The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle

by Dan Simmons

  The guests who alighted from these craft were no less flamboyant and impressive than their vehicles: personal styles ranged from pre-Hegira conservative evening wear on bodies obviously never touched by Poulsen treatments to this week’s highest fashion from TC2 draped on figures molded by the Web’s most famous ARNists. Then I moved on, pausing at a long table just long enough to fill my plate with roast beef, salad, sky squid filet, Parvati curry, and fresh-baked bread.

  The low evening light had faded to twilight by the time I found a place to sit near the gardens, and the stars were coming out. The lights of the nearby city and Administration Complex had been dimmed for tonight’s viewing of the armada, and Tau Ceti Center’s night sky was more clear than it had been for centuries.

  A woman near me glanced over and smiled. “I’m sure that we’ve met before.”

  I smiled back, sure that we had not. She was very attractive, perhaps twice my age, in her late fifties, standard, but looking younger than my own twenty-six years, thanks to money and Poulsen. Her skin was so fair that it looked almost translucent. Her hair was done in a rising braid. Her breasts, more revealed than hidden by the wispwear gown, were flawless. Her eyes were cruel.

  “Perhaps we have,” I said, “although it seems unlikely. My name is Joseph Severn.”

  “Of course,” she said. “You’re an artist!”

  I was not an artist. I was … had been … a poet. But the Severn identity, which I had inhabited since my real persona’s death and birth a year before, stated that I was an artist. It was in my All Thing file.

  “I remembered,” laughed the lady. She lied. She had used her expensive comlog implants to access the datasphere.

  I did not need to access … a clumsy, redundant word which I despised despite its antiquity. I mentally closed my eyes and was in the datasphere, sliding past the superficial All Thing barriers, slipping beneath the waves of surface data, and following the glowing strand of her access umbilical far into the darkened depths of “secure” information flow.

  “My name is Diana Philomel,” she said. “My husband is sector transport administrator for Sol Draconi Septem.”

  I nodded and took the hand she offered. She had said nothing about the fact that her husband had been head goon for the mold-scrubbers union on Heaven’s Gate before political patronage had promoted him to Sol Draconi … or that her name once had been Dinee Teats, former crib doxie and hopstop hostess to lungpipe proxies in the Mid-sump Barrens … or that she had been arrested twice for Flashback abuse, the second time seriously injuring a halfway house medic … or that she had poisoned her half-brother when she was nine, after he had threatened to tell her stepfather that she was seeing a Mudflat miner named …

  “Pleased to meet you, M. Philomel,” I said. Her hand was warm. She held the handshake an instant too long.

  “Isn’t it exciting?” she breathed.

  “What’s that?”

  She made an expansive gesture that included the night, the glow-globes just coming on, the gardens, and the crowds. “Oh, the party, the war, everything,” she said.

  I smiled, nodded, and tasted the roast beef. It was rare and quite good, but gave the salty hint of the Lusus clone vats. The squid seemed authentic. Stewards had come by offering champagne, and I tried mine. It was inferior. Quality wine, Scotch, and coffee had been the three irreplaceable commodities after the death of Old Earth. “Do you think the war is necessary?” I asked.

  “Goddamn right it’s necessary.” Diana Philomel had opened her mouth, but it was her husband who answered. He had come up from behind and now took a seat on the faux log where we dined. He was a big man, at least a foot and a half taller than I. But then, I am short. My memory tells me that I once wrote a verse ridiculing myself as “… Mr. John Keats, five feet high,” although I am five feet one, slightly short when Napoleon and Wellington were alive and the average height for men was five feet six, ridiculously short now that men from average-g worlds range from six feet tall to almost seven. I obviously did not have the musculature or frame to claim I had come from a high-g world, so to all eyes I was merely short. (I report my thoughts above in the units in which I think … of all the mental changes since my rebirth into the Web, thinking in metric is by far the hardest. Sometimes I refuse to try.)

  “Why is the war necessary?” I asked Hermund Philomel, Diana’s husband.

  “Because they goddamn asked for it,” growled the big man. He was a molar grinder and a cheek-muscle flexer. He had almost no neck and a subcutaneous beard that obviously defied depilatory, blade, and shaver. His hands were half again as large as mine and many times more powerful.

  “I see,” I said.

  “The goddamn Ousters goddamn asked for it,” he repeated, reviewing the high points of his argument for me. “They fucked with us on Bressia and now they’re fucking with us on … in … whatsis …”

  “Hyperion system,” said his wife, her eyes never leaving mine.

  “Yeah,” said her lord and husband, “Hyperion system. They fucked with us, and now we’ve got to go out there and show them that the Hegemony isn’t going to stand for it. Understand?”

  Memory told me that as a boy I had been sent off to John Clarke’s academy at Enfield and that there had been more than a few small-brained, ham-fisted bullies like this there. When I first arrived, I avoided them or placated them. After my mother died, after the world changed, I went after them with rocks in my small fists and rose from the ground to swing again, even after they had bloodied my nose and loosened my teeth with their blows.

  “I understand,” I said softly. My plate was empty. I raised the last of my bad champagne to toast Diana Philomel.

  “Draw me,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Draw me, M. Severn. You’re an artist.”

  “A painter,” I said, making a helpless gesture with an empty hand. “I’m afraid I have no stylus.”

  Diana Philomel reached into her husband’s tunic pocket and handed me a light pen. “Draw me. Please.”

  I drew her. The portrait took shape in the air between us, lines rising and falling and turning back on themselves like neon filaments in a wire sculpture. A small crowd gathered to watch. Mild applause rippled when I finished. The drawing was not bad. It caught the lady’s long, voluptuous curve of neck, high braid bridge of hair, prominent cheekbones … even the slight, ambiguous glint of eye. It was as good as I could do after the RNA medication and lessons had prepared me for the persona. The real Joseph Severn could do better … had done better. I remember him sketching me as I lay dying.

  M. Diana Philomel beamed approval. M. Hermund Philomel glowered.

  A shout went up. “There they are!”

  The crowd murmured, gasped, and hushed. Glow-globes and garden lights dimmed and went off. Thousands of guests raised their eyes to the heavens. I erased the drawing and tucked the light pen back in Hermund’s tunic.

  “It’s the armada,” said a distinguished-looking older man in FORCE dress black. He lifted his drink to point something out to his young female companion. “They’ve just opened the portal. The scouts will come through first, then the torchship escorts.”

  The FORCE military farcaster portal was not visible from our vantage point; even in space, I imagine it would look like nothing more than a rectangular aberration in the starfield. But the fusion tails of the scoutships were certainly visible—first as a score of fireflies or radiant gossamers, then as blazing comets as they ignited their main drives and swept out through Tau Ceti System’s cislunar traffic region. Another cumulative gasp went up as the torchships farcast into existence, their firetails a hundred times longer than the scouts’. TC2’s night sky was scarred from zenith to horizon with gold-red streaks.

  Somewhere the applause began, and within seconds the fields and lawns and formal gardens of Government House’s Deer Park were filled with riotous applause and raucous cheering as the well-dressed crowd of billionaires and government officials and membe
rs of noble houses from a hundred worlds forgot everything except a jingoism and war lust awakened now after more than a century and a half of dormancy.

  I did not applaud. Ignored by those around me, I finished my toast—not to Lady Philomel now, but to the enduring stupidity of my race—and downed the last of the champagne. It was flat.

  Above, the more important ships of the flotilla had translated in-system. I knew from the briefest touch of the datasphere—its surface now agitated with surges of information until it resembled a storm-tossed sea—that the main line of the FORCE:space armada consisted of more than a hundred capital spinships: matte-black attack carriers, looking like thrown spears, with their launch-arms lashed down; Three-C command ships, as beautiful and awkward as meteors made of black crystal; bulbous destroyers resembling the overgrown torchships they were; perimeter defense pickets, more energy than matter, their massive containment shields now set to total reflection—brilliant mirrors reflecting Tau Ceti and the hundreds of flame trails around them; fast cruisers, moving like sharks among the slower schools of ships; lumbering troop transports carrying thousands of FORCE: Marines in their zero-g holds; and scores of support ships—frigates; fast attack fighters; torpedo ALRs; fatline relay pickets; and the farcaster JumpShips themselves, massive dodecahedrons with their fairyland arrays of antennae and probes.

  All around the fleet, kept at a safe distance by traffic control, flitted the yachts and sunjammers and private in-system ships, their sails catching sunlight and reflecting the glory of the armada.

  The guests on the Government House grounds cheered and applauded. The gentleman in FORCE black was weeping silently. Nearby, concealed cameras and wideband imagers carried the moment to every world in the Web and—via fatline—to scores of worlds which were not.

  I shook my head and remained seated.

  “M. Severn?” A security guard stood over me.

  “Yes?”

  She nodded toward the executive mansion. “CEO Gladstone will see you now.”

  TWO

  Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written. Meina Gladstone was just such a leader for our Final Age, although none then could have dreamed that there would be no one but me to write the true history of her and her time.

  Gladstone had been compared to the classical figure of Abraham Lincoln so many times that when I was finally ushered into her presence that night of the armada party, I was half surprised not to find her in a black frock coat and stovepipe hat. The CEO of the Senate and leader of a government serving a hundred and thirty billion people was wearing a gray suit of soft wool, trousers and tunic top ornamented only by the slightest hint of red cord piping at seems and cuffs. I did not think she looked like Abraham Lincoln … nor like Alvarez-Temp, the second most common hero of antiquity cited as her Doppelganger by the press. I thought that she looked like an old lady.

  Meina Gladstone was tall and thin, but her countenance was more aquiline than Lincolnesque, with her blunt beak of a nose; sharp cheekbones; the wide, expressive mouth with thin lips; and gray hair rising in a roughly cropped wave, which did indeed resemble feathers. But to my mind, the most memorable aspect of Meina Gladstone’s appearance was her eyes: large, brown, and infinitely sad.

  We were not alone. I had been led into a long, softly lighted room lined with wooden shelves holding many hundreds of printed books. A long holoframe simulating a window gave a view of the gardens. A meeting was in the process of breaking up, and a dozen men and women stood or sat in a rough half-circle that held Gladstone’s desk at its cusp. The CEO leaned back casually on her desk, resting her weight on the front of it, her arms folded. She looked up as I entered.

  “M. Severn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you for coming.” Her voice was familiar from a thousand All Thing debates, its timbre rough with age and its tone as smooth as an expensive liqueur. Her accent was famous—blending precise syntax with an almost forgotten lilt of pre-Hegira English, evidently now found only in the river-delta regions of her home world of Patawpha. “Gentlemen and ladies, let me introduce M. Joseph Severn,” she said.

  Several of the group nodded, obviously at a loss as to why I was there. Gladstone made no further introductions, but I touched the datasphere to identify everyone: three cabinet members, including the Minister of Defense; two FORCE chiefs of staff; two aides to Gladstone; four senators, including the influential Senator Kolchev; and a projection of a TechnoCore Councilor known as Albedo.

  “M. Severn has been invited here to bring an artist’s perspective to the proceedings,” said CEO Gladstone.

  FORCE:ground General Morpurgo snorted a laugh. “An artist’s perspective? With all due respect, CEO, what the hell does that mean?”

  Gladstone smiled. Instead of answering the General, she turned back to me. “What do you think of the passing of the armada, M. Severn?”

  “It’s pretty,” I said.

  General Morpurgo made a noise again. “Pretty? He looks at the greatest concentration of space-force firepower in the history of the galaxy and calls it pretty?” He turned toward another military man and shook his head.

  Gladstone’s smile had not wavered. “And what of the war?” she asked me. “Do you have an opinion on our attempt to rescue Hyperion from the Ouster barbarians?”

  “It’s stupid,” I said.

  The room became very silent. Current real-time polling in the All Thing showed 98 percent approval of CEO Gladstone’s decision to fight rather than cede the colonial world of Hyperion to the Ousters. Gladstone’s political future rested on a positive outcome of the conflict. The men and women in that room had been instrumental in formulating the policy, making the decision to invade, and carrying out the logistics. The silence stretched.

  “Why is it stupid?” Gladstone asked softly.

  I made a gesture with my right hand. “The Hegemony’s not been at war since its founding seven centuries ago,” I said. “It is foolish to test its basic stability this way.”

  “Not at war!” shouted General Morpurgo. He gripped his knees with massive hands. “What the hell do you call the Glennon-Height Rebellion?”

  “A rebellion,” I said. “A mutiny. A police action.”

  Senator Kolchev showed his teeth in a smile that held no amusement. He was from Lusus and seemed more muscle than man. “Fleet actions,” he said, “half a million dead, two FORCE divisions locked in combat for more than a year. Some police action, son.”

  I said nothing.

  Leigh Hunt, an older, consumptive-looking man reported to be Gladstone’s closest aide, cleared his throat. “But what M. Severn says is interesting. Where do you see the difference between this … ah … conflict and the Glennon-Height wars, sir?”

  “Glennon-Height was a former FORCE officer,” I said, aware that I was stating the obvious. “The Ousters have been an unknown quantity for centuries. The rebels’ forces were known, their potential easily gauged; the Ouster Swarms have been outside the Web since the Hegira. Glennon-Height stayed within the Protectorate, raiding worlds no farther than two months’ time-debt from the Web; Hyperion is three years from Parvati, the closest Web staging area.”

  “You think we haven’t thought of all this?” asked General Morpurgo. “What about the Battle of Bressia? We’ve already fought the Ousters there. That was no … rebellion.”

  “Quiet, please,” said Leigh Hunt. “Go on, M. Severn.”

  I shrugged again. “The primary difference is that in this case we are dealing with Hyperion,” I said.

  Senator Richeau, one of the women present, nodded as if I had explained myself in full. “You’re afraid of the Shrike,” she said. “Do you belong to the Church of the Final Atonement?”

  “No,” I said, “I’m not a member of the Shrike Cult.”

  “What are you?” demanded Morpurgo.

  “An arti
st,” I lied.

  Leigh Hunt smiled and turned to Gladstone. “I agree that we needed this perspective to sober us, CEO,” he said, gesturing toward the window and the holo images showing the still-applauding crowds, “but while our artist friend has brought up necessary points, they have all been reviewed and weighed in full.”

  Senator Kolchev cleared his throat. “I hate to mention the obvious when it seems we are all intent on ignoring it, but does this … gentleman … have the proper security clearance to be present at such a discussion?”

  Gladstone nodded and showed the slight smile so many caricaturists had tried to capture. “M. Severn has been commissioned by the Arts Ministry to do a series of drawings of me during the next few days or weeks. The theory is, I believe, that these will have some historical significance and may lead to a formal portrait. At any rate, M. Severn has been granted a T-level gold security clearance, and we may speak freely in front of him. Also, I appreciate his candor. Perhaps his arrival serves to suggest that our meeting has reached its conclusion. I will join you all in the War Room at 0800 hours tomorrow morning, just before the fleet translates to Hyperion space.”

  The group broke up at once. General Morpurgo glowered at me as he left. Senator Kolchev stared with some curiosity as he passed. Councilor Albedo merely faded into nothingness. Leigh Hunt was the only one besides Gladstone and me to remain behind. He made himself more comfortable by draping one leg over the arm of the priceless pre-Hegira chair in which he sat. “Sit down,” said Hunt.