by John Meaney
Tom turned to face the rows of people. The applause was massive—
Destiny! It’s really happening.
—a roll of thunder which stretched on and on, for ever.
Lord Corcorigan bowed, and descended to meet his peers.
~ * ~
38
NULAPEIRON AD 3413
Golden background powdered with black stars, slashed by a diagonal bend surmounted by a poignard gules . . .
“I don’t think so.”
He waved it out of existence.
Azure Möbius-strip inescutcheon, argent stallion rampant in the first quarter.
“Fate. How bloody pretentious can I possibly get?”
A soft chime sounded.
“Come in,” called Tom, minimizing the holovolume.
“Were you busy, my Lord?” Avernon poked his head through the membrane.
Tom laughed. “Not really, my Lord.”
“Designing a coat-of-arms, Lord Corcorigan?”
“Noblesse oblige... or noblesse s’amuse. Do come in, Lord Avernon. Make yourself comfortable.”
Avernon came into the gold-appointed drawing-room.
“Stopped grinning yet?”
“No.”
“You look as though you’re floating off the ground.”
Tom shook his head, but not in denial . . . just at the strangeness of the situation. The old market chamber seemed a lifetime away: somebody else’s life.
“When are you seeing Lord Shinkenar?”
“Father?” Avernon shrugged. “On the way to l’Academia, I suppose.”
“Don’t forget—”
“—to thank him on your behalf. Right.”
“Sorry.” Not the first time Tom had mentioned it.
Though Avernon had spent many years fostered into Lady Darinia’s extended family, his father was Lord Shinkenar: first proposer of Tom’s elevation, and responsible for the creation of Tom’s demesne.
He didn’t come to see your triumph. Tom looked at Avernon. But you haven’t complained once.
Yet nothing was that simple. Tom was now the ruler of Veldrin Provincia: a modest demesne, formed from some outer sections of Lord Shinkenar’s own realm, plus reclaimed interdemesne caverns and halls which had lain unused for a century.
It was a very handsome gesture of gratitude.
“You saved my life.” Avernon gestured to a couch, and it slid across the floor to him. “He wanted to repay you years ago, when it happened”—he lay down on the couch, crossed his hands beneath his head, and stared at the mother-of-pearl ceiling—”but someone had already bought you a thousand merit points—”
What?
Tom had always thought that merit points were an automatic award. A cost to the system, not to an individual.
“I didn’t realize that merits could come from a donor.”
“Over a certain limit, they have to.” Avernon squinted at the slowly changing swirls in the panels above him. “I forget what the threshold is. A hundred points, maybe?”
In all Tom’s time as a servitor, nobody had mentioned this. And he had never known anyone else to be awarded more than twenty points at a time—and even that was rare—so the issue had never arisen.
“But if it wasn’t your father ...” Tom’s voice trailed off.
Who gave me my start? Lady Darinia?
The question burned in his mind.
Or Sylvana?
Intricate fairings swept back across a glistening carapace: it hung silently above the courtyard.
“Not bad,” said Tom.
“Can’t have a Lord without a lev-car, can we? That’s what Father says.”
“You won’t have time to ride it.” Tom clapped Avernon on the shoulder—an action which, a couple of days ago, would have carried heavy punishment. “Hobnobbing with the great minds of our age, unravelling the cosmic mysteries ...”
“…chasing women ...”
“. . . and chasing women, with no time for mundane activities like joyriding.”
“You’re exactly right.” Avernon held out a small crystal shard. “That’s why the lev-car is yours.”
Tom was speechless. Not at the gift itself, so much as the implications: that he could go anywhere, ride it where he pleased.
He rubbed his earlobe where the ID stud had been.
“Want to try it out, Tom?”
The crystal shard, having transferred ownership codes to Tom’s thumb ring, dissolved in his hand.
“I guess we’d better.”
Tom gestured. The lev-car rose and floated across to the colonnade by which he and Avernon stood. Raising its retro-fashionable gull-doors, it sank to the flagstones.
“Beautiful.”
Tom slid inside first.
They moved off, slipping beneath a trellis archway covered in cloying air-blossom. A group of Ladies, conversing on a high balcony on a silver buttress, stopped as Tom and Avernon passed.
Tom tuned the cockpit to transparency. He gave a cheery wave to the Ladies, then turned the lev-car and sailed towards a wide tunnel.
They came out in a vast, raw cavern. They were still in interstitial territory, belonging to no demesne, perhaps two klicks from the Convocation venue, the Congressio Interstata.
The natural stone was black, speckled with greenish yellow. Here and there, red-brown ferric insertions stained the walls like dried blood. Sparse fluorofungus glimmered.
Tom brought the lev-car’s stately glide to a halt, and they hovered in place. In front of them five dark tunnel openings were like watching eyes.
“Is everything OK?” asked Avernon.
“I think so. Do you get motion sickness?”
“Er, no. Why do you—?”
“Go!” Tom slammed his fist down, whooping as the lev-car leaped forwards and status holovolumes went crazy. “Hang on, now!”
Banking to the left, plunging down, then arcing upwards, heading straight for the cavern ceiling—”Destiny!” muttered Avernon, clinging to his seat—then whipping aside at the last second, twisting, speeding into a tunnel entrance, pressed deep into their seats as velocity increased again and rock walls flew past like fluid slipstream while Tom manically laughed and red-planed the hurtling lev-car’s acceleration.
“Not long till the Last Chance Dance.”
It was the post-Convocation party.
Avernon, gripplewine in hand, nodded in the direction of a group of finely gowned young Ladies. One of them caught his regard and giggled.
“I beg your pardon?” The collar of Tom’s formal half-cape was stiff with new platinum brocade, and he ran a finger inside to loosen it. “Last chance-—?”
“Midnight Minuet, officially.” Avernon raised an eyebrow. “But, y’know, for the guys who haven’t managed to score during the Convocation—”
“It’s Falvonn and Kirindahl, isn’t it?” Tom indicated the pair who were heading towards them. “They’re a bad influence on you.”
“Hi, fellows.” Avernon greeted the two devil-may-care Lords. “Tom thinks you’re a bad influence. This is from a chap who breaks every flight regulation with a passenger who once had a cardiac infarction.”
“Er ...” Tom felt suddenly sick. “I didn’t think—”
“Don’t listen to him, Tom.” Falvonn, swigging from a goblet. “They grew him a new heart when it happened. That’s the one thing that definitely won’t fail.”
“I hope you’re not insinuating . . .”
Tom tuned out their conversation.
He had learned that the party-going Falvonn and Kirindahl used to drag the naturally shy Avernon out to social occasions, helping him to meet Ladies, basically, in return for academic tuition. But sometimes their collective emotional development seemed to be stuck at the twelve-year-old stage.
Not sensible, like me. He remembered the mad lev-car flight, and inwardly smiled.
Come to think of it, Falvonn and Kirindahl always seemed to turn up in each other’s company. A smart remark rose to Tom’s tongue,
but he held it back: latent homosexuality was not a topic for jokes in the Primum Stratum, at least in this sector.
He did not think it was true . . . but if it was, and if latency turned to actuality, then they would be disinherited, stripped of their new positions, and demoted to Lords-Minissimi-sans-Demesne. And shunned for ever.
“—do you think, Tom?”
“I’m sorry?”
“She’s looking at me. Lady Arlath. What do you reckon?”
“I don’t know, Avernon. Are you seriously interested in her?”
Avernon glanced at Falvonn and Kirindahl, and shrugged. “To tell you the truth—”
Tom snagged a glass from a passing tray, turning so that his halfcape fell open plainly to reveal his abbreviated left sleeve.
Lady Arlath blanched and turned back to her friends.
“Just a little social experiment,” Tom murmured.
“Fate, Tom.” Kirindahl, the quieter of the pair, finally spoke. “Underneath it all, you’re an evil bastard. What do you think, chaps?”
Avernon raised his glass.
“We knew that,” he said, “all along.”
Tom beckoned a servitor—the gesture came too easily—and discarded his half-empty glass.
Laughter arose from the small group of Ladies near the marble archway. Avernon was in their midst, Falvonn and Kirindahl flanking him.
Tom looked around the gathering.
“Do you know anyone, Lord Corcorigan?” It was a young, plainfaced Lady who addressed him. “I’m Yeltina, by the way.”
“Honoured.” Tom, thinking carefully, gave the correct bow: halfradian angle (for peer-meeting-peer, first occasion), head inclined to the left (for male-meeting-female). “And I don’t know anyone here, really.”
Among the lacy columns, some three hundred of Gelmethri’s elite mingled in small groups. Servitors moved around with trays, backed up by golden microdrones floating discreetly near the opalescent ceiling. Through various archways, neighbouring chambers were visible, filled with partying nobility. The celebrations extended far beyond this one grand chamber.
“That’s Countess Nilkitran.” Lady Yeltina pointed out a distinguished Lady with a fractal head-dress. “She devised contra-loop web-attractors.”
“Good grief!” Tom was amazed. “I’ve read some of her work. She’s brilliant.”
“Come on. I’ll introduce you.”
She led him across to the half-dozen Lords and Ladies who formed Countess Nilkitran’s audience. Drawing closer, he caught snatches of fine conversation, but found it hard to catch the words’ meaning.
“Um . . . Your work is fantastic, ma’am,” he said.
The Countess looked surprised, as Lady Yeltina introduced him: “This is Lord Corcorigan.”
“Oh.” Countess Nilkitran raised an eyebrow. “So you’re the one.”
But she smiled then, and everything was fine.
After a few minutes in conversation with the Countess and her admirers, Tom sensed another presence behind him.
“Ah, Lord Corcorigan.” The Countess looked over Tom’s shoulder. “Let me introduce—”
“Not to worry.” An elegant, female voice. “Tom and I are old friends.”
Tom noticed the surprised respect in some of the eyes upon him. He turned and said: “Lady V’Delikona. It’s good to see you.”
The white-haired Lady smiled as he kissed her hand. Then she tucked her arm in his.
“May I take Tom away for a moment?”
“Of course.”
Her slender arm felt frail, but her spirit was still formidable. As they walked, she nodded to various Lords who bowed in her direction.
“You’ve attracted attention in some quarters.”
“I guess so, my Lady. I’m having a lot of fun. And it really is good to see you.”
“One grows so weary of sycophants.” Her eyes were bright with energy in her lined, narrow face. “But when you say that, you mean it.”
“I should hope so.”
“Mmm. Come on.” They moved into an adjoining chamber, a ballroom where slow music was gently playing. “Want to dance with a little old Lady?”
“My pleasure,” Tom said truthfully.
As they moved slowly around the floor, she looked up at him. “You dance well.”
“I learned mostly by watching ...” Tom grinned slyly.
“. . . standing by the wall,” she finished for him, glancing at the servitors who even now ringed the ballroom. “Waiting on your superiors.” Her irony matched his.
When the dance was over, she declined the offer of another.
“I was talking to A’Dekal earlier”—she was referring to Lord A’Dekal, ranked Primus Maximus—”and he mentioned an interest in meeting you.”
“That’s kind.” Tom’s voice was carefully neutral.
“Maybe, maybe not.” Lady V’Delikona looked serious. She grabbed his forearm. “Promise me something, Tom.”
“Anything.”
“Remember that you deserve everything you’ve achieved.” Her voice grew fierce. “What others have handed to them on a plate, you’ve earned by your own efforts. Believe in your strength.”
“I . . . thank you.’
“Don’t forget. And keep your guard up. A’Dekal’s a brilliant logosopher, but a rotten human being.”
“Funny,” said Tom, “how the two don’t always go together.”
“That’s right.” She tightened her arm in his again. “Except for you and me, babe.”
Her sudden smile was heartbreaking, despite their difference in years, and Tom laughed. Inside, he was deeply moved.
Then she took him out to a small balcony, and left him alone with Lord A’Dekal.
“I looked over the logs, Tom, of your Review presentation.” Lord A’Dekal smiled frostily. “Most intriguing, though not in my area of expertise.”
“Nor up to your standards, sir.” Tom’s reply was diplomatic more than truthful. “Your stochastic-certainty cytomatrices are required studies at Lady Darinia’s Sorites School.”
“Just so.”
The balcony clung outside a marble-encrusted drawing-room. Below, in a low courtyard, an impromptu lightball game was in progress. Laughing white-shirted Lords, tunics and capes discarded, chased the whining, fluorescing ball.
“Builds backbone,” added Lord A’Dekal. “The noble pursuit. I was in the first seventeen at l’Academia Ultima. Do you play?”
“Er, no.” Tom realized belatedly that he was talking about lightball.
“Pity. Sound mind, sound body.”
“I guess so.” Tom thought of the thousands of hours he had spent running, stretching, practising phi2dao.
“You’re welcome to visit my demesne.” Lord A’Dekal’s clipped tone made it sound like an order. “Come in two tendays. You can join in the bat hunt.”
“Thank you.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve handled a graser rifle before.”
“No, sir. But hunting doesn’t sound like the kind of thing I’d be good at.”
White eyebrows exaggerated A’Dekal’s frown. “I suppose not. But you can stay for a while. You’ll be welcome to use all the facilities.”
Tom stared at the stony-faced old Lord, trying to understand his meaning.
“Any handicap in the sporting arena”—Lord A’Dekal’s stern gaze was fixed determinedly on Tom’s face—”can be overcome. My medical facilities are superlative; you know of my research.”
He’s trying not to look at my stump. Tom twisted slightly, moving his left shoulder forwards, and the tiniest of twitches plucked at Lord A’Dekal’s right eye.
“My femtovats,” Lord A’Dekal continued, “have clone and fast-grow facilities.”
“Ah,” said Tom. “I see. Thank you.”
And he did see.
He can regrow my missing arm.
Cursing his lack of control, Tom glanced down at his abbreviated left sleeve. And when he looked up, there was the subtle, superior light of vi
ctory in Lord A’Dekal’s eyes.