Context (2 page)

The
black-robed woman curtsied.

‘I am Nirilya.’ She spoke in
accented Nov’glin. ‘Your guide, Lord Corcorigan.’

Tom appreciated her effort:
speaking his native tongue.

Beyond the marble platform, the
floor was purple glass, the exact colour of orthoplum wine. On it, the
twelve-strong honour guard stood to attention. Overhead, near the gilded
ceiling, rosy glowglobes floated.

‘And you’—Nirilya’s tone was cold—‘must
be Captain Elva Strelsthorm.’

Elva’s hands tightened into
half-fists, then relaxed. Such stark words, in another place, would have borne
grave insult. Had Elva been noble-born, they would constitute a death-duel
challenge. But this was another culture, and Nirilya was not speaking her own
language; they would have to make allowances.

Nirilya was staring at Tom:
another breach of protocol.

‘If you’ll permit me’—she
gestured towards the purple glass floor—‘my Lord.’

It rippled.

A deformity spread across the
floor. Then a two-metre swelling grew, morphed into a lev-chair, and detached
itself with a gentle pop. It slid towards Tom.

He glanced at Elva, then
surrendered, and eased himself inside the chair.

Fate...

A
spasm shook his leg, and he
briefly closed his eyes.

‘Are you—?’

‘Let’s go.’

The chair rose. Inside, Tom tried
to relax.

He was twenty-nine Standard Years
of age, athlete and warrior, but he felt like an old, old man.

It
was a rich realm. They passed through corridors of solid sapphire; tunnels of
stone carved with microscopic intricacy, lit by familiar fluorofungus upon the
ceilings. Walls were panelled in milky jade, or polished granite across which
ALife mandelbroten pulsed.

Surrounded by the honour guard,
Tom’s chair skimmed across the floor. Nirilya and Elva walked side by side,
like old friends; only the tension in Elva’s shoulders indicated otherwise.

They crossed a noisy, energetic
boulevard whose pearly ceiling glowed with opalescent light. Everyone here wore
blue, yet the variety was immense: diamond-crossed doublets, loose jumpsuits,
trailing robes.

There were no discreet
passageways for servitors. A demesne where everyone was equal?

I
wanted to achieve something
like this.

They traversed a series of
crystal lev-steps, over a copper fountain, to a low balcony where Nirilya
dismissed the honour guard. The officer-in-charge bowed, then the men wheeled
away, and marched into a transverse corridor.

A doorshimmer evaporated at
Nirilya’s gesture.

‘Your apartments, my Lord.’

Inside: sweeping buttresses of
dark blue glass; glassine columns, slowly morphing; holoflames dancing above hexagonal
flagstones. And for rehab, there was a chamber with a laminar-flow strip for
running, and a glassine wall sloping inwards at forty-five degrees and covered
with tiny knobs and protuberances, some shaped like miniature whimsical
gargoyles.

‘You’ll need a climbing wall,’
said Elva. ‘As soon as you’ve recovered.’

Tom, still in his lev-chair,
nodded silently.

A large reception chamber, a
dining chamber, a small art gallery and library, and half a dozen sleeping
chambers completed the ensemble.

Elva turned to Nirilya. “This is
quite satisfactory.’

Her words were a dismissal, and
Nirilya’s face tightened.

But her voice was steady as she
said: ‘We can go straight to the medical centre, if you wish.’

Tom,
standing in the med centre’s reception chamber, watched his lev-chair melt into
the glassine floor. Elva, looking more relaxed since Nirilya had left, examined
their surroundings.

‘Here we are.’

A barefoot young woman,
shaven-headed and clad in a russet tabard, came into the chamber. She
genuflected.

‘Please follow me, my Lord.’

Then she retraced her steps ...
walking
backwards
into the corridor from which she had come. Tom leaned
on his cane, glanced at Elva, and followed.

Twin rows of arches lined the
long corridor. To the left, the first chamber contained a semi-translucent
clone/regrow vat. All around the vat, a circle of barefoot men sat
cross-legged, watching and waiting.

‘A moment.’ Tom halted.

‘Sir?’ The young woman stopped,
trembling. ‘Have I given offence in any—?’

‘Not even a tiny bit. Are you a
servitrix?’

‘My Lord? I’m a vassal in the
ownership of Malfax Cortindo, who is owned by Dr Xyenquil himself.’

There was pride in her statement.

I should have known.

In the realms of Gelmethri
Syektor where he had lived, servitors were owned only by nobility. His own
years of servitude were etched forever in his soul. But there had also been
opportunity; finally, the joys of logosophical discovery in the Sorites School.

Yet here—he understood
immediately—a vassal could be indentured to another vassal, held to merciless
account for the most trivial of offences, restricted in education and work, in
living quarters and even in marriage. So easily abused, beyond even the immense
range of privileges which the law accorded any vassal’s owner, knowing there was
no redress: receiving the misery passed down from their owner’s own suffering.

It was an endless hierarchy of
manipulation and cruelty, of all the capricious, devastating acts which follow
when human beings are held to be no more than property.

No matter that such propensities
come from neural patterns laid down by primate genes, and that Tom could have
written the logosophical equations to prove it. When ethical systems become
possible, they also become
necessary,
and that was why Tom had once been
part of a revolution which aimed to bring liberty to all of Nulapeiron’s ten
billion diverse souls.

But now that seemed a time of
almost child-like innocence.

So arrogant—to think that I could
change all this.

In
the last chamber on the right, a grey-haired man with no legs was struggling to
cross the floor, walking on his stumps. Pain and determination etched deep
lines in his sweat-drenched features; his breath came in painful rasps.

Sweet Destiny.
Tom could only stare.
Be
strong, my friend.

He almost asked the female vassal
to explain, but then he realized: clone/regrow vats could regenerate damaged
cells, but the processes were expensive. Reserved for whatever élite held sway
here: Lords and Ladies, by another name.

‘They can fit prosthetics,’ Elva
murmured, ‘once he’s able to walk like that.’

Hardening the skin on his stumps,
learning to use his hip flexors to maximum effect.

Often, Tom had run and climbed
for hours—had once ascended, as a solo free-climb, the outer surface of a
kilometre-wide terraformer sphere hanging in the clouds above the surface: the
day he killed the Oracle. That same day, he had run sixty klicks in one long,
unbroken ultra-endurance session, after escaping in a drop-bug to the ground.

But he had never pushed himself
as hard as this poor injured vassal struggling to cross a modest chamber,
forcing himself to walk upon legs which did not exist.

~ * ~

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