Dan Simmons - The Rise of Endymion

HYPERION

EXTRAORDINARY. Asimovs Science Fiction
SIMMONS MASTERFULLY EMPLOYS SFS POTENTIAL. Locus
A MAGNIFICENTLY ORIGINAL BLEND OF THEMES AND STYLES. The Denver Post

THE FALL OF HYPERION

GENEROUSLY CONCEIVED AND STYLISTICALLY SURE-HANDED. AN UNFAILINGLY INVENTIVE NARRATIVE THAT BEARS COMPARISON WITH SUCH CLASSICS AS ISAAC ASIMOVS FOUNDATION SERIES, FRANK HERBERTS DUNE, AND GENE WOLFES BOOK OF THE NEW SUN.
The New York Times Book Review
DAN SIMMONS HAS BRILLIANTLY CONCEPTUALIZED A FUTURE 700 YEARS DISTANT. IN SHEER SCOPE AND COMPLEXITY IT MATCHES, AND PERHAPS EVEN SURPASSES, THOSE OF ISAAC ASIMOV AND JAMES BLISH.
The Washington Post Book World

ENDYMION

[A] MASTERY OF FAR-FUTURE SCIENCE FICTION.
The New York Times Book Review
A MAJOR WORK SIMMONS DOESNT JUST PROMISE; HE DELIVERS.
Science Fiction Chronicle
BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL OF 1995.
Rocky Mountain News

THE RISE OF ENDYMION

SIMMONSS SCOPE IS TRULY STAGGERING, HIS INVENTIVENESS CONTINUES TO IMPRESS, AND THE NARRATIVE OFFERS SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE.
Kirkus Reviews
BRILLIANTLY REALIZED. Booklist

Song of Kali

Phases of Gravity

Carrion Comfort

*Hyperion

*The Fall of Hyperion

Entropys Bed at Midnight

Summer of Night

*The Hollow Man

Children of the Night

Summer Sketches

Fires of Eden

*Endymion

*The Rise of Endymion

* Available from Bantam Books

This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

THE RISE OF ENDYMION
A Bantam Spectra Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition / September 1997

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed s are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Copyright 1997 by Dan Simmons.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-5658
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78192-5

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words Bantam Books and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

v3.1

This book is for Jack Vance, our finest creator of worlds. It is also dedicated to the memory of Dr. Carl Sagan, scientist, author, and teacher, who articulated the noblest dreams of humankind.

The author would like to thank the following people: Kevin Kelly for his account of the evolution of a-life from 80-byte critters in his book Out of Control; Jean-Daniel Breque and Monique Labailly for their personal guided tour through the catacombs of Paris; Jeff Orr, cybercowboy extraordinaire, for boldly going into cyberspace to retrieve the forty-some pages of this tale kidnapped by the TechnoCore; and my editor, Tom Dupree, for his patience, enthusiasm, and shared good taste for loving Mystery Science Theater 3000.

We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.

Norbert Wiener,
Cybernetics, or Control and
Communication in the Animal and the Machine

The universal nature out of the universal substance, as if it were wax, now moulds the figure of a horse, and when it has broken this up, it uses the material for a tree, next for a man, next for something else; and each of these things subsists for a very short time. But it is no hardship for the vessel to be broken up, just as there was none in its being fastened together.

Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Robert Browning,
Abt Vogler

If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it may not be, I will but [sic] you in the place where I began in this series of thoughtsI mean, I began by seeing how man was formed by circumstancesand what are circumstances?but touchstones of his heart? and what are touch stones?but proovings [sic] of his heart [sic]?and what are the proovings [sic] of his heart but fortifiers or alterers of his nature? and what is his altered nature but his soul?and what was his soul before it came into the world and had These provings and alterations and perfectionings?An intelligences [sic]without Identityand how is this Identity to be made? Through the medium of the Heart? And how is the heart to become this Medium but in a world of Circumstances?There now I think what with Poetry and Theology you may thank your Stars that my pen is not very long-winded

John Keats,
In a letter to his brother

he Pope is dead! Long live the Pope!

The cry reverberated in and around the Vatican courtyard of San Damaso where the body of Pope Julius XIV had just been discovered in his papal apartments. The Holy Father had died in his sleep. Within minutes the word spread through the mismatched cluster of buildings still referred to as the Vatican Palace, and then moved out through the Vatican State with the speed of a circuit fire in a pure-oxygen environment. The rumor of the Popes death burned through the Vaticans office complex, leaped through the crowded St. Annes Gate to the Apostolic Palace and the adjacent Government Palace, found waiting ears among the faithful in the sacristy of St. Peters Basilica to the point that the archbishop saying Mass actually turned to look over his shoulder at the unprecedented hiss and whispering of the congregation, and then moved out of the Basilica with the departing worshipers into the larger crowds of St. Peters Square where eighty to a hundred thousand tourists and visiting Pax functionaries received the rumor like a critical mass of plutonium being slammed inward to full fission.

Once out through the main vehicle gate of the Arch of Bells, the news accelerated to the speed of electrons, then leaped to the speed of light, and finally hurtled out and away from the planet Pacem at Hawking-drive velocities thousands of times faster than light. Closer, just beyond the ancient walls of the Vatican, phones and comlogs chimed throughout the hulking, sweating Castel SantAngelo where the offices of the Holy Office of the Inquisition were buried deep in the mountain of stone originally built to be Hadrians mausoleum. All that morning there was the rattle of beads and rustle of starched cassocks as Vatican functionaries rushed back to their offices to monitor their encrypted net lines and to wait for memos from above. Personal communicators rang, chimed, and vibrated in the uniforms and implants of thousands of Pax administrators, military commanders, politicians, and Mercantilus officials. Within thirty minutes of the discovery of the Popes lifeless body, news organizations around the world of Pacem were cued to the story: they readied their robotic holocams, brought their full panoply of in-system relay sats on-line, sent their best human reporters to the Vatican press office, and waited. In an interstellar society where the Church ruled all but absolutely, news awaited not only independent confirmation but official permission to exist.