Context

by John Meaney

  Which was why ordinary passers-by kept clear of them, giving Tom a glimpse along a grey colonnade. At its far end was a piazzetta whose floor was tiled in metre-wide squares: white silver-shot marble alternating with black obsidian.

  Men were standing on the squares, but it was the two others, seated on opposite lev-chairs overhead—opponents, facing each other across the piazzetta’s width—who caught Tom’s attention. One was an ordinary merchant, he guessed, with a flushed face and worried eyes. But the other...

  Clad in black, with white lace at throat and cuffs, the elegant man sat with chin on fist, regarding the thirty-two people who stood below: his liveried servitors, face to face with the merchant’s barefoot vassals.

  Schachmati game, Tom realized. With people as the pieces.

  And yet none of it made sense.

  There was none of the celebratory atmosphere one would expect, given such an unusual event. And it was remarkable that a Lord should visit this far down, in Bilyarck Gébeet’s Seventh Stratum. Yet there was no mistaking the man’s noble origins, from the cut of his clothes to the studied arrogance and ennui as he floated above his plebeian inferiors.

  There was a scent pedlar nearby, carrying a tray of small stoppered bottles. Above the tray, cheerfully bright holo-labels advertised exotic fragrant oils at reasonable prices. But the pedlar’s expression was grim.

  ‘Who is that, over there?’ Tom stepped closer, keeping his voice low. ‘A Lord?’

  ‘Viscount Trevalkin.’

  ‘And the game they’re playing?’

  ‘With people’s lives.’ The pedlar spoke in a sour whisper. ‘That trader boss may be a traitor, but there’s no need to draw things out.’

  ‘Traitor?’

  There were spearmen standing at watchful attention along the colonnade, and while their ceremonial weapons and dress uniforms were in keeping with a noble visitation, the graser pistols tagged to their hips were purely functional. Every one of them looked lean and fit. And two officers, off to one side, were blatantly watching the piazza’s crowd.

  Looking this way.

  Tom turned quickly away from the pedlar. Behind him, he could hear the man taking the hint, his scuffling footsteps disappearing as he faded into the throng. If he had any sense, the pedlar would extinguish the hololabels and get rid of the tray.

  Jasirah and the others were already beyond the piazza, walking along a grey corridor lined with golden glowclusters. Tom followed, tugging off his grey cloak as he moved among the crowd—a simple change in appearance—and bundled it under his arm. Then he was in clear space, into the corridor, and lengthening his stride.

  Around a bend, and no sign of anyone following. So he had not alarmed the soldiers that much.

  ‘Gazhe? Are you coming?’

  Some holiday.

  Tom smiled then, to reassure his friends who were in need of this break as much as he was. And he wondered, as he walked faster to catch up, whether he should have learned something from the carls’ custom of total relaxation: each evening a celebration of the day that had passed. For Tom allowed himself no opportunity simply to relax and do nothing: every moment was a time for preparation or for action, born from the knowledge that life is too short and fragile to waste, and that if Destiny deals a hand, there is no choice but to play the game and play it hard, doing everything to win.

  In his case, failure would mean despair, an end to driven purpose; and victory would be defined by seeing Elva once again.

  ~ * ~

  20

  TERRA AD 2142

  <>

  [5]

  In one corner of the dimly lit gym, a narrow-shouldered black man was working a solo fighting form: sudden shifts of motion, dropping to the floor, striking in odd directions; nothing acrobatic or overtly violent about it.

  ‘Most people,’ said Lily Degas, ‘don’t rate pentjak silat too much.’

  ‘In which case’—Ro regarded the strange techniques, the subtle oblique attack angles—‘most people don’t know shit.’

  ‘Girlfriend, you got that right.’

  Degas was the owner: thick-waisted, with grey-flecked hair, but hard-looking, a little scarred around the eyes. Even without the holo in the foyer—Degas with championship belt held aloft—Ro would have known that she had fought in the ring.

  ‘Come on,’ Degas added. ‘I’ll show you the locker rooms.’

  No frills. Sweat and effort. Ro pounded on air pads and electromag shields, then sparred with an older woman, and finally a young hispanic guy with loads of spirit but none of Ro’s tactical awareness. Afterwards, Ro touched gloves with her sparring partners, and limped off towards the showers, stripping off helmet and chest pad as she walked.

  Later, heading out into the warm night and feeling good, her hair still damp, Ro retrieved her new bicycle. She thumbed the handgrip, releasing the security locks, then mounted the saddle. Breathed in the clean air, then glanced back at the floating holo sign—LILY’S KICKBOX: Kick-Ass Good, but Humble—and grinned. It was a far cry from Mother’s clean, tranquil dojo: different path, same goal.

  She placed her right foot upon the pedal—

  ‘Ro?’ It was Degas herself, standing in the doorway.

  ‘Yeah? I mean—’

  ‘Can you come back inside for a moment?’

  Puzzled, Ro dismounted, and walked back to the gym’s blue-painted door, not bothering to re-lock her bike’s safeties—it was a hassle. She positioned herself so that she could keep the bike in sight but Degas swung the door firmly shut, blocking off the outside world.

  ‘The thing is ...’ Degas paused, then: ‘I was a cop’s wife for fifteen years, y’know?’

  Ro did not want to ask what had happened to him. She remained silent.

  ‘Are you in some kind of trouble, girl?’

  Ro shook her head. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  Degas frowned.

  ‘Look . . .’ Ro, feeling uneasy, stepped past Degas and pushed the door open.

  Her new bicycle was gone.

  ‘Shit!’ She crouched, ready to run in pursuit—she could hear the thief, already out of sight around the corner and pedalling hard—but a firm grip caught her sleeve and swung her back inside.

  Ro’s fists clenched ...but she did not intend to fight Degas.

  ‘Cool it.’ The warning was unnecessary. ‘If the bike’s been pinched, you might be better off.’

  ‘What... do you mean?’

  ‘Someone—a Mexican, no-one I know—brushed by the bike earlier.’

  Ro stared at her.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So if he wasn’t dropping a bug on you, I’m your maiden aunt.’ A quick smile. ‘And I ain’t no maiden.’

  Bugged? Ro did not know what to make of that. She took a taxi—ground-TDV—back to DistribOne. In the morning, clear-minded, she would decide whether to report the bike stolen.

  Professional surveillance ...

  Something to do with Anne-Louise? The notion made her shiver.

  She tapped her strand to pay the taxi, then slid out into the pleasant warm night air. Above, the black sky hung over the desert, studded with silver stars. Before her, inviting, DistribOne was a fairytale oasis in the wilderness, bedecked with orange-white lights.

  In the refectory, Ro ordered decaf coffee from the AI. Gradually, she became aware of a low buzz of excitement. In one corner, several students were gathered around a holo-display, watching a news bulletin. And two carafes of wine, one almost empty, stood beside it: an impromptu party.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  A teaching assistant called Zoë—Ro had seen her around, was envious of her clear, creamy complexion and lustrous grey eyes—looked up from an armchair and giggled.

  ‘Illegal aliens,’ she said. ‘Well, one of them, at least.’

  The others, ignoring Ro, huddled closer to the holo.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Got loose. Not sure it was even supposed to be’—Zoë hiccoug
hed—‘here on Terra. Zajinet embassy’s getting a roasting.’

  In the image, an anti-xeno demonstration was in progress. The protesters’ holo banners flickered and broke up. Accidental beat-frequency effects, with the camera-scan cycling out of synch? Or a subtle form of censorship?

  But it was still possible to infer what they read, and few of the slogans would win prizes for originality: Aliens go home, or Earth for Earthers, space the Xenoes. Even The Only Good Alien Is A Dead One, and the nearly humorous: I love Xenoes... curried and hot, with rice on the side.

  ‘Xenophobes’ once referred simply to those who fear strangers. Now it was a polite term for wrongthinking bigots who blamed beings of different appearance and mentality for the inadequacies and failures of their own pitiful, misery-drenched lives.

  The only thing Ro could not understand was why this particular demonstration was occurring, and why the news was so important.

  ‘What,’ she asked slowly, ‘is a Zajinet?’

  ‘Huh?’ Zoë leaned closer, peering, and Ro could smell alcohol vapour upon her breath. ‘Just got here, yes? Well’—Zoë half-stumbled from the armchair, but caught her balance before Ro could grab her—‘you’d better come with me.’

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘Ah ... Right. New girl. Not authorized.’

  Ro stared at her. ‘Why don’t you show me anyway?’

  ‘No bilateral symmetry even.’ Zoë spoke with alcoholic over-careful enunciation. ‘It’s not that common, on life-supporting worlds.’

  Around them, the lab was blanketed in gloomy shadows.

  ‘Surprising.’

  Ro did not have access to UNSA xenofiles, and xeno visitors were generally kept out of the public eye. Of the thirty biocapable worlds, only a handful had sentient species. Two had interplanetary spaceflight; it was rumoured that the Zajinets might be a third spacefaring species, but no-one knew for sure.

  A holo grew into being.

  ‘They don’t look like much,’ said Ro.

  Red network, fractally branching. A pattern in light.

  ‘That’s their core form. Internal.’ Zoë’s diction was improving. ‘They usually look more like this

  The image flickered.

  It might have been a garden decoration, an impromptu sculpture of heaped boulders and stones, save that it was the size of an elephant, and it moved. Somehow the separate inorganic clumps held together as the whole ensemble stumped about, then glided along a shining path formed of metal, or perhaps of ice.

  ‘Kind of a shell they build around themselves.’

  ‘Ugly-looking.’ Ro gestured for explanatory text-tesseracts, but the display did not respond: she really was not authorized.

  ‘Well, they all look like that. They’ve got ambassadors in Moscow and Tehran. What do you think?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Interesting enough for project work? We need good researchers.’

  ‘I guess,’ said Ro.

  A chance to work with aliens?

  But she was an intern, still a student.

  No way they’ll give that work to me.

  ‘Le ... less ... Uh, let’s go join the party.’

  Ro muttered to herself. Aware that she was sleeping, face down on the bed. And then the muted chaos of overlaid whispers in the dark:

  <<... arcs joining: and entropic diffusion extends ...>>

  <<... white, she survives the pearly nascent...>>

  <<... burgeons the nexus: sweetening death ...>>

  <<... yet cold as matrix overdrives her future ...>>

  Ro jerked awake. An unsettling dream?

  But neither the whispered sounds nor the half-sensed images faded as she sat bolt upright in the darkness.

  <<... she sees!...>>

  <<... sensitive, this one ...>>

  <<... affirm! confirm!...>>

  <<... aware: beware...>>

  Emerald fire, incandescent in the night shadows: a twisted dendritic network of glowing, burning lines. It was a nightmare, fiery in the darkened room, hovering over Anne-Louise’s empty bed.

  ‘Ah!’ Ro threw her sheet from the bed. ‘Get back!’

  She rolled sideways, moving fast, head pounding -

  It disappeared.

  — then stopped, almost falling over.

  It’s gone.

  Trembling, she sat back on her bed. Sweat covered her. Scalp prickling, stomach heaving ...but there was nothing here. The shadowed bedroom was empty now, save for a dead person’s bed, a quietness which seemed more empty than the void, and the burning afterimage in her memory of an eerie inhuman ghost which surely could not exist.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  21

  NULAPEIRON AD 3419

  Ninth stratum, in Bilyarck Gébeet: the vacation’s second day, and its true beginning. But it started with a disconcerting, overheard conversation.

  Breakfast was interesting; they dined in a low-lit eatery at whose centre lay a pit in which orange-hot liquid magma flowed. The place was warm despite the insulating clearshell, and in the lava small hexagonal flukes bobbed occasionally into sight.

  Jasirah had excused herself for the moment, and Quilvox was muttering that perhaps they should have left her—he referred to Jasirah as ‘Old Misery’—in the Bronlah Hong. Tom was just opening his mouth to say she was not that bad, when a fragment of speech drifted from a neighbouring table, as the background chatter briefly faded.

  ‘... best one, I thought, was “Mincing Minnie Mixes Metalinguistic Metaphors”.’

  Tom froze in his seat.

  ‘The best from Playing the Paradox, maybe. But the second collection was a lot funnier overall: Auntie Antinomy Dances the Fractal Fantastic. What a laugh.’

  ‘Subtle, too,’ he heard a woman say. And something told Tom that they were a group of school magisters, even before she added: ‘I’d like to try it out on my students, but I’m not sure they’ll understand it completely.’

  ‘I’m not even sure that I do,’ said one of her colleagues.

  Tom was holding his breath. Slowly, he released it.

  ‘I wonder if he’ll ever write a third ... ?’

  And then Tom was walking away, having tossed too many cred-spindles upon the table, just needing to escape. Jasirah was returning, but he brushed past her without a word, into the spiralling tunnel beyond.

  They’re talking about my poetry.

  His tutor, Mistress eh’Nalephi, had caused the first volume to be published, and had presented him with the crystal-shard on the day he turned twenty-three. At the time, he had been filled with a nameless j oy which turned the world into magic and for a while brought perfection into his life.

  But that was before he became a Lord, killed an Oracle, joined and subsequently abandoned a revolutionary movement, spent years wandering in a fractured, alcohol-deranged daze before fighting his way back to recovery, only to watch the single living person who truly mattered to him invoke thanatotropic toxin implants, for her own tangled and indecipherable purposes, and die before his eyes.

  It was Jasirah, despite her reputation for hostility and jealousy, who sought Tom out. She found him standing by a long transparent water pipe which ran past a cloister at shoulder height, watching the silver bubbles and small bright-yellow cleansing fish, but seeing nothing.

  ‘Come on,’ she said.

  And led him back towards the eatery, while Tom apologized for his actions without explaining them. But when they reached the magma-pit chamber, the others had already left.

  ‘Sorry.’ Tom looked at Jasirah and shrugged his shoulders. ‘I guess it’s just you and me.’

  The colour heightened in Jasirah’s round cheeks, suffusing her already dark skin. Then she cleared her throat and told him that she would like to go shopping.

  Later, after several hours spent in fabric emporiums where Tom struggled hard to conceal his overwhelming boredom, they had lunch together in a tiny piazzetta where quickglass automaton-birds glided and whis
tled among the trellises and airplants, dipping and soaring without ever stopping to reenergize.