Flowercrash

by Stephen Palmer

  ~

  Manserphine could not sleep for the excitement of her roiling thoughts. Hour after hour she went over what she knew, until the facts became jumbled and the sky became light. Dreamlessly she dozed.

  Before her floated a girl child, with pale skin, orange eyes and an insouciant expression; a girl aware of her ability, or of her potential. In ethereal space they orbitted one another, the girl smiling, Manserphine teasing out the letters of her name from the flowers between her eyes. Zaha… Zahafe… Zahafezhan.

  Abruptly, she woke. She sat upright. Night lay warm and heavy outside her open window. Cicadas stridulated, cats yowled, owls screeched. A few hoverflies flew out of the room, avoiding the nets woven by autospiders.

  Kirifaïfra slept at her side. In the thyme perfumed atmosphere she considered the new information, and wondered how Zoahnône would react when the name of Alquazonan’s child was revealed. It had been the briefest vision, yet it was dense with meaning.

  But the events of the next day put all this metaphysics out of her head.

  She first learned of trouble when, half an hour late, she turned up at her Shrine, where chaos seemed to have been let loose.

  Spying Yamagyny, she asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Haven’t you heard? The Sea-Clerics are filling the floods with their own kelp networks. It’s war. We’ve got to fight. Fortunately the boats we asked the Shrine of Root Sculpture to make are almost ready. The first defence crews are going out in an hour.”

  Manserphine’s light mood slipped into gloom. Later that morning she watched the first root-boats carried through the lanes of Veneris upon the raised hands of a hundred volunteers. She followed them down to the edge of the flood, a few hundred yards south of the Sump, which was also flooding. On distant waters she saw ships, boats, even coracles, full of women in black clothes armed with scythes. She cried in sympathy, for she could see the thought behind the deed. With the flower networks dying, many ecological niches were opening up. The Sea-Clerics hoped to capitalise on this by planting their own technologies. Kelp and seaweed networks would doubtless soon be joined by dune thistle and whip-grass.

  She knew she had to take part in the battle. She could change possibilities.

  By afternoon the battle was in full swing. All hands from the Shrine, up to and including the senior clerics, were making south, ready to board a root-boat and do battle. Manserphine followed Teshazan and Yamagyny as they ran south through the alleys, their hair flowing loose, a gleam of fever in their eyes. Even Zoahnône and Shônsair had found a small boat and were fighting the Sea-Clerics. Alquazonan, though not fighting herself, had organised crews of gynoids who fought with a cool intensity, reminding Manserphine of cats with their prey.

  She clambered into a boat with the two clerics. The artisans of the Shrine of Root Sculpture had done their work well. Each boat was made from a single root grown in a tank of green nutrient gel, moulded by digital procedures stored in the molecular structures of various herbs, then taken to workshops, where clerics carved them into flat-hulled boats moving under the motive power of nodule engines. They ranged in size from ten feet to fifty.

  The Sea-Clerics did not call any halt when dusk fell. There were about a hundred individual crews, who in the morning had begun filling up the estuary, then moved steadily north, so that by the time the defence was active fully a tenth of the water was choked with slippery kelp.

  Lack of light was a problem. Since dropping kelp was easier in the dark than the hand-to-hand fighting necessary for defence, the Sea-Clerics had the advantage. But then, from the roofs of the Shrine of Root Sculpture, a dozen glowing owls rose like a phalanx of lanterns, to fly south, spread out, and illuminate the flood to its edges. This raised the hopes of the defenders and demoralised the Sea-Clerics.

  Manserphine had no experience of hand-to-hand fighting, but the pain she felt at the technological pollution of the dark water gave her strength and cunning. She was not a strong woman, so she chose as her weapon a hollow tube like a grater four feet long. It grazed flesh and scythed wood with equal effectiveness. Once it had been the root of a tree.

  Manserphine did not tire as the night progressed. Once the Sea-Clerics saw the scale of the defence, they redoubled their efforts. In one encounter Yamaygyny was stabbed in the arm by a Sea-Cleric as she tried to pull the woman’s scythe away. The scythe sank into the water, but Yamagyny fell back into the root-boat, groaning. Enraged, Manserphine leaped onto the enemy ship and attacked the two clerics there, until they jumped over the edge and swam off. Then she holed the ship with the point of her metal root, jumped back to her boat, and watched, satisfied, as it sank.

  There were many such encounters. Her weapon became bloodied. Around her she heard a cacophany of splashing, cries, shouts, and yelled orders for sorties, retreats, and an end to the enemy. The gynoids fought in silence, occasionally bursting into sparks if they took a wound. One or two were too damaged to continue the struggle, and they departed for the Guildhall.

  As dawn approached, the zeal Manserphine felt began to fade as fatigue took her. She and Teshazan were now fighting on their own. During a break, a small owl fluttered down to the prow of her boat and said, “The defence is succeeding. Zoahnône and Shônsair are to make a final push. Move south. We intend blocking the mouth of the river where the banks are high, so that the Sea-Clerics are kept away from the floods. May Our Sister Crone be with you!”

  The owl flew off to the next boat. Manserphine looked over the great flood to see the results of the night. Only a score of Sea-Cleric ships remained afloat, but they were full of women and piles of stinking seaweed. They lay in the southern reaches. As their boat moved south, alongside fifty others, she noticed the Sea-Clerics adopt a new circular position, with the prows of their boats pointing out, as if ready for a final defence.

  She saw what would happen. A gap would be left by the root-boats so that the Sea-Clerics could retreat. Force of numbers would make them preserve their final ships.

  But it did not happen like that. As if unable to countenance a marine retreat, the Sea-Clerics made for the western shores of the flood, where they beached their ships and boats, set fire to them, then ran back to their Shrine.

  The floods were left in peace. Insects floated everywhere. Already, aquatic spiders were rounding up those still alive and encouraging them to pieces of floating wood, where they could dry themselves and later fly off. But many more had sunk like tiny bullets to the bottom of the water, and for these Manserphine mourned.

  Next day, at an emergency meeting of the Garden, they discussed what could be done. Already a gynoid blockade was in place. It would not fail as human watchers might; the gynoids stood like sentinels, their eyes always turned south. Some camped on the eastern bank opposite the Shrine of the Sea, where from a tower of wood they observed the golden domes.

  Manserphine offered hope. She knew the mermaids would help. With Curulialci’s blessing she walked down the western track, until, at the beach, she saw mermaids basking in the last rays of the sun. There she also saw dying seaweed covered in limp flowers, and she understood that the Sea-Clerics’ attempt to engineer the blooms of the flower crash had here failed.

  She located Abvoloyns and Gholequie. They knew of the battle, and so Manserphine was able to launch into her plea. “We must destroy the reef. Once the floods have subsided the threat of further action is gone. I know that it was built by large-scale manipulation of hardpetal. It must have a weakness.”

  “Hardpetal is vulnerable to network manipulation,” Abvoloyns said. “Do you have any ideas?”

  “I was hoping you might have some.”

  “We have little experience of this substance.”

  “I can provide the procedures and the network knowledge,” Manserphine said, “but the method of attack is a different matter.”

  Abvoloyns considered the problem. “In the airy world,” she said, “are there scavengers who eat hardpetal if it lies around?”

  Manserphi
ne considered. “Only in Novais. Many buildings there are constructed from hardpetal, or contain great amounts of it. I remember seeing small birds pecking at the substance—they were avian droplets of abstraction, reified by natural mechanisms then forced by their urges to reproduce themselves, like ideas demanding public recognition. If we could create a marine version…”

  “We will attend to the body of such a creature,” Abvoloyns said, “if you will create the necessary network procedures. Then, if successful, we will introduce the creatures to the reef and let them eat.”

  “It will take some time,” Gholequie said, “perhaps a few weeks.”

  “Work as fast as you can,” Manserphine replied.

  CHAPTER 20

  A month passed from the day of the flower crash.

  Nuïy was left to stew in his own discontent. The weather became oppressively hot. Still Sargyshyva, Zehosaïtra and Deomouvadaïn discussed endless variations of plans, but every time Deomouvadaïn reported back to Nuïy the latest plan was either thought impractical, pointless, or just too dangerous. The problem was their lack of understanding of both gynoids and the great stone Guildhall that was their base. Baigurgône was impossible to locate in the Cemetery reality, although, during the last few days, there had been hints of her voice amongst the static and random blips.

  One sultry evening, a bored Nuïy decided to take the matter into his own hands. From the Tech Houses he stole a mosquito, placing its tiny glass box in his pocket as he would an egg, then walking out as calm as Deomouvadaïn himself. In his hut he checked the mosquito’s microfine line, tested the headphone insert on the end, then departed the Shrine using papers signed weeks previously by Deomouvadaïn. So used were the guards to his coming and going they did not bother even to check the date, allowing Nuïy to bask in the sense of freedom he had gained from his status.

  Still the floods covered the central bowl of Zaïdmouth. Since the Battle of Nocturnal Boats the lake had been quiet, a blockade of saturnine gynoids forming an arc where once the estuary had been. Nuïy walked around the eastern shore, passed Blissis to the west, then cut across fields toward the gap between Blissis and Novais, where the Wild Network Guildhall stood.

  He was immediately struck by changes in the landscape. Brown and yellow stumps showed where flower networks had once flourished, but in between these new shoots had emerged, some showing the first hints of the violet flowers within. And there were dead hoverflies everywhere, with more the further north and west he went, until his feet were crunching upon a carpet of them. The air smelled of rust and oil.

  It was midnight when he first saw the Guildhall lights. Above him stars twinkled, while around him the cicadas stridulated. It was a night of perfect calm; essential if the mosquito was to work. He skulked around the building, eyeing up escape routes, noting illuminated windows, those dark, those open to the fragrant night air. But when he noticed that the carpet of metal insects had cut open the fabric at his knees, he took more care where he knelt.

  For an hour he watched, crouching beside a bush at the rear of the house. He saw many different gynoids inside the building, most of them wandering the lower two floors. The third floor, he noticed, was little used, while the top floor had only two windows illuminated. He reasoned that it was more likely for Alquazonan and her lieutenants to have their quarters higher up, with the lower floors set aside for more mundane purposes.

  With that in mind, he took out the glass case and opened it. The microfine line had coiled itself around a glass wheel, its free end connected to Nuïy’s headphones. The mosquito was ready to fly. With a gentle breath he blew it out of the container and instructed it to fly to one of the upper illuminated windows. It vanished into gloom in seconds, but Nuïy knew it flew because the wheel turned, paying out the line. He put his headphones on.

  There came a tap as the mosquito hit one of the windows. He heard nothing except the faint clunk of boots from lower down in the Guildhall. Through an electret microphone he directed the mosquito to fly to the other window. This time he heard a scratching sound. He instructed the mosquito to find a crack in the window and enter a few centimetres, then wait. Adept at distinguishing sounds, he thought the scratching might be the sound of plastic fingers creaking as they manipulated network devices, or possibly of wild flowers trained up the wall bending and swaying as data moths arrived and departed.

  Then voices. One he recognised immediately: Alquazonan. The other he did not know, though he suspected it to be Shônsair or Zoahnône, neither of whom he had heard speak.

  Alquazonan said, “There is the final picture. What do you make of it?”

  “It is an accurate scan, and a clear one, but I am not sure what it shows.”

  Silence for a while. Then Alquazonan said, “If I am pregnant, as you thought to be the case, would it be reasonable to expect my offspring to be a gynoid?”

  “It would be reasonable.”

  “Then what is the featureless lump in my belly? It is as I said before. I have a technological cancer, a malignancy growing ever larger, draining me.”

  Another silence. Then: “I suppose you must be correct, Alquazonan. Yet our reasoning seemed so right. Manserphine’s visions backed up our deductions. Where have we gone wrong?”

  “Your plan is too audacious. You are trying to change nature. We gynoids are not meant to bear offspring, we are meant to emerge from networks in the earth, or abstractly from electronic space.”

  “Could this picture of a lump be the result of a faulty scan?”

  “These rose screens are the best in Zaïdmouth,” Alquazonan said, “and their resolution is fine.”

  “But we have a name for the embodied gynoid. Zahafezhan exists now in Zaïdmouth, waiting to be born.”

  “Then Zahafezhan must be waiting for you somewhere else.”

  “I don’t think so. I still believe you to be pregnant.”

  “There is the question of that name,” Alquazonan said. “I asked Manserphine to write it down, and she used the small flourish above the first vowel to indicate that it is short, not long as is typical amongst the superior classes in Veneris. Face it, Shônsair. The word is in fact Veneris street cant, and it means ‘remarkable vulva.’ It is used by Venerisian women versed in the arts of the bed.”

  “I believe that to be a coincidence.”

  “Do not let your beliefs cloud the facts.”

  “The meaning is unusual, but it may have some significance that we are as yet unaware of.”

  “I think not,” Alquazonan remarked.

  “I will leave you now, and we will consider the implications. Keep safe, and keep well. Farewell.”

  There came the clunk of a door opening, then boots fading away. Nuïy called the mosquito back, deactivating it once it was in its case. He returned to the Shrine of the Emerald Man, where he slept for the remainder of the night. Knowing that a meeting was scheduled for the afternoon he asked if he might be allowed in to give important news, and after some grumpy muttering Deomouvadaïn agreed, though the fact that he did not ask what the news might be worried Nuïy. At the meeting he was immediately asked to explain his presence. He told them of his deed, then reported the conversation verbatim.

  There was silence for a few minutes, before Sargyshyva said, “I s’pose we must credit you, Nuïy Pinkeye, for what you’ve done.”

  Deomouvadaïn scowled, then said, “We mustn’t. Time after time I’ve trained Nuïy Pinkeye.” He turned to Nuïy and said, “Once again you’ve ignored my orders.”

  “They were not your orders,” Nuïy pointed out. “Nobody said I had to stay in the Shrine. I fret here, doing nothing.”

  “Nay, I told you t’stay put,” Sargyshyva asserted.

  “That time has past,” Nuïy confidently replied.

  Zehosaïtra coughed, then said, “Let’s not argue over details. Nuïy Pinkeye has made progress. What do we do now?”

  The three men shot one another acid glances, before Sargyshyva muttered, “I think the time has come t�
�admit defeat regarding our more sophisticated plans. We need facts. We must capture Alquazonan and cut her open. This pathetic scan done by the hags was a waste of time. We need t’see what lies inside her belly.”

  “Agreed,” Zehosaïtra and Deomouvadaïn chorused.

  “Then we must plan and act.”

  But they planned without Nuïy, and he felt more isolated, staying in his hut with his wild plants and his headphones, listening for clues on the networks. Once, he walked down to the autodog kennels to find Eletela, but the conversation was vague and full of embarrassing pauses. He was tempted to ask after the other members of the dormitory, but instead turned and walked away, the metallic howls of the autodogs in his ears.

  After a few days Deomouvadaïn told him that a night mission was planned in which he would take part, though under strict conditions which meant he was an observer allowed only to record. Nuïy knew they did not trust him and were making rules solely for his benefit. He went along with a grim face, aware of his reduced status.

  As midnight passed they settled themselves in a depression in the ground just north of the Wild Network Guildhall. They had to wear tough leather boots to counteract the effect of the deepening carpet of metal hoverflies, and they wore gloves when clearing the depression. On account of his exalted rank Sargyshyva was not present, leaving Zehosaïtra, Deomouvadaïn and two saluki autodogs to complete the mission, with Nuïy trailing behind. Nuïy pointed out Alquazonan’s window, then retired while one of the salukis jumped the twelve feet or so to the first balcony, then repeated the gymnastic trick to reach that of the fourth floor. There it let down a rope, after tying it to a spike with its great mouth and a paw.

  “Now, then,” Deomouvadaïn told Nuïy. “We’re going up. You stay here on look out. On no account move or do anything of yer own. If you do…”

  Deomouvadaïn gave Nuïy a look similar to those he had favoured him with months ago, when Nuïy was being punished for acting alone. With a hint of sarcasm, Nuïy replied, “What should I do, sir, if I see anything untoward?”