‘Like what?’
‘If you’re not ripe enough to figure elevation out for yourself, then use the mechanisms that other races have used to elevate themselves with. In the majority of the post-physical elevation cases we’re aware of, the physical mechanism survived the act. So you just plug it back in, reboot, and press go. Bang, you’re an instant demigod.’
‘But would ANA allow that? And what about the post-physicals?’
‘It’s got fuck all to do with ANA. If you take a starship and leave Commonwealth space its jurisdiction and responsibility end there. Technically, anyway; this whole Pilgrimage shit really screwed things up. The argument about interference was getting very noisy inside before I left.’
‘So why hasn’t anyone done it?’
‘What makes you think they haven’t? That’s the point: post-physicals don’t hang around afterwards. Not that we know of. Oh, it’s going to take a shitload of effort, and you’d probably spend a century repairing the gizmo, but it can be done. But that’s nothing like the effort involved in manipulating Living Dream, imprisoning ANA, and creating an inversion core.’
‘So what is Ilanthe doing?’
Gore spread his palms out and shrugged. ‘Million-dollar question, sonny.’
‘Oh fuck.’
‘Welcome to the paranoia club; cheapest fees in the universe and membership lasts forever.’
‘So where are we going?’
‘The Anomine homeworld.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they successfully went post-physical; and they left their elevation mechanism behind.’
Inigo’s Twenty-First Dream
Edeard walked out of the Mayor’s sanctum, hoping none of his annoyance was showing. Even after all these decades in Makkathran he was still less adept at veiling his emotions than other citizens. It had been a petty argument, of course, which just made it worse. But Mayor Trahaval was adamant. Livestock ownership certificates would not be extended to sheep and pigs. For centuries they had only been required for cattle, the Mayor insisted, and that tradition was more than adequate. If there had been an increase in rustling out in the countryside, it was not the city’s job to interfere, and certainly not to impose additional paperwork on the provinces. Let the governors increase the sheriff patrols, and have the market marshals keep a more watchful eye.
The doors closed behind Edeard, and he took a calming breath. A powerful farsight drifted across him, raising goose-bumps on his arms. As always it was gone in a moment; certainly the watcher hadn’t lingered long enough for him to use his own farsight to ascertain where they were.
Whoever they were, they’d been checking up on him for a couple of years now, and growing bolder of late. The snooping was coming almost weekly now. It irritated him that there was almost nothing he could do about it, short of being fast enough to catch the secret watcher at his or her own game. So far he hadn’t managed that, though he suspected it was some disaffected youth making sure he wasn’t around while they set about their own nefarious business. Certainly Argain hadn’t heard anything from his contacts about a youngster with exceptional psychic powers. At least, not one who hired out his talent. So Edeard was content to play a waiting game; one day they’d make a mistake, and then they’d find out just why he was called the Waterwalker.
On the Liliala Hall’s ceiling above him, the storm clouds swirled ferociously, blocking out all sight of Gicon’s Bracelet. Three weeks, that’s all, just three weeks to the next elections. Not that he expected Trahaval to be voted out, nor even wanted him to be. Life was good in Makkathran and the provinces, in no small part due to Trahaval, who was a solid reliable Mayor, consolidating everything Finitan had achieved over his unprecedented six terms. It was just that he lacked any real vision of his own. Hence the refusal to expand the livestock registry. Farmers had been complaining about rustling for years, and it was definitely on the increase. Merchants and abattoirs in the city weren’t too choosy who they bought their beasts from, a moral flexibility followed by all the big towns and provincial capitals. An expanded certificate scheme would help, especially given how difficult it was to settle such disputes. As always, pressure was put on the constables and sheriffs to sort the mess out and come down hard on the rustlers. Such expectations were a sign of the times, Edeard reflected wryly. Twenty years ago people were concerned about thugs and robberies and securing the roads against highwaymen, nowadays it was missing sheep.
But in three weeks’ time, if all went well, he might finally get out of the special Grand Council committee on organized crime which Mayor Finitan had created. After two and a half decades it had accomplished everything Edeard had ever wanted it to. The committee had begun by weeding out the left-over street gang members, of whom there were still hundreds. They’d fallen back into their old ways with the greatest of ease, as if Finitan’s election and the mass banishment had meant nothing. They weren’t organized any more, not as they had been under Buate and Ivarl, though Ranalee and her ilk certainly exerted enough malign influence. Because they were all independent of their old gangs the constables had to go after them one at a time, catching them in the act of some petty criminal endeavour. Then came the court case, which inevitably fined them rather than jailed them because the offences were so petty; or if they were jailed it was only for a few months – which solved nothing. Edeard and Finitan had introduced a rehabilitation scheme as an alternative to fines and jail and banishment; making convicts undertake public works alongside genistar teams. It had to be done. They were determined in that. Some attempt had to be made to break the cycle of crime and poverty. The cost of the scheme had kicked off a huge political struggle in the Council, absorbing all Finitan’s efforts for his entire second term. Guilds had been coerced to train the milder recidivists, taking them on as probationary apprentices so they were offered some kind of prospects at least. Slowly and surely, the level of physical crime in the city had fallen. That left other levels of disruption and discontent. Edeard had gone after the remaining One Nation followers, which had been far more difficult. They could never be brought before a court of law and sanctioned before undergoing rehabilitation. Instead he applied pressure in other areas of their lives. Their businesses suffered, no bank would loan them money, their status (so important to the Grand Families) withered away as whispered rumours multiplied and they were blackballed from clubs and events. Finally, should those methods fail to move them, there was always the formal tax investigation of their estates. Over the years they simply packed up and left Makkathran. Edeard made sure they dispersed evenly across the provinces, so that, given the distances involved, they slowly fell out of contact with each other.
That just left the Grand Families. Which strictly speaking didn’t fall under the remit of the committee. Their power came from their wealth, which was jealously and adroitly guarded. Finitan quietly began to increase the number of tax clerks, while Edeard removed the more corrupt members of that guild. The city’s tax revenue increased accordingly. But bringing full accountability to the Grand Families and merchant classes was a process of democratization which would probably exceed his lifetime, though the worst excesses had already been curbed.
Now, in three weeks’ time Makkathran would vote on his candidature for Chief Constable. Please Lady! Because everyone, especially the Grand Families, saw each new crime in Makkathran as part of some vast subversive semi-revolutionary network of evil. It was an inevitable result of the success which the constables and his own committee had secured over the years, cutting the overall level of crime in the city and out on the Iguru so spectacularly. Consequently any crime which was committed these days became noteworthy, from missing crates of vegetables to the theft of cloaks from the Opera House. They had to be organized, and therefore required the immediate appointment of the Waterwalker himself to head up the investigation.
Three weeks, he thought as he walked across the Liliala Hall, that’s all I’ve got to put up with this Lady-damned rubbish for. Three weeks. A
nd if I lose, they might even expect me to resign. It wasn’t a thought he’d shared with anyone, not even Kristabel; but it was one he’d considered a few times of late. Certainly there was precious little for the special Grand Council committee to do these days. The number of constables assigned to the committee was barely a quarter of what it had been fifteen years ago, and most of those remaining were on loan to provincial capitals or winding up cases that had dragged on for years.
One way or another, it needs to close down. I need to do something else.
Above him, a vigorous hurricane knot at the ceiling’s apex spun faster and faster. The racing bands of cloud grew darker as they thickened. At first he didn’t really notice the centre, it was just another patch of darkness. Then a star shimmered within it, and he stopped and stared up. The centre of the storm-whorl was clearing, expanding to show the night sky beyond. He’d never seen the ceiling do that before, not in all the years he’d walked beneath it. Clouds were draining away rapidly now, abandoning the ceiling to leave a starscape where the Void’s nebulas glimmered with robust phosphorescence. Then Gicon’s Bracelet appeared, each of the five small planets spaced neatly around the ceiling, and shining with unwavering intensity, so much larger than he’d ever seen them before. The Mars Twins, both angry gleaming orbs of carmine light, still devoid of any features. Vili, the brightest of the five, with an unbroken mantle of ice reflecting sunlight right back through its thin cloudless atmosphere. Alakkad, its dead black rock threaded with beautiful orange lines of lava, pulsing like veins. And finally, Rurt, an airless grey-white desert, battered by comets and asteroids since the day it formed to produce a terrain of a million jagged craters. Edeard gaped in delight at the celestial panorama which the ceiling had so unexpectedly delivered in such wondrous detail. He took his time, familiarizing himself with each of the Gicon worldlets. It had been a long time since he’d bothered to look through a telescope – decades, back before he ever set foot in Makkathran. As he went round the sedate quintet formation he realized something new had appeared amid them. A patch of pale iridescent light was shimmering beside Alakkad. ‘What is that?’ he murmured in puzzlement. It couldn’t be a nebula, it was too small, too steady. Besides, the ceiling was showing him the entire bracelet, which meant the patch was close to Querencia. There was no tail, so it wasn’t a comet. Which meant . . .
Edeard dropped to his knees as if in prayer, staring up in awe at the little glowing patch. ‘Oh dear Lady!’ He’d never seen one. Never imagined what one would look like. But even so he knew exactly what he was looking at.
Edeard put his eye to the end of the telescope again, making sure the alignment was right. Why the lens stuck out vertically halfway along the big brass tube was a mystery to him. The astronomer he’d bought it off had launched into some long explanation about focal length. It made no sense to Edeard; that the contraption worked was all he required. He’d spent most of the afternoon setting it up on the hortus outside the study where Kristabel kept her desk and all the paperwork she used to manage the estate. By now the ziggurat all the way down to the third floor knew of the Waterwalker’s new interest, not to mention every astronomer in Makkathran – gossipy clique that they were. It wouldn’t take long before the entire city was aware. Then life might get interesting again.
And that’s my real problem with this world. Too damn neat and tidy.
He stood up, arching his back to get the kinks out. His farsight swept out across the gloaming-cloaked city. Someone was observing him. Not the secretive newcomer, he knew this mental signature only too well. His farsight stretched all the way down to Myco and that four-storey building fronting Upper Tail Canal, the one with a faint violet glow escaping from its upper windows.
‘Hello, Edeard,’ Ranalee longtalked. She was standing in the office which used to belong to Bute and Ivarl before her. When he employed the city’s own senses to look into the room he saw she was dressed in a long silk evening gown with flared arms. Large jewels sparkled in her hair and round her neck. Two girls were in attendance. They looked like junior daughters from some Grand Family, the kind she usually ensnared in her various dynastic breeding schemes. Their robes were certainly more expensive than the courtesans on the lower floors, and their admiration for Ranalee was painfully obvious. A lad was also in there with them, a dark-haired youth in his late teens, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Edeard guessed he was of the aristocracy, his self-confidence incriminated him. For him to be there was somewhat unusual for Ranalee, but hardly unique.
Edeard sighed at finding the trio, but then charging into the House of Blue Petals with a squad of constables to rescue innocents from her clutches didn’t work. He’d made that mistake before. Once it had been so bad he’d gone back in time to make sure it never happened.
There was only one way to rid Makkathran of Ranalee, and he wouldn’t do it. As she so often said, that would make him one of her own. So he endured, and did what he could to thwart her legitimately.
To add to the ignominy, she’d aged extremely well; presumably thanks to some deal made in Honious, he told himself sullenly. Her skin remained firm and wrinkle-free, and she managed to maintain an impressive figure even after four children. You had to get right up next to her and look into those hypnotic eyes to know the true age and calculating ingenuity that the body contained. A position he tried to avoid as much as possible.
‘Good evening,’ he replied equably.
‘Interesting new toy you’ve got there.’
‘As always, I’m flattered by your attention.’
‘Why do you want a telescope?’
‘To watch the end of your world approaching.’
‘How coy. I’ll find out, of course.’
‘You certainly will. I’ll be announcing it very loudly in a few days.’
‘How intriguing. That’s why I always liked you Edeard. You make life exciting.’
‘Who are your new friends?’
Ranalee smiled as she looked round the office at the youngsters. ‘Come and join us, find out for yourself.’ She signalled the girls, who immediately went over to the lad and started kissing him.
‘No thank you.’
‘Still holding out against your true self? How sad.’
‘You’re really not going to enjoy my announcement. I’m about to turn even those with the weakest of wills away from your kind of existence.’
‘You’re very bitter tonight. Were those livestock certificates so desperately important to you?’
Every time. She could do it. Every Single Time. Edeard pressed his teeth together as he tried to squash his anger back down.
‘At least the animal markets are one enterprise you haven’t contaminated yet,’ he told her. It was petty, but . . .
‘Poor Edeard, still jealous after all these years. You never expected me to be so successful did you?’
He refused to rise to the bait. But Ranalee’s business ability had surprised him. She’d invested wisely, unlike the previous owners of the House of Blue Petals, who had simply squandered the money on their own lifestyle. Today, Ranalee owned over two dozen perfectly legitimate businesses, and had a considerable political presence on the general merchants council, and in the Makkathran Chamber of Commerce. Nowadays, she was completely independent of the old faltering Gilmorn family. He knew of course that she’d used her vile dominance ability to sway unsuspecting rivals at opportune moments, and to build unseemly financial alliances, yet he could never prove anything. And of course, her children had been married off selectively, gathering more wealthy families into her dominion.
‘That’s Makkathran for you,’ he replied. ‘Equal opportunity for everyone.’
Ranalee shook her head, seemingly tired of the argument. ‘No Edeard. It’s not. Nor – before you start – are all of us born equal. You got where you are because of your strength, just as I foresaw. And I am where I am because of my strength, and you resent that.’
‘Are you saying you used illicit methods to gather yo
ur new wealth?’
‘Did you achieve your position legitimately? Where is my father, Edeard? Where is Owain? Why has there never been an enquiry over their disappearance?’
‘Is an enquiry needed into their activities?’
‘Would it ever be an impartial one?’ She reached up and began removing the jewelled pins from her hair so it could fall free.
‘You don’t want that.’
‘No,’ she said simply. ‘The past is the past. It’s done. Over. I look to the future. I always have done.’ She regarded the youngsters dispassionately. The ardent girls had taken the lad’s shorts off. They giggled as they pushed him down on a big couch.
Edeard couldn’t watch the lad’s enraptured, worshipful face as Ranalee moved over to the side of the couch and stared down at him. Too many memories. ‘Why do you do this?’ he asked. ‘You’ve achieved so much.’
A victory smile twitched across Ranalee’s lips. ‘Not as much as you.’
‘Oh for the Lady’s sake!’
‘Would you like to linger tonight, Edeard? Would you like to remember how it was? How much you lost?’
‘Goodnight,’ he said in disgust.
‘Wait.’ She turned from the couch.
‘Ranalee . . .’
‘I have some information for you. It’s something she would never come to you with.’
‘What’s this?’ he asked, though with a falling heart he knew exactly who she was talking about. Ranalee would never attract his attention simply to taunt, she always had some way of inflicting harm or worry.
‘Vintico has spent the day answering uncomfortable questions in the Bellis Constable Station,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. Apparently, they’ve detained him overnight so formal charges can be drawn up tomorrow.’
‘Oh Lady,’ Edeard groaned.
Vintico was Salrana’s eldest child. And one of the most worthless humans ever to walk Makkathran’s streets. In no small part because his father was Tucal, Ranalee’s brother. That despicable pairing was when he finally realized there would never be a truce between him and Ranalee, that their war would continue until the bitter end.