Creation Machine (18 page)

It wasn’t enough for Alam. He was bright enough to recognize the constraints being placed on his future; he studied, easily achieving the highest marks in the school, kept apart from his peers and watched for his chance.

It came when he was two days short of his thirteenth birthday, in the form of Helmer Ep-Hive. Ep-Hive happened to make a grudgingly dutiful official visit to the school, somewhere he regarded as a social and educational backwater. He also happened to be both highly observant, and a full colonel in the Security section of the state apparatus. He registered the presence of the dark-haired boy with the hooded eyes within ten minutes of arriving in the building, and went out of his way to engage the lad in conversation.

The brief talk confirmed Ep-Hive’s first impression. The boy was exceptional in intellect, ambition and also in a certain capacity for unpleasantness which might or might not prove useful. Ep-Hive tended to follow his hunches. He made some calls, and a few weeks later the Senior Tutor of the court school found himself saying goodbye to a young man who suddenly looked older, and very much in control of himself.

Alam would finish his education in one of the private colleges run by State Security. He thrived, learning technical and management skills with equal ease and concealing a quickening temper behind a studied reserve. He graduated a year early with the highest honours on record, and from then on his rise was inexorable. Ep-Hive was proved right on all counts ten years later when his former student sentenced him to execution by progressive disembowelment – ostensibly for corruption and incompetence, but actually for the far simpler and more serious offence of getting in Alam’s way. By that time, Ep-Hive had been one of the last people who could, and no one else felt like trying because the capacity for unpleasantness had blossomed into a controlled streak of imaginative cruelty. Ep-Hive’s demise had taken several days, during which his shuddering body had been suspended from the ceiling of one of the Security section’s main conference rooms, directly over a prettily decorated porcelain tub that held a loop of his own intestines and a swelling colony of ants. The room remained in use throughout, hosting some of the most sober, focused and above all
short
conferences the building had ever seen.

That sort of thing gets people noticed. It got Alam noticed by the newly elevated Final Patriarch, who told him he was the most unpleasant individual he had ever met, before making him Head of Security and awarding him the dead man’s title, his estate and his two wives.

The newly anointed Alameche Ur-Hive had never looked back.

He ran his eye over the crowd until he saw Kestus; the man was standing a few metres away, apparently on his own, which probably meant that he had plain-clothes staff all over the place. Alameche gave him a slight nod, and then turned away and headed for his own box. The Night Games would begin when the Overlord had dropped below the horizon. It was time to make himself comfortable, and besides, he had guests to think about.

His private box was well up the high-sunward wall of the Stadium, just at the point where the curve of the bowl became difficult to climb. Those in higher boxes often paid slaves to haul them up the slope in woven baskets, but Alameche thought that was a stupid affectation. He paused before crossing the threshold, gave Kestus another glance – the man had kept station with him – and then crested the stone lip and strolled into the interior.

Inside, the box was cool and dark. Alameche faced away from the entrance for a few seconds, partly to check that the refreshments he had ordered were in place and partly to allow his eyes to adapt. Then he turned round quickly to stare back the way he had come, over the stunning vista of the Great Stadium.

Alameche did not generally use superlatives, but stunning was the only word. He must have allowed himself this private little game scores of times but the impact of the sight in his sensitized eyes never lessened. First, of course, there was the sheer scale. The Stadium was a hyperbolic bowl five hundred metres deep and three times that in diameter. It was carved out of one side of the Great Basin, so that if Alameche turned to his left he could see straight out over the Citadel, while to his right the cliff walls of the Basin reared up nearly another kilometre. At this time of day their furrowed profile was thrown into dramatic relief by the low sunlight that lanced across them.

Then, if he raised his eyes, there was the mass of the Refractor: the enormous faceted crystalline
thing
that hung above the centre of the Stadium like a flattened, incredibly complicated jewel. The acoustics of the Stadium were perfect – a single whisper on the main stage far below could be heard anywhere – but vision needed help and the Refractor provided it, projecting three-dimensional images of whatever was going on to tens of thousands of focal points at the same time. Alameche didn’t begin to understand how it worked. The Apothecary had tried to explain it once but Alameche had lost interest after a few minutes and the old man had wisely given up.

The flap-shush of sandalled feet on stone roused him. He lowered his eyes and saw Fiselle walking up the steep slope towards the entrance of the box. Alameche raised an eyebrow. ‘Alone?’

The thin man smiled. ‘For the moment. Garamende follows, together with an entourage, but on such slopes as these his girth argues against him.’

‘Quite.’ Alameche gestured to the table behind him. ‘Well, we are thoroughly provisioned. His girth is not at risk from me.’

Fiselle looked at the table and raised an eyebrow. ‘His might not be. Mine, though?’

Alameche laughed. ‘You haven’t got a girth. You only have a height.’

‘True.’ Fiselle looked down at his body. ‘I seem destined to exist in two dimensions. But don’t worry.’ He pointed downhill. ‘I think the third one approaches, and it has brought some friends.’ An s-shaped chain of bobbing lights was working its way up the slope, dividing the crowd as it came. Alameche followed the gesture and then grinned to himself. It was not so much an entourage as a procession. Garamende had obviously decided to arrive in style.

At the front of the queue were four slim, androgynous youths who looked like perfectly identical quads. At first their naked bodies seemed dark, but then Alameche realized that they were pale-skinned but covered with intricate full-body tattoos. He squinted. The tattoos were definitely erotic.

A much heavier body followed the slim youths. Garamende was stamping up the slope, followed by several more people. He was carrying a torch in one hand and a flask in the other. Alameche raised an eyebrow. ‘Going very well,’ he said.

Fiselle snorted. ‘The last flare of a dying sun.’ He stood aside as the front of the party came to the threshold of the box. The tattooed quads split into pairs and stood to attention to either side while Garamende strode through them as if they were an honour guard, throwing his torch into the air as he did so. Fiselle took a step forward and caught it before it landed on the back of Garamende’s procession.

The big man thumped Alameche on the shoulder. ‘God’s knob, man! You make a chap walk a long way uphill for a drink.’

Alameche nodded at the flask. ‘At least you brought one with you.’

‘Not one. Several.’ Garamende waggled the flask. ‘But only part of the way. I’m empty.’

‘Then feel free to refill.’ Alameche gestured to the tables behind him. ‘There’s plenty for all. Including your company.’

‘Company? Oh yes.’ Garamende waved at the people who had followed him. He raised his voice. ‘Everyone, this is My Lord Alameche Ur-Hive, grand something-or-other to the Patriarch. He’s a complete bastard and a good friend of mine. Introduce yourselves to him, will you?’

Alameche smiled and nodded at a succession of breathless people, seeing eyes that were anxious or calculating, and smelling breath that was generally corrupted with spirits. It seemed Garamende’s party had been under way for a while. When he had finished he turned to Garamende. ‘What about your four decorated young friends?’

‘Them? Oh yes.’ Garamende grinned, reached out a hand and slapped one of the youths sharply on the bottom. ‘My latest toys. Androgynes. Whatever you want, whenever you want it, and four times over. Good, eh?’

Fiselle frowned. ‘Bred or Doctored?’

‘Bred, of course. No sense in half measures. Besides, Doctored’s not the same. You can always see the join.’

‘I suppose so.’ Fiselle smiled. ‘But I didn’t realize your tastes were so – flexible.’

Garamende frowned and wagged a finger in Fiselle’s face. ‘I don’t believe in denying myself, man. And what’s a bit of cock between friends, eh?’ He turned in appeal to Alameche. ‘What do you say? Adjudicate, for fuck’s sake!’

‘I don’t think so.’ Alameche patted Garamende on the shoulder. ‘Besides, there’s no time. We’re about to begin.’

As he spoke the low light across the Stadium flared and vanished as the last rim of the Overlord dipped below the Basin Ranges. For a moment everything was dim and silent. Then there was a blaring fanfare, and a
whoomph
as thousands of braziers burst into flame. The orange light reached the Refractor, setting a fractured glow which seemed to spread out from the thing until Alameche felt he could almost touch it. Then it shimmered and coalesced in an image of the main stage.

Even Alameche drew in a breath and he had known, if only intellectually, what was going to happen.

The stage was occupied by a three-dimensional image of the Cordern. The definition was superb, down to the scale of individual cities, rivers and groups of islands. The night sides of the planets sparkled with city lights, and the day sides were vivid with colour, and with landscape relief that seemed almost hyperreal. Only Silthx was less interesting, shown in soft greys at the far edge of the stage.

Despite the realism there was something wrong with the scene. It took a moment to work out that the day sides of all the planets faced in the same direction, as if they were all lit by the same sun, whereas in the real Cordern these five planets shared three suns and one disputed object that only qualified as a sun by some definitions. Once the brain had worked that out, the eye naturally travelled towards where the single anomalous sun should have been.

When it got there it found the Patriarch.

The scale of the illusion made him about a third the height of a planet. He was wearing a simple grey robe, the least ostentatious of his state wardrobe, and he was watching the planets of the Cordern with paternal good nature. After a few moments he turned towards the audience.

‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘We are here both to celebrate, and to look ahead. First, it is the anniversary of my elevation to the Patriarchy – a heavy honour, and believe me I struggle every day to live up to it. Tonight concludes our celebrations, and I am glad so many of you are here to share them with me.’

There was solid applause. Fiselle leaned towards Alameche. ‘Remind me, what was the penalty for not attending tonight?’

Alameche didn’t answer. The question had been rhetorical; there was no ‘official’ requirement to attend these events. The unofficial one, with its unspoken sanction, was quite unspeakable enough. He kept his eye on the stage.

The Patriarch held out his arm towards the planets. ‘Do you see these? Well, do you?’ The stadium roared. The Patriarch smiled as the cheers swept over him. Then he made a downwards motion with his hands and the noise quietened. ‘A generation ago, there were three. Two generations ago, there was just one. My friends, I believe there can be more. Many more!’ He swept his arm round and, as if following it, the images around him multiplied until the Patriarch seemed to be standing in the middle of a vast tract of space.

Now the whole stadium was on its feet. Alameche glanced around; Fiselle and Garamende were standing too, and most of Garamende’s party were jumping up and down. The quads were staring slackly at the stage, and it occurred to Alameche that they might be drugged. He supposed that would make it easier to endure Garamende.

The Patriarch waved for quiet again, and smiled round at the Stadium. ‘Well, that is tomorrow’s task. You have another task tonight. To celebrate!’ He swept his arm round again, and he and the planets vanished. The braziers flared columns of orange flames and then died down to reveal a crowded stage.

Fiselle glanced at it, shook his head and turned towards the refreshments. ‘Gladiators,’ he said. ‘Well, well. How original. I think I will have something to eat.’ He looked down at his stomach. ‘One can always aspire to a third dimension, after all.’

The celebrations had lasted for several hours.

Some of Garamende’s party had brought pipes with them, and for quite a long time the box had been rank with fumes. The Apothecary’s drops had helped Alameche fight off most of the effects of passive smoking, but even so he was beginning to flag. In the next hour he would need either a sleep or another dose. He wasn’t the only one; Fiselle was lounging on a couch near the front of the box, with half an eye on the stage. The stage was empty at last, except for the clean-up squads. Fiselle gestured languidly towards them. ‘Nasty job,’ he said.

Alameche blinked. ‘In what way?’

‘Cleaning up blood and so forth.’ Fiselle closed his eyes and sank back. ‘Just saying. Nasty.’

Alameche watched the cleaners for a moment. Then he turned back to Fiselle, opened his mouth and shrugged. The man was asleep.

He looked round the box. Quite a few of the party were also asleep, including most of the pipe smokers. The quads had obviously become bored, and had retreated to a pile of cushions in one corner where they had formed a sort of slowly moving erotic knot. He watched for a while, and for a partly stoned moment wondered if he should join in. The urge passed. Instead he stood up and stretched, digging his hands into the small of his back and then raising them above his head.

And nearly hitting Garamende, who had somehow materialized next to him. Alameche almost jumped.

The fat man was staring at the stage. ‘Alameche,’ he said, ‘tell me what the fuck is happening.’

‘What do you mean?’