by Dan Simmons
“Attention,” he says over the all-call channels. “This is Father Captain de Soya, commanding this mission under papal imperative. Commander Barnes-Avne will repeat these orders in a moment, but right now I want to specify that there will be no actions taken, no shots fired, no defensive acts initiated that will in any way endanger the life of the child who will be stepping from one of these tombs in … thirteen and a half minutes. I want this understood by every Pax officer and trooper, every torchship captain and space-navy sailor, every pilot and airborne flight officer … this child must be captured but unharmed. Failure to heed this warning will result in court-martial and summary execution. May we all serve our Lord and our Church this day.… In the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I ask that our efforts be successful. Father Captain de Soya, Acting Commander Hyperion expedition, out.”
He continues walking as the chorus of amens comes in over tactical channels. Suddenly he pauses. “Commander?”
“Yes, Father Captain.” Barnes-Avne’s voice is calm in his earphones.
“Would it screw up your perimeter if I asked for Sergeant Gregorius’s squad to join me here at the Sphinx?”
There is the briefest pause, which tells him how little the ground Commander thinks of such last-minute changes in plans. The “reception committee”—a squad of specially chosen Swiss Guard, the doctor with the sedative ready to be administered, and a medic with the living cruciform in its stasis container—are even now waiting at the foot of the Sphinx’s stairs.
“Gregorius and his troops will be there in three minutes,” says the Commander. De Soya can hear the commands going out over the tactical tightbeam and the confirmations coming in. Once again he has asked these five men and women to fly in dangerous conditions.
The squad touches down in two minutes forty-five seconds. De Soya can see them only on infrared; their reaction paks are glowing white-hot.
“Shed the flying paks,” he says. “Just stay near me no matter what happens. Watch my back.”
“Yes, sir,” comes Sergeant Gregorius’s rumble through the wind howl. The huge noncom steps closer, his visor and combat suit looming in de Soya’s IR vision. Obviously the sergeant wants a visual confirmation on whose back he is watching.
“S-minus ten minutes,” says Commander Barnes-Avne. “Sensors indicate unusual activity in the antientropic fields around the tombs.”
“I feel it,” says de Soya. Indeed, he can. The shifting of the time fields in the Valley creates a sense of vertigo in him not too dissimilar from nausea. Both this and the raging sandstorm make the priest-captain feel unattached to the ground, lightheaded, almost drunk. Planting his feet carefully, de Soya walks back to the Sphinx. Gregorius and his troopers follow in a tight V.
The “welcoming committee” is standing on the steps of the Sphinx. De Soya approaches, flashes his infrared and radio ID, talks briefly with the doctor carrying the sedative ampule—warns the woman not to harm the child—and then waits. There are thirteen forms on the steps now, counting Gregorius’s team. De Soya realizes that the combat squads do not look especially welcoming with their raised heavy weapons. “Step back a few paces,” he says to the two squad sergeants. “Keep the squads ready, but out of sight in the storm.”
“Affirmative.” The ten troopers take a dozen steps back and are totally invisible in the blowing sand. De Soya knows that nothing living could break through the perimeter they have established.
To the doctor and his medic aide carrying the cruciform, De Soya says, “Let’s get closer to the door.” The suited figures nod and the three slowly climb the stairs. The antientropic fields are intense now. De Soya remembers once, as a young boy, he had stood up to his chest in a vicious surf, the tide and undertow trying to pull him out into an unfriendly ocean on his homeworld. This is a bit like that.
“S-minus seven minutes,” says Barnes-Avne on the common channel. Then, on the tightbeam to de Soya, “Father Captain, would you like the skimmer to land and get you? There’s a better overview up here.”
“No, thank you,” says de Soya. “I’ll stay with the contact team.” He sees on his display that the skimmer is climbing for altitude, finally pausing at ten thousand meters, above the worst of the dust storm. Like any good commander, Barnes-Avne wants to control the action while not being caught up in it.
De Soya keys the private channel to his dropship pilot. “Hiroshe?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Be ready to lift off in ten minutes or less.”
“Ready, sir.”
“The storm won’t be a problem?” As with all deep-space combat captains, de Soya is more distrustful of atmosphere than of almost anything else.
“No problem, sir.”
“Good.”
“S-minus five minutes,” comes Commander Barnes-Avne’s steady voice. “Orbital detectors show no space activity for thirty AUs. Northern hemispheric airwatch shows no vehicles airborne. Ground detection shows no unauthorized movement from the Bridle Range to the coast.”
“COP screens clear,” comes the C3 controller’s voice.
“CAP clear,” says the lead Scorpion pilot. “It’s still a beautiful day up here.”
“Radio and tightbeam silence from this point on until Level Six goes to standdown,” says Barnes-Avne. “S-minus four minutes and sensors show maximum antientropic activity throughout the Valley. Contact team, report in.”
“I’m at the door,” says Dr. Chatkra.
“Ready,” says the medic, a very young trooper named Caf. The trooper’s voice is shaky. De Soya realizes that he does not know if Caf is male or female.
“All set here,” reports de Soya. He glances over his shoulder through the clear visor. Even the bottom of the stone stairway is invisible in the howling sand. Electrical discharges crackle and pop. De Soya switches to IR and sees the ten Swiss Guards standing there, weapons literally hot.
Even in the midst of storm noise, a terrible quiet suddenly descends. De Soya can hear his own breathing within the helmet of his combat suit. The unused com channels hiss and pop with static. More static lashes his tactical and IR visors, and de Soya slides them up in exasperation. The sealed portal of the Sphinx is less than three meters in front of him, but the sand now conceals it, now reveals it, like a shifting curtain. De Soya takes two steps closer, and Dr. Chatkra and her medic follow.
“Two minutes,” says Barnes-Avne. “All weapons to full hot. High-speed recorders to automatic. Medical dustoff teams stand by.”
De Soya closes his eyes to fight the vertigo of the time tides. The universe, he thinks, is truly wondrous. He is sorry that he has to sedate the child within seconds of meeting her. Those are his orders—she would sleep through the attachment of the cruciform and the fatal flight back to Pacem—and he knows that he will, in all probability, never hear the girl’s voice. He is sorry. He would like to talk to her, ask her questions about the past, about herself.
“One minute. Perimeter fire control on full auto.”
“Commander!” De Soya has to slide the tactical visor down to identify the voice as belonging to a science lieutenant on the interior perimeter. “The fields are building to max along all the tombs! Doors opening on the caves, the Monolith, the Shrike Palace, the Jade Tomb …”
“Silence on all channels,” snaps Barnes-Avne. “We’re monitoring it here. Thirty seconds.”
De Soya realizes that the child is going to step into this new era only to be confronted with three helmeted, visored figures in combat armor, and slides all of his visors up. He may never get to talk to the girl, but she will see his human face before she sleeps.
“Fifteen seconds.” For the first time de Soya hears tension in the Commander’s voice.
Blowing sand claws at Father Captain de Soya’s exposed eyes. He raises a gloved hand, rubs, and blinks through tears. He and Dr. Chatkra take another step closer. The doors of the Sphinx are opening inward. The interior is dark. De Soya wishes he could see in IR, but he does not flip the visor down. He is det
ermined that this child will see his eyes.
A shadow moves within darkness. The doctor begins to step toward the form, but de Soya touches her arm. “Wait.”
The shadow becomes a figure; the figure becomes a form; the form is a child. She is smaller than de Soya expected. Her shoulder-length hair blows in the wind.
“Aenea,” says de Soya. He had not planned on speaking to her, or calling her by name.
The girl looks up at him. He sees the dark eyes, but senses no fear there—just … anxiety? Sadness?
“Aenea, don’t worry …,” he begins, but the doctor moves forward quickly at that moment, injector raised, and the girl takes a quick step back.
It is then that Father Captain de Soya sees the second figure in the gloom. And it is then that the screaming begins.
14
I hadn’t known that I was claustrophobic until this trip. The flying at high speeds through pitch-black catacombs, the encircling containment field blocking even the wind of my passage, the sense of stone and darkness all around—twenty minutes into the wild flight I disengaged the autopilot program, landed the hawking mat on the labyrinth floor, collapsed the containment field, stepped away from the mat, and screamed.
I grabbed the flashlight laser and played it on the walls. A square corridor of stone. Here, outside the containment field, the heat struck me. The tunnel must be very deep. There were no stalactites, no stalagmites, no bats, no living things … only this square-hewn cavern stretching to infinity. I played the light over the hawking mat. It seemed dead, totally inert. In my haste I might have exited the program incorrectly, wiped it. If so, I was dead. We had jinked and banked on a score of branchings so far; there was no way I would ever find my own way out.
I screamed again, although it was a bit more of a deliberate, tension-breaking shout than a scream this time. I fought the sense of walls and darkness closing in. I willed away the nausea.
Three and a half hours left. Three and a half hours of this claustrophobic nightmare, barreling along through blackness, hanging on to a leaping flying carpet … and then what?
I wished then that I had brought a weapon. It seemed absurd at the time; no handgun would have given me a chance against even a single Swiss Guard trooper—not even against a Home Guard irregular—but now I wished I had something. I removed the small hunting knife from its leather scabbard on my belt, saw the steel gleam in the flashlight beam, and started laughing.
This was absurd.
I set the knife back, dropped onto the mat, and tapped in the “resume” code. The hawking mat stiffened, rose, and lurched into violent motion. I was going somewhere fast.
FATHER CAPTAIN DE SOYA SEES THE HUGE SHAPE for an instant before it is gone, and the screaming begins. Dr. Chatkra steps toward the retreating child, blocking de Soya’s view, there is a rush of air tangible even within the wind roar all around, and the doctor’s helmeted head is rolling and bouncing past de Soya’s boots.
“Mother of God,” he whispers into his open microphone. Dr. Chatkra’s body still stands. The girl—Aenea—screams then, the sound almost lost under the howling sandstorm, and as if the force of the scream has acted upon Chatkra’s body, the corpse falls to the stone. The medic, Caf, shouts something unintelligible and lunges for the girl. Again the dark blur, more sensed than seen, and Caf’s arm is separated from the medic’s body. Aenea runs toward the stairway. De Soya lunges at the child but collides with some sort of huge, metallic statue made of barbs and razor wire. Spikes puncture his combat armor—impossible!—but he feels the blood pouring from half a dozen minor wounds.
“No!” screams the girl again. “Stop! I command you!”
The three-meter metal statue turns in slow motion. De Soya has a confused impression of blazing red eyes staring down at the girl, and then the metal sculpture is gone. The father-captain takes a step toward the child, still wanting to reassure her as well as capture her, but his left leg goes out from under him, and he goes to his right knee on the broad stone step.
The girl comes to him, touches his shoulder, and whispers—somehow audibly above the wind howl and the worse howling of people in pain coming over his earphones—“It will be all right.”
Father Captain de Soya’s body is suffused with well-being, his mind is filled with joy. He weeps.
The girl is gone. A huge figure looms over him, and de Soya clenches his fists, tries to rise, knowing that it is futile—that the creature has returned to kill him.
“Easy!” shouts Sergeant Gregorius. The big man helps de Soya to his feet. The father-captain cannot stand—his left leg is bleeding and useless—so Gregorius holds him in one giant arm while he sweeps the area with his energy lance.
“Don’t shoot!” shouts de Soya. “The girl …”
“Gone,” says Sergeant Gregorius. He fires. A spike of pure energy lashes into the crackling swirl of sand. “Damn!” Gregorius lifts the father-captain over his armored shoulder. The screams on the net are growing wilder.
MY CHRONOMETER AND COMPASS TELL ME THAT I am almost there. Nothing else suggests that. I am still flying blind, still hanging on to the lurching hawking mat as it selects which branch of the endless Labyrinth to hurtle down. I have had little sense of the tunnels climbing toward the surface, but, then, I have had little sense of anything except vertigo and claustrophobia.
For the last two hours I have worn my night-vision glasses and illuminated our flight path with the flashlight laser at its widest setting. At three hundred klicks per hour, the rock walls rush by with alarming rapidity. But rather that than darkness.
I am still wearing the goggles when the first light appears and blinds me. I sweep off the glasses, stow them in a vest pocket, and blink away afterimages. The hawking mat is hurtling me toward a rectangle of pure light.
I remember the old poet saying that the Third Cave Tomb had been closed for more than two and a half centuries. All of the Time Tombs on Hyperion had their portals sealed after the Fall, but the Third Cave Tomb actually had a wall of rock sealing it off from the Labyrinth behind the closed portal. For hours now I had half expected to barrel into that wall of rock at almost three hundred klicks per hour.
The square of light grows rapidly. I realize that the tunnel has been climbing for some time, rising to the surface here. I lie full-length on the hawking mat, feeling it slow as it reaches the end of its programmed flight plan. “Good work, old man,” I say aloud, hearing my voice for the first time since the shouting interlude three and a half hours ago.
I set my hand over the acceleration threads, afraid to let the mat slow to a walking pace here where I am bound to be a sitting duck. I had said that it would take a miracle to keep from being shot by the Swiss Guard; the poet had promised me one. It is time.
Sand swirls in the tomb opening, covering the doorway like a dry waterfall. Is this the miracle? I hope not. Troopers can see through a sandstorm easily enough. I brake the mat to a stop just within the doorway, pull a bandanna and sunglasses from my pack, tie the scarf over my nose and mouth, lie full-length on my belly again, set my fingers over the flight designs, and punch the acceleration threads.
The hawking mat flies through the doorway and into open air.
I jink hard right, rising and dropping the mat in a wild evasive pattern, knowing even as I do so that such efforts are useless against autotargeting. It does not matter—my urge to stay alive overrides my logic.
I cannot see. The storm is so wild that everything two meters beyond the leading edge of the mat is obscured. This is insane … the old poet and I never discussed the possibility of a sandstorm here. I can’t even tell my altitude.
Suddenly a razor-sharp flying buttress passes less than a meter beneath the hurtling carpet, immediately I fly under another barbed metal strut, and I realize that I have almost just collided with the Shrike Palace. I am headed precisely the wrong direction—south—when I need to be at the north end of the Valley. I look at my compass, confirm my folly, and swing the hawking mat around. Fro
m the glimpse I had of the Shrike Palace, the mat is about twenty meters above ground level. Stopping the carpet, feeling it rocked and buffeted by the wind, I lower it like an elevator until it touches windswept stone. Then I raise it three meters, lock in that altitude, and move due north at little more than a walking pace.
Where are the soldiers?
As if to answer my unspoken question, dark forms in battle armor hurtle by. I flinch as they fire their baroque energy lances and stubby flechette guns, but they are not firing at me. They are shooting over their shoulders. They are Swiss Guard and they are running. I had never heard of such a thing.
Suddenly I realize that beneath the wind howl, the Valley is alive with human screams. I don’t see how this is possible—troopers would keep their helmets fastened and visors down in such a storm. But the screams are there. I can hear them.
A jet or skimmer suddenly roars overhead, no more than ten meters above me, its autoguns firing to either side—I survive because I am directly beneath the thing—and I have to brake suddenly as the storm ahead of me is illuminated by a terrible blast of light and heat. The skimmer, jet, whatever, has flown directly into one of the tombs ahead of me. I guess that it is the Crystal Monolith or the Jade Tomb.
More firing to my left. I fly right, then northwest again, trying to bypass the tombs. Suddenly there are screams to my right and directly ahead. Bolts of lancefire slash through the storm. This time someone is shooting at me. Shooting and missing? How can this be?
