Context (4 page)

It
was in Eskania Broadway, a place of glassine blue and polished granite, that
Tom gave Elva the slip. His thoughts swirled; he knew only that he had to be
alone.

He left her apologizing to a food
vendor. The scallop-shaped lev-stall had descended from the ceiling, and Tom
had picked a red confection, expecting sweet redberries, then spat it out upon
the flagstones: some fishbloc derivative, salty and strong.

‘Yes, I’ll pay you.’ Elva was
saying.

Feeling dizzy, Tom slipped into a
side tunnel. The air was cold, and yet he was sweating as he took a series of
turns guaranteed to confuse. He came out into a low-ceilinged plaza.

There were bright-garbed
Laksheesh monks, an account-scribe symbiont group—asthenic spindle-armed men,
torsos rising from the living emerald gelblock which had long since dissolved
their lower bodies—and a squad of bannermen. And a throng of ordinary vassals
and freedmen, going about their business.

There was a dark tunnel entrance
which seemed to beckon him. Checking that Elva was not following—though he
could not have said
why
he needed to lose her—he took that route, and
came out beside a polychromatic stream over which a footbridge arced.

Overhead, fluorofungus shone a
surreal indigo, almost invisible. Beneath him, swirling bright colours: acid
stench like a Vortex Mortis.

It drew him.

And then he was standing on the
railing, sweating and shivering, staring down.

What’s wrong with me?

Death beckoned. The acid stream
called to him, whispered surcease, promised a peaceful alternative to the
horrors which lay ahead.

He remembered the funeral: Father’s
corpse dissolving, knucklebone plopping into the Vortex Mortis, the red-eyed
mourners looking on.

End it.

He bent his legs to jump.

End it now.

‘My Lord!’

Her hand caught his cape, and he
toppled back onto the bridge. Pain slammed into his injured leg, bringing him
into the moment.

‘Nirilya?’

Concerned white face, framed by
cowl-like black fronds.

‘Lord Corcorigan. You’d better
come with me.’

Interlude,
unknown or forgotten. Amnesia must have taken hold, for when Tom’s awareness
returned, he was in a chamber he had never seen before, and Nirilya -

They were twisting apart, those
long black ribbons which formed her garments. Her robe dropped away. Revealed,
she was white-skinned and almost gaunt: areoles prominent on small cupped
breasts. Cascading black hair.

The treatment. It’s another reaction...

Ice and fire.

Hallucinating ? But I saw
-

There was a vial of scented
lev-gel, and she smeared it on, slowly, across Tom’s bare torso—though he could
not remember undressing—then used her fingers and her warm tongue: soft liquid
sensations more real than he could possibly imagine.

Floating in mid-air, gel and
lev-field holding them aloft, amid a swarm of circling flitterglows in the
shadow-shrouded chamber, he and she became one: entwined, combined, as though
their very cells would merge. Drifting, pulsing, until Tom’s entire being burst
in silver crescendo and flowed outwards eternally, forever.

Jerked
into wakefulness.

Oh, Fate.

Lying on the cold stone floor,
lev-gel sliding from his body.

‘Nirilya.’

She was pulling her robes together,
her green feline eyes warm with satisfaction.

‘My fine Lord. How are you?’

‘Er...’ He looked around for his
clothes.

‘Over there.’ Nirilya pointed. ‘I
need to get to the Bureau. I’m late.’

‘I...’

She leaned over, kissed him.

‘Nirilya. We have to talk.’

What the Chaos happened here?

Growing very still, she stared at
him. Then, carefully: ‘We don’t have to meet up later, if it’s inconvenient. My
Lord.’

Tom, pulling on his trews, shook
his head.

‘I didn’t mean for ...’ He
stopped, helpless.

Nirilya clicked her fingers, and
a black drone floated into the chamber.

‘It’ll get you breakfast. I’ve,
ah, got to ...’

She turned and moved at a run,
slipped through the frosting doorshimmer, was gone.

Chaos!

Halfway
through his meal of nut omelettes, krilajuice and boljicream—sitting
outstretched, bare-chested—Tom stopped, stared up at the floating black drone
as though it had forced the food on him, then resumed eating.

His normal breakfast was
fruitbloc, perhaps a cup of daistral.

What’s wrong with me?

But he was ravenous. An
aftereffect of yesterday’s fever? He forced himself to slow down. Here he was,
enjoying breakfast in Nirilya’s chambers, after a night of...

Rubbing his face, he felt sinking
dismay. Satisfaction, yes, and those charged erotic memories ...but last night
was nothing he had intended.

I nearly killed myself.

It could have been a fever, a
mind-altering hallucination from bloodstream debris—fragments of warring
femtocytes and antiphages. Or perhaps a rogue femtocyte, gaining access to his
logotrope-enabled mind, had fired up his death wish.

But there was a deeper part of
him which knew that these were rationalizations, and that he had received
formless, nameless visions born of Chaos, swirling fast and strong in the dark
mind-waters which he beneath the fragile illusion human beings term
consciousness.

At last, he pushed the food
aside. His stomach was flat and ridged with muscle, but if he continued to eat
like—

No!

He leaped to his feet, scattering
dishes, recoiling at the sight of his own shoulder.

It’s an illusion.

But he knew, even before he felt
with trembling fingers, that it was real, not holo. The stump, protruding from
his left shoulder, looked as it always did—save that, from the end, half-formed,
a tiny hand was growing. Miniature fingers curled like soft pale baby worms.

A flesh-bud, awaiting growth.

~ * ~

3

NULAPEIRON
AD 3418

He
wanted to weep: great aching tears of bitterness and regret; and he wanted to
laugh: loud and echoing in celebration.

Instead, Tom stood upon the
viaduct which crossed Eskania Broadway, and his hand—his good, right hand
-clutched the dark blue balustrade until the knuckles whitened, until it seemed
that either frozen quickglass or his tendons must shatter or snap.

‘Are you all right, young fellow?’