Resolution (14 page)
‘But we have friends,
a
friend, in common, my Lord and I.’ Feltima looked boldly at Tom. ‘Some people say I manoeuvre vehicles exactly like her.’
Tom had deduced that Velsevius and Feltima had swapped roles during the day; for part of the time, the vehicle had been flung through some wild, exciting turns that seemed familiar. It was an old memory that surfaced now.
‘Limava?’ he asked. ‘Were you trained by Limava?’
‘Yes.’ Feltima was beaming. ‘Before she moved on to better things. You know she became a squadron leader during the war?’
‘No. Did she—?’
‘As far as I’m aware, she made it OK. We haven’t been in touch.’
‘Good.’ Tom nodded. ‘That’s good.’
He and Limava had been short-term lovers. When she broke it off, Tom had felt relief as well as disappointment. Tom had been a delta-class servitor then: not a great prospect for the future.
Not that I’ve any wealth now.
Markilon was sitting up and looking watchful, but Velsevius had already tucked himself into his sleeping bag, pulled down the opaque face-visor, and rolled over onto his side. Tom followed Velsevius’s example, sliding down inside his bag and giving an exaggerated yawn.
He allowed himself to slide into a relaxed trance, superficially asleep but in fact alert. His sleeping bag was military issue, designed to shred itself apart in action, freeing up his limbs should he need to fight. Still, while Markilon’s presence was unexpected, Tom sensed no danger from him.
Feltima and Markilon chatted softly for about an hour. Finally, they turned in, and the hold’s lights dimmed. Tom’s trance drifted towards sleep.
Yet he wondered, before he let go of consciousness, just why it was that Lady V’Delikona should summon him on Corduven’s behalf, when Corduven was more than capable himself. Why was the summoning urgent?
Blackness carried him to dreams which would fade before he woke.
They travelled through the day, and arrived in what would have been nightshift in almost any other demesne. (Once, Tom had remarked that Terran timezones had depended on where you were, instead of being standard across the globe. His friend Lady Sylvana had shuddered as she deduced the geometry, and said: ‘How deliciously
quaint.
That’s what you get for grubbing about on the surface.’) But Realm V’Delikona was different: it was known as The Realm Which Never Sleeps. Each of its inhabitants chose which of three diurnal rhythms to adopt; workplaces were continuously open; all public corridors and halls and caverns were permanently and brightly lit.
The arachnargos slowed before a platform which overlooked a sheer drop: three hundred metres to the cavern floor. This was the largest cavern in the demesne, and one of the most impressive. Glowing morphbuildings slowly altered shape below, and on the cavern walls. The air was strung with crimson tubes hanging in catenary curves, carrying ovoid passenger-cars like corpuscles through arteries.
Down on the platform, despite the late hour, a regal white-haired figure stood, dressed in a long violet-and-white robe with a raised silver collar. Around her, the Palace Halberdiers were at ramrod attention.
Tom, squeezed into the rear of the control cabin alongside Markilon, heard Feltima’s gasp. ‘Is that Lady V’Delikona down there? The Lady herself?’
With a sense of mischief, Tom could not help saying: ‘Well, she
is
an old friend.’
Feltima glanced at him with an awe which had not been present before.
‘Taking up position.’ Velsevius spoke in a crisp, professional tone. ‘Ready to lower you now, my Lord, if you’ll make your way aft.’
‘I will. Thanks for your hospitality and ... entertainment.’ Tom winked at Markilon, who grinned. ‘Take care, everybody.’
‘It’s been our honour, sir,’ said Velsevius.
Then Tom clambered back into the thoracic hold, where a slender tendril wrapped itself around his waist only a second before the floor puckered then gaped open. A cold wind was blowing below.
The tendril lowered him.
It
was
windy, and as his feet touched the ground Tom was almost bowled over, but the tendril lingered long enough to steady him, before whipping up into the arachnargos hold. The vehicle sealed shut, and was already moving away when Lady V’Delikona grasped Tom’s hand and said: ‘Thank Fate you made it, Tom. You need to be here.’
The Halberdiers closed in all around, providing a shelter from the buffeting wind. High overhead, Tom could see glassbirds being flung against the stalactites. For someone who loved the surface, he was still discomfited to be in a cavern large enough to manifest
weather.
‘Why’s that, my Lady?’ He let her lean on him as they walked towards the rearing entrance. ‘Why the urgency?’
‘It’s Corduven.’ Lady V’Delikona stopped, wisps of white hair escaping from her platinum clasps. ‘He’s here, and ... He’s dying, Tom.’
‘No ...’
‘I’m afraid he doesn’t have much time. Prepare yourself for a change in his appearance.’
‘It can’t be.’
‘Tom. You learned to face harsh realities a long time ago.’
He blinked at the gusts which assaulted his eyes.
Corduven, my friend.
But Lady V’Delikona was right. He had long given up expecting fairness from Destiny.
~ * ~
10
NULAPEIRON AD 3423
Polished floors were tuned to deep, vibrating purple. Morphsculptures in alcoves stood frozen, their pseudometabolisms halted as a mark of respect. Servitors clad in grey tunics or surcoats dropped to one knee as Tom passed.
In a hushed pentahedral antechamber filled with ice-like furnishings of frosted glass, a shaven-headed priestess - a senior Antistita - bowed to Tom, sweeping her thurible to one side, dispensing heady violet smoke. At the chamber’s far end, tall doorshimmers evaporated, sensing Tom’s approach.
‘Prepare yourself for a change in his appearance,’
Lady V’Delikona had said, but the figure propped up in the bed was still a shock. Corduven’s cheeks were sunken and his eyes were glazed; yet only a tenday ago he had been bright and cheerful, acting as best man at Tom’s wedding.
Too cheerful. Doped up with ‘tropes.
In retrospect, Tom could see it.
You‘ve always driven yourself too hard.
The narrow, skeletal man in the bed was the greatest strategist of the current age, according to some military observers. Always highly strung, he took immense doses of logotropes, especially at the height of the war, sometimes going a tenday without sleep.
Fragile eyelids fluttered open.
‘Knew ... you‘d... come. Tom.
’
Fingers raised weakly, let fall.
‘Corduven. Fate, Corduven.’
Tom knelt by the bed, took that frail hand and held it, head bowed.
After a time, a low cough roused Tom from his thoughts. It could not be Corduven: he was sleeping, hanging onto the last shreds of life. Tom looked up, blinking. A man was standing at the foot of the bed; and his eyes were reddened from crying. It took Tom several moments to recognize Jay A’Khelikov, his one-time colleague in the intelligence corps of Corduven’s Academy.
‘Jay...’
Tom swallowed, released Corduven’s hand, stood up. Suddenly, he realized what Jay was doing here, and the nature of his relationship to Corduven.
I
didn‘t know.
Corduven had confessed, once, why his marriage to Sylvana had failed and been annulled. It was a vulnerability that Tom could have exploited: in noble society, men who were close to other men could not hold responsible positions or inherit the privileges of their parents. In that respect, commonfolk in some lower strata had more freedom than their aristocratic rulers.
Corduven and Jay.
Tom had not even known they were acquainted. He also knew that Jay had had an affair with a female operative, called Lihru ... but there had been something odd about it, an internal struggle which Tom had thought due to the charged situation in their clandestine, betrayal-filled world, at the height of the war when defeat seemed inevitable.