Olympos t-2

by Dan Simmons

  “She has and he is free,” Prospero said softly, “but I felt it was time you woke because Setebos now walks this world.”

  “Sycorax, Caliban, and Setebos,” repeated Moira. She drew in a long breath, hissing it between her teeth.

  “Between the witch, the demidevil, and the thing of darkness,” Prospero said softly, “they would control the moon and Earth, decide all ebbs and flows, and deal all power to their command.”

  Moira nodded and chewed her full lower lip for a moment. “When does your eiffelbahn car depart again?”

  “In one hour,” said the magus. “Will you be on it, Miranda dear? Or will you be sleeping in the fax-coffin of time again, allowing your atoms and memories to be restored in such a meaningless loop forever?”

  “I’ll be on your damned car,” said Moira. “And I’ll take from the update banks what I need to know about this brave new world I’m born into yet again. But first, young Prometheus has his questions to ask and then I have a suggestion on what he can do to regain his function status.” She glanced toward the apex of the dome.

  “No, Moira,” said Prospero.

  “Harman,” she said softly, putting her soft hand on the back of his, “ask your questions now.”

  He licked his lips. “Are you really a post-human?”

  “Yes, I am. That is what Savi’s people called us before the Final Fax.”

  “Why do you look like Savi?”

  “Ah … you knew her, then? Well, I will learn her health or fate when I call up the update function. I knew Savi, but more important, Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan Ho Tep was in love with her and she returned no love for him—they were of separate tribes, so to speak. So I took her form, her memories, her voice… everything… before coming here to the Taj.”

  “How did you take her form?” asked Harman.

  Moira looked at Prospero again. “His people do know nothing, don’t they?” To Harman she said, “We post-humans had reached the point where we had no bodies of our own, my young Prometheus. At least none that you would recognize as bodies. We needed none. There were only a few thousand of us, but we had bred ourselves out of the human gene pool, thanks to the genetic skills of the avatar of the cyberspace logosphere here…”

  “You’re welcome,” said Prospero.

  “When we wanted to take a human form—always a female human form, I might add, for all of us—we just borrowed one.”

  “But how?” said Harman.

  Moira sighed. “Are the rings still in the sky?”

  “Of course,” said Harman.

  “Polar and equatorial both?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think they are, Harman Prometheus? There are more than a million discrete objects up there… what do your people think they are?”

  Harman licked his lips again. The air here in the great temple-tomb was very dry. “We know our Firmary, where we were rejuvenated, was up there. Most of us think the other objects up there are the posts—your people’s—homes. And your machines. Cities on orbiting islands like Prospero’s. I was there last year on Prospero’s Isle, Moira. I helped bring it down.”

  “You did?” She looked at the magus again. “Well, good for you, young Prometheus. But you’re wrong in thinking that the million orbiting objects, most of them much smaller than Prospero’s Isle, were habitats for my kind or machines serving solely our purposes. There are a dozen or so habitats, of course, and several thousand giant wormhole generators, black hole accumulators, early experiments in our interdimensional travel program, Brane Hole generators… but most of the orbiting objects up there are serving you.”

  “Me?”

  “Do you know what faxing is?”

  “I’ve done it all my life,” said Harman.

  “Yes, of course, but do you know what it is?”

  Harman took a breath. “We’d never really thought about it, but on our voyages last year Savi and Prospero explained that the faxnode pavilions actually turn our bodies into coded energy and then our bodies, minds, and memories are rebuilt at another node.”

  Moira nodded. “But the fax pavilions and nodes are not necessary,” she said. “They were simply ruses to keep you old-style humans from wandering in places you shouldn’t go. This fax form of teleportation was staggeringly heavy on computer memory, even with the most advanced Calabi-Yau DNA and bubble-memory machines. Do you have any idea how much memory is required to store the data on just one human being’s molecules, much less the holistic wavefront of his or her personality and memories?”

  “No,” said Harman.

  Moira gestured toward the top of the dome, but Harman realized that she was actually gesturing toward the sky beyond and the polar and equatorial rings turning up there now against the dark blue sky. “A million orbital memory banks,” said the woman. “Each one dedicated to one of you old-style humans. And in many of the other clumsy orbital machines, the black-hole-powered teleportation devices themselves—GPS satellites, scanners, reducers, compilators, receivers, and transmitters—somewhere up there above you every night of your life, my Harman Prometheus, was a star with your name on it.”

  “Why a million?” asked Harman.

  “That was thought to be a viable minimum herd population,” said Moira, “although I suspect there are far fewer of you than that today since we allowed each woman to have only one child. In my day, there were only nine thousand three hundred and fourteen of your subspecies of humans—those with nanogenetic functions installed and active—and a few hundred thousand dying old-old-style humans, those like my beloved Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo Khan Ho Tep, the last of his royal breed.”

  “What are the voynix?” asked Harman. “Where did they come from? Why did they act as silent servants for so long and then start attacking my people after Daeman and I destroyed Prospero’s Isle and the Firmary? How do we stop them?”

  “So many questions,” sighed Moira. “If you want them all answered, you will need context. To gain context, you need to read these books.”

  Harman’s head jerked and he looked up and down at the curving inner dome lined with books. He could not do the mathematics on the square or cubic feet of books here, but he imagined—wildly, blindly—that there must be at least a million volumes on these shelves.

  “Which books?” he asked.

  “All of these books,” said Moira, lifting her hand from his to gesture in a circle toward everything. “You can, you know.”

  “Moira, no,” Prospero said again. “You’ll kill him.”

  “Nonsense,” said the woman. “He’s young.”

  “He’s ninety-nine years old,” said Prospero, “more than seventy-five years older than Savi’s body was when you cloned it for your own purposes. She had memories then. You carry them now. Harman is no tabula rasa.”

  Moira shrugged. “He’s strong. Sane. Look at him.”

  “You’ll kill him,” said Prospero. “And with him, one of our best weapons against Setebos and Sycorax.”

  Harman was very angry now, but also excited. “What are you talking about?” he demanded, pulling his hand back when Moira threatened to touch it again with hers. “Are you talking about me sigling all these books? It would take months… years. Decades, maybe.”

  “Not sigling,” said Moira, “but eating them.”

  “Eating them,” repeated Harman, thinking, Was she mad before she entered the time coffin or have the centuries of being replicated there, cell by cell, neuron by neuron, made her mad?

  “Eating them,” agreed Moira. “In the sense that the Talmud spoke of eating books—not reading them, but eating them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you know what the Talmud is?” asked Moira.

  “No.”

  Moira pointed toward the apex of the dome again, some seventy stories above them. “Up there, my young friend, in a tiny little cupola made of the clearest glass, there is a cabinet formed of gold and pearl and crystal and I have the golden key. Within, it ope
ns into a world and a little lovely moony night.”

  “Like your sarcophagus?” asked Harman. His heart was pounding.

  “Nothing like my sarcophagus,” laughed Moira. “That coffin was just another node on your faxing merry-go-round, replicating me through the centuries until it was time to wake and go to work. I’m talking about a machine that will allow you to read all these books in depth before the eiffelbahn car leaves the Taj station in …” She glanced at her palm. “Fifty-eight minutes.”

  “Do not do this, Moira,” said Prospero. “He will do us no good in the war against Setebos if he is dead or a drooling moron.”

  “Silence, Prospero,” snapped Moira. “Look at him. He’s already a moron. It’s as if his entire race has been lobotomized since Savi’s day. He might as well be dead. This way, if the cabinet works and he survives, he may be able to serve himself and us.” She took Harman’s hand again. “What do you most want in this universe, Harman Prometheus?”

  “To go home to see my wife,” said Harman.

  Moira sighed. “I can’t guarantee that the crystal cabinet—the knowledge and nuance of all these books that my poor, dead Ahman Ferdinand Mark Alonzo accumulated over his centuries—will allow you to freefax home to your wife… what is her name?”

  “Ada.” The two syllables made Harman want to weep. It made him want to weep twice—once for missing her, again for betraying her.

  “To Ada,” said Moira. “But I can guarantee that you will not get home alive to see her unless you take this chance.”

  Harman stood and stepped out onto the railingless marble ledge three hundred feet above the cold marble floor below. He looked up at the center of the dome almost seven hundred feet above but could see nothing except a sort of haze there where the last of the metal catwalks converged like black and almost invisibly thin spiderwebs.

  “Harman, friend of Noman …” began Prospero.

  “Shut up,” Harman said to the magus of the logosphere.

  To Moira he said, “Let’s go.”

  57

  “I quantum teleported us here according to your directions,” says Hephaestus, “but where in Hades’ Hell are we?”

  “Ithaca,” says Achilles. “A rugged, rocky isle, but a good nurse to boys who would be men.”

  “It looks and smells more like a hot, stinking shithole to me,” says the god of fire, limping along the dusty, rock-strewn trail that leads up a steep slope past meadows filled with goats and cattle to where the red tiles of several buildings glare in the merciless sun.

  “I’ve been here before,” says Achilles, “the first time when I was a boy.” The hero’s heavy shield is strapped to his back, his sword secure in its scabbard on a belt hanging over his shoulder. The blond young man is not sweating from the climb or heat, but Hephaestus, limping along behind him, is huffing and pouring sweat. Even the immortal Artificer’s beard is wet with sweat.

  The steep but narrow trail ends on top of the hill and in sight of several large structures.

  “Odysseus’ palace,” says Achilles, jogging the last fifty yards.

  “Palace,” gasps the god of fire. He limps into the clearing in front of the high gates, sets both hands on his crippled leg, and bends over as if he is going to be sick. “It’s more like a fucking vertical pigsty.”

  The remnant of a small, abandoned fortress rises like a squat stone stump fifty yards to the right of the main house on the promontory overlooking the cliff. The home itself—Odysseus’ palace—is made of newer stone and newer wood, although the main doors—open—are comprised of two ancient stone slabs. Terra-cotta paving tiles on the terrace are made of expensive tile set neatly in place, obviously the work of the best craftsmen and stone masons—although equally obviously not dusted or swept recently—and all the outside walls and columns are brightly painted. Faux painted vines filled with images of birds and their nests spiral around the white columns on either side of the entry, but real vines have also grown there, their tangle inviting real birds and becoming home to at least one visible nest. Achilles can see colorful frescoes gleaming from the walls of the shadowy vestibule beyond the main doors, which have been left ajar.

  Achilles starts forward but halts when Hephaestus grabs his arm. “There’s a forcefield here, son of Peleus.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “You wouldn’t until you walked into it. I’m sure it would kill any other mortal man, but even though you’re the fleet-footed mankiller with what Nyx called your singularity probability quotient, the field would knock you on your ass. My instruments measure at least two hundred thousand volts in it and enough amperage to do real damage. Stand back.”

  The bearded dwarf-god fiddles with boxes and corkscrewed metallic shapes hanging from the various leather straps and chest bands on his heavy vests, checks little dials, uses a short wand with alligator clip jaws to attach something that looks like a dead metallic ferret to some terminus in the invisible field, then links four rhomboid devices together with colored wire before pushing a brass button.

  “There,” says Hephaestus, god of fire. “Field’s down.”

  “That’s what I like about high priests,” says Achilles, “they do nothing and then brag about it.”

  “You wouldn’t have fucking thought it was fucking nothing if you’d walked into that forcefield,” growls the god. “It was Hera’s work based on my machines.”

  “Then I thank you,” says Achilles and strides through the archway, between the stone slabs of the open doorway, and into the vestibule and Odysseus’ home.

  Suddenly there is a growling noise and a dark animal lunges snarling from the shadows.

  Achilles’ sword is in his hand in an instant, but the dog has already collapsed on the dusty tiles.

  “This is Argus,” says Achilles, patting the head of the prostrate and panting animal. “Odysseus trained this hound from a pup more than ten years ago, but told me that he had to leave for Troy before he ever took Argus hunting for boar or wild deer. Our crafty friend’s son, Telemachus, was supposed to be his master in Odysseus’ absence.”

  “No one’s been his master for weeks,” says Hephaestus. “The mutt has all but starved to death.” It is true; Argus is too weak to stand or move his head. Only his large, imploring eyes follow Achilles’ hand as the hero pets the animal. The dog’s ribs stand out against his slack, lusterless hide like the hull timbers of an unfinished ship against old canvas.

  “He can’t get outside Hera’s forcefield,” mutters Achilles. “And I’ll wager that there was nothing to eat inside. He’s probably had water from the rains and gutters, but no food.” He pulls several biscuits from the small bag he’s been carrying with his shield—biscuits purloined from the Artificer’s home—and feeds two to the dog. The animal can just barely chew them. Achilles sets three more biscuits next to the dog’s head and stands.

  “Not even a corpse to feed on,” says Hephaestus. “What with the humans gone everywhere on your Earth now except around Ilium… just disappeared like fucking smoke. “

  Achilles rounds on the limping god. “Where are our people? What have you and the other immortals done with them?”

  The Artificer holds both palms high. “It wasn’t our doing, son of Peleus. Not even great Zeus’s. Some other force emptied out this Earth, not us. We Olympian gods need our worshipers. Living without our mortal grovelers, idolators, and altar-builders would be like narcissists—and I know Narcissus well—living in a world without mirrored surfaces. This wasn’t our deed.”

  “You expect me to believe there are other gods?” asks Achilles, sword still half-raised.

  “Big fleas have little fleas, and little fleas have littler fleas to bite ‘em, and littler fleas have even smaller fleas, and so on ad infinitum, or some doggerel like that,” says the bearded immortal.

  “Be silent,” says Achilles. He pats the now actively chewing dog on the head one last time and turns his back on Hephaestus.

  They pass through the vestibule into the
main hall—the throne room as it were—where Achilles had been received years earlier by Odysseus and his wife Penelope. Odysseus’ son Telemachus had been a shy boy of six then, barely up to the task of bowing to the assembled Myrmidons and then hurriedly being led away by his nurse. The throne room is now empty.

  Hephaestus is consulting one of his instrument-boxes. “This way,” he says, leading Achilles from the throne room back across the brightly frescoed vestibule to a longer, darker room. It is the banquet hall, dominated by a low table thirty feet long.

  Zeus is sprawled supine on the table, his arms and legs thrown akimbo. He is naked and he is snoring. The banquet hall is a mess—cups, bowls, and utensils thrown everywhere, arrows spilled out all over the floor from where a great quiver had fallen from the wall, another wall missing a tapestry that was bunched up under the snoring Father of the Gods.

  “It’s Absolute Sleep, all right,” grumbles Hephaestus.

  “It sounds like it,” says Achilles. “I’m surprised the timbers don’t collapse from the snores and snorts.” The mankiller is stepping carefully over the heads of barbed arrows that are scattered on the floor. Although few Greek warriors admit it, most use deadly substances for poison on their speartips and arrowheads, and the only thing Achilles, son of Peleus, knows from the Oracle’s and his mother Thetis’s predictions of his own death is that a poisoned arrowhead piercing the only mortal part of his body will be the cause of his demise. But neither his immortal mother nor the Fates had ever told him exactly where or when he will die, or who will fire the deadly arrow. It would be too absurdly ironic, Achilles thinks now, to prick a toe on one of Odysseus’ ancient fallen arrows and die in agony even before he can waken Zeus to demand that Penthesilea be saved.

  “No, I mean Absolute Sleep was the fucking drug Hera used to knock him out,” says the Artificer. “It was a potion I helped develop into aerosol form, although Nyx was the original chemist.”

  “Can you wake him?”