The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle

by Dan Simmons

  I stopped pacing. “God’s Grove? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I feel that the Templars have been the key to some missing element in this painful charade. Now you say that Het Masteen is dead. Perhaps the True Voice can explain to us what they had planned for this pilgrimage … Masteen’s tale, as it were. He was, after all, the only one of the seven original pilgrims who did not tell the story of why he had come to Hyperion.”

  I paced again, more rapidly now, trying to keep anger in check. “My God, Duré. We don’t have time for such idle curiosity. It’s only”—I consulted my implant—“an hour and a half until the Ouster invasion Swarm enters the God’s Grove system. It must be bedlam there.”

  “Perhaps,” said the Jesuit, “but I still will go there first. Then I will speak to Gladstone. It may be that she will authorize my return to Hyperion.”

  I grunted, doubting that the CEO would ever let such a valuable informant return to harm’s way. “Let’s get going,” I said, and turned to find my way out.

  “A moment,” said Duré. “You said a while ago that you were sometimes able to … to ‘dream’ … about the pilgrims while you were still awake. A sort of trance state, is it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, M. Severn, please dream about them now.”

  I stared in amazement. “Here? Now?”

  Duré gestured toward his chair. “Please. I wish to know the fate of my friends. Also, the information might be most valuable in our confrontation with the True Voice and M. Gladstone.”

  I shook my head but took the seat he offered. “It might not work,” I said.

  “Then we have lost nothing,” said Duré.

  I nodded, closed my eyes, and sat back in the uncomfortable chair. I was all too aware of the other two men watching me, of the faint smell of incense and rain, of the echoing space surrounding us. I was sure that this would never work; the landscape of my dreams was not so close that I could summon it merely by closing my eyes.

  The feeling of being watched faded, the smells grew distant, and the sense of space expanded a thousandfold as I returned to Hyperion.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Confusion.

  Three hundred spacecraft retreating in Hyperion space under heavy fire, falling back from the Swarm like men fighting bees.

  Madness near the military farcaster portals, traffic control overloaded, ships backed up like EMVs in TC2’s airborne gridlock, vulnerable as partridges to the roaming Ouster assault ships.

  Madness at the exit points: FORCE spacecraft lined up like sheep in a narrow pen as they cycle from the Madhya cutoff portal to the outgoing ’caster. Ships spinning down into Hebron space, a few translating to Heaven’s Gate, God’s Grove, Mare Infinitus, Asquith. Only hours left now before the Swarms enter Web systems.

  Confusion as hundreds of millions of refugees farcast away from the threatened worlds, stepping into cities and relocation centers gone half mad with the aimless excitement of incipient war. Confusion as unthreatened Web worlds ignite with riots: three Hives on Lusus—almost seventy million citizens—quarantined due to Shrike Cult riots, thirty-level malls looted, apartment monoliths overrun by mobs, fusion centers blown, farcaster terminexes under attack. The Home Rule Council appeals to the Hegemony; the Hegemony declares martial law and sends FORCE: Marines to seal the hives.

  Secessionist riots on New Earth and Maui-Covenant. Terrorist attacks from Glennon-Height royalists—quiet now for three-quarters of a century—on Thalia, Armaghast, Nordholm, and Lee Three. More Shrike Cult riots on Tsingtao-Hsishuang Panna and Renaissance Vector.

  FORCE Command on Olympus transfers combat battalions from transports returning from Hyperion to Web worlds. Demolition squads assigned to torchships in threatened systems report farcaster singularity spheres wired for destruction, awaiting only the fatlined order from TC2.

  “There is a better way,” Councilor Albedo tells Gladstone and the War Council.

  The CEO turns toward the ambassador from the TechnoCore.

  “There is a weapon that will eliminate the Ousters without harming Hegemony property. Or Ouster property, for that matter.”

  General Morpurgo glowers. “You’re talking about the bomb equivalent of a deathwand,” he says. “It won’t work. FORCE researchers have shown that it propagates indefinitely. Besides being dishonorable, against the New Bushido Code, it would wipe out planetary populations as well as the invaders.”

  “Not at all,” says Albedo. “If Hegemony citizens are properly shielded, there need be no casualties whatsoever. As you know, deathwands can be calibrated for specific cerebral wavelengths. So could a bomb based on the same principle. Livestock, wild animals, even other anthropoid species would not be affected.”

  General Van Zeidt of FORCE: Marines stands. “But there’s no way to shield a population! Our testing showed that death-bomb heavy neutrinos would penetrate solid rock or metal to a depth of six kilometers. No one has shelters like that!”

  The projection of Councilor Albedo folds his hands on the table. “We have nine worlds with shelters which would hold billions,” he says softly.

  Gladstone nods. “The labyrinthine worlds,” she whispers. “But certainly such a transfer of population would be impossible.”

  “No,” says Albedo. “Now that you have joined Hyperion to the Protectorate, each of the labyrinthine worlds has farcaster capability. The Core can make arrangements to transfer populations directly to these underground shelters.”

  There is babble around the long table, but Meina Gladstone’s intense gaze never leaves Albedo’s face. She beckons for silence and receives it. “Tell us more,” she says. “We are interested.”

  The Consul sits in the spotty shade of a low neville tree and waits to die. His hands are tied behind him with a twist of fiberplastic. His clothes are torn to rags and are still damp; the moisture on his face is partially from the river but mostly from perspiration.

  The two men who stand over him are finishing their inspection of his duffel bag. “Shit,” says the first man, “there bey nothing worth anything here-in except this fucking antique pistol.” He thrusts Brawne Lamia’s father’s weapon in his belt.

  “It bey too bad we couldn’t get that goddamn flying carpet,” says the second man.

  “It beyn’t flying too well there toward the end!” says the first man, and both of them laugh.

  The Consul squints at the two massive figures, their armored bodies made silhouettes by the lowering sun. From their dialect he assumes them to be indigenies; from their appearance—bits of outmoded FORCE body armor, heavy multipurpose assault rifles, tatters of what once had been camou-polymer cloth—he guesses them to be deserters from some Hyperion Self-defense Force unit.

  From their behavior toward him, he is sure that they are going to kill him.

  At first, stunned from the fall into the Hoolie River, still tangled in the ropes connecting him to his duffel bag and the useless hawking mat, he thought them to be his saviors. The Consul had hit the water hard, stayed under for a much longer time than he would have imagined possible without drowning, and surfaced only to be pushed under by a strong current and then pulled under again by the tangle of ropes and mat. It had been a valiant but losing battle, and he was still ten meters from the shallows when one of the men emerging from the neville and thorn tree forest had thrown the Consul a line. Then they had beaten him, robbed him, tied him, and—judging from their matter-of-fact comments—were now preparing to cut his throat and leave him for the harbinger birds.

  The taller of the two men, his hair a mass of oiled spikes, squats in front of the Consul and pulls a ceramic zero-edge knife from its scabbard. “Any last words, Pops?”

  The Consul licks his lips. He has seen a thousand movies and holies where this was the point at which the hero twisted his opponent’s legs out from under him, kicked the other one into submission, seized a weapon and dispatched both—firing with his hands still tied—and then went on with hi
s adventures. But the Consul feels like no hero: he is exhausted and middle-aged and hurt from his fall in the river. Each of these men is leaner, stronger, faster, and obviously meaner than the Consul ever has been. He has seen violence—even committed violence once—but his life and training have been devoted to the tense but quiet paths of diplomacy.

  The Consul licks his lips again and says, “I can pay you.”

  The crouching man smiles and moves the zero-edge blade back and forth five centimeters in front of the Consul’s eyes. “With what, Pops? We’ve got your universal card, and it bey worth shit out here.”

  “Gold,” says the Consul, knowing that this is the only syllable that has held its power over the ages.

  The crouching man does not react—there is a sick light in his eyes as he watches the blade—but the other man steps forward and sets a heavy hand on his partner’s shoulder. “What bey you talkin’ about, man? Wherefore you got gold?”

  “My ship,” says the Consul. “The Benares.”

  The crouching man raises the blade next to his own cheek. “He bey lyin’, Chez. The Benares bey that old flat-bottomed manta-pulled barge belongin’ to the blue-skins we finished trey day ago.”

  The Consul closes his eyes for a second, feeling the nausea in him but not surrendering to it. A. Bettik and the other android crewmen had left the Benares in one of the ship’s launches less than a week earlier, heading downstream toward “freedom.” Evidently they had found something else. “A. Bettik,” he says. “The crew captain. He didn’t mention the gold?”

  The man with the knife grins. “He make lots a noise, but he don’t speak much. He say the boat way and the shit gone up to Edge. Too fuckin’ far for a barge with no mantas, me-think.”

  “Shut up, Obem.” The other man crouches in front of the Consul. “Why would you have gold on that old barge, man?”

  The Consul raises his face. “Don’t you recognize me? I was Hegemony Consul to Hyperion for years.”

  “Hey, don’t bey fuckin’ with us …” begins the man with the knife, but the other interrupts. “Yeah, man, I remember your face on the camp holie when I bey kid-like. So why you carryin’ gold upriver now when the sky bey fallin’, Hegemony-man?”

  “We were heading for the shelter … Chronos Keep,” says the Consul, trying not to sound too eager but at the same time grateful for each second he is allowed to live. Why? part of him thinks. You were tired of living. Ready to die. Not like this. Not while Sol and Rachel and the others need his help.

  “Several of Hyperion’s most wealthy citizens,” he says. “The evacuation authorities wouldn’t allow them to transfer the bullion, so I agreed to help them store it in vaults in Chronos Keep, the old castle north of the Bridle Range. For a commission.”

  “You bey fuckin’ crazy!” sneers the man with the knife. “Everything north of here bey Shrike country now.”

  The Consul lowers his head. There is no need to simulate the fatigue and sense of defeat he projects. “So we discovered. The android crew deserted last week. Several of the passengers were killed by the Shrike. I was coming downriver by myself.”

  “This bey shit,” says the man with the knife. His eyes have that sick, distracted look again.

  “Just a second,” says his partner. He slaps the Consul once, hard. “So where bey this so-called gold ship, old man?”

  The Consul tastes blood. “Upriver. Not on the river, but hidden in one of the tributaries.”

  “Yeah,” says the knife-man, setting the zero-edge blade flat against the side of the Consul’s neck. He will not need to slash in order to sever the Consul’s throat, merely rotate the blade. “I say this bey shit. And I say we bey wastin’ time.”

  “Just a second,” snaps the other man. “How far upriver?”

  The Consul thinks of the tributaries he has passed in the last few hours. It is late. The sun almost touches the line of a copse of trees to the west. “Just above Karla Locks,” he says.

  “So why you bey flyin’ down on that toy-like rather than bargin’ it?”

  “Trying to get help,” says the Consul. The adrenaline has faded, and now he feels a terminal exhaustion very close to despair. “There were too many … too many bandits along the shore. The barge seemed too risky. The hawking mat was … safer.”

  The man called Chez laughs. “Put the knife away, Obem. We bey walkin’ up it a bit, hey?”

  Obem leaps to his feet. The knife is still in his hand but now the blade—and the anger—are aimed toward his partner. “Bey you fucked, man, hey? Bey your head bey full of shit between ears, hey? He bey lyin’ to keep from deathwards flyin’.”

  Chez neither blinks nor steps back. “Sure, he bey maybe lyin’. Don’t matter, hey? The Locks they bey less’n half-day walk we bey makin’ anyway, hey? No boat, no gold, you cut his throat, hey? Only slowwise, ankles-up like. They bey gold, you still gets the job, bladewise, only bey rich man now, hey?”

  Obem teeters a second between rage and reason, turns to the side, and swings the ceramic zero-edge blade at a neville tree eight centimeters thick through the trunk. He has time to turn back and crouch in front of the Consul before gravity informs the tree that it has been severed and the neville falls back toward the river’s edge with a crash of branches. Obem grabs the Consul’s still-damp shirtfront. “OK, we see what bey there, Hegemony-man. Talk, run, trip, stumble, and I bey slicin’ fingers and ears just for practice, hey?”

  The Consul staggers to his feet, and the three of them move back into the cover of brush and low trees, the Consul three meters behind Chez and the same distance in front of Obem, trudging back the way he had come, moving away from the city and the ship and any chance of saving Sol and Rachel.

  An hour passes. The Consul can think of no clever scheme once the tributaries are reached, the barge not discovered. Several times Chez waves them into silence and hiding, once at the sound of gossamers fluttering in branches, again at a disturbance across the river, but there is no sign of other human beings. No sign of help. The Consul remembers the burned-out buildings along the river, the empty huts and vacant wharves. Fear of the Shrike, fear of being left behind to the Ousters in the evacuation, and months of plundering by rogue elements of the SDF have turned this area into a no-man’s-land. The Consul concocts excuses and extensions, then discards them. His only hope is that they will walk close to the Locks where he can make a leap for the deep and rapid water there, try to stay afloat with his hands tied behind him until he is hidden in the maze of small islands below that point.

  Except that he is too tired to swim, even if his arms were free. And the weapons the two men carry would target him easily, even if he had a ten-minute start among the snags and isles. The Consul is too tired to be clever, too old to be brave. He thinks about his wife and son, dead these many years now, killed in the bombing of Bressia by men with no more honor than these two creatures. The Consul is only sorry that he has broken his word to help the other pilgrims. Sorry about that … and that he will not see how it all comes out.

  Obem makes a spitting noise behind him. “Shit with this, Chez, hey? What say we sit him and slit him and help him talk a bit, hey? Then we go lonewise to the barge, if barge they bey?”

  Chez turns, rubs sweat out of his eyes, frowns at the Consul speculatively, and says, “Hey, yeah, I think maybe timewise and quietwise you bey right, goyo, but leave it talkable toward the end, hey?”

  “Sure,” grins Obem, slinging his weapon and extracting his zero-edge.

  “DO NOT MOVE!” booms a voice from above. The Consul drops to his knees and the ex-SDF bandits unsling weapons with practiced swiftness. There is a rush, a roar, a whipping of branches and dust about them, the Consul looks up in time to see a rippling of the cloud-covered evening sky, lower than the clouds, a sense of mass directly above, descending, and then Chez is lifting his fléchette rifle and Obem is targeting his launcher and then all three are falling, pitching over, not like soldiers shot, not like recoil elements in some ballistic equation
, but dropping like the tree Obem had felled earlier on.

  The Consul lands face first in dust and gravel and lies there unblinking, unable to blink.

  Stun weapon he thinks through synapses gone sluggish as old oil. A localized cyclone erupts as something large and invisible lands between the three bodies in the dust and the river’s edge. The Consul hears a hatch whine open and the internal tick of repellor turbines dropping below lift-critical. He still cannot blink, much less lift his head, and his vision is limited to several pebbles, a dunescape of sand, a small grass forest, and a single architect ant, huge at this distance, that seems to be taking a sudden interest in the Consul’s moist but unblinking eye. The ant turns to hurry the half meter between itself and its moist prize, and the Consul thinks Hurry at the unhurried footsteps behind him.

  Hands under his arms, grunting, a familiar but strained voice saying, “Damn, you’ve put on weight.”

  The Consul’s heels drag in the dirt, bouncing over the randomly twitching fingers of Chez … or perhaps it is Obem … the Consul cannot turn his head to see their faces. Nor can he see his rescuer until he is lifted—with a grunted litany of soft curses near his ear—through the starboard blister-hatch of the decamouflaged skimmer, into the long, soft leather of the reclining passenger seat.

  Governor-General Theo Lane appears in the Consul’s field of vision, boyish-looking but slightly demonic-looking too as the hatch lowers and the red interior lamps light his face. The younger man leans over to secure crashweb snaps across the Consul’s chest. “I’m sorry I had to stun you along with those other two.” Theo sits back, snaps his own web in place, and twitches the omni controller. The Consul feels the skimmer shiver and then lift off, hovering a second before spinning left like a plate on frictionless bearings. Acceleration pushes the Consul into his seat.

  “I didn’t have much choice,” says Theo over the soft internal skimmer noises. “The only weapon these things are allowed to carry are the riot-control stunners, and the easiest way was to drop all three of you at lowest setting and get you out of there fast.” Theo pushes his archaic glasses higher on his nose with a familiar twitch of one finger and turns to grin at the Consul. “Old mercenary proverb—‘Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.” ’