Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

"Admiral, you're looking at the great secret that divides the morphonts and the virtual. The virtual take everything as raw material for their creativity--even their own memories and identities. They have no root. They have no attachment to the physical world or any piece of that world. This oak does. It is its embodiment that makes it like us. That is what makes it our ally..."

He trailed off, hand still raised to nearly touch the oak. Being in the presence of the oak was bringing back memories. He remembered an oak visiting Brink, shortly before he'd de-indexed himself. Something about a warning ...

"Chen?"

He blinked and looked to where Admiral Fanning was frowning down at the other visitor. It sat on its little wooden cart, glittering tail coiled around its front paws, staring enigmatically into the distance. He could see the faint white strands of nanofiber that tied together its sculpted iron muscles and limbs.

"It's a cheetah," he said, walking up to it and looking into its gigantic green eyes. "A beautiful piece." He glanced at Travis. "You've seen it in motion."

The officer nodded. "Admiral, it talked. It's a new emissary from the ... the people who contacted Maspeth. This one is empowered to negotiate and its word will be binding."

"But it's not moving."

"Candesce," said Keir. "We're too close. To wake these two up, we'll have to bring them back near the skin of the world. You should have held this meeting there to begin with."

Fanning ran a hand through his hair. "They wouldn't have come. They'd have thought it was a trap. And they won't go now. This is a disaster."

Keir straightened. "No, it's a beginning." He stepped close to the admiral. "Sir, I lost my own wife to the virtuals. I will not see any hesitation or doubt among those who stand with me against it."

Fanning's eyes widened. Keir finally knew who he'd been before the de-indexing and his neotenization. Right now he saw in Fanning a young man, still inexperienced in many things--a technological and philosophical primitive who was preparing to hurl spears at starships.

"Guard these two, but do not touch them," he told the assembled soldiers. "Let no one know they're here as yet. Not one word ," he emphasized, looming over the gardener who'd had the temerity to wave his shears at the oak. "All our lives depend on them."

He walked away, aware that Fanning was staring after him. He'd thought Keir was a boy; well, so had Keir himself. It was time to lay that illusion aside.

Yes, he remembered the oak's visit now. It might even have been this one. It had come to warn the Renaissance of some imminent danger, but what that was remained tantalizingly out of reach.

Keir did remember, though, how he'd been feeling just before it arrived. He'd been excited--no, far more than that: triumphant. He recalled savage satisfaction, an aesthetic sense of rightness, and how he'd used his scry to banish sleep for night after night as he'd worked out the final details of what he was going to present to the others. And then, when the oak came, fear ...

To de-index himself, he'd wandered far into the labyrinth of Brink, into empty quarters no one had yet explored. His second body had plodded behind him, towing something massive and unwieldy ... a manufacturing fab, that was it. But why just the fab? They were always attached to an Edisonian; there was no other source for the designs they used.

In darkness lit only by the eyes of his second body, he had built something. And then he'd given instructions to that other body, and as he'd laid down and fallen asleep, it had raised surgical hands that held a gleaming something ...

Pulse.

Now, on the edge of the grove in Aurora's great gardens, he stopped. Something had changed the moment he'd seen the oak, but it was so quiet, so unexpected, that he hadn't even registered it consciously.

Pulse. There it was again. He closed his eyes and waited.

Pulse.

His scry was awake.

"There you are!"

He opened his eyes, blinking at another incongruity--a voice that he shouldn't be hearing inside Virga at all. Disoriented, Keir looked around at the crowd of haughty nobles, prime ministers and presidents, diplomats and retainers. One figure was walking straight through them all, hand extended, a broad smile on his face.

It was Gallard, his tutor from Brink.

19

AS THE LIGHTfrom his sun faded toward dusk, Hayden Griffin could be seen climbing the broad steps to the gallery overlooking the gardens. He turned to face the sun, as he had that morning, and then stood stock-still, a statue of himself.

A few minutes later, Leal walked up, carrying two wineglasses. "Are you doing that on purpose?" she asked as she came to stand next to him.

He blinked and looked down at her. "Doing what?"

"Looking heroic."

He seemed to notice the crowd below for the first time. Many faces were turned to look at him, and some people were leaning together to talk, clearly telling stories about the sun lighter. "Ah," he said, embarrassed suddenly. "No, it's just this spot has a decent eyeline. I was checking the twilight calibration."

"Of course you were," she said smoothly, handing him one of the glasses. "But you wouldn't be so intimidating to all those fine, eligible young women down there if you did it with this in your hand."

Now his eyes widened in surprise. "I mean," she said, "you're not actually trying to scare them away, are you?"

Uncomfortable, he sipped at the wine. "I don't know how to play this game," he admitted finally. "Damnit, now I've forgotten the flicker rate."

"That's a good first step." Her gaze drifted across the people below, then stopped. Her smile faded.

Hayden noticed. "We ran rings around them once before," he said, nodding to the Abyssal soldiers waiting at the foot of the steps. "And if worse comes to worst, there's a hundred noblemen down there who would happily shoot them for a chance to talk to you." Now it was her turn to look startled, and his to grin. "... Or hadn't you noticed that ?"

Behind where the stage had stood this morning, workmen had finished dismantling a brand-new fountain in the center of the diamond-shaped plaza that served as the foyer to the gardens. They were levering slabs of paving stone in to replace it, and a small orchestra had begun tuning up in one corner of the diamond.

"I do believe we're having a ball," said Hayden dryly. "I hate these things."

"You just haven't attended one with the right partner," she countered.

"Speaking of which, where's your young man? Keir?"

"He's not as young as he looks. And I don't know. I haven't seen him since this afternoon." She frowned. "He's probably inspecting the wheel's buttresses or something. He's as much an engineer as you are."

"You say that as if it were a bad thing." He cocked his arm for her to hold and they began to stroll down the steps.

"You're both boys when you do that. Be a man for the evening."

His brows wrinkled with worry. "Is that going to involve dancing?"

"I fear it may." She smiled at Eustace Loll's goons as they passed them.

"I'll dance if you'll wear a gown."

"Cheeky! --Oh, all right."

They entered the swirl of color and waistcoats and jewelery as, unnoticed, Hayden's sun faded into nightly slumber overhead.

* * *

DINNER HAD BEENserved. Jugglers and acrobats had flown and tossed one another across the dance floor. As they pranced away Antaea saw the delegates looking askance at one another. Despite the best efforts of their hosts, they had not come to form any sort of community during the day. They were here because they agreed there might be a threat to Virga that the Home Guard couldn't deal with alone. Beyond that, they were suspicious.