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

by Alex McKechnie

  ‘I recall all fine details and particulars that I am exposed to.’

  ‘But not your first days in the cave?’

  I may be blocking it intentionally, for some reason. Else there may be some kind of nuanced psychological issue. Insufficient evidence to suggest that she is aware of the cause of the memory’s absence.

  ‘Consider it a quandary, 261. Give me your most informed opinion on the matter.’

  Acid coursed about in his stomach. His palms were slick. Both the tersh and the syndicate woman were watching closely now, waiting pensively.

  ‘There are three possibilities. I have repressed the memory: unlikely. I have forgotten the memory: unlikely. Else, I have had the memory removed artificially: also unlikely.’

  ‘And if forced to choose one of the three, 261, which would you select?’

  ‘The third, though I can think of no compelling reason why it might be the case.’

  ‘Let me help you then. I have been privy to the deep streams, and taken full advantage of them. You were not born in the traditional impish manner.’

  The tersh was staring at her now. Evidently he is also unaware of her conviction, whatever it is.

  ‘Instead, you were taken at the age of forty-three by the Bureau of Stratigraphics and engineered.’

  There was the sensation of something waiting in his peripheries, a ghost at the feast, a hideous spectre looming just outside of his direct view. I must remain calm. Whatever she says, I must remain calm.

  ‘They reverted you to your current age, around twenty-five, I assume, and made the usual impish changes to your countenance. With these, you are familiar.’

  Then she was silent. She raised her eyebrows the way a schoolteacher might, imploring a child to make a conceptual jump.

  ‘Why?’ said 261, stretching the word to two syllables.

  ‘Look around,’ said Miss Butterworth.

  ‘What is the meaning of all this?’ the tersh said.

  ‘Patience, we’re nearing the point. Look around, 261. Is there a pith, a kernel, that looks familiar to you?’

  There were the slowly circling purple drapes carried by the hall drones. There were the titian-eyed servile gungovs awaiting instruction. There were the chalices, the laid tables, the many Pergrin murals, the many tersh murals, the two spyles at the grand socratic’s side, playfully bustling.

  ‘I have not been to this place before,’ said 261.

  ‘You have been here many times. Let me help you further. The tersh likenesses. Does it stir anything in you?’

  Whatever she says, you must remain calm. It is imperative that you remain calm.

  ‘Look, 261.’

  ‘Surely, he’s not…’ Jura murmured, loud enough to carry the length of the Tershal Hall.

  ‘Look, 261.’

  The murals were drawn in scallix ink; portraits - each of them at least five chalga high - of the last six tershes after the Imp Revolution. The current tersh, Jura, led at the front, striking a heroic side pose. Next was Princewright, now presumably incarcerated, also depicted from the side; gallant. The third was Stanislav, long brown ringlets of hair, the nose distinct and angular. The bog of acid in 261’s stomach spumed slightly. Stanislav. That name is close to me. I know every step in its pronunciation, from the high ledge of the first syllable to the cruel landing of the last.

  ‘Is it apparent yet?’ said Miss Butterworth.

  He shook his head. He did not know. Nor did he want to.

  ‘Tersh Stanislav, the merciful. One of the kinder tyrants, isn’t that what they say?’

  ‘This is insanity,’ Jura whispered.

  ‘Defender of men, keeper of the peace. Does that tie a knot with you, Imp? He did not, as the histories have it, die a peaceful death one night in his sleep. He was abducted and taken to the Bureau of Stratigraphics, in accordance with a conspiracy, devised by his then closest assistant, Princewright.’

  How could she possibly know this, if it’s true? Princewright wouldn’t have told her, nor would he have declared it on the streams, however deep.

  ‘Murder was too banal. As a dead man he would have been a historical blip. But as an imp? He would be invaluable, already with a lifetime of experience as a leader.’

  But there is no motive. There is no motive. ‘This is an elaborate lie,’ said 261.

  ‘I have here some stereopticons of his speeches, if you’re interested,’ said Miss Butterworth. ‘Why, we can -’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I do not wish to see those.’

  He wiped the tepid sweat from his brow and made an effort to regulate his breathing. Then: ‘In this bizarre story of yours, what is the motive? Why would Tersh Princewright have acted in that fashion?’

  ‘I assume you have met with the liege.’

  She knows of the t’assali wielder. I must change my approach. ‘I have,’ said 261.

  ‘Princewright bore two children, twins, a boy - the liege - and a girl. They were conceived in Kadesh only days after a wiremind rig exploded in the region. Little was known about t’assali radiation at the time. Princewright and his wife had no idea the radiation might affect the children. Both were born with a certain affinity for t’assali. They seemed to understand it intuitively. The tersh at the time, Stanislav, somehow became aware of this and drew on his creative powers. He had, for a long while, dreamed of wielding the power of t’assali, far beyond the meagre satellite cannons. He convinced Princewright to enter the children into a clandestine initiative with the explicit promise that they would not be harmed. He was faithful to the tersh. They had been good friends for years. Reluctantly Princewright agreed.’

  ‘Little is certain about what exactly Tersh Stanislav did to them, but we know it was some kind of extreme and repeated exposure to t’assali fields. Both children apparently developed abilities with the phenomenon. The brother’s talents came first. He was able to manipulate objects when coated in liquid t’assali, but was powerless with the energy alone. The Ayakashi came next. It appeared first on the outskirts of Kraika and levelled the city to the ground.'

  'Stanislav knew at once what it was. The girl. She had abilities far beyond her brother to temper and control the field. She must have been manifesting pure instances of the energy with her volition. Only, the power came to her in sleep. She was totally impotent while awake. Time and again the Ayakashi appeared inland and devoured cities, leaving nothing but ash and embers. Of course, she had little understanding of what was happening. Stanislav took full custody of the children and banned Princewright from their chambers. Princewright went at once to Governance and informed them of what was happening, and what he believed the Ayakashi to be. A security outfit came for both of the children, probably intending a quick and painless execution.’

  ‘Stanislav must have known what was coming. He released them into the epicforest only hours before the soldiers arrived, damning the planet to onslaught of the Ayakashi. And that act, the selfless liberation of those children, is what granted you your title, imp. Tersh Stanislav the Merciless. There are perhaps five people alive who know the story, and three of them are in this room.’

  The liege. He had known me, known my face at least.

  ‘Of course, Princewright couldn’t have you killed. You had both been far too close. Instead, he concocted a kind of revenge. As you had warped his children, so too would he warp you. It’s long gone from your memory, I suppose; the surgeries, the spinal treatments, the electrode reconditioning; all without anaesthesia. When the transformation was quite finished, he executed the former imp in secret, and had you take his place in the quandary cave. You are a labour of love, 261. Extensive work went into what you are now. Aren’t you grateful?’

  Betrayal: the act of duplicity or breaking a verbal contract for the sake of personal gain. Amnesia: the pathological condition of forgetting large aspects of -

  ‘And now you have come home, Stanislav. Tersh Princewright is incarcerated, you have had your revenge without needing to raise a finger. Come,
take your rightful place.’

  There are no rightful places. All is arbitrary. ‘My rightful place,’ repeated the imp slowly.

  ‘Of course. You were a tersh, a great one. The people adored you. They will rejoice at your return. It will be advantageous for us all.’

  The Ayakashi, the wielders, this little girl. I do not remember these things. If I do not remember these things -

  ‘Yet you did them, 261. Don’t think yourself so virtuous. If anything, the professor and I should be thanking you. Without the Ayakashi, the later stages of our plan would be impossible.’

  ‘You have the girl?’ he said quietly. ‘The Ayakashi girl?’

  ‘Of course. She will be instrumental in our stratagem.’

  He met her eyes, then Jura’s, then the gungovs’, and realised - in a moment he knew no word for - that there was no longer any ground to stand on.

  33

  “Better a wrathful god that exists than a benevolent one invented.”

  -Cato the Wiremind of Olde Erde

  Jura -

  The machine had changed beyond measure since his last visit. The gyratory rings were completed, stretching almost to the ceiling of the workshop. The containment section was fully formed, perfectly spherical and gleaming. Even the mysterious basket had been finished, decked in some kind of regal-looking velvet material. Gungovs stood all about the chamber making what looked to be final adjustments: tightening fusion-loops and adding reinforcement bolts. The boy was drawing from a smoke stick of some kind, watching the construction frenzy below.

  ‘Hard at work?’ Jura said.

  Mcalister nodded in greeting and went on with his smoke stick.

  ‘Well, is it nearing completion?’

  The boy looked him up and down, appearing legitimately surprised. ‘I would say, Professor, that you’re nearing completion. You look all deathly, you know.’

  Don’t disparage me so, I have looked in the mirror and I know it is an ugly countenance staring back. Mcalister himself looked equally haggard, his face a testament to sleep deprivation and poor nutrition.

  ‘Yes, Your Eminence. It is nearing completion. I had to make some small adjustments to accommodate for the ambrosia payload, but she will be ready to launch by the end of the week, I should think. My, that’ll be a day. What were you planning? Zapoei and roasted zardanuts? A party?’

  Parties. I remember parties. Warm, welcome affairs, Annie in her summer dress greeting guests at the door, wine, humid summer evenings in Xianxi, friends from the faculty.

  ‘There won’t be a celebration,’ Jura said flatly. ‘The rings, are they operational?’

  ‘I hadn’t stopped to find out. Shall we see?’

  He called out to a gungov by the main control bank. It pulled at a lever with its grabbing parts. The rest of the human engineers halted to watch the display. Sure enough, the rings began to fall groundwards and arched back up to the ceiling, achingly slow at first, then gaining momentum. The spectacle was almost completely silent.

  ‘When they cross the speed threshold, the ambrosia will ignite and feed into the main assembly,’ Mcalister said. ‘Once that happens, the process will be runaway. There won’t be any stopping it, short of the Ayakashi making an appearance in the workshop. If there’s nothing in the basket, do you imagine the ambrosia will become self-aware?’

  ‘I imagine that isn’t part of your remit, Workman. Follow.’

  Jura waggled his finger in a come-hither gesture and led the boy to the observational platform.

  ‘Fetch fulshrub wine,’ he said to a gungov. Mcalister affected mock-surpise.

  ‘Professor, are we to have a toast?’

  ‘Your work has been excellent, though I am hesitant to tell you so. Gnesha knows your ego needs little more inflation.’

  The rings continued to gyrate, falling about in synchrony like skipping ropes.

  ‘But I admit that I could not have done such a thing,’ Jura said. ‘Your craftmenship is impressive. Tell me, how did you gain your expertise?’

  Mcalister was expressionless for a moment then laughed sardonically.

  ‘Have you brought me up here to make conversation? Is life that unbearable with your woman?’

  The gungov arrived with two glasses.

  ‘I have brought you up here to congratulate you. I’m -’ he faltered, sighed, began again. ‘I’m trying to commend your work.’

  They both took nips of wine. I do not remember a time when there wasn’t a disconnect between how I felt and how the world took me to be.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mcalister, apparently with sincerity. ‘It was you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was you, Professor, though I am hesitant to tell you so. Gnesha knows your ego needs little more inflation. Stratigraphics. You couldn’t help but grow impassioned when you spoke of Pergrin’s days on Old Erde. There was something about the age of wireminds that I knew, that I knew, intrigued you. And it intrigued me. I became obsessive, Pergrin, Cato, Erde, all of that. Do you know there was once supposedly seven simultaneous wireminds active on Old Erde? It’s right there in Pergrin’s Histories. If they’re so evil, how can that be so? Wouldn’t they have just eaten the planet, like Miss Butterworth and her Spool story?’

  A pause, the engineers and gungovs still admiring the spinning rings.

  ‘And do you know,’ he said then, his eyes suddenly wide, ‘that when t’assali coheres, it coheres across the entire time stream?’

  ‘I wouldn’t even know where to start with a sentence like that.’

  ‘It means, Professor, that a wiremind doesn’t just see into its own future, but lives there too. And it means, presumably, that all seven of those wireminds, and indeed any wiremind that has ever lived, has seen its future fate. Cato knew Pergrin would come for him. If the Spool story is true, then the machine knew the syndicate would destroy it. Why didn’t they save themselves?’

  ‘Perhaps there was nothing they could do…’ Jura murmured, though there was little sincerity behind the words. He felt a rush, small at first, then spreading up his back like dry leaves catching on fire.

  ‘Oh come. They’d be practically omnipotent. Or prescient at the least. Either our myths are fictitious, or they knew something we don’t.’

  ‘Well, perhaps it’s just too painful,’ Jura said. I had not considered that before. ‘Godhood, I mean. Perhaps the weight of it is too much and they yearn to die. Just being human is maudlin enough at times. Imagine the entirety of creation in your head. And, if you’re right, the entirety of time too. Surely nothing can contain that and sit comfortably.’

  Mcalister nodded to the rings. ‘When I’m finished, that will. You’ll see.’

  Jura looked him over. There was a quiet assurance to the rogue he hadn’t noticed before; a passionate love for struggle and defiance. Hell, he’s been here for, what, five weeks already? Alone, only the gungovs for company, doggedly tiring himself like a serf. Surely no one could withstand that.

  ‘I admire your ambition, at least,’ Jura muttered.

  There is something about the boy. I was like that once, full of an indomitable conviction that my work was important. Was I such a contrarian though?

  ‘It’s strange to be with you now, Professor. After all of these years. Here in your mighty tower. I don’t imagine it’s where either of us thought you were going.’

  ‘I don’t imagine either of us thought you would live in it with me.’

  The boy took another sip of his wine and regarded Jura over the wine glass’s rim: ‘You look troubled, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘The weight of rule,’ Jura mumbled.

  ‘I think it's more than that. When this machine is finished, everything will change, won’t it? Not just on Exurbia, but in the syndicate. I’ve had a lot of time to think it over. If this really is the first wiremind in three thousand years since Cato, that’s -’ he searched the air for the right word, ‘considerable. Plus, the Old Erders never had the chance to use ambrosia. Thi
s monster will spread throughout the systems faster than they can stop it. I suppose Exurbia will be swallowed in seconds. And what of us then? I would expect you to be a little troubled, Professor. Faced with indeterminants like that.’

  ‘You’re a true Ixenite, aren’t you,’ Jura said. There was a pull in his chest. How long had it been, pretending for them all now? Forty years at least, denouncing the Ixers and their machines. Truly, he dreamed of an orange blaze on the horizon wider and brighter than any sunset could have produced: the dawn of the t’assali god. I could tell him. I could tell him all of it. This may well be the last time we’re alone together.

  ‘I still don’t understand, you know,’ said the boy. ‘If Miss Butterworth follows the Pergrin Decree to the letter, why has she commissioned me to build just the kind of machine that flaunts it?’

  ‘She commissioned you?’

  ‘I consider being allowed to keep my life a form of payment in exchange for the service I’ve provided, yes.’

  Jura ran a hand through his gunmetal grey curls and looked the boy over again.

  ‘You said yourself it’s an amplifier, not a wiremind. Such a machine might be permitted under the Pergrin Decree.’

  ‘Oh really?’ said the boy. ‘They fear a wiremind because they know what it could do, what it would do. Disseminate consciousness throughout the cosmos, faster than they could keep up with, faster than they could stop it. And, do you know something, Professor? I think the whole process is as natural as a fulshrub. And I know, by Gnesha’s girdle, that you know it too. This is what universes do, isn’t it? They turn from dead lifelessness into living objects. They rouse. It doesn’t matter if you never launch this monster here. One will get through, some day. And one is all that needs to. There’s an archaic word, Old Erdish. Gestalt. Do you know it?’

  Jura’s blood ran glacial. ‘No,’ he said carefully.

  ‘Well, the Ixenites of Pergrin’s day thought this was all part of a natural process too. And they thought the entire process should have a name, and that’s the name they gave it. Cato and the wireminds weren’t technological curiosities to them. They were the next logical step in a cosmic process. They were waypoints on Jacob’s ladder. How about it, Professor. Shall we have a look up evolution’s skirt?’