Context

by John Meaney

  There was nothing to do but wait. Xyenquil had implanted antiphages; he told Tom to go home and rest.

  Wearing a new lev-support, like a cummerbund around his waist—‘Very stylish, my Lord,’ said Elva, not quite keeping a straight face—Tom walked stiffly to a high balcony overlooking Os-Vensumbrae Cavernae.

  Down below, towers and colonnades of smartnacre and morphmarble cycled, slow and viscous, through their changing forms. Beside Tom, Elva, accustomed to more static surroundings, started to look queasy.

  ‘Tom? Why don’t we go somewhere else?’

  A wide black lake, with ice patches floating. Overhead, among twisted stalactites, snowy edelaces fluttered and glided, hunting for blindmoths.

  Away from the quickglass and the ornate boulevards, this was a raw, natural cavern. The air was cold; wild fluoro-fungus grew splashed across the ceiling, keeping the air fresh with its characteristic woody scent.

  On the other side of the lake, on a beach-like scree, a small party moved: a white-bearded man with a staff—a teacher, perhaps—followed by nine children, wrapped up in red insulsuits against the cold.

  ‘Better.’ Tom’s breath steamed. ‘Good idea, Elva.’

  He was leaning on the cane. There were no lev-fields; the waist-support was rendered useless here.

  But Elva was shivering.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not cold, Tom?’

  He shrugged in reply. If anything, he was sweating more than earlier.

  ‘Perhaps we should go back,’ said Elva. ‘If you’re getting a fev—’

  A sharp cry echoed across the icy lake, and Elva crouched by reflex in a combat stance.

  Edelace.

  A white shape had dropped from the ceiling, and covered a small, struggling boy like a lacy shawl. But this was deadly, a hunting edelace, laden with toxins.

  The old man moved surprisingly fast, swinging his staff round to point at the boy. Then a strange dark fire—black flames—sprouted from the staffs metal-shod point.

  He touched the edelace with that negative fire, and it shrivelled.

  ‘Are you OK?’ called Elva.

  For a moment Tom thought she meant him. The sight of black flames had struck a deep, frightening chord inside him: a wave of cold fear. It dissipated, leaving a strange fatigue in its wake.

  What does it mean?

  Tom stood swaying, trying to remain steady. Perhaps it was a fever: infection and counteragents waging war inside his body.

  What am I supposed to remember?

  Across the lake, the old man gave no sign of having heard Elva. He used his staff to carry the wounded edelace, draped across the tip, down to the lake’s edge. Then he flicked it onto the black waters, left it floating where it might regrow.

  Strange enough. Yet it was the manner of the party’s leaving which affected Tom profoundly.

  The nine boys were seated here and there, on flat stones or shale, staring in different directions. Chewing food, acting like normal children of their age, if perhaps a little quiet.

  But as the old man turned away from the lake, all nine boys stood in perfect unison. Silently, blank-faced, they formed a single file. As the old man led the way, using his cane to help him up the slope, the nine boys followed soundlessly, climbing without effort.

  Into a dark tunnel mouth, they disappeared one by one. It was impossible to tell which had been attacked by the edelace.

  Then the silent boys were gone.

  ‘Wait and see,’ Dr Xyenquil had told him. ‘That’s all we can do.’

  ‘And if your antiphages don’t work?’

  There had been no comforting reply.

  It was in Eskania Broadway, a place of glassine blue and polished granite, that Tom gave Elva the slip. His thoughts swirled; he knew only that he had to be alone.

  He left her apologizing to a food vendor. The scallop-shaped lev-stall had descended from the ceiling, and Tom had picked a red confection, expecting sweet redberries, then spat it out upon the flagstones: some fishbloc derivative, salty and strong.

  ‘Yes, I’ll pay you.’ Elva was saying.

  Feeling dizzy, Tom slipped into a side tunnel. The air was cold, and yet he was sweating as he took a series of turns guaranteed to confuse. He came out into a low-ceilinged plaza.

  There were bright-garbed Laksheesh monks, an account-scribe symbiont group—asthenic spindle-armed men, torsos rising from the living emerald gelblock which had long since dissolved their lower bodies—and a squad of bannermen. And a throng of ordinary vassals and freedmen, going about their business.

  There was a dark tunnel entrance which seemed to beckon him. Checking that Elva was not following—though he could not have said why he needed to lose her—he took that route, and came out beside a polychromatic stream over which a footbridge arced.

  Overhead, fluorofungus shone a surreal indigo, almost invisible. Beneath him, swirling bright colours: acid stench like a Vortex Mortis.

  It drew him.

  And then he was standing on the railing, sweating and shivering, staring down.

  What’s wrong with me?

  Death beckoned. The acid stream called to him, whispered surcease, promised a peaceful alternative to the horrors which lay ahead.

  He remembered the funeral: Father’s corpse dissolving, knucklebone plopping into the Vortex Mortis, the red-eyed mourners looking on.

  End it.

  He bent his legs to jump.

  End it now.

  ‘My Lord!’

  Her hand caught his cape, and he toppled back onto the bridge. Pain slammed into his injured leg, bringing him into the moment.

  ‘Nirilya?’

  Concerned white face, framed by cowl-like black fronds.

  ‘Lord Corcorigan. You’d better come with me.’

  Interlude, unknown or forgotten. Amnesia must have taken hold, for when Tom’s awareness returned, he was in a chamber he had never seen before, and Nirilya -

  They were twisting apart, those long black ribbons which formed her garments. Her robe dropped away. Revealed, she was white-skinned and almost gaunt: areoles prominent on small cupped breasts. Cascading black hair.

  The treatment. It’s another reaction...

  Ice and fire.

  Hallucinating ? But I saw -

  There was a vial of scented lev-gel, and she smeared it on, slowly, across Tom’s bare torso—though he could not remember undressing—then used her fingers and her warm tongue: soft liquid sensations more real than he could possibly imagine.

  Floating in mid-air, gel and lev-field holding them aloft, amid a swarm of circling flitterglows in the shadow-shrouded chamber, he and she became one: entwined, combined, as though their very cells would merge. Drifting, pulsing, until Tom’s entire being burst in silver crescendo and flowed outwards eternally, forever.

  Jerked into wakefulness.

  Oh, Fate.

  Lying on the cold stone floor, lev-gel sliding from his body.

  ‘Nirilya.’

  She was pulling her robes together, her green feline eyes warm with satisfaction.

  ‘My fine Lord. How are you?’

  ‘Er...’ He looked around for his clothes.

  ‘Over there.’ Nirilya pointed. ‘I need to get to the Bureau. I’m late.’

  ‘I...’

  She leaned over, kissed him.

  ‘Nirilya. We have to talk.’

  What the Chaos happened here?

  Growing very still, she stared at him. Then, carefully: ‘We don’t have to meet up later, if it’s inconvenient. My Lord.’

  Tom, pulling on his trews, shook his head.

  ‘I didn’t mean for ...’ He stopped, helpless.

  Nirilya clicked her fingers, and a black drone floated into the chamber.

  ‘It’ll get you breakfast. I’ve, ah, got to ...’

  She turned and moved at a run, slipped through the frosting doorshimmer, was gone.

  Chaos!

  Halfway through his meal of nut omelettes, krilajuice and b
oljicream—sitting outstretched, bare-chested—Tom stopped, stared up at the floating black drone as though it had forced the food on him, then resumed eating.

  His normal breakfast was fruitbloc, perhaps a cup of daistral.

  What’s wrong with me?

  But he was ravenous. An aftereffect of yesterday’s fever? He forced himself to slow down. Here he was, enjoying breakfast in Nirilya’s chambers, after a night of...

  Rubbing his face, he felt sinking dismay. Satisfaction, yes, and those charged erotic memories ...but last night was nothing he had intended.

  I nearly killed myself.

  It could have been a fever, a mind-altering hallucination from bloodstream debris—fragments of warring femtocytes and antiphages. Or perhaps a rogue femtocyte, gaining access to his logotrope-enabled mind, had fired up his death wish.

  But there was a deeper part of him which knew that these were rationalizations, and that he had received formless, nameless visions born of Chaos, swirling fast and strong in the dark mind-waters which he beneath the fragile illusion human beings term consciousness.

  At last, he pushed the food aside. His stomach was flat and ridged with muscle, but if he continued to eat like—

  No!

  He leaped to his feet, scattering dishes, recoiling at the sight of his own shoulder.

  It’s an illusion.

  But he knew, even before he felt with trembling fingers, that it was real, not holo. The stump, protruding from his left shoulder, looked as it always did—save that, from the end, half-formed, a tiny hand was growing. Miniature fingers curled like soft pale baby worms.

  A flesh-bud, awaiting growth.

  ~ * ~

  3

  NULAPEIRON AD 3418

  He wanted to weep: great aching tears of bitterness and regret; and he wanted to laugh: loud and echoing in celebration.

  Instead, Tom stood upon the viaduct which crossed Eskania Broadway, and his hand—his good, right hand -clutched the dark blue balustrade until the knuckles whitened, until it seemed that either frozen quickglass or his tendons must shatter or snap.

  ‘Are you all right, young fellow?’

  The man was white-haired and bent with age or injury, and a freedman’s narrow bracelet encircled his bony left wrist.

  ‘Yes, I’m—’

  For a moment, Tom swayed beneath a wave of weakness.

  I’ve lost my cane.

  The old man’s weight was half upon his burgundy glass walking stick. Tom realized that his own cane was gone, that his lev-support was back in the apartment, and that his leg was almost free of pain.

  ‘Good, good.’ The old man turned away, muttering. ‘Good, good, good ...’

  Xyenquil... He did this to me.

  Feeling oddly disconnected, Tom made his way to the helical down-ramp, let the laminar flow take him slowly down to the boulevard’s marbled floor. It glimmered with inner life, beneath amber glowglobes floating near the opalescent ceiling.

  He walked then, almost without volition, cocooned from the passing throngs by a muffled sense of dislocation, until he reached the square archway leading to the med centre.

  They had gone too far.

  There was a floating tricon, complex yet discreet, by the glassine arch. The motile holo ideogram was dense with meaning: a clumped configuration overall, redolent of strength; calming pink/gold facets of a hundred hues, denoting care and healing, while the complex folding/unfolding of its topology furnished staff resumes and the med centre’s prestigious history.

  Tom pointed at a facet, made a show-me-more control gesture.

  Rectilinear facets, indicating a lack of irony, laid bare the facts of Xyenquil’s expertise. Elva had chosen well: Xyenquil was more than capable of implanting regrowth factors while combating a life-threatening infection.

  Damn you—

  Tom’s fist (his proper fist) tightened, and for a second killing rage swept through him. Then it was gone, and he turned away, deliberately relaxing the hand, trying to recall the way to his apartment.

  I have to talk to Elva.

  She was performing triceps dips, hands on a glassine chair and heels on a desktop. Purple dark-stained leotard top, revealing creamy skin: athletic shoulders, strong upper body. Sweat plastered strands of hair across her forehead; her jaw was hard with determination.

  Her long trousers were baggy, pale grey, and her feet were clad in training slippers. A discarded skipping rope lay in twisted loops upon the black polished floor.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ said Tom, standing in the chamber’s archway.

  She pumped through the remaining repetitions, her core muscles tight with strengthening tension, in perfect form.

  ‘Not bad.’ Tom smiled, a little.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Icy words, as exact and correct as her exercises.

  I never realized how disciplined you are.

  He’d known she spent less time than he on endurance conditioning, but had not factored in the intensity of her workout period, and the daily weapons training. She had been his chief security officer, back when he had a demesne to command—a shorter rule than most—but in those days he had appreciated her intelligence work (and her eidetic memory) more than her warrior attributes.

  When he had met up with her again in Darinia Demesne, five tendays ago, he realized just who it was he had always depended on, however much Sylvana’s unattainable beauty had entranced him.

  And the last forty days, spent travelling in each other’s company, had shown him her true sterling worth, wrapped up though he was in the misery of his hurt.

  ‘I hope,’ he began, ‘you weren’t worried when I—’

  ‘My Lord can spend his nights’—with an unaccustomed flatness to her tone—‘wherever he pleases, of course.’

  ‘Perhaps it pleases me to explain.’

  ‘Sir.’ Standing at ease, her chin raised. ‘But Grand’aume Security informed me of your whereabouts, when I considered initiating a search.’

  ‘I—That’s good.’

  ‘Their having you under constant surveillance? A double-edged sword, if I may venture an opinion.’

  ‘Elva...’ Tom was exasperated. ‘Of course you can speak freely, whenever you like.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Silence rebounded off the cold elegant walls.

  Chaos, this is hard.

  Aware suddenly of the closeness of the chamber, the slick highlights of her sweat-damp skin, her exertion-soaked tight leotard top. And her infinity-gaze—pale grey eyes: strong and unambiguous—directed away from him.

  He took a deep breath, then asked the question he could no longer contain.

  ‘Elva, what did you do to me?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I thought—’ Tom shook his head, turning away. ‘Xyenquil’s achieved ... more than I intended.’

  ‘And you’re not—’

  What? he wondered. Pleased?

  Very softly: ‘So was his femtoregime to your specification?’

  ‘Sir.’ Her tone was formal, and pulled him round. ‘I ordered full healing capabilities, regardless of cost.’

  After a moment, ‘You’re not just my servitrix,’ Tom said. ‘Don’t call me sir.’

  But she was hurt, and a scowl lurked beneath the controlled mask of her features.

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  Damn it!

  ‘For Fate’s sake, Elva. You think I haven’t had the chance for cell-regrow before?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lord A’Dekal, did you ever meet him? No... Crusty old bastard, presided at my ascension ceremony. Offered me the use of his med facilities, at a price.’

  Elva said nothing.

  ‘He wanted,’ Tom continued, ‘my support for his reactionary think-tank, the Circulus Fidelis. The cost’—grimly—‘was too high.’

  ‘You could have found a way.’

  The chamber seemed to spin.

  ‘What are you talking about?’