Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars (An Infinite Triptych Book 1) (30 page)

A second orange ripple jaunted along the same axis, made a full circuit of the Grand Hall and evaporated the circling drapes.

‘I’m not angry,’ said the girl, her voice weak and atrophied. ‘Just disappointed. I have been watching for a time now. I have seen every one of your actions, as though in a dream.’ Weakly, she swung her legs over the side of the cot and stood on shaking feet. Jura went to her side instinctively and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Thank you, Professor.’

‘Moxiana,’ said the syndicate woman softly. ‘I have arranged things very carefully. The gestalt -’

‘Oh, I know of the gestalt,’ said the girl. ‘I see snatches of the days ahead, and I have seen the gestalt there. Though it’s a curious thing, I don’t see you.’

‘You have betrayed
everything
,’ upbraided the syndicate woman, turning then to the gungovs. ‘Do you even know what it is you have done?’

‘My brother has mercy in him afterall,’ said the girl, smiling to one of the gungovs.

‘I am truly so -’ said the imp.

‘There is no need to apologise,’ said the girl. ‘It was another life for you, long ago. You are not the same. None of us are now, I suppose. What is done to me is done to me. You’ve had fair punishment anyway.’ Jura lifted the girl onto his throne and set her down as gently as possible. She smelled of the epicforest, of fulschubs and w’liaks, of scallix honey. He fought the urge to cry and won only partially. A meagre drizzle of tears ran the length of his face and dripped onto his robes.

‘My brother thinks me merciful,’ said the girl. ‘And he is right. But even mercy has its limits.’

‘Spare her,’ said the imp, panicking suddenly.

‘No,’ said the girl. ‘It would do no good.’

She smiled again, smoothed her cloth gown with a willowy hand, and closed her eyes. An orange curtain, a small caricature of the Ayakashi, materialised at the Grand Hall’s entrance. The syndicate woman took a few panicked reverse steps and backed into a main wall. The tershal heads stared down from their tapestries, each smiling knowingly: Stanislav, Princewright, and Jura. She did not try to bargain, nor did she scream. Instead she stood and admired the slow approaching effervescence, closed her eyes and appeared at peace. It came upon her silently and dissipated. There were only blackened singes then.

Part III – The Up

In which Moxiana speaks her piece

39

“Time is a game only children play well.”

     - David Berman, Old Erde word artisan

Fortmann –

He lay in the full throes of zapoei, muddledrunk. There was Maria’s grave, and there too the Zdrastian’s, twin w’liak trunks that he had carved their names into and stood in their memory. Every night as he made his leaf bed in the epicforest, the scene returned to him: Maria turning to catch what she must have known would be the last glimpse of his face. Then she had been as nothing. So too the Zdrastian. The orange ardour had disappeared and there had been only himself and the fleeing gungov child then.

He had no doubt something would come for him, though he knew not what. The syndicate woman would conjure some new abominations and send them hunting for him.
I do not think I would mind so much.
Mr. Covert Woof had remained with him, somehow having escaped the Ayakashi too. He would vanish for several hours and return with scraps of food, scavenged birds and the like.
What a kind animal the Zdrastian has made of you.
Fortmann was not hungry. The dog gave up trying to force food on him and tended only to himself after the second day. There would be no use returning to the city, or any of the cities in fact. He would not be welcome. Nor would he want to be. The epicforest was his home now. He would die in it; said death hopefully not being too distant. He considered suicide. It would not be a difficult task, collecting all the berries he could find. One strain was bound to be poisonous.
I didn’t see it happening like this. I imagined a glitz fight or some such, I imagined resisting something and being punished for it. Not shrivelling up alone with the w’liaks.

He woke to the dog licking at his face and reached for the zapoei. The last bottle was drained. The dog licked his face again, pulled at his shirt with its teeth. Fortmann snarled. The dog persisted. ‘What? What the hell is it?’

His belly was a little distended now; weeks of intermittent fasting. His joints groaned in their sockets. He stood on bare feet and brushed the dead leaves from his back.
This is a kind of torture. I am being punished for some transgression in the last life, or the one to come next.
The dog beckoned to a clearing ahead of them. ‘What?’ It beckoned again. He followed it with tired steps. They stood then on a hill’s bank, Bucephalia in the far distance, the tershal tower rising above the trees like a frozen rocket.

‘You’re a pest,’ he muttered. ‘I’m not your master.’

The dog’s expectant look said otherwise. The sky ahead of them was riddled suddenly with forks of orange. Another came, then another, emananting – he realised – from the tersh’s tower. More streaks flashed from it now, obliterating the walls.
What on Exurbia…
There was a pause then another round of Ayakashi flashes. Most of the topmost dome was gone then. The higher chambers only remained as barebones. Taking his field telescope he glassed three figures stood in the chamber, two adults and what must have been a child. There was a break in the eruptions and a shape appeared suddenly over the structure, fashioned, by the look of it, from pure t’assali. An Old Erde butterfly, its torrid orange wings slowly beating, ascending high above the capital then into the morning cloud canopy. The dog watched him as he vaulted in double steps down the bank towards the city.

***********

As he passed through the suburbs, more knew his face than he was comfortable with. At the wrought gate to the Blueberry Projects, a few of the crowd even tipped their hats.
The Chapterhouse wasn’t so secret after all then.
Mr. Covert Woof loped faithfully at his side, stopping occasionally to sniff at debris.

‘It’s been a Hades storm up there,’ said a man in the Hydrea district. ‘The Ayakashi too.’

‘I know,’ Fortmann said. ‘I saw.’

The sky was empty of transport capsules. Even the birds seemed grounded. All through the districts and the projects, folk were standing on their doorsteps or sitting in the streets, smoking, watching, talking in soft murmurs.
They’re anticipating
. His heart began to flutter as he approached what was left of the tershal tower. At Precosa Street he glassed a gungov way off with his field telescope. It was wandering aimlessly, ignoring the cityfolk. Close enough then, he saw the tower entire. The top regions had been almost completely destroyed. A few remaining girders gave it a birdcage aesthetic, but there was little else left.

There were still gungovs standing guard at the tershal grounds. A crowd had formed, some baying, most just apparently there out of pure curiosity.
Since when do gungovs tolerate rabbles?
He prepared a small speech in his mind and approached the orange-eyed rascal with the largest grabbing parts. The thing stepped aside before he could open his mouth. Both he and the dog passed without comment.

‘Who’s he then?’ yelled a fabric woman.

‘A Seer!’ yelled another. ‘Look, it’s a Seer!’

‘Not anymore,’ Fortmann said. 

He had walked the grounds once as a child on a school outing. Little had changed: the former tershes still immortalised as hardened t’assali statues, the fountains spitting water in triple helices. The gungovs were just as accommodating as he continued into the grounds, standing aside, one following him at a distance, showing little more than idle curiosity. The ambassadorial chambers were empty. Food had been left half eaten at banquet tables. A Pergrin statue had been thrown or dropped and now it lay headless. A factotum gungov beckoned and led him to the service steps.
Well, of course. The ascendance closets aren’t likely to be operational.

The staircase spiralled up and around the outside of the tower itself. As he climbed, more and more of the Exubric degradation was obvious now. Every street was full of onlookers. Some must have been watching his climb through their binoculars. Commerce had come to a halt entirely, by the look of it.
Whatever the outcome, this will be a day they’ll remember.

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.