by Dan Simmons
“Blue ice?” interrupted Ada. “It was that cold?”
“Very cold near the stuff,” said Daeman. “But not so bad just a few yards away. Just chilly and raining, It wasn’t really ice, I don’t think. Just something chill and crystalline—cold but organic, like spiderwebs rising out of icebergs—and the blocks and webs of the stuff covered the old domi towers and boulevards all around the crater in the heart of Paris Crater.”
“Did you see that… thing… you saw come through the hole?” asked Emme.
“No. I couldn’t get close enough. There were more voynix than I’d ever seen before. The Guarded Lion building itself—it used to be some sort of transport center, you know, with rails running in and out and landing pads on the roof—was alive with voynix.” Daeman looked at Harman. “It reminded me of Jerusalem last year.”
“That many?” said Harman.
“That many. And there was something else. Two things that I haven’t talked about yet.”
Everyone waited. Outside, the snow fell. There was a moan from the infirmary, and Hannah slipped away to check on Noman-Odysseus again.
“There’s a blue light shining from Paris Crater now,” said Daeman.
“A blue light?” asked the woman named Loes.
Only Harman, Ada, and Petyr registered comprehension—Harman because he’d been there in Jerusalem with Daeman and Savi nine months earlier; Ada and Petyr because they’d heard the stories.
“Does it shoot skyward like the one we saw in Jerusalem?” asked Harman.
“Yes.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” asked the redheaded woman named Oelleo.
Harman answered. “We saw a similar beam in Jerusalem last year—a city near the drained Mediterranean Basin. Savi, the old woman with us, said that the beam was made of …what was it, Daeman? Tachyons?”
“I think so.”
“Tachyons,” continued Harman. “And that it contained the captured codes of all of her race from before the Final Fax. That beam was the Final Fax.”
“I don’t understand,” said Reman. He looked very tired.
Daeman shook his head. “Neither do I. I don’t know if the beam came with the creature I saw come through the hole, or if the beam somehow brought that thing to Paris Crater. But there’s more news—and it’s worse.”
“How could it be?” asked Peaen with a laugh.
Daeman did not smile. “I had to get out of Paris Crater quickly—the Guarded Lion node would be death by now, voynix everywhere—and I knew it wouldn’t be light here yet, so I faxed to Bellinbad, then Ulanbat, then Chom, then Drid, then Loman’s Place, then Kiev, then Fuego, then Devi, then Satle Heights, then to Mantua, finally to Cape Town Tower.”
“To warn them all,” said Ada.
“Yes.”
“Why is that bad news?” asked Harman.
“Because the holes have opened at both Chom and Ulanbat,” said Daeman. “The community cores there are webbed with blue ice. The blue beams rise from both of those survivor colonies. Setebos has been there.”
28
The forty or so people in the room simply stared at each other. Then there was a babble-chorus of questions. Daeman and Harman explained what Caliban on the orbital isle had said about his god, Setebos, the “many-handed like a cuttlefish.”
They asked about Ulanbat and Chom. Chom he’d seen only from a distance—a growing web of blue ice. In Ulanbat, he told them, he’d faxed to the seventy-ninth floor of the Circles of Heaven and seen from the ring terrace there that the hole was a mile out over the Gobi Desert, the web of ice-stuff connecting the low outbuildings to the bottom levels of the Circles. The seventy-ninth floor seemed to be above the ice—for now.
“Did you see any people there?” asked Ada.
“No.”
“Voynix?” asked Reman.
“Hundreds. Scuttling in and under and around the ice web. But not in the Circles.”
“Then where are the people?” asked Emme in a small voice. “We know Ulanbat had weapons—we bartered them for their rice and textiles.”
“They must have faxed out when the hole appeared,” said Petyr. It sounded obvious to Ada that the young man was putting more certainty in his voice than he felt.
“If they faxed out,” said Peaen, “I mean the people in both Ulanbat and Chom, why haven’t they shown up here as refugees? Those three node cities—Paris Crater, Chom, Ulanbat—still house tens of thousands of old-style humans like us. Where are they? Where did they go?” She looked at Greogi and Casman, who’d just come in from their overnight guard duty at the fax pavilion. “Greogi, Cas, have people been faxing in overnight? Fleeing something?”
Greogi shook his head. “The only traffic was Daeman Uhr here—late last night and then again this morning.”
Ada stepped into the middle of the circle. “Look… we’ll meet to talk about this later. Right now you’re all exhausted. Most of you were up all night. A lot of people hadn’t eaten when all this started. Stoman, Cal, Boman, Elle, Anna, and Uru have been cooking up a huge breakfast. Those of you who need to go on guard duty—you’re first in line in the dining hall. Make sure you get plenty of coffee. The rest of you should also eat before you catch some sleep. Reman wanted me to mention that the iron pour will be at ten a.m. We’ll all get together in the old ballroom at three p.m. for a full community meeting.”
People milled, stirred, buzzed with conversation, but left to get their breakfasts and to go about their duties.
Harman walked toward the infirmary, caught Ada’s and Daeman’s eye, nodded in that direction. The two joined him as the last of the crowd dispersed.
Ada quietly told Siris and Tom, who’d been working as medical attendants, applying first aid to the wounded and watching over Noman during the night, that they should go get something to eat. The two slipped out, leaving Hannah sitting next to the bed and Daeman, Ada, and Harman standing.
“This is like old times,” said Harman, referring to when the five of them had traveled together, and then with Savi, nine months earlier. They’d rarely had time to be alone together since then.
“Except that Odysseus is dying,” said Hannah, her voice flat and ragged. She was holding the unconscious man’s left hand and squeezing it so tightly that all the interlaced fingers, his and hers, were white.
Harman stepped closer and studied the unconscious man. His bandages—just replaced an hour earlier—were soaked through with blood. His lips were as white as his fingertips and his eyes no longer moved beneath their closed eyelids. Noman’s mouth was open slightly and the breath that rattled there was swift, shallow, and unsure.
“I’m going to take him to the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu,” said Harman.
Everyone stared at him. Finally Hannah said, “You mean when he… dies? To bury him?”
“No. Now. To save him.”
Ada gripped Harman’s upper arm so fiercely that he almost flinched away. “What are you talking about?”
“What Petyr said—Noman’s last words before losing consciousness near the wall yesterday evening—I think he was trying to tell him to take him back to the crèche at Golden Gate.”
“What crèche?” said Daeman. “I only remember the crystal coffins.”
“Cryotemporal sarcophagi,” said Hannah, enunciating each syllable with care. “I remember them in the museum there. I remember Savi talking about them. It’s where she slept some of the centuries away. It’s where she said she found Odysseus sleeping three weeks before we met here.”
“But Savi didn’t always tell the truth,” said Harman. “Perhaps she never did. Odysseus has admitted that he and Savi had known each other for a long, long time—that it was the two of them who distributed the turin cloths almost eleven years ago.”
Ada held up the turin cloth that Daeman had left behind in the other room.
“And Prospero told us… up there… that there was more to this Odysseus than we could understand. And on a couple of occasions, after a lot of wine,
Odysseus has mentioned his crèche at the Golden Gate—joked about returning to it.”
“He must have meant the crystal coffins… the sarcophagi,” said Ada.
“I don’t think so,” said Harman, pacing back and forth past the empty beds. All of the other victims of last night’s fighting had decided to recuperate in their rooms in Ardis Hall or the outlying barracks. Only Noman was still here this morning. “I think there was another thing there at Golden Gate, a sort of healing crèche.”
“Blue worms,” whispered Daeman. His pale face grew even paler. Hannah was so shocked at the image—her cells remembered her hours in the worm-filled tanks up there in the Firmary on Prospero’s orbital isle even if her mind did not—that she released Odysseus’ hand.
“No, I don’t think so,” Harman said quickly. “We didn’t see anything that resembled the Firmary healing tanks when we were at the Golden Gate. No blue worms. No orange fluid. I think the crèche is something else.”
“You’re just guessing,” Ada said flatly, almost harshly.
“Yes. I’m just guessing.” He rubbed his cheeks. He was so very tired. “But I think that if Noman… Odysseus… survives the sonie flight, there might be a chance for him at the Golden Gate.”
“You can’t do that,” said Ada. “No.”
“Why not?”
“We need the sonie here. To fight the voynix if they come back tonight. When they come back tonight.”
“I’ll be back before dark,” said Harman.
Hannah stood. “How can that be? When we flew from the Golden Gate with Savi it took more than a day of flying.”
“It can fly faster than that,” said Harman. “Savi was flying slowly so as not to scare us.”
“How much faster?” asked Daeman.
Harman hesitated a few seconds. “Much faster,” he said at last. “The sonie tells me that it can get to the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu in thirty-eight minutes.”
“Thirty-eight minutes!” cried Ada, who had also been on that long, long flight up with Savi.
“The sonie told you?” said Hannah. She was upset. “When did the sonie tell you? I thought the machine couldn’t answer questions about destinations.”
“It hasn’t until this morning,” said Harman. “Just after the fighting. I had a few minutes alone up on the jinker platform with the sonie and I figured out how to interface my palm functions with its display.”
“How did you discover that?” asked Ada. “You’ve been trying to find some function interface for months.”
Harman rubbed his cheek again. “I finally just asked it how to start the function interface. Three green circles within three larger red circles. Easy.”
“And it told you how long it would take to get to Golden Gate?” said Daeman. He sounded dubious.
“It showed me,” Harman said softly. “Diagrams. Maps. Airspeed. Velocity vectors. All superimposed on my vision—just like farnet or …” He paused.
“Or allnet,” said Hannah. They’d all experienced the vertigo-inducing confusion of allnet since Savi had shown them how to access it the previous spring. None of them had mastered its use. It was just too much information to process.
“Yeah,” said Harman. “So I figure if I take Odysseus… Noman… this morning, I can see if there’s some sort of a healing crèche there for him… install him in one of the crystal coffins if there’s not—and be back here before the three p.m. meeting. Heck, I could be back here for lunch.”
“He probably wouldn’t survive the trip,” said Hannah, her voice wooden. She was staring at the gasping unconscious man whom she loved.
“He definitely won’t survive another day here at Ardis without medical care,” said Harman. “We’re just… too… fucking… ignorant.” He slammed his fist down on a wooden cabinet top and then pulled it back, knuckles bleeding. He was embarrassed by the outburst.
Ada said, “I’ll go with you. You can’t carry him into the Bridge bubbles by yourself. You’ll have to use a stretcher.”
“No,” said Harman. “You shouldn’t go, my dear.”
Ada’s pale face came up quickly and her black eyes flashed with anger. “Because I’m…”
“No, not because you’re pregnant.” Harman touched her fingers that she’d folded into a fist, setting his large, rough fingers around her slender, softer ones. “You’re just too important here. This news that Daeman brought is going to spread through the entire community in the next hour. Everyone’s going to be near panic.”
“Another reason that you shouldn’t go,” whispered Ada.
Harman shook his head. “You’re the leader here, my darling. Ardis is your estate now. We’re all guests here at your home. The people will need answers—not just at the meeting, but in the coming hours—and you need to be here to calm them.”
“I don’t have any answers,” Ada said in a small voice.
“Yes, you do,” said Harman. “What would you suggest we do about Daeman’s news?”
Ada turned her face toward the window. There was frost on the panes, but it had quit snowing and raining outside. “We need to see how many of the other communities have been invaded by the holes and blue ice,” she said softly. “Send about ten messengers out to fax to the remaining nodes.”
“Just ten?” said Daeman. There were more than three hundred remaining faxnodes that had survivor communities.
“We can’t spare more than ten, in case the voynix return during the daylight,” Ada said flatly. “They can each take thirty codes and see how many nodes they can cover before nightfall in this hemisphere.”
“And I’ll look for more flechette magazines at the Golden Gate,” said Harman. “Odysseus brought back three hundred magazines with him when he found the three rifles last fall, but we’re almost out after last night.”
“We have teams pulling crossbow bolts from the voynix carcasses,” said Ada, “but I’ll tell Reman that we’ll need to cast as many new ones as we can today. I’ll have the workshop double up on that work today. The arrows take so much longer, but we can put more bows on the ramparts by darkfall.”
“I’m going with you,” Hannah said to Harman. “You will need someone else to carry Odysseus in on the stretcher, and no one here has explored the green bubble city on the Golden Gate more than I have.”
“All right,” said Harman, seeing his wife—what a strange word and thought, “wife”—throw the younger woman a sharp glance that considered jealousy and then rejected it. Ada knew that Hannah’s only love—as hopeless and unrequited as it had been—was for Odysseus.
“I’ll go, too,” said Daeman. “You could use an extra crossbow there.”
“True,” said Harman, “but I think it would be more useful if you’d be in charge of choosing the fax-messenger teams, briefing them on what you saw, and sorting out their destinations.”
Daeman shrugged. “All right. I’ll take thirty nodes myself. Good luck.” He nodded toward Hannah and Harman, touched Ada’s arm, and left the infirmary.
“Let’s eat very quickly,” Harman said to Hannah, “and then grab some clothes and weapons and get going. We’ll get some strong young guys to help us carry Odysseus outside. I’ll bring the sonie down.”
“Couldn’t we eat in the sonie?” said Hannah.
“I think it’d be better if we grabbed a fast bite first,” said Harman. He was remembering the impossible trajectories the sonie had shown him—the launch from Ardis almost vertical, leaving the atmosphere, arcing up into outer space, then reentering like a bullet dropped from heaven. Just the memory of the trajectory graphic made his heart pound.
“I’ll go get my stuff and see if Tom and Siris can help me get Odysseus ready for the trip,” said Hannah. She kissed Ada on the cheek and hurried out.
Harman took a last look at Odysseus—the strong man’s face was gray—and then took Ada by the elbow and led her down the hall to a quiet place by the rear door.
“I still think I should go,” said Ada.
Harman nodde
d. “I wish you could. But when the people digest Daeman’s news—when they get the sense that Ardis may be the last free node left and that someone or something is gobbling up all the other cities and settlements—there’s liable to be a real panic.”
“Do you think we’re the last ones left?” whispered Ada.
“I have no idea. But if this thing Daeman glimpsed coming through the hole is the Setebos god-thing that Caliban and Prospero talked about, I think we’re in big trouble.”
“And you think Daeman’s right… that Caliban himself is on Earth?”
Harman chewed his lip for a moment. “Yes,” he said at last. “I think Daeman’s right in thinking that the monster slaughtered everyone in the Paris Crater domi tower just to get to Marina, Daeman’s mother—to send Daeman a message.”
The clouds had covered the sun again and it grew darker outside. Ada seemed intent on watching the feverish activity on the cupola scaffolding. A team of a dozen men and women were laughing as they walked to relieve the guards on the north wall.
“If Daeman’s right,” Ada said softly, never turning to look at Harman, “what’s to keep Caliban and his creatures from coming here while you’re gone? What’s to prevent you from returning from this trip to save Odysseus only to find stacks of skulls in Ardis Hall? We wouldn’t even have the sonie to escape in.”
“Oh …” said Harman and it came out as a moan. He took a step away from her and brushed sweat from his forehead and cheeks, realizing how cold and clammy his skin was.
“My love,” said Ada, whirling, taking two fast steps, and hugging him fiercely. “I’m sorry I said that. Of course you have to go. It’s terribly important that we try to save Odysseus—not just because he’s our friend, but because he’s the only one who might know what this new threat is and how to counter it. And we need the flechette ammunition. And I wouldn’t flee Ardis in a sonie under any circumstances. It’s my home. It’s our home. We’re lucky to have four hundred others to help us defend it.” She kissed him on the mouth, then hugged him fiercely again and spoke into the leather of his tunic. “Of course you have to go, Harman. You do. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Just come back soon.”