Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars (An Infinite Triptych Book 1) (7 page)

‘I can't imagine,’ he whispered into the spinning rings and the orange effervescence, as though to a lover, ‘that you would ever mean to hurt anyone.’

9

“We should act in accordance with our nature, and if history has taught us anything, it's that our nature is as variable as the wind.”

- Tersh Stanislav of Exurbia

Fortmann and Maria -

Fortmann fetched a little more ice from the freezer unit and crawled back into bed.

‘It’s supposed to be served hot,’ said Maria.

‘What, zapoei? It’s not supposed to be served at all, or to humans anyway, judging by the taste of it.’

She sat naked and propped against the headboard of the bed and stared with a little lacklustre into space. She’d had more force and violence in her than he’d expected, pulling at his hair, giving commands
.
He was, he realised, a little relieved it was over now.

‘They say,’ Fortmann intoned, as if to nobody at all, ‘zapoei is smuggled in from the syndicate hub. Every year, a single capsule full of the stuff arrives on the tip of Godeli and -’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, someone would notice, an astronomer or something.’

‘They say it has a way of evading Exurbic telescopes.’

‘Let me get this clear in my mind,’ she said. ‘The syndicate, or somebody in the syndicate, has found a way of smuggling contraband past Exurbia’s millions of radio and plasma telescopes. And, instead of using it for experimental narcotics, or wiremind components, or even lewd pictures of one of the syndicate hub senators, they smuggle liquor. And not even liquor anyone actually enjoys. They cross five hundred million lightyears of Gnesha-damned hell-haunted empty space to deliver the foulest alcohol man is yet to burden his galactic empire with.’

Fortmann studied her face.
Is this dry humour?

‘Does male company always make you this irate?’ he said.

‘Only when they talk dross. Come on,’ she said, patting the other side of the bed. He slid over and put an arm across her shoulders. This would make things complicated for the Chapterhouse,
but Plovda be damned,
he didn't much care. Even now, a few floors below, the devoted were going about their evening chores completely oblivious to the scene in Fortmann’s chambers. Would they have been bothered if they knew? It might degrade his status as a man of purity, but they would accept it eventually.
There is nothing in the Chapter’s charter which stipulates abstinence.

‘Things are coming together, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘Really coming together.’

She nodded.

‘Everything is aligning.’

She nodded again.
He is in a cultish mood now.

‘Just a few more moves, and we’ll be in a winning position. It doesn’t matter what they do after that, it’ll be too late.’

‘After 261?’ she said.

‘After 261.’

‘But the syndicate,’ she said. She had often thought it, but never found the right occasion to put it to him. Now, naked in his chambers, it seemed ridiculous not to speak her mind.

‘What about the syndicate?’ he said, apparently entertained.

‘Won’t they send out a military unit to stop us? They could just vapourise the planet if they wanted.’

He turned to check if she was being sincere. ‘You surprise me,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Well, what do you think Exurbia will look like, after the Up?’

She shrugged.

‘Tell me. Honestly.’

‘I think,’ she said, carefully, ‘that the first thing to go will be national divisions, then personal divisions.’

He nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘And then there won’t be any need for Governance and Governance will dissolve. There might be some last minute military resistance from the Bucephalian forum, but it won’t be of any consequence.’

‘Why?’ he said, stroking her hair then. ‘Why won’t it be of any consequence?’

‘Because most of the citizens by that point will have fused into a single conscious unity, and that unity will have control of the planet’s defences.’

He nodded emphatically. ‘You’re damn right,’ he said. ‘And the wiremind will have built defences we can’t even dream of, and we’ll have control of those too. Now imagine some pushy military unit turns up from the syndicate hub. They wouldn’t last ten seconds in local space against whatever technology we’ll be using by then. We’ll wipe them out like insects.’

He was laughing then, his eyes wide.

‘Hell-haunted insects, we’ll rip them apart before they can even get near the planet. And they’ll send another wave, a warfleet, and we’ll rip that apart too, child’s play. And do you know what comes after that?’

She shook her head slowly.

‘We stretch out our fingers across Exurbic space, out beyond the solar system, out to the syndicate hub and we give them a proviso. They can either join the Up, or face extinction.’

‘
Extinction?’

‘Extinction. They’re outmoded, obsolete. They’ll only initiate little pathetic uprisings every few years or so. Most of them won’t join us out of choice. They’ll need persuading. And what better incentive than eternal life?’

‘Eternal life,’ she said. ‘Or extinction?’

‘Just like the gods of old Erde. Eternal life or extinction.’

Is he addled? It’s so hard to tell on nights like these.

Fortmann sipped at his zapoei and stroked the girl's hair. Everything was orienting now.
Unfolding
, as the poem went,
just as it should.

‘What do you think it will feel like?’ she said in a small voice.

‘What?’

‘When it happens. Stratification, the Up, all of it. What will it feel like?’

‘It will be sublime.’

‘Will it hurt?’

‘No.’

‘Will we die?’

He sat up. ‘Die?’

She nodded.

‘Of course not. Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?’

‘I’ve been listening. But we’ll just be a drop in an ocean, won’t we? We’ll just be part of a huge whole. What room is there for me in there? What room is there for a single mind in a thing like that?’

These are her true colours then
, he thought.
This is the timid little girl beneath the assured and taciturn exterior.
He took his glass with him to the window and surveyed the chaptergrounds below. Even so close to midnight there was still a handful of Chapterhouse devotees turning the soil of the plushflour fields in the dark, working silently and without thanks or acknowledgement.

‘When life began on Old Erde those billions of years ago,’ he said, ‘it was small and weak and divisible. And it stayed like that for a long while, at war with itself. But slowly, over time, a sort of union formed. Cells began to work in unison and became multicellular life. And that life increased in stature, growing in size, becoming more complex over millions upon millions of years until Old Erde was full of mammals, and reptiles, and amphibians, and primates, and fauna, and an infinite menagerie of complexity.’

One of the devotees in the plushflour field stopped to wipe the evening’s humidity from his brow. He scanned the horizon for a moment and returned to ploughing the soil.

‘And later, much later, a primate evolved a brain big enough to hold the universe inside it. And language was born. And sentience was born. And standing armies, and particle physics, and loan repayment schemes, and political dissent, and political obedience, and poetry, and bread, and interpretive dance, and interstellar travel. Do you see? It’s impossible, it would all have been impossible, without deep and intentional collaboration. It’s how the cells became complex organisms. It’s how the complex organisms became sentient. And it’s how man will become whatever it is he next needs to be, that which is waiting in the Up. But like those cells, like those tiny, divisible and insignificant single units, he will need to come together to give birth to that next level of complexity. And if a cell could talk, it might have screamed. It might have recoiled at the prospect of losing its individuality. But imagine telling it that millions of years later, some distant descendant of itself would be out living among the stars, on alien planets, new worlds. Well, that might just have just given it the courage required to make the jump. So I’m asking you to have courage now, in the final days. I’m asking you to revel in the miraculous shape of things to come.’

He finished the last of the zapoei and turned to face her then in the half-dark of his chambers. ‘And no. It won’t hurt.’

And yet it’s strange,
Maria thought without daring to say it,
that with a thousand other worlds in the syndicate, not a single one has broken through to the Up yet, even accidentally.

‘There is something, a kernel of a problem,’ he said after a time.

‘What?’

'Apparently there’s a ship inbound. The Zdrastian has been using Takashi and his implant to monitor Governance communications. It’ll arrive in about twenty-four hours, apparently.’

‘Gnesha, is it syndicate?’

‘They don’t know. They gave it a good run for its money though, opened fire. Didn’t even touch it.’

‘How,’ she said, sitting up now, ‘did you only just think to mention this?’

He made a placating hand gesture.

‘Pergrin’s toes, calm down. It doesn’t affect the imp’s big day out tomorrow. It doesn’t affect anything, for that matter.’

‘
Anything?
What if it’s syndicate?’

‘So what?’

‘What if they’re bringing even tighter t’assali regulations, or harsher Pergrin restritctions, or a more sensitive wiremind detector, or -’

‘You’re being absurd. It’s probably just some dumb overdue diplomacy visit. There’ll be a hoo-ha for a few days, and then it’ll die down. You’ll see.’

Out in the fields beyond, the devotees were making their way in. Assured now, Fortmann thought, of their own piety.

‘Do you know what history is?’ he said, like a dog refusing to give up a bone.

She shrugged.

‘History is the autobiography of a madman. An old Erde thinker said that once. And he was wrong. History is what god does as he’s waking up. Sometimes he groans a little and out comes a printing press or a new vaccine. Other times, he opens a bleary eye and a species learns to flit between the stars. But sooner or later he’s going to come around entirely and sit up right there in bed, Gnesha’s teeth he will. And every burning ball of t’assali in every Ixenite basement will be a footnote to that great morning. Because only one need get through. Only one rig need go critical, only one need reach full Pergrinitude, and the planet’s face could change in a day. All of it, the death, the wars, the diasporas, the empires, the literature, the changing fashions; it’ll be realised on that day, on
that morning.
Let the syndicate thugs come. Let them trample over everything we’ve built. Ghesha’s spit, let them try.’

She watched his nakedness outlined in the half-dark, gesticulating as he spoke.
There is a flame at the heart of some men, and it burns for good in a few, and it burns for ill in others, and I haven’t the slightest idea,
she thought
, what it burns for in you.

10

“Every mud puddle, every bough, every bridge, every nebula – why, it's a love song to the Up, sung across entirety of time.”

- The Second Wielder

Jura -

No ram-jets
, Jura thought.
No boosters, no chemical propulsion of any kind.
It was unsettlingly quiet. The craft descended slowly, kissed the landing pad with its chrome belly, then lay still. The crowd was silent, save for a ripple of murmurs. The grand tersh straightened himself at Jura’s side, cleared his throat a few times, and moved his bulk from one foot to the other.

‘Let’s just
hope
they’re syndicate,’ whispered the tersh.

It was possible, Jura had realised several days earlier, that the syndicate had been overtaken by some other faction, or destroyed entirely. Exurbia only received infrequent wave communications from the hub, a sentence or two every five years. Besides, any idiot could just pretend to represent the syndicate. Perhaps it had collapsed centuries ago. There was no way to know.

The rear of the craft slid aside and a gangway emerged. Then a figure descended, tall and garbed in white flowing robes, two spherical floating objects in tow. A woman, Jura realised, by her build. Blonde flowing hair fell about her shoulders, and nestled in between the reams was a pale and austere face that surveyed the crowd. Even the murmurs were dead now. She approached the bridge platform on which stood Jura, the grand tersh, and a full compliment of Bucephalian Governance officials: worldworks analysts, diplomats to the marginals, strategists, and worldstate poets. She identified the tersh as an authority figure and approached him. The tersh opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again.

‘Welcome,’ Jura said uncertainly, ‘to Exurbia.’

The tersh appeared suddenly furious but held his tongue.

I should not have made the opening remarks. I will suffer for this later.

‘Many thanks,’ said the woman, ‘for both the reception, and attending in such a capacity.’

The accent was neutral,
almost
Exurbic, the vowels natural and gliding.

‘I bring gifts, of course,’ she said.

One of the floating drones glided into the forefront and opened a side panel to reveal some kind of blue and glowing matter.

‘A much-needed replacement for your t’assali technology. Your scientists will be able to synthesise more of the material from this original template. It’s about ten times more efficient than t’assali, and cleaner at that.’

‘My Lady,’ said the grand tersh, and bowed his head in customary respect. ‘You grace us with your kindness.’

‘Quite.’

Jura studied the face.
What is so bizarre about it? Something out of place, and yet deliciously subtle. Her features are beautiful, but typical nonetheless. Her eyes, a standard shade of blue.