“I don’t think you have to worry,” Nisa said. “I think you’ve broken him. I never thought that would happen.”
The Yellowleaf shrugged and sat down, her back against the darkest wall. Nisa remembered that the hetman couldn’t speak.
Nisa looked down at Ruiz’s sleeping face. He seemed a great deal younger, as though the dream he now lived in was a pleasant one. Perhaps, she thought, that was the danger here: The dreamer might not want to wake.
She felt as if she had just awakened from a dream she would have wished to continue: the dream in which Ruiz Aw loved her.
“Would you like to see the city?” Somnire asked. “Come outside. I’ll be your tour guide and we can talk.” He put a light hand on Ruiz’s arm and tugged him gently toward the exit.
When they came to the great bronze door, Somnire touched it and it swung open. A small two-passenger flier sat between the deep walls, and Somnire led Ruiz to it.
“Let’s go,” the ancient boy said. “Don’t be afraid. I’m an excellent pilot, and besides, none of this is real.” He winked cheerfully and slid into the left-hand seat.
“So, why don’t we just sprout wings and float away?” Ruiz asked.
“Would you like that better? No? I didn’t think so. Let’s try to preserve our illusions.”
They lifted above the walls, into the sunlight, and Ruiz thought, How beautiful, how strange.
The island was a living confection. From the surf that rolled in from the blue-green sea to the crown of shining black cliffs that rose above, palaces of brilliant white stone frosted the steep slopes. Everywhere flowering plants spilled from terraces and windows and walls, and their spiciness thickened the air, so that it almost made Ruiz dizzy.
The oddest sights of the city were the great white flying buttresses that rose from the sea and swept upward in a fine vigorous curve until they met the basalt of the cliffs. These massive structures, spaced a half-kilometer apart at the base, apparently served as apartments for thousands of dwellers; windows glittered in the sun, and innumerable small balconies broke the sheer faces.
They rose higher and began to drift sideways above the palaces.
Ruiz looked down, to see more of the small animals the boy had called sarim. They sat on ledges, sunning themselves, huge iridescent wings spread — or flitted from balcony to balcony, chasing each other playfully. High above, a dozen others circled lazily in the rising air currents. The city seemed otherwise empty, and Ruiz wondered who tended the plants, until he remembered that none of this was real.
“Ah, but once it was,” Somnire said.
Ruiz jerked his head to look at the boy, full of a sudden unsettling suspicion.
“Oh, of course I know what you’re thinking,” said Somnire with a careless smile. “Your consciousness now exists in the mind of the Compendium; what would you expect? I lie to myself and pretend that I’m a man named Somnire, who once called himself the Head Librarian — but in fact I’m only a subroutine in the virtual. There are no rules for me!” He laughed. “For example…” His face shimmered, became a chitinous insectile nightmare, all fangs and spines, the eyes huge compound jewels. An instant later it returned to its pleasant youthful humanity. “See? I couldn’t have done that so easily when I was real. So, I have access to every ripple that slips across your mind. Please remember this, should you be tempted to think unkind thoughts of me.”
Ruiz sighed. He had grown terribly weary of things that weren’t what they seemed; he could barely bring himself to notice them.
“I’m sorry,” Somnire said. “I shouldn’t have done that. And I think we can help you, I really do. After all, the Compendium contains all the knowledge a thousand years of searching could collect — and what’s more powerful than knowledge? Other than guns and bombs, I mean.” Somnire’s voice had darkened. Just for an instant the beautiful city seemed to waver and Ruiz caught a glimpse of the emptiness beneath.
“Roderigo did it, you know,” Somnire went on. “That’s why we won’t help them. Roderigo and Delt. Well, they had many allies — all the folk of Sook who couldn’t stand to see knowledge freely shared — but they were the organizers, and they were the ones who broke the stones and butchered all the stackfolk.”
Ruiz felt a small curiosity. “Why would you build your library on Sook, of all places?”
“Ah! Where else? You must understand, we had only one rule: We would give any knowledge we possessed to anyone who asked for it. No pangalac world would have suffered our presence.”
Ruiz must have shown his perplexity, for Somnire laughed, a trifle bitterly, and went on. “For example: You want to build a hellbomb? We’d tell you how. You want to know where the fissionables can be bought? The price? How to arrange secure transport? Do you see why we would be unpopular? But the Shards don’t care who lives on Sook, as long as they obey the rules.”
“Oh,” said Ruiz. “Then why won’t you tell the Roderigans what they want to know?”
The ancient boy gave him a long unfriendly look. For a minute he didn’t answer; then he said, “That was then, when the Compendium was alive. We’ve since learned a certain self-protective pragmatism. The truth didn’t save us.
“Now we’re ghosts. Vengeful ghosts. You should remember that, if you want our help.”
“I will,” Ruiz said.
They flew on in silence, and Ruiz wondered if he had fatally offended the ancient boy. He didn’t care very much.
They gradually circled the island, and it appeared to Ruiz that the island must once have housed hundreds of thousands, though now all the palaces and courtyards and gardens were empty of human life. The only movement came from the sarim, who played everywhere in the deserted city.
Once a flight of the creatures winged by just below the flier, and Somnire sighed. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” Sunlight glowed in the wings, throwing back a subtle prismatic dazzle.
“I suppose,” said Ruiz. “Are you alone here, except for them?”
“No, I have a few companions — though they dwindle. At one time there were many of us, most of the dons and many stackfolk.” The boy shook his head, and his face was dark and cold. “But the laws of time and energy are stronger than anything else, stronger even than all the varieties of truth we harvested here.”
“Ah,” Ruiz said, though he didn’t understand what the boy was talking about. “These stackfolk… your slaves?”
Somnire jerked around to glare at him in irritation and amusement, an odd mixture. “Slaves? There were no slaves on Dorn. The stackfolk were a race designed to care for the Compendium — they did that job better and more joyfully than any other race could have… but no one but a fool would describe them as slaves. You have an unhealthy obsession with slavery; you see slaves everywhere.” He grinned. “Look at me; do I really seem a slave?”
“It’s hard to tell sometimes,” Ruiz said. “But, no.”
“And yet my parents were stackfolk. I was a stackperson until I became a don.”
“Oh,” said Ruiz.
On the far side of the island were vast sea caves, like fanged mouths biting the ocean. Long breakwaters radiated outward from the openings. “There ships from every land on Sook docked,” Somnire said. “That was a gentler time on Sook. Before the pirate Lords had grown so great. The Blades of Namp were nothing but a mob of ragged crazies, too weak to eat any but their own. Castle Delt was only an evil dream of the SeedCorp factors, a few troops marching up and down the beach and playing soldier.” Somnire drew a deep breath, and his elaborate coiffure wobbled. “Roderigo was already strong, however.”