Paradox (26 page)

Adrenaline fading, Tom joined him. Unobtrusively, the shaven-headed man pulled the opening wider, and pointed out into the market. “See her?” It was an old grey-haired woman, autistically scrubbing her hands over and over—

“That's what the membrane does”—he let the hanging fall back into place—“unless I dissolve it. We don't encourage thieves at Kilware Associates. My name is Brino, by the way.”

As Brino turned, a metallic glint in the small of his back denoted another discouragement to theft—as though his quiet, watchful bearing were not enough warning.

Scrubbing, over and over—

Tom shook his head. “I just wanted to look around.”

“That's what the woman said. But don't worry”—Brino chuckled—“we'll get her the antidote when she breaks down and asks for it. That's more than most people would do.”

“Antidote?”

“It's like a permanent skin condition until treated. Very unpleasant. And there's no generic treatment: the femtocytes have to be coded, exactly matching the toxin's receptors.”

“Interesting,” said Tom, wondering if it could be used for his palace's defences.

“Also expensive. That's why most people wouldn't treat miscreants for free.”

Tom frowned.

“Let me just browse by myself. I promise”—with the tiniest of smiles—“that if I want to touch anything, I'll ask first.”

“Very good.” The man, Brino, bowed: as though to an official, not to his liege Lord.

Energy weapons were forbidden in all strata of Tom's realm; even his militia, when that was up to strength, would keep their hardware in armouries until needed. But some of these displayed items, among the blades and chains, skirted the intent of the law: brooches which used lev-fields to spit toxic needles, bracelets entwined with monofilament garottingcord, belts which undid at a touch to form many-stranded blade-whips.

Tom looked at Brino. Small, but with a feline awareness. Much though he disliked the whole concept of this establishment, Tom realized:
This is probably the safest place in my realm.
No thieves in their right minds would try to rob this place.

A whimper sounded from the back of the tent.

“Don't worry.” Brino spoke softly as Tom whirled. “One of our patients, that's all.”

“Patients?”

Just then, black drapery rose, revealing a youth, face webbed with pain and glistening with sweat, limping out of a double chamber formed by the tent's inner partitions. A broad bandage had been fastened around his right thigh, outside his trews.

“Thank you.” The youth's voice was faint. He nodded to a slender woman, clutched a small bag, limped past Tom without a glance, and went out into the marketplace.

The woman was dressed in a dark tunic, similar to Brino's. Beside her, on a bench, a hugely muscled man, running to fat—his face dangerously flushed—looked up fearfully.

“Your turn,” the woman said, and the big man swallowed as the drapes fell back into place, hiding them.

Beside Tom, Brino was gently shaking his head.

“When it comes to weaponry, it pays to get the best.”

“Weaponry?”

“Depending on your definition of the term.” Brino smiled at Tom. “Implants, mindware—it's all part of the same thing.”

Tom stared out of the tent's main opening. The bandaged youth was disappearing behind a stall, heading towards an exit tunnel.

“Cheap mindware was his problem.” Brino spoke right beside Tom's ear, and Tom started: he had not heard the man approach. “Uploaded a close-quarter-combat logotrope. Shoddy workmanship.”

“So what happened?” Tom, despite himself, was genuinely curious.

“Tried to throw a high roundhouse kick and tore his hamstring to shreds,” said Brino, and laughed. “Loaded reflex-patterns his body couldn't cope with.”

“Ouch.” Tom winced.

“He wanted us to fix the problem with myolin-enhancers and monocarbon tendons.” Brino shook his head. “Throwing good money after bad. We offered to deinstall the ‘trope, or just treat the immediate injuries. Guess which he chose.”

“I suppose…Not the long-term solution.”

“Right.”

Tom gestured towards the tent's rear. “And what about the big guy?”

“Muscle grafts. Silly bugger.” Brino shook his head. “If he had the gym discipline to keep the grafts in working order, he wouldn't need them in the first place. Now they're just turning to fat.”

Brino's body-fat percentage looked to be even less than Tom's own. Despite Tom's fitness and years of phi2dao training, he felt that he should walk softly around this man.

“So how many establishments,” Tom asked, changing the subject, “do you have?”

He had already decided that this was not the same tent, nor these the same staff, which he had seen in the Tertium Stratum of Lady Darinia's demesne, near the Caverna del'Amori.

“A few.” Brino's expression gave nothing away.

“Hmm.”

“So what you need”—Brino talked as though Tom had been asking for advice—“is something subtle, don't you think?”

“If you say so.”

“External smart-tech can be disabled, and at the very least is detectable.” Brino ran his hand across his shaven head. “You should be looking for
sensitivity
.”

Tom chuckled, though he knew Brino was being serious.

“Here.” Brino took a fighting stance, slowly extending a punch and holding it so that his ribs were exposed. “Throw a side kick.”

Tom did not ask how Brino knew he could fight. They both had the look: each could recognize something of himself in the other.

And the adrenaline was pumping. Two fighters, strangers, from different backgrounds: no matter how controlled and civilized the meeting, the possibility of sudden overkill lurked, waiting to explode.

Slowly, Tom chambered his right leg, extended, pressed the edge of his foot against Brino's lower ribs, then retracted.

“And if the opening hadn't been there?” asked Brino.

“I wouldn't have kicked. I'd have done something else.” Tom extended a backfist which Brino blocked, exposing his own ribs. “Or created the opening.”

Once more the path was clear for Tom's kick; he did not bother with the technique itself.

“Take your guard.” Brino looked serious.

Right side forward, Tom's arm was bent at a right angle but fluid, ready to move.

“No opening to your ribcage,” said Brino. “Right?”

Tom nodded, waiting.

“But let's work the angles.”

There was a thud against Tom's floating ribs, and he forced himself to stay upright, exerting breath control.

Where did that come from?

“Nice,” was all he said.

“See?” Brino moved slowly this time, showing him. “Fluid and deceptive: finding the opening.”

From Brino's line of sight, Tom's guard should have closed off the gap…yet Brino's leg unerringly coiled and thrust, foot somehow shooting up
between
Tom's arm and torso, reaching the target.

Tom backed away before he spoke.

“You have a 'trope which can teach that?”

“You can already do that.” Brino's smile was beatific. “We can just open up the possibilities of your own perceptions.”

“Let me think about that.”

The nausea hit him two strata from home.

Home? His palace, his—
Sweet Fate!

Bad cramps were clenching his intestines. He was in a wide cargo-access corridor, and he had to stumble past heavily laden smoothcarts, searching around the hong's bays, until he found the servitors' washrooms.

Ignoring a startled exclamation from a liveried cargo-loader, Tom rushed inside and vomited into a red-enamelled sink.

What's wrong with me?

But a part of him knew: as he had left the Kilware Associates tent, the shaven-headed man, Brino, had bowed too low, in full acknowledgement of Tom's rank.

I refused the logotrope. But somehow—

A jangled lattice of red light fell across his vision; a thousand fingernails clawed across his skin; strange kinaesthetic waves danced through his skull.

Pain
…

How had they achieved it? Anaesthetic nanodart? Some form of inductive coding, using resonance to reprogram the femtocytes already inside him?

Regardless, the waves of agony swept through him, a logotropic tide of neural disruption.

In all the pain, there was one constant: it was his left arm, finally, the unchanging burning which could never be overridden, that gave him something to cling on to.

And then it was past.

He slipped out of the hong before its steward and his watchmen could arrive. Though he had his thumb ring, Tom did not want to fall back on his authority unless he had to.

Wouldn't want them to think their Liege Lord was just an ordinary human being
.

At a clothing shop, he used an anonymous cred-needle to buy a new cape, dark blue and unhooded, for twelve coronae. He dumped the old, tattered cloak—now stained and unpleasant—in a reclamation vat.

Looking more respectable, he found a small daistral house, and took a seat among flowering potted trees which overlooked a broad piazza. Above, the ceiling was an ochre mosaic among azure inlays.

The drink and a small pastry began to revive him.

“Thank you.” He smiled at the pretty servitrix and she bobbed him a curtsy.

Her sidelong glances, as she bent to clear and polish a nearby table, made him wonder: did she think him a half-rich freedman, a hong-owner's son perhaps? Or—

Hands wringing, endlessly
.

It was something about the girl's polishing motion, the way she twisted the damp cloth…

Hands.

Like the old woman, the would-be thief who had rubbed her hands together, stung endlessly by the membrane toxins which guarded Kilware Associates' goods.

Like Mother
…

In a moment of intuition, Tom realized: Mother, too, had once been burned by whatever pain-gel was in the membrane. Somewhere, at some time, she had stolen, or attempted to steal. To support a dreamtrope habit?

Always, under stress, she would wring her hands like that
…

But you had to pay, normally, to get the antidote. That's what Brino had said.

How did you pay, Mother? What were you forced to do, to atone for your crime?

And Father's defensive words to Trude: “
She was down on her luck, that's all
.” Wasn't that what he had said?

Red lines pulsed across his vision as he stood.

Breathe
…

Regaining control, he credited the daistral shop with a generous tip, and walked on. Heading for his palace, where his servitors would be glad—he hoped—to see him. Then to send some of the palace watchmen downstratum to find Kilware Associates.

The watchmen would be out of their depth if it came to violence. But Tom was sure that Brino and all trace of the weapons emporium would be gone by the time they arrived.

But a dizzy spell hit him, doubling him over.

“Are you all right, sir?”

Tom allowed himself to be taken back into the daistral shop, sat down in a quiet corner, and plied with analgesic. Someone fetched a diagnostrip which oscillated wildly, unable to pin down symptoms—much less form a diagnosis—and finally tossed it aside.

They settled for the restorative powers of simple broth, and finally allowed Tom to doze in a chair. It was when he saw them moving chairs into the inner chambers that he realized the entire working day had passed, and they were closing up.

“No, no.” They refused additional payment, beyond that for broth, but Tom made note of their name: the Dancing Bee. “You take care of yourself,” they said. “Come back and see us.”

Smiling, Tom agreed that he would.

Death came in the dark.

His running-gallery had been deserted. Even the kitchens—barely lit by two glimmering glowclusters—had no staff, and Tom had helped himself to a small piece of fruit tart from a procblock, and taken a cup of sweet mint daistral.

Afterwards, he had walked, pleased by his ability to take a solitary tour, among his rudimentary art collection: primitive flatpaints, rhythmic dust-sculptures mutating in their lev-fields, musical self-composing interference patterns made visible by thermal imagery.

Still not sleepy, he headed for the conference chamber, where he could find the crystals he had been working on. He was humming to himself as he slipped off his cape and stepped through the membrane—

Scarlet arrays slatted into place across his vision.

—there: one man in the shadows, almost upon him—

Waves pulsed across his skin. The darkness was pitch black.

—from left and right; Tom leaped forwards but
there was another one
rushing him—

Faint silver glimmer of eyes, half-glimpsed.

—and he moved faster, avoiding, spinning, but
there were seven attackers
and footwork could grant him only milliseconds—