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 th
irst. 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.
“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 dir
ection. 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.”
Flowercrash Page 30
