Incarnation - John French Read online

‘Come on,’ she muttered to herself, and yawned. The weight of sleep still hung on her, soft and smothering. ‘Come on, time and tide and all those things…’

  She reached for the next vial sitting in the silk-lined case on her desk. The liquid inside was the green of new leaves. She had dreamed of the forest gardens on Xaris Plethis, of walking under the dappled light when second spring came. Home… so far away and long ago, before the family had lost a fortune and gained another, before the training and the surgery and everything that came after. It had been warm, and the warm wind had brought the smell of cooking and oil fires from the hab-drifts clinging to the estate’s walls. She had dreamed that smell too, she realised. Smell, light, shadow, leaves and trees, all of it as real as the wood of the desk.

  Lights were blinking amber on the disabled comms console. As she watched them, they began to turn red.

  ‘All right,’ she said to the empty reading chamber. ‘All right, enough.’ She snapped the vial into the injector, put it to her neck and pulled the trigger. This drug was a jolt of fire. She winced, ejected the vial, and was snapping the next one into place before the thought of pausing for just a second more could form. The next two vials followed, one after another without pause: cyan and crimson, violet and blue.

  She dropped the injector on the desk amongst the neat piles of scrolls, data-slates and stacks of parchment. A tiny bubble of blood clung to the injector head. Viola sat back, feeling her thoughts expand and multiply. Ingrained loops of analysis spun up and she felt herself begin to hunger. By the time she activated the data-stream linked to her augmetic left eye, the lack of information to process was causing her physical pain. It took her two minutes to read the status of the ship, from command status to weapon readiness. Then she began on the material on her desk, logs and reports, numbers, profit and loss, all of it a cascade that she drank, her eyes not blinking, her face a pale mask beneath her snow-white hair. At last she stopped, and felt the information breathe behind her eyes.

  It was getting harder to escape. Part of that was time – after a while the pathways etched into her psyche by the family savants became deeper, the drug infusions a daily need, data no longer an addiction but a necessity as basic as air. That was part of it. The other part of it was that she was starting to worry what would happen when she wasn’t looking, what in the web of all that she controlled for her family and for Covenant would go wrong if she let herself close her eyes. Still, at least she had been able to sleep, if only for a few hours.

  The door alert clanged. She looked up, realising that apart from the light of the candle hovering above her desk on a servo-skull, the librarium was unlit.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Bal, Lady Viola, from the household contingent. Master Kynortas ordered me to escort you on your tour of the lower decks.’

  Viola frowned, and blink-accessed a series of records. She was still frowning as she stood and shrugged on a red and black naval-cut coat. The laspistol was in the pocket where she had left it, and the grip slid into her palm like the hand of an old friend.

  ‘Enter,’ she said, and keyed the door release.

  Wooden panelling slid aside to reveal slab plasteel, which split and hinged outwards with a hiss of pistons.

  Viola watched and waited, hands thrust casually into the pockets of her coat.

  A man stepped through the opening. He was tall, six feet four at a glance. He wore the red and black of a Castellan-bonded trooper, and the burnished steel cuirass of a member of the household guard. His face was lean, the dark hair above dusted with grey. He wore a short sabre on his left hip, a heavy boarding pistol on his right and carried a brush-crested pressure helm, lacquered black, under his left arm. He moved awkwardly, she noticed, as though slightly off-balance, or carrying an injury.

  ‘My lady,’ he said, stopping and bowing his head.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ she said.

  ‘Master Kynortas is personally unavailable–’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I was ordered to attend you as your lifeward–’

  ‘Where is Melgor?’ In her pocket, her finger was steady on the laspistol’s trigger. One swift movement and she could tear his head from his shoulders with a shot.

  ‘She is also unable to attend you.’

  ‘There is no mention of that in the household contingent reports.’

  ‘No, lady, but it is so.’

  ‘That is not possible.’ She saw the ghost of a frown form on his face.

  ‘I regret that I cannot explain what is possible, only that Melgor is unable to attend, and I have been ordered to attend–’

  ‘How?’ she snapped, feeling anger flare, and then wondering at its intensity. The drugs and cognitive rhythms had not kicked in properly. She was still not balanced.

  Bal looked up at her. His eyes were blue.

  ‘Because she is bleeding out in a medicae bay twenty decks down from here.’

  Viola blinked.

  ‘That has not been… I was not…’

  ‘Live fire drill accident,’ said Bal. ‘It happens. I am sure the report will come along.’

  Viola blinked again; shook her head.

  ‘But…’ She looked up at him, then felt the sway of her still-settling mind steady. ‘I don’t know you.’ Her voice was cold. Her finger tensed on the pistol’s trigger.

  ‘And nor I you, my lady, but if you really mean to shoot me with that pistol in your pocket you should take a step back.’

  She froze. Then drew the pistol and aimed it at his head.

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I think you could kill me just fine.’

  ‘I don’t know you,’ she said again. Part of herself was wondering why she was pointing a gun at a man who might be a bodyguard or an assassin. If he was a killer she should have already shot him. If he was not, then she was looking more foolish by the second. Another part of her, the part that even all those years of mind sculpting and training had not been able to remove, did not care. This was her library. She was the seneschal of House von Castellan, and she would point a gun at whomever she pleased. ‘Who are you?’

  Bal looked straight down the gunsight, and sighed.

  ‘You know what, to hell with this,’ he said, and dumped the lacquered helmet onto the desk. ‘I said it was a bad idea.’

  ‘What do you think you–’

  ‘I said this duty was not for me. I said.’ He looked up at her as he unfastened the cuirass and shook it free. Under the armour plate he wore a quilted bodyglove in red and black. ‘I am sorry, this is a mistake. Go ahead and take the shot – frankly it would make me feel better.’

  The armour went on the desk beside the helm. A stack of data-slates wobbled. Viola took a step. The frown on her face was a scowl.

  ‘What are you doing? You can’t just–’

  ‘Renege on a contract? Actually, I think I can, and even if I can’t the only way of enforcing it is to shoot me, and that at least is better than traipsing around like a tin soldier trying to remember whether to bow or salute.’

  ‘Is this a joke?’ snapped Viola, surprise flicking to anger.

  A cord of gold braid and household crest in silver went onto the desk next.

  ‘Joke? Yes, but not a good one.’ He turned and walked towards where the door hid behind an expanse of wooden panelling. Shorn of his armour and formal weaponry he moved with a smooth grace, she noticed, like a feline apex predator. He stopped in front of the wall.

  ‘Could you let me out?’ He paused, and then bowed his head stiffly. ‘If it is not too much trouble, my lady.’

  Viola laughed. The sound rose up the book-lined walls. Now it was Bal’s turn to frown.

  ‘Where did Kynortas find you?’ she asked.

  ‘Serapho,’ he said. ‘One month back after you put into dock there.’

  ‘The hive-archives?’

  ‘It’s not all scribes and ink drinkers.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. In her left eye details of the planet society were fl
ashing across her sight faster than she could have blinked. She was reading the ship records through.

  ‘You were what? A thief-seeker?’ Bal turned away, looking at the panelling as though he would be able to find a handle or hatch he had missed before. ‘And Kynortas found you how?’

  Bal gave a single shake of his head. ‘He found me, offered me a contract, and I said yes… not my smartest move.’

  ‘Why not? Kynortas is a long way from a fool, and he doesn’t let just anyone walk in here wearing a household crest.’

  ‘Like you said before – you don’t know me. This isn’t for me. A mistake.’

  Viola blinked as a strip of data whipped past her sight.

  ‘Bal, formally Balan Zur, gun-servant to the late scribeseeker-general of the prime archipelago. Imprisoned after the death of his mistress during a turf war in the lower archive stacks. Sentenced to…’ She paused, the data frozen in her eye. ‘Sentenced to menial servitor conversion for his failure.’

  Bal went very still, and then he nodded once.

  ‘May I go now, please?’

  ‘Kynortas must have used Lord Covenant’s authority to have you released to him…’

  Bal let out a breath.

  ‘May I go, please?’

  Viola looked at him for a long moment, and then moved back to her desk and activated the door release. The wood and metal slid and folded back.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Bal, and stepped through the door.

  ‘Why did I need to take a step back?’ she asked. Bal looked back at her. ‘You said that I had to take a step back if I really meant to shoot you – why?’

  Bal looked at her for a moment and shrugged.

  ‘You had to draw the weapon. I was three strides from you. A guess, but you were taught to extend your arms to shoot. That makes it two strides, and I am under or behind your gun’s barrel.’ He shrugged again. ‘By the time the shot went off I would have been throwing you to the floor. One step back and you would have had time to draw, aim and squeeze, and I would have been a dead man.’

  ‘And if you had the pistol?’

  Bal shrugged.

  ‘Honestly it wouldn’t matter how far away you were. You would be dead.’ He looked confused for a second and then bowed his head. ‘I mean… of course, you would not… my lady…’

  She laughed again and threw him the laspistol. He looked up and caught it casually. Hand sliding around the grip and covering, not touching, the trigger, she noticed. Professional.

  ‘Show me,’ she said.

  ‘What, show you how dead you would be? No!’

  She shook her head, the laughter lingering as a grin.

  ‘The soul of your craft is guns – I would like to see some of it, before you go.’ She paused, still smiling. ‘Please.’

  ‘All right.’ He fished in a thigh pocket and came up with a handful of coins, some tarnished silver, some faded bronze. Viola recognised them as script tokens, silver verses and bronze cant; the currency of Serapho. He looked at her and flicked a single coin into the air. There was a crack of las-fire, a flash of light. Charred metallic dust fell through the air.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Viola, and nodded at the other coins in his hand. ‘What about the rest?’

  ‘All of them?’

  Viola shrugged.

  ‘Why not?’

  Bal raised an eyebrow. Then he grinned.

  ‘Useless now anyway,’ he said, and threw the fistful of coins into the air.

  Cleander von Castellan made sure that he smiled as he stepped onto the command dais. He felt like doing anything but smiling. Truth be told, he felt like drinking a lot of whatever spirit he could lay his hands on and then throwing up.

  ‘Did I miss it?’ he asked, and grinned. The nearby deck officers grinned back.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Void Mistress Ghast, handing over an order docket to one of a cluster of subalterns, saluting, and turning back to the next junior waiting on her. ‘You made it just in time.’

  ‘I must try harder to be less punctual in the future,’ he said. More grins. He took a silver cup of caffeine from a waiting servitor and took a swig. It was all so damned predictable – the tricks, the little jokes helping mask the truth – that everyone on the Dionysia’s bridge was on edge. Four weeks in the warp, four bad weeks. The storms had been blowing hard after they had left Serapho, and Covenant’s meeting with the Black Priest, Hesh. There had been problems in the lower decks: discontent, madness and ratings trying to dig their way out of the bilge hulls. Cleander couldn’t say he blamed them. He had not slept properly in seventeen nights, and the night before had been filled with dreams that woke him shivering and sweat-soaked, a scream caught just between his tongue and teeth.

  Now they were just reaching the point of translation back into reality. Anyone who had seen fewer storms than he might have thought a return to the void should have been a cause of celebration. It was not, though. It was one of the most dangerous parts of a storm passage, when the unreality of the warp gave up a ship to reality, and the two dimensions ground against each other like teeth. And with a storm running it was worse. They had been threading the worst storms that Cleander had ever seen. So he made sure that he kept his smile in place as he sipped the hot caffeine.

  ‘Approaching calculated point of transition at edge of Dominicus System,’ said a servitor-modulated voice. The Navigators never spoke directly when threading the warp. ‘Count mark sixty minutes, six-zero minutes.’

  ‘Mark the count!’ called Ghast from beside Cleander.

  ‘Mark the count!’

  ‘Mark the count!’ The shouts echoed down the bridge.

  Bells clanged. Tech-adepts began to walk between the consoles. Censers puffed incense into the air. Light dimmed to amber. Seconds and minutes began to blink across screens hanging from the spine of the room.

  ‘Very good, Mistress Ghast,’ he said, putting the cup of caffeine down on the servitor’s waiting tray. He felt like he was going to throw it back up. A shiver ran through the ship. Cleander thought for a moment that it sounded like something outside running its claws over the hull. ‘I hope that wasn’t anyone knocking to come in – we simply don’t have the room for guests.’ A few of the officers managed to grin, but none of them laughed. Cleander made sure that he kept smiling.

  ‘Lord Covenant,’ said Glavius-4-Rho, as he entered Covenant’s chambers. He hinged his body into a bow. He had calculated the degree of his obeisance based on reactions to his previous formal greetings and some remarks by the preacher called Josef, and the Lady Viola. He had spent the better part of an hour on the calculations for his posture and the length of time it should be held. Now that he stood before the inquisitor, bent over, primary arms thrown wide in submission, watching the seconds tick down, he was certain he had made a miscalculation.

  ‘Did you succeed?’ asked Covenant.

  Glavius-4-Rho did not move for a second. He had another 3.12 seconds until his calculations said he could rise from his formal bow. He cancelled the time count and straightened. His augmetics purred. His eye-rings clicked. He was unsettled, yes, that was what he was feeling: unsettled. Perhaps it was their imminent exit from the warp. His calculations and preparations should have removed that source of emotional intrusion into his thought space, but–

  ‘Magos?’

  Glavius-4-Rho’s sight snap-focused on Covenant. The inquisitor had not risen from his desk, but sat with his hands resting on the arms of his chair. A mind-linked sculpting apparatus spun around the half-complete sculpture of a face. Glavius-4-Rho noticed that the movements had a fast jerky rhythm, like that of fingers drumming in time with unsettled thoughts.

  ‘Magos, is there a problem?’

  Covenant was utterly still, his eyes steady.

  Wrapped in metal and wire, the last of Glavius-4-Rho’s flesh shivered.

  ‘The undertaking was a success. The device that you placed in my keeping is now functional.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I am not
familiar with this pattern of sacred technology…’ He paused. ‘I am not even sure if it is sacred.’

  Covenant turned and looked across to where the silver faces of enemies and the gold faces of allies looked down from the wood-panelled wall.

  ‘You have it?’

  Glavius-4-Rho nodded, and reached inside his robes with his secondary arms. The box that he withdrew was small, 8.3 by 14.168, by 5.15 centimetres, made of a grey, petrified wood that he had not been able to identify. The ratios of its dimensions were slightly off and that had vexed him ever since Covenant had handed it to him. Not as much as the contents had for these last weeks, but still…

  He placed the box on the desk. Covenant steepled his hands and looked at it. Glavius-4-Rho paused for 0.89 seconds, and then hinged the lid open.

  ‘It functions as intended,’ he said, ‘or at least so I believe. It is difficult to be certain without having seen it function before. The damage was extensive. Heat and…’ His voice trailed off in static.

  ‘Do you know what it is?’ asked Covenant.

  ‘I deduced enough of its purpose to assign it a form of designation. Based on that and the data from Serapho I can ascribe it a functional title.’ He paused again, and felt a mechanism in his cheek twitch. ‘It is a predictive etheric resonance sensor.’

  Covenant lifted the device out of the box. In form it was a disc of brass and bone, 15.33 recurring centimetres in diameter. At its core, a silver flywheel holding three crystal spheres spun in a bubble of the same material. Symbols that resembled ancient Terran astrological signs covered the disc, etched in hair-fine lines. Subtle cogwork murmured inside its case as Covenant lifted it.

  ‘You are right,’ said Covenant softly, staring at the device. ‘At least you are not wrong. This… thing responds to tides in the warp, to patterns of energy, to the merging of dreams and thoughts. It was made on Terra, did you know that?’

  Glavius-4-Rho parsed the question, uncertain if it was rhetorical, or a sincere request for information. He was not comfortable. This behaviour was outside of the patterns of behaviour he had observed in the inquisitor. He was not certain why Covenant was talking to him. He had absolutely no idea how he should respond.