“They can lance you at half an AU,” I said, not convinced.
“Yes,” agreed the ship. “Nothing to worry about … if we have fifteen minutes’ head start.”
I turned back to the frowning holo and silent android. “That’s all great,” I said. “If it’s true. But it doesn’t help me figure out how to get the girl to the ship or the ship away from Hyperion with that fifteen-minute head start. The torchships will be in what’s called a COP—a combat orbiting patrol. One or more of them will be over Equus every second, covering every cubic meter of space from a hundred light-minutes out to the upper atmosphere. At about thirty kilometers, the combat air patrol—probably Scorpion-class pulse fighters, able to scram into low orbit if need be—will take over. Neither the space nor atmospheric patrol would allow the ship fifteen seconds on their screens, much less fifteen minutes.” I looked at the old man’s younger face. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me. Ship? Did the Ousters fit you with some sort of magical stealth technology? An invisibility shield or something?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” said the ship. After a second it added, “That wouldn’t be possible, would it?”
I ignored the ship. “Look,” I said to Martin Silenus, “I’d like to help you get the girl—”
“Aenea,” said the old man.
“I’d like to get Aenea away from these guys, but if she’s as important as you say she is to the Pax … I mean, three thousand Swiss Guard, good Christ … there’s no way we can get within five hundred kilometers of the Valley of the Time Tombs, even with this nifty-keen spaceship.”
I saw the doubt in Silenus’s eyes, even through holographic distortion, so I continued. “I’m serious,” I said. “Even if there were no space or air cover, no torchships or fighters or airborne radar, there’s the Swiss Guard. I mean”—I found that I was clenching my hands into fists as I spoke—”these guys are deadly. They’re trained to work in squads of five, and any one of those squads could bring down a spaceship like this.”
The satyr’s brows arched in surprise or doubt.
“Listen,” I said again. “Ship?”
“Yes, M. Endymion?”
“Do you have defensive shields?”
“No, M. Endymion. I do have Ouster-enhanced containment fields, but they are only for civilian use.”
I didn’t know what “Ouster-enhanced containment fields” were, but I went on. “Could they stop a standard torchship CPB or lance?”
“No,” said the ship.
“Could you defeat C-plus or conventional kinetic torpedoes?”
“No.”
“Could you outrun them?”
“No.”
“Could you prevent a boarding party from entering?”
“No.”
“Do you have any offensive or defensive abilities that could deal with Pax warships?”
“Unless one counts being able to run like hell, M. Endymion, the answer is no,” said the ship.
I looked back at Martin Silenus. “We’re screwed,” I said softly. “Even if I could get to the girl, they’d just capture me as well as her.”
Martin Silenus smiled. “Perhaps not,” he said. He nodded to A. Bettik, and the android went up the spiral stairway to the upper level and returned in less than a minute. He was carrying a rolled cylinder of something.
“If this is the secret weapon,” I said, “it had better be good.”
“It is,” said the poet’s smirking hologram. He nodded again and A. Bettik unrolled the cylinder.
It was a rug, a bit less than two meters long and a bit more than a meter wide. The cloth was frayed and faded, but I could see intricate designs and patterns. A complex weave of gold threads were still as bright as …
“My God,” I said, the realization hitting me like a fist to the solar plexus. “A hawking mat.”
The holo of Martin Silenus cleared his throat as if preparing to spit. “Not a hawking mat,” he grumbled. “The hawking mat.”
I took a step back. This was the stuff of pure legend, and I was almost standing on it.
There had been only a few hundred hawking mats in existence, ever, and this was the first one—created by the Old Earth lepidopterist and legendary EM-systems inventor Vladimir Sholokov shortly after the destruction of Old Earth. Sholokov—already in his seventies, standard, had fallen madly in love with his teenage niece, Alotila, and had created this flying carpet to win her love in return. After a passionate interlude, the teenager had spurned the old man, Sholokov had killed himself on New Earth only weeks after perfecting the current Hawking spindrive, and the carpet had been lost for centuries … until Mike Osho bought it in Carvnel Marketplace and took it to Maui-Covenant, using it with his fellow shipman Merin Aspic in what would become another love affair that would enter legend—the love of Merin and Siri. This second legend, of course, had become part of Martin Silenus’s epic Cantos, and if his tale was to be believed, Siri had been the Consul’s grandmother. In the Cantos the Hegemony Consul had used this very same hawking mat (“hawking” here with a small h because it referred to the Old Earth bird, not to the pre-Hegira scientist named Hawking whose work had led to the C-plus breakthrough with the improved interstellar drive) to cross Hyperion in one final legend—this being the Consul’s epic flight toward the city of Keats from the Valley of the Time Tombs to free this very ship and fly it back to the tombs.
I went to one knee and reverently touched the artifact.
“Jesus H. Christ,” said Silenus, “it’s only a fucking rug. And an ugly one at that. I wouldn’t have it in my house—it clashes with everything.”
I looked up.
“Yes,” said A. Bettik, “this is the same hawking mat.”
“Does it still fly?” I asked.
A. Bettik dropped to one knee next to me and extended his blue-fingered hand, tapping at the curled and complicated design. The hawking mat grew as rigid as a board and hovered ten centimeters above the floor.
I shook my head. “I never understood.… EM systems don’t work on Hyperion because of the weird magnetic field here.…”
“Big EM systems don’t,” snapped Martin Silenus. “EMVs. Levitation barges. Big stuff. The carpet does. And it’s been improved.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Improved?”
“The Ousters again,” came the ship’s voice. “I don’t remember it well, but they tinkered with a lot of things when we visited them two and a half centuries ago.”
“Evidently,” I said. I stood and nudged the legendary mat with my foot. It bounced as if on firm springs but remained hovering where it was. “Okay,” I said, “we have Merin and Siri’s hawking mat, which … if I remember the story … could fly along at about twenty klicks per hour.…”
“Twenty-six kilometers per hour was its top speed,” said A. Bettik.
I nodded and nudged the hovering carpet again. “Twenty-six klicks per hour with a good tailwind,” I said. “And the Valley of the Time Tombs is how far from here?”
“One thousand six hundred eighty-nine kilometers,” said the ship.
“And how much time do we have before Aenea steps out of the Sphinx there?” I said.
“Twenty hours,” said Martin Silenus. He must have tired of his younger image, because the holo projection was now of the old man as I had seen him the night before, hoverchair and all.
I glanced at my wrist chronometer. “I’m late,” I said. “I should have started flying a couple of days ago.” I walked back to the grand piano. “And what if I had? This is our secret weapon? Does it have some sort of super defense field to protect me … and the girl … from Swiss Guard lances and bullets?”
“No,” said A. Bettik. “It has no defensive capabilities whatsoever, except for a containment field to deflect the wind and to keep its occupants in place.”
I shrugged. “So what do I do … carry the rug to the Valley and offer the Pax a trade—one old hawking mat for the kid?”
A. Bettik remained kneeling by the hov
ering carpet. His blue fingers continued to caress the faded fabric. “The Ousters modified it to hold a charge longer—up to a thousand hours.”
I nodded. Impressive superconductor technology, but totally irrelevant.
“And it now flies at speeds in excess of three hundred kilometers per hour,” continued the android.
I chewed my lip. So I could get there by tomorrow. If I wanted to sit on a flying rug for five and a half hours. And then what … ?
“I thought we had to pluck her away in this ship,” I said. “Get her out of the Hyperion system and all that …”
“Yes,” said Martin Silenus, his voice suddenly as tired as his aged image, “but first you have to get her to the ship.”
I walked away from the piano, stopping at the spiral staircase to whirl back toward the android, the holo, and the hovering carpet. “You two just don’t understand, do you?” I said, my voice louder and sharper than I had intended. “These are Swiss Guard! If you think that damned rug can get me in under their radar, motion detectors, and other sensors, you’re crazy. I’d just be a sitting duck flapping along at three hundred klicks per hour. Believe me, the Swiss Guard grunts—much less the pulse jets in combat air patrol—much less the orbiting torchships—would lance this thing in a nanosecond.”
I paused and squinted at them. “Unless … there’s something else you’re not telling me …”
“Of course there is,” said Martin Silenus, and managed a satyr’s tired smile. “Of course there is.”
“Let’s take the hawking mat out to the tower window,” said A. Bettik. “You have to learn how to handle it.”
“Now?” I said, my voice suddenly small. I felt my heart begin to hammer.
“Now,” said Martin Silenus. “You have to be proficient at flying it by the time you leave at oh-three-hundred hours tomorrow.”
“I do?” I said, staring at the hovering, legendary rug with a growing sense of THIS IS REAL.… I MAY DIE TOMORROW.
“You do,” said Martin Silenus.
A. Bettik deactivated the hawking mat and rolled it into a cylinder. I followed him down the metal stairs and out the corridor to the tower staircase. The sunlight was bright through the open tower window. My God, I thought as the android spread the carpet on the stone ledge and activated it again. It was still a long drop to the stones below. My God, I thought again, my pulse pounding in my ears. There was no sign of the old poet’s holo.
A. Bettik gestured me onto the hovering hawking mat. “I’ll go with you on the first flight,” the android said softly. A breeze rustled the leaves atop the nearby chalma tree.
My God, I thought a final time, and climbed onto the sill and then onto the hawking mat.
11
Precisely two hours before the child is scheduled to emerge from the Sphinx, an alarm sounds in Father Captain de Soya’s command skimmer.
“Airborne contact, bearing one-seven-two, northbound, speed two-seven-four klicks, altitude four meters,” comes the voice of the COP defense-perimeter controller from the C3-ship six hundred kilometers above. “Distance to intruder, five hundred seventy klicks.”
“Four meters?” says de Soya, looking at Commander Barnes-Avne where she sits across from him at the CIC console amidships in the skimmer.
“Trying to come in low and slow under detection,” says the Commander. She is a small woman with pale skin and red hair, but very little of either skin or hair is visible under the combat headgear she wears. In the three weeks de Soya has known the Commander, he has not seen her smile. “Tactical visor,” she says. Her own visor is in place. De Soya lowers his.
The blip is near the southern tip of Equus, moving north from the coast. “Why didn’t we see it before?” he asks.
“Could have just launched,” says Barnes-Avne. She is checking combat assets within her tactical display. After the first difficult hour in which de Soya had to present the papal diskey to convince her that command of the Pax’s most elite brigades was to be handed over to a mere ship’s captain, Barnes-Avne has shown total cooperation. Of course, de Soya has left the minute-to-minute operation to her. Many of the Swiss Guard Brigade leaders believe de Soya to be a mere papal liaison. De Soya does not care. The child is his concern, the girl, and as long as the groundforce is being well commanded, the details are of little concern.
“No visual,” says the Commander. “Dust storm down there. It’ll be here before S-hour.”
“S-hour” is what the troops have been calling the opening of the Sphinx for months now. Only a few officers among them know that a child has been the focus of all this firepower. Swiss Guards do not grumble, but few could appreciate such a provincial posting, so far from the action, in such sandy and uncomfortable surroundings.
“Contact remains northbound, one-seven-two, velocity now two-five-nine klicks, altitude three meters,” says the C3 controller. “Distance five hundred seventy kilometers.”
“Time to bring it down,” says Commander Barnes-Avne on the command channel limited to her and de Soya. “Recommendations?”
De Soya glances up. The skimmer is banking to the south. Outside the mantis-eye blisters, the horizon tilts and the bizarre Time Tombs of Hyperion pass a thousand meters beneath them. The sky to the south is a dull brown-and-yellow band. “Lance it from orbit?” he says.
Barnes-Avne nods but says, “You’re familiar with the torchships’ work. Let’s put a squad on it.” With her god-glove she touches red pips at the southern tip of the defensive perimeter. “Sergeant Gregorius?” She has switched to the tactical-channel tightbeam.
“Commander?” The sergeant’s voice is deep and graveled.
“You’re monitoring the bogey?”
“Affirmative, Commander.”
“Intercept it, identify it, and destroy it, Sergeant.”
“Affirmative, Commander.”
De Soya watches as the C3 cameras zoom toward the southern desert. Five human forms suddenly appear rising from the dunes, their chameleon polymer fading as they rise above dust cloud. On a normal world they would be flying by EM repulsore; on Hyperion they wear the bulkier reaction paks. The five fan out so that several hundred meters separate them and hurtle southward into the dust cloud.
“IR,” says Barnes-Avne, and the visual shifts to the infrared to follow them through the thickening cloud. “Illuminate target,” she says. The image shifts south, but the target is only a heat blur.
“Small,” says the Commander.
“Plane?” Father Captain de Soya is used to spaceborne tactical displays.
“Too small, unless it’s some sort of motorized paraglider,” says Barnes-Avne. There is absolutely no stress in her voice.
De Soya looks down as the skimmer passes over the south end of the Valley of the Time Tombs and accelerates. The dust storm is a gold-brown band along the horizon ahead of them.
“Distance to intercept one hundred eighty klicks,” comes Sergeant Gregorius’s laconic voice. De Soya’s visor is slaved to the Commander’s, and they are seeing what the Swiss Guard sergeant sees—nothing. The squad of troops is flying on instruments through blowing sand so thick that the air is as dark as night around them.
“Reaction paks are heating up,” comes another calm voice. De Soya checks the readout. It is Corporal Kee. “Sand’s foulin’ up the intakes,” continues the corporal.
De Soya looks through his visor at Commander Barnes-Avne. He knows she has a tough choice to make—another minute in that dust cloud could send one or more of her troops falling to their deaths; failure to identify the bogey could lead to trouble later.
“Sergeant Gregorius,” she says, her voice still rock calm, “take out the intruder now.”
There is the briefest of pauses on the comline. “Commander, we can hang in here a few more …,” begins the sergeant. De Soya can hear the howl of the dust storm over the man’s voice.
“Take it out now, Sergeant,” says Barnes-Avne.
“Affirmative.”
De Soya switches to
the wide-range tactical and looks up to see the Commander watching him. “You think this might be a feint?” she says. “A distraction to pull us away so that the real intruder can infiltrate elsewhere?”
“Could be,” says de Soya. He sees from the display that the Commander has raised the alert all along the perimeter to Level Five. A Level Six alert is combat.
“Let’s see,” she says, just as Gregorius’s troops fire.
The dust storm is a rolling cauldron of sand and electricity. At 175 kilometers, their energy weapons are unreliable. Gregorius chooses a steel rain dart and launches it himself. The dart accelerates to Mach 6. The bogey does not divert from its path.
“No sensors, I think,” says Barnes-Avne. “It’s flying blind. Programmed.”
The dart passes over the heat target and detonates at a distance of thirty meters, the shaped charge propelling the twenty thousand flechettes directly downward into the intruder’s path.
“Contact down,” says the C3 controller at the same second that Sergeant Gregorius reports, “Got him.”
“Find and identify,” says the Commander. Their skimmer has banked back toward the Valley.
De Soya glances through the visor display. She has taken the kill at a distance but is not removing the troops from the storm.
“Affirmative,” says the sergeant, and the storm is wild enough to add static to a tightbeam.
The skimmer flies low over the valley, and de Soya identifies the tombs for the thousandth time: here, in reverse order from the usual pilgrims’ approach—although there have been no pilgrims for more than three centuries—comes first the Shrike Palace, farther south than the others, its barbed and serrated buttresses reminiscent of the creature that has not been seen here since the days of the pilgrims; then the more subtle Cave Tombs—three in all—their entrances carved out of the pink stone of the canyon wall; then the huge centrally placed Crystal Monolith; then the Obelisk; then the Jade Tomb; and finally the intricately carved Sphinx with sealed door and outflung wings.
De Soya glances at his chronometer.
“One hour and fifty-six minutes,” says Commander Barnes-Avne.