by John Meaney
“I won’t stay. What did you think of—?” Trude stopped as Father shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “Well, I wanted to ask a favour. Can you spare Tom for an hour or two, later tonight?”
“Of course.” Mother smiled brightly. “Tom would love to help out.”
“Just to Garveron Place—”
But Father was lifting the stewpot’s lid, revealing the dark meat-and-dumpling stew, and the aroma of roasting meat ascended, filled Tom’s nostrils, mixed with his breath as he remembered the Pilot’s face crisping, cooked beneath the questing graser beam . . .
He staggered, gorge rising, as he pushed back from the table and lurched past Trude out into the corridor, barely making it to the communal washroom in time.
After rinsing his mouth with warm water, Tom waited before returning to the family chamber. Thoughts whirling, he walked slowly back; at the hanging, he clapped absent-mindedly to announce his arrival, and went inside. Trude was no longer there.
He reassured Mother about his health. At her insistence, he put on a heavy overtunic, and headed for Trude’s place.
She let him leave the overtunic there—”The temperature at Garveron Place is the same as here, Tom. Don’t worry”—and handed him her smoothcart’s handle.
He tugged the flat plate along the tunnels, its near-frictionless lower surface bucking and sliding across the uneven granite floor. Already his knees were aching, and it was an hour-long walk to their destination.
It pulsed.
As they entered Farlgrin District, zeitgeist-deco salsa pounded in the tunnel’s walls, as though music were the heart of the world, of Nulapeiron itself. Mutated fluorofungus and hand-tinted glowclusters shone electric blue.
Other tunnels lay in black shadow, low-ceilinged and dripping with moisture.
They passed worn steps which wound into a darkened bar. The beat thumped loudly here, and the air was heavy with the sweetness of ganja masks. A pale woman, triple silver bars inlaid along each cheekbone and across her fingers—flesh entwined with metal, screwed into place during childhood—stared at them with feverish orange eyes. Baring her teeth, she snapped her clawlike fingers: a muted clash.
Trude laid her hand on Tom’s shoulder and they walked away, taking a left turn, spiralling gently downwards.
“So, Tom.” They came out onto a worn balcony above Garveron Cavern. “What have you been reading this decaday?”
The term sounded old-fashioned, overly polite. Anyone else would have said “tenday.”
“Xiao Wang’s Skein Wars.”
Their path became a footbridge, bordered with floating holoflames, spanning a pit whose sides were stores and taverns. Bronze globes circled in the air: a lev-orrery.
“What’s it about?”
Lone women loitered at curved niches, each with a small velvet cap lying beside her on the balustrade.
“Er, self-organized criticality.” The phrase was awkward on Tom’s tongue.
A nervous-looking man made his selection, picking up one of the caps and walking away, shoulders hunched. The cap’s owner followed him docilely, too tired to sway her hips.
“Emergent properties,” added Tom, “in their virtual environment. The sudden appearance of the Fulgor Anomaly.”
“I’m surprised,” Trude muttered, “that it got past the censors.”
They took a spiralling ramp downwards. Unloaded, the smooth-cart’s very lightness made it awkward to handle, and Tom was sweating by the time they reached flat stone. In the cavern’s pit, dark storefronts were like eye-pits in skulls. The taverns were open and late-night crowds sat outside, beneath stained orange glowglobes.
Above, the cavern roof was lost in darkness.
“It’s a very old crystal.” Tom was puffing now. “Centuries old. Text only. Found it on Darin’s stall.”
“Even so.”
Passing through the crowds, among the clink of glasses and clack of go stones, the hiss of baby narls in tabletop serpent fights and the gamblers’ encouragements and curses, Tom and Trude threaded their way to Tenebra Shaft, where love poets sweetly recorded whispered seductions for their clients.
“And it explains”—Tom tugged the cart out of a small black man’s path—”why they do things differently now.”
“Ah.” A knowing look crossed Trude’s lined face. “Shoring up the status quo.” There it was again, in Trude’s speech: a touch of educated precision, as though she belonged two or even three strata above. “Here we are.” She clapped, and tugged a heavy hanging aside. “Hi, Filram.”
“Trude!” A hook-nosed, sallow man, dressed in a voluminous smock, looked up from a counter piled high with fabric. “Long time.” Their business took a while, conducted in low voices while Tom, outside, sat on the small, flat smoothcart, heels on the ground, rocking frictionlessly. Then he helped load bolts of fabric—heavy burgundy and silver, light mandelbroten in a hundred shades of green—and tied them in place with cord.
“Full rate.” Trude was handing over cred-flakes.
“I usually give a discount to fellow—” The man, Filram, gave a phlegmy cough, eyes flickering in Tom’s direction. “Fellow traders.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. My love to your family.”
Trude held out a small, grey-wrapped parcel. Filram accepted it with a nod; it vanished within his stained, baggy smock.
“Go in freedom, Trude.”
Lash!
Heading upwards on the spiralling ramp, climbing towards the footbridge, Tom was bathed in sweat.
Crack!
“What—?” He stopped, panting.
Trude frowned.
Unable to control the cart’s frictionless wandering, Tom had no choice but to continue upwards, hauling the cart up onto the level footbridge. Then he leaned over the balustrade, looking down.
Another wet lash of sound.
“Fate!” Trude, coming up beside him, muttered: “Could it be?”
Down below, crowds edged back as a snub-nosed bronze lev-car slid into view. It was an open vehicle, its curved, curlicued bench-seat occupied by a vast, white-skinned man: bare-chested, hugely round, like stacked tubes of fat. Bald head gleaming with a sickly sweat. Behind him, on a footplate, a narrow-bodied slave rode, shaven-headed like his master, raising a sinewy arm—
Trude’s bony fingers clamped around Tom’s upper arm.
The slave swung forwards.
His chain-whip whistled through the air, towards his master’s bare, wide back. Lash! Cherry drops on white: blood sprang out on smooth, glistening skin.
Trude: “What’s he doing here?”
She almost spat the words, like a curse. But Tom was watching the women: they had filed down from the footbridge and laid their velvet caps on the flagstones. Even from up here, he could see the tension drawn across their faces.
In the now halted lev-car, the gross man’s head lolled to one side, tongue protruding. The slave, ignoring him, pointed to two of the women.
They glanced behind them, but a big, grim-faced man with triple braids knotted into loops—pit-fighter style—gestured them onwards. No-one in the crowd tried to help the women. Fearfully, they stepped up onto the footplate beside the slave.
“Destiny.” Bitterness swirled through Trude’s low-toned words. “All tools, all trapped: even him.”
They watched as the lev-car moved, heading for a low, dark tunnel, and slowly slid from sight.
“Who—?” Tom’s voice was hoarse.
“We’re honoured.” Indecipherable emotion webbed Trude’s lined face. “That was an Oracle, young Tom.”
It was as though the stone bridge had dropped away beneath him.
An Oracle?
“It—No, it couldn’t be.”
Down here?
“Creator of truecasts. Destiny’s voice.” A bitter laugh, cut off. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Oracle.
A twisted intersection. Almost home.
“You were there, weren’t you, Tom?” Trude’s voice cut into the swirli
ng images inside Tom’s head. “When the, ah, prisoner was killed?”
Pilot. Stench of roasting meat—
“I can’t . . .”
Beyond the intersection, a group of tall youths loitered. One of them called out, “Hey, Corcorigan.” He made the forefinger-and-looped-thumb gesture. “Heard your momma’s quite a dancer.”
Trude glared, and they turned away, grinning.
“Getting worse round here,” she muttered, then looked at Tom. “Are you OK?”
He shook his head, unable to talk.
“Don’t worry. It got to me, too.”
The Pilot’s death. But there was more, and the stallion talisman felt hard as guilt beneath his tunic, yet he could not explain. Not to Trude, not to anyone.
Beside him, a wall hanging shifted and he jumped, heart pounding, and dropped the smoothcart’s handle.
It was a storage alcove filled with cleaning equipment. A young couple stepped out—he thin and acne-scarred, she plump and smooth-skinned—and looked at Trude sheepishly. Holding hands, they simultaneously blushed.
Chuckling, Trude helped Tom to pick up the handle and get the smoothcart moving again.
Later, alone in his cot, Tom drew the stallion out from beneath his tunic and curled his left hand into the control gesture. Halved, the talisman fell neatly apart.
He looked at its contents for a long time: black, ovoid capsule, needle fastened alongside. Then, pressing the two sections together, he twisted his right hand.
Whole again: forever frozen, galloping for freedom.
He tucked the talisman away.
~ * ~
3
NULAPEIRON AD 3404
Astymonia patrol: a large, blank-faced man and a fit-looking woman. Black helmets. Behind them, night shadows etched the tunnel.
“Are your parents in?”
Tom had been nearest to the hanging when they clapped.
“Er, sure. Dad?” He turned, and the male officer walked in past him. Tom’s gaze was drawn to the long knife at his hip, its hilt worn smooth with practice.
“Come in, come in “ Father was standing by the table, smiling hospitably. “Please sit down.”
The woman followed Tom inside, removed her helmet and placed it on the table, but remained standing. “Thanks all the same.” She ran a hand through her close-cropped hair. “May we ask you some questions, ah—”
Father’s ID stud flashed in his ear.
“Davraig Corcorigan.” The male officer looked up from his thumb-ring display. “A trader?”
“That’s right.” Father’s broad face looked cheery.
The officers were astymonia, not militia: locals, not foreigners. Armed, but no energy weapons.
“Were you in the market,” the woman asked, “yesterday morning?”
“I saw the prisoner escape. The troopers”—Father spoke carefully—”had no choice, that I could see.”
The woman nodded.
“A Romaner.” The male officer looked intent. “A thief, separated from her people.”
A Pilot, Tom wanted to say, but could not.
“Seems reasonable to me,” said Father easily. “Thank Fate we’ve got you and the militia, officers—Say, there’s supper in the pot. Would you like to join us?” He patted his ample belly and smiled.
The male officer snorted, but the woman declined politely. “No thanks. We’ll be getting along.”
“The boy?” The man nodded in Tom’s direction.
“My son, Tom. He’s fourteen Standard.”
Only a hectoday, Tom thought, until I’m fifteen.
“One moment.” Checking his display, the man narrowed his eyes. “Is there anyone else here?”
“Only my—”
At the chamber’s rear, the sleeping-alcove’s curtain moved, then Mother looked out: radiantly beautiful, her hair a copper nimbus, picking up highlights from the small floating glowcluster.
“Because it’s cold in Farlgrin District,” she said to Tom.
He closed his eyes in embarrassment.
That was last night’s conversation, Mother. Opening his eyes again, he saw her ID stud’s ruby spark. Please concentrate.
“Ranvera Corcorigan, officers.” She smiled brilliantly. “Nice to meet you.”
A sharp intake of breath: the male officer.
“Ma’am?” It was the woman who spoke. “Were you in the market chamber yesterday?”
“I don’t allow that kind of talk in my home.”
The officers looked at each other.
“Dreamtropes,” murmured Father. “Disturbances . . . upset her.”
“I see.” The female officer frowned, then retrieved her helmet from the table. “I don’t think we’ll trouble you further.”
“Oh, a moment.” Father held up his work-roughened hand. “The injured militiamen. There must be medical costs—”
“Taken care of.” Snapping her helmet into place, the woman nodded. “Sir. Madam. Thank you for your co-operation.”
After they had gone, Father sat at the table, shaking his head.
“Never known it.” Puzzled. “Young troopers, refusing payment.”
Mother, retreating to the rear alcove, pulled the faded red hanging across.
When Tom returned home, halfway through the afternoon, the chamber was still untidy from the morning, and the sleeping-alcove was still curtained off. Tom shook his head, but went into his own alcove and sat cross-legged on his cot.
“Kwere ost?”
Stallion. Not too dissimilar from his talisman.
Tom gestured for lower audio volume before answering in Eldraic:
“Est ekwos.”
As he had left the market chamber, Padraig and Levro had cast him sour glances, for none of the other traders’ sons or daughters could shirk their duties. But Mother wanted Tom to “better himself.”
“Karoshe.” The holo image shifted, morphing into a twisted spiral organism with hexagonal flukes. “Eh kwees?” A lava-dweller of some sort. “Kwere ost?”
A stirring outside. Mother, getting up at last?
“Ne savro.” Tom could not identify the species in any language.
“Ah, Tom!” Mother tugged the hanging aside, smiling brightly. “How lovely!”
“Ost thermidron.”
Spirit sinking, Tom saw that Mother was wearing a one-piece baggy black sweatsuit: her old rehearsal outfit.
“Kwere ost?”
“Never mind.” Tom gestured the display away, closing down the language tutorial.
“The Borehole Lilt?”
Tom forced a smile. “Great.” Tricons filled the air above the infotablet, and he pointed.
“Dancers—”
“—are special people.” Tom sighed as the familiar strains of music began. “Yes, Mother.”
She took a towel from a shelf, and Tom knew that the Shawl Dance was next. It would finish with a spectacular sequence of plies, but that was not reason enough to stay. She might drag Tom out onto the floor and force him to try some steps.
But her eyes, a distant blue, were filled with dreams, and it was easy to slip past her, out into the tunnel, and head back towards the market chamber and sanity.
Hands jammed into his tunic pockets, Tom took the long way round, not wanting to face Father.
“You should have stayed with her, Tom,” he would say. Then, “It’s a sickness, that’s all.”
Two figures up ahead in the gloom, where the fluorofungus was patchy.
Tom shook his head. In a mood like this, Mother might be lost to them for days, dancing her dreams while he and Father tidied the chamber, bought and cooked the food, on top of their normal work.
Something about them—But the two figures were still, heads bent together, talking in low voices.
No matter. Perhaps he should go back.
He had never dared to ask Father why he stayed with her, but Father had told him nonetheless: “I love her, son.”
And there was nothing Tom could say to that.
“—origan. Check them—” A freak whisper echoed down the tunnel, was lost.
