Ready to get going again.
One more quote about the ship from Endymion: ____________________________________________________
He nodded and folded his arms. "Renaissance Vector was one of the most important worlds of the Hegemony. Extremely Earth-like on the Solmev Scale, it was settled by some of the early seed ships and was completely urbanized by the time of the Fall. It was famous for its universities, its medical centers - most Poulsen treatments were administered there for the Web citizens who could afford it - its baroque architecture - especially beautiful in its mountain fortress, Keep Enable - and its industrial output. Most of the FORCE space craft were manufactured there. In fact, this spacecraft must have been built there - it was a product of the Mitsubishi-Havcek complex." "Really?" said the ship's voice. "If I knew that, the data must have been lost. How interesting." Aenea and I exchanged worried glances for the dozenth time on this voyage. A ship that couldn't remember its past or its point of origin did not inspire confidence during the complexities of interstellar flight... ____________________________________________________
Again, it is obvious that something dreadful must have happened to the ship, its master, and possibly to the Keats persona who was once known to have occupied it...
Our first meeting with the Shrike in Endymion takes place at the Time Tombs, when he accompanies Aenea at the end of her journey through time. He seems to be there to help her, as he provides all of the distraction that the waiting Pax army can handle...but he refuses to listen to her orders and pleas, and causes her so much distress that she is still weeping about his actions, days later... During the journey of Aenea, Raul, and Bettik through the old worlds of what was once the Hegemony, he shows up every now and then. He doesn't seem to do much when he does, he just...appears. it always seemed to me that he was just checking up on them...this of course, changes drastically on God's Grove, but I will address that seperately in a moment.
Here is one of the Shrike's early appearances...the threesome are on a jungle world with the hurt ship. Raul and Aenea have been out on the hawking mat scouting when they learn that the Shrike has not only appeared on the beach, but on the ship itself... ____________________________________________________ "It's on the beach?" I said. "It was a moment ago, when I went up to carry another lod out," came A. Bettik's voice. "Then it was in the Hawking-drive accumulator ring,: said the ship. "What?" I said. "Thre's no entrance to that part of the ship - " I stopped before I made a total idiot of myself. "Where is it now?" I said. "We are not sure," said A. Bettik. "I am going out onto the hull now and will be taking one of the radios. The ship will relay my voice to you." "Wait....," I began. "M. Endymion," interrupted the android, "rather than urging you to rush back here, I called to suggest that you and M. Aenea...ah...extend your sight-seeing for a bit until the ship and I receive an indication of our...ah...visitor's intentions." This made sense to me. Here I was charged with protecting this girl, and when what might well be the deadliest killing machine in the galaxy appears, what do I do but rush her toward the danger? I was being a bit of an @#%$ this long day. I reached for the flight threads to slow us and bank us back to the east. Aenea's small hand intercepted mine. "No," she said "We'll go back." I was shaking my head. "That thing is..." "That thing can go anywhere it pleases," said the girl. Her eyes and tone were deadly serious. "If it wanted me...or you...it would appear right here on the mat with us." The thought made me look around. "Let's go back," said Aenea. I sighed and turned back upriver, slowing the mat just a bit as I did so. Pulling the plasma rifle from my back and swinging the stock out to lock it, I said, "I don't get it. Is there any record of that monster ever leaving Hyperion?" "I don't think so," said the girl. She was leaning so that her face was against my back trying to stay out of the windblast as the deflection field lessened. "So...what's happening? Is it following you?" "That seems logical." Her voice was muffled as she spoke into the cotton of my shirt. "Why?" I said. Aenea pushed away so strongly that I began to reach for her instinctively to keep her from tumbling off the back of the mat. She shrugged away from my hand. "Raul, I don't really know the answers to these questions yet, all right? I didn't know if the thing would leave Hyperion. I certainly didn't want it to. Believe me." "I do," I said. ____________________________________________________ This is also where the ship gets a mass reading on the Shrike. It is almost three meters tall and weighs 1.06 metric tons. A. Bettik suggests that perhaps the Shrike can vary its mass as required...
Now to shift gears a bit...to Rhadamanth Nemes. She comes into the story when she is assigned to Father de Soya's group, which is assigned to capture Aenea. She is introduced as a soldier with special training, but we soon learn that she is soemthing much more ominous...and she seems to have much-more than human powers... We first see her in action when she murders a harmless and kind old priest who had aided Aenea and Raul. She then butchers 23 equally harmless people...and then jacks herself into a farcaster portal to learn where Aenea and Raul have gone. She prepares herself to pursue them to God's Grove...
Aenea feels the senseless murders somehow, and knows that they are being followed by a merciless monster while they are the Muslim world of Qon-Riyadh -- a world, like the Jewish world Hebron, which has been abandoned somehow of all human life, with no signs of what has happened to the people...and even as Aenea somehow knows of the monster trailing them, the Shrike once again joins them... This quote begins as Raul tries to calm Aenea from her terrible fever nightmare, right after Raul has seen the reappearance of the Shrike... ____________________________________________________ "No, it's not {all right}, " said the girl. "Ah, God, Raul. I asked him to come with me. That last night. Did you know that I asked him to come along? He said no - " "Who said no?" I asked. "The Shrike?" A Bettik came up behind me. Outside, the red sand chafed at the windows and sliding door. "No, no, no, said Aenea. Her cheeks wer moist, although whether it was from tears or her fever breaking, I did not know. "Father Glaucus," she said, her voice almost lost under the wind noise. "That last night...I asked Father Glaucus to come with us. I shouldn't have asked him, Raul...it was not part of my....my dreams...but I did ask, and if I asked, I should have insisted..." "It's all right," I said, pushing a damp tendril of hair off her brow. "Father Glaucus is all right." "No, he's not," said the girl, and moaned softly. "He's dead. The thing that's chasing us killed him. Him and all the Chitchatuk." I looked at the monitor board again. It still showed improvement from the fever, despite her ravings. I looked at A. Bettik, but the android was staring intently at the child. "You mean the Shrike killed them?" I said. "No, not the Shrike," she said softly, and laid her wrist against her lips. "At least I don't think so. No, it wasn't the Shrike." Suddenly she gripped my hand in both of hers. "Raul, do you love me?" I could only stare a moment. Then, not withdrawing my hand, I said, " Sure, kiddo. I mean..." Aenea seemed to really look at me then for the first time since she had come awake and called my name. "No, stop," she said. She laughed softly. "I'm sorry. I came unglued in time for a minute. Of course you don't love me. I forgot when we were...who we were to each other now." "No, its all right," I said, not understanding. I patted her hand. "I do care for you, kiddo. So does A. Bettik, and we're going to - " "Hush," said Aenea. She freed her hand and set one finger against my lips. "Hush. I was lost for a moment. I thought we were...us. The way we're going to..."She lay back deeper in the pillows and sighed. "My God, its the night before God's Grove. Our last night traveling..." I was not sure if she was making sense yet. I waited. A Bettik said ," M. Aenea, is God's Grove our next destination on the river?" "I guess so," said the girl, sounding more like the child I knew. "Yes. I don't know. It all fades..." She sat up again. "It's not the Shrike chasing us, you know. It's the Pax." "Of course it's the Pax," I said, trying to get her to make contact with reality. "They've been after us since..." Aenea was shaking her head adamanatly. her hair hung in damp tendrils. "No," she said softly but very firmly. "The Pax is after us because the Core tells it we're dangerous to them." "The Core?" I said. "But it's...ever since the Fall it's been..." "Alive and dangerous," said Aenea. "After Gladstone and the others destroyed the farcaster system that provided the Core with its neural net, it retreated...but it never went far, Raul. Can't you see that?" "No," I said. "I can't. Where has it been if it didn't go far?" "The Pax," the girl said simply. "My father - his persona in Mother's Schron loop - explained it to me before I was born. The Core waited until the Church began to be revitalized under Paul Dure...Pope Teilhard 1. Dure was a good man, Raul. My mother and Uncle Martin knew him. He carried two cruciforms...his own and Father Lenar Hoyt's. But Hoyt was ...weak." I patted her wrist. 'But what does this have to do with -" "Listen!" said the girl, pulling her arm back. "Anything can happen tomorrow on God's Grove. I can die. We can all die. The future is never written...only penciled in. If I die and you survive, I want you to explain to Uncle Martin...to whoever will listen..." "You are not going to die, Aenea -" "Just listen!" pleaded the girl. There were tears in her eyes again. I nodded and listened. Even the wind howl seemed to abate. "Teilhard was murdered in his ninth year. My father predicted it. I don't know if it was by TechnoCore agents...they use cybrids...or just Vatican politics, but when Lenar Hoyt was resurrected from their shared cruciforms, the Core acted. it was the Core that provided the technology of allowing the cruciform to revive humans without the sexlessness or idiocy visited on the Bikura tribe on Hyperion..." "But how?" I said. "How could the TechniCore AIs know how to use the cruciform symbiote?" I saw the answer even before she spoke. "They created the cruciforms," said Aenea. Not the current Core, but the UI they create in the future. It sent the things back in time on Hyperion just as it did the Time Tombs. tested the parasite on the lost tribe...the Bikura...saw the problems..." "Little problems," I said, "Like resurrection destroying reproductive organs and intelligence." "Yes," said Aenea. She took my hand again. " The Core was able to correct those problems with their technology. Technology they gave to the Church under its new Pope...Lenar Hoyt, Julius VI." I began to understand. "A Faustian bargain..."I said. "The Faustian bargain," said the girl. "All the church had to do to gain the universe was sell its soul." "And thus the Pax Protectorate was born," A. Bettik said softly. "Political power through the barrel of a parasite." "It's the Core that's after us...after me," continues the child. "I'm a threat to them, not just the church." I shook my head slowly. "How are you a threat to the Core? You're one child..." "One child who was in touch with a renegade cybrid persona before I was born," she whispered. " My father was loose, Raul. Not just in the datasphere or the megasphere...but in the metasphere. Loose in the wider psychocerbernet that even the Core is terrified of..." "Lions and tigers and bears," muttered A. Bettik. "Exactly," said Aenea. "When my father's persona penetrated the Core megasphere, he asked the AI, Ummon, what the Core was afraid of. They said that they didn't range further in the metasphere because it was full of lions and tigers and bears." "I don't get it, kiddo," I said. "I'm lost." She leaned forward and squeeezed my hand.Her breath on my cheek was warm and sweet. "Raul, you know Uncle Martin's Cantos. What happened to the Earth?" "Old Earth?" I said stupidly. "In the Cantos the AI Ummon said that the three elements of the TechnoCore were at war...We talked about this." "Tell me again." "Ummon told the Keats persona...your father...that the Volatiles wanted to destroy humanity. The Stables...his group...wanted to save it. They faked the black-hole destruction of Old Earth and spirited it away to either the Magellenic Clouds or the Hercules Cluster. The Ultimates, the third group, didn't give a damn what happened to Old Earth or humanity as long as their Ultimate Intelligence project came to fruition." Aenea waited. "And the church agrees with what everyone else believes," I continues somewhat lamely. "That Old Earth was swallowed by the black hole and died when it was supposed to have died." "Which version do you believe, Raul?" I took a breath. "I don't know, I said. "I'd like Old Earth to still exist, I guess, but somehow it doesn't seem to be that important." "What if there is a third possibility?" said Aenea. The glass doors suddenly rattled and shook. I put my hand on the plasma pistol, half expecting the Shrike to be scratching at the glass. Only the desert wind howled there. "A third possiblity?" I said. "Ummon lied," said Aenea. "The AI lied to my father. No elements of the Core moved the Earth...not the Stables, not the Volatiles, not the Ultimates." "So it was destroyed," I said. "No," said Aenea. "My father did not understand then. He did later. Old Earth was moved to the Magellenic Clouds, all right, but not by any element of the Core. They didn't have the technology or the energy resources or that level of control of the Void Which Binds. The Core can't even travel to the Magellenic Cloud. Its too far...unimaginably distant." "Who, then." I said. "Who stole Old Earth?" Aenea laid back on the pillows. "I don't now. I don't think the Core knows, either. But they don't want us to know - and they're terrified that we'll find out." A. Bettik stepped closer. 'So its not the Core that is activating the farcasters on our voyage?" "No," said Aenea. "WIll we find out who is?" I said. "if we live," said Aenea. "if we live." Her eyes looked tired now, not feverish. "They'll be waiting for us tomorrow, Raul. And I don't mean that priest-captain and his men. Someone...something from the Core will be waiting for us." "The thing you think killed Father Glaucus, Cuchiat, and the others," I said. "Yes." "Is this some sort of vision?" I asked. "To know about Father Glaucus, I mean." "Not a vision," said the girl with an empty voice. "Just a memory from the future. A certain memory." I looked out at the diminishing storm. "We can stay here," I said. "We can get a skimmer or an EMV that works, fly to the northern hemisphere, and hide in Ali or one of the bigger cities that the guidebook talks about. We don't have to play their game and go through that farcaster portal tomorrow." "Yes," said Aenea. "we do." I started to protest and then remained silent. After a while I said, " And where does the Shrike come in?" "I don't know," said the girl. "It depends on who sent it this time. Or it could be acting on its own. I don't know." "On its own?" I said. "I thought it was just a machine." "Oh, no" said Aenea. "Not just a machine." I rubbed my cheek. "I don't understand. It could be a friend?" "Never a friend," said the girl. She sat up and put her hand on my cheek where I had rubbed it a second before, "I'm sorry, Raul, I don't mean to talk in circles. It's just that I don't know. Nothing's written. Everything's fluid. And when I do get a glimpse of things shifting, it's like watching a beautiful sand painting in the second before the wind gets it..." ____________________________________________________ We learn here a lot about Nemes...that she is probably some sort of super-cybrid, serving the parts of the Core who want to exterminate humankind. We also learn that the Keats persona was greatly feared by the Core...as is Aenea herself... not to mention learning that the Shrike has a will of his own -- that he is NOT just a mindless machine or sevant oof the Core...
I'm starting to wear out...this is getting to be a huge post, and I've yet to get into the events on God's Grove or Rise of Endymion...I am going to take a break now...when I return, God's Grove...
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>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi at: 9/12/03 12:07 pm </i>
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