Ahira's Hangar

no problem, duchess of malfi
thx again for all the research <i></i>

Now we come to Rise of Endymion where so many things come together...

Here are some bits from chapter 5, where Nemes and her hell-siblings are having a meeting on Svoboda with the Core Consul.
Quote:"The girl, Aenea, has returned to Pax space," said Albedo. "Where?" said Nemes's female sibling. There was something like eagerness in her voice. Councillor Albedo opened his hands. "The portal..." began Nemes. "Tells us nothing this time," said Councillor Albedo. His smile had not wavered. Nemes frowned at this. During all of the centuries of the hegemony's Worldweb, the Three Sectors of Counciousness of the Core had not found a way to use the Void portal - that instantaneous interface that humans had known as farcasters - without leaving a record of modulated neutrinos i nthe fold matrix. "The Something Else..." she said. "Of course,"said Albedo. He flicked his hand as if discarding the useless useless segment of this conversation. "But we can still register the connection. We feel sure that the girl is among those returning from Old Earth via the old farcaster network."

Quote:Briareus said, "The Shrike is no longer under the control of the UI?" Albedo opened hus hands a final time. "The gods of the future no longer whisper to us, my expensive friend. They was amongst themselves and the clamor of their battle echos back throug htime. If our god's work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves." He lloked a tthe foir clone-siblings. "Are we clear on instructions?" "Find the girl," said Scylla. "And?" said the Councillor. "Kill her at once," said Gyges. "No hesitation." "And is her disciples intervene?" said Albedo, smiling more broadly now, his voice the charicature of a human schoolteacher's. "Kill them," said Briareus. "And is ther Shrike appears?" he said, the smile suddenly fading. "Destroy it." said Nemes.

The possible futures have been in great flux since that conversation between the Keats AI and Ummon. At that point in time, during the events of the Fall, it seemed almost a certainty that the Machine God would rule in the future. But with the birth and survival of Aenea, that particular future is becoming more and more uncertain. And the Shrike, once called the servant of the Machine God seems to act in ways contrary to what the Core wishes... Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

Our first real meeting with the Shrike in Rise of Endymion occurs on one of my favorite worlds, Vitus-Gray-Balianus B. This is the peaceful homeworld of the Amoiete Spectrum Helix, a people who will be featured in the novellete Orphans of the Helix. Interestingly enough, The Shrike does battle on this most peaceful of planets against one of the Nemes quads -- to protect Raul this time, as Aenea is not even upon that planet...

We will now skip ahead to an important meeting between representatives of the Core and leaders of the Pax and its Mercantilus...here are some bits of conversation...and we must take everything with a grain of salt, given that its source is the Core...

Quote:"Our elements of the Core - elements devoted to preserving not only the human race but some sort of alliance with your species - destroyed one iteration of the John Keats cybrid, but a second was created and succeded i nits primary mission. And that mission was - to reproduce with a specific human female and create a "messiah" with connections to both the Core and Humanity. That "messiah" lives now in the form of the child named Aenea. Born on Hyperion more than three centuries ago, that child fled through the Time Tombs to our age. She did not do so out of fear - we would not have harmed her - but because her mission is to destroy the Church, destroy the Pax civilization, and to end the human race as you have known it.

Quote:"There is more." said Councillor Albedo. "My element of the Core has created a ...breeed of soldier...whose sole job is to find and capture this Aenea before she can spread the deadly contagion. 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 rogue elements of the Core?" asked Father farrel. 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...hjelping her spread the contagion. I nthe 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 constructc 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."

Quote:"Three centuries ago, extreme factions of the Core - a society of autonomous intelligences ravaged and torn by eight centuries of violent debate and conflict - tried a new tack. They devised the cybrid creature known as John Keats - a human personality imbedded in an AI persona carried in a human body connected to the Core via Planvck-space interface. The Keats persona had many purposes - as a sort of trap for wha tthe UIs considered the "empathy" element of an emerging human species UI, as a prime mover to set the events in motion which eventually led to the last Hyperion pilgrimage and the opening of the time Tombs there, to flush the Shrike out of hiding, and as a catalyst to the Fall of the Farcasters."


next will come the world of T'ien Shan, the Mountains of Heaven...where Aenea and Raul will be reunited and where she has become The One Who Teaches... Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

The world of T'ien Shan is a very special place. The lower atmosphere is poisonous, so the humans live on the mountaintops. There is a very strong Tibetan Buddhist influence there. The Dalai Lama gently rules from his Palace above the clouds. At the time of the events of Rise of Endymion his current incarnation is as an eight year old child...
Aenea is there, reunited with Raul...and she has begun her mission as the Teacher...
And the Pax is hunting for her... Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

Aenea and Raul have been called to a reception at the Palace, to meet with the Dalai Lama and some guests from the Pax...among them are three of the Nemes creatures...

After dinner, there is dancing with an orchestra. Raul and Aenea are dancing...
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There had been no sign of the Pax guests for hours, but suddenly one of them - Rhadamanth Nemes - emerges from the shadows of the Dalai lama's curtained alcove. She has changed her uniform and is now dressed all in red. There are two others with her, and for a moment I think they are the priests, but then I see that the two figures dressed in balck are near-copies of the Nemes thing: another woman and a man, both in black combat suits, both with limp, black bangs hanging down on pale foreheads, both with eyes of dead amber.
The trio moves through the frozen dancers toward Aenea and me. Instinctively I put myself between my friend and the things, but the Nemes male and its other sibling begin to move around us, flanking us. I pull Aenea close behind me, but she steps to my side.
The frozen dancers make no noise. The orchestra remains silent. Even the moonlight seems stilled to solid shafts in the dusty air.
I remove the flashlight laser and hold it at my side. The primary Nemes thing shows small teeth. Cardinal Moustafa steps from the shadows and stands behind her. All four of the Pax creatures hold their gaze on Aenea. For a moment I think that the universe has stopped, that the dancers are literally frozen in time and space, that the music hangs above us like icy stalacites ready to shatter and fall, but then I hear the murmur through the crowd - fearful whispers, a hiss of anxiety.
There is no visible threat - only four Pax guests moving out across the ballroom floor with Aenea as the locus of their closing circle - but the sense of predators closing on their prey is too strong to ignore, as is the scent of fear through the perfume and powder and cologne.
"Why wait?" says Rhadamanth Nemes, looking at Aenea but speaking to someone else - her siblings perhaps, or the Cardinal.
"I think..." says Cardinal Mustafa and freezes.
Everyone freezes. The great horns near the entrance arch have blown with the bass rumble of continental crusts shifting. No one is back there in the alcoves to blow them. The bone and brass trumpets bracket the endless one-note rumbling of the horns. The great gong vibrates on the bone conduction level.
There is a rustle and stifled outcry across the dance floor, in the direction of the escalators, the anteroom, and the curtained entrance arch. The thinning crowds there are parting wider, moving aside like furrowed soil ahead of a steel plow.
Something is moving behind the closed curtains of the anteroom.
Now something has passed through the curtains, not so much parting them as severing them. Now something is glinting in Oracle light and gliding across the parquet floors, gliding as if floating centimeters above the floor, glinting in the dying light of the moon. Tatters of red curtain hang from an impossibly tall form - three meters at least - and there are too many arms emerging from the folds of that crimson robe. It looks as if the hands hold steel blades. The dancers move away more quickly and there is a general and audible intake of breath. Lightning silently supercedes the moonlight and strobes off polished floors, eclipsing the Oracle with retinal echoes. When the thunder arrives some long seconds after, it is indistinguishable from the low, bone-shaking rumble of the still-reverberating horns in the entrance hall.
The Shrike glides to a halt five paces from Aenea and me, five paces from the Nemes thing, ten paces from each of the Nemes siblings frozen in their act of circling us, eight paces from the Cardinal. It occurs to me that the Shrike shrouded in its dangling red curtain tatters resembles nothing so much as a chrome and black caricature of Cardinal Mustafa in his crimson robe. The Nemes clones in their black uniforms look like shadows of stilettos against the walls.
Somewhere in one of the shadowed corners of the great reception room a tall clock slowly strikes the hour...one...two...three...four. It is, of course, the number inhuman killing machines standing before and behind us. It has been more than four years since I have seen the Shrike, but its presence is no less terrible and no more welcome despite its intercession here. The red eyes gleam like lasers under a thin film of water. The chrome-steel jaws are parted to show row upon row of razor teeth. The thing's blades, barbs, and cutting edges emerge from the enfolding red cutain robe in scores of places. It does not blink. It does not appear to breathe. Now that the gliding has stopped, it is as motionless as a nightmare sculpture.
Rhadamanth Nemes is smiling at it.
____________________________________________________

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
****Tavern Wench of DOGMA, the Defenders of George Martin's Art****<i></i>

this is the end ? :p <i></i>

Nope, I just haven't had time lately to get back to this...but I have a bit of tiem today, so will see if I can get some more done.

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell

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Perhaps I'll come for you myself some night. You ought to see me...my fur is white now, pale as snow,but the stature, the majesty, the power, those have not left me...We are the direwolves, the nightmares who haunt your racial memories, the dark shapes circling endlessly beyond the light of your fires.~George R.R. Martin<i></i>

Let's skip ahead to the tree of Pain, on the voyage of Atonement...when we get the clearest answers we are given...

Quote:"The Cantos say that Het Masteen was carried away somewhere...somewhen by the Shrike" she said, "He later died in the Valley of the Time Tombs after returning. The poem did not say if he was gone an hour or thirty years. Uncle Martin did not know." I squinted at her. "What about Kassad, kiddo? The Cantos are fairly specific there...the Colonel follows Moneta into the far future, engages in battle with the Shrike..." "With legions of Shrikes, actually," corrected my friend. "Yeah," I said. I had never really understood that. "But it seems continuous enough...he follows her, he fights, he dies, his body is put in the Crystal Monolith, and it and Moneta begin the long trip back through time." Aenea nodded and smiled. "With the Shrike" she said. I paused. The Shrike had emerged from the tombs...Moneta had traveled with it somehow...so although the Cantos clearly said that Kassad had destroyed the Shrike in that great, final battle, the monster was somehow alive and traveling with Moneta and Kassad's body back through...Damn, did the poem ever actually say that Kassad was dead? "Uncle Martin had to fake parts of the tale, you know," said Aenea. "He had some descriptions from Rachel, but he took poetic license on the parts he didn't understand." "Uh huh," I said. Rachel, Moneta. The Cantos had clearly suggested that the girl-child Rachel, who went forward in time with her father , Sol, to the future, would return as the woman Moneta. Colonel Kassa's phantom lover. The woman he would follow into the future to his fate...And what had Rachel said to me a few hours earlier when i was suspicious that she and Aenea were lovers? "I happen to be involved with a certain soldier...male...whom you'll meet today. Well, actually, I will be involved with him someday. I mean...@#%$, it's complicated." ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell

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Perhaps I'll come for you myself some night. You ought to see me...my fur is white now, pale as snow,but the stature, the majesty, the power, those have not left me...We are the direwolves, the nightmares who haunt your racial memories, the dark shapes circling endlessly beyond the light of your fires.~George R.R. Martin<i></i>

The following pieces are written in play format...
Quote:
____________________________________________________

Templar Hat masteen: Revered One Who Teaches, if I may change the subject fro mthe cosmic and theological to the most personal and petty...

Aenea: Nothing of which you speak could be petty, True Voice of the Tree het Mastten.

Templar Het Masteen: I was on the Hyperion pilgrimage with your mother, Revered One Who teaches...

Aenea: She spoke to me of you often, True Voice of the Tree Het Mastten.

Templar Het Mastten: Then you know that the Lord of Pain...the Shrike...came to me as the pilgrims were crossing Hyperion's Sea of Grass on the Windwagon, One Who Teaches. It came to me and carried me forward in tiem and space...to this time, to this place.

Aenea: Yes.

Templar Het Masteen: And in my conversations with you and with my brethren in the Brotherhood of the Muir, I have come to understand that it is my fate to serve the Muir and the cause of Life i nthis age, as it was prophesied centuries ago by our own seers int othe Void Which Binds. But in these days, and despite the best efforts of my Brothers and other kind freinds among the Ousters, I have heard of Martin Silenus's epic poem and found an edition of the Cantos...

Aenea: That is unfortunate, True Voice of the Tree Het Masteen. My Uncle Martin wrote tha tto the best of his knowledge, but his knowledge was incomplete.

Templar Het Masteen: But i nthe Cantos, Revered One Who Teaches, it says that the pilgrims in their day...and my friend Colonel Kassad has confirmed that this was the case...that they find me on Hyperion, in the Valley of the Time Tombs, and that I die shortly after they find me...

Aenea: This is true in the context of the Cantos, but...

Templar Het Masteen: (holding up a hand to silence my friend) It is not the inevitability of my return through time to the pilgraimage on Hyperion nor my inevitable death t hat worries me, Revered One Who Teaches. I understand that this is just one possible future for me...however probable of desirable. But wha tI wish to clarify is the truth of my last words according to the old poet's Cantos. Is it true that imediately before dying I will cry out, I am the True Chosen. I must guide the Tree of Pain during the time of Atonement.

Aenea: That is what is written i nthe Cantos, True Voice of the Tree Het Masteen.

Templar Het Masteen: (smiling under his hood) And this tiem is near, Revered One Who Teaches? Will be using this Yggdrasill as the Tree of Pain for our Atonement as the prophecies attest?

Aenea: I will, True Voice of the Tree Het Mastten. I will be laving to carry out that Atonement within standard days. I formally ask that the Yggdrasill be the instrument of our voyage and the instrument of that Atonement. I will be inviting many of those among us here tomight to join me o nthat final voyage. And I formally ask you, True Voice of the Tree Het Masteen, if you will captain the treeship Yggdrassil - forever after known as the Tree of Pain - on this voyage.

Templar Het Masteen: I formally accept your invitation and agree to captain the treeship Yggdrasill on this mission of Atonement, O Revered One Who Teaches. (There are several minutes of silence). ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell

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Perhaps I'll come for you myself some night. You ought to see me...my fur is white now, pale as snow,but the stature, the majesty, the power, those have not left me...We are the direwolves, the nightmares who haunt your racial memories, the dark shapes circling endlessly beyond the light of your fires.~George R.R. Martin<i></i>

quote:
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Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: M. Aenea,Brawne's child, may I ask another question relating to my own fate and future?

Aenea: I will endeavor to answer, Colonel, while repeating my reluctance to discuss specifics of a topic as fluid as our future.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: Reluctant or no, child, I believe I deserve an answer to this question. I, too, have read thse damned cantos. In them, it says that I followed the apparition Moneta into the future while fighting the Shrike...trying to prevent it fro mslaughtering the other pilgrims. This was true...soem months ago I arrived here. Moneta dissappeared, but has reappeared in a younger version of this woman who calls herself rachel Weintraub. But the cantos also state that I will soon join in terrible battle with legions of Shrikes, will die, and be entombed i nthe newly built Crystal Monolith on Hyperion, where my body travels back in time with Moneta as my compainion. How can this be, M. Aenea? Have I come to the wrong time? The wrong place?

Aenea: Colonel Kassad, friend and protector of my mother and the other pilgrims, be assured that all proceeds accordong to whatever plan there is. Uncle Martin wrote the cantos given what revelation there was granted to him. Not all details of your life...or mine...were available to him. Indeed, he was told precious little of what was to transpire outside of his presence. I can say this to you, Colonel Kassad...the battle wit hthe Shrike is true, however metaphorically rendered. one possible future is for you to die in battle with the Shrike...with many Shrike-like warriors...and to be placed i nthe Crystal Monolith after a hero's funeral. But if this were to come to pass, it would be after many years and many other battles. there is work for you to do i nthe days, months, years, and decades yet to come. I ask you now to accompany me o nthe Yggdrasill when i depart i nthree days...that will be the first step toward these battles.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: (smiling) But you deflect the question somewaht, M. Aenea. may I ask you...will the Shrike be on your Tree of Pain when it leaves in three standard day's time?

Aenea: I believe that it will, Colonel Kassad.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: You have not told us us here tonight, M. Aenea. what the Shrike is...or where it truly comes from...what its role in this centuries-old and centuries-to-come game is.

Aenea: That is correct, Colonel. I have not told anyone here tonight.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: have you ever told wnyone, child?

Aenea: No.

Colonle Fedmahn Kassad: But you know the origin of the Shrike.

Aenea: Yes.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: Will you tell us, Brawne Lamia's child?

Aenea: I would prefer not to, Colonel.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: But you will if asked again, will you not? At least you will answer my direct questions o nthe matter?

Aenaea: (nods silently...I see tears in her eyes)

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: the Shrike first appears in that same far future in which I do battle with it as per the Cantos, is this not correct, M. Aenea? That future in which the Core is making its last ditch stand against its enemies?

Aenea: Yes.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: And the Shrike is...will be...a construct, is it not? A created thing. A Core-created thing.


Aenea: This is accurate.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: It will be a strnage amalgram of Core technological wizardry, Void Which Binds energy, and the cybrid-recycled personality of a real human being, won't it, M. Aenea?

Aenea: Yes.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: In truth, Aenea, would you agree that the Shrike will be a pawn of both sides...of all sides...in this war for t he soul of humankind...this war that leaps back and forth across tiem like a four-dimensional chess game?

Aenea: Yes, Colonel...although not as a pawn. A knight perhaps.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: All right, a knight. And this cybrid, Void Which Binds-connected, ARNed, DNA-engineered, nanotech-enhanced, terribly mutated knight...it starts out with the personality of a single warrior, does it not? Perhaps an oppenent in this thousand-year game?

Aenea: Do you need to know this, Colonel? There is no greater hell than seeing the precise details of one's...

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: (softly) Of one's future? Of one's death? Of one's fate? I know that, Aenea, daughter of my friend Brawne Lamia. I know tha tyou have carried such terrible certitudes and vision with you since before you were born...since the days when your mother and I crossed the seas and mountains of Hyperion toward wha twe thought was our fate with the Shrike. i know that has been difficult for you, Aenea, my young friend...harder than any of us here could imagine. None of us here could have borne up inder such a burden. But I still want to know this part of my own fate. And I believe that my years of service in the cause of this battle...years past and years yet to be given...have earned me the right to an answer. Is the Shrike based on a single warrior's personality?

Aenea: Yes.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: Mine? After my death in battle, the Core elements...or some power...will incorporate my will, my soul, my persona into that...monster...and send it back in time throught the Crystal Monolith?

Aenea: Yes, Colonel. Parts of your persona...but only parts of it...will be incorporated into the living construct called the Shrike.

Colonel Fadmahn Kassad: (laughing) But I can also live to beat it in battle?

Aenea: Yes.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad: (laughing harder now, the laughter sounding sincere and unforced) By God, by the will of Allah...if the universe has any soul, it is the soul of irony. I kill mine enemy, I eat his heart, and the enemy becomes me...and I become him...

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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell

******************************************************

Perhaps I'll come for you myself some night. You ought to see me...my fur is white now, pale as snow,but the stature, the majesty, the power, those have not left me...We are the direwolves, the nightmares who haunt your racial memories, the dark shapes circling endlessly beyond the light of your fires.~George R.R. Martin<i></i>

One more quote, this one about the Consul...

Quote:In my dream, the Hegemony Consul was playing the Steinway on the balcony of his ebony spaceship - that spaceship that I knew so well -- while great, green saurian things surged and bellowed in the nearby swamps. He was playing Schubert. I did not recognize the world beyond the balcony, but it was a place of huge, primitive plants, towering storm clouds, and frightening animal roars. The Consul was a smaller man than I had always imagined. When he was finished with the piece, he sat quietly for a moment in the twlilight until the ship spoke in a voice I did not recognize - a smarter, more human voice. "Very nice," said the ship. "Very nice indeed."
"Thank you , John," said the Consul, rising from the bench and bringing the balcony into the ship with him. It was beginning to rain.
"Do you still insist on going hunting in the morning?" asked the disembodied voice that was not the ship's as I knew it.
"Yes," said the Consul. "It is something I do here on occasion."
"Do you like the taste of dinosaur meat?" asked the ship's AI.
"Not at all," said the Consul, "Almost inedible. It is the hunt I enjoy."
"You mean the risk," said the ship.
"That, too." The Consul chuckled. "Although I do take care."
"But what if you don't come back from your hunt tomorrow?" asked the ship. His voice was of a young man with an Old Earth British accent.
The Consul shrugged. "We've spent - what? More than six years exploring the old Hegemony worlds. We know the pattern...chaos, civil war, starvation, fragmentation. We've seen the fruit of the Fall of the Farcaster system."
"Do you think that Gladstone was wrong in ordering the attack?" asked the ship softly.
The Consul had poured himself a brandy at the sideboard and now carried it to the chess table set near the bookcase. He took a seat and looke dat the game pieces already engaged in battle o nthe board in front of him. "Not at all, " he said. "She did the right thing. But the result is sad. It will be decades, perhaps centuries before the Web begins to reweave itself together in a new form." He had been warming the brandy and sloshing it gently as he spoke, now he inhale it and sipped. Looking up, the Consul said, "Would you like to join me for the completion of our game, John?"
The holo of a young man appeared in the seat opposite. He was a striking young man with clear hazel-colored eyes, low brow, hollow cheeks, a compact nose and a stubborn jaw, and a wide mouth that suggested both a calm masculinity and a hint of pugnaciousness. the young man was dressed in a loose blouse and high-cut breeches. His hair was auburn-colored, thick, and very curly. The Consul knew his guest had once been described as having"...a brisk, winning face," and he put that down to the easy mobility of ecpression that came with the young man's great intelligence and vitality.
"Your move," said John.
The Consul studied his options for several moments and then moved a bishop.
John responded at once, pointing to a pawn that the Consul obediently ,moved one rank forward for him. The young man looked up with sincere curiosity in his eyes. "What if you don't come back from the hunt tomorrow?" he asked softly. Startled out of his reverie, the Consul smiled. "Then the ship is yours, which it obviously is anyway." He moved his bishop back. "What will you do, John, if this should be the end of our travels together?"
John gestured to have his rook moved forward at the same lightning speed with which he replied, "Take it back to Hyperion," he said. "Program it to return to Brawne if all is well. Or possibly oy Martin Silenus, if the old man is still alive and working on his Cantos."
"Program it?" asked the Consul, frowning at the board. "You mean you'd leave the ship's AI?" He moved his bishop diagonally another square.
"Yes," said John, pointing to have his pawn advanced again. "I will do that in the next few days, at any rate."
His frown deepening, the Consul looked at the board, then at the hologram across from him, and then at the board again. "Where will you go?" he asked and moved his queen to protect his king.
"Back into the Core," said John, moving his rook two spaces.
"To confront your maker again?" asked the Consul, attacking again with his bishop.
John shook his head. His bearing was very upright and he had the habit of clearing his forehead of surls with an elegant, backward toss of his head. "No," he said softly, " to start raising hell with the Core entities. To accelerate their endless civil wars and internecine rivalries. To be what my template had been to the poetic community - an irritant." he pointed at where he wanted his remaining knight moved.
The Consul considered that move, found it not a threat, and frowned at his own bishop. "For what reason?" he said at last.
John smiled again and pointed to the sqaure where his rook should next appear. "My daughter will need help in a few years," he said. he chuckled. "Well, in two hundred and seventy-some years, actually. Checkmate."
"What?" said the Consul, startled and studied the board. "It can't be...."
John waited.
"Damn," said the Hegemony Consul at last, tipping over his king. "@#%$ and spit and hell."
"Yes," said John, extending his hand. "Thank you again for a pleasant game. And I do hope that tomorrow's hunt turns out more agreeably for you."
"Damn," said the Consul and, without thinking, attempted to shake the hologram's thin-fingered hand. For the hundrenth time, his solid fingers went through the other's insubstantial palm. "Danm," he said again.



I hope these quotes will help to at least partially answer your questions... ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell

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Perhaps I'll come for you myself some night. You ought to see me...my fur is white now, pale as snow,but the stature, the majesty, the power, those have not left me...We are the direwolves, the nightmares who haunt your racial memories, the dark shapes circling endlessly beyond the light of your fires.~George R.R. Martin<i></i>

Quote:Martin Silenus was in good humor upon meeting his old friend after almost 280 years of seperation. "So your black killer's soul is going to become the seed crystal when they build the Shrike a millenium hence, heh? " cackled the old man through his laboring speech synthesizer. "Well, thanks a shitload, Kassad." ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell

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Perhaps I'll come for you myself some night. You ought to see me...my fur is white now, pale as snow,but the stature, the majesty, the power, those have not left me...We are the direwolves, the nightmares who haunt your racial memories, the dark shapes circling endlessly beyond the light of your fires.~George R.R. Martin<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi  at: 11/7/03 5:46 pm
</i>

yea some things i have already fogotten <i></i>

but i still dont understand anything <i></i>