The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (61 page)

“Look!” cried Brawne Lamia, pointing to the balcony doorway
where the fading twilight had been replaced with pulses of strong light.

The group went out into the cool evening air, shielding their eyes from the staggering display of silent explosions which filled the sky: pure white fusion bursts expanding like explosive ripples across a lapis pond; smaller, brighter plasma implosions in blue and yellow and brightest red, curling inward like flowers folding for the night: the lightning dance of gigantic hellwhip displays, beams the size of small worlds cutting their swath across light-hours and being contorted by the riptides of defensive singularities: the aurora shimmer of defense fields leaping and dying under the assault of terrible energies only to be reborn nanoseconds later. Amid it all, the blue-white fusion tails of torchships and larger warships slicing perfectly true lines across the sky like diamond scratches on blue glass.

“The Ousters,” breathed Brawne Lamia.

“The war’s begun,” said Kassad. There was no elation in his voice, no emotion of any kind.

The Consul was shocked to discover that he was weeping silently. He turned his face from the group.

“Are we in danger here?” asked Martin Silenus. He sheltered under the stone archway of the door, squinting at the brilliant display.

“Not at this distance,” said Kassad. He raised his combat binoculars, made an adjustment, and consulted his tactical comlog. “Most of the engagements are at least three AU away. The Ousters are testing the FORCE:space defenses.” He lowered the glasses. “It’s just begun.”

“Has the farcaster been activated yet?” asked Brawne Lamia. “Are the people being evacuated from Keats and the other cities?”

Kassad shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Not yet. The fleet will be fighting a holding action until the cislunar sphere is completed. Then the evacuation portals will be opened to the Web while FORCE units come through by the hundreds.” He raised the binoculars again. “It’ll be a hell of a show.”

“Look!” It was Father Hoyt pointing this time, not at the fireworks display in the sky but out across the low dunes of the northern moors. Several kilometers toward the unseen Tombs, a single figure
was just visible as a speck of a form throwing multiple shadows under the fractured sky.

Kassad trained his glasses on the figure.

“The Shrike?” asked Lamia.

“No, I don’t think so … I think it’s … a Templar by the looks of the robe.”

“Het Masteen!” cried Father Hoyt.

Kassad shrugged and handed the glasses around. The Consul walked back to the group and leaned on the balcony. There was no sound but the whisper of wind, but that made the violence of explosions above them more ominous somehow.

The Consul took his turn looking when the glasses came to him. The figure was tall and robed, its back to the Keep, and strode across the flashing vermilion sands with purposeful intent.

“Is he headed toward us or the Tombs?” asked Lamia.

“The Tombs,” said the Consul.

Father Hoyt leaned elbows on the ledge and raised his gaunt face to the exploding sky. “If it is Masteen, then we’re back to seven, aren’t we?”

“He’ll arrive hours before us,” said the Consul. “Half a day if we sleep here tonight as we proposed.”

Hoyt shrugged. “That can’t matter too much. Seven set out on the pilgrimage. Seven will arrive. The Shrike will be satisfied.”

“If it
is
Masteen,” said Colonel Kassad, “why the charade on the windwagon? And how did he get here before us? There were no other tramcars running and he couldn’t have walked over the Bridle Range passes.”

“We’ll ask him when we arrive at the Tombs tomorrow,” Father Hoyt said tiredly.

Brawne Lamia had been trying to raise someone on her comlog’s general comm frequencies. Nothing emerged but the hiss of static and the occasional growl of distant EMPs. She looked at Colonel Kassad. “When do they start bombing?”

“I don’t know. It depends upon the strength of the FORCE fleet defenses.”

“The defenses weren’t very good the other day when the Ouster scouts got through and destroyed the
Yggdrasill
,” said Lamia.

Kassad nodded.

“Hey,” said Martin Silenus, “are we sitting on a fucking
target?”

“Of course,” said the Consul. “If the Ousters are attacking Hyperion to prevent the opening of the Time Tombs, as M. Lamia’s tale suggests, then the Tombs and this entire area would be a primary target.”

“For nukes?” asked Silenus, his voice strained.

“Almost certainly,” answered Kassad.

“I thought something about the anti-entropic fields kept ships away from here,” said Father Hoyt.

“
Crewed
ships,” said the Consul without looking back at the others from where he leaned on the railing. “The anti-entropic fields won’t bother guided missiles, smart bombs, or hellwhip beams. It won’t bother mech infantry, for that matter. The Ousters could land a few attack skimmers or automated tanks and watch on remote while they destroy the valley.”

“But they won’t,” said Brawne Lamia. “They want to
control
Hyperion, not destroy it.”

“I wouldn’t wager my life on that supposition,” said Kassad.

Lamia smiled at him. “But we are, aren’t we, Colonel?”

Above them, a single spark separated itself from the continuous patchwork of explosions, grew into a bright orange ember, and streaked across the sky. The group on the terrace could see the flames, hear the tortured shriek of atmospheric penetration. The fireball disappeared beyond the mountains behind the Keep.

Almost a minute later, the Consul realized that he had been holding his breath, his hands rigid on the stone railing. He let out air in a gasp. The others seemed to be taking a breath at the same moment. There had been no explosion, no shock wave rumbling through the rock.

“A dud?” asked Father Hoyt.

“Probably an injured FORCE skirmisher trying to reach the orbital perimeter or the spaceport at Keats,” said Colonel Kassad.

“He didn’t make it, did he?” asked Lamia. Kassad did not respond.

Martin Silenus lifted the field glasses and searched the darkening
moors for the Templar. “Out of sight,” said Silenus. “The good Captain either rounded that hill just this side of the Time Tombs valley or he pulled his disappearing act again.”

“It’s a pity that we’ll never hear his story,” said Father Hoyt. He turned toward the Consul. “But we’ll hear yours, won’t we?”

The Consul rubbed his palms against his pant legs. His heart was racing. “Yes,” he said, realizing even as he spoke that he had finally made up his mind. “I’ll tell mine.”

The wind roared down the east slopes of the mountains and whistled along the escarpment of Chronos Keep. The explosions above them seemed to have diminished ever so slightly, but the coming of darkness made each one look even more violent than the last.

“Let’s go inside,” said Lamia, her words almost lost in the wind sound. “It’s getting cold.”

   They had turned off the single lamp and the interior of the room was lighted only by the heat-lightning pulses of color from the sky outside. Shadows sprang into being, vanished, and appeared again as the room was painted in many colors. Sometimes the darkness would last several seconds before the next barrage.

The Consul reached into his traveling bag and took out a strange device, larger than a comlog, oddly ornamented, and fronted with a liquid crystal diskey like something out of a history holo.

“Secret fatline transmitter?” Brawne Lamia asked dryly.

The Consul’s smile showed no humor. “It’s an ancient comlog. It came out during the Hegira.” He removed a standard micro-disk from a pouch on his belt and inserted it. “Like Father Hoyt, I have someone else’s tale to tell before you can understand my own.”

“Christ on a stick,” sneered Martin Silenus, “am I the only one who can tell a straightforward story in this fucking herd? How long do I have to …”

The Consul’s movement surprised even himself. He rose, spun, caught the smaller man by the cape and shirtfront, slammed him
against the wall, draped him over a packing crate with a knee in Silenus’s belly and a forearm against his throat, and hissed, “One more word from you, poet, and
I’ll
kill you.”

Silenus began to struggle but a tightening on his windpipe and a glance at the Consul’s eyes made him cease. His face was very white.

Colonel Kassad silently, almost gently, separated the two. “There will be no more comments,” he said. He touched the deathwand in his belt.

Martin Silenus went to the far side of the circle, still rubbing his throat, and slumped against a crate without a word. The Consul strode to the door, took several deep breaths, and walked back to the group. He spoke to everyone but the poet. “I’m sorry. It is just that … I never expected to share this.”

The light from outside surged red and then white, followed by a blue glow which faded to near darkness.

“We know,” Brawne Lamia said softly. “We all felt that way.”

The Consul touched his lower lip, nodded, roughly cleared his throat, and came to sit by the ancient comlog. “The recording is not as old as the instrument,” he said. “It was made about fifty standard years ago. I’ll have some more to say when it’s over.” He paused as if there were more to be said, shook his head, and thumbed the antique diskey.

There were no visuals. The voice was that of a young man. In the background one could hear a breeze blowing through grass or soft branches and, more distantly, the roll of surf.

Outside, the light pulsed madly as the tempo of the distant space battle quickened. The Consul tensed as he waited for the crash and concussion. There was none. He closed his eyes and listened with the others.

THE CONSUL’S TALE:
REMEMBERING SIRI

I climb the steep hill to Siri’s tomb on the day the islands return to the shallow seas of the Equatorial Archipelago. The day is perfect and I hate it for being so. The sky is as tranquil as tales of Old Earth’s seas, the shallows are dappled with ultramarine tints, and a warm breeze blows in from the sea to ripple the russet willowgrass on the hillside near me.

Better low clouds and gray gloom on such a day. Better mist or a shrouding fog which sets the masts in Firstsite Harbor dripping and raises the lighthouse horn from its slumbers. Better one of the great sea-simoons blowing up out of the cold belly of the south, lashing before it the motile isles and their dolphin herders until they seek refuge in the lee of our atolls and stony peaks.

Anything would be better than this warm spring day when the sun moves through a vault of sky so blue that it makes me want to run, to jump in great loping arcs, and to roll in the soft grass as Siri and I have done at just this spot.

Just this spot. I pause to look around. The willowgrass bends and ripples like the fur of some great beast as the salt-tinged breeze gusts up out of the south. I shield my eyes and search the horizon but nothing moves there. Out beyond the lava reef, the sea begins to chop and lift itself in nervous strokes.

“Siri,” I whisper. I say her name without meaning to do so. A hundred meters down the slope, the crowd pauses to watch me and to catch its collective breath. The procession of mourners and celebrants stretches for more than a kilometer to where the white buildings
of the city begin. I can make out the gray and balding head of my younger son in the vanguard. He is wearing the blue and gold robes of the Hegemony. I know that I should wait for him, walk with him, but he and the other aging Council members cannot keep up with my young, ship-trained muscles and steady stride. But decorum dictates that I should walk with him and my granddaughter Lira and my nine-year-old grandson.

To hell with it. And to hell with them.

I turn and jog up the steep hillside. Sweat begins to soak my loose cotton shirt before I reach the curving summit of the ridge and catch sight of the tomb.

Siri’s tomb
.

I stop. The wind chills me although the sunlight is warm enough as it glints off the flawless white stone of the silent mausoleum. The grass is high near the sealed entrance to the crypt. Rows of faded festival pennants on ebony staffs line the narrow gravel path.