by John Meaney
‘How many other chambers,’ he asked, ‘does this place have?’
‘Thirty-five, sir.’
Tom quelled internal laughter.
‘I suppose ... I’ll be able to make do.’
A wide green lake nestled in a crystalline cavern, only a few minutes’ walk from Tom’s new home. Nature and artifice combined in frosted-mint intricate pillars, joining gentle emerald waves to the sculpted ceiling above. Brightly coloured sailplanes floated just above the water, and even from here the laughter of carefree lordlings at play was audible.
There were even some swimmers, bobbing among the waves.
Leaning against a pillar on the marble shore, Tom watched. Beside him, his new chief servitor, Adam Gervicort, stood stiffly to attention. Adam was maybe twenty SY old—two-thirds of Tom’s age—and suddenly that seemed awfully young.
There was a shout above the waters, then good-natured name-calling, as two sailplanes narrowly avoided a collision.
“The nobility at play,’ Tom murmured.
‘My Lord?’
‘Nothing. Who are they?’
There was a group of twelve runners further along the shore, dressed in olive-green long-sleeved leotards, running to a cadence.
‘Soldiers, sir. From General d’Ovraison’s Akademía del’Guerro.’
‘It’s a military school?’
‘Um ...’ Adam’s shoulders stiffened, as though he had been about to shrug, but servitor reflexes stopped the gesture. ‘Everyone calls it the Academy, but it’s more than a training school. It’s Strategic Command for the sector.’
‘I see.’
Tom wondered just what he was doing here. Change was not necessarily progress.
‘Listen, Adam . . .’ He hesitated, then: ‘In private, why don’t you just call me Tom.’
‘OK, I—’ Adam reddened. ‘Sir.’
Tom sighed. What kind of ulterior motive did Adam suspect him of?
Yet if Corduven has lovers, they’re surely not female...
He put that thought aside. If the local mores were anything like the noble milieu he was used to, his knowledge of Corduven’s preferences was a dangerous secret.
Tom was sure—pretty sure—that Corduven was not the kind to abuse servitors; but that could not be said for all nobility.
He looked Adam in the eyes.
‘I was born a long way down, my friend. When the authorities sold me to Lady Darinia, I entered servitude as delta-class. I’d ask you to drop my title in public, as well as privately, except that it would rebound on you. They’d find a way to make you suffer.’
Adam was silent for a moment. Out on the lake, youthful Lords and Ladies dived from sailplanes into the waves, and struck out for shore.
‘I knew you’d been promoted...’ Adam swallowed. ‘But to rise that far ...’
Tom nodded.
‘All the way,’ he said.
He had lunch at the apartment. Surprisingly, no-one batted an eyelid—two servitrices came at Tom’s summons—when he ordered gripple yogurt mixed with soycheese.
‘I’m not one for fancy food, either.’
After lunch, Tom washed in his bath chamber’s minty aerogel-pool—he stayed submerged for nearly twenty minutes, breathing directly from the gel—then padded into the master bedchamber, where Adam had laid out clothes for him to wear: dark tunic and trews, black cape lined with emerald silk.
Good taste. And he’s got the sense to make himself scarce.
There were noble-born High Lords who required servitors to help them dress. They might revel in the power they held; to Tom, it revealed a childish dependence on others.
But everything we perceive, he reminded himself, is content within context.
And his background was rather different from that of other nobility.
Halfway through dressing he stopped, noticing a small floating bedside table. On it, atop a small cushion, a sapphire-decorated thumb ring lay.
From Corduven?
It was a Lord’s signet ring, and Tom’s original—as presented by Lord A’Dekal—had been lost for years. Mixed emotions washed through him as he slid his thumb inside, and the ring adjusted itself to fit.
There were no messages from Corduven. Yet this apartment had been made available, according to Adam, on Corduven’s direct order.
Tom tagged his cloak fast, then left the chamber. He passed by a series of angled mirrorfields, noting that the cloak billowed though there was no breeze.
Smartfibre: he would disable it later.
‘My Lord?’ Adam was waiting in the antechamber.
There were six servitrices present—Adam had been double-checking their inventory—so Tom did not complain about the honorific.
What the Chaos am I doing here?
But, ‘Come on,’ was all he said. ‘I want to see this Academy.’
A silver-lined tunnel. Tom’s ring sparked blue as he passed through a membrane-barrier; Adam’s earstud winked ruby light.
‘Is this part of the Academy?’
Adam shook his head. ‘Not yet, my Lord.’
The Academy must take up some two-thirds of the previous Palace Boltrivar, and extend beyond its bounds.
‘Wait here, would you.’
There was an archway off to the right; a discreet floating tricon warned that entry was for nobles only. Beyond an antechamber, in a golden hall, stood fine-gowned Ladies, and Lords in formal half-capes, conversing.
Tom slipped into the antechamber. The murmur of conversation grew louder, accompanied by soft flute music.
‘Some orthoplum wine, sir?’ A majordomo, trailed by junior servitors bearing trays, gestured with a white-gloved hand towards the selection. ‘We have the finest—’
‘Is there any gripplejuice?’
In answer, the majordomo merely looked at a servitrix, who departed at a run.
Damn. Why couldn’t they just say no?
But that, of course, would never do.
When the servitrix returned, Tom took the glass directly from her, before she had a chance to present it to the major-domo.
‘I appreciate this. Full of antioxidants, you know. And no side effects.’
She blushed, curtsied, withdrew.
Tom nodded to the majordomo—who bowed—and headed inside.
‘... gestalten successfully,’ a young Lord was saying, ‘as a way of decoding perception-processing: pattern against backdrop. But when they founded a school of psychoanalysis ...’
His companions laughed.
But Tom wondered whether archaic self-actualization cults were as ridiculous as scholars thought. What if the few surviving texts were satire or parody?
Silently, he moved to another group.
‘... Valerron’s conjecture.’ The speaker was a dark-haired Lady of some thirty SY, and her glance flickered in Tom’s direction. ‘Only a millionth of the nervous system’s processing is conscious; even contemporary humans are a mix of competing personalities and cognitive daemons. In the flow, in the midst of writing poetry, defining a logosophical model—there’s no self-awareness involved.’
This was elementary; Tom wondered what her point was.
‘... millennium and a half ago, measurements showed electric potential changes in the brain a third of a second before conscious volition takes place.’
A nice paradox: the illusion of autonomous self.
‘But Lord Valerron concludes,’ said the Lady, ‘that true consciousness itself may be a recent phenomenon, postdating culture. Perhaps not even the world’s founders thought as we do now.’
Tom looked at her.
‘Are you saying we don’t think like Terrans a mere thousand years ago?’
‘Did they have logotropic integration, or even cognate-daemon mapping?’ Her blue eyes brightened as she conjured a billowing holo manifold into existence. ‘My own model suggests that Terrans rarely experienced hyperego formation during the third decade of life.’
Murmurs of appreciation arose among the onlookers.
Rigorous tesseracts and proof-dendrimers backed up the Lady’s analysis.
Tom gave a small, exact bow. Then he went to stand by the wall—unconsciously like a servitor—and frowned, wondering why her hypothesis disturbed him so.
She sought him out afterwards, as the other Lords and Ladies drifted away. Tom, not wanting company, angled his body, allowing his cape to fall open on the left.
‘It’s OK, my Lord Corcorigan.’ Her smile was mischievous. ‘I recognized you immediately. I’m Brekana.’
‘Honoured.’ Tom’s bow was punctiliously correct. ‘But why would you recognize me? I don’t—’
‘My cousin Sylvana’s told me all about you.’
Tom’s breath caught. ‘Lady Sylvana, of Darinia Demesne?’
‘Of course. It’s a shame she’s not here. Normally, she can’t resist our little conversaziones.’
Sylvana.
With a tiny smile, aware of her words’ devastating effect, Brekana bobbed a curtsy and moved away, catching an elder Lord’s gaze and waving a greeting.
Sylvana’s living here?
Tom took a goblet of gripplejuice out to Adam, who started with surprise, but seemed pleased enough with the drink.
‘Thank you, my Lord.’
Sylvana. You, for one, always had an interesting way with servitors.
After Adam had drained the goblet and tossed it into a recvat, Tom indicated a long white tunnel. ‘That leads into the Academy proper?’
‘Just so, sir. I have access permission.’
They passed through a membrane which took longer than usual to liquefy—while its deepscan procedure completed -before allowing them inside.
‘This way, sir.’
Tom came out on a high balcony, having left Adam far below on the winding stone staircase, struggling with the climb. The cavern ceiling, knotwork-decorated, was close overhead. On one side, a stubby stone gargoyle, missing half its teeth and a portion of one wing, leered at Tom.
Down below, among exquisite formal gardens, perhaps a hundred men and women were running in time or performing group calisthenics.
Tom was not alone. An athletic-looking man, perhaps a little younger than Tom, had been observing the training; now he turned, and bowed.
‘Pleased to meet you, sir.’ And, in a moment of mutual recognition: ‘We can always do with another fighter.’
Tom smiled. ‘I’m Tom Corcorigan.’
‘Jay A’Khelikov yclept.’ Obviously noble-born.
They clasped wrists, but alertly: each aware of the other’s capabilities.
‘Sorry,’ the man added, ‘but I must go back to—’
Danger.
A soft sound, behind.
Tom started to spin, forming a knife-hand, but then he recognized Adam—puffing, out of breath, oblivious to the danger—and straightened up.
Beside him, Jay A’Khelikov’s gaze flickered over Adam, dismissed the threat.
Treating him like something inanimate.
No.
Sounds of training cadences drifted up from below.
‘This fellow’—there was steel in Tom’s voice—‘is called Adam Gervicort.’
A person, not an object.
A’Khelikov’s face was like stone: a warrior’s mask, betraying nothing, ready for anything. But then he did something which astonished Tom, and would continue to astound him on reflection.
‘Your pardon, sir.’ Jay A’Khelikov stepped forward and grasped Adam’s forearm. ‘I’ll not make the same mistake again.’
Chaos ...
Then he nodded, to Adam and Tom both, made his way to the staircase, and descended from sight. Adam looked stunned.
A Lord, apologizing to a servitor?
What kind of a place is this?
~ * ~
38
NULAPEIRON AD 3420
That night he dreamed he was before the traders’ tribunal. The other boys from the Ragged School—the real thieves -had escaped; but the security mannequins held Tom fast.
Tom still clutched the purloined tunic which Algrin had pushed into his grasp. In a moment of sickening insight, he realized that he was guilty by the traders’ laws, and that the punishment was mortal.
‘My Lady—’ He stops, unable to plead before Lady Darinia, visiting this stratum on a whim, with only an academic interest in such administrative matters. The Lady, unconcerned, turns to her young daughter, seeks her opinion.
‘It should be quick. The boy should not undergo cruel or unusual punishment.’
Until that moment, Tom has known nothing of the nobility, save that they are lovers of paradox and wordplay, masters and mistresses of logosophy.
Sylvana has endorsed his execution.
“Very well,’ says the Lady Darinia. ‘Take him to a holding—’
And that is when his words burst forth:
‘But that’s cruel.’
The traders exclaim angrily, one of them rising to strike down this impudent boy. But Lady Darinia stops the tirade.
‘Explain yourself, boy.’
He knows the executioner is away, due to return in three days’ time. They will hold him in a cell, as though leniency were his due—saving him mental torture—until the true extent of his punishment is revealed.
‘The wait itself is cruel and unusual punishment,’ Tom argues desperately, half aware that he is recapitulating classical allusions, archaic principles all logosophers must know. ‘By your own logic, you have to pardon me.’
For a second, there is stunned silence.
Then the traders erupt in anger—but Lady Darinia raises a finger, and they stop.
‘He argues prettily, Mother.’ Sylvana is pale, with golden hair, as youthful as Tom himself. ‘And we need more Palace servitors.’
Thus did Sylvana save his life.
Then the inevitable coda:
‘An arm, perhaps?’ suggests Sylvana.
‘Very well.’ Lady Darinia, ruler of this realm, rises to her feet. ‘Before you deliver him’—grey gaze sweeping over Tom—‘remove an arm.’
And, with no change in expression: ‘Either arm will do.’
So did she change that life forever.
In the morning, there was still no word from Corduven; but a message from Lord Jay A’Khelikov invited Tom to a nearby daistral house for breakfast.
And does Sylvana live nearby?
His endurance run was on a laminar-flow pad in the study: running hard to nowhere. He drank a litre of water beforehand, another afterwards. Then he sat at the wide quickglass desk, and read the invitation again.
This chamber, he realized suddenly, was similar to the study in his own palace, during his brief reign: too similar for coincidence. And of all his former noble acquaintances, only Lady Sylvana had visited him there.
Was the apartment’s very layout a subtle message?
What else have I missed?
Tom sighed. He had been away from noble life for too long.
Or not long enough.
Over daistral, Jay quizzed Tom about his intentions.
‘The war effort is gearing up.’ Jay poked at a bowl of cold rice and sliced dodecapears. ‘And, er, tactically trained Lords with real battle experience are not exactly plentiful.’
‘I’m not—’
But Tom’s attention was caught then by a complex holo, like a golden net, floating above the next table.
Tac simulation.
And he noted that other diners in the daistral house, male and female, looked lean and fit. In fact, they exuded robust vitality in a way that suggested everyone, like himself, had already pushed themselves through extreme physical training, despite the early hour.
‘... them hard.’ One of the young men was pointing into the simulation. ‘And continuously.’
‘Right,’ agreed a colleague, as she gestured for the holo to rotate. ‘Pound ‘em here and here, until they give it up.’