Livia was a bit surprised to realize that she wasn't just telling herself that it was true. I'm turning into Aaron. Though he was as adept a political player as anyone in Westerhaven, he had contempt for the great game. They had argued about that recently, too.
What had he said at the time? "Nobody here has the balls to effect real change in the world." She smiled despite herself.
She knew why she was thinking about this now. Lu-cius's disappearance and the weird potlatch of the ancestors had served to remind her of a time of blood and pain and loneliness a period when authority had been meaningless. She recalled the electric emotions of the crowd at the potlatch. That had been the moment when carefully suppressed memories had started to boil up in her again.
Like it or not, traumatic and ineradicable experience marked her as different from these careless people laughing and dancing a few meters below her. So maybe that was why she finally stood up and said, "Cicada, Peaseblossom, bring me an anima of Aaron even a sim will do.
"We're going to find out where he's gone."
4
Founders! Cicada had clutched Peaseblossom and pointed. Founders have come!
Livia's friend Sylvie turned to the anima of Livia she'd been chatting with and said, "Oh, look! Isn't that Lady Ellis?" She pointed, hiding the gesture behind a mask. Livia's anima followed her gaze to look at the woman standing with her parents. It was indeed Ellis, one of the original creators of the Westerhaven manifold. Nearly mythological, Lady Ellis was seldom seen at this level. She and her own peers resided in mansions and realities of their own creation, rarely deigning to interfere with the affairs of their descendants. For her to be here was truly an honor for the Kodalys.
"Do you think we might be able to speak to her?" mused Sylvie.
Livia's anima laughed. "Try walking over there. You could vanish on the way!"
"Oh, wouldn't that be embarrassing!" Sylvie shook her head. "Better to wallow in real anonymity, I think."
Cicada glanced back to the authority sims he and Pease-blossom had been running, and gave the inscape equivalent of a shriek. Look! he said. What are they doing?
Agents of the founders were fanning out through the shifting clouds of simulations. Whenever they encountered a sim where Livia was being confronted over the drummers incident,
they gestured imperiously and, using their unmatched authority, terminated it The agencies of the peers fell back in confusion, and a few began trying to get the attention of their real counterparts, who naturally would not have been sullying their hands by participating directly in political scapegoating.
Why are they saving Livia?
Let's sim them!
Sim a founder? Impossible!
Not impossible. Important! Come, let's try.
Before they had the chance to try it, the founders' agents acted, generating animas that summoned corresponding ghosts of Livia herself.
What are they doing?
I don't know. Let's tell Livia!
The two faeries dove from the sky, ready to defend their mistress at the first hint of trouble, even if it came from the founders themselves. But just as they were about to manifest in front of Livia, another figure appeared before them. It stood on the air, beautiful and radiating authority, and put a finger to its faintly smiling lips.
"Where are those guys?" Livia opened an inscape window herself and called up some generic agents. "I want to review my last conversation with Aaron Varese," she told one. "And find Cicada and Peaseblossom!"
The agent bowed and vanished in a puff of faux-smoke. At the same time, the sights, sounds, and scents of a different time descended around Livia: her last talk with Aaron.
It had only been a few days ago, so she remembered the occasion well even without artificial aids. Livia had been lounging on a couch in a gazebo on the grounds of Aaron's estate, while he paced the old wooden floorboards. It was evening and another party was winding down; the air was delicately scented and still warm from the day. The sky was clear, revealing thousands of stars, those to north and south wheeling slowly west, while those directly above turned grandly around the zenith. Aaron had sought her out to express his boredom with the other guests, then stayed for one of those half-drunken conversations that it was valuable but sometimes embarrassing to record.
"Everywhere I look I see limits," he was saying. "And I wonder why we tolerate them."
Livia had shrugged, languidly turning to look at the stars. "Limits are the fountain of creativity," she said. "Without them there is no novelty."
"So they say." Aaron crossed his arms and glared down at her. "They being inhuman powers that control our lives, and over which we have no control. Inscape; the demented AI of the tech locks; even the founders. They parcel out a tiny fraction of their power to us, just enough to allow us to live tiny, inconsequential lives. It's a tyranny. Something should be done."
She'd smiled ironically. "Like what? Should I gather the peers together and overthrow nature?"