The Rise of Endymion

by Dan Simmons

  Aenea takes a breath. She flexes her fingers as if her hands are cramping. When she looks around the room, her gaze touches each of us.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m wandering. Suffice it to say, that with the Fall of the Farcasters, the other races using the Void decided to stop the vandalism of the fatline. These other races had long since sent observers to live among us …”

  There is a sudden whispering and murmuring in the room. Aenea smiles and waits for it to subside.

  “I know,” she says. “The idea surprised me, as well, even though I knew this before I was born. These observers have an important function … to decide if humanity can be trusted to join them in the Void Which Binds medium, or if we are only vandals. It was one of these observers among us who recommended that Old Earth be transported away before the Core could destroy it. And it was one of these observers who designed the tests and simulations carried out on Old Earth during the last three centuries of its exile in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud to better explain our species to them and measure the empathy of which we are capable.

  “These other races also sent their observers—spies, if you will—to dwell among the elements of the Core. They knew that it had been the Core tampering which had damaged the boundaries of the Void, but they also know that we created the Core. Many of the … residents is not quite the right word—collaborators? cocreators?—on the Void Which Binds are ex-silicon constructs, nonorganic autonomous intelligences in their own right. But not of the variety which rules the TechnoCore today. No sentient race can appreciate the Void medium without having evolved empathy.”

  Aenea raises her knees a bit and sets her elbows on them, leaning forward now as she speaks.

  “My father—the John Keats cybrid—was created for this reason,” she says, and although her voice is level, I can hear the subtext of emotion there. “As I have explained before, the Core is in a constant state of civil war, with almost every entity there fighting for itself and for no one else. It is a case of hyper-hyper-hyperparasitism to the tenth degree. Their prey—other Core elements—are not so much killed as absorbed, their coded genetic materials, memories, softwares, and reproductive sequences cannibalized. The cannibalized Core element still ‘lives’ but as a subcomponent of the victorious element or elements, which soon enough turn on one another for parts. Alliances are temporary. There are no philosophies, creeds, or ultimate goals—only contingency arrangements to optimize survival strategies. Every action in the Core is a result of the zero-sum game that has been playing there since the Core elements evolved into sentience. Most elements of the Core are capable of dealing with humankind in only those zero-sum terms … optimizing their parasite strategy in relation to us. Their gain, our loss. Our gain, their loss.

  “Over the centuries, however, some of these Core elements have come to understand the true potential of the Void Which Binds. They understand that their empathy-free species of intelligence can never be part of that amalgam of living and past races. They have come to understand that the Void Which Binds was not so much constructed as evolved, like a coral reef, and that they will never find shelter there unless they change some of the parameters of their own existence.

  “Thus evolved some members of the Core—not altruists, but desperate survivalists who realized that the only way ultimately to win their never-ending zero-sum game was to stop the game. And to stop the game they needed to evolve into a species capable of empathy.

  “The Core knows what Teilhard de Chardin and other sentimentalists refused to acknowledge: that evolution is not progress, that there is no ‘goal’ or direction to evolution. Evolution is change. Evolution ‘succeeds’ if that change best adapts some leaf or branch of its tree of life to conditions of the universe. For that evolution to ‘succeed’ for these elements of the Core, they would have to abandon zero-sum parasitism and discover true symbiosis. They would have to enter into honest co-evolution with our human race.

  “First the renegade Core elements continued cannibalizing to evolve more empathy-prone Core elements. They rewrote their own code as far as they were able. Then they created the John Keats cybrid—a full attempt at simulating an empathie organism with the body and DNA of a human being, and the Core-stored memories and personality of a cybrid. Opposing elements destroyed the first Keats cybrid. The second one was created in the first’s image. It hired my mother—a private detective—to help him unravel the mystery of the first cybrid’s death.”

  Aenea is smiling and for a moment she seems oblivious of us or even of her own storytelling. She seems to be reliving old memories. I remember then what she once casually mentioned during our trip from Hyperion in the Consul’s old ship—“Raul, I had my mother’s and father’s memories poured into me before I was born … before I’d become a real fetus even. Can you imagine anything more destructive to a child’s personality than to be inundated with someone else’s lives even before you’ve begun your own? No wonder I’m a screwed-up mess.”

  She does not look or act like a screwed-up mess to me at this moment. But then I love her more than life.

  “He hired my mother to solve the mystery of his own persona’s death,” she continues softly, “but in truth he knew what had happened to his former self. His real reason for hiring my mother was to meet my mother, to be with my mother, to become my mother’s lover.” Aenea stops for a moment and smiles, her eyes seeing distant things. “My Uncle Martin never got that part right in his muddled-up Cantos. My parents were married and I don’t think Uncle Martin ever told of that … married by the Bishop at the Shrike Temple on Lusus. It was a cult, but a legal one, and my parents’ marriage would have been legal on two hundred worlds of the Hegemony.” She smiles again, looking across the crowded room directly at me. “I can be a bastard, you know, but I wasn’t born one.

  “So they were married, I was conceived—probably before that ceremony—and then Core-backed elements murdered my father before my mother could begin the Shrike pilgrimage to Hyperion. And that should have been the end of any contact between my father and me except for two things—his Core persona was captured in a Schrön Loop implanted behind my mother’s ear. For some months she was pregnant with two of us—me in her womb and my father, the second John Keats persona, in the Schrön Loop. His persona could not communicate directly to my mother while imprisoned in its endless-cycle Schrön Loop, but it communicated with me easily enough. The hard part was defining what ‘me’ was at that point. My father helped by entering the Void Which Binds and taking the fetal ‘me’ with him. I saw what was to be—who I would be—even how I would die—before my fingers were fully formed.

  “And there was one other detail which Uncle Martin left out of his Cantos. On the day that they had gunned down my father on the steps of the Shrike Temple in the Lusian Concourse Mall, my mother was covered with his blood—the reconstructed, Core-augmented DNA of John Keats. What she did not fully understand at the time was that his blood was literally the most precious resource in the human universe at that moment. His DNA had been designed to infect others with his single gift—access to the Void. Mixed with fully human DNA in the right way, it would offer the gift of blood that would open the portal to the Void Which Binds to the entire human race.

  “I am that mix. I bring the genetic ability to access the Void from the TechnoCore and the too-seldom-used human ability to perceive the universe through empathy. For better or worse, those who drink of my blood shall never see the world or the universe the same again.”

  So saying, Aenea rises to her knees on the tatami mat. Theo brings a white linen cloth. Rachel pours red wine from a vase into seven large goblets. Aenea takes a small packet from her sweater—I recognize it as a ship’s medkit—and removes a sterile lancet and an antiseptic swab. She pauses before using the lancet and sweeps her gaze across the crowd. There is no sound—it is as if the more than hundred people there are holding their breath.

  “There is no guarantee of happiness, wisdom, or long life if you drin
k of me this evening,” she says, very softly. “There is no nirvana. There is no salvation. There is no afterlife. There is no rebirth. There is only immense knowledge—of the heart as well as the mind—and the potential for great discoveries, great adventures, and a guarantee of more of the pain and terror that make up so much of our short lives.”

  She looks from face to face, smiling as she meets the gaze of the eight-year-old Dalai Lama. “Some of you,” she says, “have attended all of our discussion sessions over the past standard year. I have told you what I know about learning the language of the dead, learning the language of the living, learning to hear the music of the spheres, and learning how to take a first step.”

  She looks at me. “Some of you have heard only some of these discussions. You were not here when I discussed the real function of the Church’s cruciform or the real identity of the Shrike. You have not heard the details of learning the language of the dead or the other burdens of entering the Void Which Binds. For those of you with doubts or hesitation, I urge you to wait. For the rest of you, I say again—I am not a messiah … but I am a teacher. If what I have taught you these months sounds like truth, and if you wish to take this chance, drink of me this night. Be warned, that the DNA which allows us to perceive the medium of the Void Which Binds cannot coexist with the cruciform. That parasite will wither and die within twenty-four hours of the time you drink of my blood. It will never grow within you again. If you seek resurrection through the cruciform cross, do not drink the blood of my body in this wine.

  “And be warned that you will become, like me, the despised and sought-out enemy of the Pax. Your blood will be contagious. Those with whom you share it—those who choose to find the Void Which Binds via your shared DNA—will become despised in turn.

  “And finally, be warned that, once having drunk this wine, your children will be born with the ability to enter the Void Which Binds. For better or worse, your children and their children will be born knowing the language of the dead, the language of the living, hearing the music of the spheres, and knowing that they can take a first step across the Void Which Binds.”

  Aenea touches her finger with the razor edge of the lancet. A tiny drop of blood is visible in the lantern light. Rachel holds a goblet up as the tiny drop of blood is squeezed into the large volume of wine. Then again with the next goblet, and so on until each of the seven cups has been … contaminated? Transubstantiated? My mind is reeling. My heart is pounding in something like alarm. This seems like some wild parody of the Catholic Church’s Holy Communion. Has my young friend, my dear lover, my beloved … has she gone insane? Does she truly believe that she is a messiah? No, she said that she is not. Do I believe that I will be transformed forever by drinking of wine that is one part per million my beloved’s blood? I do not know. I do not understand.

  About half of the people there move forward to line up and sip from one of the large goblets. Chalices? This is blasphemy. It’s not right. Or is it? One sip is all they take, then return to their places on the tatami mats. No one seems especially energized or enlightened. No horns of light shine from anyone’s forehead after they partake of the wine. No one levitates or speaks in tongues. They each take a sip and sit down.

  I realize that I have been holding back, trying to catch Aenea’s gaze. I have so many questions … Belatedly, feeling like a traitor to someone I should trust without hesitation, I move toward the back of the shortening line.

  Aenea sees me. She holds her hand up briefly, palm toward me. The meaning is clear—Not now, Raul. Not yet. I hesitate another moment, irresolute, sick at the thought of these others—these strangers—entering into an intimacy with my darling when I cannot. Then, heart pounding and face burning, I sit back on my mat.

  There is no formal end to the evening. People begin to leave in twos and threes. A couple—she drank of the wine, he did not—leave together with their arms around one another as if nothing has changed. Perhaps nothing has changed. Perhaps the communion ritual I’ve just watched is all metaphor and symbolism, or autosuggestion and self-hypnosis. Perhaps those who will themselves hard enough to perceive something called the Void Which Binds will have some internal experience that convinces them that it has happened. Perhaps it’s all bullshit.

  I rub my forehead. I have such a headache. Good thing I didn’t drink the wine, I think. Wine sometimes brings on migraines with me. I chuckle and feel ill and empty for a moment, left behind.

  Rachel says, “Don’t forget, the last stone will be set in place in the walkway tomorrow at noon. There’ll be a party on the upper meditation platform! Bring your own refreshments.”

  And thus ends the evening. I go upstairs to our shared sleeping platform with a mixture of elation, anticipation, regret, embarrassment, excitement, and a throbbing headache. I confess to myself that I didn’t understand half of Aenea’s explanation of things, but I leave with a vague sense of letdown and inappropriateness … I’m sure, for instance, that Jesus Christ’s Last Supper did not end with a shouted reminder of a BYOB party on the upper deck.

  I chuckle and then swallow the laugh. Last Supper. That has a terrible ring to it. My heart begins pounding again and my head hurts worse. Hardly the way to enter one’s lover’s bedroom.

  The chili air on the upper platform walkway clears my head a bit. The Oracle is just a sliver above towering cumulus to the east. The stars look cold tonight.

  I am just about to enter our shared room and light the lantern when suddenly the skies explode.

  21

  hey all came up from the lower levels—all of the ones who had stayed at the Temple Hanging in Air after most of the work had been finished—Aenea and A. Bettik, Rachel and Theo, George and Jigme, Kuku and Kay, Chim Din and Gyalo Thondup, I Lhomo and Labsang, Kim Byung-Soon and Viki Groselj, Kenshiro and Haruyuki, Master Abbot Kempo Ngha Wang Tashi and his master, the young Dalai Lama, Voytek Majer and Janusz Kurtyka, brooding Rimsi Kyipup and grinning Changchi Kenchung, the Dorje Phamo the Thunderbolt Sow and Carl Linga William Eiheji. Aenea came to my side and slipped her hand in mine as we watched the skies in awed silence.

  I am surprised that we were not all blinded by the light show going on up there where the stars had been a moment earlier: great blossoms of white light, strobes of sulfur yellow, blazing red streaks—far brighter than a comet or meteor’s tail—crisscrossed with blue, green, white, and yellow slashes—each as clear and straight as a diamond scratch on glass, then sudden bursts of orange that seemed to fold into themselves in silent implosions, followed by more white strobes and a resumption of red slashes. It was all silent, but the violence of light alone made us want to cover our ears and cringe in a sheltered place.

  “What in ten hells is it?” asked Lhomo Dondrub.

  “Space battle,” said Aenea. Her voice sounded terribly tired.

  “I do not understand,” said the Dalai Lama. He did not sound afraid, merely curious. “The Pax authorities assured us that they would have only one of their starships in orbit—the Jibril, I believe is its name—and that it was on a diplomatic mission rather than a military one. Regent Reting Tokra also assured me of this.”

  The Thunderbolt Sow made a rude noise. “Your Holiness, the Regent is in the pay of the Pax bastards.”

  The boy looked at her.

  “I believe it to be true, Your Holiness,” said Eiheji, his bodyguard. “I have heard things in the palace.”

  The sky had faded almost to black but now it exploded again in a score of places. The rocky cliff face behind us bled reflections of red, green, and yellow.

  “How can we see their laser lances if there is no dust or other colloidal particles to highlight them?” asked the Dalai Lama, his dark eyes bright. Evidently the news of his Regent’s betrayal was not surprising to him … or at least not as interesting as the battle going on thousands of kilometers above us. I was interested to see that the supreme holy person of the Buddhist world had been tutored in basic science.

  Again, it was his bodyguard who
answered. “Some ships must have been hit and destroyed already, Your Holiness,” said Eiheji. “The coherent beams and CPBs would become visible in the expanding fields of debris, frozen oxygen, molecular dust, and other gases.”

  This caused a moment of silence in our group.

  “My father watched this once, on Hyperion,” whispered Rachel. She rubbed her bare arms as if there had been a sudden chill.

  I blinked and looked at the young woman. I had not missed Aenea’s comment about her friend’s father, Sol … I knew my Cantos well enough to identify Rachel as the infant on the legendary Hyperion pilgrimage, daughter of Sol Weintraub … but I admit that I had not completely believed it. The infant Rachel had become the almost mythical woman, Moneta, in the Cantos—someone who had traveled back in time in the Time Tombs with the Shrike. How could that Rachel be here, now?

  Aenea put her arm around Rachel’s shoulders. “My mother as well,” she said softly. “Only then it was thought to be the Hegemony forces against the Ousters.”

  “Who is this, then?” demanded the Dalai Lama. “The Ousters against the Pax? And why have the Pax warships come unbidden to our system?”

  Several white spheres of light pulsed, grew, dimmed, and died. We all blinked away the retinal echoes.