Context

by John Meaney

  It gave an interesting insight into the man, a contrast to his breezy flirtation with the receptionist. Smiling sadly, Tom returned to the reception chamber and regained his seat.

  His injured thigh began to ache once more, but this time the pain seemed almost welcome: like an old friend dropping in for a visit, unannounced and with no indication whether this was a brief reunion or an extended stay.

  They were very respectful. When they showed him into the low-ceilinged chamber, motioning him towards a plain but comfortable lev-chair, they used polite forms of address, and couched every order as a humble yet formal request.

  But it was clear nonetheless that he was not at liberty to leave without answering their questions, and that if he tried he would learn the difference between a social occasion and an interrogation.

  There were three of them, and they introduced themselves in turn. Feldrif sat to Tom’s left: lean and black-skinned, his pale silk tunic adorned with ruffles whose frivolity was in sharp contrast to the gauntness of his face, the watchful intelligence in his amber eyes.

  On Tom’s right, Altigorn was a plump white man in burgundy robes, with fat-folds squeezing his eyes almost shut. An off-cycle eunuch, whose implants could flood his body with testosterone and adrenaline at will, his bulk comprising muscle as well as fat: not to be underestimated.

  While in front of him sat Muldavika: scalp shaven on the left, straw-coloured hair hanging to her right shoulder, a row of ruby stars across her forehead.

  ‘I’m an Iota,’ she said, noticing his attention. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t try to convert you.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  Feldrif s laugh was not entirely pleasant.

  ‘She’s a warden,’ he explained, ‘in the Church of the Incompressible Algorithm. No-one holds it against her.’

  There was no way for Tom to interpret this comment: one culture’s insult is another’s irony. Muldavika’s expression was unreadable, hard as stone.

  After that, they got down to business.

  ‘The first commoner to be elevated to Lordship in Gelmethri Syektor for nearly a century.’ Holo-tesseracts delineated Tom’s biography; Feldrif read the highlights aloud. ‘Remarkable logosophical ability, by all accounts. Ruled Corcorigan Demesne’—he looked up, amber eyes filled with private speculation—‘for only two SY, before disappearing without explanation.’

  Tom said nothing.

  ‘And you reappeared, after four SY,’ Feldrif continued, ‘just a few tendays ago. Believed to have assisted in a special forces operation which ended a show trial of captured nobles. And which somehow’—frowning now—‘seems to have led to the cessation of violence in that sector.’

  Fate, I hope so.

  ‘We’re not altogether clear, Lord Corcorigan, just how that was accomplished.’

  ‘Just lucky, I guess.’

  Muldavika’s face tightened. In her church, luck was blasphemy.

  ‘You’ll understand,’ said Altigorn, his jowls wobbling as he spoke, ‘that the Seer is a most, er, valuable resource within our realm. Any unexplained death in his presence is a matter of grave concern.’

  Elva.

  Tom blinked, unable to speak.

  Why did you do it?

  But then he regained a measure of composure, and answered: ‘Your Seer was never in any danger. Not from me, and not from Elva.’

  His three interrogators exchanged looks.

  An hour later:

  ‘You have our full sympathy’—Feldrif, speaking smoothly, was covering the same ground yet again—‘Lord Corcorigan. You’ll appreciate our concern.’

  ‘I don’t know...’ Tom clenched his fist, released it. ‘Why she had to kill herself.’

  ‘Had to, my Lord?’ Muldavika leaned towards Tom. ‘You make it sound like a duty.’

  ‘How else do you interpret what she said? The way she—’

  That was when he stopped, realizing what was wrong with their line of questioning.

  ‘Why don’t you know this already?’

  Feldrif: ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If the Seer is that important, you have his chambers under surveillance.’

  A long silence.

  Then Muldavika said, ‘Captain Elva Strelsthorm’s final words were, near enough, “I’ve another loyalty, and this one goes right back to childhood.” What do you think she meant by that?’

  Tom looked away.

  ‘I’ve known her,’ he said finally, ‘since I was fourteen SY old. But I have no idea what she was referring to.’

  A deeper layer of questioning:

  ‘Did you work with many agents, my Lord, who bore thanatotropic implants?’

  That told him all he needed to know about their background knowledge, of both him and Elva.

  ‘No,’ he said after a moment. ‘But I knew of their ...Look.’ He stopped, wiped perspiration from his forehead. ‘I don’t know. You commit suicide to avoid torture, or out of despair, but neither one applied to Elva. She—’ He choked then, and could not continue.

  ‘Take a minute, my Lord.’

  ‘No...’ Tom blinked, essayed a humourless smile. ‘Your own deepscans didn’t work, did they?’

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘You didn’t detect Elva’s implant...’ But his voice trailed off as he registered the odd expressions on his three interrogators’ faces. ‘What is it? Am I missing something?’

  It was Muldavika who let out a long breath, and told Tom more than he wanted to know about the manner of Elva’s dying.

  ‘Tanglethreads are undetectable even by deepscans, Lord Corcorigan. As I’m sure you are aware.’

  ‘What?’

  The term she used was one he had not heard beyond the realm of fiction, and never within the ranks of LudusVitae.

  ‘You weren’t aware of this.’ Feldrif was reading from a lased-in display: Tom’s physiometric readouts. ‘Which means, of course, you are free to go, my Lord.’

  His tone was polite enough, but still a dismissal.

  ‘Thank you.’

  There was little else to say.

  But as he was starting to walk away, it was Altigorn who said:

  ‘One other thing, Lord Corcorigan. What does the term Blight mean to you?’

  Tom turned, frowning. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Or’—Feldrif, this time—‘Dark Fire, my Lord?’

  What?

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Muldavika. Tom’s heart pounded; surely his telemetry readings had leapt off the scale.

  ‘All right...’

  But the answer he gave must have satisfied them even less than himself.

  ‘... I’ve been dreaming of black flames. Every night since Elva... since it happened. It scares me, but I’ve no idea what it means.’

  It sounded insane; but their own scanners showed that he did not lie.

  Elva... What was this other loyalty you held?

  None of it made sense.

  I would have helped, if you ‘d only asked...

  But there was no-one to hear his devastated grief, or to frame a reply which might seem remotely rational.

  ~ * ~

  8

  NULAPEIRON AD 3418

  The one who is gone

  (Now she’s no longer here)

  Her dark memories torn

  Leave dry tunnels sere.

  You see it, don’t you?

  How the void lingers through?

  ... Now Elva is gone.

  Cold ice, solid stone

  And maha pervades all:

  Now we are alone

  Thin illusion must pall.

  Only twists, superstrings –

  Mathematical things –

  Since Elva is gone.

  Fluorofungal shine

  And glowcluster shimmer

  Flood entropic time:

  Die Zeit tot uns immer.

  Just interstices –

  Empty space, if you please –

  For Elva is gone.

 
; Shadows, pale shade

  (Empty core, surface hard)

  By consensus made

  Our atomic facade.

  It’s reductio

  Ad vacuum, I know –

  But Elva is gone.

  Emergent conceit –

  Warmth, love: obsolete

  Now Elva is gone.

  She would have wanted a funnier epitaph. But every attempt at whimsy seemed odd and painful, incongruous in a world drained of colour and warmth, left hard and brittle in the aftermath of her passing.

  Tom hugged his cape about himself. The time for tears was past: death was too enormous, too implacable, for such fragile shows of emotion.

  Icy mist, black lake. Above, the shadowed ceiling, the half-glimpsed edelaces.

  A blink of time, and our cosmos ends.

  And now, and forever: a universe without Elva.

  We never even kissed, until the end.

  Yet he was her liege Lord: a position he had seen abused so often that... But the thought brought no comfort.

  Tom shivered.

  And heard: ‘They come.’

  The priestess prayed.

  Eight russet-liveried vassals slid the white cocoon out onto the water. The black lake was flat and silent, and there was no draught in the chill air, as though the cavern itself held its breath.

  Beside Tom, Xyenquil formed a prayer-mudra with his fingers, accompanying the priestess. Rows of vassals stood to attention. Nirilya remained well back, near an exit. Her hood was black; her dark robes fluttered, in a breeze which did not exist.

  Tom watched the cocoon drift towards the lake’s centre. Inside, teloworms would already be at work, digesting the flesh that had once borne Elva’s spirit.

  ‘... our daughter, that was instantiated, is now complete. Solved and demonstrated: the algorithm of her life is worked out, and honours thereby the greater whole…’

  Above, among frost-rimed stalactites, edelaces fluttered. Others glided in from shadowed tunnels.

  ‘...the nöomatrix, whence the Omega Singularity comes, to collapse the holy cosmic function, observed by Its omniscient love ...’

  A fragile edelace drifted down, and draped itself across the white cocoon. Tom shivered, but could not look away.

  Another edelace dropped.

  ‘...to the depths, conjoining her remains...’

  More descended, fragile and fluttering, blanketing the cocoon with their lacy forms.

  Elva. Please come back...

  It began to sink beneath the dark waters.

  The edelaces would digest the cocoon and absorb the teloworms which had fed upon Elva’s body and broken down the bones; the teloworms themselves, as parasites, would live on inside the edelaces, to catalyse their hosts’ reproduction, bringing forth new life in white fragile forms whose beauty was legendary and whose toxins were deadly.

  Elva.

  The cocoon sank, disappeared. Recitation over, the priestess bowed.

  Elva, my only love.

  The lake was black and still.

  Suddenly it moved and he sat bolt upright in his sweat-soaked bed, surrounded by gloomy darkness, breathing hard as though sprinting for a long race’s finish line.

  When he looked down at his stump it was shrouded in shadows and then it moved again and he jerked back in fear. It was a tiny motion. The bud-hand, centimetres longer than yesterday, had only twitched, but the sensation was massive and electric.

  A gift from Elva?

  He lay back down, head turned to the right, away from the new growth, and wondered what kind of world it was when even his body and his dreams were not his own. And prepared for a gritty-eyed, sleepless wait for the morningshift to come.

  Walking, at random. He carried the cane, but as precaution, not necessity.

  Floor hatch revolving, slats falling into place.

  Tom followed the spiral stairs down to the Secundum Stratum. Checking his travel-tag—making sure he could return—he walked to the nearest hatch and descended again, down to Tertium.

  It was like a scene from childhood, though richer: an Aqua Hall, silvery streams tinkling, a ceramic sculpture fountain. Queuing vassals, empty containers in hand, ration-spikes tucked into their belts. In the corridor beyond, two white-haired women were struggling with filled containers.

  ‘Please,’ said Tom. ‘Allow me.’

  He used his cane as a yoke, slinging it through the carry ropes. Then he laid it across his shoulders and stood upright.

  ‘Ladies?’

  ‘I’m Eta,’ said one of the women. And, ‘I’m Ara,’ said the other.

  Sloshing water made the burden awkward.

  ‘My name’s Tom. Er ... Which way?’

  Terracotta-walled corridor. He deposited the containers just inside the indicated alcove: a plain, clean dwelling.

  ‘Thank you, Tom.’

  ‘Would you stay, Tom, for some daistral?’

  Tom wiped his forehead. His thigh was beginning to throb.

  ‘I must go. But thank you.’

  As he left, pulling the curtain closed behind, he saw the two women clasp hands, and wondered at their relationship. Tom had lost too much not to recognize love when he saw it, and he smiled wistfully, just for a second, before walking on.

  ‘Spare a sliver, noble giver?’ An urchin, cap in hand. ‘Grant a mil for our thespian thrill?’

  Tom stopped, leaning on his cane.

  A troupe of mummers, amid a ring of spectators up ahead, was giving a performance. One holomasked player, with two faces staring in opposite directions, represented an Oracle.

  ‘Please, noble sir. A small donation fends off starv—’

  The urchin’s voice trailed off.

  One of the mummers, blunt ceramic dagger upraised, had his other arm behind his back, hidden beneath a half-cape, and Tom shivered in recognition, hoping that no-one would make the connection between the allegorical performance in front of them and the one-armed man who stood behind the audience.

  ‘I’m neither cold’—the urchin—‘nor very old. My time’s not yet, pale Dr Death.’

  Making a ward sign, he slipped away, was lost among the onlookers.

  Tom turned.

  ‘My Lord.’ It was Xyenquil, smiling with chagrin. ‘I’m the district coroner, among other duties. Hence the young lad’s—’

  ‘I understand.’ Tom spoke quickly, to distract him from the mummers’ performance. ‘You’re here on business, Doctor?’

  Xyenquil ran a hand through his curly red hair.

  ‘Not, ah ... No. I was hoping to talk to you.’

  But not, Tom realized, on official premises.

  ‘Talk about what?’ Then he remembered the interrogation he had undergone, and everything they had said about Elva. ‘The neurosurgery. Elva’s implants. What exactly was done to her?’

  Xyenquil’s blue eyes held an unreadable expression, and he replied with a question of his own which at first seemed neither interesting nor relevant.

  ‘Is it true that Lords study all the logosophical disciplines?’

  Quietly: ‘Yes. It’s true.’

  ‘Ah. If only ... Well, you’ll know then, sir, of quantum entanglement. Pairs of particles prepared so that one will always be in some way the duplicate or the exact inverse of the other: paired spins, polarity, whatever.’

  ‘Ancient observations, Doctor. A thousand SY old. More.’

  ‘But it’s ancient knowledge,’ said Xyenquil, ‘which has never lost its mystery. Not to me, at least.’

  It is one of the key indicators that the universe is stranger than it looks: some outcomes are determined by the nature of the experiment—a particle’s properties are partially determined by the way a human observer chooses to measure it. When particles are paired, then separated by vast distances ...whenever one particle is observed, the partner instantaneously changes, to remain its partner’s duplicate or inverse.

  It was fundamental to the Oracles’ existence: since information cannot travel faster than l
ight, the entanglement-relationship travels backwards through time.