Ventus

"You lost someone close to you?" He looked around, noticing the fine wooden table and bed-frame. "Your husband."

Megan nodded as she reached for more down. "You see I know about losing things. And about trying to keep them." She looked at him, almost fiercely. "You always lose it in the end--what you want to keep. The harder you try to keep it the more it goes. So now I know how to keep things right."

"How is that?"

"You can never keep a whole thing. But you can keep a part of anything." She looked sadly at the wooden cupboard. "Be it only a piece of furniture. And if you can learn to be content with that, then you can let anything go." Megan stood and walked to the cupboard. She smoothed her hand over the fine wood grain. "I would sit and watch him as he made this. He spent so much time on it. We were in love. When you lose your husband, you think you"ve lost everything--nothing has any value any more. Funny, how long it took to know that this was still here, and other little things. The parts of him I could keep."

She shrugged, and turned to Armiger. "And what have you lost?"

He felt a surge of rage at the mindless presumption of the question. As if she could comprehend what he"d lost! Well, maybe to her, losing her husband was the equivalent of his own disaster. "I lost my army," he said.

Megan laughed. "And nearly your life. But soldiers don"t worry about that sort of thing, do they? I admire that."

He scratched absently at the back of his arm. "Good lady, soldiers worry about nothing else."

She came and sat down on the edge of the bed. He smelled pungent chicken feathers. "Now," she said seriously, "maybe I do believe that. Because you"ve lost something. More than your way."

Armiger stared at her. There was no way he could talk about this--words could not encompa.s.s it, they were too small. The part of him he had communed with had been beyond words, or any of a human"s five senses; it had invented senses, and sense, to suit its intimacies.

He wanted to speak to her in thunder, in torn ground and shocked air. Would have, had he only the strength.

Reminded that she had given him what strength he did have, he looked down.

"I think... I did die," he said. It was the only human a.n.a.logue he could think of. "I died when... She died." She was completely wrong to describe his higher Self; but Megan"s people thought their souls were feminine. He struggled to find words, wrapping his arms around himself, glaring past her. "More than a wife. More than a queen. My G.o.d died, who gave meaning to more than just my life, who infused everything, the stones, the air, with it."

Megan nodded. "I knew. From things you said in your sleep. From the look of you." She sighed. "Yes, you see, we are together in that."

"No. Not like you." He sat up angrily, feeling sharp stabs of pain in his side. Megan stared at him, patient and undaunted.

He wanted to pierce her calmness, her certainty that her own pain was as great as his. "She wasn"t a human being," he said. She was... a Wind."

Megan blinked. Her brow wrinkled, then cleared. "Much is made clear," she said. It was his turn to look surprised. Megan reached out, slowly, and touched the healing scar under his chin. "I know the rites of death," she said. "I have had to perform them myself."

Armiger sat back. His anger was deflated. For some reason, he felt unfulfilled, as if he had lied to her, and not merely told her what she would understand.

Everything was greying out. "Sleep," she said. "My morph."

He lay back, listening to her move about the cabin. Just before he drifted off again, he heard her say, maybe to herself, "And what part of this are you going to keep?"

9.

"This may be our last warm night of the year," said Megan the next evening. "It pleases me to see you enjoying it."

Armiger smiled at her. He stood in the center of the clearing next her cottage. The sun had just set, leaving a rose band across the western horizon. The moon Diadem was rising. The moon received its name from the scattering of brilliant white craters on its surface, which made it a dim oval studded with diamond-bright pinp.r.i.c.ks of light. On other nights Armiger had praised or cursed those gleaming points, depending on whether night-visibility was to his army"s advantage or not. Tonight, possibly for the first time, he was able to admire the sight for its own sake.

He felt content. He knew it was because he was free from all responsibilities during this convalescence.

"Strange," he murmured.

Megan looked up at the moon, then back at him. "What?"

"I should be dead," he said.

She touched his shoulder. "Your wounds were terrible. But they"re healing quickly. Isn"t that normal for a morph?"

"I"m not exactly a morph," he said wryly. "Just something like one. But yes, you"re right." The lie came easily to his lips. Then he thought about it. Could he explain this to a mortal? He would never have thought he had an obligation to try.

Armiger lowered his eyes from the moon, and studied Megan in the pale light. She was a creature he didn"t understand. His plans had rarely included women. But she stood next to him now, easy in the cricket-song and darkness, and played none of the dominance games males played. She took her own obligation to him, the wounded soldier, for granted.

"My link to my higher self," he began, then stopped. "It was more than love. We shared an ident.i.ty. When... she died, I should have died too. Because there was only one of us. Or at least that"s what I believed."

Megan nodded. "We all think that of our life"s love. But one carries on."

At first Armiger thought she had simply not understood him. Then he thought of another possibility: Megan knew his experiences were not like hers, but she was making an effort to translate them into terms she could understand.

It surprised him to think that she might be spending her time with him doing such an odd kind of work. For it would be work, finding commonality with a stranger"s experience. Armiger himself did so only as a way of antic.i.p.ating the next move of an opponent.

If she"d kept her conclusions to herself, he might have believed she was doing that too. But she shared them.

"Was she killed in the war?" Megan asked.

He started to say no, since this local brushfire he had been involved in had nothing to do with the interstellar conflict that had resulted in his greater self"s demise. But he could play the same game as her: what would make sense to her, on an emotional level? "Yes," he said.

"You won"t go back to being a soldier, will you?"

He barely heard her. Why am I alive? When his Self died, he should have been extinguished, or at least turned back into an aimless machine.

"I thought I knew what I was," he said. Armiger had pretended to be human since arriving on Ventus. Before that, he recalled bright light and deep vacuum, vision encompa.s.sing 360 degrees, radio song in his head, and others" thoughts as well. In that existence, there had been no distinguishing his own mind from those of his companions, the other servants of 3340. And the G.o.d"s will was the same as their own. The part of that vast ident.i.ty that was Armiger thought of himself as an extension of the greater whole. He had a.s.sumed that when he thought, it was 3340 who was thinking, and when he acted, it was the G.o.d acting. It had always been that way.

No, not always...

Suddenly the presence of this woman at his side felt threatening. Something ancient, a memory perhaps, made him turn away from her. "I need to be alone now," he said. The harsh tone of his own voice surprised him.

"But--" she began. Then she seemed to think better, and turned and walked away quickly.

Armiger glanced back. Humans were biological creatures--mortal animals. For a second there, though, he had touched on some deep-buried feeling within himself. Megan had loomed in the darkness as real as 3340 itself. For an instant, he had... remembered? Remembered standing with someone, a human being, who was every bit his own equal. A creature like himself.

A woman.

And there and then a memory unfolded within Armiger like a long-dormant flower: of himself walking and laughing, a young man with a young woman on his arm, on a world with two moons. On a night like this.

That memory was a thousand years old.

Had he once been human himself? That could explain why 3340 had chosen him for this job. On the other hand, the G.o.d could have crafted his personality from the remnants of captured human minds. After all, a memory was nothing more than a synaptic hologram. He was sure 3340 could manufacture any sort of memory for its agents.

Armiger stalked through the long wet gra.s.s, swiping at it absently with his hands. The moon and the warmth of the night were forgotten now. He came to the edge of the woods, and turned to pace back the way he"d come, scowling.

If that had been a manufactured memory, why should it remain submerged for so long? He would have expected the G.o.d to make only useful memories, and provide them all to his agent"s consciousness.

This memory... her hand in his... was an alien thing. He couldn"t fit it into his purpose or ident.i.ty as 3340 had given them to him.

He realized he had been kicking the gra.s.s out of his way as he walked, tearing it up by the roots. Armiger stopped, and glanced back at the cottage. Megan stood silhouetted in the doorway.

He ran his hand through his hair. Well. Evidently there was some fragment of human mentality in him. 3340 would not have sent him on this mission were that not the case. It could explain why he was still alive: for some reason 3340 had given him the same instincts for autonomous self-preservation as biological creatures had.

He told himself not to jump to conclusions. He had yet to really take stock of himself. Hitherto the overwhelming fact of his bereavement had kept him from exploring what was left to him. Maybe it was time.

He walked back to the cottage. Megan still stood in the doorway, a frown on her face. "I can"t say I haven"t done that myself," she said. "I"m sorry if I reminded you of things you didn"t want to think about."

Armiger felt tired, in body and mind. "I need to thank you, actually," he said. "You"ve provided me such a safe haven here that I can finally face some of these things."

Megan beamed. She seemed to struggle for something to say. "Oh," she managed at last. Then, slyly, "then I can take your ripping up the garden as a good sign?"

"Garden?" He glanced back at the darkened field.

"You tromped right through one of them a minute ago."

"Oh." What to say? "I"ll repair the damage in the morning."

She laughed. "Just do your best. I can"t picture you as a gardener, whatever else you may be."

Awkwardly, he tried a grin in reply. Megan combed her fingers through her hair and b.u.mped her shoulder against the doorjamb a couple of times.

"I"ll heat up some stew if you"d like," she said at last.

"Thanks. I"m going to sit out here and meditate a while."

"Okay." She ducked back in, leaving the door open to the fragrances of night.

Armiger sat down stiffly on the uneven boards of the cottage"s small porch. There was just enough s.p.a.ce next to Megan"s rocking chair for him to sit in full lotus. He gazed out over the breeze-runnelled gra.s.s. Diadem"s light cast shadows like nodding figures under the trees. He closed his eyes.

Armiger decided to avoid a full neurophysiological exam for now. He just wasn"t psychologically strong enough to take an objective look at how much intelligence, memory and will he had lost with 3340. He could treat his body dispa.s.sionately, however, so he started with that.

His resources were painfully low. The gossamer nanotech that made up his real body had unfurled from its usual position at the spine, and spread throughout this human form, right to its extremities. Nearly all his energy was devoted to shoring up the body"s ravaged immune system. He had manufactured nano to move in and repair the dead cells of his own corpse, and until a day or so ago he had been warm and breathing only because the nano had replaced normal cell processes with their own harsh metabolism. Now the nano were easing out of revived cells and were being reabsorbed into his filamentary body. His strength was growing, but very slowly. At this rate it would be many months before he recovered fully.

He regretted having been so profligate with his power when he arrived. To think he had detached parts of his own gossamer and implanted them in humans, just to use them as remote eyes and ears...

Armiger opened his eyes. He had completely forgotten about the remotes. It wasn"t surprising, with everything that had happened; they had always been a minor part of his plans, the mental equivalent of posting picket sentries around a camp. They did contain valuable nano, however. He could considerably speed up his recovery if he recovered some of that.

If it hadn"t been too badly damaged by the catastrophe, he should still have links to each remote. They operated on superluminal resonances, undetectable on the electromagnetic spectrum; he had set up the links this way to prevent the Winds from homing in on his position. It was still possible to trace the signal back from one of the remotes, but that would require an understanding of human physiology and psychology that he knew the Winds didn"t possess. Superluminal links were always two way--what affected one station affected the other. Armiger knew of no Wind capable of exploiting the fact to turn one of his remotes into a receiver, so he had felt safe in making them.

Shutting his eyes, he called up their perspectives. The system was weak from damage and disuse, but after a few seconds the remotes began to respond.

There should have been twelve. By the time the system was fully up, Armiger could see through only six pairs of eyes.

Even that was nearly overwhelming. Somewhere in the catastrophe he had lost the ability to process multiple sensory inputs. What came to him now was a chaos of sensations: blue cloth waving near a fire, water down a horse"s flank, the feel of stone on his bare back, a warm hand on his belly-- --Pounding heart and ragged breaths gulped into a tight and painful chest.

He recoiled in pain. It was too much to take all at once. After opening his eyes and breathing quietly for a minute, he resumed, this time singling out one remote"s perspective.

This other"s hands smoothed the chestnut flank of his horse one last time, then turned away. Armiger saw he stood in a small stable, the sort attached to country inns all across Ravenon. This perspective belonged to an engineer who travelled the country repairing and updating the heliographs in royal signal towers. He saw a lot of the country in his travels, and more than once Armiger had used his perspective to gather intelligence.

Tonight he was idle, walking slowly out of the stable, through a light drizzle to the door of a thatch-roofed inn. Armiger stayed with him only long enough to see him slide aside the curtain to a private closet; a candle already burned next the small cot there.

Armiger turned his attention to the next perspective. This man was in bed already, but not alone. Several people sat on hard wooden chairs next to the bed in his small plaster-walled bedroom. Armiger"s remote was talking to them.

"...Came at me like that out of nowhere. Why? What did I do to deserve this?" He gestured at his leg, which lay exposed above the bedding. It was thickly wrapped in b.l.o.o.d.y bandages.

"How many did you say there were?" asked a man wearing the crimson ribbons of a priest.

"Five, six. I don"t know! It all happened so fast."

"Well, you must have done something to offend them."

"Not necessarily," said another man. "Maybe someone else did. Matthew was pa.s.sing by. He was a handy target."

"I don"t understand," whined the man in the bed. "How am I going to work now?"

"Don"t worry. We"ll help you."

Armiger left this perspective for the next.

Still on her back. Cold stone and pebbles ground against her hips. Her legs were wrapped around the broad torso of the man who moved against her. Past his shoulder, Armiger could see bright stars.

He moved to the next remote.

Stumbling in the blackness, he went down on all fours. His own breath was a rasping rattle in his ears. This man stood, staggering now from a broad sc.r.a.pe down his leg, and ran.

Through leaves and dancing branches he ran--down a hillside, recklessly, barely keeping to his feet above prancing stones--and into an orchard. The limbs of the well-tended trees stretched skyward like supplicants" arms to heaven. He barely glanced up at them. After weaving his way down an alley between the trees, he allowed himself to slow, then to pause, and look behind him.

Nothing pursued him in the darkness. He looked up.

The night here was overcast, making the darkness near total. But past the crest of the hill he had just come down, above the clouds, light shone as though men with lanterns rode some causeway there. The lights were coming closer, with apparent slowness.

He gave a cry that was more a painful gasp, and turned to run again. A cottage was visible now at the end of the rows of trees. Low, stone, with a goat-pen attached, it glowed with internal firelight, warm and inviting. He renewed his run, breathing harshly.

Armiger felt the boards under him dip as Megan came out onto the porch. She said something. He raised one hand to still her.

The runner had reached the cottage. "Lena!" he cried, then flung himself to hang on the fence around the goatpen. He shuddered.

"Perce?" A young woman appeared in the cottage"s doorway--uncannily silhouetted as Megan had been earlier. "Perce! What"s wrong?"