Context (94 page)

Three
nights later, Tom moved through a district of prosperous but depressing
tunnels: black, with steel dragon-sculptures—fangs bared, neck cowls flaring
open—sprouting from purple pillars. Archways were decorated with black tangled
wire on which blood-blossoms sprouted, their wispy rust-coloured air-roots
gently waving.

Passers-by smiled or laughed
rarely; when they did, their humour had a predatory, self-satisfied aura,
congratulating themselves or their cronies on the power they held.

Tyentro’s team had already swept
the rendezvous for surveillance, but Tom’s skin prickled all the same. This was
some sort of crux: if Velsivith had been setting them up, now was the time for
him to spring the trap.

The rendezvous was a tavern, with
half-enclosed booth-alcoves along the rear wall. In the third alcove from the
left, with tiny flames flickering inside, two glasses of fire-brandy were
waiting.

Tom squeezed into the alcove,
painfully aware that it made a perfect cage, and sat down opposite Velsivith.

Sparks, cast by the fire-brandy,
danced in the warm amber ovoid inset upon Velsivith’s cheek.

‘Well, my Lord?’

A rippling privacy-screen now
blurred their view of the saloon outside, but Tom wished Velsivith had not
referred to his rank.

‘They’re in neutral territory,
beyond the Grand’aume, and still travelling. I received word.’

‘Right.’ Velsivith’s lean face
looked diabolic through the flames. ‘There’s Internal Security surveillance on
my home again, but I had a chat and joked with the team leader: we went to
school together.’

‘They’ll wonder why there’s no
sign of Vhiyalla.’

‘I said she’s not well, but that
won’t last for long. If they deepscan—’

‘Tomorrow, then.’ Tom’s real
internal demons stirred at the rich brandy scent, enhanced by the flames’
flickering warmth. ‘And you’ll be done here.’

Velsivith snuffed out one glass’s
flames, then took a deep swallow, and put the glass down with careful control.

His eyes were unreadable.

‘Tomorrow.’

~ * ~

51

BETA
DRACONIS III AD 2142

<Story>>

[17]

Twenty-two
humans attended the event; afterwards, there were twenty-two theories about
what, exactly, had occurred. Some said it was a trial, a criminal prosecution;
others considered it merely a political debate between opposing Zajinet
parties.

A few thought it some kind of
entertainment or joke, or else a manifestation of alien cognitive processes
whose full nature no human being would ever be equipped to understand.

They stood confused amid the
flickering, overlapping occurrences of Zajinets and the dome-shaped hall—mostly
dome-shaped, though other forms (a horizontal pyramid, a series of stone
needles, even a patch of sere green sky that looked like nothing on this world)
flipped into existence, were gone.

Each individual Zajinet seemed at
times to split apart and overlay, shimmering, in superimposed images of
differing configurations, as though they somehow existed in simultaneous,
parallel realities which could be concentrated together in one place, though
never for longer than a moment.

The human visitors wore tight
env-suits, though they stood on a stable dais in a hemisphere of Terran
atmosphere; it was the craziness around them which they needed to shut out. At
any time during the proceedings, two or three humans were likely to have matt
black helmets, darkened for a moment’s respite to hide the random chaos which
bubbled through the air, rippled through the ground.

Two Zajinets manifested,
unclothed: that was how Ro thought of it later. They were not clad in the
granules and stones and boulders which formed the aliens’ normal, outer forms,
like huge elephantine sculptures. Instead, these two individuals comprised raw
traceries of light: scarlet fire, and blazing sapphire.

Bursts of white agitation
scintillated around their peripheries.

Were they prisoners before the
dock? Speakers before a gathering of peers?

<<…preserve...>>

<<…in finding, hold on
to...>>

<<…converse manifests...>>

<<…obliterate...>>

<<…a focus...>>

Then the first Zajinet’s opponent—in
Ro’s interpretation they were opponents, judging by the strange overlapping
waves of light, the pulsing interference pattern—blasted its reply:

<<... single thread!...>>

<<... saved softly in
confusing dark...>>

<<... their only hope...>>

Lila, her hair a shining violet
today, examined a small disk embedded in the palm of her glove.

‘One of them’—Lila pointed—‘we’ve
dealt with before. The other Zajinet’s a stranger.’

I know him.

It was the one who had broken
into XenoMir, had somehow brought her to this world. Ro was—almost—sure of it.
But she kept her mouth shut as Lila tapped her palm disk, downloading the
defendant’s (as Ro mentally labelled the Zajinet stranger) energy signature for
later reference.

Some kind of resonance?
Ro was sure she could steal a
palm disk, now she knew of their existence.
A way of detecting particular
individuals?

Or of tracking them down.

Already Ro was thinking in terms
of tactics and weaponry. And revenge.

Between the two Zajinets, a
complex wave pattern built: a form of communication so beyond humans there was
nothing to do but analyse the ebb and flow of brightness. It was like trying to
decipher a person’s speech by looking at the blaze of neurons firing within the
brain: devoid of semantic content. But it surely was an argument, between two
minds.

Then the pattern slowly faded.

An expectant air hung over the
hall, and for a moment the walls seemed solid, devoid of the flickering
overlays which normally characterized this place.

Find him guilty!

Nothing.

If it was a trial, the defendant
was not being punished.

And
then the conclusion, which no-one among the humans fully understood.

The individual that had kidnapped
Ro blazed brightly—in triumph, she thought. Then both of the opposing Zajinets
seemed to
slip sideways
into the liquid air, somehow folding the
atmosphere and themselves into narrow lines, then collapsed to points, then
nothing at all.

Is that what it did to me?

Was it teleportation?

Whatever the mechanism, it was
the disappearance into thin—if unusual—air of two alien beings which captured
people’s imaginations. Not the workings of the Zajinet legal system, if such a
thing even existed.

The others were muttering excitedly
to each other—‘Did you see that?’—but Ro tapped her glove’s wrist controls to
silence her helmet’s audio input.

Can they teleport across the
light-years?

But a strange memory came to her
then, a flickering glimpse of
a hollow ovoid chamber, glimmering with eerie
light, with the Zajinet, her shining captor, hovering above a white glowing
brightness at the chamber’s centre. Then a twisting, a blaze of amber.

And somehow she knows the Zajinet’s
attention is upon her, though it is no more than a jumbled tracery of scarlet
light. Then a tendril of lightning reaches out
—

Blackness.

Ro drew a deep, shuddering
breath.

It’s short-range, the
teleportation, if that’s what it truly is. But it’s not how they travel among
the stars.

Because she knew what the shining
chamber must have been. And that glimpse of amber...