“Can you imagine life with no flowers?” replied Kirifaïfra.
Zehosaïtra chose to ignore this, saying, “I’m a traveller. I’d like bed and board for the night.”
Vishilkaïr shook his head and replied, “I’m afraid we’re not taking bookings at the moment.”
“Not taking bookings?” Zehosaïtra glanced around the silent inn. “What kind of inn is this?”
“The usual sort.”
“Are you full, then?”
“No.”
Vishilkaïr’s urbane manner began irritate Zehosaïtra. He said, “It’s a poor deal if a weary traveller comes to Veneris to find the inns closed against him. Still, if it be, it be. I’ll have a cold ale, Innkeeper.”
Vishilkaïr poured him his ale, then set it down in silence. Zehosaïtra handed over a brooch of gold, saying, “This’ll have to do, since I’ve no cowries about my person.”
Vishilkaïr looked at the bauble, then handed it back and said, “Electronic transfer will be fine.”
“My account has been frozen by this loss of the flower networks,” Zehosaïtra temporised.
Kirifaïfra sat by his side. “Odd,” he said.
“It certainly is,” Vishilkaïr added.
Zehosaïtra tried to get the topic of conversation on the right track. “It’s a strange day. Do you think this is the flower crash we’ve all heard so much about?”
“So you too are an itinerant researcher,” Kirifaïfra said. “Aren’t there alot about, unc?”
“There certainly are,” Vishilkaïr agreed.
“The flower crash is not so rare a topic of conversation. Folklore reveals much about it.”
“Does your guardian think that?” Kirifaïfra asked.
Zehosaïtra frowned, aware now that he was playing the part of stooge in a game. “Please be serious, gentlemen. The flower crash affects every corner of Zaïdmouth. It’s no joking matter.”
“That is true enough,” Vishilkaïr said, a gleam in his eye.
Zehosaïtra, recalling how easily Deomouvadaïn and Nuïy had fooled this pair, realised that something had changed. He said, “I’m looking for Shônsair. Do you know where I can find her?”
“I’ve never heard that name,” Kirifaïfra said.
Vishilkaïr added, “Neither have I.”
Frustration crept over Zehosaïtra, and he tried to keep it out of his voice. “You seem ill at ease, gentlemen. Perhaps you know more than you pretend.”
“We know nothing,” came the reply.
“What of the pregnant gynoid?”
They frowned at this. “Pregnant?”
“Yes,” Zehosaïtra replied. “Alquazonan, who goes to the Inner Garden. Surely you know she is related to the flower crash. Perhaps she’s an… agent of change in this world.”
“
Is
she pregnant?” Kirifaïfra asked.
“Why, yes.”
“How?”
Zehosaïtra had talked himself into a corner. This was far more difficult than he had imagined. “Isn’t it obvious?” he said, aware that he was on a losing streak.
“No,” they replied.
Unable to reveal what he suspected about the two, unwilling to reveal how flimsy his guesses were, and incapable of naming Baigurgône, Zehosaïtra was only able to smile weakly, finish his ale, and depart with a cheery farewell.
Nearby, the trio discussed what had happened. Sargyshyva said, “Those two may have been warned of us. Or they may have been following us.”
“In the electronic messages I overheard,” Nuïy said, “new births were referred to as well as the flower crash. We are only a few pieces of information missing. We can go on. Alquazonan would be worth investigating.”
“That’s some time off,” Sargyshyva said. “We must be sure of our plans. For now we’ll return t’the Shrine.”
“I will stay here,” Zehosaïtra said. “I want to watch the inn. Comings and goings may reveal much.”
“Very well,” Sargyshyva said. “Return to us tomorrow.”
Nuïy and the First Cleric returned to the boat, but as Nuïy looked out across the flooded centre of Zaïdmouth he saw a remarkable thing. Dark clouds, that he knew must be bees from the autohives, covered the water. Though they were metal, they floated. Of course, they were deactivated.
~
They returned to the Shrine of the Emerald Man to find that Deomouvadaïn had forged a link with Baigurgône in the Cemetery reality.
“Has the flower crash occurred?” Sargyshyva asked her, speaking directly into a microphone.
A crackling voice came tinny over the speaker. “Yes! We have almost won! I have been empowered by the new Cemetery networks. Soon they will migrate into Veneris, and then across the rest of Zaïdmouth. I will anchor my whole being to the substrate of the Cemetery reality to consolidate my position. Remain in the Shrine for now, until I can investigate the networks and discover exactly what is happening. One task remains. We must locate and destroy the embodied gynoid created by Zoahnône and Shônsair. Only it stands in the way of our final victory.”
“That’s being taken care of,” Sargyshyva said. “Zehosaïtra’s watching the Determinate Inn. We suspect Shônsair and Zoahnône are linked t’the men who work there.”
Nuïy spent an anxious night wondering if they would succeed in their plans. Part of the problem was their lack of facts, and he wondered if, as before, he should work on his own. In earlier months that determination had been punished, but his status was far higher now than it had been. He had dictated terms to the clerics and they had listened.
Zehosaïtra returned at dusk of the next day, and Nuïy was called by Deomouvadaïn to a meeting in the Inner Sanctum. In the scroll room they listened to Zehosaïtra’s report.
“I’ve seen Shônsair and Zoahnône enter the Determinate Inn. They’re in Veneris. But most intriguing of all I saw the Interpreter hag Manserphine also enter, just one hour afterwards. There’s clearly a link. The hags are at the bottom of this. At midnight all three left the inn. The two men locked up and pinched out the lamps. I heard the three un-men speak in the street. The Interpreter said she’d speak to Alquazonan in the Garden. The others said it was a long shot. When the Interpreter departed for her Shrine, the other two walked in the opposite direction. I distinctly heard one suggest that a birth might be imminent.”
“Then we’ve two courses of action,” Sargyshyva said. “We must force Alquazonan t’speak. She knows something. She’s a focus. Perhaps she’s one of these agents of change that we must oppose. Secondly, we must somehow force the two innkeepers and the Interpreter t’speak. That may involve capture.”
“Can we not capture Alquazonan?” Nuïy asked.
“Possibly. It may be best t’capture all four and interrogate them in our dungeons. I’ll decide. For now, we’ll think and plan.”
“There’s also Baigurgône to consider,” Zehosaïtra said. “She offered us vital information without hesitation. That was a significant deed. Yesterday, she confirmed the existence of the flower crash, but she demanded we stay here.”
Sargyshyva nodded and said, “She’s an un-man and not t’be trusted. We’ll exploit her, but follow our own path.”
Nuïy frowned. “I would expect the enemy to know already about Alquazonan. How is it that we do and they seemingly do not?”
Zehosaïtra considered this, then replied, “I believe we do know things they don’t. Before, we only noticed her bulging belly, and speculated. But now we’ve seen things in the Cemetery. Recall the metal flower inside the cairn and the black bee. That’s a network metaphor of transfer. Alquazonan has received something through her forehead. Even Baigurgône knows nothing of that. So why shouldn’t we think that the bee’s the fertilizer, and she the host?”
Nuïy grimaced as he listened to this, but he saw the logic.
“We can only find out by asking,” Sargyshyva said. “It’s time t’make plans. Then act.”
“Don’t ignore Baigurgône,” warned Zehosaïtra.
“If I want to, I will. Our Lord In Green won’t tolerate the presence of the un-man. We must stand up for ourselves. We must plan. Fight. Discover the truth, in the name of Our Lord In Green.”
“Aye to that,” they chorused.
CHAPTER 19
Manserphine’s response to the flower crash was despair. She wandered the alleys of central Veneris, explored the Shrine lanes, strode up to the oldest districts in the north, to find everywhere the remains of blooms flopped like exhausted soldiers at the pathetic and gruesome end of a battle. Screens showed gritty images in black and white. Many, however, were blank.
She walked down to the Sump, where she was able to gaze out over the artificial ocean created by the Sea-Clerics. Sick with despondency, she saw innumerable floating bees, and she realised that the flower crash had deprived them of their natural behaviour patterns. Inutility had caused their demise. The dead bees represented a lost pool of knowledge. She understood too that the Sea-Clerics had been unable to force the flower networks to follow their vision, and so had been unable to control the event itself. But then another thought troubled her. Suppose the Sea-Clerics now returned to the use of force?
It was all hopeless. They had lost. Humanity had lost.
She returned to the Determinate Inn, and slept.
She woke. She lay in bed, Kirifaïfra at her side. Already the inn’s autospiders had rounded up a handful of hoverflies and stached them in their nets, ready for release, but still a few smacked against the window.
It was a Garden day, the first session after the flower crash.
Inside, all nine members were present. Ianniyas, who had become Interpreter during Manserphine’s incarceration, gave her a wide berth, but Manserphine ignored this, knowing that Ianniyas was ruled by her ambition and was probably annoyed at her return from the Shrine of the Sea.
But the Garden had changed. Manserphine, who always managed to slip up her hat when the poppy heads descended, could
feel
the difference.
No longer was it a random collection of borders, bushes, and scented blooms drooping from elegant stems. Now it was grey and damp, stolid and slow under a grey sky, scentless and grim. With only small packets of data moving through the networks, the Garden had been forced to reduce itself to the bare minimum, a low resolution reality fraying at the edges, small and hazy. Already the root backup systems were being overloaded. Soon the whole system would fail, just as it failed every autumn.
They stood in the Outer Garden. Curulialci called for their presence in the Inner Garden, so Manserphine walked over, alongside Yamaygyny and Alquazonan. Again, much was different. The jumble of blooms had been replaced by monochrome. For a while they wandered this new environment, amazed at the cold, the gloom, the bland and pixelated images, taking in the foul air, fearful of what the change suggested.
“It reminds me of before,” Alquazonan reminisced. “About fifty years ago there was a great change, when the Garden split into two.”
“Tell us more,” said Manserphine.
“It was around the time of the Gang of Three. Previously, the Garden had been comparatively bare, but suddenly it was lush, scented, far bigger than before. Now it has returned to something like its earlier state.”
Manserphine considered these words. She passed under a bare brick arch and into a circular arbour about twenty feet across. There was another entrance on the opposite side, but apart from that the arbour was enclosed. The only objects of note were three chairs of twinkling granite, massive like split boulders, yet with natural seats for sitting in.
Suddenly she was aware that she was alone.
She turned. At the arch, Alquazonan and the two clerics were staring in, trying to walk underneath, but somehow unable to. She walked back to them, and said, “Come on, it’s quite safe.”
They heard her, but seemed not to see her, as the lesser members in the Outer Garden saw those of the Inner but did not hear them. Manserphine realised that she was a shifting mirage to them. She stepped out, and they jumped back.
“Manserphine!” Curulialci said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. You cannot walk under the arch?”
They all tried, but the natural forces of the Garden stopped them. Once more Manserphine entered the arbour, looked at the three chairs, then wondered if they were waiting for somebody to sit in them.
Outside, Curulialci said, “You became a ghost to us and we could hardly hear you.”
“It is as before,” Alquazonan said. “Certain members are not allowed across the new boundary. The Garden is now a tripartite reality. We must name this arbour the Core Garden. Yet it is odd that only Manserphine can walk inside. Why is she different?”
“She has silvery skin here,” Yamagyny remarked.
“What causes the other five members of the Garden to halt at the boundary between the Outer and Inner Gardens?” Manserphine asked.
“That is a secret of Our Sister Crone,” Curulialci said, glancing at Yamagyny. The pair looked uncomfortable.
“Now would seem to be the time to share it,” Manserphine said.
They walked off, talking in quiet voices. Alquazonan glanced at Manserphine and said, “I wonder if the flower crash caused this new reality?”
“Do you think there is a link?”
“Well, I cannot help but recall what happened fifty years ago. Then there was a massive change in the Garden.”
“But no flower crash.”
Alquazonan agreed. “There had been a particularly good summer the year before, however, with lots of seeds. The year after… a completely different Garden.”
Manserphine was struck by the similarity to last year’s seed production. “It’s almost as if the networks can plan for future events.”
Alquazonan nodded. “The Wild Network Guild was at the time a minor organisation, since wild networks were not common then. But fifty two years ago those networks became much more numerous, and they have since spread across Zaïdmouth, along with the influence of the Guild I now lead.”
“I must tell my friends Zoahnône and Shônsair,” Manserphine said. “This changes a great deal.”
Again Alquazonan agreed. “Fifty two years ago there was no flower crash, just a bounty of flowers and new networks. This time it is different. The networks have taken a mortal blow. But there are always those seeds lying dormant in the ground, full of knowledge, full of data, awaiting next year.”
Ten minutes later, Curulialci returned to say, “Yamagyny has gone back to inform the other five of the new changes.”
“This secret,” Manserphine said. “What is it?”
Curulialci hesitated, then replied, “Determination of who enters the Inner Garden is made by the Garden itself and is not based on individual merit. It is based on role. Whoever is Grandmother Cleric, Mother Cleric, and presumably whoever is Guildmistress, although so far there has only been one, is admitted. The Garden is an entity with its own rules.”
“Then it is clear that I have for some reason been chosen by the Garden,” Manserphine said. “The networks have their own ethics, you might say. We must ask why I have been chosen.”
“Do you know why?” Curulialci asked.
Manserphine saw that it was time to admit the one difference she knew of. “I have a small confession to make,” she said. “I do not experience the Garden as you do—”
“I knew it,” Alquazonan interrupted. “For some time I have wondered about your skin colour. Now I know. The Cemetery.”
“The Cemetery?” Curulialci said, her face wrinkled with disgust.
“Around my brain there lies an interface,” Manserphine said. “I acquired it by accident. I did not even know about it until later. The hat I wear covers the interface ecology on my forehead. Every Sea-Cleric has access to this technology, and it is why they wear silver circlets.”
“This is not the reason,” Alquazonan confidently said. “Your method of interface is like mine. As we speak now, my body lies supine in the Guildhall, flowers at its forehead. But I cannot enter the Core Garden. No, the Garden, and by implication the networks, sense that you are conceptually different, just as Curulialci, Yamagyny, you and myself are different from the lesser members. It is something in your nature, or possibly in your social role.”
Manserphine remembered what the mermaids had told her. “I am an agent of change in Zaïdmouth,” she said. “Those mermaids sharing my vision can sense it in me.”
“That is a more likely reason,” Alquazonan said.
Curulialci sighed. “Whatever the reason, the change has happened and we cannot reverse it. At least Manserphine has nobody to talk to inside the arbour, since she alone was chosen by the Garden.”
Alquazonan looked at Manserphine, as if expecting a denial.
Manserphine said, “There are three granite chairs inside. One must be for me. I think two other people are expected.”
“That cannot be,” Curulialci said. “The Garden is composed of ten people, six of whom cannot enter the Inner Garden to get to the Core Garden.”
“That is incorrect,” Alquazonan said. “Shônsair and Zoahnône were able to enter the Inner Garden during the attempted transmutation. And there is Fnfayrq to consider. Has she ever attempted to enter the Inner Garden?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then she remains untested. As for Zoahnône and Shônsair, they may be able to enter the Core Garden, depending on what they can offer Zaïdmouth.”
“Zoahnône can offer much,” Manserphine said. “We must ask her to try.”
“That would be a good start. What a pity we will never see Fnfayrq again. She is of an organisation with the potential for change.”
“Bad change.”
“Change, nonetheless,” Alquazonan said. “There are many agents of change in this world, some of who only have the opportunity to alter the sheen on a flower petal, others with opportunity enough to write history. We must sift one from the other until the most important agents of change are identified. Then we must consider their possibilities. Then we must act.”
“Act?” Curulialci said.
“We are not yet defeated.”
With the conversation over, the remainder of Garden business was concluded and then Manserphine left to find Zoahnône. At the Determinate Inn she learned that she and Shônsair were soon expected, so she settled down to wait. At last they arrived, and she told them what had happened in the Garden, concluding, “Change is afoot. Even Alquazonan can feel it. We must try to understand what is happening.”
“Would that we could,” Zoahnône replied. “With Baigurgône controlling the networks many of our options are gone. Indeed, she may soon make a punitive strike on the Garden.”
“What is her goal?” asked Manserphine.
Zoahnône simply replied, “To defeat us.”
“Is that all? Does she know your plans?”
“We don’t know. It’s not impossible. There are a million ways to manipulate the networks if you know what you’re doing.”
Manserphine sighed. “We must win. The embodied gynoid—Zaha whatever her name is—must be born.”
“Manserphine,” Shônsair said, her voice quiet but intense, “have you noticed that Alquazonan is a fat android?”
“Yes.”
“We jested that she may be pregnant, but Kirifaïfra lately reported that the strange men from Emeralddis have linked Alquazonan with pregnancy. Have your visions anything to say about this?”
“I only saw the new being,” Manserphine replied, “not her mother. But Alquazonan spoke to me in the Garden about the flower crash. Perhaps we should all question her face to face in case some fragment of information is thrown up.”
The idea was discussed, then agreed to. Having sent a message to tell Alquazonan they were on their way, they departed the Determinate Inn, leaving Vishilkaïr to look after it.
Two hours before midnight they arrived, to be ushered through the Guildhall up to the top floor, where Alquazonan had her private chamber. This was a single, square room painted black, but decorated with textiles woven from luminous threads all colours of the rainbow, so that a uniform, almost hallucinatory light was thrown into the room. There were no shadows. Elegant censers wrought as statues of women in athletic poses stood free, all isolated by this ubiquitous illumination. There was no furniture except bulky cushions and mattresses thrown at random about the floor.
Alquazonan welcomed them in, and in the manner of Novais aristocrats invited them to take a cushion and gather in the centre of the room.
For some minutes the five sat quiet, as if nobody dared break the silence. The faint whisper of autospiders directing one another to remove hoverflies hissed around them. Then Shônsair said, “Alquazonan, we have during our travels wondered about the cause of your technological cancer. Perhaps you could describe it to us.”
“The cause is a mystery to me,” Alquazonan said, “but describing it is easier. I first became aware of it fifty or so years back, after the change in the Garden, and since then it has slowly grown inside me, pulling power from my internal cells to aid its growth, tiring me, perhaps even eroding my basic parts so that a kind of death is nigh. Soon it will reach my interface, and then I expect I will die.”
“But some of these symptoms are like those of a human pregnancy,” Shônsair said.
“How can I be pregnant?” Alquazonan said. “I am a gynoid. Gynoid bodies emerge from the very earth, from wombs of red hardpetal. Our physiology is entirely non-human.”
“It is the metaphor that counts,” Shônsair said, haughtily. “Suppose you are pregnant—”
“Wait,” Zoahnône cautioned. “Alquazonan does not know of my plan to create the first embodied gynoid.” Briefly, Zoahnône outlined her ideas, concluding, “Shônsair naturally wonders if your cancer is actually the first such gynoid, but of course, it cannot be, since so far we have developed no sure method of linking such a gynoid with its mother. Mating comes before pregnancy.”
“Exactly,” Alquazonan said. “But I am not pregnant with anything. The technology that we gynoids have at our foreheads exists as interface, but it surely cannot expand to create a developing gynoid, even if such a being existed.”
“We do not know that for sure,” Zoahnône said. “Shônsair and I have both developed models for gynoid pregnancy involving the exact process you describe.”
Manserphine had been listening with keen interest to all this. In the silence that followed she said, “There is one thing we do know. My vision told me that the first embodied gynoid is alive, now, today.” Manserphine reached into her mind and tried to pull out the name, but she could not. “Zaha-something,” she said. “That being lives today in Zaïdmouth.”