In Arcadia

Chapter Ten

A white bird, trailing plumes of silver light, trilled a song that shaped words at the edge of hearing.

Ramara is dead. Zathar’s heart breaks. The seams of the world divide. Bring light. Bring night. Bring life. Stitch the world together.

More than a few of the people around Laura paused to watch the bird disappear over the town’s sloping roofs, but the majority ignored it, for the Messengers of the Weaver were a regular occurrence.

Non-player compared to player characters, Laura wondered. Or newbies versus higher level?

It really was very difficult to pick out the players from the computer-controlled characters. The Muinans didn’t have true artificial intelligence, but their simulations were so sophisticated that much of their basic schooling was conducted by a pair of complex programs. Standing on the bridge into Tekan Town, Laura gazed at travellers heading in every direction and could not pick out the kind of set routines that would give an NPC away.

Then she wondered whether she would be able to spot Gidds without turning on the names display.

Would he have made a character that looked just like himself, except blue? Or simply have gone with a default model, and not wasted his time on customisation? Laura usually chose chibi models herself—she was always entertained viewing a game world from the viewpoint of chubby little gnomes or tarutaru—but Red Exchange did not have the range of races she was used to, so she’d made herself someone who rather strongly resembled Romana II from Doctor Who. A blue English Rose.

Laura sighed, and briefly opened her eyes, the game world receding to a square on her internal screen. She was in her window seat, which was actually a tiny room all of its own, built into the roof level of her house. It was only accessible via a spiral stair from her workroom, was the one room that had a view of the southern reaches of the lake, and featured the most ridiculously luxurious adaptable couch. Filling its own glass-walled nook, the couch was very similar to the ones used on the interplanetary ships, and could be raised and adjusted to all sorts of sitting and reclining positions. Cass had certainly had a lot of fun thinking up things Laura would like in a house.

Although interface games could stimulate the other senses, allowing players to touch, taste, and smell virtual worlds, they did not remove players from the real world, and it had taken time for Laura to grow used to the sensation of being in two places and two people at once. Today it was doubly difficult, because she’d fallen ingloriously while exploring the rocks on Arcadia’s northern shore that morning, and the resulting bruise was making its presence felt.

At least being in the game world didn’t involve any actual effort. Closing her eyes again, Laura thought about walking, and Romana-Angharad obligingly strolled along the street, looking around.

Tekan Town was most definitely worth looking at. It was built across a series of very perpendicular hills, with most of the structures up near the peaks, while the valleys beneath were narrow and filled with fast-running water. Everything was connected by bridges: arches of stone, enormous tree branches adapted for walking, and even the occasional swaying rope construction. In a non-game world, Laura expected such a place would be frighteningly windy, but Tekan Town was a balmy haven, the branches festooned with flowers, the stone bridges decorated with great urns of greenery, and even the rope bridges wound through with vines of what smelled very like jasmine.

Between the bridges, many of the hilltops had been neatly lopped off to provide a flat surface for construction, while others had been hollowed into pointed mountain cathedrals where traders gathered to set up market stalls. The whole place was dizzying, not least because of the layered floral perfume, and made Laura wonder if there were swamp regions in Red Exchange, and whether the programmers would focus on scent to the same extent there.

There was certainly plenty of potential for too much reality in a virtual game, and Laura could readily imagine others where immersion would be a bad idea. She certainly would never have lasted through Resident Evil if she’d been able to smell the zombies.

The arrangement with Gidds had been to meet at the fountain on Porphery Mountain—the centre point of Tekan Town. Laura had been aiming to arrive a little early, but had misjudged her path, and quickened her pace in order to reach the broad plaza almost precisely on time.

Wouldn’t want to be late for our first date, she thought, smiled at the idea, and then looked around for her Serious Soldier.

Gidds had not chosen a default model—at least not from Laura’s memory of the various selections—and there was no distinct resemblance, but the young man sitting on the rim of the round central pool was still unmistakeable. Upright but relaxed, his hands resting on his knees, ineffably himself.

Laura did turn on the names display, just to be sure, and saw Ruvord, which was the name he’d told her he’d use. He’d chosen a similar build to his own, but with a squarer face, and longer hair, which was caught back into a high, short ponytail.

"Gidds."

He turned to her, his brief smile surfacing as he stood, and they clasped hands. No kisses this time, which Laura suspected would have been not quite comfortable for both of them, in their blue-skinned guises.

"Not too tired?" she asked, for while it was midday on Arcadia, it was close to midnight halfway around the world where he’d been stationed.

He shook his head. "Now that the Conclave is over, I’ve much more control over my timetable, so I simply slept for much of the afternoon and evening, making this functionally mid-morning for me. I have only just started, however, and haven’t yet completed the first contract of the game."

"Neither have I," Laura said. "Since we were going to travel together, I haven’t been playing. I found out the game’s based on a long series of books, and read the first one of those instead."

"Background research?"

She laughed at the approving note in his voice. "It helped me understand the system a little more, but not the particular teszen that is supposed to be my first contract. They’re all very individual."

Gidds hadn’t even spoken to his yet, but since both of the spirits were located on the White Plateau, they decided to travel to meet his, and then work on solutions to both contracts.

"Is the name Ruvord significant to you?" she asked, as they climbed the intricately worked ramp-bridge that led up to the Plateau.

"A famous Taren explorer. From the Caverns Era."

Tare was an extremely unhospitable planet, all oceans and storms, and the early Taren settlers had lived almost entirely underground. A lot of Tarens still weren’t at all comfortable with concepts like 'outside'—let alone animals or insects.

"I hope he didn’t end up meeting a grue," she said lightly, and then explained the game ZORK, and the Great Underground Empire, and monsters that attacked only in the dark.

That conversational tangent was the result of long deliberation. Sue was right: even if he tried, Gidds could never catch up, just as Laura did not expect to ever be really well-versed in a thousand years or so of Taren-Kolaren-Muinan history, literature, and social conventions. She could build new experiences with Gidds, true, but simply leaving out of their relationship all the things that made Laura her very own self did not seem to her any better an idea than ignoring things that were important to him.

There was no way she could ever have a conversation with him like those she shared with Sue, but she had decided the only way to bring him into the frame of reference through which she habitually viewed the world was simply to explain as they went along. He gave ZORK the same focused absorption he’d brought to her description of Earth’s political complications.

"It doesn’t sound a very enjoyable game," he said, after she had outlined one of the first computer games she had ever played: a text adventure puzzle that required hundreds of replays to solve, and forgave not a single misstep.

"I’m not sure I’d have the patience for it now," she agreed, as they began following a rutted road across the broad, flat plateau that functioned as farmland for the town. "But back then…computers are less than a Muinan century old on Earth, and computer games only started to become widely available when I was in my teens. Everything was fascinating. And though they were far less complex, and often a good deal harder, they still involved a lot of things I really enjoy: puzzles, exploring new places, experiencing incredible stories. Even just the idea of what they represented fascinated me. I spent endless hours in Elite, a space merchant game that involved very little story, simply because I loved imagining myself with my own ship, flying from planet to planet." She glanced at the unfamiliar, square-cut profile of his avatar. "What part of these games causes negative reactions for Sight talents?"

He side-stepped a large puddle before answering. "For Sight Sight, the layering of false on real. Enhanced reality games are the most problematic, perhaps because they usually attempt to make the projections of the game seem true, but this sort of game feels more like watching an entertainment so long as interactions involving touch are minimised. Touch can still lead to a sensation like vertigo, while sight and sound are not so difficult. And it’s a very bad idea to try to eat anything."

"I tried to eat a piece of fruit and didn’t need Sight Sight to think it a bad idea," Laura said, grimacing. "It tasted exceptionally odd. Of course, it was glowing green, so possibly it was meant to be a bad idea. What about Place Sight?"

"Place Sight is in some ways easier, since for the most part there is no difficulty touching virtual objects or people. But Place can react to the ideas or intentions of the game’s creators. Someone, for instance, was inordinately proud of the design of the bridge up to these fields. And games which include depictions of torture or suffering, or other very negative extremes, can be more than unpleasant. This…I will need to evaluate it longer, but I think I will be able to safely approve it for the Kalrani." His brief smile surfaced as he glanced at her. "And I also enjoy exploration and puzzles."

He’s well aware that I’m evaluating him, Laura thought, as she smiled back.

"Did your daughters inherit your Sights?"

"Combat and Sight Sight," he said. "And Path Sight from their mother. Neither has Place."

"Do you regret that?"

He hesitated. "A little. Place Sight has many challenges, but it is also the most profound Sight to experience. It adds so much richness to my life."

They had reached a signpost, and Gidds paused to fish a card from the pocket of the simple tunic his avatar wore. Laura had received a card of her own during the game tutorial, and been instructed to follow it to her first teszen.

The four-way signpost was decorated not with words, but with simple pictures. Gidds' compared the sketched symbols on his card, and turned in the direction of sheep. Then he glanced at her, and she suspected that he had caught the sudden flash of hilarity she’d experienced, at the idea of him making a contract with some kind of sheep spirit.

"Does it feel limiting to be in a virtual environment?" she asked, to cover herself.

"For Place Sight, it is a matter of constantly reaching for something that isn’t there. Sight Sight, which is more subtle, does not feel so absent—and also triggers more reliably on images alone. Although I don’t need any talents to tell me you’ve hurt your leg in some way."

"Really? How can you tell?"

"You keep limping. The impulse controls for your avatar are responding to the pain you feel outside the game."

Laura hadn’t noticed. A little embarrassed, she explained her excursion onto Arcadia’s rocky southern bank. "It’s nothing serious: a bruise."

"Would you find it intrusive if, for instance, Kaoren visited in a few kasse? Not entirely coincidentally."

She laughed, pleased that he’d been upfront instead of just trying to organise her. "He’ll be doing that anyway—I’m having the whole family over for dinner. And then Cass will probably try to mother me, which I find wholly disconcerting. She’s matured so much."

"She has grown into herself," Gidds said, considering another signpost, and then turning in the direction of the painted outline of a house.

The road took them past a number of the hairy sheep clearly based on those found on Muina, and into a tidy farmyard. Here Laura was entirely distracted from hunting spirits by Zylat Island’s version of a chicken: banded brown and white feathered creatures that reacted to their arrival by scampering up trees and the sides of the farmhouse, and filling the air with excited glock noises as they goggled down at the intruders.

"These were in the book I read," Laura said. "They’re called goo-glucks."

And the thought of Gidds making a contract with a spirit representing the excitable climbers produced another jolt of hilarity, followed by a second glance. No matter how muted his Sights, he could definitely tell when she was being amused at his expense.

"Perhaps a contract with their teszen would offer speed," he said, unfazed. "Or claws."

He turned over the card, checking for further symbols, but—unsurprisingly for a newbie quest—they’d already arrived at their destination, and so he held it up in accordance with the instructions given by the representative of the Weaver. Nothing happened.

"How long did you wait?"

"It only took a moment for me. I was led to a pond, and when I held the card up there was an immediate ripple, and a voice that managed to be both very wet and very crotchety snapped No talking until you give me what I want most. I’m not even—oh, I think something’s happening."

Around Gidds' feet, motes of dust stirred and lifted. A fragment of straw whirled upward and stopped directly in front of his eyes, spinning gently.

"…is a man?"

The words were barely audible, a whisper on the wind. Gidds tilted his head ever so slightly, then said: "It is."

"…what does man want?"

"Your strength." Gidds was just as serious talking to a piece of straw as he was with anything else Laura had seen him do. "The land of Ramara has fractured and fallen beneath the ocean. We are gathering allies to heal the damage that has spread from her fall, so the land of Zathar does not share her fate."

"…don’t care. Ramara, Zathar, not here. Only care Zylat."

"If Zathar falls, Thetis will follow. And after Thetis, Mris, and Kaztar and Zylat. In return for your aid, I offer my blood."

"…eat man?"

"Yes," Gidds said, with perfect gravity. "Blood in exchange for your aid."

"…eat man," the wind repeated, and the piece of straw whirled faster, slashing Gidds' avatar’s face and leaving a tiny purplish line. A dark droplet of blood escaped the line, and a mote of light bloomed, burning it away. The light lifted, circled Gidds once, and then dropped to rest upon his hand.

It vanished, along with the wind, and Laura stepped forward to study the mark it had left behind. A tiny spiral of pale blue, slightly raised.

"Like a brand," she said. "Did it hurt?"

"Momentarily."

"Well, I don’t think that was the teszen of the goo-glucks. You seem to have done some background research of your own."

"I asked many questions when I joined the Path of the Weaver." He looked around the farmyard thoughtfully, and his brief smile surfaced as he glanced up at the dozens of climbing birds still sporadically letting out their signature call. "I do wonder what their teszen would be. It is an interesting idea, to give every part of the world a motive force."

"A bit like Shintoism," Laura said, and explained that as they started back toward the route to her starter teszen.

"This isn’t one of the belief systems you described in our briefing sessions."

"Earth has a lot of religions," Laura said, shrugging. "I’m surprised the Triplanetary has so strongly kept to planet-spirit reverence, especially when it only seems to be Muina herself that has ever responded in a verifiable way." She hesitated, aware that while there was some debate among Muinan descendants as to what exactly the spirit of Muina constituted, most treated the planet quite factually as a living creator entity.

"Which of Earth’s beliefs do you follow?" Gidds asked.

"Oh, well, I’m an atheist. I’m sure—have had demonstrated by coming here, in fact—that there are powers that Earth’s science hasn’t yet come to understand or acknowledge, but Earth’s gods have always seemed to me to be explanations that developed into complexities."

"And so you don’t believe that Earth, like Muina, lives?"

"I believe it’s a living planet, and deserves our care for that reason alone. I’ve never seen any sign that it’s a thinking entity." She sighed. "Of course, I’d say the same thing about Muina if it weren’t for the fact that there appears to be a place in Kalasa where people can experience some form of communication with…something. Do you believe that it’s really the planet?"

"Yes." He was direct, firm. "I had never been certain before visiting Kalasa. But I could not say whether the same core exists for other worlds."

As they followed the route on Laura’s card, they discussed the theories around Muina’s resemblance to Earth—one of which was that it was a created planet.

"Does the possibility bother you?" she asked. "I know that Cass was originally very worried how people would react, but she seems to have been far from the only person to think of that explanation, and I’ve seen some heated debates on the newsnets."

"I would like to know, but it is more an abstract question for me. Rather than clinging to a preferred truth, I will accept whatever is proven—in the unlikely event that a definitive judgment is ever made. Fortunately Sight Sight is not inflicting a strong need to have an answer."

"Do you —" Laura began, but then spotted the lone, overhanging tree that had been her second symbol. "Here’s my demanding pool."

No ripples disturbed the water when they reached the rock-lined rim. It was an eerie spot, tucked away in a little hollow, and very still.

"I tried to ask it for more information, but it didn’t react any further. Admittedly, I didn’t try for very long, since, well…" She paused, turned, and met his eyes. "I stopped for a nightcap."

Even through an avatar, the doubled-intensity effect hit her. He reached for her hands, and squeezed them tightly.

"Your assignment is still due to finish in two days, right?

"Yes." One word that said a great deal, and most of it involved being naked. "After that, I will have a month primarily working with Kaoren at Kalasa, and can travel from Pandora via the teleport platforms."

"Does touching things in this game really give you vertigo?"

A small grimace. "Yes, unfortunately." But it was a moment more before he let go of her hands. Then he asked: "Would you like me to tell you the probable solution for the teszen?"

She blinked at him, saw that he was—of course—perfectly serious, and let out her breath in laughing exasperation. "Now was it your Sights that gave you the answer, or simple observation?"

"At times it is difficult to separate the two. But in this case, a thing you will be able to see."

"Well, that’s something at least. If I can’t figure it out, I’ll ask for a hint, but it’s heartening that there’s something apparently so completely obvious you spotted it straight away."

Making an effort to avoid preconceptions, Laura looked carefully around, not initially seeing anything different than before. Tree. Rocks. A few little ferns. Water that was clear, though in the shade, so it looked quite black.

A tracery of silver.

"There’s a lesson in this about looking beyond the surface," Laura said, kneeling so she could better peer into the water. The silver was not a fish, but a line, a slender chain dropping deep into the centre of the pool. Its end was fastened to a spur of rock almost at her feet.

Laura lifted the fine, chilly links. The chain was thin, but not so fragile she couldn’t begin drawing it from the water, handful after careful handful. Ten feet. Twenty. A little pile of silver began to mound beside her.

"How deep can this pool be?" she asked, leaning forward. "I think I can see something coming up."

Gidds had knelt beside her, steadying her against the possibility of impromptu baths, but there was no difficulty pulling the last of the chain from the pool, and with it a small metal cage. Inside, was a sodden ball that, as she set the cage down, partially unwound into something scrawny and distinctly feline, grey hair clumped into wet spikes.

"Now this is just cruel," Laura said. "What a place to keep a cat."

Cat? Cat? The voice was just as crotchety as the first time she’d heard it, though rather less wet. Woman is blind.

"I certainly haven’t been winning any points for observation," she agreed, examining the fastening of the small, square cage, and then trying to get a grip on the pin that was holding it in place. "What should I call you, if cat is so very wrong?"

Kirr-tut! Woman knows nothing.

"Well, I’m new around here. But learning fast."

Gidds offered Laura a small stone, and she used it to knock the pin free, then watched with fascination as the kirr-tut slithered out the moment the door opened. It was as much marten or weasel as cat—a long and snaky furred animal—but with very cat-like high pointed ears and a wedge-shaped skull. It stretched, and shook itself, and made a sound like an exasperated sneeze.

What woman want?

"Your strength," Laura said, with a quick smile across at Gidds. "To prevent all the world from following Ramara beneath the waves. In return, I offer you blood."

Ramara drowned. Disdain shot through the kirr-tut’s annoyance. Yes. Will help.

Before Laura could respond, it nipped her—the pain sharp and unexpected enough that she jerked and briefly opened her eyes onto the view from her window seat.

The brand that sealed her first contract was a paw print on the inside of her wrist. Laura regarded it with disproportionate pride for how little effort it had cost her.

"Not that I’m altogether sure what I’ve gained, unless it’s a grumpiness mode. Somehow cross, damp not-a-cat will help me heal holes in the world."

They walked back to the city, discussing the similarities in the game to the crisis that had nearly seen the destruction of Muina, Tare and Kolar.

"And yet with no Ionoth," Laura said. "Forming contracts and healing damage, and so far as I can tell any combat is with nodes of corruption."

"I like it," Gidds said, definitely. "I will have a second evaluation made by another instructor, and if they pass it, approve it for the Kalrani."

And then perhaps they would take another considered step toward each other. Dating, and thinking of introducing family.

Laura felt ready for it.