by Dan Simmons
But swamp gas has no brain, and John Keats did.
The Shrike takes another two steps, and more hours pass for Sol and the others outside. I can see blood on the crying infant’s skin where the Shrike’s scalpeled fingers have cut into flesh.
To hell with this.
Outside, on the broad stone porch of the Sphinx, caught now in the flood of temporal energies flowing in and through the tomb, lay backpacks, blankets, abandoned food containers, and all the detritus Sol and the pilgrims had left there.
Including a single Möbius cube.
The box had been sealed with a class-eight containment field on the Templar treeship Yggdrasill when Voice of the Tree Het Masteen had prepared for his long voyage. It contained a single erg—sometimes known as a binder—one of the small creatures which might not be intelligent by human standards but which had evolved around distant stars and developed the ability to control more powerful forcefields than any machine known to humankind.
The Templars and Ousters had communicated with the creatures for generations. Templars used them for control redundancy on their beautiful but exposed treeships.
Het Masteen had brought this thing hundreds of light-years to complete the Templar agreement with the Church of the Final Atonement to help fly the Shrike’s thorn tree. But, seeing the Shrike and the tree of torment, Masteen had not been able to fulfill the contract. And so he died.
The Möbius cube remained. The erg was visible to me as a constrained sphere of red energy in the temporal flood.
Outside, through a curtain of darkness, Sol Weintraub was just visible—a sadly comic figure, speeded up like a silent-film figure by the subjective rush of time beyond the Sphinx’s temporal field—but the Möbius cube lay within the Sphinx’s circle.
Rachel cried with the fear even a newborn can know. Fear of falling. Fear of pain. Fear of separation.
The Shrike took a step, and another hour was lost to those outside.
I was insubstantial to the Shrike, but energy fields are something which even we Core-analog ghosts can touch. I canceled the Möbius cube’s containment field. I freed the erg.
Templars communicate with ergs via electromagnetic radiation, coded pulses, simple rewards of radiation when the creature does what they want … but primarily through a near-mystical form of contact which only the Brotherhood and a few Ouster exotics know. Scientists call it a crude telepathy. In truth, it is almost pure empathy.
The Shrike takes another step into the opening portal to the future. Rachel cries with the energy only someone newly born to the universe can muster.
The erg expands, understands, and melds with my persona. John Keats takes on substance and form.
I hurry the five paces to the Shrike, remove the baby from its hands, and step back. Even in the energy maelstrom that is the Sphinx, I can smell the infant-newness of her as I hold the child against my chest and cup her moist head against my cheek.
The Shrike whirls in surprise. Four arms extend, blades snick open, and red eyes focus on me. But the creature is too close to the portal itself. Without moving, it recedes down the storm drain of temporal flow. The thing’s steam-shovel jaws open, steel teeth gnash, but it is already gone, a spot in the distance. Something less.
I turn toward the entrance, but it is too far. The erg’s draining energy could get me there, drag me upstream against the flow, but not with Rachel. Carrying another living thing that far against so much force is more than I can manage even with the erg’s help.
The baby cries, and I bounce her gently, whispering nonsense doggerel in her warm ear.
If we can’t go back and we can’t go forward, we’ll just wait here for a moment. Perhaps someone will come along.
* * *
Martin Silenus’s eyes widened and Brawne Lamia turned quickly, seeing the Shrike floating in midair above and behind her.
“Holy shit,” Brawne whispered reverently.
In the Shrike Palace, tiers of sleeping human bodies receded in the gloom and distance, all of the people except Martin Silenus still connected to the thorn tree, the machine UI, and God knows what else by pulsing umbilicals.
As if to show its power here, the Shrike had quit climbing, opened its arms, and floated up three meters until it hung in the air five meters out from the stone shelf where Brawne crouched next to Martin Silenus.
“Do something,” whispered Silenus. The poet was no longer attached by the neural shunt umbilical, but he was still too weak to hold his head up.
“Ideas?” said Brawne, the brave remark somewhat ruined by the quaver in her voice.
“Trust,” said a voice below them, and Brawne shifted to look down toward the floor.
The young woman whom Brawne had recognized as Moneta in Kassad’s tomb stood far below.
“Help!” cried Brawne.
“Trust,” said Moneta and disappeared. The Shrike had not been distracted. It lowered its hands and stepped forward as if walking on solid stone rather than air.
“Shit,” whispered Brawne.
“Ditto,” rasped Martin Silenus. “Out of the frying pan back into the fucking fire.”
“Shut up,” said Brawne. Then, as if to herself, “Trust what? Who?”
“Trust the fucking Shrike to kill us or stick us both on the fucking tree,” gasped Silenus. He managed to move enough to clutch Brawne’s arm. “Better dead than back on the tree, Brawne.”
Brawne touched his hand briefly and stood, facing the Shrike across five meters of air.
Trust? Brawne held her foot out, felt around on emptiness, closed her eyes for a second, and opened them as her foot seemed to touch a solid step. She opened her eyes.
Nothing was under her foot except air.
Trust? Brawne put her weight on her forward foot and stepped out, teetering a moment before bringing her other foot down.
She and the Shrike stood facing each other ten meters above the stone floor. The creature seemed to grin at her as it opened its arms. Its carapace glowed dully in the dim light. Its red eyes were very bright.
Trust? Feeling the adrenaline rush, Brawne stepped forward on the invisible steps, gaining height as she moved into the Shrike’s embrace.
She felt the fingerblades slicing through fabric and skin as the thing began to hug her to it, toward the curved blade growing out of its metal chest, toward the open jaws and rows of steel teeth. But while still standing firmly on thin air, Brawne leaned forward and set her uninjured hand flat against the Shrike’s chest, feeling the coldness of the carapace but also feeling a rush of warmth as energy rushed from her, out of her, through her.
The blades stopped cutting before they cut anything but skin. The Shrike froze as if the flow of temporal energy surrounding them had turned to a lump of amber.
Brawne set her hand on the thing’s broad chest and pushed.
The Shrike froze completely in place, became brittle, the gleam of metal fading to be replaced by the transparent glow of crystal, the bright sheen of glass.
Brawne stood on air being embraced by a three-meter glass sculpture of the Shrike. In its chest, where a heart might be, something that looked like a large, black moth fluttered and beat sooty wings against the glass.
Brawne took a deep breath and pushed again. The Shrike slid backward on the invisible platform she shared with it, teetered, and fell. Brawne ducked under the encircling arms, hearing and feeling her jacket tearing as still-sharp fingerblades caught in the material and ripped as the thing tumbled, and then she was teetering herself, flailing her good arm for balance as the glass Shrike turned one and a half times in midair, struck the floor, and shattered into a thousand jagged shards.
Brawne pivoted, fell to her knees on the invisible catwalk, and crawled back toward Martin Silenus.
In the last half meter, her confidence failed her, the invisible support simply ceased to be, and she fell heavily, twisting her ankle as she hit the edge of the stone tier and managing to keep from falling off only by grabbing Silenus’s knee.
“There’s obviously been some weird shit going on since I left,” Martin Silenus said hoarsely. “Can we go now, or do you plan to walk on water as an encore?”
“Shut up,” Brawne said shakily. The two syllables sounded almost affectionate.
She rested a while and then found that the easiest way to get the still-weak poet down the steps and across the glass-strewn floor of the Shrike Palace was to use the fireman’s carry. They were at the entrance when he pounded unceremoniously on her back and said, “What about King Billy and the others?”
“Later,” panted Brawne and stepped out into the predawn light.
She had hobbled down two-thirds of the valley with Silenus draped over her shoulders like so much limp laundry when the poet said, “Brawne, are you still pregnant?”
“Yes,” she said, praying that that was still true after the day’s exertions.
“You want me to carry you?”
“Shut up,” she said and followed the path down and around the Jade Tomb.
“Look,” said Martin Silenus, twisting to point even as he hung almost upside down over her shoulder.
In the glowing light of morning, Brawne could see that the Consul’s ebony spacecraft now sat on the high ground at the entrance to the valley. But that was not what the poet was pointing toward.
Sol Weintraub stood silhouetted in the glare of the Sphinx’s entrance. His arms were raised.
Someone or something was emerging from the glare.
Sol saw her first. A figure walking amidst the torrent of light and liquid time flowing from the Sphinx. A woman, he saw, as she was silhouetted against the brilliant portal. A woman carrying something.
A woman carrying an infant.
His daughter Rachel emerged—Rachel as he had last seen her as a healthy young adult leaving to do her doctoral work on some world called Hyperion, Rachel in her mid-twenties, perhaps even a bit older now—but Rachel, no doubt about that, Rachel with her copperish-brown hair still short and falling across her forehead, her cheeks flushed as they always were as with some new enthusiasm, her smile soft, almost tremulous now, and her eyes—those enormous green eyes with specks of brown just visible—those eyes fixed on Sol.
Rachel was carrying Rachel. The infant squirmed with its face against the young woman’s shoulder, tiny hands clenching and unclenching as it tried to decide whether to start crying again or not.
Sol stood stunned. He tried to speak, failed, and tried again. “Rachel.”
“Father,” said the young woman and stepped forward, putting her free arm around the scholar while she turned slightly to keep the baby from being crushed between them.
Sol kissed his grown daughter, hugged her, smelled the clean scent of her hair, felt the firm reality of her, and then lifted the infant to his own neck and shoulder, feeling the shudders pass through the newborn as she took a breath before crying. The Rachel he had brought to Hyperion was safe in his hands, small, red face wrinkled as she tried to focus her randomly wandering eyes on her father’s face. Sol cupped her tiny head in his palm and lifted her closer, inspecting that small face for a second before turning toward the young woman.
“Is she … ”
“She’s aging normally,” said his daughter. She was wearing something part gown, part robe, made of soft brown material. Sol shook his head, looked at her, saw her smiling, and noticed the same small dimple below and to the left of her mouth that was visible on the infant he held.
He shook his head again. “How … how is this possible?”
“It’s not for very long,” said Rachel.
Sol leaned forward and kissed his grown daughter’s cheek again. He realized that he was crying, but he would not release either hand to wipe away the tears. His grown Rachel did so for him, touching his cheek gently with the back of her hand.
There was a noise below them on the steps, and Sol looked over his shoulder to see the three men from the ship standing there, red faced from running, and Brawne Lamia helping the poet Silenus to a seat on the white slab of railing stone.
The Consul and Theo Lane looked up at them.
“Rachel … ” whispered Melio Arundez, his eyes filling.
“Rachel?” said Martin Silenus, frowning and glancing at Brawne Lamia.
Brawne was staring with her mouth half open. “Moneta,” she said, pointing, then lowering her hand as she realized she was pointing. “You’re Moneta. Kassad’s … Moneta.”
Rachel nodded, her smile gone. “I have only a minute or two here,” she said. “And much to tell you.”
“No,” said Sol, taking his grown daughter’s hand, “you have to stay. I want you to stay with me. ”
Rachel smiled again. “I will stay with you, Dad,” she said softly, raising her other hand to touch the baby’s head. “But only one of us can … and she needs you more.” She turned to the group below. “Listen, please, all of you.”
As the sun rose and touched the broken buildings of the Poets’ City, the Consul’s ship, the western cliffs, and the taller Time Tombs with its light, Rachel told her brief and tantalizing story of being chosen to be raised in a future where the final war raged between the Core-spawned UI and the human spirit. It was, she said, a future of terrifying and wonderful mysteries, where humankind had spread across this galaxy and had begun to travel elsewhere.
“Other galaxies?” asked Theo Lane.
“Other universes,” smiled Rachel.
“Colonel Kassad knew you as Moneta,” said Martin Silenus.
“Will know me as Moneta,” said Rachel, her eyes clouding. “I have seen him die and accompanied his tomb to the past. I know that part of my mission is to meet this fabled warrior and lead him forward to the final battle. I have not truly met him yet.” She looked down the valley toward the Crystal Monolith. “Moneta,” she mused. “It means ‘Admonisher’ in Latin. Appropriate. I will let him choose between that and Mnemosyne—‘memory’—for my name.”
Sol had not released his daughter’s hand. He did not do so now. “You’re traveling back in time with the Tombs? Why? How?”
Rachel lifted her head, and reflected light from the far cliffs painted her face in warmth. “It is my role, Dad. My duty. They give me means to keep the Shrike in check. And only I was … prepared.”
Sol lifted his infant daughter higher. Startled from sleep, she blew a single bubble of saliva, turned her face into her father’s neck for warmth, and curled her small fists against his shirt.
“Prepared,” said Sol. “You mean the Merlin’s sickness?”
“Yes,” said Rachel.
Sol shook his head. “But you weren’t raised in some mysterious world of the future. You grew up in the college town of Crawford, on Fertig Street, on Barnard’s World, and your …”He stopped.
Rachel nodded. “She shall grow up … up there. Dad, I’m sorry, I have to go.” She freed her hand, drifted down the stairs, and touched Melio Arundez’s cheek briefly. “I’m sorry for the pain of memory,” she said softly to the startled archaeologist. “To me it was, literally, a different life.”
Arundez blinked and held her hand to his cheek a moment longer.
“Are you married?” asked Rachel softly. “Children?”
Arundez nodded, moved his other hand as if he were going to remove the pictures of his wife and grown children from his pocket, and then stopped, nodded again.
Rachel smiled, kissed him quickly on the cheek again, and moved back up the steps. The sky was rich with sunrise, but the door to the Sphinx was still brighter.
“Dad,” she said, “I love you.”
Sol tried to speak, cleared his throat. “How … how do I join you … up there?”
Rachel gestured toward the open door of the Sphinx “For some it will be a portal to the time I spoke of. But, Dad … ” She hesitated. “It will mean raising me all over again. It means
suffering through my childhood for a third time. No parent should be asked to do that.”
Sol managed a smile. “No parent would refuse that, Rachel.” He changed arms holding the sleeping infant, and shook his head again. “Will there be a time when … the two of you … ?”
“Coexist again?” smiled Rachel. “No. I go the other way now. You can’t imagine the difficulty I had with the Paradox Board to get this one meeting approved.”
“Paradox Board?” said Sol.
Rachel took a breath. She had stepped back until only her fingertips touched her father’s, both their arms extended. “I have to go, Dad.”
“Will I … ” He looked at the baby. “Will we be alone … up there?”
Rachel laughed, and the sound was so familiar that it closed around Sol’s heart like a warm hand. “Oh no,” she said, “not alone. There are wonderful people there. Wonderful things to learn and do. Wonderful places to see … ” She glanced around. “Places we have not imagined yet in our wildest dreams. No, Dad, you won’t be alone. And I’ll be there, in all my teenage awkwardness and young-adult cockiness.” She stepped back, and her fingers slipped away from Sol.
“Wait a while before stepping through, Dad,” she called, moving back into the brilliance. “It doesn’t hurt, but once through you can’t come back.”
“Rachel, wait,” said Sol.
His daughter stepped back, her long robe flowing across stone, until the light surrounded her. She raised one arm. “See you later, alligator!” she called.
Sol raised a hand. “After a while … crocodile.”
The older Rachel was gone in the light.
The baby awoke and began to cry.
It was more than an hour before Sol and the others returned to the Sphinx. They had gone to the Consul’s ship to tend to Brawne’s and Martin Silenus’s injuries, to eat, and to outfit Sol and the child for a voyage.
“I feel silly packing for what may be like a step through a farcaster,” said Sol, “but no wonder how wonderful this future is, if it doesn’t have nursing paks and disposable diapers, we’re in trouble.”