Resolution (44 page)

‘Where’s the ... ?’ Tom hitched his cloak tighter against the chill which swept across the platform, and looked back at the slugtrain. ‘There was an old priest aboard with me. Where is he now?’

The officer appeared to speak into his clenched stone fist. Then: ‘There was no-one else aboard. The train has made no stops since picking you up.’

‘I don’t—’ Tom shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

Strange eyes regarded him. Tom remembered the myth: that Kobolds could submerge themselves inside solid rock, move through it as if through viscous water.

‘Welcome to Surturheim, Lord Corcorigan.’

Beneath Tom, the platform glowed orange, started to melt. He began to sink.

‘Where am I—?’

‘To see the Lady.’

The Kobolds made a strange gesture of respect, fists to forehead, then disappeared from sight as Tom sank into glowing ooze.

Surturheim?

And continued to descend.

~ * ~

28

TERRA AD 2166

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[8]

The final draft of Deirdre’s dissertation was entitled ‘Sequencing the Memome’, and it owed nothing to UNSA funding or Rand-Miti intervention. Her wit shone clearly, even through the academic language, and Kian chuckled as he read the final chapter, his infopad’s display bright enough to read beneath the morning sun.

They sat at their usual outdoor table on the Athenaeum Café patio. The Caltech campus stretched away to one side. Deirdre, clutching a tall iced latte, vibrated with anxiety. After the blaze of creative energy in which she had written, a deep uncertainty enveloped her.

‘Yes,’ murmured Kian, reading. ‘I like that.’

Beside their table, the olive tree’s dark leaves rustled in a short-lived breeze, grew still. A bush with downturned violet flowers cast a subtle scent on the hot, clean air.

‘You like it?’

‘Come off it, Deirdre. It’s marvellous, and you know it.’

She shrugged, sipped her latte, then gave a tiny smile.

‘I
thought
it was, when I started. But now—’

‘Now you’ve only got to sit and wait for job offers to come flooding in.’

‘Job offers?’

‘Every faculty in the world will want you on board.’ Kian raised his iced tea in salute. ‘And I can’t blame ‘em.’

He drank a toast, and Deirdre blushed.

‘You need to publish it as a popular science book. You have to—’

A shadow fell across them: a slim man standing in the sunlight.

‘You’ve finished the dissertation.’ It was Nikolos Vlessides, who was working on a master’s in plant design. ‘Already.’

Kian waved him to a vacant chair. ‘And it’s amazing.’

‘Amazingly good’ - Nikolos’s variable English could be surprisingly colloquial - ‘or amazingly bad?’

Deirdre rattled off a curse in rapid Greek.

‘My mother,’ said Nikolos, ‘is not inclined like that.’

Kian shook his head.

‘You can be a real moron, Nick. What do you want to drink?’

‘A real espresso would be nice.’

‘But you’ll make do with what they serve here, right?’

Kian placed the order using the table’s microphone; less than a minute later, a dog-sized robot came whirring across the patio. Nikolos removed his cup and saucer from its back.

‘You know ...’Nikolos gestured at the olive tree. ‘This reminds me of home. Very much.’ He reached across and picked up Deirdre’s infopad. ‘And this looks like one of my plants’ root systems.’ He highlighted the fractal diagram of propaganda channels. ‘How you say ...
Apeiron?’

‘Boundless.’ Deirdre grinned. ‘Like the poet: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower—”‘

‘ “Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand”,’ said Kian, ‘ “And Eternity in an hour ...” Or Hamlet: “I could be bounded in a nutshell yet count myself the king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”‘

Deirdre took the infopad from Nikolos’s hands. She tapped it, and the text of
Auguries of Innocence
hung above the table.

‘See here? “The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath / Writes Revenge in realms of Death.” In Will Blake’s time, “beneath” must have rhymed with “Death”. Isn’t that great? Makes you wonder what our speech would sound like to a TwenCener. Y’know, to a Victorian gentleman, “civilization” was pronounced in English just like the Français.’

Kian grinned.

‘You are brilliant.’

Nikolos nodded solemnly. ‘One smart cookie, Deirdre Dullaghan.’

‘Come on,’ said Kian when Nikolos had gone. ‘Let’s grab boards and find some waves.’

Deirdre started to shake her head, then stopped.

‘All right. But you drive.’

The ancient car was hers, but the onboard AI was bug-ridden - it had a recurring fixation for Anchorage, Alaska, and occasionally spun in circles until someone hit the override - and she considered manual driving a chore, not a pleasure.

‘Deal.’

Twenty minutes later they were at the beach, removing their boards from the back seat. They trudged across hot powdery sand.

‘That,’ said Kian, looking back, ‘is a very buggy buggy.’

‘Jesus. Give me peace.’

‘Well...’A breaker crashed. ‘Surf’s up, dudette.’

‘Race you, dude.’

They caught a tube, and rode it pure. Yelling with fear and pride, they crouched beneath a curling glass-like wave, borrowed its power, cutting the gradients.

Afterwards, they sat on floating boards, watching the sun splash orange and crimson across the sky as it neared the horizon. The night grew cool.

‘The sea engenders life, tugged by the moon. Always.’

‘Poetic, Deirdre Dullaghan. Very poetic’

‘I’d like to know what’s wrong, though.’

Gentle wavelets lapped around them.

‘ “Sequencing the Memome” is bloody perfect.’

‘I doubt it. But that’s not what I’m talking about.’

Kian sat silently on his bobbing board.

‘Come on, Kian. I’ve been self-absorbed, but I’m still on the planet. What is it?’

‘I’m ... I’m scared.’

‘Jesus. Scared of what?’

‘You know Dirk’s arriving tomorrow? Well, we’re going on to PhoenixCentral together.’

‘The spaceport.’

‘Well, what other—? Yeah. Right. For a kind of, um, fitting session.’

‘For a suit?’

Kian splashed water in Deirdre’s direction; but in the fading light his face was serious, not playful.

‘For a ship.’