Context

by John Meaney

  Shaking.

  As though she were freezing, but the sand and air were oven-hot. Thirst, long gone.

  Bad sign …

  Her body’s heat dissipation had been blown apart by thermal stress: the shivering mechanism, designed to warm the body, is also a symptom of heatstroke’s final stages.

  Dying. . .

  Terminal phase.

  Not long now, my father.

  Hissing.

  Snake...?

  And then the rumbling.

  Flyer. Come to finish—

  Neither.

  The ground trembled beneath her.

  Darkness beckoned.

  Sleep?

  Something wet pattered against her cheek.

  Dreaming.

  Again. The plop, plop of raindrops on baked ground.

  Rain— Impossible.

  But it comes, finally, to deserts, too.

  Lifegiving rain.

  She lay there, mouth open. Half-turned, by an immensity of effort, to catch sweet falling raindrops in her blistered, swollen mouth.

  Awakening...

  Thunder, in the purple skies. Silver rain, falling harder.

  Beating against her.

  Large drops splashing, breaking apart, painfully healing, as though she could absorb the life fluid directly through her skin—

  Danger.

  Washing against her face. A flat stream, bubbling.

  Lying in it.

  Danger, still.

  Floods...

  Too weak to move.

  But she had to remember the floods.

  Get moving.

  This was the desert, where riverbeds survive as sun-hardened channels, concrete-hard rippled ground in the baking conditions. And become a sudden home to raging flash floods when the storms finally arrive.

  Get moving now.

  Rain hammered strength into her, and she rose—slowly, slowly—onto hands and knees, and began to crawl. Head down, squinting from time to time through the rain, sighting her destination.

  A flat rock, standing in the arroyo’s centre.

  But roiling water rushed around her wrists, above her knees, foaming and bubbling with a strength which could snatch back life more quickly than it had returned it to her.

  Flat rock, in midstream. If the waters did not rise too far, she would be safe.

  If she could reach it...

  Sheets of rain fell.

  Got it.

  And fell.

  Stone, slippery in the wet. Her fingers skidded off it, but she grabbed again and her grip held. And she pulled.

  Climb. That’s it.

  Ro hauled herself on top of the flat-topped rock and knelt there, gasping, while wind and rain washed all around, and in the black and purple sky, white lightning cracked and thunder bellowed.

  It’s time...

  And then it happened.

  This is my time.

  Happened, as perhaps some part of her had always known it would.

  Time.

  Floodwaters rising rapidly, the false night darkening almost to pitch black, while overhead a sense of massive electric potential was building, accumulating, great enough to—

  It struck.

  White lightning blazed downwards -

  Time... to live.

  — and struck the flat rock.

  But did not dissipate.

  And then another bolt.

  Yes.

  A third.

  But the lightning remained: glowing bolts connecting earth to heaven, upward-flowing electrons coruscating as they rose. Hissing and crackling, rippling white fire pillars reared up into darkness.

  Another crack.

  Fourth.

  Again, again: fifth and sixth.

  I’m going to live.

  Grimly, Ro forced herself to stand.

  And then, incredibly, she laughed.

  While all about her, on the flat-topped rock, white lightning played and danced, glowed and cracked.

  I’m going to live, my father!

  And blazed.

  Hissed, steam rising.

  And burned.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  31

  NULAPEIRON AD 3420

  Brother Tom began his prayers early.

  First, the dynamic warm-up devotions. And then he ran: day one of forty-nine, pacing himself for a forty-nine-klick offering before the Way. Along a dark, clean tunnel—he moved; the world flowed past.

  Logos, I devote myself to thee.

  For it is the world, the universe which thinks.

  I do not exist.

  The ego, the I, is an atom of self-awareness: one cog in the cosmic mechanism, a unit vector in the infinite nöomatrix by which the universe perceives itself.

  Beyond thought...

  I am nothing.

  ... he ran.

  Back in the refectory, he drank deeply from a bowl. Then he sat back, eyes closed, and shuddered in ecstasy as electrolytes flooded through him, replenishing the muscles, while zentropes recharged his mind.

  ‘How goes it, Brother Tom?’

  ‘Well, Brother Thrumik.’

  Tears sprang to Tom’s eyes.

  He was so lucky, being here ...

  Thrumik laid a reassuring hand upon his shoulder.

  ‘I know, my brother.’

  And so it continued, the seven-squared sequence, until the forty-eighth night arrived.

  It was the eve of his final run in this extended devotion, and he remembered Brother Alvam’s spiritual glow when he had completed the novadecenovena runs. And wondered if, with a night of fasting and no sleep, he himself might gain a fraction of that grace.

  Neither eating nor drinking, Tom meditated alone in his cell.

  But drowsiness caused his head to nod, so he rose, walked to the Outer Court—exchanging bows with the guardian-monks—and passed through the bronze doorway to the deserted marketplace beyond.

  The nightwatchman, in his tattered surcoat, leaning on his staff, observed without comment.

  One with Logos.

  Tom began to run: slowly, silently, emphasizing heel-to-toe.

  Logos is one.

  For a time, he moved at an easy pace. Then, after passing through a series of quiet residential tunnels, he slowed to a walk. Tomorrow’s devotion would require energy.

  The footpath led into a long cavern, bisected by a dark stream running arrow-straight along its centre. At a curved footbridge, Tom stopped.

  The bridge flows.

  He stood there, contemplating.

  The water does—

  Something.

  No. That’s not right.

  It floated past: a small pale corpse, tiny hand’s cupped palm upwards as though in supplication.

  ‘Sorry, brother.’ An uncouth voice echoed from upstream. ‘Missed the bugger.’

  A big-bellied youth with dull eyes was hurrying along the bank, bearing a long-handled scoop. Moving marginally faster than the small, furry, drifting body.

  The nightwatchman had two burly sons: Baze and Taze. This was one of them.

  Making a tiny mudra of blessing, Tom watched as the youth—whether Baze or Taze, he was not sure—fished the dead marmie from the black waters.

  But then another voice called out—the other brother, leaning against a stone bollard to catch his breath—and on the cobblestones, by this one’s feet, a heavy burlap sack lay still.

  No...

  Lay moving.

  Tom’s skin prickled. Then something snapped behind Tom’s eyes, a red rage filled his vision, and when his senses cleared he was standing above the second youth—now prone, stunned, beneath him—pressing his foot into a fragile throat.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he reached down, opened the sack just a little—enough to see the wide amber eyes inside: six or seven trapped, fearful marmies—then sealed it shut.

  ‘Taze! Taze!’ Gasping, the brother was running up. ‘Let him go
, brother ... He ain’t done nuthin’.’

  Tom stepped back, releasing him. ‘You’re Baze.’

  ‘Yeah, I—’ He stopped, puffing, bent over in agony. Then: ‘We’s doin’ the Abbot’s bidding, brother. No messing.’

  On the cobblestones, a tortured gurgle was the only sound which came from Taze’s throat.

  ‘Don’t try to talk,’ Tom told him. ‘In an hour, drink a little cold water.’

  Inside the sack, the marmies struggled without hope.

  ‘You said’—his own voice came from far away—‘this is the Abbot’s bidding?’

  Sack in hand, he headed towards the public cavern where he had first seen marmies. At this late hour, only a few pink glow-globes moved through the shadows, casting weird ripples across the green translucent turing-block at the far end.

  ‘They squeals, see,’ Baze had told him. ‘Disturbs the Abbot’s meditations.’

  And the other elder monks’, apparently.

  Taze had nodded emphatically when his brother added: ‘Our Pa says, it must be right an’ proper, or they wouldn‘t—’

  But Tom had cut him off.

  Now, at the cavern’s edge, he gently knelt down, and pulled open the sack. At the same time, the resident troop of marmies, ranged high up on the cavern wall, grew still. Then one of them called out, high and chattering.

  And, at Tom’s feet, the freed captives swirled into motion—bounding towards their fellows—save for one. A single marmie looked up at Tom, gave a small grimace, a headshake, then loped away, using foreknuckles sparingly on the flagstones, and then sprang up the wall with admirable agility.

  You‘re welcome.

  Tom thought back to what he had told the two brothers, the nightwatchman’s sons.

  ‘The rules have changed.’ And his thoughtful addendum: ‘But don’t tell your Pa just yet.’

  He walked out of the cavern without looking back.

  The novitiates’ personal belongings were kept in a dank storage vault, until they became full monks, expected to remain for life. Would his things be here, or had too much time elapsed since his de facto ordination?

  Tom looked along the shelves, until he saw a small folded pack which looked familiar: a dark-green travelling cloak folded in a neat bundle. Still uncertain—it was a generic cloak, nothing special—he poked around with his fingertips, brushed something formed of metal.

  Tom lifted it forth. It dangled from the neck cord: hooves upraised, mane wild, in an endless striving for freedom.

  Father...

  He had not even realized his talisman was gone.

  How can I follow the Way without my father’s gift?

  Sliding the cord over his head, Tom secreted the metal stallion within his orange jumpsuit robe. Then he pulled out a small disk—the travel-tag given to him by Trevalkin: he remembered his dislike of the man—and tucked it inside his clothes, beside his talisman.

  He slipped out of the vault without a sound.

  For the sake of the Way, I do this...

  Repeating the sentence in his mind, over and over like a mantra, Tom made his way along the darkened cloister. By the time he reached the kitchen-lab, the monastery appeared deserted: it was four hours before dawnshift; no-one save the guardian-monks would be awake.

  The travel-tag was a high-privilege access-request, tagged specifically to Realm Boltrivar. But the lab’s semisentient scanfield, as Tom had hoped, recognized the implied authority.

  Membrane dissolved, and he slipped inside.

  He ran. It was incredible, wonderful—coming into the last few tunnels, knowing the monastery was in reach, then pouring into the Outer Court, standing there swaying, scarcely believing he had completed the Intermediate Devotion.

  Forty-nine klicks: the forty-ninth successive day.

  The courtyard was not crowded, but a few elder monks watched approvingly as aides took him to a recovery chapel, and laid him on a pallet. Soft waves of warmth rose through him, and a physiologist-monk came in to take readings, nodded, and left.

  But when they brought in his meal on a tray, Tom passed his hand across the bowls in an unobtrusive motion, sprinkling fine grains like dust across his food.

  For the sake of the Way.

  That night he dreamed of Paradox.

  At first it was true memory: of the white neko-kitten, mother killed by cruel youths, living wild. Of sneaking from the Ragged School with Zhao-ji, taking the poor thing fish-bloc. The tiny buzz as the small body purred, little pink tongue lapping up food.

  Or later, in a gilded travelling cage, in comfort like a Lord, tended to by Zhao-ji’s officers ...

  But then those sea-green eyes became impossibly huge...

  ‘Why have you stopped looking for me, Tom?’

  ... became grey ...

  ‘Don’t you love me?’

  ... were Elva’s eyes.

  ‘I—’

  He snapped awake, reaching into darkness.

  It was a day of recovery-prayer—a solo run, light-paced—but he departed from the expected route, into a deserted cavern he knew was there, and bent himself to a different kind of devotion.

  For the Way.

  Slowly, crouching low, he threw a palm-strike against empty air; followed with a slow spin: reverse elbow to an imaginary face. Claw, hammer-strike.

  Faster.

  Knee-strike, moving smoothly now, low kick, drop to the gravelly ground, fire a knife-hand upwards, targeting a groin...

  No, faster.

  Leaped high: a spinning kick. Landed in the midst of invisible enemies, let rip the killing blows, the implacable dance of death.

  Faster.

  Cramps and vomiting came that night, but he hid the symptoms from his brother monks. A few stares followed him the next morning, as he left for his devotions.

  Do I not emanate a holy glow?

  But he was no better than his brothers.

  Dead marmie floating...

  No better.

  On black waters, like Elva’s death cocoon.

  Edelaces dropped in his memory; barriers fell in his mind.

  ‘After tomorrow’s devotions,’ Thrumik told him on his return, ‘you’re to attend Penitents’ Chapel.’

  ‘Thank you, my brother.’

  It was no punishment, despite the name, but an honour to pray in the tiny chapel filled with deepscan fields and physio-tropic processors. A place for receiving guidance.

  The strongest guidance.

  For the sake of the Way.

  No-one stopped him when he went to run that night.

  But it was a short-lived devotion, as he left the prayer-route, slowing to a walk, and made his way among the darker entertainment tunnels until he found the tavern he sought.

  The holo still flapped virtual wings above the entrance, but there was no housecarl on guard at the House Of The Golden Moth.

  Inside, the clamour lessened only slightly at the sight of a monk in the doorway; a confused-looking serving maid took him quickly through the main tavern, and sat him down in a quiet, low-lit chamber at the rear.

  Shortly afterwards, the owner—Master Lochlen, Tom recalled—came inside, sat down opposite Tom, laying his hands flat on the black gloss tabletop.

  ‘What can I do for you, brother?’

  Strange patterns began to spark and swirl inside the tabletop.

  ‘I’m looking for Kraiv. I—’

  Beguiling patterns.