by Dan Simmons
“I slept out here away from the others,” said Daeman, speaking in a more normal tone as they got farther away from the main lean-to. His voice was still soft but each syllable roared in Ada’s aching head. Far overhead, the e—and p-rings whirled as they always whirled, turning and crossing in front of the stars and a fingernail moon. Ada saw something move up there and for a minute her heart pounded before she realized it was the sonie, orbiting silently in the night.
“Who’s flying the sonie?” she asked dully.
“Oko.”
“I didn’t know she knew how to fly it.”
“Greogi taught her yesterday,”said Daeman. They were approaching the smaller campfire and Ada saw the silhouette of another man standing there.
“Good morning, Ada Uhr,” said Tom.
Ada had to smile at the formal honorific. It had not been used much in recent months. “Good morning, Tom,” she whispered. “Where is this thing?”
Daeman pulled a long piece of wood out of the fire and extended it into the darkness like a torch.
Ada stepped back.
Daeman and Tom had obviously piled up palisade logs on three sides to cage the… thing… in the triangular space. But it was scurrying to and fro in that space, obviously ready and soon capable of climbing the two-foot-high flimsy wooden barricades.
Ada took the torch from Tom and crouched lower to study the Setebos thing in the flickering light.
Its multiple yellow eyes blinked and closed at the glare. The little Setebos—if that is what it was—was about a foot long, already larger in mass and length than a regular human brain, Ada thought, but still with the disgustingly pink wrinkles and folds and appearance of a living, disembodied brain. She could see the gray strip between the two hemispheres, a mucousy membrane covering it, and a slight pulsing, as if the whole thing was breathing. But this pink brain also had pulsating mouths—or orifices of some kind—and a myriad of tiny, pink baby hands beneath it and protruding from orifices. It scrabbled back and forth on those pudgy little pink fingers that looked like a mass of wriggling worms to Ada.
The yellow eyes opened, stayed open, and locked on Ada’s face. One of the orifices opened and screeching, scratching sounds came out.
“Is it trying to talk?” Ada whispered to both men.
“I have no idea,” said Daeman. “But it’s only a few minutes old. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s talking to us by the time it’s an hour old.”
“We shouldn’t let it get an hour old,” Tom said softly but firmly. “We should kill the thing now. Blow it apart with flechettes and then burn its corpse and scatter the ashes.”
Ada looked at Tom in surprise. The self-trained medic had always been the least violent and most life-affirming person she’d known at Ardis.
“At the very least,” said Daeman, watching the thing successfully trying to climb the low wooden barrier, “it needs a leash.”
Wearing heavy canvas-and-wool gloves they’d designed at Ardis early in the winter for work with livestock, Daeman leaned forward and plunged a sharp, thin spike that he’d curved to form a hook into the solid band of fibers—corpus callosum, Ada remembered it was called—connecting the two hemispheres of the little Setebos’s brain. Then, moving quickly, Daeman tugged to make sure the hook was secure, snapped a carabiner to it, and rigged twenty feet of nylon rope to the carabiner.
The little creature screamed and howled so loudly that Ada looked over her shoulder at the main camp, sure that everyone would come boiling out of the lean-to. No one stirred except one sentry near the fire who looked over her way sleepily and then went back to contemplating the flames.
The little Setebos writhed and rolled, running against the wooden barriers and finally clambering over them like a crab. Daeman tugged it up short on six feet of leash.
More tiny hands emerged from their folded state in the pink brain’s orifices and pulled themselves along on elastic stalks a yard or more long. The hands leaped at the nylon rope and tugged at it wildly, other hands exploring the hook and carabiner, trying to pull them free. The hook held. Daeman was pulled forward for a second but then jerked the scrabbling creature back onto the frozen grass of its cage.
“Strong little bastard,” he whispered.
“Let it wander,” said Ada. “Let’s see where it goes. What it does.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. Not far, but let’s see what it wants.”
Tom kicked the low post-wall down and the Setebos baby scurried out, the baby fingers under it working in unison, blurring like some obscene centipede’s legs.
Daeman allowed himself to be tugged along behind it, keeping the leash short. Ada and Tom walked beside Daeman, ready to move quickly if the creature turned toward them. It moved too quickly and too purposefully for any of the humans not to sense the danger from it.
Tom’s flechette rifle was being held at the ready and Daeman had another rifle strapped over his shoulder.
The thing didn’t head for the campfire or the lean-to. It tugged them twenty yards into the darkness of the west lawn. Then it scurried down into one of the former defensive trenches—a flame trench Ada had helped to dig—and seemed to squat on its spraddled hands.
Two new orifices opened at either ends of the little creature and stalks without hands, pulsing proboscises, emerged, wavered, and suddenly attached themselves to the ground. There came a sound that was a mixture of a pig rooting and a baby suckling.
“What the hell?” said Tom. He had the rifle aimed, the plastic-metal stock set firmly against his shoulder. The first shot, Ada knew, would slam several thousand crystal-barbed flechettes into the pulsing pink monstrosity at a velocity greater than the speed of sound.
Ada started shivering. Her constant, pulsing headache turned to a wave of nausea.
“I know this spot,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “It’s where Reman and Emme died during the voynix attack… they burned to death here.”
The Setebos spawn continued loudly rooting and suckling.
“Then it’s …” began Daeman and stopped.
“Eating,” finished Ada.
Tom put his finger on the trigger. “Let me kill it, Ada Uhr. Please.”
“Yes,” said Ada. “But not yet. I have no doubt that the voynix will return as soon as this thing dies. And it’s still dark. And we’re nowhere near ready. Let’s go back to your camp.”
They walked back to the campfire together, Daeman tugging the reluctant and finger-dragging Setebos thing along behind them.
60
Harman drowned.
His last thoughts before the water filled his lungs were—That bitch Moira lied to me—and then he gagged and choked and drowned in the swirling golden liquid.
The crystal dodecahedron had filled only to within a foot of its multifaceted top while Harman had been watching the golden liquid flow into it. Savi-Moira-Miranda had called the rich golden fluid the “medium” by which he would sigl—although that had not been her term—the Taj’s gigantic collection of books. Harman had stripped down to his thermskin layer.
“That has to come off, too,” said Moira. Ariel had stepped back into the shadows and now only the young woman stood in the bright light from the cupola windows with him. The guitar was on a nearby tabletop.
“Why?” said Harman.
“Your skin has to be in contact with the medium,” said Moira. “The transfer can’t work through a bonded molecular layer like a thermskin.”
“What transfer?” Harman had asked, licking his lips. He was very nervous. His heart was pounding.
Moira gestured toward the seemingly infinite rows of shelved books lining the hundred curved stories of inner dome-wall widening out below them.
“How do I know that there’s anything in those old books that will help me get back to Ada?” said Harman.
“You don’t.”
“You and Prospero could send me home right now if you wanted,” said Harman, turning away from the filling crystal tan
k. “Why don’t you do that so we can skip all this nonsense?”
“It’s not that easy,” said Moira.
“The hell it isn’t,” shouted Harman.
The young woman went on as if Harman had not spoken. “First of all, you know from the turin and from what Prospero told you that all of the planet’s faxnodes and fax pavilions have been shut off.”
“By whom?” said Harman, turning back to look at the crystal cabinet again. The golden fluid was swirling to within a foot of the top, but it had stopped filling. Moira had opened a panel on the top—one of the multifaceted glass faces—and he could see the short metal rungs that would allow him to climb up to that opening.
“By Setebos or his allies,” said Moira.
“What allies? Who are they? Just tell me what I need to know.”
Moira shook her head. “My young Prometheus, you’ve been told things for the better part of a year now. Hearing things means nothing unless you have the context in which to place the information. It is time for you to gain that context.”
“Why do you keep calling me Prometheus?” he barked at her. “Everyone seems to have ten names around here… Prometheus, I don’t know that name. Why do you call me that?”
Moira smiled. “I guarantee that you will understand that at least, after the crystal cabinet.”
Harman took a deep breath. One more smug smile out of this woman, he realized, and he might hit her in the face. “Prospero said that this thing could kill me,” he said. He looked at the cabinet rather than the post-human thing in Savi’s human form.
Moira nodded. “It could. I do not believe it will.”
“What are my chances?” said Harman. His voice sounded plaintive and weak to his own ears.
“I don’t know. Very good, I think, or I would not suggest you go through this… unpleasantness.”
“Have you done it?”
“Undergone the crystal cabinet transfer?” said Moira. “No. I had no reason to.”
“Who has?” demanded Harman. “How many lived? How many died?”
“All of the Chief Librarians have experienced the crystal cabinet transfer,” said Moira. “All the many generations of the Keepers of the Taj. All the linear descendents of the original Khan Ho Tep.”
“Including your beloved Ferdinand Mark Alonzo?”
“Yes.”
“And how many of these Keepers of the Taj survived the cabinet transfer?” asked Harman. He was still wearing the thermskin, but his exposed hands and face felt the terrible chill in the air up there near the top of the dome. He concentrated on not shivering.
Harman was afraid that if Moira merely shrugged, he’d just walk away forever. And he didn’t want to do that—not yet. Not until he knew more. This awkward crystal cabinet with its glowing gold liquid might kill him… but it might also return him to Ada sooner.
Moira did not shrug. She looked him in the eye—she had Savi’s eyes—and said, “I don’t know how many died. Sometimes the flow of information is simply too much—for lesser minds. I do not believe you have a lesser mind, Prometheus.”
“Don’t call me that again.” Harman’s freezing hands were tightened into fists.
“All right.”
“How long does it take?” he asked.
“The transfer itself? Less than an hour.”
“That long?” said Harman. “The eiffelbahn car leaves in forty-five minutes.”
“We’ll make it,” said Moira. Harman hesitated.
“The medium fluid is warm,” said Moira as if reading his mind. It was more likely, he realized, she was reading his shivers and shaking.
That may have decided the issue for Harman. He had peeled off the thermskin, embarrassed to be naked in front of this stranger with whom he had had a strange sort of sex less than two hours earlier. And it was cold.
He had quickly clambered up the side of the dodecahedron, using the short rungs for hand and footholds, feeling how cold the metal was against the bare soles of his feet.
It had been a relief when he lowered himself through the open panel and actually dropped into the golden liquid. As she’d promised, the fluid was warm. It had no scent and the few drops that landed on his lips had no taste.
And then Ariel had levitated from the shadows and closed and locked the panel above Harman’s head.
And then Moira had touched some control on the vertical and virtual control panel where she stood.
And then a pump chugged to life again somewhere in the base of the crystal cabinet and more fluid began to fill the closed container.
Harman had screamed at them then—screamed at them to let him out—and then, when both post-human and biosphere non-human ignored him, Harman had pounded and kicked, trying to open the panel, trying to shatter the crystal. The fluid continued to rise. For some seconds Harman found the last inch of air at the top facet of the dodecahedron and he breathed it in deeply, still pounding on the overhead panels. And then the fluid rose until there was no more inch of air, no more air bubbles except those escaping from Harman’s lips and nose.
He held his breath for as long as he could. He wished that his last thought could have been of Ada and his love for Ada—and his sorrow for having betrayed Ada—but although he thought of her, his last thoughts while holding his breath until his lungs were afire were a confused jumble of terror and fury and regret.
And then he could hold his breath no more and—still pounding on the unyielding crystal panel above him—he exhaled, coughed, gagged, cursed, gagged more, breathed in the thickening fluid, felt darkness flowing over his mind even as overwhelming panic continued to fill his body with useless adrenaline, and then his lungs held no air at all, but Harman did not know this. Heavier without air in his lungs, his body no longer kicking, moving, or breathing, Harman sank to the center of the dodecahedron.
61
There had been a flurry of activity and tightbeamed conversation on the bridge of the Queen Mab as another masered message came in from the Voice on the asteroid city on polar Earth orbit, but it was only a repeat of the previous rendezvous coordinates and after five minutes confirming this and with no other message following, the principal moravecs met back at the chart table.
“Where were we?” said Orphu of Io.
“You were about to present your Theory of Everything,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che.
“And you said you knew who the Voice is,” said Cho Li. “Who or what is it?”
“I don’t know who the Voice is,” answered Orphu, vocalizing in soft rumbles rather than tightbeaming or transmitting on the standard in-ship comm channels. “But I have a pretty good guess.”
“Tell us,” said General Beh bin Adee. The Belt moravec’s tone did not suggest a polite request so much as a direct order.
“I’d rather explain my entire… Theory of Everything… first and then tell you about the Voice,” said Orphu. “It’ll make more sense in context.”
“Proceed,” said Prime Integrator Asteague/Che.
Mahnmut heard his friend take in a full breath of O-two, even though the Ionian had weeks or months of reserve in his tanks. He wanted to tightbeam his friend the question—Are you sure you want to go ahead with this explanation?—but since Mahnmut himself had no clue as to what Orphu was going to say, he remained silent. But he was nervous for his friend.
“First of all,” said Orphu of Io, “you haven’t released the information yet, but I’m pretty sure you’ve identified most of the million or so satellites that make up Earth’s polar and equatorial rings that we’re so quickly approaching… and I bet that most of the objects aren’t asteroids or habitations.”
“That is correct,” said Asteague/Che.
“Some of them we know to be early post-human attempts at creating and corralling black holes,” continued Orphu. “Huge devices like the wormhole accumulator that you showed us crashing into that other orbital asteroid city nine months ago. But how many of those are there? A few thousand?”
“Fewer
than two thousand,” confirmed Asteague/Che.
“It’s my bet that the bulk of the rest of the million… things … that the post-humans put in orbit are data storage devices. I don’t know what kind—DNA, maybe, although that would require constant life support, so they’re probably bubble memory combined with some sort of advanced quantum computer with some complicated post-human memory storage that we moravecs haven’t discovered yet.”
Orphu paused and there was a silence that seemed to stretch on for hours to Mahnmut. The various Prime Integrators and moravec leaders were not looking at one another, but Mahnmut guessed that they had a private tightbeam channel and that they were conferring.
Asteague/Che finally broke the silence—which had probably lasted only seconds in real time.
“They are mostly storage devices,” said the Prime Integrator. “We’re not sure of their nature, but they appear to be some sort of advanced magnetic bubble-memory quantum wavefront storage units.”
“And each unit is essentially independent,” said Orphu. “Its own hard disk, so to speak.”
“Yes,” said Asteague/Che.
“And most of the rest of the satellites in the rings—probably no more than ten thousand or so—are basic power transmitters and some sort of modulated tachyon waveform transmitters.”
“Six thousand four hundred and eight power transmitters,” said the navigator Cho Li. “Precisely three thousand tachyon wave transmitters.”
“How do you know this, Orphu of Io?” asked Suma IV, the powerful Ganymedan. “Have you hacked into our Integrator comm channels or files?”
Orphu held two of his multisegmented forward manipulator arms out, flat palms up. “No, no,” he said. “I don’t have enough programming knowledge to hack into my sister’s diary… if I had a sister or if she had a diary.”
“Then how …” began Retrograde Sinopessen.
“It just makes sense,” said Orphu. “I have an abiding interest in human beings and their literature. Over the centuries, I’ve paid attention to those observations of Earth, the post-humans’ rings, and the data about the few humans left on the planet that the Five Moons Consortium has made public knowledge.”