Paradox

by John Meaney

  “Begging your pardon, my Lord ...”

  “Any time, Jak. Say what’s on your mind.”

  “You’re going to interview them personally? The palace staff?”

  “Well, yes.” Tom frowned. “How else can I get to know them?”

  Jak said nothing: but that was eloquence in itself.

  “By Chaos, Jak!” Tom shook his head. “I really did need to talk to you, didn’t I?”

  “Looks like it, my Lord.” Emphasis on the title. The designation which meant Tom could never “get to know” his servitors.

  “So what do I do? Tell me.”

  “Not fair. I don’t know the details. But your chef-steward isn’t too dynamic, is he?”

  Tom sighed. “I didn’t want to start by getting rid of people.”

  “No need to.” Jak was reviewing the tricons’ surface layers as he spoke. “Let him keep his title, just bring in a majordomo. Then you can—”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Tom stood up, motioning Jak to remain seated.

  “Do you think you could do the job? And would you want to?”

  “Chaos! Sorry, I meant—”

  “That’s OK. Do you want it?”

  “I’m a lot younger than Felgrinar,” Jak pointed out. “Could be awkward.”

  “So am I.”

  “You’ve other advantages, my Lord. But I’m up for the challenge.”

  “Good.” Tom grinned. “Very good. I’ll put in a request directly to Lady Darinia.” He swept the triconic display into oblivion. “And I’ll leave the interviews for my new majordomo to conduct.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “But first . . . Here’s something I was going to ask everyone. What are your weaknesses?”

  Jak frowned, but realized the question was sincere.

  “Rough stuff,” he said finally. “Peacekeeping. I can handle stevedores—usually—but you need someone like Lieutenant Milran. I didn’t notice any palace security on the complement.”

  “There are some watchmen and the like, at phi level,” said Tom. “But you’re saying I need a head of security?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” It was not a thought to bring him comfort. “Anything more?”

  “I’m sure lots will spring to mind later.”

  Security. Servitor management. What else was he missing?

  “I guess”—Tom looked at him—”there are things they don’t teach in the Sorites School.”

  “I could have told you that . . . my Lord.”

  That night he fell asleep without the benefit of an extra training session.

  Claustrophobia

  But there was a period during which he slipped in and out of grey wakefulness—

  Things with him, in the shadows.

  —never quite dropping out of the dream—

  Dripping. A liquid dripping upon his cheek.

  —then giving himself up to exhaustion, slipping back beneath sleep’s veil, surrendering to the half-seen images.

  It was huge: a big black cargo train, such as Tom had not seen since his days in the Ragged School. And it had been necessary to descend five strata to see it.

  “My Lord.” Jak looked concerned. “Seriously. You should not be down this far.”

  In truth, the twenty uniformed servitors surrounding Tom—some of them conscripted from kitchen duty just for the occasion—looked pale and nervous.

  “Do they have any particular reason,” asked Tom quietly, “to hate their Liege Lord here?”

  “Nothing I’ve heard of.” Jak peered into a shadowy side tunnel. “But I have a feeling—Hey!” He shouted to a gang of stevedores. “Watch those cargo-bugs!”

  The near-sentient black spheroids, rolling on their stubby legs, had begun to veer off the ramps leading into the cargo cars. Quickly, the loading-crews brought them back under control with spit-wands and sheer manhandling.

  “As I was saying, my Lord, you shouldn’t be here.”

  ‘Damn it.” Tom spoke out, knowing that he would be misinterpreted. “I ought to be able to walk safely in my own demesne, no matter the stratum.”

  “Even so.”

  “Yes, all right. I’m not going to hang around.” Reaching inside his waist sash, Tom drew out a crystal sliver. “Take this, would you?”

  “Of course. What’s on it, my Lord?”

  “Details of my new security chief, I hope.”

  Jak raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

  “When you get back to Lady Darinia’s demesne, do some investigating, would you? See if the person would be interested in transferring allegiance. Check she’s as suitable as I think she is. Let’s confer before I offer her the position.”

  “OK.” Jak spoke automatically, but his gaze was on the loading-crews, watching the cargo for which he held responsibility.

  “And, Jak ...”

  “My Lord?”

  “If you decide to transfer allegiance, and Lady Darinia agrees, I really will be your Lord. For the long term. You understand?”

  Am I a hypocrite?

  Jak bowed, very low. “I do, my Lord.”

  It was awful.

  Hood up, hem of his tattered black cloak just skimming the foetid puddles, he walked along a twisted tunnel. Stepping aside to avoid two burly men hauling a battered smoothcart—its bottom plates worn, to judge by the scraping noise—Tom was careful not to lean against the damp, mossy walls.

  My demesne.

  Even the fluorofungus was mottled with black: the kind of infection that it was a public duty immediately to report, to avoid its spreading.

  When Jak returned, perhaps Tom could get him to start some programmes which would clean all this up.

  But we’ll need to get the Primum Stratum sorted first. Tom could almost hear the objection. Down here, ten strata below Tom’s palace, noble intentions seemed far away and useless.

  It had been two tendays since Jak’s departure, and his return was imminent. But Tom had wanted to descend, to see the lower parts of his realm with his own eyes.

  If it’s this bad here, what’s it like lower down?

  Tom kept his long cloak drawn around him, not certain whether his subjects here would know of their new Lord’s deformity.

  “What d’you want?” Scowling, grime-blackened, warty face. Bleary eyes. A battered flask in a pocket of his tunic.

  “I, er, was looking for the market,” said Tom.

  But he straightened his stance as he said so, relaxing his shoulders, and the other man unconsciously took a step back.

  “That way,” he said after a moment, gesturing with his wart-encrusted chin.

  From the alcove behind him, two more men stumbled out and glared at Tom, oblivious to their comrade’s drawing-back.

  They stopped dead as Tom allowed his cloak to fall open: whether at the sight of his stump, or of the long redmetal poignard in a crossdraw position on his left hip, Tom could not tell.

  “Thank you.” He addressed the man who had given him directions.

  Walking on across increasingly uneven flagstones, avoiding water dripping from ceiling cracks, Tom realized that he truly wanted to see the local market chamber. Would it be like the one he had grown up in within Lady Darinia’s demesne?

  He did not even know in which stratum his original home had lain. But it was not like this one. Surely, his home had been larger, not as grubby as this. The stallholders’ tentlike awnings were stained and faded. The few marketgoers seemed bent by woe, malnourished and clad in near-rags.

  It should not be like this.

  Grimly, he walked around the chamber’s pentagonal perimeter, noting the small barefoot children—one with the blank expression but sullen watchful eyes of a thief—and the spiritless haggling, the paucity of goods displayed on the old fabric-covered tables.

  *** KILWARE ASSOCIATES ***

  The scarlet tricon, just on the edge of his peripheral vision, caught Tom’s attention.

  Dark, and grimy
enough to blend in with the surroundings, it might not even have been the same tent that Tom had seen in Lady Darinia’s demesne. But it was the same tricon, projected virtually so that it appeared to hang deep inside the rock wall against which the tent was pitched.

  Placing his hand lightly on his poignard’s hilt, he stepped inside.

  Dim lighting—low scarlet beams peeping out from gaps in a drape at the rear—and long shadowed tables, covered in translucent membrane. Inside were rows of weapons. Immediately, a poignard caught Tom’s attention: silver rather than redmetal, but otherwise it could have been twin to the weapon at Tom’s belt. He reached down—

  “Stop! Don’t touch the membrane!”

  A slight, shaven-headed man in a dark tunic held out a hand in warning; Tom froze.

  “Come here.” The man crossed to a side opening in the tent, and beckoned Tom. “Take a look.”

  Adrenaline fading, Tom joined him. Unobtrusively, the shaven-headed man pulled the opening wider, and pointed out into the market. “See her?” It was an old grey-haired woman, autistically scrubbing her hands over and over—

  “That’s what the membrane does”—he let the hanging fall back into place—”unless I dissolve it. We don’t encourage thieves at Kilware Associates. My name is Brino, by the way.”

  As Brino turned, a metallic glint in the small of his back denoted another discouragement to theft—as though his quiet, watchful bearing were not enough warning.

  Scrubbing, over and over—

  Tom shook his head. “I just wanted to look around.”

  “That’s what the woman said. But don’t worry”—Brino chuckled—”we’ll get her the antidote when she breaks down and asks for it. That’s more than most people would do.”

  “Antidote?”

  “It’s like a permanent skin condition until treated. Very unpleasant. And there’s no generic treatment: the femtocytes have to be coded, exactly matching the toxin’s receptors.”

  “Interesting,” said Tom, wondering if it could be used for his palace’s defences.

  “Also expensive. That’s why most people wouldn’t treat miscreants for free.”

  Tom frowned.

  “Let me just browse by myself. I promise”—with the tiniest of smiles—”that if I want to touch anything, I’ll ask first.”

  “Very good.” The man, Brino, bowed: as though to an official, not to his liege Lord.

  Energy weapons were forbidden in all strata of Tom’s realm; even his militia, when that was up to strength, would keep their hardware in armouries until needed. But some of these displayed items, among the blades and chains, skirted the intent of the law: brooches which used lev-fields to spit toxic needles, bracelets entwined with monofilament garotting-cord, belts which undid at a touch to form many-stranded blade-whips.

  Tom looked at Brino. Small, but with a feline awareness. Much though he disliked the whole concept of this establishment, Tom realized: This is probably the safest place in my realm. No thieves in their right minds would try to rob this place.

  A whimper sounded from the back of the tent.

  “Don’t worry.” Brino spoke softly as Tom whirled. “One of our patients, that’s all.”

  “Patients?”

  Just then, black drapery rose, revealing a youth, face webbed with pain and glistening with sweat, limping out of a double chamber formed by the tent’s inner partitions. A broad bandage had been fastened around his right thigh, outside his trews.

  “Thank you.” The youth’s voice was faint. He nodded to a slender woman, clutched a small bag, limped past Tom without a glance, and went out into the marketplace.

  The woman was dressed in a dark tunic, similar to Brino’s. Beside her, on a bench, a hugely muscled man, running to fat—his face dangerously flushed—looked up fearfully.

  “Your turn,” the woman said, and the big man swallowed as the drapes fell back into place, hiding them.

  Beside Tom, Brino was gently shaking his head.

  “When it comes to weaponry, it pays to get the best.”

  “Weaponry?”

  “Depending on your definition of the term.” Brino smiled at Tom. “Implants, mindware—it’s all part of the same thing.”

  Tom stared out of the tent’s main opening. The bandaged youth was disappearing behind a stall, heading towards an exit tunnel.

  “Cheap mindware was his problem.” Brino spoke right beside Tom’s ear, and Tom started: he had not heard the man approach. “Uploaded a close-quarter-combat logotrope. Shoddy workmanship.”

  “So what happened?” Tom, despite himself, was genuinely curious.

  “Tried to throw a high roundhouse kick and tore his hamstring to shreds,” said Brino, and laughed. “Loaded reflex-patterns his body couldn’t cope with.”

  “Ouch.” Tom winced.

  “He wanted us to fix the problem with myolin-enhancers and monocarbon tendons.” Brino shook his head. “Throwing good money after bad. We offered to deinstall the ‘trope, or just treat the immediate injuries. Guess which he chose.”

  “I suppose ... Not the long-term solution.”

  “Right.”

  Tom gestured towards the tent’s rear. “And what about the big guy?”

  “Muscle grafts. Silly bugger.” Brino shook his head. “If he had the gym discipline to keep the grafts in working order, he wouldn’t need them in the first place. Now they’re just turning to fat.”

  Brino’s body-fat percentage looked to be even less than Tom’s own. Despite Tom’s fitness and years of phi2dao training, he felt that he should walk softly around this man.

  “So how many establishments,” Tom asked, changing the subject, “do you have?”

  He had already decided that this was not the same tent, nor these the same staff, which he had seen in the Tertium Stratum of Lady Darinia’s demesne, near the Caverna del’Amori.

  “A few.” Brino’s expression gave nothing away.

  “Hmm.”

  “So what you need”-—Brino talked as though Tom had been asking for advice—”is something subtle, don’t you think?”

  “If you say so.”

  “External smart-tech can be disabled, and at the very least is detectable.” Brino ran his hand across his shaven head. “You should be looking for sensitivity.”

  Tom chuckled, though he knew Brino was being serious.

  “Here.” Brino took a fighting stance, slowly extending a punch and holding it so that his ribs were exposed. “Throw a side kick.”

  Tom did not ask how Brino knew he could fight. They both had the look: each could recognize something of himself in the other.

  And the adrenaline was pumping. Two fighters, strangers, from different backgrounds: no matter how controlled and civilized the meeting, the possibility of sudden overkill lurked, waiting to explode.

  Slowly, Tom chambered his right leg, extended, pressed the edge of his foot against Brino’s lower ribs, then retracted.

  “And if the opening hadn’t been there?” asked Brino.

  “I wouldn’t have kicked. I’d have done something else.” Tom extended a backfist which Brino blocked, exposing his own ribs. “Or created the opening.”

  Once more the path was clear for Tom’s kick; he did not bother with the technique itself.

  “Take your guard.” Brino looked serious.

  Right side forward, Tom’s arm was bent at a right angle but fluid, ready to move.

  “No opening to your ribcage,” said Brino. “Right?”

  Tom nodded, waiting.

  “But let’s work the angles.”

  There was a thud against Tom’s floating ribs, and he forced himself to stay upright, exerting breath control.

  Where did that come from?

  “Nice,” was all he said.

  “See?” Brino moved slowly this time, showing him. “Fluid and deceptive: finding the opening.”

  From Brino’s line of sight, Tom’s guard should have closed off the gap . . . yet Brino’s leg unerringly coil
ed and thrust, foot somehow shooting up between Tom’s arm and torso, reaching the target.

  Tom backed away before he spoke.