Hyperion h-1

by Dan Simmons

  “Ten months,” I said. “Three hundred and six standard days. Three hundred fourteen of yours. Nine hundred eighteen shifts.”

  “And then your exile will be over.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you will be twenty-four years old and very rich.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m tired, Merin. I want to sleep now.”

  We programmed the tiller, set the collision alarm, and went below. The wind had risen some and the old vessel wallowed from wave crest to trough with every swell. We undressed in the dim light of the swinging lamp. I was first in the bunk and under the covers. It was the first time Siri and I had shared a sleep period.

  Remembering our last Reunion and her shyness at the villa, I expected her to douse the light. Instead she stood a minute, nude in the chill air, thin arms calmly at her sides.

  Time had claimed Siri but had not ravaged her. Gravity had done its inevitable work on her breasts and buttocks and she was much thinner. I stared at the gaunt outlines of ribs and breastbone and remembered the sixteen-year-old girl with baby fat and skin like warm velvet. In the cold light of the swinging lamp I stared at Siri’s sagging flesh and remembered moonlight on budding breasts. Yet somehow, strangely, inexplicably, it was the same Siri who stood before me now.

  “Move over, Merin.” She slipped into the bunk beside me. The sheets were cool against our skin, the rough blanket welcome. I turned off the light. The little ship swayed to the regular rhythm of the sea’s breathing. I could hear the sympathetic creak of masts and rigging.

  In the morning we could be casting and pulling and mending but now there was time to sleep. I began to doze to the sound of waves against wood.

  “Merin?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would happen if the Separatists attacked the Hegemony tourists or the new residents?”

  “I thought the Separatists had all been carted off to the isles.”

  “They have been. But what if they resisted?”

  “The Hegemony would send in FORCE troops who could kick the shit out of the Separatists.”

  “What if the farcaster itself were attacked… destroyed before it was operational?”

  “Impossible.”

  “Yes, I know, but what if it were?”

  “Then the LosAngeles would return nine months later with Hegemony troops who would proceed to kick the shit out of the Separatists… and anyone else on Maui-Covenant who got in their way.”

  “Nine months’ shiptime,” said Siri. “Eleven years of our time.”

  “But inevitable either way,” I said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “All right,” said Siri but we did not speak. I listened to the crack and sigh of the ship. Siri had nestled in the hollow of my arm. Her head was on my shoulder and her breathing was so deep and regular that I thought her to be asleep. I was almost asleep myself when her warm hand slid up my leg and lightly cupped me. I was startled even as I began to stir and stiffen. Siri whispered an answer to my unasked question. “No, Merin, one is never really too old. At least not too old to want the warmth and closeness. You decide, my love. I will be content either way.”

  I decided. Toward the dawn we slept.

  The tomb is empty.

  “Donel, come in here!”

  He bustles in, robes rustling in the hollow emptiness.

  The tomb’s empty. There is no hibernation chamber—I did not truly expect there to be one—but neither is there sarcophagus or coffin. A bright bulb illuminates the white interior. “What the hell is this, Donel? I thought this was Siri’s tomb.”

  “It is, Father.”

  “Where is she interred? Under the floor for Chrissake?” Donel mops at his brow. I remember that it is his mother I am speaking of. I also remember that he has had almost two years to accustom himself to the idea of her death.

  “No one told you?” he asks.

  “Told me what?” The anger and confusion are already ebbing. “I was rushed here from the dropship station and told that I was to visit Siri’s tomb before the farcaster opening. What?”

  “Mother was cremated as per her instructions. Her ashes were spread on the Great South Sea from the highest platform of the family isle.”

  “Then why this… crypt?” I watch what I say. Donel is sensitive.

  He mops his brow again and glances to the door. We are shielded from the view of the crowd but we are far behind schedule. Already the other members of the Council have had to hurry down the hill to join the dignitaries on the bandstand. My slow grief this day has been worse than bad timing—it has turned into bad theater.

  “Mother left instructions. They were carried out.” He touches a panel on the inner wall and it slides up to reveal a small niche containing a metal box. My name is on it.

  “What is that?”

  Donel shakes his head. “Personal items Mother left for you. Only Magritte knew the details and she died last winter without telling anyone.”

  “All right,” I say. “Thank you. I’ll be out in a moment.” Donel glances at his chronometer. “The ceremony begins in eight minutes. They will activate the farcaster in twenty minutes.”

  “I know,” I say. I do know. Part of me knows precisely how much time is left. “I’ll be out in a moment.”

  Donel hesitates and then departs. I close the door behind him with a touch of my palm. The metal box is surprisingly heavy. I set it on the stone floor and crouch beside it. A smaller palmlock gives me access.

  The lid clicks open and I peer into the container.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” I say softly. I do not know what I expected—artifacts perhaps, nostalgic mementos of our hundred and three days together—perhaps a pressed flower from some forgotten offering or the frenchhorn conch we dove for off Fevarone. But there are no mementos—not as such.

  The box holds a small Steiner-Ginn handlaser, one of the most powerful projection weapons ever made. The accumulator is attached by a power lead to a small fusion cell that Siri must have cannibalized from her new submersible. Also attached to the fusion cell is an ancient comlog, an antique with a solid state interior and a liquid crystal diskey. The charge indicator glows green.

  There are two other objects in the box. One is the translator medallion we had used so long ago. The final object makes me literally gape in surprise.

  “Why, you little bitch,” I say. Things fall into place. I cannot stop a smile. “You dear, conniving, little bitch.”

  There, rolled carefully, power lead correctly attached, lies the hawking mat Mike Osho bought in Carvnel Marketplace for thirty marks. I leave the hawking mat there, disconnect the comlog, and lift it out. I sit crosslegged on the cold stone and thumb the diskey. The light in the crypt fades out and suddenly Siri is there before me.

  They did not throw me off the ship when Mike died.

  They could have but they did not. They did not leave me to the mercy of provincial justice on Maui-Covenant.

  They could have but they chose not to. For two days I was held in Security and questioned, once by Shipmaster Singh himself. Then they let me return to duty. For the four months of the long leap back I tortured myself with the memory of Mike’s murder. I knew that in my clumsy way I had helped to murder him. I put in my shifts, dreamed my sweaty nightmares, and wondered if they would dismiss me when we reached the Web. They could have told me but they chose not to.

  They did not dismiss me. I was to have my normal leave in the Web but could take no off-Ship R and R while in the Maui-Covenant system. In addition, there was a written reprimand and temporary reduction in rank.

  That was what Mike’s life had been worth—a reprimand and reduction in rank.

  I took my three-week leave with the rest of the crew but, unlike the others, I did not plan to return. I farcast to Esperance and made the classic Shipman’s mistake of trying to visit family. Two days in the crowded residential bulb was enough and I stepped to Lusus and took my pleasure in three days of whoring on the Rue des Ch
ats.

  When my mood turned darker I ’cast to Fuji and lost most of my ready marks betting on the bloody samurai fights there.

  Finally I found myself farcasting to Homesystem Station and taking the two-day pilgrim shuttle down to Hellas Basin. I had never been to Homesystem or Mars before and I never plan to return, but the ten days I spent there, alone and wandering the dusty, haunted corridors of the Monastery, served to send me back to the ship.

  Back to Siri.

  Occasionally I would leave the red-stoned maze of the megalith and, clad only in skinsuit and mask, stand on one of the uncounted thousands of stone balconies and stare skyward at the pale gray star which had once been Old Earth. Sometimes then I thought of the brave and stupid idealists heading out into the great dark in their slow and leaking ships, carrying embryos and ideologies with equal faith and care. But most times I did not try to think. Most times I simply stood in the purple night and let Siri come to me. There in the Master’s Rock, where perfect satori had eluded so many much worthier pilgrims, I achieved it through the memory of a not quite sixteen-year-old womanchild’s body lying next to mine while moonlight spilled from a Thomas Hawk’s wings.

  When the Los Angeles spun back up to a quantum state, I went with her.

  Four months later I was content to pull my shift with the construction crew, plug into my usual stims, and sleep my R and R away. Then Singh came to me. “You’re going down,” he said. I did not understand. “In the past eleven years the groundlings have turned your screw-up with Osho into a goddamned legend,” said Singh. “There’s an entire cultural mythos built around your little roll in the hay with that colonial girl.”

  “Siri,” I said.

  “Get your gear,” said Singh. “You’ll spend your three weeks groundside. The Ambassador’s experts say you’ll do the Hegemony more good down there than up here. We’ll see.”

  The world was waiting. Crowds were cheering. Siri was waving. We left the harbor in a yellow catamaran and sailed south-southeast, bound for the Archipelago and her family isle.

  “Hello, Merin.” Siri floats in the darkness of her tomb.

  The holo is not perfect; a haziness mars the edges. But it is Siri—Siri as I last saw, gray hair shorn rather than cut, head high, face sharpened with shadows. “Hello, Merin, my love.”

  “Hello, Siri,” I say. The tomb door is closed.

  “I am sorry I cannot share our Seventh Reunion, Merin. I looked forward to it.” Siri pauses and looks down at her hands. The image flickers slightly as dust motes float through her form. “I had carefully planned what to say here,” she goes on. “How to say it. Arguments to be pied. Instructions to be given. But I know how useless that would have been. Either I have said it already and you have heard or there is nothing left to say and silence would best suit the moment.”

  Siri’s voice had grown even more beautiful with age.

  There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain. Siri moves her hands and they disappear beyond the border of the projection. “Merin, my love, how strange our days apart and together have been. How beautifully absurd the myth that bound us.

  My days were but heartbeats to you. I hated you for that.

  You were the mirror that would not lie. If you could have seen your face at the beginning of each Reunion! The least you could have done was to hide your shock… that, at least, you could have done for me.

  “But through your clumsy naiveté there has always been… what?… something, Merin. There is something there that belies the callowness and thoughtless egotism which you wear so well. A caring, perhaps. A respect for caring, if nothing else.

  “Merin, this diary has hundreds of entries… thousands, I fear… I have kept it since I was thirteen. By the time you see this, they will all have been erased except the ones which follow. Adieu, my love. Adieu.”

  I shut off the comlog and sit in silence for a minute. The crowd sounds are barely audible through the thick walls of the tomb. I take a breath and thumb the diskey.

  Siri appears. She is in her late forties. I know immediately the day and place she recorded this image. I remember the cloak she wears, the eelstone pendant at her neck, and the strand of hair which has escaped her barrette and even now falls across her cheek. I remember everything about that day. It was the last day of our Third Reunion and we were with friends on the heights above South Tern. Donel was ten and we were trying to convince him to slide on the snowfield with us. He was crying. Siri turned away from us even before the skimmer settled.

  When Magritte stepped out we knew from Siri’s face that something had happened.

  The same face stares at me now. She brushes absently at the unruly strand of hair. Her eyes are red but her voice is controlled. “Merin, they killed our son today. Alón was twenty-one and they killed him. You were so confused today, Merin. “How could such a mistake have happened?” you kept repeating.

  You did not really know our son but I could see the loss in your face when we heard. Merin, it was not an accident. If nothing else survives, no other record, if you never understand why I allowed a sentimental myth to rule my life, let this be known—it was not an accident that killed Alón. He was with the Separatists when the Council police arrived.

  Even then he could have escaped. We had prepared an alibi together. The police would have believed his story.

  He chose to stay.

  “Today, Merin, you were impressed with what I said to the crowd… the mob… at the embassy. Know this, Shipman—when I said, “Now is not the time to show your anger and your hatred,” that is precisely what I meant. No more, no less. Today is not the time. But the day will come. It will surely come. The Covenant was not taken lightly in those final days, Merin. It is not taken lightly now. Those who have forgotten will be surprised when the day comes but it will surely come.”

  The image fades to another and in the split second of overlap the face of a twenty-six-year-old Siri appears superimposed on the older woman’s features. “Merin, I am pregnant. I’m so glad. You’ve been gone five weeks now and I miss you. Ten years you’ll be gone. More than that.

  Merin, why didn’t you think to invite me to go with you? I could not have gone but I would have loved it if you had just invited me. But I’m pregnant, Merin. The doctors say that it will be a boy. I will tell him about you, my love. Perhaps someday you and he will sail in the Archipelago and listen to the songs of the Sea Folk as you and I have done these past few weeks. Perhaps you’ll understand them by then.

  Merin, I miss you. Please hurry back.”

  The holographic image shimmers and shifts. The sixteen-year-old girl is red-faced. Her long hair cascades over bare shoulders and a white nightgown. She speaks in a rush, racing tears. “Shipman Merin Aspic, I’m sorry about your friend—I really am—but you left without even saying goodbye. I had such plans about how you would help us… how you and I… you didn’t even say goodbye. I don’t care what happens to you. I hope you go back to your stinking, crowded Hegemony hives and rot for all I care. In fact, Merin Aspic, I wouldn’t want to see you again even if they paid me. Goodbye.”

  She turns her back before the projection fades. It is dark in the tomb now but the audio continues for a second. There is a soft chuckle and Siri’s voice—I cannot tell the age—comes one last time. “Adieu, Merin. Adieu.”

  “Adieu,” I say and thumb the diskey off.

  The crowd parts as I emerge blinking from the tomb. My poor timing has ruined the drama of the event and now the smile on my face incites angry whispers. Loudspeakers carry the rhetoric of the official ceremony even to our hilltop. “…beginning a new era of cooperation,” echoes the rich voice of the Ambassador.

  I set the box on the grass and remove the hawking mat.

  The crowd presses forward to see as I unroll the carpet.

  The tapestry is faded but the flight threads gleam like new copper. I sit in the center of the mat and slide the heavy box on behind me.

  “…and mo
re will follow until space and time will cease to be obstacles.”

  The crowd moves back as I tap the flight design and the hawking mat rises four meters into the air. Now I can see beyond the roof of the tomb. The islands are returning to form the Equatorial Archipelago. I can see them, hundreds of them, borne up out of the hungry south by gentle winds.

  “So it is with great pleasure that I close this circuit and welcome you, the colony of Maui-Covenant, into the community of the Hegemony of Man.”

  The thin thread of the ceremonial comm-laser pulses to the zenith. There is a spattering of applause and the band begins playing. I squint skyward just in time to see a new star being born.

  Part of me knew to the microsecond what has just occurred.

  For a few microseconds the farcaster had been functional.

  For a few microseconds time and space had ceased to be obstacles. Then the massive tidal pull of the artificial singularity triggered the thermite charge I had placed on the outer containment sphere. That tiny explosion had not been visible but a second later the expanding Schwarzschild radius is eating its shell, swallowing thirty-six thousand tons of fragile dodecahedron, and growing quickly to gobble several thousand kilometers of space around it. And that is visible—magnificently visible—as a miniature nova flares whitely in the clear blue sky.

  The band stops playing. People scream and run for cover. There is no reason to. There is a burst of X rays tunneling out as the farcaster continues to collapse into itself, but not enough to cause harm through Maui-Covenant’s generous atmosphere. A second streak of plasma becomes visible as the Los Angeles puts more distance between itself and the rapidly decaying little black hole. The winds rise and the seas are choppier.

  There will be strange tides tonight.

  I want to say something profound but I can think of nothing. Besides, the crowd is in no mood to listen. I tell myself that I can hear some cheers mixed in with the screams and shouts.

  I tap at the flight designs and the hawking mat speeds out over the cliff and above the harbor. A Thomas Hawk lazing on midday thermals flaps in panic at my approach.