Paradox (33 page)

“Are we softworms or are we men?”

Angry mutterings among the ragged crowd. There were stevedores and labourers of every kind, big forearms and big bellies or else skinny, like ferrets. Black-skinned or white, they were mostly stained with grey grime.

“What about women?” called out a big woman, arms crossed above her mighty bosom. She was as brawny as many of the men.

“Yes, please,” someone said, and laughter rippled through the gathering.

Tom smiled from his vantage point: a tiny alcove, once used to hold a statuette; only its broken base remained. The alcove was high up, just below the groined ceiling. The stone felt greasy with moss and mutated fluorofungus.

“OK, OK.” The speaker—the authorities would term him a rabble-rouser—held up his hands, allowing the amusement to peter out. “Brothers…and
sisters”
—hoots of laughter—“all of us: we're humans, and therefore we should have our dignity, our pride. But do our masters grant us that dignity? Do they?”

Mumbled negatives among the crowd, but not boisterous, not now. This was striking too close to home.

Below Tom, hanging in mid-air near the wall, was one of his first attempts at seditious verse:

For freedom's curse

Could not be worse

For Oracles, or then for me.

The slaves he whips

Inconstant rips

For darkness' sake, will always be.

But Chaos waits

Beyond the gates

Where Oracles no longer see.

The tiny holocrystal projecting this poem had been in place for several days. The script was in large, simple tricons, and the colour-coding was garish, but it had a dual purpose. The shading was a generally recognized code which proclaimed the public meeting here, at this place and time.

Similar verses were scattered around the locality: twelve strata down, just inside the border of Lord Shinkenar's demesne.

If the mass of people are illiterate
, Tom wondered,
then why are they affected so by poetry?

Perhaps it was just the times, the choice of subject matter. Or maybe the nobility underestimated the populace.

Reflexively, he reached for the stallion talisman beneath his jerkin. It was there, but empty: the comms relay was back in his study. Trusting Elva's security routines implicitly. Technicians were working ceaselessly, in shifts around the clock, in chambers with no dark periods (like Lady V'Delikona's realm), to restore and duplicate its capabilities.

Whatever had happened on the Oracle's terraformer sphere, it had left the crystal blackened and only partially functional. The basic comms frameworks were there, but they would not activate. Karyn's Tale was inaccessible—though he still had the previously downloaded modules—and only a hint of its vast processing powers was available.

For all the tech-talk of exaqubit architecture and hectoday-long reverse-engineering analyses, it was just one small crystal they were trying to take apart. It seemed that building the requisite toolkits
would be the hard part of the project. Regardless, the regular brainstorming discussions were surprisingly enjoyable, though Tom knew none of the technicians' names. That was one of the simpler precautions taken by LudusVitae cell members.

Tom adjusted his position in the high alcove. The greasy stonework felt cold.

“And how many hours do you work every day?” The speaker, down below, singled out someone in the crowd.

A plant
, Tom thought, gathering his tattered cloak more tightly around his hunched body.

“Too many!” was the shouted answer, and other voices rose in angry support.

“And will we present their Lordships with our demands?”

“Aye!” Mutterings. “
Demands
…”

But there was jostling at the back of the crowd, a ripple of push and shove, and then Tom could see the uniforms. Some of them were civilians with only diagonal black sashes to identify them.

Not regular militia, those others. Professional thugs, armed with staves.

They used a wedge formation to force their way into the crowd's centre, while a small group circled the dank chamber's edges, trying to cut off the speaker's escape.

Most fled, but others fought, and there were cracked heads and streaming blood on both sides as confusion reduced them to a milling mass of bodies. The speaker tried to fight, but some of his own followers pulled him away and bundled him off to a dark side tunnel.

Damn them!

But it was not entirely unexpected, and there was nothing Tom could do to help. He was more useful to LudusVitae alive and free, and the numbers were too great: no matter how skilled he was, eventually sheer weight of numbers would press him into a corner and then he would be done for.

But he was afraid; and part of him wanted desperately to confront that fear.

Soon the chamber was deserted, save for the few wounded who had not been arrested. Moaning, holding foreheads or bloody temples. Two were lying still.

Damn them to Chaos.

It was a long time before members of the local populace—not organized: in twos or threes, looking for relatives—came to take away the survivors. One of the prone men had partially awoken, and began to moan incoherently as they carried him away on a blanket used as a stretcher. The other did not react as he was dragged out.

When the chamber was empty, Tom swung himself out of the alcove and climbed down the rough stone wall.

“My Lord?”

He span, hand ready, lowering into a crouch.

“I'm just a messenger.” A small oriental youth bowed. “Did you see the action? It was quite a beehive of activity.”

“No-one managed to block the incursion.”

“Just so. Will you follow me, please?”

Beehive: block.
Today's general-intro code.

“Where are we going?” asked Tom, but the youth had already turned his back and slipped into the shadowed corridor from which he had come.

Silently, Tom followed.

Cream-walled halls, square pillars with inlaid gold. Spreading green ferns at their bases. Soft music playing.

They were three strata up from the trouble scene, and the atmosphere could not have been more different: calm and prosperous. Not bad for the Nonum Stratum.

The youth's travel-access had been sufficient to get them both through the ceiling hatches. Tom's own control codes were not
required, and he noted this. It signified a cell with significant resources.

Golden lev-platforms; merchants hawking fine pottery. A small amount of licensed smart-tech: moving figurines, self-composing music-crystals. Tom would have liked to stop—all pleasurable music is based on the constant 1/
f
parameter, but the annealed-transition algorithms sounded particularly interesting as a complex piece shifted from adagio to allegro—but a discreet establishment, blocky golden lion statues guarding the entrance, was in front of them.

Inside, a faint smell of incense hung in the air.

“Please wait,” said the youth, bowing. He stepped through a membrane.

Cool and shadowed. Long displays of jewellery, infocrystals, statuettes. Bladed weapons which looked purely decorative: flexible blades, bright scarlet tassels.

Some customers quietly browsed. A lone woman, a couple holding hands. Two slender youths, in identical black silk tunics, waited patiently for any summons to help.

“How much is this?” The woman, holding up a flat octagon, decorated in red, gold and green, in which a round silver disc was embedded.

“The
pakua
mirror? Did you want it blessed?”

“If it can be done now. How much does it cost?”

“Master Tang has a couple with him at the moment: a geomantic consultation…”

Tom tuned out their conversation, only half listening as the fee structure was explained: the amount being whatever the woman could afford, provided certain numerologically significant digits appeared in the final sum.

He took down a chain-whip from the wall and weighed it in his hand: surprisingly heavy. He remembered the
wu shu
demonstration, so long ago, when Zhao-ji's people came to the caverns near the Ragged School.

A lifetime ago.

“We are all living in the dragon's veins.” One of the oriental youths, addressing Tom.

“I've always thought so.”

“Master Tang will see you now.”

Rising straight up through the floor via a circular membrane, a young couple bearing scarlet-wrapped packages bade farewell to the youths, who returned the gesture: left hand clasping right fist, a short courteous bow.

“This way.”

Tom replaced the weapon and followed the youth to the room's centre, tensing slightly as the membrane liquefied and elongated, slow and viscous. It lowered them into a basement chamber, then slurped back into position, regaining its original shape.

“Lord Corcorigan.” From his seated position, the man bowed.

“Master Tang.”

“We are honoured. Please”—indicating a chair of square design—“take a seat.” Master Tang clapped his hands, and the youth hurried off through a side membrane.

Tom waited.

“I'm so sorry,” Master Tang continued, “that our poor establishment cannot match the standards you are used to.”

“I'm glad to be here.”

If only you'll tell me why.

“Thank you. Please, my Lord…If I make any errors of protocol, be assured that no offence is implied. It will be just unfamiliarity with noble ways.”

Tom bowed, hiding a smile. It was the apology he should have made, and he wondered how many rules of etiquette he had already broken since entering the chamber.

“In the interests of mutual understanding,” he said, “let us forgo embarrassment. If we spell out intentions and agreements in detail,
explained simply but without assumptions about each other's inferences, then we should avoid any problems.”

Master Tang's sudden laugh echoed back from walls and ceiling. “In other words, my Lord, you'd like me to get to the point.”

Tom smiled. “If you like.”

“But not before we've had some daistral. Ah, Younger Sik-chun.” He beckoned to the youth, who had reappeared with a laden tray. “Thank you.”

The youth held the tray at knee-height between Tom and Master Tang, then let go. It remained floating in its lev-field. He poured daistral from a pot into two cups, then bowed and exited.

“An old friend of yours, Siu Lung”—Master Tang took a sip—“sends his regards.”

“I'm sorry, I don't—”

“Little Dragon is his commonly used name these days. It was not always so.”

Zhao-ji.
His old friend.

“Is he well, Master Tang?”

But it was a decade since Tom had seen him, and this meeting was about more than lost friendship. And why was it taking place now, in particular?

“He is ranked
sheung fa
—Double Flower—and that is high indeed, my Lord.”

Tom looked at Master Tang directly. “Only four steps down from Dragon Head, the
lung tau
himself. I'm very impressed.”

Master Tang, too experienced to show surprise, nodded. “So am I, my Lord.”

“May I enquire as to the society's name?”

There were many, and Tom knew only a few of their names.

Master Tang said nothing—

Crimson, curling creature, wings unfurled, breathing fire. Bulbous, intelligent eyes.

—but smiled as Tom rocked back, startled by the near-subliminal holoflash.

Recovering, Tom bowed. He had heard of the Strontium Dragons, possibly the most powerful syndicate in this sector. But its boundaries did not stop there, and it had links and alliances to societies in far-flung demesnes.

Most of his information came from Elva's tendaily security briefings. For the first time, he began to appreciate just how detailed and professional her analyses were.

Biding his time, he picked up his cup and drank some daistral. “Very good.” He sat back, savouring the taste.

Master Tang remained silent.

We could sit here all day, without another word.
But it would not do to betray a lack of control.

In Tom's first meeting with LudusVitae, in the abandoned arachnargos wreck, there had been one oriental man at least. Another member of the Strontium Dragons?

Finally, Master Tang turned and looked at the side membrane just as the youth, Younger Sik-chun, returned bearing a black-lacquered box.

Sik-chun relinquished his hold; like the tray, the small box floated. As before, he bowed silently and left.

“Earlier this year”—Master Tang's dark eyes glittered—“an untoward event occurred on a terraformer sphere, high in the atmosphere.”

Tom's body readied itself for combat. But he could sense the waves of spiritual strength, of
ch'i
, emanating from Master Tang. His body, too, showed the paradoxical relaxed tension of a prepared warrior.

“Indeed.”

“Such an unnatural environment, do you not think, my Lord? However—”