Absorption (16 page)

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Authors: John Meaney

BOOK: Absorption
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Before the tree stood a simple well, a few broken stones ringing a hole of blackness.
 
‘No.’ His voice was hoarse. ‘It cannot be his. Not Mimir’s.’
 
Surely this was ordinary, a well built by men who had moved on or died away, nothing more.
 
Not his.
 
Stígr was a wanderer, yes, but that was all he was. Wanderer and poet, singer of sagas, master of words, keeper of memories. It was a blasphemy to think of anything else, of the other who wandered the middle world and sought wisdom regardless of the price.
 
The painful, bloody price.
 
No. Don’t ask this.
 
A sacrifice, offered with determination, garnished with suffering.
 
I will not.
 
But still his feet stumbled down toward the well’s black centre, where he stopped.
 
‘Please . . .’
 
His right thumb, crooked and tensed, rose toward his face. Sinews trembled as he fought the movement, warring against himself; but the motion was inexorable. Slowly, slowly, his hand ascended, growing large to dominate his sight, then touched his nose, the bridge of his nose—
 
Please. Please, no.
 
—with his thumbnail scratching into the skin, sliding left, into the eye socket and down, to the inner corner of his eye—‘NO!’
 
—and pressed in with enormous strength, pushed inside, slickness coating his thumb as he ripped outward, a slick pop as it came free and half his world went dark forever.
 
Sweet All-Father, no.
 
But he had done it, as he had been commanded.
 
‘Why me? Why
me?
’
 
He sobbed with pain, hating himself. Then his dagger was in his hand and he made the final severance, cutting it free, changing his world for always.
 
The worst part was afterward, when it was too late to revert to his previous life, and he could not fight the motion of his hand again, this time as it held out his eyeball over the well - white, bloodied, glistening - and let it drop.
 
His eye fell forever into darkness.
 
Pain raging in his head, he could hardly see with his remaining eye, as he strained to focus through blood-mist on the ash-tree, where it stood in silent observation. So this was the first agony, not the last ordeal.
 
His tunic was belted at the waist with braided leather cords. Hands shaking as if palsied, he undid the cords, unravelling them. Then he carried them to the foot of the ash-tree, tears flooding down his right cheek, blood and fluid down his left.
 
Climbing the tree was torture.
 
When did it happen?
 
Twice he slipped, formed his hands into desperate hooks, and found a grip, tearing his skin. No matter: the ascent was everything.
 
When did the darkness take me?
 
His early childhood was happy. He thought he remembered that, through the roaring chaos of present pain. Or perhaps all his memories were false, and all of his existence was this: pure and bloody agony.
 
Two loops, with sufficient play, he placed around a branch. This was going to be it.
 
The other sacrifice.
 
For the eye, given to Mimir, was not enough. Nine days and nine nights: that was what the ordeal demanded. He knew it now, and felt the tiniest of respite from pain with the knowledge of giving in, accepting what was happening.
 
Turning outward, back against the trunk, he slipped one wrist inside a loop to his left, then the other to his right. Arched back, he could not maintain the pressure for long. Slowly, he worked his heels down the trunk, aware that a sudden slip now would wrench both arms from his sockets, dislocating them, and causing him to strangle as his damaged shoulders squeezed his neck.
 
For now, his body cruciform, he hung in place, his every sinew etched in pain.
 
By my own will.
 
If not his, then whose?
 
Or
is
it mine? Why are you making me do this?
 
When the wind rose, its passage through the tree was a metallic rustle that quickly magnified and then became lost in the tidal howl that grew up all around, and when the lightning flashed he felt no surprise.
 
The storm banged and growled, twisted, and tore the world away.
 
 
There was light in the world when something pushed him into wakefulness—
 
‘Stígr? My sweet?’
 
—but for a moment he was back there, at the beginning and at the end, nine days and nine nights, as he hung there ever closer to nothingness yet unable to die, wishing for cessation but knowing that it held a price, did knowledge, a price that every wandering poet should be prepared to pay, a tribute of pain, a toast of blood, a meal of eye-flesh, a sacrifice—‘It’s morning, and you should wake.’
 
—and at the end of the ninth night, the storm that had been ever-present grew stronger and stronger, black clouds rotating overhead, opening up the storm centre, and then it happened, because that was the moment—‘Stígr?’
 
—when
the sky looked at him
, and he was lost.
 
Her name was Anya and they had shared their bodies last night but this was agony, the remembrance and the reality of it, and the sweep of present momentary time - Being, the Norn whose true name was Skuld - was eclipsed by the past collapsing on him, the knowledge that darkness was omnipotent and he was nothing, the most terrified of thralls, no more than that.
 
Rubbing his face, he came into more ordinary wakefulness. There was a wetness on his left cheek, below the dirty eye-patch he wore. He sucked in his breath as Anya gently pulled the patch upward; then she shuddered and lowered it back.
 
Perhaps she had expected to see a covered eye, not this pink-red madness that sometimes wept clear fluid, nothing like tears.
 
‘I’m sorry,’ he told her.
 
‘I . . . I need to return to Hildr.’
 
But she paused and looked at him, and for a moment she appeared as enthralled as last night, when he felt his power upon him but no destructive imperative, so he could use his words to beguile for romance, for simple lust.
 
In this moment, he could change her mind, commit himself to her and her to him.
 
‘Then go,’ he said. ‘Do it now.’
 
She pulled away, trying not to sob, and then broke into a half-run, back toward the hall. He stared with his single, unwise eye. For that was part of what he had learned, during his nine-day crucifixion.
 
Pain is the eye of wisdom.
 
A socket full of never-healing rawness, that was the portal to reality, the lens of darkness.
 
All I deserve.
 
Perhaps Anya would find goodness; he himself already had his painful reward.
 
Almost as if the Norns knew what they were doing.
 
ELEVEN
 
FULGOR, 2603 AD
 
Carl rode the one-person speedcapsule back along the tunnel beneath Quiller Park, exited via the cavernous underground terminus, and rose to the surface in a flowgel column. When he stepped off the elliptical upper surface on to the plaza, he was scanning the environment only because that was natural for someone with his training.
 
He was energized because of his time in mu-space with
her
, his ship; but he was still careful, and there had been no signs during the return journey of anything untoward. The speedcapsule had been the same one he rode out in, with no sign of having been opened or deepscanned: he had left telltales on board, femtoscopic flakes that would have informed him of peacekeeper inspection.
 
A shaven-headed man was walking toward him. Xavier Spalding, from the meeting earlier. Behind Xavier rose the quickglass conference centre, the tower morphing with glacial slowness as it cycled through a variety of impressive but conservative forms, taking days to change from one to another.
 
Carl had not expected anyone else from the meeting to still be here. He wondered what Xavier’s objective was.
 
A discrete off-Skein discussion? Or something more?
 
Xavier was smiling.
 
‘How nice to run into you again, Carl.’
 
They touched fists formally.
 
‘Likewise, Xavier. Are you pleased with today’s outcome?’
 
‘Surely. And I was hoping you’d come back here.’
 
‘I was just wandering as I worked in Skein.’
 
‘So you could have been physically anywhere, and I could have just called you, of course. But since you’d booked an aircab pickup for twenty minutes from now, it seemed likely you’d return here.’
 
‘How could you know that?’
 
He did not like this. Covertly, he clicked his tongue and curled his left big toe. Warmth in both forefingers indicated that his tu-rings’ major defensive systems had responded, coming online and polling the surroundings for danger.
 
Nothing so far.
 
‘I’ve got many controlling interests,’ said Xavier. ‘Including the cab company and other transport providers. Your itinerary is confidential, as is every passenger’s.’
 
‘Uh-huh. So why meet in person, all the same?’
 
‘For the same reason we hold trade talks in reality, when they’re important. We’re brachiating primates, Mr Blackstone, with large brains, that’s all. Tactile and sociable.’
 
That, and ordinary Fulgidi felt safer off Skein when Luculenti were involved in negotiations, since the élite had full control of that environment. It was a habit they carried into other interactions, with purely ordinary people.
 
‘And of course,’ Xavier went on, ‘it’s why virtual education isn’t good enough, and why we send our sociable children to real colleges and multiversities.’
 
Carl smiled, made his voice sound natural, and said: ‘Funny thing, my son Roger has just started in Lucis Multi.’
 
‘Obviously I knew that, Carl, while
you’ve
not realized that my daughter Alisha is in Roger’s study group. I’m hoping they’ll become friends. As might you and I, let me add.’
 
‘Friendships and alliances are good things.’
 
‘My daughter is . . . particularly astute,’ began Xavier.
 
There was something in his voice, the tension of mixed emotions. Something worth following up, once this encounter was over.
 
‘She’s noticed that their primary tutor, Dr Petra Helsen,’ Xavier added, ‘has some unusual behaviour patterns. Not off the scale, you understand.’
 
Around them on the plaza, a few scattered travellers were passing by. No one was paying attention. Talking this way was more low-key than inside a privacy field of whirling diamond dust. Still, they were in the open, perhaps subject to SatScan surveillance right now.

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