by Дэн Симмонс
Aenea. I will not say at this time, Lhomo. Not until I am certain. And the Core cannot be attacked with physical weapons, just as it cannot be entered by physical entities.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. So once again they are impervious to our attacks? Free from confrontation?
Aenea. No, neither impervious nor free from confrontation. If the fates allow, I will personally carry the attack to the physical Core. Indeed, that attack has already begun in ways that I hope to make clear later. And I promise you that I will confront the AI’s in their lair.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. M. Aenea, Brawne’s child, may I ask another question relating to my own fate and future?
Aenea. I will endeavor to answer, Colonel, while repeating my reluctance to discuss specifics of a topic as fluid as our future.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. Reluctant or no, child, I believe I deserve an answer to this question. I, too, have read these damned Cantos. In them, it says that I followed the apparition Moneta into the future while fighting the Shrike… trying to prevent it from slaughtering the other pilgrims. This was true… some months ago I arrived here. Moneta disappeared, but has reappeared in the younger version of this woman who calls herself Rachel Weintraub. But the Cantos also state that I will soon join in terrible battle with legions of Shrikes, will die, and will be entombed in the newly built Time Tomb called the Crystal Monolith on Hyperion, where my body travels back in time with Moneta as my companion. How can this be, M. Aenea? Have I come to the wrong time? The wrong place?
Aenea. Colonel Kassad, friend and protector of my mother and the other pilgrims, be assured that all proceeds according to whatever plan there is. Uncle Martin wrote the Cantos given what revelation there was granted to him. Not all details of your life… or mine… were available to him. Indeed, he was told precious little of what was to transpire outside of his presence. I can say this to you, Colonel Kassad… the battle with the Shrike is true, however metaphorically rendered. One possible future is for you to die in battle with the Shrike… with many Shrike-like warriors… and to be placed in the Crystal Monolith after a hero’s funeral. But if this were to come to pass, it would be after many years and many other battles. There is work for you to do in the days, months, years, and decades yet to come. I ask you now to accompany me on the Yggdrasill when I depart in three days… that will be the first step toward these battles.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad (smiling). But you deflect the question somewhat, M. Aenea. May I ask you… will the Shrike be on your Tree of Pain when it leaves in three standard days’ time?
Aenea. I believe it will, Colonel Kassad.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. You have not told us here tonight, M. Aenea, what the Shrike is… where it truly comes from… what its role in this centuries-old and centuries-to-come game is.
Aenea. That is correct, Colonel. I have not told anyone here tonight.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. Have you ever told anyone, child?
Aenea. No.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. But you know the origin of the Shrike.
Aenea. Yes.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. Will you tell us, Brawne Lamia’s child?
Aenea. I would prefer not to, Colonel.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. But you will if asked again, will you not? At least you will answer my direct questions on the matter?
Aenea (nods silently… I see tears in her eyes).
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. The Shrike first appears in that same far future in which I do battle with it as per the Cantos, is this not correct, M. Aenea? That future in which the Core is making its last-ditch stand against its enemies?
Aenea. Yes.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. And the Shrike is… will be… a construct, is it not? A created thing. A Core-created thing.
Aenea. This is accurate.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. It will be a strange amalgam of Core technological wizardry, Void Which Binds energy, and the cybrid-recycled personality of a real human being, won’t it, M. Aenea?
Aenea. Yes, Colonel. It will be all those things and more.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. And the Shrike will be created by the Core but will become a servant and Avatar of other… powers… entities, will it not?
Aenea. Yes.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. In truth, Aenea, would you agree that the Shrike will be a pawn of both sides… of all sides… in this war for the soul of humankind… this war that leaps back and forth across time like a four-dimensional chess game?
Aenea. Yes, Colonel… although not a pawn. A knight, perhaps.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. All right, a knight. And this cybrid, Void Which Binds—connected, ARN-ied, DNA-engineered, nanotech-enhanced, terribly mutated knight… it starts with the personality of a single warrior, does it not? Perhaps an opponent in this thousand-year game?
Aenea. Do you need to know this, Colonel? There is no greater hell than seeing the precise details of one’s…
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad (softly). Of one’s future? Of one’s own death? Of one’s fate? I know that, Aenea, daughter of my friend Brawne Lamia. I know that you have carried such terrible certitudes and visions with you since before you were born… since the days when your mother and I crossed the seas and mountains of Hyperion toward what we thought was our fate with the Shrike. I know that it has been very difficult for you, Aenea, my young friend… harder than any of us here could imagine. None of us could have borne up under such a burden. But still I want to know this part of my own fate. And I believe that my years of service in the cause of this battle… years past and years yet to be given… have earned me the right to an answer. Is the Shrike based on a single human warrior’s personality?
Aenea. Yes.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. Mine? After my death in battle, the Core elements… or some power… will incorporate my will, my soul, my persona into t… monster… and send it back in time through the Crystal Monolith?
Aenea. Yes, Colonel. Parts of your persona… but only parts of it… will be incorporated into the living construct called the Shrike.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad (laughing). But I can also live to beat it in battle?
Aenea. Yes.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad (laughing harder now, the laughter sounding sincere and unforced). By God… by the will of Allah… if the universe has any soul, it is the soul of irony. I kill mine enemy, I eat his heart, and the enemy becomes me… and I become him.
(There are several more minutes of silence. I see that the treeship Yggdrasill has turned around and that we are approaching the great curve of the Biosphere Startree again.)
Rachel Weintraub. Friend Aenea, Beloved Teacher, in the years I have listened to you teach and learned from you, one great mystery has haunted me.
Aenea. What is that, Rachel?
Rachel Weintraub. Through the Void Which Binds, you have heard the voices of the Others… the sentient races beyond our space and time whose memories and personalities resonate in the Void medium. Through communion with your blood, some of us have learned to hear the whispers of the echoes of those voices… of the Lions and Tigers and Bears, as some call them.
Aenea. You are one of my best students, Rachel. You will someday hear these voices clearly. Just as you will learn to hear the music of the spheres and to take that first step.
Rachel Weintraub (shaking her head). That is not my question, friend Aenea. The mystery to me has been the presence in human space of an Observer or Observers sent by those… Others… those Lions and Tigers and Bears… to study humankind and report back to these distant races. Is the presence of this Observer… or these Observers… a literal fact?
Aenea. It is.
Rachael Weintraub. And they were able to take on the form of human or Ouster or Templar?
Aenea. The Observer or Observers are not shapeshifters, Rachel. They chose to come among us in some sort of mortal form, that is true… much as my father was mortal but cybrid born.
Rachael Weintraub. And this Observer or these Observers have been watching us for centuries?
>
Aenea. Yes.
Rachael Weintraub. Is that Observer… or one of these Observers… with us here today, on this treeship, or at this table?
Aenea (hesitates). Rachel, it is best that I say nothing more at this time. There are those who would kill such an Observer in an instant to protect the Pax or to defend what they think it means to be “human.” Even saying that such an Observer exists puts that entity at great risk. I am sorry… I promise you that this… this mystery… will be solved in the not-too-distant future and the Observer or Observers’ identity revealed. Not by me, but by the Observer or Observers themselves.
Templar True Voice Of The Startree Ket Rosteen. Brothers in the Muir, respected Ouster allies, honored human guests, beloved sentient friends, Revered One Who Teaches… we shall finish this discussion at another time and in another place. I take it as a consensus of those among us that M. Aenea’s request for the treeship Yggdrasill to depart for Pax space in three standard days is agreed to… and that, with luck and courage, thus shall be fulfilled the ancient Templar prophecies of the Tree of Pain and the time of Atonement for all children of Old Earth. Now we will finish our meal and speak of other things. This formal meeting is adjourned, and what remains of our short voyage must be friendly conversation, good food, and the sacrament of real coffee grown from beans harvested on Old Earth… our common home… the good Earth.
This meeting is adjourned. I have spoken.
Later that evening, in the warm light of our private cubby, Aenea and I made love, spoke of personal things, and had a late, second supper of wine and zygoat cheese and fresh bread. Aenea had gone off to the kitchen cubby for a moment and returned with two cystal bulbs of wine. Offering me one, she said, “Here, Raul, my beloved… take this and drink.”
“Thanks,” I said without thinking and started to raise the bulb to my lips. Then I froze.
“Is this… did you…”
“Yes,” said Aenea. “It is the communion that I have delayed so long for you. Now it is yours if you choose to drink. But you do not have to do this, my love. It will not change the way I feel about you if you choose not to.”
Still looking into her eyes, I drained the wine in the bulb. It tasted only of wine.
Aenea was weeping. She turned her head away, but I had already seen the tears in her lovely, dark eyes. I swept her up in my arms and we floated together in the warm womb light.
“Kiddo?” I whispered. “What’s wrong?” My heart ached as I wondered if she was thinking of the other man in her past, her marriage, the child… The wine had made me dizzy and a bit sick. Or perhaps it was not the wine.
She shook her head. “I love you, Raul.”
“I love you, Aenea.”
She kissed my neck and clung to me. “For what you have just done, for me, in my name, you will be hunted and persecuted…”
I forced a chuckle. “Hey, kiddo, I’ve been hunted and persecuted since the day we rode the hawking mat out of the Valley of the Time Tombs together. Nothing new there. I’d miss it if the Pax quit chasing us.”
She did not smile. I felt her tears against my throat and chest as she clung more tightly. “You will be the first among all those who follow me, Raul. You will be the leader in the decades and decades of struggle to come. You will be respected and hated, obeyed and despised… they will want to make a god of you, my darling.”
“Bullshit,” I whispered into my friend’s hair. “You know I’m no leader, kiddo. I haven’t done anything except follow in all the years we’ve known each other. Hell… I spend most of my time just trying to catch up.”
Aenea raised her face to mine. “You were my Chosen One before I was born, Raul Endymion. When I fall, you will continue on for us. Both of us must live through you…”
I put my heavy finger against her lips. I kissed the tears from her cheeks and lashes. “No talking of falling or living without the other,” I commanded her. “My plan is simple… to stay with you forever… through everything… to share everything. What happens to you, happens to me, kiddo. I love you, Aenea.” We floated in the warm air together. I was cradling her in my arms.
“Yes,” whispered my friend, hugging me fiercely, “I love you, Raul. Together. Time. Yes.”
We quit talking then. I tasted wine and the salt from her tears in our kisses. We made love for more hours, then drifted off to sleep together, floating entwined in the other’s embrace like two sea creatures, like one wonderfully complex sea creature, drifting on a warm and friendly tide.
26
The next day we took the Consul’s ship out toward the sun.
I had awakened expecting to be feeling some sort of enlightenment, overnight satori from the communion wine, a deeper understanding of the universe at the very least, omniscience and omnipotence at best. Instead, I awoke with a full bladder, a slight headache, but pleasant memories of the night before. Aenea was awake before me and by the time I came out of the toilet cubby, she had coffee hot in the brewing bulb, fruit in its serving globe, and fresh, warm rolls ready.
“Don’t expect this service every morning,” she said with a smile.
“Okay, kiddo. Tomorrow I’ll make breakfast.”
“Omelet?” she said, handing me a coffee bulb.
I broke the seal, inhaled the aroma, and squeezed out a drop, taking care not to burn my lips or to let the globule of hot coffee get away. “Sure,” I said. “Anything you like.”
“Good luck in finding the eggs,” she said, finishing her roll in two bites. “This Startree is neat, but short on chickens.”
“Pity,” I said, looking through the transparent pod wall. “And so many places to roost.” I changed tones to serious. “Kiddo, about the wine… I mean, it’s been about eight standard hours and…”
“You don’t feel any different,” said Aenea. “Hmm, I guess you’re one of those rare individuals on which the magic doesn’t work.”
“Really?” My voice must have sounded alarmed, or relieved, or both, because Aenea shook her head.
“Uh-uh, just kidding. About twenty-four standard hours. You’ll feel something. I guarantee it.”
“What if we’re… ah… busy when the time comes?” I said, wiggling my eyebrows for emphasis. The motion made me float free a bit from the sticktite table.
Aenea sighed. “Down, boy, before I staple those eyebrows in place.”
“Mmm,” I said, grinning at her over the coffee bulb. “I love it when you talk dirty.”
“Hurry,” said Aenea, setting her bulb in the sonic washer bin and recycling the eating mat. I was content to munch my roll and look at the incredible view through the wall.
“Hurry? Why? Are we going somewhere?”
“Meeting on the ship,” said Aenea. “Our ship. Then we have to get back and see to the last provisioning of the Yggdrasill for departure tomorrow evening.”
“Why on our ship?” I said. “Won’t it just be crowded compared to all these other places?”
“You’ll see,” said Aenea. She had slipped into soft blue zero-g trousers, pulled tight at the ankle, with a tucked-in white shirt with several sticktite-sealing pockets. She wore gray slippers. I had gotten used to going barefoot around the cubby and in the various stems and pods.
“Hurry,” she said again. “Ship’s leaving in ten minutes and it’s a long vine ride to the docking pod.”
It was crowded. And although the internal containment field held the gravity to one-sixth-g, it felt like a Jovian pull after sleeping in freefall. It seemed strange to be crowded in on one dimensional plane with everyone, letting all that airspace overhead go to waste. On the library deck of the Consul’s ship with us, seated at the piano, on benches, in overstuffed chairs, and along holopit ledges, were the Ousters Navson Hamnim, Systenj Coredwell, Sian Quintana Ka’an resplendent in her feathers, the two silver, vacuum-adapted Ousters Palou Koror and Drivenj Nicaagat, as well as Paul Uray, and Am Chipeta. Het Masteen was there, as was his superior, Ket Rosteen. Colonel Kassad was present—as tall as
the towering Ousters—and so were the Dorje Phamo, looking ancient and regal in an ice-gray gown that billowed beautifully in the low gravity, as well as Lhomo, Rachel, Theo, A. Bettik, and the Dalai Lama.
None of the other sentient beings were there.
Several of us stepped out on the balcony to watch the inner surface of the Startree fall behind as the ship climbed toward the central star on its pillar of blue fusion flame.
“Welcome back, Colonel Kassad,” the ship said as we gathered on the library level.
I raised an eyebrow at Aenea, surprised that the ship had managed to remember his passenger from the old days.
“Thank you, Ship,” said the Colonel. The tall, dark man seemed distracted to the point of brooding.
Climbing away from the inner shell of the Biosphere Startree gave me a sense of vertigo quite distinct from watching the sphere of a planet grow smaller and fall behind. Here we were inside the orbital structure, and while the view from within the branches of the Startree had been one of open gaps between the leaves and trunks, glimpses of starfields on the side opposite the sun and everywhere great spaces, the view from a hundred thousand klicks and climbing was of a seemingly solid surface, the huge leaves reduced to a shimmering surface—looking for all the world like a great green, concave ocean—and the sense of being in some huge bowl and unable to escape was almost overwhelming.
The branches were glowing blue from the trapped atmosphere within the containment fields there, giving thousands of klicks of vinous wood and flickering leaves a sort of blue, electric glow, as if the entire inner surface were charged with voltage. And everywhere was life and motion: Ouster angels with hundred-klick wings not only flitted among the branches and beyond the leaves, but were hurled deeper into space—inward toward the sun, more quickly outward past the ten-thousand-klick root systems; a myriad of smaller life-forms shimmered in the blue envelope of atmosphere—radiant gossamers, faery chains, parrots, blue arboreals, Old Earth monkeys, vast schools of tropical fish swimming along in zero-g, seeking out the comet-misted regions, blue herons, flights of geese and Martian brandy fowl, Old Earth porpoises—we passed out of range before I could categorize a fraction of what I was seeing.