Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 267
had seen what she had seen.
As to his flattery--well, she knew, as an absolute
certainty, that no one in the world had the knowledge she held.
It was perhaps slightly charming that he recognized it.
"And why should I tell you what you wish to know--even
assuming that I have the knowledge you need?"
Maut put his hands behind his back. He seemed to be
restraining an urge to pace. "You have looked up at the sky,"
he said. "All humans have done that, at one time or another.
And you have asked questions.
"You want to interrogate the sky. And you of all people,
Queen Galas, would interrogate nature itself, everything that is
other, in your human search for understanding. Everything
you have ever done proves this. You are human, Galas, and
your madness is very human: you wish to hear human speech
issue from the inhuman, from the rocks and trees. Could a
stone speak, what would it say? Your kind has ever invented
gods, and governments, and categories and even the sexes
themselves as means of interrogating that otherness.
"That the world should speak, as you speak! What a
desire that is. It informs every aspect of your life. Deny it if
you can.
"Allow me my ironic bow. I am here, madam, to
perform this deed for you. I am everything you are not. I was
blazing atoms in an artificial star, have been resonances of
electromagnetic fire, and cold iron and gridwork machines in
vast webs cast between the nebulae.
"I am stone and organism, alive and dead, whole and
sundered. I am the voiceless given a tongue to speak.
"I will speak."
And yet, the irony was not lost on Armiger that on this