by Dan Simmons
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 commingling 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 Techno-Core 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 allows 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?”
“It has been done,” Johnny said softly. “Once. A personality reconstruction not too different from my own. A twentieth-century poet named Ezra Pound. He abandoned his AI persona and fled from the Web in his cybrid. But the Pound reconstruction was insane.”
“Or sane,” I said.
“Yes.”
“So all of the data and personality of an AI can survive in a cybrid’s organic brain.”
“Of course not, Brawne. Not one percent of one percent of my total consciousness would survive the transition. Organic brains can’t process even the most primitive information the way we can. The resultant personality would not be the AI persona… neither would it be a truly human consciousness or cybrid…” Johnny stopped in mid-sentence and turned quickly to look out the window.
After a long minute I said, “What is it?” I reached out a hand but did not touch him.
He spoke without turning. “Perhaps I was wrong to say that the consciousness would not be human,” he whispered. “It is possible that the resulting persona could be human touched with a certain divine madness and meta-human perspective. It could be… if purged of all memory of our age, of all consciousness of the Core… it could be the person the cybrid was programmed to be…”
“John Keats,” I said.
Johnny turned away from the window and closed his eyes. His voice was hoarse with emotion. It was the first time I had heard him recite poetry:
“Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
A paradise for a sect, the savage too
From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep
Guesses at Heaven; pity these have not
Traced upon vellum or wild Indian leaf
The shadows of melodious utterance.
But bare of laurel they live, dream, and die;
For Poesy alone can tell her dreams,
With the fine spell of words alone can save
Imagination from the sable charm
And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say,
“Thou art no Poet—mayst not tell thy dreams”?
Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved,
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.
Whether the dream now purposed to rehearse
Be Poet’s or Fanatic’s will be known
When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What does it mean?”
“It means,” said Johnny, smiling gently, “that I know what decision I made and why I made it. I wanted to cease being a cybrid and become a man. I wanted to go to Hyperion. I still do.”
“Somebody killed you for that decision a week ago,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to try again?”
“Yes.”
“Why not invest consciousness in your cybrid here? Become human in the Web?”
“It would never work,” said Johnny. “What you see as a complex interstellar society is only a small part of the Core reality matrix. I would be constantly confronted with and at the mercy of th
e AIs. The Keats persona… reality… would never survive.”
“All right,” I said, “you need to get out of the Web. But there are other colonies. Why Hyperion?”
Johnny took my hand. His fingers were long and warm and strong. “Don’t you see, Brawne? There is some connection here. It may well be that Keats’s dreams of Hyperion were some sort of transtemporal communication between his then persona and his now persona. If nothing else, Hyperion is the key mystery of our age—physical and poetic—and it is quite probable that he… that I was born, died, and was born again to explore it.”
“It sounds like madness to me,” I said. “Delusions of grandeur.”
“Almost certainly,” laughed Johnny. “And I never have been happier!” He grabbed my arms and brought me to my feet, his arms around me. “Will you go with me, Brawne? Go with me to Hyperion?”
I blinked in surprise, both at his question and the answer, which filled me like a rush of warmth. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll go.”
We went into the sleeping area then and made love the rest of that day, sleeping finally to awaken to the low light of Shift Three in the industrial trench outside.
Johnny was lying on his back, his hazel eyes open and staring at the ceiling, lost in thought. But not so lost he did not smile and put his arm around me. I nestled my cheek against him, settling into the small curve where shoulder meets chest, and went back to sleep.
I was wearing my best clothes—a suit of black whipcord, a blouse woven of Renaissance silk with a Carvnel blood-stone at the throat, a cocked Eulin Bré tricorne—when Johnny and I farcast to TC2 the next day. I left him in the wood and brass bar near the central terminex, but not before I slid Dad’s automatic across to him in a paper bag and told him to shoot anyone who even looked cross-eyed at him.
“Web English is such a subtle tongue,” he said.
“That phrase is older than the Web,” I said. “Just do it.” I squeezed his hand and left without looking back.
I took a skycab to the Administration Complex and walked my way through about nine security checks before they let me into the Center grounds. I walked the half klick across Deer Park, admiring the swans in the nearby lake and the white buildings on the hilltop in the distance, and then there were nine more checkpoints before a Center security woman led me up the flagstoned path to Government House, a low, graceful building set amid flower gardens and landscaped hills. There was an elegantly furnished waiting room but I barely had time to sit down on an authentic pre-Hegira de Kooning before an aide appeared and ushered me into the CEO’s private office.
Meina Gladstone came around the desk to shake my hand and show me to a chair. It was strange to see her in person again after all those years of watching her on HTV. She was even more impressive in the flesh: her hair was cut short but seemed to be blowing back in gray-white waves; her cheeks and chin were as sharp and Lincolnesque as all the history-prone pundits insisted, but it was the large, sad, brown eyes which dominated the face and made one feel as if he or she were in the presence of a truly original person.
I found that my mouth was dry. “Thank you for seeing me, M. Executive. I know how busy you are.”
“I’m never too busy to see you, Brawne. Just as your father was never too busy to see me when I was a junior senator.”
I nodded. Dad had once described Meina Gladstone as the only political genius in the Hegemony. He knew that she would be CEO someday despite her late start in politics. I wished Dad had lived to see it.
“How is your mother, Brawne?”
“She’s well, M. Executive. She rarely leaves our old summer place on Freeholm anymore but I see her every Christmas Fest.”
Gladstone nodded. She had been sitting casually on the edge of a massive desk which the tabloids said had once belonged to an assassinated President—not Lincoln—of the pre-Mistake USA, but now she smiled and went around to the simple chair behind it. “I miss your father, Brawne. I wish he were in this administration. Did you see the lake when you came in?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember sailing toy boats there with my Kresten when you were both toddlers?”
“Just barely, M. Executive. I was pretty young.”
Meina Gladstone smiled. An intercom chimed but she waved it into silence. “How can I help you, Brawne?”
I took a breath. “M. Executive, you may be aware that I’m working as an independent private investigator…” I didn’t wait for her nod. “A case I’ve been working on recently has led me back to Dad’s suicide…”
“Brawne, you know that was investigated most thoroughly. I saw the commission’s report.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I did too. But recently I’ve discovered some very strange things about the TechnoCore and its attitude toward the world Hyperion. Weren’t you and Dad working on a bill that would have brought Hyperion into the Hegemony Protectorate?”
Gladstone nodded. “Yes, Brawne, but there were over a dozen other colonies being considered that year. None were allowed in.”
“Right. But did the Core or the AI Advisory Council take a special interest in Hyperion?”
The CEO tapped a stylus against her lower lip. “What kind of information do you have, Brawne?” I started to answer but she held up a blunt finger. “Wait!” She keyed an interactive. “Thomas, I’ll be stepping out for a few minutes. Please be sure that the Sol Draconi trade delegation is entertained if I fail a bit behind schedule.”
I didn’t see her key anything else but suddenly a blue and gold farcaster portal hummed into life near the far wall. She gestured me to go through first.
A plain of gold, knee-high grass stretched to horizons which seemed farther away than most. The sky was a pale yellow with burnished copper streaks which may have been clouds. I didn’t recognize the world.
Meina Gladstone stepped through and touched the comlog design on her sleeve. The farcaster portal winked out. A warm breeze blew spice scents to us.
Gladstone touched her sleeve again, glanced skyward, and nodded. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, Brawne. Kastrop-Rauxel has no datasphere or sats of any kind. Now please go ahead with what you were saying. What kind of information have you come across?”
I looked around at the empty grasslands. “Nothing to warrant this security… probably. I’ve just discovered that the TechnoCore seems very interested in Hyperion. They’ve also built some sort of analog to Old Earth… an entire world!”
If I expected shock or surprise I was disappointed.
Gladstone nodded. “Yes. We know about the Old Earth analog.”
I was shocked. “Then why hasn’t it even been announced? If the Core can rebuild Old Earth, a lot of people would be interested.”
Gladstone began walking and I strolled with her, walking faster to keep up with her long-legged strides.
“Brawne, it would not be in the Hegemony’s interest to announce it. Our best human intelligence sources have no idea why the Core is doing such a thing. They have offered no insight. The best policy now is to wait. What information do you have about Hyperion?”
I had no idea whether I could trust Meina Gladstone, old times or not.
But I knew that if I was going to get information I would have to give some. “They built an analog reconstruction of an Old Earth poet,” I said, “and they seem obsessed with keeping any information about Hyperion away from him.”
Gladstone picked a long stem of grass and sucked on it.
“The John Keats cybrid.”
“Yes.” I was careful not to show surprise this time. “I know that Dad was pushing hard to get Protectorate status for Hyperion. If the Core has some special interest in the place, they may have had something to do… may have manipulated…”
“His apparent suicide?”
“Yeah?”
The wind moved gold grass in waves. Something very small scurried away in the stalks at our feet. “It is not beyond the realm of possibility, Brawne. But there was absolutely no evidence. Tell me wha
t this cybrid is going to do.”
“First tell me why the Core is so interested in Hyperion.”
The older woman spread her hands. “If we knew that, Brawne, I would sleep much easier nights. As far as we know, the TechnoCore has been obsessed with Hyperion for centuries. When CEO Yevshensky allowed King Billy of Asquith to recolonize the planet, it almost precipitated a true secession of AIs from the Web. Recently the establishment of our fatline transmitter there brought about a similar crisis.”
“But the AIs didn’t secede.”
“No, Brawne, it appears that, for whatever reason, they need us almost as badly as we need them.”
“But if they’re so interested in Hyperion, why don’t they allow it into the Web so they can go there themselves?”
Gladstone ran a hand through her hair. The bronze clouds far above rippled in what must be a fantastic jet stream. “They are adamant about Hyperion not being admitted to the Web,” she said. “It is an interesting paradox. Tell me what the cybrid is going to do.”
“First tell me why the Core is obsessed with Hyperion.”
“We do not know for sure.”
“Best guess then.”
CEO Gladstone removed the stem of grass from her mouth and regarded it.
“We believe that the Core is embarked on a truly incredible project which would allow them to predict… everything. To handle every variable of space, time, and history as a quantum of manageable information.”
“Their Ultimate Intelligence Project,” I said, knowing that I was being careless and not caring.
This time CEO Gladstone did register shock. “How do you know about that?”
“What does that project have to do with Hyperion?”
Gladstone sighed. “We don’t know for sure, Brawne. But we do know that there is an anomaly on Hyperion which they have not been able to factor into their predictive analyses. Do you know about the so-called Time Tombs that the Shrike Church holds holy?”
“Sure. They’ve been off limits to tourists for a while.”
“Yes. Because of an accident to a researcher there a few decades ago, our scientists have confirmed that the anti-entropic fields around the Tombs are not merely a protection against time’s erosive effects as has been widely believed.”
