Here came Maerta, conspicuously in her own stocky, dark-skinned body. Her clothing was shuffling, watching pupil dilation and other indicators in the visitors as his own had on the hillside. In short order it had adjusted itself into conservative garb that would seem neutral, if not familiar, to these people from Virga. Some of the other people were undergoing similar transformations, but those encased in glittering exoskeletons or half-visible under swirling dragonflies had no hope of looking familiar. Sure enough, the Virgans stumbled to a halt, closing ranks and muttering in alarm as they were surrounded by dozens of shambling, dancing, or plodding figures of various degrees of humanity.
"Don't be alarmed," said Maerta, striding forward with her hand outstretched and a welcoming smile on her face. "I'm afraid you've caught us in our work clothes today." She shook Maspeth's hand, and then, as the man stepped in between them, Eustace Loll's. "Keir warned us that you're tired and hungry. I've got a nice stew on the boil over here, why don't you come and sit down?"
They didn't take much persuading, especially when Maerta made shooing motions at the others and they mostly retreated back to their workstations. With Keir's reassurance that nothing dangerous was happening, the bigger exoskeletons retreated and those wearing them sent proxy bodies in their stead. Soon the floor was empty of all but human-appearing people. The Virgans slumped with relief onto some benches behind one of the material partitions, and Maerta began serving soup.
"It's lucky that Keir spotted you," she was saying; as she said this out loud, she glyphed a message at Keir's scry: Why weren't you in class?
"Just lucky, I guess," he said with a grin. "I'm often looking in the wrong direction at the right time."
Maerta's own smile faltered, and behind her he noticed a couple of the other grown-ups exchange glances. What did that mean? He'd just been making a joke.
Maspeth said, "We owe him our lives," and the look she sent Keir wiped every other consideration out of his mind. "We were at the end of our strength," she went on, "and with the avalanches ... we wouldn't have made it to the city without his help."
Maerta looked pleased, and for a tiny moment Keir thought that things would end here. But--"There he is!"--he turned and here came Gallard, who was the kids' designated teacher, and as humorless and unforgiving as any adult he'd known.
Gallard's face had all the anonymous perfection of his people; he was from the inner reaches of Vega, where the virtuals ruled and body-swapping was common. As usual, he was surrounded by a cloud of glyphs and emoticons, so many of so many types that Keir could never tell what he was thinking. "Where did you get to?" he asked as he strode across the stone floor to glower down at Keir. "--I know, I know, you were on the slopes. But what conceivable reason could you have had for that?"
Keir's scry flashed all kinds of red warnings, but they didn't stop him from blurting, "Better company?"
Gallard's face didn't change, but his icon cloud scowled at Keir. He appealed to Maerta. "He's out of control. You see what I have to put up with?"
Keir found his ears becoming hot as he realized that Leal Maspeth was watching this exchange with interest. "I'm sorry," he said, trying to be adult about it all. "It won't happen again."
"You've said that before. Maerta--"
She held up a hand. "I'll talk to him, Gallard. Maybe some discipline is in order. For now, I'm grateful that he helped these travelers. It was something he didn't have to do, especially if he knew how you'd react."
Gallard glanced over at the Virgans with disinterest, then turned back to Keir. "Come on. You have a simulation to finish."
"Maerta--" But she shook her head at him.
"Go on, Keir. We'll discuss your absence later."
Even more acutely embarrassed, he snuck a glance at Maspeth, who was actually grinning! "It's good to see that some things never change," she said. Then she added in a sympathetic tone to Gallard, "I'm a teacher, too."
"Come, Keir." He strode away without acknowledging Maspeth's comment. Keir shrugged at her, ducked his head to Maerta while firing a cloud of apology glyphs at her scry, then hurried after his tutor.
* * *
"REST, PLEASE," INSISTED the woman Keir Chen had introduced as Maerta. "You're safe now." She was matronly, of apparent middle age, but Leal had learned lately to be wary of appearances in the world outside Virga. Maerta's twin sister was handing out bowls of broth to Leal's men, who sat or lay in various exhausted poses on a well-lit stone floor.
"Thank you, but I'm not sure we are safe," Leal said. She was aware that she was shifting from foot to foot, looking around herself nervously. They might well have gone from the frying pan into the fire; Keir Chen's people didn't all look human. Some were huge and hulking, with hydraulic lines and metal spars intertwining the flesh of their arms. Others were whiskered and coiffed with silvery antennae that turned and swerved as they looked about. Some were entirely metal, and multi-armed. And now that she was noticing things, she realized that Maerta and her sister were not the only twins in this huge room. She counted at least five other pairs in her first glance around.
Keir Chen had called this place Complication Hall. Apparently it was the only inhabited spot in the city. The Hall was a cathedral-sized space, built in a cross shape and complete with a vast, backlit rose window at its far end. Its pillared sides rose seventy meters into the architectural insanity that may have given the place its name: a frozen explosion of arches, cornices, footings, and crenellations all toppled over one another in a narrowing gyre whose ultimate ceiling was lost in mazey detail. At least the floor was level. Its polished surface hosted heaps of boxes, sleeping and living areas behind partitions, and many strange silvery forestlike growths of machinery. For Leal, only the brown stone floors, the pervasive shadows, and the smell of cooking food were familiar.
Maerta smiled knowingly now and nodded up at the strange ceiling. "Brink is immune to avalanches," she said. "In the five years we've been here, not one roof has broken."
"It's not avalanches I'm worried about." Leal bit her lip, unsure of what to say; then she blurted, "We were followed."
Maerta's eyes narrowed. "By what?"
That was telling: she had not asked by whom. "He was my ... one of our former companions," said Leal. She couldn't afford to describe John Tarvey any other way; it was too painful. "He was taken by one of those, I think the word is 'river,' and when he came back to us he'd ... changed." She looked at the floor.
Maerta stared at her in wonder. "You really are from Virga, aren't you?"
"Yes, and I promise to tell you all about how we got here, but first we have to make sure that the thing that's, that's wearing Tarvey like a coat can't get in!"
She'd said that too loudly; her men were all staring at her. Eustace Loll limped over. His lips pursed into an expression that might have been concern, or might have been disapproval. "You've been through a lot, Leal. You should rest." He bowed to Maerta. "On behalf of the government and people of Abyss, I'd like to thank you for rescuing us."
Leal wanted to tell him to shut up, but in this place, surrounded by so many people, she no longer had the power. Loll had been waiting for such a moment, she realized: for a time when he no longer had to defer to her.
"You're welcome," said Maerta. "We'll send some bodies down to patrol the city's lower entrances."
Loll raised his eyebrow. "Thank you. However--though I appreciate Leal's anxieties--I don't think that will be necessary. The man was swept away by the avalanche. He won't be back."