“Friends, we will be, for the age to come, for all ages to come and let none stand in our way. Let them see us, and let them quake.“ — opening to the Summit, 45th chapter of The Season of Amber, award-winning fantasy book.

Editor’s note: it did sweep the awards in 2067, though I never voted for it.

The fault lines were deep, a crack in the nascent friendship that had kindled under a mountain, and so Martin said nothing. Words could but bother bedrock.

Ghost in white that he was, he rotated, the better to see the runners.

What better place to host a meeting like this, but a gymnasium? People who exercised — ran of their volition and not mandated to — wouldn’t care if two Proxies suddenly showed up.

The race that had begun as he entered continued, each greyhound-lean in their own world, seeing only the world before them. He wished for that perception, to be able to only see that which lay in front.

“Somaronov and some of the others are looking for you.”

The words came from behind and slightly to the left.

“That portal trick worked.”

Still, he said nothing. He had tried words during the Crown-bout but they hadn’t moved her. Surrendering, actions, maybe.

“I’m…I’m sorry for what I said.”

Martin craned his head, his Chassis bringing the world before him in perfect rendition, motes of dust kicked up by the adjacent runners, the lensed eyes of Calix’s own Chassis, a cleaning drone swabbing at an arch high above.

He thought of the things he could say, words to hurt, to incite, to patch over the divide. But this fissure, Martin thought, it needed bridging. A meeting of hands. Revelation.

“You called me naive. But Isla, I’m not naive when I say that I don’t think you’re sorry.”

There was an ironic echo here. He had told her after the Examination that he was sorry, but he hadn’t been, not truly. She had granted him that rare gift-honesty, so he would return it.

Her fists clenched.

“I’m..”

The hands splayed loose.

“I’m not sorry for— I’m sorry for this, between us.”

Martin nodded. That sounded better than contrition, it had a ring of truth even.”Yeah, and I’m not sure where that leaves us. You’re not going to change, are you?”

“Are you?”

Berenice fleeing during the Examination had been easier to forgive, for she already felt that she was in the wrong. In the weeks since the bout, Martin had pondered the difference between that conflict and this conflict.

The problem was that, in a sense, he wasn’t angry at Calix, nor she at him. Such a rapid feeling could be stoked, or eased, notched down. This went deeper. At the heart, he was a hypocrite who wanted to change, who wanted to choose kindness when he could. To not always approach life with a saw, like Adit Havrasalam.

To Isla, however, the saw was kindness. And therein lay the heart of the issue.

“No, I don’t think I will,” Isla eventually answered.

He picked each word from the basket of his mind, silvered and deft, a prayer made real.”Then don’t. Yet, I don’t think we have to be at odd ends. We want the same thing. Same goal, different metods.”

He coughed, for the next part was embarrassing.”You told me once that our origins don’t matter. Only where we end up. And one day, when we stand at the pinnacle, I want to have you with me.”

He stretched out a hand, fearing nothing so much as rejection, fearing it like that Regial staring down at him through a crevice beneath a mountain.

The lenses of her helmet focused on the white-garbed hand. He was thankful that they both wore Chassis. The wait stretched like taffy. Seconds, then minutes passed. It had been all for naught.

She shook his hand.

“Friends?”

“Friends,” he reaffirmed, breath coming easier now.

The crack was still there. But like an old riverbed, something had been traced there. Gold, hallowed, gleaming gold.

_____

They weren’t just friends like that. This was no cast, no fictional drama where bygones were bygones and everything fine as apologies were made.

But, they could walk with one another now. There was silence, but it was comfortable thing, the shape of which had been made under the Mountain and then later, as they fought.

“Somaronov?”

He had to ask. He and her— there was a distance there too, one Soleri would fill with poison, rather than see bridged.

“…hmm.”

They made their way out of the stadium, through the gymnasial district and further out on Level 5 before Isla spoke.

“She is not the angriest one, I think.No. She is angry, but not at you.”

The synth-asphalt rose at an incline, square blocks rising all around them. Above, another commercial flashed across the sky that wasn’t. A baby tumbling over a green hill, its diaper being cleaned with tug of a spray. Diaper-rash?

“Solzhenitsyn?”

“Solzhenitsyn.”

They turned around, stopping momentarily before a gated house. Martin wondered who lived there. The size of it suggested a Two:er coming up in the arcology or a Three. Size, and location, that was how you measured your success in an arcology. What did it mean that he had his own apartment then, one Level 9?

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Do you know who Claire Chevalier is?”

Martin paused at the unfamiliar name, staring at a centipedean droid, wondering at its purpose. Someone—a child maybe—had left it on the lawn.

They resumed their walk.

“Name doesn’t ring a bell.”

He focused his will, and one side of the helmet shimmered. The interface of the intranet stared back at him. Usually he’d have to use a pad, or a sphere, or even one of those old basic handhelds, but a Chassis could interface directly.

The search showed several people, ranging from prepubescents to pensioners.

“Searched her too.”

A tram passed them by, in which an older man instructed a younger one. A personal vehicle? Lunacy.

“I’m not sure if she was one of your exes, but she is very, very angry at you.”

Martin startled, the motion transitioning into a shrug.”I don’t know no Claire Chevalier. Maybe she’s an arcology hardliner. I’m the only provincial here.”

In the weeks since the bouts, that detail had spread. He had told Isla. He couldn’t remember if he let on to someone else, which begged the question: who was the tattle?

“She’s from one of Britain’s arcologies. Bruja with the nets, cracking anything given a chance.”

“We were sitting-“

“We?”

“Me, the Guos, Chevalier, Saolirin, Needa and a few others.”

The hollow ache that erupted at those words was not the worst Martin Soleri had experienced, but…

They excluded me. He noted the absence of Sonnentag’s name, too.

“We were sitting at this café, when Needa mentions your name.”

Calix’s head bent. Her body slumped.

“She mentions your jacket, and I say something like, ‘can you believe this guy came from a camp’. Chevalier pretty much blew it, she starts to rant of how provincials are just rapists and murderers.”

Martin closed his eyes. Of course she had. There were places in Camp Sala where even he would fear to walk. But referring to the entire camp as lawless western was like calling an arcology heaven. Martin had been down to Level 1- seen the corrugated metal, the shimmer of radiation kept at bay by a Field ten-thousand times stronger than that of a ordinary Proxy.

“Martin?”

Still walking, they entered a small enclosure, the heart of which was a swan rising from a submerged pond. He stopped before it. Was this another of the extinct animals he had learned about in Federated schooling? He couldn’t remember— and that bothered him.

What was there to say? This Chevalier had some sort of grudge against provincials, and by extension, him. That grudge, and who he was, they were two different things, yet all the same, he’d be held to an account of some sort.

His fists tightened. He too, had words for people like this Chevalier. People who had born safe and protected. Who assumed without knowing anything.

“Chevalier, she a Two:er?”

“Nah, a Three. Her parents were doctors, I think.”

That only made it worse. Even in a time when Proxies could cure cancers, doctors were still esteemed. For while such options were possible, they remained a viable alternative for the rarefied few.

Most people would have to settle for average, mortal doctors. And those Martin had seen in the camps had lived like kings and queens, relatively speaking. After all, even crime lords needed people to keep them healthy. Add to that she was arcology-raised…

“And the others?”

“They heard you during Sviratham’s last lecture,” she said, voice matter-of-fact. Neutral even, when neutrality was probably the last thing on her mind.

It was as close to answer as an answer was likely to be gotten.

A white-stranded hand dipped beneath the translucent waters. Between the sheer gauze of the fluid and the filters of his Chassis, the coins at the bottom the fountain were clear. A face in profile. Carl XVI Gustaf, that old worthy. The last Swedish king. Wasn’t there a story of how the queen had held Stockholm castle during Devastation? Suddenly he wanted to hear it again.

“When?”

She came to stand by his shoulder. That was twice now. A third time would see Calix’s statement stand, forever.

“They followed you, so I tagged along. By now they’ll have figured it out.”

One detail jumped up at him, a thing Calix had mentioned.”You said she could crack anything.”

“She could.”

Like the sub-routines that monitored people’s positions.

Martin felt his tongue, webbed against the back of his palate, dry and slow.

Isla had followed him, hadn’t she. Never saying, ‘go this way’, ‘go that way’. Just following him.

This place had probably been a garden once, the green of bushes traded for the grey of ceramacrete, with only the fountain to remain, and she had followed him, or seen the other way, she had led him.

Like how a wolfhound shepherds the lamb. Her shoulder touched his now. Close, close enough that even the lesser exoaurics would be dangerous. When you had a target within hugging distance, even mere lightning would suffice.

On the watery surface of the oval beneath the dead bird Martin saw a hand rise— to clap his shoulders.

“You sent me away that time. The Ennas Dilemma, they call it. An impossible, unknowable scenario. And maybe it was— I wasn’t there.

Well, you’re not getting away this time. This, it can be be won.”

Unbidden and unnoticed they fell. His worries, and his shoulders.

Together then.

The crack was still there. But it shone now, eclipsing the dark of doubt.

Together they stood, Martin Soleri and Isla Calix.

Waiting.

A ghost in white, a horned lady in red.

For seconds, then minutes, those units stretching into an hour.

Eventually Calix froze the basin.”Where the fuck are they?!”

_____

“Now, this, this is the sort of thing a girl could get used to real quick.”

They sat in the couch to the right of his bed, the couch which would be to the left, were one to use the bed as one’s point of view.

A man with nails that were either gene-modded or filed with a file the width of an atom gestured in a expansive way on the screen that was part and parcel of the apartment. Any further expansion, Martin thought, and the man with coiffed hair might just explode and fly away. Like a ballon.

Also, that language…Spanish?

“Well, don’t.”

“Ah, don’t be like that. My place isn’t even half as good as yours. This puts the high in high definition,” she said, stretching out on the couch.

“What is your place like?”

He never did ask Berenice that time she came over.

“Hmm,” she muttered, apparently growing irritated at whatever was said in her own language.

“Isla?”

“Most of us got a single room. Triparte? Nah, three parts. Upper part is bed, second is living room and the bottom is a bedroom.”

“Where do you cook?”

“Cook? Not everyone gets an actual kitchen, Martin. There is a partial reformulator in a corner of the living room. Bit limited, I can’t make paella on it.

So, who did you sleep with to get this apartment?”

“Funny you should ask…” He told her the story of the health-exams, meeting Chiyo Moyamoto, and the unknown senior Proxy.

“You should text her.”

“Text her?”

“Yeah. I want to meet her. Besides, what you’re describing…it sounds funny, Martin. I think you’re caught up in something.”

Between the Examination, the fracture between himself, Calix and Sonnentag and the weeks where Sviratham had drilled them without pause to master basic Field techniques…he hadn’t forgotten. But rather, the mystery behind his arrival at Vänern Arcology had been placed in a dusty corner of his mind.

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know anything more.”

“That she has told you.”

“Why would she lie?”

“Martin, this is how they get the hooks in you. By dangling something interesting, and piece by piece they reel you in,” she said, eyes fixed on the screen, voice dark and heavy.

“I-“

Ring.

“Ignore it. She’d lie because it is in her best interest to do so. She stumbled on a mystery—this kid from a provincial camp, showing up at the doorstep on an arcology. Oh, she made a scan, but who was it that forwarded the data up the next step on the ladder? This she wonders.”

Ring.

“You meet. The scan shows that you’ve got the goods. A Proxy-to-be. It was just chance that made her scan you. But the person who made you a priority? That person realised what the scan meant—in advance, and I think Chiyo Moyamoto wants to know real bad the identity of this senior.”

Ring. Ring.

“Also, there’s the apartment. Someone meddled to give you this apartment. That, and your scan—

Ring. Ring. Ring.

“Martin, could you please get the fuckingdoor?”

Soleri got up. He walked through the hallway- door opening to reveal none other than Viktor Solzhenitsyn.

He…the beard no longer extended beyond the confines of his shin, but rather, followed the arc of his face. His hair was tied with a clip into a straight-laced bun rather the descending waterfall-mess that he usually wore. A one-piece garment, the overall which any Two:er or One:er might wear to work hinted at muscles beneath.

Brown eyes smiled, intent.

“Solzhenitsyn…”

Martin stumbled, unsure.”Do you want to come in? I can put on a pot of coffee real quick…”Soleri trailed off as Viktor gestured him to a stop.

“Nah, man. I was just going to come by to check up on you.”

Martin’s lips formed a hesitant smile. Any time now, Solzhenitsyn would make a caustic remark.

“I’m fine.”

“Who is it?”

He craned his neck, Martin did, shouting back.”Viktor!”

“Is that Calix I hear?”

Martin turned back to the Russian Proxy. “Sure is.” He paused.”I’m sorry for what happened at the lecture. Somaronov shouldn’t have said that.”

“No,” Viktor Solzhenitsyn said, “she shouldn’t have.”

Martin didn’t take a step back, but it was a near thing. He remembered the way Solzhenitsyn’s gaze had gone quiet at the other Russian’s words as it did now.

“But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Oh?”

Martin came to a realisation: this was perhaps what Solzhenitsyn looked like without hostility.

The hair on his arms stood at attention.

“Like I said; I was just coming by to check up on you.”

Martin shrugged, not quite clear why he felt so bothered. Solzhenitsyn had made no threats, merely leaned against the wall and he wasn’t even wearing his Chassis. ”I’m fine.” “You’re going somewhere?”

“Sviratham came through. I’m going to Camp Sala tonight. My punishment, you see.”

Viktor Solzhenitsyn took a step back. The corridor was dimly lit, and so the shadows splayed at unusual angles across the bearded man’s face.

“Anyhow. Just wanted to see if you were fine.”

Where, Martin wondered, has all that emotion gone? Why have you asked me thrice whether I’m fine?

“Be seeing you, Soleri.”

The door swung shut.

Then Martin knew.

“Viktor…”

The Chassis covered him in less than a fraction. Martin Soleri stared, peered through the door, through the portal-link and the accompanying room Solzhenitsyn had entered—-he swerved, seeing the corridor, a series of lights and a void that scratched at his eyeballs. A warren of black with gleaming starry freckles.

He opened his door, Calix’s shouts echoing behind him. Walked up to that darkness. The portal-link closed behind him, this he absently knew. He touched that darkness—and staggered.

Tears pushed their way through his eyes. Snot blurbed in his nose. His heart vaulted in his chest. This was something of an order of what Somaronov had made him feel.

He got up to a standing position from one knee, clutching the offending limb. He took another step away from the stygian dark. No, it was in fact worse than Somaronov’s attack. Perhaps not worse. Deeper. An ocean, before Soleri’s sea. Its author, no doubt Viktor, must at some point felt such despair as to eclipse his own.

Martin held his hand up, fingers extended and called upon summer. The memory of a slow breeze, of kisses in alcoves, of liquor stolen from faulty reformulators, and in his palm a Christmas globe of dawn levitated. Intent, emotion, ritual. All of these things powered endoaurics. Sviratham’s words.

So Martin Soleri raised the globe above his head, banishing the night.

Revealing…

Six Proxies. Their helmets, torn open. Wounds, gaping, blood pooling in great puddles.

The metal of their Chassis…whatever had savaged those armors, it had been quick.

He recognised the blue eyes of Ronja Somaronov, pupils burst-chest atleast rising-slumped against one wall.

I was just coming by to check up on you.