by Dan Simmons
Sol continued to hug her, feeling her thin arms around him and the warmth of her cheek against his. He was crying silently, feeling the wetness on his cheeks and in his short beard, but unwilling to release her for even the second it would take to wipe the tears away.
“I love you, Daddy,” whispered Rachel.
He rose then, wiped his face with a swipe of the back of his hand, and with Rachel’s left hand still firmly in his, began the long descent with her toward the altar below.
Sol awoke with a sense of falling, grabbing for the baby. She was asleep on his chest, her fist curled, her thumb in her mouth, but when he started upright she awoke with the cry and arching reflex of a startled newborn. Sol got to his feet, dropping blankets and cloak around him, clutching Rachel tightly to him.
It was daylight. Late morning, if anything. They had slept while the night died and sunlight crept into the valley and across the Tombs. The Sphinx huddled over them like some predatory beast, powerful forelegs extended on either side of the stairway where they had slept.
Rachel wailed, her face contorting with the shock of waking and hunger and sensed fear in her father. Sol stood in the fierce sunlight and rocked her. He went to the top step of the Sphinx, changed her diaper, heated one of the last nursing paks, offered it to her until the wails turned to soft nursing sounds, burped her, and walked her around until she drifted into light sleep again.
It was less than ten hours until her “birthday.” Less than ten hours until sunset and the last few minutes of his daughter’s life. Not for the first time, Sol wished that the Time Tomb were a great glass building symbolizing the cosmos and the deity that ran it. Sol would throw rocks at the structure until not a single pane remained unbroken.
He tried to remember the details of his dream, but the warmth and reassurance of it shredded in the harsh light of Hyperion’s sun. He remembered only Rachel’s whispered entreaty. The thought of offering her to the Shrike made Sol’s stomach ache with horror. “It’s all right,” he whispered to her as she twitched and sighed toward the treacherous haven of sleep once again. “It’s all right, kiddo. The Consul’s ship will be here soon. The ship will come any minute.”
The Consul’s ship did not come by noon. The Consul’s ship did not come by midafternoon. Sol walked the valley floor, calling out for those who had disappeared, singing half-forgotten songs when Rachel awoke, crooning lullabies as she drifted back to sleep. His daughter was so tiny and light: six pounds and three ounces, nineteen inches at birth, he remembered, smiling at the antique units of his antique home, of Barnard’s World.
In late afternoon, he startled awake from his half-doze in the shade of the Sphinx’s outflung paw, standing with Rachel waking in his arms as a spacecraft arched across the dome of deep lapis sky.
“It’s come!” he cried, and Rachel stirred and wiggled as if in response.
A line of blue fusion flame glowed with that daylight intensity reserved to spacecraft in atmosphere. Sol hopped up and down, filled with the first relief in many days. He shouted and leaped until Rachel wailed and wept in concern. Sol stopped, lifted her high, knowing that she could not yet focus her eyes but wanting her to see the beauty of the descending ship as it arced above the distant mountain range, dropping toward the high desert.
“He did it!” cried Sol. “He’s coming! The ship will …”
Three heavy thuds struck the valley almost at once; the first two were the twin sonic booms of the spacecraft’s “footprint” racing ahead of it as it decelerated. The third was the sound of its destruction.
Sol stared as the glowing pinpoint at the apex of the long fusion tail suddenly grew as bright as the sun, expanded into a cloud of flame and boiling gases, and then tumbled toward the distant desert in ten thousand burning pieces. He blinked away retinal echoes as Rachel continued crying.
“My God,” whispered Sol. “My God.” There was no denying the complete destruction of the spacecraft. Secondary explosions ripped the air, even from thirty kilometers away, as pieces fell, trailing smoke and flames, toward the desert, the mountains, and the Sea of Grass beyond. “My God.”
Sol sat on the warm sand. He was too exhausted to cry, too empty to do anything but rock his child until her crying stopped.
Ten minutes later Sol looked up as two more fusion trails burned the sky, these headed south from the zenith. One of these exploded, too distant for sound to reach him. The second one dropped out of sight below the southern cliffs, beyond the Bridle Range.
“Perhaps it was not the Consul,” whispered Sol. “It could be the Ouster invasion. Perhaps the Consul’s ship still will come for us.”
But the ship did not come by late afternoon. It had not come by the time the light of Hyperion’s small sun shone on the cliff wall, shadows reaching for Sol on the highest step of the Sphinx. It did not come when the valley fell in shadow.
Rachel was born less than thirty minutes from this second. Sol checked her diaper, found her dry, and fed her from the last nursing pak. As she ate, she looked up at him with great, dark eyes, seemingly searching his face. Sol remembered the first few minutes he had held her while Sarai rested under warmed blankets; the baby’s eyes had burned into him then with these same questions and startlement at finding such a world.
The evening wind brought clouds moving in quickly above the valley. Rumbles to the southwest came first as distant thunder and then with the sick regularity of artillery, most likely nuclear or plasma explosions five hundred klicks or more to the south. Sol scanned the sky between lowering clouds and caught glimpses of fiery meteor trails arching overhead: ballistic missiles or dropships, probably. Death for Hyperion in either case.
Sol ignored it. He sang softly to Rachel as she finished nursing. He had walked to the head of the valley, but now he returned slowly to the Sphinx. The Tombs were glowing as never before, rippling with the harsh light of neon gases excited by electrons. Overhead, the last shafts from the setting sun changed the low clouds to a ceiling of pastel flames.
Less than three minutes remained until the final celebration of Rachel’s birth. Even if the Consul’s ship arrived now, Sol knew that he would not have time to board it or get his child into cryogenic sleep.
He did not want to.
Sol climbed the stairs to the Sphinx slowly, realizing that Rachel had come this way twenty-six standard years earlier, never guessing the fate that awaited her in that dark crypt.
He paused at the top step and took in a breath. The light from the sun was a palpable thing, filling the sky and igniting the wings and upper mass of the Sphinx. The tomb itself seemed to be releasing the light it had stored, like the rocks in Hebron’s desert, where Sol had wandered in the wilderness years before, seeking enlightenment and finding only sorrow. The air shimmered with light, and the wind continued to rise, blowing sand across the valley floor and then relenting.
Sol went to one knee on the top step, pulling off Rachel’s blanket until the child was in only her soft cotton newborn’s clothes. Swaddling clothes.
Rachel wiggled in his hands. Her face was purple and slick, her hands tiny and red with the effort of clenching and unclenching. Sol remembered her exactly like this as the doctor handed the infant to Sol, as he stared at his newborn daughter as he was staring now, then set her on Sarai’s stomach so the mother could see.
“Ah, God,” breathed Sol and dropped to his other knee, truly kneeling now.
The entire valley quivered as if to an earthquake tremor. Sol could vaguely hear the explosions continuing far to the south. But of more immediate concern now was the terrible glow from the Sphinx. Sol’s shadow leaped fifty meters behind him down the stairway and across the valley floor as the tomb pulsed and vibrated with light. Out of the corner of his eye, Sol could see the other Tombs glowing as brightly—huge, baroque reactors in their final seconds before meltdown.
The entrance to the Sphinx pulsed blue, then violet, then a terrible white. Behind the Sphinx, on the wall of the plateau above the Valley of
the Time Tombs, an impossible tree shimmered into existence, its huge trunk and sharp steel branches rising into the glowing clouds and above. Sol glanced quickly, saw the three-meter thorns and the terrible fruit they bore, and then he looked back at the entrance to the Sphinx.
Somewhere the wind howled and thunder rumbled. Somewhere vermilion dust blew like curtains of dried blood in the terrible light from the Tombs. Somewhere voices cried out and a chorus shrieked.
Sol ignored all this. He had eyes only for his daughter’s face and, beyond her, for the shadow that now filled the glowing entrance to the tomb.
The Shrike emerged. The thing had to bend to allow its three-meter bulk and steel blades to clear the top of the doorway. It stepped onto the top porch of the Sphinx and moved forward, part creature, part sculpture, walking with the terrible deliberation of nightmare.
The dying light above rippled on the thing’s carapace, cascaded down across curving breastplate to steel thorns there, shimmering on finger-blades and scalpels rising from every joint. Sol hugged Rachel to his chest and stared into the multifaceted red furnaces that passed for the Shrike’s eyes. The sunset faded into the blood-red glow of Sol’s recurrent dream.
The Shrike’s head turned slightly, swiveling without friction, rotating ninety degrees right, ninety degrees left, as if the creature were surveying its domain.
The Shrike took three steps forward, stopping less than two meters from Sol. The thing’s four arms twisted and rose, fingerblades uncurling.
Sol hugged Rachel tightly to him. Her skin was moist, her face bruised and blotched with the exertions of birth. Seconds remained. Her eyes tracked separately, seemed to focus on Sol.
Say yes, Daddy. Sol remembered the dream.
The Shrike’s head lowered until the ruby eyes in that terrible hood stared at nothing but Sol and his child. The quicksilver jaws parted slightly, showing layers and levels of steel teeth. Four hands came forward, metallic palms up, pausing half a meter from Sol’s face.
Say yes, Daddy. Sol remembered the dream, remembered his daughter’s hug, and realized that in the end—when all else is dust—loyalty to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave. Faith—true faith—was trusting in that love.
Sol lifted his newborn and dying child, seconds old, shrieking now with her first and last breath, and handed her to the Shrike.
The absence of her slight weight struck Sol with a terrible vertigo.
The Shrike lifted Rachel, stepped backward, and was enveloped in light.
Behind the Sphinx, the tree of thorns ceased shimmering, shifted into phase with now, and came into terrible focus.
Sol stepped forward, arms imploring, as the Shrike stepped back into the radiance and was gone. Explosions rippled the clouds and slammed Sol to his knees with shock waves of pressure.
Behind him, around him, the Time Tombs were opening.
PART THREE
THIRTY-ONE
I awoke, and was not pleased to be awakened.
Rolling over, squinting and cursing the sudden invasion of light, I saw Leigh Hunt sitting on the edge of the bed, an aerosol injector still in his hand.
“You took enough sleeping pills to keep you in bed all day,” he said. “Rise and shine.”
I sat up, rubbed the morning stubble on my cheeks, and squinted in Hunt’s direction. “Who the hell gave you the right to enter my room?” The effort of speaking started me coughing, and I did not stop until Hunt returned from the bathroom with a glass of water.
“Here.”
I drank, vainly trying to project anger and outrage between spasms of coughing. The remnants of dreams fled like morning mists. I felt a terrible sense of loss descend.
“Get dressed,” said Hunt, standing. “The CEO wants you in her chambers in twenty minutes. While you’ve been sleeping, things have been happening.”
“What things?” I rubbed my eyes and ran fingers through my tousled hair.
Hunt smiled tightly. “Access the datasphere. Then get down to Gladstone’s chambers soonest. Twenty minutes, Severn.” He left.
I accessed the datasphere. One way to visualize fine’s entry point to the datasphere is to imagine a patch of Old Earth’s ocean in varying degrees of turbulence. Normal days tended to show a placid sea with interesting patterns of ripples. Crises showed chop and whitecaps. Today there was a hurricane under way. Entry was delayed to any access route, confusion reigned in breaking waves of update surges, the datumplane matrix was wild with storage shifts and major credit transfers, and the All Thing, normally a multilayered buzz of information and political debate, was a raging wind of confusion, abandoned referenda and obsolete position templates blowing by like tattered clouds.
“Dear God,” I whispered, breaking access but feeling the pressure of the information surge still pounding at my implant circuits and brain. War. Surprise attack. Imminent destruction of the Web. Talk of impeaching Gladstone. Riots on a score of worlds. Shrike Cult uprisings on Lusus. The FORCE fleet abandoning Hyperion system in a desperate rearguard action, but too late, too late. Hyperion already under attack. Fear of farcaster incursion.
I rose, ran naked to the shower, and sonicked in record time. Hunt or someone had laid out a formal gray suit and cape, and I dressed in a hurry, brushing back my wet hair so that damp curls fell to my collar.
It wouldn’t do to keep the CEO of the Hegemony of Man waiting. Oh no, that wouldn’t do at all.
“It’s about time you got here,” said Meina Gladstone as I entered her private chambers.
“What the fuck have you done?” I snapped.
Gladstone blinked. Evidently the CEO of the Hegemony of Man was not used to being spoken to in that tone. Tough shit, I thought.
“Remember who you are and to whom you’re speaking,” Gladstone said coldly.
“I don’t know who I am. And I may be speaking to the greatest mass murderer since Horace Glennon-Height. Why the hell did you allow this war to happen?”
Gladstone blinked again and looked around. We were alone. Her sitting room was long and pleasantly dark and hung with original art from Old Earth. At that moment I didn’t care if I was in a room filled with original van Goghs. I stared at Gladstone, the Lincolnesque face merely that of an old woman in the thin light through the blinds. She returned my gaze for a moment, then looked away again.
“I apologize,” I snapped, no apology in my voice, “you didn’t allow it, you made it happen, didn’t you?”
“No, Severn, I did not make it happen.” Gladstone’s voice was hushed, almost a whisper.
“Speak up,” I said. I paced back and forth near the tall windows, watching the light from the blinds move across me like painted stripes. “And I’m not Joseph Severn.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Shall I call you M. Keats?”
“You can call me No Man,” I said. “So that when the other cyclopes come, you can say that No Man has blinded you, and they will go away, saying that it’s the will of the gods.”
“Do you plan to blind me?”
“Right now I could wring your neck and walk away without a twinge of remorse. Millions will die before this week is out. How could you have allowed it?”
Gladstone touched her lower lip. “The future branches only two directions,” she said softly. “War and total uncertainty, or peace and totally certain annihilation. I chose war.”
“Who says this?” There was more curiosity than anger in my voice now.
“It is a fact.” She glanced at her comlog. “In ten minutes I have to go before the Senate to declare war. Tell me the news of the Hyperion pilgrims.”
I crossed my arms and stared down at her. “I will tell you if you promise to do something.”
“I will if I can.”
I paused, realized that no amount of leverage in the universe could make this woman write a blank check on her word. “All right,” I said. “I want you to fatline Hyperion, release the hold you have on the Consul’s ship, and send someone up the Hoolie River to fin
d the Consul himself. He’s about a hundred and thirty klicks from the capital, above the Karla Locks. He may be hurt.”
Gladstone crooked a finger, rubbed her lip, and nodded. “I will send someone to find him. Releasing the ship depends upon what else you have to tell me. Are the others alive?”
I curled my short cape around me and collapsed on a couch across from her. “Some are.”
“Byron Lamia’s daughter? Brawne?”
“The Shrike took her. For a while, she was unconscious, connected to some sort of neural shunt to the datasphere. I dreamed … she was floating somewhere, reunited with the implant persona of the first Keats retrieval personality. Just entering the datasphere … the megasphere really, Core connections and dimensions I never dreamed of as well as the accessible ’sphere.”
“Is she alive now?” Gladstone leaned forward, intense.
“I don’t know. Her body disappeared. I was awakened before I saw where her persona entered the megasphere.”
Gladstone nodded. “What about the Colonel?”
“Kassad was taken somewhere by Moneta, the human female who seems to reside in the Tombs as they travel through time. The last I saw of him, he was attacking the Shrike barehanded. Shrikes, actually, there were thousands of them.”
“Did he survive?”
I opened my hands. “I don’t know. These were dreams. Fragments. Bits and pieces of perception.”
“The poet?”
“Silenus was carried off by the Shrike. Impaled on the tree of thorns. But I glimpsed him there later in Kassad’s dream. Silenus was still alive. I don’t know how.”
“So the tree of thorns is real, not merely Shrike Cult propaganda?”
“Oh yes, it’s real.”
“And the Consul left? Tried to return to the capital?”
“He had his grandmother’s hawking mat. It worked all right until he reached the place near Karla Locks I mentioned. It … and he … fell into the river.” I preempted her next question. “I don’t know if he survived.”
“And the priest? Father Hoyt?”