Resolution (35 page)

While Tom’s security teams were checking the drop-bugs and walking through the logistics, Axolon made a strange announcement:

Alone in the conference chamber, Tom looked up from the holodisplay. A breeze drifted in from outside, through the tall opening which led to the view balcony. The sky beyond looked clear. Everything was peaceful.

‘See what?’

As Tom spoke, a small shape glided into the chamber -
intruder! -
and Tom was going for his graser pistol when he realized that this what Axolon meant. In a combat crouch, though he could not recall having pushed the chair back, Tom stopped and waited.

It was a glassbird, and it circled the chamber once while producing a high, piercing cry. Then it swooped down towards the table - Tom gestured quickly, and the holo image winked out - and came to a scraping halt.

Tom nodded without speaking.

Then the glassbird opened its polished beak and recited in a sing-song voice:
‘We should meet my Lord: one psychopath to another.’

‘Trevalkin,’ growled Tom.

‘I suggest a rendezvous in Realm Buchanan. You’ll find the coordinates in this bird’s heart.’

It was a recording, no more. As the words ended, the bird tilted its head, and regarded Tom with an eyeless stare for several moments. Then its body began to shiver.

What the Chaos could you want?

The glassbird melted and slopped apart into a pool of thick, viscous sludge upon the tabletop. In the middle of the liquefied remains, a small hard crystal shone.

There were seven-sided columns; high-groined ceiling; naves and alcoves: all stippled with strange white-and-bronze illumination cast by spike-encrusted glowclusters. Their sculpted, intricate forms concealed micrograser arrays, ready to be turned upon the populace at the Liege Lord’s command.

The chancery contained some seventeen or eighteen shaven-headed commoners at prayer. Pale pink smoke drifted from a thurible, and caught in Tom’s throat.

Where are you, Trevalkin?

The followers of the Finite Computational Path had split from the Church of the Incompressible Algorithm in a schism that remained bitter (though unbloody), stemming from minor differences of interpretation. A preacher was declaiming on their holy mission, and Tom strove to look interested while casting glances in all directions.

It was five hours since the glassbird had come to a programmed suicidal end in Tom’s conference chamber.

Now, militiamen were walking past. Their uniforms were silver and green, suggesting a festive spirit at odds with their stone expressions and purely functional graser rifles. Realm Buchanan’s reputation had always been that of a friendly, tolerant realm, open to outsiders.

Tom’s thumb ring was wrapped in nul-gel and concealed inside his belt. A ruby ID stud in his left ear proclaimed his merchant trader status: a cover that gave him freedom of movement.

He was not alone here in Realm Buchanan. Doria Megsin, Academy-trained like Tom, led one support team of six paramilitaries dressed as civilians; they were a klick away from this position. Her lieutenant, Grax Tegoral, led Team Beta, also in mufti; he was keeping an eye on a fallback escape route. Doria and Grax were security officers (based in Axolon Array) whose advice Tom had finally taken. They would not let him go in alone, unsupported and with a suicide implant; they wanted to keep him alive.

So where the Chaos are you, Trevalkin?

Tom backed away from the praying folk - some were penitents, lying face-down on the cold stone floor - and spotted a purple hanging which led to a small shop containing crystals and sacred statuettes.

He slipped inside, nodded to the shaven-headed youth who tended the shop, then checked the wire racks. Tom allowed his gaze to slip unfocused over a sequence of Laksheesh epics: they looked fascinating, but fluency in the language was inconsistent with his cover.

Instead, Tom picked up a locket which, when pressed, displayed the current ruler’s family tree (using a patrilineal line) back to the first Earl, with a sidenote about a Terran called Sean Buchanan, proto-logosopher and twenty-first-century ‘direct ancestor’.

‘Five minims, good sir,’ murmured the youth.

Tom shook his head, hiding a smile. Forty generations back,
assuming no interbreeding,
meant a million million ‘direct ancestors’ alive at that time, which was impossible (as well as ridiculous: any one ancestor would account for a minute fraction of inherited genome). Since Terra had never supported that many inhabitants, the assumption was wrong: the entire human race is inbred. There has never been a genetic basis for aristocracy; can never be, since the ancestral genes are scattered throughout the populace.

‘Three minims,’ Tom offered, in keeping with his cover: a trader always negotiates.

Glumly, the youth nodded in agreement.

Tucking the locket inside his belt, Tom left via a second exit, and found himself in a clean, well-kept tunnel. He walked past trestles loaded with goods; behind them, the vendors stood patiently.

Got to be here somewhere.

Then Tom was standing beneath an archway soft with moss, between walls in which reptilian heads were graser-etched. In front of him, floating lev-steps led to a balcony where people sat. One of them was lean and composed.

Trevalkin.

His hair and clothes were different, but Tom recognized him immediately. Nerves tightening with the possibility of betrayal, Tom climbed the steps slowly. Silver leaning-frames rather than chairs ringed each table. Tom took a table far from Trevalkin’s, and muttered his order to the house system.

On the wall, orange fastsnails slid, whistling their eerie mating songs. Some diners reached out to the trails of hallucinogenic slime, dipped their fingertips and sucked them.

Tom’s daistral arrived and he drank it quickly. As he finished, Trevalkin was already rising. After counting to fifty (in Laksheesh), Tom followed.

Puffs of sporemist rose above mossy boulders, metamorphosed from grey to apricot, then drifted off. Iridescent green patches flowed across the corridor walls.

Below the landing on which Tom and Trevalkin stood, silver-foamed water swirled in a decorative pool. In the mossgarden beyond, a lone mother grabbed her toddler by the arm, looked fearfully up at Tom, then half-ran from the garden, was gone.

The gardens were deserted.

Treachery?

Then three men appeared, walking in unnatural synchrony among the soft moss-covered boulders. At their throats, bright scarlet cravats were strangely luminous in the pale light.

Absorbed.

Tom had seen their kind before ...

Trevalkin tugged at his sleeve, and they slipped out of sight.

After walking along an empty tunnel, they reached a public thoroughfare where quiet crowds were moving. They blended in, and Trevalkin leaned close to Tom, keeping his voice low.

‘Memetic engineers among the colonists,’ murmured Trevalkin, ‘created a society where even lowborns could ascend to the highest ranks.’

For a moment, Tom thought Trevalkin must have access to the old Pilots’ tales. Then he reconsidered, and muttered: ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Only that you’re the proof, Corcorigan, that one who receives all the benefits can turn out to be an ungrateful snot.’