He turned and slowly strolled back the way he'd come. Each shaded bower and stone cottage he passed could contain anything or anyone; the whole Archipelago was layered in illusion, yet here it seemed he was more aware than ever of invisible lives lived just out of reach. That covered walkway there might contain armchairs and tables invisible to him, where patriarchs of the Kodalys older than Livia's parents still sat. Conversations might be going on all around him, all infinitely removed. Yet the impression was not of people hiding; it was more that in this place, time did not move inexorably forward, but layered its moments one on top of the other. If you knew how, you could tunnel through the layers and find the moment you needed — the pipe smoke still swirling, the laughter of lost decades still echoing.
His anger dissolved as he walked through sun and shade. And perhaps this was the condition that a particular manifold had set for him: that he should never be able to find Livia while driven by anger. For as he strolled, hands in pockets, admiring the stonework, he glanced up at random and found himself looking straight at her.
Livia Kodaly was walking, head down, arms crossed, along a flagstone path. She looked over as he approached, and smiled.
Doran's inscape interface couldn't tell him if this was a real person, an anima, or an agent. Something was spoofing her identity. So he stopped several meters away from her, his own arms crossed, and grimaced in frustration. "Hiding in plain sight again, I see."
She laughed. "Still demanding definite answers, I see. How are you, Doran?"
He stuck out his hand to shake, but she opened her arms and hugged him. Whatever her state of being, she felt real just now. When they disengaged he stepped back, unsure of himself now that he was here.
A thousand questions crowded: Had she survived the eschatus machine, being on the edge of the blast radius? Was the warrior Qiingi alive as well? And most of all, was she behind the strange appearance of manifolds across the Archipelago?
"How are you?" she asked.
He opened his mouth and closed it again. "I ... I don't know," he said, surprised at his own honesty. "I showed the worst side of myself when I was here last. The cowardly side. Since then ... I've become a smuggler, did you know that? I'm helping distribute tech lock technology throughout the solar system." He grinned at her. "You never knew, but I fell in love with Westerhaven when I visited the Life of Livia." I fell in love with you. "So I'm trying to make places like it in the Archipelago. Manifolds. I've become a hero to the versos. And the versos are becoming something new. They're like the seeds around which new values are crystalizing — "
"Founders?" she asked.
"Yes! I've given my Scotland to some of them, you should see the manifold they're crafting there, Livia. Hard lives they're trying to lead — but theirs''
"And what's yours, Doran?" she asked as she began strolling again. "What do you own?"
"Shame," he said. "And determination. But I guess those have been what drove me all along."
They walked together, she did not vanish in the sunlight "Your vote is riding high these days," he said after a while. "She represents the new manifolds and her constituency is huge. And there are wars going on, Livia, between the annies and the followers of the Book ... " He shook his head. "But you don't care, do you? You've been hiding here in your garden, and you don't care what happens to the rest of the world."
"That's not true," she murmured. "The Government hired me to be a baseline, remember? It's just that I'm not the baseline for the Government's reality anymore. Nor am I for crippleview. I've become a goal for people like you who are trying to find their way out of the one-sided reality of the Archipelago. Naturally you can't see me as long as you still live inside that view."
She smiled. "I'm a founder now, Doran, and my manifold is vast You just haven't found your way there yet."
Desperately, he said, "But aren't you really here? Can't I see you? I came all this way just to see you."
"To see who, exactly?" she asked. "The Livia of me Life of Livia? The hero of the far side accident? The guide who led the peers out of fallen Westerhaven? The rescuer, who returned to chase the villains out of Teven? Or is it Alison Haver you're looking for?" She shook her head. "I could have stood back and let you meet one of those; but then you wouldn't have found me."
"And is this the real you? Or just another mask?"
Sadly, she turned away. "You haven't understood the first thing about manifolds, have you? It's not me who's put the mask on my face. It's you."
For a while Doran walked with her, confused and wondering. Finally she looked back, and her expression softened a bit "Let me teD you a story," she said. "You won't find this one in the Life of Livia. Nobody's ever heard it before.
"What have I had that's truly mine? What was it that I wanted? In my old life, here, I was unhappy with the peers, and Aaron's radical pronouncements rang a false note with me, too. I didn't have the words to explain my feelings to myself or anybody else, then. But you could see it all around you, in the peers fighting duels over fine points of aesthetics, or planning grand cities and works to renew Westerhaven when and if they came to power. They fought over a million different issues, but it always came down to one thing: How could we find a balance between our own uniqueness and our place in the world? Should we try to liberate ourselves from the constraints that the world and the previous generation had placed on us — and maybe abandon reality entirely — or should we throw away our creative souls and conserve the world that was? Westerhaven was always in a tug-of-war between those two poles, the liberal and the conservative.
"Well, before the invasion — in fact, just days before I met with Lucius and he took me to Raven's country — I took an aircar up in the night. Nobody saw me leave Bar-rastea; even my agents were asleep. I touched down ever so gently on the edge of a forest and left the aircar. The trees made a canopy of complete black overhead so I navigated entirely by inscape, walking into a wood alone, at night, far from family and friends.
"And as I walked I began to sing, and as I sang a different world opened before me. I had come to the manifold of the drummers — the manifold I had helped to save a few weeks before. When I emerged from the trees it was to see their towers still standing in the glow of the coronal's arch. Faintly, I could hear a single drum beating in the distance. It was very cold, the ground leeched all heat from your feet as you stepped through the spongy, wet grass. But I knew where I was going.
"Doran, nothing in the Life of Livia could hint at the feelings of freedom and fear I felt there, alone, breaking into a place that was currently guarded by the peers in daylight. My heart was pounding as I found the tower and walked up its steps in complete darkness.
"I replaced the water-worn drum of the last drummer with a new one I'd brought. Keeping the Drummers' manifold alive for another month or two was that simple. I secured the new drum and checked that the rains had topped up the cistern that dripped onto the skin. Then I walked back out again. It wasn't until I reached the outside that I paused for a minute to listen.
"Each drumbeat sounded clear and distinct. Each one rolled out into the night, reaching nobody's ears, but real nonetheless. It was a tremble of air, nothing more, yet in that tremble the drummers lived. In that tremble of air was something not of Westerhaven, not preserved by your Government or to be found in the narratives. Call it the Song of Ometeotl, if you wish. It remained in my ears as I stole back through the forest and returned in secret to my home."
She smiled at his astonished expression. "At the time I didn't know why I did it It was one of those actions that you can't reconcile with the person you think you are. But now I understand. I was honoring the existence and dignity of a reality independent of my own.
"If you want to understand any of the decisions I've made, you have to start there."
Suddenly she laughed. "Don't look so serious, Doran. I've got everything I wanted. I have my music and the people I love around me. I'm part of a Society. I'm a part of my world, I'm not strug
gling against it the way you have your whole life."
He winced. But it was a fair comment. After a while he asked, "So what happens now? Do you vanish back into the manifolds again?"
She shook her head. "You vanish. But hopefully not forever. I'm glad you came to find me, Doran. Perhaps we'll meet again. For now, all I can offer you is my thanks for being my friend. The best way I know to do that is in music."
Livia grinned, and walking backward in front of him, she began to sing. She sang about youth and age, and the turn of the seasons. It was a song about change and acceptance, and the small human things that made up a day, or a life.
Livia sang; and as she sang she began to fade; and as she faded into the bright air, the song faded with her. In moments she was gone, leaving him alone with the whirring of the bees.
Doran shook his head and walked away. At first he felt only frustration. Was she alive or wasn't she? Had he just met some clever anima running on after its owner's death? Or did the real Livia still walk somewhere, perhaps not in this garden or even on this work! — but somewhere?
When the answer came to him, it did so suddenly and with such force that he laughed in surprise. She'd said she had learned to honor the existence and dignity of a reality independent of her own. But how did you do that? Maybe the key was to refrain from trying to slot everything into your own categories, the way Choronzon and the annies did. Alive by Doran's definition; dead by his definition — could it be that Livia was neither of those things? He knew that she had opted out of the annies' version of reality. Was it so hard to accept that his own categories no longer applied to her either?
He walked on, strangely content. Ever since he had first encountered the masks and manifolds of Wester-haven in the Life of Livia, he had wondered why they seemed so familiar and yet so different from the views of the narratives. Now he finally understood. In this strange new world he was just beginning to discover, you did not bring reality to you. You went to it.
There was a way for him to meet Livia Kodaly again, if he wished to.
All he would have to do was change.
Epilogue
Aaron Varese stood on a stone veranda looking out over his estate. He was sipping a cup of coffee, feeling tired but, for the moment, satisfied.
It had taken months of effort, but things were stabilizing. His world no longer changed daily. For a while after the Ascension of 3340, buildings, trees, people — all had shifted moment by moment. He'd thought he was going to go mad, and maybe he would have — if not for the Book.
He glanced back at the table where it rested, just a slight flutter of anxiety compelling him to make sure it was still there. In those first days, he'd clung to it like a life raft. He had always been good at using it, but he'd needed all his skills to ride out and eventually halt the mad chaos of images and memories that inscape had thrown at him. For weeks, he'd focused on nothing else, done nothing else but use the Book. And gradually, the madness had abated.
He could walk his virtual gardens in peace this evening, because he had spent the day masterfully using the Book. It didn't matter that he didn't understand the now-limited tableaux that came to him, or what his actions meant; what mattered was that they no longer took up every waking moment.
He had time now for peace — and melancholy. For while his estate was now stable around him, it was also a reminder of everything he'd given up.
"There you are!" Esther ran out and threw her arms around him. He hugged her fiercely. "I can't believe you're still real," she murmured into his shoulder.
"I am," he said. She was real — he was almost sure of it. For months his only companions had been animas from the Westerhaven he'd once knew. Esther Mannus's had been among them. They were merely actors who drew him into scenes that he escaped only by using the Book. Once he had used it properly, the men and women dissolved along with the props and sets of the scenario.
A few days ago, Esther had remained after a scene ended. She seemed as surprised and suspicious at this turn of events as he was. Only as the days passed, and they remained together, did they begin to wonder if the other was more than just an anima.
She was his reward — or he was hers. It didn't matter. What mattered was that the Book was merciful.
As the light reddened and vanished in a simulated sunset, he walked with her through scented grass and silence. He felt his heart swelling with some emotion — love? Gratitude? It was hard to separate feelings these days, when you were required to ride an emotional roller coaster all day long. The thought made him smile. "You're a refuge from the world," he said sincerely.
"And you," she said, sighing and shaking her head. "It wasn't meant to be this way, was it?"
"This crazy? No ... I suppose the Ascended body is busy. Somewhere there're people assigned to be Eyes and Ears and so on. If things continue settling down, we should be able to track one of them down and find out what's going on in the outside world."
"I ... heard a rumor today," she said. Laughing at his look of surprise, she added, "Yeah, people have time for rumors now!"
He shook his head in wonder. "Well — what was it?"
"That we're not alone in here," she murmured dramatically. "Us humans making up the kernel, that is. The rumor is, there's something else in here with us. I talked to a role who claimed to have seen it."
"Seen it? Seen what?"
"A human figure, beckoning in the distance. Something from outside the Book. The rumor is that somewhere there's an exit — a way out of the kernel, back to the real world. And for those who are ready, a guide will appear to lead them back."
Aaron turned away. He felt ill suddenly. In his few quiet moments, he'd had his own doubts about his decision to join with 3340 — and he hated himself for it.
"This is our real world, Esther. This is what we chose." It's too late to turn back.
"I know, love." Her arms entwined bis chest.
He relaxed a bit "It just infuriates me that people should continue to want the impossible, even now when we have everything we ever wanted."
"Think of it as an echo of the past," she whispered. "Echoes go and return, and go and return. For a while. Only for a while ... "
He closed bis eyes, letting his shoulders slump. She was right, of course. So for a while he simply let himself stand there, eyes closed in her embrace, with warm sunset light on his face. She swayed slightly with him, and he heard a faint whisper of song. He knew the tune: what was it called again?
O night you were my guide ...
It was something ancient. Ah, it would come to him in a moment — or an eternity. He had a thousand years to remember, after all.
O night more loving than the rising sun.
He smiled ruefully.
"That's 'The Dark Night of the Soul,'" he said suddenly.
"What?"
"That song you're humming."
She unwove herself and looked up at him, puzzled. "I wasn't humming anything."
He stared at her. With a cold flush of adrenaline, he realized that the voice he'd heard was not Esther's.
Somewhere in the dimness under the trees that bordered the estate, someone was singing. The singer's voice swung up and down in cadences as serene as the sunset, confident and seductive.
O night you were my guide
O night more loving than the rising sun
O night that joined the lover to the beloved one
Transforming the beloved within the loved one ...
"I know that voice," whispered Esther.
He knew it too. But that was impossible ...
"What did we do wrong?" Esther whispered. Aaron shook his head. They'd offended the Book, obviously — else why should a new phantom invade their hard-won moment of freedom? In the calm happiness of that distant voice, he realized how much he feared the Book. It brought into sharp relief the fact that he had been driven by nothing but fear for a very long time.
Esther's fingers dug painfully into his skin. Then she let go, and began to w
alk toward the trees. After a moment, Aaron followed.
Step by reluctant step, they made their way under the boughs and toward the embrace of a long-lost friend, rival, a legend and worry whom neither had seen since the world fractured. She said nothing, but smiled as she continued to sing. And to beckon.
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