The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (124 page)

Brawne looks at Johnny in the hell-light from the megalith’s glow. The egg-chamber is still black, the megasphere and universe beyond, opaqued to nonexistence. She leans forward until their temples touch,
knowing that no thought can be secret here but wanting the sense of whispering:

—
Jesus Christ, do you understand all of that?

Johnny raises soft fingers to touch her cheek:

—Yes
.

—
Part of some human-created Trinity is hiding out in the Web?

—
The Web or elsewhere. Brawne, we do not have much time left here. I need some final answers from Ummon
.

—
Yeah. Me too. But let’s keep it from waxing rhapsodic again
.

—
Agreed
.

—
Can I go first, Johnny?

Brawne watches her lover’s analog bow slightly and make a you-first gesture and then she returns her attention to the energy megalith:

—
Who killed my father? Senator Byron Lamia?

[Elements of the Core authorized it
Myself included]

—
Why? What did he do to you?

[He insisted on bringing Hyperion into the equation before it could be factored/predicted/absorbed]

—
Why? Did he know what you just told us?

[He knew only that the Volatiles were pressing for quick

extinction

of humankind

He passed this knowledge

to his colleague

Gladstone]

—
Then why haven’t you murdered her?

[Some of us have precluded

that possibility/inevitability

The time is right now

for the Hyperion Variable

to be played]

—
Who murdered Johnny’s first cybrid? Attacked his Core persona?

[I did
It was

Ummon’s will which prevailed]

—
Why?

[We created him

We found it necessary to discontinue him

for a while

Your lover is a persona retrieved

from a humankind poet

now long dead

Except for the Ultimate Intelligence Project

no effort has been

so complicated

nor little understood

as this resurrection

Like your kind/

we usually destroy

what we cannot understand]

Johnny raises his fists toward the megalith:

—
But there is another of me. You failed!

[Not failure
You had to be destroyed

so that the other

might live]

—
But I am not destroyed!
cries Johnny.

Yes

You are]

The megalith seizes Johnny with a second massive pseudopod before Brawne can either react or touch her poet lover a final time. Johnny twists a second in the AI’s massive grip, and then his analog—Keats’s small but beautiful body—is torn, compacted, smashed into an unrecognizable mass which Ummon sets against his megalith flesh, absorbing the analog’s remains back into the orange-and-red depths of itself.

Brawne falls to her knees and weeps. She wills rage … prays for a shield of anger … but feels only loss.

Ummon turns his gaze on her. The egg-chamber ovoid collapses, allowing the din and electric insanity of the megasphere to surround them.

[Go away now