by Dan Simmons
Suddenly there was true motion beneath my hand, and the hull simply fell and folded away—not rising mechanically like some portals I had seen, and certainly not swinging on hinges—simply folding into itself and out of the way, like lips pulling back.
Lights turned on. An interior corridor—its ceiling and walls as organic as a glimpse of some mechanical cervix—glowed softly.
I paused about three nanoseconds. For years my life had been as calm and predictable as most people’s. This week I had accidentally killed a man, been condemned and executed, and had awakened in Grandam’s favorite myth. Why stop there?
I stepped into the spaceship, and the doors folded shut behind me like a hungry mouth closing on a morsel.
THE CORRIDOR INTO THE SHIP WAS NOT AS I WOULD have imagined it. I had always thought of spacecraft interiors as being like the hold of the seagoing troopships that transported our Home Guard regiment to Ursus: all gray metal, rivets, dogged hatches, and hissing steam pipes. None of that was evident here. The corridor was smooth, curved, and almost featureless, the interior bulkheads covered with a rich wood as warm and organic as flesh. If there was an air lock, I hadn’t seen it. Hidden lights came on ahead of me as I advanced and then extinguished themselves as I passed, leaving me in a small pool of light with darkness ahead and behind. I knew that the ship couldn’t be more than ten meters across, but the slight curve of this corridor made it seem larger on the inside than it had appeared on the outside.
The corridor ended at what must have been the center of the ship: an open well with a central metal staircase spiraling upward and downward into darkness. I set my foot on the first step and lights came on somewhere above. Guessing that the more interesting parts of the ship lay upward, I began to climb.
The next deck above filled the entire circle of the ship and held an antique holopit of the kind I had seen in old books, a scattering of chairs and tables in a style I could not identify, and a grand piano. I should say here that probably not one person out of ten thousand born on Hyperion could have identified that object as a piano—especially not as a grand piano. My mother and Grandam both had held a passionate interest in music, and a piano had filled much of the space in one of our electric caravans. Many had been the time I had heard my uncles or grandfather complaining about the bulk and weight of that instrument—about all of the jules of energy used to trundle that heavy pre-Hegira apparatus across the moors of Aquila, and about the commonsense efficiency of having a pocket synthesizer that could create the music of any piano … or any other instrument. But mother and Grandam were insistent—nothing could equal the sound of a true piano, no matter how many times it had to be tuned after transport. And neither grandfather nor uncles complained when Grandam played Rachmaninoff or Bach or Mozart around the campfire at night. I learned about the great pianos of history from that old woman—the pre-Hegira grand pianos included. And now I was looking at one.
Ignoring the holopit and furniture, ignoring the curved window wall that showed only the dark stone of the interior of the tower, I walked to the grand piano. The gold lettering above the keyboard read STEINWAY. I whistled softly and let my fingers caress the keys, not yet daring to depress one. According to Grandam, this company had ceased making pianos before the Big Mistake of ‘08, and none had been produced since the Hegira. I was touching an instrument at least a thousand years old. Steinways and Stradivarii were myths among those of us who loved music. How could this be? I wondered, my fingers still trailing over keys that felt like the legendary ivory—tusks of an extinct creature called an elephant. Human beings like the old poet in the tower might possibly survive from pre-Hegira days—Poulsen treatments and cryogenic storage could theoretically account for that—but artifacts of wood and wire and ivory had little chance of making that long voyage through time and space.
My fingers played a chord: C-E-G-B flat. And then a C-major chord. The tone was flawless, the acoustics of the spaceship perfect. Our old upright piano had needed tuning by Grandam after every trip of a few miles across the moors, but this instrument seemed perfectly tuned after countless light-years and centuries of travel.
I pulled the bench out, sat, and began playing Für Elise. It was a corny, simple piece, but one that seemed to fit the silence and solitude of this dark place. Indeed, the lights seemed to dim around me as the notes filled the circular room and seemed to echo up and down the dark staircase well. As I played, I thought of Mother and Grandam and how they would never have guessed that my early piano lessons would lead to this solo in a hidden spaceship. The sadness of that thought seemed to fill the music I was playing.
When I was finished, I pulled my fingers back from the keyboard quickly, almost guiltily, struck with the presumption of my poor playing of such a simple piece on this fine piano, this gift from the past. I sat in silence for a moment, wondering about the ship, about the old poet, and about my own place in this mad scheme of things.
“Very nice,” said a soft voice behind me.
I admit that I jumped. I had heard no one climb or descend the stairs, sensed no one entering the room. My head jerked around.
There was no one in the room.
“I have not heard that particular piece played in some time,” came the voice again. It seemed to emanate from the center of the empty room. “My previous passenger preferred Rachmaninoff.”
I set my hand on the edge of the bench to steady myself and thought of ail the stupid questions I could avoid asking.
“Are you the ship?” I asked, not knowing if this was a stupid question but wanting the answer.
“Of course,” came the reply. The voice was soft but vaguely masculine. I had, of course, heard talking machines before—such things had been around forever—but never one that might actually be intelligent. The Church and Pax had banned all true AIs more than two centuries before, and after seeing how the TechnoCore had helped the Ousters destroy the Hegemony, most of the trillions of people on a thousand devastated worlds had agreed wholeheartedly. I realized that my own programming in that regard had been effective: the thought that I was talking to a truly sentient device made my palms moist and my throat tight.
“Who was your … ah … previous passenger?” I said.
There was the hint of a pause. “The gentleman was generally known as the Consul,” said the ship at last. “He had been a diplomat for the Hegemony for much of his life.”
It was my turn to hesitate before speaking. It occurred to me that perhaps the “execution” in Port Romance had only scrambled my neurons to the point where I thought I was living in one of Grandam’s epic poems.
“What happened to the Consul?” I asked.
“He died,” said the ship. There may have been the slightest undertone of regret in the voice.
“How?” I said. At the end of the old poet’s Cantos, after the Fall of the WorldWeb, the Hegemony Consul had taken a ship back to the Web. This ship? “Where did he die?” I added. According to the Cantos, the ship the Hegemony Consul had left Hyperion in had been infused with the persona of the second John Keats cybrid.
“I can’t remember where the Consul died,” said the ship. “I only remember that he died, and that I returned here. I presume there was some programming of that directive in my command banks at the time.”
“Do you have a name?” I asked, mildly curious as to whether I was speaking to the AI persona of John Keats.
“No,” said the ship. “Only ship.” Again there came something more pause than simple silence. “Although I do seem to recall that I had a name at one point.”
“Was it John?” I asked. “Or Johnny?”
“It may have been,” said the ship. “The details are cloudy.”
“Why is that?” I said. “Is your memory malfunctioning?”
“No, not at all,” said the ship. “As far as I can deduce, there was some traumatic event about two hundred standard years ago which deleted certain memories, but since then my memory and other faculties have been flawless.”
/>
“But you don’t remember the event? The trauma?”
“No,” said the ship, cheerily enough. “I believe that it occurred at about the same time that the Consul died and I returned to Hyperion, but I am not certain.”
“And since then?” I said. “Since your return you’ve been hidden away here in this tower?”
“Yes,” said the ship. “I was in the Poet’s City for a time, but for most of the past two local centuries, I have been here.”
“Who brought you here?”
“Martin Silenus,” said the ship. “The poet. You met him earlier today.”
“You’re aware of that?” I said.
“Oh, yes,” said the ship. “I was the one who gave M. Silenus the data about your trial and execution. I helped to arrange the bribe to the officials and the transport of your sleeping body here.”
“How did you do that?” I asked, the image of this massive, archaic ship on the telephone too absurd to deal with.
“Hyperion has no true datasphere,” said the ship, “but I monitor all free microwave and satellite communications, as well as certain ‘secure’ fiber-optic and maser bands which I have tapped into.”
“So you’re a spy for the old poet,” I said.
“Yes,” said the ship.
“And what do you know about the old poet’s plans for me?” I asked, turning toward the keyboard again and beginning Bach’s Air on a G-string.
“M. Endymion,” said a different voice behind me.
I quit playing and turned to see A. Bettik, the android, standing at the head of the circular staircase.
“My master had become worried that you were lost,” said A. Bettik. “I came to show you the way back to the tower. You just have time to dress for dinner.”
I shrugged and walked to the stairwell. Before following the blue-skinned man down the stairs, I turned and said to the darkening room, “It was nice talking to you, Ship.”
“It was a pleasure meeting you, M. Endymion,” said the ship. “I will see you again soon.”
7
The torchships Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar are a full AU beyond the burning orbital forests and still decelerating around the unnamed sun when Mother Commander Stone buzzes at Father Captain de Soya’s compartment portal to inform him that the couriers have been resurrected.
“Actually, only one was successfully resurrected,” she amends, floating at the opened iris-door.
Father Captain de Soya winces. “Has the … unsuccessful one … been returned to the resurrection creche?” he asks.
“Not yet,” says Stone. “Father Sapieha is with the survivor.”
De Soya nods. “Pax?” he asks, hoping that this will be the case. Vatican couriers bring more problems than military ones.
Mother Commander Stone shakes her head. “Both are Vatican. Father Gawronski and Father Vandrisse. Both are Legionaries of Christ.”
De Soya avoids a sigh only by an effort of will. Legionaries of Christ had all but replaced the more liberal Jesuits over the centuries—their power had been growing in the Church a century before the Big Mistake—and it was no secret that the Pope used them as shock troops for difficult missions within the Church hierarchy. “Which one survived?” he asks.
“Father Vandrisse.” Stone glances at her comlog. “He should be revived by now, sir.”
“Very well,” says de Soya. “Adjust the internal field to one-g at oh-six-forty-five. Pipe Captains Hearn and Boulez aboard and give them my compliments. Please escort them to the forward meeting room. I’ll be in with Vandrisse until we convene.”
“Aye, aye,” says Mother Commander Stone, and kicks off.
The revival room outside the resurrection creche is more chapel than infirmary. Father Captain de Soya genuflects toward the altar and then joins Father Sapieha by the gurney, where the courier is sitting up. Sapieha is older than most Pax crew—at least seventy standard—and the soft halogen beams reflect from his bald scalp. De Soya has always found the ship’s chaplain short-tempered and not very bright, much like several of the parish priests he had known as a boy.
“Captain,” acknowledges the chaplain.
De Soya nods and steps closer to the man on the gurney. Father Vandrisse is young—perhaps in his late twenties standard—and his dark hair is long and curled in the current Vatican fashion. Or at least in the fashion that had been coming in when de Soya had last seen Pacem and the Vatican: a time-debt of three years had already accrued in the two months they had been on this mission.
“Father Vandrisse,” says de Soya, “can you hear me?”
The young man on the cot nods and grunts. Language is hard for the first few minutes after resurrection. Or so de Soya has heard.
“Well,” says the chaplain, “I’d better get the other’s body back in the creche.” He frowns at de Soya as though the captain had personally brought about the unsuccessful resurrection. “It is a waste, Father Captain. It will be weeks—perhaps months—before Father Gawronski can be successfully revived. It will be very painful for him.”
De Soya nods.
“Would you like to see him, Father Captain?” persists the chaplain. “The body is … well … barely recognizable as human. The internal organs are quite visible and quite …”
“Go about your duties, Father,” de Soya says quietly. “Dismissed.”
Father Sapieha frowns again as if he is going to reply, but at that moment the gravity Klaxon sounds, and both men have to orient themselves so that their feet touch the floor as the internal containment field realigns itself. Then the gravity slowly climbs to one-g as Father Vandrisse sinks back into the gurney’s cushions and the chaplain shuffles out the door. Even after only a day of zero-g, the return of gravity seems an imposition.
“Father Vandrisse,” de Soya says softly. “Can you hear me?”
The young man nods. His eyes show the pain he is in. The man’s skin glistens as if he has just received grafts—or as if he is newborn. The flesh looks pink and raw to de Soya, almost burned, and the cruciform on the courier’s chest is livid and twice normal size.
“Do you know where you are?” whispers de Soya. Or who you are? he mentally adds. Postresurrection confusion can last for hours or days. De Soya knows that couriers are trained to overcome that confusion, but how can anyone be trained for death and revival? An instructor of de Soya’s at the seminary had once put it plainly—“The cells remember dying, being dead, even if the mind does not.”
“I remember,” whispers Father Vandrisse, and his voice sounds as raw as his skin looks. “You are Captain de Soya?”
“Father Captain de Soya. Yes.”
Vandrisse tries to lever himself up on his elbow and fails. “Closer,” he whispers, too weak to lift his head from the pillow.
De Soya leans closer. The other priest smells faintly of formaldehyde. Only certain members of the priesthood are trained in the actual mysteries of resurrection, and de Soya had chosen not to be one of these. He could officiate at a baptism and administer Communion or Extreme Unction—as a starship captain he has had more opportunities for the latter than the former—but he had never been present at the Sacrament of Resurrection. He has no idea of the processes involved, beyond the miracle of the cruciform, in returning this man’s destroyed and compressed body, his decaying neurons and scattered brain mass, to the human form he now sees before him.
Vandrisse begins whispering and de Soya has to lean even closer, the resurrected priest’s lips almost brushing de Soya’s ear.
“Must … talk …,” Vandrisse manages with great effort.
De Soya nods. “I’ve scheduled a briefing in fifteen minutes. My other two ship captains will be there. We’ll provide a hoverchair for you and …”
Vandrisse is shaking his head. “No … meeting. Message for … you … only.”
De Soya shows no expression. “All right. Do you want to wait until you are …”
Again the agonized shake of his head. The skin of the priest’s face is s
lick and striated, as if the muscle were showing through. “Now …,” he whispers.
De Soya leans close and waits.
“You are … to … take the … archangel courier … ship … immediately …,” gasps Vandrisse. “It is programmed for its destination.”
De Soya remains expressionless, but he is thinking, So it is to be a painful death by acceleration. Dear Jesus, could you not let this cup pass from me?
“What do I tell the others?” he asks.
Father Vandrisse shakes his head. “Tell them nothing. Put your executive officer in command of the … Balthasar. Transfer task force command to Mother Captain Boulez. Task Force MAGI will … have … other orders.”
“Will I be informed of these other orders?” asks de Soya. His jaw hurts with the tension of sounding calm. Until thirty seconds ago the survival and success of this ship, this task force, had been the central reason for his existence.
“No,” says Vandrisse. “These … orders … do … not … concern you.”
The resurrected priest is pale with pain and exhaustion. De Soya realizes that he is taking some satisfaction in that fact and immediately says a short prayer for forgiveness.
“I am to leave immediately,” repeats de Soya. “Can I take my few personal possessions?” He is thinking of the small porcelain sculpture that his sister had given him shortly before her death on Renaissance Vector. That fragile piece, locked in a stasis cube during high-g maneuvers, has been with him for all of his years of spacefaring.
“No,” says Father Vandrisse. “Go … immediately. Take nothing.”
“This is upon order of …,” queries de Soya.
Vandrisse frowns through his grimace of pain. “This is upon direct command of His Holiness, Pope Julius XIV,” says the courier. “It is … Omega Priority … superseding all orders of Pax Military Command or SpaComC-Fleet. Do … you … understand … Father … Captain … de … Soya?”