The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (47 page)

“No,” agreed the Consul, “but what they
contain
may explode. May already
have
exploded, for that matter.”

“A cube that size could hold a kiloton nuclear explosion in check as long as it was boxed during the nanosecond of ignition,” added Fedmahn Kassad.

Lamia scowled at the trunk. “Then how do we know that something in there didn’t kill Masteen?”

Kassad pointed to a faintly glowing green strip along the trunk’s only seam. “It’s sealed. Once unsealed, a Möbius cube has to be reactivated at a place where containment fields can be generated. Whatever’s in there didn’t harm Captain Masteen.”

“So there’s no way to tell?” mused Lamia.

“I have a good guess,” said the Consul.

The others looked at him. Rachel began to cry and Sol pulled a heating strip on a nursing pak.

“Remember,” said the Consul, “at Edge yesterday when M. Masteen made a big deal out of the cube? He talked about it as if it were a secret weapon?”

“A weapon?” said Lamia.

“Of course!” Kassad said suddenly. “An erg!”

“Erg?” Martin Silenus stared at the small crate. “I thought ergs were those forcefield critters that Templars use on their treeships.”

“They are,” said the Consul. “The things were found about three centuries ago living on asteroids around Aldebaran. Bodies about as big as a cat’s spine, mostly a piezoelectric nervous system sheathed in silicon gristle, but they feed on … and manipulate … forcefields as large as those generated by small spinships.”

“So how do you get all that into such a little box?” asked Silenus, staring at the Möbius cube. “Mirrors?”

“In a sense,” said Kassad. “The thing’s field would be damped … neither starving nor feeding. Rather like cryogenic fugue for us. Plus this must be a small one. A cub, so to speak.”

Lamia ran her hand along the metal sheath. “Templars control these things? Communicate with them?”

“Yes,” said Kassad. “No one is quite sure how. It’s one of the Brotherhood secrets. But Het Masteen must have been confident that the erg would help him with …”

“The Shrike,” finished Martin Silenus. “The Templar thought that this energy imp would be his secret weapon when he faced the Lord of Pain.” The poet laughed.

Father Hoyt cleared his throat. “The Church has accepted the Hegemony’s ruling that … these creatures … ergs … are not sentient beings … and thus not candidates for salvation.”

“Oh, they’re sentient, all right, Father,” said the Consul. “They
perceive
things far better than we could ever imagine. But if you mean intelligent … self-aware … then you’re dealing with something along the lines of a smart grasshopper. Are grasshoppers candidates for salvation?”

Hoyt said nothing. Brawne Lamia said, “Well, evidently Captain
Masteen thought this thing was going to be
his
salvation. Something went wrong.” She looked around at the bloodstained bulkheads and at the drying stains on the deck. “Let’s get out of here.”

   The windwagon tacked into increasingly strong winds as the storm approached from the northeast. Ragged banners of clouds raced white beneath the low, gray ceiling of stormfront. Grasses whipped and bent under gusts of cold wind. Ripples of lightning illuminated the horizon and were followed by rolls of thunder sounding like warning shots, across the windwagon’s bow. The pilgrims watched in silence until the first icy raindrops drove them below to the large stateroom in the stern.

“This was in his robe pocket,” said Brawne Lamia, holding up a slip of paper with the number 5 on it.

“So Masteen would have told his story next,” muttered the Consul.

Martin Silenus tilted his chair until his back touched the tall windows. Storm light made his satyr’s features appear slightly demonic. “There’s another possibility,” he said. “Perhaps someone who hasn’t spoken yet had the fifth spot and killed the Templar to trade places.”

Lamia stared at the poet. “That would have to be the Consul or me,” she said, her voice flat.

Silenus shrugged.

Brawne Lamia pulled another piece of paper from her tunic. “I have number 6. What would I have achieved? I go next anyway.”

“Then perhaps it’s what Masteen would have
said
that needed to be silenced,” said the poet. He shrugged again. “Personally, I think the Shrike has begun harvesting us. Why did we think we’d be allowed to get to the Tombs when the thing’s been slaughtering people halfway from here to Keats?”

“This is different,” said Sol Weintraub. “This is the Shrike Pilgrimage.”

“So?”

In the silence that followed, the Consul walked to the windows.
Wind-driven torrents of rain obscured the Sea and rattled the leaded panes. The wagon creaked and leaned heavily to starboard as it began another leg of its tack.

“M. Lamia,” asked Colonel Kassad, “do you want to tell your story now?”

Lamia folded her arms and looked at the rain-streaked glass. “No. Let’s wait until we get off this damned ship. It stinks of death.”

   The windwagon reached the port of Pilgrims’ Rest in midafternoon but the storm and tired light made it feel like late evening to the weary passengers. The Consul had expected representatives from the Shrike Temple to meet them here at the beginning of the penultimate stage of their journey but Pilgrims’ Rest appeared to the Consul to be as empty as Edge had been.

The approach to the foothills and the first sight of the Bridle Range was as exciting as any landfall and brought all six of the would-be pilgrims on deck despite the cold rain which continued to fall. The foothills were sere and sensuous, their brown curves and sudden upthrustings contrasting strongly with the verdant monochrome of the Sea of Grass. The nine-thousand-meter peaks beyond were only hinted at by gray and white planes soon intersected by low clouds, but even so truncated were powerful to behold. The snow line came down to a point just above the collection of burned-out hovels and cheap hotels which had been Pilgrims’ Rest.

“If they destroyed the tramway, we’re finished,” muttered the Consul. The thought of it, forbidden until now, made his stomach turn over.

“I see the first five towers,” said Colonel Kassad, using his powered glasses. “They seem intact.”

“Any sign of a car?”

“No … wait, yes. There’s one in the gate at the station platform.”

“Any moving?” asked Martin Silenus, who obviously understood how desperate their situation would be if the tramway was not intact.

“No.”

The Consul shook his head. Even in the worst weather with no
passengers, the cars had been kept moving to keep the great cables flexed and free of ice.

The six of them had their luggage on deck even before the windwagon reefed its sails and extended a gangplank. Each now wore a heavy coat against the elements—Kassad in FORCE-issue thermouflage cape, Brawne Lamia in a long garment called a trenchcoat for reasons long forgotten, Martin Silenus in thick furs which rippled now sable, now gray with the vagaries of wind, Father Hoyt in long black which made him more of a scarecrow figure than ever, Sol Weintraub in a thick goosedown jacket which covered him and the child, and the Consul in the thinning but serviceable greatcoat his wife had given him some decades before.

“What about Captain Masteen’s things?” asked Sol as they stood at the head of the gangplank. Kassad had gone ahead to reconnoiter the village.

“I brought them up,” said Lamia. “We’ll take them with us.”

“It doesn’t seem right somehow,” said Father Hoyt. “Just going on, I mean. There should be some … service. Some recognition that a man has died.”

“May
have died,” reminded Lamia, easily lifting a forty-kilo backpack with one hand.

Hoyt looked incredulous, “Do you really believe that M. Masteen might be alive?”

“No,” said Lamia. Snowflakes settled on her black hair.

Kassad waved to them from the end of the dock and they carried their luggage off the silent windwagon. No one looked back.

“Empty?” called Lamia as they approached the Colonel. The tall man’s cloak was still fading from its gray and black chameleon mode.

“Empty.”

“Bodies?”

“No,” said Kassad. He turned toward Sol and the Consul. “Did you get the things from the galley?”

Both men nodded.

“What things?” asked Silenus.

“A week’s worth of food,” said Kassad, turning to look up the hill toward the tramway station. For the first time the Consul noticed
the long assault weapon in the crook of the Colonel’s arm, barely visible under the cloak. “We’re not sure if there are any provisions beyond this point.”

Will we be alive a week from now?
thought the Consul. He said nothing.

They ferried the gear to the station in two trips. Wind whistled through the open windows and shattered domes of the dark buildings. On the second trip, the Consul carried one end of Masteen’s Möbius cube while Lenar Hoyt puffed and panted under the other end.

“Why are we taking the erg thing with us?” gasped Hoyt as they reached the base of the metal stairway leading to the station. Rust streaked and spotted the platform like orange lichen.

“I don’t know,” said the Consul, gasping for breath himself.

From the terminal platform they could see far out over the Sea of Grass. The windwagon sat where they had left it, sails reefed, a dark and lifeless thing. Snow squalls moved across the prairie and gave the illusion of whitecaps on the numberless stalks of high grass.

“Get the material aboard,” called Kassad. “I’ll see if the running gear can be reset from the operator’s cabin up there.”

“Isn’t it automatic?” asked Martin Silenus, his small head almost lost in thick furs. “Like the windwagon?”

“I don’t think so,” said Kassad. “Go on, I’ll see if I can get it started up.”

“What if it leaves without you?” called Lamia at the Colonel’s retreating back.

“It won’t.”

   The interior of the tramcar was cold and bare except for metal benches in the forward compartment and a dozen rough bunks in the smaller, rear area. The car was big—at least eight meters long by five wide. The rear compartment was partitioned from the front cabin by a thin metal bulkhead with an opening but no door. A small commode took up a closet-sized corner of this aft compartment. Windows rising from waist height to the roofline lined the forward compartment.

The pilgrims heaped their luggage in the center of the wide floor
and stomped around, waved their arms, or otherwise worked to stay warm. Martin Silenus lay full length on one of the benches, with only his feet and the top of his head emerging from fur. “I forgot,” he said, “how the fuck do you turn on the heat in this thing?”

The Consul glanced at the dark lighting panels. “It’s electrical. It’ll come on when the Colonel gets us moving.”

“
If
the Colonel gets us moving,” said Silenus.

Sol Weintraub had changed Rachel’s diaper. Now he bundled her up again in an infant’s thermsuit and rocked her in his arms. “Obviously I’ve never been here before,” he said. “Both of you gentlemen have?”

“Yeah,” said the poet.

“No,” said the Consul. “But I’ve seen pictures of the tramway.”

“Kassad said he
returned
to Keats once this way,” called Brawne Lamia from the other room.

“I think …” began Sol Weintraub and was interrupted by a great grinding of gears and a wild lurch as the long car rocked sickeningly and then swung forward under the suddenly moving cable. Everyone rushed to the window on the platform side.

Kassad had thrown his gear aboard before climbing the long ladder to the operator’s cabin. Now he appeared in the cabin’s doorway, slid down the long ladder, and ran toward the car. The car was already passing beyond the loading area of the platform.

“He isn’t going to make it,” whispered Father Hoyt.

Kassad sprinted the last ten meters with legs that looked impossibly long, a cartoon stick figure of a man.

The tramcar slid out of the loading notch, swung free of the station. Space opened between the car and the station. It was eight meters to the rocks below. The platform deck was streaked with ice. Kassad ran full speed ahead even as the car pulled away.

“Come on!” screamed Brawne Lamia. The others picked up the cry.

The Consul looked up at sheaths of ice cracking and dropping away from the cable as the tramcar moved up and forward. He looked back. There was too much space. Kassad could never make it.

Fedmahn Kassad was moving at an incredible speed when he reached the edge of the platform. The Consul was reminded for the second time of the Old Earth jaguar he had seen in a Lusus zoo. He half expected to see the Colonel’s feet slip on a patch of ice, the long legs flying out horizontal, the man falling silently to the snowy boulders below. Instead, Kassad seemed to fly for an endless moment, long arms extended, cape flying out behind. He disappeared behind the car.

There came a thud, followed by a long minute when no one spoke or moved. They were forty meters high now, climbing toward the first tower. A second later Kassad became visible at the corner of the car, pulling himself along a series of icy niches and handholds in the metal. Brawne Lamia flung open the cabin door. Ten hands helped pull Kassad inside.

“Thank God,” said Father Hoyt.

The Colonel took a deep breath and smiled grimly. “There was a dead man’s brake. I had to rig the lever with a sandbag. I didn’t want to bring the car back for a second try.”

Martin Silenus pointed to the rapidly approaching support tower and the ceiling of clouds just beyond. The cable stretched upward into oblivion. “I guess we’re crossing the mountains now whether we want to or not.”

“How long to make the crossing?” asked Hoyt.

“Twelve hours. A little less perhaps. Sometimes the operators would stop the cars if the wind rose too high or the ice got too bad.”

“We won’t be stopping on this trip,” said Kassad.

“Unless the cable’s breached somewhere,” said the poet. “Or we hit a snag.”

“Shut up,” said Lamia. “Who’s interested in heating some dinner?”

“Look,” said the Consul.

They moved to the forward windows. The tram rose a hundred meters above the last brown curve of foothills. Kilometers below and behind they caught a final glimpse of the station, the haunted hovels of Pilgrims’ Rest, and the motionless windwagon.