"One of our people took this picture about six hours ago," said the founder. "From the air."
It took a moment for her meaning to sink in. Then Livia stood up quickly. "Oh! But that's ... "
"Impossible? Yes, it is." They both stared at the photo.
Taking pictures from the air was simple in Wester-haven. In Raven's world, however, photography did not exist. Neither did flying machines. Inscape and tech locking worked together to exclude inappropriate technological interactions; the upshot was
that Raven's world and everything in it was invisible from Westerhaven. The two technology sets were mutually invisible. Lady Ellis was showing her a picture that by all Livia knew simply could not exist.
"The light from the towers reached the camera," mused the lady. "That's to be expected; it would reach our eyes too if we were flying by. But then, the tech locks should have edited it out of the camera's image, just as inscape would edit it out of our sensorium. The pilot said he saw this Raven city, Livia. What does that mean?"
She shook her head. An unquiet feeling had started in the pit of her stomach.
"It's like what happened at this potlatch thing, isn't it?" continued the founder. "I hear the diplomats dismissed the event as unimportant. Pah!" She waved away the window. 'They were too busy obsessing about Lucius Xavier to pay attention to the real issue. Worse yet, when we confronted them just now with this picture, they all hemmed, hawed, or hid behind their animas. Nobody wants to take this on."
Here it came, thought Livia. "Take what on?"
"Livia, someone has to go investigate what's happened in Skaalitch. That should be obvious. We think it should be someone who's had ... experience with situations of instability in the tech locks and inscape."
Livia blew out a heavy sigh. It was momentarily amusing to picture Jachman and his cronies going to the founders to manipulate them for this outcome. But they could never have had the authority for it. Nobody did. Which meant either that Ellis was telling the truth about her motives for asking Livia ... or there were politics here she knew nothing about.
Either way, this conversation couldn't have happened, no matter how strong Lady Ellis's authority, unless Livia was willing to let it happen. That alone was sufficient to guarantee her answer.
"Yes," she said. "I'll go check it out."
5
He had come to the center of the bay to find peace. Qiingi had always been able to do that, ever since he was able to paddle on his own: he would glide silently over the hurrying water, watching the mist consume the bottoms of the nearby mountains. That mist was where a being could trade its ghahlanda and become something else, as Livia Kodaly had when she visited from the world of ghosts. The mist devoured everything and in it this became that, lost became found.
Today there was no mist. The distant shoreline remained crystal clear under limpid sunlight. He could see the individual rocks along the shoreline, the splashing as the waves lunged against them.
He slapped the water and one of the sleek beings surfaced next to him. "Qiingi," it said, after playfully shaking water all over him. "You neglect your studies."
"I know," he said regretfully. "There are problems in the houses of men. Strangers who have no qqatxhana."
He no longer thought of them as ancestors that fabrication had fallen in the first day of their visit
"Yes, we know of them. You must trust them." The being flicked its flukes, dove and rose again. "But for now, we must pick up where we left off last time. Tell me, Qi-ingi: where does teotl come from?"
"It is not ours," he said stiffly. Qiingi's skin was crawling; these beings had never endorsed interlopers such as the ancestors before. "Teotl was the guiding principle of the Nahuatl of Earth," he went on. "Like everything else we have, we stole the idea from someone else."
"Qiingi ... " The being sounded reproachful. "Good artists borrow, great artists steal. And truly great artists forget that they've stolen. You sound like an adolescent Is it because you have been polluted by the ideas of the Westerhaven girl?"
"Unlikely," he said, reluctant to talk about the strangers who had visited the day of the potlatch.
"Tell me, what is teotl?"
He scowled at the being for a few moments but he had come here to find peace. If he was truly to do that, he must shift his worries away from what was transpiring on land. Qiingi sighed. 'Teotl is the region of the fleeting moment" he recited. "Ometeotl is the one near to everyone, to whom everyone is near. But teotl can only be a thing, it cannot be itself."
"What? Qiingi, what are you talking about? Are you speaking nonsense?" The being dove under the boat, emerging on the other side.
They did this all the time teach you something then pretend you were speaking gibberish when you recited it back to them. The being was trying
to get him to think about what he was saying, not just recite.
As he focused on explaining what he meant Qiingi found his thoughts settling. This was what he'd come here for. 'Teotl is ... teotl is that which is always something other than itself. It is everything and everything is it"