Context

by John Meaney

  For his mind and body, without sustenance, were inexorably shutting down. Soon he would be unable to form the logotropic command sequence which activated his thanatotropic suicide implant; and beyond that point he dared not go.

  I’ll die when I decide.

  It was the only option left open to him.

  Not before.

  But either way it marked his failure. Starving or the other thing: both marked the end of his quest for Elva, his fulfilment of the Seer’s vision which was proving to be an illusion, a tortured and torturing dream. He would never see her again, never touch her skin, never kiss the soft warm lips of a woman who had died yet still survived.

  Elva, my love.

  Disappointment hurt more than torture, more than wounds.

  I’ve lost you now.

  Fifth day, and his eyes were closing of their own accord. He lay upon the broken stone—on a bare rock, though he could not recall his mat being stolen—and tried to conjure up the suicide code within the slow, restricted remnants of his mind.

  An end, at last—

  Boots, with polished toecaps, were standing in front of him. He squinted up at the inspecting officers. From somewhere, a woman’s voice clearly carried:

  ‘That one will do.’ With a note of disgust: ‘Clean it up. Have it sent to my quarters.’

  Hard prods against his back. The transmission ends of grasers.

  I’m sorry...

  Lice-ridden and filthy, he wanted to apologize for his own stink and lethargy. Were he a guard, he would not soil a hand on such as himself.

  ‘Move, animal.’

  Stumbling, he somehow forced himself to move.

  Gleaming floor. The sound of flutes. Soft rose scents ...

  Tom stood swaying, overcome by the soft air’s cool embrace, waiting as he had been told.

  A doorshimmer evaporated.

  Then an officer walked into the luxury-filled chamber, and stopped in front of him. He squinted, trying to focus. His surroundings were a blur of platinum statues, a holo sculpture floating before a russet tapestry, a face—

  Floor shifting.

  A familiar face ...

  ‘Tom. Oh, my Fate, what have they done to you?’

  Reaching out.

  Elva.

  Mouth opening, but no words came out.

  ‘Tom...’

  Her strong arms caught him as darkness closed in.

  ~ * ~

  61

  NULAPEIRON AD 3422

  Wondrously soft, her hand in his. Glistening grey, her sparkling eyes he had thought would remain unseen. Those beautiful lips.

  Facing each other across a low table, seated on comfortably upholstered lev-stools, holding hands in a deep communication needing no words.

  It was her.

  ‘Elva…’

  She smiled, blinking away tears.

  ‘I thought we were lost,’ she said. ‘Forever.’

  ‘That couldn’t happen.’

  ‘No.’ Her grip tightened on his hand. ‘We won’t let it.’

  Earlier, when he had come round, she had fed him: taste explosions bursting with liquid sweetness in his mouth. The physical organism, starved, fed without allowing talk; but his gaze had remained fastened on her even as he nourished himself like an animal, gripplefruit sticky with juice on his hand.

  But when she had finally stopped him eating—knowing the dangers of gorging himself too soon after his extended fast—he had allowed her to take away the food for now, despite the urgency of his hunger’s demands.

  He trusted her.

  Elva. At last...

  Trusted her with everything.

  Washed and dressed in clean pale-grey tunic and trews—the uniform of prisoners taken to act as vassals for a time—Tom felt his thought processes revitalize as his blood glucose rose. All sorts of barriers and barricades had fallen away in his mind: the inner defences he had shored up against fear and loneliness and disappointment, not daring to let his feelings out in case he never saw her again.

  But Elva was here, she was real, a fantasy made fact, and this time he was going to hang on to her, despite the danger.

  It was like hanging over an abyss, dangling from a solitary handhold, with only one chance for survival and happiness: never to let go.

  ‘I’m not the woman you knew, Tom.’

  ‘We all change,’ was the only reply he could make.

  ‘See here?’ Letting go of his hand, she rolled up her tunic sleeve. ‘This wasn’t me.’

  When she put her hand in his again, he raised it up and softly kissed the rippling white scar which ran up the inside of her forearm.

  ‘It’s part of you now,’ he said.

  ‘But I saw Litha get cut, playing with a broken blue glass bottle when our parents weren’t watching. I was there. I bandaged the wound. I can remember how her hot blood smelled like copper. We were seven SY old, my inseparable twin sister and me ...’

  When she turned away there was no sobbing, but soft silent tears trickled down her cheeks: in mourning for the sister she had effectively destroyed, displacing Litha’s consciousness when the entanglement system decohered, and all of Elva’s thoughts and memories slammed into Litha’s brain, even as Elva’s body dropped dead in Tom’s arm and the Seer looked on, powerless to prevent the disaster he had just created.

  What had it been like for her, suddenly to be in a distant realm, surrounded by strangers who thought they knew her, and knowing above all the price Litha had paid for her being here?

  But it was what Elva said next that caused the hairs on the back of Tom’s neck to rise, his skin to grow chill.

  ‘Sometimes I dream,’ she told him. ‘And not always when I’m asleep: waking images of places I’ve never been to, of people I’ve never seen ...’

  Tom swallowed.

  Finally, there was only one possible response.

  ‘You are Elva. And I love you more than I can say.’

  ‘I was never really recruited into the Grey Shadows,’ she said later. They had moved onto a couch, in a chamber lit by glowflitters hanging close to the wall tapestries, and she sat on his right so they could hold hands. ‘Mother and Father were part of it. Litha and I just naturally, as we learned more and more of their purpose, became involved ... Were we stupid, Tom?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I worked genuinely hard, as an astymonia officer and in LudusVitae. But the Shadows wanted to stay in the background, not openly commit themselves to LudusVitae’s cause, even though their objectives were largely the same.’

  Tom nodded. The infighting between different covert groups had at times threatened to destroy any effectiveness the umbrella organization of LudusVitae might have had.

  ‘But Litha...’ She looked away, then back at Tom. ‘She was in deep cover, in Earl Draufmann’s Palace Guards, rising through the ranks faster than me. The pact was, if we came across knowledge that looked vital to the Shadows, if there was any risk at all that we would not be allowed to bring it back without hindrance ...’

  ‘You were as willing to sacrifice yourself’—Tom shifted on the couch, staring hard at her: trying to convince Elva of her own bravery—‘as she was.’

  ‘I don’t know. How can I ever?’

  ‘You gave up a huge amount, even so.’

  ‘I thought I’d lost you ...’

  Draufmann Demesne had been at the core of Blight territory, one of the original manifestations in the world: a seed-growth of malevolent influence which spread, eventually becoming the vast infection which now threatened everything. Elva had communications facilities—code drops and couriers, nothing high-tech and therefore open to subversion—but no means of leaving.

  Not without abandoning her mission totally. Her sister’s mission: that was what made escape unthinkable.

  ‘But now you’re here,’ she said, ‘we’re going to have to get out.’

  It was what Tom wanted, though he had no illusions about the dangers they would face in trying to leave this dread
ful place.

  ‘What about your superiors?’ he asked. ‘Can you simply drop out of the Grey Shadows network?’

  ‘Perhaps. But I’d rather take back the price of my passage.’ With a bleak half-smile: ‘There’s stuff here worth dying for.’

  But before that, Elva had a guest for dinner, and Tom could only watch and suffer as she flirted with an enemy senior officer who had a non-military conquest on his mind. All the while, Tom held back the trembling desire to lash out, to strike the throat and claw the eyes, bringing the bastard the Fate he undoubtedly deserved.

  It started when a chime sounded, and Elva ran a hand through her hair and stood up, flustered.

  ‘There’s a ... cleaning kit. In the kitchen chamber, there. Perhaps you ought to ...’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ A too-tight smile stretched Tom’s face. ‘I know how to be a servitor.’

  Elva closed her eyes for a moment, composing herself, then nodded abruptly and went to receive her visitor.

  When the doorshimmer dissolved, a large florid man in dress uniform stepped inside. His greedy eyes, and the small wrapped present he handed Elva, were mere details: Tom hated the man on sight.

  But Tom bent to his cleaning tasks with tense familiarity, remembering how to carry out menial tasks without ever looking his betters in the eye.

  ‘Ah, Herla, my dear.’ It was Elva’s cover name, and it sounded strange. The officer took her hand and kissed her cheek (as Tom winced, unseen, at the moist invasive sound). ‘Beautiful company, elegant surroundings. What more could a man ask for?’

  ‘Careful, Major.’ Elva set the present down upon a crystal table. ‘You’ll turn my head.’

  ‘That would be nice, if you’ll allow it.’

  The urge to crush his throat was almost overwhelming. Tom moved on, polishing a shelf by hand,

  ‘Hmm. I see your unit is damaged. I’ll just send for a—’

  ‘No, no.’ Elva laid her hand upon her visitor’s arm. ‘It’s quite efficient, and I find the asymmetry aesthetically pleasing.’

  She’s talking about me.

  ‘Symbolically? As a visible mark of inferiority? Interesting.’ The man gave a liquid chuckle. ‘Perhaps I’ll commission a holosculpture, depicting them all in that light.’

  ‘You’ve more than met your targets, then.’ Elva gestured at wall units to deliver up the meal which they had been preparing. As the membrane-doors liquefied, it was Tom—having quickly stepped through a vibroclean field—who reached inside and carried them across to the dining table which floated at the largest chamber’s centre. ‘Or you’d not be so willing to devote yourself to art.’

  ‘Well, it’s amazing.’ With a self-conscious clearing of the throat: ‘We’ve instituted such productivity gains by utilizing short-life units that it’s cheaper than mesobores, even as we get rid of the failed biomass.’

  It took a moment to realize he was discussing human beings: their uses as slaves, the economics of working them to death and bringing in replacements, as opposed to keeping them alive or using inanimate devices, which felt no pain, had never been equipped with the capacity for suffering.

  ‘But I shouldn’t bore you with details. Work, work, work. It’s all I seem to do.’

  ‘Major, you push yourself too hard.’ There was a false caress in Elva’s voice; Tom had to turn away to hide his distaste. ‘But I really am very interested ...’

  The dinner conversation was a masterpiece of emotional intrigue: the major’s none too subtle attempts to entice Elva away from the table into a situation of physical proximity (neither noticing nor caring about Tom’s presence); Elva’s deft verbal parries and gentle avoidance.

  Later, as she manoeuvred him towards the door, fending off a friendly pat which could have become much more, he said: ‘Ah, Commander Hilsdottir. You break my heart.’

  ‘Soon, Major,’ she promised him. Laughing, she pushed him outside, as though it was only for the opportunity to touch him. ‘I’ll break your heart very soon.’

  Then she stepped back inside and waved the doorshimmer into being.

  After a moment, her shoulders slumped.

  ‘You can stop tidying up now, Tom.’ She would not meet his eyes. ‘It’s not—’

  ‘Elva.’ Very gently, he touched her shoulder, and moved to face her. ‘You are the bravest person I’ve ever met. And I love you more than I ever thought possible. All right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nodding, her eyes damp. ‘Yes, it is.’

  Tom decided, even in the miraculous shared warmth of their embrace, that there was a great deal he would never ask about—would never pass judgement on, should she ever call on him to listen.

  Her voice was muffled against his shoulder, but her words were clear and spoke to his heart.

  ‘We have to get out of here. Tonight.’

  Although Elva—or rather, Litha—had begun her military career as Herla Hilsdottir in Draufmann Demesne, she had been posted to five other realms since then. This place was formerly Realm Buchanan, and it had a very special significance beyond the human tragedy taking place in the death camp just a short walk away from Elva’s chambers.

  For at its heart lay the Collegium Perpetuum Delphinorum, creator of Oracles: one of three Collegiate sites in the world, and the first to fall before the encroaching Blight.

  And Elva would not leave without retrieving the price of her passage.

  ‘There. Not bad.’ She adjusted the large black satchel on his back.

  ‘Thank you.’ Tom shifted inside his new, baggy outer clothes. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’re my beast of burden. You’re not supposed to ask questions.’

  ‘Anything you say, ma’am.’

  ‘There are some crystals I was planning to retrieve—duplicate—over time. Other things that I could never steal without blowing my cover. There’s no point in leaving them behind. Not now.’

  ‘But how will you—?’

  ‘Theft is easy, when you’ve rank and clearance.’

  There was a strange light in her grey eyes, simultaneously calm and vibrant: a look of centred energy.

  ‘Good to know,’ said Tom.

  ‘It’s getting away afterwards that’s going to be hard.’

  The Collegium.

  The boulevard which led through the square archway was lustrous with age: arch, wall and ceilings all of grey polished mother-of-pearl, edged with jet and lightly decorated with gold-wire sculptures.

  At the ancient black gates, a dozen armed sentries stood, and their eyes were watchful, almost reptilian. Tom wondered if they remained truly human.

  But he and Elva, with an escort of their own, passed through unchallenged.

  He shuffled behind her, moving neither too fast nor too slow. There were mesodrones overhead, armoured and armed, circling through constant scanning patterns; he did not attract their attention. Bare-headed officers walked by, in earnest conversation, while more troops, mirror-visored here, stood to attention in the shielded alcoves which lined every wall.

  Once, Tom supposed, there had been statuary in their places; and he had a brief irrational wish that some benevolent magic might turn them all to stone, and let this place revert to its original purpose.

  It was a purpose he had once feared and hated; but if the Dark Fire had suborned it, the Collegium Perpetuum Delphinorum might become—might already have become—a greater evil than anyone could have—ha!—predicted. Or were there Oracles at the Academy, even now, who had foreseen their birthplace’s fall?

  And did they know what might happen to him and Elva here today?

  Irrelevant. Ignore.

  A guard barked a question.

  Elva gave an apposite countersign, spoke a coded phrase, and a mirrorfield darkened and collapsed. They stepped into a plush cosy corridor, carpeted in soft deep burgundy, with floating crystal glowglobes overhead.

  Silver doors, opened, led to party sounds: clink of goblets, murmured conversations. Someone called to Elva as they passed the doorway.<
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  ‘Back in a moment, General.’ She waved at someone, but Tom dared not turn his head to look. ‘If you’ve left some decabrandy, that is.’