by Dan Simmons
All eyes turned toward the person sitting next to AI Councilor Albedo.
As if to underline the importance of the moment, a new AI persona had been admitted to the War Council and had given the presentation on the awkwardly labeled “deathwand device.” Councilor Nansen was tall, male, tanned, relaxed, impressive, convincing, trustworthy, and imbued with that rare charisma of leadership that made one both like and respect the person on sight.
Meina Gladstone feared and loathed the new Councilor at once. She felt as if this projection had been designed by AI experts to create just the response of trust and obedience she sensed others at the table already granting. And Nansen’s message, she feared, meant death.
The deathwand had been Web technology for centuries—designed by the Core and limited to FORCE personnel and a few specialized security forces such as Government House’s and Gladstone’s Praetorians. It did not burn, blast, shoot, slag, or incinerate. It made no sound and projected no visible ray or sonic footprint. It simply made the target die.
If the target were human, that is. A deathwand’s range was limited—no more than fifty meters—but within that range, a targeted human died, while other animals and property were totally safe. Autopsies showed scrambled synapses but no other damage. Deathwands merely made one cease to be. FORCE officers had carried them as short-range personal weapons and symbols of authority for generations.
Now, Councilor Nansen revealed, the Core had perfected a device that utilized the deathwand principle on a larger scale. They had hesitated to reveal its existence, but with the imminent and terrible threat of the Ouster invasion …
The questioning had been energetic and sometimes cynical, with the military more skeptical than the politicians. Yes, the deathwand device could rid us of Ousters, but what about the Hegemony population?
Remove them to shelter on one of the labyrinthine worlds, Nansen had replied, repeating the earlier plan of Councilor Albedo. Five kilometers of rock would shield them from any effects of the widening deathwand ripples.
How far did these death rays propagate?
Their effect diminished to below the lethal level at just under three light-years, Nansen responded calmly, confidently, the ultimate salesman in the penultimate sales pitch. A wide enough radius to rid any system of the attacking Swarm. Small enough to protect all but the nearest neighboring star systems. Ninety-two percent of the Web worlds had no other inhabited world within five light-years.
And what about those who can’t be evacuated? Morpurgo had demanded.
Councilor Nansen had smiled and opened his palm as if to show there was nothing hidden there. Do not activate the device until your authorities are sure that all Hegemony citizens are evacuated or shielded, he had said. It will be, after all, totally under your control.
Feldstein, Sabenstorafem, Peters, Persov, and many of the others had been instantly enthusiastic. A secret weapon to end all secret weapons. The Ousters could be warned … a demonstration could be arranged.
I’m sorry, Councilor Nansen had said. His teeth when he smiled were as pearly white as his robes. There can be no demonstration. The weapon works just as a deathwand, only across a much wider region. There will be no property damage or blast effect, no measurable shock wave above the neutrino level. Merely dead invaders.
To demonstrate it, Councilor Albedo had explained, you must use it on at least one Ouster Swarm.
The excitement of the War Council had not been lessened. Perfect, said All Thing Speaker Gibbons, choose one Swarm, test the device, fatline the results to the other Swarms, and give them a one-hour deadline to break off their attacks. We didn’t provoke this war. Better millions of the enemy dead than a war that claims tens of billions over the next decade.
Hiroshima, Gladstone had said, her only comment of the day. It had been said too softly for anyone except her aide Sedeptra to hear.
Morpurgo had asked: Do we know that the killing rays will become ineffective at three light-years? Have you tested it?
Councilor Nansen smiled. If he answered yes, there were heaps of dead humans somewhere. If he said no, the device’s reliability was seriously at stake. We are certain that it will work, said Nansen. Our simulation runs were foolproof.
The Kiev Team AIs said that about the first farcaster singularity, thought Gladstone. The one that destroyed Earth. She said nothing aloud.
Still, Singh and Morpurgo and Van Zeidt and their specialists had spiked Nansen’s guns by showing that Mare Infinitus could not be evacuated quickly enough and that the only first-wave Web world that had its own labyrinth was Armaghast, which was within a light-year of Pacem and Svoboda.
Councilor Nansen’s earnest, helpful smile did not fade. “You want a demonstration, and that would be only sensible,” he said quietly. “You need to show the Ousters that invasion will not be tolerated, while focusing on the minimum loss of life. And you need to shelter your indigenous Hegemony population.” He paused, folded his hands on the tabletop. “What about Hyperion?”
The buzz around the table deepened in tone.
“It’s not really a Web world,” said Speaker Gibbons.
“Yet it is in the Web now, with the FORCE farcaster still in place!” cried Garion Persov of Diplomacy, obviously a convert to the idea.
General Morpurgo’s stern expression did not shift. “That will be there only another few hours. We’re protecting the singularity sphere now, but it could fall at any time. Much of Hyperion itself is already in Ouster hands.”
“But Hegemony personnel have been evacuated?” said Persov.
Singh answered. “All but the Governor-General. He could not be found in the confusion.”
“A pity,” said Minister Persov without much conviction, “but the point is that the remaining population is mostly Hyperion indigenie, with easy access to the labyrinth there, correct?”
Barbre Dan-Gyddis of the Ministry of Economy, whose son had been a fiberplastic plantation manager near Port Romance, said, “Within three hours? Impossible.”
Nansen stood. “I think not,” he said. “We can fatline the warning to the remaining Home Rule Authorities in the capital, and they can begin the evacuation immediately. There are thousands of entrances to the labyrinth on Hyperion.”
“The capital of Keats is under siege,” growled Morpurgo. “The entire planet is under attack.”
Councilor Nansen nodded sadly. “And soon will be put to the sword by the barbarian Ousters. A difficult choice, gentlemen and ladies. But the device will work. The invasion will simply cease to exist in Hyperion space. Millions might be saved on the planet, and the effect on the Ouster invasion forces elsewhere would be significant. We know that their so-called Sister Swarms communicate by fatline. The termination of the first Swarm to invade Hegemony space—the Hyperion Swarm—may be the perfect deterrent.”
Nansen shook his head again and looked around with an expression of almost paternal concern. There could be no simulating such pained sincerity. “It has to be your decision. The weapon is yours to use or disregard. It pains the Core to take any human life … or, through inaction, allow any human life to come to harm. But in this case, where the lives of billions are at risk … ” Nansen opened his hands again, shook his head a final time, and sat back, obviously leaving the decision to human minds and hearts.
Babble around the long table rose. Debate grew almost violent.
“CEO!” called General Morpurgo.
In the sudden silence, Gladstone lifted her gaze to the holographic displays in the darkness above them. The Mare Infinitus Swarm fell toward that ocean world like a torrent of blood aimed toward a small blue sphere. Only three of the orange Task Force 181.2 embers remained, and even as the silent Council watched, two of these winked out. Then the final one was extinguished.
Gladstone whispered into her comlog. “Communications, any last message from Admiral Lee?”
“None to the command center, CEO,” came the response. “Only standard fatline telemetry during the bat
tle. It appears they did not reach the center of the Swarm.”
Gladstone and Lee had held hopes of capturing Ousters, of interrogations, of establishing the identity of their enemy beyond a doubt. Now that young man of such energy and ability was dead—dead at Meina Gladstone’s command—and seventy-four ships of the line were wasted.
“Mare Infinitus farcaster destroyed by preset plasma explosives,” reported Admiral Singh. “Forward elements of the Swarm now entering cislunar defense perimeter.”
No one spoke. The holographics showed the tidal wave of blood-red lights engulfing the Mare Infinitus system, the final orange embers around that gold world blinking out.
A few hundred of the Ouster ships remained in orbit, presumably reducing Mare Infinitus’s elegant floating cities and ocean farms to burning debris, but the major part of the blood tide rolled on, out of the region projected above.
“Asquith System in three standard hours, forty-one minutes,” intoned a technician near the display board.
Senator Kolchev stood. “Let’s put the Hyperion demonstration to a vote,” he said, ostensibly addressing Gladstone but speaking to the crowd.
Meina Gladstone tapped her lower lip. “No,” she said at last, “no vote. We will use the device. Admiral, prepare the torchship armed with the device to translate to Hyperion space and then broadcast warnings to planet and Ouster alike. Give them three hours. Minister Imoto, send coded fatline signals to Hyperion telling them that they must … repeat, must … seek shelter in the labyrinths at once. Tell them that a new weapon is being tested.”
Morpurgo wiped sweat from his face. “CEO, we can’t run any risk that this device can fall into enemy hands.”
Gladstone looked at Councilor Nansen and tried to make her expression reveal nothing of what she felt. “Councilor, can this device be rigged so that it detonates automatically if our ship is captured or destroyed?”
“Yes, CEO.”
“Do it. Explain all necessary failsafe devices to the proper FORCE experts.” She turned toward Sedeptra. “Prepare a webwide broadcast for me, scheduled to commence ten minutes before the device is to be detonated. I have to tell our people about this.”
“Is that wise … ?” began Senator Feldstein.
“It is necessary.” said Gladstone. She rose, and the thirty-eight people in the room rose a second later. “I’m going to get a few minutes sleep while you people work. I want the device ready and in-system and Hyperion warned immediately. I want contingency plans and priorities for a negotiated settlement ready by the time I awaken in thirty minutes. ”
Gladstone looked out at the group, knowing that one way or the other, most of the people there would be out of power and out of office within the next twenty hours. One way or the other, it was her last day as CEO.
Meina Gladstone smiled. “Council dismissed,” she said and farcast to her private quarters to take a nap.
FORTY-THREE
Leigh Hunt had never seen anyone die before. The last day and night he spent with Keats—Hunt still thought of him as Joseph Severn but was sure that the dying man now thought of himself as John Keats—were the most difficult in Hunt’s life. The hemorrhages came frequently during Keat’s last day of life, and between these bouts of retching, Hunt could hear the phlegm boiling in the small man’s throat and chest as he fought for life.
Hunt sat next to the bed in the small front room in the Piazza di Spagna and listened to Keats babble as sunrise moved to midmorning and midmorning faded to early afternoon. Keats was feverish and moving in and out of consciousness, but he insisted that Hunt listen and write everything down—they had found ink, pen, and foolscap in the other room—and Hunt complied, scribbling furiously as the dying cybrid raved on about metaspheres and lost divinities, the responsibilities of poets and the passing of gods, and the Miltonic civil war in the Core.
Hunt had perked up then and squeezed Keats’s feverish hand. “Where is the Core, Sev—Keats? Where is it?”
The dying man had broken into a visible sweat and turned his face away. “Don’t breathe on me—it comes like ice!”
“The Core,” repeated Hunt, leaning back, feeling close to tears from pity and frustration, “where is the Core?”
Keats smiled, his head moving back and forth in pain. The effort he made to breathe sounded like wind through a ruptured bellows. “Like spiders in the web,” he muttered, “spiders in the web. Weaving … letting us weave it for them … then trussing us and draining us. Like flies caught by spiders in the web.”
Hunt quit writing as he listened to more of this seemingly senseless babble. Then he understood. “My God,” he whispered. “They’re in the farcaster system.”
Keats tried to sit up, grasped Hunt’s arm with a terrible strength. “Tell your leader, Hunt. Have Gladstone rip it out. Rip it out. Spiders in the web. Man god and machine god … must find the union. Not me!” He dropped back on the pillows and started weeping without sound. “Not me.”
Keats slept some through the long afternoon, although Hunt knew that it was something closer to death than sleep. The slightest sound would start the dying poet awake and set him wrestling to breathe. By sunset Keats was too weak to expectorate, and Hunt had to help him lower his head over the basin to allow gravity to clear his mouth and throat of bloody mucus.
Several times, when Keats fell into fitful naps, Hunt walked to the window and once down the stairs to the front door to stare into the Piazza. Something tall and sharp edged stood in the deepest shadows opposite the Piazza near the base of the steps.
In the evening, Hunt himself dozed off while sitting upright in the hard chair next to Keats’s bed. He awoke from a dream of falling and put his hand out to steady himself only to find Keats awake and staring at him.
“Did you ever see anyone die?” asked Keats between soft gasps for breath.
“No.” Hunt thought that there was something odd about the young man’s gaze, as if Keats were looking at him but seeing someone else.
“Well then I pity you,” said Keats. “What trouble and danger you have got into for me. Now you must be firm for it will not last long.”
Hunt was struck not only by the gentle courage in that remark, but by the sudden shift in Keats’s dialect from flat Web-standard English to something much older and more interesting.
“Nonsense,” said Hunt heartily, forcing enthusiasm and energy he did not feel. “We’ll be out of this before dawn. I’m going to sneak out as soon as it gets dark and find a farcaster portal.”
Keats shook his head. “The Shrike will take you. It will allow no one to help me. It’s role is to see that I must escape myself through myself.” He closed his eyes as his breathing grew more ragged.
“I don’t understand,” said Leigh Hunt, taking the young man’s hand. He assumed this was more of the fever talking, but since it was one of the few times Keats had been fully conscious in the past two days, Hunt felt it worth the effort to communicate. “What do you mean escape yourself through yourself?”
Keats’s eyes fluttered open. They were hazel and far too bright. “Ummon and the others are trying to make me escape myself through accepting the godhood, Hunt. Bait to catch the white whale, honey to catch the ultimate fly. Fleeing Empathy shall find its home in me … in me, Mister John Keats, five feet high … and then the reconciliation begins, right?”
“What reconciliation?” Hunt leaned closer, trying not to breathe on him. Keats appeared to have shrunk in his bedclothes, tangle of blankets, but heat radiating from him seemed to fill the room. His face was a pale oval in the dying light. Hunt was only faintly aware of a gold band of reflected sunlight moving across the wall just below where it met the ceiling, but Keats’s eyes never left that last smear of day.
“The reconciliation of man and machine, Creator and created,” said Keats and began to cough, stopping only after he had drooled red phlegm into the basin Hunt held for him. He lay back, gasped a moment, and added,” Reconciliation of humankind and those races it tried t
o exterminate, the Core and the humanity it tried to expunge, the painfully evolved God of the Void Which Binds and its ancestors who tried to expunge it.”
Hunt shook his head and quit writing. “I don’t understand. You can become this … messiah … by leaving your deathbed?”
The pale oval of Keats’s face moved back and forth on the pillow in a motion which might have been a substitute for laughter. “We all could have, Hunt. Humankind’s folly and greatest pride. We accept our pain. We make way for our children. That earned us the right to become the God we dreamed of. ”
Hunt looked down and found his own fist clenched in frustration. “If you can do this … become this power … then do it. Get us out of here!”
Keats closed his eyes again. “Can’t. I’m not the One Who Comes but the One Who Comes Before. Not the baptized but the baptist. Merde, Hunt, I’m an atheist! Even Severn couldn’t convince me of these things when I was drowning in death!” Keats gripped Hunt’s shirt with a fierceness that frightened the older man. “Write this!”
And Hunt fumbled to find the ancient pen and rough paper, scribbling furiously to catch the words Keats now whispered:
A wondrous lesson in thy silent face:
Knowledge enormous makes a god of me.
Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,
Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,
Creations and destroyings, all at once
Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,
And deify me, as if some blithe wine
Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,
And so become immortal.
Keats lived for three more painful hours, a swimmer rising occasionally from his sea of agony to take a breath or whisper some urgent nonsense. Once, long after dark, he pulled at Hunt’s sleeve and whispered sensibly enough, “When I am dead, the Shrike will not harm you. It waits for me. There may not be a way home, but it will not harm you while you search.” And again, just as Hunt was bending over to hear if the breath still gurgled in the poet’s lungs, Keats began to talk and continued between spasms until he had given Hunt specific instructions for his entombment in Rome’s Protestant Cemetery, near the Pyramid of Caius Cestius.