Resolution (3 page)

In some circles, Tom was known as The Oracle Killer.

‘The Jack may be dead,’ said Elva, guessing that Tom was thinking of the Collegium.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

The blasted, ruined cyborg, its remains welded into a wall by the force of the explosion which had burned its body apart, should have died long before. Tenacity had been programmed into it at the deepest cellular levels.

When Tom was lost, searching for Elva in the Collegium corridors after Blight-subsumed soldiers had captured her, it was the near-dead Jack which had sniffed the air - his preternatural senses still functioning - and struggled to produce a whisper, telling Tom which direction to follow. Without the Jack, Tom would not have found Elva.

‘It’s almost as if he can’t die,’ added Tom. ‘And we owe him everything.’

Elva touched his arm. ‘I owe him much, from what you say. But you’re the one who rescued me.’

‘That’s because I love you, Lady Elva Corcorigan.’

‘Ah, my Lord. I love you.’ She stopped before a fabric store, looked Tom in the eyes, then turned him to face a daistral shop where a flock of singing glassbirds was hovering. ‘And because I want you to
keep
loving me, I suggest you go and drink some daistral while I look around in here. All right?’

‘I don’t mind—’

‘You lie beautifully, as a trained logosopher should. Now go and drink some daistral.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And whatever I buy, tell me later that you love it.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Good. Now go.’

Tom sat at a hexagonal quartz table, sipping whiganberry daistral with cream on top. Nearby, two Ladies drank from floating lev-cups and watched their children playing together. Towards the rear, an ancient noble couple - the Lord so feeble that he moved within an exoskeleton’s support - shuffled towards a table which had been readied for them by a vassal who greeted them by name as well as rank.

It was over half an hour before Elva turned up smiling, followed by a long-haired servitor carrying a handful of black velvet bags.

‘The mall-master wouldn’t let me carry my own goods.’

‘Well, of course not,’ said Tom. As Elva sat, Tom dug inside his waistband for cred-slivers, but the servitor shook his head.

‘Sorry, sir,’ he muttered. ‘Master Zagrix says as how we shouldn’t accept tips, see...’ A miserable expression caused his spotted face to droop.

‘Thanks for your help, young Wiklan.’ Elva took the bags from him; for a moment, he stared at her in awe. ‘That’ll be all, thank you.’

‘Er, yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.’

Wiklan bobbed a bow, then turned and moved away at a kind of fast shuffle, as though he had grown too fast into his body to be coordinated.

‘Those aren’t bolts of fabric,’ Tom pointed out, as Elva opened the first of the velvet bags.

‘No, I found a much more interesting place.’ Mischief danced in her grey eyes. ‘Wait till you see.’ She drew out a set of shining brass knucks. They clacked as she placed them on the quartz table. ‘See, they’ve got retractable spikes. Aren’t they cute?’

‘You found a weapons shop.’

‘Could be. Look here ... This is a crystal gun, and the needles are almost invisible. Got a range of loads: that one’s incendiary, then neurotoxin, and a nasty little smartvirus that—’

‘You’re an obsessive hoplophile, dearest Elva.’

‘Tom, you say the sweetest things. And look…’

She drew out a whitemetal poignard and placed it carefully on the quartz. Then she spun the weapon around, so that Tom could see the pommel and the insignia inscribed upon it: two archaic characters, kappa and alpha, intertwined.

‘Where did you—?’

‘Kilware Associates’ - her smile was cute enough to break Tom’s heart - ‘are back.’

One of the things that had made Elva such a good security chief - of Corcorigan Demesne - had been her eidetic memory. She remembered Tom once giving an order to find a weapons store called Kilware Associates. That search had been unsuccessful; but when she saw the golden insignia on the store today, she had remembered everything.

Now, as they walked along creamy cathedral-high halls towards the store, Tom told her for the first time of his dealings with Kilware Associates.

‘I think they may be observers,’ he said, ‘under Pilots’ orders.’

‘Pilots!’

Tom had been fourteen Standard Years old when he had met his first Pilot: the woman who had given him her log-crystal shortly before the militia caught up with her and their graser beams torc her apart. Tom still forgot that, for most people, Pilots existed only as figures out of legend, dangerous folk who traversed the fractal wilds of mu-space, carrying ordinary humans in their ships as unconscious cargo. Yet how else could Terran emigrants have colonized Nulapeiron, some twelve hundred Standard Years before?

‘I suspect,’ said Tom, ‘that Pilots maintain an intelligence service, and that Kilware Associates are part of it. At any rate, when I entered one of their shops, a man called Brino caused some kind of tacware to be embedded in my nervous system.’

‘Without your approval, you mean?’

‘Or knowledge, at first. It was quite useful for hand-to-hand conflict: it highlighted vital targets in red, made me see attackers as a mass of points to strike. But the ‘ware is long gone ...’

Tom’s two lost years as an alcoholic derelict, after he had fled a revolution which seemed no better than the corrupt regimes it sought to replace, had destroyed all traces of the implanted mindware. Perhaps some psychological carry-over had occurred: when Tom now practised his fighting skills, he still focused on places to hit, not on his opponents’ actions.

‘The day of our wedding,’ Tom added, ‘a stranger called to see me. A Pilot. He said his name was Janis deVries, and that the Pilot I met all those years ago was his mother. And he gave me a dagger’ - he pointed at the whitemetal poignard - ‘just like that. It’s in our luggage.’

Elva had known none of this. ‘What else did he say?’

‘Only that we’d be meeting up again. Nothing more.’

Tom and Elva halted before a wide storefront draped with black velvet curtains and banners, behind which jet-black opaque windows stood. A discreet golden kappa-and-alpha logo glinted by the doorway.

‘I guess,’ said Elva, ‘we should say hello.’

The store’s interior was hushed. It was a place of grey shadows and black drapes, with crystal-clear points of light illuminating display cases where polished weapons shone. From the rear, a lean, shaven-headed man walked towards them. He wore a goatee; last time Tom had seen him, he had been clean-shaven.

‘It was a woman called Yeira,’ murmured Elva, ‘who served me earlier.’

‘Right,’ said Tom. ‘And this is Brino, that I told you about.’

Brino stopped and bowed, with a gymnast’s - or a master-fighter’s -litheness.

‘My Lord and Lady Corcorigan. So good to see you.’

A short woman stepped out from behind a sword rack. ‘My Lord.’ She bobbed a curtsy, then said to Elva: ‘Nice to see you again so soon, my Lady.’

‘Hello, Yeira.’

Yeira turned to Brino and said: ‘You were right. They
were
followed. Seven watchers are stationed outside. Deepscan shows they’re armed.’

Tom looked at Elva.

‘We noticed nothing.’

‘And they’re not yours?’ Brino gestured, and a string of cubic holo images hung in the air before him. Inside each, an impassive man was shown. ‘My guess would be an Action League. They’re not local, anyway.’

Elva’s hand went to the graser pistol tagged to her hip. ‘Who are they?’

Tom said: ‘What’s an Action League?’

With a two-handed control gesture, Brino caused a black membrane to slide down across the doorway and vitrify into hardness. ‘We’re protected now.’ He made a further series of gestures, then stopped. ‘My Lord, you’ve heard of the Circulus Fidus.’

‘Reactionary think-tank,’ Tom said, thinking:
And that bastard A‘Dekal tried to recruit me to their cause.
‘Are you saying the Circulus has become militant?’

‘Not exactly. Action Leagues are affiliated to the Circulus, and they’re springing up in every sector. Strategically, their thinking is sound. With the war over, they have to re-establish the old regimes quickly, before realms start experimenting with new forms of government. It’s a chance for change, or to knuckle down beneath the same old iron fist.’

‘Your words could be interpreted as treason.’

‘Perhaps ... Would you drag me before Duke Kalshuna, my Lord?’

Tom had to smile at that. ‘Maybe not.’

Inside each of the seven holo images, the men suddenly stiffened, and their eyes rolled up. They slumped to the floor.

‘Don’t worry.’ Yeira checked a scan display. ‘They’re unharmed. A bit of a migraine when they wake up, is all. They’ll be out for an hour. Oh, and ... they’re wearing eyebranes with high-zoom capability: it’s no wonder you didn’t spot them. They’d have hung well back.’