‘Where did you—?’

  ‘Kilware Associates’ - her smile was cute enough to break Tom’s heart - ‘are back.’

  One of the things that had made Elva such a good security chief - of Corcorigan Demesne - had been her eidetic memory. She remembered Tom once giving an order to find a weapons store called Kilware Associates. That search had been unsuccessful; but when she saw the golden insignia on the store today, she had remembered everything.

  Now, as they walked along creamy cathedral-high halls towards the store, Tom told her for the first time of his dealings with Kilware Associates.

  ‘I think they may be observers,’ he said, ‘under Pilots’ orders.’

  ‘Pilots!’

  Tom had been fourteen Standard Years old when he had met his first Pilot: the woman who had given him her log-crystal shortly before the militia caught up with her and their graser beams torc her apart. Tom still forgot that, for most people, Pilots existed only as figures out of legend, dangerous folk who traversed the fractal wilds of mu-space, carrying ordinary humans in their ships as unconscious cargo. Yet how else could Terran emigrants have colonized Nulapeiron, some twelve hundred Standard Years before?

  ‘I suspect,’ said Tom, ‘that Pilots maintain an intelligence service, and that Kilware Associates are part of it. At any rate, when I entered one of their shops, a man called Brino caused some kind of tacware to be embedded in my nervous system.’

  ‘Without your approval, you mean?’

  ‘Or knowledge, at first. It was quite useful for hand-to-hand conflict: it highlighted vital targets in red, made me see attackers as a mass of points to strike. But the ‘ware is long gone ...’

  Tom’s two lost years as an alcoholic derelict, after he had fled a revolution which seemed no better than the corrupt regimes it sought to replace, had destroyed all traces of the implanted mindware. Perhaps some psychological carry-over had occurred: when Tom now practised his fighting skills, he still focused on places to hit, not on his opponents’ actions.

  ‘The day of our wedding,’ Tom added, ‘a stranger called to see me. A Pilot. He said his name was Janis deVries, and that the Pilot I met all those years ago was his mother. And he gave me a dagger’ - he pointed at the whitemetal poignard - ‘just like that. It’s in our luggage.’

  Elva had known none of this. ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘Only that we’d be meeting up again. Nothing more.’

  Tom and Elva halted before a wide storefront draped with black velvet curtains and banners, behind which jet-black opaque windows stood. A discreet golden kappa-and-alpha logo glinted by the doorway.

  ‘I guess,’ said Elva, ‘we should say hello.’

  The store’s interior was hushed. It was a place of grey shadows and black drapes, with crystal-clear points of light illuminating display cases where polished weapons shone. From the rear, a lean, shaven-headed man walked towards them. He wore a goatee; last time Tom had seen him, he had been clean-shaven.

  ‘It was a woman called Yeira,’ murmured Elva, ‘who served me earlier.’

  ‘Right,’ said Tom. ‘And this is Brino, that I told you about.’

  Brino stopped and bowed, with a gymnast’s - or a master-fighter’s -litheness.

  ‘My Lord and Lady Corcorigan. So good to see you.’

  A short woman stepped out from behind a sword rack. ‘My Lord.’ She bobbed a curtsy, then said to Elva: ‘Nice to see you again so soon, my Lady.’

  ‘Hello, Yeira.’

  Yeira turned to Brino and said: ‘You were right. They were followed. Seven watchers are stationed outside. Deepscan shows they’re armed.’

  Tom looked at Elva.

  ‘We noticed nothing.’

  ‘And they’re not yours?’ Brino gestured, and a string of cubic holo images hung in the air before him. Inside each, an impassive man was shown. ‘My guess would be an Action League. They’re not local, anyway.’

  Elva’s hand went to the graser pistol tagged to her hip. ‘Who are they?’

  Tom said: ‘What’s an Action League?’

  With a two-handed control gesture, Brino caused a black membrane to slide down across the doorway and vitrify into hardness. ‘We’re protected now.’ He made a further series of gestures, then stopped. ‘My Lord, you’ve heard of the Circulus Fidus.’

  ‘Reactionary think-tank,’ Tom said, thinking: And that bastard A‘Dekal tried to recruit me to their cause. ‘Are you saying the Circulus has become militant?’

  ‘Not exactly. Action Leagues are affiliated to the Circulus, and they’re springing up in every sector. Strategically, their thinking is sound. With the war over, they have to re-establish the old regimes quickly, before realms start experimenting with new forms of government. It’s a chance for change, or to knuckle down beneath the same old iron fist.’

  ‘Your words could be interpreted as treason.’

  ‘Perhaps ... Would you drag me before Duke Kalshuna, my Lord?’

  Tom had to smile at that. ‘Maybe not.’

  Inside each of the seven holo images, the men suddenly stiffened, and their eyes rolled up. They slumped to the floor.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Yeira checked a scan display. ‘They’re unharmed. A bit of a migraine when they wake up, is all. They’ll be out for an hour. Oh, and ... they’re wearing eyebranes with high-zoom capability: it’s no wonder you didn’t spot them. They’d have hung well back.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ said Elva. ‘Perhaps I’ll have a little chat with one of them.’

  ‘You’ll learn very little,’ Brino told her. ‘My recommendation would be to make sure you’re on board your arachnargos tonight. Realm Vilshan is well guarded, and you should be safe there.’

  That realm was Tom’s and Elva’s last stop before the Collegium itself. ‘You seem remarkably well informed, Master Brino.’

  ‘I try to be, my Lord.’

  Elva had edged towards a display case. Now, before Tom could react -he remembered the toxin-laden membranes that had protected the weapons store’s displays - Elva reached inside and picked up a small dartbow. ‘Very nice.’ She held it down and to the side. ‘Isn’t it dangerous, selling weapons for a living?’

  Brino held her gaze.

  ‘No, my Lady. Safest place in the world.’

  Elva looked at him for a moment longer, then replaced the dartbow on its velvet cushion. At that moment, Brino reached inside his tunic pocket, took out something small, and tossed it towards Tom.

  ‘A present, my Lord.’

  Tom snatched it from the air; Elva frowned at the lack of protocol. She was a commoner by birth, but a peacekeeping officer by training, and therefore disciplined.

  ‘A crystal.’ Tom clenched it in his hand. ‘May I ask what’s on it?’

  ‘I think you know,’ said Brino. ‘It’s a copy of the one that was destroyed.’

  ‘From the Pilot?’

  ‘Janis deVries sends his regards.’

  ‘What? No, wait—’

  Then something strange happened. Brino made a control gesture such as Tom had never seen before, and the air began to move. Blocks of transparency slid around them. Display cases shifted, weapons glinting as they rotated and folded out of existence.

  Invisible bands constrained Tom like a fist.

  ‘Are you caught?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Elva.

  Brino seemed wrapped in shadows: nearby, yet somehow distant. ‘Farewell, my Lord and Lady. I hope you’re successful.’

  ‘Wait, I want to—’

  Brino was gone. So was Yeira.

  Shadows, shadows all around ...

  An eldritch twisting of the air itself.

  Then the invisible force released Tom and bright light sprang into being on all sides. He toppled backwards onto the floor, flagstones banging hard against his buttocks. Elva was sprawled on one side.

  They were sitting on the floor in the bright-lit hall, and passers-by were stopping, shocked at the sight of nobility sprawled on the ground. Where the weapons store had been was a blank, wide alcove.

  ‘That’s a neat trick,’ said Elva.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ said Tom.

  Then Elva giggled, and in a moment they were laughing hard enough to cry as they sat there on the floor, while all around them strangers stared at the insane aristocratic couple who had dropped into their ordinary lives.

  ~ * ~

  3

  NULAPEIRON AD 3423

  The original crystal had been some kind of diary or log, but in the young Tom’s possession it became, much more. Adapting itself to the environment, the crystal posed teaching questions, and allowed Tom to study logosophical disciplines long before he enrolled in the Sorites School which made him a Lord.

  It was also a history of the Pilots, though how much was true and how much was drama for its own sake, Tom could not tell.

  Yet the crystal could also function as a mu-space relay, and Tom made use of it several times. Accessing communications processors of the mu-space universe enabled him to subvert an Oracle’s future memories, by immersing the Oracle in a perfectly simulated but false future. Only in a fractal universe (where mathematics was not constrained by Gödel’s Theorem) could such a detailed lie be constructed.

  The crystal’s last feat had not been at Tom’s hand. Instead, a squadron of volunteers flew with it above a giant Blight-constructed crystal building up on the world’s surface (and this was exceptional: most of Nulapeiron’s ten billion inhabitants would collapse in agoraphobic fear if they saw the surface or the sky). Those volunteers opened the gateway through which the Dart-entity warred against the Blight, and defeated it.

  Back in the apartment, Tom held the crystal in his hand for a long time, simply staring at it. This one, he was sure, had no mu-space comms capability; Brino would not hand over such technology. But even if the crystal held only the old teaching tales, the ones that Tom had already experienced over and over, that would be enough.

  It was a link to his past, in a dislocated, fluid world.

  Elva kissed him, then made ready to leave. She had booked an hour in the training chambers of the local security forces, so she could practise with her new weapons against fighting mannequins.

  ‘See you later, Tom.’

  ‘Be careful, darling. Or at least—’

  ‘—be vicious, right. ‘Later.’

  Then she was gone.

  Tom did not fully immerse himself in the old story. Instead, tapping his holopad, he opened an introductory static image: a holo depicting a slender woman and her two teenage sons. The sons were twins, a little older than when Tom had last seen them in the original crystal’s tales, but still recognizable.

  They looked normal, because they wore contact lenses to disguise the true appearance of their eyes: obsidian orbs without surrounding whites, jet-black eyes which could stare upon a fractal space no ordinary human being could comprehend.

  Tom looked at the image for a long time.

  What’s wrong?

  It was that feeling of threat, the feeling that had been growing stronger as he drew nearer to the Collegium. Surely it could only be nerves, knowing that he might be placing himself and Elva in the hands of his enemies. And yet, and yet...

  It was something real, he knew: something more than fear.

  Then a familiar silent voice sounded in his mind:

  Tom? Is that you in there?

  He chuckled and headed towards the lounge, holopad in hand. As he stepped inside, he made to shut down the image, but Eemur’s next words stopped him.

  No, don’t ... There’s a link here, my Lord. A very strange but important link.

  What kind of link?

  A form of entanglement? I’m not sure. But something...

  Tom shivered.

  The nervous systems of Elva and her twin sister Litha had been quantum-entangled since an early age. When Elva’s body had perished (or, as she said with no trace of humour, the first time she died), her consciousness had instantaneously displaced Litha’s mind in Litha’s body. But this could not be what Eemur was talking about: setting up such a link was a long, tricky process, and fallible; Elva sometimes woke up amid fading tag-ends of dreams that were not hers.

  ‘Eemur?’ Tom spoke aloud. ‘How can there be a link? These people must have perished centuries ago.’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Eemur?’

  Then her words came with an odd, eerie overlay: I haven’t given you your wedding present yet.

  ‘That’s all right’

  Let’s do it now.

  ‘Don’t worry about—’

  But you have to kiss me first.

  Confusion whirled inside Tom. Once before, he had picked up Eemur’s Head and kissed her like an automaton, not knowing why he was doing it. While Blight-subsumed soldiers had threatened them, Tom had kissed two sapphire tears from her eyes and gained strange abilities, just for a few moments. For long enough.

  But now—

  In some fashion, Eemur’s Head had saved his and Elva’s lives. Now, Tom knew he should refuse her request; yet he could not. Deep inside, he did not want to refuse.

  Eemur.

  Tom leaned forward, and then Eemur’s black-and-purple tongue was slithering, slick and icy, inside his mouth. Sucking the warmth from him.

  Sapphires sparkled.

  What ...?

  Cold lightning seared his lips.

  Congratulations, my sweet Lord.

  Tore his universe apart.

  Tom fell into that explosion, whorls of brightness flashing past, arced around atoms grown the size of galaxies; fell through the humming strangeness of quarks, the scream of incandescent spacetime whose warp and weave stretched to encompass him.

  He dropped through.

  Twisting along the Calabi-Yau dimensions, sliding through hyper-geometric crawlspaces beneath the subset revealed to human senses ... he could almost comprehend the mosaic, the eleven-dimensioned tessellae slotting together to form the universe. The human universe, real-space, was just a brane’s width away from ...

  Tom slammed into normal size.

  He lay on black, gleaming glass, panting hard.

  Where the Chaos am I?

  It was a cold great metal hall, formed of abstract sculptures: jagged flanges and polygonal sheets of alloy struck odd angles everywhere. Razor-edged obsidian formed angular archways too high and narrow for humans.

  Cold...

  Overhead, a vertical hanging sheet of bronze crawled with dark-red crystals which spread in fractal trees, blackened into death, then glimmered red once more. Criss-crossed black hawsers webbed the hall; spinning copper disks moved along them.

  Interesting place you’ve chosen.

  The air felt thick, cold and oily.

  ‘I’ve chosen?’ Tom’s words sounded flat. ‘What is this?’

  More flanges materialized, sliding into place. A jumble of metallic sheets moved. An angular carapace shifted, and steel eyes opened.

  Tom, I think you’d better ...

  But Tom was already moving.

  Where in Nulapeiron is this?

  Stupid question. He ducked behind a sharp-cornered buttress. Had it seen him? He had caught a glimpse of questing pincers which could snip him in half without noticing.

  Quickly.

  There. A jagged entrance to ... something. Tom pushed away from the buttress, ducked beneath a protrusion which could have taken out his eye, and was into the tunnel.

  Things clacked behind him.

  Not in Nulapeiron. This was not his world.

  There was a jutting sheet of dull metal which formed a natural hiding place, and he sank down, breathing hard.

  ‘Where?’ he whispered.

  As a boy, Tom had dreamed of leaving the marketplace, perhaps to visit the merchants’ homes in the stratum above ... and now this: another world.

  This may be Siganth. Tom, I’m sorry. I followed the link...

  Siganth?

  ‘Don’t be insane.’