Context (26 page)

He fell.

Yellow fluorescence burst in his
eyes, disintegrating the Tom-awareness. But still he crawled ...and this time
the thought pieces coalesced, re-forming, and though it was reflex which caused
him to grab a rust-streaked pillar and haul himself upright, it was Tom
Corcorigan again who stood there, swaying on his torn, painful feet.

Pain.

Narrow maintenance tunnel: round
entrance at waist height, wide enough to crawl through.

Use the pain.

Forced himself inside.

He moved on hand and knees, head
rocking with every push forward, trying not to think of the grime infecting his
sticky wounds. Just pushing—

Stop.

Almost toppled into space.

Hand clawing into a gap between
blackened stones, he hung on at the tunnel’s end, leaned forward. A transverse
tunnel, wide but ill-lit, ran past below.

Orange glowglobes circled over
cracked plinths on which the remains of shattered statues stood. The women who
waited there were resigned or sad, anger and resentment buried by fatigue and
pragmatism: the need to attract business. Scant rags, barely concealing
too-thin bodies. Narrow shoulders hunched against the cold.

Three men in rough surcoats
walked past, but it was nearly dawnshift and they did not even glance at the
women who offered themselves.

‘Time’—an older woman with a
scarred face—‘we gave it up for the night’

‘I only give it up for credit,
dearie.’

The other women were too tired to
laugh. One tugged off her earrings, cheap imitation amber which for a moment
brought Ralkin Velsivith to mind.

Just how bright is he?

They would have sealed off the
interrogation levels, and there were so few ways out—could they follow him
here?

Perhaps it was that thought which
cost him his balance, as he leaned too far over the edge and tried to crimp his
fingers on a worn gargoyle’s head, but too late.

Falling, surrendering at last to
gravity, to Fate ...

Flagstones rose up to smash him.

Swaying,
the ceiling, where the fluorofungus sprawled, diseased and sickly looking.

Women. Carrying him.

Gentle hands.

‘My place ...’ Her voice came
from a vast distance, though she spoke right by his ear.

Laid him down, on a rough sacking
bed.

‘... to the Coders.’

‘Later.’

He lay back, gasping, sliding in
and out of consciousness, while rake-thin women with bitter faces and foul mouths
and roughened skin and every reason to hate and despise the male gender tended
him as carefully as they might a precious newborn child.

‘...
with us, don’t worry.’

‘He was in a bad way.’

‘Doesn’t look too ... Is he
awake?’

Sliding away from the world as
they lifted him, gently, and laid him down onto something soft. Grey stone
ceiling, drifting past above.

‘Here, by the autodoc.’

‘And lift...’

Awoke
naked on a pallet. A—thing—was sitting on his bare chest.

‘Ah-get off!’

Black, fist-sized. Its two feet
felt like wet rubber; its single yellow eye blinked slowly, once, then stared.
Tom raised his hand to swipe it away.

‘Don’t harm them.’ A woman’s
voice, from an archway to his right.

Them?

He raised himself up—the froggly
on his chest hopped lower down his stomach, eye wide open—and saw four more of
the little things huddled together between his feet.

‘You frightened them.’ The woman—white
skin, grey dreadlocks—kept her voice low. ‘They were helping you.’

A pink sheet covered the lower
half of Tom’s body, preserving his modesty.

‘Sorry, fellows.’ Tom reached out
his hand. ‘Hey ...’

The nearest froggly jumped into
reach.

Tom stroked its round head/body,
and the yellow eye squeezed shut with pleasure.

‘Look at your stomach.’ The woman,
dressed in a pale grey tabard, pointed.

Glistening, the skin.

‘What the Chaos?’ Then, as the
froggly’s eye snapped open: ‘OK, little fellow. It’s all right.’

‘Their exudate,’ said the woman, ‘has
healed your wound.’

Tom shook his head, looking down
at the other four frog-glies watching from the bottom of the pallet.

‘Not bad, little ones. I didn’t
realize you work for a living.’

‘They like you. And the healing’s
proceeded fast, too. Somehow’—with a brief smile—‘the two usually go together.’

‘Oh.’ Tom did not know how to
answer that. ‘Er, thank you.’

‘It’s our duty.’

Her grey tabard was more
sumptuous than it first appeared: gloss and matt cells, laid grid-wise,
shifting colour as Tom watched. A second later, the pattern shifted once more:
an ecology of cellular automata playing out their life-cycles within the woman’s
garment.

A row of tiny ruby stars across
her forehead.

‘You’re a—’

‘Holy Coder, yes.’ A wry upturned
grin, and she shook her dreadlocks: tiny woven-in silver skeletons jangled. ‘That’s
what they call us.’

Church of the Incompressible
Algorithm.

Like his interrogator, Muldavika,
in the Aurineate Grand’aume.

But this one was armed with no
more than a medical delta-inducer, and she was pointing it at him.

‘Sleep,’ she said, and the world
went away.

‘Looks
fit enough, beneath the injuries.’

‘There’s only one muscle’—a man’s
voice, somewhat high-pitched; educated but not patrician—‘you need to worry
about keeping active.’

‘That’s not muscle, that’s
blood-flow. Oh ...you mean the heart.’

‘I’ll say.’

‘Ha! As though you were
interested.’

In his sleep, Tom smiled.

How
bright is Velsivith?

Would he have connected the
flesh-sphere incident on the loading platform with Tom’s escape?

Tom jerked awake. He was on the
pallet, but clothed in grey: trews and jerkin, the empty left sleeve tucked in.
And his stallion talisman formed a small comforting lump on his chest. He
touched it through the cloth.

But it was not Father’s memory
which sprang to mind.

Velsivith.

Would Grand’aume Security track
him to this place? He was surely out of their realm.