The Rise of Endymion hc-4

by Дэн Симмонс

  Farther out, the size of the largest life-forms and swarms of life-forms became apparent. From several thousand klicks “up,” I could see the shimmering herds of blue platelets, the sentient Akerataeli traveling together. After our first meeting here with the creatures from my cloud planet, I had asked Aenea if there were any more on the Biosphere Startree than the two in the conference.

  “A few more,” my friend had said. “About six hundred million more.” Now I could see the Akerataeli moving effortlessly on the air currents from trunk to trunk—hundreds of kilometers apart—in swarms of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.

  And with them came their obedient servants: the sky squids and zeplins and transparent medusae and vast, tendriled gas bags similar to the one that had eaten me on the cloud world. But larger. I had estimated that original monster as perhaps ten klicks long—these zeplinlike work beasts must have been several hundred klicks long, perhaps longer when one factored in the countless tentacles, tendrils, flagella, whips, tails, probes, and proboscises the things sported. I realized as I watched that all of the Akerataeli’s giant beasts of burden were busy with tasks—weaving branches and stems and pods into elaborate bio-designs, pruning dead branches and city-sized leaves from the Startree, wrestling Ouster-designed structures into place or hauling material from one part of the Biosphere to another.

  “How many zeplin things are the Akerataeli controlling on the Startree?” I asked Aenea when she was free for a second.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s ask Navson.”

  The Ouster said, “We have no idea. They breed as needed for tasks. The Akerataeli themselves are a perfect example of a swarm organism, a hive mind… none of the disc-entities alone is sentient… in parallel, they are brilliant. The sky squids and other ex-Jovian-world creatures have been reproducing as needed here for more than seven hundred standard years. I would venture that there are several hundred million working around the Biosphere… perhaps a billion at this point.”

  I stared down at the tiny forms on the dwindling Biosphere surface. A billion creatures each the size of the Pinion Plateau on my homeworld.

  Farther out and the gaps between the branches a million klicks overhead and a half million klicks underfoot became apparent enough. The section from which we had come was the oldest and densest, but far along the great inner curve of the Biosphere there were gaps and divisions—some planned, others yet to be filled in with living material. But even here space was busy and filled with motion—comets arcing between roots, branches, leaves, and trunks on precise trajectories, their gift of water being volatilized from the surface by Ouster-aimed and erg-powered heat beams from the trunks and from genetically adapted reflective leaves creating mirrors hundreds of klicks across. Once turned to water vapor, the great clouds drifted across the trailing roots and misted the billion square klicks of leaf surface.

  Larger than the comets were the scores of carefully placed asteroids and shepherd moons moving a few thousand or tens of thousands of kilometers above the inner and outer surface of the living sphere—correcting for orbital drift, providing tides and tugs to help the branches grow correctly, throwing shadow on the Biosphere’s inner surface where shade was needed, and serving as observation bases and work shacks for the countless Ouster and Templar gardeners who watched over the project from decade to decade and century to century.

  And now, a half a light-minute out and accelerating toward the sun as if the ship were searching for a Hawking-drive translation point, there appeared to be even more traffic in the vast hollow of the green sphere: Ouster warships, all obsolete by Pax standards, with Hawking-drive blisters or giant ramscoop containment fields, old-fashioned high-g destroyers and C3 ships from a long-gone era, elegant sunjammer cargo craft with great curved sails of gleaming monofilm—and everywhere the individual Ouster angels, wings flapping and shimmering as they tacked in toward the sun or hurtled back out toward the Biosphere.

  Aenea and the others stepped back inside to continue their discussion. The topic was important—still trying to find a way to stall the Pax from attacking, some sort of feint or distraction that would keep the massing fleet from hurling itself this way—but I had more important things on my mind. As A. Bettik turned to leave the balcony, I touched the android’s right sleeve.

  “Can you stay and talk a minute?”

  “Of course, M. Endymion.” The blue-skinned man’s voice was as gentle as always.

  I waited until we were alone on the balcony, the drone of conversation from within affording us privacy outside, and leaned on the railing.

  “I’m sorry we haven’t had more chance to talk since arriving here at the Startree,” I said.

  A. Bettik’s bald scalp gleamed in the rich sunlight. His blue-eyed gaze was calm and friendly. “That’s perfectly all right, M. Endymion. Events have proven quite hectic since our arrival. I do concur, however, that this artifact does cause one to find opportunities to discuss it.” He waved his remaining hand at the huge curve of the Startree to where it seemed to fade away near the central sun’s brilliance.

  “It’s not the Startree or the Ousters I want to talk about,” I said softly, leaning a bit closer.

  A. Bettik nodded and waited. “You were with Aenea on all of the worlds between Old Earth and T’ien Shan,” I said. “Ixion, Maui-Covenant, Renaissance Vector, and the others?”

  “Yes, M. Endymion. I had the privilege to travel with her during all the time she allowed others to travel with her.”

  I chewed my lip, realizing that I was about to make a fool of myself but having no choice.

  “And what about the time when she did not allow you to travel with her,” I said.

  “While M. Rachel, M. Theo, and the others remained with me on Groombridge Dyson D?” said A. Bettik. “We carried on with M. Aenea’s work, M. Endymion. I was especially busy working on the construction of…”

  “No, no,” I interrupted, “I mean what do you know about her absence?”

  A. Bettik paused. “Virtually nothing, M. Endymion. She had told us that she would be away for some time. She had made provisions for our employment and continued work with her… students. One day she was gone and she was to stay away for approximately two standard years…”

  “One year, eleven months, one week, six hours,” I said.

  “Yes, M. Endymion. That is precisely correct.”

  “And after she returned, she never told you where she had been?”

  “No, M. Endymion. As far as I know, she never mentioned it to any of us.”

  I wanted to grab A. Bettik’s shoulders, to make him understand, to explain why this was of life and death importance to me. Would he have understood? I didn’t know. Instead, attempting to sound calm, almost disinterested—and failing miserably—I said, “Did you notice anything different about Aenea when she returned from that sabbatical, A. Bettik?”

  My android friend paused, not, it seemed, out of hesitation to speak, but as if laboring to remember nuances of human emotion. “We left for T’ien Shan almost immediately after that, M. Endymion, but my best recollection is that M. Aenea was very emotional for some months—elated one minute, absolutely wracked with despair the next. By the time you arrived on T’ien Shan, these emotional swings had seemed to have abated.”

  “And she never mentioned what caused them?” I felt like a swine going behind my beloved’s back like this, but I knew that she would not talk to me about these things.

  “No, M. Endymion,” said the android. “She never talked to me about the cause. I presumed it was some event or events she experienced during her absence.”

  I took a deep breath. “Before she left… on the other worlds… Amritsar, Patawpha… any of the worlds before she left Groombridge Dyson D… had she… was she… had there been anyone?”

  “I don’t understand, M. Endymion.”

  “Was there a man in her life, A. Bettik? Someone she showed affection for? Someone who seemed especially close to her?”


  “Ah,” said the android. “No, M. Endymion, there seemed to be no male who showed any special interest in M. Aenea… other than as a teacher and possible messiah, of course.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And no one came back with her after the one year, eleven months, one week, and six hours?”

  “No, M. Endymion.”

  I gripped A. Bettik’s shoulder. “Thank you, my friend. I’m sorry I’m asking these stupid questions. It’s just that… I don’t understand… somewhere there’s a… shit, it doesn’t matter. It’s just stupid human emotion.” I turned to go in to join the others.

  A. Bettik stopped me with a hand on my wrist. “M. Endymion,” he said softly, “if love is the human emotion to which you refer, I feel that I have watched humankind long enough during my existence to know that love is never a stupid emotion. I feel that M. Aenea is correct when she teaches that it may well be the mainspring energy of the universe.”

  I stood and watched, gaping, as the android left the balcony and went into the crowded library level.

  They were close to making a decision.

  “I think we should send the Gideon-drive courier drone with a message,” Aenea was saying as I came into the lounge. “Send it direct and within the hour.”

  “They’ll confiscate the drone,” said Sian Quintana Ka’an in her musical contralto.

  “And it’s the only ship we have left with the instantaneous drive.”

  “Good,” said Aenea. “They’re an abomination. Every time they are used, part of the Void is destroyed.”

  “Still,” said Paul Uray, his thick Ouster dialect sounding like someone speaking through radio static, “there remains the option of using the drone as a delivery system.”

  “To launch nuclear warheads, or plasma weapons, against the armada?” said Aenea. “I thought that we had dismissed that possibility.”

  “It’s our only way of striking at them before they strike at us,” said Colonel Kassad.

  “It would do no good,” said the Templar True Voice of the Startree Ket Rosteen. “The drones are not built for precise targeting. An archangel-class warship would destroy it light-minutes away from target. I agree with the One Who Teaches. Send the message.”

  “But will the message stop their attack?” said Systenj Coredwell.

  Aenea made the little gesture that I knew so well. “There are no guarantees… but if it puts them off balance, at least they will use their instantaneous drive drones to postpone the attack. It is worth a try, I think.”

  “And what will the message say?” said Rachel.

  “Please hand me that vellum and stylus,” said Aenea.

  Theo brought the items and set them on the Steinway. Everyone—including me—crowded close as Aenea wrote:

  To Pope Urban XVI and Cardinal Lourdusamy: I am coming to Pacem, to the Vatican.

  Aenea

  “There,” said my young friend, handing the vellum to Navson Hamnim. “Please set this in the courier drone when we dock, set the transponder to “carrying hardcopy message,” and launch it to Pacem System.”

  The Ouster took the vellum. I had not yet developed the knack of reading the Ouster’s facial expressions, but I could tell that something was giving him pause. Perhaps it was a lesser form of the same sort of panic and confusion that was filling my chest at the moment.

  I am coming to Pacem. What the goddamn hell did that mean? How could Aenea go to Pacem and survive? She could not. And wherever she was going, I was certain of only one thing… that I would be at her side. Which meant that she was going to kill me as well, if she was as good as her word. Which she always had been. I am coming to Pacem. Was it just a ploy to deter their fleet? An empty threat… a way of stalling them? I wanted to shake my beloved until her teeth fell out or until she explained everything to me.

  “Raul,” she said, gesturing me closer.

  I thought that perhaps this was the explanation I wanted, that she was reading my expression from across the room and saw the turmoil within me, but all she said was, “Palou Koror and Drivenj Nicaagat are going to show me what it means to fly like an angel, do you want to come with me? Lhomo’s coming.”

  Fly like an angel? For a moment I was sure that she was speaking gibberish.

  “They have an extra skinsuit if you want to come,” Aenea was saying. “But we have to go now. We’re almost back to the Startree and the ship will be docking in a few minutes. Het Masteen has to get on with the loading and provisioning of the Yggdrasill and I have a hundred things to do before tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” I said, not knowing what I was agreeing to. “I’ll come along.” At the time I was feeling surly enough to think that this response was a wonderful metaphor for my entire ten-year odyssey: yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing or getting into, but count me in.

  One of the space-adapted Ousters, Palou Koror, handed us the skinsuits. I had used skinsuits before, of course—the last time being just a few weeks earlier when Aenea and I had climbed T’ai Shan, the Great Peak of the Middle Kingdom—although it seemed like months or years ago—but I had never seen or felt a skinsuit like these.

  Skinsuits go back many centuries, the working concept being that the best way to keep from exploding in vacuum is not a bulky pressure suit as in the earliest days of spaceflight, but a covering so thin that it allows perspiration to pass even while it protects the skin from the terrible heat, cold, and vacuum of space. Skinsuits had not changed much in all those centuries, except to incorporate rebreathing filaments and osmosis panels. Of course, my last skinsuit had been a Hegemony artifact, workable enough until Rhadamanth Nemes had clawed it to shreds.

  But this was no ordinary skinsuit. Silver, malleable as mercury, the thing felt like a warm but weightless blob of protoplasm when Palou Koror dropped it in my hand. It shifted like mercury. No, it shifted and flowed like a living, fluid thing. I almost dropped it in my shock, catching it with my other hand only to watch it flow several centimeters up my wrist and arm like some flesh-eating alien.

  I must have said something out loud, because Aenea said, “It is alive, Raul. The skinsuit’s an organism… gene-tailored and nanoteched… but only three molecules thick.”

  “How do I put it on?” I said, watching it flow up my arm to the sleeve of my tunic, then retreat. I had the impression that the thing was more carnivore than garment. And the problem with any skinsuit was that they had to be worn next to the skin: one did not wear layers under a skinsuit. Anywhere.

  “Uh-huh,” said Aenea. “It’s easy… none of the pulling and tugging we had to do with the old skinsuits. Just strip naked, stand very still, and drop the thing on your head. It’ll flow down over you. And we have to hurry.”

  This inspired something less than great enthusiasm in me.

  Aenea and I excused ourselves and jogged up the spiral stairs to the bedroom level at the apex of the ship. Once there we hurried out of our clothes. I looked at my beloved—standing naked next to the Consul’s ancient (and quite comfortable, as I remembered) bed—and was about to suggest a better use of our time before the treeship docked. But Aenea just waggled a finger at me, held the blob of silver protoplasm above her, and dropped it in her hair.

  It was alarming watching the silver organism engulf her—flowing down over her brown-blond hair like liquid metal, covering her eyes and mouth and chin, flowing down her neck like reflective lava, then covering her shoulders, breasts, belly, hipbones, pubis, thighs, knees… finally she lifted first one foot and then the other and the engulfment was complete. “Are you all right?” I said, my voice small, my own blob of silver still pulsing in my hand, eager to get at me.

  Aenea—or the chrome statue that had been Aenea—gave me a thumbs-up and gestured to her throat. I understood: as with the Hegemony skinsuits, communication from now on would be via subvocalization pickups.

  I lifted the pulsing mass in both hands, held my breath, closed my eyes, and dropped it on my head.

  It took less than five seconds. For a terrible in
stant I was sure that I could not breathe, feeling the slick mass over my nose and mouth, but then I remembered to inhale and the oxygen came cool and fresh.

  Can you hear me, Raul? Her voice was much more distinct than the hearpatch pickups on the old suit.

  I nodded, then subvocalized, Yeah. Weird feeling.

  Are you ready, M. Aenea, M. Endymion? It took me a second to realize that it was the other adapted Ouster, Drivenj Nicaagat on the suitline. I had heard his voice before, but translated via speech synthesizer. On the direct line, his voice was even more clear and melodious than the birdsong of Sian Quintana Ka’an.

  Ready, responded Aenea, and we went down the spiral stairs, through the throng, and out onto the balcony.

  Good luck, M. Aenea, M. Endymion. It was A. Bettik speaking to us through one of the ship’s comlinks. The android touched each of us on our respective silver shoulders as we stepped next to Koror and Nicaagat at the balcony railing.

  Lhomo was also waiting, his silver skinsuit showing every ridge of delineated muscle on his arms, thighs, and flat belly. I felt awkward for a moment, wishing either that I was wearing something over this micron-thin layer of silver fluid or that I worked harder at keeping in shape. Aenea looked beautiful, the body that I loved sculpted in chrome. I was glad that no one but the android had followed the five of us onto the balcony.

  The ship was within a couple thousand klicks of the Startree and decelerating hard. Palou Koror made a motion and jumped easily onto the thin balcony rail, balancing against the one-sixth-g. Drivenj Nicaagat followed suit, and then Lhomo, then Aenea, and finally—much less gracefully—I joined them. The sense of height and exposure was all but overwhelming—the great green basin of the Startree beneath us, the leafy walls rising into the unblinking distance on all sides, the bulk of the ship curving away beneath us, balancing on the slim column of fusion fire like a building teetering on a fragile blue column. I realized with a sickening feeling that we were going to jump.