She remembered something Pando had said.
I told Ito his own story.
She shivered.
Marius pointed out the various ways through the world. Ito’s led up through the Eagle, into the mountains, directly to Kronus. The encroaching Blue army was like the lobes of a brain.
“Meanwhile, we go east, under cover of the deep places, and deliver you to his backdoor.”
“Me?”
“Yes. And the Ride of the Spinifex Reach.”
“Great,” said Box.
“By the impossible crossing?” asked Amelia Chance.
“Not so impossible,” said Marius.
He pointed out a region of the map, marked with a jumble of blue and white ridges. “The ice in the Gyre,” he said. “There, the field rotates. The theory is no one can escape it.”
“Wonderful,” said Box.
“It’s only a story,” he said. “It’s been done. We have here a person who’s done it.”
Magda’s haberdashery store was an ant’s nest of rooms, in the furthest basement of the Chancery. She was a Horu of a venerable age: the oldest person in this world Box had seen. Her rheumy blue eyes had an unblinking stare, like she was gazing into an infinite distance.
“You’re not the first to ask,” she said.
“Oh, who else?” said Marius. He used the voice the young keep for the old. Box reminded herself that Magda could be half the age of the universe.
“That sweet girl with the big imagination. Cities of glass. Ships made of light. I wish I could dream of such things.”
“Maybe you will,” said Box.
“No,” she said. “I’ve grown comfortable here. Adventure belongs to the young, like Marius here. People with fire in their souls. Do you think she found her way, the girl?”
“I know it,” said Marius.
“Where is she now, do you think?”
Box looked at Marius, who nodded. “She’s reconnoitering the Enemy,” he said.
“She’s fighting him,” said Box.
“Alone?”
“No, she’s with Viki of this Ride,” said Marius, “and Iris of the Eagle.”
“Viki. I know her. A tearaway child. What of that bat, Helen?”
“The armies of the West are on the move.”
“A frontal attack on his force?”
“A misdirection. The real attack will come from the east. That’s why we’re here. To learn the way.”
“In the east? Very good. If the fly won’t come to the web, take the web to the fly,” she said.
“Will you help us?” asked Box.
“It won’t be easy,” she said. “You see, the ice first has to admit you.”
She motioned them to sit. “I’ll tell you a story,” she said. “I was once an explorer. I first mapped the haunted forest. That map you have there, that’s mine. I met the ghost, a most delightful man, if somewhat unusual looking.”
“You could see, then?” asked Box.
“I was born blind, you know, but I’m a farseer. When I was young, I explored in my dreams. My body stayed here, while the rest of me travelled.” She made them fragrant tea in bowls, like the tea in the Mousehole. She moved with the deft exactness of the blind in their homes.
“I know the top of the world,” she said. “And the spiraling ice. I remember it well. I tried to cross it myself, many times, but those dreams always ended in silence. I woke up, unedified. Then I met Yowl of the ways. He was an ice giant, a being of mythos, but good-natured, and kind to a traveling woman. He said he’d be my spirit guide. He promised to take me through in safety, and he did. I came out the other side, and found my way home, where I was no longer sleeping.”
“East to west?”
“Oh yes. East to west, it’s impassable. West to east, it’s invisible.”
“Why is that?” asked Box.
“I believe because it’s an escape route from this place. A rupture, where something came through, now guarded.”
“What came through?”
“That’s a good question.”
“So, we have to find Yowl?”
“Or his son, Yewi.”
“How?”
“Present yourselves there. If they want, they’ll admit you.”
“Where, exactly?” asked Marius.
She led them to a smaller room, little more than a desk in a cupboard, filled with boxes and the oily parts of sewing machines, and felt her way through a pile of papers. She found a map, like Marius’s map of the helix. Unlike Marius’s map, it was densely packed with numbers. Hopf numbers. She pointed one out with a bone-steady finger.
“Go precisely there,” she said. “I do mean precisely. These numbers are accurate to within a few meters.”
“Magda,” said Box. “Aren’t those spacetime coordinates? Don’t they include a time?”
“They do. You also have to be there at the exact time specified.”
“Which is when?” asked Marius.
“First light in the Gyre, three days from now,” she said.
“By what clock,” asked Box.
Magda smiled and tapped the side of her head.
“How do you know this?” asked Box.
The old woman shrugged. “Who can explain prophecy?”
“One last thing,” she said, turning to Box. “I like to think that all my dream explorers are out there, still exploring. If you should meet one, say hello from me.”
“I will,” said Box.
“Oh, and when the girl returns, send her here for more dresses. I want to hear more of her stories. Cities of glass. How unbelievable.”
Brin had taken a liking to Alis, who was now sporting cropped hair, to match Brin’s new buzzcut. They’d become lovers.
“You look radiant,” said Box. “Both of you do.”
Not just radiant, but radiantly happy. Love suited Brin, she thought. Love and struggle. Alis could see it as well. She had the self-satisfied air of a muse.
Box had resumed her Po training, as much to clear her mind as learn new skills. Brin was showing her the second form of Po, called the Arcana. It was the art of deception. Alis was trying to guess who Brin was pretending to be.
At first Brin floated like air. Where Alis struck, she wasn’t.
“You’re the Prophet,” she said, and Brin nodded.
“Now you,” said Brin to Box.
Box laughed, and feigned a catlike way of moving, with the hint of a snarl on her face.
“You’re Brin,” said Alis.
“No,” said Brin. “She’s Pax.”
Brin explained that Po was a syncretic art. “A Po exponent should know how to pass for a Denebian streetfighter, or an Earth kickboxer, and everything in between. What we learn, we can use. You can’t be deceptive if you can only play Po.”
She squared up to Box, and snuck a kick through her defenses.
“You’re the Red Lady,” said Alis.
“No,” she said. “I’m myself, before I learnt Po.” They laughed. Box liked this new, relaxed Brin. She also liked the soldier, coiled under the surface.
“Now you,” said Brin.
“Me?” asked Alis.
“Is your head cured?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t hit you in it.”
Alis took to the ring. She was an athlete like Brin, although a less confident one. Box knew she was still feeling the effects of the crippling blow.
“I have to pretend?” she said.
“Yes,” said Brin.
She marched in, in a flurry of wild punches, one of which landed, causing Brin to leap back out of her reach.
“That’s easy,” said Box. “You’re Marius.”
“Or the monkey,” said Brin, rubbing her cheekbone.
Alis started again, this time warily circling the perimeter, taking care not to step in the ring, then she stepped behind Box.
“What’s that?” asked Brin.
“It’s the Horu way of fighting,” said Alis.
&n
bsp; Ito had taken to prowling, moving from shadow to shadow, trapped by the Chancery walls. Box was shocked, not by Ito but for him. He had a hunted look, that made her feel broken. She was physically prevented from visiting his rooms, for her own sake, Marius said. There was a locked door, and the rider on guard wouldn’t admit her. Finally, Marius relented.
“Ito’s asked for you,” he said.
Ito didn’t seem ill that night, but he didn’t look healthy. He was a far cry from the healthy outdoorsman she’d met on the Pnyx. He’d lost weight, and his beard had grown in. He was starting to resemble Brin’s description of Kronus: bright-eyed and bushy-faced, a holy madman.
Marius had told her that Ito now had the recurring delusion of being Kronus himself. He thought the Enemy was reaching in, through him, into this place, like an intruder reaching in through a window.
It was Ito’s task to protect them.
From himself, if need be.
One man, alone with God, was how he described it.
Just him, and the disease.
“Hey,” she said.
“Did I show you this?” he replied, as though continuing a conversation. He pointed out the words on the wall. Love. Honor. Duty. Peace.
She nodded.
“Pax calls it the story of the soldier. Four pillars, to build a life by. Live by the first three, and the fourth will be yours.”
“Kitou told me,” she said. “Does it work?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m at peace.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“You’re still angry at me.”
“No,” she sighed. “I’m over that now.”
He kissed her on the lips. “Are you afraid?” he asked.
“Of course I’m afraid. What do you think?”
“Don’t be. The game is afoot. You have nothing to fear now.”
“I’m afraid for you.”
“I have nothing to fear.”
“I wish it was true.”
He sighed. “Ophelia, I have a job for you.”
“What?”
“Bear witness.”
“A witness to what?”
“To my life. To my death, if it comes to that. I must tell you more about the disease.”
“Hear your confession?”
He shook his head. “It’s not a confession.”
He took her to bed. They had sex. It was good sex. There was nothing mad about him in bed. He was just Ito.
“Imagine a thought like a virus,” he said, after the lovemaking. “A thought so wrong, but so right, that you can’t get it out of your head. It bends your mind so far, it won’t come back again. That’s how the cryptovirus feels.”
“At first I thought it was a diversion. Something to distract us from Fluxor. Maybe it worked. Maybe it did. Fluxor was left undefended. Only later did I realize that Fluxor was the diversion, but by then it was too late. Here I was, locked in the Fa:ing creation myth.
“Then I experienced the first symptoms of the disease.
“I can’t begin to describe how ecstatic it is. The most extraordinary rushes of bliss. But now I see the virus itself is the Enemy, and Kronus its victim. I haven’t decided that lightly. I have no affection for him. He’s a monster. A sociopathic killer. A world killer. But it fits all the facts.
He stood and started to pace.
“I believe the Horu gave it to him,” he said. “The ones we call Greys.”
“What? Deliberately?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why would they do that?”
“For the same reason we have weapons of mass destruction. Because they were in a war. Because they were infected by it themselves. Because they were sociopaths. Because they were monsters. Because that’s how it works.”
“They engineered it?”
“Or they found it. Or it found them. I think the exterior evil that invaded Kronus was us.”
“Do the Horu here know about this?”
“No,” he said. “It’d destroy them, to know.”
“Well, they should be told.”
She stood and paced. It was making her nervous. The historian in her accepted the possible truth of what Ito was saying.
Kronus the victim. Us the disease.
If true, it changed everything.
“Why are you telling me?”
“As my witness.”
“Why?”
“So you can take the information back to the Real.”
“If I get back,” she said.
He nodded. “I have a plan,” he said.
He really did have a kind of light about him, bright like a fever, shining through his skin. Maybe it really was the divine madness of a prophet.
“I don’t only plan to fight Kronus,” he said. “I plan to expose him. To draw out his nature. He won’t be able to help himself. I’m his index case. His apex victim. He can’t help but crow about it.”
“How will that help us?”
“Then he’ll become the monster. And the monster will shake people.”
“Out of their complacency?
“The Blue people there: they’ll see it. They’ll hate it. They’ll hate him. And they’ll remember. They’ll weave it into this world’s story.”
“That’s your plan?”
“Yes. The universe must turn against him. Not only the people here, but the Möbius operating system.”
“Why?”
“So that in an inconceivably distant future, when the last few quarks have decayed, it’ll remember. And it’ll send the Fa:ing back here.”
“You’re mad.”
He laughed, and then he was Ito again.
The following morning, a sortie assembled. The season was changing. Flurries of snow chased themselves round the Chancery yard. Soon the Spinifex Reach would be piled high with snowdrifts. Gathered in the yard was an army of children. They weren’t the usual youngsters of the Ride, but actual children. They were led by the venerable horseman. He gave her a dolorous grin, through teeth stained blue from chewing Cerulean wax.
How many would survive this, she wondered?
First, she had to say goodbye to the ship, who was deliberately powering herself down, instead of gradually fading.
[I have no fear of death, Dr Box. Life is a brief flash of illumination, between infinities. The infinities are neutral.]
[I hate this,] said Box.
[Please don’t,] said the ship. [There’s something holy about dying. I know I’ll continue elsewhere. I always have that solace. I’ve lost more remotes than you can imagine.
[But what I feel most now is clarity.
[The universe is on your side, Ophelia Box.
[Not just this place, or the Real, but the cosmos.
[I sense great powers coming to your aid.
[Open yourself up to them.
[Open your mind.]
And then she was gone.
And Box wept.
Then she had to say goodbye to Ito. She’d hardly gotten to know him. Now he was being wrenched out of her.
“I’m furious,” she said, meaning nothing of the sort, crying openly now. Why couldn’t he just run away? Turn and deal with his problems. Get treatment. But it wasn’t in him to do that.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells.
He’ll face down his black beast, and die.
There, she’d said it.
“I know,” he said, meaning he knew what she wanted to say. He held her, then turned and walked away. His children’s sortie was already on their horses, who knew their way into the sky, and then they were gone, fading into the morning.
“I’ll never see you again,” she said.
She’d had too many experiences of futility in her life. She told herself that this time, it had to mean something.
Fuck you, she thought, to her enemies.
22 ∞ Polity
2065
The Water Bear fell into a cauldron of light. Inside her gamespace, star maps fell into place. She was a
half light-year from the Möbius singularity, still inside the Milky Way galaxy, deep in the galactic core.
The first thing she did was look for pursuers, then she jumped: half a light second.
[Where are we?] asked Jaasper.
[Where we hoped to be,] said the ship.
[Where’s that?]
[Still in our galaxy,] said Pax.
[How far from home?]
[From the nearest of the thousand worlds?] said the ship. [About twelve thousand light-years. Nearly thirty thousand light-years to Fluxor.]
[Can you make it that far?]
[It’d take years.]
[What about alien friends? With hyperlight drives?]
[None. Not within a reasonable distance.]
[Where does that leave us?]
[Stuck.]
[What does stuck mean?]
[It means there’s no easy way back.]
The Po communications network spread like a spider’s web throughout the galaxy, but it didn’t spread here.
[Too much interference,] she said. [Someone would have to be listening to hear us in the electromagnetic soup.]
[Maybe someone is listening,] said Jaasper.
[It’s worth a try,] said Pax.
[Agreed,] said the ship. She sent out a distress ping, on a Po secure channel, and kept on sending it. Although she was persona incognito - an unexplained copy of an existing Po warship - her predicament would be understood. An extraction would follow. She heard nothing, except for the deathsong of beta particles and gamma rays.
[Let’s return to the singularity,] said Jaasper. [Slug it out with the Horu.]
[Die boldly?] said the ship.
[Sneak in, ride another Manifold.] said Pax.
[Yes,] said the ship. [That at least has a chance of working.]
[If a Horu ship ever leaves,] said Jaasper.
[Game theory,] said the Water Bear. [If only one option can win, behave as though it will happen.]
[Agreed,] said Pax.
She was preparing to leave, when her rescuer arrived in a scabrous aurora, like a malfunctioning diode. First there was a miasma of parts, that flickered in and out of existence, and then the entire structure was present.
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