Resolution (57 page)

Later, in the depths of the terraformer, Tom opened the small cupboard he sought. Someone who could explain his random visions and what they might mean: that was what he needed.

Her flensed head was glistening with blood, and her lidless spherical eyes somehow appeared to widen; and Tom realized he was interrupting what should have been a private time.

Nutrients swelled striated strips of tissue.

‘Sorry, I’ll... Later, OK?’

The cupboard door vitrified shut and Tom stood there for a moment, face flaring with embarrassment and something more. Then he turned away, looking for the helical stairway which led back up to the level where the Corcorigan family chamber was, where he might attain a few hours’ rest before the morning crowded in on him.

At mid-morning, Elva beckoned Tom from a briefing session after he had called a short break. Leading him down to the lower levels, she stopped at a clear internal window and nodded.

‘I’d say she gets it from you.’

‘What do you—? Well.’

Inside a storage bay which had been refitted with old matting on both floor and walls, a silver-haired, hard-looking carl was instructing some twelve or thirteen children. In the front row, a stern-faced Jissie stamped and whirled her way through a phi2dao beginners’ fighting form.

Part-way through, she became aware of Tom watching her, but her ferocity only increased, all hesitation evaporating as she gouged and struck imaginary opponents crowding in upon her.

Tom was very careful not to smile. When the form was finished, he gave a long slow nod, while Jissie stood to attention and appeared to be watching only her instructor.

‘Come on,’ said Elva. ‘There’s someone else you need to see. Arrived a few hours ago.’

In the next level down, in one of the many chambers that had been transformed into a sick-ward, they found Lady Renata bent over an autodoc. A maintenance drone floated overhead, just below the ceiling, beaming control codes into the autodoc’s processor blocks at Renata’s direction.

‘Right,’ she said after a minute. ‘All done, I think.’

‘Very good.’ Tom smiled as Renata jumped. ‘Sorry. All that stealth training.’

‘Right. How are you, Tom? Hello again, Elva. Are ... ? Look, drone, put the ‘doc into restart mode, and I’ll check it myself, OK?’

The drone hung in place for a moment as though in reproach, then slowly slid from the chamber.

‘Sorry about that, Tom.’

‘Our fault for interrupting. You’re doing good work.’

‘Maybe ... You’ve a question you need to ask me. I can tell.’

‘How about a statement first? I’ve seen a ... Lady. One whose substance is like nothing I’d ever heard of. Though there are people who’ve heard certain ... stories.’

‘
You‘ve met her.
The Crystal Lady.’

‘Yes, though I’ve no way of proving that.’ Not without revealing the comms crystal, and that Tom did not want to do. ‘It seems quite a coincidence, that your investigative field is magma studies and indigenous lifeforms—’

‘Pretty much the same thing, as it turns out.’

‘—and that Trevalkin ends up being associated with an organization that somehow links to the native species’... what? Representative?’

The Grey Shadows were old. Tom wondered how many of the nobility were members. Yet Renata made no mention of them as she explained: ‘According to legend, the Crystal Lady is
ancient.
Some say one of the Founding Lords constructed her. There are more mystic tales ... The planet’s core manifesting itself in dreams, stuff like that.’

‘But the Lady is a construct?’

Renata shrugged. ‘You’re the one who’s met her, not me.’

Tom had read some of Renata’s technical papers. Their academic language failed to disguise her enthusiasm for the creatures she studied: not just thermidors, but huge entities that moved deep inside the magma, swimming in schools and emitting long-harmonic vibrations that might be a form of singing.

‘We need Avernon,’ he told her. ‘Do you know where he is?’

There had been no word from Trevalkin.

‘One man can’t save the world.’ Renata shook her head angrily. ‘Avernon can’t be expected to pull out some miracle that will destroy the Anomaly.’

‘Destruction is too grand an aim.’ Tom explained that his techs were working on ways to shield the world, to close off the hyperdimensions so that the Anomaly could not reach into Nulapeiron from its other locations thousands of light-years away ... before Nulapeiron became a hellworld as bad as Siganth or the legendary Fulgor.

Then Renata rubbed her eyes, bit her lip, and thought hard about what she was going to say next. ‘The thing is ... I heard from Trevalkin, but I don’t know whether to trust him.’

‘You can trust him.’ Tom surprised himself with the certainty of his feeling. ‘He hates the Anomaly more than any of us.’

‘Then ...’ Renata looked at Elva, then back at Tom. ‘Trevalkin was in the Aurineate Grand’aume, but will have left by now. Gone to fetch Avernon, his message said.’

‘Bifurcating Chaos.’ Elva turned away. ‘The Grand’aume’s surrounded by Anomalous realms. They’re trapped.’

‘That’s not what Trevalkin thinks. He called it an exercise in exfiltration.’

A chill wind seemed to blow through Tom’s heart, cold and hard. He never, ever, wanted to descend to Nulapeiron’s inhabited strata and enter an occupied demesne again; but in his mind was a clear image of himself, rappelling down a shaft with another figure at his side ... and he knew that the laws of Destiny trapped him, Tom Corcorigan, as much as an ant or an Oracle or a morning mist which swirled, and dissipated, breaking apart at sunlight’s touch.

~ * ~

37

TERRA AD 2166

<>

[10]

It was blazing hot in Arizona. Deirdre, who had visited the state before, had never known it otherwise. A sky like unblemished lapis lazuli, clear and blue, stretched overhead, beyond their flyer’s membrane cockpit. Below, their shadow flitted across a tan landscape; the rust-and-icing-sugar strata of the empty Painted Desert; scattered green saguaro cacti, five metres tall and more; straggling mesquite.

Tiny beige dots were ground squirrels, like little meerkats, standing upright on sentinel duty by their burrows. Kian wondered what they made of the big white flyer coasting overhead like some predatory bird with four human beings held in its stomach.

‘Ow!’

Clear air turbulence bucked the flyer, but the AI compensated and the human pilot merely tipped back his Stetson and grinned at his passengers. Deirdre, stony-faced, returned a hard stare.

Then the desert over which they flew was Martian red in all directions, sere and stark. Its harsh beauty did not conceal its true nature; if the flyer went down for any reason, this was an environment that could kill.

‘Home, sweet home, folks.’

Far from anywhere, stood a cluster of blue glass pyramids; near them, black-and-silver structures formed hangars and administration blocks, while a baked yellow runway shaped like an elongated question mark angled out into the desert.

All around, the clean red sand and hot still air crackled with latent energy.

‘Goin’ down.

They swooped in to land.