Ilium

by Dan Simmons

  “Yes,” said Harman, smiling slightly. “My lips do move when I read. I didn’t know there was any other way to do it. And it took me more than four Twenties to reach that level of proficiency.” To Ada, it appeared as if the ninety-nine-year-old knew he was being insulted, but did not care, showing only interest in what Savi would say next.

  Ada cleared her throat. “What was that animal you . . . killed . . . today?” she asked Odysseus, her voice bright and brittle. “Not the Terror Birds, the other one?”

  “I just think of it as the floppy-nosed grazer,” said Odysseus. “Want to try some?” He reached back to the counter and lifted the platter of fire-darkened meat, holding it in front of Ada.

  Wanting to be polite, Ada took the smallest cut on the platter, handling it gingerly with utensils.

  “I’ll also take some,” said Harman. The platter went around. Hannah and Daeman scowled at the meat, sniffed it, smiled politely, but didn’t take any. When the platter came to Savi, she passed it on to Odysseus without a word.

  Ada nibbled the smallest bit she could slice. It was delicious—like steak, only stronger and richer. The wood smoke gave it a flavor different than any microwaved thing she had ever tasted. She cut a larger piece.

  Odysseus was eating with just a short, sharp knife he had brought to the table with him, slicing thin strips and chewing them from the end of the knife. Ada tried not to stare.

  “Macrauchenia,” said Savi between forkfuls of her salad and microwaved rice.

  Ada looked up, wondering if this was more of the woman’s strange language ritual.

  “Pardon me?” said Daeman.

  “Macrauchenia. That’s the name of the animal that our Greek friend killed and our two other friends are eating like there’s no second course. They covered these South American plains a couple of million years ago but went extinct before humankind showed up in South America. They were brought back by the ARNists during the crazy years after the rubicon, before the post-humans put a stop to reintroducing extinct species helter skelter. Once they had the Macrauchenia back, though, some ARNist thought it would be clever to bring back Phorusrhacos.”

  “For-us-what?” said Daeman.

  “Phorusrhacos. The Terror Birds. The ARNist geniuses forgot that those birds were the primary predator in South America for millions of years. At least until the Smilodonts wandered down from North America when the water level fell and the land bridge between the continents emerged. Did you know that the Panamanian Isthmus is underwater again? The continents separate again?” She looked around, obviously intoxicated, belligerent, and secure in the knowledge that none of them had any idea what she was talking about.

  Harman sipped his wine. “Do we want to know what a Smilodont is?”

  Savi shrugged. “Just a big fucking cat with big fucking sabertooth teeth. They’d eat Terror Birds for lunch and pick their sabers with the leftover claws. The idiot ARNists did bring sabertooths back, but not here. India. Anyone here know where that is . . . was? Should be? The post-humans ripped it free of Asia and broke it into a goddamned archipelago.”

  The five looked at her.

  “Thank you for reminding me,” said Odysseus with his stilted accent, and stood and went to the counter. “Next course, Terror Bird.” He carried the big platter back to the table. “I’ve been waiting to taste this delicacy for quite a while, but never had the time to hunt one until today. Who will join me?”

  Everyone but Daeman and Savi volunteered to try a slice. They all poured more wine for themselves. Outside, the thunderstorm had arrived with a vengeance and flashes of lightning streaked around the bridge structure, illuminating the saddle and ruins far below as well as the clouds and jagged peaks on either side.

  Ada, Harman, and Hannah each tried a bite of the pale meat and then drank copious water and wine. Odysseus bit off slice after slice from the point of his knife.

  “It reminds me of . . . chicken,” Ada said into the silence.

  “Yes,” said Hannah, “definitely chicken.”

  “Chicken with a strange, strong, bitter taste,” said Harman.

  “Vulture,” said Odysseus. “It reminds me of vulture.” He took another large bite, swallowed, and grinned. “If I cook Terror Bird again, I’ll use lots of sauce.”

  Five of them ate their microwaved rice in silence while Odysseus enjoyed more helpings of his Terror Bird and Macrauchenia, washed down with huge draughts of wine. The conversational silence might have been uncomfortable if it had not been for the storm. The wind had come up, lightning was almost continuous—illuminating the softly lit dining bubble in blasts of white light—and the thunder would have drowned out most conversation anyway. The green dining bubble seemed to sway ever so slightly when the wind howled and the four guests glanced at each other with barely concealed anxiety.

  “It’s all right,” said Savi, no longer sounding angry or all that intoxicated, as if her earlier harsh words had vented some of the pressure from her bitterness. “The pariglas does not conduct electricity and we’re firmly attached—as long as the bridge stands, we won’t fall.” Savi sipped the last of her wine and smiled without humor. “Of course, the bridge is older than God’s teeth, so I can’t guarantee it will remain standing.”

  When the worst of the storm passed and Savi was offering coffee and chai heated in odd-looking glass containers, Hannah said, “You promised to tell us how you got here, Odysseus Uhr.”

  “You want me to sing to you of all my twists and turns, driven time and again off course, in the days since my comrades and I plundered the hallowed heights of Pergamus?” he replied, voice soft.

  “Yes,” said Hannah.

  “I shall,” said Odysseus. “But first, I think, Savi Uhr has some business to discuss with all of you.”

  They looked at the old woman and waited.

  “I need your help,” said Savi. “For centuries I’ve avoided exposure to your world—-to the voynix and the other watchers who wish me ill—but Odysseus is here for a reason, and his ends serve my own. I ask if you would take him back—to one of your homes, where others can visit him—and allow him to meet and speak with your friends.”

  Ada, Harman, Daeman, and Hannah exchanged glances.

  “Why doesn’t he just fax wherever he wants?” asked Daeman.

  Savi shook her head. “Odysseus can no more fax than I can.”

  “That’s silly,” said Daeman. “Anyone can fax.”

  Savi sighed and poured the last of the wine into her glass. “Boy,” she said, “do you know what faxing is?”

  Daeman laughed. “Of course. It’s how you go from where you are to where you want to be.”

  “But how does it work?” asked Savi.

  Daeman shook his head at the old woman’s obtuseness. “What do you mean, ‘How does it work?’ It just works. Like servitors or running water. You use a fax portal to go from one place to another, one faxnode to the next.”

  Harman held up his hand. “I think what Savi Uhr means is how does the machinery work that allows us to fax, Daeman Uhr.”

  “I wondered that myself a few times,” said Hannah. “I understand how to build a furnace hearth than can melt metal. But how does one build a fax portal that sends us from here to there without having to . . . go in between?”

  Savi laughed. “It doesn’t, gentle children. Your fax portals don’t send you anywhere. They destroy you. Rip you atom from atom. They don’t even send the atoms anywhere, just store them until they’re needed by the next person faxing in. You don’t go anywhere when you’re faxed. You just die and allow another you to be built somewhere else.”

  Odysseus drank his wine and watched the receding storm, apparently not interested in Savi’s explanations. The other four stared at her.

  “Why,” said Ada, “that’s . . . that’s . . .”

  “Insane,” said Daeman.

  Savi smiled. “Yes.”

  Harman cleared his throat and set down his coffee cup. “If we are destroyed every time we fa
x, Savi Uhr, how is it that we remember everything when we . . . arrive . . . somewhere else?” He held up his right arm. “And this small scar. I received it seven years ago, when I was ninety-two. Normally, these little problems are cleared up when we go the firmary every Twenty, but . . .” He stopped as if seeing the answer himself.

  “Yes,” said Savi. “The machine-minds behind the faxportals remember your little imperfections, just as they do your memories and personality’s cell structure, sending the information—not you, but the information—from faxnode to faxnode, updating you and fixing your aging cells every twenty years—what you call your firmary visits—but why do you think you disappear on your hundredth birthday, Harman Uhr. Why do they quit renewing you when you reach a hundred? And where will you go on your next birthday?”

  Harman said nothing but Daeman said, “To the rings, you foolish woman. On the Fifth Twenty, we all ascend to the rings.”

  “To become post-humans,” said Savi, barely avoiding a sneer. “To ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of . . . someone.”

  “Yes,” said Hannah, but she made it sound like a question.

  “No,” said Savi. “I don’t know what happens to the memory patterns the logosphere keeps of you until you turn one hundred, but I know they don’t send the data to the rings. It may be stored, but I suspect it’s just destroyed. Scrambled.”

  For the second time this long day, Ada felt as if she might faint. Still, she was the first to find her voice. “Why can’t you and Odysseus Uhr use the faxnodes, Savi Uhr? Or do you just choose not to?” Choose not to be destroyed, to have the atoms of your body ripped apart like the bodies of the grazer and Terror Bird we were eating tonight. Ada dipped her fingers in her water glass and touched her fingertips to her cheek.

  “Odysseus can’t fax because the logosphere has no record of him,” Savi said softly. “His first attempt to fax would be his last.”

  “Logosphere?” repeated Harman.

  Savi shook her head again. “That’s a complicated topic. Too complicated for an old woman who’s had too much to drink today.”

  “But you will explain it soon?” pressed Harman.

  “I’ll show you all tomorrow,” said Savi. “Before we go our different ways again.”

  Ada caught Harman’s eye. He could barely contain his excitement.

  “But this logosphere . . . whatever it is,” said Hannah, “has a record of you? For the faxnodes? So you could fax?”

  Savi showed her unhappy smile. “Oh, yes. It remembers me from more than fourteen hundred years ago and when I faxed every day of my life. The logosphere is waiting for me like some invisible Terror Bird . . . it would recognize me instantly if I were to try one of your regular fax portals. But that would be my last attempt as well.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Hannah.

  “Let’s put all this technical double-talk aside for a while,” said Savi. “Accept that neither Odysseus here, nor I, can use your precious fax portals. And if I visited your wonderful society by flying there, it would be my life.”

  “Why?” asked Harman. “There’s no violence in our world. Other than the turin drama. And none of us believe that is real.” He looked pointedly at Odysseus, but the gray-haired man did not respond in any way.

  Savi sipped her wine. “Just believe me when I say that to show myself openly would be death. Also believe me that it is imperative that Odysseus be allowed to meet people, to speak to them, to be heard. If I were to fly you back, would one of you host him at your home for a few weeks? A month?”

  “Three weeks,” interrupted Odysseus, sounding brusque, as if hearing himself spoken about as if he weren’t there had irritated him. “No more.”

  “All right,” said Savi. “Three weeks. Will any of you offer three weeks of hospitality to this stranger in a strange land?”

  “Wouldn’t Odysseus be in danger in the same way you are?” asked Daeman.

  “Odysseus Uhr can take care of himself,” said Savi.

  The four were silent a minute, trying to understand the request and the circumstances of the request. Finally Harman said, “I’d like to host Odysseus, but I also want to visit this place you said might have spacecraft, Savi Uhr. My goal is to get to the rings. And as you pointed out, I’m approaching my final Twenty—I don’t have any time to waste. I’d rather spend the time finding this drained sea where you say the post-humans kept something that can fly to the e- and p-rings. Perhaps if you showed me how to pilot your sonie . . .”

  Savi rubbed her brow as if her head hurt. “The Mediterranean Basin? You can’t fly there, Harman Uhr.”

  “You mean it’s forbidden?”

  “No,” said Savi. “I mean you can’t fly there. The sonies and other flying machines won’t work over the Basin.” She paused and looked around the table. “But it’s possible to hike or drive into the Basin. I’ve tried and failed to go there over centuries, but I can lead you there. If one of your friends agrees to host Odysseus for three weeks.”

  “I want to go with you and Harman,” said Ada.

  “So do I,” said Daeman. “I want to see this Whatchamacallit Basin.”

  Harman looked at the younger man in surprise.

  “To hell with it,” said Daeman. “I’m no coward. I’ll wager that I’m the only one here who’s been eaten by an allosaurus.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Odysseus, and drained the last of his wine.

  Savi looked at Hannah. “That leaves you, my dear.”

  “I’d be happy to host Odysseus,” said the young woman. “But I don’t fax that much or go to parties. I live with my mother and she doesn’t host groups that often either.”

  “No, that won’t work, I’m afraid,” said Savi. “Odysseus only has three weeks and we need to start with a place that is well known and where many can stay for weeks on end. Actually, Ardis Hall would have been perfect.” She looked at Ada.

  “How do you know about Ardis Hall, Savi Uhr?” asked Ada. “For that matter, how do you know about Harman’s reading or anything about the world, if you cannot walk among us or use the faxnodes?”

  “I do watch,” said the older woman. “I watch and wait and sometimes fly to places where I can mingle with you.”

  “The Burning Man,” said Hannah.

  “Yes, among other places,” said Savi. She looked around the table and said, “You all look exhausted. Why don’t I show you to your rooms so you can get a good night’s sleep? We’ll continue the conversation in the morning. Just leave the dishes, I’ll clear them and wash them later.”

  The idea of picking up or washing dishes had never occurred to the guests. Once again, Ada looked around and felt the absence of servitors and voynix.

  Ada wanted to protest this enforced bedtime—they’d not yet heard Odysseus tell his tale—but she looked at her friends—Hannah hollow-eyed with fatigue, Daeman drunk and barely able to keep his head up, Harman’s face showing his age—and felt the exhaustion working at her as well. It had been one hell of a day. It was time to sleep.

  Odysseus stayed at the table as Savi led the other four from the dining room, down hallways lighted only by the diminishing lightning, up a glass-covered escalator that wound around the Golden Gate tower, and down a long corridor to a series of bubble-rooms at the highest point on the north tower. These sleeping rooms were not physically attached to the tower top, only to the glass corridor that had bridge steel as its south wall, and the sleeping cubbies themselves protruded precariously into space, like clusters of green grapes.

  Savi was offering them all separate sleep-bubbles, and gestured Hannah into the first room along the corridor. The young woman hesitated at the entrance to the small space. Inside the sleeping cubbie, even the floor was transparent, so that Hannah took one step forward and then hopped quickly backward into the relative solidity of the carpeted access hall.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” said Savi.

  “All right,” said Hannah and tried again. The bed was set again
st the far wall and there was a privately partitioned toilet and sink space near the corridor wall, ensuring privacy from the viewpoint of the other sleep bubbles, but elsewhere the curving walls and floor were so clear that you could look down eight hundred feet to the lightning-illuminated stones and hillside directly below.

  Hannah walked gingerly across the clear floor and settled gratefully onto the solid shape of the bed. The other three laughed and applauded. “If I have to go to the toilet in the night, I may not have the nerve to cross that floor again,” said Hannah.

  “You’ll get used to it, Hannah Uhr,” said Savi. “You may close and open the door by voice command and it is keyed to your voice only.”

  “Door, close,” said Hannah.

  The door irised closed. Savi dropped them off one at a time in their cubbies—first Daeman, who staggered to his bed with no apparent fear of the empty space under his feet, then Harman, who wished them both good night before ordering his door closed, then Ada.

  “Sleep well, my dear,” said Savi. “The sunrises here are rather beautiful and I hope you enjoy the view in the morning. I shall see you at breakfast.”

  There were fresh silk sleeping clothes set out on her bed. Ada went into the toilet area, took a quick hot shower, dried her hair, left her clothes on the counter next to the sink, dressed in the silk sleeping gown, and returned to the bed. Once under the covers, she turned her face to the wall and looked out at the mountain peaks and cloud tops. The thunderstorm had passed on to the east now, the lightning illuminated the receding clouds from within, and now the nearby peaks and grassy saddle were illuminated by moonlight. Ada looked down at the roadway and stone ruins so far below. What had Oysseus said about that place? That it was inhabited only by jaguars, chipmunks, and ghosts? Looking at the ancient pale-gray stones in the moonlight, Ada almost believed in the ghosts.

  There came a soft tapping at her door.

  Ada slipped from the bed and tiptoed across the cold floor, setting her fingertips against the irised metal. “Who is it?”