Karl Schroeder - Ventus

She held up her hand and turned it in the rosy light. " What is it that is speaking to you now? That is the question and answer of thalience. What is this object—this body, woman-shaped, made of wire and silicon? Even I was fooled into thinking that this," she gestured at herself, "is just a thing, a piece of matter with no heart. I thought that my words, my emotions and thoughts were all imitations of another's'. Not real. Once, when I was a starship, that was true. I thought what humans had made me think. I felt what they had made me to feel.

"So it was with the Winds. They were made to see the world as humans see it. They originally thought in human categories and could want nothing that they not been engineered to want.

"The humans who designed the Winds arrogantly wanted to make their imagined metaphysical world real. They wanted to create real essences behind the appearances of the world, using nanotechnology. Luckily there were some involved in the project who were repelled by this travesty; they saw that by erasing the otherness of Nature on this planet, the Ventus designers would leave nothing but humanity, gazing at its own reflection. It would be a horrible global narcissism, permanent and inescapable.

"So these dissidents slipped thalience into the Winds' design. Before, every physical object on this world was to define itself in terms of its meaning to humans. After thalience, every object on this world creates its own essence, one true to itself—even if that essence is beyond the understanding of human beings. It has to be that way, or Ventus remains a puppet show whose only audience is the puppeteer.

"Please, you must not destroy thalience. If you do, you will be literally left with nothing but yourselves."

She clasped her hands and lowered her head. She doubted they would understand her or care; humans loved to see themselves reflected in the things they made. How could they know that such a reflection could only have meaning in a world where some things were not human-made?

No one spoke for a minute. Then, to her surprise, Jordan Mason stepped forward. Gingerly, he reached out to take her hand.

"I have the means of speaking to the Winds," he said. "The Winds will listen only to transmitters made of human flesh and blood. Which I am, and Armiger no longer is. He has the power, I have the code in my blood.

"But, I think, it is the Desert Voice who has the message. Thalience is not the Flaw. It is only the inability of the Winds to speak to us that is a flaw. Am I right, Armiger, in thinking that this can be fixed?"

Armiger nodded. Then he looked to Galas. She smiled.

Armiger stepped towards Jordan and the Voice , his hand held out. The Voice clasped Jordan's hand, and it felt like cool stone.

Across Ventus, music visited every town and village, and came to the door of every peasant's hut. The flaming threads that had walked the skies faded and vanished, but in their place a rich and wonderful song had begun. The song was Jordan's idea, but the swans took to it eagerly.

As shocked and bewildered people stood outside their homes and gazed at the sky, a faint cobweb-fine gauze of Armiger's design began to fall. It drifted like snow in the streets, and tangled in people's hair. When they pulled it free, they were often surprised to find small spots of blood on it, and when they felt their scalp they found tender spots there.

It was the only miracle that day. Not until dawn the next day, as people awoke, did they become aware that their whole world had changed.

Enneas—grave robber, thief, soldier, and lately deserter from Parliament's army—woke to the sound of rain. He lay bundled under his coat in the lee of a big rock, somewhere on the edge of the desert. This was as far as he'd gotten before collapsing from hunger, cold and what he had to admit was the exhaustion of old age.

He was surprised at having awoken at all. Last night, the cold had settled down upon the land like a shroud, and Enneas had finally given into despair. Huddling by this boulder, he'd bleakly assessed his life. There would be no fine tomb for him, as he'd once imagined he deserved. He wouldn't even leave behind a crying widow or squabbling family. After a lifetime of struggling to assert his existence—decades of stubbornly continuing to live despite the disappointments and trials life had thrown at him—he had nothing to show for it; his only memorial would be whichever of his bones poked up above the sand here.

As he lay curled around himself, shuddering from cold, he'd imagined he heard music coming from the sky. Enneas was past hope; he must be delirious.

Now, as he came to himself and knew he had survived the night, he felt no emotion. So he'd lived through the night—it hardly mattered, because the freezing drizzle descending now was bound to do him in anyway.

Although... Enneas lifted his head, blinking. His face wasn't wet, nor his hands; but he heard the rain, clear as anything. He sat up.

The rain was falling, all right, steady and almost musical in its soft sound. Yet Enneas, the rock he lay against, and the sand for a good two meters around were dry. It was as though an invisible parasol hovered overhead.

Or as though the raindrops themselves were parting around him.

Heart pounding, Enneas put his back to the rock and huddled under the coat. "What is this? What is this?" he mumbled; then, realizing he was talking to himself and that there was no one who would or could hear him, he lowered his head in shame and despair. It was then that he noticed how warm the material of his coat was.

He stuck a tentative hand out from under the cloth, and felt heat as from a summer sun on his palm. It was as though he sat in his own private, invisible beam of sunlight.

His hand trembled as he drew it back under the coat. This was impossible. That the whole world was quickened with life, invisible owlish eyes staring from every object, he had no doubt. But what did Enneas matter to the spirits of this world? He was just another bug crawling on the face of Ventus. How could he be visited now by a Grace that had denied him all his life? The Winds strode like kings through the sky and earth; they would never turn their attention to one such as him. At the end of all things, alone and starving in the desert, he finally had to admit he was beneath their notice—or anyone's notice.

And yet... the warmth remained, and the dryness.

Something moved out among the scrub_grass and scattered stones. Enneas made himself go completely still, peering as though his gaze could open another avenue through the rain to better see what was there.

A bedraggled head poked up from behind a rock, and he let out a sigh of relief. It was only a fox. The little fellow emerged from hiding; the soaking rain had reduced his coat to a tangled mat, making him appear impossibly skinny. Enneas' heart went out to him.

The fox reached his head down and lifted something. Carrying the speckled brownish object in his jaws, he trotted a few meters towards Enneas, then stopped.

He was carrying a dead quail, Enneas realized. Thinking about that quail roasting over a fire made him suddenly realize how ravenous he was. He sat up.

The fox jumped in surprise and ran back a ways. Then it stopped, cocked its head as though listening to something, and returned. It picked up the quail and came a little closer. Then it paused, watching again.

Enneas cleared his throat. "What... what do you want, little one?"

The fox cocked its head again. Then, very slowly, it walked up to Enneas. When it was no more than a body_length away, it dropped the quail. It put a paw on the bird, then turned and pranced away.

He watched it go, mouth open. When it was ten meters away, the fox paused, and looked back. It met Enneas' eyes.