Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars (An Infinite Triptych Book 1) Page 22

  ‘We got very far,’ said Maria gently. ‘We got very far, didn’t we?’

  He tried to nod.

  The orange curtain was not a spit's reach away, drifting across the fields like a wayward ship sail. If the thing was transparent, he knew, the fields would be black beyond it. Charred and black and seared and singed, not a grass blade left untouched, not a mud clod neglected. Without thinking he let go of her hand, ran for the sake of running, taking massive snatches of breath, the taste of blood in his mouth, rusty steel grating in his chest, running, stumbling, running again and then falling to his knees. Oh what’s the use, hell, the use in anything, what’s the use in anything, what has the use ever been in anything. And he lay with his face down in the mud and smelled it, earthen, fictile. The scent of the epicforest as he’d taken it in with his nose as a child; treehouses, digging holes, catching insects, waiting for father to come home. Father. Captain Fortmann with his medals and appointments.

  He raised his head. Maria and the Zdrastian stood on the Archenon lip, turned towards the Ayakashi, both with their hands by their sides as though admiring view, as though waiting for the moons to rise. Maria turned back, found his gaze down there in the mud and the grass. She smiled.

  The curtain came upon them then. There was no commotion. They simply were and then they weren’t. Fortmann wailed, the noise lost in the scream of the Ayakashi but it felt good to let whatever it was out into the mud, into the ground where nobody would hear, where nobody would ever know that he had such a fear of death in him. What is a good last thought? What do men do in times like this? The curtain was a lying man’s length away. Had time slowed, or the Ayakashi? I am six. My family, we are watching a meteor shower, Year of the Hardy Tide. There is not a speck on the world.

  Every nerve felt the terrible heat. He didn’t know pain could be such a thing, could commandeer every thought. There is not a speck on the world, not a – He waited until he couldn’t feel himself. It would be like falling asleep, that impossible moment when one tried to feel for the point when consciousness vanished. Yes, it will be like falling asleep. And he waited still. The scream of the thing became so loud it deafened him and then there was no sound at all but a ringing. And still he waited.

  He counted five seconds. Then ten. Fifteen. He summoned the strength to raise his head. The curtain was off in the distance now, well beyond and still searing the ground ahead of it. Everything about him was embers and scorches. He looked for Maria. She was gone, the Zdrastian too. And the gungovs, gone, all embers and scorches. He tried to stand but his limbs were nothing but marrow and terror still. Something moved ahead of him, something with ears and a tail, the Zdrastian's dog coming over now, not a mark on its fur. It licked at Fortmann’s forehead a few times, nuzzling for signs of life.

  Another shape moved a few hundred feet away, a gungov infant getting to its feet, looking about for its parents, then wailing. ‘Why?’ Fortmann whispered to the dog. ‘Why you and I?’

  The dog continued to lick at him. Across the black aftermath, the gungov child took stock a final time, met Fortmann’s gaze and fled to the epicforest where there would be nobody and nothing waiting to receive him.

  38

  “One day, billions of years from now, the cosmos shall be naught but scattered dust. There will be no cause for remembering your imbecilities, nor anyone to do it even if there were.”

  -The Book of Truisms

  Jura -

  The black smear remained on the Achernon plains. The Bucephalians had no doubt watched the whole affair and stayed well away from the gravesite. Even after three days it still gave off a small muddle of vapours. Jura had spent the majority of time alone afterwards, hiding in his chambers. The syndicate woman had not pestered him. Has it been out of respect, or disgust? There would be no rescue now; that much was certain. He had not expected the turncoat gungov sally, but it had ignited a small remaining flare of optimism in him that he was not aware he possessed. And that flare had been definitively stifled. This is how systems change. Not slow and careful progress in the proletariat districts, not ballot boxes, not philosopher kings, not moralising imps. Tyrants.

  What little he knew of Old Erde confirmed the theory. One maniac rose to the top of the heap and had their way pulling the strings a while. At least those old tyrants had mortality to regulate them. A son may take over, but a dynasty collapsed eventually. How long is her lifespan though? Is she subject to death at all? There was not a wrinkle on her chalk face yet she had the audacious wisdom of an old and much-experienced hag. Perhaps the hub had long ago abolished death for those it favoured. It would not be a great surprise.

  She will still have me put in the machine, I should think. And Hades, why me? I am no prototype for a god. Barely, he thought, meeting a weary reflection of himself in the chamber’s mirror, a prototype for a man. Would others follow then? Would every high-ranking member of Governance get their own injection into the Up? Human minds would not write themselves well onto the face of the everything. A cosmic oligarchy, that’s what she wants. She must be a syndicate renegade, that much is clear. But why have they not come for her? Where are the warfleets? Like me, she craves knowledge of the forbidden. Unlike me, she wants to temper it with human stupidity, make it flawed somehow. She has come here, to a zoo she knew she could run, to a place where she would not be stopped.

  On the fourth day he'd ordered the chamber gungov to cut his hair, trim his beard, and accompany him to the Grand Hall. The syndicate woman was in congress with one of the Blueberry Projects advisors. What can there be left of it though? The imp sat in the same spot Jura had left him three days previously; staring straight ahead, his manner neither distressed nor elated. Miss Butterworth dismissed the advisor and affected a delighted smile. ‘You have decided to join us.’

  ‘I have been unwell,’ Jura said. ‘Something rotten in my gut, but I am recovered.’

  ‘We are glad to hear it.’

  The imp nodded ceremoniously.

  ‘I have been saving a surprise for you, though I was fearing you wouldn’t return in time to see it.’

  ‘You are extremely thoughtful,’ Jura said. Thoughtful. Yes. That is an adjective which fits her well.

  ‘A man of your talents deserves favour. Are you quite well again, Tersh? Have you slain your moral quandaries? Why, 261 here could have done that for you, couldn’t you Imp?’

  The imp nodded again.

  ‘As I said, I was unwell.’

  ‘Most men shrink before greatness. It’s daunting, is it not? Well, you're here now all the same. I have spoken with Mcalister. The machine is ready. He has been relieved from his position.’

  Relieved. Killed is not a synonym for that word, but it may well be in this case.

  ‘He is quite safe. In fact, he has been aptly rewarded for his talents. Such a keen mind, that one. He must remind you of your earlier days, no?’

  There is nothing hidden now. My mind is a cabinet from which she takes what she fancies.

  ‘Come,’ she patted the chair next to hers. ‘Reclaim your position, Tersh. We are almost at the zenith now, you know.'

  He retook what he had long resisted calling a throne but could now only take as such. The cushions still fitted perfectly with his buttocks. Little had changed in the Grand Hall. The banners still hung chimeral, spinning slowly like petals on a breeze. The tershal murals still looked out from their tapestries. And, he saw then, the girl – Moxiana – still slept, though not on a medical bed but an enormous cot of scallix silk and cotton pillows. A tragic princess of sorts.

  ‘We will make the launch in twenty-four hours. Mcalister has the honour of piloting the machine. Few others possess his ability. After all, he has that right by virtue of his excellent craftsmanship.’

  ‘It requires a pilot?’ Jura said.

  ‘Of course. This isn’t a wiremind, Professor. Your energies will need to be directed, as it were. A single misalignment and, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. But we have faith in Our B
rother of the Up, don’t we Imp?’

  261 nodded a third time, lip curling slightly.

  Could I tempt the boy to sabotage the flight? Would he do it?

  ‘Of course, I have been very clear with Mr. Mcalister. If he accidentally happens to misappropriate the ambrosia stream and ruin the launch, I will not only take his life, but the life of every man, woman, and child back in Zhongxiao, his home city. I believe that was enough of an incentive for a renegade of his temperament. Besides, in this case his curiosity outweighs any anti-Governance sentiments he might have. He has waited his entire life for the launch. Admittedly, he imagined it would be out in the projects somewhere, but I suspect the location isn’t as important to him as it might be for others.’

  ‘My, Your Eminence,’ said Jura. ‘You do think of everything.’

  She ran a polar-cold fingertip down his cheek. ‘We should live our lives as though Gnesha was coming this afternoon.’

  I think Gnesha would weep at the sight of this all.

  She gestured to one of the gungovs and it made for the main door. ‘Your surprise,’ she said. ‘Why, I had almost forgotten, to tell the truth.’

  The wooden slats pulled back pneumatically. In the waiting cloister stood what must have been Fricke, haggard, his hair grown long and unruly past his shoulders.

  ‘The lieutenant and yourself have a history, I believe. He saved you from being revealed as an Ixenite, if that’s correct?’

  Fricke was staring fixedly at the tersh, his eyes evidently bloodshot even from across the chamber.

  Is there no integrity left in the entire hell-haunted world? Did he confess it to her, or can she look into every man’s mind the way she looks into mine?

  ‘I sensed a great utility about the lieutenant and had him promoted to Chief Agglutinator, interpreter of the quandaries. How is it now, at the Bureau of the Moralising Imp?’

  ‘Quite excellent,’ said Fricke. ‘Quite excellent indeed.’

  ‘And you have come with a reply, I take it?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘As you know,’ she said, speaking in a respectful half-whisper so only Jura might hear, ‘we had a new imp installed when 261 defected. A woman. She has done something of a stellar job. I have obviously taken custody of the majority of quandaries, but certain insoluble problems have ben assigned to her from time to time. There was one in particular that I felt would best employ her talents.’

  Jura’s heart buffeted. ‘And what is that?’ he said.

  ‘The Ixenites in the Blueberry Projects are still yet to desist in their attempts to build a wiremind. If anything, their progress has been even more frantic since the turncoat gungov incident. I put it to the imp that we might use young Moxiana here to obliterate the area entirely, cut it out the way a surgeon might a tumorous lump.’

  ‘There are over forty thousand people in those projects,’ Jura said quietly.

  ‘Most of whom are Ixenites. Why, I believe that’s where 261’s delightful friends and their Chapterhouse once resided, isn’t that so, Imp? Before the Ayakashi took them.’

  261 nodded.

  What does it matter, you gorgon. In a day’s time I will stand in the machine’s basket and transmute all of known reality into something else entirely. Why all this cruelty in the last few moments?

  ‘And you have brought this answer with you today, I assume, Agglutinator?’ said Miss Butterworth.

  ‘Of course,’ said Fricke.

  ‘Then out with it, if you will.’

  ‘The she-imp has considered the variables involved and determined, according to traditional Exurbic and Bucephalian state law, that the Blueberry Projects are forfeit.’

  Something fell on Jura then. A mound of soggy flat hopelessness in his chest where his anxious heart had beat only moments before.

  ‘There,’ said the syndicate woman. ‘You see? A reasonable decision from a reasonable agent. Then as a special privilege, would you care to handle the Ayakashi, Agglutinator? You need only direct the commands into Our Sister of the Up Moxiana’s ear. She will do the rest.’

  ‘It would be an honour,’ said Fricke. ‘Only, if you’ll allow me to voice a small concern?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Is young Moxiana quite conscious of what she’s doing?’ said Fricke.

  Miss Butterworth frowned, sat up slightly in her chair. ‘If she were, she may have slight reservations about what it is we ask her to do. Particularly with what you’ll be asking her to do. Perhaps we will wake her one day and consult her on these things. For now though she is too young and immature.’

  ‘Yet you use her as a weapon,’ continued Fricke.

  She will kill you where you stand. Don’t think she won’t.

  ‘Like you, she possesses a certain desirable utility. We could not have cured Exurbia’s maladies otherwise.’

  ‘On the contrary, Your Eminence, I believe you’re the only sufferer of maladies here.’

  There was a glint of assured fire and resolve in Fricke’s expression, the same resolve he had met Jura with those years ago, standing before the wiremind rig.

  ‘You surprise me. Of everybody, with your accolades, I least expected you to defect to the Ixenite cause, Agglutinator.’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t. I still hold the Pergrin Decree in high regard. But I hold the lives of the Exurbic citizenry even higher. You have exterminated innocent men, women, and children. You have persecuted the population entire. You have made a travesty of our way of life. And you have been careless enough to allow me into the Grand Hall with a concealed weapon.’

  He pulled a glitz from a concealed flesh pocket in his chest like some macabre birthing episode and pointed the nib at the syndicate woman.

  ‘I doubt I have to tell you what Denkov radiation does to human flesh, even flesh as leathery as yours, Your Eminence. When the thought occurred to me that I could one day bring a weapon into this place, that I alone might be the last Exurbian with access to such leverage, I thought it best to negotiate. Perhaps you could be reasoned with if your life was at stake. But we both know that isn’t true. Anything less than your death will only continue your project here. And what a project it is.’

  He armed the nib. The metal wrinkled with purple Denkov ribbons for a moment and returned to its gunmetal silver. The gungovs remained stationary. They can’t reach him in time to stop a fatal blast.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘And more fittingly, what are you?’

  No, Fricke, what are you? A man. A man among mice.

  ‘The Demeter,’ said the syndicate woman. ‘That is my True Address, if you must use it. The bringer of the harvest. The cultivator of final stages.’

  ‘You have harvested nothing,’ he spat. ‘You have cultivated nothing. My wife, my child, my family, they dwelled in Kadesh. You had them evaporated, or at least you had the girl do it for you.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand the intricacies of the chrysalis. Do you think the caterpillar knows anything of its destiny? What does a wheatsheaf know of its providence? You are stepping on the toes of giants, Fricke.’ Still she was not alarmed, not bargaining for her life. Does she ever feel fear? Is she capable? ‘Come, the last moments of the birth are always the most perilous. Put your weapon aside. We’ll talk of this as reasonable agents.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fricke. ‘You have done too much damage already, but maybe some last scrap of decency can be salvaged in ripping you apart. Look. Look at the professor, at the imp. What have you done, you malevolent crone?’

  ‘I have arranged history into its final shape. That is the Demeter’s duty.’

  ‘You trusk, you perverser, you hideous -’

  ‘Fricke!’ Jura called. Butterworth's spyles had descended from their hiding cavity in the ceiling, cutting-parts extended, jigsaw blades spinning.

  ‘I will torch your cadaver, I will spit on your lineage, and then I will proudly inform the syndicate of what I have done. They will -’

  ‘Syndicate?’ said the woman then. Th
e spyles hung silently, a hair’s breadth from Fricke’s head, the blades almost kissing his skin. ‘Did you really imagine there was a syndicate?’

  Fricke’s aiming arm was shaking violently now.

  ‘What, some brave and all-supreme galactic empire? Did you believe it so?’

  ‘What is she saying?’ Fricke screamed. ‘What is it she’s saying?’

  ‘You’re a gullible species for one that lies so often. One would think your obsession with deception would give you some sense for when it is used against you. There is no syndicate.’

  ‘There is no syndicate,’ said the imp in a whisper.

  ‘There is no syndicate,’ sang the drones in a discordant chorus.

  There is no syndicate.

  ‘A convenient myth,’ said the imp, deflated.

  ‘How long have you known?’ said the syndicate woman.

  The imp slumped in his chair and blinkered his eyes with tired hands. ‘Since you showed Maria, the Zdrastian, and myself the gestalt. There was no way its tip couldn’t already have been reached. The most likely explanation is usually the correct one.’

  ‘Witch,’ Fricke screamed, his face flushed like a tashloe rose.

  The syndicate woman rolled her eyes and gestured to the spyles. They advanced a mere foot, their cutting-parts making a clean and silent run through the sides of Fricke’s neck. He fell to his knees, blood soaking his agglutinator robes now, gold and silver mixing in with carmine red. His mouth opened and shut as though trying to say something, a eulogy for himself. Then he collapsed. An infinite silence took hold. One of the gungovs made to remove the body discreetly, carrying the thing on its back like a rolled carpet.

  ‘How long ago did it happen?’ the imp said quietly.

  ‘Three thousand years, by your standards.’

  The imp nodded.

  Three thousand years? Three thousand years of what? ‘I don’t understand,’ Jura said.