Resolution (60 page)

Tom had an abiding interest in the true nature of spacetime, in the logical rigours of exploring the structure beneath the surface illusion of reality. But this was not the time for cosmological thinking. Now, he had to pull together everything he had learned about minds and emotions, cognitive strategies and modes of perception, and the thousand subtle ways in which thought and body and environment were linked.

Today, Tom would have to manipulate people with an expertise he had never attained before. It was a very different approach to the logosophical disciplines.

Tom remembered his first day at the Sorites School: turning up as directed, where the tall, white-haired Lord Velond waited in an otherwise empty tutorial chamber. Tom was young and a servitor still, and he expected to be serving drinks or moving furniture. But Lord Velond’s words shifted his life onto a very different track.

‘We need your brain, laddie. Not your brawn.’

When Lady Sylvana and the other noble students filed in, Tom took his seat as if he were one of the privileged elite, and not a delta-class servitor whose role in life was menial and whose legal status was little more than that of chattel.

Vistas of logosophical knowledge began to open up that day.

But Lord Velond was not the only person who taught at the Sorites School. Tom could never forget the famous Rhetor Primus, Lord Linski, who taught the pyschomanipulative arts as part of rhetoric. Linski’s ability to transform a person’s emotions and deeply held beliefs with or without the use of logotropes was legendary.

After the first hectoday under Linski’s tutelage, an unspoken conspiracy spread among the students during a particular lecture. They tried to turn the tables and subtly manipulate Lord Linski by minute nods or shakes of the head, using the language of posture and gesture to reinforce or dissuade his movements. It was a form of feedback, and they intended to control Linski so that he would end up standing where they wanted him to.

Just when they thought they had succeeded, and Lord Linski stood on the spot they had been guiding to, smiles broke out upon the students’ faces. That was Lord Linski’s cue. He made a grand, sweeping gesture that caused a long-prepared tricon to display itself:
I predict the whole class will be facing this spot -
the correct location relative to the chamber’s walls was denoted in the tricon’s geometry -
and smiling at me, at two minutes before Snapdragon Hour.

The class gasped, then broke just as a musical tone sounded, denoting Snapdragon Hour. Time for a new class to begin.

Yet the most profound lesson that Tom received in manipulating another’s will occurred not when Lord Linski was teaching, but when Linski was absent from the Sorites School, attending a conference in Sektor Grayleim. It was Lord Velond who replaced him.

The students always began tutorials by opening up their infopads, causing blank phase spaces to blossom by each chair. This time, Lord Velond clapped his hands to interrupt them. The unexpected sound reverberated through the chamber.

‘You know that induction and deduction are my fields.’ His elegant voice rang. ‘So, since my colleague, Lord Linski, is both Rhetor Primus and absent, I would not presume to teach in his place.’

A couple of young Lords laughed politely.

‘Instead,’ continued Lord Velond, ‘I believe we should all go shopping.’

Tom’s head ached.

He had been learning the Laksheesh names of colours, and how they related to triconic representations, and it was harder than expected. In formal intercourse, there were sixteen thousand hues identified, and their names related not only to electromagnetic frequency but to historical and cultural references unfamiliar to Tom.

The modern term for teal-green,
Vakdosh,
rhymed with the Old Laksheesh term for death. If you did not know that teal was the archaic colour of mourning, it made no semantic sense.

Tom was about to raise his hand and ask for permission to remain behind and study alone, when he saw something the other students (he thought) did not: the dance of amusement in Lord Velond’s normally unreadable eyes.

Tom shut down his display. Chairs slid silently back as students stood. Tom took his place among the rest.

Going shopping?

He did not think so.

Before descending, the tutorial group stopped in an antechamber where servitors took their discarded cloaks and half-capes. The noble-born students pulled on surcoats which made them look like young freedmen and freedwomen: apprentices, perhaps, to the white-haired man in the faded green ankle-length coat, for Lord Velond had adopted the appearance of a down-at-heel trader. Velond left his platinum cane in the care of Malgrix Groshe, the alpha servitor who acted as chief caretaker for the School.

Even Tom, though he was not dressed as a Lord, pulled on a drab orange vestment which obscured his black-and-ivory tunic in the house livery of Palace Darinia.

Then Lord Velond led the group to a brown stone chamber where a round steel door was set in the flagstones: a floor hatch leading down to the Secundum Stratum, in a location where no-one would expect it.

Lord Velond himself, when the door had rotated open and the descending slats had clicked into place to form a spiral stairway, was the first to go down, exuding an air of devilish mischief. The chamber below boasted a second floor hatch, allowing them to descend again.

‘No thumb rings,’ he said, when they finally gathered in a chamber on the Pentium Stratum, four strata below the Sorites School, but a universe away from the world in which the Palace aristocracy lived.

Lord Velond removed the noble-house ring which denoted his rank and inserted it inside his belt. Those among the students who had thin fabric gloves pulled them on; the others followed Lord Velond’s lead - save for Tom, who had no need for subterfuge in order to appear a commoner.

They trooped out into a jade-lined broadway, and followed Lord Velond to the nearest mall. From carts and modest boutiques, vendors plied their trade. More than one of the young Ladies - Sylvana among them - paused at a stall where bolts of exotic fabric and racks of subtle bottled fragrances were on show. Lord Velond walked on, tall and straight-backed and as vigorous as a man half his age.

They passed a tavern, then an antiques shop where several of the Lords, including Qizan and Shrolikin (who were among the least prejudiced when it came to having a lowborn studying in their midst), could not help admiring the stained old short-swords and bucklers. Qizan was on the point of picking up a battered vibe-gun when Lord Velond cleared his throat. Qizan took the hint, snatching back his hand as though a narl-serpent had tried to bite him.

‘Sorry, sir.’

They passed through a wide circular chamber of raw stone whose bulging pillars were adorned with holoflames, while the floor space was set out as a temporary market. It reminded Tom of home, of the smaller marketplace in Salis Core where Father had sold his carved statuettes and talismans. But that was many strata lower than this, and there was no way to contact anyone there.

Did Trade Mulgrave, their old neighbour and family friend, ever wonder what had happened to Tom? Had she learned of his abrupt departure from the Ragged School, his swift involuntary entry into servitude?

Tom shook his head, and hurried to rejoin the group.

They stopped in a tunnel beyond the marketplace, and gathered around Lord Velond.

‘There was a garment vendor back there,’ Lord Velond said, ‘by the cracked pillar. No, don’t look round, Shrolikin, there’s a good lad.’

‘Sir.’

‘I trust you’ll all believe me when I say, I’ve never set eyes on the proprietor before, and he certainly does not know who I am. Are you prepared to take my word on that?’