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

by Alex McKechnie

  ‘Technology may have advanced rapidly in the two centuries since the syndicate last visited,’ said the imp.

  ‘To the point of magic?’

  ‘We mustn’t make assumptions.’

  ‘And even so, you can abandon your construction efforts,’ whispered the speaker. ‘The woman has almost beaten you to it. And they have help. Mcalister, one of your own, works with them day and night. I have watched him assembling it across the weeks. His obsession is tireless. He is beyond fatigue. The main body has already taken shape. There are only a few minor details left to correct and it will be ready to launch.’

  ‘Governance is building a wiremind?’ said Fortmann.

  ‘Not Governance. The tersh and the syndicate woman. There is no Governance, or no Governance in the sense you mean it now. They have stripped the democratic chambers of any legitimacy. They have taken full control of the tower drones. They have turned the ancestor room into a scallix sanctuary.’

  ‘All with the help of the gungovs, of course,’ said 261 flatly.

  ‘There is only power and the flow of power and the consequences of power and I side with those who best comprehend it.’

  ‘Comprehend it? Jura’s a fulshrub brain, a half-head.’

  ‘Not the professor. The syndicate woman. She has played this planet like a xiao-lute.’

  ‘This is madness,’ said Maria. ‘This is madness. Why would the tersh raid every Ixenite Chapterhouse in the city, and build a wiremind behind closed doors? ’

  ‘There are some races that can only be run once, and can only be lost once. They are unique moments in history. The syndicate woman, she craves the tip of the gestalt. It’s why she’s here, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘The gestalt,’ Fortmann murmured. ‘It’s following us like a damned Erde vulture.’

  ‘And quite rightly too,’ said the speaker. ‘It permeates everything entire. It drives everything entire. We have begun to recognise ourselves as its faithful instruments, such have I. Such has the syndicate woman. Such will you, in time.’

  ‘I’m no one’s instrument,’ said Fortmann.

  ‘You’re everything’s instrument. There isn’t an atom in you that doesn’t dance to the gestalt’s tune. There isn’t an atom in you that won’t eventually reach its tip, sooner or later. It’s still important to you, isn’t it, important to all of you, whether you live or die, whether the current oligarch lives, whether the current oligarch dies. But it pales, compared to the gestalt, believe me.’ Then, the speaker gungov turning to Maria and 261: ‘But you’ve seen it, haven’t you. She revealed it.’ They both nodded. ‘Then I needn’t explain.’

  ‘It makes no difference,’ said Fortmann. ‘A wiremind wakes up in an Ixenite project hovel, an Ixenite wakes up in the tershal tower. It’s the same creature. It will behave the same way.’

  ‘The machine is an amplifier, not a wiremind in the sense you mean it. Attached to the bottom of the device is receptacle of some sort. Whatever steps into the receptacle will alter the critical field, flavouring it in some sense. This is the most I know.’

  ‘They’re using ambrosia?’ Maria said.

  ‘Of course. When the field is stable, it will expand to the syndicate hub within a matter of minutes.’

  ‘Minutes?’

  ‘Of course. T’assali and ambrosia are both exoterials. They aren’t constrained by normal worldworks limitations. They exist partly in our frame of reference, and partly in every frame of reference simultaneously, past, future, near, distant. The weld drive exploits this. However, a mind constructed out of either material could spread through space and time in all directions without expending almost any energy whatsoever. It would consider all future events and past events as part of a totality, all happening presently, in one single infinite moment. It would consider all points in space, the edge of the galaxy or the Bucephalian Civic Hall, as a one dimensional dot in a limitless expanse. My body contains trace amounts of the substance. In this way, I control the gungovs. In this way too I see snatches of what has been and what may yet be.’

  ‘Yet,’ said 261, ‘from everything you have said, it seems extremely unlikely that you control the Ayakashi.’

  ‘You’re correct. That duty is left to my sibling.’

  ‘There are two wielders? There is another like you?’

  ‘A sister, yes. As far as I can tell, we’re both products of a Governance engineering initiative to control the t’assali. Evidently the attempt was a spectacular failure. The tersh at that time, Stanislav, was against the initiative and smuggled us from captivity. This was one of the many instances of mercy that led to his being overthrown. My potency is feeble by comparison to my sister. I can animate physical objects if they’re doused in liquid t’asalli. My sister directs the energy in its raw form. She has levelled entire cities, Xianxi being the last, though I doubt it was her intention. She was always gentle, my sister. Forgiving. The power is obviously well out of her control. More than that though, if her abilities are an extension of mine, she must have considerable foresight. Find her, and the wiremind is yours. Ignore her and the tersh will be your end. I have seen that much.’

  ‘Who is the chrysalis?’ sang the gungov.

  ‘Who is the worm?’ replied one of the crawling creatures.

  ‘Who gets eternity?’ both of them sung together then. ‘Who gets the urn?’

  ‘Then you will help us?’ said Fortmann. ‘You will turn the gungovs on the tersh and the syndicate woman?’

  ‘I will do no such thing. Go about your struggle, revel in your plight, salt your wounds. If it should be you that gains the upper hand, then yes, I will help. But you are small and outnumbered and mild now and those are not qualities worthy of merit. My sister though, she considers these traits endearing. Find her and the wiremind is yours.’

  ‘How then?’ Fortmann said, trying not to shriek. ‘How?’

  ‘You need only follow the green tip of the tershal tower. Go inside if they will let you. That is where she will be.’

  ‘She’s been captured?’

  ‘It’s happening as we speak. The Governance men have already killed her protecting crone. My gungovs are escorting the girl to the tershal hall.’

  ‘Then stop it!’ said Maria. ‘Let her free, you radge. You steer them, don’t you?’

  The gungovs and the crawling creatures and the birds came to the liege's side then and crowded about him like a retinue until he was invisible behind the black creatures and their torrid orange stares.

  ‘You should know, if it is not already obvious,’ said the speaker from behind the monsters, ‘that I am not merciful like my sister.’

  31

  "Glitz" - Colloquial: probably a contraction of 'galvanised t'assali chamber mechanism', thought to have originated in New Coventry. Powerful handheld weapon capable of delivering a beam upwards of 1000 watts per square centimetre.

  - Standard Exurbic Colloquial Dictionary, 17th edition

  Jura -

  ‘Socratic Butterworth informed me that the girl had been brought here,’ Jura said. The medical man blinked vacantly a few times.

  ‘Your Eminence…’

  ‘Is she here?’

  ‘Which girl in particular?’

  Jura scanned the medical facility. A few badly beaten prisoners had been brought in on account of their close proximity to death, presumably. He recognised most as Ixenites by virtue of their usual appearance on the streams, or the Pergrin rallies.

  ‘A special case. She was arrested in the epicforest, I believe,’ Jura tried. ‘The t’assali girl?’

  The medical man lowered his head and spoke in a stifled drawl: ‘She was taken to a more secure facility in the tower’s basement. The grand socratic wanted it so.’

  ‘Very well.’ Quite right too. If she really is the Ayakashi, she could level this place in a heartbeat.

  He glanced over to the triage area. What a sad lineup of broken revolutionaries. Most were trying to sleep, but some were sitting up reading or simply
staring into space. The medical chamber was preferable to their cells, no doubt.

  ‘These are all criminals?’ said the tersh.

  ‘They are,’ said the medical man. ‘And almost all Ixenites, in one respect of another. It is of course far too dangerous to keep them incarcerated with the other convicts.’

  ‘Do they give you trouble?’

  ‘Not at all, though they preach constantly, some of them.’

  ‘About what, exactly?’

  ‘The Up, the Up, the Up…’

  Jura smirked and scanned the faces again. He lost his breath. Annie…or…A crumpled paper-figure of a woman was slouched in one of the closer beds, her wet eyes fixed on him. Annie, he mouthed. There was only scorn in her expression. Then it must be her.

  ‘Very good,’ he said to the medical man. ‘Please vacate the area for a few minutes, I will need a private correspondence with one of the inmates.’

  ‘Yes, Grand Tersh.’

  At the sound of the medical chamber doors sealing shut, Jura made for her bed. Her face was a sickly pale; her arms shrunken and withered to that of an old woman’s. Her freckles had not faded, he noticed.

  ‘Annie…’

  She stared blankly, her eyes still fixed on him.

  ‘Annie, what has happened?’

  He took her hand. The fingers were brittle and dry like old chalk.

  ‘You have happened,’ she said, a pure statement.

  ‘What has happened to you?’

  ‘You have happened to me.’

  ‘Gnesha, what have they -’

  ‘Not they, Stefan. You.’

  ‘It’s nothing, I’ll have them fix you, I’ll have the medical man -’

  ‘You’re her little runaround now,’ Annie said. ‘She won’t stand for that kind of thing and you know it. Just leave me be.’

  ‘No, I’ll tell her, I’ll explain.’

  ‘Oh to hell with you, Stefan. Go rot. Go rot wherever, but not here. Let me starve in peace.’

  ‘You’re hungry? Here, I can -’

  ‘Go rot, Stefan.’

  ‘Annie, the strings, I meant to -’

  ‘Betray me. You played and used me and that’s fine, but don’t come grovelling after the fact and expect absolution. If I’d known what you’d use them for, I’d have told you to go jump in the Askallik Canyon. But here we are. Of course, you know what she used them for, don’t you?’ Stefan was silent. ‘The girl. The Ayakashi girl. Butterworth tracked her with them. And they’ll bring her in and make a mouse of her, just as they’ve made a mouse of me.’

  Why is everybody so damned prescient? ‘How do you know all of this?’

  ‘Poor organisation in your empire, Stefan. Someone had me placed in a cell with the former tersh. He knows all about the girl.’

  ‘Annie, I didn’t know.’

  ‘Well now you do.’

  His robes felt absurd now, as though he were bundled in a massive purple bandage.

  ‘What did they do to you?’ he said again, quieter this time.

  ‘The gungovs. Whatever drives them likes inflicting pain, likes withholding food, likes seeing things writhe. I got off lightly. The tersh, the old tersh, they hate him.’

  ‘They’re starving you?’

  ‘Just leave it, Stefan.’

  Her hand was an inch from his, splayed on the bedclothes. It may as well be a galaxy away. Whatever fleeting spark that had been lingering behind her eyes had gone out now. Even the scorn was absent. Thirty years. All the days, all those thousands of days, had conspired against him and now he was facing one immovable block of time in his way. Gnesha, thirty years. There hadn’t been lines in her face then. There hadn’t been lines in his either.

  He remembered her clearly as a young woman. She had been irreverent and practical even back then. Their first kiss had been anything but though. She had taken his face in her hands quite without warning at a university faculty party. His stomach had spun, churning with butterflies. What a pleasant anxiety that all was. Her straggles of blonde hair, her freckles, tea in the morning, holding hands as sleep came on them at some ungodly time in the morning, love letters, perfume - Gnesha, her perfume, talking about ex-lovers, idly thinking about the future, toothpaste breath. Thirty years, Annie.

  ‘What do I do?’ he whispered.

  She may as well have been sleeping.

  ‘What do I do? Governance is almost totally dissolved. The southern continents are close to revolting. And the gungovs only listen to her now. Gnesha, it’s a cul-de-sac. There’s no where to go. You were always so practical, Annie. What do I do?’

  She took his face in her feeble cracked hands and put their noses almost at touching distance and lowered her voice to a delicate whisper.

  ‘You rot, Stefan. That’s what you do. You rot.’

  32

  “Consecrate my burial mound, Ye, leave me here to lay, My body free of Cato's craft, As 'twas such in Adam's day.”

  - Traditional Old Erde Pergrin Hymn

  261 -

  Someone removed the retina device and he could see again then. An enormous ornate chamber. Murals drawn in scallix ink of ancient Exurbic battles were weaved across the floor and walls. From the capriglobes hung painted likenesses of the former tershes.

  ‘Well,’ said the man who must have been the tersh, ‘you have returned. And I must admit, your appearance differs somewhat to the descriptions. Nonetheless, I am glad to see you alive.’

  261 bowed ceremoniously and knelt to a knee. A pack of gungovs stood gathered in strategic positions about the hall, all still, and all watching him with impartial orange scrutiny. They have no human guards, thought 261. Have they become so distrusting of their own species?

  ‘Your hair,’ said the syndicate woman. ‘Did the Ixenites do that to you?’

  ‘In a sense. I was exposed to a testosterone catalyst. My body has undergone a number of changes.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that,’ said the woman. ‘Like the tersh, I am glad to witness your safe return. But to what do we owe that return, 261? We barely believed it when the guards gave us word of your presence at the tower gates. Honestly, we assumed you dead.’

  She is attempting to conceal the power of her rational faculties. I have aroused caution already.

  ‘I wished to return,’ he said.

  ‘Then you were allowed to go free?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And don’t you find that in the least bit suspicious?’

  ‘But of course. I was obviously released with a motive in mind. To the best of my knowledge they have not implanted a bomb or any other deadly equipment in my body, however. I doubt I am intended as a weapon in my coming here.’

  ‘And what of this elusive they. Ixenites, I presume?’ said the tersh.

  ‘Particularly orthodox Ixenites, yes. They are of the opinion that man’s purpose is to build wireminds. I gained a number of insights into their cult, many of which I hope to make use of in my return to Governance.’

  ‘Such as?’

  I must tread carefully. ‘They are not, as we thought, militant. They have little interest in deposing Governance or inciting havoc. Their principle interest lies in realising what they call the ‘Ix’, a critical wiremind state, not violence. I should hope this gives you at least some cause to lower your recent spates of brutal attack against them.’

  The syndicate woman regarded him with ironic kindness. All the while she had been scrutinising his movements, his posture, dowsing for signs of deception.

  The way she sits, her legs crossed in that manner, is she romantically involved with the tersh?

  ‘It is not your intention to return to the cave?’ the tersh said, perhaps innocently.

  ‘Surely I can’t. Under the stipulations, the administrator of quandaries must be beyond temptation and totally impartial.’

  ‘And what do you believe yourself to be partial to, now?’ said Miss Butterworth.

  Small scratches at the base of the tersh’s neck; from the throes of
coitus, most likely.

  ‘I have seen Exurbia. I have met with its peoples. I have lived with Ixenites. I am no longer an objective moral agent. I would be best suited to sitting at your right hand as an adviser, Your Eminence. I am obviously highly knowledgeable about Exurbic geographical and political matters, after twenty-five years in the cave.’

  ‘Then you admit that your allegiances have changed?’

  The syndicate women was rubbing her chin. She is trying to entrap me already. This is too soon.

  ‘I have no allegiances.’

  ‘And yet,’ said the woman, ‘you believe you have been compromised somehow. Obviously this is a concern for the tersh and I. He allows only the purest of candidates into Governance, of course. Isn’t that correct, Your Eminence?’

  Jura nodded prosaically.

  ‘Though there may be hope yet. Do you know how you were made, 261?’ continued the syndicate woman.

  ‘I am familiar with the basics of genetic manipulation, yes.’

  ‘Humour us. A cursory overview, if you will.’

  What is her stratagem? ‘A blank foetal template is taken from the birthing streams. The variable chromosomes are randomised to allow for a degree of difference between imps. Testosterone and oestrogen are limited to the most conservative necessities. All possibility of hair follicle growth is removed. All need for stimuli is removed. The brain regions responsible for sexual drive, romantic inclination, and partner-bonding are corrupted. Finally, the code is dispatched to the birthing machine and the foetus is ready within one week. The infant is raised remotely by drones and dispatched to the cave at six years.’

  ‘And you remember your first day in the cave?’

  She is going to suggest I am atypical in some way. ‘I do not.’

  ‘And why, 261, do you think that might be?’

  ‘The episode was over twenty years ago. Humans retain very little information from childhood.’

  ‘Yes, humans retain very little information. But as you’ve already admitted, you are an unusual example. You were intended to have an eidetic memory. “Photographic” as the slang has it. Is your conviction that you don’t have such a memory?’