Karl Schroeder: Lady of Mazes

"And you want me along because ... "

"After the things you've seen, Livia, I think you're not too likely to piss yourself and run at seeing an Impossible."

Her anima smiled momentarily. "But I still don't want to."

"If we verify that there's a problem with local inscape, our authority goes up. Not much for me — but the boost could do you good right about now."

Damn him, he knew she was in trouble with the peers. Maybe he'd even set up her encounter with Jachman, knowing she might duel him and lose later that evening. It would be just like Lucius Xavier, who while he might be a friend, was also as sly a political player as Wester-haven had ever produced.

She smiled. "I'll think about it. Why don't you drop by tomorrow morning and we'll talk it over."

Livia skipped through the rest of the conversation, which was brief. Then, back in the breakfast room, she scowled at the slanting morning light. Inscape showed Lucius's aircar circling the estate already. So much for the quiet morning she had been planning. She quickly finished her breakfast and walked outside.

The gleaming, lozenge-shaped aircar touched down gracefully near a checkerboard of tennis courts. Lucius climbed out of it and waved brightly at Livia, kissing her lightly on the forehead when she reached him. "Glad you decided to join me," he said with a grin. "This should be fun."

He was dressed for a hike in stout canvas safari gear and solid boots. She was glad she'd worn her shift today; it was the work of a moment to adjust it to something rugged. Lucius was already striding toward the distant line of trees that signaled the end of the estate's manicured grounds. She hurried to join him.

"You really think there's Impossibles here?" she asked as she caught up.

"Six people from the surrounding area have seen them," he said. "The sightings were scattered all over, but the epicenter was near here. There, in fact." He pointed down the gently sloping hillside, bathed in forest, that led to a glistening blue lake.

Past the forest and meandering river the land rolled on in waves of wilderness into hazy vagueness. What looked like towering, half-visible clouds floated above the haze. These were the familiar Southwall mountains, blued to near-invisibility by a distance of over two hundred kilometers. Livia could see the white caps of glaciers atop some of the shortest peaks; snow never fell at the higher altitudes. Above them the sky was a uniform indigo.

Livia knew the lake Lucius was pointing to. There was a boathouse down there, a distant outpost of the Romanal estate. So she took the lead when they reached the trees. "There's the path."

They entered the hushed realm of the trees. Now that the estate was out of sight, Livia began to feel a bit nervous. That was irrational by any ordinary standard: she had her angels to protect her, and her presence in the heart of Westerhaven did not have anything to do with whether she was near some building.

Even so, she awoke her Society and let them walk alongside her as a reassuring crowd. For a while Lucius was silent, and Livia thought about how similar this walk was to her first official journey to a neighboring manifold, which had happened several months before.

It had been an occasion of sorrow. Shortly after her confirmation, the Westerhaven diplomatic corps had contacted Livia asking whether she would agree to help close out the estate of the Drummers. She had studied to be a diplomat like her parents before her, and she was a musician. So the request might seem natural; but she had given up on diplomacy when she realized she had no desire to travel to other manifolds. She suspected the hand of Lucius Xavier in her selection, if not of Mother herself. But she agreed to go, more from curiosity than any desire to improve her authority.

Livia joined the expedition on an empty road outside the city of Barrastea. There were representatives from a number of other manifolds as well as Westerhaven. Jach-man was one of the other junior members of the Westerhaven contingent, and it was on this occasion that Livia first met Rene Caiser. He was acting as groomsman, caring for the stamping and proud horses that were to lead their carriages.

Trees towered beyond the carriages, but the slope here was steep enough that Livia could see past them into the deep valley below. Amid the dark, nearly black treetops lay the city of the drummers. To anyone within Westerhaven, it was invisible.

Serena Elesz, the expedition's leader, briefed them before they set out. "The last drummer died a week ago," she said from her perch on the step of the lead carriage. "Officially, their consensual reality ends with that death. In fact, everyone who shared some of their values carries a template of the drummers' manifold with them, and these templates still have some authority over inscape and the tech locks. It is up to living representatives of those values to decide the fate of this manifold and its physical manifestations." She meant the land and those aspects of the city that were physically real.

Livia had put up her hand; she was never one to stay on the sidelines. "I was always told that Westerhaven gamers and preserves the cultures of other manifolds."

Serena nodded. "Yes, of course; and we'll try to do that here. We are the great integrators of the many threads of culture in Teven Coronal."

Livia put up her hand again. "I've had six people come up to me and tell me that what I need to do is make sure the drummers are shut down, so Westerhaven can recover their resources."

An awkward silence followed. Serena's take on Westerhaven had sounded like a quote straight out of the Fictional History. Livia had been raised to follow those values, but she was learning that the truth was always more complicated.

Finally Serena shrugged. "You need to vote with your heart, Livia — but remember that everything in Westerhaven is political."

Still chewing on this thought, Livia entered the carriage behind Serena's just as it began to move. They jolted down the dirt track that led off from the main road. Livia reached out with her senses and will, determined not to notice anything of Westerhaven: no buildings, no contrails. Her change of attitude and attention was noted by her neural implants and the mechology known as the tech locks; where there had been impenetrable underbrush, a pathway appeared leading into the woods. The horses joined this road without breaking stride.

She listened for rhythms in the sighing of the breeze, and soon she began to hear them. She listened for patterns in the chirping of the birds, and eventually, she heard music there. Even the clip-clop of the horses' hooves took on a complicated order, as Livia had been told it would. A sense of palpable presence began to build around the carriages, a subliminal excitement "We're close," Jachman murmured beside her.

Rene was having difficulty making the transition. He began to fade even as the drummers' city appeared around the trunks of the redwoods that walled the road. He tried to speak but no sound reached Livia's ears. The last thing she saw before he vanished was his frustrated, embarrassed frown. She couldn't help but smile at the boyishness of it.

He would be back, as soon as he'd managed to properly purge Westerhaven from his system of habits and responses. Meanwhile, they were at the drummers' ruins.

Once a thriving community had come together here to worship in ways that were difficult or impossible in other manifolds. In some places, such as Westerhaven, the pace of life was wrong for the drummers' style of contemplation; or the attitude to music interfered with what they were attempting. The ancient and powerful religions of Earth still held sway in other manifolds and would not permit any iconoclasts or experimenters. So they had made their own reality, one in keeping with their ideals. And for several generations, it had held strong.