Context (121 page)

The air was sundered, but a new
thought slammed into each person’s awareness like a divine fist: a
communication beyond words which burst through every mind, exploded in the
soul.

## YOU DARE? ##

It was the roar of an outraged
god.

A
cataclysm beyond human reckoning. A thunderous raging war beyond perception; a
coruscating series of battles whose sequence and setting and very nature could
never be comprehended by tiny mortals who see so little of their own universe—evolved
to perceive only ten per cent of the matter which exists, only four of the
dimensions—and whose capacity to imagine the fractal context on which it
depends is insignificant.

They clashed, the Dart entity and
the Blight.

They fought across the universes.

Flinging
energies which could annihilate whole worlds, wringing subtle topological
changes smaller than electrons in the stuff of spacetime itself: they attacked
each other on every level.

There was no way to understand
their motivations: whether the being which had once been Dart held any loyalty
to Its original species, or whether It merely resented the intrusion into
mu-space of the Anomalous energies which Tom’s summoning communication had
allowed to bleed through into that fractal continuum, no ordinary human could
ever know.

It was a conflict between two
gods.

As they struggled for supremacy,
miraculous changes in physical constants took place in a very special realm:
the bridge between two continua which pulsed and expanded with fiery power,
forming a universe in its own right. It became a battlefield, a chessboard, a
comms link and a resonance cavity in which contesting deities duelled in ways
which affected that universe’s geometry, determined its future; and if stars
and worlds and sentient beings rose and fell within the duration of that
link-cosmos’s existence, who was there to tell?

For when that war, that Ragnarok,
was over, the battlefield which lay between them was destroyed—a universe which
existed no more—and one of those two deities was gone.

And later analysis, led by Lord
Avernon himself, would determine that the War Between Gods had lasted a little
more than one picosecond—perhaps a millionth of a millionth of a single human
heartbeat’s duration.

Nothing of the Blight remained.

The
sky was clear, fresh and tinged with yellow. The normal cloud cover, creamy and
full, was wiped away. Distant dots—terraformer spheres, floating high above—looked
dark against the peaceful backdrop. Below, amid toppled trees and flattened
purple grasses, wrecked flyers seemed like abstract sculptures set in place to
decorate a vast but neglected parkland.

Across the battlefield, nobody
moved.

Then finally, a stirring.

Tom, by chance, was one of the
first to awaken.

~ * ~

67

NULAPEIRON
AD 3423

Fireworks
exploded along the boulevard’s length, starbursts along the golden ceiling: the
welcome crack, and then the dying wheeze. Streamers and holos sprayed through
the air.

Tom, in full nobleman’s regalia,
stood to attention on the balcony.

‘Happy New Year.’ Avernon, at Tom’s
left shoulder, used the ancient benediction.

‘To all of us,’ said Corduven, on
Tom’s right.

All three wore formal
high-collared capes, and kept their position while the victory parade passed by
below, and the swirling crowds of revellers laughed and cheered and hurled up
their thanks, and their blessings.

‘Lord One-Arm,’’
someone shouted.
‘All hail!’

There were answering cheers.

Tom’s ears were fully healed;
everything sounded closer, more richly textured, than it had before. He grinned
at the mass of people below.

It was a long time before
Corduven touched Tom’s arm and said, ‘Let’s go inside.’

Tom had a silver cane to lean on,
but his wounds were slight, and he limped only a little as they passed through
the open archway, into a richly appointed chamber where Lords and Ladies from
many realms were drinking, snacking on hors d’oeuvres delivered by lev-trays
and drones—not servitors: an informality which some found gauche, while those
with military experience appeared not to mind—and floating couches abounded.
Corduven and Avernon watched, making sure Tom sat down, then fetched drinks for
him and for themselves.

Their solicitude was beginning to
wear him down, but he smiled his thanks all the same.

Next
morning, a clap from outside Tom’s sleeping chamber woke him early, and he
struggled to sit up in the big comfortable bed.

‘What— Oh, come inside. What is
it?’

A servitor entered, swallowed.

‘Brigadier-General d’Ovraison,
sir. Sorry, I know it’s early. But he’s here, in the breakfast lounge. Says he
has something you must see.’

‘I’ll be right out.’

Bare-chested and barefoot,
dressed only in training trews, Tom padded out into the lounge where Corduven
was waiting.

‘Morning, old chap.’ He looked at
Tom’s stump, but without revulsion. ‘I thought we could go on a little trip
this morning.’

‘Fine.’ Tom rubbed his face. He
had slept well, could do with some more. ‘Where are we going?’

‘You’ll see when we get there.’

In
cloaks and heavy tunics, they walked along the boulevard, among the detritus of
the previous night’s parade. In one alcove, two men still in uniform were
singing quietly. Here and there, unconscious figures were slumped, on benches
or against the main wall.