Resolution (103 page)

The climb down had been fast. He picked his way down the convex surface, slowing as he neared the equatorial rim and the slope became almost vertical. Here, a mistake could not be corrected, would spring him out over the drop.

Tom halted his descent at the rim, hooked his hand around a cable and crouched near Axolon’s pale weathered face.

‘Did I do right by you, old friend? Bringing you this instead of death?’

‘I know. What I mean is—’

Tom shook his head, blinked away tears caused by the wind.

‘Then will you help me now?’

After a moment, Tom nodded, and swung himself to one side. Then he began to descend further, on the underside: a convex overhang, and he a tiny insect on the vast stone globe, using counterpressure against the tug of gravity.

Some five metres below Axolon’s head, he stopped.

‘Here, I think.’

Then he turned to face outwards as cables that had once formed a cyborg’s sinews wrapped themselves around his torso, his three limbs, and splayed him against the terraformer sphere.

Crucified him.

‘Yes.’

Pain caught his breath. Cold slipstream rushed past.

Now.

Tom opened himself up to the visions.

And Saw.

The Lady cries as the bronze talon slides closer and above the lake the edelaces wait to drop while the great hall stands empty and glassbirds sing where none is left to hear and flames lick across the abandoned warehouse as hemp catches fire and smoke blackens and in the church they are praying without seeing the doubt that lurks behind the priestess’s eyes or the empty tunnel empty hall empty boulevard empty lake and all the empty empty empty realms and that is just the start.

Tom howled into the wind.

Face like paper as the old woman prays over her husband stroking the forehead but the eyes unmoving and the resonance catches and they overlap in their thousands all those mourning widows with their new-fallen men but they could have been Absorbed moving in their mindless armies in steady enthralled marching rhythm through corridors that once formed their homes where the ruined babies lie unmourned and none to taste the stench that hangs in the silent boulevard or the quiet family home where the stocky man holds his children to his chest and stares at the faded hanging and waits.

It was not enough.

How can you See an entire world and every person in it?

Even components of the greater whole must eat but their nutritional intake is balanced only chemically as in the mess a thousand Absorbed individuals in scarlet uniform eat fresh slop with synchronized raising and lowering of a thousand spoons while in the destroyed tunnel a family crawls through the gap left by the rubble in their search for food and a ciliate feasts upon a fallen Lord and a Lady gasps as the noose
—

Tom. I’m with you.

—
tightens around her neck and the spatter of urine on tiles below as her body jerks but her spirit is free and her chief of security finds her just in time to turn his graser upon himself before black flames push the air apart while in the Aqua Hall the old councilman with the bandaged eye doles out careful rations of
—

I can help the search.

—
water to the queuing broken men and women except that at the door a big man with a livid scar holds a curved knife at the ready
—

Focus there.

—
and wipes a stain from the blade and straight blade in its sheath and another and a needle-like stiletto lies in her lap ready for anything like a whistling glassbird the scimitar whistles as the cycle-eunuch swings and the Dragoon’s sabre and his comrade’s lance
—

Weapons. Resonate on weapons.

—
and the endless shining array of weapon upon weapon upon weapon and the steady grip and the shaven head saying to the wounded man that everything will be fine as he washes the wound and applies the healing gel
and Tom knows Brino’s voice and the olive features of the man who helps him and that is something.

You’ve found him!

Both.

The agony was unbearable.

I want both of them.

Struggling to maintain the vision.

Hang on, Tom.

Blue fire exploding all around.

Come on.

Blue nova.

It’s happening.

Try ...

Something snapped in the air.

Got them.

A link tunnelled through realspace.

Tom’s crucified form was on Axolon Array but it also hung in the weapons shop deep below ground where Brino and the Pilot, Janis deVries, were treating the wounded. Janis wore contacts, as he had when he visited Tom on the day of his wedding.

‘I need your help.’
Tom’s words split the air like sapphire flames.

‘What?’ Janis deVries rose quickly.

‘To contact Labyrinth. Someone in the Admiralty Council.’

Perhaps the term was outmoded, but Janis would know what he meant.

I’m still with you, Tom.

‘I can’t—’ Janis looked at Brino.

‘You ought to help, Pilot,’ said Brino. ‘That’s my opinion.’

Those wounded who were conscious were moaning in fear, but Brino gestured and black hangings slid into place, deadening sound: forming a space where only he and the Pilot and the floating apparition that was Tom Corcorigan appeared to exist.

‘I was looking for Brino,’
said Tom.
‘But truly, I need a Pilot.’

‘I’m supposed to observe. Not fight.’

‘Can you open a comms channel inside mu-space? To Labyrinth?’

‘I won’t ask how you know of that place. I can, but... Not from here.’

‘Take me with you.’

‘You mean ... ?’

‘
Go to your ship, and I will follow as I am.’

Janis smiled grimly.

‘Follow, then. If you can.’

The floor rotated and a shaft opened beneath his feet.

‘With me.’

Janis dropped.

Tom followed.

The ship was submerged in molten magma that boiled red and yellow below the habitable strata. Janis slid through an impermeable shaft while Tom followed.

The Grey Shadows. Of course.

It was Pilots who had formed that centuries-old organization, though few of its members would be aware of it.

Then Janis was inside the control cabin of his vessel and the hatch was sealing shut. He stared at the crucified apparition floating beside him.

It hurts.

Tom felt the stone terraformer breaking his back and the cold wind tearing at his skin even as he felt the heat inside this cabin. He was in both places; he was in neither.

It is agony.

He was in a Pilot’s ship, a thing that he had dreamed of.

Hurts
—

I know. I’m here, Tom.

Janis was opening something like - yet unlike - a holodisplay, swirling with perspectives no human mind could grasp.

‘Your ship can exit into mu-space from here,’
said Tom.

‘Yes.’ Janis looked at him. ‘How did you know that?’

Tom remembered the old tale, and the empty hangar in a spaceport the morning after Kian McNamara disappeared.

‘Lucky guess. Can you hang there, without movement?’

‘Relative to insertion? Does that mean you’ll be able to tunnel through the event barrier, if I hold steady? To enter mu-space with me, from ... wherever you are now?’

‘I think so.’

 
‘Then here goes.’