by Dan Simmons
Pilot Cook takes the advice and banks the dropship sharply, accelerating back toward the spaceport at Mach 1.5. “Whoa! Whoa!” shouts de Soya through the g-load. “Just a klick out. I need to watch.”
Both visual and tactical are a visual demonstration of chaos theory as hundreds of aircraft and airborne troopers fly away from the portal as if flung outward by an explosion. The area is barely empty on radar before the violet beam burns down from space. Ten meters wide and too bright to look directly at, the CPB strikes the ancient farcaster portal perfectly on target. Concrete, steel, and ferroplast melt into lakes and rivers of lava on either bank of the real river. The river itself turns to steam in an instant, sending the shock wave and steam cloud billowing out over the city for kilometers in every direction. This time the mushroom cloud reaches toward the stratosphere.
Captain Wu, Father Brown, and all the others are staring at Father Captain de Soya. He can almost hear their thoughts: the girl was to be captured alive.
He ignores their stares and says to the pilot, “I’m not familiar with this model of dropship. Can it hover?”
“For a few minutes,” responds the pilot. Her face is slick with sweat under her helmet.
“Get us down there and hover over the portal arch,” commands de Soya. “Fifty meters would be fine.”
“Sir,” says the pilot, “the thermals and shock waves from the steam explosions—”
“Do it, Lieutenant.” The father-captain’s voice is level, but there will be no arguing with it.
They hover. Steam and a violent drizzle fill the air, but their searchlight beams and high-profile radar stab downward. The farcaster arch is glowing white-hot, but it still stands.
“Amazing,” whispers Commander Barnes-Avne.
Mother Captain Stone comes over tactical. “Father Captain, the target was hit, but it’s still there. Do you want me to lance it again?”
“No,” says de Soya. Beneath the arch the river has cauterized itself, water flowing back into the superheated scar. New steam billows upward as the riverbanks of melted steel and concrete flow into water. The hissing is audible through the external pickups. The river is wild with eddies and whirlpools. It is filled with swirling debris.
De Soya looks up from tactical and his monitors and sees the others looking at him again. The orders were to take the child alive and return her to Pacem.
“Commander Barnes-Avne,” he says formally. “Would you please order your troopers to land and begin an immediate search of the river and adjoining areas?”
“Certainly,” says Barnes-Avne, keying her command net and issuing orders. Her gaze never leaves Father Captain de Soya’s face.
28
In the days that follow the dragging of the river and the discovery of no spaceship, no bodies, and only a hint of debris of what may have been the girl’s ship, Father Captain de Soya fully expects a court-martial and perhaps an excommunication. The archangel courier is dispatched to Pacem with the news, and within twenty hours the same ship, with different human couriers, returns with the verdict: there will be a Board of Review. De Soya nods when he hears the news, believing it to be a precursor to his return to Pacem for court-martial and worse.
Surprisingly, it is the pleasant Father Brown who heads the Board of Review, as personal representative of Secretary of State Simon Augustino Cardinal Lourdusamy, with Captain Wu standing in for Admiral Marusyn of Pax Fleet. Other members of the board include two of the admirals present during the debacle and Commander Barnes-Avne. De Soya is offered counsel, but he refuses.
The father-captain is not under arrest during the five days of the board hearing—not even under house arrest—but it is understood that he will remain on the Pax military base outside of DaVinci until the hearing is concluded. During those five days, Father Captain de Soya walks along the river path within the base confines, watches news on local television and direct-access channels, and occasionally looks skyward, imagining that he can guess where Raphael still swings in parking orbit, uncrewed and silent except for its automated systems. De Soya hopes that the ship’s next captain brings it more honor.
Many of his friends visit him: Gregorius, Kee, and Rettig are nominally still his bodyguards, although they no longer carry weapons and—like de Soya—remain on the Pax base in virtual arrest. Mother Captain Boulez, Captain Hearn, and Mother Captain Stone all stop by after giving their testimony and before shipping out for the frontier. That evening de Soya watches the blue tails of their dropships rising toward the night sky and envies them. Captain Sati of the St. Anthony has a glass of wine with de Soya before returning to his torchship and active duty in another system. Even Captain Lempriere comes by after testifying, and it is that bald man’s halting sympathy that finally angers de Soya.
On the fifth day de Soya goes before the board. The situation is odd—de Soya still holds the papal diskey and thus is technically beyond reproach or indictment—but it is understood that Pope Julius, through Cardinal Lourdusamy, has willed this Board of Review, and de Soya, shaped to obedience through both his military and Jesuit training, complies with humility. He does not expect exoneration. In the tradition of ship captains since the Middle Ages on Old Earth, de Soya knows well that the coin of a captain’s prerogatives has two sides—almost godlike power over everyone and everything aboard one’s ship, balanced by the requirement to take total responsibility for any damage to the ship or failure of one’s mission.
De Soya has not damaged his ship—neither his former task force, nor his new ship, the Raphael—but he is acutely aware that his failure has been total. With immense resources of the Pax available to him both on Hyperion and in Renaissance space, he has failed to capture a twelve-year-old child. He can see no excuse for this, and he testifies thus during his part of the hearing.
“And why did you order the lancing of the farcaster portal on Renaissance Vector?” asks Father Admiral Coombs after de Soya’s statement.
De Soya raises a hand, then drops it. “I realized at that moment that the reason for the girl’s trip to this world was to reach the portal,” he says. “Our only hope for detaining her was to destroy the portal arch.”
“But it was not destroyed?” queries Father Brown.
“No,” says de Soya.
“In your experience, Father Captain de Soya,” says Captain Wu, “has there been any target that one minute of fully applied CPB fire would not destroy?”
De Soya thinks for a moment. “There are targets such as orbital forest or Ouster Swarm asteroids that would not be fully destroyed by even a full minute of lancefire,” he says. “But they would have been severely damaged.”
“And the farcaster portal was not damaged ?” persists Father Brown.
“Not to my knowledge,” says de Soya.
Captain Wu turns to the other board members. “We have an affidavit from Chief of Planetary Engineers Rexton Hamn that the alloy of the farcaster portal—although radiating heat for more than forty-eight hours—was not damaged by the attack.”
The panel members converse among themselves for several minutes.
“Father Captain de Soya,” begins Admiral Serra when the questioning resumes, “were you aware that your attempt to destroy the portal might have destroyed the girl’s ship?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“And in so doing,” continues Serra, “killed the child?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“And your orders were—specifically—to bring the child to Pacem … unharmed. Am I correct?”
“Yes, Admiral. Those were my precise orders.”
“But you were willing to defy those orders?”
De Soya takes a breath. “In this case, Admiral, I felt it was a calculated risk. My instructions were that it was of paramount importance to bring the child to Pacem within the shortest time possible. In those few seconds when I realized that she might be able to travel by farcaster portal and escape apprehension, I felt that destroying the portal—not the child’s ship—was our best
hope. To be honest, I felt that the ship had either already traversed the portal or had not yet reached it. All indications were that the ship had been struck and fallen into the river. I did not know whether the ship had the capacity to travel underwater through the portal—or, for that matter, whether the portal could farcast an object underwater.”
Captain Wu folds her hands. “And to your knowledge, Father Captain, has the farcaster portal shown any signs of activity since that night?”
“Not to my knowledge, Captain.”
“To your knowledge, Father Captain,” she continues, “had any farcaster portal—on any world of the former Web or any spaceborne portal, for that matter—had any farcaster shown any sign of renewed activity since the Fall of the farcasters more than two hundred seventy standard years ago?”
“To my knowledge,” says de Soya, “they have not.”
Father Brown leans forward. “Then, Father Captain, perhaps you can tell this board why you thought that the girl had the capacity to open one of these portals and was attempting to escape through this particular one.”
De Soya does open his hands this time. “Father, I … I don’t know. I guess that I had the distinct feeling that she was not willing to be captured, and her flight along the river … I don’t know, Father. The use of the portal is the only thing that made sense that night.”
Captain Wu looks at her fellow panelists. “Any more questions?” After a silence the captain says, “That will be all, Father Captain de Soya. This board will apprise you of its findings by tomorrow morning.”
De Soya nods and leaves.
THAT NIGHT, WALKING THE BASE PATH ALONG THE river, de Soya tries to imagine what he will do if he is court-martialed and stripped of his priesthood but not imprisoned. The thought of freedom after such failure is more painful than the thought of prison. Excommunication has not been mentioned by the board—no punishment has—but de Soya clearly sees his conviction, his return to Pacem for higher court proceedings, and his ultimate banishment from the Church. Only a terrible failure or heresy could bring about such punishment, but de Soya sees—unblinkingly—what a terrible failure his efforts have been.
In the morning he is called into the low building where the board has met all night. He stands at attention in front of the dozen men and women behind the long table.
“Father Captain de Soya,” begins Captain Wu, speaking for the others, “this Board of Review was convened to answer queries from Pax Command and the Vatican as to the disposition and outcome of recent events—specifically, in this command and this commander’s failure to apprehend the child known as Aenea. After five days of investigation and after many hundreds of hours of testimony and depositions, it is the finding of this board that all possible efforts and preparations were made to carry out this mission. The fact that the child known as Aenea—or someone or something traveling with her—was able to escape via a farcaster that has not worked for almost three standard centuries could not have been anticipated by you or by any other officer working with you or under your command. The fact that the farcasters could resume operation at all is, of course, of grave concern to the Pax Command and to the Church. The implications of this will be explored by the highest echelons of Pax Command and the Vatican hierarchy.
“As for your role in this, Father Captain de Soya, with the exception of possible concern we have for your risking the life of the child you are charged with taking into custody, we find your actions responsible, correct, in keeping with your mission priorities, and legal. This board—while official only in the capacity of review—recommends that you continue your mission with the archangel-class ship designated the Raphael, that your use of the papal-authority diskey continue, and that you requisition those materiels and personnel you consider necessary for the continuance of this mission.”
De Soya, still at rigid attention, blinks rapidly several times before saying, “Captain?”
“Yes, Father Captain?” says Wu.
“Does this mean that I can keep Sergeant Gregorius and his troopers as my personal guard?”
Captain Wu—whose authority strangely overwhelms that of the admirals and planetary ground commanders at the table—smiles. “Father Captain,” she says, “you could order the members of this board to go along as your personal guard if you wish. The authority of your papal diskey remains absolute.”
De Soya does not smile. “Thank you, Captain … sirs. Sergeant Gregorius and his two men will suffice. I will leave this morning.”
“Leave for where, Federico?” asks Father Brown. “As you know, exhaustive searches of the records have not given us a clue as to where the farcaster might have sent that ship. The River Tethys had changeable connections, and any data about the next world on the line has evidently been lost to us.”
“Yes, Father,” says de Soya, “but there are only two-hundred-some worlds that used to be connected by that farcaster river. The girl’s ship has to be on one of them. My archangel ship can reach all of them—given time for resurrection after translation—in less than two years. I will begin immediately.”
At this, the men and women at the table can only stare. The man in front of them is facing several hundred deaths and difficult resurrections. As far as they know, no one since the beginning of the Sacrament of Resurrection has ever submitted to such a cycle of pain and rebirth.
Father Brown stands and lifts his hand in benediction. “In Nomine Patris, et Fílii, et Spíritus Sancti, “he intones. “Go with God, Father Captain de Soya. Our prayers go with you.”
29
When they shot us down several hundred meters short of the farcaster portal, I was sure we were dead this time. The internal containment field failed the second the generators were struck, the wall of the planet we were looking up at suddenly and inarguably became down, and the ship fell like an elevator with its cables cut.
The sensations that followed are hard for me to describe. I know now that the internal fields switched to what was known as a “crash field”—no misnomer, I can assure you—and for the next few minutes it felt precisely as if we were caught up in a giant vat of gelatin. In a sense, we were. The crash field expanded in a nanosecond to fill every square millimeter of the ship, cushioning us and keeping us absolutely immobile as the spacecraft plunged into the river, bounced off the bottom mud, fired its fusion engine—creating a giant plume of steam—and plowed ahead relentlessly through mud, steam, water, and debris from the imploding riverbanks until the ship fulfilled the last command given to it—pass through the farcaster portal. The fact that we did so three meters beneath the broiling river surface did not keep the portal from working. The ship later told us that while its stern was passing through the farcaster, the water above and behind it suddenly became superheated steam—as if one of the Pax ships or aircraft were lancing it with a CPB. Ironically, it was the steam that deflected the beam for the milliseconds necessary for the ship to complete its transition.
Meanwhile, knowing none of these details, I stared. My eyes were open—I could not close them against the cloying force of the crash field—and I was watching the external video monitors set along the foot of the bed as well as looking out through the still-transparent hull apex as the farcaster portal flickered to life amid the steam and sunlight poured over the river’s surface, until suddenly we were through the steam cloud and once again smashing against rock and river bottom, then hitting a beach beneath blue sky and sun.
Then the monitors went off and the hull went dull. For several minutes we were trapped in this cave blackness—I was floating in midair, or would have been had it not been for the gelatinous crash field—my arms were thrown wide, my right leg was half-bent in a running posture behind me, my mouth was open in a silent scream, and I could not blink. At first the fear of suffocation was very strong—the crash field was in my open mouth—but I soon realized that my nose and throat were receiving oxygen. The crash field, it turns out, worked much like the expensive osmosis masks used for deep-sea diving durin
g the Hegemony days: air leached through the field mass pressing against one’s face and throat. It was not a pleasant experience—I’ve always detested the thought of choking—but my anxiety was manageable. More disturbing was the blackness and claustrophobic sense of being caught in a giant, sticky web. During those long minutes in the darkness, I had thoughts of the ship being stuck there forever, disabled, with no way to relax the crash fields, and the three of us starving to death in our undignified postures, until someday the ship’s energy banks would be depleted, the crash field would collapse, and our whitened skeletons would drop and rattle around the interior hull of the ship like so many bones being cast by an invisible fortune-teller.
As it was, the field slowly folded away less than five minutes later. The lights came on, flickered, and were replaced by red emergency lighting even as we were gently lowered to what had been the wall a short while before. The outer hull became transparent once again, but very little light filtered in through the mud and debris.
I had not been able to see A. Bettik and Aenea while stuck in place—they had been just out of my frozen field of sight—but now I saw them as the field lowered them to the hull with me. Iwas amazed to hear a scream issue from my throat and realized that it was the shout that had welled up in me the instant of the crash.
For a moment the three of us just sat on the curved hull wall, rubbing and testing our own arms, legs, and heads to make sure we weren’t injured. Then Aenea spoke for us all. “Holy shit,” she said, and stood up on the curving floor of the hull. Her legs were shaky.
“Ship!” called the android.
“Yes, A. Bettik.” The voice was as calm as ever.
“Are you damaged?”
“Yes, A. Bettik,” said the ship. “I have just completed a full damage assessment. Field coils, repulsors, and Hawking translators have suffered extensive damage, as have sections of the aft hull and two of the four landing fins.”