A modest hut here rented angel's wings.
"They're just exos," Kirstana explained as she browsed a rack of furled, feathered things as tall as she was. "You know, visitors from lower-gee worlds wear them to amplify the strength of their legs and back, so they can walk here. These ones... well, they're wings. That's all."
Furled, they made up a tall heavy backpack. Unfurled, they were huge; the black ones Toby chose had a wingspan of at least eight meters. Kirstana's were white. She chatted with the proprietor about the details of using them, then, when properly strapped in, she simply walked to the edge of the platform and stepped off. Her security bot, Barber, stepped after her.
Toby shouted in alarm—but seconds later she reappeared, soaring so close to the sun-lamps that she blazed white as if she herself were a lamp. Barber was relying on what looked like jets built into his shoulders. "Hoo-hoo," shouted Kirstana. "Come on, the air's fine!"
He gulped at the proprietor. "You're good to go," said the young lady, slapping him on the back. Closing his eyes and trusting to the millennia of technological development that separated Kirstana's age from the one he'd grown up in, he ran and jumped.
The wings unfurled, and suddenly he was flying.
All you had to do was look the way you wanted to go, and tilt or shift your body that way; the wings took care of the rest. He learned early on that they had a mind of their own, and wouldn't let you run into buildings or hit the glass wall of the city. Within those limits, he could do what he wanted.
In this way they spiraled down through the geodesic froth of the continent, pausing to perch here and there while Kirstana pointed to the sights.
"People come here from thousands of worlds to fly, both inside and outside," she shouted as they diverged and converged in the air. "There's tournaments and contests. Of course they trade, too."
The continent was mostly made up of Lockstep 360/1 cities, but not entirely. Some of the spheres attached to it were closed off and dark; and some of the three-sixty cities weren't inhabited by humans.
He gawked at the distance-blurred glitter of the first one she pointed out. "Aliens? There are real aliens?" Kirstana laughed.
"No, not real aliens, if you mean intelligent beings who evolved separately from us. Nobody's ever found those yet, I mean we've only been expanding into the galaxy for fourteen thousand years, we've hardly explored out to a thousand light-years. No, those ones there are uplifted Chimpanzees. You'll also find apes and dolphins and—well, other things that are entirely new species unrelated to anything on Earth. And then there's artificial intelligences from the fast worlds, and augmented humans." She banked away, her voice fading as she singsonged the list: "—And mutants and heavyworlders and hybrids and single-genders and neanderthals and hyper-cats and..."
When they stopped for lunch in the heights of a jungle sphere full of mist and rainbow-colored birds, he tried to find words for how overwhelming he found it all. "We're in the middle of nowhere between the stars, but this place seems as rich as Earth. Though that can't be. Earth, Mars—I mean, Barsoom—they must be so much more than this. More than we could imagine..." Yet she was looking at him strangely.
"Earth? Barsoom? Oh, come on," she chided. "We have so much more than the fast worlds could ever have. Earth only has Barsoom and Jupiter and a couple of other planets and artif icial worlds. Venus, sure; Saturn. What's that? Four or five trading partners? And then, the next fast worlds are four light-years away, that's decades of travel time—a one-way trip for anybody living in real-time." She shook her head. "No, Toby, the fast worlds are sad places, hopelessly impoverished. How could they ever have this kind of diversity—The richness? The vibrancy?—and reach out and be able to actually touch it?"
"Heh." Toby was grinning again. Way to go, Peter. He noticed she was smiling, too. "You love playing tour guide, don't you?"
She shrugged. "We moved here when I was sixteen. I guess I've been exploring ever since. Every day when I step outside and look around I just... it's like I'm living in some kind of fairy tale. Even these words—'fairy tale'—the ancient idea of fairies—the language we're talking about them with... it's all so... amazing!"
He shook his head, puzzled. "Why?"
"Because it's ancient and ever-present at one and the same time. So amazingly, impossibly old, yet still here. Living in a lockstep is like hopping in a time machine and shooting back to the dawn of history while simultaneously being shot into the far future. It's that incredible age everything has here—it's all preserved, the world as it was thousands of years ago."
Thoughtful, he put on his wings and they looked for a convenient balcony to jump off of. Suddenly Toby stopped.
"What's Destrier?"
Kirstana stumbled. She looked closely at him. "You were in line to join the pilgrimage there. How can you not know?"
"I'm... not from around here either, remember?" He'd told her that his family was from one of the first lockstep colonies, a little comet-world isolated from most of three-sixty for the past forty years. It was obviously time to embellish the story a little. "You know I'm from a second-generation world. But my grandfather took us out of the lockstep a few cycles back and... well, time got away from us. It's been a couple of generations since any of us were here. And grandfather never wanted to talk about what he'd left. But he was, you know, one of the first generations in the lock-step. Which is where I get my accent."
"Destrier's the symbol of everything that's wrong with this place," she said darkly.
Toby was surprised. "But all this—" He tilted a wing at the wonders of the continent.
She shook her head. "—Could be so much more, if it weren't for Origin."
Origin. Another word nobody'd mentioned to him yet.
"Is that the symbol for Origin, then?" he said. He pointed at the thing that had prompted his question.
She looked, and scowled. "Oh. The shrines."
They'd mostly been invisible outside of augmented reality; from a distance this one looked like a simple niche in the wall that flanked the restaurant. Behind the wall, the outer skin of the city sphere curved down, very close here, forming a dark ceiling drawn with mazey rain patterns. Trees curled up to nearly touch the glassy surface. It was details like this that had been catching his attention since he'd arrived here, so he'd walked by little niches like this one many times without noticing them.
Up close he could see a human figure seated on what looked like a stone throne. A kind of sundial pattern formed the backdrop.
"Who's that?"
She reached out to touch the little throne with one finger. "The Emperor of Time." She gave an exasperated sigh. "He's been a major mythological figure for over ten thousand years, and you're saying he's new to you?"
He shrugged awkwardly.
"... Right. Well, he sits on a throne, see? He's been sitting on it since the beginning of time. And here's the thing: he's perfectly free to stand up and walk away, or run in circles or stand on his hands or whatever he wants to— free at any moment and every moment, and he has the power and everything. And every moment, every single moment since the beginning of time, he's freely chosen to stay right where he is."
Toby shook his head, puzzled. "Does he have a name?"
Now Kirstana laughed. "Of course! You know who he is. Everybody knows the Emperor of Hyperchaos—Emperor of Time, Lord of Origins, the One Who Waits.
"He's Toby McGonigal."
Somehow, hearing this just made Toby feel really, really tired. He waved a hand and said, "I should have guessed."
But then, as he turned away from the shrine, a new and deep unease filled him. There were the houses and spiraling stairs of the city—a place modeled on Peter's design. "Whose idea was that?" he muttered, perplexed. Then, to Kirstana, "Why're there shrines?"
She stared at him, wondering. "It's the lock-step's official religion. People join the lockstep because it's eternal; that's why my parents brought me here. 'Cause even in twenty, thirty thousand years, this place w
ill barely have changed at all. The Emperor remains unchanged, and we're supposed to model our lives on his."
"Lives?" He shook his head. "I thought Toby McGonigal was just lost in space."
Surprisingly, she looked uncomfortable. "That's not a very nice way to put it. He Waits. And the lockstep unfolds according to His grand design."
"His design?" Not Peter's? Toby walked back to the railing that overlooked the tiers of the city. The sun lamps were tuning toward evening. "And who..." he groped for the word. "Who enforces this grand design?"
She harumphed. He looked back; Kirstana stood with her arms crossed, hipshot. "Next you're going to tell me you've never heard of Evayne McGonigal."
Something inside Toby spasmed and he quickly looked away. "Sorry," he managed to say. "You've got an eleven thousand year advantage on me."
"No..." She leaned on the balcony next to him. "The advantage is yours. You'd be a celebrity on any non-lockstep world you cared to visit, you know. You're ancient, practically prehistoric. People would have, oh, so many questions for you!"
He was starting to realize what he was to her. "Like you have questions?"
"Well, yeah." She looked away shyly. "How often do you get a chance to meet somebody who remembers the beginning?"
"But I don't," he said hastily. "I'm third-generation."
"Meaning your family moved to the lockstep only centuries of real-time after it began?" She shook her head. "The blink of an eye, in historical terms. You're still from right back at the beginning."
"I guess."
She looked away at the city-scape, a troubled expression on her face.
"I'm tired. Let's head back." She nodded, and they dove into the sky again, retracing their path but this time up and up through dizzying layers of city black, rain-threaded glass.
They smiled, but barely spoke as they parted. Both were exhausted, but somehow despite the awful news about this strange religion and Evayne's part in it, Toby was content for now. He felt like he'd accomplished something today, though he'd found no work among the local bots. He'd learned important things, and found a friend. Also, he'd discovered a way in which his age could be important without all the politics and family complications that Corva and Jaysir attached to it.
Maybe he could hire himself out to explain the ancient world, say, local rich people's houses. The thought was startling: could there be a career in being old?
Toby was still musing over this idea as he wandered back to the bed-and-breakfast. He was so absorbed in his fantasy of getting paid to talk about the early days of Sedna, that he barely noticed as Orpheus suddenly bounded up. Only when a flood of icons popped up and he had to bat at them to dismiss them all, did he look up and see who was sitting on the step outside his lodgings.
"... haven't seen you in days!" Orpheus ran back to her, and she scratched his ears vigorously, making his head wobble. Orpheus stretched high and licked her forehead.
Toby just stood there, mind a blank, until Corva looked over Orpheus's head and said, "Hi, Toby. Fancy meeting you here."
Jaysir must have told her where he was. Well, it stood to reason: the maker had what he wanted now, why shouldn't he? "Uh, hi. You're, um, doing well? Getting work?"
Still scritching at Orpheus's ears, Corva tilted her head and peered at Toby. "I didn't come to this planet to work."
He'd just meant to be polite in asking that; now Toby was confused. "Oh," he said. "So then..."
"We came here because I needed your help," she continued, her face dead-pan and her voice neutral. "There's no point in me being here otherwise."
He crossed his arms. "I never promised to help you."
"Well." She looked away. "That's true." After a moment she set Orpheus aside and stood up. "I mean, all did was save your life. It's not like you owe me anything." This was the first time he'd seen her through his revamped glasses, but unlike nearly anybody else he might pass on the street—and unlike Kirstana—she was not festooned with virtual tags and flags, other than one green and gray symbol hovering near the hollow of her throat.
"Ammond and Persea also saved my life," he pointed out. "What do I owe them?" She sputtered, but before she could say anything he added, "You won't even tell me what you need me for. That's hardly gonna win me over."
"Ah. Well, I guess that's kind of..."
He just stared at her, and after a couple of "But you see"s and "You gotta understand"s, Corva finally found the right words: "I couldn't tell you in case you screwed us over by telling the police, or got caught. If they found out..." She looked genuinely distressed.
"So?" he said. "This is where we were going. I guess you can tell me now we're here, right?"
She glanced upward. "Wallop was our destination. But yeah, I'm sorry. Of course I wanted to tell you! It's just... it's not you I don't trust. It's everybody you might talk to."
He thought of Kirstana, and was suddenly uneasy. A glance around the street showed nobody lurking in any doorways—and after all, this was Peter's Utopia, a civilization modeled on Consensus. There were no hovering microbots spying and eavesdropping on every citizen. At least, he didn't think there were.
"Come inside," he said. "And this time, tell me the truth."
Chapter 10
As Jaysir had before her, Corva sat in his room's one armchair, and Toby perched on the bed. Orpheus looked from one human to the other, obviously torn; then he climbed into Corva's lap. She stroked his forehead and he began purring loudly.
"We came here to save my brother's life," said Corva.
The statement hung there; she didn't go on. Toby shook his head, and said, "What?"
"He's in quarantine," she said. "On board a passenger ship from Thisbe." She said that name as if she expected him to know what it meant. He could have done a search on it, but that would have taken his attention away from watching Corva, and the uncertainty and anger warring for dominance in her expression.
Toby took the bait. "Why do you need to save him?"
"Don't you know what quarantine means? Your brother has frozen him out of the lock-step!"
He jerked back at her sudden fury. "What do you mean, frozen out?" Even as he asked this, Toby had a flash of memory—of himself, standing on the outer hull of the tug and staring down at a black planet dotted with silent, frozen cities: unknowing that he'd arrived at a settled world, or because he'd awakened at the wrong time.
"All the three-sixty ports are closed to Halen's ship," she said. "They haven't got fuel to go home or to any other world, so they've been forced into hibernation until the ports open. And your brother's decreed that won't be for another six months."
Toby was shocked that Peter would do such a thing—but he was also puzzled. "That's... really bad. I guess. I don't know why... but if your brother's hibernating, all you have to do is wait. It'll take a while, yeah, but he's perfectly safe, right?"
She shook her head, and for the first time since he'd met her, he saw Corva near tears. "It's not just that. He came here to try to find me, and because of that, they've quarantined his ship for a year. And half that's done."
"Yeah, but—"
"But Thisbe! Thisbe's government wanted to trade with another lockstep. There's one on the planet that's even more successful locally than 360-to-1. It's called 240-to-1. The local council hacked the hibernation timing repeaters so we'd jubilee with them—wake on their turns as well as ours. We could trade with both that way! But your brother found out and he... punished Thisbe."
A sick feeling, almost of watching from somewhere else, had taken hold of Toby. "Punished... how?"
"All ships from Thisbe are quarantined until it's gone three of our years at a ratio of three-sixty to twelve!"
"Wait, what?" He had to sit back and think about that for a moment. "They've accelerated time on your world... by twelve times?"
She nodded rapidly. "All the McGonigal beds have shifted from wintering over for thirty years per turn, to two-and-a-half. For every month that passes for you and me, a fu
ll year passes back home. I came here to study for a year, before the quarantine. But it's been going for—" now her eyes scrunched up and she did begin to cry, "for eight months!"
Eight months had passed—for Corva. Eight years were already gone by for her friends and family on Thisbe.
Those pictures of Peter and Evayne came to Toby's mind—the ones that he couldn't look at, and there were all those books he'd been afraid to open that talked about all the things that they'd done and seen, without him, in the past forty years. He should have known all about this, but he'd been afraid to investigate.
Corva sat across from him, crying, and he couldn't speak. He couldn't think of a single way to make it better for her.
But there was still something puzzling about the situation. "Why didn't you go home when this first started? You were living out here, I get that, but why stay here?"
"... But that's the whole point, McGonigal!" She glared at him. "A lot of people from Thisbe travel, Hell, half our economy runs on remittances from foreign workers! Of course we all want to go home, but who'll take us there? Any ship that goes back to Thisbe will be stranded there for at least a year! Travel's dried up—I couldn't get back—so my brother boarded a ship that was going to try to sneak around the quarantine. They got caught." Her hand went up, fingers half-curling around her locket.
He was trying to picture the time in his mind. If you took a calendar, and pasted it into just one month of another calendar, you'd have a year inside a month. But what they'd done to Corva's brother was take the bigger calendar and drop it into just one month of an even larger one. "Your brother's gone from living a year for every month you live, to living a month for your next year... while everybody back home lives twelve years... it's crazy. But why? Why do this extra thing to the ship he's on?"
She flung up her hands in frustration. "Because they tried to get around the quarantine by pretending to be coming from another world. And apparently it isn't enough to have everybody back home aging like that, they had to make any ships that left not come back for the full twelve years! It's a blockade, is what it is."
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