by Дэн Симмонс
Albedo sighed. “As far as we can tell, the virus becomes contagious once the cruciform has died. Those who have been denied resurrection through contact with Aenea will spread the virus to others. Also, those who have never carried a cruciform can be vectors for this virus.”
“Is there any cure? Any immunization?” queried Lourdusamy.
“None,” said Albedo. “The Humanists have attempted for three centuries to create countermeasures. But because the Aenea virus is a form of autonomous nanotech, it designs its own optimum mutation vector. Our defenses can never catch up to it. Perhaps with our own legions of nanotech colonies released within humanity we could someday catch up with the Aenea virus and defeat it, but we Humanists abhor nanotechnology. And the sad fact is that all nanotech life is out of our control—out of anyone’s control. The essence of nanotech life’s evolution is autonomy, self-will, and goals which have nothing to do with those of the harboring life-form.”
“Humanity, you mean,” said Lourdusamy.
“Precisely.”
“Aenea’s first goal,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy, “or to be more precise—the first goal of her Core rogue element creators—is to destroy all cruciforms and thus destroy human resurrection.”
“Yes.”
“You mentioned three goals. What are the other two?”
“The second goal is to destroy the Church and the Pax… that is, all current human civilization,” said Albedo. “When the Aenea virus spreads, when resurrection is denied… with farcasters still not functional and the Gideon drive impractical for single life-span humans… that second goal will be accomplished. Humanity will return to the balkanized tribalism which followed the Fall.”
“And the third goal?” said Lourdusamy.
“The final goal is actually this Core element’s original goal,” said Councillor Albedo. “The destruction of the human species.”
It was CEO Anna Pelli Cognani who shouted. “That’s impossible! Even the destruction… kidnapping… of Old Earth or the Fall of the Farcasters did not wipe out humanity. Our species is too far-flung for such extinction. Too many worlds. Too many cultures.”
Albedo was nodding, but sadly. “That was true. Was. But the Aenea Plague will spread almost everywhere. The cruciform-killing viruses will have mutated to new stages. Human DNA will have been invaded everywhere. With the fall of the Pax, the Ousters will invade again… this time successfully. They have long since succumbed to nanotech mutation. They are no longer human. With no Church or Pax or Pax Fleet to protect humanity, the Ousters will seek out those pockets of surviving human DNA and infect them with the nanotech plague. The human species… as we have known it and as the Church has sought to protect it… will cease to exist within a few standard years.”
“And what will succeed it?” asked Cardinal Lourdusamy in a low rumble.
“No one knows,” said Albedo softly. “Not even Aenea or the Ousters or the rogue elements of the Core who have released this final plague. The nanotech life-form colonies will evolve according to their own agenda, fashioning the human form to their own whims, and only they will be in control of their destiny. But that destiny will no longer be human.”
“My God, my God,” said Kenzo Isozaki, amazed that he was speaking aloud. “What can we do? What can I do?”
Amazingly, it was His Holiness who answered.
“We have dreaded and fought this threatened plague for three hundred years,” His Holiness said softly, his sad eyes expressing more pain than his own. “Our first effort was to capture the child, Aenea, before she could spread the infection. We knew that she fled her era to ours not out of fear—we wished her no harm—but so that she could spread the virus across the Pax.
“Actually,” amended His Holiness, “we suspect that the child Aenea does not truly know the full effect her contagion will have on humanity. In some ways, she is the unknowing pawn of these rogue elements of the Core.”
It was CEO Hay-Modhino who suddenly spoke with vehemence. “We should have plasma-bombed Hyperion to cinders on the day she was scheduled to emerge from the Time Tombs. Sterilized the entire planet. Taken no chances.”
His Holiness took no umbrage at the unpardonable interruption. “Yes, our son, there are those who urged that. But the Church could no more be the cause of taking so many innocent lives than we could have authorized the death of the single girl. We conferred with the predictive elements of the Core… they saw that a Jesuit named Father Captain de Soya would be instrumental in her final capture… but none of our peaceful attempts to seize the child succeeded. Pax Fleet could have vaporized her ship four years ago, but it was under orders not to unless all else failed. So we continue to strive for containment of her viral invasion. What you must do, M. Isozaki—what you must all do—is continue to support the Church’s efforts, even as we intensify those efforts. M. Albedo?”
The gray man spoke again. “Imagine the coming plague as a forest fire on an oxygen-rich world. It will sweep everything before it unless we can contain it and then extinguish it. Our first effort is to remove the dead wood and brush—the inflammable elements—not necessary to the living forest.”
“The non-Christians,” murmured CEO Pelli Cognani.
“Precisely,” said Councillor Albedo.
“That is why they had to be terminated,” said the Grand Inquisitor. “All those thousands on the Saigon Maru. All those millions. All those billions.”
Pope Urban XVI raised his hand, in a command to silence rather than benediction this time. “Not terminated!” he said sternly. “Not a single life, not Christian, not non-Christian, has been taken.”
The dignitaries looked at one another in confusion.
“This is true,” said Councillor Albedo.
“But they were lifeless…” began the Grand Inquisitor and then stopped abruptly. “My profound apologies, Holy Father,” he said to the Pope.
His Holiness shook his mitered head. “No apology is required, John Domenico. These are emotional topics. Please explain, M. Albedo.”
“Yes, Your Holiness,” said the man in gray. “Those aboard the Saigon Maru were lifeless, Your Excellency, but not dead. The Core… the Humanist elements in the Core… have perfected a method of putting human beings in temporary stasis, neither alive nor dead…”
“Like cryogenic fugue?” said CEO Aron, who had traveled much by Hawking drive before his conversion.
Albedo shook his head. “Much more sophisticated. And less harmful.” He gestured with well-manicured fingers. “During the past seven years, we have processed seven billion human beings. In the next standard decade—or sooner—we must process more than forty-two billion more. There are many worlds in the Outback, and many even within Pax space, where non-Christians are in the majority.”
“Processed?” said CEO Pelli Cognani.
Albedo smiled grimly. “Pax Fleet declares a world quarantined without knowing the real reason for their actions. Core robot ships arrive in orbit and sweep the inhabited sections with our stasis equipment. Cor Unum provides the ships and funding and training. Opus Dei uses freighters to remove the bodies in stasis…”
“Why remove them?” asked the Grand Inquisitor. “Why not leave them on their homeworlds?”
His Holiness answered. “They must be hidden in a place where the Aenea Plague cannot find them, John Domenico. They must be carefully… lovingly… put out of harm’s way until the danger is past.”
The Grand Inquisitor bowed his head in understanding and compliance.
“There is more,” said Councillor Albedo. “My element of the Core has created a… breed of soldier… whose sole job is to find and capture this Aenea before she can spread the deadly contamination. The first one was activated four years ago and was called Rhadamanth Nemes. There are only a few others of these hunter-seekers, but they are equipped to deal with whatever obstacles the rogue elements of the Core throw at them… even the Shrike.”
“The Shrike is controlled by the Ultimates and other rogu
e elements of the Core?” asked Father Farrell. It was the first time the man had spoken.
“We think so,” answered Cardinal Lourdusamy. “The demon seems to be in league with the Aenea… helping her spread the contagion. In the same way, the Ultimates appear to have found a way to open certain farcaster portals for her. The Devil has found a name… and allies… in our age, I fear.”
Albedo held up one finger. “I should stress that even Nemes and our other hunter-seekers are dangerous… as are any constructs so terribly single-minded. Once the child is captured, these cybrid beings will be terminated. Only the terrible danger posed by the Aenea Plague justifies their existence.”
“Holy Father,” said Kenzo Isozaki, his hands pressed together in prayer, “what else can we do?”
“Pray,” said His Holiness. His dark eyes were wells of pain and responsibility. “Pray and support our Holy Mother Church in her effort to save humankind.”
“The Crusade against the Ousters will continue,” said Cardinal Lourdusamy. “We will hold them at bay as long as we can.”
“To that end,” said Councillor Albedo, “the Core has developed the Gideon drive and is working on new technologies for humanity’s defense.”
“We shall continue our search for the girl… young woman, now, I believe,” added Lourdusamy.
“And if she is apprehended, she will be isolated.”
“And if she is not apprehended, Your Excellency?” asked Grand Inquisitor Cardinal Mustafa.
Lourdusamy did not answer.
“We must pray,” said His Holiness. “We must ask for Christ’s help at this time of maximum danger for our Church and our human race. We must each do everything we can and then ask more of ourselves. And we must pray for the souls of all of our brothers and sisters in Christ—even for, especially for, the soul of the child Aenea who unwittingly leads her species into such peril.”
“Amen,” said Monsignor Lucas Oddi.
Then, while all the others in the small chapel knelt and bowed their heads, His Holiness, Pope Urban XVI, stood, moved to the altar, and began to say a Mass of Thanksgiving.
14
Aenea.
Her name came before any other conscious thought.
I thought of her before I thought to think of myself.
Aenea.
And then came the pain and noise and onslaught of wetness and buffeting. Mostly it was the pain that roused me. I opened one eye. The other appeared to be gummed shut with caked blood or other matter.
Before I remembered who or where I was, I felt the pain from innumerable bruises and cuts, but also from something far worse in my right leg. Then I remembered who I was. And then I remembered where I had been.
I laughed. Or more precisely, I tried to laugh. My lips were split and swollen and there was more blood or goo sealing one corner of my mouth. The laugh emerged as a sort of demented moan. I had been swallowed by some sort of aerial squid on a world all atmosphere and clouds and lightning.
Even now I was being digested in the noisy belly of the beast. It was noisy. Explosively so.
Rumbles, blasts, and a pounding, slapping noise. Like rain on a tropical forest canopy. I squinted through my one eye. Darkness… then a strobe of white light… darkness with red retinal echoes… more white strobes.
I remembered the tornadoes and planet-sized storm that had been coming toward me as I floated along in my kayak under the parasail before the beast swallowed me. But this was not that storm.
This was rain on a jungle canopy. The material batting at my face and chest was tattered nylon, the remains of the parasail, wet palm fronds, and pieces of shattered fiberglass. I squinted downward and waited for the next lightning flash. The kayak was there, but splintered and shattered. My legs were there… still partially ensconced in the kayak shell… the left leg intact and movable, but the right…
I cried out in pain. The right leg was definitely broken. I could see no bone breaking through the flesh, but I was sure that there was a fracture in the lower thigh. Otherwise I seemed intact. I was bruised and scratched. There was dried blood on my face and hands. My trousers were little more than rags. My shirt and vest were in tatters. But as I turned and arched my back, stretched my arms and flexed my fingers, wiggled the toes on my left foot and tried to wiggle those on my right, I thought that I was more or less in one piece… no broken back, no shattered ribs, no nerve damage except for possibly in my right leg where the agony was like barbed wire dragged through veins.
When the next flashes of lightning exploded, I tried to assess my surroundings. The broken kayak and I seemed to be stuck in a jungle canopy, wedged between splintered limbs, wrapped around with the tattered parasail and clinging shroud lines, being battered with palm fronds in a tropical storm, in a darkness broken only by lightning flashes, hanging some indeterminate distance above solid ground. Trees? Solid ground? The world I had been flying on had no solid ground… or at least none reachable without being compressed by pressure to something the size of my fist. And it seemed unlikely that there would be trees in the core of that Jovian world where hydrogen was squeezed to metal form. So I was not on that world. Nor was I still in the belly of the beast. Where was I? Thunder blasted around me like plasma grenades.
The wind came up, tossing the kayak in its precarious perch and making me scream aloud from the pain. I may have lost consciousness for a few moments, for when I opened my eyes again, the wind had died down and the rain was pummeling me like a thousand cold fists. I wiped the rain and matted blood from my eyes and realized that I was feverish, that my skin was burning even in that cold rain. How long have I been here? What vicious microbes have found my open wounds? What bacteria shared the gut of that airborne squid-thing with me? Logic would have dictated that the entire memory of flying on the Jovian cloud world and being taken in by a tentacled squid-thing had been a fever dream—that I had farcast here… wherever here was… after escaping Vitus-Gray-Balianus B and all the rest was dreamscape. But there were the remnants of the deployed parasail all around me in the wet night. And there was the vividness of my memories. And there was the logical fact that logic did not work on this odyssey. The wind shook the tree. The broken kayak slid along the precarious nest of shattered fronds and branches. My broken leg sent stabs of agony through me.
I realized that I had better apply some logic to this situation. At any moment the kayak was going to slide, or the branches would break, and the entire mass of shattered fiberglass, clinging nylon risers, and wet memory-canvas parasail tatters was going to crash down into the darkness, dragging me and my broken leg with it.
Despite the flashes of lightning… which came with less regularity now, leaving me in the pitching, wet darkness… I could see nothing below me except more branches, gaps of darkness, and the thick, gray-green trunks of trees that wound around themselves in a tight spiral. I did not recognize that sort of tree. Where am I? Aenea… where have you sent me now? I stopped that sort of thing. It was almost a form of prayer, and I was not going to get into the habit of praying to the girl I had traveled with and protected and eaten dinner with and argued with for four years. Still and all, I thought, you might have sent me to some less difficult places, kiddo. If you had a choice in the matter, I mean. Thunder rumbled but no lightning flashed to light the scene.
The kayak shifted and sagged, the broken bow tilting suddenly. I reached behind me and flailed around for the thick branch I had seen there during the earlier flashes of lightning. There were broken branches galore, razor-sharp splintered frond stems, and the sawtooth edges of the fronds themselves. I grabbed and pulled, trying to leverage my broken leg out of the broken cockpit of the kayak, but the branches were loose and I came only halfway out, reeling in nausea from the pain. I imagined that black dots were dancing in my vision, but the night was so dark that it made no difference. I retched over the side of the rocking kayak and tried again to find a firm handhold in the maze of splintered branches.
How the hell did I get in these
treetops, anyway? It did not matter. Nothing mattered at the moment except getting out of this mess of broken fiberglass and tangled shroud lines.
Get my knife, cut my way out of this clinging tangle.
My knife was gone. My belt was gone. The pockets of my vest had been ripped away and then the vest torn to a few tatters. My shirt was mostly gone. The flechette pistol I’d held like a talisman against the airborne cuttlefish-squid thing was gone… I dimly remembered it and my backpack dropping out when the passing tornado had ripped the parasail to shreds. Clothes, flashlight laser, ration pak… everything gone. Lightning flashed, although the thunder-rumble had moved farther away. My wrist glinted in the downpour. Comlog. That goddamn band must be indestructible.
What good would the comlog do me? I wasn’t sure, but it was better than nothing. Raising my left wrist close to my mouth in the drumming rain, I shouted, “Ship! Comlog on… Ship! Hey!”
No response. I remembered the device flashing overload warnings during the electrical storm on the Jovian world. Inexplicably, I felt a sense of loss. The ship’s memory in the comlog had been an idiot savant, at best, but it had been with me for a long time. I had grown used to its presence. And it had helped me fly the dropship that had carried us from Fallingwater to Taliesin West. And…
I shook away the nostalgia and thrashed around for a handhold again, finally clinging to the shroud lines that hung around me like thin vines. This worked. The parasail streamers must have caught firmly in the upper branches, and some of the shroud lines bore my weight as I scrabbled with my left foot on slick fiberglass to pull my dead leg from the wreckage. The pain made me black out again for a few moments… this was as bad as the kidney stone at its worst, only coming at me in jagged waves… but when my mind came back into focus, I was clinging to the spiral-wrapped trunk of the palm tree rather than lying in the wreckage. A few minutes later a microburst of wind bulled through the jungle canopy and the kayak fell away in pieces, some being arrested by the intact shroud lines, others tumbling and crashing into darkness.
