Paradox (31 page)

“My Lord?”

Tom could hear her, but it was of no import.

“Can I help you, my Lord?”

Black despair.

He was slumped in his chair, brooding behind his quickglass desk, surrounded by the rows of crystals—so much accumulated wisdom—which adorned his study.

“Tom!”

Such familiarity penetrated his heavy mood.

“Elva? How are you doing?”

Not even Jak would have dared to use his first name, but Captain Elva Strelsthorm was fearless.

Blood on his hand.

“I'm fine, my Lord. It's your welfare that concerns me today.”

Not literally: he had wiped it.

“I've never…”

After the Oracular inkling of his own death: his ultimate Fate.

“…been better, Elva.”

Remembering the apparition, no, the actual experience of
walking out of the chamber, turning his back against both corpses, shuffling out onto the parapet.

Nightfall.

He had never seen true night before, but this was it: darkness shrouding the world. Cold winds. Purple/white lightning spat, and solid curtains of rain smashed against the stonework, spattered him with silver ricochets, blinded him with its force.

And he felt torn apart—a literal separation—as some part of him climbed
slowly onto the slippery balustrade—thinking: journey's end, at last—and launched himself into the void, falling down through the biting air, paralysed by windrush, scream lost amid the slipstream, plunging to oblivion.

“I've never seen you worse, my Lord. And that's the truth.”

Heart pounding, he dropped back onto the balcony floor, drenched with fear-sweat as well as rain—asking himself endlessly: what happened?—trying to convince himself that it was hallucination, brought on by shock.

Or had he glimpsed—felt, touched, smelled—another reality, an alternative world where he threw himself into nothingness, welcoming death as the closure of life suddenly devoid of meaning?

Did he know less of the nature of time and Fate than he thought?

“Perhaps, Elva. Perhaps so.”

He returned to the chamber then, trying to ignore the pitiful remnants cupped in the golden framework, and the Oracle's lifeless, collapsed remains upon the floor. Three microdrones were already working their way like scavengers across his clothing, his gaping wound.

The systems told him the terraformer's complement of guards: over a hundred armed troopers, nearly thirty ancillary staff. Too risky to descend into the terraformer's interior.

So he ordered a femtofact-mesodrone to extrude braided polyfilament, used the golden framework of his mother's bier as a tether, and went back out onto the storm-swept balcony.

“My Lord, I've fetched a visitor for you.”

Was this the same conversation? Or had time elapsed?

“I don't want to see anyone.”

“But—”

“Thanks all the same, Elva. But that's an order.”

The long dangerous rappel down the curved exterior. It was the best part of a thousand metres: easy enough in dry conditions, taken at an unhurried pace; dangerous as Chaos right now as he jumped and slid along rain-slick stonework, braking the filament by friction round his waist and bare hand, near-sightless in the darkness and the pounding rain.

“Tom…?”

A different voice.

Finding the equatorial rim, clambering along it on hand and knees until he reached an opening, then the precarious lowering of himself, fingers crimped on wet stone, and swinging into dry safety.

No choice then but to plunge through the membrane, hoping it would do no worse than sound alarms. Sprinting, crouched over, into the interior.

“Thomas Corcorigan…”

Into a wider space—drop-bug launch-cradle—but a Jack—not Jak, his friend: but a dermawebbed Jack with microfaceted silver eyes and white sparks of liquid light playing across his skin—leaped forwards, weapon-system powering up, but Tom was fast, very fast, and then the Jack was down and blood was pooling—dark, almost purple: another death—on the ceramic floor.

Flash image: dead feline, neko-kitten's mother.

“…What do you think you're playing at?”

Then throwing himself into the drop-bug and shouting: “Go!” Mallow-like cocoon pressed against him as the bug sealed itself and launched.

There was sickening acceleration, a distant thump, then the free-floating parabolic descent, the final roar of simple chemical jets, the cushioned impact.

“Trude?” When he looked up from his desk, he felt for the first time the cold tears which had tracked down his cheeks.

The long trek on foot, just to make distance across the dark landscape.

A fitful rest.

Then magnificent dawn, painting the sky pale yellow streaked with lime, white sunlight sparking from the launch site's membrane. No people, only dumb equipment, so he could make his way inside and climb down into Nulapeiron's depths, away from the unnatural spaces and the skin-burning elements.

Finally, the long run—journeying on foot: an ultra-endurance event such as he had never imagined—using glimmerglows stolen from the cargo-shuttle launch site to illuminate, pitifully, his path along the dark tunnel, expecting at any moment to be struck by a hurtling cargo train, spattered, smashed out of existence.

Part of him longed for that. But part of him wanted only to run, and keep on running.

“What are you doing here, Trude?”

That familiar old face: more wrinkled now, and the once grey hair was mostly white, but it was bound by a familiar style of mandelbrot scarf and her sudden smile had not changed at all.

Running
…

“Tom, Tom. What have you been up to?”

A wan smile beneath his cold tears. It had been so long…

Run and never stop.

“That's easy. He's been—”

It was Elva who spoke, standing behind Trude, hands clasped lightly in front of her but ready for action, her wide shoulders relaxed.

“—killing Oracles.”

Small blind ciliates, scurrying.

“Procedures and protocol?” asked Elva.

The thing was huge: scorched and blackened, part of its thorax overhanging a shadowed crevasse in the natural cavern's floor. Tendrils hung in catenary arcs, their end-pads still fastened to the walls and roof as they had been at the time of the attack. Or accident, if that was what it had been.

How did she know?

One tendril lay coiled and broken like dead rope on the ground.

How did Elva know about the Oracle?

“Poll-and-acknowledge are alpha-hash-standard for today.” Trude's voice was matter-of-fact. “Scatter-pattern beta if anything goes wrong.”

A lone ellipsoidal ciliate queen—half the size of a man's leg, with several fingernail-sized males clinging to its mottled carapace; its brushlike hair-legs rippling—scuttled down the wide hanging tendril from the wrecked arachnargos body. It headed for the quiet shadows.

“I'll go first.” Elva crossed over to the arachnargos and went inside.

Trude reached out for his arm but Tom ignored her, keeping his cape wrapped tightly around himself.

What am I doing here?

Elva leaned out of the gaping wound in the bulbous thorax, inserted thumb and forefinger in her mouth, and gave a low, piercing whistle.

“Sophisticated signal code.” Tom tried for irony, but his heart was not in it.

“Whatever works.” Trude patted his arm.

“How long have you known Elva?”

Trude's lined face was half-hidden in the gloom.

“A while.”

Since the days when he lived in the market? Tom shrugged, inside his cape. They wanted to be secretive; he would not concern himself.

Scarlet smeared across the white/blue floor
…

The connection between the market-dwelling stallholder's son and his present self seemed tenuous: a distant, fragile thing.

The only way in was to clamber along the one loose tendril and swing in through the opening. For a moment, hanging over the long drop, he felt an almost overwhelming desire to throw himself off—

“Tom?”

—but he saw then that Trude was unsteady on her feet, and he helped her through the dark opening into the wrecked arachnargos. He followed her inside.

Shadows.

Waiting for his vision to adjust, Tom kept his eye-focus soft: twelve shadows against the background gloom. Discount Trude and Elva; but the others were potential enemies.

Something stirred inside Tom: a gathering of interest, or the awareness of danger.

Too soon.

Deep inside, his nerves were silently whimpering.

A tiny glowglimmer, trapped in a collimating tube, lowered itself from the ceiling. Its low illumination was directed at him.

“Who are you?” he said.

The shadow-shrouded figures were bulky and shapeless: wearing voluminous capes, baggy hoods drawn forwards. A natural precaution.

A moist smell lingered in the air.

“You'll forgive us”—softly spoken: a young man's voice, possibly Zhongguo Ren—“if we're a little reticent on that point.”

Someone sneezed, and murmured an apology.

“This meeting wasn't my idea.” Tom kept his tone neutral.

One of the figures leaned forwards and muttered:
“Dyestvityelna, rezap proroka?”

“Yes, he did,” said Elva. “Stone dead.”

Tom looked at her, surprised.

She shrugged. “My accent's terrible, but I understand the basics.”

“Exactly how?” one of the others began, in a deep baritone. Then, “This is ridiculous.” He lowered his hood, revealing blocky features beneath cropped white hair. “Exactly how did you achieve this particular termination, Lord Corcorigan?”

Tom shook his head.

“A trick?” someone asked. “How do we know it actually happened?”

Another man drew back his hood. Narrow face, dark-brown skin.

Tom, recognizing the bright-yellow tattoo on forehead and cheek, cast his memory back for the name. “Dr Sukhram. My regards, sir.”

He bowed, equal-to-equal.

The doctor hesitated, then returned the gesture.

“This is a little theatrical,” said the white-haired man, “but you can refer to me as Sentinel. It's a reasonably appropriate codename.”

“I won't ask why.” Tom looked around at the others. No more impulses to reveal themselves.

“Anyway.” Sentinel leaned back against a grime-streaked bulkhead. “The security networks confirm the kill. In fact, the covert channels are buzzing with the news.”

He looked at the hooded man who had expressed doubt; the man abruptly nodded.

“But why”—Tom heard the slightest tremor in his own voice—“do you identify
me
as the killer?”

There was silence for a moment, then Elva said: “Don't worry, my Lord. Not from evidence at the scene: I don't know anything about that. Just observations in your own demesne.”

So I didn't leave and return undetected. Nicely done, Elva.
Perhaps he should have been glad she was so thorough.
But you've told these people all about me.

A betrayal? It didn't seem that way.

“So who are you?” He made it a general question, but it was Dr Sukhram who cleared his throat and answered: “An umbrella organization, of sorts. LudusVitae, when we need a name. Something of a loose alliance, with not entirely common objectives—”

“But we agree”—a woman's voice, harsh—“that the use of Oracles must stop.”

Waves of tension, criss-crossing the darkened cabin.

Sentinel said: “Some of our more, ah,
progressive
colleagues favour radical redesign of social structures. But, frankly, there are thousands of demesnes in the world, and not all of them even have Lords, as such. So a global—”

“You won't find many deep strata”—low voice: coarse accent but clear articulation—“without widespread support for total revolution. I'm talking about a worldwide change in—”

“Please.” Trude held up a hand. “This isn't why we're here.”

“Agreed.” Sentinel squeezed his eyes shut briefly, as though in pain. Then, “We're more than a debating society,” he said.

Uneasy, not trusting these disorganized strangers who held his life in their hands, Tom remained silent.

Somebody shifted position, and red dots sparked into being across Tom's vision field, as kinaesthetic awareness slotted attack-vectors into place.

“Frankly—” Sentinel began, but stopped as Dr Sukhram cut in: “My Lord, whatever technique you used to circumvent an Oracle's awareness…With such a method, the debating could end. What we need is direct action.”

And you're a healer?
But Tom had the patience of discipline, and still he said nothing.

“Mister Cor—” Sentinel hesitated. “I mean, my Lord…”

Of course. They've never had a noble among them.