by Dan Simmons
Ariel’s face was human enough—long, thin nose, full lips curved in a slight smile, black eyes, hair curling down to his or her shoulders in greenish-white strands—but the effect of looking right through Ariel’s transparent skin to the floating nodes of light within diminished any sense that one was looking at a human being.
“You’re Ariel,” said Harman, not quite making it a question.
The figure dipped its head in acknowledgment. “I see that Savi herself has told thee of me,” he or she said in that maddeningly soft voice.
“Yes. But I thought that you would be…intangible…like Prospero’s projection.”
“A hologram,” said Ariel. “No. Prospero assumes substance as he pleases, but rarely does it please him to do so. I, on the other hand, whilst being called a spirit or sprite for so very long by so very many, yet love to be corporeal.”
“Why do you say that this crèche will kill Odysseus?” asked Hannah. She was crouching next to the unconscious man, trying to find his pulse. Noman looked dead to Harman’s eye.
Ariel stepped closer. Harman glanced at Petyr, who was staring at the figure’s translucent skin. The younger man had lowered the bow but continued to look shocked and suspicious.
“These are crèches such as Savi used,” said Ariel, gesturing toward the eight crystal coffins. “Therein all activity of the body is suspended or slowed, it is true, like an insect in amber or a corpse on ice, but these couches heal no wounds, no. Odysseus has for centuries kept his own time-ark hidden here. Its abilities surpasseth my understanding. “
“What are you?” asked Hannah, rising. “Harman told us that Ariel was an avatar of the self-aware biosphere, but I don’t know what that means.”
“No one does,” said Ariel, making a delicate motion part bow, part curtsy. “Wilst thou follow me then to Odysseus’ ark?”
Ariel led them to the spiral staircase that helixed up through the ceiling, but rather than climbing, she laid her right palm against the floor and a hidden segment of the floor irised open, showing more spiral staircase continuing downward. The stairs were wide enough to accommodate the stretcher, but it was still hard and tricky work to carry the heavy Odysseus down the stairway. Petyr had to go ahead with Hannah to keep the unconscious man from sliding off.
Then they followed a green bubble corridor to an even smaller room, this one allowing in even less light than the crystal coffin chamber above. With a start, Harman realized that this space was not in one of the buckyglas bubbles, but had been carved out of the concrete and steel of the actual Bridge tower. Here there was only one crèche, wildly different from the crystal boxes—this machine was larger, heavier, darker, an onyx coffin with clear glass only above where the man or woman’s face would be. It was connected by a myriad of cables, hoses, conduits, and pipes to an even larger onyx machine that had no dials or readouts of any sort. There was a strong smell which reminded Harman of the air just before a serious thunderstorm.
Ariel touched a pressure plate on the side of the time-ark and the long lid hissed open. The cushions inside were frayed and faded, still impressed with the outline of a man just Noman’s size.
Harman looked at Hannah, they hesitated only a second, and then they set Odysseus-Noman’s body inside the ark.
Ariel made a motion as if to shut the lid, but Hannah quickly stepped closer, leaned into the ark, and kissed Odysseus gently on the lips. Then she stepped back and allowed Ariel to close the lid. It sealed shut with an ominous hiss.
An amber sphere immediately flicked into existence between the ark and the dark machine.
“What does that mean?” asked Hannah. “Will he live?”
Ariel shrugged—a graceful motion of slim shoulders. “Ariel is the last of all living things to know the heart of a mere machine. But this machine decides its occupants’ fates within three revolutions of our world. Come, we must depart. The air here will soon grow too thick and foul to breathe. Up into the light again, and we shall speak to one another like civil creatures.”
“I’m not leaving Odysseus,” said Hannah. “If we’ll know if he’ll live or die within seventy-two hours, then I’ll stay until we know.”
“You can’t stay,” said an indignant Petyr. “We have to hunt for the weapons and get back to Ardis as quick as we can.”
The temperature in the stuffy alcove was rising quickly. Harman felt sweat trickle down his ribs under his tunic. The thunderstorm burning smell was very strong now. Hannah took a step away from them and folded her arms across her chest. It was obvious that she intended to stay near the crèche.
“You will die here, cooling this fetid air with your sighs,” said Ariel. “But if thee wishes to monitor your beloved’s life or death, step closer here.”
Hannah stepped closer. She towered over the slightly glowing form that was Ariel.
“Give me your hand, child,” said Ariel.
Hannah warily extended her palm. Ariel took the hand, set it against his or her chest, and then pushed it into its green chest. Hannah gasped and tried to pull away, but Ariel’s strength was too much for her.
Before Harman or Petyr could move, Hannah’s hand and forearm were free again. The young woman stared in horror at a green-gold blob that remained in her fist. As the three humans watched, the organ deliquesced, seeming to flow into Hannah’s palm until it was gone.
Hannah gasped again.
“It is only a telltale,” said Ariel. “When your lover’s condition changeth, thee shall know it now.”
“How will I know it?” asked Hannah. Harman saw that the girl was pale and sweating.
“Thee shall know it,” repeated Ariel.
They followed the palely glowing figure out into the green buckyglas corridor and then up the stairs again.
No one spoke as they followed Ariel through corridors and up frozen escalators and then along a helix of globules attached to the underside of the great suspension cable. They stopped in a glass room attached to the concrete and steel cross-support high on the south tower. Just beyond the glass, voynix on this horizontal segment of the Bridge silently threw themselves at the green wall, clawing and scrabbling but finding neither entry nor purchase. Ariel paid them no heed as he or she led them to the largest room along this string of globules. There were tables and chairs here, and machines set into countertops.
“I remember this place,” said Harman. “We ate dinner here our one night at the Bridge. Odysseus cooked his Terror Bird right outside there on the Bridge…during a lightning storm. Do you remember, Hannah?”
Hannah nodded, but her gaze was distracted. She was chewing her lower lip.
“I thought all of you might wish to eat,” said Ariel.
“We don’t have time…” began Harman, but Petyr interrupted.
“We’re hungry,” he said. “We’ll take time to eat.”
Ariel waved them to the round table. She or he used a microwave to heat three bowls of soup in wooden bowls, then brought the bowls to the table and set out spoons and napkins. She or he poured cold water into four glasses, set the glasses in place, and joined them at the table. Harman tasted the soup warily—found it delicious, filled with fresh vegetables—and ate it with pleasure. Petyr tasted his and ate slowly, suspiciously, keeping one eye on Ariel as the biosphere avatar stood by the counter. Hannah didn’t touch her soup. She seemed to have flowed into herself, out of reach, much as the green-gold glob from Ariel had.
This is madness, thought Harman. This greenish…creature…has one of our party reach into his or her chest and remove a golden organ, and the three of us come up to have hot soup while the voynix scrabble at the glass ten feet away and the self-aware avatar of the planetary biosphere acts as our servitor. I’ve gone mad.
Harman acknowledged to himself that he may have gone mad, but the soup was good. He thought of Ada and continued eating.
“Why are you here?” asked Petyr. He’d pushed the wooden bowl away from him and was staring intently at Ariel. His bow was by his chair.
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br /> “What would thee have me tell you?” asked Ariel.
“What the hell is going on?” asked Petyr, never one for small talk or subtleties. “Who the hell are you, really? Why are the voynix here and why are they attacking Ardis? What is that goddamned thing that Daeman saw in Paris Crater? Is it a threat…and if so, how can we kill it?”
Ariel smiled. “Always among the first questions of thy kind…what is it and how can I kill it?”
Petyr waited. Harman lowered his spoon.
“It is a good question,” said Ariel, “ for if thee were the first men to leap up, instead of the last, thou shoulds’t cry, ’Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!’ But it is a long tale, as long as dying Odysseus’, I think, and hard to tell over cold soup.”
“Then start by telling us again who you are,” said Harman. “Are you Prospero’s creature?”
“Aye, I was once. Not quite slave, not quite servant, but indentured to him.”
“Why?” asked Petyr. It had begun to rain hard, but the water droplets found no more purchase on the curved buckyglas than had the leaping voynix. Still, the pounding of the showers on the Bridge and girders made a background roar.
“The magus of the logosphere saved me from that damned witch Sycorax,” said Ariel, “whose servant then I was. For it was she who had mastered the deep codes of the biosphere, she who summoned Setebos, her lord, but when I showed myself too delicate to act her earthy and abhorred demands, she—in her most unmitigable rage—anchored me to a single, cloven pine, in which rift I did remain a dozen times a dozen years before being released by Prospero.”
“Prospero saved you,” said Harman.
“Prospero released me to do his bidding,” said Ariel. The thin, pale lips curved upward slightly. “And then demanded my service for another dozen times a dozen years.”
“And did you serve him?” asked Petyr.
“I did.”
“Do you serve him now?” asked Harman.
“I serve no man or magus now.”
“Caliban served Prospero once,” said Harman, trying to remember everything Savi had said, everything that the hologram named Prospero had told him up there on that orbital isle. “Do you know Caliban?”
“I do,” said Ariel. “A villain I do not love to look on.”
“Do you know if Caliban is back on Earth?” pressed Harman. He wished Daeman were here.
“Thou know’st it is truth,” said Ariel. “He seeks to turn all Earth into his old filthy-mantled pool, make the frozen sky his cell.”
The frozen sky his cell, thought Harman. “So Caliban is ally of this Setebos?” he asked aloud.
“Aye.”
“Why did you show yourself to us?” asked Hannah. The beautiful young woman’s gaze was still distracted by sorrow, but she had turned her head to look at Ariel.
Ariel began to sing—
“Where the bee sucks, there suck I
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I crouch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily:
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.”
“The creature’s mad,” said Petyr. He stood abruptly and walked to the bridge-side wall. Three voynix leapt at him, struck the field above the buckyglas, and dropped away. One of them managed to sink its bladed hands into the Bridge concrete and arrested its fall. The other two disappeared in the clouds below.
Ariel laughed softly. Then he or she wept. “Our shared Earth is under siege. The war has come here. Savi is dead. Odysseus is dying. Setebos would fain kill everything I am and come from and exist to protect. You old-style humans are either enemies or allies…I choose the latter. You have no vote in the matter.”
“You’ll help us fight the voynix, Caliban, and this Setebos creature?” asked Harman.
“No, thee shall help me.”
“How?” said Hannah.
“I have tasks for thee. First, you came for weapons…”
“Yes!” said Hannah, Petyr, and Harman in unison.
“Those two who stay shall find them in a secret room at the bottom of the south tower, behind the old, dead computing machines. You will see a circle on the opaque, greenglass wall, having then a pentacle inscribed within. Say merely ’open’ and you will find the room where sly Odysseus and poor, dead Savi did conceal their little Lost-Era toys.”
“You said the two who stay?” said Petyr.
“One of thee three should take the sonie home to Ardis Hall before yon Ardis falls,” said Ariel. “The second of thee should stay here and tend to Odysseus if he does not die, for he alone knows the secrets of Sycorax, since once he did lie with her—and no man lies with Sycorax without suffering a change. The third of thee shall come with me.”
The three people looked at each other. With the heavy rain and cloudy light, it was as if they were deep underwater, staring at each other through cold green gloom.
“I’ll stay,” said Hannah. “I’d decided to stay anyway. If Odysseus awakes, someone should be here.”
“I’ll take the sonie home,” said Harman, cringing at his own cowardice but not caring at the same time. He had to get home to Ada.
“I’ll go with you, Ariel,” said Petyr, stepping closer to the delicate little figure.
“No,” he or she said.
The three humans glanced at each other and waited.
“No, it must be Harman who comes with me,” said Ariel. “We will tell the sonie to take Petyr straight home, but at half the speed thee came. It is an old machine and should not suffer the spur without dire cause. Harman must come with me.”
“Why?” said Harman. He wasn’t going anywhere but home to Ada—of this he was sure.
“Because drowning is thy destiny,” said Ariel, “and because thy wife’s life and thy child’s life depend upon this destiny. And Harman’s destiny this day is to come with me.” Ariel rose from the ground then, weightless, floating above them, floating six feet above the table, his or her black gaze never leaving Harman’s face as she or he sang again—
“Full fathom five our Harman lies,
Of his bones are coral made:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Ding dong, ding dong.”
“No,” said Harman. “I’m sorry, but…no.”
Petyr set an arrow to his string and drew back the bow.
“Are you going bat-fowling?” asked Ariel, twenty feet away now as she/he drifted in the green-gloomed air, but smiling at Petyr.
“Don’t…” said Hannah, but whether she was talking to Ariel or Petyr he never found out.
“Time to go,” said Ariel, almost laughing.
The lights went out. In the absolute darkness, there came a fluttering, rushing sound—as of an owl swooping—and in the darkness, Harman felt something lift him off the floor as effortlessly as a hawk would lift a baby rabbit, flinging and carrying him backward through the darkness, sending him flailing and falling down into the sudden blackness between the tall pillars of the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu.
31
The first day out from Mars and Phobos.
The thousand-foot-long, moravec-built atomic spaceship Queen Mab moves up out of Mars’ gravity well with a series of brilliant explosions literally kicking it in the butt.
Escape velocity from the moon Phobos is a mere 10 cm/sec, but the Queen Mab quickly kicks herself up to 20 km/sec acceleration in order to start the process of climbing up and out of Mars’ gravity. While the three-hundred-meter-long spacecraft could travel to Earth at that velocity, it’s too impatient to do so; the Queen Mab plans to keep accelerating until its thirty-eight thousand tons of mass are moving at a brisk 700 km/sec. On the pulse-unit storage decks, well-oiled chains and ratchets and chutes guide the Coke-can-sized forty-five-ki
loton bombs down and into the ejector mechanism that runs out through the center of the pusher plate at the rear end of the spacecraft. During this part of the voyage, a bomb-can is ejected every twenty-five seconds and is then detonated six hundred meters behind the Queen Mab. On each pulse-unit ejection, the muzzle of the ejection tube is sprayed by anti-ablation oil, which also coats the pusher after each detonation. The heavy pusher plate is driven backward into the ship on thirty-three-meter-long shock absorbers, and then its huge pistons drive it back into place for the next plasma flash. The Queen Mab is soon moving toward Earth at a comfortable and steady 1.28-g’s, its actual acceleration increasing with every blast. The moravecs, of course, could withstand hundreds or even thousands of times that g-force for short periods, but there is one human aboard—the shanghaied Odysseus—and the moravecs were unanimous in not wanting him to end up as raspberry jam on a deck floor.
On the engineering level, Orphu of Io and other technical ’vecs watch steam pressure and oil-level gauges while also monitoring voltage and coolant levels. With atom bombs going off behind it every thirty seconds, the spacecraft has much use for lubricant, so oil reservoirs the size of small oceangoing oil tankers from the Lost Era ring the bottom ten decks. The engine-room deck with its myriad of pipes, valves, meters, reciprocating pistons, and huge pressure gauges still looks to all concerned like something out of an early-Twentieth Century steamship.
Even with its gentle 1.28-g-load, the Queen Mab will be accelerating briskly enough, for long enough, and then decelerating quickly enough, that it plans to reach the Earth-Moon system in just a little over thirty-three standard days.
Mahnmut is busy this first day out checking systems in his submersible the Dark Lady. The sub is not only fitted snugly into one of the holds of the Queen Mab, but is also attached to a winged reentry shuttle for its drop into the Earth’s atmosphere in a month or so, and Mahnmut is making sure that the new controls and interfaces for these new parts are all in working order. Although a dozen decks apart while they work, Mahnmut and Orphu chat with each other via private tightbeam while they watch on separate ship video and radar links as Mars falls farther and farther behind. The cameras showing Mahnmut this stern-view require sophisticated computerized filters to be able to peer through the near-continuous flash-blast of the constantly erupting “pulse-units”…aka bombs. Orphu, while blind to the visible spectrum of light, “watches” Mars recede through a series of radar plots.