Karl Schroeder - Lady of Mazes

He raised his hand to the little boat, and was rewarded by a wave back. The skyhook resolved into a black cable with a nest of grappling arms at its end. Its claws were big enough to pick up the entire boat and it seemed determined to do just that. Qiingi watched with interest and some regret. It would have been good to know what was happening elsewhere in the wide world.

Suddenly some kind of wooden arm shot from the bottom of the fishing boat. A whirling net flew straight up and entangled the descending hand of the skyhook. Qiingi gave a shout of surprise, then laughed. They had seen this coming; the versos were not so naive as people assumed — himself included, apparently.

The fishing boat shot forward. They had some kind of engine in there. Now it left a white wake behind it and the nose tilted up with the force of its push. "Livia, you should see this!" he shouted, knowing his voice probably wouldn't carry inside the cabin from here.

The skyhook clenched and unclenched its spider fingers, trying to dislodge the net. Above it a second one popped out of the clouds and plummeted at the boat. Do-ran must have an endless supply of those things, and they would be wary of the nets now.

A brave attempt by the versos, but doomed to failure.

A shimmer just offshore caught Qiingi's attention. The waves there seemed skewed, out of synch with one another in one — no, in two spots. The horizon became clipped and rose up and down just over the waves; then he understood what he was seeing.

Two man-sized, man-shaped things had just stood up out of the water. They were nearly invisible, but the view of the waves behind them was updated just a fraction of a second late, making the sea and sky jerky in those spots. The two nearly-invisible men splashed out of the surf and ran toward Qiingi.

He backed away, frightened but aware that it was far too late for him to try anything. Irrationally, he wondered whether one of those figures was the false ancestor Kale, come to pay Qiingi back for dropping a tree on him.

"Come on!" said a male voice as a half-visible arm waved at him. "We need to get inside." The two forms raced past Qiingi and he found himself standing still for a moment, staring. Then he ran after them.

"The boat," he shouted. "It was a decoy!"

"Yeah, aren't we brilliant?" Both human-shaped blurs were waiting at the hut's door. One gestured for Qiingi to precede them. "After you, Voicewalker."

"How did you know — " He pushed in ahead of them. Livia stood up, eyes wide. "Livia, we have visitors, I — "

"Who are you?" she said. Qiingi turned.

As the door shut the two men became visible. They looked like brothers, similarly tall and slender, with elfin faces and delicate jaws. They were sopping wet and had identical, ridiculous grins on their faces as they high-fived one another.

"Ha, I knew it would work!"

"No you didn't, you whined about the plan all the way — "

"That was just to motivate you."

"I'll motivate you, just wait."

"But Livia, here we are! You didn't think we'd leave you helpless, did you?" The man puffed out his chest with pride.

"It can't be," muttered Livia.

Qiingi looked from her to the men. "What? Who are these people?"

She swallowed and shook her head. "If I'm right, you've met them before, Qiingi. But you were never formally introduced." She walked up to the first man. "Qiingi Voicewalker, this is — "

"Peaseblossom!"

"And I'm Cicada!" And they stuck out their hands for him to shake.

The lads professed to be hungry, so Livia brought out one of the loaves of bread that occasionally fell from the sky. "Are these bodies biological, then?" asked Qiingi politely, as the agents piled cheese and raw onions on big slabs of bread.

"Oh, no, we just like to eat," said Cicada.

"Give me that!" Livia grabbed the sandwich away from him.

The momentary annoyance — somehow reassuring because it proved to her that these really were her faeries — finally made Livia snap out of the state of shock she'd been in since they arrived. "But what are you doing here? And how did you get ... these?" She indicated their robust bodies.

"Some of your fans made them for us," said Cicada.

"Along with some supplies; and when they heard that Doran Morss had kidnaped you, the whole bunch of them went together and got us a ship. It's waiting outside." He pointed down.

"Fans? What fans?'

"Well, you know," said Peaseblossom around a large mouthful. "You're a huge celebrity now so there's thousands of people willing to kick in to support whatever you do."

"Celebrity?" She stared at them, then noticed that Qi-ingi was looking guilty. "Why? Tell me."

"Well." Qiingi looked to the others for support. Cicada whistled and examined his fingernails. Peaseblossom just grinned.

"Remember when we first arrived in mis place," said Qiingi reluctantly. "Our inscape was unguarded. Your own data stores were raided by data-thieves ... "

She paled. "Oh no."

"Many of your recorded experiences were stolen in those few seconds. We didn't know. And ... Livia, we just found out about the Life of Livia — "

"The what?"

In a state of horrified disbelief, she heard Qiingi tell her that her memories had been distributed as an entertainment; millions of people had seen them. As the vast depths of die data began to become obvious, he said, the Life of Livia had recently taken on a new significance. There was enough of Teven there for people to become intensely curious about the manifolds. Versos and even mainstream citizens had begun styling themselves after Westerhaven fashions, and adjusting their narratives to resemble the Societies of Livia's home.

"But this is — it's impossible!" She couldn't stay still, but paced up and down the narrow confines of the cabin, wringing her hands. "It's like rape! How much do they know? What have they seen?" She felt physically ill at the thought. Finally she rounded on Qiingi. "Why didn't you tell me?"

He shrank back from her intensity. "I did not think you were prepared to hear it in the right spirit," he said. "It would have been one more confirmation that your public life has been stolen from you."

"It's not that bad," said Cicada, patting her arm. "When people copy the Life, they also unknowingly copy us, and we've been guarding the stuff you wouldn't want anyone to see."

"We even changed your looks — "

"We've been talking to the other copies of us, so we could coordinate it — "

"And we hide the important stuff."

She shook her head. "That was not your decision to make! You should have told me! So ... so how many copies are there?"

"As of now?" Cicada leaned back, cracking his knuckles behind his head. "Well, about seven hundred million, I'd say."

Screaming seemed too weak a reaction at this point. Livia slumped down in a corner, hating them all.

"It's the versos," said Qiingi hurriedly. "It's not you they're interested in — well, except insofar as you're what Mr. Morss called a 'baseline' for them to emulate. No, it's Westerhaven they're fascinated by. And Raven's people, and the other manifolds. There is nothing like them here."

Cicada nodded violently. "There's this huge movement to try to make manifolds, but they don't know how to do it, because the plans for the tech locks weren't included in the Life. People know about tech locks now, but they're having trouble making them — "

"Because the key to the locks is this giganormous database," said Peaseblossom, "that cross-references a thousand years of anthropological data on how technologies affect culture."

"We looked into this database thing," said Cicada. "The data were compiled centuries ago by scientists in the monoculture. A huge effort. But all existing copies were corrupted in the Viability War that ended with the anecliptics coming to power."