Resolution (53 page)

Though the atmosphere was warm and humid, the Dragoons betrayed no signs of discomfort, even in their dress uniforms with heavy polished helmets. The officer bowed and introduced himself as Lieutenant Hixent. Then the whole platoon wheeled, forming an escort.

After they had walked only a few metres, the platoon halted, and it took Tom a second to realize that he and Jissie and Lieutenant Hixent were standing on a wide silvery disk, one of many inset in the brass wharf. The disk detached itself and rose into the air, carrying all three of them aloft.

‘A moment, my Lord ...’ Lieutenant Hixent made a gesture, assuming control. ‘OK. Now, we have an arachnargos waiting for you.’

Tom looked down at Jissie. Her eyes, widened, took in everything.

‘We should move quickly,’ Tom said. ‘If that’s possible.’

‘Of course, sir.’ Lieutenant Hixent caused the disk to slide through the air, while the escort marched below to a jogging cadence, matching the lev-disk’s speed. ‘Would you and your daughter care for refreshments, or should we get you straight aboard?’

Jissie flinched then reddened.

‘We’ll eat on board,’ said Tom, ‘if that’s all right. My compliments to Lords Draxon and Traquinal, but I should not stay to make their acquaintance. My presence here is a liability.’

‘Sir.’

They wheeled into an airy, cathedral-high hall, filled with high arches and intricate friezes and centuries-old mosaics. At the hall’s centre, a functional-looking arachnargos was poised: long and low, its upper carapace a dark, shining green, its lower thorax pale-grey speckled with brown. The tendrils were hunched and angular, ready to thrust into motion.

‘It’s the fastest we have, my Lord.’

‘My thanks, Lieutenant. My profound thanks.’

It was only as tendrils were lifting Tom and Jissie aboard that Tom saw relief soften Lieutenant Hixent’s square features. And Tom wondered whether it was a spirit of solidarity or a desire to remove a prime target from a fearful realm which motivated the Dragoons’ assistance.

Five hours later, after a journey which Tom spent worrying about Elva while Jissie stood in the control cabin watching the pilots, they reached the border with Valkeu Demesne, another realm which Tom had never visited. No longer ruled by the eponymous Count Valkeu, it had become a demesne whose reputation was for innovative technical products produced by an isolationist culture which grew increasingly ... strange.

The arachnargos lowered Tom and Jissie to the ground. Then, before the oddly etiolated Valkeu guards had time to verify Tom’s credentials, the dark-green arachnargos sprang across broken ground, ducked low to slither through an abandoned colonnade, hauled itself past the border checkpoint, and raced out into raw cavern: interstitial territory that no-one wished to rule. In seconds, it was out of sight.

Then one of the guards blinked in a way that made Tom step back: with a sideways flicker of nictitating membranes. Their leader spoke in a dislocated, fluting voice.

‘Transport for you is readied.’

‘Er ... Thank you.’

Tom and Jissie, with their narrow-limbed otherworldly escort, passed through a gateway formed of polished white stone, while faint vapours slid across their skins.

No lev-disks awaited them here; they had to walk. The tall soldiers had stilt-like legs and a jerking motion which allowed them to eat up distance with no sign of fatigue. By the end of their trek, Tom could remember only a succession of identical white halls, of strange-looking people who paid no attention to two strangers in their realm, and gleaming arcades and mazes formed of glass and diamond, their purpose impenetrable.

At some point, when Jissie could walk no more, Tom swung her up onto his back. She rode in silence, fingers clutched in the collar of Tom’s cape, her small stump hooked over Tom’s left shoulder, her legs looped around his torso.

Finally they stopped and Jissie slid down, and stood beside Tom on a balcony. Beneath, on a wide elliptical floor, five white dart-shaped shuttles stood. Overhead a vertical shaft led upwards into shadows. High above, invisible, was the night-shrouded opening to the planet’s surface and its clear, waiting skies.

Tom might have convinced himself that free humanity was collaborating to remove him to safety, were it not for his final conversation with the guards of Valkeu Demesne.

‘Thank you,’ Tom said. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘Not required.’ A wave of a long, skinny hand. ‘This individual performed task on track.’

‘Er, yes. But you didn’t have to help us. I was just—’

‘False-to-facts that must be, since these individuals
did
perform such.’ The spokesperson (for the hard-looking asthenic soldiers looked sexless to Tom) pointed with a loose-jointed forefinger that seemed too long to be human. ‘Path followed, therefore Destiny is manifest.’

Jissie moved closer to Tom, her lips squeezed shut.

‘Quantum predestination,’ said Tom, ‘doesn’t mean you can’t—’

‘If only one path, then no choice. If many paths and randomness, still not
choice:
only randomness. Free will not required.’

The individual Tom had thought of as an officer bore no insignia or markings. Perhaps any one of the group might have been nominated as the one who spoke with strangers.

‘But when did you stop believing in it?’ Tom asked. ‘In free will?’

‘Seven Standard Years ago, this realm renounced idea.’

‘Renounced
it? But, but...’

Impossible ...

Yet Tom wondered if a concept so fragile that it could be destroyed merely by professing its non-existence could ever form a fundamental truth.

They have no free will because they stopped believing in it.

Then Jissie tugged at his sleeve.

‘They’re calling us from below.’

The shuttle launched.

Acceleration and the hand of fear squeezed Tom and Jissie back in their seats. The vertical shaft’s walls raced past in darkness. Sensor displays scrolled fast as the IR-scanned circle up ahead grew from a dot to a wide, protective membrane. Then they were almost on it, about to—

Impact.

—fly through and break into a silvery night lit by all three moons. The landscape fell away beneath.

Jissie laughed.

It was a startling reaction. No-one faced the agoraphobia-inducing skies without a programme of deconditioning; but she was fearless, that was all.

Then the blood drained from Jissie’s face.

‘What is it?’

Jissie pointed into an image of the ground below, at a wide shadow sliding from the field of view. ‘I thought it was the ... lake. You know.’

Ah, Fate.

‘You mean’ - Tom’s scalp tightened - ‘the Lake of Glass.’

‘Mother and Father are there.’

Tom squeezed his eyes shut.

Just two of the quarter-million people I killed.

Jissie touched his stump, in a matter-of-fact way no-one else had ever done.

‘You freed their souls, my ... Tom.’

Her face was serious.

‘Did I?’

‘They were Absorbed and you freed them.’

‘Sweet Fate, Jissie.’ Tom’s voice was a dry whisper. ‘I hope you’re right.’

Still, Tom and Jissie had a long flight ahead of them. As the shuttle whispered above moonlit clouds, Tom closed his eyes and allowed sleep to claim him. Then suddenly—

The voice booming through the comm system punched him out of his dreams.

‘Uh ... Axolon? That you?’

Hours had passed. Tom felt drugged.

Tom blinked, took in a deep breath. Beside him, Jissie was wide-eyed but not afraid.