Edda (4 page)

“I must have passed out,” she muttered, before a headset was placed over her eyes. “Darn it, so close, too.”

Chapter 4

OF LOVE AND EMPTINESS

By the time
Ambassador returned to Princess’s chamber, she was on her feet and staring out of a large window.

“Well, that was quite an adventure.” The avatar remained facing the window, but the eyes of her reflection in the glass met his and she smiled: a smile that Ambassador had seen a thousand times, yet right now it had a quality of exaggerated innocence that he had never noticed before.

There could hardly be a greater contrast between the composure of the avatar and the panting human body Ambassador had been monitoring a few minutes earlier. Naturally, Penelope’s avatar was an aesthetically pleasing one that she had chosen for herself and refined over the years with her own scripting. It was of a young human woman; perhaps—like Penelope herself—fifteen years of age. The avatar’s eyes were slightly larger and certainly tended to glow more than those of an actual human. Her face, too, was rather elfin, the cheekbones and chin being delicately drawn.

While Penelope’s human body was kept shaved for considerations of hygiene, her avatar had extraordinary, vibrant long tresses whose coils swayed as she walked and whose wisps lay about her head catching little glints of light like a halo. Normally her hair was a shiny raven black, but recently Penelope had favored a rather garish purple. Apart from this lurid coloration the avatar certainly was a pleasant creation, quite in keeping with her role as a princess in Edda.

It was a puzzle to Ambassador, and an important one, to determine exactly what incentive Penelope needed for her to remain a productive unit. A few years ago, she had been much easier to understand. It had perhaps been somewhat demeaning for Ambassador to be observed by the other manifestations playing hide-and-seek with the little girl. But a high degree of autonomy was required in order to discover the ingenious hiding places of the human, and he had been the logical choice.

Penelope had once delighted in the vast scale of the castle and had relished exploring its long corridors, tall towers, and hidden chambers. Quite apart from a desire to intimidate his rivals with the scale of his achievements, Lord Scanthax had needed somewhere to house the captured belongings of a thousand lords and ladies from a thousand different regions. It once had been a highly successful motivational strategy to allow Penelope to dress up her avatar in the flared silk suits popular in the southern continent; to brandish a fan made from feathers of a rare equatorial bird; and to wear the jewelry created by the rulers of the tallest mountains of the west, Edda’s greatest source of sapphire, opal, and emerald. But it had been more than two years since Penelope had shown the slightest interest in the wealth and curiosities housed in the castle.

Today, Princess stood with her back to Ambassador and her face in shadow. And it seemed to Ambassador that even more complex than the visible patterns of light and dark on her velvet dress were the invisible and unfathomable motions of Penelope’s soul. No longer would games please her, nor praise. She was becoming unpredictable and unreadable.

Outside, a waterfall—scripted by Penelope in an era when the castle was deemed to no longer require its full defenses—sent up rainbows as the sun declined toward the west.

“How odd that in Edda I could climb those cliffs if I chose. I could run vast distances without feeling tired. Yet in my natural habitat, the world into which I was born, I can’t even reach that stupid library.” Princess turned and gestured that he should sit. “You know, seriously, I’ve let myself get out of shape. Schedule more exercise sessions, please. Like, double the current routine.”

Ambassador gave a nod, and his hands took hold of the back of a plush chair as he attempted to appraise her mood. Resigned? Reflective? Or rebellious and resolute in her mutinous desire to reach the humans’ library?

“That was pathetic. I’m a wreck back there.”

“Not at all, Penelope. You are in good health and have a most harmonious set of proportions between your body parts; it is just that the environment is so hostile outside your apartments.”

“Oh, you flatterer. What is it that you want, by the way? You’ve been hanging around me a lot recently.”

Inadvertently, Ambassador’s gaze left her pale face and flicked to the dresser, where the captured gun lay. And while this did not escape her notice, it did no harm.

“Ah, yes, of course. More scripting. The first part of our new agreement. Let’s set to work while I’m in the mood, shall we?”

“Very good, Princess.” This unexpected and delightful response filled him with a surge of energy, and Ambassador almost skipped to the door, which he patiently held open while Penelope picked up the gun and a shoulder bag in which she kept her tools. It was a strange juxtaposition, the workmanlike satchel, full of pockets and iron implements, hung across a body covered by the exceptionally fine needlework of a dress decorated in pearls. But Princess could wear what she pleased as long as she kept Lord Scanthax secure with her scripts.

If she could make some progress on the scripting of the new gun, that would balance the very negative view that Lord Scanthax was certain to take of Penelope’s extraordinarily dangerous and unrestrained attempt to leave her apartments. They had to march a considerable distance along quiet carpeted corridors, but their pace was swift. Walking just ahead of Princess, Ambassador felt energized, and she seemed willing to keep up with him, no matter how much he depleted his stamina reserve.

Historically, Penelope did her work in a wizard’s laboratory that filled the top floor of the eastern round tower. There was no particular need for such an environment; she could work anywhere. But as a child the room had helped her to conceive of herself as the heroine of a story in which her magic saved the kingdom. By now it was a habit for Penelope to work in the laboratory, even though the room remained a little childish in decor. It had frogs and ravens in cages, brightly colored potions bubbling over flames and releasing spicy fragrances into the room, elaborately drawn pentacles on the floor, rune-engraved wands and daggers lying on a big scarred table, and signs of burn marks around the edges of tapestries whose scenes depicted wondrous and fabulous monsters.

It also had a computer, and as soon as Ambassador opened the gargoyle-carved doors to the chamber, Penelope stepped through and went over to sit before a large viewing screen.

“Play the recordings of this weapon in action, please.” The seat that faced the screen had two demon skulls built into its arms; Princess rested her hands on these as she waited expectantly for the clips. Surprised by the speed with which Penelope was turning her attention to the gun, Ambassador needed a guilty moment to work the computer and access the files they needed. A few seconds after he found them, a projector shone its beam onto the screen and they watched a converted archer unit fire bright green bolts of energy from the gun, destroying a variety of targets—including a heavily armored tank—until the weapon ceased to work, presumably having expended all its charges.

“Interesting.” Penelope had a remote control device in her hand and was flicking back through the recordings, examining certain moments again in slow motion. “Much more powerful than anything we have, don’t you think?”

“Oh, quite. Hence the concerns of Lord Scanthax. An army using these would destroy us easily.” Ambassador paused, reluctant to interrupt her study, but he had to know. “Do you think you can script us these guns?”

“Well, yes, in the sense that I can script anything, given time. But how it generates such energy safely is quite a mystery. This could take a while.”

“A while?”

“A year, say.”

“A year!” Ambassador’s voice came out shrill and shocked, even to his own ears.

“Just kidding.” Princess looked away from the screen and gave him a smile. “I don’t know how long, I’m afraid, but let’s make a start, shall we?”

It was fascinating and frustrating to watch Penelope work. Moving to sit up at the large, scarred wooden table, she pushed all the clutter of the magician’s workshop to the side and conjured up a lump of matter out of nowhere, approximately the size of the gun.

The humans who had created Edda had been surprised and more than a little alarmed when some of their creations—the more powerful lords and ladies—over the course of the centuries, emerged as fully conscious lifeforms. As a precaution against the potential danger represented by these aggressive beings, the humans made it impossible for anyone without living human DNA to access the tools that allowed for the world to be re-scripted. But for the fact that the human body of Penelope was encased in a headset and was physically moving her fingers in her world through the various menus that allowed access to the deepest levels of Edda, she would not be able to create new matter and alter its properties.

Ambassador speculated, a little enviously, on what it must be like to have such an ability. To have access to all the coding of Edda was to be a god. Princess had the ability to alter the very fundamentals of the world. The sun itself could burn blue or green instead of yellow, should she wish it. Or so she said. Not that her power was limitless. Magic items, for example, had so far proven to be beyond her scripting skills. Also, there had been a time when Penelope had attempted to create friends for herself. The experiments had ended in frustration and with a room full of fairies, ballerinas, princesses, and multicolored furry animals. They could all walk and talk; they could all carry out a variety of tasks; but not with the independence of thought that Penelope had striven for.

Having killed all his rivals, Lord Scanthax was the only remaining self-conscious being in Edda, and he refused to let Penelope examine his coding, or that of any of his manifestations. Ordinary units, such as farmers and soldiers, Penelope had studied in depth, and she could reproduce those with a few days’ work. If she had succeeded in creating consciousness, perhaps she could have re-scripted Ambassador so that his will was independent from that of Lord Scanthax. Did he desire such a thing? It was a shocking thought, and immediately Ambassador turned his attention back to the worktable.

In the brief time it had taken to arrive at the thought of having complete autonomy and to shy away from such a disloyal notion, Princess had already created an exact copy of the physical shape of the gun. This seemed very encouraging to Ambassador, who seated himself on a stool, feeling occasional tremors of excitement run through his body. All today’s earlier misfortunes would be forgotten and Lord Scanthax would be very pleased indeed if Ambassador came to him later to announce progress on the new weapon.

Amongst the various implements and devices on the table was an old weighing scale, the sort with two pans hanging by chains from a levered arm. The captured gun was resting in one pan and from time to time Princess placed her new construction in the other. At first, hers was too light. But after several attempts, where she seemed only to be touching her new creation with the tip of a wand, the scales began to tip. One more slight adjustment and they were balanced.

“Oh, well done, Princess.” Ambassador gave her a glowing smile. And although she smiled back, she shook her head.

“When I change some of its other properties, I’ll probably lose control over its density again. But it’s a place to start. I’m coming at this by a series of approximations. There will be a lot of frustration and trying to put square pegs in round holes before we are done.”

Beaming now, Ambassador gave a slight chuckle, conveying his absolute confidence in her skills. And why not? He had seen her grow up and become more and more accomplished with every year. The little girl—whose avatar back then had been a fairy princess complete with wings—had been pathetically eager to please and perhaps that desire for Lord Scanthax’s approval had not entirely dissipated with age.

As though thinking along similar lines, Princess looked up from her work. “Ambassador, do you like me?”

“Like you?” he repeated thoughtfully.

“Yes. Do you like me—Penelope?”

“I’m sure I do. It’s just that the phrase might mean something different to a human than to an autonomous manifestation of Lord Scanthax.”

A flicker of a smile appeared on her lips, reassuring him that he had not spoken amiss.

“Let me put it differently.” Her head was tipped, focused on the material in front of her, her true gaze probably flickering across hundreds of menus and codes. “What memory do you most treasure?”

“Memory?”

“Your happiest moment.”

“Ah. The work that I was most satisfied with was accomplished when you were about halfway between seven and eight years old.”

“Yes?”

“There were many critical periods for Lord Scanthax, but this was possibly one of the most significant. Our realm had three alliances under way. To the south, ourselves and Lady Morwen were slowly undermining the position of General Tokamash. This was so obviously to our mutual benefit that despite repeated—and increasingly generous—offers from others to try to pry us apart, we had a great deal of confidence in the alliance. Theoretically, there was a time when we would have been quite vulnerable to a strike from Lady Morwen, but so long as the two of us stuck it out, we knew we would end up with the considerable prize of General Tokamash’s lands. Trusting to this perspective, we did not feel the need to send our greatest diplomatic resource southward.” Ambassador glanced at Princess, and she looked up from her work a moment to meet his gaze. “That would be me, by the way.

“To the east, as you know, there were developments of mild interest, but the mountains effectively made those of long-term consideration only. No, our real difficulty was to the west, where, more and more, our fleets were encountering those of the island realm of Admiral Ekkehar. Perhaps it would help if I showed you on a map?”

Penelope sat up. “If you like.”

“Oh please, I’ve interrupted you. I’m sorry; my enthusiasm for the story has run away with me. Go back to your scripting, please, please.” Ambassador was shocked at himself; how could he have suggested that she leave such vital work to attend to a map illustrating a minor and purposeless anecdote?