‘With a thesis that won’t be made public.’

  ‘Right. That practice has been going for centuries, too. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘I ... Deirdre? Why UNSA? What’s memetic engineering got to do with them?’

  ‘So far the offworld settlements are just that... Small settlements. But terraformers are already spreading Terran bacteria. Eventually, some worlds will have habitable regions.’

  ‘With large populations.’

  ‘Which UNSA would like to control.’

  ‘But... They’re going to end up designing entire societies.’

  ‘Yeah, well...’ Deirdre clasped her hands on top of her head, leaned back in her chair. ‘They’re gonna try.’

  Outside, gentle rain began to patter once more.

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ said Kian. ‘Let’s go to the boardwalk.’

  ‘In this—?’ She stopped, nodded. ‘I’ll get my slicker.’

  ‘Meet you outside in ten.’

  Grey waves chopped and swirled beneath the timbers. Kian and Deirdre leaned against a rail with a solitary yellow-billed gull for company, while overhead a camera-drone bearing the SMPD logo struggled to maintain position in the gusty wind.

  ‘I wonder how long it can stay up.’ Kian was eyeing the drone.

  ‘Men worry about that, I hear.’

  ‘Ha. You know,’ Kian said, ‘there are genes that have identical effects in humans and tomatoes, yet the first time they cloned a black cat, the clone turned out tortoiseshell. And the so-called educated public didn’t even pick up on it, much less digest the implications.’

  ‘Tortoiseshell?’

  ‘What you call over here, um ... calico, right? It’s not always obvious what’s a fundamental concept. Sex is common—’

  ‘Yes, darling Kian.’

  ‘—but if that gull’s a boy, he’s got ZZ chromosomes, not XY Different mechanism.’

  ‘You still worried about your mechanism?’

  ‘Yes. No. Jesus ...’

  Deirdre laid her hand on his arm. ‘I wrote a paper about gender differentiation when I was twelve. I’ve always been different. I just thought... eventually that would be OK, you know?’

  ‘You’re worried they can bring pressure to bear? The authorities, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know, Kian. I don’t know.’

  In the air, the camera-drone remained aloft. Perhaps it was surveilling them right now.

  ‘You think you’re different?’ Kian hesitated, then reached up and prised away his contact lenses. ‘Really?’

  Deirdre stared at his obsidian eyes and shivered, just as the gull launched itself from the rail and swooped down towards the rushing sea.

  ‘I’ll show you from different.’ Kian pointed with his chin. ‘See there?’

  There was a split second during which the tiniest of golden glimmers inside his eyes caught Deirdre’s attention. Then she looked up at the drone.

  Feel it.

  Kian focused.

  Synchronize.

  Subverted.

  Now.

  Aloft, the drone jerked, then coughed dark smoke. For a few seconds it struggled, then it tilted to one side, hung in place for a moment, then slid sideways and down, towards the waves.

  Kian turned away, hearing the splash, cursing himself.

  Shit. What have I done?

  He began to walk.

  Rain and seaspray plastered Deirdre’s hair against her forehead, and she blinked to keep water from her eyes as she followed, caught hold, and tugged Kian’s sleeve, pulling him to a halt.

  ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily, pal.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Deirdre. I shouldn’t have done that.’

  Gently, she tapped him on the forehead.

  ‘Bad boy. Now let’s go home.’

  ‘I don’t... All right.’

  Wind whipped around Kian and Deirdre as they left the boardwalk, and they leaned into it, heading towards the battened-down Santa Monica strip, combining their weights against the random buffeting of elements which neither knew nor cared about the existence of two tiny individuals caught inside turbulent patterns they could barely perceive.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  22

  NULAPEIRON

  AD 3423-3426

  It was a time of despair; it was a time of tightening resolve.

  Two Standard Years passed quickly, though not easily: in planning, drawing together alliances, outmanoeuvring political enemies among the Action Leagues and elsewhere; and in research, as Tom brought the best technicians to his floating home, the kilometre-wide stone sphere once known as Guillaume Globe. From its apex, creamy gases spewed, as it continued its centuries-old terraforming task, one sphere among thousands in Nulapeiron’s skies.

  Then there was Fire Watch.

  In realm after realm, internal surveillance organizations sprang up, often with remits which hid their true machinations from the Liege Lords and Ladies who approved their creation. Some of those Fire Watch bodies kept to the purpose Tom envisaged: watching for signs of the Anomaly. Others were more inclined to function as instruments of repression, quashing commoners’ movements for emancipation, tightening the punishments for minor infractions of the law.

  Tom’s missing left arm hurt as never before.

  In all of this, Viscount Trevalkin’s motives were unclear to Tom: Trevalkin was a reactionary, but one who hated the original Blight with a vengeance (the one thing that Tom would accept they had in common). Tom’s head ached when he tried to track the global state of allegiances and betrayals at any time.

  And he missed Elva more than he could say.

  From the balcony which ringed the sphere close to the apex, Tom would stare down at the slow-passing landscape: quilted patchworks of heaths and meadows; sere blue-grey desert wastes; the blinding Quicksilver Sea.

  On occasion, Eemur’s Head ventured out with Tom, lowering her lev-tray to the stone balustrade. Nice world. Sometimes Tom could not tell whether a thought was hers or his. Too bad we don’t know how to save it.

  The lev-tray had been Elva’s idea, and she had sent it along with Eemur herself.

  Meanwhile, in the core levels of the sphere, techs worked on hyper-dimensional research - a prime goal being to decide whether there were detectable resonances that would reveal the Anomaly’s presence in the world. Other teams attempted to reassemble the near-destroyed cyborg, the Jack known as Axolon.

  Strange visions swam through Tom’s nightmares. Increasingly often when he woke, there was blazing sapphire tracery that faded quickly, and was gone.

  The Aurineate Grand’aume had been a rich realm; now it was suffering because of its status as Blight-occupied territory during the war. It formed a prime recruiting ground.

  One of the people that Tom hired personally was Dr Xyenquil, the red-haired medic who might or might not have saved Tom’s life once, from femtocytic infection.

  ‘I don’t know why Axolon rejects the regrow-factors,’ he told Tom more than once. ‘It’s as if his cells - and they’re femto constructs as much as biological - have evolved antibody reactions to Jack technology.’

  ‘Or he doesn’t want to be reconstituted as a killing machine.’

  Xyenquil would shrug. ‘I can’t argue with that, my Lord.’

  Couriers sent to the Klivinax Toldrinov were met with blank silence. The guild which manufactured cyborgs had disowned Axolon, or were unwilling to reveal their secrets.

  ‘He’s not suicidal,’ Xyenquil said once. ‘Axolon has no self-destruct facility ... Not consciously.’

  Every tenday or so, instead of running on his laminar flow pad, Tom would clamber over the terraformer’s balcony and freeclimb around the outer surface of the sphere, buffeted by winds and always conscious that the slightest mistake would spring him into the void.

  These were the times when Tom forgot about political subterfuge, about inferring motives and machinations in realms he would never see, based on a haze of doubtful intelligence.

  After one such climb, Tom sat in lotus and slid into deepest logosophical trance, attempting to clarify the global situation in his mind. When his eyes snapped open an hour later, his strategic understanding remained shadowy, but he knew exactly what to do about Axolon, and put the matter to him.

  The cyborg agreed.

  And was reborn.

  The terraformer sphere legally became Axolon Array. It continued to drift among the clouds; but now, on the outer surface, mounted just below the equatorial ring, a cyborg’s head looked down upon the landscape, his fibres and metal sinews splayed across the stone surface and rooted in it, linked organically with ancient control systems so that he became a composite being: no longer a Jack, but something new and powerful.

  Sometimes, Tom would climb down, perch on the narrowest of windswept ledges close to the cyborg’s face, and hold logosophical discussions on the nature of life and death and humankind’s purpose in the universe.

  On other occasions, they would remain silent, watching the landscape slide slowly past beneath, until it was time for Tom to go back inside.

  Spies and counterspies; double and triple agents; measures and counter-measures; plans within plans. And in that confusion, Elva came to visit: twice in the first year, once the next, always accompanied by Adam who made sure to bury himself in technical discussions for as much of the time as possible.

  It was not supposed to happen this way.

  How could Tom ask that Elva love him, when they were never together?

  Four times, Thylara arrived by shuttle: ostensibly to discuss alliances with the TauRiders and other clans. Two visits ended with a wild ride in bed when she rode Tom like a bucking arachnasprite and he cried aloud with anguished pleasure when he came.

  Then Tom returned to work, feeling dirty and driven, surrounded by holodisplays which mapped cause and effect, allegiance and betrayal, making use of every possible resource save Oracular truecasts to determine the state of Nulapeiron.

  Pushing himself ever harder ...

  You will not have my world.

  ... until the day a small flyer marked with the charcoal signs of graser fire, its control surfaces so badly damaged that its survival was a near miracle, docked in a transfer bay near the bottom of the sphere, and the wounded occupant came aboard.

  Tom received the man in the polished chamber with the chequered blue-and-white floor where, nearly twelve Standard Years before, the Oracle had died.

  ‘My Lord.’ Despite his injuries, the man went down on one knee and bowed his head. ‘I have bad news.’

  The rest was detail, for in that moment Tom deduced exactly what had occurred, and clearly saw the depths of his own failure, and the helplessness with which he and everyone else faced the future.

  Fate help us.

  The Anomaly was here.

  ~ * ~

  23

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  It was night and white lightning forked through purple clouds. Tom stood on the balcony, dark cloak whipping in the wind as he stared at the sky and saw only failure.

  You’re achieving nothing out there, my Lord.

  In his fist he clenched a crystal delineating the Anomalous incursions. The worst aspects were all-clear reports from Fire Watch bodies in realms which clearly had been subverted. Whom could he trust?

  There were sightings of scarlet-clad human figures appearing from black flames; of metallic beings with flanges and wings and talons; mysterious decrees and repressive military occupation by forces whose officers had eyes like stone and the emotional warmth of reptiles.

  Sheets of rain, silver and hard, began to fade, intensity lessening until drizzle remained, then nothing: just flat, preternaturally still air, while in the distance lightning blasted through the cloudbase.

  Eye of the storm.

  They were in the midst of it.

  Soon the violence will rage.

  Tom turned and went inside. Around a conference table in the chamber where he had murdered the Oracle, his friends and advisers waited. Xyenquil’s frown of concern might be for Tom’s health, and Eemur on her floating tray merely glistened with fresh blood, but the others looked fearful, knowing the entire world could fall in days.

  And what am I supposed to do?

  They were looking up at him, expecting leadership. Tom let out a breath.

  Then: ‘Axolon?’ he said.

 

  The voice reverberated all around them.

  ‘Ready a drop-capsule. I’m going down to the surface.’

  While Tom’s security teams were checking the drop-bugs and walking through the logistics, Axolon made a strange announcement:

  Alone in the conference chamber, Tom looked up from the holodisplay. A breeze drifted in from outside, through the tall opening which led to the view balcony. The sky beyond looked clear. Everything was peaceful.

  ‘See what?’

  As Tom spoke, a small shape glided into the chamber - intruder! - and Tom was going for his graser pistol when he realized that this what Axolon meant. In a combat crouch, though he could not recall having pushed the chair back, Tom stopped and waited.

  It was a glassbird, and it circled the chamber once while producing a high, piercing cry. Then it swooped down towards the table - Tom gestured quickly, and the holo image winked out - and came to a scraping halt.

 

  Tom nodded without speaking.

  Then the glassbird opened its polished beak and recited in a sing-song voice: ‘We should meet my Lord: one psychopath to another.’

  ‘Trevalkin,’ growled Tom.

  ‘I suggest a rendezvous in Realm Buchanan. You’ll find the coordinates in this bird’s heart.’

  It was a recording, no more. As the words ended, the bird tilted its head, and regarded Tom with an eyeless stare for several moments. Then its body began to shiver.

  What the Chaos could you want?

  The glassbird melted and slopped apart into a pool of thick, viscous sludge upon the tabletop. In the middle of the liquefied remains, a small hard crystal shone.

  There were seven-sided columns; high-groined ceiling; naves and alcoves: all stippled with strange white-and-bronze illumination cast by spike-encrusted glowclusters. Their sculpted, intricate forms concealed micrograser arrays, ready to be turned upon the populace at the Liege Lord’s command.

  The chancery contained some seventeen or eighteen shaven-headed commoners at prayer. Pale pink smoke drifted from a thurible, and caught in Tom’s throat.

  Where are you, Trevalkin?

  The followers of the Finite Computational Path had split from the Church of the Incompressible Algorithm in a schism that remained bitter (though unbloody), stemming from minor differences of interpretation. A preacher was declaiming on their holy mission, and Tom strove to look interested while casting glances in all directions.

  It was five hours since the glassbird had come to a programmed suicidal end in Tom’s conference chamber.

  Now, militiamen were walking past. Their uniforms were silver and green, suggesting a festive spirit at odds with their stone expressions and purely functional graser rifles. Realm Buchanan’s reputation had always been that of a friendly, tolerant realm, open to outsiders.

  Tom’s thumb ring was wrapped in nul-gel and concealed inside his belt. A ruby ID stud in his left ear proclaimed his merchant trader status: a cover that gave him freedom of movement.

  He was not alone here in Realm Buchanan. Doria Megsin, Academy-trained like Tom, led one support team of six paramilitaries dressed as civilians; they were a klick away from this position. Her lieutenant, Grax Tegoral, led Team Beta, also in mufti; he was keeping an eye on a fallback escape route. Doria and Grax were security officers (based in Axolon Array) whose advice Tom had finally taken. They would not let him go in alone, unsupported and with a suicide implant; they wanted to keep him alive.

  So where the Chaos are you, Trevalkin?

  Tom backed away from the praying folk - some were penitents, lying face-down on the cold stone floor - and spotted a purple hanging which led to a small shop containing crystals and sacred statuettes.