by Dan Simmons
A moment later, Sol Weintraub came close and hugged them both with one arm around their shoulders. The baby wriggled in pleasure at the sudden warmth of bodies. The Consul smelled the talc-and-newborn scent of her.
“I was wrong,” said the Consul. “I will make a request of the Shrike. I will ask for her.” He gently touched Rachel’s head where the small skull curved in to neck.
Martin Silenus made a noise which began as a laugh and died as a sob. “Our last requests,” he said. “Does the muse grant requests? I have no request. I want only for the poem to be finished.”
Father Hoyt turned toward the poet. “Is it so important?”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes,” gasped Silenus. He dropped the empty Scotch bottle, reached into his bag, and lifted out a handful of flimsies, holding them high as if offering them to the group. “Do you want to read it? Do you want me to read it to you? It’s flowing again. Read the old parts. Read the Cantos I wrote three centuries ago and never published. It’s all here. We’re all here. My name, yours, this trip. Don’t you see … I’m not creating a poem, I’m creating the future!” He let the flimsies fall, raised the empty bottle, frowned, and held it like a chalice. “I’m creating the future,” he repeated without looking up, “but it’s the past which must be changed. One instant. One decision.”
Martin Silenus raised his face. His eyes were red. “This thing that is going to kill us tomorrow—my muse, our maker, our unmaker—it’s traveled back through time. Well, let it. This time, let it take me and leave Billy alone. Let it take me and let the poem end there, unfinished for all time.” He raised the bottle higher, closed his eyes, and threw it against the far wall. Glass shards reflected orange light from the silent explosions.
Colonel Kassad stepped closer and laid long fingers on the poet’s shoulder.
For a few seconds the room seemed warmed by the mere fact of human contact. Father Lenar Hoyt stepped away from the wall where he had been leaning, raised his right hand with thumb and little finger touching, three fingers raised, the gesture somehow including himself as well as those before him, and said softly, “Ego te absolvo.”
Wind scraped at the outer walls and whistled around the gargoyles and balconies. Light from a battle a hundred million kilometers away painted the group in blood hues.
Colonel Kassad walked to the doorway. The group moved apart.
“Let’s try to get some sleep,” said Brawne Lamia.
Later, alone in his bedroll, listening to the wind shriek and howl, the Consul set his cheek against his pack and pulled the rough blanket higher. It had been years since he had been able to fall asleep easily.
The Consul set his curled fist against his cheek, closed his eyes, and slept.
EPILOGUE
The Consul awoke to the sound of a balalaika being played so softly that at first he thought it was an undercurrent of his dream.
The Consul rose, shivered in the cold air, wrapped his blanket around him, and went out onto the long balcony. It was not yet dawn. The skies still burned with the light of battle.
“I’m sorry,” said Lenar Hoyt, looking up from his instrument. The priest was huddled deep in his cape.
“It’s all right,” said the Consul. “I was ready to awaken.” It was true. He could not remember feeling more rested. “Please continue,” he said. The notes were sharp and clear but barely audible above the wind noise. It was as if Hoyt was playing a duet with the cold wind from the peaks above. The Consul found the clarity almost painful.
Brawne Lamia and Colonel Kassad came out. A minute later Sol Weintraub joined them. Rachel twisted in his arms, reaching toward the night sky as if she could grasp the bright blossoms there.
Hoyt played. The wind was rising in the hour before dawn, and the gargoyles and escarpments acted like reeds to the Keep’s cold bassoon.
Martin Silenus emerged, holding his head. “No fucking respect for a hangover,” he said. He leaned on the broad railing. “If I barf from this height, it’ll be half an hour before the vomitus lands.”
Father Hoyt did not look up. His fingers flew across the strings of the small instrument. The northwest wind grew stronger and colder and the balalaika played counterpart, its notes warm and alive. The Consul and the others huddled in blankets and capes as the breeze grew to a torrent and the unnamed music kept pace with it. It was the strangest and most beautiful symphony the Consul had ever heard.
The wind gusted, roared, peaked, and died. Hoyt ended his tune.
Brawne Lamia looked around. “It’s almost dawn.”
“We have another hour,” said Colonel Kassad.
Lamia shrugged. “Why wait?”
“Why indeed?” said Sol Weintraub. He looked to the east where the only hint of sunrise was the faintest of palings in constellations there. “It looks like a good day is coming.”
“Let’s get ready,” said Hoyt. “Do we need our luggage?”
The group looked at one another.
“No, I think not,” said the Consul. “The Colonel will bring the comlog with the fatline communicator. Bring anything necessary for your audience with the Shrike. We’ll leave the rest of the stuff here.”
“All right,” said Brawne Lamia, turning back from the dark doorway, gesturing toward the others, “let’s do it.”
There were six hundred and sixty-one steps from the northeast portal of the Keep to the moor below. There were no railings. The group descended carefully, watching their step in the insecure light.
Once onto the valley floor, they looked back at the outcrop of stone above. Chronos Keep looked like part of the mountain, its balconies and external stairways mere slashes in the rock. Occasionally a brighter explosion would illuminate a window or throw a gargoyle shadow, but except for those instances it was as if the Keep had vanished behind them.
They crossed the low hills below the Keep, staying on grass and avoiding the sharp shrubs which extended thorns like claws. In ten minutes they had crossed to sand and were descending low dunes toward the valley.
Brawne Lamia led the group. She wore her finest cape and a red silk suit with black trim. Her comlog gleamed on her wrist. Colonel Kassad came next. He was in full battle armor, camouflage polymer not yet activated so the suit looked matte black, absorbing even the light from above. Kassad carried a standard-issue FORCE assault rifle. His visor gleamed like a black mirror.
Father Hoyt wore his black cape, black suit, and clerical collar. The balalaika was cradled in his arms like a child. He continued to set his feet carefully, as if each step caused pain. The Consul followed. He was dressed in his diplomatic best, starched blouse, formal black trousers and demi-jacket, velvet cape, and the gold tricorne he had worn the first day on the treeship. He had to keep a grip on the hat against the wind that had come up again, hurling grains of sand in his face and sliding across the dune tops like a serpent. Martin Silenus followed close behind in his coat of wind-rippled fur.
Sol Weintraub brought up the rear. Rachel rode in the infant carrier, nestled under the cape and coat against her father’s chest. Weintraub was singing a low tune to her, the notes lost in the breeze.
Forty minutes out and they had come even with the dead city. Marble and granite gleamed in the violent light. The peaks glowed behind them, the Keep indistinguishable from the other mountain-sides. The group crossed a sandy vale, climbed a low dune, and suddenly the head of the valley of the Time Tombs was visible for the first time. The Consul could make out the thrust of the Sphinx’s wings and a glow of jade.
A rumble and crash from far behind them made the Consul turn, startled, his heart pounding.
“Is it beginning?” asked Lamia. “The bombardment?”
“No, look,” said Kassad. He pointed to a point above the mountain peaks where blackness obliterated the stars. Lightning exploded along that false horizon, illuminating icefields and glaciers. “Only a storm,” he said.
They resumed their trek across vermilion sands. The Consul found himself straining to make out
the shape of a figure near the Tombs or at the head of the valley. He was certain beyond all certainty that something awaited them there … that it awaited.
“Look at that,” said Brawne Lamia, her whisper almost lost in the wind.
The Time Tombs were glowing. What the Consul had first taken to be light reflected from above was not. Each Tomb glowed a different hue and each was clearly visible now, the glow brightening, the Tombs receding far back into the darkness of the valley. The air smelled of ozone.
“Is that a common phenomenon?” asked Father Hoyt, his voice thin.
The Consul shook his head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It had never been reported at the time Rachel came to study the Tombs,” said Sol Weintraub. He began to hum the low tune as the group started forward again through shifting sands.
They paused at the head of the valley. Soft dunes gave way to rock and ink-black shadows at the swale which led down to the glowing Tombs. No one led the way. No one spoke. The Consul felt his heart beating wildly against his ribs. Worse than fear or knowledge of what lay below was the blackness of spirit which seemed to have come into him on the wind, chilling him and making him want to run screaming toward the hills from which they had come.
The Consul turned to Sol Weintraub. “What’s that tune you’re singing to Rachel?”
The scholar forced a grin and scratched his short beard. “It’s from an ancient flat film. Pre-Hegira. Hell, it’s pre-everything.”
“Let’s hear it,” said Brawne Lamia, understanding what the Consul was doing. Her face was very pale.
Weintraub sang it, his voice thin and barely audible at first. But the tune was forceful and oddly compelling. Father Hoyt uncradled the balalaika and played along, the notes gaining confidence.
Brawne Lamia laughed. Martin Silenus said in awe, “My God, I used to sing this in my childhood. It’s ancient.”
“But who is the wizard?” asked Colonel Kassad, the amplified voice through his helmet oddly amusing in this context.
“And what is Oz?” asked Lamia.
“And just who is off to see this wizard?” asked the Consul, feeling the black panic in him fade ever so slightly.
Sol Weintraub paused and tried to answer their questions, explaining the plot of a flat film which had been dust for centuries.
“Never mind,” said Brawne Lamia. “You can tell us later. Just sing it again.”
Behind them, the darkness had engulfed the mountains as the storm swept down and across the moors toward them. The sky continued to bleed light but now the eastern horizon had paled slightly more than the rest. The dead city glowed to their left like stone teeth.
Brawne Lamia took the lead again. Sol Weintraub sang more loudly, Rachel wiggling in delight. Lenar Hoyt threw back his cape so as to better play the balalaika. Martin Silenus threw an empty bottle far out onto the sands and sang along, his deep voice surprisingly strong and pleasant above the wind.
Fedmahn Kassad pushed up his visor, shouldered his weapon, and joined in the chorus. The Consul started to sing, thought about the absurd lyrics, laughed aloud, and started again.
Just where the darkness began, the trail broadened. The Consul moved to his right, Kassad joining him, Sol Weintraub filling the gap, so that instead of a single-file procession, the six adults were walking abreast. Brawne Lamia took Silenus’s hand in hers, joined hands with Sol on the other side.
Still singing loudly, not looking back, matching stride for stride, they descended into the valley.
This is for Ted
All of the characters in this book
are fictitious, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
This edition contains the complete text
of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
THE FALL OF HYPERION
A Bantam Spectra Book / published by arrangement with Doubleday
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Doubleday edition published March 1990
Bantam edition / March 1991
Bantam reissue / December 1995
SPECTRA and the portrayal of the boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1990 by Dan Simmons.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-37438.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Doubleday.
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78189-5
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, New York 10019.
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Contents
Master - Table of Contents
The Fall of Hyperion
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Two
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part Three
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Epilogue
Dedication
“Can God play a significant game with his own creature? Can any creator, even a limited one, play a significant game with his own creature?”
—NORBERT WIENER, God and Golem, Inc.
“… May there not be superior beings amused with any graceful, though instinctive attitude my mind may fall into, as I am entertained with the alertness of a Stoat or the anxiety of a Deer? Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine … By a superior being our reasonings may take the same tone—though erroneous they may be fine— This is the very thing in which consists poetry …”
—JOHN KEATS, in a letter to his brother
“The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth.”
—JOHN KEATS, in a letter to a friend
PART ONE
ONE
On the day the armada went off to war, on the last day of life as we knew it, I was invited to a party. There were parties everywhere that evening, on more than a hundred and fifty worlds in the Web, but this was the only party that mattered.
I signified acceptance via the datasphere, checked to make sure that my finest formal jacket was clean, took my time bathing and shaving, dressed with meticulous care, and used the one-time diskey in the invitation chip to farcast from Esperance to Tau Ceti Center at the appointed time.
It was evening in t
his hemisphere of TC2, and a low, rich light illuminated the hills and vales of Deer Park, the gray towers of the Administration complex far to the south, the weeping willows and radiant fernfire which lined the banks of River Tethys, and the white colonnades of Government House itself. Thousands of guests were arriving, but security personnel greeted each of us, checked our invitation codes against DNA patterns, and showed the way to bar and buffet with a graceful gesture of arm and hand.
“M. Joseph Severn?” the guide confirmed politely.
“Yes,” I lied. It was now my name but never my identity.
“CEO Gladstone still wishes to see you later in the evening. You will be notified when she is free for the appointment.”
“Very good.”
“If you desire anything in the way of refreshment or entertainment that is not set out, merely speak your wish aloud and the grounds monitors will seek to provide it.”
I nodded, smiled, and left the guide behind. Before I had strolled a dozen steps, he had turned to the next guests alighting from the terminex platform.
From my vantage point on a low knoll, I could see several thousand guests milling across several hundred acres of manicured lawn, many of them wandering among forests of topiary. Above the stretch of grass where I stood, its broad sweep already shaded by the line of trees along the river, lay the formal gardens, and beyond them rose the imposing bulk of Government House. A band was playing on the distant patio, and hidden speakers carried the sound to the farthest reaches of Deer Park. A constant line of EMVs spiraled down from a farcaster portal far above. For a few seconds I watched their brightly clad passengers disembark at the platform near the pedestrian terminex. I was fascinated by the variety of aircraft; evening light glinted not only on the shells of the standard Vikkens and Altz and Sumatsos, but also on the rococo decks of levitation barges and the metal hulls of antique skimmers which had been quaint when Old Earth still existed.
I wandered down the long, gradual slope to the River Tethys, past the dock where an incredible assortment of river craft disgorged their passengers. The Tethys was the only webwide river, flowing past its permanent farcaster portals through sections of more than two hundred worlds and moons, and the folk who lived along its banks were some of the wealthiest in the Hegemony. The vehicles on the river showed this: great, crenelated cruisers, canvas-laden barks, and five-tiered barges, many showing signs of being equipped with levitation gear; elaborate houseboats, obviously fitted with their own farcasters; small, motile isles imported from the oceans of Maui-Covenant; sporty pre-Hegira speedboats and submersibles; an assortment of hand-carved nautical EMVs from Renaissance Vector; and a few contemporary go-everywhere yachts, their outlines hidden by the seamless reflective ovoid surfaces of containment fields.