Context

by John Meaney

  ‘Never mind.’ One of the psych team pushed back his chair. ‘Happens to everyone, sooner or—’

  Storming from the room.

  ‘Not to me, it doesn’t.’

  ‘You did all right,’ said Zoë. ‘Everyone falls into the rhetoric trap.’

  ‘Not if they do their jobs properly.’

  ‘They said’—Zoë smiled to take the edge off her words —’that you might be a perfectionist.’

  Psych analysis. That’s all I need.

  ‘Could it be a weapon?’ The thought struck Ro. ‘If we ever need one against the Zajinets, I mean?’

  Zoë shook her head. ‘They freeze into analysis-catatonia only if they take the question seriously. They have the choice of ignoring it entirely, from what anyone can tell.’

  It might remain in stasis for an hour or two; it might be longer. The record was nine and a half days without movement, after the British ambassador to Iceland, at the Reykjavik xeno centre, had held a hand out to a Zajinet and said: ‘How do you do, sir?’

  Ro’s breath steamed.

  Patterns. Always patterns—in the cold air’s movements, in the lightly falling snow. In the games and duplicities of human beings in general, of Zoë in particular. Finding her in Moscow had been one coincidence too many.

  ‘Can I ask vow a question, Zoë, without dire consequences?’

  Zoë made an adjustment on her cuff- turning up her coat’s thermal filaments—before answering.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Just how old are you, Zoë?’

  ‘Ah. I wondered when you’d get to that.’

  Ro’s jumpsuit was lent a touch of European elegance by her velvet scarf, indigo on one side and teal green on the reverse, draped casually round her throat. Her ears, though, were freezing, for she had thrown back her heated hood.

  Sounds carried badly through the muffling snow. It was important to remain alert.

  ‘My husband, ex-husband’—Zoë coughed—‘used to feel like a child molester when we went out in public. So he said.’

  It was hard to believe, but she claimed to be forty-two years old. Up close, it was obvious only that Zoë was too tough to be eighteen, however girlish she looked.

  Hardly a grad student, then.

  There was a point they had skirted around: Zoë’s exact role. But observing—or manipulating—Ro McNamara was obviously apart of her assignment, whoever she was working for.

  Just as we’re being watched right now.

  Ro said nothing about the hidden observers. If it was not Zoë’s people but some kind of enemy team secreted in the snowbanks, then she would have badly miscalculated. But the tiny patterns within patterns of Zoë’s body language, to Ro’s alert senses, suggested knowledge of their hidden positions.

  And there was tension strung throughout Zoë’s body; it took no genius to figure out that she was expecting some kind of action.

  ‘Christ, I hate the cold. But Moscow’—another cough—‘in December, of course it’s friggin’ freezing.’

  A shriek as a sled tipped up, spilling its two riders. Other students laughed.

  ‘Shame the labs are off limits.’ Ro did not look in Zoë’s direction. ‘Stupid time for a shutdown.’

  ‘Nice to see the hills, though.’ With a sniffle: ‘At least the air’s fresher than my apartment.’

  The lease on Zoë’s place, on fashionable Strugatski Prospekt, had allegedly been arranged by a long-term Muscovite friend whom Ro had never met.

  And she’s sticking to her cover story.

  Ro’s suspicion was that the ‘friend’ was a colleague in UNtel—the UN’s covert intelligence and xenology arm—and that Zoë herself was some kind of intelligence officer. Not that Ro had ever met a spy ...

  Another probe: ‘I haven’t seen any security recently.’

  ‘They pulled off the teams.’ Zoë shrugged, indicating a lack of worry. ‘No trouble for two months, no anti-xeno demos. Nothing.’

  That’s almost convincing.

  If it weren’t for patterns in the snow.

  Seven men... No.

  They were hidden superbly well.

  Nine of them, and armed.

  ‘Are you going home for Christmas?’

  ‘Home?’ Distantly, as though Zoë hardly recognized the concept: ‘No ... No, I don’t think so.’

  Snowflakes, falling heavier.

  Awaiting phase-transition, the pattern-shift...

  Are mathematical minds made vulnerable by their abilities, or is it that, seeing so deeply, the arbitrary and ephemeral nature of consensual reality becomes too flimsy to hold on to?

  Ro thought of Cantor: periods of deep insight into the nature of infinite sets, invariably followed by incarceration -amid black depression—in the Nerveninstitut von Halle.

  Are thoughts, then, so fragile?

  Nash’s Nobel Prize-winning one-page paper, founding the concept of game-theoretical equilibria, highlighting the nuclear madness of Mutual Assured Destruction—the product of a mind about to be torn apart by schizophrenia.

  Or is infinite truth so dangerous?

  Of the first four Kabbalists, conjuring up a group vision — of God’s manifestation upon Mount Sinai—one was shocked into permanent disbelief, and two died insane, before the blazing glory of Ein Sof, of infinity glimpsed—

  Transition.

  It’s starting.

  ‘Behind you,’ murmured Ro, ‘at three hundred degrees.’

  Transition now.

  She saw: gunman, eleven o’clock.

  Despite the gloom, pale silver light washed across the weapon’s transmission face, a bulky figure kneeling, aiming at her and Zoë, and Ro knew she had a tenth of a second, no more—

  Evade!

  Zoë was fast, but not fast enough. Ro used a scissoring sacrifice-sweep, kicking Zoë’s feet from under her, as she herself dropped prone.

  ‘Tarapityes!’ Zoë screamed into her bracelet. ‘Go, go, go!’

  Tracer beam, cutting the air above them.

  And the pattern: white shapes rising silently from the snow.

  ‘Damn it—’ Zoë rolled over to elbow-crawl.

  Too late.

  Ro could see the gunman: rising to his feet, taking new aim—

  Acceptance:

  I’m going to die.

  Then there was a blur of motion, a white-suited figure arcing through the air—flying thrust-kick with perfect extension—and the crunch of snapping vertebrae.

  The gunman dropped, neck broken, into the snowbank.

  Other white-clad soldiers fell on him, bayonets glinting on their magThrow rifles, and stabbed downwards, making sure.

  Laughter.

  Zoë, on her knees, retched into the snow.

  But the students, dragging their sleds upslope, had seen nothing.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Ro helped Zoë to her feet. “This—’

  ‘No, this way.’

  Trudging through drifts, they headed directly to the residence block. Beyond, in a slush-bordered courtyard of black wet cobblestones, white-jumpsuited soldiers were sliding a body bag into a TDV.

  My God—

  Ro recognized the corpse.

  The would-be assassin’s movements had been altered by his thermal suit, but suddenly she was sure. Moving quickly, taking them by surprise, she palmed the membranous bag into transparency.

  Soldiers, grabbing ...They stopped at Zoë’s soft command.

  ‘I know him,’ Ro said to Zoë. ‘And so do you.’

  Coffee-coloured features, broad cheekbones. Nothing out of place: this country’s historic Sovietski empire had once been bigger than AmeriFed’s.

  ‘I don’t—’

  Ro remembered: the bare-headed Mexican in the burning early sun, staring at her with dark impassive eyes as she ran at the desert’s edge, where red sand met cultivated greenery.

  ‘He was a gardener at DistribOne.’

  The TDV’s door descended, clicked shut. The vehicle murmured into motion.
r />   ‘Christ.’ Zoë. ‘Someone will pay.’

  Soldiers moved off at a noiseless, loping run, disappearing among black-limbed trees, as thickening snow fell, then gushed, from the bone-white sky, enveloping the world in heavy silence.

  ‘So we’re safe,’ said Ro.

  ‘Not yet. Let’s go.’

  <>

  ~ * ~

  42

  NULAPEIRON AD 3421

  The long balcony was exquisite—rose-pink flagstones with platinum borders, floating lev-tables of clearest crystal—in contrast to the shadowy training cavern it overlooked. Though antisound deadened the clamour of unseen manoeuvres below, odd highlights spattered across the raw, jumbled cavern ceiling: reflected graser fire.

  Beside Tom, Corduven looked more highly strung than ever, his pale skin taut across prominent cheekbones, his narrow body angular with tension.

  ‘You’re sure about this, aren’t you, Tom?’

  ‘Going into the field? Yes, I am.’

  Lihru was the last agent he would send into danger; it was time to do something active himself.

  They walked in step, pacing along the balcony. Corduven’s hands were clasped behind his back, hidden by the dark-blue half-cape he wore over his plain uniform.

  Daistral and minrasta cakes waited on a nearby table, untouched.

  ‘It would be a tragedy,’ Tom said, ‘an Avernon were dead. Have you tried to—?’

  ‘He’s safe.’ A fleeting half-smile tightened Corduven’s features. ‘Which means, he isn’t here.’

  At the balcony’s end they stopped. Tom leaned over the balustrade, staring down upon the dark crawling figures of troops on the cavern floor. The terrain was jagged, and they used every possible concealment: broken outcrops, shallow craters half-filled with dirty water.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Corduven’s voice tugged Tom back. ‘We don’t spend any time together.’

  His skin looked almost translucent, blood vessels visible as pale-blue shadow lines.

  ‘You’ve enough on your plate, old friend.’

  ‘Too much, perhaps.’ For a moment, despair webbed Corduven’s features. ‘I don’t—There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’

  Here it comes.

  Tom was not sure he had faced up to his own feelings; he did not want to discuss the Oracle Gérard d’Ovraison’s death with Corduven.

  I killed your brother.

  But the question was: ‘Why did you really join us, Tom?’

  Caught off guard, he answered, ‘I’m not... sure. I needed a purpose. I couldn’t just stand by, you know? I’m looking for ...’ His voice trailed off.

  There was so much he had left out of his debriefing, after he had offered to describe his experiences in the Aurineate Grand’aume. He had been interviewed by a single portly man in civilian cloak and tunic, whose timid manner belied the astuteness of his questions. Tom had furnished descriptions of the Grand’aume’s torture chambers and the names of his interrogators; he had passed on his speculations about the Seer’s origins and capabilities, and everything he knew about the Dark Fire’s manifestation and the manner in which the Seer died.

  Tom had lied, though only by omission and misdirection: he had worded his account so that it sounded as though Elva had perished at the same time as the Seer, during the Blight’s strange attack.

  Was it natural paranoia?

  Perhaps they could help me.

  But he had access to many levels of the strategy net, could query the intelligence results and perform interpolations/extrapolations (assisted by tactical AIs whose inductive/deductive capacity obeyed the letter, if not the spirit, of the anti-Turing laws).

  Internal security officers, who monitored all Labyrinth personnel, must surely have noted his obsession; and Corduven was too thorough not to have acquainted himself with the contents of Tom’s dossier.

  Perhaps it was just a reluctance to appear insane, to share his belief that the woman whose body had long been consumed by teloworms in a black burial lake was still alive, in another person’s body.

  “They’ve taken you through the implications, Tom?’

  Corduven began to walk again, back along the balcony, and Tom moved to keep pace.

  ‘Of becoming an active agent, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly. With your knowledge—’

  ‘I need triple-redundant fail-safe thanatotropes. Of course. And the will to use them.’

  Because it was strategically inconceivable that he should survive capture long enough to be interrogated.

  ‘You’re not doing enough here, is that it?’

  ‘You know my background. And I’ve nothing more to gain, training people, giving hints to codebreakers.’

  Sending people off to die.

  They paused, halfway along the balcony’s length.

  ‘But so much of this’—Corduven’s gesture took in the richly appointed balcony, the small group of servitors who waited quietly at the far end—‘is what you wanted to destroy, isn’t it?’

  Tom said nothing.

  ‘The noble institutions, the ...’ Corduven looked at Tom, continued: “The world’s founders used pre-logotrope memetic engineering, yet I think they got the social design essentially correct. But you ... Surely you don’t agree.’

  ‘If any system lets human beings be bartered or sold, Cord, then there’s something rotten in its foundations.’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘Maybe.’ A flicker of sympathy, or maybe amusement, crossed Corduven’s taut face. ‘So why fight for it? Because your revolution failed, and you need a cause? Any cause?’

  Tom took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

  ‘Corduven, my friend, you know how many realms the Dark Fire has taken.’ His fist was clenched; he forced it to open. ‘Do you really think, once this war is over, your precious Lords and Ladies will still hold power?’

  I’ve said it now.

  Tom felt his own face mirror Corduven’s expression: a small, hard smile of recognition—of positions taken, of battle lines being drawn—while down below, amid the jagged, broken rock, soldiers crawled beneath tracer-fire cover, breathing musty air replete with the stink of battle, of sweat and fear, laying down desperate skills to be tested soon for real, wincing when a practice beam harmlessly struck clothing, seeing instead the last spurt of blood, hearing the silent cry, feeling the infinite heavy blackness closing in forever.

  The evacuation began: three thousand personnel, many tonnes of materiel, to be transported to a distant demesne, the Academy’s new home.

  But I’ve made the right choice.

  For Tom would not be going with them.

  Corridors grew packed with vast, squat arachnargoi; they teemed with lines of troopers bearing wrapped bundles: cargo for the great thoracic holds. Pale drawn faces. Excited children, running among the troopers’ feet, playing beneath deadly black arachnabugs: one-person military bugs, armed and fast, hanging by their black tendrils, watching and ready.

  Beyond the Outer Courts, Tom found other folk. Faces pinched with worry, local non-Academy inhabitants, ordinary people—the sort who, on a lower stratum, would recognize Lord One-Arm by sight—watching the preparations with dismay. Occasional glares of silent anger flashed in Tom’s direction, as he walked the stark corridors in his black velvet cloak lined with silver.

  If you only knew.

  But they would assume he was running away, with all the others.

  Here, the children were too cowed to play, hushed when they tried to speak. More aware than their parents: they had no rationalizations with which to combat realistic fear.

  There was a toy, a fastclay model lev-car, bent out of shape upon the flagstones. Tom picked it up, handed it to a wide-eyed girl watching from inside a small—but very clean — dwelling alcove.

  ‘Is this yours?’

  She took the toy from Tom, and opened her mouth to speak — but a heavy hand, her mother’s, descended on the girl’s shoulder, and she remaine
d mute.