Paradox (4 page)

“Father…”

Nobody paid attention to Tom.

The officer was holding out a small bag. “Please, sir.” He spoke through clenched teeth. In a lower tone: “He can afford it.”

Father's expression was wooden. “No.”

“Please reconsider.” The officer waited. Then: “My respects, sir.”

He bowed to Father, low and precise, as though to a senior officer. Then he wheeled on his bootheel, and for a moment self-disgust washed across his features.

“Escort: atten-
tion
!”

Six troopers snapped their heels together. In time with the officer, they marched away towards the chamber's centre.

And then he saw her.

It was too early for marketgoers, and the scattered stallholders moved to the market's perimeter as the militia ranks formed with the same precision they had shown before. At their centre, the black tent had already lowered itself into the lev-car's rear luggage hold. It pulled its narrow legs inside.

From the same entrance Tom had used, she came. Cupric tresses. Elegant, controlled walk.

There were militiamen standing to attention, but he could have slipped through the gaps between them—were he not paralysed. This was not, could not be happening.

The Oracle, big and impossibly handsome, was waiting by the lev-car.

No
…

Courteously, he helped her aboard, then climbed in after her.

Mother!

And it moved off slowly, the lev-car, its cockpit membrane still transparent, the couple inside clearly visible. Her hand was upon his gauntleted forearm.

Two hundred militiamen stamped and turned in unison. Then they
marched out, squadron after squadron, as the lev-car edged out of view, and they followed into Skalt Bahreen's darkness while Tom could only watch, pinned, until only the echoing bootsteps remained, lingering in the market's still air like the waking fragments of a bad, lost dream.

Where was she now?

“Tom?” Trude called after him, but he pretended not to hear: head down, holding the empty containers by their loop-handles.

He passed people he knew, but their gazes slid guiltily from his face, never meeting his eyes.

Ten whole days.

It burned at Tom. His own fault for eavesdropping, for using the infotablet again, but Trude's words would not leave his mind.

“Stop belittling yourself, Davraig.” Impatience in her tone. “You ought to ask: what would the Oracle see in her? Beyond the obvious, I mean.”

Father had been despondent, but anger rose in Tom at the memory.

“She'll return, you'll see.” A pause, and then she added: “I could get a call session booked. I've got some, ah, associates who owe me a favour.”

“I could talk to her?”

“We can try. Should take about a tenday.”

And it had been ten days, of despair.

In the Aqua Hall, there were too many people—he should have come earlier—but he accepted a token anyway, set down his containers, and sat on a red ceramic bench, awaiting his turn.

So, where? Some other stratum? Another demesne? Where would the Oracle have taken her?

“Are you all right, son?” A white-haired man with a concerned expression.

Tom shook himself, unclenching his fists. “Just a headache. It's nothing.”

“If you're sure…”

“Thank you. I'm fine.”

Tom watched the old man make his way out, bent beneath the canister slung across his shoulders, water sloshing inside. The old man looked back from the tunnel outside—nodding as Tom waved—and then he was gone.

Tom leaned back, watching triple braids of water arc through the air above the pool. Inset wall aquaria were filled with fish: purple, red, yellow-and-black with impossibly long, trailing fins. Normally he liked to watch them—

“Gamma nine? Last call.”

Tom checked the ceramic token: his turn.

He waited while the attendants filled his containers, spiked Father's ration flake and helped him sling the handles over his shoulders.

Awkwardly, trying not to slip, Tom made his long way home.

“Ranvera Corcorigan, if you would.”

Trude—as he had never heard her. Not with such refinement and precision.

“A moment…” Above the table, the impossibly smooth-featured head was replaced by a human figure: a white-bearded man, with parallel purple scars cut into one cheek. “Chef-Steward Valneer, at your service.”

Tom, who had been standing frozen in the doorway—this was only the third realtime call he'd seen—slowly lowered his water containers. Neither Trude nor Father even glanced in his direction.

“I am calling on behalf of Master Trader Corcorigan”—Trude nodded towards Father, who remained stone-faced, unimpressed by his apparent social promotion—“whose wife is a guest of His Wisdom, I believe.”

A grim pause. “This call is not unexpected. I have been asked to assure you that Madam Corcorigan is well.”

Father, like a statue, merely watched.

“She, ah…” The old man, Valneer, cleared his throat. “She is where she wants to be.”

“My wife.” Father.

“I'm sorry.” The pain in Valneer's eyes looked genuine.

“Not good enough!” Trude, flaying him with her voice.

“Ma'am, I—” The old man stopped, then wavered: his image split into a thousand revolving fragments which coalesced once more.

Oracle Gérard d'Ovraison.

“Sorry, old friend.” Spoken to one side. “This is my burden.” Then he turned his handsome regard upon Trude, and bowed slightly to Father. “My regards, sir.”

Father's skin looked suddenly grey.

“Ran”—a smile tugged at the Oracle's lips—“is truly fine. But I promised her…harmony. She cannot be disturbed.”

“She is my wife.”

“Not—ah, damn it.” The Oracle shrugged his massive shoulders. “There is a thing—I don't want to tell you.” An odd smile flickered, was gone. “But I already know I will.”

“Ranvera is my
wife.”

“Not for much longer, I fear.” A sudden resonance in the Oracle's words, like nothing Tom had ever heard. “But I haven't told Ran…of your impending death.”

Trude's hands caught Tom's attention: gripping the table edge, bloodless white with tension.

“No!” Tom, filled with sudden rage.

“The son.” Grey eyes, impossibly deep, meeting the force of Tom's anger, absorbing it. “Our first meeting, chronologically speaking.”

Trude: “Ranvera's nothing to you.”

“I can pull into timeflow more than…Well. Let's say she has qualities only I can appreciate.” His gaze grew darker. “My regrets, all of you.” He swept a courteous bow to everyone in the room.
“Davraig—if I may call you that—it would be wise to get your affairs in order.”

A strangled sound escaped Trude's lips.

“Five tendays.” The Oracle looked at her. “That's how long your friend Davraig has to live.”

His image winked out of existence.

Minus thirty. Three tendays remaining.

Aleph to Zeus: tricons instantiated with a cycle time of 0.11-recurring nanoseconds. The names of God flowed past.

Background: the nasal prayer-hum, the whistling spin-chain.

Hb:7.3g dl­
^-1
Glowing amid the incense vapours.
Parietal-delta amp: 112.3µV.

A touch on Tom's sleeve: the assistant priestess, scarcely older than Tom, motioning him aside, as the Antistita, the elder priestess, swept past Father's bed once more, with a rustle of heavy purple silks.

“I don't…believe…in this.” Father's voice was soft.

The shaven-headed priestess paused in her chants. “You used to.”

Beside Tom, the younger assistant checked both displays: mediscanner's holo to the left, prayer processor to the right. Then she swung her thurible again, and a puff of violet incense fumes made Tom cough.

Blinking away tears, he watched the Antistita perform mudras above Father's chakra points, chanting softly, while pastel phase-space manifolds billowed and blossomed in the holodisplays.

Then she bowed to Father, who nodded weakly, slack-faced, from his bed.

“Be infinitely blessed.”

The young assistant gestured, wiping the holos, and gathered up the processors. When she was finished, both purple-robed priestesses left quickly, surprising Tom. Then he realized, and went outside to the tunnel, where they were waiting.

“I'm sorry.” The Antistita's eyes glistened in the half-light.

“You can't find anything, either.” Tom had already tried a cheap diagnostrip, taped across Father's forehead: status red, prognosis/treatment a noncommittal white.

“There's a great deal wrong with Davraig.” She reached out and touched his forehead with her ancient, palsied finger. “You must prepare yourself.”

Tom looked away, still blinking from the incense.

“I can't.”

Minus nine:

Spitting light blackened cheek and one eye stared at him—

A clapping…

—
toppling, for ever.

“Huh!” He jerked awake, dragged himself bodily from the micro-sleep dream.

“Tom?” Outside.

He stood up. Padding barefoot across cold stone, he checked on Father, then went to the hanging and pulled it back. He had not seen Trude for several days, but she was here, with a yellow-tattooed, brown-skinned man behind her.

“You'd better brace yourself, Trude,” said Tom, “for a change in Father's appearance.”

He felt more than heard her sharp intake of breath as she came inside. The glowcluster was at low intensity, but she could see the grey, emaciated husk hunched foetally in the bed.

“This is Dr Sukhram.” She gestured at her companion, who was already placing tiny discs across Father's skin.

Torn attractors pulsed in a hundred displays.

“Not battle-wounded,” Sukhram muttered, as though to himself.

“He's a friend.”

“The access codes—” Sukhram looked up, then turned back to his diagnostics. “Never mind.”

Shifting hues, blurring—

“Sweet Fate, lad!” Strong hands catching him. “When did you last sleep?”

A cool sensation against his neck, then blackness.

“Past and future.”

His tunic was rich, Tom noticed. Upstratum, for sure. “This is the past event.” Dr Sukhram pointed, and a golden node lit up. “And here the future event.” Another glow.

“Each event sends out two waves: one directed to the future, one to the past.”

Drifting. Trude asking something. Tom focused in again, on Dr Sukhram's answer.

“Between the events they reinforce. Before the past event and after the future event, the waves cancel out because of phase shift…”

Waves, hanging in time.

“Quantum predestination, Trude. Don't you ever attend technical briefings?”

“I…”

Grey haze, then sleep.

And, when he awoke properly:

“There's nothing wrong with my father?”

Dr Sukhram slowly shook his head. “That's not what I meant. Nothing organic, in one sense. The mediscanner and diagnostrip weren't wrong.”

“So you can—” Tom stopped.

The doctor's eyes were dark and liquid: full of sorrow, quite devoid of hope.

Minus five.

Incredibly, the fragile thing tottered on its bent legs.

“Oh, Pa…Back to bed.” Trying to be gentle.

“Stall…” A dry whisper, scarcely a sound.

“We've closed the stall. Sold lots. Time to rest now.”

“Stall…Rest.”

The ivory disc—the only one Dr Sukhram had left behind—hummed softly, plunging illegal narcocytes into Father's bloodstream.

A soft clap, and Trude came in.

“Ran-vera.” Attempting to wet his lips. “Knew…you'd…come.”

Silently, Trude sat down on a stool beside Father's bed, and took his hand. Tears, tracking down her lined cheeks, glittered in the glowcluster's light.

Zero.

“Go away.”

The hour before dawnlight.

<>
The ivory disc's display lit up.

“Go away go away go away.”

What devils did Father see, to terrify him so? Shaking, Tom moved out of Father's line of sight.

<>

Breathing change.

Trude held one frail hand, Tom held the other.

Panting now: a long-distance runner, fighting for breath, fighting for life—

Not long.

<>

“We love you!” Tom shouted.

Coming faster. Sprinting for the finish—

Soon.

<>

“We—”

Breath, rattling. Unmistakable.

<<…is 100 per cent>>

Now.

<>

Finish line.

And silence.

Clap.

Automatically, Tom walked across and pulled the hanging back.

“The Antistita sent me.” The young priestess. “She said—” She stopped, eyes wide with fright. “She said it's Davraig's time.”