The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (175 page)

De Soya nods.

“Would you like to see him, Father Captain?” persists the chaplain. “The body is … well … barely recognizable as human. The internal organs are quite visible and quite …”

“Go about your duties, Father,” de Soya says quietly. “Dismissed.”

Father Sapieha frowns again as if he is going to reply, but at that moment the gravity Klaxon sounds, and both men have to
orient themselves so that their feet touch the floor as the internal containment field realigns itself. Then the gravity slowly climbs to one-g as Father Vandrisse sinks back into the gurney’s cushions and the chaplain shuffles out the door. Even after only a day of zero-g, the return of gravity seems an imposition.

“Father Vandrisse,” de Soya says softly. “Can you hear me?”

The young man nods. His eyes show the pain he is in. The man’s skin glistens as if he has just received grafts—or as if he is newborn. The flesh looks pink and raw to de Soya, almost burned, and the cruciform on the courier’s chest is livid and twice normal size.

“Do you know where you are?” whispers de Soya.
Or who you are?
he mentally adds. Postresurrection confusion can last for hours or days. De Soya knows that couriers are trained to overcome that confusion, but how can anyone be trained for death and revival? An instructor of de Soya’s at the seminary had once put it plainly—“The cells remember dying, being dead, even if the mind does not.”

“I remember,” whispers Father Vandrisse, and his voice sounds as raw as his skin looks. “You are Captain de Soya?”

“Father Captain de Soya. Yes.”

Vandrisse tries to lever himself up on his elbow and fails. “Closer,” he whispers, too weak to lift his head from the pillow.

De Soya leans closer. The other priest smells faintly of formaldehyde. Only certain members of the priesthood are trained in the actual mysteries of resurrection, and de Soya had chosen not to be one of these. He could officiate at a baptism and administer Communion or Extreme Unction—as a starship captain he has had more opportunities for the latter than the former—but he had never been present at the Sacrament of Resurrection. He has no idea of the processes involved, beyond the miracle of the cruciform, in returning this man’s destroyed and compressed body, his decaying neurons and scattered brain mass, to the human form he now sees before him.

Vandrisse begins whispering and de Soya has to lean even closer, the resurrected priest’s lips almost brushing de Soya’s ear.

“Must … talk …,” Vandrisse manages with great effort.

De Soya nods. “I’ve scheduled a briefing in fifteen minutes.
My other two ship captains will be there. We’ll provide a hoverchair for you and …”

Vandrisse is shaking his head. “No … meeting. Message for … you … only.”

De Soya shows no expression. “All right. Do you want to wait until you are …”

Again the agonized shake of his head. The skin of the priest’s face is slick and striated, as if the muscle were showing through. “Now …,” he whispers.

De Soya leans close and waits.

“You are … to … take the … archangel courier … ship … immediately …,” gasps Vandrisse. “It is programmed for its destination.”

De Soya remains expressionless, but he is thinking,
So it is to be a painful death by acceleration. Dear Jesus, could you not let this cup pass from me?

“What do I tell the others?” he asks.

Father Vandrisse shakes his head. “Tell them nothing. Put your executive officer in command of the … 
Balthasar
. Transfer task force command to Mother Captain Boulez. Task Force MAGI will … have … other orders.”

“Will I be informed of these other orders?” asks de Soya. His jaw hurts with the tension of sounding calm. Until thirty seconds ago the survival and success of this ship, this task force, had been the central reason for his existence.

“No,” says Vandrisse. “These … orders … do … not … concern you.”

The resurrected priest is pale with pain and exhaustion. De Soya realizes that he is taking some satisfaction in that fact and immediately says a short prayer for forgiveness.

“I am to leave immediately,” repeats de Soya. “Can I take my few personal possessions?” He is thinking of the small porcelain sculpture that his sister had given him shortly before her death on Renaissance Vector. That fragile piece, locked in a stasis cube during high-g maneuvers, has been with him for all of his years of spacefaring.

“No,” says Father Vandrisse. “Go … immediately. Take nothing.”

“This is upon order of …,” queries de Soya.

Vandrisse frowns through his grimace of pain. “This is upon direct command of His Holiness, Pope Julius XIV,” says the courier. “It is … Omega Priority … superseding all orders
of Pax Military Command or SpaComC-Fleet. Do … you … understand … Father … Captain … de … Soya?”

“I understand,” says the Jesuit, and bows his head in compliance.

The archangel-class courier ship has no name. De Soya had never considered torchships beautiful—gourd-shaped, the command and weapons mod dwarfed by the huge Hawking drive and in-system fusion-thrust sphere—but the archangel is actively ugly in comparison. The courier ship is a mass of asymmetrical spheres, dodecahedrons, lash-ons, structural cables, and Hawking-drive mounts, with the passenger cabin the merest of afterthoughts in the center of all that junk.

De Soya had met briefly with Hearn, Boulez, and Stone, explained only that he had been called away, and transferred command to the new—and amazed—task force and
Balthasar
captains, then took a one-person transfer pod to the archangel. De Soya tried not to look back at his beloved
Balthasar
, but at the last moment before attaching to the courier, he turned and looked longingly at the torchship, sunlight painting its curved flank into a crescentlike sunrise over some lovely world, then turned resolutely away.

He sees upon entering that the archangel has only the crudest virtual tactical command, manual controls, and bridge. The interior of the command pod is not much larger than de Soya’s crowded cubby on the
Balthasar
, although this space is crowded with cables, fiber-optic leads, tech diskeys, and two acceleration couches. The only other space is the tiny navigation room-cum-wardrobe cubby.

No, de Soya sees at once, the acceleration couches are not standard. These are unpadded steel trays in human form, more like autopsy slabs than couches. The trays have a lip—to keep fluid from sloshing under high-g, he is sure—and he realizes that the only compensating containment field in the ship would be around these couches—to keep the pulverized flesh, bone, and brain matter from floating away in the zero-g intervals after final deceleration. De Soya can see the nozzles where water or
some cleansing solution had been injected at high speed to clean the steel. It had not been totally successful.

“Acceleration in two minutes,” says a metallic voice. “Strap in now.”

No niceties
, thinks de Soya.
Not even a “please.”

“Ship?” he says. He knows that no true AIs are allowed on Pax ships—indeed, no AIs are allowed anywhere in Pax-controlled human space—but he thinks that the Vatican might have made an exception on one of its archangel-class courier ships.

“One minute thirty seconds until initial acceleration,” comes the metallic voice, and de Soya realizes that he is talking to an idiot machine. He hurries to strap himself in. The bands are broad, thick, and almost surely for show. The containment field will hold him—or his remains—in place.

“Thirty seconds,” says the idiot voice. “Be advised that the C-plus translation will be lethal.”

“Thanks,” says Father Captain Federico de Soya. His heart is pounding so fiercely that he can hear it in his ears. Lights flicker in the various instruments. Nothing here is meant for human override, so de Soya ignores them.

“Fifteen seconds,” says the ship. “You might wish to pray now.”

“Fuck you,” says de Soya. He has been praying since he left the courier’s recovery room. Now he adds a final prayer for forgiveness for the obscenity.

“Five seconds,” comes the voice. “There will be no further communications. May God bless you and speed your resurrection, in Christ’s name.”

“Amen,” says Father Captain de Soya. He closes his eyes as acceleration commences.

Evening came early in the ruined city of Endymion. I watched the last of the autumn light dim and die from my vantage point in the tower where I had awakened earlier on this endless day. A. Bettik had led me back, shown me to my room, where stylish but simple evening clothes—tan cotton trousers tightening just below the knees, white flax blouse with a hint of ruffled sleeves, black leather vest, black stockings, soft black leather boots, and a gold wristband—were still laid out on the bed. The android also showed me to the toilet and bathing facilities a floor below and told me that the thick cotton robe hanging on the door was for my use. I thanked him, bathed, dried my hair, dressed in everything that had been laid out except for the gold band, and waited at the window while the light grew more golden and horizontal and shadows crept down from the hills above the university. When the light had died to the point where shadows had fled and the brightest stars in the Swan were visible above the mountains to the east, A. Bettik returned.

“Is it time?” I asked.

“Not quite, sir,” replied the android. “Earlier you requested that I return so that we might talk.”

“Ahh, yes,” I said, and gestured toward the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. “Have a seat.”

The blue-skinned man stood where he was by the door. “I am comfortable standing, sir.”

I folded my arms and leaned against the windowsill. The air coming in the open window was cool and smelled of chalma. “You don’t have to call me sir,” I said. “Raul will do.” I hesitated. “Unless you’re programmed to talk to … ah …” I was about to say “humans,” but did not want to make it seem as if I thought A. Bettik was
not
human. “… to talk to people that way,” I finished lamely.

A. Bettik smiled. “No, sir. I am not programmed at all … not like a machine. Except for several synthetic prostheses—to augment strength, for instance, or to provide resistance to radiation—I have no artificial parts. I was merely taught deference to fulfill my role. I could call you M. Endymion, if that would be preferable.”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I’m so ignorant about androids.”

A. Bettik’s thin-lipped smile returned. “There is no need to apologize, M. Endymion. Very few human beings now alive have seen one of my race.”

My race
. Interesting. “Tell me about your race,” I said. “Wasn’t the biofacture of androids illegal in the Hegemony?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. I noticed that he stood at parade rest, and wondered idly if he had ever served in a military capacity. “Biofacture of androids was illegal on Old Earth and many of the Hegemony homeworlds even before the Hegira, but the All Thing allowed biofacture of a certain number of androids for use in the Outback. Hyperion was part of the Outback in those days.”

“It still is,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“When were you biofactured? Which worlds did you live on? What were your duties?” I asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Not at all, M. Endymion,” he said softly. The android’s voice had the hint of a dialect that was new to me. Offworld. Ancient. “I was created in the year 26
A.D.C
. by your calendar.”

“In the twenty-fifth century,
A.D
.,” I said. “Six hundred ninety-four years ago.”

A. Bettik nodded and said nothing.

“So you were born … biofactured … after Old Earth was destroyed,” I said, more to myself than to the android.

“Yes, sir.”

“And was Hyperion your first … ah … work destination?”

“No, sir,” said A. Bettik. “For the first half century of my existence, I worked on Asquith in the service of His Royal Highness, King Arthur the Eighth, sovereign lord of the Kingdom of Windsor-in-Exile, and also in the service of his cousin, Prince Rupert of Monaco-in-Exile. When King Arthur died, he willed me to his son, His Royal Highness, King William the Twenty-third.”

“Sad King Billy,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“And did you come to Hyperion when Sad King Billy fled Horace Glennon-Height’s rebellion?”

“Yes,” said A. Bettik. “Actually, my android brothers and I were sent ahead to Hyperion some thirty-two years before His Highness and the other colonists joined us. We were dispatched here after General Glennon-Height won the Battle of Fomalhaut. His Highness thought it wise if an alternate site for the kingdoms-in-exile were prepared.”

“And that’s when you met M Silenus,” I prompted, pointing toward the ceiling, imagining the old poet up there within his web of life-support umbilicals.

“No,” said the android. “My duties did not bring me into contact with M. Silenus during the years when the Poet’s City was occupied. I had the pleasure of meeting M. Silenus later, during his pilgrimage to the Valley of the Time Tombs two and a half centuries after the death of His Highness.”

“And you’ve been on Hyperion since,” I said. “More than five hundred years on this world.”

“Yes, M. Endymion.”

“Are you immortal?” I asked, knowing the question was impertinent but wanting the answer.

A. Bettik showed his slight smile. “Not at all, sir. I will die from accident or injury that is too serious for me to be repaired. It is just that when I was biofactured, my cells and systems were nanoteched with an ongoing form of Poulsen treatments so that I am essentially resistant to aging and disease.”

“Is that why androids are blue?” I asked.

“No, sir,” said A. Bettik. “We are blue because no known race of humankind was blue at the time of my biofacture, and
my designers felt it imperative to keep us visually separate from humans.”

“You do not consider yourself human?” I asked.

“No, sir,” said A. Bettik. “I consider myself android.”

I smiled at my own naïveté. “You still act in a service capacity,” I said. “Yet use of slave android labor was outlawed throughout the Hegemony centuries ago.”