The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (51 page)

“Not too small, I hope. I want to be paid.”

“It will be adequate for our purposes, M. Lamia. Have you discovered anything of interest?”

I shrugged. “Tell me what you do in that library.”

“Can it possibly be germane?”

“Yeah, could be.”

He looked at me strangely. Something about his eyes made me go weak at the knees. “You remind me of someone,” he said softly.

“Oh?” From anyone else that line would have been cause for an exit. “Who?” I asked.

“A … woman I once knew. Long ago.” He brushed fingers across his brow as if he were suddenly tired or dizzy.

“What was her name?”

“Fanny.” The word was almost whispered.

I knew who he was talking about. John Keats had a fiancée named Fanny. Their love affair had been a series of romantic frustrations which almost drove the poet mad. When he died in Italy, alone except for one fellow traveler, feeling abandoned by friends and his lover, Keats had asked that unopened letters from Fanny and a lock of her hair be buried with him.

I’d never heard of John Keats before this week; I’d accessed all this shit with my comlog. I said, “So what do you do at the library?”

The cybrid cleared his throat. “I’m researching a poem. Searching for fragments of the original.”

“Something by Keats?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to access it?”

“Of course. But it is important for me to see the original … to touch it.”

I thought about that. “What’s the poem about?”

He smiled … or at least his lips did. The hazel eyes still seemed troubled. “It’s called
Hyperion
. It’s difficult to describe what it’s … about. Artistic failure, I suppose. Keats never finished it.”

I pushed aside my plate and sipped warm tea. “You say Keats never finished it. Don’t you mean
you
never finished it?”

His look of shock had to be genuine … unless AIs were consummate actors. For all I knew, they could be. “Good God,” he
said, “I’m not John Keats. Having a persona based upon a retrieval template no more makes me Keats than having the name Lamia makes you a monster. There’ve been a million influences that have separated me from that poor, sad genius.”

“You said I reminded you of Fanny.”

“An echo of a dream. Less. You’ve taken RNA learning medication, yes?”

“Yes.”

“It’s like that. Memories which feel … hollow.”

A human waiter brought fortune cookies.

“Do you have any interest in visiting the real Hyperion?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“The Outback world. Somewhere beyond Parvati, I think.”

Johnny looked puzzled. He had broken open the cookie but had not yet read the fortune.

“It used to be called Poets’ World, I think,” I said. “It even has a city named after you … after Keats.”

The young man shook his head. “I’m sorry, I haven’t heard of the place.”

“How can that be? Don’t AIs know everything?”

His laugh was short and sharp. “This one knows very little.” He read his fortune:
BE WARY OF SUDDEN IMPULSES
.

I crossed my arms. “You know, except for that parlor trick with the bank manager holo, I have no proof that you are what you say you are.”

“Give me your hand.”

“My hand?”

“Yes. Either one. Thank you.”

Johnny held my right hand in both of his. His fingers were longer than mine. Mine were stronger.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

I did. There was no transition: one instant I was sitting in the Blue Lotus on Red Dragon Street and the next I was … nowhere. Somewhere. Streaking through gray-blue datumplane, banking along chrome-yellow information highways, passing over and under and through great cities of glowing information storage, red skyscrapers sheathed in black security ice, simple entities like personal
accounts or corporate files blazing like burning refineries in the night. Above it all, just out of sight as if poised in twisted space, hung the gigantic
weights
of the AIs, their simplest communications pulsing like violent heat lightning along the infinite horizons. Somewhere in the distance, all but lost in the maze of three-dimensional neon that partitioned one tiny second of arc in the incredible datasphere of one small world, I sensed rather than saw those soft, hazel eyes waiting for me.

Johnny released my hand. He cracked my fortune cookie open. The strip of paper read:
INVEST WISELY IN NEW VENTURES
.

“Jesus,” I whispered. BB had taken me flying in datumplane before, but without a shunt the experience had been a shadow of this. It was the difference between watching a black and white holo of a fireworks display and
being
there. “How do you do that?”

“Will you be making any progress on the case tomorrow?” he asked.

I regained my composure. “Tomorrow,” I said, “I plan to solve it.”

   Well, maybe not solve it, but at least get things moving. The last charge on Johnny’s credit flimsy had been the bar on Renaissance V. I’d checked it out the first day, of course, talked to several of the regulars since there was no human bartender, but had come up with no one who remembered Johnny. I’d been back twice with no greater luck. But on the third day I went back to stay until something broke.

The bar was definitely not in the class of the wood and brass place Johnny and I had visited on TC
²
. This place was tucked on a second floor of a decaying building in a run-down neighborhood two blocks from the Renaissance library where Johnny spent his days. Not the kind of place he would stop in on the way to the farcaster plaza, but just the kind of place he might end up if he met someone in or near the library—someone who wanted to talk in private.

I’d been there six hours and was getting damned tired of salted nuts and flat beer when an old derelict came in. I guessed that he was a regular by the way he didn’t pause in the doorway or look around, but headed straight for a small table in the back and ordered
a whiskey before the serving mech had come to a full stop. When I joined him at the table I realized that he wasn’t so much a derelict as an example of the tired men and women I’d seen in the junk shops and street stalls in that neighborhood. He squinted up at me through defeated eyes.

“May I sit down?”

“Depends, sister. What’re you selling?”

“I’m buying.” I sat, set my beer mug on the table, and slid across a flat photo of Johnny entering the farcaster booth on TC
²
. “Seen this guy?”

The old man glanced at the photo and returned his full attention to his whiskey. “Maybe.”

I waved over the mech for another round. “If you did see him, it’s your lucky day.”

The old man snorted and rubbed the back of his hand against the gray stubble on his cheek. “If it is, it’ll be the first time in a long fucking time.” He focused on me. “How much? For what?”

“Information. How much depends on the information. Have you seen him?” I removed a black market fifty-mark bill from my tunic pocket.

“Yeah.”

The bill came down to the table but remained in my hand. “When?”

“Last Tuesday. Tuesday morning.”

That was the correct day. I slid the fifty marks to him and removed another bill. “Was he alone?”

The old man licked his lips. “Let me think. I don’t think … no, he was there.” He pointed toward a table at the rear. “Two other guys with him. One of them … well, that’s why I remembered.”

“What’s that?”

The old man rubbed finger and thumb in a gesture as old as greed.

“Tell me about the two men,” I coaxed.

“The young guy … your guy … he was with one of them, you know, the nature freaks with robes. You see ’em on HTV all the time. Them and their damn trees.”

Trees
? “A Templar?” I said, astounded. What would a Templar be doing in a Renaissance V bar? If he’d been after Johnny, why
would he wear his robe? That would be like a murderer going out to do business in a clown suit.

“Yeah. Templar. Brown robe, sort of oriental-looking.”

“A man?”

“Yeah, I said he was.”

“Can you describe him more?”

“Nah. Templar. Tall son of a bitch. Couldn’t see his face very well.”

“What about the other one?”

The old man shrugged. I removed a second bill and set them both near my glass.

“Did they come in together?” I prompted. “The three of them?”

“I don’t … I can’t … No, wait. Your guy and the Templar guy came in first. I remember seeing the robe before the other guy sat down.”

“Describe the other man.”

The old man waved over the mech and ordered a third drink. I used my card and the servitor slid away on noisy repellere.

“Like you,” he said. “Sort of like you.”

“Short?” I said. “Strong arms and legs? A Lusian?”

“Yeah. I guess so. Never been there.”

“What else?”

“No hair,” said the old man. “Just a whattyacallit like my niece used to wear. A pony tail.”

“A queue,” I said.

“Yeah. Whatever.” He started to reach for the bills.

“Couple more questions. Did they argue?”

“Nah. Don’t think so. Talked real quiet. Place’s pretty empty that time of day.”

“What time of day was it?”

“Morning. About ten o’clock.”

This coincided with the credit flimsy code.

“Did you hear any of the conversation?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Who did most of the talking?”

The old man took a drink and furrowed his brow in thought.
“Templar guy did at first. Your man seemed to be answering questions. Seemed surprised once when I was looking.”

“Shocked?”

“Uh-uh, just surprised. Like the guy in the robe’d said something he didn’t expect.”

“You said the Templar did most of the talking at first. Who spoke later? My guy?”

“Uh-uh, the one with the pony tail. Then they left.”

“All three of them left?”

“Nah. Your guy and the pony tail.”

“The Templar stayed behind?”

“Yeah. I guess so. I think. I went to the lav. When I got back I don’t think he was there.”

“What way did the other two go?”

“I don’t know, goddammit. I wasn’t paying much attention. I was having a drink, not playing spy!”

I nodded. The mech rolled over again but I waved it away. The old man scowled at its back.

“So they weren’t arguing when they left? No sign of a disagreement or that one was forcing the other to leave?”

“Who?”

“My guy and the queue.”

“Uh-uh. Shit, I don’t know.” He looked down at the bills in his grimy hand and at the whiskey in the mech’s display panel, realizing, perhaps, that he wasn’t going to get any more of either from me. “Why do you want to know all this shit, anyway?”

“I’m looking for the guy,” I said. I looked around the bar. About twenty customers sat at tables. Most of them looked like neighborhood regulars. “Anyone else here who might’ve seen them? Or somebody else you might remember who was here?”

“Uh-uh,” he said dully. I realized then that the old man’s eyes were precisely the color of the whiskey he’d been drinking.

I stood, set a final twenty-mark bill on the table. “Thanks, friend.”

“Any time, sister.”

The mech was rolling toward him before I’d reached the door.

* * *

I walked back toward the library, paused a minute in the busy farcaster plaza, and stood there a minute. Scenario so far: Johnny had met the Templar or been approached by him, either in the library or outside when he arrived in midmorning. They went somewhere private to talk, the bar, and something the Templar said surprised Johnny. A man with a queue—possibly a Lusian—showed up and took over the conversation. Johnny and Queue left together. Sometime after that, Johnny farcast to TC
²
and then farcast from there with one other person—possibly Queue or the Templar—to Madhya where someone tried to kill him.
Did
kill him.

Too many gaps. Too many “someones.” Not a hell of a lot to show for a day’s work.

I was debating whether to ’cast back to Lusus when my comlog chirped on the restricted comm frequency I’d given to Johnny.

His voice was raw. “M. Lamia. Come quickly, please. I think they’ve just tried again. To kill me.” The coordinates which followed were for the East Bergson Hive.

I ran for the farcaster.

   The door to Johnny’s cubby was open a crack. There was no one in the corridor, no sounds from the apartment. Whatever had happened hadn’t brought the authorities yet.

I brought out Dad’s automatic pistol from my coat pocket, jacked a round into the chamber, and clicked on the laser targeting beam with a single motion.

I went in low, both arms extended, the red dot sliding across the dark walls, a cheap print on the far wall, a darker hall leading into the cubby. The foyer was empty. The living room and media pit were empty.

Johnny lay on the floor of the bedroom, his head against the bed. Blood soaked the sheet. He struggled to prop himself up, fell back. The sliding door behind him was open and a dank industrial wind blew in from the open mall beyond.

I checked the single closet, short hall, kitchen niche, and came
back to step out on the balcony. The view was spectacular from the perch two hundred or so meters up the curved Hive wall, looking down the ten or twenty kilometers of the Trench Mall. The roof of the Hive was a dark mass of girders another hundred or so meters above. Thousands of lights, commercial holos, and neon lights glowed from the mall, joining in the haze of distance to a brilliant, throbbing electric blur.

There were hundreds of similar balconies on this wall of the Hive, all deserted. The nearest was twenty meters away. They were the kind of thing rental agents like to point to as a plus—God knows that Johnny probably paid plenty extra for an outside room—but the balconies were totally impractical because of the strong wind rushing up toward the ventilators, carrying the usual grit and debris as well as the eternal Hive scent of oil and ozone.

I put my pistol away and went back to check on Johnny.

The cut ran from his hairline to his eyebrow, superficial but messy. He was sitting up as I returned from the bathroom with a sterile drypad and pressed it against the cut. “What happened?” I said.