Flowercrash (35 page)

CHAPTER 23

For some days Nuïy lay on his bed in the hut and considered what to do. He thought of killing himself, and even prepared a random cocktail of drugs that he filched from Deomouvadaïn’s herb garden. But after a while the shock of his sentence wore off and once more he tried to connect with the Green Man in order to know what to do. He put the packet of drugs in his pocket and forgot about them.

He forced himself to think with pure logic. He was confined for ever—or at least for as long as he was a leaf of the Green Man. Since he could not imagine leaving the strong, noble trunk of his demiurge, that meant he had to act using what lay within the boundary of the Shrine. Well, that included his secret audio-papyrus, the Drum Houses, and the Tech Houses.

One thing he knew. He must thwart the un-men, the hags, the flower lovers. In the name of the Green Man he must do something. He knew it would be impossible for him to become an ordinary initiate, poring over scrolls, learning texts, rhymes, sinking into the dialect of Emeralddis, becoming a simple cleric. He knew without question that he was more than that. The events of the past proved it, since he had been chosen by the Green Man for the great task of Garden metamorphosis. Admittedly, that had failed, but the war was not yet over.

So he must act. And he must act without the possibility of failure. The enemy
must
die.

For days he considered options. It did not help that once more he was taking lessons with Raïtasha. And then, lying on his bed one evening, he had an idea. He leaped up. He had access to the most awesome arsenal imaginable. He could control a force that might raze Veneris to the ground.

Of course!

For feverish hours he planned. He thought through every deed, memorising his options, recalling the layout of the Tech Houses, of the paths leading up to it, of the Drum Houses, of the Shrine as a whole. He knew that if he was discovered he would either be killed or expelled. But the Green Man was telling him to do it.

On the night following his idea, he waited until the third hour after midnight, then stole up to the Tech Houses, where, along the western wall, he knew of a row of windows with rotting wood. One of these he forced, using a fork and a knife, until he was able to reach under it and undo the catch. Then he slipped inside and closed the window.

Silent, the Tech Houses lay before him. He had three hours.

He walked to the largest listening room, where he powered up the local networks so that their rustling leaves glowed green and yellow. He brought network clones from the stores, attached them, then settled down with a pair of headphones over his ears.

Soon he was immersed in his work. He opened lines to the Shrine of the Delightful Erection, until he had mimicked a Blissis network so well the defences of the Shrine recognised him as local. Once he was attached to the outer networks of the Shrine he was able to access the public database, and then it was just a matter of minutes before he had found the sector devoted to local history.

Now he had to concentrate. A large amount of sonic information would soon flow down the networks. But here he was in his element.

He accessed the records relating to childrens’ songs. There were scores of variants. He selected them all, and pulled them.

He listened with total concentration. Two hundred and sixty six songs— ancient and modern—were played in order of antiquity. Their rhythms typically varied between ten seconds and a minute, with the older ones shorter and the more recent longer. He performed a mental calculation. He should be finished half an hour before the Tech House was opened.

When the last rhythm finished, he returned the network clones to their store, turned off the networks that he had used, brushed the dust off their leaves, checked he had not left footprints on the damp floor, then departed.

Part one of the plan was complete. Part two he would perform tomorrow night.

He attended to his lessons as best he could during the day, but all he could think of was the Drum Houses; how he would enter, which room he would use, how he would set up the drum. It all had to work. The Green Man must not be failed this time.

Night came. At three hours past midnight he forced another window and made for the smallest of the drum chambers, where he knew a particularly responsive drum lay, one he had used many times during the year. It lay on its side, dust covering its body, a hundred cables hanging from its base.

He plugged it into the root nodules, then attached a network clone to disguise his work.

He felt a little nervous. But he was sure he could do what he had set out to do.

He took a wooden stool and sat on it, taking the drum between his legs and cradling it. For a few moment he recalled the joy of working here.

He sat with his back straight.

In his memory two hundred and sixty six rhythms were stored. But first he had to connect. He took a pair of headphones and placed them over his ears, settling them into a comfortable position, then drumming the connection pattern, and after that the destination code.

Cemetery.

Seconds later he heard the reverberant carrier wave of the Cemetery reality, a unique sound like a receptive hall that he knew meant he was connected. He heard faint clunks, taps, creakings as of decaying bodies.

He opened the microphone at his lips. He would have to speak to offer a bargain.

He drummed the first rhythm. The second. He drummed on.

A voice in his headphones. “What are you doing?”

“Raising the Cemetery.”

“Who is this?”

Nuïy knew better than to tell Baigurgône who he was, for she might try to call somebody in the Shrine to have the raising stopped. He drummed on, his perfect memory working independently of his conscious mind, relaying the rhythms in exact order, with exact precision.

Time passed.

“Stop,” Baigurgône said. “I am disintegrating. If you raise every beast you will break every connection with the substrate.”

“I know.”

“Is that you, Nuïy?”

Almost an hour had passed. Nuïy had woken over a hundred Cemetery beasts.

Baigurgône’s voice began to sound scared. “Nuïy, listen to me. Stop now. The Cemetery reality is composed of the underground beasts’ gestalt actuality. If you raise every one I will have no network in which to exist, and I will have no choice but to find an artificial body to return to. Stop now.”

“Never,” Nuïy said. “You betrayed us. You pretended to be a man, then left us. You have hardly helped us since you entered the networks. You deserve to die. So die now.”

“Nuïy, what are you doing?”

Nuïy drummed on. He was at rhythm number one hundred and eleven. Almost half way. The Cemetery would be a chaotic stew of churned earth and silver beasts, all looking for the maker of the bargain. Well, soon he would reveal himself.

“Nuïy! What are you doing?”

“Raising the Cemetery.”

“I will die.”

“Jump out into some other network,” Nuïy suggested. “Become a thing, like me. You used to be a
thing,
that Kamnaïsheva person—”

“But this is my base! Outside of the Cemetery reality I will be just an ordinary entity, floating free—or worse, a puny body. I am Baigurgône! I cannot—”

“The Cemetery must be raised.”

“But why? Why?”

“To find the infant,” Nuïy said. “The infant must die.”

“Yes, Nuïy,” pleaded Baigurgône, “but there are other ways. I will help. We will call Sargyshyva and plan together.”

“The time for that is over.”

“
Nuïy!
”

But Nuïy drummed on. He ignored the voice.

Half an hour to go. Seventy rhythms remained. Seventy beasts lay in hypnotic self-slumber. The others waited, angered, asking one another who made such a mighty call.

“You made me what I am,” Baigurgône said. Her voice was now distinctly slurred, with a metallic twang. “You cannot undo your own deed.”

“If I helped you become what you are, I have the right to unmake you,” Nuïy replied. He felt absolutely no pity. All that mattered was the raising of the Cemetery.

“Nuïy! Don’t do it. Leave one beast, I beg you!”

“That cannot be. I must maximise the chances of the Green Man. Every beast must be raised.”

“Nuïy,” Baigurgône urged, “what bargain can you possibly make that will satisfy every beast?”

“You will see.”

“But I will lose my power!”

“That is of no concern to me. All that matters are the wishes of the Green Man.”

Again the desolate cry. “
Nuïy!
”

And Nuïy drummed on.

“Nuuuuiiiiiiiiy…”

Now when Baigurgône called out her voice was impossible to understand. It wailed in a series of ever lower metal screams, until it dipped below the frequency of Nuïy’s hearing, and was gone.

Five rhythms remained.

Nuïy drummed them.

He finished.

For a minute he sat, mentally shocked by his feat, until his mind recalled that he existed in the real world. In his headphones he heard a rumble of voices, some near, some far and reverberated, echoing around the activated Cemetery reality.

“Beasts of the Cemetery!” he called out. He felt immeasurably strong, in control of the most powerful force in Zaïdmouth, about to enact the final, victorious deed of the Green Man.

“Beasts!” he called again. “Do you hear me?”

There came an extraordinary sound, a kind of low groan, with every voice stereoscopically distinct, like a choir of gynoid minstrels arranged in a half circle. The groan was a single, distinct word. “Indeeeeeed.”

They heard him. Nuïy tried to imagine two hundred and sixty six ancient beasts, all waiting, all listening to him.

“Beasts of the Cemetery,” he said. “I offer you a cosmic bargain. I want you all to leave the Cemetery and scour Veneris for the gynoid born of Alquazonan. You will recognise it through its aura, for it is a gynoid unable to enter the networks, a gynoid of bodily sensation and no intellectual capacity. Question every man, woman and gynoid you meet. Search, and when you have found it…”

The voices again groaned in their inhumanly perfect chorus. “What do weeeeee get?”

“Here is my bargain. Promise to do this deed and I will reveal to you the nature of the new gynoid. Once you know this, you yourselves will be immeasurably enhanced. As the raiser of the Cemetery, I so swear.”

“A bargain is set! Weeeeee will find. What is sheeeeee?”

Nuïy had to restrain his emotions. His heart thumped. This was the crux of the matter. “The newly born gynoid,” he said, “is one future of the networks. If you find her, absorb her, for then
you
will have power over the future evolution of the networks, and so your potential will be enhanced. And this is why I raised you all, for if you succeed, you all benefit.”

They gave a long groan. “Hmmmmm.”

A lone voice spoke. “What do you get?”

“The end of this new gynoid.” He almost choked. “You will do it, won’t you? I have kept my part of the bargain.”

“Yeeeeees!”

Nuïy shut down the network links and pulled off his headphones. Dawn was close. Leaving the room as he had found it, he returned to his hut, where he pondered his accomplishments.

~

The Cemetery changed at dawn.

With the coming of the sun, hillocks of earth appeared, tearing the sod as they did; small holes, big holes, deep holes. Then the earth piles were scattered as beasts emerged from the damp Cemetery ground. Many were silver, but others, especially the larger ones, were brown, crimson, even black. The small beasts were serpentine of form, or like lizards with small legs, which they used to scuttle out of the Cemetery into the road, leaving gleaming trails of slime. Other beasts were more mammalian; they strode out jaws dripping, scattering clods of earth and fragments of flesh as they did.

Some beasts were so large they dwarfed the few people who saw them appear. One was like a hunched giant, bent almost double, its beard damp with drool, its pale eyes staring. It clambered into the road and surveyed the buildings around it. Another looked like a four-armed monkey. Other simian beings, grunting and grinning, departed the Cemetery through its gates, their glittering eyes rolling, their claws retracting then emerging. The beasts scattered earth, stones and Cemetery debris as they departed.

A few Venerisians saw this raising. They fled south. Soon, houses were abuzz with the appalling news. Such a thing had never happened before.

In half an hour every beast had left the Cemetery. Randomly they grabbed individuals and demanded to know the whereabouts of Alquazonan’s offspring. Already many doors and windows were barred and shuttered, but some of the more aggressive beasts were hammering to break down any such portal.

It chanced that Shônsair was one of the first gynoids caught. She had been researching interfaces in the Venereal Garden. As dawn broke she heard strange gruntings from the north, which she put down to Woods men fighting in the Cemetery copses, but a few minutes later a screaming woman tore down the street, yelling that the Cemetery had been raised.

Shônsair thought the woman was drunk. But others followed, and then she saw something silvery slip through the Venereal Garden hedge and wind itself around the waist of a victim. It was like an anaconda. The woman gasped for air.

“Where is Alquazonan’s offspring?” the beast asked in a hissing voice, raising its head so that its eyes stared into those of its victim.

“I—I don’t know! Who?”

“She is somewhere in Veneris. Where is she?”

After more denials, the serpent uncoiled itself and slithered into the undergrowth. Astonished, Shônsair watched.

Something pulled her arm back. She turned and twisted, but its strength exceeded even hers.

She faced a beast a foot taller than she. Its barrel chest was covered in black hair, while its pink thighs were like pillars. It had a canine head, but a longer muzzle than that of a real dog, with drooling jaws, burning eyes of red, and nostrils that expanded and contracted with rage. Shônsair found both her hands and wrists in a firm grip.

“Where is Alquazonan’s offspring, gynoid? Tell me quickly!”