Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

Keir hung back, in the shadows, watching the grown-ups inspect the new flying machine. This one was different from his ornithopter--naturally, since the Edisonians evolved each object from scratch.

"What are the air bags for?" Maspeth asked. With her were Minister Loll, Piero Harper, and several other "airmen."

Maerta frowned. "I don't know. --We often don't know the inner workings of the devices the Edisonians make. You could ask one of them, but they might not know, either; since they merely evolve the designs, they don't need to comprehend them."

"Lift," said Keir without thinking. They both turned to look for him, and he reluctantly stepped out of the shadows.

"The bags will probably hold hydrogen," he said, "which is lighter than air. So they'll carry you up, at least until you reach the freefall zone."

"Keir knows something about flying machines," said Maerta with no trace of irony or malice. "He has one of his own." And she nodded to where his ornithopter sat preening its metal feathers in a distant corner of the courtyard.

"Oh, do you fly?" asked Harper. Keir regretted having spoken, and shuffled his feet.

"Not yet," he said curtly.

"You're wise to start slow." Harper grinned. "Flying under gravity's no mean feat. We learned that the hard way."

Keir's scry was telling him to disengage from this conversation. That was probably Maerta's fault; she didn't want him to socialize with the strangers, even though he'd saved their lives and they were clearly grateful. Keir knew his own scry was registering his anger to her and the other Renaissance people nearby, but he kept his face composed as he bowed to the Virgans. "Yes ... if you'll excuse me?" He walked away.

"We'll be able to ferry the rest of our men up from the surface in these?" said Leal Maspeth behind him--but she was watching him go. He could see that through his dragonflies.

He wondered what his scry would tell hers if she had it; it was frustrating that she had none. Scry was useful, because it made explicit the implicit. It interpreted your unconscious thoughts and motives, and communicated those to the scry of the people around you. This took the guesswork out of social relations; or at any rate, Keir's tutors said that was its original function. Like anything else that actually survived in the real world, it had evolved.

Scry was said to predate Artificial Nature. If that were the case, then the original scry technology had been thought up and designed, maybe even by human minds. Some idealist, perhaps, had believed that human society would function more efficiently if people's unconscious minds coordinated their efforts.

Feeling isolated and lonely, he went to his ornithopter and knelt next to it. "How are you?" he asked it.

"Ready," it said. Keir sighed in annoyance and stood up again.

"Ahem." He looked around to find the Virgan government minister, Eustace Loll, standing a polite distance away. Maerta's bots had fixed his broken leg, and he'd seemed pathetically grateful, as if he hadn't expected such a basic courtesy from his hosts.

Of all the Virgans, only Loll seemed to sense the scry around him. He couldn't actually see the emoticons and assessment tags that hovered virtually around everybody and everything here--but he somehow acted like he could. Maerta and the others had warmed up to him very quickly, yet Keir's scry told him that Maspeth didn't trust him.

Maspeth, however, wasn't anywhere to be seen. None of the Virgans were in the courtyard anymore, except for Loll.

He bowed. "Keir Chen, may I talk to you for a minute?"

"Certainly, Minister. I'm done here anyway." Keir didn't know what a "minister" was, but the title came attached to Loll, so he used it.

Loll appeared to like being addressed this way. He peered up at the black sky above the courtyard, then smiled and shook his head. "I confess, I find it strange that your people claim not to understand the very flying machine they're building for us."

Keir shrugged. "Nobody understands machines. We just use 'em. And if we're not careful, we get used by 'em."

Loll's laugh was rich and comradely. He reached out to pat the ornithopter's wing. "So who uses who, in this particular relationship?"

"Oh, it's not very bright and it doesn't think for itself," he said.

"Yet it does what you tell it to?"

Keir nodded. "You can command it, yes. Or use the hand controls, but I still haven't got the hang of it."

Loll mused, rubbing his large chin. "Yet, I should think I'd feel guilty, ordering such a creature around. It may only be a beast of burden, but ... perhaps I can sympathize with it on that level."

"How are you a beast of burden, Minister?" he asked after a conspicuous and awkward silence.

"Oh! Well, I've had to carry heavy loads before. Mostly policy, you know." Loll shrugged. "And responsibility. I don't know how it is in your world, Keir Chen, but in mine we have to take individual responsibility for the welfare of people we may never meet. That's what I've done all my life. It's a calling, really. I help care for people who may not have the resources or information to make certain kinds of decisions for themselves. That's what we call 'government.' I gather you don't have that here."

"Government? No. Responsibility? Sure."

"Ah, then maybe you'll understand my ... distress ... at the current situation."

"Your being stranded here? I guess you've got people waiting for you back home," he said, a little enviously. "A family?"

Loll shook his head. "A city--actually, a whole country whose fate may rest on my ability to reach them in time with a warning."

"Is that why you were out here?"

Loll looked uncomfortable. "Yes, though--it pains me to say this--we've been told not to talk about the details to any outsiders. By that creature Professor Maspeth calls the 'emissary.'"

"The morphont?" Keir's scry was trying to read Loll by the man's stance, blood perfusion, eye movements, and so on. It wasn't having any success--no extra emoticons were floating around Loll that weren't already obvious from the tone of his voice and expression. Either he had fabulous self-control, or he was telling the truth. "It looked like a servant," said Keir. "When I saw it on the mountainside, it was just helping you stay on your feet."

"It wouldn't show its other side to you, naturally." Loll looked grieved. "It's a creature we know very little about. You've seen that little rider it has perched on Maspeth's shoulder? It's impossible to talk to her without it listening. Impossible for her to say what she really means without it hearing, as well. It's using her as its mouthpiece and it wants to get that mouthpiece into Virga to deliver an ultimatum to my people." He glanced around. "We can only tell you this now because, for the moment, it's elsewhere."

Keir hid his surprise and sudden curiosity behind a noncommittal "Hmm.

"It's a morphont, though," he added, "so it could hide any sort of mind in its bodies. You can't judge them by how they look, so I guess I can't tell you what to expect, either. If you're asking us to help you in any way regarding it, I'm not sure what we can do."

Loll gestured impatiently at the half-grown aircraft. "You have power! It seems to me that the people of this world can do anything you want." He rubbed his forehead. "Sorry. It's just the strain of this march we've been forced to undertake. --Make no mistake, we all want to get home, and as quickly as possible. We don't even mind the emissary delivering its message. But our people need to be warned in advance. They need to be prepared. And all this time, as we've walked and walked in its company, it seemed impossible that we could send anyone on ahead. Until now."

Keir glanced at a scry summary. "The airship will be ready in a couple of days--"