“We have no idea,” said Father Captain de Soya over the tightbeam hiss. “My recommendation would be to get out of there as soon as possible. The dropship is our parting gift to you. Use it in good health.”
I looked out at the black lava landscape for a minute. Every time the wind rustled dead branches or scraped ash on ash, I was sure it was the hell-woman gliding toward us.
“Aenea,” came the priest-captain’s voice.
“Yes, Father Captain?”
“We’re going to shut off the tightbeam in a second … we’ll be passing out of line-of-sight anyway … but I have to tell you one thing.”
“What’s that, Father?”
“My child, if they order me back to find you … not to hurt you, but to find you … well, I am an obedient servant of the Church and a Pax Fleet officer.…”
“I understand, Father,” said Aenea. Her eyes were still on the sky where the fusion tail was fading near the eastern horizon. “Good-bye, Father. Good-bye, Corporal Kee. Thank you.”
“Good-bye, my daughter,” said Father Captain de Soya. “God bless you.” We could both hear the sound of a benediction. Then the tightbeam snapped off and there was only silence.
“Come on in,” I said to Aenea. “We’re leaving. Now.”
Closing the inner and outer air-lock doors was a simple enough task. We checked on the autosurgeon a final time—all of the lights were amber but steady—and then strapped ourselves into the heavy acceleration couches. There were shields to cover the windscreen, but they were raised, and we could see across the dark lava fields. A few stars were visible in the east.
“Okay,” I said, looking at the myriad switches, diskeys, touchplates, holopads, monitors, flatscreens, buttons, and gewgaws. There was a low console between us and two omnicontrollers there, each with finger insets and more diskey patterns. I could see half a dozen places where one could jack in directly. “Okay,” I said again, looking at the pale girl dwarfed by her padded chair, “any ideas?”
“Get out and walk?” she said.
I sighed. “That might be the best plan except for—” I jerked my thumb back toward the humming autosurgeon.
“I know,” said Aenea. She sagged in the heavy straps. “I was joking.”
I touched her hand on the console. As always, there was a jolt of electricity there—a sort of physical déjà vu. Pulling my hand away, I said, “Goddammit, the more advanced a technology’s supposed to be, the simpler it’s supposed to be. This looks like something out of an eighteenth-century Old Earth fighter-plane cockpit.”
“It’s built for professionals to fly,” said Aenea. “We just need a professional pilot.”
“You have one,” chirped the comlog. It was speaking in its own voice.
“You know how to fly a ship?” I said suspiciously.
“In essence, I am a ship,” the comlog said primly. The clasp panel clicked open. “Please connect the red filament jack to any red interface port.”
I connected it to the console. Immediately the panel came alive, monitors glowed, instruments checked in, the dropship’s ventilators hummed, and the omnicontroller twitched. A flat-screen monitor in the center of the dash glowed yellow, and the comlog’s voice said, “Where do you wish to go, M. Edymion? M. Aenea?”
The girl spoke first. “The next farcaster,” she said softly. “The last farcaster.”
58
It was daylight on the other side. We hovered above the stream and moved forward slowly. The comlog had shown us how to use the controllers while it ran all the rest of the ship’s systems and kept us from making stupid mistakes. Aenea and I glanced at each other and inched the dropship over the treetops. Unless the hell-woman could transit a farcaster portal, we were safe.
It felt strange making our last farcaster shift without the raft, but the raft would not have worked here anyway. The River Tethys had become little more than a trickling stream between deep banks—the creek could not have been more than eight or ten centimeters deep and only three or four meters wide. It meandered through heavily wooded countryside. The trees were strange, but familiar at the same time … mostly deciduous like champa or weirwood, but broadleafed and expansive like halfoak. The leaves were bright yellow and brilliant red, and carpets of them lined the banks of the streambed.
The sky was a pleasant blue—not as deep blue as Hyperion’s, but deeper than most earthlike worlds we had seen on this trip. The sun was large and bright but not overpowering. Sunlight came through the windscreen and fell across our laps.
“I wonder what it’s like out there,” I said.
The comlog … ship … whatever it was now, must have thought I was talking to it. The central monitor pulsed and data began to flow down it.
Atmosphere: 0.77 N2
0.21 O2
0.009 Ar
0.0003 CO2
variable H2O (-0.01)
Surface pressure: 0.986 bar
Magnetic field: 0.318 gauss
Mass: 5.976 × 1024 kg
Escape velocity: 11.2 km/s
Surface gravity: 980 km/s
Tilt angle of magnetic axis: 11.5º
Dipole moment: 7.9 × 1025 gauss/cm3
“That’s strange,” said the ship. “An improbable coincidence.”
“What?” I said, already knowing.
“These planetary data match almost perfectly with my database for Old Earth,” said the ship. “It is very unusual for any world to match so closely with—”
“Stop!” screamed Aenea, pointing out the windscreen. “Land! Please, now.”
I would have smashed into trees on the way down, but the ship took over, found us a flat, rocky spot within twenty meters of the tree-lined streambed, and set us down without a bump. Aenea was punching the air-lock combination while I was still staring out the windscreen at the flat roof of the house beyond the trees.
She was down the ladder before I could talk to her. I paused to check the autosurgeon, was pleased to see several of the lights switched to green, and said to the ship, “Watch over him. Keep everything ready for a quick getaway.”
“I shall, M. Endymion.”
WE CAME AT THE HOUSE FROM DOWNSTREAM AND across the stream from it. The building is hard to describe, but I will try.
The house itself was built out over a modest waterfall that spilled only three or four meters to a small natural pool beneath. Yellow leaves floated in the pool before being whisked away downstream on the quickening current. The most noticeable features of the house were the thin roofs and rectangular terraces that seemed to hang out over the stream and waterfall as if defying gravity. The house appeared to be built of stone and glass, concrete and some steel. To the left of the slabs of terrace, a stone wall rose three floors with a glass-cornered window rising in it almost the entire height. The metal framework around those windows was painted a gentle orange.
“Cantilevered,” said Aenea.
“What?”
“That’s what the architect calls those overhanging terraces,” she said. “Cantilevered. They echo the limestone ledges that have been here for millions of years.”
I paused in our walk to look at her. The dropship was out of sight beyond the trees behind us. “This is your house,” I said. “The one you dreamed of before you were born.”
“Yes.” Her lips were trembling slightly. “I even know its name now, Raul. Fallingwater.”
I nodded and sniffed the air. The scent was rich with decaying leaves, living plants, rich soil, water, and a certain tang to the air. It was very different from Hyperion’s air, but it somehow smelled like home. “Old Earth,” I whispered. “Can it be?”
“Just … Earth,” said Aenea. She touched my hand. “Let’s go in.”
We crossed the stream on a small bridge upstream from the house, crunched our way up a gravel drive, and entered through a loggia and narrow entranceway. It was like coming into a comfortable cave.
Pausing in the large living room, we called, but no one answered. Aenea walk
ed across the open space as if in a trance, running her fingers over wood and stone surfaces, exclaiming at small discoveries.
The floor was carpeted in places, bare stone in others. Books filled low shelves in at least one alcove, but I did not take time to check the titles. Metal shelves ran under the low ceiling, but these were empty—perhaps just a design element. The far wall was taken up by a huge fireplace. The hearth was of rough stone —perhaps the top of the boulder upon which the house seemed to balance—and ran out two meters or so from the fireplace.
A large fire was crackling in the fireplace, despite the warmth of the sunny autumn day. I called again, but the silence was heavy. “They were expecting us,” I said, making a weak joke. The only weapon I had now was the flashlight laser in my pocket.
“Yes, they were,” said Aenea. She went over to the left of the fireplace and placed her small hands on a metal sphere that was set into its own hemispherical niche in the stone wall. The sphere was a meter and a half or so in diameter and was painted a rich, rusty red.
“The architect meant this as a kettle to heat wine in,” Aenea said softly. “It was only used once … and the wine was heated in the kitchen and brought here. It’s too big. And the paint is probably toxic.”
“This is the architect you’re looking for?” I said. “The one you plan to study with?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he was a genius. Why would he make a wine kettle too big and too toxic to use?”
Aenea turned and smiled. No—she grinned. “Geniuses screw up, Raul. Look at our trip if you need proof. Come on, let’s look around.”
The terraces were lovely, the view from above the little waterfall pleasant. Inside, the ceilings and overhangs were low, but that just gave one more of a sense of peering out of a cave into the green world of the forest through all that glass. In the living room again, a glass-and-metal hatchway folded back to steps—supported by bars from the floor above—which led down only to a larger cement platform over a pool in the stream above the waterfall.
“The plunge,” said Aenea, as if coming home to something very familiar.
“What’s it for?” I said, peering around.
“Nothing practical,” said Aenea. “But the architect considered it—and I quote—‘absolutely necessary from every standpoint.’ ”
I touched her shoulder. She turned and smiled at me, not mechanically or dreamily, but with an almost radiant vitality.
“Where are we, Aenea?”
“Fallingwater,” she said. “Bear Run. In western Pennsylvania.”
“Is that a nation?” I said.
“Province,” said Aenea. “State, I mean. In the former United States of America. North American continent. Planet Earth.”
“Earth,” I repeated. I looked around. “Where is everybody? Where’s your architect?”
The girl shook her head. “I don’t know. We should know soon.”
“How long are we going to stay here, kiddo?” I had thoughts of laying in food, weapons, and other equipment while A. Bettik recovered and before we headed off again.
“A few years,” said Aenea. “No more than six or seven, I think.”
“Years?” I had stopped on the upper terrace where we had stepped out at the head of the flight of stairs. “Years?”
“I have to study under this man, Raul. I have to learn something.”
“About architecture?”
“Yes, and about myself.”
“And what will I be doing while you’re … learning about yourself?”
Instead of making a joke, Aenea nodded seriously. “I know. It doesn’t seem fair. But there will be a few things for you to do while I’m … growing up.”
I waited.
“The Earth needs to be explored,” she said. “My mother and father visited here. It was Mother’s idea that the … lions and tigers and bears—the forces that stole the Earth away before the TechnoCore could destroy it … it was Mother’s idea that they were running experiments here.”
“Experiments?” I said. “What kind of experiments?”
“Experiments in genius, mostly,” said Aenea. “Although perhaps experiments in humanity would be a better phrase.”
“Explain.”
Aenea gestured toward the house around us. “This place was completed in 1937.”
“A.D.?” I said.
“Yes. I’m sure it was destroyed in the twenty-first-century North American class riots, if not before. Whoever brought the Earth here rebuilt it somehow. Just as they rebuilt nineteenth-century Rome for my father.”
“Rome?” I felt that I was standing around with my thumb in my ear repeating everything the child said. It was one of those days.
“The Rome where John Keats spent his last days,” said Aenea. “But that’s another story.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I read it in your Uncle Martin’s Cantos. And I didn’t understand it then, either.”
Aenea made the gesture with her hands that I was growing used to. “I don’t understand it, Raul. But whoever brought the Earth here brings back people as well as old cities and buildings. They create … dynamics.”
“Through resurrection?” My voice was doubtful.
“No … more like … well, my father was a cybrid. His persona resided in an AI matrix, his body was human.”
“But you’re not a cybrid.”
Aenea shook her head. “You know I’m not.” She led me farther out on the terrace. Below us, the stream rushed over the little waterfall. “There will be other things for you to do while I’m … in school.”
“Such as?”
“Besides exploring all of the Earth and figuring out just what these … entities … are up to here, you’ll need to leave before I do and go back to fetch our ship.”
“Our ship?” I resolved to pull my metaphorical thumb out of my ear. “You mean travel by farcaster to get the Consul’s ship.”
“Yep.”
“And bring it here?”
She shook her head. “That would take a few centuries. We’ll agree to meet somewhere in the former Web.”
I rubbed my cheek, feeling the whiskers scratch. “Anything else? Any other little ten-year odysseys to keep me occupied?”
“Just the trip to the Outback to see the Ousters,” she said. “But I’ll be going with you on that trip.”
“Good,” I said. “I hope that’s all the adventures that we’ll have waiting for us. I’m not as young as I used to be, you know.”
I was trying to be light about all this, but Aenea’s eyes were deep and serious. She put her fingers in my palm. “No, Raul,” she said. “That’s just the beginning.”
The comlog beeped and tapped. “What?” I said with a spasm of concern about A. Bettik.
“I’ve just received coordinates on the common band,” came the comlog/ship’s voice. It sounded puzzled.
“Any voice or visual transmissions?” I said.
“No, just travel coordinates and optimum cruise altitudes. It’s a flight plan.”
“To where?” I said.
“A point on this continent some three thousand kilometers to the southwest of our current position,” said the ship.
I looked at Aenea. She shook her head.
“No idea?” I said.
“An idea,” she said. “Not a certainty. Let’s go be surprised.”
Her small hand was still in mine. I did not release it as we walked back through the yellow leaves and morning sunlight to the waiting dropship.
59
I once said to you that you were reading this for the wrong reason. What I should have said was that I was writing this for the wrong reason.
I have filled these seamless days and nights and smooth pages of microvellum with memories of Aenea, of Aenea as a child, with not one word of her life as the messiah whom you must know and perhaps whom you mistakenly worship. But I have not written these pages for you, I discover, nor have I written them for myself. I have brought Aenea the child alive i
n my writing because I want Aenea the woman to be alive—despite logic, despite fact, despite all loss of hope.
Each morning—each self-programmed brightening of the lights, I should say—I awaken in this three-by-six-meter Schrödinger cat box and find myself amazed to be alive. There has been no scent of bitter almonds in the night.
Each morning I fight despair and terror by writing these memories on my text slate, stacking the microvellum pages as they accumulate. But the recycler in this little world is limited; it can produce only a dozen or so pages at a time. So as I finish each dozen or so pages of memory, I feed the oldest pages into the recycler to have them come out fresh and empty so as to have new pages upon which to write. It is the snake swallowing its own tail. It is insanity. Or the absolute essence of sanity.
It is possible that the chip in the text slate has the full memory of what I have written here … what I shall write in the coming days if fate grants me those days … but the truth is, I do not really care. Only the dozen pages of microvellum are of interest to me each day—pristine, empty pages in the morning, crowded, ink-splashed pages filled with my small and spidery script each evening.
Aenea comes alive for me then.
BUT LAST NIGHT—WHEN THE LIGHTS IN MY SCHRÖDINGER cat box were off and nothing separated me from the universe but the static-dynamic shell of frozen energy around me with its little vial of cyanide, its ticking timer, and its foolproof radiation detector—last night I heard Aenea calling my name. I sat up in the absolute blackness, too startled and hopeful even to command the lights on, certain that I was still dreaming, when I felt her fingers touch my cheek. They were her fingers. I knew them when she was a child. I kissed them when she was a woman. I touched them with my lips when they took her away for the final time.
Her fingers touched my cheek. Her breath was warm and sweet against my face. Her lips were warm against the corner of my mouth.