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

‘I don’t, Your Auspiciousness.’

‘Before the word “wiremind” was coined, the people of Old Erde devised a system for categorising technology. They knew the future would be a million times more complex than the past and so the Ix metric was born. Stage I is the alteration of humans using medical implants. We’ve been doing it for centuries, have we not? The next is using mental implants, such as the one I now wear myself. Stage III is the point at which a society begins to use these devices recreationally, rather than just in a medical setting. By stage IV, we are beginning to see the beginning of wireminds. It is this point that the Pergrin Decree forbids us from ever reaching, for the certain knowledge of what will happen.’

And yet, we’re building a wiremind right here in the tershal tower. What madness is this?

‘Stage V is the emergence of human-technological hybrids. The planet would long ago have been destroyed by the wiremind of course, but let’s allow the Ixenites their optimism. By stage VI they believe it will be possible to transfer human consciousness onto a machine platform, to
live forever
on a technological substratum. Madness, no? At stage VII, almost the entire planetary population will have migrated inside these virtual habitats, opting for immortality over biological death. By stage VIII, all the sentient software inside these habitats will have merged together into a single conscious unity. And it is that unity that they fervently refer to as stage IX, hence,
Ixenites.
They call it the birth of the godhead. Little do they know that particular godhead is always, without fail, furious when he’s woken from his slumber.’

‘But,’ said Jura, ‘nobody has tried to build these virtual habitats.’

‘No, of course not. The Ixenites are trying to skip the later stages using t’assali. That’s the beauty of the material. No other substance in the universe, not even silicon, can reach critical conscious states the way
it
can. And once it does, there’s a feedback effect, or they hope there will be anyway. The patterns of consciousness bleed back into reality itself, turning physical systems into miniature consciousness computers. In effect,’ she said, with a playful wink, ‘waking up the universe.’

How do you know so much? Are you mechanical after all?

‘Of course, being a sack of meat like yourself, there’s only so much we can guess about the process. But that seems to be how it would unfold. I saw the beginnings on Spool, of course. That was enough.’

‘What…’ said Jura, his stomach vaulting at the thought, ‘did it look like?’

She was silent. He went to repeat the question, but she pointed to the centre of the hall. There was only air and ornaments for a moment, then a giant marble-like sphere actuated, filling the hall itself, swallowing even the diligent gungovs: a planet, cloud patterns percolating in the upper atmosphere, the skies a fuchsia purple, the whole structure turning slowly on an invisible pivot.

‘All species,’ said Miss Butterworth, ‘are either insomniacal or comatose. Some can’t lose themselves to the dark, others can’t emerge from it.’

There was a break in the clouds towards the top of the north pole, a pallid shimmer of green and red light.

‘Almost all species are insomniacal. Take the Old Erde shark, for example. A brute of a creature, evolutionarily stagnant, living at the peak of its development for millions of years. And with nowhere to go, with no monuments to build, no history to live through.’

The shimmer began to plume and blossom in wild permutations, covering the whole of the continent from where it came in seconds, expanding out.

‘Others, very rare species, are comatose. They live for millions of years on the cusp of their improvement, never quite able to make the jump for one reason or another.’

The ribbons engulfed the whole of the planet until there was only a curtain of variegated light. Then it vanished completely, the gungovs still standing where the planet had been, unmoved.

‘The question, beloved tersh, is which you think
our
species is. A sleeper, or an insomniac? A chrysalis or a worm?’

‘I don’t consider myself educated enough to comment.’

Miss Butterworth laughed into her hands.

‘It’s all you ever think about, you lying brute. No matter.’ She gestured to one of the hall drones and it came at once with a glass of zadrika. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘for something testing. Will you promise me, Professor, that you won’t relent?’

‘Relent?’

‘To anything less than the promise you made some months ago when I
arranged
this position for you, to honour the traditions of Exurbia.’

‘I stand by that promise.’

‘Even under moments of stress?’ 
It has been nothing but. 
Furious butterflies began at once to swarm and dance in his stomach. ‘Yes,’ he said.

She nodded to the door drone.

‘Annie Jura,’ it said, ‘of the Bureau of Celestials.’

The main doors swung aside. Annie was propped up against a gungov, her hair greasy and wild, her face sunken. Jura stood to his feet involuntarily, his mouth opening and closing.

‘Treason,’ said Miss Butterworth, taking Jura’s hand and pulling him back down into the tershal chair, ‘is punishable by death, is it not?’

‘Treason?’ said Jura, his breath short.
Am I a pet? And is this entire world, and its entire populace, just some jangling ball to be dangled under my nose?

The gungov pulled Annie forward into the centre of the room and then retreated to the peripheries with the others. She fell to her knees, matted hair covering her face like a veil of seaweed. ‘Oh Stefan,’ she said in a mouse’s voice.

‘You will call the tersh,’ said Miss Butterworth, ‘by his correct address.’

‘What’s happened to her?’ said the professor, noticing then the welts on his ex-wife’s arms.

‘Mrs. Jura made the decision to pass her satellite access string onto unauthorised parties.’

His senses receded into a single point; his hearing muted, his field of vision the size of a bullet hole.

‘A diligent member of the Bureau of Celestials informed me of the theft when he found that the strings were being used for improper purposes.’

Jura could make out something of a manic smile through Annie’s blonde tangles. He lowered his voice to a whisper: ‘But she gave them to
me
, and I gave them to
you.’

‘Your point being what, exactly?’

‘You wanted the codes and I asked Annie to aquire them from the Bureau.’

‘To steal them, you mean.’

‘You
demanded
them.’

‘I asked that they might be ascertained. The Governance bureaus are an extension of the syndicate itself. Theft from them is theft from the hub. This could hardly go unpunished.’ And then to Annie: ‘What have you to say for yourself?’

She was gaunter than he’d ever seen her, skin like perished parchment. 
How long has she already been kept in the cells?

‘Nothing comes to mind,’ Annie said.

‘Annie…’ Jura said.

‘You admit the crime then, Mrs. Jura?’ said the syndicate woman.

‘Of course.’

‘And you are willing to face the appropriate punishment for such a crime against Governance?’

‘I am.’

‘It’s settled then.’

An escort gungov approached to remove her. 

‘Wait,’ said Jura. ‘This is preposterous. She was only doing as I asked, and I was doing as
you
asked. You have the strings now. That would’ve been impossible without Annie’s help.’

‘You’re correct, Grand Tersh, but you forget that this is a precedent. Old Erde’s empires were often founded on slavery and persecution. When their empires matured, did they still tolerate said slavery and persecution? Means and ends, ends and means.’

‘Whatever you do with those strings,’ he said, ‘will be thanks to Annie. You wouldn’t have them otherwise.’

‘You’re correct. And those robes about your body, the chair on which you sit, the chamber you will retire to this evening, it came as a result of the former tersh trying to kill me. Had he not made such a terrible calculation, he would still be in power today, rather than rotting in the Low Cells. Does that make the attempted murder of syndicate officials virtuous then, just because it brought you to power?’

‘It’s hardly a fair analogy.’

‘But it is,’ said Annie, her voice rasping and low. ‘It’s fair in every sense.’

‘Then the matter’s concluded. Remove her.’

The gungov’s eyes surged with orange for a moment then returned to the standard dim glow. It began to drag her from the hall.

Could I kill the witch? If I told the machines to rip her limb from limb, would they obey me, even if she’s syndicate? They’d just turn and laugh at me, laugh in mechanical squeaks, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
He felt himself a young man then, some two decades previous. Wind was dabbing at the curtains. Annie was still asleep. He had brushed aside the hair from her face and she had opened her eyes for a moment, just a moment, and he had known then,
known
in the sense that he knew his own name,
known
in the sense that he knew the positions of the stars, that nothing could really harm him now. They had found a small corner of their own, and it would be enough for the duration of the lives.
Time is a rot and it eats through even the sturdiest walls, even certainty, even empires. Even you and I, Annie.

23

“There are no poems left to write now, no candles left to light. You need only trace my steps and walk into the long clear day.”

     - The Second Wielder

261 -

‘After the Pergrin Decree,’ Maria said, ‘Old Erde put all of its efforts into reaching the stars.’

261 twirled a strand of his hair in thought as he listened. He was used to the sensation of it on his head now.

‘And maybe, in a way, the Decree was a good thing. Instead of wireminds designing everything for them, the Old Erders had to overcome technological issues on their own. The weld drive took another two hundred years to discover, and even then it had some serious issues.’

‘Such as what, exactly?’

‘Spatial fissures. Didn’t the cave tell you any of this?’

‘The cave only ever informed me of current events, and the occasional historical item for the purposes of context.’

‘Well, I’m not an authority on the subject, Fortmann knows more about all of this, but as I understand it, welding slams two points in space together. The resulting energy release is massive, so massive in fact that it creates a dead spot wherever the craft arrived, a few light years across at least. No vacuum energy, no string matrices, nothing. It stays a dead spot forever. Nothing can fly through it. A few early expeditions tried to and never came back. As I guess you can imagine, it makes interstellar travel a pretty rare novelty.’

The cave said there were over nine hundred colonised syndicate worlds, and at least one hundred independent planets. If the weld fallout has an even radial distribution of two light years, at least, that means over forty thousand light years of fallout space across the galaxy.

‘That’s madness,’ said 261. Maria eyed him a little excitedly. 
She’s alarmed at me making value judgements. 
‘From the syndicate’s perspective, I mean,' he added. 'It would only take ten weld jumps to a planet before the planet’s surrounding space becomes so damaged that further travel to and from is impossible.’

‘And therein lies the syndicate’s problem. A boat big enough for just one crewman creates a dead spot wider than the distance between Old Erde and its nearest star. Not bad for a ball of t’assali the size of a human head, don't you think?’

‘Madness…’ said the imp again.

‘It certainly makes maintaining an empire something of a problem, yes.’

Fortmann had been watching quietly from across the room. Now he put his legs up on the windowsill and chewed his lip.

‘Why is it madness, 261?’

This is some kind of test. There are at least three of these a day from him.

‘It seems extremely wasteful,’ said the imp.

‘And that bothers you on an emotional level?’

‘Not that I’m aware. I only mean that it seems like an extremely inefficient method of travel. What is the point in colonising a galaxy when you destroy it in the process?’

Maria was unabashedly smiling then.
She believes I am cultivating a sense of ‘care’.

‘Which makes the refulgent Miss Butterworth’s appearance on Exurbia all the more bizarre,’ said Fortmann. ‘No spatial fissures were found by the Bureau of Celestials. Either she somehow found a way to hide the damage, or she didn’t arrive by weld drive at all.’

‘There is a strong likelihood,’ said 261, ‘that the latter hypothesis is correct. The syndicate has had some two centuries to develop new propulsion. They may well be using something far more advanced.’

‘No,’ said Maria, ‘that doesn’t make sense either. If they can send more than just one ship, and they thought we were about to break the Pergrin Decree, why didn’t they just send a warfleet instead?’

Insoluble quandary at this present moment.
The thought sent a spasm of nausea through him.

‘Look,’ Fortmann said, shifting to a more formal position.

Now he will make a request of me.

‘We know that just before you were freed from the cave, you authorised a message to the syndicate hub.’

‘That’s correct.’ 
There is no sense in lying about this. They obviously have the records somehow.

‘Can you tell us what the message said?’

‘Certainly. It asked for confirmation from the hub that Miss Butterworth was in fact a syndicate member rather than a rogue imposter.’

‘And that was all the message said?’

‘If I recall correctly, yes.’

Fortmann appeared detachedly sceptical.
Perhaps he thinks I gave the hub information about his chapter of Ixenites. Typical unwarranted self-importance.