Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

Some of the objects scattered around the floor would be recognizable to anyone living in Artificial Nature. There were the usual microrefineries, ecosyms, Edisonians to imagine new designs, and fabs to build anything you might want. Most of these were in turn made out of black utility fog that had taken these forms only temporarily.

Standardization didn't exist outside Virga; it was a primitive thing, a signal of the inefficiencies of pre-Edisonian manufacturing. Keir had been learning lately that things were different inside Virga, though: There, they still had factories, and things called designs that told you how to duplicate a machine you'd already built. Designs could be read and understood by human beings--an extraordinary idea.

If Maspeth and her people looked around Complication Hall they could easily see dozens of identical devices and objects, many of them showing signs of having been put together by human hands. They might see these things, but would they recognize how unusual they were? To have more than one of something, and to be able to build more yourself ... in Keir's world, these were astonishing, even frightening anomalies.

But no--as Keir entered with his refugees, it was other details that caught their attention. People began popping out from behind partitions and curtains scattered around the place. He was disappointed to see that nearly all of them were second bodies; what kind of invasion did they think he was mounting?

Here came Maerta, conspicuously in her own stocky, dark-skinned body. Her clothing was shuffling, watching pupil dilation and other indicators in the visitors as his own had on the hillside. In short order it had adjusted itself into conservative garb that would seem neutral, if not familiar, to these people from Virga. Some of the other people were undergoing similar transformations, but those encased in glittering exoskeletons or half-visible under swirling dragonflies had no hope of looking familiar. Sure enough, the Virgans stumbled to a halt, closing ranks and muttering in alarm as they were surrounded by dozens of shambling, dancing, or plodding figures of various degrees of humanity.

"Don't be alarmed," said Maerta, striding forward with her hand outstretched and a welcoming smile on her face. "I'm afraid you've caught us in our work clothes today." She shook Maspeth's hand, and then, as the man stepped in between them, Eustace Loll's. "Keir warned us that you're tired and hungry. I've got a nice stew on the boil over here, why don't you come and sit down?"

They didn't take much persuading, especially when Maerta made shooing motions at the others and they mostly retreated back to their workstations. With Keir's reassurance that nothing dangerous was happening, the bigger exoskeletons retreated and those wearing them sent proxy bodies in their stead. Soon the floor was empty of all but human-appearing people. The Virgans slumped with relief onto some benches behind one of the material partitions, and Maerta began serving soup.

"It's lucky that Keir spotted you," she was saying; as she said this out loud, she glyphed a message at Keir's scry: Why weren't you in class?

"Just lucky, I guess," he said with a grin. "I'm often looking in the wrong direction at the right time."

Maerta's own smile faltered, and behind her he noticed a couple of the other grown-ups exchange glances. What did that mean? He'd just been making a joke.

Maspeth said, "We owe him our lives," and the look she sent Keir wiped every other consideration out of his mind. "We were at the end of our strength," she went on, "and with the avalanches ... we wouldn't have made it to the city without his help."

Maerta looked pleased, and for a tiny moment Keir thought that things would end here. But--"There he is!"--he turned and here came Gallard, who was the kids' designated teacher, and as humorless and unforgiving as any adult he'd known.

Gallard's face had all the anonymous perfection of his people; he was from the inner reaches of Vega, where the virtuals ruled and body-swapping was common. As usual, he was surrounded by a cloud of glyphs and emoticons, so many of so many types that Keir could never tell what he was thinking. "Where did you get to?" he asked as he strode across the stone floor to glower down at Keir. "--I know, I know, you were on the slopes. But what conceivable reason could you have had for that?"

Keir's scry flashed all kinds of red warnings, but they didn't stop him from blurting, "Better company?"

Gallard's face didn't change, but his icon cloud scowled at Keir. He appealed to Maerta. "He's out of control. You see what I have to put up with?"

Keir found his ears becoming hot as he realized that Leal Maspeth was watching this exchange with interest. "I'm sorry," he said, trying to be adult about it all. "It won't happen again."

"You've said that before. Maerta--"

She held up a hand. "I'll talk to him, Gallard. Maybe some discipline is in order. For now, I'm grateful that he helped these travelers. It was something he didn't have to do, especially if he knew how you'd react."

Gallard glanced over at the Virgans with disinterest, then turned back to Keir. "Come on. You have a simulation to finish."

"Maerta--" But she shook her head at him.

"Go on, Keir. We'll discuss your absence later."

Even more acutely embarrassed, he snuck a glance at Maspeth, who was actually grinning! "It's good to see that some things never change," she said. Then she added in a sympathetic tone to Gallard, "I'm a teacher, too."

"Come, Keir." He strode away without acknowledging Maspeth's comment. Keir shrugged at her, ducked his head to Maerta while firing a cloud of apology glyphs at her scry, then hurried after his tutor.

* * *

"REST, PLEASE," INSISTEDthe woman Keir Chen had introduced as Maerta. "You're safe now." She was matronly, of apparent middle age, but Leal had learned lately to be wary of appearances in the world outside Virga. Maerta's twin sister was handing out bowls of broth to Leal's men, who sat or lay in various exhausted poses on a well-lit stone floor.

"Thank you, but I'm not sure we are safe," Leal said. She was aware that she was shifting from foot to foot, looking around herself nervously. They might well have gone from the frying pan into the fire; Keir Chen's people didn't all look human. Some were huge and hulking, with hydraulic lines and metal spars intertwining the flesh of their arms. Others were whiskered and coiffed with silvery antennae that turned and swerved as they looked about. Some were entirely metal, and multi-armed. And now that she was noticing things, she realized that Maerta and her sister were not the only twins in this huge room. She counted at least five other pairs in her first glance around.

Keir Chen had called this place Complication Hall. Apparently it was the only inhabited spot in the city. The Hall was a cathedral-sized space, built in a cross shape and complete with a vast, backlit rose window at its far end. Its pillared sides rose seventy meters into the architectural insanity that may have given the place its name: a frozen explosion of arches, cornices, footings, and crenellations all toppled over one another in a narrowing gyre whose ultimate ceiling was lost in mazey detail. At least the floor was level. Its polished surface hosted heaps of boxes, sleeping and living areas behind partitions, and many strange silvery forestlike growths of machinery. For Leal, only the brown stone floors, the pervasive shadows, and the smell of cooking food were familiar.

Maerta smiled knowingly now and nodded up at the strange ceiling. "Brink is immune to avalanches," she said. "In the five years we've been here, not one roof has broken."

"It's not avalanches I'm worried about." Leal bit her lip, unsure of what to say; then she blurted, "We were followed."