by Dan Simmons
De Soya insists that a permanent guard be placed upon the portals. He wants cameras erected for twenty-nine-hour-a-day surveillance there. He wants sensors, alarms, and trip wires. The local Pax troops confer with their Archbishop and grudgingly comply with this perceived slight to their sovereignty. De Soya all but despairs at this useless politics.
On their sixth day Corporal Kee falls ill to a mysterious fever and is hospitalized. De Soya believes it is a result of their resurrection: each of them has privately suffered the shakes, emotional swings, and minor ailments. On the seventh day Kee is able to walk and implores de Soya to get him out of the infirmary and off this world, but now the Archbishop insists that de Soya help celebrate a High Mass that evening in honor of His Holiness, Pope Julius. De Soya can hardly refuse, so that night—amid scepters and pink-buttoned monsignore, beneath the giant insignia of His Holiness’s Triple Crown and Crossed Keys (which also appears on the papal diskey that de Soya now wears around his neck), amid the smoke of incense, white miters and the tinkle of bells, under the solemn singing of a six-hundred-member children’s choir, the simple priest-warrior from MadredeDios and the elegant Archbishop celebrate the mystery of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. Sergeant Gregorius takes Communion that evening from de Soya’s hand—which he does every day of their quest—as do a few dozen others also chosen to receive the Host, secret to the success of their cruciform immortality in this life, while three thousand of the faithful pray and watch in the dim cathedral light.
On the eighth day they leave the system, and for the first time Father Captain de Soya welcomes the coming death as a means of escape.
They are resurrected in a creche on Heaven’s Gate, a once-miserable world terraformed to shade trees and comfort in the days of the Web, now largely fallen back to boiling mud, pestilent swamps, unbreathable atmosphere, and the blazing radiation source of Vega Prime in the sky. Raphael’s idiot computer has chosen this series of old River Tethys worlds, finding the most efficient order to visit them in since there were no clues on Renaissance V. to show where the portal there might have led, but de Soya is interested that they are coming closer and closer to Old Earth System—less than twelve light-years from TC2, now just a little more than eight from Heaven’s Gate. De Soya realizes that he would like to visit Old Earth System—even without Old Earth—despite the fact that Mars and the other inhabited worlds, moons, and asteroids there have become provincial backwaters, of no more interest to the Pax than MadredeDios had been.
But the Tethys never flowed through Old Earth System, so de Soya must swallow his curiosity and be satisfied that the next few worlds will be even closer to Old Earth’s former home.
Heaven’s Gate takes eight days as well, but not because of intra-Church politics. There is a small Pax garrison in orbit around the planet, but they rarely go down to the ruined world. Heaven’s Gate’s population of four hundred million residents had been reduced to eight or ten crazy prospectors wandering its mudflat surface in the 274 standard years since the Fall: the Ouster Swarms had swept by this Vegan world even before Gladstone had ordered the farcasters destroyed—slagging the orbital containment sphere, lancing the capital of Mudflat City, with its lovely Promenade gardens, plasma bombing the atmosphere-generating stations it had taken centuries to build—and generally plowed the world under before the loss of farcaster connections salted the earth so that nothing would grow there again.
So now the Pax garrison guards the broiling planet for its rumored raw materials, but has little reason to go down there. De Soya must convince the garrison commander—Pax Major Leem—that an expedition has to be mounted. On the fifth day after Raphael’s entry into Vega System, de Soya, Gregorius, Kee, Rettig, a Lieutenant Bristol, and a dozen Pax garrison troops fitted out in environmental hazard suits, take a dropship to the mudflats where the River Tethys had once flowed. The farcaster portals are not there.
“I thought it was impossible to destroy them,” says de Soya. “The TechnoCore built them to last and booby-trapped them so that destruction is impossible.”
“They’re not here,” says Lieutenant Bristol, and gives the order to return to orbit.
De Soya stops him. Using his papal diskey as authority, de Soya insists that a full-sensor search be made. The farcasters are found—sixteen klicks apart and buried under almost a hundred meters of mud.
“That solves your mystery,” says Major Leem on tightbeam. “Either the Ouster attack or later mudslides buried the portals and what had been the river. This world has literally gone to hell.”
“Perhaps,” says de Soya, “but I want the farcasters excavated, temporary environmental bubbles erected around them so that someone coming through would survive, and a permanent guard mounted at each portal.”
“Are you out of your crossdamned mind!” Major Leem explodes, and then—remembering the papal diskey—he adds, “Sir.”
“Not yet,” says de Soya, glowering into the camera. “I want this done within seventy-two hours, Major, or you will be serving the next three standard years on the planetary detail down here.”
It takes seventy hours to excavate, construct the domes, and post the guard. Someone traveling the River Tethys will find no river here, of course, only the boiling mud, noxious, unbreathable atmosphere, and waiting troopers in full battle armor. De Soya goes to his knees on the Raphael that last night in orbit around Heaven’s Gate and prays that Aenea has not already come this way. Her bones were not found in the excavated mud and sulfur, but the Pax engineer in charge of the excavation tells de Soya that the soil is so toxic here in its natural form that the child’s bones could already have been eaten away by acid.
De Soya does not believe this to be the case. On the ninth day he translates out of system with a warning to Major Leem to keep the guards vigilant, the domes livable, and his mouth more civil to future visitors.
NO ONE WAITS TO RESURRECT THEM IN THE THIRD system Raphael brings them to. The archangel ship enters System NGCes 2629 with its cargo of dead men and its beacons flashing Pax Fleet code. There is no response. There are eight planets in NGCes 2629, but only one of them, known by the prosaic name of NGCes 2629-4BIV, can support life. From the records still available to the Raphael, it seems likely that the Hegemony and TechnoCore had gone to the effort and expense of extending the River Tethys here as a form of self-indulgence, an aesthetic statement. The planet has never been seriously colonized or terraformed except for random RNA seeding during the early days of the Hegira, and appears to have been part of the River Tethys tour strictly for scenic and animal-viewing purposes.
That is not to say that there are not human beings on the world now, as the Raphael sniffs them out in parking orbit during the last days of its passengers’ automated resurrections. As best the limited resources of the Raphael’s near-AI computers can reconstruct and understand, NGCes 2629-4BIV’s minimum population of visiting biologists, zoologists, tourists, and support teams had been stranded after the Fall and had gone native. Despite prodigious breeding over almost three centuries, however, only a few thousand human beings still populated the jungles and highlands of the primitive world: the RNA-seeded beasties there were capable of eating human beings, and they did so with gusto.
Raphael runs to the edge of its limits in the simple task of finding the farcaster portals. Available Web records in its memory say simply that the portals are set at varying intervals along a six-thousand-kilometer river in the northern hemisphere. Raphael modifies its orbit to a roughly synchronous point above the massive continent which dominates that hemisphere and begins photographing and radar-mapping the river. Unfortunately, there are three massive rivers on that continent, two flowing to the east, one to the west, and Raphael is unable to prioritize probabilities. It decides to map all three—a task of analyzing more than twenty thousand kilometers of data.
When the four men’s hearts begin to beat at the end of the third day of the resurrection cycle, Raphael feels some silicon equivalent of relief.
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nbsp; Listening to the computer’s description of the task ahead while he stands naked in front of the mirror in his tiny cubby, Federico de Soya feels no relief. In truth, he feels like weeping. He thinks of Mother Captain Stone, Mother Captain Boulez, and Captain Hearn, on the Great Wall frontier by now and quite possibly engaging the Ouster enemy in fierce combat. De Soya envies them the simplicity and honesty of their task.
After conferring with Sergeant Gregorius and his two men, de Soya reviews the data, immediately rejects the western-flowing river as too unscenic for the River Tethys, since it flows primarily through deep canyons, away from the life-infested jungles and marshes; the second river he rejects because of the obvious number of waterfalls and rapids—too rough for River Tethys traffic—and so he begins a simple, fast radar-mapping of the longest river with its long, gentle stretches. The map will show up dozens, perhaps hundreds, of natural obstacles resembling farcaster portals—rocky waterfalls, natural bridges, boulder fields in rapids—but these can be scanned by the human eye in a few hours.
On their fifth day the portals are located—improbably far apart, but inarguably artificial. De Soya personally flies the dropship, leaving Corporal Kee in the Raphael as backup in case of emergency.
This is the scenario de Soya has dreaded—no way to tell if the girl has come this way, with or without her ship. The stretch between the inert farcasters is the longest yet—almost two hundred kilometers—and although they fly the dropship back and forth over the jungle and river’s edge, there is no telling if anyone has passed this way, no witnesses to interview, no Pax troops to leave on guard here.
They land on an island not far from the upper farcaster, and de Soya, Gregorius, and Rettig discuss their options.
“It’s been three standard weeks since the ship passed through the farcaster on Renaissance V.,” says Gregorius. The interior of their dropship is cramped and utilitarian: they discuss things from their flight chairs. Gregorius’s and Rettig’s combat armor hang in the EVA closet like metal second skins.
“If they came through to a world like this,” says Rettig, “they probably just took off in the ship. There’s no reason they have to keep going down the river.”
“True,” says de Soya. “But there is a good chance the ship was damaged.”
“Aye,” says the sergeant, “but how badly? Could it have flown? Patched itself as it went? Perhaps made it to an Ouster repair base? We’re not that far from the Outback here.”
“Or the girl could have sent the ship off and gone on through the next farcaster,” says Rettig.
“Assuming any of the other portals work,” says de Soya tiredly. “That the one on Renaissance V. was not just a fluke.”
Gregorius sets his huge hands on his knees. “Aye, sir, this is ridiculous. Finding a needle in a haystack, as they used to say … that would be child’s play compared to this.”
Father Captain de Soya looks out through the dropship windows. The high ferns here are blowing in a silent wind. “I have a feeling she’s going down the old river. I think she’ll use the farcasters. I don’t know how—the flying machine that someone used to get her out of the Valley of the Time Tombs, maybe, an inflatable raft, a stolen boat—I just think she’s using the Tethys.”
“What can we do here?” asks Rettig. “If she’s already come through, we’ve missed her. If she’s not yet arrived … well, we could wait forever. If we had a hundred archangel ships so that we could bring troops to each of these worlds …”
De Soya nods. In his hours of prayer his mind often slips away to the thought of how much simpler this task would be if the archangel couriers were simple robotic craft, translating into Pax systems, broadcasting the papal-diskey authority and ordering the search, then jumping out of system without even decelerating. As far as he knows, the Pax is building no robot ships—the Church’s hatred of AIs and dependence upon human contact all but forbids it. And as far as he knows, there are only three archangel-class courier ships in existence—the Michael, the Gabriel, which had first brought him the message, and his own Raphael. In Renaissance System, he had wanted to send the other courier ship out in search, but the Michael had pressing Vatican duties. Intellectually, de Soya understood why this search was his and his alone. But here they have spent almost three weeks and searched two worlds. A robot archangel could leap into two hundred systems and broadcast the alert in less than ten standard days … at this rate, it will take de Soya and the Raphael four or five standard years. The exhausted father-captain has the urge to laugh.
“There’s still her ship,” he says briskly. “If they go on without it, they have two options—send the ship somewhere else, or leave it behind on one of the Tethys worlds.”
“You say ‘they,’ sir,” Gregorius says softly. “Are you sure there are others?”
“Someone lifted her from our trap on Hyperion,” says de Soya. “There are others.”
“It could be an entire Ouster crew,” says Rettig. “They could be halfway back to their Swarm by now … after leaving the girl on any of these worlds. Or they could be taking her with them.”
De Soya lifts a hand to shut off conversation. They have been around and around this before. “I think the ship was hit and damaged,” he says. “We look for it and it may lead us to the girl.”
Gregorius points to the jungle. It is raining there. “We’ve flown this entire stretch of river between the portals. No sign of a ship. When we get to the next Pax system, we can send back garrison troops to watch these portals.”
“Yes,” says Father Captain de Soya, “but they’ll have a time-debt of eight or nine months.” He looks at the rain streaking the windshield and side ports. “We’ll search the river.”
“What?” says Lancer Rettig.
“If you had a damaged ship and had to leave it behind, wouldn’t you hide it?” asks de Soya.
The two Swiss Guard troopers stare at their commander. De Soya sees that the men’s fingers are trembling. Resurrection is affecting them as well.
“We’ll deep-radar the river and as much of the jungle as we can,” says the father-captain.
“It’ll take another day, at least,” begins Rettig.
De Soya nods. “We’ll have Corporal Kee instruct Raphael to deep-radar the jungle on a two-hundred-klick swatch on either side of the river. We’ll use the dropship to search the river.… We have a cruder system on board, but less to cover.”
The exhausted troopers can only nod their obedience.
THEY FIND SOMETHING ON THE SECOND SWEEP OF the river. The object is metal, large, and in a deep pool only a few kilometers downriver from the first portal. The dropship hovers while de Soya tightbeams the Raphael. “Corporal, we’re going to investigate. I want the ship ready to lance this thing within three seconds of my command … but only on my command.”
“I understand, sir,” tightbeams Kee.
De Soya holds the dropship in hover while Gregorius and Rettig suit up, prepare the proper tools, and stand in the open air lock. “Go,” says de Soya.
Sergeant Gregorius drops out of the lock, the suit’s EM system kicking in just before the armored man strikes water. Both sergeant and lancer swoop above the surface, weapons ready.
“We have the deep-radar lock on tactical,” Gregorius acknowledges on tightbeam.
“Your video feeds are nominal,” says de Soya from his command chair. “Commence dive.”
Both men drop, strike the surface, and disappear beneath it. De Soya banks the dropship so he can see out the port blister: the river is a dark green, but two bright headlamps can be seen gleaming through the water. “About eight meters beneath the surface,” he begins.
“Got it,” says the sergeant.
De Soya looks up at the monitor. He sees swirling silt, a many-gilled fish hurrying out of the light, a curved metal hull.
“There’s a hatch or air lock open,” reports Gregorius. “Most of the thing’s buried in the mud here, but I can see enough of the hull to say it’s about the right siz
e. Rettig will stay out here. I’m going in.”
De Soya has the urge to say “Good luck,” but keeps his silence. The men have been together long enough to know what is appropriate with each other. He trims the dropship, readying the crude plasma gun that is the tiny ship’s only armament.
The video feed stops as soon as Gregorius enters the open hatch. A minute passes. Then two. Two minutes beyond that, and de Soya is all but squirming in the command chair. He half expects to see the spaceship leap out of the water, clawing for space in a desperate attempt to escape.
“Lancer?” he says.
“Yes, sir,” comes Retttig’s voice.
“No word or video from the sergeant?”
“No, sir. I think the hull’s blocking tightbeam. I’ll wait another five minutes and … Hold it, sir. I see something.”
De Soya sees it too, the feed from the lancer’s video murky in the thick water, but clear enough to show Sergeant Gregorius’s armored helmet, shoulders, and arms rising from the open air-lock hatch. The sergeant’s headlamp illuminates silt and riverweed, the light swinging to blind Rettig’s camera for an instant.
“Father Captain de Soya,” comes Gregorius’s bass rumble, only slightly out of breath, “this ain’t it, sir. I think it’s one of those old go-anywhere yachts that rich folks had back in the Web days, sir. You know, sir, the kind that was submersible—could even fly a bit, I think.”
De Soya lets out his breath. “What happened to it, Sergeant?”
The suited figure on the video gives a thumbs-up to Rettig, and the two men rise toward the surface. “I think they scuttled it, sir,” says Gregorius. “There are at least ten skeletons on board … maybe a dozen. Two of ’em are kids. As I say, sir, this thing was rigged to float on any ocean—go under it if they wanted—so there’s no way all the hatches opened by accident, sir.”