Context (21 page)

It was a tentative invitation:
there was a noticeable gap between their table and the others. Even hardened
police officers had other things to talk about over lunch besides the ironic
and often undignified ways in which ordinary human beings meet their end.

‘Sure.’ Ro carried her tray over,
and took a vacant chair between Hannah and the large man who’d been describing
his Tunisian trip. ‘Is that fried manta you’re eating?’ Determined to put her
grief aside.

‘Yep.’ The man patted his belly. ‘Lots
of locals won’t eat seafood, but I love it.’

‘You know that rays, if they don’t
feel too good,’ said Ro, ‘regurgitate their own stomachs.’

‘What?’

‘Sure. Their stomachs, turned
inside out, dangle from their mouths, and they rinse them off. Then they suck ‘em
back in.’

‘Gross.’ One of the other techs
nodded in approval. ‘I like it’

‘And more efficient than simply
vom—’

Sergeant Arrowsmith was standing
by the table: a looming, bulky figure. He stared down, with neither comment nor
judgement in his gaze.

‘I see that you’ve made some
friends.’

<ENDS>>

~ * ~

13

NULAPEIRON
AD 3418

It
burned: the missing left arm. Fire traced the nonexistent nerves, delivered
sensations of cramp-knotted muscles. An acidic itching of skin which could
never be scratched.

Elva.

Wrapped in a heavy cape and
leaning on a cane, he stood at the black lake’s edge. Stared into its
night-dark depths. Fragments of her corpse would have settled on the bottom:
the parts which had escaped digestion by teloworms. Microscopic life would
already have gone to work on those tiny remains; one way or another, she was
wholly absorbed into the local ecosystem.

And yet he had seen a future in
which he rescued her. In which a one-armed Tom Corcorigan saved the woman he
loved; and he believed in that vision strongly enough to have shorn off his
regrowing left arm.

Giggling, high voices.

Tom looked up. A small group of adults
and children, maybe two families on an outing, settled further along by the
lake, placed unopened picnic parcels on the broken grey stones.

So what do I do now?

Black-clad figure, leaping into
the chamber, where soldiers threaten Elva
...

In the vision which the Seer had
granted him, there were tiny differences in Elva’s appearance, but she looked
like the woman he had grown to love. If that body had belonged to a twin or to
a clone, then life experiences would account for the changes; and the physical
duplication would mean that her personality would be less altered by the
transfer.

Though what effect the experience
of deliberate suicide might have upon a person, before awakening in a sister’s
body, knowing that you had caused the sudden and permanent erasure of that body’s
original personality ...Tom blinked, aware of his ignorance, his only certainty
an absolute determination to find her.

But the vision’s remembered
sequence gave no hint as to her location in space, or the time when those events
occurred.

He turned away from the lake, a
strange sound catching in his throat, and the playing children froze, then
looked to their parents for support, knowing that their mothers and fathers
were omniscient and strong, ensuring their security, defining their entire
childhood worlds forever.

A
vassal, barefoot and carrying a small bundle, entered the cavern. She descended
the scree slope, stopped at the water’s edge and genuflected.

‘What do you want?’ Tom gestured
for her to stand.

‘My Lord.’

She placed the fabric-wrapped
bundle on the stones.

‘What—?’

But she was already leaving.
Stones scrunched beneath her bare feet as she made her way upslope.

Tom used his cane’s tip carefully
to pull back the fabric. Inside lay a bluemetal poignard.

Fate...

Awkwardly, he picked it up
between thumb and forefinger while keeping hold of the cane. At the hilt’s end,
an archaic flatscript insignia which he recognized: kappa and alpha entwined,
sign of the strange vanished weapons suppliers known as Kilware Associates.

Its balance was perfect. Save for
the colour, and the hallmark, the poignard was twin to one Tom had once owned.

Scarlet blood across a blue/white
floor...

The one he had used to kill the
Oracle Gérard d’Ovraison.

His
fitness increased by geometric progression.

There was a long gallery with
angular, intricately carved pillars set every ten metres, and he used them as
markers. Early in the morning, with the gallery almost deserted, eerily lit by
floating half-power glowclusters, he jogged slowly along the central
blue-carpeted aisle, from the beginning to the second set of pillars, and
retraced his steps, ignoring the pain.

He was puffing, totally winded.

But the next day he jogged
faster, and pushed himself all the way to the fourth pillar. On the third day,
he made it to the eighth and back.

He
spent most of his time studying—across a range of subjects whose choice seemed
random—inside his expensive apartment. Soon, he would have to move out, or
start earning credit.

But Elva had dealt with the
finances, and he wanted to put off that particular pain as long as possible.

Outside, though, when he walked
the boulevards, he noticed a new tension in the air. Occasionally, random
brittle laughter rang out from a daistral house, before dying abruptly, cut off
too soon. While here and there, among the crowds, Tom saw teams of
scarlet-caped men and women in unfamiliar grey uniforms, all with an odd
intensity of gaze.

And their capes’ hue was
familiar: the same shade as the cravats of the unnaturally synchronized team
who had caught the thief, and the clothing of the mysterious children by the
black lake in which Elva had been buried.

Once, a passing age-bent woman
muttered something about
‘Chaos-damned Blight’,
but she broke off when
she noticed Tom’s regard, tugging her shawl up around her straggling white
locks, and shuffled away into a side runnel. By the time he had decided to
follow and question her, she was gone.

There were news pillars, whose
intricate embellished tricons were on display at major intersections, and
according to them the Aurineate Grand’aume’s prosperity was at an all-time
high, while social events were flourishing and the normally low crime rate had
dropped to zero.

During one of those walks, he
thought he saw a black-cowled figure watching him. But when he approached,
Nirilya turned away, and left.

He could have run after her, or
made his way to her home, but instead he returned to his own apartment, and
resumed his logosophical studies. Looking for any hint or clue which might lead
him to the location of that vision which he hoped was not a dream.