Flowercrash (19 page)
“Am I really in trouble?” he asked.
“I have been told to investigate Luihaby. Members of the Garden must be celibate according to Our Sister Crone’s immutable law.”
“Luihaby doesn’t come just to me. She’s a bit of a slut.”
“I don’t need to know that,” Manserphine replied. “The subject here is you. There’s no question that I can mention these liaisons in my report. There’s only one way out.” Manserphine warmed to her subject, seeing a way to manipulate him. “You must stop working here. If you continue there is always the risk of Yamagyny finding out. You will have to remain at the Determinate Inn.”
“But I’ll have no money.”
Rain began pattering down from a grey stormcloud coming in off the sea. They huddled closer to the tree trunk. Manserphine thought awhile, then said, “Ask your uncle for more pay.”
“He won’t give me more.”
“Surely he’s got enough to give you a few extra cowries?”
Kirifaïfra shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“But he’s rich. All those fabulous clothes, the inn, the never ending supplies of whiskey and vodka.”
Kirifaïfra’s gaze became distant. “He certainly has large amounts of coinage flowing through his hands.”
“I suppose he is some drugs supplier in Blissis.”
“To my certain knowledge drugs play no part in his financial dealings.”
Manserphine scowled. “I don’t want to know, whatever it is. You had better come with me to the inn.”
They stood, walking to the southern gate of the garden through the drizzle. Half way down the street Manserphine noticed the three men who had tried to gatecrash the party at the Determinate Inn. They leered at her as she passed.
Manserphine turned and shouted, “Go grin at pigs in the Woods, vagrants—ow!”
Kirifaïfra had slapped a hand around her mouth and was bundling her down the street. “Shush!” he said.
She struggled free, to demand, “What are you doing?”
“Those three will revenge themselves on you for your cheek.”
“
My
cheek? But they’re men.”
Kirifaïfra became as serious as she had ever seen him. “They’re rough men of the Cemetery. Cross them and they cross you back, tenfold. Steer clear of them.”
Manserphine was angry at being told this—and by another man. “I don’t fear any man,” she said. “They are just ruffians. Show them a dagger and they would collapse like a pack of cards.”
“They wouldn’t. I know.”
“How?”
He hesitated. “I can’t tell you.”
“Another secret? You love me, you want to bed me, yet you cheerfully declare your secrets?”
“Don’t jest,” he said. The expression on his face was pained. Manserphine muttered to herself and said nothing further.
At the Determinate Inn he took her hand and kissed it in a gesture so melodramatic she laughed. Affectations like this were in his nature. She said, “I’d better go. Things to do.”
“Yes. Oh—your friend was here last night. She said she will send a message.”
“My friend?”
“The secret gynoid.”
Manserphine stared at him. “Zoahnône was here last night?”
“Yes, in the back garden. We chatted.”
“You chatted? What about?”
Kirifaïfra nonchalantly answered, “I told her about the flower crash.”
Manserphine’s mind became temporarily blank. She murmured, “I think I need a drink,” and seconds later found herself sitting at the bar.
As ever, Omdaton sat asleep before the fire, while Vishilkaïr stood behind the bar. Kirifaïfra sat next to Manserphine, his thigh warm against hers. It was as if she had never left.
“A triple whiskey on the rocks?” Vishilkaïr asked.
Manserphine nodded. “How is it that I leave this inn with sadness in my heart, only to find myself back days later?”
“The heart seeks home,” remarked Vishilkaïr.
“That’s right unc,” Kirifaïfra commented.
Manserphine laughed and playfully hit his shoulder. Yet, how could it be? How could she feel more at home here than in the Shrine where she was Our Sister Crone’s fourth most important cleric? She drank her whiskey and smacked the square glass down, indicating a refill. Vishilkaïr obliged. Turning to Kirifaïfra, she said, “So you told her about the flower crash? How could you know about it?”
“Botanical observation,” he replied. “As you’ve found out, I work in the Venereal Garden.”
“Worked,” Manserphine corrected.
Vishilkaïr threw his nephew a puzzled glance. “Tell you later unc,” said Kirifaïfra. “Working in the Venereal Garden allowed me to watch the growth and decay of wild networks, the sort Alquazonan looks after. Did you notice almost all the flowers there are the wild variety?”
“Never mind that, the flower crash,” urged Manserphine.
“I’m coming to it. When flowers lose their petals at the end of their season, seeds fall too. Those seeds are nuggets of ideas. Kernels of concepts. When they enter the earth any hardpetal nearby creeps over and smothers them, forming nodes from which new networks emerge. Now, in the Venereal Garden there lie gynoids who want to mate.”
“Mate? Who with?”
“The insects, of course. Don’t you know? Gynoid sex happens when insects bring huge quantities of data to flowers that bloom from their bodies. I don’t know why that should happen, but anyway. This means that the networks in the Venereal Gardens are metaphorically carnal, which makes for fascinating screens, I can tell you. Now last year I noticed that a great quantity of seeds were produced by all the flowers of the Venereal Garden, and it struck me that perhaps they knew of some event to happen the following year that might strike them down. This would make them want to produce as many seeds as possible.”
Manserphine cast her mind back to the previous year, when there certainly had been unusual quantities of seeds, dropped in spring from the winter flowering blooms and in autumn from those of summer.
She said, “But how did you know of the flower crash?”
“A trifle of research showed me that the networks themselves call this future event the flower crash.”
Fascinated despite herself, Manserphine tried to find faults. Though she knew the answer to the question, she said, “Why should the networks be able to see their own demise?”
Kirifaïfra hesitated, then replied, “That does puncture my theory, I must admit. Still, it is only a theory—though Zoahnône called it a brilliant piece of deductive reasoning.”
“Did she,” Manserphine said. She pondered what she had heard. In the flower crash vision, she had felt the event to be imminent. If Kirifaïfra was right it would happen this year. But what was it?
“Have you noticed how many roses there are this year?” Kirifaïfra asked.
“Yes,” she replied, absent-mindedly.
“I think something bad is going to happen soon. Diversity—that’s nature.”
It was time to go. She had wasted too much time drinking.
Walking back to the Shrine, she arranged in her mind what she would put in her first report. Best to be vague about Luihaby for the moment. On the way to her room she passed a crowd of clerics and laity at an open door. She stopped. “What is happening?” she asked.
“Something horrible,” somebody said.
Manserphine looked over shoulders to see a blood-soaked body on a bed. Thorny stems grew out of the chest and stomach. It seemed the victim had been lying there for a few days. A cleric was invoking Our Sister Crone’s rites of finality.
“Who is it?” Manserphine asked, looking away.
“Our Debt Collector. Gharalaiwy, she was called.”
~
Nuïy crouched in the silence of midnight, Deomouvadaïn’s herb garden all around him. In the boggy ground he sat still, headphones over his ears, trying to coax the fading papyrus into a semblance of clear sound. Soon he would have to find and plant new ones.
He listened.
Then he heard the phrase that he had for so long tried to catch amidst the ever-increasing babble of the spring networks.
Flower crash.
He memorised the message as it passed. ‘I’ve spoken with Kirifaïfra concerning the flower crash. I am sure now that it will happen this year. I’ve questioned Lizlaini, but she knew nothing of Shônsair’s origins. Shônsair clearly has plans and is highly dangerous. I am still searching Blissis for her. Hope your first session was successful.’
So. Names. Now he had facts to use. Who was this Kirifaïfra, these un-men Lizlaini and Shônsair?
He and Deomouvadaïn must find out.
CHAPTER 12
During the weeks following the reconvening of the Garden, Manserphine noticed small changes in the virtual environment that at first she explained away as an understandable reaction of the self-regulating systems, but which later she began to worry about. She could hear the sea. They all heard this sound, whether they stood in the Inner or Outer Garden, and with it, some days later, came distant mewling gulls and the distinctive odour of sea air.
Fnfayrq did not reappear, except briefly at the fourth session to wander the Outer Garden and enjoy the flowers. With no idea of how she would behave, nor what was causing the changes, Manserphine was left trying to articulate her ephemeral worries. Curulialci advised her to forget such details.
One night Manserphine had a mild vision. She was floating before the mermaid, red stars above her, dark depths below. From the mouth of the mermaid an orange flower emerged.
Manserphine understood the relevance and found herself fully awake, insects buzzing around her head in a haze of clematis perfume. Dawn was an hour away. She hurried to the garden and checked the message screen. There she read, ‘My plans are progressing. I have heard rumours of a deranged gynoid wandering Blissis in search of experience. This gynoid may know the whereabouts of Shônsair. If I find Shônsair, I may force out of her various explanations, such as her role in the flower crash, before I decide what to do with her. Unfortunately, the residents of Blissis are truculent, when they are conscious, and I am finding questioning difficult. It seems possible, however, that Shônsair and Baigurgône have some role in this attempt to crash the flower networks, so I must continue. Please keep your ear open for talk of suspicious gynoids. Kirifaïfra’s evidence suggests that the flower crash will occur this year.’
Manserphine had heard no talk of gynoids. She had not seen Zoahnône for some time and the embodied gynoid plan, with its attendant tasks, had been relegated in her mind. She was more worried about the Garden.
That afternoon she was summoned to a private meeting of the three senior clerics. Her report on Luihaby had been studied and further investigation had been carried out by a disbelieving Curulialci. Luihaby was to be weeded out of the Garden, her replacement one Suonhilni, who would represent those few residents of the Woods and the edges of Veneris who could be represented. Manserphine shrugged, glad that she had helped Kirifaïfra avoid an unpleasant fate.
Two days later she received an evening message from Zoahnône asking if they could meet in the Determinate Inn. There was news.
She donned a summer dress, low boots, and departed the Shrine from a side door, walking carefully through flowers, fanning insects aside, until she stood at the end of the passage. Rainclouds made it a dark evening, a curtain of drizzle dampening her face. Veneris was quiet. She stepped out into the alley before her.
Strong hands grabbed her arms and twisted them behind her back, while more hands grabbed her face, thrusting a gag into her mouth. She struggled, but they were men, far stronger than she was. She smelled bitter herbs on their clothes; the stink of tobacco upon them. In seconds she was bundled into a covered sedan chair, where her hands and feet were tied.
She saw no faces. The operation had been too swift. She had no idea who they were, what they wanted. Terrified, she struggled to roll out of the chair, but its sides were too high. The poles were lifted; she was moving. She tried to bounce her body up and down in an effort to put them off her stride, even to attract the attention of passers-by, but all to no avail. After some minutes she relaxed. She recalled no vision warning her of this event.
In mere minutes she felt the sedan chair put to the ground. She smelled a rotting odour, reminding her of the northern districts of the urb. Outside, she heard nothing except the soughing of the breeze. The rain had stopped.
They bundled her out of the sedan chair and laid her upon the damp ground. They knelt at her side, and now she could see who they were; the gatecrashing trio. One, the older man, undid her gag, while the others untied her hands and feet, then held them tight, so that she was forced to lie on her side.
“Before you scream,” the old man said, “consider the knife in my hand. Consider that there’s nobody here. Nobody in the Cemetery ‘cept men. Us and you.”
The Cemetery! Her premonition suggested she would die here. Shaking, she managed to reply, “What do you want? Who are you?”
“We’re the Band of Herb Smokers,” he said. “You mean your boyfriend didn’t tell you?”
“Boyfriend? Don’t you know who I am—”
“Shut up,” the man replied, lighting a cigarette. “Nobody talks like that to Argomaïtra.”
“Tha’s right,” the others added.
“Let me go,” Manserphine said, trying to inject some force into her voice. “You’ll be castrated for this.”
Argomaïtra ignored her. “We don’t like chaps splitting from a Band. We was a foursome in the old days. Now stuck-up little Kirifaïfra gets himself a tart and finds society. ‘Cept for prostituting in the Venereal Garden, of course. P’raps you didn’t know about that.”
“I did, and I have forgiven him,” Manserphine said.
That infuriated him. “You
forgave
him? You cheap tart! You’re all the bloody same aren’t you? Well, we’re here to pass judgement on you and your filthy crone.”
“You can’t. You’re men.”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “We are men. We can do what we like ‘cos we’re just vagrants in this bloody urb and nobody rules us. Got that? Nobody. Not you, nor your hag.”
Argomaïtra stood up, taking a deep drag at his cigarette. He glanced at the smaller of the other men, and said, “Tell her, Shiamaïtra.”
Shiamaïtra knelt at her side. Manserphine felt dread come over her and she struggled once more, only to feel the strength of her captors. Aided by the third man, Shiamaïtra turned her over, so that she saw a large hole beside her in the ground. Beside the large hole was a coffin.
She panicked, understanding their intention, but it was hopeless. For some seconds she saw nothing, felt nothing except her own rigid body and the painfully tight grips on her ankles and wrists. They were too strong.
“Don’t,” she managed to gasp. “Don’t do it.”
“But we’ve got the nails and the hammer,” Shiamaïtra said. “That cost us. And we ain’t got no money. It’s like that, being a man. No nothing. Partic’ly no respect.”
“Don’t!” Manserphine repeated.
“But we’ve got to. The bloke who made that there coffin wouldn’t give us our money back. Would he, dad?”
“He damn wouldn’t,” chuckled Argomaïtra. Suddenly his voice was like ice. “Do it, son. Do it now. Get it over with.”
Manserphine put all her strength into trying to pull away her feet so she could kick out, but it was hopeless. She screamed. She was dumped into the coffin. Argomaïtra had lifted the lid, and as soon as his henchmens’ grip was loosed he slammed it down. For a moment Manserphine thought she would get out, for the lid had landed awry, but they slammed down upon it with their hands as she screamed again, and then she was trapped in total blackness.
She hammered at the sides. Nothing. The sound of a nail being hammered into the lid. Another. Another.
Already the air felt hot. For a second she realised she must conserve air. Then she realised the pointlessness.
She screamed again, all control lost, and pushed out to try and break the wood of the coffin.
Nothing. No give.
Nails banging in. Muffled laughter. Muffled voices. “We sure got her, dad. That’ll show Kirifaïfra.”
She screamed again.
Nothing. Just the unforgiving strength of the coffin surrounding her. The heat of the air. Confined. Suddenly she could not move. Panic had obliterated her responses. Every muscle like stone. Then she gasped a great lungful of air and cried,
“No! Please!”
She hammered some more. More and more.
Nothing.
Her body moved as the coffin was thrown into the earth. Noise on the lid of earth raining down.
Boots on the lid.
The air was hot. Her breath was coming raucous.
Then nothing from outside.
Manserphine had never considered death. This unexpected moment left her mind naked. She felt everything, and yet nothing. She understood that this was it. Death. Escape was inconceivable.
Yet she could not believe it.
She waited for sound.
Nothing.
Just nothing.
She was hammering at the sides of the coffin.
Her body was doing something. Yet she was already out of her self, her mind frozen by shock. She felt nothing.
The hammering continued. At the edges of her perception she knew her body was making this rhythmic hammering. Why? Her mind was stilled. It had lost itself. It was a dead thing.
Cracking noises.
Suddenly Manserphine was aware of herself. In the pitch blackness she saw shards of light, heard more wood cracking, splitting, caving in to the push of glowing hands.
The dream continued. A face. Two great crimson eyes on a long metal face. A mouth, dripping saliva. And she felt air on her face, and the rejuvenating feel of pure oxygen.
She screamed, took a lungful of air and screamed again. Unable to move, she tried to look away from the beast. Panic closed again.
The thing was huge. It wriggled close, pushed up and out, making space. Manserphine could breath. It was exhaling oxygen.
Her mind focussed on it. She knew it was here, yet she knew it must be a hallucination. Nobody, but nobody could escape being buried alive. Impossible.
Then it spoke.
“You called.”
Manserphine could only whine at the creature, too shocked, pushed too far into fear to respond. She sounded like a dying animal.
“You called?”
She heard herself say, “No,” but the syllable extended into a howl. She knew she was staring, that she was incoherent, but there was nothing else she could do.
For a third time the beast said, “You called.”
Manserphine tried to grasp some fragment of her conscious self. She tried to speak. “B-b-but… n-nooooooo!”
“You did call,” the beast replied, in a voice of calm certainty. “What bargain would you have me consider?”
“Get me out!” Manserphine managed to reply. Her body, out of control, hammered and pushed upon the coffin lid.
“The rhythm of your call brought me here, but I cannot simply push you to the surface for we have not agreed a bargain.”
She recalled Cemetery stories. Bargains with necromantic beasts. Those old tales. Kirifaïfra had removed the sea-bracelet with a bargain that had seen him sacrifice his precious hair braid.
“Let me out!” she begged, tears wetting her face. “I’ll do anything!”
The beast shrank back a little.
“No!” Manserphine yelled, reaching out, then jerking back when she felt the slimy, cold metal of its snout.
“You have visions,” it said.
“Yes!” she snivelled, feeling panic approach once more.
“Then here is my bargain,” the beast said. “You will give me your innocence. Will you accept losing your innocence if I raise you to the surface?”
“Get me out, get me up,” Manserphine groaned, weeping. She felt now that she was lost. The beast was playing games. It would eat her.
She was right.
With a lunge it came at her. She squealed and shrank back. Its snout expanded into a metal hand with a dozen fingers which grabbed her forehead.
Again, panic. She hammered at the thing.
A jumble of struggles, cold metal, movement.
Air.
Cold air on her face.
Rain. It was raining on her.
She clambered to her feet.
She ran. Only when she struck a wall and fell to the ground did she look for a gate. There. She ran through.
She ran down alleys. She knew which ones.
The Determinate Inn stood before her. Wailing, limbs loose now with the after-effects of her fear, she stumbled into the inn.
Two figures sitting at a table, lit by a single lamp.
She screamed. She fell to the floor. All the emotions that had been held back by shock now caused her to collapse, unable to bear any more, and she flung herself about, crashing into furniture.
A voice. “Unc! Quick! The chlorodyne!”
Acid menthol splashed in her mouth.
Then nothing.
~
Manserphine woke up. The weirdest dream…
Her body felt light. She opened her eyes.
She lay on her back in her old room. A figure sat at the foot of the bed, reading a hardpetal lamina.
She breathed in, and he heard.
Kirifaïfra was at her side. “Are you awake, Manserphine?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How easy is your breathing?”
She breathed in and out. “All right.”
“Your throat. Does it ache?”
“A bit.”
“Do your arms and legs feel numb? Shake them. Can you feel them?”
Manserphine did as he asked. “I can feel them,” she reported.
He sighed and sat back. “Good. Chlorodyne dosage is difficult to guess. It all happened so fast we were worried about an overdose. That means permanent brain damage.”
“Am I well?”
He paused, and she noticed his glance flicker to her forehead. “You seem to be hale. A nasty…well, it looks like a tattoo that has come up on your forehead.”
“Oh…”
“What happened? You were raped?”
“No, nothing like that.” Manserphine hesitated as images of her torment returned to her mind, and with them the emotions. She heard herself whimper.
“You’re safe here,” Kirifaïfra said, stroking her arm. “We’ll look after you until you’ve recovered.”
Manserphine stumbled through a description of the evening’s events. Kirifaïfra’s face changed from rage at the abduction to shock at the beast, to tearful pity at her flight to the inn. Manserphine cried with him. They held hands as she concluded her story.
“You’re safe here,” Kirifaïfra repeated. “So, you have discovered my secret. If I’d known what I’d lead you into, I would have killed them first. I’m ashamed.”
“You weren’t to know,” Manserphine replied. “I shouted at them in the street. They saw us first, anyway, walking away from the Cemetery, weeks and weeks ago.”