Resolution (4 page)

‘Thanks for that,’ said Elva. ‘Perhaps I’ll have a little chat with one of them.’

‘You’ll learn very little,’ Brino told her. ‘My recommendation would be to make sure you’re on board your arachnargos tonight. Realm Vilshan is well guarded, and you should be safe there.’

That realm was Tom’s and Elva’s last stop before the Collegium itself. ‘You seem remarkably well informed, Master Brino.’

‘I try to be, my Lord.’

Elva had edged towards a display case. Now, before Tom could react -he remembered the toxin-laden membranes that had protected the weapons store’s displays - Elva reached inside and picked up a small dartbow. ‘Very nice.’ She held it down and to the side. ‘Isn’t it dangerous, selling weapons for a living?’

Brino held her gaze.

‘No, my Lady. Safest place in the world.’

Elva looked at him for a moment longer, then replaced the dartbow on its velvet cushion. At that moment, Brino reached inside his tunic pocket, took out something small, and tossed it towards Tom.

‘A present, my Lord.’

Tom snatched it from the air; Elva frowned at the lack of protocol. She was a commoner by birth, but a peacekeeping officer by training, and therefore disciplined.

‘A crystal.’ Tom clenched it in his hand. ‘May I ask what’s on it?’

‘I think you know,’ said Brino. ‘It’s a copy of the one that was destroyed.’

‘From the
Pilot?’

‘Janis deVries sends his regards.’

‘What? No, wait—’

Then something strange happened. Brino made a control gesture such as Tom had never seen before, and the air began to move. Blocks of transparency slid around them. Display cases shifted, weapons glinting as they rotated and folded out of existence.

Invisible bands constrained Tom like a fist.

‘Are you caught?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Elva.

Brino seemed wrapped in shadows: nearby, yet somehow distant. ‘Farewell, my Lord and Lady. I hope you’re successful.’

‘Wait, I want to—’

Brino was gone. So was Yeira.

Shadows, shadows all around ...

An eldritch twisting of the air itself.

Then the invisible force released Tom and bright light sprang into being on all sides. He toppled backwards onto the floor, flagstones banging hard against his buttocks. Elva was sprawled on one side.

They were sitting on the floor in the bright-lit hall, and passers-by were stopping, shocked at the sight of nobility sprawled on the ground. Where the weapons store had been was a blank, wide alcove.

‘That’s a neat trick,’ said Elva.

‘Isn’t it?’ said Tom.

Then Elva giggled, and in a moment they were laughing hard enough to cry as they sat there on the floor, while all around them strangers stared at the insane aristocratic couple who had dropped into their ordinary lives.

~ * ~

3

NULAPEIRON AD 3423

The original crystal had been some kind of diary or log, but in the young Tom’s possession it became, much more. Adapting itself to the environment, the crystal posed teaching questions, and allowed Tom to study logosophical disciplines long before he enrolled in the Sorites School which made him a Lord.

It was also a history of the Pilots, though how much was true and how much was drama for its own sake, Tom could not tell.

Yet the crystal could also function as a mu-space relay, and Tom made use of it several times. Accessing communications processors of the mu-space universe enabled him to subvert an Oracle’s future memories, by immersing the Oracle in a perfectly simulated but false future. Only in a fractal universe (where mathematics was not constrained by Gödel’s Theorem) could such a detailed lie be constructed.

The crystal’s last feat had not been at Tom’s hand. Instead, a squadron of volunteers flew with it above a giant Blight-constructed crystal building up on the world’s surface (and this was exceptional: most of Nulapeiron’s ten billion inhabitants would collapse in agoraphobic fear if they saw the surface or the sky). Those volunteers opened the gateway through which the Dart-entity warred against the Blight, and defeated it.

Back in the apartment, Tom held the crystal in his hand for a long time, simply staring at it. This one, he was sure, had no mu-space comms capability; Brino would not hand over such technology. But even if the crystal held only the old teaching tales, the ones that Tom had already experienced over and over, that would be enough.

It was a link to his past, in a dislocated, fluid world.

Elva kissed him, then made ready to leave. She had booked an hour in the training chambers of the local security forces, so she could practise with her new weapons against fighting mannequins.

‘See you later, Tom.’

‘Be careful, darling. Or at least—’

‘—be vicious, right. ‘Later.’

Then she was gone.

Tom did not fully immerse himself in the old story. Instead, tapping his holopad, he opened an introductory static image: a holo depicting a slender woman and her two teenage sons. The sons were twins, a little older than when Tom had last seen them in the original crystal’s tales, but still recognizable.

They looked normal, because they wore contact lenses to disguise the true appearance of their eyes: obsidian orbs without surrounding whites, jet-black eyes which could stare upon a fractal space no ordinary human being could comprehend.

Tom looked at the image for a long time.

What’s wrong?

It was that feeling of
threat,
the feeling that had been growing stronger as he drew nearer to the Collegium. Surely it could only be nerves, knowing that he might be placing himself and Elva in the hands of his enemies. And yet, and yet...

It was something real, he knew: something more than fear.

Then a familiar silent voice sounded in his mind:

Tom? Is that you in there?

He chuckled and headed towards the lounge, holopad in hand. As he stepped inside, he made to shut down the image, but Eemur’s next words stopped him.

No, don’t ... There’s a link here, my Lord. A very strange but important link.

What kind of link?

A form of entanglement? I’m not sure. But something
...

Tom shivered.

The nervous systems of Elva and her twin sister Litha had been quantum-entangled since an early age. When Elva’s body had perished (or, as she said with no trace of humour, the
first
time she died), her consciousness had instantaneously displaced Litha’s mind in Litha’s body. But this could not be what Eemur was talking about: setting up such a link was a long, tricky process, and fallible; Elva sometimes woke up amid fading tag-ends of dreams that were not hers.

‘Eemur?’ Tom spoke aloud. ‘How can there be a link? These people must have perished centuries ago.’

There was no reply.

‘Eemur?’

Then her words came with an odd, eerie overlay:
I haven’t given you your wedding present yet.

‘That’s all right’

Let’s do it now.

‘Don’t worry about—’

But you have to kiss me first.