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

by Alex McKechnie

  ‘Professor,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Please.’

  He motioned to a couch opposite. Jura sat. Up close, the tersh was even fatter than the streams usually showed him. A clown’s nose sat precariously balanced on a boxer’s face.

  ‘I hope the gungov didn’t scare you.’

  ‘Your Great Auspiciousness,’ Jura said. ‘Magnanimous -’

  ‘Professor. Look.’

  Beyond the rooftop, hundreds of feet below, was Bucephalia in all its absurd glory. Spires and towers that tried for a respectable height, but all were dwarfed by the grand tersh’s tower. A few of the moveable buildings were still exchanging rooms and levels with one another in the night, buffeting about.

  ‘We’re alone. Nobody’s watching. Let’s dispense with titles.’

  Jura nodded. What a strange accent the tersh had, emphasising all the wrong beats in a word, a leftover of his Kraikese childhood.

  ‘I’ve had my eye on you for some time now,’ said the tersh.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes indeed. Particularly your work on wiremind detection. Very promising. We might’ve had a crisis on our hands if it wasn’t for your recent efforts.’

  ‘That’s very kind, Grand Tersh.’

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘No, thank you. I'm quite all right.’

  A drone appeared at Jura’s side bearing what looked like zapoei.

  ‘Come now, Professor. A good view deserves a good beverage, don’t you think?’

  The glass was almost scalding hot, the zapoei itself on the verge of boiling. He took a tentative sip. The flavour was not far from putrid hummus.

  ‘An acquired taste,’ said the tersh.

  ‘I believe I’m yet to acquire it, Your Eminence.’

  The tersh was quiet for a time. Did I offend him with that last remark?

  ‘You’ve heard the news, of course,’ the tersh said finally.

  Ah, so that's what this is all about.

  ‘The syndicate ship?’ Jura said.

  ‘How do you know it’s syndicate, might I ask?’

  'It’s not likely to be one of the separatist factions, if I can speak so boldly. In the last communication from the syndicate hub, they claimed to have absorbed the separatists into the hub major. I’m told that the t’assali beams were rendered ineffective somehow, an unlikely technology for pirates or simple drifters to possess.’

  ‘Very good, Professor.’

  Was that really a test, or is the idiot just taking credit for my logic?

  ‘And what do you imagine they’ve come to Exurbia for? A single boat like that, I mean. All alone,’ the tersh continued.

  ‘Probably an inspection. If it was delivering new technology, they could just send us the specifications via gamma pulse instead as usual.’

  ‘Inspection? What kind of inspection?’

  A sinking sensation formed in Jura’s stomach. This man, this portly little half-wit, evidently has no mental faculty whatsoever. He had imagined meeting the tersh many times, exchanging witty repartees, playing jakialiatz together. The streams had left out any sign of his lacking intelligence, painting him always as a respectable and sagely potentate.

  ‘To ensure Exurbia isn’t developing wiremind technology, Your Eminence. It's no secret that the imp advised a t'assali assault on the craft, with no effect. It is usually assumed that any planet harbouring a wiremind would have access to advanced weaponry, courtesy of its monolithic intellect. This will have been a test to confirm whether or not Exurbia is providing sanctuary to such a wiremind.’

  ‘Of course, of course. And you’re confident they won’t find one here?’

  The tersh was looking directly at him now, eyes unwavering like the gungov's had in the main chamber below. Gnesha, does he know?

  ‘We should hope not, Your Eminence.’

  ‘Only, it’s a small matter, Professor. Agglutinator Knox tells me -’

  Knox? Gnesha's teeth, what of him?

  ‘- you had some wiremind equipment confiscated at a bust in the Blueberry Projects last week.’

  ‘That’s correct, Your Grace.’ Jura swallowed.

  ‘I believe he’s spoken with the demolition team at your faculty and they’re yet to receive the parts for destruction.’

  ‘Ah yes, a minor mix up. The technique these particular Ixers were using is something a little unusual. I’ve been dissecting the machine in my lab to discern its workings.’

  The tersh was silent.

  Jura continued: ‘So we can guarantee it doesn’t happen again in that fashion, you see. Knowledge is power after all.’

  ‘To a certain degree,’ said the tersh slowly. ‘Though obviously, with the syndicate craft approaching, I will need the entire rig destroyed.’

  ‘Grand Tersh -’

  ‘The entire rig destroyed, you understand. Refusal to do so could easily be construed as a failure to abide by the Pergrin Decree. Am I being succinct enough for you, Professor?’

  Jura nodded and took a sip of zapoei.

  ‘Good man. I knew you’d understand. That’s the laudable thing about academics. They don’t have to be told twice, yes?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace. Quite right.’

  To think of it, this meddlesome runt the ruler of an entire planet, his whims indulged, his idiot countenance tolerated wherever he steps on Exurbia’s surface.

  ‘You know, there’s an opening coming up on the Council of Topologies. The vice-chairman is stepping down shortly…’ said the tersh.

  Is this a bargain of some description? Destroy the machine and I’ll throw you some bureaucratic coasting job?

  ‘I’ll certainly consider it, Your Grace.’

  ‘I would, Professor. It can’t be easy, all of your friends going onto more esteemed positions, leaving you floundering there in the dirt of wiremind mechanics like a -’

  He paused.

  ‘Failure,’ Jura added helpfully.

  ‘Stick in the mud, I should say. And that’s putting it diplomatically. There are openings, Professor. All you have to do is not walk on the grass when the sign says so, and take a hint from a friend occasionally. A very powerful friend indeed.’

  Jura scrutinised Bucephalia below, the dank and half-lit hovels in the middle distance, the projects in the foreground. What I would give to live down there now in total obscurity. What I would give to have been born a carpenter or mattersmith. Not drinking pisswater at the top of a mad king’s tower, with his figurative knife to my throat.

  ‘That shouldn’t be a problem, Your Grace,’ said Jura.

  A transport pod arced up and into the night sky pursued by a police flyer, both little more than mere dots on the horizon. Out in the streets, in the living rooms, the houses, the mechanisms of civil life were check and totalling like abacus beads. For every Governance freak, there’s some amateur Ixenite busying away in his basement with logic gates and t’assali breakers. For every grunt there is some unsung revolutionary trying to build a god and the two work at their game like cat and mouse. How long does it continue? Like some ardent cosmic sperm, it would only take one radical to make it to the egg and the game is up.

  ‘Deep in thought, Professor?’

  ‘Something like that, yes. The view is spectacular.’

  ‘Let’s hope this syndicate lot agrees when they arrive, hm? Perhaps the scenery will be enough to stop them annexing the planet.’

  ‘Can they do that, Your Grace?’

  ‘They can do whatever they want. Doesn’t that seem like a contradiction to you? Two centuries since they last visited, no supplies, no assistance, minimal technological help, yet still all the power in the hub. Imagine having your absent father turn up at your twenty-first birthday party and announce that your hair’s too long and your lover is ugly. Wouldn’t that irk you, Professor?’

  ‘I imagine it would. Am I correct in supposing you’re considering a resistive effort of…some description?’

  Now we’re on tenuous ground.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t say tha
t. Besides, what would be the use? We gave it all we could with the t’assali cannons and that thing didn’t even blink. If they send a warfleet out, well that’s that, I should think.’

  ‘You won’t resist them then, Grand Tersh?’

  ‘I will resist them, Professor, in the same way you have resisted me this evening. Tacitly and yet without the courage to act on that resistance.’

  Horror. I have walked into my own execution. A guard compliment will meet me when I leave. I will be accompanied to a holding facility at the Bureau of Substantiation and tortured gratuitously until I deliver a confession. Then I will be put to sleep on a medical bed with a vial of diaxidom contraldihide. My body will be incinerated in the Bureau of Substantiation’s crematorium and, if I’m very lucky, a few of my ashes will make it all the way from the chimney to the lower Exurbic atmosphere.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, Your Eminence.’

  Freezing sweat sheets and nausea. A stifling of the breath.

  ‘No. I’m afraid of that too, Stefan. And that’s something we can both agree on. The -’ he consulted a small skript, ‘- eighth of Julika, Year of the Silicon River. Is that a date you remember?’

  Jura nodded slowly.

  ‘Radical faction 157C was taken into custody, along with a level orange wiremind rig. The project was an estimated three days from completion, and could easily have resulted in a Pergrin crisis, according to a report you later wrote. And it’s a funny thing, but when a covert mechanical forensics team traced some of the components that had been used in the rig -’

  I could take a running jump off of the balcony. He couldn’t stop me in time.

  ‘- they identified the source as your laboratory at the Stratigraphics Faculty. An interesting coincidence, don’t you think, Professor?’

  How has this gone unmentioned for eight years? How have they let me retain my freedom all this time?

  ‘Now, not being a legal man myself, I wouldn’t want to comment on the matter. I certainly wouldn’t dream of implying that it was you who might have supplied the parts to the Ixenites, especially not out of some ideological attempt to build a wiremind. Why, as a stalwart defender of Exurbic freedoms, supposedly devoted to ensuring exactly that doesn’t happen on Exurbia, I wouldn’t want to imply you were complicit. But if there was even the slightest chance you might be, well, it wouldn’t look good. But I trust your allegiances, of course. After all, slaving away in some Ixenite hovel is one thing, but supplying them the parts. Well, it doesn't bear mention. I certainly wouldn't want to make allegations, nor would I consider myself qualified to do so.’ He fixed Jura with a pregnant stare. ‘So goodnight, Professor.’

  Jura stood to his feet, smoothed his hair, and bowed ceremoniously. The tersh kept his eyes on the city lights below. Out in the secretary’s chamber, there were no guards waiting. Nor would there be at home, Jura knew. Not until Governance grew bored with his wiremind detection technologies.

  Some hours later, he sat watching the arms of the stolen wiremind rig spinning in concentric circles on themselves in his laboratory. A marmalade orange burned at the core of the t’assali ball, a point where all known technical description broke down. The thing was taunting him, an unbearable invitation. I have stolen you from the arms of the Ixenites, and now what? My life? What would it take to finally push a generator critical? And if it went critical, what in Gnesha’s name would happen next? Would it spontaneously just become a mind, and announce its intentions to subjugate all of Exurbia?

  ‘I can't imagine,’ he whispered into the spinning rings and the orange effervescence, as though to a lover, ‘that you would ever mean to hurt anyone.’

  9

  “We should act in accordance with our nature, and if history has taught us anything, it's that our nature is as variable as the wind.”

  - Tersh Stanislav of Exurbia

  Fortmann and Maria -

  Fortmann fetched a little more ice from the freezer unit and crawled back into bed.

  ‘It’s supposed to be served hot,’ said Maria.

  ‘What, zapoei? It’s not supposed to be served at all, or to humans anyway, judging by the taste of it.’

  She sat naked and propped against the headboard of the bed and stared with a little lacklustre into space. She’d had more force and violence in her than he’d expected, pulling at his hair, giving commands. He was, he realised, a little relieved it was over now.

  ‘They say,’ Fortmann intoned, as if to nobody at all, ‘zapoei is smuggled in from the syndicate hub. Every year, a single capsule full of the stuff arrives on the tip of Godeli and -’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, someone would notice, an astronomer or something.’

  ‘They say it has a way of evading Exurbic telescopes.’

  ‘Let me get this clear in my mind,’ she said. ‘The syndicate, or somebody in the syndicate, has found a way of smuggling contraband past Exurbia’s millions of radio and plasma telescopes. And, instead of using it for experimental narcotics, or wiremind components, or even lewd pictures of one of the syndicate hub senators, they smuggle liquor. And not even liquor anyone actually enjoys. They cross five hundred million lightyears of Gnesha-damned hell-haunted empty space to deliver the foulest alcohol man is yet to burden his galactic empire with.’

  Fortmann studied her face. Is this dry humour?

  ‘Does male company always make you this irate?’ he said.

  ‘Only when they talk dross. Come on,’ she said, patting the other side of the bed. He slid over and put an arm across her shoulders. This would make things complicated for the Chapterhouse, but Plovda be damned, he didn't much care. Even now, a few floors below, the devoted were going about their evening chores completely oblivious to the scene in Fortmann’s chambers. Would they have been bothered if they knew? It might degrade his status as a man of purity, but they would accept it eventually. There is nothing in the Chapter’s charter which stipulates abstinence.

  ‘Things are coming together, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘Really coming together.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Everything is aligning.’

  She nodded again. He is in a cultish mood now.

  ‘Just a few more moves, and we’ll be in a winning position. It doesn’t matter what they do after that, it’ll be too late.’

  ‘After 261?’ she said.

  ‘After 261.’

  ‘But the syndicate,’ she said. She had often thought it, but never found the right occasion to put it to him. Now, naked in his chambers, it seemed ridiculous not to speak her mind.

  ‘What about the syndicate?’ he said, apparently entertained.

  ‘Won’t they send out a military unit to stop us? They could just vapourise the planet if they wanted.’

  He turned to check if she was being sincere. ‘You surprise me,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, what do you think Exurbia will look like, after the Up?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Tell me. Honestly.’

  ‘I think,’ she said, carefully, ‘that the first thing to go will be national divisions, then personal divisions.’

  He nodded. ‘Go on.’

  ‘And then there won’t be any need for Governance and Governance will dissolve. There might be some last minute military resistance from the Bucephalian forum, but it won’t be of any consequence.’

  ‘Why?’ he said, stroking her hair then. ‘Why won’t it be of any consequence?’

  ‘Because most of the citizens by that point will have fused into a single conscious unity, and that unity will have control of the planet’s defences.’

  He nodded emphatically. ‘You’re damn right,’ he said. ‘And the wiremind will have built defences we can’t even dream of, and we’ll have control of those too. Now imagine some pushy military unit turns up from the syndicate hub. They wouldn’t last ten seconds in local space against whatever technology we’ll be using by then. We’ll wipe them out like insects.’

  He was laug
hing then, his eyes wide.

  ‘Hell-haunted insects, we’ll rip them apart before they can even get near the planet. And they’ll send another wave, a warfleet, and we’ll rip that apart too, child’s play. And do you know what comes after that?’

  She shook her head slowly.

  ‘We stretch out our fingers across Exurbic space, out beyond the solar system, out to the syndicate hub and we give them a proviso. They can either join the Up, or face extinction.’

  ‘Extinction?’

  ‘Extinction. They’re outmoded, obsolete. They’ll only initiate little pathetic uprisings every few years or so. Most of them won’t join us out of choice. They’ll need persuading. And what better incentive than eternal life?’

  ‘Eternal life,’ she said. ‘Or extinction?’

  ‘Just like the gods of old Erde. Eternal life or extinction.’

  Is he addled? It’s so hard to tell on nights like these.

  Fortmann sipped at his zapoei and stroked the girl's hair. Everything was orienting now. Unfolding, as the poem went, just as it should.

  ‘What do you think it will feel like?’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When it happens. Stratification, the Up, all of it. What will it feel like?’

  ‘It will be sublime.’

  ‘Will it hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will we die?’

  He sat up. ‘Die?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Of course not. Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?’

  ‘I’ve been listening. But we’ll just be a drop in an ocean, won’t we? We’ll just be part of a huge whole. What room is there for me in there? What room is there for a single mind in a thing like that?’

  These are her true colours then, he thought. This is the timid little girl beneath the assured and taciturn exterior. He took his glass with him to the window and surveyed the chaptergrounds below. Even so close to midnight there was still a handful of Chapterhouse devotees turning the soil of the plushflour fields in the dark, working silently and without thanks or acknowledgement.

  ‘When life began on Old Erde those billions of years ago,’ he said, ‘it was small and weak and divisible. And it stayed like that for a long while, at war with itself. But slowly, over time, a sort of union formed. Cells began to work in unison and became multicellular life. And that life increased in stature, growing in size, becoming more complex over millions upon millions of years until Old Erde was full of mammals, and reptiles, and amphibians, and primates, and fauna, and an infinite menagerie of complexity.’