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

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 go 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?’

‘Knowingly, yes,’ said the boy.

He took in the Grand Hall then, the dangling purple banners, the gungovs stationary in the wings, the glass domed ceiling and the moons rising beyond it. ‘It is good to be inside the tower at last,’ the boy said. ‘I always imagined the place was ridiculous, I just didn’t realise to what an extent. You’ve really got a foothold, Stefan. You’ve really -’

‘You
shall not
,’ said Miss Butterworth, standing then, the two spyles streaking across the room to her side and extending their cutting-parts, ‘refer to the tersh by that name.’

‘Apologies, I assumed we were on informal terms. I see now that I was wrong.’

Jura motioned to the syndicate woman and she sat back down reluctantly. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what is
your
name, if I might ask?’

‘Mcalister. Store clerk extraordinaire.’

‘Store clerks don’t wear water coils, Mr. Mcalister.’

‘I sometimes moonlight as a high-ranking member of an order determined to end your tyrannical reign and create the first critical-stage wiremind. But mostly I stick to being a store clerk, you see.’

‘We had a gentleman here yesterday,’ said Miss Butterworth, ‘with a similar sense of humour. He’s having a wonderful time at the Bureau of Rehabilitation now, I believe. It would be no bother at all to extend the same offer to yourself.’

The boy reached for a switch on his back and deactivated the water coils. Then he untethered them from his body and let them to the ground.

‘His name was Marxazy, and he was a friend. I don’t expect to see him again,’ said the boy.

‘Ah, and you have been captured on account of this
Marxazy,’
said the tersh.

The boy eyed one of the gungovs. ‘I have been captured because you’ve had your machinations, whatever they are, storming every hell-haunted house in Bucephalia for the last month. I was treated to a visit of theirs just after the moons had risen last night.’

‘We have found it an effective tactic for dealing with your kind,’ said Miss Butterworth.

‘Your idea, no doubt,’ said the boy. ‘Much like every other abomination recently, whispering in this soft-head’s ear, soothsaying. Is that the new law of the land, then? Round us all up?’

‘The Pergrin Decree isn’t a joke, Mr. Mcalister. It’s the core of the syndicate’s resilience. Without it, we’re all lost. I can see the Bureau of Rehabilitation would only be child’s play to you. With talents such as yours, I’m sure we can find a more appropriate placement. In my private chambers, perhaps. My spyles would be more than happy to make your acquaintance.’

‘Oh we would,’ one said, and corkscrewed up through the centre of the hall, splaying its cutting-parts.

‘Your wiremind device,’ the tersh cut in. ‘What could you possibly hope to achieve?’ 
And how close was it to criticality?

‘I have reason to believe that we have all been lied to for a very long time now,’ said the boy. ‘I have reason to believe that the syndicate hub is not the utopic union our visitor here claims it to be. I have reason to believe that the only thing that can possibly save us from you, her, all of us, is a spinning ball of t’assali that has finally woken up.’

‘What makes you think that’s even possible?’ Jura said. ‘Wireminds are a myth as old as Old Erde.’

‘Because it has happened before. And you know it,’ he said, staring then at Miss Butterworth. ‘You know damn well it’s impossible to stop the gestalt. Why have you come here?’

‘Bind him,’ said Miss Butterworth, stroking one of the spyles. ‘Then mute him, and take him to the education room where I will educate him.’

‘
Why?
What could you possibly stand to gain?’

‘That’s quite enough, young man,’ said Jura. ‘Miss Butterworth is a distinguished guest, and I am the head of Exurbic Governance. We shan’t be spoken to in this manner.’

The spyles advanced across the hall, one bearing an adhesive gag.

‘Just think about it for a moment,’ the boy said. ‘She told us she came by boat but not a single astronomer detected weld ripples. She told us she came for a week’s inspection, and she has stayed for, what, five months now? She said she would honour our rituals, yet all she’s done is frame the old tersh and position you as a puppet instead. You can’t possibly -’

The drone rolled the gag across his mouth, the other took his hands with a low-energy t’assali field. He stood motionless, not resisting.

‘That’s a very healthy imagination you apparently have,’ said Miss Butterworth. ‘Why, if I had fancies like yours, I’m sure I could write new myths to endure for millennia. It’s a shame you’ve applied your talents to Ixenite matters instead. I’ll be up to join you shortly, Mr. Mcalister. Then we’ll get a little better acquainted.’

She motioned to the drones and they dragged the boy and his water coils from the hall. Jura shifted uneasily in the tershal chair. ‘What will you do to him?’ he said.

‘Whatever need be done.’

‘I don’t know if we should be torturing the population, even if they are Ixenites…’

‘What would you suggest, Your Eminence? Perhaps we should dispatch them all to the almond spas instead and pay for their rest and recuperation with credit from the Governance treasury?’

‘There is a line,’ he said quietly, ‘between total mercy and total tyranny.’

‘In a universe without the Pergrin Decree that might be so. Let’s imagine we detain Mr. Mcalister for a short time, perhaps have him flogged a little. Then we let him loose on an unsuspecting Bucephalia once again. He will tell his Ixenite friends back in their warrens and hovels that the price for trying to build a wiremind is little more than a smack on the wrist. They will overrun even the gungovs in almost no time at all. Can I assume you understand?’

Jura nodded. Gnesha, his clothes were heavy, the absurd purple robe, filled with weights in the hem so as to stop it from swaying when he walked, the tershal cane to carry, the tershal cummerbund about his waist.
What a relief it will be to take this nonsense off tonight, to lie in bed with the lights off and the curtains sealed.

‘What is it, Professor?’

She would be there of course, just as she was there every night, sharing his bed, insisting that they - as she put it -
twine
. Afterwards, naked, she would say impossible things, things she had no way of knowing, breaking him apart, recounting childhood episodes he had been careful not to share with another living soul, save perhaps for Annie an age ago. And sometimes, if she fell asleep first - though he suspected she was only pretending - he would walk to the balcony and look out on Bucephalia below, look out on his continentmen and continentwomen and wonder how many stared back at his tower and wished they could trade places.
I would take that trade in a second, Plovda’s fury, I would.

‘We will need him, this Mcalister character.’

‘
Need him,
Miss Butterworth?’

‘As the scorpion needs the toad,’ she said. ‘Do you know that story, Professor?’

He wrung his hands beneath the tershal robes and tried to clear his mind. ‘I believe I do, yes.’ 
Perhaps it has all been clever guesswork. Perhaps she can’t see inside me at all and I’m just addled.

‘His design was one of the best I’ve seen, very few moving parts. We could certainly use him.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying so, is that not incredibly dangerous, letting a man like that inside the workshop?’

‘What is the moral of the scorpion and the toad, Professor?’ she said, reaching across to run a lazy finger down his neck.

‘Be careful whose help you accept,’ Jura said, his skin prickling. 
For your help has brought nothing but misery.

‘No. The moral is that each and every living thing has within it a nature, and will act in accordance, above all, with that nature. Men will lie and men will steal, but they will always revert back to their true leanings. Mr. Mcalister’s true leaning is the building of a god. It matters not to him whether that god is built in the slums or the palace; he will do a fine job in the tershal workshop. Perhaps he’s an Ixenite, but it’s only a vice. He’s a gestalt fanatic first and foremost, a “Seer” as they say in their chapterhouses.’

The gestalt, the gestalt, the gestalt.
She would talk of it only in the moments when he was incapable of leaving, bound by duty or ritual, lying spent beneath bedsheets, or sitting fully robed in the tershal hall.

‘Is the gestalt…’ he said, ‘a syndicate branch of spirituality, or is it only native to the Exurbic Ixenites?’

She turned to him, incredulous for a stretched second, then let out a manic laugh that seem to compound and compound on itself.

‘Did I say something naive?’

‘More,’ she said, ‘than you could ever possibly understand.’ Then, wiping a tear from her eye: ‘Do you know why they’re called Ixenites, Stefan?’