Paradox (19 page)

Specks of light in the darkness.

“Watch out.” Limava started to gesture, but Lanctus had already reacted.

“I've got it. Spark and halt.”

Tom grabbed the webbing, then forced himself to relax as the arachnargos stopped its forward motion, rebounded as Lanctus allowed the tendrils to behave elastically, then steadied.

“Spark” was the code which would tell the lev-car to stop. Tom winced as it grew larger in the rear-view IR display, but it span to a halt, just in time.

The smaller arachnabugs were no danger: skittering past, then sticking to strategic positions high up the natural-cavern walls.

“Fate,” muttered Limava, opening up more real-holos for Tom to see.

Photo-multiplied images showed long queues of shambling people. Their lights were glowclusters tied in simple rope bags; the natural fluorofungus here was patchy, and the refugees were taking a risk, hoping that the air was breathable.

Tom was already moving.

We could have prevented this!

His nonexistent left arm flared with pain as he ran through the rear membrane and into the cargo hold.

“Command: release!” he shouted, and a dozen mag-clamps deactivated, dropping med-drones into a hovering position. Snatching a satchel from the catwalk, tagging it to his waist, he leaped into open space as he called “Rope! Now!” and caught the descending thread.

The floor puckered open at Tom's approach.

“Drones, follow!”

Damn them all!

The med-drones scattered flitterglows as they descended, lighting up the scene.

“Where are your wounded?” Tom called out the question in four different languages as he hit the ground running.

Drawn faces, dead eyes. One gaunt man pointed back along the straggling column.

“My thanks.”

Behind him, the cavern flared with white light as leviathans, with lev-bike escorts, settled into place, popping their carapace doors. Hundreds of burgundy-uniformed men and women streamed out—Lady V'Delikona's most skilled servitors and freedmen-volunteers—followed by more med-drones.

It was endless: the grey shifting tableaux of walking wounded, the old folk bandaged with makeshift rags, the ancient stares of children who had seen their parents' deaths.

Tom stayed with the lead group, backtracking along the column of broken refugees—here, sliding down a scree slope; there, wriggling through gaps where rockfall had filled in the natural route—working his way closer to the demesne's flooded core.

Maintenance shafts led them down to a river: twisting whirlpools and turbulent eddies surrounding smashed columns, piled debris. The flowing water's surface was just two metres below the broken ceiling: it had once been a major thoroughfare.

With no swimming skills, Tom could only watch as smartmasked divers followed submerged med-drones, their white lights a rippling glow beneath the surface.

Images: Lady Sylvana laying her hand across an old man's forehead while medics worked on his broken torso. A child crying in her mother's lifeless arms. Torn limbs. Opaque eyes staring into Destiny.

“I can't save him.” A medic, her face stained with grime, looked hopelessly up at Tom while holodisplays cycled above a boy's pain-ravaged body. “I need a euthanasia-dose, but I can't reach—”

Gently, Tom reached down and used finger and thumb against the carotid arteries, sending the boy to oblivion. Then he helped the medic to her feet, and took her to find a patient whom she could save.

More: long hours of organizing supplies, prioritizing evacuations, logging names and implanting tracers so that sundered families might later be reunited. Naming the dead, whenever they could; sampling DNA, tagging temporary burial mounds, encasing them in antibacterial gel.

“Oh, Tom! There are so many of them.” During one of their few short breaks, Lady Sylvana came over to talk. She brushed her hair back from her sweaty face, heedless of the bloodstains across her torn garments.

“How's Corduven?”

Though Corduven was in charge of the overall effort, Tom had seen him earlier walking dazed, face unnaturally white with shock, among the laid-out bodies of dead children.

“You didn't hear?” She struggled to focus on Tom. “I had to sedate him. Your drivers, Lanctus and Limava, helped me do it where no-one could see. He's back in our lev-car.”

“But—” Tom forced himself to shut up.

Why should I think, I was the only one to feel the strain? Corduven knew what was coming, too
.

“He beat his fists bloody against a bulkhead.” She spoke softly, in counterpoint to swirling waters and the shouting of team co-ordinators.

“Destiny.”

Then she was holding out her thumb ring, her official seal, to Tom. “There's a bounce-beam link to Lady V'Delikona's palace. You've Lord-Majeure status to commandeer resources. Take it.”

Tom took it automatically. “But how can I—?”

“You're in charge, Tom.” Transgressing etiquette, she touched his cheek, briefly. “Cord needs me.”

Tom stared, then nodded. “Look after him.”

Second day.

Though he usually steered clear of stimulants—distrusting anything that was not coded and tested to logotropic standards—Tom used them now. There had been time for a few brief snatches of sleep, but it felt worse than not sleeping at all. Gritty-eyed and greasy-skinned, he hacked agents to help the monitoring and scheduling—pushing the legal limits, enabling near-Turing capabilities—and surrounded himself with shifting holovolumes. It helped to watch the colourful schematics: but his eyes were drawn back, always, to the realtime images of grey despair.

The body count steadily rose.

More teams arrived from Lady V'Delikona's demesne. More vehicles joined the convoy transferring the wounded to safe havens. Still, thousands were threading their way on foot through broken tunnels.

When the nervous strain became too great, Tom would set the monitor nodes to auto, and help with the digging-out of collapsed corridors.

The second night passed without sleep.

Twinges of chest pain warned Tom that he was pushing too hard: the heavier the fatigue grew, the higher the stimulant doses he had to use.

As the number of rescue personnel continued to grow, travel routes became more complex—while lower strata in this realm were being steadily evacuated, as a precaution—and Tom's state of mind grew increasingly inhuman, almost crazed.

“You ought to rest.” Corduven, twitching from medication, visited Tom in the arachnargos.

Tom raged at Corduven and threw him out.

Third night.

Fourth.

At some point there was a ragged cheer—a survivor, dug out from a landslide of debris, way past the expected time limit—but it hardly affected Tom: only his left eyelid flickered.

He numbly checked displays, noted increasing throughput, pinpointed bottlenecks, worked automaton-like to string everything together.

Fifth.

Next day, he was staring at a cycling display—had been staring at it for some unknown period of time, just letting the colours pulse—when Lady Sylvana shook his shoulder.

He felt sick, unable to speak.

“It's working smoothly now, Tom.”

Slowly, he shook his head; even his neck seemed to creak.

“What's that?”

He followed her pointing finger.

A light touch on the back of his neck, and he reacted too slowly—
derm-patch.
Cascading blackness fell upon him and he drowned.

Entire universes collapsed.

It was literally true: a continuum requires consciousness to comprehend it; every death ends a universe.

When you die, it all disappears.

Semi-lucid waking periods; dreams in which all his limbs were missing; grey confusion of real sensations: strapped onto a hard bench,
being thrown around in a comfortless military-grade arachnargos, stripped down for speed.

We were well prepared.
The thought was comfortless:
Thanks to the truecast
.

Then—suddenly, it seemed—he was resting on clean, fresh sheets in a luxurious bed, in a bright chamber whose silver-tinted membrane window looked out upon startling caverns threaded with crimson transport tubes.

Tom closed his eyes, sighed, and slid down into sleep.

Sensei punished her.

It was strange: a dark shadow seemed to blight his spirit, but Karyn could not use it against him. Over and over, he crunched her into the mat.

I needed that
, she thought, kneeling to face him afterwards.
But I'll be bruised in the morning
.

“Sensei? Mike? What's the—?”

He shook his grizzled head. “Blackmail, Karyn. A dangerous strategy. They could throw you off the programme altogether.”

Puzzled, Karyn said nothing: waiting for more detail.

“I had to OK your request,” Mike continued, “since it counts as temporary leave. And since you bypassed three or four levels of bureaucracy.”

“
Irimi
,” murmured Karyn, referring to Mike's favourite strategy: entering directly to the centre of the whirlwind as the opponent attacks.

Again, she waited, but there was already a hint: a request of some sort had been placed using her ID. Since it was not her doing, it must have been Sal's, before he was deleted.

“I'll tell you straight.” A hint of a smile on Mike's face. “You've some people worried. And that makes me interested, since I was on the ethics committee.”

“Ethics committee?” Now Karyn was really puzzled.

“Not for the whole of Project Rewire. Just some of the experiments.”

Project Rewire?

“I just want to reach Dart.”

Mike stared at her, then: “I want him rescued more than anything, Karyn. I've been praying for guidance.” His big hands were palm-down on his thighs: he looked like a kneeling bear. “Is it really best that you go, not someone else? You're not the next in line for a ship commission. And an experienced Pilot—”

“It will take longer to refit an existing vessel. It needs to be a new one.”

“OK…” Doubtfully.

“And is anyone better motivated than I am?”

“The Zürich labs are shut down for a fortnight.” Mike shook his head, but his voice was suddenly decisive. “I'll book flights to Jakarta for both of us. First thing tomorrow.” His big hands closed into fists. “I won't let you do this alone.”

Her terminal—controlled by her new packet-swarm of antlike agents: dumb but numerous—woke her at 4 a.m.

“Oh, God.” She groaned, stretched, then blinked at the flat-text message hanging in the air above her bedside table.

“
ITINERARY CHANGED. TRAVEL-PASS FOR PARIS IS APPENDED: DOWNLOAD TO C-FORMAT CRYSTAL. SEE YOU AT THE CAFÉ CATOPTRIQUE, SEINE LEFT BANK, 19:00 LOCAL, TOMORROW.
”

“Paris?” she said to the empty room. “
Merde alors.
”