Karl Schroeder - Lady of Mazes

"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."

She walked on, serenely confident. Doran sized her up, debating whether he could knock her down and just run for it. Probably not — he could see the faint shimmering outline of a virtual matter shield around her, what the locals called an "angel." He couldn't disable her.

On the other hand, Filament needed him alive and cooperative. And, cooped up as he'd been for the past days, he hadn't had any exercise.

So, as they were passing a narrow alley, he simply turned and ran. It took her a full five seconds to notice what he'd done; her startled shout made him laugh out loud as he dodged and jumped the debris in the alley.

He came out onto a street that he'd never visited in the sim, and quickly looked left and right. She'd catch him any second now — or call in the reinforcements mat he had no doubt were lurking around somewhere nearby. So it didn't matter which way he went; might as well pick the most scenic. He went left.

Her pounding feet sounded behind him. Again she shouted for him to stop. Doran kept running, reveling in the feeling of the crisp autumn air in his lungs and the pounding of his feet on pavement. For a few seconds it didn't matter where he was or what this was all about. There was just him enjoying the run.

Then he looked up. He had come to the end of the buildings. And standing there in his way was a wall of silent people — thousands of them packed shoulder to shoulder and blocking his way.

He stumbled and went down on one knee. The Book's agent puffed up behind him, cursing, but Doran ignored her. He was staring at the crowd.

His initial impression had been that they were there to block bis escape. But they weren't looking at him; hell, they weren't looking at anything at all. They simply stood there, uniformly sightless and silent — no, not silent. Doran could hear a faint sighing sound that he'd at first thought was the wind. But the air wasn't moving. It was breathing he heard — a million, two million inhalations. And though the crowd was still ten meters away, it was palpably warmer here.

"Hell of my fathers," he whispered. "What have you done to them?"

Thirty-three forty's agent clapped her hand on his shoulder and dragged him to his feet. "We've done nothing," she said. "Not yet. But these people are why you are here."

Doran thought of turning and running from this vast multitude. He might have, even though 3340's people would catch him again — but stopped as he thought about the sheer helplessness of these men and women. They were no danger to him; he was probably more danger to them.

He forced himself to examine the scene clinically. If he looked closely he could see faint geometric outlines — virtual matter — drifting over the crowd. Knowing what was possible even within the narratives, these things were probably feeding, watering, and cleaning up after the silent people.

"Is this what the Book does to its slaves?" he asked after a while. "Paralyzes them to make them more efficient? I assume these people's minds are off in inscape somewhere, playing out its little role-games."

The woman took his arm and started walking forward. The crowd parted miraculously as she approached. "It's not paralysis," she said. "And they're not slaves — they're elite users. Volunteers. They're the best at using the Book from all over Teven, and they're true believers in its goodness. They're very busy right now, assembling a new processing kernel for 3340."

Any one person in Teven had more character in their face than any ten Archipelagics. But the faces they passed, each so unique, were all equally blank. "A new kerneir

"They're building a bounded version of 3340 that can operate in isolation from the rest of the network."

Belatedly, Doran realized that the crowd was sealing itself behind them as they proceeded. He'd lost his last chance to cut and run. He instinctively edged closer to the woman, feeling, under the weight of all those empty gazes, as if he were five years old again. "You're going to make a new book?"

"Of course not," she snapped. "Version 3340 is perfect." She looked over at him. "I was told that you knew what we're going to do."

Now, belatedly, he understood.

About a kilometer ahead of them, some of the strange nets and cables that hung above the city drooped down almost to ground level. Where they converged, Doran glimpsed the gleaming blue curve of the eschatus machine, nestled like a spider at the heart of its web.