Flowercrash

by Stephen Palmer

  “I was caught during the Cemetery raising. I had to escape the beasts. How did it go here? Did they question anybody?”

  Yamagyny seemed unnaturally cold. “You could say that.”

  Manserphine frowned, then said, “Was there a problem?”

  “We need you to come to Curulialci’s chamber. Now.”

  Manserphine went to pull a robe around her shoulders. “All right,” she said.

  “Leave that robe. It is Shrine property.”

  Manserphine dropped it as if it was hot. “I’m sorry?”

  “Leave it there. It belongs to the Shrine.”

  Manserphine saw that the coldness went far deeper than she had at first suspected. “There is a problem,” she said. “Did the beasts injure anybody?”

  “Come along now.”

  Manserphine followed Yamagyny down the corridors towards Curulialci’s chamber. “What do you mean, Shrine property? I can use it, can’t I?”

  Yamagyny offered no opinion.

  At Curulialci’s chamber, both she and Teshazan the Sister Cleric were present. Manserphine said, “Has something bad happened?”

  “Something has,” Curulialci agreed.

  Manserphine sat in the chair offered, while Yamagyny sat opposite her, the other two clerics at either side, so that Manserphine felt as if she was about to face an interrogation.

  “What exactly?” she asked.

  Curulialci replied, “As you know, the role of Interpreter is crucial to the running of the Garden, and thus of Zaïdmouth. Without an Interpreter the political stability of Zaïdmouth would be compromised, and so it is essential that the woman granted this role by Our Sister Crone is of the highest intellect.”

  “True.”

  “And moral fibre.”

  “But what has this got to do with the Cemetery beasts?”

  Curulialci seemed to shrink, as if ashamed by such a question, and suddenly Manserphine had an inkling of what this might be about.

  Curulialci said, “When a senior cleric of Our Sister Crone swears an oath, we expect her to keep it.”

  “I have,” Manserphine half-heartedly said, trying to smile, and failing.

  “You have not. The position of Interpreter requires an oath of celibacy. It would seem that our present Interpreter is a wanton hussy.”

  Manserphine was shocked at the language. She pointed to her chest, and said, “You mean me?”

  “Of course we mean you!”

  No choice but to deny it. “I’m no hussy,” she said.

  Curulialci activated a rose screen. The cropped image of a room appeared, its viewpoint that of ceiling or window. On a bed lay a woman with her feet at her shoulders, above her a sweat-soaked man, bent over, thrusting hard and fast. For one very long second Manserphine did not recognise the scene. Then she saw the man’s pigtail, and she leaped from her chair and cried, “Turn it off!”

  She jumped at the rose and smacked it aside to disrupt the data flow. Curulialci’s face was flushed with rage as she shouted, “You lascivious, shameful hussy! How could you betray Our Sister Crone? How could you lie to us?”

  Manserphine had no answer. The image had burned itself into her mind and all she could think of was how to erase it. She stood sightless, before her mind’s eye the red rose, the screen, the pair on the bed.

  “Interpreter, you are stripped of your office. You are no cleric of Our Sister Crone.”

  Manserphine returned to the real world. She faced all three of them, standing tall, the emotions inside her surging: anger and joy: anger for what they had done, joy for what she understood, and what she would now tell them.

  “You are so short-sighted,” she told them. “Don’t you see how inhumane that oath is? We’re human beings, we need sex. We’re made for sex, you, and you Yamagyny, and you Teshazan. And me. You are denying your own humanity with these absurd rules. You’ve perverted humanity into an intellectual myth. What matters is emotional sincerity, and there you’ll find the true image of Our Sister Crone, as a thinking, feeling woman, who in her youthful manifestation is a lusty woman.”

  “This is just heresy,” Curulialci retorted.

  “I’ve seen the truth,” Manserphine said, “with my own eyes. And I saw it because I am Interpreter. You’re no better than the Sea-Clerics, who you hypocritically denounce for promiscuity. But their promiscuity is exactly the same as your celibacy. They are promiscuous because of the split they force between thinking and feeling, and you are celibate because of the split you force between social role and feeling. There’s no difference! You’re both as hollow and insincere as each other.”

  “That’s just abuse,” declared Yamagyny.

  “You know it’s true. How many times have you replayed those images, Curulialci, pretending you were checking it really was me, or wondering who the man was?” Curulialci’s face reddened, and caring nothing about how close to the mark she was, Manserphine continued, “You’re just as fascinated as every novice initiate who comes here. And why can they have affairs, but not you or me? How has my affair with my lover changed me? Has it reduced the quality of my interpretation? Has it turned my brains to mush?”

  “It makes you weak,” Curulialci said.

  “True strength comes from being. You are the weak ones, because you’re just acting.”

  “Our Sister Crone demands sexual purity of her higher clerics,” Curulialci insisted. “The oath comes with the position.”

  “A travesty of the human condition,” Manserphine declared. “If all you can do is trot out some old dogma without thinking, I might as well leave now.”

  “You better had leave now,” Yamagyny said.

  “And don’t come back,” Curulialci added. “You are forever banished from this Shrine.”

  Teshazan seemed uncomfortable with this. “I think banishment is a bit harsh,” she said. “Return her to cleric, or initiate status.”

  “She is banished for all time,” Curulialci shouted. “You have ten minutes to leave in, Manserphine. If you take five, so much the better. And never come back.”

  Manserphine turned on her heel and ran out of the chamber, her fury quickening her step. In her room she threw her personal belongings into a sack and left the Shrine by a side entrance.

  She stood on the street. A light drizzle fell from low cloud.

  Suddenly cold, she walked north, head bowed.

  Not daring to consider what Kirifaïfra might think, she arrived at the house in silence and sat down in a corner, saying not a word. They noticed.

  “What happened?” Vishilkaïr asked, softly.

  Manserphine stared at the ground. First she had to tell Kirifaïfra, privately. She gestured for him to follow her into their room, where she said, “They caught us, Kiri. They’ve banished me forever.”

  “Caught us?”

  “They were watching us from flower screens.”

  He touched her shoulder. “They? The clerics of Our Sister Crone?”

  “Yes! They watched us making love at the inn.”

  He stared. “Banished?”

  “Not just for one season. Forever. Stripped me of my title.”

  “You’re not Interpreter any more?”

  He was having difficulty understanding. “The oath of celibacy,” she told him. “They got me on that.”

  She burst into tears, and he hugged her, until she was able to look him in the face.

  “What are we going to do?” she sobbed. She relaxed against him, and he held her steady. “What can I do now?”

  After a while they walked back to the others, who were waiting in absolute silence. “Is it bad?” Vishilkaïr asked.

  Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Manserphine replied, “It’s the worst. They’ve banished me.” The tears flowed again, but she held her head up, wanting them to see the depth of her sorrow. “I can’t go back. They gave me ten minutes. I had to run out. What are we going to do?”

  They let her cry her tears out. Eventually Zoahnône said, “This presum
ably means you no longer have access to the Headflower Chamber, yet you need access urgently. The Core Garden awaits you.”

  “There are other methods,” Shônsair said blandly.

  “But my role,” Manserphine said. “If the networks no longer see me as an agent, will they let me into the Core Garden? I might be a nobody now, with no influence.” She began to weep once more as she said, “They’ll make that Ianniyas the Interpreter!”

  “She’ll never be as good as you,” Kirifaïfra said, hugging her to him.

  “What use is that now?” she responded.

  No reply was forthcoming.

  CHAPTER 25

  Manserphine was not going to be beaten by her erstwhile kin. She felt as if she had been cut with a blade and thrown to the street, like a piece of skin off an apple. Torn from her Shrine, her home, left to live like a vagrant in a ruined house, hiding from everybody—or so it seemed—she felt a consuming anger at the folly of what the clerics had done; her loss was already making way for frustration. Above all she was haunted by the possibility that the networks themselves might disown her, and she was unable to stop talking about it, until Kirifaïfra had to hand her over to Vishilkaïr and go for a long walk.

  But Manserphine did not want revenge. She wanted justice. Her own justice. Sex was right and they were wrong. She felt that she was sincere and the clerics insincere, and that made her all the more determined, for the art of sincerity was the foundation of her deeds as Zoahnône’s aide and without it she knew she would be worthless. She was that agent of change. She had chosen work and love. The two need not be separate. It was her task to live out that belief, and if possible use it to influence the future of Zaïdmouth.

  Kirifaïfra was appalled at what had happened. Manserphine tried to remember when she had noticed flowers at the inn window, cringing at the thought of the material that might lie in the Shrine’s databases. But although she cringed, she never thought it wrong. She wanted Kirifaïfra, even though she did not love him as he loved her. She wanted him and she would have him.

  It was no coincidence that on subsequent nights Zoahnône, Shônsair and Vishilkaïr contrived to be away from the tumbledown house for some hours.

  After three days of uncomfortable, nervous living, they decided they had to make more serious arrangements. The procurement of food and water was particularly difficult. Vishilkaïr had returned to the Determinate Inn to find it wrecked. He melted back into the garden undergrowth, worried that if neighbours saw him the Cemetery beasts might return.

  It was Kirifaïfra who suggested searching for Omdaton. Vishilkaïr smiled and clapped him on the back. “Well done, nephew. She has a sister living by the Sump, perhaps she fled there. Yes, maybe we could set up a food line, just for a few weeks, until we’re back to normal.”

  “Normal,” Manserphine muttered, as if yearning for paradise.

  Omdaton was found and arrangements made. But Manserphine, wrapped in cloaks in the chilly, damp house, and fretting for her future, was more worried about the networks and what was to be done about her role in Zaïdmouth. When the Garden reconvened, she would be unable to participate.

  One morning Zoahnône and Shônsair took her to one side. “You have lost the access of the Headflower Chamber,” Zoahnône said, “but there is a natural method that you may not be aware of.”

  “A way to return to the Garden?”

  “You know that our floral ecology allows us to interface directly with the networks. Inside the poppies of the Headflower Chamber lie tiny insects that connected to your forehead interface when the blooms descended, just as the insects on cables work for the Sea-Clerics.”

  “But outdoors?” Manserphine asked.

  “It is possible to lie in wild flower glades and receive the actuality of the networks. We do so whenever we enter them, letting local insects interface with the flowers at our heads. Were you to let such insects create a permanent link, you would be able to enter the Garden.”

  Manserphine shivered as she imagined what she would have to endure. “I need to know whether the networks have cast me aside,” she told herself. “I need to know if I can still get into the Core Garden.”

  “Then take the natural route. Your forehead is like a flower. As it happens you are in the ideal place, for in the Venereal Garden there are many glades.”

  “I’ll consider it,” Manserphine said.

  They stood up and made to leave.

  “I’ve made up my mind,” said Manserphine. “We’ll tell the men, and then I’ll give it a go.”

  “You are a wise woman,” Zoahnône remarked.

  Kirifaïfra was more familiar with wild network haunts than anybody, so he led them south to beds of orchids and foxglove, where all except he lay down. Manserphine settled herself underneath a roof of drooping orchids, pink and sticky, aware that already insects were being attracted. She lay back, pulled off her hat and closed her eyes. A hand at her own: Kirifaïfra.

  She heard buzzing, then felt something on her forehead. She shivered, then winced and squeezed her eyes tight. The buzzing came from all around her head. She tensed her whole body. On her forehead she felt tiny cold bodies, hairy bodies, descending for just moments, then flying off. The buzzing became pleasant, like the sound of a murmuring crowd, as individual insect sounds merged into a formless hum.

  Her sight and hearing brought plain green and whispering silence. Disorientated, frightened, she tried to get up, but she could not feel her body, nor how it lay in gravity. For some seconds she floated, until sounds at her ears gave her a framework to concentrate on, and then her sight returned.

  She was floating outside the Garden with the other two at her side.

  “How do we get inside?” she asked, looking at the sphere before her.

  “Just want to go,” they replied. “We shall wait here for you.”

  Grass under her feet, as a scented wind brushed her hair away from her face. She smelled the familiar fragrances of the Outer Garden. Relief flooded through her.

  The Garden was in session. She walked up to the benches where the five women of the Outer Garden sat. When they heard her they turned and gasped. She was overjoyed to see that Ianniyas sat here, implying that her replacement could not enter the Inner Garden. Here also sat Ashnaram of the Shrine of Flower Sculpture, Suonhilci and Zentenzin, and Ephroyao of the Shrine of Root Sculpture. She put her hands on her hips and surveyed them all.

  Ianniyas stepped forward. “So you thought you’d return, man eater?”

  Manserphine laughed. “I am by right a member of the Garden.”

  Ianniyas glanced at her colleagues, then laughed back. “We know all about you, Manserphine, lying with that man in a bed of filthy rags, with his hand between your legs.”

  Manserphine felt intense pity overcome her, bringing the hint of a tear to each eye. “Nothing you say can insult me,” she said. “You merely show your own paucity of vision. I love to lie with men. I like the feel of my man’s hands over my skin, of him inside me. You do too, if you’d only admit it.”

  “Though there’s a difference,” Ianniyas sneered, “between sordid copulation and the occasional holy crush granted to lesser women of Our Sister Crone.”

  Manserphine saw the opportunity for a put-down. “The difference between you and me,” she said, “is that you think you are holy, whereas I know I am whole.”

  They watched in silence as she left them and skipped over the boundary of dark grass marking the edge of the Inner Garden. She had to stop herself jumping from the joy she felt at winning over Ianniyas. None of the Inner Garden members were visible, so she wandered for a while, smelling the flowers, looking up at the sky, remembering all the events that had occurred here.

  From her right she heard a voice. “Manserphine?”

  She turned to see Curulialci and Yamagyny, Alquazonan a few yards behind them, all three concealed by a bough of violet flowers. The two clerics approached, staring in amazement.

  “What are you doing here?” asked
Curulialci.

  “The networks themselves give me the right to enter the Garden,” Manserphine replied. “Don’t attempt to eject me. You can’t.”

  They were silent for some seconds while they took this in. Manserphine looked hard at them and found herself without sympathetic feelings.

  Curulialci gestured for Alquazonan to approach. “You’re a gynoid,” she said. “Get rid of this intruder.”

  Alquazonan replied, “My status as a gynoid does not mean you may exploit me. Even if I could remove Manserphine, which I cannot.”

  “You can’t?”

  “Not only that, I do not wish to.”

  Curulialci glared, while Yamagyny tried to say something. Surprise made her incoherent.

  Curulialci tried again. “You are not welcome here, apostate. You are not our Interpreter, so leave now.”

  Manserphine grasped for a suitable reply. “I am an independent Interpreter,” she said. “I will be available through the networks for everybody in Zaïdmouth. Too long has my position been one owned by a restrictive hierarchy. Since the networks are for all of us I will be available for all.” She paused, glanced at Alquazonan, then said, “I am still the Interpreter of Zaïdmouth. I will prove it by entering the Core Garden.”

  She strode off to the arbour, which lay fifty yards away. At the arch she turned, to see that both clerics and Alquazonan were watching. She glanced up. In the sky, like distant gulls, she saw two translucent shadows, and she knew they were Zoahnône and Shônsair, peering down to see how she fared.

  She walked into the arbour.

  The three granite seats stood as before. She sat on one. With her deepest and most profound emotions she knew that here three individuals were meant to meet, perhaps to joust, perhaps to join, perhaps just to talk. Two were known. She wondered if it was her right to bring the trio together. She, after all, was the Interpreter of others.

  She sat taking in the atmosphere for half an hour, partly because she wanted to renew her acquaintance with the Core Garden, but partly to make the clerics outside think something was happening to which they were not privy. At length she wandered out, to find them just a few yards away, talking in quiet voices.