for a few moments, then Fortmann turned slowly to Maria. ‘What, in Pergrin’s name, are you talking about?’

  ‘Nature begets herself and herself and herself,’ said the Zrastian, in a similar sagely tone. ‘First an atom, then a star, then a planet, then an empire. Then the gods themselves.’

  Could poison have done this to them?

  ‘Mythology has it reversed. It is not the gods that make men, but rather -’

  ‘Friends,’ 261 said and pointed to below the moons. A rippling manifold of colour hung suspended above the epicforest, not four koels distant.

  ‘Oh Erde and damnation, the Ayakashi,’ Fortmann moaned. Now we die then, all cinder-black and charred.

  ‘No. It’s not the Ayakashi, we can be certain of that much,' said the imp.

  ‘A destination nonetheless, a destination nonetheless,’ said Maria sleepily.

  The manifold loitered in the air like
lazy plasma then settled into what all four of them instantly recognised as a butterfly; amethyst purple and at least half a koel high, its wings turned towards them, beating silently in the middle distance.

  ‘We are approaching the end of history, and as we near it, the pattern becomes more complex. Things are unstuck, both in time and tradition,’ said the Zdrastian. We’ve all been poisoned, or dosed, or something. Else I have lost my mind, thought Fortmann.

  ‘No you haven’t,’ said Maria. Her skin was radiant then, her expression a marble plane of calm and resolve. She cupped Fortmann’s face in her hand.

  ‘We’re very close now,’ she said.

  ‘To what, damn it?’

  The butterfly began to approach them, jaunting across the epicforest canopy.

  ‘To what, damn it?’ Is she possessed? God, are we all possessed?

  The butterfly was coming faster now; close enough already that Fortmann could see the antennae and the bulbous knowing eyes, and the mouth wet and snapping shut, opening and snapping shut.

  ‘To the Up,’ Maria said. ‘To the final gestalt, to the gestalt.’

  ‘What can that possibly mean? What does any of this nonsense mean?’

  ‘The tersh and the girl will open the gates, and those who wish to join may join, and those who wish to stay may stay. We are invited, all of us invited, to join our cousins in the Up. The Demeter has made it so.’

  Fortmann went to shield his face and fell to the dirt. The other three stood with hands at their sides, expressions neutral, Maria’s eyes closed, the Zdrastian a vision of calm, 261 smiling. The butterfly converged on the party in a final mad beating of wings, the mouth open as though to swallow them whole. Fortmann shrieked. There was no pain. Rather, he felt nothing at all. 261 and Maria stood at the ledge in the exact same position. The monster was gone, evaporated. He frantically searched the nightsky and the epicforest canopy.

  ‘I had no idea,’ Maria said quietly, on her knees now. 261 nodded stoically.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Fortmann screamed, scrabbling to his feet, eyes wide.

  ‘I had no idea,’ she said again. ‘None at all.’