The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (35 page)

For a second the pyre was a perfect sculpture of flame, a blue and yellow
Pietà
with a four-armed madonna holding a blazing Christ figure. Then the burning figure writhed and arched, still pinned by steel thorns and a score of scalpeled talons, and a cry went up which to this day I cannot believe emanated from the human half of that death-embraced pair. The scream knocked me to my knees, echoed from every hard surface in the city, and drove the pigeons into wheeling panic. And the scream continued for minutes after the flaming vision simply ceased to be, leaving behind neither ashes nor retinal image. It was another minute or two before I realized that the scream I now heard was mine.

   Anticlimax is, of course, the warp and way of things. Real life seldom structures a decent denouement.

It took me several months, perhaps a year, to recopy the kerosene-damaged pages and to rewrite the burned
Cantos
. It will be no
surprise to learn that I did not finish the poem. It was not by choice. My muse had fled.

The City of Poets decayed in peace. I stayed another year or two—perhaps five, I do not know; I was quite mad by then. To this day records of early Shrike pilgrims tell of the gaunt figure, all hair and rags and bulging eyes, who would wake them from their Gethsemane sleep by screaming obscenities and shaking his fist at the silent Time Tombs, daring the coward within to show itself.

Eventually the madness burned itself out—although the embers will always glow—and I hiked the fifteen hundred kilometers to civilization, my backpack weighted down with just manuscript, surviving on rock eels and snow and on nothing at all for the last ten days.

The two and a half centuries since are not worth telling, much less reliving. The Poulsen treatments to keep the instrument alive and waiting. Two long, cold sleeps in illegal, sublight, cryogenic voyages; each swallowing a century or more; each taking its toll in brain cells and memory.

I waited then. I wait still. The poem must be finished. It
will
be finished.

In the beginning was the Word.

In the end … past honor, past life, past caring …

In the end will be the Word.

4

The
Benares
put into Edge a little after noon on the next day. One of the mantas had died in harness only twenty kilometers downriver from their destination and A. Bettik had cut it loose. The other had lasted until they tied up to the bleached pier and then it rolled over in total exhaustion, bubbles rising from its twin airholes. Bettik ordered this manta cut loose as well, explaining that it had a slim chance of surviving if it drifted along in the more rapid current.

The pilgrims had been awake and watching the scenery roll by since before sunrise. They spoke little and none had found anything to say to Martin Silenus. The poet did not appear to mind … he drank wine with his breakfast and sang bawdy songs as the sun rose.

The river had widened during the night and by morning it was a two-kilometer-wide highway of blue gray cutting through the low green hills south of the Sea of Grass. There were no trees this close to the Sea, and the browns and golds and heather tones of the Mane shrubs had gradually brightened to the bold greens of the two-meter-tall northern grasses. All morning the hills had been pressed lower until now they were compressed into low bands of grassy bluffs on either side of the river. An almost invisible darkening hung above the horizon to the north and east, and those pilgrims who had lived
on ocean worlds and knew it as a promise of the approaching sea had to remind themselves that the only sea now near was comprised of several billion acres of grass.

Edge never had been a large outpost and now it was totally deserted. The score of buildings lining the rutted lane from the dock had the vacant gaze of all abandoned structures and there were signs on the riverfront that the population had fled weeks earlier. The Pilgrims’ Rest, a three-century-old inn just below the crest of the hill, had been burned.

A. Bettik accompanied them to the summit of the low bluff. “What will you do now?” Colonel Kassad asked the android.

“According to the terms of the Temple bonditure, we are free after this trip,” said Bettik. “We shall leave the
Benares
here for your return and take the launch downriver. And then we go on our way.”

“With the general evacuations?” asked Brawne Lamia.

“No.” Bettik smiled. “We have our own purposes and pilgrimages on Hyperion.”

The group reached the rounded crest of the bluff. Behind them, the
Benares
seemed a small thing tied to a sagging dock; the Hoolie ran southwest into the blue haze of distance below the town and curved west above it, narrowing toward the impassable Lower Cataracts a dozen kilometers upriver from Edge. To their north and east lay the Sea of Grass.

“My God,” breathed Brawne Lamia.

It was as if they had climbed the last hill in creation. Below them, a scattering of docks, wharves, and sheds marked the end of Edge and the beginning of the Sea. Grass stretched away forever, rippling sensuously in the slight breeze and seeming to lap like a green surf at the base of the bluffs. The grass seemed infinite and seamless, stretching to all horizons and apparently rising to precisely the same height as far as the eye could see. There was not the slightest hint of the snowy peaks of the Bridle Range, which they knew lay some eight hundred kilometers to the northeast. The illusion that they were gazing at a great green sea was nearly perfect, down to the wind-ruffled shimmers of stalks looking like whitecaps far from shore.

“It’s beautiful,” said Lamia, who had never seen it before.

“It’s striking at sunset and sunrise,” said the Consul.

“Fascinating,” murmured Sol Weintraub, lifting his infant so that she could see. She wiggled in happiness and concentrated on watching her fingers.

“A well-preserved ecosystem,” Het Masteen said approvingly. “The Muir would be pleased.”

“Shit,” said Martin Silenus.

The others turned to stare.

“There’s no fucking windwagon,” said the poet.

The four other men, woman, and android stared silently at the abandoned wharves and empty plain of grass.

“It’s been delayed,” said the Consul.

Martin Silenus barked a laugh. “Or it’s left already. We were supposed to be here last night.”

Colonel Kassad raised his powered binoculars and swept the horizon. “I find it unlikely that they would have left without us,” he said. “The wagon was to have been sent by the Shrike Temple priests themselves. They have a vested interest in our pilgrimage.”

“We could walk,” said Lenar Hoyt. The priest looked pale and weak, obviously in the grip of both pain and drugs, and barely able to stand, much less walk.

“No,” said Kassad. “It’s hundreds of klicks and the grass is over our heads.”

“Compasses,” said the priest.

“Compasses don’t work on Hyperion,” said Kassad, still watching through his binoculars.

“Direction finders then,” said Hoyt.

“We have an IDF, but that isn’t the point,” said the Consul. “The grass is sharp. Half a klick out and we’d be nothing but tatters.”

“And there are the grass serpents,” said Kassad, lowering the glasses. “It’s a well-preserved ecosystem but not one to take a stroll in.”

Father Hoyt sighed and half collapsed into the short grass of the hilltop. There was something close to relief in his voice when he said, “All right, we go back.”

A. Bettik stepped forward. “The crew will be happy to wait and ferry you back to Keats in the
Benares
should the windwagon not appear.”

“No,” said the Consul, “take the launch and go.”

“Hey, just a fucking minute!” cried Martin Silenus. “I don’t remember electing you dictator, amigo. We
need to get there
. If the fucking windwagon doesn’t show, we’ll have to find another way.”

The Consul wheeled to face the smaller man. “How? By boat? It takes two weeks to sail up the Mane and around the North Littoral to Otho or one of the other staging areas. And that’s when there are ships available. Every seagoing vessel on Hyperion is probably involved in the evacuation effort.”

“Dirigible then,” growled the poet.

Brawne Lamia laughed. “Oh, yes. We’ve seen so
many
in the two days we’ve been on the river.”

Martin Silenus whirled and clenched his fists as if to strike the woman. Then he smiled. “All right then, lady, what do we do? Maybe if we sacrifice someone to a grass serpent the transportation gods will smile on us.”

Brawne Lamia’s stare was arctic. “I thought burned offerings were more your style, little man.”

Colonel Kassad stepped between the two. His voice barked command. “Enough. The Consul’s right. We stay here until the wagon arrives. M. Masteen, M. Lamia, go with A. Bettik to supervise the unloading of our gear. Father Hoyt and M. Silenus will bring some wood up for a bonfire.”

“A bonfire?” said the priest. It was hot on the hillside.

“After dark,” said Kassad. “We want the windwagon to know we’re here. Now let’s
move
.”

   It was a quiet group that watched the powered launch move downriver at sunset. Even from two kilometers away the Consul could see the blue skins of the crew. The
Benares
looked old and abandoned at its wharf, already a part of the deserted city. When the launch was lost in the distance, the group turned to watch the Sea of Grass. Long shadows from the river bluffs crept out across what the Consul already found himself thinking of as the surf and shallows. Farther out, the sea seemed to shift in color, the grass mellowing to an aquamarine shimmer before darkening to a hint of
verdurous depths. The lapis sky melted into the reds and golds of sunset, illuminating their hilltop and setting the pilgrims’ skins aglow with liquid light. The only sound was the whisper of wind in grass.

“We’ve got a fucking huge heap of baggage,” Martin Silenus said loudly. “For a bunch of folks on a one-way trip.”

It was true, thought the Consul. Their luggage made a small mountain on the grassy hilltop.

“Somewhere in there,” came the quiet voice of Het Masteen, “may lie our salvation.”

“What do you mean?” asked Brawne Lamia.

“Yeah,” said Martin Silenus, lying back, putting his hands under his head, and staring at the sky. “Did you bring a pair of undershorts that are Shrikeproof?”

The Templar shook his head slowly. The sudden twilight cast his face in shadow under the cowl of the robe. “Let us not trivialize or dissemble,” he said. “It is time to admit that each of us has brought on this pilgrimage something which he or she hopes will alter the inevitable outcome when the moment arrives that we must face the Lord of Pain.”

The poet laughed. “I didn’t bring even my lucky fucking rabbit’s foot.”

The Templar’s hood moved slightly. “But your manuscript perhaps?”

The poet said nothing.

Het Masteen moved his invisible gaze to the tall man on his left. “And you, Colonel, there are several trunks which bear your name. Weapons, perhaps?”

Kassad raised his head but did not speak.

“Of course,” said Het Masteen, “it would be foolish to go hunting without a weapon.”

“What about me?” asked Brawne Lamia, folding her arms. “Do you know what secret weapon I’ve smuggled along?”

The Templar’s oddly accented voice was calm. “We have not yet heard your tale, M. Lamia. It would be premature to speculate.”

“What about the Consul?” asked Lamia.

“Oh, yes, it is obvious what weapon our diplomatic friend has in store.”

The Consul turned from his contemplation of the sunset. “I brought only some clothes and two books to read,” he said truthfully.

“Ah,” sighed the Templar, “but what a beautiful spacecraft you left behind.”

Martin Silenus jumped to his feet. “The fucking ship!” he cried. “You can call it, can’t you? Well, goddammit, get your dog whistle out, I’m tired of sitting here.”

The Consul pulled a strand of grass and stripped it. After a minute he said:

“Even if I could call it … and you heard A. Bettik say that the comsats and repeater stations were down … even if I could call it, we couldn’t land north of the Bridle Range. That meant instant disaster even
before
the Shrike began ranging south of the mountains.”