Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

Maerta's eyes narrowed. "By what?"

That was telling: she had not asked by whom . "He was my ... one of our former companions," said Leal. She couldn't afford to describe John Tarvey any other way; it was too painful. "He was taken by one of those, I think the word is 'river,' and when he came back to us he'd ... changed." She looked at the floor.

Maerta stared at her in wonder. "You really are from Virga, aren't you?"

"Yes, and I promise to tell you all about how we got here, but first we have to make sure that the thing that's, that's wearing Tarvey like a coat can't get in!"

She'd said that too loudly; her men were all staring at her. Eustace Loll limped over. His lips pursed into an expression that might have been concern, or might have been disapproval. "You've been through a lot, Leal. You should rest." He bowed to Maerta. "On behalf of the government and people of Abyss, I'd like to thank you for rescuing us."

Leal wanted to tell him to shut up, but in this place, surrounded by so many people, she no longer had the power. Loll had been waiting for such a moment, she realized: for a time when he no longer had to defer to her.

"You're welcome," said Maerta. "We'll send some bodies down to patrol the city's lower entrances."

Loll raised his eyebrow. "Thank you. However--though I appreciate Leal's anxieties--I don't think that will be necessary. The man was swept away by the avalanche. He won't be back."

"He will be back," said Leal; but she abruptly felt very dizzy. Piero Harper was suddenly at her side, helping her sit on a strange blocky thing that sculpted itself to her shape as if it were alive. " It will be back." Tired and defeated, she stared around at the strange people, the extra bodies and odd machines. "Unless its purpose was to drive us into your arms. Are you like it?"

"They are not," said the junk-doll on her shoulder.

Leal shrugged irritably. "But why is that boy walking around in a cloud of bugs?" She glared at Maerta. "Why are there two of you?"

"We'll explain," she soothed. "Or your morphont companion can tell you. But for now, you must rest. You're at the end of your strength, and your physiology's not been augmented to support the restoratives we'd like to give you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just rest."

Leal leaned her chin on her hand, and closed her eyes. She could sense Eustace Loll moving about, though she could neither see nor hear him. Her suspicion was like Hayden Griffin's fabled radar, telling her that he must be speaking to Maerta and her kin, ingratiating, lulling. There were two sides to the story of how Leal and her people had come to be here, and Loll would never let her version go uncontested.

She should be defying his story with her own, but she hadn't the strength. When someone put a bowl in her hands, she ate, and then she lay back and the couch/chair accommodated her and was very comfortable; and she slept.

* * *

IT WAS TWOhours before Keir could convince Gallard that he'd finished all his work--that, indeed, he'd done it before ducking out earlier. Pleading exhaustion at the adventures of the afternoon, he swore that he would go straight to his room and not venture forth for the remainder of the day. Fuming a scry cloud of virtual sighs and annoyance glyphs, Gallard agreed, and Keir headed out.

He knew the way, of course, but walking these corridors would never become familiar. If the city of Brink had possessed an air of abandonment, he might have been able to imagine that he was investigating someplace lost and mysterious--disturbing the ghosts of people who might have once crisscrossed these bleak gothic corridors in previous lifetimes. But Brink had never been inhabited. It wasn't strictly a city at all, rather a variety of morphont called a metropoloid . Its ancestors had been true, inhabited cities, but Brink was part of an evolutionary offshoot that had lost some of the defining traits of a true urban space. Traits like plumbing, and lights, and elevators with doors.

The blank facades and grasping towers didn't sum to a place at all, but to a wilderness, one that he was desperate to escape from.

He hesitated in the doorway to his oddly angled room. This was definitely not where he wanted to be; but he didn't know where else to go. He sat at the desk.

He stood.

He walked to the sartorius, which proffered clothing, exoskeleton parts, and other extensions as he approached.

Turning away from that, he fell backward and let the bed catch him. For a few minutes he just lay there as his dragonflies zipped in a restless cloud from door to ceiling to floor and back.

The sounds of distant conversation filtered in through the chamber's narrow windows--echoes of voices from the Hall, including Maspeth's anxious tones. He sat up, wrapped his fingers around his skull, and bent his head over his knees.

A gentle knock came from the doorway. He wanted nothing more than to tell whoever it was to go away, but instead he heard himself say, "Come." Maerta stepped in, in her second body, and came to sit on the bed next to him. Her scry was muted, only a few faint glyphs twirling near her ears. She was carrying something heavy, and now she moved to set it on the floor by the bed.

It was the brick--the Mighty Brick, now stripped of its agencies and protective devices. "Ah," said Keir, gazing at it mournfully. "You killed it."

"We found it near a rather grouchy ornithopter. That one claimed you were starving it to death."

He shrugged, but he couldn't look her in the eye. He'd drawn his own scry all the way in, leaving him bare of context.

"Keir," she said softly, "what were you doing with these things?"

His restless fingers tangled together. "I--I don't know." Now he did look at her directly. "I mean that. I know I made this," he pointed at the brick, "but I don't know what it is."

"That I can answer," she said. "You and Gallard were studying embodiment a few weeks back. To have a body is, well, almost a sacred thing, no? --To us, I mean. It's what separates us, and our allies like the oaks and the morphonts, from things like the creature that was chasing Leal Maspeth and her friends." She nudged the brick with her toe. "Having a body, even if it's a block of dumb stone, anchors the mind and its values. We're fighting to keep our anchors, all of us, and none more so than the people who live in Virga. Even if they don't know it.

"I'm pretty sure you made the Mighty Brick to remind yourself of these things."

"Then why did I forget?"

She shook her head. "I don't--"

"Stop lying to me! You do know."

She was silent for a moment, and he felt a small sense of triumph at having scored a point in their ongoing argument--because, before today, he hadn't even been sure himself that something was wrong. Now he had proof, in the form of those lines scratched next to the door a kilometer below the Hall.

"Keir," she said slowly, "why did you grow that aircraft?" He looked away, but she put a hand on his shoulder. "Where were you going to go?"

"I don't know."

"You didn't have someone in specific you were going to look for?"

That was an odd question; he looked at her for the first time. "No. Who would I have to look for?"

"Sita?"

He didn't recognize the name, and shook his head, confused. Scry gave no hint as to who this Sita might be, either. Somehow his incomprehension satisfied Maerta, who took away her hand and sighed.

"I'm not a real boy, am I?" he asked her. "The other kids are growing up, but I'm growing down . Getting shorter, stupider. Forgetting things--like, like this Sita whoever. Why? What's happening to me?"

She looked him in the eye. "Keir, you have to trust me when I say I can't tell you."