Paradox (18 page)

Immense cavern systems, their ceilings swirling with pinks and oranges. Vast blood-red networks of slender tubes were threaded through the airy spaces: in them, half-shadowed shapes flitted.

Vehicles, Tom thought, craning forwards over Limava's shoulder. Cargo-bugs.

Arteries, suspended in mid-air.

Then the arachnargos whipped into a gold-white square-cross-sectioned corridor encrusted with intricate sculpture, and followed it to a pillared hall where the floor was of polished marble and granite: pink with swirling grey, black speckled with yellow-green.

“Lady V'Delikona's realm,” Limava announced, taking off her helmet.

“Word is,” said Lanctus from the driver's position, “that she's something of a dragon. Even Lord d'Ovraison's scared of her.”

Tom, grateful that they had come to a halt, sighed. “I don't think that need worry us minions.”

“That's where you're wrong, old mate.” Lanctus pointed at a small holovolume. “Dinner tonight, and you'll be accompanying our Lord and Lady.”

Tom glanced at Limava, then looked away.

“The thing I find oddest around here,” Lanctus continued, changing the subject, “is that they have no dark-periods. Just continuous brightness. Or do I mean continual?”

“Continuous.” Tom peered out through the front viewscreen. “But that's terrible. You need to sleep in darkness to avoid developing myopia, and to reach the deeper states.”

“I don't mean they can't sleep OK in private. The public areas remain lit.”

“Oh.”

“Hey, servant-boy!” Limava grinned. “You're a well-travelled man, now. Exploring different cultures.”

I ought to feel grateful.

But every time he closed his eyes he saw the same thing: a small girl's pudgy fingers disappearing beneath roiling waves, drowning in a maelstrom which had not yet occurred.

Quietly, Tom stood with goblet in hand, too diffident to ask for something different—this contained alcohol—and watched the nobles in conversation.

The setting was informal. They sat or stood in small groups, chatting, oblivious to the platinum-inlaid dendriforms, the antique statues of Kali in all her aspects.

The servitors were unobtrusive, attentive, blank-faced.

I should be with them.
But those were not his orders.

He was dressed formally, half-cape across his left shoulder. Incredibly, he was a
guest.

He observed:

Laughter, with a hint of strain. A young Lady leaning towards a Lord: her body-language unconsciously open, his arms defensively crossed.

There, an older Lord, arm around his younger companion, not noticing her discomfiture.

Beyond, a group of grey-haired men, each merely waiting his turn to speak, not listening to the others.

And me? I'm less than any of them
.

“Depressing, isn't it?”

The Lady was slim, straight-backed, her white hair coiffed into a simple twist, bound with platinum.

“Ma'am?” Uncomfortably, he twitched his left shoulder.

“Never mind, young man. Do you know where Lady Sylvana is?”

“Ah…She went that way.” Then something loosened Tom's normal restraint: “She went with a
personal
friend of our hostess, or so the gentleman took pains to mention. Several times.”

“Really.” A faint appraisal in the Lady's eyes. “And the gentleman's name?”

“Sorry, I don't know.” He added: “I don't suppose Lady V'Delikona does, either.”

“Perhaps she knows him as an
impersonal
friend.”

Tom laughed.

Nearby, a servitor swayed slightly beneath the burden of a heavy tray.

“Something the matter?”

“Oh no, ma'am.”

But she followed his gaze. “It must be hard, holding the food, unable to eat.”

Putting herself in a servitor's position.
Unusual.

“Actually”—he smiled—“I think you'll find he's already eaten. And very well, too.”

“I trust you're joking.”

“Oh, no.” Tom shrugged. “How else can they make sure their stomachs don't rumble?”

The Lady looked at him, then turned away.

“I'm Tom Corcorigan.”

The servitor, overseer's white sash over his burgundy livery, frowned at his holodisplay. Other guests, nobles, filed past Tom into the dining-hall.

“I beg your pardon, Master Corcorigan.” The servitor minimized the triconic lattice. “There was a last-minute change to the arrangements. This way, please.”

Some devilry made him do it.

Before sitting down, Tom slipped off the half-cape and draped it across the back of his chair. When he sat, the young Lady to his left visibly blanched.

The Lady to his right—the white-haired Lady with whom he had conversed earlier—was being treated with deference even by the nobility around her.

Lady V'Delikona
.

At that moment, Lady Sylvana walked past the long table, almost gliding in her peach satin gown—and winked in Tom's direction, before continuing on.

Fate
.

“What were you thinking, young man?”

Her voice cut through his thoughts.

“Er…” Tom gestured at their surroundings: octagonal chamber, pale orange and lapis lazuli; triple rows of tables parallel to each wall. Three hundred Lords and Ladies, attended by servitors. “I was just admiring this. Everything.”

“Ah. So what do you think of the room's arrangement?”

“It's…all right.”

Lady V'Delikona's wrinkles deepened as she frowned.

“What do you think?” She addressed the bearded Lord who was sitting opposite Tom.

“Well. Very fine.” The man gestured with his half-filled goblet. “Tasteful, Lady V'Delikona, as always.”

She looked around the table, and Lords and Ladies nodded agreement.

Tom turned away, suppressing a smile.

“What?”

“I was thinking, your Ladyship”—Tom hesitated: he was on dangerous ground—“that its leitmotif is rather subversive, in fact.”

Frowns from the gentry. Even the young Lady at Tom's left glanced at him.

“And you appreciate—what?” Lady V'Delikona's gaze was piercing. “Explain yourself.”

“The connection to…the past.”

“And connectivity is important?”

Tom paused, then: “If you mean implicit connectivity in the universal sense”—excitement pushed his inhibitions aside—“of ancients like Bohm or Spinoza, then yes. We're temporary eddies in the flow. Far-from-equilibrium patterns which dissipate, soon enough.”

“Flawed patterns, then.” Again, the icy glitter in her eyes. “So tell me, young man, just how did you lose your arm?”

Shocked silence settled over the table.

“An accident.” Tom smiled. “I got caught.”

“A thief?”

Background clatter, but the Lords on this table were intent on Lady V'Delikona and Tom.

“More of an unwitting accomplice.”

A studied pause, then: “Did it hurt?”

Bubbling fat. Stench of burning flesh
.

“Always.”

A frown.

“But you should have had an implant to—” Lady V'Delikona glanced in the direction of Lady Sylvana's table.

“I removed it.”

This time, Tom felt the full weight of her attention upon him.

“How did you accomplish that?”

“I stole a lattice blade from the kitchens.” A smile twitched at the corner of Tom's mouth. “But I returned it later.”

“So. A reformed thief. But why did you choose the pain?”

“Because—it's mine.”

Lady V'Delikona stared at him for a moment. “You didn't mention that some patterns are nearer to dissolution than others.”

Tom blinked. “That would have been impolite.”

The briefest of nods, then she turned to the man at her right. Touching his arm, she asked about his diplomatic envoys to Treston Province.

Tom understood that he had been dismissed.

“What did you mean”—the young Lady to his left, trying not to look at Tom's abbreviated left sleeve—“about subversion?”

“The trigrammatic table arrangement.” Tom gestured around the octagonal chamber. “Following the
I-Ching
.”

“I'm sorry?”

“From Terra, the world that colonized Nulapeiron. But we shouldn't talk about such things, should we?” Tom raised his goblet. “Not in front of the servitors.”

Through the silver-tinted membrane, the huge caverns were visible: creamy apricot ceilings, crimson transport-threads.

“Did you enjoy the meal, Tom?”

Tom wheeled: he had not sensed Corduven's entrance.

“Yes, I—I may have overstepped the mark once or twice. Excitement.”

“Maybe.” Corduven tapped a floating rose-and-jet table with his fingernails. “Lady V'Delikona likes you, though.”

“You're kidding.”

“Not at all.” But his voice was tense.

Tom looked carefully at Corduven. “What's wrong, Corduven?”

“You were discussing itinerary changes with your driver, Lanctus.”

A chill settled across Tom's skin. “That's right. Hypothetically: otherwise I would have come to you, of course.”

“It would have placed us in Duke Boltrivar's realm by 303, in five days' time.”

Four days before the flood
.

“I know it's a detour.” Tom let out a long breath. “But I thought you'd like to—”

“There's something you don't know about me.” A small smile tugged at Corduven's delicate features, then he glanced away, out into the caverns.

A silver mesodrone drifted past the window membrane.

He's nervous
.

“I don't understand.”

“The thing is, Tom. For one thing, my brother's an Oracle.”

“I—”

He doesn't know
.

“Gérard is one of the best. Never gets anything wrong.”

“I thought…they can't. Make mistakes, I mean.”

“Can't they?” Corduven shrugged. “They're relying on memories of future events. Their consciousness is twisted up and down their own timelines: most of them are scarcely human.”

Tom looked at him.

“You know I saw the truecast, don't you?”

Dart was missing.

No message. No contact. Nothing that anyone could do.

Comms technology could make the Earth—or that tiny skin of the living planet which people thought of as the world—appear small. But in the face of mu-space's vastness…In that literally endless cosmos, no-one could mount a search for one missing vessel.

In UNSA, nobody even pretended they were going to try.

Dart—

For three days she skipped her workouts, ate badly, slept little. Exhaustion frazzled her nerves: once, halfway through delivering a lecture, she suddenly came to her senses and realized that everyone was staring at her—a group of upturned young faces—and that her voice had just trailed off.

She resumed her routine, but listlessly.

A week passed.

Sometimes, when a novice Pilot miscalculated slightly, their vessel reappeared in realspace a few days late, with the Pilot's nerves jangled, but unharmed.

Another week. Then a third.

Karyn's life became an exercise in grey despair. She performed her duties automatically, without flair.

It was nearly a month after Dart's disappearance when Anne-Marie, accompanied by her dog Barney, tapped lightly on the lecture-theatre door.

“OK, guys,” said Karyn. “Download the bifurcation diagram, and perform an order-of-magnitude…No, plot a Schrödinger”—Karyn nodded to Anne-Marie: a useless gesture—“and replace the del-squared with a Fordian, then compare.”

That should keep them busy.
She stepped outside.

There was someone with Anne-Marie: mid-twenties, oriental…Karyn ransacked her memory, then said: “What can I do for you, Chojun?”

Brief smile on Anne-Marie's face. Chojun Akazawa—the guy Karyn had met in the Fizzy Cyst bar: grad student, probably—shuffled his feet, embarrassed.

“I've, er, been running quester agents in EveryWare…”

“Yes?”

“I thought you should know—UNSA's been running a lattice search. Concentrating on the volume where Pilot Mulligan was supposed to, ah, reinsert.”

Dart
.

Chojun cleared his throat. “They've picked up signals—”

“They've found him!”

“—from a buoy. Not his vessel.”

Karyn was dumbstruck.

“Give Karyn the crystal,” Anne-Marie prompted.

Chojun handed over a small datacrystal. “It's the strangest phenomenon you've ever seen,” he said. “Fractal lightning: that's the best description I can think of. But not transient—permanent. Actually, growing.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's all over Pilot Mulligan's ship, trying to burrow through the event membrane. Almost”—he hesitated—“purposeful.”

“I've got to—” Karyn stopped.

Got to reach him
.

Anne-Marie reached down to pat Barney—the dog was watchful, tail frozen, sensitive to the emotional atmosphere—then she said: “It's six months before you get a ship, Karyn. Someone else will have to go.”

“I know—” Karyn began, but Chojun interrupted: “I don't see what anyone can do. Sorry, but—You'd need to resonate with the event membrane, logarithmically increase its intensity…You'd do better to configure a new vessel that way, rather than refit one in service.”

“What way?” demanded Karyn. “Reconfigure how?”

“More field generators, core transmitters…Your own UNSA guys should have a better idea.”

“Right.” Karyn glanced back into the lecture theatre: the students were heads-down, working on the quantum chaos solution. “As if”—she could not keep the bitterness from her voice—“they'd talk to me.”

Anne-Marie spoke softly: “I have contacts.”

What had she said before?
I've worked a lot with UNSA
.

“Anne-Marie, I've got to find him. Got to.”

“Whatever I can do.”

Chojun, stuffing his hands in his pockets, nodded abruptly.

“Thank you both.” Karyn turned away, heart pounding.

Dart's alive!