An un-man walked out from behind a tree.
“Kamnaïsheva,” they said in unison.
She was like, yet unlike. Here she was feminine of figure, tall, yet retaining the intense green eyes of her former incarnation. Something of a new power seemed to shroud her, however, manifested perhaps in the confidence of her walk and her purposeful gaze. She wore clothes of black leather and steel.
She stood a few yards away, hands on hips, to survey them. “I am glad you managed to enter the Cemetery reality. Let us hope you are not still in shock at my appearance. There is much to do.”
“Kamnaïsheva, you tricked us,” said Zehosaïtra. “You soiled the perfection of Our Lord In Green.”
“It was an essential part of my plan. And my name is Baigurgône, though that is not my real name. Use it. I had to have access to a technology suitable for my needs. That of the Green Man was eminently suitable, so I utilised it. You have no complaint for you have benefitted. And now I have you here.” She looked at Nuïy. “You in particular, young man. Without your drumming my metamorphosis would not have been quite so complete, and I would not have been able to anchor myself to this reality.”
“Leave me be, un-man,” Nuïy muttered.
“You won’t be so churlish when you hear what I have to say. And don’t call me un-man, for I am now a pure network entity. You are a guest here in my home.”
“You lied t’me,” Sargyshyva said. “You promised me eternal life in the networks.”
“Don’t push your luck,” Baigurgône replied. She reached into the air and pointed with one finger, whereupon Sargyshyva croaked, pressed his temples and sagged to the ground. Appalled, Nuïy let his fear and hatred leap out like a beast from his mind, so that without moving he had thrust aside the invisible grip and knocked Baigurgône a few steps back.
She recovered immediately. “You did that, Nuïy?”
“Leave him alone!” Nuïy shouted.
Baigurgône stared at him. “You all put on the skull caps as I instructed?”
Nuïy sulked. Baigurgône repeated her question. Nuïy felt a dread come over him, making him want to answer. He replied, “No. There was a pain in my belly and insects crawled over me. Then I fainted.”
“Aha,” Baigurgône said, with a grin. “And do you know why?”
“No.”
“Then let me tell you. In your childhood, Nuïy, a certain interface was implanted into your brain. But it seems you rejected it. The interface sent down links to your belly, leaving you with a structure there not unlike the forehead interfaces of the gynoids. At this moment you are directly connected to the networks, whereas these two clerics are indirectly linked. You have acquired great power.” She pointed into the sky. “Can you see a coloured disk?”
“Yes.”
“That is the Garden.”
Nuïy looked up, then returned his gaze to Baigurgône. “Nobody in my family would have put something in my brain,” he declared.
“Somebody did,” Baigurgône insisted. “Look behind you. The pulsating orange splotch on the horizon is the semi-reality used by the Sea-Clerics. You know them, Nuïy, oh, yes you do! They overlaid their own data when we tried to change the nature of the Garden. They fooled us. But all is not lost.”
“Why should we work with you, un-man?” Zehosaïtra interrupted.
Baigurgône favoured him with a menacing look, then said, “Because I know what may come to pass. As we speak, two enemies of the Green Man are plotting to change Zaïdmouth forever. They wish to create a new kind of gynoid, which, over time, will change both artificial and human culture, and thus the character of the networks. If they succeed we can look forward to a future where our mighty intellects are subordinated to the follies of the emotional body. As you are aware, emotion is an ignoble thing. I offer you my vision of the future. We must build a strong culture of the intellect. Eventually, we must all forsake our bodies and become pure thought, drifting through the infinities of the networks as was meant to be. My offer to you still stands, Sargyshyva, for I deem it not impossible for humans to follow me into the networks. And you, Nuïy. You are one of a handful of agents of change. If we are lucky, the agent of change on the side opposite to us will be fooled and we will be victorious. If not, we can say goodbye to the structures of thought and glittering intellect that could come into existence.”
“Aye t’that, in the name of Our Lord In Green,” said Sargyshyva.
Nuïy stared at him. Baigurgône had enunciated a doctrine so similar to that of the Green Man that Sargyshyva had sworn upon it.
“Who is this other agent of change?” Zehosaïtra asked.
“That is what we must find out,” replied Baigurgône. “It will be a human being linked to Zoahnône and Shônsair, who are the pair opposed to us. If those two succeed, all is lost. But now we have power, for I control vast swathes of the networks, particularly here inside the Cemetery reality. That will demoralise our enemies. But there is still much to do.”
Nuïy looked at the two clerics, who in turn glanced at him, then in wonder at each other. Eventually Zehosaïtra said, “I find this all rather unlikely. You’re an un-man. What can you know?”
“Look beyond your visual preconceptions. You see before you a network entity of pure, abstract thought, thousands upon thousands of years old. I have travelled to another star, to see its light reflected in glass. I was alive when the last human beings upon the Earth struggled against a storm. Is that not marvellous? Is that not what you would desire, as Sargyshyva desired?”
“I suppose so,” Zehosaïtra muttered, though he looked unhappy.
“Do you still desire it?” Baigurgône asked Sargyshyva.
“Yea,” Sargyshyva admitted after a few moments thought.
“And you, Nuïy?”
“I will keep my opinion to myself.”
Baigurgône declared, “Then on a vote of two to one we are agreed to fight the agent of change that I have focussed on. There are others, of course. One, for instance, will be inside the Shrine of the Sea. But struggle is what must concern us—the struggle between the intellect and the body.”
“And what will you do?” Nuïy boldly asked.
“Now I exist in the networks I must prepare for the flower crash.”
“How do we depart this place?” Zehosaïtra asked.
“You simply refocus your attentions upon your bodies as they lie in the real world, and then gently pull off the skull caps.”
“And me?” Nuïy asked.
“You must find your own way.”
Baigurgône turned and walked back to her tree, to be swallowed up by the gloom. Zehosaïtra said, “Back, then, to locate our two enemies.”
“You’ll follow the plan?” Sargyshyva asked, surprise in his voice.
“Of course.”
Nuïy watched as they raised their hands to their heads. Suddenly he felt as though he was going to be left isolated, trapped, and the horrific memory of the insects swarming over his belly returned to his mind. He put forth all his energy to scream, “No, do not leave me!” only to find himself overcome by dizziness.
A mental judder shook him.
He felt the world around him
twist
, as if by a hand external to it, then fade into black.
Suddenly they stood in a garden, Nuïy still dizzy, Sargyshyva and Zehosaïtra at his side, looking puzzled at the new environment.
“Where are we?”
With the dizzy spell fading, Nuïy glanced at what lay around him. It was a garden, certainly, but one unfamiliar, rather old fashioned in design, with brick paths and many flowers set in irregular beds. He saw roses, lavender, crocus, all vibrant with colour and power. It seemed to be night. The sky above was deep purple, starless, but with a small disk floating high, green in colour with splashes of black and purple.
“Where are we?” they repeated.
“I don’t know,” Nuïy replied. “Are we still in the Cemetery networks?”
Zehosaïtra shook his head. “It’s much warmer and it somehow feels different. There must be a way out, so we’d better explore.”
He led them on. For the next two hours they strolled at random. The garden was huge, spreading in all directions, with a variety of areas, some overgrown, others attended to, some full to overflowing with nocturnal blooms, others just areas of grass with a few scented bushes. The paths seemed to run at random. There were no structures, no places of gathering, and when their brick path ran through an area of rosebushes that Zehosaïtra recognised they realised that the garden was a maze with no edge.
Zehosaïtra stared to the horizon. “There is a border,” he said, “and so logically there must be an exit.” He marked the path on which he stood with a white stone, then led them on. The hours passed. The border seemed just as distant as before. Eventually, as the sky began to lighten, they gave up traipsing across fields and through borders to return to the paths, only to discover, minutes after, a white stone on the path ahead of them.
“This is a den of illusion,” Sargyshyva said. “We’ve yet t’return t’the Cemetery. Zehosaïtra, try taking yer skull cap off.”
Zehosaïtra did this, feeling his head for signs of it, only to report, “It doesn’t seem to be there.”
Sargyshyva found a similar problem. “How can we be here, yet not here?”
“It’s a conundrum,” Zehosaïtra said. “Nuïy Pinkeye, d’you have any ideas?”
“None at all,” Nuïy admitted.
“Well, dawn is close. Let’s see what the sun shows.”
So they waited. The sky lightened to blue, at which point white clouds appeared, thin and curved like cirrus, and the flowers took on a new vibrancy that made Nuïy sick.
“What if there is no sun?” he told Zehosaïtra, as their wait became increasingly uncomfortable.
“There must be.”
“This is not the real world,” Nuïy stated. “We are in a reality of some kind, unless it is a foul nightmare we all share. Baigurgône has tricked us.”
“Not necessarily,” Zehosaïtra said.
“Of course she has. She is an un-man.”
“Not necessarily,” Zehosaïtra repeated, in harder tones. “Let’s find facts before making a conclusion.”
Sargyshyva pointed. In a hoarse voice he said, “Look! Un-men!”
They all stood. Two un-men wearing flowing robes were walking towards them, perhaps a hundred yards off, as yet unaware of them. Now Nuïy saw a chance to escape. He began running towards them, calling, “We’ll capture them and force our escape.”
“Wait, wait,” came the voices of the two clerics as he ran.
Nuïy felt his body change. He wanted nothing more than to dominate the two women, and he felt a hard shell form around his limbs, olive green with black stripes, while his feet turned to hobnail boots and his hands to steel talons. He felt proud of his new guise.
Now the women saw him. They stopped, stared, then screamed. Nuïy felt like a giant, bearing down upon them, just a few yards away, and he shouted like a barbarian, raising his hands for the first strike that would crush them to the earth.
They raised their hands up as if in terror, and vanished.
Nuïy tripped and fell, rolling long and far in his now unfamiliar body.
He stood upright. Sargyshyva and Zehosaïtra stood staring at him. “This is good,” he told them. “Now I am armoured I cannot be touched. The un-men were banished.”
“You fool,” Zehosaïtra said, showing rare anger. “We could have questioned them and found a way out.
They
left this place! We can’t follow them.”
Nuïy felt righteousness come over him in response to Zehosaïtra’s anger. His transmutation had made him realise how much power he might have in this world, and how little he had outside. And he realised how much better than the real world this garden was. Why not stay here and rule? It could be his domain. It
should
be his domain.
He told them, “You are powerless here, while I wax to heights you cannot guess. Look at me! This armour is the symbol of Nuïy. This is what I am like. Can you do this? Can you claw out and rake the face off an enemy? Praise be to Our Lord In Green for my good fortune.”
Stunned, the two clerics gaped at him, but they said nothing, and Nuïy knew his power had frightened them.
“I will control everybody who comes here,” he said. “We will escape only when I am certain that I can return. That is my word on the subject.”
“Is it,” Zehosaïtra replied.
Nuïy was tempted to strike out, but he knew that would be going too far. Despite his armour, he instinctively felt the two clerics must for the moment be left alone. Gruffly, he said, “I meant no offence. But look at me. I am remade in a hard image. No more softness for me!”
Sargyshyva glanced at Zehosaïtra, then replied, “Yea, so you be, Nuïy. What a clever man you are.” He turned to Zehosaïtra, and said, “I’m tired. Let’s rest awhile and leave Nuïy t’his thoughts.”
They departed. Nuïy watched them go. The balance of power had changed. Before, he had tried to persuade them of his importance to the Green Man. Now he had proved it. He basked in his own success.
CHAPTER 18
Subjective days passed. They explored the garden as far as they could, until Zehosaïtra began to speculate about three dimensional realities with one surface. Wherever they began, they also ended up.
For Nuïy, the experience of compartmentalised hardness that so epitomised his mind became an ever more wonderful thing. As drifting day passed into featureless night, and returned to day, his body grew and became tougher, so that eventually he was almost completely enclosed in the armour. He understood that this armour was the symbol of his experience of himself. The reality was articulating it. To find so marvellous an expression moved him almost to joy, which he was careful to repress by hiding it in the cracks of his new body plate.
But on the third day problems arose. He was now so tough, so beaten metal hard, that walking was becoming difficult, reducing him to a side-to-side shuffle that Zehosaïtra frowned at and Sargyshyva found embarrassing. His neck was too rigid to move, so he was forced to pivot on his titanium steel feet in order to view alternative angles.
The hours passed. Occasionally they would see women entering the garden—they never knew where from—then vanishing when they tried to approach. They also saw Alquazonan, in different, slimmer guise, but she flitted about like a will o’the wisp if they tried to contact her.
On the fourth day Nuïy found walking impossible. Sargyshyva and Zehosaïtra, discussing how their bodies might be coping in the real world, decided to make a final attempt to pierce the hazy horizon. Nuïy was left standing still, unable to move, encased in himself. He watched them go, forcing the sadness and isolation he felt under the plates of his self.
They vanished into bushes. He waited, solid as a statue and no more mobile.
“So.”
A voice behind him. He could not move or turn.
He was pushed to the ground, where he bounced, turned, then landed on his back.
Alquazonan and another un-man looked down on him. “I shall try to locate the others,” the woman told Alquazonan. “See what you can do with this one.”
She departed, leaving Nuïy alone.
Alquazonan knelt at his side, experimentally knocking at the armour of his legs. Nuïy felt a sensation in his head as of sound through wood when his ear was laid upon it. It vibrated right through him, as if he had become solid. She tapped at his chest, then upon his face. She peered across his face, and then said, “Is anybody in there?”
Nuïy realised that his face was disappearing. He was eroding, being smoothed into perfect hardness by the relentless force of his own semi-autistic mind.
“I can see somebody,” Alquazonan said.
Nuïy tried to speak, but his armour did not want to let him. His armour wanted to avoid contact with everybody, to form a shell so tough nothing could get in. And Nuïy would have to live inside. The fear of touch that had characterised his life in the real world was here subdued, because he was so well protected.
“I think we have a man here,” Alquazonan said. She hit hard on his chest, then belly, then on his legs. “Yes, a man. Maybe a frightened man with many barriers. Do you have direct contact with this place, man? Is there somebody lurking inside this metaphor of narcissism?”
She was talking to herself, but Nuïy felt she was trying to make contact. And she had guessed much of what he now knew. Too much. Suddenly desperate, he tried to move his limbs—any limb—but none would respond. It was as if he inhabited a corpse. Repelled by himself, he struggle to move once more, but no limb would follow orders. He felt his mind slipping away. Without sense, without the ability to create motion, he would be nothing.
“I think I have an idea,” Alquazonan said. “An interesting idea that will support my theory.”
She knelt at Nuïy’s side and bent over him, so that her head was above his. Slowly, she closed, until her lips touched Nuïy’s own rocky mouth. He felt the faintest touch. He tried to move, but failed.
The kiss lingered. Alquazonan kissed him without resorting to breathing. On and on and on…
Nuïy felt movement in his fingers. His armour was melting. Alquazonan realised that, and she became a little more passionate. Nuïy’s resistance spiralled into disgust, but he could not move his neck to turn away. He had in his youth heard stories of women making lewd expressions and coarse sounds from the back of their throats when they lay with men. He had ignored it all. Yet his horrified memory had stored the details, and now these details returned to haunt him.
Alquazonan pulled away then sat astride him, lowering her face once more to kiss the melting mask of his face. Nuïy now could feel his neck. He tore his head away, but she settled herself on him, grasped his head with both hands, and kissed with renewed strength.
Yet her expression remained neutral. She was emotionally calm, but her skin became pink, then red, and Nuïy saw perspiration forming.
Now she was moving up and down upon him, that perfect face neutral, balanced, yet flushed, beads of sweat trickling down from her hair line. The contrast between the motion, now centred upon his groin, and the unflustered face hypnotised him, so that only when the sensation became strong did he notice a heat, almost a craving, between his legs. Despite his repulsion, a tiny voice in his mind informed him that the sensation was good, and would become better. He clamped down on it, but like a fish in his memory banks it slipped away.
Faster she moved, her face above his so that their lips just touched and her half closed eyes lay directly before his. Nuïy felt his body melting, dissolving into the earth. Soon he could escape. He tried to twitch his legs, and they moved, as did his arms, but Alquazonan just spread herself more completely over him, pinning him down, moving all the faster. Her weight was like lead upon him. He felt as if it was her very femininity that pressed him to the ground, a weight that seemed to be increasing to an unbearable maximum.
Suddenly Nuïy felt himself lose control. Heat spread from his groin to his thighs, belly, then up his chest like a lick of flame to his throat. He uttered an involunatary groan, then cursed himself for revealing his self.
Nuïy felt his chest melt away, then, at last, the plates at his shoulders and belly. He wriggled out from under Alquazonan, limbs flailing, trying to recover his balance.
“So,” she said, standing also.
Gasping for breath, Nuïy stared at the poised face. He took a few steps backward.
“Still scared of me?” she asked.
Nuïy could say nothing. A nameless horror rose inside his mind as he realised what he had done. Warmth still suffused his belly and groin, an unbearable mixture of pleasure and disgust.
He stared at the sky and screamed.
Cold wind on his face.
Two men lying nearby. He lay on his back.
Nuïy stood, then waited for Sargyshyva and Zehosaïtra to get up. The north wall of the Cemetery stood at their backs, newly laid, or so it seemed from the lack of mosses and lichen. He scanned the horizon. The din of summer insects had gone, leaving eerie silence. He saw two figures walking some distance away, so that the upper parts of their bodies were silhouetted against the sky. He walked forward, the clerics following. Birds twittered in bushes and ice cracked in puddles as he strode through them.
The two people turned when they heard him.
He saw they were un-men. His memory supplied the identity of one of them: Alquazonan. These were the two from inside the reality.
Nuïy followed his fury; he ran forward. The two stopped walking.
As he closed they crouched down to pick up dead boughs from the ground. He slowed. They stood among moss-covered cairns, here and there hawthorn bushes and yellow broom. He chose his weapon, a chunk of slate two feet long. He cared nothing for its unforgiving shape and weight. He wanted to maim.
He attacked with violent abandon. The un-men ducked and weaved, and through their agility he missed them time after time.
“Stop that!” came a shout.
“Stop in the name of Our Lord In Green!”
Nuïy banished the voices from his mind. He swung at Alquazonan, but missed. The other, taking her chance, made to swing her bough around, but Nuïy ducked and, raising the chunk of slate high, dropped her. She collapsed.
Fluids dripped from the head wound. Alquazonan stared in horror. Nuïy turned towards her, overbalanced, and fell towards the ground. As he hit the ground he grabbed at the cairn beside him in an attempt to soften his fall. He hit earth. Moss, leaves and particles of rock and soil showered him as the covering detached itself from the stone.
The sun illuminated the side of the cairn. A golden flower a foot across had been exposed, and now its petals glittered as if polished, while stamens as thick as his finger oozed white fluid, and the central style waved like a hypnotised snake. The stem bore down into the cairn, a yellow cable as thick as Nuïy’s arm. He stared at the flower. A black insect—a giant solitary bee—flew down upon the flower and crawled over the anthers, then upon the style. It buzzed away, then landed upon Alquazonan’s forehead before flying off.
The figure beside Nuïy groaned. Sargyshyva and Zehosaïtra were close. Nuïy took a chunk of slate and smashed the skull. Metal gleamed under spurting liquids, yellow and green, and sacs of plastic slipped out. The limbs relaxed. Alquazonan fled.
Nuïy felt himself dragged from the site. For a moment he thought the ground was moving, before realising that he was being pulled.
Tight grip on each arm. He looked up to see two clerical faces.
“You
touched me!
” he yelled, panic-stricken.
They dropped him.
A mental judder shook him.
He felt the world around him
twist
, as if by a hand external to it, then fade into black.
He felt tired, too warm, and he fell to the earth, covering his head with his arms and hands. The long hours of tension and terror had exhausted him. Now emotions threatened to overcome him, but he calmed himself, then, after a minute of quiet, stood.
The land about him seemed different: warmer, more humid, insects stridulating. But he was tired.
“We must return to the Shrine,” he said. “We are all fatigued.”
“We are out of that garden,” said Zehosaïtra.
“I s’pose so,” Sargyshyva muttered.
Zehosaïtra glowered at Nuïy, before turning away.
Nuïy felt faint. They had a long walk ahead of them. The clerics led the way, but in a copse a few hundred yards from the cairns Nuïy fell exhausted to the ground. “I must sleep,” he said. “So tired.”
He heard voices. “Leave him be,” one said.
“For now, First Cleric. We have to return.”
“He’s failing under the stress of these past days.”
“Give him a few hours.”
Nuïy slept.
~
He felt sun on his face.
He opened his eyes. Through the trees, late afternoon sunlight streamed, yellow-orange beams fanning out from the centre of his perception, and he heard the twittering of birds and, nearer, the buzzing of insects. He smelled old pine trees, gorse, and the faintest whiff of roses. He sat up. His head ached. Zehosaïtra and Sargyshyva were not around, though when he looked to his right he saw them, far off, pointing to the south. Slightly dizzy, unsure what was reality and what dream in his cluttered memory, he tottered over to the clerics. The confusion in his mind worried him. Before, everything had been clear.
Zehosaïtra turned when a twig cracked under his boot. “Nuïy Pinkeye,” he said. “Come and see what’s happened.”
Nuïy joined them at the edge of the copse. Before him lay the southern regions of the Cemetery, crowded with gravestones, tombs and mausoleums; but where it had been green and damp, all was now a mass of colour as countless blooms rose up into the air. Insects flew everywhere, great swarms of them such as Nuïy had never seen before. Illuminated by the evening sun, the Cemetery seemed to be suffocating under blankets of violet. Only the tallest tombstones were visible, and only the larger mausoleums.
“What has happened?” he asked.
Zehosaïtra replied, “We don’t know, but we’re reminded of what Kirifaïfra said about a paradigm shift. See how the Cemetery’s violet and black flowers have expanded.”
“We must get more data if we are to beat the hags,” Nuïy said.
“That we must,” Zehosaïtra agreed.
“Are you ready t’move on?” Sargyshyva asked him.
“I am tired,” Nuïy said, “and my mouth is painful from thirst. I am starving.”
Sargyshyva turned to Zehosaïtra and said, “We’ll depart come nightfall. Go t’the vagrants and beggars of eastern parts and buy food and water. We’ll eat here, then make for the Determinate Inn.”
“Very well, First Cleric.”
Zehosaïtra departed. Sargyshyva glanced at Nuïy and said, “Rest some more, Nuïy Pinkeye.”
Nuïy sat against a tree and gazed out over the flowery nightmare before him. He felt as if the hags had already won. Who could fight this profusion of flower technology? Perhaps only the strangling leaves of the Green Man.
They ate the hard black bread that Zehosaïtra brought, washed it down with sour wine, then made south for the Determinate Inn.
They were shocked by what they saw.
In the streets, the flowers had withered and died. A few petals remained clinging to puny flowerheads, but in street after street the central aisle of flower technology was sucked dry of vitality, to leave crisped yellow remains.
Flower crash.
One other problem was also apparent. The millions of hoverflies generated by the rose monoculture had nowhere to go, and people were having to improvise new ways of avoiding the clouds swarming everywhere. Ultraviolet banners failed to work, and there were uncountable numbers of autospiders weaving nylon nets to capture wayward insects. Indoors, repellent lamps glowed neon blue.
At the Determinate Inn they decided that Zehosaïtra alone must enter. Nuïy was known, while Sargyshyva was too important. Nuïy sat in an alley next to Sargyshyva, and they listened through the air plant.
Zehosaïtra walked in to find both Vishilkaïr and Kirifaïfra present. Both men offered him expressions as black as those under sentence of death. “Why so gloomy?” he asked them.