Context (60 page)

That
night he dreamed of Paradox.

At first it was true memory: of
the white neko-kitten, mother killed by cruel youths, living wild. Of sneaking
from the Ragged School with Zhao-ji, taking the poor thing fish-bloc. The tiny
buzz as the small body purred, little pink tongue lapping up food.

Or later, in a gilded travelling
cage, in comfort like a Lord, tended to by Zhao-ji’s officers ...

But then those sea-green eyes
became impossibly huge...

‘
Why have you stopped looking
for me, Tom?’

...
became grey ...

‘Don’t you love me?’

...
were Elva’s eyes.

‘I—’

He snapped awake, reaching into
darkness.

It
was a day of recovery-prayer—a solo run, light-paced—but he departed from the
expected route, into a deserted cavern he knew was there, and bent himself to a
different kind of devotion.

For the Way.

Slowly, crouching low, he threw a
palm-strike against empty air; followed with a slow spin: reverse elbow to an
imaginary face. Claw, hammer-strike.

Faster.

Knee-strike, moving smoothly now,
low kick, drop to the gravelly ground, fire a knife-hand upwards, targeting a
groin...

No, faster.

Leaped high: a spinning kick.
Landed in the midst of invisible enemies, let rip the killing blows, the
implacable dance of death.

Faster.

Cramps
and vomiting came that night, but he hid the symptoms from his brother monks. A
few stares followed him the next morning, as he left for his devotions.

Do I not emanate a holy glow?

But he was no better than his
brothers.

Dead marmie floating...

No better.

On black waters, like Elva’s
death cocoon.

Edelaces dropped in his memory;
barriers fell in his mind.

‘After tomorrow’s devotions,’
Thrumik told him on his return, ‘you’re to attend Penitents’ Chapel.’

‘Thank you, my brother.’

It was no punishment, despite the
name, but an honour to pray in the tiny chapel filled with deepscan fields and
physio-tropic processors. A place for receiving guidance.

The strongest guidance.

For the sake of the Way.

No-one
stopped him when he went to run that night.

But it was a short-lived
devotion, as he left the prayer-route, slowing to a walk, and made his way
among the darker entertainment tunnels until he found the tavern he sought.

The holo still flapped virtual
wings above the entrance, but there was no housecarl on guard at the House Of
The Golden Moth.

Inside, the clamour lessened only
slightly at the sight of a monk in the doorway; a confused-looking serving maid
took him quickly through the main tavern, and sat him down in a quiet, low-lit
chamber at the rear.

Shortly afterwards, the owner—Master
Lochlen, Tom recalled—came inside, sat down opposite Tom, laying his hands flat
on the black gloss tabletop.

‘What can I do for you, brother?’

Strange patterns began to spark
and swirl inside the tabletop.

‘I’m looking for Kraiv. I—’

Beguiling patterns.

Calling to me.

Tom wrenched his gaze away, and
looked at Lochlen.

‘How very interesting, that you
can resist . . .’ A smile creased Lochlen’s lean face, and he made a control
gesture. ‘But Kraiv and Draquelle have left.’

The patterns faded, were gone.

‘I need ...’ Tom turned away,
blinking tears.

‘Stokhastikos.’
Lochlen had been tugging his
goatee in thought; suddenly he looked at Tom’s shoulder, then up at Tom’s face.
‘I should’ve known—’

‘I’m sorry.’ Tom began to rise. ‘It
was wrong of me to come here.’

Thrumik’s words:
you’re to
attend Penitents’ Chapel.
That would sort out his confusion.

‘No, my—’ Lochlen stopped, then
continued. ‘I can find out which way they went. I know something of their
purpose. Can you come back tomorrow?’

After Penitents’ Chapel?

‘Perhaps they...’ Tom frowned,
trying to think. ‘Perhaps they went home, to the Hong.’

‘The Bronlah Hong?’ Lochlen was
looking at him strangely. ‘In the Bilyarck Gébeet?’

‘Yes, that’s—’

‘The last place they’d go. Haven’t
you heard?’

Tom stared at his features, not
quite processing the words.

‘It fell,’ continued Lochlen, ‘to
the Blight. That whole sector—’

Words like fading echoes, like
roof-fall in distant caverns, crashing down where no-one waited to hear.

I must get back.

‘—is Dark Fire territory now.’

For
the sake of the Way.

Keeping that mantra in his mind,
making
use
of the deepest principle of his conditioning.

The Way...

In the darkest, quietest hours,
Tom slipped from his cell, and returned to the kitchen-lab once more.

~ * ~

32

NULAPEIRON
AD 3420

Tom
was no logotrope designer.

He lay on his mat, alone in his
cell, writhing beneath the tortured images—surreal, bloody, sexual, morbid—which
tore at him, dragged him through a place that was neither sleep nor waking but
more akin to a blistering, morphing, confused and agonizing hell.

And snapped awake, wide-eyed and
drenched with sweat.

Outside, the sound of running
footsteps.