Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

He swallowed, feeling the panic starting to return. "I'm leaving," he said; then, realizing that he hadn't yet talked to the Virgans about it, he turned to them. "If you'll have me."

Leal and Piero glanced at one another. "We would," said Leal, "but it's not for us to decide."

Maerta shook her head. "It's too soon, Keir. There's no telling what will happen to you if you enter Candesce's influence before the process is complete."

"What process?" He wanted to tear at his hair in frustrated anger. "What's happening to me," he demanded, "and who did it?"

Maerta opened her mouth, closed it, and for the first time, looked genuinely distressed. "Keir," she said hesitantly. "You're ... Dear, you're de-indexing. And ... you did it to yourself."

De-indexing? He polled scry, but the data was inaccessible--doubtless one of Maerta's "child-proofing" locks. He shook his head in confusion.

"I don't understand! None of this is making any sense." He backed toward the glass passage that led out of the city. "But you can't keep me here. I won't stay."

"It's suicide!" Maerta appealed to the Virgans. "Hasn't he told you what's waiting on the other side of the door? Stay here, we'll keep you safe until we come up with a better option."

To Keir's relief, Leal shook her head with a frown. "I have to deliver my message. I'm overdue."

Maerta took an angry step in Keir's direction; he backed away. "What message could be so important that you'll risk your own lives to bring it back to Virga?"

Leal just stared at her in disbelief. From the look on her face, Keir expected some outburst from her, but what she said was "I've been wondering something ever since we arrived here, Maerta.

"How is that you and your people are still human?"

Maerta said nothing.

"You're not from Virga," Leal went on. "Keir said he's from a planet named Revelation. Are you as well?" Guardedly, Maerta nodded. "And is Revelation within Artificial Nature?"

Another nod.

"Yet you fled here. You're hiding here. From what? What happened on Revelation?"

Maerta looked at Keir, then away. Finally she said, "Revelation was ... a little bubble of humanity in the larger universe. Outside of the arena, you understand, where truces hold between the various forces that contend inside A.N. Then ... the balance of power shifted, several years ago. Revelation's protection evaporated. The planet ... fell.

"We came here because Brink was an obscure place, a secret place, and right next to Virga."

"You came to study Candesce," said Leal.

"Yes. To try to find a way to defend ourselves."

"Then let us go," Leal commanded, "because you are not the only ones with this goal. And if I succeed, I may be able to give you direct access to Candesce, to study it from the inside. --And besides," she added, "if you can rescue the rest of our people from the plains below the city, they can stop this assault. Half of them are Home Guard people, anyway; if the others try to land they'll put a stop to whatever lies Loll's told to incite them. Take care of them, and I promise you, we will take care of Keir Chen."

Maerta looked at Keir. Again he held her gaze defiantly. Her shoulders slumped. "Then go," she said. "And yes, Leal, we'll find your men."

Keir turned and, without a look back, raced up the crystal passage that led from Aethyr, Brink, and Complication Hall to Virga.

* * *

FOR A FEWminutes, Leal thought they would make it. Yet as the mysterious blockhouse that hung in the precise black between the worlds came nearer, she heard muttering among her companions; Piero and the other men were slowing. Leal peered ahead, and she, too, faltered.

John Tarvey was waiting for them at the end of the crystal tunnel.

The lads were drawing their guns, both the ones they'd brought and the new ones Keir Chen's people had made for them. Tarvey just stood there, his hands up and his face half-turned aside--not a gesture of surrender, but a pose that said hear me out.

Keir had come abreast of Leal and now he sent her an uneasy frown. She guessed what he was thinking. They could go back; he could summon his people to help. She shook her head minutely. If the firepower they had with them wasn't sufficient to deal with this thing that had taken on the shape of her friend, whatever force would be enough might also be enough to shatter the crystal tube, and kill them all through exposure to the vacuum.

She brought her party to a halt about thirty feet from the creature. "We shot you before," she shouted. "What makes you think we won't do it again?"

"I'm absolutely sure you will," he said. Still with his hands up, he continued, "But I'm not out to stop you. I can help."

The lads exchanged suspicious glances; then their eyes turned to Leal. She moistened her lips and thought about what to say. "What do you mean?" was all she could finally summon.

"We can end that primitive bombardment that's threatening your friends," said Tarvey. "It's just chemical weapons, after all--primitive airships. They could be swept aside in seconds. All I have to do is make the call."

"Make the call?" She shook her head, uncomprehending. "To who? Who's this 'we' you're talking about? I thought we were your friends."

A look of distress flickered across his face then, to be quickly erased by the uncanny serenity that was so unlike the John Tarvey she knew. "You know us as the virtuals," he said. "We're a vast and ancient civilization--the inheritors of humanity's original spark of consciousness. And we want to help you."

"We don't want your help!" shouted Piero Harper. He raised his pistol. "Stand aside. Now!"

Leal touched her hand to Piero's wrist. "Wait," she said. "Tarvey, we don't need the help of the virtuals right now. But we could use your help."

Tarvey tilted his head to one side, minutely. "What?" he asked.

"You said that all you have to do is make the call." She had some notion of what that meant: there had been telephone stations on some street corners in Sere. You could pay the vendor and shout into the staticky roar of the handset, and with luck make out the gist of what the person on the other end was saying. Here, where Candesce's influence was barely felt, such long-distance communication must be easy. "Do you mean to say that you haven't yet told this civilization of yours what's happening here?"

Now it was Tarvey's turn to look suspicious. "They know I've been following you. They know about Brink."

"But do they know about this ?" She nodded at the blockhouse behind him.

Tarvey looked aloof. "I can't find any record of this door, but--"

"Don't. In the name of the friendship we had, John, I beg this of you. If it's in your power to hide this door from your ... friends ... if you can do that, then you can help. You. Not Artificial Nature, John. You."

He slowly lowered his chin, and she could see he was troubled. "All I want," he said, "is that you not die. That we can be ... together."

Leal felt a prickle down the back of her neck at the sudden realization of what he was offering. When John said not die , he meant never die . --And that would have been the most wonderful of offers she could ever have heard, were it not for one thing: his reasons.

"John," she said with quiet sadness, "I can't help you now."

He looked up again, and she saw it in his eyes: the prospect of an eternity outside of Virga, of outliving his friends, his family, his country and even the language of his birth. The loneliness of the image made her shudder. If such loneliness was possible, Leal didn't want to be immortal.

"Please," she said again. "Do this for us. For what you once were. And for what we still are."

John Tarvey crossed his arms and, with the slightest push of his toe against the crystal, drifted to the side. Leal and her lads filed past him, until all that was left to him was silence.