by Dan Simmons
“Not at this distance,” said Kassad. He raised his combat binoculars, made an adjustment, and consulted his tactical comlog. “Most of the engagements are at least three AU away. The Ousters are testing the FORCE:space defenses.” He lowered the glasses. “It’s just begun.”
“Has the farcaster been activated yet?” asked Brawne Lamia. “Are the people being evacuated from Keats and the other cities?”
Kassad shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Not yet. The fleet will be fighting a holding action until the cislunar sphere is completed. Then the evacuation portals will be opened to the Web while FORCE units come through by the hundreds.” He raised the binoculars again. “It’ll be a hell of a show.”
“Look!” It was Father Hoyt pointing this time, not at the fireworks display in the sky but out across the low dunes of the northern moors.
Several kilometers toward the unseen Tombs, a single figure was just visible as a speck of a form throwing multiple shadows under the fractured sky.
Kassad trained his glasses on the figure.
“The Shrike?” asked Lamia.
“No, I don’t think so… I think it’s… a Templar by the looks of the robe.”
“Het Masteen!” cried Father Hoyt.
Kassad shrugged and handed the glasses around. The Consul walked back to the group and leaned on the balcony.
There was no sound but the whisper of wind, but that made the violence of explosions above them more ominous somehow.
The Consul took his turn looking when the glasses came to him. The figure was tall and robed, its back to the Keep, and strode across the flashing vermilion sands with purposeful intent.
“Is he headed toward us or the Tombs?” asked Lamia.
“The Tombs,” said the Consul.
Father Hoyt leaned elbows on the ledge and raised his gaunt face to the exploding sky. “If it is Masteen, then we’re back to seven, aren’t we?”
“He’ll arrive hours before us,” said the Consul. “Half a day if we sleep here tonight as we proposed.”
Hoyt shrugged. “That can’t matter too much. Seven set out on the pilgrimage. Seven will arrive. The Shrike will be satisfied.”
“If it’s Masteen,” said Colonel Kassad, “why the charade on the windwagon? And how did he get here before us? There were no other tramcars running and he couldn’t have walked over the Bridle Range passes.”
“We’ll ask him when we arrive at the Tombs tomorrow,” Father Hoyt said tiredly.
Brawne Lamia had been trying to raise someone on her comlog’s general comm frequencies. Nothing emerged but the hiss of static and the occasional growl of distant EMPs. She looked at Colonel Kassad. “When do they start bombing?”
“I don’t know. It depends upon the strength of the FORCE fleet defenses.”
“The defenses weren’t very good the other day when the Ouster scouts got through and destroyed the Yggdrasill,” said Lamia.
Kassad nodded.
“Hey,” said Martin Silenus, “are we sitting on a fucking target?”
“Of course,” said the Consul. “If the Ousters are attacking Hyperion to prevent the opening of the Time Tombs, as M. Lamia’s tale suggests, then the Tombs and this entire area would be a primary target.”
“For nukes?” asked Silenus, his voice strained.
“Almost certainly,” answered Kassad.
“I thought something about the anti-entropic fields kept ships away from here,” said Father Hoyt.
“Crewed ships,” said the Consul without looking back at the others from where he leaned on the railing. “The anti-entropic fields won’t bother guided missiles, smart bombs, or hellwhip beams. It won’t bother mech infantry, for that matter. The Ousters could land a few attack skimmers or automated tanks and watch on remote while they destroy the valley.”
“But they won’t,” said Brawne Lamia. “They want to control Hyperion, not destroy it.”
“I wouldn’t wager my life on that supposition,” said Kassad.
Lamia smiled at him, “But we are, aren’t we, Colonel?”
Above them, a single spark separated itself from the continuous patchwork of explosions, grew into a bright orange ember, and streaked across the sky. The group on the terrace could see the flames, hear the tortured shriek of atmospheric penetration. The fireball disappeared beyond the mountains behind the Keep.
Almost a minute later, the Consul realized that he had been holding his breath, his hands rigid on the stone railing. He let out air in a gasp.
The others seemed to be taking a breath at the same moment. There had been no explosion, no shock wave rumbling through the rock.
“A dud?” asked Father Hoyt.
“Probably an injured FORCE skirmisher trying to reach the orbital perimeter or the spaceport at Keats,” said Colonel Kassad.
“He didn’t make it, did he?” asked Lamia. Kassad did not respond.
Martin Silenus lifted the field glasses and searched the darkening moors for the Templar. “Out of sight,” said Silenus. “The good Captain either rounded that hill just this side of the Time Tombs valley or he pulled his disappearing act again.”
“It’s a pity that we’ll never hear his story,” said Father Hoyt. He turned toward the Consul. “But we’ll hear yours, won’t we?”
The Consul rubbed his palms against his pant legs. His heart was racing. “Yes,” he said, realizing even as he spoke that he had finally made up his mind. “I’ll tell mine.”
The wind roared down the east slopes of the mountains and whistled along the escarpment of Chronos Keep. The explosions above them seemed to have diminished ever so slightly, but the coming of darkness made each one look even more violent than the last.
“Let’s go inside,” said Lamia, her words almost lost in the wind sound. “It’s getting cold.”
They had turned off the single lamp and the interior of the room was lighted only by the heat-lightning pulses of color from the sky outside.
Shadows sprang into being, vanished, and appeared again as the room was painted in many colors. Sometimes the darkness would last several seconds before the next barrage.
The Consul reached into his traveling bag and took out a strange device, larger than a comlog, oddly ornamented, and fronted with a liquid crystal diskey like something out of a history holo.
“Secret fatline transmitter?” Brawne Lamia asked dryly.
The Consul’s smile showed no humor. “It’s an ancient comlog. It came out during the Hegira.” He removed a standard micro-disk from a pouch on his belt and inserted it. “Like Father Hoyt, I have someone else’s tale to tell before you can understand my own.”
“Christ on a stick,” sneered Martin Silenus, “am I the only one who can tell a straightforward story in this fucking herd? How long do I have to…”
The Consul’s movement surprised even himself. He rose, spun, caught the smaller man by the cape and shirt-front, slammed him against the wall, draped him over a packing crate with a knee in Silenus’s belly and a forearm against his throat, and hissed, “One more word from you, poet, and I’ll kill you.”
Silenus began to struggle but a tightening on his windpipe and a glance at the Consul’s eyes made him cease.
His face was very white.
Colonel Kassad silently, almost gently, separated the two. “There will be no more comments,” he said. He touched the deathwand in his belt.
Martin Silenus went to the far side of the circle, still rubbing his throat, and slumped against a crate without a word. The Consul strode to the door, took several deep breaths, and walked back to the group. He spoke to everyone but the poet. “I’m sorry. It is just that… I never expected to share this.”
The light from outside surged red and then white, followed by a blue glow which faded to near darkness.
“We know,” Brawne Lamia said softly. “We all felt that way.”
The Consul touched his lower lip, nodded, roughly cleared his throat, and came to sit by the ancient comlog.
“The recording is not as old as the instrument,” he said. “It was made about fifty standard years ago. I’ll have some more to say when it’s over.” He paused as if there were more to be said, shook his head, and thumbed the antique diskey.
There were no visuals. The voice was that of a young man. In the background one could hear a breeze blowing through grass or soft branches and, more distantly, the roll of surf.
Outside, the light pulsed madly as the tempo of the distant space battle quickened. The Consul tensed as he waited for the crash and concussion.
There was none. He closed his eyes and listened with the others.
The Consul’s Tale:
Remembering Siri
I climb the steep hill to Siri’s tomb on the day the islands return to the shallow seas of the Equatorial Archipelago.
The day is perfect and I hate it for being so. The sky is as tranquil as tales of Old Earth’s seas, the shallows are dappled with ultramarine tints, and a warm breeze blows in from the sea to ripple the russet willowgrass on the hillside near me.
Better low clouds and gray gloom on such a day. Better mist or a shrouding fog which sets the masts in Firstsite Harbor dripping and raises the lighthouse horn from its slumbers. Better one of the great sea-simooms blowing up out of the cold belly of the south, lashing before it the motile isles and their dolphin herders until they seek refuge in the lee of our atolls and stony peaks.
Anything would be better than this warm spring day when the sun moves through a vault of sky so blue that it makes me want to run, to jump in great loping arcs, and to roll in the soft grass as Siri and I have done at just this spot.
Just this spot. I pause to look around. The willowgrass bends and ripples like the fur of some great beast as the salt-tinged breeze gusts up out of the south. I shield my eyes and search the horizon but nothing moves there.
Out beyond the lava reef, the sea begins to chop and lift itself in nervous strokes.
“Siri,” I whisper. I say her name without meaning to do so. A hundred meters down the slope, the crowd pauses to watch me and to catch its collective breath. The procession of mourners and celebrants stretches for more than a kilometer to where the white buildings of the city begin. I can make out the gray and balding head of my younger son in the vanguard. He is wearing the blue and gold robes of the Hegemony. I know that I should wait for him, walk with him, but he and the other aging Council members cannot keep up with my young, ship-trained muscles and steady stride. But decorum dictates that I should walk with him and my granddaughter Lira and my nine-year-old grandson.
To hell with it. And to hell with them.
I turn and jog up the steep hillside. Sweat begins to soak my loose cotton shirt before I reach the curving summit of the ridge and catch sight of the tomb.
Siri’s tomb.
I stop. The wind chills me although the sunlight is warm enough as it glints off the flawless white stone of the silent mausoleum. The grass is high near the sealed entrance to the crypt. Rows of faded festival pennants on ebony staffs line the narrow gravel path.
Hesitating, I circle the tomb and approach the steep cliff edge a few meters beyond. The willowgrass is bent and trampled here where irreverent picnickers have laid their blankets. There are several fire rings formed from the perfectly round, perfectly white stones purloined from the border of the gravel path.
I cannot stop a smile. I know the view from here: the great curve of the outer harbor with its natural seawall, the low, white buildings of Firstsite, and the colorful hulls and masts of the catamarans bobbing at anchorage.
Near the pebble beach beyond Common Hall, a young woman in a white skirt moves toward the water. For a second I think that it is Siri and my heart pounds. I half prepare to throw up my arms in response to her wave but she does not wave. I watch in silence as the distant figure turns away and is lost in the shadows of the old boat building.
Above me, far out from the cliff, a wide-winged Thomas Hawk circles above the lagoon on rising thermals and scans the shifting bluekelp beds with its infrared vision, seeking out harp seals or torpids. Nature is stupid, I think and sit in the soft grass. Nature sets the stage all wrong for such a day and then it is insensitive enough to throw in a bird searching for prey which have long since fled the polluted waters near the growing city.
I remember another Thomas Hawk on that first night when Siri and I came to this hilltop. I remember the moonlight on its wings and the strange, haunting cry which echoed off the cliff and seemed to pierce the dark air above the gaslights of the village below.
Siri was sixteen… no, not quite sixteen… and the moonlight that touched the hawk’s wings above us also painted her bare skin with milky light and cast shadows beneath the soft circles of her breasts. We looked up guiltily when the bird’s cry cut the night and Siri said, “It was the nightingale and not the lark, That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear.”
“Huh?” I said. Siri was almost sixteen. I was nineteen.
But Siri knew the slow pace of books and the cadences of theater under the stars. I knew only the stars.
“Relax, young Shipman,” she whispered and pulled me down beside her then. “It’s only an old Tom’s Hawk hunting. Stupid bird. Come back, Shipman. Come back, Merin.”
The Los Angeles had chosen that moment to rise above the horizon and to float like a wind-borne ember west across the strange constellations of Maui-Covenant, Siri’s world. I lay next to her and described the workings of the great Hawking-drive spinship which was catching the high sunlight against the drop of night above us, and all the while my hand was sliding lower along her smooth side, her skin seemed all velvet and electricity, and her breath came more quickly against my shoulder. I lowered my face to the hollow of her neck, to the sweat and perfume essence of her tousled hair.
“Siri,” I say and this time her name is not unbidden.
Below me, below the crest of the hill and the shadow of the white tomb, the crowd stands and shuffles. They are impatient with me. They want me to unseal the tomb, to enter, and to have my private moment in the cool silent emptiness that has replaced the warm presence that was Siri.
They want me to say my farewells so they can get on with their rites and rituals, open the farcaster doors, and join the waiting Worldweb of the Hegemony.
To hell with that. And to hell with them.
I pull up a tendril of the thickly woven willowgrass, chew on the sweet stem, and watch the horizon for the first sign of the migrating islands.
The shadows are still long in the morning light. The day is young. I will sit here for a while and remember.
I will remember Siri.
Siri was a… what?… a bird, I think, the first time I saw her. She was wearing some sort of mask with bright feathers. When she removed it to join in the raceme quadrille, the torchlight caught the deep auburn tints of her hair. She was flushed, cheeks aflame, and even from across the crowded common I could see the startling green of her eyes contrasting with the summer heat of her face and hair. It was Festival Night, of course. The torches danced and sparked to the stiff breeze coming in off the harbor and the sound of the flutists on the break-wall playing for the passing isles was almost drowned out by surf sounds and the crack of pennants snapping in the wind. Siri was almost sixteen and her beauty burned more brightly than any of the torches set round the throng-filled square. I pushed through the dancing crowd and went to her.
It was five years ago for me. It was more than sixty five years ago for us. It seems only yesterday.
This is not going well.
Where to start?
“What say we go find a little nooky, kid?” Mike Osho was speaking.
Short, squat, his pudgy face a clever caricature of a Buddha, Mike was a god to me then. We were all gods; long-lived if not immortal, well paid if not quite divine. The Hegemony had chosen us to help crew one of its precious quantum-leap spinships, so how could we be less than gods? It was just that Mike, brilliant, mercurial, irreverent
Mike, was a little older and a little higher in the Shipboard pantheon than young Merin Aspic.
“Hah. Zero probability of that,” I said. We were scrubbing up after a twelve-hour shift with the farcaster construction crew. Shuttling the workers around their chosen singularity point some one hundred and sixty-three thousand kilometers out from Maui-Covenant was a lot less glamorous for us than the four-month leap from Hegemony-space. During the C-plus portion of the trip we had been master specialists; forty-nine starship experts shepherding some two hundred nervous passengers.
Now the passengers had their hardsuits on and we Shipmen had been reduced to serving as glorified truck drivers as the construction crew wrestled the bulky singularity containment sphere into place.
“Zero probability,” I repeated. “Unless the groundlings have added a whorehouse to that quarantine island they leased us.”
“Nope. They haven’t,” grinned Mike. He and I had our three days of planetary R and R coming up but we knew from Shipmaster Singh’s briefings and the moans of our Shipmates that the only ground time we had to look forward to would be spent on a seven-by-four-kilometer island administered by the Hegemony. It wasn’t even one of the motile isles we had heard about, just another volcanic peak near the equator.
Once there, we could count on real gravity underfoot, unfiltered air to breathe, and the chance to taste unsynthesized food. But we could also count on the fact that the only intercourse we would have with the Maui-Covenant colonists would be through buying local artifacts at the duty-free store.
Even those were sold by Hegemony trade specialists.
Many of our Shipmates had chosen to spend their R and R on the Los Angeles.
“So how do we find a little nooky, Mike? The colonies are off limits until the farcaster’s working. That’s about sixty years away, local time. Or are you talking about Meg in spincomp?”
“Stick with me, kid,” said Mike. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
I stuck with Mike. There were only five of us in the dropship. It was always a thrill to me to fall out of high orbit into the atmosphere of a real world. Especially a world that looked as much like Old Earth as Maui-Covenant did. I stared at the blue and white limb of the planet until the seas were down and we were in atmosphere, approaching the twilight terminator in a gentle glide at three times the speed of our own sound.
