The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (239 page)

The raft rode lower with the mass of the creature on the front end, and water lapped across the boards almost back to the tent. Several of the front and port-side logs were hanging loose.

“We need to work on the raft,” I said, taking the steering oar in hand and laying the rifle at my feet.

“Not on this world,” said Aenea, still straining against the pole to move us out into the center current. “After we go through the portal.”

“Do you know where we’re headed?” I said.

She shook her head. Her hair seemed dull this morning. “I just know that this is the last day.”

She had said that a few minutes earlier, and I had felt the same stab of alarm then as I did now. “Are you sure, kiddo?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t know where we’re going?”

“No. Not exactly.”

“What do you know? I mean …”

She smiled wanly. “I know what you mean, Raul. I know that if we survive the next few hours, we hunt for the building I’ve seen in my dreams.”

“What does it look like?”

Aenea opened her mouth to speak but then just rested against the pole a moment. We were moving quickly now in the center of the river. The tall downtown buildings gave way to small parks and walkways on either bank. “I’ll know the building when I see it.” She laid the pole down and walked closer, pulling at my sleeve. I bent to hear her whisper. “Raul, if I don’t … make it … and you do … please get home to tell Uncle Martin about what I said. About the lions and tigers and bears … and what the Core is up to.”

I grabbed her by her thin shoulder. “Don’t talk like that. We’re all going to make it.
You
tell Martin when we see him.”

Aenea nodded without conviction and went back to the pole. The Shrike continued to stare ahead, water lapping at its feet and the morning light beginning to glint on its thorns and razor surfaces.

I had expected us to move into open desert beyond the city of Mashhad, but once again my expectations were mistaken. The riverside parks and walkways grew more luxuriant with trees—everblues, deciduous Old Earth varieties, and a proliferation of yellow and green palms. Soon the city buildings were behind us and the wide, straight river was passing through a rich forest. It was still early morning, but the heat of the rising sun was very powerful.

The steering oar was not really needed in the central current. I lashed it in place, took off my shirt, folded it on top of my pack, and took the port push-pole from the obviously exhausted girl. She looked at me with dark eyes but did not complain.

A. Bettik had collapsed the microtent and shaken out most of the accumulated sand. Now he sat near me as the current moved us around a wide bend and into an even thicker tropical rain forest. He was wearing the loose shirt and ragged shorts of yellow linen I had seen him in on Hebron and Mare Infinitus. The broad-brimmed straw hat was at his feet. Surprisingly, Aenea moved to the front of the raft to sit near the motionless Shrike as we drifted deeper into the heavy jungle.

“This can’t be native,” I said, straightening the raft as the current tried to swing it sideways. “There can’t be enough rainfall in this desert to support all this.”

“I believe it was an extensive garden area planeted by the Shi’a religious pilgrims, M. Endymion,” said A. Bettik. “Listen.”

I listened. The rain forest was alive with the rustle of birds and wind. Beneath these sounds I could hear the hiss and rattle of sprinkler systems. “Incredible,” I said. “That they’d use precious water to maintain this ecosystem. It must stretch for kilometers.”

“Paradise,” said Aenea.

“What, kiddo?” I poled us back into the center current.

“The Muslims were primarily desert people on Old Earth,” she said softly. “Water and greenery was their idea of paradise. Mashhad was a religious center. Maybe this was to give the faithful a glimpse of what was to come if the teachings of Allah in the Qur’an were obeyed.”

“Expensive sneak preview,” I said, dragging the pole a bit as we turned again to the left as the river widened. “I wonder what happened to the people.”

“The Pax,” said Aenea.

“What?” I did not understand. “These worlds … Hebron, Qom-Riyadh … were under Ouster control when the population disappeared.”

“According to the Pax,” said Aenea.

I thought about this.

“What do the two worlds have in common, Raul?” she said.

It took no time to answer that. “They were both adamantly non-Christian,” I said. “They refused to accept the cross. Jew and Muslim.”

Aenea said nothing.

“That’s a terrible thought,” I said. My stomach hurt. “The Church may be misguided … the Pax can be arrogant with
its power … but …” I wiped sweat out of my eyes. “My God …,” I said, struggling to say the one word. “Genocide?”

Aenea shifted to look at me. Just behind her the Shrike’s bladed legs caught the light. “We don’t know that,” she said very quietly. “But there are elements of the Church and of the Pax that would do it, Raul. Remember, the Vatican depends almost totally on the Core to maintain its control of resurrection—and through that, its control of all the people on all the worlds.”

I was shaking my head. “But … genocide? I can’t believe it.” That concept belonged with the legends of Horace Glennon-Height and Adolf Hitler, not with people and institutions I had seen in my lifetime.

“Something terrible is going on,” said Aenea. “That has to be why we were routed this way … through Hebron and Qom-Riyadh.”

“You said that before,” I said, pushing hard on the pole. “Routed. But not by the Core. Then by whom?” I looked at the back of the Shrike. I was pouring sweat in the heat of the day. The looming creature was all cool blades and thorns.

“I don’t know,” said Aenea. She swiveled back around and rested her forearms on her knees. “There’s the farcaster.”

The portal rose, vine shrouded and rusted, from the overgrown jungle. If this was still Qom-Riyadh’s paradise park, it had grown out of control. Above the green canopy, the blue sky carried a hint of red dust clouds on the wind.

Steering for the center of the river, I laid the pole along the port side and went back to pick up my rifle. My stomach was still tight with the thought of genocide. Now it tightened further with the image of ice caves, waterfalls, ocean worlds, and of the Shrike coming to life as we passed into whatever waited.

“Hang on,” I said needlessly as we passed under the metal arch.

The view ahead of us faded and shifted as if a curtain of heat haze had begun to shimmer ahead of us and around us. Suddenly the light changed, the gravity changed, and our world changed.

Father Captain de Soya awakes to screaming. It is several minutes before he realizes it is his voice doing the screaming.

Thumbing open the coffin-lid catch, he pulls himself to a sitting position within the creche. Lights are blinking red and amber on the monitor panel, although all of the essential guidelines are green. Moaning in pain and confusion, de Soya starts to pull himself out. His body floats above the open creche, his flailing hands can get no grip. He notices that his hands and arms are glistening red and pink, as if all his skin has been burned off.

“Dear Mother of Mary … where am I?” He is weeping. The tears hang in front of his eyes in tumbling beads. “Zero-g … where am I? The
Balthasar
? What’s … happened? Space battle? Burns?”

No. He is aboard the
Raphael
. Slowly the outraged dendrites in his brain begin to work. He is floating in instrument-lighted darkness. The
Raphael
. It should be in orbit around God’s Grove. He had set the creche cycles for Gregorius, Kee, and him for a dangerous six hours rather than the usual three days.
Playing God with the troopers’ lives
, he remembers thinking. The chances for unsuccessful resurrection are very high at this hurried pace. De Soya remembers the second courier who had brought orders to him on the
Balthasar
, Father Gawronski—it
seems like decades ago to him—he had not achieved successful resurrection … the resurrection chaplain on
Balthasar
 … what was that old bastard’s name? Father Sapieha … had said that it would take weeks or months for Father Gawronski to be resurrected after that initial failure … a slow, painful process, the resurrection chaplain had said accusingly …

Father Captain de Soya’s mind is clearing as he floats above the creche. Still in free fall as he had programmed. He remembers thinking that he might not be in shape to walk in one-g. He is not.

Kicking off to the wardrobe cubby, de Soya checks himself in the mirror there—his body glistens redly, he does look like a burn victim, and the cruciform is a livid welt in all that pink, raw flesh.

De Soya closes his eyes and pulls on his underclothes and cassock. The cotton hurts his raw skin, but he ignores the pain. The coffee has percolated as programmed. He lifts his bulb from the plotting table and kicks back into the common room.

Corporal Kee’s creche glows green in the last seconds of revival. Gregorius’s creche has flashing warning lights. De Soya curses softly and pulls himself down to the sergeant’s creche panel. The resurrection cycle has been aborted. The hurried revival has failed.

“Goddammit,” whispers de Soya, and then offers an Act of Contrition for taking the Lord’s name in vain. He needed Gregorius.

Kee revives safely, however, although the corporal is confused and in pain. De Soya lifts him out, kicks off with him to the wardroom cubby to sponge-bathe the other man’s burning skin and to offer him a drink of orange juice. Within minutes Kee can understand.

“Something was wrong,” de Soya explains. “I had to take this risk to see what Corporal Nemes was up to.”

Kee nods his understanding. Even though dressed with the cabin temperature set high, the corporal is shivering violently.

De Soya leads the way back to the command core. Sergeant Gregorius’s creche is all amber lights now as the cycle surrenders the big man to death again. Corporal Rhadamanth Nemes’s creche shows green lights for the normal three-day resurrection. Monitor displays show that she is inside, lifeless, and receiving the secret sacramental ministrations of resurrection. De Soya taps the release code.

Warning lights blink. “Creche release not allowed during resurrection cycle,” comes
Raphael
’s emotionless voice. “Any attempt to open the creche now could result in true death.”

De Soya ignores the lights and warning buzzers and tugs at the lid. It stays locked. “Give me that pry bar,” he says to Kee.

The corporal tosses the iron bar across the weightless space. De Soya finds a niche for the head of the bar, says a silent prayer that he is not wrong and paranoid, and pries up the lid. Alarm bells fill the ship.

The creche is empty.

“Where is Corporal Nemes?” de Soya asks the ship.

“All instruments and sensors show her in her creche,” says the ship’s computer.

“Yeah,” says de Soya, tossing the bar aside. It tumbles into a corner in zero-g slow motion. “Come on,” he says to the corporal, and the two kick back to the wardroom cubby. The shower stall is empty. There is no place to hide in the common area. De Soya kicks forward to his command chair while Kee heads for the connecting tube.

Status lights show geosynchronous orbit at thirty thousand kilometers. De Soya looks out the window and sees a world of swirling cloud banks except for a wide band at the equator, where slash marks cut across green and brown terrain. Instruments show the dropship attached and powered down. Voice queries have the ship confirm that the dropship is where it should be, its air lock undisturbed since translation. “Corporal Kee?” de Soya says on the intercom. He must concentrate to keep his teeth from chattering. The pain is very real; it is as if his skin is on fire. He has a tremendous urge to close his eyes and sleep. “Report,” commands de Soya.

“The dropship’s gone, Captain,” says Kee from the access tunnel. “All the connector lights are green, but if I cycled the air lock, I’d be breathing vacuum. I can see out the port here that the dropship’s gone.”

“
Merde
,” whispers de Soya. “All right, come on back here.” He studies the other instruments while he waits. The telltale double burps are there on the thruster record … about three hours ago. Calling up the map of the equatorial region of God’s Grove, de Soya keys in a telescope and deep-radar search of the stretch of river around the stump of the Worldtree. “Find the first farcaster portal and show me every
stretch of the river in between. Report on location of dropship transponder.”

“Instruments show dropship attached to the command-core boom,” says the ship. “Transponder confirms this.”

“Okay,” says de Soya, imagining himself punching out silicon chips like teeth, “ignore the dropship beacon. Just begin telescope and deep-radar searches of this region. Report any life-forms or artifacts. All data on main screens.”

“Affirmative,” says the computer. De Soya sees the screen lurch forward as telescopic magnification begins. He is looking down on a farcaster portal now from only a few hundred meters above it. “Pan downriver,” he says.

“Affirmative.”

Corporal Kee slides into the copilot’s seat and straps himself in. “With the dropship gone,” he says, “there’s no way we can get down there.”

“Combat suits,” says de Soya through the ripples of pain that shake him. “They have an ablative shield … hundreds of microlayers of colored ablative in case of a coherent light firefight, right?”

“Correct,” says Corporal Kee, “but—”

“My plan was for you and Sergeant Gregorius to use the ablative for reentry,” continues de Soya. “I could get
Raphael
in as low an orbit as possible. You use an auxiliary reaction pak for retro thrust. The suits should survive reentry, shouldn’t they?”

“Possibly,” says Kee, “but—”

“Then you go to EM repulsors and find this … woman,” says de Soya. “Find her and stop her. Afterward, you use the dropship to get back.”

Corporal Kee rubs his eyes. “Yes, sir. But I checked the suits. All of them have integrity breaches.…”

“Integrity …,” repeats de Soya stupidly.