Brawne knew shock was common when you've been shot; at the moment, however, it was pissing her off.
It had been a quiet night at Cicero's for a change; Stan told her he figured it was because the Ousters were leaving Hyperion, a fact that worried many. They had fought so hard to capture the planet they believed would be a factor in humanity's victory over the UI that their sudden choice to leave made no sense. The Hegemony was gone, broken into pieces; the Core had been defeated by the destruction of the farcasters. What were they running away from?
Aenea would know. Aenae would tell her if she asked. At twelve years old, Aenea was still a smart-mouth brat who sometimes thought she was too big for her britches, but it could be hard to argue with her. How could you tell someone what to do when they could see the future? Even though she said nothing about her dreams, Brawne could see it in her eyes; she was a normal child of potential, who would change humanity forever.
"Ah, Aenea," Brawne moaned, nearly screaming when her back hit the wall of the alley, stars colouring her vision as she almost passed out. This was maddening, this weakness; she had grown up on Lusus, damn it, she should not have become this weak over the years. She had let herself go after giving birth for far too many years. Once upon a time, she would have taken the woman down before she would have managed to shoot, but this time she had been too slow. The bullet had slammed into her gut before she had realized the bitch had fired, and she had allowed herself to fall like a stupid cow, reeling with the pain.
Stan had cut the woman off sometime before midnight. An indigenie flush with wealth from a major fiberplastic sale, she had worked her way through most of the hard liquor before he had stopped her, most of it vile clones of whiskey and vodka; both were inferior products on Hyperion. Both were guaranteed to kill your stomach and leave you feeling as if a sea serpent had swallowed you whole and shat you out. Martin once told her only the indigenies were outright crazy enough to drink something that could blind a sober man from ten paces away from mere breath alone. She believed him.
Predictably, the woman had thrown a fit, though Brawne could only understand about half of it; twelve years on Hyperion had made her no expert at indigenie patois, though she honestly saw and heard very few of them in Keats. "Bey you stupid, old man?" she had shouted, throwing a bottle half-full of cloudy vodka at Stan. "I bey having money to pay for my drinks. I bey a payin' customer, I bey. Me-think you should bey givin' me my alcohol right away-like!" She had thrown a handful of bills on the bar and leapt over it herself to grab a new bottle of whiskey, only to find herself being thrown right back over it by Brawne. An unlucky table of Hoolie dockworkers on a weekend drunk shouted curses at her as the old weirwood smashed to bits. Then Brawne had walked around the bar to throw the indigenie out, and they shut up.
Though twelve years on a planet with a mere one-g gravity had shrunk Brawne's Lusian muscles under the fat she had accumulated from her pregnancy, what she had gained back in the last four had been impressive. No one would pick a fight with her sober; the steely glint in her expressive eyes and her knowledge of martial arts spread the word that she was not to be fucked with. Stan had grumbled and hollered over the idea of hiring a woman to be his bouncer, but once she had proven herself to be both crazy and effective, he had kept her on. The amount of times she had thrown a drunk out on his ear had given her back her usefulness, so long gone after her years as a detective. So she had not been too worried about dealing with an indigenie, and, in a bit of hypocrisy, a woman. She certainly hadn't expected the woman to swing a punch that knocked her back a few feet and run out the door.
The gun had definitely been unexpected. Once Brawne had been shot and dropped to her ass, however, she had gotten back up again, fighting the waves of pain radiating from her gut to kick the woman - who had not bothered to run after shooting her - with severe violence in the face. The indigenie dropped the gun and ran then, and Brawne, now bleeding far too badly, had given up the chase. Even her brand of stubborn could not overcome a bullet, tough-ass detective or no. But she was still pissed.
She thought of what Johnny would say, if he could see her now; she remembered him the night they had first made love, asking her, "Why are you so tough?" Because she had refused to be anything else. She had not wanted to live in fear of the future after her father was killed, and so she had pushed herself, trained herself, to become a detective. She watched her mother disappear into herself after Byron's body was found, and she had sworn to find out the truth. And she had done it, even though it had been cold comfort knowing she could never tell her mother, knowing that her mother was so lost inside of her sadness she likely never realized Brawne had disappeared. She had discovered the truth, and it had left her even more unsatisfied.
Johnny. Aenea. She struggled to stand again, the world going grey around her rapidly tunneling vision. She was definitely going to pass out, and she knew if she did in the piss-end of an alley on the wrong side of Keats, she would be dead. But her legs refused to cooperate, and she tumbled back down again, scummy water soaking her pants. "Fuck, this hurts," she gasped, awkwardly flopping onto her ass. She felt cold, and as she tugged her trenchcoat closer, she wondered what would happen if she did die. Would her lack of faith be proven false, as she soared up into the heavens, or reached Nirvana, or did something extraordinary instead of simpling turning off? She wondered if Aenea had dreamed of this moment: her mother, Brawne Lamia, dying in a cold, smelly alleyway alone. If she had, she would have never told her. She told her mother once that she tried very hard not to tell anyone what she had seen of the future, because she was never sure if it was the right future. It was like quantum physics; in viewing the event, she could have changed the outcome. Brawne had told her no one liked a know-it-all anyway.
My name is Byron Lamia. I know the truth about the Core, and at this moment, I am paying for it with my life. The cybrids intercepted me on the way home, injecting me with nanotechnology to make me compliant. They tell me the nanos will disappear from my bloodstream within the hour, leaving no trace of their interference. I struggle, to no avail, as they order me to follow them and say nothing. They tell me I will be committing suicide by shooting myself; it is the price I am paying for going against the wishes of the Core by petitioning for Hyperion to be brought into the Hegemony. Inside of my head, I am cursing and screaming, unable to vocalize my thoughts.
I am home now, and they lead me into the master bedroom. They know my wife and child are out shopping; they have planned this perfectly. By their direction, I write a note explaining why I have done this, all lies that anyone who knows me will see through. Brawne especially will know this to be a lie; she is smart as a whip, and I am so proud of her. I know she will carry on after I am dead.
I finish writing the note, and I find a gun pressed into my hand; an antique pearl-handled pistol that I keep on the nightstand as I sleep. It was a gift from a fellow Lusian senator, as they knew my passion for firearms. The cybrids are smiling now, as I enter my bedroom and stand over my wife's side of the bed; the covers are turned down, as she always leaves them. She will not handle my death well, my poor wife. "Put the pistol in your mouth, Senator," one of the cybrids says, a bland, nondescript man. I follow his instructions and taste steel; I wonder what it will feel like in the second before death as my finger tightens on the trigger.
Brawne screamed as the gunshot echoed through her mind, and she slammed her fists against the concrete. "What in the hell, what in the hell," she choked, tears streaming down her face. The sudden onslaught of imagery had been as real as a memory; she had been there, she had re-lived her father's murder as surely as she had walked next to him and witnessed it personally. And yet she had not; she had been in a Lusus mall with her mother at the time of death. Was she hallucinating? She curled her fingers around the gun the indigenie had dropped, and almost screamed again as she recognized the pearl handle. It was impossible....
My name is John Keats, and I am dying. It is not an easy death; tuberculosis is a terrible way to die, as I choke on blood within my lungs, when I am not coughing them up. I came to Italy with Joseph Severn to attempt to stop the spread of the disease, to no avail; I know I am not to leave this place, and that I will never see Fanny again.
Severn has gone to pick flowers, and I choke on the blood boiling up in my throat. As I flop helplessly on the bed, I cough up onto myself, an invalid, pathetic young man left alone in a strange country. I wonder what Fanny thinks of me now; I have not read her latest letters. I feel a sense of loss at all of the poems I have yet to write, and all of the poems I have already written that will be lost to time; according to my critics, this is best. They dislike my prose, and slander my pen. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps Mr. John Keats would have been better off a surgeon instead of an artist. I think of my sonnet "When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be":
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
I think of my unfinished poem, "Hyperion," and know some kindness in that no one shall read it after I am dead. It vexed me, and I am ashamed to have left it behind, but now, the time has passed. My very last work will be as on my tombstone: "Here lies one whose name is writ in water." Severn will honour my request. And it will be left unscathed by those scavengers who call themselves critics, my final statement to a heartless, loving, alternately cruel world.
Brawne was on her side when she opened her eyes, though she no longer felt any pain. The sight of Johnny - not her Johnny, but the poet John Keats upon whom his cybrid had been patterned - had opened up the old wound of seeing him die in the megasphere. She missed him so much, for so little time she had spent with him. The second John Keats cybrid had to be wandering the metasphere still, capable of visiting her, but she knew he understood why she never wanted to see him again. Perhaps he visited Aenea.
"Brawne. It's time to go, Brawne." A familiar hand closed around her fingers, pulling her up. She closed her eyes, then slowly opened them.
Johnny was smiling at her, and she knew, without a doubt, that it was her Johnny, which was technically impossible. "Johnny? Am I dreaming?"
He took her other hand, and they began to fly, just as they had done before as he took her into the megasphere. "You're not dreaming, Brawne, but you are dead, I'm afraid," he said sadly, pulling her into his arms. "So am I, but the human mind is a strange and powerful machine. I think our brilliant little messiah could explain it, because I still don't understand it myself."
"I'm dead? But I can't be dead, Aenea needs me! Take me back, Johnny, take me back!" She struggled against his arms, looking back down at her body, so small and fragile as it lay curled up on the concrete in its puddle of blood. "Jesus, Johnny, I can't believe this. I can't just leave her alone with Martin, not like my father left me!"
"Shhh, Brawne. Let it go. Aenea knows. We've become the Voices of the Beloved Dead; she'll always have us near. And she is more than capable of taking care of herself. She'll have her allies. We've done our part; now we exit, stage right." She slumped against him as she kissed her, holding her tightly. It was just as she remembered; even her body image had changed to match the her of twelve years ago, when they had been lovers.
"Is she really going to be The One Who Teaches?" she asked once they parted, continuing to rise. "What she's told me, and what we planned on...I believe, but I don't believe it. My daughter, of all people, a damned messiah." She looked back down at the small speck of her own body. "And what was I seeing? I saw my father as he killed himself under the orders of a cybrid. I saw John Keats - the John Keats - on his death bed. Is it because I'm her mother?"
They were rising into the metasphere, and Brawne fell silent. Johnny nodded at her awe, and said, "No, you were a regular human being, Brawne. It was the nanotechnology in your bloodstream that gave you access to the Void Which Binds; it is the gift of Aenea's blood that the Core is afraid of. She spiked your coffee yesterday with it. She gave you her gift and her curse, knowing something could happen to you today." He smiled sadly, stroking Brawne's cheek with his thumb. "Our poor little girl. Such a burden to bear. Such is the fate of any messiah." He said:
Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
A paradise for a sect; the savage too
From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep
Guesses at Heaven; pity these have not
Trac'd upon vellum or wild Indian leaf
The shadows of melodious utterance.
But bare of laurel they live, dream, and die;
For Poesy alone can tell her dreams,
With the fine spell of words alone can save
Imagination from the sable charm
And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say,
'Thou art no Poet may'st not tell thy dreams?'
Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.
Whether the dream now purpos'd to rehearse
Be poet's or fanatic's will be known
When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.
"Johnny, you're a morbid bastard," Brawne said, and she kissed him again, hearing the strange, echoing vastness of the metasphere all around them like a beautiful bird's song, the lyre with its one broken string no longer. She whispered into his mouth,
Anon rush'd by the bright Hyperion;
His flaming robes stream'd out beyond his heels,
And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,
That scared away the meek ethereal hours
And made their dove wings tremble. On he flared....
"'On he flared,'" Johnny echoed, and kissed her again.
