Livia had put up her hand; she was never one to stay on the sidelines. "I was always told that Westerhaven gamers and preserves the cultures of other manifolds."
Serena nodded. "Yes, of course; and we'll try to do that here. We are the great integrators of the many threads of culture in Teven Coronal."
Livia put up her hand again. "I've had six people come up to me and tell me that what I need to do is make sure the drummers are shut down, so Westerhaven can recover their resources."
An awkward silence followed. Serena's take on Westerhaven had sounded like a quote straight out of the Fictional History. Livia had been raised to follow those values, but she was learning that the truth was always more complicated.
Finally Serena shrugged. "You need to vote with your heart, Livia but remember that everything in Westerhaven is political."
Still chewing on this thought, Livia entered the carriage behind Serena's just as it began to move. They jolted down the dirt track that led off from the main road. Livia reached out with her senses and will, determined not to notice anything of Westerhaven: no buildings, no contrails. Her change of attitude and attention was noted by her neural implants and the mechology known as the tech locks; where there had been impenetrable underbrush, a pathway appeared leading into the woods. The horses joined this road without breaking stride.
She listened for rhythms in the sighing of the breeze, and soon she began to hear them. She listened for patterns in the chirping of the birds, and eventually, she heard music there. Even the clip-clop of the horses' hooves took on a complicated order, as Livia had been told it would. A sense of palpable presence began to build around the carriages, a subliminal excitement "We're close," Jachman murmured beside her.
Rene was having difficulty making the transition. He began to fade even as the drummers' city appeared around the trunks of the redwoods that walled the road. He tried to speak but no sound reached Livia's ears. The last thing she saw before he vanished was his frustrated, embarrassed frown. She couldn't help but smile at the boyishness of it.
He would be back, as soon as he'd managed to properly purge Westerhaven from his system of habits and responses. Meanwhile, they were at the drummers' ruins.
Once a thriving community had
come together here to worship in ways that were difficult or impossible in other manifolds. In some places, such as Westerhaven, the pace of life was wrong for the drummers' style of contemplation; or the attitude to music interfered with what they were attempting. The ancient and powerful religions of Earth still held sway in other manifolds and would not permit any iconoclasts or experimenters. So they had made their own reality, one in keeping with their ideals. And for several generations, it had held strong.
For some reason, they had built on low swampy ground. Water had reclaimed most of the tall brick structures. Marsh grass grew between the houses and waved on their roofs. This place had been in decline for a long time. It was more of a village, anyway, thought Livia; the houses ended not more than two hundred meters away. Once there had been frescoes on the sides of the buildings, and statues, but they had been weathered away long ago.
The drummers' microcivilization had run its natural course, and now uncomprehending outsiders had come to lay it to rest.
The expedition left the carriages and walked, sometimes wading, out into the city. They split up and began to poke about. The place was desolate, like something out of a historical sim. Livia's feet were soon wet and she found herself shivering. When she met Rene coming around the side of a large (and empty) public building, she said, "Why would anyone stay here?"
He shrugged. "There were never many of them. But apparently it was quite the religious center once. Reaching the divine through music. You're a musician, you'd have loved it here."
"But they never wrote any of it down. And they didn't perform for pleasure."
They walked on for a while, but whatever possessions the drummers had once had, they were gone, toppled into the swampy water or taken away by those who had abandoned this place's values. Rene shook his head at last.
"They're dead. I dunno about you, but I agree with the others. We should shut it down and reclaim the land."
Livia shook her head. "And just replace their reality with ours? Better if we could all learn to travel here. That would be diplomacy."
"But they're all dead. So what's to stop us?"
Livia opened her mouth to reply, then stopped. She couldn't explain why, but she felt there was still a presence here, however tenuous. It felt wrong to simply wipe the place away but it was hard to justify preserving it; doing so would go against her very public political stance.
She decided to change the subject. "We lost you for a while back there," she said at last. "You're not very musical?"
He grinned. "Maybe I'm not. And you are not nearly as scary up close as I was told you'd be."