Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

by Karl Schroeder

  "What did I say?"

  "Nothing." She shrugged. "How was our take tonight?"

  "Respectable." He held a thick satchel. "Best get to the drop-off before someone tries to mug us for it."

  They shared a smile. There were few people alive who could best Antaea in a fair fight. The money wasn't the bait for their trap, anyway. She'd already laid that out.

  Now, as the purple light of Candesce's evening began to wash across the principality skies, she climbed into their twin-engined aircar and took the satchel from Richard's hand. Slipstream's former ambassador to Gehellen was proud to turn his wine-stain birthmark to the light these days; notoriety, he'd discovered, suited him as well as respectability once had. His knowledge of principality fashions and customs was invaluable to Antaea during this junket--as he'd known it would be.

  He settled into the cockpit. "Our hotel? Or a good restaurant. I know of one," he said.

  "I'm tired," she admitted. "Maybe the hotel tonight." He nodded and turned to his controls, and she reached out to shut the hatch.

  "Excuse me." A large figure blocked the outside light. "Are you Antaea Argyre?"

  Her hand shot to the little pistol at her belt. "Sorry, show's over," she said quickly as she hauled on the door handle.

  A large hand reached up and the door wouldn't move. Antaea pulled out the pistol and aimed it straight at the silhouetted man's chest, her own heart suddenly pounding. "Let go or I'll shoot!"

  "Shooting will be quite unnecessary," said another, familiar-sounding voice. A slim silhouette moved into the light, and Antaea's grip on the door eased. "Captain Sayrea Airsigh, of the Home Guard's Last Line," she said. "I believe we met four or five years ago, at the Gates of Virga? --At least, I gather I made an impression on you, since I hear you've been using my name as one of your aliases, lately."

  Damn Crase anyway. He'd obviously reported her presence in Sere. She smiled anyway. "Yes, Captain, it was quite a party, and I do remember you. It's good to see you."

  "And you," said Airsigh in a sincere tone.

  "Apart from catching up on old times, though, I've been instructed to invite you to a small meeting my people have organized. We'd like your opinion on something--or rather, someone."

  "Do I have your guarantee that I'll be let go again safely afterwards?"

  Airsigh took the question seriously. "You do."

  Antaea glanced at Richard, who shrugged. "What do you mean, you want my opinion on someone?"

  "The Last Line has a visitor--from outside."

  "Outside? You mean--"

  "The First Line have sent us an ambassador from beyond Virga, and we don't know what to make of him.

  "We'd like you to help us answer a question. Is he--"

  "--a monster?" Antaea nodded grimly. "Yes.

  "I can do that."

  13

  "KEEP UP" WAS all Venera Fanning said. So they tried.

  Five countries in five days: that had been Keir's first week with Venera. Her viciously thin yacht, the Judgment, would scream from destination to destination while Venera stood up from its hatch to hold out her hand to men on passing jet bikes, like a falconer waiting for her bird to alight on her wrist. What the passing hands exchanged with her was letters. Outbound, she sent announcements (or, perhaps, warnings) of her imminent arrival at this or that palace or pavilion; inbound, she received cautious, fawning, or stiffly cool acknowledgments.

  A very public campaign was under way by ambassadors and senior public officials of both Slipstream and Aerie; they, too, were fanning out across the world, visiting capitals and city-states everywhere from the principalities to Virga's cold outer reaches. They brought reminders of the two incursions into Virga that had occurred within the past several years, and proposed that all concerned heads of state send delegates to a grand colloquy, to be held in Aerie's new capital city, Aurora. The Virga Home Guard were invited as well--though whether the semimythical organization would show up was anybody's guess--to give an accounting of their own actions to the people of Virga.

  Venera's mission was not so public. Her extensive spy network had spent years researching vulnerabilities and finding the skeletons in everybody's closets. For those nations and cities which proved reluctant to attend the colloquy, she was acting as a discreet second strand of persuasion. It was a process that was fascinating to watch.

  As they approached the mauve or peach or lime-colored airs of the next nation on their itinerary, Venera would order one of her men out to hang gay banners off the more wicked-looking of the yacht's fins. Twirling Slipstream's colors, they glided into port like some fabulously long-lived firework. Then, the fast-and-furious game would begin.

  Keir usually watched that game from a distance.

  "What is she telling them?" Leal Maspeth hissed now; she was craning her neck to see the head table at tonight's banquet. The nation was Unduvine, the city Greydrop. More than that, Keir didn't know, except that they built their town wheels of iron and asteroidal stone, and that this great hall whose corner he and Leal sat in was ancient.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Venera Fanning had leaned forward, across the table, and was putting most of her weight on the dinner knife she'd plunged into the oak tabletop. The ambassadors, admirals, nobles, and members of parliament seated with her were to a man cringing back in their own chairs, for all the world as if Venera were radiating some force field.

  Suddenly Venera put her hand next to her temple and splayed open her fingers, said something short, and brayed with laughter. The entire table broke into howls of mirth and, as she sat down again, they leaned forward, even more relaxed than they'd been before her tirade.

  "I believe," Keir said somberly, "that Venera Fanning just told a joke."

  "Well, at least they're having a good time," muttered Leal. She and Keir had been introduced as minor members of Venera's ambassadorial staff, which meant they had to sit in waiting rooms, or stand in the hall, or, as now, eat at what Leal insisted on calling "the kid's table" far to one side of the real action.

  "I told you to bring your notebook," he said as he tucked into the dinner. "You could have been writing your book all this time."

  "They'd think I was spying," she countered; then she frowned at his plate. "And what exactly are you doing?"

  Keir looked down and realized he had, once again, dismembered and dissected his dinner in such a way as to lay out his main course's bone structure for examination. "Sorry," he said. "I've just never seen birds like these. I keep trying to figure out how they fly."

  "Birds don't fly," she said with an air of great patience. "Flying is something you do under gravity. Virgan birds swim. Like fish. Or people."

  "Ah. I suppose." He grinned at the little skeleton.

  Leal eyed him. "You're having the time of your life, aren't you?"

  He shrugged. "I really don't know, I haven't had a moment to think about it." It was true; he was starting to feel safe again here in Virga--if not feel at home--and Venera kept him too busy to brood about the past. "I just..." Now he did frown.

  "What?"

  "I hope I remember all of this later, that's all."

  "And why wouldn't you?"

  Because scry used to be my memory, and now it's gone. But he didn't say that, firstly because she wouldn't understand; and secondly because increasingly, he was realizing that he could remember things without using the neural implant system.

  This whole whirlwind diplomatic mission, for instance: it seemed every instant was indelibly printed in his mind. The curling mists that enwrapped the frozen city of Seasory were as vivid to him now as when they had arrived there. Mostly what he remembered about Seasory was Leal--Leal emerging from her cabin to breathe deep the brisk air of one of her own country's major trading partners; her craning her neck at the city's sights--its tenements made of ice that loomed over cleated iron streets, the men and women like feathered pillars in their coats, gliding to and fro in the mist. Throughout their visit she had seemed under some spell
caused by the permanent darkness and cold; once, Keir had seen her dance a few steps to an inaudible tune when she stood in shadow and thought no one could see her.

  He remembered the mechanical back-and-forth of Venera's hips as she stalked straight to the palace of Seasory's satrap to bow here, bow there, give gifts, kiss barons on the cheeks and baronesses on the hand, and then, swaying tick tick tick, leave just as quickly. "Next stop, Aeolia," was all she said as Keir and Leal (confusedly looking back at the bright palace where they'd only been for ten minutes) followed.

  And he remembered Aeolia. In Aeolia, the skies sang. Rather than single big town wheels, the Aeolians spun thousands of small ones, each boasting a dozen or so buildings. They begrudged their ancient genes that required they spend some time in gravity, so everything of value that they built soared in the weightless spaces between their wheels. Most important of all these creations were the symphonicads: gigantic assemblages that filtered wind through thousands of pipes and horns and across the strings of countless harps and dulcimers. The symphonicads sang, but it was no random clitter-clatter such as a wind chime might make. Their design was so cunning that they improvised melodies and harmonies of entrancing beauty and complexity. The Aeolians staged plays and built brilliantly lit tableaux around them. They hooped wires to catch water, touching a single drop of oil to the stretched surfaces, and built vast intricate cities of quivering rainbow transparency, disguising their town wheels behind bouquets of silvered color.

  They feted Venera on a single giant spinning hoop of golden silk. It undulated in the air, turning only as quickly as necessary to keep the tables and chairs in contact with its inner surface. Keir bounced, delighted on this pliant surface whose outer edges rippled in the wind; jugglers and tumblers rolled onto and off the ribbon, the symphonicads chorused like angels, and Venera earnestly declared Slipstream's eternal pledge to defend Aeolia.

  The Aeolians laughed. No one attacked them. They were too beautiful.

  "No one has ever yet attacked you," replied Venera. "But they will. And soon."

  The Aeolians laughed again, but, when they left the next morning, Venera carried with her a sheaf of gilded documents bearing the Aeolian seal. Keir hadn't seen who had given them to her--but then, he'd not had the stamina to stay up half the night talking and drinking as she had.

  "Next stop, Emperaza," Venera had said. And in the Judgment's lounge, she added a green dot to the giant chart that half-filled one wall.

  "Memory..." Keir said now. Leal raised an eyebrow expectantly. "Where I come from, all our experiences are recorded by devices like my dragonflies. Stored in perfect faithful detail. We only use our biological memories to find those records and then we replay them, instead of remembering in full the natural way."

  Leal thought about that. "I don't get it," she said after a minute. "How would you remember this dinner, then? Wouldn't you have to sit through the whole damn interminable hours-long grind of it again? Wouldn't it take longer to remember things that way?"

  "Oh! No, you see, scry builds emblems for us." She looked puzzled. "An emblem is a collection of perceptual moments that registered as important to us at the time," he said. "Scry builds a little tableau or mini-scene, usually just a second or two long, out of those elements. But you can focus on any one of them and spin it out into as much detail as you want, right up to slowing down or stopping time so you can thoroughly explore any given second."

  Leal leaned across the table and pushed at his forearm. "And you said you were human."

  "I'm serious! I had that, and I've lost it."

  Instead of concern, he saw a mischievous look bloom across her face. "You know, we have something like that, too--and so do you. It's called imagination.

  "--Oh, wait," she said suddenly. "Someone's coming."

  A diminutive page appeared at the tableside. He was not more than ten years old but crammed into a starched black uniform. "Lady requests your presence," he said solemnly to Keir.

  "Mine? Oh." He glanced at Leal, who shrugged; so he wiped his lips on the napkin and followed the boy back to the head table.

  "See?" said Venera, putting out her arms in a span to show Keir off to the others at the table. "This is one of them."

  An elderly woman in fine silks frowned skeptically at Keir. "The boy is from Artificial Nature?"

  Keir bowed, as Venera had coached him.

  "Come on, then," prompted the man next to the frowning woman. "Prove it."

  Keir looked at Venera.

  "He's not a dancing raven," she snapped. "He doesn't do tricks."

  "Well, then..."

  "Excuse me," interrupted Keir. "Perhaps if I knew what it was you had been debating?"

  "No, that's--" Venera began, but the frowning woman said, "What is Artificial Nature?"

  "Ah." Venera glowered, and he imagined she had just spent a few minutes trying to explain that on her own. "Artificial Nature is technology that is employed by and for nonhuman ends, including the ends of plants, animals, and even other technologies."

  "But why is it called Artificial Nature?" the lady pressed.

  Keir eyed Venera, who nodded almost imperceptibly. "Well," he said, "what is technology?"

  The lady looked confused. "Why, it's..." She frowned.

  "This fork," said her companion.

  "Suns," said someone else.

  "Guns."

  "Clocks."

  Keir made sure to bow again, and Venera began to relax. "Those are all individual cases," he admitted. "But what is technology as such?"

  There was silence. Keir nodded. "It is not so obvious. Technology is any natural phenomenon harnessed for human use. --Clothing, for instance, harnesses the phenomenon of insulating air layers to keep us warm; our suns harness the phenomenon of nuclear fusion to light our skies."

  They all went ahh and smirked at one another as if it had been obvious all along.

  "Outside of Virga," Keir continued, "we have a situation where natural phenomena are harnessed for nonhuman use. In fact, harnessed for nonliving, nonsentient uses ... Is such a thing still a technology?"

  Venera was smiling at him now; encouraged, he said, "Out there is a world of natural phenomena employed by other natural phenomena. Some are employed for a purpose; others are controlled by systems that have no purpose--that are just technologies run amok. It's a wilderness. Chaos. A state of nature, built with and by and for what we would call technologies. Out there..." He suppressed a shudder at a flash of memory he'd not known he had. "Things look like they are designed, look like they have a function, look like they're being used by someone for some purpose ... when they're not. They appear to be technologies, but they are in fact just natural phenomena, distilled to their essences, and running wild."

  Something in his tone had silenced the entire table. Their general expression was one of alarm--all save Venera, who appeared quite satisfied. "Thank you," she said, waving a hand brusquely. Keir bowed, and backed away as she'd taught him.

  He was trying to catch that elusive memory as he sat down across from Leal. Something about a garden, and a house--and a woman who didn't remember Keir's name.

  "--went all right?" Leal was asking. Keir shook his head.

  "Yes, I think I gave them exactly the answer Venera was asking for."

  "About what?"

  He told her, and they talked on; but for the rest of the evening, Keir felt as though his mind were somehow divided in two. Part of him was at the table, basking in golden gaslight in the exotic palace of a Virgan kingdom. The other part was casting here and there, overturning the furniture of disused, natural memories in search of something elusive that suddenly seemed hugely important.

  * * *

  EVERY TEN SECONDS, the room flipped over. Antaea ignored the stomach-flipping effects of artificial gravity in such a small wheel as Airsigh indicated she should sit down opposite her. Along with them, the long and slightly curved conference table accommodated some other Last Line officers--but none of especially high
rank. This, Antaea found especially interesting.

  She looked from Airsigh to the other faces. "All right," she said, "what the hell is going on?"

  They exchanged a few glances. "We're not sure ourselves," said a gray-haired captain. "We're told there's some new accommodation with the outsiders. A new alliance. But it's the First Line who're telling us this, dictating to us like we have no say in the matter. It's..."

  "Disturbing," said Airsigh. "Look, Argyre, I'll be blunt. Our senior officers don't seem concerned, but those of us on the lines, we're hearing conflicting stories, and we want to know..."

  "Who's right and who's lying?" She twined her fingers together on the tabletop. "I'm afraid I can't help you with that."

  The older man shook his head impatiently. "Your friends in Slipstream think there's a threat to Virga."

  Airsigh nodded. "And the First Line followed what it thought was that threat into Aethyr, where it crashed some of their ships. At least, that's the official story. But we know there's another side to it--this claim that somebody out there was trying to make contact with us and it all went wrong."

  Antaea blinked in surprise. "You heard that?"

  Airsigh tapped a sheaf of papers Antaea hadn't noticed before. "Something out there has continued to try to make contact. It calls itself a 'morphont' and claims that some history dean, Leal Hieronyma Maspeth, was its intermediary." She shot Antaea an intent look. "Do you know anything about these morphonts?"

  "I know they're not sapient like we are," Antaea said. She'd made the same objection when Leal had told her about the emissary. "They wear consciousness like clothing--they don it and shed it as needed. How can the interests of creatures like that possibly align with ours?"

  Airsigh gave that question some consideration. "They might if we faced another, bigger threat," she said finally. "'The enemy of my enemy' and all that. Maybe they don't think the way we do, but they can calculate odds just as well as us. Anyway, we don't know, and this is why we're trying to investigate further."

  Antaea frowned at this unsatisfying answer.