Context

by John Meaney

  ‘So why exactly,’ asked Xyenquil, ‘would an extended femtarray, an entangled femtarray, be threaded throughout Elva Strelsthorm’s nervous system?’

  Tom stared at him.

  ‘I’m risking a great deal to tell you this, my Lord.’ Xyenquil swallowed. ‘But there are things happening in government departments right now which make me feel, well, uncomfortable. I just thought you should know.’

  It was the first indication Tom had received that the medical centre was more than just a private concern. And a hint of strange occurrences among official organizations ...

  Was that the source of the fear he had sensed, among those who were questioning him? A burgeoning coup d’état, or some other great internal change about to come over this realm’s administration?

  But whatever was going on, it was obvious that there were individuals with a sense of decency and honour which overrode considerations of protocol and regulations, even in a dangerous political climate.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

  Tom’s interrogators had mentioned tanglethreads. But he had thought it was to do with encrypted comms, not the entire basis of Elva’s identity ...

  And then the enormous implication of what Xyenquil was saying hit him like a sledgehammer, and he dropped to his knees on the flagstones, and vomited profusely even as the medic took hold of him.

  ‘The duplicate ...’ Tom spoke thickly, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

  ‘Can’t possibly be a machine,’ said Xyenquil. ‘I’m sure it can’t be.’

  ‘A person?’

  ‘I’d say so.’ Xyenquil’s grasp, supporting Tom, was stronger than Tom would have expected. ‘I can’t see how else it could be done.’

  ‘You’re saying she ...’ Tom forced himself to stand upright, and take a step away from Xyenquil. ‘That there’s someone else, somewhere in this world, whose mind is a duplicate of Elva’s.’

  ‘I’m not sure that duplicate is the correct term.’

  Chaos...

  ‘Tell me. Please.’

  ‘I’m not—’ Xyenquil stopped, continued. ‘I believe that Captain Strelsthorm’s nervous system was intimately interwoven with sensors, quantum-entangled to a similar array in some other person’s body. At the moment of death -’

  Tom swallowed, but could not look away from him.

  ‘—the entangled pairs collapsed, and a one-off information transfer—a total information transfer—pulsed through the link as it was destroyed.’

  ‘I daren’t believe it.’

  ‘But, my Lord ...’ Xyenquil blinked. ‘I’m sure of it. Her mind effectively over-wrote the other body’s personality in that instant. The link was designed that way.’

  A two-way link: had the other person died first, it would have been Elva who ...

  Elva lives?

  Tom closed his eyes, shuddering beneath the impact of an idea whose implications were too big to comprehend.

  For if Xyenquil was right, somewhere in this world of ten billion souls there walked a person of unknown appearance and even gender whose thoughts and emotions and memories were those of Elva Strelsthorm, the embodiment of everything that was good and decent and joyful in his life: Elva, whose body had been buried and dissolved within an icy lake, but whose essential beautiful being, whose soul might yet survive, close at hand or forever beyond his reach.

  ~ * ~

  9

  TERRA AD 2142

  <>

  [2]

  Red desert—a startling Martian red: as though this were no longer Terra—to her left, and the distant purple mesa. Above, the clearest deepest sapphire sky she had ever seen: endless and cloudless and pure, beating down with wave after burning wave of heat.

  Sand crunched rhythmically beneath her combat boots; her running pace was steady, metronomic.

  Last lap.

  Rainbow shimmering to her right: the mistfield, surrounding the complex; inside, emerald grass of an almost Irish lustre.

  Come on.

  Salt taste of sweat. Keeping the pace, Ro undid the bandanna from around her neck, and wiped her forehead. And began to run faster.

  Movement. A light tan ground squirrel stood bolt upright, staring at her.

  ‘Good morning to you,’ Ro murmured.

  Inside the mistfield lay DistribOne: salmon-pink block-shaped buildings, a satellite of PhoenixCentral. Otherwise, the red desert stretched endlessly, flatness relieved only by tall saguaro cacti like green capital psis. Like men with hands upraised.

  A Mexican groundsman with sun-darkened skin, hatless, crouched on the sand, was tinkering with a battered grey maint-bot.

  ‘Hi.’ Ro gave a breathless greeting, continuing to run.

  He looked at her with the same expression as the ground squirrel.

  They both think I’m mad.

  It was early—06:52, the refectory not yet open for breakfast—but the temperature was already 27.4 Celsius. She knew both these facts without any tech devices.

  Last two hundred metres, and she poured on the speed.

  Pounding past the main path, she slowed to walking pace, jogged back to the white flagstones, and lowered herself into a hamstring stretch. The stone’s heat seeped into her muscles, relaxing them. A far cry from Swiss winter training—

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  A tiny scorpion scuttled across the path, was gone.

  She stopped in the corridor outside her room, skin prickling.

  Someone’s inside.

  Ro did not question her intuition; it had proved accurate too often in the past.

  Outside the door, a small holo hung:

  *** DOROTHY McNAMARA ***

  FlightScienes Dept V

  *** ANNE-LOUISE ST CLAIRE ***

  PRDiv Sect Gamma3

  There was every chance that the ‘intruder’ was in fact the roommate Ro had not yet met.

  She stood there for a moment, regarding the southwestern pastels of her surroundings—burnt orange, pale blue—and considered. It was almost certainly this Anne-Louise; no reason to suspect otherwise. Anne-Louise was due back from her field trip today, though this seemed awfully early.

  The door concertinaed open at Ro’s gesture.

  ‘Howdy, ma’am.’ A tall, rangy man tipped his stetson. ‘Mighty pleased to meet ya.’

  Deep desert tan. White shirt, narrow black jeans.

  Gunbelt.

  Ro stared, very closely. Vision told her that a person was standing there. But as for her other senses ...

  ‘I really don’t think so.’

  Silver badge, glinting. Arizona Ranger.

  ‘Well now, purty—’

  But Ro walked straight through the cowboy figure, which dissolved into sparkling needles, and slowly disappeared from existence.

  From the floor where she sat cross-legged, an elegant dark-haired young woman—she appeared slight, but not fragile—looked up, smiling, and said:

  ‘However did you know?’

  ‘Anne-Louise?’ Ro held out her hand. ‘Vous êtes Québecoise, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘Ouais.’ She held up her hand and they shook. ‘Tu peux me tutoyer, tu sais. But I’m supposed to be practising my English.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘So how did you know’—Anne-Louise ejected a cassette wafer from her holopad, and rose easily to her feet—‘that Clint was a holo?’ She threw the wafer.

  ‘Clint?’ Ro snatched it from the air: an old-fashioned layered-crystal cassette, the type of lattice wafer that Gramps still preferred to use. ‘You did say Clint?’

  ‘Clint Shade, Arizona Ranger. My hero.’

  They sat on their respective beds, facing each other. At the foot of each bed was a desk. Anne-Louise pointed: on her desktop stood Ranger Shade, now just a few centimetres tall, and frozen.

  ‘The hero of Black Devil Mesa. My new story.’

  ‘Right, they told me.’ Ro handed back the cassette wafer. ‘You’re a storyfactor.’

  A Gallic shrug. ‘An un
published storyfactor.’

  ‘Still…’

  Animated now: ‘My project’s a new character-template shell-language.’

  ‘Er, that sounds good.’ There was a squeeze-bulb of electrolyte replacement fluid on the bedside table. Ro had placed it there before going out to run; she took a gulp now, and it felt good. ‘Very ... interesting.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Anne-Louise shrugged again. ‘My tutor says the primary AIs are too jokey, and the secondary characters are too “predictably unpredictable”. I mean, what’s a hack to do, eh?’

  ‘Too bad.’ Ro wound her infostrand bracelet-wise round her wrist. ‘Um ... I need to take a shower.’

  ‘After which, the refectory will be open. Good plan?’

  ‘I reckon so.’

  Despite the holo graffito in the physics lab washroom—Flush twice, it’s a long way to the refectory—the food was in fact delicious. Ro spooned more huevos rancheros into her mouth, swallowed, leaned back and sighed.

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Apart from the coffee.’ Anne-Louise nevertheless drained her cup.

  ‘You were on an archaeological field trip?’

  ‘Right. A new find. Petroglyphs, my speciality.’

  The refectory was bright, with floor-to-ceiling windows, and still mostly empty. There were glass-framed sand paintings and Navajo rugs on the orange walls.

  ‘Archaeology, anthro, storytelling. Interesting combination.’

  A modest shrug. ‘My mother calls me le terrassier. The digger.’

  ‘Charming. How come you’ve an UNSA internship?’

  ‘Apparently “to stimulate interdisciplinary serendipity, and present a positive image to the academe-nets”. That’s what it said on my application.’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘C’est ςa. Actually, it’s just money. I do PR, and UNSA gets grant money from a humanities foundation.’

  ‘That’s ...’ Ro’s attention was distracted ‘... not bad.’

  Anne-Louise looked over her shoulder, to where a lean twentyish man—bronze skin, narrow waist encircled by a silver concho belt, wide athlete’s shoulders—was making his way, tray in hand, towards them.

  ‘That,’ said Anne-Louise, ‘is Luís.’

  Definitely not bad.

  He stopped by their table.

  ‘Hey.’ Anne-Louise raised her hand. ‘Yá’ át’ ééh abíní.’

  ‘And bonjour to you.’ He sat down, and held out his hand to Ro. ‘I’m Luís Starhome.’

  ‘This is Ro,’ said Anne-Louise. ‘Cool contacts, don’t you think?’

  Ro’s skin tingled as she shook hands, scarcely noticing the remark about her eyes, which were their natural all-black obsidian.

  ‘Definitely,’ His attention was all upon her. ‘She hasn’t challenged you to chess yet, Ro?’

  ‘No...’

  ‘Don’t let her. She’s a demon.’

  ‘Thanks’—Ro did not even glance in Anne-Louise’s direction—‘for the warning.’

  Anne-Louise stood up. ‘Sorry, guys. I have to finish unpacking. Um, that ceremony at your uncle’s hogan, Luís ...’

  “The Skyway?’

  ‘I won’t be able to make it. Perhaps Ro would be interested?’ She picked up her tray. ‘Later, guys.’

  They watched her go, then Luís said formally, ‘I’m Luís Starhome, as I said, born for the K’aahanáanii, the Living Arrow Clan, born into the Tangle People, Ta’neezahnii.’

  Ro nodded, her expression serious, acknowledging the importance of his words. She would have to get Anne-Louise to explain Navajo kinship relations.

  ‘I’m Dorothy,’ she said, ‘known as Ro, of the clan McNamara.’

  Luís’s face was a bronze warrior’s mask.

  ‘I’d say today’—with a sudden, startling smile—‘is a day of bright beginnings.’

  The morning was given over to a seminar. Old Professor Davenport and his partner, an AI doppelganger, were entertaining enough, but the fractal calculus was too easy for Ro and she sat quietly, visualizing unblemished bronze skin rather than equations. Dark eyes. A turquoise and silver necklet—

  Davenport was asking a question, but the woman beside Ro answered.

  Ro let her attention drift again.

  The sky was one huge sapphire, still devoid of cloud. At the end of the afternoon, Ro used the outdoor walkway to the dorm block, breathing in the pure still-hot air. Flowering plants were draped across the overhead trellis; a tiny hummingbird darted, insect-quick, among the blooms.

  Ro opened the door to her room.

  No...

  A Navajo rug—half beneath, half covering the thing.

  Off to one side, a holo floating: a chess game, one piece remaining...

  Sweet Jesus, no.

  Diamond-and-cross pattern, in brick red, earth brown, violet, white. Ro wanted to see only the rug. Outstretched hand upon the floor ...

  Look at the chessboard.

  It was a king, just the one piece on the floating holo-board. Blurred ...but that was her vision failing, not the image’s resolution. Staring at the chesspiece.

  A distraction ...

  Ro squatted down.

  This is not happening.

  But she reached out nonetheless.

  And, hand trembling, she turned back the rug by one tasselled corner.

  Anne-Louise.

  The thing’s dark tongue protruded, filmed-over eyes staring at opaque infinity, a livid crease encircling the swollen throat. Clothes slashed to shreds. Ankles bound.

  Ro cried aloud, like an animal.

  But there was no reaction—and never would be—from Anne-Louise’s pitiful, desecrated remains.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  10

  NULAPEIRON AD 3418

  From underneath, it looked powerful and mean: teardrop body flaring backwards, coloured a lustrous butter-yellow, from which its long black tendrils extended.

  ‘Fate.’ Tom craned back his head, staring upwards. ‘It’s not exactly inconspicuous.’

  ‘Double bluff. No-one would expect secretive types, like us, to be riding inside.’ The amber ovoid, inset in Velsivith’s cheek, was warm with reflected yellow light. “That’s my theory.’

  The arachnargos’s lower thorax rippled open, and narrow threads extruded down to them, fastened on, then slowly lifted Tom and Velsivith inside.

  The crew dropped them off in a red-tiled hall. Tom watched the arachnargos move swiftly away, its tendrils whipping ever faster as it took a tunnel corner at speed and was gone.

  ‘Follow me.’

  Velsivith led Tom through a short corridor and out onto a threadway.

  That same immense shaft. The great sphere, where the Seer dwelt, still floated at the centre. But the shaft itself looked darker, more ominous, and the walls ...

  They rippled with movement.

  For a moment Tom had to clutch the safety rail, stricken with vertigo, as the shaft itself seemed momentarily to come alive. But it was an illusion, though the walls were covered with movement, stippled with shapes which seemed small only from this height.

  Arachnabugs were crawling up and down the walls, everywhere. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of the one-man military-grade ‘bugs, on constant defensive patrol.

  ‘Are you expecting trouble?’

  Velsivith answered indirectly. ‘This is about as safe as anywhere can get.’

  They made their way down through the swaying thread-way—the previous time Tom had come this way, Elva had been with him—with a squadron of Dragoons following. Their marching steps, in time, caused a resonant oscillation in the long transparent tube, and Tom was feeling sickened by the time they reached the huge sphere’s entrance.

  Velsivith stopped before the door-membrane.

  ‘Go on through, my Lord. You’re expected.’