‘Between you and me, my dear,’ Pieter shouted an hour later as he drove the whirring battery car along the dusty road from the house to Cazoria, the nearest town, ‘I put you in the blue room on purpose last night; the bed’s headboard is fitted with a receptor system.’ He smiled over at her.
They had the sunlight-powered car’s top off; the wind whistled round their ears. (‘Ruins the efficiency,’ Pieter had told her, ‘but it’s much more fun.’ He wore goggles and a tie-down hat, and had given her similar equipment. She wore loose trousers, a blouse and a light jacket.) ‘I thought you might be able to avail yourself of the facilities. If you hadn’t, well then, no harm done.’
Asura held onto her hat and smiled broadly at him. Then she frowned, and said, ‘The bed made me dream?’
‘Not exactly, but it let you dream… in concert, shall we say? Though you must have a remarkable gift to adapt so quickly and so easily.’
They drove on through the morning, between wild fruit-forests of banana and orange. Asura was enjoying the drive.
‘Ah, Asura?’ Pieter said.
‘Yes?’
‘That is not regarded as acceptable in polite society. Or, come to think of it, in almost any society, normally.’
‘What? This?’
‘Yes. That.’
‘No? But it feels good. It is beginning with car shaking.’
‘I don’t doubt. Nevertheless. One does that sort of thing in private, I think you’ll find.’
‘Oh, all right.’ Asura looked mildly puzzled, then adjusted her hands and sat with them clasped demurely in her lap.
‘There’s the town,’ Pieter said, nodding ahead to where a collection of white spires and towers were rising above the greenery. He glanced at his young passenger and shook his head. ‘Serehfa. Good grief. I hope I’m doing the right thing…’
* * *
2
Chief Scientist Gadfium sat in the whirlbath with the High Sortileger Xemetrio; the pumps hummed, water frothed and bubbled, steam hissed from wall pipes and wrapped them in its hot, dense fog, and music played loudly.
They sat side by side facing each other, each whispering into the other’s ear.
‘They sound half mad, or it sounds half mad,’ Xemetrio said, snorting. ‘What is all this nonsense about “Love is god” and the “Hallowed centre”?’
‘It sounds formalised,’ Gadfium whispered. ‘I don’t think it really means anything.’
Xemetrio drew back a little in the swirling steam; it was so thick Gadfium could not see the walls of the bathroom. ‘My dear,’ Xemetrio whispered urbanely once his mouth was alongside her ear again. ‘I am the High Sortileger; everything means something.’
‘You see; that is your faith, even though you wouldn’t call it such; theirs is expressed in this quasi-religious -‘
‘It isn’t quasi-religious, it’s completely religious.’
‘Even so.’
‘And Sortilegy boils down to a matter of statistics,’ Xemetrio said, sounding genuinely offended. ‘Anything less spiritual is difficult to -‘
‘We’re moving off the point. If we ignore the religious trappings and concentrate on the information itself -‘
‘Context matters,’ the Sortileger insisted.
‘Let us assume the rest of the signal is true.’
‘If you insist.’
‘Abstract: they confirm our fears concerning the cloud and the lack of any communication from the Diaspora, and they know of our attempt to construct rockets. They know about this idiotic war between Adijine and the Engineers and that it isn’t going to lead anywhere, and they seem concerned about some “workings” going on in the level-five south-western solar affecting the fabric – we assume they mean the fabric of the castle mega-structure itself.’ Gadfium wiped beads of moisture from her brow. ‘Do we know any more about what’s going on there?’
‘There’s a full Army unit there and they have a lot of heavy equipment, including something they dug out of the southern revetment last year,’ Xemetrio told her. ‘It’s all being kept very quiet.’ He leant back and adjusted a control by the side of the tub. ‘They built a new hydrovator into the Southern Volcano Room just to supply the garrison. That was where Sessine was heading when he was killed.’
‘Sessine was always reckoned one of those who might have been sympathetic to us; do you think -?’
‘Impossible to say. There was nothing to link us and him, though it is feasible he was assassinated for political reasons.’ Xemetrio shrugged. ‘Or personal ones.’
‘The signal spoke of “workings”,’ Gadfium said. ‘Mine workings, perhaps? What is beneath that room?’
‘The floor is unpierced; it cannot signify.’
‘But if the device found in the southern revetment…’
‘If somebody had finally found a machine able to create new holes in the mega-structure and made it work and dragged it all the way up here, they’d be burrowing into the ceiling of the sacristy, in no-man’s land between the King’s forces and the Engineers of the Chapel.’
‘But the signal spoke of their concern over the fabric. If that is what they meant -‘
‘Then,’ the Sortileger said, sounding exasperated, ‘there’s nothing we can do for now, unless we are to confess all to the King and his Security people. What else have you decided we can tell from your mysterious signal, assuming it’s not all some bizarre self-delusion on the part of the mad people who watch stones slide and call it science?’
‘I trust them.’
‘Like you trust the signal itself,’ Xemetrio said sourly. ‘We are conspirators, Gadfium; we cannot afford so much trust.’
‘We are not yet acting upon such trust and so risk nothing.’
‘Yet,’ scoffed the Sortileger, cupping water over his shoulders.
‘Whoever sent the signal,’ Gadfium went on, ‘believes the answer lies in the Cryptosphere.’
‘I’m sure the true answer does, along with every possible false answer and no way to distinguish between them.’
‘They appear to believe that, as we have always suspected, there is a conspiracy to thwart all efforts to avoid the catastrophe.’
‘Though why the King and his cronies should particularly want to die when the sun blows up is of course a trifle difficult to fathom. We’re back to speculating about ultra-secret survival projects or some bizarre fatalism.’
‘Neither of which is utterly unfeasible, but the act of the conspiracy is all that matters for now, not its origin. Lastly, the signal-senders confirm both that there is, or may be, an already designed-in method of escape -‘
‘What, though? Switch on some galactic vacuum-cleaner? Move the planet?’
‘You’re the Sortileger, Xemetrio…’
‘Huh. We daren’t run that question through the system, but if I had to guess, I’d stick with the obvious answer; there’s some part of Serehfa which conceals an escape device. That may be what the war with the Chapel is really about. Maybe the Engineers have access to it and Adijine doesn’t.’
‘Whatever. The signal also suggests that the data corpus itself may hold the solution and be attempting to access it.’
‘The mythical asura,’ the Sortileger said, shaking his head.
‘Such a method would make sense, given the chaotic nature of the crypt,’ Gadfium whispered. ‘The possibility of the data corpus’ corruption may have been foreseen -‘
‘Amazing Sortilegy,’ Xemetrio muttered.
‘- just as was the possibility of a threat to the Earth that could not be dealt with by automatic space defence mechanisms. Physical separation of the information required to activate the escape device would ensure that no matter the delay it could never be corrupted by the crypt.’
‘Though it still has to be initiated,’ Xemetrio said. ‘But let’s not lose sight of the fact that all this supposition is built on the word of some historically, how shall I put it?… eccentric observers of sliding stones, and that even if they are to be trusted, what we’ve actually got is an intellectually suspect, semi-garbled message originating from somewhere within the top ten kilometres of the fast-tower; we still have no idea who or what is up there and what their motives are.’
‘We also have little time to squander, Xemetrio. We have to decide what to do and how to reply. You’re sure you can get this signal and our appraisal to the others safely?’
‘Yes, yes,’ the High Sortileger snapped; Gadfium asked this question virtually every time they had information they had to spread around their network, and each time Xemetrio had to reassure that as High Sortileger he could move data within the data corpus without Security knowing all about it.
‘Good,’ Gadfium said, apparently relieved afresh. ‘Clispeir is going to heliograph an acknowledgment to the fast-tower’s signal and a request for more information, but we must make up our minds; do we act now, merely get ready to act, or go on as before, waiting?’
The High Sortileger looked sadly at the glistening mountains of foam bobbing around him. ‘I vote we wait for more information. Meantime, I’ll start a quiet search for your asura.’ He shook his head. ‘Besides, what could we do?’
‘We could find out what’s going on in the fifth-level southwestern solar; that would be a start.’