Safely You Deliver

by Graydon Saunders

  Dove’s hard heart and Constant’s dispassion and Chloris’ terrible kindness aren’t slight things, but they’re not from beyond the world. It feels like it matters.

  Mikka hugs me. Down by the carousel, Halle’s shouting from being just that happy.

  “The end of the world is the good example?” Mikka’s understanding, and sometimes it really helps that your sister understands.

  I nod. “One reason to have people visit this festival is we’ll be Independents next Festival.”

  “If there is a next Festival,” Mikka says, carefully only solemn and I nod again.

  “If there’s a next Festival I won’t be primarily material.”

  “Independents all seem solid.” Mikka’s carefully not looking worried about me. “I haven’t met many, but there’s no way Blossom isn’t solid.”

  “Blossom’s solid by courtesy.” I admit it’s a lot more difficult to tell than we think it is, the combined perceptions are difficult to fool.

  Sorcerers outside the Peace, skilled ones centuries old, have made that mistake and I detest needing to know anything about it.

  “It’s entirely a choice for each Independent how they go metaphysical but that’s not really helpful and I haven’t been thinking about it. Don’t want to give up” — I’m reduced to waving — “a sense of embodiment.”

  Mikka looks at me. “Do it wrong and you don’t want anyone to ever hug you again?”

  “Do it really wrong and no one could, I’d be immaterial, and still wanting human contact.”

  Mikka looks alarmed.

  “Immaterial isn’t difficult, Chloris goes immaterial as a function of mood. It’s not impossible to change your metaphysical self once you’ve got one, but it’s rarely the case that you want to, once you’re in that shape it’s what’s expected, how things have always been.”

  There’s one of those pauses, and it goes on and on.

  “Wanted to see you before whatever happened.”

  “While you’re still human?” Mikka’s voice stays even.

  “While I’m still human.” And alive, and sane, and not a record of disgrace because the Shape of Peace could not believe I wished the Peace to prosper.

  Before I maybe kill all of us. So long as we’re all us-together, we’re all going to survive, or none of us, these hundred years.

  Mikka and I sit there for half an hour more and watch Halle have a wonderful time and talk about failure statistics as applied to cheese making and cider pressing and freezing mutton.

  There aren’t any meaningful statistics for sorcerous incompetence. Too much variability, no statistically significant samples.

  Mikka expects getting Halle off the carousel, even by tempting with a snack, won’t be easy. Dove says it’s time to go look at the Pond Pavilion and consider lunch, and Halle climbs down off the wingéd lion and takes Mikka’s hand. Happily, while asking about the snack and what the pillows are made out of, because sometimes coldcrisp gets into feather pillows.

  Dove grins at Mikka’s astonished eyes and says “Nothing to do with the Power,” in cheerful tones.

  The Pavilion itself, meant to sleep twenty-four in two levels of sleeping rooms along the back wall, with a corner kitchen and a big corundum tub set flush into a patio west of the main pavilion and provided with extra showers and movable screens, illusory ones completely transparent from the inside and less permeable to bugs than a brick wall, is a surprise. The windows always surprise, these are corundum with improvements, so finger and nose prints don’t happen. The big airy inside is a surprise, too, and the titanium spiral stairs with laterally-compressed ocelotter statues weaving through the balusters. I’m still proud of those, it took Spook awhile to figure out why those ocelotters wouldn’t play chase.

  Halle insists on being trailed by Pelōŕios up the stairs. Dove heads up to the top level to do room demonstrations as required.

  “We’ve got Dove’s mother Grackle and Dove’s sister Hawthorn and various neeves showing up day after tomorrow.”

  “Be nice to know if the unstoppable is hereditary.” Mikka’s voice is quiet and contemplative. There’s the sensation of a waft of hot breath over my neck, too quiet to be a snort.

  I think of Lark’s shade, worried about having done the wrong thing instead of dying. “It was.” Mikka looks at me, and doesn’t know what to say.

  Which is fine, because Edgar and Chloris show up with lunch floating behind them, trailed by some extra blankets.

  Chapter 31

  Grue

  Doucelin wants these official.

  Halt refuses. Not a school until there’s been Independents. Public interest, public safety, they can ask questions but not of a school.

  Independents don’t get pathos or ethos, just logos. Quantify anything official.

  Immense feats of necromancy for Dove’s benefit.

  Zora’s reproducing-life license.

  Leaving the kids alive.

  Not Independents yet.

  So useful.

  Tell it to Doucelin, Clerk-qualified and the Galdor-gesith’s fylstan, it has to be logic. Quantified, careful, clear.

  Would help if anyone understood what Zora’s done. Halt’s immensely pleased.

  “Now,” Halt says, setting out the second thing, tiny, tiny slices of what looks like fruit pie on mouse scale, “Zora. The possibilities are three. Zora has an unusual talent flavour, and we notice it now because Zora has come swiftly into sufficient scope of power that the unusual becomes obvious. Zora has been elevated by the working link, Power answering Power, and this is what any life-tweaker or stuff-wreaker would become, were they so exalted. Zora, in the example of greater talents and with the full hopes of youth, has altered their talent into its present form.”

  Doucelin puts down the delicate miniature platinum pie-shovel, flat, raised edges, no tines, has to be a shovel, and says “Can you tell which?”

  “The third.” Doucelin looks at me. “No way to tell and it’s the third.”

  The other teachers all nod.

  “Zora’s first question about metaphysical transition concerned altering one’s talent,” Wake says.

  Smug old god.

  “Zora’s determined,” Spike says, “to provide an equivalent contribution.”

  Doucelin says, irritated, “Six food plants.” Five ahead of any accepted Independent for any four year span throughout the history of both Commonweals.

  Zora doesn’t know. Wants to avoid competitive thinking. Edgar checked. Tucked the knowledge away, there only if Zora specifically searches.

  “Some sense of being outnumbered applies.” Wake’s being benevolent. “The others have less obviously constructive talent flavours.”

  Doucelin takes a deep breath, pauses, doesn’t speak.

  Thanks Halt for the passed teacup. This whole service is hand-carved white nephrite. Except the teapot; that looks like the glassblower was possessed. The blue flames in the heaters make effortful faces.

  You get tea when the third thing’s served. Really strange tea. The third, middle, thing is five centilitres of clear pudding with a clear sauce. Tiny platinum spoons. Safety hint.

  Doucelin’s Cryptic Amative. Stuck tasting parts per billion, faint smells, lovers’ meals stacked across their skin in scattered molecules.

  Halt has three tea sets where Doucelin wouldn’t rather drink water. This is the favourite.

  “They are still getting along?” Doucelin says. Tea has improved composure.

  Spike smiles. Things in the corners glitter. “Responsibility, not rivalry. I’m not going to analyze how they set the lower Third down until after.”

  Only partly lack of time.

  I can’t analyze how they set the lower Third down. Dove and Edgar took the complete geology, complete ecology, implied entire history Zora handed them. Knit it into the world. Might as well shrug and say “magic.”

  Cartographic survey will take years. An Initial Habitability Assessment was found on file. Happening again.


  “There is an issue of social contrast,” Doucelin says. “People report wildly different feelings if they think ‘oh, that’s Zora out for a run’ against ‘unicorns on the towpath’.”

  “Shapeshifting requires extensive knowledge. One strong reason to teach shapeshifting as becoming yourself.”

  Doucelin nods at me. The one thing students can shift into.

  “To have knowledge of a shape constrains the self to the knowledge,” Halt says. “The sorcerer who would become a crow becomes their understanding of crows, that is slow to gather.”

  Doucelin nods again.

  Shapeshifter talent-flavour means you do it fast. Any sorcerer eventually.

  Not comfortable admitting this. “Zora pulled a better unicorn out of one and a half animals and affronted craft. It’s not shapeshifting.”

  “Are the results equivalent?” Doucelin’s writing rapidly.

  “Shapeshifting alters your material representation. Different mass, different chemistry, maybe you affect your metaphysical part if you’re not careful. No matter how good you are, your name isn’t altered, you can always tell if something’s shapeshifted out of its heredity.”

  Halt might disagree with “always.” I don’t mean entelechy.

  “Zora’s incorporated the constructed unicorn nature whole and entire. Has two natural hereditary material representations.”

  Doucelin goes blank, doubtful, worried. Says “Did Zora’s name change?”

  “It has expanded,” Wake says. “Yet what was, is, and Zora is not released.” Not a way to get out of the Shape of Peace.

  Doucelin sets the pen down. Takes the lid off the delicate nephrite tea cup, sets it down on the lid-rest, sets the lid-tongs back on the lid-tong rest, picks the cup with the holding ring, sips, sips again, sets it back down. Puts the lid back.

  “Zora’s always been a unicorn?”

  “Zora has always had the option of presenting as a unicorn,” Halt says, entirely mild. “Though not for two months yet.”

  That’s Halt’s sincerely amused smile; Halt appreciates the joke.

  Doucelin would like to know just who, or what, is the butt of the joke.

  “Zora wishes to offer Pelōŕios a similar range of presentation.” Just simple facts.

  Doucelin says “Why?” sharply.

  “Simplest corrective for Pelōŕios’ obligate metavory.” I try for bland.

  “All right, how?” Doucelin’s less sharp, more vehement.

  “Life-tweaking, life-mages, are similar; they alter, slightly, an accumulation of history. In the main, life-tweakers alter the history of development, while life-mages alter the accumulation of heredity.” Wake’s voice is calm.

  “Necromancy is a rough control of metaphysic process state. It achieves material ends through manipulation of entropy.” The summary of the summary, if you’re Wake.

  Doucelin’s voice wanted something new, unknown.

  “What Zora does,” and I stop. Wave at Spike.

  “Zora’s analogy to material necromancy isn’t supportable,” Spike says. “Zora’s operating on metaphysical as well as material substrates, and instantiating process or meta-process conditions in abstract terms as well as actual.”

  Spike finds the whole thing fascinating.

  “It’s not primarily operant on history, though it can and does involve alteration of accumulated present probability. That part looks retroactive, specify the desired present process and state and the present constrains the past, but it’s not being left to ripple, that part’s extremely neat.”

  “Tagmats affect thoughts and luck and happenstance.” Doucelin says it slowly. Tagmats have serious trouble learning not to alter the people around them. There’ve been some successes. Not how you bet.

  “No structured penumbra, no general emanation, Zora’s lacking side effects.” Spike’s definite about that. “Dove leaks much more structure, and that’s nothing like strong enough to present an involuntary agreement risk, even with low talent and long exposure.”

  Dove’s personality not so warranted. Every one of us thinks that; I can see it in Doucelin’s face.

  “If you ask the children who does what,” Halt says, using an odd and impeccably elegant utensil to set out layered round pastries five centimetres across, “Zora’s jobs are food security and strategic planning.”

  Doucelin goggles a little.

  “The rest of them,” Spike says, fork above her pastry, “consider their job to be making sure nothing bothers Zora.”

  Spike doesn’t hear how nothing sounds. Not wrong, the others mean it that way.

  Doucelin hears nothing accurately.

  “That seems an unqualified scope of responsibility,” Doucelin says.

  “Give them a little time, Doucelin dear,” Halt says, beatific.

  “Time is what makes people nervous.” Doucelin isn’t happy, even halfway through the pastry.

  Halt says they’re not what a fresh one would be, but you mustn’t harvest joy from the young in the Commonweal.

  Don’t know how Halt remembers joy so well.

  “The experiment sought an increase in capability.” Wake is calm. Wake’s calm watching Chloris start to flicker.

  “Which we need.” Not Spike’s whole attention. No frying the fylstan.

  “Granted.” Doucelin nods abstracted thanks to Halt. Last item’s a delicate fruit. Needs great skill and Power to peel.

  Worth it.

  “We do not need an hierarchy of sorcerers.” Doucelin’s first bite of fruit produces a brief blissful expression. “However questionable some aspects of creating the Keepers were and are, it worked. We cannot do so again, and we cannot possibly expect stability from a methodology to produce such exceptional sorcerers.”

  Doucelin waves the fruit-spoon, neatly, controlled. “I do not say that your students are not respectable persons. I do say their existence is problematic, and that were there to be more it should be more problematic still.”

  “We shall not have such luck again,” Halt says.

  Doucelin nods. “Shall not have youthful Creeks of capable family background inventing talent flavours that better suit the work” comes out empty of emphasis. Not as empty as Halt’s emphasis. Still respectable.

  “One in thirty thousands,” Wake says. “One person in ten shall be born in the five year span from which we might regularly expect to draw a class.”

  “Three,” Doucelin says, to nods.

  “Kynefrid’s experience may prove the more relevant,” Wake says. “And yet the Commonweal seeks to grow in numbers.”

  “Fifty years, or a hundred,” Doucelin says. “You’d expect to have classes, expect to know if what’s being tried now works.”

  Doucelin looks weary. Twice my age now. Will look just as youthful then. Some old sorcerer had the skill to keep their toys.

  “Patience isn’t a policy.”

  “Fear isn’t much of one,” Spike says. “However enormously the Founders laboured, however possible it might be, the scope of choice is greater with capable sorcerers than without.”

  “Not once people believe you can overcome the Shape,” Doucelin says. “Which is a real worry and a real worry.”

  Nobody’s sure Blossom and Dove and Constant couldn’t.

  “Especially since the regular, not-militant life-tweaker turns out to be able and interested in re-imagining live unicorns into a new state of being.” Worried Doucelin.

  “Arguments from complexity being dismissed with entelechy?” Halt sounds almost whimsical.

  “Entirely.” No whimsy from Doucelin.

  “Perhaps I may make an argument from simplicity,” Wake says. “It is a surpassingly difficult problem to correctly select which subordinate to execute.”

  Doucelin snorts.

  “The Commonweal forbids fixed hierarchies of rank,” Wake says. “While job selection and task-matching are properly acknowledged to be difficult problems, these do not begin to compare to reacting to an unexpected circ
umstance with a fixed and jealous hierarchy of authority.”

  Doucelin reaches for words. Doesn’t get any on the first try.

  “You have read this,” Wake says to Doucelin. “You have the knowledge. I have the long experience.”

  Doucelin finds words.

  “You’re confusing facts and belief. Agreeing on the facts isn’t the problem. What a Clerk knows, or what a sorcerer understands, don’t address the fear there’s going to be a sorcerous takeover.”

  Spike’s being visibly, sparklingly, calm.

  Doucelin looks over at her, instead of Wake. “To the extent I can understand the Shape of Peace with mathematics, I do, I understand it’s dynamic, that it’s a hope-biased combination of opinion, that it’s not subject to direct control.”

  The sparks diminish.

  “The current leading worry is that there’s a way to substitute, everyone thought names were immutable in the Shape, and then the second one got created.” Doucelin picks up the fruit spoon again. “A class of students keeps doing impossible things. Now everyone wonders if Dove and Blossom couldn’t make something that you could control, that looked enough like the Shape to fool everyone else.”

  “Not Ongen.” Blossom’s a little wry. “Not any judge, not fifty or so Independents, not any Standard-Captain, not anyone who happened to be awake when the switch occurred, not anyone at all if we didn’t hold a vote first.”

  Last seven words come out emphatic.

  “About which they must be you or Ongen or maybe Halt to be factually certain.” Doucelin’s calm. Unhappy, but calm.

  “‘No fixed hierarchy’ isn’t free of strain. It works better, but people detest unpredictability in their social interactions. There aren’t any people whose kind didn’t come from a time when there was a fixed hierarchy, when you did what the sorcerer said. And probably where people started liked social predictability, before the Power and sorcerers altered everybody.” Doucelin would like to be able to spend time on trying to answer that.

  “Why there are geans,” Halt says.

  Doucelin nods. “And it works, and it turns into how things have always been.”