Ilium by Dan Simmons Read Free Book Online

height of shelves in the library, Daeman watched the subtle, soft shift of her right breast under its thin sheath of silk.
    He had been in a library before, but never one this large. The room must have been more than a hundred feet long and half that high, with a mezzanine running around three walls and sliding ladders on both levels to give access to the higher and more remote volumes. There were alcoves, cubbies, tables with large books opened on them, seating areas here and there, and even shelves of books over the huge bay window on the far wall. Daeman knew that the physical books stored here must have been treated with non-decomposative nanochemicals many, many centuries before, probably millennia ago—these useless artifacts were made of leather and paper and ink, for heaven’s sake—but the mahogany-paneled room with its pools of source lighting, ancient leather furniture, and brooding walls of books still smelled of age and decay to Daeman’s sensitive snout. He could not imagine why Ada and the other family members maintained this mausoleum at Ardis Hall, or why Harman and Hannah wanted to see it tonight.
    The curly-haired man who claimed to be in his last year and who claimed to have walked into the Atlantic Breach stopped in wonder. “It’s wonderful, Ada.” He climbed a ladder, slid it along a row of shelves, and reached a hand out to touch a thick leather volume.
    Daeman laughed. “Do you think the reading function has returned, Harman Uhr ?”
    The man smiled, but seemed so confident that for a second Daeman half expected to see the golden rush of symbols down his arm as the reading function signaled the content. Daeman had never seen the lost function in action, of course, but had heard it described by his grandmother and other old folks describing what their great-great-grandparents had enjoyed.
    No words flowed. Harman pulled his hand back. “Don’t you wish you had the reading function, Daeman Uhr ?”
    Daeman heard himself laughing yet again on this odd evening and was acutely aware of both of the young women looking at him with expressions somewhere between bemusement and curiosity.
    “No, of course not,” he said at last. “Why should I? What could these old things tell me that could have any pertinence to our lives today?”
    Harman climbed higher on the ladder. “Aren’t you curious why the post-humans are no longer seen on Earth and where they went?”
    “Not at all. They went home to their cities in the rings. Everyone knows that.”
    “Why?” asked Harman. “After many millennia of molding our affairs here, watching over us, why did they leave?”
    “Nonsense,” said Daeman, perhaps a bit more gruffly than he had intended. “The posts are still watching over us. From above.”
    Harman nodded as if enlightened and shuffled his ladder a few yards along its brass track. The man’s head was almost touching the underside of the library mezzanine now. “How about the voynix?”
    “What about the voynix?”
    “Did you ever wonder why they were motionless for so many centuries and are so active now?”
    Daeman opened his mouth but had nothing to say to that. After a moment, he managed, “That business about the voynix not moving before the final fax is total nonsense. Myths. Folklore.”
    Ada stepped closer. “Daeman, did you ever wonder where they came from?”
    “Who, my dear?”
    “The voynix.”
    Daeman laughed heartily and honestly at this. “Of course not, my lady. The voynix have always been here. They are permanent, fixed, eternal—moving, sometimes out of sight, but always present—like the sun or the stars.”
    “Or the rings?” asked Hannah in her soft voice.
    “Precisely.” Daeman was pleased that she understood.
    Harman pulled a heavy book from the shelves. “Daeman Uhr, Ada informs me that you are quite the lepidopterist.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Butterfly expert.”
    Daeman could feel himself blush. It was always pleasing to have one’s skills