Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars (An Infinite Triptych Book 1)

by Alex McKechnie

  ‘“The tersh is eternal,”’ said the girl.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s the last thing they said, the voices. The tersh is eternal.’

  ‘Tershes die like all of us, eventually,’ said the crone.

  ‘Not this one.’

  ‘The current tersh?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We can’t make assumptions. It could mean anything.’

  The crone began to turn the statement over in her mind. Eternal, of all things. Gnesha, what wickedness is idling on our horizon, and just what are we to do when it arrives?

  2

  “Who is the chrysalis? Who is the worm? Who gets eternity? Who gets the urn?”

  - Traditional Old Erde Pergrin hymn

  Fortmann and the Zdrastian -

  Moonless. Fortmann led the way, the Zdrastian keeping in close second and dragging his dog by a tight leash. The dog had tissue paper secured about its paws with elastic bands, the Zdrastian referring to the thing always as Mr. Covert Woof. Fortmann put up a hand to say wait and bent to a crouch.

  ‘What do you see?’ whispered the Zdrastian.

  Fortmann shook his head.

  The grass was high and wild in places. Plovda, they could be hiding anywhere. Fortmann pointed then to Mr. Covert Woof.

  What? the Zdrastian mouthed. Fortmann pulled the lead from the man’s hand.

  ‘We let the animal go first,’ he whispered. ‘They probably won’t touch him. He’s just a dog.’

  ‘They will!’ said the Zdrastian and went to take the lead back. ‘They will! They will!’

  ‘They’re looking for people, not pets. Let the dog go first. If something happens to him I’ll buy you a new one when we get back.’

  Mr. Covert Woof laid down in grass and licked at his paws.

  ‘He is precious!’ said the Zdrastian. ‘Very precious!’

  Fortmann scanned the dark, then leaned in close.

  ‘Do you know what they are?’ he said. ‘The gungovs?’

  The Zdrastian shook his head slowly.

  ‘Monsters. Now we can walk out there and get torn to pieces by one of those things or we can let the dog lure them out. Or, alternatively, we can go back to the Chapterhouse and tell the entire congregation how you’d much rather endanger two human lives because of a dog.’

  The Zdrastian cocked his head and eyed Mr. Covert Woof mournfully. They should not be separated in a fashion like this. It had not been part of the plan.

  ‘I think you’re lying,’ said the Zdrastian. ‘I think the gungovs are no more than machines.’

  ‘Does it matter? They’ll hack us up just the same.’

  Fortmann began to uncouple the leash from Mr. Covert Woof’s collar. There was no need to wait for permission, the Zdrastian didn’t try to interfere. The dog climbed to its feet and scrutinised Fortmann’s face in the dark. Fortmann patted it a few times and rubbed its ear.

  ‘Us or the dog.’

  ‘You planned this all along,’ said the Zdrastian. It would not do well to contradict the head of the order - a seer, no less - but involving the dog stirred a sudden impertinence in him. Fortmann said nothing and pointed then into the wild grass ahead, into the great w’liaks and the pines, and the dog set off without hesitation. The tail was visible for a few seconds and then that too disappeared, the grass heads jiving occasionally in the animal’s wake. Both of the men remained still. The green tulleys sung from their invisible niches in the trees. The Zdrastian began to mentally recite a prayer his mother had sung him once when he had been heavy with fever as a child: Though I know the world may be set in its way, and time be too big to hold, alter this day in the most peaceful direction.

  Two springer spaniel ears emerged suddenly from the thickets, bounding back towards them. Oh thank you. Oh thank you thank you thank you.

  ‘See?’ said Fortmann, speaking at a reasonable volume now. ‘The little thing's fine.’

  They stood and squinted into the dark ahead, the Zdrastian clipping the dog back onto the lead and ruffling his fur. Fortmann shouldered his apparat pack and took a tentative step forward. The grass cracked under his boot. The night freeze was coming in already.

  ‘We’ll be quick,’ said the Zdrastian. ‘We’ll be very very quick, won’t we?’

  ‘Very quick,’ agreed Fortmann and led them both into the dark.

  The tomb was in sight now, a towering stone fortification set centrally between a ring of pines. I will have myself cremated, thought the Zdrastian. To think that Governance buried their dead there, all laid out in lines probably, like sleeping soldiers in a barracks tent. To think they relegated the bodies to such a place. Yes, cremated. That way I need never end up in such a quiet stone box. Fortmann took a lever bar from his pack and broke the bolt on the main door. It yawned open, more dark inside.

  ‘Though I know the world may be set in its way,’ the Zdrastian mumbled.

  ‘No,’ said Fortmann. ‘There’s no call for prayers.’

  He threw a caprigobe out into the black. It sparked a few times and ignited, suspended a few feet from the ground and dusting the inner walls of the tomb with a gentle cerulean blue. Mr. Covert Woof marvelled at the light for a moment then nibbled at a paw.

  ‘Dr. Kliment now, yes?’ said the Zdrastian.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Fortmann. ‘The map said the non-militaries are kept in a side chamber.’

  Kept, thought the Zdrastian. You keep the peace. Or kestrels, or jam, or quiet. You don’t keep the dead. They serve no purpose.

  The capriglobe illuminated the crevices now as it moved with them, niches cut into the walls where nondescript caskets lay. Fortmann took a right at an intersection and the Zdrastian followed with the dog. The hall gave way to an opening, the back wall way beyond the light of the capriglobe.

  ‘Dr. Kliment,’ said the Zdrastian again. A few of the caskets bore labels now, the names preceded with official titles, Deputy Supervisor, Quarter Tersh, Agglutinator.

  ‘Dr. Kliment,’ said Fortmann then, pointing to a casket isolated from the others. ‘Would you care to?’ He proffered the lever bar. ‘For training purposes?’

  ‘You said you would! We agreed!’

  Fortmann nodded stoically and grabbed at one end of the casket, dragging it out onto the ledge towards them. The lid came off with minimal pressure. The Zdrastian swallowed and took a step forward. Alter this day in the most peaceful direction. Fortmann reached in without ceremony, lines in his brow now, illuminated baby blue by the capriglobe.

  ‘The raviner,’ he said. The Zdrastian took the tool from the apparat pack and handed it across. He saw them both from the outside, he could not help it; watching as a child might from behind a sofa. Two adjacent figures garbed in military black, working in the dark and a dog watching impartially from a laying position. Ideology puts humans in rather queer situations. The Zdrastian took another step towards the casket. The corpse's nose was visible now, protruding from the box like a pink shark fin. Dr. Kliment. Dead and kept here.

  Fortmann plunged the raviner into Kliment's forehead and began to drag the levers apart. The skull gave way reluctantly, opening with a muffle that reverberated all about the chamber. The Zdrastian thought of a cat he had owned once in his adolescence, the cat that had brought in mice every day and insisted on eating them by the fire. Muted crunches from the animal's mouth as it chewed the bones, not unlike the noises the raviner made now. Fortmann reached an ungloved hand into the orifice. The dog was interested. Perhaps, thought the Zdrastian, it is the smell.

  ‘Behind the medulla oblongata,’ said the Zdrastian.

  ‘Quite right.’

  Fortmann’s elbows disappeared into the casket along with his arms, alternating up and down as though kneading dough. He paused, squinted in the capriglobe light, and pulled with a sudden explosive motion.

  ‘You have it, yes?’ said the Zdrastian. ‘Yes?’

  Fortmann nodded. He raised a hand triumphantly, the fingertips glazed in red and s
olid patches of something not unlike gelatine. Set between the thumb and index finger was a grey mass the size of a sugar cube, electrode wires dangling like inert shrimp whiskers. He patted the Zdrastian’s shoulder with the unbloodied hand and smirked. Then he raised the cube to the light of the capriglobe. It shone like an opal.

  ‘For the Ix,’ Fortmann said.

  ‘For the Ix,’ intoned the Zdrastian and held Fortmann’s gaze.

  ‘May it come in our lifetime.’

  ‘That we may know the Up,’ said the Zdrastian, the chant so old in him that he merely opened his mouth and let it fall out.

  ‘Here,’ Fortmann said and offered the cube. The Zdrastian looked it over. This was some kind of bravery test, undoubtedly; the chapter seemed full of these small moments, evaluating one’s loyalty. The Zdrastian shook his head. The blood was too much, the pulp also. It has come right out of a man’s head, for Gnesha’s sake. He had expected more somehow, the way they’d all talked about it back at the Chapterhouse. Something elaborate with spirals and markings perhaps. ‘Is that all of it?’ he said.

  Fortmann nodded. ‘For the Ix,’ he said again, smiling now. ‘That we may know the Up.’

  3

  “Don’t you find it strange that your creation myths differ in their particulars, yet all resemble one another? The common message: you aren’t mice but neither are you gods yet.”

  - Cato the Wiremind of Old Erde

  261 -

  261 had woken at the chime of the ablutions bell and gone about the motions of readying himself. It required no mental effort. He could keep his mind on the quandaries from the day before while his body rose and washed, moving on bare feet through the cave sections by rote memorisation. If the lights failed for whatever reason it would make no difference to his routine.

  The grey habit was waiting for him in the vacuum tube, creaseless, on the same steel hanger as every morning. He drove his arms in and fastened it about his waist with the rope cord. Breakfast was already prepared, waiting in the lip of the smaller vacuum tube, the bowl of grey nutrient gruel served always at the same tepid temperature.

  He ate, relieved his bladder, and made into the main chamber. The omnicast activated at the sound of his footsteps – or perhaps it was a motion sensor, he had never been sure – and the quandary globes appeared about him suddenly. They calibrated for a moment, ambling about like bubbles in oil, then settled into primary colours of equal distribution a metre or so from the central chair. He eased into it and reclined.

  ‘Begin?' asked the cave. The imp nodded.

  The quandary globes rearranged into two concentric spirals and three isolates, all varying shades of green. This will be regarding a political matter then, he thought.

  ‘Day eight thousand seven hundred and five, quandary one,’ said the cave in its monotone purr. ‘As dispatched by Agglutinator Vaughn Knox. Categorised as trade dispute, non-traditional. Skern Corporation have long been a supplier of epnocillin to Exurbia major. Conventional trade agreements have regulated the distribution and price of the medicine. An outbreak of cyan fever has been reported on the Queb’al continent. Skern Corporation has quadrupled the price of epnocillin in response to the expected rise in demand. At this price, Governance will only be able to purchase a tenth of the needed dose, given its current health budget. Agglutinator Vaughn Knox suggests legislative action against Skern Corporation if they refuse to lower the cost of the medicine to its original price. Skern Corporation is claiming they are completely justified in raising their prices as they see advantageous and will respond, if forced to lower their prices, by withdrawing the medicine from the market indefinitely. Please advise.’

  261 toyed with the robe cord about his waist, one of his few eccentricities. ‘How many are likely to die due to a lack of access to the treatment?’ he said.

  ‘Three thousand in the next seven years at least, according to the Red Medic's evaluation.’

  He pushed a finger in between the tassels of the cord and pinched the frayed ends. The concentric spiral was spinning now, the spheres which composed it turning to darker hues of green. He reached out to the isolates – signifying the possible universes in which price fixing went ahead – and brushed them aside. This would not be a difficult quandary.

  ‘I assume there has been no radical change in Governance’s position on free-market capitalism?’

  ‘Confirmed.’

  He moulded the concentric spiral into a cuboid and adjusted its hue closer towards the red end of the spectrum. Red. The colour of inaction, of contradiction. ‘If Exurbia claims itself a truly free-market economy then that can be no intervention in Skern Corporation’s pricing strategy. The medicine should be sold at whatever price they choose.’ He collapsed the cuboid and pushed it towards the ceiling where it dissipated.

  ‘Inform the agglutinator,’ he said.

  ‘You are quite certain?’

  261 nodded. The omnicast powered down, leaving only the beige panel lamps of the cave’s main chamber for light.

  ‘That is the only scheduled quandary?’ said 261, cautiously surprised.

  ‘This is visitation day. Your guest will arrive in just under two minutes. There are more quandaries scheduled for after the visitation.’

  There was little to distinguish one day from another and when he cast his mind back, they seemed to blur into one amorphous mass. It had been at least one hundred days since the last visitation. A cup of tsotl tea would be waiting in the vacuum tube now as a greeting gift to the newcomer. He washed his face in the wallsink and waited by the cave's entrance. A minute or so passed and the panel slid aside, revealing a young female, perhaps early into her twenties. He offered the tea and bowed. ‘It’s a pleasure,’ said 261.

  She smiled unguardedly and accepted the tea. ‘Thank you.’

  She was not shy as the majority of the others often were. Usually they stood behind the threshold of the cave for some time, nervously glancing about until 261 politely insisted that they enter. She simply waltzed in. Unlike the face which greeted him each morning in the hygiene mirror, she had hair. A thick black mane of the stuff fell down her back in ringlets, stopping just short of her hips. Her face was a tanned copper brown, freckled and dimpled in places.

  ‘I imagined – oh, I don’t know what I imagined. Statues and columns and all sorts,’ she said.

  ‘The visitors are often surprised by the minimalism I live in.’

  ‘Is it always this grey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She sipped the tea and set it down on the ledge of the wallsink.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No stimuli is needed,’ said 261.

  ‘For who? For you?’

  He fingered at the rope cord’s tassel. ‘For me, yes. My role does not require stimuli.’

  ‘They made me wear grey, you know.’ She gestured down at her torso, a single beige jumpsuit with a Velcro lip. ‘So I don’t excite you, I guess.’

  She smiled playfully. He tried to return it.

  ‘Where does it happen then?’ she said.

  ‘Where does what happen?’

  ‘You know. The moral stuff.’

  He led them both through to the main chamber and pointed to the chair.

  ‘That’s it?’ she said.

  He nodded.

  ‘Gnesha. I don’t know what I expected. How does it work?’

  He tried to remember what protocol forbid and did not forbid. Governance had been ambiguous in their recommendations, that much he recalled. There would be no harm in revealing the basics. He waved the omnicast on and the quandary spheres materialised, whirling and then settling before the two of them. The girl let out an impressed whistle.

  ‘These spheres,’ said 261, ‘correspond to aspects of a moral problem. I rearrange the problem until the solution is self-evident and then I submit it to the agglutinator, who actions my decision.’

  ‘You steer history,’ said the girl, suddenly reverential.

  ‘I solve moral problems,’ said 26
1.

  Steer history. He considered that. There was a certain flat poetry to it, though ‘steered’ implied too much intention. ‘Administrate’ would have been better fitting. He disliked the sudden deification and tried to remember the recommended conversation lines Governance had prepared.

  ‘Tell me about yourself,’ he said.

  She poked one of the quandary spheres across the chamber.

  ‘I’m a gardener,’ she said. ‘Nothing special. I played the lottery as a joke one day and won. Here I am.’

  ‘The Bureau lottery?’ he said.

  ‘Obviously. What else? Don’t you know how it works?’

  ‘I have a cursory understanding,’ he said. Don’t admit ignorance of anything, the guidelines had said. That was paramount.

  ‘The lottery to meet you, of course. It’s all a big publicity stunt really, just so Governance can keep the idea of you popular. You’re a pretty big deal at the moment. There are plenty of up-highs who would love to see you gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ he said.

  ‘Gone,’ she said. ‘You’re a thorn in their side, don’t you know that? They spend months trying to get some new policy in. You find some great glaring moral fault in the details, and it goes out the window. Of course they want you gone. If it wasn’t for the lottery you’d probably have been written off years ago.’

  ‘Then it serves a necessary function,’ said 261.

  ‘How long have you been doing this?’ she said, looking at him suddenly as though he were under suspicion.

  ‘I have always done this.’

  Academically he tried to remember a time when he had not lived in the cave and could not. She strode past him and into the ancillary chamber where he slept.

  ‘There aren't any windows,’ she called out. ‘No books or anything. What do you do when you’re not playing with your quandaries?’

  ‘I sleep,’ he said.

  She laughed thinking it a joke perhaps, and made back into the main chamber. ‘Do you have a name?’