“Yes.”
“Remember that all networks are dynamic systems. Although the soil of Emeralddis is rigid with innumerable roots, they are nonetheless changing. You must be dynamic. The change you make must not be a static, surface effect. You must be ready to feel the flow of data and to respond to it in real time.”
Nuïy nodded. He understood all of this. “Very well.”
Kamnaïsheva nodded back. “Are there any final questions?”
“Is there a time limit?”
Kamnaïsheva glanced across at Zehosaïtra. “None that we have decided. But do not be tardy. The Third Cleric is a busy man.”
Nuïy said, “Then I am ready.”
“Effomnegeen!” Kamnaïsheva called.
Sensory overload. Nuïy almost jumped off his stool from the speed of the response. He sat inside a jungle of flowering vines, lianas everywhere carrying massive pink blooms like lips, above him nets of blue and purple flowers, far off at the end of the Lodge fronds of red and orange clematis. Water trickled, insects stridulated, and he thought he even smelled the scent of the blooms. The shock made him quiver, but soon, as he remembered that this was a manifestation of thousands of databases interacting to mimic a jungle, he controlled himself. He gripped the drum between his knees. Already his memory was flinging out the contents of rhythmic compartments. Soon a tentative structure built itself before his mind’s eye. He heard it resonate in his mind’s ear.
Go!
He drummed. The hide was warm and bone dry, so it resonated to perfection. No slackness in this device. Every rhythmic sequence sent data metaphors directly into the system.
He began by sending leaf data in an attempt to change the inner structure of the flowers to that of leaves. Some of this was successful; he saw blue flowers turn green, saw petals go flat. He repeated successful rhythmic sequences, building up a data into a series of waves so perfectly timed the networks seemed to throb in synchrony. When he had changed every flower above him he realised that he was succeeding. Now he had proved the power of his skill, he must look and hear deeper, to change the jungle itself into a cool, leafy glade, with thick trunks and mossy boughs, suitable for the presence of the Green Man.
After fifteen minutes of slow drumming he had altered every flower to a leaf, but then he saw that new flowers were curling out of buds with time-lapse speed, glowing with the intensity of their yellows, oranges, and reds. Nuïy brought in faster, more complex rhythms, adding fills to crush the chirrupping sound into something more like a soughing breeze among leaves.
More flowers grew. So this was the dynamic quality that Kamnaïsheva had warned of; the Lodge had its own systems, and they wanted the jungle back. Now he was fighting, competing against a great inhuman brain.
This excited him. He revelled in the challenge. He had no doubt that he could convert this abomination of a jungle into cool forest.
He drummed on. To give himself more memory he stopped tracking real time. He immersed himself into the jungle, feeling hate and disgust in his mind as he did so. He wanted nothing more than to convert this place—that seemed like a nightmare from his childhood—into the clean green of the Green Man. He felt that if he succeeded, the Green Man himself would notice him.
Choosing new metaphors of growth and change, of the cycle of leaf to humus to nutrient to leaf, he attacked the systems, forcing the jungle to accept colder rain, to put down deeper roots, to alter the thinness of the soil into something cooler, deeper, more rocky. By forcing biomass to enter the soil and leave the jungle itself, he achieved a new depth that the jungle could not fight. Its shallow diversity was no match for simple depth. Nuïy smelled humus, felt cold rain on his skin, and heard the sounds of thrushes, owls, and, far above him, a lark. Because he felt right sitting in this environment he was able to use feedback from his own senses, enriching the forest, making the leaves grow, banishing insects, creating tough bark and thick roots and chunky acorns.
The forest responded. Slim green saplings sprang up just yards away, and he felt new leaves caressing his skin as they shot up around him. Rainfall ceased, the heavens cleared and the sun came out. Birdsong deafened him. Leaves were all around now, almost suffocating him, as the glade he had created became a small opening, then just a gap between huge trunks and leaf-loaded boughs.
The intensity suffocated him, but he loved it. He felt as if the Green Man had manifested. Leaves and branches struck his skin, and his feet stood upon damp soil. Down through the forest the sun shone in columns angled away from the vertical, creating pools of light that he could just see through the press of leaves. He heard deer. He felt badgers tunnelling below his feet. He was here.
A distant voice tried to pierce the forest noise. It reminded him of his own voice. A growling, phlegmy voice. Another drifted beside it, deep, possibly angry. Nuïy could only concentrate on the forest. He had stopped drumming. His limbs seemed paralyzed as he breathed in the beauty of the forest.
The voices were closing—
“NUIY!”
The voice yelled into his ear. He fell off his stool. He smelled the breath of the shouter. His vision was poor, blurred, particularly in his right eye.
Two men were pushing through the undergrowth. Deomouvadaïn and Zehosaïtra. Nuïy watched with horror as their green streaked faces closed.
“Nuïy!” they shouted, “get out!”
He was lying in a forest, an awesome, gloomy, dank—
“Nuïy! Wake up!”
Somebody grabbed his hand. He screamed and pulled it away.
A voice barked, “No, Third Cleric, he won’t. He’s physically remote. Let me get him!”
Nuïy tried to wake from the trance. He remembered something about percussion. A huge, green structure like a pear.
“Nuïy!”
He was suffocating amidst branches and leaves that entwined around his legs. Bramble and nettles caught his arms. Birds everywhere. The sun made the serrated edges of damp leaves glitter. Smell of humus.
“Nuïy! Quick!”
That was Deomouvadaïn. Nuïy tried to focus on the grizzled hair and beard, but it was difficult. The forest was dragging him deeper inside its interior. He was being sucked away from the real world. He did not mind.
A stick was thrust into his face. “Grab it!” Deomouvadaïn shouted. When he did not, Deomouvadaïn smacked it against his head. Faint pain.
When Deomouvadaïn ordered him again, he grabbed the stick. He was dragged along the peaty soil into a less dense area, full of nettles, docks and ivy. Deomouvadaïn was crawling through the undergrowth, pulling him.
He recognised a tunnel. The hall. When he saw daylight, and against that the silhouette of Kamnaïsheva, he returned to the real world, stood up, and with Deomouvadaïn at his side stumbled out of the Percussion Lodge.
The four men stood in the road. A crowd had gathered. Nuïy looked back to see the walls of the Lodge trembling, here and there twitching in the aftermath of some spasm.
“Well, lad,” Zehosaïtra said. “Well, well…”
Nuïy felt ill. He had hurt the Third Cleric perhaps. Something bad had happened, and he was the cause.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
Kamnaïsheva said, “There is nothing to apologise for. We were taken aback. You passed, Nuïy. You did far more than we expected.”
“What happened?”
“You altered the visual and sonic metaphors of the data as we hoped you would. But then you went a level deeper. The substance of the Percussion Lodge itself became malleable and manifested your streams of data. You created the physical semblance of a forest. We have never seen anything like it.”
Zehosaïtra smiled. “You are a genius, lad. If you can do this, who knows what you might achieve with a bit of training?”
“I have been trained,” Nuïy said.
Deomouvadaïn coughed. “No offense, Third Cleric. Nuïy is still naive. He doesn’t understand the meaning of full training. He didn’t mean to appear arrogant.”
&nb
sp; “No offence was implied, Recorder-Shaman. Nuïy is young. We are old. When Nuïy is old, he will serve the Green Man even better than he did today.”
“I will,” Nuïy confirmed.
With the crowd cheering Zehosaïtra, they rode home on the autodogs. Nuïy felt like a senior cleric, but with Deomouvadaïn behind him he was frustrated, unable to enjoy the adulation, so he adopted a hunched posture, the better to disguise his pride.
At the Shrine, Deomouvadaïn led him to his hut, where he said, “You did well. Zehosaïtra was impressed. Soon, the penultimate stage of yer induction will take place. You must impress Sargyshyva. That’ll be a harder task.”
“What then is the ultimate stage?”
“All I can say is that the Green Man wants to change the way Zaïdmouth is governed. For historical reasons, the hag un-men have controlled Zaïdmouth in a pact that has existed for fifty two years. It must change. Clerics of the Shrine of the Green Man are banned even from the Outer Garden.”
“We must have a say,” Nuïy agreed.
“Sargyshyva is creating the final plan. He’ll inform you of it.”
Nuïy could not stop the grin. “I am to see him?”
“Yes,” Deomouvadaïn growled. He frowned. “Now, then. We’ve one final affair to clear up.”
“What is that?”
Deomouvadaïn glanced around the clerical yards. “We’d better go into yer hut.”
Inside, Nuïy offered Deomouvadaïn a cup of water, but he refused. “You remember the task I set a few weeks back.”
For a moment Nuïy did not know what Deomouvadaïn meant, but then he remembered what he had done with the sliver of metal root. “Yes,” he said, trying to keep his expression neutral.
“Did you do the deed?”
“I did.”
Deomouvadaïn’s face seemed to contain two expressions; disgust and pity. “So, you did the deed,” he said, quietly.
“I did.”
“You’re lying. The man remains alive.”
Nuïy shrugged. “The root must have failed. No technology is perfect.”
“No follower of the Green Man can afford to be a liar. You didn’t do as I told you. The man’s alive.”
Hearing Deomouvadaïn speak in these terms made Nuïy quail. If the Green Man could read his thoughts he was done for. He would have to hope that this little secret could be kept buried in the depths of his mind, along with all the other bad things. Looking into Deomouvadaïn’s eyes, he said, “I killed a victim. I introduced the bramble root into fruit on the bedside table. I thought this fruit would be eaten and the sliver ingested.”
“You lie, Nuïy.”
“The victim ate the root. That is complete truth.” And it was!
But Deomouvadaïn glared at Nuïy, then walked to the door. “You’ll never beat me, boy. I’m the Recorder-Shaman. I know everything. I know you’re lying.”
Nuïy tried to bring a little worry into his expression, the better to convince Deomouvadaïn. “I killed the victim. The apple was eaten. The root was ingested. There can be no doubt.”
Deomouvadaïn paused, as if thinking. Slowly, he approached Nuïy, studying his face. “Nuïy,” he said. “That eye.”
“It is defocussed. But I can see well enough out of the other.”
“Can you, now.”
There was a flash of motion. A thunk to his chin. Nuïy fell to the floor and consciousness drifted away.
He woke.
He was lying in a bed.
He felt pain.
Pain in his head, especially in his right eye.
He opened his eyes. Only the left eye received light, although the right seemed to be open. That whole area was numb. He brought his hand around to feel his right eye, but jerked it away when he felt a hard, foreign body there. His heart began to thump.
He was in his hut. Alone.
Again he felt the thing over his right eye. It seemed to be a piece of wood. Two cords went around his head, as if securing it.
He stood up. Wobbly, he walked around his bed. It was night and in a window he saw his reflection. There was something on his face.
He went to a mirror and saw that a piece of carved wood painted pink had been tied around his head.
He pulled it up. He saw an empty socket.
CHAPTER 9
At last there were hints of spring. Along the narrow alleys of Veneris the winter flowering blooms drooped, their petals dropping off and sinking into the earth like ink into a sponge. But a surge of new shoots took their place, presaging the excesses of the season of growth. Along the centre of every street, alley and passage grew a line of slim buds, while gardens and yards also acquired a veneer of green. People began to notice an increase in the numbers of insects, but as yet they were only odd bees, hoverflies and groups of butterflies acting in concert. And night flowering networks began to attract moths, so that in one district it was difficult to come home from inn or Shrine without some hairy-winged creature flapping into a face.
In some districts the appearance of scented white clematis made walls and roofs look as if winter snows had returned.
In the paddock behind the Determinate Inn, Manserphine visited Eollyndy, creeping from her room at dawn, checking that the supine gynoid remained in position, then returning for a bath, and breakfast. After the initial interaction the gynoid became semi-conscious, but over a period of days Manserphine noticed small changes in the orchids around the body, as they angled their heads towards it; small sensors laid along the inner surfaces of the petals were compound eyes and ears. The local networks were aware of the new garden occupant, which meant that Dustspirit was somehow preparing for the great leap into physical form.
Manserphine tried to imagine how it could be possible for an abstract form to become embodied, but the task was beyond her. She did not believe in the concept of spirit, or soul, as did the clerics of the Shrine of Flower Sculpture, or those of the Green Man. Our Sister Crone was a woman of one life, mind forever entwined with body.
One cool morning Manserphine noticed a single white daisy poking out from under the loose hat worn by Eollyndy. Carefully, she tried to pick the seam, but it remained taut. She went to fetch a pair of scissors, which she used to cut open the side of the hat. After ten minutes of painstaking work she had laid open the seam. She pulled the hat away to reveal the plastic beneath.
She was shocked by what she saw. From the forehead of the gynoid a multitude of shoots had grown, and some had broken free to flower. One had sought light through the holed seam. Manserphine laid bare the gynoid’s body, knowing it was now far beyond talking to her, even of noticing what she was doing. It would be in some dream of the starry sky changing into blue sky; perhaps the first tender touches of Dustspirit’s abstract fingers exploring its mind. She studied the flowers. There were many species, among those she recognised being bluebells, green-rose, miniature orchids, and even what seemed to be the tough stalk of a future sunflower. This could only mean one thing. Eollyndy’s internal structures—mysterious even to many in the Wild Network Guild who looked after the interests of the gynoids—were preparing links to the networks.
She jumped as a bee buzzed by and settled on the daisy, making it bow down to the earth. Well, there was proof of her supposition. Soon the links would be manifest. She realised that the moment of embodiment was close. She could not guess how close, but it must be a matter of days.
“What are you doing?”
She jumped. She had not heard any approach.
It was Kirifaïfra. The rising sun lit the right side of his face, so that, unshaven and wearing just a short nightshirt and sandals, he looked slightly unhinged. In the morning chill his breath plumed white.
“What are you doing?” he repeated. He did not seem angry, just curious. Clearly he had just risen.
Manserphine glanced down at the exposed gynoid. The bee had gone, but the daisy still bounced on its stalk. “There is an explanation for this,” she began.
“Well, I can’t w
ait to hear it,” Kirifaïfra said, walking past her and kneeling to examine the scene.
Manserphine sat on the ground beside him, smoothing out her dress so that it covered her legs. “You must keep this a secret,” she said. “Nobody else, not even your uncle, must know about it.”
“All right, but I’ll need the truth.”
“That you shall get,” Manserphine said, a little stung.
He turned away from her, reaching out to smooth the damp, mildewed hair of the gynoid. His touch was sure. He felt the skin with the back of his fingers, then touched the gynoid’s fingers. He may have been acting for her benefit, but she was touched.
“This is a gynoid from Blissis,” she explained. “She was called Eollyndy, and she was a blank—a dud. The network entity that should have welled up inside her brain failed to create a personality. I’m waiting…”
“For what?”
This would be difficult. “Let me move on to the flowers,” she said. “Networks are linking. Soon, there will be lots of insects. If anybody happens to notice from the kitchen window there could be trouble.”
Kirifaïfra glanced back, then said, “They won’t. The line of bushes will block the view. But what are you involved with here?”
“I can’t tell you everything because there are Shrine secrets involved. You should understand that. Suffice to say that something from the networks is coming here, something—”
“Somebody, you mean.”
Manserphine paused. “Well, possibly somebody. A presence is expected, and that presence knows things about me. I must speak with it, perhaps help it complete its plans.”
“I’ll help too.”
So simply said. Manserphine pitied him. He dabbled in things he knew nothing about. Nor could he know, being a man. She laughed, then said, “Perhaps. If it is appropriate.”
“You know it won’t be.”
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings. But yes, the chances are small. After all, I am the Interpreter of the Garden. One in thousands.”
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