by Dan Simmons
The steering oar was not really needed in the central current. I lashed it in place, took off my shirt, folded it on top of my pack, and took the port push-pole from the obviously exhausted girl. She looked at me with dark eyes but did not complain.
A. Bettik had collapsed the microtent and shaken out most of the accumulated sand. Now he sat near me as the current moved us around a wide bend and into an even thicker tropical rain forest. He was wearing the loose shirt and ragged shorts of yellow linen I had seen him in on Hebron and Mare Infinitus. The broad-brimmed straw hat was at his feet. Surprisingly, Aenea moved to the front of the raft to sit near the motionless Shrike as we drifted deeper into the heavy jungle.
“This can’t be native,” I said, straightening the raft as the current tried to swing it sideways. “There can’t be enough rainfall in this desert to support all this.”
“I believe it was an extensive garden area planeted by the Shi’a religious pilgrims, M. Endymion,” said A. Bettik. “Listen.”
I listened. The rain forest was alive with the rustle of birds and wind. Beneath these sounds I could hear the hiss and rattle of sprinkler systems. “Incredible,” I said. “That they’d use precious water to maintain this ecosystem. It must stretch for kilometers.”
“Paradise,” said Aenea.
“What, kiddo?” I poled us back into the center current.
“The Muslims were primarily desert people on Old Earth,” she said softly. “Water and greenery was their idea of paradise. Mashhad was a religious center. Maybe this was to give the faithful a glimpse of what was to come if the teachings of Allah in the Qur’an were obeyed.”
“Expensive sneak preview,” I said, dragging the pole a bit as we turned again to the left as the river widened. “I wonder what happened to the people.”
“The Pax,” said Aenea.
“What?” I did not understand. “These worlds … Hebron, Qom-Riyadh … were under Ouster control when the population disappeared.”
“According to the Pax,” said Aenea.
I thought about this.
“What do the two worlds have in common, Raul?” she said.
It took no time to answer that. “They were both adamantly non-Christian,” I said. “They refused to accept the cross. Jew and Muslim.”
Aenea said nothing.
“That’s a terrible thought,” I said. My stomach hurt. “The Church may be misguided … the Pax can be arrogant with its power … but …” I wiped sweat out of my eyes. “My God …,” I said, struggling to say the one word. “Genocide?”
Aenea shifted to look at me. Just behind her the Shrike’s bladed legs caught the light. “We don’t know that,” she said very quietly. “But there are elements of the Church and of the Pax that would do it, Raul. Remember, the Vatican depends almost totally on the Core to maintain its control of resurrection—and through that, its control of all the people on all the worlds.”
I was shaking my head. “But … genocide? I can’t believe it.” That concept belonged with the legends of Horace Glen-non-Height and Adolf Hitler, not with people and institutions I had seen in my lifetime.
“Something terrible is going on,” said Aenea. “That has to be why we were routed this way … through Hebron and Qom-Riyadh.”
“You said that before,” I said, pushing hard on the pole. “Routed. But not by the Core. Then by whom?” I looked at the back of the Shrike. I was pouring sweat in the heat of the day. The looming creature was all cool blades and thorns.
“I don’t know,” said Aenea. She swiveled back around and rested her forearms on her knees. “There’s the farcaster.”
The portal rose, vine shrouded and rusted, from the overgrown jungle. If this was still Qom-Riyadh’s paradise park, it had grown out of control. Above the green canopy, the blue sky carried a hint of red dust clouds on the wind.
Steering for the center of the river, I laid the pole along the port side and went back to pick up my rifle. My stomach was still tight with the thought of genocide. Now it tightened further with the image of ice caves, waterfalls, ocean worlds, and of the Shrike coming to life as we passed into whatever waited.
“Hang on,” I said needlessly as we passed under the metal arch.
The view ahead of us faded and shifted as if a curtain of heat haze had begun to shimmer ahead of us and around us. Suddenly the light changed, the gravity changed, and our world changed.
53
Father Captain de Soya awakes to screaming. It is several minutes before he realizes it is his voice doing the screaming.
Thumbing open the coffin-lid catch, he pulls himself to a sitting position within the creche. Lights are blinking red and amber on the monitor panel, although all of the essential guidelines are green. Moaning in pain and confusion, de Soya starts to pull himself out. His body floats above the open creche, his flailing hands can get no grip. He notices that his hands and arms are glistening red and pink, as if all his skin has been burned off.
“Dear Mother of Mary … where am I?” He is weeping. The tears hang in front of his eyes in tumbling beads. “Zerog … where am I? The Balthasar? What’s … happened? Space battle? Burns?”
No. He is aboard the Raphael. Slowly the outraged dendrites in his brain begin to work. He is floating in instrument-lighted darkness. The Raphael. It should be in orbit around God’s Grove. He had set the creche cycles for Gregorius, Kee, and him for a dangerous six hours rather than the usual three days. Playing God with the troopers’ lives, he remembers thinking. The chances for unsuccessful resurrection are very high at this hurried pace. De Soya remembers the second courier who had brought orders to him on the Balthasar, Father Gawronski—it seems like decades ago to him—he had not achieved successful resurrection … the resurrection chaplain on Balthasar … what was that old bastard’s name? Father Sapieha … had said that it would take weeks or months for Father Gawronski to be resurrected after that initial failure … a slow, painful process, the resurrection chaplain had said accusingly …
Father Captain de Soya’s mind is clearing as he floats above the creche. Still in free fall as he had programmed. He remembers thinking that he might not be in shape to walk in one-g. He is not.
Kicking off to the wardrobe cubby, de Soya checks himself in the mirror there—his body glistens redly, he does look like a burn victim, and the cruciform is a livid welt in all that pink, raw flesh.
De Soya closes his eyes and pulls on his underclothes and cassock. The cotton hurts his raw skin, but he ignores the pain. The coffee has percolated as programmed. He lifts his bulb from the plotting table and kicks back into the common room.
Corporal Kee’s creche glows green in the last seconds of revival. Gregorius’s creche has flashing warning lights. De Soya curses softly and pulls himself down to the sergeant’s creche panel. The resurrection cycle has been aborted. The hurried revival has failed.
“Goddammit,” whispers de Soya, and then offers an Act of Contrition for taking the Lord’s name in vain. He needed Gregorius.
Kee revives safely, however, although the corporal is confused and in pain. De Soya lifts him out, kicks off with him to the wardroom cubby to sponge-bathe the other man’s burning skin and to offer him a drink of orange juice. Within minutes Kee can understand.
“Something was wrong,” de Soya explains. “I had to take this risk to see what Corporal Nemes was up to.”
Kee nods his understanding. Even though dressed with the cabin temperature set high, the corporal is shivering violently.
De Soya leads the way back to the command core. Sergeant Gregorius’s creche is all amber lights now as the cycle surrenders the big man to death again. Corporal Rhadamanth Nemes’s creche shows green lights for the normal three-day resurrection. Monitor displays show that she is inside, lifeless, and receiving the secret sacramental ministrations of resurrection. De Soya taps the release code.
Warning lights blink. “Creche release not allowed during resurrection cycle,” comes Raphael’s emotionless voice. “
Any attempt to open the creche now could result in true death.”
De Soya ignores the lights and warning buzzers and tugs at the lid. It stays locked. “Give me that pry bar,” he says to Kee.
The corporal tosses the iron bar across the weightless space. De Soya finds a niche for the head of the bar, says a silent prayer that he is not wrong and paranoid, and pries up the lid. Alarm bells fill the ship.
The creche is empty.
“Where is Corporal Nemes?” de Soya asks the ship.
“All instruments and sensors show her in her creche,” says the ship’s computer.
“Yeah,” says de Soya, tossing the bar aside. It tumbles into a corner in zero-g slow motion. “Come on,” he says to the corporal, and the two kick back to the wardroom cubby. The shower stall is empty. There is no place to hide in the common area. De Soya kicks forward to his command chair while Kee heads for the connecting tube.
Status lights show geosynchronous orbit at thirty thousand kilometers. De Soya looks out the window and sees a world of swirling cloud banks except for a wide band at the equator, where slash marks cut across green and brown terrain. Instruments show the dropship attached and powered down. Voice queries have the ship confirm that the dropship is where it should be, its air lock undisturbed since translation. “Corporal Kee?” de Soya says on the intercom. He must concentrate to keep his teeth from chattering. The pain is very real; it is as if his skin is on fire. He has a tremendous urge to close his eyes and sleep. “Report,” commands de Soya.
“The dropship’s gone, Captain,” says Kee from the access tunnel. “All the connector lights are green, but if I cycled the air lock, I’d be breathing vacuum. I can see out the port here that the dropship’s gone.”
“Merde,” whispers de Soya. “All right, come on back here.” He studies the other instruments while he waits. The telltale double burps are there on the thruster record … about three hours ago. Calling up the map of the equatorial region of God’s Grove, de Soya keys in a telescope and deep-radar search of the stretch of river around the stump of the Worldtree. “Find the first farcaster portal and show me every stretch of the river in between. Report on location of dropship transponder.”
“Instruments show dropship attached to the command-core boom,” says the ship. “Transponder confirms this.”
“Okay,” says de Soya, imagining himself punching out silicon chips like teeth, “ignore the dropship beacon. Just begin telescope and deep-radar searches of this region. Report any life-forms or artifacts. All data on main screens.”
“Affirmative,” says the computer. De Soya sees the screen lurch forward as telescopic magnification begins. He is looking down on a farcaster portal now from only a few hundred meters above it. “Pan downriver,” he says.
“Affirmative.”
Corporal Kee slides into the copilot’s seat and straps himself in. “With the dropship gone,” he says, “there’s no way we can get down there.”
“Combat suits,” says de Soya through the ripples of pain that shake him. “They have an ablative shield … hundreds of microlayers of colored ablative in case of a coherent light firefight, right?”
“Correct,” says Corporal Kee, “but—”
“My plan was for you and Sergeant Gregorius to use the ablative for reentry,” continues de Soya. “I could get Raphael in as low an orbit as possible. You use an auxiliary reaction pak for retro thrust. The suits should survive reentry, shouldn’t they?”
“Possibly,” says Kee, “but—”
“Then you go to EM repulsors and find this … woman,” says de Soya. “Find her and stop her. Afterward, you use the dropship to get back.”
Corporal Kee rubs his eyes. “Yes, sir. But I checked the suits. All of them have integrity breaches.…”
“Integrity …,” repeats de Soya stupidly.
“Someone slashed the ablative armor,” says Kee. “Not noticeable to the eye, but I ran a class-three integrity diagnostic. We’d be dead before ionization blackout.”
“All the suits?” says de Soya weakly.
“All of them, sir.”
The priest-captain overcomes the urge to curse again. “I’m going to bring the ship lower anyway, Corporal.”
“Why, sir?” says Kee. “Anything that happens down there is still going to be several hundred klicks away, and we can’t do a damn thing about it.”
De Soya nods but taps in the parameters he wants to the guidance core. His befuddled brain makes several mistakes—at least one of which would burn them up in the atmosphere of God’s Grove—but the ship catches them. De Soya resets the parameters.
“I advise against such a low orbit,” says the sexless ship’s voice. “God’s Grove has a volatile upper atmosphere, and three hundred kilometers does not satisfy safety-margin requirements as listed in the—”
“Shut up and do it,” says Father Captain de Soya.
He closes his eyes as the main thrusters fire. The return of weight makes the pain in his flesh and body all the more fierce. De Soya hears Kee groan in the copilot’s couch.
“Internal containment-field activation will alleviate the discomfort of four-g deceleration,” says the ship.
“No,” says de Soya. He is going to save power.
The noise, vibration, and pain continue. The limb of God’s Grove grows in the windscreen until it fills the view.
What if that … traitor … has programmed the ship to drive us into atmosphere if we awake and try any maneuver? de Soya suddenly thinks. He grins despite the punishing g-pull. Then she doesn’t go home either.
The punishment continues.
54
The Shrike was gone when we came through the other side of the portal.
After a moment I lowered my rifle and looked around. The river was broad and shallow here. The sky was a deep blue, darker than Hyperion’s lapis lazuli, and towering stratocumulus were visible far to the north. The cloud columns seemed to be catching evening light, and a glance behind us showed a large sun low in the sky. My feeling was that it was near sunset rather than just after sunrise.
The riverbanks showed rocks, weeds, and ashy soil. The very air smelled of ash, as if we were moving through an area destroyed by forest fire. The low growth supported that impression. To our right, many kilometers away, from the look of it, rose a blackened shield volcano.
“God’s Grove, I think,” said A. Bettik. “That is the remnant of the Worldtree.”
I looked again at the black volcanic cone. No tree could ever have grown that large.
“Where’s the Shrike?” I said.
Aenea stood and walked to the place where the creature had stood a moment before. She passed her hand through the air as if the monster had become invisible.
“Hang on!” I said again. The raft was coming up on a modest set of rapids. I returned to the steering oar and unlashed it while the android and girl took up poles on either side. We bounced, splashed, and tried to turn end to end, but were soon past the white ripples.
“That was fun!” said Aenea. It was the most animated I had heard her in some time.
“Yeah,” I said, “fun. But the raft’s coming apart.” This was a slight exaggeration, but not total hyperbole. The loose logs at the front were coming untethered. Our gear was rattling around loose on the collapsed microtent fabric.
“There is a flat space to put in,” said A. Bettik, pointing to a grassy area along the right riverbank. “The hills look more formidable ahead.”
I pulled the binoculars out and studied those black ridges. “You’re right,” I said. “There may be real rapids ahead, and few places to put in. Let’s tie up loose ends here.”
The girl and android poled us to the right bank. I jumped out and pulled the raft higher onto the muddy shore. Damage was not serious to the front and starboard sides, just loose wraith-hide thongs and a few splintered boards. I glanced upriver. The sun was lower, although it looked as if we had another hour or so of light.
“Do we camp tonight?�
� I said, thinking that this might be the last good place. “Or keep on moving?”
“Keep moving,” Aenea said adamantly.
I understood the impulse. It was still morning, Qom-Riyadh time. “I don’t want to be caught on white water after dark,” I said.
Aenea squinted at the low sun. “And I don’t want to be sitting here after dark,” she said. “Let’s get as far as we can.” She borrowed the binoculars and studied the black ridges to our right, the dark hills to the left of the river. “They wouldn’t have put the Tethys section on a river with dangerous rapids, would they?”
A. Bettik cleared his throat. “It would be my guess,” he said, “that much of that lava flow was created during the Ouster attack on this world. Very severe rapids may have resulted from the seismic disruption such a lancing would cause.”
“It wasn’t the Ousters,” Aenea said softly.
“What was that, kiddo?”
“It wasn’t the Ousters,” she said more firmly. “It was the TechnoCore that built ships to attack the Web … they were simulating an Ouster invasion.”
“Okay,” I said. I had forgotten that Martin Silenus had said as much toward the end of his Cantos. That part had not made much sense to me when I was learning the poem. It was all irrelevant now. “But the slagged hills are still there, and some nasty white water may be as well. White water or actual waterfalls. It could be that we can’t get the raft through it.”
Aenea nodded and set the binoculars back in my pack. “If we can’t, we can’t. We’ll walk it and swim through the next portal. But let’s fix the raft quickly and get as far as we can. If we see bad rapids, we’ll pole for the closest bank.”
“It may be more cliff than riverbank,” I said. “That lava looks mean.”
Aenea shrugged. “Then we’ll climb and keep hiking.”
I admit that I admired that child that evening. I knew that she was tired, sick, overwhelmed by some emotion I could not understand, and scared half to death. But I had never seen her ready to quit.
