by Lou Anders
Colin was safe.
They worked on my broken wrist in the Accident & Emergency Room. Colin was fine, they told me (truthfully) as the technician injected me with amber fluid. Then he sat me down before a cylindrical scanner, and I placed my hand inside.
Yukiko was fascinated by the holo display that sprang up, showing the bones of hand and wrist as silvery translucent shapes, and the bright threads of the femtocyte load as injected particles spread around my bones and got to work.
“The femtoscopic carriers,” Yukiko said, “transport the healing femto-cytes into place, is that right?”
“Um, yeah. Sure.” The technician kept his attention focused on the console.
I was pretty sure his concentration was a good thing. Why would Yukiko want to distract him?
“So the carriers,” she continued. “Could they take any femtoscopic load into place? Anything at all?”
The technician shrugged. “Why not?”
“Anything?” I said.
“Er…Yeah.” The technician looked at us. “What are you thinking of?”
“Where can we buy,” asked Yukiko, “equipment like this?”
But the technician's phone chimed just then. He listened for a moment, then said, “I'll be right there.” To Yukiko and me he added, “Sorry, guys. I'll be back in ten. Just keep your hand in place.”
“No worries,” I told him.
After the technician had left, Yukiko said, “It can carry anything. Including pets.”
She didn't mean cats or dogs. Yukiko meant pets: persistently entangled twins. Twin particles. Injecting lone particles into one person, and as for their entangled twins…
“We've already talked,” Yukiko said, “about using the nozzle spray that way. Entangling you”—her smile was Zen-serene and sensuous at the same time—“with me, not some old console.”
It was unreal. Feasible now, yet still unreal.
Yukiko reached out and touched my shoulder.
“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”
I stared at her. She was perfect. I had done nothing to deserve her, or the possibility of such an amazing future.
“Not yet,” I said. “But I will be.”
Shama stood as Master Teldrasso had taught her, ready with the platinum axe she had to hold two-handed. Then she breathed, remembering the silent chant.
I am the crystal.
And she swung, striking pure. The blackened area snapped off. What remained was perfect, a crystal shard aching to be reworked. Now the oven glowed the exact scarlet-and-gold required, smelled of that hot ceramic tang. This was the moment.
Shama used tongs to place the shard just right. As she concentrated, the tip of her tongue showed between her teeth. Then she sat back on her heels and watched.
Inside the oven, the crystal grew yellow then orange, starting to spread into the convoluted mold, ready to reshape, yet retaining essential wholeness.
The crystal is me.
I'm tired now. In need of unbroken sleep.
On his silver-chased couch, Prince Argul grew very still, statuelike, as his mind spread farther and wider than ever before. His lean, bearded face held a static smile: like a statue, but a happy one.
Yet somewhere on the edge of his dream-awareness, as he bathed in the refreshing thousands of sleeping minds, the men and women and children of the city currently dreaming, something new shone. A different kind of possibility, something that resonated, drew him…
A web, of such perfection.
In the sleeping chamber, there was no one to see as the smile faded from the somnolent prince's face. Perhaps some part of his dreaming unconscious knew the danger even then.
Mothlike, Prince Argul responded to the power, to the attraction of a superbly resonant web.
The inescapable attraction.
A soft moan sounded from the prince.
I gasp, come awake in what must be the tag-end of a dream: silver web-lines glowing on my naked skin. They shine in the night-dark bedroom. Then they waver, grow translucent.
And are gone.
I drop back onto the bed.
Inside heavy purple robes, the viceroy's thin body trembled. Or perhaps it was just his stomach churning. The viceroy, known as Vul, sat at the narrow end of his black glass oval-shaped conference table. Halfway along the right-hand side, General Lanishen leaned his elbows on the polished black tabletop and stared at Vul.
For Vul—whose real name, mostly forgotten, was Triklan Vulkishan—this was a turning point, a moment when Lanishen became ally or enemy. Vul breathed out and focused, using peripheral vision to pick up every nuance of the general's body language, sensitizing his hearing to stresses in the general's voice.
They were alone in the steel conference chamber. The only sound was a soft pneumatic hiss; the only movement, background swirls in pale-amber globes: observation globes that ringed the chamber.
Various toxin-spewing devices were hidden in the bulkheads and furniture, their existence theoretically secret, but surely suspected by General Lanishen. His tone was polite.
“My tactical developers’ brief,” the general told Vul, “includes investigating the possibility of new weapons. The city must remain safe.”
“And so it must, General.”
Vul waited a moment, analyzing. His natural empathy was almost zero; but his parents had been teachers who worked down in deck two, and at home they had taught Vul ways of observation, to intellectually deduce the thought processes of others. Those skills, now superlative, had taken time to learn. At school the kids called him Vul the Fool.
And now he was their viceroy.
Vul added: “A working Void Egg might be considered going beyond the bounds of your brief, might it not?”
General Lanishen placed his hands palm-down on the black glass table. “You're implying two things. A fully developed weapon and my part in…”
The general paused. Perhaps he could read Vul's body language, just as Vul could read his.
“…its development. Of course your agents, Viceroy, are highly trained.”
“Yes.”
Neither man mentioned the forthcoming discussion in the royal court, when Prince Argul was expected to rule in favor of Vul's new policing agency. But the agency, without royal charter, was already in clandestine operation.
Behind General Lanishen, an amber globe changed hue.
“Then we should drop it,” said Vul.
“What? The program has lasted years. So I admit it. To cancel at this stage would mean—”
“I mean drop the bomb.”
Silence rocked through the chamber. Then: “You can't mean that.”
“We lay the egg,” Vul nodded as he spoke, a movement designed to influence the general's subconscious, “as we pass the next demon city. We leave the Void Egg as close to the tri-damned demons as we can. Set it to detonate when the air bubble has passed on…just afterwards. The demons will still be waking up.”
General Lanishen shook his head. “There's no strategic value in destroying the next demon city.”
He called it city, not nest, upgrading its status in his mind to honorable enemy. It took a moment for Vul to work this out.
“Twelve years ago,” said Vul, “a nest of demon commandos came at the Clanking City, when we passed into their territory. They weren't asleep in their own towers or aeries. They attacked us.”
“That's well known, sir.”
“Yes, General, and you're going to argue that it was a different demon city. That there is no evidence to suggest that demons communicate across different regions. But there's no evidence against it, either.”
General Lanishen tensed in his chair. He did not like Vul trying to deduce his thoughts. And that, Vul realized, was a dislike that could be used against Lanishen.
“Why would you want demons to fear us, Viceroy? That can work two ways. They might leave us alone, or plan further attacks in the future.”
“Demonic commandos,” said Vul. “Have you ever
read the reports of that operation?”
“No…I was a lieutenant then, in charge of—”
“The defenders failed to find any hidden bivouacs.” Vul pointed at a convoluted brown-and-white sculpturelike object on a shelf. “What they did find was a collection of ceramic devices that trapped air. I mean demonic air, not ours. They had their own little bubble of acidic vapor in place, allowing them to breathe when the real atmosphere passed over their land.”
General Lanishen pushed himself back from the table, but remained sitting.
“I fail to see where this discussion is leading. If you have charges to make, sir, then please to do so now.”
“I'm not playing games, General. My theories indicate that our air might not continue to travel in the same direction forever. And can any city maintain motive power without ever failing?”
“It's been centuries—”
“And do we not plan for the far future? If we force the demons to provide devices that can hold our atmosphere in place, we can settle down.”
“You mean live like demons?” General Lanishen half stood. “In one place like vermin?”
“In the future, perhaps. Not in our lifetimes.”
It was enough to calm the general, enough for him to sit back down. He had reservations about working with Vul. But Vul had revealed plans and intentions as treasonous as General Lanishen's own.
“How many scholars,” said the general, “share your theory, Viceroy?”
Vul shook his head.
“Unimportant. What's important is that we work together.”
Over General Lanishen's shoulder, Vul could see the observation globe that had changed color earlier. Something shifted inside. It fractionally darkened.
“Prince Argul,” said the general, “will not approve of such actions.”
At the mention of the prince, Vul felt that same old feeling. “Oh, Prince Argul. We'll create some kind of story for him.”
There was a theory that creating a Void Egg (long speculated on by scholars) could break open the world, shearing the infinite cylinder into two. As a thought experiment, scholars liked to use such a catastrophe to teach the arithmetic of infinities: both remaining halves of the world would (if current cosmological theories were correct) be infinitely long cylinders.
Neither Vul nor Lanishen believed that theory.
“Even you,” said General Lanishen, “cannot shield against a psych inquisitor.”
“My concerns are for the city, nothing more.”
The general gave a tiny shake of the head, relaxing, allowing more of his hidden thoughts to reveal themselves in his body language. He had heard the overtones in Vul's voice when Vul mentioned Prince Argul.
And Vul was thinking, even now: Argul, so beautiful…
Vul's suppressed desires for the prince, even as thoughts, were illegal and punishable by death; and Vul realized he might have betrayed himself.
How subtle this game had become!
Should Vul acknowledge the general's deduction, cementing their alliance yet revealing a mortal weakness? Or should he convince the general that he was mistaken?
The metal deck shifted as the city missed a step. Both men waited. The deck leveled itself, and the Clanking City continued as always.
“That globe—” Vul pointed behind the general.
“What is it?”
“More than you think.” Vul got up from his seat and walked to the amber globe. “This maps Prince Argul's mind. Topography, not geometry.”
“What does that mean?”
Vul decided to use the truth. “It means we're seeing pictures of Argul's mind”—he deliberately dropped the royal title—“and it seems our ruler is lost in dreams.”
General Lanishen rose, glanced at the globe, then stared at Vul. “So he's asleep. I don't need your arcane devices to tell me a man can sleep.”
“No.” Vul pointed. “I mean lost. In dreams.”
“Explain.”
“That bright spot? It's a form of trap, for certain gifted people. Something attractive they can't get away from.”
General Lanishen's hand moved toward his hip. He wore no obvious weapons. The gesture was unconscious.
“I mean it,” Vul continued. “Argul is losing his mind.”
The general stood very still.
“You mean that?”
“More literally than you imagine, General.”
“Then a power vacuum is approaching.”
“Yes.”
After a moment, General Lanishen said, “Good.”
We were naked in the lab at night when we performed the injection sequence. As our particles entangled, I entered Yukiko, and we made love as our nerves resonated in a mystical experience that was ours alone.
You think we would dream of publishing results like that? Describing to others the mystical feedback of loving someone who loves you, who loves you loving them, becoming one person, experiencing infinite, burning, nova-bright recursion?
Afterwards, in our everyday lives, it took time to manifest a shared imagined vision, of a red apple or a black cat with bright green eyes, but over time we managed it. And our nights were wonderful. I learned to hear the music playing in Yukiko's mind.
Then, two months into our joining, I felt the difference in Yukiko compared to myself, the strangeness of feeling in certain locations. We went together to the hospital, and I waited outside while they performed the scans; but we knew the results before they started.
What we had yet to find out was the way that the cancer would fight back, resisting treatment, metastasizing with an aggression the medics had never encountered. Soon we would learn that death was coming.
In Shama's cupboard, movement occurred inside the three cocoons. The mother, the purple dodecamoth, began to croon and warble.
At around the same time, Peetro and Hoj were pressed back inside an alcove, observing a half-lit corridor down which three soldiers were dragging a beaten prisoner. Peetro never drank alcohol; Hoj was sobering up fast. This was serious, and dangerous: following soldiers from the Viceroy's Own Guards.
“Could it be Argul?” whispered Hoj.
“No.” Peetro continued to watch. “Maybe.”
He drew back. If the soldiers spotted them…
But the injured prisoner might have been Prince Argul. It was someone slightly built and dark-haired.
“Not even Vul would dare…”
“Yeah?” Hoj started to raise his voice, then lowered it. “Argul failed to turn up to committee meetings, is what I heard. Not like him.”
Since taking over after his father's death, Argul had changed. Prince Sardal, his father, had been a strong and meticulous leader, yet a scarcely functional telepath. Argul, a dreamer, raised by his talented but directionless uncle, Count Hamel, had been different. In his late teens, he had even gone off the rails somewhat, along with his youthful noble friends, Hoj and Peetro.
Hoj liked to think of himself as a calming influence in the old days. Peetro kept his opinions to himself.
But Argul, since his elevation to power, had done his best for the city. His face nowadays, it seemed to Peetro, was perpetually tight with stress.
“TriGods damn it,” Peetro muttered now. “I really don't want to follow them.”
The soldiers had dragged the prisoner away from Vul's chambers. A general and Vul himself had looked on, while Peetro and Hoj, skulking, had observed from a distance.
“So what,” said Hoj, “are we going to do?”
“Follow them. What else?”
“But you said—”
“If it is Argul, could we ever forgive ourselves?”
Hoj rubbed his coppery hair. “Well eventually, I suppose we—”
“Come on.”
As members of the Median (though not High) Council, Hoj and Peetro were aware of certain security codes. Spinning the combination locks of two sets of armored hatches got them close to the three guards and their prisoner.
But the metal cell wh
ere the guards finally incarcerated the man lay beyond a large reinforced hold. Other guards, stationed in the corridor outside, kept watch. It was only as the trio led the prisoner inside that surveillance relaxed for a moment. Peetro leaned around a steel buttress, seeing the strange sapphire glow that shone inside the hold. Hoj looked also, then pulled himself back into hiding.
“Oh, shit,” muttered Peetro.
Guards swung the hold's big door. It sounded a dull bong as it shut.
“Did you see the prisoner's face?” said Hoj.
“No…”
“So maybe it wasn't Argul.”
“Shadroth, Bilkroth”—Peetro stared at Hoj—“and bleeding Vikridor.”
Hoj recoiled, unused to such blasphemy from Peetro.
“What is it?”
“That shade of blue…”
“You mean the light?”
“It's a, er, transition frequency. I remember the tutorial, and Academician Tiklov telling us about—”
“A what frequency?”
“Listen.” Peetro grabbed Hoj's shoulders. “Vul's insane. That blue glow means there's a Void Egg inside the hold.”
“You can't be…” Hoj's voice trailed off.
“Yes, I bloody can.”
In the evening, I go for a walk in the forest. Yukiko is with me, holding my hand, but only in my mind.
I miss you so much, my love.
She told me once that walking like this in forest air was a medical treatment in Japan. Proper doctors prescribed it.
“Oh, really,” I told her.
“Don't be cynical, darling.” Yukiko pressed my arm. I remember the feeling. “Healthy organic molecules are making their way through your lung tissue, your skin, right this moment.”
She was right. I inhale pine scents, remembering that Yukiko was always right.
Oh, my love…
When I finally return to the house, the kitchen automatically lights up and starts the coffee, but there's something different. It takes me a moment, but—
In one corner of the ceiling, a yellowish cocoon is fastened.
A moving cocoon.
They were in a back room of the Busted Star. Peetro, holding a mug of cold purple tea, watched as Hoj downed a fire-brandy.