In Heaven and Earth Read online

  This was the skill that had made him pass the simulation so easily, the one which others struggled to acquire. He was the master of his own dreams.

  He found himself in a version of his own infirmary, one where the corners of the room didn’t quite meet and where the wall screen was webbed with silver.

  “Connect with your counterparts in the patient,” Reuben said. In the simulations, he had always found it better to give verbal commands. It kept his whims and feelings out of the interface more effectively. “Project image of patient’s mind.”

  The projection came up on screen immediately. The nanites were a damn sight faster than the Juniper’s computer. Amused, Reuben crossed to the wall, zooming in until he was looking straight at the damaged patch in Vairya’s memory. Little silver specks scuttled across the screen, but Reuben ignored them for the moment. This was a much clearer image than the best the ship’s scanners could do.

  He could now see that the gleaming inside of Vairya’s skull was formed of countless tiny scales, overlapping and gleaming. Light flickered across them in a ceaseless rainbow ripple. In the damaged corner, a whole streak of scales had gone dim, blackened in places. They had not been entirely destroyed, though, so he touched each one on the screen, highlighting them.

  “Nanites, repair selected cells,” he commanded and then took a careful breath as he issued the truly dangerous command, “Replicate as necessary to complete previous command.”

  The little silver dots stilled for a moment, before they all converged on the damaged area. Within seconds, the burnt cells had vanished below a roiling spread of silver.

  If this was all that was needed to heal a man, Reuben could understand why the scientists of Old Earth had found this technology so seductive. Why was it that every generation had to learn again that you shouldn’t trust anything which seemed too good to be true?

  On the screen, the silver dots were shifting away from the damaged area, like iron filings repelled by a magnet. Reuben frowned as they revealed the same damage, barely altered. A few of the cells were gleaming again, but most were still dull. As Reuben watched, a thin line of light appeared around them, gleaming with the same play of colours as the lights that swirled across the rest of Vairya’s mind.

  One of the silver dots crept back towards the damage, only to bounce off the shining barrier.

  Interesting. Not so easy, after all.

  Time to see if he was completely alone in here. Imagining a com chip in his ear, he asked, “Eskil, can you see what I’m visualising?”

  Eskil’s voice came back with a slight echo of distance. “No, but I can hear you loud and clear. You’re speaking out loud.”

  “Get your scan up and zoom in.”

  “On it, but give me a clue what… oh. That’s odd.”

  “And not my doing. Is he still completely out?”

  “Yeah. Looks like his brain is fighting back. Could be an inbuilt defence.”

  “Find out for me. I’m going to try something different.” He turned his attention back to the screen. “Nanites, form a spearhead and break through that wall.”

  They rushed to obey, but even their most concentrated attack merely recoiled from that thread of light.

  “Nothing I can find anywhere about defence protocols,” Eskil said, “but no one really knows much about the TC4s.”

  Reuben grinned up at the screen, relishing a challenge. “I’ll have to be creative, then.”

  Eskil cleared his throat, and asked hesitantly, “Have you considered that it may be psychological? If he’s suffering some form of traumatic amnesia, he may well be subconsciously fighting the memory.”

  “Do cyborgs have a subconscious?” Reuben wondered.

  “I think you’re about to find out.”

  Reuben pondered that, regarding his screen, and grimaced. This infirmary was just a mental projection, albeit a comfortable one, but it was his imaginary landscape. If Eskil was right, he needed to see what was in Vairya’s mind, not his own.

  “Nanites,” he murmured. “Cease hostilities. Show me what Vairya is dreaming.”

  Signal to signal, brain to brain, imagination to imagination, he and Vairya were joined right now. This was the place where science and magic became one, and it both scared and fascinated him.

  The projection of Vairya’s brain vanished from the screen. In its place, a new picture appeared, like something out of an ancient painting or fantasy vid. A walled city stood among green fields, its white walls gleaming like pearl in the sunlight. Around it, an army had gathered, knights in gleaming silver armour riding up and down on metallic horses.

  How bizarre.

  Nonetheless, Reuben’s next move was obvious. Taking a deep breath, he stepped through the screen, into Vairya’s dream.

  Chapter Three

  IT DIDN’T feel like a dream. The grass was crisp beneath his feet, and he could feel a cool wind gusting past his cheeks. Behind him, the door to a large tent flapped and billowed.

  The silver knights had all turned to line up before him in perfect rows. They all wore visored helmets and metalled gauntlets, with not a hint of skin showing.

  “Nanites,” Reuben said, and they all saluted, hands clanging off their helmets.

  There was something disturbing about the way they had no faces, and Reuben wished that Vairya’s imagination had pushed them into a different shape. They were supposed to be mindless and functional. The hint of humanity this shape gave them just emphasised how inhuman they really were.

  “Cease the attack,” he told them. “Take a flag of parley to the walls.”

  Three of them immediately wheeled and rode off, the banner they carried changing colour as they moved. Another swung down from its saddle and offered Reuben its horse.

  He didn’t know how to ride, but since the horse was metal and the whole scenario subject to his imagination, he dragged himself up the horse’s side and into the saddle, jerking the reins in the direction of the castle.

  With a soft whirr of cogs, the horse carried him in that direction.

  It was only a few minutes before he arrived at the gates of the city, but it gave him time to survey the landscape around him. It was an odd place. For the most part, it looked like something from an ancient picture: castle, blue sky, ploughed fields rising in gentle curves, cobbled road placed at an aesthetically pleasing angle across the fields.

  All across the fields, however, thin stakes of glass rose towards the sky, glittering in the sunlight and confusing the eye. They struck Reuben as ominous, for all they should have been fragile, and he was glad none stuck out of the road. All the same, he directed his iron horse to the middle of the road to avoid them, and shuddered when a wind shifted through them, making them hum and moan in a way that set his teeth on edge.

  He was glad to reach the gatehouse of the citadel, where his nanoknights were waiting for him, their white flag streaming in the wind.

  On the wall over the gate, a lone man in a white surcoat was standing, his blue cloak flaring in the breeze. Reuben shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up at him.

  Vairya looked back at him.

  In the infirmary, he had been a body and a medical puzzle. Now, staring down at Reuben with the wind stinging colour into his cheeks and tousling his fair curls, he looked like a man, and a damned pretty one at that.

  “Hello,” Reuben called to him. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Vairya didn’t seem to have heard that. Instead, he stood straight, a cold expression settling on his face. “Sir Knight, I am Vairya, lord of this castle. Wherefore do you besiege us with such strength of arms?”

  What the fuck? Sighing, Reuben reassessed the situation. They were in Vairya’s mind, after all, which combined a dose of amnesia with memories of all of human history. If he had to operate within the bounds of the scenario to win Vairya’s trust, so be it. He had seen enough silly vids set in the ancient era.

  “Lord Vairya, I greet you in the name of the Sirius Protectorate, whom we both s
erve. I am Sir Reuben, late of Rigel, Knight-Chirugeon. As a penance for my sins, this geas has been laid upon me: I may not pass by any man who suffers a wound or sickness without offering him my service until he is healed once more.”

  “Oh, well played,” Vairya said, his eyes bright and his mouth tilting into a grin, “but that’s really not what a geas meant. You’re muddling your myth cycles.”

  Reuben crossed his arms and glowered. “Nonetheless, I swore an oath. Let me in so I can treat you.”

  “What of your fierce warriors? Are they your bodyguards, good knight?”

  Vairya was laughing at him. Irritated, Reuben dug out a smirk of his own. “You mean my orderlies? Absolutely essential to the healing process.” He was starting to enjoy this.

  “Orderlies in armour? How original.”

  Reuben shrugged one shoulder. “Believe me, the first time you get punched by some convulsing idiot, you see the need.”

  “Invalids,” Vairya said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “Such a nuisance.”

  “Damn right. Some won’t even let me in their gates.”

  Vairya raised his brows. “Gracious me, Sir Reuben, I begin to see why someone might have laid a geas upon you.”

  “Some people just don’t appreciate my bedside manner. Let me in, Lord Vairya.”

  “So you can show me your bedside manner?”

  Oh, so the little shit was going to flirt with him. Unimpressed, Reuben crossed his arms and glared. “Because you’re sick, and I have siege weapons.”

  As soon as he said it, he wondered if he had pushed his luck too far. People tended not to recognise his sense of humour. They were more likely to take him at face value and hate him.

  Vairya, after a second of incredulity, collapsed into a fit of laughter, leaning hard against the battlements. The laughter lit him up, and Reuben had to bite back a smile of appreciation. For someone who had been designed as a glorified database, he was too pretty for his own good.

  When Vairya stopped laughing and stood up properly, he said, “I will let you in, and two of your orderlies, but know this, Sir Knight: mere medicine alone will not cure the Dolorous Wound I have suffered.”

  He left the wall, and Reuben rocked back on his heels to wait. Something about that last comment had tickled his memory. It had been something he read, in those long months in witness protection when he had nothing to do but wait for the trial and read his way through over three millennia’s worth of literature. In the cold, clean isolation of a room in space, he had been drawn to old stories, the passion, violence, and colour of knights and heroes, devils and the doomed, the plays of Shakespeare, the poetry of dying empires, the raging against the dying of the light of those who could only reach the stars in their dreams. When he had finally been set loose to live his own life again, he had been more educated, if no wiser. All he had learnt from his reading was that people were still stupid in the same old ways, no matter the era or the technology they wielded.

  It had been oddly comforting at the time, when he was face to face with the price of his own hubris, but there had been times since when he wondered if he had missed something.

  By the time the wicket gate creaked open, he had chased down the reference, and he didn’t bother to hide his incredulity. “The Dolorous Blow was suffered by the Fisher King in Arthurian myth. You, on the other hand, just have a particularly irritating head injury.”

  “Irritating to me or you?” Vairya inquired, holding out his hand.

  “Both.”

  Vairya laughed again. Closer up, he looked subtly different to the body in the infirmary. Everyone did, when they were projecting their own self-image, but there was so much more life and mischief in his face that he looked like his own brother. “Do come into my city, Sir Reuben. We are honoured to have you as our guest.”

  “The honour is all mine,” Reuben said, remembering some manners, and waved to two of his nanoknights to follow him inside.

  “Aren’t you going to ask why I chose that particular myth?”

  “Since a wound to the thigh was a medieval euphemism for castration, I’m just going to assume—”

  “My dick works just fine,” Vairya snapped, the first hint of irritation in his voice. “I chose the Fisher King because he can’t be healed by just anyone. It has to be someone worthy.”

  Reuben wasn’t convinced. There were plenty of myths about sick kings. If Vairya had chosen this one, it meant something, although probably not sexual dysfunction. It was a reminder that this man, for all his banter, was a patient and a terrified and traumatised one at that. Gentling his voice, he asked, “How may I prove myself worthy?”

  Vairya shot him a startled look, and said hurriedly, “Do come and see my garden, Sir Reuben.”

  “I’m not here to pick flowers,” Reuben started, but Vairya seized his hand and dragged him forwards, through the deep gateway and out into the sunlit land beyond.

  He had expected a castle yard or a city. Instead, the walls of Vairya’s citadel circled a vast rose garden. There were walls scattered between the flowers, but they were all overgrown with flowering briars. The air smelt sweet as he stepped forwards in surprise, the scent so heady that he felt a little dizzy. Swathes of coloured flowers curled across the ground like streaked marble: pink, red, yellow, white, all still in bud, but close enough to opening that the air was full of their perfume.

  “Aren’t they lovely?” Vairya asked and reached out to touch one of the roses tenderly, running his finger down the pink curve of its petals.

  “Beautiful,” Reuben said, “but I am here for you, not the flowers.”

  Vairya shrugged. “But I am here for the roses. They have such short lives, and they are so lovely when they flower. They deserve to be cared for.”

  “What about the people in the city? Don’t they deserve your care too? We need your memory working so we can find out what happened to them.”

  Vairya bowed his head towards the flower, breathing in softly. When he looked up, his eyes were sad. “I was starting to think you might be the one, but you don’t understand at all. You can’t help me.”

  “I could if you’d let me,” Reuben said in frustration, but Vairya just shook his head.

  What was he missing? Oh, it was obvious enough that Vairya didn’t want to remember and was twisting this scenario to avoid it, but there must be a weakness here, some flaw in Vairya’s defences that Reuben could exploit to break through all the fear and avoidance.

  “You doubt I am worthy? Set me a task, and let me prove my worth.” He knew the kind of quests a scenario like this would throw up, fighting monsters, fetching obscure items, or rescuing princesses, and he was confident his imagination was a match for any of them.

  Vairya hesitated, lifting his shoulders slightly. “That’s not how—”

  Reuben pressed his advantage. “It’s only fair. I’ve come here with the best of intentions, as a complete stranger who knows nothing of your situation. You owe me a chance to prove myself.”

  Vairya was quiet for a moment. Then he lifted his chin with a sudden sharp grin. “You won’t like it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Oh, I will. Your task is trial by ordeal.”

  “And what will that prove?” Reuben asked, intrigued. It seemed out of character.

  “Your determination.”

  “Trying to scare me off? It won’t work.” In here torture was merely a matter of the mind, and Reuben knew he could out-think the mere illusion of pain.

  Vairya led him under an arch covered with scarlet flowers, into a round of grass. Roses surrounded it, and a pebbled path led across it to a door.

  It stood within a stone archway, with the path continuing on either side. It was made of wood, with a heavy iron ring as its handle. Reuben walked around it, trying to swallow a laugh. He was beginning to suspect that Vairya was taking his ideas from bad vids rather than any actual historical source. Waggling his eyebrows, he said, “Let me guess— the Chamber of the Ordeal?”

 
; “No,” Vairya said, though he looked cross. “Of course not.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s, er… It has no name. It’s the Nameless Chamber.”

  “Of Dread?” Reuben inquired, grinning. “The Nameless Chamber of Doom? Destiny?”

  “It needs no name,” Vairya said primly, but amusement was starting to dance in his eyes again. “It is beyond such petty mortal concerns.”

  “The rack, boiling oil, or pliers to my toenails?”

  Vairya looked horrified. “What sort of doctor are you? That’s barbaric.”

  “Torture always is,” Reuben said grimly. “No matter how civilised men try to justify it.”

  “I don’t intend to torture you, just understand you. It won’t hurt.”

  He seemed genuinely upset, so Reuben smiled a little, wanting to reassure him, and opened the door.

  It did not, inevitably, simply open on the garden on the other side of its frame. Instead, a long grey corridor led away into the distance. Reuben recognised its type at once, a space station passage. Nowhere else combined that windowless blandness with such scope.

  “You coming?” he asked Vairya.

  “I’ll watch from here.”

  “If this turns out to be an emergency exit, I’m going to be overflowing with righteous wrath when I get back.”

  “It’s not a trick.”

  Reuben shrugged and stepped through the doorway. It hissed shut behind him, and he turned to see it had become a metal hatch. Shrugging again, he walked along the corridor at a steady speed, bracing for an attack.

  None came, but after a few minutes the corridor ended at another hatch. Reuben touched the keypad, and took a slow breath as it slid open. Whatever unpleasantness Vairya had concocted for him, he was ready.

  The door opened to show a wide office backed with a clear wall that displayed the stars beyond. A glass desk stood on a slightly raised dais, and someone was standing by the window, looking out at the vastness of space.