Ventus

by Karl Schroeder

  I know Calandria May's resourcefulness well. I did not let myself become injured or sick through all of this. I coped. I was, of course, searching for a way to escape. Gradually, it dawned on me that there might not be one.

  Now you must understand the position in which I found myself. As a ship, I am sentient when I need to be sentient, and simply a physical body the rest of the time. I think as I need to think, and no more. Diadem is a complex place. I could not walk its halls without being alert. At the same time, I could not curl up and pretend to sleep, for the Winds would see through my deception if I slept more than a night. I could not pretend to die; they would try to recycle my remains. And I could not really die, for I had no assurance that my captain's insurance claim would proceed without my testimony.

  So I must walk, and think. I must ensure that I would not stop doing that, until I had found a way to escape. It was a simple matter to issue the commands to myself, but I did not realize what the result would be. Perhaps you guess.

  There came a day when I fell upon my knees and begged the Winds to kill me, and I would have revealed my true nature to do that had I not commanded myself not to and then removed my ability to rescind the command. I was alone, trapped here perhaps for eternity, with my own thoughts. How I wanted to stop thinking! But my emotions continued to evolve as well, and they commanded me to exist! persist! and to think.

  Oh, I inherited my emotions from Calandria May, and I understand now that each human has a ruling passion, one that serves as the fountainhead from which flow all semblances of happiness, sadness, anger and joy. I understand you better for this, Axel; oh, I thought about you for long hours and days, make no mistake. I wished that I had modelled myself after you, instead of her, for your fuel is a kind of rage driven by joy that finds no outlet. But hers—she is like a wave of sorrow, swelling slow and implacable across the earth she treads. She is nothing but sorrow, and that is what I inherited. So I walked, and I wept.

  I was so sunk in misery one day that that I walked into vacuum without realizing it. I suddenly realized I had not breathed in several minutes, and looked up to find myself in a giant cavern, looking at a distant cave mouth that let out out on the airless surface of Diadem. I had come through a cylinder airlock and the air had flown out without my knowing. Here I was, supposedly human, standing hipshot and indifferent in hard vacuum in a place whose temperature my feet told me must be a hundred degrees below zero.

  Oops, I mouthed, but it was too late—my cover was blown. The realization came as a flood of relief; I could never have deliberately revealed my identity to the Winds, but chance had done it for me. Maybe they would grant me the grace of a quick end now.

  But no, there were no sensors on the walls of this cave. There had been, but I could see where they had been ripped out. Near me, blocking my view of the larger area of the cavern, stood a giant oily-surfaced cube half the height of the cave mouth—fifty meters at least. I saw movement there: dozens of multi-limbed metallic forms crawled over its surface, teasing it apart. Pieces of it lay strewn across the cavern floor.

  Maybe I could run back to the airlock without being discovered—but I suppressed the thought. For at least this moment I was free of my own manufactured instinct for survival. I chose to revel in the freedom, and walked down the cave floor.

  As I approached the cube I recognized it: it was a fractal lab. ...I see by your blank expression that you don't know what that is. Quite simply, the cube was actually eight cubes stacked together, four and four. Each face of the larger cube exposed open sides of two of the cubes—like square-cut rooms without doors. The inside walls of these cubes were subdivided into four as well, with two diagonal faces open like smaller rooms. Inside these, subdivision again, and so on and on down the scale. The faces of the walls that were not open were festooned with instruments, arms, sensors, containment vessels—everything imaginable for investigation. These scaled down to, from macro-sized arms fifteen meters long down to microscopic tweezers. You can throw anything into a fractal lab and it will be devoured and all its secrets learned from top to bottom.

  Whatever purpose the swans had had for this lab, they had abandoned it. It was being cannibalized now for parts. Parts for what?

  I snuck by the working spiders and skirted the base of the lab to look out at the grey, undulating floor of the cavern. And there I saw myself.

  —It was uncanny. A shimmering silver bird crouched in the grey dust, not twenty meters away. It was a perfect replica of the starship Desert Voice. Beyond it I spotted another, and then a field of a dozen more. The nearest one was incomplete; spiders were busily building its left wing from salvaged lab parts.

  When the swans dismantled my starship form, they did not just discard it. They memorized its construction—digested it, in a sense. Now they were building an entire navy of replicas. With such a navy they could escape the vicinity of Ventus, where they are now trapped, and travel... anywhere. The Archipelago. Earth. Even leave the galaxy and take spores of themselves to distant provinces of the universe.

  When I realized what I was seeing fear struck me hard for the first time. Ventus has awoken from its inward-turned sleep. It is determined to clean the infection of foreign ships out of even the farthest reaches of its system—and then what? I didn't know. I don't know.

  Something knocked me down. Metal hands clawed at me, and I fended them off to find myself surrounded by spiders. I kicked to my feet and bounded over to the half-built replica.

  Our own technology is far beyond that of the Winds, so they had simply copied most of my body. That meant that when I mounted the neck of the giant bird and plunged my hand through its silver skin, I was in a sense reaching into my own body—my old body, reborn.

  The connection came as a savage blast of... pain, I suppose you would call it. I felt the nervous system of the replica, and could instantly feel the places where the Winds had grafted their own mechal minds into it. It felt botched, an abomination. More than that—the bird-form felt alien to me now. I had grown used to this four-limbed little body, maybe past the point of no return. Believe me, that realization was the greatest shock I have ever felt.

  In any case the silver body had lurched to life beneath me. I held on, as it flexed its wing and half-wing, poured energy into its flanks and took off. Behind me I saw others snapping to attention, heads up, weapons systems turning at me.

  I fled for the mouth of the cavern and they followed.

  You know the rest. We exchanged shots at the mouth of the cavern, and I brought the ceiling down on them. One fusion blast had punctured my torso, and I felt the energies there go awry as I rose in a spiral away from the cavern. I got no more than a kilometer or two into space before the silver body exploded beneath me and I rose on a wave of flame into the black sky.

  I altered my trajectory with the little energy I had left, trying to leave Diadem behind. Then I made myself sleep, for my mind was ringing with the shock of what I had just seen and done.

  When I awoke, I was here.

  So now I ask you, what will happen to me? I have fulfilled my purpose, but I can no longer cease to exist by myself. I have inherited Calandria May's sorrow, and am lost myself without the purpose I once had. I can never be a ship again. So please, I beg you, shut me down now.

  I never wanted to have a soul.

  35

  "Thalience rules the world, but thalience is mad."

  Jordan had told his tale, and his audience had listened attentively, all save the queen who seemed listless and distracted. Jordan knew Armiger, Megan and Galas well; he could read their expressions and body language, and knew their interests. He knew what they wanted to hear, and he had been rehearsing this tale for weeks, all save the climax which he had just learned himself. He shouldn't have been surprised that they would listen.

  Armiger's keen eyes bored into him, and about halfway through his recitation Jordan began to feel the familiar sensation of Vision come over him. He let it happen without interrupting his nar
rative, although what he saw astonished him.

  He saw a youth, sunburnt and dusty, gripping the hand of a slim frank-eyed young woman in the amber light of late afternoon that bathed the cave. He watched his own mouth move as he spoke, and saw his unfocused eyes—for the first time he saw himself as others saw him, and also as he was when in the grip of Vision. And the young man he saw bore no resemblance to the person he had thought he was.

  In his state of trance, Jordan's face became a calm mask. His eyes gazed ahead like a prophet's, open to hidden vistas. He was bigger than he'd thought; he supposed he'd been growing in the past few months, but hadn't paid attention. His hair had become a mane that swirled around his shoulders, and the beginnings of a beard speckled his chin. New angles made his cheekbones stand out. Half-starved, but lean and fit, he no longer resembled the youth whom Calandria May had kidnapped.

  With a start that put a noticeable pause into his storytelling, he had realized that he might go home now, and not even be recognized in Castor's villa.

  Deliberately, he pulled himself back from Vision, until he could see Armiger and the others as they sat in silence. They were all watching him save Megan, whose gaze lingered on the horses outside.

  "Thalience," murmured Armiger.

  "Do you know what that is, sir?" Jordan asked.

  Armiger laughed humourlessly. "Yes. It's just not what I expected. Not at all."

  "We must go," said Megan. "If we are to escape..."

  Galas knuckled at her eyes like a child. She ignored everyone else.

  "Sir," said Jordan. "The Winds are mad. They have to be cured. Or stopped. Can you do it?"

  Armiger crossed his arms. "Why should I?"

  Very slowly, Galas raised her head to stare at him.

  "I was sent here to conquer them," said Armiger. "And by doing so, to end the world. Do you want me to end the world?"

  Jordan was unimpressed. He knew Armiger's style; the man was stonewalling, as he often did when someone touched a nerve. "All I want is for the Winds to listen to us," he countered.

  "You think I can do that?"

  Jordan looked Armiger in the eye. "I ask you to try."

  The general held his gaze for a moment, then looked down. "You've been pursued by the Winds because of what I did to you," he said. "I apologize. And I'm flattered that you sought me out. But as long as you are with me, the Winds can find you—and me as well. Had you considered that in your grand scheme?"

  Jordan shrugged. "When I came to find you, it was to get you to remove the implants. With them gone, the Winds wouldn't seek me anymore, right?"

  "Is that what you want?" asked Armiger.

  Thinking about it, Jordan realized that it wasn't, not any more. He had gained far more than he had lost from his maddening and unpredictable ability to see through Armiger's eyes. Reluctantly, he shook his head.

  "Then you cannot travel with me, I'm afraid," said the general. "They will find us both that way."

  Jordan scowled. He hadn't planned on things working out this way. But now that he could converse with Mediation—had traveled the desal highways and commanded the mecha—to go back to what he had been would feel like having a limb amputated.

  "Mediation can hide us," he said. "Or at least protect us from Thalience."

  "You don't know that for sure," said Armiger. "If as you say, Mediation and Thalience are two factions in a civil war, then we are pawns in that war. Pawns can be traded or sacrificed."

  "Let's go," insisted Megan. She seemed reluctant to look at Jordan.

  "Yes." Armiger crossed his arms and frowned at Jordan. "If you found me once, you can find me again. I need to get well away from here—somewhere the Winds aren't looking. To do that, I'm afraid we have to leave you behind for a while. You seem to have eluded them in the past. If you can do it again, you can join us in a few days. Fair?"

  Jordan bowed. He didn't like it, but it was the sort of thing Armiger would command. And Jordan knew that there was no bending Armiger's will away from a plan.

  "First, though, you can give me the secret you found."

  Jordan looked up, surprised. "I told you all I know."

  "That's not what I mean." Armiger reached out.

  A tickle of shock ran up Jordan's spine as the general's fingers touched his face. Armiger turned Jordan's head from side to side, running his fingers along the angle of his jaw and into his hair.

  "Hold still."

  He felt a tingle spread from where Armiger touched him, and Tamsin gasped. Sparklight lit the ceiling of the cave. Jordan felt the world recede suddenly, as it had once when as a young boy he had fallen and cracked his elbow, and fainted from the pain. He heard voices, but they joined together in an amorphous roaring that seemed to come from inside his own skull. Then he felt himself shudder, and light and coherence came back.

  He lay in Tamsin's lap. She was spitting some very inventive curses at Armiger; Megan scowled, Galas looked interested. Armiger himself stood back, hands on his hips.

  "I have given myself a duplicate of your damaged implants," said the general as Jordan sat up. He felt no pain or disorientation. It was as if the incident of a few seconds ago had not even occurred. "If you truly have the power to command the Winds, Mason, now I have it too."

  With a gesture to the ladies, the general turned on his heel and left the cave. The two women rose to follow. Megan hesitated, then curtsied gravely. Galas paused at the doorway and looked back searchingly. Her eyes were still dazed, as they had been ever since the fight in the tower.

  She seemed to think she should say something, but in the end she shook her head in confusion and turned away.

  §

  Lavin walked. He had never felt so helpless. The doctor had ordered him to lie down, because his vertigo had returned with a vengeance. But though he had lost his lunch and felt he might never eat again, and though he often had to lean on the spear he carried when the world turned over, he couldn't stop moving. There was only one thought in his head: She has escaped.

  The troops thought he was inspecting camp. Lieutenants kept running up and asking for orders, their eyes tracking uneasily to the spires of flame that towered over the valley. He waved them aside irritably. He didn't care about the Winds. He didn't care that the summer palace had fallen due to their intervention. The queen's forces were rounded up now, and Lavin's own army seemed safe for the moment. He didn't hold any illusions, of course; both defenders and attackers were at the mercy of the Diadem swans; they were all prisoners.

  All that really mattered was that, when he awoke from the rockfall, Lavin had found, not the blade in his heart he would have expected after his treatment of Galas, but a lantern glowing by his head. The new dust from the rockfall was disturbed in only one direction; footsteps led out along the passage. She and General Armiger had left the palace.

  When he finally pulled himself out into the cave-like antechamber to the tunnels, Lavin had found only a pair of young camp followers huddling in the dusk light.

  "How long have you been here?" he asked.

  "An hour or so," said one, a sunburnt boy almost old enough to enlist.

  "Has anyone else come the way I did?"

  They shook their heads. Lavin cursed, staggered past them, and emerged into the evening air to behold the Diadem swans for the first time.

  The zenith was afire with aurora-light. Long thread-like lines descended from there, growing as they neared to become bright twisted cords of flame. The flames hovered just above the earth, and at that moment some were moving slowly through Lavin's camp. His army was scattered, men cowering in groups in hastily-dug foxholes or under overturned wagons. Many must have run into the desert, because there were surprisingly few around.

  There were no cheering defenders on the walls of the Summer Palace; the swans walked there too. As Lavin neared the camp he saw the terminus of those cords of fire more clearly: each cable of fire ended a meter or so above a human-shaped body of fire. These bodies walked like men, but their feet d
id not quite touch the ground. His skin crawled at the way they moved; they seemed like puppets, jerked to and fro by some unimaginable manipulator above the sky.

  The swans were not massacring the soldiers. In fact, they seemed to be ignoring them, as they searched for something.

  Well. He couldn't have his men dying of exposure in the desert if the swans posed no real threat. Where was Hesty during all this?

  The prerogative of leadership is to behave as though protected by invisible armor. Lavin made sure he was visible to a sizeable number of his men, and then walked right up to one of the swans.

  "Excuse me, lord." The thing turned its head in his direction, and he nearly turned and ran. It had no real features, just a sketch of flame shaped like a head. Lavin felt no heat, and though he held his breath expecting to be destroyed, it did nothing but wait.

  Careful to plant his trembling feet and forget that the world was spinning, he said, "I am the leader of this army of men. How have we offended you?"

  "One is here," said a deep and resonant voice. The voice seemed to emanate from the hazy tail of fire above the swan's head. "One we seek is here."

  "What is the name of the... person you seek?" Oh, let it not be Galas!

  "We do not know names," said the swan. "You are not it." It turned away.

  "Wait! May we help?"

  It paused. Lavin cleared his throat and went on. "I need to consolidate my men, for their own safety. To do that I have to be able to issue commands, and come and go as needed. Will you let me do that, if I agree to help you find the one you're after?"

  "Yes," said the swan.

  An hour later, Lavin had approached the gates of the palace, two swans walking at his side. He had commanded the gates to open, and the queen's men had meekly complied. The few hundred men Lavin been able to reassure so far had nervously marched into the keep. He kept expecting them to break and run; surely their ill-concealed panic must be apparent to the defenders behind their arrow-slits. They barely obeyed orders, and certainly didn't march in step. As the queen's men laid down their arms and surrendered, they gradually regained their confidence. Hesty appeared from somewhere, looking shamefaced. Lavin left him in charge, and walked out of the palace and into the night.