by Dan Simmons
The five-hundred-foot-high walls of water on each side of the eighty-yard dry path were also frightening and even two days in the Breach hadn’t fully acclimated Harman to the sense of claustrophobia and fear of imminent collapse. He’d actually been in the Atlantic Breach once before, two years earlier when he was celebrating his ninety-eighth birthday—leaving from faxnode 124 near the Loman Estate on what had once been the New Jersey coast of North America and walking two days out, two days back, but not covering nearly so much ground as he was with Moira—and the walls of water and deep gloom of the trench had not bothered him so much then. Of course, Harman thought, I was younger then. And believed in magic.
He and Moira had not spoken in several hours, but their strides easily matched each other and they walked well together in silence. Harman was analyzing some of the information that now filled his universe, but mostly he was thinking about what he could and should do if he ever did manage to get back to Ardis.
The first thing he should do, he realized, is apologize to Ada from the bottom of his heart for having left on that idiotic voyage to the Golden Gate at Machu Picchu. His pregnant wife and unborn child should have come first. Consciously, he’d known that then, but he knew it now.
Next Harman was trying to stitch together a plan for saving his beloved, his unborn child, his friends, and his species. This was not so easy.
What was easier with the million volumes of information that had been—literally—poured into him was seeing some options.
First of all, there were the reawakened functions his mind and body kept exploring, almost one hundred of them. The most important of these, at least in the short term, was the free-fax function. Rather than find nodes and activate machinery, the nano-machinery present in every old-style human, and now understood by Harman, could fax from anywhere to anywhere on the planet Earth and even—should the interdictions be dropped—from the surface of the planet to selected points in the 1,108,303 objects, machines, and cities in orbit around the Earth. Free-faxing could save them all from the voynix—and from Setebos and his loosened calibani, even from Caliban himself—but only if the fax machines and storage modules in orbit were turned back on for humans.
Second, Harman now knew several ways he could get back up to the rings and even had a vague understanding of the alien-witch-thing named Sycorax who now ruled the former post-human orbital universe up there, but he had no clue as to how he and others could overpower Sycorax and Caliban—for Harman was certain that Setebos had sent his only begotten son up to the rings to interdict the fax function. But if they did prevail, Harman knew that he would have to drown in more crystal cabinets before he’d have all the technical information he needed to reactivate the complicated fax and sensor satellites.
Third, as Harman studied the many functions now available to him—many of which dealt with monitoring his own body and mind and finding data stored there—he knew that it would not be a problem sharing his newfound information. One of the lost functions was a simple sharing function—a sort of reverse sigling—wherein Harman could touch another old-style human, select the RNA-DNA caged protein memory packets he wanted to download, and the information would flow through his flesh and skin to the other person. It had been perfected for the Little Green Men prototypes almost two thousand years earlier, and quickly been adapted to human nanocyte function. All old-styles had this nano-induced DNA-bound memory capability and all old-styles had the hundred latent functions in their bodies and minds, but it took one informed person to start the rekindling of human abilities.
Harman had to smile. Moira could be…no, was…annoying with her many little in-jokes and obscure references, but he understood now why she kept calling him “my young Prometheus.” Prometheus, according to Hesiod, meant “foresighted” or “prophetic” and the character Prometheus in Aeschylus, and in the works of Shelley, Wu, and other great poets, was the Titan revolutionary who stole essential knowledge—fire—from the gods and brought it down to the groveling human race, elevating them into something almost like gods. Almost.
“That’s why you disconnected us from our functions,” Harman said, not even realizing that he was speaking aloud.
“What?”
He looked at the post-human woman walking next to him in the gathering gloom. “You didn’t want us to become gods. That’s why you never activated our functions.”
“Of course.”
“Yet all of the posts except you chose to go off to another world or dimension and play at being gods.”
“Of course.”
Harman understood. The first necessity and prerogative for a god, small “g” or capital “G,” was to have no other gods before him or her. He concentrated on his thoughts again.
Harman’s thinking had changed since the crystal cabinet. Where it once centered on things, places, people, and emotions, it now was mostly figurative—a complicated dance of metaphors, metonymies, ironies, and synecdoches. With billions of facts—things, places, and people—set into his very cells, the focus of his thoughts had shifted to the connections and shades and nuances and recognition side of things. Emotions were still there—stronger, if anything—but where his feelings had once surged like some big, booming bass overpowering the rest of the orchestra, they now danced like a delicate but powerful violin solo.
Much too much murky metaphor for a mere measly man, thought Harman, looking with irony at the presumption of his own thoughts. And an awful lot of alliteration from an anxious asshole.
Despite his self-mockery, he knew that he now owned the gift of being able to look at things—people, places, things, feelings, himself—with the kind of recognition that can only come from maturing into nuance, growing into oneself, and in the learning how to accept ironies and metaphors and synecdoches and metonymies not only in language, but in the hardwiring of the universe.
If he could reconnect with his own kind, get back to any old-style human enclave, not just back to Ardis, his new functions would change humankind forever. He would not force them on anyone, but since this iteration of homo sapiens was very close to being eradicated from this post-postmodern world, he doubted if anyone under attack by voynix, calibani, and a giant, soul-sucking brain skittering around on multiple hands would object too strenuously to gaining new gifts, powers, and a survival advantage.
Are these functions—in the long run—a survival advantage for my species? Harman asked himself.
The answer, which came in his own mental voice, was the clear cry of a Zen master hearing a stupid question from one of his acolytes—“Mu!”—meaning roughly, “Unask the question, stupid.” This syllable was often to followed by the equally monosyllabic “Qwatz!” which was the Zen master’s cry simultaneous with leaping and striking the stupid student about the head and shoulders with the heavy, weighted teacher’s staff.
Mu. There is no “long run” here—that will be for my sons and daughters and their children to decide. Right now, everything—everything—exists in the short run.
And the threat of being disemboweled by a humpbacked voynix tends to focus the mind wonderfully well. If the functions were turned back on—Harman knew why the old functions, including the finder function, allnet, proxnet, farnet, as well as sigling, were not working—someone up there in the rings had turned off the transmissions as surely as they’d switched off the fax machines.
If the functions were turned back on…
But how could they be turned back on?
Once again, Harman studied the problem of getting back up to the rings and switching everything back on—power, servitors, fax, all of the functions.
He needed to know if there were others besides Sycorax up there, waiting, and what their defenses were. The million books he’d ingested in the crystal cabinet had no opinion on this crucial question.
“Why won’t you or Prospero QT me up to the rings?” asked Harman. He turned to look at Moira and realized that he could just barely see her in the failing light. Her face was illuminate
d mostly by ringlight.
“We choose not to,” she said in her most maddening Bartleby fashion.
Harman thought of the slug-throwing gun in his pack on the back. Would brandishing a weapon in her direction—and allowing her to read the sincerity in his face since the post-humans had their own functions for reading and understanding human reactions—would that combination convince her to quantum teleport him to Ardis or the rings?
He knew it wouldn’t. She would never have given him the gun if it were a threat to her. She had some countermeasure built into the weapon—perhaps she could keep it from firing just by the force of her post-human thoughts, some simple brainwave circuitry built into the firing mechanism—or something equally as foolproof and bulletproof built into her.
“You and the magus went to all that trouble to kidnap me, ship me across India to the Himalayas, just to stick me in the crystal cabinet, drown me, and educate me,” said Harman. These were the most words he’d strung together since they’d begun hiking the Breach, and he realized how banal and redundant they were. “Why did you do that if you don’t want me to prevail against Setebos and the other bad guys?”
Moira did not smile again. “If you’re meant to get to the rings, you’ll find a way up there.”
“ ‘Meant to’ sounds like some sort of Calvinist predestination,” said Harman, stepping over a low lump of desiccated coral. The Breach so far had been surprisingly easy—iron bridges over the few ocean-bottom abysses they’d encountered, paths blasted or lasered into rocky or coral ridges, gentle inclines for the most part and metal cables to help them descend or ascend where the going was steep—so Harman had not had to spend much time watching his feet. But it was hard to see detail in this falling light.
Moira had not responded or visibly reacted to his feeble witticism, so he said, “There are other Firmaries.”
“Prospero told you that before.”
“Yeah, but it’s just sunk in. We old-styles don’t have to die or rebuild medicine from scratch. There are more rejuvenation tanks up there.”
“Yes, of course. The post-humans prepared to serve an old-style population of one million. There are other Firmaries and blue-worm tanks on other orbital isles in both the equatorial and polar rings. Surely this is obvious.”
“Yes, obvious,” said Harman, “but you have to remember that I have all the savvy of a newborn babe.”
“I have not forgotten that,” said Moira.
“I don’t have specific data on where the other Firmaries are,” said Harman. “Can you pinpoint them for me?”
“I’ll point them out for you after we douse the campfire tonight,” Moira said drily.
“No. I mean on a chart of the rings.”
“Do you have a chart of the rings, my young Prometheus? Is that part of what you ate and drank back at the Taj?”
“No,” said Harman, “but you can draw one for us—orbital coordinates, everything.”
“Are you pondering immortality so soon after birth then, Prometheus?”
Am I? wondered Harman. Then he remembered his last thought before the realization that other Firmaries were in mothballs up there in the post-human rings—it had been of Ada, pregnant and injured.
“Why were all the operative fax-in/fax-out healing tanks on Prospero’s isle?” he asked. Even as he asked the question, he’d seen the answer like a memory of a forgotten nightmare.
“Prospero arranged that to keep his captive Caliban fed,” said Moira.
Harman felt his stomach lurch. Part of that was his reaction to having ever felt any friendly or forgiving thoughts toward the logosphere avatar magus. But most of the sudden surge of nausea came from the fact that he’d not eaten anything since two bites of that day’s food bar before dawn that morning, and he’d forgotten even to drink from his hydrator tube in the past few hours. “Why are you stopping?” he asked Moira.
“It’s too dark to walk,” said the post-human. “Let’s build our fire and cook our weenies and roast some marshmallows and sing camp songs. Then you can get a few hours’ sleep and dream of living forever in the bright future of the blue-worm tanks.”
“You know,” said Harman, “you can really be a sarcastic pain in the ass sometimes.”
Moira smiled now. Her smile was Cheshirecatlike, almost the only detail he could see of her in the Breach-trench darkness. “When my many sisters were here,” she said, “before they all flew off to become gods—many of them male gods, which I thought was a demotion—they used to tell me the same thing. Now pull that dried wood and seaweed that we’ve been picking up all day out of your pack and start us a nice fire…that’s a good little old-style.”
69
Mommy! Mommmmeeee! I’m so scared. It’s so cold and dark down here. Mommy! Come help me get out. Mommy, please!
Ada awoke just half an hour after falling asleep in the cold, early hours of the dark winter morning. The child-voice in her mind felt like a small, cold, and unwelcome hand inside her clothes.
Mommy, please. I don’t like it here. It’s cold and dark and I can’t get out. The rock is too hard. I’m hungry. Mommy, please help me get out of here. Mommeeeee.
As exhausted as she was, Ada forced herself out of her bedroll and into the cold air. The survivors—there were forty-eight now one week and five days after their return to the ruins of Ardis—had made tents out of salvaged canvas and Ada now slept with four other women. The cluster of tents and the original lean-to next to the well formed the center of a new palisade, with the sharpened stakes set only a hundred feet out from the center of the tent city and the tumbled ruins of the original Ardis Hall.
Mommeeee…please, Mommy….
The voice was there much of the time now and although Ada had learned to ignore it during most of her waking day, it kept her from sleeping. Tonight—this dark predawn morning—it was much worse than usual.
Ada pulled on her trousers, boots, and heavy sweater and stepped out of the tent, moving as quietly as she could so as not to waken Elle and her other tentmates. There were a few people awake by the center campfire—there always were, all through the night—and sentries out on the new walls, but the area between Ada and the Pit was empty and dark.
It was very dark; thick clouds had blocked the starlight and ringlight and it smelled like snow was on the way. Ada stepped carefully as she made her way to the Pit—some people still preferred sleeping outdoors now that they’d stitched together and lined better bedrolls and sleeping bags. She didn’t want to step on anyone. Just in her fifth month of pregnancy, Ada already felt fat and clumsy.
Mommeeeeeeeeee!
She hated that damned voice. With a real child growing inside her, she couldn’t tolerate the pleading, whining ersatz-child voice coming from that thing in the Pit, even if it was just a mental echo. She wondered if her own baby’s developing neural system could pick up this telepathic invasion. She hoped not.
Mommy, please let me out. It’s dark down here.
They’d decided to have one person standing guard at the Pit at all times, and tonight it was Daeman. She knew the thin, muscular silhouette with its flechette rifle slung over his shoulder even before she could make out his face. He turned to her as she came up to the edge of the Pit.
“Can’t sleep?” he whispered.
“It won’t let me,” she whispered back.
“I know,” said Daeman. “I can always hear it when it targets you with its pleading. Faint, but audible—a sort of tickling at the back of the brain. I hear the thing calling ’Mommeee’ and just want to unload this magazine of flechettes into it.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” said Ada, staring down at the metal grill welded and bolted into rock above the Pit. The grill was large, heavy, and fine-meshed—they’d taken it from the old cistern near the ruins of Ardis Hall—and the Setebos baby had already grown to the point where it couldn’t get its stalk-wandering hands through the mesh. The Pit itself was only fourteen feet deep, but they’d hacked it and blasted it ou
t of solid rock. And strong as the monstrous thing down there was—the many-eyed, many-handed brain part of it was now more than four feet long and its hands were stronger every day—it wasn’t strong enough to tear the grill’s bolts and welded, sunken rods out of the rock. Not yet.
“A good idea except for the fact that we’d have twenty thousand voynix on us in five minutes if we kill the thing,” whispered Daeman.
Ada didn’t have to be reminded of this, but hearing it said aloud made the coldness and chill of nausea creep deeper into her. The sonie was up now, in the cloudy dark, doing its slow reconnaissance orbits. The news was the same every day—the voynix stayed away, in an almost perfect circle with a radius of just under two miles from what could be this last human encampment on Earth—yet the numbers kept growing. Greogi had estimated at least twenty thousand to twenty-five thousand of the dull-silvery things out there in the treeless forests yesterday afternoon. There would be more at first light this morning. There were more each day. It was as certain as the weak, wintry sunrises. It was as certain as the fact that the pleading, whining, insinuating mental voice coming up from the Pit would never stop until it got free.
And then what? wondered Ada.
She could imagine. Just the presence of the thing had cast a pall over the Ardis survivors. It was hard enough just to get through the days—building and expanding their little tents and shacks, salvaging what they could from the ruins, improving their hopeless little log fort, not to mention getting enough to eat—without the Setebos baby’s evil whining in their minds.