The Pillars of Eternity

Boaz scanned the rest of the room. There was little furniture. The one door bore steel bonds and at the four corners of the room were antennaed boxes. These were guard devices which, to the credit of his ship, the search beams did not appear to have triggered.

This is the man, the ship told him, who went into the Brilliancy Cluster and detected Meirjain. He has the data.

‘I’ve found him,’ Boaz said out loud.

The other three leaned close. ‘Have you fixed the location?’ Obsoc asked.

‘I can find it again.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Mace curiously.

‘A prospector. He’s drugged right now. I think he’s an addict. It looks like plutosnow.’

‘Oh, by the Fire,’ Mace said, unconscious of using the colonnader oath, ‘no wonder he didn’t make it to Meirjain first time.’ The effects of plutosnow were erratic. It produced bursts of unusual energy and ability, interspersed with an almost total lack of will. Anything achieved by its use usually had to be finished by somebody else.

‘Perhaps the whole story is a fantasy he started,’ Obsoc suggested worriedly. ‘Perhaps Meirjain is not due to appear.’

‘I doubt it,’ Boaz said. ‘One side effect of plustosnow is an aversion to untruth. This character may have opened his mouth too much and then holed up for his own protection. Or else he gave the numbers to a few people and then holed up.’

‘If the econosphere takes it seriously, so can we,’ Romrey said.

Boaz nodded agreement. He looked at Obsoc. It was now up to the trillionaire to play his part and organize the seizure of the needed information. In the circumstances it scarcely seemed necessary. Boaz felt he could take the cellar on his own.

Obsoc’s grasp on realities, however, betokened more than a nodding acquaintances with such operations. ‘We must move carefully,’ he said with a grave air. ‘There are men in Wildhart whose interest in this matter matches our own, and they are totally ruthless. Did you know that the Hat Brothers are here? Also Father Larry and his girls. Perhaps you do not know of these people. I assure you they are very resourceful and they will be watching to see if anyone is about to make a move. Yes…. Then of course the econosphere undoubtedly has agents here, though whether they command any resources worth speaking of is a different matter.’ He pondered. ‘I take it he has defences?’

‘There is a guard system. I didn’t see anything else.’

‘I will hire some people who know how to deal with these things. Meanwhile you’d better give me the exact location.’

The collector attended closely while Boaz drew a rough map and described the warehouse. ‘Good. Well, our work here would seem to be finished. Are you coming, Mace, my dear?’

The girl looked almost appealingly at Boaz. ‘I’ll follow you a little later, Radalce. I’d like to rest here a while longer – if you don’t mind, Captain Boaz.’

Though he would have preferred her to go, Boaz shrugged his consent. Obsoc looked his craggy body up and down, an obvious thought dawning on him. ‘Well, enjoy yourself, my dear. I’ll send the runabout back for you.’

He and Romrey left. When Boaz came back from seeing them down the flowrail she was still sitting at the table. As he came close her hand glided up and gently stroked his leg.

He drew back. ‘You must not do that, Mace. You cannot expect to entice me into dalliance.’

‘You’re not that much of a colonnader!’

‘So to speak.’

‘But you have bones. How can you refuse such pleasure?’

‘I never use my bones, Mace. They have been switched off for many years.’

‘A stoic indeed!’

‘Pleasure is a poor thing to me. My life is set in one direction.’

‘Oh, you’re a mystic, bent on self-transcendence,’ she said, misunderstanding him. ‘But that puzzles me. Here you are going all out after time-gems. It could only be for the money. Greed for money doesn’t square with sensual abstention – does it?’

‘It is not for money.’

‘Then what?’ She frowned.

‘Never mind.’ Boaz waved his hand in annoyance. ‘You wished to end your life.’

‘And you interfered. That was very sanctimonious of you.’

‘It was not because of you. You tried to implicate someone else, in a way that would have had harmful consequences for them. That was unfair.’

She looked unabashed.

‘Do you still intend to end your life?’

She smiled self-consciously, as though wanting to avoid the subject. ‘There’s no such things,’ she said flippantly. ‘You’re a colonnader, you know that. The world returns, and we return with it. There is no death.’

‘You are not a colonnader.’

‘I don’t have to be. Everybody knows it’s true. Science has proved it.’

‘Yes, that is so.’ He paused, deliberating, before he spoke again. ‘But as a consideration, it is too abstract an idea for most people. Even if they take it seriously, the prospect of dreamless sleep for the next nine hundred trillion years is sufficient inducement for the intended suicide. So I ask you again: is it still your intention?’