Lady of Mazes

by Karl Schroeder

  "Is this what the peers have become?" she said coldly. "Bisson, I've come to help you."

  He blinked. "How do you know my name?"

  "Take me to Maren."

  A long silence ensued. The others were watching Bisson. Finally he nodded curtly. "Bring her."

  They filed out of the library through a gap in the outer wall. Nobody was watching, yet Bisson took them by bidden ways through the city. Much of the journey was underground, through echoing caveways that had once been broad brightly-lit avenues underneath the streets. Above ground, they hugged the sides of buildings or walked beneath lattice-growths of bush and tree.

  While they walked she repeated her questions about what had happened. Bisson threatened her halfheartedly the first few tunes. Finally he started answering, apparently just to shut her up.

  Just why he and these others were hiding out here he wouldn't say. Nor would he explain the scar behind bis ear. But the recent history of Teven was an open subject, and he talked about it eagerly. So eagerly that Livia realized he must truly want to believe that she was who she said she was.

  Thirty-three forty's attack on the manifolds had accelerated after the fall of Westerhaven. It seemed as if a chain reaction set hi, or perhaps that the tech locks shut down as the carefully crafted interfaces between realities disappeared. Bisson did not describe it that way, of course; for him and for most people in Teven, it was not that the manifolds had disappeared: it was that one manifold that allowed all technologies to coexist had absorbed all the others.

  Some people could live in this manifold; certainly it was compatible enough with the values of Westerhaven, Cirrus, and a few other civilizations. But for the majority of citizens of Teven, this new reality was chaos.

  Into this chaos had come the Good Book. Kale's forces ruthlessly stamped out any other organizational system, and they soon enlisted passionate new converts from the population to help them. Those people who could adopt the roles of the Book flourished; but whole microciviliza-tions remained shell-shocked, their citizens reduced to ghosts wandering the streets of the larger cities. The users of the Book tried to help them. Although Bisson did not say so, Livia knew that many more must be engaged in trying to rally them to fight back. She had no doubt that it was such a group she had stumbled upon in the library.

  Where one of the great towers of Barrastea had fallen, hundreds of meters of white sail material lay draped over the lower buildings. Bisson brought them underneath a tall fold of the stiff material. Livia heard voices up ahead; then they emerged into a campsite built under the pale tenting. There were about twenty people here, all as ragged as Bisson and his companions.

  Livia saw her immediately. Maren Ellis's face stood out from those around the fire — a serene blossom amongst the sunburnt, thin visages of the others. Just now she was surveying the others as they talked, her eyes guttering.

  Bisson went over to her and bent to whisper something. Even as he did, she looked up and her eyes met Livia's.

  Livia glanced around the camp, looking for a familiar face — and immediately saw one. Rene Caiser was standing up, brushing his hair back nervously. When he saw that she'd spotted him he grinned shyly. Livia laughed and shouted, "Rene!"

  Ignoring the suspicious stares of many of the others, he ran around the fire and embraced her, lifting her off the ground in his enthusiasm. "You're back!"

  "We don't know it's her," muttered Ross sulkily.

  Bisson was arguing with Maren. She stood up, brushing him aside, and walked over to Livia and Rene. Circling Livia she looked her up and down. " ... Or a very good likeness," she said to Bisson.

  Livia was tired of all this suspicion. There was one simple way to end it, and she took it: looking Maren Ellis in the eye, she said, "Choronzon is coming. He's going to destroy the tech locks once and for all."

  22

  "What did you say to her?" Rene and Livia watched Maren pacing back and forth in front of the fire. She looked like a caged tiger; watching her move, Livia wondered how she had ever thought Maren Ellis was an ordinary human being.

  "Livia ... " She looked over. Bisson had an abject expression on his face. "I'm sorry I was rough on you. But since the horizons fell ... it's hard to know what's real."

  "Real ... " She half smiled, remembering how that word had once held meaning for her. "I don't blame you." Then she remembered the scar over his ear. She reached out to Rene's own hairline. "Your implants ... "

  "Inscape's dangerous," he said with a grimace. 'Thirty-three forty uses it to build these huge temporary scenarios — as if the whole coronal were suddenly put into games mode. Geography, time, people — it all gets mixed up, and then everyone has to use that damned Book to sort it all out again."

  "Really? How often does that happen?"

  He smiled ruefully. "It was once every couple of weeks to start off. Then it started accelerating, until the whole place was going crazy. That was about a month ago, and since then it's calmed down gradually. Only now we have the sleepwalkers ... "

  "The what?"

  "I don't even know how to describe them. You'll see. Anyway, when things got out of hand we had to cut our links to inscape or go crazy; it's okay as long as you use the Book, but if you resist ... There are days when I almost believe I'm better off without the implants. But it's not true. Those of us who don't use the Book live like animals. Some of us are here in the ruins. The rest are in camps scattered across the coronal. No manifolds any more, no tech locks — everybody mixed together."

  "It sounds bad," she said, "but is it really the manifolds you miss?" He stared at her like she was insane. "What I mean is, would you really want it all back the way it was? I mean, bring back the manifolds, sure — but would you want the horizons back, too?"

  Now he just looked puzzled. "How could you have manifolds without horizons?"

  Livia nodded at Maren. "She would say you can't."

  "And you would say ... ?"

  Maren walked over. 'Tell me what happened after you left here," she commanded.

  Livia sat down and began recounting the story of their journey to the Archipelago and back again. She had carefully rehearsed what she would say; she glossed over many of the details, and for the rest watched Maren El-lis's face carefully. She was especially careful when recounting her encounters with narratives and the Good Book.

  "The Book appeared shortly after the mad anecliptic was destroyed," Livia explained. Most of the camp had gathered around to listen, and from the blank expressions it was clear that anecliptic was still not a word anyone here had heard. Even in the depths of Teven Coronal's worst crisis, Maren Ellis was hiding things from her own people.

  Livia pretended not to have noticed the incomprehension amongst the audience. "According to Choronzon," she continued, "3340 was made by the anecliptic for some sort of fall-back plan, one that involved Teven somehow."

  "Do you believe him?" Maren asked sharply.

  Livia had no intention of revealing what she thought. She said, "The other possibility is that Choronzon himself made 3340 — that he's trying to do what the anecliptic could not — change the balance of power in the Archipelago."

  "But why us?" Maren shook her head emphatically. "It makes no sense."

  "Actually, it does make sense," said Livia quietly. 'Teven Coronal has been isolated for two hundred years. It's the only place in the solar system free of the Archi-pelagic control systems. That makes it the only place where something like the Book can really cut loose and grow."

  "Grow? Grow into what?"

  Livia hesitated. "That I don't know."

  "And the anecliptics are coming to destroy it?"

  "So Choronzon says. But while they're doing that, I'm pretty sure he means to destroy the tech locks."

  The founder cursed. "It fits — unfortunately. All except for the idea that 3340 is strictly an emergent system. If it were, how do you explain Kale and his bosses?"

  "The ancestors?" Livia shrugged. "We think they were slotted into par
ticular roles semipermanently by the Book. I'm sure they've made a lot of the critical decisions, maybe they decided to invade Teven on their own. The Book doesn't decide, it's not a thing; it's the roles that decide."

  "If so, there's a hell of a role just arrived," said Rene. "We have it from our man inside — some people came from this 'space' place — " He gestured vaguely at the sky.

  "I think I know who," said Livia. "Listen." She turned to Maren. "Do the tech locks still exist?" Maren nodded.

  Livia let out a sigh of relief. Her journey here might not have been in vain after all. "You have the keys to them, don't you? You and only you?" she asked.

  Maren nodded again, more warily this time.

  Livia crossed her arms and looked away from the founder. "We can still save the legacy of the manifolds," she said slowly and carefully. "The key is to protect the locks, which I assume is what you've been doing since I left" Rene nodded.

  "You won't be able to protect them from Choronzon," said Livia. "You need a new plan."

  "And you have it?" asked Maren. Her eyes still glittered in the firelight, coldly now.

  "There's two alternatives," said Livia. She and Qiingi had gone over the possibilities on the way here; if he'd found Raven, he would be presenting the same options to him. "One," she said, bending back a finger of her right hand, "we enter into a defensive alliance with the Good Book."

  The crowd around the campfire looked shocked. After a moment people started muttering angrily. Maren didn't even blink. "What can we offer it?"

  "An end to resistance, and cooperation until it achieves whatever it came here to achieve." Nobody looked happy at the idea. "I know," said Livia. "Before we can deal, we need to know what it's doing with Teven. If it's something with a definite end — that isn't going to destroy us all — then we could do it. But we need to know what it is."

  Maren scowled into the fire. "And the other option?"

  "Make a copy of the locks and run for it," Livia said bluntly. "I have a ship that can do it. But we'd have to go now, before Choronzon arrives."

  "Run where?" Maren laughed. "Back to the Archipelago? They're why we came here to begin with." She shook her head. "No, easy as that solution seems, Livia, I'm afraid it's out of the question. We're going to have to go with your first choice.

  "We will have to cut a deal with 3340."

  In predawn light, Livia sat in a deep armchair perched incongruously atop a patch of rubble. She was plotting her next move. Stars showed through a gap in the tenting overhead; earlier, she had aimed her com laser through that gap and reported her situation to the ship.

  Qiingi would be in Barrastea in a few hours — along with Raven, whom he had found helping disoriented refugees from some of the neoprimitivist manifolds. Rom what the lads had (and hadn't) said, it sounded like Qiingi's return to what was once Raven's people had been a saddening experience. She felt a little of that sadness too as she waited for the avalanche of light that was dawn within a coronal. With daylight, decisions would be necessary. And things would change, again.

  Someone coughed discreetly. She looked over and saw that Rene was standing at the foot of the rubble mound. "May I approach the queen?" he asked with a flourishing bow.

  She laughed. "Come here." He came and sat on the stones at her feet "You should be sleeping," he said.

  She shrugged.

  "What you said earlier about having manifolds without horizons — that's what this is all about, isn't it?" he asked. "This person, Chonzon — "

  "Choronzon. And he's not a person. He's a ... well, in the Archipelago they call him a god. He knows Maren from way back. And he doesn't like what she's done in Teven."

  "What sfe's done?"

  "Rene, Maren Ellis isn't a founder — she's the founder." She told him what little she knew about how Teven had come to be colonized. Rene expressed some surprise at learning how old Maren really was — but not as much surprise as Livia would have expected.

  "So she's the keeper of the tech locks," he mused. "And she never told us."

  "And there lies the problem," said Livia. "Maren Ellis, Choronzon, the Government, the anecliptics, 3340 — none of them are human. Human beings don't control their own destiny anymore. But the question is, could we?"

  "You think the locks are the answer? But why? I should have thought the annies, or this Government — "

  She shook her head. "Too much goes on that's simply not on a human scale anymore. Humans could never control the distribution of resources in the solar system, for instance — it's too complex a problem. But we should be able to control those things that are on a human scale."

  He nodded slowly. "So that's what you're up to."

  "What?" she said innocently.

  "You want to take the locks away from Maren." She said nothing. Rene laughed quietly. "And that means that everydring you've said since you arrived — about Choron-zon, and 3340 and so on — could be a lie intended to get Maren to give you the locks."

  Livia sat forward. "And if it was? Would you tell her?"

  "Well, I don't — " Rene was saved from having to answer by a flurry of activity at the edge of the camp. Someone had arrived, it seemed. He stepped down to look and Livia leaped to her feet, thinking it might be Qi-ingi, and jumped down the side of the rubble pile.

  Maren Ellis was talking to a man who stood leaning on a fold of sail material. "I don't know what 3340's really up to any more man you do — but I know what it says it's doing," said a familiar voice. "Would that do for a start?"

  Livia stopped in her tracks, shocked; Rene bumped into her. Maren Ellis turned and saw her. "Livia, mere you are. This is our agent inside 3340's camp. Livia Ko-daly, meet — "

  "Lucius Xavier," she said, holding out her hand for him to shake. "Yes, we've met."

  Lucius looked into her eyes uneasily. "How are you?"

  She sighed. "Older, and less easily offended. And you?"

  "I'm no better a person than the last time we met," he said with a faint smile. "But I've never been your enemy — as I believe I told you once."

  "You did," she said, letting go of his hand. "But back then, your authority mattered to me."

  His eyes widened, but before he could reply Maren Ellis said, drily, "I'm glad you two know each other. But, can we get back to the matter at hand?"

  Xavier sat down near the fire. He made a show of warming his hands over it. "We've all wanted to know what 3340 is doing here," he said. "During my long association with 334O's people, I've never stopped trying to find that out The problem has been that even the Book's people don't know. They follow their roles and are rewarded for it — that's as much as they know.

  "But four days ago a vessel for traveling in space arrived in Barrastea." He glanced shrewdly at Livia. "Were you on that?" She shook her head; her little ship had only arrived at the coronal yesterday.

  Lucius looked disappointed. "Anyway, this vessel brought some important roles with it, as well as the first person I've seen whom I might consider an actual leader."

  "Filament?" said Livia.

  "Uh, yes. Yes, that's her — or its — name."

  "We need to speak to this Filament," said Maren. "Can you arrange that?"

  Lucius looked uncomfortable. "Our resistance doesn't have a very high priority with the Book at the moment," he said delicately.

  "Tell her that I'm here," said Livia. "That should get her attention."

  "Hang on," said Lucius. "You asked me if I had learned what 3340 is doing here. Didn't you want to hear what I've found out?"

  "I'm sorry, Lucius, please continue," said Maren smoothly.

  Lucius looked unhappy. "None of this has turned out ... like I expected," he said, glancing at Livia. 'This vessel brought something else with it. It's a ... I don't know what it is. "But they say it's here to turn the sleepers into a god."

  "I've seen this place before," said Doran Morss, wondering at the streets and plazas that glowed under sunrise. "That way is the park, isn't it?"

 
; The young woman walking next to him looked surprised. "When were you here? Teven's been locked down — only we have the keys to get in and out."

  They were trudging up a leaf-strewn avenue. In the distance dawn light painted open parkland gold. Here and there people stood about in the street. Their silence and air of distraction was disturbing.

  "In a sim," he said. "I've been here in a sim."

  The woman leading him nodded as if his explanation hadn't actually raised more questions than it answered. She was dazzlingly beautiful, but it was the ridiculous physical perfection of the body-sculpted; that suggested to him that she was from the inner Archipelago, where such things were currently fashionable. Judging from the clunky way she walked, she had once been short and stocky, and had never quite adjusted to the tall willowy build she had now.

  She was one of 3340's advance guard in this place, and might have been here for years by now. She probably had no idea what was going on in the outside world.

  Doran's kidnapping had been remarkably polite — after his beating at the hands of Filament's thugs, that is. There was little need for violence once he was on board her ship. He could escape into any Archipelagic view he wanted, it wouldn't change the underlying situation. And there was nothing and no one for him to fight; any adversary would dissolve into inscape if Doran so much as glared at him or her.

  But he had finally been allowed to disembark from the ship, only to find himself in a place he'd thought existed only in an online fantasy. It didn't matter. Now that he was dealing with real people again, things were different He might be able to actually do something here.

  Suddenly the woman dropped back to walk beside him. "That sim — the one where you visited here — who made it?"

  Doran chewed his lip for a moment, thinking. Then he said, "A local named Livia Kodaly. One of yours, I assume. I suppose she was part of a propaganda mission of some kind? To interest users of the Book in coming here?"

  "Maybe." She shrugged. "The Book's strategic moves often aren't visible to us on our scale. It's probably got millions of projects on the go."