Paradox (32 page)

“…Oracular domination is a crime against humanity. The only way—”

Tom: “They haven't done anything to me.”

Shocked silence.

Then, “But you killed—”

“That was personal.”

Tom withdrew.

They can't give me up to the authorities. They'll have to kill me themselves.

He stepped outside the cabin, then sat down carefully, cross-legged, on the wide tendril. Pulling his cape close, he leaned back against the besmirched, burned hull.

If they can—

But here, in interstitial territory, there were no sensor webs to detect energy weapons or femtotech. Fate only knew what armaments the conspirators were carrying.

Trude and Elva were his friends, but how much did that count for?

Shadows lay below, dark and inviting. A twitch of the muscles, a drop of a few seconds, and it would all be over—

I wonder what they're saying, inside.

Perhaps they could control their disappointment in him. There
were raised voices, but he could not make out the words. Then a low muttering.

But what shall I do now, Maestro?

He addressed his thoughts to the inviting shadows.

In a sense, it was the same dilemma which had accompanied his taking possession of Corcorigan Demesne: the choice between a life of scholarship and ease, or determined vengeance.

Father…I wish you were here.

Even after all these years.

I miss you.

The ascension of Tom Corcorigan to Lordship: if only Father could have seen it!

What should I do?

But the paradox was not lost on Tom. It was Father's death that had uncovered buried strength: the power of hatred.

And there are five thousand Oracles still in the world.

There was a long, still moment, during which no stimulus intruded into Tom's awareness. Blank, dark; silent.

He was not conscious of making a decision, but he found himself carefully standing—with precise technique, getting up without using his hand for balance—and letting out a long, calming breath.

Then he turned and re-entered the darkened arachnargos cabin.

They were scared.
Scared enough to be dangerous.
Even with their hooded figures shrouded in near-darkness, the tension in their bodies hung like black knots in the air. It struck Tom's deep physical awareness;
wu shu
practitioners, like the Strontium Dragons' warriors, would think of it as disrupted
ch'i.

With one's dream in sight, just within reach…overwhelming fear is the natural response.

But this is my time.
It was the thought that had sustained Tom before, on taking possession of his realm, giving the strength to avoid easy choices.

“You'll have to explain the technique again,” said a woman. “How exactly does simulating an Oracle's future allow you to—?”

“Never mind.” It was Dr Sukhram who ended the discussion, chopping the air with a decisive gesture. “We have empirical proof, don't we? The details are for later.”

A pause, then scattered nods of agreement.

Looks as though I have to do it.

Having done it once…would that make the next one easier? Or harder?

And committing my whole life to eradicating the Oracles…But what else would I do?

He felt as though the decision had been made for him—No, that wasn't right. As though there was
no
choice to be made. No alternative. There was a rushing sound in his ears, and he felt for a moment as though he was swaying. Then he refocused on his surroundings.

“—actually need their deaths?” Sentinel was saying. “If we discredit the truecasts, so true cannot be distinguished from false, should that not be sufficient?”

Elva spoke up. “There must be some critical number we need to, ah, take down. My Lord?”

“Take down, yes.” Tom smiled, grimly. “Subvert or kill. Whatever we need to do.”

He saw the sense of commitment settle upon the group.

In Sentinel's eyes was a new glimmer: empty dissent could now become effective action.

“You can help, Lord Corcorigan, to bring freedom to the world.”

A bitter, cynical laugh rose up inside Tom.

Me? Freedom?

He could not have come this far without gaining some self-knowledge. The Tom who might have spent a lifetime engaged in logosophical analyses of Avernon's metavectors…that Tom no longer existed.

“Who better?”

His previous ennui dissolved as his nerves once more tightened and his inner strength returned.

The power—

For the real Tom knew, finally, that civilized society was not for the likes of him.

—
of hatred.

“When's it going to happen?”

Anne-Marie's eyes shifted randomly. Barney, the dog, raised his muzzle to follow the arcing trajectory of the taxi as it lifted into the grey-clouded sky.

“This afternoon.” Karyn looked down and patted Barney's head.

“How quickly? No, don't tell me.” Anne-Marie's smile appeared mirthless. “Distance is a strange concept in mu-space. You'll reach him in time.”

“God, I hope so.” Though it was warm, Karyn shivered. “They're going as fast as they can. Viral insertion today. Fly to Phoenix late tonight.” More jet-lag. “The rest starts tomorrow.”

“How accurate—I mean, do you know
exactly
where he is, in mu-space?”

Hefting her bag, Karyn began to walk: whether she or Barney moved first, it was impossible to say.

“Near as damn it.”

The soles of Karyn's boots were silent on the piazza's green and orange tiles, but Anne-Marie knew exactly where she was.

“My place first,” said Anne-Marie. “Lemon tea, almond cookies. OK?”

“Fine.” Karyn blinked away tears.

What's wrong with me?

But Anne-Marie must know she was crying. Even Barney, catching the confused vibrations, stared up at Karyn as they walked.

Next morning, early, she bowed in, took the wooden sword—the
bokken
—from its rack and began her solo
suburi
exercises, cutting the air and thrusting towards imaginary opponents.

Trying to feel expansive, to make the empty dojo her home, she moved faster while feeling everything slow down. She did not think: movement just happened. Neither jet-lag nor lack of sleep hindered her.

“Good.”

Sensei. Mike.

She knelt and bowed, then gave him the gift of a flowing attack, sword hand arcing towards his forehead. Sensei blended with the motion, entered, and she rolled through the air, scarcely feeling the mat's touch as she regained her feet.

“Something different today,” said Sensei a little later, pinning her with
ikkyo
, “about your spirit.”

“I know.”

Too soon for the nanocytes to have begun their work.

“Something…joyful.”

Truly, she almost floated through the throws.

When the training-session was over, she headed for the changing-room. She tugged off the baggy black split-skirt
hakama
and white
gi
jacket, folded them and placed them in her bag. Wearing just a white T-shirt and trousers, she looked towards the showers, frowned—then suddenly the paroxysm hit her and she was inside a toilet cubicle and vomiting as though she were about to die.

It looked like some sort of mothership: transparent-hulled, spawning strange tangled exploratory vessels with missions of their own.

“This is fuckin' criminal.”

The smaller ones were waldophages, borne to their target sites by the nanovector. Already they were unfolding their monomolecular arms, ready to perform the most intimate of surgical procedures: laying new substrate, extruding RNA-precursors ready to duplicate existing neurons, manufacturing Cooper-pair qubit-gates when merely rewiring the existing cortical connections would be insufficient.

“Nice bedside manner, Doc.”

The grouping in the image was one of hundreds of thousands inside Karyn's nervous system. Already the examination room's angles seemed to twist and shift through odd perspective changes, light transmogrifying from normal hues to greys and indescribable not-greys.

Too soon. Hysteria, that was all. It would be days before such coherent macro-effects would become manifest.

“Not you,” the chief medic growled, then wiped his bushy moustache with the back of his hand. “Damn it, you didn't know, did you?”

Karyn started to rise and he pushed her back down. She was surprised: at his action, and that she did not rupture the limb at wrist, elbow and shoulder as she had been taught.

“Fran! God damn it!” The medic angrily stabbed a finger over a sensor pad, but another medic, a woman, was already rushing in.

“What's up?”

“Check this.”

Pulsing holo. Abstract phase-space; text sheets abbreviated in codes Karyn did not recognize.

“I don't suppose either of you wants to—”

“Shit!” The second medic, Fran, gave Karyn a startled look. “Confirmed, confirmed,” she muttered, then said to Karyn: “You underwent Phase II in your condition?”

“What cond—?”

“She doesn't know.” The chief medic lightly touched Karyn's shoulder. “Do you, darlin'?”

Karyn closed her eyes, and forced out a long slow breath. If the nanoviral insertion had failed, then Dart was dead. That was how serious the matter was.

“That's right.” The woman, Fran. “The normal procedure would have caused you to abort, regardless.” Grim anger tightened her voice. “This was done deliberately.”

Abort?

“You don't mean that literally,” Karyn said, but dismay was already rising inside her.

“You're pregnant, darlin'.” The chief medic, walruslike with his big moustache, was serious now. “There's no question of it.”

But Fran was staring intently, manipulating auxiliary displays. “Secondary concentration, just here.” She pointed. “Can we rotate and magnify?”

Stomach-churning sensation as a galaxy of light-points swirled and grew larger.

Dart…We're having a baby.

Stupid way to think.

“Bastards.” Fran, softly. “God-damned bastards.”

“There are still choices.” The chief medic took a deep breath and looked at Karyn. “We can—”

“Stop. Don't tell me.” Karyn sat up on the examination couch, pushing away their hands.

“But the baby—”

Shifting overlays, a hundred shades of blue. Tiny shape: hardly recognizable, but Karyn knew it for what it was. At one end, a cluster of white sparks of light.

“The nanocytes are in my baby's brain. Aren't they?”

Project Rewire.

And she had signed the contract. But that gave them no defensible right to—

Fran's face was white, pinched with fear and rage. But the chief medic slowly nodded his head. “They can't be nondestructively removed. It's already too late for that.”

“I'm another experiment.” Swinging her legs off the couch, and standing up. “Wonderful.”

“I don't think you should—”

“
I have no choice!”
Karyn's voice bounced back off the walls, a screeching echo. “Whatever they've done to me, I have to complete the mission.”

“Agreed.” The chief medic held up his hand as Fran started to protest. “But when you return, if you decide to take legal action, I will testify on your behalf.”

Fran mutely nodded her support.

“Thank you. If you could just give me something for the sickness?”

“No problem.” The chief handed over a dermastrip.

She was halfway to the door when a sudden realization hit her: “The baby. I mean, the embryo. They wouldn't—”

Unable to continue, she could only watch as the two medics grimly checked their displays. Fran accessed the pan-UNSA Pilots' database, quickly sifting data.

Then a sudden grin split her face.

“Fifty-fifty,” she said. “You and Pilot Mulligan. DNA match, everything normal.”

Except that nanocytes are rewiring my baby's nervous system.

“Thanks.” Karyn nodded to them both.

She left the med-centre and went out into the scorching heat of an Arizona summer morning. One of the passing medics wore a T-shirt with
two holo-skeletons, lying on a strip of parched red sand apparently extending into his torso, and projecting half a metre in front of him.

As Karyn passed by him, her proximity activated the garment's audio and holo-motion—
one skeleton turning its skull, saying to the other:
“BUT IT'S A
DRY
HEAT”—echoing the tourist-board enticements to visitors.

A strangled sound halfway between a laugh and a sob rose inside her.

At the end of the long, white runway, rippling in the furnace-hot air, the domes of Phoenix LaunchCentral stood clean and massive, strong, mirror-bright and totally impersonal.