He told of the illusion continued, the trip back to England, the reunion with the Fanny-who-was-not-Fanny and the near mental breakdown this had engendered. He told of his inability to write further poetry, of his increasing estrangement from the cybrid impostors, of his retreat into something resembling catatonia combined with “hallucinations” of his true AI existence in the nearly incomprehensible (to a nineteenth-century poet) TechnoCore, and of the ultimate crumbling of the illusion and the abandonment of the “Keats Project.”
“In truth,” he said, “the entire, evil charade made me think of nothing so much as a passage in a letter I wrote … he wrote … to his brother George some time before his illness. Keats said:
“May there not be superior beings amused with any graceful, though instinctive attitude my mind may fall into, as I am entertained with the alertness of a Stoat or the anxiety of a Deer? Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine. By a superior being our reasonings may take the same tone—though erroneous they may be fine—This is the very thing in which consists poetry.”
“You think the … Keats Project … was evil?” I asked.
“Anything which deceives is evil, I believe.”
“Perhaps you are more John Keats than you are willing to admit.”
“No. The absence of poetic instinct showed otherwise even in the midst of the most elaborate illusion.”
I looked at the dark outlines of shapes in the dark house. “Do the AIs know that we’re here?”
“Probably. Almost surely. There is no place that I can go that the TechnoCore cannot trace and follow. But it was the Web authorities and brigands from whom we fled, no?”
“But you know now that it was someone … some intelligence in the TechnoCore who assaulted you.”
“Yes, but only in the Web. Such violence in the Core would not be tolerated.”
There came a noise from the street. A pigeon, I hoped. Wind blowing trash across cobblestones perhaps. I said, “How will the TechnoCore respond to my being here?”
“I have no idea.”
“Surely it must be a secret.”
“It is … something they consider irrelevant to humanity.”
I shook my head, a futile gesture in the darkness. “The recreation of Old Earth … the resurrection of … how many?… human personalities as cybrids on this recreated world … AIs killing AIs … irrelevant!” I laughed but managed to keep the laughter under control. “Jesus wept, Johnny.”
“Almost certainly.”
I moved to the window, not caring what sort of target I would afford anyone in the dark street below, and fumbled out a cigarette. They were damp from the afternoon’s chase through the snowdrifts but one lighted when I struck it. “Johnny, earlier when you said that the Old Earth analog was complete, I said, ‘Why, for God’s sake?’ and you said something like ‘That may be the case.’ Was that just a wiseass comment or did you mean something?”
“I mean that it might indeed be for God’s sake.”
“Explain.”
Johnny sighed in the darkness. “I don’t understand the exact purpose of the Keats Project or the other Old Earth analogs, but I suspect that it is part of a TechnoCore project going back at least seven standard centuries to realize the Ultimate Intelligence.”
“The Ultimate Intelligence,” I said, exhaling smoke. “Uh-huh. So the TechnoCore is trying to … what?… to build God.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“There is no simple answer, Brawne. Any more than there is a simple answer to the question of why humankind has sought God in a million guises for ten thousand generations. But with the Core, the interest lies more in the quest for more efficiency, more reliable ways to handle … variables.”
“But the TechnoCore can draw on itself and the megadatasphere of two hundred worlds.”
“And there still will be blanks in the … predictive powers.”
I threw my cigarette out the window, watching the ember fall into the night. The breeze was suddenly cold; I hugged my arms. “How does all this … Old Earth, the resurrection projects, the cybrids … how does it lead to creating the Ultimate Intelligence?”
“I don’t know, Brawne. Eight standard centuries ago, at the beginning of the First Information Age, a man named Norbert Wiener wrote: ‘Can God play a significant game with his own creature? Can any creator, even a limited one, play a significant game with his own creature?’ Humanity dealt with this inconclusively with their early AIs. The Core wrestles with it in the resurrection projects. Perhaps the UI program has been completed and all of this remains a function of the ultimate Creature/Creator, a personality whose motives are as far beyond the Core’s understanding as the Core’s are beyond humanity’s.”
I started to move in the dark room, bumped a low table with my knee, and remained standing. “None of which tells us who is trying to kill you,” I said.
“No.” Johnny rose and moved to the far wall. A match flared and he lighted a candle. Our shadows wavered on the walls and ceiling.
Johnny came closer and softly gripped my upper arms. The soft light painted his curls and eyelashes copper and touched his high cheekbones and firm chin. “Why are you so tough?” he asked.
I stared at him. His face was only inches from mine. We were the same height. “Let go,” I said.
Instead, he leaned forward and kissed me. His lips were soft and warm and the kiss seemed to last for hours. He’s a machine, I thought. Human, but a machine behind that. I closed my eyes. His soft hand touched my cheek, my neck, the back of my head.
“Listen …” I whispered when we broke apart for an instant.
Johnny did not let me finish. He lifted me in his arms and carried me into the other room. The tall bed. The soft mattress and deep comforter. The candlelight from the other room flickered and danced as we undressed each other in a sudden urgency.
We made love three times that night, each time responding to slow, sweet imperatives of touch and warmth and closeness and the escalating intensity of sensation. I remember looking down at him the second time; his eyes were closed, hair fell loosely across his forehead, the candlelight showing the flush across his pale chest, his surprisingly strong arms and hands rising to hold me in place. He had opened his eyes that second to look back at me and I saw only the emotion and passion of that moment reflected there.
Sometime before dawn we slept and, just as I turned away and drifted off, I felt the cool touch of his hand on my hip in a movement protective and casual without being possessive.
They hit us just after first light. There were five of them, not Lusian but heavily muscled, all men, and they worked well together as a team.
The first I heard them was when the door to the apartment was kicked open. I rolled out of bed, jumped to the side of the bedroom door, and watched them come through. Johnny sat up and shouted something as the first man leveled a stunner. Johnny had pulled on cotton shorts before going to sleep; I was nude. There are real disadvantages to fighting in the nude when one’s opponents are dressed, but the greatest problem is psychological. If you can get over the sense of heightened vulnerability, the rest is easy to compensate for.
The first man saw me, decided to stun Johnny anyway, and paid for the mistake. I kicked the weapon out of his hand and clubbed him down with a blow behind the left ear. Two more men pushed into the room. This time both of them were smart enough to deal with me first. Two others leaped for Johnny.
I blocked a stiff-fingered jab, parried a kick that would have done real damage, and backed away. There was a tall dresser to my left and the top drawer came out smooth and heavy. The big man in front of me shielded his face with both arms so that the thick wood splintered, but the instinctive reaction gave me a second’s opening and I took it, putting my entire body into the kick. Number two man grunted and fell back against his partner.