Falcon opened his eyes to golden sunlight.
He was sitting in a deckchair, facing out across a railed platform. Only one other person was here on the platform with him. She leant with an elbow resting nonchalantly against the low guardrail, a glass in her hand, displaying an admirable lack of concern for the drop behind her. Beyond the rail, far below, sweeping grandly into the distance, was the elegant continuation of an airship’s envelope. And beyond that a crumpled grandeur that he recognised as the Grand Canyon . . .
An airship.
Falcon realised, with a kind of delayed recognition, that he was back on the Queen Elizabeth. This was the little external platform that jutted out behind the main observation deck, in the lee of the deck’s big Plexiglas dorsal blister. Normally open to VIPs only. But the woman leaning against the railing was no ordinary passenger. She had one foot on the floor, the other on the lowest rail. Her clothes were white, almost luminous in the sunlight.
Falcon stared at this angelic vision. “If I’m going mad, keep it coming. I’m rather enjoying the experience.”
“No,” she said quietly. “You’re not mad, or delirious.” She held up the glass. “You want some iced tea?”
“You sound like Hope. You look like Hope. But Hope always said I should stay away from the crash site. And how did I get here? The last thing I remember . . . something about the sun . . . I remember Jupiter Within. The snowman, the cottage—Adam?”
“Adam was released.”
Falcon, oddly, imagined a moth cupped in a child’s hands, and set free in the safety of the night dark. “I’m glad.”
“And he brought out with him all that was left of you—all of you.”
“And all of you? Who decided you should be here?”
Her smile was teasing. “Complaining?”
“Far from it. But how the hell—”
“Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“No. Given that we’re having this conversation, though . . . Where are we? What are we?”
“In the future, Howard. I mean, our future. At a point in time where the Machines have become—well, pretty powerful. They can resurrect a convincing emulation of almost any historical personage. Even more so when they have direct access to the memories of those who knew that person. Adam had preserved the essence of you, of course. As for me—do you recall the Memory Garden?”
The pain of its destruction still pushed a little sliver through whatever counted as his heart. “The Springer-Soames destroyed it.”
“Not as thoroughly as they imagined. Shattered it, yes. Obliterated its living ecosystem. But the testimonies, the recordings, the biographical accounts, all were still recoverable. Even as the terms of the human-Machine accord were falling into place—even as Boss, Tem and others were negotiating with the Springer-Soames to establish a new democratic regime to replace the wreck of the WG—there were investigators busy sifting through the rubble cloud of the Memory Garden. After that stunt, Howard, your speech from the heart of the sun, anything associated with you was suddenly of huge interest.”
“Nice to know.”
“Yes, much of your memorial to Hope was lost. But much more was preserved. You did a good job, Howard. You remembered her well. She would have been pleased—and she would have understood why you did it.”
“She would?”
“There was always a longing in you, Howard—a hole in your psyche where human companionship used to fit. You needed me. So, as they reassembled you, the Machines stitched me back together as well.”
“So you’re not Hope—just a clever impersonation.” He smiled even as the truth took the edge off his joy. “Should I call you False Hope instead?”
“Call me what you like. All I know is that she was a remarkable doctor. It’s an honour to be her emulation. You don’t find this distressing, do you? . . . Let me show you something.” She bid him rise from the deckchair, and join her at the guardrail.
Falcon stood and moved to the railing. Even that simple motion was a strange experience. He now had legs rather than undercarriage; shoes rather than wheels. For the first time in centuries he could feel the fabric of the uniform against his skin, the scratch of it against the hairs of his shins as he moved. Even, he realised, his brief embodiment as his eleven-year-old self was nothing compared to the sheer authenticity of this.
“That body you’re wearing now. It isn’t real. None of this is real. But it can be, if you choose to accept the Machines’ offer.”
“This is all a gift of the Machines? . . . What offer?”
“Physical embodiment is the easiest part of the puzzle, actually. You’re like wine. They can pour you into any bottle.”
He grunted. “Well, I’m a sour old vintage. I bet there’s a catch,” he said slowly. “There always is with the Machines.”
“No, it’s unconditional. No strings. No coercion. But if you were willing to help them with a little local difficulty, I’m sure they’d appreciate the gesture. May I show you something else?”
“Go ahead.”
Hope swept her free hand across the sky.
And, all at once, the blue deepened to an inky darkness, transitioning from the horizon through degrees of purple and navy and indigo to black at the zenith. And, beneath the prow of the Queen Elizabeth the Arizona landscape had faded to transparency, ghosting quietly away.
Despite himself, Falcon felt a surge of vertigo. He reached for support, felt the cold steel rail under his fingers. Wherever Hope had taken him, it was somewhere else. Somewhere very else. “We’re not in Arizona any more,” he whispered.
Hope smiled. “Or Kansas, for that matter.”
The Queen Elizabeth was suspended over a planet, far enough from the surface that the curvature of the world’s horizon was plainly apparent. Hovering above some great bay or bight, a blue-green sea partly enclosed by long peninsulas.
Falcon stared at the scene for long seconds, trying to be analytical, determined not to jump to premature conclusions, especially on the basis of such sparse sensory data. He was seeing things differently now, his impressions squeezed through the arrow-slots of human perception. How could people stand being like this, he wondered? It was as if they walked around with masks on, only ever catching a glimpse of things. His eyes no longer even had a zoom feature.
He supposed he would have to make do with it. And in truth, there was a satisfaction in making the best of such meagre resources. He studied the scene anew, trying to forget the battery of senses he had come to rely on, and to just absorb the view as gathered by his eyes.
For a start there was clearly atmosphere down there, evidenced by a band of blue that formed a perfect circumscribing arc above the horizon. The landmasses were more than barren rock, for they threw back tints of green and ochre and blue. Near their extremities those two claws of land shattered into chains of islands, diminishing in size as they reached further out into the sea. Falcon glanced from one island to the next. Each was surrounded by a bright margin of cliff or beach, further hemmed by white breakers.
Complexity. Detail. There were atolls and reefs and archipelagos and lone, isolated islands. In the sky there were clouds, and the plumes of barely-slumbering volcanoes.
“It’s lovely,” Falcon said. “Please tell me it’s not just another simulation.”
“It’s real enough. And we’re close enough that seeing it with your own eyes—touching it, exploring it—wouldn’t be a problem. We could be down there, in that air, swimming those seas, walking those shorelines. In a way, though, this world is just a starter. It’s not why the Machines called you back to life—or for that matter, why they summoned me.” Hope gave a sidelong smile. “But they thought you’d like it, just as they hoped you’d like me.”
Falcon met her smile with one of his own. He had grown used to the leathery stiffness of his old mask—it had been a useful filter for his deeper feelings, he realised now with chagrin. He was more transparent now; he would have to be careful. “If this is a starter, what’s the main course?”
“That,” Hope said, and directed his attention to the horizon at his right.
Beyond this nameless world, the limb of another planet was rising into view. From its flattened oval, and the heavy banding of its surface features, it could not help but remind Falcon of Jupiter. But he could no more have mistaken it for Jupiter than he’d have mistaken Earth for Mars. This was another Jovian world, but it was unlike any in the solar system. It glowed, a sullen red.
“They have a name for it, but it’s not one you and I are presently capable of understanding. Or indeed pronouncing. Not that that matters for now. We’re here, and they need us. Do you remember the terms of Orpheus’s accord, Howard? The separation of human and Machine spheres of influence?”
“Somewhere at the back of my mind.”
“Courtesy of the Machines, we’re in an extrasolar system, accessed through the gateway inside Jupiter Within. Just as Orpheus promised. But this Earthlike moon is a mere pendant to a Machine world, Howard: that hot Jupiter is full of Machines. A remarkable situation—and light-years from Earth. And yet you could be useful here.”
“Useful. You make me sound like an old trowel.”
“Better than obsolescence, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose. Useful how?”
“Do you believe in accidents, Howard? Chance events? This timeline we’ve found ourselves on—this braid of historical events, this one strand out of all the myriad paths we might have taken—do you ever wonder if there’s a deeper purpose to it all?”
“Purpose?”
“A random gust of wind ended your old life, above the Grand Canyon. Without that gust, you’d have sailed on, and no one beyond a small cadre of airship historians would have had reason to know the name Howard Falcon. You’d never have been reconstructed—you’d never have gone to Jupiter, met the medusae. And what caused that gust of wind? Some random atmospheric fluctuation, a butterfly flapping its metaphorical wings. Chance shapes our lives on the smallest of scales, and history itself on the largest.”
“Hm,” Falcon said, remembering. “A kiss on a pool table . . .”
“Howard?”
“Sorry. Just a line from an old movie. But what’s this got to do with me?”
“Do you remember what Orpheus said of the First Jovians?”
Falcon remembered that firelit room, the poker in the hearth, the snowman in the armchair. It felt like some sepia-tinted memory from his earliest childhood. “Hard to forget. But we weren’t told much.”
“We have learned a little more, with time. The First Jovians have achieved an expertise with metric engineering beyond anything in our understanding. They have touched the bedrock of reality . . . and felt ghosts, vibrations, singing through it. Whispers and rumours of other realities, other histories, adjoining our own. We can only imagine the paths not taken. The First Jovians—well, they seem to feel those lost worlds in their bones. And in some sense—although this is only my intuition—I think they have the means to nurture the paths they deem most favourable . . . those with the outcomes most useful to them, most favourable to life, the most beautiful. However they measure it.
“Now, along with the Machines, they’ve met—encountered—something, inside that hot Jupiter, something that doesn’t fit into their preconceived framework. Perhaps another order of life, which isn’t playing by the usual rules. It’s got them befuddled—enough that they need a fresh perspective. I think we, you and I, have been brought to this moment, this place, because even gods need mortals. Because the First Jovians need us. Human and Machine. A partnership in curiosity. Because the real work of life, of mind, is still to be done. The question is: are you ready for a new journey?”
“I feel like I’ve done enough journeying for one lifetime.”
“Oh, enough with the self-pity. You’re just getting started.”
Falcon felt a shiver of recognition. That sounded like Hope Dhoni. “I see they left you with the same rough edges.”
“You’d have been disappointed with anything less.” She took a final sip from her glass. “So what’s it to be? A quiet retirement with a view to die for, or something that might stretch you, just a tiny bit?”
He smiled, and turned away. His gaze returned to that kiss of atmosphere below, to the cold, clear envelope enclosing a planet’s worth of seas and islands and weather. He found himself wondering what the ballooning would be like down there.
He said softly, “Astonish me.”