Context

by John Meaney

Tom listened while Jasirah talked of her childhood in the Garujahn Protectorate, of her overbearing mother and often absent father. Then, in a sudden shift of subject which Jasirah seemed to think was entirely natural, she declared: ‘I really need to get my fortune told.’

  ‘I don’t think’—Tom tried to keep the laughter from his voice—‘you’ll find an Oracle round here.’

  She gave him a small, quizzical look.

  ‘We passed a scryer’s booth,’ she said, ‘when we walked through the market.’

  The tent’s interior was dark, lit only by a row of fluorescent bell jars and Klein bottles in which strange albino serpents with flat crested heads flexed and coiled, regarding the human interlopers with eyes like blood-red stones. On a small stool before a triangular table, the scryer sat hunched, a grey shawl pulled hood-like over her head, hiding her features.

  Her voice was ancient, quavering, and her hand shook as she accepted Jasirah’s proffered fee. Then a young beefy man came inside the tent, though the scryer had given no signal.

  Tom watched as the assistant drew on heavy gauntlets, then removed the nearest serpent, looped round his wrists. He held the flat triangular head, pried open the jaws, and pressed the serpent’s narrow, curved fangs into the old woman’s scarred and bony forearm. The reptile remained expressionless, unblinking, as venom pumped into withered, punctured flesh.

  Nor did it offer more than token resistance as it was forced back inside its glowing glass prison. Then the young man sealed the jar, shed his protective gauntlets and left, having uttered no word to either his employer or her clients.

  Tom looked at Jasirah for her reaction, but she was intent upon the scryer’s hooded features.

  From the three-sided tabletop, a small collection of crystal dice rose into the air.

  Am I supposed to be impressed?

  The dice dropped and rolled. Then the scryer produced a deck of cards, and spread them face down across the table, and motioned for Jasirah to pick one.

  ‘Seven of Ships.’ Jasirah looked up at Tom. ‘But what about its conjunction?’

  It was the scryer who turned over the second card—Ace of Wands—and at the sight of it Jasirah turned away, shoulders drooping with disappointment. When she picked the final card, it was the Swordsman—armed nobleman in profile, en garde, foot upon a vanquished opponent—and it seemed to confirm Jasirah’s expectations.

  ‘Thwarted,’ said the scryer, ‘in love.’

  Then she pulled back her shawl, revealing the brass-coloured threads woven across her eye-sockets. And, turning her lined face towards Tom:

  ‘Your turn, my Lord.’

  Jasirah tried a brave smile, as though the scryer’s words were a joke.

  ‘I’m not a noble,’ Tom said.

  But deep lines etched curves to bracket the old woman’s mouth, an expression which managed to combine both amusement and disapproval. He felt like a miscreant schoolboy, caught misbehaving by a senior praefectus, trying to hide his guilt before a magister with lies and indirection, with no hope of success.

  Four of Serpents.

  ‘A beginning,’ the old woman said, ‘born of adversity.’

  That, to a one-armed client: anyone could have guessed as much. At least, if she were not truly blind—

  But she called me Lord.

  ‘And’—with a nod towards the crystals which had rolled once more—‘I see a red-haired woman in your early life, my Lord.’

  Tom’s skin crawled.

  Mother.

  Giddily, he watched as the old scryer drew another card from the spread, and then a third.

  ‘The Sorcerer,’ murmured Jasirah, ‘and the Fool.’

  Tom laughed shortly, without humour, but Jasirah shivered, her round face pinched with concern.

  ‘We need,’ rasped the scryer, ‘a five-spread.’

  The Nine of Ships.

  ‘Last card.’

  Benoited Chaos! he cursed. Irrational nonsense.

  But fine hairs stood up on the back of his neck as she turned the card over: glossy, baroque patterns surrounding a central dark-haired figure whose eyes were obsidian, black upon black, and he did not need Jasirah’s startled exclamation to tell him the card’s designation.

  The Pilot.

  ‘Gazhe ...’ Jasirah’s brown eyes were bright with tears, imploring.

  But Tom was already on his feet.

  ‘This day . . .’ The old woman paused, then: ‘You will learn a thing, my Lord.’

  I’ve learned something already.

  Confused, suddenly afraid, he plunged out of the tent and into the light, the bright busy marketplace, and stumbled towards the nearest exit. It was raw, this tunnel, but he moved on quickly, almost running, hurrying along the tunnel’s length until he came out into a wide natural cavern.

  He stopped, catching his breath, and then the true nature of his surroundings became clear. For everywhere the stone was patched with sickly, moribund fluorofungus, stippled with liquid infection and glowing deathly green. While up above, near the dripping ceiling, dying blindmoths, feasting upon disease, fluttered in vain, unaware that extinction was almost upon them.

  And yet, and yet...

  It was the evening’s events, not the scryer’s unsettling words, which brought the message home to Tom: that things had changed in the world, had perhaps started to change sometime during his four Standard Years in exile. And that these changes were unrelated to LudusVitae and affiliated movements, who had coordinated uprisings throughout Nulapeiron in the event known as Flashpoint. Its results had turned out to be Chaos-damned and paradoxically unpredictable, as revolutionaries suborned so many Oracles that neither the ruling powers nor their opponents knew any longer which truecasts were trustworthy and which were merely simulated dreams of a future that would never occur.

  He did not know how many Oracles remained alive. Surely there were thousands of them, still. But whether people would ever again blindly accept the validity of their truecasts, that was another matter.

  Am I that insane? In his alcove at the travellers’ hostel, Tom stared at the blank whitewashed wall. Am I ready to believe an old woman who’s injected serpent venom so often she’s probably psychotic ?

  Or perhaps it was the fact that she had made no mention of Elva which was upsetting him. And that was foolish, since he could not rationally believe the scryer had any kind of true ability.

  Though he had already run long and hard today—just before dawnshift, in shadow-shrouded empty tunnels—he was trembling with the need to burn more adrenaline. He changed into his cheap, one-piece training suit, and pulled on the soft, battered climbing slippers he had bought from a pawnshop. Then he walked out to the nearest natural caverns and, without warm-up, began to climb.

  For an hour he worked problems, traversing his way from one cavern to another. Close to ground level, he threw himself upwards in a series of power moves: from knees turned out in the frog position, launching himself up to grab a ledge or crack, crimping his fingers and smearing his inner soles against the rock.

  Then he went for the heights, concentrating on soft limberness and precise technique, the rhythm of counter-tension versus relaxation, and passed over a narrow abyssal rift by spidering his way across the ceiling.

  Finally, he found himself near the apex of a long, cathedral-like space, at whose far end the rockface sloped inwards, smoothly, to a great gargoyle figure: spread-winged and leering, it must have been a hundred metres or more in width.

  Smiling, Tom worked his way along and down. On the slope, he walked across upright, relying on friction without using his hand, then reached the vertical rock, hooked into a fingerhold and leaned back, so that torque pressed his feet into stone.

  Something... ?

  A distant clatter of sound. Tom remained still, his breathing shallow, but there was only silence now.

  Come on.

  He laughed softly to himself as he clambered up the final portion, swung across to the gargoyle’s giant stone wi
ngtip. Hooking one heel, Tom pointed the other foot into a narrow gap, spreading his hips, maybe a hundred and fifty metres above the great cavern’s chopped and fractured floor.

  Then, controlling abdominal tension, he released his finger crimp and slowly tilted backwards, until he was hanging head down—feet spread in forward splits between two stable holds—hand dangling down into the void, arm relaxed.

  Finally...

  All fear was gone, as though the world itself had settled back into place.

  Thank Fate.

  It was one of those moments when life was precious, filled with wonder, as he stared at the distant floor above/below his head.

  And then there was movement.

  They danced and flowed: from everywhere they came, like boiling swarms of termites, into the cavern beneath him. Long, sinuous myriapedes, their rounded segments looking hard, armoured. Dark lev-cars. And soldiers on foot: seen from above, their helmets were like small round pellets; but their sense of purpose was manifest.

  And, as Tom hung there watching, the first myriapedes halted, segments splitting open, disgorging troops and equipment.

  For a moment, he thought he was seeing an invasion. But then he realized that the dun colours were those of the Bilyarck Gébeet’s own forces, and that they were inflating bivouacs behind defensive emplacements, and posting sentinels.

  Manoeuvres?

  Every demesne’s armed forces needed training. But it seemed to Tom—as he swung himself back upright—that the platoons and companies now entering the cavern moved less fluidly than their comrades in the vanguard, needed officers to tell them how to order themselves and set up camp. They might be newer recruits in training—or they might be conscripted troops who had none of the experience and spirit of men and women who had devoted their lives to military service.

  Tom began to move, swinging from hold to hold, going for speed and momentum now, wanting to make himself scarce before sensor-fields were put into place and someone with an itchy finger mistook Tom’s intentions and depressed the firing stud for that high moment of spurting orgasmic joy when graser fire splits the air and a human body falls.

  But, whatever the truth of the events occurring below, it seemed certain—or so Tom thought, as he climbed dangerously fast—that Bilyarck Gébeet was a realm preparing itself for war.

  ~ * ~

  22

  TERRA AD 2142

  <>

  [6]

  Aching blue sky. Sere red. Desert heat.

  ‘Message sender is Albrecht. Subject is: How are you doing?’

  So hot, it melted through to her very bones.

  ‘No-read del,’ said Ro, and the teardrop icon winked out of existence.

  A broken shadow crossed the dusty ground behind her.

  ‘You ready?’ Luís Starhome’s voice.

  Ro turned. His face was bronze in the desert dawn, untouched by sweat.

  ‘Sure. Mrs Bridcombe’—Ro tapped her infostrand, powering it down—‘already saddled Quarrel for me.’

  She walked back to the corral, half expecting Luís to ride Bolt—Quarrel’s half-sister: same dam, different stallion -bareback. But Luís threw a light saddle across the strong-looking mare, cinched the magstrap with practised ease.

  Ro mounted as best she could.

  They waved towards the low pueblo-style ranch house. Behind the polarized windows, the tall figure of Alice Bridcombe waved back.

  Slowly, Ro and Luís urged their mounts into motion. There was a reassuring gurgle from the saddlebags: full water bottles. Strands and EveryWare notwithstanding, this was still a desert they were riding into. A place of danger.

  And death was no abstraction. Anne-Louise’s murder had taught her that.

  As she rode, she thought about Flight Officer Armstrong Neil, and the meeting with Ilse Schwenger which was surely prearranged, but whose purpose remained a mystery. It was the next morning that she had learned of the field trip to IllinoisCentral, the second-busiest spaceport on the continent: an unexpected bonus for an intern who was new to DistribOne.

  Frau Doktor Schwenger, pulling strings?

  And this was what Ro had seen, as she sat with her strand’s analysis displays pulsing and scrolling, and watched the departure lounge:

  An old woman, bent with care and paranoid mistrust, carrying her own baggage while an empty smartcart trailed almost plaintively behind her; a newly married triple, voluptuous fem-bi linking arms with her blushing partners, wedding-glitter sparkling on their slash-cut suits; a large family, farewell tears tracking down their cheeks, followed by a small convoy of heaped smartcarts—emigrating offworld; a teenage boy, wired with excitement, his wide-eyed stare brightening when he saw Ro.

  Behind the swirling crowd, the vendors: faint warm scents of toffee-ants—nouveau africain vite-cuisine—and butter-fried cicada-chews; of beer (inadvisable before a mu-space voyage’s delta-coma) and fresh-fruit shakes; of dark rich coffee.

  Later, Ro had been the last one into the small private lounge, where the other researchers were already breaking off chunks of caramel doughnut, sipping espressos.

  ‘... got Jim bumped off the list,’ one of them was saying.

  ‘Must be someone’s little flooz—’

  Their voices died as Ro stepped inside.

  ‘So ... “He went to town”.’ Ro shifted in her saddle, trying to ignore the chafing. ‘How would I say that? “He went”.’

  They were a world away from UNSA and its bureaucratic machinations, in a desert which stretched to the horizon in every direction, looking stark and eternal—except that once, in its geological past, the wide sands had formed a sea floor, while strange forms, few of which would leave any traces for the curious hairless primates to follow, swam in the warm, salty waters which covered it, thinking mysterious thoughts, hunting their exotic prey.

  ‘That depends.’ A tight smile. ‘The verb expresses the method of locomotion. Kintahgóó ‘o’ooldloozh if he travelled on horseback, kintahgóó bit ‘o’oot’a’ if he flew.’

  Ro blinked. The hot dry air was making her sleepy.

  ‘You mean, “rides” and “flies”. But what is the simple verb: “to go”?’

  Luís shook his head. ‘The verb is bound up with context, always. There are different words for travel on foot, or mounted, by ground vehicle, or by air.’ Luís made a gesture with his mouth which Ro could not interpret. ‘And, for the same mode, different terms depending on speed.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Also, if there are several possible consequences, the verb choice reflects the result. Or the frequency: to do a thing once, to do it many times on one occasion, to repeat it on many separate occasions ...They’re different words. Different ideas.’

  ‘My God.’ A linguistic timelessness? An alternative concept of cause and effect? ‘That’s amazing.’

  What difference might it make to her worldview if she were fluent enough to think in Navajo?

  And when the People, the dine’ é, feared evil chindhí spirits, did they sense something real and tangible which poor non-Navajos, bound by their limited ways of perception, simply could not see?

  Superstitious nonsense.

  Ro touched her heels to Quarrel’s flanks, increasing the pace.

  In the sweaty darkness, the Singer’s—Luís’s uncle’s—lined face was a graven ancient mask, whose eyes had looked on sights no man should experience. The hogan’s interior was not small, but the dark air seemed to draw in, to vibrate with resonance as the chant continued.

  It was a Far Voyage Way, a family Sing, and it gradually dawned on Ro that the ceremony was focused on Luís.

  There were six Navajo men and two women, besides the Singer and Luís. All were family members, though clan kinship was another complex relationship Ro had not deciphered: in some sense, everyone belonged to two tribes—born into the maternal clan, and for the father’s.

  As the ceremony drew on, the mundane world—that manufactured illusion of consensual reality
—slowly receded, and the hogan defined the cosmos, where Luís, like a bronze warrior from olden times, was bright in its firmament. Ro felt herself swaying, lost in the rhythms of the Sing, enchanted by the gestures, entranced by the repeated elaborate giving of turquoise and bright shells: always the same four colours (white, yellow, blue, black); always the fourfold repetition in the chants.

  One of the women, leaning close to Ro so she could whisper, translated part of a story: of Coyote, the Trickster, gambling all in an eating contest. Using his supernatural abilities to eat not just the food, but the plates and even the tabletop as well.