Admiral Nashita swiveled his chair and waited.
“We’d like transport down to the planet,” said Hunt. “Down to Hyperion.”
The Admiral’s scowl seemed to deepen. “CEO Gladstone’s people said nothing about arranging a dropship.”
Hunt did not blink. “Governor-General Lane knows that we might be coming.”
Nashita glanced at one of his callups, snapped his fingers, and barked something at a Marine major who hurried over. “You’ll have to hurry,” the Admiral said to Hunt. “There is a courier just ready to leave from port twenty. Major Inverness will show you the way. You will be brought back up to the primary JumpShip. The Hebrides will be departing this position in twenty-three minutes.”
Hunt nodded and turned to follow the Major. I tagged along. The Admiral’s voice stopped us.
“M. Hunt,” he called, “please tell CEO Gladstone that the flagship will be too busy from this point on for any more political visits.” Nashita turned away to flickering callups and a line of waiting subordinates.
I followed Hunt and the Major back into the maze.
“There should be windows.”
“What?” I had been thinking about something, not paying attention.
Leigh Hunt turned his head toward me. “I’ve never been in a dropship without windows or viewscreens. It’s strange.”
I nodded and looked around, noticing the cramped and crowded interior for the first time. It was true that there were only blank bulkheads, and heaps of supplies and one young lieutenant in the passenger hold of the dropship with us. It seemed to conform to the claustrophobic ambience of the command ship.
I looked away, returning to the thoughts that had preoccupied me since we left Nashita. Following the other two to port twenty, it had suddenly occurred to me that I was not missing something I had expected to miss. Part of my anxiety toward this trip had lain in the thought of leaving the datasphere; I was rather like a fish contemplating leaving the sea. Part of my consciousness lay submerged somewhere in that sea, the ocean of data and commlinks from two hundred worlds and the Core, all linked by the invisible medium once called datumplane, now known only as the megasphere.
It struck me as we left Nashita that I could still hear the pulse of that particular sea—distant but constant, like the sound of the surf half a mile from the shore—and I had been trying to understand it all during the rush to the dropship, the buckling in and separation, and the ten-minute cislunar sprint to the fringes of Hyperion’s atmosphere.
FORCE prided itself on using its own artificial intelligences, its own dataspheres and computing sources. The ostenible reason lay in the requirement to operate in the great spaces between Web worlds, the dark and quiet places between the stars and beyond the Web mega-sphere, but much of the real reason lay in a fierce need for independence which FORCE had shown toward the TechnoCore for centuries. Yet on a FORCE ship in the center of a FORCE armada in a non-Web, non-Protectorate system, I was tuned to the same comforting background babble of data and energy that I would have found anywhere in the Web. Interesting.
I thought of the links the farcaster had brought to Hyperion system: not just the JumpShip and farcaster containment sphere floating at Hyperion’s L3 point like a gleaming new moon, but the miles of gigachannel fiber-optic cable snaking through permanent JumpShip farcaster portals, microwave repeaters mechanically shuttling the few inches to repeat their messages in near real-time, command ship tame AIs requesting—and receiving—new links to the Olympus High Command on Mars and elsewhere Somewhere the datasphere had crept in, perhaps unknown to the FORCE machines and their operators and allies. The Core AIs knew everything happening here in Hyperion system. If my body were to die now, I would have the same escape path as always, fleeing down the pulsing links that led like secret passages beyond the Web, beyond any vestige of datumplane as humanity had known it, down datalink tunnels to the TechnoCore itself. Not really to the Core, I thought, because the Core surrounds, envelops the rest, like an ocean holding separate currents, great Gulf Streams which think themselves separate seas.
“I just wish there was a window,” whispered Leigh Hunt.
“Yes,” I said. “So do I.”
The dropship bucked and vibrated as we entered Hyperion’s upper atmosphere. Hyperion, I thought. The Shrike. My heavy shirt and vest seemed sticky and clinging. A faint susurration from without said that we were flying, streaking across the lapis skies at several times the speed of sound.
The young lieutenant leaned across the aisle. “First time down, gentlemen?”
Hunt nodded.
The Lieutenant was chewing gum, showing how relaxed he was. “You two civilian techs from the Hebrides?”
“We just came from there, yes,” said Hunt.
“Thought so,” grinned the Lieutenant. “Me, I’m running a courier pack down to the Marine base near Keats. My fifth trip.”
A slight jolt ran through me as I was reminded of the name of the capital; Hyperion had been repopulated by Sad King Billy and his colony of poets, artists, and other misfits fleeing an invasion of their homeworld by Horace Glennon-Height—an invasion which never came. The poet on the current Shrike Pilgrimage, Martin Silenus, had advised King Billy almost two centuries earlier in the naming of the capital. Keats. The locals called the old part Jacktown.
“You’re not going to believe this place,” said the Lieutenant. “It’s the real anal end of nowhere. I mean, no datasphere, no EMVs, no farcasters, no stimsim bars, no nothing. It’s no wonder that there are thousands of the fucking indigenies camped around the spaceport, just tearing down the fence to get offworld.”
“Are they really attacking the spaceport?” asked Hunt.
“Naw,” said the Lieutenant and snapped his gum. “But they’re ready to, if you know what I mean. That’s why the Second Marine Battalion has set up a perimeter there and secured the way into the city. Besides, the yokels think that we’re going to set up farcasters any day now and let ’em step out of the shit they got themselves into.”
“They got themselves into?” I said.
The Lieutenant shrugged. “They must’ve done something to get the Ousters cricked at them, right? We’re just here to pull their oysters out of the fire.”
“Chestnuts,” said Leigh Hunt.
The gum snapped. “Whatever.”
The susurration of wind grew to a shriek clearly audible through the hull. The dropship bounced twice and then slid smoothly—ominously smoothly—as if it had encountered a chute of ice ten miles above the ground.
“I wish we had a window,” whispered Leigh Hunt.
It was warm and stuffy in the dropship. The bouncing was oddly relaxing, rather like a small sailing ship rising and falling on slow swells. I closed my eyes for a few minutes.
TEN
Sol, Brawne, Martin Silenus, and the Consul carry gear, Het Masteen’s Möbius cube, and the body of Lenar Hoyt down the long incline to the entrance of the Sphinx. Snow is falling rapidly now, twisting across the already writhing dune surfaces in a complex dance of wind-driven particles. Despite their com logs’ claim that night nears its end, there is no hint of sunrise to the east. Repeated calls on their comlog radio link bring no response from Colonel Kassad.
Sol Weintraub pauses before the entrance to the Time Tomb called the Sphinx. He feels his daughter’s presence as a warmth against his chest under the cape, the rise and fall of warm baby’s breath against his throat. He raises one hand, touches the small bundle there, and tries to imagine Rachel as a young woman of twenty-six, a researcher pausing at this very entrance before going in to test the anti-entropic mysteries of the lime Tomb. Sol shakes his head. It has been twenty-six long years and a lifetime since that moment. In four days it will be his daughter’s birthday. Unless Sol does something, finds the Shrike, makes some bargain with the creature, does something, Rachel will die in four days.
“Are you coming, Sol?” calls Brawne Lamia. The others have stored their gear in the first room, hal
f a dozen meters down the narrow corridor through stone.
“Coming,” he calls, and enters the tomb. Glow-globes and electric lights line the tunnel but they are dead and dust covered. Only Sol’s flashlight and the glow from one of Kassad’s small lanterns light the way.
The first room is small, no more than four by six meters. The other three pilgrims have set their baggage against the back wall and spread tarp and bedrolls in the center of the cold floor. Two lanterns hiss and cast a cold light. Sol stops and looks around.
“Father Hoyt’s body is in the next room,” says Brawne Lamia, answering his unasked question. “It’s even colder there.”
Sol takes his place near the others. Even this far in, he can hear the rasp of sand and snow blowing against stone.
“The Consul is going to try the comlog again later,” says Brawne. “Tell Gladstone the situation.”
Martin Silenus laughs. “It’s no use. No fucking use at all. She knows what she’s doing, and she’s never going to let us out of here.”
“I’ll try just after sunrise,” says the Consul. His voice is very tired.
“I will stand watch,” says Sol. Rachel stirs and cries feebly. “I need to feed the baby anyway.”
The others seem too tired to respond. Brawne leans against a pack, closes her eyes, and is breathing heavily within seconds. The Consul pulls his tricorne cap low over his eyes. Martin Silenus folds his arms and stares at the doorway, waiting.
Sol Weintraub fusses with a nursing pak, his cold and arthritic fingers having trouble with the heating tab. He looks in his bag and realizes that he has only ten more paks, a handful of diapers.
The baby is nursing, and Sol is nodding, almost sleeping, when a sound wakes them all.
“What?” cries Brawne, fumbling for her father’s pistol.
“Shhh!” snaps the poet, holding his hand out for silence.
From somewhere beyond the tomb comes the sound again. It is flat and final, cutting through the wind noise and sand rasp.
“Kassad’s rifle,” says Brawne Lamia.
“Or someone else’s,” whispers Martin Silenus.
They sit in silence and strain to hear. For a long moment there is no sound at all. Then, in an instant, the night erupts with noise … noise which makes each of them cringe and cover his or her ears. Rachel screams in terror, but her cries cannot be heard over the explosions and rendings beyond the tomb.
ELEVEN
I awoke just as the dropship touched down. Hyperion, I thought, still separating my thoughts from the tatters of dream.
The young lieutenant wished us luck and was the first out as the door irised open and cool, thin air replaced the pressurized thickness of the cabin atmosphere. I followed Hunt out and down a standard docking ramp, through the shield wall, and onto the tarmac.
It was night, and I had no idea what the local time was, whether the terminator had just passed this point on the planet or was just approaching, but it felt and smelled late. It was raining softly, a light drizzle perfumed with the salt scent of the sea and the fresh hint of moistened vegetation. Field lights glared around the distant perimeter, and a score of lighted towers threw halos toward the low clouds. A half dozen young men in Marine field uniforms were quickly unloading the dropship, and I could see our young lieutenant speaking briskly to an officer thirty yards to our right. The small spaceport looked like something out a history book, a colonial port from the earliest days of the Hegira. Primitive blast pits and landing squares stretched for a mile or more toward a dark bulk of hills to the north, gantries and service towers tended to a score of military shuttles and small warcraft around us, and the landing areas were ringed by modular military buildings sporting antennae arrays, violet containment fields, and a clutter of skimmers and aircraft.
I followed Hunt’s gaze and noticed a skimmer moving toward us. The blue and gold geodesic symbol of the Hegemony on one of its skirts was illuminated by its running lights; rain streaked the forward blisters and whipped away from the fans in a violent curtain of mist. The skimmer settled, a Perspex blister split and folded, and a man stepped out and hurried across the tarmac toward us.
He held out his hand to Hunt. “M. Hunt? I’m Theo Lane.”
Hunt shook the hand, nodded toward me. “Pleased to meet you, Governor-General. This is Joseph Severn.”
I shook Lane’s hand, a shock of recognition coming with the touch. I remembered Theo Lane through the déjà vu mists of the Consul’s memory, recalling the years when the young man was the Vice-Consul; also from a brief meeting a week earlier when he greeted all of the pilgrims before they departed upriver on the levitation barge Benares. He seemed older than he had appeared just six days before. But the unruly lock of hair on his forehead was the same, as were the archaic eyeglasses he wore, and the brisk, firm handshake.
“I’m pleased you could take the time to make planetfall,” Governor-General Lane said to Hunt. “I have several things I need to communicate to the CEO.”
“That’s why we’re here,” said Hunt. He squinted up at the rain. “We have about an hour. Is there somewhere we can dry off?”
The Governor-General showed a youthful smile. “The field here is a madhouse, even at 0520 hours, and the consulate is under siege. But I know a place.” He gestured toward the skimmer.
As we lifted off, I noticed the two Marine skimmers keeping pace with us but I was still surprised that the Governor-General of a Protectorate world flew his own vehicle and did not have constant bodyguards. Then I remembered what the Consul had told the other pilgrims about Theo Lane—about the young man’s efficiency and self-effacing ways—and realized that such a low profile was in keeping with the diplomat’s style.
The sun rose as we lifted off from the spaceport and banked toward town. Low clouds glowed brilliantly as they were lighted from below, the hills to the north sparkled a bright green, violet, and russet, and the strip of sky below the clouds to the east was that heart-stopping green and lapis which I remembered from my dreams. Hyperion, I thought, and felt a thick tension and excitement catch in my throat.
I leaned my head against the rain-streaked canopy and realized that some of the vertigo and confusion I felt at that moment came from a thinning of the background contact with the datasphere. The connection was still there, carried primarily on microwave and fatline channels now, but more tenuous than I had ever experienced—if the datasphere had been the sea in which I swam, I was now in shallow water indeed, perhaps a tidal pool would be a better metaphor, and the water grew even shallower as we left the envelope of the spaceport and its crude microsphere. I forced myself to pay attention to what Hunt and Governor-General Lane were discussing.
“You can see the shacks and hovels,” said Lane, banking slightly so we had a better view of the hills and valleys separating the spaceport from the suburbs of the capital.
Shacks and hovels were too-polite terms for the miserable collection of fiberplastic panels, patches of canvas, heaps of packing crates, and shards of flowfoam that covered the hills and deep canyons. What obviously had once been a scenic seven- or eight-mile drive from the city to the spaceport through wooded hills now showed land stripped of all trees for firewood and shelter, meadows beaten to barren mudflats by the press of feet, and a city of seven or eight hundred thousand refugees sprawled over every flat piece of land in sight. Smoke from thousands of breakfast fires floated toward the clouds, and I could see movement everywhere, children running in bare feet, women carrying water from streams that must be terribly polluted, men squatting in open fields and waiting in line at makeshift privies. I noted that high razorwire fences and violet containment field barriers had been set along both sides of the highway, and military checkpoints were visible every half mile. Long lines of FORCE camouflaged ground vehicles and skimmers moved both directions along the highway and low-level flyways.
“… most of the refugees are indigenies,” Governor-General Lane was saying, “although there are thousands of displaced landowners
from the southern cities and the large fiberplastic plantations on Aquila.”
“Are they here because they think the Ousters will invade?” asked Hunt.
Theo Lane glanced at Gladstone’s aide. “Originally there was panic at the thought of the Time Tombs opening,” he said. “People were convinced that the Shrike was coming for them.”
“Was it?” I asked.
The young man shifted in his seat to look back at me. “The Third Legion of the Self-Defense Force went north seven months ago,” he said. “It didn’t come back.”
“You said at first they were fleeing the Shrike,” said Hunt. “Why did the others come?”
“They’re waiting for the evacuation,” said Lane. “Everyone knows what the Ousters … and the Hegemony troops … did to Bressia. They don’t want to be here when that happens to Hyperion.”
“You’re aware that FORCE considers evacuation an absolute last resort?” said Hunt.
“Yes. But we’re not announcing that to the refugees. There have been terrible riots already. The Shrike Temple has been destroyed … a mob laid siege, and someone used shaped plasma charges stolen from the mineworks on Ursus. Last week there were attacks on the consulate and the spaceport, as well as food riots in Jacktown.”
Hunt nodded and watched the city approach. The buildings were low, few over five stories, and their white and pastel walls glowed richly in the slanting rays of morning light. I looked over Hunt’s shoulder and saw the low mountain with the carved face of Sad King Billy brooding over the valley. The Hoolie River twisted through the center of the old town, straightening before it headed northwest toward the unseen Bridle Range, twisting out of sight in the weirwood marshes to the southeast, where I knew it widened to its delta along the High Mane. The city looked uncrowded and peaceful after the sad confusion of the refugee slums, but even as we began to descend toward the river, I noticed the military traffic, the tanks and APCs and GAVs at intersections and sitting in parks, their camouflage polymer deliberately deactivated so the machines would look more threatening. Then I saw the refugees in the city: makeshift tents in the squares and alleys, thousands of sleeping forms along the curbs, like so many dull-colored bundles of laundry waiting to be picked up.