Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga Page 5

  The blank facades and grasping towers didn't sum to a place at all, but to a wilderness, one that he was desperate to escape from.

  He hesitated in the doorway to his oddly angled room. This was definitely not where he wanted to be; but he didn't know where else to go. He sat at the desk.

  He stood.

  He walked to the sartorius, which proffered clothing, exoskeleton parts, and other extensions as he approached.

  Turning away from that, he fell backward and let the bed catch him. For a few minutes he just lay there as his dragonflies zipped in a restless cloud from door to ceiling to floor and back.

  The sounds of distant conversation filtered in through the chamber's narrow windows--echoes of voices from the Hall, including Maspeth's anxious tones. He sat up, wrapped his fingers around his skull, and bent his head over his knees.

  A gentle knock came from the doorway. He wanted nothing more than to tell whoever it was to go away, but instead he heard himself say, "Come." Maerta stepped in, in her second body, and came to sit on the bed next to him. Her scry was muted, only a few faint glyphs twirling near her ears. She was carrying something heavy, and now she moved to set it on the floor by the bed.

  It was the brick--the Mighty Brick, now stripped of its agencies and protective devices. "Ah," said Keir, gazing at it mournfully. "You killed it."

  "We found it near a rather grouchy ornithopter. That one claimed you were starving it to death."

  He shrugged, but he couldn't look her in the eye. He'd drawn his own scry all the way in, leaving him bare of context.

  "Keir," she said softly, "what were you doing with these things?"

  His restless fingers tangled together. "I--I don't know." Now he did look at her directly. "I mean that. I know I made this," he pointed at the brick, "but I don't know what it is."

  "That I can answer," she said. "You and Gallard were studying embodiment a few weeks back. To have a body is, well, almost a sacred thing, no? --To us, I mean. It's what separates us, and our allies like the oaks and the morphonts, from things like the creature that was chasing Leal Maspeth and her friends." She nudged the brick with her toe. "Having a body, even if it's a block of dumb stone, anchors the mind and its values. We're fighting to keep our anchors, all of us, and none more so than the people who live in Virga. Even if they don't know it.

  "I'm pretty sure you made the Mighty Brick to remind yourself of these things."

  "Then why did I forget?"

  She shook her head. "I don't--"

  "Stop lying to me! You do know."

  She was silent for a moment, and he felt a small sense of triumph at having scored a point in their ongoing argument--because, before today, he hadn't even been sure himself that something was wrong. Now he had proof, in the form of those lines scratched next to the door a kilometer below the Hall.

  "Keir," she said slowly, "why did you grow that aircraft?" He looked away, but she put a hand on his shoulder. "Where were you going to go?"

  "I don't know."

  "You didn't have someone in specific you were going to look for?"

  That was an odd question; he looked at her for the first time. "No. Who would I have to look for?"

  "Sita?"

  He didn't recognize the name, and shook his head, confused. Scry gave no hint as to who this Sita might be, either. Somehow his incomprehension satisfied Maerta, who took away her hand and sighed.

  "I'm not a real boy, am I?" he asked her. "The other kids are growing up, but I'm growing down. Getting shorter, stupider. Forgetting things--like, like this Sita whoever. Why? What's happening to me?"

  She looked him in the eye. "Keir, you have to trust me when I say I can't tell you."

  "Can't tell me? Or won't?"

  "Can't. Because I made a promise that I wouldn't."

  "To who? You're the leader here, aren't you? Who could you possibly have to make a promise to that you'd have to keep?"

  Maerta stood up, clasped her hands, and walked to the door. Then she turned and said, "I can't betray my promise, Keir; and I'm sorry, but for now, that's how it has to be."

  He just stared at her, tears starting in the corners of his eyes. Maerta came back, her hands hovering over him. "Oh, no, no, I'm sorry, Keir. It's for the best. You'll understand when it's all over and it'll be fine, fine. You'll see. We would never do this to hurt you, we love you."

  "Do what?" He was crying as much from frustration as disappointment or fear. "What did you do?"

  "You'll see in time, and it'll be all right, I promise." Briskly, she went on: "Now I have to ask you something, and it's very important. Can you be honest with me? Did you tell the Virgans anything about what we're doing here? --In Brink? Anything about who the Renaissance are?"

  He shook his head bitterly. Now he wished he had.

  "Good. Good. We don't know them, Keir. They might be spies. They might be dangerous, do you understand?"

  He nodded sullenly.

  "And Keir, the flying machine..." She was silent so long that finally he was forced to look at her.

  "When the time comes," she said, "you'll be able to leave Brink, and go anywhere in the universe that you want to go. But just hang on a little longer. Your time's not yet, Keir.

  "Not yet."

  * * *

  "MA'AM?"

  Leal turned to find Piero Harper at the doorway; there was concern written on his wind- and labor-aged features. She smiled warmly at Hayden Griffin's loyal crewman, and raised her hands to show off the room. "Isn't this nice? It has a roof! I'd forgotten what those were like."

  Piero smiled and ducked his head. "It's no fun, ma'am, camping out under gravity."

  "The things you learn." This chamber they'd given her was huge--but then, there was no lack of space in this city-that-wasn't-a-city. Before letting herself be walked here last night, she'd had to wait while her bed was constructed--extruded, actually, from one of the odd half-animal, half-machine things they called a fab. The things had squatted and huffed and beeped and squelched out chairs, tables, and cupboards, each one to order and each one slightly different. Maerta and her people had demonstrated what they called exoskeletons, which hoisted the finished goods on their backs and hauled them--a roomful of furniture per person--up stairs and ramps to these chambers. It would all have been wonderful to someone who wasn't half-dead with exhaustion. As it was Leal had slept like a stone for what must have been twelve hours; in this permanent gloom, it could have been six or two days. Now she felt like she could barely lift a limb. The lethargy was good; her mind had been gloriously blank for much of the day.

  "Are they actually doing it?" she asked.

  Piero nodded, and she shook her head with a wondering smile. Keir Chen's people were being outrageously generous. Leal, Piero, and some of his more trusted crewmates had spent part of the morning sitting around another strange device, the one Maerta called an Edisonian, discussing how they might rescue Piero's master Hayden Griffin and the rest of the airmen trapped on the lower plains. While they talked, the Edisonian listened; and then it thought a little bit; and then it began showing glowing images on its side, of the complete design for a flying machine of a type Leal had never seen before. The thing had big ungainly bags attached to it, and stiff wings, presumably to catch the wind. Neither of those were features of Virgan airships, but they made sense in the context of the pervasive gravity in Aethyr. "How long will it take to construct these?" Leal had asked Maerta.

  The woman had shrugged. "A couple of days."

  "They are being generous," Piero said now. She waved him in and he shut the door (also new, also made last night while they watched), but didn't advance any further into the room. "Ma'am, it's not that I'm ungrateful ... but I can't help getting the feeling they want to get rid of us."

  "Y-yesss," she admitted. "But not in a hostile way. You know the old saying, 'Fish and visitors stink after two days.'"

  He grinned. "They're like monks, aren't they? Very serious and studious. But I can't for the life of
me figure out what they're studying."

  "Keir said they're studying the city."

  "The boy. You believe him?"

  She shrugged. "No. Look, what does it matter, if we get our airships in two days? We can go home, Piero."

  He stood there uncertainly until she shook her head and said, "Oh, do sit down!" He lowered himself into one of the armchairs--becoming, she realized, the very first and maybe the last human to use it--and clutched its arms uncomfortably.

  "Beggin' your pardon, ma'am, but if it don't matter, then why were you standing in the window when I came in, just starin' at nothing and sighing?"

  She scratched the side of her head. "Mm, well..."

  "Somethin' about this place is bothering you, ma'am. What is it?"

  "It's not these people." She looked down, summoning her thoughts and her courage to express them. "Piero ... how old were you, when your country was conquered?"

  This was obviously not the question he'd expected. "Wha--Well, about fifteen. Old enough to know what I was losing."

  "And what is that like?"

  "Ah." Crow's-feet gathered around his eyes as he smiled. "You think you've lost Abyss forever?"

  "Haven't I? Piero, I've been branded a traitor! Bringing Loll with us was a mistake, I know that now. We'll never win him over, and when we get home and he's among his old cronies and the power-brokers of Abyss, he'll turn on us. I know it, no matter what he says. He'll have me arrested if I return."

  He nodded, but then said, "You suppose that his word is all that matters there now? Ma'am, Slipstream took over my beloved Aerie, and I lost my home. It's a terrible thing, being lost like that. But I got it back. Aerie's a nation again, thanks to Mr. Hayden Griffin and the sun he made. And you'll see, when all this is over, Abyss will take you back with open arms. All'll be forgiven when they realize you saved them all."

  She looked away. After a moment she murmured, "Maybe it's not enough for them to forgive me; after all, I've done nothing wrong. What I keep asking myself, after what's happened, is whether I'll ever be able to forgive them."

  Piero frowned.

  "And if not," she continued, "where will I ever find a new home?"

  Piero stood and came to lightly touch her hand--reticent, always-polite Piero, who had always treated her like some upper-class client, like the professor she'd wanted to be. She clasped her own hand over his and blinked up at him. "Ma'am, you'd be queen of Aerie if I had any say in it," he said fiercely. "And a citizen, surely, there or in Slipstream or any nation that learns the treasure you're bringing and what you had to sacrifice to get it."

  Tears blurred her view of him. She hadn't cried since the night her friend Easley had died, because in order to survive, she'd had to choke the old, emotionally fluttery version of herself. These tears were different than the old Leal's would have been, though--more hard-won, and with vaster depths of feeling behind them.

  "Thank you, Piero," she said. "Still, I feel like a bird lost in an ocean of air. Where can I set my feet, Piero? And when can I fold my wings, and sleep?" She closed her eyes. "Sleep like I used to sleep."

  "Tell the people back home what you learned out here, ma'am," Piero asserted. "And then you may be surprised what becomes possible."

  3

  "I KNOW IT doesn't look like much right now," Maerta was telling Leal Maspeth, "but in a day or two it'll be able to fly."

  Keir hung back, in the shadows, watching the grown-ups inspect the new flying machine. This one was different from his ornithopter--naturally, since the Edisonians evolved each object from scratch.

  "What are the air bags for?" Maspeth asked. With her were Minister Loll, Piero Harper, and several other "airmen."

  Maerta frowned. "I don't know. --We often don't know the inner workings of the devices the Edisonians make. You could ask one of them, but they might not know, either; since they merely evolve the designs, they don't need to comprehend them."

  "Lift," said Keir without thinking. They both turned to look for him, and he reluctantly stepped out of the shadows.

  "The bags will probably hold hydrogen," he said, "which is lighter than air. So they'll carry you up, at least until you reach the freefall zone."

  "Keir knows something about flying machines," said Maerta with no trace of irony or malice. "He has one of his own." And she nodded to where his ornithopter sat preening its metal feathers in a distant corner of the courtyard.

  "Oh, do you fly?" asked Harper. Keir regretted having spoken, and shuffled his feet.

  "Not yet," he said curtly.

  "You're wise to start slow." Harper grinned. "Flying under gravity's no mean feat. We learned that the hard way."

  Keir's scry was telling him to disengage from this conversation. That was probably Maerta's fault; she didn't want him to socialize with the strangers, even though he'd saved their lives and they were clearly grateful. Keir knew his own scry was registering his anger to her and the other Renaissance people nearby, but he kept his face composed as he bowed to the Virgans. "Yes ... if you'll excuse me?" He walked away.

  "We'll be able to ferry the rest of our men up from the surface in these?" said Leal Maspeth behind him--but she was watching him go. He could see that through his dragonflies.

  He wondered what his scry would tell hers if she had it; it was frustrating that she had none. Scry was useful, because it made explicit the implicit. It interpreted your unconscious thoughts and motives, and communicated those to the scry of the people around you. This took the guesswork out of social relations; or at any rate, Keir's tutors said that was its original function. Like anything else that actually survived in the real world, it had evolved.

  Scry was said to predate Artificial Nature. If that were the case, then the original scry technology had been thought up and designed, maybe even by human minds. Some idealist, perhaps, had believed that human society would function more efficiently if people's unconscious minds coordinated their efforts.

  Feeling isolated and lonely, he went to his ornithopter and knelt next to it. "How are you?" he asked it.

  "Ready," it said. Keir sighed in annoyance and stood up again.

  "Ahem." He looked around to find the Virgan government minister, Eustace Loll, standing a polite distance away. Maerta's bots had fixed his broken leg, and he'd seemed pathetically grateful, as if he hadn't expected such a basic courtesy from his hosts.

  Of all the Virgans, only Loll seemed to sense the scry around him. He couldn't actually see the emoticons and assessment tags that hovered virtually around everybody and everything here--but he somehow acted like he could. Maerta and the others had warmed up to him very quickly, yet Keir's scry told him that Maspeth didn't trust him.

  Maspeth, however, wasn't anywhere to be seen. None of the Virgans were in the courtyard anymore, except for Loll.

  He bowed. "Keir Chen, may I talk to you for a minute?"

  "Certainly, Minister. I'm done here anyway." Keir didn't know what a "minister" was, but the title came attached to Loll, so he used it.

  Loll appeared to like being addressed this way. He peered up at the black sky above the courtyard, then smiled and shook his head. "I confess, I find it strange that your people claim not to understand the very flying machine they're building for us."

  Keir shrugged. "Nobody understands machines. We just use 'em. And if we're not careful, we get used by 'em."

  Loll's laugh was rich and comradely. He reached out to pat the ornithopter's wing. "So who uses who, in this particular relationship?"

  "Oh, it's not very bright and it doesn't think for itself," he said.

  "Yet it does what you tell it to?"

  Keir nodded. "You can command it, yes. Or use the hand controls, but I still haven't got the hang of it."

  Loll mused, rubbing his large chin. "Yet, I should think I'd feel guilty, ordering such a creature around. It may only be a beast of burden, but ... perhaps I can sympathize with it on that level."

  "How are you a beast of burden, Minister?" he asked afte
r a conspicuous and awkward silence.

  "Oh! Well, I've had to carry heavy loads before. Mostly policy, you know." Loll shrugged. "And responsibility. I don't know how it is in your world, Keir Chen, but in mine we have to take individual responsibility for the welfare of people we may never meet. That's what I've done all my life. It's a calling, really. I help care for people who may not have the resources or information to make certain kinds of decisions for themselves. That's what we call 'government.' I gather you don't have that here."

  "Government? No. Responsibility? Sure."

  "Ah, then maybe you'll understand my ... distress ... at the current situation."

  "Your being stranded here? I guess you've got people waiting for you back home," he said, a little enviously. "A family?"

  Loll shook his head. "A city--actually, a whole country whose fate may rest on my ability to reach them in time with a warning."

  "Is that why you were out here?"

  Loll looked uncomfortable. "Yes, though--it pains me to say this--we've been told not to talk about the details to any outsiders. By that creature Professor Maspeth calls the 'emissary.'"

  "The morphont?" Keir's scry was trying to read Loll by the man's stance, blood perfusion, eye movements, and so on. It wasn't having any success--no extra emoticons were floating around Loll that weren't already obvious from the tone of his voice and expression. Either he had fabulous self-control, or he was telling the truth. "It looked like a servant," said Keir. "When I saw it on the mountainside, it was just helping you stay on your feet."

  "It wouldn't show its other side to you, naturally." Loll looked grieved. "It's a creature we know very little about. You've seen that little rider it has perched on Maspeth's shoulder? It's impossible to talk to her without it listening. Impossible for her to say what she really means without it hearing, as well. It's using her as its mouthpiece and it wants to get that mouthpiece into Virga to deliver an ultimatum to my people." He glanced around. "We can only tell you this now because, for the moment, it's elsewhere."