by Dan Simmons
Holding her tightly, he stepped forward into the darkness and raised his voice against the silence:
“Listen! There will be no more offerings, neither child nor parent.
There will be no more sacrifices for anyone other than our fellow human.
The time of obedience and atonement is past.”
Sol listened. He could feel the pounding of his heart and Rachel’s warmth against his arm. From somewhere high above there came the cold sound of wind through unseen fissures. Sol cupped his hand to his mouth and shouted:
“That’s all! Now either leave us alone or join us as a father rather than a receiver of sacrifices. You have the choice of Abraham!”
Rachel stirred in his arms as a rumble grew out of the stone floor.
Columns vibrated. The red gloom deepened and then winked out, leaving only darkness.
From far away there came the boom of huge footsteps.
Sol hugged Rachel to him as a violent wind roared past.
There was a glimmer of light as both he and Rachel awoke on the HS Intrepid outward bound for Parvati to transfer to the treeship Yggdrasill for the planet Hyperion. Sol smiled at his seven-week-old daughter.
She smiled back.
It was her last and her first smile.
The main cabin of the windwagon was silent when the old scholar finished his story. Sol cleared his throat and took a drink of water from a crystal goblet. Rachel slept on in the makeshift cradle of the open drawer. The windwagon rocked gently on its way, the rumble of the great wheel and the hum of the main gyroscope a lulling background noise.
“My God,” Brawne Lamia said softly. She started to speak again and then merely shook her head.
Martin Silenus closed his eyes and said:
“Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will;
She can, though every face will scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.”
Sol Weintraub asked, “William Butler Yeats?” Silenus nodded. “A Prayer for My Daughter.”
“I think I’m going up on deck for a breath of air before turning in,” said the Consul. “Would anyone care to join me?”
Everyone did. The breeze of their passage was refreshing as the group stood on the quarterdeck and watched the darkened Sea of Grass rumble by. The sky was a great, star-splashed bowl above them, scarred by meteor trails. The sails and rigging creaked with a sound as old as human travel.
“I think we should post guards tonight,” said Colonel Kassad. “One person on watch while the others sleep. Two-hours intervals.”
“I agree,” said the Consul. “I’ll take the first watch.”
“In the morning…” began Kassad.
“Look!” cried Father Hoyt.
They followed his pointing arm. Between the blaze of constellations, colored fireballs flared—green, violet, orange, green again—illuminating the great plain of grass around them like flashes of heat lightning. The stars and meteor trails paled to insignificance beside the sudden display.
“Explosions?” ventured the priest.
“Space battle,” said Kassad. “Cislunar. Fusion weapons.” He went below quickly.
“The Tree,” said Het Masteen, pointing to a speck of light which moved among the explosions like an ember floating through a fireworks display.
Kassad returned with his powered binoculars and handed them around.
“Ousters?” asked Lamia. “Is it the invasion?”
“Ousters, almost certainly,” said Kassad. “But almost as certainly just a scouting raid. See the clusters? Those are Hegemony missiles being exploded by the Ouster ramscouts’ countermeasures.”
The binoculars came to the Consul. The flashes were quite clear now, an expanding cumulus of flame. He could see the speck and long blue tail of at least two scoutships fleeing from the Hegemony pursuers.
“I don’t think…” began Kassad and then stopped as the ship and sails and Sea of Grass glowed bright orange in reflected glare.
“Dear Christ,” whispered Father Hoyt. “They’ve hit the treeship.”
The Consul swept the glass left. The growing nimbus of flames could be seen with the naked eye but in the binoculars the kilometer-long trunk and branch array of the Yggdrasill was visible for an instant as it burned and flared, long tendrils of flame arcing away into space as the containment fields failed and the oxygen burned.
The orange cloud pulsed, faded, and fell back on itself as the trunk became visible for a final second even as it glowed and broke up like the last long ember in a dying fire. Nothing could have survived. The treeship Yggdrasill with its crew and complement of clones and semisentient erg drivers was dead.
The Consul turned toward Het Masteen and belatedly held out the binoculars. “I’m so… sorry,” he whispered.
The tall Templar did not take the glasses. Slowly he lowered his gaze from the skies, pulled forward his cowl, and went below without a word.
The death of the treeship was the final explosion.
When ten minutes had passed and no more flares had disturbed the night, Brawne Lamia spoke. “Do you think they got them?”
“The Ousters?” said Kassad. “Probably not. The scoutships are built for speed and defense. They’re light-minutes away by now.”
“Did they go after the treeship on purpose?” asked Silenus. The poet sounded very sober.
“I think not,” said Kassad. “Merely a target of opportunity.”
“Target of opportunity,” echoed Sol Weintraub. The scholar shook his head. “I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep before sunrise.”
One by one the others went below. When only Kassad and the Consul were left on deck, the Consul said, “Where should I stand watch?”
“Make a circuit,” said the Colonel. “From the main corridor at the base of the ladder you can see all of the stateroom doors and the entrance to the mess and galley. Come above and check the gangway and decks. Keep the lanterns lit. Do you have a weapon?”
The Consul shook his head.
Kassad handed over his deathwand. “It’s on tight beam—about half a meter at ten meters’ range. Don’t use it unless you’re sure that there’s an intruder. The rough plate that slides forward is the safety. It’s on.”
The Consul nodded, making sure that his finger stayed away from the firing stud.
“I’ll relieve you in two hours,” said Kassad. He checked his comlog.
“It’ll be sunrise before my watch is over.” Kassad looked at the sky as if expecting the Yggdrasill to reappear and continue its firefly path across the sky. Only the stars glowed back. On the northeastern horizon a moving mass of black promised a storm.
Kassad shook his head. “A waste,” he said and went below.
The Consul stood there awhile and listened to the wind in the canvas, the creek of rigging, and the rumble of the wheel. After a while he went to the railing and stared at darkness while he thought.
Five
Sunrise over the Sea of Grass was a thing of beauty. The Consul watched from the highest point on the aft deck.
After his watch he had tried to sleep, given it up, and come up onto deck to watch the night fade into day. The stormfront had covered the sky with low clouds and the rising sun lit the world with brilliant gold reflected from above and below. The windwagon’s sails and lines and weathered planks glowed in the brief benediction of light in the few minutes before the sun was blocked by the ceiling of clouds and color flowed out of the world once again. The wind which followed this curtain closing was chill, as if it had blown down from the snowy peaks of the Bridle Range just visible as a dark blur on the northeastern horizon.
Brawne Lamia and Martin Silenus joined the Consul on the aft deck, each nursing a cup of coffee
from the galley. The wind whipped and tugged at the rigging.
Brawne Lamia’s thick mass of curls fluttered around her face like a dark nimbus.
“Morning,” muttered Silenus, squinting out over his coffee cup at the wind-rippled Sea of Grass.
“Good morning,” replied the Consul, amazed at how alert and refreshed he felt for not having slept at all the night before. “We have a headwind, but the wagon still seems to be making decent time. We’ll definitely be to the mountains before nightfall.”
“Hrrgnn,” commented Silenus and buried his nose in the coffee cup.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” said Brawne Lamia, “just for thinking about M. Weintraub’s story.”
“I don’t think…” began the poet and then broke off as Weintraub came onto deck, his baby peering over the lip of an infant carrier sling on his chest.
“Good morning, everyone,” said Weintraub, looking around and taking a deep breath. “Mmm, brisk, isn’t it?”
“Fucking freezing,” said Silenus. “North of the mountains it’ll be even worse.”
“I think I’ll go down to get a jacket,” said Lamia, but before she could move there came a single shrill cry from the deck below.
“Blood!”
There was, indeed, blood everywhere. Het Masteen’s cabin was strangely neat—bed unslept in, travel trunk and other boxes stacked precisely in one corner, robe folded over a chair—except for the blood which covered great sections of the deck, bulkhead, and overhead. The six pilgrims crowded just inside the entrance, reluctant to go farther in.
“I was passing on my way to the upper deck,” said Father Hoyt, his voice a strange monotone. “The door was slightly ajar. I caught a glimpse of… the blood on the wall.”
“Is it blood?” demanded Martin Silenus.
Brawne Lamia stepped into the room, ran a hand through a thick smear on the bulkhead, and raised her fingers to her lips. “It’s blood.” She looked around, walked to the wardrobe, looked briefly among the empty shelves and hangers, and then went to the small porthole.
It was latched and bolted from the inside.
Lenar Hoyt looked more ill than usual and staggered to a chair. “Is he dead then?”
“We don’t know a damn thing except that Captain Masteen isn’t in his room and a lot of blood is,” said Lamia. She wiped her hand on her pant leg. “The thing to do now is search the ship thoroughly.”
“Precisely,” said Colonel Kassad, “and if we do not find the Captain?”
Brawne Lamia opened the porthole. Fresh air dissipated the slaughterhouse smell of blood and brought in the rumble of the wheel and the rustle of grass under the hull. “If we don’t find Captain Masteen,” she said, “then we assume that he either left the ship under his own will or was taken off.”
“But the blood…” began Father Hoyt.
“Doesn’t prove anything,” finished Kassad. “M. Lamia’s correct. We don’t know Masteen’s blood type or genotype. Did anyone see or hear anything?”
There was silence except for negative grunts and the shaking of heads.
Martin Silenus looked around. “Don’t you people recognize the work of our friend the Shrike when you see it?”
“We don’t know that,” snapped Lamia. “Maybe someone wanted us to think that it was the Shrike’s doing.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Hoyt, still gasping for air.
“Nonetheless,” said Lamia, “we’ll search in twos. Who has weapons besides myself?”
“I do,” said Colonel Kassad. “I have extras if needed.”
“No,” said Hoyt.
The poet shook his head.
Sol Weintraub had returned to the corridor with his child. Now he looked in again. “I have nothing,” he said.
“No,” said the Consul. He had returned the deathwand to Kassad when his shift ended two hours before first light.
“All right,” said Lamia, “the priest will come with me on the lower deck. Silenus, go with the Colonel. Search the mid-deck. M. Weintraub, you and the Consul check everything above. Look for anything out of the ordinary. Any sign of struggle.”
“One question,” said Silenus.
“What?”
“Who the hell elected you queen of the prom?”
“I’m a private investigator,” said Lamia, leveling her gaze on the poet.
Martin Silenus shrugged. “Hoyt here is a priest of some forgotten religion. That doesn’t mean we have to genuflect when he says Mass.”
“All right,” sighed Brawne Lamia. “I’ll give you a better reason.” The woman moved so fast that the Consul almost missed the action in a blink. One second she was standing by the open port and in the next she was half way across the stateroom, lifting Martin Silenus off the deck with one arm, her massive hand around the poet’s thin neck. “How about,” she said, “that you do the logical thing because it’s the logical thing to do?”
“Gkkrgghh,” managed Martin Silenus.
“Good,” said Lamia without emotion and dropped the poet to the deck.
Silenus staggered a meter and almost sat on Father Hoyt.
“Here,” said Kassad, returning with two small neural stunners. He handed one to Sol Weintraub. “What do you have?” Kassad asked Lamia.
The woman reached into a pocket of her loose tunic and produced an ancient pistol.
Kassad looked at the relic for a moment and then nodded. “Stay with your partner,” he said. “Don’t shoot at anything unless it’s positively identified and unquestionably threatening.”
“That describes the bitch I plan to shoot,” said Silenus, still massaging his throat.
Brawne Lamia took a half step toward the poet.
Fedmahn Kassad said, “Shut up. Let’s get this over with.” Silenus followed the Colonel out of the stateroom.
Sol Weintraub approached the Consul, handed him the stunner. “I don’t want to hold this thing with Rachel. Shall we go up?”
The Consul took the weapon and nodded.
The windwagon held no further sign of Templar Voice of the Tree Het Masteen. After an hour of searching, the group met in the stateroom of the missing man. The blood there seemed darker and drier.
“Is there a chance that we missed something?” said Father Hoyt. “Secret passages? Hidden compartments?”
“There’s a chance,” said Kassad, “but I swept the ship with heat and motion sensors. If there’s anything else on board larger than a mouse, I can’t find it.”
“If you had these sensors,” said Silenus, “why the fuck did you have us crawling through bilge and byways for an hour?”
“Because the right equipment or apparel can hide a man from a heat-’n’-beat search.”
“So, in answer to my question,” said Hoyt, pausing a second as a visible wave of pain passed through him, “with the right equipment or apparel, Captain Masteen might be hiding in a secret compartment somewhere.”
“Possible but improbable,” said Brawne Lamia. “My guess is that he’s no longer aboard.”
“The Shrike,” said Martin Silenus in a disgusted tone.
It was not a question.
“Perhaps,” said Lamia. “Colonel, you and the Consul were on watch through those four hours. Are you sure that you heard and saw nothing?”
Both men nodded.
“The ship was quiet,” said Kassad. “I would have heard a struggle even before I went on watch.”
“And I didn’t sleep after my watch,” said the Consul.
“My room shared a bulkhead with Masteen’s. I heard nothing.”
“Well,” said Silenus, “we’ve heard from the two men who were creeping around in the dark with weapons when the poor shit was killed. They say they’re innocent. Next case!”
“If Masteen was killed,” said Kassad, “it was with no deathwand. No silent modern weapon I know throws that much blood around. There were no gunshots heard—no bullet holes found—so I presume M. Lamia’s automatic pistol is not suspect. If this
is Captain Masteen’s blood, then I would guess an edged weapon was used.”
“The Shrike’s an edged weapon,” said Martin Silenus.
Lamia moved to the small stack of luggage. “Debating isn’t going to solve anything. Let’s see if there’s anything in Masteen’s belongings.”
Father Hoyt raised a hesitant hand. “That’s… well, private, isn’t it? I don’t think we have the right.”
Brawne Lamia crossed her arms. “Look, Father, if Masteen’s dead, it doesn’t matter to him. If he’s still alive, looking through this stuff might give us some idea where he was taken. Either way, we have to try to find a clue.”
Hoyt looked dubious but nodded. In the end, there was little invasion of privacy. Masteen’s first trunk held only a few changes of linen and a copy of Muir’s Book of Life. The second bag held a hundred separately wrapped seedlings, flash-dried and nestled in moist soil.
“Templars must plant at least a hundred offspring of the Eternal Tree on whatever world they visit,” explained the Consul. “The shoots rarely take, but it’s a ritual.”
Browne Lamia moved toward the large metal box which had sat at the bottom of the pile.
“Don’t touch that!” snapped the Consul.
“Why not?”
“It’s a Möbius cube,” responded Colonel Kassad for the Consul. “A carbon-carbon-shell set around a zero impedance containment field folded back on itself.”
“So?” said Lamia. “Möbius cubes seal artifacts and stuff in. They don’t explode or anything.”
“No,” agreed the Consul, “but what they contain may explode. May already have exploded, for that matter.”
“A cube that size could hold a kiloton nuclear explosion in check as long as it was boxed during the nanosecond of ignition,” added Fedmahn Kassad.
Lamia scowled at the trunk. “Then how do we know that something in there didn’t kill Masteen?”
Kassad pointed to a faintly glowing green strip along the trunk’s only seam. “It’s sealed. Once unsealed, a Möbius cube has to be reactivated at a place where containment fields can be generated. Whatever’s in there didn’t harm Captain Masteen.”
