"While I was home," he said, "I told our story to the elders. About our flight from here, and our time in the Archipelago. Livia, I left Teven with you not to seek allies for a war, but to seek meaning for the changes in our lives. I was not idle, while we were in the Archipelago. I was putting together a story to tell my people, one that would fit with the myth cycle Raven and the elders crafted for us. I told my tale while I was home. That will do my people more good than any technology."

She wondered about that as he put his arm around her and slowed her to a stroll. For Qiingi's people, his solution doubtless made sense. He wasn't denying that the tech locks had made his people possible; but she had to admit that Raven's people had very different ways of coping, because of what die locks had made possible. That reinforced the huge gulf she knew lay between Qiingi and herself. But gulfs, she had also learned, could be crossed.

Barrastea looked deceptively like it always had. In other days she might have started singing as she walked, entertaining whoever might pass by with arias from the Fictional History. But it was enough, for now, to be walking the streets as she once had.

Some of the moving sidewalks had been restored, so it only took mem a half hour to reach the edge of the city. As they exited the slidewalk Livia could see their destination: a craggy spire of the carefully designed Roman ruin that someone had built here ages ago. Spikes of tall grass, yellow now in the autumn, poked up between big weathered stone blocks. The structure was roofless and exposed, and perhaps for this reason the refugees from lost manifolds had not settled in it.

One large plinth of stone sketched a walk-in fireplace. This structure concealed one of the many entrances Aaron had discovered to the coronal's spacecraft docks. Livia and Qiingi had stepped out of this door only a day ago, and already they were leaving again.

As they rounded die broken wall that hid the fireplace from the road, Livia was surprised to see Peaseblossom sitting on a stone block. They had left the lads, and everyone else, in the ship below. And there was Cicada, standing now as he saw her; and Emblaze and even Sophia.

"What are you doing up — " Livia stopped as she saw who was standing with them.

It was 3340's servant, the self-styled "ancestor," Kale. Two others of his kind stood next to him.

Livia drew her sword, hissing "You go left," to Qiingi — but to her amazement and anger Qiingi put a hand out to stop her. "What — " she started to say. Then she recognized the man next to Kale.

It was Aaron.

"Aaron!" She laughed with relieved surprise and started to run — but her footsteps faltered after a couple of meters. There was something about the scene, the way people were sitting, the placement of Aaron and Kale, as if Aaron were standing with Kale and not with the others ...

"Aaron ... what happened?" It was a question for all of them, but Livia saw only Aaron. She couldn't believe the vision he presented.

It was as though some classical portrait artist had been hired to paint an idealized version of her dearest friend. All his imperfections had been smoothed away: where he'd had a slight slouch, now he stood straight and tall; where his cheeks had been a bit thin, now his jaw was square and strong. His eyes, which had once been a colorless gray, were now blue. But overriding all of these physical details was the sense that someone else now lived in the body that had once been his.

He strode through the tall grass and stopped a couple of meters away from Livia. A gentle, apologetic look suffused his features as he said, shyly, "How are you?"

She gaped at him. "How — I, I don't know. Aaron, what happened? How did you get here? And what are you doing ... here?"

"Livia, I wanted to tell you about it, of course. But ... I guess if we'd wanted to face up to things, we'd have known that politics would someday come between us. I mean, you and I believe different things but it never mattered before." He took a deep breath. "What I'm saying is I'm sorry we had to meet again like this. This wasn't the role I wanted to be playing when I saw you again."

"Role? You mean you're working for him now?" She glared at Kale.

"Actually, he's working for me." At first Livia didn't realize what he'd said; as she was trying to formulate a response, he added, "I'm afraid we had to confiscate your ship." Again he looked away, unhappily but not, it seemed, with any sense of guilt.

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Politics. We'll give it back, just not in time for you to warn anybody in the Archipelago about what's going to happen."

"And what is going to happen?" asked Qiingi.

"Freedom," Aaron said seriously. "We're going to free the Archipelago from the anecliptics. So that human beings can finally reach their full potential."

Kale cleared his throat. "We're wasting time. She wanted us to bring them immediately."

"Yes," said Aaron. "If you'll come this way ... 7" He gestured politely for Livia to precede him.

Her fingers itched to draw her sword, but nobody was making any effort to disarm her; doubtless this kind of weapon would do her no good. She and Qiingi joined her friends and they walked out the back of the ruin to a grassy area where several aircars sat.

"Want us to take 'em out?" murmured Cicada loyally. "We're expendable, after all."

She glanced sidelong at him. "You might once have been. Having a body's changed you. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you guys now."

"Oh?" He looked surprised, and pleased.

Despite her loud objections, Livia was separated from Qiingi and placed in the aircar that Aaron would be piloting. She shrank away from him. He noticed, and frowned.

"Whose side do you think I'm on?" he asked, with a trace of his old sullenness.

"Well, I don't know who you are, so I couldn't say," she said. "I once knew a man who looked like you, but he wouldn't be working for the enemy."

He guided them into the air with an expert hand. "What enemy is that?" he asked casually.

"You know. Thirty-three forty. The Good Book. The thing that destroyed our world and killed our friends."

Aaron shook his head sadly. "There's no such thing as this '3340' you're so angry at. We didn't know that when Teven was invaded, of course; you can name a thing even if it doesn't exist. There is no 'Good Book' except the physical object with that name. There's only people and the things they've done. Like you and me, for instance. But standing against us is a real enemy. I saw that, but I also knew you wouldn't see it"

"The annies? The Government? No, I agree with you," she said, "but 3340's no better — "

"There is no 3340!" He'd put the aircar on autopilot and now turned to glare at her. "Don't you get it? The Book doesn't think, it isn't conscious. It's us who do that. The Book just organizes and coordinates our actions — it's like a Society, only inconceivably bigger. No thing invaded Teven, and no thing is occupying it now, Livia. It's just people acting together, for good or ill. Giving a name to this new kind of power — treating it like a person — is irresponsible. If you do that you end up fighting phantoms. When I realized that, I realized how much was still possible for humanity, even in a world ruled by godlike forces like the annies.

"So whose side am I on? I'm on the side of human beings, Livia. And I'm fighting against the inhuman powers that have enslaved us all."

"So who killed our friends?" she said, almost inaudibly.

"Men and women of Raven's people, and other manifolds," he said angrily. "And these 'ancestors.' And they're sorry, Livia, you can't imagine how sorry they are that people died in the liberation of Teven. They want to atone for it And they will." He stared grimly out through the canopy at the passing buildings. "I came back to make sure they would."