Flowercrash (24 page)

CHAPTER 15

Once the process of drumming was in full swing Nuïy started to believe they would convert the Garden. Before, he had merely thought it could happen, but now he was much encouraged by reports sent back from intelligent procedures linked to the database metaphors that he drummed across the networks. Deep roots, tall trees, the sun in a clear sky with showers at night. It would happen. The vile diversity of the jungle was departing in a mass of falling petals and unfertilised seeds, making the mind of the Green Man actuality.

Nuïy thought he felt praise emanating from the Green Man. This praise was cool, clear, uncluttered by emotion. It said simple things, and Nuïy believed it was right that he should receive it.

The intelligent procedures, however, also reported that the Garden was learning to fight back. Although Nuïy was transfering the metaphors of hundreds of databases into the Garden substrate, it was learning to reflect them back into the networks. Nuïy also thought he detected an anomaly in some transmissions. In the early days he had drummed with consideration only to rhythmic accuracy, but now, with confidence increased, he thought he could detect volume changes in the copies they had archived of metaphors successfully implanted. Research one day showed these volume changes had existed from the first week of work.

Although not unduly worried—the networks had diurnal rhythms of their own, causing information dispersal rates to change according to the time of day—he nonetheless mentioned it to Kamnaïsheva.

Kamnaïsheva frowned as he considered Nuïy’s points. “The Garden has subtle defences that only now we are meeting,” he said. “Continue the day’s work, then analyse the volume changes when we have finished.”

This Nuïy did. Reports were good. The Garden was losing its structure, and trees were growing fast to create a dim, gloomy interior, surrounded by undergrowth of bramble and nettle, set here and there with brooks and even a pool. But something was not right. The structure seemed too flexible. They had aimed for a strong, tight forest, full of trees with the thickest stems; oak, sequoia, ironbeam. But somehow the descriptions sent back were of rippling trees with tough, and yet mobile, roots. It was as if the Garden was being rebuilt on sand.

That night he rejected his bed to concentrate on the volume analysis. He was surprised to see that Kamnaïsheva stayed too, either because he was worried about the anomalies or because of some private work of his own. Nuïy glanced aside occasionally to see the Analyst-Drummer working with what appeared to be a hemispherical headset.

The night passed. Nuïy subtracted databases from other databases to reveal the volume anomalies. This left him with a stream of data, arhythmic, apparently random, yet annoyingly opaque of origin. Could it be network noise? They had overcome that by allowing for background hiss. Could it be the daily rhythms? No, they were accounted for by the huge Tech House nets that simulated the state of the networks from minute to minute. Drummer error? No, he was perfect.

What then? At length, defeated by the randomness of the data he had extracted, he yawned, ready for sleep.

Then he had an idea. He converted his data into an audio procedure and played it.

He sat up straight. Something in his memory gave a twitch. Immediately he was immersed in the landscape of his mind, searching his memory, ever deeper, until he heard over the noise of the speaker another noise. Arhythmic drumming.

This was what he had heard on the night of the papyrus extraction. Nuïy shook himself out of reverie and looked across at the Analyst-Drummer.

“You have heard this before?” Kamnaïsheva asked immediately.

Nuïy was in a dilemma. To describe how he had heard the sound would be to give away his secret listening. He replied, “Once, some nights ago, I heard drumming like this. Yes… the patterns are the same.”

Kamnaïsheva stood back. He seemed in shock. Nuïy was appalled to see the knotted cords in his neck strain and his green eyes widen.

“Are you well, Analyst-Drummer?”

Kamnaïsheva, for once, spoke without restraint. “It cannot be! If this data is correct, then we are passing additional information along with our own. Who knows what it could be?”

“I do not follow.”

“Somebody is laying metaphors over our own. That information is being carried on the back of our own data. The Garden will interpret these volume changes as data with meaning!”

Kamnaïsheva raised his hands to the crown of his head, gripping them together in a gesture that reminded Nuïy of Sargyshyva. The sight struck him as incongruous for just a few moments, before Kamnaïsheva said in a flurry, “We must carry on with the work. Maybe it is random information. Yet there are other places in Zaïdmouth where data accumulates to constitute systems, and these could exert an influence if they felt threatened.”

“Are there?” Nuïy asked. “Do you mean the Cemetery?”

“Never mind that,” Kamnaïsheva said, with vigour enough to make Nuïy suspicious. “We have here a dangerous anomaly. Well done for spotting it. I must consider what to do. I had better go and see Sargyshyva. You lock up here, I have to go. Get some sleep, Pinkeye.”

Nuïy was left to ponder the rippling cloak of the Analyst-Drummer—and then a slammed door. This was the first time in his life that he had been left alone in the Drum Houses. He ought to exploit such an opportunity. He walked first towards Kamnaïsheva’s worktable, to look at the hemispherical headgear. An odour caught his nose and he lifted it to his face. Musk. His memory worked for him. Sargyshyva. Musk oil was what the First Cleric used on his scalp, so he must have worn this contraption.

For the first time Nuïy considered what might happen if the Green Man succeeded in changing the Garden. The clerics of his Shrine would have to enter the Garden to assume control. Nuïy looked at the headgear and saw that it had screens and earpieces. A reality could be experienced through such equipment. Yet this technology was like nothing he had seen in the Tech Houses, being smoother, heavier, made of silver; and of course screens were not sanctioned by the Green Man. Nuïy saw the connection. Kamnaïsheva and Sargyshyva were plotting, they were thinking of the converted Garden and how to rule it. Though he had no evidence, he knew now that these two were the plotters, with Kamnaïsheva the instigator, for Sargyshyva, as First Cleric, would need no excuse to enter the Garden as leader. Something here was very wrong.

Nuïy examined the rest of the bench. Unfamiliar items littered it, worrying him because he did not recognise their uses. Eventually he locked and departed the Drum Houses. The night was old. He looked up to the top floor of the Inner Sanctum to see lamps glowing bright in the chamber of the First Cleric. That night he slept with the roar of surf echoing in his mind. He had never heard the sea, yet instinctively he knew what it sounded like…

Next day he noticed for the first time that the unexpected defences of the Garden were sourced in two places. Early morning reports suggested that a pair of sub-systems had immersed themselves into the Garden and were somehow organising defences, so that the metaphors of the Green Man were simply returning to base.

“Do not give up,” Kamnaïsheva instructed him. “We are getting to the tricky parts. The deeper we probe, the more wily the defences. A point will come when the Garden will notice what we did earlier in the month. Then there will be chaos, as the changes we planted surge up from the solid earth.”

“But these two new systems are strong.”

“Two new systems?”

Nuïy tried to think of an appropriate metaphor. “It is as if two chess players are marshalling the defences of the Garden.”

“Two—” Without finishing his sentence, Kamnaïsheva was gone.

With nothing else to do, Nuïy continued drumming. He still believed they could change the Garden, but the anomalies, unexpected Garden states and the peculiar behaviour of Kamnaïsheva were having a draining effect on his morale. As night fell, he left.

He went to Deomouvadaïn’s house to discuss what he had learned. There he found a strange man, dark of skin, bulky, with a hunched posture that suggested wounding or disablement. The man scratched a ragged beard.

“This is Tantaïtra,” Deomouvadaïn said, “my man out in the urb. He has a strange tale to tell.”

“That I do,” said Tantaïtra, in an accent Nuïy recognised as belonging to the outer districts of Veneris. “I went up to the Cemetery to locate the Band of Herb Smokers, only to discover that they were in hiding. Some sort of feud is being played out among the gravestones. One man in particular, Argomaïtra, is being sought. So I talked to members of the Band of Four Males, and the Band of Some Depth, both of whom spend their time digging up oddments of silver technology. They were able to point me to the Band of Finding, Aha, whose leader is Argomaïtra’s uncle—an irascible man of ninety. The Band of Finding, Aha also have a feud with the Band of Herb Smokers. I was able to persuade my contact that damage could be done if I was given information. I learned that the Band of Herb Smokers formerly consisted of four men, one of whom was Kirifaïfra, now a resident at the Determinate Inn, Veneris. So I walked down to that inn and entered on the pretext of thirst. There I tried to engage the young man Kirifaïfra in talk, but he suspected me and forced me out with a projectile flower. I then returned to Emeralddis.”

Deomouvadaïn nodded. “You’ve done well.” He showed Nuïy a sketch that Tantaïtra had made of Kirifaïfra, then said, “It’s up to us now. We have to find and interrogate this man.”

“But we are confined.”

“Yes. Curse it!”

Nuïy quailed to see this rare expression of frustration, implying that even Deomouvadaïn was unable to think of a way of avoiding the gaze of Sargyshyva’s spies. Deomouvadaïn dismissed Tantaïtra with a handful of golden acorns, then asked Nuïy, “What stage are we at with the drumming?”

“We are close to the end. The Garden is metamorphosing. But there are difficulties, and the Green Man is being sorely tested.”

“Hmph. And the Analyst-Drummer?”

“Behaving bizarrely,” Nuïy reported, describing the most recent incidents.

“I’m sure he and Sargyshyva are plotting, possibly with Zehosaïtra. Gaddaqueva is out of it. We must find out what’s going on!”

Softly, Nuïy said, “You are unquiet tonight, Recorder-Shaman.”

“I’ve heard news from Zehosaïtra. This mustn’t be told to anybody. D’you understand?”

“By the strength of Our Lord Green, yes.”

Deomouvadaïn nodded, then sank back in his chair to gaze at the ceiling. “Events are coming to a head,” he said. “I’ve heard a report that the Shrine of the Sea are massing boats and even ships in the harbour. That can only mean one thing. An attack on Zaïdmouth, and presumably on the Garden. It may be that such an attack is linked with the flower crash.”

Nuïy was unable to stop a cry of anguish escaping his mouth. “But Recorder-Shaman! The moat is salty. Metaphoric data is being loaded upon our own metaphors and the Garden is built on sand!”

“What!” Deomouvadaïn cried. “Then it is Kamnaïsheva and Sargyshyva. We must stop them.”

“But how?”

“There’s no time to waste. We must speak to Zehosaïtra. Follow me.”

They sped out into the clerical yards and up to the Inner Sanctum, where they brushed passed the guards and ran up to Zehosaïtra’s personal chamber on the next floor up. Zehosaïtra welcomed them into his quarters.

Deomouvadaïn outlined what they knew. Nuïy discovered as he did that Zehosaïtra had yesterday warned of the Shrine of the Sea, only for Sargyshyva to dismiss the reports as fanciful. Deomouvadaïn told of everything: Nuïy’s suspicions, the drugged Second Cleric, and the new information regarding the salt and the sand.

Zehosaïtra pondered this for five minutes, before sitting upright to say, “I am the de facto leader of this Shrine. I must make the right decision.” He looked across at a statue of the Green Man, then concluded, “We three must confront Sargyshyva. There is no point in skulking now that the Shrine of the Sea has massed its forces. If we are left on the sidelines they will murder us. We must go. Come!”

So Nuïy found himself following the two clerics, with their angered faces, bristling beards and flapping cloaks. He felt lost amidst chaos. He followed them like a boy trailing older brothers.

But one final shock lay in store. As they ascended to the top of the Inner Sanctum they heard weeping. Rounding the corner they saw, kneeling before his own door, a mewling Sargyshyva, cloak muddied, hair unkempt, calling out, “Let me in! Let me in, fiend!”

Zehosaïtra ran up to the First Cleric and skidded to a halt beside him. “What is afoot?”

Sargyshyva seemed to care nothing for his extraordinary appearance. He implored Zehosaïtra, “The fiend’s in there. He’s locked and triple barred the door. We must get inside before he departs us forever.”

“Fiend?” Deomouvadaïn said. “What fiend?”

“Why, Kamnaïsheva!”

Zehosaïtra hesitated, then declared, “We must go and make counsel. Follow me, all of you!”

All four men ran down the corridor and into an ante-chamber off the Scroll Room, where they sat around a table, Sargyshyva and Zehosaïtra on one side, Deomouvadaïn and Nuïy on the other. Again it was Zehosaïtra who took charge of the situation. “This is a Heretic’s Council,” he declared. “Kamnaïsheva has proved himself a traitor to the Green Man.”

“What’s he done?” Deomouvadaïn asked Sargyshyva.

Sargyshyva gulped and seemed close to breaking down. “We had an arrangement. I die inside t’mention it. He promised me eternal life in the networks. We two would leap in together. Now he’s forced me out of my own quarters.”

“Why? What’s in there?”

“The great golden statue. It’s an incarnation of the Green Man, with vast potential.”

Deomouvadaïn sagged. “You mean it’s plugged into the networks?”

“Yes.”

“Then the Analyst-Drummer must at all costs be stopped,” Zehosaïtra stated. “He could do anything from inside there.”

Sargyshyva began, “He could—”

“Enough speculation,” Zehosaïtra said. “There’s only one way. Force. We must fetch bull mastiffs from the kennels and have them smash open the door.”