Johnny was struggling but one of the intruders had him around the throat in a choke hold while the other pinned his legs. I came off the floor in a crouch, accepted the blow from my number two, and leaped across the bed. The guy holding Johnny’s legs went through the glass and wood of the window without a word.
Someone landed on my back and I completed the roll across the bed and floor, bringing him up against the wall. He was good. He took the blow on his shoulder and went for a nerve pinch beneath my ear. He had a second of trouble because of the extra layers of muscle there and I got an elbow deep into his stomach and rolled away. The man choking Johnny dropped him and delivered a textbook-perfect kick to my ribs. I took half the impact, feeling at least one rib go, and spun inside, attempting no elegance as I used my left hand to crush his left testicle. The man screamed and was out of it.
I’d never forgotten the stunner on the floor and neither had the last of the opposition. He scurried around to the far side of the bed, out of reach, and dropped to all fours to grab the weapon. Definitely feeling the pain from the broken rib now, I lifted the massive bed with Johnny in it and dropped it on the guy’s head and shoulders.
I went under the bed from my side, retrieved the stunner, and backed into an empty corner.
One guy had gone out the window. We were on the second floor. The first man to enter was still lying in the doorway. The guy I’d kicked had managed to get to one knee and both elbows. From the blood on his mouth and chin, I guessed that a rib had punctured a lung. He was breathing very raggedly. The bed had crushed the skull of the other man on the floor. The guy who’d been choking Johnny was curled up near the window, holding his crotch and vomiting. I stunned him into silence and went over to the one I’d kicked and lifted him by the hair. “Who sent you?”
“Fuck you.” He sprayed some bloody spittle in my face.
“Maybe later,” I said. “Again, who sent you?” I placed three fingers against his side where the ribcage seemed concave and pressed.
The man screamed and went very white. When he coughed the blood was too red against pale skin.
“Who sent you?” I set four fingers against his ribs.
“The bishop!” He tried to levitate away from my fingers.
“What bishop?”
“Shrike Temple … Lusus … don’t, please … oh, shit.…”
“What were you going to do with him … us?”
“Nothing.… oh, God damn … don’t! I need a medic, please!”
“Sure. Answer.”
“Stun him, bring him … back to the Temple … Lusus. Please. I can’t breathe.”
“And me?”
“Kill you if you resisted.”
“Okay,” I said, lifting him a little higher by his hair, “we’re doing fine here. What did they want him for?”
“I don’t know.” He screamed very loudly. I kept one eye on the doorway to the apartment. The stunner was still in my palm under a fistful of hair. “I … don’t … know …” he gasped. He was hemorrhaging in earnest now. The blood dripped on my arm and left breast.
“How’d you get here?”
“EMV … roof.”
“Where’d you ’cast in?”
“Don’t know … I swear … some city in the water. Car’s set to return there … please!”
I ripped at his clothes. No comlog. No other weapons. There was a tattoo of a blue trident just above his heart. “Goonda?” I said.
“Yeah … Parvati Brotherhood.”
Outside the Web. Probably very hard to trace. “All of you?”
“Yeah … please … get me some help …oh, shit … please …” He sagged, almost unconscious.
I dropped him, stepped back, and sprayed the stun beam over him.
Johnny was sitting up, rubbing his throat, and staring at me with a strange gaze.
“Get dressed,” I said. “We’re leaving.”
The EMV was an old, transparent Vikken Scenic with no palm-locks on the ignition plate or diskey. We caught up to the terminator before we had crossed France and looked down on darkness that Johnny said was the Atlantic Ocean. Except for lights of the occasional floating city or drilling platform, the only illumination came from the stars and the broad, swimming-pool glows of the undersea colonies.
“Why are we taking their vehicle?” asked Johnny.
“I want to see where they farcast from.”
“He said the Lusus Shrike Temple.”
“Yeah. Now well see.”
Johnny’s face was barely visible as he looked down at the dark sea twenty klicks below. “Do you think those men will die?”
“One was already dead,” I said. “The guy with the punctured lung will need help. Two of them’ll be okay. I don’t know about the one who went out the window. Do you care?”
“Yes. The violence was … barbaric.”
“ ‘Though a quarrel in the street is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine,’ ” I quoted. “They weren’t cybrids, were they?”
“I think not.”
“So there are at least two groups out to get you … the AIs and the bishop of the Shrike Temple. And we still don’t know why.”
“I do have an idea now.”
I swiveled in the foam recliner. The constellations above us—familiar neither from holos of Old Earth’s skies nor from any Web world I knew—cast just enough light to allow me to see Johnny’s eyes. “Tell me,” I said.
“Your mention of Hyperion gave me a clue,” he said. “The fact that I had no knowledge of it. Its absence said that it was important.”
“The strange case of the dog barking in the night,” I said. “What?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
Johnny leaned closer. “The only reason that I would not be aware of it is that some elements of the TechnoCore have blocked my knowledge of it.”
“Your cybrid …” It was strange to talk to Johnny that way now. “You spend most of your time in the Web, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t you run across mention of Hyperion somewhere? It’s in the news every once in a while, especially when the Shrike Cult’s topical.”
“Perhaps I did hear. Perhaps that is why I was murdered.”
I lay back and looked at the stars. “Let’s go ask the bishop,” I said.
Johnny said that the lights ahead were an analog of New York City in the mid-twenty-first century. He didn’t know what resurrection project the city had been rebuilt for. I took the EMV off auto and dropped lower.
Tall buildings from the phallic-symbol era of urban architecture rose from the swamps and lagoons of the North American littoral. Several had lights burning. Johnny pointed to one decrepit but oddly elegant structure and said, “The Empire State Building.”
“Okay,” I said. “Whatever it is, that’s where the EMV wants to land.”
“Is it safe?”
I grinned at him. “Nothing in life’s safe.” I let the car have its head and we dropped to a small, open platform below the building’s spire. We got out and stood on the cracked balcony. It was quite dark except for the few building lights far below and the stars. A few paces away, a vague blue glow outlined a farcaster portal where elevator doors may once have been.
“I’ll go first,” I said but Johnny had already stepped through. I palmed the borrowed stunner and followed him.
I’d never been in the Shrike Temple on Lusus before but there was no doubt that we were there now. Johnny stood a few paces ahead of me but other than him there was no one around. The place was cool and dark and cavernous if caverns could really be that large. A frightening polychrome sculpture which hung from invisible cables rotated to unfelt breezes. Johnny and I both turned as the farcaster portal winked out of existence.
“Well, we did their work for them, didn’t we?” I whispered to Johnny. Even the whisper seemed to echo in the red-lit hall. I hadn’t planned on Johnny ’casting to the Temple with me.
The light seemed to come up t
hen, not really illuminating the great hall but widening its scope so that we could see the semicircle of men there. I remembered that some were called exorcists and others lectors and there was some other category I forgot. Whoever they were, it was alarming to see them standing there, at least two dozen of them, their robes variations on red and black and their high foreheads glowing from the red light above. I had no trouble recognizing the bishop. He was from my world, although shorter and fatter than most of us, and his robe was very red.
I did not try to hide the stunner. It was possible that if they all tried to rush us I could bring them all down. Possible but not probable. I could not see any weapons but their robes could have hidden entire arsenals.
Johnny walked toward the bishop and I followed. Ten paces from the man we stopped. The bishop was the only one not standing. His chair was made of wood and looked as if it could be folded so that the intricate arms, supports, back, and legs could be carried in a compact form. One couldn’t say the same for the mass of muscle and fat evident under the bishop’s robes.
Johnny took another step forward. “Why did you try to kidnap my cybrid?” He spoke to the Shrike Cult holy man as if the rest of us were not there.
The bishop chuckled and shook his head. “My dear … entity … it is true that we wished your presence in our place of worship, but you have no evidence that we were involved in any attempt to kidnap you.”
“I’m not interested in evidence,” said Johnny. “I’m curious as to why you want me here.”
I heard a rustling behind us and I swiveled quickly, the stunner charged and pointed, but the broad circle of Shrike priests remained motionless. Most were out of the stunner’s range. I wished that I had brought my father’s projectile weapon with me.
The bishop’s voice was deep and textured and seemed to fill the huge space. “Surely you know that the Church of the Final Atonement has a deep and abiding interest in the world of Hyperion.”
“Yes.”
“And surely you are aware that during the past several centuries the persona of the Old Earth poet Keats has been woven into the cultural mythos of the Hyperion colony?”
“Yes. So?”
The bishop rubbed his cheek with a large red ring on one finger. “So when you offered to go on the Shrike Pilgrimage we agreed. We were distressed when you reneged on this offer.”
Johnny’s look of amazement was most human, “I offered? When?”
“Eight local days ago,” said the bishop. “In this room. You approached us with the idea.”
“Did I say why I wanted to go on the … the Shrike Pilgrimage?”
“You said that it was … I believe the phrase you used was … ‘important for your education.’ We can show you the recording if you wish. All such conversations in the Temple are recorded. Or you may have a duplicate of the recording to view at your own convenience.”
“Yes,” said Johnny.
The bishop nodded and an acolyte or whatever the hell he was disappeared into the gloom for a moment and returned with a standard video chip in his hand. The bishop nodded again and the black-robed man came forward and handed the chip to Johnny. I kept the stunner ready until the guy had returned to the semicircle of watchers.
“Why did you send the goondas after us?” I asked. It was the first time I’d spoken in front of the bishop and my voice sounded too loud and too raw.
The Shrike holy man made a gesture with one pudgy hand. “M. Keats had expressed an interest in joining our holiest pilgrimage. Since it is our belief that the Final Atonement is drawing closer each day, this is of no little importance to us. Consequently, our agents reported that M. Keats may have been the victim of one or more assaults and that a certain private investigator … you, M. Lamia … was responsible for destroying the cybrid bodyguard provided M. Keats by the TechnoCore.”
“Bodyguard!” It was my turn to sound amazed.
“Of course,” said the bishop. He turned toward Johnny. “The gentleman with the queue who was recently murdered on the Templar Excursion, was this not the same man whom you introduced as your bodyguard a week earlier? He is visible in the recording.”
Johnny said nothing. He seemed to be straining to remember something.
“At any rate,” continued the bishop, “we must have your answer about the pilgrimage before the week is out. The Sequoia Sempervirens departs from the Web in nine local days.”
“But that’s a Templar treeship,” said Johnny. “They don’t make the long leap to Hyperion.”
The bishop smiled. “In this case it does. We have reason to believe that this may be the last Church-sponsored pilgrimage and we have chartered the Templar craft to allow as many of the faithful as possible to make the trip.” The bishop gestured and red-and-black-robed men faded back into darkness. Two exorcists came forward to fold his stool as the bishop stood. “Please give us your answer as soon as possible.” He was gone. The remaining exorcist stayed to show us out.
There were no more farcasters. We exited by the main door of the Temple and stood on the top step of the long staircase, looking down on the Concourse Mall of Hive Center and breathing in the cool, oil-scented air.
My father’s automatic was in the drawer where I’d left it. I made sure there was a full load of flechettes, palmed the magazine back in, and carried the weapon into the kitchen where breakfast was cooking. Johnny sat at the long table, staring down through gray windows at the loading dock. I carried the omelets over and set one in front of him. He looked up as I poured the coffee.
“Do you believe him?” I asked. “That it was your idea?”
“You saw the video recording.”
“Recordings can be faked.”
“Yes. But this one wasn’t.”
“Then why did you volunteer to go on this pilgrimage? And why did your bodyguard try to kill you after you talked to the Shrike Church and the Templar captain?”
Johnny tried the omelet, nodded, and took another forkful. “The … bodyguard … is a complete unknown to me. He must have been assigned to me during the week lost to memory. His real purpose obviously was to make sure that I did not discover something … or, if I did stumble upon it, to eliminate me.”
“Something in the Web or in datumplane?”
“In the Web, I presume.”
“We need to know who he … it … worked for and why they assigned him to you.”
“I do know,” said Johnny. “I just asked. The Core responds that I requested a bodyguard. The cybrid was controlled by an AI nexus which corresponds to a security force.”
“Ask why he tried to kill you.”
“I did. They emphatically deny that such a thing is possible.”
“Then why was this so-called bodyguard slinking around after you a week after the murder?”
“They respond that while I did not request security again after my … discontinuity … the Core authorities felt that it would be prudent to provide protection.”
I laughed. “Some protection. Why the hell did he run on the Templar world when I caught up to him? They aren’t even trying to give you a plausible story, Johnny.”
“No.”
“Nor did the bishop explain how the Shrike Church had farcaster access to Old Earth … or whatever you call that stage-set world.”
“And we did not ask.”
“I didn’t ask because I wanted to get out of that damn Temple in one piece.”
Johnny didn’t seem to hear. He was sipping his coffee, his gaze focused somewhere else.
“What?” I said.
He turned to look at me, tapping his thumbnail on his lower lip. “There is a paradox here, Brawne.”
“What?”
“If it was truly my aim to go to Hyperion … for my cybrid to travel there … I could not have remained in the TechnoCore. I would have had to invest all consciousness in the cybrid itself.”
“Why?” But even as I asked I saw the reason.
“Think. Datumplane itself is an abstract. A comm
ingling of computer and AI-generated dataspheres and the quasi-perceptual Gibsonian matrix designed originally for human operators, now accepted as common ground for man, machine, and AI.”
“But AI hardware exists, somewhere in real space,” I said. “Somewhere in the TechnoCore.
“Yes, but that is irrelevant to the function of AI consciousness,” said Johnny. “I can ‘be’ anywhere the overlapping dataspheres allow me to travel … all of the Web worlds, of course, datumplane, and any of the TechnoCore constructs such as Old Earth … but it’s only within that milieu that I can claim ‘consciousness’ or operate sensors or remotes such as this cybrid.”
I set my coffee cup down and stared at the thing I had loved as a man during the night just past. “Yes?”
“The colony worlds have limited dataspheres,” said Johnny. “While there is some contact with the TechnoCore via fatline transmissions, it is an exchange of data only … rather like the First Information Age computer interfaces … rather than a flow of consciousness. Hyperion’s datasphere is primitive to the point of nonexistence. And from what I can access, the Core has no contact whatsoever with that world.”
“Would that be normal?” I asked. “I mean with a colony world that far away?”
“No. The Core has contact with every colony world, with such interstellar barbarians as the Ousters, and with other sources the Hegemony could not imagine.”
I sat stunned. “With the Ousters?” Since the war on Bressia a few years earlier, the Ousters had been the Web’s prime bogeymen. The idea of the Core … the same congregation of AIs which advises the Senate and the All Thing and which allow our entire economy, farcaster system, and technological civilization to run … the idea of the Core being in touch with the Ousters was frightening. And what the hell did Johnny mean by “other sources”? I didn’t really want to know right then.
“But you said it is possible for your cybrid to travel there?” I said. “What did you mean by ‘investing all consciousness’ in your cybrid? Can an AI become … human? Can you exist only in your cybrid?”