Flowercrash (20 page)

“I was once the runner for the Band of Herb Smokers. The large man, Retykalla, is another nephew of Vishilkaïr’s. The other two are just brutes. They kill peacocks for pleasure. When I departed, it left wounds. I suppose they saw me with you and thought of a way to hurt me back.”

“Very likely,” Manserphine replied, sitting up against her bolster. Tentatively, she asked, “What happened in the Cemetery?”

“You made a bargain with a beast.” He looked away, deep in thought, then continued, “You say you hammered. I think you hammered a calling rhythm, such as you might have heard in play-yards when you were a girl. The beast came to demand a bargain—as they always do.”

“I can’t remember exactly what happened,” Manserphine said, shivering.

Kirifaïfra took her, and hugged her. “The bargain is not always like for like.”

“It knew I had visions. It said something about losing innocence.” Tears came, and Kirifaïfra hugged her closer. “I can’t remember.”

“You went through too much trauma to remember. Don’t worry. Lie back and sleep.”

“I can’t, I’m—”

“Insomniac.” He reached down beside the bed and from a blue flask poured a tot of liquor. “Drink. You need to distance yourself from the fear. Don’t worry. We will be on guard for the rest of the night.”

Manserphine drank.

And she slept.

~

Long after dawn next morning she woke, groggy, with a headache, but alive. The drug—strong, whatever it was—had knocked her out. Because of that, she felt stretched, as if she had undergone a particularly bad night. However she was able to get up and pull on some underwear, a vest, and a gown.

An object dangled from the crown of her head, and she saw a silver cord taking the place of the ribbon she had been given on leaving the Determinate Inn. It seemed to have wound itself around the lock of hair like a constricting snake. She could not pull it off.

Kirifaïfra opened the door, smiling when he saw her on her feet. “Good,” he said. “You’re with us again.” He took her hands and placed them at her side. “Don’t do that.”

“What is it?”

“A present. If ever you are in desperate trouble, call out, ‘Save me, sweet Kiri!’”

Manserphine shook her head, half a smile on her face. “Under all that posturing you’re just an old romantic, aren’t you?”

Kirifaïfra replied, “You really scared us when you collapsed. I’ve never seen anything so frightening. Vishilkaïr has some breakfast waiting for you. And you’ve a guest.”

“Zoahnône?”

“Yes.”

Manserphine walked down the stairs, to see Zoahnône sitting relaxed in a chair as if she was a regular customer.

“Ah, Manserphine,” Vishilkaïr said, “come and have some blueberry preserve on toast. With strawberry tea.”

Manserphine stopped in the centre of the common room. Zoahnône was staring at her. At her forehead. “What?” she said.

The gynoid approached her, looking in wonder at the mark on her forehead. “How did that happen?”

Kirifaïfra interrupted, “The Cemetery beast, Zoahnône. Best not to talk about it just now—”

“Quiet,” Zoahnône snapped. “This was done to you?” she asked Man- serphine.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“An ecology of miniature flowers has been connected to your brain. New sensory channels will be opening even as we speak. Are you dizzy?”

“An ecology of flowers?” Manserphine felt the tremors of yesterday’s fear in her mind, making her body tremble. She went to the bay window seat, where she sat. Vishilkaïr was at her side with the tea, silent like a waiter.

“Do you know what this means?” Zoahnône asked, sitting opposite her.

“Do I need to know?” Manserphine mournfully replied.

“I think you ought to. It changes everything.”

“
Every
thing?”

Zoahnône answered, “Normally human beings have no direct access to the artificial realities that are dotted about Zaïdmouth, which is why they rely on poppies and other mechanisms. Embodied gynoids have near perfect access. Network entities, of course, have the best access of all. In one sense they become the networks. If Shônsair or Baigurgône were to leap back into the networks, Gaia forbid, they would obtain immense power.”

“But these miniature flowers?”

“An interface between the human cortex and artificially generated information. I daren’t think how your perception of, say, the Garden will alter. And it may alter your visions, which are seated within your emotional body. Now you will feel the lure of network infinities. The real world in which you toil, and sweat, and love, may become remote. You must avoid temptation. Stay as you are. Live as a body.”

Seeing Zoahnône’s agitation Manserphine said, “Don’t worry, I won’t change.”

“Ah, but as yet you have not experienced.”

Manserphine felt cross. To change the subject, she said, “You mentioned news yesterday. What was it?”

“News of Shônsair. She is in Blissis. I have located a friend of the doorwarden Lizlaini, and know now of a haunt. Soon I will capture and then confront Shônsair—”

“Wait a moment,” said Kirifaïfra, interrupting from his position leaning against the bar. “Did you just say
dotted about Zaïdmouth?
”

Zoahnône nodded. “As Dustspirit, I detected four artificial realities.”

“Four?” Manserphine said. “Where?”

“The Inner and Outer Gardens are two, sewn together. The third is rooted in the Cemetery. The fourth… the fourth seems to float. I think it may be rooted in Aequalaïs.”

Manserphine gasped. “Surely the Sea-Clerics can’t have their own Garden?”

Zoahnône hesitated. Then: “Who knows what they have?”

A silence settled upon the inn. Through the windows came the sound of folk walking by, cursing the flowers and the hoverflies.

Manserphine’s mind wandered as she considered what she knew of the Shrine of the Sea. Too little. Tired by the conversation, she decided to return to her bed. Zoahnône warned her that she must wear a hat to cover the mark on her forehead. Manserphine listlessly agreed, and Kirifaïfra helped her ascend the stairs. When she lay in bed, he sat at her side, pouring a goblet of water, a goblet of wine, and a pill that he described as a relaxant. Manserphine felt his kind presence at her side. They were close. She reached out for the side of his face, and they kissed. It lingered on.

When they parted Manserphine smiled and said, “Well. What have we done?”

“Begun,” he replied.

“I cannot have work and love.”

He shrugged. “There’s only one way out. Have both.”

“I shall consider it.”

“I knew you would.”

He departed the room, leaving Manserphine to consider the mistake she might just have made.

Night: and the full force of a vision.

It was the first not to feature the mermaid. It was entirely different to all the others. Instead of floating before the mermaid in a sea of analogies she felt she was inside somebody’s head, all around her picturesque possibilities arrayed as flat images, fragments of motion like screen sequences, even nuggets of reality that she could touch and smell. These components moved about her like a three dimensional kaleidoscope. She felt the power of the networks, as if she was inside them.

Before her lay an infant girl. She moved towards her, then touched her. The skin was tough, almost like leather, and she realised that it was plastic. She gasped. A voice replayed Zoahnône’s words. An embodied gynoid would have to be born in a body. She knew who this infant might be. She wanted to know the girl’s given name, but as yet she did not have one. Yet almost she did. Z... Za... Zaha-something.

And she knew this being already existed.

She lost her vision. She cried out and rolled off her bed. Clouds of insects flew about her room, and there was a cloying scent of lavender and cherry blossom from the hardpetal desk. She stood to open the window, then sat on her bed.

Kirifaïfra knocked, entering at her call, immediately distressed by what he saw. “Don’t worry, I’m fine," said Manserphine. “Pretty energetic, actually. It was a vision, a strong one.”

He closed the door and sat beside her. Manserphine felt his presence as a thing—an object, that she could handle. She reached out and kissed him with passion that had lain dormant for years, then pushed him to the bed and sat astride him. He responded, caressing her shoulders, her hair, then her thighs.

“Oh, Kiri,” she said. “I want to. I want to, now.”

“So do I.”

She kissed his forehead, then stretched herself over him, feeling an erotic charge grow within her. She kissed him again.

“But I can’t get pregnant,” she said. “It would be the end of my life at the Shrine.”

He hesitated one second, then replied, “My fertile month comes around midwinter. We’re safe.”

With no other word she pulled his clothes off, then, still astride him, pulled off her dress, then the rest of her clothes. When he sat up to help she shoved him down. Through night’s end and across daybreak they made love, until the dawn chorus faded and they slept amidst ragged bedclothes.

Manserphine woke. Kirifaïfra lay asleep. She admired his body, that for so long he had wanted her to look at. She laughed. Something within her seemed to have cracked, as if a cup containing her emotions had broken. It made her free. Yet she knew that such freedom was dangerous. Her wildness with Kirifaïfra could lose her the role of Interpreter; the investigator could become the investigated. But for the foreseeable future she was safe to enjoy the power she held with Kirifaïfra, to enjoy the effect her naked body had on him, and his on her.

Happily, she pulled on a gown and went to the door. There, on a tray upon the floor, lay breakfast; preserves and toast in an autoheater, with a thermos of green tea.

She had to laugh. It worried her that Vishilkaïr knew, but there would be no hiding it from him if sleeping with Kirifaïfra became a regular event. She glanced back at him. Already she wanted him again. But she had to go back to the Shrine, for the Garden was in session today.

That day passed slowly. In the Headflower Chamber she had to wear the simple hat given to her by Omdaton, but it did not seem to interfere with the poppies. Worried once more by the sound of the surf, she wandered the edge of the Outer Garden, where the artificial reality blurred and sensory distortion became unpleasant enough to induce dizziness. But although she expected to see the ocean, she did not, though she could hear it and its gulls, and smell the sea breeze.

Yet there was sand on her feet. It was as if she walked dunes at the edge of a shore. Her distracted mood made Curulialci pointedly ask, “Are you our Interpreter today, or just a spectator?”

Manserphine apologised and tried to pay attention. At the end of the session she departed the Shrine, making first for the northern garden. Zoahnône had left no message, so she stored two lines: ‘My visions have changed to become deeper, and I somehow feel that the first embodied gynoid is already alive!’

But now a dilemma confronted her. If she absented herself from her room, that fact would eventually be noticed, as would her comings and goings at dawn and dusk. Yet the Determinate Inn could be the only place of liaison with Kirifaïfra. She would have to ration herself.

Next day, she again wandered the Outer Garden, eventually causing Curulialci to approach her and say, “What is it, Manserphine? Do the changes upset you?”

“They do.”

Curulialci sighed. “You did elementary gardening with the Flower Mistresses. Just like a real one, this Garden is an ecology. The presence of Fnfayrq, so unexpected, has caused it to adjust to her presence—even to the possibility of her presence, since she is not always here. It is making her welcome by reorganising itself. There are many, many subsystems in the Garden, and not all make themselves apparent, just as the roots of a plant cannot be seen.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“I hope you are not going to invoke your vision things to justify your feelings.”

Manserphine did not like the tone of this. She replied, “My visions have reality.” She was tempted to say how they had changed, but she did not.

“Leave gardening to gardeners,” Curulialci advised. “You are a neutral, an observer, standing adjacent to Our Sister Crone’s hierarchy. Do you understand that principle?”

Manserphine looked at the Grandmother Cleric with annoyance in her heart. She recalled Zoahnône’s words, and suddenly saw something of the hypocrisy of Curulialci’s stance. She thought of Kirifaïfra’s sweating body. She was changing.

Curulialci seemed to notice it. “Is there something wrong, Interpreter?”

Manserphine saw the danger and rescued herself from it. “I’m a little distracted by these changes, Grandmother Cleric. Don’t forget I visited Aequalaïs recently. I have experienced the mystery of the Sea-Clerics and I don’t much care for it.”

Curulialci frowned. “Leave the Garden to me. Fnfayrq is just shy.” She glanced to Manserphine’s flowing hair, then up to the hat. “Why do you wear that bowl on your head?”

“It is all the fashion,” Manserphine replied, putting a little vexation in her voice to improve the act.

“And the braid?”

“A gift from a friend.”

Curulialci turned to walk away. “Don’t sacrifice your skills for fripperies and fancies, Interpreter.”

Gloomily Manserphine watched Curulialci walk off. She wanted to stay at the Determinate Inn tonight, but this encounter had put her off the idea. The tension between what she wanted and what she was asked to do made her hot and bothered. She cursed under her breath. Already a man was making her life difficult.

At the end of the day she checked the orange snapdragon in the garden, but Zoahnône had not left anything, nor it seemed had even read her note. Manserphine felt fidgety. Evening was falling. She returned to the Shrine and from the Crocus Chamber arranged a transfer of funds to the Determinate Inn so that Kirifaïfra’s loss of income was accounted for.

The Garden was in session next day. Manserphine awaited the senior clerics, sitting in the Headflower Chamber while they dealt with a clay model that had shattered in an initiate’s hands. She scowled. She believed in the power of Our Sister Crone, but this trifle of an invented omen annoyed her.