Lady of Mazes

by Karl Schroeder

  Sophia Eckhardt appeared, seated on the air next to Qi-ingi. Livia could hear the continuation of the party behind her. "Alison, dear," she said, "I'm so sorry about the interruption earlier. Your song was lovely — you have a wonderful voice. Everybody's saying so."

  "Well, that's very nice — " she began. Sophia cut her off.

  "In particular, one of the most powerful and influential humans in the Archipelago said so." She smirked. "You had no idea I had guests like that at my little bash, did you?"

  "Well, no, we — "

  "Anyway, dear, you've received an invitation! Well, we both have. To sing for some special guests of Doran's on board his worldship. It'll be an important gig for me, but for you, I can hardly believe it! Not that I'm jealous, I'm proud of being the one to discover you. Will you do it?"

  "Um." She glanced at Aaron and Qiingi. Both were smiling at her; Aaron nodded. "What does it get us — me?"

  "Access to what they used to call 'the corridors of power.' Influence. Resource. Oh, and a certain amount of fame, I suppose."

  "All right," she said hesitantly. "Who — who's this Do-ran person, again?"

  "Oh, you saw him in the narrative. Doran Morss. He's the one who so rudely interrupted your little audition."

  13

  Clouds drifted away from the sun and shafts of white burst out to illuminate Doran Morss's private world.

  Having never been able to travel to Earth, for all his wealth, Morss had recreated part of it in his worldship: the exact topography and foliage of Scotland drifted by beneath Livia's window. Sophia still insisted on seeing it laid out flat within the consensus space of the Archipelago, like the original, but Doran Morss apparently preferred to see his lands through crippleview and so to be polite, Livia did, too. This view showed the lands to be rolled up into a tube that was capped on the ends to keep out the implacable vacuum of space. Huge diamond windows in the caps let in sunlight that reflected down from conical mirrors floating at the axis of the cylinder. The east and west shores of Doran's Scotland nearly met where the North Sea and Atlantic combined into a thick band of treacherous water on the far side of the world. He had so designed the place that it was full of cloud and mist most of the time; even without inscape's intervention, you could only tell you were in an artificial world on the sunniest days.

  High above the rugged landscape of Morss's Scotland swung a chandelier city in bolo configuration, its two tethered halves separated by kilometers of cable. At the bottom of one glittering tangle of buildings hung a vast domed ballroom, its walls patterned like lace in opaque white and transparent diamond. After performing her songs, Livia had drifted over to one of the transparent panels, seeking a vantage point from which to watch the proceedings.

  Doran Morss's party was both a surprise and a relief to Livia: it wasn't a swirl of half-real inscapes, like nearly every other event she'd seen so far in the Archipelago. Indeed, everything here was refreshingly solid, as were the people, who were all physically present. Sophia was deep in conversation with one of the visiting post-humans. She seemed uncomfortable around the rest of the guests. For the moment, all Livia wanted to do was stay out of the way, however much her Westerhaven training told her she should be shmoozing and picking up gossip.

  Almost all of the guests looked like human beings, with notable exceptions such as the nonsentient brody that squatted like a living tank near the drinks table. These weren't humans standing about with drinks in their hands, however. The ballroom was crowded with votes, and Livia was witnessing a meeting of the government in the Archipelago.

  Each vote was the embodiment of some value that had once had its own institutions, buildings, cadres, and followers. Some churches stood over there, chatting and munching canapes; here sporting fraternities and paramilitaries swapped anecdotes; and farther away, the arts were bickering. Apparently, while their personalities were the average of the values of millions of humans, these beings were required to conduct their business with one another on the humanly accessible levels of conversation, innuendo, back-room dealing, and treachery. It was part of something the locals called "open-source government"

  The votes didn't intimidate Livia; nonetheless, her performance had been difficult Not technically — she was in voice and well-rehearsed. No, it was a fight with Aaron and Qiingi this morning that had her distraught and distracted, fumbling through her song. Luckily no one had seemed to notice.

  "I know you're upset, but stay, please," Sophia had told her. "You can't help your friends until all of you calm down a bit" So Livia stood by the wall, arms crossed, waiting out the rest of the entertainments.

  Finally they were done, and Doran Morss stepped to a podium at one end of the dome. A cylindrical cloudscape wheeled behind him as he said, "Welcome to my humble abode," to general laughter. "You particular constituencies have been summoned here by the Government to discuss the Omega Point crisis. I hope that while you're here you'll see some of the sights in my little world and hopefully drop by to see me as well."

  The crowd made polite noises. Morss accepted them with a nod, then simply stood there and waited, his arms crossed. The crowd quieted. Morss stayed still, gazing out at them.

  What's he doing? Livia felt the tension in the room grow as the seconds stretched on, and Morss didn't move.

  "So it's come to this," he said at last. The words were spoken very quietly, but by now the ballroom was utterly silent All faces were turned toward Morss.

  "Not so long ago," he continued, "there could have been no Omega Point crisis. If a trans-humanist movement sprang up during the rule of the monoculture, it would have been quashed before it encompassed a hundred people. But of course, the monoculture ultimately failed, didn't it? And you were born in its place. Some of you are old enough to remember the first years of the Government" He nodded to the small crowd of churches. "You remember a time when you would have channeled the people's energies back into some more useful pursuit. Inscape would have changed their narratives' plotlines and led them back to sanity. But that didn't happen this time."

  "Hello again," said someone next to Livia. She turned to find the Government standing next to her. It wore its guise as a young woman, this time dressed as a waitress. "How are you?"

  "I'm fine," Livia said curtly.

  The Government was carrying a tray of canapes. "Then try the calamari," it said with a smile. "It's fine, too."

  "This worldship is on course to the Omega Point Coronal," continued Morss. "The cultists have expelled or killed the remaining human population and have barricaded themselves inside the coronal. We're supposed to be meeting to decide how to deal with their creation as a newborn post-human entity — you, as votes, me and other outsiders as representatives of anecliptic interest."

  He waved a hand negligently, half turning away. "Sure. Let's spend a few hours trying them for crimes against viability. Fat lot of good that'll do, now that they've killed everybody around them.

  "I'd much rather talk about when this is going to happen again!" he shouted. "And what are we going to do to prevent the next outbreak? Before you were born, the monoculture tried to stem the tide of post-human transformations — and failed. Are you here today to say that the Government has failed, too? Is that die real message we're going to send the human race?"

  "I was hoping he'd do this," whispered the Government. "Doran's a reliable ally."

  "Ally? You speak as though he's your equal. Isn't he just another citizen?"

  The Government shook her head. "He's an independent nation. As such, he is my equal."

  Livia nodded, not quite comprehending. "What does he have to do with the Omega Point thing?"

  Sophia had talked about the Omega Point crisis on the way here. To Livia, the thought of an entire coronal uploading their minds into a machine was outrageous. "Sophia thinks Omega Point are heroes," she added, nodding in the singer's direction. What had disturbed Livia most was Aaron's reaction. He also seemed excited at the prospect of people doing such a thing.
>
  "Doran has authority as a traditional human," said the Government. "Many people supported Omega Point, including many of the votes here. People see embodied humanity as a dead end, and post-humanism as the only way out from under the anecliptics. Doran's wrong about one thing, though; we're not here to debate the right or wrong of it The question is, is Omega Point's creation viable!"

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "Can it survive and find a place in the Archipelago?" said the Government. "That's all it means. It's the ultimate question for any entity — bacteria or god."

  "You're victims of your own success," Morss was saying. "Government happens so seamlessly now that most people have abandoned public life entirely. They're drowning in inscape — we see it every day. Every day there are more outbreaks of post-human expansionism from within our own ranks. As a human who is outside the jurisdiction of the Government — hence independent — I'm one of the few individual humans able to talk to you all on an equal footing. And I have a simple message, from humanity to you: forget about Omega Point. Don't shoot the messenger. Look to yourselves for the problem and the solution."

  "Now I didn't expect him to say that," mused the Government.

  The Government hurried off to speak to a knot of votes. As Morss wound up his speech the votes were arguing and chatting, like any conference or colloquium. Livia had intended to stay so that she could petition the votes for help; but right now she just wanted the day to be over.

  This morning's argument had begun almost as soon as Livia sat down. Qiingi had said, "Why are you not physically present, Aaron? These meetings are important."

  "Of course they are," Aaron had snapped back. "That's why I'm making the best of my resources. I've got sixteen animas out there right now, tracking down leads. But I don't see you copying yourself at all." He wasn't just present as an anima, Iivia saw; Aaron registered as a veritable tornado of information-density in her reticle. His view of the Archipelago was intense and multichanneled.

  "It is not our way to divide ourselves," Qiingi replied awkwardly. Aaron had laughed at him.

  "Whose way? Who is this 'we' you're talking about? Are you part of this expedition or not, Qiingi? Are you going to pull your weight?"

  Qiingi winced. "But this ... this is not my teotl — my technology — "

  "Maybe it wasn't when you were back on Teven, but it is now." Aaron appealed to Livia. 'Tell him, Liv. He's got to get with the way the world works here. Otherwise he'll just hold us back."

  "Get with the way the world works?" Livia stared at Aaron. "You mean abandon your own technological mix for somebody else's? Since when has anyone of Teven Coronal done that willingly?"

  "Oh, stop defending him, Liv."

  "I do know what you mean, Aaron — but please," she had said, "this isn't the time. Why don't you tell us if you've found out anything since yesterday?"

  "Me?" He glared at her. "What about you? What have you found since yesterday? Or have you spent yet another day doing nothing but chatting with your new friends?"

  Before she could respond he'd said, "I'll tell you what I found. Nothing. Nothing at all. A thousand adhocracies willing to build armies to help us — until they hear the words 'Fallow Lands.' And not a whisper anywhere of anything called 3340."

  Livia chewed a nail now, staring at the vast concentration of political power before her. She had to do something, so at last she sighed and walked through the mass of votes, wondering who best to talk to. She finally decided on one of the churches.

  "Excuse me, can I ask you something?"

  She approached the subject obliquely, using a cover story they'd agreed upon: that a group of people from Alison Haver's supposed homeworld of Ventus had vanished into the Fallow Lands. She needed to rescue them.

  As soon as she said this the vote held up a hand. "Your people are outside of our realm of influence. We're not an absolute power within the Archipelago, you know."

  "But the Government — "

  "Its job is to balance influence between individuals and groups; we weigh a single voice as equal to a million voices in our decision making. But that power counts for nothing in the Fallow Lands, or anywhere that the anecliptics control. It doesn't seem to count for much anywhere, lately, since people have largely stopped paying attention to us."

  "But how can that ber The church, which looked like a kindly old man, patted her arm sympathetically. "Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time, human beings were mere equals of all the other life forms on Earth; they fit into their niche in the ecology. Then they discovered machines, and began to think of themselves as separate from nature. They genetically engineered new sentient species, and AI came to pervade everything mechanical.

  "Now picture the result: a world where every species has become conscious and fully technological — and so have all their technological creations. The lamb wars against the lion, and their machines rebel against both. We've come full circle: humanity is again just one of many species competing in an ecology out of its control.

  "Today, you have the anecliptics on the one hand, and the realm of sentients and blind powers they cultivate on the other. You can picture the anecliptics as the solar system's equivalent of the carbon cycle — the bedrock of predictability that is necessary for an actual ecology to flourish. They mete out resources to all the viables in the solar system according to a rigorous plan. Without mis artificial nature, therc'd be a destructive collapse of the ecology."

  "But surely someone deals with them — someone has access to (he Fallow Lands — "

  The church shook its head. "The anecliptics maintain their power by remaining utterly aloof from all our power struggles. In practice that means they don't even talk to us votes, much less individuals like yourself. All they care about is the ecology they maintain."

  Livia crossed her arms. "I don't understand why you keep talking about ecologies. This is just politics."

  The vote sighed. "No, it's not. Humanity is just a species with a particular ecological niche, as it was a hundred thousand years ago. In the Archipelago of the anecliptics, real power is no longer possible — or meaningful — for individual human beings. Many of them blame us, although we're in the same position with respect to the armies. So people have starting finding creative ways to work around us, like the Good Book and its imitators. They think they're defying the anecliptics this way, but the armies don't care. As long as the ecology functions, they don't care what we do or how we do it."

  "So what you're really saying," said Livia, "is that you're unwilling or unable to defy the anecliptics. You'll never help us."

  The vote shook its head sadly. "I'm sorry. But no human power can help your friends."

  Feeling helpless and frustrated, Livia drifted through the crowd, ending up near another of the filigreed windows of the ballroom. For a while she stared out at the clouds. This was a beautiful place, but it wasn't home. She longed for the ancient trees and sweeping sails of Barrastea with an almost physical ache. The pain had been tolerable when she led her people out of Wester-haven, and even while sitting idle in the flying house it had not overwhelmed her. At least there had been a purpose to that waiting.

  But to never return to Teven; and if there were no leads to this 3340 in the Archipelago, to never learn what had befallen her friends and family, or why ... She turned and leaned on the transparent wall, staring down at the bleak moors below. She didn't weep. Tears wouldn't express what she felt.

  "Ms. Haver?"

  It took her a second to remember that this was the name she was going by here. Livia took a deep breath and turned.

  Doran Morss stood there, for the moment without hangers-on or votes near him. "Are you all right?" he asked. "Did you have friends or family at Atchity?" That was the coronal that Omega Point had ruined, she recalled.

  "No — no connection there. I'm fine. Just ... a little tired after my performance." She summoned a smile, wishing for an anima in its place. "But I'm afraid I missed the end of your spee
ch."

  "That's okay," he said, turning to scowl at the crowd. "They didn't buy it anyway."

  "What do you mean?"

  "They've decided to send a punitive expedition to wipe out Omega Point. They want me to go along."

  "Oh. What does that mean for you?"

  He raised an eyebrow. "You really don't know who I am, do you?"

  "I'm not from the Archipelago," she said, just in time to be overheard by a small group of votes who had wandered over.

  "How lucky for us!" one of them said. "Just when we were trying to locate a baseline to round out the expedition."

  "Not a chance," snarled Morss.

  "What?" said Livia.

  The vote cocked his head, amused at Morss's reaction. "Have you asked her? Or have you just been chatting her up?"

  "I came over to compliment you on your singing," said Morss, now looking a bit desperate.

  The vote bowed to Livia. "I hope you don't think me rude, dear, but have you taken the cliff test?"

  "The what?"

  "She's a performer and a guest," Morss snapped. "I don't think it's our place to press her into any kind of service."

  "It is when there doesn't seem to be a human other than yourself within twenty million kilometers who can pass the test," said the vote.

  "Of course there isn't," said Morss. "So why should you expect this one to — "

  "You said you're not from the Archipelago," the vote said to Livia. "Where are you from?"

  Wary, she said, "What is this cliff test? And why should I be afraid to take it?"

  "Oh, it's nothing to be afraid of," said the vote. "In fact, it'll only take a second. May I?"

  Morss stepped between the vote and Livia. "Now wait a minute — "

  Livia thought about their lack of progress on any front. A stray thought came to her: what would Lucius Xavier do in this situation? "Go ahead," Livia said past Morss's shoulder.

  "We're much obliged," said the vote. He waved his hand even as Morss said "No!"

  Livia stumbled. She looked around; somehow in the press of people she'd ended up with her back to the diamond-glass wall. She put out her hand to brace herself against the impenetrable substance —