Ilium (29 page)

Odysseus drank his wine and watched the receding storm, apparently not interested in Savi’s explanations. The other four stared at her.

“Why,” said Ada, “that’s . . . that’s . . .”

“Insane,” said Daeman.

Savi smiled. “Yes.”

Harman cleared his throat and set down his coffee cup. “If we are destroyed every time we fax, Savi
Uhr,
how is it that we remember everything when we . . . arrive . . . somewhere else?” He held up his right arm. “And this small scar. I received it seven years ago, when I was ninety-two. Normally, these little problems are cleared up when we go the firmary every Twenty, but . . .” He stopped as if seeing the answer himself.

“Yes,” said Savi. “The machine-minds behind the faxportals remember your little imperfections, just as they do your memories and personality’s cell structure, sending the information—not you, but the
information
—from faxnode to faxnode, updating you and fixing your aging cells every twenty years—what you call your firmary visits—but why do you think you disappear on your hundredth birthday, Harman
Uhr
. Why do they quit renewing you when you reach a hundred? And where will you go on your next birthday?”

Harman said nothing but Daeman said, “To the rings, you foolish woman. On the Fifth Twenty, we all ascend to the rings.”

“To become post-humans,” said Savi, barely avoiding a sneer. “To ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of . . . someone.”

“Yes,” said Hannah, but she made it sound like a question.

“No,” said Savi. “I don’t know what happens to the memory patterns the logosphere keeps of you until you turn one hundred, but I know they don’t send the data to the rings. It may be stored, but I suspect it’s just destroyed. Scrambled.”

For the second time this long day, Ada felt as if she might faint. Still, she was the first to find her voice. “Why can’t you and Odysseus
Uhr
use the faxnodes, Savi
Uhr
? Or do you just choose not to?”
Choose not to be destroyed, to have the atoms of your body ripped apart like the bodies of the grazer and Terror Bird we were eating tonight
. Ada dipped her fingers in her water glass and touched her fingertips to her cheek.

“Odysseus can’t fax because the logosphere has no record of him,” Savi said softly. “His first attempt to fax would be his last.”

“Logosphere?” repeated Harman.

Savi shook her head again. “That’s a complicated topic. Too complicated for an old woman who’s had too much to drink today.”

“But you will explain it soon?” pressed Harman.

“I’ll
show
you all tomorrow,” said Savi. “Before we go our different ways again.”

Ada caught Harman’s eye. He could barely contain his excitement.

“But this logosphere . . . whatever it is,” said Hannah, “has a record of you? For the faxnodes? So you
could
fax?”

Savi showed her unhappy smile. “Oh, yes. It remembers me from more than fourteen hundred years ago and when I faxed every day of my life. The logosphere is waiting for me like some invisible Terror Bird . . . it would recognize me instantly if I were to try one of your regular fax portals. But that would be my last attempt as well.”

“I don’t understand,” said Hannah.

“Let’s put all this technical double-talk aside for a while,” said Savi. “Accept that neither Odysseus here, nor I, can use your precious fax portals. And if I visited your wonderful society by flying there, it would be my life.”

“Why?” asked Harman. “There’s no violence in our world. Other than the turin drama. And none of us believe that is real.” He looked pointedly at Odysseus, but the gray-haired man did not respond in any way.

Savi sipped her wine. “Just believe me when I say that to show myself openly would be death. Also believe me that it is imperative that Odysseus be allowed to meet people, to speak to them, to be heard. If I were to fly you back, would one of you host him at your home for a few weeks? A month?”

“Three weeks,” interrupted Odysseus, sounding brusque, as if hearing himself spoken about as if he weren’t there had irritated him. “No more.”

“All right,” said Savi. “Three weeks. Will any of you offer three weeks of hospitality to this stranger in a strange land?”

“Wouldn’t Odysseus be in danger in the same way you are?” asked Daeman.

“Odysseus
Uhr
can take care of himself,” said Savi.

The four were silent a minute, trying to understand the request and the circumstances of the request. Finally Harman said, “I’d like to host Odysseus, but I also want to visit this place you said might have spacecraft, Savi
Uhr
. My goal is to get to the rings. And as you pointed out, I’m approaching my final Twenty—I don’t have any time to waste. I’d rather spend the time finding this drained sea where you say the post-humans kept something that can fly to the e- and p-rings. Perhaps if you showed me how to pilot your sonie . . .”

Savi rubbed her brow as if her head hurt. “The Mediterranean Basin? You can’t fly there, Harman
Uhr
.”

“You mean it’s forbidden?”

“No,” said Savi. “I mean you
can’t
fly there. The sonies and other flying machines won’t work over the Basin.” She paused and looked around the table. “But it’s possible to hike or drive into the Basin. I’ve tried and failed to go there over centuries, but I can lead you there.
If
one of your friends agrees to host Odysseus for three weeks.”

“I want to go with you and Harman,” said Ada.

“So do I,” said Daeman. “I want to see this Whatchamacallit Basin.”

Harman looked at the younger man in surprise.

“To hell with it,” said Daeman. “I’m no coward. I’ll wager that I’m the only one here who’s been eaten by an allosaurus.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Odysseus, and drained the last of his wine.

Savi looked at Hannah. “That leaves you, my dear.”

“I’d be happy to host Odysseus,” said the young woman. “But I don’t fax that much or go to parties. I live with my mother and she doesn’t host groups that often either.”

“No, that won’t work, I’m afraid,” said Savi. “Odysseus only has three weeks and we need to start with a place that is well known and where many can stay for weeks on end. Actually, Ardis Hall would have been perfect.” She looked at Ada.

“How do you know about Ardis Hall, Savi
Uhr
?” asked Ada. “For that matter, how do you know about Harman’s reading or anything about the world, if you cannot walk among us or use the faxnodes?”

“I do watch,” said the older woman. “I watch and wait and sometimes fly to places where I can mingle with you.”

“The Burning Man,” said Hannah.

“Yes, among other places,” said Savi. She looked around the table and said, “You all look exhausted. Why don’t I show you to your rooms so you can get a good night’s sleep? We’ll continue the conversation in the morning. Just leave the dishes, I’ll clear them and wash them later.”

The idea of picking up or washing dishes had never occurred to the guests. Once again, Ada looked around and felt the absence of servitors and voynix.

Ada wanted to protest this enforced bedtime—they’d not yet heard Odysseus tell his tale—but she looked at her friends—Hannah hollow-eyed with fatigue, Daeman drunk and barely able to keep his head up, Harman’s face showing his age—and felt the exhaustion working at her as well. It had been one hell of a day. It was time to sleep.

Odysseus stayed at the table as Savi led the other four from the dining room, down hallways lighted only by the diminishing lightning, up a glass-covered escalator that wound around the Golden Gate tower, and down a long corridor to a series of bubble-rooms at the highest point on the north tower. These sleeping rooms were not physically attached to the tower top, only to the glass corridor that had bridge steel as its south wall, and the sleeping cubbies themselves protruded precariously into space, like clusters of green grapes.

Savi was offering them all separate sleep-bubbles, and gestured Hannah into the first room along the corridor. The young woman hesitated at the entrance to the small space. Inside the sleeping cubbie, even the floor was transparent, so that Hannah took one step forward and then hopped quickly backward into the relative solidity of the carpeted access hall.

“It’s perfectly safe,” said Savi.

“All right,” said Hannah and tried again. The bed was set against the far wall and there was a privately partitioned toilet and sink space near the corridor wall, ensuring privacy from the viewpoint of the other sleep bubbles, but elsewhere the curving walls and floor were so clear that you could look down eight hundred feet to the lightning-illuminated stones and hillside directly below.

Hannah walked gingerly across the clear floor and settled gratefully onto the solid shape of the bed. The other three laughed and applauded. “If I have to go to the toilet in the night, I may not have the nerve to cross that floor again,” said Hannah.

“You’ll get used to it, Hannah
Uhr,
” said Savi. “You may close and open the door by voice command and it is keyed to your voice only.”

“Door, close,” said Hannah.

The door irised closed. Savi dropped them off one at a time in their cubbies—first Daeman, who staggered to his bed with no apparent fear of the empty space under his feet, then Harman, who wished them both good night before ordering his door closed, then Ada.

“Sleep well, my dear,” said Savi. “The sunrises here are rather beautiful and I hope you enjoy the view in the morning. I shall see you at breakfast.”

There were fresh silk sleeping clothes set out on her bed. Ada went into the toilet area, took a quick hot shower, dried her hair, left her clothes on the counter next to the sink, dressed in the silk sleeping gown, and returned to the bed. Once under the covers, she turned her face to the wall and looked out at the mountain peaks and cloud tops. The thunderstorm had passed on to the east now, the lightning illuminated the receding clouds from within, and now the nearby peaks and grassy saddle were illuminated by moonlight. Ada looked down at the roadway and stone ruins so far below. What had Oysseus said about that place? That it was inhabited only by jaguars, chipmunks, and ghosts? Looking at the ancient pale-gray stones in the moonlight, Ada almost believed in the ghosts.

There came a soft tapping at her door.

Ada slipped from the bed and tiptoed across the cold floor, setting her fingertips against the irised metal. “Who is it?”

“Harman.”

Ada’s heart thudded in her chest. She had been hoping, silently wishing, that Harman would join her tonight. “Door open,” she whispered, stepping back, noting in the wall’s reflection how milky her arms and thin gown looked in the moonlight.

Harman stepped just inside and paused as Ada whispered the door closed again. Harman was wearing only blue silk sleep garb. She waited for him to embrace her, to lift her in his arms and carry her to the soft bed against the clear, curved wall. What would it be like, she wondered, to make love as if one were floating above these clouds, these mountains?

“I needed to talk to you,” Harman said softly.

Ada nodded.

“I think it’s important that Odysseus be in the right place the next few weeks,” he said. “And I don’t think that Hannah’s mother’s cubbie is the right place.”

Feeling foolish, Ada folded her arms across her breasts. She imagined that she could feel the cold night air of the high mountains through the glass under her feet. “You don’t know what Odysseus wants to do or why,” she whispered.

“No, but if he’s really Odysseus, it may be
very
important. And Savi’s right . . . Ardis Hall is the perfect place for him to meet people.”

Ada felt anger coil in her. Who was this man to tell her what to do? “If you think it’s so important that he be hosted somewhere,” she said, “why don’t you invite him to
your
home as
your
guest?”

“I don’t have a home,” said Harman.

Ada blinked at this, trying to understand. She couldn’t.
Everyone
had a home.

“I’ve been traveling for many years,” said Harman. “I own only what I carry, except for the books I’ve collected, which I store in an empty cubby in Paris Crater.”

Ada opened her mouth to speak but could think of nothing to stay. Harman took a step closer, so close that Ada could smell the male and soap scent of him. He had also showered before coming to her room.
Will we make love after this conversation?
thought Ada, feeling her anger slip away as quickly as it came.

“I need to go to the Mediterranean Basin with Savi,” said Harman. “I’ve been hunting for a way to get to the e- and p-rings for more than sixty years, Ada. To be so close . . . well, I have to go.”

Ada felt the anger flare again. “But I want to
go with you.
I want to see this Basin . . . find a spaceship, go to the rings. It’s why I’ve helped you the last few weeks.”

“I know,” whispered Harman. He touched her arm. “And I want you to go with me. But this thing with Odysseus may be important.”

“I know, but . . .”

“And Hannah just doesn’t know that many people. Or have the space to host visitors.”

“I know, but . . .”

“And Ardis Hall
would
be perfect,” whispered Harman. He released his soft hold on Ada’s arm but still held her in the grip of his gaze. Ada was aware of the stars beyond the clear, curved ceiling above them.

“I know Ardis Hall would be perfect,” said Ada. She felt sad and torn between imperatives and people. “But we don’t even know what this Odysseus wants . . . or who he really is.”

“True,” whispered Harman. “But the best way to find out would be for you to host him while I hunt for a spaceship in the Mediterranean Basin. I promise you that if I find one that can get us to the rings, I’ll come get you before I go there.”

Ada hesitated before speaking again. Her face was raised slightly toward Harman’s, and she had the feeling that if they did not speak, he would kiss her.

Suddenly lightning flashed and thunder from the receding storm shook the green-glass structure. “All right,” Ada whispered. “I’ll host Odysseus and have Hannah as my helper at Ardis Hall for three weeks. But
only
if you promise to take me to the rings if you find a way to get there.”