Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars (An Infinite Triptych Book 1) Page 17

  ‘Have you all gone completely mad, or have I?’

  ‘You saw it, didn’t you?’ said 261. Maria and the Zdrastian nodded.

  ‘The alternate imp, she showed it to me too, just a little differently. Then you understand now?’

  Maria nodded again. 261 pointed with his free hand to where the butterfly had first condensed. ‘Whatever it is, whatever the alternate imp sent us here for, we’ll find it there.’

  ‘You’ve gone insane, all of you,' said Fortmann.

  The three of them started down the hill towards the valley and the trees in silence.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going? This is madness, we need to stop for the night, we need to rest, Gnesha’s pintel, we need to rest.’

  ‘Come on. It won’t be long,’ called 261 from ahead. ‘It won’t be long now, Fortmann.’

  29

  “This next step will be no more peaceful than those which came before it. Our evils will journey with us to the stars, just as we once brought them to the Americas.”

  - Carlos Boncheva of Old Erde, creator of the weld drive

  Moxiana -

  She awoke to a pain in her arm, a needle. Eyes open then, she was in a medical room of some kind, secured with straps to a table, surrounded by the monsters she had seen in her visions. Trundling and rusted machines, their eyes burning with Ayakashi orange. The machines were working on her unhurriedly, one drawing blood, another taking a scan of her with some kind of device.

  An ocean of memories washed over her suddenly: the epicforest, zardanuts, the crone and the glitz. The Governance men would have left the crone's body there in the dirt. It had happened just as the girl had foreseen it, not a single variation.

  'Stop,' she croaked.

  One of the gungovs seemed to take notice. It paused for a moment, selected a syringe from a medical tray, and plunged it into her arm. Sleep came upon her again then.

  30

  “Great ills befall the one who sings, of such mechanised abhorrent things.”

  - Traditional Old Erde Pergrin Hymn

  Fortmann -

  The entrance to the corridor had been unremarkable; scallixes hovered and danced at the last clearing, but there had been no foreboding omens. Once inside, they had trudged a few koels into the forest as the canopy grew denser and began to block out the sun. Soon enough it was twilight for them. At least, thought Fortmann, we’ve survived longer than the Governance men before us. With each glance into the w’liaks he expected severed arms or whole cadavers, ripped in two by something furious, with horns and bloodied teeth. What was it the Zdrastian had said, that night in the tombs? Alter this day in the most peaceful direction. A stupid prayer, a dumb and desperate and stupid prayer, but now he mumbled it under his own breath, fast enough that each syllable ran into the next.

  ‘Keep walking as you are,’ said 261 quietly from up ahead. ‘But do tell me if you see something unusual.’

  ‘Unusual?’ said Fortmann.

  ‘Anything out of place.’

  ‘It makes me extremely nervous when you say things like that, Imp.’

  ‘There’s no cause for alarm. I doubt we would have come this far had we not been allowed to anyway.’

  ‘We’re being watched, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Correct. And,’ he added, ‘where is the Zdrastian?’

  They stopped and scanned the epicforest. Mr. Covert Woof was gone too.

  ‘When was the last time we saw him?’ said the imp.

  ‘He was behind me not ten minutes ago,’ said Maria.

  ‘Gnesha’s twot, where has he gotten to?’ growled Fortmann.

  ‘We should wait. He’ll get lost otherwise,’ said 261.

  Fortmann whistled for the dog. Bulbous insect eyes watched from the foliage. Fortmann looked for severed arms again, for cadavers, and found nothing. The w’liaks and fulshrubs were growing warped in the soil now, their leaves an almost necrotic black. The scallixes were absent, bird song was too distant to hear. Governance had a genetic tampering initiative once, or so they say. Perhaps they let their worst creations run amok here where they could do no harm to anyone, save to those fools who willingly came looking for them.

  ‘Be silent a moment,’ said 261. Fortmann’s heart was beating in his temples.

  ‘What?’

  ‘One moment.’

  There was the sound of burning paper from all about. Alter this day in the most peaceful direction, alter this day –

  Then, a screech from behind, followed by a small explosion. Fortmann forced himself to turn around. Orange effervescence leaked from the bark of the trees. Plovda, is that t’assali? Almost all of the w'liaks were bleeding it now, orange streaks igniting their bark. Something howled from up ahead. There was a distant rustle from the leaf canopy and it seemed to be approaching them. Fortmann squinted. Sure enough, something was dividing the trees as it came, pushing them aside like a man might draw a curtain.

  ‘Don’t run,’ said 261, keeping his stare on the forest ahead. ‘It might be taken as a supplicating gesture.’

  Alter this day in the most peaceful direction, one without forest monsters and cadavers and arms torn from cadavers and –

  The trees ahead of the monster erupted in fire as it neared. Fortmann made out the vague shape of it then. Black all over, winged, and two points of burning coral orange for eyes, shooting wildfire ahead to clear a path.

  ‘Do not run,’ shouted 261. 'That is imperative.’

  ‘Maria…’ Fortmann whispered. She turned to him, her face still an image of whatever angelic calm the gargantuan butterfly had provided her. Then she took his hand and kissed it. The monster was near now, still incinerating the trees as it came. And beside it, Fortmann saw then, were more of them, flying in tandem. They were bulbous and huge, jaunting clumsily on asymmetrical wings, and another beside them that did not fly but ran on flailing legs.

  ‘Do not run.’

  The forest ahead of them was blazing now. Smoke and flames had blotted out the twilight.

  In the most peaceful direction, in the most peaceful direction, in the most–

  The creatures paused a laying man’s length from 261, the flying monstrosities perched in the air, those that walked taking a stance behind the three of them until they were encircled.

  ‘We ask for an audience with your master,’ said 261 placidly. ‘With your leader,’ he corrected. The creatures were silent. One of the walking things sidled up to Fortmann and put its grievous inkdark face to his. The eyes were that of a gungov’s, burning with the same pupiless churning orange violence.

  ‘We have come a considerable distance, from Bucephalia on foot. We are weary and long-travelled. We ask only for the briefest of meetings with he or she who presides over this place.’ Another infinite pause. ‘We have been sent by the second moralising imp.’ There was the slightest of commotions among the creatures. ‘She resides now in the quandary cave, but assures me that whoever dwells here would at least grant us an audience.’

  A pause, then the troop turned in the direction they had come - the trees slowly burning to the base of their trunks - and advanced.

  ‘They’re ignoring us,’ Fortmann whispered.

  ‘Doubtful,’ said 261. ‘We must follow.’

  ‘They’re ignoring us.’

  Without warning, 261 grabbed Fortmann by the lapels of his camouflage jacket and bent so that their heads were level and their lips close enough to kiss.

  ‘You are welcome, Seer Fortmann, to take your cowardice and retreat back to whence we came. That is your prerogative and I will not try to stop you, nor, I doubt, will Maria. But do not try to shirk your duty or the weight of what is upon us by making feeble and irrational excuses. Even now, those at the Chapterhouse await our triumphant return. Retreat by all means, but know that if you do so I will inform them of your inexcusable cowardice and it’s highly likely that you will be, at the very least, impeached. Do you understand?’

  Fortmann nodded, speechless. Mari
a was staring from ahead, mouth open. We meant to make a monster of you. And now you have become one.

  They tailed behind for a koel, the creatures never turning to check if they were following. There were unfamiliar shapes through the trees now, trunks twisted into helices, rocks sheared by fire and stacked on top of one another. In the middle distance was a small mudsand structure of arched pillars and warped columns. Fortmann noticed the absence of windows and grew immediately uneasy. What doesn’t need light to live? The creatures led them to the door and then were perfectly stationary.

  ‘We should enter?’ said 261. There was no further movement. He pulled at the ropehandle. The door was cumbersome but gave way. Something has neglected to go outside for a very long time. There were no rooms inside, only one enormous extended hall. A menagerie of orange-eyed creatures stood and lay idly all about, staring now at the visitors. And there are gungovs here, thought Fortmann gravely, immediately recognising the humanoid figures. Once inside, something closed the door behind them and they stood before the zoo of distorted geometries and limbs where limbs should not have been. The centremost group parted to reveal a human male, the eyes normally pupilled, though with a pale shade of fire burning across them. He lay slouched on a sofa, arms at his side as though comatose.

  ‘I know you,’ said something that looked like a gungov, staring at 261. The voice was that of a bellows stoking a fire. ‘You share a likeness with one I knew.’

  ‘A likeness perhaps,’ said 261, ‘but it’s highly improbable that we have met before. To who are we speaking?’

  ‘You are speaking to the speaker,’ said the gungov. ‘And I speak for the liege.’

  ‘And I am the reader,’ said another gungov. ‘And I read for the liege.’

  ‘And I am the killer,’ said a third. ‘And I kill for the liege.’

  The lying man looked from 261 to Maria then to Fortmann, but did not move.

  Is he incapacitated, or does our visit simply not merit rising?

  ‘You control the gungovs,’ said Maria to the laying man. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I do,’ said the speaker gungov. ‘The task takes up the majority of my concentration.’

  They talk like wind.

  ‘Even now, it is requiring all of my effort just to keep my mind in this very room. You should be honoured that I think it even necessary to bother doing so. I could have skinned you where you stood hours ago.’

  ‘And for that we are grateful,’ said 261.

  ‘You control all of the gungovs? On Exurbia?’ said Maria.

  ‘I sow my energies among them and animate them and think for them, and I see through their eyes, and I kill with them when killing is needed.’

  ‘Then does the tersh know what you are? Does he know that it’s a man who drives them?’

  ‘Man,’ rasped the speaker. Every creature in the room made the noise of wind across brittle leaves, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

  ‘Man,’ rasped the gungov again. ‘As much a man I am as you are mitochondria.’

  ‘You control the t’assali,’ whispered Fortmann.

  ‘No. I animate it. I wield it. I do not control it. That is the privilege of another.’ The speaker scrutinised Fortmann and Maria. ‘I do not know you two.’

  ‘We’re not Governance,’ Fortmann said, and meant to finish the sentence with an official address but could find nothing fitting.

  ‘Well of course, I know that much. I see everything there is to see inside the halls of power and your faces have not appeared there even once. You are Ixenites.’

  Fortmann was silent.

  ‘We have come - ’ said 261.

  ‘You have come to build a wiremind. You have come to spit in Pergrin’s face. You have come to raise arms against those who would stop you.’ Titian orange flares streaked across the man’s eyes. The speaker, the reader, and the killer began to talk at once then: ‘Every waking moment I feel the t’assali trying to cohere in me and I resist it. I placate it, I tell it “no, not now, not now.”’

  A wiremind without a rig? Is that possible?

  ‘And yet you have come here with the intention of rousing it?’ The gungovs and the birds and the bent and twisted monsters leered then and sidled closer to the three newcomers. ‘For what good?’

  ‘We believe -’ started Fortmann.

  ‘I know full well what you believe. What change does that make in the world?’

  ‘This is what the universe does,’ he said quietly. ‘It builds gods.’

  ‘Doubtless. I am living proof after all.’

  ‘An icon led us here,’ said 261. ‘An Old Erde insect, a butterfly. Were you responsible for that?’

  ‘Not directly.’

  ‘Then you know what it was?’

  ‘We’re standing very close to edge now. Things are crawling up from beyond the precipice.’ One of the gungovs sprayed the liege’s face in water mist and wiped a slick of sweat from his brow. ‘This planet celebrates Pergrin and his tenacity, but few know what followed after that day. I have read the reports. They still exist on the deepest Governance streams. Pergrin became a hero to the Erde people. After Cato, almost every wiremind was destroyed in the space of a week, the processing units torn out and smashed on the steps of the civic halls across the planet. A small movement persisted on one of the western continents that held true to the traditions of wiremind building and taught it to the next generation, and the next. They preserved the knowledge in secret, even when the penalty for such preservation was death. Instead of advancing mechanical intelligence, the Erders invested their efforts into genetic redesign and nanotechnology, and suffered the consequences of their ambition. Within a decade, man fell into what was later called the "strata". So many species of human now existed that civil order dissolved. The more intelligent species took over the cities and built their monuments to a god they vowed to create. The lower species retreated to the forests and the mountains and lived simple lives, many returning to a state before language or civilisation. It is the Anari, the most intellectually gifted of Erde's man-species, who perfected the weld drive and brought us out to the stars. You will notice, however, that we are not Anari. And for this I can find no reasonable explanation.’

  ‘There is no mention in the streams of a syndicate hub effort to revert all galactic citizens to the original human template. How can we even be sure this is the original human template? Nevertheless, what the Anari truly left behind is far more dangerous than propulsion technology and genetic tampering devices. It is the myth that god can be created rather than found at an altar. A notion obscene as it is impetuous. And it is one that has gripped this planet in its vice and will not let go. Either way, by tyranny or wiremind, we will go extinct. The syndicate woman spoke of a planet, Spool. Her warfleet evaporated it long before the wiremind could spread far enough through local space to preserve itself. They will do the same here the moment one goes critical. Don’t think they will spare us out of some benevolent mercy. Our forests are not that green, nor is our literature that profound.’

  ‘The ambrosia,’ said 261.

  ‘Yes,’ said the speaker. ‘You think it will reach criticality faster than t’assali, fast enough to peak before a hub response can arrive.’

  ‘It is extremely likely.’

  ‘And do you not think the syndicate woman knows this?’

  ‘She will have considered the possibility, yes.'

  ‘And still she brought the ambrosia to Exurbia?’

  ‘What exactly are you implying?’ said 261. ‘You have the gungovs’ ears, inside the tershal tower and outside. You must hear her true thoughts.’

  ‘I hear what she says aloud. All else is guesswork. There is a mismatch between her intentions and her speech the size of the Askallik Canyon. But she is not sinister. Not in the least.’

  ‘You can’t mean that,’ said Fortmann before he could stop himself. ‘She obviously framed the last tersh.’

  ‘Such are the mechanisms of rule. The man you speak of, Tersh Princewright, h
ad the tersh prior to him removed. Of course,’ he said, all orange eyes turned then to the imp, ‘you will be familiar with this.’

  ‘I have no such knowledge. Tersh Stanislav died before I was installed in the cave. There was no reason to research the matter when I assumed my duties.’

  ‘I’m surprised at you. The evidence is there. I saw it in its entirety. Princewright, his assistant at the time, poured drops of w’liak sap into the man’s ear, rendering him dead in appearance to those who weren’t versed in toxicology. He was taken in his sleep to one of the deepest vaults and left there to rot.’

  ‘And he died?’ said Fortmann.

  ‘Oh no. He still lives, in a sense. Now Princewright is imprisoned himself. Some Old Erde spiritual practices would frame this as a kind of divine retribution or cosmic justice. I believe the syndicate woman is working on the behalf of both forces.’

  A gungov bent to pour a little water into the liege’s mouth. Errant trickles ran onto his overalls.

  ‘How do you imagine, truly imagine, Exurbia will appear after your wiremind becomes conscious of itself?’

  ‘We don’t,’ said Fortmann. ‘We build it because it is the reasonable thing to do. Nature made men to work on the projects too complicated for her hands alone. We’re her gardeners.’

  ‘Her harvesters,’ said the gungov.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Well now then, little Ixenites, your Demeter has come, your goddess of the harvest. Here with her hoe and sickle. This is the point at which you will either embrace the reality of your abstruse ambition, or learn to be more careful with what you wish for.’

  The Demeter, blonde hair in sprawls, those cerulean blue eyes. ‘The syndicate women,’ Fortmann said.

  ‘I admit, I haven’t the slightest fancy what she might be,' said the liege. 'Inhuman, that’s the most I can say. I broke into her craft using one of my gungovs. There was nothing inside, literally nothing. No controls, no equipment, no paraphernalia.’