Flowercrash (12 page)

CHAPTER 8

After a week of drumming, Nuïy, following his new timetable, returned to the Tech Houses and to Deomouvadaïn. It had been a difficult time. His right eye remained defocussed, and he thought he might have a detached retina. He suffered for the first time in his life from headaches; mild, but present nonetheless. Suddenly his insensitivity to pain became a worry, for he wondered if his body was changing under the stress of working for the Green Man.

One day, Deomouvadaïn took him back to his house, offering him a glass of beer and an apple. Surprised, Nuïy accepted them, checking the apple for suspicious marks and the beer for oily swirls.

Deomouvadaïn said, “I’ve a task for you, Nuïy. There’s somebody in Emeralddis who has offended the Green Man.”

“How?”

“Never mind that. You only need to know who. As you’ll realise, the Green Man mustn’t be offended. Do you know the punishment?”

“No.”

Deomouvadaïn thought awhile, then, in a voice light compared to his usual gruff tones he said, “The punishment is death, of course. I’m rather busy. You must perform the deed.”

Nuïy stared. How often he had thought of killing other people, especially those of his family. Now he was being asked to do a favour that would allow him to kill. How strange that would be. He could not imagine what it would be like, but he knew he wanted to know.

“I will do my best,” he said.

Deomouvadaïn coughed up phlegm. “It’s no easy task,” he said, doubtfully. “You must succeed.”

“I can do it. I will do it for the Green Man.”

“Very good.” Deomouvadaïn pulled a scrap of paper from his robe and passed it to Nuïy. “There’s the name and address. My signature at the bottom will allow you out of the Shrine. Now to the method. Recall the Leafmaster’s lesson concerning the senior clerics. Sargyshyva performed a great feat to affirm himself under the boughs of the Green Man.”

“I can remember his exact words. ‘Sargyshyva, at that time the Second Cleric, knew he would soon become First Cleric. Ummagaïdira had lung cancer and would soon perish. So Sargyshyva performed a deed. Under the cover of night he entered the Shrine of Root Sculpture. There he stole from the Sculpted Hedge itself a root of death. Pursued by enemies, he returned south. He lost his enemies in the marshes.’”

“Correct,” said Deomouvadaïn. “That root was the precursor of roots used by ascetics of the Green Man to dispose of undesirables. You’ll use such a root.” Deomouvadaïn handed him a packet. “This must be introduced into the mouth of the victim. Such is yer task. Success is essential.”

“I will find success.”

Deomouvadaïn scratched at his beard, then coughed again, as if nervous. “I’ve two further items of news. Firstly. At the end of this week I’ll be transfering you to a hut in the northern clerical accomodation. The dormitory is no longer suitable for you. Secondly. You must in a fortnight take a crucial test. Later I’ll give you the details. However I can say now that you’ll be observed by the Third Cleric.”

“Zehosaïtra? Why him?”

“You’ve come to his attention. Say nothing of this to anybody else.”

“I will do that.”

“Very well. Now leave, and perform my task.”

Nuïy departed Deomouvadaïn’s house. A strange sensation—that he had heard called joy—bubbled up inside him, but he snapped down on it before it threatened to take him over. He, Nuïy, was trusted enough to perform an assassination as a favour, and because Deomouvadaïn was so busy he probably would not even check. That was how much he was trusted! He felt that at last he was standing beside the trunk of the Green Man.

Nuïy walked straight to the east gate, where three guards stood playing tuck-the-leaf. Showing them his signed paper, he walked on into the urb. This was the first time he had left the Shrine since arriving.

Momentarily he was disorientated. He remembered a different Nuïy, adrift, angry, who came to this place and made a fool of himself. He cast his mind back to those days, remembering what he wore, what was said to him, what he did. It felt like recalling the distant past. Now he was Nuïy of the Green Man, and soon even the senior clerics would know of him. He tried to repress a grin, but it was impossible. This new life was so much better than the old.

He walked north to the address on the paper. As yet he had not decided how to introduce the tiny metal root in his pocket into the mouth of his victim. He recalled Raïtasha’s lesson on methods of killing. There would be a suitable procedure to follow.

The house stood alone on the northern edge of the urb. A smell of decay and stagnant water came off the nearby marshes. From a dark doorway Nuïy watched through open windows as the inhabitants of the house, three old men with long beards, went about their business. There. The short, ugly one. That was the man.

Nuïy watched into the night. It would be simple enough to locate the man’s room and break in, then perhaps tie him and lock open his mouth, or introduce the root like a poison into some morsel of food at his bedside. But what a waste. With trembling hands, he took the packet out of his pocket and looked at the sliver of metal. Here lay certain death. Nuïy understood the potential. He folded the packet, returned it to his pocket then strode away, north along the causeway and out into the night…

~

The week passed by, slow and long.

Nuïy saw little of Deomouvadaïn. The Recorder-Shaman mentioned nothing of the killing, and Nuïy, once the excitement of the assassination was over, relegated the incident to the back of his mind, where it remained, satisfying. After his final day of the week listening in the Tech Houses he returned to the dormitory.

Mehmatha and his two cronies had just returned from a day’s shillelah practice, sweating and stinking the dormitory out, while Drowaïtash lay reading on his bed and Eletela scrubbed autodog oil from his arms and hands.

Nuïy stood up and faced them all. “Silence, please.” He clapped his hands twice. “I must tell you something.”

Everybody stopped what they were doing and looked at him, except Mehmatha, who with his back turned continued to wash himself down. Nuïy waited, but when Mehmatha showed no sign of paying attention he began, “Tomorrow I will be entering clerical accomodation adjacent to the orchards. I am vital now to the progress of the Green Man’s plans. That is why the decision has been taken to move me from this place.”

He turned and sat down. Drowaïtash and Eletela walked over to sit on his bed. Nuïy edged away from them, then looked up. “Yes?”

Drowaïtash said, “What will you be doing?”

“More of the work I am currently engaged with. Tomorrow I will be drumming a new rhythm devised by Kamnaïsheva himself. It is hoped that it will alter the metaphor of an entire database.”

“Is that good?” Eletela asked in his stupid voice.

Nuïy did not bother to look at him. “I cannot explain it with less complexity. You have not been trained as I.”

So Nuïy settled down to pass his final night in the dormitory. He collected his meagre belongings into a sack and put them beside his pillow.

During the night he was woken when his bed jerked under him. He sat up. Darkness surrounded him, but he saw the door flapping in the breeze, letting in cold air. He went to close it. Strong hands grabbed him. He was beaten around the head with a cudgel. His damaged eye flared with pain. Before he could cry out a wad of cloth was stuffed into his mouth. Thrust to the ground, he was sat on by two masked figures. A third took his right hand and grabbed his middle finger. With a crack it was bent back; dislocated. Nuïy felt a stab of pain. Then the other hand. Now he knew he hurt. He struggled, but they were too heavy for him to shift. After a final kick to the head the figures ran off. Nuïy was left half-conscious beside the dormitory.

He lay still for a few minutes, feeling new pains not known before. They did not distress him but he knew they were bad. He could not move his numb hands. Blood in his mouth again. Memories of the two previous blows he had suffered surged into his mind. It seemed to him that the Green Man was harsh, for here he had suffered, in a different way than when living with his family, in a more extreme way. The black-and-white doctrine appealed to him, but it was blunt, and although he was different to others he still understood and appreciated subtlety, which he saw as grades of small compartments.

He stood up. He swayed. He noticed a mild throbbing in his head, while his hands also throbbed.

He walked into the dormitory and lay on his bed. Five dark bundles lay on five beds. Something in the position of Drowaïtash made Nuïy think he was awake. He lay still. He did not sleep.

Next morning at first light he got up. With hands useless he was unable to wash, but he managed to lift his sack of oddments by pressing the top between his wrists. It fell free as he stumbled through the door.

Then Drowaïtash stood beside him. “What’s wrong?”

Nuïy tried to hide the damage, but it was too late.

When Drowaïtash did not seem shocked, Nuïy knew he had been awake during the attack. Drowaïtash said, “We must see the medic cleric.”

“No. This must not become known to the clerics.”

Drowaïtash thought. “Eletela is good with creatures,” he said.

“Mechanical ones,” Nuïy replied.

“He will be able to inspect your fingers,” Drowaïtash insisted. In seconds he had returned with Eletela.

“They’re dislocated,” Eletela declared. “How did this happen?” He looked up at Nuïy’s face. “And those bruises?”

“Never mind.”

Eletela took a cloth from his pocket and twisted it into a rag. “Bite on that.”

“Why?” Nuïy asked.

“You’ll need to.”

Nuïy saw that Eletela would have to touch him. Appalled by his dilemma, he managed to mutter, “Wear gloves. You must not touch me.”

Eletela agreed. He took Nuïy’s right hand and manipulated the middle finger back. Nuïy looked away. He felt pain again. Slight, uncomfortable. Dimly he appreciated that this would be agony for a normal man. Then Eletela did the same with his other finger.

Nuïy said to them, “Now I must go.” Drowaïtash put the sack into his folded arms. Nuïy turned and walked away.

He had been shown his hut on the previous day. In an hour he would need to be at the Drum Houses, where a most complex pattern would be entered into the networks. And he with damaged fingers.

He waited by the hut door until Raïtasha appeared with a key. Immediately the Leafmaster saw the state of Nuïy’s face and said, “What in the name of the Green Man have you been doing? Dorm fights? Speak up!”

Nuïy had not prepared a story. He hesitated, then said, “A tile fell off the roof during the night and landed on my face. I am well. There is no pain.”

Raïtasha scowled, unlocked the door and pushed Nuïy inside. “Get yerself ready for yer lesson. Wipe that blood off yer face. And stop squinting. The Green Man looks straight out at folk, not cross-eyed like a deformed donkey.”

“Yes, Leafmaster.”

Nuïy sat on the bed. The hut was a single room with a table and chair, a chest of drawers and various domestic facilities. In a cupboard he found food. In a drawer he found a gown, rough towels and hunks of soap. It was grim, but better than the dormitory.

An hour later he was sitting in the Output Room, a round drum between his knees, Kamnaïsheva at his side along with two technical clerics. Great cables emerged from the base of the drum, to end in white nodes as big as Nuïy’s head. Vast quantities of data were to be transfered. Nuïy sat motionless, muscles tense. Normally he would be relaxed, but he dreaded the possibility of Kamnaïsheva noticing the swelling in his fingers.

Kamnaïsheva drummed the new rhythm. His was the near perfection that Nuïy had noticed on those nights sitting outside the Drum Houses. Nuïy recorded the information.

“Now you,” Kamnaïsheva said.

Nuïy began. The pattern lasted forty six seconds. He felt no pain in his hands, just numbness. At twenty two seconds he lost concentration. He faltered. The multitude of compartments in his mind seemed shrouded in mist. He stared into the air, eyes defocussed, mouth hung slightly open, unable to bring his mind back to attentive reception.

A voice. “Nuïy. Nuïy?”

That brought him round.

Kamnaïsheva said, “Why have you stopped?”

The tone of Kamnaïsheva’s voice took him back to his mother. Fear bubbled up inside him. He was about to have a childish panic attack. Suddenly he recalled the first part of the pattern, and to defeat the panic he began to drum it. The sensations receded. He drummed on.

At forty one seconds, he lost the pattern.

Kamnaïsheva asked, “Is there a problem?”

“A tile fell on my head during the night. I have a mild headache and my right eye is defocussed. I cannot apologise enough. In a few hours I will be well again.” He hesitated, then mumbled, “Could we wait until tomorrow to complete this test? It must be given proper attention.”

With stony face Kamnaïsheva regarded him. Nuïy felt he had failed. In the silence, with three clerics staring at him, he wondered if he had lost everything. He would be thrown to the streets. At last Kamnaïsheva replied, “Return to this room tomorrow, two hours after dawn. Do not doubt that the new pattern must be tested then.”

Nuïy ran from the room.

In the silence of his hut, wrapped in blankets and curled up on his bed, he considered all that had happened to him since leaving Veneris. Just days after arriving it had become clear to him that the Green Man had called him here, but now he wondered if somehow he had misinterpreted the call. Today he had failed a drumming test for the first time. It could signify the beginning of the end.

The day passed. He remained on the bed. At dusk he ate a few biscuits, drank a mug of water, bathed his hands, then slept.

~

Next day he felt better. His hands were half numb. The swelling had reduced to become a discolouration. Experimentally he tapped at the table. A little pain. He could fight past that.

Presenting himself at the Output Room, he began the day’s work. He sent the sonic data without error, and once he had done that his confidence returned. But there was a hint of trouble in Kamnaïsheva’s glittering eyes that gave him a glimpse of the Analyst-Drummer’s inhuman side.