Resolution by John Meaney

NULAPEIRON AD 3423

A lean figure, wrapped in a long cape, stood atop a slender footbridge spanning Gelshania Boulevard. It was an hour before dawnshift. High above the boulevard, attached to the baroque, ornate panels of the concave ceiling, bronze-and-platinum glowclusters shone dimly, as if sleeping. Down below, the boulevard’s floor was of polished butter-yellow metal. At this hour, only a few servitors walked there, carrying out their errands.

I was once like you.

Tom Corcorigan was a Lord, and there were people in power who knew the part he had played in the War Against The Blight; but nothing could eradicate the memory of his lowly childhood and the deprivations of his years in servitude.

Beneath the cape, his missing left arm ached.

There was movement, far along the shrinking perspective of the boulevard tunnel. Tom recognized the vanguard immediately for what it was: a cohort of greystone warriors, neither human nor living statues but somehow both, their slit-eyes covered with nictitating membrane and impervious to sporemist or smartwraith, their bodies formed of granite and morphstone, tensing to unbelievable hardness in the heat of battle.

Expensive, Tom thought. Who is it that can afford their services?

This was the Primum Stratum of Demesne Kalshuna, an old rich realm that had suffered during the war. What reason could the Liege Lord’s clan-members have for sneaking around before dawnshift? As far as Tom knew, he and Elva—she was fast asleep in their guest apartment—were the only visiting nobility.

The procession drew closer.

Oh, Fate ...

Behind the greystone phalanx, a levanquin floated, moving ponderously above the metallic yellow floor. Eerie blue reflections slid across its bubble-covered carapace; inside, a bulky, shaven-headed figure was barely visible. Behind the levanquin, more greystone warriors walked, and among them shuffled twin rows of manacled servitors, dressed alike in shabby blue livery.

Haven’t I tried enough to eradicate this?

The vehicle’s occupant was an Oracle, and these servitors could surely bear witness to the intense, perverse stimulation that most Oracles required to bring their strange, fragmented mentalities into a semblance of coherence, to match their thoughts to normal timeflow.

Like every Oracle, this one would be a product of the Collegium Perpetuum Delphinorum. The nearest Collegium (for there were three sites in the world) had survived enemy occupation during the War Against The Blight . . . and it was Tom’s and Elva’s destination. This was the eighth night (or early morning) of their honeymoon; their peregrination would end at a place which took innocent children, with their families’ consent, and turned them into monsters.

And one of those abominations occupied the levanquin sliding at this moment beneath the footbridge.

I could kill you now.

A drop onto the bubble-canopy, a swift cut from the graserbracelet he wore—a wedding present from Elva—and Tom would be inside. Then his bare hand would be enough to dispense justice on behalf of those who suffered so that Oracles might thrive.

Whether Tom could escape from an enraged cohort of greystone warriors was another matter . . . but he knew already that he was not going to try. He had no intention of making a widow of Elva so soon.

Elva ...

A soft smile alighted on Tom’s face, and he turned away from the sights below, pulling up his cape’s hood, and strode on across the footbridge, heading back towards his and Elva’s temporary home.



Tom walked the length of the apartment’s hallway. Its floor was square-patterned, milky violet quartz and hard transparent glass, beneath which lambent orange lava flowed. Just for a moment, he caught a glimpse of hexagonal flukes as a thermidor wriggled and swam through blazing hot magma.

A doorshimmer evaporated, and he stepped through into the darkened lounge. An oval window overlooked the Benbow Cavern, containing a scene of joyful debris. Down below, torn banners floated in ornate pools; discarded flagons decorated quiescent fountains which last night had flung polarized streamers of thousand-hued water in high, triumphant arcs. There were a few sleeping bodies; on one tilted lev-bench, a Lord-Meilleur-sans-Demesne lay sprawled against a commoner.

Mesodrones were scooping up the litter.

Sooner or later the victory celebrations would have to cease, and everyone would turn to rebuilding their lives. For now, why not? The Blight had been a vast malignant lifeform, enslaving millions of minds as it reached throughout the realms of Nulapeiron, and they had been lucky to beat it back and destroy it. They had caused it to confront an entity which lived in mu-space, a possibly god-like being that had once been human, whose name was Dart. It was the Dart-entity which had defeated the Blight.

So why aren’t I happy?

But Tom knew that the Blight had been a spawned seedling, and that during the final battle it had been trying to contact its parent organism: the vast worlds-spanning hiveform known as the Anomaly. That Anomaly had already subsumed entire planets. Even in Nulapeiron, where the teaching of history was tightly controlled, the Anomaly was a dark legend synonymous with fear.

And the closer Tom and Elva drew to the Collegium Perpetuum Delphinorum, the less Tom was able to sleep. During nightshift, he kept snapping awake, convinced that the Anomaly was already aware of Nulapeiron’s existence. If it had any curiosity concerning a world capable of killing its offspring, it might turn its attention here . . . and Tom was under no illusion that the trick they had pulled off against the Blight could be made to work again.

The Blight had nearly destroyed Nulapeiron. How humanity might fight the vast malignant entity which had spawned the Blight, Tom had no idea.





A crystal sideboard stood against one wall of the elegant chamber. On the sideboard, atop a platinum tray, was an oval outline in shadow. Tom assumed that Eemur’s severed head was asleep, or in some state that might pass for sleep; but then her words sounded directly in his mind:

Can’t sleep, my Lord? Did something come up?

Tom stared into the gloom.

Or fail to? Shame, on your honeymoon.

Thank you, Eemur, for your kind empathy.

Tom could not have said exactly when he became aware of the link between them. It had occurred during the past few days, growing continuously stronger, and he was already taking it for granted. He had not mentioned it to anybody else . . . not even Elva.

You’re worried about the Anomaly.

Of course I am. Aren’t you?

Tom made a control gesture, and a glowglobe detached itself from the ceiling, flickering brightly as it floated lower.

Naturally. But no-one else will be in the mood to listen, and you know that.

But the danger—

Is based on what? Your intuition? My Sight? You know what they’re worth.

Fate damn it.

Now the light glistened on Eemur’s flensed and disembodied head: her blood-wet striated muscles, including the odd three-way strips beneath grey-white cheekbones; her long exposed teeth; the bulging spheres of her eyes. There was something new: a black moirée cap covering the remnants of scalp and sparse, sticky strands of lank, blood-soaked hair.

You know I’m right.

Her head balanced on its tangle of sinews and severed arteries, testament to the clumsy beheading five centuries before.

You know I don’t have to like it. But, yes . . . You’re right.

So what are you going to do?

Down in the Benbow Cavern, the glowclusters were beginning to shine a rosy hue, marking the commencement of dawnshift.

I’m going to work out. Is that all right with you?

Whatever you say. Don’t mind me.

Then the contact between them became muted, a kind of mental hush falling in the chamber. Tom nodded, and gestured to the glow-globe to return to the ceiling. As it rose, he shucked off his cape and tunic. Bare-chested, wearing only dark training tights, he stood relaxed, taking in deep breaths.

No comment came from Eemur’s Head.

Tom worked through his warm-up routine, then his squats and one-arm press-ups (the only kind, as he sometimes remarked to Elva, that he would ever be able to do). Then he ordered the morph-capable ceiling to extrude a loop, for a series of one-finger pull-ups (each finger in turn): a traditional exercise used only by élite-class climbers.

The first part of his workout was over. Tom gestured a section of flooring into laminar-flow mode, stepped onto it and began to run. After a few minutes, he pushed up the speed, and the flow accelerated to match.

His bare torso was slick with sweat.

Anomaly.

Running.

I will not let you do it.

Running harder.

I will not let you take my world.

Tom ran on his hurtling journey to nowhere, faster and faster on the spot, concentration narrowing until he was pure movement, all fears and thoughts forgotten.



When his training was finished and his breathing had slowed, Tom stood in the bedchamber doorway, still soaked with sweat, scratching the stump which depended from his left shoulder.

“Remove an arm.” Lady Darinia’s words echoed across the years. “Either arm will do.”

On the bed, his beautiful wife Elva lay sprawled and contented. The chamber’s glowglobe painted her skin dawnshift-pink, full of promise.

Then she stirred and opened one eye.

“Well, my good Lord. I hope you haven’t exhausted yourself.”

“I am pretty tired.”

“How tired, sir?”

The smartsatin sheet furled back.

“Not very,” Tom said.

“Then come here.”

Resolution © John Meaney

Context by John Meaney

NULAPEIRON AD 3418

This was the view from inside the long passenger cabin: glowing orange mists, redolent with inner fires, which billowed and swirled beyond the clear membranous hull. In dark gaps amid the pulsing orange vapours, glimpses of cavern ceiling high above, of rock-strewn floor below.

On distant walls, black teardrop shapes hung, their strong tendrils splayed against the raw, cold stone. They were armoured arachnabugs: military-grade, single-occupant, and armed.

The passenger-transport was a long shuttle-bug, currently holding still, poised at the vast cavern’s exact centre. For security scans? None of the passengers seemed worried.

“Why we did stopped?” A child’s voice, plaintive.

A lurch, and the long shuttle-bug slid forwards along its longitudinal filament, thread-like braids flowing across the hull. Adults laughed, and the child gave a gap-toothed grin.

Tom was slumped in the soft seat, and his pale skin was etched with unvoiced suffering. Unseen beneath his dark trews, amber gel— sprinkled with healing silver motes—encased his left thigh.

Above them, on the cabin’s furry ceiling, big purple servolice crawled, offering snacks. One paused overhead, but Elva, beside Tom, waved the thing on. Few passengers wanted refreshment; they were nearing journey’s end. The plush cabin was filled with bright excitement at entering a new realm, or the sweet pleasure of returning home: many people, recently, had been granted wander-leave for the first time in their lives.

But in Tom’s injured leg, dark pain crouched like a venomous spider.

“Are you OK, my—Tom?” Elva looked concerned.

Don’t call me Lord. His rank meant nothing now.

But he said only: “I’m fine.”

It was a lie. His leg wound was serious, maybe mortal, but pure agony defined his missing left arm. In the thirteen Standard Years since it had been severed, never had the nonexistent limb burned more painfully than now.

“Good security.” Elva stared out at the unbreathable orange vapour. Always the tactician. Years ago, Tom had learned to count on her. Then the glowing clouds were gone, and polished walls were sliding past, tessellated with intricate square-patterned mosaics in bright primary hues. Crystal and bronze sculptures stood in white-lit alcoves. A huge platform, of pale marble with pale grey swirls, drew close. At its rear stood ornate high archways filled with shimmering scan-fields: entrances to the rich, fabled realm which lay beyond.

The shuttle-bug whispered into position, and docked.

And as the transport’s doors dissolved open, a long row of mirror-masked soldiers in tan capes hoisted shining grasers, snapped bootheels together, coming to sharp attention.

Huge holos glimmered into being above the exit arches:

*** WELCOME, HONOURED GUESTS ***


*** TO THE ***


*** AURINEATE GRAND’AUME ***

Alongside the disembarking passengers, soldiers—uniformly tall—remained unmoving at strict attention. Watching, from behind their faceless mirrormasks.

“Tasteless.” Elva nodded towards the giant holos, then handed Tom his cane.

But Tom knew her trained awareness was centred upon the soldiers, evaluating the threat. Tom drew his cloak close, limped slowly towards the shimmerfields.

Were there always troops to greet new arrivals? Or was there conflict nearby?

Other passengers streamed past, rushing for the exits. Floating mesodrones bore their luggage; but everything Tom and Elva owned fitted into the one small bag she carried.

“Ahem.” Elva cleared her throat.

Up ahead, near the shimmerfields, stood a slender woman robed in black. Decorative fronds sprouted cowl-like from her collar—black, in contrast to her triangular, bone-white features—moving slowly, as if stirred by unfelt breezes. Black cuffs trailed to the floor.

A bronze microdrone hung above each shoulder. Behind her stood an honour guard of twelve soldiers: bare-headed, stone-faced, formal scimitars fastened across their backs.

“I see her,” murmured Tom.

They had wanted neither fuss nor ceremony. Had thought that, in the Aurineate Grand’aume—one of the few major realms with neither Lords nor Ladies—they could arrive incognito.

“It’s all right,” said Elva. “No-one else cares.”

A tight grin stretched momentarily across Tom’s face. She was right: they were anonymous travellers, unnoticed amid the crowd. They headed towards the waiting woman.





*** INDEPENDENCE & COMMITMENT ***





Another holo shone its greeting.

“Let’s hope their medicine”—Tom stopped, pointed at the holo with his cane—“has more class than their advertising.”

Elva looked away. It was nothing she could joke about. Inside Tom’s infected leg, a colony of femtocytes was growing. Engineered pseudatoms, replicating fast, threatened to phase-shift into action and dismantle his cells.

If the Grand’aume’s medics were not as advanced as their reputation suggested, then Tom would very shortly die a quick but agonizing death.

The black-robed woman curtsied.

“I am Nirilya.” She spoke in accented Nov’glin. “Your guide, Lord Corcorigan.”

Tom appreciated her effort: speaking his native tongue.

Beyond the marble platform, the floor was purple glass, the exact colour of orthoplum wine. On it, the twelve-strong honour guard stood to attention. Overhead, near the gilded ceiling, rosy glowglobes floated.

“And you”—Nirilya’s tone was cold—“must be Captain Elva Strelsthorm.”

Elva’s hands tightened into half-fists, then relaxed. Such stark words, in another place, would have borne grave insult. Had Elva been noble-born, they would constitute a death-duel challenge. But this was another culture, and Nirilya was not speaking her own language; they would have to make allowances.

Nirilya was staring at Tom: another breach of protocol.

“If you’ll permit me”—she gestured towards the purple glass floor—“my Lord.”

It rippled.

A deformity spread across the floor. Then a two-metre swelling grew, morphed into a lev-chair, and detached itself with a gentle pop. It slid towards Tom.

He glanced at Elva, then surrendered, and eased himself inside the chair.

Fate . . .

A spasm shook his leg, and he briefly closed his eyes.

“Are you—?”

“Let’s go.”

The chair rose. Inside, Tom tried to relax.

He was twenty-nine Standard Years of age, athlete and warrior, but he felt like an old, old man.





It was a rich realm. They passed through corridors of solid sapphire; tunnels of stone carved with microscopic intricacy, lit by familiar fluorofungus upon the ceilings. Walls were panelled in milky jade, or polished granite across which ALife mandelbroten pulsed.

Surrounded by the honour guard, Tom’s chair skimmed across the ?oor. Nirilya and Elva walked side by side, like old friends; only the tension in Elva’s shoulders indicated otherwise.

They crossed a noisy, energetic boulevard whose pearly ceiling glowed with opalescent light. Everyone here wore blue, yet the variety was immense: diamond-crossed doublets, loose jumpsuits, trailing robes.

There were no discreet passageways for servitors. A demesne where everyone was equal?

I wanted to achieve something like this.

They traversed a series of crystal lev-steps, over a copper fountain, to a low balcony where Nirilya dismissed the honour guard. The officer-in-charge bowed, then the men wheeled away, and marched into a transverse corridor.

A doorshimmer evaporated at Nirilya’s gesture.

“Your apartments, my Lord.”

Inside: sweeping buttresses of dark blue glass; glassine columns, slowly morphing; holoflames dancing above hexagonal flagstones. And for rehab, there was a chamber with a laminar-flow strip for running, and a glassine wall sloping inwards at forty-five degrees and covered with tiny knobs and protuberances, some shaped like miniature whimsical gargoyles.

“You’ll need a climbing wall,” said Elva. “As soon as you’ve recovered.”

Tom, still in his lev-chair, nodded silently.

A large reception chamber, a dining chamber, a small art gallery and library, and half a dozen sleeping chambers completed the ensemble.

Elva turned to Nirilya. “This is quite satisfactory.”

Her words were a dismissal, and Nirilya’s face tightened.

But her voice was steady as she said: “We can go straight to the medical centre, if you wish.”

Tom, standing in the med centre’s reception chamber, watched his lev-chair melt into the glassine ?oor. Elva, looking more relaxed since Nirilya had left, examined their surroundings.

“Here we are.”

A barefoot young woman, shaven-headed and clad in a russet tabard, came into the chamber. She genuflected.

“Please follow me, my Lord.”

Then she retraced her steps . . . walking backwards into the corridor from which she had come. Tom leaned on his cane, glanced at Elva, and followed.

Twin rows of arches lined the long corridor. To the left, the first chamber contained a semi-translucent clone/regrow vat. All around the vat, a circle of barefoot men sat cross-legged, watching and waiting.

“A moment.” Tom halted.

“Sir?” The young woman stopped, trembling. “Have I given offence in any—?”

“Not even a tiny bit. Are you a servitrix?”

“My Lord? I’m a vassal in the ownership of Malfax Cortindo, who is owned by Dr. Xyenquil himself.”

There was pride in her statement.

I should have known.

In the realms of Gelmethri Syektor where he had lived, servitors were owned only by nobility. His own years of servitude were etched forever in his soul. But there had also been opportunity; finally, the joys of logosophical discovery in the Sorites School.

Yet here—he understood immediately—a vassal could be indentured to another vassal, held to merciless account for the most trivial of offences, restricted in education and work, in living quarters and even in marriage. So easily abused, beyond even the immense range of privileges which the law accorded any vassal’s owner, knowing there was no redress: receiving the misery passed down from their owner’s own suffering.

It was an endless hierarchy of manipulation and cruelty, of all the capricious, devastating acts which follow when human beings are held to be no more than property.

No matter that such propensities come from neural patterns laid down by primate genes, and that Tom could have written the logosophical equations to prove it. When ethical systems become possible, they also become necessary, and that was why Tom had once been part of a revolution which aimed to bring liberty to all of Nulapeiron’s ten billion diverse souls. But now that seemed a time of almost child-like innocence.

So arrogant—to think that I could change all this.

In the last chamber on the right, a grey-haired man with no legs was struggling to cross the floor, walking on his stumps. Pain and determination etched deep lines in his sweat-drenched features; his breath came in painful rasps.

Sweet Destiny. Tom could only stare. Be strong, my friend.

He almost asked the female vassal to explain, but then he realized: clone/regrow vats could regenerate damaged cells, but the processes were expensive. Reserved for whatever Žlite held sway here: Lords and Ladies, by another name.

“They can fit prosthetics,” Elva murmured, “once he’s able to walk like that.”

Hardening the skin on his stumps, learning to use his hip flexors to maximum effect.

Often, Tom had run and climbed for hours—had once ascended, as a solo free-climb, the outer surface of a kilometre-wide terraformer sphere hanging in the clouds above the surface: the day he killed the Oracle. That same day, he had run sixty klicks in one long, unbroken ultra-endurance session, after escaping in a drop-bug to the ground.

But he had never pushed himself as hard as this poor injured vassal struggling to cross a modest chamber, forcing himself to walk upon legs which did not exist.

Context © John Meaney

Paradox by John Meaney

1


NULAPEIRON ad 3404

Like scarlet/amber fireflies hanging in the tunnel’s darkness, the floating tricons read:


His desperate hooves are flying, flying—

Hunt the moon which now lies dying

Where all about, and all around

Falls barren, grey and broken ground.

Tom froze.

Patchy fluorofungus, clumped upon the tunnel ceiling, palely pushed back the shadows. No visible motion. Had there been the faintest whisper of a sound?

Nothing.

Heart beating faster—he did not want to be caught by the other ­market boys, not when he was writing poetry—he returned his attention to the battered blue infotablet on his lap. He was sitting in a cold stone alcove, and when he shifted position the holodisplay jerked in mid-air.

Something . . .

No. Shaking his head, Tom unwrapped a sweet-ginger jantrasta strip and bit off a piece. He chewed, thinking, then swallowed. He gestured for ­dictation mode.


“Hard-striking sparks are pounding, trying—

With bursting heart is crying, crying:

Pursue the love his . . . no, er, damn it . . .”

Left hand arcing horizontally, right index and forefinger scissoring together, he killed dictation and wiped the final stanza.

With another glance into the shadows, Tom leaned back, reached inside his coarse-weave tunic, and drew out his talisman on its black throat cord. It was a silver ­stallion: wild-maned, its hooves frozen for ever as they cut through the air.

He remembered the day of its creation: Father, sweating, bent over the white-hot graser beam; the metal block spitting, bubbling; the air redolent with the close, heavy scents of oil and scorched metal. The joy which leaped through Tom when Father gave the stallion to him instead of selling it.

It was his good-luck piece, his inspiration when the words would not come. Stroking the smooth metal mane, he closed his eyes.

And heard: “Don’t stand up on my account.”

Paralysed, Tom could not have risen. The woman before him was cloaked in burgundy, her hood drawn, but he could see the elegant, pointed chin, the clear olive complexion. Her silver voice was a flautist’s dream.

“May I?” she asked, and somehow she had slipped the cord and the small stallion was in her slender hand.

Throat constricted, Tom could only nod.

“Quite beautiful.”

“It—” Tom swallowed. “It’s a stallion. A mythical beast.”

“Hmm.”

“My father made it.” He started to point in the market’s direction, then stopped. The woman was bent over, examining the hanging tricons.

“And this poetry?”

“Mine.” An odd emptiness in Tom’s stomach. “I ­write—”

“Competently.” She gestured to rotate the display. “A nice sense of space, for someone who has never seen the sky.”

How did she do that? The infotablet was keyed to Tom’s gestures alone.

“Good harmonics, too.” Enlarging the tricons, she pointed to the subtlest colourplay: grey to silver, suggesting shivering cold, agoraphobic chill. “Do you ken mathematics?”

Wordlessly, Tom brought up the triconic lattice of My Market: crowd-flow as fluid dynamics. Poetry and maths combined.

“Ah,” the woman breathed. “Nice. Perhaps”—she pointed into a floating hamiltonian matrix—“you could be more rigorous here with the third ­differential. But it works.”

Tom inclined his head.

“What’s your name, young poet?”

“Uh, Tom Corcorigan, ma’am.”

“I—” She stopped, listening. “Time, I think, to go.” A small hesitation, then she seemed to come to some ­decision. Holding the stallion talisman, she held out her other hand. “Take this.”

It was a small, black, ovoid capsule. Strange, Tom thought, picking it up. Looks slippery, but isn’t. Almost as though it was not there at all.

A small needle adhered lengthwise to the capsule.

“Trust me now, for a moment.” The woman wore a dark copper thumb ring. Briefly, it sparked with a ruby light. “I won’t damage your father’s work.”

Suddenly the stallion lay in two silver halves on her palm, its once solid core hollowed out like an empty womb. Tom was speechless.

“Hold the stallion, and give me back the nul-gel cap.”

Taking the black ovoid, the woman gave Tom his sundered talisman, which he accepted automatically. He flinched as though burned, but the metal felt cold.

“Quickly, watch me.” She unfastened the needle and stabbed it into the capsule. “Push this, and the processor’s accessible.” Swiftly removing the needle, she laid it lengthwise once more against the capsule. It held in place. “Download just one module at a time, then disengage, otherwise they’ll detect emissions.”

With deft fingertips, she placed the capsule inside one half of the ­stallion, closed the other half over it, and gestured. The stallion was whole once more.

“Did you see the control gesture?”

“Yes,” said Tom. “Like this—”

“No, don’t show me. Left hand opens, right hand closes.”

Tom nodded to show his understanding: one control gesture to undo the two halves, its mirror image to meld them together.

“Damn it.” The woman’s fine mouth grimaced. “If only I had more—Well, I don’t.” Another glance along the corridor. “Life is a mortal pilgrimage, my friend.”

She closed Tom’s fist over the talisman, enclosing his grip with her own. Her hand was smooth.

“When the dark fire falls, seek salvation where you—” Her head turned swiftly to one side.

And then she was standing.

“I won’t tell anyone.” The words came straight out of Tom’s mouth, surprising him.

Gentle fingertips brushed his cheek. Her touch was electric.

“Good luck.”

Her farewell seemed to hang in the air as she slipped into the shadows, broke into a silent run, and was lost among the darkened turns.

On his way home, infotablet tagged to his belt, Tom halted suddenly. From a side tunnel, a militia squad appeared. They were running in time, a distance-eating jog, graser rifles held at port-arms, boot soles slapping softly on the worn stone. As the squad disappeared around a bend, two militiamen dropped out of formation and came back towards Tom.

He felt caught, a blindmoth trapped in a hanging web.

“Hello, lad.” The bigger militiaman smiled, then continued in thick-accented Nov’glin: “Seen a stranger, have ye? A woman?”

Tom could only shake his head.

“Where, then?”

Tom stared at him, confused, but the other trooper laughed harshly. “We’re in Darinia Demesne,” he said. “Part of Gelmethri Syektor.”

“Yeah. So what?”

“So”—the trooper brushed Tom’s head with a rough hand—“round here, a shake of the head means no.”

“Bleedin’ Fate.” The big militiaman scowled at Tom. “Ya wouldn’t lie to me, would ya, mate?”

Tom started to shake his head again, then stopped.

“Wastin’ time. Come on.”

Suppertime. Silent tension seemed to knot the air. Mother bustled about the small family chamber, her startling red hair tied back, her pale, beauti­ful face lined with strain. Father, looking blocky and resigned, followed her with his gaze. Tom said nothing, unable to tell them what had happened.

Throughout supper, he was conscious of the talisman beneath his tunic, warm against his skin.

Meal over, Tom ran the dishes under the clean-beam, then retired to his sleeping-alcove and pulled the hanging across—failing to shut out his parents’ icy tension. Placing his moccasins on the floor, he sat on his cot, infotablet in his hands, thinking about the mysterious woman. Eventually, with a sense of distant surprise, he realized he was exhausted, and lay back, clutching the infotablet.

Grey sleep seemed elusive, and his mind drifted—

And then he was clinging by his right hand, void beneath him, desperate, and a flake of stone broke off and tumbled into space . . .

“Fate,” he murmured, feeling the danger. Strong winds rocked him, turbulence tugged.

Turbulence. Chaos. Terms of ancient days, before fate became hardwired in humanity’s souls.

He clung to his precarious hold, aware of the weapon sheathed at his back, fueled by the inner core of rage, murder in his heart as he was jerking awake, and Father’s broad hand was on his shoulder.

“Nightmare again?”

Father’s square, fleshy face, beneath his heavy thatch of grey hair, was creased with concern.

“Sorry.” Tom struggled up into a sitting position. “I don’t remember.”

But his body was drenched with sweat.

Cold breakfast, bitter daistral. Tom and Father left early, but there were already people moving in the quiet ­corridors. The old trinket-seller, carpet roll across his shoulders, nodded wearily.

At the market’s entrance, Trude Mulgrave waved her thin, bony hand.

“Hi, Davraig.” She brushed back a long, grey lock of hair which had escaped from her red-and-white headscarf, and her large earrings jangled. “And Tom. How are you both?”

“Good,” said Father. “And you?”

“’Twixt great and middling.” A typical Trude reply. “Good business today, I think.”

“Let’s hope so.”

Grey shadows, pale rose-hued glowglobes: early morning in the market chamber. The unpacking—the head trader’s surly sons unloading their lev-platform—and the setting-up. The dragging-in of carts; the untying of stalls’ fastenings, for those who relied on the nightwatchman to guard their goods. The fish-vat woman’s gaggle of ­children. The unsnapping of membrane tents and the tying of knots; the scents of heavy hemp and dusty fabric.

The hong-owner’s daughters, caped and beribboned, on their way to school, flanked by patient housecarl bodyguards: “Darling! Isn’t this wild?” Holding up a shawl or jewellery which they would not buy. “Perfect for Darkday.”

The girls grew quickly bored, as always, and continued to the market chamber’s centre. Waiting until their earstuds flashed, confirming IDs, they stood aside as the silver ceiling disc rotated and the flanges spiralled downwards and snapped into place.

Slender ankles flashed beneath their capes as they ascended the helical stairway to the stratum above, a place Tom had seen only in his imagination.

“Tom?”

“Sir?” Tom flushed guiltily.

“Put these on the front display, would you?” Heavy medallions.

“OK, Father.”

Tom laid them out on the velvet tray and checked the rest of the cluttered booth: perfumed candles, bronze dragon lamps, pewter amulets and cape clasps. Twisted-knot brooches and amber tag-holders.

The stairway had folded back up into the chamber’s ceiling, solid and impenetrable.

Gradually, the market-going crowd built up. Within two hours, the chamber was filled with the sound of haggling, the digging for bargains. Among the multitude of matt ochres and dull blues, among the brown and grey tunics, bright silk flashed here and there. Trude’s stall, with its bolts of exotic fabrics, was as popular as always, though many were merely looking.

An eerie hush descended.

Soft movement brushed through the crowd: a shuffling, a drawing-apart, forming clear passage from one entrance all the way to the chamber’s centre. Tom’s skin prickled as a squad of militiamen marched in. Up close, their goose-step was not silly, but an expression of controlled power: wide shoulders, muscular gait, heavy weapons held one-handed as though they weighed nothing.

Their prisoner was in the centre, surrounded.

The woman! Tom’s heart pounded. No—

Hood drawn forwards, burgundy cape torn, her slender wrists manacled to a heavy silver bar: her bent posture spoke of defeat. A sympathetic ripple passed through the marketgoers, a tiny forward motion as though to assist, then a retreat.

Please . . . The words cut through Tom’s mind. Help her, somebody!

What was her alleged crime? Somehow it made no difference. The crowd held its collective breath as the ­militia­men halted. At their centre, the woman slumped: a figure of broken grace. Ahead of them, an officer strode forwards and raised his baton. It blinked scarlet, and the ceiling disc span as silver slats spiralled downwards.

It must have been what she was waiting for.

Tossing her head back, she freed her mass of black, curly hair from the hood’s confines. Her olive-skinned face was triangular, almost feline. She reached up, despite the manacle bar’s weight, dabbed at her eyes and flicked something aside.

Her eyes were obsidian black, without surrounding whites. Glittering jet.

“Sweet Fate!” Father’s voice was a shocked whisper. “A Pilot!”

Pilot? Weren’t they just a legend?

In each eye, a tiny spark grew. Remembering the stories, Tom glanced away just in time, as golden fire coruscated across her eyes and lightning flashed, a blinding light, and people screamed, clutching at their eyes.

When Tom looked up, the Pilot’s chains and manacle bar had fallen to the flagstones. She tossed her cape at a trooper. Lean, clad in tight burgundy, she whirled into motion, and ashen-faced militiamen staggered back.

A big, grizzled trooper lunged forwards, arms wide, but the Pilot’s shin scythed into his ribs and the blade-edge of her foot whipped into his knee with a sickening crunch. He dropped.

And she ran.

She faked to one side, then sprinted into the main squad. Tangled among themselves, unable to bring their heavy graser rifles to bear, they fell as she span, almost dancing, through their midst: ducking low to elbow-strike a groin, leaping high to arc her knee into an exposed throat, palm-striking the troopers into each other’s line of fire.

Then she broke from the mêlée and leaped for the spiral stairs.

Run! Tom clenched his fists. Hurry!

She landed on the fifth rung, ducked beneath a graser beam’s sizzling crack, then launched herself upwards so fast that she looked weightless. For a moment Tom thought she was going to make it but more beams lanced through the air, impaling her. Arm flung out, she began to topple back, turning her face towards Tom. Half of it was blackened, roasted meat, her one good jet-black eye focusing on him for a moment . . . Then more beams split the air, and her lifeless body dropped.

It lay there, twisted and ripped on the cold, hard flagstones: a shattered thing, a broken shell.

Paradox © John Meaney