The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (177 page)

The old man smiled. “You want to be a hero, Raul Endymion.”

I blew out my breath in derision and set my hands on the tablecloth. My fingers looked blunt and clumsy there, out of place against the fine linen.

“You want to be a hero,” he repeated. “You want to be one of those rare human beings who make history, rather than merely watch it flow around them like water around a rock.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I did, of course, but there was no way he could know me that well.

“I
do
know you that well,” said Martin Silenus, seemingly responding to my thought rather than my last statement.

I should say here that I did not think for a second that the old man was telepathic. First of all, I do not believe in telepathy—or, rather, I did not at that time—and secondly, I was more
intrigued by the potential of a human being who had lived almost a thousand standard years. Why, even if he were insane, I thought, it was possible that he had learned to read facial expressions and physical nuance to the point where the effect would be almost indistinguishable from telepathy!

Or perhaps it was just a lucky guess.

“I don’t want to be a hero,” I said flatly. “I saw what happens to heroes when my brigade was sent to fight the rebels on the southern continent.”

“Ahh, Ursus,” he muttered. “The south polar bear. Hyperion’s most useless mass of ice and mud. I remember some rumors of a disturbance there.”

The war there had lasted eight Hyperion years and killed thousands of us local boys who were stupid enough to enlist in the Home Guard to fight there. Perhaps the old poet wasn’t as astute as I was making him out to be.

“I don’t mean hero as in the fools who throw themselves on plasma grenades,” he continued, licking his thin lips with a lizard’s flick of tongue. “I mean hero as in he whose prowess and beneficence is so legendary that he comes to be honored as a divinity. I mean hero in the literary sense, as in central protagonist given to forceful action. I mean hero as in he whose tragic flaws will be his undoing.” The poet paused and looked expectantly at me, but I stared back in silence.

“No tragic flaws?” he said at last. “Or not given to forceful action?”

“I don’t want to be a hero,” I said again.

The old man hunched over his coffee. When he looked up, his eyes held a mischievous glint. “Where do you get your hair cut, boy?”

“Pardon me?”

He licked his lips again. “You heard me. Your hair is long, but not wild. Where do you get it cut?”

I sighed and said, “Sometimes, when I was in the fens for a long period, I’d cut it myself, but when I’m in Port Romance, I go to a little shop on Datoo Street.”

“Ahhhh,” said Silenus, settling back in his tall-backed chair. “I know Datoo Street. It’s in the Night District. More of an alley than a street. The open market there used to sell ferrets in gilded cages. There were street barbers, but the best barber
shop
there belonged to an old man named Palani Woo. He had six sons, and as each came of age, he would add another chair
to the shop.” The old eyes raised to look at me, and once again I was struck by the power of personality there. “That was a century ago,” he said.

“I get my hair cut at Woo’s,” I said. “Palani Woo’s great-grandson, Kalakaua, owns the shop now. There are still six chairs.”

“Yes,” said the poet, nodding to himself. “Not too much changes on our dear Hyperion, does it, Raul Endymion?”

“Is that your point?”

“Point?” he said, opening his hands as if showing that he had nothing so sinister as a point to hide. “No point. Conversation, my boy. It amuses me to think of World Historical Figures, much less heroes of future myths, paying to get their hair cut. I thought of this centuries ago, by the way … this strange disconnection between the stuff of myth and the stuff of life. Do you know what ‘Datoo’ means?”

I blinked at this sudden change of direction. “No.”

“A wind out of Gibraltar. It carried a beautiful fragrance. Some of the artists and poets who founded Port Romance must have thought that the chalma and weirwood forests which covered the hills above the bog there must have smelled nice. Do you know what Gibraltar is, boy?”

“No.”

“A big rock on Earth,” rasped the old man. He showed his teeth again. “Notice that I didn’t say Old Earth.”

I had noticed.

“Earth is Earth, boy. I lived there before it disappeared, so I should know.”

The thought still made me dizzy.

“I want you to find it,” said the poet, his eyes gleaming.

“Find … it?” I repeated. “Old Earth? I thought you wanted me to travel with the girl … Aenea.”

His bony hands waved away my sentence. “You go with her and you’ll find Earth, Raul Endymion.”

I nodded, all the while pondering the wisdom of explaining to him that Old Earth had been swallowed by the black hole dropped into its guts during the Big Mistake of ’08. But, then, this ancient creature had fled from that shattered world. It made little sense to contradict his delusions. His
Cantos
had mentioned some plot by the warring AI TechnoCore to steal Old Earth—to spirit it away to either the Hercules Cluster or the Magellanic Clouds, the
Cantos
were inconsistent—but that was
fantasy. The Magellanic Cloud was a separate
galaxy
 … more than 160,000 light-years from the Milky Way, if I remembered correctly … and no ship, neither Pax nor Hegemony, had ever been sent farther than our small sphere in one spiral arm of
our
galaxy—and even with the Hawking-drive exclusion to Einsteinian realities, a trip to the Large Magellanic Cloud would take many centuries of shiptime and tens of thousands of years’ time-debt. Even the Ousters who savored the dark places between the stars would not undertake a voyage like that.

Besides, planets are not kidnapped.

“I want you to find Earth and bring it back,” continued the old poet. “I want to see it again before I die. Will you do that for me, Raul Endymion?”

I looked the old man in the eye. “Sure,” I said. “Save this child from the Swiss Guard and the Pax, keep her safe until she becomes the One Who Teaches, find Old Earth and bring it back so you can see it again. Easy. Anything else?”

“Yes,” said Martin Silenus with the tone of absolute solemnity that comes with dementia, “I want you to find out what the fuck the TechnoCore is up to and stop it.”

I nodded again. “Find the missing TechnoCore and stop the combined power of thousands of godlike AIs from doing whatever they’re planning to do,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my tongue. “Check. Will do. Anything else?”

“Yes. You are to talk with the Ousters and see if they can offer me immortality … 
true
immortality, not this born-again Christian bullshit.”

I pretended to write this on an invisible notepad. “Ousters … immortality … not Christian bullshit. Can do. Check. Anything else?”

“Yes, Raul Endymion. I want the Pax destroyed and the Church’s power toppled.”

I nodded. Two or three hundred known worlds had willingly joined the Pax. Trillions of humans had willingly been baptized in the Church. The Pax military was stronger than anything Hegemony Force had ever dreamed of at the height of its power. “OK,” I said. “I’ll take care of that. Anything else?”

“Yes. I want you to stop the Shrike from hurting Aenea or wiping out humanity.”

I hesitated at this. According to the old man’s own epic poem, the Shrike had been destroyed by the soldier Fedmahn
Kassad in some future era. Knowing the futility of projecting logic into a demented conversation, I still mentioned this.

“Yes!” snapped the old poet. “But that is
then
. Millennia from now. I want you to stop the Shrike
now
.”

“All right,” I said. Why argue?

Martin Silenus slumped back in his chair, his energy seemingly dissipated. I glimpsed the animated mummy again in the folds of skin, the sunken eyes, the bony fingers. But those eyes still blazed with intensity. I tried to imagine the force of this man’s personality when he’d been in his prime: I could not.

Silenus nodded and A. Bettik brought two glasses and poured champagne.

“Then you accept, Raul Endymion?” asked the poet, his voice strong and formal. “You accept this mission to save Aenea, travel with her, and accomplish these other things?”

“With one condition,” I said.

Silenus frowned and waited.

“I want to take A. Bettik with me,” I said. The android still stood by the table. The champagne bottle was in his hand. His gaze was aimed straight forward, and he did not turn to look at either of us or register any emotion.

The poet showed surprise. “My android? Are you serious?”

“I am serious.”

“A. Bettik has been with me since before your great-great-grandmother had tits,” rasped the poet. His bony hand slammed down on the table hard enough to make me worry about brittle bones. “A. Bettik,” he snapped. “You wish to go?”

The blue-skinned man nodded without turning his head.

“Fuck it,” said the poet. “Take him. Do you want anything else, Raul Endymion? My hoverchair, perhaps? My respirator? My teeth?”

“Nothing else,” I said.

“And so, Raul Endymion,” said the poet, his voice formal once again, “do you accept this mission? Will you save, serve, and protect the child Aenea until her destiny is fulfilled … or die trying?”

“I accept,” I said.

Martin Silenus lifted his wineglass and I matched the motion. Too late, I thought that the android should be drinking with us, but by then the old poet was giving his toast.

“To folly,” he said. “To divine madness. To insane quests
and messiahs crying from the desert. To the death of tyrants. To confusion to our enemies.”

I started to raise the glass to my lips, but the old man was not done.

“To heroes,” he said. “To heroes who get their hair cut.” He drank the champagne in one gulp.

And so did I.

Born again, seeing—literally—with the wondering eyes of a child, Father Captain Federico de Soya crosses the Piazza San Pietro between the elegant arcs of Bernini’s colonnade and approaches St. Peter’s Basilica. The day is beautiful with cold sunlight, pale-blue skies, and a chill in the air—Pacem’s single inhabitable continent is high, fifteen hundred meters above standard sea level, and the air is thin but absurdly rich in oxygen—and everything de Soya sees is bathed in rich afternoon light that creates an aura around the stately columns, around the heads of the hurrying people; light that bathes the marble statues in white and brings out the brilliance of the red robes of bishops and the blue, red, and orange stripes of the Swiss Guard troopers standing at parade rest; light that paints the tall obelisk in the center of the plaza, the fluted pilasters of the Basilica’s facade, and ignites into brilliance the great dome itself, rising more than a hundred meters above the level of the plaza. Pigeons take wing and catch this rich, horizontal light as they wheel above the plaza, their wings now white against the sky, now dark against the glowing dome of St. Peter’s. Throngs move by on either side, simple clerics in black cassocks with pink buttons, the bishops in white with red trimming, cardinals in blood-scarlet and deep magenta, citizens of the Vatican in their ink-black doublets, hose, and white ruffs, nuns in rustling
habits and soaring white gull wings, male and female priests in simple black, Pax officers in dress uniforms of scarlet and black such as de Soya himself wears this day, and a scattering of lucky tourists or civilian guests—privileged to attend a papal Mass—dressed in their finest clothes, most in black, but all of a richness in cloth that makes even the blackest fiber gleam and shimmer in the light. The multitudes move toward the soaring Basilica of St. Peter’s, their conversation muted, their demeanor excited but somber. A papal Mass is a serious event.

With Father Captain de Soya this day—only four days after his fatal leave-taking from Task Force MAGI and one day after his resurrection—are Father Baggio, Captain Marget Wu, and Monsignor Lucas Oddi: Baggio, plump and pleasant, is de Soya’s resurrection chaplain; Wu, lean and silent, is aide-de-camp to Pax Fleet Admiral Marusyn; and Oddi, eighty-seven standard years old but still healthy and alert, is the factotum and Undersecretary to the powerful Vatican Secretary of State, Simon Augustino Cardinal Lourdusamy. It is said that Cardinal Lourdusamy is the second most powerful human being in the Pax, the only member of the Roman Curia to have the ear of His Holiness, and a person of frightening brilliance. The Cardinal’s power is reflected in the fact that he also acts as Prefect for the Sacra Congregatio pro Gentium Evangelizatione se de Propaganda Fide—the legendary Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, or De Propaganda Fide.

To Father Captain de Soya, the presence of these two powerful people is no more surprising or astounding than the sunlight on the facade above him as the four climb the broad steps to the Basilica. The crowd, already quiet, stills to silence as they file through into the vast space, walk past more Swiss Guards in both ornamental and battle dress, and move into the nave. Here even the silence echoes, and de Soya is moved to tears at the beauty of the great space and of the timeless works of art they pass on the way to the pews: Michelangelo’s
Pietà
visible in the first chapel to the right; Arnolfo di Cambrio’s ancient bronze of St. Peter, its right foot polished to the point of being worn away by centuries of kisses, and—lit brilliantly from beneath—the striking figure of Giuliana Falconieri Santa Vergine, sculpted by Pietro Campi in the sixteenth century, more than fifteen hundred years earlier.

Father Captain de Soya is weeping openly by the time he crosses himself with holy water and follows Father Baggio into
their reserved pew. The three male priests and the female Pax officer kneel in prayer as the last scuffling and coughing dies in the vast space. The Basilica is in near darkness now, with only pinpoint halogen spots illuminating the art and architectural treasures glowing like gold. Through his tears de Soya looks at the fluted pilasters and the dark bronze baroque columns of Bernini’s Baldachino—the gilded and ornate canopy over the central altar where only the Pope can say Mass—and contemplates the wonder of the last twenty-four hours since his resurrection. There had been pain, yes, and confusion—as if he were recovering from a particularly disorienting blow to the head—and the pain was more general and terrible than any headache, as if every cell in his body remembered the indignity of death and even now rebelled against it—but there had been wonder as well. Wonder and awe at the smallest things: the taste of the broth Father Baggio had fed him, the first sight of Pacem’s pale-blue sky through the rectory windows, the overwhelming humanness of the faces he had seen that day, the voices he had heard. Father Captain de Soya, although a sensitive man, has not wept since he was a child of five or six standard years, but he weeps this day … weeps openly and unashamedly. Jesus Christ had given him the gift of life for the second time, the Lord God had shared the Sacrament of Resurrection with him—this faithful, honorable man from a poor family on a backwater world—and de Soya’s individual cells now seem to remember the sacrament of rebirth as well as the pain of death; he is suffused with joy.