Context

by John Meaney

  ‘Tom, you must know how I feel about—’

  Confused, Tom leaped to Elva’s side, almost sliding off the lev-step before he caught his balance. He grasped her arm.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  But her only answer was a gasp.

  ‘Ah...’

  She shuddered, eyes already growing opaque.

  Thanatotrope.

  Suicide implant. Self-immolation by conscious decision: undercover operatives used them, choosing death over torture.

  ‘Elva! No—’

  The Seer spun away, silver highlights sliding across the helm-throne’s polished dome.

  I SHOULD NOT HAVE REVEALED SO MUCH.

  Blue lightning coruscated angrily.

  MY SCANFIELDS CAN’T DETECT— BUT IT’S TOO LATE NOW.

  Elva’s body was growing slack and heavy in Tom’s arm, her eyes half-lidded as though sleep was upon her.

  ‘My love . . .’ Shaking, she reached out, touched Tom’s mouth with a gentle fingertip. ‘... always

  The most important words he had ever heard: they changed his life in an instant.

  I’M SORRY ...

  ‘Forever,’ he said, meaning it.

  And kissed her soft lips as she died.

  ~ * ~

  5

  NULAPEIRON AD 3418

  Pale, triangular face. Green eyes, dark with concern.

  ‘Go away.’ His voice was a distant grey whisper.

  Her soft touch against his cheek.

  Elva, dying...

  ‘I think you should leave’—the red-haired medic, Xyenquil—‘for now, Mistress Nirilya.’

  Vassals stood statue-like against the plain polished wall, staring straight ahead.

  ‘He needs me.’

  Tom’s face was like stone when he turned to look at her: ‘Go away. Now.’

  A faux-comic moment: in the med hall’s main corridor, a long bundle slipped from the lev-pallet as it bucked—‘Watch out!’—but one of the attendants caught the thing just in time: Elva’s corpse, bound in russet cloth.

  ‘Where are they taking her?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Sir—’

  ‘I’m her liege Lord.’

  Xyenquil sighed. ‘For autopsy. By our laws, we can— Lord Corcorigan, it would be better if we have your authorization.’

  Tom stared at him for a long moment.

  Then, mechanically: ‘Proceed.’

  His thumb ring sparked, recording the agreement.

  Back in the apartment, he looked inside the chamber which had been readied for his rehabilitation. The laminar-flow running pad, the adjustable slope of the carefully designed climbing wall, with its jokey gargoyle-featured protuberances.

  Prepared to Elva’s specifications. Who else could know him so well?

  ‘Elva ...I’m sorry.’ Too stunned to sob, he stood with tears tracking down his face, making no attempt to brush them away. ‘Nirilya was... a mistake.’

  He gasped, and leaned against the doorway’s arch, feeling his legs about to give way.

  Please come back.

  But no-one knew better than he the futility of prayers to Fate.

  There was no sleep that night.

  Instead, he sat facing Elva’s chair—the one she had used most often over the past few days—with glowglimmers tuned almost to pitch darkness, wrapped in deep shadows, remembering the past, picking over every mistake he had made.

  Too many...

  He and Elva had never even kissed, until the moment of her death. There were so many times he could have spoken up, could have done things differently. So often, he had seen liege Lords abuse their privileges ...but he had broken so many other precedents, so many other rules. Surely he could have managed this properly. And their backgrounds, his and Elva’s, had been the same.

  As far as he knew.

  ‘It was always Litha who was the important one.’

  It was what she had said, before death came to shut her down at her own command.

  Who is Litha? Or who was she?

  Someone that important to Elva, someone she would mention in her final breath ...And Tom had no idea who Litha might be.

  Elva. There‘s so much I need to ask you.

  But death is the final stripper of illusions. It cuts away the pleasant images we use to cocoon ourselves during the everyday, the insulating fluff of social interactions and light-hearted entertainments, leaving bare the starkest of realities: that every life must end, and in its wake leave survivors to contemplate their loved one’s passing, the inevitability of their own extinction.

  And worse: that even initial grief-heat passes, slowly cooling as the survivors’ energies begin to ebb, leaving stunned acceptance in its wake, and unwiped tears which grow as cold as death.

  There had been a brother: Odom Strelsthorm, whose wedding Tom had attended, four Standard Years ago. But Odom and his wife Trilina would be impossible to find—even by courier—given the conditions in Gelmethri Syektor.

  It had taken Tom and Elva four tendays to reach the Grand’aume; and it had taken all of Elva’s skills to make the arrangements, to get them here. Yet she had not once complained.

  Damn it all to Chaos...

  Gritty-eyed, Tom waved open a series of displays and traced through news-holos, using his noble-house access rights—valid even here, in this realm which boasted no Lords or Ladies of its own—to trace the revolution’s path. Wondering if he could search out the family Strelsthorm; knowing it was impossible.

  It was not just an academic exercise. For most of the four SY since Elva’s brother had married, Tom had lived in exile, far from the revolution which suddenly seemed as arbitrary and meaningless as the cruel and overbearing system it was meant to replace.

  Tom wiped his face, tried to focus on the holo reports.

  Half-melted corpses; smoke-blackened tunnels. ‘Sources implicating the White Glowclusters have disappeared in mysterious...’

  Gesturing, he interrogated the White Glowclusters tricon. The three-dimensional ideograph changed shade, unfurled like a blossoming flower, revealing intricate inner facets which read:

  ... a secret society of Zhongguo Ren origin, affiliated with the Strontium Dragons and known to be responsible for the following atrocities...

  Enough.

  He had friends among those secret societies.

  Tom explored another link.

  Consul Populis, a breakaway LudusVitae action brigade, came to power in Luftwin Sectoris during the second putsch. They discovered documents implicating revanchist noble houses, led by Lord Delivglan, in the arming of General d’Ovraison, the notorious Butcher of Lenkilion...

  ‘Stop.’

  He waved the holos away.

  It was a nightmare.

  Corduven’s bias, briefing Tom, had been different—he hardly considered himself a butcher—but the facts remained as he had outlined them: for two Standard Years, since the abortive global action codenamed Flashpoint, there had been bloodshed and confusion in hundreds of realms. Widespread so-called revolution ... yet nothing had changed for the better.

  Nobles and repressed commoners... They could all go to Chaos and Perdition, if only Tom could have her back.

  Elva. I need you.

  But there was no-one there to answer.

  A low chime sounded.

  Elva’s back!

  Then he shut down his emotions, cursing himself.

  No, I don’t think so.

  Grimly, he waved the doorshimmer away, and saw Nirilya standing there.

  ‘I don’t’—he spoke quickly, before she could interject -’want to see you just now.’

  ‘I know.’ Nirilya bowed her head. ‘But the .., the Seer is expecting you. In three hours.’

  Expecting me?

  Tom remembered Elva’s ironic comment: ‘I dare say the Seer knows we‘re coming.’

  Half-laughing, half-sobbing: ‘You mean, it’s my Destiny to go?’

  Nirilya stared at him, confused.

  ‘Leave m
e, Nirilya. Now.’

  ‘All right.’ Stepping back into the corridor outside. ‘I—’

  Doorshimmer, coalescing into place.

  Ice bitch. It’s all your fault.

  But he would not have felt such rage if it had been even remotely true. For there was only one person responsible for Elva’s death; and now it seemed that he was the one who lacked the strength to carry on alone.

  He reached inside his tunic, pulled out his stallion talisman. He made the control gesture—a conjunctive sequence of protokinemes, a compound order: a substitute for a left-handed gesture—and it fell apart into two neat halves.

  Black nul-gel coated the crystal.

  ‘This was my real advantage. Not ability.’

  He had been fourteen SY old when a renegade Pilot—a figure out of legend, until she proved they were real—had given him the comms crystal. It had acted as a teaching document, and more: a communications conduit to mu-space itself, until the last occasion of use had burned it out. Scorch marks marred the smooth curves of an equine body: a stallion, a mythical creature.

  Perhaps some functionality remains.

  Before, he had been given logosophical puzzles to solve, to extract the next portion of a tale whose exact relationship to historical truth he had never determined. Even with the comms resonator damaged, perhaps those old tales were in there still: a comfort, a link to his past.

  An escape. Or a reminder of the first time he had seen Elva, when she was part of the hunt for the Pilot: though the authorities never admitted just what kind of person they tracked down and killed.

  And it was Father who had carved the stallion from a solid ingot. Tom could still see those blocky hands guiding the cutting graser with practised skill; hear the spatter of molten metal; taste the hot acrid tang upon the air.

  I miss you, Father...

  Tom inserted the copper download needle, and began the sequence: expecting a replay of earlier modules, but finding instead something new—a continuation of what went before—and in its own way disturbing.

  ~ * ~

  6

  TERRA AD 2142

  <>

  [1]

  ‘Race you!’

  Albrecht’s white lanky body arced through a competent dive into dark waters.

  ‘Bastard.’ Ro crouched on the old stone jetty, careful of its slippery moss, then swung her arms forwards, propelling herself, and cleanly entered the lake.

  He’s never won yet.

  Swimming fast: freestyle-racer dolphin-crawl.

  Faster.

  Speed through superior technique: the ongoing mathematical self-analysis of attack angle on the stroke, body alignment cutting turbulence, propulsion from the feet.

  Albrecht reached the orange hydroplatform a second before her, caught it just right. By the time she hauled herself up beside him, he was whistling nonchalantly, staring at the pine forest beyond the lake’s edge.

  Above, jagged white-capped mountains looked serene, majestic.

  ‘You must be getting old.’ Albrecht spoke in English, as always when he was with her.

  ‘Getting cold.’ She shivered, aware of her bathing suit’s flimsiness and his proximity.

  They were both nineteen years old.

  ‘Ro, I’ve been wanting to ask—’

  A flyer was hovering over a clump of pine.

  It moved. Ro watched, analysing its parabolic descent, its minute non-automated corrections.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘It’s Gramps. With Mother, I’ll bet.’

  An old-fashioned gull door swung up, and two people alighted onto the stone beach: a slender grey-haired woman, and a stocky, ursine—like a big old Kodiak bear—white-bearded man with wide shoulders and powerful forearms.

  ‘As I thought.’ Ro double-blinked her left lens to max zoom. ‘Gramps was flying.’

  By hand, too. Good for you, Gramps.

  Albrecht sucked in a breath.

  ‘Father Mulligan’s waving,’ he said, and lifted a tentative hand in Gramps’s direction.

  Mother waved too, though facing the wrong way. Nothing new: Karyn McNamara had been blind since before Ro’s birth.

  Your timing sucks for once, Mother.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, as Albrecht was preparing to dive. ‘I’ve got to tell you—’

  ‘What?’

  In a rush: ‘I’m going to DistribOne, Arizona. An UNSA internship.’

  Albrecht stopped. The hydroplatform rocked, and for a moment it looked as though he might fall in. Then he sat back down.

  There was so much he could say: that she had tagged her name onto the h-mail petition going around the schoolNets in protest at the United Nations’ growing power; that signing on with their space agency smacked of hypocrisy. And he knew her mother well enough to realize that Karyn would not approve. But all he managed was:

  ‘That’s in AmeriFed.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ro felt miserable. ‘My exam results were good enough—’

  ‘But you’re just starting your second year.’

  ‘The internship runs in parallel.’

  She was studying with the Technische Netteninstitut von Zürich, but it was instantiated in EveryWare: location was irrelevant.

  Albrecht blinked rapidly.

  ‘Shit.’ Ro swallowed. ‘This isn’t easy.’

  ‘It seems easy enough for you.’ And then a bitter non sequitur, designed to hurt: ‘Violet eyes are passé, you know.’

  He threw himself into a graceless dive, splashing her.

  ‘Al—’

  Hugging herself for warmth, she watched him strike out for the shore.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Grandfather spread his hands wide. ‘I didn’t think to bring a towel.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ Ro stood on tiptoe, kissed his leathery cheek.

  She had swum directly to the beach; her clothes—a bright pink jumpsuit, neatly folded—and towel were on the stone jetty, half a klick away.

  ‘How was Adelaide?’ she asked.

  ‘Getting hot. We trained on the beach.’

  He had the thick wrists and forearms of a lifelong aikidoka.

  ‘For God’s sake.’ It was Mother, trying to get a rise out of Grandfather. ‘Ro? Shall we meet back at the school?’

  Grandfather—Father Michael Mulligan SJ, PhD, DSc — grinned, and shrugged his heavy shoulders. He really looked like a friendly bear.

  ‘Your fault,’ he said. ‘She’s annoyed because your strand’s offline.’

  Ro nodded towards the jetty. ‘I left it with my stuff.’

  They would in fact approve: both reckoned that young people leaned too much on EveryWare.

  ‘So you missed the news.’ Mother stood with her hands on her hips.

  Silver sockets, where her eyes should have been, glinted in the September sun.

  ‘What news?’

  ‘Your canton-reg has come through.’

  Ro fell silent.

  So I’m a voting citizen now.

  And she no longer needed anyone’s approval to work abroad.

  At the jetty, she performed a towel dance: wriggling out of her swimsuit, kicking it aside, pulling on the pink jumpsuit. Grandfather had flown Mother back to the school, and there was no-one else in sight, but you never—

  A bush rustled, and she grew still.

  Nothing.

  Shaking her head, Ro slipped her boots on, then wound her golden infostrand necklet-wise round her throat. Picking up her towel, she began to climb the uneven hillside path.

  It passed close to dark rhododendron bushes and someone grabbed her but she moved very fast, clamping the wrist and dropping him—watch it—ignoring her attacker’s yell as she struck hard with her knee, tracking the vectors by reflex—no!—and pulled down at the last moment, smashing collarbone instead of throat.