Resolution (56 page)

Tom stood watching the empty space where his mother’s sarcophagus had stood. Someone had ripped out the equipment before he took possession of the terraformer; still he could almost see her near-dead body, if he tilted his head a certain way.

Behind him, someone coughed.

‘Oh.’ Tom turned. ‘Hi, Adam.’

‘Tom.’ The scar on Adam’s face rippled in the half-light as he nodded. ‘I hear my Lady Elva is safe.’

‘As much as any of us.’ After a moment, Tom gestured for a drone. ‘You need a drink?’ A small drone rose, and hovered at shoulder height. ‘This one’s got daistral and juice.’

‘What I need is something stronger. But ... All right, a daistral. Command: bring—’

‘Cancel that.’ Tom stopped the drone before it could float over to Adam. He gestured the carapace open and reached inside, and drew out a steaming cup. ‘Here you are.’

‘Thanks.’ Adam accepted the drink. ‘That’s the second time I’ve been served by you, my Lord.’

‘It won’t become a habit.’

‘I know ... I hear you’ve a new tunic which no-one’s seen you wearing.’

Tom raised his own cup in a toast. ‘You’ve just got here, and your spies are reporting already. Not bad.’

They clinked their cups together.

‘I rescued some new ‘tropes,’ Adam said. ‘From the labs. My Lady ordered a research programme some time back. The logotropes work for anyone who’s not had desensitization against all that.’ Adam gestured to the night sky outside. ‘Works in ninety-nine per cent of cases.’

‘What about the other one per cent?’

‘That’s the thing. Adverse reactions range from nosebleeds all the way to haematoma or anaphylactic shock.’

‘Chaos. All we can do is offer them around and explain the risks.’

‘I ... Right. I didn’t think you’d agree, Tom. They need more testing and development. You’ve got
children
on board this thing.’

‘No, what we need is more time, but we’re not going to get it. If things get bad, we’ll have to evacuate via drop-bugs to the surface. Anyone who can’t function in the open ...’

Tom let his voice trail off, as Adam carefully placed his cup down on the conference table.

If you‘re going to attack me, now’s the time.

There was tension in Adam’s shoulders. He blamed Tom for Elva’s stress over the past two years; that was understood. Perhaps now he had nothing to lose by attacking Tom, since their whole world was gone ... and he was Academy-trained like Tom, and just as dangerous.

Then Adam straightened and looked Tom right in the eyes.

‘Tom. Sir. I need to tell you ...’

Tom held his breath.

‘... that we need a commander…’

Right. It was a shame Corduven was not still alive, is that what he wanted to say?

You think I’d disagree?

‘... and you’re the right man. We need you, Tom.’

Tom could only watch as Adam bowed in formal salute, spun on his heel, and left.

After three hours of immersion in tactical displays, it seemed that the only thing Tom had accomplished was reading about the successes of others; and those were limited to the practicalities of survival, not victory. Dispersed shuttle groups were entering the first eighty terraformer spheres to begin the task of recommissioning.

We‘re hiding. Hoping the Anomaly won’t notice.

Grimly, he looked through hanging stacks of tesseracts delineating the Anomaly’s absorption of realm after realm below.

While the world dies.

From inside his belt, Tom took out the violet crystal which the Kobold officer had given to him. It would allow him to contact the Grey Shadows, and perhaps whatever forces the Crystal Lady herself might command. Tom’s tech analysts had decided it used a Calabi-Yau bridge, which allowed the comms-beams to bypass the kilometres of solid rock between here and the Crystal Lady’s deep dwelling, by sliding through the hyperdimensions.

The problem was, such a broadcast would almost certainly produce resonances which a hungry and expanding Anomaly could detect and pounce on.

‘I can’t use it,’ Tom muttered, ‘until I know what I’m asking for.’

He was talking to himself: harmless in an academic logosopher; fatal in an intelligence agent, as Tom had been back in the occupied Aurineate Grand’aume. Then he thought of the young girl, Sadia, in Realm V’Delikona, writing poetry at Corduven’s funeral, and wondered how she and her father had fared.

So long since
I
wrote poetry.

Now was the time to fight.

Tom looked again through the displays which pulsed in the darkness while everyone else in the overcrowded terraformer sphere slept - all but a few night-duty sentries and obsessive researchers ... plus the wounded who suffered despite the autodocs’ morphitropes and delta-inducers.

‘I can’t do this.’

Tom pushed himself back from the table and stood.

Unclasping his cape, he cast it across the chair. His belt, with the Grey Shadows crystal, went on the table.
We’re lost.
Tom considered a moment, then bent forward, tugged his tunic over his head, and threw the garment aside.
Lost...
The tunic fell through the holo images and lay spread across the tabletop like a fallen soldier.

Bare-chested, with the stallion talisman and its hidden crystal hanging round his neck, Tom crossed to the window. Membrane slid wetly across his skin as he stepped outside.

Chill night air encircled him.

Step and smear.

And lean
out,
for Fate’s sake.

Traversing with his fingertips brushing the stone, walking almost upright, using the sides of his slipper-like shoes for greater friction, Tom moved along silvery stonework rendered treacherous by moonlight.

Sliding shadows and odd perspectives made him constantly review the basics. The smallest mistake would spring him outwards from the sphere, betrayed by his own tension and the basic laws of physics, only to topple into a void filled with darkness.

The wind was fresh. The wind was freedom.

Thank Fate I’m here, now. Breathing.

For there were, as one of the ancient proto-logosophers pointed out, many more ways to be dead than to be alive.

Then the going became more difficult, and both rational and whimsical thinking disappeared as the cerebellum brought the climbing problem into his forebrain: jamming his fist inside a wide crack, extending down for a foothold -
missed
- and scrabbling, looking for a knot of stone where he might hook his heel -
got it -
and continue his descent.

Wind buffeted his ears, flailing at his bare torso, as Tom perched gargoyle-like upon the narrowest of ledges, at the equatorial rim of the kilometre-diameter sphere. Moonlight caused clouds to whiten as though from internal fluorescence, painted the sky dark-blue and purple, occluding the stars.

The ground, far below, was scarcely visible, save as half-glimpsed patches of grey heathland plus, once, a tiny spark of orange flames. Refugees.

You‘re safer down there.

Tom would order a drop-bug, filled with supplies, to be flung back in that direction.

The face was mostly stone now. The one faceted eye that Tom saw was a silver shard of moonlight.

‘Oh, you know ... Time passing like a cloud. Life dissipating like a morning mist. That kind of thing.’

Seconds slid by.

Chill movement of wind.

‘Yeah, but teleology ain’t in fashion, my friend.’

‘You’ve got me there.’

Silver-grey, the distant glimpses of land below.

‘What about you, Axolon? What do you think of as you float up here?’

A shining lake moved past below. Soon it was gone, hidden by nimbus and distance.

Tom chuckled.

‘Let me know if you come to some conclusion.’

A dark gap appeared overhead, split by the major moon’s white disk.