Resolution (68 page)

Run.

Gathering new insight.

The air crackles as the man’s eyes roll up and there is a lick of darkness which is symptomatic of tunnelling through spacetime, neural links conjoined through the rat-infested crawlspace which lies below normal reality as he becomes one microscopic cell in the great Anomaly and his mouth lolls open then stretches in a madman’s smile.

Tom could See them all.

Tom grew confident in his ability to control and direct the visualizations which so directly reflected the abilities of his Enemy. Once, when he established contact with research labs deep within the Collegium Perpetuum Delphinorum, he watched (from his terraformer base, thousands of kilometres away) the painstaking work they performed, the complex logosophical model built using intricate holodisplays ...

Pain, and the Dark Fire shimmering.

...
and then saw the alien incursion, heard the screams, regarded the bravery of Collegiate researchers who contrived to release the zero-point vacuum energy from their spacetime manipulators. Normally they used it to drive their hypergeometric transformations, their bending of the universe, in the same way that a water mill might draw power from a river’s flow; but now, the devices erupted in a cascading tidal wave of blazing light and sound that split air and rock, creating a sequence of flash-explosions that ripped the heart out of the Collegium, killing every human (and former human) and metallic being within the inner boundaries.

‘Chaos,
no ...’ Tom withdrew whimpering from the trance. ‘The Collegium ...’

The Collegium was gone. The researchers had destroyed it, and themselves.

But we needed them.

He was on a couch in their family chamber, and Jissie was looking scared. Then the membrane door softened and Elva stepped inside.

‘Jissie, why did you call—? Tom, are you all right?’

‘The Collegium. I just Saw it ... They killed themselves. Took the Anomaly’s people and ... things ... with them.’

‘But we need their tech.’ Elva looked pale. ‘You said yourself, we can’t drop a shield in place without their techniques.’

Jissie spoke up. ‘Which one was it?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Jissie, dear, we don’t have time for—’

‘Was it the Collegiate site near Realm Buchanan,’ said Jissie, ‘or the one in Rigay Larn, or the one in Strehling Suhltone? Just wondering.’

Tom and Elva stared at each other.

‘Near Realm Buchanan.’ Tom sat up on the couch. Sweat trickled either side of his nose, and his eyes stung. ‘The one where—’

The one where Elva had served undercover, as Commander Herla Hilsdottir in a Blight-controlled death camp, for far too long. Where she and Tom had broken free.

Where on the surface, the great glass edifice used by the Blight to contact the Anomalous hellworlds had exploded, undergone a heatless phase transition to produce the Lake of Glass that encased two hundred and fifty thousand people whose minds had formed a small yet significant component of the Blight.

And where Jissie’s parents lay entombed.

So many dead.

Elva knelt down at Tom’s side and took hold of his hand.

‘We will get through this.’ Then she turned to Jissie. ‘And how were you aware, young woman, that the Collegium spans - spanned - three sites? That’s not common knowledge.’

‘Renata told me. She’s nice. We chat a lot.’

Elva clapped Tom’s thigh and stood. ‘Looks like we need to recruit two new strategic command officers.’

‘Two?’ said Tom.

‘Well, Jissie, obviously. Maybe Lady Renata will make the grade as well.’

Jissie’s smile was the first good thing Tom had seen for days.

In a translucent hologlobe representing Nulapeiron, dark sectors continued to expand like spilled ink. Only at high magnification did the small bright lines of the freedom fighters’ flying columns grow visible.

It took local-scale diagrams to denote the acts of sabotage and assassination of a desperate resistance movement fighting against a power that would not stop growing.

Spreading darkness.

And, where three specific locations had been picked out in blue, one had been blackened from existence. Crescents of Anomaly-controlled territory curled and tightened around the remaining two.

Tom Saw:

A raiding party creeps through a ruined banquet hall, clambering over fallen blocks of shattered marble, into the heart of a former Palace. Some of them stop to admire the marble-and-jade, platinum-inlaid bedchambers of the fled nobility. They grin or shake their heads.

And stop dead.

There is a whisper of sound.

Blindmoths explode in a flurry from a crack in the wall, flutter near the diamond-mirrored ceiling, and fingers tighten on firing-studs before someone breathes out, mutters a profanity, and the fighters’ shoulders relax.

Then something scrapes against broken stone. The fighters whirl, unable to raise their weapons as the air shivers and darkness manifests itself.

His vision shifted:

A lone courier runs across the surface, silver grasses clinging at his ankles while the cold wind buffets him, whips up waves on the Argent Sea, where a tiny three-person aquabug awaits.

Muttering, he reviews the specific command sequence that will activate his thanatotrope should the Enemy capture him. It is almost as if he
wants
to commit suicide.

Tears track unnoticed down his cheeks as he runs.

Shifted:

Angular grey blocks of stone, thrust up by geological upheaval over ages, form a cluttered slope. Pink and crimson algae coat their tips. Nearby, in the air, near-invisible glassmoths slip and slide. While below, linked together by smartrope, the commandos continue their dangerous climb.

Again:

Circular pools of light dot the grey stone plain. Here and there stand worn columns: statues of Founding Lords whose features have been scoured to smoothness by the harsh atmosphere of early times, and the corrosive oxygen-rich winds of recent centuries. The circles shimmer like water but are membranes, covering vertical shafts which lead down into the federated demesnes known collectively as Strehling Suhltone.

A membrane parts as pulse engines fling a big orbital shuttle vertically towards the clouds. Then, like a fast-healing wound, the membrane grows whole once more.

And on the plain, immobile beneath her grey camouflage blanket, the observer mutters into her comm-ring, then thumbs it off. Only a ceramic knife is sticky-tagged to her uniform: otherwise, she is unarmed. A graser would only tempt her into fighting, and that is not her purpose.

She settles down to wait and watch.

Some part of Tom raised a question: was it possible to See too much?

A deserted galleria, where broken statues lie, and only ciliates move, rustling. Small orange beetles feast upon a dead girl’s eyes.

Again:

In the tavern, they swing their tankards and sing, as though the war and the final calamity are but distant things or tales to frighten children.

While in one corner, the air grows dark, begins to twist.

Alone on his couch, Tom shuddered as the visions took him deeper:

Infiltrating a realm far from home, the narrow-shouldered man moves among well-dressed men and women, stops at the buffet tables, selects a red confection and chews as though he is used to such luxury. Then he moves to the edge of a conversational group. He can learn much from their speech-patterns, by the topics they choose
not
to discuss. But he is after specific information.

Standing by a pillar, a security officer dressed in purple and black turns, and the expression in those cold eyes is one that no human being should ever witness.

Tom. Reach out to me, Tom.

Again: