by Дэн Симмонс
Dem Ria pulled my shirt on as if I were her child, Bin… or younger. I motioned her hands away and tried to close the buttons with suddenly awkward fingers. They had used buttons rather than sealtabs at Taliesin West on Old Earth.
I thought I had grown used to them, but this was taking forever. “… and we heard on the radio that a dropship had landed at Bombasino. There are four people in unknown uniforms—two men, two women. They were asking the Commandant about you. They just lifted off—the dropship and three skimmers. They will be here in four minutes. Perhaps less.”
“Radio?” I said stupidly. “I thought you said that the radio didn’t work. Isn’t that why the priest went to the base to get the doctor?”
“Father Clifton’s radio was not working,” whispered Dem Ria, pulling me to my feet. She held me steady as I stepped into my trousers. “We have radios… tightbeam transmitters… satellite relays… all of which the Pax knows nothing about. And spies in place. One has warned us… hurry, Raul Endymion. The ships will be here in a minute.”
I came fully awake then, literally flushed with a surge of anger and hopelessness that threatened to wash me away. Why won’t these bastards leave me alone? Four people in unknown uniforms.
Pax, obviously. Evidently their search for Aenea, A. Bettik, and me had not ended when the priest-captain—de Soya—had let us escape the trap on God’s Grove more than four years earlier.
I looked at the chronometer readout on my comlog. The ships would be landing in a minute or so.
There was nowhere I could run in that time where Pax troopers would not find me. “Let me go,” I said, pulling away from the short woman in the blue robe. The window was open, the afternoon breeze coming through the curtains. I imagined that I could hear the near-ultrasonic hum of skimmers. “I have to get away from your house…” I had images of the Pax torching the home with young Ces Ambre and Bin still in it. Dem Ria pulled me back from the window.
At that moment, the man of the household—young Alem Mikail Dem Alem—came in with Dem Loa. They were carrying the Lusian bulk of the Pax trooper who had been left to guard me. Ces Ambre, her dark eyes bright, was lifting the guard’s feet while Bin struggled to pull one of the man’s huge boots off. The Lusian was fast asleep, mouth open, drool moistening the high collar of his combat fatigues.
I looked at Dem Ria.
“Dem Loa brought him some tea about fifteen minutes ago,” she said softly. She made a graceful gesture that caused the blue sleeve of her robe to billow. “I am afraid that we used the rest of your ultramorph prescription, Raul Endymion.”
“I have to go…” I began. The ache in my back was bearable, but my legs were shaky.
“No,” said Dem Ria. “They will catch you within minutes.” She pointed to the window. From outside there came the unmistakable subsonic rumble of a dropship on EM drive, followed by the thud and bark of its thrusters. The thing must be hovering right above the village, seeking a landing site. A second later the window vibrated to a triple sonic boom and two black skimmers banked above the adobe buildings next door.
Alem Mikail had stripped the Lusian to his thermal-weave underwear and had laid him out on the bed. Now he snapped the man’s massive right wrist into the handcuffs and snicked the other cuff around the headboard bar. Dem Loa and Ces Ambre were sweeping up the layers of fatigue clothing, body armor, and huge boots and stuffing them in a laundry bag. Little Bin Ria Dem Loa Alem tossed the guard’s helmet in the bag. The thin boy was carrying the heavy flechette pistol. I started at the sight—children and weapons was a mix I learned to avoid even when I was a child myself, learning to handle power weapons while our caravan rumbled its way across the Hyperion moors—but Alem smiled and took the pistol from the boy, patting him on the back. It was obvious from the way Bin had held the weapon—fingers away from the trigger guard, pointing the muzzle away from himself and his father, checking the safety indicator even as he gave the pistol up—that he had handled such a device before.
Bin smiled at me, took the heavy bag with the guard’s clothing in it, and ran out of the room. The noise outside rose to a crescendo and I turned to look out the window.
A black skimmer kicked up dust less than thirty meters down the street that ran along the canal. I could see it through a gap between the houses. The larger dropship lowered itself out of sight to the south, probably landing in the grassy open area near the well where I had collapsed in pain from the kidney stone.
I had just finished wiggling into my boots and securing my vest when Alem handed me the flechette pistol. I checked the safety and propellant charge indicators out of habit, but then shook my head. “No,” I said. “It would be suicide to attack Pax troopers with just this. Their armor…” I was not actually thinking about their armor at that moment, but, rather, about the return fire from assault weapons that would level this house in an instant. I thought of the boy outside with the laundry bag of trooper’s armor. “Bin…” I said. “If they catch him…”
“We know, we know,” said Dem Ria, pulling me away from the bed and into the narrow hallway. I did not remember this part of the house. My universe for the past forty-some hours had been the bedroom and adjoining lavatory. “Come, come,” she said.
I pulled away again, handing the pistol to Alem. “Just let me run,” I said, my heart pounding. I gestured toward the snoring Lusian. “They won’t think that’s me for a second. They can tightbeam the doctor—if she’s not already in one of those skimmers—to ID me. Just tell them”—I looked at the friendly faces in their blue robes—“tell them that I overpowered the guard and held you at gunpoint…” I stopped then, realizing that the guard would destroy that cover story as soon as he awoke.
The family’s complicity in my escape would be self-evident. I looked at the flechette pistol again, half-ready to reach for it. One burst of steel needles and the sleeping trooper would never awaken to destroy the cover-up and endanger these good people.
Only I could never do it. I might shoot a Pax trooper in a fair fight—indeed, the adrenaline rush of anger that was burning through my weakness and terror told me that it would be a welcome relief to have that opportunity—but I could never shoot this sleeping man. But there would be no fair fight. Pax troopers in combat armor, much less these mysterious four in the dropship—Swiss Guard?—would be immune to flechettes and anything else short of Pax assault weapons. And the Swiss Guard would be immune to those. I was screwed. These good people who had shown me such kindness were screwed.
A rear door slammed open and Bin slid into the hallway, his robe hiked up to show spindly legs covered with dust. I stared at him, thinking that the boy would not get his cruciform and would die of cancer. The adults might well spend the next standard decade in a Pax prison.
“I’m sorry…” I said, hunting for words.
I could hear the commotion in the street as troopers hurried through the evening rush of pedestrians.
“Raul Endymion,” said Dem Loa in her soft voice, handing me the rucksack they had brought from my kayak, “please shut up and follow us. At once.”
There was a tunnel entrance beneath the floor of the hallway. I had always thought that hidden passages were the stuff of holodramas, but I followed Dem Ria into the one willingly enough. We were a strange procession—Dem Ria and Dem Loa sweeping down the steep staircase ahead of me, then me carrying the flechette pistol and fumbling the rucksack on my back, then little Bin followed by his sister, Ces Ambre, then, carefully locking the trapdoor behind him, Alem Mikail Dem Alem. No one stayed behind. The house was empty except for the snoring Lusian trooper.
The stairway went deeper than a normal basement level, and at first I thought that the walls were adobe like the ones above. Then I realized that the passage was cut from a soft stone, perhaps sandstone.
Twenty-seven steps and we reached the bottom of the vertical shaft and Dem Ria led the way down a narrow passage illuminated by pale chemical glowglobes. I wondered why this average, working-class home would have
an underground passage.
As if reading my mind, Dem Loa’s blue cowl turned and she whispered, “The Amoiete Spectrum Helix demands… ah… discreet entrances to one another’s homes. Especially during the Twice Darkness.”
“Twice Darkness?” I whispered back, ducking under one of the globes. We had already gone twenty or twenty-five meters—away from the canal-river, I thought—and the passage still curved out of sight to the right. “The slow, dual eclipse of the sun by this world’s two moons,” whispered Dem Loa. “It lasts precisely nineteen minutes. It is the primary reason that we chose this world… please excuse the pun.”
“Ahh,” I said. I did not understand, but it didn’t seem to matter at that moment. “Pax troops have sensors to find spider-holes like this,” I whispered to the women in front of me. “They have deep radar to search through rock. They have…”
“Yes, yes,” said Alem from behind me, “but they will be held up a few minutes by the Mayor and the others.”
“The Mayor?” I repeated rather stupidly.
My legs were still weak from the two days in bed and pain. My back and groin ached, but it was a minor pain—inconsequential—compared to what I had passed through (and what had passed through me) during the last couple of days.
“The Mayor is challenging the Pax’s right to search,” whispered Dem Ria. The passage widened and went straight for at least a hundred meters. We passed two branching tunnels. This wasn’t a bolt-hole; it was a bloody catacombs. “The Pax recognizes the Mayor’s authority in Lock Childe Lamonde,” she whispered. The silken robes of the five family members in blue were also whispering against the sandstone as we hurried down the passage. “We still have law and courts on Vitus-Gray-Balianus B, so they are not allowed unlimited search and seizure rights.”
“But they’ll download permission from whatever authority they need,” I said, hurrying to keep up with the women. We came to another juncture and they turned right.
“Eventually,” said Dem Loa, “but the streets are now filled with all of the colors of the Lock Childe Lamonde strand of the Helix—reds, whites, greens, ebonies, yellows—thousands of people from our village. And many more are coming from nearby Locks. No one will volunteer which house is the one where you were kept. Father Clifton has been lured out of town on a ruse, so he can be of no help to the Pax troopers. Dr. Molina has been detained in Keroa Tambat by some of our people and is currently out of touch with her Pax superiors. And your guard will be sleeping for at least another hour. This way.”
We turned left into a wider passage, stopped at the first door we had seen, waited for Dem Ria to palmlock it open, and then stepped into a large, echoing space carved into the stone. We were standing on a metal stairway looking down on what appeared to be a subterranean garage: half a dozen long, slim vehicles with oversized wheels, stern wings, sails, and pedals clustered by primary colors. These things were like buckboards set on spidery suspensions, obviously powered by wind and muscle power, and covered over with wood, bright, silky polymer fabrics, and Perspex.
“Windcycles,” said Ces Ambre.
Several men and women in emerald-green robes and high boots were preparing three of the wagons for departure. Lashed in the back of one of the long wagonbeds was my kayak.
Everyone was moving down the clattering staircase, but I stopped at the head of the stairs. My balking was so sudden that poor Bin and Ces Ambre almost crashed into me.
“What is it?” said Alem Mikail.
I had tucked the flechette pistol in my belt and now I opened my hands. “Why are you doing this? Why is everyone helping? What’s going on?”
Dem Ria took a step back up the metal staircase and leaned on the railing. Her eyes were as bright as her daughter’s had been. “If they take you, Raul Endymion, they will kill you.”
“How do you know?” I said. My voice was soft but the acoustics of the underground garage were such that the men and women in green looked up from where they were working below.
“You spoke in your sleep,” said Dem Loa.
I cocked my head, not understanding. I had been dreaming of Aenea and our conversation. What would that have told these people? Dem Ria took another step upward and touched my wrist with her cool hand. “The Amoiete Spectrum Helix has foretold this woman, Raul Endymion. This one named Aenea. We call her the One Who Teaches.”
I felt goose bumps at that moment, in the chill glowglobe light of this buried place. The old poet—Uncle Martin—had spoken of my young friend as a messiah, but his cynicism leaked into everything he said or did. The people of Taliesin West had respected Aenea… but to believe that the energetic sixteen-year-old was actually a World Historical Figure? It seemed unlikely. And the girl and I had spoken of it in real life and in my ultramorph dreams, but… my God, I was on a world scores of light-years away from Hyperion and an eternal distance from the Lesser Magellanic Cloud where Old Earth was hidden. How had these people…
“Halpul Amoiete knew of the One Who Teaches when he composed the Helix Symphony,” said Dem Loa. “All of the people of the Spectrum were descended from empath stock. The Helix was and is a way to refine that empathic ability.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand…”
“Please understand this, Raul Endymion,” said Dem Ria, her fingers squeezing my wrist almost painfully. “If you do not escape this place, the Pax will have your soul and body. And the One Who Teaches needs both these things.”
I squinted at the woman, thinking that she was jesting. But her pleasant, unlined face was set and serious.
“Please,” said little Bin, setting his little hand in my free one and pulling. “Please hurry, Raul.”
I hurried down the stairs. One of the men in green handed me a red robe. Alem Mikail helped me fold and wrap it over my own clothes. He wrapped the red burnoose and cowl in a dozen quick strokes. I would never have been able to arrange it properly. I realized with a shock that the entire family—the two older women, teenaged Ces Ambre, and little Bin—had stripped naked from their blue robes and were arranging red ones around them. I saw then that I had been wrong thinking that they were like Lusians—for although their bodies were shorter than Pax-space average and heavily muscled, they were perfectly proportioned. None of the adults had any hair, either on their heads or elsewhere. Somehow this made their compact, perfectly toned bodies more attractive. I looked away, realizing that I was blushing.
Ces Ambre laughed and jostled my arm. We were all in red robes now, Alem Mikail being the last to pull his on. One glance at his heavily muscled upper torso told me that I would not last fifteen seconds in a fight with the shorter man. But then, I realized, I probably would not last more than thirty seconds with Dem Loa or Dem Ria either. I offered the flechette pistol to Alem but he gestured for me to keep it and showed me how to tuck it in one of the multiple sashes of the long, crimson robe. I thought of my lack of weapons in the little backpack—a Navajo hunting knife and the little flashlight laser—and nodded my gratitude. The women and children and I were hurried into the back of the windcycle wagon that held my kayak and red fabric was pulled tight over the stays above us. We had to crouch low as a second layer of fabric, some wooden planks, and various crates and barrels were set in around and above us.
I could just make out a glimpse of light between the tailgate and the wagon cover. I listened to footsteps on stone as Alem went up front and crawled onto one of the two pedaling saddles. I listened as one of the other men—also now in a red robe—joined him on the cycling seat on the other side of the central yoke. With the masts still lowered above us, fabric sails reefed, we began rolling up a long ramp out of the garage.
“Where are we going?” I whispered to Dem Ria, who was lying almost next to me. The wood smelled like cedar.
“The downstream farcaster arch,” she whispered back.
I blinked. “You know about that?”
“They gave you Truthtell,” whispered Dem Loa from the other side of a crate. “And you
did speak in your sleep.”
Bin was lying right next to me in the darkness.
“We know the One Who Teaches has sent you on a mission,” he said almost happily. “We know you have to get to the next arch.” He patted the kayak that curved next to us. “I wish I could go with you.”
“This is too dangerous,” I hissed, feeling the wagon roll out of the tunnel and into open air.
Low sunlight illuminated the fabric above us. The windcycle wagon stopped for a second as the two men cranked the mast erect and unfurled the sail. “Too dangerous.” I meant them taking me to the farcaster, of course, not the mission that Aenea had sent me on.
“If they know who I am,” I whispered to Dem Ria, “they’ll be watching the arch.”
I could see the silhouette of her cowl as she nodded. “They will be watching, Raul Endymion. And it is dangerous. But darkness is almost here. In fourteen minutes.”
I glanced at my comlog. It would be another ninety minutes or more until twilight according to what I had observed the previous two days. And then almost another full hour until true nightfall. “It is only six kilometers to the downstream arch,” whispered Ces Ambre from her place on the other side of the kayak. “The villages will be filled with the Spectrum celebrating.”
I understood then. “The Twice Darkness?” I whispered.
“Yes,” said Dem Ria. She patted my hand. “We must be silent now. We will be moving into traffic along the saltway.”
“Too dangerous,” I whispered one last time as the wagon began creaking and groaning its way into traffic. I could hear the chain drive rumbling beneath the buckboard floor and feel the wind catch the sail. Too dangerous, I said only to myself.
