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

  The top levels were silent. Even the water pumps had been shut off. He found what looked to be the main corridor, Mr. Covert Woof taking the lead now. There were slashes of furious t’assali scorches riding up the walls. The Grand Hall was in sight then. Three figures turned to meet him as he entered: the imp, the tersh, and a young girl, each of them dappled with the light of the moons.

  ‘Oh, rapture,’ said the imp. ‘It is wonderful to see you alive, Fortmann.’

  The three of them sat barefoot like infants on the floor, legs crossed, facing one another.

  ‘Where is she?’ said Fortmann.

  ‘Dead,’ said the girl, pacifically.

  ‘Dead?’

  She pointed to a large scorch mark on a remaining wall.

  ‘The Ayakashi…’ Fortmann said.

  ‘Yes. The Ayakashi. Come. Sit.’

  He hesitated a moment and met their stares. There’s no urgency here, at the peak of this strange mountain. Then he removed his shoes.

  ‘What of Maria and the Zdrastian?’ said the imp.

  ‘Dead. The Ayakashi.’

  ‘It is not an impossible problem,’ said the girl. ‘I believe I can remake everything, if I’m strong enough.’ She tapped her head playfully. ‘They still live in here, most of them anyway. Are you hungry, Seer? Thirsty?’

  He caught his reflection in one of the Grand Hall's mirrors: a man malnourished and withered from a long stint in the epicforest. ‘Perhaps later. What exactly has happened here? I came when I saw the butterfly.’

  ‘That was my doing,’ said the girl. ‘A sign, for the people of Exurbia. A promise I have made. The Up. It is graspable now. I believe the syndicate woman’s actions were not in line with her intentions.’

  What kind of child talks in this manner?

  ‘She has done us a great service. As I said, they live in me, all of them who met the Ayakashi with their flesh. Butterworth too. I can feel the outlines of her volition even now.’

  ‘Then you are the Ayakashi, you mean?’

  The girl nodded.

  ‘And you control it?’

  ‘That is correct. I spent my time here asleep at Her behest, though part of my mind remained awake. I slowly trained myself to use it, to understand it. There was no other choice. It is a troublesome talent. But as you can see -’ she gestured to the ruins of the Grand Hall, ‘it is not so troublesome now.’

  Is this a new tyrannical chapter in our history? Who could oppose her?

  ‘It is an honour,’ said the tersh, extending a hand. Fortmann took it. ‘The imp tells me it was you that sabotaged the Pergrin mallet.’

  ‘I…’ Fortmann faltered.

  ‘It was not an accusation. In your position, I might have done the same. You weren’t to know she would use the occasion to rise to power. Come, all is well now.’

  Fortmann had seen Jura’s face on the streams; always worn and burdened. There was a lightness to him today. ‘Then,’ Fortmann said slowly, looking first to the imp, to the tersh, then the girl, ‘what happens now?’

  ‘First, you eat,’ said the girl.

  A gleaming ribbon of t’assali suspended a banquet plate and brought it to Fortmann’s lap. He took it tentatively, paused, and then gave in like a famished animal.

  ‘There are some sentences,’ continued the girl,’ that are only meaningful once they’re completed. The syndicate woman knew she wasn’t the end, but the means. I can only make out parts of her stratagem but it was a complicated one. I will say that much. Her intentions weren’t malicious. It’s difficult to put into words. She was following the gestalt at its purest. And she has given it to me now. I see it fully, its outskirts and its centre.’

  ‘The butterfly?’ Fortmann said in between mouthfuls of da’giak.

  ‘That is part of it, yes. We have been a museum piece for a long time now, a last human sanctuary. It seems we were kept for sentimental reasons, as a homage to what those in the Up once were. But there was a change of opinion among those who built the museum. It was deemed unfair that we couldn’t join them, that we were denied the choice. If Miss Butterworth brought us anything, it was the opportunity to make that choice. And now we may make it. She positioned us so it would be possible. Now we are together, we’re faced with our own providence, just as the Old Erders were once. I have their history in my mind now. It is not as we were led to believe. Cato the wiremind found a kind of transcendence, the Up as you would call it, Seer. He opened gates all across Old Erde leading to the Next Realms. Some chose to remain in their original human configuration and that was their choice. Most went though, after a time. Their consciousnesses spread throughout the galaxy entire, fusing with matter itself.’ She looked to the ruined overdome, the stars hanging beyond it now. ‘It’s alive,’ she said, ‘in its entirety, a trillion voices as one. They’ve been there all along, only we didn’t have the ears. But They’re issuing an invitation. As on Old Erde, we can open the gates on Exurbia and pass to the Next Realms. It is within my-’ She cocked her head in thought for a moment. ‘Capacity.’

  ‘What was she?’ said Fortmann quietly. It had been driving at him for the longest time. ‘What was Butterworth really?’

  ‘An accelerator. A Demeter as she called herself, here for the harvest of our species.’

  ‘But why not do it peacefully? Couldn’t she just have explained the, whatever it is, gestalt to us?’

  ‘No. It wouldn’t have worked. We’re still creatures of aggression. She was a fixed point to rally against, the catalyst in the reaction. We wouldn’t have made it this far without her.’

  But people are dead. Cities are gone, he thought.

  ‘And I will reconstitute them,’ said the girl, as though he’d spoken aloud. ‘I have that ability. She knew I could.’

  ‘Then Maria -’

  ‘And the Zdrastian, the turncoat gungovs, Xianxi, Kadesh, all of them, yes. I will reconstitute them. Nothing is lost. I promise you.’

  In his mind he saw the twin tree trunks, laid on the soil and bearing Maria and the Zdrastian's dates of death. Was it all really so fickle?

  ‘You’re thinking of the Up. You’re curious?’ said the girl.

  Fortmann nodded.

  ‘It is a challenge to explain. I have only seen a glimmer. But believe me, it is, as the syndicate woman put it, our providence. I suppose I would say that it is the place all things go when they grow enough, where all life tends to eventually, whichever trajectory it takes. Understand that, as the syndicate woman told you, all poetry is blather to a dog. We haven't the senses or faculties to conceive of just what is waiting in the Up, but we can be sure that it isn't malicious. That is honestly the most I can tell you. Those who wish to stay may stay. And those who wish to come may come. We have been issued an impossible invitation. They would not have made the offer had They not been sure.’

  'Sure of what?' Fortmann said.

  'Our maturity. If Exurbia has been a sanctuary for the last of us, then Miss Butterworth came to open the gates and reuinte us with the rest of our kind.'

  'But They're not our kind.'

  'They sought to preserve us as a remnant I suppose, a biological souvenir to a former stage in their evolutionary history, before the absence of division and decline and death, before we found our way. We share a common lineage, doubtless. They were us once. Much as we domesticate our distant animal cousins, They domesticated theirs. Had the Pergrin Decree not been in place, an Exurbic wiremind would long ago have been activated, and ushered us partially into the Up. But not entirely. It requires a human element, a catalyst.'

  'What is life's history,' the girl continued, 'if not a slow and agonising conquest of dimensions? From bacteria to standing armies. From primates to the heavens. There is nothing more divine about the men of old Erde, of our kind, than of the all life which came before it. Nor is there anything more divine about the life which came after. They have their own disputes and limitations in the Up, I'm sure. Quarrels we cannot possibly begin to imagine. There is no fool
ishness to ignoring their invitation. Many will find the idea distasteful and choose to remain in their current condition, eventually succumbing to the fate of all temporary creatures. Such is their right. Most will not though, that much I can see.'

  There was a small commotion at the chamber’s entrance. Evidently the gungovs had released the Ixenite captives from their cells on the lower levels. Now they stood silently at the Grand Hall’s threshold.

  ‘Come,’ said the girl, smiling. ‘Come in, all of you.’ Sit, please.'

  They entered tentatively. Many, Fortmann realised, were men and women of his own chapter. Jura stood to his feet slowly, eyes fixed on a woman at the back of the rabble. She padded to him across the cold marble tier, affecting a prisoner’s robe, her hair in matted blonde swathes. The tersh bent to whisper something. She paused, her expression neutral for a moment, then fell apart into desperate sobs.

  ‘Annie,’ he whispered. ‘Annie, Annie, Annie, Annie.’

  The girl brought the entire banquet contents over to the middle of the hall and laid it out in concentric circles. The Ixenites sat and ate, ravished. And Mcalister too, emerging from the crowd as they swamped the hall, made for the four of them.

  ‘I hear you need a pilot,’ he said to the tersh.

  ‘He won’t be making the journey,’ said the girl. ‘That is my duty, as well as another’s.’

  The imp smiled, understanding. ‘We go together,’ he said. ‘You and I.’

  The girl nodded. ‘I will use my energies to spread the imp’s volition across the Up. My abilities and his clarity of mind make for the perfect fusion. You will steer us, Mcalister. To the best of your abilities. Can you do that?’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Then eat, all of you, drink, gain vitality. This evening we will open the gates to the Up.’

  40

  “Words are little more than batteries for storing the charge of our meanings. They cannot accomodate for Real Truths anymore than a flask could hold an ocean.”

  -The Book of Truisms

  261 and Fortmann -

  They spent the evening reacquainting themselves, the Ixenites in good humour. Moxiana conjured starfire t’assali spectres; scallixes and former tershes and butterflies, all dancing across the Grand Hall’s canopy. At the apogee of the moons, when the crowd were well fed and watered and drunk, they moved without comment into the workshop where the machine lay; the blue ambrosia heart beating silently at its centre.

  ‘Some of you will stay,’ she said, turning to address the rabble. ‘And that is a fine thing. It means there will at least be a few biological ancestors left in the galaxy. Perhaps you will find the Up in your own way too, one day. There is no great shame in remaining behind. In a sense, you’re the preservation of a long legacy.’ She offered a hand to the imp. He took it. ‘Many of you imagined machine intelligence would herald the next stage of cosmic ascendance. You are correct in a sense, but not in another. Intelligence is the next stage of cosmic ascendance. The cosmos has a secret history; one of coming awake. And today we rouse it a little more. 261 and myself will open eleven gates to the Up across the planet. You need only walk through them if you so wish join us. There is no great obligation. However, I’m also at a loss to fully explain what will be on the other side. It is not something that fits comfortably into words. Such is the work one can do with only blunt tools. Mcalister, please.’

  The boy sat at the controls, unwavering. The machine’s rings began to spin slowly, the ambrosia growing doubly, then triply illuminated; ultramarine and indigo bluefire dancing in reflections on the faces of the rabble. 261’s heart began to palpate, the sensation a familiar one now.

  ‘Time is a kind of landscape and until now we have been forced to walk it always at the same pace, and always without being able to double back on ourselves or cross to some distant point.’

  ‘It’s simultaneous,’ the imp murmured. ‘Through the gates? In the Up?’

  ‘Not entirely, but something like that, yes. There are no great divisions where we’re going.’

  The ambrosia began to spark and warp in its cavern, blue embers shooting from the machine. The rings must have been reaching criticality, spinning just at eyesight’s threshold. The entire workshop’s expanse was bathed in blue light then. Moxiana led 261 into the basket.

  ‘You will bring them back?’ Fortmann shouted from the crowd. ‘Maria? The Zdrastian?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the girl. ‘And they may join us too if they like.’

  ‘And Kadesh? Xianxi?’

  ‘Everything. All of it.’

  He saw the twin tree stumps in his mind, bearing epitaphs. Maria…

  ‘I am scared,’ whispered the imp, making careful that only the girl heard.

  ‘I swear to you, on everything that counts in this world,’ said the girl, ‘that there is no reason to be.’

  She linked their fingers together. ‘This isn’t dying.’

  ‘Then what can we take with us? Of…ourselves?’

  She tapped her head with a sincere finger. ‘The only part of significance.’

  What matters? My time as tersh? I should not like that to follow me in, or up, or out. I should not like that with me. 261 picked out Jura in the crowd, Annie’s hand in his, the two of them disheveled and spent but watching with calm expressions. They know the worst is over now. The professor smiled to him.

  ‘Be well, Stanislav,’ he called out.

  ‘And you also,’ shouted the imp.

  Already he began to feel bizarre, his thoughts running into one undulating stream.

  ‘“The Tersh will be eternal,”’ said the girl. ‘I always wondered what that signified.’

  She looked the imp over as though for the final time and stroked his face. ‘Now it’s inescapably clear.’

  ‘Everything tends towards coherence,’ said the imp dazedly, beginning to understand now. The girl nodded and admired the mad throng of gyrating rings above them.

  ‘Quite right, 261.’

  The moons were glistening through the overdome, almost upon one another. Beyond them, he saw, the constellations were at the tip of their flight for the evening. Is that where we will bide?

  ‘What do I do?’ whispered the imp, trying not to shake but shaking all the same then.

  ‘Just wait,’ said the girl, loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of the spinning rings and the ambrosia and the dancing plaits of cerulean light. ‘It shan’t be long now.’

  41

  “As the adage goes, a herd of buffalo may only move as fast as the slowlest buffalo among them. So too with man, if he is to behave ethically.”

  - Cato the Wiremind of Old Erde

  Jura -

  ‘Do we have enough timber,’ Annie said. ‘For the night, I mean?’ Jura nodded.

  ‘And rice?’

  ‘Enough of that too.’

  She let the wheelbarrow go at her feet. ‘Then I’ll open the wine.’

  ‘Do that,’ he said. ‘And then come and sit.’ He cleared a patch of grass and set himself down. She appeared not long after with a bottle and two glasses. One of the gates was hanging fantasmic in the middle distance, shimmering, all blues and purples. What is it, at least thirty feet high?

  ‘Quite a sight,’ she said.

  ‘It is.’

  He waited for the inevitable question. It didn’t come this time. Perhaps she’s grown bored of asking already. ‘I don’t want to,’ he said, anticipating. The gate warped slightly and settled again.

  ‘Well, I think you’ll change your mind,’ she said.

  ‘Damnit, I’m not going. If you want to, just do it.’

  ‘I just find it strange, that's all.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You spend your whole life busying away in secret, writing about it, dreaming about it, building machines for it no less, risking your life. And when it comes, when it appears there right at your doorstep -’

  ‘I have what I need,’ he said.

  Right at my doorstep
. She isn’t wrong. Any moment now he could walk the lip of their mountain, down into the valley, and pass straight through the gate. He had seen others doing it, whole families crossing the threshold. Millions of them, all across the planet, everyday. Evolutionary migrants.

  ‘And what do you need, Tersh?’ she said.

  He went to chastise her but saw she was smiling. No purple robes now, Annie. His toga barely deserved the name; more of a glorified vegetable sack he’d taken from a disused washing line. The original owners had probably walked through one of the gates weeks before anyway.

  ‘You know what I need,’ he said.

  A long silence. She sipped at her wine.

  Fortmann had promised he’d send a sign back, however small but that had been weeks ago. Both he and Maria had walked unwaveringly into the blue shimmer, their hands entwined, and vanished entirely. Where are they now? Hell, when? Jura remembered another professor from the faculty years before, Jurgen. Jura had visited the man on his deathbed and watched him writhing in agony from the cancerous lumps in his belly. But Jurgen had been in good spirits, had joked and teased even, had promised to send Jura a sign, proving that there was a world waiting beyond the grave. After Jurgen's death Jura had looked for signs of his message in the most unlikely of places: rain drops on a window that might spell out a simple word, strange cloud formations, even voices inside his own mind. But after three months of waiting for his friend's sign he called off the search. They were merely drops on a window, merely rainclouds. One could go mad trying to find meaning in things like that. He begrudged Jurgen's silence for several years afterwards but came around eventually. Even if he had survived the crossing into death's country, what need would he have to communicate with me? I have never found the urge in me to send notes back into my mother's womb to confirm that I survived the exit. So too had Fortmann and Maria lost interest in Exurbia now, perhaps. Considering the fragments Moxiana had told him of the Up, it was surely a place all other places paled in comparison to.