Context

by John Meaney

  ‘I can arrange that, sir.’

  Shaven-headed children walked—no, marched—in ranks along the wide corridor. Tom felt his face stiffen into a mask as he saw the matching tunics, the bright expressions somewhere between solemnity and buoyant enthusiasm. They wore half-capes of blue, lined with red, and they walked straight-backed and proud behind a small banner bearer who could not have been more than eight SY old.

  Adult gazes slipped away as the procession passed.

  But it had been worse, earlier that morning, when the tunnels had been quieter and Tom had seen the column of prisoners, thirty men, women and children tied together, walking barefoot, under guard. There had been six soldiers escorting. Only six. The prisoners should have fought back tooth and nail like vicious animals, accepting the risk of death. But their attentions were focused inwards, full of muddied confusion (just as Velsivith had described), and the conviction that this was a bureaucratic error which would surely be rectified as soon as they could talk to someone in charge.

  On each forehead, a motile sigil—slapped on during their arrest—cycled through changes, from red diamond to blue spot: a prisoner brand, which would have deterred escape had they even perceived the extent of their own danger; but they did not allow themselves that madness. Not consciously.

  Only one small girl, too young to deceive herself, stared at the soldiers with open mouth and fear shining in her eyes.

  While passers-by, whose former neighbours might have been among the prisoners, oddly carried on about their daily business, walking to market or godown. Unable to look, as though they could not quite perceive what was happening in their own quiet residential tunnels, in the clean stone corridors with well-kept alcoves, among the small, tidy moss-gardens and scrubbed piazzettas of a modest, well-ordered community.

  Tom was trembling when he reached the safe chamber, passing by Stilvan—Tyentro’s lieutenant, hawk-nosed and dangerous—and two other team members, on silent watch.

  I should have done something.

  But the Blight’s forces were everywhere, implacable, as though the very air was heavy with its essence.

  Something...

  In the small, curtained-off chamber, Velsivith sat on a low stool, heavy russet cloak pulled round himself. There was a chill, and a musty smell rose from the old drapes. When he saw Tom, he gave a thin, tight smile.

  ‘Well met, my Lord.’

  A flicker of a glance from Tyentro, well concealed. Surprised at Tom’s rank? Neither had told the other much of his past; their meetings were always brief, for safety.

  ‘Lieutenant Velsivith, I’m sorry for your wife’s troubles.’

  ‘You saw us that day, from the balcony.’ The amber ovoid in his cheek looked dark, almost brown. ‘But that’s not what you’re— Her illness. Who else knows?’

  ‘We were the second interested group to find out.’

  ‘Who ... You mean my superiors. Chaos!’ Velsivith looked away. ‘Ah, Vhiyalla. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Accept our help,’ said Tom.

  ‘Oh, that. As I recall our last meeting’—with more than a trace of self-disgust—‘I left you to the interrogators’ mercies in one of the pain chambers. Why should you help me?’

  ‘Common enemy.’

  ‘Not good enough. Why should you trust me?’

  Tom stood with his back against the cold stone wall. He could feel the heat being leeched from his body, despite his cape.

  ‘That day, I did see you and Vhiyalla. What I saw could not be faked.’

  Tom heard the longing in his own voice, fell silent.

  Neither of the other men looked surprised or amused: too many people, nowadays, had tragic stories of their own to carry with them.

  ‘Have you got courier lines?’ Velsivith glanced at Tyentro, then back at Tom. ‘Enough to take us into a friendly realm? Away from the Blight.’

  Is that what you ‘re after? Infiltration, after all?

  Taking down an enemy courier network would be a big feather in any intelligence officer’s cap. Or more immediately, security forces might already be converging on this rendezvous.

  ‘She wouldn’t go by herself,’ Velsivith added. ‘Not that I want to remain.’

  Tyentro made a silent shift in stance. This was between Tom and Velsivith; Tyentro’s job was to kill Velsivith if things went wrong. Should Stilvan raise the alarm, Tom would attempt to escape—his duty as a local control—while Tyentro dealt with things on the spot.

  Anybody can kill anybody.

  Not true, but Tyentro was very capable.

  ‘What are you offering,’ Tom asked, ‘to pay for passage?’

  Velsivith hunched forward on his stool. ‘Not many people have seen the Blight manifest a portion of itself—but you have, my Lord. And so have I.’

  Tom felt a chill that was nothing to do with the stones he was leaning against.

  ‘You mean the people who killed the Seer.’

  ‘People.’ With a faint smile: ‘If you can call them that. I think of them as substrate.’

  ‘But you didn’t see them.’

  ‘Not then. But later. I’ve travelled, closer to the power centres, where there are more non-people like that. Their eyes . . .’ Velsivith shook his head, very slightly. “They’re part of the Blight, just components, and that means they’re no longer human.’

  Tyentro unfolded his arms, recrossed them, without tucking in the upper hand: ready to strike as soon as it became necessary.

  ‘What can you give us?’

  ‘Locations of two of their High Commands. And biometric data on every prisoner who’s passed through the Grand’aume Core.’

  Tom stepped away from the wall. ‘Biometric data?’

  ‘Every prisoner is deepscanned and analysed. Of the ones who are deported, some are directed to camps near the High Commands, the power centres. There are tales of what happens there’—with an almost violent headshake of denial—‘but I don’t know. I do know that those camps’ prisoners are chosen from the multitude that pass through.’

  ‘From bio-analyses?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ With a bitter smile: ‘You didn’t think they’d actually committed a crime or anything, did you?’

  Tom’s eyelids fluttered as he shifted into logotropic trance, analysing and synthesizing, allowing gestalten to form themselves against the background of his own experience, and his consciously constructed model of the Dark Fire’s nature and intentions, matching with the scant information he already possessed about the ongoing arrests.

  Finally, he breathed in deeply, snapped his eyes open.

  ‘You’ve a prisoner called Yano,’ he told Velsivith. ‘I’d like you to release him.’

  ‘And that’—Velsivith’s voice was suddenly subdued—‘is the price of my passage?’

  ‘With the biometrics. And one other thing.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Something we’ll discuss later.’

  ~ * ~

  50

  NULAPEIRON AD 3421

  When Yano was released, Tyentro himself tagged along through the crowded tunnels, following the dazed man as he stared with wonder at homely sights he had thought were lost to him forever. With experienced tunnelcraft strengthened by natural paranoia, Tyentro was excellent at spotting human surveillance; there was none here.

  Femtotech was more dangerous, but that would have to wait till they could get to a safe chamber for screening.

  Finally, before Yano reached his sister Shayella’s dwelling—she was with Tyentro’s lieutenant, Stilvan, two strata below; up here, notice had been given for her arrest -Tyentro intercepted him.

  Dismay shut down Yano’s expression when Tyentro showed a crystal copy of Shayella’s arrest notice. He agreed to go along with Tyentro, though he feared trickery, and a return to the Grand’aume’s dungeons.

  Tom learned all this as he debriefed Tyentro.

  ‘Let’s get him down to his sister,’ he said. “Then he’ll be more forthcoming when we as
k questions.’

  ‘All right,’ Tyentro answered. ‘But I thought his release meant nothing, tactically. Just a way of bringing Velsivith further into our camp. Strengthening our hold on him.’

  ‘That’s part of it. But I want to know more about the Seer’s chamber.’

  The way Tom remembered it, the Seer’s chamber was a great ovoid hanging in a vast darkened shaft, its catenary walkways like transparent capillaries linking it to the tunnels beyond the abyss. When he had last seen it, row upon row of arachnabugs had been crawling on the shaft wall, guarding the Seer.

  Yano had helped to build the walkways. Beyond confirming Tom’s impressions and adding architectural detail—the exact number of walkways (twelve), the materials used (moldoil softglass)—he had little tactically significant information.

  ‘Thank you,’ Tom said finally. ‘Make yourself comfortable. Two more days, and you’ll be far away from here.’

  Yano began to reply, but his mouth twisted and suddenly he was sobbing, and he sat with his hands clasped between his thighs, rocking back and forth, staring at the grimy flagstones, seeing only the jailers coming for him once more, and the glistening red of the pain chamber’s flesh-like toxin-laden walls, while his skin shrank beneath the piercing screams of tortured prisoners only he could hear.

  They used a different location for Tom’s next meeting with Velsivith. It was an art gallery, its owner absent; the walls and ceilings were burnt orange, composed of flat planes but in a jumbled maze of polygon-faced tunnels, and the floor was a single continuous turquoise crystal.

  It reminded Tom of the Arizona realm in Ro’s Story, but he tried not to take that as some kind of omen.

  He sat beside Velsivith on a wide bench, and watched a deep-burgundy smartglass sculpture slowly morphing through liquid, abstract configurations.

  ‘Tell me,’ Tom said slowly, ‘about the Seer’s chamber.’

  Velsivith twitched. “That place.’

  ‘It was under heavy guard when last I saw it. Not that it helped at all.’

  ‘No-one’—the amber ovoid pulsed alternately dark and light as Velsivith shook his head—‘would dare attack it now.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘There are no guards, except in the ordinary access tunnels outside. But the mausoleum is haunted, my Lord. I mean it.’

  ‘Mausoleum?’

  ‘It— We kept the Seer there. Froze the—remains. Council orders.’

  Haunted.

  Dark Fire manifestations?

  Then, ‘That’s the other thing I want to ask of you, Ralkin,’ he said quietly, using Velsivith’s forename for the first time. ‘Can you get me inside there?’

  It was like dark, coagulating blood: the burgundy smart-glass, slowly changing shape upon its shelf.

  ‘No,’ said Velsivith finally. ‘Not you. The scans will remember you, still recognize you, and I can’t override that.’

  Chaos...

  ‘Tyentro, then.’

  ‘If you get Vhiyalla to safety, yes.’

  ‘I’d say we have a deal.’

  They sent Vhiyalla, along with Shayella and her brother Yano, via the long-prepared escape routes, stage-managed by some of their deepest-cover agents-in-place. A bland-faced courier went with them, carrying a crystal in his tunic’s flash-pocket, set to heisenberg the crystal to oblivion if the pocket was incorrectly opened.

  But the biometrics data which Velsivith had provided might be very important. Unknown to the others, Tom sent a duplicate with a second courier.

  Deep-lined face and whipcord-thin, with long wispy white hair: the man was in his seventies, but ramrod-straight and obviously fit.

  That’s how I want to turn out.

  Tom and the courier bowed, each recognizing a kindred spirit. Then the old man was gone, and Tom knew they were unlikely to ever meet again.

  Three nights later, Tom moved through a district of prosperous but depressing tunnels: black, with steel dragon-sculptures—fangs bared, neck cowls flaring open—sprouting from purple pillars. Archways were decorated with black tangled wire on which blood-blossoms sprouted, their wispy rust-coloured air-roots gently waving.

  Passers-by smiled or laughed rarely; when they did, their humour had a predatory, self-satisfied aura, congratulating themselves or their cronies on the power they held.

  Tyentro’s team had already swept the rendezvous for surveillance, but Tom’s skin prickled all the same. This was some sort of crux: if Velsivith had been setting them up, now was the time for him to spring the trap.

  The rendezvous was a tavern, with half-enclosed booth-alcoves along the rear wall. In the third alcove from the left, with tiny flames flickering inside, two glasses of fire-brandy were waiting.

  Tom squeezed into the alcove, painfully aware that it made a perfect cage, and sat down opposite Velsivith.

  Sparks, cast by the fire-brandy, danced in the warm amber ovoid inset upon Velsivith’s cheek.

  ‘Well, my Lord?’

  A rippling privacy-screen now blurred their view of the saloon outside, but Tom wished Velsivith had not referred to his rank.

  ‘They’re in neutral territory, beyond the Grand’aume, and still travelling. I received word.’

  ‘Right.’ Velsivith’s lean face looked diabolic through the flames. ‘There’s Internal Security surveillance on my home again, but I had a chat and joked with the team leader: we went to school together.’

  ‘They’ll wonder why there’s no sign of Vhiyalla.’

  ‘I said she’s not well, but that won’t last for long. If they deepscan—’

  ‘Tomorrow, then.’ Tom’s real internal demons stirred at the rich brandy scent, enhanced by the flames’ flickering warmth. ‘And you’ll be done here.’

  Velsivith snuffed out one glass’s flames, then took a deep swallow, and put the glass down with careful control.

  His eyes were unreadable.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ~ * ~

  51

  BETA DRACONIS III AD 2142

  <>

  [17]

  Twenty-two humans attended the event; afterwards, there were twenty-two theories about what, exactly, had occurred. Some said it was a trial, a criminal prosecution; others considered it merely a political debate between opposing Zajinet parties.

  A few thought it some kind of entertainment or joke, or else a manifestation of alien cognitive processes whose full nature no human being would ever be equipped to understand.

  They stood confused amid the flickering, overlapping occurrences of Zajinets and the dome-shaped hall—mostly dome-shaped, though other forms (a horizontal pyramid, a series of stone needles, even a patch of sere green sky that looked like nothing on this world) flipped into existence, were gone.

  Each individual Zajinet seemed at times to split apart and overlay, shimmering, in superimposed images of differing configurations, as though they somehow existed in simultaneous, parallel realities which could be concentrated together in one place, though never for longer than a moment.

  The human visitors wore tight env-suits, though they stood on a stable dais in a hemisphere of Terran atmosphere; it was the craziness around them which they needed to shut out. At any time during the proceedings, two or three humans were likely to have matt black helmets, darkened for a moment’s respite to hide the random chaos which bubbled through the air, rippled through the ground.

  Two Zajinets manifested, unclothed: that was how Ro thought of it later. They were not clad in the granules and stones and boulders which formed the aliens’ normal, outer forms, like huge elephantine sculptures. Instead, these two individuals comprised raw traceries of light: scarlet fire, and blazing sapphire.

  Bursts of white agitation scintillated around their peripheries.

  Were they prisoners before the dock? Speakers before a gathering of peers?

  <<…preserve...>>

  <<…in finding, hold on to...>>

  <<…converse manifests...>>

  <<�
�obliterate...>>

  <<…a focus...>>

  Then the first Zajinet’s opponent—in Ro’s interpretation they were opponents, judging by the strange overlapping waves of light, the pulsing interference pattern—blasted its reply:

  <<... single thread!...>>