Paradox (22 page)

The silence seemed to last for ever.

There were other things Tom could talk about, a dozen research topics suggesting themselves. Yet he held back, knowing he should keep something in reserve.

Blinking and, in one instance, yawning, the Lords pulled themselves out of trance. Their grave faces seemed blurred, tired.

I'm exhausted
, Tom realized.
But I've done the best I can.

Their eyes refocused on their surroundings.

Tom bowed again, low and courteous.

Let them judge me on this.

Then he left, chin held high.

Final day.

The Exedra Concordia was a huge hall: platonic solids revolving in mid-air, among lacy web-columns of fine white ceramic. Banked tiers of canopied smartseats. Tapestry banners bearing flat-projected paradoxicons; Tom whiled away the long wait by guessing the missing facets.

He was high up, near the rear. His crimson seat was at the end of a row, with neither canopy nor reshape-capability.

Down below, thirteen nobles—ten Lords Maximi, three Ladies Maximae—gave welcoming speeches. Each stood on a wide, floating crystal sculpture—sapphire, violet, crimson: spread-winged gryphons, eagles—which drifted into the foremost position when it was the rider's turn to speak.

Haunting music. Dreaming flutes; sweet strings; a distant roll of martial drums—
I wonder where Dervlin is now
—as Field Marshal Lord Takegawa, in full dress uniform, marched in with other senior military men and women to take seats in the first row.

A more splendid refrain of massed horns and a solitary pipe began to rise. Blue-robed Lords Academic filed in and took their places.

It was Lord A'Dekal who led the ceremony, his voice cast by the hall's systems across the thousands-strong audience.

“
My Lords and Ladies, let us meditate
.”

His long, white beard lay in contrast against his azure robe; was complemented by the stiff, white cape, its ornately horned cowl framing his long, stern face.

Did you always look the part of Primus-among-Maximi?
Tom wondered.
Or have you taken on the image that others expect?

Down below, in the fourth tier from the front, the younger Lords and Ladies wore scarlet trimmed with yellow. They were awaiting the Nuntiatio Dominorum, in which promotions and fiefdoms would be announced, and secondments to heirless realms or elevation to the higher ranks of academia would be made public.

None of them knew their fate.

Tom had briefly talked yesterday with Avernon—“Surely you must know what position you've got?”—but Avernon merely shook his head, with an almost bemused smile.

He could see Avernon now, in the middle of the fourth row, his scarlet cap set at an odd angle. Carelessness rather than jauntiness. Two of Avernon's peers, the devil-may-care duo of Falvonn and Kirindahl, were stiffly formal today.

Your futures have been decided already.
Tom almost pitied them.
You just don't know what it is yet.

The ceremony's agenda had been printed in flat-text on crystalline laminae, and every attendee had a copy. Tom wondered how many of the audience could read the archaic format.

He checked the items still to come.

There were Lord A'Dekal's summary of the year's events in the sector; a chorale by the Floating Singers of Kalgathoria; talks on fiscal policy and interdemesne trade agreements; and the Lord Xalteron Anniversary Speech to be delivered by Duke Boltrivar, it being fifty SY since the distinguished logosopher Xalteron (now deceased) had codified his ethical calculus and overseen its widespread dissemination.

Ethics. After so many of Boltrivar's subjects had died three years ago.

And where were you when the riverflood broke, my Duke?

Tom knew the answer: far away on an “impromptu” diplomatic visit.

He closed his eyes.

His left arm itched. If only it existed, he could have scratched it.

Snapping his eyes open, he scanned the schedule again, estimating the ceremony's duration. Two hours, at least.

After Duke Boltrivar's item, there would be the announcements of ambassadorships and appointments to the Fora-Regnorum. They were for older nobles—the grander Lords and Ladies—and were temporary, often part-time assignments, though highly prestigious.

The futures of the more senior peers were not at stake today. They would have been party to the arrangements; the announcements were pro forma.

“…
like to review the events of a most propitious year
…”

There were few freedmen among the gathering's members. No proletarian promotions would be announced here.

Later, when the Convocation proper had ended, there would be three more days of meetings. Some commoners' assignments might be decided then, but it was still rare. A subject's future was normally decided by his or her own Lord.

But they brought me before the Review Committee
.

Tom did not know what to expect. Maybe a teaching assistantship? In the Sorites School, perhaps. Or in some other realm.

“…
increased revenue by
…”

Today he was here only to watch Avernon's official recognition and assignment. But that was hours away.

I shouldn't have drunk all that daistral
.

He slipped from his seat and headed up the aisle to the rear membrane. Outside, the corridor was a sweeping grey-black curve, almost deserted. He nodded to a servitor, who bowed awkwardly (discomfited by Tom's wearing a guest's scarlet sash but a servitor's earstud), and headed for the wash-chamber.

Afterwards, he returned to the corridor. It was cool and peaceful, and long black bench-seats arced along one wall.

I have no duties
, Tom realized with a kind of eerie shock.
There's a grand ceremony going on in the hall, which most servitors would kill to see. But it's boring.

Half amused at his own actions, he slipped off his half-cape and
laid it on the seat. Carefully ignoring the servitors, Tom sat down, pulled his legs up into lotus, and closed his eyes.

He exhaled.

“Sir?”

Tom opened his eyes. From the hall, applause.

“They're announcing senior ambassadors, sir.” The tall servitor, standing by Tom's bench-seat, spoke respectfully.

“Thank you.”

Wisely, Tom had changed earlier from lotus to an easier cross-legged position. Now, as he slid off the bench and stood, there was only the tiniest twinge of stiffness. “I'd better get back to my proper place.”

The other servitor bowed and backed away.

Don't treat me like that
.

Tom slipped through the membrane and walked down the aisle to his waiting seat.

The audience applauded another appointment. Down below, Lord A'Dekal was handing a thumb ring of office to a distinguished Lady.

Nobody paid attention as Tom regained his place.

“…
to become Duke of Pelokrinitsa
…” The first of the younger Lords was now being awarded office. “…
by virtue of logos and thinatos, power in thought and deed
…”

Tom applauded, clapping his hand against his thigh. Then he sighed inwardly as Lord A'Dekal announced the next elevation in rank.

One by one the young nobles, Lords and Ladies, ascended on floating crystal stepping-discs to Lord A'Dekal's platform. Their scarlet-and-yellow robes were bright, almost glowing as they accepted their honours.

Finally, it was Avernon's turn.

“…
for a great leap forward in human understanding, in a sweeping but subtle reformation of deepest logos, soon to be known in every realm
…
I present
the new Sapiens Primus of l'Academia Ultima, and visiting Isslyedavetel of Skola Na'wchnya, the most honourable Lord Avernon!”

Tom joined in the thunderous applause.

You're winning our bet so far.
The two positions were pure-research roles, the highest attainable.
Good for you, Avernon.

There were three or four more appointments announced by Lord A'Dekal, and the clapping was prolonged. Partly, it was a continuation of the genuine warmth for Avernon.

But also, the long ceremony was drawing to a close.

“…
last of all, and most unexpected: an elevation from the common ranks. A rare event, my Lords and Ladies, and unknown in this sector for nearly a century.
”

Stunned silence.

“
Thomas Corcorigan, would you stand, please?
”

Blood-rush in his ears. The world slipped in and out of focus.

Shakily, he stood.

“Come down, if you would.”

Scattered clapping.

He felt disembodied. Unsteadily, swallowing, Tom made his way along the downward-sloping aisle.

“…
with fewer advantages than the rest of us, and despite his background
…”

There were attendants, alpha-class servitors, and their gentle hands helped him up to the first floating crystal step. Then he was on his own.

“…
and an outstanding presentation to the Review Committee
…”

Above him, Lord A'Dekal beckoned.

Heart hammering, Tom climbed to the next crystal—glancing at Avernon's beaming face amid the crowd—then to the next, moving automatically.

Then he was standing, paralysed, before the tall Lord.

“Take this,” Lord A'Dekal murmured. “Go on.”

It was a silver thumb ring. Hand shaking, Tom reached for it.

“
My Lords and Ladies
…”

Lord A'Dekal turned around on the floating platform. His regal voice, projected by the hall systems, rang out across the great hall.

“…
may I present to you Lord Corcorigan. He will be ruler of Veldrin Provincia, a new realm bordering Lord Shinkenar's demesne
.”

Tom turned to face the rows of people. The applause was massive—

Destiny! It's really happening
.

—a roll of thunder which stretched on and on, for ever.

Lord Corcorigan bowed, and descended to meet his peers.

Golden background powdered with black stars, slashed by a diagonal bend surmounted by a poignard gules
…

“I don't think so.”

He waved it out of existence.

Azure Möbius-strip inescutcheon, argent stallion rampant in the first quarter.

“Fate. How bloody pretentious can I possibly get?”

A soft chime sounded.

“Come in,” called Tom, minimizing the holovolume.

“Were you busy, my Lord?” Avernon poked his head through the membrane.

Tom laughed. “Not really, my Lord.”

“Designing a coat-of-arms, Lord Corcorigan?”

“Noblesse oblige
…or
noblesse s'amuse.
Do come in, Lord Avernon. Make yourself comfortable.”

Avernon came into the gold-appointed drawing-room.

“Stopped grinning yet?”

“No.”

“You look as though you're floating off the ground.”

Tom shook his head, but not in denial…just at the strangeness of the situation. The old market chamber seemed a lifetime away: somebody else's life.

“When are you seeing Lord Shinkenar?”

“Father?” Avernon shrugged. “On the way to l'Academia, I suppose.”

“Don't forget—”

“—to thank him on your behalf. Right.”

“Sorry.” Not the first time Tom had mentioned it.

Though Avernon had spent many years fostered into Lady Darinia's extended family, his father was Lord Shinkenar: first proposer of Tom's elevation, and responsible for the creation of Tom's demesne.

He didn't come to see your triumph.
Tom looked at Avernon.
But you haven't complained once.

Yet nothing was that simple. Tom was now the ruler of Veldrin Provincia: a modest demesne, formed from some outer sections of Lord Shinkenar's own realm, plus reclaimed interdemesne caverns and halls which had lain unused for a century.

It was a very handsome gesture of gratitude.

“You saved my life.” Avernon gestured to a couch, and it slid across the floor to him. “He wanted to repay you years ago, when it happened”—he lay down on the couch, crossed his hands beneath his head, and stared at the mother-of-pearl ceiling—“but someone had already bought you a thousand merit points—”

What?

Tom had always thought that merit points were an automatic award. A cost to the system, not to an individual.

“I didn't realize that merits could come from a donor.”

“Over a certain limit, they have to.” Avernon squinted at the slowly changing swirls in the panels above him. “I forget what the threshold is. A hundred points, maybe?”

In all Tom's time as a servitor, nobody had mentioned this. And he had never known anyone else to be awarded more than twenty points at a time—and even that was rare—so the issue had never arisen.

“But if it wasn't your father…” Tom's voice trailed off.

Who gave me my start? Lady Darinia?

The question burned in his mind.

Or Sylvana?

Intricate fairings swept back across a glistening carapace: it hung silently above the courtyard.

“Not bad,” said Tom.

“Can't have a Lord without a lev-car, can we? That's what Father says.”

“You won't have time to ride it.” Tom clapped Avernon on the shoulder—an action which, a couple of days ago, would have carried heavy punishment. “Hobnobbing with the great minds of our age, unravelling the cosmic mysteries…”

“…chasing women…”

“…and chasing women, with no time for mundane activities like joyriding.”

“You're exactly right.” Avernon held out a small crystal shard. “That's why the lev-car is yours.”

Tom was speechless. Not at the gift itself, so much as the implications: that he could go anywhere, ride it where he pleased.

He rubbed his earlobe where the ID stud had been.

“Want to try it out, Tom?”

The crystal shard, having transferred ownership codes to Tom's thumb ring, dissolved in his hand.

“I guess we'd better.”

Tom gestured. The lev-car rose and floated across to the colonnade by which he and Avernon stood. Raising its retro-fashionable gull-doors, it sank to the flagstones.

“Beautiful.”

Tom slid inside first.

They moved off, slipping beneath a trellis archway covered in cloying air-blossom. A group of Ladies, conversing on a high balcony on a silver buttress, stopped as Tom and Avernon passed.

Tom tuned the cockpit to transparency. He gave a cheery wave to the Ladies, then turned the lev-car and sailed towards a wide tunnel.

They came out in a vast, raw cavern. They were still in interstitial territory, belonging to no demesne, perhaps two klicks from the Convocation venue, the Congressio Interstata.

The natural stone was black, speckled with greenish yellow. Here and there, red-brown ferric insertions stained the walls like dried blood. Sparse fluorofungus glimmered.

Tom brought the lev-car's stately glide to a halt, and they hovered in place. In front of them five dark tunnel openings were like watching eyes.

“Is everything OK?” asked Avernon.

“I think so. Do you get motion sickness?”

“Er, no. Why do you—?”

“
Go!
” Tom slammed his fist down, whooping as the lev-car leaped forwards and status holovolumes went crazy. “Hang on, now!”

Banking to the left, plunging down, then arcing upwards, heading straight for the cavern ceiling—“Destiny!” muttered Avernon, clinging to his seat—then whipping aside at the last second, twisting, speeding into a tunnel entrance, pressed deep into their seats as velocity increased again and rock walls flew past like fluid slipstream while Tom manically laughed and red-planed the hurtling lev-car's acceleration.

“Not long till the Last Chance Dance.”

It was the post-Convocation party.

Avernon, gripplewine in hand, nodded in the direction of a group of finely gowned young Ladies. One of them caught his regard and giggled.

“I beg your pardon?” The collar of Tom's formal half-cape was stiff with new platinum brocade, and he ran a finger inside to loosen it. “Last chance—?”

“Midnight Minuet, officially.” Avernon raised an eyebrow. “But, y'know, for the guys who haven't managed to score during the Convocation—”

“It's Falvonn and Kirindahl, isn't it?” Tom indicated the pair who were heading towards them. “They're a bad influence on you.”

“Hi, fellows.” Avernon greeted the two devil-may-care Lords. “Tom thinks you're a bad influence. This is from a chap who breaks every flight regulation with a passenger who once had a cardiac infarction.”

“Er…” Tom felt suddenly sick. “I didn't think—”

“Don't listen to him, Tom.” Falvonn, swigging from a goblet. “They grew him a new heart when it happened. That's the one thing that definitely won't fail.”

“I hope you're not insinuating…”

Tom tuned out their conversation.

He had learned that the party-going Falvonn and Kirindahl used to drag the naturally shy Avernon out to social occasions, helping him to meet Ladies, basically, in return for academic tuition. But sometimes their collective emotional development seemed to be stuck at the twelve-year-old stage.

Not sensible, like me.
He remembered the mad lev-car flight, and inwardly smiled.

Come to think of it, Falvonn and Kirindahl always seemed to turn up in each other's company. A smart remark rose to Tom's tongue, but he held it back: latent homosexuality was not a topic for jokes in the Primum Stratum, at least in this sector.

He did not think it was true…but if it was, and if latency turned to actuality, then they would be disinherited, stripped of their new positions, and demoted to Lords-Minissimi-sans-Demesne. And shunned for ever.

“—do you think, Tom?”

“I'm sorry?”

“She's looking at me. Lady Arlath. What do you reckon?”

“I don't know, Avernon. Are you seriously interested in her?”

Avernon glanced at Falvonn and Kirindahl, and shrugged. “To tell you the truth—”

Tom snagged a glass from a passing tray, turning so that his half-cape fell open plainly to reveal his abbreviated left sleeve.

Lady Arlath blanched and turned back to her friends.

“Just a little social experiment,” Tom murmured.

“Fate, Tom.” Kirindahl, the quieter of the pair, finally spoke. “Underneath it all, you're an evil bastard. What do you think, chaps?”

Avernon raised his glass.

“We knew that,” he said, “all along.”

Tom beckoned a servitor—the gesture came too easily—and discarded his half-empty glass.

Laughter arose from the small group of Ladies near the marble archway. Avernon was in their midst, Falvonn and Kirindahl flanking him.

Tom looked around the gathering.

“Do you know anyone, Lord Corcorigan?” It was a young, plain-faced Lady who addressed him. “I'm Yeltina, by the way.”

“Honoured.” Tom, thinking carefully, gave the correct bow: half-radian angle (for peer-meeting-peer, first occasion), head inclined to the left (for male-meeting-female). “And I don't know anyone here, really.”

Among the lacy columns, some three hundred of Gelmethri's elite mingled in small groups. Servitors moved around with trays, backed up by golden microdrones floating discreetly near the opalescent ceiling. Through various archways, neighbouring chambers were visible, filled with partying nobility. The celebrations extended far beyond this one grand chamber.

“That's Countess Nilkitran.” Lady Yeltina pointed out a distinguished Lady with a fractal head-dress. “She devised contra-loop web-attractors.”

“Good grief!” Tom was amazed. “I've read some of her work. She's brilliant.”

“Come on. I'll introduce you.”

She led him across to the half-dozen Lords and Ladies who formed Countess Nilkitran's audience. Drawing closer, he caught snatches of fine conversation, but found it hard to catch the words' meaning.

“Um…Your work is fantastic, ma'am,” he said.

The Countess looked surprised, as Lady Yeltina introduced him: “This is Lord Corcorigan.”

“Oh.” Countess Nilkitran raised an eyebrow. “So you're the one.”

But she smiled then, and everything was fine.

After a few minutes in conversation with the Countess and her admirers, Tom sensed another presence behind him.

“Ah, Lord Corcorigan.” The Countess looked over Tom's shoulder. “Let me introduce—”

“Not to worry.” An elegant, female voice. “Tom and I are old friends.”

Tom noticed the surprised respect in some of the eyes upon him. He turned and said: “Lady V'Delikona. It's good to see you.”

The white-haired Lady smiled as he kissed her hand. Then she tucked her arm in his.

“May I take Tom away for a moment?”

“Of course.”

Her slender arm felt frail, but her spirit was still formidable. As they walked, she nodded to various Lords who bowed in her direction.

“You've attracted attention in some quarters.”

“I guess so, my Lady. I'm having a lot of fun. And it really is good to see you.”

“One grows so weary of sycophants.” Her eyes were bright with energy in her lined, narrow face. “But when you say that, you mean it.”

“I should hope so.”

“Mmm. Come on.” They moved into an adjoining chamber, a ballroom
where slow music was gently playing. “Want to dance with a little old Lady?”

“My pleasure,” Tom said truthfully.

As they moved slowly around the floor, she looked up at him. “You dance well.”

“I learned mostly by watching…” Tom grinned slyly.

“…standing by the wall,” she finished for him, glancing at the servitors who even now ringed the ballroom. “Waiting on your
superiors.”
Her irony matched his.

When the dance was over, she declined the offer of another.

“I was talking to A'Dekal earlier”—she was referring to Lord A'Dekal, ranked Primus Maximus—“and he mentioned an interest in meeting you.”