The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (328 page)

FOREMAN GEORGE TSARONG:
Is there no hope then? Can we do nothing to help our friends?

OUSTER NAVSON HAMNIM:
Excuse me for interrupting, M. Tsarong, M. Aenea, but we should explain to our friends that when the time comes for our Ouster Swarms and Templar allies to take the offensive against the Pax, our first objective is to liberate the many Labyrinthine worlds where these populations are kept in silent storage and to attempt to revive them.

THE DORJE PHAMO: (loudly)

Revive them? How is this to happen? How can anyone revive them?

AENEA:
By striking directly at the TechnoCore.

LHOMO DONDRUB:
And where
is
the TechnoCore, Aenea? Tell me and I will go there now and do battle with these AI cowards.

AENEA:
The true location of the TechnoCore has been the AIs’ best-kept secret since the entities left Old Earth a thousand standard years ago, Lhomo. Their actual, physical location has been hidden since then … their secrecy is their best defense against the hosts which might turn against their parasites.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
CEO Meina Gladstone was convinced that the Core dwelt in the interstices of the farcaster medium … like invisible spiders in an unseen web. It is the reason she authorized the deathbombing of the space-portal far-caster network … to strike at the Core. Was she wrong? Were the farcasters destroyed for nothing?

AENEA:
She was wrong, Fedmahn. The physical location of the Core was not within the farcaster medium … which is the fabric of the Void Which Binds. But the destruction of the farcasters was not in vain … it deprived the Core of the parasite medium upon which they fed on human minds, while silencing part of their megasphere data network.

LHOMO DONDRUB:
But, Aenea,
you
know where the Core resides?

AENEA:
I believe I do.

LHOMO DONDRUB:
Will you tell us so that we can attack them with our teeth and nails and bullets and plasma weapons?

AENEA:
I will not say at this time, Lhomo. Not until I am certain. And the Core cannot be attacked with physical weapons, just as it cannot be entered by physical entities.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
So once again they are impervious to our attacks? Free from confrontation?

AENEA:
No, neither impervious nor free from confrontation. If the fates allow, I will personally carry the attack to the physical Core. Indeed, that attack has already begun in ways that I hope to make clear later. And I promise you that I will confront the AIs in their lair.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
M. Aenea, Brawne’s child, may I ask another question relating to my own fate and future?

AENEA:
I will endeavor to answer, Colonel, while repeating my reluctance to discuss specifics of a topic as fluid as our future.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
Reluctant or no, child, I believe I deserve an answer to this question. I, too, have read these damned
Cantos
. In them, it says that I followed the apparition Moneta into the future while fighting the Shrike … trying to prevent it from slaughtering the other pilgrims. This was true … some months ago I arrived here. Moneta disappeared, but has reappeared in the younger version of this woman who calls herself Rachel Weintraub. But the
Cantos
also state that I will soon join in terrible battle with legions of Shrikes, will die, and will be entombed in the newly built Time Tomb called the Crystal Monolith on Hyperion, where my body travels back in time with Moneta as my companion. How can this be, M. Aenea? Have I come to the wrong time? The wrong place?

AENEA:
Colonel Kassad, friend and protector of my mother and the other pilgrims, be assured that all proceeds according to whatever plan there is. Uncle Martin wrote the
Cantos
given what revelation there was granted to him. Not all details of your life … or mine … were available to him. Indeed, he was told precious little of what was to transpire outside of his presence.

I can say this to you, Colonel Kassad … the battle with the Shrike is true, however metaphorically rendered. One possible future is for you to die in battle with the Shrike … with many Shrike-like warriors … and to be placed in the Crystal Monolith after a hero’s funeral. But if this were to come to pass, it would be after many years and many other battles. There is work for you to do in the days, months, years, and decades yet to come. I ask you now to accompany me on the
Yggdrasill
when I depart in three days … that will be the first step toward these battles.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD: (smiling)

But you deflect the question somewhat, M. Aenea. May I ask
you … will the Shrike be on your Tree of Pain when it leaves in three standard days’ time?

AENEA:
I believe it will, Colonel Kassad.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
You have not told us here tonight, M. Aenea,
what
the Shrike is … where it truly comes from … what its role in this centuries-old and centuries-to-come game is.

AENEA:
That is correct, Colonel. I have not told anyone here tonight.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
Have you ever told anyone, child?

AENEA:
No.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
But you
know
the origin of the Shrike.

AENEA:
Yes.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
Will you tell us, Brawne Lamia’s child?

AENEA:
I would prefer not to, Colonel.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
But you
will
if asked again, will you not? At least you will answer my direct questions on the matter?

AENEA: (nods silently … I see tears in her eyes)

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
The Shrike first appears in that same far future in which I do battle with it as per the Cantos, is this not correct, M. Aenea? That future in which the Core is making its last-ditch stand against its enemies?

AENEA:
Yes.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
And the Shrike is … will be … a construct, is it not? A created thing. A
Core
-created thing.

AENEA:
This is accurate.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
It will be a strange amalgam of Core technological wizardry, Void Which Binds energy, and the cybrid-recycled personality of a real human being, won’t it, M. Aenea?

AENEA:
Yes, Colonel. It will be all those things and more.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
And the Shrike will be created by the Core but will become a servant and Avatar of other … powers … entities, will it not?

AENEA:
Yes.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
In truth, Aenea, would you agree that the Shrike will be a pawn of both sides … of
all
sides … in this war for the soul of humankind … this war
that leaps back and forth across time like a four-dimensional chess game?

AENEA:
Yes, Colonel … although not a pawn. A knight, perhaps.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
All right, a knight. And this cybrid, Void Which Binds-connected, ARNied, DNA-engineered, nanotech-enhanced, terribly mutated knight … it starts with the personality of a single warrior, does it not? Perhaps an opponent in this thousand-year game?

AENEA:
Do you need to know this, Colonel? There is no greater hell than seeing the precise details of one’s …

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD: (softly)

Of one’s future? Of one’s own death? Of one’s fate? I know that, Aenea, daughter of my friend Brawne Lamia. I know that you have carried such terrible certitudes and visions with you since before you were born … since the days when your mother and I crossed the seas and mountains of Hyperion toward what we thought was our fate with the Shrike. I know that it has been very difficult for you, Aenea, my young friend … harder than any of us here could imagine. None of us could have borne up under such a burden.

But still I want to know this part of my own fate. And I believe that my years of service in the cause of this battle … years past and years yet to be given … have earned me the right to an answer.

Is the Shrike based on a single human warrior’s personality?

AENEA:
Yes.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD:
Mine? After my death in battle, the Core elements … or some power … will incorporate my will, my soul, my persona into that … monster … and send it back in time through the Crystal Monolith?

AENEA:
Yes, Colonel. Parts of your persona … but only parts of it … will be incorporated into the living construct called the Shrike.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD: (laughing)

But I can also live to
beat
it in battle?

AENEA:
Yes.

COLONEL FEDMAHN KASSAD: (laughing harder now, the laughter sounding sincere and unforced)

By God … by the will of Allah … if the universe has any soul, it is the soul of irony. I kill mine enemy, I eat his heart, and the enemy becomes me … and I become him.
(There are several more minutes of silence. I see that the tree-ship
Yggdrasill
has turned around and that we are approaching the great curve of the Biosphere Startree again.)

RACHEL WEINTRAVB:
Friend Aenea, Beloved Teacher, in the years I have listened to you teach and learned from you, one great mystery has haunted me.

AENEA:
What is that, Rachel?

RACHEL WEINTRAUB:
Through the Void Which Binds, you have heard the voices of the Others … the sentient races beyond our space and time whose memories and personalities resonate in the Void medium. Through communion with your blood, some of us have learned to hear the whispers of the echoes of those voices … of the Lions and Tigers and Bears, as some call them.

AENEA:
You are one of my best students, Rachel. You will someday hear these voices clearly. Just as you will learn to hear the music of the spheres and to take that first step.

RACHEL WEINTRAUB: (shaking her head)

That is not my question, friend Aenea. The mystery to me has been the presence in human space of an Observer or Observers sent by those … Others … those Lions and Tigers and Bears … to study humankind and report back to these distant races. Is the presence of this Observer … or these Observers … a literal fact?

AENEA:
It is.

RACHEL WEINTRAUB:
And they were able to take on the form of human or Ouster or Templar?

AENEA:
The Observer or Observers are not shapeshifters, Rachel. They chose to come among us in some sort of mortal form, that is true … much as my father was mortal but cybrid born.

RACHEL WEINTRAUB:
And this Observer or these Observers have been watching us for centuries?

AENEA:
Yes.

RACHEL WEINTRAUB:
Is that Observer … or one of these Observers … with us here today, on this treeship, or at this table?

AENEA: (hesitates)

Rachel, it is best that I say nothing more at this time. There are those who would kill such an Observer in an instant to protect the Pax or to defend what they think it means to be “human.” Even saying that such an Observer exists puts that entity at great risk. I am sorry … I promise you that this … this mystery … will be solved in the not-too-distant future
and the Observer or Observers’ identity revealed. Not by me, but by the Observer or Observers themselves.

TEMPLAR TRUE VOICE OF THE STARTREE KET ROSTEEN:
Brothers in the Muir, respected Ouster allies, honored human guests, beloved sentient friends, Revered One Who Teaches … we shall finish this discussion at another time and in another place. I take it as a consensus of those among us that M. Aenea’s request for the treeship
Yggdrasil
I to depart for Pax space in three standard days is agreed to … and that, with luck and courage, thus shall be fulfilled the ancient Templar prophecies of the Tree of Pain and the time of Atonement for all children of Old Earth.

Now we will finish our meal and speak of other things. This formal meeting is adjourned, and what remains of our short voyage must be friendly conversation, good food, and the sacrament of real coffee grown from beans harvested on Old Earth … our common home … the good Earth.

This meeting is adjourned. I have spoken.

Later that evening, in the warm light of our private cubby, Aenea and I made love, spoke of personal things, and had a late, second supper of wine and zygoat cheese and fresh bread.

Aenea had gone off to the kitchen cubby for a moment and returned with two crystal bulbs of wine. Offering me one, she said, “Here, Raul, my beloved … take this and drink.”

“Thanks,” I said without thinking and started to raise the bulb to my lips. Then I froze. “Is this … did you …”

“Yes,” said Aenea. “It is the communion that I have delayed so long for you. Now it is yours if you choose to drink. But you do not have to do this, my love. It will not change the way I feel about you if you choose not to.”

Still looking into her eyes, I drained the wine in the bulb. It tasted only of wine.

Aenea was weeping. She turned her head away, but I had already seen the tears in her lovely, dark eyes. I swept her up in my arms and we floated together in the warm womb light.

“Kiddo?” I whispered. “What’s wrong?” My heart ached as I wondered if she was thinking of the other man in her past, her marriage, the child … The wine had made me dizzy and a bit sick. Or perhaps it was not the wine.

She shook her head. “I love you, Raul.”

“I love you, Aenea.”

She kissed my neck and clung to me. “For what you have just done, for me, in my name, you will be hunted and persecuted …”

I forced a chuckle. “Hey, kiddo, I’ve been hunted and persecuted since the day we rode the hawking mat out of the Valley of the Time Tombs together. Nothing new there. I’d miss it if the Pax quit chasing us.”

She did not smile. I felt her tears against my throat and chest as she clung more tightly. “You will be the first among all those who follow me, Raul. You will be the leader in the decades and decades of struggle to come. You will be respected and hated, obeyed and despised … they will want to make a god of you, my darling.”