Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars (An Infinite Triptych Book 1) (20 page)

‘I was arrested for trying to build exactly the kind of machine you are asking me to construct
here
. Is it one rule for the populace, and one rule for Governance?’

‘I think you forget who you’re talking to, Citizen.’

‘If you were going to have me killed, you would have done it already. Obviously I’m too valuable to dispense with, but you can’t openly let me know that. Worse than that though, it seems the decision to keep me alive wasn’t made by you at all but that woman of yours. The same woman that - and forgive my tenacity - has you at her mercy. The same woman who had the last tersh framed for a crime I personally have evidence of him not committing. I know who planted the generator in that mallet. There are rumours all across the Ixenite network. Worse though,
she
probably knows too, doesn’t she? And all of this has just been an elaborate game to remove anybody from power who might get in her way. So yes, Your Reverence, I have some moral quibbles. Why am I building this machine for a woman we know nothing about, who has no interest in Exurbia, who would debase its politics on a whim?’

‘You are talking,’ said Jura, ‘to the foremost honourable of Exurbia. You would do well to keep your mouth more tightly shut. My companion Miss Butterworth might consider you a valuable asset, but in the event that I
do not
, it will be no bother at all to have you disposed with.’

‘Stratigraphics,’ said Mcalister. ‘Three to five o’clock. Monday mornings.’

'What?’

‘I thought you might remember me. Apparently you don’t. I took a semester of your stratigraphics module at university.’

He searched the bastard’s face. There was only the long and blurry backlog of former students.
Maybe he’s a touch familiar.

‘You were quite timid back then, but most of the students liked you. I liked you. And the
other
 Professor Jura. She taught physics back then. Anna?’

‘Annie,’ said Jura before he could stop himself. 
Annie. Where are you?

‘What became of her?’

‘She's no longer my wife. There were differences.’

‘Last I heard, she was working at the Bureau of Celestials. Until she was arrested and brought here.’

‘What of it?’

‘Nothing at all. I only mention it in passing. Say, do you remember old Kreole, the Old Erde history professor?’

‘The one with narcolepsy?’ Jura said.

‘He used to fall asleep mid-sentence when he was teaching.’

‘Plovda, he was mad enough awake. And -’ Jura collected himself.
This is no place, nor time, for nostalgia.

‘It was no secret that you sympathised with the Ixenites,’ said Mcalister, undeterred by the silence. ‘Every lecture seemed pregnant with little hints. I suppose our suspicions weren’t wrong. This is your way of winning the race, isn’t it, Professor? Taking control of the game and arresting the opposition, locking them up in your tower.’

‘Didn’t you listen to Miss Butterworth’s speech?’ Jura said. ‘Didn’t you listen to a word of it? Spool, the last planet to achieve a critical wiremind state, it was destroyed, was it not?’

‘By a syndicate warfleet, yes.’

‘Else it would have reached the syndicate hub.’

‘Well, Professor, let’s entertain, for a moment, the possibility that she might be lying. Isn’t it just the kind of horror story you’d tell if you had an anti-wiremind agenda? And even then, let’s pretend she’s being totally honest with us. Let’s pretend that wireminds automatically turn on their planets. Why would she come here to help us build one?’

Jura ran his eyes across the basket at the base of the machine. Only the crooked spokes of the outline had been built so far. ‘It isn’t a wiremind,’ Jura said quietly.

‘Oh?’

‘It’s an amplifier of some kind.’

‘Of what kind?’

‘I’ve told you too much already. Continue with your work, this is getting us nowhere.’

‘You don’t know, do you? You have no idea.’

‘Continue with 
-’

‘I’ll tell you what it is, because I’ve had full access to the blueprints and it’s obvious. The machine is a focus point. Something, or
someone
I suppose, is placed inside the basket. When the ambrosia goes critical, it becomes contiguous with all points in spacetime simultaneously.’

‘Absurd.’

‘You know it isn’t. Whatever rides along with it will be dispersed equally across the field. The exomaterial field itself won’t achieve full consciousness beyond, say, three pergrins. Whatever is placed inside the field, however, will be projected onto the Up.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call it that.’ 
A childish occult term.

‘The Up, Professor? What would you have it named?’

The bane of my miserable life. 
Jura shrugged.

‘Well,’ said Mcalister, ‘it isn’t of great importance what we call it. The point is that we know what the esteemed Miss Butterworth has in mind. She’s not here to build a god. She’s here to make one of a man. Isn’t that ironic? Who gets to be the pioneer, do you think? Who gets to take that first journey in the basket? Is it you, Professor? As her lover, I mean.’

Infernal oik. 
‘What did you say?’

‘
As her lover,
Professor. Will you be given preference on account of you being her lover
?’

‘Don’t comment on matters you don’t understand.’

‘They’re the only matters worth commenting on.’

Mcalister stood defiantly now, arms at his side, chest protruding, his breath regular and assured.

‘Just what is it you want?’ Jura said.

‘The same thing you want, Professor.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Freedom from the itch. Doesn’t it just
haunt
you?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘The pull of the gestalt. I don’t know anything that tugs harder.

‘Who gets eternity?’ sung a shrill voice. 
Lords, no. Not now. 

‘Who gets the urn?’ sung another, even higher. The syndicate woman’s spyles wound down in a helix from the ceiling.

‘How long have you been there?’ said Jura. ‘Waiting in the eaves like devious little bats.’

‘
Who gets eternity?’
they sung together, clashing at a semi-tone apart. Mcalister was watching them thoughtfully as they flew about his face, extending and retracting their cutting-parts like a playful cat’s claws.

‘
Who gets the urn?’

‘Fiesty, aren’t they?’ said Mcalister.

‘We have special instructions,’ said the first drone. ‘From our lady.’

‘Special instructions,’ said the second. ‘To open you up if you’re rude.’

‘To…
open me up?’
Mcalister said.

They juddered their cutting-parts in a frenzy, in and out, the gauge wheels whirling.

‘And you have been very rude. Very rude to the professor.’

The boy kept his eyes on Jura. ‘We were talking, as friends.’

‘You weren’t saying very friendly things,’ said the second spyle.

‘He gets the urn!’ said the first. ‘The urn for him!’

Both brought out enormous gleaning bifurcate blades and raised them to Mcalister’s face. A look of repressed panic flashed across it.

‘He’s a student of mine,’ said Jura. ‘An old friend.’ One of the blades moved cleanly into Mcalister’s neck and drew a small blot of blood. ‘More than that,’ said Jura hurriedly, ‘he’s an asset to the cause, and Miss Butterworth will be very angry if you damage him. Especially if you kill him.’

‘But he’s mischievous,’ one said. ‘He’s plotting.’

‘He’s indispensable. Grand Socratic Butterworth said that herself.
Indispensible.’

The drones paused in their flight for a moment, retracted their cutting-parts and turned their eyestalks on Jura.

‘You are also mischievous,’ said the first.

‘You are also plotting,’ said the other.

‘Begone with you, return to your keeper, she waits in the tershal hall.’

They circled back up into the ceiling and disappeared through a cavity. Mcalister tried to staunch the blood flow, his neck covered in streams of it then.

‘I'm sorry,’ said Jura. ‘They’re Plovda’s little menaces. Evil.’

‘Old Kreole, the history teacher,’ Mcalister said, his face a little pale, but the expression resolved. ‘He used to say one should judge a man by his guard dogs. And what strange guard dogs your lover keeps, Professor.’

28

“All systems tend towards absolute perfection, if granted sufficient time and resources.”

     -The Book of Truisms

Fortmann -

Early evening, the moons riding up gingerly on the horizon, a few transport pods leaving lazy contrails in their wake. In the projects, defiance beat like an anvil, the Ixenites toiling in double-time, working through steam, working through fear and foolhardiness. Many were young, the elders having been rooted out by the gungovs in their raids. And in the basements, in the attics and the hidden passages, the barebones of god were being assembled, secured with bolts and sticking fluid.

On Hoyle Street, a gungov put an explosive kick through a shack door. T’assali shot then from its eyes and its fingers and its chest and evaporated the entrance entirely. A young girl screamed from the end of the hall and ran for cover, taking the stairs in double jumps. The rest of the group entered.

A hundred koels south, the expedition climbed the steep hill in swaddled rags, trudging through the evening like old women, heads ducked and bobbing. The foot sores were sore enough not to mention anymore, their pack straps cutting welts into their shoulders. Bucephalia was little more than a thumbnail on the horizon, the orange vented steam trails of t’assali hanging over it like a spectre. Fortmann imagined the one-two beat of his footsteps were tribal drums, that they were all elsewhere, that they were fed and watered and bound for bed.

‘Another two koels, and we’ll be at the lip of the corridor I think,’ said 261.

From behind, the imp’s stature was enormous now, that of a bear.
I could do with some of that testosterone synthesiser myself,
thought Fortmann. Then aloud: ‘Well, I don’t see a damn thing. We could be walking right into the gnashing jaws of death for all you know.’

‘
Fortmann,’
Maria said, scolding.

I am Seer. You shan’t talk to me in that manner, bed shared or no bed shared.

‘Well, what’s the guarantee? How do you even know where this place is?’ he said.

‘I was privy to a large quantity of classified information during my time in the cave. The Corridor of Screaming Bark came up from time to time,’ said 261.

‘Then you know what it is?’

‘Reports were often vague.’

‘Oh, superb.’

‘
Fortmann,’
Maria said again, and broke from his side to walk among the rushes. The Zdrastian still kept position at the back of the line, quiet as he had been the entire journey. Mr. Covert Woof - tissue paper secured about his paws as usual - trotted faithfully at his master’s side, pausing occasionally to sniff at screeshrubs and mottlebarbs.

‘Exurbic Special Security often spoke informally of their terror at approaching the corridor, as well as supposed episodes in which personnel had gone missing,’ said 261. ‘Though in all likelihood, we’re probably safe.’

Perhaps the synthesiser did something to his faculties. Twenty-four years in a concrete box, then being suddenly pulled out and dosed with chemicals could have taken its toll on the man. 

‘We’re probably safe? What do we have that an official tershal security detail doesn’t?’

The imp stopped at a highledge and seemed to sniff the wind then. He ran two brazen hands through his long brown hair and eyed the valley below.

‘I have had a considerable amount of time to think about the corridor, as well as the t’assali events on Exurbia.’

‘What does t’assali have to do with it?’ Fortmann said.

‘A great deal. To begin with, the Ayakashi always strikes with apparent volition behind it. It has never, as far as I’m aware, acted without purpose or intention. There is a strong likelihood that it is either a creature in its own right, or being controlled by a pilot of some sort.’

‘Pilot
?
’ Maria said.

‘And I believe the Ayakashi is steered by a similar force to that which guides the gungovs.’

‘They seem like robots,’ offered the Zdrastian weakly.

‘Possibly. We know at the least that the gungovs are operated by t’assali. On occasion they have even tried to communicate, though in very rudimentary ways. There’s ample evidence to suggest that they’re being piloted remotely also.’

‘By the same entity?’

‘Highly unlikely. The gungovs are faultlessly faithful to the tersh. The Ayakashi, however, has made several attempts on Bucephalia, as well as levelling Xianxi, a tershal stronghold against the rogue city states. There are at least two sources of power.’

All three of them moved to the ledge. The epicforest lay below, stretching koel after koel into the far distance.

‘What did she say to you, 261? The imp woman,’ Maria said.

‘Very little, and nothing of much substance or use for the occasion at hand. But enough to confirm that I have made the right decision.’

‘Decision?’

‘In staying with your cause.’

‘In fairness,’ said Maria, ‘you didn’t have much choice.’

Idiot, what are you filling his head with?
Fortmann thought.

‘There has been ample chance to have you incarcerated or your location reported to Governance at the very least,’ said 261. He spoke without malice. ‘Every day, in fact, has brought with it a new opportunity to reveal my location to Governance. The pass-string on your stream terminals took me less than three minutes to override. The Ixenite guarding my apartment is Staren York, a man that repeatedly came up involved with quandaries while I was in the cave; there was every chance to blackmail him into aiding my escape. The t’assali beacon on your rooftop -’

‘All right,’ said Fortmann gravely. ‘Understood.’