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

by Alex McKechnie

  Only New Coventry hadn’t been entirely destroyed like the cities before it. There were the typical scorch patterns, the smoking ash where houses and civil buildings had been, where the Ayakashi had spread its fire, but a single wooden structure stood unharmed near the central district. The rabble approached cautiously. The house was perfectly intact and unblemished.

  ‘Rather not be proddin’ bee hives today,’ said one of the rabble women. ‘Let’s just go about the day and say nothin’ of it. Boston Falls ain’t a far hike.’

  A few murmured in agreement. The crone advanced towards the house.

  ‘Ain’t nothing in there we want to be wrapped up in,’ said the rabble woman.

  ‘Go then,’ said the crone. The crowd stood rooted to the spot uncertainly.

  What weirdness has been at work here? All was intact inside: a row of shoes laid neatly by the front door, coats hung on pegs. A cup of something sat steaming on the dining table. Upstairs was the same. The beds were neatly made, the books were alphabetised on their shelves. And out beyond the bay windows, she saw, was a scorched and flattened black plain of death that extended all the way to the lip of the epicforest. She checked the windows on the opposite side. The black plain reached just as far in that direction too. We’re standing in the eye of the storm. Then, a sound that returned to her often in the subsequent years: a quiet rasp at first, followed by a full-blown sobbing coming from one of the other bedrooms. The crone pushed the door back. A girl of perhaps two lay wrapped in bedsheets, hands pressed to her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. Is this an apparition?

  ‘Come,’ said the crone. ‘Why waste good salt and water?’

  The girl stopped for a moment and looked up.

  ‘Where is your mama? Is your mama here?’

  Then more crying. Without caution, the crone took the child in her arms and coddled her, hot tears soaking into her rags and scarf.

  ‘If we can’t find your mama,’ said the crone, ‘you can come with me, that’s fine.’

  The others would have deserted by now anyway. Hell, let them. They’d only cry merry witchcraft at the child and make her suffer. We’ll marry our fortunes together, thought the crone, two vagabonds wandering together if it had to be so.

  Someone had fixed a nameboard to the bed: Moxiana.

  ‘Moxie?’ said the crone. The child looked up. ‘Moxie it is then. My name is Phoebe.’

  The eyes were bluer than any she’d seen before, bluer than the daysky even. And just for a moment, just for the briefest second, an orange glimmer blazed across the child's pupils and disappeared.

  18

  “I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to.”

  - Williard Gaylin of Old Erde, professor of mindworks

  Jura -

  She spied him from the counter, walked casually over to the table, and sat opposite.

  ‘Are we alone?’ she said.

  ‘Is that an existential question?'

  ‘Are we alone?’

  ‘As far as I can tell.’

  There was a young couple at the back, and an old man by himself a few tables away, but the place was empty for the most part. She ordered some tsotl tea from the drone, then it left them in peace.

  ‘Did you go under the awnings like I said?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And your clothes, did you -’

  ‘I’m the planet’s foremost scholar. Give me some credit.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that brain of yours Stefan, I just doubt the rest. I lived with you, remember.’

  He was drawn to the tiny brown freckle specks on her cheeks, the face he remembered waking up with for thirty years; pillow-pocked in the morning, rosy and flushed in the afternoon. Did she let the bastard in, this Sadowitz or whatever of hers, like she’d let him in? Did she tell Sadowitz about the foul things her father had said when she was young, about the hiding hole in the fulshrubs where she’d go to weep? Where were those moments now, the under-bedclothes whispers, naked and echt? I remember them all.

  ‘I won’t folly about,’ she said. ‘I’m worried for you.’

  ‘Well, it’s probably justified.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘It is. I told you, he’s after my head. And he’ll probably get it, short of me moving out to the epicforests and living on sulquats for the rest of my natural life.’

  ‘Well, have they got any evidence?’

  ‘All the evidence they need. Even then, what difference did evidence ever make? If he wants my head, he’ll get it.’

  ‘We can go public,’ she said. ‘Take it to the streams.’

  ‘Are you mad? They’ll just call me an Ixenite and it’ll be the mob who comes for my head instead of Governance.’

  ‘Well, you could go into hiding then. Sazopol. Or Melbournio. They’ll both take you.’

  ‘Annie. Give it up. You know hiding’s not going to stop them. There’s only one way out.’

  She made an exasperated face. ‘What?’

  ‘Rig the orbital satellites not to detect me, and flee to one of the lone-cities.’

  ‘That’s all well and good, but how are you going to rig a satellite?’

  He put his hands above the table and laced the fingers together and held her gaze silently.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not on the hell-haunted deep.’

  ‘There isn’t anything else for it,’ he said.

  ‘You bastard, Stefan. You incorrigible bastard. I thought you needed a friend.’

  ‘I do, Annie.’

  ‘I won’t do it.’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s your prerogative.’

  ‘That’s your prerogative,’ she said in a puerile voice. ‘Do you know what will happen to me the moment they find out? You thought your wiremind debacle was bad. They’ll probably rip out my eyes. No, they’ll set the gungovs on me, Stefan. That’s what they’ll do.’

  They probably would, he thought. I hadn’t considered that.

  ‘And then they’ll come after you too.’

  ‘Not,’ he said, ‘if they can’t find me. And they won’t find you either if you come with me.’

  ‘That’s what you wanted to talk about today, was it? Stealing satellite pass-strings, and what? Eloping together?’

  ‘The eloping is optional,’ he said.

  'You incorrigible bastard.’

  I have missed your abuse.

  ‘I’m a taken woman,’ she said then.

  ‘But I know you have a soft spot for criminals. And respected academics. I’m right in your niche. It’s all right Annie, I’ll work something out.’

  She sipped at her tea and drummed her fingers on the table. ‘What’s she like?’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The visitor. You’ve met her, haven’t you?’

  He saw the blonde straggles of hair in his mind, the butterfly coming across Bucephalia towards him, the giggling spyles. ‘Complicated,’ he said finally.

  ‘Is she really syndicate?’

  ‘No doubt.’

  ‘Gnesha. How do you know?’

  ‘Trust me, I know.’

  ‘Stefan, you didn’t fornicate with her, did you?’

  What a strange evening that had been, the drones and the butterfly and the opal water. It had all disappeared in a flash, Exurbia had returned beyond the window, and Miss Butterworth had made to take his toga off. He stopped her with a kind of half-conviction. What good could this possibly end in?

  ‘Who is the chrysalis?’ she’d whispered. ‘Who is the worm?’

  She pulled a little more forcefully at the toga and it came away in her hand. ‘Who gets eternity? Who gets the urn?’

  There hadn’t been strength to resist; the swaddles of scented hair in his mouth, in his nose, her pale flesh and symmetry and wet breath in his ear.

  ‘I just know,’ he said.

  ‘There isn’t another way out, other than the strings, is there?’ Annie said.

  He shook his head. How strange, he
thought, that two creatures could grow as close as we were, and recede back to strangers. The fine details of her life still sat comfortably in his memory, her minutia: shoe size, preferred soap types, the location of each and every mole on her body.

  ‘Are you quite all right?’ she said, fixing her eyes on his then.

  You pity me, don't you? An old man come begging. ‘I'm fine,’ he said. ‘I take long walks in the morning. Fresh air does me a world of good.’

  ‘I don't care about your damned morning walks. Are you well?’

  ‘As well as one can be. I didn't come for a medical evaluation.’

  ‘Just as well since I'm not a doctor. I'm not a spy either, Stefan. I can't just go around stealing Governance strings for you.’

  ‘Fine.’ What would the gungovs do to you, I wonder. Haul you away and have you thrown in some Bureau of Rehabilitation cell, I should think. Let you rot for the rest of your days.

  ‘I go back to Mornington sometimes,’ he said.

  ‘Is the old house still there?’

  ‘There's a young couple living in it now, with children. They look like good people.’ A pregnant silence, then: ‘You and Sadowitz, did you ever -’

  ‘No,’ she said, flatly. ‘You know how I feel about children.’

  ‘I do.’

  She openly glanced at his naked ring finger.

  ‘I see you didn't remarry.’

  ‘Too much hassle, all that confetti and arguing. It isn't for me.’

  ‘There's still plenty of time.’ She sighed and waggled her head awkwardly, an affectation Jura remembered clearly still. ‘I'll get the strings for you. I don't have a choice, do I? If you're telling the truth, and there's really no way out of this short of making a run for it, then fine. You can have them.’

  Something moved in him then and gave way. ‘Why would you do this?’ he said. ‘Any of this.’

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know. That night you rang, I could’ve just hung up and not thought about you for another three years, really I could. But there was something about the way you asked. You were desperate. Even now, I don’t like seeing you desperate. I can’t stand it. You’re not supposed to live like that. Did you really think it would turn out like this? Like this?’ Gnesha, I don't know. ‘Every time we speak, Stefan, it’s like you’ve had more and more of yourself taken from you. I’ll do it. I’ll try at least. It’s better than seeing you headless.’

  I love you, he thought. You and all your freckles and your fickle whims. I love you and everything is too late and I am too old and we’re stars apart.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘Why do you do this, Stefan? Why were you trying to build a wiremind?’

  He avoided her eyes.

  ‘Do you know that story,’ he said, ‘the one about the toad and the scorpion? The scorpion wants to get across the river on the toad’s back, but the toad says, “You’ll only sting me!” and the scorpion promises that it won't. Well, they get halfway across the river, and the scorpion stings the toad, and as the toad’s falling under the water it cries out, “Why did you do that, now we’ll both die!” And the scorpion says “I can’t help it, it’s in my nature.” There is something in my nature, and I can’t control it, and I don’t understand it, but I’d sting that damn toad any day.’

  19

  “I want to play God and I think I'd be good at it. A vacuum needs filling. God probably doesn't exist, and even if He does the poor fellow will soon be fired for gross incompetence. Considering that the position is open, I see absolutely nothing wrong in applying for the job.”

  - John K. Clark, Old Erde thinker

  Jura -

  Hanging over the Civic Hall was an age-old w’liak tree, the branches spindly and enormous. On one branch, nestled in a den of leafs and cover, was a purple chrysalis. Inside was a half-butterfly, a foetal thing, wingless, a head without eyes.

  Below, the civic gardens were covered in dignitaries and Governance men and women from Exurbia’s sub-capitals, all frocked in regal purples and reds, ornate flowing togas and frilled dresses. A towering marble statue of Pergrin had been erected in the gardens, his arm forever raised with the infamous hammer, his brow heavy, his face set and certain. A troop of gungovs stood scattered about the gardens and the hall, watching impartially with burning orange eyes.

  ‘Of course,’ a dignitary woman was saying to Jura, ‘the Ixers would rather death over submission, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘I really wouldn’t know,’ Jura said and scanned the crowd.

  ‘That’s what fanatics want. Everything or death. Animals aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes. Animals.’

  ‘We’re all very grateful back in Greenridge, Professor. Without your detectors, we could’ve had a Pergrin crisis of our own by now.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘Plus, what with the -’

  He spied Annie through the crowd, dressed in full faculty robes and talking with one of the anti-Ix lieutenants.

  ‘Would you excuse me a moment? I’ve just spotted an associate.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  He took another glass of wine from a drone and joined his ex-wife. If she was alarmed, she didn’t show it.

  ‘Stefan,’ she said. ‘Lieutenant Fricke, this is an old friend of mine. I know the lieutenant from his work at the Bureau of Celestials.’ Jura paused in horror. Fricke. How many Frickes could there really be in Bucephalia? He studied the face, the slightly vacuous glare, the thick brown eyebrows.

  ‘The professor and I are already acquainted,’ Fricke said.

  The voice confirmed it, the same as it had been that morning when he’d kept Jura at glitzpoint and watched him dismantle the wiremind rig, bolt by bolt, those officious eyes never leaving Jura until the last of the vent sections had come apart and the t’assali orb had evaporated.

  ‘Lieutenant Fricke,’ Jura said.

  ‘You know each other?’ Annie said.

  The lieutenant shot him a brief, uncomfortable glance.

  ‘We did some work together at the faculty,’ Jura said. ‘A long time ago now.’

  ‘Eight years if I recall, Professor. Have you been well?’

  'Very.’

  ‘That’s marvellous to hear.'

  The lieutenant bowed ceremoniously, excused himself, and disappeared into the haze of dignitaries.

  ‘That was him, wasn’t it?’ Annie whispered.

  Oh, you read me like a damned book.

  ‘None other,’ Jura said.

  ‘Gnesha’s toes.’

  'If he was going to rat me out, he would’ve by now. Besides, it’s bad enough they know I’ve been smuggling wiremind apparatus. They’d go berserk if it came out I’d almost let one go critical.’

  ‘Imagine it,’ she said, quieter still. ‘Imagine if it had.’

  ‘I can’t. And neither can you.’

  She took a slurp of wine and gestured to a human clearing across the garden.

  ‘I have them,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

  She led them through a sea of dignitaries, academics, politicians, and notables, over to where a small Pergrin statue spewed water from its mouth. Then she passed a miniature databead across to him under the guise of a light embrace.

  ‘It’s everything you’ll need for the tracking satellites. For the love of Gnesha and Plovda, don’t leave any trace behind in the system, those strings are unique to me.’

  ‘Annie…thank you.’

  Miss Butterworth’s face flared suddenly in his mind then, her rouge lips parting, her head flung back. ‘The tersh will be looking for me,’ he said. ‘I have to get back.’

  ‘All right.’

  She looked him up and down, straightened his toga at the shoulder, held his gaze. She’s wondering if this is the last time we’ll see each other.

  ‘Don’t do anything ridiculous,’ she said.

  ‘I won’t.’

  He took her hand, laced their fingers together. She didn’t resist.

  ‘If I go,�
� he said, ‘if I have to run, I’ll come and find you. It’s the last thing I’ll do.’ Is there still time? Are we recoverable, you and I?

  ‘Make sure.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘And Stefan -’

  ‘Professor Jura,’ said a woman’s voice.

  He grabbed his hand back from Annie. A snickering shiver arced down his spine. ‘Miss Butterworth.’

  ‘Enjoying the festivities?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And who is this beautiful creature? I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.’

  ‘Miss Butterworth, this is Annie Jura.’

  Annie nodded mechanically.

  ‘Jura? A sibling?’

  ‘Ex-wife,’ Annie said plainly.

  ‘Ah, I see. What a lucky woman, to have been in close proximity to an intellect like Professor Jura's.’

  ‘Every diamond has its flaws.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Miss Butterworth, ‘though some should be glad they ever had diamonds at all. Will you be attending the Ruination?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Jura said quickly. ‘We both will. I’m told you have the honour of bringing the hammer down?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Only the best for those from the syndicate,’ Annie said.

  ‘Do I detect a note of scepticism, Mrs. Jura?’

  Stefan clenched his fists involuntarily and held his breath.

  ‘None at all, Your Eminence. Why, you’re the first visitor from the hub in over two centuries. Of course the honour should fall to you.’

  ‘You're too kind. Your rituals are rather quaint, I must say. We long ago abandoned these kinds of displays at the hub. Why, this gathering is rather good for morale I imagine, wouldn't you agree?’

  ‘Probably,’ Annie said.

  ‘Even better for upholding Pergrin's Decree, I should say. What is it you do, Mrs. Jura?’

  ‘Stellar cartography, at the Bureau of Celestials.’

  ‘Fine work. Of course, the hub long ago categorised all visible star systems, but I suppose it does Exurbia well to still have dark corners in its knowledge base. Encourages a sense of wonder.’