"True. My friends have ... lost their way. One is mesmerized by the wonders of your science and technology, and the other has thrown herself into the service of Doran Morss. They neglect our search for allies. Every day they seem to remember less why we came here." He tried to express the depth of his feelings of betrayal and pain at Livia's absence, but all he could say in the end was, "I do not understand."
Ishani shook her head sympathetically. "It's the narratives. They're making sense of your friends' lives; that's what they do. It's insidious, you don't even know it's happening. I'll bet they've both found causes they can believe in. They've even met people, haven't they? ... Beautiful men or women who hold out some hope of completing them, of being their match ... " She sighed ruefully at his expression. "It's true. Narratives will do that. And what they find for you is genuine, and emotionally fulfilling. It's just that it's been given to you, you haven't made it yourself."
He looked around the cabin, suddenly frightened. "And have the narratives given me this?"
"No. If you're here on the ground of the Scotland you're outside the narratives' influence. This is Doran Morss's ship, and he's not part of the human Archipelago. That's why we," she gestured at Lindsey and herself, "can be ourselves here."
"I came here to respect the loss of my people through isolation and genuine sadness," he said after a while. "Why did you come here?"
Lindsey brooded for a moment. "Because," she said, "everybody's looking for a way out. Out of the smothering comfort of the narratives, away from the impossibility of change. Since the anecliptics took over the Archipelago, things are safer — there's been no billion-casualty wars in a long time. But people are starting to realize that the price is too high. They can't change the world around them, so they try to change themselves — like Omega Point. But that's no answer. We have to look to the past for models of how to live."
"That's very interesting," he said politely. "But what I asked was, why are you living like this? I don't understand how anyone lives in this Archipelago, it is a strange place where people do not follow their ... spirits. I merely wondered if that was what you were doing. Following your spirits."
Ishani frowned. "I don't know how to answer that."
He swallowed more of the horrible stew, then said, "In my country, we did not have sims or books or other entertainments. But on cold nights we would sit around the fire, and tell each other our stories ... I see from your expressions that you do not know that tradition. I'm sorry I assumed too much."
"No, wait," said Lindsey, reaching to catch Ishani's arm. "I think that's a great idea, don't you? Ishani, why don't you tell us your story. How you came to be here."
Ishani sat back, looking shocked. "You mean, not by rewinding a memory, but by talking?" She started to grin, then laughed. "Like Charon did ... All right, but I haven't organized my life as a narrative, you know. I'm not sure you'll understand."
"As listeners, we are not required to understand," said Qiingi. "Only to care."
"Ah. Well, then here goes."
My parents came from an average background, six generations all living together in an extended estate on an ordinary coronal. My first memories are of running and laughing on gigantic lawns among miles of parkland. The parks were full of fabulous animatronic creatures who staged tableaux and intricate dramas for us kids. The whole coronal was like this — paved with the grand estates of dynasties that had their roots in fabulous distant places like Mars and Mercury.
As I grew older and received my inscape implants I discovered other worlds that overlaid this one. There was a city, a marvelous place of whirring aircars and towering skyscrapers full of light — but it was entirely virtual, not a single brick of it physically existing. Yet everybody who was anybody had an apartment there. As a young teenager I would spend whole nights out with my friends in the crowded thick air of the city's alleys. Then to bug out and find myself sitting quietly in my room, where in fact I'd been all along.
It was at a party in this virtual city that I met the Wild Boy.
His name was Charon and he came from far away in the outer solar system. He'd grown up in an aerostat city in the frozen skies of Uranus, where the air's perfectly still for centuries at a time and the young people entertain themselves by rappelling up and down the vast curving sides of their cities above an endless abyss of air. He'd seen comrades fall to their deaths during such adventures — had spoken to one ten minutes into her descent, as she calmly related the sensation of the black tightening around her like an invisible serpent a thousand kilometers below him.
Charon was so gray and serious, like Death at a dinner party; but his stories held us fascinated, and not only because he told them to us verbally — like this — rather than just rewinding a memory for us to walk through. We loved his melancholy darkness — but we never let him know it. When we discovered that he refused to edit his inscape feeds, we took to pestering and teasing him mercilessly, playing tricks on his view, that sort of thing. I was very much attracted to him, so I'm afraid I was the worst.
He came to see me in my studio one day — I was a pretentious little girl and fancied myself a painter. I'd had a real studio built for me by the house bots, high up in one attic of the main building. I wore an old-style Parisian painter's cap and a white smock while I worked, even though I would never in a million years have touched real paint. I was working in airblocks when Charon came in, moving sculpted shapes of opacity and colored translu-cence around to create a light sculpture. I remember I'd called up a shaft of sun to spotlight myself and my work on the blond wood floor — totally artificial light, it was cloudy outside, but you get the idea. Charon took one look at me, and burst out laughing.
"I came here to yell at you for that last trick you played," he said; I can still remember the nasal tone of his accent. "But I can see now that it isn't necessary."
As clearly as I remember that, I can also remember my stunningly clever reply:
"What?"
"You're not much more real than that stuff you're playing with, are you?" he said. He was angry, but I wasn't sure why. Sure, I'd done something to his inscape again, but it was just inscape — and if he'd been hurt, well, hurts could be healed with a little pill or a few minutes with a sympathy agent.
I said something inane, I think it was about his interrupting important work. He walked slowly up to me, looking the sculpture up and down, and a sly expression came over his face. "I've noticed," he said, "that you and your friends are so used to inscape that you ignore most of it. You stick to the little parts that are fashionable and you never poke your head outside them."
It was true, but so what? In those first days after you get your inscape implants, the whole universe seems to be waving and trying to get your attention. You learn to tune it out; and I said so.
"Well, I've been exploring," he said. "Let me show you something." And right next to my light sculpture, he opened a window.
Visions unfolded in that window like flowers opening in the sun — first dozens, then as Charon's query raced through the worlds of the Archipelago, hundreds, thousands of subwindows floated in an infinite space next to my sculpture. They rotated in and out of focus at the front of the field. And, in each one of them, a young woman stood in front of a half-finished light sculpture.
"This is what's happening right this second, all across the Archipelago," said Charon. "I simply asked inscape to show me all the publically accessible feeds from girls who are working with airblocks."