The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle

by Dan Simmons

  For a while, we walked together in silence. I noticed that she had exchanged her suit for a long robe of the kind worn by grand matrons on Patawpha; the robe was wide and billowing, inset with intricate dark blue and gold designs which almost matched the darkening sky. Gladstone’s hands were out of sight in hidden pockets, the wide sleeves stirred to a breeze; the hem dragged on the milk-white stones of the path.

  “You let them interrogate me,” I said. “I’m curious as to why.”

  Gladstone’s voice was tired. “They were not transmitting. There was no danger of the information being passed on.”

  I smiled. “Nonetheless, you let them put me through that.”

  “Security wished to know as much about them as they would divulge.”

  “At the expense of any … inconvenience … on my part,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And does Security know who they were working for?”

  “The man mentioned Harbrit,” said the CEO. “Security is fairly certain that they meant Emlem Harbrit.”

  “The commodities broker on Asquith?”

  “Yes. She and Diana Philomel have ties with the old Glennon-Height royalist factions.”

  “They were amateurs,” I said, thinking of Hermund mentioning Harbrit’s name, the confused order of Diana’s questioning. “Of course.”

  “Are the royalists connected to any serious group?”

  “Only the Shrike church,” said Gladstone. She paused where the path crossed a small stream via a stone bridge. The CEO gathered her robe and sat on a wrought-iron bench. “None of the bishops have yet come out of hiding, you know.”

  “With the riots and backlash, I don’t blame them,” I said. I remained standing. There were no bodyguards or monitors in sight, but I knew that if I were to make any threatening move toward Gladstone, I would wake up in ExecSec detention. Above us, the clouds lost their last tinge of gold and began to glow with the reflected silver light of TC2’s countless tower cities. “What did Security do with Diana and her husband?” I asked.

  “They’ve been thoroughly interrogated. They’re being … detained.”

  I nodded. Thorough interrogation meant that even now their brains were floating in full-shunt tanks. Their bodies would be kept in cryogenic storage until a secret trial determined if their actions had been treasonable. After the trial, the bodies would be destroyed, and Diana and Hermund would remain in “detention,” with all sensory and comm channels turned off. The Hegemony had not used the death penalty for centuries, but the alternatives were not pleasant. I sat on the long bench, six feet from Gladstone.

  “Do you still write poetry?”

  I was surprised by her question. I glanced down the garden path where floating Japanese lanterns and hidden glow-globes had just come on. “Not really,” I said. “Sometimes I dream in verse. Or used to …”

  Meina Gladstone folded her hands on her lap and studied them. “If you were writing about the events unfolding now,” she said, “what kind of poem would you create?”

  I laughed. “I’ve already begun it and abandoned it twice … or rather, he had. It was about the death of the gods and their difficulty in accepting their displacement. It was about transformation and suffering and injustice. And it was about the poet … whom he thought suffered most at such injustice.”

  Gladstone looked at me. Her face was a mass of lines and shadows in the dimming light. “And who are the gods that are being replaced this time, M. Severn? Is it humanity or the false gods we created to depose us?”

  “How the hell should I know?” I snapped and turned away to watch the stream.

  “You are part of both worlds, no? Humanity and TechnoCore?”

  I laughed again. “I’m part of neither world. A cybrid monster here, a research project there.”

  “Yes, but whose research? And for what ends?”

  I shrugged.

  Gladstone rose and I followed. We crossed the stream and listened to water moving over the stones. The path wound between tall boulders covered with exquisite lichen which glowed in the lantern light.

  Gladstone paused at the top of a short flight of stone steps. “Do you think the Ultimates in the Core will succeed in constructing their Ultimate Intelligence, M. Severn?”

  “Will they build God?” I said. “There are those AIs which do not want to build God. They learned from the human experience that to construct the next step in awareness is an invitation to slavery, if not actual extinction.”

  “But would a true God extinguish his creatures?”

  “In the case of the Core and the hypothetical UI,” I said, “God is the creature, not the creator. Perhaps a god must create the lesser beings in contact with it in order for it to feel any responsibility for them.”

  “Yet the Core has appeared to take responsibility for human beings in the centuries since the AI Secession,” said Gladstone. She was gazing intently at me, as if gauging something by my expression.

  I looked out at the garden. The path glowed whitely, almost eerily in the dark. “The Core works toward its own ends,” I said, knowing as I spoke that no human being knew that fact better than CEO Meina Gladstone.

  “And do you feel that humanity no longer figures as a means toward those ends?”

  I made a dismissive gesture with my right hand. “I’m a creature of neither culture,” I said again. “Neither graced by the naïveté of the unintentional creators, nor cursed by the terrible awareness of their creatures.”

  “Genetically, you are fully human,” said Gladstone.

  It was not a question. I did not respond.

  “Jesus Christ was said to be fully human,” she said. “And also fully divine. Humanity and Godhead at intersection.”

  I was amazed at her reference to that old religion. Christianity had been replaced first by Zen Christianity, then Zen Gnosticism, then by a hundred more vital theologies and philosophies. Gladstone’s home-world was no repository for discarded beliefs and I assumed—and hoped—that neither was the CEO. “If he was fully human and fully God,” I said, “then I am his antimatter image.”

  “No,” said Gladstone, “I would imagine that the Shrike your pilgrim friends are confronting is that.”

  I stared. It was the first time she had mentioned the Shrike to me, despite the fact that I knew—and she knew that I knew—that it had been her plan which led the Consul to open the Time Tombs and release the thing.

  “Perhaps you should have been on that pilgrimage, M. Severn,” said the CEO.

  “In a way,” I said, “I am.”

  Gladstone gestured, and a door to her private quarters opened. “Yes, in a way you are,” she said. “But if the woman who carries your counterpart is crucified on the Shrike’s legendary tree of thorns, will you suffer for all eternity in your dreams?”

  I had no answer, so I stood there and said nothing.

  “We will talk in the morning after the conference,” said Meina Gladstone. “Good night, M. Severn. Have pleasant dreams.”

  EIGHT

  Martin Silenus, Sol Weintraub, and the Consul are staggering up the dunes toward the Sphinx as Brawne Lamia and Fedmahn Kassad return with Father Hoyt’s body. Weintraub clutches his cape tight around him, trying to shelter his infant from the rage of blowing sand and crackling light. He watches as Kassad descends the dune, his long legs black and cartoonish against electrified sand, Hoyt’s arms and hands dangling, moving slightly with each slide and step.

  Silenus is shouting, but the wind whips away words. Brawne Lamia gestures toward the one tent still standing; the storm has collapsed or ripped away the others. They crowd into Silenus’s tent, Colonel Kassad coming last, passing the body in gently. Inside, their shouts can be heard above the crack of fiberplastic canvas and the paper-splitting rip of lightning.

  “Dead?” shouts the Consul, peeling back the cloak Kassad had wrapped around Hoyt’s nude body. The cruciforms glow pinkly.

  The Colonel points to the telltales blinking on the surface
of the FORCE-issue medpak adhered to the priest’s chest. The lights blink red except for the yellow winking of the systems-sustaining filaments and nodules. Hoyt’s head rolls back, and now Weintraub can see the millipede suture holding the ragged edges of the slashed throat together.

  Sol Weintraub tries to locate a pulse manually; finds none. He leans forward, sets his ear to the priest’s chest. There is no heartbeat, but the welt of the cruciform there is hot against Sol’s cheek. He looks at Brawne Lamia. “The Shrike?”

  “Yes … I think … I don’t know.” She gestures toward the antique pistol she still holds. “I emptied the magazine. Twelve shots at … whatever it was.”

  “Did you see it?” the Consul asks Kassad.

  “No. I entered the room ten seconds after Brawne, but I didn’t see anything.”

  “What about your fucking soldier gadgets?” says Martin Silenus. He is crowded in the back of the tent, huddled in a near-fetal position. “Didn’t all that FORCE shit show something?”

  “No.”

  A small alarm sounds from the medpak, and Kassad detaches another plasma cartridge from his belt, feeds it into the pak’s chamber, and sits back on his heels, flipping his visor down to watch out the opening of the tent. His voice is distorted by the helmet speaker. “He’s lost more blood than we can compensate for here. Did anyone else bring first aid equipment?”

  Weintraub rummages in his pack. “I have a basic kit. Not enough for this, though. Whatever slashed his throat cut through everything.”

  “The Shrike,” whispers Martin Silenus.

  “It doesn’t matter,” says Lamia, hugging herself to stop her body from shaking. “We’ve got to get help for him.” She looks at the Consul.

  “He’s dead,” says the Consul. “Even a ship’s surgery won’t bring him back.”

  “We have to try!” shouts Lamia, leaning forward to grab the Consul’s tunic front. “We can’t leave him to those … things …” She gestures toward the cruciform glowing beneath the skin of the dead man’s chest.

  The Consul rubs his eyes. “We can destroy the body. Use the Colonel’s rifle …”

  “We’re going to die if we don’t get out of this fucking storm!” cries Silenus. The tent is vibrating, fiberplastic pounding the poet’s head and back with each billow. The sound of sand against fabric is like a rocket taking off just outside. “Call the goddamned ship. Call it!”

  The Consul pulls his pack closer, as if guarding the antique comlog inside it. Sweat glistens on his cheeks and forehead.

  “We could wait the storm out in one of the Tombs,” says Sol Weintraub. “The Sphinx, perhaps.”

  “Fuck that,” says Martin Silenus.

  The scholar shifts in the cramped space and stares at the poet. “You came all this way to find the Shrike. Are you telling us that you’ve changed your mind now that he seems to have made an appearance?”

  Silenus’s eyes gleam out from under his lowered beret. “I’m not telling you anything except that I want that goddamned ship of his here, and I want it now.”

  “It might be a good idea,” says Colonel Kassad.

  The Consul looks at him.

  “If there’s a chance to save Hoyt’s life, we should take it.”

  The Consul is in pain himself. “We can’t leave,” he says. “Can’t leave now.”

  “No,” agrees Kassad. “We won’t use the ship to leave. But the surgery might help Hoyt. And we can wait out the storm in it.”

  “And maybe find out what’s happening up there,” says Brawne Lamia, jerking her thumb toward the roof of the tent.

  The baby, Rachel, is crying shrilly. Weintraub rocks her, holding her head in his broad hand. “I agree,” he says. “If the Shrike wants to find us, it can find us on the ship as easily as out here. We’ll make sure that no one leaves.” He touches Hoyt’s chest. “As horrible as it sounds, the information the surgery gives us on how this parasite works could be priceless to the Web.”

  “All right,” says the Consul. He pulls the ancient comlog from his pack, lays his hand on the diskey, and whispers several phrases.

  “Is it coming?” asks Martin Silenus.

  “It’s confirmed the command. We’ll need to stow our gear for transfer. I told it to land just above the entrance to the valley.”

  Lamia is surprised to find that she has been weeping. She wipes her cheeks and smiles.

  “What’s funny?” asks the Consul.

  “All this,” she says, stabbing at her cheeks with the back of her hand, “and all I can think about is how nice it’ll be to have a shower.”

  “A drink,” says Silenus.

  “Shelter from the storm,” says Weintraub. The baby is taking milk from a nursing pak.

  Kassad leans forward, his head and shoulders outside the tent. He raises his weapon and clicks off the safety. “Telltales,” he says. “Something’s moving just beyond the dune.” The visor turns toward them, reflecting a pale and huddled group, the paler body of Lenar Hoyt. “I’m going to check it out,” he says. “Wait here until the ship arrives.”

  “Don’t leave,” says Silenus. “It’s like one of those fucking ancient horror holos where they go one by one to … hey!” The poet falls silent. The entrance to the tent is a triangle of light and noise. Fedmahn Kassad is gone.

  · · ·

  The tent is beginning to collapse, stakes and wire anchors giving way as the sand shifts around them. Huddled together, shouting to be heard over the wind roar, the Consul and Lamia wrap Hoyt’s body in his cloak. Readouts on the medpak continue to blink red. Blood has ceased to flow from the crude millipede suture.

  Sol Weintraub sets his four-day-old child in the infant carrier on his chest, folds his cape around her, and crouches in the entrance. “No sign of the Colonel!” he shouts. As he watches, a lightning bolt strikes the outstretched wing of the Sphinx.

  Brawne Lamia moves to the entrance and lifts the priest’s body. She is amazed at how light it is. “Let’s get Father Hoyt to the ship and in surgery. Then some of us will come back to search for Kassad.”

  The Consul tugs his tricorne cap low and shrugs his collar high. “The ship has deep radar and movement sensors. It’ll tell us where the Colonel’s gone.”

  “And the Shrike,” says Silenus. “Can’t forget our host.”

  “Let’s go,” says Lamia and gets to her feet. She has to lean into the wind to make progress. Loose ends of Hoyt’s cloak flap and crack around her, while her own cloak streams behind. Finding the path by the intermittent flashes of lightning, she moves toward the head of the valley, glancing back only once to see if the others are following.

  Martin Silenus steps away from the tent, lifts Het Masteen’s Möbius cube, and his purple beret whips away in the wind, climbing as it goes. Silenus stands there and curses impressively, stopping only when his mouth begins to fill with sand.

  “Come,” shouts Weintraub, his hand on the poet’s shoulder. Sol feels the sand striking his face, littering his short beard. His other hand covers his chest as if sheltering something infinitely precious. “We’ll lose sight of Brawne if we don’t hurry.” The two help each other move forward against the wind. Silenus’s fur coat ripples wildly as he detours to retrieve his beret from where it has come down in the lee of a dune.

  The Consul is the last to leave, carrying both his own pack and Kassad’s. A minute after he leaves the small shelter, stakes give way, fabric tears, and the tent flies into the night, surrounded by a halo of static electricity. He staggers the three hundred meters up the trail, occasionally catching glimpses of the two men ahead of him, more frequently losing the path and having to walk in circles until he comes across it again. The Time Tombs are visible behind him when the sandstorm ebbs a bit and the lightning flashes follow one another in close succession. The Consul sees the Sphinx, still glowing from repeated electrical strikes, the Jade Tomb beyond it, its walls luminescent, and beyond them the Obelisk, no glow there, a vertical swipe of pure black against the cliff walls. Th
en the Crystal Monolith. There is no sign of Kassad, although the shifting dunes, blowing sand, and sudden flashes make it seem as if many things are moving.

  The Consul looks up, seeing the wide entrance to the valley now and the rushing clouds low above it, half expecting to see the blue fusion glow of his ship lowering through them. The storm is terrible, but his spacecraft has landed in worse conditions. He wonders if it is already down and the others are waiting at the base of it for him to arrive.

  But when he reaches the saddle between cliff walls at the opening of the valley, the wind assaults him anew, he sees the four others huddled together at the beginning of the broad, flat plain, but there is no ship.

  “Shouldn’t it be here by now?” shouts Lamia as the Consul approaches the group.

  He nods and crouches to extract the comlog from his pack. Weintraub and Silenus stand behind him, bending over to offer some shelter from the blowing sand. The Consul extracts the comlog and pauses, looking around. The storm makes it appear as if they are in some mad room where the walls and ceiling change from instant to instant, one second closing in on them, scant meters away, the next second receding to the distance, the ceiling floating upward, as in the scene where the room and Christmas tree expand for Clara in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.

  The Consul palms the diskey, bends forward, and whispers into the voice square. The ancient instrument whispers back to him, the words just audible above the rasp of sand. He straightens up and faces the others. “The ship was not allowed to leave.”

  There is a babble of protest. “What do you mean ‘not allowed’?” asks Lamia when the others fall silent.

  The Consul shrugs and looks skyward as if a blue tail of flame might still announce the ship’s coming. “It wasn’t given clearance at the spaceport in Keats.”