Flowercrash (32 page)

CHAPTER 21

Manserphine was trying to sleep when a messenger from one of the houses opposite the Determinate Inn came to have her woken; and now here was one of the Shrine initiates at her door.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Two hours after midnight, sister.”

“Oh… and I have to go to—”

“The Determinate Inn. The girl said it was urgent.” Then the initiate spoke the code-word that Manserphine insisted on using for emergencies.

Sighing, she paid over a brass cowrie, pulled on yesterday’s dress, shrugged a woollen robe around her shoulders, then stumbled out into the corridor. Outside the Shrine she had to struggle through the foot-deep layer of deactivated hoverflies that now choked every passage, courtyard and street in Veneris. It was like forging through a snowdrift. The smell of decaying oils—sweet and yet musty—was overpowering. And yet through this drift a myriad of violet flowers poked.

At last she found herself inside the Determinate Inn, where she found Vishilkaïr, Kirifaïfra and Shônsair. “What’s happened?” she asked.

Shônsair replied, “There has been an attack on the Wild Network Guildhall. Alquazonan was almost captured by men. She is damaged and there is worry concerning a possible miscarriage. We need to make council and decide what to do.”

Manserphine cursed, sat down, then accepted a whiskey pick-me-up from Kirifaïfra. “Who are these damned men? Emeralddis criminals?”

“Clerics of the Shrine of the Green Man, more likely. They control the ancient autodog technology, and two such beasts were seen.”

“They know something,” Manserphine said, “and they’re trying to stop us. I bet Baigurgône is behind it. She might know about the link between our plans and the Wild Network Guild. She might know of Zahafezhan.”

“Let us hope not. But whatever the motive, we must think of Alquazonan. If she is pregnant, she must be protected.”

“She needs to be hidden,” Manserphine mused.

“Could she be hidden in your Shrine?” Shônsair asked.

“No. It’s too open. Besides, I don’t want attention drawn to me. As yet the clerics don’t know of my private work.”

“They know about your private life,” Vishilkaïr observed, “by which I mean the mermaids, the interface and the rest of it.”

“I must keep this inn a secret for as long as possible,” Manserphine said. “And yet, this inn would be the best place to hide Alquazonan. No nosy guests, peace and quiet, and most important of all, we’re all aware of the plan. Is Omdaton safe?”

“She is on our side,” Vishilkaïr confirmed.

“Then my advice is to bring Alquazonan here. She can be put in an upstairs room for now. To involve outsiders would be the big mistake. Here, we all trust one another.”

“Very well,” Shônsair said.

Manserphine asked, “Where’s Zoahnône?”

“With Alquazonan at the Guildhall. We shall spirit Alquazonan away and bring her here.”

“Wait,” Kirifaïfra said. “There’s a bottleneck where the floods meet the Woods. It might be better to take the long route, around the Woods to the north, then around the further edge of Veneris.”

“Yes,” Manserphine agreed, “there’s a deep lane that I use to walk down to the shore mermaids. You could find that, then follow it until you see the Shrine of Our Sister Crone, then make east through the urb. If you use the wicket gate off the common land behind the inn, nobody will see you arrive here. Do it tonight.”

“Then I must go,” said Shônsair. “There are but three hours until dawn. Wait here, all of you.”

With that imperious command, she departed.

Manserphine was left yawning. “This is going to be a difficult day,” she remarked. “I have to be in the Garden later this morning.”

Silence from everyone.

The hours passed. Manserphine sat half asleep in Kirifaïfra’s arms, sitting in the bay window, violet flowers outside tinkling as the wind shuffled them; and the moths came in their thouands. Insomnia kept her away from sleep, but curious half-visions came to mind, of great golden flowers, black bees, and a half running, half stumbling flight through the lush excesses of the Cemetery…

“She’s here.”

Manserphine jumped out of semi-slumber. The back door was open, letting a cool breeze into the inn, fragrant with night crocus; then footsteps and low voices in the kitchen, and the door shut. A dozen autospiders began scuttling towards the kitchen.

With the front shutters closed, all the conspirators assembled in the common room. “Did it work?” Manserphine asked.

“Yes,” Zoahnône replied.

“I am not enjoying this summer,” Alquazonan grumbled. “When will you believe I am not pregnant?”

“Are you hurt?” Manserphine asked.

“A beast dropped me to the floor. I do not hurt, but something has changed in my belly.”

“The gestation has been altered,” Shônsair said. Manserphine noticed cords in her neck flexing, as if under the stress of the moment. “There may be a miscarriage.”

“We have postulated a fifty two year pregnancy,” Zoahnône pointed out. “At worst, the birth will be early.”

“There will be no birth,” Alquazonan insisted. “I am cancerous. It is a great lump. The scan proved it.”

Manserphine decided to break the argument. “We don’t truly know what may happen. This is a historical first.”

“I don’t agree,” Alquazonan told her. “In your vision you saw a humanoid infant. I carry a formless lump.”

“Perhaps a few more years development are required,” Kirifaïfra suggested.

“I hope not to remain here for so long,” Alquazonan declared. “In fact, I won’t. I am the leader of the Wild Network Guild with many responsibilities.”

“For now,” Manserphine said, trying to mollify them all, “stay here and recover from your fall. Who were the attackers?”

“Two men with autodogs, most likely clerics from the Shrine of the Green Man. They intoxicated me with a softpetal spray.”

“Well, you’re safe now,” Manserphine said. “Vishilkaïr, show her the secret room upstairs. I’m off to the Shrine.”

After a kiss from Kirifaïfra, she departed.

~

Further changes…

She discovered that the Garden had altered again. For some weeks it had been moving from simple monochrome into a gloomy purple mode, as the networks of the Cemetery took over those ecological niches left open by the demise of the flower networks. Violet blooms and black flowerheads held Cemetery metaphors; necromantic knowledge, very ancient knowledge. The Garden was metamorphosing and they did not know where it would end.

Manserphine shivered. Unlike the flower networks, most Cemetery species were evergreen. If the Garden failed to die during the five month winter recess, then the opportunity for Baigurgône to complete her plans would be much improved.

The majority of the day was tedious—endless discussion of what to do, with never an answer in sight—and by afternoon she was too tired to care for official work. Taking a few hours sleep in the early evening, she woke half refreshed, put on a new dress, drank a mug of green tea and made for the Determinate Inn. The two men were out, but Zoahnône and Shônsair were upstairs standing beside Alquazonan, who lay stretched out naked on a bed, the lump in her belly thrusting upwards. Manserphine stopped at the door, surprised by this sight, glancing at Zoahnône and Shônsair, and then at the patient. She was intrigued to see that Alquazonan was formed like a human woman, even down to bushy pubic hair, but there were lumps on her stretched belly that looked like infected insect bites.

“Is all well?” she asked.

Zoahnône glanced at her, face neutral. “Something is happening. The lump is moving and Alquazonan reports a sensation similar to pain, yet with twinges of ecstasy. We worry about miscarriage.”

Manserphine sighed. “Can’t we find out what is going on?”

“You put it well when you described this as uncharted territory.”

“Then all we can do is wait.”

“I suspect we will not have to wait long.”

Manserphine returned to the common room. Her body clock was so out of phase with the rhythm of the day that she felt disconnected; lacking sleep, awake from the tension of events, tired of her Garden work, desperate to feel Kirifaïfra’s body upon hers yet too exhausted to actually do anything. Sighing, she drank more whiskey.

Kirifaïfra and Vishilkaïr returned an hour after midnight. While Vishilkaïr locked and barred the door, Kirifaïfra threw two false beards upon the table, then slumped into a chair and downed a glass of vodka in one.

“You’ve been to Emeralddis,” Manserphine said.

“Yes. Checking out rumours.”

“Are there any?”

“We were only interested in the Shrine. It seems there is something going on there, but nobody knows what. The locals report a great cloud of insects at the time of Baigurgône entering the networks. They also report comings and goings more recently, but it is difficult to separate truth from guesses. Certainly, the Shrine is up to something, but we knew that already.”

“There was one thing,” Vishilkaïr said. “You remember the tall, silent youth with the pot plant who came here? He did something catastrophic down at the Percussion Lodge some months ago. He’s been seen going in and out of the Shrine a lot.”

“Nothing much to go on,” Kirifaïfra said, “but it’s a start.”

They retired to bed. Stimulated by the spices in her drink, Manserphine pestered Kirifaïfra, until they made love and she almost fainted from her joy. She stretched, gazing out of the window. Some of the iris outside were so tall their screen-heavy heads knocked against the glass, and for a few selfishly erotic moments she wondered if it would be possible to tease out from their active nets a visual record of the night’s activities. She laughed at how she had changed.

But tomorrow she had a vital task to perform. After the Garden session she would go into the northern garden and at last pull out from the matted networks a certain procedure copied into a crocus bulb. Then she would take it down to the mermaids.

The day was very hot, and hoverflies were even more numerous than usual. Masked against them and carrying a parasol, she took the crocus bulb south, wading through the insect drifts along the green lane to the shore, where she saw half a dozen mermaids lying at the edge of the sea. Neither Abvoloyns nor Gholequie was present, but one young mermaid slipped into the sea, and ten minutes later both of them were sliding onto the shore.

“Here’s the procedure,” Manserphine said, kneeling at their side as excitedly they examined the bulb. “I went to Novais and caught a dozen of the reified abstractions from the back of the Shrine of Flower Sculpture. Then I created a hardpetal interface and set the whole arrangement in the garden of my Shrine, where they evolved very nicely. Some were weak, but this one is very strong. It only wants to reproduce itself.” She laughed. “Rather like me at the moment.”

Gholequie looked up, to say, “I must meet this lover of yours.”

“One day I’ll bring him down here, and we can all swim in the sea.”

“For now,” Abvoloyns said, “we must concentrate on draining the flood. The hardpetal reef is stronger than ever, encrusted with real organisms and softpetal weeds that have coagulated from the outflow of the Shrine of the Sea. They twist and turn as they seek new ideas with which to expand themselves.”

“Have you created your creature?” Manserphine asked.

“Yes. Gholequie, go and fetch one, please.”

Gholequie dived back into the sea. Abvoloyns looked with curiosity at Manserphine to say, “You enjoy a man, then?”

“Oh, yes. I enjoy him.”

Abvoloyns frowned, then glanced away. “Hmmm.”

“Why?”

“No mermaid has ever foreseen you with a lover. But I suppose the future is mutable. Love affairs are so often rooted in chance, whatever they eventually become.”

Manserphine was for a few seconds chilled by this, but she touched the metal braid in her hair, and, reminded of Kirifaïfra, knew that everything would be all right.

Gholequie returned. In her right hand she held a foot long lobster, glowing pale blue like an insect repellent, with two massive claws and beady black eyes. “This is a night lobster,” she said, “which we made from other lobster species. Once it’s imbued with the desire to eat hardpetal it will attack the reef, and in days we should have a hole so big the thing just collapses.”

“Good,” Manserphine said. “Now all we have to do is mate them.”

The lobster was wriggling in Gholequie’s hands. Manserphine moved the crocus bulb near it, and its struggles became more frantic. Gholequie held the lobster flat on the sand, so that Manserphine could roll the bulb up to it without risking her fingers. Immediately the lobster pounced. It curled around the bulb and began eating the wispy outer layers, but simultaneously the bulb itself seemed to leak, and they noticed streams of colour sinking into the lobster’s shell, turning it every colour of the rainbow. After just five minutes the substance of the bulb had sunk into the lobster, which was now eighteen inches long, ferocious, and looking for more. Gholequie picked it up and swam out into the ocean.

“What will happen now?” Manserphine asked.

“More will be made by cumulative action. Unknown to the Sea-Clerics, they themselves have helped us, for the reef has made the concentration of softpetal higher than normal. Our lobster’s intense desires will be communicated to all the other lobsters through the medium of softpetal molecular arrays. All we have to do is wait until the idea they symbolise is so strong the reef itself suffers.”

“Good.” Manserphine looked out across the ocean. “Soon the Sea-Clerics will be relegated once more to irrelevance. But I would like to see Fnfayrq once more. She needs to have her failure explained to her.”

“That is a matter for you, if anybody.”

Two days passed. On the evening of the third, a runner sent to the Shrine of Our Sister Crone told of strange events around the flood. Manserphine walked down with Teshazan and Yamagyny, where they saw a thick line of soggy ground, wet vegetation and slimy paving slabs. The waters were receding fast. They danced for joy.

The only response from the Shrine of the Sea was to post their own clerics upon the rocky edge of their headland, where, in gloomy silence, they watched as during the night the floods sank, the river banks returned, and then the sand of the estuary, until as the sun rose all was as it had been. Silently, the clerics returned to their Shrine.