The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (128 page)

Duré was still smiling. “So? Does any of this preclude you from being this Empathy entity?”

“I don’t
feel
like a part of some god,” I said sharply. “I don’t remember anything, understand anything, or know what to do next.”

Monsignor Edouard touched my wrist. “Are we so sure that Christ always knew what to do next? He knew what had to be done. It is not always the same as knowing what to do.”

I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t even know what has to be done.”

The Monsignor’s voice was quiet. “I believe that what Paul is saying is that
if
the spirit creature you say is hiding here in our time, it may well not know its own identity.”

“That’s insane,” I said.

Duré nodded. “Much of the events on and around Hyperion have seemed insane. Insanity seems to be spreading.”

I looked closely at the Jesuit. “
You
would be a good candidate for the deity,” I said. “You’ve lived a life of prayer, contemplating theologies, and honoring science as an archaeologist. Plus, you’ve already been crucified.”

Duré’s smile was gone. “Do you hear what we’re saying? Do you hear the blasphemy in what we’re saying? I’m no candidate for the Godhead, Severn. I’ve betrayed my Church, my science, and now, by disappearing, my friends on the pilgrimage. Christ may have lost his faith for a few seconds; He did not sell it in the marketplace for the trinkets of ego and curiosity.”

“Enough,” commanded Monsignor Edouard. “If the identity of this Empathy part of some future, manufactured deity is the mystery, think of the candidates just in the immediate troupe of your little Passion Play, M. Severn. The CEO, M. Gladstone, carrying the weight of the Hegemony on her shoulders. The other members of the pilgrimage … M. Silenus who, according to what you told Paul, even now suffers on the Shrike’s tree for his poetry. M. Lamia, who has risked and lost so much for love. M. Weintraub, who has suffered Abraham’s dilemma … even his daughter, who has returned to the innocence of childhood. The Consul, who—”

“The Consul seems more Judas than Christ,” I said. “He betrayed both the Hegemony and the Ousters, who thought he was working for them.”

“From what Paul tells me,” said the Monsignor, “the Consul was true to his convictions, faithful to the memory of his grandmother Siri.” The older man smiled. “Plus, there are a hundred billion other players in this play. God did not choose Herod or Pontius Pilate or Caesar
Augustus as His instrument. He chose the unknown son of an unknown carpenter in one of the least important stretches of the Roman Empire.”

“All right,” I said, standing and pacing before the glowing mosaic below the altar. “What do we do now? Father Duré, you need to come with me to see Gladstone. She knows about your pilgrimage. Perhaps your story can help avert some of the bloodbath which seems so imminent.”

Duré stood also, folding his arms and staring toward the dome as if the darkness high above held some instructions for him. “I’ve thought of that,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s my first obligation. I need to go to God’s Grove to speak to their equivalent of the Pope—the True Voice of the Worldtree.”

I stopped pacing. “God’s Grove? What does that have to do with anything?”

“I feel that the Templars have been the key to some missing element in this painful charade. Now you say that Het Masteen is dead. Perhaps the True Voice can explain to us what they had planned for this pilgrimage … Masteen’s tale, as it were. He was, after all, the only one of the seven original pilgrims who did not tell the story of why he had come to Hyperion.”

I paced again, more rapidly now, trying to keep anger in check. “My God, Duré. We don’t have time for such idle curiosity. It’s only”—I consulted my implant—“an hour and a half until the Ouster invasion Swarm enters the God’s Grove system. It must be bedlam there.”

“Perhaps,” said the Jesuit, “but I still will go there first. Then I will speak to Gladstone. It may be that she will authorize my return to Hyperion.”

I grunted, doubting that the CEO would ever let such a valuable informant return to harm’s way. “Let’s get going,” I said, and turned to find my way out.

“A moment,” said Duré. “You said a while ago that you were sometimes able to … to ‘dream’ … about the pilgrims while you were still awake. A sort of trance state, is it?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, M. Severn, please dream about them now.”

I stared in amazement. “Here? Now?”

Duré gestured toward his chair. “Please. I wish to know the fate of my friends. Also, the information might be most valuable in our confrontation with the True Voice and M. Gladstone.”

I shook my head but took the seat he offered. “It might not work,” I said.

“Then we have lost nothing,” said Duré.

I nodded, closed my eyes, and sat back in the uncomfortable chair. I was all too aware of the other two men watching me, of the faint smell of incense and rain, of the echoing space surrounding us. I was sure that this would never work; the landscape of my dreams was not so close that I could summon it merely by closing my eyes.

The feeling of being watched faded, the smells grew distant, and the sense of space expanded a thousandfold as I returned to Hyperion.

THIRTY-FIVE

Confusion.

Three hundred spacecraft retreating in Hyperion space under heavy fire, falling back from the Swarm like men fighting bees.

Madness near the military farcaster portals, traffic control overloaded, ships backed up like EMVs in TC
²
’s airborne gridlock, vulnerable as partridges to the roaming Ouster assault ships.

Madness at the exit points: FORCE spacecraft lined up like sheep in a narrow pen as they cycle from the Madhya cutoff portal to the outgoing ’caster. Ships spinning down into Hebron space, a few translating to Heaven’s Gate, God’s Grove, Mare Infinitus, Asquith. Only hours left now before the Swarms enter Web systems.

Confusion as hundreds of millions of refugees farcast away from the threatened worlds, stepping into cities and relocation centers gone half mad with the aimless excitement of incipient war. Confusion as unthreatened Web worlds ignite with riots: three Hives on Lusus—almost seventy million citizens—quarantined due to Shrike Cult riots, thirty-level malls looted, apartment monoliths overrun by mobs, fusion centers blown, farcaster terminexes under attack. The Home Rule Council appeals to the Hegemony; the Hegemony declares martial law and sends FORCE: Marines to seal the hives.

Secessionist riots on New Earth and Maui-Covenant. Terrorist attacks from Glennon-Height royalists—quiet now for three-quarters of a century—on Thalia, Armaghast, Nordholm, and Lee Three. More Shrike Cult riots on Tsingtao-Hsishuang Panna and Renaissance Vector.

FORCE Command on Olympus transfers combat battalions from transports returning from Hyperion to Web worlds. Demolition squads assigned to torchships in threatened systems report farcaster singularity
spheres wired for destruction, awaiting only the fatlined order from TC
²
.

“There is a better way,” Councilor Albedo tells Gladstone and the War Council.

The CEO turns toward the ambassador from the TechnoCore.

“There is a weapon that will eliminate the Ousters without harming Hegemony property. Or Ouster property, for that matter.”

General Morpurgo glowers. “You’re talking about the bomb equivalent of a deathwand,” he says. “It won’t work. FORCE researchers have shown that it propagates indefinitely. Besides being dishonorable, against the New Bushido Code, it would wipe out planetary populations as well as the invaders.”

“Not at all,” says Albedo. “If Hegemony citizens are properly shielded, there need be no casualties whatsoever. As you know, deathwands can be calibrated for specific cerebral wavelengths. So could a bomb based on the same principle. Livestock, wild animals, even other anthropoid species would not be affected.”

General Van Zeidt of FORCE: Marines stands. “But there’s no way to shield a population! Our testing showed that death-bomb heavy neutrinos would penetrate solid rock or metal to a depth of six kilometers. No one has shelters like that!”

The projection of Councilor Albedo folds his hands on the table. “We have nine worlds with shelters which would hold billions,” he says softly.

Gladstone nods. “The labyrinthine worlds,” she whispers. “But certainly such a transfer of population would be impossible.”

“No,” says Albedo. “Now that you have joined Hyperion to the Protectorate, each of the labyrinthine worlds has farcaster capability. The Core can make arrangements to transfer populations directly to these underground shelters.”

There is babble around the long table, but Meina Gladstone’s intense gaze never leaves Albedo’s face. She beckons for silence and receives it. “Tell us more,” she says. “We are interested.”

The Consul sits in the spotty shade of a low neville tree and waits to die. His hands are tied behind him with a twist of fiberplastic. His
clothes are torn to rags and are still damp; the moisture on his face is partially from the river but mostly from perspiration.

The two men who stand over him are finishing their inspection of his duffel bag. “Shit,” says the first man, “there bey nothing worth anything here-in except this fucking antique pistol.” He thrusts Brawne Lamia’s father’s weapon in his belt.

“It bey too bad we couldn’t get that goddamn flying carpet,” says the second man.

“It beyn’t flying too well there toward the end!” says the first man, and both of them laugh.

The Consul squints at the two massive figures, their armored bodies made silhouettes by the lowering sun. From their dialect he assumes them to be indigenies; from their appearance—bits of outmoded FORCE body armor, heavy multipurpose assault rifles, tatters of what once had been camou-polymer cloth—he guesses them to be deserters from some Hyperion Self-defense Force unit.

From their behavior toward him, he is sure that they are going to kill him.

At first, stunned from the fall into the Hoolie River, still tangled in the ropes connecting him to his duffel bag and the useless hawking mat, he thought them to be his saviors. The Consul had hit the water hard, stayed under for a much longer time than he would have imagined possible without drowning, and surfaced only to be pushed under by a strong current and then pulled under again by the tangle of ropes and mat. It had been a valiant but losing battle, and he was still ten meters from the shallows when one of the men emerging from the neville and thorn tree forest had thrown the Consul a line. Then they had beaten him, robbed him, tied him, and—judging from their matter-of-fact comments—were now preparing to cut his throat and leave him for the harbinger birds.

The taller of the two men, his hair a mass of oiled spikes, squats in front of the Consul and pulls a ceramic zero-edge knife from its scabbard. “Any last words, Pops?”

The Consul licks his lips. He has seen a thousand movies and holies where this was the point at which the hero twisted his opponent’s legs out from under him, kicked the other one into submission, seized a weapon and dispatched both—firing with his hands still tied—and then went on with his adventures. But the Consul feels like no hero: he is exhausted and middle-aged and hurt from his fall in the river.
Each
of
these men is leaner, stronger, faster, and obviously meaner than the Consul ever has been. He has seen violence—even committed violence once—but his life and training have been devoted to the tense but quiet paths of diplomacy.

The Consul licks his lips again and says, “I can pay you.”

The crouching man smiles and moves the zero-edge blade back and forth five centimeters in front of the Consul’s eyes. “With what, Pops? We’ve got your universal card, and it bey worth shit out here.”

“Gold,” says the Consul, knowing that this is the only syllable that has held its power over the ages.

The crouching man does not react—there is a sick light in his eyes as he watches the blade—but the other man steps forward and sets a heavy hand on his partner’s shoulder. “What bey you talkin’ about, man? Wherefore you got gold?”

“My ship,” says the Consul. “The
Benares
.”