by Dan Simmons
Above the city, a battle is raging. Lasers lance into and through the clouds, ships dodge like gnats and burn like moths too close to a flame, while parafoils and the blur of suspension fields drift beneath the cloud ceiling. The city of Keats is being attacked. The Ousters have come to Hyperion.
“Oh, sweet fuck,” Theo whispers reverently.
Along the forested ridge northwest of the city, a brief spout of flame and a flicker of contrail mark a shoulder-launched rocket coming directly toward the Hegemony skimmer.
“Hang on!” snaps Theo. He takes manual control, throws switches, banks the skimmer steeply to starboard, trying to turn inside the small rocket’s own turning radius.
An explosion aft throws the Consul into the crashweb and blurs his vision for a moment. When he can focus again, the cabin is filled with smoke, red warning lights pulse through the gloom, and the skimmer warns of systems failure in a dozen urgent voices. Theo is slumped grimly over the omni-controller.
“Hang on,” he says again, needlessly. The skimmer slews sickeningly, finds a grip in the air, and then loses it as they tumble and sideslip toward the burning city.
THIRTY-SIX
I blinked and opened my eyes, disoriented for a second as I looked around the immense, dark space of St. Peter’s Basilica. Pacem. Monsignor Edouard and Father Paul Duré leaned forward in the dim candlelight, their expressions intense.
“How long was I … asleep?” I felt as if only seconds had elapsed, the dream a shimmer of images one has in the instants between lying peacefully and full sleep.
“Ten minutes,” said the Monsignor. “Can you tell us what you saw?”
I saw no reason not to. When I was finished describing the images, Monsignor Edouard crossed himself. “Mon Dieu, the ambassador from the TechnoCore urges Gladstone to send people to those … tunnels.”
Duré touched my shoulder. “After I talk to the True Voice of the Worldtree on God’s Grove, I will join you on TC2. We have to tell Gladstone the folly of such a choice.”
I nodded. All thoughts of my going to God’s Grove with Duré or to Hyperion itself had fled. “I agree. We should depart at once. Is your … can the Pope’s Door take me to Tau Ceti Center?”
The Monsignor stood, nodded, stretched. Suddenly I realized that he was a very old man, untouched by Poulsen treatments. “It has a priority access,” he said. He turned to Duré. “Paul, you know that I would accompany you if I could. The funeral of His Holiness, the election of a new Holy Father … ” Monsignor Edouard made a small, rueful sound. “Odd how the daily imperatives persist even in the face of collective disaster. Pacem itself has fewer than ten standard days until the barbarians arrive.”
Duré’s high forehead gleamed in the candlelight. “The business of the Church is something beyond a mere daily imperative, my friend. I will make my visit on the Templar world brief, then join M. Severn in his effort of convincing the CEO not to listen to the Core. Then I will return, Edouard, and we will try to make some sense of this confused heresy.”
I followed the two of them out of the basilica, through a side door that led to a passageway behind the tall colonnades, left across an open courtyard—the rain had stopped and the air smelled fresh—down a stairway, and through a narrow tunnel into the papal apartments. Members of the Swiss Guard snapped to attention as we came into the apartments’ anteroom; the tall men were dressed in armor and yellow-and-blue striped pantaloons, although their ceremonial halberds were also FORCE-quality energy weapons. One stepped forward and spoke softly to the Monsignor.
“Someone has just arrived at the main terminex to see you, M. Severn.”
“Me?” I had been listening to other voices in other rooms, the melodious rise and fall of oft-repeated prayers. I assumed it had to do with preparation for the Pope’s burial.
“Yes, an M. Hunt. He says that it is urgent.”
“Another minute and I would have seen him at Government House,” I said. “Why not have him join us here?”
Monsignor Edouard nodded and spoke softly to the Swiss Guard, who whispered into an ornamental crest on his antique armor.
The so-called Pope’s Door—a small farcaster portal surrounded by intricate gold carvings of seraphim and cherubim, topped with a five-station bas-relief illustrating Adam and Eve’s fall from grace and expulsion from the garden—stood in the center of a well-guarded room just off the Pope’s private apartments. We waited there, our reflections wan and tired-looking in the mirrors on each wall.
Leigh Hunt was escorted in by the priest who had led me to the basilica.
“Severn!” cried Gladstone’s favorite advisor. “The CEO needs you at once.”
“I was just going there,” I said. “It would be a criminal mistake if Gladstone allowed the Core to build and use the death device.”
Hunt blinked—an almost comical reaction on that basset-hound countenance. “Do you know everything that happens, Severn?”
I had to laugh. “A young child sitting unattended in a holo pit sees much and understands very little. Still, he has the advantage of being able to change channels and turn the thing off when he grows tired of it.” Hunt knew Monsignor Edouard from various state functions, and I introduced Father Paul Duré of the Society of Jesus.
“Duré?” managed Hunt, his jaw almost hanging slack. It was the first time that I had seen the advisor at a loss for words, and I rather enjoyed the sight.
“We’ll explain later,” I said and shook the priest’s hand. “Good luck on God’s Grove, Duré. Don’t be too long.”
“An hour,” promised the Jesuit. “No longer. There is merely one piece of the puzzle I must find before speaking to the CEO. Please explain to her about the horror of the labyrinth … I will give her my own testimony later.”
“It’s possible that she’ll be too busy to see me before you get there anyway,” I said. “But I’ll do my best to play John the Baptist for you.”
Duré smiled. “Just don’t lose your head, my friend.” He nodded, tapped in a transfer code on the archiac diskey panel, and disappeared through the portal.
I bid farewell to Monsignor Edouard. “We will get all this settled before the Ouster wave gets this far.”
The old priest raised a hand and blessed me. “Go with God, young man. I feel that dark times await us all but that you will be especially burdened.”
I shook my head. “I’m just an observer, Monsignor. I wait and watch and dream. Little burden there.”
“Wait and watch and dream later,” Leigh Hunt said sharply. “Her Nibs wants you within reach now, and I have a meeting to get back to.”
I looked at the little man. “How did you find me?” I asked needlessly. Farcasters were operated by the Core, and the Core worked with the Hegemony authorities.
“The override card she gave you also makes it easier to keep track of your travels,” Hunt said, his impatience audible. “Right now we have an obligation to be where things are happening.”
“Very well.” I nodded at the Monsignor and his aide, beckoned to Hunt, and tapped in the three-digit code for Tau Ceti Center, added two digits for the continent, three more for Government House, and added the final two numbers for the private terminex there. The far-caster’s hum went up a notch on the scale, its opaque surface seemed to shimmer with expectancy.
I stepped through first, stepped aside to give Hunt room as he followed.
• • •
We are not in the central Government House terminex. As far as I can tell, we are nowhere near Government House. A second later, my senses total the input of sunlight, sky color, gravity, distance to horizon, smells, and feel of things, and decide that we aren’t on Tau Ceti Center.
I would have jumped back through the portal then, but the Pope’s Door is small, Hunt is coming through—leg, arm, shoulder, chest, head, second leg appearing—so I grab his wrist, pull him through roughly, say “Something’s wrong!” and try to step back through, but too late, the frameless portal on this side shimmers, dil
ates to a circle the size of my fist, and is gone.
“Where the hell are we?” demands Hunt.
I look around and think. Good question. We are in the country, on a hilltop. A road underfoot winds through vineyards, goes down a long hill through a wooded vale, and disappears around another hill a mile or two distant. It is very warm, and the air hums with the sounds of insects, but nothing larger than a bird moves in this vast panorama. Between bluffs to our right, a blue smear of water is visible—either an ocean or sea. High cirrus ripples overhead; the sun is just past the zenith. I see no houses, no technology more complicated than the vineyard rows and the stone-and-mud road underfoot. More importantly, the constant background buzz of the datasphere is gone. It is somewhat like suddenly hearing the absence of a sound one has been immersed in since infancy; it is startling, heart-stopping, confusing, and a bit terrifying.
Hunt staggers, claps his ears as if it is true sound he is missing, taps at his comlog. “Goddamn,” he mutters. “Goddamn. My implant’s malfunctioning. Comlog’s out.”
“No,” I say. “I believe we’re beyond the datasphere.” But even as I say this, I hear a deeper, softer hum—something far greater and far less accessible than the datasphere. The megasphere? The music of the spheres, I think, and smile.
“What the hell are you grinning about, Severn? Did you do this on purpose?”
“No. I gave the proper codes for Government House.” The total absence of panic in my voice is a kind of panic itself.
“What is it then? That goddamned Pope’s Door? Did it do this? Some malf or trick?”
“No, I think not. The door didn’t malfunction, Hunt. It brought us just where the TechnoCore wants us.”
“The Core?” What little color left in that basset countenance quickly drains away as the CEO’s aide realizes who controls the farcaster. Who controls all farcasters. “My God. My God.” Hunt staggers to the side of the road and sits in the tall grass there. His suede executive suit and soft black shoes look out of place here.
“Where are we?” he asks again.
I take a deep breath. The air smells of fresh-turned soil, newly mown grass, road dust, and the sharp tinge of the sea. “My guess is that we’re on Earth, Hunt.”
“Earth.” The little man is staring straight ahead, focusing on nothing. “Earth. Not New Earth. Not Terra. Not Earth Two. Not … ”
“No,” I say. “Earth. Old Earth. Or its duplicate.”
“Its duplicate.”
I go over and sit beside him. I pull a strand of grass and strip the lower part of its outer sheath. The grass tastes tart and familiar. “You remember my report to Gladstone on the Hyperion pilgrims’ stories? Brawne Lamia’s tale? She and my cybrid counterpart … the first Keats retrieval persona … traveled to what they thought was an Old Earth duplicate. In the Hercules Cluster, if I remember correctly.”
Hunt glances up as if he can judge what I am saying by checking constellations. The blue above is graying slightly as the high cirrus spreads across the dome of sky. “Hercules Cluster,” he whispers.
“Why the TechnoCore built a duplicate, or what they’re doing with it now, Brawne didn’t learn,” I say. “Either the first Keats cybrid didn’t know, or he wasn’t saying.”
“Wasn’t saying,” nods Hunt. He shakes his head. “All right, how the hell do we get out of here? Gladstone needs me. She can’t … there are dozens of vital decisions to be made in the next few hours.” He jumps to his feet, runs to the center of the road, a study in purposeful energy.
I chew on the stalk of grass. “My guess is that we don’t get out of here.”
Hunt comes at me as if he is going to assault me then and there. “Are you insane! No way out? That’s nuts. Why would the Core do that?” He pauses, looks down at me. “They don’t want you talking to her. You know something that the Core can’t risk her learning.”
“Perhaps.”
“Leave him, let me go back!” he screams at the sky.
No one answers. Far out across the vineyard, a large black bird takes flight. I think it is a crow; I remember the name of the extinct species as if from a dream.
After a moment, Hunt gives up on addressing the sky and paces back and forth on the stone road. “Come on. Maybe there’s a terminex wherever this thing goes.”
“Perhaps,” I say, breaking off the stalk of grass to get at the sweet, dry upper half. “But which way?”
Hunt turns, looks at the road disappearing around hills in both directions, turns again. “We came through the portal looking … this way.” He points. The road goes downhill into a narrow wood.
“How far?” I ask.
“Goddammit, does it matter?” he barks. “We have to get somewhere!” I resist the impulse to smile. “All right.” I stand and brush off my trousers, feeling the fierce sunlight on my forehead and face. After the incense-laden darkness of the basilica, it is a shock. The air is very hot, and my clothing is already damp with sweat.
Hunt starts walking vigorously down the hill, his fists clenched, his doleful expression ameliorated for once by a stronger expression—sheer resolve.
Walking slowly, in no hurry, still chewing on my stalk of sweet grass, eyes half-closed with weariness, I follow him.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad screamed and attacked the Shrike. The surreal, out-of-time landscape—a minimalist stage designer’s version of the Valley of the Time Tombs, molded in plastic and set in a gel of viscous air—seemed to vibrate to the violence of Kassad’s rush.
For an instant there had been a mirror-image scattering of Shrikes—Shrikes throughout the valley, spread across the barren plain—but with Kassad’s shout these resolved themselves to the single monster, and now it moved, four arms unfolding and extending, curving to greet the Colonel’s rush with a hearty hug of blades and thorns.
Kassad did not know if the energy skinsuit he wore, Moneta’s gift, would protect him or serve him well in combat. It had years before when he and Moneta had attacked two dropships’ worth of Ouster commandos, but time had been on their side then; the Shrike had frozen and unfrozen the flow of moments like a bored observer playing with a holopit remote control. Now they were outside time, and the was the enemy, not some terrible patron. Kassad shouted and put his head down and attacked, no longer aware of Moneta watching, nor of the impossible tree of thorns rising into the clouds with its terrible, impaled audience, nor even aware of himself except as a fighting tool, an instrument of revenge.
The Shrike did not disappear in its usual manner, did not cease being there to suddenly be here. Instead, it crouched and opened its arms wider. Its fingerblades caught the light of the violent sky. The Shrike’s metal teeth glistened in what might have been a smile.
Kassad was angry; he was not insane. Rather than rush into that embrace of death, he threw himself aside at the last instant, rolling on arm and shoulder, and kicking out at the monster’s lower leg, below the cluster of thornblades at the knee joint, above a similar array on the ankle, If he could get it down …
It was like kicking at a pipe embedded in half a klick of concrete. The blow would have broken Kassad’s own leg if the skinsuit had not acted as armor and shock absorber.
The Shrike moved, quickly but not impossibly; the two right arms swinging up and down and around in a blur, ten fingerblades carving soil and stone in surgical furrows, arm thorns sending sparks flying as the hands continued upward, slicing air with an audible rush. Kassad was out of range, continuing his roll, coming to his feet again, crouching, his own arms tensed, palms flat, energy-suited fingers rigid and extended.
Single combat, thought Fedmahn Kassad. The most honorable sacrament in the New Bushido.
The Shrike feinted with its right arms again, swung the lower left arm around and up with a sweeping blow violent enough to shatter Kassad’s ribs and scoop his heart out.
Kassad blocked the right-arm feint with his left forearm, feeling the skinsuit flex and batter bone as the steel-and-axe force of the Shrike’s blow struck
home. The left-arm killing blow he stopped with his right hand on the monster’s wrist, just above the corsage of curved spikes there. Incredibly, he slowed the blow’s momentum enough that scalpel-sharp fingerblades were now scraping against his skinsuit field rather than splintering ribs.
Kassad was almost lifted off the ground with the effort of restraining that rising claw; only the downward thrust of the Shrike’s first feint kept the Colonel from flying backward. Sweat poured freely under the skinsuit, muscles flexed and ached and threatened to rip in that interminable twenty seconds of struggle before the Shrike brought its fourth arm into play, slashing downward at Kassad’s straining leg.
Kassad screamed as the skinsuit field ripped, flesh tore, and at least one fingerblade sliced close to bone. He kicked out with his other leg, released the thing’s wrist, and rolled frantically away.
The Shrike swung twice, the second blow whistling millimeters from Kassad’s moving ear, but then jumped back itself, crouching, moving to its right.
Kassad got to his left knee, almost fell, then staggered to his feet, hopping slightly to keep his balance. The pain roared in his ears and filled the universe with red light, but even as he grimaced and staggered, close to fainting from the shock of it, he could feel the skinsuit closing on the wound—serving as both tourniquet and compress. He could feel the blood on his lower leg, but it was no longer flowing freely, and the pain was manageable, almost as if the skinsuit carried medpak injectors like his FORCE battle armor.
The Shrike rushed him.
Kassad kicked once, twice, aiming for and finding the smooth bit of chrome carapace beneath the chest spike. It was like kicking the hull of a torchship, but the Shrike seemed to pause, stagger, step back.
Kassad stepped forward, planted his weight, struck twice where the creature’s heart should be with a closed-fist blow that would have shattered tempered ceramic, ignored the pain from his fist, swiveled, and slammed a straight-armed, open-palmed blow into the creature’s muzzle, just above the teeth. Any human being would have heard the sound of his nose being broken and felt the explosion of bone and cartilage being driven into his brain.