Context (19 page)

Silver
bubbles floated past him as he dreamed.

My Lord ...
Resonance of almost-words, beyond
the emerald sea. Warm languor. Friendly femtocytes, gentle as kisses, within
his wounds.

‘Lord Corcorigan.’ Slipping away.
Chill air, waking him. ‘Welcome back.’

Tom coughed, sat upright in the
tank as green gel sloughed off.

Xyenquil held out a robe for him.

‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that they’ll
be questioning you again.’

As he helped Tom on with the
robe, he clucked his tongue and added: ‘The new limb, my Lord, is growing
nicely.’

On
a smartnacre chair sat Feldrif, thin and dark. Behind him stood Ralkin
Velsivith, thoughtfully rubbing the amber below his left cheekbone. The ovoid
jewel was the exact same hue as Feldrif s eyes.

The doorshimmer was guarded by
two big men, muscles swollen with testosterone and growth-factor implants, who
stared ahead and said nothing.

‘It just...engulfed him,’ Tom was
saying. ‘The Seer, I mean.’

Velsivith remained silent.

‘Where did it come from?’ Feldrif
s tone was sceptical. ‘Through the chamber wall? Or did it simply appear?’

‘It just —I don’t know.’

Velsivith: ‘And could you
describe this, ah, phenomenon again, please?’

‘Like a vortex. But strange
perspectives ... What do your holologs show?’

Feldrif leaned forward. ‘Why do
you ask that?’

In the previous interrogation,
Feldrif had been the polite one. But this time the others were absent, and Tom
had all along thought that his civility had been a role, ready to be discarded
when the situation called for more direct means of questioning.

‘Because ... Your deepscan must
keep an archive.’

‘And how do you know so much
about our security?’

Tom shook his head, saying
nothing. A pain was beginning to throb over his left eye.

They had already admitted they
had deepscans in the Seer’s chambers, when they had talked to him after Elva’s
death.

Elva, my love...

‘Look.’ Feldrif crossed his arms.
‘You’re in a great deal of trouble, Lord Corcorigan, so I suggest—’

‘Yeah?’ Tom’s near-patrician
accent dropped away, revealing the harsher tones of his childhood in Salis
Core. ‘Or maybe you are, for losing the
resource
you were supposed to be
protecting.’

‘You
dare
—’

‘Great idea.’ Velsivith brought
his hands together in a loud clap. ‘You two fight it out in here, while I try
to find the killers. OK?’

‘Fate.’ Feldrif leaned back in
his chair, amber eyes glaring.

To Tom, Velsivith said: ‘The
security logs show nothing. I mean, completely blank. And that’s no mean trick.’

‘If the prisoner’—Feldrif indicated
Tom—‘was harmless, why did the defence system trap him?’

‘The Seer triggered it to save
me. Kept me out of harm’s way.’

‘Chaos.’ Velsivith cursed.

‘You don’t agree?’ Feldrif looked
almost gleeful.

‘No, I do.’ Velsivith clacked a
fingernail against the amber ovoid in his cheek. ‘That’s the problem.’

Feldrif stared hard at Tom.

Was
the Seer an Oracle?

The question ran through Tom’s
mind, over and over, as his escort—twelve armed troopers—took him back to his
apartments. They left without saying a word.

Were his visions truecasts?

Or merely possibilities?

Elva
said:
‘Boo!’

Tom stumbled backwards, and he
gasped.

‘Did I scare you?’
She gave a wicked grin.
‘Well,
I’m a ghost, so I probably did.’

Tom blinked, trying to focus on
the image.

Oh, Elva.

His heart beat wildly inside his
chest, like a trapped animal fighting to get free.

‘If you‘ve managed to open this,
it means I’m legally dead, according to the local security nets.’
She drifted above the half-opened
black case. ‘...
And I know it’s you, Tom.’
A shrug.
‘Otherwise, this
would be a different sequence, with a less friendly message. Your biosigns have
registered. The less obvious compartments will open for you.’

Tom opened his mouth to speak, then
shut it.

It’s just a recording. No
interaction.

But it seemed he could reach out
and touch her, feel her warm skin—

‘Good luck, my Lord. You’ve
always been the best.’

The holo-Elva winked out of
existence, and Tom turned away with a stifled sob.

It
was a hoplophile’s dream.

Laid out on the bed—on Elva’ s
bed—were the contents of her intricate bag.

No smartweapons, which was good:
defensive femtotech would always detect, and usually counteract, anything which
was too clever. Instead, there were spin-darts and throw-chains; sticky
razor-burrs; toxin-coated spit-needles and snap-blades. A matching pair of
nacre-handled monowhips.

‘Which army were you going to
take on, Elva?’

Tiny ping-bows, currently
disassembled, with exothermic bolts. Shiver-crystals—plus timers—with
hydrofluoric acid cores.

And more.

Spikes: fast-dissolve toxic, and
armour-piercing vibro. Explosive flakes. A nozzle-spray with unknown contents.
A titanium-handled vibroblade. Extensible finger-claws—

‘That one will do.’

Tom picked up the lightweight
vibroblade.

He walked out of Elva’s chamber
without looking back.

Naked,
covered with slick sweat, he knelt, sat back on his heels, eyes squeezed shut
as he prepared himself, tightened his nerves to the highest tension they were
capable of. Remembering the Seer-induced vision, focusing on that future which
must come true:

Elva spinning to face the
troopers who burst in upon her.

The vibroblade was slippery in
his grasp.

Dark-clad figure, spinning kick,
laughing
as he
saves her.

Breathing fast and heavy, as
though he were sprinting, close to the finish.

The
one-armed
man who
saves her.

Crying inside, knowing he had to
do it, to fulfil the Fate he had seen, which he so desperately wanted to make
real.

The one-armed man who
is Tom Corcorigan.