Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

Chaison waved one of his men forward. 'Where are Ferance and the Home Guard people?' he murmured.

'We can't find them,' murmured the officer.

Yes, it might have been them, thought Antaea. Waking the emissaries would be a highly effective display of power, if you had discovered Candesce's secret. And yet, you would want to be there for the unveiling of that capability; and would you really choose to inaugurate it by giving your enemies a chance to speak?

'This is strange,' Chaison said. 'We have no explanation. I suggest we worry about the how later, and seize the opportunity while we have it.'

'WHO ARE YOU?' thundered the oak. Chaison bowed.

'Admiral Chaison Fanning of the navy of Slipstream,' he said. To his aide he added, 'Where is Shambles? Aerie's got to be represented here.'

'DO YOU SPEAK FOR VIRGA?'

'No one speaks for Virga.' He walked up to stand under the broad branches of the oak. 'We here speak for some of the human nations in Virga. We came here to discuss how to protect ourselves and all the rest who are not here.'

'THEN YOU WILL DO.'

Chaison looked around, a pained expression on his face. The nobles, ministers, and diplomats of the other nations ringed him and the tree; all appeared awestruck and, clearly, at a loss for words. Antaea knew politicians, however. That silence would not last.

Chaison turned his attention to the iron cat. 'You're the being that came to Abyss with a message? The one that Leal Maspeth knows?'

'I am part of that,' said the cat with a duck of its head. Antaea twitched at those words. Part of that. It was admitting that it wasn't a conscious soul like herself. 'We came to you with news of your danger,' it continued. 'It is our danger, too; and so, we propose an alliance.'

Now the crowd began talking animatedly. Antaea crossed her arms and shook her head.

Chaison held up his hand for silence. 'What kind of alliance?'

'It should not be possible for us to speak here,' said the cat. 'Obviously you have learned the secret of how Candesce is able to keep Artificial Nature at bay, even if you will not admit it to us. We want that secret for our own protection. In return, we will give you military and technological assistance.'

Antaea couldn't help herself. 'But you're part of Artificial Nature,' she blurted. 'You were frozen until just now because you're part of it. How would Candesce's field protect you? It would just turn you off.'

'We would use it as a weapon, not a shield. And as to us being a part of the Artificial Nature, you are part of biology,' said the cat. 'Do you therefore ally yourself with plagues and parasites? Your operating system is DNA. Do you therefore think of yourself only as that? It gives you life, but it also gives you cancer, and diseases, and decrees that you must die.' The creature paced away a little, then spun around impatiently. 'We do not wish to be at the mercy of consciousness. We simply wish to remain what we are.'

'You wish? You 'wish'?' Antaea shook her head with a cynical laugh. 'You just admitted you're not even aware. How can you want anything? You're a robot,' she said to the cat, 'and you,' she shouted at the oak, 'you're nothing but a plant!'

She turned to the crowd. 'They may be despicable people, but at least Ferance and her allies are like us.'

'Oh, but they're not.'

Antaea turned to look at Leal. The former history tutor had crossed her arms and had an annoyingly impatient look on her face.

'They're conscious beings like us,' said Antaea. 'They,' she pointed at the emissaries, 'are not.'

Leal frowned at the path under her feet for a moment. Then she raised her head and said, 'Consciousness is a passenger.

'--Or, at best, a crewman. Our values are the pilot.

'You and I are aware, Antaea, because that is what our bodies and our ways of life need from us. Sometimes we forget ourselves, and come to think that we are our minds--but that's a piece of foolishness. You must never forget what you really are.'

'Which is?' Antaea felt light-headed. Her hands were shaking.

Leal smiled. 'Love, and hunger, and aches and pains and family and all the things you want, and hate, and desire with your whole being. They are what you are, and your mind, too, in its own place.

'But even those creatures who don't have minds have values; they are their values, embodied in their form and function. So the oak,' she nodded to the tree, 'and so the multi-bodied morphont.

'Ask yourself,' she said to Antaea, 'what world does the oak want? The same that you want: a world of sunlight and clear air, rain, whispering branches and humming insects. The oaks want what we want. But what do Ferance's allies want? Not a garden. At best ... a palace, for them; a prison, for the rest of us.'

'You're wrong!' Yet she couldn't think. Leal was a practiced speaker, and Antaea had never mastered rhetoric, nor ever relied on argument to save her. In her frustration she wanted to cut Leal down where she stood; she wanted to make these idiots see the madness in front of them.

'It's suicide!' she shouted, turning to appeal to the crowd surrounding them. 'Can't you see? It wasn't the virtuals who tried to take Candesce. Not them who hollowed out my--my sister...' Horror began to well up in her, for they were staring at her as if she were insane. She pushed it down one last time and cried, 'If you make a pact with these dead things, then you're making a pact with death itself!'

'Antaea,' Leal said gently--and Antaea knew she had to run, because if she stayed for another second she