by Dan Simmons
The vote to allow Noman to borrow the sonie had been decided by one vote. The last vote—the deciding vote—had been cast by a man named Elian, the bald leader of the six Hughes Town refugees who had come in with Hannah and Noman on the skyraft, not even one of the Ardis survivors.
The Ardis people who had voted against losing the sonie were furious. There were demands for a recount. Flechette rifles actually had been raised in anger, along with shouting voices.
Ada had stepped into the middle of the melee and announced in a loud, calm voice that the issue had been decided. Noman was to be allowed to borrow the sonie but would return it as soon as possible. In the meantime, they would have the sky-raft that Noman and Hannah had cobbled together in the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu—the sonie could carry only six; the sky-raft could haul up to fourteen people at a time if they had to make a run for the island. This matter was settled.
The flechette rifles had been lowered, but the grumbling continued. Old friends of Ada’s refused to meet her gaze in the hours afterward and she knew that she’d used up the last of her capital as leader of the Ardis survivors.
Now Noman and the sonie were gone and Ada had never felt lonelier. She touched her slightly bulging belly and thought, Little person, son or daughter of Harman, if this was a mistake that endangers you, I shall be sorry to the last second of my life.
“Ada?” said Daeman. “Can I have a word in private with you?”
They walked out beyond the north palisade to where Hannah had once kept her scaffolded hearth working. Daeman told her about his meeting with the post-human who called herself Moira. He described how she looked exactly like a young Savi and how she was invisible to the rest of them as she stood near him during the meeting and the vote.
Ada shook her head slowly. “None of that makes any sense, Daeman. Why would a post-human appear in Savi’s body—stay invisible to the rest of us? How could she? Why would she?”
“I don’t know,” said Daeman.
“Did she have anything else to say?”
“She promised—before the meeting—to tell me something about Harman after the meeting if she could attend.”
“And?” said Ada. She felt her heart pounding so wildly that it might have been the child stirring within her, as eager as she to hear the news.
“All the Moira-ghost said afterward was ‘Remember that Noman’s coffin was Noman’s coffin,’ ” said Daeman.
Ada made him repeat that twice and said, “That makes no sense either.”
“I know,” said Daeman. He looked crestfallen, shoulders slumped. “I tried to make her explain but then she was… gone. Just disappeared.”
She stared hard at him. “Are you sure this happened, Daeman? We’ve all been working too hard, sleeping too little, worrying too much. Are you sure this Moira-ghost was real?”
Daeman stared hard back at her, his gaze as angrily defensive as hers was angrily doubtful, but he said nothing else.
“Remember that Noman’s coffin was Noman’s coffin,” muttered Ada. She looked around. People were going about their early afternoon chores, but the work groups had now broken themselves into clusters of those who had voted the same. Neither side was speaking to the bald man Elian. Ada fought off the urge to sob.
Neither Noman nor the sonie returned that day. Nor the next. Nor the next.
On the third day, Ada went up in the wobbly sky-raft with Hannah at the controls, accompanying Daeman’s hunting party out beyond the circle of voynix and trying to get an estimate of how many of the headless, carapaced killers were out there. It was a beautiful morning—no clouds at all, a blue sky and warmer winds promising spring—and she could easily see that the number of voynix pressing into their two-mile radius from the Pit had grown.
“It’s hard for me to guess,” Ada whispered to Daeman although they were a thousand feet above the monsters. “There must be three or four hundred just visible in that meadow. We never had to count large numbers of things growing up. What do you think? Fifteen thousand in the whole encircling mass? More?”
“More, I think,” Daeman said calmly. “I think there are thirty to forty thousand of the things surrounding us now.”
“Don’t they ever get tired of standing there?” asked Ada. “Don’t they have to eat? Drink?”
“Evidently not,” said Daeman. “Back when we thought they were servant-machines, I never saw one eat or drink or get tired, did you?”
Ada said nothing. Those times seemed too remote to think about, even though they had ended less than a year earlier.
“Fifty thousand,” muttered Daeman. “Perhaps there are fifty thousand here now, and more faxing in every day.”
Hannah flew them farther west to find game and fresh meat.
On the fourth day, the Setebos baby in the Pit had grown to the size of a yearling calf—one of their yearling calves, now all slaughtered by voynix, of course, but a calf that was only a pulsating gray brain with a score of pink hands on its belly, yellow eyes, pulsating orifices, and more three-fingered hands leaping out on gray stalks.
Mommy, Mommy, whispered the thing in Ada’s mind, in all their minds. It’s time for me to come out now. This pit is too small and I am too hungry to stay here any longer.
It was early evening, less than an hour from twilight and another long, dark winter night. The group gathered near the Pit. Men and women still tended to stand near only those who had voted as they had on the loan of the sonie. Everyone now carried a flechette weapon, although crossbows were kept close to hand in reserve.
Casman, Kaman, Greogi, and Edide stood over the Pit with their rifles aimed at the large thing in the hole. Others gathered close.
“Hannah,” said Ada, “is the sky-raft fully provisioned?”
“Yes,” said the younger woman. “All of the first trip crates are aboard and still room for ten people on the first trip. We can get fourteen people aboard on every trip after that.”
“And what time are you down to in rehearsing the trip to the island and the unpacking of the crates?” asked Ada.
“Forty-two minutes,” said Laman, rubbing the stumps of his missing fingers on his right hand. “Thirty-five minutes with just people. It takes a few minutes to get people aboard or off.”
“That’s not good enough,” said Ada.
Hannah stepped closer to the fire they kept burning near the Pit.
“Ada, the trip to the island takes fifteen minutes each way. The machine can’t fly any faster.”
“The sonie would have been there in less than a minute,” said Loes, one of the angriest of the Ardis survivors. “We could all have been delivered there in less than ten minutes.”
“We don’t have the sonie now,” Ada said. She heard the lack of affect in her own voice. Without meaning to, she glanced to the southwest, down toward the river and the island, but also toward the woods where fifty to sixty thousand voynix waited.
Noman had been right. Even if the entire colony of humans here escaped to the island, the voynix would be on them there in hours—perhaps minutes. Even though the Ardis faxnode was still nonfunctioning—they kept two people there at the pavilion day and night to keep testing it—the voynix were faxing. Somehow, they were faxing. There was nowhere on earth, Ada realized, that they would be free of the killers.
“Let’s get back to making dinner,” she called above the murmuring. Everyone could feel the Setebos spawn’s clammy voice in his or her mind.
Mommy, Daddy, it’s time for me to come out now. Open the grill, Daddy, Mommy, or I will. I’m stronger now. I’m hungry now. I want to come meet you now.
Greogi, Daeman, Hannah, Elian, Boman, Edide, and Ada sat talking late into the night. Above them the equatorial and polar rings whirled silently, turning as they always had. The Big Dipper was low in the north. There was a crescent moon.
“I think tomorrow, first light, we abandon the idea of the island and begin evacuating as many people as possible to the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu,” said Ada. “We shou
ld have done it weeks ago.”
“It would take weeks for this stupid sky-raft to get to the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu,” said Hannah. “And it may break down again and never get there. Without Noman to fix it, the people on the sky-raft will be stranded.”
“We’re dead if it breaks down here as well,” said Daeman. He touched Hannah’s shoulder as the young woman seemed to slump. “You’ve done an amazing job keeping it working, Hannah, but this is a technology we just don’t understand.”
“What technology do we understand?” muttered Boman.
“Crossbows,” said Edide. “We were getting damned good at building crossbows.”
No one laughed. After a few minutes, Elian said, “Tell me again why the voynix can’t get into the habitation part of this bridge at Machu Picchu.”
“The habitation bubbles are like grapes on a vine,” said Hannah, who had spent more time there than any of them. “But linked together. Clear plastic or something. It’s late Lost Era technology, maybe even post-human technology—some sort of forcefield just above the surface of the glass. Voynix just slide off.”
“We had something similar on the windows of the crawler Savi drove us in from Jerusalem into the Mediterranean Basin,” said Daeman. “She said it was a frictionless field to keep the rain off. But it worked for voynix and calibani too.”
“I’d enjoy seeing one of these calibani,” said Elian. “And also the Caliban thing you described.” The bald man’s mouth and other facial features seemed always set to a show of strength and curiosity.
“No,” Daeman said softly, “you wouldn’t enjoy seeing either one. Especially the real Caliban. Trust me on this.”
In the silence that followed, Greogi said what they had all been thinking. “We’re going to have to draw straws… something. Fourteen get to go to the Bridge. They can carry weapons, water, and minimum rations, hunt along the way perhaps, so a full sky-raft load of fourteen can go. The rest of us stay.”
“Fourteen out of fifty-four get to live?” said Edide. “Doesn’t seem right.”
“Hannah will be one of those who goes,” said Greogi. “She flies the sky-raft back if the fourteen get to the Bridge on the first trip.”
Hannah shook her head. “You can fly the thing as well as I can, Greogi. We can teach anyone here how to fly it as well as I can. I’m not automatically on the first trip and you know… you know … there won’t be a second trip. Not with the shape the sky-raft is in. Not with the voynix continuing to mass out there in the dark. Not with the Setebos thing getting stronger every hour. Those fourteen short straws, long straws, whichever, will have a chance to live. The rest will die here.”
“Then we’ll decide as soon as it’s light,” said Ada.
“There may be fighting,” said Elian. “People are angry, hungry, resentful. They may not want to draw straws to see who lives and who dies. They may rush the raft right away, or after they don’t get a seat.”
Ada nodded. “Daeman, take ten of your best people and have them surround the sky-raft—protect it—even before I call the council together. Edide, you and your friends quietly try to collect as many of the loose weapons as possible.”
“Most people sleep with their flechette rifles now,” said the blond woman. “They don’t let them out of their hands.”
Ada nodded again. “Do what you can. I’ll talk to everyone. Explain why this is the only hope.”
“The losers will want to be ferried to the island,” said Greogi. “At the very least.”
Boman nodded. “I would. I will if I don’t get the right-sized straw.”
Ada sighed. “It won’t do any good. I’m convinced that the island is just another place to die… the voynix will be there minutes after we are if the Setebos thing isn’t there to protect us. But we can do that. Ferry those who want to go, then let the fourteen head for the Bridge.”
“It will waste time,” said Hannah. “Put more stress on the sky-raft.”
Ada held her hands out, palms upward. “It may keep our people from killing each other, Hannah. It gives fourteen people a chance. And the rest get to choose where they stand and die. That’s something—an illusion of choice if nothing else.”
No one had anything else to say. They broke up to head toward their own sleeping tents and lean-tos.
Hannah followed Ada and touched her arm in the dark before they reached Ada’s sleeping tent.
“Ada,” whispered the younger woman, “I have this feeling that Harman is still alive. I hope you’re one of the fourteen.”
Ada smiled—her white teeth visible in the ringlight. “I have this feeling that Harman is alive, too, my dear. But I’m not going to be one of the fourteen. I’ve already decided that I’m not going to take part in the drawing of straws. My baby and I are staying at Ardis.”
In the end, none of their planning mattered.
Just after sunrise, Ada jerked awake to cold hands in her mind and within her womb.
Mommy—I have your little boy here. He’s going to stay inside for a few months while I teach him things—wonderful things—but I’m coming out to play!
Ada screamed as she felt the mind in the Pit touching the developing mind of the fetus inside her.
She was on her feet and running, carrying two flechette rifles, before anyone else could fully awaken.
The Setebos baby had bent the bars of the grill back and was squeezing its gray brain-girth through the bent mesh and bars. Already the thing had tentacles flung out fifteen feet to a side, three-fingered hands sunk deep in the dirt. Three of its feeding orifices were open and the long, fleshy, trunklike appendages there were already drinking grief and terror and history from the soil of Ardis. Its many yellow eyes were very bright and as it rose out of the Pit, the many fingers on its large pink hands were waving like sea anemones in a strong current.
Mommy, it’s all right, hiss-thought the thing as it pulled itself free of the Pit. All I’m going to do is …
Ada heard Daeman and others running behind her, but she did not look over her shoulder as she stopped, jerked down the flechette rifle from her shoulder, and fired a full clip into the Setebos thing.
It spun as thousands of crystal darts shredded part of its left lobe. Tentacles lashed toward her.
Ada dodged, slapped in a second magazine, emptied it into the writhing brain.
Mommmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Ada dropped the first flechette rifle when the second magazine was empty, raised the second rifle, clicked it to full automatic, stepped three paces closer between the clawing tentacles, and fired the full magazine of flechettes between the yellow eyes at the front of the brain.
The Setebos spawn screamed—screamed with its real many mouths—and fell backward into the Pit.
Ada strode to the edge of the Pit, slammed in a new magazine and fired, ignoring the shouts and screams behind her. When that flechette magazine was empty, she slapped in another, aimed at the bleeding gray mass in the pit, and fired again. Again. Again. The brain split along its hemispheres and she blasted each pulped hemisphere as if smashing a pumpkin. The pink hands and long stalks spasmed, but the Setebos spawn was dead.
Ada felt it die. Everyone did. Its last mental scream—in no language except pain—hissed away to silence in their minds like filthy water going down a drain.
Everyone except sentinels came out from their shelters and stood grouped around the Pit, staring down, feeling the absence but not yet believing.
“Well, I guess I don’t have to go gather straws after all,” said Greogi to Ada, leaning close and almost whispering into her ear amidst the stunned silence.
Suddenly there came a noise from all around them—a whirring, whistling, humming, terrifying noise, distant yet growing louder, the whir and scrabbling noise echoing through the forest and from the surrounding hills.
“What in the hell …” began Casman.
“The voynix,” said Daeman. He took Ada’s rifle from her, slapped in a fresh magazine of flech
ettes, and handed it back to her. “They’re all coming at once.”
81
Here I am watching and listening as a god goes mad.
I don’t know what help I thought I could get up here on Olympos for my besieged and dying Achaeans, but now I’ve trapped myself, just as surely as the Greeks on their beach with the Trojans closing in are trapped to the death, me standing here in my sweaty chameleon suit, cheek by jowl with a thousand immortals, trying to hold my breath to keep from giving myself away while watching and listening as Zeus, already king of the gods, declares himself the one and only Eternal God Almighty.
I shouldn’t worry about being noticed. The gods around me are staring with their immortal jaws hanging slack, their godlike mouths hanging open, and their divine Olympian eyes bugging out.
Zeus has gone mad. And his dark eyes seem to be boring into me as he spittles on about his new ascendance to ultimate Godhood. I’m sure he can see me. His eyes have the self-pleasuring patience of a cat with a mouse between its paws.
I put my thick-suited hand on the QT medallion against my chest under the sticky chameleon suit.
But where to go? Back to the beach with the Achaeans means certain death. Back to Ilium to see Helen means pleasure and survival, but I will have betrayed… betrayed who? The Greeks haven’t even noticed when I’ve walked among them, at least not since Achilles and Odysseus both disappeared on the wrong side of the closing Brane Hole. Why should I feel loyalty to them when they don’t….
But I do.
Speaking of Odysseus—and X-rated images pop into my mind when I do think of him—I know that I can QT back to the Queen Mab. That might be the safest place for me, although I really have no place there among the moravecs.
Nothing feels right. No move feels better than a cowardly betrayal.
Betrayal of whom, for Gods’ sake? I ask myself, taking the Lord’s name in vain even as the universe’s new Lord and only Almighty God stares me in the eye and finishes his fist-pounding, spittle-flying rant.
Lord God Zeus did not end his speech with “ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS?”—but he might as well have, based on the thickness of silence that now falls over the Great Hall of the Gods.