Resolution by John Meaney

constructed.’
     
    ‘I’m willing to learn,’ Tom muttered.
     
    All the better to destroy you.
     
    Zilwen gestured, and the display rotated and transformed. It showed a white spherical cloud - a hollow sphere - surrounding the world.
     
    ‘From space, it doesn’t shine so obviously’ - Zilwen brightened the display further - ‘but it is there, in exactly this configuration.’
     
    ‘What is there?’
     
    ‘The spinpoint field, of course.’ Zilwen glanced at Strostiv, who did not react. ‘What did you think you just observed? The spinpoints we’ve harvested from orbit.’
     
    ‘And what,’ asked Tom slowly, ‘is a spinpoint?’
     
    Zilwen was one of those brilliant fools, technically hypercompetent but unable to explain his thoughts, and his mouth worked as he tried to find the words.
     
    Then Tom held up his hand, forestalling him.
     
    ‘Fate! You’ve got singularities—’
     
    Strostiv was smiling now.
     
    ‘—of negative time. That’s what a spinpoint is: an infinitesimal knot where time is reversed.’
     
    Zilwen nodded. To Strostiv, he said: ‘He got it, fast enough. I’d say he’s able to do the job.’
     
    Strostiv shrugged, smiling at Tom in apology for Zilwen’s manner. But at least Zilwen was not concealing his goals.
     
    ‘You want me to work for the Collegium?’ Tom stared at them. ‘Are you serious?’
     
    ‘It’s the perfect place for your research interests, don’t you think? You have no demesne to rule, and the money must be running out, particularly with the cyborg affair: I know how much those technicians cost.’
     
    ‘It’ll be fun.’ Zilwen gazed at him with round, almost childlike eyes. ‘We have top of the range equipment. Absolutely the best.’
     
    Tom remembered another child, with cut-open scalp and the drones removing humanity from the wet, exposed brain.
     
    ‘I don’t see ...’ Tom would milk them of information before refusing outright. ‘I still don’t see how you create the spinpoints in the first place. It seems impossible.’
     
    Zilwen frowned.
     
    ‘Um ... I thought you realized ...’
     
    ‘We’re working on it,’ Strostiv interrupted with a politician’s smoothness. ‘Whether it’s the next year or the next century, we’ll get there. We’re guaranteed success, don’t you see? What could be better than allying yourself to a project that you already know will be a winner?’
     
    Even with the logosophical model hanging over the table and the hints contained in Strostiv’s words, it took several long moments for Tom to put the pieces together and blurt out his reaction. ‘My Fate,’ he said. ‘You don’t know how to create spinpoints. You don’t know—’
     
    He was out of his chair and standing now.
     
    ‘—because they haven’t been created yet.’
     
    Waves of silence seemed to crash in the room, and then Strostiv sighed, reclaiming a sense of normality. ‘That’s the nature, I’m afraid, of negative time.’
     
    ‘The spinpoints’ origins lie in our future. Our descendants will create them.’
     
    ‘Or we will, tomorrow.’ Strostiv raised his hands, palms up. ‘Who can tell?’
     
    ‘And you want me to work on this?’
     
    ‘Well, of course we can discuss your—’
     
    ‘You know so much about the nature of time. Do you understand the word never?’
     
    Tom kicked his chair aside. It spun across the floor and fell clattering. Then he strode from the chamber breathing hard, not looking back, knowing he might kill someone if he did.
     

     
    An hour later he was on a lev-platform accompanied by four greystone warriors, skimming through raw, broken tunnels only fitfully lit by glow-fungus. In some, the fungus was sparse or diseased, and therefore the air was bad; they moved through those tunnels at high speed, mainly for Tom’s benefit: it was said that greystone warriors could function for many minutes on end without breathing.
     
    The escort, he assumed, was not for Tom’s