The observatory at the top of the fastness keep was open, the telescope within pointed towards the south, awaiting its target to come into view. It would be a night-time watch, the sun still an hour or more from appearing on the eastern ecliptic to spread light across the planet beneath the observatory. It was not ideal, but it couldn't be helped. He had received instruction to watch this target whenever possible, no matter what the weather conditions, and to the exclusion of all other nearby targets, which numbered just a handful, anyway.
The watcher stood in a pit in the floor, underneath the mechanism that powered the movement of the scope, adjusting settings, pulling levers and rotating dials. The scope would track on its given target, with small adjustments possible from the seat where the watcher would recline, staring through the eyepiece, making his observations. When he was done with the settings, he wound the spring that powered the mechanism, set the timer, and closed the doors. He picked up a small oil lamp that flickered a warm, yellow-orange glow into the otherwise dark room from the floor beside him, then climbed a small metal staircase to the observatory floor. There, he placed the lamp on a bracket by the door and crossed to a worn leather armchair next to an ornate wooden cabinet with ornately carved feet and an inlaid credenza of burr and walnut.
Taking a bottle out of the cabinet, he sat in the armchair and poured a good measure of golden liquid into two tumblers, placing one on a small table in front of him. Stopping the bottle, he raised his glass in salute at the man sat bound with rope to the chair the other side of the table, and took a sip, making a show of savouring the taste. The two men stared at each other for a few seconds, and it was only when Sable Holm raised a questioning eyebrow that the watcher feigned to notice his difficulty in reaching his glass.
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. How rude. Here, let me."
The watcher waved his hand like a magician and the ropes binding Sable to the chair disappeared. Sable rubbed his wrists and grimaced as his circulation returned, then straightened the sleeves of his jacket before reaching for his glass and returning the salute. He sipped the whisky and seemed to genuinely savour the taste, closing his eyes and allowing a small smile to appear on his lips. "Does this mean you've decided I'm not a threat at last?"
"Mmm. Let's just say I've not been able to find any reason to doubt your story, or your intentions. And I've decided too that you are not a threat – to me, at any rate. In here, I am God, and I have made it so that were you to try anything to harm either myself or the work I do, you will be deleted from the substrate. I believe that if whatever brought you here is important enough, you will respect that."
"Fair enough." Sable sipped his drink and sat with a look of contentment on his face, but the watcher noticed a tremor in his guest's fingers which betrayed his heightened emotion.
"What you ask, is that I take sides," the watcher said. Sable nodded, but stayed quiet. "Taking sides was not in my terms and conditions of embodiment. We set out to keep the peace, not take sides in a war. You know that."
"Agreed. But things have changed! You've seen it yourself – will see it again shortly! The boy – he is living proof that what I was saying all those years ago was correct. He's a bright, intelligent and caring child, who hasn't even begun to reach his potential. In a year or two he will reach maturity and then you'll see, everyone will see!"
"What will they see, Sable? The future of humanity? I think not. Wherever he goes he will be seen as nothing more than a plague-wraith that has the uncanny ability to think for himself, and talk like a normal person – better than that in fact. And what will happen? He will be killed, Sable, torn apart by the very people you and I set out to save because of their mistrust of anything unusual and strange. A plague-wraith on its own has value and they're traded as pets down there. An intelligent plague-wraith? He will frighten the locals to death. They will kill him."
"Which is why you need to help him stay alive long enough to reach his potential. Two years – no more. After that it won't matter."
The argument had been going on for days, ever since the watcher had allowed Sable out of the oubliette – even before they had cleared the dungeons, following the string that led them out to the safety of the keep's lower levels.
"Two years! He won't last two weeks, whether I help him or not. In fact, it might be best if he is retrieved by SimCore, if that's indeed who they are. Better them than those back-to-medieval revenant monks, who make such a mockery of what they call faith. By the way, what made you choose to stay in the heartland of their twisted influence? Surely somewhere more remote would have been better. Wales, or even Scotland perhaps? Why an English Kingdom, for pity's sake?"
"Partly because I had no choice at first, and partly ... partly through pride, I admit. I thought that maybe, if I could prove a plague victim can be cured and given the gift of normal life, I could turn opinion around and change the way things are going. I thought I could maybe persuade the senate, and everyone else – even SimCore, that this war wasn't worth fighting if the need for it was removed from Earth. All it needs is this boy to survive a little longer. Please, I know you were meant to be impartial in your task, to watch and report and not do anything unless given explicit instruction. But I also know you have the power to choose to intervene if you want to. I fought for that, right from the start – for just such a reason as this."
The watcher looked unconvinced for a moment, then frowned as he realised what Sable was saying. "Your appearance in the oubliette - that wasn't a SimCore authorised upload... I had assumed it was a last-stand protocol that activated when you died, but it wasn't was it?"
Sable tapped his head and smiled ruefully at the watcher. "When the nano reached my net, it activated a last-stand routine of my own design, squirting a readied mind state up to here. It also activated the destruction of my net, which protected my work but necessarily doomed my mortal life. It couldn't be helped.
"What good is your work up here?" asked the watcher. "You know there is no way out from this v-con. It's trapped just as effectively as you are."
"No. I made a copy a long time ago. It's still down there, in need of protection and in grave danger."
"The boy."
"Indeed, the boy. He doesn't know it, but he holds the key to returning the human race to greatness once again, but until he can get that knowledge to where it is needed, and not before the right time, it can't be used. And I fear that both sides will try to stop him reaching that goal at all costs, as the price they will pay for his success will be their lives."
A bell sounded twice in the observatory, and the watcher stood. "It is time," he said, and walked over to the chair under the telescope's eyepiece. Once settled in the chair, the watcher released a clamp that held the telescope in place, allowing it to move once the timer on the clockwork mechanism completed its count down. A few seconds later there was an audible clank as the mechanism engaged, then a regular ticking as the telescope began to track on its target; the town and castle within Berkeley Protectorate, Wessex Kingdom. In the high clock-speed of the v-con, the watcher would have over an hour to make his observations. In real time, just eight minutes would pass. There would usually be in the order of hundreds of passes between locating and observing a target, as it relied on them being in the open at the same time and place as where the telescope was trained on – a combination rarely encountered, but it was the best that could be achieved with the tools at hand. After only a few moments searching, however, the watcher grunted in surprise.
"I've found your boy, and he's in trouble."
Sable looked up, the worry on his face clear to see even in the dim light of the oil lamp. Inwardly, the watcher sighed, as he felt he was about to make a decision that would anger his superiors, and perhas open the way for more serious consequences.
"Here, let me show you what I can see." The watcher allowed the view received by the telescope to appear on the curving wall of the observatory, as if shone there by a projector. The image was dark and grainy, but it was possible to make out the castle, seen from the north and lit by the light of the moon. Around and beyond the castle lay pools of fog, thicker where hollows and small valleys trapped it, thin and insubstantial over fields and scrub further away from the Protectorate. Objects that were warm stood out brightly, and here and there cattle could be seen grouped together in corners of fields. Smoke from fires and heat escaping from houses and the castle itself showed up as plumes and spots of light; bright in the infra-red. The watcher allowed the view to zoom beyond the castle, southwards to where several bright spots could be seen scattered amongst scrub and thickets close to a track that ran north to south – the Old Gloucester Road, as the watcher knew it to be called. One of the bright spots had a blue marker above it – Farron, identified by size and motion characteristics analysed on previous observations. Through his eyepiece, the watcher could see Farron running towards a hollow where fog lay thick, possibly even thick enough to obscure the telescope's own ability to see. His movements appeared in slow motion due to the relative difference in apparent time, but it was clear that he was being pursued by several men, and ... something else. He looked closely at the thing bounding over the scrub.
"Is that a chimera I see? It must be ancient! Where on earth did that come from?" The watcher looked away from the eyepiece at Sable, who was looking aghast at the image on the observatory wall.
"It was in the castle, always has been. It was found hundreds of years ago. It's sat on a plinth since the Protectorate was founded... I don't understand!"
"It seems our SimCore friends are more resourceful than we thought," said the watcher, turning back to the eyepiece again. "I see your bird, too."
The watcher looked as the bird of prey harried the chimera, over several seconds it made two passes, each time knocking the chimera over to slow its advance, but not able to inflict any apparent damage to the device, which itself almost brought the bird down with a snap of its jaws, missing the birds leg by the merest whisker. The watcher estimated that it would be ten more minutes of subjective time before the chimera reached the boy – six seconds in the real.
"Tell me," said the watcher, "is the bird, your chimera, now answering to Farron? It looks like it's protecting him."
"I hope so, yes. I told him how to find the imprint key before I died – I assume he's worked out how to activate it."
"Well, that's something. But I don't think its enough."
"Please," pleaded Sable, "give him a chance. If there is anything you can do to help, you would be doing the right thing."
"Would I though? Hmm. I tell you what. I will even things up – give the boy a fighting chance to escape. Would that do?"
"Anything, but please, do it quickly!"
"Alright. But if there are any consequences, you'll share them with me, mark my words."
The watcher returned to his eyepiece and looked again at the hunt below him. The telescope was approaching vertical now that the orbiting platform was almost overhead. Ideal conditions for what he was about to do. Part of his uploaded personality that had access to the platform's weapon systems came to life, assessed the mission it had been given, selected the appropriate system, and armed the weapon, then waited for permission to fire. Outside the observatory, one of the trebuchets moved on its drum tower, turning on its axis and drawing down the arm with a creak of ropes and pulleys. The noise it made caused Sable look around in alarm, but the watcher just waved a hand dismissively at him.
"Just a representation, ignore it. Each of the trebuchets depicts one of the five weapon systems. If they move without me wanting them too, then we're in trouble."
"As opposed to someone else, I suppose," replied Sable.
"Indeed, now hush. These weapons were designed for decisive actions on massive, heavily defended targets, not a surgical strike on a moving object a hundred kilos in weight. I'm using a fraction of its power but even so it's going to make one hell of a bang down there, so I ask you again – are you sure this is wise?"
"Yes, please, just do what you can."
The watcher nodded, sighed to himself, and gave the weapon permission to fire. He fervently hoped he had made the right decision, and as the view through the telescope washed out in the glare of reflected light of a high energy laser ionising the atmosphere through which it travelled, he felt a return of purpose.
When the view through the eyepiece returned to normal, he saw the scattered, glowing remains of the chimera spread across a hundred meter radius of scrub, with the still, prone form of Farron a short distance beyond. For the time remaining of the observation, they watched as the bird began picking off the pursuers one by one, but at no time did they see Farron stir from the ground.