Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars (An Infinite Triptych Book 1) (21 page)

‘I resisted the urge to return to the cave partly out of curiosity for your intentions, and partly out of my recent disdain for Governance. However, the female imp showed me more than I needed to see to confirm my allegiance. You have only my word of course, but I hope this will suffice. It is unlikely that I would have helped you this far had my loyalties still laid with Governance. I know what you did to Takashi however.’

Fortmann saw the man in his mind, still alive even now somehow, lying slack-jawed on the medical table back at the Chapterhouse, wires sprouting from his head like an eccentric cat’s whiskers.

‘If you do anything like that again, I will withdraw my help immediately. Barring that however, you have my full compliance.’ Maria rubbed his back and put her head on his shoulder.

‘Thank you, 261,’ she said.

‘And
what exactly
did the woman imp show you?’ Fortmann said.

‘The gestalt,
’
said 261.

‘What do you mean, she “showed it” to you?’

‘It would be difficult to describe. In short, despite your somewhat dubious moral practices, she convinced me that I should do all I can to usher in what you refer to as “the Up.”’

This is just the kind of ruse a dupe like him might pull, exactly the kind of nonsense he would spout. 
‘Then you will help us build a wiremind?’ Fortmann said.

‘I will help to put you in a position where it could, in theory, be possible, yes.’

The sun had almost all but disappeared, the moons were reigning now. Fortmann surveyed the constellations. Phorell and Xerxes shone to the north, marking the route to the hub. All those weld fissures the visiting crafts had left over the centuries, what if they were visible? Would the night sky just be one open gash?
We have ripped the firmament apart for the sake of our stupid disaporas.

‘Though we will need to pass through the corridor first,’ the imp added. ‘I will be completely honest, partly because it is in my nature, and partly out of my concern for you all. We may well be walking into danger. The female imp admitted that she was unsure what lay beyond the corridor, though we both know that it is somehow connected to the Ayakashi. We are not the first to have supposed this. In the Year of the Flaunted Sickle, a small party of climate scientists and security personnel attempted to pass through the corridor, harbouring similar suspicions to mine about what lay beyond it. I have heard their last transmission myself, and it is not a pleasant one.’

‘What happened?’ said Maria.

‘Unknown. They were all almost certainly murdered, not more than three minutes into entering the corridor. Judging from the background sounds, they were all disemboweled or fatally mutilated in some way.’

A bundle of scallixes rose glowing from a grasspatch.

‘That fills me with boundless confidence,’ said Fortmann. ‘Gnesha’s highest blessings upon you.’

‘
Fortmann,’
Maria groaned.

‘The imp women could just as well be leading us into certain death. She’s cunning isn’t she, just like you. She knows what we want. She knows what we’d do for it.’

‘The alternate imp is following the gestalt. She won’t bring us to harm.’

‘We are all following the gestalt,’ said Maria then, the lacklustre gone from her voice suddenly. ‘For better or worse, through calamity and wicked circumstance, through the age before ages and the age upon now with its many chronicles and revisions. We all follow the gestalt with its burning in our cells, and the ancestors of our cells, and the earth on which walked our ancestors, and the men of Old Erde and the beasts before them. As the scallix looks for pollen, so do we look for our deliverance, and our providence among the flowers, and nothing can stop or hope to stop, or even truly wish to stop if it so understood, the rising shout of complexity’s progress in the world, in the yonder. What little bits we are. What little components switching on and off like diodes. What little villages our lives are on a map too big to navigate by. But there is a destination nonetheless.’

They stood in silence for a few moments, then Fortmann turned slowly to Maria. ‘What, in Pergrin’s name, are you talking about?’

‘Nature begets herself and herself and herself,’ said the Zrastian, in a similar sagely tone. ‘First an atom, then a star, then a planet, then an empire. Then the gods themselves.’

Could poison have done this to them?

‘Mythology has it reversed. It is not the gods that make men, but rather -’

‘Friends,’ 261 said and pointed to below the moons. A rippling manifold of colour hung suspended above the epicforest, not four koels distant.

‘Oh Erde and damnation, the Ayakashi,’ Fortmann moaned. 
Now we die then, all cinder-black and charred.

‘No. It’s not the Ayakashi, we can be certain of that much,' said the imp.

‘A destination nonetheless, a destination nonetheless,
’
said Maria sleepily.

The manifold loitered in the air like lazy plasma then settled into what all four of them instantly recognised as a butterfly; amethyst purple and at least half a koel high, its wings turned towards them, beating silently in the middle distance.

‘We are approaching the end of history, and as we near it, the pattern becomes more complex. Things are unstuck, both in time and tradition,’ said the Zdrastian. 
We’ve all been poisoned, or dosed, or something. Else I have lost my mind,
thought Fortmann.

‘No you haven’t,’ said Maria. Her skin was radiant then, her expression a marble plane of calm and resolve. She cupped Fortmann’s face in her hand.

‘We’re very close now,’ she said. 

‘To what, damn it?’

The butterfly began to approach them, jaunting across the epicforest canopy.

‘To
what
, damn it?’ 
Is she possessed? God, are we all possessed?

The butterfly was coming faster now; close enough already that Fortmann could see the antennae and the bulbous knowing eyes, and the mouth wet and snapping shut, opening and snapping shut.

‘To the Up,’ Maria said. ‘To the final gestalt, to
the
gestalt.’

‘What can that possibly mean? What does any of this nonsense mean?’

‘The tersh and the girl will open the gates, and those who wish to join may join, and those who wish to stay may stay. We are invited, all of us invited, to join our cousins in the Up. The Demeter has made it so.’

Fortmann went to shield his face and fell to the dirt. The other three stood with hands at their sides, expressions neutral, Maria’s eyes closed, the Zdrastian a vision of calm, 261 smiling. The butterfly converged on the party in a final mad beating of wings, the mouth open as though to swallow them whole. Fortmann shrieked. There was no pain. Rather, he felt nothing at all. 261 and Maria stood at the ledge in the exact same position. The monster was gone, evaporated. He frantically searched the nightsky and the epicforest canopy.

‘I had no idea,’ Maria said quietly, on her knees now. 261 nodded stoically.

‘What the hell was that?’ Fortmann screamed, scrabbling to his feet, eyes wide.

‘I had no idea,’ she said again. ‘None at all.’

‘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.’