by Dan Simmons
I point to the open square at the foot of the steps. “The Piazza di Spagna,” I say. It is suddenly strange to hear Hunt call me Severn. I realize that the name ceased to be mine when we passed through the Lateran Gate. Or, rather, that my true name had suddenly become my own again.
“Before too many years pass,” I say, “these will be called the Spanish Steps.” I start down the right bend in the staircase A sudden dizziness causes me to stagger, and Hunt moves quickly to take my arm.
“You can’t walk,” he says. “You’re too ill.”
I point to a mottled old building forming a wall to the opposite side of the broad steps and facing the Piazza. “It’s not far, Hunt. There is our destination. ”
Gladstone’s aide turns his scowl toward the structure. “And what is there? Why are we stopping there? What awaits us there?”
I cannot help but smile at this least poetic of men’s unconscious use of assonance. I suddenly imagine us sitting up long nights in that dark hulk of a building as I teach him how to pair such technique with masculine or feminine caesura, or the joys of alternating iambic foot with unstressed pyrrhic, or the self-indulgence of the frequent spondee.
I cough, continue coughing, and do not cease until blood is spattering my palm and shirt.
Hunt helps me down the steps, across the Piazza where Bernini’s boat-shaped fountain gurgles and burbles in the dusk, and then, following my pointing finger, leads me into the black rectangle of the doorway—the doorway to Number 26 Piazza di Spagna—and I think, without volition, of Dante’s Commedia and seem to see the phrase “LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH’INTRATE”—“Abandon Every Hope, Who Enter Here”—chiseled above the cold lintel of the doorway.
Sol Weintraub stood at the entrance to the Sphinx and shook his fist at the universe as night fell and the Tombs glowed with the brilliance of their opening and his daughter did not return.
Did not return.
The Shrike had taken her, lifted her newborn body in its palm of steel, and then stepped back into the radiance which even now pushed Sol away like some terrible, bright wind from the depths of the planet. Sol pressed against the hurricane of light, but it kept him out as surely as might a runaway containment field.
Hyperion’s sun had set, and now a cold wind blew from the barrens, driven in from the desert by a front of cold air sliding down the mountains to the south, and Sol turned to stare as vermilion dust blew into the searchlight glare of the opening Time Tombs.
The opening Tombs!
Sol squinted against the cold brilliance and looked down the valley to where the other Tombs glowed like pale green jack-o’-lanterns behind their curtain of blown dust. Light and long shadows leaped across the valley floor while the clouds were drained of the last of their sunset color overhead, and night came in with the howling wind.
Something was moving in the entrance of the second structure, the Jade Tomb. Sol staggered down the steps of the Sphinx, glancing up at the entrance where the Shrike had disappeared with his daughter, and then he was off the stairway, running past the Sphinx’s paws and stumbling down the windblown path toward the Jade Tomb.
Something moved slowly from the oval doorway, was silhouetted by the shaft of light emanating from the tomb, but Sol could not tell if it was human or not, Shrike or not. If it was the Shrike, he would seize it with his bare hands, shake it until it either returned his daughter to him or until one of them was dead.
It was not the Shrike.
Sol could see the silhouette as human now. The person staggered, leaned against the Jade Tomb’s doorway as if injured or tired. It was a young woman.
Sol thought of Rachel here in this place more than half a standard century earlier, the young archaeologist researching these artifacts and never guessing the fate awaiting her in the form of Merlin’s sickness. Sol had always imagined his child being saved by the sickness being canceled, the infant aging normally again, the child-who-would-some-day-be-Rachel given back her life. But what if Rachel returned as the twenty-six-year-old Rachel who had entered the Sphinx?
Sol’s pulse was pounding so loudly in his ears that he could not hear the wind rage around him. He waved at the figure, half-obscured now by the dust storm.
The young woman waved back.
Sol raced forward another twenty meters, stopped thirty meters from the tomb, and cried out. “Rachel! Rachel!”
The young woman silhouetted against the roaring light moved away from the doorway, touched her face with both hands, shouted something lost in the wind, and began to descend the stairs.
Sol ran, tripping over rocks as he lost the path and stumbled blindly across the valley floor, ignored the pain as his knee struck a low boulder, found the true path again, and ran to the base of the Jade Tomb, meeting her as she emerged from the cone of expanding light.
She fell just as Sol reached the bottom of the stairs, and he caught her, lowered her gently to the ground as blown sand rasped against his back and the time tides whirled about them in unseen eddies of vertigo and déjà vu.
“It is you,” she said and raised a hand to touch Sol’s cheek. “It’s real. I’m back.”
“Yes, Brawne,” said Sol, trying to hold his voice steady, brushing matted curls from Brawne Lamia’s face. He held her firmly, his arm on his knee, propping her head, his back bent to provide more shelter from the wind and sand. “It’s all right, Brawne,” he said softly, sheltering her, his eyes bright with the tears of disappointment he would not let fall. “It’s all right. You’re back.”
Meina Gladstone walked up the stairs of the cavernous War Room and stepped out into the corridor where long strips of thick Perspex allowed a view down Mons Olympus to the Tharsis Plateau. It was raining far below, and from this vantage point almost twelve klicks high in the Martian sky, she could see pulses of lightning and curtains of static electricity as the storm dragged itself across the high steppes.
Her aide Sedeptra Akasi moved out into the corridor to stand silently next to the CEO.
“Still no word on Leigh or Severn?” asked Gladstone.
“None,” said Akasi. The young black woman’s face was illuminated by both the pale light of the Home System’s sun above and the play of lightning below. “The Core authorities say that it may have been a farcaster malfunction.”
Gladstone showed a smile with no warmth. “Yes. And can you remember any farcaster malfunction in our lifetime, Sedeptra? Anywhere in the Web?”
“No, M. Executive.”
“The Core feels no need for subtlety. Evidently they think they can kidnap whomever they want and not be held accountable. They think we need them too much in our hour of extremis. And you know something, Sedeptra?”
“What?”
“They’re right.” Gladstone shook her head and turned back toward the long descent into the War Room, “It’s less than ten minutes until the Ousters envelop God’s Grove. Let’s go down and join the others. Is my meeting with Councilor Albedo on immediately after this?”
“Yes, Meina. I don’t think … I mean, some of us think that it is too risky to confront them directly like that.”
Gladstone paused before entering the War Room. “Why?” she asked and this time her smile was sincere. “Do you think the Core will disappear me the way they did Leigh and Severn?”
Akasi started to speak, stopped, and raised her palms.
Gladstone touched the younger woman on the shoulder. “If they do, Sedeptra, it will be a mercy. But I think they will not. Things have gone so far that they believe that there is nothing an individual can do to change the course of events.” Gladstone withdrew her hand, her smile faded. “And they may be right.”
Not speaking, the two descended to the circle of waiting warriors and politicians.
“The moment approaches,” said the True Voice of the Worldtree Sek Hardeen.
Father Paul Duré was brought back from his reverie. In the past hour, his desperation and frustration had descended through resignation to something akin to
pleasure at the thought of having no more choices, no more duties to perform. Duré had been sitting in companionable silence with the leader of the Templar Brotherhood, watching the setting of God’s Grove’s sun and the proliferation of stars and lights in the night that were not stars.
Duré had wondered at the Templar’s isolation from his people at such a crucial moment, but what he knew of Templar theology made Duré realize that the Followers of the Muir would meet such a moment of potential destruction alone on the most sacred platforms and in the most secret bowers of their most sacred trees. And the occasional soft comments Hardeen made into the cowl of his robe made Duré realize that the True Voice was in touch with fellow Templars via comlog or implants.
Still, it was a peaceful way to wait for the end of the world, sitting high in the known galaxy’s tallest living tree, listening to a warm evening breeze rustle a million acres of leaves and watching stars twinkle and twin moons hurtle across a velvet sky.
“We have asked Gladstone and the Hegemony authorities to offer no resistance, to allow no FORCE warships in-system,” said Sek Hardeen.
“Is that wise?” asked Duré. Hardeen had told him earlier what the fate of Heaven’s Gate had been.
“The FORCE fleet is not yet organized enough to offer serious resistance,” answered the Templar. “At least this way our world has some chance of being treated as a nonbelligerant.”
Father Duré nodded and leaned forward the better to see the tall figure in the shadows of the platform. Soft glow-globes in the branches below them were their only illumination other than the starlight and moonglow. “Yet you welcomed this war. Aided the Shrike Cult authorities in bringing it about.”
“No, Duré. Not the war. The Brotherhood knew it must be part of the Great Change.”
“And what is that?” asked Duré
“The Great Change is when humankind accepts its role as part of the natural order of the universe instead of its role as a cancer.”
“Cancer?”
“It is an ancient disease which—”
“Yes,” said Duré, “I know what cancer was. How is it like humankind?”
Sek Hardeen’s perfectly modulated, softly accented tones showed a hint of agitation. “We have spread out through the galaxy like cancer cells through a living body, Duré. We multiply without thought to the countless life forms that must die or be pushed aside so that we may breed and flourish. We eradicate competing forms of intelligent life.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the Seneschai empaths on Hebron. The marsh centaurs of Garden. The entire ecology was destroyed on Garden, Duré, so that a few thousand human colonists might live where millions of native life forms once had thrived.”
Duré touched his cheek with a curled finger. “That is one of the drawbacks of terraforming.”
“We did not terraform Whirl,” the Templar said quickly, “but the Jovian life forms there were hunted to extinction.”
“But no one ascertained that the zeplens were intelligent,” said Duré, hearing the lack of conviction in his own voice.
“They sang,” said the Templar. “They called across thousands of kilometers of atmosphere to each other in songs which held meaning and love and sorrow. Yet they were hunted to death like the great whales of Old Earth.”
Duré folded his hands. “Agreed, there have been injustices. But surely there is a better way to right them than to support the cruel philosophy of the Shrike Cult … and to allow this war to go on.”
The Templar’s hood moved back and forth. “No. If these were mere human injustices, other remedies could be found. But much of the illness … much of the insanity which has led to the destruction of races and the despoiling of worlds … this has come from the sinful symbiosis.”
“Symbiosis?”
“Humankind and the TechnoCore,” said Sek Hardeen in the harshest tones Duré had ever heard a Templar use. “Man and his machine intelligences. Which is a parasite on the other? Neither part of the symbiote can now tell. But it is an evil thing, a work of the Anti-Nature. Worse than that, Duré, it is an evolutionary dead end.”
The Jesuit stood and walked to the railing. He looked out over the darkened world of treetops spreading out like cloud tops in the night. “Surely there is a better way than turning to the Shrike and interstellar war.”
“The Shrike is a catalyst,” said Hardeen. “It is the cleansing fire when the forest has been stunted and allowed to grow diseased by overplanning. There will be hard times, but the result will be new growth, new life, and a proliferation of species … not merely elsewhere but in the community of humankind itself.”
“Hard times,” mused Duré. “And your Brotherhood is willing to see billions of people die to accomplish this … weeding out?”
The Templar clenched his fists. “That will not occur. The Shrike is the warning. Our Ouster brethren seek only to control Hyperion and the Shrike long enough to strike at the TechnoCore. It will be a surgical procedure … the destruction of a symbiote and the rebirth of humankind as distinct partner in the cycle of life.”
Duré sighed. “No one knows where the TechnoCore resides,” he said. “How can the Ousters strike at it?”
“They will,” said the True Voice of the Worldtree, but there was less confidence in his voice than there had been a moment before.
“And was attacking God’s Grove part of the deal?” asked the priest.
It was the Templar’s turn to stand and pace, first to the railing, then back to the table. “They will not attack God’s Grove. That is what I have kept you here to see. Then you must report to the Hegemony.”
“They’ll know at once whether the Ousters attack,” said Duré, puzzled.
“Yes, but they will not know why our world will be spared. You must bring this message. Explain this truth.”
“To hell with that,” said Father Paul Duré. “I’m tired of being everyone’s messenger. How do you know all this? The coming of the Shrike? The reason for the war?”
“There have been prophecies—” began Sek Hardeen.
Duré slammed his fist into the railing. How could he explain the manipulations of a creature who could—or at least was an agent of a force which could—manipulate time itself?
“You will see … ” began the Templar again, and as if to punctuate his words there came a great, soft sound, almost as though a million hidden people had sighed and then moaned softly.
“Good God,” said Duré and looked to the west where it seemed that the sun was rising where it had disappeared less than an hour before. A hot wind rustled leaves and blew across his face.
Five blossoming and inward-curling mushroom clouds climbed above the western horizon, turning night to day as they boiled and faded. Duré had instinctively covered his eyes until he realized that these explosions were so far away that although brilliant as the local sun, they would not blind him.
Sek Hardeen pulled back his cowl so that the hot wind ruffled his long, oddly greenish hair. Duré stared at the man’s long, thin, vaguely Asian features and realized that he saw shock etched there. Shock and disbelief. Hardeen’s cowl whispered with comm calls and the microbabble of excited voices.
“Explosions on Sierra and Hokkaido,” whispered the Templar to himself. “Nuclear explosions. From the ships in orbit.”
Duré remembered that Sierra was a continent, closed to outsiders, less than eight hundred kilometers from the Worldtree where they stood. He thought that he remembered that Hokkaido was the sacred isle where the potential treeships were grown and prepared.
“Casualties?” he asked, but before Hardeen could answer, the sky was slashed with brilliant light as a score or more tactical lasers, CPBs, and fusion lances cut a swath from horizon to horizon, switching and flashing like searchlights across the roof of the world forest that was God’s Grove. And where the lance beams cut, flame erupted in their wake.
Duré staggered as a hundred-meter-wide beam skipped like a tornado through the forest less
than a kilometer from the Worldtree. The ancient forest exploded in flame, creating a corridor of fire rising ten kilometers into the night sky. Wind roared past Duré and Sek Hardeen as air rushed in to feed the fire storm. Another beam slashed north and south, passing close to the Worldtree before disappearing over the horizon. Another swath of flame and smoke rose toward the treacherous stars.
“They promised,” gasped Sek Hardeen. “The Ouster brethren promised!”
“You need help!” cried Duré. “Ask the Web for emergency assistance.”
Hardeen grabbed Duré’s arm, pulled him to the edge of the platform. The stairs were back in place. On the platform below, a farcaster portal shimmered.
“Only the advance units of the Ouster fleet have arrived,” cried the Templar over the sound of forests burning. Ash and smoke filled the air, drifting past amidst hot embers. “But the singularity sphere will be destroyed any second. Go!”
“I’m not leaving without you,” called the Jesuit, sure that his voice could not be heard over the wind roar and terrible crackling. Suddenly, only kilometers to the east, the perfect blue circle of a plasma explosion expanded, imploded inward, then expanded again with visible concentric circles of shock wave. Kilometer-tall trees bent and broke in the first wave of the blast, their eastern sides exploding in flame, leaves flying off by the millions and adding to the almost solid wall of debris hurtling toward the Worldtree. Behind the circle of flame, another plasma bomb went off. Then a third.
Duré and the Templar fell down the steps and were blown across the lower platform like leaves on a sidewalk. The Templar grabbed a burning muirwood baluster, seized Duré’s arm in an iron grip, and struggled to his feet, moving toward the still shimmering farcaster like a man leaning into a cyclone.
Half conscious, half aware of being dragged, Duré managed to get to his own feet just as Voice of the Worldtree Sek Hardeen pulled him to the edge of the portal. Duré clung to the portal frame, too weak to pull himself the final meter, and looked past the farcaster to see something which he would never forget.