Paradox (48 page)

##
WE CAN
'
T INTERFACE
—##

Going mad
.

##—
LIKE THIS FOR LONG
.##

But if this were madness, he had to go with it.

“Can you…” Madness. Try anyway. “Take the model from my mind? Can you…?”

##
I
'
M READING IT
.##

Impossible. Hallucination.

“Show them…future.”

##
WHICH FUTURE
?##

He would have laughed if he had the strength but his eyes were close to burning out with the pulsing optic blast and it had to happen quickly.

“All of them,” he said.

##
CONNECT ME
.##

Not entirely clear what was meant, but there had to be a decision so Tom took it.

Blue fire.

Through the sapphire haze he could see Arlanna and Sylvana, frozen, locked by conflicting emotions—

##
QUICKLY
.##

Crack!
Graser fire, renewed fighting below.

Black streaks, tearing across the walls—
arachnabugs
—streaming in through the doorways, fanning out in all directions.

##
BEFORE YOUR EYES BURN
.##

—but he could not wait so he ran along the cross-beam—

“Tom!
No!
”

##
HURRY
.##

Jump
.

—towards Arlanna as the graser pistol swung back up and he launched himself into space.

Reverence?
The concerned person had touched his sleeve.

Peace
, Tom, disguised as a priest, had replied.
I'm praying, that's all.

Floating.

Physical awareness was distant: hard floor beneath him, tilting—

##
GET UP
.##

—lev-sphere floor, made it—

##
GET UP NOW
.##

—but he had
not
put the crystal in the socket—

##
FADING
…
##

“I'm
doing
it.”

—as he forced himself back up into reality, staggered across the open-top lev-sphere, muttered apologies to Arlanna as he searched the golden console for what he needed,
got it
, and slammed the crystal in.

Graser fire, arachnabugs, people screaming as the fighting intensified.

“STOP NOW!”

Tom's voice was magnified a thousand times as he interfaced with the Palace and used the internal walls as a speaker membrane. For a moment everybody froze, two thousand people; even the arachnabugs stopped, clinging to metal-faceted walls, as Tom called on the power of Ro's god to cast huge holovisions before them.

One:
Bodies hanging in blood-dripping rows from sculpted walls, while the triumphant army with their crimson/emerald colours march through burning tunnels, and a subsidiary volume shows the heaped tiny corpses
.

Two:
The LudusVitae dead, Vilkarzyeh's face recognizable among them. Outside, reinstated Lords direct the cleansing of the walls, and banquet halls are restored to former glory, while in the lower demesnes they use smoothcarts to take dead children to the acid vortices
.

Three:
Lords and LudusVitae facing each other across the elliptical quartz table. Triconic lattices show the details—and the numbers of casualties are huge, but those numbers have stopped growing
.

The holovolumes were immense, clustered into three main groups, and if this didn't convince them, nothing would.

“MAKE YOUR CHOICE: THERE ARE THREE OPTIONS.”

The only place from which someone could take control of the holosystem was from a lev-sphere, and Tom could see the other judges working it out. Vilkarzyeh and Sentinel were the first to react.

“THEY ARE ALL TRUECASTS.”

Arlanna lurched past Tom to the golden panel, hit a stud, and the whole lev-sphere spun aside as Vilkarzyeh's sphere shot past, his face white with rage.

“CHOOSE ONE.”

Tom closed the voice interface but left the giant holodisplays running. It was their choice. For those who cared to look, tertiary displays provided stress-analyses demonstrating that Tom at least believed his own words.

Graser beam
and now it was up to Fate—
save Sylvana
—and he shouted: “Arlanna, you've got to help me!” She spun the lev-sphere again.

Silver swarm.

“That way,” he said.

She arced their trajectory, down, then up, and smashed into Vilkarzyeh's sphere. The impact threw them both across the console.

From each of seven doorways they came, flying into the hall and quickly dispersing: lev-bikes. Riders with crimson/emerald sashes fired grasers at the darting arachnabugs.

Vilkarzyeh was slumped in his lev-sphere, stunned or dead. Among the other five spheres, Elva was in control, her weapon trained directly on Sentinel but ready to blast anyone who moved.

I could always rely on you
.

“Move closer to that thing.” Tom pointed to the cruciform sculpture. “Please, Arlanna.”

A tortured sound arose in Arlanna's throat, but she made the gesture and their lev-sphere moved.

She wanted Sylvana to die
, Tom realized,
because of me
.

There was more than one interpretation of that, but one thing Tom was sure of: Arlanna had been surprised to see him because she thought he was dead. Believed her own organization's disinformation.

Sylvana climbed aboard. The tension between her and Arlanna was almost physical.

Hurtling lev-bikes and arachnabugs were everywhere.

“Arlanna!” Tom had to yell above the crack of weapons. “Who can order the guards to stand down?”

“Any of us.”

“Who will they
listen
to?”

Too late.

Lev-field
.

The Chaos of lev-bikes and arachnabugs faded into background as he saw the cruciform
quiver.

“You think…I'm a…fool?” Vilkarzyeh, unsteady, pointed at the first group of holos.

A Lord, screaming under interrogation, while Vilkarzyeh impassively watches…

It was the future compatible with his own truecast; therefore he assumed it was the only possible future. And it showed him alive.

“Don't be a fool, Alexei!”

Build-up.

It was designed for execution, but not this way.

“Get down.” Tom grabbed Sylvana, forced her down. “And you.” Arlanna.

Rods, separating
.

The cruciform shape was there, but it was a configuration: each rod trembled with potential, detached from those around it.

Pulse.

The cruciform exploded.

Ten thousand rods slammed through the air, ripped through bodies and arachnabug hulls alike.

Vilkarzyeh
…

Tom glimpsed the rod which sliced through Vilkarzyeh's carotid artery, scarlet blood spurting. Then he threw himself across Sylvana and Arlanna—
my leg!
—as rods arrowed into the lev-sphere and smashed against the deck.

They were listing at an angle and it saved them from the worst of the cascade; bouncing rods whipped past but nothing serious, save the shaft impaling Tom's left leg.

A Zhongguo Ren. His face looked bloodless.

“Where's Zhao-ji?” Tom asked, or thought he did.

The cockpit was open; the youth was still looking down.

Whisper: “You know Siu Lung?”

Sliding in and out of consciousness. Strange fire in his thigh.

“Tom…” Arlanna.

Tearing sound. “Use this as a tourniquet.” Sylvana.

The arachnabug was still there, suspended above them.

“
Zài nǎr?
” said Tom, but knew he needed more, a code-intro, and it came from intuition: “Paradox,” and then the blackness fell.

Carnage.

Tom was leaning against a misshapen crystal blob, part of the damaged floor, and his bandaged leg was numb.

Whimpers. Here, a wounded woman, taken from the wreckage of her lev-bike; there, a man screaming as rescuers lifted him. Lev-gurneys, med-drones. Survivors sat amid the debris, looking stunned.

“Tom.” Zhao-ji, left hand clasped over right fist, bowed.

A nod was all Tom could manage.

“Congratulations.” Corduven's uniform was smeared with blood, not his own. “You worked things out rather quickly.”

He meant, Tom had deduced the new alliance between Corduven's soldiers and the Strontium Dragons on remarkably little evidence. But Tom had always known that LudusVitae was a shaky alliance…and that Corduven was a master strategist.

“What's happening outside?” The fighting had spread far beyond the confines of Aleph Hall. Fate knew what state the rest of Darinia Demesne was in.

Crunch of bootsteps. Elva, walking across bright ceramic shards.

“There's still fighting,” she said. “But it's dying down. News of the cease-fire is spreading.”

“Let's hope it spreads quickly.” Arlanna.

“Provided your people don't—” Sylvana stopped.

Tom raised his hand, ignoring torn muscles.

“If you two”—looking between Sylvana and Arlanna—“can't make peace, what hope is there for anyone?”

The two women stared in silence.

Crystal.

Elva held it out. “We recovered it from the lev-sphere.”

Corduven and Sylvana watched intently as Tom took it. Fully trained, Lord and Lady, they appreciated the strangeness—

Glimmer of light.

“Is its strobe-output functional?” asked Corduven.

“No idea.” Tom smiled grimly. “I didn't even know it could do that.”

I thought it was nonfunctional
.

Fading.

“Doesn't look like it.” Corduven's eyelids flickered. “
Multiple
truecasts, Tom? And all of them genuine?”

The blue fire; the barrier. After killing the Oracle—
Corduven's brother
—that strange hallucination of committing suicide, hurling himself from the terraformer.

Parallel universes, or their ghosts.

“All true,” said Tom.

Were they different beads of the Cosmic Necklace, sometimes impinging, as though Fate had carelessly tossed the Necklace down into a tangled heap? Or was the explanation more complex?

“I know enough,” Tom added, “to have deduced my ignorance. Time's more subtle than we think.”

Spark.

“Tom…”

Spark of light.

“Careful, now.”

But he had already seen it.

“The medics said you need to take care of your eyes. The strobe
nearly burned out—”

##DISCONNECTING NOW.##

Tom winced at the input's strength, but did not look away.

“Thank you.”

##PILOTS DIED FOR THIS. IT WAS IMPORTANT.##

Firing the words directly into his brain.

“Yes,” said Tom. “Are you who I think…?”

##I AM A SYSTEM-REFLECTION OF WHAT LIES BEYOND.##

Head pounding.
Do
not
look away.

“But you're not just an AI inside the comms system.”

##LESS THAN THE WHOLE, BUT GREATER THAN THE SEED.##

“I know, but—”

No time left.

##DISCONNECT.##

“
Dart
!”

Crystal growing opaque.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Sylvana touched Tom's arm. “You'd better come with me.”

Arlanna was frowning.

Tom shook his head.

“It's Maestro da Silva,” Sylvana said.

Three rods impaled him.

“
Tom
…” Maestro da Silva's eyes fluttered.

“He saved me,” Malkoril muttered. “Pushed me aside so fast—”

Tom cursed himself for not realizing that the maestro, with Malkoril and Keldur, had been here, amid the crowd.

“…
best…bargain
…”

“Don't speak, Maestro. You'll be all—”

“…
thousand merits…well…spent
…”

Tom's throat tightened.

No.

Breathing changed, rasping—

Not again.

—and he shouted for a medic but no-one came—

Damn it, not again
.

—holding onto the maestro—quickening breaths, shallow and painful—hugging him tight as the throat-rattle came and life departed.

“It was you,” he whispered to the maestro's corpse. “You gave me my start.”

He held on until the body-bearers came.

Despite unsteady feet—his wounded leg felt increasingly numb, and odd pulsations drifted across his vision—Tom bowed to each in turn: Zhao-ji, Corduven, Arlanna, the beautiful Sylvana. Friends, but with their own agendas.

“Good Destiny,” he said.

Sudden weakness, but she caught him: the one who was always faithful.

“What do you want to do, Tom?”

Whimpers of the wounded, cries of the bereaved.

Lords and revolutionaries, standing together.

“Take me home,” he whispered.

He stumbled once, but Elva's strong arm held him, and they left the Palace together.

THE END