Paradox

by John Meaney

  No go.

  He worked his way through the entire sequence—they have to be there running through his mind—and stopped in the seventh, the last one, a children’s ballet studio. No-one.

  I can’t do this without support.

  But neither could he do it with his old servitor friends: they had the knowledge, but not the training.

  Losing track of time in the empty studio, haunted by the dark spectre in the mirror: himself, hand resting loosely on the barre. Did you learn to dance, Mother, in a place like this? Then he heard the sound of approaching children.

  He slipped outside.

  Only one course of action suggested itself, so he began the entire exercise again, beginning with the first rendezvous-point and following the sequence, and on the fourth try he found them.

  “Catch.”

  The crystal sparkled orange as Corduven caught it. “What’s this?”

  “Everything you need,” said Tom. “Detailed schematics—more detailed than your own—with prisoner locations mapped. Estimated guard strengths.”

  Corduven was sitting at a white wrought-iron table beneath tall, dark-leaved bushes with bright flowers and cloying scents. Carp swam in a pool.

  It had taken this long—too long—for Corduven’s team to reach one of the prearranged rendezvous-points. But when Tom had asked how they had escaped the fighting, Corduven had ignored the question.

  “All right,” Corduven said now, leaning back in his chair. “How did you—?”

  A low whistle, and he froze.

  People coming, he mouthed.

  But a second whistle came, the all-clear, and he continued: “Is it reliable?”

  “I’d say so, yes.” Tom turned a chair backwards, sat down.

  “How . . . ?”

  “Let’s just say, the new masters need to keep the old place running. And keep the prisoners fed.”

  Corduven took out a small silver infotablet.

  “Nice cells.” The schematic blossomed. “The old guest suites. I remember them.”

  With teams of revolutionary guards in front of every membrane, on watch at every intersection.

  “Me too. The thing is”—Tom gestured: the display rotated and magnified—”the interim council have anticipated, in my opinion, every possible action.”

  Corduven had the rank to mobilize a thousand soldiers for all-out assault—Tom understood that—but their movements would be detected days in advance and the prisoners would disappear. Stealth was the only option, but still uncertain.

  “Fate damn it!” Corduven’s eyelids flickered. He was showing the stress.

  “How are your men?” Meaning: how many casualties?

  This time Corduven answered. “We lost two. The other six are fine. The enemy was suppressed.”

  Tom looked away. Then, “Why are you here, Corduven? What’s the real reason?”

  Corduven answered too quickly: “Is life that simple?”

  “Not in my experience. But your marriage with Sylvana was annulled.”

  You knew my feelings: that’s why I’m here. But what about you?

  “Do you think she’s beautiful, Tom?”

  It caught him unawares. “Oh, yes.”

  “I like beautiful women, too, Tom—”

  “Naturally.”

  “—because I can identify with them, in a sense.”

  Tom stared at him. “I don’t follow.”

  “Not because I desire a relationship with them.”

  It took a few moments to sink in.

  “Bloody Chaos, Cord!”

  I didn’t realize.

  “Yes, my friend.” Corduven’s voice was distant. “That’s exactly what it is.”

  And it was grounds for disinheritance—at best—among the nobility; within the military, Tom had no idea of the consequences.

  He knows the risks in telling me this.

  Tom looked at his old friend for a long moment, then held out his hand. “Thank you.”

  Gravely, they clasped wrists.

  Corduven called the others round for briefing, leaving one lookout.

  “Tom, explain your thinking. I’ll want pros and cons, gentlemen, so pay attention.”

  Two of the soldiers nodded as Tom started: “We can turn their own thinking against them. This is a show trial, so they want an audience in the Aleph Hall. It looks better for the cameras.”

  He pulled up a subsidiary holovolume. “They don’t want any nasty surprises, of course, so the guest list has been planned. But that gives us something to work with: ID crystals, seating arrangements—I’ve hacked into those before—and the like.”

  “Weapon scans,” interrupted one of the men. “You’re not going to be able to suborn their sensor webs.”

  Tom noted the suborn and the patrician accent. These men held high rank.

  “Granted. That’s why we’ll be going in unarmed.”

  Derisive looks, replaced almost immediately by thoughtful expressions.

  You picked your men well, Corduven.

  Elite-trained, certainly. But there was something else: Corduven’s soul-baring had avoided Tom’s pertinent question about why he was really here. This operation had the feel of a last-ditch attempt, as if his forces needed to pull off a spectacular and very public coup.

  Suicide mission? With high-ranking patriotic officers?

  “. . . you think, Tom?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said—”

  “Never mind.” Tom reached inside his tunic, pulled out the talisman and drew it over his head. “Watch carefully, gentlemen.” Gestured, separated the halves, split the nul-gel with his fingernail. “See this?”

  Corduven stiffened: a man used to giving nothing away, but surprised for once.

  He didn’t know what was inside.

  “This,” said Tom, “is a mu-space comms relay. Pilot tech.”

  “Chaos!” Troopers glanced at each other.

  I’ve been getting blasé,, Tom realized, about the whole concept. Once more, he was bringing ancient, whispered legends to life before people’s eyes.

  But if you knew what I now suspect, you’d kill me out of hand.

  “Pilots, did you say?” A lean-faced soldier stared intently at the display.

  “They do exist—”

  Tom forced himself to silence.

  “Go on.” Corduven.

  “This particular crystal is not, unfortunately, in complete working order.” Tom indicated a tricon in Corduven’s holodisplay; he gestured for drill-in to more detail. “We can deduce where the higher-ranking LudusVitae officers are staying. One of them should have a functional crystal.”

  Two troopers whispered; Tom caught the word Pilot mentioned twice.

  Corduven said: “How do you know? About these crystals, I mean.”

  “You told me. Three thousand Oracles were affected in Flashpoint. That would have taken three thousand comms relays—probably—and I’m willing to bet the senior officers still have them.”

  Corduven and one of the men exchanged looks.

  Tom understood: this was something their renowned intelligence services had not picked up, but should have. Which meant Tom could be lying.

  He addressed Corduven directly: “You’re going to have to trust me, and let me make my own preparations.”

  And if you knew whose help I intended to enlist—

  A pause, then: “Agreed.”

  A hesitant ripple seemed to pass along the corridor wall, then it froze.

  “Yes,” murmured Tom. “It’s me.”

  He touched the wall with a gentle palm, then hurried onwards. He needed complete isolation—the timings all wrong—and the outer courts would be safer.

  Timing. He should have had a crystal first, before he started: but it was not going to happen. Instead, he was going to have to construct the whole thing in his mind, an algorithmic network comprising thousands of processes in Avernon-metavector contexts.

  And Corduven’s men would have to get
hold of a crystal.

  Lev-bikes, hurtling through the air—

  But the high-arched halls of Veneluza Galleria were empty, disused. Wild fluorofungus formed random clumps on the groined ceiling, the fluted columns. The thirteen-year-old monument—to the riders and spectators who had perished in the explosion—had been toppled over, and acid-etched tricon projections proclaimed freedom’s cause across smoke-blackened walls.

  ~ * ~

  66

  NULAPEIRON AD 3418

  Aleph Hall, reconfigured.

  From inside: a vast, dark, hollow sphere, hundreds of metres across. Its shadows were relieved by floating holo-panels and ribbons of glowing blues—royal and eggshell, azure and sapphire, picked out here and there with exotic violet and startling turquoise.

  Scalp tingling.

  Hard to make out the walls, but they were faceted, with dark panels. The shadows held twisted sculptures: steel and dull gold, tortured figures struggling in the darkness.

  Sombre crowds were filing in.

  Tom started to reach up to run a hand across his scalp—stop that— but prevented himself in time. It would not be appropriate, that was all.

  Least of his worries. He did not have that bloody crystal.

  Other light sources: blood-red vertical bars of baleful light, slowly moving in unpredictable orbits around the hall.

  “Excuse me, Your Reverence.”

  “Please, daughter.” Tom moved aside to let her past.

  Crowds, mostly silent: speaking, when they had to, in subdued whispers. There was just a faint susurration of rustling fabric—long, hooded robes predominating, their colours dark and plain—and the soft arrhythmic slapping of hundreds of padded sandals against the seven spiralling glassine ramps.

  Relying on Corduven to come through with the goods.

  The revolutionary guards wore crossed sashes—one crimson, one emerald—and, more importantly, bore black-and-silver graser rifles at port-arms. They were everywhere: in curved rows along the sloping ramps, around the crystal floor’s perimeter, and stationed in a grid-pat-tern among the spectators themselves.

  Elva, can I trust you?

  If Corduven knew how Tom had obtained the IDs, he would have aborted the operation immediately. But in any case Tom had not seen any sign of—There! Small in the distance, a figure in the descending file. Grey, hooded cape, but it did not disguise Corduven’s gait: highly strung and radiating tension.

  Scalp tingling, ignore.

  Seven ramps, seven men.

  It had been a coincidence, and Tom wondered now whether that had influenced their judgement. Corduven and the six soldiers had split up, each coming down a separate ramp spiral. Perhaps they should have stuck together.

  Itching—Keep still!

  Too far for Corduven to signal success or failure.

  A whisper: “May I have your blessing, Reverence?”

  Urge to laugh.

  “Of course, my son.”

  Do not laugh, do not even think of scratching your bloody head, or Sylvana will die, is that plain enough for you?

  The thought came like an icy shock, and then Tom was forming the one-hand mudra and dredging his memory for the Old Eldraic words—”Benehte, syen mir, pre’ omnis greche”—of formal benediction.

  It was an image of torture.

  The crystal floor was flat, maybe a hundred metres in diameter. High above, at the equatorial level, seven equidistant entrances formed a horizontal circle.

  Torture, yes. It suggested torture, and by conscious design. Formed of dark iron and metre-long carbon rods, thousands of them: a satanic cruciform nest of tortured metal floating at the hall’s exact centre, a hundred metres above Tom’s head.

  Shaven head, tingling.

  In the cruciform, restraining-straps hung limply.

  Here and there, as Tom adjusted his flowing purple robes, people stopped and paused, craning their heads back to look up at the thing. Disappointed that it was unoccupied?

  Some bowed or raised fist to forehead in respect as they passed Tom, and he blessed them with the mudra.

  He could have had two acolytes with him, swinging thuribles and filling the place with perfumed violet incense smoke, but Corduven’s men would not look like apprentice priests, even shaven-headed and purple-robed.

  Ripples passed across the crystalline floor.

  Melting, beginning to move. Tom and everyone else shifted as clear seats morphed into being. Then, by unspoken consent, the two thousand spectators sat down.

  A murmur passed through them.

  But the revolutionary guards did not look up: they were watching the crowd, scanning carefully, and Tom did not like that. Too well trained. There was the glitter of eyes upon him—mistake: look up like everybody else—and Tom forced himself to break eye contact and lean back.

  Glowing, white.

  At the ceiling’s apex, a circular membrane glowed. It changed, bulging downwards in seven places, budding, then the buds burst. White light slid across silver as they dropped into view.

  For a moment the tribunal bobbed in place, then the seven lev-spheres slowly descended. Open-topped, ringed with gold: one judge inside each.

  Destiny!

  He must have been mistaken.

  Then seven great cubic holovolumes sprang up around the hall, close-ups of the judges, and Tom realized he was right.

  Elva.

  No surprise that she was here, a senior LudusVitae officer and locally born . . . except that she had said nothing of this last night.

  Malkoril had furnished the information, and Tom had sneaked along to her temporary quarters to talk. To persuade her to furnish the eight IDs, which she had.

  Closing his eyes to slits, as though in prayer.

  There was no hint that he was the focus of special attention. The guards—at least a hundred and fifty of them—were watching everybody.

  So he opened his eyes normally and checked the holos. Three judges were strangers to him, but four were not. Their heads and shoulders were so huge in the displays that it felt as though he could just reach out and touch them: a gentle fingertip along a cheek, or curved fingers raking eyes, take your pick.

  His feelings were that mixed.

  Sentinel: blocky and white-haired, formidable-looking.

  Elva: face impassive, eyes giving nothing away.

  Viscount Vilkarzyeh: in a simple uniform without decorations, one of the proletariat, trying his quondam peers.

  A familiar pale, freckled face . . . Reddish-auburn hair, beautiful eyes, the nonfunctional one like a huge turquoise/aquamarine amber-flecked jewel at this magnification. Here to try her former mistress.

  Arlanna.

  He tried to catch Corduven’s eye, but the vectors were all wrong, his view obscured by other spectators.

  No crystal.

  If Corduven’s men had been successful, he would have got it to Tom by now.

  “Are you sure you’ll get one?” Tom had asked.

  “My people,” Corduven had replied, “are proficient in neurointerrogation. “

  A paradox-trap, then.

  Corduven could not make his move without Tom; Tom needed a crystal.

  Lady Darinia’s expression is calm, authoritative: in close-up, her eyes are unnaturally steady.

  “The Lady Sylvana will decide the boy’s punishment.”

  Wide, blue eyes.

  Blood pressure, EEG, normal. Verdict: not unduly stressed. Clear, young voice. “An arm, perhaps?”

  “Very well.” Lady Darinia. “Before you deliver him, remove an arm.”

  Impersonal grey gaze.

  “Either arm will do.”

  Why the Chaos had the prosecution begun with this illustration?

  Because of the thing Tat had said: One-Arm had been a martyr to the cause, and the crowd would know that.