Exurbia: A Novel About Caterpillars (An Infinite Triptych Book 1) by Alex McKechnie
Authors: Alex McKechnie
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helpfully.
‘Stick in the mud, I should say. And that’s putting it diplomatically. There are openings, Professor. All you have to do is not walk on the grass when the sign says so, and take a hint from a friend occasionally. A very powerful friend indeed.’
Jura scrutinised Bucephalia below, the dank and half-lit hovels in the middle distance, the projects in the foreground. What I would give to live down there now in total obscurity. What I would give to have been born a carpenter or mattersmith. Not drinking pisswater at the top of a mad king’s tower, with his figurative knife to my throat .
‘That shouldn’t be a problem, Your Grace,’ said Jura.
A transport pod arced up and into the night sky pursued by a police flyer, both little more than mere dots on the horizon. Out in the streets, in the living rooms, the houses, the mechanisms of civil life were check and totalling like abacus beads. For every Governance freak, there’s some amateur Ixenite busying away in his basement with logic gates and t’assali breakers. For every grunt there is some unsung revolutionary trying to build a god and the two work at their game like cat and mouse. How long does it continue? Like some ardent cosmic sperm, it would only take one radical to make it to the egg and the game is up.
‘Deep in thought, Professor?’
‘Something like that, yes. The view is spectacular.’
‘Let’s hope this syndicate lot agrees when they arrive, hm? Perhaps the scenery will be enough to stop them annexing the planet.’
‘Can they do that, Your Grace?’
‘They can do whatever they want. Doesn’t that seem like a contradiction to you? Two centuries since they last visited, no supplies, no assistance, minimal technological help, yet still all the power in the hub. Imagine having your absent father turn up at your twenty-first birthday party and announce that your hair’s too long and your lover is ugly. Wouldn’t that irk you, Professor?’
‘I imagine it would. Am I correct in supposing you’re considering a resistive effort of…some description?’
Now we’re on tenuous ground .
‘Oh, I didn’t say that. Besides, what would be the use? We gave it all we could with the t’assali cannons and that thing didn’t even blink. If they send a warfleet out, well that’s that, I should think.’
‘You won’t resist them then, Grand Tersh?’
‘I will resist them, Professor, in the same way you have resisted me this evening. Tacitly and yet without the courage to act on that resistance.’
Horror. I have walked into my own execution. A guard compliment will meet me when I leave. I will be accompanied to a holding facility at the Bureau of Substantiation and tortured gratuitously until I deliver a confession. Then I will be put to sleep on a medical bed with a vial of diaxidom contraldihide. My body will be incinerated in the Bureau of Substantiation’s crematorium and, if I’m very lucky, a few of my ashes will make it all the way from the chimney to the lower Exurbic atmosphere.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, Your Eminence.’
Freezing sweat sheets and nausea. A stifling of the breath.
‘No. I’m afraid of that too, Stefan. And that’s something we can both agree on. The -’ he consulted a small skript, ‘- eighth of Julika, Year of the Silicon River. Is that a date you remember?’
Jura nodded slowly.
‘Radical faction 157C was taken into custody, along with a level orange wiremind rig. The project was an estimated three days from completion, and could easily have resulted in a Pergrin crisis, according to a report you later wrote. And it’s a funny thing, but when a covert mechanical forensics team traced some of the components that had been used in the rig -’
I could take a running jump off of the balcony. He couldn’t stop me in time.
‘- they identified the source as your laboratory at the Stratigraphics Faculty. An interesting coincidence, don’t you think, Professor?’
How has this
‘Stick in the mud, I should say. And that’s putting it diplomatically. There are openings, Professor. All you have to do is not walk on the grass when the sign says so, and take a hint from a friend occasionally. A very powerful friend indeed.’
Jura scrutinised Bucephalia below, the dank and half-lit hovels in the middle distance, the projects in the foreground. What I would give to live down there now in total obscurity. What I would give to have been born a carpenter or mattersmith. Not drinking pisswater at the top of a mad king’s tower, with his figurative knife to my throat .
‘That shouldn’t be a problem, Your Grace,’ said Jura.
A transport pod arced up and into the night sky pursued by a police flyer, both little more than mere dots on the horizon. Out in the streets, in the living rooms, the houses, the mechanisms of civil life were check and totalling like abacus beads. For every Governance freak, there’s some amateur Ixenite busying away in his basement with logic gates and t’assali breakers. For every grunt there is some unsung revolutionary trying to build a god and the two work at their game like cat and mouse. How long does it continue? Like some ardent cosmic sperm, it would only take one radical to make it to the egg and the game is up.
‘Deep in thought, Professor?’
‘Something like that, yes. The view is spectacular.’
‘Let’s hope this syndicate lot agrees when they arrive, hm? Perhaps the scenery will be enough to stop them annexing the planet.’
‘Can they do that, Your Grace?’
‘They can do whatever they want. Doesn’t that seem like a contradiction to you? Two centuries since they last visited, no supplies, no assistance, minimal technological help, yet still all the power in the hub. Imagine having your absent father turn up at your twenty-first birthday party and announce that your hair’s too long and your lover is ugly. Wouldn’t that irk you, Professor?’
‘I imagine it would. Am I correct in supposing you’re considering a resistive effort of…some description?’
Now we’re on tenuous ground .
‘Oh, I didn’t say that. Besides, what would be the use? We gave it all we could with the t’assali cannons and that thing didn’t even blink. If they send a warfleet out, well that’s that, I should think.’
‘You won’t resist them then, Grand Tersh?’
‘I will resist them, Professor, in the same way you have resisted me this evening. Tacitly and yet without the courage to act on that resistance.’
Horror. I have walked into my own execution. A guard compliment will meet me when I leave. I will be accompanied to a holding facility at the Bureau of Substantiation and tortured gratuitously until I deliver a confession. Then I will be put to sleep on a medical bed with a vial of diaxidom contraldihide. My body will be incinerated in the Bureau of Substantiation’s crematorium and, if I’m very lucky, a few of my ashes will make it all the way from the chimney to the lower Exurbic atmosphere.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, Your Eminence.’
Freezing sweat sheets and nausea. A stifling of the breath.
‘No. I’m afraid of that too, Stefan. And that’s something we can both agree on. The -’ he consulted a small skript, ‘- eighth of Julika, Year of the Silicon River. Is that a date you remember?’
Jura nodded slowly.
‘Radical faction 157C was taken into custody, along with a level orange wiremind rig. The project was an estimated three days from completion, and could easily have resulted in a Pergrin crisis, according to a report you later wrote. And it’s a funny thing, but when a covert mechanical forensics team traced some of the components that had been used in the rig -’
I could take a running jump off of the balcony. He couldn’t stop me in time.
‘- they identified the source as your laboratory at the Stratigraphics Faculty. An interesting coincidence, don’t you think, Professor?’
How has this
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