The Pillars of Eternity

‘This is a matter of importance,’ he said. ‘I can tell you that I have come straight from the Chief. Orm’s orders are that Boaz is to be liquidated outright. No attempt at arrest.’

‘There are problems in either case, sir.’

‘Yes … he is a difficult man to stop. If we were in Kathundra, now, it would be different.’ He chuckled. The police in Kathundra had a secret right of control over the force-transport network. Any citizen under observation could, at any time he entered a travel booth, be switched straight to a police cell or killing chamber, or even circulated endlessly through the system for as long as need be … ‘But there is an easier way,’ he went on. ‘This creature Boaz has a grave deficiency. He is a man on remote: his ship keeps him alive. To destroy him, one should destroy his ship, preferably choosing a time when the two are separated …’

They spoke further, laying plans and appointing a time. In actual fact the plotting of Boaz’s course had been firming up for more than a standard month: that Chaunce would be his final destination had been extrapolated in advance. Police Chief Orm had gleefully told the colonel an even more interesting fact: Chaunce had a secret visitor, a government minister no less, though Orm was not at liberty to name him. Nevertheless when he made his report it would be to the full Cabal, and someone very important had better have a damned good explanation … Treason in high places was a crime for which Police Chief Orm had particular relish.

11

No longer was Boaz fighting a figment. For the first time, perhaps, since he had wakened in the city of Theta with a new, straight skeleton, with silicon bones that promised a new future, he knew a measure of happiness.

He was in a fun room with Mace, just off the main arcade of the sprawling, blossom-smelling town. The room itself was a work of art: walls a delicate shade of yellow, embossed with a frieze which could give the occupants enough suggestions to last a week; carpeted and furnished with a softness that made it seem a playland. An everchanging spectrum of perfumes made the air continually fresh and pleasant. Subliminal sounds – inaudible to those whose senses were not heightened by silicon bones – fed one’s sense of well being with constant, encouraging music.

They had rested, and now were ready to begin again. Mace smiled, and touched his naked shoulder. ‘Your body has qualities,’ she said, ‘that are yours alone.’

He looked down at his craggy self. She did not mention that perpetual virility was one of them: that was not unique – it was available by a simple piece of surgery. More important to him, in any case, was the new virility that had come to his mind.

That dreadful past, of course, was still there. But he could now bring himself to have the memory erased if he wished, flushed from his psyche. In fact, he had decided not to. Mace had shown him another way, another goal.

He would seek pleasure the equal of that pain! Even now he could not help but put it in philosophical terms. In the colonnader cards the principle of justice, or equilibrium, was all important. If such a principle truly existed in the universe, then his agony must be balanced by an equal positive experience able to cancel its evil effects!

He had not mentioned this piece of reasoning to Mace. She would only have laughed. It was a wonder to him, a marvel, that all she had done was to open his eyes to what any untutored workman, nymphgirl or shopkeeper could have told him – that because a body of ideas was impressive, and had the backing of civilization and classical discourse, did not make it true.

She opened her palm. In it rested four little filter plugs, two pink, two pale blue. ‘The blue ones are for men,’ she said. ‘Put them in.’

He took them and, following her example, inserted them in his nostrils. ‘Now we spray each other,’ she said. ‘Remember to breathe through your nose.’

She handed him a blue spray-gun that she took from a cushion, taking a pink one herself. Her selective nose filters protected her from the highly charged male-directed pheromonic molecules she puffed at him; his kept out the female-directed chemicals he puffed at her.

Standing only a couple of feet apart, they drenched each other. She threw back her head as she silently set her bone functions. She tossed aside the spray-gun, discarded the nose filters. She threw open her arms.

‘Bones!’ she screeched quietly. ‘Your bones, Boaz!’

Excitedly, he began to rise, and rise yet higher.

The low, single sun was casting long probing fingers across the ship ground when three large men, wearing the garb of technicians, approached an unusually upright cargo ship. They paused at the bottom of the tread-rail. Then one stepped on, his hand inside his tunic, holding the stock of the heat-and-shock pistol with which to force the hatch. As the rail started to flow the others stepped on after him, ready with hand weapons to deal with any defensive robots, the last man carrying the case of thermal grenades.