Дэн Симмонс: Endymion

“It’s built for professionals to fly,” said Aenea. “We just need a professional pilot.”

“You have one,” chirped the comlog. It was speaking in its own voice.

“You know how to fly a ship?” I said suspiciously.

“In essence, I am a ship,” the comlog said primly. The clasp panel clicked open. “Please connect the red filament jack to any red interface port.”

I connected it to the console. Immediately the panel came alive, monitors glowed, instruments checked in, the dropship’s ventilators hummed, and the omnicontroller twitched. A flat-screen monitor in the center of the dash glowed yellow, and the comlog’s voice said, “Where do you wish to go, M. Endymion? M. Aenea?”

The girl spoke first. “The next farcaster,” she said softly. “The last farcaster.”

It was daylight on the other side. We hovered above the stream and moved forward slowly. The comlog had shown us how to use the controllers while it ran all the rest of the ship’s systems and kept us from making stupid mistakes. Aenea and I glanced at each other and inched the dropship over the treetops. Unless the hell-woman could transit a farcaster portal, we were safe.

It felt strange making our last farcaster shift without the raft, but the raft would not have worked here anyway. The River Tethys had become little more than a trickling stream between deep banks—the creek could not have been more than eight or ten centimeters deep and only three or four meters wide. It meandered through heavily wooded countryside. The trees were strange, but familiar at the same time… mostly deciduous like champa or weirwood, but broadleafed and expansive like halfoak. The leaves were bright yellow and brilliant red, and carpets of them lined the banks of the streambed.

The sky was a pleasant blue—not as deep blue as Hyperion’s, but deeper than most earthlike worlds we had seen on this trip. The sun was large and bright but not overpowering.

Sunlight came through the windscreen and fell across our laps.

“I wonder what it’s like out there,” I said.

The comlog… ship… whatever it was now, must have thought I was talking to it. The central monitor pulsed and data began to flow down it.

Atmosphere: 0.77 N 2

0.21 O 2

0.009 Ar

0.0003 CO 2

variable H 2O (-0.01)

Surface pressure: 0.986 bar

Magnetic field: 0.318 gauss

Mass: 5.976 x 10 24kg

Escape velocity: 11.2 km/s

Surface gravity: 9.80 m/s

Tilt angle of magnetic axis: 11.5°

Dipole moment: 7.9 x 10 25gauss/cm 3

“That’s strange,” said the ship. “An improbable coincidence.”

“What?” I said, already knowing.

“These planetary data match almost perfectly with my database for Old Earth,” said the ship. “It is very unusual for any world to match so closely with—”

“Stop!” screamed Aenea, pointing out the windscreen. “Land! Please, now.”

I would have smashed into trees on the way down, but the ship took over, found us a flat, rocky spot within twenty meters of the tree-lined streambed, and set us down without a bump. Aenea was punching the air-lock combination while I was still staring out the windscreen at the flat roof of the house beyond the trees.

She was down the ladder before I could talk to her. I paused to check the autosurgeon, was pleased to see several of the lights switched to green, and said to the ship, “Watch over him. Keep everything ready for a quick getaway.”

“I shall, M. Endymion.”

We came at the house from downstream and across the stream from it. The building is hard to describe, but I will try.

The house itself was built out over a modest waterfall that spilled only three or four meters to a small natural pool beneath. Yellow leaves floated in the pool before being whisked away downstream on the quickening current. The most noticeable features of the house were the thin roofs and rectangular terraces that seemed to hang out over the stream and waterfall as if defying gravity. The house appeared to be built of stone and glass, concrete and some steel. To the left of the slabs of terrace, a stone wall rose three floors with a glass-cornered window rising in it almost the entire height. The metal framework around those windows was painted a gentle orange.

“Cantilevered,” said Aenea.

“What?”

“That’s what the architect calls those overhanging terraces,” she said. “Cantilevered. They echo the limestone ledges that have been here for millions of years.”

I paused in our walk to look at her. The dropship was out of sight beyond the trees behind us. “This is your house,” I said. “The one you dreamed of before you were born.”

“Yes.” Her lips were trembling slightly. “I even know its name now, Raul. Fallingwater.”

I nodded and sniffed the air. The scent was rich with decaying leaves, living plants, rich soil, water, and a certain tang to the air. It was very different from Hyperion’s air, but it somehow smelled like home. “Old Earth,” I whispered. “Can it be?”

“Just… Earth,” said Aenea. She touched my hand. “Let’s go in.”

We crossed the stream on a small bridge upstream from the house, crunched our way up a gravel drive, and entered through a loggia and narrow entranceway. It was like coming into a comfortable cave.

Pausing in the large living room, we called, but no one answered. Aenea walked across the open space as if in a trance, running her fingers over wood and stone surfaces, exclaiming at small discoveries.

The floor was carpeted in places, bare stone in others. Books filled low shelves in at least one alcove, but I did not take time to check the titles. Metal shelves ran under the low ceiling, but these were empty—perhaps just a design element. The far wall was taken up by a huge fireplace. The hearth was of rough stone—perhaps the top of the boulder upon which the house seemed to balance—and ran out two meters or so from the fireplace.

A large fire was crackling in the fireplace, despite the warmth of the sunny autumn day. I called again, but the silence was heavy. “They were expecting us,” I said, making a weak joke. The only weapon I had now was the flashlight laser in my pocket.

“Yes, they were,” said Aenea. She went over to the left of the fireplace and placed her small hands on a metal sphere that was set into its own hemispherical niche in the stone wall. The sphere was a meter and a half or so in diameter and was painted a rich, rusty red.

“The architect meant this as a kettle to heat wine in,” Aenea said softly. “It was only used once… and the wine was heated in the kitchen and brought here. It’s too big. And the paint is probably toxic.”

“This is the architect you’re looking for?” I said. “The one you plan to study with?”

“Yes.”

“I thought he was a genius. Why would he make a wine kettle too big and too toxic to use?”

Aenea turned and smiled. No—she grinned. “Geniuses screw up, Raul. Look at our trip if you need proof. Come on, let’s look around.”

The terraces were lovely, the view from above the little waterfall pleasant. Inside, the ceilings and overhangs were low, but that just gave one more of a sense of peering out of a cave into the green world of the forest through all that glass. In the living room again, a glass-and-metal hatchway folded back to steps—supported by bars from the floor above—which led down only to a larger cement platform over a pool in the stream above the waterfall.

“The plunge,” said Aenea, as if coming home to something very familiar.

“What’s it for?” I said, peering around.

“Nothing practical,” said Aenea. “But the architect considered it—and I quote—’absolutely necessary from every standpoint.’”