by Dan Simmons
Suddenly the void collapsed in on itself, vision returned, and the spheres of red and blue returned fore and aft. Within seconds the blue sphere from the stern migrated along the ship like a doughnut passing over a writing stylus, it merged with the red sphere at the bow, and colored geometries burst without warning from the forward sphere like flying creatures emerging from an egg. I say “colored geometries,” but this does nothing to share the complex reality: fractal-generated shapes pulsed and coiled and twisted through what had been the void. Spiral forms, spiked with their own subgeometries, curled in on themselves, spitting smaller forms of the same cobalt and blood-red brilliance. Yellow ovoids became pulsar-precise explosions of light. Mauve and indigo helixes, looking like the universe’s DNA, spiraled past us. I could hear these colors like distant thunder, like the pounding of surf just beyond the horizon.
I realized that my jaw was hanging slack. I turned away from the railing and tried to concentrate on the girl and android. The colors of the fractal universe played across them. Aenea still played softly, her fingers moving across keys even as she looked up at me and at the fractal heavens beyond me.
“Maybe we should go inside,” I said, hearing each word in my own voice hanging separately in the air like icicles along a branch.
“Fascinating,” said A. Bettik, arms still folded, his gaze on the tunnel of forms surrounding us. His skin was blue again.
Aenea stopped playing. Perhaps sensing my vertigo and terror for the first time, she rose, took my hand, and led me inside the ship. The balcony followed us in. The hull re-formed. I was able to breathe again.
“WE HAVE SIX DAYS,” THE GIRL SAID. WE WERE SITTING in the holopit because the cushions were comfortable there. We had eaten, and A. Bettik had fetched us cold fruit drinks from the refrigerator drawers. My hand shook only slightly as we sat and talked.
“Six days, nine hours, and twenty-seven minutes,” said the ship.
Aenea looked up at the bulkhead. “Ship, you can stay quiet for a while unless there’s something vital you have to say or we have a question for you.”
“Yes, M.… Aenea,” said the ship.
“Six days,” repeated the girl. “We have to get ready.”
I sipped my drink. “Ready for what?”
“I think they’ll be there waiting for us. We have to come up with a way to get through Parvati System and on to Renaissance Vector without their stopping us.”
I considered the child. She looked tired. Her hair was still straggly from the shower. With all of the Cantos talk of the One Who Teaches, I had expected someone extraordinary—a young messiah in toga, a prodigy delivering cryptic utterances—but the only thing extraordinary about this young person was the powerful clarity of her dark eyes. “How could they be waiting for us?” I said. “The fatline hasn’t worked for centuries. The Pax ships behind us can’t call ahead as they could in your time.”
Aenea shook her head. “No, the fatline had fallen before I was born. Remember, my mother was pregnant with me during the Fall.” She looked at A. Bettik. The android was drinking juice, but he had not chosen to sit down. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you. As I said, I used to visit the Poet’s City and thought I knew all of the androids.”
He bowed his head slightly. “No reason for you to remember me, M. Aenea. I had left the Poet’s City even before your mother’s pilgrimage. My siblings and I were working along the Hoolie River and on the Sea of Grass then. After the Fall, we … left service … and lived alone in different places.”
“I see,” she said. “There was a lot of craziness after the Fall. I remember. Androids would have been in danger west of the Bridle Range.”
I caught her gaze. “No, seriously, how could someone be waiting for us at Parvati? They can’t outrun us—we got to quantum velocity first—so the best they can do is translate into Parvati space an hour or two after us.”
“I know,” said Aenea, “but I still think that, somehow, they’ll be waiting. We have to come up with a way this unarmed ship can outrun or outmaneuver a warship.”
We talked for several more minutes, but none of us—not even the ship when queried—had a clever idea. All the time we were talking, I was observing the girl—the way her lips turned up slightly in a smile when she was thinking, the slight furrow in her brow when she spoke earnestly, how soft her voice was. I understood why Martin Silenus wanted her protected from harm.
“I wonder why the old poet didn’t call us before we left the system,” I mused aloud. “He must have wanted to talk to you.”
Aenea ran her fingers through her hair like a comb. “Uncle Martin would never greet me via tightbeam or holo. We were agreed that we would speak after this trip was over.”
I looked at her. “So you two planned the whole thing? I mean—your getaway, the hawking mat—everything?”
She smiled again at the thought. “My mother and I planned the essential details. After she died, Uncle Martin and I discussed the plan. He saw me off to the Sphinx this morning.…”
“This morning?” I said, confused. Then I understood.
“It’s been a long day for me,” the girl said ruefully. “I took a few steps this morning and covered half the time that humans have been on Hyperion. Everyone I knew—except Uncle Martin—must be dead.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “The Pax arrived not long after you disappeared, so many of your friends and family could have accepted the cross. They would still be here.”
“ ‘Accepted the cross,’ ” repeated the girl, and shivered slightly. “I don’t have any family—my mother was my only real family—and I sort of doubt that many of my friends or my mother’s friends would have … accepted the cross.”
We stared at each other in silence for a moment, and I realized how exotic this young creature was; most of the historical events on Hyperion I was familiar with had not yet occurred when this girl had taken her step into the Sphinx “this morning.”
“So, anyway,” she said, “we didn’t plan things down to the detail of the hawking mat—we didn’t know if the Consul’s ship would return with it, of course—but Mother and I did plan to use the Labyrinth if the Valley of the Tombs was off-limits. That worked out all right. And we hoped that the Consul’s ship would be here to get me offplanet.”
“Tell me about your time,” I said.
Aenea shook her head. “I will,” she said, “but not now. You know about my era. It’s history and legend to you. I don’t know anything about your time—except for my dreams—so tell me about the present. How wide is it? How deep is it? How much is mine to keep?”
I did not recognize the allusion of the last questions, but I began telling her about the Pax—about the great cathedral in St. Joseph and the …
“St. Joseph?” she said. “Where’s that?”
“You used to call it Keats,” I said. “The capital. It was also called Jacktown.”
“Ah,” she said, settling back in the cushions, the glass of fruit juice balanced in her slender fingers, “they changed the heathen name. Well, my father wouldn’t mind.”
It was the second time she had mentioned her father—I assumed she was speaking of the Keats cybrid—but I did not stop to ask her about that.
“Yes,” I said, “many of the old cities and landmarks were renamed when Hyperion joined the Pax two centuries ago. There was talk of renaming the world itself, but the old name stuck. Anyway, the Pax does not govern directly, but the military brought order to …” I went on for some time, filling her in on details of technology, culture, language, and government. I described what I had heard, read, and watched of life on more advanced Pax worlds, including the glories of Pacem.
“Gee,” she said when I paused, “things really haven’t changed that much. It sounds as if technology is sort of stuck … still not caught up to Hegemony days.”
“Well,” I said, “the Pax is partly responsible for that. The Church prohibits thinking machines—true AIs—and its emphasis is on human and spiritual
development rather than technological advancement.”
Aenea nodded. “Sure, but you’d think that they would have caught up to WorldWeb levels in two and a half centuries. I mean, it’s like the Dark Ages or something.”
I smiled as I realized that I was taking offense—being annoyed at criticism of the Pax society I had chosen not to join. “Not really,” I said. “Remember, the largest change has been the granting of virtual immortality. Because of that, the population growth is regulated carefully and there is less incentive to change exterior things. Most born-again Christians consider themselves to be in this life for the long haul—many centuries, at least, and millennia with luck—so they aren’t in a hurry to change things.”
Aenea regarded me carefully. “So the cruciform resurrection stuff really works?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then why haven’t you … accepted the cross?”
For the third time in recent days, I was at a loss to explain. I shrugged. “Perversity, I guess. I’m stubborn. Also, a lot of people like me stay away from it when we’re young—we all plan to live forever, right?—and then convert when age starts setting in.”
“Will you?” Her dark eyes were piercing.
I stopped myself from shrugging again, but the gesture of my hand was the equivalent. “I don’t know,” I said. I had not told her yet about my “execution” and subsequent resurrection with Martin Silenus. “I don’t know,” I said again.
A. Bettik stepped into the holopit circle. “I thought that I might mention that we have stocked the ship with an ample supply of ice cream. In several flavors. Could I interest either of you in some?”
I formed a phrase reminding the android that he was not a servant on this voyage, but before I could speak, Aenea cried, “Yes! Chocolate!”
A. Bettik nodded, smiled, and turned in my direction. “M. Endymion?”
It had been a long day: hawking-mat voyages through the Labyrinth, dust storms, carnage—she said it was the Shrike!— and my first offworld trip. Quite a day.
“Chocolate,” I said. “Yes. Definitely chocolate.”
20
The surviving members of Sergeant Gregorius’s squad are Corporal Bassin Kee and Lancer Ahranwhal Gaspa K.T. Rettig. Kee is a small man, compact and quick in both reflexes and intelligence, while Rettig is tall—almost as tall as the giant Gregorius—but is as thin as the sergeant is massive. Rettig is from the Lambert Ring Territories and has the radiation scars, skeletal frame, and independent bent so stereotypical of ‘stroiders. De Soya has learned that the man had never set foot on a full-sized, full-g world until he was twenty-three standard years old. RNA medication and serious Pax military exercise has toughened and strengthened the trooper until he can fight on any world. Reserved to the point of muteness, A.G.K.T. Rettig listens well, follows orders well, and—as the battle on Hyperion showed—survives well.
Corporal Kee is as voluble as Rettig is silent. During their first day of discussion, Kee’s questions and comments show insight and clarity, despite the brain-fogging effects of resurrection.
All four of the men are shaken by the experience of death. De Soya tries to convince them that it gets easier with experience, but his own shaken body and wits put the lie to these reassurances. Here, without counseling and therapy and the welcoming resurrection chaplains, each of the Pax soldiers is dealing with the trauma as best he can. Their conferences on the first day in Parvati space are interrupted frequently as fatigue or sheer emotion overcome them. Only Sergeant Gregorius is outwardly unshaken by the experience.
On the third day they meet in Raphael’s tiny wardroom cubby to plot their final course of action.
“In two months and three weeks, that ship is going to translate into this system less than a thousand klicks from where we’re station-holding,” says Father Captain de Soya, “and we have to be certain we can intercept it and detain the girl.”
None of the Swiss Guard soldiers has asked why the girl’s detention is required. None will discuss the issue until their commanding officer—de Soya—raises it first. Each will die, if necessary, to carry out the cryptic order.
“We don’t know who else is on board the ship, right?” says Corporal Kee. They have discussed these items, but memories are faulty for the first few days of their new lives.
“No,” says de Soya.
“We don’t know the armament of the ship,” says Kee, as if checking off a mental list.
“Correct.”
“We don’t know if Parvati is the ship’s destination.”
“Correct.”
“It could be,” says Corporal Kee, “that the ship is scheduled to rendezvous with another ship here … or perhaps the girl means to meet someone on the planet.”
De Soya nods. “The Raphael doesn’t have the sensors of my old torchship, but we’re sweeping everything between the Oort cloud and Parvati itself. If another ship translates before the girl’s, we’ll know at once.”
“Ouster?” says Sergeant Gregorius.
De Soya raises his hands. “Everything’s speculation. I can tell you that the child is considered a threat to the Pax, so it’s reasonable to conclude that the Ousters—if they know of her existence—might want to grab her. We’re ready if they try.”
Kee rubs his smooth cheek. “I still can’t quite believe we could hop home in a day if we wanted to. Or go for help.” Home for Corporal Kee is the Jamnu Republic on Deneb Drei. They have discussed why it would be useless to ask for help—the closest Pax warship is the St. Anthony, which should be, if de Soya’s orders were obeyed, in hot pursuit of the girl’s ship.
“I’ve tightbeamed the commander of the Pax garrison on Parvati,” says de Soya. “As our computer inventory showed, they have just their orbital patrol craft and a couple of rock jumpers. I’ve ordered him to put every spacecraft they have into cislunar defensive positions, to alert all the outposts on the planet, and to await further orders. If the girl was to get past us and land there, the Pax would find her.”
“What kind of world is Parvati?” asks Gregorius. The man’s bass rumble of a voice always gets de Soya’s attention.
“It was settled by Reformed Hindus not long after the Hegira,” says de Soya, who has accessed all this on the ship’s computer. “Desert world. Not enough oxygen to support humans—mostly C-O-two atmosphere—and it was never enough of a success to terraform, so either the environments are tailored or the people are. Population was never large—a few dozen million before the Fall. Fewer than half a million now, and most of them live in the one big city of Gandhiji.”
“Christians?” asks Kee. De Soya guesses that the question is more than idle curiosity; Kee asks few random questions.
“A few thousand in Gandhiji have converted,” says de Soya. “There is a new cathedral there—St. Malachy’s—and most of the born-again are prominent businesspeople who favor joining the Pax. They talked the planetary government—a sort of elective oligarchy—into inviting the Pax garrison here about fifty standard years ago. They’re close enough to the Outback to worry about the Ousters.”
Kee nods. “I just wondered if the garrison could count on the populace reporting it when the girl’s ship lands.”
“Doubtful,” says de Soya. “Ninety-nine percent of the world is empty—never settled, or gone back to sand dunes and lichen fields—with most of the people huddled around the big boxite mines near Gandhiji. But the orbital patrols would track her.”
“If she gets that far,” says Gregorius.
“Which she will not,” says Father Captain de Soya. He touches a tabletop monitor, which brings up the graphic he has prepared. “Here’s the intercept plan. We snooze until T-minus three days. Don’t worry—remember, fugue doesn’t have the hangover time of resurrection. Half an hour to shake the cobwebs out. Okay … so T-minus three days, the alarm goes off. Raphael’s been looping out to here—” He taps the diagram at a point two-thirds the way around the elipsoid trajectory. “We know their ship’s C-plus entry velocit
y, which means we know their exit velocity … it will be about point-zero-three C, so if they’re decelerating toward Parvati at the same rate they left Hyperion …” The trajectory and timeline diagrams fill the screen. “This is hypothetical, but their translation point is not … it will be here” He touches a stylus to a red point ten AUs from the planet. Their own trajectory elipsoid blinks its way to that point. “And here is where we intercept them, less than a minute from their translation point.”
Gregorius leans over his monitor. “We’ll all be going like a crossdamned bat out of hell, pardon the language, Father.”
De Soya smiles. “You are absolved, my son. Yes, velocities will be high, as will be our combined delta-v’s if their ship commences deceleration toward Parvati, but relative velocities for the two ships will be almost nill.”
“How close will we be, Captain?” says Kee. The man’s black hair glistens in the overhead spots.
“When they translate, we’ll be bearing down on them at a distance of six hundred klicks. Within three minutes we’ll be able to throw a rock at them.”
Kee frowns. “But what will they throw at us?”
“Unknown,” says de Soya. “But the Raphael is tough. I’m betting that her shields can take anything this unidentified ship throws at us.”
Lancer Rettig grunts. “Bad bet to lose.”
De Soya swivels his chair to look at the trooper. He had almost forgotten Rettig was there. “Yes,” he says, “but we have the advantage of being close. Whatever they throw at us, they’ll have a limited time to throw.”
“And what do we throw at them?” rumbles Gregorius.
De Soya pauses. “I’ve gone over Raphael’s armament with you,” he says at last. “If this were an Ouster warship, we could fry, bake, ram, or burn it. Or we could just make its crew die quietly.” Raphael carries deathbeam weaponry. At five hundred klicks, there would be no doubt of their effectiveness.
“But we’re not going to use any of that …,” continues the father-captain. “Unless we absolutely have to … to disable the ship.”
