by Dan Simmons
“Paul!” His voice echoed off rock. Wind stirred dust beyond the Jade Tomb, but nothing else stirred. Sol still had the feeling that something was sneaking up on him, that he was being watched.
Rachel screamed and wiggled in his grasp, her voice the high, thin wail of a newborn. Sol glanced at his comlog. She would be one day old in an hour. He searched the sky for the Consul’s ship, cursed softly at himself, and went back to the entrance to the Sphinx to change the baby’s diaper, check on Brawne, pull a nursing pak from his bag, and grab a cloak. The heat dissipated quickly when the sun was gone.
In the half-hour of twilight remaining, Sol moved quickly down the valley, shouting Duré’s name and peering into the Tombs without entering. Past the Jade Tomb where Hoyt had been murdered, its sides already beginning to glow a milky green. Past the dark Obelisk, its shadow thrown high on the southeastern cliff wall. Past the Crystal Monolith, its upper reaches glowing with the last of the day’s light, then fading as the sun set somewhere beyond the City of Poets. In the sudden chill and hush of evening, past the Cave Tombs, Sol shouting into each and feeling the dank air against his face like a cold breath from an open mouth.
No answer.
In the last of the twilight, around the bend in the valley to the blade-and-buttress not of the Shrike Palace, dark and ominous in the growing gloom. Sol stood at the entrance trying to make sense of the ink-black shadows, spires, rafters, and pylons, shouted into the dark interior; only his echo answered. Rachel began to cry again.
Shivering, feeling a chill on the back of his neck, wheeling constantly to surprise the unseen watcher and seeing only deepening shadows and the first of the night’s stars between clouds above, Sol hurried back up the valley toward the Sphinx, walking quickly at first and then almost running past the Jade Tomb as the evening wind rose with a sound of children screaming.
“Goddamn!” breathed Sol as he reached the top of the stairs to the Sphinx.
Brawne Lamia was gone. There was no sign of her body or the metal umbilical.
Cursing, holding Rachel tight, Sol fumbled through his pack for the flashlight.
Ten meters down the cental corridor, Sol found the blanket Brawne had been wrapped in. Beyond that, nothing. The corridors branched and twisted, now widening, now narrowing as the ceiling lowered to the point that Sol was crawling, holding the baby in his right arm so that her cheek was next to his. He hated being in this tomb. His heart was pounding so fiercely that he half-expected to have a coronary then and there.
The last corridor narrowed to nothing. Where the metal cable had snaked into stone, now there was only stone.
Sol held the flashlight in his teeth and slapped at the rock, shoved at stones the size of houses as if a secret panel would open, tunnels would be revealed.
Nothing.
Sol hugged Rachel tighter and began to make his way out, taking several wrong turns, feeling his heart race even more wildly as he thought himself lost. Then they were in a corridor he recognized, then in the main corridor, then out.
He carried his child to the bottom of the steps and away from the Sphinx. At the head of the valley, he stopped, sat on a low rock, and panted for breath. Rachel’s cheek still lay against his neck, and the baby made no sound, no movement other than the soft curl of fingers against his beard.
Wind blew in from the barrens behind him. Clouds opened above and then closed, hiding the stars so that the only light came from the sick glow of the Time Tombs. Sol was afraid that the wild beating of his heart would frighten the baby, but Rachel continued to curl calmly against him, her warmth a tactile reassurance.
“Damn,” whispered Sol. He had cared for Brawne Lamia. He had cared for all of the pilgrims, and now they were gone. Sol’s decades as an academic had preconditioned him to hunt for patterns in events, a moral grain in the accreted stone of experience, but there had been no pattern to events on Hyperion—merely confusion and death.
Sol rocked his child and looked out on the barrens, considering leaving this place at once … walking to the dead city or Chronos Keep … walking northwest to the Littoral or southeast to where the Bridle Range intersected the sea. Sol raised a shaky hand to his face and rubbed his cheek; there would be no salvation in the wilderness. Leaving the valley had not saved Martin Silenus. The Shrike had been reported far south of the Bridle Range—-as far south as Endymion and the other southern cities—and even if the monster spared them, starvation and thirst would not. Sol might survive on plants, rodent flesh, and snow-melt from the high places—but Rachel’s supply of milk was limited, even with the supplies Brawne had brought back from the Keep. Then he realized that the milk supply did not matter.…
I’ll be alone in less than a day. Sol stifled a moan as the thought struck him. His determination to save his child had brought him across two and a half decades and a hundred times that many light-years. His resolve to return Rachel’s life and health to her was an almost palpable force, a fierce energy which he and Sarai had shared and which he had kept alive the way a temple priest preserves the sacred temple flame. No, by God, there was a pattern to things, a moral underpinning to this platform of seemingly random events, and Sol Weintraub would wager his and his daughter’s lives on that belief.
Sol stood, walked slowly down the trail to the Sphinx, climbed the stairs, found a therm cloak and blankets, and made a nest for the two of them on the highest step as Hyperion winds howled and the Time Tombs glowed more brightly.
Rachel lay on his chest and stomach, her cheek on his shoulder, her tiny hands curling and uncurling as she released the world for the land of infant sleep. Sol heard her gentle breathing as she moved into deep slumber, heard the soft sound as she blew tiny bubbles of saliva. After a while, he released his own hold on the world and joined her in sleep.
THIRTY
Sol dreamed the dream he had suffered since the day Rachel had incurred Merlin’s sickness.
He was walking through a vast structure, where columns the size of redwood trees rose into the gloom and where crimson light fell in solid shafts from somewhere far above. There came the sound of a giant conflagration, entire worlds burning. Ahead of him glowed two ovals of the deepest red.
Sol knew the place. He knew that he would find an altar ahead with Rachel on it—Rachel in her twenties and unconscious—and then would come the Voice, demanding.
Sol stopped on the low balcony and stared down at the familiar scene. His daughter, the woman he and Sarai had bid farewell to when she left for postgraduate work on distant Hyperion, lay naked on a broad block of stone. Above them all floated the twin red orbs of the Shrike’s gaze. On the altar lay a long, curved knife made of sharpened bone. The Voice came then:
“Sol! Take your daughter, your only daughter, Rachel, whom you love, and go to the world called Hyperion and offer her there as a burnt offering at one of the places of which I shall tell you.”
Sol’s arms were shaking with rage and grief. He pulled at his hair and shouted into the darkness, repeating what he had told that voice before:
“There will be no more offerings, neither child nor parent. There will be no more sacrifices. The time of obedience and atonement is past. Either help us as a friend, or go away!”
In previous dreams, this had led to the sound of wind and isolation, terrible footsteps receding in the dark. But this time the dream persisted, the altar shimmered and was suddenly empty except for the bone knife. The twin red orbs still floated high above, fire-filled rubies the size of worlds.
“Sol, listen,” came the Voice, modulated now so it did not boom from far above but almost whispered in his ear, “the future of humankind depends upon your choice. Can you offer Rachel out of love, if not obedience?”
Sol heard the answer in his mind even as he groped for the words. There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaini
ng, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always—always—returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred.
Not this time. Not ever again.
“Say yes, Daddy.”
Sol started at the touch of a hand on his. His daughter, Rachel, stood next to him, neither infant nor adult, but the eight-year-old he had known twice—aging and growing backward through that age with Merlin’s sickness—Rachel with her light brown hair tied back in a simple braid, short form soft in washed-denim play tunic and kid sneakers.
Sol took her hand, gripping as tightly as he could without hurting her, feeling the returned grip. This was no illusion, no final cruelty of the Shrike. This was his daughter.
“Say yes, Daddy.”
Sol had solved Abraham’s problem of obedience to a God turned malicious. Obedience could no longer be paramount in relations between humanity and its deity. But when the child chosen as sacrifice asked for obedience to that God’s whim?
Sol went to one knee next to his daughter and opened his arms. “Rachel.”
She hugged him with the energy he remembered from countless such hugs, her chin high over his shoulder, her arms fierce in their intensity of love. She whispered in his ear, “Please, Daddy, we have to say yes.”
Sol continued to hug her, feeling her thin arms around him and the warmth of her cheek against his. He was crying silently, feeling the wetness on his cheeks and in his short beard, but unwilling to release her for even the second it would take to wipe the tears away.
“I love you, Daddy,” whispered Rachel.
He rose then, wiped his face with a swipe of the back of his hand, and with Rachel’s left hand still firmly in his, began the long descent with her toward the altar below.
Sol awoke with a sense of falling, grabbing for the baby. She was asleep on his chest, her fist curled, her thumb in her mouth, but when he started upright she awoke with the cry and arching reflex of a startled newborn. Sol got to his feet, dropping blankets and cloak around him, clutching Rachel tightly to him.
It was daylight. Late morning, if anything. They had slept while the night died and sunlight crept into the valley and across the Tombs. The Sphinx huddled over them like some predatory beast, powerful forelegs extended on either side of the stairway where they had slept.
Rachel wailed, her face contorting with the shock of waking and hunger and sensed fear in her father. Sol stood in the fierce sunlight and rocked her. He went to the top step of the Sphinx, changed her diaper, heated one of the last nursing paks, offered it to her until the wails turned to soft nursing sounds, burped her, and walked her around until she drifted into light sleep again.
It was less than ten hours until her “birthday.” Less than ten hours until sunset and the last few minutes of his daughter’s life. Not for the first time, Sol wished that the Time Tomb were a great glass building symbolizing the cosmos and the deity that ran it. Sol would throw rocks at the structure until not a single pane remained unbroken.
He tried to remember the details of his dream, but the warmth and reassurance of it shredded in the harsh light of Hyperion’s sun. He remembered only Rachel’s whispered entreaty. The thought of offering her to the Shrike made Sol’s stomach ache with horror. “It’s all right,” he whispered to her as she twitched and sighed toward the treacherous haven of sleep once again. “It’s all right, kiddo. The Consul’s ship will be here soon. The ship will come any minute.”
The Consul’s ship did not come by noon. The Consul’s ship did not come by midafternoon. Sol walked the valley floor, calling out for those who had disappeared, singing half-forgotten songs when Rachel awoke, crooning lullabies as she drifted back to sleep. His daughter was so tiny and light: six pounds and three ounces, nineteen inches at birth, he remembered, smiling at the antique units of his antique home, of Barnard’s World.
In late afternoon, he startled awake from his half-doze in the shade of the Sphinx’s outflung paw, standing with Rachel waking in his arms as a spacecraft arched across the dome of deep lapis sky.
“It’s come!” he cried, and Rachel stirred and wiggled as if in response.
A line of blue fusion flame glowed with that daylight intensity reserved to spacecraft in atmosphere. Sol hopped up and down, filled with the first relief in many days. He shouted and leaped until Rachel wailed and wept in concern. Sol stopped, lifted her high, knowing that she could not yet focus her eyes but wanting her to see the beauty of the descending ship as it arced above the distant mountain range, dropping toward the high desert.
“He did it!” cried Sol. “He’s coming! The ship will … ”
Three heavy thuds struck the valley almost at once; the first two were the twin sonic booms of the spacecraft’s “footprint” racing ahead of it as it decelerated. The third was the sound of its destruction.
Sol stared as the glowing pinpoint at the apex of the long fusion tail suddenly grew as bright as the sun, expanded into a cloud of flame and boiling gases, and then tumbled toward the distant desert in ten thousand burning pieces. He blinked away retinal echoes as Rachel continued crying.
“My God,” whispered Sol “My God.” There was no denying the complete destruction of the spacecraft. Secondary explosions ripped the air, even from thirty kilometers away, as pieces fell, trailing smoke and flames, toward the desert, the mountains, and the Sea of Grass beyond. “My God.”
Sol sat on the warm sand. He was too exhausted to cry, too empty to do anything but rock his child until her crying stopped.
Ten minutes later Sol looked up as two more fusion trails burned the sky, these headed south from the zenith. One of these exploded, too distant for sound to reach him. The second one dropped out of sight below the southern cliffs, beyond the Bridle Range.
“Perhaps it was not the Consul,” whispered Sol. “It could be the Ouster invasion. Perhaps the Consul’s ship still will come for us.”
But the ship did not come by late afternoon. It had not come by the time the light of Hyperion’s small sun shone on the cliff wall, shadows reaching for Sol on the highest step of the Sphinx. It did not come when the valley fell in shadow.
Rachel was born less than thirty minutes from this second. Sol checked her diaper, found her dry, and fed her from the last nursing pak. As she ate, she looked up at him with great, dark eyes, seemingly searching his face. Sol remembered the first few minutes he had held her while Sarai rested under warmed blankets; the baby’s eyes had burned into him then with these same questions and startlement at finding such a world.
The evening wind brought clouds moving in quickly above the valley. Rumbles to the southwest came first as distant thunder and then with the sick regularity of artillery, most likely nuclear or plasma explosions five hundred klicks or more to the south. Sol scanned the sky between lowering clouds and caught glimpses of fiery meteor trails arching overhead: ballistic missiles or dropships, probably. Death for Hyperion in either case.
Sol ignored it. He sang softly to Rachel as she finished nursing. He had walked to the head of the valley, but now he returned slowly to the Sphinx. The Tombs were glowing as never before, rippling with the harsh light of neon gases excited by electrons. Overhead, the last shafts from the setting sun changed the low clouds to a ceiling of pastel flames.
Less than three minutes remained until the final celebration of Rachel’s birth. Even if the Consul’s ship arrived now, Sol knew that he would not have time to board it or get his child into cryogenic sleep.
He did not want to.
Sol climbed the stairs to the Sphinx slowly, realizing that Rachel had come this way twenty-six standard years earlier, never guessing the fate that awaited her in that dark crypt.
He paused at the top step and took in a breath. The light from the sun was a palpable thing, filling the sky and igniting the wings and upper mass of the Sphinx. The tomb itself seemed to be releasing the light it had stored, like the rock
s in Hebron’s desert, where Sol had wandered in the wilderness years before, seeking enlightenment and finding only sorrow. The air shimmered with light, and the wind continued to rise, blowing sand across the valley floor and then relenting.
Sol went to one knee on the top step, pulling off Rachel’s blanket until the child was in only her soft cotton newborn’s clothes. Swaddling clothes.
Rachel wiggled in his hands. Her face was purple and slick, her hands tiny and red with the effort of clenching and unclenching. Sol remembered her exactly like this as the doctor handed the infant to Sol, as he stared at his newborn daughter as he was staring now, then set her on Sarai’s stomach so the mother could see.
“Ah, God,” breathed Sol and dropped to his other knee, truly kneeling now.
The entire valley quivered as if to an earthquake tremor. Sol could vaguely hear the explosions continuing far to the south. But of more immediate concern now was the terrible glow from the Sphinx. Sol’s shadow leaped fifty meters behind him down the stairway and across the valley floor as the tomb pulsed and vibrated with light. Out of the corner of his eye, Sol could see the other Tombs glowing as brightly—huge, baroque reactors in their final seconds before meltdown.
The entrance to the Sphinx pulsed blue, then violet, then a terrible white. Behind the Sphinx, on the wall of the plateau above the Valley of the Time Tombs, an impossible tree shimmered into existence, its huge trunk and sharp steel branches rising into the glowing clouds and above. Sol glanced quickly, saw the three-meter thorns and the terrible fruit they bore, and then he looked back at the entrance to the Sphinx.
Somewhere the wind howled and thunder rumbled. Somewhere vermilion dust blew like curtains of dried blood in the terrible light from the Tombs. Somewhere voices cried out and a chorus shrieked.
Sol ignored all this He had eyes only for his daughter’s face and, beyond her, for the shadow that now filled the glowing entrance to the tomb.