Lady of Mazes

by Karl Schroeder

  Livia half carried Aaron along the corridor. He was cursing; behind them the stone itself was groaning from the tons of shattered ice that were settling over the entrance. "Ha!" Aaron slurred. "That'll keep 'em." livia looked around quickly. Her party was all accounted for: finally, at least for a while, they were among friends.

  An angel flickered into being next to Aaron. "Is he all right?" she asked frantically. To have come so far, only to lose him now —

  "He'll be fine. He might have a slight concussion."

  "Knew you'd make it through," mumbled Aaron.

  "I didn't," she said shakily. "I didn't know I could do it without you beside me."

  A flight of emotions crossed Aaron's face: embarrassment, perhaps? — sadness, certainly. "No, not me; it was all you," he murmured, looking away.

  Gentle hands unwove Livia's arms from Aaron, but she had to watch while he was carried up a long flight of stone steps and laid out on a pallet. Then, with nothing more to do, she collapsed on the uneven floor.

  After a while the haze of exhaustion and shock began to wear off. Livia raised her head as someone handed her a bowl of hot soup, and she even summoned up a smile. While she was eating Qiingi came to sit next to her.

  "So this is the aerie of which you spoke," he said. "I was expecting a camp, or buildings. But we're underground."

  She nodded. The aerie was a series of rooms and passages carved out of stone. The mountains had been built out of asteroidal stone, uneven in density and veined in silvery nickel-iron. They sat now in one of its main halls, a lofting space like a long slot cut in the rock. Crude halogen lamps lit the spaces, and the air was cold. Water dripped from the ceiling in places. "We discovered this place a couple of generations ago. We don't know who originally built it, but we use it as a storage depot for trading with Cirrus," she said.

  In the cleared center of this hall were various towering devices of wood and brass. Most of Aaron's friends were here, standing or sitting in a semicircle. Several of them stood in the middle, debating. She watched them dumbly for a while, until she realized she didn't recognize the oldest debater. "Who's that?" she asked.

  Qiingi let out a deep sigh. He looked stricken, in a way he had not during all their adventures on the way to this place. "Qiingi, what is it?"

  "I approached him," he said. "I wasn't sure, because his appearance was very different when he was with us." He met her eyes sadly. "That, Livia Kodaly, is my founder. Raven."

  "There's nowhere to go," the old man was saying. "These invaders are spreading everywhere. They're close to shutting down the tech locks. Then they won't need to skulk around anymore." He didn't talk like Qiingi, Livia realized; this Raven sounded more Westethaven than anything. But she didn't comment on that to Qiingi.

  "Somewhere, someone must have a manifold that can resist this '3340,'" said another of the debaters. This was Francis Munari, the best military thinker among the peers; he had apparently arrived here with the remains of the Barrastea rearguard several days before.

  Several others took up the thread of his argument. Raven kept shaking his head, but he was drowned out for the moment. With a groan, Livia levered herself to her feet and walked over to the circle.

  "It's not a technical problem," she said, projecting her authority as best she could. Heads turned.

  "That's why nobody's able to resist them," she continued. "What nobody seems to get is that the manifolds use inscape and the locks, but they're not created by them. They're created by ideals."

  "Make sense, Livia!" snapped Francis. "While you talk, they're digging through the ice to get us. Make sense or give the floor to somebody else."

  Raven bowed to her. He had a charming face, a bit satyrlike with a fringe of white hair around his bald scalp. "Livia Kodaly, it's an honor. You've seen what I've seen, haven't you? That the ancestors aren't attacking us through our technology?"

  "Yes. That's the problem." Reluctantly, she walked into the circle. "The tech locks seem untouched; if they weren't this form of attack wouldn't be necessary. The invaders have a little control over inscape, just enough to be able to distort messages and meanings. But they can't seem to attack the locks directly. They're probing each manifold to find out what its highest ideal is, then they come and promise a new way to get to that ideal. It's different for each manifold, but the end result is that people hand control over to them."

  Francis crossed his arms. "How do you know this?"

  "When we set out to find this place, there were sixteen of us," she said. "We ran from manifold to manifold — each time thinking we'd shaken our pursuers. And each and every time, we found they'd gotten there before us. As if they had always been mere, hiding in the cracks of the world." Trying to escape pursuit, Livia had led her people through the warrens of a vast, baroque stone city that clung nice lichen to the ascending cable, isolate and paranoid. From there they had slipped past cloud cities and arbors that hung in the sky like a dream of angels, and past hardscrabble farms perched on sagging square-kilometer nets of sailcloth that hung in the permanent mist When they ran out of sky, they walked a length of frayed cable down to the mountaintops and hid in the mazes of a forest-dwelling people who seemed more owl than human. In every place she met some manifestation of 3340; and in each one she lost one or two people.

  "I know it was 3340, once or twice," she said. "Catching the stragglers as they tried to open their hearts to a new destination. But more often, it was just too hard for our people to go on. To reject the values of the place where we were resting for a day or two — to embrace new values in order to see a different world." Each new place was a revelation of sorts: an example of a new way to live. A couple of the refugees had found paradise during that long climb, and simply refused to leave it A couple had found hell.

  "Everywhere we went, we tried to warn the people," she continued. "No one believed us. In many places, we couldn't even find the words to explain what's happening — if you tried you would start to fade." She shook her head sadly. "I never knew how many manifolds had turned in on themselves. Even though we all went through the freeing of inscape that happens at puberty, most people no longer seem to believe in any reality beyond theirs."

  She ran out of steam. For a while there was silence. Then Raven cleared his throat.

  "Some of you are wondering how I came to be here with you." He glanced significantly at Qiingi. "I did not betray my people. But the animals — my spirits — they deceived me. I didn't know about the presence of the ancestors until it was too late. Then for a while I lived as a 'guest' of these invaders."

  He looked down at the stone floor. "I only escaped after the Oceanus incident."

  "How is it you escaped?" someone asked suspiciously. "It seems a bit convenient. How do we know you're not working with them?"

  Raven looked back at the man blandly. "You don't. I escaped because I had help from one of your founders — Maren Ellis. She trusted me, and some of you here trusted me enough to take me in. For that I'm grateful." He raised his voice. "I've seen what these ancestors are doing to our people. They're trying to shut down the tech locks. Men and women of Raven who spent their whole lives learning to work leather, or carve wood, now can get clothing or shelter with a simple gesture. Their life's work is rendered meaningless. And your diplomats and seekers of knowledge have nowhere to go now; all inscape's differences are being annihilated by the conquerors."

  "But why?" asked Francis. "If we're going to fight them, we need to know why they're doing this."

  Raven hesitated. "I don't know," he said at last. "They don't need human labor. They grow machines for that. They aren't plundering our treasures — they ignore them. And they're not telling us what to do, they don't seem to need that kind of power over people. But they're changing us. Changing the people themselves."

  "What do you mean?" asked Francis. A hush had fallen over the crowd.

  "We lived in a world that accommodated the human need for meaning," said Raven. "It let us know that our beliefs we
re valuable in and of themselves. The invaders reject that; they say that our beliefs are only valuable insofar as they serve something else. Something they call 3340 and will not define any more clearly.

  "But they are clear about one thing. Those who follow 3340 will gain the power of gods. All we have to do to achieve this power is abandon the realities we've been building all our lives."

  9

  The stone floor shook under Livia. "They're into the corridors!" someone shouted. With that signal, the crowd melted away as humans, angels, and agents all raced to their posts. Qiingi was offered a weapon and accepted it gratefully. Francis shouted orders; massive engines stood up on their hydraulic legs and began stalking after him toward the stairs. In seconds Livia found herself standing with Raven and a few of the refugees. Aaron was awake, and now stood unsteadily, holding his head.

  Livia watched the action with a resigned sense of detachment. "Such a lot of effort," she heard herself saying, "for a day or two's reprieve."

  Aaron scowled at her. "What else are we supposed to do? If you're right, there's nowhere to run to."

  She shook her head. "I never said that" She turned to Raven. "There is an alternative, isn't there? You knew this attack was coming."

  Raven shrugged. "We didn't know. We ... saw some signs. We were worried that we'd gone too far in our isolationism. So we decided to take steps."

  "In secret?"

  "The other founders would never have agreed to it."

  Aaron looked from Livia to Raven. All three of them turned to look past the chaos of running people, to where Aaron's experimental barrels sat in a far corner.

  Livia walked over to one of the barrels. When she tapped it, it sounded hollow. "So you and Maren Ellis inspired Aaron here to experiment with space travel," she said to Raven. "Aaron, last time I talked to you it sounded like you'd succeeded." She looked up, expecting to see the light of understanding in his eyes. Instead she saw disappointment.

  "Theoretically, yes," he said, shaking his head. "Sure, we've sent cargoes ... even round-tripped them, but — "

  "Round-tripped? What do you mean?"

  He gazed at her evenly. "It doesn't matter. You know the difference between running away here, within Teven Coronal, and running away out there? If we run here, we can always change our minds. Always come back. But nobody ever responded to the messages we put in the barrels. We don't even know what's out there." He waved at the glass-walled end of the workshop, where the stars slowly wheeled past

  "Raven knows," she said. "Don't you?"

  To her surprise, the old man shook his head. "I know what was out there two hundred years ago. I've tried to contact my mother, but only get her anima. And it claims to know no more than we do. We can't help you much, I'm afraid."

  "But you know what caused the accident that stranded Aaron and me outside of inscape," she accused. "You all knew, but you never told us. There was a name for the thing that caused the accident, Aaron."

  His eyes widened. "Livia, I don't want to — "

  "The anecliptics, Aaron. You know that word, don't you?" she said to Raven.

  The old man shrugged. "I know we bought this world from them. They were our friends. But my mother never told me more than that."

  "Your mother?'

  "Maren Ellis." Seeing their astonished expressions, Raven laughed. "Yes, my mother. We've had our differences over the years ... I guess you could say Raven's people is one of them. But she's one of the originals, and I'm not. And the originals don't talk about the time before the manifolds. I don't know any more about what's out mere than you do."

  Livia glared at the barrels. "You'd think she would have told you. Or told somebody what she knew. She knows more about what's happening than she's told any of us.

  The one thing we know, though, is that Ellis and the other founders came from there." Livia nodded at the stars visible past the diamond-glass far wall of the workshop. "They built this world with the help of the anecliptics. Another thing I know is that this 3340 who is attacking us is not one of the anecliptics. It's an interloper, a trespasser, where our real ancestors were invited in."

  Raven nodded. "Mother told me that the anecliptics agreed to shelter us from outside influences. I do agree mat if these so-called ancestors are invaders on our territory that they're also invading the territory of the anecliptics ... but ... "

  Shouts from below, then tense silence. Then — the deep crump of a distant explosion. As dust filtered down from above, bom of them turned to watch the stairwells that led to the outer doors.

  "What are you suggesting?" asked Aaron after silence returned.

  For a moment she was afraid to say it But they were just standing there; nobody had a plan beyond simple survival. What was needed right now was a countermove whose audacity matched that of the attack against Teven. None of the peers seemed ready to think on that scale, and Livia didn't feel worthy of doing it either. But she had a reputation for heroism — even if she didn't remember being that hero. For her, audacity was permitted.

  Her eyes on Raven, Livia said, "We have to leave the coronal. Find these anecliptics. Tell them about 3340. Maybe they'll evict everybody; maybe they'll kill us all, I don't know. But Aaron, I'm betting they won't be indifferent."

  They stared at her in shock for a moment. Then Raven shook his head. "Well, Maren and I talked about this kind of travel ... We commissioned the space-travel research project. But, Livia, leaving Teven is a worse suicide than what we face here. We isolated ourselves in this place for a reason: because the outside world is full of enemies."

  It was the old ostrich-head-in-the-sand argument that Esther and the peers had always used on her. It infuriated Livia.

  Aaron shook his head. "It won't work anyway."

  Gunfire and shouts echoed up from below. Livia grabbed Raven by the shoulders. "Listen! We're out of other options. Anything else we do, 3340 wins. Are you already resigned to that?"

  People were boiling up out of the stairwell now. Qiingi came loping over. "Up, up!" he shouted. "They've taken the foyer. Eagles and thunderbirds!"

  Aaron looked around at his scattered experiments. "Livia, there's no way to do it None of the test barrels is big enough to hold a person, much less the supplies and oxygen they'd need. And with no heat source ... it's sure death, Liv."

  But Raven was looking away, his expression troubled. "There might be a way. If we go up," he said to Aaron. "All the way up."

  Aaron frowned in sudden understanding. "How do you know about that?"

  "You forget, I grew up in Westerhaven — before this manifold had that name. I know this place, and its secrets."

  At that moment Francis ran over. "What are you doing standing around?" he shouted. "Grab a weapon and get down there!"

  "Let me handle this," Raven said to Livia and Aaron. "You gather the supplies you'll need."

  "Then you agree?" She ignored Francis.

  Raven sighed. "No. But it's a thing to try."

  "What's going on here?" demanded Francis. Livia didn't stick around to listen to his confrontation with Raven. She followed Aaron's lead as he grabbed a box and began throwing food and other gear into it.

  The battle was reaching a peak. The equipment he'd been using for cover had crumbled under an onslaught of laser fire and Qiingi was looking for a better vantage point when he felt a hand descend on his shoulder. Startled, he looked up. Raven stood over him. The old man didn't say a word, but simply pointed — away from the battle.

  Qiingi turned and immediately spotted Livia Kodaly dragging boxes onto an open-sided freight elevator stuffed with crates and pieces of metal equipment. He nodded to Raven and followed the founder over to help with the loading.

  Half of the equipment appeared Modern, or even older. The rest was totally new, composed of quantum dots and ganged mesobots. Some of it exhibited the pseudo-life of post-scientific technology; it was all equally repellant to Qiingi.

  Qiingi helped Aaron dump several last boxes into the elevator. "Whe
re are you going?" he asked. Livia's friend eyed him suspiciously but said nothing.

  Livia looked up from where she was lashing some metal tubes together. "Away from Teven. We're going to try to find help."

  Away from Teven. The thought was astonishing, dizzying even. Qiingi didn't hesitate. "I will go with you." Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Raven nod.

  "No," snapped Aaron Varese.

  "This is my world, too," said Qiingi. "Or is it only Westerhaven mat you intend to save?"

  "But you don't have the skills — "

  "What skills, exactly, do you think we shall require?"

  Aaron glared at him. Livia watched them both. Then Aaron simply said, "Up!" The huge metal square began grinding its way toward an empty black shaft in the ceiling; icy air swept down from there. Below them the workshop spread out like a game board. On it Westerhaven was playing a losing match.

  It was shaming to watch Raven's thunderbirds clawing their way up the stairs through the withering fire. Once Qiingi would have trusted his life to the beasts. Now they were almost upon him. "We're rising too slowly," he said, as calmly as he could. Nobody answered. At any second the invaders would be up the stairs, and then this platform would be the most prominent target in the room.

  Aaron was explaining something to Raven, who listened intently. "The first barrels just disappeared," he said. "It took a while before we figured out that the coronals expect to find destination and routing labels on incoming and outgoing packages. Then, two months ago we labeled a barrel and dropped it, and forty days later, it came back! Round-tripped! The coronals, they rotate, and the ones in this part of space are lined up, so if you drop something off one at just the right moment, it heads straight for the next one in line, on a tangent to its rim. And the coronals know this ... they're watching for incoming cargos all the time. They'll pick it up ... "

  One of the stairwells exploded upward. A bellowing monstrosity stood up into smoke and flame and chunks of rock and metal flew everywhere. The concussion knocked Qiingi off his feet. But they were only two meters below the ceiling now ... one meter, and the workshop was opaqued with smoke. Qiingi let go a long-held breath as the line of light and smoke narrowed and vanished, leaving them alone in a black shaft of rock.