The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (40 page)

The look of shock on her face when he released her was so profound that he could not ignore it. “What is it, sweetie? What’s wrong?”

It was one of the few times he had ever seen his daughter totally at a loss for words.

“I … you … I forgot,” she stammered. She shook her head in a familiar way and managed to laugh and cry at the same instant. “You look a little different is all, Dad. I
remember
leaving here like it was … literally … yesterday. When I saw … your hair …” Rachel covered her mouth.

Sol ran his hand across his scalp. “Ah, yes,” he said, suddenly close to laughing and crying himself. “With your school and travels, it’s been more than eleven years. I’m old. And bald.” He opened his arms again. “Welcome back, little one.”

Rachel moved into the protective circle of his embrace.

   For several months things went well. Rachel felt more secure with familiar things around, and for Sarai the heartbreak of their daughter’s illness was temporarily offset by the pleasure of having her home again.

Rachel rose early every morning and viewed her private “orientation
show” which, Sol knew, contained images of him and Sarai a dozen years older than she remembered. He tried to imagine what it was like for Rachel: she awoke in her own bed, memory fresh, twenty-two years old, home on vacation before going offworld to graduate school, only to find her parents suddenly aged, a hundred small changes in the house and town, the news different … years of history having passed her by.

Sol could not imagine it.

   Their first mistake was acceding to Rachel’s wishes in inviting her old friends to her twenty-second birthday party: the same crew who had celebrated the first time—irrepressible Niki, Don Stewart and his friend Howard, Kathi Obeg and Marta Tyn, her best friend Linna McKyler—all of them then just out of college, shucking off cocoons of childhood for new lives.

Rachel had seen them all since her return. But she had slept … and forgotten. And Sol and Sarai this one time did not remember that she had forgotten.

Niki was thirty-four standard, with two children of her own—still energetic, still irrepressible, but ancient by Rachel’s standards. Don and Howard talked about their investments, their children’s sports accomplishments, and their upcoming vacations. Kathi was confused, speaking only twice to Rachel and then as if she was speaking to an impostor. Marta was openly jealous of Rachel’s youth. Linna, who had become an ardent Zen Gnostic in the years between, cried and left early.

When they had gone, Rachel sat in the postparty ruin of the living room and stared at the half-eaten cake. She did not cry. Before going upstairs she hugged her mother and whispered to her father, “Dad, please don’t let me do anything like that again.”

Then she went upstairs to sleep.

   It was that spring when Sol again had the dream. He was lost in a great, dark place, lighted only by two red orbs. It was not absurd when the flat voice said:

And Sol had screamed into the darkness:

“You already have her, you son of a bitch! What do I have to do to get her back? Tell me! Tell me, goddamn you!”

And Sol Weintraub woke sweating with tears in his eyes and anger in his heart. In the other room he could feel his daughter sleeping while the great worm devoured her.

   In the months which followed Sol became obsessive about obtaining information on Hyperion, the Time Tombs, and the Shrike. As a trained researcher, he was astounded that there were so little hard data on so provocative a topic. There was the Church of the Shrike, of course—there were no temples on Barnard’s World but many in the Web—but he soon found that seeking hard information in Shrike cult literature was like trying to map the geography of Sarnath by visiting a Buddhist monastery. Time was mentioned in Shrike Church dogma, but only in the sense that the Shrike was supposed to be “… the Angel of Retribution from Beyond Time” and that true time had ended for the human race when Old Earth died and that the four centuries since had been “false time.” Sol found their tracts the usual combination of double talk and navel lint-gathering common to most religions. Still, he planned to visit a Shrike Church temple as soon as he had explored more serious avenues of research.

Melio Arundez launched another Hyperion expedition, also sponsored by Reichs University, this one with the stated goal of isolating and understanding the time-tide phenomenon which had inflicted the Merlin sickness on Rachel. A major development was the Hegemony Protectorate’s decision to send along on that expedition a farcaster transmitter for installation at the Hegemony consulate in Keats. Even so, it would be more than three years’ Web time before the expedition arrived on Hyperion. Sol’s first instinct was to go with Arundez and his team—certainly any holodrama would have the
primary characters returning to the scene of the action. But Sol overrode the instinctive urge within minutes. He was a historian and philosopher; any contribution he might make to the expedition’s success would be minute, at best. Rachel still retained the interest and skills of a well-trained undergraduate archaeologist-to-be, but those skills dwindled a bit each day and Sol could see no benefit to her returning to the site of the accident. Each day would be a shock to her, awakening on a strange world, on a mission which would require skills unknown to her. Sarai would not allow such a thing.

Sol set aside the book he was working on—an analysis of Kierkegaard’s theories of ethics as compromise morality as applied to the legal machinery of the Hegemony—and concentrated on collecting arcane data on time, on Hyperion, and on the story of Abraham.

Months spent carrying on business as usual and collecting information did little to satisfy his need for action. Occasionally he vented his frustration on the medical and scientific specialists who came to examine Rachel like streams of pilgrims to a holy shrine.

“How the hell can this be happening!” he screamed at one little specialist who had made the mistake of being both smug and condescending to the patient’s father. The doctor had a head so hairless, his face looked like lines painted on a billiard ball. “She’s begun growing smaller!” Sol shouted, literally buttonholing the retreating expert. “Not so one can see, but bone mass is decreasing. How can she even
begin
to become a child again? What the
hell
does that do to the law of conservation of mass?”

The expert had moved his mouth but had been too rattled to speak. His bearded colleague answered for him. “M. Weintraub,” he said, “sir. You have to understand that your daughter is currently inhabiting … ah … think of it as a localized region of reversed entropy.”

Sol wheeled on the other man. “Are you saying that she is merely stuck in a bubble of backwardness?”

“Ah … no,” said the colleague, massaging his chin nervously. “Perhaps a better analogy is that … biologically at least … the life/metabolism mechanism has been reversed … ah …”

“Nonsense,” snapped Sol. “She doesn’t excrete for nutrition or regurgitate her food. And what about all the neurological activity?
Reverse the electrochemical impulses and you get nonsense. Her brain
works
, gentlemen … it’s her memory that is disappearing. Why, gentlemen? Why?”

The specialist finally found his voice. “We don’t know why, M. Weintraub. Mathematically, your daughter’s body resembles a time-reversed equation … or perhaps an object which has passed through a rapidly spinning black hole. We don’t know
how
this has happened or
why
the physically impossible is occurring in this instance, M. Weintraub. We just don’t know enough.”

Sol shook each man’s hand. “Fine. That’s all I wanted to know, gentlemen. Have a good trip back.”

   On Rachel’s twenty-first birthday she came to Sol’s door an hour after they had all turned in. “Daddy?”

“What is it, kiddo?” Sol pulled on his robe and joined her in the doorway. “Can’t sleep?”

“I haven’t slept for two days,” she whispered. “Been taking stay-awakes so I can get through all of the briefing stuff I left in the Wanta Know? file.”

Sol nodded.

“Daddy, would you come downstairs and have a drink with me? I’ve got some things I want to talk about.”

Sol got his glasses from the nightstand and joined her downstairs.

It proved to be the first and only time that Sol would get drunk with his daughter. It was not a boisterous drunk—for a while they chatted, then began telling jokes and making puns, until each was giggling too hard to continue. Rachel started to tell another story, sipped her drink just at the funniest part, and almost snorted whiskey out her nose, she was laughing so hard. Each of them thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened.

“I’ll get another bottle,” said Sol when the tears had ceased. “Dean Moore gave me some Scotch last Christmas … I think.”

When he returned, walking carefully, Rachel had sat up on the couch and brushed her hair back with her fingers. He poured her a small amount and the two drank in silence for a while.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“I went through the whole thing. Saw myself, listened to myself, saw the holos of Linna and the others all middle-aged …”

“Hardly middle-aged,” said Sol. “Linna will be thirty-five next month …”

“Well,
old
, you know what I mean. Anyway, I read the medical briefs, saw the photos from Hyperion, and you know what?”

“What?”

“I don’t believe any of it, Dad.”

Sol put down his drink and looked at his daughter. Her face was fuller than before, less sophisticated. And even more beautiful.

“I mean, I
do
believe it,” she said with a small, scared laugh. “It’s not like you and Mom would put on such a cruel joke. Plus there’s your … your age … and the news and all. I know it’s
real
, but I don’t
believe
it. Do you know what I mean, Dad?”

“Yes,” said Sol.

“I mean I woke up this morning and I thought,
Great … tomorrow’s the paleontology exam and I’ve hardly studied
. I was looking forward to showing Roger Sherman a thing or two … he thinks he’s so
smart
.”

Sol took a drink. “Roger died three years ago in a plane crash south of Bussard,” he said. He would not have spoken without the whiskey in him, but he had to find out if there was a Rachel hiding within the Rachel.

“I know,” said Rachel and pulled her knees up to her chin. “I accessed everybody I knew. Gram’s dead. Professor Eikhardt isn’t teaching anymore. Niki married some … 
salesman
. A lot happens in four years.”

“More than eleven years,” said Sol. “The trip to and from Hyperion left you six years behind us stay-at-homes.”

“But that’s normal,” cried Rachel. “People travel outside the Web all the time.
They
cope.”

Sol nodded. “But this is different, kiddo.”

Rachel managed a smile and drained the last of her whiskey. “Boy, what an understatement.” She set the glass down with a sharp, final sound. “Look, here’s what I’ve decided. I’ve spent two and a half days going through all of the stuff she … I … prepared to
let me know what’s happened, what’s going on … and
it just doesn’t help
.”

Sol sat perfectly still, not even daring to breathe.

“I mean,” said Rachel, “knowing that I’m getting younger every day, losing the memory of people I haven’t even
met
yet … I mean, what happens next? I just keep getting younger and smaller and less capable until I just
disappear
someday? Jesus, Dad.” Rachel wrapped her arms more tightly around her knees. “It’s sort of funny in a weird way, isn’t it?”

“No,” Sol said quietly.

“No, I’m sure it’s not,” said Rachel. Her eyes, always large and dark, were moist. “It must be the worst nightmare in the world for you and Mom. Every day you have to watch me come down the stairs … confused … waking up with yesterday’s memories but hearing my own voice tell me that yesterday was
years
ago. That I had a love affair with some guy named Amelio …”

“Melio,” whispered Sol.

“Whatever. It just doesn’t
help
, Dad. By the time I can even begin to absorb it, I’m so worn out that I have to sleep. Then … well, you know what happens then.”

“What …” began Sol and had to clear his throat. “What do you want us to do, little one?”

Rachel looked him in the eye and smiled. It was the same smile she had gifted him with since her fifth week of life. “Don’t tell me, Dad,” she said firmly. “Don’t let
me
tell me. It just hurts. I mean, I didn’t
live
those times …” She paused and touched her forehead. “You know what I mean, Dad. The Rachel who went to another planet and fell in love and got hurt … that was
a different Rachel!
I shouldn’t have to suffer her pain.” She was crying now. “Do you understand? Do you?”

“Yes,” said Sol. He opened his arms and felt her warmth and tears against his chest. “Yes, I understand.”

   Fatline messages from Hyperion came frequently the next year but they were all negative. The nature and source of the anti-entropic fields had not been found. No unusual time-tide activity had been
measured around the Sphinx. Experiments with laboratory animals in and around the tidal regions had resulted in sudden death for some animals, but the Merlin sickness had not been replicated. Melio ended every message with “My love to Rachel.”

   Sol and Sarai used money loaned from Reichs University to receive limited Poulsen treatments in Bussard City. They were already too old for the process to extend their lives for another century, but it restored the look of a couple approaching fifty standard rather than seventy. They studied old family photos and found that it was not too difficult to dress the way they had a decade and a half before.

Sixteen-year-old Rachel tripped down the stairs with her comlog tuned to the college radio station. “Can I have rice cereal?”