Simon had been confronted with a new problem...
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Chapter 19.
Simon stared incredulously for a long, long moment, before his natural politeness asserted itself. "Pardon me. Of course, please sit down." I've just invited a known mass-murderess and part of another faction to eat lunch with me. But perhaps a wiser course than rejecting her.
Relief was visible on the perfect features as Maria-Susanna sat down. "Thanks so much, Simon. I... know you probably haven't heard good things about me."
"And some of them are true," he said. "Most of them, I suspect."
For just an instant he saw – or, perhaps, sensed, through that strange connection with the Arena – a flash of agony, remorse and anger and confusion. It was gone almost before he saw it, and she simply said, "I... suppose, yes. At least in some sense or another. I won't argue with you, not now."
Her eyes were downcast, and he heard a trace of shakiness in the breath she drew before gesturing, with too-casual a movement, for the menu to appear before her. She's worried. Frightened? A Hyperion? He found a part of him wanting to reach out, take her hand and ask what was wrong.
Oh, this is dangerous. She may not assault me physically here, but already I can feel her effect on me. He recalled her prior appearance, how she had charmed even Ariane, to her confusion... and the furious anger he'd sensed in her, when no one else had seen it.
In that instant he understood. Of course. I had not yet fully admitted the existence of this strange ability, and it was active without my awareness. It gives me a perspective beyond the human, and here, against a woman who is herself beyond human, I am afraid I need that detachment.
Simon concentrated, allowed that godlike perception to trickle in, to elevate his senses and knowledge above those he owned naturally. As he did so, he could suddenly see layers of tension within the woman across from him. It does not let me read minds, but perceiving external signals that I would ordinarily miss, that it can do.
More importantly, he felt that preternatural attraction and sympathy becoming more distant. He could still feel them, but they were no longer gaining a hold on his deeper emotions and perceptions. But they are real. There is an attraction, a fascination, that goes beyond any ordinary emotional reaction. He could, somehow, tell that, even though he could detect nothing objective that would explain the attraction.
But none of that changed the fact that in front of him was a woman who was worried, afraid, a woman to whom such fear would be alien, perhaps was the trigger to make her into the monster he had heard of.
Or... just possibly... the lever to find a way to curing her. Is that possible?
"You could have called me – or anyone – if you wanted," Simon said finally, as she scanned the menu with the air of someone only half-seeing what was before them. "But you did not. Why?"
Her eyes met his, a flash of deep-sky blue more intense than Ariane's, and even through the Olympian detachment of his connection to the Arena he could feel the heartrending impact of that sad gaze. "The contact through the Arena... is impersonal, Simon. You know that. No one would have met with me without first preparing, formulating their suspicions, their fears." She sighed. "And I'm not a danger to you. I'm not! I don't agree with DuQuesne and some of the others on everything, but I want to save humanity, protect it... it's... it's my purpose."
That much was true, and at the same time trembled on the ragged edge of disaster. To admit she has a real purpose is probably dangerously close to recalling that she was created. "I am not arguing with you, Maria-Susanna. What brought you to me, then, Maria-Susanna of the Vengeance?" He thought it best to remind her that despite her protestations, she was no longer with humanity.
She laughed, and there was a bitter note in that laugh that sent a jolt through Simon. "Just 'Maria-Susanna' now, I am afraid. I am no longer a member of the Vengeance."
My God. "What? But... why?"
"I don't know!" she snapped. Then she blinked, clenched her fists, and took three deep breaths. To Simon's oversight, a roiling crest of emotion rose and was just as suddenly damped down. "I don't know. Selpa'a'At called me in, said that the Vengeance felt that my presence was no longer a benefit to the Vengeance, and removed me from the Faction."
She shook her head slowly, confused, angry, sad, all at once. "He seemed... horrified. By me. Or something associated with me. But I had told him a version of the truth, and he had seemed not to care as long as I posed no threat to his people. Now, suddenly, without warning, I am disposed of."
"Just like that? Now you have no home, nothing?"
A wan ghost of a smile rose on her face. "Just like that. Oh, I am not a beggar on the streets; he did not begrudge me a very large number of vals for both my service and to pay for the insult and injury of dismissal. But I am now... nobody in the Arena."
"I am certain there are other factions that would accept you," Simon said.
"But not my own homeland, I suspect."
Simon paused, and drove himself higher, looking at Maria-Susanna as he had Vantak during the battle. Is there a solution here? A chance? A way to draw her back from the brink?
Even as he did that, he saw.
Saw the woman before him, younger, without the signs of care or anger, alongside a man in a gold shirt that she looked at with absolute adoration. She traveled with him, fought at his side, tended him in injury, and was in turn tended when she had fallen.
And then the same woman, screaming in horror and denial as she cradled the man's body in her arms. Denial turned to rage, rage to murderous fury and the first cold-blooded killing, hunting a woman whose features echoed her own through the increasing chaos that had to be Hyperion Station during its fall. The loss of others, hundreds of others, and the mind made to be a support and hero and defender broke, and he could see the pattern of the madness within her, bent inward, self-supporting, self-destroying.
Yes. It could be done. But not by me. Only by someone who knew her well, whose voice could reach her... and only if they said the right words. Still, he now had a grasp of what could be said, what could be done, even if it was very little.
"Perhaps," Simon said, after what must have been only a fractional pause to Maria-Susanna. "But if you return, you will have to answer for everything you have done. You know that. Even if you justify it to yourself, the law will not have the same view."
"Yes…" her eyes blanked for a moment, then refocused, with another of those flashes of madness or pain. "Yes, I know. And so I cannot come home. Not now."
"I'm sorry, Maria-Susanna."
She looked at him then – really looked at him, not through the lens of her own worries, but with the wide-eyed blue gaze that he had seen in the younger girl. "You mean that. You really are sorry for me, for this... situation." She smiled, an expression with the force of a cannon of sunshine, and reached out to squeeze his hand. "Thank you, Simon. And... I'm sorry, too. For having misled you, and especially for taking your research without permission. I needed it... but that's not really a good excuse." A moment of pained self-awareness. "I'm ... good at excuses, though."
"Given your situation... I won't hold a grudge," he said, with a smile and a nod. "Don't do anything like that again, though."
"I won't. I promise, Simon; you're safe from me – you and your marvelous brain and whatever it invents." Again another flash of self-awareness, and her other hand convulsively tightened. "You aren't associated with them, so I can promise that."
"Them" being Hyperion, I have to assume. The thought of Hyperion triggered another recall, and he suddenly found himself trying to weigh the dangers of exposing something.
She leaned forward. "What is it, Simon?"
Well, there's no way I'll convince her there wasn't something. And... in all honesty, I would not want to keep this secret from her. "I just remembered something very important that I need to tell you."
"Important? For me?" She was, for the moment, honestly startled. She knew no one in the Faction of Humanity would have anything they wanted to say to her, barring 'you're under arrest', or possibly something worse. "What is it?"
"Someone's killing Hyperions, and it isn't you."
Maria-Susanna went pale, face now alabaster white. "What? Who?"
"We have not yet identified the culprit. But we do know that he, or she, or it, is responsible for the deaths of at least four Hyperions, and nearly killed DuQuesne as well."
Her perfect brows drew down and he could suddenly see the resemblance between her and DuQuesne: there was an implacable rage there at any who harmed people she thought of as hers. "Who did this... person kill?"
"I wasn't given the details – probably wouldn't recognize their names. DuQuesne and Oasis said it was... " he checked his memory of the conversation to make sure he got it right, "... Johnny, Telzey, D'Arbignal, and Giles."
I was wrong; now she's gone white. The beautiful golden-haired woman sagged back in shock. "No. No, not Johnny! Not funny old Giles! I didn't even know... I thought they were dead already! Oh, DuQuesne, you were hiding them from me, and now they're gone?" Her color was starting to return, and a hard, cold light was rising in her eyes. "But this enemy found them, even when I hadn't?"
"Our top suspect... is an escaped Hyperion AI."
She froze. Not only pale, her hands suddenly shook. "No. No."
Simon couldn't ignore that horror. He rose and gently put an arm around her.
Maria-Susanna leaned into him – just for a moment – shuddering. She pulled away, but did not move far enough to take his hand from her shoulder. For long moments, she sat there, still, gazing into an unseeable distance.
At last, she swallowed and nodded. "Thank you, Simon. Thank you very much. Not just for telling me... but for being here, for me, when you owe me nothing. I won't forget this."
She rose, taking his hand and squeezing it. "They... might be right about me," she said, in the quietest whisper. "I... sometimes ask myself if they are. But... I can't think about that. Not really."
"Maria—"
"No, don't. Just... take my thanks. You've been very kind, Doctor Simon Sandrisson, and I haven't had – or earned – much kindness of late." Her eyes were misty for a moment, then she blinked the incipient tears away. "And thanks to you, I know what I have to do. Again... thank you."
Without another word, she turned and strode away, quickly weaving through the crowd until she completely disappeared.
She knows where she's going now. He had no idea how he had led her to the decision, but clearly something about their conversation had given her the direction she had lacked. What Faction will she approach? What is her goal now?
And am I EVER going to get to relax enough to go to sleep?
I am very curious if this story arc was intended from the original time of writing Maria-Susanna joining the Vengeance or if it an author’s evolution of ideas and plot.
My apologies if this is an impertinent or impolite question. I’ve never really hung around an author’s blog before. And I should say I’ve much enjoyed the Boundaryverse and GCA books so far (even if I came off as a pompous twit in my first post/criticism on this blog).
*a* story arc with many similarities to the one currently in mind was planned. Exigencies of publication have required that I shift and compress things that would otherwise have extended over a couple of books, so it’s not identical to what I originally planned for Maria-Susanna back when I invented her.
The idea that she would have a better connection with Simon than anyone else living has been around for most of that time.
Thank you for so kindly satisfying my curiosity.
It felt nicely set up but with a faster than expected transition, and sadly no time for Maria-Susanna to be a major player in some way for the Vengeance. (Assuming what she said happened really did, and I won’t ask about that just yet!).
Oh, Maria-Susanna’s being 100% honest here, which is itself a rarity.
Honestly, Maria-Susanna wanted something from the Vengeance, and she’s got it, in actuality. This departure hurt her because it wasn’t under HER control, but someone else’s decision.
Ooh, that makes sense. She controls her relationships.
I can google two of them easily enough, but who’re Johnny and Giles from?
Well, Simon’s only HEARD the one name, so since it’s from his PoV it’s misspelled; if it was Maria-Susanna or DuQuesne’s PoV, it should be “Jonny”, which may help.
The other, “funny old Giles” who was noted to be an extremely good card player by DuQuesne, is Giles Habibula.
Alas, I’m not *that* versed in literature, so that doesn’t help me that much on Jonny.
Habibula on the flip side, is quite googleable, thanks ^^
Not literature. MEDIA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIhEpjnaNlo
Oh! I do know that one! I’d have gotten if he was called ‘Quest’ ^^
Huh, never even noticed the spelling!
Also kinda surprised he’d be the type to stay in a virtual world, adjustment seems like it’d be easy compared to D’Arbignal (fantasy) or Telzey (no telepathy)… it’s the family thing, right? The Quests were all about family and adventure, and none of his family could come out.
Adjustment from what was basically a 1950s pulp world to 2375 wouldn’t have been trivial at all, but yes, the fact that he would be losing his entire family was by far the strongest deciding point. At that he was one of the ones lucky enough to be able to MAKE that decision, since an awful lot of Hyperion was too badly damaged to salvage the artificial world data.
I just now noticed…This snippet is titled “Grand Central Arena: Chapter 19”. And neither it not the one previous have the tag for “Challenges of the Deeps”. Apologies for nitpicking/backseat editing.
Arg. Well, I can edit them, though I’m stuck with the link being “Grand Central Arena Chapter 19” unless I want to wipe out all the comments, which I don’t.
Just caught up and WOW do I have questions. SO MANY QUESTIONS.
The revelations about Hyperion capabilities in the Arena are pretty much what I’d eventually settled on, but one thing still puzzles me — the scene in GCA with the casino. Was that some kind of probability manipulation at work, perhaps combined with humans’ lack of risk-aversion tech, or have I been completely misreading it all these years and the casino was cheating in his favor to set him up?
Did I catch that right that there was a Hyperion Superman? Who could (in his setting) fly? How far would the Arena have gone to accommodate Clark if he’d survived — would it actually have given him Kryptonian powers, and at what level?
Does Earth have the technology to “extract” Wu’s friends and family from VR, transferring them into cloned human(ish) bodies? If they then no longer had any AI capabilities, would the Arena allow them entrance? Would they receive powers based on their own lives, or would that be going a step too far?
…and you say Marc has “perception.” In association with his mashup world which includes Lensman.
Perception.
Does Marc C. DuQuesne have the Klono-damned RIGELLIAN SENSE OF PERCEPTION?!
About Steve… you won’t get that answer until Chapter 27, which is I believe the very last snippet chapter.
Yes, there was a Superman. How far that would have gone? Well… let’s watch and see how far it goes with the others, and you’ll have your answer.
Does humanity have that capability? Yes, you can give an AI a human body. Many of the precise enhancement approaches and techniques used by Hyperion are not known, however, so they couldn’t necessarily give them the body they WOULD have had as a Hyperion. It’s also known that NORMALLY you can’t transfer an AI into the universe functionally just by putting it in a meat casing, otherwise the Minds of the Blessed would’ve been using proxy bodies all along and rotating them in and out. So whether the Arena would even allow them to enter as functional creatures is unknown.
Yes, the Sense of Perception is one of the things that SECOND-STAGE LENSMAN Marc C. DuQuesne has.
…holy Klono’s uranium UNIT! o.O;
So… is the Sense sensitive enough to tell when the Arena is fine-tuning the properties of matter?
Sore wa… HIMITSU desu! ^_^
To be honest, I’m not even sure how much of an advantage that would be. It might glean insight into the physics of known “tamperings” like the primary beam, but when the Arena can alter such things at will, or at least under rules that no one fully knows…
I can’t help but feel that when the primary beams are unleashed, the florid adjective/sentence count should go way up.
I do attempt to add a few Smithian vibes when I get to the battles. 🙂
I’ve finally given up. I can’t find a sufficient answer to my question, though that might be because the answer has not yet been revealed. I’ve actually made an account on WordPress just to ask this question. Please?!
Who is Maria-Susanna?
“Mary Sue”
Hyperion
The ‘perfect’ self of one of the creators.
Apparently also designed to be a companion to someone? (do I have that right?)
Mind snapped during the breakup of Hyperion.
Murderous. Insane. Brilliant.
But is that all we know about her? Is she based on someone in fiction? What were her abilities in Hyperion? For whom was she a companion? (if I have that right, and a follow up – why would someone make a version of herself to be a companion? I’d think that they would want the self-version to be the star) Etc. Etc.
I’ve read both Arenaverse books multiple times, and I’m devouring this one the second it comes out on eArc, but I’m beginning to think I’m rather dense – who and what is Maria-Susanna?
She is a “Mary-Sue”. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, “Mary-Sue” is (at least by the definition I use, which is one of the common ones) a wish-fulfillment, SELF-INSERT fanfiction character, wherein the author of the fanfic PUTS THEMSELVES into the story.
In this specific case, she’s the self-insert character of Maria Condette Gambino, one of the driving forces behind Hyperion. From context in the sections we hear about her, she was specifically a Star Trek self-insert who married Captain James T. Kirk (so her last name, which she never uses now, is Kirk).
The original Mary-Sue was in a Star Trek fic (Ensign Mary Sue). The “Sue” phenomenon is of course huge in fanfic. Sometimes — especially for male authors of the typical sort — their Mary Sue (or Marty-Stu) inserts are pure power fantasies, so yes, those become The Real Star — they’re faster, stronger, smarter, etc., than anyone else. A lot of other fics, sterotypically but by no means always written by women, are focused more on the RELATIONSHIPS. I.e., the author is really attracted to a given character, so their self-insert becomes the perfect companion for that character (often to the exclusion of all other interesting parts of the setting).
If you want to know more than you would ever need to know about the Mary Sue phenomenon, including the arguments over exactly what *IS* a Mary Sue and what isn’t, and what KINDs of Sues there are, TVTropes has many entries on Sues of all sorts: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue
Noooo!!!!! Not TVTropes!
Got it. Did … hmmm, I’d swear I remember somewhere said that Maria-Susanna got to Jim after Hyperion collapsed (killed him, is what I’m remembering, though maybe I assumed to much). The gold shirt I had picked up as being Kirk, but that Maria was screaming because she was “for him” completely bypassed me. Did her insanity turn the love to hate and she killed him, or am I misremembering? (I will happily re-read to track that down. My memory may not be accurate here.)
Huh. Based on being a Star Trek human character, I’m guessing that M-S’s special abilities are a lot more subtle than most of the other Hyperions’. No likely physical super powers beyond peak-human ability. Tons of intelligence because – well, Mary Sue syndrome done by a bona-fide genius. Probably some off-the-charts emotional capabilities, both in reading and projecting, and an excellence at reading alien emotions as well. Excellent political and scheming instincts given the style of the show. Possibly some minor telepathy too, both to read and possibly control/implant thoughts.
Of course, Kirk certainly had romances with enough alien females that looked human, so M-S could have been an ‘alien’ with an unknown collection of abilities. However, even if that is so, flashy abilities among the core cast of Star Trek was pretty thoroughly kept to a minimum/temporary, so even in that case I’d guess M-S’s abilities would still be less flashy than Duquesne, Kim Possible, and Monkey King.
Anyway, thank you for the clarification! That really helps me integrate the character with the others.
You’ll want to re-read Chapter 4 of Spheres of Influence: http://grandcentralarena.com/spheres-of-influence-chapter-4/
She broke when Kirk got himself killed. The first person she killed was her CREATOR.
Insofar as the powers of Mary-Sue — the basic power of a Mary-Sue of her type is to (A) make people like her if she wants them to, and (B) distort the storylines to make them focus on her interests rather than those of the original story. Oh, and to somehow come out of any bad situation on top.