Resolution (43 page)

Ten minutes later, Tom re-entered the conference chamber. He was half-expecting Chaos and shouting. Instead, the atmosphere was silent, but charged with adrenaline. Fear and anger pulsed in the air.

‘We can’t say yes or no,’ said Trevalkin.

‘Then I suggest you—’

‘Because it’s not our choice. There is someone else’ - Trevalkin’s features were unreadable - ‘you have to see. Alone.’

‘No.’ Doria was standing. ‘My Lord Corcorigan travels nowhere without—’

‘It’s all right.’ Tom looked at Trevalkin. ‘This time, we trust each other, or nothing can save us.’

Trevalkin stared back, then nodded.

‘Fate help us all,’ he said.

~ * ~

27

NULAPEIRON AD 3426

Tom travelled almost alone, in a slugtrain which slid surprisingly fast through utilitarian tunnels fashioned beneath the ocean floor. For a while, Tom stood at the rear carriage’s end panel, looking out at the slime trail which glistened then faded.

He returned to his side-facing bench seat, and sat down opposite a blue-robed man whose white hair had been teased into short spikes. Tom looked up. Droplets of moisture beaded the carriage ceiling.

‘Just condensation, my son.’ The man was a priest. ‘We’re safe from the ocean overhead, Fate willing.’

‘Thank you,’ said Tom.

The small priest pulled out a holobreviary, and bent forward, muttering prayers.

As the train entered a series of switchbacks, Tom clutched his armrest. The priest continued his orison without pause, swaying in his seat. Then the train straightened out, and Tom became aware that the air was warmer than it had been, almost stifling.

He leaned back and closed his eyes.

As the carriage rocked, Tom slipped into a dream.

It is a long, concave-walled laboratory furnished in black and dark grey where strange shapes swirl: peripheral, subliminal... Not quite there.

The chamber is - and yet is not - one that Tom knows: located deep in the interior of Axolon Array. It is a lab where the best researchers Tom could recruit work hard to decipher time’s true nature. Yet this place is subtly different, distorted ... Just how, Tom cannot tell.

He stands on the solid jet floor, and the air is sharp in his lungs. At the same time he is disembodied, incorporeal. Tom cannot move; yet he feels calm and liberated.

In the chamber’s centre, blue lightning dances. It tears the air apart but the electric dance of energy does not stop. One moment, it sounds like a tsunami crashing upon a shattered shore; the next, the sound is a gentle shush of white noise and distant breakers.

It is cold. It is hot.

Sweat springs out upon Tom’s skin. Or perhaps he is not here at
—

Sapphire lightning.

At the centre of the chamber, a floating figure screams. The trapped Pilot? But that was on the hellworld known as
—

No.

The figure is Tom Corcorigan.

Not me.

The floating man waves his arms in supplication - his two arms - and then the blue fire grows brighter and the world lurches - splits - this Tom waves his
one
arm - yelling out his agony to anyone there - but the Tom who observes is frozen by the knowledge that this suffering is self-inflicted. This Tom had two arms, but severed one.

A trial of pain.

By which he will regain Elva and defeat the
—

No.

None of it makes sense.

His eyelids half-opened, to the bright swaying carriage and the nodding priest who muttered, ‘Auguries like the tide,’ amid the overpowering warmth.

Sleep welcomed him back.

As Tom Corcorigan watches, the split occurs.

Time without time, attoseconds or aeons, the duration of an electron jump or a red giant’s birth and death ... He suffers, the Tom who is trapped, for an unknown time, until a brilliant nova-burst, electric blue, whose flash obscures the laboratory.

When it has passed, a figure lies at the foot of the wall, and groans. Slowly, as a disembodied Tom watches, the bruised Tom Corcorigan pulls himself to his feet.

‘I guess it worked.’

The Tom who observes aches to speak:
Are you addressing me?

‘I guess it did.’

The voice comes from behind - no!
-
then
another
Tom Corcorigan faces the one who looked in pain. They wear identical cloaks, each with a whitemetal poignard tagged at the hip.

‘The one nearer the drop-exit
—’

‘—
gets Elva. That’ll be me. And you
—’

‘—
will see another universe.’

‘Destiny go with you, my brother.’

‘Destiny.’

The two Tom Corcorigans leave by different exits, each heading towards his own Fate, tricking the Destiny which thought just one path could occur.

Is that what I must do?
the Tom who observes can only wonder.
Do I harness the trick of parallel time?

A scraping sound brings all his senses whirling round to bear on one spot: a shadowed alcove behind a buttress.

‘I wonder why,’ says the third Tom Corcorigan (not counting the one who observes), ‘everyone assumes a
bilateral
symmetry. Even me.
’

The smile which twists his face is lupine: a predator with prey in sight.

What? There’s always another alternative?

The new Tom, too, gathers his cloak around himself, checks his weapons, walks from the lab chamber, is gone.

And the dreamer who observes ...

...
finally woke up.

What have I just seen?

In an empty carriage.

Bulky, blue-skinned figures were waiting at the landing platform. They were fighting Kobolds, kin to the greystone warriors, likewise melding flesh and living stone so deeply that a simple boundary could no longer be drawn. Oil-slick light slid across their hardened craggy forms as they snapped to attention.