by Dan Simmons
“And I’ve seen the holos of dinosaurs and Terror Birds and saber-toothed cats roaming this Earth,” said Centurion Leader Mep Ahoo.
“The humpbacked metallic things have killed up to ten percent of the old-style population?” asked Mahnmut, who was a stickler for the proper use of that word “decimate.”
“They have,” said General Beh bin Adee. “Probably more. And just since we’ve been in transit from Mars.”
“So what do we do now?” asked Orphu of Io. “Although if no one has an immediate answer, I have a suggestion.”
“Go ahead,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che.
“I think you should defrost the thousand rockvec soldiers we have in cold storage, fire up the dropship and the dozen atmospheric hornets you have onboard, load them to the gunwales with troopers, and get into the fight.”
“Get into the fight?” repeated the navigator Callistan, Cho Li.
“Start by nuking that brain creature into radioactive pus,” said Orphu. “Then get moravec boots on the ground and defend the humans. Kill those Calibans and the headless-humped things that are killing humans everywhere. Get into the fight.”
“What an extraordinary suggestion,” said Cho Li in a shocked voice.
“We hardly have enough information to decide on a course of action at this point,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che. “For all we know, the brain creature—as we so respectfully call it—may be the only peaceful, sentient organism on Earth. Perhaps it’s some sort of interdimensional archaeologist or anthropologist or historian.”
“Or ghoul,” said Mahnmut.
“Our mission was to carry out surveillance,” said Suma IV in tones that were meant to be final. “Not start a war.”
“We can do both things for the price of one,” said Orphu. “We have the firepower aboard the Queen Mab to make a difference in whatever is going on down there. And although you haven’t officially told Mahnmut or me, we know there must be a host of more modern stealthed moravec warships following the Mab. This could be a wonderful opportunity to hit that thing—all those things—and coldcock them before they even know they’re in a fight.”
“What an extraordinary suggestion,” repeated Cho Li. “Absolutely extraordinary.”
“Right now,” said Asteague/Che in that odd James Mason voice that Mahnmut remembered from flatfilms, “our goal is not to start a war, but to deliver Odysseus to the Phobos-sized asteroid city in the polar ring as per the request of the Voice.”
“And before that,” said Suma IV, “we have to decide whether to go ahead with the dropship mission under cover of the aerobraking maneuver, or to wait until after rendezvous with the Voice’s orbital city and delivery of our human passenger.”
“I have a question,” said Mahnmut.
“Yes?” Prime Integrator Asteague/Che was also a Europan, thus almost the same size as the diminutive Mahnmut. The two stared visor-plate to visor-plate while the administrator waited.
“Does our human passenger want to be delivered to the Voice?” asked Mahnmut.
There was a silence broken only by the hum of ventilators, comm reports to and from those ‘vecs monitoring instruments, and the occasional bang of attitude thrusters from the hull.
“Good heavens,” said Cho Li. “How could we have overlooked asking him?”
“We were busy,” said General Beh bin Adee.
“I’ll ask him,” said Suma IV. “Although it will be embarrassing at this point if Odysseus says no.”
“We have his garments all prepared,” said the skittering Retrograde Sinopessen.
“Garments?” rumbled Orphu of Io. “Is our son of Laertes a Mormon?”
No one responded. All moravecs had some interest in human history and society—it had been programmed into their evolving DNA and circuits to keep such an interest—but very few were as immersed in human thinking as the huge Ionian. Nor had the others evolved such an odd sense of humor.
“Odysseus obviously has been wearing clothing of our design while he’s been aboard the Queen Mab,” chirped Retrograde Sinopessen. “But the clothing he will wear during the rendezvous with the Voice’s orbital asteroid will have every sort of nano-sized recording and transmission device we could conceive of. We will all monitor his experience in real time.”
“Even those of us who are going down to Earth on the dropship?” asked Orphu.
There was an embarrassed silence. Moravecs were not given to frequent embarrassment, but they were capable of it.
“You were not chosen for the dropship crew,” Asteague/Che said at last in his clipped but not unpleasant tones.
“I know,” said Orphu, “but I think I can convince you that the drop-ship mission must be launched during the Mab’s aerobraking and that I have to be on board. The little corner of the hold on Mahnmut’s sub will serve me just fine as my passenger space. It has all the connections I need and I like the view.”
“The submersible bay has no view,” said Suma IV. “Except via video link, which might be interrupted if the dropship were to come under attack.”
“I was being ironic,” said Orphu.
“Also,” said Cho Li, making a noise like a small animal clearing its throat, “you are—technically, optically—blind.”
“Yes,” said Orphu, “I’ve noticed. But beyond proper affirmative-action hiring practices—never mind, it’s not worth the time to explain—I can give you three compelling reasons why I have to be included on the dropship mission to Earth.”
“We haven’t concluded that the mission itself should occur,” said Asteague/Che, “but please proceed with your reasons for being included. Then we Prime Integrators must make several decisions in the next fifteen minutes.”
“First of all, of course,” rumbled Orphu, “there’s the obvious fact that I will be a splendid ambassador to any and all sentient races we meet after landing on Earth.”
General Beh bin Adee made a rude sound. “Is that before or after you nuke them into radioactive pus?” he asked.
“Secondly, there is the less obvious but still salient fact that no moravec on this ship—perhaps no moravec in existence—knows more about the fiction of Marcel Proust, James Joyce, William Faulkner, and George Marie Wong—as well as the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman—than I do, therefore and ergo, no moravec knows more about human psychology than I do. Should we actually speak to an old-style human, my presence will be indispensable.”
I didn’t know you also studied Joyce, Faulkner, Wong, Dickinson, and Whitman, tightbeamed Mahnmut.
It never came up, answered Orphu. But I’ve had time to read out there in the hard vacuum and sulfur of the Io Torus over the last twelve hundred standard years of my existence.
Twelve hundred years! tightbeamed Mahnmut. Moravecs were designed for a long life span, but three standard centuries was generous for the average ‘vec’s existence. Mahnmut himself was less than one hundred fifty years old. You never told me you were that old!
It never came up, transmitted Orphu of Io.
“I did not quite follow all the logical connections there in the verbal part before you tightbeamed your friend,” said Asteague/Che, “but pray continue. I believe you said that you had three compelling reasons why you should be included.”
“The third reason I deserve a chair on the dropship,” said Orphu, “figuratively speaking, of course, is that I’ve figured it out.”
“Figured what out?” asked Suma IV. The dark buckycarbon Ganymedan wasn’t visibly checking his chronometer, but his voice was.
“Everything,” said Orphu of Io. “Why there are Greek gods on Mars. Why there’s a tunnel through space and time to another Earth where Homer’s Trojan War is still being fought. Where this impossibly terraformed Mars came from. What Prospero and Caliban, two characters from an ancient Shakespearean play, are doing waiting for us on this real Earth, and why the quantum basis for the entire solar system is being screwed up by these Brane Holes that keep popping up… everything.”
/> 56
The woman who looked like a young Savi was indeed named Moira, although in the next hours Prospero sometimes called her Miranda and once he smilingly referred to her as Moneta, which added to Harman’s confusion. Harman’s embarrassment, on the other hand, was so great that nothing could add to it. For their first hour together, he could not look in Moira’s direction, much less look her in the eye. As Moira and he ate what amounted to breakfast as Prospero sat at the table, Harman finally managed to look in the woman’s direction but couldn’t raise his gaze to her eye level. Then he realized that this probably seemed as if he was staring at her chest, so he looked away again.
Moira seemed oblivious to his discomfort.
“Prospero,” she said, sipping orange juice brought to them by a floating servitor, “you foul old maggot. Was this key to my awakening your idea?”
“Of course not, Miranda, my dear.”
“Don’t call me Miranda or I’ll start calling you Mandrake. I am not now, nor was I ever, your daughter.”
“Of course you are and were my daughter, Miranda, my dear,” purred Prospero. “Is there a post-human alive whom I did not help become what they are? Were not my genetic sequencing labs your womb and your cradle? Am I therefore not thy father?”
“Is there another post-human alive today, Prospero?” asked the woman.
“Not to my knowledge, Miranda, dear.”
“Then fuck you.”
She turned to Harman, sipped coffee, sliced at an orange with a frighteningly sharp knife, and said, “My name is Moira.”
They were at a small table in a small room—a space more than a room—that Harman had not noticed before. It was an alcove set within the booklined wall halfway up the inside of the great inward-curving dome, at least three hundred feet above the marble-walled maze and floor. It was easy to understand why he hadn’t seen the space from below—the walls of this shallow alcove were also lined with books. There had been other alcoves along the way up, some holding tables like this one, others containing cushioned benches and cryptic instruments and screens. The iron stairways, it turned out, moved like escalators or it would have taken much longer for the three of them to climb this high. The exposure—there were no railings and the narrow marble walkways and the wrought-iron escalator steps were more air than iron—was horrifying. Harman hated to look down. He focused on the books instead and kept his shoulders against the shelves as he walked.
This woman was dressed much as Savi had been the first time he’d seen her—a blue tunic top made of cotton canvas, corded trousers, and high leather boots. She even wore a sort of short wool cape similar to the one he’d seen on Savi when they met, although this cape was a dark yellow rather than the deep red the older woman had worn. However, its complicated, many-folded cut seemed to be the same. The major difference between the two women—besides the vast difference in age—was that the older Savi had been carrying a pistol when they met, the first firearm Harman had ever seen. This version of Savi—Moira, Miranda, Moneta—he knew with absolute certainty, had not been armed when he first met her.
“What has happened since I first slept, Prospero?” asked Moira.
“You want a summary of fourteen centuries in as many sentences, my dear?”
“Yes. Please.” Moira separated the juicy orange into sections and handed a section to Harman, who ate it without tasting it.
“ ‘The woods decay,’ ” intoned the magus Prospero, “ ‘the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-hair’d shadow roaming like a dream The ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.’ ”
He bowed his balding and gray-haired head a bit.
“ ‘Tithonus,’ ” said Moira. “Tennyson before breakfast always makes my bowels ache. Tell me, is the world sane yet, Prospero?”
“No, Miranda.”
“Are my folk all dead or changeling’d then, as you say?” She ate grapes and redolent cheese and drank from a large goblet of ice water the floating servitors continued to refill for her.
“They are dead or changeling’d or both.”
“Are they coming back, Prospero?”
“God knows, my daughter.”
“Don’t give me God, please,” said Moira. “What about Savi’s nine thousand one hundred and thirteen fellow Jews? Have they been retrieved from the neutrino loop?”
“No, my dear. All the Jews and rubicon survivors in this universe remain a blue beam rising from Jerusalem and nothing more.”
“We did not keep our promise then, did we?” asked Moira, pushing her plate away and brushing crumbs and juice from her palms.
“No, daughter.”
“And you, Rapist,” she said, turning to the blinking Harman, “do you have any other purpose in this world than taking advantage of sleeping strangers?”
Harman opened his mouth to speak, thought of nothing to say, and shut his mouth. He felt actively ill.
Moira touched his hand. “Do not reproach yourself, my Prometheus. You had little choice. The air inside the sarcophagus was scented with an aerosol aphrodisiac so potent that Prospero sent it off with one of the original changelings—Aphrodite herself. Lucky for both of us its effects are very temporary.”
Harman felt a surge of relief followed by fury. “You mean I had no choice?”
“Not if you carried the DNA of Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan Ho Tep,” said Moira. “And all males of your race should.”
She turned back to Prospero. “Where is Ferdinand Mark Alonzo? Or rather, what was his fate?”
The magus bowed his head. “Miranda, beloved, three years after you entered the loop-fax sarcophagus, he died of one of the wildcat variants of rubicon that swept through the old population every year as surely as a summer zephyr. He was interred in a crystal sarcophagus next to yours—although all the fax equipment could do was keep his corpse from rotting then, since the Firmary tanks had not yet learned how to deal with rubicon. Before the vats could educate themselves, a score of Caliphate mandroids climbed Mount Everest, evaded the security shields, and began looting the Taj. The first thing they looted was poor Ferdinand Mark Alonzo’s heavy coffin—throwing it over the side.”
“Why didn’t they throw me over as well?” asked Moira. “Or for that matter, finish their looting? I noticed all the agate, jasper, bloodstones, emeralds, lapis, cornelian, and other baubles were still in place on the walls and screen maze.”
“Caliban faxed in and dispatched the twenty Caliphate mandroids for you,” said Prospero. “It took the servitors a month to mop up all the blood.”
Moira’s head came up. “Caliban still lives?”
“Oh, yes. Ask our friend Harman here.”
She glanced at Harman but refocused her attention on the magus. “I’m surprised Caliban didn’t rape me as well.”
Prospero smiled sadly. “Oh, he tried, Miranda my dear, he tried many times, but the sarcophagus would not open to him. Had the world bent to Caliban’s will and member, he would have long since peopled this island earth with little Calibans by you.”
Moira shuddered. Finally she turned to Harman again, ignoring the old man. “I need to know your story and your character and your life,” she said. “Give me your palm.” She set her right elbow on the table and held up one hand, palm toward him.
Confused, Harman did the same, but not touching her.
“No,” said Moira. “Have the old-style humans forgotten the sharing function?”
“They have, actually,” said Prospero. “Our friend Harman here can—or could until the eiffelbahn inhibited his access—call up only the finder, allnet, proxnet, and farnet functions. And those only by visualizing certain geometric shapes.”
“Mother of Heaven,” said Moira. She dropped her hand to the table. “Can they still read?”
“Only Harman and a handful of others he’s taught in the last few months,” said Prospero. “Oh, I forgot to mention that our friend did learn to sigl some months ago.”
“Sigl?” Moira laughed. “That was never meant to be used to understand books. That was an indexing function. It must feel like glancing at a recipe in a cookbook and thinking you’ve actually eaten the dinner. Harman’s people must be the dullest subspecies of homo sapiens ever to receive a patent.”
“Hey,” said Harman. “I’m right here. Don’t talk about me as if I’m not even here. And I may not know this sharing function, but I can learn it quickly. In the meantime, we can talk. I have questions to ask too, you know.”
Moira looked at him. He noticed the rich gray-green of her eyes.
“Yes,” she said at last, “I have been rude. You must have come a long way to waken me—and you took that action against your will—and I am sure you would rather be elsewhere in the world. The least I can do is show you some manners and answer your questions.”
“Can you show me how to do this sharing function you were talking about?” asked Harman. He was determined not to lose his temper with this woman who looked so much like Savi and spoke in her voice. “Or show me how to fax without faxnode pavilions,” he added. “The way Ariel does it.”
“Ah, Ariel,” said Moira. She glanced at Prospero. “The old-styles have forgotten how to freefax?”
“They’ve forgotten almost everything,” said Prospero. “They were made to forget. By your people, Moira. By Vala, by Tirzah, by Rahaba—by all your Urizened Beulahs.”
Moira tapped the flat of her knife against her palm. “Why did you use this person to wake me, Prospero? Has Sycorax consolidated her power and freed your monster Caliban from your control?”