by Dan Simmons
Her smile lingered. “And will again, I wager.” She withdrew her hand and then offered it to the android. “Aenea. Orphan of time.”
A. Bettik shook her hand more gracefully than I had, bowed deeply, and introduced himself. “I am at your service, M. Lamia,” he said.
She shook her head. “My mother is … was … M. Lamia. I’m just Aenea.” She noticed my change in expression. “You know of my mother?”
“She is famous,” I said, blushing slightly for some reason. “All of the Hyperion pilgrims are. Legendary, actually. There is this poem, epic oral tale, actually …”
Aenea laughed. “Oh, God, Uncle Martin finished his damn Cantos.”
I admit that I was shocked. My face must have shown it. I’m glad I was not playing poker this particular morning.
“Sorry,” said Aenea. “Obviously the old satyr’s scribblings have become some sort of priceless cultural heritage. He’s still alive? Uncle Martin, I mean.”
“Yes, M.… yes, M. Aenea,” said A. Bettik. “I have had the privilege of serving your uncle for over a century.”
The girl made a face. “You must be a saint, M. Bettik.”
“A. Bettik, M. Aenea,” he said. “And no, I am no saint. Merely an admirer and long acquaintance of your uncle.”
Aenea nodded. “I met a few androids when we would fly up from Jacktown to visit Uncle Martin in the Poet’s City, but not you. More than a century, you say. What year is it?”
I told her.
“Well, we got that part right, at least,” she said, and fell silent, staring at the holo of the receding world. Hyperion was only a spark now.
“You’ve really come from the past?” I said. It was a stupid question, but I wasn’t feeling especially bright that morning.
Aenea nodded. “Uncle Martin must have told you.”
“Yes. You’re fleeing the Pax.”
She looked up. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “The Pax? Is that what they call it?”
I blinked at that. The thought of someone being unfamiliar with the concept of the Pax shook me. This was real. “Yes,” I said.
“So the Church does run everything now?”
“Well, in a way,” I said. I explained the role of the Church in the complex entity that was the Pax.
“They run everything,” concluded Aenea. “We thought it might go that way. My dreams got that right, too.”
“Your dreams?”
“Never mind,” said Aenea. She stood, looked around the room, and walked to the Steinway. Her fingers picked out a few notes on the keyboard. “And this is the Consul’s ship.”
“Yes,” said the ship, “although I have only vague memories of the gentleman. Did you know him?”
Aenea smiled, her fingers still trailing across the keys. “No. My mother did. She gave him a present of that—” She pointed to the sand-covered hawking mat where it lay near the staircase. “When he left Hyperion after the Fall. He was going back to the Web. He didn’t return during my time.”
“He never did,” said the ship. “As I say, my memories have been damaged, but I am sure that he died somewhere there.” The ship’s soft voice changed, became more businesslike. “We were hailed upon leaving the atmosphere, but have not been challenged or pursued since then. We have cleared cislunar space and will be out of Hyperion’s critical gravity well within ten minutes. I need to set course for spinup. Instructions, please.”
I looked at the girl. “The Ousters? That’s where the old poet said you’d want to go.”
“I changed my mind,” said Aenea. “What’s the nearest inhabited world, Ship?”
“Parvati. One-point-two-eight parsecs. Six and a half days shiptime transit. Three months time-debt.”
“Was Parvati part of the Web?” asked the girl.
A. Bettik answered. “No. Not at the time of the Fall.”
“What’s the nearest old Web world, traveling from Parvati?” said Aenea.
“Renaissance Vector,” said the ship immediately. “It is an additional ten days shiptime, five months time-debt.”
I was frowning. “I don’t know,” I said. “The hunters … I mean, offworlders I used to work for usually came from Renaissance Vector. It’s a big Pax world. Busy. Lots of ships and troops there, I think.”
“But it’s the closest Web world?” said Aenea. “It used to have farcasters.”
“Yes,” said the ship and A. Bettik at the same moment.
“Set course for Renaissance Vector by way of Parvati System,” said Aenea.
“It would be a shiptime day and two weeks of time-debt quicker to jump directly to Renaissance Vector, if that is our destination,” advised the ship.
“I know,” said Aenea, “but I want to go by way of Parvati System.” She must have seen the question in my eyes, for she said, “They’ll be following us, and I don’t want them to know the real destination when we spin up out of this system.”
“They are not in pursuit now,” said A. Bettik.
“I know,” said Aenea. “But they will be in a few hours. Then and for the rest of my life.” She looked back at the holopit as if the ship’s persona resided there. “Carry out the command, please.”
The stars shifted on the holodisplay as the ship obeyed. “Twenty-seven minutes to translation point for Parvati System,” it said. “Still no challenge or pursuit, although the torchship St. Anthony is under way, as is the troopship.”
“What about the other torchship?” I said. “The … what was it? The St. Bonaventure.”
“Common band communications traffic and sensors show that it is open to space and emitting distress signals,” said the ship. “The St. Anthony is responding.”
“My God,” I whispered. “What was it, an Ouster attack?”
The girl shook her head and walked away from the piano. “Just the Shrike. My father warned me.…” She fell silent.
“The Shrike?” It was the android who spoke. “To my knowledge, in legend and the old records, the creature called the Shrike never left Hyperion—usually staying in the area within a few hundred kilometers around the Time Tombs.”
Aenea dropped back into the cushions. Her eyes were still red and she looked tired. “Yeah, well, he’s wandering farther afield now, I’m afraid. And if Father is right, it’s just the beginning.”
“The Shrike hasn’t been seen or heard from for almost three hundred years,” I said.
The girl nodded, distracted. “I know. Not since the tombs opened right before the Fall.” She looked up at the android. “Gosh, I’m starved. And filthy.”
“I will help the ship prepare lunch,” said A. Bettik. “There are showers upstairs in the master bedroom and on the fugue deck below us,” he said. “Also a bath in the master bedroom.”
“That’s where I’m headed,” said the girl. “I’ll be down before we make the quantum jump. See you in twenty minutes.” On her way to the stairs she stopped and took my hand again. “Raul Endymion, I’m sorry if I seem ungrateful. Thank you for risking your life for me. Thank you for coming with me on this trip. Thank you for getting into something so big and complicated that neither one of us can imagine where we’re going to end up.”
“You’re welcome,” I said stupidly.
The child grinned at me. “You need a shower, too, friend. Someday we’ll take it together, but right now I think you should use the one on the fugue deck.”
Blinking, not knowing what to think, I watched her bounce up the stairs.
18
Father Captain de Soya awakens in a resurrection creche aboard the Raphael. He had been allowed to name the archangel-class ship. Raphael is the archangel in charge of finding lost loves.
He has been reborn only twice before, but each time there had been a priest there to greet him, to give him the ceremonial sip of sacramental wine from the cup and then the customary glass of orange juice. There had been resurrection experts there to talk to him, explain things to him, until his befuddled mind began to work again.
My legs. I have two of them. He is naked, of course, his skin pink and gleaming in the strange, parboiled wetness of the resurrection tank, and now he feels his ribs, his abdomen, his left leg—all the places slashed and ruined by the demon. He is perfect. There is no sign of the terrible wound that had separated his leg from his body.
“Raphael?”
“Yes, Father Captain?” The voice is angelic, which is to say, totally devoid of sexual identity. De Soya finds it soothing.
“Where are we?”
“Parvati System, Father Captain.”
“The others?” De Soya has only the foggiest memory of Sergeant Gregorius and his two surviving squad members. No memory of boarding the courier ship with them.
“Being awakened as we speak, Father Captain.”
“How much time has passed?”
“Just a bit less than four days since the sergeant brought you aboard, Father Captain. The enhanced jump was carried out within the hour of your installation in the resurrection creche. We have been station-keeping ten AUs from the world of Parvati, as per your instructions via Sergeant Gregorius, for the three days of your resurrection.”
De Soya nods his understanding. Even that slight motion is painful. Every cell in his body aches from resurrection. But the pain is a healthy ache, unlike the terrible pain of his wounds. “Have you contacted the Pax authorities on Parvati?”
“No, Father Captain.”
“Good.” Parvati had been a remote colony world during the days of the Hegemony; now it is a remote Pax colony. It holds no interstellar spacecraft—Pax military or Mercantilus—and only a small military contingent and a few crude interplanetary ships. If the girl was going to be captured in this system, the Raphael would have to do the capturing.
“Update on the girl’s ship?” he says.
“The unidentified spacecraft spun up two hours and eighteen minutes before we did,” said Raphael. “The translation coordinates were undoubtedly for Parvati System. Arrival time for the unidentified ship is approximately two months, three weeks, two days, and seventeen hours.”
“Thank you,” says de Soya. “When Gregorius and the others are revived and dressed, have them meet me in the situation room.”
“Yes, Father Captain.”
“Thank you,” he says again. He thinks, Two months, three weeks, two days … Mother of Mercy, what am I going to do for almost three months in this backwater system? Perhaps he had not thought through this clearly. Certainly he had been distracted by trauma, pain, and drugs. But the next nearest Pax system was Renaissance Vector, which was ten days shiptime travel from Parvati, five months time-debt—three and a half days and two months after the girl’s ship would arrive from Hyperion System. No, he might not have been thinking clearly—he is not now, he realizes—but he had made the right decision. Better to come here and think things over.
I could jump to Pacem. Ask for instructions directly from Pax Command … from the Pope, even. Recuperate for two and a half months and jump back here with time to spare.
De Soya shakes his head, grimaces from the discomfort of doing so. He has his instructions. Capture the girl and return her to Pacem. Returning to the Vatican would be only an admission of failure. Perhaps they would send someone else. During the preflight briefing, Captain Marget Wu had made it clear that the Raphael was unique—the only armed, six-person archangel-class courier ship in existence—and although another might have come on-line in the months of time-debt that have elapsed since he left Pacem, there is little sense in returning now. If Raphael was still the only armed archangel, all de Soya could do would be add two more troopers to the ship’s roster.
Death and resurrection are not to be taken lightly. That precept had been driven home time and again in de Soya’s catechism when he was growing up. Just because the sacrament exists and is offered to the faithful, does not mean it should be exercised without great solemnity and restraint.
No, I’ll talk to Gregorius and the others and figure things out here. We can make our plans, then use the cryogenic-fugue cubbies to wait the last couple of months. When the girl’s ship arrives, the St. Anthony will be in hot pursuit. Between the torchship and Raphael, we should be able to interdict the ship, board her, and retrieve the girl without problem.
Logically, this all makes sense to de Soya’s aching brain, but another part of his mind is whispering, Without problem … this is what you thought about the Hyperion mission.
Father Captain de Soya groans, lifts himself down from the resurrection couch, and pads off in search of a shower, hot coffee, and some clothes.
19
I knew little about the principles of the Hawking drive when I first experienced it years ago; I know little more about it now. The fact that it was essentially (if accidentally) the brainchild of someone who lived in the twentieth century, Christian Era, boggled my mind then as it does now, but not nearly as much as the experience itself.
We met in the library—formally known as the navigation level, the ship informed us—a few minutes before translation to C-plus speeds. I was dressed in my spare set of clothes and my hair was wet, as was Aenea’s. The child wore only a thick robe, which she must have found in the Consul’s closet, because the garment was far too large for her. She looked even younger than her twelve years, swallowed as she was in all those yards of terry cloth.
“Shouldn’t we be getting to the cryogenic-fugue couches?” I asked.
“Why?” said Aenea. “Don’t you want to see the fun?”
I frowned. All the offworld hunters and military instructors I had spoken to had spent their C-plus time in fugue. That’s the way humans had always spent their time between the stars. Something about the effect of the Hawking field on the body and mind. I had images of hallucinations, waking nightmares, and unspeakable pain. I said as much while trying to sound calm about it.
“Mother and Uncle Martin told me that C-plus can be endured,” said the girl. “Even enjoyed. It just takes some getting used to.”
“And this ship was modified by the Ousters to make it easier,” said A. Bettik. Aenea and I were sitting at the low glass table in the middle of the library area; the android stood to one side. Try as I might to treat him as an equal, A. Bettik insisted on acting like a servant. I resolved to quit being an egalitarian horse’s ass about it and to let him act any way he wanted.
“Indeed,” said the ship, “the modifications included an enhanced containment field capability, which makes the side effects of C-plus travel much less disagreeable.”
“What exactly are the side effects?” I asked, not willing to show the full extent of my naïveté, but also not willing to suffer if I didn’t have to.
The android, the girl, and I looked at each other. “I have traveled between the stars in centuries past,” A. Bettik said at last, “but I was always in fugue. In storage, actually. We androids were shipped in cargo holds, stacked like frozen sides of beef, I am told.”
Now the girl and I looked at each other, embarrassed to meet the blue-skinned man’s gaze.
The ship made a noise that sounded remarkably like someone clearing his throat. “Actually,” it said, “from my observations of human passengers—which, I must say, is suspect because …”
“Because your memory is hazy,” the girl and I said in unison. We looked at each other again and laughed. “Sorry, Ship,” said Aenea. “Go on.”
“I was just going to say that from my observations, the primary effect of the C-plus environment on humans is some visual confusion, mental depression brought about by the field, and simple boredom. I believe that cryogenic fugue was developed for the long voyages, and is used as a convenience for shorter trips such as this.”
“And your �
� ah … Ouster modifications ameliorate these side effects?” I said.
“They are designed to,” replied the ship. “All except boredom, of course. That is a peculiarly human phenomenon, and I do not believe that a cure has been found.” There was a moment of silence, and then the ship said, “We will reach the translation point in two minutes ten seconds. All systems are functioning optimally. Still no pursuit, although the St. Anthony is tracking us on its long-range detectors.”
Aenea stood up. “Let’s go down and watch the shift to C-plus.”
“Go down and watch?” I said. “Where? The holopit?”
“No,” called the girl from the stairway. “From outside.”
The spaceship had a balcony. I hadn’t known that. One could stand outside on it even while the ship was hurtling through space, preparing to translate to C-plus pseudo-velocities. I hadn’t known that—and if I had, I would not have believed it.
“Extend the balcony, please,” the girl had said to the ship, and the ship had extended the balcony—the Steinway moving out with it—and we’d walked through the open archway into space. Well, not really into space, of course; even I, the provincial shepherd, knew that our eardrums would have exploded, our eyes burst, and our blood boiled in our bodies if we had stepped into hard vacuum. But it looked as if we were walking out into hard vacuum.
“Is this safe?” I asked, leaning against the railing. Hyperion was a star-sized speck behind us, Hyperion’s star a blazing sun to port, but the plasma tail of our fusion drive—tens of klicks long—gave the impression that we were perched precariously on a tall blue pillar. The effect was a definite inducement to acrophobia, the illusion of standing unprotected in space created something akin to agoraphobia. I had not known until that instant that I was susceptible to any phobia.
“If the containment field fails for a second,” said A. Bettik, “under this g-load and velocity, we will die immediately. It matters little if we are inside or outside the ship.”
“Radiation?” I said.
