Resolution (11 page)

All the better to destroy you.

Zilwen gestured, and the display rotated and transformed. It showed a white spherical cloud - a hollow sphere - surrounding the world.

‘From space, it doesn’t shine so obviously’ - Zilwen brightened the display further - ‘but it is there, in exactly this configuration.’

‘What
is
there?’

‘The spinpoint field, of course.’ Zilwen glanced at Strostiv, who did not react. ‘What did you think you just observed? The spinpoints we’ve harvested from orbit.’

‘And what,’ asked Tom slowly, ‘is a spinpoint?’

Zilwen was one of those brilliant fools, technically hypercompetent but unable to explain his thoughts, and his mouth worked as he tried to find the words.

Then Tom held up his hand, forestalling him.

‘Fate! You’ve got singularities—’

Strostiv was smiling now.

‘—of negative time. That’s what a spinpoint is: an infinitesimal knot where time is reversed.’

Zilwen nodded. To Strostiv, he said: ‘He got it, fast enough. I’d say he’s able to do the job.’

Strostiv shrugged, smiling at Tom in apology for Zilwen’s manner. But at least Zilwen was not concealing his goals.

‘You want
me
to work for the Collegium?’ Tom stared at them. ‘Are you serious?’

‘It’s the perfect place for your research interests, don’t you think? You have no demesne to rule, and the money must be running out, particularly with the cyborg affair: I know how much those technicians cost.’

‘It’ll be fun.’ Zilwen gazed at him with round, almost childlike eyes. ‘We have top of the range equipment. Absolutely the best.’

Tom remembered another child, with cut-open scalp and the drones removing humanity from the wet, exposed brain.

‘I don’t see ...’ Tom would milk them of information before refusing outright. ‘I still don’t see how you create the spinpoints in the first place. It seems impossible.’

Zilwen frowned.

‘Um ... I thought you realized ...’

‘We’re working on it,’ Strostiv interrupted with a politician’s smoothness. ‘Whether it’s the next year or the next century, we’ll get there. We’re guaranteed success, don’t you see? What could be better than allying yourself to a project
that you already know
will be a winner?’

Even with the logosophical model hanging over the table and the hints contained in Strostiv’s words, it took several long moments for Tom to put the pieces together and blurt out his reaction. ‘My Fate,’ he said. ‘You don’t know how to create spinpoints. You don’t know—’

He was out of his chair and standing now.

‘—because
they haven’t been created yet.’

Waves of silence seemed to crash in the room, and then Strostiv sighed, reclaiming a sense of normality. ‘That’s the nature, I’m afraid, of negative time.’

‘The spinpoints’ origins lie in our future. Our descendants will create them.’

‘Or we will, tomorrow.’ Strostiv raised his hands, palms up. ‘Who can tell?’

‘And you want me to work on this?’

‘Well, of course we can discuss your—’

‘You know so much about the nature of time. Do you understand the word
never?’

Tom kicked his chair aside. It spun across the floor and fell clattering. Then he strode from the chamber breathing hard, not looking back, knowing he might kill someone if he did.

An hour later he was on a lev-platform accompanied by four greystone warriors, skimming through raw, broken tunnels only fitfully lit by glow-fungus. In some, the fungus was sparse or diseased, and therefore the air was bad; they moved through those tunnels at high speed, mainly for Tom’s benefit: it was said that greystone warriors could function for many minutes on end without breathing.

The escort, he assumed, was not for Tom’s protection so much as the Collegium’s: they might wonder what he was capable of doing. (The warriors might, just might, have been assigned to get rid of him, now that he knew the Collegium’s secret. Tom half-hoped they would try; he had an awful lot of anger to purge.)

But then the lev-platform was descending without incident, and the officer was saying in an incongruously soft voice: ‘The Lady Elva is through there, sir.’

A dark opening in the rockface emitted clinks of sound. The technicians must be already working on the Jack.

‘Thank you,’ said Tom, stepping off the platform.

It rose and spun away, then flew back the way it had come.

Tom stepped through the opening.

Elva was there. Tom took in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, releasing his rage, letting it dissipate. One of the technicians, kneeling, glanced up at him, then continued with her work.

On the rough stone wall, the Jack’s ruined half-head turned slightly. Its -
his
- one intact microfaceted eye focused on Tom.

‘You ... came .... back.’

‘I said I would.’

‘Promised... death.
’

Tom had sworn to end the Jack’s agony. ‘I’d rather bring you life.’

Charcoal sprayed across the rock. Remnants of the cyborg’s destroyed torso melded with charred stone, fused into the damaged wall. Any other lifeform would have been obliterated; but tenacity was at the core of a Jack’s programmed being.

‘Axolon?’ said Elva. ‘We need to take you offline now, for a while. All right?’

‘...ess.’

The cyborg’s head drooped as if tired. Tom could not imagine the pain and exhaustion he had undergone.

‘Now.’ The kneeling tech gestured, and the Jack froze still.

‘Whew.’ Elva rubbed her face, then smiled at Tom. ‘It’s going to be a lot of effort just to prise and chip him from the rock, even with micro-cutters. After that... I really don’t know how we’re going to fix him.’

‘But we have to try.’

‘Yes.’ Elva stared at the near-destroyed form. ‘Yes, we do.’

It was hard to imagine Axolon at the height of his power, with hyper-fine senses and weaponry to match a regiment. (Tom had once killed what he thought was a Jack, but in Klivinax Toldrinov terminology that had been a nymph; as a full Jack, Axolon would have been invulnerable in hand-to-hand combat.) It was even harder to imagine a power capable of doing this to Axolon, but that was what the Blight had been: unimaginable.

And its parent Anomaly was greater and darker by far.

Then Elva was handing Tom a crystal - the ordinary kind - saying: ‘A courier left this, an hour ago. It’s DNA-sealed, for your eyes only.’

‘Well’ - Tom thumbed it on - ‘I’ve no secrets from you, dear.’

But the lightness dropped from his tone as he read the message. All its meaning was wrapped up in two, concise triconic ideograms:

Please come immediately. It concerns Corduven
.
The sharp-edged configuration conveyed this:
Fully urgent.

And it was signed:

Lady V’Delikona.

Elva placed her hand atop Tom’s.

‘You can go in the morning. I’ll keep the work going here. Your absence won’t slow things down.’

‘I can always postpone—’

‘It says
most urgent,
Tom, and she’s never asked anything of you before.’

‘Perhaps ...’ He blew out a breath. ‘Perhaps I should go right now.’

‘In the morning, when you’ve rested. Our tent’s down that way. You can go freshen up, while I make your travel arrangements.’

‘We can’t afford—’

‘Do what I say.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And I’ll be with you in a minute.’

‘I ... Thank you, darling.’

‘Any time, my love.’

Next morning, Tom left at dawnshift, in an arachnargos less impressive than the one which had brought them here, but functional. The pilots offered to let him ride up front, but Tom preferred to sit in the thoracic hold, alone.

There, he reached inside his tunic, and drew out the metal stallion talisman which his father had made, a lifetime before. His fingers formed the same old control gesture, and the solid metal clove apart, revealing the crystal hidden in its hollow core.

It was the crystal which Brino had given him, replacement to the one which had been Tom’s companion over the years, with its teaching puzzles and tales of the first Pilots. For a long time, Tom held it in his palm, smiling with anticipation, before inserting it into his holopad.

Then he activated it in full sensory mode, and sank inside the tale.