Ventus

by Karl Schroeder

The Voice looked up, startled. She had apparently heard the word.

  "Thalience is a myth—a story they tell one another here," she said. "It's a dream of no longer being an artificial intelligence, but of being self-determined. Of no longer fearing that every word you speak, every thought you have, is just the regurgitation of some human's thoughts. They call it the Pinnochio Change around here."

  "If it's just a myth, we need to know that too," said Axel. "But if it's true... that they've found it... what does it mean?"

  A new look came into the Voice's eye. She smiled again, dazzlingly this time, and placed her other hand over Axel's.

  "I would like to know myself," she said. "I would like to know, very much."

  38

  Jordan had asked Ka to summon two horses, and the little Wind had done so quickly and discreetly. Mediation provided a decoy: a line of disturbances in the desert, leading the other way. It was a simple matter to mount their backs and cluck, sending them into the starlit desert. The apparent ease of their escape didn't inspire either Jordan or Tamsin with confidence; after an hour of grim riding he confided in her that he was remembering their other horses—the ones that had split open like ripe pears to disgorge hostile morphs at Desal 447. Despite Ka's assurances that the swans were looking in the wrong place for them, they both rode with shoulders hunched that first night. Only when the sky remained empty in the following days did they begin to relax.

  When they stopped to rest, Jordan summoned heat and commanded Ka to tell them stories. Jordan himself could lean back and close his eyes, and with some effort navigate the ghostly landscape inside his head to where Mediation's library resided. He could make a book twirl up in his imagination, and in seconds it would appear as vididly as the real thing before him; but only he could see it. Tamsin was a much better reader than he, so it was a shame that he could not show her the books. Ka was willing and able to read them aloud to both of them.

  They learned more about Ventus—its geography and history, and just what the Winds had done to make it habitable. Jordan drew maps from the pictures in his mind.

  They learned what nanotechnology was; what computers were; how the mecha truly differed from evolved life. Jordan wanted to know how Armiger intended to conquer the Winds, so over and over he asked about how the Winds issued their commands, and how they were ruled. The swans were not the ultimate power, it seemed—Diadem itself gave the highest decrees, but in time of emergency the swans could act on their own. Armiger probably intended to cut Diadem off somehow, or take its place in the hierarchy. Questions about how led to discussions about codes and keys, radio, electromagnetism, electrons and atoms. Jordan's mind was whirling, but a desperate feeling that he was making up for lost time kept him asking questions.

  It wasn't fair. The whole world was a giant library. Knowledge didn't just reside in the manse libraries—it was embedded in every stone and grain of sand. For all of history, men had starved and died amongst untold riches, surrounded by an environment that could cater to their every whim if they could but talk to it. Jordan alternated between horror at the waste of the past centuries, and an equal feeling of disquiet as he contemplated the things he could do now. For commanding the elements and even living things, like these docile horses, seemed somehow wrong—a violation, maybe, of things' right to simply be.

  Mediation fed him updates on the movements of Thalience, and had given him huge resources he had not had time to catalog. Jordan could close his eyes and see banks of glowing numbers, each representing some vast mechanism that helped control the world's climate. With a single command he could affect things on a giant scale now: cause storms, floods, or reverse the course of winter itself. It seemed Mediation had thrown its fortunes in Jordan's lap, because it regarded him as a link to its original programming'.

  Mediation told him that vagabond moons were converging on this continent from all over the world, and gigantic orbiting mirrors were changing their orbits to track this way. (The idea of these mirrors was one more concept he could barely encompass, but he needed to accept it.) Diadem was in a ferment, but the swans weren't telling the desals what was going on up there. The swans themselves were converging on a spot almost directly over Jordan's head. They were marshalling vast energies, for what purpose no one yet knew.

  Relations were strained along the hierarchy of the Winds; it was impossible for any Wind to refuse an order that preserved the integrity of the commonly-accessible and unchangeable ecological template of the world. Once those conditions were fulfilled, however, the Winds could do whatever they pleased. If the swans had found an ecologically safe way of obliterating the desals, or even all human life on Ventus, they could try it.

  At times Jordan tuned out whatever discussion Tamsin was having with Ka, and monitored Armiger's progress. Armiger had set a punishing pace, and his party was a days's ride ahead now, steadily moving southwest. He wasn't sure, but he guessed the general was making for the nexus of Winds' power at the Titans' Gates. Mediation had shown the place to him, and Jordan was eager to see it with his own eyes.

  As they stopped for another rest, Tamsin waved away Ka's offer to read to her and went to lie on the sand. "Oh," she groaned. "I'm so stiff I'm going to crack like a twig."

  "I know," he said. "I feel the same way."

  "Can't your precious Mediation fix us, the way morphs fix animals?"

  "I asked it yesterday," he said as he awkwardly sat next to her. The horses were looking tired too. They wouldn't last much longer at this pace. "Mediation said that it can heal those who can talk to it—meaning me. But not you, because you can't."

  "So? Have you gotten it to heal you?"

  He shook his head. "That wouldn't be fair. More to the point, how would I know when you were at the end of your strength if I felt perfectly fine all the time?"

  She laughed humorlessly and shook her head. "Oh, what are we doing? What in the world are we doing?"

  He hung his head. "I've been trying to come up with a plan."

  "Yeah? Tell me."

  "We're following Armiger. Well, everybody's following Armiger. It's like he's is a boat in a stream, and the Winds and everybody else are swept up in his wake. Thalience is after him; I think they were only after me because I was a clue to his existence. Now they seem to know about him, they're not so interested in me anymore. Calandria and Axel are after him too. So everyone is converging on him. And he's making for the Titans' Gates.

  "They've all forgotten about me. Armiger doesn't need me now that he can command the Winds himself. The hooks and swans don't care about me now that they know about him. And Calandria and Axel... well, I was just a way for them to find him, too." It hurt to say that. He shrugged. "The swans seem to have forgotten about Mediation too—and the others never knew about it. But the Titans' Gates are the stronghold of Mediation.

  "For some reason Armiger hasn't spoken to Mediation yet. So at least for now, I'm in command of it, if I want to be."

  "In command..." She shook her head. "It's hard to believe."

  He snorted. "I wouldn't get too excited. I've only got this power as long as everybody ignores me. Armiger knows about Mediation, since I told him about it, but he hasn't even contacted the geophysical Winds yet. I can't figure out why. He must be waiting until he reaches the Gates before revealing himself."

  "So?"

  "Well," said Jordan. "This is the question: do we just let things unfold? After all, who are we to interfere in a war between the gods?"

  "Of course we just let things unfold," said Tamsin. "What other choice do we have? I thought we were going to rendezvous with Armiger. Then he takes over the Winds, and that's that."

  He shook his head. "But what if he fails? If Thalience kills him... well, you heard it yourself in the desal: Thalience thinks of humans as vermin. Who'll defend us against it then?"

  "I don't know."

  "And lastly I've been wondering about Armiger himself. Does he really mean to conquer the Winds? And if so, what is he going to repla
ce them with? Do we have any say in what he does? It sure doesn't look like it."

  He stood up, straining into a stretch. "Armiger hasn't contact Mediation. That worries me. I can see all sorts of things that the geophysical Winds should be doing to prepare a defence against the swans. They're not doing anything—at least in any organized way."

  She looked up. "But you could order them to."

  He nodded. "I've been getting Mediation to tell me what the Titans' Gates do, and how they work. Right now it treats me like an equal, so it's giving me access to all the systems. Now, do you remember yesterday, when Ka told us about codes? —About how everything the Winds do is controlled through them? Well, that's not quite true. They often use passwords, like the sentries in an army camp. The Winds use them when one of them wants to lock something for its own exclusive use. Well, I asked Mediation if the Titans' Gates could be locked by passwords..."

  When Jordan told Tamsin what he had decided to do, he had the great pleasure of seeing her smile for the first time in days.

  §

  The first ally to arrive was a jaguar. It padded into the circle of firelight as they were preparing for bed, and lay down opposite Jordan and Tamsin, its head on its paws.

  Tamsin clawed at Jordan, who had been drowsing in Vision. "Jordan, look look oh no oh no."

  He flopped his head over and blinked at the animal. "Ah. I've been expecting this. I asked Mediation for protection. It said it was sending troops."

  The jaguar gave a cat smile: a slow two-eyed wink.

  "Troops...?" Tamsin relaxed her tight grip on his arm. "Is that... one of Mediation's Winds?"

  "Not a Wind. Just a cat." Jordan sat up, looking grimly at the animal. "Part of our escort."

  "Ah." He had told her to expect guests. She hadn't known what was coming, but had imagined morphs or something equally hideous. "Is it... wild?"

  He shook his head. "The Winds can cohabit the minds of animals. It's our lieutenant. You can trust it completely."

  "Lieutenant jaguar." She rose to her feet, slowly. The jaguar watched her, not moving. "Can I—can I touch her?"

  "I don't know." He squinted at the animal. "Yes, I think you can."

  Tamsin rummaged near the fire for scraps of the pheasant they had spitted earlier. Then she got down on her haunches and waddled carefully over to the jaguar.

  "Here." She held out a drumstick that still had some meat on it. The jaguar sniffed, then gravely took the bone from her hand.

  Tamsin stood up and took four steps back. Then she let out a breath she'd apparently been holding. "Animals. They sent us animals, not monsters. I was so worried, I—"

  "Look." Jordan stood up and pointed into the darkness.

  They were visible at first only as pairs of glowing disks in the night. One, two, half a dozen, twenty, roving around the fire. Then a bear walked into the light, and squatted down next to the jaguar. After it, two scampering ferrets, and then an antlered deer, who snorted and pawed at the dirt next to the bear.

  They could hear it now, an immense quiet motion in the dark. There was nothing out there but dark forms, black on black moving. "How many are there?" shouted Tamsin, as she glimpsed phalanxes of horns closing in from one side, an ocean of furred backs from the other.

  Jordan shook his head. He looked so serious that she was afraid to ask what he was thinking. To Tamsin, the arrival of these beasts seemed wondrous. She couldn't imagine why he found it disturbing.

  They continued to come, all night, and eventually Tamsin had to sleep. She lay down facing the jaguar and wept quietly, for it seemed as though she and Jordan were being granted a benediction by nature tonight—and she had not realized until this very moment that all her life, she had longed for such a blessing.

  §

  Tamsin wept again the next day, but this time it was because she finally understood the reason for Jordan's unhappiness.

  They had woken to find themselves at the center of battalion of animals, hundreds of them, who lay head-to-tail in a sweeping circle around them. When Jordan stood up and walked to the edge of the camp to piss, they all stood as one and did likewise.

  That woke Tamsin, who was appalled, then laughed until her sides were sore.

  It was later in the day, when they were riding elk-back into the desert, that the escort ceased to be magical for her, and became something sinister—an abomination. She had not considered how the animals would feed.

  Without warning, a bear that she had been admiring turned on the gazelle trotting next to it and ripped its throat out. Tamsin screamed. The gazelle fell, thrashing, spouting blood everywhere. As the bear stopped to feed, a few other carnivores moved in to share the meal, and the rest of the batallion—hunters and prey alike—simply split politely around them and moved on.

  "How could it do that!"

  Jordan had turned in his saddle to watch. "I guess it makes sense," he said reluctantly. "Mediation controls these animals. They're not acting out of their own volition."

  She cried then, as she realized that the harmony of nature she had fallen asleep to was a sham, merely evidence of overwhelming power; these animals would die because of herself and Jordan, pawns in a game about which they neither knew nor cared.

  "I've been thinking about this ever since we met desal 447," he said. "Is this how the world was intended to be? Were we meant to treat all living things on this world as puppets we can just order around? As slaves? Is that what Mediation wants to return to? If it is, I think I can understand where Thalience is coming from."

  "It's evil," she said.

  He nodded. "Even if we don't do anything, just knowing that the world is like a big puppet show for our benefit... it makes everything cheap. Like we're being cheated somehow."

  She nodded, wiping at her eyes. "It is all a lie, isn't it?"

  The sky, the earth, the animals and trees, were constructs of the Winds, who could do with them as they pleased. What they pleased to do was make them act like natural things. They—or whoever controlled them—could as easily make them act differently.

  Tamsin had pictured Armiger's conquest of the Winds as a liberation, akin to the Iapysian parliament overthrowing Queen Galas. It was a change of government, no more, she had thought.

  Might it mean something else, though?

  "Jordan, what is Armiger going to do with the world if he conquers it?"

  Conquest of the Winds meant complete command of Ventus—earth, sea, sky, and nature. And while Tamsin loved nature and might wish to preserve it, another mind, given that kind of power, might conceive an entirely different world. Brick over the seas. Turn the sky to gleaming metal. Replace everything alive with something mechal, in the name of efficiency or power.

  "I know," he said. "I've been worrying about that. For all that they're tyrants, the Winds use their power to keep Ventus a garden for life. It seems as if Thalience genuinely loves the life here. But Mediation? I don't know. And Armiger? Is he going to care as much? Would we? I don't know—but it scares me to think about."

  Tamsin thought about it, and as she did, it came to her that her life was dividing in two at this point. She had thought that time had split in that moment when Uncle tore her out of her village, and her family and childhood died. Now, even that seemed like a period of innocence to her—a time when, however sad her life, the sky was still the sky, and the grass still the grass. None of that was true anymore, nor could she imagine how it could ever be true again.

  §

  It seemed he had barely fallen asleep before Hesty was shaking his shoulder, and Lavin blinked his eyes open to find sunlight streaming through the flap of the tent. The army was ready to decamp; they were to leave in the morning.

  "Sir, wake up sir!" Hesty's hand shook him again. The motion sent waves of nausea through him, and he cursed, shrugging Hesty off.

  "Who would believe morning could come so quickly," he muttered.

  "Sir, it's not morning!"

  For a moment Lavin forgot his whirling senses. H
esty sounded scared. Not nervous, or apprehensive as he'd been in the past before battles. But frightened. Lavin looked up at him.

  It was cold enough for Lavin's breath to frost, but Hesty was sweating. He wasn't dressed properly, either—he wore a quilted robe around which he'd buckled his rapier.

  "Sir, it's the middle of the night."

  "What are you saying?" It was daylight, anyone could see that.

  "Sir, it's two o'clock in the morning. A new sun appeared, just five minutes ago. The sentries woke me and I came straight here. Sir, the camp is waking up. Panic is spreading."

  "Hand me my uniform."

  He didn't even have his laces tied up before he heard a relay of shouts coming from the edge of the camp. A faint voice repeated it nearby, then one of his own guard twitched back the flap of the tent and said, "Sir, a small force of men is approaching from the east. There are Winds with them."

  "Thank you." He stepped in front of the mirror to adjust his hair. "Hesty, go get dressed. I want you to be calm. If anyone asks, don't admit that you're surprised by this. In fact, tell your men we arranged for the Winds to bring us this new sun."

  "Yes, sir." Hesty saluted and left.

  Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to deduce which way was down and move his limbs accordingly. Do not lean right. Walk to the tent flap. Good.

  He emerged into hot daylight. The sun was at the zenith; he shaded his hand and peered at it. Something odd about it. He squinted, trying to figure out what it was... the sun was smaller than usual.

  And square.

  He looked away; the spots made his vertigo worse for a few moments.

  The sky around the little sun was daylight blue, but it rapidly faded until, at the horizon, it was night-black again. Everything to the horizon was day-lit, but Lavin got the impression that beyond a circle of ten or so kilometers, night still reigned. It was bizarre.

  A group of maybe twenty men on horseback, and some odd animals had reached the edge of the encampment. One of the figures had apparently dismounted, and was talking to the sentries there. After a moment, the sentries backed off, and the group moved forward. It was hard to tell what the animals were; at first he'd thought they were mastiffs, but they moved differently. Lavin ordered his camp chair and the banners of his office and titles brought out. He refused to be a supplicant now, after all that had happened, so he sat in the chair. It would have been difficult to remain standing for any length of time anyway.