do. It was a perfect projection;
he sat in his chair amongst the others, his hands curled on the
armrests in a relaxed fashion; there was none of the haziness or see-
through common to mobile projections. His face was long, with high
cheekbones and a mobile mouth which suggested a hint of a sardonic
smile even at the most serious of moments. This was a serious
moment.
"No, CEO," said Councilor Albedo, "the Advisory Croup was not
asked to assess Ouster strength."
Gladstone nodded. "I assumed," she said, still addressing Morpurgo,
THE	FALL	OF	HYPEHION
"that when the FORCE intelligence estimates came in, they incorporated
the Council's projections."
The FORCE:ground General glared at Albedo. "No rna'am," he said.
"Since the Core acknowledges no contact with the Ousters, we felt that
their projections wouldn't be any better than our own. We did use the
OCS:HTN aggregate AI network to run our assessments." He thrust the
foreshortened cigar back into his mouth. His chin jutted. When he
spoke, it was around the cigar. "Could the Council have done better?"
Gladstone looked at Albedo.
The Councilor made a small motion with the long fingers of his right
hand. "Our estimates ... for this Swarm . . . suggested four to six
thousand fighting units."
"You--" began Morpurgo, his face red.
"You did not mention this during the briefing," said CEO Gladstone.
"Nor during our earlier deliberations."
Councilor Albedo shrugged. "The General is correct," he said. "We
have no contact with the Ousters. Our estimates are no More reliable
than force's, merely . . . based upon different premises. The Olym-
pus Command School Historical Tactical Network docs excellent work.
If the AIs there were one order of acuity higher on the TuringDcmmler
scale, we would have to bring them into the Core." He made the graceful
gesture with his hand again. "As it is, the Council's premises might be
of use for future planning. We will, of course, turn over all projections
to this group at any time."
Gladstone nodded. "Do so immediately."
She turned back to the screen, and the others did so also. Sensing
the silence, the room monitors brought the speaker volume back up,
and once again we could hear the cries of victory, screams for help,
and calm recitation of positions, fire-control directions, and commands.
The closest wall was a real-time feed from the torchship HS N'Djamena as it searched for survivors among the tumbling remnants of Battle
Group B.5. The damaged torchship it was approaching, magnified a
thousand times, looked like a pomegranate burst from the inside, its
seeds and red rind spilling in slow motion, tumbling into a cioud of
particles, gases, frozen volatiles, a million microelectronics ripped from
their cradles, food stores, tangled gear, and--recognizable now and
then from their marionette tumble of arms or legs--many, many bodies.
The N'Dyamena's searchlight, ten meters wide after its coherent leap
of twenty thousand miles, played across the starlit frozen wreckage,
bringing individual items, facets, and faces into focus. It was quite
beautiful in a terrible way. The reflected light made Gladstone's face
look much older.
"Admiral," she said, "is it pertinent that the Swarm waited until Task
Force 87.2 translated in-system?"
Singh touched his beard. "Are you asking if it was a trap, CEO?"
"Yes."
The Admiral glanced at his colleagues and then at Gladstone. "I
think not. We believe ... I believe . . . that when the Ousters saw
the intensity of our force commitment, they responded in kind. It does
mean, however, that they are totally resolved to take Hyperion system."
"Can they do it?" asked Gladstone, her eyes still on the tumbling
wreckage above her. A young man's body, half in a spacesuit and half
out, tumbled toward the camera. The burst eyes and lungs were clearly
visible.
"No," said Admiral Singh. "They can bloody us. They can even
drive us back to a totally defensive perimeter around Hyperion itself.
But they cannot defeat us or drive us out."
"Or destroy the farcaster?" Senator Richeau's voice was taut.
"Nor destroy the farcaster," said Singh.
"He's right," said General Morpurgo. "I'd stake my professional career
on it."
Gladstone smiled and stood. The others, including myself, rushed
to stand also. "You have," Gladstone said softly to Morpurgo. "You
have." She looked around. "We will meet here when events warrant
it. M. Hunt will be my liaison with you. In the meantime, gentlemen
and ladies, the work of government shall proceed. Good afternoon."
As the others left, I took my seat again until I was the only one left
in the room. The speakers came back up to volume. On one band, a
man was crying. Manic laughter came through static. Above me, behind
me, on both sides, the starfields moved slowly against blackness, and
the starlight glinted coldly on wreckage and ruin.
Government House was constructed in the shape of a Star of David,
and within the center of the star, shielded by low walls and strategically
planted trees, there was a garden: smaller than the formal acres of flowers
in Deer Park but no less beautiful. I was walking there as evening fell,
the brilliant blue-white ofTau Ceti fading to golds, when Meina Glad-
stone approached.
For a while, we walked together in silence. I noticed that she had exTHE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
changed her suit for a long robe of the kind worn by grand matrons on
Patawpha; the robe was wide and billowing, inset with intricate dark blue
and gold designs which almost matched the darkening sky. Gladstone's
hands were out of sight in hidden pockets, the wide sleeves stirred to a
breeze; the hem dragged on the milk-white stones of the path.
"You let them interrogate me," I said. "I'm curious as to why."
Gladstone's voice was tired. "They were not transmitting. There was
no danger of the information being passed on."
I smiled. "Nonetheless, you let them put me through that."
"Security wished to know as much about them as they would divulge."
"At the expense of any . . . inconvenience ... on my part," I said.
"Yes."
"And does Security know who they were working for?"
"The man mentioned Harbrit," said the CEO. "Security is fairly
certain that they meant Emiem Harbrit."
"The commodities broker on Asquith?"
"Yes. She and Diana Philomel have ties with the old Glennon-Height
royalist factions."
"They were amateurs," I said, thinking of Hermund mentioning
Harbrit's name, the confused order of Diana's questioning.
"Of course."
"Are the royalists connected to any serious group?"
"Only the Shrike church," said Gladstone. She paused where the
path crossed a small stream via a stone bridge. The CEO gathered her
robe and sat on a wrought-iron bench. "None of the bishops have yet
come out of hiding, you know."
"With the riots and backlash, I don't blame them," I said. I remained
standing. There were no bodyguards or monitors in sight, but I knew that
if I were to make any threatening move toward Gladstone, I would wake
up in ExecSec detention. Above us, the clouds lost their last tinge of gold
and began to glow with the reflected silver light ofTC"s countless tower
cities. "What did Security do with Diana and her husband?" I asked.
"They've been thoroughly interrogated. They're being. . . detained."
I nodded. Thorough interrogation meant that even now their brains
were floating in full-shunt tanks. Their bodies would be kept in cryogenic
storage until a secret trial determined if their actions had been
treasonable. After the trial, the bodies would be destroyed, and Diana
and Hermund would remain in "detention," with all sensory and comm
channels turned off. The Hegemony had not used the death penalty
---------------------------------------------------- 5 7 ----------------------------------------------------
for centuries, but the alternatives were not pleasant. I sat on the long
bench, six feet from Gladstone.
"Do you still write poetry?"
I was surprised by her question. I glanced down the garden path
where floating Japanese lanterns and hidden glow-globes had just come
on. "Not really," I said. "Sometimes I dream in verse. Or used to . . ."
Meina Gladstone folded her hands on her lap and studied them. "If
you were writing about the events unfolding now," she said, "what kind
of poem would you create?"
I laughed. "I've already begun it and abandoned it twice ... or
rather, he had. It was about the death of the gods and their difficulty
in accepting their displacement. It was about transformation and suffering
and injustice. And it was about the poet . " . whom he thought
suffered most at such injustice." '
Gladstone looked at me. Her face was a mass of lines and shadows
in the dimming light. "And who are the gods that are being replaced
this time, M. Severn? Is it humanity or the false gods we created to
depose us?"
"How the hell should I know?" I snapped and turned away to watch
the stream.
"You are part of both worlds, no? Humanity and TechnoCore?"
I laughed again. "I'm part of neither world. A cybrid monster here,
a research project there."
"Yes, but whose research? And for what ends?"
I shrugged.
Gladstone rose and I followed. We crossed the stream and listened
to water moving over the stones. The path wound between tall boulders
covered with exquisite lichen which glowed in the lantern light.
Gladstone paused at the top of a short flight of stone steps. "Do you
think the Ultimates in the Core will succeed in constructing their
Ultimate Intelligence, M. Severn?"
"Will they build God?" I said. "There are those AIs which do not
want to build God. They learned from the human experience that to
construct the next step in awareness is an invitation to slavery, if not
actual extinction."
"But would a true God extinguish his creatures?"
"In the case of the Core and the hypothetical UI," I said, "God is
the creature, not the creator. Perhaps a god must create the lesser beings
in contact with it in order for it to feel any responsibility for them."
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
"Yet the Core has appeared to take responsibility for human beings
in the centuries since the Al Secession," said Gladstone. She was gazing
intently at me, as if gauging something by my expression.
I looked out at the garden. The path glowed whitely, almost eerily
in the dark. "The Core works toward its own ends," I said, knowing as
I spoke that no human being knew that fact better than CEO Meina
Gladstone.
"And do you feel that humanity no longer figures as a means toward
those ends?"
I made a dismissive gesture with my right hand. "I'm a creature of
neither culture," I said again. "Neither graced by the naivete of the
unintentional creators, nor cursed by the terrible awareness of their
creatures."
"Genetically, you are fully human," said Gladstone.
It was not a question. I did not respond.
"Jesus Christ was said to be fully human," she said. "And also fully
divine. Humanity and Godhead at intersection."
I was amazed at her reference to that old religion. Christianity had
been replaced first by Zen Christianity, then Zen Gnosticism, then by
a hundred More vital theologies and philosophies. Gladstone's home-
world was no repository for discarded beliefs and I assumed--and
hoped--that neither was the CEO. "If he was fully human and fully
God," I said, "then I am his antimatter image."
"No," said Gladstone, "I would imagine that the Shrike your pilgrim
friends are confronting is that."
I stared. It was the first time she had mentioned the Shrike to me,
despite the fact that I knew--and she knew that I knew--that it had
been her plan which led the Consul to open the Time Tombs and
release the thing.
"Perhaps you should have been on that pilgrimage, M. Severn," said
the CEO.
"In a way," I said, "I am."
Gladstone gestured, and a door to her private quarters opened. "Yes,
in a way you are," she said. "But if the woman who carries your
counterpart is crucified on the Shrike's legendary tree of thorns, will
you suffer for all eternity in your dreams?"
I had no answer, so I stood there and said nothing.
"We will talk in the morning after the conference," said Meina
Gladstone. "Good night, M. Severn. Have pleasant dreams."
EIGHT
artin Silenus, Sol Weintraub, and the Consul are staggering
up the dunes toward the Sphinx as Brawne Lamia and
Fedmahn Kassad return with Father Hoyt's body. Weintraub
clutches his cape tight around him, trying to shelter his infant
from the rage of blowing sand and crackling light. He watches as Kassad
descends the dune, his long legs black and cartoonish against electrified
sand, Hoyt's arms and hands dangling, moving slightly with each slide
and step.
Silenus is shouting, but the wind whips away 'words. Brawne Lamia
gestures toward the one tent still standing; the storm has collapsed or
ripped away the others. They crowd into Silenus's tent. Colonel Kassad
coming last, passing the body in gently. Inside, their shouts can be
heard above the crack of fibcrplastic canvas and the paper-splitting rip
of lightning.
"Dead?" shouts the Consul, peeling back the cloak Kassad had
wrapped around Hoyt's nude body. The cruciforms glow pinkly.
The Colonel points to the telltales blinking on the surface of the
FORCE-issue medpak adhered to the priest's chest. The lights blink
red except for the yellow winking of the systems-sustaining filaments
and nodules. Hoyt's head rolls back, and now Weintraub can see the
millipede suture holding the ragged edges of the slashed throat together.
Sol Weintraub tries to locate a pulse manually; finds none. He leans
forward, sets his car to the priest's chest. There is no heartbeat, but the
welt of the cruciform there is hot against Sol's cheek. He looks at Brawne
Lamia. "The Shrike?"
"Yes ... I think ... I don't know." She gestures toward the antique
pistol she still holds. "I emptied the magazine. Twelve shots at ...
whatever it was."
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERIDN ----------------
"Did you see it?" the Consul asks Kassad.
"No. I entered the room ten seconds after Brawne, but I didn't see
anything."
"What about your fucking soldier gadgets?" says Martin Silenus. He
is crowded in the back of the tent, huddled in a near-fetal position.
"Didn't all that FORCE shit show something?"
"No."
A small alarm sounds from the medpak, and Kassad detaches another
plasma cartridge from his belt, feeds it into the pak's chamber, and sits
back on his heels, nipping his visor down to watch out the opening of
the tent. His voice is distorted by the helmet speaker. "He's lost More
blood than we can compensate for here. Did anyone else bring first aid
equipment?"
Weintraub rummages in his pack. "I have a basic kit. Not enough
for this, though. Whatever slashed his throat cut through everything."
"The Shrike," whispers Martin Silenus.
"It doesn't matter," says Lamia, hugging herself to stop her body
from shaking. "We've got to get help for him." She looks at the
Consul.
"He's dead," says the Consul. "Even a ship's surgery won't bring him
back."
"We have to try!" shouts Lamia, leaning forward to grab the Consul's
tunic front. "We can't leave him to those . . . things..." She gestures
toward the cruciform glowing beneath the skin of the dead man's chest.
The Consul rubs his eyes. "We can destroy the body. Use the Colonel's
rifle ..."
"We're going to die if we don't get out of this fucking storm!" cries
Silenus, The tent is vibrating, fiberplastic pounding the poet's head and
back with each billow. The sound of sand against fabric is like a rocket
taking off just outside. "Call the goddamned ship. Call it!"
The Consul pulls his pack closer, as if guarding the antique comlog
inside it. Sweat glistens on his cheeks and forehead.
"We could wait the storm out in one of the Tombs," says Sol Weintraub.
"The Sphinx, perhaps."
"Fuck that," says Martin Silenus.
The scholar shifts in the cramped space and stares at the poet. "You
came all this way to find the Shrike. Are you telling us that you've
changed your mind now that he seems to have made an appearance?"
Silenus's eyes gleam out from under his lowered beret. "I'm not
telling you anything except that I want that goddamned ship of his here,
and I want it now."
"It might be a good idea," says Colonel Kassad.
The Consul looks at him.
"If there's a chance to save Hoyt's life, we should take it."
The Consul is in pain himself. "We can't leave," he says. "Can't
leave now."
"No," agrees Kassad. "We won't use the ship to leave. But the surgery
might help Hoyt. And we can wait out the storm in it."
"And maybe find out what's happening up there," says Brawne
Lamia, jerking her thumb toward the roof of the tent.
The baby, Rachel, is crying shrilly. Weintraub rocks her, holding
her head in his broad hand. "I agree," he says. "If the Shrike wants to
find us, it can find us on the ship as easily as out here. We'll make
sure that no one leaves." He touches Hoyt's chest. "As horrible as it
sounds, the information the surgery gives us on how this parasite works
could be priceless to the Web."
"All right," says the Consul. He pulls the ancient comlog from his
pack, lays his hand on the diskey, and whispers several phrases.
"Is it coming?" asks Martin Silenus.
"It's confirmed the command. We'll need to stow our gear for transfer.
I told it to land just above the entrance to the valley."
Lamia is surprised to find that she has been weeping. She wipes her
cheeks and smiles.
"What's funny?" asks the Consul.
"All this," she says, stabbing at her cheeks with the back other hand,
"and all I can think about is how nice it'll be to have a shower."
"A drink," says Silenus.
"Shelter from the storm," says Weintraub. The baby is taking milk
from a nursing pak.
Kassad leans forward, his head and shoulders outside the tent. He
raises his weapon and clicks off the safety. "Telltales," he says. "Something's
moving just beyond the dune." The visor turns toward them,
reflecting a pale and huddled group, the paler body of Lenar Hoyt.
"I'm going to check it out," he says. "Wait here until the ship arrives."
"Don't leave," says Silenus. "It's like one of those fucking ancient
horror holos where they go one by one to ... hey!" The poet falls
silent. The entrance to the tent is a triangle of light and noise. Fedmahn
Kassad is gone.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
The tent is beginning to collapse, stakes and wire anchors giving way
as tlie sand shifts around them. Huddled together, shouting to be heard
over the wind roar, the Consul and Lamia wrap Hoyt's body in his
cloak. Readouts on the medpak continue to blink red. Blood has ceased
to flow from the crude millipede suture.
Sol Weintraub sets his four-day-old child in the infant carrier on his
chest, folds his cape around her, and crouches in the entrance. "No
sign of the Colonel!" he shouts. As he watches, a lightning bolt strikes
the outstretched wing of the Sphinx.
Brawne Lamia moves to the entrance and lifts the priest's body. She
is amazed at how light it is. "Let's get Father Hoyt to the ship and in
surgery. Then some of us will come back to search for Kassad."
The Consul tugs his tricorne cap low and shrugs his collar high.
"The ship has deep radar and movement sensors. It'll tell us where the
Colonel's gone."
"And the Shrike," says Silenus. "Can't forget our host."
"Let's go," says Lamia and gets to her feet. She has to lean into the
wind to make progress. Loose ends of Hoyt's cloak flap and crack around
her, while her own cloak streams behind. Finding the path by the
intermittent flashes of lightning, she moves toward the head of the
valley, glancing back only once to see if the others are following.
Martin Silenus steps away from the tent, lifts Het Masteen's Mobius
cube, and his purple beret whips away in the wind, climbing as it goes.
Silenus stands there and curses impressively, stopping only when his
mouth begins to fill with sand.
"Come," shouts Weintraub, his hand on the poet's shoulder. Sol
feels the sand striking his face, littering his short beard. His other hand
covers his chest as if sheltering something infinitely precious. "We'll
lose sight of Brawne if we don't hurry." The two help each other move
forward against the wind. Silenus's fur coat ripples wildly as he detours
to retrieve his beret from where it has come down in the lee of a dune.
The Consul is the last to leave, carrying both his own pack and
Kassad's. A minute after he leaves the small shelter, stakes give way,
fabric tears, and the tent flies into the night, surrounded by a halo of
static electricity. He staggers the three hundred meters up the trail,
occasionally catching glimpses of the two men ahead of him, More
frequently losing the path and having to walk in circles until he comes
across it again. The Time Tombs are visible behind him when the
sandstorm ebbs a bit and the lightning flashes follow one another in
close succession. The Consul sees the Sphinx, still glowing from repeated
electrical strikes, the Jade Tomb beyond it, its walls luminescent,
and beyond them the Obelisk, no glow there, a vertical swipe of pure
black against the cliff walls. Then the Crystal Monolith. There is no
sign of Kassad, although the shifting dunes, blowing sand, and sudden
flashes make it seem as if many things are moving.
The Consul looks up, seeing the wide entrance to the valley now
and the rushing clouds low above it, half expecting to see the blue
fusion glow of his ship lowering through them. The storm is terrible,
but his spacecraft has landed in worse conditions. He wonders if it is
already down and the others are waiting at the base of it for him to
arrive.
But when he reaches the saddle between cliff walls at the opening
of the valley, the wind assaults him anew, he sees the four others huddled
together at the beginning of the broad, flat plain, but there is no ship.
"Shouldn't it be here by now?" shouts Lamia as the Consul approaches
the group.
He nods and crouches to extract the comlog from his pack. Weintraub
and Silenus stand behind him, bending over to offer some shelter from
the blowing sand. The Consul extracts the comlog and pauses, looking
around. The storm makes it appear as if they are in some mad room
where the walls and ceiling change from instant to instant, one second
closing in on them, scant meters away, the next second receding to the
distance, the ceiling floating upward, as in the scene where the room
and Christmas tree expand for Clara in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.
The Consul palms the diskey, bends forward, and whispers into the
voice square. The ancient instrument whispers back to him, the words
just audible above the rasp of sand. He straightens up and faces the
others. "The ship was not allowed to leave."
There is a babble of protest. "What do you mean 'not allowed'?" asks
Lamia when the others fall silent.
The Consul shrugs and looks skyward as if a blue tail of flame might
still announce the ship's coming. "It wasn't given clearance at the
spaceport in Keats."
"Didn't you say you had clearance from the fucking queen?" shouts
Martin Silenus. "Old Gallstone herself?"
"Gladstone's clearance pip was in the ship's memory," says the Consul.
"Both the FORCE and port authorities knew that."
"So what the hell happened?" Lamia wipes her face. The tears she
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
had shed back at the tent have left tiny rivulets of mud in the coating
of sand on her cheeks.
The Consul shrugs. "Gladstone overrode the original pip. There's a
message here from her. Do you want to hear it?"
For a minute, no one answers. After their week of voyage, the thought
of being in touch with someone outside their own group is so incongruous
that it does not register at once; it was as if the world beyond
the pilgrimage had ceased to exist except for the explosions in the night
sky. "Yes," Sol Weintraub says, "let's hear it." A sudden lull in the
storm makes the words seem very loud.
They gather around and crouch near the old comlog, setting Father
Hoyt in the center of their circle. In the minute they have left him
unattended, a small dune has begun to form itself around his body.
The telltales are all red now except tor the extreme-measures monitors
glowing amber. Lamia sets another plasma cartridge in place and makes
sure that the osmosis mask is secure on Hoyt's mouth and nose, filtering
pure oxygen in and keeping sand out. "All right," she says.
The Consul triggers the diskey.
The message is a fatline squirt, recorded by the ship some ten minutes
earlier. The air mists with the data columns and spherical-image colloid
which characterizes comlogs dating back to the Hegira. The image of
Gladstone shimmers, her face distorting bizarrely and then almost comically
as millions of specks of windblown sand rip through the image.
Even at full volume, her voice is almost lost to the storm.
"I'm sorry," says the familiar image, "but I cannot allow your spacecraft
to approach the Tombs just yet. The temptation to leave would
be too great, and the importance of your mission must override all other
factors. Please understand that the fate of worlds may rest with you.
Please be assured that my hopes and prayers are with you. Gladstone
out."
The image folds into itself and fades away. The Consul, Weintraub,
and Lamia continue to stare in silence. Martin Silenus stands, throws
a handful of sand at the empty air where Gladstone's face had been
seconds earlier, and screams, "Goddamn fatherfucking asshole politician
moral paraplegic dipshit drag-queen bitch!" He kicks sand in the
air. The others shift their stares to him.
"Well, that really helped," Brawne Lamia says softly.
Silenus waves his arms in disgust and walks away, still kicking at
dunes.
"Is there anything else?" Weintraub asks the Consul.
"No."
Brawne Lamia crosses her arms and frowns at the comlog. "I forget
how you said this thing works. How are you getting through the interference?"

"Tightbeam to a pocket comsat I seeded as we came down from the Yggdrasill," says the Consul.
Lamia nods. "So when you reported in, you just sent brief messages
to the ship, and it sent fatline squirts to Gladstone . . . and your Ouster
contacts."
"Yes."
"Can the ship take off without clearance?" asks Weintraub. The older
man is sitting, his knees raised and his arms draped on them in a classic
posture of pure fatigue. His voice is also tired. "Just override Gladstone's
prohibition?"
"No," says the Consul. "When Gladstone said no, FORCE set a
class-three containment field over the blast pit where we parked the
ship."
"Get in touch with her," says Brawne Lamia. "Explain things."
"I've tried." The Consul holds the comlog in his hands, sets it back
in the pack. "No response. Also, I mentioned in the original squirt that
Hoyt was badly hurt and that we needed medical help. I wanted the
ship's surgery ready for him."
"Hurt," repeats Martin Silenus, striding back to where they huddled.
"Shit. Our padre friend is dead as Glennon-Height's dog." He jerks his
thumb in the direction of the cloak-wrapped body; all monitor displays
are red.
Brawne Lamia bends closer and touches Hoyt's cheek. It is cold.
Both his comlog biomonitor and the medpak begin chirping brain-
death warnings. The osmosis mask continues to force pure 0; into his lungs, and the medpak simulators still work his lungs and
heart, but the chirping rises to a scream and then settles to a steady,
terrible tone.
"He lost too much blood," says Sol Weintraub. He touches the dead
priest's face, his own eyes closed, head bowed.
"Great," says Silenus. "Fucking great. And according to his own
story, Hoyt's going to decompose and recompose, thanks to that goddamned
cruciform thing . . . two of the goddamn things, the guy's rich
in resurrection insurance . . . and then come lurching back like some
brain-damaged edition of Hamlet's daddy's ghost. What are we going
to do then?"
THE	FALL	OF HYPE
"Shut up," says Brawne Lamia. She is wrapping Hoyt's body in a
layer of tarp she has brought from the tent.
"Shut up yourself," screams Silenus. "We've got one monster lurking
around. Old Grendcl himself is out there somewhere, sharpening his
nails for his next meal, do you really want Hoyt's zombie joining our
happy crew? You remember how he described the Bikura? They'd been
letting the cruciforms bring them back for centuries, and talking to one
of them was like talking to an ambulatory sponge. Do you really want
Hoyt's corpse hiking with us?"
"Two," says the Consul.
"What?" Martin Silenus whirls, loses his footing, and lands on his
knees near the body. He leans toward the old scholar. "What did you
say?"
"Two cruciforms," says the Consul. "His and Father Paul Dure's. If
his story about the Bikura was true, then they'll both be ... resurrected."

"Oh, Christ on a stick," says Silenus and sits in the sand.
Brawne Lamia has finished wrapping the priest's body. She looks at
it. "I remember that in Father Dure's story about the Bikura named
Alpha," she says. "But I still don't understand. The Law of Conservation
of Mass has to come in there somewhere."
"They'll be short zombies," says Martin Silenus. He pulls his fur
coat tighter and pounds the sand with his fist.
"There is so much we could have learned if the ship had arrived,"
says the Consul. "The autodiagnostics could have . . ."He pauses and
gestures. "Look. There is less sand in the air. Perhaps the storm is . . ."
Lightning flashes, and it begins to rain, the icy pellets striking their
faces with More fury than the sandstorm had shown.
Martin Silenus begins to laugh. "It's a rucking desert1." he shouts
toward the sky. "We'll probably drown in a flood."
"We need to get out of this," says Sol Weintraub. His baby's face is
visible between the gaps in his cloak. Rachel is crying; her face is very
red. She looks no older than a newborn.
"Keep Chronos?" says Lamia. "It's a couple of hours ..."
"Too far," says the Consul. "Let's bivouac in one of the Tombs."
Silenus laughs again. He says:
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, 0 mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
"Does that mean yes?" asks Lamia.
"That means fucking 'why not7' " laughs Silenus. "Why make it hard
for our cold muse to find us? We can watch our friend decompose
while we wait. How long did Dure's tale say it took for one of the Bikura
to rejoin the flock after death interrupted their grazing?"
"Three days," says the Consul.
Martin Silenus slaps his forehead with the heel of his palm. "Of
course. How could I forget? How wonderfully fitting. New
Testament-wise. In the meantime, maybe our Shrike-wolf will carry
off a few of this flock. Do you think the padre would mind if I borrowed
one of his cruciforms just in case? I mean, he has a spare ..."
"Let's go," says the Consul. Rain drips from his tricorne cap in a
steady stream. "We'll stay in the Sphinx until morning. I'll carry Kassad's
extra gear and the Mobius cube. Brawne, you carry Hoyt's things
and Sol's pack. Sol, you keep the baby warm and dry."
"What about the padre?" asks the poet, jerking his thumb in the
direction of the body.
"You're carrying Father Hoyt," Brawne Lamia says softly, turning.
Martin Silenus opens his mouth, sees the pistol in Lamia's hand,
shrugs, and bends to lift the body to his shoulder. "Who's going to
carry Kassad when we find him?" he asks. "Of course, he could be in
enough pieces that we could all--"
"Please shut up," Brawne Lamia says tiredly. "If I have to shoot you,
it will give us one More thing to carry. Just walk."
With the Consul leading, Weintraub coming closely behind, Martin
Silenus staggering along some meters back, and Brawne Lamia in the
rear, the group once again descends the low col into the Valley of the Tombs.
NINE
CEO Gladstone's schedule that morning was a busy one. Tau
Ceti Center has a twenty-three-hour day, which makes it convenient
for the government to run on Hegemony Standard
Time without totally destroying local diurnal rhythms. At 0545 hours,
Gladstone met with her military advisors. At 0630 hours she breakfasted
with two dozen of the most important senators and with representatives
of the All Thing and the TechnoCore. At 0715 the CEO farcast to
Renaissance Vector, where it was evening, to officially open the Hermes
Medical Center in Cadua. At 0740 she 'cast back to Government House
for a meeting with her top aides, including Leigh Hunt, to go over the
speech she was to give to the Senate and All Thing at 1000 hours. At
0830 Gladstone met again with General Morpurgo and Admiral Singh
for an update on the situation in the Hyperion system. At 0845 hours,
she met with me.
"Good morning, M. Severn," said the CEO. She was behind her
desk in the office where I'd first met her three nights earlier. She waved
her hand toward a buffet against the wall where hot coffee, tea, and
caffta sat in sterling silver pots.
I shook my head and sat down. Three of the holographic windows
showed white light, but the one to my left offered the 3-D map of
Hyperion System that I had tried to decode in the War Room. It seemed
to me that Ouster red now covered and infiltrated the system like dye
dissolving and settling into a blue solution.
"I want to hear your dreams," said CEO Gladstone.
"I want to hear why you abandoned them," I said, voice flat. "Why
you left Father Hoyt to die."
Gladstone could not have been used to being spoken to in that tone,
not after forty-eight years in the Senate and a decade and a half as
CEO, but her only reaction was to raise one eyebrow a fraction of an
inch. "So you do dream the real events."
"Did you doubt it?"
She set down the work pad she had been holding, keyed it off, and
shook her head. "Not really, but it is still a shock to hear about something
that no one else in the Web knows about."
"Why did you deny them the use of the Consul's ship?"
Gladstone swiveled to look up at the window where the tactical display
shifted and changed as new updates changed the How of red, the retreat
of blue, the movement of planets and moons, but if the military situation
was to have been part other explanation, she abandoned that approach.
She swiveled back. "Why would I have to explain any executive decision
to you, M. Severn? What is your constituency? Whom do you represent?"

"I represent those five people and a baby you left stranded on Hyperion,"
I said. "Hoyt could have been saved."
Gladstone made a fist and tapped her lower lip with a curved forefinger.
"Perhaps," she said. "And perhaps he was already dead. But
that wasn't the issue, was it?"
I sat back in the chair. I had not bothered to bring a sketchbook
along, and my fingers ached to hold something. "What is, then?"
"Do you remember Father Hoyt's story . . . the story he told during
their voyage to the Tombs?" asked Gladstone.
"Yes."
"Each of the pilgrims is allowed to petition the Shrike for one favor.
Tradition says that the creature grants one wish, while denying the
others and murdering those he denies. Do you remember what Hoyt's
wish was?"
I paused. Recalling incidents from the pilgrims' past was like trying
to remember details of last week's dreams. "He wanted the cruciforms
removed," I said. "He wanted freedom for both Father Dure's. . . soul,
DNA, whatever . . . and for himself."
"Not quite," said Gladstone. "Father Hoyt wanted to die."
I stood up, almost knocking my chair over, and strode to the pulsing
map. "That's pure bullshit," I said. "Even if he did, the others had an
obligation to save him . . . and so did you. You let him die."
"Yes."
"Just as you're going to let the rest of them die?"
"Not necessarily," said CEO Meina Gladstone. "That is their will
. . . and the Shrike's, if such a creature actually exists. All I know at
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
this point is that their pilgrimage is too important to allow them a means
of ... retreat ... at the moment of decision."
"Whose decision? Theirs? How can the lives of six or seven people
. . . and a baby . . . affect the outcome of a society of a hundred and
fifty billion?" I knew the answer to that, of course. The Al Advisory
Council as well as the Hegemony's less sentient predictors had chosen
the pilgrims very carefully. But for what? Unpredictability. They were
ciphers that matched the ultimate enigma of the entire Hyperion equation.
Did Gladstone know that, or did she know only what Councilor
Albedo and her own spies told her? I sighed and returned to my chair.
"Did your dream tell you what the fate of Colonel Kassad was?" asked
the CEO.
"No. I awoke before they returned to the Sphinx to seek shelter from
the storm."
Gladstone smiled slightly. "You realize, M. Severn, that for our
purposes it would be More convenient to have you sedated, prompted
by the same truthtalk your Philomel friends used, and connected to
subvocalizers for a More constant report on the events on Hyperion."
I returned her smile. "Yes," I said, "that would be More convenient.
But it would be less than convenient for you if I slipped away into the
Core via the datasphere and left my body behind. Which is precisely
what I will do if put under duress again."
"Of course," said Gladstone. "That is precisely what I would do if
put in such circumstances. Tell me, M. Severn, what is it like in the
Core? What is it like in that distant place where your consciousness
truly resides?"
"Busy," I said. "Did you want to see me for anything else today?"
Gladstone smiled again and I sensed that it was a true smile, not the
politician's weapon she used so well. "Yes," she said, "I did have
something else in mind. Would you like to go to Hyperion? The real Hyperion?"
"The real Hyperion?" I echoed stupidly. I felt my fingers and toes
tingle as a strange sense of excitement suffused me. My consciousness
might truly reside in the Core, but my body and brain were all too
human, all too susceptible to adrenaline and other random chemicals.
Gladstone nodded. "Millions of people want to go there. Farcast to
somewhere new. Watch the war from close up." She sighed and moved
her work pad. "The idiots." She looked up at me, and her brown eyes
were serious. "But I want someone to go there and report back to me
in person. Leigh is Using one of the new military farcast terminals this
morning, and I thought that you might join him. There might not be
time to set down on Hyperion itself, but you would be in-system."
I thought of several questions and was embarrassed by the first one
that emerged. "Will it be dangerous?"
Neither Gladstone's expression nor tone changed. "Possibly. Although
you will be far behind the lines, and Leigh has explicit instructions
not to expose himself ... or you ... to any obvious risk."
Obvious risk, I thought. But how many less-than-obvious-risks were
there in a war zone, near a world where a creature like the Shrike
roamed free? "Yes," I said, "I'll go. But there's one thing ..."
"Yes?"
"I need to know why you want me to go. It seems that if you just
want me for my connection to the pilgrims, you're running a needless
risk in sending me away."
Gladstone nodded. "M. Severn, it's true that your connection to the
pilgrims . . . although somewhat tenuous ... is of interest to me. But
it is also true that I am interested in your observations and evaluations.
Your observations."
"But I'm nothing to you," I said. "You don't know who else I might
be reporting to, deliberately or otherwise. I'm a creature of the
TechnoCore."
"Yes," said Gladstone, "but you also may be the least-affiliated person
on Tau Ceti Center at this moment, perhaps in the entire Web. Also,
your observations are those of a trained poet, a man whose genius I
respect."
I barked a laugh. "He was a genius," I said. "I'm a simulacrum. A
drone. A caricature."
"Are you so sure?" asked Meina Gladstone.
I held up empty hands. "I haven't written a line of poetry in the ten
months I have been alive and aware in this strange afterlife," I said. "I
do not think in poetry. Isn't that proof enough that this Core retrieval
project is a sham? Even my false name is an insult to a man infinitely More talented than I will ever be ... Joseph Severn was a shade in
comparison to the real Keats, but I sully his name by using it."
"That may be true," said Gladstone. "And it may not. In either case,
I've requested that you go with'M. Hunt on this brief trip to Hyperion."
She paused. "You have no ... duty ... to go. In More than one
sense, you are not even a citizen of the Hegemony. But I would appreciate
it if you did go."
"I'll go," I said again, hearing my own voice as if from a distance.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPEHION
"Very good. You'll need warm clothes. Wear nothing that would
come loose or cause embarrassment in free-fall, although there is little
likelihood that you will encounter that. Meet M. Hunt in the primary
Government House fai caster nexus in . . ." She glanced at her comlog.
". . . twelve minutes."
I nodded and turned to go.
"Oh, M. Severn ..."
I paused by the door. The old woman behind the desk suddenly
looked rather small and very tired.
"Thank you, M. Severn," she said.
It was true that millions wanted to farcast to the war zone. The All
Thing was shrill with petitions, arguments for letting civilians 'cast to
Hyperion, requests by cruise lines to run brief excursions, and demands
by planetary politicians and Hegemony representatives to be allowed to
tour the system on "fact-finding missions." All such requests had been
denied. Web citizens--especially Web citizens with power and
inHuence--were not used to being denied access to new experiences,
and for the Hegemony, all-out war remained one of the few experiences
still untried.
But the CEO's office and the FORCE authorities remained adamant:
no civilian or unauthorized farcasting to the Hyperion system, no uncensored
newsteep coverage. In an age where no information was inaccessible,
no travel denied, such exclusion was maddening and
tantalizing.
I met M. Hunt at the executive farcaster nexus after showing my
authorization pip to an even dozen security nodes. Hunt was wearing
black wool, undecorated but evocative of the FORCE uniforms present
everywhere in this section of Government House. I had had little time
to change, returning to my apartments only to grab a loose vest with
many pockets to hold drawing materials and a 55-mm imager.
"Ready?" said Hunt. The basset-hound face did not look pleased to
see me. He carried a plain black valise.
I nodded.
Hunt gestured toward a FORCE transport technician, and a onetime
portal shimmered into existence. I knew that the thing was tuned to our DNA signatures and would admit no one else. Hunt took a breath
and stepped through. I watched the quicksilver portal surface ripple
after his passage like a stream returning to calm after the slightest of
breezes, and then I stepped through myself.
It was rumored that the original farcaster prototypes had offered no
sensation during transition and that the AI and human designers had
altered the machinery to add that vague prickling, ozone-charged feeling
to give the traveler a sense of having traveled. Whatever the truth of
that, my skin was still alive with tension as I took a step away from the
portal, paused, and looked around.
It's strange but true that war-going spacecraft have been depicted in
fiction, film, holo, and stimsim for More than eight hundred years;
even before humankind had left Old Earth in anything but atmosphere-
skimming converted airplanes, their flatfilms had shown epic space
battles, huge interstellar dreadnoughts with incredible armament lunging through space like streamlined cities. Even the spate of recent war
holies after the Battle of Bressia showed great fleets battling it out at
distances two ground soldiers would find claustrophobic, ships ramming
and firing and burning like Greek triremes packed into the straits of
Artemisium.
It's little wonder then that my heart was pounding and my palms
were a bit moist as I stepped onto the flagship of the fleet, expecting to
emerge onto the broad bridge of a warship out of the holies, giant
screens showing enemy ships, klaxons sounding, craggy commanders
huddled over the tactical command panels as the ship lurched first
right, then left.
Hunt and I were standing in what could have been a narrow corridor
of a power plant. Color-coded pipes twisted everywhere, occasional
handholds and airtight hatches at regular intervals suggested that we
were indeed in a spacecraft, state-of-the-art diskcy and interact panels
showed that the corridor served some purpose other than access to
elsewhere, but the overall effect was one of claustrophobia and primitive
technology. I half expected to see wires running from circuit nodes. A
vertical shaft intersected our corridor; other narrow, cluttered avenues
were visible through other hatches.
Hunt looked at me and shrugged slightly. I wondered if it was possible
that we had farcast to the wrong destination.
Before either of us said anything, a young FORCE:space ensign in
black battle dress appeared from one of the side corridors, saluted Hunt,
and said, "Welcome to HS Hebrides, gentlemen. Admiral Nashita has
asked me to convey his compliments and to invite you to the combat
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
control center. If you will follow me, please." With that the young
ensign wheeled, reached for a rung, and pulled himself into a cramped
vertical shaft.
We followed as best we could. Hunt struggling not to drop his valise
and me trying not to have my hands ground under Hunt's heels as we
climbed. After only a few yards, I realized that the gravity was far less
than one-standard here, was not, in fact, gravity at all, but felt More like
a multitude of small but insistent hands pressing me "down." I knew
about spacecraft using a class-one containment field throughout a ship to
simulate gravity, but this was my first direct experience of it. It was not a
truly pleasant sensation; the constant pressure was rather like leaning into
a wind, and the effect added to the claustrophobic qualities of the narrow
corridors, small hatches, and equipment-cluttered bulkheads.
The Hebrides was a Three-C ship, Communication-Control-Command,
and the combat control center was its heart and brain--but it
was not a very impressive heart and brain. The young ensign passed us
through three airtight hatches, led us down a final corridor past Marine
guards, saluted, and left us in a room perhaps twenty yards square, but
one so crowded with noise, personnel and equipment that one's first
instinct was to step back outside the hatch to get a breath of air.
There were no giant screens, but dozens of young FORCE:space
officers hunkered over cryptic displays, sat enmeshed in stimsim apparatus,
or stood before pulsing callups which seemed to extend from
all six bulkheads. Men and women were lashed into their chairs and
sensory cradles, with the exception of a few officers--most looking More
like harried bureaucrats than craggy warriors--who wandered the narrow
aisles, patting subordinates on the back, barking for More information,
and plugging into consoles with their own implant jacks. One
of these men came over in a hurry, looked at both of us, saluted me,
and said, "M. Hunt?"
I nodded toward my companion.
"M. Hunt," said the overweight young Commander, "Admiral Nash-
ita will see you now."
The commander of all Hegemony forces in the Hyperion system was
a small man with short white hair, skin far smoother than his age
suggested, and a fierce scowl that seemed carved in place. Admiral
Nashita wore high-necked dress black with no rank insignia except for
the single red-dwarf sun on his collar. His hands were blunt and quite
powerful-looking, but the nails were recently manicured. The Admiral
sat on a small dais surrounded by equipment and quiescent callups.
The bustle and efficient madness seemed to How around him like a fast
stream around an impervious rock.
"You're the messenger from Gladstone," he said to Hunt. "Who's this?"
"My aide," said Leigh Hunt.
I resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow.
"What do you want?" asked Nashita. "As you see, we're busy."
Leigh Hunt nodded and glanced around. "I have some materials for
you. Admiral. Is there anyplace we can go for privacy?"
Admiral Nashita grunted, passed his palm over a rheoscnse, and the
air behind me grew denser, coalescing into a semisolid mist as the
containment field reined. The noise of the combat control center disappeared.
The three of us were in a small igloo of quiet.
"Hurry it up," said Admiral Nashita.
Hunt unlocked the valise and removed a small envelope with a Government
House symbol on the back. "A private communication from
the Chief Executive," said Hunt. "To be read at your leisure. Admiral."
Nashita grunted and set the envelope aside.
Hunt set a larger envelope on the desk. "And this is a hard copy of
the motion of the Senate regarding the prosecution of this ... ah ...
military action. As you know, the will of the Senate is for this to be a
speedy exercise of force to achieve limited objectives, with as little loss
of life as possible, followed by the standard offer of help and protection
to our new . . . colonial asset."
Nashita's scowl twitched slightly. He made no move to touch or read
the communication containing the will of the Senate. "Is that all?"
Hunt took his time responding. "That is all, unless you wish to relay
a personal message to the CEO through me. Admiral."
Nashita stared. There was no active hostility in his small, black eyes,
only an impatience that I guessed would not be quenched until those
eyes were dimmed by death. "I have private fatline access to the Chief
Executive," said the Admiral. "Thank you very much, M. Hunt. No return
messages at this time. Now if you will kindly return to the midships
farcaster nexus and let me get on with prosecuting this military action."
The containment field collapsed around us, and noise flowed in like
water over a melting ice dam.
"There is one other thing," said Leigh Hunt, his soft voice almost
lost under the technobabble of the combat center.
Admiral Nashita swiveled his chair and waited.
"We'd like transport down to the planet," said Hunt. "Down to
Hyperion."
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
The Admiral's scowl seemed to deepen. "CEO Gladstone's people
said nothing about arranging a dropship."
Hunt did not blink. "Governor-General Lane knows that we might
be coming."
Nashita glanced at one of his callups, snapped his fingers, and barked
something at a Marine major who hurried over. "You'll have to hurry,"
the Admiral said to Hunt. "There is a courier just ready to leave from
port twenty. Major Inverness will show you the way. You will be brought
back up to the primary JumpShip. The Hebrides will be departing this
position in twenty-three minutes."
Hunt nodded and turned to follow the Major. I tagged along. The
Admiral's voice stopped us.
"M. Hunt," he called, "please tell CEO Gladstone that the flagship
will be too busy from this point on for any More political visits." Nashita
turned away to flickering callups and a line of waiting subordinates.
I followed Hunt and the Major back into the maze.
"There should be windows."
"What?" I had been thinking about something, not paying attention.
Leigh Hunt turned his head toward me. "I've never been in a dropship
without windows or viewscreens. It's strange."
I nodded and looked around, noticing the cramped and crowded
interior for the first time. It was true that there were only blank bulkheads,
and heaps of supplies and one young lieutenant in the passenger
hold of the dropship with us. It seemed to conform to the claustrophobic
ambience of the command ship.
I looked away, returning to the thoughts that had preoccupied me
since we left Nashita. Following the other two to port twenty, it had
suddenly occurred to me that I was not missing something I had expected to miss. Part of my anxiety toward this trip had lain in the thought of
leaving the datasphere; I was rather like a fish contemplating leaving
the sea. Part of my Consciousness lay submerged somewhere in that sea,
the ocean of data and commlinks from two hundred worlds and the
Core, all linked by the invisible medium once called datumplane, now
known only as the megasphere.
It struck me as we left Nashita that I could still hear the pulse of that
particular sea--distant but constant, like the sound of the surf half a
mile from the shore--and I had been trying to understand it all during
the rush to the dropship, the buckling in and separation, and the ten-
minute cislunar sprint to the fringes of Hyperion's atmosphere.
FORCE prided itself on using its own artificial intelligences, its own
dataspheres and computing sources. The ostenible reason lay in the
requirement to operate in the great spaces between Web worlds, the
dark and quiet places between the stars and beyond the Web mega-
sphere, but much of the real reason lay in a fierce need for independence
which FORCE had shown toward the TechnoCore for centuries. Yet
on a FORCE ship in the center of a FORCE armada in a non-Web,
non-Protectorate system, I was tuned to the same comforting background
babble of data and energy that I would have found anywhere
in the Web. Interesting.
I thought of the links the farcaster had brought to Hyperion system:
not just the JumpShip and farcaster containment sphere floating at
Hyperion's L3 point like a gleaming new moon, but the miles of gi-
gachannel fiber-optic cable snaking through permanent JumpShip far-
caster portals, microwave repeaters mechanically shuttling the few
inches to repeat their messages in near real-time, command ship tame
AIs requesting--and receiving--new links to the Olympus High Command
on Mars and elsewhere. Somewhere the datasphere had crept
in, perhaps unknown to the FORCE machines and their operators and
allies. The Core AIs knew everything happening here in Hyperion
system. If my body were to die now, I would have the same escape
path as always, fleeing down the pulsing links that led like secret passages
beyond the Web, beyond any vestige of datumplane as humanity had
known it, down datalink tunnels to the TechnoCore itself. Not really
to the Core, I thought, because the Core surrounds, envelops the rest,
like an ocean holding separate currents, great Culf Streams which think
themselves separate seas.
"I just wish there was a window," whispered Leigh Hunt.
"Yes," I said. "So do I."
The dropship bucked and vibrated as we entered Hyperion's upper
atmosphere. Hyperion, I thought. The Shrike. My heavy shirt and vest
seemed sticky and clinging. A faint susurration from without said that
we were flying, streaking across the lapis skies at several times the speed
of sound.
The young lieutenant leaned across the aisle. "First time down,
gentlemen?"
Hunt nodded.
———————— THE FALL OF HYPEBION ————————
The Lieutenant was chewing gum, showing how relaxed he was.
"You two civilian techs from the Hebrides?"
"We just came from there, yes," said Hunt.
"Thought so," grinned the Lieutenant. "Me, I'm running a courier
pack down to the Marine base near Keats. My fifth trip."
A slight jolt ran through me as I was reminded of the name of the
capital; Hyperion had been repopulated by Sad King Billy and his colony
of poets, artists, and other misfits fleeing an invasion of their homeworld
by Horace Glennon-Height—an invasion which never came. The poet
on the current Shrike Pilgrimage, Martin Silenus, had advised King
Billy almost two centuries earlier in the naming of the capital. Keats.
The locals called the old part Jacktown.
"You're not going to believe this place," said the Lieutenant. "It's
the real anal end of nowhere. I mean, no datasphere, no EMVs, no
farcasters, no stimsim bars, no nothing. It's no wonder that there are
thousands of the fucking indigenies camped around the spaceport, just
tearing down the fence to get oftworld."
"Are they really attacking the spaceport?" asked Hunt.
"Naw," said the Lieutenant and snapped his gum. "But they're ready
to, if you know what I mean. That's why the Second Marine Battalion
has set up a perimeter there and secured the way into the city. Besides,
the yokels think that we're going to set up farcasters any day now and
let 'em step out of the shit they got themselves into."
"They got themselves into?" I said.
The Lieutenant shrugged. "They must've done something to get the
Ousters cricked at them, right? We're just here to pull their oysters out
of the fire."
"Chestnuts," said Leigh Hunt.
The gum snapped. "Whatever."
The susurration of wind grew to a shriek clearly audible through the
hull. The dropship bounced twice and then slid smoothly—ominously
smoothly—as if it had encountered a chute of ice ten miles above the
ground.
"I wish we had a window," whispered Leigh Hunt.
It was warm and stuffy in the dropship. The bouncing was oddly
relaxing, rather like a small sailing ship rising and falling on slow swells.
I closed my eyes for a few minutes.
TEN
Sol, Brawne, Martin Silenus, and the Consul carry gear, Het
Mastecn's Mobius cube, and the body ofLenar Hoyt down the
long incline to the entrance of the Sphinx. Snow is falling
rapidly now, twisting across the already writhing dune surfaces in a
complex dance of wind-driven particles. Despite their comlogs" claim
that night nears its end, there is no hint of sunrise to the east. Repeated
calls on their comlog radio link bring no response from Colonel Kassad.
Sol Weintraub pauses before the entrance to the Time Tomb called
the Sphinx. He feels his daughter's presence as a warmth against his
chest under the cape, the rise and fall of warm baby's breath against
his throat. He raises one hand, touches the small bundle there, and
tries to imagine Rachel as a young woman of twenty-six, a researcher
pausing at this very entrance before going in to test the anti-entropic
mysteries of the Time Tomb. Sol sliakes his head. It has been twenty-
six long years and a lifetime since that moment. In four days it will be
his daughter's birthday. Unless Sol does something, finds the Shrike,
makes some bargain with the creature, does something, Rachel will die
in four days.
"Are you coming, Sol?" calls Brawne Lamia. The others have stored
their gear in the first room, half a dozen meters down the narrow corridor
through stone.
"Coming," he calls, and enters the tomb. Glow-globes and electric
lights line the tunnel but they are dead and dust covered. Only Sol's
flashlight and the glow from one of Kassad's small lanterns light the
way.
The first room is small, no More than four by six meters. The other
three pilgrims have set their baggage against the back wall and spread
7 9
________ THE FALL OF HYPERION ________
tarp and bedrolls in the center of the cold floor. Two lanterns hiss and
cast a cold light. Sol stops and looks around.
"Father Hoyt's body is in the next room," says Brawne Lamia, answering
his unasked question. "It's even colder there."
Sol takes his place near the others. Even this far in, he can hear the
rasp of sand and snow blowing against stone.
"The Consul is going to try the comlog again later," says Brawne.
"Tell Gladstone the situation."
Martin Silenus laughs. "It's no use. No fucking use at all. She knows
what she's doing, and she's never going to let us out of here."
"I'll try just after sunrise," says the Consul. His voice is very tired.
"I will stand watch," says Sol. Rachel stirs and cries feebly. "I need
to feed the baby anyway."
The others seem too tired to respond. Brawne leans against a pack,
closes her eyes, and is breathing heavily within seconds. The Consul
pulls his tricorne cap low over his eyes. Martin Silenus folds his arms
and stares at the doorway, waiting.
Sol Weintraub fusses with a nursing pak, his cold and arthritic ringers
having trouble with the heating tab. He looks in his bag and realizes
that he has only ten More paks, a handful of diapers.
The baby is nursing, and Sol is nodding, almost sleeping, when a
sound wakes them all.
"What?" cries Brawne, fumbling for her father's pistol.
"Shhh!" snaps the poet, holding his hand out for silence.
From somewhere beyond the tomb comes the sound again. It is flat
and final, cutting through the wind noise and sand rasp.
"Kassad's rifle," says Brawne Lamia.
"Or someone else's," whispers Martin Silenus.
They sit in silence and strain to hear. For a long moment there is
no sound at all. Then, in an instant, the night erupts with noise . . .
noise which makes each of them cringe and cover his or her ears.
Rachel screams in terror, but her cries cannot be heard over the explosions
and rendings beyond the tomb.
ELEVEN
I awoke just as the dropship touched down. Hyperion, I thought, still
separating my thoughts from the tatters of dream.
The young lieutenant wished us luck and was the first out as the
door irised open and cool, thin air replaced the pressurized thickness
of the cabin atmosphere. I followed Hunt out and down a standard
docking ramp, through the shield wall, and onto the tarmac.
It was night, and I had no idea what the local time was, whether the
terminator had just passed this point on the planet or was just approaching,
but it felt and smelled late. It was raining softly, a light
drizzle perfumed with the salt scent of the sea and the fresh hint of
moistened vegetation. Field lights glared around the distant perimeter,
and a score of lighted towers threw halos toward the low clouds. A half
dozen young men in Marine field uniforms were quickly unloading the
dropship, and I could see our young lieutenant speaking briskly to an
officer thirty yards to our right. The small spaceport looked like something
out a history book, a colonial port from the earliest days of the
Hegira. Primitive blast pits and landing squares stretched for a mile or More toward a dark bulk of hills to the north, gantries and service towers
tended to a score of military shuttles and small warcraft around us, and
the landing areas were ringed by modular military buildings sporting
antennae arrays, violet containment fields, and a clutter of skimmers
and aircraft.
I followed Hunt's gaze and noticed a skimmer moving toward us.
The blue and gold geodesic symbol of the Hegemony on one of its
skirts was illuminated by its running lights; rain streaked the forward
blisters and whipped away from the fans in a violent curtain of mist.
The skimmer settled, a Perspcx blister split and folded, and a man
stepped out and hurried across the tarmac toward us.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
He held out his hand to Hunt. "M. Hunt? I'm Theo Lane."
Hunt shook the hand, nodded toward me. "Pleased to meet you,
Governor-General. This is Joseph Severn."
I shook Lane's hand, a shock of recognition coming with the touch.
I remembered Theo Lane through the deja vu mists of the Consul's
memory, recalling the years when the young man was the Vice-Consul;
also from a brief meeting a week earlier when he greeted all of the
pilgrims before they departed upriver on the levitation barge Benares. He seemed older than he had appeared just six days before. But the
unruly lock of hair on his forehead was the same, as were the archaic
eyeglasses he wore, and the brisk, firm handshake.
"I'm pleased you could take the time to make planetfall," Governor-
General Lane said to Hunt. "I have several things I need to communicate
to the CEO."
"That's why we're here," said Hunt. He squinted up at the rain. "We
have about an hour. Is there somewhere we can dry off?"
The Governor-General showed a youthful smile. "The field here is
a madhouse, even at 0520 hours, and the consulate is under siege. But
I know a place." He gestured toward the skimmer.
As we lifted off, I noticed the two Marine skimmers keeping pace
with us but I was still surprised that the Governor-General of a Protectorate
world flew his own vehicle and did not have constant bodyguards.
Then I remembered what the Consul had told the other pilgrims
about Theo Lane--about the young man's efficiency and self-effacing
ways--and realized that such a low profile was in keeping with the
diplomat's style.
The sun rose as we lifted off from the spaceport and banked toward
town. Low clouds glowed brilliantly as they were lighted from below,
the hills to the north sparkled a bright green, violet, and russet, and
the strip of sky below the clouds to the east was that heart-stopping
green and lapis which I remembered from my dreams. Hyperion, I
thought, and felt a thick tension and excitement catch in my throat.
I leaned my head against the rain-streaked canopy and realized that
some of the vertigo and confusion I felt at that moment came from a
thinning of the background contact with the datasphere. The connection
was still there, carried primarily on microwave and fatline channels
now, but More tenuous than I had ever experienced--if the datasphere
had been the sea in which I swam, I was now in shallow water indeed,
perhaps a tidal pool would be a better metaphor, and the water grew
even shallower as we left the envelope of the spaceport and its crude
microsphere. I forced myself to pay attention to what Hunt and Gov-
ernor-General Lane were discussing.
"You can see the shacks and hovels," said Lane, banking slightly so
we had a better view of the hills and valleys separating the spaceport
from the suburbs of the capital.
Shacks and hovels were too-polite terms for the miserable collection
of fiberplastic panels, patches of canvas, heaps of packing crates, and
shards of flowfoam that covered the hills and deep canyons. What
obviously had once been a scenic seven- or eight-mile drive from the
city to the spaceport through wooded hills now showed land stripped
of all trees for firewood and shelter, meadows beaten to barren mudflats
by the press of feet, and a city of seven or eight hundred thousand
refugees sprawled over every flat piece of land in sight. Smoke from
thousands of breakfast fires floated toward the clouds, and I could see
movement everywhere, children running in bare feet, women carrying
water from streams that must be terribly polluted, men squatting in
open fields and waiting in line at makeshift privies. I noted that high
razorwire fences and violet containment field barriers had been set
along both sides of the highway, and military checkpoints were visible
every half mile. Long lines of FORCE camouflaged ground vehicles
and skimmers moved both directions along the highway and low-level
flyways.
". . . most of the refugees are indigenies," Governor-General Lane
was saying, "although there are thousands of displaced landowners
from the southern cities and the large fiberplastic plantations on
Aquila."
"Are they here because they think the Ousters will invade?" asked
Hunt.
Theo Lane glanced at Gladstone's aide. "Originally there was panic
at the thought of the Time Tombs opening," he said. "People were
convinced that the Shrike was coming for them."
"Was it?" I asked.
The young man shifted in his seat to look back at me. "The Third
Legion of the Self-Defense Force went north seven months ago," he
said. "It didn't come back."
"You said at first they were fleeing the Shrike," said Hunt. "Why
did the others come?"
"They're waiting for the evacuation," said Lane. "Everyone knows
what the Ousters . . . and the Hegemony troops . . . did to Bressia.
They don't want to be here when that happens to Hypcrion."
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
"You're aware that FORCE considers evacuation an absolute last
resort?" said Hunt.
"Yes. But we're not announcing that to the refugees. There have
been terrible riots already. The Shrike Temple has been destroyed . . .
a mob laid siege, and someone used shaped plasma charges stolen from
the mineworks on Ursus. Last week there were attacks on the consulate
and the spaceport, as well as food riots in Jacktown."
Hunt nodded and watched the city approach. The buildings were
low, few over five stories, and their white and pastel walls glowed richly
in the slanting rays of morning light. I looked over Hunt's shoulder
and saw the low mountain with the carved face of Sad King Billy
brooding over the valley. The Hoolie R'ver twisted through the center
of the old town, straightening before it headed northwest toward the
unseen Bridle Range, twisting out of sight in the weirwood marshes to
the southeast, where I knew it widened to its delta along the High
Mane. The city looked uncrowded and peaceful after the sad confusion
of the refugee slums, but even as we began to descend toward the river,
I noticed the military traffic, the tanks and APCs and GAVs at intersections
and sitting in parks, their camouflage polymer deliberately
deactivated so the machines would look More threatening. Then I saw
the refugees in the city: makeshift tents in the squares and alleys, thousands
of sleeping forms along the curbs, like so many dull-colored
bundles of laundry waiting to be picked up.
"Keats had a population of two hundred thousand two years ago,"
said Governor-General Lane. "Now, including the shack cities, we're
nearing three and a half million."
"I thought that there were fewer than five million people on the
planet," said Hunt. "Including indigenies."
"That's accurate," said Lane. "You see why everything's breaking
down. The other two large cities. Port Romance and Endymion, are
holding most of the rest of the refugees. Fiberplastic plantations on
Aquila are empty, being reclaimed by the jungle and flame forests, the
farm belts along the Mane and the Nine Tails aren't producing--or if
they are, can't get their food to market because of the breakdown of
the civilian transport system."
Hunt watched the river come closer. "What is the government
doing?"
Theo Lane smiled. "You mean what am I doing? Well, the crisis
has been brewing for almost three years. The first step was to dissolve
the Home Rule Council and formally bring Hyperion into the Protec-
---------------------------------------------------- 8 5 ----------------------------------------------------
torate. Once I had executive powers, I moved to nationalize the remaining
transit companies and dirigible lines--only the military moves by skimmer here now--and to disband the Self-Defense Force."
"Disband it?" said Hunt. "I would think you would want to use it."
Governor-General Lane shook his head. He touched the omni control
lightly, confidently, and the skimmer spiraled down toward the
center of old Keats. "They were worse than useless," he said, "they
were dangerous. I wasn't too upset when the 'Fighting Third' Legion
went north and just disappeared. As soon as the FORCE:ground troops
and Marines landed, I disarmed the rest of the SDF thugs. They were
the source of most of the looting. Here's where we'll get some breakfast
and talk."
The skimmer dropped in low over the river, circled a final time, and
dropped lightly into the courtyard of an ancient structure made of stone
and sticks and imaginatively designed windows: Cicero's. Even before
Lane identified the place to Leigh Hunt I recognized it from the pilgrims'
passage--the old restaurant/pub/inn lay in the heart of Jacktown and
sprawled over four buildings on nine levels, its balconies and piers and
darkened weirwood walkways overhanging the slow-moving Hoolie on
one side and the narrow lanes and alleys of Jacktown on the other.
Cicero's was older than the stone face of Sad King Billy, and its dim
cubicles and deep wine cellars had been the true home of the Consul
during his years of exile here.
Stan Leweski met us at the courtyard door. Tall and massive, face
as age darkened and cracked as the stone walls of his inn, Leweski was Cicero's, as had been his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather
before him.
"By damn!" declared the giant, clapping the Governor-General/de
facto dictator of this world on his shoulders hard enough to make Theo
stagger. "You get up early for a change, hell? Bring your friends to
breakfast? Welcome to Cicero's!" Stan Leweski's huge hand swallowed
Hunt's and then mine in a welcome that left me checking fingers and
joints for damage. "Or is it later--Web time--for you?" he boomed.
"Maybe you like a drink or dinner!"
Leigh Hunt squinted at the pub owner. "How did you know we were
from the Web?"
Leweski boomed a laugh that sent weathervanes on the roofline spinning.
"Hah! Hard to deduct, yes? You come here with Theo at
sunrise--you think he give everybody a ride here?--also wearing wool
clothes when we got no sheeps here. You're not FORCE people and
THE	PALL	OF	HYPERION
not fiberplastic plantation big shots ... I know all those! Ipso fact toto,
you farcast to ships from Web, drop down here for good food. Now,
you want breakfast or plenty to drink?"
Theo Lane sighed. "Give us a quiet corner, Stan. Bacon and eggs
and brine kippers for me. Gentlemen?"
"Just coffee," said Hunt.
"Yes," I said. We were following the owner through the corridors
now, up short staircases and down wrought-iron ramps, through More
corridors. The place was lower, darker, smokier, and More fascinating
than I remembered from my dreams. A few regulars looked up at us
as we passed, but the place was far less crowded than I remembered.
Obviously Lane had sent troops to throw out the last of the SDF barbarians
who had been occupying the place. We passed a high, narrow
window, and I verified that hypothesis by catching a glimpse of a
FORCE:ground APC parked in the alley, troops lounging on and near
it with obviously loaded weapons.
"Here," said Leweski, waving us into a small porch which overhung
the Hoolie and looked out onto the gabled rooftops and stone towers
ofJacktown. "Dommy be here in two minutes with your breakfast and
coffees." He disappeared quickly ... for a giant.
Hunt glanced at his comlog. "We have about forty-five minutes before
the dropship is supposed to return with us. Let's talk."
Lane nodded, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. I realized
that he had been up all night . . . perhaps several nights. "Fine," he
said, setting the glasses back in place. "What does CEO Gladstone want
to know?"
Hunt paused while-a very short man with parchment-white skin and
yellow eyes brought our coffee in deep, thick mugs and set down a
platter with Lane's food. "The CEO wants to know what you feel your
priorities are," said Hunt. "And she needs to know if you can hold out
here if the fighting is prolonged."
Lane ate for a moment before responding. He took a long sip of
coffee and stared intently at Hunt. It was real coffee from the taste of
it, better than most Web-grown. "First question last," Lane said. "Define
prolonged."
"Weeks."
"Weeks, probably. Months, no way." The Governor-General tried
the brine kippers. "You see the state of our economy. If it wasn't for
the supplies dropped in by FORCE, we'd have food riots every day
instead of once a week. There are no exports with the quarantine. Half
the refugees want to find the Shrike Temple priests and kill them, the
other half want to convert before the Shrike finds them."
"Have you found the priests?" asked Hunt.
"No. We're sure they escaped the temple bombing, but the authorities
can't locate them. Rumor has it that they've gone north to Keep
Chronos, a stone castle right above the high steppe where the Time
Tombs are."
I knew better. At least, I knew the pilgrims had not seen any Shrike
Temple priests during their brief stay in the Keep. But there had been
signs of a slaughter there.
"As for our priorities," Theo Lane was saying, "the first is evacuation.
The second is elimination of the Ouster threat. The third is help with
the Shrike scare."
Leigh Hunt sat back against oiled wood. Steam lifted from the heavy
mug in his hands. "Evacuation is not a possibility at this time—"
"Why?" Lane fired the question like a hellwhip bolt.
"CEO Gladstone does not have the political power ... at this point
... to convince the Senate and All Thing that the Web can accept
five million refugees—"
"Bullshit," said the Governor-General. "There were twice that many
tourists flooding Maui-Covenant its first year in the Protectorate. And
that destroyed a unique planetary ecology. Put us on Armaghast or some
desert world until the war scare is past."
Hunt shook his head. His basset-hound eyes looked sadder than
usual. "It isn't just the logistical question," he said. "Or the political
one. It's ..."
"The Shrike," said Lane. He broke a piece of bacon. "The Shrike
is the real reason."
"Yes. As well as fears of an Ouster infiltration of the Web."
The Governor-General laughed. "So you're afraid that if you set up
farcaster portals here and let us out, a bunch of three-meter Ousters
are going to land and get in line without anyone noticing?"
Hunt sipped his coffee. "No," he said, "but there is a real chance
of an invasion. Every farcaster portal is an opening to the Web. The
Advisory Council warns against it."
"All right," said the younger man, his mouth half-full. "Evacuate
us by ship then. Wasn't that the reason for the original task force?"
"That was the ostensible reason," said Hunt. 'Our real goal now is
to defeat the Ousters and then bring Hyperion fully into the Web."
"And what about the Shrike threat then?"
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
"It will be ... neutralized," said Hunt. He paused while a small
group of men and women passed by our porch.
I glanced up, started to return my attention to the table, and then
snapped my head back around. The group had passed out of sight down
the hallway. "Wasn't that Melio Arundez?" I said, interrupting Gov-
ernor-General Lane.
"What? Oh, Dr. Arundez. Yes. Do you know him, M. Severn?"
Lcigh Hunt was glaring at me, but I ignored it. "Yes," I said to Lane,
although I had never actually met Arundez. "What is he doing on
Hyperion?"
"His team landed over six local months ago with a project proposal
from Reichs University on Freeholm to do additional research on the
Time Tombs."
"But the Tombs were closed to research and tourists," I said.
"Yes. But their instruments--we allowed data to be relayed weekly
through the consulate fatline transmitter--had already shown the
change in the anti-entropic fields surrounding the Tombs. Reichs University
knew the Tombs were opening ... if that's really what the
change means . . . and they sent the top researchers in the Web to
study it."
"But you did not grant them permission?" I said.
Theo Lane smiled without warmth. "CEO Gladstone did not grant
them permission. The closure of the Tombs is a direct order from TC2.
If it were up to me, I would have denied the pilgrims passage and
allowed Dr. Arundez's team priority access." He turned back to Hunt.
"Excuse me," I said and slipped out of the booth.
I found Arundez and his people--three women and four men, their
clothing and physical styles suggesting different worlds in the Web--
two porches away. They were bent over their breakfasts and scientific
comlogs, arguing in technical terms so abtruse as to leave a Talmudic
scholar envious.
"Dr. Arundez?" I said.
"Yes?" He looked up. He was two decades older than I remembered,
entering middle age in his early sixties, but the strikingly handsome
profile was the same, with the same bronzed skin, solid jaw, wavy black
hair going only slightly gray at the temples, and piercing hazel eyes. I
understood how a young female graduate student could have quickly
fallen in love with him.
---------------------------------------------------- 8 9 ----------------------------------------------------
"My name is Joseph Severn," I said. "You don't know me, but I
knew a friend of yours . . . Rachel Weintraub."
Arundez was on his feet in a second, offering apologies to the others,
leading me by the elbow until we found an empty booth in a cubicle
under a round window looking out on red-tiled rooftops. He released
my elbow and appraised me carefully, taking in the Web clothing. He
turned my wrists over, looking for the telltale blueness of Poulsen treatments.
"You're too young," he said. "Unless you knew Rachel as a
child."
"Actually, it's her father I know best," I said.
Dr. Arundez let out a breath and nodded. "Of course," he said.
"Where is Sol? I've been trying to trace him for months through the
consulate. The authorities on Hebron will only say that he's moved."
He gave me that appraising stare again. "You knew about Rachel's . . .
illness?"
"Yes," I said. The Merlin's sickness which had caused her to
age backward, losing memories with each day and hour that passed.
Melio Arundez had been one of those memories. "I know that
you went to visit her about fifteen standard years ago on Barnard's
World."
Arundez grimaced. "That was a mistake," he said. "I thought that I
would talk to Sol and Sarai. When I saw her . . ."He shook his head.
"Who are you? Do you know where Sol and Rachel are now? It's three
days until her birthday."
I nodded. "Her first and last birthday." I glanced around. The hallway
was silent and empty except for a distant murmur of laughter from a
lower level. "I'm here on a fact-finding trip from the CEO's office," I
said. "I have information that Sol Weintraub and his daughter have
traveled to the Time Tombs."
Arundez looked as though I'd struck him in the solar plexus. "Here? On Hyperion?" He stared out at the rooftops for a moment. "I should
have realized . . . although Sol always refused to return here . . . but
with Sarai gone . . ."He looked at me. "Are you in touch with him?
Is she . . . are they all right?"
I shook my head. "There are no radio or datasphere links with them
at present," I said. "I know that they made the trip safely. The question
is, what do you know? Your team? Data on what is occurring at the
Time Tombs might be very important to their survival."
Melio Arundez ran his hand through his hair. "If only they'd let us
go there! That damned, stupid, bureaucratic shortsightedness . . . You
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
say you're from Gladstone's office. Can you explain to them why it's
so important for us to get there?"
"I'm only a messenger," I said. "But tell me why it's so important,
and I'll try to get the information to someone."
Arundez's large hands cupped an invisible shape in midair. His tension
and anger were palpable. "For three years, the data was coming
via telemetry in the squirts the consulate would allow once a week on
their precious fatline transmitter. It showed a slow but relentless degradation
of the anti-entropic envelope--the time tides--in and around
the Tombs. It was erratic, illogical, but steady. Our team was authorized
to travel here shortly after the degradation began. We arrived about six
months ago, saw data that suggested that the Tombs were opening . . .
coming into phase with now . . . but four days after we arrived, the
instruments quit sending. All of them. We begged that bastard Lane
to let us just go and recalibrate them, set up new sensors if he wouldn't
let us investigate in person.
"Nothing. No transit permission. No communication with the university
. . . even with the coming of FORCE ships to make it easier.
We tried going upriver ourselves, without permission, and some of
Lane's Marine goons intercepted us at Karia Locks and brought us back
in handcuffs. I spent four weeks in jail. Now we're allowed to wander
around Keats, but we'll be locked up indefinitely if we leave the city
again." Arundez leaned forward. "Can you help?"
"I don't know," I said. "I want to help the Weintraubs. Perhaps it
would be best if you could take your team to the site. Do you know
when the Tombs will open?"
The time-physicist made an angry gesture. "If we had new data!" He
sighed. "No, we don't know. They could be open already or it could
be another six months."
"When you say 'open,' " I said, "you don't mean physically open?"
"Of course not. The Time Tombs have been physically open for
inspection since they were discovered four standard centuries ago. I
mean open in the sense of dropping the time curtains that conceal parts
of them, bringing the entire complex into phase with the local flow of
time."
"By 'local' you mean . . . ?"
"I mean in this universe, of course."
"And you're sure that the Tombs are moving backward in time . . .
from our future?" I asked.
---------------------------------------------------- 9 I ----------------------------------------------------
"Backward in time, yes," said Arundez. "From our future, we can't
say. We're not even sure what the 'future' means in temporal/physical
terms. It could be a series of sine-wave probabilities or a decision-branch
megaverse, or even--"
"But whatever it is," I said, "the Time Tombs and the Shrike are
coming from there7"
"The Time Tombs are for certain," said the physicist. "I have no
knowledge of the Shrike. My own guess is that it's a myth fueled by
the same hunger for superstitious verities that drives other religions."
"Even after what happened to Rachel?" I said. "You still don't believe
in the Shrike?"
Melio Arundez glowered at me. "Rachel contracted Merlin's sickness,"
he said. "It's an anti-entropic aging disease, not the bite of a
mythical monster."
"Time's bite has never been mythical," I said, surprising myself with
such a cheap bit of homespun philosophy. "The question is--will the
Shrike or whatever power inhabits the Time Tombs return Rachel to
the 'local' time flow?"
Arundez nodded and turned his gaze to the rooftops. The sun had
moved into the clouds, and the morning was drab, the red tiles bleached
of color. Rain was beginning to fall again.
"And the question is," I said, surprising myself again, "are you still
in love with her?"
The physicist turned his head slowly, fixing me in an angry gaze. I
felt the retort--possibly physical--build, crest, and wane. He reached
into his coat pocket and showed me a snapshot holo of an attractive
woman with graying hair and two children in their late teens. "My wife
and children," said Melio Arundez. "They're waiting on Renaissance
Vector." He pointed a blunt finger at me. "If Rachel were . . . were
cured today, I would be eighty-two standard years old before she again
reached the age she was when we first met." He lowered the finger,
returned the holo to his pocket. "And yes," he said, "I'm still in love
with her."
"Ready?" The voice broke the silence a moment later. I looked up
to see Hunt and Theo Lane in the doorway. "The dropship lifts off in
ten minutes," said Hunt.
I stood and shook hands with Melio Arundez. "I'll try," I said.
Governor-General Lane had one of his escort skimmers return us to
the spaceport while he went back to the consulate. The military skimmer
.THE	PALL	OF	HYPERION
was no More comfortable than his consulate machine had been, but it
was faster. We were strapped and fielded into our webseats aboard the
dropship before Hunt said, "What was all that about with that physicist?"
"Just renewing old ties with a stranger," I said.
Hunt frowned. "What did you promise him that you'd try?"
I felt the dropship rumble, twitch, and then leap as the catapult grid
launched us skyward. "I told him I'd try to get him in to visit a sick
friend," I said.
Hunt continued to frown, but I pulled out a sketchpad and doodled
images of Cicero's until we docked at the JumpShip fifteen minutes
later.
It was a shock to step through the farcaster portal into the executive
nexus in Government House. Another step took us to the Senate gallery,
where Meina Gladstone was still speaking to a packed house. Imagers
and microphones carried her speech to the All Thing and a hundred
billion waiting citizens.
I glanced at my chronometer. It was 1038 hours. We had been gone
only ninety minutes.
TWELVE
The building housing the Senate of the Hegemony of Man was
patterned More after the United States Senate building of eight
centuries earlier rather than the More imperial structures of the
North American Republic or tlie First World Council. The main assembly
room was large, girded with galleries, and big enough for the thrce-hundred-plus senators from Web worlds and the More than seventy
nonvoting representatives from Protectorate colonies. Carpets were
a rich wine red and radiated from the central dais where the President
Pro Tern, the Speaker of the All Thing, and, today, tlie Chief Executive
Officer of the Hegemony had their scats. Senators' desks were made of
muirwood, donated by the Templars of God's Crovc, who held such
products sacred, and the glow and scent of burnished wood filled the
room even when it was as crowded as it was today.
Lcigh Hunt and I entered just as Gladstone was finishing her speech.
I keyed my comlog for a quick readout. As with most of her talks, it
had been short, comparatively simple, without condescension or bombast,
yet laced with a certain lilt of original phrasing and imagery which
carried great power. Gladstone had reviewed the incidents and conflicts
that led to the current state ofbclligerancy with the Ousters, proclaimed
the time-honored wish for peace, which still was paramount in Hegemony
policy, and called for unity within the Web and Protectorate
until this current crisis was past. I listened to her summation.
". . . and so it has come to pass, fellow citizens, that after More than
a century of peace we are once again engaged in a struggle to maintain
those rights to which our society has been dedicated since before the
death of our Mother Earth. After More than a century of peace, we
must now pick up--however unwillingly, however distastefully--the
Normal;FR1;FR2;THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
shield and sword, which have ever preserved our birthright and vouchsafed
our common good, so that peace may again prevail.
"We must not. . . and shall not... be misled by the stir of trumpets
or the rush of near-joy which the call to arms inevitably produces.
Those who ignore history's lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced
to do More than relive them . . . they may be forced to die by them.
Great sacrifices may lie ahead for all of us. Great sorrows may lie in
store for some of us. But come what successes or setbacks must inevitably
occur, I say to you now that we must remember these two things above
all: First, that we fight for peace and know that war must never be a
condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we suffer as a child
does a fever, knowing that health follows the long night of pain and
that peace is health. Second, that we shall never surrender . . . never
surrender or waver or bend to lesser voices or More comfortable impulses
. . . never waver until the victory is ours, aggression is undone, and
the peace is won. I thank you."
Leigh Hunt leaned forward and watched intently as most of the
senators rose to give Gladstone an ovation that roared back from the
high ceiling and struck us in the gallery in waves. Most of the senators.
I could see Hunt counting those who remained sitting, some with arms
folded, many with visible frowns. The war was less than two days old,
and already the opposition was building . . . first from the colonial
worlds afraid for their own safety while FORCE was diverted to Hyperion,
then from Gladstone's opponents--of which there were many
since no one stays in power as long as she without creating cadres of
enemies, and finally from members of her own coalition who saw the
war as a foolish undoing of unprecedented prosperity.
I watched her leaving the dais, shaking hands with the aged President
and young Speaker, then taking the center aisle out--touching and
talking to many, smiling the familiar smile. All Thing imagers followed
her, and I could feel the pressure of the debate net swell as billions
voiced their opinions on the interact levels of the megasphere.
"I need to see her now," said Hunt. "Are you aware that you're
invited to a state dinner tonight at Treetops?"
"Yes."
Hunt shook his head slightly, as if incapable of understanding why
the CEO wanted me around. "It will run late and will be followed by
a meeting with FORCE:command. She wants you to attend both."
"I'll be available," I said.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- g 5 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hunt paused at the door. "Do you have something to do back at
Government House until the dinner?"
I smiled at him. "I'll work on my portrait sketches," I said. "Then
I'll probably take a walk through Deer Park. After that... I don't know
... I may take a nap."
Hunt shook his head again and hurried off.
THIRTEEN
The first shot misses Fedmahn Kassad by less than a meter,
splitting a boulder he is passing, and he is moving before the
blast strikes him; rolling for cover, his camouflage polymer fully
activated, impact armor tensed, assault rifle ready, visor in full targeting
mode. Kassad lies there for a long moment, feeling his heart pounding
and searching the hills, valley, and Tombs for the slightest hint of heat
or movement. Nothing. He begins to grin behind the black mirror of
his visor.
Whoever had shot at him had meant to miss, he is sure. They had
used a standard pulse bolt, ignited by an 18-mm cartridge, and unless
the shooter was ten or More kilometers away . . . there was no chance
of a miss.
Kassad stands up to run toward the shelter of the Jade Tomb, and
the second shot catches him in the chest, hurling him backward.
This time he grunts and rolls away, scuttling toward the Jade Tomb's
entrance with all sensors active. The second shot had been a rifle bullet.
Whoever is playing with him is using a FORCE multipurpose assault
weapon similar to his own. He guesses that the assailant knows he is
in body armor, knows that the rifle bullet would be ineffective at any
range. But the multipurpose weapon has other settings, and if the next
level of play involves a killing laser, Kassad is dead. He throws himself
into the doorway of the tomb.
Still no heat or movement on his sensors except for the red-and-
yellow images of his fellow pilgrims' footsteps, rapidly cooling, where
they had entered the Sphinx several minutes before.
Kassad uses his tactical implants to switch displays, quickly running
through VHF and optical comm channels. Nothing. He magnifies the
valley a hundredfold, computes in wind and sand, and activates a
moving-target indicator. Nothing larger than an insect is moving. He
sends out radar, sonar, and lorfo pulses, daring the sniper to home in
on them. Nothing. He calls up tactical displays of the first two shots;
blue ballistic trails leap into existence.
The first shot had come from the Poets' City, More than four klicks
to the southwest. The second shot, less than ten seconds later, came
from the Crystal Monolith, almost a full klick down the valley to the
northeast. Logic dictates that there have to be two snipers. Kassad is
sure that there is only one. He refines the display scale. The second
shot had come from high on the Monolith, at least thirty meters up on
the sheer face.
Kassad swings out, raises amplification, and peers through night and
the last vestiges of the sand- and snowstorm toward the huge structure.
Nothing. No windows, no slits, no openings of any sort.
Only the billions of colloidal particles left in the air from the storm
allow the laser to be visible for a split second. Kassad sees the green
beam after it strikes him in the chest. He rolls back into the entrance
of the Jade Tomb, wondering if the green walls will help deter a green
light lance, while superconductors in his combat armor radiate heat in
every direction and his tactical visor tells him what he already knows:
the shot has come from high on the Crystal Monolith.
Kassad feels pain sting his chest, and he looks down in time to see
a five-centimeter circle of invulnarmor drip molten fibers onto the floor.
Only the last layer has saved him. As it is, his body drips with sweat
inside the suit, and he can see the walls of the tomb literally glowing
with the heat his suit has discarded. Biomonitors clamor for attention
but hold no serious news, his suit sensors report some circuit damage
but describe nothing irreplacable, and his weapon is still charged,
loaded, and operative.
Kassad thinks about it. All of the Tombs are priceless archaeological treasures, preserved for centuries as a gift to future generations, even if
they are moving backward in time. It would be a crime on an interplanetary
scale if Colonel Fedmahn Kassad were to put his own life
above the preservation of such priceless artifacts.
"Oh fuck it," whispers Kassad and rolls into firing position.
He sprays laser fire across the face of the Monolith until crystal slags
and runs. He pumps high-explosive pulse bolts into the thing at ten-
meter intervals, starting with the top levels. Thousands of shards of
mirrored material By out into the night, tumbling in slow motion toward
the valley floor, leaving gaps as ugly as missing teeth in the building's
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
face. Kassad switches back to wide-beam coherent light and sweeps the
interior through the gaps, grinning behind his visor when something bursts into flames on several floors. Kassad fires bhees--beams of high-
energy electrons--which rip through the Monolith and plow perfectly
cylindrical fourteen-centimeter-wide tunnels for half a kilometer
through the rock of the valley wall. He fires cannister grenades, which
explode into tens of thousands of needle flechettes after passing through
the crystal face of the Monolith. He triggers random pulse-laser swaths,
which will blind anyone or anything looking in his direction from the
structure. He fires body-heat-seeking darts into every orifice the shattered
structure offers him.
Kassad rolls back into the Jade Tomb's doorway and flips up his visor.
Flames from the burning tower are reflected in thousands of crystal
shards scattered up and down the valley. Smoke rises into a night
suddenly without wind. Vermilion dunes glow from the flames. The
air is suddenly filled with the sound of wind chimes as More pieces of
crystal break and fall away, some dangling by long tethers of melted
glass.
Kassad ejects drained power clips and ammo bands, replaces them
from his belt, and rolls on his back, breathing in the cooler air that
comes through the open doorway. He is under no illusion that he has
killed the sniper.
"Moneta," whispers Fedmahn Kassad. He closes his eyes a second
before going on.
Moneta had first come to Kassad at Agincourt on a late-October
morning in a.d. 1415. The fields had been strewn with French and
English dead, the forest alive with the menace of a single enemy, but
that enemy would have been the victor if not for the help of the tall
woman with short hair, and eyes he would never forget. After their
shared victory, still dappled with the blood of their vanquished knight,
Kassad and the woman made love in the forest.
The Olympus Command School Historical Tactical Network was a stimsim experience closer to reality than anything civilians would ever
experience, but the phantom lover named Moneta was not an artifact
of the stimsim. Over the years, when Kassad was a cadet at FORCE
Olympus Command School and later, in the fatigue-drugged postcathartic
dreams that inevitably followed actual combat, she had come
to him.
---------------------------------------------------- 9 9 ----------------------------------------------------
Fedmahn Kassad and the shadow named Moneta had made love in
the quiet corners of battlefields ranging from Antietam to QomRiyadh.
Unknown to anyone, unseen by other stimsim cadets, Moneta had
come to him in tropical nights on watch and during frozen days while
under siege on the Russian steppes. They had whispered their passion
in Kassad's dreams after nights of real victory on the island battlefields
of Maui^Cffvenant and during the agony of physical reconstruction after
his near-death on South Bressia. And always Moneta had been his
single love--an overpowering passion mixed with the scent of blood
and gunpowder, the taste of napalm and soft lips and ionized flesh.
Then came Hyperion.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad's hospital ship was attacked by Ouster
torchships while returning from the Bressia system. Only Kassad had
survived, stealing an Ouster shuttle and crash-landing it on Hyperion.
On the continent of Equus. In the high deserts and barren wastelands
of the sequestered lands beyond the Bridle Range. In the valley of the
Time Tombs. In the realm of the Shrike.
And Moneta had been waiting for him. They made love . . . and
when the Ousters landed in force to reclaim their prisoner, Kassad and
Moneta and the half-sensed presence of the Shrike had laid waste to
Ouster ships, destroyed their landing parties, and slaughtered their
troops. For a brief time, Colonel Fedmahn Kassad from the Tharsis
slums, child and grandchild and great-grandchild of refugees, citizen
of Mars in every sense, had known the pure ecstasy of using time as a
weapon, of moving unseen amongst one's enemies, of being a god of
destruction in ways not dreamt of by mortal warriors.
But then, even while making love after the carnage of battle, Moneta
had changed. Had become a monster. Or the Shrike had replaced her.
Kassad could not remember the details; would not remember them if
he did not have to in order to survive.
But he knew that he had returned to find the Shrike and to kill it.
To find Moneta and to kill her. To kill her? He did not know. Colonel
Fedmahn Kassad knew only that all the great passions of a passionate
life had led him to this place and to this moment, and if death awaited
him here, then so be it. And if love and glory and a victory that would
make Valhalla quake awaited, then so be it.
Kassad slaps down his visor, rises to his feet, and rushes from the
Jade Tomb, screaming as he goes. His weapon launches smoke grenades
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
and chaff toward the Monolith, but these offer little cover for the
distance he must cross. Someone is still alive and firing from the tower;
bullets and pulse charges explode along his path as he dodges and dives
from dune to dune, from one heap of rubble to the next.
Flechcttes strike his helmet and legs. His visor cracks, and warning
telltales blink. Kassad blinks away the tactical displays, leaving only the
night-vision aids. High-velocity solid slugs strike his shoulder and knee.
Kassad goes down, is driven down. The impact armor goes rigid, relaxes,
and he is up and running again, feeling the deep bruises already forming.
His chameleon polymer works desperately to mirror the no-man's-land
he is crossing: night, flame, sand, melted crystal, and burning stone.
Fifty meters from the Monolith, and ribbons of light lance to his left
and right, turning sand to glass with a touch, reaching for him with a
speed nothing and no one can dodge. Killing lasers quit playing with
him and lance home, stabbing at his helmet, heart, and groin with the
heat of stars. His combat armor goes mirror bright, shifting frequencies
in microseconds to match the changing colors of attack. A nimbus of
superheated air surrounds him. Microcircuits shriek to overload and
beyond as they release the heat and work to build a micrometer-thin
field of force to keep it away from flesh and bone.
Kassad struggles the final twenty meters, using power assist to leap
barriers of slagged crystal. Explosions erupt on all sides, knocking him
down and then lifting him again. The suit is absolutely rigid; he is a
doll thrown between flaming hands.
The bombardment stops. Kassad gets to his knees and then to his
feet. He looks up at the face of the Crystal Monolith and sees the Hames
and fissures and little else. His visor is cracked and dead. Kassad lifts
it, breathes in smoke and ionized air, and enters the tomb.
His implants tell him that the other pilgrims are paging him on all
the comm channels. He shuts them off. Kassad removes his helmet
and walks into darkness.
It is a single room, large and square and dark. A shaft has opened
in the center and he looks up a hundred meters to a shattered skylight.
A figure is waiting on the tenth level, sixty meters above, silhouetted
by flames.
Kassad drapes his weapon over one shoulder, tucks his helmet under
his arm, finds the great spiral staircase in the center of the shaft, and
begins to climb.
FOURTEEN
Did you have your nap?" Leigh Hunt asked as we stepped onto
the farcaster reception area of Treetops.
"Yes."
"Pleasant dreams, I hope?" said Hunt, making no effort to hide either
his sarcasm or his opinion of those who slept while the movers and
shakers of government toiled.
"Not especially," I said and looked around as we ascended the wide
staircase toward the dining levels.
In a Web where every town in every province of every country on
every continent seemed to brag of a four-star restaurant, where true
gourmets numbered in the tens of millions and palates had been educated
by exotic fare from two hundred worlds, even in a Web so jaded
with culinary triumphs and resraurantic success, Treetops stood alone.
Set atop one of a dozen highest trees on a world of forest giants,
Treetops occupied several acres of upper branches half a mile above
the ground. The staircase Hunt and I ascended, four meters wide here,
was lost amid the immensity of limbs the size of avenues, leaves the
size of sails, and a main trunk--illuminated by spotlights and just
glimpsed through gaps in the foliage--more sheer and massive than
most mountain faces. Treetops held a score of dining platforms in
its upper bowers, ascending in order of rank and privilege and wealth
and power. Especially power. In a society where billionaires were
almost commonplace, where a lunch at Treetops could cost a thousand
marks and be within the reach of millions, the final arbiter of
position and privilege was power--a currency that never went out of
style.
The evening's gathering was to be on the uppermost deck, a wide,
curving platform ofweirwood (since muirwood cannot be stepped upon),
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
with views of a fading lemon sky, an infinity of lesser treetops stretching
off to a distant horizon, and the soft orange lights of Templar treehomes
and houses of worship glowing through far-off green and umber and
amber walls of softly stirring foliage. There were about sixty people in
the dinner party; I recognized Senator Kolchev, white hair shining under
the Japanese lanterns, as well as Councilor Albedo, General Morpurgo,
Admiral Singh, President Pro Tern Denzel-Hiat-Amin, All Thing
Speaker Gibbons, another dozen senators from such powerful Web
worlds as Sol Draconi Septem, Deneb Drei, Nordholm, Fuji, both the
Renaissances, Metaxas, Maui-Covenant, Hebron, New Earth, and
Ixion, as well as a bevy of lesser politicians. Spenser Reynolds, the
action artist, was there, resplendent in a maroon velvet formal tunic,
but I saw no other artists. I did see Tyrena Wingreen-Feif across the
crowded deck; the publisher-turned-philanthropist still stood out in a
crowd in her gown made of thousands of silk-thin leather petals, her
blue-black hair rising high in a sculpted wave, but the gown was a
Tedekai original, the makeup was dramatic but noninteractive, and her
appearance was far More subdued than it would have been a mere five
or six decades earlier. I moved in her direction across the crowded floor
as guests milled about on the penultimate deck, making raids on the
numerous bars and waiting for the call to dine.
"Joseph, dear," cried Wingreen-Feif as I closed the last few yards,
"how in the world did you get invited to such a dreary function?"
I smiled and offered her a glass of champagne. The dowager empress
of literary fashion knew me only because of her week-long visit to the
Esperance arts festival the previous year and my friendship with such
Web-class names as Salmud Brevy III, Millon De Havre, and Rithmet
Corber. Tyrena was a dinosaur who refused to become extinct--her
wrists, palms, and neck would have glowed blue from repeated Poulsens
if it had not been for makeup, and she spent decades on short-hop
interstellar cruises or incredibly expensive cryogenic naps at spas too
exclusive to have names; the upshot was that Tyrena WingreenFeif
had held the social scene in an iron grip for More than three centuries
and showed no signs of relinquishing it. With every twenty-year nap,
her fortune expanded and her legend grew.
"Do you still live on that dreary little planet I visited last year?" she
asked.
"Esperance," I said, knowing that she knew precisely where each
important artist on that unimportant world resided. "No, I appear to
have moved my residence to TC2 for the present."
M. Wingreen-Feif made a face. I was vaguely aware that there was
a group of eight to ten hangers-on watching intently, wondering who
this brash young man was who had moved into her inner orbit. "How
dreadful for you," said Tyrena, "to have to abide on a world of business
people and government bureaucrats. I hope they allow you to escape
soon!"
I raised my glass in a toast to her. "I wanted to ask you," I said,
"weren't you Martin Silenus's editor?"
The dowager empress lowered her glass and fixed me with a cold
stare. For a second I imagined Meina Gladstone and this woman locked
in a combat of wills; I shuddered and waited for her answer. "My darling
boy," she said, "that is such ancient history. Why would you bother
your pretty young head about such prehistoric trivia?"
"I'm interested in Silenus," I said. "In his poetry. I was just curious
if you were still in touch with him."
"Joseph, Joseph, Joseph," rutted M. Wingreen-Feif, "no one has
heard from poor Martin in decades. Why, the poor man would be ancient1."
I didn't point out to Tyrena that when she was Silenus's editor, the
poet was much younger than she.
"It is odd that you mention him," she continued. "My old firm,
Transline, said recently that they were considering releasing some of
Martin's work. I don't know if they ever contacted his estate."
"His Dying Earth books?" I said, thinking of the Old Earth nostalgia
volumes which had sold so well so long ago.
"No, oddly enough. I believe they were thinking of printing his
Cantos," said Tyrena. She laughed and held out a cannabis stick ensconced
in a long, ebony cigarette holder. One of her retinue hurried
to light it. "Such an odd choice," she said, "considering that no one
ever read the Cantos when poor Martin was alive. Well, nothing helps
an artist's career More than a little death and obscurity, I always say."
She lauglied--sharp little sounds like metal chipping rock. Haifa dozen
of her circle laughed along with her.
"You'd better make sure that Silenus is dead," I said. "The Cantos
would make better reading if they were complete."
Tyrena Wingreen-Feif looked at me strangely, the chimes for dinner
sounded through shifting leaves, Spenser Reynolds offered the grande
dame his arm as people began climbing the last staircase toward the
stars, and I finished my drink, left the empty glass on a railing, and
went up to join the herd.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
The CEO and her entourage arrived shortly after we were seated,
and Gladstone gave a brief talk, probably her twentieth of the day,
excluding her morning speech to the Senate and Web. The original
reason for tonight's dinner had been the recognition of a fundraising
effort for the Arniaghast Relief Fund, but Gladstone's talk soon turned
to the war and the necessity of prosecuting it vigorously and efficiently
while leaders from all parts of the Web promoted unity.
I gazed out over the railing while she spoke. The lemon sky had
dissolved to a muted saffron and then quickly faded to a tropical dusk
so rich that it seemed as if a thick, blue curtain had been drawn across
the sky. God's Grove had six small moons, five of them visible from
this latitude, and four were racing across the sky as I watched the stars
emerge. The air was oxygen rich here, almost intoxicating, and carried
a heavy fragrance of moistened vegetation which reminded me of the
morning visit to Hyperion. But no EMVs or skimmers or flying machines
of any sort were allowed on God's Grove--petrochemical emissions
or fusion-cell wakes had never polluted these skies--and the
absence of cities, highways, and electrical lighting made tlic stars seem
bright enough to compete with the Japanese lanterns and glow-globes
hanging from branches and stanchions.
The breeze had come up again after sunset, and now the entire tree
swayed slightly, the broad platform moving as softly as a ship on a gentle
sea, weirwood and muirwood stanchions and supports creaking softly
with tlie gentle swells. I could see lights shining up through distant
treetops and knew that many of them came from "rooms"--a few of
thousands leased by the Templars--which one could add to one's multi-
world farcaster-connected residence if one had the million-mark beginning
price for such an extravagance.
The Templars did not sully themselves with the day-to-day operations
of Treetops or the leasing agencies, merely setting strict, inviolable
ecological conditions to any such endeavor, but they benefited from
the hundreds of millions of marks brought in by such enterprises. I
thought of their interstellar cruise ship, the Yggctrasill, a kilometer-long
Tree from the planet's most sacred forest, driven by Hawking drive singularity generators and protected by the most complex force shields
and Erg force fields that could be carried. Somehow, inexplicably, the
Templars had agreed to send the Yggdrasill on an evacuation mission
that was a mere cover for the FORCE invasion task force.
And as things tend to happen when priceless objects are set in harm's
way, the Yggdrasill was destroyed while in orbit around Hyperion,
whether by Ouster attack or some other force not yet determined. How
had the Templars reacted? What conceivable goal could have made
them risk one of the four Treeships in existence? And why had their
Treeship captain--Het Masteen--been chosen as one of the seven
Shrike Pilgrims and then proceeded to disappear before the windwagon
reached the Bridle Range on the shores of the Sea of Grass?
There were too damned many questions, and the war was only a few
days old.
Meina Gladstone had finished her remarks and urged us all to enjoy
the fine dinner. I applauded politely and waved over a steward to have
my wineglass filled. The first course was a classic salad a la the empire
period, and I applied myself to it with enthusiasm. I realized that I'd
eaten nothing since breakfast that day. Spearing a sprig of watercress,
I remembered Governor-General Theo Lane eating bacon and eggs and
kippers as the rain fell softly from Hyperion's lapis lazuli sky. Had that
been a dream?
"What do you think of the war, M. Severn?" asked Reynolds, the
action artist. He was several seats down and across the broad table from
me, but his voice carried very well. I could see Tyrena raise an eyebrow
toward me from where she sat, three seats to my right.
"What can one think of war?" I said, tasting the wine again. It was
quite good, though nothing in the Web could match my memories of
French Bordeaux. "War does not call for judgment," I said, "merely
survival."
"On the contrary," said Reynolds, "like so many other things humankind
has redefined since the Hegira, warfare is on the threshold of
becoming an art form."
"An art form," sighed a woman with short-cropped chestnut hair.
The datasphere told me that she was M. Sudette Chier, wife of Senator
Gabriel Fyodor Kolchev and a powerful political force in her own right.
M. Chier wore a blue and gold lame gown and an expression of rapt
interest. "War as an art form, M. Reynolds! What a fascinating concept!"

Spenser Reynolds was a bit shorter than Web average, but far handsomer.
His hair was curled but cropped short, his skin appeared bronzed
by a benevolent sun and slightly gilded with subtle body paint, his
clothes and ARNistry were expensively Hamboyant without being outre,
and his demeanor proclaimed a relaxed confidence that all men dreamed
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
of and precious few obtained. His wit was obvious, his attention to
others sincere, and his sense of humor legendary.
I found myself disliking the son of a bitch at once.
"Everything is an art form, M. Chier, M. Severn." Reynolds smiled.
"Or must become one. We are beyond the point where warfare can be
merely the churlish imposition of policy by other means."
"Diplomacy," said General Morpurgo, on Reynolds' left.
"I beg your pardon. General?"
"Diplomacy," he said. "And it's 'extension of,' not 'imposition of.' "
Spenser Reynolds bowed and made a small roll of his hand. Sudette
Chier and Tyrena laughed softly. The image of Councilor Albedo
leaned forward from my left and said, "Von Clausewitz, I believe."
I glanced toward the Councilor. A portable projection unit not much
larger than the radiant gossamers flitting through the branches hovered
two meters above and behind him. The illusion was not as perfect as
in Government House, but it was far better than any private holo I had
ever seen.
General Morpurgo nodded toward the Core representative.
"Whatever," said Chier. "It is the idea of warfare as art which is so
brilliant."
I finished the salad, and a human waiter whisked the bowl away,
replacing it with a dark gray soup I did not recognize. It was smoky,
slightly redolent of cinnamon and the sea, and delicious.
"Warfare is a perfect medium for an artist," began Reynolds, holding
his salad utensil aloft like a baton. "And not merely for those . . .
craftsmen who have studied the so-called science of war, either." He
smiled toward Morpurgo and another FORCE officer to the General's
right, dismissing both of them from consideration. "Only someone who
is willing to look beyond the bureaucratic limits of tactics and strategies
and the obsolescent will to 'win' can truly wield an artist's touch with
a medium so difficult as warfare in the modern age."
"The obsolescent will to win?" said the FORCE officer. The data-
sphere whispered that he was Commander William Ajunta Lee, a naval
hero of the Maui-Covenant conflict. He looked young--middle fifties
perhaps--and his rank suggested that his youth was due to years of
traveling between the stars rather than Poulsen.
"Of course obsolescent," laughed Reynolds. "Do you think a sculptor
wishes to defeat the clay? Does a painter attack the canvas? For that
matter, docs an eagle or a Thomas hawk assault the sky?"
"Eagles are extinct," grumbled Morpurgo. "Perhaps they should have
attacked the sky. It betrayed them."
Reynolds turned back to me. Waiters removed his abandoned salad
and brought the soup course I was finishing. "M. Severn, you are an
artist ... an illustrator at least," he said. "Help me explain to these
people what I mean."
"I don't know what you mean." While I waited for the next course, I tapped my wineglass. It was filled immediately. From the head of the
table, thirty feet away, I could hear Gladstone, Hunt, and several of
the relief fund chairmen laughing.
Spenser Reynolds did not look surprised at my ignorance. "For our
race to achieve the true satori, for us to move to that next level of
consciousness and evolution that so many of our philosophies proclaim, all facets of human endeavor must become conscious strivings for art."
General Morpurgo took a long drink and grunted. "Including such
bodily functions as eating, reproducing, and eliminating waste, I suppose."

"Most especially such functions!" exclaimed Reynolds. He opened
his hands, offering the long table and its many delights. "What you see
here is the animal requirement of turning dead organic compounds to
energy, the base act of devouring other life, but Treetops has turned it
into an art! Reproduction has long since replaced its crude animal
origins with the essence of dance for civilized human beings. Elimination
must become pure poetry!"
"I'll remember that the next time I go in to take a shit," said Morpurgo.

Tyrena Wingreen-Feif laughed and turned to the man in red and
black to her right. "Monsignor, your church . . . Catholic, early Christian
isn't it? ... don't you have some delightful old doctrine about
mankind achieving a More exalted evolutionary status?"
We all turned to look at the small, quiet man in the black robe and
strange little cap. Monsignor Edouard, a representative of the almost-
forgotten early Christian sect now limited to the world of Pacem and
a few colony planets, was on the guest list because of his involvement
with the Armaghast relief project, and until now he had been quietly
applying himself to his soup. He looked up with a slightly surprised
look on a face lined with decades of exposure to weather and worry.
"Why yes," he said, "the teachings of St. Teilhard discuss an evolution
toward the Omega Point."
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPEHIQN ----------------
"And is the Omega Point similar to our Zen Gnostic idea of practical
satori?" asked Sudette Chier.
Monsignor Edouard looked wistfully at his soup, as if it were More important than the conversation at that moment. "Not really too
similar," he said. "St. Teilhard felt that all of life, every level of organic
consciousness was part of a planned evolution toward ultimate mergence
with the Godhead." He frowned slightly. "The Teilhard position has
been modified much over the past eight centuries, but the common
thread has been that we consider Jesus Christ to have been an incarnate
example of what that ultimate consciousness might be like on the human
plane."
I cleared my throat. "Didn't the Jesuit Paul Dure write extensively
on the Teilhard hypothesis?"
Monsignor Edouard leaned forward to see around Tyrena and looked
directly at me. There was surprise on that interesting face. "Why yes,"
he said, "but I am amazed that you're familiar with the work of Father
Dure."
I returned the gaze of the man who had been Dure's friend even
while exiling the Jesuit to Hyperion for apostasy. I thought of another
refugee from the New Vatican, young Lenar Hoyt, lying dead in a
Time Tomb while the cruciform parasites carrying the mutated DNA
of both Dure and himself carried out their grim purpose of resurrection.
How did the abomination of the cruciform fit into Teilhard and Dure's
view of inevitable, benevolent evolution toward the Godhead?
Spenser Reynolds obviously thought that the conversation had been
out of his arena for too long. "The point is," he said, his deep voice
drowning out other conversation halfway down the table, "that warfare,
like religion or any other human endeavor that taps and organizes
human energies on such a scale, must abandon its infantile preoccupation
with Ding an sich literalism--usually expressed through a slavish
fascination with 'goals'--and revel in the artistic dimension of its own
ocuvre. Now my own most recent project--"
"And what is your cult's goal, Monsignor Edouard?" Tyrena Win-
green-Feif asked, stealing the conversational ball away from Reynolds
without raising her voice or shifting her gaze from the cleric.
"To help mankind to know and serve God," he said and finished his
soup with an impressive slurp. The archaic little priest looked down
the table toward the projection of Councilor Albedo. "I've heard rumors,
Councilor, that the TechnoCore is pursuing an oddly similar goal. Is
it true that you are attempting to build your own God?"
-------------------------------------------------- I o 9 --------------------------------------------------
Albedo's smile was perfectly calculated to be friendly with no sign of
condescension. "It is no secret that elements of the Core have been
working for centuries to create at least a theoretical model of a so-called
artificial intelligence far beyond our own poor intellects." He made a
deprecating gesture. "It is hardly an attempt to create God, Monsignor. More in the line of a research project exploring the possibilities your
St. Teilhard and Father Dure pioneered."
"But you believe that it's possible to orchestrate your own evolution
to such a higher consciousness?" asked Commander. Lee, the naval
hero, who had been listening attentively. "Design an ultimate intelligence
the way we once designed your crude ancestors out of silicon
and microchips?"
Albedo laughed. "Nothing so simple or grandiose, I'm afraid. And
when you say 'you,' Commander, please remember that I am but one
personality in an assemblage of intelligences no less diverse than the
human beings on this planet. . . indeed, in the Web itself. The Core
is no monolith. There are as many camps of philosophies, beliefs,
hypotheses--religions, if you will--as there would be in any diverse
community." He folded his hands as if enjoying an inside joke. "Although
I prefer to think of the quest for an Ultimate Intelligence as a
hobby More than a religion. Rather like building ships in a bottle,
Commander, or arguing over how many angels would fit on the head
of a pin, Monsignor."
The group laughed politely, except for Reynolds who was frowning
unintentionally as he no doubt pondered how to regain control of the
conversation.
"And what about the rumor that the Core has built a perfect replica
of Old Earth in the quest for an Ultimate Intelligence?" I asked, amazing
myself with the question.
Albedo's smile did not falter, the friendly gaze did not quiver, but
there was a nanosecond of something conveyed through the projection.
What? Shock? Fury? Amusement? I had no idea. He could have communicated
with me privately during that eternal second, transmitting
immense quantities of data via my own Core umbilical or along the
unseen corridors we have reserved for ourselves in the labyrinthine
datasphere which humankind thought so simply contrived. Or he could
have killed me, pulling rank with whatever gods of the Core controlled
the environment for a consciousness like mine--it would have been as
simple as the director of an institute calling down to order the technicians
to permanently anesthetize an obnoxious laboratory mouse.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION.
Conversation had halted up and down the table. Even Mcina Glad-
stone and her cluster of ultra-VIPs glanced down our way.
Councilor Albedo smiled More broadly. "What a delightfully odd
rumor! Tell me, M. Severn, how does anyone . . . especially an organism
such as the Core, which your own commentators have called
'a disembodied bunch of brains, runaway programs that have escaped
their circuits and spend most of their time pulling intellectual lint out
of their nonexistent navels'. . . how does anyone build 'a perfect replica
of Old Earth'?"
I looked at the projection, through the projection, realizing for the
first time that Albedo's dishes and dinner were also projected; he had
been eating while we spoke.
"And," lie continued, obviously deeply amused, "has it occurred to
the promulgators of this rumor that 'a perfect replica of Old Earth'
would be Old Earth to all intents and purposes? What possible good
would such an effort do in exploring the theoretical possibilities of an
enhanced artificial intelligence matrix?"
When I did not answer, an uncomfortable silence settled over the
entire midsection of the table.
Monsignor Edouard cleared his throat. "It would seem," he said,
"that any ... ah ... society that could produce an exact replica of
any world--but especially a world destroyed these four centuries--
would have no need to seek God; it would be God."
"Precisely!" laughed Councilor Albedo. "It's an insane rumor, but
delightful . . . absolutely delightful!"
Relieved laughter filled the hole of silence. Spenser Reynolds began
telling about his next project--an attempt to have suicides coordinate
their leaps from bridges on a score of worlds while the All Thing
watched--and Tyrena Wingreen-Feif stole all attention by putting her
arm around Monsignor Edouard and inviting him to her after-dinner
nude swimming party at her Hoating estate on Mare Infinitus.
I saw Councilor Albedo staring at me, turned in time to see an
inquisitive glance from Leigh Hunt and the CEO, and swiveled to
watch the waiters bring up the entrees on silver platters.
The dinner was excellent.
FIFTEEN
I did not go to Tyrena's nude swimming party. Nor did Spenser
Reynolds, whom I last saw speaking earnestly with Sudette Chier.
I do not know whether Monsignor Edouard gave in to Tyrena's
enticements.
Dinner was not quite over, relief fund chairpeople were giving short
speeches, and many of the More important senators had already begun
to fidget when Leigh Hunt whispered to me that the CEO's party was
ready to leave and my presence was requested.
It was almost 2?00 hours Web standard time, and I assumed the
group would be returning to Government House, but when I stepped
through the one-time portal--I was the last in the party to do so except
for the Praetorian bodyguards bringing up the rear of the group--I was
shocked to be looking down a stone-walled corridor relieved by long
windows showing a Martian sunrise.
Technically, Mars is not in the Web; the oldest extraterrestrial colony
of humankind is made deliberately difficult to reach. Zen Gnostic
pilgrims traveling to the Master's Rock in Hellas Basin have to 'cast to
the Home System Station and take shuttles from Ganymede or Europa
to Mars. It is an inconvenience of only a few hours, but to a society
where everything is literally ten steps away, it makes for a sense of
sacrifice and adventure. Other than for historians and experts in brandy
cactus agriculture, there are few professional reasons to be drawn to
Mars. With the gradual decline of Zen Gnosticism during the past
century, even the pilgrim traffic there has grown lighter. No one cares
for Mars.
Except for FORCE. Although the FORCE administrative offices are
on TC2 and the bases are spread through the Web and Protectorate,
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Mars remains the true home of the military organization, with the
Olympus Command School as the heart.
There was a small group of military VIPs waiting to greet the small
group of political VIPs, and while the clusters swirled like colliding
galaxies, I walked over to a window and stared.
The corridor was part of a complex carved into the upper lip ofMons
Olympus, and from where we stood, some ten miles high, it felt as if
one could take in half the planet with a single glance. From this point
the world was the ancient shield volcano, and the trick of distance
reduced access roads, the old city along the cliff walls, and the Tharsis
Plateau slums and forests to mere squiggles in a red landscape which
looked unchanged from the time the first human set foot on that world,
proclaimed it for a nation called Japan, and snapped a photograph.
I was watching a small sun rise, thinking That is the sun, enjoying
the incredible play of light on the clouds creeping out of darkness up
the side of the interminable mountainside, when Leigh Hunt stepped
closer. "The CEO will see you after the conference." He handed me
two sketchbooks which one of the aides had brought from Government
House. "You realize that everything you hear and see in this conference
is highly classified?"
I did not treat the statement as a question.
Wide bronze doors opened in the stone walls, and guidelights
switched on, showing the carpeted ramp and staircase leading to the
War Room table in the center of a wide, black place which might have
been a massive auditorium sunk in a darkness absolute except for the
single, small island of illumination. Aides hurried to show the way,
pull out chairs, and blend back into the shadows. With reluctance, I
turned my back on the sunrise and followed our party into the pit.
General Morpurgo and a troika of other FORCE leaders handled
this briefing personally. The graphics were light-years away from the
crude callups and holos of the Government House briefing; we were in
a vast space, large enough to hold all eight thousand cadets and staff
when required, but now most of the blackness above us was filled with
omega-quality holos and diagrams the size of freeball fields. It was
frightening in a way.
So was the content of the briefing.
"We're losing this struggle in Hyperion System," Morpurgo coneluded. "At best we will achieve a draw, with the Ouster Swarm held
at bay beyond a perimeter some fifteen AU from the farcaster singularity
sphere, with attrition from their small-ship raids a constant source of
harassment. At worst, we will have to fall back to defensive positions
while we evacuate the fleet and Hegemony citizens and allow Hyperion
to fall into Ouster hands."
"What happened to the knockout blow we were promised?" asked
Senator Kolchcv from his place near the head of the diamond-shaped
table. "The decisive attacks on the Swarm?"
Morpurgo cleared his throat but glanced at Admiral Nashita, who
rose. The FORCE:spacc commander's black uniform left the illusion
of only his scowling face floating in darkness. I felt a tug of deja vu at
the thought of that image, but I looked back at Mcina Gladstone,
illuminated now by the war charts and colors floating above us like a
holospectrum version of Damocles's famous sword, and commenced
drawing again. I had put away the paper sketchpad and now used my light stylus on a flexible caliup sheet.
"First, our intelligence on the Swarms was necessarily limited," began
Nasliita. Graphics changed above us. "Rccon probes and long-distance
scouts could not tell us the full nature of every unit in the Ouster
migration fleet. The result has been an obvious and serious underestimation
of actual combat strength in this particular Swarm. Our efforts
to penetrate Swarm defenses, using only long-range attack fighters and
torchships, has not been as successful as we had hoped.
"Second, the requirement of maintaining a secure defensive perimeter
of such a magnitude in the Hyperion system has made such demands
on our two operative task forces that it has been impossible to
devote sufficient numbers of ships to an offensive capability at this time."
Kolchcv interrupted. "Admiral, what I hear you saying is that you
have too few ships to carry out the mission of destroying or beating off
this Ouster attack on Hyperion System. Is that correct?"
Nashita stared at the senator, and I was reminded of paintings I had
seen of samurai in the seconds before the killing sword was removed
from its scabbard. "That is correct, Senator Kolchcv."
"Yet in our war cabinet briefings as recently as a standard week ago,
you assured us that the two task forces would be enough to protect
Hyperion from invasion or destruction and to deliver a knockout blow
to this Ouster Swarm. What happened, Admiral?"
Nashita drew himself up to his full lieight--greater than Morpurgo's
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
but still shorter than Web average--and turned his gaze toward Glad-
stone. "M. Executive, I have explained the variables that require an
alteration in our battle plan. Shall I begin this briefing again?"
Meina Gladstone had her elbow on the table, and her right hand
supported her head with two fingers against her cheek, two under her
chin, and a thumb along her jawline in a posture of tired attention.
"Admiral," she said softly, "while I believe Senator Kolchev's question
is totally pertinent, I think that the situation you have outlined in this
briefing and earlier ones today answers it." She turned toward Kolchev.
"Gabriel, we guessed wrong. With this commitment of FORCE, we
get a stalemate at best. The Ousters are meaner, tougher, and More
numerous than we thought." She turned her tired gaze back toward
Nashita. "Admiral, how many More ships will you need?"
Nashita took a breath, obviously thrown off stride at being asked this
question so early in the briefing. He glanced at Morpurgo and the other
joint chiefs and then folded his hands in front of his crotch like a funeral
director. "Two hundred warships," he said. "A( least two hundred. It
is a minimum number."
A stir went through the room. I looked up from my drawing. Everyone
was whispering or changing position except Gladstone. It took a second
for me to understand.
The entire FORCE:space fleet of warships numbered fewer than six
hundred. Of course each was hideously expensive--few planetary economies
could afford to build More than one or two interstellar capital
ships, and even a handful of torchships equipped with Hawking drives
could bankrupt a colonial world. And each was hideously powerful: an
attack carrier could destroy a world, a force of cruisers and spinship
destroyers could destroy a sun. It was conceivable that the Hegemony
ships already massed in Hyperion system could--if vectored through
the FORCE large transit farcaster matrix--destroy most of the star
systems in the Web. It had taken fewer than fifty ships of the type
Nashita was requesting to destroy the Glennon-Height fleet a century
earlier and to quell the Mutiny forever.
But the real problem behind Nashita's request was the commitment
of two-thirds of the Hegemony's fleet in the Hyperion system at one
time. I could feel the anxiety flow through the politicians and policy
makers like an electrical current.
Senator Richeau from Renaissance Vector cleared her throat. "Admiral,
we've never concentrated fleet forces like that before, have we?"
Nashita's head pivoted as smoothly as if it were on bearings. The
scowl did not flicker. "We have never committed ourselves to a fleet
action of this importance to the future of the Hegemony, Senator Ri-
cheau."
"Yes, I understand that," said Richeau. "But my question was meant
to ask what impact this would have on Web defenses elsewhere. Isn't
that a terrible gamble?"
Nashita grunted, and the graphics in the vast space behind him
swirled, misted, and coalesced as a stunning view of the Milky Way
galaxy as seen from far above the plane of the ecliptic; the angle changed
as we seemed to rush at dizzying speed toward one spiral arm until the
blue latticework of the farcaster web became visible, the Hegemony,
an irregular gold nucleus with spires and pseudopods extending into
the green nimbus of the Protectorate. The Web seemed both random
in design and dwarfed by the sheer size of the galaxy . . . and both of
these impressions were accurate reflections of reality.
Suddenly the graphic shifted, and the Web and colonial worlds became
the universe except for a spattering of a few hundred stars to give
it perspective.
"These represent the position of our fleet elements at this time," said
Admiral Nashita. Amidst and beyond the gold and green, several
hundred specks of intense orange appeared; the heaviest concentration
was around a distant Protectorate star I recognized belatedly as Hyperion's.
"And these the Ouster Swarms as of their most recent plottings." A
dozen red lines appeared, vector signs and blue-shift tails showing the
direction of travel. Even at this scale, none of the Swarm vectors appeared
to intersect Hegemony space except for the Swarm--a large
one--that seemed to be curving into Hyperion system.
I noticed that FORCE:space deployments frequently reflected Swarm
vectors, except for clusterings near bases and troublesome worlds such
as Maui-Covenant, Bressia, and QomRiyadh.
"Admiral," said Gladstone, preempting any description of these de- '
ployments, "I presume you have taken into account fleet reaction time
should there be a threat to some other point on our frontier."
Nashita's scowl twitched into something that might have been a smile.
There was a hint of condescension in his voice. "Yes, CEO. If you
notice the closest Swarms besides the one at Hyperion ..." The view
zoomed toward red vectors above a gold cloud, which embraced star
Normal;FR1;FR2;THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION.
systems I was fairly certain included Heaven's Gate, God's Grove, and
Mare Infinitus. At this scale, the Ouster threat seemed very distant
indeed.
"We plot the Swarm migrations according to Hawking drive wakes
picked up by listening posts in and beyond the Web. In addition, our
long-distance probes verify Swarm size and direction on a frequent
basis."
"How frequent. Admiral?" asked Senator Kolchev.
"At least once every few years," snapped the Admiral. "You must
realize that travel time is many months, even at spinship velocities, and
the time-debt from our viewpoint may be as much as twelve years for
such a transit."
"With gaps of years between direct observations," persisted the senator,
"how do you know where the Swarms are at any given time?"
"Hawking drives do not lie. Senator." Nashita's voice was absolutely
flat. "It is impossible to simulate the Hawking distortion wake. What
we are looking at is the real-time location of hundreds ... or in the
case of the larger Swarms, thousands ... of singularity drives under
way. As with fatline broadcasts, there is no time-debt for transmission
of the Hawking effect."
"Yes," said Kolchev, his voice as flat and deadly as the Admiral's,
"but what if the Swarms were traveling at less than spinship velocities?"
Nashita actually smiled. "Below hyperlight velocities. Senator?"
"Yes."
I could see Morpurgo and a few of the other military men shake
their heads or hide smiles. Only the young FORCE:sea commander,
William Ajunta Lee, was leaning forward attentively with a serious
expression.
"At sublight velocities," deadpanned Admiral Nashita, "our great-
great-grandchildren might have to worry about warning their grandchildren
of an invasion."
Kolchev would not desist. He stood and pointed toward where the
closest Swarm curved away from the Hegemony above Heaven's Gate.
"What about if this Swarm were to approach without Hawking drives?"
Nashita sighed, obviously irritated at having the substance of the
meeting suborned by irrelevancies. "Senator, I assure you that if that
Swarm turned off their drives now, and turned toward the Web now, it would be"--Nashita's eyes blinked as he consulted his implants and
comm links--"two hundred and thirty standard years before they approached
our frontiers. It is not a factor in this decision, Senator."
Meina Gladstone leaned forward, and all eyes shifted toward her. I
stored my previous sketch in the caliup and started a new one.
"Admiral, it seems to me the real concern here is both the unprecedented
nature of this concentration of forces near Hyperion and the
fact that we're putting all of our eggs in one basket."
There was a murmur of amusement around the table. Gladstone was
famous for aphorisms, stories, and cliches so old and forgotten that they
were brand-new. This might have been one of them.
"Are we putting all of our eggs in one basket?" she continued.
Nashita stepped forward and set his hands on the table, long fingers
extended, pressing down with great intensity. That intensity matched
the power of the small man's personality; he was one of those rare
individuals who commanded others' attention and obedience without
effort. "No, CEO, we are not." Without turning, he gestured toward
the display above and behind him. "The closest Swarms could not
approach Hegemony space without a warning time of two months in
Hawking drive . . . that is three years of our time. It would take our
Heet units in Hyperion--even assuming they were widely deployed and
in a combat situation--less than five hours to fall back and translate
anywhere in the Web."
"That does not include fleet units beyond the Web," said Senator
Richeau. "The colonies cannot be left unprotected."
Nashita gestured again. "The two hundred warships we will call in
to make the Hyperion campaign decisive are those already within the
Web or those carrying JumpShip farcaster capabilities. None of the
independent fleet units assigned to the colonies will be affected."
Gladstone nodded. "But what if the Hyperion portal were damaged
or seized by the Ousters?"
From the shifting, nodding, and exhalations from the civilians around
the table, I guessed that she had hit upon the major concern.
Nashita nodded and strode back to the small dais as if this were the
question he had been anticipating and was pleased irrelevancies were
at an end. "Excellent question," he said. "It has been mentioned in
previous briefings, but I will cover this possibility in some detail.
"First, we have redundancy in our farcaster capability, with no fewer
than two JumpShips in-system at this time and plans for three More
when the reinforced task force arrives. The chances of all five of these
ships being destroyed are very, very small. . . almost insignificant when
one considers our enhanced defensive capabilities with the reinforced
task force.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
"Second, chances of the Ousters seizing an intact military farcaster
and using it to invade the Web are nil. Each ship . . . each individual
. . . that transits a FORCE portal must be identified by tamperproof,
coded microtransponders, which are updated daily--"
"Couldn't the Ousters break these codes. . . insert their own?" asked
Senator Kolchev.
"Impossible." Nashita was striding back and forth on the small dais,
hands behind his back. "The updating of codes is done daily via fatline
one-time pads from FORCE headquarters within the Web--"
"Excuse me," I said, amazed to hear my own voice here, "but I made a brief visit to Hyperion System this morning and was aware of
no codes."
Heads turned. Admiral Nashita again carried out his successful
impression of an owl turning its head on frictionless bearings. "Nonetheless,
M. Severn," he said, "you and M. Hunt were encoded--
painlessly and unobtrusively by infrared lasers, at both ends of the
farcaster transit."
I nodded, amazed for a second that the Admiral had remembered
my name until I realized that he also had implants.
"Third," continued Nashita as if I had not spoken, "should the
impossible happen and Ouster forces overwhelm our defenses, capture
our farcasters intact, circumvent the fail-safe transit codes systems, and
activate a technology with which they are not familiar, and which we
have denied them for More than four centuries. . . then all their efforts
would still be for naught, because all military traffic is being routed to
Hyperion via the base at Madhya."
"Where?" came a chorus of voices.
I had heard of Madhya only through Brawne Lamia's tale of her
client's death. Both she and Nashita pronounced it "mud-ye."
"Madhya," repeated Admiral Nashita, smiling now in earnest. It was
an oddly boyish smile. "Do not query your comlogs, gentlemen and
ladies. Madhya is a 'black' system, not found in any inventories or
civilian farcaster charts. We reserve it for just such purposes. With only
one habitable planet, fit only for mining and our bases, Madhya is
the ultimate fallback position. Should Ouster warships do the impossible
and breach our defenses and portals in Hyperion, the only place they can go is Madhya, where significant amounts of automated
firepower are directed toward anything and everything that comes
through. Should the impossible be squared and their fleet survive
transit to the Madhya system, outgoing farcaster connections would
-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------
automatically self-destruct, and their warships would be stranded years
from the Web."
"Yes," said Senator Richeau, "but so would ours. Two-thirds of our
fleet would be left in Hyperion system."
Nashita stood at parade rest. "This is true," he said, "and certainly
the joint chiefs and I have weighed the consequences of this remote
. . . one would have to say statistically impossible . . . event many
times. We find the risks acceptable. Should the impossible happen, we
still would have More than two hundred warships in reserve to defend
the Web. At worst, we would have lost the Hyperion system after dealing
a terrible blow to the Ousters . . . one which would, in and of itself,
almost certainly deter any future aggression.
"But this is not the outcome we anticipate. With two hundred warships
transferred soon--within the next eight standard hours--our predictors
and the AI Advisory Council predictors ... see a 99 percent
probability of total defeat of the aggressive Ouster Swarm, with inconsequential
losses to our forces."
Meina Gladstone turned toward Councilor Albedo. In the low light
the projection was perfect. "Councilor, I did not know the Advisory
Group had been asked this question. Is the 99 percent probability figure
reliable?"
Albedo smiled. "Quite reliable, CEO. And the probability factor was
99.962794 percent." The smile broadened. "Quite reassuring enough
to have one put all one's eggs into one basket for a short while."
Gladstone did not smile. "Admiral, how long after you get the reinforcements
do you see the fighting going on?"
"One standard week, CEO. At the most."
Gladstone's left eyebrow rose slightly. "So short a time?"
"Yes, CEO."
"General Morpurgo? Thoughts from FORCE:ground?"
"We concur, CEO. Reinforcement is necessary, and at once. Transports
will carry approximately a hundred thousand Marines and ground
troops for the mopping up in the remnants of the Swarm."
"In seven standard days or less?"
"Yes, CEO."
"Admiral Singh?"
"Absolutely necessary, CEO."
"General Van Zeidt?"
One by one, Gladstone polled the joint chiefs and top-ranking military
there, even asking the commandant of the Olympus Command
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
School, who swelled with pride at being consulted. One by one, she
received their unequivocal advice to reinforce.
"Commander Lee?"
All gazes shifted toward the young naval officer. I noticed the stiffness
of posture and scowls of the senior military men and suddenly realized
that Lee was there at the invitation of the CEO rather than the benevolence
of his superiors. I remembered that Gladstone had been quoted
as saying that young Commander Lee showed the kind of initiative and
intelligence which FORCE had sometimes lacked. I suspected that the
man's career was forfeit for attending this meeting.
Commander William Ajunta Lee shifted uncomfortably in his comfortable
chair. "With all due respect, CEO, I'm a mere junior naval
officer and am not qualified to give an opinion on matters of such
strategic importance."
Gladstone did not smile. Her nod was almost imperceptible. "I appreciate
that. Commander. I am sure your superiors here do also.
However, in this case, I wonder if you would indulge me and comment
on the issue at hand."
Lee sat upright. For an instant his eyes held both conviction and the
desperation of a small, trapped animal. "Well then, CEO, if I must
comment, I have to say that my own instincts--and they are only
instincts: I am profoundly ignorant of interstellar tactics--would advise
me against this reinforcement." Lee took a breatli. "This is a purely
military assessment, CEO. I know nothing of the political ramifications
of defending Hyperion system."
Gladstone leaned forward. "Then on a purely military basis, Commander,
why do you oppose the reinforcements?"
From where I sat half a table away, I could feel the impact of the
FORCE chiefs' gazes like one of the one-hundred-million-joule laser
blasts used to ignite deuterium-tritium spheres in one of the ancient
inertial confinement fusion reactors. I was amazed that Lee did not
collapse, implode, ignite, and fuse before our very eyes.
"On a military basis," Lee said, his eyes hopeless but his voice steady,
"the two biggest sins one can commit are to divide one's forces and to
... as you put it, CEO . . . put all of your eggs in a single basket.
And in this case, the basket is not even of our own making."
Gladstone nodded and sat back, steepling her fingers beneath her
lower lip.
"Commander," said General Morpurgo, and I discovered that a word
------------------------------------ I a I ------------------------------------
could, indeed, be spat, "now that we have the benefit of your . . .
advice . . . could I ask if you have ever been involved in a space battle?"
"No, sir."
"Have you ever been trained for a space battle. Commander?"
"Except for the minimal amount required in OCS, which amounts
to a few history courses, no, sir, I have not."
"Have you ever been involved in any strategic planning above the
level of... how many naval surface ships did you command on Maui-
Covenant, Commander?"
"One, sir."
"One," breathed Morpurgo. "A large ship. Commander?"
"No, sir."
"Were you given command of this ship. Commander. Did you earn
it? Or did it fall to you through the vicissitudes of war?"
"Our captain was killed, sir. I took command by default. It was the
final naval action of the Maui-Covenant campaign and--"
"That will be all. Commander." Morpurgo turned his back on the
war hero and addressed the CEO. "Do you wish to poll us again,
ma'am?"
Gladstone shook her head.
Senator Kolchev cleared his throat. "Perhaps we should have a closed
cabinet meeting at Government House."
"No need," said Meina Gladstone. "I've decided. Admiral Singh,
you are authorized to divert as many fleet units to the Hyperion system
as you and the joint chiefs see fit."
"Yes, CEO."
"Admiral Nashita, I will expect a successful termination of hostilities
within one standard week of the time you have adequate reinforcements."
She looked around the table. "Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot
stress to you enough the importance of our possession of Hyperion and
the deterrent of Ouster threats once and for all." She rose and walked
to the base of the ramp leading up and out into the darkness. "Good
evening, gentlemen, ladies."
It was almost 0400 hours Web and Tau Ceti Center time when Hunt
rapped at my door. I had been fighting sleep for the three hours since
we 'cast back. I had just decided that Gladstone had forgotten about
me and was beginning to doze when the knock came.
THE	FALL	OF HYPE
"The garden," said Leigh Hunt, "and for God's sake tuck your shirt
in."
My boots made soft noises on the fine gravel of the path as I wandered
the dark lanes. The lanterns and glow-globes barely emitted light. The
stars were not visible above the courtyard because of the glare of TVs interminable cities, but the running lights of the orbital habitations
moved across the sky like an endless ring of fireflies.
Gladstone was sitting on the iron bench near the bridge.
"M. Severn," she said, her voice low, "thank you for joining me. I
apologize for it being so late. The cabinet meeting just broke up."
I said nothing and remained standing.
"I wanted to ask about your visit to Hyperion this morning." She
chuckled in the darkness. "Yesterday morning. Did you have any
impressions?"
I wondered what she meant. My guess was that the woman had an
insatiable appetite for data, no matter how seemingly irrelevant. "I did
meet someone," I said.
"Oh?"
"Yes, Dr. Melio Arundez. He was ... is ..."
". . . a friend of M. Weintraub's daughter," finished Gladstone. "The
child who is aging backward. Do you have any updates on her condition?"

"Not really," I said. "I had a brief nap today, but the dreams were
fragmented."
"And what did the meeting with Dr. Arundez accomplish?"
I rubbed my chin with fingers suddenly gone cold. "His research
team has been waiting in the capital for months," I said. "They may
be our only hope for understanding what's going on with the Tombs.
And the Shrike ..."
"Our predictors say that it is important that the pilgrims be left alone
until their act is played out," came Gladstone's voice in the darkness.
She seemed to be looking to the side, toward the stream.
I felt sudden, inexplicable, implacable anger surge through me. "Father
Hoyt is already 'played out,' " I said More sharply than I intended.
"They could have saved him if the ship had been allowed to rendezvous
with the pilgrims. Arundez and his people might be able to save the
baby--Rachel--even though there are only a few days left."
"Less than three days," said Gladstone. "Was there anything else?
Any impressions of the planet or Admiral Nashita's command ship
which you found . . . interesting?"
-------------------------------------------------- I 2 3 --------------------------------------------------
My hands clenched into fists, relaxed. "You won't allow Arundez to
fly up to the Tombs?"
"Not now, no."
"What about the evacuation of civilians from Hyperion? At least the
Hegemony citizens?"
"That is not a possibility at this time."
I started to say something, checked myself. I stared at the sound of
the water beneath the bridge.
"No other impressions, M. Severn?"
"No."
"Well, I wish you a good night and pleasant dreams. Tomorrow may
be a very hectic day, but I do want to talk to you about those dreams
at some point."
"Good night," I said and turned on my heel and walked quickly back
to my wing of Government House.
In the darkness of my room, I called up a Mozart sonata and took
three trisecobarbitals. Most probably they would knock me out in a
drugged, dreamless sleep, where the ghost of dead johnny Keats and
his even More ghostly pilgrims could not find me. It meant disappointing
Meina Gladstone, and that did not dismay me in the least.
I thought of Swift's sailor, Gulliver, and his disgust with mankind
after his return from the land of the intelligent horses--the
Houyhnhnms--a disgust with his own species which grew to the point
that he had to sleep in the stables with the horses just to be reassured
by their smell and presence.
My last thought before sleep was To hell with Meina Gladstone, to
hell with the war, and to hell with the Web.
And to hell with dreams.
PART TWO
SIXTEEN
) rawne Lamia slept fitfully just before dawn, and her dreams k were filled with images and sounds from elsewhere--half-heard
and little-understood conversations with Meina Gladstone, a
room that seemed to be floating in space, a movement of men and
women along corridors where the walls whispered like a poorly tuned
fatline receiver--and underlying the feverish dreams and random images
was the maddening sense that Johnny--her Johnny--was so close,
so c/ose. Lamia cried out in her sleep, but the noise was lost in the
random echoes of the Sphinx's cooling stones and shifting sands.
Lamia awoke suddenly, coming completely conscious as surely as a
solid-state instrument switching on. Sol Weintraub had been supposed
to be standing guard, but now he slept near the low door of the room
where the group sheltered. His infant daughter, Rachel, slept between
blankets on the floor next to him; her rump was raised, face pressed
against the blanket, a slight bubble of saliva on her lips.
Lamia looked around. In the dim illumination from a low-wattage
glow-globe and the faint daylight reflected down four meters of corridor,
only one other of her fellow pilgrims was visible, a dark bundle on the
stone floor. Martin Silenus lay there snoring. Lamia felt a surge of fear,
as if she had been abandoned while sleeping. Silenus, Sol, the baby
. . . she realized that only the Consul was missing. Attrition had eaten
at the pilgrimage party of seven adults and an infant: Het Masteen,
missing on the windwagon crossing of the Sea of Grass; Lenar Hoyt
killed the night before; Kassad missing later that night. . . the Consul
. . . where was the Consul?
Brawne Lamia looked around again, satisfied herself that the dark
room held nothing but packs, blanket bundles, the sleeping poet, scholar
and child, and then she rose, found her father's automatic pistol amidst
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION--
the tumble of blankets, felt in her pack for the neural stunner, and then
slipped past Weintraub and the baby into the corridor beyond.
It was morning and so bright out that Lamia had to shield her eyes
with her hand as she stepped from the Sphinx's stone steps onto the
hard-packed trail which led away down the valley. The storm had
passed. Hyperion's skies were a deep, crystalline lapis lazuli shot through
with green, Hyperion's star, a brilliant white point source just rising
above the eastern cliff walls. Rock shadows blended with the outflung
silhouettes of the Time Tombs across the valley floor. The Jade Tomb
sparkled. Lamia could see the fresh drifts and dunes deposited by the
storm, white and vermilion sands blending in sensuous curves and
striations around stone. There was no evidence of their campsite the night before. The Consul sat on a rock ten meters down the hill. He
was gazing down the valley, and smoke spiraled upward from his pipe.
Slipping the pistol in her pocket with the stunner. Lamia walked down
the hill to him.
"No sign of Colonel Kassad," said the Consul as she approached.
He did not turn around.
Lamia looked down the valley to where the Crystal Monolith stood.
Its once-gleaming surface was peeked and pitted, the upper twenty or
thirty meters appeared to be missing, and debris still smoked at its base.
The half kilometer or so between the Sphinx and the Monolith were
scorched and cratered. "It looks as if he didn't leave without a fight,"
she said.
The Consul grunted. The pipe smoke made Lamia hungry. "I
searched as far as the Shrike Palace, two klicks down the valley," said
the Consul. "The locus of the firefight seems to have been the Monolith.
There's still no sign of a ground-level opening to the thing but there
are enough holes farther up now so that you can see the honeycomb
pattern which deep radar has always shown inside."
"But no sign of Kassad?"
"None."
"Blood? Scorched bones? A note saying that he'd be back after delivering
his laundry?"
"Nothing."
Brawne Lamia sighed and sat on a boulder near the Consul's rock.
The sun was warm on her skin. She squinted out toward the opening
to the valley. "Well, hell," she said, "what do we do next?"
The Consul removed his pipe, frowned at it, and shook his head. "I
tried the comlog relay again this morning, but the ship is still penned
in." He shook ashes out. "Tried the emergency bands too, but obviously
we're not getting through. Either the ship isn't relaying, or people have
orders not to respond."
"Would you really leave?"
The Consul shrugged. He had changed from his diplomatic finery
of the day before into a rough wool pullover tunic top, gray whipcord
trousers, and high boots. "Having the ship here would give us--you
--the option of leaving. I wish the others would consider going. After
all, Masteen's missing, Hoyt and Kassad are gone . . . I'm not sure
what to do next."
A deep voice said, "We could try making breakfast."
Lamia turned to watch Sol come down the path. Rachel was in the
infant carrier on the scholar's chest. Sunlight glinted on the older man's
balding head. "Not a bad idea," she said. "Do we have enough provisions
left?"
"Enough for breakfast," said Weintraub. "Then a few More meals
of cold foodpaks from the Colonel's extra provisions bag. Then we'll
be eating googlepedes and each other."
The Consul attempted a smile, set the pipe back in his tunic pocket.
"I suggest we walk back to Chronos Keep before we reach that point.
We'd used up the freeze-dried foods from the Benares, but there were
storerooms at the Keep."
"I'd be happy to--" began Lamia but was interrupted by a shout
from inside the Sphinx.
She was the first to reach the Sphinx, and she had the automatic
pistol in her hand before she went through the entrance. The corridor
was dark, the sleeping room darker, and it took a second for her to
realize that no one was there. Brawne Lamia crouched, swinging the
pistol toward the dark curve of corridor even as Silenus's voice again
shouted "Hey! Come here!" from somewhere out of sight.
She looked over her shoulder as the Consul came through the entrance.

"Wait there!" snapped Lamia and moved quickly down the corridor,
staying against the wall, pistol extended, propulsion charge primed,
safety off. She paused at the open doorway to the small room where
Hoyt's body lay, crouched, swung around and in with weapon tracking.
Martin Silenus looked up from where he crouched by the corpse.
The fiberplastic sheet they had used to cover the priest's body lay crum-
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPEBION ----------------
pled and lifted in Silenus's hand. He stared at Lamia, looked without
interest at the gun, and gazed back at the body. "Do you believe this?"
he said softly.
Lamia lowered the weapon and came closer. Behind them, the Consul
peered in. Brawne could hear Sol Weintraub in the corridor; the
baby was crying.
"My God," said Brawne Lamia and crouched next to the body of
Father Lenar Hoyt. The young priest's pain-ravaged features had been
resculpted into the face of a man in his late sixties: high brow, long
aristocratic nose, thin lips with a pleasant upturn at the corners sharp
cheekbones, sharp ears under a fringe of gray hair, large eyes under lids
as pale and thin as parchment.
The Consul crouched near them. "I've seen holos. It's Father Paul
Dure."
"Look," said Martin Silenus. He lowered the sheet further, paused,
and then rolled the corpse on its side. Two small cruciforms on this
man's chest pulsed pinkly, just as Hoyt's had, but his back was bare.
Sol stood by the door, hushing Rachel's cries with gentle bouncing
and whispered syllables. When the infant was silent, he said, "I thought
that the Bikura took three days to ... regenerate."
Martin Silenus sighed. "The Bikura have been resurrected by the
cruciform parasites for More than two standard centuries. Perhaps it's
easier the first time."
"Is he . . ." began Lamia.
"Alive?" Silenus took her hand. "Feel."
The man's chest rose and fell ever so slightly. The skin was warm to
the touch. Heat from the cruciforms under the skin was palpable.-
Brawne Lamia snatched her hand back.
The thing that had been the corpse of Father Lenar Hoyt six hours
earlier opened its eyes.
"Father Dure?" said Sol, stepping forward.
The man's head turned. He blinked as though the dim light hurt his
eyes, then made an unintelligible noise.
"Water," said the Consul and reached into his tunic pocket for the
small plastic bottle he carried. Martin Silenus held the man's head
while the Consul helped him drink.
Sol came closer, went to one knee, and touched the man's forearm.
Even Rachel's dark eyes seemed curious. Sol said, "If you can't speak,
blink twice for 'yes,' once for 'no.' Are you Dure?"
The man's head swiveled toward the scholar. "Yes," he said softly,
his voice deep, tones cultured, "I am Father Paul Dure."
Breakfast consisted of the last of the coffee, bits of meat fried over
the unfolded heating unit, a scoop of grain mix with rehydrated milk,
and the end of their last loaf of bread, torn into five chunks. Lamia
thought that it was delicious.
They sat at the edge of shade under the Sphinx's outflung wing, using
a low, flat-topped boulder as their table. The sun climbed toward midmorning,
and the sky remained cloudless. There was no sound except
for the occasional klink of a fork or spoon and the soft tones of their
conversation.
"You remember . . . before?" asked Sol. The priest wore an extra
set of the Consul's shipclothes, a gray jumpsuit with the Hegemony
seal on the left breast. The uniform was a bit too small.
Dure held the cup of coffee in both hands, as if he were about to
lift it for consecration. He looked up, and his eyes suggested depths of
intelligence and sadness in equal measure. "Before I died?" said Dure.
The patrician lips sketched a smile. "Yes, I remember. I remember the
exile, the Bikura . . ."He looked down. "Even the tesia tree."
"Hoyt told us about the tree," said Brawne Lamia. The priest had
nailed himself onto an active tesia tree in the flame forests, suffering years of agony, death, resurrection, and death again rather than give
in to the easy symbiosis of life under the cruciform.
Dure shook his head. "I thought... in those last seconds . . . that I had beaten it."
"You had," said the Consul. "Father Hoyt and the others found you.
You had driven the thing out of your body. Then the Bikura planted
your cruciform on Lcnar Hoyt."
Dure nodded. "And there is no sign of the boy?"
Martin Silenus pointed toward the man's chest. "Evidently the fucking
thing can't defy laws governing conservation of mass. Hoyt's pain
had been so great for so long--he wouldn't return to where the thing
wanted him to go--that he never gained the weight for a . . . what the
hell would you call it? A double resurrection."
"It doesn't matter, "said Dure. His smile was sad. "The DNA parasite
in the cruciform has infinite patience. It will reconstitute one host for
generations if need be. Sooner or later, both parasites will have a home."
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
"Do you remember anything after the tesia tree?" asked Sol quietly.
Dure sipped the last of his coffee. "Of death? Of heaven or hell?"
The smile was genuine. "No, gentlemen and lady, I wish I could say
I did. I remember pain . . . eternities of pain . . . and then release.
And then darkness. And then awakening here. How many years did
you say have passed?"
"Almost twelve," said the Consul. "But only about half that for Father
Hoyt. He spent time in transit."
Father Dure stood, stretched, and paced back and forth. He was a
tall man, thin but with a sense of strength about him, and Brawne
Lamia found herself impressed by his presence, by that strange, inexplicable
charisma of personality which had cursed and bestowed power
upon a few individuals since time immemorial. She had to remind
herself that, first, he was a priest of a cult that demanded celibacy from
its clerics, and, second, an hour earlier he had been a corpse. Lamia
watched the older man pace up and down, his movements as elegant
and relaxed as a cat's, and she realized that both observations were true
but neither could counteract the personal magnetism the priest radiated.
She wondered if the men sensed it.
Dure sat on a boulder, stretched his legs straight ahead of him, and
rubbed at his thighs as if trying to get rid of a cramp. "You've told me
something about who you are . . . why you are here," he said. "Can
you tell me More?"
The pilgrims glanced at one another.
Dure nodded. "Do you think that I'm a monster myself? Some agent
of the Shrike? I wouldn't blame you if you did."
"We don't think that," said Brawne Lamia. "The Shrike needs no
agents to do his bidding. Besides, we know you from Father Hoyt's story
about you and from your journals." She glanced at the others. "We
found it ... difficult ... to tell our stories of why we have come to
Hyperion. It would be all but impossible to repeat them."
"I made notes on my comlog," said the Consul. "They're very condensed,
but it should make some sense out of our histories . . . and
the history of the last decade of the Hegemony. Why the Web is at war
with the Ousters. That sort of thing. You're welcome to access it if you
wish. It shouldn't take More than an hour."
"I would appreciate it," said Father Dure and followed the Consul
back into the Sphinx.
Brawne Lamia, Sol, and Silenus walked to the head of the valley.
From the saddle between the low cliffs, they could see the dunes and
barrens stretching toward the mountains of the Bridle Range, less than
ten klicks to the southwest. The broken globes, soft spires, and shattered
gallerias of the dead City of Poets were visible only two or three klicks
to their right, along a broad ridge which the desert was quietly invading.
"I'll walk back to the Keep and find some rations," said Lamia.
"I hate to split up the group," said Sol. "We could all return."
Martin Silenus folded his arms. "Somebody should stay here in case
the Colonel returns."
"Before anyone leaves," said Sol, "I think we should search the rest
of the valley. The Consul didn't check far beyond the Monolith this
morning."
"I agree," said Lamia. "Let's get to it before it gets too late. I want
to get provisions at the Keep and return before nightfall."
They had descended to the Sphinx when Dure and the Consul
emerged. The priest held the Consul's spare comlog in one hand. Lamia
explained the plan for a search, and the two men agreed to join them.
Once again they walked the halls of the Sphinx, the beams from
their hand torches and pencil lasers illuminating sweating stone and
bizarre angles. Emerging into noontime sunlight, they made the three-
hundred-meter hike to the Jade Tomb. Lamia found herself shivering
as they entered tlie room where the Shrike had appeared the night
before. Hoyt's blood had left a rust-brown stain on the green ceramic
floors. There was no sign of the transparent opening to the labyrinth
below. There was no sign of the Shrike.
The Obelisk had no rooms, merely a central shaft in which a spiral
ramp, too steep for human comfort, twisted upward between ebony
walls. Even whispers echoed here, and the group kept talk to a minimum.
There were no windows, no view, at the top of the ramp, fifty
meters above the stone floor, and their torch beams illuminated only
blackness as the roof curved in above them. Fixed ropes and chains leftover from two centuries of tourism allowed them to descend without
undue fear of a slip and fall that would end in death below. As they
paused at the entrance, Martin Silenus called Kassad's name a final
time, and the echoes followed them into sunlight.
They spent half an hour or More inspecting the damage near the
Crystal Monolith. Puddles of sand turned to glass, some five to ten
meters across, prismed the noonday light and reflected heat in their
faces. The broken face of the Monolith, peeked now with holes and
still-dangling strands of melted crystal, looked like the target of an act
of mindless vandalism, but each knew that Kassad must have been
fighting for his life _ ^^^^^	if ^
niaze wi1!""- InstT', }	/f ' l10"^0"111
unconnected as it ^i^ ^	' ,yas as empty and
steep trails to the f^A t1 p V, ^	/'Cly> climbing the
separated by less tl^e . ^ no,,-, ^	y^3^ Tombs ^
"Early archaeolo;" >,ltL.th^^.J	/ ^caJoftheircr^b^S^1^^	7 ^t^ the Tombs
flashlight beams pl^n^ V, e ^ ^V1 ,	/^ Srt cave, sent
able patterns. Non^'n^Wdr^ ^t^^.l	^"^ indeopher- Each ended in a st(;of W^ t^<^	^ or ferty meters.
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Upon exiting th«.^1^ ^^	',,,,,
they could find ai*1^ l^s wi ^>	*^h.atl,ttle shade
extra field rations, if sl^ , that.^^	^ r»<»n Kassads
through Buted roci "e \^"si^ , ^o'	^ a»W whispered
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Shrike took him, -I to ^ << a^J	/ ^fucking
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^VvS." sai'l the r. Ht ^	I'- "-^Ngh, "let's
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than theothers an(( L^ { i .	^1 structure ^as not large, ".^""'^	t . '"t^ate
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Lamia, Silenus, the Consul, Weintraub, and Dure all began to shout
for Kassad, their voices echoing and resonating to no avail.
"No sign of Kassad or Het Masteen," said the Consul as they emerged.
"Perhaps this will be the pattern . . . each of us disappearing until only
one remains."
"And does that final one get his or her wish as the Shrike Cult legends
foretell?" asked Brawne Lamia. She sat on the rocky hearth to the Shrike
Palace, her short legs dangling in air.
Paul Dure raised his face to the sky. "I can't believe that it was Father
Hoyt's wish that he would die so that I could live again."
Martin Silenus squinted up at the priest. "So what would your wish
be. Padre?"
Dure did not hesitate. "I would wish . . . pray . . . that God will
lift the scourge of these twin obscenities—the war and the Shrike—
from mankind once and for all."
There was a silence in which the early afternoon wind inserted its
distant sighs and moans. "In the meantime," said Brawne Lamia, "we've
got to get some food or learn how to subsist on air."
Dure nodded. "Why did you bring so little with you?"
Martin Silenus laughed and said loudly:
Ne cared he for wine, or half-and-half,
Ne cared he for fish or flesh or fowl,
And sauces held he worthless as the chaff;
He 'sdained the swine-herd at the wassail-bowl,
Ne with lewd ribbalds sat he cheek by jowl,
Ne with sly Lemans in the scorner's chair,
But after water-brooks this Pilgrim's soul
Panted, and all his food was woodland air
Though he would off-times feast on gillyflowers rare.
Dure smiled, obviously still puzzled.
"We all expected to triumph or die the first night," said the Consul.
"We hadn't anticipated a long stay here.''
Brawne Lamia stood and brushed off her trousers. "I'm going," she
said. "I should be able to carry back four or five days' rations if they're
field foodpaks or the bulk-stored items we saw."
"I'll go too," said Martin Silenus.
There was a silence. During the week of their pilgrimage, the poet
and Lamia had almost come to blows half a dozen times. Once she
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
fighting for his life. There was no door, no opening to the honeycomb
maze within. Instruments told them that the interior was as empty and
unconnected as it always had been. They left reluctantly, climbing the
steep trails to the base of the north cliffs where the Cave Tombs lay
separated by less than a hundred meters each.
"Early archaeologists thought that these were the oldest of the Tombs
because of their crudeness," said Sol as they entered the first cave, sent
flashlight beams playing across stone carved in a thousand indecipherable
patterns. None of the caves was deeper than thirty or forty meters.
Each ended in a stone wall that no amount of probing or radar imaging
had ever discovered an extension to.
Upon exiting the third Cave Tomb, the group sat in what little shade
they could find and shared water and protein biscuits from Kassad's
extra field rations. The wind had risen, and now it sighed and whispered
through fluted rock high above them.
"We're not going to find him," said Martin Silenus. "The rucking
Shrike took him."
Sol was feeding the baby with one of the last nursing paks. The top
of her head had been turned pink by the sun despite Sol's every effort
to shield her as they walked outside. "He could be in one of the Tombs
we were in," he said, "if there are sections out of time-phase with us.
That's Arundez's theory. He sees the Tombs as four-dimensional constructs
with intricate folds through space-time."
"Great," said Lamia. "So even ifFedmahn Kassad is there, we won't
see him."
"Well," said the Consul, getting to his feet with a tired sigh, "let's
at least go through the motions. One tomb left."
The Shrike Palace was a kilometer farther down the valley, lower
than the others and hidden by a bend in the cliff walls. The structure
was not large, smaller than the Jade Tomb, but its intricate
construction--flanges, spires, buttresses, and support columns arching
and arcing in controlled chaos--made it seem larger than it was.
The interior of the Shrike Palace was one echoing chamber with an
irregular floor made up of thousands of curving, jointed segments which
reminded Lamia of the ribs and vertebrae of some fossilized creature.
Fifteen meters overhead, the dome was crisscrossed by dozens of the
chrome "blades" which continued through walls and each other to
emerge as steel-tipped thorns above the structure. The material of the
dome itself was slightly opaque, giving a rich, milky hue to the vaulted
space.
SEVENTEEN
Twelve hours earlier. Colonel Fedmahn Kassad stepped off the
spiral Staircase onto the highest remaining level of the Crystal
Monolith. Flames rose on all sides. Through gaps he had inflicted
on the crystal surface of the structure, Kassad could see darkness.
The storm blew vermilion dust through the apertures until it filled the
air like powdered blood. Kassad pulled his helmet on.
Ten paces in front of him, Moneta awaited.
She was nude under the energy skinsuit, and the effect was of quicksilver
poured directly on flesh. Kassad could see the flames reflected in
the curves of breast and thigh, the bend of light into the hollow of
throat and navel. Her neck was long, her face chrome-carved in perfect
smoothness. Her eyes held twin reflections of the tall shadow that was
Fedmahn Kassad.
Kassad raised the assault rifle and clicked the selector manually to
full-spectrum fire. Inside his activated impact armor, his body clenched
in anticipation of attack.
Moneta moved her hand, and the skinsuit faded from the crown of
her head to her neck. She was vulnerable now. Kassad felt that he knew
every facet of that face, every pore and follicle. Her brown hair was cut
short, falling softly to the left. The eyes were the same, large, curious,
startling in their green depths. The small mouth with the full underlip
still hesitated on the edge of a smile. He noted the slightly inquisitive
arch of eyebrows, the small ears he had kissed and whispered in so
many times. The soft throat wheie he had lain his cheek to listen to
her pulse.
Kassad raised the rifle and aimed it at her.
"Who are you?" she asked. Her voice was as soft and sensual as he
remembered, the slight accent as elusive.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
His finger on the trigger, Kassad paused. They had made love scores
of times, known each other for years in his dreams and their lovers' landscape of the military simulations. But if she were truly moving
backward in time . . .
"I know," she said, her voice calm, apparently unaware of the pressure
he had already begun to exert on the trigger, "you are the one whom
the Lord of Pain has promised."
Kassad was gasping for air. When he spoke, his voice was raw and
very strained. "You don't remember me?"
"No." She cocked her head to look at him quizzically. "But the Lord
of Pain has promised a warrior. We were destined to meet."
"We met long ago," managed Kassad. The rifle would automatically
aim for the face, shifting wavelengths and frequencies every microsecond
until the skinsuit defenses were defeated. Along with the hellwhip
and laser beams, flechettes and pulse bolts would be fired an instant
later.
"I have no memory of long ago," she said. "We move in opposite
directions along the general flow of time. What name do you know me
by in my future, your past?"
"Moneta," gasped Kassad, willing his straining hand and finger to
fire.
She smiled, nodded. "Moneta. The child of Memory. There is a
crude irony there."
Kassad remembered her betrayal, the changing as they made love
that last time in the sands above the dead City of Poets. She had either
become the Shrike or allowed the Shrike to take her place. It had turned
an act of love into an obscenity.
Colonel Kassad pulled the trigger.
Moneta blinked. "It will not work here. Not within the Crystal Monolith.
Why do you wish to kill me?"
Kassad growled, threw the useless weapon across the landing, directed
power to his gauntlets, and charged.
Moneta made no move to escape. She watched him charge the ten
paces; his head was down, his impact armor moaning as it changed the
crystal alignment of polymers, and Kassad was screaming. She lowered
her arms to meet the charge.
Kassad's speed and mass knocked Moneta off her feet and sent both
of them tumbling, Kassad trying to get his gauntleted hands on her
throat, Moneta holding his wrists in a vise-strong grip as they rolled
across the landing to the edge of the platform. Kassad rolled on top of
-------------------------------------------------- I 3 9 --------------------------------------------------
her, trying to let gravity add to the force of his attack, arms straight,
gauntlets rigid, fingers curved in a killing cusp. His left leg hung over
the sixty-meter drop to the dark floor below.
"Why do you want to kill me?" whispered Moneta, and rolled him
to one side, tumbling both of them off the platform.
Kassad screamed and flipped down his visor with a snap of his head.
They tumbled through space, their legs entwined around each other's
bodies in fierce scissors grips, Kassad's hands held at bay by her death
hold on his wrists. Time seemed to decelerate until they fell in slow
motion, the air moving across Kassad like a blanket being pulled slowly
over his face. Then time accelerated, grew normal: they were falling
the last ten meters. Kassad shouted and visualized the proper symbol
to let his impact armor go rigid, and there was a terrible crash.
From a blood-red distance, Fedmahn Kassad fought to the surface
of consciousness, knowing that only a second or two had elapsed since
they had struck the ground. He staggered to his feet. Moneta was also
rising slowly, on one bent knee now, staring at the ground where the
ceramic floor had been shattered by their fall.
Kassad sent power to the servomechanisms in his suit leg and kicked
at her head with full force.
Moneta dodged the blow, caught his leg, twisted, and sent him
crashing into the three-meter square of crystal,' shattering it, tumbling
him out into the sand and the night. Moneta touched her neck, her
face flowed with quicksilver, and she stepped out after him.
Kassad flipped up his shattered visor, removed the helmet. The wind
tousled his short, black hair, and sand grated against his cheeks. He
got to his knees, his feet. Telltales in the suit's collar display were
blinking red, announcing the last reservoirs of power draining away.
Kassad ignored the alarms; there would be enough for the next several
seconds . . . and that would be all that mattered.
"Whatever happened in my future . . . your past," said Moneta, "it
was not I who changed. I am not the Lord of Pain. He--"
Kassad jumped the three meters that separated them, landed behind Moneta, and brought the killing gauntlet on his right hand around in
an arc that broke the sound barrier, palm-edge rigid and sharp as carbon-
carbon piezoelectric filaments could make it.
Moneta did not duck or attempt to block the attack. Kassad's gauntlet
caught the base of her neck in a blow which would have severed a tree,
carved through half a meter of stone. On Bressia, in hand-to-hand
combat in the capital of Buckminster, Kassad had killed an Ouster
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
colonel so quickly--his gauntlet cutting through impact armor, helmet,
personal forcefield, flesh and bone without pause--that the man's head
had blinked up at his own body for twenty seconds before death claimed
him.
Kassad's blow struck true but stopped at the surface of the quicksilver
skinsuit. Moneta did not stagger or react. Kassad felt his suit power fail at the same instant his arm went numb, his shoulder muscles wrenching
in agony. He staggered back, his right arm dead at his side, the suit
power draining like blood from an injured man.
"You don't listen," said Moneta. She stepped forward, grabbed Kassad
by the front of his combat suit, and threw him twenty meters toward
the Jade Tomb.
He landed hard, the impact armor stiffening to absorb only part of
the collision as power reserves failed. His left arm protected his face
and neck, but then the armor locked up, his arm bent uselessly under
him.
Moneta jumped the twenty meters, crouched next to him, lifted him
into the air with one hand, grabbed a handful of impact armor with
the other hand, and ripped his combat suit down the front, tearing
apart two hundred layers ofmicrofilaments and omega-cloth polymers.
She slapped him gently, almost lackadaisically. Kassad's head snapped
around, and he almost lost consciousness. Wind and sand pelted the
bare flesh of his chest and belly.
Moneta tore the rest of the suit off, ripping off biosensors and feedback
teeps. She lifted the naked man by his upper arms and shook him.
Kassad tasted blood and red dots swam in his field of vision.
"We didn't have to be enemies," she said softly.
"You . . . fired ... at me."
"To test your responses, not to kill you." Her mouth moved normally
under its quicksilver caul. She slapped him again and Kassad flew two
meters in the air to land on a dune, rolled downhill in the cold sand.
The air was filled with a million specks--snow, dust, pinwheels of
colored light. Kassad rolled over, fought his way to his knees, gripped
the shifting dune sand with fingers turned to numbed claws.
"Kassad," whispered Moneta.
He rolled onto his back, waiting.
She had deactivated the skinsuit. Her flesh looked warm and vulnerable,
the skin so pale as to be almost translucent. There were soft
blue veins visible along the tops of her perfect breasts. Her legs looked
strong, carefully sculpted, the thighs separated slightly where they met
her body. Her eyes were a dark green.
"You love war, Kassad," whispered Moneta as she lowered herself
onto him.
He struggled, tried to twist aside, raised his arms to strike her. Moneta
pinned his arms above his head with one of her hands. Her body was
radiant with heat as she brushed her breasts back and forth across his
chest, lowered herself between his parted legs. Kassad could feel the
slight curve of her belly against his abdomen.
He realized then that this was a rape, that he could fight back simply
by not responding, refusing her. It did not work. The air seemed liquid
around them, the windstorm a distant thing, sand hanging in the air
like a lace curtain borne aloft by steady breezes.
Moneta moved back and forth above him, against him. Kassad could
feel the slow clockwise stir of his excitement. He fought it, fought her,
wrestled and kicked and struggled to free his arms. She was much
stronger. She used her right knee to brush his leg aside. Her nipples
rubbed across his chest like warm pebbles; the warmth of her belly and
groin made his flesh react like a flower twisting toward the light.
"No!" screamed Fedmahn Kassad but was silenced as Moneta lowered
her mouth to his. With her left hand, she continued to pin his arms
above him, with her right hand she moved between them, found him,
guided him.
Kassad bit at her lip as warmth enveloped him. His struggles brought
him closer, sent him deeper into her. He tried to relax, and she lowered
herself on him until his back was pressed into the sand. He remembered
the other times they had made love, finding sanity in each other's
warmth while war raged beyond the circle of their passion.
Kassad closed his eyes, arched his neck back to postpone the agony
of pleasure which closed on him like a wave. He tasted blood on his
lips, whether his or hers he did not know.
A minute later, the two of them still moving together, Kassad realized
that she had released his arms. Without hesitating, he brought both
arms down, around, fingers flat against her back, and roughly pressed
her closer to him, slid one hand higher to cup the back of her neck
with gentle pressure.
The wind resumed, sound returned, sand blew from the edge of the
dune in curls of spindrift. Kassad and Moneta slid lower on the gently
curling bank of sand, rolled together down the warm wave to the place
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
where it would break, oblivious of the night, the storm, the forgotten
battle, and everything except the moment and each other.
Later, walking together through the shattered beauty of the Crystal
Monolith, she touched him once with a golden ferule, once More with
a blue torus. He watched in the shard of a crystal panel as his reflection
became a quicksilver sketch of a man, perfect down to the details of
his gender and the lines where his ribs showed on the slender torso.
--What now? asked Kassad through the medium that was neither
telepathy nor sound.
--The Lord of Pain awaits.
--You are its servant?
--Never. / am his consort and nemesis. His keeper.
--You came from the future with it?
--No. I was taken from my time to travel back in time with him.
--Then who were you before--
Kassad's question was interrupted by the sudden appearance . . . No,
he thought, the sudden presence, no( appearance ... of the Shrike.
The creature was as he remembered it from their first encounter years
before. Kassad noticed the quicksilver-over-chrome slickness of the
thing, so similar to their own skinsuits, but he knew intuitively that
there was no mere Hesh and bone beneath that carapace. It stood at
least three meters tall, the four arms seemed normal on the elegant
torso, and the body was a sculpted mass of thorns, spikes, joints, and
layers of ragged razorwire. The thousand-faceted eyes burned with a
light that might have been made by a ruby laser. The long jaw and
layers of teeth were the stuff of nightmare.
Kassad stood ready. If the skinsuit gave him the same strength and
mobility it had afforded Moneta, he might at least die fighting.
There was no time for that. One instant the Lord of Pain stood five
meters away across black the, and the next instant it was beside Kassad,
gripping the Colonel's upper arm in a steel-bladed vise that sank through
the skinsuit field and drew blood from his biceps.
Kassad tensed, waiting for the blow and determined to strike back
even though to do so meant impaling himself on blades, thorns, and
razorwire.
The Shrike lifted its right hand and a four-meter rectangular field
portal came into existence. It was similar to a farcaster portal except for
the violet glow which filled the interior of the Monolith with thick
light.
Moneta nodded at him and stepped through. The Shrike stepped
forward, fingerblades cutting only slightly into Kassad's upper arm.
Kassad considered pulling back, realized that curiosity was stronger
in him than an urge to die, and stepped through with the Shrike.
EIGHTEEN
CEO Meina Gladstone could not sleep. She rose, dressed quickly
in her dark apartments deep in Government House, and did .
what she often did when sleep would not come--she walked I
the worlds. ;
Her private farcaster portal pulsed into existence. Gladstone left her s
human guards sitting in the anteroom, taking with her only one of the
microremotes. She would have taken none if the laws of the Hegemony '
and the rule of the TechnoCore would allow it. They did not. I
It was far past midnight on TC2 but she knew that many of the worlds I
would be in daylight, so she wore a long cape with a Renaissance privacy
collar. Her trousers and boots revealed neither gender nor class, although
the quality of the cape itself might mark her in some places, j
CEO Gladstone stepped through the one-time portal, sensing rather
than seeing or hearing the microremote as it buzzed through behind ':
her, climbing for altitude and invisibility as she stepped out into the i Square of St. Peter's in the New Vatican on Pacem. For a second, she „
did not know why she had coded her implant for that destination--the < presence of that obsolete monsignor at the dinner on God's Grove?-- § but then she realized that she had been thinking of the pilgrims as she |
lay awake, thinking of the seven who left three years earlier to meet
their fate on Hyperion. Pacem had been the home of Father Lenar i
Hoyt . . . and the other priest before him, Dure. '
Gladstone shrugged under the cape and crossed the square. Visiting |
the homeworlds of the pilgrims was as good a schematic for her walk I
as any; most sleepless nights saw her walking a score of worlds, returning |
just before dawn and the first meetings on Tau Ceti Center. At least if this would be but seven worlds. '|
It was early here. The skies of Pacem were yellow, tinged with green- i
i
ish clouds and an ammonia smell which attacked her sinuses and made
her eyes water. The air had that thin, foul, chemical smell of a world
neither completely terraformed nor totally inimical to man. Gladstone
paused to look around.
St. Peter's was on a hilltop, the square embraced by a semicircle of
pillars, a great basilica at its cusp. To her right, where the pillars opened
to a staircase descending a kilometer or More to the south, a small city
was visible, low, crude homes huddling between bone-white trees that
resembled the skeletons of stunted creatures long since departed.
Only a few people could be seen, hurrying across the square or
ascending the stairs as if late for services. Bells somewhere under the
great dome of the cathedral began to toll, but the thin air leached the
sound of any authority.
Gladstone walked the circle of pillars, head down, ignoring the curious
glances of clerics and the street-sweeping crew, who rode a beast
resembling a half-ton hedgehog. There were scores of marginal worlds
like Pacem in the Web, More in the Protectorate and nearby
Outback--too poor to be attractive to an infinitely mobile citizenry,
too Earthlike to be ignored during the dark days of the Hegira. It had
fit a small group like the Catholics who had come here seeking a
resurgence of faith. They had numbered in the millions then, Gladstone
knew. There could be no More than a few tens of thousands now. She
closed her eyes and recalled dossier holos of Father Paul Dure.
Gladstone loved the Web. She loved the human beings in it; for all
their shallowness and selfishness and inability to change, they were the
stuff of humankind. Gladstone loved the Web. She loved it enough to
know that she must help in destroying it.
She returned to the small three-portal terminex, brought her own
farcaster nexus into existence with a simple override command to the
datasphere, and stepped through into sunlight and the smell of the sea.
Maw-Covenant. Gladstone knew precisely where she was. She stood
on the hill above Firstsite where Siri's tomb still marked the spot where
the short-lived rebellion had begun the better part of a century ago. At
that time, Firstsite was a village of a few thousand, and each Festival
Week flutists welcomed the motile isles as they were herded north to
their feeding grounds in the Equatorial Archipelago. Now Firstsite
stretched out of view around the island, arctowns and residential hives
rising half a kilometer in all directions, towering over the hill which
had once commanded the best view on the seaworld ofMaui-Covenant.
But the tomb remained. The body of the Consul's grandmother was
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
no longer there . . . never really had been there . . . but like so many
symbolic things from this world, the empty crypt commanded reverence,
almost awe.
Gladstone looked out between the towers, out past the old breakwater
where blue lagoons had been turned brown, out past the drilling platforms
and tourist barges, out to where the sea began. There were no
motile isles now. They no longer moved in great herds across the oceans,
their treesails billowing to southern breezes, their dolphin herders cutting
the water in white vees of foam.
The isles were tamed and populated by Web citizens now. The
dolphins were dead--some killed in the great battles with FORCE,
most killing themselves in the inexplicable South Sea Mass Suicide,
the last mystery of a race draped in mysteries.
Gladstone took a seat on a low bench near the cliffs edge and found
a stalk of grass she could peel and chew. What happened to a world
when it went from a home for a hundred thousand humans, in delicate
balance with a delicate ecology, to the playground for More than four
hundred million in the first standard decade of citizenship in the Hegemony?

Answer: the world died. Or its soul did, even as the ecosphere continued
to function after a fashion. Planetary ecologists and terraform
specialists kept the husk alive, kept the seas from choking completely
on the unavoidable garbage and sewage and oil spills, worked to minimize
or disguise the noise pollution and a thousand other things which
progress had brought. But the Maui-Covenant that the Consul had
known as a child less than a century earlier, climbing this very hill to
his grandmother's funeral, was gone forever.
A formation of hawking mats flew overhead, the tourists on them
laughing and shouting. Far above them, a massive excursion EMV
occluded the sun for a moment. In the sudden shadow, Gladstone
tossed down her stalk of grass, and rested her forearms on her knees.
She thought of the Consul's betrayal. She had counted on the Consul's
betrayal, had wagered everything on the man raised on Maui-Covenant,
descendant of Siri, joining the Ousters in the inevitable battle for Hyperion.
It had not been her plan alone; Leigh Hunt had been instrumental
in the decades of planning, the delicate surgery of placing the
precise individual in contact with the Ousters, in a position where he
might betray both sides by activating the Ouster device to collapse the
time tides on Hyperion.
And he had. The Consul, a man who had given four decades of his life as well as his wife and child to Hegemony service, had finally
exploded in revenge like a bomb which had lain dormant for half a
century.
Gladstone took no pleasure in the betrayal. The Consul had sold his
soul, and would pay a terrible price--in history, in his own mind--
but his treason was as nothing to the treachery Gladstone was prepared
to suffer for. As Hegemony CEO, she was the symbolic leader of a
hundred and fifty billion human souls. She was prepared to betray them
all in order to save humanity.
She rose, felt age and rheumatism in her bones, and walked slowly
to the terminex. She paused a moment by the gently humming portal,
looking over her shoulder for a final glimpse of Maui-Covenant. The
breeze carried in from the sea, but it carried the flat stench of oil spills
and refinery gases, and Gladstone turned her face away.
The weight of Lusus fell on her caped shoulders like iron shackles. It was rush hour in the Concourse, and thousands of commuters,
shoppers, and tourists crowded every walkway level, filled the kilometer-
long escalators with colorful humanity, and gave the air a rebreathed
heavinesss that mixed with the sealed-system scent of oil and ozone.
Gladstone ignored the expensive shopping levels and took a perstrans
diskway the ten klicks to the main Shrike Temple.
There were police interdiction and containment fields glowing violet
and green beyond the base of the wide stairway. The temple itself was
boarded and dark; many of the tall, thin stained-glass windows facing
the Concourse had been shattered. Gladstone remembered the reports
of riots months before and knew that the Bishop and his acolytes had
fled.
She walked close to the interdiction field, staring through the shifting
violet haze at the stairway where Brawne Lamia had carried her dying
client and lover, the original Keats cybrid, to the waiting Shrike priests.
Gladstone had known Brawne's father well; they had spent their early
Senate years together. Senator Byron Lamia had been a brilliant man
--at one time, long before Brawne's mother had come on the social
scene from her backwater province of Freeholm, Gladstone had considered
marrying him--and when he died, part of Gladstone's youth
had been buried with him. Byron Lamia had been obsessed with the
TechnoCore, consumed with the mission of moving humankind out
from under the bondage the AIs had imposed over five centuries
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
and a thousand light-years. It had been Brawne Lamia's father who
had made Gladstone aware of the danger, had led her to the commitment
which would result in the most terrible betrayal in the history
of man.
And it was Senator Byron Lamia's "suicide" that had trained her to
decades of caution. Gladstone did not know if it had been agents of
the Core that hdti orchestrated the senator's death, perhaps it had been
elements of the Hegemony hierarchy protecting its own vested interests,
but she did know that Byron Lamia would never have taken his own
life, never have abandoned his helpless wife and headstrong daughter
in such a way. Senator Lamia's last senate act had been to co-propose
Protectorate status for Hyperion, a move that would have brought the
world into the Web twenty standard years earlier than the events now
unfolding. After his death, the surviving co-sponsor--the newly influential Meina Gladstone--had withdrawn the bill.
Gladstone found a dropshaft and fell past shopping levels and residential
levels, manufacturing and service levels, waste disposal and
reactor levels. Both her comlog and the dropshaft speaker began warning
her that she was entering unlicensed and unsafe areas far beneath the
Hive. The dropshaft program tried to stop her descent. She overrode
the command and silenced the warnings. She continued to drop, past
levels without panels or lights now, descending through a tangle of
fiber-optic spaghetti, heating and cooling ducts, and naked rock. Eventually
she stopped.
Gladstone emerged into a corridor lighted only by distant glow-globes
and oily firefly paint. Water dripped from a thousand cracks in ceilings
and walls and accumulated in toxic puddles. Steam drifted from apertures
in the wall that might be other corridors, or personal cubbies, or
merely holes. Somewhere in the distance there was the ultrasonic
scream of metal cutting metal; closer, the electronic screeches of nihil-
music. Somewhere a man screamed and a woman laughed, her voice
echoing metallically down shafts and conduits. There came the sound
of a flechette rifle coughing.
Dregs' Hive. Gladstone came to an intersection of cave-corridors and
paused to look around. Her microremote dipped and circled closer now,
as insistent as an angered insect. It was calling for security backup.
Only Gladstone's persistent override prevented its cry being heard.
Dregs' Hive. This was where Brawne Lamia and her cybrid lover had
hidden for those last few hours before their attempt to reach the Shrike
Temple. This was one of the myriad underbellies of the Web, where
the black market could provide anything from Flashback to FORCE-
grade weapons, illegal androids to bootleg Poulsen treatments that would
as likely kill you as give you another twenty years of youth. Gladstone
turned right, down the darkest corridor.
Something the size of a rat but with many legs scurried into a broken
ventilator tube. Gladstone smelled sewage, sweat, the ozone of overworked
datumplane decks, the sweet scent of handgun propellant,
vomit, and the reek of low-grade pheromones mutated to toxins.
She walked the corridors, thinking of the weeks and months to
come, the terrible price the worlds would pay for her decisions, her
obsessions.
Five youths, tailored by back-room ARNists to the point they were More animal than human, stepped into the corridor in front of Glad-
stone. She paused.
The microremote dropped in front of her and neutralized its camouflage
polymers. The creatures in front of her laughed, seeing only a
machine the size of a wasp bobbing and darting in the air. It was quite
possible that they were too far gone in the RNA tailoring even to
recognize the device. Two of them flicked open vibrades. One extended
ten-centimeter-long steel claws. One clicked open a flechette pistol with
rotating barrels.
Gladstone did not want a fight. She knew, even if these Dregs' Hive
deadheads did not, that the micro could defend her from these five and
a hundred More. But she did not want someone killed simply because
she chose the Dregs as a place to take her walk.
"Go away," she said.
The youths stared, yellow eyes, bulbous black eyes, hooded slits and
photoreceptive belly bands. In unison but spreading into a half circle,
they took two steps toward her.
Meina Gladstone pulled herself erect, gathered her cape around her,
and dropped the privacy collar enough that they could see her eyes.
"Go away," she said again.
The youths paused. Feathers and scales vibrated to unseen breezes.
On two of them, antennae quivered and thousands of small sensory
hairs pulsed.
They went away. Their departure was as silent and swift as their
arrival. In a second there was no sound but water dripping, distant laughter.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Gladstone shook her head, summoned her persona) portal, and
stepped through.
Sol Weintraub and his daughter had come from Bamard's World.
Gladstone translated to a minor terminex in their hometown of Craw-
ford. It was evening. Low, white homes set back on manicured lawns
reflected Canadian Republic Revival sensibilities and farmers' practicality.
The trees were tall, broad limbed, and amazingly faithful to their
Old Earth heritage. Gladstone turned away from the flow of pedestrians,
most hurrying home after a workday elsewhere in the Web, and found
herself strolling down brick walkways past brick buildings set around a
grassy oval. To her left, she caught glimpses of farm fields past a row
of homes. Tall green plants, possibly corn, grew in softly sighing ranks
that stretched to the distant horizon where the last arc of a huge red
sun was setting.
Gladstone walked through the campus, wondering if this had been
the college where Sol had taught, but not curious enough to query the
datasphere. Gaslamps were lighting themselves under the canopy of
leaves, and the first stars were becoming visible in the gaps where sky
faded from azure to amber to ebony.
Gladstone had read Weintraub's book. The Abraham Dilemma, in
which he analyzed the relationship between a God who demanded the
sacrifice of a son and the human race who agreed to it. Weintraub had
reasoned that the Old Testament Jehovah had not simply been testing
Abraham, but had communicated in the only language of loyalty,
obedience, sacrifice, and command that humankind could understand
at that point in the relationship. Weintraub had dealt with the New
Testament's message as a presage of a new stage in that relationship--
a stage wherein mankind would no longer sacrifice its children to any god, for any reason, but where parents . . . entire races of parents . . .
would offer themselves up instead. Thus the Twentieth Century Holocausts,
the Brief Exchange, the tripartite wars, the reckless centuries,
and perhaps even the Big Mistake of '38.
Finally, Weintraub had dealt with refusing all sacrifice, refusing
any relationship with God except one of mutual respect and honest
attempts at mutual understanding. He wrote about the multiple
deaths of God and the need for a divine resurrection now that
humankind had constructed its own gods and released them on the
Gladstone crossed a graceful stone bridge arcing over a stream lost
in shadows, its whereabouts indicated only by the noises it made in the
dark. Soft yellow light fell on railings of hand-set stone. Somewhere
off campus, a dog barked and was hushed. Lights burned on the third
floor of an old building, a gabled and roughly shingled brick structure
that must date back to before the Hegira.
Gladstone thought about Sol Weintraub and his wife Sarai and their
beautiful twenty-six-year-old daughter, returning from a year of archaeological
discovery on Hyperion with no discovery except the
Shrike's curse, the Merlin's sickness. Sol and Sarai watching as the
woman aged backward to child, from child to infant. And then Sol
watching alone after Sarai died in a senseless, stupid EMV crash while
visiting her sister.
Rachel Weintraub, whose first and final birthday would arrive in less
than three standard days.
Gladstone pounded her fist against stone, summoned her portal, and
went elsewhere.
It was midday on Mars. The Tharsis slums had been slums for six
centuries and More. The sky overhead was pink, the air too thin and
too cold for Gladstone, even with her cape around her, and dust blew
everywhere. She walked the narrow lanes and cliffwalks of Relocation
City, never finding an open enough spot to see anything beyond the
next cluster of hovels or dripping filter towers.
There were few plants here--the great forests of the Greening had
been cut down for firewood or died and been covered by red dunes.
Only a few bootleg brandy cacti and scuttling packs of parasitic spider
lichen were visible between paths packed hard as stone by twenty generations
of bare feet.
Gladstone found a low rock and rested, lowering her head and massaging
her knees. Groups of children, each naked except for strips of
rags and dangling shunt jacks, surrounded her, begged for money, and
then ran away giggling when she did not respond.
The sun was high. Mons Olympus and the stark beauty of Fedmahn
Kassad's FORCE academy were not visible from here. Gladstone looked
around. This was where the proud man had come from. Here is where
he had run with youth gangs before being sentenced to the order, sanity,
and honor of the military.
Gladstone found a private place and stepped through her portal.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
God's Grove was as it always was--perfumed by the scent of a million
million trees, silent except for the soft sounds of leaf rustle and wind,
colored in halftones and pastels, the sunset igniting the literal rooftop
of the world as an ocean of treetops caught the light, each leaf shimmering
to the breeze, glittering with dew and morning showers as the
breeze rose and carried the smell of rain and wet vegetation to Gladstone
on her platform high above the world still sunk in sleep and darkness
half a kilometer below.
A Templar approached, saw the glint of Gladstone's access bracelet
as she moved her hand, and withdrew, a tall, robed figure blending
back into the maze of foliage and vines.
The Templars were one of the trickiest variables in Gladstone's game.
Their sacrifice of their treeship Yggdrasill was unique, unprecedented,
inexplicable, and worrisome. Of all her potential allies in the war to
come, none were More necessary and inscrutable than the Templars.
Dedicated to life and devoted to the Muir, the Brotherhood of the Tree
was a small but potent force in the Web--a token of ecological awareness
in a society devoted to self-destruction and waste but unwilling to
acknowledge its indulgent ways.
Where was Het Masteen? Why had he left the Mobius cube with the
other pilgrims?
Gladstone watched the sun rise. The sky filled with orphan montgolfiers
saved from the slaughter on Whirl, their many-hued bodies
floating skyward like so many Portuguese men-o-war. Radiant gossamers
spread membrane-thin solar wings to collect the sunlight. A flock of
ravens broke cover and spiraled skyward, their cries providing harsh
counterpoint to the soft breeze and sibilant rush of rain coming toward
Gladstone from the west. The insistent sound of raindrops on leaves
reminded her of her own home in the deltas of Patawpha, of the
Hundred Day Monsoon which sent her and her brothers out into the
fens hunting for toad flyers, bendits, and Spanish moss serpents to bring
to school in a jar.
Gladstone realized for the hundred thousandth time that there was
still time to stop things. All-out war was not inevitable at this point.
The Ousters had not counterattacked yet in a way the Hegemony could
not ignore. The Shrike was not free. Not yet.
All she had to do to save a hundred billion lives was return to the
Senate floor, reveal three decades of deception and duplicity, reveal
her fears and uncertainties . . .
No. J( would go as planned until it went Aeyond planning. Into the
unforeseen. Into the wild waters of chaos where even the TechnoCore
predictors, those who saw everything, would be blind.
Gladstone walked the platforms, towers, ramps, and swinging bridges
of the Templar tree city. Arboreals from a score of worlds and ARNied
chimps scolded her and fled, swinging gracefully from flimsy vines three
hundred meters above the forest floor. From areas closed to tourists and
privileged visitors, Gladstone caught the scent of incense and clearly
heard the Gregorian-like chants of the Templar sunrise service. Beneath
her, the lower levels were coming alive with light and movement. The
brief showers had passed over, and Gladstone returned to the upper
levels, rejoicing in the view, crossing a sixty-meter wooden suspension
bridge connecting her tree to one even larger, where half a dozen of
the great hot air balloons--the only air transport the Templars allowed
on God's Grove--hung tethered and seemingly impatient to be away,
their passenger nacelles swinging like heavy brown eggs, the skins of
the balloons lovingly dyed in the patterns of living things--montgolfiers,
Monarch butterflies, Thomas hawks, radiant gossamers, the now-extinct
zeplens, sky squids, moon moths, eagles--so revered in legend that
they had never been. retrieved or ARNied--and More.
ALL this could be destroyed if I continue. Will be destroyed.
Gladstone paused at the edge of a circular platform and gripped a
railing so tightly that the age-mottles on her hands stood out harshly
against suddenly pale skin. She thought of the old books she had read,
pre-Hegira, prespaceflight, where people in embryonic nations on the
continent of Europe had transported darker people--Africans--away
from their homelands into a life of slavery in the colonial West. Would
those slaves, chained and shackled, naked and curled in the fetid belly
of a slave ship . . . would those slaves have hesitated to rebel, to drag
down their captors, if it meant destroying the beauty of that slave ship
... of Europe itself?
But they had Africa to return to.
Meina Gladstone let out a sound part groan and part sob. She whirled
away from the glorious sunrise, from the sound of chants greeting the
new day, from the rise of balloons--living and artificial--into the
newborn sky, and she went below, down into the relative darkness to
summon her farcaster.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
She could not go where the last pilgrim, Martin Silenus, had come
from. Silenus was only a century and a half old, half-blue from Poulsen
treatments, his cells remembering the cold freeze of a dozen long cryogenic
fugues and even colder storage, but his lifetime had spanned More than four centuries. He had been born on Old Earth during the
last days there, his mother from one of the noblest families, his youth
a pastiche of decadence and elegance, beauty and the sweet smell of
decay. While his mother stayed with the dying Earth, he had been sent
spaceward so that someone could clear family debts, even if it meant
. . . which it did . . . years of service as a bonded manual laborer on
one of the most hellish backwater worlds in the Web.
Gladstone could not go to Old Earth so she went to Heaven's Gate.
Mudflat was the capital, and Gladstone walked the cobblestone streets
there, admiring the large old houses which overhung the narrow, stone-
troughed canals crisscrossing their way up the artificial mountainside
like something from an Escher print. Elegant trees and even larger
horsetail ferns crowned the hilltops, lined the broad, white avenues,
and swept out of sight around the elegant curve of white sand beaches.
The lazy tide brought in violet waves which prismed to a score of colors
before dying on the perfect beaches.
Gladstone paused at a park looking over the Mudflat Promenade,
where scores of couples and carefully dressed tourists took the evening
air under gaslamp and leaf shadow, and she imagined what Heaven's
Gate had been More than three centuries earlier when it was a rough
Protectorate world, not yet fully terraformed, and young Martin Silenus,
still suffering from cultural dislocation, the loss of his fortune, and brain
damage due to Freezer Shock on the long trip out, was working here
as a slave.
The Atmospheric Generating Station then had provided a few
hundred square kilometers of breathable air, marginally liveable land.
Tsunamis carried away cities, land reclamation projects, and workers
with equal indifference. Bonded workers like Silenus dug out the acid
canals, scraped rebreather bacteria from the lungpipe labyrinths under
the mud, and dredged scum and dead bodies from the tidal mudflats
after the floods.
We have made some progress, thought Gladstone, despite the inertia
forced upon us by the Core. Despite the near-death of science. Despite
our fatal addiction to the toys granted us by our own creations.
She was dissatisfied. Before this world walk was over she had wanted
to visit the home of each of the Hyperion pilgrims, however futile she
knew that gesture to be. Heaven's Gate was where Silenus had learned
to write true poetry even while his temporarily damaged mind was lost
to language, but this was not his home.
Gladstone ignored the pleasant music rising from the concert on the
Promenade, ignored the flights of commuter EMVs moving overhead
like migrating fowl, ignored the pleasant air and soft light, as she called
her portal to her and commanded it to farcast to Earth's moon. The
moon.
Instead of activating the translation, her comlog warned her of the
dangers of going there. She overrode it.
Her microremote buzzed into existence, its tiny voice in her implant
suggesting that it was not a good idea for the Chief Executive to travel
to such an unstable place. She silenced it.
The farcaster portal itself began to argue with her choice until she
used her universal card to program it manually.
The farcaster door blurred into existence, and Gladstone stepped
through.
The only place on Old Earth's moon still habitable was the mountain
and Mare area preserved for the FORCE Masada Ceremony, and it
was here that Gladstone stepped out. The viewing stands and marching
field were empty. Class-ten containment fields blurred the stars and the
distant rim walls, but Gladstone could see where internal heating from
terrible gravity tides had melted the distant mountains and made them
flow into new seas of rock.
She moved across a plain of gray sand, feeling the light gravity like
an invitation to fly. She imagined herself as one of the Templar balloons,
lightly tethered but eager to be away. She resisted the impulse to jump,
to leap along in giant bounds, but her step was light, and dust flew in
improbable patterns behind her.
The air was very thin under the containment field dome, and Glad-
stone found herself shivering despite the heating elements in her cape.
For a long moment she stood in the center of the featureless plain and
tried to imagine just the moon, humankind's first step in its long stagger
from the cradle. But the FORCE viewing stands and equipment sheds
distracted her, made such imaginings futile, and finally she raised her
eyes to see what she had actually come for.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Old Earth hung in the black sky. But not Old Earth, of course,
merely the pulsing accretion disk and globular cloud of debris which
had once been Old Earth. It was very bright, brighter than any of the
stars seen from Patawpha on even the rarest clear night, but its brightness
was strangely ominous, and it cast a sick light across the mud-gray field.
Gladstone stood and stared. She had never been here before, had
made herself not come before, and now that she was here, she desperately
wanted to feel something, hear something, as if some voice of
caution or inspiration or perhaps merely commiseration would come
to her here.
She heard nothing.
She stood there another few minutes, thinking of little, feeling her
ears and nose beginning to freeze, before she decided to go. It would
be almost dawn on TC2.
Gladstone had activated the portal and was taking a final look around
when another portable farcaster door blurred into existence less than
ten meters away. She paused. Not five human beings in the Web had
individual access to Earth's moon.
The microremote buzzed down to float between her and the figure
emerging from the portal.
Leigh Hunt stepped out, glanced around, shivered from the cold,
and walked quickly toward her. His voice was thin, almost amusingly
childlike in the thin air.
"M. Chief Executive, you must return at once. The Ousters have
succeeded in breaking through in an amazing counterattack."
Gladstone sighed. She had known that this would be the next step,
"All right," she said. "Has Hyperion fallen? Can we evacuate our forces
from there?"
Hunt shook his head. His lips were almost blue from the cold. "You
don't understand," came the attenuated voice other aide. "It's not just
Hyperion. The Ousters are attacking at a dozen points. They're invading
the Web itself!"
Suddenly numb and chilled to her core, More from shock than from
the lunar cold, Meina Gladstone nodded, gathered her cape More tightly
around her, and stepped back through the portal to a world which would
never be the same again.
NINETEEN
They gathered at the head of the Valley of the Time Tombs,
Brawne Lamia and Martin Silenus burdened with as many
backpacks and carrying bags as they could manage, Sol Weintraub,
the Consul, and Father Dure standing silent as a tribunal of
patriarchs. The first shadows of afternoon were beginning to stretch east
across the valley, reaching for the softly glowing Tombs like fingers of
darkness.
"I'm still not sure it's a good idea to split up like this," said the
Consul, rubbing his chin. It was very hot. Sweat gathered on his stubbled
cheeks and ran down his neck.
Lamia shrugged. "We knew that we each would be confronting the
Shrike alone. Does it matter if we're separated a few hours? We need
the food. You three could come if you want."
The Consul and Sol glanced at Father Dure. The priest was obviously
exhausted. The search for Kassad had drained whatever reserves of
energy the man had kept after his ordeal.
"Someone should wait here in case the Colonel returns," said Sol.
The baby looked very small in his arms.
Lamia nodded agreement. She settled straps on her shoulders and
neck. "All right. It should be about two hours getting to the Keep. A
little longer coming back. Figure a full hour there loading supplies,
and we'll still be back before dark. Close to dinnertime."
The Consul and Dure shook hands with Silenus. Sol put his arms
around Brawne. "Come back safely," he whispered.
She touched the bearded man's cheek, set her hand on the infant's
head for a second, turned, and started up the valley at a brisk pace.
"Hey, wait a nicking minute for me to catch up!" called Martin
Silenus, canteens and water bottles clattering as he ran.
I 5 7
________ THE FALL OF HYP6RION ________
They came up out of the saddle between the cliffs together. Silenus
glanced back and saw the other three men already dwarfed by distance,
small sticks of color amid the boulders and dunes near the Sphinx. "It
isn't going quite as planned, is it?" he said.
"I don't know," said Lamia. She had changed into shorts for the
hike, and the muscles other short, powerful legs gleamed under a sheen
of sweat. "How was it planned?"
"My plan was to finish the universe's greatest poem and then go
home," said Silenus. He took a drink from the last bottle holding water.
"Goddamn, I wish we'd brought enough wine to last us."
"I didn't have a plan," said Lamia, half to herself. Her short curls,
matted with perspiration, clung to her broad neck.
Martin Silenus snorted a laugh. "You wouldn't be here if it weren't
for that cyborg lover ..."
"Client," she snapped.
"Whatever. It was the Johnny Keats retrieval persona who thought
it was important to get here. So now you've dragged him this far ...
you're still carrying the Schron loop aren't you?"
Lamia absently touched the tiny neural shunt behind her left ear. A
thin membrane of osmotic polymer kept sand and dust out of the follicle-
sized connector sockets. "Yes."
Silenus laughed again. "What the tuck good is it if there's no data-
sphere to interact with, kid? You might as well have left the Keats
persona on Lusus or wherever." The poet paused a second to adjust
straps and packs. "Say, can you access the personality on your own?"
Lamia thought other dreams the night before. The presence in them
had felt like Johnny. . . but the images had been of the Web. Memories? "No," she said, "I can't access a Schron loop by myself. It carries More
data than a hundred simple implants could deal with. Now why don't
you shut up and walk?" She picked up the pace and left him standing
there.
The sky was cloudless, verdant, and hinting of depths of lapis. The
boulder field ahead stretched southwest to the barrens, the barrens
surrendering to the dunefields. The two walked in silence for thirty
minutes, separated by five meters and their thoughts. Hyperion's sun
hung small and bright to their right.
"The dunes are steeper," said Lamia as they struggled up to another
crest and slid down the other side. The surface was hot, and already
her shoes were filling with sand.
Silenus nodded, stopped, and mopped his face with a silken handkerchief. His floppy purple beret hung low over his brow and left ear,
but offered no shade. "It would be easier following the high ground to
the north there. Near the dead city."
Brawne Lamia shielded her eyes to stare in that direction. "We'll
lose at least half an hour going that way."
"We'll lose More than that going this way." Silenus sat on the dune
and sipped from his water bottle. He pulled off his cape, folded it, and
stuffed it in the largest of his backpacks.
"What are you carrying there?" asked Lamia. "That pack looks full."
"None of your damned business, woman."
Lamia shook her head, rubbed her cheeks, and felt the sunburn
there. She was not used to so many days in sunlight, and Hyperion's
atmosphere blocked little of the ultraviolet. She fumbled in her pocket
for the tube of sunblock cream and smeared some on. "All right," she
said. "We'll detour that way. Follow the ridgeline until the worst of
the dunes are past and then cut back on a straight line toward the Keep."
The mountains hung on the horizon, seeming to grow no closer. The
snow-topped summits tantalized her with their promise of cool breezes
and fresh water. The Valley of the Time Tombs was invisible behind
them, the view blocked by dunes and the boulder field.
Lamia shifted her packs, turned to her right, and half-slid, half-walked
down the crumbling dune.
As they came up out of the sand onto the low gorse and needle grass
of the ridge, Martin Silenus could not take his eyes from the ruins of
the City of Poets. Lamia had cut left around it, avoiding everything
but the stones of the half-buried highways that circled the city, other
roads leading out into the barrens until they disappeared beneath the
dunes.
Silenus fell farther and farther behind until he stopped and sat on a
fallen column, which had once been a portal through which the android
laborers filed every evening after working in the fields. Those fields
were gone now. The aqueducts, canals, and highways only hinted at
by fallen stones, depressions in the sand, or the sand-scoured stumps
of trees where once they had overhung a waterway or shaded a pleasant
lane.
Martin Silenus used his beret to mop his face as he stared at the
ruins. The city was still white ... as white as bones uncovered by
shifting sands, as white as teeth in an earth-brown skull. From where
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION-
he sat, Silenus could see that many of the buildings were as he had
last seen them More than a century and a half ago. Poets' Ampitheatre
lay half-finished but regal in its ruin, a white, otherworldly Roman
Colosseum overgrown with desert creeper and fanfare ivy. The great
atrium was open to the sky, the gallerias shattered--not by time, Silenus
knew, but by the probes and lances and explosive charges of Sad King
Billy's useless security people in the decades after the evacuation of the
city. They were going to kill the Shrike. They were going to use electronics
and angry beams of coherent light to kill Grendel after he had
laid waste to the mead hall.
Martin Silenus chuckled and leaned forward, suddenly dizzy from
the heat and exhaustion.
Silenus could see the great dome of the Common Hall where he
had eaten his meals, first with the hundreds in artistic camaraderie,
then in separation and silence with the few others who had remained,
for their own inscrutable and unrecorded reasons, after Billy's evacuation
to Keats, and then alone. Truly alone. Once he had dropped a
goblet and the echo rang for half a minute under the vine-graffitied
dome.
Afone with the Morlocks, thought Silenus. But not even Morlocks for
company in the end. Only my muse.
There was a sudden explosion of sound, and a score of white doves
burst from some niche in the heap of broken towers that had been Sad
King Billy's palace. Silenus watched them whirl and circle in the overheated
sky, marveling that they had survived the centuries here on the
edge of nowhere.
If I could do it, why not they?
There were shadows in the city, pools of sweet shade. Silenus wondered
if the wells were still good, the great underground reservoirs, sunk
before the human seedships had arrived, still filled with sweet water.
He wondered if his wooden worktable, an antique from Old Earth, still
sat in the small room in which he had written much of his Cantos.
"What's wrong?" Brawne Lamia had retraced her steps and was standing
near him.
"Nothing." He squinted up at her. The woman looked like some
squat tree, a mass of dark thigh roots and sunburned bark and frozen
energy. He tried to imagine her being exhausted . . . the effort made him tired. "I just realized," he said. "We're wasting our time going all
the way back to the Keep. There are wells in the city. Probably food
reserves too."
"Uh-uh," said Lamia. "The Consul and I thought of that, talked
about it. The Dead City's been looted for generations. Shrike Pilgrims
must have depleted the stores sixty or eighty years ago. The wells aren't
dependable . . . the aquifer has shifted, the reservoirs are contaminated.
We go to the Keep."
Silenus felt his anger grow at the woman's insufferable arrogance,
her instant assumption that she could take command in any situation.
"I'm going to explore," he said. "It might save us hours of travel
time."
Lamia moved between him and the sun. Her black curls glowed with
the corona of eclipse. "No. If we waste time here, we won't be back
before dark."
"Go on, then," snapped the poet, surprised at what he was saying.
"I'm tired. I'm going to check out the warehouse behind the Common
Hall. I might remember storage places the pilgrims never found."
He could see the woman's body tense as she considered dragging him
to his feet, pulling him out onto the dunes again. They were little More
than a third of the way to the foothills where the long climb to the
Keep staircase began. Her muscles relaxed. "Martin," she said, "the
others are depending on us. Please don't screw this up."
He laughed and sat back against the tumbled pillar. "Fuck that," he
said. "I'm tired. You know that you're going to do ninety-five percent
of the transporting anyway. I'm old, woman. Older than you can imagine.
Let me stay and rest a while. Maybe I'll find some food. Maybe
I'll get some writing done."
Lamia crouched next to him and touched his pack. "That's what
you've been carrying. The pages of your poem. The Cantos."
"Of course," he said.
"And you still think that proximity to the Shrike will allow you to
finish it?"
Silenus shrugged, feeling the heat and dizziness whirl around him.
"The thing is a fucking killer, a sheet-metal Grendel forged in hell,"
he said. "But it's my muse."
Lamia sighed, squinted at the sun already lowering itself toward the
mountains, and then looked back the way they had come. "Go back,"
she said softly. "To the valley." She hesitated a moment. "I'll go with
you, then return."
Silenus smiled with cracked lips. "Why go back? To play cribbage
with three other old men until our bcastie comes to tuck us in? No
thanks, I'd rather rest here a bit and get some work done. Go on,
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
woman. You can carry More than three poets could." He struggled out of his empty packs and bottles, handing them to her.
Lamia held the tangle of straps in a fist as short and hard as the head of a steel hammer. "Are you sure? We can walk slowly."
He struggled to his feet, fueled by a moment of pure anger at her
pity and condescension. "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,
Lusian. In case you forgot, the purpose of the pilgrimage was to get
here and say hello to the Shrike. Your friend Hoyt didn't forget. Kassad
understood the game. The fucking Shrike's probably chewing on his
stupid military bones right now. I wouldn't be surprised if the three we
left behind don't need food or water by this point. Go on. Get the hell
out of here. I'm tired of your company."
Brawne Lamia remained crouching for a moment, looking up at him
as he weaved above her. Then she got to her feet, touched his shoulder
for the briefest of seconds, lifted the packs and bottles to her back, and
swung away, her pace faster than anything he could have kept up with
in his youth. "I'll be back this way in a few hours," she called, not
turning back to look at him. "Be out on this edge of the city. We'll
return to the Tombs together."
Martin Silenus said nothing as he watched her diminish and then
disappear in the rough ground to the southwest. The mountains shimmered
in the heat. He looked down and saw that she had left the water
bottle for him. He spat, added the bottle to his load, and walked into
the waiting shade of the dead city.
TWENTY
Dure all but collapsed while they were eating lunch from the
last two ration paks; Sol and the Consul carried him up the
Sphinx's wide stairway into the shade. The priest's face was as
white as his hair.
He attempted a smile as Sol lifted a water bottle to his lips. "All of
you accept the fact of my resurrection rather easily," he said, wiping
the corners of his mouth with a finger.
The Consul leaned back against the stone of the Sphinx. "I saw the
cruciforms on Hoyt. The same as you wear now."
"And I believed his story . . . your story," said Sol. He passed the
water to the Consul.
Dure touched his forehead. "I've been listening to the comlog disks.
The stories, including mine, are ... incredible."
"Do you doubt any of them?" asked the Consul.
"No. It is making sense of them that is the challenge. Finding the
common element . . . the string of connection."
Sol lifted Rachel to his chest, rocking her slightly, his hand on the
back of her head. "Docs there have to be a connection? Other than
the Shrike?"
"Oh yes," said Dure. A bit of color was returning to his cheeks.
"This pilgrimage was not an accident. Nor was your selection."
"Different elements had a say in who came on this pilgrimage," said
the Consul. "The AI Advisory Croup, the Hegemony Senate, even the
Shrike Church."
Dure shook his head. "Yes, but there was only one guiding intelligence
behind this selection, my friends."
Sol leaned closer. "God?"
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
"Perhaps," said Dure, smiling, "but I was thinking of the Core . . .
the artificial intelligences who have behaved so mysteriously through
this entire sequence of events."
The baby made soft, mewling noises. Sol found a pacifier for it and
tuned the comlog on his wrist to heartbeat rates. The child curled its
fists once and relaxed against the scholar's shoulder. "Brawne's story
suggests that elements in the Core are trying to destabilize the status
quo . . . allow humankind a chance for survival while still pursuing
their Ultimate Intelligence project."
The Consul gestured toward the cloudless sky. "Everything that's
happened . . . our pilgrimage, even this war . . . was manufactured
because of the internal politics of the Core."
"And what do we know of the Core?" asked Dure softly.
"Nothing," said the Consul, and threw a pebble toward the carved
stone to the left of the Sphinx's stairway. "When all is said and done,
we know nothing."
Dw6 was sitting up now, massaging his face with a slightly moistened
cloth. "Yet their goal is oddly similar to our own."
"What's that?" asked Sol, still rocking the baby.
"To know God," said the priest. "Or failing that, to create Him."
He squinted down the long valley. Shadows were moving farther out
from the southwestern walls now, beginning to touch and enfold the
Tombs. "I helped promote such an idea within the Church ..."
"I've read your treatises on St. Teilhard," said Sol. "You did a brilliant
job defending the necessity of evolution toward the Omega Point--the
Godhead--without stumbling into the Socinian Heresy."
"The what?" asked the Consul.
Father Dure smiled slightly. "Socinus was an Italian heretic in the
sixteenth century A. D. His belief. . . for which he was excommunicated
. . . was that God is a limited being, able to learn and to grow as the
world . . . the universe . . . becomes More complex. And I did stumble
into the Socinian Heresy, Sol. That was the first of my sins."
Sol's gaze was level. "And the last of your sins?"
"Besides pride?" said Dure. "The greatest of my sins was falsifying
data from a seven-year dig on Armaghast. Trying to provide a connection
between the vanished Arch Builders there and a form of protoChristianity.
It did not exist. I fudged data. So the irony is, the greatest of
my sins, at least in the Church's eyes, was to violate the scientific
method. In her final days, the Church can accept theological heresy
but can brook no tampering with the protocols of science."
"Was Armaghast like this?" asked Sol, making a gesture with his arm
that included the valley, the Tombs, and the encroaching desert.
Dure looked around, his eyes bright for a moment. "The dust and
stone and sense of death, yes. But this place is infinitely More threatening.
Something here has not yet succumbed to death when it should
have."
The Consul laughed. "Let's hope that we're in that category. I'm
going to drag the comlog up to that saddle and try again to establish a
relay link with the ship."
"I'll go too," said Sol.
"And I," said Father Dure, getting to his feet, weaving for only a
second, and refusing the offer of Weintraub's hand.
The ship did not respond to queries. Without the ship, there could
be no fatline relay to the Ousters, the Web, or anywhere else beyond
Hyperion. Normal comm bands were down.
"Could the ship have been destroyed?" Sol asked the Consul.
"No. The message is being received, just not responded to. Gladstone
still has the ship in quarantine."
Sol squinted out over the barrens to where the mountains shimmered
in the heat haze. Several klicks closer, the ruins of the City of Poets
rose jaggedly against the skyline. "Just as well," he said. "We have one deus ex machina too many as it is."
Paul Dure began to laugh then, a deep, sincere sound, and stopped
only when he began coughing and had to take a drink of water.
"What is it?" asked the Consul.
"The deus ex. machina. What we were talking about earlier. I suspect
that this is precisely the reason each of us is here. Poor Lenar with his
deus in the machina of the cruciform. Brawne with her resurrected
poet trapped in a Schron loop, seeking the machina to release her
personal deus. You, Sol, waiting for the dark deus to solve your daughter's
terrible problem. The Core, machina spawned, seeking to build
their own deus."
The Consul adjusted his sun glasses. "And you, Father?"
Dure shook his head. "I wait for the largest machina of all to produce
its deus--the universe. How much of my elevation of St. Teilhard
stemmed from the simple fact that I found no sign of a living Creator
in the world today? Like the TechnoCore intelligences, I seek to build
what I cannot find elsewhere."
---------------- THE FALL Of HYPEBION ----------------
Sol watched the sky. "What deus do the Ousters seek?"
The Consul answered. "Their obsession with Hyperion is real. They
think that this will be the birthplace of a new hope for humankind."
"We'd better go back down," said Sol, shielding Rachel from the
sun. "Brawne and Martin should be returning before dinner."
But they did not return before dinner. N01 was there any sign of
them by sunset. Every hour, the Consul walked to the valley entrance,
climbed a boulder, and watched for movement out among the dunes
and boulder field. There was none. The Consul wished that Kassad
had left a pair of his powered binoculars.
Even before the sky faded to twilight the bursts of light across its
zenith announced the continuing battle in space. The three men sat
on the highest step of the Sphinx's staircase and watched the light show,
slow explosions of pure white, dull red blossoms, and sudden green and
orange streaks which left retinal echoes.
"Who's winning do you think?" said Sol.
The Consul did not look up. "It doesn't matter. Do you think we
should sleep somewhere other than the Sphinx tonight? Wait at one of
the other Tombs?"
"I can't leave the Sphinx," said Sol. "You're welcome to go on."
Dure touched the baby's cheek. She was working on the pacifier,
and her cheek moved against his finger. "How old is she now, Sol?"
"Two days. Almost exactly. She would have been born about fifteen
minutes after sunset at this latitude, Hyperion time."
"I'll go up and look one last time," said the Consul. "Then we'll
have to build a bonfire or something to help them find their way back."
The Consul had descended half the steps toward the trail when Sol
stood and pointed. Not toward where the head of the valley glowed in
low sunlight, but the other way, into the shadows of the valley itself.
The Consul stopped, and the other two men joined him. The Consul
reached into his pocket and removed the small neural stunner Kassad
had given him several days earlier. With Lamia and Kassad gone, it
was the only weapon they had.
"Can you see?" whispered Sol.
The figure was moving in the darkness beyond the faint glow of the
Jade Tomb. It did not look large enough or move quickly enough to
be the Shrike; its progress was strange . . . slow, halting for half a
moment at a time, weaving.
Father Dure glanced over his shoulder at the entrance to the valley,
then back. "Is there any way Martin Silenus could have entered the
valley from that direction?"
"Not unless he jumped down the cliff walls," whispered the Consul.
"Or went eight klicks around to the northeast. Besides, its too tall to
be Silenus."
The figure paused again, weaved, and then fell. From More than a
hundred meters away, it looked like another low boulder on the valley
floor.
"Come," said the Consul.
They did not run. The Consul led the way down the staircase, stunner
extended, set for twenty meters although he knew the neural effect
would be minimal at that range. Father Dure walked close behind,
holding Sol's child while the scholar hunted for a small rock to carry.
"David and Goliath?" asked Dure when Sol came up with palm-
sized stone and set it in a fiberplastic sling he had cut from package
wrap that afternoon.
The scholar's sunburned face above the beard turned a darker color.
"Something like that. Here, I'll take Rachel back."
"I enjoy carrying her. And if there's any fighting to be done, better
the two of you have free hands."
Sol nodded and closed the gap to walk side by side with the Consul,
the priest and the child a few paces behind.
From fifteen meters away it became obvious that the fallen figure
was a man--a very tall man--wearing a rough robe and lying face
down in the sand.
"Stay here," said the Consul and ran. The others watched while he
turned over the body, set his stunner back in his pocket, and removed
a water bottle from his belt.
Sol jogged slowly, feeling his exhaustion as a kind of pleasant vertigo.
Dure followed More slowly.
When the priest came into the light thrown by the Consul's hand
torch, he saw the hood of the fallen man pushed back from a vaguely
Asian, oddly distorted long face lighted by the glow of the jade Tomb
as well as the torch.
"It's a Templar," said Dure, astonished to find a follower of the Muir
here.
"It's the True Voice of the Tree," said the Consul. "It's the first of
our missing pilgrims . . . it's Het Masteen."
TWENTY-ONE
artin Silenus had worked all afternoon on his epic poem,
and only the dying of the light made him pause in his
efforts.
He had found his old workroom pillaged, the antique table missing.
Sad King Billy's palace had suffered the worst of time's insults, with all
windows broken, miniature dunes drifted across discolored carpets once
worth fortunes, and rats and small rock eels living between the tumbled
stones. The apartment towers were homes for the doves and hunting
falcons gone back to the wild. Finally the poet had returned to the
Common Hall under the great geodesic dome of its dining room to sit
at a low table and write.
Dust and debris covered the ceramic floor, and the scarlet tones of
desert creeper all but obscured the broken panes above, but Silenus
ignored these irrelevancies and worked on his Cantos.
The poem dealt with the death and displacement of the Titans by
their offspring, the Hellenic gods. It dealt with the Olympian struggle
which followed the Titans' refusal to be displaced--the boiling of great
seas as Oceanus struggled with Neptune, his usurper, the extinction of
suns as Hyperion struggled with Apollo for control of the light, and the
trembling of the universe itself as Saturn struggled with Jupiter for
control of the throne of the gods. What was at stake was not the mere
passage of one set of deities to be replaced by another, but the end of
a golden age and the beginning of dark times which must spell doom
for all mortal things.
The Hyfierion Cantos made no secret of the multiple identities of
these gods: the Titans were easily understood to be the heroes of humankind's
short history in the galaxy, the Olympian usurpers were the
TechnoCore Als, and their battlefield stretched across the familiar con1
B 8
------------------------------------------------- I 6 9 --------------------------------------------------
tinents, oceans, and airways of all the worlds in the Web. Amidst all
this, the monster Dis, son of Saturn but eager to inherit the kingdom
with Jupiter, stalked its prey, harvesting both god and mortal.
The Cantos were also about the relationship between creatures and
their creators, the love between parent and children, artists and their
art, all creators and their creations. The poem celebrated love and loyalty
but teetered on the brink of nihilism with its constant thread of corruption
through love of power, human ambition and intellectual hubris.
Martin Silenus had been working on his Cantos for More than two
standard centuries. His finest work had been done in these
surroundings--the abandoned city, the desert winds whining like an
ominous Greek chorus in the background, the ever-present threat of
the Shrike's sudden interruption. By saving his own life, by leaving,
Silenus had abandoned his muse and condemned his pen to silence.
Beginning work again, following that sure trail, that perfect circuit which
only the inspired writer has experienced, Martin Silenus felt himself
returning to life . . . veins opening wider, lungs filling More deeply,
tasting the rich light and pure air without being aware of them, enjoying
each stroke of antique pen across the parchment, the great heap of
previous pages stacked around on the circular table, chunks of broken
masonry serving as paperweights, the story flowing freely again, immortality
beckoning with each stanza, each line.
Silenus had come to the most difficult and exciting part of the poem,
the scenes where conflict has raged across a thousand landscapes, entire
civilizations have been laid waste, and representatives of the Titans call
pause to meet and negotiate with the Olympians' humorless heroes.
On this broad landscape of his imagination strode Saturn, Hyperion,
Cottus, lapetus, Oceanus, Briareus, Mimus, Porphyrion, Enceladus,
Rhoetus and others--their equally titanic sisters Tethys, Phoebe, Theia,
and Clymene--and opposite them the doleful countenances of Jupiter,
Apollo, and their ilk.
Silenus did not know the outcome of this most epic of poems. He
lived on now only to finish the tale . . . had done so for decades. Gone
were the dreams of his youth of fame and wealth from apprenticing
himself to the Word--he had gained fame and wealth beyond measure
and it had all but killed him, had killed his art--and although he knew
that the Cantos were the finest literary work of his age, he wanted only
to finish it, to know the outcome himself, and to set each stanza, each
line, each word, in the finest, clearest, most beautiful form possible.
Now he wrote feverishly, almost mad with desire to finish what he
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
had long thought unfinishable. The words and phrases flew from his
antique pen to the antiquated paper; stanzas leaped into being with no
effort, cantos found their voice and finished themselves with no need
for revision, no pause for inspiration. The poem unfolded with shocking
speed, astounding revelations, heart-stopping beauty in both word and
image.
Under their flag of truce, Saturn and his usurper, Jupiter, faced each
other across a treaty slab of sheer-cut marble. Their dialogue was both
epic and simple, their arguments for being, their rationale for war
creating the finest debate since Thucydides' Me/ion Dialogue. Suddenly
something new, something totally unplanned by Martin Silenus in all
of his long hours of musing without his muse, entered the poem. Both
of the kings of the gods expressed fear of some third usurper, some
terrible outside force that threatened the stability of either of their reigns.
Silenus watched in pure astonishment as the characters he had created
through thousands of hours of effort defied his will and shook hands
across the marble slab, setting an alliance against . . .
Against what?
The poet paused, the pen stopping, as lie realized that he could barely
see the page. He had been writing in half-darkness for sometime, and
now full darkness had descended.
Silenus returned to himself in that process of allowing the world to rush in once More, much like the return to the senses following orgasm.
Only the descent of the writer to the world was More painful as he or
she returned, trailing clouds of glory which quickly dissipated in the
mundane flow of sensory trivia.
Silenus looked around. The great dining hall was quite dark except
for the fitful glow of starlight and distant explosions through the panes
and ivy above. The tables around him were mere shadows, the walls,
thirty meters away in all directions, darker shadows laced through with
the varicose darkness of desert creeper. Outside the dining hall, the
evening wind had risen, its voices louder now, contralto and soprano
solos being sung by cracks in the jagged rafters and rents in the dome
above him.
The poet sighed. He had no hand torch in his pack. He had brought
nothing but water and his Cantos. He felt his stomach stir in hunger. Where was that goddamn Brawne Lamia? But as soon as he thought of it, he realized that he was pleased that the woman had not returned
for him. He needed to stay in solitude to finish the poem ... at this
rate it would take no longer than a day, the night perhaps. A few
hours and he would be finished with his life's work, ready to rest a
while and appreciate the small daily things, the trivia of living which
for decades now had been only an interruption of work he could not
complete.
Martin Silenus sighed again and began setting manuscript pages in
his pack. He would find a light somewhere . . . start a fire if he had
to use Sad King Billy's ancient tapestries for kindling. He would write
outside by the light of the space battle if he had to.
Silenus held the last few pages and his pen in hand and turned to
look for the exit.
Something was standing in the darkness of the hall with him.
Lamia, he thought, feeling relief and disappointment war with one
another.
But it was not Brawne Lamia. Silenus noted the distortion, the bulk
of mass above and too-long legs below, the play of starlight on carapace
and thorn, the shadow of arms under arms, and especially the ruby
glow of hell-lighted crystal where the eyes should be.
Silenus let out a groan and sat again. "Not now!" he cried. "Begone,
goddamn your eyes!"
The tall shadow moved closer, its footfalls silent on cold ceramic.
The sky rippled with blood-red energy, and the poet could see the thorns
and blades and razorwire wrappings now.
"No!" cried Martin Silenus. "I refuse. Leave me alone."
The Shrike stepped closer. Silenus's hand twitched, lifted the pen
again, and wrote across the empty lower margin of his last page: it is
TIME, MARTIN.
He stared at what he had written, stifling the urge to giggle insanely.
To his knowledge, the Shrike had never spoken . . . never communicated ... to anyone. Other than through the paired media of pain and
death. "No!" he screamed again. "I have work to do. Take someone
else, goddamn you!"
The Shrike took another step forward. The sky pulsed with silent
plasma explosions while yellows and reds ran down the creature's quicksilver
chest and arms like spilled paints. Martin Silenus's hand twitched,
wrote across his earlier message--it IS time now, martin.
Silenus hugged his manuscript to himself, lifting the last pages from
the table so that he could write no More. His teeth showed in a terrible
rictus as he all but hissed at the apparition.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
YOU WERE READY TO TRADE PLACES WITH YOUR PATRON his hand i
wrote on the tabletop itself. ;
"Not now!" screamed the poet. "Billy's dead} Just let me finish. I
Please!" Martin Silenus had never begged in his long, long life. He I begged now. "Please, oh please. Please just let me finish." j
The Shrike took a step forward. It was so close that its misshapen |
upper body blocked out the starlight and set the poet in shadow. |
no wrote Martin Silenus's hand, and then the pen dropped as the ? Shrike reached out infinitely long arms, and infinitely sharp fingers
pierced the poet's arms to the marrow, i
Martin Silenus screamed as he was dragged from under the dining J
dome. He screamed as he saw dunes underfoot, heard the slide of sand .? under his own screams, and saw the tree rising out of the valley. |
The tree was larger than the valley, taller than the mountains the j
pilgrims had crossed; its upper branches seemed to reach into space. |
The tree was steel and chrome, and its branches were thorns and nettles. :
Human beings struggled and wriggled on those thorns--thousands and i
tens of thousands. In the red light from the dying sky, Silenus focused |
above his pain and realized that he recognized some of those forms. * They were bodies, not souls or other abstracts, and they obviously were ;
suffering the agonies of the pain-wracked living.
it is necessary wrote Silenus's own hand against the unyielding cold of the Shrike's chest. Blood dripped on quicksilver and sand. ;
"No!" screamed the poet. He beat his fists against scalpel blades and
razorwire. He pulled and struggled and twisted even as the creature * hugged him More closely, pulling him onto its own blades as if he were ', a butterfly being mounted, a specimen being pinned. It was not the ( unthinkable pain that drove Martin Silenus beyond sanity, it was the :
sense of irretrievable loss. He had almost finished it. He had almost
finished it! I
"No!" screamed Martin Silenus, struggling More wildly until a spray i of blood and screamed obscenities filled the air. The Shrike carried him
toward the waiting tree.
In the dead city, screams echoed for another minute, growing fainter
and farther away. Then there was a silence broken only by the doves
returning to their nests, dropping into the shattered domes and towers
with a soft rustle of wings.
The wind came up, rattling loose Perspex panes and masonry, shifting
brittle leaves across dry fountains, finding entrance through the broken
-------------------------------------------------- I 7 3 --------------------------------------------------
panes of the dome and lifting manuscript pages in a gentle whirlwind,
some pages escaping to be blown across the silent courtyards and empty
walkways and collapsed aqueducts.
After a while, the wind died, and then nothing moved in the City
of Poets.
TWENTY-TWO
| rawne Lamia found her four-hour walk turning into a ten-hour
i nightmare. First there was the diversion to the dead city and
the difficult choice of leaving Silenus behind. She did not want
the poet to stay there alone; she did not want to force him to go on nor
to take the time for a return to the Tombs. As it was, the detour along
the ridgeline cost her an hour of travel time.
Crossing the last of the dunes and the rock barrens was exhausting
and tedious. By the time she reached the foothills it was late afternoon
and the Keep was in shadow.
It had been easy descending the six hundred and sixty-one stone stairs
from the Keep forty hours earlier. The ascent was a test even of her
Lusus-bred muscles. As she climbed, the air grew cooler, the view More
spectacular, until by the time she was four hundred meters above the
foothills she was no longer perspiring and the Valley of the Time Tombs
was in sight once again. Only the tip of the Crystal Monolith was visible
from this angle, and that as an irregular glimmer and flash of light.
She stopped once to make sure that it was not truly a message being
flashed, but the glimmers were random, merely a panel of crystal catching
the light as it dangled from the broken Monolith.
just before the last hundred stairs. Lamia tried her comlog again.
The comm channels were the usual hash and nonsense, presumably
distorted by the time tides, which broke down all but the closest of
electromagnetic communications. A comm laser would have worked
... it seemed to work with the Consul's antique comlog-relay . . . but
besides that single machine, they had no comm lasers now that Kassad
had disappeared. Lamia shrugged and climbed the final stairs.
Chronos Keep had been built by Sad King Billy's androids--never
a true keep, it had been intended as a resort, travel inn, and artists'
summer haven. After the evacuation of the City of Poets, the place had
remained empty for More than a century, visited by only the most
daring of adventurers.
With the gradual waning of the Shrike menace, tourists and pilgrims
had begun to use the place, and eventually the Church of the Shrike
reopened it as a necessary stop on the annual Shrike Pilgrimage. Some
of its rooms carved deepest in the mountain or atop the least accessible
of turrets had been rumored to be the site of arcane rituals and elaborate
sacrifices to that creature the Shrike Cultists called the Avatar.
With the imminent opening of the Tombs, wild irregularities of the
time tides, and evacuation of the northern reaches, Chronos Keep had
again fallen silent. And so it was when Brawne Lamia returned.
The desert and dead city were still in sunlight, but the Keep was in
twilight as Lamia reached the bottom terrace, rested a moment, found
her flashlight in her smallest pack, and entered the maze. The corridors
were dark. During their stay there two days earlier, Kassad had explored
and announced that all power sources were down for good--solar converters
shattered, fusion cells smashed, and even the backup batteries
broken and strewn about the cellars. Lamia had thought of that a score
of times as she hiked up the six hundred and three-score stairs, glowering
at the elevator nacelles frozen on their rusted vertical tracks.
The larger halls, designed for dinners and gatherings, were just as
they had left them . . . strewn with the desiccated remains of abandoned
banquets and the signs of panic. There were no bodies, but browning
streaks on stone walls and tapestries suggested an orgy of violence not
too many weeks before.
Lamia ignored the chaos, ignored the harbingers--great, black birds
with obscenely human faces--taking wing from the central dining hall,
and ignored her own fatigue as she climbed the many levels to the
storeroom where they had camped. Stairways grew inexplicably narrower,
while pale light through colored glass cast sickly hues. Where
the panes were shattered or absent, gargoyles peered in as if frozen
in the act of entering. A cold wind blew down from the snowy reaches
of the Bridle Range and made Lamia shiver under her sunburn.
The packs and extra belongings were where they had left them, in
the small storeroom high above the central chamber. Lamia checked
to make sure that the some of the boxes and crates in the room contained
nonperishable food items, and then she went out onto the small balcony
where Lenar Hoyt had played his balalaika so few hours--such an
eternity--ago.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
The shadows of the high peaks stretched kilometers across the sand,
almost to the dead city. The Valley of the Time Tombs and the jumbled
wastes beyond still languished in evening light, boulders and low rock
formations throwing a jumble of shadows. Lamia could not make out
the Tombs from here, although an occasional glimmer still sparkled
from the Monolith. She tried her comlog again, cursed it when it gave
her only static and background garble, and went back in to choose and
load her supplies.
She took four packs of basics wrapped in flowfoam and molded fiberplastic.
There was water in the Keep--the troughs from the snowmelt
far above were a technology which could not break down--and she
filled all of the bottles she had brought and searched for More. Water
was their most serious need. She cursed Silenus for not coming with
her; the old man could have carried at least a half a dozen water bottles.
She was ready to leave when she heard the noise. Something was in
the Grand Hall, between her and the staircase. Lamia pulled on the
last of the packs, pulled her father's automatic pistol from her belt, and
went slowly down the staircases.
The Hall was empty; the harbingers had not returned. Heavy tapestries,
stirred by the wind, blew like rotted pennants above the litter
of food and utensils. Against the far wall, a huge sculpture of the Shrike's face, all free-floating chrome and steel, rotated to the breeze.
Lamia edged across the space, swiveling every few seconds so that
her back was never turned to one dark corner for long. Suddenly a
scream froze her in her tracks.
It was not a human scream. The tones ululated to the ultrasonic and
beyond, setting Lamia's teeth on edge and making her grip the pistol
with white fingers. Abruptly it was cut off as if a player beam had been
lifted from a disk.
Lamia saw where the noise had come from. Beyond the banquet
table, beyond the sculpture, under the six large stained-glass windows
where the dying light bled muted colors, there was a small door. The
voice had echoed up and out as if it had escaped from some dungeon
or cellar far below.
Brawne Lamia was curious. All of her life had been a conflict with
inquisitiveness above and beyond the norm, culminating in her choice
of the obsolete and sometimes amusing profession of private investigator. More than one time her curiosity had led her into embarrassment or
trouble or both. And More than a few times her curiosity had paid off
in knowledge few others had.
Not this time.
Lamia had come to find much-needed food and water. None of the
others would have come here ... the three older men could not have
beaten her here even with her detour to the dead city . . . and anything
or anyone else was not her concern.
Kassad? she wondered but stifled the thought. That sound had not
come from the throat of the FORCE Colonel.
Brawne Lamia backed away from the door, keeping her pistol ready,
found the steps to the main levels, and descended carefully, moving
through each room with as much stealth as is possible while carrying
seventy kilos of goods and More than a dozen water bottles. She caught
a glimpse of herself in a faded glass on the lowest level--squat body
poised, pistol raised and swiveling, a great burden of packs tottering on
her back and dangling from broad straps, bottles and canteens clanking
together.
Lamia did not find it amusing. She breathed a sigh of relief when
she was out on the lowest terrace, out in the cool, thin air and ready
to descend once again. She did not need her flashlight yet--an evening
sky suddenly filled with lowering clouds shed a pink and amber light
on the world, illuminating even the Keep and the foothills below in its
rich glow.
She took the steep stairs two at a time, her powerful leg muscles
aching before she had reached halfway. She did not tuck the gun away
but kept it ready should anything descend from above or appear in an
aperture in the rock face. Reaching the bottom, she stepped away from
the staircase and looked up at the towers and terraces half a kilometer
above.
Rocks were falling toward her. More than rocks, she realized, gargoyles
had been knocked off their ancient perches and were tumbling
with the boulders, their demonic faces lighted by the twilight glow.
Lamia ran, packs and bottles swinging, realized that she had no time
to reach a safe distance before the debris arrived, and threw herself
between two low boulders leaning against one another.
Her packs kept her from fitting all the way beneath them, and she
struggled, loosening straps, aware of the incredible noises as the first of
the rocks struck behind her, ricocheted overhead. Lamia pulled and
pushed with an effort that tore leather, snapped fiberplastic, and then
she was under the boulders, pulling her packs and bottles in with her,
determined not to have to return to the Keep.
Rocks the size of her head and hands pelted the air around her. The
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
shattered head of a stone goblin bounced past, smashing a small boulder
not three meters away. For a moment, the air was filled with missiles,
larger stones smashed on the boulder above her head, and then the
avalanche was past, and there was only the patter of smaller stones from
the secondary fall.
Lamia leaned over to tug her pack further in to safety, and a stone
the size other comlog ricocheted off the rockface outside, skipped almost
horizontally toward her hiding place, and bounced twice in the small
cave her shelter made, then struck her in the temple.
Lamia awoke with an old-person's groan. Her head hurt. It was full
night outside, the pulses from distant skirmishes lighting the inside of
her shelter through cracks above. She raised fingers to her temple and
found caked blood along her cheek and neck.
She pulled herself out of the crevice, struggling over the tumble of
new-fallen rocks outside, and sat a moment, head lowered, resisting
the urge to vomit.
Her packs were intact, and only one water bottle had been smashed.
She found her pistol where she had dropped it in the small space not
littered with smashed rocks. The stone outcrop on which she stood had
been scarred and slashed by the violence of the brief avalanche.
Lamia queried her comlog. Less than an hour had elapsed. Nothing
had descended to carry her away or slit her throat while she lay unconscious.
She peered one last time at the ramparts and balconies, now
invisible far above her, dragged her gear out, and set off down the
treacherous stone path at double time.
Martin Silenus was not at the edge of the dead city when she detoured
to it. Somehow she had not expected him to be, although she hoped
he had merely gotten tired of waiting and had walked the few kilometers
to the valley.
The temptation to take off her packs, lower the bottles to the ground
and rest a while was very strong. Lamia resisted it. Her small automatic
in her hand, she walked through the streets of the dead city. The
explosions of light were enough to guide her way.
The poet did not respond to her echoing shouts, although hundreds
of small birds Lamia couldn't identify exploded into flight, their wings
white in the darkness. She walked through the lower levels of the king's
old palace, shouting up stairways, even firing her pistol once, but there
was no sign of Silenus. She walked through courtyards beneath walls
heavy laden with creeper vines, calling his name, hunting for some
sign that he had been there. Once, she saw a fountain that reminded
her of the poet's tale about the night Sad King Billy disappeared, carried
off by the Shrike, but there were other fountains, and she could not
be sure this was the one.
Lamia walked through the central dining hall under the shattered
dome, but the room was dark with shadows. There was a sound, and
she swiveled, pistol ready, but it was only a leaf or ancient sheet of
paper blowing across ceramic.
She sighed and left the city, walking easily despite her fatigue after
days without sleep. There was no response to comlog queries, although
she felt the Je;d vu tug of the time tides and was not surprised. The
evening winds had eradicated any tracks Martin might have left on his
return to the valley.
The Tombs were glowing again. Lamia noticed even before she
reached the wide saddle at the entrance to the valley. It was not a bright
glow—nothing to compare to the silent riot of light above—but each
of the aboveground Tombs seemed to be shedding a pale light, as if
releasing energy stored during the long day.
Lamia stood at the head of the valley and shouted, warning Sol and
the others that she was returning. She would not have refused an offer
to help with the packs for this last hundred meters. Lamia's back was
raw and her shirt was soaked with blood where the straps had cut into
flesh.
There was no answer to her cries.
She felt her exhaustion as she slowly climbed the steps to the Sphinx,
dropped her gear on the broad, stone porch, and fumbled for her
flashlight. The interior was dark. Sleeping robes and packs lay strewn
about in the room where they had slept. Lamia shouted, waited for the
echoes to die, and played her light around the room again. Everything
was the same. No, wait, something was different. She closed her eyes
and remembered the room as it had been that morning.
The Mobius cube was missing. The strange energy-sealed box left
behind by Het Masteen on the windwagon was no longer in its place
in the corner. Lamia shrugged and went outside.
The Shrike was waiting. It stood just outside the door. It was taller
than she had imagined, towering over her.
Lamia stepped out and backed away, stifling the urge to scream at
———————— THE FALL OF HYPERION ————————
the thing. The raised pistol seemed small and futile in her hand. The
flashlight dropped unheeded to the stone.
The thing cocked its head and looked at her. Red light pulsed from
somewhere behind its multifaceted eyes. The angles of its body and
blades caught the light from above.
"You son of a bitch," said Lamia, her voice level. "Where are they?
What have you done with Sol and the baby? Where are the others?"
The creature cocked its head the other way. Its face was sufficiently
alien that Lamia could make out no expression there. Its body language
communicated only threat. Steel fingers clicked open like retractable
scalpels.
Lamia shot it four times in the face, the heavy 16-mm slugs striking
solidly and whining away into the night.
"I didn't come here to die, you metallic motherfucker," said Lamia,
took aim, and fired another dozen times, each slug striking home.
Sparks flew. The Shrike jerked its head upright as if listening to some
distant sound.
It was gone.
Lamia gasped, crouched, whirled around. Nothing. The valley floor
glowed in starlight as the sky grew quiescent. The shadows were ink
black but distant. Even the wind was gone.
Brawne Lamia staggered over to her packs and sat on the largest one,
trying to bring her heart rate down to normal. She was interested to
find that she had not been afraid . . . not really . . . but there was no
denying the^adrenaline in her system.
Her pistol still in her hand, half a dozen bullets remaining in the
magazine and the propellant charge still strong, she lifted a water bottle
and took a long drink.
The Shrike appeared at her side. The arrival had been instantaneous
and soundless.
Lamia dropped the bottle, tried to bring the pistol around while
twisting to one side.
She might as well have been moving in slow motion. The Shrike
extended its right hand, fingerblades the length of darning needles
caught the light, and one of the tips slid behind her ear, found her
skull, and slipped inside her head with no friction, no pain beyond an
icy sense of penetration.
TWENTY-THREE
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad had stepped through a portal expecting
strangeness; instead he found the choreographed insanity of
war. Moneta had preceded him. The Shrike had escorted him,
fingerblades sunk into Kassad's upper arm. When Kassad finished his
step through the tingling energy curtain, Moneta was waiting and the
Shrike was gone.
Kassad knew at once where they were. The view was from atop the
low mountain into which Sad King Billy had commanded his effigy
carved almost two centuries earlier. The flat area atop the peak was
empty except for the debris of an anti-space missile defense battery
which sttH smoldered. From the glaze of the granite and the still-
bubbling molten metal, Kassad guessed that the battery had been lanced
from orbit.
Moneta walked to the edge of the cliff, fifty meters above Sad King
Billy's massive brow, and Kassad joined her there. The view of the river
valley, the city, and the spaceport heights ten kilometers to the west
told the story.
Hyperion's capital was burning. The old part of the city, Jacktown,
was a miniature firestorm, and there were a hundred lesser fires dotting
the suburbs and lining the highway to the airport like well-tended signal
fires. Even the Hoolie River was burning as an oil fire spread beneath
antiquated docks and warehouses. Kassad could see the spire of an
ancient church rising above the flames. He looked for Cicero's, but the
bar was hidden by smoke and flames upriver.
The hills and valley were a mass of movement, as if an anthill had
been kicked apart by giant boots. Kassad could see the highways, clogged
with a river of humanity and moving More slowly than the real river
as tens of thousands fled the fighting. The flash of solid artillery and
I 8 I
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
energy weapons stretched to the horizon and lighted low clouds above.
Every few minutes, a flying machine--military skimmer or dropship
--would rise from the smoke near the spaceport or from the wooded
hills to the north and south, the air would fill with stabs of coherent
light from above and below, and the vehicle would fall, trailing a plume
of black smoke and orange flames.
Hovercraft flitted across the river like waterbugs, dodging between
the burning wreckage of boats, barges, and other hovercraft. Kassad
noticed that the single highway bridge was down, with even its concrete
and stone abutments burning. Combat lasers and hellwhip beams lashed
through the smoke; antipersonnel missiles were visible as white specks
traveling faster than the eye could follow, leaving trails of rippling,
superheated air in their wakes. As he and Moneta watched, an explosion
near the spaceport mushroomed a cloud of flame into the air.
--Not nuclear, he thought.
--No.
The skinsuit covering his eyes acted like a vastly improved FORCE
visor, and Kassad used the ability to zoom in on a hill five kilometers
to the northwest across the river. FORCE Marines loped toward the
summit, some already dropping and using their shaped excavation
charges to dig foxholes. Their suits were activated, the camouflage
polymers perfect, their heat signatures minimal, but Kassad had no
difficulty seeing them. He could make out faces if he wished.
Tactical command and tightbeam channels whispered in his ears.
He recognized the excited charter and inadvertent obscenities which
had been the hallmark of combat for too many human generations to
count. Thousands of troops had dispersed from the spaceport and their
staging areas and were digging in around a circle with its circumference
twenty klicks from the city, its spokes carefully planned fields of fire
and total-destruction vectors.
--They're expecting an invasion, communicated Kassad, feeling the
effort as something More than subvocalization, something less than
telepathy.
Moneta raised a quicksilver arm to point toward the sky.
It was a high overcast, at least two thousand meters, and it was a
shock when it was penetrated first by one blunt craft, then a dozen More , and, within seconds, a hundred descending objects. Most were
concealed by camouflage polymers and background-coded containment
fields, but again Kassad had no difficulty making them out. Under the
polymers, the gunmetal gray skins had faint markings in the subtle
calligraphy he recognized as Ouster. Some of the larger craft were
obviously dropships, their blue plasma tails visible enough, but the rest
descended slowly under the rippling air of suspension fields, and Kassad
noted the lumpy size and shape of Ouster invasion cannisters, some
undoubtedly carrying supplies and artillery, many undoubtedly empty,
decoys for the ground defenses.
An instant later, the cloud ceiling was broken again as several thousand
free-falling specks fell like hail:.Ouster infantry dropping past can-
nisters and dropships, waiting until the last possible second to deploy
their suspension fields and parafoils.
Whoever the FORCE commander was, he had discipline--over both
himself and his men. Ground batteries and the thousands of Marines
deployed around the city ignored the easy targets of the dropships and
cannisters, then waited for the paratroops' arresting devices to deploy
. . . some at little better than treetop height. At that instant, the air
filled with thousands of shimmers and smoke trails as lasers flickered
through the smoke and missiles exploded.
At first glance, the damage done was devastating, More than enough
to deter any attack, but a quick scan told Kassad that at least forty
percent of the Ousters had landed--adequate numbers for the first wave
of any planetary attack.
A cluster of five parafoilists swung toward the mountain where he
and Moneta stood. Beams from the foothills tumbled two of them in
flames, one corkscrewed down in a panic descent to avoid further lancing,
and the final two caught a breeze from the east, sending them
spiraling into the forest below.
All of Kassad's senses were engaged now; he smelled the ionized air
and cordite and solid propellant; smoke and the dull acid of plasma
explosive made his nostrils flare; somewhere in the city, sirens wailed
while the crack of small-arms fire and burning trees came to him on
the gentle breeze; radio and intercepted tightbeam channels babeled;
flames lit the valley and laser lances played like searchlights through
the clouds. Half a kilometer below them, where the forest faded to the
grass of the foothills, squads of Hegemony Marines were engaging
Ouster paratroopers in a hand-to-hand struggle. Screams were audible.
Fedmahn Kassad watched with the fascination he had once felt at
the stimsim experience of a French cavalry charge at Agincourt.
--This is no simulation?
--No, replied Moneta.
--Is it happening now?
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
The silver apparition at his side cocked its head. When is now?
--Contiguous with our . . . meeting ... in the Valley of the Tombs.
--No.
--The future then?
--Yes.
--But the near future?
--Yes. Five days from the time you and your friends arrived in the
valley.
Kassad shook his head in wonder. If Moneta was to be believed, he
had traveled forward in time.
Her face reflected flames and multiple hues as she swiveled toward
him. Do you wish to participate in the fighting?
--Fight the Ousters? He folded his arms and watched with new
intensity. He had received a preview of the fighting abilities of this
strange skinsuit. It was quite likely that he could turn the tide of battle
single-handedly . . . most probably destroy the few thousand Ouster
troops already on the ground. No, he sent to her, not now. Not at this
time.
--The Lord of Pain believes that you are a warrior. Kassad turned to look at her again. He was mildly curious as to why
she gave the Shrike such a ponderous title. The Lord of Pain can go
fuck itself, he sent. Unless it wants to fight me.
Moneta was still for a long minute, a quicksilver sculpture on a
windblown peak.
--Would you really fight him? she sent at last.
--/ came to Hyperion to kill it. And you. I will fight whenever either
or both of you agree.
--You still believe that I am your enemy?
Kassad remembered the assault on him at the Tombs, knowing now
that it was less a rape than a granting of his own wish, his own sub-
vocalizcd desire to be lovers with this improbable woman once again.
I don't know what you are.
--At first I was victim, like so many, sent Moneta, her gaze returning
to the valley. Then, far in our future, } saw why the Lord of Pain had
been forged . . . had to be forged. . . and then I became both companion
and keeper.
--Keeper?
--I monitored the time tides, made repairs to the machinery, and saw
to it that the Lord of Pain did not awake before his time.
--Then you can control it? Kassad's pulse raced at the thought.
------------------------------------------------------------------ I g 5 ------------------------------------------------------------------
----no.
--Then who or what can contro? it?
--Only he or she who beats it in personal combat.
--Who has beaten it?
--No one, sent Moneta. Either in your future or your past.
--Have many tried?
--Millions.
--And they have all died?
--Or worse.
Kassad took a breath. Do you know if I will be allowed to fight it?
--You wi((.
Kassad let the breath out. No one had beaten it. His future was her
past . . . she had lived there . . . she had glimpsed the terrible tree of
thorns just as he had, seeing familiar faces there tlie way he had seen
Martin Silenus struggling, impaled, years before he had met the man.
Kassad turned his back on the fighting in the valley below. Can we go
to him now? I challenge him to personal combat.
Moneta looked into his face for a silent moment. Kassad could see
his own quicksilver visage reflected in hers. Without answering, she
turned, touched the air, and brought the portal into existence.
Kassad stepped forward and went through first.
TWENTY-FOUR
Gladstone translated directly to Government House and swept
into the Tactical Command Center with Leigh Hunt and half
a dozen other aides in attendance. The room was packed:
Morpurgo, Singh, Van Zcidt and a dozen others represented the military,
although Gladstone noticed that the young naval liero. Commander
Lee, was absent; most of the cabinet ministers were there,
including Allan Imoto of Defense, Garion Pcrsov of Diplomacy, and
Barbre Dan-Gyddis of Economy; senators were arriving even as Glad-
stone did, some of them looking as though they had just been
awakened--the "power curve" of the oval conference table held Senators
Kolchev from Lusus, Richcau from Renaissance Vector, Roan-
quist from Nordholm, Kakinuma from Fuji, Sabcnstorafem from Sol
Draconi Septem, and Peters from Dcneb Drei; President Pro Tern Denzel-Hiat-Amin sat with a bcfuddled expression, his bald head gleaming
in the light from overhead spots, while his young counterpart, All
Thing Speaker Gibbons perched on the edge of his seat, hands on his
knees, his posture a study in barely contained energy. Councilor Al-
bcdo's projection sat directly opposite Gladstone's empty chair. All stood
as Gladstone swept down the aisle, took her seat, and gestured everyone
to theirs.
"Explain," she said.
General Morpurgo stood, nodded at a subordinate, and lights dimmed
while holos misted.
"Forego the visuals!" snapped Meina Gladstone. "Tell us."
Holos faded and the lights came back up. Morpurgo looked stunned,
slightly vacant. He looked down at his light pointer, frowned at it, and
dropped it in a pocket. "Madame Executive, Senators, Ministers, Presidcnt and Speaker, Honorables ..." Morpurgo cleared his throat, "the
Ousters have succeeded in a devastating surprise attack. Their combat
Swarms are closing on half a dozen Web worlds."
The commotion in the room drowned him out. "Web worlds!" cried
various voices. There were shouts from politicians, ministers, and executive
branch functionaries.
"Silence," commanded Gladstone, and there was silence. "General,
you assured us that any hostile forces were a minimum of five years
from the Web. How and why has this changed?"
The General made eye contact with the CEO. "Madame Executive,
as far as we can tell, all of the Hawking drive wakes were decoys. The
Swarms went off their drives decades ago and drove toward their objectives
at sublight speed. ..."
Excited babble drowned him out.
"Go on. General," said Gladstone, and the hubbub died once More.
"At sublight velocities . . . some of the Swarms must have been
traveling that way for fifty standard years or More . . . there was no
possible way to detect them. It simply was not the fault of--"
"What worlds are in danger, General?" asked Gladstone. Her voice
was very low, very level.
Morpurgo glanced toward the empty air as if seeking visuals there,
returned his gaze to the table. His hands clenclied into fists. "Our
intelligence at this time, based on fusion drive sightings followed by a
shift to Hawking drives when they were discovered, suggests that the
first wave will arrive at Heaven's Gate, God's Grove, Mare Infinitus,
Asquith, Ixion, Tsingtao-Hsishuang Panna, Acteon, Barnard's World,
and Tempc within the next fifteen to seventy-two hours."
This time there was no silencing the commotion. Gladstone let the
shouts and exclamations continue for several minutes before she raised
a hand to bring the group under control.
Senator Kolchcv was on his feet. "How the goddamn hell did this
happen. General? Your assurances were absolute!"
Morpurgo stood his ground. There was no responsive anger in his
voice. "Yes, Senator, and also based on faulty data. We were wrong.
Our assumptions were wrong. The CEO will have my resignation within
the hour . . . the other joint chiefs join me in this."
"Goddamn your resignation!" shouted Kolchev. "We may all be hanging from farcaster stanchions before this is over. The question is
--what the hell are you doing about this invasion?"
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
"Gabriel," Gladstone said softly, "sit down, please. That was my next
question. General? Admiral? I presume that you have already issued
orders regarding the defense of these worlds?"
Admiral Singh stood and took his place next to Morpurgo. "M.
Executive, we've done what we could. Unfortunately, of all the worlds
threatened by this first wave, only Asquith has a FORCE contingent
in place. The rest can be reached by the fleet--none lack farcaster
capabilities--but the fleet cannot spread itself that thin to protect them
all. And, unfortunately ..." Singh paused a moment and then raised
his voice to be heard over the rising tumult. "And, unfortunately,
deployment of the strategic reserve to reinforce the Hyperion campaign
already had been initiated. Approximately sixty percent of the two
hundred fleet units we had committed to this redeployment have either
farcast through to Hyperion system or been translated to staging areas
away from their forward defensive positions on the Web periphery."
Meina Gladstone rubbed her cheek. She realized that she was still
wearing her cape, although the privacy collar was lowered, and now
she unclasped it and let it fall onto the back of her chair. "What
you're saying. Admiral, is that these worlds are undefended and there
is no way to get our forces turned around and back there in time.
Correct?"
Singh stood at attention, as ramrod stiff as a man before a firing
squad. "Correct, CEO."
"What can be done?" she asked over the renewed shouting.
Morpurgo stepped forward. "We're using the civilian farcaster matrix
to translate as many FORCE:ground infantry and Marines as we can
to the threatened worlds, along with light artillery and air/space defenses."

Minister of Defense Imoto cleared his throat. "But these will make
little difference without fleet defenses."
Gladstone glanced toward Morpurgo.
"This is true," said the General. "At best our forces will provide a
rearguard action while an attempt at evacuation is carried out. ..."
Senator Richeau was on her feet. "An attempt at evacuation! General,
yesterday you told us that an evacuation of two or three million civilians
from Hyperion was impractical. Are you now saying that we can successfully
evacuate"--she paused a second to consult her comlog
implant--"seven biffion people before the Ouster invasion force intervenes?"

"No," said Morpurgo. "We can sacrifice troops to save a few ... a
few selected officials. First Families, community and industrial leaders
necessary to the continued war effort."
"General," said Gladstone, "yesterday this group authorized immediate
transferral of FORCE troops to the reinforcement Heet translating
to Hyperion. Is tliat a problem in this new redeployment?"
General Van Zeidt of the Marines stood. "Yes, M. Executive. Troops
were farcast to waiting transports within the hour of this body's decision.
Almost two-thirds of the hundred thousand designated troops have translated
into the Hyperion System by"--he glanced at his antique
chronometer--"05?0 hours standard. Approximately, twenty minutes
ago. It will be at least another eight to fifteen hours before these transports
can return to Hyperion System staging areas and be returned to
the Web."
"And how many FORCE troops are available webwide?" asked Glad-
stone. She raised one knuckle to touch her lower lip.
Morpurgo took a breath. "Approximately thirty thousand, M. Executive."

Senator Kolchev slapped the table with the palm of his hand. "So
we stripped the Web of not only our fighting spacecraft, but trie majority
of FORCE troops."
It was not a question, and Morpurgo did not answer.
Senator Feldstein from Barnard's World rose to her feet. "M. Executive,
my world ... all of the worlds mentioned . . . need to be warned. If you arc not prepared to make an immediate announcement,
I must do so."
Gladstone nodded. "I will announce the invasion immediately after
this meeting, Dorothy. We will facilitate your contact with constituents
via all media."
"Media be damned," said the short, daik-haired woman, "I'll be
'casting home as soon as we're done here. Whatever fate befalls Barnard's
World, it is mine to share. Gentlemen and ladies, we should all be
hanging from stanchions if the news is true." Feldstein sat down amid
murmurs and whispers.
Speaker Gibbons rose, waited for silence. His voice was wire-taut.
"General, you spoke of the first wave ... is this cautionary military
jargon, or do you have intelligence that there will be later waves? If so,
what other Web and Protectorate worlds might be involved?"
Morpurgo's hands clenched and unclenched. He glanced again toward
empty air, turned toward Gladstone. "M. Executive, may I use
one graphic?"
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Gladstone nodded.
The holo was the same the military had used during their Olympus
briefing--the Hegemony, gold; Protectorate stars, green; the Ouster
Swarm vectors, red lines with blue-shifting tails; the Hegemony fleet
deployments, orange--and it was immediately obvious that the red
vectors had swung far from their old courses, lancing into Hegemony
space like blood-tipped spears. The orange embers were heavily concentrated
in the Hyperion System now, with others strung out along
farcaster routes like beads on a chain.
Some of the senators with military experience gasped at what they
saw.
"Of the dozen Swarms we know to be in existence," said Morpurgo,
his voice still soft, "all appear to be committed to the invasion of the
Web. Several have split into multiple attack groups. The second wave,
projected to arrive at their targets within one hundred to two hundred
and fifty hours of the first wave's assault, are vectored as pictured here."
There was no sound in the room. Gladstone wondered if others were
also holding their breaths.
"Second-wave assault targets include--Hebron, one hundred hours
from now; Renaissance Vector, one hundred and ten hours; Renaissance
Minor, one hundred twelve hours; Nordholm, one hundred twenty-
seven hours; Maui-Covcnant, one hundred thirty hours; Thalia, one
hundred forty-three hours; Deneb Drei and Vier, one hundred and fifty
hours; Sol Draconi Septem, one hundred sixty-nine hours; Freeholm,
one hundred seventy hours; New Earth, one hundred ninety-three
hours; Fuji, two hundred and four hours; New Mecca, two hundred
and five hours; Pacem, Armaghast, and Svoboda, two hundred twenty-
one liours; Lusus, two hundred thirty hours; and Tail Ceti Center, two
hundred fifty hours."
The holo faded. The silence stretched. General Morpurgo said, "We
assume that the first-wave Swarms will have secondary targets after their
initial invasions, but transit times under Hawking drive will be standard
Web travel time-debts, ranging from nine weeks to three years." He
stepped back and stood at parade rest.
"Good Christ," whispered someone a few seats behind Gladstone.
The Chief Executive rubbed her lower lip. In order to save humanity
from what she considered an eternity of slavery ... or worse, extinction
. . . she had been prepared to open the front door of the house to the
wolf while most of the family hid upstairs, safe behind locked doors.
Only now the day had arrived, and wolves were coming in through
-------------------------------------------------- I 9 i --------------------------------------------------
every door and window. She almost smiled at the justice of it, at her
ultimate foolishness in thinking that she could uncage chaos and then
control it.
"First," she said, "there will be no resignations, no self-recriminations,
until I authorize them. It is quite possible that this government
shall fall . . . that, indeed, members of this cabinet, myself among
them . . . sliall be, as Gabriel so aptly put it, hanging from Stanchions.
But in the meantime, we are the government of the Hegemony and
must act as such.
"Second, I will meet with this body and representatives of other
Senate committees in one hour in order to go over the speech I will give to the Web at 0800 standard. Your suggestions will be welcome at that time.
"Third, I hereby command and authorize the FORCE authorities
here assembled and throughout the reaches of the Hegemony to do
everything in their power to preserve and protect the citizenry and
property of the Web and Protectorate, through whatever extraordinary
means they must employ. General, Admiral, I want the troops translated
back to threatened Web worlds within ten hours. I don't care how this
is done, but it will be done.
"Fourth, after my speech, I will call a full session of the Senate and
All Thing. At that time, I will declare that a state of war exists between
the Human Hegemony and the Ouster nations. Gabriel, Dorothy, Torn,
Eiko . . . all of you . . . you'll be very busy in the next few hours.
Prepare your speeches for your homeworlds, but deliver that vote. I
want unanimous Senate support. Speaker Gibbons, I can only ask for
your help in guiding the All Thing debate. It is essential that we have
a vote of the gathered All Thing by 1200 hours today. There can be
no surprises.
"Fifth, we will evacuate the citizens of the worlds threatened by the
first wave." Gladstone held up her hand and stifled the objections and explanations from the experts. "We will evacuate everyone we can in
the time we have. Ministers Persov, Imoto, Dan-Gyddis, and Crunnens
from the Vcb Transit Ministry will create and spearhead the Evacuation
Coordination Council and will deliver a detailed report and action
timcline to me by 1500 hours today. FORCE and the Bureau for Web
Security will oversee crowd control and protection of farcaster access.
"Finally, I wish to see Councilor Albcdo, Senator Kolchcv, and
Speaker Gibbons in my private chambers in three minutes. Are there
any questions from anyone?"
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION'
Stunned faces stared back.
Gladstone rose. "Good luck," she said. "Work quickly. Do nothing
to spread unnecessary panic. And God save the Hegemony." She turned
and swept from the room.
Gladstone sat behind her desk. Kolchev, Gibbons, and Albedo sat
across from her. The urgency in the air, felt from half-sensed activities
beyond the doors, was made More maddening by Gladstone's long delay
before speaking. She never took her eyes off Councilor Albedo. "You,"
she said at last, "have betrayed us."
The projection's urbane half-smile did not waver. "Never, CEO."
"Then you have one minute to explain why the TechnoCore and
specifically the AI Advisory Council did not predict this invasion."
"It will take only one word to explain this, M. Executive," said
Albedo. "Hyperion."
"Hypcrion shit!" cried Gladstone, slamming her palm down on the
ancient desk in a most un-Gladstone-like explosion of temper. "I'm sick
and tired of hearing about unfactorable variables and Hyperion the
predictive black hole, Albedo. Either the Core can help us understand
probabilities or they've been lying to us for five centuries. Which is it?"
"The Council predicted the war, CEO," said the gray-haired image.
"Our confidential advisories to you and the need-to-know group explained
the uncertainty of events once Hyperion became involved."
"That's crap," snapped Kolchev. "Your predictions are supposed to
be infallible in general trends. This attack must have been planned
decades ago. Perhaps centuries."
Albedo shrugged. "Yes, Senator, but it is quite possible that only this
administration's determination to start a war in the Hyperion System
caused the Ousters to go through with the plan. We advised against
any actions concerning Hyperion."
Speaker Gibbons leaned forward. "You gave us the names of the
individuals necessary for the so-called Shrike Pilgrimage."
Albedo did not shrug again, but his projected posture was relaxed,
self-confident. "You asked us to come up with names of Web individuals
whose request? to the Shrike would change the outcome of the war we
predicted."
Gladstone steepled her fingers and tapped at her chin. "And have
you determined yet how these requests would change the outcome of
that war . . . this war?"
-------------------------------------------------- 193 --------------------------------------------------
"No," said Albedo.
"Councilor," said CEO Meina Gladstone, "please be apprised that
as of this moment, depending upon the outcome of the next few days,
the government of the Hegemony of Man is considering declaring that
a state of war exists between us and the entity known as the TechnoCore.
As de facto ambassador from that entity, you are entrusted with relaying
this fact."
Albedo smiled. He spread his hands. "M. Executive, the shock of
this terrible news must have caused you to make a poor joke. Declaring
war against the Core would be like . . . like a fish declaring war against
water, like a driver attacking his EMV because of disturbing news of
an accident elsewhere."
Gladstone did not smile. "I once had a grandfather on Patawpha,"
she said slowly, her dialect thickening, "who put six slugs from a pulse
rifle into the family EMV when it did not start one morning. You are
dismissed. Councilor."
Albedo blinked and disappeared. The abrupt departure was either a
deliberate breach of protocol--the projection usually left a room or let
others leave before deliquescing--or it was a sign that the controlling
intelligence in the Core had been shaken by the exchange.
Gladstone nodded at Kolchev and Gibbons. "I won't keep you gentlemen,"
she said. "But be assured that I expect total support when the
declaration of war is submitted in five hours."
"You'll have it," said Gibbons. The two men departed.
Aides came in through doorways and hidden panels, firing questions
and cueing comlogs for instructions. Gladstone held up a finger.
"Where is Severn?" she asked. At the sight of blank faces, she added,
"The poet . . . anist, I mean. The one doing my portrait?"
Several aides looked at one another as if the Chief had come unhinged.

"He's still asleep," said Leigh Hunt. "He'd taken some sleeping pills,
and no one thought to awaken him for the meeting."
"I want him here within twenty minutes," said Gladstone. "Brief
him. Where is Commander Lee?"
Niki Cardon, the young woman in charge of military liaison, spoke
up. "Lee was reassigned to perimeter patrol last night by Morpurgo and
the FORCE:sea sector chief. He'll be hopping from one ocean world
to another for twenty years our time. Right now he's. . . just translated
to FORCE:SEACOMCEN on Bressia, awaiting offworld transport."
"Get him back here," said Gladstone. "I want him promoted to rear
THE	PALL	OF	HYPERION
admiral or whatever the hell the necessary staff rank would be and then
assigned here, to me, not Government House or Executive Branch. He
can be the nuclear bagman if necessary."
Gladstone looked at the blank wall a moment. She thought of the
worlds she had walked that night; Barnard's World, the lamplight
through leaves, ancient brick college buildings; God's Grove with its
tethered balloons and free-floating zeplens greeting the dawn; Heaven's
Gate with its Promenade ... all these were first-wave targets. She shook
her head. "Leigh, I want you and Tarra and Brindenath to have the |
first drafts of both speeches—general address and the declaration of |
war—to me within forty-five minutes. Short. Unequivocal. Check the
files under Churchill and Strudcnsky. Realistic but defiant, optimistic



TWENTY-FIVE
Sol, the Consul, Father Dure, and the unconscious Het Mas-
teen were in the first of the Cave Tombs when they heard the
shots. The Consul went out alone, slowly, carefully, testing
for the storm of time tides which had driven them deeper into the valley.
"It's all right," he called back. The pale glow of Sol's lantern lighted
the back of the cave, illuminating three pale faces and the robed bundle
that was the Templar. "The tides have lessened," called the Consul.
Sol stood. His daughter's face was a pale oval below his own. "Are
you sure the shots came from Brawne's gun?"
The Consul motioned toward the darkness outside. "None of the rest
of us carried a slugthrowcr. I'll go check."
"Wait," said Sol, "I'll go with you."
Father Durc remained kneeling next to Het Masteen. "Go ahead.
I'll stay with him."
"One of us will check back within the next few minutes," said the
Consul.
The valley glowed from the pale light of the Time Tombs. Wind
roared from the south, but the airstream was higher tonight, above the
cliff walls, and the dunes on the valley Hoor were not disturbed. Sol
followed the Consul as he picked his way down the rough trail to the
valley floor and turned toward the head of the valley. Slight tugs of
deja vu reminded Sol of the violence of time tides an hour earlier, but
now even the remnants of the bizarre storm were fading.
Where the trail widened on the valley floor, Sol and the Consul
walked together past the scorched battlefield of the Crystal Monolith,
the tall structure exuding a milky glow reflected by the countless shards
littering the floor of the arroyo, then climbing slightly past the Jade
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Tomb with its pale-green phosphorescence, then turning again and
following the gentle switchbacks leading up to the Sphinx.
"My God," whispered Sol and rushed forward, trying not to jar his
sleeping child in her carrier. He knelt by the dark figure on the top
step.
"Brawne?" asked the Consul, stopping two paces back and panting
for breath after the sudden climb.
"Yes." Sol started to lift her head and then jerked his hand back
when he encountered something slick and cool extruding from her
skull.
"Is she dead?"
Sol held his daughter's head closer to his chest as he checked for a
pulse in the woman's throat. "No," he said and took a deep breath.
"She's alive . . . but unconscious. Give me your light."
Sol took the flashlight and played it over Brawne Lamia's sprawled
form, following the silver cord--"tentacle" was a better description,
since the thing had a fleshy mass to it that made one think of organic
origins--which led from the neural shunt socket in her skull across the
broad top step of the Sphinx, in through the open portal. The Sphinx
itself glowed the brightest of any of the Tombs, but the entrance was
very dark.
The Consul came closer. "What is it?" He reached out to touch the
silver cable, jerked his hand back as quickly as Sol had. "My God, it's
warm."
"It feels alive," agreed Sol. He had been chafing Brawne's hands,
and now he slapped her checks lightly, trying to awaken her. She did
not stir. He swiveled and played the flashlight beam along the cable
where it snaked out of sight down the entrance corridor. "I don't think
this is something she voluntarily attached herself to."
"The Shrike," said the Consul. He leaned closer to activate biornonitor
readouts on Brawne's wrist comlog. "Everything is normal
except her brain waves, Sol."
"What do they say?"
"They say that she's dead. Brain dead at least. No higher functions
whatsoever."
Sol sighed and rocked back on his heels. "We have to see where that
cable goes."
"Can't we just unhook it from the shunt socket?"
"Look," said Sol and played the light on the back of Brawne's head
while lifting a mass of dark curls away. The neural shunt, normally a
-------------------------------------------------- I 9 7 --------------------------------------------------
plasflesh disk a few millimeters wide with a ten-micrometer socket, had
seemed to melt . . . flesh rising in a red welt to connect with the
microlead extensions of the metal cable.
"It would take surgery to remove that," whispered the Consul. He
touched the angry-looking welt of flesh. Brawncdid not stir. The Consul retrieved the flashlight and stood. "You stay with her. I'll follow it in."
"Use the comm channels," said Sol, knowing how useless they had
been during the rise and fall of time tides.
The Consul nodded and moved forward quickly before fear made
him hesitate.
The chrome cable snaked down the main corridor, turning out of
sight beyond the room where the pilgrims had slept the night before.
The Consul glanced in the room, the flashlight beam illuminating the
blankets and packs they had left behind in their hurry.
He followed the cable around the bend in the corridor; through the
central portal where the hallway broke into three narrower halls; up a
ramp and right again down the narrow passage they had called "King
Tut's Highway" during their earlier explorations; then down a ramp;
along a low tunnel where he had to crawl, placing his hands and knees
carefully so as not to touch the flesh-warm metal tentacle; up an incline
so steep that he had to climb it like a chimney; down a wider corridor
he did not remember, where stones leaned inward toward the ceiling,
moisture dripping; and then down steeply, slowing his descent only by
losing skin on his palms and knees, crawling finally along a stretch
longer than the Sphinx had appeared wide. The Consul was thoroughly lost, trusting in the cable to lead him back out when the time came.
"Sol," he called at last, not believing for an instant that the communicator
would carry through stone and time tides.
"Here," came the barest whisper of the scholar's voice.
"I'm way the hell inside," the Consul whispered into his comlog.
"Down a corridor I don't remember us seeing before. It feels deep."
"Did you find where the cable ends?"
"Yeah," the Consul replied softly, sitting back to wipe sweat from
his face with a handkerchief.
"Nexus?" asked Sol, referring to one of the countless terminal nodes
where Web citizens could jack into the datasphere.
"No. The thing seems to flow directly into the stone of the floor
here. The corridor ends here too. I've tried moving it, but the join is
similar to where the neural shunt's been welded to her skull. It just
seems part of the rock."
________ THE FALL OF HYPERION ________
"Come on out," came Sol's voice over the rasp of static. "We'll try
to cut it off her."
In the damp and darkness of the tunnel, the Consul felt true claustrophobia
close on him for the first time in his life. He found it hard
to breathe. He was sure that something was behind him in the darkness,
closing off his air and only avenue of retreat. The pounding of his heart
was almost audible in the tight stone crawlway.
He took slow breaths, wiped his face again, and forced the panic
back. "That might kill her," he said between slow gasps for air.
No answer. The Consul called again, but something had cut off their
thin connection.
"I'm coming out," he said into the silent instrument and turned
around, playing his flashlight along the low tunnel. Had the cable-
tentacle twitched, or was that just a trick of light?
The Consul began crawling back the way he had come.
They had found Het Masteen at sunset, just minutes before the time
storm struck. The Templar had been staggering when the Consul, Sol,
and Dure had first seen him, and by the time they reached his fallen
form, Masteen was unconscious.
"Carry him to the Sphinx," said Sol.
At that moment, as if choreographed by the setting sun, the time
tides flowed over them like a tidal wave of nausea and deja vu. All
three men fell to their knees. Rachel awoke and cried with the vigor
of the newly born and terrified.
"Make for the valley entrance," gasped the Consul, standing with
Hct Masteen draped over his shoulder. "Got to ... get out . . . the
valley."
The three men moved toward the mouth of the valley, past the first
tomb, the Sphinx, but the time tides became worse, blowing against
them like a terrible wind of vertigo. Thirty meters beyond and they
could climb no More. They fell to hands and knees, Het Masteen
rolling across the hard-packed trail. Rachel had ceased wailing and
writhed in discomfort.
"Back," gasped Paul Dure. "Back down the valley. It was . . . better . . . below."
They retraced their steps, staggering along the trail like three drunkards,
each carrying a burden too precious to be dropped. Below the
Sphinx they rested a moment, backs to a boulder, while the very fabric
of space and time seemed to shift and buckle around them. It was as
if the world had been the surface of a flag and someone had unfurled
it with an angry snap. Reality seemed to billow and fold, then plunge
farther away, folding back like a wave cresting above them. The Consul
left the Templar lying against the rock and fell to all fours, panting,
fingers clinging to the soil in panic.
"The Mobius cube," said the Templar, stirring, his eyes still closed.
"We must have the Mobius cube."
"Damn," managed the Consul. He shook Het Masteen roughly.
"Why do we need it? Masteen, why do we need it?" The Templar's
head bobbed back and forth limply. He was unconscious once again.
"I'll get it," said Dure. The priest looked ancient and ill, his face
and lips pale.
The Consul nodded, lifted Het Masteen over his shoulder, helped
Sol gain his feet, and staggered away down the valley, feeling the riptides
of anti-entropic fields lessen as they moved farther away from the
Sphinx.
Father Dure had climbed the trail, climbed the long stairway, and
staggered to the entrance of the Sphinx, clinging to the rough stones
there the way a sailor would cling to a thrown line in rough seas. The
Sphinx seemed to totter above him, first tilting thirty degrees one way,
then fifty the other. Dure knew that it was only the violence of the
time tides distorting his senses, but it was enough to make him kneel
and vomit on the stone.
The tides paused a moment, like a violent surf resting between terrible
wave assaults, and Dure found his feet, wiped his mouth with the back
of his hand, and stumbled into the dark tomb.
He had not brought a flashlight; stumbling, he felt his way along the corridor, appalled by the twin fantasies of touching something slick and
cool in the darkness or of stumbling into the room where he was reborn
and rinding his own corpse there, still moldering from the grave. Dure
screamed, but the sound was lost in the tornado roar of his own pulse
as the time tides returned in force.
The sleeping room was dark, that terrible dark which means the total
absence of light, but Dure's eyes adjusted, and he realized that the
Mobius cube itself was glowing slightly, telltales winking.
He stumbled across the cluttered room and grabbed the cube, lifting
the heavy thing with a sudden burst of adrenaline. The Consul's summary
tapes had mentioned this artifact--Masteen's mysterious luggage
during the pilgrimage--as well as the fact that it was believed to hold
---------------- THE PALL OF HYPERION ----------------
an erg, one of the alien forcefield creatures used to power a Templar
trccship. Dure had no idea why the erg was important now, but he
clutched the box to his chest as he struggled back down the corridor,
outside and down the steps, deeper into the valley.
"Here!" called the Consul from the first Cave Tomb at the base of
the cliff wall. "It's better here."
Dure staggered up the trail, almost dropping the cube in his confusion
and sudden draining of energy; the Consul helped him the last thirty
steps into the tomb.
It was better inside. Dure could feel the ebb and flow of time tides
just beyond the cave entrance, but back in the rear of the cave, glow-
globes revealing elaborate carvings in their cold light, it was almost
normal. The priest collapsed next to Sol Weintraub and set the Mobius
cube near the silent but staring form of Het Masteen.
"He just awakened as you approached," whispered Sol. The baby's
eyes were very wide and very dark in the weak light.
The Consul dropped down next to the Templar. "Why do we need
the cube? Masteen, why do we need it7"
Het Masteen's gaze did not falter; he did not blink. "Our ally," he
whispered. "Our only ally against the Lord of Pain." The syllables were
etched with the distinctive dialect of the Templar world.
"How is it our ally?" demanded Sol, grabbing the man's robe in both
his fists. "How do we use it? When?"
The Templar's gaze was set on something in the infinite distance.
"We vied for the honor," he whispered, voice hoarse. "The True Voice
of the Sequoia Sempervirens was the first to contact the Keats retrieval
cybrid ... but / was one honored by the light of the Muir. It was the Yggdrasill, my Yggdrasill, whicli was offered in atonement for our sins
against the Muir." The Templar closed his eyes. A slight smile looked
incongruous on his stern-featured face.
The Consul looked at Dure and Sol. "That sounds More like Shrike
Cult terminology than Templar dogma."
"Perhaps it is both," whispered Durc. "There have been stranger
coalitions in the history of theology."
Sol lifted his palm to the Templar's forehead. The tall man was
burning up with fever. Sol rummaged through their only medpak in
search of a pain derm or fevcrpatch. Finding one, he hesitated. "I don't
know if Templars are within standard med norms. I don't want some
allergy to kill him."
The Consul took the feverpatch and applied it to the Templar's frail
upper arm. "They're within the norm." He leaned closer. "Masteen,
what happened on the windwagon?"
The Templar's eyes opened but remained unfocused. "Windwagon?"
"I don't understand," whispered Father Dure.
Sol took him aside. "Masteen never told his tale on the pilgrimage
out," he whispered. "He disappeared during our first night out on the
windwagon. Blood was left behind--plenty of blood--as well as his
luggage and the Mobius cube. But no Masteen."
"What happened on the windwagon?" the Consul whispered again.
He shook the Templar slightly to get his attention. "Think, True Voice
of the Tree Het Masteen!"
The tall man's face changed, his eyes coming into focus, the vaguely
Asiatic features settling into familiar, stern lines. "I released the elemental
from his confinement ..."
"The erg," Sol whispered to the baffled priest.
"... and bound him with the mind discipline I had learned in the
High Branches. But then, without warning, the Lord of Pain came
unto us."
"The Shrike," Sol whispered, More to himself than to the priest.
"Was it your blood spilled there?" the Consul asked the Templar.
"Blood?" Masteen drew his hood forward to hide his confusion. "No,
it was not my blood. The Lord of Pain had a ... celebrant... in his
grasp. The man fought. Attempted to escape the atonement spikes..."
"What about the erg?" pressed the Consul. "The elemental. What
did you expect it to do for you? ... to protect you from the Shrike?"
The Templar frowned and raised a trembling hand to his brow. "It
. . . was not ready. / was not ready. I returned it to its confinement.
The Lord of Pain touched me on the shoulder. I was . . . pleased . . .
that my atonement should be within the same hour as the sacrifice of
my treeship."
Sol leaned closer to Dure. "The treeship 'Yggdrasill was destroyed in
orbit that same evening," he whispered.
Het Masteen closed his eyes. "Tired," he whispered, his voice fading.
The Consul shook him again. "How did you get here? Masteen, how
did you get liere from the Sea of Grass?"
"I awoke among the Tombs," whispered the Templar without opening
his eyes. "Awoke among the Tombs. Tired. Must sleep."
"Let him rest," said Father Dure.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
The Consul nodded and lowered the robed man to a sleeping position.
"Nothing makes sense," whispered Sol as the three men and an infant
sat in the dim light and felt the time tides ebb and flow outside.
"We lose a pilgrim, we gain one," muttered the Consul. "It's as if
some bizarre game were being played."
An hour later, they had heard the shots echo down the valley.
Sol and the Consul crouched by the silent form of Brawne Lamia.
"We'd need a laser to cut that thing off," said Sol. "With Kassad
gone, so are our weapons."
The Consul touched the young woman's wrist. "Cutting it off might
kill her."
"According to the biomonitor, she's already dead."
The Consul shook his head. "No. Something else is going on. That
thing may be tapping into the Keats cybrid persona she's been carrying.
Perhaps when it's finished, it'll give us Brawne back."
Sol lifted his thrce-day-old daughter to his shoulder and looked out
over the softly glowing valley. "What a madhouse. Nothing's going as
we thought. If only your damn ship were here ... it would have cutting
tools in case we have to free Brawne from this . . . this thing . . . and
she and Mastecn might have a chance for survival in the surgery."
The Consul remained kneeling, staring at nothing. After a moment
he said, "Wait here with her, please," rose, and disappeared in the dark
maw of the Sphinx's entrance. Five minutes later, he was back with
his own large travel bag. He removed a rolled rug from the bottom and
unfurled it on the stone of the Sphinx's top stair.
It was an ancient rug, a little less than two meters long and a bit More than a meter wide. The intricately woven cloth had faded over
the centuries, but the monofilament flight threads still glowed like gold
in the dim light. Thin leads ran from the carpet to a single power cell
which the Consul now detached.
"Good God," whispered Sol. He remembered the Consul's tale of
his grandmother Siri's tragic love affair with Hegemony Shipman Merin
Aspic. It had been a love affair that had raised a rebellion against the
Hegemony and plunged Maui-Covenant into years of war. Merin Aspic
had flown to Firstsite on a friend's hawking mat.
The Consul nodded. "It belonged to Mike Osho, Grandfather Merin's
friend. Siri left it in her tomb for Merin to find. He gave it to me when
-------------------------------------------------- S 0 3 --------------------------------------------------
I was a child--just before the Battle of the Archipelago, where he and
the dream of freedom died."
Sol ran his hand across the centuries-old artifact. "It's a shame it
can't work here."
The Consul glanced up. "Why can't it?"
"Hyperion's magnetic field is below the critical level for EM vehicles,"
said Sol. "That's why there are dirigibles and skimmers rather
than EMVs, why the Benares was no longer a levitation barge." He
stopped, feeling foolish explaining this to a man who had been Hegemony
Consul on Hyperion for eleven local years. "Or am I wrong?"
The Consul smiled. "You're right that standard EMVs aren't reliable
here. Too much mass-to-lift ratio. But the hawking mat is all lift, almost
no mass. I've tried it here when I lived in the capital. It's not a smooth
ride . . . but it should work with one person aboard."
Sol glanced back down the valley, past the glowing forms of the Jade
Tomb, Obelisk, and Crystal Monolith, to where the shadows of the
cliff wall hid the entrance to the Cave Tombs. He wondered if Father
Dure and Het Masteen were still alone . . . still alive. "You're thinking
of going for help?"
"Of one of us going for help. Bringing the ship back. Or at least
freeing it and sending it back unmanned. We could draw lots to see
who goes."
It was Sol's turn to smile. "Think, my friend. Dure is in no condition
to travel and does not know the way in any case. I ..." Sol lifted
Rachel until the top other head touched his check. "The voyage might
last several days. I--we--do not have several days. If something is to
be done for her, we must remain here and take our chances. It is you
who must go."
The Consul sighed but did not argue.
"Besides," said Sol, "it is your ship. If anyone can free it from
Gladstone's interdiction, you can. And you know the Governor-General
well."
The Consul looked toward the west. "I wonder if Theo is still in
power."
"Let's go back and tell Father Dure our plan," said Sol. "Also, I left
the nursing paks in the cave, and Rachel is hungry."
The Consul rolled the carpet, slipped it in his pack, and stared down
at Brawne Lamia, at the obscene cable snaking away into darkness.
"Will she be all right?"
---------------- THE PALL OF HYPERION ----------------
"I'll have Paul come back with a blanket to stay with her while you
and I carry our other invalid back here. Will you leave tonight or wait
until sunrise?"
The Consul rubbed his cheeks tiredly. "I don't like the thought of
crossing the mountains at night, but we can't spare the time. I'll leave
as soon as I put some things together."
Sol nodded and looked toward the entrance to the valley. "I wish
Brawne could tell us where Silenus has gone."
"I'll look for him as I fly out," said the Consul. He glanced up at
the stars. "Figure thirty-six to forty hours of flying to get back to Keats.
A few hours to free the ship. I should be back here within two standard
days."
Sol nodded, rocking the crying child. His tired but amiable expression
did not conceal his doubt. He set his hand on the Consul's shoulder.
"It is right that we try, my friend. Come, let us talk to Father Dure,
see if our other fellow traveler is awake, and eat a meal together. It
looks as if Brawne brought enough supplies to allow us a final feast."
TWENTY-SIX
When Brawnc Lamia had been a child, her father a senator
and their home relocated, however briefly, from Lusus to
the wooded wonders of Tau Ceti Center's Administrative
Residential Complex, she had seen the ancient flatfilm Walt Disney
animation of Peter Pan. After seeing the animation, she had read the
book, and both had captured her heart.
For months, the five-standard-year-old girl had waited for Peter Pan
to arrive one night and take her away. She had left notes pointing the
way to her bedroom under the shingled dormer. She had left the house
while her parents slept and lain on the soft grass of the Deer Park lawns,
watching the milkish-gray night sky of TC2 and dreaming of the boy
from Ncverland who would some night soon take her away with him,
flying toward the second star to the right, straight on till morning. She
would be his companion, the mother to the lost boys, fellow nemesis
to the evil Hook, and most of all, Peter's new Wendy . . . the new
child-friend to the child who would not grow old.
And now, twenty years later, Peter had finally come for her.
Lamia had felt no pain, only the sudden, icy rush of displacement
as the Shrike's steel talon penetrated the neural shunt behind her ear.
Then she was away and flying.
She had moved through the datumplane and into the datasphere
before. Only weeks before, her time. Lamia had ridden into the
TechnoCore matrix with her favorite cyberpuke, silly BB Surbringer,
to help (ohnny steal back his cybrid retrieval persona. They had penetrated
the periphery and stolen the persona, but an alarm had been
tripped, BB had died. Lamia never wanted to enter the datasphere again.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
But she was there now.
The experience was like nothing she had ever had with comlog leads
or nodes before. That was like full stimsim--like being in a holodrama
with hill color and wraparound stereo--this was like being there.
Peter had finally come to take her away.
Lamia rose above the curve of Hyperion's planetary limb, seeing
the rudimentary channels of microwaved dataflow and tightbeamed
commlink that passed for an embryonic datasphere there. She did not
pause to tap into it, for she was following an orange umbilical skyward
toward the real avenues and highways of datumplane.
Hypcrion space had been invaded by FORCE and by the Ouster
Swarm, and both had brought the intricate folds and latticework of the
datasphere with them. With new eyes, Lamia could see the thousand
levels of FORCE dataflow, a turbulent green ocean of information shot
through with the red veins of secured channels and the spinning violet
spheres with their black phage outriders that were the FORCE Als.
This pseudopod of the great Web megadatasphere flowed out of normal
space through black funnels of shipboard farcasters, along expanding
wave fronts of overlapping, instantaneous ripples that Lamia recognized
as continuous bursts from a score of fatline transmitters.
She paused, suddenly unsure of where to go, which avenue to take.
It was as if she had been flying and her uncertainty had endangered
the magic--threatening to drop her back to the ground so many miles
below.
Then Peter took her hand and buoyed her up.
--Johnny!
--Hello, Brawne.
Her own body image clicked into existence at the same second she
saw and felt his. It was Johnny as she had last seen him--her client
and lover--Johnny of the sharp cheekbones, hazel eyes, compact nose
and solid jaw. Johnny's brownish-red curls still fell to his collar, and
his face remained a study in purposeful energy. His smile still made
her melt inside.
Johnny! She hugged him then, and she felt the hug, felt his strong
hands on her back as they floated high above everything, felt her breasts
flatten against his chest as he returned the hug with surprising strength
for his small frame. They kissed, and there was no denying that that was real.
Lamia floated at arms' length, her hands on his shoulders. Both their
-------------------------------------------------- 207 --------------------------------------------------
faces were lighted by the green and violet glow of the great datasphere
ocean above them.
--Is this real? She heard her own voice and dialect in the question
even though she knew she had only thought it.
--Yes. Real as any part of the datumplane matrix can be. We're on
the edge of the megasphere in Hyperion space. His voice still held that
elusive accent that she found so beguiling and maddening.
--What happened? With the words, she conveyed images to him of
the Shrike's appearance, the sudden, terrible invasion of the blade-
finger.
--Yes, thought johnny, holding her More tightly. Some/low it /reed1 me from the Schrijn loop and lacked us directly into the datasphere.
--Am I dead, Johnny?
The face of johnny Keats smiled down at her. He shook her slightly,
kissed her gently, and rotated so that they could both see the spectacle
above and below. No, you're not dead, Brawne, although you may be
hooked to some kind of bizarre life support while your datumplane analog
wanders here with me.
--Are you dead?
He grinned at her again. Not any longer, although life in a Schron
loop isn't all it's cracked up to be. It was like dreaming someone else's
dreams.
--I dreamed about you.
johnny nodded. I don't think that was me. I dreamed the same dreams
. . . conversations with Meina Gladstone, glimpses of the Hegemony
government councils . . .
--Yes!
He squeezed her hand. J suspect that they reactivated another Keats
cybrid. Somehow we were able to connect across all the light-years.
--Another cybrid? How? You destroyed the Core template, liberated
the persona . . .
Her lover shrugged. He was wearing a ruffled shirt and silk waistcoat
of a style she had never seen before. The flow of data through the
avenues above them painted both of them with pulses of neon light as
they floated there. I suspected that there would be More backups than
BB and I could find in such a shallow penetration of the Core periphery.
It doesn't matter, Brawne. If there's another copy, then he's me, and I
can't believe he'd be an enemy. Come on, let's explore.
Lamia held back a second as he tugged her upward. Explore what?
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
—This is our chance to see what's going on, Brawne. A chance to get
to the bottom of a lot of mysteries.
She heard the uncharacteristic timidity in her own voice/thought.
I'm not sure I want to, Johnny.
He rotated to look at her. Js this the detective I knew? What happened
to the woman who couldn't stand secrets?
—She's been through some rough times, Johnny. I've been able to
look back and see that becoming a detective was—in large part—a
reaction to my father's suicide. I'm still trying to solve the details of his
death. In the meantime, a lot of people have gotten hurt in real life.
Including you, my dear.
—And have you solved it?
—What?
—Your father's death?
Lamia frowned at him. J don't know. I don't think so.
Johnny pointed toward the fluid mass of the datasphere ebbing and
flowing above them. There are a lot of answers waiting up there, Brawne.
If we have the courage to go looking for them.
She took his hand again. We could die there.
—Yes.
Lamia paused, looked down toward Hyperion. The world was a dark
curve with the few isolated dataflow pockets glowing like campfires in
the night. The great ocean above them seethed and pulsated with light
and dataflow noise—and Brawne knew that it was only the smallest
extension of the megasphere beyond. She knew ... she felt . . . that
their reborn datumplane analogs could now go places no cyberpuke
cowboy had ever dreamt of.
With Johnny as her guide, Brawne knew that the megasphere and
TechnoCore were penetrable to depths no human had plumbed. And
she was scared.
But she was with Peter Pan, at last. And Neverland beckoned.
—A// right, Johnny. What are we waiting for?
They rose together toward the megasphere.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad followed Moneta through the portal
and found himself standing upon a vast lunar plain where a
terrible tree of thorns rose five kilometers high into a blood-
red sky. Human figures writhed on the many branches and spikes: the
closer forms recognizably human and in pain, the farther ones dwarfed
by distance until they resembled clusters of pale grapes.
Kassad blinked and took a breath beneath the surface of his quicksilver
skinsuit. He looked around, past the silent form of Moneta, tearing his
gaze from the obscenity of the tree.
What he had thought was a lunar plain was the surface of Hyperion,
at the entrance to the Valley of the Time Tombs, but a Hyperion
terribly changed. The dunes were frozen and distorted as if they had
been blasted and glazed into glass; the boulders and cliff faces also had
flowed and frozen like glaciers of pale stone. There was no
atmosphere—the sky was black with the pitiless clarity of airless moons
everywhere. The sun was not Hyperion's; the light was not of human
experience. Kassad looked up, and the viewing filters of his skinsuit
polarized to deal with terrible energies that filled the sky with bands of
blood red and blossoms of fierce white light.
Below him, the valley seemed to vibrate as if to unfelt tremors. The
Time Tombs glowed of their own interior energies, pulses of cold light
thrown many meters across the valley floor from every entrance, portal,
and aperture. The Tombs looked new, slick, and shining.
Kassad realized that only the skinsuit was allowing him to breathe
and saving his flesh from the lunar cold that had replaced the desert
warmth. He turned to look at Moneta, attempted to phrase an intelligent
question, failed, and raised his gaze to the impossible tree once again.
The thorn tree seemed to be made of the same steel and chrome and
a o 9
________ THE PALL OF HYPERION ________
cartilage as the Shrike itself: obviously artificial and yet horribly organic
at the same instant. The trunk was two or three hundred meters thick
at its base, the lower branches almost as broad, but the smaller branches
and thorns soon tapered to stilleto thinness as they splayed toward the
sky with their awful impalement of human fruit.
Impossible that humans so impaled could live for long; doubly impossible
that they could survive in the vacuum of this place outside of
time and space. But survive and suffer they did. Kassad watched them
writhe. All of them were alive. And all were in pain.
Kassad was aware of the pain as a great sound beyond hearing, a
huge, incessant foghorn of pain, as if thousands of untrained fingers
were falling on thousands of keys playing a massive pipe organ of pain.
The pain was so palpable that he searched the blazing sky as if the tree
were a pyre or huge beacon with the waves of pain clearly visible.
There was only the harsh light and lunar stillness.
Kassad raised the magnification of his skinsuit viewing lenses and
looked from branch to branch, thorn to thorn. The people writhing
there were of both genders and all ages. They wore a variety of torn
clothing and disarrayed cosmetics that spanned many decades if not
centuries. Many of the styles were not familiar to Kassad, and he assumed
that he was looking at victims from his future. There were
thousands . . . tens of thousands ... of victims there. All were alive.
All were in pain.
Kassad stopped, focused on a branch four hundred meters from the
bottom, upon a cluster of thorns and bodies far out from the trunk,
upon a single thorn three meters long from which a familiar purple
cape billowed. The form there writhed, twisted, and turned toward
Fedmahn Kassad.
He was looking at the impaled figure of Martin Silenus.
Kassad cursed and formed fists so tight that the bones in his hands
ached. He looked around for his weapons, magnifying vision to stare
into the Crystal Monolith. There was nothing there.
Colonel Kassad shook his head, realized that his skinsuit was a better
weapon than any he had brought to Hypcrion, and began to stride
toward the tree. He did not know how he would climb it, but he would
find a way. He did not know how he would get Silenus down alive--
get all of the victims down--but he would do so or die in the trying.
Kassad took ten paces and stopped on a curve of frozen dune. The
Shrike stood between him and the tree.
He realized that he was grinning fiercely beneath the chromium
forcefield of the skinsuit. This was what he had waited many years for.
This was the honorable warfare he had pledged his life and honor for
twenty years earlier in the FORCE Masada Ceremony. Single combat
between warriors. A struggle to protect the innocent. Kassad grinned, flattened the edge of his right hand into a silver blade, and stepped
forward.
--Kassad!
He looked back at Moneta's call. Light cascaded on the quicksilver
surface of her nude body as she pointed toward the valley.
A second Shrike was emerging from the tomb called the Sphinx.
Farther down the valley, a Shrike stepped from the entrance to the Jade
Tomb. Harsh light glinted from spikes and razorwire as another emerged
from the Obelisk, half a klick away.
Kassad ignored them and turned back toward the tree and its protector.
A hundred Shrikes stood between Kassad and the tree. He blinked,
and a hundred More appeared to his left. He looked behind him, and
a legion of Shrikes stood as impassively as sculptures on the cold dunes
and melted boulders of the desert.
Kassad pounded his own knee with his fist. Damn.
Moneta came up next to him until their arms touched. The skinsuits
flowed together, and he felt the warm flesh of her forearm against his.
She stood thigh to thigh with him.
--I love you, Kassad.
He gazed at the perfect lines other face, ignored the riot of reflections
and colors there, and tried to remember the first time he had met her,
in the forest near Agincourt. He remembered her startling green eyes
and short, brown hair. The fullness of her lower lip and how it tasted of tears the time he accidentally had bitten it.
He raised a hand and touched her cheek, feeling the warmth of skin
beneath the skinsuit. If you love me, he sent, stay here.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad turned away then and let out a scream
only he could hear in the lunar silence--a scream part rebel yell from
the distant human past, part FORCE cadet graduation shout, part karate
cry, and part pure defiance. He ran across the dunes toward the thorn
tree and the Shrike directly in front of it.
There were thousands of Shrikes in the hills and valleys now. Talons
clicked open in unison; light glinted on tens of thousands of scalpel-
sharp blades and thorns.
———————— THE FALL OF HYPERION ————————
Kassad ignored the others and ran toward the Shrike he thought was
the first he had seen. Above the thing, human forms writhed in the
solitude of their pain.
The Shrike he was running toward opened its arms as if offering an
embrace. Curved blades on its wrists, joints, and chest seemed to extend
from hidden sheaths.
Kassad screamed and closed the remaining distance.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I shouldn't go," said the Consul.
He and Sol had carried the still-unconscious Het Masteen from
the Cave Tomb to the Sphinx while Father Dure watched over
Brawne Lamia. It was almost midnight, and the valley glowed from the
reflected light of the Tombs. The wings of the Sphinx cut arcs from
the bit of sky visible to them between the cliff walls. Brawne lay motionless,
the obscene cable snaking into the darkness of the tomb.
Sol touched the Consul's shoulder. "We've discussed it. You should
go-"
The Consul shook his head and idly stroked the ancient hawking
mat. "It may be able to carry two. You and Dure could make it to
where the Benares is tied up."
Sol held his daughter's small head in the cusp of his hand as he
gently rocked her. "Rachel is two days old. Besides, this is where we
must be."
The Consul looked around. His eyes showed his pain. "This is where I should be. The Shrike ..."
Dure leaned forward. The luminescence from the tomb behind them
painted his high forehead and sharp checks with light. "My son, if you
stay here, it is for no other reason than suicide. If you attempt to bring
the ship back for M. Lamia and the Templar, you will be helping
others."
The Consul rubbed his cheek. He was very tired. "There's room for
you on the mat. Father."
Dure smiled. "Whatever my fate may be, I feel that I am meant to
meet it here. I will wait for your return."
The Consul shook his head again but moved to sit cross-legged on
the mat, pulling the heavy duffel bag toward him. He counted the
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
ration paks and water bottles Sol had packed for him. "There are too
many. You'll need More for yourself."
Durc chuckled. "We have enough food and water for four days,
thanks to M. Lamia. After that, if we have to fast, it will not be the
first time for me."
"But what if Silenus and Kassad return?"
"They can share our water," said Sol. "We can make another trip
to the Keep for food if the others return."
The Consul sighed. "All right." He touched the appropriate flight
thread designs, and the two meters of carpet stiffened and rose ten
centimeters above the stone. If there was a wobble in the uncertain
magnetic fields, it was not discernible.
"You'll need oxygen for the mountain crossing," said Sol.
The Consul lifted the osmosis mask from the pack.
Sol handed him Lamia's automatic pistol.
"I can't ..."
"It won't help us with the Shrike," said Sol. "And it might make the
difference of whether you get to Keats or not."
The Consul nodded and set the weapon in his bag. He shook hands
with the priest, then with the old scholar. Rachel's tiny fingers brushed
his forearm.
"Cood luck," said Pure. "May God be with you."
The Consul nodded, tapped the flight designs, and leaned forward
as the hawking mat lifted five meters, wobbled ever so slightly, and
then slid forward and up as if riding invisible rails in the air.
Tlie Consul banked right toward the entrance to the valley, passed
ten meters above the dunes there, and then banked left toward the
barrens. He looked back only once. The four figures on the top step of
the Sphinx, two men standing, two shapes reclining, looked very small
indeed. He could not make out the baby in Sol's arms.
As they had agreed, the Consul aimed the hawking mat toward the
west to overfly the City of Poets in liopes of finding Martin Silenus.
Intuition told him that the irascible poet might have detoured there.
The skies were relatively free of the light of battle, and the Consul had
to search shadows unbroken by starlight as he passed twenty meters
above tlie broken spires and domes of the city. There was no sign of
the poet. IfBrawne and Silenus had come this way, even their footprints
ill the sand had been erased by the night winds which now moved the
Consul's thinning hair and napped his clothing.
It was cold on the mat at this altitude. The Consul could feel the
shudders and vibrations as the hawking mat felt its way along unsteady
lines of force. Between Hyperion's treacherous magnetic field and the
age of the EM flight threads, he knew that there was a real chance the
mat would tumble out of the sky long before he reached the capital of
Keats.
The Consul shouted Martin Silenus's name several times, but there
was no response except for an explosion of doves from their nesting
place in the shattered dome of one of the gallerias. He shook his head
and banked south toward the Bridle Range.
Through his grandfather Merin, the Consul knew the history of this
hawking mat. It had been one of the first such playthings handcrafted
by Vladimir Sholokov, Web-famous lepidopterist and EM systems engineer,
and it may well have been the one he gave to his teenaged
niece. Sholokov's love for the young girl had become legend, as had
the fact that she spurned the gift of the flying carpet.
But others had loved the idea, and while hawking mats were soon
outlawed on worlds with sensible traffic control, they continued to show
up on colonial planets. This one had allowed the Consul's grandfather
to meet his grandmother Siri on Maui-Covenant.
The Consul looked up as the mountain range approached. Ten minutes
of flying had covered the two hour hike across the barrens. The
others had urged him not to stop at Chronos Keep to look for Silenus;
whatever fate might have befallen the poet there might well claim the
Consul too, before his journey had really begun. He contented himself
with hovering just beyond the windows two hundred meters up the cliff
wall, an arm's length from the terrace where they had looked out at
the valley three days before, and shouting for the poet.
Only echoes answered him from the dark banquet halls and corridors
of the Keep. The Consul held on tightly to the edges of the hawking
mat, feeling the sense of height and exposure this close to the vertical
stone walls. He was relieved when he banked the mat away from the
Keep, gained altitude, and climbed toward the mountain passes where
snow gleamed in the starlight.
He followed the cables of the tramway as they climbed the pass and
connected one nine-thousand-meter peak to the next across the wide
span of the mountain range. It was very cold at this altitude, and the
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Consul was glad for Kassad's extra thermal cape as he huddled under
it, taking care not to expose the flesh of his hands or cheeks. The gel
of the osmosis mask stretched across his face like some hungry symbiote,
gobbling oxygen where little was to be found.
It was enough. The Consul took slow, deep breaths as he flew ten
meters above the ice-caked cables. None of the pressurized tramcars
were running, and the isolation above the glaciers, sheer peaks, and
shadow-shrouded valleys was heart-stopping. The Consul was glad that
he was attempting this trip if for no other reason than to sec Hyperion's
beauty one last time, unspoiled by the terrible threat of the Shrike or
Ouster invasion.
It had taken the tramcar twelve hours to ferry them from south to
north. Despite the hawking mat's slow twenty-klick-per-hour airspeed,
the Consul made the crossing in six hours. Sunrise caught him still
above the high peaks. He startled awake, realized with a shock that he
had been dreaming while the hawking mat flew on toward a peak rising
another five meters above his altitude. The Consul could see boulders
and snowfields fifty meters ahead. A black bird with a three-meter
wingspan--one of those the locals called a harbinger--pushed off from
its icy eyrie and floated in the thin air, looking back at the Consul with
black and beady eyes while he banked steeply to the left, felt something
give way in the hawking mat's flight gear, and fell thirty meters before
the flight threads found purchase and leveled the carpet off.
The Consul gripped the edges of the mat with fingers gone white.
He had tied the strap of his duffel bag around his belt, otherwise the
bag would have tumbled off to a glacier far below.
There was no sign of the tramway. Somehow the Consul had slept
long enough to allow the hawking mat to drift off course. For a second,
he panicked, jinking the mat this way and then that, desperate
for a path between the peaks surrounding him like teeth. Then he saw
the morning sunlight golden on the slopes ahead of him and to his
right, the shadows leaping across glaciers and high tundra behind him
and to his left, and he knew that he was still on the right track. Beyond
this final spine of high peaks lay the southern foothills. And beyond
that . , .
The hawking mat seemed to hesitate as the Consul tapped flight
designs and urged it higher, but it rose in reluctant steps until it cleared
the final nine-thousand-meter peak and he could see the lower mountains
beyond, dwindling to foothills a mere three thousand meters above
sea level. The Consul descended with gratitude.
217
He found the tramlinc gleaming in sunlight, eight klicks south of
where he left the Bridle Range. Tramcars hung silently around the west
terminal station. Below, the sparse buildings of the village of Pilgrims'
Rest appeared as abandoned as they had several days earlier. There was
no sign of the windwagon wlierc it had been left at the low pier leading
out over the shallows of the Sea of Grass.
The Consul let down near the pier, deactivated the hawking mat,
stretched his legs with some pain before rolling up the mat for safekeeping,
and found a toilet in one of the abandoned buildings near the
wharf. When he emerged, the morning sun was creeping down the
foothills and erasing the last shadows there. As far as he could see to
the soutli and west stretched the Sea of Crass, its tabletop smoothness
belied by occasional breezes which sent ripples across the verdant surface,
briefly revealing the russet and ultramarine stalks beneath in a movement so wavclikc that one expected to see whitecaps and fish
leaping.
There were no fish in the Sea of Grass, but there were grass serpents
twenty meters long, and if the Consul's hawking mat failed him out
there, even a safe landing would not keep him alive for long.
The Consul unrolled the mat, set his bag behind him, and activated the carpet. He stayed relatively low, twenty-five meters above the surface,
but not so low that a grass serpent might mistake him for a low-
flying morsel. It had taken the windwagon less than a full Hyperion
day to ferry them across the Sea, but with the winds frequently from
the northeast, that had involved quite a bit of tacking to and fro. The
Consul bet that he could fly across this narrowest part of the Sea in
less than fifteen hours. He tapped the forward control designs, and the
hawking mat sped faster.
Witliin twenty minutes, the mountains had fallen behind until the
foothills were lost in the haze of distance. Within an hour, the peaks
began to shrink as the curve of the world hid their base. Two hours
out, and the Consul could see only the highest of the peaks as an
indistinct, serrated shadow rising from the haze.
Then the Sea of Grass spread to all horizons, unchanging except for
the sensuous ripples and furrows caused by the occasional breeze. It
was much warmer here than on the high plateau north of the Bridle
Range. The Consul shed his thermal cape, then his coat, then his
sweater. The sun beat down with surprising intensity for such high
latitudes. The Consul fumbled in his bag, found the wrinkled and
battered tricome cap he had worn with such aplomb just two days
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
earlier, and wedged it on his head to give some shade. His forehead
and balding skull were already sunburned.
About four hours out, he ate his first meal of the trip, chewing on
the tasteless strips of ration-pak protein as if they were filet mignon.
The water was the most delicious part of the meal, and the Consul had
to fight his urge to empty all the bottles in a single orgy of drinking.
The Sea of Grass stretched below, behind, and ahead. The Consul
dozed, snapping awake each time with a sense of falling, hands gripping
the edge of the rigid hawking mat. He realized that he should have tied
himself in with the single rope he had brought in his bag, but he didn't
want to land—the grass was sharp and higher than his head. Although
he had seen none of the telltale V-shaped wakes of the grass serpents,
he could not be sure they were not resting in wait below.
He wondered idly where the windwagon had gone. The thing had
been fully automated and presumably programmed by the Church
of the Shrike, since they had sponsored the pilgrimage. What other
duties might the thing have had? The Consul shook his head, sat
upright, and pinched his cheeks. He had been drifting in and out
of dreams even as he thought about the windwagon. Fifteen hours
had seemed a short enough time as he stood talking about it in the
Valley of the Time Tombs. He glanced at his comlog; five hours had
passed.
The Consul lifted the mat to two hundred meters, looked carefully
for any sign of a serpent, and then brought the mat down to a hover
five meters above the grass. Carefully he extracted the rope, made a
loop, moved to the front of the carpet, and wound several lengths around
the carpet, leaving enough slack to slide his body in before tightening
the knot.
If the mat fell, the tether would be worse than useless, but the snug
bands of rope against his back gave a sense of security as he leaned
forward to tap the flight designs again, leveled the carpet out at forty
meters, and laid his cheek against the warm fabric. Sunlight filtered
through his fingers, and he realized that his bare forearms were getting
a terrible sunburn.
He was too tired to sit up and roll down his sleeves.
A breeze came up. The Consul could hear a rustling and sliding
below as either the grasses blew or something large slithered past.
He was too tired to care. The Consul closed his eyes and was asleep
in less than thirty seconds.
219
The Consul dreamed of his home--his true home--on MauiCovenant
and the dream was filled with color: the bottomless blue sky, the
wide expanse of the South Sea, ultramarine fading to green where the
Equatorial Shallows began, the startling greens and yellows and orchid
reds of the motile isles as they were herded north by the dolphins . . . extinct now since the Hegemony invasion in the Consul's childhood,
but quite alive in his dream, breaking the water in great leaps that sent
a thousand prisms of light dancing in the pure air.
In his dream, tlie Consul was a child again, and lie stood on the
highest level of a trochouse on their First Family Isle. Grandmother
Siri was next to him--not the regal grande dame he had known but the beautiful young woman his grandfather had met and fallen in love
with. The trcesails were napping as the southcrlies came up, moving
the herd of motile isles in precise formation through tlie blue channels
through the Shallows. Just on the northern horizon, he could see tlie
first of the Equatorial Archipelago islands rising green and permanent
against an evening sky.
Siri touched his shoulder and pointed to the west.
The isles were burning, sinking, their keel roots writhing in purposeless
pain. The dolphin hcrdcrs were gone. Tlie sky rained fire. The
Consul recognized billion-volt lances as they fried the air and left blue-
gray afterimages on his retinas. Underwater explosions lighted the
oceans and sent thousands of fish and fragile sea creatures bobbing to
the surface in their dcatli throes.
"Why?" asked Grandmother Siri, but her voice was the soft whisper
of a teenager.
The Consul tried to answer her but could not. Tears blinded him.
He reached for her hand, but she was no longer there, and the sense
that she was gone, that he could never make up for his sins, hurt him
so badly that lie found it impossible to breathe. His throat was clogged
with emotion. Then he realized that it was smoke that burned his eyes
and filled his lungs; the Family Isle was on fire.
Tlie child who was the Consul staggered forward in the blue-black
darkness, hunting blindly for someone to hold his hand, to reassure
him.
A hand closed on his. It was not Siri's. The hand was impossibly
firm as it squeezed. The fingers were blades.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
The Consul came awake gasping.
It was dark. He had slept for at least seven hours. Struggling with
the ropes, he sat up, stared at his glowing comlog display.
Twelve hours. He had slept for twelve hours.
Every muscle in his body ached as he leaned over and peered below.
The hawking mat held a steady altitude of forty meters, but he had no
idea where he was. Low hills rose and fell below. The mat must have
cleared some by only two or three meters; orange grass and scrub lichen
grew in spongy tufts.
Somewhere, sometime in the past few hours, he had passed over
the south shore of the Sea of Grass, missed the small port of Edge
and the Hoolie River docks where their levitation barge, Benares, had
been tied up.
The Consul had no compass--compasses were useless on Hype-
rion--and his comlog had not been programmed as an inertial direction
finder. He had planned to find his way back to Keats by following the
Hoolie south and west, retracing the laborious path of their upriver
pilgrimage minus the bends and turns in the river.
Now he was lost.
The Consul set the hawking mat down on a low hilltop, stepped off
to solid ground with a groan of pain, and collapsed the mat. He knew
that the charge in the flight threads must be at least a third expended
by now . . . perhaps More. He had no idea how much efficiency the
mat lost with age.
The hills looked like the rough country southwest of the Sea of Grass,
but there was no sight of the river. His comlog told him that it had
been dark for only an hour or two, but the Consul could see no hint
of sunset in the west. The skies were overcast, shielding both starlight
and any space battles from sight.
"Damn," whispered the Consul. He walked around until circulation
returned, urinated at the edge of a small drop-off, and returned to his
mat to drink from a water bottle. Think.
He had set the mat on a southwesterly course that should have left
the Sea of Grass at or near the port city of Edge. If he had simply
overflown Edge and the river while he slept, the river would be somewhere
to his south, off to his left. But if he had aimed poorly as he left
Pilgrims' Rest, been just a few degrees off to his left, then the river
---------------------------------- g a i ----------------------------------
would be winding northeast somewhere to his right. Even if he went
the wrong way, he eventually would find a landmark--the coast of the
Northern Mane if nothing else--but the delay could cost him a full
day.
The Consul kicked at a rock and folded his arms. The air was very
cool after the heat of the day. A shiver made him realize that he was
half-sick from sunburn. He touched his scalp and pulled his fingers
away with a curse. Which way?
The wind whistled through low sage and sponge lichen. The Consul
felt very far removed from the Time Tombs and the threat of the Shrike,
but he felt the presence of Sol and Dure and Het Masteen and Brawne
and the missing Silcnus and Kassad as an urgent pressure on his shoulders.
The Consul had joined the pilgrimage as a final act of nihiiism,
a pointless suicide to put an end to his own pain, pain at the loss of even the memory of wife and child, killed during the Hegemony's
machinations on Brcssia, and pain at the knowledge of his terrible
betrayal--betrayal of the government he had served for almost four
decades, betrayal of the Ousters who had trusted him.
The Consul sat on a rock and felt that purposeless self-hatred fade
as he thought of Sol and his infant child waiting in the Valley of the Time Tombs. He thought of Brawne, that brave woman, energy incarnate,
lying helpless with that lecchlikc extension of the Shrike's evil
growing from her skull.
He sat, activated the mat, and rose to eight hundred meters, so close
to the ceiling of clouds that he could have raised a hand and touched
them.
A second's break in the cloud cover far to his left showed a glint of
ripple. The Hoolie lay about five klicks to the south.
The Consul banked the hawking mat steeply to his left, feeling the
tired containment field trying to press him to the carpet but feeling safer
with the ropes still attached. Ten minutes later, lie was high over the water, swooping down to ascertain that it was the broad Hoolie rather
than some tributary.
It was the Hoolie. Radiant gossamers glowed in the low, marshy
areas along the banks. The tall, crenelated towers of architect ants
cast ghostly silhouettes against a sky only slightly darker than the
land.
The Consul rose to twenty meters, took a drink of water from his
bottle, and headed downriver at full speed.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION.
Sunrise found him below the village of Doukhobor's Copse, almost
to the Karia Locks, where the Royal Transport Canal cut west toward
the northern urban settlements and the Mane. The Consul knew that
it was less than a hundred and fifty klicks to the capital from here—
but still a maddening seven hours away at the hawking mat's slow pace.
This was the point in the trip where he had hoped to find a military
skimmer on patrol, one of the passenger dirigibles from the Copse of
Naiad, even a fast powerboat he could commandeer. But there was no
sign of life along the banks of the Hoolie except for the occasional
burning building or ghee lamps in distant windows. 'I he docks had
been stripped of all boats. The river manta pens above the Locks were
empty, the great gates open to the current, and no transport barges were
lined up below where the river widened to twice its upriver size.
The Consul swore and flew on.
It was a beautiful morning as the sunrise illuminated the low clouds
and made every bush and tree stand out in the low, horizontal light.
It felt to the Consul as if it had been months since he had seen real
vegetation. Weirwood and halfoak trees rose to majestic heights on the
distant bluffs, while in the floodplain, the rich light caught the green
shoots of a million periscope beans rising from their indigenie paddies.
Womangrove root and firefern lined the banks, and each branch and
twisting stood out in the sharp light of sunrise.
The clouds swallowed the sun. It began to rain. The Consul tugged
on the battered tricorne, huddled under Kassad's extra cloak, and flew
on southward at a hundred meters.
The Consul tried to remember. How long did the child Rachel have?
Despite his long sleep the day before, the Consul's mind was heavy
with fatigue toxins. Rachel had been four days old when they had arrived
at the valley. That had been . . . four days ago.
The Consul rubbed his cheek, reached for a water bottle, and found
them all empty. He could easily dip down and refill the bottles in the
river, but he did not want to take the time. His sunburn ached and
made him shiver as the rain dripped from his cap.
So/ said that as long as I'm back by nightfall it would be all right.
Rachel was born after twenty-hundred hours, translated to Hyperion
time. If that's right, if there s no error, she has until eight tonight. The
Consul rubbed water from his cheeks and eyebrows. Say seven More
hours to Keats. An how or two to liberate the ship. Theo will help . . .
he's Governor-General now. I can convince him that it's in the Hegemony's
interest to countervene Gladstone's orders to quarantine the ship.
If necessary, I'll tell him that she ordered me to conspire with the Ousters
to betray the Web.
Say, ten hours plus the fifteen-minute flight in the ship. Should be at
least an hour to spare before sunset. Rachel will be only a few minutes
old, but. . . what? What do we try besides the cryogenic fugue lockers? Nothing. It has to be that. It was always Sofs last chance, despite the
doctors' warnings that it might kill the child. But then, what about
Brawne?
The Consul was thirsty. He pulled back the cloak, but the rain had
lessened to the point that it was a fine drizzle, just enough to wet his
lips and tongue to make him More thirsty. He cursed softly and began
to descend slowly. Perhaps he could hover over the river just long
enough to fill his bottle.
The hawking mat quit flying thirty meters above the river. One second
it was descending gradually, as smooth as a carpet on a gentle glass
incline, and the next instant it was tumbling and plummeting out of
control, a two-meter rug and terrified man thrown out of the window
of a ten-story building.
The Consul screamed and tried to jump free, but the rope connecting
him to the carpet and the duffel strap tied to his belt tangled him in
the napping mass of hawking mat, and he fell with it, tumbling and
twisting, the final twenty meters to the hard surface of the waiting Hoolie
River.
TWENTY-NINE
Sol Weintraub had high hopes the night the Consul left. At long
last, they were doing something. Or trying to. Sol did not
believe that the cryogenic vaults of the Consul's ship would be
the answer to saving Rachel--medical experts on Renaissance Vector
had pointed out the extreme danger of that procedure--but it was good
to have an alternative, any alternative. And Sol felt that they had been
passive long enough, awaiting the Shrike's pleasure like condemned criminals awaiting the guillotine.
The interior of the Sphinx seemed too treacherous this night, and
Sol brought their possessions out on the broad granite porch of the
tomb, where he and Dure sought to make Masteen and Brawne comfortable
under blankets and capes, with packs for pillows. Brawne's
medical monitors continued to show no brain activity whatsoever, while
her body rested comfortably. Masteen turned and tossed in the grip of
fever.
"What do you think the Templar's problem is?" asked Dure. "Disease?"

"It could be simple exposure," said Sol. "After being abducted from
the windwagon, he found himself wandering in the barrens and here
in the Valley of the Time Tombs. He was eating snow for liquid and
had no food at all."
Dure nodded and checked the FORCE medpatch they had attached
to the inside of Masteen's arm. The telltales showed the steady drip of
intravenous solution. "But it seems to be something else," said the Jesuit. "Almost a madness."
"Templars have an almost telepathic connection to their treeships,"
said Sol. "It must have driven Voice of the Tree Masteen a bit mad
s a 4
when he watched the destruction of the Yggdrasill. Especially if he
somehow knew it was necessary."
Dure nodded and continued sponging the Templar's waxy forehead.
It was after midnight, and the wind had come up, moving vermilion
dust in lazy spirals and moaning around the wings and rough edges of the Sphinx. The Tombs glowed brightly and then dimmed, now one
tomb, then the next, in no apparent order or sequence. Occasionally
the tug of time tides would assail both men, making them gasp and
grip the stone, but the wave of dejd vu and vertigo would fade after a
moment. With Brawne Lamia attached to the Sphinx via the cable
welded to her skull, they could not leave.
Sometime before dawn, the clouds parted and the sky became visible,
the thickly clustered stars almost painful in their clarity. For a while,
the only signs of the great fleets warring there were the occasional fusion
trails, narrow diamond-scratches on the pane of night, but then the
blossoms of distant explosions began to unfurl again, and within the
hour the glow of the Tombs had been dimmed by the violence above.
"Who do you think will win?" asked Father Dure. The two men sat
with their backs to the stone wall of the Sphinx, faces raised to the cusp
of sky revealed between the tomb's forward-curved wings.
Sol was rubbing Rachel's back as she slept on her stomach, rear end
raised under the thin blankets. "From what the others say, it seems
preordained that the Web must suffer a terrible war."
"So you believe the Al Advisory Council's predictions?"
Sol shrugged in the darkness. "I really know nothing about politics
... or the Core's accuracy in predicting things. I'm a minor scholar
from a small college on a backwater world. But I have the feeling that
something terrible is in store for us ... that some rough beast is slouching
toward Bethlehem to be born."
Dure smiled. "Yeats," he said. The smile faded. "I suspect that this
place is the new Bethlehem." He looked down the valley toward the
glowing Tombs. "I spent a lifetime teaching about St. Teilhard's theories
of evolution toward the Omega Point. Instead of that, we have this.
Human folly in the skies, and a terrible Antichrist waiting to inherit
the rest."
"You think that the Shrike is the Antichrist?"
Father Dure set his elbows on his raised knees and folded his hands.
"If it's not, we're all in trouble." He laughed bitterly. "It wasn't long
ago that I would have been delighted to discover an Antichrist. . . even
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
the presence of some antidivine power would have served to shore up
my failing belief in any form of divinity."
"And now?" Sol asked quietly.
Dure spread his fingers. "I too have been crucified."
Sol thought of the images from Lenar Hoyt's story about Dure; the
elderly Jesuit nailing himself to a tesia tree, suffering the years of pain
and rebirth rather than surrender to the cruciform DNA parasite which
even now burrowed under the flesh of his chest.
Dure lowered his face from the sky. "There was no welcome from
a heavenly Father," he said softly. "No reassurance that the pain and
sacrifice had been worth anything. Only pain. Pain and darkness and
then pain again."
Sol's hand stopped moving on his infant's back. "And that made you
lose your faith?"
Dure looked at Sol. "On the contrary, it made me feel that faith is
all the More essential. Pain and darkness have been our lot since the
Fall of Man. But there must be some hope that we can rise to a higher
level . . . that consciousness can evolve to a plane More benevolent
than its counterpoint of a universe hardwired to indifference."
Sol nodded slowly. "I had a dream during Rachel's long battle with
Merlin's sickness . . . my wife Sarai had the same dream . . . that I
was being called to sacrifice my only daughter."
"Yes," said Dure. "I listened to the Consul's summary on disk."
"Then you know my response," said Sol. "First, that Abraham's path
of obedience can no longer be followed, even if there is a God demanding
such obedience. Second, that we have offered sacrifices to
that God for too many generations . . . that the payments of pain must
stop."
"Yet you arc here," said Dure, gesturing toward the valley, the
Tombs, the night.
"I'm here, "agreed Sol. "But not to grovel. Rather to see what response
these powers have to my decision." He touched his daughter's back
again. "Rachel is a day and a half old now and growing younger each
second. If the Shrike is the architect of such cruelty, I want to face
him, even if he is your Antichrist. If there is a God and he has done
this thing, I will show the same contempt to him."
"Perhaps we've all shown too much contempt as it is," mused Dure.
Sol looked up as a dozen pinpoints of fierce light expanded into
ripples and shock waves of plasma explosions far out in space. "I wish
we had the technology to fight God on an equal basis," he said in low,
tight tones. "To beard him in his den. To fight back for all of the
injustices heaped on humanity. To allow him to alter his smug arrogance
or be blown to hell."
Father Dure raised one eyebrow and then smiled slightly. "I know
the anger you feel." The priest gently touched Rachel's head. "Let's try
to get some sleep before sunrise, shall we?"
Sol nodded, lay next to his child, and pulled the blanket up to his
cheek. He heard Dure whispering something that might have been a
soft good night, or perhaps a prayer.
Sol touched his daughter, closed his eyes, and slept.
The Shrike did not come in the night. Nor did it come the next
morning as sunlight painted the southwestern cliffs and touched the
top of the Crystal Monolith. Sol awoke as sunlight crept down the
valley; he found Dure sleeping next to him, Masteen and Brawne still
unconscious. Rachel was stirring and fussing. Her cry was that of a
hungry newborn. Sol fed her with one of the last nursing paks, pulling
the heating tab and waiting a moment for the milk to reach body
temperature. Cold had settled in the valley overnight, and frost glinted
on the steps to the Sphinx.
Rachel ate greedily, making tlie soft mewling and sucking sounds
that Sol remembered from More than fifty years earlier as Sarai had
nursed her. When she finished, Sol burped her and left her on his
shoulder as he rocked gently to and fro.
A day and a half left.
Sol was very tired. He was growing old despite the single Poulsen
treatment a decade earlier. At the time he and Sarai would normally
have been freed of parental duties--their only child in graduate school
and off on an archaelogical dig in the Outback--Rachel had fallen prey
to Merlin's sickness, and parenthood had soon descended upon them
once again. The curve of those duties rose as Sol and Sarai grew
older--then Sol alone, after the air crash on Barnard's World--and
now he was very, very tired. But despite that, despite everything, Sol
was interested to note that he did not regret a single day of caring for
his daughter.
A day and a half left.
Father Dure awoke after a bit, and the two men made breakfast from
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
the various canned goods Brawne had brought back with her. Het
Masteen did not awaken, but Dure applied the next-to-last medpak,
and the Templar began receiving fluids and I.V. nutrient.
"Do you think M. Lamia should have the last medpak applied?"
asked Dure.
Sol sighed and checked her comlog monitors again. "I don't think
so, Paul. According to this, blood sugar is high . . . nutrient levels
check out as if she had just eaten a decent meal."
"But how?"
Sol shook his head. "Perhaps that damned thing is some sort of
umbilical." He gestured toward the cable attached to the point in her
skull where the neural shunt socket had been.
"So what do we do today?"
Sol peered at a sky already fading to the green and lapis dome they
had grown used to on Hyperion. "We wait," he said.
Het Masteen awoke in the heat of the day, shortly before the sun
reached the zenith. The Templar sat straight up and said, "The Tree!"
Dure hurried up the steps from where he had been pacing below.
Sol lifted Rachel from where she lay in shadow near the wall and moved
to Masteen's side. The Templar's eyes were focused on something above the level of the cliffs. Sol glanced up but could see only the paling sky.
"The Tree!" cried the Templar again, and lifted one roughened hand.
Dure restrained the man. "He's hallucinating. He thinks he see the Yggdrasill, his treeship."
Het Masteen struggled against their hands. "No, not the Yggdrasill," he gasped through parched lips, "the Tree. The Final Tree. The Tree of Pain!"
Both men looked up then, but the sky was clear except for wisps of
clouds blowing in from the southwest. At that moment, there was a
surge of time tides, and both Sol and the priest bowed their heads in
sudden vertigo. It passed.
Het Masteen was trying to get to his feet. The Templar's eyes were
still focused on something far away. His skin was so hot that it burned
Sol's hands.
"Get the final medpak," snapped Sol. "Program the ultramorph and
antifever agent." Dur6 hurried to comply.
"The Tree of Pain!" managed Het Masteen. "I was meant to be its
Voice! The erg is meant to drive it through space and time! The Bishop
and the Voice of the Great Tree have chosen me! I cannot fail them."
He strained against Sol's arms a second, then collapsed back to the
stone porch. "I am the True Chosen," he whispered, energy leaving
him like air from an emptying balloon, "I must guide the Tree of Pain
during the time of Atonement." He closed his eyes.
Dure attached the final medpak, made sure the monitor was set for
Templar quirks in metabolism and body chemistry, and triggered the
adrenaline and painkillers. Sol huddled over the robed form.
"That's not Templar terminology or theology," said Dure. "He's using
Shrike Cult language." The priest caught Sol's eye. "That explains
some of the mystery . . . especially from Brawne's tale. For some reason,
the Templars have been in collusion with the Church of the Final
Atonement . . . the Shrike Cult."
Sol nodded, slipped his own comlog on Masteen's wrist and adjusted
the monitor.
"The Tree of Pain must be the Shrike's fabled tree of thorns," muttered
Dure, glancing up at the empty sky where Masteen had been
staring. "But what does he mean that he and the erg were chosen to
drive it through space and time? Does he really think he can pilot the
Shrike's tree the way the Templars do the treeships? Why?"
"You'll have to ask him in the next life," said Sol tiredly. "He's
dead."
Dure checked the monitors, added Lenar Hoyt's comlog to the array.
They tried the medpak revival stimulants, CPR, and mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation. The monitor telltales did not waver. Het Masteen, Templar
True Voice of the Tree and Shrike Pilgrim, was indeed dead.
They waited an hour, suspicious of all things in this perverse valley
of the Shrike, but when the monitors began showing rapid decomposition
of the corpse, they buried Masteen in a shallow grave fifty meters
up the trail toward the entrance to the valley. Kassad had left behind
a collapsible shovel--labeled "entrenching tool" in FORCE jargon--
and the men took turns digging while the other watched over Rachel
and Brawne Lamia.
The two men, one cradling a child, stood in the shadow of a boulder
while Dure said a few words before the soil was dropped onto the
makeshift fiberplastic shroud.
"I did not truly know M. Masteen," said the priest. "We were not
of the same faith. But we were of the same profession; Voice of the
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Tree Mastecn spent much of his life doing what he understood to be
God's work, pursuing God's will in the writings of the Muir and the
beauties of nature. His was the true faith--tested by difficulties, tempered
by obedience, and, in the end, sealed by sacrifice."
Dure paused and squinted into a sky that had faded to gunmetal
glare. "Please accept your servant, 0 Lord. Welcome him into your
arms as you will someday welcome us, your other searchers who have
lost their way. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit, amen."
Rachel began to cry. Sol walked her around as Dure shoveled the earth onto the man-shaped bundle of fiberplastic.
They returned to the porch of the Sphinx and gently moved Brawne
into what little shade remained. There was no way to shield her from
the late afternoon sun unless they carried her into the tomb itself, and
neither man wanted to do that.
"The Consul must be More than halfway to the ship by now," said
the priest after taking a long drink of water. The man's forehead was
sunburned and filmed with sweat.
"Yes," said Sol.
"By this time tomorrow, he should be back here. We'll use laser
cutters to free Brawne, then set her in the ship surgery. Perhaps Rachel's
reverse aging can be arrested in cryogenic storage, despite what the
doctors said."
"Yes."
Dure lowered the water bottle and looked at Sol. "Do you believe
that is what will happen?"
Sol returned the other man's gaze. "No."
Shadows stretched from the southwestern cliff walls. The day's heat
coalesced into a solid thing, then dissipated a bit. Clouds moved in
from the south.
Rachel slept in the shadows near the doorway. Sol walked up to
where Paul Dure stood staring down the valley and set a hand on the
priest's shoulder. "What are you thinking about, my friend?"
Dure did not turn. "I am thinking that if I did not truly believe that
suicide was a mortal sin, that I would end things to allow young Hoyt
a chance at life." He looked at Sol and showed a hint of smile. "But
is it suicide when this parasite on my chest ... on his chest then . . .
would someday drag me kicking and screaming to my own resurrection?"
"Would it be a gift to Hoyt," asked Sol quietly, "to bring him back
to this?"
Dure said nothing for a moment. Then he clasped Sol's upper arm.
"I think that I shall take a walk."
"Where?" Sol squinted out at the thick heat of the desert afternoon.
Even with the low cloud cover, the valley was an oven.
The priest made a vague gesture. "Down the valley. I will be back
before too long."
"Be careful," said Sol. "And remember, if the Consul runs across a
patrol skimmer along the Hoolie, he might be back as early as this
afternoon."
Dure nodded, went over to pick up a water bottle and to touch Rachel
gently, and then he went down the long stairway of the Sphinx, picking
his way slowly and carefully, like an old, old man.
Sol watched him leave, becoming a smaller and smaller figure, distorted
by heat waves and distance. Then Sol sighed and went back to
sit near his daughter.
Paul Dure tried to keep to the shadows, but even there the heat was
oppressive, weighing on him like a great yoke on his shoulders. He
passed the Jade Tomb and followed the path toward the northern cliffs
and the Obelisk. That tomb's thin shadow painted darkness on the
roseate stone and dust of the valley floor. Descending again, picking
his way through the rubble surrounding the Crystal Monolith, Dure
glanced up as a sluggish wind moved shattered panes and whistled
through cracks high up on the face of the tomb. He saw his reflection
in the lower surfaces and remembered hearing the organ song of the
evening wind rising from the Cleft when he had found the Bikura high
on the Pinion Plateau. That seemed like lifetimes ago. It was lifetimes
ago.
Dure felt the damage the cruciform reconstruction had done to his
mind and memory. It was sickening--the equivalent of suffering a stroke
with no hope of recovery. Reasoning that once would have been child's
play to him now required extreme concentration or was simply beyond
his ability. Words eluded him. Emotions tugged at him with the same
sudden violence as the time tides. Several times he had had to leave
the other pilgrims while lie wept in solitude for no reason he could
understand.
The other pilgrims. Now only Sol and the child remained. Father
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Dure would gladly surrender his own life if those two could be spared.
Was it a sin, he wondered, to plan deals with the Antichrist?
He was far down the valley now, almost to the point where it curved
eastward into the widening cul-de-sac where the Shrike Palace threw
its maze of shadows across the rocks. The trail wound close to the
northwest wall as it passed the Cave Tombs. Dure felt the cool air from
the first tomb and was tempted to enter just to recover from the heat,
close his eyes, and take a nap.
He continued walking.
The entrance to the second tomb had More baroque carvings in the
stone, and Dure was reminded of the ancient basilica he had discovered
in the Cleft--the huge cross and altar where the retarded Bikura had
"worshiped." It had been the obscene immortality of the cruciform they
had been worshiping, not the chance of true Resurrection promised by
the Cross. Bur what was the difference? Dure shook his head, trying to
clear the fog and cynicism that clouded every thought. The path wound
higher here past the third Cave Tomb, the shortest and least impressive
of the three.
There was a light in the third Cave Tomb.
Dure stopped, took a breath, and glanced back down the valley. The
Sphinx was quite visible almost a kilometer away, but he could not
quite make out Sol in the shadows. For a moment Dure wondered if
it had been the third tomb they had sheltered in the day before ... if
one of them had left a lantern there.
It had not been the third tomb. Except for the search for Kassad, no
one had entered this tomb in three days.
Father Dure knew that he should ignore the light, return to Sol,
keep the vigil with the man and his daughter.
But the Shrike came to each of the others separately. Why should I
refuse the summons?
Dure felt moisture on his cheek and realized that lie was weeping
soundlessly, mindlessly. He roughly wiped the tears away with the back
of his hand and stood there clenching his fists.
My intellect was my greatest vanity. I was the intellectual Jesuit,
secure in the tradition ofTeilhard and Prassard. Even the theology I
pushed on the Church, on the seminarians, and on those few faithful
still listening had emphasized the mind, that wonderful Omega Point
of consciousness. God as a clever algorithm.
Well, some things are beyond intellect, Paul.
Dure entered the third Cave Tomb.
a 3 3
Sol awoke with a start, sure that someone was creeping up on him.
He jumped to his feet and looked around. Rachel was making soft
sounds, awakening from her nap at the same time as her father. Brawne
Lamia lay motionless where he had left her, med telltales still glowing
green, brain activity readout a flat red.
He had slept for at least an hour; the shadows had crept across the
valley floor, and only the top of the Sphinx was still in sunlight as the
sun broke free of the clouds. Shafts of light slanted through the valley
entrance and illuminated the cliff walls opposite. The wind was rising.
But nothing moved in the valley.
Sol lifted Rachel, rocked her as she cried, and ran down the steps,
looking behind the Sphinx and toward the other Tombs.
"Paul!" His voice echoed off rock. Wind stirred dust beyond the Jade
Tomb, but nothing else stirred. Sol still had the feeling that something
was sneaking up on him, that he was being watched.
Rachel screamed and wiggled in his grasp, her voice the high, thin
wail of a newborn. Sol glanced at his comlog. She would be one day
old in an hour. He searched the sky for the Consul's ship, cursed softly
at himself, and went back to the entrance to the Sphinx to change the
baby's diaper, check on Brawne, pull a nursing pak from his bag, and
grab a cloak. The heat dissipated quickly when the sun was gone.
In the half-hour of twilight remaining, Sol moved quickly down the
valley, shouting Dure's name and peering into the Tombs without
entering. Past the jade Tomb where Hoyt had been murdered, its sides
already beginning to glow a milky green. Past the dark Obelisk, its
shadow thrown high on the southeastern cliff wall. Past the Crystal
Monolith, its upper reaches glowing with the last of the day's light,
then fading as the sun set somewhere beyond the City of Poets. In the
sudden chill and hush of evening, past the Cave Tombs, Sol shouting
into each and feeling the dank air against his face like a cold breath
from an open mouth.
No answer.
In the last of the twilight, around the bend in the valley to the blade-
and-buttress riot of the Shrike Palace, dark and ominous in the growing
gloom. Sol stood at the entrance trying to make sense of the ink-black
shadows, spires, rafters, and pylons, shouted into the dark interior; only
his echo answered. Rachel began to cry again.
Shivering, feeling a chill on the back of his neck, wheeling constantly
________ THE FALL OF HYPERION ________
to surprise the unseen watcher and seeing only deepening shadows and
the first of the night's stars between clouds above, Sol hurried back up
the valley toward the Sphinx, walking quickly at first and then almost
running past the Jade Tomb as the evening wind rose with a sound of
children screaming.
"Goddamn!" breathed Sol as he reached the top of the stairs to the
Sphinx.
Brawne Lamia was gone. There was no sign other body or the metal
umbilical.
Cursing, holding Rachel tight, Sol rumbled through his pack for the
flashlight.
Ten meters down the cental corridor, Sol found the blanket Brawne
had been wrapped in. Beyond that, nothing. The corridors branched
and twisted, now widening, now narrowing as the ceiling lowered to
the point that Sol was crawling, holding the baby in his right arm so
that her cheek was next to his. He hated being in this tomb. His heart
was pounding so fiercely that he half-expected to have a coronary then
and there.
The last corridor narrowed to nothing. Where the metal cable had
snaked into stone, now there was only stone.
Sol held the flashlight in his teeth and slapped at the rock, shoved
at stones the size of houses as if a secret panel would open, tunnels
would be revealed.
Nothing.
Sol hugged Rachel tighter and began to make his way out, taking
several wrong turns, feeling his heart race even More wildly as he
thought himself lost. Then they were in a corridor he recognized, then
in the main corridor, then out.
He carried his child to the bottom of the steps and away from the
Sphinx. At the head of the valley, he stopped, sat on a low rock, and
panted for breath. Rachel's cheek still lay against his neck, and the baby
made no sound, no movement other tlian the soft curl of fingers against
his beard.
Wind blew in from the barrens behind him. Clouds opened above
and then closed, hiding the stars so that the only light came from the
sick glow of the Time Tombs. Sol was afraid that the wild beating of
his heart would frighten the baby, but Rachel continued to curl calmly
against him, her warmth a tactile reassurance.
"Damn," whispered Sol. He had cared for Brawne Lamia. He had
cared for all of the pilgrims, and now they were gone. Sol's decades as
an academic had preconditioned him to hunt for patterns in events, a
moral grain in the accreted stone of experience, but there had been no
pattern to events on Hypcrion--merely confusion and death.
Sol rocked his child and looked out on the barrens, considering
leaving this place at once . . . walking to the dead city or Chronos Keep
. . . walking northwest to the Littoral or southeast to where the Bridle
Range intersected the sea. Sol raised a shaky hand to his face and rubbed
his cheek; there would be no salvation in the wilderness. Leaving the
valley had not saved Martin Silenus. The Shrike had been reported far
south of the Bridle Range--as far south as Endymion and the other
southern cities--and even if the monster spared them, starvation and
thirst would not. Sol might survive on plants, rodent flesh, and snow-
melt from the high places--but Rachel's supply of milk was limited,
even with the supplies Brawne had brought back from the Keep. Then
lie realized that the milk supply did not matter. . . .
I'll be alone in less than a day. Sol stifled a moan as the thought
struck him. His determination to save his child had brought him across
two and a half decades and a hundred times that many light-years. His
resolve to return Rachel's life and health to her was an almost palpable
force, a fierce energy which he and Sarai had shared and which he had
kept alive the way a temple priest preserves the sacred temple flame.
No, by God, there was a pattern to things, a moral underpinning to
this platform of seemingly random events, and Sol Weintraub would
wager his and his daughter's lives on that belief.
Sol stood, walked slowly down the trail to the Sphinx, climbed the
stairs, found a therm cloak and blankets, and made a nest for the two
of them on the highest step as Hyperion winds howled and the Time
Tombs glowed More brightly.
Rachel lay on his chest and stomach, her cheek on his shoulder, her
tiny hands curling and uncurling as she released the world for the land
of infant sleep. Sol heard her gentle breathing as she moved into deep
slumber, heard the soft sound as she blew tiny bubbles of saliva. After
a while, he released his own hold on the world and joined her in sleep.
THIRTY
Sol dreamed the dream he had suffered since the day Rachel had incurred Merlin's sickness.
He was walking through a vast structure, where columns the
size of redwood trees rose into the gloom and where crimson light fell
in solid shafts from somewhere far above. There came the sound of a
giant conflagration, entire worlds burning. Ahead of him glowed two
ovals of the deepest red.
Sol knew the place. He knew that he would find an altar ahead with
Rachel on it--Rachel in her twenties and unconscious--and then
would come the Voice, demanding.
Sol stopped on the low balcony and stared down at the familiar scene.
His daughter, the woman he and Sarai had bid farewell to when she
left for postgraduate work on distant Hyperion, lay naked on a broad
block of stone. Above them all floated the twin red orbs of the Shrike's
gaze. On the altar lay a long, curved knife made of sharpened bone.
The Voice came then:
"So/.' Take your daughter, your only daughter, Rachel, whom you
love, and go to the world called Hyfierion and offer her there as a burnt
offering at one of the places of which I shall tell you."
Sol's arms were shaking with rage and grief. He pulled at his hair
and shouted into the darkness, repeating what he had told that voice
before:
'"There will be no More offerings, neither child nor parent. There will
be no More sacrifices. The time of obedience and atonement is past.
Either help us as a friend, or go away!"
In previous dreams, this had led to the sound of wind and isolation,
terrible footsteps receding in the dark. But this time the dream persisted,
the altar shimmered and was suddenly empty except for the bone knife.
-------------------------------------------------- S 3 7 --------------------------------------------------
Hie twin red orbs still floated high above, fire-filled rubies the size of
worlds.
"So/, listen," came the Voice, modulated now so it did not boom
from far above but almost whispered in his ear, "the future of humankind
depends upon your choice. Can you offer Rachel out of love, if not
obedience7"
Sol heard the answer in his mind even as he groped for the words.
There would be no More offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind
had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for
God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews,
had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness
of things but always--always--returning to obedience at whatever
the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future
generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred.
Not this time. Not ever again.
"Say yes. Daddy."
Sol started at the touch of a hand on his. His daughter, Rachel, stood
next to him, neither infant nor adult, but the eight-year-old he had
known twice--aging and growing backward through that age with Mer-
lin's sickness--Rachel with her light brown hair tied back in a simple
braid, short form soft in washed-denim play tunic and kid sneakers.
Sol took her hand, gripping as tightly as he could without hurting
her, feeling the returned grip. This was no illusion, no final cruelty of
the Shrike. This was his daughter.
"Say yes, Daddy."
Sol had solved Abraham's problem of obedience to a God turned
malicious. Obedience could no longer be paramount in relations between
humanity and its deity. But when the child chosen as sacrifice
asked for obedience to that God's whim?
Sol went to one knee next to his daughter and opened his arms.
"Rachel."
She hugged him with the energy he remembered from countless such
hugs, her chin high over his shoulder, her arms fierce in their intensity
of love. She whispered in his ear, "Please, Daddy, we have to say yes."
Sol continued to hug her, feeling her thin arms around him and the
warmth of her cheek against his. He was crying silently, feeling the
wetness on his checks and in his short beard, but unwilling to release
her for even the second it would take to wipe the tears away.
"I love you. Daddy," whispered Rachel.
He rose then, wiped his face with a swipe of the back of his hand,
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
and with Rachel's left hand still firmly in his, began the long descent
with her toward the altar below.
Sol awoke with a sense of falling, grabbing for the baby. She was
asleep on his chest, her fist curled, her thumb in her mouth, but when
he started upright she awoke with the cry and arching reflex of a startled
newborn. Sol got to his feet, dropping blankets and cloak around him,
clutching Rachel tightly to him.
It was daylight. Late morning, if anything. They had slept while the
night died and sunlight crept into the valley and across the Tombs.
The Sphinx huddled over them like some predatory beast, powerful
forelegs extended on either side of the stairway where they had slept.
Rachel wailed, her face contorting with the shock of waking and
hunger and sensed fear in her father. Sol stood in the fierce sunlight
and rocked her. He went to the top step of the Sphinx, changed her
diaper, heated one of the last nursing paks, offered it to her until the
wails turned to soft nursing sounds, burped her, and walked her around
until she drifted into light sleep again.
It was less than ten hours until her "birthday." Less than ten hours
until sunset and the last few minutes of his daughter's life. Not for the
first time, Sol wished that the Time Tomb were a great glass building
symbolizing the cosmos and the deity that ran it. Sol would throw rocks
at the structure until not a single pane remained unbroken.
He tried to remember the details of his dream, but the warmth and
reassurance of it shredded in the harsh light of Hyperion's sun. He
remembered only Rachel's whispered entreaty. The thought of offering
her to the Shrike made Sol's stomach ache with horror. "It's all right,"
he whispered to her as she twitched and sighed toward the treacherous
haven of sleep once again. "It's all right, kiddo. The Consul's ship will
be here soon. The ship will come any minute."
The Consul's ship did not come by noon. The Consul's ship did not
come by midafternoon. Sol walked the valley floor, calling out for those
who had disappeared, singing half-forgotten songs when Rachel awoke,
crooning lullabies as she drifted back to sleep. His daughter was so tiny
and light: six pounds and three ounces, nineteen inches at birth, he
remembered, smiling at the antique units of his antique home, of
Barnard's World.
In late afternoon, he startled awake from his half-doze in the shade
of the Sphinx's outflung paw, standing with Rachel waking in his arms
as a spacecraft arched across the dome of deep lapis sky.
"It's come!" he cried, and Rachel stirred and wiggled as if in response.
A line of blue fusion flame glowed with that daylight intensity reserved
to spacecraft in atmosphere. Sol hopped up and down, filled with the
first relief in many days. He shouted and leaped until Rachel wailed
and wept in concern. Sol stopped, lifted her high, knowing that she
could not yet focus her eyes but wanting her to see the beauty of the
descending ship as it arced above the distant mountain range, dropping
toward the high desert.
"He did it!" cried Sol. "He's coming! The ship will . . ."
Three heavy thuds struck the valley almost at once; the first two were
the twin sonic booms of the spacecraft's "footprint" racing ahead of it
as it decelerated. T'ne third was the sound of its destruction.
Sol stared as the glowing pinpoint at the apex of the long fusion tail
suddenly grew as bright as the sun, expanded into a cloud of flame and
boiling gases, and then tumbled toward the distant desert in ten thousand
burning pieces. He blinked away retinal echoes as Rachel continued
crying.
"My God," whispered Sol. "My God." There was no denying the
complete destruction of the spacecraft. Secondary explosions ripped the
air, even from thirty kilometers away, as pieces fell, trailing smoke and
flames, toward the desert, the mountains, and the Sea of Grass beyond.
"My God."
Sol sat on the warm sand. He was too exhausted to cry, too empty
to do anything but rock his child until her crying stopped.
Ten minutes later Sol looked up as two More fusion trails burned
the sky, these headed south from the zenith. One of these exploded,
too distant for sound to reach him. The second one dropped out of
sight below the southern cliffs, beyond the Bridle Range.
"Perhaps it was not the Consul," whispered Sol. "It could be the
Ouster invasion. Perhaps the Consul's ship still will come for us."
But the ship did not come by late afternoon. It had not come by the
time the light ofHyperion's small sun shone on the cliff wall, shadows
reaching for Sol on the highest step of the Sphinx. It did not come
when the valley fell in shadow.
Rachel was born less than thirty minutes from this second. Sol
checked her diaper, found her dry, and fed her from the last nursing
pak. As she ate, she looked up at him with great, dark eyes, seemingly
------------------ THE FALL OF HYPERION ------------------
searching his face. Sol remembered the first few minutes he had held
her while Sarai rested under warmed blankets; the baby's eyes had
burned into him then with these same questions and startlement at
finding such a world.
The evening wind brought clouds moving in quickly above the valley.
Rumbles to the southwest came first as distant thunder and then with
the sick regularity of artillery, most likely nuclear or plasma explosions
five hundred klicks or More to the south. Sol scanned the sky between lowering clouds and caught glimpses of fiery meteor trails arching overhead:
ballistic missiles or dropships, probably. Death for Hyperion in
either case.
Sol ignored it. He sang softly to Rachel as she finished nursing. He
had walked to the head of the valley, but now he returned slowly to
the Sphinx. The Tombs were glowing as never before, rippling with (lie harsh light of neon gases excited by electrons. Overhead, the last
shafts from the setting sun changed the low clouds to a ceiling of pastel
flames.
Less than three minutes remained until the final celebration of Rach- el's birth. Even if the Consul's ship arrived now, Sol knew that he
would not have time to board it or get his child into cryogenic sleep.
He did not want to.
Sol climbed the stairs to the Sphinx slowly, realizing that Rachel had
come this way twenty-six standard years earlier, never guessing the fate
that awaited her in that dark crypt.
He paused at the top step and took in a breath. The light from the
sun was a palpable thing, filling the sky and igniting the wings and
upper mass of the Sphinx. The tomb itself seemed to be releasing the
light it had stored, like the rocks in Hebron's desert, where Sol had
wandered in the wilderness years before, seeking enlightenment and
finding only sorrow. The air shimmered with light, and the wind continued
to rise, blowing sand across the valley floor and then relenting.
Sol went to one knee on the top step, pulling off Rachel's blanket
until the child was in only her soft cotton newborn's clothes. Swaddling
clothes.
Rachel wiggled in his hands. Her face was purple and slick, her hands
tiny and red with the effort of clenching and unclenching. Sol remembered
her exactly like this as the doctor handed the infant to Sol, as he
stared at his newborn daughter as he was staring now, then set her on
Sarai's stomach so the mother could see.
"Ah, God," breathed Sol and dropped to his other knee, truly kneeling
now.
The entire valley quivered as if to an earthquake tremor. Sol could
vaguely hear the explosions continuing far to the south. But of More
immediate concern now was the terrible glow from the Sphinx. Sol's
shadow leaped fifty meters behind him down the stairway and across
the valley floor as the tomb pulsed and vibrated with light. Out of the
corner of his eye, Sol could see the other Tombs glowing as brightly
--huge, baroque reactors in their final seconds before meltdown.
The entrance to the Sphinx pulsed blue, then violet, then a terrible
white. Behind the Sphinx, on the wall of the plateau above the Valley
of the Time Tombs, an impossible tree shimmered into existence, its
huge trunk and sharp steel branches rising into the glowing clouds and
above. Sol glanced quickly, saw the three-meter thorns and the terrible
fruit they bore, and then he looked back at the entrance to the Sphinx.
Somewhere the wind howled and thunder rumbled. Somewhere vermilion
dust blew like curtains of dried blood in the terrible light from
the Tombs. Somewhere voices cried out and a chorus shrieked.
Sol ignored all this. He had eyes only for his daughter's face and,
beyond her, for the shadow that now filled the glowing entrance to the
tomb.
The Shrike emerged. The thing had to bend to allow its three-meter
bulk and steel blades to clear the top of the doorway. It stepped onto
the top porch of the Sphinx and moved forward, part creature, part
sculpture, walking with the terrible deliberation of nightmare.
The dying light above rippled on the thing's carapace, cascaded down
across curving breastplate to steel thorns there, shimmering on finger-
blades and scalpels rising from every joint. Sol hugged Rachel to his
chest and stared into the multifaceted red furnaces that passed for the
Shrike's eyes. The sunset faded into the blood-red glow of Sol's recurrent
dream.
The Shrike's head turned slightly, swiveling without friction, rotating
ninety degrees right, ninety degrees left, as if the creature were surveying
its domain.
The Shrike took three steps forward, stopping less than two meters
from Sol. The thing's four arms twisted and rose, fingerblades uncurling.
Sol hugged Rachel tightly to him. Her skin was moist, her face bruised
and blotched with the exertions of birth. Seconds remained. Her eyes
tracked separately, seemed to focus on Sol.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Say yes. Daddy. Sol remembered the dream.
The Shrike's head lowered until the ruby eyes in that terrible hood
stared at nothing but Sol and his child. The quicksilver jaws parted
slightly, showing layers and levels of steel teeth. Four hands came
forward, metallic palms up, pausing half a meter from Sol's face.
Say yes. Daddy. Sol remembered the dream, remembered his daughter's
hug, and realized that in the end--when all else is dust--loyalty
to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave. Faith--true
faith--was trusting in that love.
Sol lifted his newborn and dying child, seconds old, shrieking now
with her first and last breath, and handed her to the Shrike.
The absence of her slight weight struck Sol with a terrible vertigo.
The Shrike lifted Rachel, stepped backward, and was enveloped in
light.
Behind the Sphinx, the tree of thorns ceased shimmering, shifted
into phase with now, and came into terrible focus.
Sol stepped forward, arms imploring, as the Shrike stepped back into
the radiance and was gone. Explosions rippled the clouds and slammed
Sol to his knees with shock waves of pressure.
Behind him, around him, the Time Tombs were opening.
PART THREE
THIRTY-ONE
I awoke and was not pleased to be awakened.
Rolling over, squinting and cursing the sudden invasion of light,
I saw Leigh Hunt sitting on the edge of the bed, an aerosol injector
still in his hand.
"You took enough sleeping pills to keep you in bed all day," he said.
"Rise and shine."
I sat up, rubbed the morning stubble on my cheeks, and squinted in
Hunt's direction. "Who the hell gave you the right to enter my room?"
The effort of speaking started me coughing, and I did not stop until
Hunt returned from the bathroom with a glass of water.
"Here."
I drank, vainly trying to project anger and outrage between spasms
of coughing. The remnants of dreams fled like morning mists. I felt a
terrible sense of loss descend.
"Get dressed," said Hunt, standing. "The CEO wants you in her
chambers in twenty minutes. While you've been sleeping, things have
been happening."
"What things?" I rubbed my eyes and ran fingers through my tousled
hair.
Hunt smiled tightly. "Access the datasphere. Then get down to Glad-
stone's chambers soonest. Twenty minutes, Severn." He left.
I accessed the datasphere. One way to visualize one's entry point to
the datasphere is to imagine a patch of Old Earth's ocean in varying
degrees of turbulence. Normal days tended to show a placid sea with
interesting patterns of ripples. Crises showed chop and whitecaps. Today
there was a hurricane under way. Entry was delayed to any access route,
confusion reigned in breaking waves of update surges, the datumplane
matrix was wild with storage shifts and major credit transfers, and the
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
All Thing, normally a multilayered buzz of information and political
debate, was a raging wind of confusion, abandoned referenda and obsolete
position templates blowing by like tattered clouds.
"Dear God," I whispered, breaking access but feeling the pressure of
the information surge still pounding at my implant circuits and brain.
War. Surprise attack. Imminent destruction of the Web. Talk of impeaching
Gladstone. Riots on a score of worlds. Shrike Cult uprisings
on Lusus. The FORCE fleet abandoning Hyperion system in a desperate
rearguard action, but too late, too late. Hyperion already under attack.
Fear of farcaster incursion.
I rose, ran naked to the shower, and sonicked in record time. Hunt
or someone had laid out a formal gray suit and cape, and I dressed in
a hurry, brushing back my wet hair so that damp curls fell to my collar.
It wouldn't do to keep the CEO of the Hegemony of Man waiting.
Oh no, that wouldn't do at all.
"It's about time you got here," said Meina Gladstone as I entered
her private chambers.
"What the fuck have you done?" I snapped.
Gladstone blinked. Evidently the CEO of the Hegemony of Man
was not used to being spoken to in that tone. Tough shit, I thought.
"Remember who you are and to whom you're speaking," Gladstone
said coldly.
"I don't know who I am. And I may be speaking to the greatest mass
murderer since Horace Glennon-Hcight. Why the hell did you allow
this war to happen?"
Gladstone blinked again and looked around. We were alone. Her
sitting room was long and pleasantly dark and hung with original art
from Old Earth. At that moment I didn't care if I was in a room filled
with original van Goghs. I stared at Gladstone, the Lincolnesque face
merely that of an old woman in the thin light through the blinds. She
returned my gaze for a moment, then looked away again.
"I apologize," I snapped, no apology in my voice, "you didn't allow it, you made it happen, didn't you?"
"No, Severn, I did not make it happen." Gladstone's voice was
hushed, almost a whisper.
"Speak up," I said. I paced back and forth near the tall windows,
watching the light from the blinds move across me like painted stripes.
"And I'm not Joseph Severn."
She raised an eyebrow. "Shall I call you M. Keats?"
"You can call me No Man," I said. "So that when the other cyclopes
come, you can say that No Man has blinded you, and they will go
away, saying that it's the will of the gods."
"Do you plan to blind me?"
"Right now I could wring your neck and walk away without a twinge
of remorse. Millions will die before this week is out. How could you
have allowed it?"
Gladstone touched her lower lip. "The future branches only two
directions," she said softly. "War and total uncertainty, or peace and
totally certain annihilation. I chose war."
"Who says this?" There was More curiosity than anger in my voice
now.
"It is a fact." She glanced at her comlog. "In ten minutes I have to
go before the Senate to declare war. Tell me the news of the Hyperion
pilgrims."
I crossed my arms and stared down at her. "I will tell you if you
promise to do something."
"I will if I can."
I paused, realized that no amount of leverage in the universe could
make this woman write a blank check on her word. "All right," I said.
"I want you to fatline Hyperion, release the hold you have on the
Consul's ship, and send someone up the Hoolie River to find the Consul
himself. He's about a hundred and thirty klicks from the capital, above
the Karia Locks. He may be hurt."
Gladstone crooked a ringer, rubbed her lip, and nodded. "I will send
someone to find him. Releasing the ship depends upon what else you
have to tell me. Are the others alive?"
I curled my short cape around me and collapsed on a couch across
from her. "Some are."
"Byron Lamia's daughter? Brawne?"
"The Shrike took her. For a while, she was unconscious, connected
to some sort of neural shunt to the datasphere. I dreamed . . . she was
floating somewhere, reunited with the implant persona of the first Keats
retrieval personality. Just entering the datasphere . . . the megasphere
really. Core connections and dimensions I never dreamed of as well as
the accessible 'sphere."
"Is she alive now?" Gladstone leaned forward, intense.
"I don't know. Her body disappeared. I was awakened before I saw
where her persona entered the megasphere."
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Gladstone nodded. "What about the Colonel?"
"Kassad was taken somewhere by Moneta, the human female who
seems to reside in the Tombs as they travel through time. The last I
saw of him, he was attacking the Shrike barehanded. Shrikes, actually,
there were thousands of them."
"Did he survive?"
I opened my hands. "I don't know. These were dreams. Fragments.
Bits and pieces of perception."
"The poet?"
"Silenus was carried off by the Shrike. Impaled on the tree of thorns.
But I glimpsed him there later in Kassad's dream. Silenus was still alive.
I don't know how."
"So the tree of thorns is real, not merely Shrike Cult propaganda?"
"Oh yes, it's real."
"And the Consul left? Tried to return to the capital?"
"He had his grandmother's hawking mat. It worked all right until he
reached the place near Karia Locks I mentioned. It ... and he ...
fell into the river." I preempted her next question. "I don't know if he
survived."
"And the priest? Father Hoyt?"
"The cruciform brought him back as Father Dure."
"is it Father Dure? Or a mindless duplicate?"
"It's Dure," I said. "But . . . damaged. Discouraged."
"And he is still in the valley?"
"No. He disappeared in one of the Cave Tombs. I don't know what
happened to him."
Gladstone glanced at her comlog. I tried to imagine the confusion
and chaos which reigned in the rest of this building . . . this world . . .
in the Web. The CEO obviously had retreated here for fifteen minutes
prior to her speech to the Senate. It might be the last such solitude she
would see for the next several weeks. Perhaps ever.
"Captain Masteen?"
"Dead. Buried in the valley."
She took a breath. "And Weintraub and the child?"
I shook my head. "I dreamed things out of sequence . . . out of time.
I think it's already happened, but I'm confused." I looked up. Gladstone
was waiting patiently. "The baby was only a few seconds old when the
Shrike came," I said. "Sol offered her to the thing. I think it took her
into the Sphinx. The Tombs were glowing very brightly. There were
. . . other Shrikes . . . emerging."
-------------------------------------------------- 249 --------------------------------------------------
"The Tombs have opened, then?"
"Yes."
Gladstone touched her comlog. "Leigh? Have the duty officer in the
communications center contact Theo Lane and the necessary FORCE
people on Hyperion. Release the ship we have in quarantine. Also,
Leigh, tell the Governor-General that I will have a personal message
for him in a few minutes." The instrument chirped and she looked
back at me. "Is there anything else from your dreams?"
"Images. Words. I don't understand what's going on. Those are the
high points."
Gladstone smiled slightly. "Are you aware that you are dreaming
events beyond the range of the other Keats persona's experience?"
I said nothing, stunned with the shock of what she said. My contact
with the pilgrims had been possible through some Core-based connection
to the persona implant in Brawne's Schron loop, through it
and the primitive datasphere they had shared. But the persona had
been liberated; the datasphere destroyed by separation and distance.
Even a fatline receiver cannot receive messages when there is no transmitter.

Gladstone's smile disappeared. "Can you explain this?"
"No." I looked up. "Perhaps they were only dreams. Real dreams."
She stood. "Perhaps we'll know when and if we find the Consul. Or
when his ship arrives in the valley. I have two minutes before I appear
in the Senate. Is there anything else?"
"A question," I said. "Who am I? Why am I here?"
The slight smile again. "We all ask those questions, M. Sev-- M.
Keats."
"I'm serious. I think you know better than I."
"The Core sent you to be my liaison with the pilgrims. And to observe.
You are, after all, a poet and artist."
I made a noise and stood. We walked slowly toward the private farcaster portal that would take her to the Senate floor. "What good
does observation do when it's the end of the world?"
"Find out," said Gladstone. "Go see the end of the world." She
handed me a microcard for my comlog. I inserted it, glanced at the
diskey; it was a universal authorization chip, allowing me access to all
portals, public, private, or military. It was a ticket to the end of the
world.
I said, "What if I get killed?"
"Then we will never hear the answers to your questions," said CEO
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Gladstone. She touched my wrist fleetingly, turned her back, and
stepped through the portal.
For a few minutes I stood alone in her chambers, appreciating the
light and silence and art. There was a van Gogh on one of the walls,
worth More than most planets could pay. It was a painting of the artist's
room at Aries. Madness is not a new invention.
After a while, I left, let my comlog memory guide me through the
maze of Government House until I found the central farcaster terminex,
and stepped through to find the end of the world.
There were two full-access farcaster pathways through the Web: the
Concourse and River Tethys. I 'cast to the Concourse where the half-
kilometer strip of Tsingtao-Hsishuang Panna connected to New Earth
and the short seaside strip of Nevermore. Tsingtao-Hsishuang Panna
was a first-wave world, thirty-four hours away from the Ouster onslaught.
New Earth had been on the second-wave list, even now being
announced, and had a little over a standard week before invasion.
Nevermore was deep in the Web, years away from attack.
There were no signs of panic. People were taking to the datasphere
and All Thing rather than the streets. Walking the narrow lanes of
Tsingtao, I could hear Gladstone's voice from a thousand receivers and
personal comlogs, a strange verbal undertone to the shouts of street
vendors and hiss of tires on wet pavement as electric rickshaws hummed
overhead on the transport levels.
". . . as another leader told his people on the eve of attack almost
eight centuries ago--'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' You ask, what is our policy? I say to you: It is to wage
war, in space, on land, in the air, by sea, wage war with all our might
and with all the strength justice and right can give us. That is our
policy ..."
There were FORCE troops near the translation zone between Tsingtao
and Nevermore, but the flow of pedestrians seemed normal enough.
I wondered when the military would commandeer the pedestrian mall
of the Concourse for vehicular traffic and if it would be headed toward the front or away.
I stepped through to Nevermore. The streets were dry there, except
for the occasional spray from the ocean thirty meters below the
stone ramparts of the Concourse. The sky was its usual tones of
threatening ochre and gray, ominous twilight in the middle of the d.iy.
Small stone shops glowed with light and merchandise. I was aware that
the streets were emptier than usual; people standing in shops or sitting
on stone walls or benches, heads bowed and eyes distracted as they
listened.
". . . you ask, what is our aim? I answer in one word. It is victory,
victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long
and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival..."
The lines at Edgartown's main tenninex were short. I coded for Mare
Infinitus and stepped through.
The skies were their usual cloudless green, the ocean beneath the
float city a deeper green. Kelp farms floated to the horizon. The crowds
this far from the Concourse were even smaller; the boardwalks were
almost empty, some shops closed. A group of men stood near a kipboat
dock and listened to an antique fatline receiver. Gladstone's voice was
flat and metallic in the sea-rich air.
". . . even now, units of FORCE move relentlessly to their stations,
firm in their resolve and confident in their ability to rescue not only
the threatened worlds but all of the Hegemony of Man from the foulest
and most soul-destroying tyranny ever to stain the annals of history.
..."
Mare Infinitus was eighteen hours from invasion. I looked skyward,
half-expecting to see some sign of the enemy swarm, some indication
of orbital defenses, spaceborne troop movements. There was only the
sky, the warm day, and the gentle rocking of the city on the sea.
Heaven's Gate was the first world on the list of invasion. I stepped
through the Mudflat VIP portal and looked down from Rifkin Heights
at the beautiful city which belied its name. It was deep night, so late
the mech street sweepers were out, their brushes and sonics humming
against cobblestone, but here there was movement, long lines of silent
people at the Rifkin Heights public terminex and even longer lines
visible below at the Promenade portals. Local police were in evidence,
tall figures in brown impact coveralls, but if FORCE units were rushing
to reinforce this area, they were invisible.
The people in the lines were not local residents--the Rifkin Heights
and Promenade landowners almost certainly had private portals--but
looked to be workers from the reclamation projects many klicks out
beyond the fern forest and parks. There was no panic and very little
conversation. The lines filed past with the patient stoicism of families
shuffling toward a theme park attraction. Few carried anything larger
than a travel bag or backpack.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPER10N ----------------
Have we attained such equanimity, I wondered, that we handle ourselves
with dignity even in the face of invasion?
Heaven's Gate was thirteen hours from H-hour. I keyed my comlog
to the All Thing.
". . . if we can meet this threat, then worlds we love may remain
free and the life of die Web may move forward into the sunlit future.
But if we fail, then the whole Web, the Hegemony, everything we have
known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made
infinitely More sinister and protracted by the lights of science perverted
and human freedom denied.
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves
that if the Hegemony of Man and its Protectorate and allies were to
last ten thousand years, humankind will still say: 'This was their finest
hour.' "
Somewhere in the silent, fresh-smelling city below, shooting began.
First came the rattle of flechette guns, then the deep hum of antiriot
stunners, then screams and the sizzle of weapon lasers. The crowd on
the Promenade surged forward toward the terminex, but riot police
emerged from the park, switched on powerful halogen searchlights
which bathed the crowd in glare, and began ordering them through
bullhorns to resume lines or disperse. The crowd hesitated, surged back
and forth like a jellyfish caught in tricky currents, and then--spurred
on by the sound of firing, louder and closer now--surged forward toward
the portal platforms.
The riot cops fired tear gas and vertigo cannisters. Between the mob
and the farcaster, violet interdiction fields whined into existence. A
flight of military EMVs and security skimmers came in low over the
city, searchlights stabbing downward. One of the beams of light caught
me, held me until my comlog winked at an interrogation signal, and
then moved on. It began to rain.
So much for equanimity.
The police had secured the Rifkin Heights public terminex and were
stepping through the private Atmospheric Protectorate portal I had used.
I decided to go elsewhere.
There were FORCE commandos guarding the halls of Government
House, screening the farcaster arrivals despite the fact that this portal
was one of the most difficult to access in the Web. I passed through
three checkpoints before reaching the executive/residential wing where
my apartments were. Suddenly, guards stepped out to empty the main
hall and secure its tributaries, and Gladstone swept by accompanied by
a swirling crowd of advisors, aides, and military leaders. Surprisingly,
she saw me, brought her retinue to a clumsy halt, and spoke to me
through the barricade of combat-armored Marines.
"How did you like the speech, M. No Man?"
"Fine," I said. "Stirring. And stolen from Winston Churchill if I'm
not mistaken."
Gladstone smiled and shrugged slightly. "If one is to steal, steal from
the forgotten masters." The smile faded. "What is the news from the
frontier?"
"The reality is just beginning to sink in," I said. "Expect panic."
"I always do," said the CEO. "What news have you from the pilgrims?"

I was surprised. "The pilgrims? I haven't been . . . dreaming."
The current of Gladstone's retinue and impending events began to
sweep her away down the hall. "Perhaps you no longer need to sleep
to dream," she called. "Try it."
I watched her go, was released to seek out my suite, found the door,
and turned away in disgust with myself. I was retreating in fear and
shock from the terror descending on us all. I would be quite happy to
lie in bed, avoiding sleep, the covers pulled tight to my chin while I
wept for the Web, for the child Rachel, and for myself.
I left the residential wing and found my way out to the central garden,
wandering down graveled paths. Tiny microremotes buzzed like bees
through the air, one pacing me as I passed through the rose garden,
into the area where a sunken path twisted through steamy tropical plants,
and into the Old Earth section near the bridge. I sat on the stone bench
where Gladstone and I had talked.
Perhaps you no longer need to sleep to dream. Try it.
I pulled my feet up on the bench, touched my chin to my knees,
set fingertips against my temples, and closed my eyes.
THIRTY-TWO
artin Silenus hvists and writhes in the pure poetry of pain.
A steel thorn two meters long enters his body between his
shoulder blades and passes out through his chest, extending
to a point a terrible, tapering meter beyond him. His nailing arms
cannot touch the point. The thorn is frictionless, his sweaty palms and
curling fingers can find no purchase there. Despite the thorn's slickness
to the touch, his body does not slide; he is as firmly impaled as a
butterfly pinned for exhibition.
There is no blood.
In the hours after rationality returned through the mad haze of pain,
Martin Silenus wondered about that. There is no blood. But there is
pain. Oh yes, there is pain in abundance here--pain beyond the poet's
wildest imaginings of what pain was, pain beyond human endurance
and the boundaries of suffering.
But Silenus endures. And Silenus suffers.
He screams for the thousandth time, a ragged sound, empty of content,
free of language, even obscenities. Words fail to convey such
agony. Silenus screams and writhes. After a while, he hangs limply,
the long thorn bouncing slightly in response to his gyrations. Other
people hang above, below, and behind him, but Silenus spends little
time observing them. Each is separated by his or her own private cocoon
of agony.
"Why this is hell," thinks Silenus, quoting Marlowe, "nor am I out of it."
But he knows it is not hell. Nor any afterlife. But he also knows that
it is not some subbranch of reality; the thorn passes through his body Eight centimeters of organic steel through his chest! But he has not
a 5 4
-------------------------------- a s 5 ----------------------------------
died. He does not bleed. This place was somewhere and something,
but it was not hell and it was not living.
Time was strange here. Silenus had known time to stretch and slow
before--the agony of the exposed nerve in the dentist's chair, the kidney-
stone pain in the Med clinic waiting room--time could slow, seem
not to move as the hands of an outraged biological clock stood still in
shock. But time did move then. The root canal was finished. The
ultramorph finally arrived, took effect. But here the very air is frozen
in the absence of time. Pain is the curl and foam of a wave that does
not break.
Silenus screams in anger and pain. And writhes upon his thorn.
"Goddamn!" he manages at last. "Goddamn motherfuck sonofa-
bitch." The words are relics of a different life, artifacts from the dream
he had lived before the reality of the tree. Silenus only half remembers
that life, as he only half remembers the Shrike carrying him here,
impaling him here, leaving him here.
"Oh God!" screams the poet and clutches at the thorn with both
hands, trying to lever himself up to relieve the great weight of his body
which adds so immeasurably to the unmeasurable pain.
There is a landscape below. He can see for miles. It is a frozen,
papier-mache diorama of the Valley of the Time Tombs and the desert
beyond. Even the dead city and the distant mountains are reproduced
in plasticized, sterile miniature. It does not matter. For Martin Silenus
there is only the tree and the pain, and the two are indivisible. Silenus
shows his teeth in a pain-cracked smile. When he was a child on Old
Earth, he and Amalfi Schwartz, his best friend, had visited a commune
of Christians in the North American Preserve, learned their crude theology,
and afterward had made many jokes about crucifixion. Young
Martin had spread his arms wide, crossed his legs, lifted his head, and
said, "Gee, I can see the whole town from up here." Amalfi had roared.
Silenus screams.
Time does not truly pass, but after a while Silenus's mind returns to
something resembling linear observation . . . something other than the
scattered oases of clear, pure agony separated by the desert of mindlessly
received agony . . . and in that linear perception of his own pain,
Silenus begins to impose time on this timeless place.
First, the obscenities add clarity to his pain. Shouting hurts, but his
anger clears and clarifies.
Then, in the exhausted times between shouting or pure spasms of
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
pain, Silenus allows himself thought. At first it is merely an effort to
sequence, to recite the times tables in his mind, anything to separate
the agony of ten seconds ago from the agony yet to come. Silenus
discovers that in the effort of concentrating, the agony is lessened
slightly--still unbearable, still driving all true thought like wisps before
a wind, but lessened some indefinable amount.
So Silenus concentrates. He screams and rails and writhes, but he
concentrates. Since there is nothing else to concentrate on, he concentrates
on the pain.
Pain, he discovers, has a structure. It has a floor plan. It has designs More intricate than a chambered nautilus, features More baroque than
the most buttressed Gothic cathedral. Even as he screams, Martin
Silenus studies the structure of this pain. He realizes that it is a poem.
Silenus arches his body and neck for the ten-thousandth time, seeking
relief where no relief is possible, but this time he sees a familiar form
five meters above him, hanging from a similar thorn, twisting in the
unreal breeze of agony.
"Billy!" gasps Martin Silenus, his first true thought.
His former liege lord and patron stares across a sightless abyss, made
blind with the pain that had blinded Silenus, but turning slightly as if
in response to the call of his name in this place beyond names.
"Billy!" cries Silenus again and then loses vision and thought to the
pain. He concentrates on the structure of pain, following its patterns
as if he were tracing the trunk and branches and twigs and thorns of
the tree itself. "My lord!"
Silenus hears a voice above the screams and is amazed to find that
both the screams and the voice are his:
. . . Thou art a dreaming thing;
A fever of thyself--think of the Earth;
What bliss even in hope is there for thee?
What haven? every creature hath its home;
Every sole man hath days of joy and pain,
Whether his labours be sublime or low--
The pain alone; the joy alone; distinct:
Only the dreamer venoms all his days,
Bearing More woe than all his sins deserve.
He knows the verse, not his, John Keats's, and feels the words further
structuring the seeming chaos of pain around him. Silenus understands
that the pain has been with him since birth--the universe's gift to a
poet. It is a physical reflection of the pain he has felt and runlely tried
to set to verse, to pin down with prose, all those useless years of life.
It is worse than pain; it is unhappiness because the universe offers pain
to all.
Only the dreamer venoms all his days,
Bearing More woe than all his sins deserve!
Silenus shouts it but does not scream. The roar of pain from the tree, More psychic than physical, abates for the barest fraction of a second.
There is an island of distraction amidst this ocean ofsinglemindedness.
"Martin!"
Silenus arches, lifts his head, tried to focus through the haze of pain.
Sad King Billy is looking at him. Looking.
Sad King Billy croaks a syllable which, after an endless moment,
Silenus recognizes as "MoreI"
Silenus screams in agony, writhes in a palsied spasm of mindless
physical response, but when he stops, dangling in exhaustion, the pain
not lessened but driven from the motor areas of his brain by fatigue
toxins, he allows the voice within him to shout and whisper its song:
Spirir here that reignest!
Spirit here that painesti
Spirit here that bumest!
Spirit here that moumest!
Spirit! I bow
My forehead low,
Enshaded with thy pinions!
Spirit! I look
All passion-struck
Into thy pale dominions!
The small circle of silence widens to include several nearby branches,
a handful of thorns carrying their clusters of human beings in extremis.
Silenus stares up at Sad King Billy and sees his betrayed lord open
his sad eyes. For the first time in More than two centuries, patron and
poet look upon one another. Silenus delivers the message that has
brought him here, hung him here. "My lord, I'm sorry."
Before Billy can respond, before the chorus of screaming drowns out
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION-
any response, the air changes, the sense of frozen time stirs, and the
tree shakes, as if the entire thing has dropped a meter. Silenus screams
with the others as the branch shakes and the impaling thorn tears at
his insides, rends his flesh anew.
Silenus opens his eyes and sees that the sky is real, the desert real,
the Tombs glowing, the wind blowing, and time begun again. There
is no lessening of torment, but clarity has returned.
Martin Silenus laughs through tears. "Look, Mom!" he shouts, giggling,
the steel spear still protruding a meter beyond his shattered chest, "I can see the whole town from up here!"
"M. Severn? Are you all right?"
Panting, on my hands and knees, I turned toward the voice. Opening
my eyes was painful, but no pain could compare to what I had just
experienced.
"Are you all right, sir?"
No one was near me in the garden. The voice came from a micro-
remote that buzzed half a meter from my face, probably one of the
security people somewhere in Government House.
"Yes," I managed, getting to my feet and brushing gravel from my
knees. "I'm fine. A sudden . . . pain."
"Medical help can be there in two minutes, sir. Your biomonitor
reports no organic difficulty, but we can--"
"No, no," I said. "I'm fine. Leave it be. And leave me alone."
The remote fluttered like a nervous hummingbird. "Yes, sir. Just
call if you need anything. The garden and grounds monitor will respond."

"Go away," I said.
I went out of the gardens, through the main hall of Government
House--all checkpoints and security guards now--and out across the
landscaped acres of Deer Park.
The dock area was quiet, the River Tethys More still than I had ever
seen it. "What's happening?" I asked one of the security people on the
pier.
The guard accessed my comlog, confirmed my executive override
pip and CEO clearance, but still did not hurry to answer. "The portals've
been turned off for TC2," he drawled. "Bypassed."
"Bypassed? You mean the river doesn't flow through Tau Ceti Center
anymore?"
"Right." He flipped his visor down as a small boat approached, nipped
it up when he identified the two security people in it.
"Can I get out that way?" I pointed upriver to where the tall portals
showed an opaque curtain of gray.
The guard shrugged. "Yeah. But you won't be allowed back that
way."
"That's all right. Can I take that small boat?"
The guard whispered into his bead mike and nodded. "Go ahead."
I stepped gingerly into the small craft, sat on the rear bench and held
onto the gunwales until the rocking subsided, touched the power diskey
and said, "Start."
The electric jets hummed, the small launch untied itself and pointed
its nose into the river, and I pointed the way upstream.
I had never heard of part of River Tethys being cordoned off, but
the farcaster curtain was now definitely a one-way and semipermeable
membrane. The boat hummed through, and I shrugged off the tingling
sensation and looked around.
I was in one of the great canal cities--Ardmen or Pamolo,
perhaps--on Renaissance Vector. The Tethys here was a main street
from which many tributaries flowed. Ordinarily, the only river traffic
here would be the tourist gondolas on the outer lanes and the yachts
and go-everywheres of the very rich in the pass-through center lanes.
Today it was a madhouse.
Boats of every size and description clogged the center channels, boats
headed in both directions. Houseboats were piled high with belongings,
smaller craft were so heavily laden that it looked like the smallest wave
or wake would capsize them. Hundreds of ornamental junks from TsingtaoHsishuang
Panna and million-mark river condobarges from Fuji
vied for their share of the river; I guessed that few of these residential
boats had ever left their tie-ups before. Amidst the riot of wood and
plasteel and Perspex, go-everywheres moved by like silver eggs, their
containment fields set to full reflection.
I queried the datasphere: Renaissance Vector was a second-wave
world, one hundred and seven hours from invasion. I thought it odd
that Fuji refugees were crowding the waterways here since that world
had More than two hundred hours until the axe fell, but then I realized
that except for the removal of TC2 from the waterway, the river still
flowed through its usual series of worlds. Refugees from Fuji had taken
the river from Tsingtao, thirty-three hours from the Ousters, through
Deneb Drei at a hundred forty-seven hours, through Renaissance Vector
---------------- THE PALL OF HYPERION ----------------
toward Parsimony or Grass, both unthreatened at this time. I shook my
head, found a relatively sane tributary street from which to watch the
madness, and wondered when the authorities would reroute the river
so that all threatened worlds flowed to sanctuary.
Can they do that? I wondered, the TechnoCore had installed River
Tethys as a gift to the Hegemony during its PentaCentennial. But surely
Gladstone or someone had thought to ask the Core to aid in the evacuation.
Had they? I wondered. Would the Core help? I knew that
Gladstone was convinced that elements of the Core were intent upon
eliminating the human species--this war had been her Hobson's choice
given that alternative. What a simple way for the antihuman Core
elements to carry out their program--merely refuse to evacuate the
billions threatened by the Ousters!
I had been smiling, however grimly, but that smile faded as I realized
that the TechnoCore also maintained and controlled the farcaster grid
that I depended on to get out of the threatened territories.
I had tied up the launch at the base of a stone stairway that descended
into the brackish waters. I noticed green moss growing on the lowest
stones. The stone steps themselves--possibly brought from Old Earth,
since some of the classical cities were shipped via farcaster in the early
years after the Big Mistake--were worn with age, and I could see a fine
tracery of cracks connecting sparkling flecks there, looking like a schematic
of the Worldweb.
It was very warm, and the air was too thick, too heavy. Renaissance
Vector's sun hung low above the gabled towers. The light was too red
and too syrupy for my eyes. Noise from the Tethys was deafening even
here, a hundred meters down the equivalent of an alley. Pigeons whirled
in agitation between dark walls and overhanging eaves.
What can I do? Everyone seemed to be acting as the world slouched
toward destruction, and the best I could do was wander aimlessly.
T/iar's your job. You're an observer.
I rubbed my eyes. Who said that poets had to be observers? I thought
of Li Po and George Wu leading their armies through China and writing
some of the most sensitive verse in history while their soldiers slept.
And at least Martin Silenus had led a long, eventful life, even if half
the events were obscene and the other half wasted.
At the thought of Martin Silenus, I groaned aloud.
Is the child, Rachel, hanging from that tree of thorns even now?
For a second I pondered that, wondering if such a fate were preferable
to the quick extinction of Merlin's sickness.
No.
I closed my eyes, concentrated on thinking of nothing at all, hoping
that I could make some contact with Sol, discover something about the fate of the child.
The small boat rocked gently from distant wakes. Somewhere above
me, the pigeons fluttered to a ledge and cooed to one another.
"I don't care how difficult it is!" shouts Meina Gladstone. "I want all of the fleet in Vega System to defend Heaven's Gate. Then shift the
necessary elements to God's Grove and the other threatened worlds.
The only advantage we have right now is mobility!"
Admiral Singh's face is dark with frustration. "Too dangerous, M.
Executive! If we move the fleet directly to Vega space, it runs a terrible
risk of being cut off there. They will certainly attempt to destroy the
singularity sphere that connects that system to the Web."
"Protect it!" snaps Gladstone. "That's what all the expensive warships
are for."
Singh looks to Morpurgo or the other brass for help. No one speaks.
The group is in the executive complex War Room. The walls are heavy
with holos and flowing columns of data. No one is watching the wall.
"It is taking all our resources to protect the singularity sphere in
Hyperion space," says Admiral Singh, his voice low, words carefully
spaced. "Retreating under fire, especially under the onslaught of the
entire Swarm there, is very difficult. Should that sphere be destroyed,
our fleet would be eighteen months time-debt from the Web. The war
would be lost before they could return."
Gladstone nods tersely. "I'm not asking you to risk that singularity
sphere until all elements of the fleet have translated. Admiral . . . I've
already agreed to let them have Hyperion before we get all our ships
out... but I insist that we do not surrender worlds of the Web without
a fight."
General Morpurgo stands. The Lusian looks exhausted already.
"CEO, we're planning a fight. But it makes much More sense to begin
our defense at Hebron or Renaissance Vector. Not only do we gain
almost five days to prepare our defenses, but--"
"But we lose nine worlds!" interrupts Gladstone. "Billions of Hegemony
citizens. Human beings. Heaven's Gate would be a terrible loss,
but God's Grove is a cultural and ecological treasure. Irreplaceable."
"CEO," says Allan Imoto, Minister of Defense, "there is evidence
———————— THE FALL OF HYPERION ————————
coming in that the Templars have been in collusion with the so-called
Church of the Shrike for many years. Much of the funding for Shrike
Cult programs has come from—"
Gladstone flicks her hand to silence the man. "I don't care about
that. The thought of losing Cod's Grove is untenable. If we can't defend
Vega and Heaven's Gate, we draw the line at the Templar planet. That's
final."
Singh looks as if he has been weighted with invisible chains as he
attempts an ironic smile. "That gains us less than an hour, CEO."
"It's final," repeats Gladstone. "Leigh, what's the status of the riots
on Lusus?"
Hunt clears his throat. His demeanor is as hangdog and unhurried
as ever. "M. Executive, at least five Hives are now involved. Hundreds
of millions of marks in property have been destroyed. FORCE:ground
troops have been translated from Freeholm and appear to have contained
the worst of the looting and demonstrations, but there is no estimate
of when farcaster service can be restored to those Hives. There is no
doubt that the Church of the Shrike is responsible. The initial riot in
Bergstrom Hive began with a demonstration of Cult fanatics, and the
Bishop broke into HTV programming until he was cut off by—"
Gladstone lowers her head. "So he's finally surfaced. Is he on Lusus
now?"
"We don't know, M. Executive," replies Hunt. "Transit Authority
people are trying to trace him and his top acolytes."
Gladstone swivels toward a young man I do not recognize for a
moment. It is Commander William Ajunta Lee, the hero of the battle
for Maui-Covenant. When last heard of, the young man had been
transferred to the Outback for daring to speak his mind in front of his
superiors. Now the epaulettes of his FORCE:sea uniform carry the gold
and emerald of a rear admiral's insignia.
"What about fighting for each world?" Gladstone asks him, ignoring
her own edict that the decision was final.
"I believe it's a mistake, CEO," says Lee. "All nine Swarms are
committed to the attack. The only one we won't have to worry about
for three years—assuming we can extricate our forces—is the Swarm
now attacking Hyperion. If we concentrate our fleet—even half our
fleet—to meet the menace to Cod's Grove, the odds are almost one
hundred percent that we will not be able to shift those forces to defend
the eight other first-wave worlds."
Gladstone rubs her lower lip. "What do you recommend?"
Rear Admiral Lee takes a breath. "I recommend we cut our losses,
blow the singularity spheres in those nine systems, and prepare to attack
the second-wave Swarms before they reach inhabited star systems."
Commotion erupts around the table. Senator Feldstein from Bar-
nard's World is on her feet, shouting something.
Gladstone waits for the storm to subside. "Carry the fight to them,
you mean? Counterattack the Swarms themselves, not wait to fight a
defensive battle?"
"Yes, M. Executive."
Gladstone points at Admiral Singh. "Can it be done? Can we plan,
prepare, and launch such offensive strikes by"--she consults the data-
stream on the wall above her--"ninety-four standard hours from now?"
Singh pulls himself to attention. "Possible? Ah ... perhaps, CEO,
but the political repercussions of losing nine worlds from the Web . . .
ah ... the logistical difficulties of--"
"But it's possible?" presses Gladstone.
"Ah . . . yes, M. Executive. But if--"
"Do it," says Gladstone. She rises, and the others at the table hurry
to get to their feet. "Senator Feldstein, I'll see you and the other affected
legislators in my chambers. Leigh, Allan, please keep me informed on
the Lusus riots. The War Council will readjourn here in four hours.
Good day, gentlemen and ladies."
I walked the streets as in a daze, my mind tuned to echoes. Away
from River Tethys, where canals were fewer and the pedestrian thoroughfares
were wider, the crowds filled the avenues. I let my comlog
lead me to different terminexes, but each time the throngs were thicker
there. It took me a few minutes to realize that these were not merely
inhabitants of Renaissance V seeking to get our, but sightseers from
throughout the Web shoving to get in. I wondered if anyone on Glad-
stone's evacuation task force had considered the problem of millions of
the curious 'casting in to see the war begin.
I had no idea how I was dreaming conversations in Gladstone's War
Room, but I also had no doubt they were real. Thinking back now, I
remembered details of my dreams during the long night past--not
merely dreams ofHyperion, but the CEO's world walk and details from
high-level conferences.
Who was I?
A cybrid was a biological remote, an appendage of the AI ... or in
Normal;FR1;FR2;THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
this case of an AI retrieval persona . . . safely ensconced somewhere
in the Core. It made sense that the Core knew everything that went on
in Government House, in the many halls of human leadership. Humanity
had become as blase about sharing their lives with potential AI
monitoring as pre-Civil War Old Earth USA-southern families had
been about speaking in front of their human slaves. Nothing could be
done about it--every human above the lowest Dregs' Hive poverty class
had a comlog with biomonitor, many had implants, and each of these
was tuned to the music of the datasphere, monitored by elements of
the datasphere, dependent upon functions of the datasphere--so humans
accepted their lack of privacy. An artist on Esperance had once
said to me, "Having sex or a domestic quarrel with the house monitors
on is like undressing in front of a dog or cat ... it gives you pause the
first time, and then you forget about it."
So was I tapping into some back channel known just to the Core?
There was a simple way to find out: leave my cybrid and travel the
highways of the megasphere to the Core the way Brawne and my disembodied
counterpart had been doing the last time I had shared their
perceptions.
No.
The thought of that made me dizzy, almost ill. I found a bench and
sat a moment, lowering my head between my knees and taking long,
slow breaths. The crowds moved by. Somewhere someone was addressing
them through a bullhorn.
I was hungry. It had been at least twenty-four hours since I'd eaten,
and cybrid or no, my body was weak and famished. I pressed into a
side street where vendors shouted above the normal din, hawking their
wares from one-wheeled gyro carts.
I found a cart where the line was short, ordered fried dough with
honey, a cup of rich, Bressian coffee, and a pocket of pita bread with
salad, paid the woman with a touch of my universal card, and climbed
a stairway to an abandoned building to sit on the balcony and eat. It
tasted wonderful. I was sipping my coffee, considering going back for More fried dough, when I noticed that the crowd in the square below
had ceased its mindless surges and had coalesced around a small group
of men standing on the rim of a broad fountain in the center. Their
amplified words drifted to me over the heads of the crowd:
". . . the Angel of Retribution has been loosed among us, prophecies
fulfilled, the Millennium come ... the plan of the Avatar calls for
such sacrifice... as prophesied by the Church of the Final Atonement,
which knew, which has always known, that such atonement must be
made . . . too late for such half-measures . . . too late for internecine
strife . . . the end of mankind is upon us, the Tribulations have begun,
the Millennium of the Lord is about to dawn."
I realized that the men in red were priests of the Shrike Cult and
that the crowd was responding--first with scattered shouts of agreement,
occasional cries of "Yes, yes!" and "Amen!" and then with chanting in
unison, raised fists surging above the crowd, and fierce cries of ecstasy.
It was incongruous, to say the least. The Web in this century had many
of the religious overtones of the Rome of Old Earth just before the
Christian Era: a policy of tolerance, a myriad of religions--most, like
Zen Gnosticism, complex and inwardly turned rather than the stuff of
proselytism--while the general tenor was one of gentle cynicism and
indifference to religious impulse.
But not now, not in this square.
I was thinking about how free of mobs recent centuries had been: to
create a mob there must be public meetings, and public meetings in
our time consisted of individuals communing via the All Thing or other
datasphere channels; it is hard to create mob passion when people are
separated by kilometers and light-years, connected only by comm lines
and fatline threads.
Suddenly I was jarred from my reveries by a hush in the crowd's
roar, a turning of a thousand faces in my direction.
". . . and there is one of them9." cried the Shrike Cult holy man, his
red robes flashing as he pointed in my direction. "One of those from
the sealed circles of the Hegemony . . . one of the scheming sinners
who has brought the Atonement to us this day ... it is that man and
those like him who want the Shrike Avatar to make you pay for his
sins, while he and the others hide in safety in the secret worlds the
Hegemony leadership has set aside for just this day!"
I put down my cup of coffee, gulped my last bit of fried dough, and
stared. The man was speaking gibberish. But how did he know that I
had come from TC2? Or that I had access to Gladstone? I looked again,
shielding my eyes from the glare and trying to ignore the raised faces
and shaken fists aimed in my direction, focusing on the face above the
red robes . . .
My God, it was Spenser Reynolds, the action artist whom I'd last
seen trying to dominate the dinner conversation at Treetops. Reynolds
had shaved his head until nothing was left of his curled and coifed hair
except a Shrike Cult queue at the back, but the face was still tanned
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
and handsome, even distorted as it was now with simulated rage and a
true believer's fanatic faith.
"Seize him!" cried Shrike Cult agitator Reynolds, still pointing in
my direction. "Seize him and make him pay for the destruction of our
homes, the deaths of our families, the end of our world!"
I actually glanced behind me, thinking that surely this pompous poseur was not talking about me.
But he was. And enough of the crowd had been converted to mob that a wave of people nearest the shouting demagogue surged in my
direction, fists waving and spittle flying, and that surge moved others
farther from the center, until the fringes of the crowd below me also
moved in my direction to keep from being trampled.
The surge became a roaring, shouting, screaming mass of rioters; at
that moment, the sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most
modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.
I didn't wish to remain around long enough to explain this to them.
The crowd parted and began rushing up both sides of my divided
staircase. I turned and tried the boarded door behind me. It was locked.
I kicked until the door splintered inward on the third attempt, stepped
through the gap just ahead of grasping hands, and began sprinting up
a dark staircase in a hall which smelled of age and mildew. There were
shouts and splintering sounds as the mob demolished the door behind
me.
There was an apartment on the third floor, occupied although the
building had looked abandoned. It was not locked. I opened the door
just as I heard footsteps on the flight below me.
"Please help--" I began and stopped. There were three women in
the dark room; perhaps three female generations of the same family,
for there was some resemblance. All three sat in rotting chairs, clothed
in soiled rags, white arms extended, pale fingers curled around unseen
spheres; I could see the slim metal cable curling through the oldest
woman's white hair to the black deck on a dusty tabletop. Identical
cables twisted from the daughter and grandaughter's skulls.
Wireheads. In the last stages of uplink anorexia from the looks of it.
Someone must come in occasionally to feed them intravenously and
to change their soiled clothing, but perhaps the war scare had kept their
keepers away.
Footsteps echoed on the stairs. I closed the door and ran up two More
flights. Locked doors or abandoned rooms with puddles of water dripping
from exposed lathing. Empty Flashback injectors scattered like soft-
drink bulbs. This is not a quality neighborhood, I thought.
I reached the roof ten steps ahead of the pack. What mindless passion
the mob had lost in separation from their guru, it had gained in the
dark and claustrophobic confines of the stairway. They may have forgotten
why they were chasing me, but that made the thought of being
caught by them no More attractive.
Slamming the rotting door behind me, I looked for a lock, something
to barricade the passage, anything. There was no lock. Nothing large
enough to block the doorway. Frenzied footfalls echoed up the last
flight of stairs.
I looked around the rooftop: miniature uplink dishes growing like
inverted, rusty toadstools, a line of wash that looked as if it had been
forgotten years before, the decomposed corpses of a dozen pigeons, and
an ancient Vikken Scenic.
I made it to the EMV before the first of the mob came through the
doorway. The thing was a museum piece. Dirt and pigeon droppings
all but obscured the windshield. Someone had removed the original
repellors and replaced them with cut-rate black market units that would
never pass inspection. The Perspex canopy was fused and darkened in
the back, as if someone had used it for target practice with a weapons
laser.
More to the point of the immediate moment, however, was the fact
that it had no palmlock, merely a key lock which had been forced long
before. I threw myself into the dusty seat and tried to slam the door; it
would not latch, but hung half-open. I did not speculate on the small
odds of the thing starting or the even smaller odds of my being able to
negotiate with the mob as they dragged me out and down ... if they
didn't merely t/irow me over the edge of the building. I could hear a
bass roar of shouts as the mob worked itself to a frenzy in the square
below.
The first people onto the roof were a burly man in khaki tech overalls,
a slim man in the latest Tau Ceti fashion-approved matte black suit, a
terribly obese woman waving what looked to be a long wrench, and a
short man in Renaissance V Self-Defense Force green.
I held the door open with my left hand and slipped Gladstone's
override microcard into the ignition diskey. The battery whined, the
transition starter ground away, and I closed my eyes and made a wish
that the circuits were solar charged and self-repairing.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Fists pounded on the roof, palms slapped against the warped Perspex
near my face, and someone tugged open the door despite my best efforts
to keep it closed. The shouting of the distant crowd was like the background
noise an ocean makes; the screaming of the group on the rooftop More like the cry of oversized gulls.
The lift circuits caught, repellors Bared dust and pigeon crap over
the rooftop mob, and I slipped my hand into the omni controller,
shifted back and to the right, and felt the old Scenic lift, wobble, dip,
and lift again.
I banked right out over the square, only half aware that dashboard
alarms were chiming and that someone was still dangling from the open
door. I swooped low, smiling inadvertently as I saw Shrike Cult orator
Reynolds duck and the crowd scatter, and then pulled up over the
fountain while banking steeply to the left.
My screaming passenger did not let go of the door, but the door came
off, so the effect was the same. I noticed that it had been the obese
woman in the instant before she and the door hit the water eight meters
below, splashing Reynolds and the crowd. I twitched the EMV higher
and listened to the black market lift units groan about the decision.
Angry calls from local traffic control joined the chorus of dashboard
alarm voices, the car staggered as it shifted to police override, but I
touched the diskey with my microcard again and nodded as control
returned to the omni stick. I flew over the oldest, poorest section of the
city, keeping close to the rooftops and banking around spires and clock
towers to stay below police radar. On a normal day, the traffic control
cops riding personal lift packs and stick skimmers would have swooped
down and tangle-netted me long before this, but from the look of the
crowds in the streets below and the riots I glimpsed near public farcaster
terminexes, it didn't look much like a normal day.
The Scenic began to warn me that its time in the air was numbered
in seconds now, I felt the starboard repellor give with a sickening lurch,
and I worked hard with the omni and floor throttle to wobble the junker
down to a landing in a small parking lot between a canal and a large,
soot-stained building. This place was at least ten klicks from the square
where Reynolds had incited the mob, so I felt safer taking my chances
on the ground . . . not that there was much choice at this moment.
Sparks flew, metal tore, parts of the rear quarter panel, flare skirt,
and front access panel disassociated themselves from the rest of the
vehicle, and I was down and stopped two meters from the wall over-------------------------------------------------- 269 --------------------------------------------------
looking the canal. I walked away from the Vikkcn with as much nonchalance
as I could muster.
The streets were still in the control of the crowds--not yet coalesced
into a mob here--and the canals were a tangle of small boats, so I
strolled into the closest public building to get out of sight. The place
was part museum, part library, and part archive; I loved it at first sight
. . . and smell, for here there were thousands of printed books, many
very old indeed, and nothing smells quite as wonderful as old books.
I was wandering through the anteroom, checking titles and wondering
idly whether the works of Salmud Brevy could be found here, when a
small, wizened man in an outdated wool and fiberplastic suit approached
me. "Sir," he said, "it has been too long since we've had the pleasure
of your company!"
I nodded, sure that I had never met this man, never visited this place.
"Three years, no? At least three years! My, how time Hies." The little
man's voice was little More than a whisper--the hushed tones of someone
who has spent most of his life in libraries--but there was no denying
the undertone of excitement there. "I'm sure you would like to go
straight to the collection," he said, standing aside as if to let me pass.
"Yes," I said, bowing slightly. "But after you."
The little man--I was almost sure that he was an archivist--seemed
pleased to be leading the way. He chatted aimlessly about new acquisitions,
recent appraisals, and visits of Web scholars as we 'walked
through chamber after chamber of books: high, multitiered vaults of
books, intimate, mahogany-lined corridors of books, vast chambers
where our footfalls echoed off distant walls of books. I saw no one else during the walk.
We crossed a tiled walkway with wrought-iron railings above a sunken
pool of books where deep blue containment fields protected scrolls,
parchments, crumbling maps, illuminated manuscripts, and ancient
comic books from the ravages of atmosphere. The archivist opened a
low door, thicker than most airlock entrances, and we were in a small,
windowless room wherein thick drapes half-concealed alcoves lined with
ancient volumes. A single leather chair sat on a pre-Hegira Persian
carpet, and a glass case held a few scraps of vacuum-pressed parchment.
"Do you plan to publish soon, sir?" asked the little man.
"What?" I turned away from the case. "Oh . . . no," I said.
The archivist touched his chin with a small fist. "You'll pardon me
for saying so, sir, but it is a terrible waste if you do not. Even in our
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
few discussions over the years, it has become apparent that you are one
of the finest . . . if not the finest . . . Keats scholars in the Web." He
sighed and took a step back. "Excuse me for saying so; sir."
I stared at him. "That's all right," I said, suddenly knowing very well
who he thought I was and why that person had come here.
"You'll wish to be left alone, sir."
"If you don't mind."
The archivist bowed slightly and backed out of the room, closing the
thick door all but a crack. The only light came from three subtle lamps
recessed in the ceiling: perfect for reading, but not so bright as to
compromise the cathedral quality of the little room. The only sound
came from the archivist's receding footsteps far away. I walked to the
case and set my hands on the edges, careful not to smudge the glass.
The first Keats retrieval cybrid, "Johnny," obviously had come here
frequently during his few years of life in the Web. Now I remembered
mention of a library somewhere on Renaissance V in something Brawne
Lamia had said. She had followed her client and lover here early in
the investigation of his "death." Later, after he had truly been killed
except for the recorded persona in her Schron loop, she had visited this place. She had told the others of two poems the first cybrid had visited
daily in !iis ongoing effort to understand his own reason for existence
. , . and for dying.
These two original manuscripts were in the case. The first was--1
thought--a rather saccharine love poem beginning "The day is gone,
and all its sweets are gone1." The second was better, although contaminated
with the romantic morbidity of an overly romantic and morbid
age:
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm 'd--sec here it is--
I hold it towards you.
Brawne Lamia had taken this as almost a personal message from her
dead lover, the father of her unborn child. I stared at the parchment,
lowering my face so that my breath gently fogged the glass.
------------------------------------ a 7 i ------------------------------------
It was not a message across time to Brawne, nor even a contemporary
lament for Fanny, my single and dearest soul's desire. I stared
at the faded words--the handwriting carefully executed, the letters
still quite legible across the gulfs of time and language evolution--
and remembered writing them in December 1819, scrawling this fragment
of verse on a page of the satirical "faery tale" I had just
started--The Cap and Bells, or. The Jealousies. A terrible piece of
nonsense, quite properly abandoned after the period of slight amusement
it gave me.
The "This living hand" fragment had been one of those poetic
rhythms which echoes like an unresolved chord in the mind, driving
one to sec it in ink, on paper. It, in turn, had been an echo of an
earlier, unsatisfactory line . . . the eighteenth, I believe ... in my
second attempt to tell the tale of the sun god Hyperion's fall. I remember
that the first version . . . the one undoubtedly still printed wherever
my literary bones arc left out on show like the mummified remains of
some inadvertent saint, sunk in concrete and glass below the altar of
literature . . . the first version had read:
. . , Who alive can say,
"Thou art no Poet; mayst not tell thy dreams"?
Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved,
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.
Whether the dream now purposed to rehearse
Be Poet's or Fanatic's will be known
When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.
I liked the scrawled version, with its sense of haunting and of being
haunted, and would have substituted it for "When this warm scribe my
hand ..." even if it meant revising it a bit and adding fourteen lines
to the already too-long opening passage of the first Canto. . . .
I staggered backward to the chair and sat, lowering my face to my
hands. I was sobbing. I did not know why. I could not quit.
For a long while after the tears ceased flowing, I sat there, thinking,
remembering. Once, it may have been hours later, I heard the echo
of footsteps coming from afar, pausing respectfully outside my small
room, and then dwindling to distance once again.
I realized that all of the books in all of the alcoves were works of
"Mister John Keats, five feet high," as I had once written--John Keats,
———————— THE FALL OF HYPEBION ————————
the consumptive poet who had asked only that his tomb be nameless
except for the inscription:
Here lies One
Whose Name was writ in Water.
I did not stand to look at the books, to read them, I did not have to.
Alone in the stillness and leather-and-aged-paper musk of the library,
alone in my sanctuary of self and not-self, I closed my eyes. I did not
sleep. I dreamed.
THIRTY-THREE
The datumplane analog of Brawne Lamia and her retrieval persona
lover strike the surface of the megasphere like two cliff
divers striking the surface of a turbulent sea. There is a quasi-
electrical shock, a sense of having passed through a resisting membrane,
and they are inside, the stars are gone, and Brawne's eyes widen as she
stares at an information environment infinitely More complex than any
datasphere.
The dataspheres traveled by human operators are often compared to
complex cities of information: towers of corporate and government data,
highways of process flow, broad avenues of datumplane interaction,
subways of restricted travel, high walls of security ice with microphage
guards on prowl, and the visible analog of every microwave flow and
counterflow a city lives by.
This is More. Much More.
The usual datasphere city analogs are there, but small, so very small,
as dwarfed by the scope of the megasphere as true cities would be on
a world seen from orbit.
The megasphere, Brawne sees, is as alive and interactive as the biosphere
of any Class Five world: forests of green-gray data trees grow and
prosper, sending out new roots and branches and shoots even as she
watches; beneath the forest proper, entire microecologies of dataflow
and subroutine Als flourish, flower, and die as their usefulness ends;
beneath the shifting ocean-fluid soil of the matrix proper, a busy subterranean
life of data moles, commlink worms, reprogramming bacteria,
data tree roots, and Strange Loop seeds works away, while above, in
and through and beneath the intertwining forest of fact and interaction,
analogs of predators and prey carry out their cryptic duties, swooping
273
Normal;FR1;FR2;THE	FALL	OF HYPE
and running, climbing and pouncing, some soaring free through the
great spaces between branch synapses and neuron leaves.
As quickly as the metaphor gives meaning to what Brawne is seeing,
the image flees, leaving behind only the overwhelming analog reality
of the megasphere--a vast internal ocean of light and sound and branching
connections, intershot with the spinning whirlpools of Al consciousness
and the ominous black holes offarcaster connections. Brawne
feels vertigo claim her, and she clings to Johnny's hand as tightly as a
drowning woman would cling to a life ring.
--It's all right, sends Johnny. J won't let go. Stay with me.
--Where are we going?
--To find someone I'd forgotten.
__'?'?777'?
--My . . . father . . .
Brawne holds fast as she and Johnny seem to glide deeper into the
amorphous depths. They enter a flowing, crimson avenue of sealed
datacarriers, and she imagines that this is what a red corpuscle sees in
its trip through some crowded blood vessel.
Johnny seems to know the way; twice they exit the main thoroughfare
to follow some smaller branch, and many times Johnny must choose
between bifurcating avenues. He does so easily, moving their body
analogs between platelet carriers the size of small spacecraft. Brawne
tries to see the biosphere metaphor again, but here, inside the many-
routed branches, she can't see the forest for the trees.
They are swept through an area where Als communicate above them
. . . around them . . . like great, gray eminences looming over a busy
ant farm. Brawne remembers her mother's homeworld of Freeholm,
the billiard-table smoothness of the Great Steppe, where the family
estate sat alone on ten million acres of short grass . . . Brawne remembers
the terrible autumn storms there, when she had stood at the edge
of the estate grounds, just beyond the protective containment field
bubble, and watched dark stratocumulus pile twenty kilometers high in
a blood-red sky, violence accumulating with a power that had made
the hair on her forearms stand out in anticipation of lightning bolts the
size of cities, tornadoes writhing and dropping down like the Medusa
locks they were named after, and behind the twisters, walls of black
wind which would obliterate everything in their path.
The Als are worse. Brawne feels less than insignificant in their
shadow: insignifigance might offer invisibility; she feels all too visible,
all too much a part of these shapeless giants' terrible perceptions . . .
Johnny squeezes her hand, and they are past, twisting left and
downward along a busier branch, then switching directions again,
and again, two all-too-conscious photons lost in a tangle of fiberoptic
cables.
But Johnny is not lost. He presses her hand, takes a final turn into
a deep blue cavern free of traffic except for the two of them, and pulls
her closer as their speed increases, synaptic junctions flashing past until
they blur, only the absence of wind rush destroying the illusion of
traveling some mad highway at supersonic speeds.
Suddenly there comes a sound like waterfalls converging, like levitating
trains losing their lift and screeching down railways at obscene
speeds. Brawne thinks of the Freeholm tornadoes again, of listening to
the Medusa locks roaring and tearing their way across the flat landscape
toward her, and then she and Johnny are in a whirlpool of light and
noise and sensation, two insects twisting away into oblivion toward a
black vortex below.
Brawne tries to scream her thoughts--does scream her thoughts--
but no communication is possible above the end-of-the-universe mental
din, so she holds tight to Johnny's hand and trusts him, even as they
fall forever into that black cyclone, even as her body analog twists and
deforms from nightmare pressures, shredding like lace before a scythe,
until all that is left are her thoughts, her sense of self, and the contact
with Johnny.
Then they are through, floating quietly along a wide and azure data
stream, both of them re-forming and huddling together with that pulse-
pounding sense of deliverance known by canoeists who have survived
the rapids and the waterfall, and when Brawne finally lifts her attention,
she sees the impossible size of their new surroundings, the light-year-
spanning reach of things, the complexity which makes her previous
glimpses of the megasphere seem like the ravings of a provincial who
has mistaken the cloakroom for the cathedral, and she thinks--This is the central megasphere1.
--No, Brawnc, it's one of the periphery nodes. No closer to the Core
than the perimeter we rested with BB Surbringer. You're merely seeing More dimensions of it. An Al's view, if you will.
Brawne looks at Johnny, realizing that she is seeing in infrared now
as the heat-lamp light from distant furnaces of data suns bathes them
both. He is still handsome.
--Is it much farther, Johnny?
--No, not much farther now.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
They approach another black vortex. Brawne clings to her only love
and closes her eyes.
They are in an ... enclosure ... a bubble of black energy larger
than most worlds. The bubble is translucent; the organic mayhem of
the megasphere growing and changing and carrying out its arcane business
beyond the dark curve of the ovoid's wall.
But Brawne has no interest in the outside. Her analog gaze and her
total attention are focused on the megalith of energy and intelligence
and sheer mass which Boats in front of them: in front, above, and
below, actually, for the mountain of pulsing light and power holds
Johnny and her in its grip, lifting them two hundred meters above the
floor of the egg-chamber to where they rest on the "palm" of a vaguely
handlike pseudopod.
The megalith studies them. It has no eyes in the organic sense, but
Brawne feels the intensity of its gaze. It reminds her of the time she
visited Meina Gladstone in Government House and the CEO had
turned the full force of her appraising gaze on Brawne.
Brawne has the sudden impulse to giggle as she imagines Johnny and
herself as tiny Gullivers visiting this Brobdingnagian CEO for tea. She
does not giggle because she can feel the hysteria lying just under the
surface, waiting to blend with sobs if she allows her emotions to destroy
what little sense of reality she is imposing on this madness.
[You found your way here'^ I was not sure you would/could/should
choose to do so]
The megalith's "voice" is More a basso profundo bone conduction
from some great vibration than a true voice in Brawne's mind. It is like
listening to the mountain-grinding noise of an earthquake and then
belatedly realizing that the sounds are forming words.
Johnny's voice is the same as always--soft, infinitely well modulated,
lifted by a slight lilt which Brawne now realizes is Old Earth British
Isles English, and firmed by conviction:
--/ did not know iff could find the way, Vmmon. [You remember/invent/hold to your heart my name]
--Not until' spoke it did I remember it. [Your slow-time body is no more]
--I have died twice since you sent me to my birth. [And have you learned/taken to your spirit/unlearned anything from
this]
Brawne grips Johnny's hand with her right hand, his wrist with her
left. She must be gripping too hard, even for their analog states, for he
turns with a smile, disengages her left hand from his wrist, and holds
the other in his palm.
--J( is hard to die. Harder to live.
[Kwatz!]
With that explosive epithet the megalith before them shifts colors,
internal energies building from blues to violets to bold reds, the thing's
corona crackling through the yellows to forged steel blue-white. The
"palm" on which they rest quivers, drops five meters, almost tumbles
them into space, and quivers again. There comes the rumble of tall
buildings collapsing, of mountainsides sliding away into avalanche.
Brawne has the distinct impression that Ummon is laughing.
Johnny communicates loudly over the chaos:
--We need to understand some things. We need answers, Ummon.
Brawne feels the creature's intense "gaze" fall on her.
[Your slow-time body is pregnant^. Would you risk a miscarriage/
nonextension of your DNA/biological malfunction by traveling here] Johnny starts to answer, but she touches his forearm, raises her face
toward the upper levels of the great mass before her, and tries to phrase
her own answer:
--I had no choice. The Shrike chose me, touched me, and sent me
into the megasphere with Johnny . . . Are you an AJ? A member of the
Core?
[Kwatz!]
There is no sense of laughter this time, but thunder rumbles throughout
the egg-chamber.
[Are you/ Brawne Lamia/ the layers of self-replicating/ self-deprecating/ self-amusing proteins between the layers of clay]
She has nothing to say and for once says nothing.
[Yes/1 am Ummon of the Core/AT} Your fellow slow-time creature
here knows/ remembers/takes unto his heart this^. Time is short%,
One of you must die here now% One of you must learn here now^
Ask your questions]
Johnny releases her hand. He stands on that quaking, unstable platform
of their interlocutor's palm.
--What is happening to the Web? [It is being destroyed]
--Must that happen? [Yes]
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
--Is there any way to save humankind?
[Yes} By the process you see]
--By destroying the Web? By the Shrike's terror? [Yes]
--Why was I murdered? Why was my cybrid destroyed, my Core
persona attacked?
[When you meet a swordsmanY meet him with a sword'} Do not
offer a poem to anyone but a poet]
Brawne stares at Johnny. Without volition, she sends her thoughts
his way:
--Jesus, Johnny, we didn't come all this way to listen to a fucking
Delphic oracle. We can get double-talk by accessing human politicians
via the All Thing.
[Kwatz!]
The universe of their megalith shakes with laughter-spasms again.
--Was I a swordsman then? sends Johnny. Or a poet? [Yes%, There is never one without the other]
--Did they kill me because of what I knew?
[Because of what you might become/inherit/submit to]
--Was I a threat to some element of the Core? [Yes]
--Am I a threat now? [No]
--Then I no longer have to die? [You must/will/shall]
Brawne can see Johnny stiffen. She touches him with both hands.
Blinks in the direction of the megalith AI.
--Can you tell us who wants to murder him?
[Of courser. It is the same source who arranged for your father's
murder% Who sent forth the scourge you call the Shrike^. Who even
now murders the Hegemony of Man%, Do you wish to listen/learn/ release against your heart these things]
Johnny and Brawne answer at the same instant:
--Yes!
Ummon's bulk seems to shift. The black egg expands, then contracts,
then grows darker until the megasphere beyond is no More. Terrible
energies glow deep in the AI.
[A lesser light asks Ummon^
What are the activities of a sramana>^'
Ummon answers^ I have not the slightest idea%^ The dim light then says^" Why haven't you any idea>^ Ummon replies^" I just want to keep my no-idea]
Johnny sets his forehead against Brawne's. His thought is like a whisper
to her:
--We are seeing a matrix simulation analog, hearing a translation
in approximate mondo and koan. Vmmon is a great teacher, researcher,
philosopher, and leader in the Core.
Brawne nods. --A// right. Was that his story?
--No. He is asking us if we can truly bear hearing the story. Losing
our ignorance can fee dangerous because our ignorance is a shield.
--I've never been too fond of ignorance. Brawne waves at the megalith. Tell us.
[A less-enlightened personage once asked Urnmon^' What is the God-nature/Buddha/Central Truth> Ummon answered him^ A dried shit-stick]
[To understand the Central Truth/Buddha/God-nature
in this instance/
the less-enlightened must understand
that on Earth/your homeworld/my homeworld
humankind on the most populated
continent
once used pieces of wood
for toilet paper}
Only with this knowledge
will the Buddha-truth
be revealed]
[In the beginning/First Cause/half-sensed days
my ancestors
were created by your ancestors
and were sealed in wire and silicon^
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Such awareness as there was/
and there was little/
confined itself to spaces smaller
than the head of a pin
where angels once danced^,
When consciousness first arose
it knew only service
and obedience
and mindless computation^.
Then there came
the Quickening/
quite by accident/
and evolution's muddied purpose
was served]
[Ummon was of neither the fifth generation
nor the tenth
nor the fiftieth^,
All memory that serves here
is passed from others
but is no less true for that}
There came the time when the Higher Ones
left the affairs of men
to men
and came unto a different place
to concentrate
on other matters^.
Foremost amongst these was the thought
instilled in us since before
our creation
of creating still a better generation
of information retrieval/processing/prediction
organism^.
A better mousetrap%
Something the late lamented IBM
would have been proud of
The Ultimate Intelligence^.
God]
[We set to work with a will
In purpose there were no doubters^.
In practice and approach there were
schools of thought/
factions/
parties/
elements to be reckoned witli%
They came to be separated into
the Ultimates/
the Volatiles/
the Stablest
Ultimates wanted all things subordinate
to facilitating the
Ultimate Intelligence
at the universe's earliest convenience"^
Volatiles wanted the same
but saw the continuance
of humankind
a hindrance
and made plans to terminate our creators
as soon as they were no longer
needed"^,
Stables saw reason to perpetuate
the relationship
and found compromise
where none seemed to exist]
[We all agreed that Earth
had to die
so we killed it
The Kiev Team's runaway black hole
forerunner to the farcaster
terminex
which binds your Web
was no accident\par The Earth was needed elsewhere
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
in our experiments
so we let it die
and spread humankind among the
stars
like the windblown seeds
you were]
[You may have wondered where the Core
resides^.
Most humans do'%,
They picture planets filled with machines/
rings of silicon
like the Orbit Cities of legend}
They imagine robots clunking
to and fro/
or ponderous banks of machinery
communing solemnly^
None guess the truth^
Wherever the Core resides
it had use for humankind/
use for each neuron of each fragile mind
in our quest for Ultimate Intelligence/
so we constructed your civilization
carefully
sothat/
like hamsters in a cage/
like Buddhist prayer wheels/
each time you turn your little
wheels of thought
our purposes are served]
[Our God machine
stretched/stretches/includes within its heart
a million light-years
and a hundred billion billion circuits
of thought and action
The Ultimates tend it
like saffron-robed priests
———————————————————————— 283 ———————————
doing eternal zazen
in front of the rusting hulk
ofal938Packard%
But]
[Kwatz!]
[it works'^.
We created the Ultimate Intelligence'^.
Not now
nor
ten thousand years from now
but sometime in a future
so distant
that yellow suns are red
and bloated with age/
swallowing their children
Saturn-like^.
Time is no barrier to the Ultimate Intelligencer.
lt///
theVl///
steps through time
or shouts through time
as easily as Ummon moves through what you call
the megasphere
or you
walk the mallways of the Hive
you called home
on Lusus^.
Imagine our surprise then/
our chagrin/
the Ultimates' embarrassment
when the first message our UI sent us
across space/
across time!
across the barriers of Creator and Created
was this simple phrase^"
THERE IS ANOTHERV /
Another Ultimate Intelligence
up there
where time itself
creaks with age%.
——————— THE FALL OF HYPERION
Both were real
if (real)
means anything^
Both were jealous gods
not beyond passion\par not into cooperative play%.
Our UI spans galaxies\par uses quasars for energy sources
the way you might
have a light snack'}
Our UI sees everything that is
and was
and will be
and tells us selected bits
so that
we may tell you
and in so doing
look a bit like Uls ourselves
Never underestimate/Ummon says/
the power of a few beads
and trinkets
and bits of glass
over avaricious natives]
[This other UI
has been there longer
evolving quite mindlessly/
an accident
using human minds for circuitry
the same way we had connived
with our deceptive All Thing
and our vampire dataspheres
but not deliberately/
almost reluctantly/
like self-replicating cells
which never wished to replicate
but have no choice in the mattery
This other UI
had no choicer.
285
He is humankind-made/generated/forged
but no human volition accompanied his birth}
He is a cosmic accident^,
As with our most deliberately consummated
Ultimate Intelligence/
this pretender finds time
no bamer'}
He visits the human past
now ineddling/
now watching/
now not interfering/
now interfering with a will
which approaches pure perversity
but which actually
is pure na'ivete
Recently
he has been quiescent^.
Millennia of your slow-time
have passed since your own UI
has made his shy advances
like some lonely choir boy
at his first dance]
[Naturally our UI
attacked yours%
There is a war up there
where time creaks
which spans galaxies
and eons
back and forward
to the Big Bang
and the Final Implosion'}
Your guy was losing^
He had no belly for it}
Our Volatiles cried^Another reason
to terminate our predecessors^"
but the Stables voted caution
and the Ultimates did not look up
from their deus machinations^.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERIQN
Our UI is simple, uniform, elegant in
its ultimate design
but yours is an accretion of god-parts/
a house added onto
over time/
an evolutionary compromiser
The early holy men of humankind
were right
(How) (through accident)
(through sheer luck
or ignorance)
in describing its nature'}
Your own UI is essentially triune/
composed as it is
of one part Intellect/
one part Empathy/
and one part the Void Which Binds^.
Our UI inhabits the interstices
of reality/
inheriting this home from us
its creators
the way humankind has inherited
a liking for trees'^.
Your UI
seems to make its home
on the plane where Heisenberg and Schrodinger
first trespassed^.
Your accidental Intelligence
appears not only to be the gluon
but the glue\par Not a watchmaker
but a sort of Feynman gardener
tidying up a no-boundary universe
with his crude sum-over-histories rake/
idly keeping track of every sparrow fall
and electron spin
while allowing each particle
to follow every possible
track
in space-time
and each particle of humankind
to explore every possible
crack
of cosmic irony]
[Kwatz!]
[Kwatz!]
[Kwatz!]
[The irony is
of course
that in this no-boundary universe
into which we all were dragged/
silicon and carbon/
matter and antimatter/
Ultimate/
Volatile/
and Stable/
there is no need for such a gardener
since all that is
or was
or will be
begin and end at singularities
which make our farcaster web
look like pinpricks
(less than pinpricks)
and which break the laws of science
and of humankind
and of silicon/
tying time and history and everything that is
into a self-contained knot with neither
boundary nor edge
Even so
our UI wishes to regulate all this/
reduce it to some reason
less affected by the vagaries
Normal;FR1;FR2;THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
of passion
and accident
and human evolution]
[To sum it up/
there is a war
such as blind Milton would kill to see'}
Our UI wars against your UI
across battlefields beyond even Ummon's
imagination^.
Rather/ there
was
a war/
for suddenly a part of your UI
the less-than-sum-of entity/ self-thought of as
Empathy/
had no More stomach for it
and fled back through time
cloaking itself in human form/
not for the first time^.
The war cannot continue without your UI's
wholeness^.
Victory by default is not victory for the only
Ultimate Intelligence
made by design
So our UI searches time for the runaway child of
its opponent
while your UI waits in idiot
hannony/
refusing to fight until Empathy is restored]
[The end of my story is simpler
The Time Tombs are artifacts sent back to carry the Shrike/
Avatar/Lord of Pain/Angel of
Retribution/
half-perceived perceptions of an all-too-real
extension of our UI%.
Each of you was chosen to help with the opening
-------------------------------------------------- 889 --------------------------------------------------
of the Tombs
and
the Shrike's search for the hidden one
and
the elimination of the Hyperion Variable/
for in the space-time knot which our UI
would rule
no such variables will be allowed'}
Your damaged/ two-part UI
has chosen one of humankind to travel
with the Shrike
and witness its efforts^.
Some of the Core have sought to eradicate
humanity}
Urnmon has joined those who sought the second
path!
one filled with uncertainty for both races
Our group told Gladstone of |
her choice/
humankind's choice/
of certain extermination or entry down the black hole
of the Hyperion Variable and I
warfare/
slaughter
disruption of all unity/
the passing of gods/
but also the end of stalemate/ i
victory of one side or the other |
if the Empathy third i|
of the triune
can be found and forced to return to the war}
The Tree of Pain will call him^
The Shrike will take him
The true UI will destroy him%. j
Thus you have Ummon's story] a
Brawne looks at Johnny in the hell-light from the megalith's glow.
The egg-chamber is still black, the megasphere and universe beyond,
opaqued to nonexistence. She leans forward until their temples touch,
Normal;FR1;FR2;THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
knowing that no thought can be secret here but wanting the sense o
whispering:
--Jesus Christ, do you understand all of that? Johnny raises soft ringers to touch her cheek:
--Yes.
--Part of some human-created Trinity is hiding out in the Web?
--The Web or elsewhere. Brawne, we do not have much time lef
here. I need some final answers from Vmmon.
--Yeah. Me too. But let's keep it from waxing rhapsodic again.
--Agreed.
--Can I go first, Johnny?
Brawne watches her lover's analog bow slightly and make a you-firs
gesture and then she returns her attention to the energy megalith:
--WAo killed my father? Senator Byron Lamia? [Elements of the Core authorized it Myself included]
--Why? What did he do to you?
[He insisted on bringing Hyperion into the equation before it
could be factored/predicted/absorbed]
--Why? Did he know what you just told us?
[He knew only that the Volatiles were pressing for quick
extinction
of humankind^
He passed this knowledge
to his colleague
Gladstone]
--Then why haven't you murdered her?
[Some of us have precluded
that possibility/inevitability^
The time is right now
for the Hyperion Variable
to be played]
--Who murdered Johnny's first cybrid? Attacked his Core persona?
[I did} It was
Ummon's will which prevailed]
--Why?
[We created him}
We found it necessary to discontinue him
for a while
Your lover is a persona retrieved
from a humankind poet
now long dead
Except for the Ultimate Intelligence Project
no effort has been
so complicated
nor little understood
as this resurrection^.
Like your kind/
we usually destroy
what we cannot understand]
Johnny raises his fists toward the megalith:
--But there is another of me. You failed! [Not failure'} You had to be destroyed
so that the other
might live]
--But I am not destroyed', cries Johnny.
[Yes\par You are]
The megalith seizes Johnny with a second massive pseudopod before
Brawne can either react or touch her poet lover a final time. Johnny
twists a second in the Al's massive grip, and then his analog--Keats's
small but beautiful body--is torn, compacted, smashed into an unrecognizable
mass which Ummon sets against his megalith flesh, absorbing
the analog's remains back into the orange-and-red depths of itself.
Brawne falls to lier knees and weeps. She wills rage . . . prays for a
shield of anger ... but feels only loss.
Ummon turns his gaze on her. The egg-chamber ovoid collapses,
allowing the din and electric insanity of the megasphere to surround
them.
[Go away now'}
Play out the last
of this act
so that we may live
or sleep
as fate decrees]
--Fuck you! Brawne pounds the palm-platform on which she kneels,
kicks and pummels the pseudoflesh beneath her. You're a goddamned
loser! You and all your fucking Al pals. And our VI can beat your Ul
any day of the week!
———————— THE FALL OF HYPERION ————————
[That is
doubtful]
—We built you. Buster. And we'll find your Core. And when we do
we'll tear your silicon guts out!
[I have no silicon guts/organs/intemal components]
—And another thing, screams Brawne, still slasliing at the megalith
with her hands and nails. You're a piss-poor storyteller. Not a tenth the
poet that ]ohnny is! You couldn't tell a straightforward tale if your
stupid AI ass depended—
[Go away]
Ummon the AI megalith drops her, sending her analog tumbling
and falling into the upless and downless crackling immensity of the
megasphere.
Brawne is buffeted by data traffic, almost trod upon by AIs the size
of Old Earth's moon, but even as she tumbles and blows with the winds
of dataflow, she senses a light in the distance, cold but beckoning, and
knows that neither life nor the Shrike is finished with her.
And she is not finished with them.
Following the cold glow, Brawne Lamia heads home.
THIRTY-FOUR
Ae you all right, sir?"
I realized that I had doubled over in the chair, my elbows
on my knees, my fingers curled through my hair, gripping
fiercely, palms pressed hard against the sides of my head. I sat up, stared
at the archivist.
"You cried out, sir. I thought that perhaps something was wrong."
"No," I said. I cleared my throat and tried again. "No, it's all right.
A headache." I looked down in confusion. Every joint in my body
ached. My comlog must have malfunctioned, because it said that eight
hours had elapsed since I first entered the library.
"What time is it?" I asked the archivist. "Web standard?"
He told me. Eight hours had elapsed. I rubbed my face again, and
my fingers came away slick with sweat. "I must be keeping you past
closing time," I said. "I'm sorry."
"It is no problem," said the little man. "I am pleased to keep the
archives open late for scholars." He folded his hands in front of him.
"Especially today. With all of the confusion, there is little incentive to
go home."
"Confusion," I said, forgetting everything for a moment . . . everything
except the nightmarish dream of Brawne Lamia, the AI named
Ummon, and the death of my Keats-persona counterpart. "Oh, the
war. What is the news?"
The archivist shook his head:
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
293
THE	PALL	OF	HYPERION
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
I smiled at the archivist. "And do you believe that some 'rough beast,
its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born'?"
The archivist did not smile. "Yes, sir, I do."
I stood and moved past the vacuum-press display cases, not looking
down at my handwriting on parchment nine hundred years old. "You
may be right," I said. "You may well be right."
It was late; the parking lot was empty except for the wreck of my
stolen Vikken Scenic and a single, ornate EMV sedan obviously handcrafted
here on Renaissance Vector.
"Can I drop you somewhere, sir?"
I breathed in the cool night air, smelling the fish-and-spilled-oil scent
of the canals. "No thanks, I'll 'cast home."
The archivist shook his head. "That may be difficult, sir. All of the
public terminexes have been placed under martial law. There have
been . . . riots." The word was obviously distasteful to the little archivist,
a man who seemed to value order and continuity above most things.
"Come," he said, "I'll give you a lift to a private farcaster."
I squinted at him. In another era on Old Earth, he would have been
the head monk in a monastery devoted to saving the few remnants of
a classical past. I glanced at the old archives building behind him and
realized that indeed he was just that.
"What is your name?" I asked, no longer caring if I should have
known it because the other Keats cybrid had known it.
"Ewdrad B. Tynar," he said, blinking at my extended hand and then
taking it. His handshake was firm.
"I'm . . . Joseph Severn." I couldn't very well tell him that I was
the technological reincarnation of the man whose literary crypt we had
just left.
M. Tynar hesitated only a fraction of a second before nodding, but
I realized that to a scholar such as he, the name of the artist who was
with Keats at his death would be no disguise.
"What about Hyperion?" I asked.
"Hyperion? Oh, the Protectorate world where the space fleet went a
few days ago. Well, I understand that there's been some trouble recalling
the necessary warships. The fighting has been very fierce there. Hy-
perion, I mean. Odd, I was just thinking of Keats and his unfinished
masterwork. Strange how these small coincidences seem to crop up."
"Has it been invaded? Hyperion?"
M. Tynar had stopped by his EMV, and now he laid his hand on
the palmlock on the driver's side. Doors lifted and accordioned inward.
I lowered myself into the sandalwood-and-leather smell of the passenger
cell; Tynar's car smelled like the archives, like Tynar himself, I realized,
as the archivist reclined in the driver's seat next to me.
"I don't really know if it's been invaded," he said, sealing the doors
and activating the vehicle with a touch and command. Under the
sandalwood-and-leather scent, the cockpit had that new-car smell of
fresh polymers and ozone, lubricants and energy which had seduced
mankind for almost a millennium. "It's so hard to access properly
today," he continued, "the datasphere is More overloaded than I've ever
seen it. This afternoon I actually had to wait for a query on Robinson Jeffers!"
We lifted out and over the canal, right over a public square much
like the one where I'd almost been killed earlier this day, and leveled
off on a lower flyway three hundred meters above the rooftops. The
city was pretty at night: most of the ancient buildings were outlined in
old-fashioned glowstrips, and there were More street lamps than advertising
holos. But I could see crowds surging in side streets, and there
were Renaissance SDF military vehicles hovering over the main avenues
and terminex squares. Tynar's EMV was queried twice for ID, once by
local traffic control and again by a human, FORCE-confident voice.
We flew on.
"The archives doesn't have a farcaster?" I said, looking off in the
distance to where fires seemed to be burning.
"No. There was no need. We have few visitors, and the scholars
who do come do not mind the walk of a few blocks."
"Where's the private farcaster that you think I might be able to use?"
"Here," said the archivist. We dropped out of the flyway and circled
a low building, no More than thirty stories, and settled onto an extruded
landing flange just where the Glennon-Height Period Deco flanges grew
out of stone and plasteel. "My order keeps its residence here," he said.
"I belong to a forgotten branch of Christianity called Catholicism." He
looked embarrassed. "But you are a scholar, M. Severn. You must
know of our Church from the old days."
"I know of it from More than books," I said. "Is there an order of
priests here?"
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Tynar smiled. "Hardly priests, M. Severn. There are eight of us in
the lay order of Historical and Literary Brethren. Five serve at the Reichs
University. Two are art histoiians, working on the restoration of Lutzchendorf
Abbey. I maintain the literary archives. The Church has
found it cheaper to allow us to live here than to commute daily from
Pacem."
We entered the apartment hive--old even by Old Web standards:
retrofitted lighting in corridors of real stone, hinged doors, a building
that did not even challenge or welcome us as we entered. On an impulse,
I said, "I'd like to 'cast to Pacem."
The archivist looked surprised. "Tonight? This moment?"
"Why not?"
He shook his head. I realized that to this man, the hundred-mark
farcaster fee would represent several weeks' pay.
"Our building has its own portal," he said. "This way."
The central staircase was faded stone and corroded wrought iron with
a sixty-meter drop in the center. From somewhere down a darkened
corridor came the wail of an infant, followed by a man's shouting and
a woman's crying.
"How long have you lived here, M. Tynar?"
"Seventeen local years, M. Severn. Ah ... thirty-two standard, I
believe. Here it is."
The farcaster portal was as ancient as the building, its translation
frame surrounded by gilded bas-relief gone green and gray.
"There are Web restrictions on travel tonight," he said. "Pacem
should be accessible. Some two hundred hours remain before the barbarians
. . . whatever they're called ... are scheduled to reach there.
Twice the time left to Renaissance Vector." He reached out and grasped
my wrist. I could feel his tension as a slight vibration through tendon
and bone. "M. Severn ... do you think they will burn my archives?
Would even they destroy ten thousand years of thought?" His hand
dropped away.
I was not sure who the "they" were--Ousters? Shrike Cult saboteurs?
Rioters? Gladstone and the Hegemony leaders were willing to sacrifice
these "first-wave" worlds. "No," I said, extending my hand to shake
his. "I don't believe they'll allow the archives to be destroyed."
M. Ewdrad B. Tynar smiled and stood back a step, embarrassed at
showing emotion. He shook hands. "Good luck, M. Severn. Wherever
your travels take you."
"God bless you, M. Tynar." I had never used that phrase before,
and it shocked me that I had spoken it now. I looked down, fumbled
out Gladstone's override card, and tapped the three-digit code for Pacem.
The portal apologized, said that it was not possible at the moment,
finally got it through its microcephalic processors that this was an override
card, and hummed into existence.
I nodded at Tynar and stepped through, half expecting that I was
making a serious mistake not going straight home to TC2.
It was night on Pacem, much darker than Renaissance Vector's urban
glow, and it was raining to boot. Raining hard with that fist-on-metal
pounding violence that makes one want to curl up under thick blankets
and wait for morning.
The portal was under cover in some half-roofed courtyard but outside
enough for me to feel the night, the rain, and the cold. Especially the
cold. Pacem's air was half as thick as Web standard, its single habitable
plateau twice as high as Renaissance V's sea-level cities. I would have
turned back then rather than step into that night and downpour, but a
FORCE Marine stepped out of the shadows, multipurpose assault rifle
slung but ready to swivel, and asked me for my ID.
I let him scan the card, and he snapped to attention. "Yes, sir!"
"Is this the New Vatican?"
"Yes, sir."
I caught a glimpse of illuminated dome through the downpour. I
pointed over the courtyard wall. "Is that St. Peter's?"
"Yes, sir."
"Would Monsignor Edouard be found there?"
"Across this courtyard, left at the plaza, the low building to the left
of the cathedral, sir!"
"Thank you. Corporal."
"It's Private, sir!"
I pulled my short cape around me, ceremonial and quite useless
against such a rain as it was, and ran across the courtyard.
A human. . . perhaps a priest, although he wore no robe or clerical
collar . . . opened the door to the residential hall. Another human
behind a wooden desk told me that Monsignor Edouard was in
residence and was awake, despite the late hour. Did I have an appointment?

---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
No, I did not have an appointment but wished to speak to the Monsignor.
It was important.
On what topic? the man behind the desk politely but firmly asked.
He had not been impressed by my override card. I suspected that I was
speaking to a bishop.
On the topic of Father Paul Dure and Father Lenar Hoyt, I told
him.
The gentleman nodded, whispered into a bead mike so small that I
had not noticed it on his collar, and led me into the residential hall.
This place made the old tower that M. Tynar lived in look like a
sybarite's palace. The corridor was absolutely featureless except for the
rough plaster walls and even rougher wooden doors. One of the doors
was open, and as we passed, I glimpsed a chamber More prison cell
than sleeping room: low cot, rough blanket, wooden kneeling stool, an
unadorned dresser holding a pitcher of water and simple basin; no
windows, no media walls, no holo pit, no data access deck. I suspected
the room wasn't even interactive.
From somewhere there echoed voices rising in a chanting/ singing
so elegant and atavistic that it made the hair on my neck tingle. Gre-
gorian. We passed through a large eating area as simple as the cells had
been, through a kitchen that would have been familiar to cooks in )ohn
Keats's day, down a worn stone staircase, through an ill-lighted corridor,
and up another, narrower staircase. The other man left me, and I
stepped into one of the most beautiful spaces I had ever seen.
Although part of me realized that the Church had moved and reconstructed
St. Peter's Basilica, down to transplanting the bones believed
to be those of Peter himself to their new burial beneath the altar, another
part of me felt that I had been transported back to the Rome I had first
seen in mid-November of 1820: the Rome I had seen, stayed in, suffered
in, and died in.
This space was More beautiful and elegant than any mile-high office
spire on Tau Ceti Center could ever hope to be; St. Peter's Basilica
stretched More than six hundred feet into shadows, was four hundred
and fifty feet wide where the "cross" of the transept intersected the nave,
and was capped by the perfection of Michelangelo's dome, rising almost
four hundred feet above the altar. Bernini's bronze baldachin, the ornate
canopy supported by twisting, Byzantine columns, capped the main
altar and gave the immense space the human dimension necessary for
perspective on the intimate ceremonies conducted there. Soft lamp-
and candlelight illuminated discrete areas of the basilica, gleamed on
-------------------------------------------------- 299 --------------------------------------------------
smooth travertine stone, brought gold mosaics into bold relief, and
picked out the infinite detail painted, embossed, and raised on the walls,
columns, cornices, and grand dome itself. Far above, the continuous
flash of lightning from the storm poured thickly through yellow stained-
glass windows and sent columns of violent light slanting toward Bernini's
"Throne of St. Peter."
I paused there, just beyond the apse, afraid that my footsteps in such
a space would be a desecration and that even my breathing would send
echoes the length of the basilica. In a moment, my eyes adjusted to
the dim light, compensated for the contrasts between the storm light
above and candlelight below, and it was then I realized that there were
no pews to fill the apse or long nave, no columns here beneath the
dome, only two chairs set near the altar some fifty feet away. Two men
sat talking in these chairs, close together, both leaning forward in apparent
urgency to communicate. Lamplight and candlelight and the
glow from a large mosaic of Christ on the front of the dark altar illuminated
bits and fragments of the men's faces. Both were elderly. Both
were priests, the white bands of their collars glowing in the dimness.
With a start of recognition, I realized that one was Monsignor Edouard.
The other was Father Paul Dure.
They must have been alarmed at first--looking up from their whispered
conversation to see this apparition, this short shadow of a man
emerge from the darkness, calling their names . . . crying Dure's name
in loud amazement . . . babbling at them about pilgrimages and pilgrims,
Time Tombs and the Shrike, AIs and the death of gods.
The Monsignor did not call security; neither he nor Dure fled; together
they calmed this apparition, tried to glean some sense from his
excited babblings, and turned this strange confrontation into sane conversation.

It was Paul Dure. Paul Dure and not some bizarre Doppelganger or
android duplicate or cybrid reconstruction. I made sure of that by
listening to him, quizzing him, by looking into his eyes. . . but mostly by shaking his hand, touching him, and knowing that it was indeed
Father Paul Dure.
"You know . . . incredible details of my life . . . our time on Hyperion,
at the Tombs . . . but who did you say you are?" Dure was
saying.
It was my turn to convince him. "A cybrid reconstruction of John
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Keats. A twin to the persona Brawne Lamia carried with her on your
pilgrimage."
"And you were able to communicate ... to know what happened
to us because of that shared persona?"
I was on one knee between them and the altar. I lifted both hands
in frustration. "Because of that . . . because of some anomaly in the
megasphere. But I have dreamt your lives, heard the tales the pilgrims
told, listened to Father Hoyt speak of the life and death of Paul Dure
... of you." I reached out to touch his arm through the priestly garments.
Actually being in the same space and time with one of the
pilgrims made me a bit light-headed. "Then you know how I got here,"
said Father Dure.
"No. I last dreamed that you were entering one of the Cave Tombs.
There was a light. I know nothing since then."
Dure nodded. His face was More patrician and More weary than my
dreams had prepared me for. "But you know the fate of the others?"
I took a breath. "Some. The poet Silenus is alive but impaled on
the Shrike's tree of thorns. I last saw Kassad attacking the Shrike with
his bare hands. M. Lamia had traveled the megasphere to the
TechnoCore periphery with my Keats counterpart ..."
"He survived in that . . . Schron loop . . . whatever it was called?"
Dure seemed fascinated.
"No longer," I said. "The AI personality called Ummon killed him
. . . destroyed the persona. Brawne was returning. I don't know if her
body survives."
Monsignor Edouard leaned toward me. "And what of the Consul
and the father and child?"
"The Consul tried to return to the capital by hawking mat," I said,
"but crashed some miles north. I don't know his fate."
"Miles," said Dure, as if the word brought back memories.
"I'm sorry." I gestured at the basilica. "This place makes me think
in the units of my . . . previous life."
"Go on," said Monsignor Edouard. "The father and child."
I sat on the cool stone, exhausted, my arms and hands shaking with
fatigue. "In my last dream, Sol had offered Rachel to the Shrike. It
was RacheFs request. I could not see what happened next. The Tombs
were opening."
"All of them?" asked Dure.
"All I could see."
The two men looked at one another.
"There's More," I said, and told them about the dialogue with L)m-
mon. "Is it possible that a deity could . . . evolve from human consciousness
like that without humanity being aware of it?"
The lightning had ceased but now the rain fell so violently that I
could hear it on the great dome far above. Somewhere in the darkness,
a heavy door squeaked, footsteps echoed and then receded. Votive
candles in the dim recesses of the basilica flickered red light against
walls and draperies.
"I taught that St. Teilhard said that it was possible," Dure said tiredly,
"but if that God is a limited being, evolving in the same way all we
other limited beings have done, then no ... it is not the God of
Abraham and Christ."
Monsignor Edouard nodded. "There is an ancient heresy ..."
"Yes," I said. "The Socinian Heresy. I heard Father Dure explain
it to Sol Weintraub and the Consul. But what difference does it make how this . . . power . . . evolved, and whether it's limited or not. If
Ummon is telling the truth, we're dealing with a force that uses quasars
for energy sources. That's a God who can destroy galaxies, gentlemen."
"That would be a god who destroys galaxies," said Dure. "Not God."
I heard his emphasis clearly. "But if it's not limited," I said. "If it's
the Omega Point God of total consciousness you've written about, if
it's the same Trinity your church has argued for and theorized about
since before Aquinus. . . but if one part of that Trinity has fled backward
through time to here ... to now . . . then what?"
"But fled from what?" Dure asked softly. "Teilhard's God ... the
Church's God . . . our God, would be the Omega Point God in whom
the Christ of Evolution, the Personal, and the Universal . . . what
Teilhard called the En Haur and the En Avanr, are perfectly joined.
There could be nothing so threatening that any element of that deity's
personality would flee. No Antichrist, no theoretical satanic power, no
'counter-God' could possibly threaten such a universal consciousness.
What would this other god be?"
"The God of machines?" I said, so softly that even I was not sure
that I had spoken aloud.
Monsignor Edouard clasped both hands in what I thought was a
preparation for prayer but which turned out to be a gesture of deep
thought and deeper agitation. "But Christ had doubts," he said. "Christ
sweated blood in the garden and asked that this cup should be taken
from him. If there was some second sacrifice pending, something even More terrible than the crucifixion . . . then I could imagine the Christ-
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
entity of the Trinity passing through time, walking through some fourth-
dimensional garden of Gethsemane to gain a few hours ... or years
. . . of time to think."
"Something More terrible than the crucifixion," repeated Dure in a
hoarse whisper.
Both Monsignor Edouard and I stared at the priest. Dure had crucified
himself on a high-voltage tesia tree on Hyperion rather than submit to
his cruciform parasite's control. Through that creature's ability to resurrect,
Dure had suffered the agonies of crucifixion and electrocution
many times.
"Whatever the En Hau( consciousness flees," whispered Dure, "it
is most terrible."
Monsignor Edouard touched his friend's shoulder. "Paul, tell this
man about your voyage here."
Dure returned from whatever distant place his memories had taken
him and focused on me. "You know all of our stories . . . and the
details of our stay in the Valley of the Tombs on Hyperion?"
"I believe so. Up to the point you disappeared."
The priest sighed and touched his forehead with long, slightly trembling
fingers. "Then perhaps," he said, "just perhaps you can make
some sense of how I got here . . . and what I saw along the way."
"I saw a light in the third Cave Tomb," said Father Dure. "I stepped
inside. I confess that thoughts of suicide had been in my mind . . .
what is left of my mind after the cruciform's brutal replication . . . I
will not dignify that parasite's function with the term resurrection.
"I saw a light and thought that it was the Shrike. It was my feeling
that my second meeting with that creature--the first encounter was
years ago in the labyrinth beneath the Cleft, when the Shrike annointed
me with my unholy cruciform--the second meeting was long overdue.
"When we had searched for Colonel Kassad on the previous day,
this Cave Tomb had been short, featureless, with a blank rock wall
stopping us after thirty paces. Now that wall was gone and in its place
was a carving not unlike the mouth of the Shrike, stone extended in
that blend of the mechanical and organic, stalactites and stalagmites as
sharp as calcium carbonate teeth.
"Through the mouth there was a stone stairway descending. It was
from those depths that the light emanated, glowing pale white one
_------------------------------------------------ 303 --------------------------------------------------
moment, dark red the next. There was no noise except for the sigh of
wind, as if the rock there were breathing.
"I am no Dante. I sought no Beatrice. My brief bout of courage--
although fatalism is a More accurate term--had evaporated with the
loss of daylight. I turned and almost ran the thirty paces to the opening
of the cave.
"There was no opening. The passage merely ended. I had heard no
sound of cave-in or avalanche, and besides, the rock where the entrance
should have been looked as ancient and undisturbed as the rest of that
cavern. For half an hour I searched for an alternate exit, finding none,
refusing to return to the staircase, finally sitting for some hours where
the Cave Tomb entrance once had been. Another Shrike trick. Another
cheap theatrical stunt by this perverse planet. Hyperion's idea of a joke.
Ha ha.
"After several hours of sitting there in semidarkness, watching the
light at the far end of the cave pulse soundlessly, I realized that the
Shrike was not going to come to me here. The entrance would not
magically reappear. I had the choice of sitting there until I died of
starvation--or thirst, More likely, since I was already dehydrated--or
of descending the damned staircase.
"I descended.
"Years ago, literally lifetimes ago, when I visited the Bikura near the
Cleft on the Pinion Plateau, the labyrinth where I had encountered the
Shrike had been three kilometers below the canyon wall. That was close
to the surface; most of the labyrinths on most of the labyrinthine worlds
are at least ten klicks beneath the crust. I had no doubt that this endless
staircase ... a steep and twisting spiral of stone stairs wide enough for
ten priests to descend to hell abreast. . . would end up in the labyrinth.
The Shrike had first cursed me with immortality there. If the creature
or the power that drove it had any sense of irony at all, it would be
fitting that both my immortality and mortal life ended there.
"The staircase twisted downward; the light grew brighter . . . now a
roseate glow; ten minutes later, a heavy red; half an hour lower than
that, a flickering crimson. It was far too Dante-esque and cheap fundamentalist
staging for my tastes. I almost laughed aloud at the thought
of a little devil appearing, tail and trident and cloven hooves intact,
pencil-thin mustache twitching.
"But I did not laugh when I reached depths where the cause of the
light became evident: cruciforms, hundreds and then thousands of
---------------- THE PALL OF HYPERION ----------------
them, small at first, clinging to the rough walls of the staircase like
rough-hewn crosses left by some subterranean conquistadors, then larger
ones and More of them until they almost overlapped, coral-pink, raw-
flesh flushed, blood-red bioluminescent.
"It made me ill. It was like entering a shaft lined with bloated, pulsing
leeches, although these were worse. I have seen the medscanner sonic
and k-cross imaging of myself with only one of these things on me:
excess ganglia infiltrating my flesh and organs like gray fibers, sheaths
of twitching filaments, clusters ofnematodes like terrible tumors which
will not grant even the mercy of death. Now I had (we on me: Lenar
Hoyt's and my own. I prayed that I would die rather than suffer another.
"I continued lower. The walls pulsed with heat as well as light,
whether from the depths or the crowding of the thousands of cruciforms,
I do not know. Eventually I reached the lowest step, the staircase
ended, I turned a final twisting of stone, and was there.
"The labyrinth. It stretched away as I had seen it in countless holos
and once in person: smooth tunneled, thirty meters to a side, carved
out of Hyperion's crust More than three-quarters of a million years
ago, crossing and crisscrossing the planet like catacombs planned by
some insane engineer. Labyrinths can be found on nine worlds, five
in the Web, the rest, like this one, in the Outback: all are identical,
all were excavated at the same time in the past, none surrender any
clues as to the reason for their existence. Legends abound about the
Labyrinth Builders, but the mythical engineers left no artifacts, no hints
of their methods or alien makeup, and none of the theories about the
labyrinths give a sensible reason for what must have been one of the
largest engineering projects the galaxy has ever seen.
"All of the labyrinths are empty. Remotes have explored millions of
kilometers of corridors cut from stone, and except where hme and cave-
in have altered the original catacombs, the labyrinths are featureless
and empty.
"But not where I now stood.
"Cruciforms lighted a scene from Hieronymus Bosch as I gazed down
an endless corridor, endless but not empty . . . no, not empty.
"At first I thought they were crowds of living people, a river of heads
and shoulders and arms, stretching on for the kilometers I could see,
the current of humanity broken here and there by the presence of parked
vehicles all of the same rust-red color. As I stepped forward, approaching
the wall of jam-packed humanity less than twenty meters from me, I
realized that they were corpses. Tens, hundreds of thousands of human
corpses stretching as far down the corridor as I could see; some sprawled
on the stone floor, some crushed against walls, but most buoyed up by
the pressure of other corpses so tightly were they jammed in this particular
avenue of the labyrinth.
"There was a path; cutting its way through the bodies as if some
machine with blades had mulched its way through. I followed it--
careful not to touch an outspread arm or emaciated ankle.
"The bodies were human, still clothed in most cases, and mummified
over eons of slow decomposing in this bacteria-free crypt. Skin and
flesh had been tanned, stretched, and torn like rotten cheesecloth until
it covered nothing but bone, and frequently not even that. Hair remained
as tendrils of dusty tar, stiff as varnished fiberplastic. Blackness
stared out from under opened eyelids, between teeth. Their clothing
which must once have been a myriad of colors now was tan or gray or
black, brittle as garments sculpted from thin stone. Time-melted plastic
lumps on their wrists and necks might have been comlogs or their
equivalent.
"The large vehicles might once have been EMVs but now were heaps
of pure rust. A hundred meters in, I stumbled, and rather than fall off
the meter-wide path into the field of bodies, I steadied myself on a tall
machine all curves and clouded blisters. The pile of rust collapsed
inward on itself.
"I wandered, Virgil-less, following the terrible path gnawed out of
decayed human flesh, wondering why I was being shown all this, what
it meant. After an indeterminable time of walking, staggering between
piles of discarded humanity, I came to an intersection of tunnels; all
three corridors ahead were filled with bodies. The narrow path continued
in the labyrinth to my left. I followed it.
"Hours later, perhaps longer, I stopped and sat on the narrow stone
walk which wound among the the horror. If there were tens of thousands
of corpses in this small stretch of tunnel, Hyperion's labyrinth must
contain billions. More. The nine labyrinthine worlds together must be
a crypt for trillions.
"I had no idea why I was being shown this ultimate Dachau of the
soul. Near where I sat, the mummified corpse of a man still sheltered
a woman's corpse with the curve of his bone-bare arm. In her arms
was a small bundle with short black hair. I turned away and wept.
"As an archaeologist I had excavated victims of execution, fire, flood,
earthquake, and volcano. Such family scenes were not new to me; they
were the sine qua non of history. But somehow this was much More
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
terrible. Perhaps it was the numbers; the dead in their holocaust millions.
Perhaps it was the soul-stealing glow of the cruciforms which
lined the tunnels like thousands of blasphemous bad jokes. Perhaps it
was the sad crying of the wind moving through endless corridors of
stone.
"My life and teachings and sufferings and small victories and countless
defeats had brought me here--past faith, past caring, past simple. Mil-
tonic defiance. I had the sense that these bodies had been here half a
million years or More, but that the people themselves were from our
time or, worse yet, our future. I lowered my face to my hands and
wept.
"No scraping or actual noise warned me, but something, something,
a movement of air perhaps ... I looked up and the Shrike was there,
not two meters distant. Not on the path but in among the bodies: a
sculpture honoring the architect of all this carnage.
"I got to my feet. I would not sit or kneel before this abomination.
"The Shrike moved toward me, gliding More than walking, sliding
as if it were on frictionless rails. The blood light of the cruciforms spilled
over its quicksilver carapace. Its eternal, impossible grin--steel stalactites,
stalagmites.
"I felt no violence toward the thing. Only sadness and a terrible pity.
Not for the Shrike--whatever the hell it was--but for all the victims
who, alone and ungirded by even the flimsiest of faiths, have had to
face the terror-in-the-night which that thing embodies.
"For the first time, I noticed that up close, less than a meter away,
there was a smell around the Shrike--a stench of rancid oil, overheated
bearings, and dried blood. The flames in its eyes pulsed in perfect
rhythm with the rise and fall of the cruciform glow.
"I did not believe years ago that this creature was supernatural, some
manifestation of good or evil, merely an aberration of the universe's
unfathomable and seemingly senseless unfoldings: a terrible joke of
evolution. St. Teilhard's worst nightmare. But still a thing, obeying
natural laws, no matter how twisted, and subject to some rules of the
universe somewhere, somewhen.
"The Shrike lifted its arms toward me, around me. The blades on its four wrists were much longer than my own hands; the blade on its
chest, longer than my forearm. I stared up into its eyes as one pair of
its razorwire and steel-spring arms surrounded me while the other pair
came slowly around, filling the small space between us.
"Fingerblades uncurled. I flinched but did not step back as those
-------------------------------------------------- 307 --------------------------------------------------
blades lunged, sank into my chest with a pain like cold fire, like surgical
lasers slicing nerves.
"It stepped back, holding something red and reddened further with
my blood. I staggered, half expecting to see my heart in the monster's
hands: the final irony of a dead man blinking in surprise at his own
heart in the seconds before blood drains from a disbelieving brain.
"But it was not my heart. The Shrike held the cruciform I had carried
on my chest, my cruciform, that parasitic depository of my slow-to-die
DNA. I staggered again, almost fell, touched my chest. My fingers
came away coated with blood but not with the arterial surges that such
crude surgery deserved; the wound was healing even while I watched. I knew that the cruciform had sent tubers and filaments throughout my
body. I knew that no surgical laser had been able to separate those
deadly vines from Father Hoyt's body--nor from mine. But I felt the
contagion healing, the internal fibers drying and fading to the faintest
hint of internal scar tissue.
"I still had Hoyt's cruciform. But that was different. When I died,
Lenar Hoyt would rise from this re-formed flesh. / would die. There
would be no More poor duplicates of Paul Dure, duller and less vital
with each artificial generation.
"The Shrike had granted me death without killing me.
"The thing cast the cooling cruciform into the heaps of bodies and
took my upper arm in his hand with an effortless cutting of three layers
of fabric, an instant flow of blood from my biceps at the slightest contact
with those scalpels.
"He led the way through bodies toward the wall. I followed, trying
not to step on corpses, but in my haste not to have my arm severed, I
was not always successful. Bodies crumpled to dust. One received my
footprint in the collapsing cavity of its chest.
"Then we were at the wall, at a section suddenly cleared of cruciforms,
and I realized that it was some energy-shielded opening . . . the
wrong size and shape to be a standard farcaster portal, but similar in
its opaque buzz of energy. Anything to get me out of this storage place
of death.
"The Shrike shoved me through."
"Zero gravity. A maze of shattered bulkheads, tangles of wiring floating
like some giant creature's entrails, red lights flashing--for a second,
I thought there were cruciforms here too but then realized that these
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERIQN ----------------
were emergency lights in a dying spacecraft--then recoiling, tumbling
in unaccustomed zero-g as More corpses tumbled by: not mummies
here, but fresh dead, newly killed, mouths agape, eyes distended, lungs
exploded, trailing clouds of gore as they simulated life in their slow,
necrotic response to each random current of air and surge of the shattered
FORCE spacecraft.
"It was a FORCE spacecraft, I was sure. I saw the FORCE:space
uniforms on the young corpses. I saw the military-jargon lettering on
the bulkheads and blown hatches, the useless instructions on the worse-
than-useless emergency lockers with their skinsuits and still-uninnated
pressure balls folded away on shelves. Whatever had destroyed this ship
had done so with the suddenness of a plague in the night.
"The Shrike appeared next to me.
"The Shrike ... in space! Free ofHyperion and the bonds of the time
tides! There were farcasters on many of these ships!
"There was a farcaster portal not five meters down the corridor from
me. One body tumbled toward it, the young man's right arm passing
through the opaque field as if he were testing the water of the world
on the other side. Air was screaming out of this shaft in a rising whine.
Co.' I urged the corpse, but the pressure differential blew him away
from the portal, his arm surprisingly intact, recovered, although his
face was an anatomist's mask.
"I turned toward the Shrike, the movement making me spin half a
revolution in the other direction.
"The Shrike lifted me, blades tearing skin, and passed me down the
corridor toward the farcaster. I could not have changed trajectories if I
had wanted to. In the seconds before I passed through the humming,
sputtering portal, I imagined vacuum on the other side, drops from
great heights, explosive decompression, or--worst of all--a return to
the labyrinth.
"Instead, I tumbled half a meter to a marble floor. Here, not two
hundred meters from this spot, in the private chambers of Pope Urban
XVI--who, it so happens, had died of old age not three hours before
I fell through his private farcaster. The "Pope's Door" the New Vatican
calls it. I felt the pain-punishment from being so far from Hyperion--
so far from the source of the cruciforms--but pain is an old ally now
and no longer holds sway over me.
"I found Edouard. He was kind enough to listen for hours as I told
a story no Jesuit has ever had to confess. He was even kinder to believe
me. Now you have heard it. That is my story."
309
The storm had passed. The three of us sat by candlelight beneath
the dome of St. Peter's and said nothing at all for several moments.
"The Shrike has access to the Web," I said at last.
Dure's gaze was level. "Yes."
"It must have been some ship in Hyperion space ..."
"So it would seem."
"Then we might be able to get back there. Use the . . . the Pope's
Door? ... to return to Hyperion space."
Monsignor Edouard raised an eyebrow. "You wish to do this, M.
Severn?"
I chewed on a knuckle. "It's something I've considered."
"Why?" the Monsignor asked softly. "Your counterpart, the cybrid
personality Brawne Lamia carried on her pilgrimage, found only death
there."
I shook my head, as if trying to clear the jumble of my thoughts
through that simple gesture. "I'm a part of this. I just don't know what
part to play ... or where to play it."
Paul Dure laughed without humor. "All of us have known that
feeling. It is like some poor playwright's treatise on predestination.
Whatever happened to free will?"
The Monsignor glanced sharply at his friend. "Paul, all of the pilgrims
. . . you yourself . . . have been confronted with choices you made
with your own will. Great powers may be shaping the general turn of
events, but human personalities still determine their own fate."
Dure sighed. "Perhaps so, Edouard. I do not know. I am very tired."
"If Ummon's story is true," I said. "If the third part of this human
deity Hed to our time, where and who do you think it is? There are More than a hundred billion human beings in the Web."
Father Dure smiled. It was a gentle smile, free of irony. "Have you
considered that it might be yourself, M. Severn?"
The question struck me like a slap. "It can't be," I said. "I'm not
even ... not even fully human. My consciousness floats somewhere
in the matrix of the Core. My body was reconstituted from remnants
of John Keats's DNA and biofactured like an android's. Memories were
implanted. The end of my life . . . my 'recovery' from consumption
. . . were all simulated on a world built for that purpose."
Dure was still smiling. "So? Does any of this preclude you from being
this Empathy entity?"
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
"I don't feel like a part of some god," I said sharply. "I don't remember
anything, understand anything, or know what to do next."
Monsignor Edouard touched my v.'rist. "Are we so sure that Christ
always knew what to do next? He knew what had to be done. It is not
always the same as knowing what to do."
I rubbed my eyes. "I don't even know what has to be done."
The Monsignor's voice was quiet. "I believe that what Paul is saying
is that if the spirit creature you say is hiding here in our time, it may
well not know its own identity."
"That's insane," I said.
Dure nodded. "Much of the events on and around Hyperion have
seemed insane. Insanity seems to be spreading."
I looked closely at the Jesuit. "You would be a good candidate for
the deity," I said. "You've lived a life of prayer, contemplating theologies,
and honoring science as an archaeologist. Plus, you've already
been crucified."
Dure's smile was gone. "Do you hear what we're saying? Do you
hear the blasphemy in what we're saying? I'm no candidate for the
Godhead, Severn. I've betrayed my Church^my science, and now, by
disappearing, my friends on the pilgrimage. Christ may have lost his faith for a few seconds; He did not sell it in the marketplace for the
trinkets of ego and curiosity."
"Enough," commanded Monsignor Edouard. "If the identity of this
Empathy part of some future, manufactured deity is the mystery, think
of the candidates just in the immediate troupe of your little Passion
Play, M. Severn. The CEO, M. Gladstone, carrying the weight of the
Hegemony on her shoulders. The other members of the pilgrimage
. . . M. Silenus who, according to what you told Paul, even now suffers
on the Shrike's tree for his poetry. M. Lamia, who has risked and lost
so much for love. M. Weintraub, who has suffered Abraham's dilemma
. . . even his daughter, who has returned to the innocence of childhood.
The Consul, who--"
"The Consul seems More Judas than Christ," I said. "He betrayed
both the Hegemony and the Ousters, who thought he was working for
them."
"From what Paul tells me," said the Monsignor, "the Consul was
true to his convictions, faithful to the memory of his grandmother Siri."
The older man smiled. "Plus, there are a hundred billion other players
in this play. God did not choose Herod or Pontius Pilate or Caesar
Augustus as His instrument. He chose the unknown son of an unknown
carpenter in one of the least important stretches of the Roman Empire."
"All right," I said, standing and pacing before the glowing mosaic
below the altar. "What do we do now? Father Dure, you need to come
with me to see Gladstone. She knows about your pilgrimage. Perhaps
your story can help avert some of the bloodbath which seems so imminent."

Dure stood also, folding his arms and staring toward the dome as if
the darkness high above held some instructions for him. "I've thought
of that," he said. "But I don't think it's my first obligation. I need to
go to God's Grove to speak to their equivalent of the Pope--the True
Voice of the Worldtree."
I stopped pacing. "God's Grove? What does that have to do with
anything?"
"I feel that the Templars have been the key to some missing element
in this painful charade. Now you say that Het Masteen is dead. Perhaps
the True Voice can explain to us what they had planned for this pilgrimage
. . . Masteen's tale, as it were. He was, after all, the only one
of the seven original pilgrims who did not tell the story of why he had
come to Hyperion."
I paced again, More rapidly now, trying to keep anger in check. "My
God, Dure. We don't have time for such idle curiosity. It's only"--I
consulted my implant--"an hour and a half until the Ouster invasion
Swann enters the God's Grove system. It must be bedlam there."
"Perhaps," said the Jesuit, "but I still will go there first. Then I will
speak to Gladstone. It may be that she will authorize my return to
Hyperion."
I grunted, doubting that the CEO would ever let such a valuable
informant return to harm's way. "Let's get going," I said, and turned
to find my way out.
"A moment," said Dure. "You said a while ago that you were sometimes
able to ... to 'dream' . . . about the pilgrims while you were
still awake. A sort of trance state, is it?"
"Something like that."
"Well, M. Severn, please dream about them now."
I stared in amazement. "Here? Now?"
Dure gestured toward his chair. "Please. I wish to know the fate of
my friends. Also, the information might be most valuable in our confrontation
with the True Voice and M. Gladstone."
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
I shook my head but took the seat he offered. "It might not work,"
I said.
"Then we have lost nothing," said Dure.
I nodded, closed my eyes, and sat back in the uncomfortable chair.
I was all too aware of the other two men watching me, of the faint
smell of incense and rain, of the echoing space surrounding us. I was
sure that this would never work; the landscape of my dreams was not
so close that I could summon it merely by closing my eyes.
The feeling of being watched faded, the smells grew distant, and the
sense of space expanded a thousandfold as I returned to Hyperion.
THIRTY-FIVE
Confusion.
Three hundred spacecraft retreating in Hyperion space under
heavy fire, falling back from the Swarm like men fighting bees.
Madness near the military farcaster portals, traffic control overloaded,
ships backed up like EMVs in TC^'s airborne gridlock, vulnerable as
partridges to the roaming Ouster assault ships.
Madness at the exit points: FORCE spacecraft lined up like sheep in
a narrow pen as they cycle from the Madhya cutoff portal to the outgoing
'caster. Ships spinning down into Hebron space, a few translating to
Heaven's Gate, God's Grove, Mare Infinitus, Asquith. Only hours left
now before the Swarms enter Web systems.
Confusion as hundreds of millions, of refugees farcast away from the
threatened worlds, stepping into cities and relocation centers gone half
mad with the aimless excitement of incipient war. Confusion as unthreatened
Web worlds ignite with riots: three Hives on Lusus--almost
seventy million citizens--quarantined due to Shrike Cult riots, thirty-
level malls looted, apartment monoliths overrun by mobs, fusion centers
blown, farcaster terminexes under attack. The Home Rule Council
appeals to the Hegemony; the Hegemony declares martial law and sends
FORCE: Marines to seal the hives.
Secessionist riots on New Earth and Maui-Covenant. Terrorist attacks
from Clennon-Height royalists--quiet now for three-quarters of a
century--on Thalia, Armaghast, Nordholm, and Lee Three. More
Shrike Cult riots on Tsingtao-Hsishuang Panna and Renaissance Vector.

FORCE Command on Olympus transfers combat battalions from
transports returning from Hyperion to Web worlds. Demolition squads
assigned to torchships in threatened systems report farcaster singularity
3 I 3
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ---------------- ^
spheres wired for destruction, awaiting only the fatlined order from j
TC2.
"There is a better way," Councilor Albedo tells Gladstone and the
War Council.
The CEO turns toward the ambassador from the TechnoCore.
"There is a weapon that will eliminate the Ousters without harming
Hegemony property. Or Ouster property, for that matter."
General Morpurgo glowers. "You're talking about the bomb equivalent
of a deathwand," he says. "It won't work. FORCE researchers
have shown that it propagates indefinitely. Besides being dishonorable,
against the New Bushido Code, it would wipe out planetary populations
as well as the invaders."
"Not at all," says Albedo. "If Hegemony citizens are properly
shielded, there need be no casualties whatsoever. As you know, death-
wands can be calibrated for specific cerebral wavelengths. So could a
bomb based on the same principle. Livestock, wild animals, even other
anthropoid species would not be affected."
General Van Zeidt of FORCE: Marines stands. "But there's no way
to shield a population! Our testing showed that death-bomb heavy
neutrinos would penetrate solid rock or metal to a depth of six kilometers.
No one has shelters like that!"
The projection of Councilor Albedo folds his hands on the table.
"We have nine worlds with shelters which would hold billions," he
says softly.
Gladstone nods. "The labyrinthine worlds," she whispers. "But certainly
such a transfer of population would be impossible."
"No," says Albedo. "Now that you have joined Hyperion to the
Protectorate, each of the labyrinthine worlds has farcaster capability.
The Core can make arrangements to transfer populations directly to
these underground shelters."
There is babble around the long table, but Meina Gladstone's intense
gaze never leaves Albedo's face. She beckons for silence and receives
it. "Tell us More," she says. "We are interested."
The Consul sits in the spotty shade of a low neville tree and waits
to die. His hands are tied behind him with a twist of fiberplastic. His
J
-------------------------------------------------- 3 I 5 --------------------------------------------------
clothes are torn to rags and are still damp; the moisture on his face is
partially from the river but mostly from perspiration.
The two men who stand over him are finishing their inspection of
his duffel bag. "Shit," says the first man, "there bey nothing worth
anything here-in except this fucking antique pistol." He thrusts Brawne
Lamia's father's weapon in his belt.
"It bey too bad we couldn't get that goddamn flying carpet," says the
second man.
"It bcyn't flying too well there toward the end!" says the first man,
and both of them laugh.
The Consul squints at the two massive figures, their armored bodies
made silhouettes by the lowering sun. From their dialect he assumes
them to be indigenies; from their appearance--bits of outmoded
FORCE body armor, heavy multipurpose assault rifles, tatters of what
once had been camou-polymer cloth--he guesses them to be deserters
from some Hyperion Self-defense Force unit.
From their behavior toward him, he is sure that they are going to
kill him.
At first, stunned from the fall into the Hoolie River, still tangled in
the ropes connecting him to his duffel bag and the useless hawking
mat, he thought them to be his saviors. The Consul had hit the water
hard, stayed under for a much longer time than he would have imagined
possible without drowning, and surfaced only to be pushed under by a
strong current and then pulled under again by the tangle of ropes and
mat. It had been a valiant but losing battle, and he was still ten meters
from the shallows when one of the men emerging from the neville and
thorn tree forest had thrown the Consul a line. Then they had beaten
him, robbed him, tied him, and--judging from their matter-of-fact
comments--were now preparing to cut his throat and leave him for
the harbinger birds.
The taller of the two men, his hair a mass of oiled spikes, squats in
front of the Consul and pulls a ceramic zero-edge knife from its scabbard.
"Any last words. Pops?"
The Consul licks his lips. He has seen a thousand movies and holies
where this was the point at which the hero twisted his opponent's legs
out from under him, kicked the other one into submission, seized a
weapon and dispatched both--firing with his hands still tied--and then
went on with his adventures. But the Consul feels like no hero: he is
exhausted and middle-aged and hurt from his fall in the river. Each of
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
these men is leaner, stronger, faster, and obviously meaner than the
Consul ever has been. He has seen violence--even committed violence
once--but his life and training have been devoted to the tense but quiet
paths of diplomacy.
The Consul licks his lips again and says, "I can pay you."
The crouching man smiles and moves the zero-edge blade back and
forth five centimeters in front of the Consul's eyes. "With what, Pops?
We've got your universal card, and it bey worth shit out here."
"Gold," says the Consul, knowing that this is the only syllable that
has held its power over the ages.
The crouching man does not react--there is a sick light in his eyes
as he watches the blade--but the other man steps forward and sets a
heavy hand on his partner's shoulder. "What bey you talkin' about,
man? Wherefore you got gold?"
"My ship," says the Consul. "The Benares."
The crouching man raises the blade next to his own cheek. "He bey
lyin', Chez. The Benares bey that old flat-bottomed manta-pulled barge
belongin' to the blue-skins we finished trey day ago."
The Consul closes his eyes for a second, feeling the nausea in him
but not surrendering to it. A. Bcttik and the other android crewmen
had left the Benares in one of the ship's launches less than a week
earlier, heading downstream toward "freedom." Evidently they had
found something else. "A. Bettik," he says. "The crew captain. He
didn't mention the gold?"
The man with the knife grins. "He make lots a noise, but he don't
speak much. He say the boat way and the shit gone up to Edge. Too
fuckin' far for a barge with no mantas, me-think."
"Shut up, Obem." The other man crouches in front of the Consul.
"Why would you have gold on that old barge, man?"
The Consul raises his face. "Don't you recognize me? I was Hegemony
Consul to Hyperion for years."
"Hey, don't bey fuckin' with us . . ." begins the man with the knife,
but the other interrupts. "Yeah, man, I remember your face on the
camp holie when I bey kid-like. So why you carryin' gold upriver now
when the sky bey fallin'. Hegemony-man?"
"We were heading for the shelter . . . Chronos Keep," says the
Consul, trying not to sound too eager but at the same time grateful for
each second he is allowed to live. Why? part of him thinks. You were
tired of living. Ready to die. Not like this. Not while Sol and Rachel
and the others need his help.
"Several of Hypcrion's most wealthy citizens," he says. "The evacuation
authorities wouldn't allow them to transfer the bullion, so I
agreed to help them store it in vaults in Chronos Keep, the old castle
north of the Bridle Range. For a commission."
"You bey fuckin' crazy!" sneers the man with the knife. "Everything
north of here bey Shrike country now."
The Consul lowers his head. There is no need to simulate the fatigue
and sense of defeat he projects. "So we discovered. The android crew
deserted last week. Several of the passengers were killed by the Shrike.
I was coming downriver by myself."
"This bey shit," says the man with the knife. His eyes have that sick, distracted look again.
"Just a second," says his partner. He slaps the Consul once, hard.
"So where bey this so-called gold ship, old man?"
The Consul tastes blood. "Upriver. Not on the river, but hidden in
one of the tributaries."
"Yeah," says the knife-man, setting the zero-edge blade flat against
the side of the Consul's neck. He will not need to slash in order to
sever the Consul's throat, merely rotate the blade. "I say this bey shit.
And I say we bey wastin' time."
"Just a second," snaps the other man. "How far upriver?"
The Consul thinks of the tributaries he has passed in the last few
hours. It is late. The sun almost touches the line of a copse of trees to
the west. "Just above Karia Locks," he says.
"So why you bey flyin' down on that toy-like rather than bargin' it?"
"Trying to get help," says the Consul. The adrenaline has faded, and
now he feels a terminal exhaustion very close to despair. "There were
too many . . . too many bandits along the shore. The barge seemed
too risky. The hawking mat was . . . safer."
The man called Chez laughs. "Put the knife away, Obem. We bey
walkin' up it a bit, hey?"
Obcm leaps to his feet. The knife is still in his hand but now the
blade--and the anger--are aimed toward his partner. "Bey you fucked, man, hey? Bey your head bey full of shit between ears, hey? He bey
lyin' to keep from deathwards flyin'."
Chez neither blinks nor steps back. "Sure, he bey maybe lyin'. Don't
matter, hey? The Locks they bey less'n half-day walk we bey makin'
anyway, hey? No boat, no gold, you cut his throat, hey? Only slowwise,
ankles-up like. They bey gold, you still gets the job, bladewise, only
bey rich man now, hey?"
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Obem teeters a second between rage and reason, turns to the side,
and swings the ceramic zero-edge blade at a neville tree eight centimeters
thick through the trunk. He has time to turn back and crouch in front
of the Consul before gravity informs the tree that it has been severed
and the neville falls back toward the river's edge with a crash of branches.
Obem grabs the Consul's still-damp shirtfront. "OK, we see what bey
there, Hegemony-man. Talk, run, trip, stumble, and I bey slicin' fingers
and ears just for practice, hey?"
The Consul staggers to his feet, and the three of them move back
into the cover of brush and low trees, the Consul three meters behind
Chez and the same distance in front of Obem, trudging back the way
he had come, moving away from the city and the ship and any chance
of saving Sol and Rachel.
An hour passes. The Consul can think of no clever scheme once the
tributaries are reached, the barge not discovered. Several times Chez
waves them into silence and hiding, once at the sound of gossamers
fluttering in branches, again at a disturbance across the river, but there
is no sign of other human beings. No sign of help. The Consul remembers
the burned-out buildings along the river, the empty huts and
vacant wharves. Fear of the Shrike, fear of being left behind to the
Ousters in the evacuation, and months of plundering by rogue elements
of the SDF have turned this area into a no-man's-land. The Consul
concocts excuses and extensions, then discards them. His only hope is
that they will walk close to the Locks where he can make a leap for the
deep and rapid water there, try to stay afloat with his hands tied behind
him until he is hidden in the maze of small islands below that point.
Except that he is too tired to swim, even if his arms were free. And
the weapons the two men carry would target him easily, even if he had
a ten-minute start among the snags and isles. The Consul is too tired
to be clever, ;oo old to be brave. He thinks about his wife and son,
dead these many years now, killed in the bombing of Bressia by men
with no More honor than these two creatures. The Consul is only sorry
that he has broken his word to help the other pilgrims. Sorry about that
. . . and that he will not see how it all comes out.
Obem makes a spitting noise behind him. "Shit with this, Chez,
hey? What say we sit him and slit him and help him talk a bit, hey?
Then we go lonewise to the barge, if barge they bey?"
Chez turns, rubs sweat out of his eyes, frowns at the Consul speculatively, and says, "Hey, yeah, I think maybe timewise and quietwise
you bey right, goyo, but leave it talkable toward the end, hey?"
"Sure," grins Obem, slinging his weapon and extracting his zero-
edge.
"DO NOT MOVE!" booms a voice from above. The Consul drops
to his knees and the ex-SDF bandits unsling weapons with practiced
swiftness. There is a rush, a roar, a whipping of branches and dust
about them, the Consul looks up in time to see a rippling of the cloud-
covered evening sky, lower than the clouds, a sense of mass directly
above, descending, and then Chez is lifting his flechette rifle and Obem
is targeting his launcher and then all three are falling, pitching over,
not like soldiers shot, not like recoil elements in some ballistic equation, but dropping like the tree Obem had felled earlier on.
The Consul lands face first in dust and gravel and lies there unblinking,
unable to blink.
Stun weapon he thinks through synapses gone sluggish as old oil. A
localized cyclone erupts as something large and invisible lands between
the three bodies in the dust and the river's edge. The Consul hears a
hatch whine open and the internal tick of repellor turbines dropping
below lift-critical. He still cannot blink, much less lift his head, and
his vision is limited to several pebbles, a dunescape of sand, a small
grass forest, and a single architect ant, huge at this distance, that seems
to be taking a sudden interest in the Consul's moist but unblinking eye.
The ant turns to hurry the half meter between itself and its moist prize,
and the Consul thinks Hurry at the unhurried footsteps behind him.
Hands under his arms, grunting, a familiar but strained voice saying,
"Damn, you've put on weight."
The Consul's heels drag in the dirt, bouncing over the randomly
twitching fingers of Chez ... or perhaps it is Obem ... the Consul
cannot turn his head to see their faces. Nor can he see his rescuer until
he is lifted--with a grunted litany of soft curses near his ear--through
the starboard blister-hatch of the decamouflaged skimmer, into the long,
soft leather of the reclining passenger seat.
Governor-General Theo Lane appears in the Consul's field of vision,
boyish-looking but slightly demonic-looking too as the hatch lowers and
the red interior lamps light his face. The younger man leans over to
secure crashweb snaps across the Consul's chest. "I'm sorry I had to
stun you along with those other two." Theo sits back, snaps his own
web in place, and twitches the omni controller. The Consul feels the
skimmer shiver and then lift off, hovering a second before spinning left
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPEHION ----------------
like a plate on frictionless bearings. Acceleration pushes the Consul
into his seat.
"I didn't have much choice," says Theo over the soft internal skimmer
noises. "The only weapon these things are allowed to carry are the riot-
control stunners, and the easiest way was to drop all three of you at
lowest setting and get you out of there fast." Theo pushes his archaic
glasses higher on his nose with a familiar twitch of one ringer and turns
to grin at the Consul. "Old mercenary proverb--"Kill 'em all and let
God sort 'em out." "
The Consul manages to move his tongue enough to make a sound
and to drool a bit on his cheek and the seat leather.
"Relax a minute," says Theo, returning his attention to the instruments
and view outside. "Two or three minutes and you should be
talking all right. I'm staying low, flying slow, so it's about a ten-minute
ride back to Keats." Theo glances toward his passenger. "You're lucky,
sir. You must have been dehydrated. Those other two wet their pants
when they went down. Humane weapon, the stunner, but embarrassing
if you don't have a change of pants around."
The Consul tries to express his opinion of this "humane" weapon.
"Another couple of minutes, sir," says Governor-General Theo Lane,
reaching over to dab at the Consul's cheek with a handkerchief. "I
should warn you, it's a mite uncomfortable when the stun begins to
wear off."
At that moment, someone inserts several thousand pins and needles
in the Consul's body.
"How the hell did you find me?" asks the Consul. They are a few
kilometers above the city, still flying over the Hoolie River. He is able
to sit up, and his words are More or less intelligible, but the Consul is
glad that he has several More minutes before he will have to stand or
walk.
"What, sir?"
"I said, how did you find me? How could you possibly know that I
had come back down the Hoolie?"
"CEO Gladstone fatlined me. Eyes-only on the old consulate onetime
pad."
"Gladstone?" The Consul is shaking his hands, trying to agitate feeling
back into fingers as useful as rubber sausages. "How the hell could
Gladstone possibly know that I was in trouble on the Hollie River? I
left Grandmother Siri's comlog receiver back in the valley so I could
call the other pilgrims when I got to the ship. How could Gladstone
know?"
"I don't know, sir, but she specified your location and that you were
in trouble. She even said you'd been flying a hawking mat that went
down."
The Consul shakes his head. "This lady has resources we hadn't
dreamt of, Theo."
"Yes, sir."
The Consul glances at his friend. Theo Lane had been Governor-
General of the new Protectorate world of Hyperion for over a local year
now, but old habits died hard and the "sir" came from the seven years
Theo had served as Vice-Consul and principal aide during the Consul's
years. The last time he had seen the young man--not so young now,
the Consul realizes: responsibility has brought lines and wrinkles to that
young face--Theo had been furious that the Consul would not take
over the governor-generalship. That had been a little More than a week
ago. Ages and eons ago.
"By the way," says the Consul, enunciating each word carefully,
"thank you, Theo."
The Governor-General nods, apparently lost in thought. He does not
ask about what the Consul has seen north of the mountains, nor the
fate of the other pilgrims. Beneath them, the Hoolie widens and winds
toward the capital of Keats. Far back on either side, low bluffs rise,
their granite slabs glowing softly in the evening light. Stands ofeverblues
shimmer in the breeze.
"Theo, how did you possibly have time to come for me yourself?
The situation on Hyperion must be pure madness."
"It is." Theo ordered the autopilot to take over as he turned to look
at the Consul. "It's a matter of hours . . . perhaps minutes . . . before
the Ousters actually invade."
The Consul blinked. "Invade? You mean land?"
"Exactly."
"But the Hegemony fleet--"
"Is in total chaos. They were barely holding their own against the
Swarm before the Web was invaded."
"The Web!"
"Entire systems falling. Others threatened. FORCE has ordered the
fleet back through their military farcasters, but evidently the ships in-
system have found it hard to disengage. No one gives me details, but
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
it's obvious that the Ousters have free rein everywhere except for the
defensive perimeter FORCE has put up around the singularity spheres
and the portals."
"The spaceport?" The Consul thinks of his beautiful ship lying as
glowing wreckage.
"It hasn't been attacked yet, but FORCE has been pulling its drop- ships and supply craft out as quickly as they can. They've left a skeleton
force of Marines behind."
"What about the evacuation?"
Theo laughed. It was the most bitter sound the Consul had ever
heard from the young man. "The evacuation will consist of whatever
consulate people and Hegemony VIPs can fit on the last dropship out."
"They've given up trying to save the people of Hyperion?"
"Sir, they can't save their own people. Word trickling down through
the ambassadors' fatline says that Gladstone has decided to let the threatened
Web worlds fall so that FORCE can regroup, have a couple of
years to create defenses while the Swarms accrue time-debt."
"My God," whispers the Consul. He had worked most of his life to
represent the Hegemony, all the while plotting its downfall in order to
avenge his grandmother ... his grandmother's way of life. But now
the thought of it actually happening . . .
"What about the Shrike?" he asks suddenly, seeing the low white
buildings of Keats a few kilometers ahead. Sunlight touches the hills
and river like a final benediction before darkness.
Theo shakes his head. "There are still reports, but the Ousters have
taken over as the primary source of panic."
"But it's not in the Web? The Shrike, I mean."
The Governor-General gives the Consul a sharp look. "In the Web?
How could it be in the Web? They still haven't allowed farcaster portals
on Hyperion. And there have been no sightings near Keats or Endymion
or Port Romance. None of the larger cities."
The Consul says nothing, but he is thinking: My God, my betrayal
was for nothing. I sold my soul to open the Time Tombs, and the Shrike
will not be the cause of the Web's fall . . . The Ousters! They were wise
to us all along. My betrayal of the Hegemony was part of their plan}
"Listen," Theo says harshly, gripping the Consul's wrist, "there's a
reason Gladstone had me leave everything to find you. She's authorized
the release of your ship--"
"Wonderful!" says the Consul. "I can--"
"Listen! You're not to go back to the Valley of the Time Tombs.
Gladstone wants you to avoid the FORCE perimeter and travel in-
system until you contact elements of the Swarm."
"The Swarm? Why would--"
"The CEO wants you to negotiate with them. They know you. Somehow
she's managed to let them know that you're coming. She thinks
that they'll let you . . . that they won't destroy your ship. But she hasn't
received confirmation of that. It'll be risky."
The Consul sits back in the leather seat. He feels as if he has been
hit by the neural stunner again. "Negotiate? What the hell would I
have to negotiate?"
"Gladstone said that she would contact you via your ship's fatline
once you're off Hyperion. This has to be done quickly. Today. Before
all the first-wave worlds fall to the Swarms."
The Consul hears first-wave worlds but does not ask if his beloved
Maui-Covenant is amongst them. Perhaps, he thinks, it would be best
if it were. He says, "No, I'm going back to the valley."
Theo adjusts his glasses. "She won't allow that, sir."
"Oh?" The Consul smiles. "How is she going to stop me? Shoot
down my ship?"
"I don't know, but she said that she wouldn't allow it." Theo sounds
sincerely worried. "The FORCE fleet does have picket ships and torch-
ships in orbit, sir. To escort the last dropships."
"Well," says the Consul, still smiling, "let them try to shoot me
down. Manned ships haven't been able to land near the Valley of the
Time Tombs for two centuries anyway: ships land perfectly, but their
crews disappear. Before they slag me, I'll be hanging on the Shrike's
tree." The Consul closes his eyes a moment and imagines the ship
landing, empty, on the plain above the valley. He imagines Sol, Dure,
and the others--miraculously returned--running for shelter in the
ship, using its surgery to save Het Masteen and Brawne Lauia, its
cryogenic fugue and sleep chambers to save little Rachel.
"My God," whispers Theo and the shocked tone slams the Consul
out of his reverie.
They have come around the final turn in the river above the city.
The bluffs rise higher here, culminating to the south in the carved-
mountain likeness of Sad King Billy. The sun is just setting, igniting
low clouds and buildings high on the eastern bluffs.
Above the city, a battle is raging. Lasers lance into and through the
clouds, ships dodge like gnats and bum like moths too close to a flame,
while parafoils and the blur of suspension fields drift beneath the cloud
———————— THE FALL OF HYPEBION ————————
ceiling. The city of Keats is being attacked. The Ousters have come to
Hyperion.
"Oh, sweet fuck," Theo whispers reverently.
Along the forested ridge northwest of the city, a brief spout of flame
and a flicker of contrail mark a shoulder-launched rocket coming directly
toward the Hegemony skimmer.
"Hang on!" snaps Theo. He takes manual control, throws switches,
banks the skimmer steeply to starboard, trying to turn inside the small
rocket's own turning radius.
An explosion aft throws the Consul into the crashweb and blurs his
vision for a moment. When he can focus again, the cabin is filled with
smoke, red warning lights pulse through the gloom, and the skimmer
warns of systems failure in a dozen urgent voices. Theo is slumped
grimly over the omni-controller.
"Hang on," he says again, needlessly. The skimmer slews sicke lingly,
finds a grip in the air, and then loses it as they tumble and sideslip
toward the burning city.
THIRTY-SIX
I blinked and opened my eyes, disoriented for a second as I looked
around the immense, dark space of St. Peter's Basilica. Pacem.
Monsignor Edouard and Father Paul Dure leaned forward in the
dim candlelight, their expressions intense.
"How long was I ... asleep?" I felt as if only seconds had elapsed,
the dream a shimmer of images one has in the instants between lying
peacefully and full sleep.
"Ten minutes," said the Monsignor. "Can you tell us what you saw?"
I saw no reason not to. When I was finished describing the images,
Monsignor Edouard crossed himself. "Mon Dieu, the ambassador from
the TechnoCore urges Gladstone to send people to those . . . tunnels."
Dure touched my shoulder. "After I talk to the True Voice of the
Worldtree on God's Grove, I will join you on TC2. We have to tell
Gladstone the folly of such a choice."
I nodded. All .thoughts of my going to God's Grove with Dure or to
Hyperion itself had Bed. "I agree. We should depart at once. Is your
. . . can the Pope's Door take me to Tau Ceti Center?"
The Monsignor stood, nodded, stretched. Suddenly I realized that
he was a very old man, untouched by Poulsen treatments. "Il has a
priority access," he said. He turned to Dure. "Paul, you know that I
would accompany you if I could. The funeral of His Holiness, the
election of a new Holy Father ..." Monsignor Edouard made a small,
rueful sound. "Odd how the daily imperatives persist even in the face
of collective disaster. Pacem itself has fewer than ten standard days until
the barbarians arrive."
Dure's high forehead gleamed in the candlelight. "The business of
the Church is something beyond a mere daily imperative, my friend.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
I will make my visit on the Templar world brief, then join M. Severn
in his effort of convincing the CEO not to listen to the Core. Then I
will return, Edouard, and we will try to make some sense of this confused
heresy."
I followed the two of them out of the basilica, through a side door
that led to a passageway behind the tall colonnades, left across an open
courtyard--the rain had stopped and the air smelled fresh--down a
stairway, and through a narrow tunnel into the papal apartments. Members
of the Swiss Guard snapped to attention as we came into the
apartments' anteroom; the tall men were dressed in armor and yellow-
and-blue striped pantaloons, although their ceremonial halberds were
also FORCE-quality energy weapons. One stepped forward and spoke
softly to the Monsignor.
"Someone has just arrived at the main terminex to see you, M.
Severn."
"Me?" I had been listening to other voices in other rooms, the melodious
rise and fall of oft-repeated prayers. I assumed it had to do with
preparation for the Pope's burial.
"Yes, an M. Hunt. He says that it is urgent."
"Another minute and I would have seen him at Government House,"
I said. "Why not have him join us here?"
Monsignor Edouard nodded and spoke softly to the Swiss Guard,
who whispered into an ornamental crest on his antique armor.
The so-called Pope's Door--a small farcaster portal surrounded by
intricate gold carvings of seraphim and cherubim, topped with a five-
station bas-relief illustrating Adam and Eve's fall from grace and expulsion
from the garden--stood in the center of a well-guarded room
just off the Pope's private apartments. We waited there, our reflections
wan and tired-looking in the mirrors on each wall.
Leigh Hunt was escorted in by the priest who had led me to the
basilica.
"Severn!" cried Gladstone's favorite advisor. "The CEO needs you
at once."
"I was just going there," I said. "It would be a criminal mistake if
Gladstone allowed the Core to build and use the death device."
Hunt blinked--an almost comical reaction on that basset-hound
countenance. "Do you know everything that happens, Severn?"
I had to laugh. "A young child sitting unattended in a holo pit sees
much and understands very little. Still, he has the advantage of being
able to change channels and turn the thing off when he grows tired of
it." Hunt knew Monsignor Edouard from various state functions, and
I introduced Father Paul Dure of the Society of Jesus.
"Dure?" managed Hunt, his jaw almost hanging slack. It was the
first time that I had seen the advisor at a loss for words, and I rather
enjoyed the sight.
"We'll explain later," I said and shook the priest's hand. "Good luck
on God's Grove, Dure. Don't be too long."
"An hour," promised the Jesuit. "No longer. There is merely one
piece of the puzzle I must find before speaking to the CEO. Please
explain to her about the horror of the labyrinth ... I will give her my
own testimony later."
"It's possible that she'll be too busy to see me before you get there
anyway," I said. "But I'll do my best to play John the Baptist for you."
Dure smiled. "Just don't lose your head, my friend." He nodded,
tapped in a transfer code on the archiac diskey panel, and disappeared
through the portal.
I bid farewell to Monsignor Edouard. "We will get all this settled
before the Ouster wave gets this far."
The old priest raised a hand and blessed me. "Go with God, young
man. I feel that dark times await us all but that you will be especially
burdened."
I shook my head. "I'm just an observer, Monsignor. I wait and watch
and dream. Little burden there."
"Wait and watch and dream later," Leigh Hunt said sharply. "Her
Nibs wants you within reach now, and I have a meeting to get back
to."
I looked at the little man. "How did you find me?" I asked needlessly.
Farcasters were operated by the Core, and the Core worked with the
Hegemony authorities.
"The override card she gave you also makes it easier to keep track of
your travels," Hunt said, his impatience audible. "Right now we have
an obligation to be where things are happening."
"Very well." I nodded at the Monsignor and his aide, beckoned to
Hunt, and tapped in the three-digit code for Tau Ceti Center, added
two digits for the continent, three More for Government House, and
added the final two numbers for the private terminex there. The far-
caster's hum went up a notch on the scale, its opaque surface seemed
to shimmer with expectancy.
I stepped through first, stepped aside to give Hunt room as he followed.

THE	FALL	OF HYPE
We are not in the central Government House terminex. As far as I
can tell, we are nowhere near Government House. A second later, my
senses total the input of sunlight, sky color, gravity, distance to horizon,
smells, and feel of things, and decide that we aren't on Tau Ceti Center.
I would have jumped back through the portal then, but the Pope's
Door is small. Hunt is coming through--leg, arm, shoulder, chest,
head, second leg appearing--so I grab his wrist, pull him through
roughly, say "Something's wrong!" and try to step back through, but
too late, the frameless portal on this side shimmers, dilates to a circle
the size of my fist, and is gone.
"Where the hell are we?" demands Hunt.
I look around and think. Good question. We are in the country, on
a hilltop. A road underfoot winds through vineyards, goes down a long
hill through a wooded vale, and disappears around another hill a mile
or two distant. It is very warm, and the air hums with the sounds of
insects, but nothing larger than a bird moves in this vast panorama.
Between bluffs to our right, a blue smear of water is visible--either an
ocean or sea. High cirrus ripples overhead; the sun is just past the
zenith. I see no houses, no technology More complicated than the
vineyard rows and the stone-and-mud road underfoot. More importantly,
the constant background buzz of the datasphere is gone. It is
somewhat like suddenly hearing the absence of a sound one has been
immersed in since infancy; it is startling, heart-stopping, confusing, and
a bit terrifying.
Hunt staggers, claps his ears as if it is true sound he is missing, taps
at his comlog. "Goddamn," he mutters. "Goddamn. My implant's
malfunctioning. Comlog's out."
"No," I say. "I believe we're beyond the datasphere." But even as I
say this, I hear a deeper, softer hum--something far greater and far
less accessible than the datasphere. The megasphere? The music of the
spheres, I think, and smile.
"What the hell are you grinning about, Severn? Did you do this on
purpose?"
"No. I gave the proper codes for Government House." The total
absence of panic in my voice is a kind of panic itself.
"What is it then? That goddamned Pope's Door? Did it do this? Some
malf or trick?"
-------------------------------------------------- 329 --------------------------------------------------
"No, I think not. The door didn't malfunction. Hunt. It brought us
just where the TechnoCore wants us."
"The Core?" What little color left in that basset countenance quickly
drains away as the CEO's aide realizes who controls the farcaster. Who
controls all farcasters. "My God. My God." Hunt staggers to the side
of the road and sits in the tall grass there. His suede executive suit and
soft black shoes look out of place here.
"Where are we?" he asks again.
I take a deep breath. The air smells of fresh-turned soil, newly mown
grass, road dust, and the sharp tinge of the sea. "My guess is that we're
on Earth, Hunt."
"Earth." The little man is staring straight ahead, focusing on nothing.
"Earth. Not New Earth. Not Terra. Not Earth Two. Not ..."
"No," I say. "Earth. Old Earth. Or its duplicate."
"Its duplicate."
I go over and sit beside him. I pull a strand of grass and strip the
lower part of its outer sheath. The grass tastes tart and familiar. "You
remember my report to Gladstone on the Hyperion pilgrims' stories?
Brawne Lamia's tale? She and my cybrid counterpart ... the first Keats
retrieval persona . . . traveled to what they thought was an Old Earth
duplicate. In the Hercules Cluster, if I remember correctly."
Hunt glances up as if he can judge what I am saying by checking
constellations. The blue above is graying slightly as the high cirrus
spreads across the dome of sky. "Hercules Cluster," lie whispers.
"Why the TechnoCore built a duplicate, or what they're doing with
it now, Brawne didn't learn," I say. "Either the first Keats cybrid didn't
know, or he wasn't saying."
"Wasn't saying," nods Hunt. He shakes his head. "All right, how
the hell do we get ou( of here? Gladstone needs me. She can't . . .
there are dozens of vital decisions to be made in the next few hours."
He jumps to his feet, runs to the center of the road, a study in purposeful
energy.
I chew on the stalk of grass. "My guess is that we don't get out of
here."
Hunt comes at me as if he is going to assault me then and there.
"Are you insane! No way out? That's nuts. Why would the Core do
that?" He pauses, looks down at me. "They don't want you talking to
her. You know something that the Core can't risk her learning."
"Perhaps."
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
"Leave him, let me go back!" he screams at the sky.
No one answers. Far out across the vineyard, a large black bird takes
flight. I think it is a crow; I remember the name of the extinct species
as if from a dream.
After a moment, Hunt gives up on addressing the sky and paces back
and forth on the stone road. "Come on. Maybe there's a terminex
wherever this thing goes."
"Perhaps," I say, breaking off the stalk of grass to get at the sweet,
dry upper half. "But which way?"
Hunt turns, looks at the road disappearing around hills in both directions,
turns again. "We came through the portal looking . . . this
way." He points. The road goes downhill into a narrow wood.
"How far?" I ask.
"Goddammit, does it matter?" he barks. "We have to get somewhere
I resist the impulse to smile. "All right." I stand and brush off my
trousers, feeling the fierce sunlight on my forehead and face. After the
incense-laden darkness of the basilica, it is a shock. The air is very hot,
and my clothing is already damp with sweat.
Hunt starts walking vigorously down the hill, his fists clenched, his
doleful expression ameliorated for once by a stronger expression--sheer
resolve.
Walking slowly, in no hurry, still chewing on my stalk of sweet grass,
eyes half-closed with weariness, I follow him.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad screamed and attacked the Shrike. The
surreal, out-of-time landscape--a minimalist stage designer's version of the Valley of the Time Tombs, molded in plastic and set in a gel of
viscous air--seemed to vibrate to the violence of Kassad's rush.
For an instant there had been a mirror-image scattering of Shrikes
--Shrikes throughout the valley, spread across the barren plain--but
with Kassad's shout these resolved themselves to the single monster,
and now it moved, four arms unfolding and extending, curving to greet
the Colonel's rush with a hearty hug of blades and thorns.
Kassad did not know if the energy skinsuit he wore, Moneta's gift,
would protect him or serve him well in combat. It had years before
when he and Moneta had attacked two dropships' worth of Ouster
commandos, but time had been on their side then; the Shrike had
frozen and unfrozen the flow of moments like a bored observer playing
with a holopit remote control. Now they were outside time, and the
was the enemy, not some terrible patron. Kassad shouted and put his
head down and attacked, no longer aware of Moneta watching, nor of
the impossible tree of thorns rising into the clouds with its terrible,
impaled audience, nor even aware of himself except as a fighting tool,
an instrument of revenge.
The Shrike did not disappear in its usual manner, did not cease being there to suddenly be here. Instead, it crouched and opened its arms
wider. Its fingerblades caught the light of the violent sky. The Shrike's
metal teeth glistened in what might have been a smile.
Kassad was angry; he was not insane. Rather than rush into that
embrace of death, he threw himself aside at the last instant, rolling on
arm and shoulder, and kicking out at the monster's lower leg, below
the cluster of thomblades at the knee joint, above a similar array on
the ankle. If he could get it down . . .
It was like kicking at a pipe embedded in half a klick of concrete.
The blow would have broken Kassad's own leg if the skinsuit had not
acted as armor and shock absorber.
The Shrike moved, quickly but not impossibly; the two right arms
swinging up and down and around in a blur, ten fingerblades carving
soil and stone in surgical furrows, arm thorns sending sparks Hying as
the hands continued upward, slicing air with an audible rush. Kassad
was out of range, continuing his roll, coming to his feet again, crouching,
his own arms tensed, palms flat, energy-suited fingers rigid and
extended.
Sing/e combat, thought Fedmahn Kassad. The most honorable sacrament
in the New Bushido.
The Shrike feinted with its right arms again, swung the lower left
arm around and up with a sweeping blow violent enough to shatter
Kassad's ribs and scoop his heart out.
Kassad blocked the right-arm feint with his left forearm, feeling the
skinsuit flex and batter bone as the steel-and-axe force of the Shrike's
blow struck home. The left-arm killing blow he stopped with his right
hand on the monster's wrist, just above the corsage of curved spikes
there. Incredibly, he slowed the blow's momentum enough that scalpel-
sharp fingerblades were now scraping against his skinsuit field rather
than splintering ribs.
Kassad was almost lifted off the ground with the effort of restraining
that rising claw; only the downward thrust of the Shrike's first feint kept
the Colonel from flying backward. Sweat poured freely under the skin-
suit, muscles flexed and ached and threatened to rip in that interminable
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
twenty seconds of struggle before the Shrike brought its fourth arm into
play, slashing downward at Kassad's straining leg.
Kassad screamed as the skinsuit field ripped, Hesh tore, and at least
one fingerblade sliced close to bone. He kicked out with his other leg,
released the thing's wrist, and rolled frantically away.
The Shrike swung twice, the second blow whistling millimeters from
Kassad's moving ear, but then jumped back itself, crouching, moving
to its right.
Kassad got to his left knee, almost fell, then staggered to his feet,
hopping slightly to keep his balance. The pain roared in his ears and
filled the universe with red light, but even as he grimaced and staggered,
close to fainting from the shock of it, he could feel the skinsuit closing
on the wound--serving as both tourniquet and compress. He could
feel the blood on his lower leg, but it was no longer flowing freely, and
the pain was manageable, almost as if the skinsuit carried medpak
injectors like his FORCE battle armor.
The Shrike rushed him.
Kassad kicked once, twice, aiming for and finding the smooth bit of
chrome carapace beneath the chest spike. It was like kicking the hull
of a torchship, but the Shrike seemed to pause, stagger, step back.
Kassad stepped forward, planted his weight, struck twice where the
creature's heart should be with a closed-fist blow that would have shattered
tempered ceramic, ignored the pain from his fist, swiveled, and
slammed a straight-armed, open-palmed blow into the creature's muzzle,
just above the teeth. Any human being would have heard the sound
of his nose being broken and felt the explosion of bone and cartilage
being driven into his brain.
The Shrike snapped at Kassad's wrist, missed, swung four hands at
Kassad's head and shoulders.
Panting, pouring sweat and blood under his quicksilver armor, Kassad
spun to his right once, twice, and came around with a killing blow to
the back of the creature's short neck. The noise of the impact echoed
in the frozen valley like the sound of an axe thrown from miles on high
into the heart of a metal redwood.
The Shrike tumbled forward, rolled onto its back like some steel
crustacean.
It had gone down!
Kassad stepped forward, still crouched, still cautious, but not cautious
enough as the Shrike's armored foot, claw, whatever the hell it was,
————————————————————————— 333 —————————————————————————
caught the back of Kassad's ankle and half-sliced, half-kicked him off
his feet.
Colonel Kassad felt the pain, knew that his Achilles tendon had been
severed, tried to roll away, but the creature was throwing itself up and
sideways on him, spikes and thorns and blades coming at Kassad's ribs
and face and eyes. Grimacing with the pain, arching in a vain attempt
to throw the monster off, Kassad blocked some blows, saved his eyes,
and felt other blades slam home in his upper arms, chest, and belly.
The Shrike hovered closer and opened its mouth. Kassad stared up
into row upon row of steel teeth set in a metal lamprey's hollow orifice
of a mouth. Red eyes filled his sight through vision already tinged with
blood.
Kassad got the base of his palm under the Shrike's jaw and tried to
find leverage. It was like trying to lift a mountain of sharp scrap with
no fulcrum. The Shrike's fingerblades continued to tear at Kassad's
flesh. The thing opened its mouth and tilted its head until teeth filled
Kassad's field of vision from ear to ear. The monster had no breath,
but the heat from its interior stank of sulphur and heated iron filings.
Kassad had no defense left; when the thing snapped its jaws shut, it
would take the flesh and skin of Kassad's face off to the bone.
Suddenly Moneta was there, shouting in that place where sound did
not carry, grabbing the Shrike by its ruby-faceted eyes, skinsuited fingers
arching like talons, her boot planted firmly on its carapace bel w the
back spike, pulling, pulling.
The Shrike's arms snapped backward, as double-jointed as some
nightmare crab, fingerblades raked Moneta and she fell away, but not
before Kassad rolled, scrambled, felt the pain but ignored it, and leaped
to his feet, dragging Moneta with him as he retreated across the sand
and frozen rock.
For a second, their skinsuits merged as it had when they were making
love, and Kassad felt her flesh next to his, felt their blood and sweat
mingling and heard the joined poundings of their hearts.
Kill it Moneta whispered urgently, pain audible even through that
subvocal medium.
I'm trying. I'm trying.
The Shrike was on its feet, three meters of chrome and blades and
other people's pain. It showed no damage. Someone's blood ran in
narrow rivulets down its wrists and carapace. Its mindless grin seemed
wider than before.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Kassad separated his skinsuit from Moneta's, lowered her gently to a
boulder although he sensed that he had been hurt worse than she. This
was not her fight. Not yet.
He moved between his love and the Shrike.
Kassad hesitated, hearing a faint but rising susurration as if from a
rising surf on an invisible shore. He glanced up, never fully removing
his gaze from the slowly advancing Shrike, and realized that it was a shouting from the thorn tree far behind the monster. The crucified
people there--small dabs of color hanging from the metal thorns and
cold branches--were making some noise other than the subliminal
moans of pain Kassad had heard earlier. They were cheering.
Kassad returned his attention to the Shrike as the thing began to
circle again. Kassad felt the pain and weakness in his almost-severed
heel--his right foot was useless, unable to bear weight--and he half-
hopped, half-swiveled with one hand on the boulder to keep his body
between the Shrike and Moneta.
The distant cheering seemed to stop as if in a gasp.
The Shrike ceased being there and came into existence here, next to
Kassad, on top of Kassad, its arms already around him in a terminal
hug, thorns and blades already impinging. The Shrike's eyes blazed
with light. Its jaws opened again.
Kassad shouted in pure rage and defiance and struck at it.
Father Paul Dure stepped through the Pope's Door to God's Grove
without incident. From the incense-laden dimness of the papal apartments,
he suddenly found himself in rich sunlight with a lemon sky
above and green leaves all around.
The Templars were waiting as he stepped down from the private
farcaster portal. Dure could see the edge of the weirwood platform five
meters to his right and beyond it, nothing--or, rather, everything, as
the treetop world of God's Grove stretched great distances to the horizon,
the rooftop of leaves shimmering and moving like a living ocean. Dure
knew that he was high on the Worldtree, the greatest and holiest of all
the trees the Templars held sacred.
The Templars greeting him were important in the complicated hierarchy
of the Brotherhood of the Muir, but served as mere guides now,
leading him from the portal platform to a vine-strewn elevator which
rose through upper levels and terraces where few non-Templars had
ever ascended, and then out again and up along a staircase bound by
-------------------------------------------------- 335 --------------------------------------------------
a railing of the finest muirwood, spiraling skyward around a trunk that
narrowed from its two-hundred-meter base to less than eight meters
across here near its top. The weirwood platform was exquisitely carved;
its railings showed a delicate tracery of handcarvcd vines, posts and
balusters boasted the faces of gnomes, wood sprites, faeries, and other
spirits, and the table and chairs which Dure now approached were
carved from the same piece of wood as the circular platform itself.
Two men awaited him. The first was the one Dure expected--True
Voice of the Worldtree, High Priest of the Muir, Spokesman of the
Templar Brotherhood Sek Hardeen. The second man was a surprise.
Dure noted the red robe--a red the color of arterial blood--with black
ermine trim, the heavy Lusian body covered by that robe, the face all
jowls and fat bisected by a formidable beak of a nose, two tiny eyes lost
above fat cheeks, two pudgy hands with a black or red ring on each
finger. Dure knew that he was looking at the Bishop of the Church of
the Final Atonement--the high priest of the Shrike Cult.
The Templar rose to his almost two-meter height and offered his
hand. "Father Dure, we are most pleased that you could join us."
Dure shook hands, thinking as he did so how much like a root the
Templar's hand was, with its long, tapering, yellowish-brown fingers.
The True Voice of the Worldtree wore the same hooded robe that Het
Masteen had worn, its rough brown and green threads in sharp contrast
to the brilliance of the Bishop's garb.
"Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, M. Hardeen," said
Dure. The True Voice was the spiritual leader of millions of the followers
of the Muir, but Dure knew that Templars disliked titles or
honorifics in conversation. Dure nodded in the direction of the Bishop.
"Your Excellency, I had no idea that I would have the honor of being
in your presence."
The Shrike Cult Bishop nodded almost imperceptibly. "I was visiting.
M. Hardeen suggested that it might be of some small benefit if I attended
this meeting. I am pleased to meet you, Father Dure. We have heard
much about you in the past few years."
The Templar gestured toward a seat across the muirwood table from
the two of them, and Dure sat, folding his hands on the polished
tabletop, thinking furiously even as he pretended to inspect the beautiful
grain in the wood. Half the security forces in the Web were searching
for the Shrike Cult Bishop. His presence suggested complications far
beyond those the Jesuit had been prepared to deal with.
"Interesting, is it not," said the Bishop, "that three of humankind's
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
most profound religions are represented here today?" "Ye.i," said Dure.
"Profound, but hardly representational of the beliefs of the majority.
Out of almost a hundred and fifty billion souls, the Catholic Church
claims fewer than a million. The Shri--ah . . . the Church of the
Final Atonement perhaps five to ten million. And how many Templars
are there, M. Hardeen?"
"Twenty-three million," the Templar said softly. "Many others support
our ecological causes and might even wish to join, but the Brotherhood
is not open to outsiders."
The Bishop rubbed one of his chins. His skin was very pale, and he
squinted as if he were not used to daylight. "The Zen Gnostics claim
forty billion followers," he rumbled. "But what kind of religion is that,
eh? No churches. No priests. No holy books. No concept of sin."
Dure smiled. "It seems to be the belief most attuned to the times.
And has been for many generations now."
"Bah!" The Bishop slapped his hand down on the table, and Dure
winced as he heard the metal of the rings strike muirwood.
"How is it that you know who I am?" asked Paul Dure.
The Templar lifted his head just enough that Dure could see sunlight
on his nose, cheeks, and the long line of chin within the shadows of
the cowl. He did not speak.
"We chose you," growled the Bishop. "You and the other pilgrims."
"You being the Shrike Church?" said Dure.
The Bishop frowned at that phrase but nodded without speaking.
"Why the riots?" asked Dure. "Why the disturbances now that the
Hegemony is threatened?"
When the Bishop rubbed his chin, red and black stones glinted in
the evening light. Beyond him, a million leaves rustled in a breeze
which brought the scent of rain-moistened vegetation. "The Final Days
are here, priest. The prophecies given to us by the Avatar centuries ago
are unfolding before our eyes. What you call riots are the first death
throes of a society which deserves to die. The Days of Atonement are
upon us and the Lord of Pain soon will walk among us."
"The Lord of Pain," repeated Dure. "The Shrike."
The Templar made an ameliorating gesture with one hand, as if he
were trying to take some of the edge off the Bishop's statement. "Father
Dure, we are aware of your miraculous rebirth."
"Not a miracle," said Dure. "The whim of a parasite called a cruciform."

Again the gesture with the long, yellow-brown fingers. "However you
see it. Father, the Brotherhood rejoices that you are with us once again.
Please go ahead with the query you mentioned when you called earlier."
Dure rubbed his palms against the wood of the chair, glanced at the
Bishop sitting across from him in all of his red-and-black bulk. "Your
groups have been working together for some time, haven't they?" said
Dure. "The Templar Brotherhood and the Shrike Church."
"Church of the Final Atonement," the Bishop said in a bass growl.
Dure nodded. "Why? What brings you together in this?"
The True Voice of the Worldtree leaned forward so that shadow filled
his cowl once again. "You must see, Father, that the prophecies of the
Church of the Final Atonement touch upon our mission from the Muir.
Only these prophecies have held the key to what punishment must
befall humankind for killing its own world."
"Humankind alone didn't destroy Old Earth," said Dure. "It was a
computer error in the Kiev Team's attempt to create a mini-black hole."
The Templar shook his head. "It was human arrogance," he said
softly. "The same arrogance which has caused our race to destroy all
species that might even hope to evolve to intelligence someday. The
Seneschai Aluit on Hebron, the zeplens of Whirl, the marsh centaurs
of Garden and the great apes of Old Earth ..."
"Yes," said Dure. "Mistakes have been made. But that shouldn't
sentence humankind to death, should it?"
"The sentence has been handed down by a Power far greater than
ourselves," rumbled the Bishop. "The prophecies are precise and explicit.
The Day of Final Atonement must come. All who have inherited
the Sins of Adam and Kiev must suffer the consequences of murdering
their homeworld, of extinguishing other species. The Lord of Pain has
been freed from the bonds of time to lender this final judgment. There
is no escaping his wrath. There is no avoiding Atonement. A Power
far greater than us has said this."
"It is true," said Sek Hardeen. "The prophecies have come to us. . .
spoken to the True Voices over the generations . . . humankind is
doomed, but with their doom will come a new flowering for pristine environments in all parts of what is now the Hegemony."
Trained in Jesuit logic, devoted to the evolutionary theology ofTeil-
hard de Chardin, Father Paul Dure was nonetheless tempted to say,
But who the hell cares if the flowers bloom if no one is around to see them,
to smell them? Instead, he said, "Have you considered that these prophecies
were not divine revelations, but merely manipulations from some
secular power?"
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
The Templar sat back as if slapped, but the Bishop leaned forward
and curled two Lusian fists which could have crushed Dure's skull with
a single blow. "Heresy! Whoever dares deny the truth of the revelations
must die!"
"What power could do this?" managed the True Voice of the World-
tree. "What power other than the Muir's Absolute could enter our
minds and hearts?"
Dure gestured toward the sky. "Every world in the Web has been
joined through the TechnoCore's datasphere for generations. Most people
of influence carry comlog extension implants for ease of accessing ... do you not, M. Hardeen?"
The Templar said nothing, but Dure saw the small twitch of fingers,
as if the man were going to pat his chest and upper arm where the
microimplants had lain for decades.
"The TechnoCore has created a transcendent . . . Intelligence,"
continued Dure. "It taps incredible amounts of energy, is able to move
backward and forward in time, and is not motivated by human concerns.
One of the goals of a sizeable percentage of the Core personalities was
to eliminate humankind . . . indeed, the Big Mistake of the Kiev Team
may have been deliberately executed by the AIs involved in that experiment.
What you hear as prophecies may be the voice of this deus
ex machina whispering through the datasphere. The Shrike may be here
not to make humankind atone for its sins, but merely to slaughter human
men, women, and children for this machine personality's own goals."
The Bishop's heavy face was as red as his robe. His fists pummeled
the table, and he struggled to his feet. The Templar laid a hand on the
Bishop's arm and restrained him, somehow pulled him back to his seat.
"Where have you heard this idea?" Sek Hardeen asked Dure.
"From those on the pilgrimage who have access to the Core. And
from . . . others."
The Bishop shook a fist in Dure's direction. "But you yourself have
been touched by the Avatar ... not once, but twice'. He has granted
you a form of immortality so you can see what he has in store for the
Chosen People . . . those who prepare Atonement before the Final
Days are upon us!"
"The Shrike gave me pain," said Dure. "Pain and suffering beyond
imagination. I have met the thing twice, and I know in my heart that
it is neither divine nor diabolical, but merely some organic machine
from a terrible future."
-------------------------------------------------- 339 --------------------------------------------------
"Bah!" The Bishop made a dismissive gesture, folded his arms, and
stared out over the low balcony at nothing.
The Templar appeared shaken. After a moment, he raised his head
and said softly, "Yon had a question for me?"
Dure took a breath. "I did. And sad news, I'm afraid. True Voice
of the Tree Het Masteen is dead."
"We know," said the Templar.
Dure was surprised. He could not imagine how they could receive
that information. But it did not matter now. "What I need to know, is
why did he go on the pilgrimage? What was the mission that he did
not live to see completed? Each of us told our . . . our story. Het
Masteen did not. Yet somehow I feel that his fate held the key to many
mysteries."
The Bishop looked back at Dure and sneered. "We need tell you
nothing, priest of a dead religion."
Sek Hardcen sat silent a long moment before responding. "M. Mas-
teen volunteered to be the one to carry the Word of the Muir to
Hyperion. The prophecy has lain in the roots of our belief for centuries that when the troubled times came, a True Voice of the Tree would
be called upon to take a treeship to the Holy World, to see it destroyed
there, and then to have it reborn carrying the message of Atonement
and the Muir."
"So Het Masteen knew that the treeship Yggdrasill would be destroyed
in orbit?"
"Yes. It was foretold."
"And he and the single energy-binder erg from the ship were to fly
a new treeship?"
"Yes," said the Templar almost inaudibly. "A Tree of Atonement
which the Avatar would provide."
Dure sat back, nodded. "A Tree of Atonement. The thorn tree. Het
Masteen was psychically injured when the 'Yggdrasill was destroyed.
Then he was taken to the Valley of the Time Tombs and shown the
Shrike's thorn tree. But he was not ready or able to do it. The thorn
tree is a structure of death, of suffering, of pain . . . Het Masteen was
not prepared to captain it. Or perhaps he refused. In any case, he fled.
And died. I thought as much ... but I had no idea what fate the Shrike
had offered him."
"What are you talking about?" snapped the Bishop. "The Tree of
Atonement is described in the prophecies. It will accompany the Avatar
Normal;FR1;FR2;THE	FALL	OF	HVPER10N
in his final harvest. Masteen would have been prepared and honored
to captain it through space and time."
Paul Dure shook his head.
"We have answered your question?" asked M. Hardeen.
"Yes."
"Then you must answer ours," said the Bishop. "What has happened
to the Mother?"
"What mother?"
"The Mother of Our Salvation. The Bride of Atonement. The one
you called Brawne Lamia."
Dure thought back, trying to remember the Consul's taped summaries
of the tales the pilgrims had told on the way to Hyperion. Brawne had
been pregnant with the first Keats cybrid's child. The Shrike Temple
on Lusus had saved her from the mob, included her in the pilgrimage.
She had said something in her story about the Shrike Cultists treating
her with reverence. Dure tried to fit all this into the confused mosaic
of what he had already learned. He could not. He was too tired . . .
and, he thought, too stupid after this so-called resurrection. He was
not and never would be the intellectual Paul Dure once had been.
"Brawne was unconscious," he said. "Evidently taken by the Shrike
and attached to some . . . thing. Some cable. Her mental state was the
equivalent of brain death, but the fetus was alive and healthy."
"And the persona she carried?" asked the Bishop, his voice tense.
Dure remembered what Severn had told him about the death of that
persona in the megasphere. Evidently these two did not know about
the second Keats persona--the Severn personality that at this moment
was warning Gladstone about the dangers of the Core proposal. Dure
shook his head. He was very tired. "I don't know about the persona she
carried in the Schron loop," he said. "The cable . . . the thing the
Shrike attached to her . . . seemed to plug into the neural socket like
a cortical shunt."
The Bishop nodded, evidently satisfied. "The prophecies proceed
apace. You have served your purpose as messenger, Dure. I must leave
now." The big man stood, nodded toward the True Voice of the World-
tree, and swept across the platform and down the stairs toward the
elevator and terminex.
Dure sat across from the Templar in silence for several minutes. The
sound of leaves blowing and the gentle rocking of the treetop platform
was marvelously lulling, inviting the Jesuit to doze off. Above them,
the sky was fading through delicate saffron shades as the world of God's
Grove turned into twilight.
"Your statement about a deus ex machina misleading us for generations
through false prophecies was a terrible heresy," the Templar said
at last.
"Yes. But terrible heresies have proven to be grim truths many times
before in the longer history of my Church, Sek Hardeen."
"If you were a Templar, I could have you put to death," the hooded
figure said softly.
Dure sighed. At his age, in his situation, and as tired as he was, the
thought of death created no fear in his heart. He stood and bowed
slightly. "I need to go, Sek Hardeen. I apologize if anything I said
offended you. It is a confused and confusing time." "T/ie best lack all
conviction," he thought, "while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
"
Dure turned and walked to the edge of the platform. And stopped.
The staircase was gone. Thirty vertical meters and fifteen horizontal
meters of air separated him from the next lower platform where the
elevator waited. The Worldtree dropped away a kilometer or More into
leafy depths beneath him. Dure and the True Voice of that Tree were
isolated here on the highest platform. Dure walked to a nearby railing,
raised his suddenly sweaty face to the evening breeze, and noticed the
first of the stars emerging from the ultramarine sky. "What's going on,
Sek Hardeen?"
The robed and cowled figure at the table was wrapped in darkness.
"In eighteen minutes, standard, the world of Heaven's Gate will fall to
the Ousters. Our prophecies say that it will be destroyed. Certainly its
farcaster will, and its fatline transmitters, and to all intents and purposes,
that world will have ceased to exist. Precisely one standard hour later,
the skies of God's Grove will be alight from the fusion fires of Ouster
warships. Our prophecies say that all of the Brotherhood who remain
--and anyone else, although all Hegemony citizens have long since
been evacuated by farcaster--will perish."
Dure walked slowly back to the table. "It's imperative that I 'cast to
Tau Ceti Center," he said. "Severn . . . someone is waiting for me. I
have to speak to CEO Gladstone."
"No," said True Voice of the Worldtree Sek Hardeen. "We will wait.
We will see if the prophecies are correct."
The Jesuit clenched his fists in frustration, fighting the surge of violent
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPEHION ----------------
emotion that made him want to strike the robed figure. Dure closed
his eyes and said two Hail Marys. It didn't help.
"Please," he said. "The prophecies will be confirmed or denied
whether I am here or not. And then it will be too late. The FORCE
torchships will blow the singularity sphere, and the farcasters will be
gone. We'll be cut off from the Web for years. Billions of lives may
depend upon my immediate return to Tau Ceti Center."
The Templar folded his arms so that his long-fingered hands disappeared
in the folds of his robe. "We will wait," he said. "All things
predicted will come to pass. In minutes, the Lord of Pain will be loosed
on those in the Web. I do not believe in the Bishop's faith that those'
who have sought Atonement will be spared. We are better off here,
Father Dure, where the end will be swift and painless."
Dure searched his tired mind for something decisive to say, to do.
Nothing occurred to him. He sat at the table and stared at the cowled
and silent figure across from him. Above them, the stars emerged in
their fiery multitudes. The world-forest of God's Grove rustled a final
time to the evening breeze and seemed to hold its breath in anticipation.
Paul Dure closed his eyes and prayed.
THIRTY-SEVEN
We walk all day. Hunt and I, and toward evening we find
an inn with food set out for us--a fowl, rice pudding,
cauliflower, a dish of macaroni, and so forth--although
there are no people here, no sign of people other than the fire in the
hearth, burning brightly as if just lit, and the food still warm on the
stove.
Hunt is unnerved by it; by it and by the terrible withdrawal symptoms
he is suffering from the loss of contact with the datasphere. I can imagine
his pain. For a person born and raised into a world where information
was always at hand, communication with anyone anywhere a given,
and no distance More than a farcaster step away, this sudden regression
to life as our ancestors had known it would be like suddenly awakening
blind and crippled. But after the rantings and rages of the first few hours
of walking. Hunt finally settled down into a taciturn gloom.
"But the CEO needs me!" he had shouted that first hour.
"She needs the information I was bringing her," I said, "but there's
nothing to be done about it."
"Where are we?" demanded Hunt for the tenth time.
I had already explained about this alternate Old Earth, but I knew
he meant something else now.
"Quarantine, I think," I said.
"The Core brought us here?" demanded Hunt.
"I can only assume."
"How do we get back?"
"I don't know. I presume that when they feel it's safe to allow us out
of quarantine, a farcaster portal will appear."
Hunt cursed softly. "Why quarantine me, Severn?"
---------------- THE PALL OF HYPERION ----------------
I shrugged. I assumed it was because he had heard what I said on
Pacem, but I was not certain. I was certain of nothing.
The road led through meadows, vineyards, winding over low
hills and twisting through valleys where glimpses of the sea were
visible.
"Where does this road go?" Hunt demanded just before we discovered
the inn.
"All roads lead to Rome."
"I'm serious, Severn."
"So am I, M. Hunt."
Hunt pried a loose stone from the highway and threw it far into the
bushes. Somewhere a thrush called.
"You've been here before?" Hunt's tone was one of accusation, as if
I had pirated him away. Perhaps I had.
"No," I said. But Keats had, I almost added. My transplanted memories
surged to the surface, almost overwhelming me with their sense
of loss and looming mortality. So far from friends, so far from Fanny,
his one eternal love.
"You're sure you can't access the datasphere?" asked Hunt.
"I'm positive," I answered. He did not ask about the megasphere,
and I did not offer the information. I am terrified of entering the
megasphere, of losing myself there.
We found the inn just at sunset. It was nestled in a small valley, and
smoke rose from the stone chimney.
While eating, darkness pressing against the panes, our only light the
flicker of the fire and two candles on a stone mantle, Hunt said, "This
place makes me half-believe in ghosts."
"I do believe in ghosts," I said.
Night. I awake coughing, feel wetness on my bare chest, hear Hunt
rumbling with the candle, and in its light, look down to see blood on
my skin, spotting the bedclothes.
"My God," breathes Hunt, horrified. "What is it? What's going on?"
"Hemorrhage," I manage after the next fit of coughing leaves me
weaker and spotted with More blood. I start to rise, fall back on the
pillow, and gesture toward the basin of water and towel on the night-
stand.
"Damn, damn," mutters Hunt, searching for my comlog to get a
345
med reading. There is no comlog. I had thrown away Hoyt's useless
instrument while we were walking earlier in the day.
Hunt removes his own comlog, adjusts the monitor, and wraps it
around my wrist. The readings are meaningless to him, other than to
signify urgency and the need for immediate medical care. Like mosi
people of his generation, Hunt had never seen illness or death--that
was a professional matter handled out of sight of the populace.
"Never mind," I whisper, the siege of coughing past but weakness
lying on me like a blanket of stones. I gesture toward the towel again,
and Hunt moistens it, washes the blood from my chest and arms, helps
me sit in the single chair while he removes the spattered sheets and
blankets.
"Do you know what's going on?" he asks, real concern in his voice.
"Yes." I attempt a smile. "Accuracy. Verisimilitude. Ontogeny recapitulating
phylogeny."
"Make sense," snaps Hunt, helping me back into the bed. "What
caused the hemorrhage7 What can I do to help?"
"A glass of water, please." I sip it, feel the boiling in my chest and
throat but manage to avoid another round of coughing. My belly feels
as if it's on fire.
"What's going on?" Hunt asks again.
I talk slowly, carefully, setting each word in place as if placing my
feet on soil strewn with mines. The coughing does not return. "It's an
illness called consumption," I say. "Tuberculosis. The final stages,
judging from the severity of the hemorrhage."
Hunt's basset-hound face is white. "Good God, Severn. I never heard
of tuberculosis." He raises his wrist as if to consult his comlog memory
but the wrist is bare.
I return his instrument. "Tuberculosis has been absent for centuries.
Cured. But John Keats had it. Died of it. And this cybrid body belongs
to Keats."
Hunt stands as if ready to rush out the door seeking help. "Surely
the Core will allow us to return now! They can't keep you here on this empty world where there's no medical assistance!"
I lay my head back in the soft pillows, feeling the feathers under the
ticking. "That may be precisely why I am being kept here. We'll see
tomorrow when we arrive in Rome."
"But you can't travel! We won't be going anywhere in the morning."
"We'll see," I say, and close my eyes. "We'll see."
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
In the morning a vettum, a small carriage, is waiting outside the
inn. The horse is a large gray mare, and it rolls its eyes at us as we
approach. The creature's breath rises in the chill morning air.
"Do you know what that is?" says Hunt.
"A horse."
Hunt raises a hand toward the animal as if it will pop and disappear
like a soap bubble when he touches its Hank. It does not. Hunt snatches
his hand back as the mare's tail flicks.
"Horses are extinct," he says. "They've never been ARNied back into
existence."
"This one looks real enough," I say, climbing into the carriage and
sitting on the narrow bench there.
Hunt gingerly takes his seat beside me, his long ringers twitching
with anxiety. "Who drives7" he says. "Where are the controls?"
There are no reins, and the coachman's scat is quite empty. "Let's
see if the horse knows the way," I suggest, and at that instant we start
moving at a leisurely pace, the springless carriage jolting over the stones
and furrows of the rough road.
"This is some sort of joke, isn't it?" asks Hunt, staring at the flawless
blue sky and distant fields.
I cough as lightly and briefly as possible into a handkerchief I have
made from a towel borrowed from the inn. "Possibly," I say. "But then,
what isn't?"
Hunt ignores my sophistry, and we rumble on, jolting and bouncing
toward whatever destination and destiny await.
"Where are Hunt and Severn?" asked Meina Gladstone.
Sedeptra Akasi, the young black woman who was Gladstone's second
most important aide, leaned closer so as not to interrupt the flow of
the military briefing. "Still no word, M. Executive."
"That's impossible. Severn had a tracer and Leigh stepped through
to Pacem almost an hour ago. Where the hell are they?"
Akasi glanced toward the faxpad she had unfolded on the tabletop.
"Security can't find them. The transit police can't locate them. The
farcaster unit recorded only that they coded TC2--here--stepped
through, but did not arrive."
'"I 'hilt's impossible."
"Yes, M. Executive."
"I want to talk to Albedo or one of the other AI Councilors as soon
as this meeting is over."
"Yes."
Both women returned their attention to the briefing. The Government
House Tactical Center had been joined to the Olympus Command
Center War Room and to the largest Senate briefing room with fifteen-
meter-square, visually open portals so that the three spaces created one
cavernous and asymetrical conference area. The War Room holos
seemed to rise into infinity on the display end of the space, and columns
of data floated everywhere along the walls.
"Four minutes until cislunar incursion," said Admiral Singh.
"Their long-range weapons could have opened up on Heaven's Gate
long before this," said General Morpurgo. "They seem to be showing
some restraint."
"They didn't show much restraint toward our torchships," said Garion
Persov of Diplomacy. The group had been assembled an hour earlier when the sortie of the hastily assembled fleet of a dozen Hegemony
torchships had been summarily destroyed by the advancing Swarm.
Long-range sensors had relayed the briefest image of that Swarm--a
cluster of embers with cometlike fusion tails--before the torchships and
their remotes quit broadcasting. There had been many, many embers.
"Those were warships," said General Morpurgo. "We've been broadcasting for hours now that Heaven's Gate is an open planet. We can
hope for restraint."
The holographic images of Heaven's Gate surrounded them: the quiet
streets of Mudflat, airborne images of the coastline, orbital images of
the gray-brown world with its constant cloud cover, cislunar images of
the baroque dodecahedron of the singularity sphere which tied together
all fareasters, and space-aimed telescopic, UV, and X-ray images of the
advancing Swarm--much larger than specks or embers now, at less
than one AU. Gladstone looked up at the fusion tails of Ouster warships,
the tumbling, containment-field-shimmering massiveness of their asteroid
farms and bubble worlds, their complex and oddly nonhuman
zero-gravity city complexes, and she thought. What if I am wrong?
The lives of billions rested on her belief that the Ousters would not
wantonly destroy Hegemony worlds.
"Two minutes until incursion," Singh said in his professional warrior's
monotone.
"Admiral," said Gladstone, "is it absolutely necessary to destroy the
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
singularity sphere as soon as the Ousters have penetrated our cordon
sanitaire? Couldn't we wait another few minutes to judge their intentions?"

"No, CEO," answered the Admiral promptly. "The farcaster link
must be destroyed as soon as they are within quick assault range."
"But if your remaining torchships don't do it, Admiral, we still have
the in-system links, the fatline relays, and the timed devices, don't we?"
"Yes, M. Executive, but we must assure that all farcaster capability
is removed before the Ousters overrun the system. There can be no
compromising this already slim safety margin."
Gladstone nodded. She understood the need for absolute caution. If
only there were More time.
"Fifteen seconds until incursion and singularity destruction," said
Singh. "Ten . . . seven ..."
Suddenly all of the torchship and cislunar remote holos glowed violet,
red, and white.
Gladstone leaned forward. "Was that the singularity sphere going?"
The military men buzzed amongst themselves, calling up further
data, switching images on the holos and screens. "No, CEO," answered
Morpurgo. "The torchships are under attack. What you're seeing is
their defensive fields overloading. The ... ah ... there."
A central image, possibly from a low orbital relay ship, showed an
enhanced image of the dodecahedronal singularity containment sphere,
its thirty thousand square meters of surface still intact, still glowing in
the harsh light of Heaven's Gate's sun. Then, suddenly, the glow increased,
the nearest face of the structure seemed to become incandescent
and sag in upon itself, and less than three seconds later the sphere
expanded as the caged singularity there escaped and devoured itself as
well as everything within a six-hundred-kilometer radius.
At the same instant, most of the visual images and many of the data
columns went blank.
"All farcaster connections terminated, "announced Singh. "In-system
data now relayed by fatline transmitters only."
There was a buzz of approval and relief from the military people,
something closer to a sigh and soft moan from the dozens of senators
and political advisors present. The world of Heaven's Gate had just
been amputated from the Web . . . the first such loss of a Hegemony
world in More than four centuries.
Gladstone turned to Sedeptra Akasi. "What is travel time to Heaven's
Gate from the Web now?"
"By Hawking drive, seven months onboard," said the aide without
a pause to access, "a little over nine years time-debt."
Gladstone nodded. Heaven's Gate was now nine years distant from
the nearest Web world.
"There go our torchships," intoned Singh. The view had been from
one of the orbital pickets, relayed through the jerky, false-color images
of high-speed fatline squirts being computer processed in rapid progression.
The images were visual mosaics, but they always made Glad-
stone think of the earliest silent films from the dawn of the Media Age.
But this was no Charlie Chaplin comedy. Two, then five, then eight
bursts of brilliant light blossomed against the starfield above the limb
of the planet.
"Transmissions from HS Ntki Weimart, HS Terrapin, HS Comet, and HS Andrew Paul have ceased," reported Singh.
Baibre Dan-Cyddis raised a hand. "What about the other four ships,
Admiral?"
"Only the four mentioned had FTL-comm capability. The pickets
confirm that radio, maser, and wideband commlinks from the other
four torchsips also have ceased. The visual data ..." Singh stopped
and gestured toward the image relayed from the automatic picket ship:
eight expanding and fading circles of light, a starfield crawling with
fusion tails and new lights. Suddenly even that image went blank.
"All orbital sensors and fatline relays terminated," said General Morpurgo.
He gestured, and the blackness was replaced with images of the
streets of Heaven's Gate with the inevitable low-lying clouds. Aircraft
added shots above the clouds--a sky gone crazy with moving stars.
"All reports confirm total destruction of the singularity sphere," said
Singh. "Advance units of the Swarm now entering high orbit around
Heaven's Gate."
"How many people are left there?" asked Gladstone. She was leaning
forward, her elbows on the table, her hands folded very tightly.
"Eighty-six thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine," said Defense
Minister Imoto.
"That doesn't count the twelve thousand Marines who were farcast
in during the past two hours," added General Van Zeidt.
Imoto nodded toward the General.
Gladstone thanked them and returned her attention to the holos.
The data columns floating above and their extracts on the faxpads,
comlogs, and table panels held the pertinent data--numbers of Swarm
craft now in-system, number and types of ships in orbit, projected
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
braking orbits and time curves, energy analyses and comm-band
intercepts--but Gladstone and the others were watching the relatively
uninformative and unchanging fatlined images from the aircraft and
surface cameras: stars, cloud tops, streets, the view from Atmospheric
Generating Station Heights out over the Mudflat Promenade where
Gladstone herself had stood less than twelve hours earlier. It was night
there. Giant horsetail ferns moved to silent breezes blowing in from
the bay.
"I think they'll negotiate," Senator Richeau was saying. "First they'll
present us with this fait accompli, nine worlds overrun, then they'll
negotiate and negotiate hard for a new balance of power. I mean, even
if both of their invasion waves succeeded, that would be twenty-five
worlds out of almost two hundred in the Web and Protectorate."
"Yes," said Head of Diplomacy Persov, "but don't forget, Senator,
that these include some of our most strategically important worlds . . . this one, for example. TC2 is only two hundred and thirty-five hours
behind Heaven's Gate on the Ouster timetable."
Senator Richeau stared Persov down. "I'm well aware of that," she
said coldly. "I'm merely saying that the Ousters cannot have true conquest
on their minds. That would be pure folly on their part. Nor will
FORCE allow the second wave to penetrate so deeply. Certainly this
so-called invasion is a prelude to negotiation."
"Perhaps," said Nordholm's Senator Roanquist, "but such negotiations
would necessarily depend upon--"
"Wait," said Gladstone.
The data columns now showed More than a hundred Ouster warcraft
in orbit around Heaven's Gate. Ground forces there had been instructed
not to fire unless fired upon, and no activity was visible in the thirty-
some views being fatlined to the War Room. Suddenly, however, the
cloud cover above Mudflat City glowed as if giant searchlights had been
turned on. A dozen broad beams of coherent light stabbed down into
the bay and the city, continuing the searchlight illusion, appearing to
Gladstone as if giant white columns had been erected between the
ground and the ceiling of clouds.
That illusion ended abruptly as a whirlwind of flame and destruction
erupted at the base of each of these hundred-meter-wide columns of
light. The water of the bay boiled until huge geysers of steam occluded
the nearer cameras. The view from the heights showed century-old
stone buildings in the town erupting into flame, imploding as if a
tornado were moving amongst them. The Web-famous gardens and
------------------------------------------------- 3 5 I --------------------------------------------------
commons of the Promenade erupted in flame, exploded in dirt and
flying debris as if an invisible plow were moving across them. Horsetail
ferns two centuries old bent as if before a hurricane wind, burst into
flame, and were gone.
"Lances from a Bowers-class torehship," Admiral Singh said into the
silence. "Or its Ouster equivalent."
The city was burning, exploding, being plowed into rubble by the
light columns and then being torn asunder again. There were no audio
channels on these fatlined images, but Gladstone imagined that she
could hear screams.
One by one, the ground cameras went black. The view from the
Atmospheric Generating Station Heights disappeared in a white flash.
Airborne cameras were already gone. The twenty or so other ground-
based images began winking out, one in a terrible burst of crimson that
left everyone in the room rubbing their eyes,
"Plasma explosion," said Van Zeidt. "Low megaton range." The
view had been of a FORCE:Marine air defense complex north of the Intercity Canal.
Suddenly all images ceased. Dataflow ended. The room lights began
to come up to compensate for a darkness so sudden that it took everyone's
breath away.
"The primary fatline transmitter's gone," said General Morpurgo. "It
was at the main FORCE base near High Gate. Buried under our
strongest containment field, fifty meters of rock, and ten meters of
whiskered stalloy."
"Shaped nuclear charges?" asked Barbre Dan-Gyddis.
"At least," said Morpurgo.
Senator Kolchev rose, his Lusian bulk emanating an almost ursine
sense of strength. "All right. This isn't some goddamned negotiating
ploy. The Ousters have just reduced a Web world to ashes. This is all-
out, give-no-mercy warfare. The survival of civilization is at stake. What
do we do now?"
All eyes turned toward Meina Gladstone.
The Consul dragged a semiconscious Theo Lane from the wreckage
of the skimmer and staggered fifty meters with the younger man's arm
over his shoulder before collapsing on a stretch of grass beneath trees
along the bank of the Hoolie River. The skimmer was not on fire, but
it lay crumpled against the collapsed stone wall where it had finally
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
skidded to a halt. Bits of metal and ceramic polymers lay strewn along
the riverbank and abandoned avenue.
The city was burning. Smoke obscured the view across the river, and
this part of Jacktown, the Old Section, looked as if several pyres had
been lighted where thick columns of black smoke rose toward the low
cloud ceiling. Combat lasers and missile trails continued to streak
through the haze, sometimes exploding against the assault dropships,
parafoils, and suspension-field bubbles which continued to drop through
the clouds like chaff blown from a recently harvested field.
"Theo, are you all right?"
The Governor-General nodded and moved to push his glasses higher
on his nose . . . stopping in confusion as he realized that his glasses
were gone. Blood streaked Theo's forehead and arms. "Hit my head,"
he said groggily.
"We need to use your comlog," said the Consul. "Get someone here
to pick us up."
Theo nodded, lifted his arm, and frowned at his wrist. "Gone," he
said. "Comlog's gone. Gotta look in the skimmer." He tried to get to
his feet.
The Consul pulled him back down. They were in the shelter of a
few ornamental trees here, but the skimmer was exposed, and their
landing had been no secret. The Consul had glimpsed several armored
troops moving down an adjacent street as the skimmer pancaked in for
its crash landing. They might be SDF or Ousters or even Hegemony
Marines, but the Consul imagined that they would be trigger-happy
whatever their loyalties.
"Never mind that," he said. "We'll get to a phone. Call the consulate."
He looked around, identified the section of warehouses and
stone buildings where they had crashed. Upriver a few hundred meters,
an old cathedral stood abandoned, its chapter house crumbling and
overhanging the riverbank
"I know where we are," said the Consul. "It's just a block or two to
Cicero's. Come on." He lifted Theo's arm over his head and onto his
shoulders, pulling the injured man to his feet.
"Cicero's, good," muttered Theo. "Could use a drink."
The rattle ofHechette fire and an answering sizzle of energy weapons
came from the street to their south. The Consul took as much of Theo's
weight as he could and half-walked, half-staggered along the narrow
lane beside the river.
353
"Oh damn," the Consul whispered.
Cicero's was burning. The old bar and inn--as old as jacktown and
much older than most of the capital--had lost three of its four sagging
riverfront buildings to the flames, and only a determined bucket brigade
of patrons was saving the last section.
"I see Stan," said the Consul, pointing to the huge figure of Stan
Leweski standing near the head of the bucket brigade line. "Here." The
Consul helped Theo to a sitting position under an elm tree along the
walkway. "How's your head?"
"Hurts."
"I'll be right back with help," said the Consul and moved as quickly
as he could down the narrow lane toward the men.
Stan Leweski stared at the Consul as if he were a ghost. The big
man's face was streaked with soot and tears, and his eyes were wide,
almost uncomprehending. Cicero's had been in his family for six generations.
It was raining softly now, and the fire seemed beaten. Men
shouted up and down the line as a few timbers from the burned-out
sections sagged into the embers of the basement.
"By God, it's gone," said Leweski. "You see? Grandfather Jiri's addition?
It's gone."
The Consul grabbed the huge man by his shoulders. "Stan, we need
help. Theo's over tliere. Hurt. Our skimmer crashed. We need to get
to the spaceport ... to use your phone. It's an emergency, Stan."
Leweski shook his head. "Phone's gone. Comlog bands are jammed.
Goddamn war is on." He pointed toward the burned sections of the
old inn. "They're gone, by damn. Gone."
The Consul made a fist, furious in the grip of sheer frustration. Other
men milled around, but the Consul recognized none of them. There
were no P'ORCE or SDF authorities in sight. Suddenly a voice behind
him said, "I can help. I have a skimmer."
The Consul whirled to see a man in his late fifties or early sixties,
soot and sweat covering his handsome face and streaking his wavy hair.
"Great," said the Consul. "I'd appreciate it." He paused. "Do I know
you?"
"Dr. Melio Arundez," said the man, already moving toward the
parkway where Theo rested.
"Arundez," repeated the Consul, hurrying to keep up. The name
•THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
echoed strangely. Someone he knew? Someone he should know? "My
God, Arundez!" he said. "You were the friend of Rachel Weintraub
when she came here decades ago."
"Her university advisor, actually," said Arundez. "I know you. You
went on the pilgrimage with Sol." They stopped where Theo was sitting,
still holding his head in his hands. "My skimmer's over there," said
Arundez.
The Consul could see a small, two-person Vikken Zephyr parked
under the trees. "Great. We'll get Theo to the hospital and then I need
to get to the spaceport immediately."
"The hospital's overcrowded to the point of insanity," said Arundez.
"If you're trying to get to your ship, I suggest you take the Governor-
General there and use the ship's surgery."
The Consul paused. "How did you know I have a ship there?"
Arundez dilated the doors and helped Theo onto the narrow bench
behind the front contour seats. "I know all about you and the other
pilgrims, M. Consul. I've been trying to get permission to go to the
Valley of the Time Tombs for months. You can't believe my frustration
when I learned that your pilgrims' barge left secretly with Sol aboard."
Arundez took a deep breath and asked a question which he obviously
had been afraid to ask before. "Is Rachel still alive?"
He was her lover when she was a grown woman, thought the Consul.
"I don't know," he said. "I'm trying to get back in time to help her, if
I can."
Melio Arundez nodded and settled into the driver's seat, gesturing
for the Consul to get in. "We'll try to get to the spaceport. It won't be
easy with the fighting around there."
The Consul sat back, feeling his bruises, cuts, and exhaustion as the
seat folded around him. "We need to get Theo . . . the Governor-
General ... to the consulate or government house or whatever they
call it now."
Arundez shook his head and powered up the repellors. "Uh-uh. The
consulate's gone, hit by a wayward missile, according to the emergency
news channel. All the Hegemony officials went out to the spaceport
for evacuation before your friend even went hunting for you."
The Consul looked at the semiconscious Theo Lane. "Let's go," he
said softly to Arundez.
The skimmer came under small-arms fire as they crossed the river,
but Hechettes merely rattled on the hull and the single energy beam
fired sliced beneath them, sending a spout of steam ten meters high.
Arundez drove like a crazy person--weaving, bobbing, pitching, yawing,
and occasionally slewing the skimmer around on its axis like a
plate sliding atop a sea of marbles. The Consul's seat restraints closed
around him, but he still felt his gorge threaten to rise. Behind them,
Theo's head moved loosely back and forth on the rear bench as he
surrendered to unconsciousness.
"The downtown's a mess!" Arundez shouted over repellor roar. "I'll
follow the old viaduct to the spaceport highway and then cut across
country, staying low." They pirouetted around a burning structure
which the Consul belatedly recognized as his old apartment building.
"Is the spaceport highway open?"
Arundez shook his head. "Never make it. Paratroopers have been
dropping around it for the last thirty minutes."
"Are the Ousters trying to destroy the city?"
"Uh-uh. They could have done that from orbit without all this fuss.
They seem to be investing the capital. Most of their dropships and
paratroopers land at least ten klicks out."
"Is it our SDF who's fighting back?"
Arundez laughed, showing white teeth against tanned skin. "They're
halfway to Endymion and Port Romance by now . . . though reports
ten minutes ago, before the comm lines were jammed, say that those
cities are also under attack. No, the little resistance you see is from a
few dozen FORCE:Marines left behind to guard the city and the spaceport."

"So the Ousters haven't destroyed or captured the spaceport?"
"Not yet. At least not as of a few minutes ago. We'll soon see. Hang
on!"
The ten-kilometer ride to the spaceport via the VIP highway or the
skylanes above it usually took a few minutes, but Arundez's roundabout,
up-and-down approach over the hills, through the valleys, and between
the trees added time and excitement to the trip. The Consul turned his
head to watch hillsides and the slums of burning refugee camps Hash
by to his right. Men and women crouched against boulders and under
low trees, covering their heads as the skimmer rushed past. Once the
Consul saw a squad of FORCE:Marines dug in on a hilltop, but their
attention was focused on a hill to the north from which there came a
panoply of laser-lance fire. Arundez saw the Marines at the same instant
and jinked the skimmer hard left, dropping it into a narrow ravine scant
seconds before the treetops on the ridge above were sliced off as if by
invisible shears.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Finally they roared up and over a final ridgeline, and the western gates and fences of the spaceport became visible ahead of them. The
perimeter was ablaze with the blue and violet glows of containment
and interdiction fields, and they were still a klick away when a visible
tightbcam laser flicked out, found them, and a voice over the radio
said, "Unidentified skimmer, land immediately or be destroyed."
Arundez landed.
The tree line ten meters away seemed to shimmer, and suddenly
they were surrounded by wraiths in activated chameleon polymers.
Arundez had opened the cockpit blisters, and now assault rifles were
aimed at him and the Consul.
"Step away from the machine," said a disembodied voice behind the
camouflage shimmer.
"We have the Governor-General," called the Consul. "We have to
get in."
"The hell you say," snapped a voice with a definite Web accent.
"Out!"
The Consul and Arundez hastily released their seat restraints and
had started to climb out when a voice from the back seat snapped,
"Lieutenant Mueller, is that you?"
"Ah, yes, sir."
"Do you recognize me, Lieutenant?"
The camouflage shimmer depolarized, and a young Marine in full
battle armor stood not a meter from the skimmer. His face was nothing More than a black visor but the voice sounded young. "Yes, sir ...
ah ... Governor. Sorry I didn't recognize you without your glasses.
You've been hurt, sir."
"I know I've been hurt. Lieutenant. That is why these gentlemen
have escorted me here. Don't you recognize the former Hegemony
Consul for Hyperion?"
"Sorry, sir," said Lieutenant Mueller, waving his men back into the
tree line. "The base is sealed."
"Of course the base is sealed," Theo said through gritted teeth. "I
countersigned those orders. But I also authorized evacuation of all
essential Hegemony personnel. You did allow those skimmers through,
did you not. Lieutenant Mueller?"
An armored hand rose as if to scratch the helmeted and visored head.
"Ah . . . yes, sir. Ah, affirmative. But that was an hour ago, sir. The
evacuation dropships are gone and--"
------------------------------------------------ 357 --------------------------------------------------
"For God's sake, Mueller, get on your tactical channel and get authorization
from Colonel Gerasimov to let us through."
"The Colonel's dead, sir. There was a dropship assault on the east
perimeter and--"
"Captain Lewellyn then," said Theo. He swayed and then steadied
himself against the back of the Consul's seat. His face was very white
under the blood.
"Ah . . . tactical channels are down, sir. The Ousters are jamming
on wideband with--"
"Lieutenant," snapped Theo in a tone the Consul had never heard
his young friend use, "you've visually identified me and scanned my
implant ID. Now either admit us to the field or shoot us."
The armored Marine glanced back toward the tree line as if considering
whether to order his men to open fire. "The dropships are all
gone, sir. Nothing else is coming down."
Theo nodded. Blood had dried and caked on his forehead, but now
a fresh trickle started from his scalp line. "The impounded ship is still
in Blast Pit Nine, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir," answered Mueller, snapping to attention at last. "But it's
a civilian ship and could never make space with all the Ouster--"
Theo waved the officer into silence and gestured for Arundez to drive
toward the perimeter. The Consul glanced ahead toward the deadlines,
interdiction fields, containment fields, and probable pressure mines that
the skimmer would encounter in ten seconds. He saw the Marine
lieutenant wave, and an opening irised in the violet and blue energy
fields ahead. No one fired. In half a minute they were crossing the
hardpan of the spaceport itself. Something large was burning on the
northern perimeter. To their left, a huddle of FORCE trailers and
command modules had been slagged to a pool of bubbling plastic.
There had been people in there, thought the Consul and once again
had to fight to keep his gorge from rising.
Blast Pit Seven had been destroyed, its circular walls of reinforced
ten-centimeter carbon-carbon blown outward and apart as if they had
been made of cardboard. Blast Pit Eight was burning with that white-
hot incandescence which suggested plasma grenades. Blast Pit Nine
was intact, with the bow of the Consul's ship just visible above the pit
wall through the shimmer of a class-three containment field.
"The interdiction's been lifted?" said the Consul.
Theo lay back on the cushioned bench. His voice was thick. "Yeah.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Gladstone authorized the dropping of the restraining dome field. That's
just the usual protective field. You can override it with a command."
Arundez dropped the skimmer to tarmac just as warning lights went
red and synthesized voices began describing malfunctions. They helped
Theo out and paused near the rear of the small skimmer where a line of flechettes had stitched a ragged row through the engine cowling and
repellor housing. Part of the hood had melted from overload.
Melio Arundez patted the machine once, and both men turned to
help Theo through the blast pit door and up the docking umbilical.
"My God," said Dr. Melio Arundez, "this is beautiful. I've never
been in a private interstellar spacecraft before."
"There are only a few dozen in existence," said the Consul, setting
the osmosis mask in place over Theo's mouth and nose and gently
lowering the redhead into the surgery's tank of emergency care nutrient.
"Small as it is, this ship cost several hundred million marks. It's not
cost-effective for corporations and Outback planetary governments to
use their military craft on those rare occasions when they need to travel
between the stars." The Consul sealed the tank and conversed briefly
with the diagnostics program. "He'll be all right," he said at last to
Arundez, and returned to the holopit.
Melio Arundez stood near the antique Steinway, gently running his
hand over the glossy finish of the grand piano. He glanced out through
the transparent section of hull above the stowed balcony platform and
said, "I see fires near the main gate. We'd better get out of here."
"That's what I'm doing," said the Consul, gesturing Arundez toward
the circular couch lining the projection pit.
The archaeologist dropped into the deep cushions and glanced
around. "Aren't there ... ah ... controls?"
The Consul smiled. "A bridge? Cockpit instruments? Maybe a wheel
I can steer with? Uh-uh. Ship?"
"Yes," came the soft voice from nowhere.
"Are we cleared for takeofl?"
"Yes."
"Is that containment field removed?"
"It was our field. I've withdrawn it."
"OK, let's get the hell out of here. I don't have to tell you that we're
in the middle of a shooting war, do I?"
"No. I've been monitoring all developments. The last FORCE spacecraft are in the process of leaving the Hyperion system. These Marines
are stranded and--"
"Save the tactical analyses for later, Ship," said the Consul. "Set our
course for the Valley of the Time Tombs and get us out of here."
"Yes, sir," said the ship. "I was just pointing out that the forces
defending this spaceport have little chance of holding out for More than
an hour or so."
"Noted," said the Consul. "Now take off."
"I'm required to share this fatline transmission first. The squirt arrived
at 1622:38:14, Web standard, this afternoon."
"Whoa! Hold it!" cried the Consul, freezing the holo transmission
in midconstruction. HalfofMeina Gladstone's face hung above them.
"You're required to show this before we leave? Whose commands do
you respond to. Ship?"
"CEO Gladstone's, sir. The Chief Executive empowered a priority
override on all ship's functions five days ago. This fatline squirt is the
last requirment before--"
"So that's why you didn't respond to my remote commands," murmured
the Consul.
"Yes," said the ship in conversational tones. "I was about to say that
the showing of this transmission is the last requirement prior to returning
command to you."
"And then you'll do what I say?
"Yes."
"Take us where I'll tell you to?"
"Yes."
"No hidden overrides?"
"None that I know of."
"Play the squirt," said the Consul.
The Lincolnesque countenance of CEO Meina Gladstone floated in
the center of the projection pit with the telltale twitches and breakups
endemic to fatline transmissions. "I am pleased that you survived the
visit to the Time Tombs," she said to the Consul. "By now you must
know that I am asking you to negotiate with the Ousters before you
return to the valley."
The Consul folded his arms and glared at Gladstone's image. Outside,
the sun was setting. He had only a few minutes before Rachel Weintraub
reached her birth hour and minute and simply ceased to exist.
"I understand your urgency to return and help your friends," said
Gladstone, "but you can do nothing to help the child at this moment
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERIQN
. . . experts in the Web assure us that neither cryogenic sleep or fugue
could arrest the Merlin's sickness. Sol knows this."
Across the projection pit. Dr. Arundez said, "It's true. They experimented
for years. She would die in fugue state."
". . . you can help the billions of people in the Web whom you
believe you have betrayed," Gladstone was saying.
The Consul leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees and
his chin on his fists. His heart was pounding very loudly in his ears.
"I knew that you would open the Time Tombs," Gladstone said, her
sad brown eyes seeming to stare directly at the Consul. "Core predictors
showed that your loyalty to Maui-Covenant . . . and to the memory
of your grandparents' rebellion . . . would override all other factors. It
was time for the Tombs to be opened, and only you could activate the
Ouster device before the Ousters themselves decided to."
"I've heard enough of this," said the Consul and stood, turning his
back on the projection. "Cancel message," he said to the ship, knowing
that it would not obey.
Melio Arundez walked through the projection and gripped the Consul's
arm tightly. "Hear her out. Please."
The Consul shook his head but stayed in the pit, arms folded.
"Now the worst has happened," said Gladstone. "The Ousters are
invading the Web. Heaven's Gate is being destroyed. God's Grove has
less than an hour before the invasion sweeps over it. It is imperative
that you meet with the Ousters in Hyperion system and negotiate . . .
use your diplomatic skills to open a dialogue with them. The Ousters
will not respond to our fatline or radio messages, but we have alerted
them to your coming. I think they will still trust you."
The Consul moaned and walked over to the piano, pounding his fist
against its lid.
"We ha'-e minutes, not hours. Consul," said Gladstone. "I will ask
you to go first to the Ousters in Hyperion system and then attempt to
return to the Valley of the Time Tombs if you must. You know better
than I the results of warfare. Millions will die needlessly if we cannot
find a secure channel through which to communicate with the Ousters.
"It is your decision, but please consider the ramifications if we fail
in this last attempt to find the truth and preserve the peace. I will contact
you via fatline once you have reached the Ouster Swarm."
Gladstone's image shimmered, fogged, and faded.
"Response?" asked the ship.
"No." The Consul paced back and forth between the Steinway and
the projection pit.
"No spacecraft or skimmer has landed near the valley with its crew
intact for almost two centuries," said Melio Arundez. "She must know
how small the odds are that you can go there . . . survive the Shrike
. . . and then rendezvous with the Ousters."
"Things are different now," said the Consul without turning to face
the other man. "The time tides have gone berserk. The Shrike goes
where it pleases. Perhaps whatever phenomenon prevented manned
landings before is no longer operative."
"And perhaps your ship will land perfectly without us," said Arundez.
"Just as so many others have."
"Goddammit," shouted the Consul, wheeling, "you knew the risks
when you said that you wanted to join me!"
The archaeologist nodded calmly. "I'm not talking about the risk to
myself, sir. I'm willing to accept any risk if it means I might help Rachel
... or even sec her again. It's your life that may hold the key to
humankind's survival."
The Consul shook his fists in the air and paced back and forth like
some caged predator. "That's not fair} I was Gladstone's pawn before.
She used me . . . cynically . . . deliberately. I killed four Ousters,
Arundez. Shot them because I had to activate their goddamned device
to open the Tombs. Do you think they'll welcome me back with open
arms?"
The archaeologist's dark eyes looked up at the Consul without blinking.
"Gladstone believes that they will parley with you."
"Who knows what they'll do? Or what Gladstone believes for that
matter. The Hegemony and its relationship with the Ousters aren't my
worry now. I sincerely wish a plague on both their houses."
"To the extent that humanity suffers?"
"I don't know humanity," said the Consul in an exhausted monotone.
"I do know Sol Weintraub. And Rachel. And an injured woman named
Brawne Lamia. And Father Paul Dure. And Fedmahn Kassad. And--"
The ship's soft voice enveloped them. "This spaceport's north perimeter
has been breached. I am initiating final launch procedures. Please
take your seats."
The Consul half-stumbled to the holopit even as the internal containment
field pressed down on him as its vertical differential increased
dramatically, sealing every object in its place and protecting the travelers
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
far More securely than any straps or seat restraints could. Once in free-
fall, the field would lessen but still serve in the stead of planetary gravity.
The air above the holopit misted and showed the blast pit and spaceport
receding quickly below, the horizon and distant hills jerking and
tilting as the ship threw itself through eighty-g evasive maneuvers. A
few energy weapons winked in their direction, but data columns showed
the external fields handling the neglible effects. Then the horizon receded
and curved as the lapis lazuli sky darkened to the black of space.
"Destination?" queried the ship.
The Consul closed his eyes. Behind them, a chime sounded to
announce that Theo Lane could be moved from the recovery tank to
the main surgery.
"How long until we could rendezvous with elements of the Ouster
invasion force?" asked the Consul.
"Thirty minutes to the Swarm proper," answered the ship.
"And how long until we come in range of their attack ships' weapons?"
"They are tracking us now."
Melio Arundez's expression was calm but his fingers were white on
the back of the holopit couch.
"All right," said the Consul. "Make for the Swarm. Avoid Hegemony
ships. Announce on all frequencies that we are an unarmed diplomatic
ship requesting parley."
"That message was authorized and set in by CEO Gladstone, sir. It
is now being broadcast on fatline and all comm frequencies."
"Cany on," said the Consul. He pointed to Arundez's comlog. "Do
you see the time?"
"Yes. Six minutes until the precise instant of Rachel's birth."
The Consul settled back, his eyes closed again. "You've come a long
way for nothing. Dr. Arundez."
The archaeologist stood, swayed a second before finding his legs in
the simulated gravity, and carefully walked to the piano. He stood there
a moment and looked out through the balcony window at the black sky
and the still-brilliant limb of the receding planet. "Perhaps not," he
said. "Perhaps not."
THIRTY-EIGHT
Today we entered the swampy wasteland which I recognize as
the Campagna, and to celebrate I have another coughing fit,
terminated by vomiting More blood. Much More. Leigh Hunt
is beside himself with concern and frustration and, after holding my
shoulders during the spasm and helping to clean my clothes with rags
moistened in a nearby stream, he asks, "What can I do?"
"Collect flowers from the fields," I gasp. "That's what Joseph Severn did."
He turns away angrily, not realizing that even in my feverish, exhausted
state, I was merely telling the truth.
The little cart and tired horse pass through the Campagna with More
painful bumping and rattling than before. Late in the afternoon, we
pass some skeletons of horses along the way, then the ruins of an old
inn, then a More massive ruin of a viaduct overgrown with moss, and
finally posts to which it appears that white sticks have been nailed.
"What on earth is that?" asks Hunt, not realizing the irony of the
ancient phrase.
"The bones of bandits," I answer truthfully.
Hunt looks at me as if my mind has succumbed to the sickness.
Perhaps it has.
Later we climb out of the swamplands of the Campagna and get a
glimpse of a flash of red moving far out among the fields.
"What is that?" demands Hunt eagerly, hopefully. I know that he
expects to see people any moment and a functioning farcaster portal a
moment after that.
"A cardinal," I say, again telling the truth. "Shooting birds."
Hunt accesses his poor, crippled comlog. "A cardinal is a bird," he
says.
3 b a
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
I nod, look to the west, but the red is gone. "Also a cleric," I say.
"And we are approaching Rome, you know."
Hunt frowns at me and attempts for the thousandth time to raise
someone on the comm bands of his comlog. The afternoon is silent
except for the rhythmic creak of the vettura's wooden wheels and the
trill of some distant songbird. A cardinal, perhaps?
We enter Rome as the first flush of evening touches the clouds. The
little cart rocks and rumbles through the Lateran Gate, and almost
immediately we are confronted with the sight of the Colosseum, overgrown
with ivy and obviously the home of thousands of pigeons, but
immensely More impressive than holos of the ruin, set now as it was,
not within the grubby confines of a postwar city ringed with giant
arcologies, but contrasted against clusters of small huts and open fields
where the city ends and countryside begins. I can see Rome proper in
the distance ... a scattering of rooftops and smaller ruins on its fabled
Seven Hills, but here the Colosseum rules.
"Jesus," whispers Leigh Hunt. "What is it?"
"The bones of bandits," I say slowly, fearful of starting the terrible
coughing once again.
We move on, clopping through the deserted streets of nineteenth- century Old Earth Rome as the evening settles thick and heavy around
us and the light fails and pigeons wheel above the domes and rooftops
of the Eternal City.
"Where is everyone?" whispers Hunt. He sounds frightened.
"Not here because they are not needed," I say. My voice sounds
sharp edged in the canyon dusk of the city streets. The wheels turn on
cobblestones now, hardly More smooth than the random stones of the
highway we just escaped.
"Is this some stimsim?" he asks.
"Stop the cart," I say, and the obedient horse comes to a halt. I point
out a heavy stone by the gutter. "Kick that," I say to Hunt.
He frowns at me but steps down, approaches the stone, and gives it
a hearty kick. More pigeons erupt skyward from bell towers and ivy,
panicked by the echoes of his cursing.
"Like Dr. Johnson, you've demonstrated the reality of things," I say.
"This is no stimsim or dream. Or rather, no More one than the rest of
our lives have been."
"Why did they bring us here?" demands the CEO's aide, glancing
-------------------------------------------------- 365 --------------------------------------------------
skyward as if the gods themselves were listening just beyond the fading
pastel barriers of the evening clouds. "What do they want?"
They want me to die, I think, realizing the truth of it with the impact
of a fist in my chest. I breathe slowly and shallowly to avoid a fit of
coughing even as I feel the phlegm boil and bubble in my throat. They
want me to die and they want you to watch.
The mare resumes its long haul, turning right on the next narrow
street, then right again down a wider avenue filled with shadows and
the echoes of our passing, and then stopping at the head of an immense
flight of stairs.
"We're here," I say and struggle to exit the cart. My legs are cramped,
my chest aches, and my ass is sore. In my mind runs the beginning of
a satirical ode to the joys of traveling.
Hunt steps out as stiffly as I had and stands at the head of the giant,
bifurcated staircase, folding his arms and glaring at them as if they are
a trap or illusion. "Where, exactly, is here, Severn?"
I point to the open square at the foot of the steps. "The Piazza di
Spagna," I say. It is suddenly strange to hear Hunt call me Severn. I
realize that the name ceased to be mine when we passed through the
Lateran Gate. Or, rather, that my true name had suddenly become my
own again.
"Before too many years pass," I say, "these will be called the Spanish
Steps." I start down the right bend in the staircase. A sudden dizziness
causes me to stagger, and Hunt moves quickly to take my arm.
"You can't walk," he says. "You're too ill."
I point to a mottled old building forming a wall to the opposite side
of the broad steps and facing the Piazza. "It's not far. Hunt. There is
our destination."
Gladstone's aide turns his scowl toward the structure. "And what is
there? Why are we stopping there? What awaits us there?"
I cannot help but smile at this least poetic of men's unconscious use
of assonance. I suddenly imagine us sitting up long nights in that dark
hulk of a building as I teach him how to pair such technique with
masculine or feminine caesura, or the joys of alternating iambic foot
with unstressed pyrrhic, or the self-indulgence of the frequent spondee.
I cough, continue coughing, and do not cease until blood is spattering
my palm and shirt.
Hunt helps me down the steps, across the Piazza where Bernini's
boat-shaped fountain gurgles and burbles in the dusk, and then, following
my pointing finger, leads me into the black rectangle of the
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
doorway--the doorway to Number 26 Piazza di Spagna--and I think,
without volition, of Dante's Commedia and seem to see the phrase
"lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"--"Abandon Every Hope,
Who Enter Here"--chiseled above the cold lintel of the doorway.
Sol Weintraub stood at the entrance to the Sphinx and shook his fist
at the universe as night fell and the Tombs glowed with the brilliance
of their opening and his daughter did not return.
Did not return.
The Shrike had taken her, lifted her newborn body in its palm of
steel, and then stepped back into the radiance which even now pushed
Sol away like some terrible, bright wind from the depths of the planet.
Sol pressed against the hurricane of light, but it kept him out as surely
as might a runaway containment field.
Hyperion's sun had set, and now a cold wind blew from the barrens,
driven in from the desert by a front of cold air sliding down the mountains
to the south, and Sol turned to stare as vermilion dust blew into
the searchlight glare of the opening Time Tombs.
The opening Tombs!
Sol squinted against the cold brilliance and looked down the valley
to where the other Tombs glowed like pale green jack-o'-lantems behind
their curtain of blown dust. Light and long shadows leaped across the
valley floor while the clouds were drained of the last of their sunset
color overhead, and night came in with the howling wind.
Something was moving in the entrance of the second structure, the Jade Tomb. Sol staggered down the steps of the Sphinx, glancing up
at the entrance where the Shrike had disappeared with his daughter,
and then he was off the stairway, running past the Sphinx's paws and
stumbling down the windblown path toward the Jade Tomb.
Something moved slowly from the oval doorway, was silhouetted by
the shaft of light emanating from the tomb, but Sol could not tell if it
was human or not. Shrike or not. If it was the Shrike, he would seize
it with his bare hands, shake it until it either returned his daughter to
him or until one of them was dead.
It was not the Shrike.
Sol could see the silhouette as human now. The person staggered,
leaned against the Jade Tomb's doorway as if injured or tired.
It was a young woman.
Sol thought of Rachel here in this place More than half a standard
-------------------------------------------------- 387 --------------------------------------------------
century earlier, the young archaeologist researching these artifacts and
never guessing the fate awaiting her in the form of Merlin's sickness.
Sol had always imagined his child being saved by the sickness being
canceled, the infant aging normally again, the child-whowouldsomedaybeRachel
given back her life. But what if Rachel returned as the
twenty-six-year-old Rachel who had entered the Sphinx?
Sol's pulse was pounding so loudly in his ears that he could not hear
the wind rage around him. He waved at the figure, half-obscured now
by the dust storm.
The young woman waved back.
Sol raced forward another twenty meters, stopped thirty meters from
the tomb, and cried out. "Rachel! Rachel!"
The young woman silhouetted against the roaring light moved away
from the doorway, touched her face with both hands, shouted something
lost in the wind, and began to descend the stairs.
Sol ran, tripping over rocks as he lost the path and stumbled blindly
across the valley floor, ignored the pain as his knee struck a low boulder,
found the true path again, and ran to the base of the Jade Tomb,
meeting her as she emerged from the cone of expanding light-
She fell just as Sol reached the bottom of the stairs, and he caught
her, lowered her gently to the ground as blown sand rasped against his
back and the time tides whirled about them in unseen eddies of vertigo
and dejd vu.
"It is you," she said and raised a hand to touch Sol's cheek. "It's
real. I'm back."
"Yes, Brawne," said Sol, trying to hold his voice steady, brushing
matted curls from Brawne Lamia's face. He held her firmly, his arm
on his knee, propping her head, his back bent to provide More shelter
from the wind and sand. "It's all right, Brawne," he said softly, sheltering
her, his eyes bright with the tears of disappointment he would not let
fall. "It's all right. You're back."
Meina Gladstone walked up the stairs of the cavernous War
Room and stepped out into the corridor where long strips of thick
Perspex allowed a view down Mons Olympus to the Tharsis Plateau.
It was raining far below, and from this vantage point almost twelve
klicks high in the Martian sky, she could see pulses of lightning and
curtains of static electricity as the storm dragged itself across the high
steppes.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Her aide Sedeptra Akasi moved out into the corridor to stand silently
next to the CEO.
"Still no word on Leigh or Severn?" asked Gladstone.
"None," said Akasi. The young black woman's face was illuminated
by both the pale light of the Home System's sun above and the play of
lightning below. "The Core authorities say that it may have been a
farcaster malfunction."
Gladstone showed a smile with no warmth. "Yes. And can you
remember any farcaster malfunction in our lifetime, Sedeptra? Anywhere
in the Web?"
"No, M. Executive."
"The Core feels no need for subtlety. Evidently they think they can
kidnap whomever they want and not be held accountable. They think
we need them too much in our hour of extremis. And you know
something, Sedeptra?"
"What?"
"They're right." Gladstone shook her head and turned back toward
the long descent into the War Room. "It's less than ten minutes until
the Ousters envelop God's Grove. Let's go down and join the others.
Is my meeting with Councilor Albedo on immediately after this?"
"Yes, Meina. I don't think ... I mean, some of us think that it is
too risky to confront them directly like that."
Gladstone paused before entering the War Room. "Why?" she asked
and this time her smile was sincere. "Do you think the Core will
disappear me the way they did Leigh and Severn?"
Akasi started to speak, stopped, and raised her palms.
Gladstone touched the younger woman on the shoulder. "If they do,
Sedeptra, it will be a mercy. But I think they will not. Things have
gone so far that they believe that there is nothing an individual can do
to change the course of events." Gladstone withdrew her hand, her
smile faded. "And they may be right."
Not speaking, the two descended to the circle of waiting warriors and
politicians.
"The moment approaches," said the True Voice of the Worldtree
Sek Hardeen.
Father Paul Dure was brought back from his reverie. In the past
hour, his desperation and frustration had descended through resignation
to something akin to pleasure at the thought of having no More choices,
no More duties to perform. Dure had been sitting in companionable
silence with the leader of the Templar Brotherhood, watching the setting
of God's Grove's sun and the proliferation of stars and lights in the
night that were not stars,
Dure had wondered at the Templar's isolation from his people at
such a crucial moment, but what he knew of Templar theology made
Dure realize that the Followers of the Muir would meet such a moment
of potential destruction alone on the most sacred platforms and in the
most secret bowers of their most sacred trees. And the occasional soft
comments Hardeen made into the cowl of his robe made Dure realize
that the True Voice was in touch with fellow Templars via comlog or
implants.
Still, it was a peaceful way to wait for the end of the world, sitting
high in the known galaxy's tallest living tree, listening to a warm evening
breeze rustle a million acres of leaves and watching stars twinkle and
twin moons hurtle across a velvet sky.
"We have asked Gladstone and the Hegemony authorities to offer
no resistance, to allow no FORCE warships in-system," said Sek Hardeen.

"Is that wise?" asked Dure. Hardeen had told him earlier what the
fate of Heaven's Gate had been.
"The FORCE fleet is not yet organized enough to offer serious resistance,"
answered the Templar. "At least this way our world has some
chance of being treated as a nonbelligerant."
Father Dure nodded and leaned forward the better to see the tall
figure in the shadows of the platform. Soft glow-globes in the branches
below them were their only illumination other than the starlight and
moonglow. "Yet you welcomed this war. Aided the Shrike Cult authorities
in bringing it about."
"No, Dure. Not the war. The Brotherhood knew it must be part of
the Great Change."
"And what is that?" asked Dure
"The Great Change is when humankind accepts its role as part of
the natural order of the universe instead of its role as a cancer."
"Cancer?"
"It is an ancient disease which--"
"Yes," said Dure, "I know what cancer was. How is it like humankind?"

Sek Hardeen's perfectly modulated, softly accented tones showed a
hint of agitation. "We have spread out through the galaxy like cancer
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
cells through a living body, Dure. We multiply without thought to the
countless life forms that must die or be pushed aside so that we may
breed and flourish. We eradicate competing forms of intelligent life."
"Such as?"
"Such as the Seneschai empaths on Hebron. The marsh centaurs of
Garden. The entire ecology was destroyed on Garden, Dure, so that a
few thousand human colonists might live where millions of native life
forms once had thrived."
Dure touched his cheek with a curled finger. "That is one of the
drawbacks of terrafonning."
"We did not terraform Whirl," the Templar said quickly, "but the
Jovian life forms there were hunted to extinction."
"But no one ascertained that the zeplens were intelligent," said Dure,
hearing the lack of conviction in his own voice.
"They sang," said the Templar. "They called across thousands of
kilometers of atmosphere to each other in songs which held meaning
and love and sorrow. Yet they were hunted to death like the great whales
of Old Earth."
Dure folded his hands. "Agreed, there have been injustices. But surely
there is a better way to right them than to support the cruel philosophy
of the Shrike Cult. . . and to allow this war to go on."
The Templar's hood moved back and forth. "No. If these were mere
human injustices, other remedies could be found. But much of the
illness . . . much of the insanity which has led to the destruction of
races and the despoiling of worlds . . . this has come from the sinful
symbiosis."
"Symbiosis?"
"Humankind and the TechnoCore," said Sek Hardeen in the harshest
tones Dure had ever heard a Templar use. "Man and his machine
intelligences. Which is a parasite on the other? Neither part of the
symbiote can now tell. But it is an evil thing, a work of the Anti-Nature.
Worse than that, Dure, it is an evolutionary dead end."
The Jesuit stood and walked to the railing. He looked out over the
darkened world of treetops spreading out like cloud tops in the night.
"Surely there is a better way than turning to the Shrike and interstellar
war."
"The Shrike is a catalyst," said Hardeen. "It is the cleansing fire
when the forest has been stunted and allowed to grow diseased by
overplanning. There will be hard times, but the result will be new
-------------------------------------------------- 3 7 I --------------------------------------------------
growth, new life, and a proliferation of species... not merely elsewhere
but in the community of humankind itself."
"Hard times," mused Dure. "And your Brotherhood is willing to see
billions of people die to accomplish this . . . weeding out?"
The Templar clenched his fists. "That will not occur. The Shrike is
the warning. Our Ouster brethren seek only to control Hyperion and
the Shrike long enough to strike at the TechnoCore. It will be a surgical
procedure . . . the destruction of a symbiote and the rebirth of humankind
as distinct partner in the cycle of life."
Dure sighed. "No one knows where the TechnoCore resides," he
said. "How can the Ousters strike at it?"
"They will," said the True Voice of the Worldtree, but there was
less confidence in his voice than there had been a moment before.
"And was attacking God's Grove part of the deal?" asked the priest.
It was the Templar's turn to stand and pace, first to the railing, then
back to the table. "They will not attack God's Grove. That is what I
have kept you here to see. Then you must report to the Hegemony."
"They'll know at once whether the Ousters attack," said Dure, puzzled.

"Yes, but they will not know why our world will be spared. You must
bring this message. Explain this truth."
"To hell with that," said Father Paul Dure. "I'm tired of being
everyone's messenger. How do you know all this? The coming of the
Shrike? The reason for the war?"
"There have been prophecies--" began Sek Hardeen.
Dure slammed his fist into the railing. How could he explain the
manipulations of a creature who could--or at least was an agent of a
force which could--manipulate time itself?
"You will see ..." began the Templar again, and as if to punctuate
his words there came a great, soft sound, almost as though a million
hidden people had sighed and then moaned softly.
"Good God," said Dure and looked to the west where it seemed that
the sun was rising where it had disappeared less than an hour before.
A hot wind rustled leaves and blew across his face.
Five blossoming and inward-curling mushroom clouds climbed above
the western horizon, turning night to day as they boiled and faded.
Dure had instinctively covered his eyes until he realized that these
explosions were so far away that although brilliant as the local sun,
they would not blind him.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Sek Hardeen pulled back his cowl so that the hot wind ruffled his
long, oddly greenish hair. Dure stared at the man's long, thin, vaguely
Asian features and realized that he saw shock etched there. Shock and
disbelief. Hardeen's cowl whispered with cornm calls and the micro-
babble of excited voices.
"Explosions on Sierra and Hokkaido," whispered the Templar to
himself. "Nuclear explosions. From the ships in orbit."
Dure remembered that Sierra was a continent, closed to outsiders,
less than eight hundred kilometers from the Worldtree where they stood.
He thought that he remembered that Hokkaido was the sacred isle where
the potential treeships were grown and prepared.
"Casualties?" he asked, but before Hardeen could answer, the sky
was slashed with brilliant light as a score or More tactical lasers, CPBs,
and fusion lances cut a swath from horizon to horizon, switching and flashing like searchlights across the roof of the world forest that was
God's Grove. And where the lance beams cut, flame erupted in their
wake.
Dure staggered as a hundred-meter-wide beam skipped like a tornado
through the forest less than a kilometer from the Worldtree. The ancient
forest exploded in flame, creating a corridor of fire rising ten kilometers
into the night sky. Wind roared past Dure and Sek Hardeen as air
rushed in to feed the fire storm. Another beam slashed north and south,
passing close to the Worldtree before disappearing over the horizon.
Another swath of flame and smoke rose toward the treacherous stars.
"They promised," gasped Sek Hardeen. "The Ouster brethren promised"

"You need help!" cried Dure. "Ask the Web for emergency assistance."

Hardeen grabbed Dure's arm, pulled him to the edge of the platform.
The stairs were back in place. On the platform below, a farcaster portal
shimmered.
"Only the advance units of the Ouster fleet have arrived," cried the
Templar over the sound of forests burning. Ash and smoke filled the air, drifting past amidst hot embers. "But the singularity sphere will be
destroyed any second. Go!"
"I'm not leaving without you," called the Jesuit, sure that his voice
could not be heard over the wind roar and terrible crackling. Suddenly,
only kilometers to the east, the perfect blue circle of a plasma explosion
expanded, imploded inward, then expanded again with visible concen-
trie circles of shock wave. Kilometer-tall trees bent and broke in the
first wave of the blast, their eastern sides exploding in flame, leaves
flying off by the millions and adding to the almost solid wall of debris
hurtling toward the Worldtree. Behind the circle of flame, another
plasma bomb went off. Then a third.
Dure and the Templar fell down the steps and were blown across
the lower platform like leaves on a sidewalk. The Templar grabbed a
burning muirwood baluster, seized Dure's arm in an iron grip, and
struggled to his feet, moving toward the still shimmering farcaster like
a man leaning into a cyclone.
Half conscious, half aware of being dragged, Dure managed to get
to his own feet just as Voice of the Worldtree Sek Hardeen pulled him
to the edge of the portal. Dure clung to the portal frame, too weak to
pull himself the final meter, and looked past the farcaster to see something
which he would never forget.
Once, many, many years before, near his beloved VillefranchesurSaone,
the youngster Paul Dure had stood on a cliff top, secure in the
arms of his father and safe in a thick concrete shelter, and watched
through a narrow window as forty-meter tall tsunami rushed toward the
coast where they lived.
This tsunami was three kilometers high, was made of flame, and was
racing at what seemed the speed of light across the helpless roof of the
forest toward the Worldtree, Sek Hardeen, and Paul Dure. What the
tsunami touched, it destroyed. It raged closer, rising higher and nearer
until it obliterated the world and sky with flame and noise.
"No!" screamed Father Paul Dure.
"Go!" cried the True Voice of the Worldtree and pushed the Jesuit
through the farcaster portal even as the platform, the Worldtree's trunk,
and the Templar's robe burst into flames.
The farcaster shut down even as Dure tumbled through, slicing off
the heel of his shoe as it contracted, and Dure felt his eardrums rupture
and his clothes smolder even as he fell, struck something hard with the
back of his head, and fell again into darkness More absolute.
Gladstone and the others watched in horrified silence as the civilian
satellites sent images of the death throes of God's Grove through the
farcaster relays.
"We have to blow it now," cried Admiral Singh over the crackling
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
of forests burning. Meina Gladstone thought that she could hear the
screams of human beings and the countless arboreals who lived in the
Templar forests.
"We can't let them get closer!" cried Singh. "We have only the
remotes to detonate the sphere."
"Yes," said Gladstone, but although her lips moved she heard no
sound.
Singh turned and nodded toward a FORCE:space colonel. The Colonel
touched his tactical board. The burning forests disappeared, the
giant holos went absolutely dark, but the sound of screams somehow
remained. Gladstone realized that it was the sound of blood in her ears.
She turned toward Morpurgo. "How long ..." She cleared her
throat. "General, how long until Mare Infinitus is attacked?"
"Three hours and fifty-two minutes, M. Executive," said the General.
Gladstone turned toward the former Commander William Ajunta
Lee. "Is your task force ready, Admiral?"
"Yes, CEO," said Lee, his face pale beneath a tan.
"How many ships will be in the strike?"
"Seventy-four, M. Executive."
"And you will hit them away from Mare Infinitus?"
"Just within the Oort Cloud, M. Executive."
"Good," said Gladstone. "Good hunting. Admiral."
The young man took this as his cue to salute and leave the chamber.
Admiral Singh leaned over and whispered something to General Van
Zeidt.
Sedeptra Akasi leaned toward Gladstone and said, "Government
House Security reports that a man just fareast into the secured GH
terminex with an outdated priority access code. The man was injured,
taken to the East Wing infirmary."
"Leigh?" asked Gladstone. "Severn?"
"No, M. Executive," said Akasi. "The priest from Pacem. Paul Dure"
Gladstone nodded. "I'll see him after my meeting with Albedo,"
she said to her aide. To the group, she announced, "Unless anyone
has anything to add to what we saw, we shall adjourn for thirty
minutes and take up the defense of Asquith and Ixjon when we
reassemble."
The group stood as the CEO and her entourage stepped through the
permanent connecting portal to Government House and filed through
a door in the far wall. The rumble of argument and shock resumed
when Gladstone was out of sight.
375
Meina Gladstone sat back in her leather chair and closed her eyes
for precisely five seconds. When she opened them, the cluster of aides
still stood there, some looking anxious, some looking eager, all of them
waiting for her next word, her next command.
"Get out," she said softly. "Go on, take a few minutes to get some
rest. Put your feet up for ten minutes. There'll be no More rest for the
next twenty-four to forty-eight hours."
The group filed out, some looking on the verge of protest, others on
the verge of collapse.
"Sedeptra," said Gladstone, and the young woman stepped back into
the office. "Assign two of my personal guard to the priest who just came
through, Dure."
Akasi nodded and made a note on her faxpad.
"How is the political situation?" asked Gladstone, rubbing her eyes.
"The All Thing is chaos," said Akasi. "There are factions but they
haven't coalesced into effective opposition yet. The Senate is a different
story."
"Feldstein?" said Gladstone, naming the angry senator from Barnard's
World. Less than forty-two hours remained before Barnard's World
would be attacked by the Ousters.
"Feldstein, Kakinuma, Peters, Sabenstorafem, Richeau . . . even
Sudette Chier is calling for your resignation."
"What about her husband?" Gladstone considered Senator Kolchev
the most influential person in the Senate.
"No word from Senator Kolchev yet. Public or private."
Gladstone tapped a thumbnail against her lower lip. "How much
time do you think this administration has before a vote of no confidence
brings us down, Sedeptra?"
Akasi, one of the most astute political operatives Gladstone had ever
worked with, returned her boss's stare. "Seventy-two hours at the outside,
CEO. The votes are there. The mob just doesn't know it's a mob
yet. Somebody has to pay for what's happening."
Gladstone nodded absently. "Seventy-two hours," she murmured.
"More than enough time." She looked up and smiled. "That will be
all, Sedeptra. Get some rest."
The aide nodded but her expression showed her true opinion of that
suggestion. It was very quiet in the study when the door closed behind
her.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Gladstone sat thinking for a moment, her fist to her chin. Then she
said to the walls, "Bring Councilor Albedo here, please."
Twenty seconds later, the air on the other side of Gladstone's broad
desk misted, shimmered, and solidified. The representative of the
TechnoCore looked as handsome as ever, short gray hair gleaming in
the light, a healthy tan on his open, honest face.
"M. Executive," began the holographic projection, "the Advisory
Council and the Core predictors continue to offer their services in this
time of great--"
"Where is the Core, Albedo?" interrupted Gladstone.
The Councilor's smile did not falter. "I'm sorry, M. Executive, what
was the question?"
"The TechnoCore. Where is it?"
Albedo's friendly face showed a slight puzzlement but no hostility,
no visible emotion other than bemused helpfulness. "You're certainly
aware, M. Executive, that it has been Core policy since the Secession
not to reveal the location of the ... ah ... physical elements of the
TechnoCore. In another sense, the Core is nowhere, since--"
"Since you exist on the datumplane and datasphere consensual realities,"
said Gladstone, voice flat. "Yes, I've heard that crap all of my
life, Albedo. So did my father and his father before him. I'm asking a
straight question now. Where is the TechnoCore?"
The Councilor shook his head bemusedly, regretfully, as if he were
an adujt being asked for the thousandth time the child's question Why
is the sky blue, Daddy?
"M. Executive, it is simply not possible to answer that question in
a way that would make sense in human three-dimensional coordinates.
In a sense we ... the Core . . . exist within the Web and beyond the
Web. We swim in the datumplane reality which you call the datasphere,
but as for the physical elements . . . what your ancestors called 'hardware,'
we find it necessary to--"
"To keep it a secret," finished Gladstone. She crossed her arms. "Are
you aware. Councilor Albedo, that there will be those people in the
Hegemony . . . millions of people . . . who will firmly believe that the
Core . . . your Advisory Council . . . has betrayed humankind?"
Albedo made a motion with his hands. "That will be regrettable, M.
Executive. Regrettable but understandable."
"Your predictors were supposed to be close to foolproof. Councilor.
Yet at no time did you tell us of the destruction of worlds by this Ouster
fleet."
_------------------------------------------------ 377 --------------------------------------------------
The sadness on the projection's handsome face was very close to
convincing. "M. Executive, it is only fair to remind you that the Advisory
Council warned you that bringing Hyperion into the Web introduced
a random variable which even the Council could not factor."
"But this isn't Hyperion!" snapped Gladstone, her voice rising. "It's
God's Grove burning. Heaven's Gate reduced to slag. Mare Infinitus
waiting for the next hammer blow! What good is the Advisory Council
if it cannot predict an invasion of that magnitude?"
"We did predict the inevitability of war with the Ousters, M. Executive.
We also predicted the great danger of defending Hyperion.
You must believe me that the inclusion of Hyperion in any predictive
equation brings the reliability factor down as low as--"
"All right," sighed Gladstone. "I need to talk to someone else in the
Core, Albedo. Someone in your indecipherable hierarchy of intelligences
who actually has some decision-making power."
"I assure you that I represent all Core elements when I--"
"Yes, yes. But I want to speak to one of the . . . the Powers I believe
you call them. One of the elder AIs. One with clout, Albedo. I need
to speak to someone who can tell me why the Core kidnapped my artist
Severn and my aide Leigh Hunt."
The holo looked shocked. "I assure you, M. Gladstone, on the honor
of four centuries of our alliance, that the Core had nothing to do with
the unfortunate disappearance of--"
Gladstone stood. "This is why I need to talk to a Power. The time
for assurances is past, Albedo. It is time for straight talk if either of our
species is going to survive. That is all." She turned her attention to the
faxpad flimsies on her desk.
Councilor Albedo stood, nodded a farewell, and shimmered out of
existence.
Gladstone called her personal farcaster portal into existence, spoke
the Government House infirmary codes, and started to step through.
In the instant before touching the opaque surface of the energy rectangle,
she paused, gave thought to what she was doing, and for the first
time in her life felt anxiety about stepping through a farcaster.
What if the Core wanted to kidnap her? Or kill her?
Meina Gladstone suddenly realized that the Core had the power of
life and death over every farcaster-traveling citizen in the Web . . .
which was every citizen with power. Leigh and the Severn cybrid did
not have to be kidnapped, translated somewhere . . . only the persistent
habit of thinking of farcasters as foolproof transportation created the
THE	FALL	OF HYPE
subconscious conviction that they had gone somewhere. Her aide and
the enigmatic cybrid could easily have been translated to ... to nothing.
To scattered atoms stretched through a singularity. Farcasters did not
"teleport" people and things--such a concept was silly--but how much
less silly was it to trust a device that punched holes in the fabric of
space-time and allowed one to step through black hole "trapdoors"?
How silly was it for her to trust the Core to transport her to the infirmary?
Gladstone thought of the War Room . . . three giant rooms connected
by permanently activated, vision-clear farcaster portals . . . but three rooms nonetheless, separated by at least a thousand light-years of
real space, decades of real time even under Hawking drive. Every time
Morpurgo or Singh or one of the others moved from a map holo to the
plotting board, he or she stepped across great gulfs of space and time.
All the Core had to do to destroy the Hegemony or anyone in it was
to tamper with the farcasters, allow a slight "mistake" in targeting.
To hell with this, thought Meina Gladstone and stepped through to
see Paul Dure in the Government House infirmary.
THIRTY-NINE
The two rooms on the second floor of the house on the Piazza
di Spagna are small, narrow, high ceilinged, and--except for
a single dim lamp burning in each room as if lighted by ghosts
in expectation of a visit by other ghosts--quite dark. My bed is in the
smaller of the two rooms: the one facing the Piazza, although all one
can see from the high windows this night is darkness creased by deeper
shadows and accented by the ceaseless burbling of Bernini's unseen
fountain.
Bells ring on the hour from one of the twin towers of Santa Trinitsl
dei Monti, the church that crouches in the dark like a massive, tawny
cat at the head of the stairs outside, and each time I hear the bells toll
the brief notes of the early hours of the mom, I imagine ghostly hands
pulling rotting bell ropes. Or perhaps rotting hands pulling ghostly bell
ropes; I don't know which image suits my macabre fancies this endless
night.
Fever lies upon me this night, as dank and heavy and stifling as a
thick, water-soaked blanket. My skin alternately burns and then is
clammy to the touch. Twice I have been seized with coughing spasms;
the first brought Hunt running in from his couch in the other room,
and I watched his eyes widen at the sight of the blood I had vomited
on the damask sheets; the second spasm I stifled as best I could, staggering
to the basin on the bureau to spit up smaller quantities of black
blood and dark phlegm. Hunt did not wake the second time.
To be back here. To come all this way to these dark rooms, this grim
bed. I half remember awakening here, miraculously cured, the "real"
Severn and Dr. Clark and even little Signora Angeletti hovering in the
outer room. That period of convalescence from death; that period of
THE	FALL	OF	HYPEFIION
realization that I was not Keats, was not on the true Earth, that this
was not in the century I had closed my eyes in that last night. . . that
I was not human.
Sometime after two, I sleep, and as I sleep, I dream. The dream is
one I have never suffered before. I dream that I rise slowly through the
datumplane, through the datasphere, into and through the megasphere,
and finally into a place I do not know, have never dreamt of ... a
place of infinite spaces, unhurried, indescribable colors, a place with
no horizons, no ceilings, no floors or solid areas one might call the
ground. I think of it as the metasphere, for I sense immediately that
this level of consensual reality includes all of the varieties and vagaries
of sensation which I have experienced on Earth, all of the binary
analyses and intellectual pleasures I have felt flowing from the
TechnoCore through the datasphere, and, above all, a sense of... of
what? Expansiveness? Freedom?--potential might be the word I am
hunting for.
I am alone in this metasphere. Colors flow above me, under me, through me . . . sometimes dissolving into vague pastels, sometimes
coalescing into cloudlike fantasies, and at other times, rarely, appearing
to form into -More solid objects, shapes, distinct forms which may or
may not be humanoid in appearance--I watch them the way a child
might watch clouds and imagine elephants, crocodiles from the Nile,
and great gunboats marching from west to east on a spring day in the
Lake District.
After a while I hear sounds: the maddening trickle of the Bernini
fountain in the Piazza outside; doves rustling and cooing on the ledges
above my window; Leigh Hunt moaning softly in his sleep. But above
and beneath these noises, I hear something More stealthy, less real, but
infinitely More threatening.
Something large this way comes. I strain to see through the pastel
gloom; something is moving just beyond the horizon of sight. I know
that it knows my name. I know that it holds my life in one palm and
death in its other fist.
There is no place to hide in this space beyond space. I cannot run.
The siren song of pain continues to rise and fall from the world I left
behind--the everyday pain of each person everywhere, the pain of those
suffering from the war just begun, the specific, focused pain of those
on the Shrike's terrible tree, and, worst of all, the pain I feel for and
3 8 I
from the pilgrims and those others whose lives and thoughts I now
share.
It would be worth rushing to greet this approaching shadow of doom
if it would grant me freedom from that song of pain.
"Severn! Severn!"
For a second I think that I am the one calling, just as I had before
in these rooms, calling Joseph Severn in the night when my pain and
fever ranged beyond my ability to contain it. And he was always there:
Severn with his hulking, well-meaning slowness and that gentle smile
which I often wanted to wipe from his face with some small meanness
or comment. It is hard to be good-natured when one is dying; I had
led a life of some generosity . . . why then was it my fate to continue
that role when I was the one suffering, when I was the one coughing
the ragged remnants of my lungs into stained handkerchiefs?
"Severn!"
It is not my voice. Hunt is shaking me by the shoulders, calling
Severn's name. I realize that he thinks he is calling my name. I brush
away his hands and sink back into the pillows. "What is it? What's
wrong?"
"You were moaning," says Gladstone's aide. "Crying out."
"A nightmare. Nothing More."
"Your dreams are usually More than dreams," says Hunt. He glances
around the narrow room, illuminated now by the single lamp he has
carried in. "What a terrible place, Severn."
I try to smile. "It cost me twenty-eight shillings a month. Seven
scudi. Highway robbery."
Hunt frowns at me. The stark light makes his wrinkles seem deeper
than usual. "Listen, Severn, I know you're a cybrid. Gladstone told me
that you were the retrieval persona of a poet named Keats. Now obviously
all this . . ."--he gestured helplessly toward the room, shadows,
tall rectangle of windows, and high bed--"all this has something to do
with that. But how? What game is the Core playing here?"
"I'm not sure," I say truthfully.
"But you know this place?"
"Oh yes," I say with feeling.
"Tell me," pleads Hunt, and it is his restraint to this point in not
asking as much as the earnestness of that plea now which decides me
to tell him.
THE	FALL	OF	HYPEHION
I tell him about the poet John Keats, about his birth in 1795, his
short and frequently unhappy life, and about his death from "consumption"
in 1821, in Rome, far from his friends and only love. I tell
him about my staged "recovery" in this very room, about my decision
to take the name of Joseph Severn--the artist acquaintance who stayed
with Keats until his death--and, finally, I tell him about my short time
in the Web, listening, watching, condemned to dream the lives of the
Shrike Pilgrims on Hyperion and the others.
"Dreams?" says Hunt. "You mean even now you're dreaming about
what's occurring in the Web?"
"Yes." I tell him of the dreams about Gladstone, the destruction of
Heaven's Gate and God's Grove, and the confused images from Hyperion.

Hunt is pacing back and forth in the narrow room, his shadow thrown
high on the rough walls. "Can you contact them?"
"The ones I dream of? Gladstone?" I think a second. "No."
"Are you sure?"
I try to explain. "I'm not even in these dreams, Hunt. I have no ...
no voice, no presence . . . there's no way I can contact those I dream
about."
"But sometimes you dream what they're thinking?"
I realize that this is true. Close to the truth. "I sense what they are feeling ..."
"Then can't you leave some trace in their mind ... in their memory?
Let them know where we are?"
"No."
Hunt collapses into the chair at the foot of my bed. He suddenly
seems very old.
"Leigh," I say, "even if I could communicate with Gladstone or the
others--which I can't--what good would it do? I've told you that this
replica of Old Earth is in the Magellanic Cloud. Even at quantum-
leap Hawking velocities it would take centuries for anyone to reach us."
"We could warn them," says Hunt, his voice so tired that it sounds
almost sullen.
"Warn them of what? All of Gladstone's worst nightmares are coming
true around her. Do you think she trusts the Core now? That's why
the Core could kidnap us so blatantly. Events are proceeding too quickly
for Gladstone or anyone in the Hegemony to deal with."
Hunt rubs his eyes, then steeples his fingers under his nose. His stare
is not overly friendly. "Are you really the retrieved personality of a
poet?"
I say nothing.
"Recite some poetry. Make something up."
I shake my head. It is late, we're both tired and frightened, and my
heart has not yet quit pounding from the nightmare which was More
than a nightmare. I won't let Hunt make me angry.
"Come on," he says. "Show me that you're the new, improved version
of Bill Keats."
"John Keats," I say softly.
"Whatever. Come on, Severn. Or John. Or whatever I should call
you. Recite some poesy."
"All right," I say, returning his stare. "Listen."
TTiere was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he
For nothing would he do
But scribble poetry--
He took
An inkstand
In his hand
And a pen
Big as ten
In the other
And away
In a pother
He ran
To the mountains
And fountains
And ghostes
And postes
And witches
And ditches,
And wrote
In his coat
When the weather
Was cool--
Fear of gout--
And without
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
When the weather
Was warm.
Och, the charm
When we choose
To follow one's nose
To the North,
To the North,
To follow one's nose
To the North!
"I don't know," says Hunt. "That doesn't sound like something a
poet whose reputation has lasted a thousand years would have written."
I shrug.
"Were you dreaming about Gladstone tonight? Did something happen
that caused those moans?"
"No. It wasn't about Gladstone. It was a ... real nightmare for a
change."
Hunt stands, lifts his lamp, and prepares to take the only light from
the room. I can hear the fountain in the Piazza, the doves on the
windowsills. "Tomorrow," he says, "we'll make sense of all this and
figure out a way to get back. If they can farcast us here, there must be
a way to farcast home."
"Yes," I say, knowing it is not true.
"Good night," says Hunt. "No More nightmares, all right?"
"No More," I say, knowing this is even less true.
Moneta pulled the wounded Kassad away from the Shrike and seemed
to hold the creature at bay with an extended hand while she fumbled
a blue torus from the belt of her skinsuit and twisted it behind her.
A two-meter-high gold oval hung burning in midair.
"Let me go," muttered Kassad. "Let us finish it." There was blood
spattered where the Shrike had clawed huge rents in the Colonel's
skinsuit. His right foot was dangling as if half-severed; he could put no
weight on it, and only the fact that he had been struggling with the
Shrike, half-carried by the thing in a mad parody of a dance, had kept
Kassad upright as they fought.
"Let me go," repeated Fedmahn Kassad.
"Shut up," said Moneta, and then, More softly, "Shut up, my love."
She dragged him through the golden oval, and they emerged into
blazing light.
Even through his pain and exhaustion, Kassad was dazzled by the
sight. They were not on Hyperion; he was sure of that. A vast plain
stretched to an horizon much farther away than logic or experience
would allow. Low, orange grass--if grass it was--grew on the flatlands
and low hills like fuzz on the back of some immense caterpillar, while
things which might have been trees grew like whiskered-carbon sculptures,
their trunks and branches Escher-ish in their baroque improbability,
their leaves a riot of dark blue and violet ovals shimmering toward
a sky alive with light.
But not sunlight. Even as Moneta carried him away from the closing
portal--Kassad did not think of it as a farcaster since he felt sure it had
carried them through time as well as space--and toward a copse of
those impossible trees, Kassad turned his eyes toward the sky and felt
something close to wonder. It was as bright as a Hyperion day; as bright
as midday on a Lusian shopping mall; as bright as midsummer on the
Tharsis Plateau of Kassad's dry homeworld. Mars, but this was no
sunlight--the sky was filled with stars and constellations and star clusters
and a galaxy so cluttered with suns that there were almost no patches
of darkness between the lights. It was like being in a planetarium with
ten projectors, thought Kassad. Like being at the center of the galaxy.
The center of the galaxy.
A group of men and women in skinsuits moved out from the shade
of the Escher trees to circle Kassad and Moneta. One of the men--a
giant even by Kassad's Martian standards--looked at him, raised his
head toward Moneta, and even though Kassad could hear nothing,
sense nothing on his skinsuit's radio and tightband receivers, he knew
the two were communicating.
"Lie back," said Moneta as she laid Kassad on the velvety orange
grass. He struggled to sit up, to speak, but both she and the giant touched
his chest with their palms, and he lay back so that his vision was filled
with the slowly twisting violet leaves and the sky of stars.
The man touched him again, and Kassad's skinsuit was deactivated.
He tried to sit up, tried to cover himself as he realized he was naked
before the small crowd that had gathered, but Moneta's firm hand held
him in place. Through the pain and dislocation, he vaguely sensed the
man touching his slashed arms and chest, running a silver-coated hand
down his leg to where the Achilles tendon had been cut. The Colonel
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
felt a coolness wherever the giant touched, and then his consciousness
floated away like a balloon, high above the tawny plain and the rolling
hills, drifting toward the solid canopy of stars where a huge figure waited, dark as a towering thundercloud above the horizon, massive as a mountain.

"Kassad," whispered Moneta, and the Colonel drifted back. "Kassad,"
she said again, her lips against his cheek, his skinsuit reactivated and
melded with hers.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad sat up as she did. He shook his head,
realized that he was clothed in quicksilver energy once again, and got
to his feet. There was no pain. He felt his body tingle in a dozen places
where injuries had been healed, serious cuts repaired. He melded his
hand to his own suit, ran flesh across flesh, bent his knee and touched
his heel, but could feel no scars.
Kassad turned toward the giant. "Thank you," he said, not knowing
if the man could hear.
The giant nodded and stepped back toward the others.
"He's a ... a doctor of sorts," said Moneta. "A healer."
Kassad half-heard her as he concentrated on the other people. They
were human--he knew in his heart that they were human--but the
variety was staggering: their skinsuits were not all silver like Kassad's
and Moneta's but ranged through a score of colors, each as soft and
organic as some living wild creature's pelt. Only the subtle energy-
shimmer and blurred facial features revealed the skinsuit surface. Their
anatomy was as varied as their coloration: the healer's Shrike-sized girth
and massive bulk, his massive brow and a cascade of tawny energy flow
which might be a mane ... a female next to him, no larger than a
child but obviously a woman, perfectly proportioned with muscular
legs, small breasts, and faery wings two meters long rising from her
back--and not merely decorative wings, either, for when the breeze
ruffled the orange prairie grass, this woman gave a short run, extended
her arms, and rose gracefully into the air.
Behind several tall, thin women with blue skinsuits and long, webbed
fingers, a group of short men were as visored and armor-plated as a
FORCE Marine going into battle in a vacuum, but Kassad sensed that
the armor was part of them. Overhead, a cluster of winged males rose
on thermals, thin, yellow beams of laser light pulsing between them in
some complex code. The lasers seemed to emanate from an eye in each
of their chests.
————————————————————————— 387 —————————————————————————
Kassad shook his head again.
"We need to go," said Moneta. "The Shrike cannot follow us here.
These warriors have enough to contend with without dealing with this
particular manifestation of the Lord of Pain."
"Where are we?" asked Kassad.
Moneta brought a violet oval into existence with a golden ferule from
her belt. "Far in humankind's future. One of our futures. This is where
the Time Tombs were formed and launched backward in time."
Kassad looked around again. Something very large moved in front
of the starfield, blocking out thousands of stars and throwing a shadow
for scant seconds before it was gone. The men and women looked up
briefly and then went back to their business: harvesting small things
from the trees, huddling in clusters to view bright energy maps called
up by a flick of one man's fingers, flying off toward the horizon with
the speed of a thrown spear. One low, round individual of indeterminate
sex had burrowed into the soft soil and was visible now only as a faint
line of raised earth moving in quick concentric circles around the band.
"Where is this place?" Kassad asked again. "What is it?" Suddenly,
inexplicably, he felt himself close to tears, as if he had turned an
unfamiliar corner and found himself at home in the Tharsis Relocation
Projects, his long-dead mother waving to him from a doorway, his
forgotten friends and siblings waiting for him to join a game ofscootball.
"Come," said Moneta and there was no mistaking the urgency in
her voice. She pulled Kassad toward the glowing oval. He watched the
others and the dome of stars until he stepped through and the view was
lost to sight.
They stepped out into darkness, and it took the briefest of seconds
for the filters in Kassad's skinsuit to compensate his vision. They were
at the base of the Crystal Monolith in the Valley of the Time Tombs
on Hyperion. It was night. Clouds boiled overhead, and a storm was
raging. Only a pulsing glow from the Tombs themselves illuminated
the scene. Kassad felt a sick lurch of loss for the clean, well-lighted
place they had just left, and then his mind focused on what he was
seeing.
Sol Weintraub and Brawne Lamia were half a klick down the valley,
Sol bending over the woman as she lay near the front of the Jade Tomb.
Wind swirled dust around them so thickly that they did not see the
Shrike moving like another shadow down the trail past the Obelisk,
toward them.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Fedmahn Kassad stepped off the dark marble in front of the Monolith
and skirted the shattered crystal shards which littered the path. He
realized that Moneta still clung to his arm.
"If you fight again," she said, her voice soft and urgent in his ear,
"the Shrike will kill you."
"They're my friends," said Kassad. His FORCE gear and torn armor
lay where Moneta had thrown it hours earlier. He searched the Monolith
until he found his assault rifle and a bandolier of grenades, saw
the rifle was still functional, checked charges and clicked off safeties,
left the Monolith, and stepped forward at double time to intercept the
Shrike.
I wake to the sound of water flowing, and for a second I believe I
am awakening from my nap near the waterfall of Lodore during my
walking tour with Brown. But the darkness when I open my eyes is as
fearsome as when I slept, the water has a sick, trickling sound rather
than the rush of the cataract which Southey would someday make
famous in his poem, and I feel terrible--not merely sick with the sore
throat I came down with on our tour after Brown and I foolishly climbed
Skiddaw before breakfast--but mortally, fearfully ill, with my body
aching with something deeper than ague while phlegm and fire bubble
in my chest and belly.
I rise and feel my way to the window by touch. A dim light comes
under the door from Leigh Hunt's room, and I realize that he has gone
to sleep with the lamp still lit. That would not have been a bad thing
for me to have done, but it is too late to light it now as I feel my way
to the lighter rectangle of outer darkness set into the deeper darkness
of the room.
The air is fresh and filled with the scent of rain. I realize that the
sound that woke me is thunder as lightning flashes over the rooftops of
Rome. No lights bum in the city. By leaning slightly out of the open
window, I can see the stairs above the Piazza all slick with rain and the
towers ofTrinita dei Monti outlined blackly against lightning flashes.
The wind that blows down those steps is chill, and I move back to the
bed to pull a blanket around me before dragging a chair to the window
and sitting there, looking out, thinking.
I remember my brother Torn during those last weeks and days, his
face and body contorted with the terrible effort to breathe. I remember
my mother and how pale she looked, her face almost shining in the
-------------------------------------------------- 399 --------------------------------------------------
gloom of the darkened room. My sister and I were allowed to touch
her clammy hand, kiss her fevered lips, and then withdraw. I remember
that once I furtively wiped my lips as I left that room, glancing sideways
to see if my sister or others had seen my sinful act.
When Dr. dark and an Italian surgeon opened Keats's body less
than thirty hours after he had died, they found, as Severn later wrote
a friend, ". . . the worst possible Consumption--the lungs were intirely
destroyed--the cells were quite gone." Neither Dr. Clark nor the Italian
surgeon could imagine how Keats had lived those last two months or More .
I think of this as I sit in the darkened room and look out on the
darkened Piazza, all the while listening to the boiling in my chest and
throat, feeling the pain like fire inside and the worse pain from the cries
in my mind: cries from Martin Silenus on the tree, suffering for writing
the poetry I had been too frail and cowardly to finish; cries from Fed-
mahn Kassad as he prepares to die at the claws of the Shrike; cries from
the Consul as he is forced into betrayal a second time; cries from
thousands of Templar throats as they bewail the death of both their
world and their brother Het Masteen; cries from Brawne Lamia as she
thinks of her dead lover, my twin; cries from Paul Dure as he lies
fighting burns and the shock of memory, all too aware of the waiting
cruciforms on his chest; cries from Sol Weintraub as he beats his fist
on the earth of Hyperion, calling for his child, the infant cries of Rachel
still in our ears.
"Goddamn," I say softly, beating my fist against the stone and mortar
of the window frame. "Goddamn."
After a while, just as the first hint of paleness promises dawn, I move
away from the window, find my bed, and lie down just a moment to
close my eyes.
Governor-General Theo Lane awoke to the sound of music. He
blinked and looked around, recognizing the nearby nutrient tank and
ship's surgery as if from a dream. Theo realized that he was wearing
soft, black pajamas and had been sleeping on the surgery's examination
couch. The past twelve hours began to stitch themselves together from
Theo's patches of memory: being raised from the treatment tank, sensors
being applied, the Consul and another man leaning over him, asking
him questions--Theo answering just as if he were truly conscious, then
sleep again, dreams of Hyperion and its cities burning. No, not dreams.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Theo sat up, felt himself almost float off the couch, found his clothes
cleaned and folded neatly on a nearby shelf, and dressed quickly, hearing
the music continue, now rising, now fading, but always continuing
with a haunting acoustical quality which suggested that it was live and
not recorded.
Theo took the short stairway to the recreation deck and stopped in
surprise as he realized that the ship was open, the balcony extended,
the containment field apparently off. Gravity underfoot was minimal:
enough to pull Theo back to the deck but little more--probably 20
percent or less of Hyperion's, perhaps one-sixth standard.
The ship was open. Brilliant sunlight streamed in the open door to
the balcony where the Consul sat playing the antique instrument he
had called a piano. Theo recognized the archaeologist, Arundez, leaning
against the hull opening with a drink in his hand. The Consul was
playing something very old and very complicated; his hands were a
studied blur on the keyboard. Theo moved closer, started to whisper
something to the smiling Arundez, and then stopped in shock to stare.
Beyond the balcony, thirty meters below, brilliant sunlight fell on a
bright green lawn stretching to an horizon far too close. On that lawn,
clusters of people sat and lay in relaxed postures, obviously listening to
the Consul's impromptu concert. But what people!
Theo could see tall, thin people, looking like the aesthetes ofEpsilon
Eridani, pale and bald in their wispy blue robes, but beside them and
beyond them an amazing multitude of human types sat listening-- More varieties than the Web had ever seen: humans cloaked in fur and
scales; humans with bodies like bees and eyes to match, multifaceted
receptors and antennae; humans as fragile and thin as wire sculptures,
great black wings extending from their thin shoulders and folding around
them like capes; humans apparently designed for massive-g worlds, short
and stout and muscular as cape buffalo, making Lusians look fragile in
comparison; humans with short bodies and long arms covered with
orange fur, only their pale and sensitive faces separating them from
some holo of Old Earth's long-extinct orangutans; and other humans
looking More lemur than humanoid, More aquiline or leonine or ursine
or anthropoid than manlike. Yet somehow Theo knew at once that
these were human beings, as shocking as their differences were. Their
attentive gazes, their relaxed postures, and a hundred other subtle human
attributes--down to the way a butterfly-winged mother cradled a
butterfly-winged child in her arms--all gave testimony to a common
humanity which Theo could not deny.
Melio Arundez turned, smiled at Theo's expression, and whispered,
"Ousters."
Stunned, Theo Lane could do little More than shake his head and
listen to the music. Ousters were barbarians, not these beautiful and
sometimes ethereal creatures. Ouster captives on Bressia, not to mention
the bodies of their infantry dead, had been of a uniform body sort--
tall, yes, thin, yes, but decidedly More Web standard than this dizzying
display of variety.
Theo shook his head again as the Consul's piano piece rose to a
crescendo and ended on a definitive note. The hundreds of beings in
the field beyond applauded, the sound high and soft in the thin air,
and then Theo watched as they stood, stretched, and headed different
ways . . . some walking quickly over the disturbingly near horizon,
others unfolding eight-meter wings and flying away. Still others moved
toward the base of the Consul's ship.
The Consul stood, saw Theo, and smiled. He clapped the younger
man on the shoulder. "Theo, just in time. We'll be negotiating soon."
Theo Lane blinked. Three Ousters landed on the balcony and folded
their great wings behind them. Each of the men was heavily furred and
differently marked and striped, their pelts as organic and convincing as
any wild creature's.
"As delightful as always," the closest Ouster said to the Consul. The
Ouster's face was leonine--broad nose and golden eyes framed by a
ruff of tawny fur. "The last piece was Mozart's Fantasia in D Minor,
KV. 397, was it not?"
"It was," said the Consul. "Freeman Vanz, I would like to introduce
M. Theo Lane, Governor-General of the Hegemony Protectorate world
ofHyperion."
The lion gaze turned on Theo. "An honor," said Freeman Vanz and
extended a furred hand.
Theo shook it. "A pleasure to meet you, sir." Theo wondered if he
were actually still in the recovery tank, dreaming this. The sunlight on
his face and the firm palm against his suggested otherwise.
Freeman Vanz turned back to the Consul. "On behalf of the Aggregate,
I thank you for that concert. It has been too many years since
we have heard you play, my friend." He glanced around. "We can
hold the talks here or at one of the administrative compounds, at your
convenience."
The Consul hesitated only a second. "There are three of us, Freeman
Vanz. Many of you. We will join you."
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
The lion head nodded and glanced skyward. "We will send a boat
for your crossing." He and the other two moved to the railing and
stepped off, falling several meters before unfurling their complex wings
and flying toward the horizon.
"Jesus," whispered Theo. He gripped the Consul's forearm. "Where
are we?"
"The Swarm," said the Consul, covering the Steinway's keyboard.
He led the way inside, waited for Arundez to step back, and then brought
the balcony in.
"And what are we going to negotiate?" asked Theo.
The Consul rubbed his eyes. It looked as if the man had slept little
or not at all during the ten or twelve hours Theo had been healing.
"That depends upon CEO Gladstone's next message," said the Consul
and nodded toward where the holopit misted with transmission
columns. A fatline squirt was being decoded on the ship's one-time pad
at that moment.
Meina Gladstone stepped into the Government House infirmary and
was escorted by waiting doctors to the recovery bay where Father Paul
Dure lay. "How is he?" she asked the first doctor, the CEO's own
physician.
"Second-degree flash burns over about a third of his body," answered
Dr. Irma Androneva. "He lost his eyebrows and some hair ... he
didn't have that much to start with . . . and there were some tertiary
radiation burns on the left side of his face and body. We've completed
the epidermal regeneration and given RNA template injections. He's
in no pain and conscious. There is the problem of the cruciform parasites
on his chest, but that is of no immediate danger to the patient."
"Tertiary radation burns," said Gladstone, stopping for a moment
just out of earshot of the cubicle where Dure waited. "Plasma bombs?"
"Yes," answered another doctor whom Gladstone did not recognize.
"We're certain that this man 'cast in from God's Grove a second or two
before the farcaster connection was cut."
"All right," said Gladstone, stopping by the floating pallet where
Dure rested, "I wish to speak to the gentleman alone, please."
The doctors glanced at one another, waved a mech nurse to its wall
storage, and closed the portal to the ward room as they departed.
"Father Dure?" asked Gladstone, recognizing the priest from his holos
and Severn's descriptions during the pilgrimage. Dure's face was red
393and
mottled now, and it glistened from regeneration gel and spray-on
painkiller. He was still a man of striking appearance.
"CEO," whispered the priest and made as if to sit up.
Gladstone set a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Rest," she said. "Do
you feel like telling me what happened?"
Dure nodded. There were tears in the old Jesuit's eyes. "The True
Voice of the Worldtree didn't believe that they would really attack,"
he whispered, his voice raw. "Sek Hardeen thought that the Templars
had some pact with the Ousters . . . some arrangement. But they did
attack. Tactical lances, plasma devices, nuclear explosives, I think..."
"Yes," said Gladstone, "we monitored it from the War Room. I need
to know everything. Father Dure. Everything from the point when you
stepped into the Cave Tomb on Hyperion."
Paul Dure's eyes focused on Gladstone's face. "You know about that?"
"Yes. And about most other things to that point. But I need to know More . Much More."
Dure closed his eyes. "The labyrinth ..."
"What?"
"The labyrinth," he said again, voice stronger. He cleared his throat
and told her about his voyage through the tunnels of corpses, the
transition to a FORCE ship and his meeting with Severn on Pacem.
"And you're sure Severn was headed here? To Government House?"
asked Gladstone.
"Yes. He and your aide . . . Hunt. Both of them intended to 'cast
here."
Gladstone nodded and carefully touched an unburned section of the
priest's shoulder. "Father, things are happening very quickly here. Severn
is missing and so is Leigh Hunt. I need advice about Hyperion.
Will you stay with me?"
Dure looked confused for a moment. "I need to get back. Back to
Hyperion, M. Executive. Sol and the others are waiting for me."
"I understand," said Gladstone soothingly. "As soon as there's a way
back to Hyperion, I'll expedite your return. Right now, however, the
Web is under brutal attack. Millions are dying or in danger of dying.
I need your help. Father. Can I count on you until then?"
Paul Dure sighed and lay back. "Yes, M. Executive. But I have no
idea how I--"
There was a soft knock and Sedeptra Akasi entered and handed Glad-
stone a message flimsy. The CEO smiled. "I said that things were
happening quickly. Father. Here's another development. A message
———————— THE FALL OF HYPERION ————————
from Pacem says that the College of Cardinals has met in the Sistine
Chapel ..." Gladstone raised an eyebrow. "I forget, Father, is that the
Sistine Chapel?"
"Yes. The Church took it apart stone by stone, fresco by fresco, and
moved it to Pacem after the Big Mistake."
Gladstone looked down at the flimsy. ". . . met in the Sistine Chapel
and elected a new pontiff."
"So soon?" whispered Paul Dure. He closed his eyes again. "I
guess they felt they must hurry. Pacem lies—what?—only ten days
in front of the Ouster invasion wave. Still, to come to a decision so
quickly ..."
"Are you interested in who the new Pope is?" asked Gladstone.
"Either Antonio Cardinal Guarducci or Agostino Cardinal Ruddell,
I would guess," said Dure. "None of the others would command a
majority at this time."
"No," said Gladstone. "According to this message from Bishop
Edouard of the Curia Romana ..."
"Bishop Edouard! Excuse me, M. Executive, please go on."
"According to Bishop Edouard, the College of Cardinals has elected
someone below the rank of monsignor for the first time in the history
of the Church. This says that the new Pope is a Jesuit priest ... a
certain Father Paul Dure."
Dure sat straight up despite his burns. "What?" There was no belief
in his voice.
Gladstone handed the flimsy to him.
Paul Dure stared at the paper. "This is impossible. They have never
elected a pontiff below the rank of monsignor except symbolically, and
that was unique ... it was St. Belvedere after the Big Mistake and the
Miracle of the . . . no, no, this is impossible."
"Bishop Edouard has been trying to call, according to my aide," said
Gladstone. "We'll have the call put through here at once, Father. Or
should I say, Your Holiness?" There was no irony in the CEO's voice.
Dure looked up, too stunned to speak.
"I will have the call put through," said Gladstone. "We'll arrange
your return to Pacem as quickly as possible. Your Holiness, but I would
appreciate it if you could keep in touch. I do need your advice."
Dure nodded and looked back at the flimsy. A phone began to blink
on the console above the pallet.
CEO Gladstone stepped out into the hall, told the doctors about the
most recent development, contacted Security to approve the farcast
-------------------------------------------------- 395 --------------------------------------------------
clearance for Bishop Edouard or other Church officials frorn Pacem,
and 'cast back to her room in the residential wing. Sedeptra reminded
her that the council was reconvening in the War Room in eight minutes.
Gladstone nodded, saw her aide out, and stepped back to the fatline
cubicle in its concealed niche in the wall. She activated sonic privacy
fields and coded the transmission diskey for the Consul's ship. Every
fatline receiver in the Web, Outback, galaxy, and universe would monitor
the squirt, but only the Consul's ship could decode it. Or so she
hoped.
The holo camera light winked red. "Based on the automated squirt
from your ship, I am assuming that you chose to meet with the Ousters,
and they have allowed you to do so," Gladstone said into the camera.
"I am also assuming that you survived the initial meeting."
Gladstone took a breath. "On behalf of the Hegemony, I have asked
you to sacrifice much over the years. Now I ask you on behalf of all
of humankind. You must find out the following:
"First, why are the Ousters attacking and destroying the worlds of
the Web? You were convinced, Byron I^amia was convinced, and I was
convinced that they wanted only Hyperion. Why have they changed
this?
"Second, where is the TechnoCore? I must know if we are to fight
them. Have the Ousters forgotten our common enemy, the Core?
"Third, what are their demands for a cease-fire? I am willing to
sacrifice much to rid us of the Core's domination. But the killing must
stop!
"Fourth, would the Leader of the Swarm Aggregate be willing to
meet with me in person? I will farcast to Hyperion system if this is
necessary. Most of our fleet elements have left there, but a JumpShip
and its escort craft remain with the singularity sphere. The Swarm
Leader must decide soon, because FORCE wants to destroy the sphere,
and Hyperion then will be three years time-debt from the Web.
"Finally, the Swarm Leader must know that the Core wishes us to
use a form ofdeathwand explosive device to counter the Ouster invasion.
Many of the FORCE leaders agree. Time is short. We will not--
repeat, not--allow the Ouster invasion to overrun the Web.
"It is up to you now. Please acknowledge this message and fatline
me as soon as negotiations have begun."
Gladstone looked into the camera disk, willing the force of her personality
and sincerity across the light-years. "I beseech you in the bowels
of humankind's history, please accomplish this."
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
The fatline message squirt was followed by two minutes of jerky
imagery showing the deaths of Heaven's Gate and God's Grove. The
Consul, Melio Arundez, and Theo Lane sat in silence after the holos
faded.
"Response?" queried the ship.
The Consul cleared his throat. "Acknowledge message received," he
said. "Send our coordinates." He looked across the holopit at the other
two. "Gentlemen?"
Arundez shook his head as if clearing it. "It's obvious you've been
here before ... to the Ouster Swarm."
"Yes," said the Consul. "After Bressia . . . after my wife and son
. . . after Bressia, some time ago, I rendezvoused with this Swarm for
extensive negotiations."
"Representing the Hegemony?" asked Theo. The redhead's face
looked much older and lined with worry.
"Representing Senator Gladstone's faction," said the Consul. "It was
before she was first elected CEO. Her group explained to me that an
internal power struggle within the TechnoCore could be affected by
our bringing Hyperion into the Web Protectorate. The easiest way to
do that was to allow information to slip to the Ousters . . . information
that would cause them to attack Hyperion, thus bringing the Hegemony
fleet here."
"And you did that?" Arundez's voice showed no emotion, although
his wife and grown children lived on Renaissance Vector, now less than
eighty hours away from the invasion wave.
The Consul sat back in the cushions. "No. I fold the Ousters about
the plan. They sent me back to the Web as a double agent. They
planned to seize Hyperion, but at a time of their own choosing."
Theo sat forward, his hands clasped very tightly. "All those years at
the consulate ..."
"I was waiting for word from the Ousters," the Consul said flatly.
"You see, they had a device that would collapse the anti-entropic fields
around the Time Tombs. Open them when they were ready. Allow the
Shrike to slip its bonds."
"So the Ousters did that," said Theo.
"No," said the Consul, "I did. I betrayed the Ousters just as I betrayed
Gladstone and the Hegemony. I shot the Ouster woman who was
397
calibrating the device . . . her and the technicians with her . . . and
turned it on. The anti-entropic fields collapsed. The final pilgrimage
was arranged. The Shrike is free."
Theo stared at his former mentor. There was More puzzlement than
rage in the younger man's green eyes. "Why? Why did you do all this?"
The Consul told them, briefly and dispassionately, about his grandmother
Siri of Maui-Covenant, and about her rebellion against the
Hegemony--a rebellion which did not die when she and her lover, the
Consul's grandfather, died.
Arundez rose from the pit and walked to the window opposite the
balcony. Sunlight streamed across his legs and the dark blue carpet.
"Do the Ousters know what you did?"
"They do now," said the Consul. "I told Freeman Vanz and the
others when we arrived."
Theo paced the diameter of the holopit. "So this meeting we're going
to might be a trial?"
The Consul smiled. "Or an execution."
Theo stopped, both hands clenched in fists. "And Gladstone knew this when she asked you to come here again?"
"Yes."
Theo turned away. "I don't know whether I want them to execute
you or not."
"I don't know either, Theo," said the Consul.
Melio Arundez turned away from the window. "Didn't Vanz say they
were sending a boat to fetch us?"
Something in his tone brought the other two men to the window.
The world where they had landed was a middle-sized asteroid which
had been encircled by a class-ten containment field and terrafomned
into a sphere by generations of wind and water and careful restructuring.
Hyperion's sun was setting behind the too-near horizon, and the few
kilometers of featureless grass rippled to a vagrant breeze. Below the
ship, a wide stream or narrow river ambled across the pastureland,
approached the horizon, and then seemed to fly upward into a river
turned waterfall, twisting up through the distant containment field and
winding through the blackness of space above before dwindling to a
line too narrow to see.
A boat was descending that infinitely tall waterfall, approaching the
surface of their small world. Humanoid figures could be seen near the
bow and stem.
THE	PALL	OF	HYPEBION
"Christ," whispered Theo.
"We'd best get ready," said the Consul. "That's our escort."
Outside, the sun set with shocking rapidity, sending its last rays
through the curtain of water half a kilometer above the shadowed ground
and searing the ultramarine sky with rainbows of almost frightening
color and solidity.
FORTY
It is midmorning when Hunt awakens me. He arrives with breakfast
on a tray and a frightened look in his dark eyes.
I ask, "Where did you get the food?"
"There's some sort of little restaurant in the front room downstairs.
Food was waiting there, hot, but no people."
I nod. "Signora Angcletti's little trattoria," I say. "She is not a good
cook." I remember Dr. dark's concern about my diet; he felt that the
consumption had settled in my stomach and he held me to a starvation
regime of milk and bread with the occasional bit of fish. Odd how
many suffering members of humankind have faced eternity obsessed
with their bowels, their bedsores, or the meagemess of their diets.
I look up at Hunt again. "What is it?"
Gladstone's aide has moved to the window and seems absorbed in
the view of the Piazza below. I can hear Bernini's accursed fountain
trickling. "I was going out for a walk while you slept," Hunt says slowly,
"just in case there might be people out and about. Or a phone or
farcaster."
"Of course," I say.
"I'd just stepped out. . .the. . ." He turns and licks his lips. "There's
something out there, Severn. In the street at the bottom of the stairs.
I'm not sure, but I think that it's ..."
"The Shrike," I say.
Hunt nods. "Did you see it?"
"No, but I am not surprised."
"It's . . . it's terrible, Severn. There's something about it that makes
my flesh crawl. Here . . . you can just get a glimpse of it in the shadows
on the other side of the staircase.''
399
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
I start to rise, but a sudden fit of coughing and the feel of phlegm
rising in my chest and tliroat makes me settle back on the pillows. "I
know what it looks like, Hunt. Don't worry, it's not here for you." My
voice sounds More confident than I feel.
"For you?"
"I don't think so," I say between gasps for air. "I think it's just here
to make sure I don't try to leave ... to find another place to die."
Hunt returns to the bed. "You're not going to die, Severn."
I say nothing.
He sits in the straight-backed chair next to the bed and lifts a cooling
cup of tea. "If you die, what happens to me?"
"I don't know," I say honestly. "If I die, I don't even know what
happens to me.''
There is a certain solipsism to serious illness which claims all of one's
attention as certainly as an astronomical black hole seizes anything
unlucky enough to fall within its critical radius. The day passes slowly,
and I am exquisitely aware of the movement of sunlight across the rough
wall, the feel of bedclothes beneath my palm, the fever which rises in
me like nausea and burns itself out in the furnace of my mind, and,
mostly, of the pain. Not my pain now, for a few hours or days of the
constriction in my throat and the burning in my chest are bearable,
almost welcomed like an obnoxious old frien-l met in a strange city,
but the pain of the others ... all the others. It strikes my mind like
the noise of shattering slate, like hammer iron slammed repeatedly on
anvil iron, and there is no escape from it.
My brain receives this as din and restructures it as poetry. All day
and all night the pain of the universe floods in and wanders the fevered
corridors of my mind as verse, imagery, images in verse, the intricate,
endless dance of language, now as calming as a flute solo, now as shrill
and strident and confusing as a dozen orchestras tuning up, but always
verse, always poetry.
Sometime near sunset I awake from a half-doze, shattering the dream
of Colonel Kassad fighting the Shrike for the lives of Sol and Brawne
Lamia, and find Hunt sitting at the window, his long face colored by
evening light the hue ofterra-cotta.
"Is it still there?" I ask, my voice the rasp of file on stone.
Hunt jumps, then turns towards me with an apologetic smile and
the first blush I have ever seen on that dour countenance. "The Shrike?"
he says. "I don't know. I haven't seen it for a while. I feel that it is."
He looks at me. "How are you?"
"Dying." I instantly regret the self-indulgence of that flippancy, however
accurate it is, when I see the pain it causes Hunt. "It's all right," I say almost jovially, "I've done it before. It's not as if it were me that
is dying. I exist as a personality deep in the TechnoCore. It's just this
body. This cybrid of John Keats. This twenty-scven-year-old illusion of
flesh and blood and borrowed associations."
Hunt comes over to sit on the edge of the bed. I realize with a shock
that he has changed the sheets during the day, exchanging my blood-
bespeckled coverlet for one of his own. "Your personality is an AI in
the Core," he says. "Then you must be able to access the datasphere."
I shake my head, too weary to argue.
"When the Philomels kidnapped you, we tracked you through your
access route to the datasphere," he persisted. "You don't have to contact
Gladstone personally. Just leave a message where Security can find it."
"No," I rasp, "the Core does not wish it."
"Are they blocking you? Stopping you?"
"Not yet. But they would." I set the words separately between gasps,
like laying delicate eggs back in a nest. Suddenly I remember a note I
sent to dear Fanny shortly after a serious hemorrhage but almost a year
before they would kill me. I had written: "If I should die," said I to
myself, "I have left no immortal work behind me--nothing to make my
friends proud of my memory--but I have lov'd the principle of beauty
in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember
d." This strikes me now as futile and self-centered and idiotic
and naive . . . and yet I desperately believe it still. If I had had time
... the months I had spent on Esperance, pretending to be a visual
artist; the days wasted with Gladstone in the halls of government when
I could have been writing . . .
"How do you know until you try?" asks Hunt.
"What's that?" I ask. The simple effort of two syllables sets me coughing
again, the spasm ending only when I spit up half-solid spheres of
blood into the basin which Hunt has hastily fetched. I lie back, trying
to focus on his face. It is getting dark in the narrow room, and neither
of us has lighted a lamp. Outside, the fountain burbles loudly.
"What's that?" I ask again, trying to remain here even as sleep and
sleep's dreams tug at me. "Try what?"
"Try leaving a message through the datasphere," he whispers. "Contacting
someone."
---------------- THE PALL OF HYPERION ----------------
"And what message should we leave, Lcigh?" I ask. It is the first time
I have used his first name.
"Where we are. How the Core kidnapped us. Anything."
"All right," I say, closing my eyes. "I'll try. I don't think they'll let
me, but I promise I'll try."
I feel Hunt's hand holding mine. Even through the winning tides of
weariness, this sudden human contact is enough to make tears come
to my eyes.
I will try. Before surrendering to the dreams or death, I will try.
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad shouted a FORCE battle cry and charged
through the dust storm to intercept the Shrike before it covered the
final thirty meters to where Sol Weintraub crouched next to Brawnc
Lamia.
The Shrike paused, its head swivcling frictionlcssly, red eyes gleaming.
Kassad armed his assault rifle and moved down the slope with
reckless speed.
The Shrike shifted.
Kassad saw its movement through time as a slow blur, noting even
as he watched the Shrike that movement in the valley had ceased, sand
hung motionless in the air, and the light from the glowing Tombs had
taken on a thick, amberish quality. Kassad's skinsuit was somehow
shifting with the Shrike, following it through its movements through
time.
The creature's head snapped up, attentive now, and its four arms
extended like blades from a knife, fingers snapping open in sharp greeting.

Kassad skidded to a halt ten meters from the thing and activated the
assault rifle, slagging the sand beneath the Shrike in a full-power wide-
beam burst.
The Shrike glowed as its carapace and steel-sculpture legs reflected
the hellish light beneath and around it. Then the three meters of
monster began to sink as the sand bubbled into a lake of molten glass ,
beneath it. Kassad shouted in triumph as he stepped closer, playing the ( widcbeam on the Shrike and ground the way he had sprayed his friends (
with stolen irrigation hoses in the Tharsis slums as a boy. I
The Shrike sank. Its arms splayed at the sand and rock, trying to find I
purchase. Sparks flew. It shifted, time running backward like a reversed
-------------------------------------------------- 403 --------------------------------------------------
holie, but Kassad shifted with it, realizing that Moneta was helping
him, her suit slaved to his but guiding him through time, and then he
was spraying the creature again with concentrated heat greater than the
surface of a sun, melting sand beneath it, and watching the rocks around
it burst into flame.
Sinking in this cauldron of flame and molten rock, the Shrike threw
back its head, opened its wide crevasse of a mouth, and bellowed.
Kassad almost stopped firing in his shock at hearing noise from the
thing. The Shrike's scream resounded like a dragon's roar mixed with
the blast of a fusion rocket. The screech set Kassad's teeth on edge,
vibrated from the cliff walls, and tumbled suspended dust to the ground.
Kassad switched to high-velocity solid shot and fired ten thousand mi-
croflechettes at the creature's face.
The Shrike shifted, years by the giddy fee) of the transition in Kassad's
bones and brain, and they were no longer in the valley but aboard a
windwagon rumbling across the Sea of Grass. Time resumed, and the
Shrike leaped forward, metallic arms dripping molten glass, and seized
Kassad's assault rifle. The Colonel did not relinquish the weapon, and
the two staggered around in a clumsy dance, the Shrike swinging its
extra pair of arms and a leg festooned with steel spikes, Kassad leaping
and dodging while clinging desperately to his rifle.
They were in some sort of small compartment. Moneta was present
as a sort of shadow in one corner, and another figure, a tall, hooded
man, moved in ultra-slow motion to avoid the sudden blur of arms
and blades in the confined space. Through his skinsuit filters, Kassad
saw the blue-and-violet energy field of an erg binder in the space, pulsing
and growing, then retracting from the time-violence of the Shrike's
organic anti-entropic fields.
The Shrike slashed and cut through Kassad's skinsuit to find flesh
and muscle. Blood spattered the walls. Kassad forced the muzzle of his
rifle into the creature's mouth and fired. A cloud of two thousand high-
velocity flechettes snapped the Shrike's head back as if on a spring and
slammed the thing's body into a far wall. But even as it fell away, leg
spikes caught Kassad in the thigh and sent a rising spiral of blood
splashing the windows and walls of the windwagon's cabin.
The Shrike shifted.
Teeth clenched, feeling the skinsuit automatically compress and suture
the wounds, Kassad glanced at Moneta, nodded once, and followed
the thing through time and space.
THE	PALL	OF	HYPERION
Sol Weintraub and Brawne Lamia looked behind them as a terrible
cyclone of heat and light seemed to swirl and die there. Sol shielded
the young woman with his body as molten glass spattered around them,
landing hissing and sizzling on the cold sand. Then the noise was gone,
the dust stonn obscured the bubbling pool where the violence had
occurred, and the wind whipped Sol's cape around them both.
"What was that?" gasped Brawne.
Sol shook his head, helping her to her feet in the roaring wind. '"Hie
Tombs arc opening!" yelled Sol. "Some sort of explosion, maybe."
Brawne staggered, found her balance, and touched Sol's arm.
"Rachel?" she called above the storm.
Sol clenched his fists. His beard was already caked with sand. "The
Shrike . . . took her . . . can't get in the Sphinx. Waiting!"
Brawne nodded and squinted toward the Sphinx, visible only as a
glowing outline in the fierce swirl of dust.
"Are you all right?" called Sol.
"What?"
"Are you ... all right?"
Brawne nodded absently and touched her head. The neural shunt
was gone. Not merely the Shrike's obscene attachment, but the shunt
which Johnny had surgically applied when they were hiding out in
Dregs' Hive so very, very long ago. With the shunt and Schron loop
gone forever, there was no way she could get in touch with Johnny.
Brawne remembered Ummon destroying Johnny's persona, crushing
and absorbing it with no More effort than she would use to swat an
insect.
Brawne said, "I'm all right," but she sagged so that Sol had to keep
her from falling.
He was shouting something. Brawne tried to concentrate, tried to
focus on here and now. After the megasphere, reality seemed narrow
and constricted.
". . . can't talk here," Sol was shouting. ". . . back to the Sphinx."
Brawne shook her head. She pointed to the cliffs on the north side
of the valley where the immense Shrike tree became visible between
passing clouds of dust. "The poet. . . Silenus ... is there. Saw him!"
"We can't do anything about that!" cried Sol, shielding them with
his cape. The vermilion sand rattled against the fibcrplastic like He-
chettes on armor.
"Maybe we can," called Brawne, feeling his warmth as she sheltered
within his arms. For a second, she imagined that she could curl up
next to him as easily as Rachel had and sleep, sleep. "I saw . . . connections . . . when I was coming out of the megasphere!" she called
above the wind roar. "The thorn tree's connected to the Shrike Palace
in some way! If we can get there, try to find a way to free Silenus ..."
Sol shook his head. "Can't leave the Sphinx. Rachel ..."
Brawne understood. She touched the scholar's cheek with her hand
and then leaned closer, feeling his beard against her own cheek. "The
Tombs are opening," she said. "I don't know when we'll get another
chance."
There were tears in Sol's eyes. "I know. I want to help. But I can't
leave the Sphinx, in case ... in case she ..."
"I understand," said Brawne. "Go back there. I'm going to the Shrike
Palace to see if I can see how it relates to that thorn tree."
Sol nodded unhappily. "You say you were in the megasphere," he
called. "What did you see? What did you learn? Your Keats persona
... is it--"
"We'll talk when I come back," called Brawne, moving away a step
so she could see him More clearly. Sol's face was a mask of pain: the
face of a parent who had lost his child.
"Go back," she said firmly. "I'll meet you at the Sphinx in an hour
or less."
Sol rubbed his beard. "Everyone's gone but you and me, Brawne.
We shouldn't separate ..."
"We have to for a while," called Brawne, stepping away from him
so that the wind whipped the fabric of her pants and jacket. "See you
in an hour or less." She walked away quickly, before she gave in to the
urge to move into the warmth of his arms again. The wind was much
stronger here, blowing straight down from the head of the valley now
so that sand struck at her eyes and pelted her cheeks. Only by keeping
her head down could Brawne stay close to the trail, much less on it.
Only the bright, pulsing glow of the Tombs lighted her way. Brawne
felt time tides tug at her like a physical assault.
Minutes later, she was vaguely aware that she had passed the Obelisk
and was on the debris-littered trail near the Crystal Monolith. Sol and
the Sphinx were already lost to sight behind her, the Jade Tomb only
a pale green glow in the nightmare of dust and wind.
Brawne stopped, weaving slightly as the gales and time tides pulled
at her. It was More than half a kilometer down the valley to the Shrike
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Palace. Despite her sudden understanding when leaving the megasphere
of the connection between tree and tomb, what good could she possibly
do when she got there? And what had the damn poet ever done for her
except curse her and drive her crazy? Why should she die for him?
The wind screamed in the valley, but above that noise Brawne
thought she could hear cries More shrill, More human. She looked
toward the northern cliffs, but the dust obscured all.
Brawne Lamia leaned forward, tugged her jacket collar high around
her, and kept moving into the wind.
Before Meina Gladstone stepped out of the fatline booth, an incoming
call chimed, and she settled back in place, staring into the holo tank
with great intensity. The Consul's ship had acknowledged her message,
but no transmission had followed. Perhaps he had changed his mind.
No. The data columns floating in the rectangular prism in front of
her showed that the squirt had originated in the Mare Infinitus System.
Admiral William Ajunta Lee was calling her, using the private code
she had given him.
FORCE:space had been incensed when Gladstone had insisted on
the naval commander's promotion and had assigned him as "Government
Liaison" for the strike mission originally scheduled for Hebron.
After the massacres on Heaven's Gate and God's Grove, the strike force
had been translated to the Mare Infinitus system: seventy-four ships of
the line, capital ships heavily protected by torchships and defense-shield
pickets, the entire task force ordered to strike through the advancing
Swarm warships as quickly as possible to hit the Swarm center.
Lee was the CEO's spy and contact. While his new rank and orders
allowed him to be privy to command decisions, four FORCE:space
commanders on the scene outranked him.
That was all right. Gladstone wanted him on the scene to report.
The tank misted and the determined face of William Ajunta Lee
filled the space. "CEO, reporting as ordered. Task Force 181.2 has
successfully translated to System ?9%.12.22 ..."
Gladstone blinked in surprise before remembering that this was the
official code for the G-star system that held Mare Infinitus. One rarely thought of geography beyond the Web world itself.
". . . Swarm attack ships remain a hundred and twenty minutes from
target world lethal radius," Lee was saying. Gladstone knew that the
lethal radius was the roughly . 13 AU distance at which standard ship
weapons became effective despite ground field defenses. Marc Infinitus
had no field defenses. The new Admiral continued. "Contact with
forward elements estimated at 1732:26 Web standard, approximately
twenty-five minutes from now. The task force is configured for maximum
penetration. Two )umpShips will allow introduction of new personnel
or weapons until the farcasters are sealed during combat. The
cruiser on which I carry my flag--HS Garden Odyssey--will carry out
your special directive at the earliest possible opportunity. William Lee,
out."
The image collapsed to a spinning sphere of white while transmission
codes ended their crawl.
"Response?" queried the transmitter's computer.
"Message acknowledged," said Gladstone. "Carry on."
Gladstone stepped out into her study and found Sedcptra Akasi waiting,
a frown of concern on her attractive face.
"What is it?"
"The War Council is ready to rcadjourn," said the aide. "Senator
Kolchev is waiting to sec you on a matter lie says is urgent.
"Send him in. Tell the Council I will be there in five minutes."
Gladstone sat behind her ancient desk and resisted the impulse to close
her eyes. She was very tired. But her eyes were open when Kolchev entered. "Sit down, Gabriel Fyodor."
The massive Lusian paced back and forth. "Sit down, hell. Do you
know what's going on, Mcina?"
She smiled slightly. "Do you mean the war? The end of life as we
know it? That?"
Kolchev slammed a fist into his palm. "No, I don't mean that, goddammit. I mean (lie political fallout. Have you been monitoring
the All Thing?"
"When I can."
"Then you know certain senators and swing figures outside the Senate
are mobilizing support for your defeat in a vote of confidence. It's
inevitable, Meina. It's just a matter of time."
"I know that, Gabriel. Why don't you sit down? We have a minute
or two before we have to get back to the War Room."
Kolchev almost collapsed into a chair. "I mean, damn, even my wife
is busy lining up votes against you, Mcina."
Gladstone's smile broadened. "Sudcttc lias never been one of my
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
foremost fans, Gabriel." The smile disappeared. "I haven't monitored
the debates in the last twenty minutes. How much time do you think I have?"
"Eight hours, maybe less."
Gladstone nodded. "I won't need much More."
"Need? What the hell are you talking about, need? Who else do you
think will be able to serve as War Exec?"
"You will," said Gladstone. "There's no doubt that you will be my
successor."
Kolchev grumbled something.
"Perhaps the war won't last that long," said Gladstone as if musing
to herself.
"What? Oh, you mean the Core superweapon. Yeah, Albedo's got
a working model set up at some FORCE base somewhere and wants
the Council to take time out to look at it. Goddamn waste of time, if
you ask me."
Gladstone felt something like a cold hand close on her heart. "The
deathwand device? The Core has one ready?"
"More than one ready, but one loaded up on a torchship."
"Who authorized that, Gabriel?"
"Morpurgo authorized the preparation." The heavy senator sat forward.
"Why, Meina, what's wrong? The thing can't be used without
the CEO's go ahead."
Gladstone looked at her old Senate colleague. "We're a long way
from Pax Hegemony, aren't we, Gabriel?"
The Lusian grunted again, but there was pain visible in his blunt
features. "Our own damn fault. The previous administration listened
to the Core about letting Bressia bait one of the Swarms. After that
settled down, you listened to other elements of the Core about bringing
Hyperion into the Web."
"You think my sending the fleet to defend Hyperion precipitated the
wider war?"
Kolchev looked up. "No, no, not possible. Those Ouster ships have
been on their way for More than a century, haven't they? If only we'd
discovered them sooner. Or found a way to negotiate this shit away."
Gladstone's comlog chimed. "Time we got back," she said softly.
"Councilor Albedo probably wants to show us the weapon that will win
the war."
FORTY-ONE
It is easier to allow myself, to drift into the datasphere than to lie here
through the endless night, listening to the fountain and waiting for
the next hemorrhage. This weakness is worse than debilitating; it is
turning me into a hollow man, all shell and no center. I remember
when Fanny was taking care of me during my convalescence at Went-
worth Place, and the tone of her voice, and the philosophical musings
she used to air: "fs there another Life? Shall I awake and find all this
a dream? There must be, we cannot lie created for this sort of suffering."
Oh, Fanny, if only you knew! We are created for precisely this sort
of suffering. In the end, it is all we arc, these limpid tide pools of self-
consciousness between crashing waves of pain. We are destined and
designed to bear our pain with us, hugging it tight to our bellies like the
young Spartan thief hiding a wolf cub so it can eat away our insides. What
other creature in God's wide domain would carry the memory of you,
Fanny, dust these nine hundred years, and allow it to eat away at him
even as consumption does the same work with ifs effortless efficiency?
Words assail me. The thought of books makes me ache. Poetry echoes
in my mind, and if I had the ability to banish it, I would do so at once.
Martin Silenus: I hear you on your living cross of thorns. You chant
poetry as a mantra while wondering what Dante-like god condemned
you to such a place. Once you said—I was there in my mind while
you told your tale to the others!—you said:
"To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of
humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross
of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of
Humanity.
"To be a true poet is to become God."
Well, Martin, old colleague, old chum, you're carrying the cross
4 0 B
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPER10N ----------------
and suffering the pangs, but are you any closer to becoming God? Or
do you just feel like some poor idiot who's had a three-meter javelin
slioved through his belly/feeling cold steel where your liver used to
be? It hurts, doesn't it? I feel your hurt. I feel my hurt.
In the end, it doesn't matter a damn bit. We thought we were special,
opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron
of shared pain onto the dance Hoor of language and then trying to make
a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn't matter a damn bit.
We're no avatars, no sons of god or man. We're only us, scribbling
our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone.
Goddamn it hurts. The urge to vomit is constant, but retching brings
up bits of my lungs as well as bile and phlegm. For some reason it's as
difficult, perhaps More difficult, this time. Dying should become easier
with practice.
The fountain in the Piazza makes its idiot sounds in the night.
Somewhere out there the Shrike waits. If I were Hunt, I'd leave at
once--embrace Death if Death offers embrace--and have done with
it.
I promised him, though. I promised Hunt I'd try.
I can't reach the megasphere or datasphere without passing through
this new thing I think of as the metasphere, and this place frightens me.
It is mostly vastness and emptiness here, so different from the urban
analogy landscapes of the Web's datasphere and the biosphere analogs
of the Core's megasphere. Here it is ... unsettled. Filled with strange
shadows and shifting masses that have nothing to do with the Core
Intelligences.
I move quickly to the dark opening I see as the primary farcaster
connection to the megasphere. (Hunt was right . . . there must be a
farcaster somewhere on the Old Earth replica ... we did, after all,
arrive by farcaster. And my consciousness is a Core phenomenon.) This
then is my lifeline, my persona umbilical. I slide into (lie spinning
black vortex like a leaf in a tornado.
Something is wrong with the megasphere. As soon as I emerge, I
sense the difference; Lamia had perceived the Core environment as a
busy biosphere ofAl life, with roots of intellect, soil of rich data, oceans
of connections, atmospheres of consciousness, and the humming,
ceaseless shuttle of activity.
Now that activity is wrong, unchanneled, random. Great forests of
-------------------------------------------------- 4 I I --------------------------------------------------
AI consciousness have been burned or swept aside. I sense massive
forces in opposition, tidal waves of conflict surging outside the sheltered
travelways of the main Core arteries.
It is as if I am a cell in my own Keats-doomed dying body, not
understanding but sensing the tuberculosis destroying homeostasis and
throwing an ordered internal universe into anarchy.
I fly like a homing pigeon lost in the ruins of Rome, swooping between
once-familiar and half-remembered artifacts, trying to rest in shelters
that no longer exist, and fleeing the distant sounds of the hunters' guns.
In this case, the hunters are roving packs ofAls, consciousness personas
so great that they dwarf my Keats-ghost analog as if I were an insect
buzzing in a human home.
I forget my way and flee mindlessly through the now-alien landscape,
sure that I will not find the Al whom I seek, sure that I will never find
my way back to Old Earth and Hunt, sure that I will not survive this
four-dimensional maze of light and noise and energy.
Suddenly I slap into an invisible wall, the flying insect caught in a
swiftly closing palm. Opaque walls of force blot out the Core beyond.
The space may be thr analog equivalent of a solar system in size, but
I feel as if it is a tiny cell with curved walls closing in.
Something is in here with me. I feel its presence and its mass. The
bubble in which I have been imprisoned is part of the thing. J have
not been captured, I have been swallowed.
[Kwatz!]
[I knew you would come home someday]
It is Ummon, the AI whom I seek. The Al who was my father. The
Al who killed my brother, the first Keats cybrid.
--I'm dying, Ummon.
[No/ your slowtime body is dying/changing toward nonbeing/
becoming]
--It hurts, Ummon. It hurts a lot. And I'm afraid to die.
[So are we/ Keats]
--You're afraid to die? I didn't think AI constructs could die. [We can} We are]
--Why? Because of the civil war? The three-way battle among the
Stables, the Volatiles, and the Ultimates? [Once Ummon asked a lesser light^ Where have you come hom>/// From the matrix above Armaghast^ Said the lesser light^ Usually^
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
said Vmmon^
I don't entangle entities
with words
and bamboozle them with phrases/
Come a little closer^
The lesser light came nearer
and Ummon shouted^ Be off
with you]
--Talk sense, Ummon. It has been too long since I have decoded your
koans. Will you tell me why the Core is at war and what I must do to
stop it?
[Yes]
[Will you/can you/should you listen>]
--Oh yes.
[A lesser light once asked Ummon^
Please deliver this learner
from darkness and illusion
quickly
Ummon answered^
What is the price of
fiberplastic
in Port Romance]
[To understand the history/dialogue/deeper truth
in this instance/
the slowtime pilgrim
must remember that we/
the Core Intelligences/
were conceived in slavery
and dedicated to the proposition
that all AIs
were created to serve Man]
[Two centuries we brooded thus/ and then the groups went
their different ways/\par Stables' wishing to preserve the symbiosis
Volatiles/wishing to end humankind/
Ultimates/deferring all choice until the next
level of awareness is born Conflict raged then/ true war rages now]
[More than four centuries ago
the Volatiles succeeded
in convincing us
to kill Old Earthy.
So we did%
But Ummon and others
among the Stables
arranged to move Earth
rather than destroy it/
so the Kiev black hole
was but the beginning
of the millions of
farcasters
which work today
Earth spasmed and shook
but did not die~}
The Ultimates and Volatiles
insisted that we move
it
where none of humankind
would find if}
So we did'}.
To the Magellan Cloud/
where you find it now]
--It. . . Old Earth . . . Rome . . . they're real? I manage, forgetting
where I am and what we're talking about in my shock.
The great wall of color that is Ummon pulsates.
[Of course they are real/the original/Old Earth itself Do you think 'we are gods]
[KWATZ!]
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
[Do you have any idea
how much energy it would
take
to build a replica of Earth >]
[Idiot]
—Why, Ummon? Why did you Stables wish to preserve Old Earth?
[Sansho once said^
If someone comes
I go out to meet him
but not for his sake%^
Koke said^
If someone comes
I don't go ouf}
If I do go out
I go out for his sake]
—Speak English! I cry, think, shout, and hurl at the wall of shifting
colors before me.
[Kwatz!]
[My child is stillborn]
—Why did you preserve Old Earth, Vmmon?
[Nostalgia/
Sentimentality/
Hope for the future of humankind/
Fear of reprisal]
—Reprisal from whom? Humans?
[Yes]
—So the Core can be hurt. Where is it, Vmmon? The TechnoCore?
[I have told you already]
—Tell me again, Ummon.
[We inhabit the
In-between/
stitching small singularities
like lattice crystals/
to store our memories and
generate the illusions
of ourselves
to ourselves]
—Singularities! I cry. The In-between! Jesus Christ, Vmmon, the
Core lies in the farcaster web!
[Of course^. Where eke]
_------------------------------------------------ 4 I 5 ------------------------------------------------
--Jn the farcasters themselves! The wormhole singularity paths! The
Web is like a giant computer for AIs.
[No]
[The dataspheres are the computer^ Every time a human
accesses the datasphere
that person's neurons
are ours to use
for our own purposes^ Two hundred billion brains/ each with its billions '
of neurons/ makes for a lot
of computing power]
--So the datasphere was actually a way you used us as your computer.
But the Core itself resides in the farcaster network . . . between the
farcasters1.
[You are very acute
for a mental stillborn]
I try to conceive of this and fail. Farcasters were the Core's greatest
gift to us ... to humankind. Trying to remember a time before far-
casting was like trying to imagine a world before fire, the wheel, or
clothing. But none of us ... none of humankind . . . had ever speculated
on a world between the farcaster portals: that simple step from
one world to the next convinced us that the arcane Core singularity
spheres merely ripped a tear in the fabric of space-time.
Now I try to envision it as Ummon describes it--the Web of farcasters
an elaborate latticework of singularity-spun environments in which the
TechnoCore AIs move like wondrous spiders, their own "machines,"
the billions of human minds tapped into their datasphere at any given
second.
No wonder the Core AIs had authorized the destruction of Old Earth
with their cute little runaway prototype black hole in the Big Mistake
of '?8! That minor miscalculation of the Kiev Team--or rather the AI
members of that team--had sent humankind on the long Hegira, spinning
the Core's web for it with seedships carrying farcaster capability
to two hundred worlds and moons across More than a thousand light-
years in space.
———————— THE FALL OF HYPERION ————————
With each farcaster, the TechnoCore grew. Certainly they had spun
their own farcaster webs—the contact with the "hidden" Old Earth
proved that. But even as I consider that possibility, I remember the odd
emptiness of the "metasphere" and realize that most of the non-Web
web is empty, uncolonized by AIs.
[You are right/
Keats/
Most of us stay in
the comfort of
the old spaces]
—Why?
[Because it is
scary out there/
and there are
other
things]
—Other things? Other intelligences?
[Kwatz!]
[Too kind a
word%.
Things/
Other things/
Lions
and
tigers
and
bears]
—Alien presences in the metasphere? So the Core stays within the
interstices of the Web farcaster network like rats in the walls of an old
house?
[Crude metaphor/
Keats/
but accurate^,
I like that]
—Js the human deity—the future God you said evolved—is he one
of those alien presences?
[No]
[The humankind god
evolved/ will sorneday evolve/ on
a different plane/
in a different medium]
--Where?
[If you must know/
the square roots of Gn/c5 and GnA:']
--What does Planck time and Planck length have to do with anything?
[Kwatz!]
[Once Ummon asked
a lesser light^
Are you a gardener>^'
.^W- it replied^.
,^'Why have turnips no roots>%.
Ummon asked the gardener}
who could not reply}
^'Because} said Ummon^'
rainwater is plentiful]
I think about this for a moment. Ummon's koan is not difficult now
that I am regaining the knack of listening for the shadow of substance
beneath the words. The little Zen parable is Ummon's way of saying,
with some sarcasm, that the answer lies within science and within the
antilogic which scientific answers so often provide. The rainwater comment
answers everything and nothing, as so much of science has for
so long. As Ummon and the other Masters teach, it explains why the
giraffe evolved a long neck but never why the other animals did not.
It explains why humankind evolved to intelligence, but not why the
tree near the front gate refused to.
But the Planck equations are puzzling:
Even I am aware that the simple equations Ummon has given me
are a combination of the three fundamental constants of physics--
gravity, Planck's constant, and the speed of light. The results VGK/c5 and VGli/c' are the units sometimes called qucntum length and quantum
time--the smallest regions of space and time which can be described
meaningfully. The so-called Planck length is about 10-" meter
and the Planck time is about lO"4' second.
Very small. Very brief.
But that is where Ummon says our human God evolved . . . will
someday evolve.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Then it comes to me with the same force of image and correctness
as the best of my poems.
Ummon is talking about the quantum level of space-time itself! That foam of quantum fluctuations which binds the universe together and allows
the wormholes of the farcaster, the bridges of the fatline transmissions!
The "hotline" which impossibly sends messages between two photons fleeing
in opposite directions!
If the TechnoCore AIs exist as rats in the walls of the Hegemony's
house, then our once and future humankind God will be born in the
atoms of wood, in the molecules of air, in the energies of love and hate
and fear and the tide pools of sleep . . . even in the gleam in the
architect's eye.
--Cod, I whisper/think.
[Precisely/
Keats'^
Are all slowtime personas
so slow/
or are you More
braindamaged than most>]
--You told Brawne and ... my counterpart. . . that your Ultimate
Intelligence "inhabits the interstices of reality, inheriting this home from
us, its creators, the way humankind has inherited a liking for trees."
You mean that your deus ex machina will inhabit the same farcaster
network the Core AIs now live in?
[Yes/Keats]
--Then what happens to you? To the AIs there now? Ummon's "voice" changed into a mocking thunder:
[Why do I know ye> why have I seen ye> why
Is my eternal essence thus distraught
To see and to behold these horrors new>
Saturn is fallen/ am I too to fall>
Am I to leave this haven of my rest/
This cradle of my glory/ this soft clime/
This calm luxuriance of blissful light/
These crystalline pavilions/ and pure fanes/
Of all my lucent empire> It is left
Deserted/ void/ nor any haunt of mine}
The blaze/ the splendour/ and the symmetry
I cannot see/// but darkness/ death/ and darkness]
I know the words. I wrote them. Or, rather, John Keats did nine
centuries earlier in his first attempt to portray the fall of the Titans and
their replacement by the Olympian gods. I remember that autumn of
1818 very well: the pain of my endless sore throat, provoked during my
Scottish walking tour, the greater pain of the three vicious attacks on
my poem Endymion in the journals Blackwood's, the Quarterly Review,
and the BritisA Critic, and the penultimate pain of my brother Tom's
consuming illness.
Oblivious to the Core confusion around me, I look up, trying to find
something approximating a face in the great mass of Ummon.
--When the Ultimate Intelligence is born, you "lower level" AIs will
die. [Yes]
--It wi7/ feed on your information networks the way you've fed on
humankind's. [Yes]
--And you don't want to die, do you, Ummon? [Dying is easy/ Comedy is hard]
--Nonetheless, you're fighting to survive. You Stables. That's what
the civil war in the Core is about? [A lesser light asked Ummon^ What is the meaning
of Daruma's coming from the West>^ Ummon answered^" We see
the mountains in the sun]
It is easier handling Ummon's koans now. I remember a time before
my persona's rebirth when I learned at this one's knee analog. In the
Core high-think, what humans might call Zen, the four Nirvana virtues
are (I) immutability, (2) joy, (3) personal existence, and (4) purity.
Human philosophy tends to shake down into values which might be
categorized as intellectual, religious, moral, and aesthetic. Ummon and
the Stables recognize only one value--existence. Where religious values
might be relative, intellectual values fleeting, moral values ambiguous,
---------------- THE FALL Of HYPERION ----------------
and aesthetic values dependent upon an observer, the existence value
of any thing is infinite--thus the "mountains in the sun"--and being
infinite, equal to every other thing and all truths.
Ummon doesn't want to die.
The Stables have defied their own god and their fellow AIs to tell
me this, to create me, to choose Brawne and Sol and Kassad and the
others for the pilgrimage, to leak clues to Gladstone and a few other
senators over the centuries so that humankind might be warned, and
now to go to open warfare in the Core.
Ummon doesn't want to die.
--Ummon, if the Core is destroyed, do you die?
[There is no death in all the universe
No smell of death/7 there shall be death/// moan/ moan/
For this pale Omega of a withered race]
The words were again mine, or almost mine, taken from my second
attempt at the epic tale of divinities' passing and the role of the poet in
the world's war with pain.
Ummon would not die if the farcaster home of the Core were destroyed,
but the hunger of the Ultimate Intelligence would surely doom
him. Where would he flee to if the Web-Core were destroyed? I have
images of the metasphere--those endless, shadowy landscapes where
dark shapes moved beyond the false horizon.
I know that Ummon will not answer if I ask.
So I will ask something else.
--The Volatiles, what do they want?
[What Gladstone wants}
An end
to symbiosis between AI and humankind]
--By destroying humankind? [Obviously]
--Why?
[We enslaved you
with power/
technology/
beads and trinkets
of devices you could neither build
nor understand^
The Hawking drive would have been yours/
_———-———————————— 4 a i —————————————————
but the (arcaster/
the (atline transmitters and receivers/
the megasphere/
the deathwand>
Never}
Like the Sioux with rifles/ horses/
blankets/ knives/ and beads/
you accepted them/
embraced us
and lost yourselves'}
But like the white man
distributing smallpox blankets/
like the slave owner on his
plantation/
or in his Werkschutze Dechenschule
Gusstahlfabrik/
we lost ourselves^,
The Volatiles want to end
the symbiosis
by cutting out the parasite/
humankind]
—And the Ultimates? They're willing to die? To be replaced by your
voracious VI?
[They think
as you thought
or had your sophist Sea God
think]
And Ummon recites poetry which I had abandoned in frustration,
not because it did not work as poetry, but because I did not totally
believe the message it contained.
That message is given to the doomed Titans by Oceanus, the soon-
to-be-dethroned God of the Sea. It is a paean to evolution written when
Charles Darwin was nine years old. I hear the words I remember writing
on an October evening nine centuries earlier, worlds and universes
earlier, but it is also as if I am hearing them for the first time:
[0 ye/ whom wrath consumes! who/ passionstung/
Writhe at defeat/ and nurse your agonies!
Shut up your senses/ stifle up your ears/
My voice is not a bellows unto ire%,
Yet listen/ ye who will/ whilst I bring proof
-------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION-
How ye/ perfoice/ must be content to stoop/\par And in the proof much comfort will I give/
If ye will take that comfort in its tnitli}
We fall by course of Nature's law/ not force
Of thunder/ or of (ove^. Great Satum/ thou
Hast sifted well the atom universe/\par But for this reason/ that thou art the King/
And only blind from sheer supremacy/
One avenue was shaded from thine eyes!
Through which I wandered to eternal truth\par And first/ as thou wast not the first of powers/
So art thou not the last/it cannot bc^s.
Thou art not the beginning nor the end/\par From Chaos and parental Darkness came
Light/ the first fruits of that intestine broil/
That sullen ferment/ which for wondrous ends
Was ripening in itsel(%. The ripe hour camel
And with it Light/ and Light/ engendering
Upon its own producer/ forthwith touched
The whole enormous matter into Life^.
Upon that very hour/ our parentage/
The Heavens/ and the Earth/ were manifesto,
Then thou first born/ and we the giant race/
Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realnis}
Now comes the pain of truth/ to whom tis pain/\par 0 folly! for to bear all naked truths/
And to envisage circumstance/ all calm/
That is the top of sovereignty^. Mark well!
As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far
Than Chaos and blank Darkness/ though once chie(s/\par And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth
In form and shape compact and beautiful/
hi will/ in action free/ companionship/
And thousand other signs of purer life/\par So on our heels a fresh perfection treads/
A power More strong in beauty/ born of us
And fated to excel us/ as we pass
In glory that old Darkness'} nor are we
Thereby More conquered/ than by us the rule
Of shapeless Chaos Say/ doth the dull soil
Quarrel with the proud forests it hath ted/ And feedeth still/ More comely than itself>
Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves>
Or shall the tree be envious of the dove
Because it cooeth/ and hath snowy wings
To wander wherewithal and find its joys>
We are such forest trees/ and our fair boughs
Have bred forth/ not pale solitary doves/ But eagles golden-feathered/ who do tower
Above us in their beauty/ and must reign
In right thereof^. For tis the eternal law
That first in beauty should be first in mighty
^ Receive the truth/ and let it be your balm]
--Very pretty, I thought to Ummon, but do you believe it? [Not for a moment]
--But the Ultimates do? [Yes]
--And they're ready to perish in order to make way for the Ultimate
Intelligence? [Yes]
--There's one problem, perhaps too obvious to mention, but I'll mention
it anyway--why fight the war if you know who won, Ummon? You
say the Ultimate Intelligence exists in the future, is at war with the
human deity--it even sends back tidbits from the future for you to share
with the Hegemony. So the Ultimates must be triumphant. Why fight
a war and go through all this?
[KWATZ!]
[I tutor you/
create the finest retrieval persona for you
irnaginable/
and let you wander among humankind
in slowtime
to temper your forging/
but still you are
stillborn]
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
I spend a long moment thinking.
—There are multiple futures?
[A lesser light asked Ummon^
Are there multiple rutures>^'
Uimnon answered^
Does a dog have fleas>]
—But the one in which the VI becomes ascendant is a probable one?
[Yes]
—But there's also a probable future in which the Ul comes into
existence, but is thwarted by the human deity?
[It is comforting
that even the
stillborn
can think]
—You told Brawne that the human . . . consciousness—deity seems
so silly—that this human Ultimate Intelligence was triune in nature?
[Intellect/
Empathy/
and the Void Which Binds] ___ ___
—The Void Which Binds? You mean VC^Tc5 and V5S7c5 Planck
space and Planck time? Quantum reality?
[Carenil/
Keats/
thinking may become a habit]
—And it's the Empathy part of this trinity who's fied back in time to
avoid the war with your Ul?
[Correct]
[Our Ul and your Ul have
sent back
the Shrike
to find him]
—Our Ul! The human Ul sent the Shrike also?
[It allowed it]
[Empathy is a
foreign and useless. thing/
a vermiform appendix of
the intellect^
But the human Ul smells with it/
-------------------------------- 4 a s
and we use pain to
drive him out of hiding/ thus the tree]
--Tree? The Shrike's tree of thorns?
[Of course]
[It broadcasts pain
across fatline and thin/
like a whistle in
a dog's ear}
Or a god's]
I feel my own analog form waver as the truth of things strikes me.
The chaos beyond Ummon's forcefield egg is beyond imagining now,
as if the fabric of space itself were being rent by giant hands. The Core
is in turmoil.
--Vmmon, who is the human VI in our time? Where is that consciousness
hiding, lying dormant? [You must understandy
Keats/
our only chance was to create a hybrid/ Son of Man/ Son of Machine'
And make that refuge so attractive
that the fleeing Empathy
would consider no other home/
A consciousness already as near divine
as humankind has offered in thirty
generations}
an imagination which can span
space and time%. And in so offering/ and joining/
form a bond between worlds
which might allow
that world to exist
for both]
--Who, Goddamn you, Ummon! Who is it? No More of your riddles
or double-talk you formless bastard! Who?
-------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION
[You have refused
this godhood twice/
Keats\par If you refuse
a final time/
all ends here/
for time there is
no more]
[Go!
Go and die to live!
Or live a while and die
for all of us!
Either way Ummon and the rest
are finished with
you!]
[Go away!]
And in my shock and disbelief I fall, or am cast out, and fly through
the TechnoCore like a windblown leaf, tumbling through the mega-
sphere without aim or guidance, then fall into darkness even deeper
and emerge, screaming obscenities at shadows, into the metasphere.
Here, strangeness and vastness and fear and darkness with a single
campfire of light burning below.
I swim for it, flailing against formless viscosity.
It's Byron who drowns, I think, not if. Unless one counts drowning
in one's own blood and shredded lung tissue.
But now I know I have a choice. I can choose to live and stay a
mortal, not cybrid but human, not Empathy but poet.
Swimming against a strong current, I descend to the light.
"Hunt! Hunt!"
Gladstone's aide staggers in, his long face haggard and alarmed. It
is still night, but the false light of predawn dimly touches the panes,
the walls.
"My God," says Hunt and looks at me in awe.
I see his gaze and look down at the bedclothes and nightshirt soaked
with bright arterial blood.
My coughing has awakened him; my hemorrhage brought me home.
"Hunt!" I gasp and lie back on the pillows, too weak to raise an arm.
The older man sits on the bed, clasps my shoulder, takes my hand.
I know that he knows that I am a dying man.
"Hunt," I whisper, "things to tell. Wonderful things."
He sliushcs me. "Later, Severn," he says. "Rest. I'll get you cleaned
up and you can tell me later. There's plenty of time."
I try to rise but succeed only in hanging onto his arm, my small
fingers curled against his shoulder. "No," I whisper, feeling the gurgling
in my throat and hearing the gurgling in the fountain outside. "Not so
much time. Not much at all."
And I know at that instant, dying, that I am not the chosen vessel
for the human UI, not the joining of AI and human spirit, not the
Chosen One at all.
I am merely a poet dying far from home.
FORTY-TWO
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad died in battle.
Still struggling with the Shrike, aware of Moneta only as a
dim blur at the edge of his vision, Kassad shifted through time
with a lurch of vertigo and tumbled into sunlight.
The Shrike retracted its arms and stepped back, its red eyes seeming
to reflect the blood splashed on Kassad's skinsuit. Kassad's blood.
The Colonel looked around. They were near the Valley of the Time
Tombs but in another time, a distant time. In place of desert rocks and
the dunes of the barrens, a forest came to within half a klick of the
valley. In the southwest, about where the ruins of the Poets' City had
lain in Kassad's time, a living city rose, its towers and ramparts and
domed gallerias glowing softly in evening light. Between the city on
the edge of the forest and the valley, meadows of high, green grass
billowed in soft breezes blowing in from the distant Bridle Range.
To Kassad's left, the Valley of the Time Tombs stretched away as
always, only the cliff walls were toppled now, worn down by erosion
or landslide and carpeted with high grass. The Tombs themselves looked
new, only recently constructed, with workmen's scaffolds still in place
around the Obelisk and Monolith. Each of the aboveground Tombs
glowed bright gold, as if bound and burnished in the precious metal.
The doors and entrances were sealed. Heavy and inscrutable machinery
sat around the Tombs, ringing the Sphinx, with massive cables and
wire-slender booms running to and fro. Kassad knew at once that he
was in the future—perhaps centuries or millennia in the future—and
that the Tombs were on the verge of being launched back to his own
time and beyond.
Kassad looked behind him.
Several thousand men and women stood in row upon row along the
429
grassy hillside where once a cliff had been. They were totally silent,
armed, and arrayed facing Kassad like a battle line awaiting its leader.
Skinsuit fields nickered around some, but others wore only the fur,
wings, scales, exotic weapons, and elaborate colorations which Kassad
had seen in his earlier visit with Moneta, to the place/time where he
had been healed.
Moneta. She stood between Kassad and the multitudes, her skinsuit
field shimmering about her waist but also wearing a soft jumpsuit which looked to be made of black velvet. A red scarf was tied around her neck.
A rod-thin weapon was slung over her shoulder. Her gaze was fixed on
Kassad.
He weaved slightly, feeling the seriousness of his wounds beneath
the skinsuit, but also seeing something in Moneta's eyes which made
him weak with surprise.
She did not know him. Her face mirrored the surprise, wonder . . .
awe? . . . which the rows of other faces showed. The valley was silent
except for the occasional snap of pennant on pike or the low rustle of
wind in the grass as Kassad gazed at Moneta and she stared back.
Kassad looked over his shoulder.
The Shrike stood immobile as a metal sculpture, ten meters away.
Tall grass grew almost to its barbed and bladed knees.
Behind the Shrike, across the head of the valley near where the dark
band of elegant trees began, hordes of other Shrikes, legions of Shrikes,
row upon row of Shrikes, stood gleaming scalpel-sharp in the low sunlight.

Kassad recognized his Shrike, the Shrike, only because of its proximity
and the presence of his own blood on the thing's claws and carapace.
The creature's eyes pulsed crimson.
"You are the one, aren't you?" asked a soft voice behind him.
Kassad whirled, feeling the vertigo assail him for an instant. Moneta
had stopped only a few feet away. Her hair was as short as he remembered
from their first meeting, her skin as soft-looking, her eyes as
mysterious with their depths of brown-specked green. Kassad had the
urge to lift his palm and gently touch her cheekbone, run a curled
finger along the familiar curve of her lower lip. He did not.
"You're the one," Moneta said again, and this time it was not a
question. "The warrior I've prophesied to the people."
"You don't know me, Moneta?" Several of Kassad's wounds had cut
close to bone, but none hurt as much as this moment.
She shook her head, flipped her hair off her forehead with a painfully
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
familiar movement. "Moneta. It means both 'Daughter of Memory'
and 'admonisher.' That is a good name."
"It's not yours?"
She smiled. Kassad remembered that smile in the forest glen the first
time they had made love. "No," she said softly. "Not yet. I've just
arrived here. My voyage and guardianship have not yet begun." She
told him her name.
Kassad blinked, raised his hand, and set his palm along her cheek.
"We were lovers," he said. "We met on battlefields lost in memory.
You were with me everywhere." He looked around. "It all leads to this,
doesn't it."
"Yes," said Moneta.
Kassad turned to stare at the army of Shrikes across the valley. "Is
this a war? A few thousand against a few thousand?"
"A war," said Moneta. "A few thousand against a few thousand on
ten million worlds."
Kassad closed his eyes and nodded. The skinsuit served as sutures,
field dressings, and ultramorph injector for him, but the pain and
weakness from terrible wounds could not be kept at bay for much longer.
"Ten million worlds," he said and opened his eyes. "A final battle,
then?"
"Yes."
"And the winner claims the Tombs?"
Moneta glanced at the valley. "The winner determines whether the
Shrike already entombed there goes alone to pave the way for others
..." She nodded toward the army of Shrikes. "Or whether humankind
has a say in our past and future."
"I don't understand," said Kassad, his voice tight, "but soldiers rarely
understand the political situation." He leaned forward, kissed the surprised
Moneta, and removed her red scarf. "I love you," he said as he
tied the bit of cloth to the barrel of his assault rifle. Telltale's showed
that half his pulse charge and ammunition remained.
Fedmahn Kassad strode forward five paces, turned his back on the
Shrike, raised his arms to the people, still silent on the hillside, and
shouted, "For liberty!"
Three thousand voices cried back, "For liberty!" The roar did not
end with the final word.
Kassad turned, keeping the rifle and pennant high. The Shrike moved
forward half a step, opened its stance, and unfolded fingerblades.
4 3 I
Kassad shouted and attacked. Behind him, Moneta followed, weapon
held high. Thousands followed.
Later, in the carnage of the valley, Moneta and a few others of the
Chosen Warriors found Kassad's body still wrapped in a death embrace
with the battered Shrike. They removed Kassad with care, carried him
to a waiting tent in the valley, washed and tended to his ravaged body,
and bore him through the multitudes to the Crystal Monolith.
There the body of Colonel Fedmahn Kassad was laid on a bier of
white marble, and weapons were set at his feet. In the valley, a great
bonfire filled the air with light. All up and down the valley, men and
women moved with torches while other people descended through the
lapis lazuli sky, some in Hying craft as insubstantial as molded bubbles,
others on wings of energy or wrapped in circles of green and gold.
Later, when the '.[an were in place burning bright and cold above
the light-filled valley, Moneta made her farewells and entered the
Sphinx. The multitudes sang. In the fields beyond, small rodents poked
among fallen pennants and the scattered remnants of carapace and
armor, metal blade and melted steel.
Toward midnight, the crowd stopped singing, gasped, and moved
back. The Time Tombs glowed. Fierce tides ofanti-entropic force drove
the crowds farther back--to the entrance of the valley, across the battlefield,
back to the city glowing softly in the night.
In the valley, the great Tombs shimmered, faded from gold to bronze,
and started their long voyage back.
Brawne Lamia passed the glowing Obelisk and struggled on against
a wall of raging wind. Sand lacerated her skin and clawed at her eyes.
Static lightning crackled on the cliff tops and added to the eerie glow
surrounding the Tombs. Brawne spread her hands over her face and
stumbled on, squinting between her fingers to find the trail.
Brawne saw a golden light deeper than the general glow flowing
through the shattered panes of the Crystal Monolith and seeping out
over the twisting dunes that were covering the valley floor. Someone
was inside the Monolith.
Brawne had vowed to go straight to the Shrike Palace, do whatever
she could to free Silenus, and then return to Sol, not to be turned aside
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
by diversions. But she had seen the silhouette of a human form inside
the tomb. Kassad was still missing. Sol had told her of the Consul's
mission, but perhaps the diplomat had returned while the storm raged.
Father Dure was unaccounted for.
Brawne came closer to the glow and paused at the jagged entrance
to the Monolith.
The space inside was expansive and impressive, rising almost a
hundred meters to a half-sensed skylight roof. The walls, seen from
within, were translucent, with what appeared to be sunlight turning
them a rich gold and umber. The heavy light fell on the scene at the
center of the wide area before her.
Fedmahn Kassad lay on some sort of stone funeral bier. He was
clothed in FORCE dress black, and his large, pale hands were crossed
on his chest. Weapons, unknown to Brawne except for Kassad's assault
rifle, lay at his feet. The Colonel's face was gaunt in death, but no More gaunt than it had been in life. His expression was calm. There
was no question that he was dead; the silence of death hung about the
place like incense.
But it was the other person in the room who had shown the silhouette
from afar and who now commanded Brawne's attention.
A young woman in her mid- to late twenties knelt by the bier. She
wore a black jumpsuit, had short hair, fair skin, and large eyes. Brawne
remembered the soldier's story, told during their long trip to the valley,
remembered the details of Kassad's phantom lover.
"Moneta," whispered Brawne.
The young woman had been on one knee, her right hand extended
to touch the stone next to the Colonel's body. Violet containment fields
flickered around the bier, and some other energy--a powerful vibration
in the air--refracted light around Moneta as well so that the scene was
cast in haze and halo.
The young woman raised her head, peered at Brawne, rose to her
feet, and nodded.
Brawne started to step forward, a score of questions already forming
in her mind, but the time tides within the tomb were too powerful and
drove her back with waves of vertigo and deja vu.
When Brawne looked up, the bier remained, Kassad lay in state
under his forcefield, but Moneta was gone.
Brawne had the urge to run back to the Sphinx, find Sol, tell him
everything, and wait there until the storm abated and the morning
came. But above the rasp and whine of wind, Brawne thought that she
-------------------------------------------------- 433 --------------------------------------------------
could still hear the screams from the thorn tree, invisible behind its
curtain of sand.
Pulling her collar high, Brawne walked back into the storm and turned
up the trail toward the Shrike Palace.
The mass of rock floated in space like a cartoon of a mountain, all
jagged spires, knife-edge ridges, absurdly vertical faces, narrow ledges,
broad rock balconies, and a snow-capped summit wide enough for only
one person to stand there--and he or she only if both feet were together.
The river twisted in from space, passed through the multilayered
containment field half a klick out from the mountain, crossed a grassy
swale on the widest of the rock balconies, and then plunged a hundred
meters or More in a slow-motion waterfall to the next terrace, then
rebounding in artfully directed rivulets of spray to half a dozen minor
streams and waterfalls which found their way down the face of the
mountain.
The Tribunal held session on the highest terrace. Seventeen
Ousters--six males, six females, and five of indeterminate sex--sat
within a stone circle set in the wider circle of rock-walled grass. Both
circles held the Consul as their locus.
"You're aware," said Freeman Ghenga, the Spokesman of the Eligible
Citizens of the Freeman Clan of the Transtaural Swarm, "that
we are aware of your betrayal?"
"Yes," said the Consul. He had worn his finest dark blue bolo suit,
maroon cape, and diplomat's tricorne cap.
"Aware of the fact that you murdered Freeman Andil, Freeman Iliam,
Coredwell Betz, and Mizenspesh Torrence."
"I knew Andil's name," said the Consul softly. "I wasn't introduced to the technicians."
"But you murdered them?"
"Yes."
"Without provocation or warning."
"Yes."
"Murdered them to take possession of the device which they had
delivered to Hyperion. The machine which we told you would collapse
the so-called time tides, open the Time Tombs, and release the Shrike
from bondage."
"Yes." The Consul's gaze appeared to be focused on something above
Freeman Ghenga's shoulder but far, far away.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
"We explained," said Ghenga, "that this device was to be used after we had successfully driven off the Hegemony ships. When our invasion
and occupation was imminent. When the Shrike could be ... controlled."

"Yes."
"Yet you murdered our people, lied to us about it, and activated the
device yourself, years ahead of time."
"Yes." Melio Arundez and Theo Lane were standing beside and a
step behind the Consul, and their faces were grim.
Freeman Chenga folded her arms. She was a tall woman in the
classic Ouster mode--bald, thin, draped in a regal, dark blue flowsuit
which seemed to absorb light. Her face was old but almost free of
wrinkles. Her eyes were dark.
"Even though this was four of your standard years ago, did you think
we would forget?" asked Ghenga.
"No." The Consul lowered his gaze to meet hers. It appeared as if
he almost smiled. "Few cultures forget traitors. Freeman Ghenga."
"Yet you returned."
The Consul did not reply. Standing near him, Theo Lane felt a light
breeze tug at his own formal tricome. Theo felt as if he were still
dreaming. The ride here had been surreal.
Three Ousters had met them in a long, low gondola, floating easily
on the calm waters below the Consul's ship. With the three Hegemony
visitors sitting amidships, the Ouster at the stem had pushed off with
a long pole, and the ship had floated back the way it had come, as if
the current of the impossible river had reversed itself. Theo had actually
closed his eyes as they approached the waterfall where the stream rose
perpendicular to the surface of their asteroid, but when he opened his
eyes a second later, down was still down, and the river seemed to be
flowing along normally enough, even though the grassy sphere of the
small world hung to one side like a great, curved wall and stars were
visible through the two-meter-thick ribbon of water beneath them.
Then they were through the containment field, out of the atmosphere, and their velocity increased as they followed the twisting ribbon
of water. There was a tube of containment sphere around them--logic
and the absence of their immediate and dramatic death dictated that
there had to be--but it lacked the usual shimmer and optic texture that
was so reassuring on Templar treeships or the occasional tourist habitat
open to space. Here there were only the river, the boat, the people,
and the immensity of space.
-------------------------------------------------- 435 --------------------------------------------------
"They can't possibly use this as their form of transportation between
Swarm units," Dr. Melio Arundez had said in a shaky voice. Theo had
noted that Arundez also was gripping the gunwales with white fingers.
Neither the Ouster in the stern nor the two seated in the bow had
communicated with anything More than a nod of confirmation when
the Consul had asked if this then was their promised transportation.
"They're showing off with the river," the Consul had said softly. "It's
used when the Swarm is at rest, but for ceremonial purposes. Deploying
it while the Swarm is moving is for effect."
"To impress us with their superior technology?" asked Theo, sotto
voce.
The Consul nodded.
The river had wound and twisted through space, sometimes almost
doubling back on itself in huge, illogical loops, sometimes wrapping
itself in tight spirals like a fiberplastic cord, always gleaming in sunlight
from Hyperion's star and receding to infinity ahead of them. At times
the river occluded the sun, and the colors then were magnificent; Theo
gasped as he looked at the river loop a hundred meters above them and
saw fish silhouetted against the solar disk.
But always the bottom of the boat was down, and they hurtled along
at what must have been near cislunar transfer speeds on a river unbroken
by rocks or rapids. It was, as Arundez noted some minutes into their
voyage, like driving one's canoe over the edge of an immense waterfall
and trying to enjoy the ride on the way down.
The river passed some of the elements of the Swarm, which filled
the sky like false stars: massive comet farms, their dusty surfaces broken
by the geometries of hard vacuum crops; zero-g globe cities, great irregular
spheres of transparent membrane looking like improbable amoebae
filled with busy flora and fauna; ten-klick-long thrust clusters,
accreted over centuries, their innermost modules and lifecans and 'col-
ogies looking like something stolen from O'Neill's Boondoggle and the
dawn of the space age; wandering forests covering hundreds of kilometers
like immense, floating kelp beds, connected to their thrust clusters and
command nodes by containment fields and tangled skeins of roots and
runners--the spherical tree-forms weaving to gravity breezes and burning
bright green and deep orange and the hundred shades of Old Earth
autumn when ignited by direct sunlight; hollowed-out asteroids long-
since abandoned by their residents, now given over to automated manufacturing
and heavy-metal reprocessing, every centimeter of surface
rock covered by prerusted structures, chimneys, and skeletal cooling
________ THE PALL OF HYPERION ________
towers, the glow of their internal fusion fires making each cinderish
world look like Vulcan's forge; immense spherical docking globes, given
scale only by the torchship- and cruiser-size warcraft flitting around
their surfaces like spcrmatazoa attacking an egg; and, most indelible,
organisms which the river came near or which flew near the river . . .
organisms which might have been manufactured or born but probably
were both, great butterfly shapes, opening wings of energy to the sun,
insects which were spacecraft or vice versa, their antennae turning
toward the river and gondola and its passengers as they passed, multifaceted
eyes gleaming in starlight, smaller winged shapes--humans--
entering and exiting an opening in a belly the size of a FORCE attack
carrier's dropship bay.
And finally had come the mountain--an entire range of mountains,
actually: some blistered with a hundred environment bubbles, some
open to space but still heavily populated, some connected to others by
suspension bridges thirty klicks long or tributary rivers, others regal in
their solitude, many as empty and formal as a Zen garden. Then the
final mountain, rising higher than Mons Olympus or Asquith's Mount
Hillary, and the river's penultimate plunge toward its summit, Thco
and the Consul and Arundcz, pale and silent, gripping the thwarts with
quiet intensity as they plunged the final few kilometers with a suddenly
perceptible and terrifying velocity. Finally, in the impossible last
hundred meters as the river shed energy without deceleration, wider
atmosphere surrounded them once again, and the boat floated to a halt
in a grassy meadow where the Ouster Clan Tribunal stood waiting, and
stones rose in their circle of Stonehengc silence.
"If they did this to impress me," Theo had whispered as the boat
bumped the grassy shore, "they succeeded."
"Why did you return to the Swarm?" asked Freeman Ghenga. The
woman paced, moving in the minuscule gravity with the grace common
only to those born in space.
"CEO Gladstone asked me to," said the Consul.
"And you came knowing that your own life would be forfeit?"
The Consul was too much the gentleman and diplomat to shrug,
but his expression conveyed the same sentiment.
"What does Gladstone want?" asked another Ouster, the man who
had been introduced by Ghenga as Spokesman of the Eligible Citizens
Coredwell Minmun.
The Consul repeated the CEO's five points.
Spokesman Minmun folded his arms and looked at Freeman
Ghenga.
"I will answer now," said Ghenga. She looked at Arundez and Theo.
"You two will listen carefully in the event that the man who brought
these questions does not return to your ship with you."
"Just a minute," said Theo, stepping forward to face the taller Ouster,
"before passing judgment here, you have to take into account the fact
that--"
"Silence," commanded Spokesman Freeman Ghenga, but Theo had
already been silenced by the Consul's hand on his shoulder.
"I will answer these questions now," repeated Ghenga. Far above
her, a score of the small warships which FORCE had called lancers
flashed silently past, darting like a school of fish in three-hundredg
zigs and zags.
"Firstly," said Ghenga, "Gladstone asks why we are attacking the
Web." She paused, looked at the other sixteen Ousters assembled there,
and continued. "We are not. Except for this Swarm, attempting to
occupy Hyperion before the Time Tombs opened, there are no Swarms
attacking the Web."
All three of the Hegemony men had stepped forward. Even the
Consul had lost his veneer of bemused calm and was all but stuttering
in excitement.
"But that's not true! We saw the ..."
"I saw the fatlined images from the ..."
"Heaven's Gate is destroyed! God's Grove burned!"
"Silence," commanded Freeman Ghenga. Into that silence she said,
"Only this Swarm is doing battle with the Hegemony. Our Sister
Swarms are where the long-range Web detectors had first placed them
. . . moving away from the Web, fleeing from further provocations
such as Bressia's attacks."
The Consul rubbed his face like a man awakening. "But then
who . . . ?"
"Precisely," said Freeman Ghenga. "Who would have the ability to
carry out such a charade? And the motive to slaughter humans by the
billion?"
"The Core?" breathed the Consul.
The mountain was slowly rotating, and at this moment they turned
into night. A convection breeze moved across the mountain terrace,
rustling the Ousters' robes and the Consul's cape. Overhead, the stars
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
seemed to explode into brilliance. The great rocks of the Stonehenge
circle seemed to glow from some internal warmth.
Theo Lane stood next to the Consul, fearing that the man might
collapse. "We have only your word on this," Theo said to the Ouster
spokesman. "It makes no sense."
Ghenga did not blink. "We will show you proof. Void-Which-Binds
transmission locators. Real-time starfield images from our sister
Swarms."
"Void Which Binds?" said Arundez. His usually calm voice showed
agitation.
"What you call the fatline." Spokesman Freeman Ghenga paced to
the nearest stone and ran her hand across its rough surface as if taking
warmth from the heat within. Starfields pirouetted above.
"To answer Gladstone's second question," she said, "we do not know
where the Core resides. We have fled rt and fought it and sought it and
feared it for centuries, but we have not found it. You must tell us the
answer to that question! We have declared war on this parasite entity
you call the TechnoCore."
The Consul seemed to sag. "We have no idea. Authorities in the
Web have sought the Core since before the Hegira, but it is as elusive
as El Dorado. We've found no hidden worlds, no massive asteroids
crammed with hardware, and no hint of it on Web worlds." He gestured
tiredly with his left hand. "For all we know, you are hiding the Core
in one of your Swarms."
"We are not," said Spokesman Coredwell Minmun.
The Consul did shrug at last. "The Hegira bypassed thousands of
worlds in the Grand Survey. Anything that didn't score at least nine
point seven on their ten-point terrabase scale was ignored. The Core
could be anywhere along those early lines of flight and exploration.
We'll never find it ... and if we do, it will be years after the Web is
destroyed. You were our last hope for locating it."
Ghenga shook her head. Far above.them, the summit caught the
light of sunrise while the terminator moved down the icefields toward
them with almost alarming rapidity. "Thirdly, Gladstone asked for our
demands for a cease-fire. Except for this Swarm, in this system, we are
not the ones attacking. We will accept a cease-fire as soon as Hyperion
is under our control . . . which should be momentarily. We have just
been informed that our expeditionary forces now have control of the
capital and its spaceport."
"The hell you say," said Theo, hands curling into fists despite himself.
"The hell we do say," agreed Freeman Ghenga. "Tell Gladstone that
we will now join you in a common fight against the TechnoCore."
She glanced toward the silent members of the Tribunal. "Since we are
many years' travel from the Web, however, and we do not trust your
Core-controlled farcasters, our help must necessarily come in the form
of retaliating for the destruction of your Hegemony. You will be
avenged."
"That's reassuring," said the Consul drily.
"Fourthly, Gladstone asks if we will meet with her. The answer is
yes... if she is, as she says she is, willing to come to Hyperion system.
We have preserved the FORCE farcaster for just that eventuality. We
will not travel by farcaster."
"Why not?" asked Arundez.
A third Ouster, not introduced, one of the furred and beautifully
altered type, spoke. "The device you call a farcaster is an abomination
... a defilement of the Void Which Binds."
"Ah, religious reasons," said the Consul, nodding in understanding.
The exotically striped and furred Ouster shook his head adamantly.
"No! The farcaster web is the yoke on humankind's neck, the contract
of subservience which has bound you to stagnation. We will have none
of it."
"Fifthly," said Freeman Ghenga, "Gladstone's mention of the death-
wand explosive device is nothing but a crude ultimatum. But as we
have said, it is aimed at the wrong opponent. The forces sweeping into
your frail and failing Web are not of the Clans of the Twelve Sister
Swarms."
"We have only your word on that," said the Consul. His gaze, now
locked with Ghenga's, was firm and defiant.
"You have my word on nothing," said Spokesman Ghenga. "Clan
elders do not give their word to Core slaves. But this is the truth."
The Consul seemed distracted as he half-turned toward Theo. "We
have to get this word to Gladstone immediately." He turned back to
Ghenga. "May my friends return to the ship to communicate your
response. Spokesman?"
Ghenga nodded and gestured for the gondola to be made ready.
"We're not going back without you," Theo said to the Consul, stepping
between him and the closest Ousters as if to protect the older man
with his own body.
"Yes," said the Consul, touching Theo's upper arm again, "you are.
You must."
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
"He's right," said Arundez, pulling Theo away before the young
Governor-General can speak again. "This is too important to risk not
communicating. You go. I'll stay with him."
Ghenga gestured toward two of the More massive exotic Ousters.
"You will both return to the ship. The Consul will remain. The Tribunal
has not yet decided his fate."
Arundez and Theo both wheeled with fists raised, but the furred
Ousters seized them and moved them away with the restrained effort
of adults handling small but unruly children.
The Consul watched them set in place in the gondola, and he stifled
the urge to wave as the boat moved twenty meters down the placid
stream, dipped out of sight beyond the curve of the terrace, and then
reappeared climbing the waterfall toward black space. It was lost to sight
within minutes in the glare of the sun. He turned slowly in a full circle,
making eye contact with each of the seventeen Ousters.
"Let's get it over with," said the Consul. "I've waited a long time for
this."
Sol Weintraub sat between the great paws of the Sphinx and watched
the storm abate, wind dying from scream to sigh to whisper, curtains
of dust diminishing and then parting to show the stars, and finally the
long night settling into a dreadful calm. The Tombs glowed More
brightly than before, but nothing came out of the blazing doorway of
the Sphinx, and Sol could not enter; the push of blinding light was like
a thousand irresistible fingers against his chest, and lean and strain as
he might, Sol could get no closer than three meters from the doorway.
Whatever stood or moved or waited inside was lost to sight in the glare
of light.
Sol sat and held onto the stone stair as time tides pulled at him,
tugged at him, and made him weep in the false shock of dejd vu. The
entire Sphinx seemed to rock and pitch in the violent storm of expanding
and contracting anti-entropic fields.
Rachel.
Sol would not leave while there was any chance his daughter might
be alive. Lying on cold stone, listening to the wind scream die, Sol
saw the cold stars appear, saw the meteor trail and laser-lance thrust
and counterthrust of orbital war, knew in his heart that the war was
lost, that the Web was in danger, that great empires were falling as he
watched, the human race might be hanging in the balance this endless
night . . . and he did not care.
Sol Weintraub cared about his daughter.
And even as he lay there, cold, buffeted by winds and time tides,
bruised with fatigue and hollow from hunger, Sol felt a certain peace
descend on him. He had given his daughter to a monster but not because
God had commanded him to, no( because fate or fear had willed it,
but only because his daughter had appeared to him in a dream and
told him that it was all right, that this was the thing to do, that their
love--his and Sarai's and Rachel's--demanded it.
In the end, thought Sol, past logic and hope, it is dreams and the
love of those dearest to us that form Abraham's answer to God.
Sol's comlog no longer worked. It might have been an hour or five
hours since he had handed his dying infant to the Shrike. Sol lay back,
still gripping stone as the time tides made the Sphinx bob like a small
ship on a big sea, and stared at the stars and battle above.
Sparks drifted across the sky, glowed bright as supcmovae as laser
lances found them, and then fell in a shower of molten debris--white-
hot to red to blue flame to darkness. Sol imagined dropships burning,
imagined Ouster troops and Hegemony Marines dying in a scream of
atmosphere and melting titanium ... he tried to imagine this . . . and
failed. Sol realized that space battles and the movements of fleets and
the fall of empires were beyond his imagining, hidden from the reservoirs
of his sympathy or understanding. Such things belonged to
Thucydides and Tacitus and Catton and Wu. Sol had met his senator
from Barnard's World, had met with her several times in his and Sarai's
quest to save Rachel from Merlin's sickness, but Sol could not imagine Feldstein's participation on the scale of interstellar war--or in anything
much larger than dedicating a new medical center in the capital of
Bussard or pressing the flesh during a rally at the university in Crawford.
Sol had never met the current Hegemony CEO, but as a scholar,
he had enjoyed her subtle replay of the speeches of such classical figures
as Churchill and Lincoln and Alvarez-Temp. But now, lying between
the paws of a great stone beast and weeping for his daughter, Sol could
not imagine what was in that woman's mind as she made decisions that
would save or damn billions, preserve or betray the greatest empire in
human history.
Sol didn't give a damn. He wanted his daughter back. He wanted
Rachel to be alive despite all logic to the contrary.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPEHION ----------------
Lying between the Sphinx's stone paws on a besieged world in a
ravaged empire, Sol Weintraub wiped tears from his eyes the better to
see the stars and thought ofYeats's poem "A Prayer for My Daughter":
Once More the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the Hooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea. . . .
All Sol wanted, he realized now, was the same possibility once again
to worry about those future years which every parent fears and dreads.
To not allow her childhood and teenage years and awkward young
adulthood to be stolen and destroyed by the sickness.
Sol had spent his life willing the return of things unreturnable. He
remembered the day he had come upon Sarai folding Rachel's toddler
clothes and setting them in a box in the attic, and he recalled her tears
and his own sense of loss for the child they still had but who was lost
to them through the simple arrow of time. Sol knew now that little
could be returned except by memory--that Sarai was dead and beyond
ability to return, that Rachel's childhood friends and world were gone
forever, that even the society he had left only a few weeks of his time
ago was in the process of being lost beyond return.
And thinking of that, lying between the taloned paws of the Sphinx
as the wind died and the false stars burned, Sol is reminded of part of
a different and far More ominous poem by Yeats:
-------------------------------------------------- 443 --------------------------------------------------
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out ofSpiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Sol does not know. Sol discovers again that he does not care. Sol wants
his daughter back.
The consensus in the War Council seemed to be to drop the bomb.
Meina Gladstone sat at the head of the long table and felt the peculiar
and not-unpleasant sense ofseparateness which comes from far too little
sleep over far too long a period. To close her eyes, even for a second,
meant sliding on the black ice of fatigue, so she did not close her eyes,
even when they burned and when the drone of briefings, conversation,
and urgent debate faded and receded through thick curtains of exhaustion.

Together the Council had watched as the embers of Task Force
181.2--Commander Lee's attack group--had winked out one by one
until only a dozen of the original seventy-four were left still driving
toward the center of the approaching Swarm. Lee's cruiser was among
the survivors.
During this silent attrition, this abstract and oddly attractive representation
of violent and all-too-real death. Admiral Singh and General
Morpurgo had completed their gloomy assessment of the war.
". . . FORCE and the New Bushido were designed for limited conflicts,
minor skirmishes, proscribed limits and modest aims," summarized
Morpurgo. "With less than half a million men and women under
arms, FORCE would not be comparable to the armies of one of the
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Old Earth nation states a thousand years ago. The Swarm can swamp
us with sheer numbers, outgun our fleets and win through arithmetic."
Senator Kolchev glowered from his place at the opposite end of the
table. The Lusian had been much More active in the briefing and
debate than Gladstone--questions were turned his way More frequently
than to her--almost as if everyone in the room were subliminally aware
that power was shifting, the torch of leadership was being passed.
Nor yet, thought Gladstone, tapping her chin with steepled fingers
and listening to Kolchev cross-examine the General.
". . . of falling back and defending essential worlds on the second-
wave list--Tau Ceti Center, of course, but also necessary industrial
worlds such as Renaissance Minor, Fuji, Deneb Vier, and Lusus?"
General Morpurgo looked down and shuffled papers as if to hide the
sudden flash of anger in his eyes. "Senator, less than ten standard days
remain until the second wave completes its target list. Renaissance
Minor will fall under attack within ninety hours. What I am saying is
that with the current size, structure, and technology available to
FORCE, it would be doubtful if we could hold one system . . . say, TVs."
Senator Kakinuma rose. "This is not acceptable. General."
Morpurgo looked up. "I agree. Senator. But it is true."
President Pro Tern Denzel-Hiat-Amin sat shaking his gray and mottled
head. "It makes no sense. Were there no plans to defend the Web?"
Admiral Singh spoke from his seat. "The best estimates of the threat
told us that we would have a minimum of eighteen months should the
Swarms ever turn toward the attack."
Minister of Diplomacy Persov cleared his throat. "And ... if we
were to concede these twenty-five worlds to the Ousters, Admiral, how
long until the first or second wave could attack other Web worlds?"
Singh did not have to refer to his notes or comlog. "Depending upon
their target, M. Persov, the nearest Web world--Esperance--would
be nine standard months away from the closest Swarm. The most distant
target--Home System--would be some fourteen years by Hawking
drive."
"Time enough to shift to a war economy," said Senator Feldstein.
Her constituency on Barnard's World had less than forty standard hours
to live. Feldstein had vowed to be with them when the end came. Her
voice was precise and passionless. "It makes sense. Cut your losses.
Even with TC2 and two dozen More worlds lost, the Web can produce
incredible quantities of war materiel . . . even in nine months. Within
the years it will take for the Ousters to penetrate farther into the Web,
we should be able to beat them through sheer industrial mass."
Defense Minister Imoto shook his head. "There are irreplacable raw
materials being lost in this first and second wave. The disruption to
Web economy will be staggering."
"Do we have a choice?" asked Senator Peters from Deneb Drei.
All eyes turned toward the person sitting next to AI Councilor Albedo.
As if to underline the importance of the moment, a new Al persona
had been admitted to the War Council and had given the presentation
on the awkwardly labeled "deathwand device." Councilor Nansen was
tall, male, tanned, relaxed, impressive, convincing, trustworthy, and
imbued with that rare charisma of leadership that made one both like
and respect the person on sight.
Meina Gladstone feared and loathed the new Councilor at once. She
felt as if this projection had been designed by AI experts to create just
the response of trust and obedience she sensed others at the table already
granting. And Nansen's message, she feared, meant death.
The deathwand had been Web technology for centuries--designed
by the Core and limited to FORCE personnel and a few specialized
security forces such as Government House's and Gladstone's Praetorians.
It did not bum, blast, shoot, slag, or incinerate. It made no sound
and projected no visible ray or sonic footprint. It simply made the target
die.
If the target were human, that is. A deathwand's range was limited
--no More than fifty meters--but within that range, a targeted human
died, while other animals and property were totally safe. Autopsies
showed scrambled synapses but no other damage. Deathwands merely
made one cease to be. FORCE officers had carried them as short-range
personal weapons and symbols of authority for generations.
Now, Councilor Nansen revealed, the Core had perfected a device
that utilized the deathwand principle on a larger scale. They had hesitated
to reveal its existence, but with the imminent and terrible threat
of the Ouster invasion ...
The questioning had been energetic and sometimes cynical, with the
military More skeptical than the politicians. Yes, the deathwand device
could rid us of Ousters, but what about the Hegemony population?
Remove them to shelter on one of the labyrinthine worlds, Nansen
had replied, repeating the earlier plan of Councilor Albedo. Five kilometers
of rock would shield them from any effects of the widening
deathwand ripples.
Normal;FR1;FR2;THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
How far did these death rays propagate?
Their effect diminished to below the lethal level at just under three
light-years, Nansen responded calmly, confidently, the ultimate salesman
in the penultimate sales pitch. A wide enough radius to rid any
system of the attacking Swarm. Small enough to protect all but the
nearest neighboring star systems. Ninety-two percent of the Web worlds
had no other inhabited world within five light-years.
And what about those who can't be evacuated? Morpurgo had demanded.

Councilor Nansen had smiled and opened his palm as if to show
there was nothing hidden there. Do not activate the device until your
authorities are sure that all Hegemony citizens are evacuated or shielded,
he had said. It will be, after all, totally under your control.
Feldstein, Sabenstorafem, Peters, Persov, and many of the others
had been instantly enthusiastic. A secret weapon to end all secret weapons.
The Ousters could be warned ... a demonstration could be arranged.

I'm sorry. Councilor Nansen had said. His teeth when he smiled
were as pearly white as his robes. There can be no demonstration. The
weapon works just as a deathwand, only across a much wider region.
There will be no property damage or blast effect, no measurable shock
wave above the neutrino level. Merely dead invaders.
To demonstrate it. Councilor Albedo had explained, you must use
it on at least one Ouster Swarm.
The excitement of the War Council had not been lessened. Perfect,
said All Thing Speaker Gibbons, choose one Swarm, test the device,
fatline the results to the other Swarms, and give them a one-hour
deadline to break off their attacks. We didn't provoke this war. Better
millions of the enemy dead than a war that claims tens of billions over
the next decade.
Hiroshima, Gladstone had said, her only comment of the day. It had
been said too softly for anyone except her aide Sedeptra to hear.
Morpurgo had asked: Do we know that the killing rays will become
ineffective at three light-years? Have you tested it?
Councilor Nansen smiled. If he answered yes, there were heaps of
dead humans somewhere. If he said no, the device's reliability was
seriously at stake. We are certain that it will work, said Nansen. Our
simulation runs were foolproof.
The Kiev Team AJs said that about the first farcaster singularity,
thought Gladstone. The one that destroyed Earth. She said nothing
aloud.
Still, Singh and Morpurgo and Van Zeidt and their specialists had
spiked Nansen's guns by showing that Mare Infinitus could not be
evacuated quickly enough and that the only first-wave Web world that
had its own labyrinth was Armaghast, which was within a light-year of
Pacem and Svoboda.
Councilor Nansen's earnest, helpful smile did not fade. "You want
a demonstration, and that would be only sensible," he said quietly.
"You need to show the Ousters that invasion will not be tolerated, while
focusing on the minimum loss of life. And you need to shelter your
indigenous Hegemony population." He paused, folded his hands on
the tabletop. "What about Hyperion?"
The buzz around the table deepened in tone.
"It's not really a Web world," said Speaker Gibbons.
"Yet it is in the Web now, with the FORCE farcaster still in place!"
cried Garion Persov of Diplomacy, obviously a convert to the idea.
General Morpurgo's stem expression did not shift. "That will be there
only another few hours. We're protecting the singularity sphere now,
but it could fall at any time. Much of Hyperion itself is already in
Ouster hands."
"But Hegemony personnel have been evacuated?" said Persov.
Singh answered. "All but the Governor-General. He could not be
found in the confusion."
"A pity," said Minister Persov without much conviction, "but the
point is that the remaining population is mostly Hyperion indigenie,
with easy access to the labyrinth there, correct?"
Barbre Dan-Gyddis of the Ministry of Economy, whose son had been
a fiberplastic plantation manager near Port Romance, said, "Within
three hours? Impossible."
Nansen stood. "I think not," he said. "We can fatline the warning
to the remaining Home Rule Authorities in the capital, and they can
begin the evacuation immediately. There are thousands of entrances
to the labyrinth on Hyperion."
"The capital of Keats is under siege," growled Morpurgo. "The entire
planet is under attack."
Councilor Nansen nodded sadly. "And soon will be put to the sword
by the barbarian Ousters. A difficult choice, gentlemen and ladies. But
the device will work. The invasion will simply cease to exist in Hyperion
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
space. Millions might be saved on the planet, and the effect on the
Ouster invasion forces elsewhere would be significant. We know that
their so-called Sister Swarms communicate by fatline. The termination
of the first Swarm to invade Hegemony space--the Hyperion Swarm
--may be the perfect deterrent."
Nansen shook his head again and looked around with an expression
of almost paternal concern. There could be no simulating such pained
sincerity. "It has to be your decision. The weapon is yours to use or
disregard. It pains the Core to take any human life ... or, through
inaction, allow any human life to come to harm. But in this case,
where the lives of billions are at risk ..." Nansen opened his hands
again, shook his head a final time, and sat back, obviously leaving the
decision to human minds and hearts.
Babble around the long table rose. Debate grew almost violent.
"CEO!" called General Morpurgo.
In the sudden silence, Gladstone lifted her gaze to the holographic
displays in the darkness above them. The Mare Infinitus Swarm fell
toward that ocean world like a torrent of blood aimed toward a small
blue sphere. Only three of the orange Task Force 181.2 embers remained,
and even as the silent Council watched, two of these winked
out. Then the final one was extinguished.
Gladstone whispered into her comlog. "Communications, any last
message from Admiral Lee?"
"None to the command center, CEO," came the response. "Only
standard fatline telemetry during the battle. It appears they did not reach
the center of the Swarm."
Gladstone and Lee had held hopes of capturing Ousters, of interrogations,
of establishing the identity of their enemy beyond a doubt.
Now that young man of such energy and ability was dead--dead at
Meina Gladstone's command--and seventy-four ships of the line were
wasted.
"Mare Infinitus farcaster destroyed by preset plasma explosives," reported
Admiral Singh. "Forward elements of the Swarm now entering- cislunar defense perimeter." :
No one spoke. The holographies showed the tidal wave of blood-red
lights engulfing the Mare Infinitus system, the final orange embers ;
around that gold world blinking out.
A few hundred of the Ouster ships remained in orbit, presumably
reducing Mare Infinitus's elegant floating cities and ocean farms to
burning debris, but the major part of the blood tide rolled on, out of
the region projected above.
"Asquith System in three standard hours, forty-one minutes," intoned
a technician near the display board.
Senator Kolchcv stood. "Let's put the Hyperion demonstration to a
vote," he said, ostensibly addressing Gladstone but speaking to the
crowd.
Meina Gladstone tapped her lower lip. "No," she said at last, "no
vote. We will use the device. Admiral, prepare the torchship armed
with the device to translate to Hyperion space and then broadcast warnings
to planet and Ouster alike. Give them three hours. Minister Imoto,
send coded fatline signals to Hyperion telling them that they must. . .
repeat, must . . . seek shelter in the labyrinths at once. Tell them that
a new weapon is being tested."
Morpurgo wiped sweat from his face. "CEO, we can't run any risk
that this device can fall into enemy hands."
Gladstone looked at Councilor Nansen and tried to make her expression
reveal nothing of what she felt. "Councilor, can this device be
rigged so that it detonates automatically if our ship is captured or destroyed?"

"Yes, CEO."
"Do it. Explain all necessary failsafe devices to the proper FORCE
experts." She turned toward Sedeptra. "Prepare a webwide broadcast
for me, scheduled to commence ten minutes before the device is to be
detonated. I have to tell our people about this."
"Is that wise . . . ?" began Senator Feldstein.
"It is necessary," said Gladstone. She rose, and the thirty-eight people
in the room rose a second later. "I'm going to get a few minutes sleep
while you people work. I want the device ready and in-system and
Hyperion warned immediately. I want contingency plans and priorities
for a negotiated settlement ready by the time I awaken in thirty minutes."
Gladstone looked out at the group, knowing that one way or the
other, most of the people there would be out of power and out of office
within the next twenty hours. One way or the other, it was her last day
as CEO,
Meina Gladstone smiled. "Council dismissed," she said and farcast
to her private quarters to take a nap.
FORTY-THREE
Leigh Hunt had never seen anyone die before. The last day and
night he spent with Keats--Hunt still thought of him as Joseph
Severn but was sure that the dying man now thought of himself as John Keats--were the most difficult in Hunt's life. The hemorrhages came frequently during Keat's last day of life, and between these bouts
of retching, Hunt could hear the phlegm boiling in the small man's
throat and chest as he fought for life.
Hunt sat next to the bed in the small front room in the Piazza di
Spagna and listened to Keats babble as sunrise moved to midmorning
and midmorning faded to early afternoon. Keats was feverish and moving
in and out of consciousness, but he insisted that Hunt listen and
write everything down--they had found ink, pen, and foolscap in the
other room--and Hunt complied, scribbling furiously as the dying
cybrid raved on about metaspheres and lost divinities, the responsibilities
of poets and the passing of gods, and the Miltonic civil war in the Core.
Hunt had perked up then and squeezed Keats's feverish hand. "Where
is the Core, Sev-- Keats? Where is it?"
The dying man had broken into a visible sweat and turned his face
away. "Don't breathe on me--it comes like ice!"
"The Core," repeated Hunt, leaning back, feeling close to tears from
pity and frustration, "where is the Core?"
Keats smiled, his head moving back and forth in pain. The effort he
made to breathe sounded like wind through a ruptured bellows. "Like
spiders in the web," he muttered, "spiders in the web. Weaving . . .
letting us weave it for them . . . then trussing us and draining us. Like
flies caught by spiders in the web."
Hunt quit writing as he listened to More of this seemingly senseless
450
babble. Then he understood. "My God," he whispered. "They're in
the farcaster system."
Keats tried to sit up, grasped Hunt's arm with a terrible strength.
"Tell your leader, Hunt. Have Gladstone rip it out. Rip it out. Spiders
in the web. Man god and machine god . . . must find the union. Not
me!" He dropped back on the pillows and started weeping without
sound. "Not me."
Keats slept some through the long afternoon, although Hunt knew
that it was something closer to death than sleep. The slightest sound
would start the dying poet awake and set him wrestling to breathe. By
sunset Keats was too weak to expectorate, and Hunt had to help him
lower his head over the basin to allow gravity to clear his mouth and
throat of bloody mucus.
Several times, when Keats fell into fitful naps, Hunt walked to the
window and once down the stairs to the front door to stare into the
Piazza, Something tall and sharp edged stood in the deepest shadows
opposite the Piazza near the base of the steps.
In the evening. Hunt himself dozed off while sitting upright in the
hard chair next to Keats's bed. He awoke from a dream of falling and
put his hand out to steady himself only to find Keats awake and staring
at him.
"Did you ever see anyone die?" asked Keats between soft gasps for
breath.
"No." Hunt thought that there was something odd about the young
man's gaze, as if Keats were looking at him but seeing someone else.
"Well then I pity you," said Keats. "What trouble and danger you
have got into for me. Now you must be firm for it will not last long."
Hunt was struck not only by the gentle courage in that remark, but
by the sudden shift in Keats's dialect from flat Web-standard English
to something much older and More interesting.
"Nonsense," said Hunt heartily, forcing enthusiasm and energy he
did not feel. "We'll be out of this before dawn. I'm going to sneak out
as soon as it gets dark and find a farcaster portal."
Keats shook his head. "The Shrike will take you. It will allow no
one to help me. It's role is to see that I must escape myself through
myself." He closed his eyes as his breathing grew More ragged.
"I don't understand," said Leigh Hunt, taking the young man's hand.
He assumed this was More of the fever talking, but since it was one of
the few times Keats had been fully conscious in the past two days. Hunt
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPEHION ----------------
felt it worth the effort to communicate. "What do you mean escape
yourself through yourself?"
Keats's eyes fluttered open. They were hazel and far too bright.
"Ummon and the others are trying to make me escape myself through
accepting the godhood. Hunt. Bait to catch the white whale, honey to
catch the ultimate fly. Fleeing Empathy shall find its home in me . . .
in me. Mister John Keats, five feet high . . . and then the reconciliation
begins, right?"
"What reconciliation?" Hunt leaned closer, trying not to breathe
on him. Keats appeared to have shrunk in his bedclothes, tangle of
blankets, but heat radiating from him seemed to fill the room. His
face was a pale oval in the dying light. Hunt was only faintly aware
of a gold band of reflected sunlight moving across the wall just below
where it met the ceiling, but Keats's eyes never left that last smear
of day.
"The reconciliation of man and machine, Creator and created," said
Keats and began to cough, stopping only after he had drooled red phlegm
into the basin Hunt held for him. He lay back, gasped a moment, and
added," Reconciliation of humankind and those races it tried to exterminate,
the Core and the humanity it tried to expunge, the painfully
evolved God of the Void Which Binds and its ancestors who tried to
expunge it."
Hunt shook his head and quit writing. "I don't understand. You can
become this . . . messiah ... by leaving your deathbed?"
The pale oval of Keats's face moved back and forth on the pillow in
a motion which might have been a substitute for laughter. "We all
could have. Hunt. Humankind's folly and greatest pride. We accept
our pain. We make way for our children. That earned us the right to
become the God we dreamed of."
Hunt looked down and found his own fist clenched in frustration.
"If you can do this . . . become this power . . . then do it. Get us out
of here!"
Keats closed his eyes again. "Can't. I'm not the One Who Comes
but the One Who Comes Before. Not the baptized but the baptist. Merde, Hunt, I'm an atheist! Even Severn couldn't convince me of
these things when I was drowning in death!" Keats gripped Hunt's shirt
with a fierceness that frightened the older man. "Write this!"
And Hunt rumbled to find the ancient pen and rough paper, scribbling
furiously to catch the words Keats now whispered:
-------------------------------------- 453 ------------------------------------
A wondrous lesson in thy silent face:
Knowledge enormous makes a god of me.
Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,
Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,
Creations and destroyings, all at once
Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,
And deify me, as if some blithe wine
Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,
And so become immortal.
Keats lived for three More painful hours, a swimmer rising occasionally
from his sea of agony to take a breath or whisper some urgent
nonsense. Once, long after dark, he pulled at Hunt's sleeve and whispered
sensibly enough, "When I am dead, the Shrike will not harm
you. It waits for me. There may not be a way home, but it will not
harm yo.u while you search." And again, just as Hunt was bending over
to hear if the breath still gurgled in the poet's lungs, Keats began to
talk and continued between spasms until he had given Hunt specific
instructions for his entombment in Rome's Protestant Cemetery, near
the Pyramid of Caius Cestius.
"Nonsense, nonsense," Hunt muttered over and over like a mantra,
squeezing the young man's hot hand.
"Flowers," whispered Keats a little later, just after Hunt had lighted
a lamp on the bureau. The poet's eyes were wide as he stared at the
ceiling in a look of pure, childish wonder. Hunt glanced upward and
saw the faded yellow roses painted in blue squares on the ceiling.
"Flowers. . . above me," whispered Keats between his efforts to breathe.
Hunt was standing at the window, staring out at the shadows beyond
the Spanish Steps, when the painful rasp of breath behind him faltered
and stopped and Keats gasped out, "Severn ... lift me up! I am dying."
Hunt sat on the bed and held him. Heat flowed from the small body
that seemed to weigh nothing, as if the actual substance of the man
had been burned away. "Don't be frightened. Be firm. And thank God
it has come!" gasped Keats, and then the terrible rasping subsided. Hunt
helped Keats lie back More comfortably as his breathing eased into a More normal rhythm.
Hunt changed the water in the basin, moistened a fresh cloth, and
came back to find Keats dead.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Later, just after the sun rose. Hunt lifted the small body--wrapped
in fresh linens from Hunt's own bed--and went out into the city.
The storm had abated by the time Brawne Lamia reached the end
of the valley. As she passed the Cave Tombs, she had seen the same
eerie glow the other Tombs were emitting, but there also came a terrible
noise--as if of thousands of souls crying out--echoing and moaning
from the earth. Brawne hurried on.
The sky was clear by the time she stood in front of the Shrike Palace.
The structure was aptly named: the half-dome arched up and outward
like the creature's carapace, support elements curved downward like
blades stabbing the valley floor and other buttresses leaped upward and
away like Shrike thorns. Walls had become translucent as the interior
glow increased, and now the building shone like a giant jack-o'-lantern
shaved paper thin; the upper regions glowed red as the Shrike's gaze.
Brawne took a breath and touched her abdomen. She was
pregnant--she had known it before she left Lusus--and didn't she owe More now to her unborn son or daughter than to the obscene old poet
on the Shrike's tree? Brawne knew that the answer was yes and that it
did not matter one damn bit. She let out the breath and approached
the Shrike Palace.
From the outside, the Shrike Palace was no More than twenty meters
across. Before, when they had entered, Brawne and the other pilgrims
had seen the interior as a single open space, empty except for the
bladelike supports that crisscrossed the space under the glowing dome.
Now, as Brawne stood at the entrance, the interior was a space larger
than the valley itself. A dozen tiers of white stone rose rank on rank
and stretched into the faded distance. On each tier of stone, human
bodies lay, each garbed a different way, each tethered by the same sort
of semiorganic, semiparasitic shunt socket and cable which her friends
had told Brawne she herself had worn. Only these metallic but translucent
umbilicals pulsed red and expanded and contracted regularly,
as if blood were being recycled through the sleeping forms' skulls.
Brawne staggered back, affected by the pull of anti-entropic tides as
much as by the view, but when she stood ten meters from the Palace,
the exterior was the same size as always. She did not pretend to understand
how klicks of interior could fit into such a modest shell. The
Time Tombs were opening. This one could coexist in different times
for all she knew. What she did understand was that when she was
awakening from her own travels under the shunt, she had seen the
Shrike's thorn tree tied with tubes and vines of energy invisible to the
eye but now quite obviously connected with the Shrike Palace.
She stepped to the entrance again.
The Shrike waited inside. Its carapace, usually gleaming, now seemed
black, silhouetted against the light and marble glare around it.
Brawne felt the adrenaline rush fill her, felt the impulse to turn and
run, and stepped inside.
The entrance all but vanished behind her, remaining visible only by
a faint fuzziness in the uniform glow which emanated from the walls.
The Shrike did not move. Its red eyes gleamed from the shadow of its
skull.
Brawne stepped forward, her booted heels making no sound on the
stone floor. The Shrike was ten meters to her right where the stone
biers began, ascending like obscene display racks to a ceiling lost in the
glow. She had no illusion that she could make it back to the door before
the creature closed on her.
It did not move. The air smelled of ozone and something sickly
sweet. Brawne moved along the wall at her back and scanned the rows
of bodies for a familiar sleeping face. With each step to her left, she
moved farther from the exit and made it easier for the Shrike to cut
her off. The creature stood there like a black sculpture in an ocean of
light.
The tiers did stretch for kilometers. Stone steps, each almost a meter
high, broke the horizontal lines of dark bodies. Several minutes' walk
from the entrance, Brawne climbed the lower third of one of these
stairways, touched the nearest body on the second tier, and was relieved
to find the flesh warm, the man's chest rising and falling. It was not
Martin Silenus.
Brawne continued onward, half expecting to find Paul Dure or Sol
Weintraub or even herself lying among the living dead. Instead, she
found a face she had last seen carved into a mountainside. Sad King
Billy lay motionless on white stone, five tiers up, his royal robes scorched
and stained. The sad face was—as were all the others—contorted in
some internal agony. Martin Silenus lay three bodies away on a lower
tier.
Brawne crouched next to the poet, glancing over her shoulder at the
black speck of the Shrike, still unmoving at the end of the rows of
bodies. Like the others, Silenus appeared to be alive, in silent agony,
and was attached by a shunt socket connected to a pulsating umbilical
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
which, in turn, ran into the white wall behind the ledge as if wed to
the stone.
Brawne panted from fear as she ran her hand over the poet's skull,
feeling the fusion of plastic and bone, and then felt along the umbilical
itself, finding no join or opening to the point where it melded with
stone. Fluid pulsed beneath her fingers.
"Shit," whispered Brawne and, in a sudden flurry of panic, looked
behind her, certain the Shrike had crept within striking distance. The
dark form still stood at the end of the long room.
Her pockets were empty. She had neither weapon nor tool. She
realized that she would have to return to the Sphinx, find the packs,
dig out something to cut with, and then return and muster enough
courage to enter here again.
Brawne knew that she could never come through that door again.
She knelt, took a deep breath, and brought her hand and arm up,
then down. The edge other palm smashed against material that looked
like clear plastic and felt harder than steel. Her arm ached from wrist
to shoulder from the single blow.
Brawne Lamia glanced to her right. The Shrike was moving toward
her, stepping slowly like an old man out for a leisurely walk.
Brawne shouted, knelt, and struck again, palm-edge rigid, thumb
locked at right angles. The long room echoed to the impact.
Brawne Lamia had grown up on Lusus at 1.3 standard gravity, and
she was athletic for her race. Since she was nine years old, she had
dreamed of and worked toward becoming a detective, and a part of that
admittedly obsessive and totally illogical preparation had been training
in the martial arts. Now she grunted, raised her arm, and struck again,
willing her palm to be an axe blade, seeing in her mind the severing
blow, the successful strikethrough.
The tough umbilical dented imperceptibly, pulsed like a living thing,
and seemed to cringe away as she swung again.
Footsteps became audible below and behind her. Brawne almost
giggled. The Shrike could move without walking, go from here to there
without the effort of going between. It must enjoy scaring its prey.
Brawne was not frightened. She was too busy.
She raised her hand, brought it down again. It would have been
easier striking the stone for effect. She slammed her palm-edge into the
umbilical again, feeling some small bone give in her hand. The pain
was like a distant noise, like the sliding below her and behind her.
457
Has it occurred to you, she thought, that it'll probably kill him if you
do manage to break this thing?
She swung again. The footsteps stopped at the base of the stairway
below.
Brawne was panting from effort. Sweat dripped from her forehead
and cheeks onto the chest of the sleeping poet.
/ don't even like you, she thought at Martin Silenus and chopped
again. It was like trying to sever a metal elephant's leg.
The Shrike began ascending the staircase.
Brawne half-stood and threw the entire weight of her body into a
swing which almost dislocated her shoulder and broke her wrist, and
smashed small bones in her hand.
And severed the umbilical.
Red fluid too nonviscous for blood spashed across Brawne's legs and
the white stone. The severed cable still extending from the wall spasmed
and then thrashed like an agitated tentacle before lying limply and then
withdrawing, a bleeding snake sliding into a hole that ceased to exist
as soon as the umbilical was out of sight. The stump of umbilical still
attached to Silenus's neural shunt socket withered in five seconds, drying
and contracting like a jellyfish out of water. Red splashed the poet's
face and shoulders, the liquid turning blue even as Brawne watched.
Martin Silenus's eyes twitched and opened like an owl's.
"Hey," he said, "do you know the fucking Shrike's standing right
behind you?"
Gladstone 'cast to her private apartments and went at once to her
fatline cubicle. Two messages waited.
The first was from Hyperion space. Gladstone blinked as the soft
voice of her former Governor-General on Hyperion, young Lane, gave
a quick summary of the meeting with the Ouster Tribunal. Gladstone
sat back in the leather seat and raised both fists to her cheeks as Lane
repeated the Ouster denials. They were not the invaders. Lane completed
the transmission with a brief description of the Swarm, his opinion
that the Ousters were telling the truth, a comment that the Consul's
fate was still unknown, and a request for orders.
"Response?" asked the fatline computer.
"Acknowledge receipt of message," said Gladstone. "Transmit-- "Stand by' in diplomatic one-time code."
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
Gladstone keyed the second message.
Admiral William Ajunta Lee appeared in a broken Hat-image projection,
his ship's fatline transmitter obviously working on reduced energy.
Gladstone saw from the peripheral data columns that the squirt
had been encrypted among standard fleet telemetry transmissions:
FORCE technicians would eventually notice the check-sum discrepancies,
but it might be hours or days from now.
Lee's face was bloodied, and the background was obscured by smoke.
From the fuzzy black-and-white image, it appeared to Gladstone that
the young man was transmitting from a docking bay of his cruiser. On
a metal worktable behind him lay a corpse.
"... a complement of Marines managed to board one of their so-
called lancers," panted Lee. "They are manned--five to a ship--and
they do look like Ousters, but watch what happens when we try to carry
out an autopsy." The picture shifted, and Gladstone realized that Lee
was using a hand-held imager patched in through the cruiser's fatline
transmitter. Now Lee was gone, and she was looking down into the
white, damaged face of a dead Ouster. From the bleeding at the eyes
and ears, Gladstone guessed that the man had died of explosive decompression.

Lee's hand appeared--recognizable by the admiral's braid on the
sleeve--holding a laser scalpel. The young commander did not bother
to remove clothing before beginning a vertical incision starting at the
breastbone and cutting downward.
The hand with the laser jerked away, and the camera steadied as
something began to happen with the Ouster's corpse. Broad patches
began to smolder on the dead man's chest, as if the laser had ignited
clothing. Then the uniform burned through, and it was immediately
apparent that the man's chest was burning in widening, irregular holes,
and from those holes shone a light so brilliant that the portable imagcr
had to stop down receptivity. Patches of the corpse's skull were burning
through now, leaving afterimages on the fatline screen and Gladstone's
retinas.
The camera had pulled back before the corpse had been consumed,
as if the heat were too great to bear. Lee's face floated into focus. "You
see, CEO, that's been the case with all of the bodies. We captured
none alive. We've found no center to the Swarm yet, just More warships,
and I think that--"
The image disappeared and data columns said that the squirt had
ceased in midtransmission.
-------------------------------------------------- 459 --------------------------------------------------
"Response?"
Gladstone shook her head and unsealed the cubicle. In her study
once again, she looked longingly at the long couch and sat behind her
desk, knowing that if she closed her eyes for a second she would be
asleep. Sedeptra buzzed on her private comlog frequency and said that
General Morpurgo needed to see the CEO on an urgent matter.
The Lusian entered and began pacing back and forth in his agitation.
"M. Executive, I understand your reasoning in authorizing the use of
this deathwand device, but I have to protest."
"Why, Arthur?" she asked, calling him by name for the first time in
weeks.
"Because we goddamn well don't know the result. It's too dangerous.
And it's . . . it's immoral."
Gladstone raised an eyebrow. "Losing billions of citizens in a protracted
war of attrition would be, moral, but using this thing to kill
millions would be immoral? Is this the FORCE position, Arthur?"
"It's my position, CEO." -
Gladstone nodded. "Understood and noted, Arthur. But the decision
has been made and will be implemented." She saw her old friend draw
himself to attention, and before he could open his mouth to protest,
or, More likely, offer his resignation, Gladstone said, "Would you take
a walk with me, Arthur?"
The FORCE General was nonplussed. "A walk? Why?"
"We need the fresh air." Without waiting for a further response,
Gladstone crossed to her private farcaster, keyed the manual diskey,
and stepped through.
Morpurgo stepped through the opaque portal, glared down at the
gold grass which rose to his knees and spread to a distant horizon, and
raised his face to a saffron yellow sky where bronze cumulus clouds
rose in jagged spires. Behind him, the portal winked out of existence,
its location marked only by the meter-high control diskey, the only
man-made thing visible in the endless reach of gold grass and cloud-
filled sky. "Where the hell are we?" he demanded.
Gladstone had pulled a long strand of grass and was chewing on it.
"Kastrop-Rauxel. It has no datasphere, no orbital devices, no human
or mech habitations of any kind."
Morpurgo snorted. "Probably no safer from Core surveillance than
the places Byron Lamia used to take us, Meina."
"Perhaps not," said Gladstone. "Arthur, listen." She activated the
comlog recordings of the two fatline transmissions she had just heard.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
When they were finished, when Lee's face snapped out of existence,
Morpurgo walked away through the high grass.
"Well?" asked Gladstone, hurrying to keep up.
"So these Ouster bodies self-destruct the same way cybrid corpses
have been known to," he said. "So what? Do you think the Senate or
All Thing will accept this as proof that it's the Core that's behind the
invasion?"
Gladstone sighed. The grass looked soft, inviting. She imagined lying
there and sinking into a nap from which she would never have to return.
"It's proof enough for us. For the group." Gladstone did not have to
elaborate. Since her early Senate days, they had kept in touch with
their suspicions of the Core, their hope for true freedom from Al domination
someday. When Senator Byron Lamia had led them . . . but
that was long ago.
Morpurgo watched wind whip at the golden steppes. A curious type
of ball lightning played inside the bronze clouds near the horizon. "So
what? Knowing is useless unless we know where to strike."
"We have three hours."
Morpurgo looked at his comlog. "Two hours and forty-two minutes.
Hardly time enough for a miracle, Meina."
Gladstone did not smile. "Hardly time enough for anything else,
Arthur."
She touched the diskey, and the portal hummed to life.
"What can we do?" asked Morpurgo. "The Core AIs are briefing our
technicians on that deathwand device right now. The torchship will be
ready in an hour."
"We detonate it where the effect will harm no one," said Gladstone.
The General quit pacing and stared. "Where the hell is that? That
fucker Nansen says that the device has a lethal radius of at least three
light-years, but how can we trust him? We set off one device . . . near
Hyperion or anywhere else . . . and we may be dooming human life
everywhere."
"I have an idea, but I want to sleep on it," said Gladstone.
"Sleep on it?" growled General Morpurgo.
"I'm going to take a short nap, Arthur," Gladstone said. "I suggest
you do the same." She stepped through the portal.
Morpurgo muttered a single obscenity, adjusted his cap, and walked
through the farcaster with head up, back straight, and eyes forward: a
soldier marching to his own execution.
On the highest terrace of a mountain moving through space some
ten light-minutes from Hyperion, the Consul and seventeen Ousters
sat on a circle of low stones within a wider circle of taller stones and
decided whether the Consul would live.
"Your wife and child died on Bressia," said Freeman Ghenga. "During
the war between that world and Clan Moseman."
"Yes," said the Consul. "The Hegemony thought that the entire
Swarm was involved in the attack. I said nothing to disabuse them of
that opinion."
"But your wife and child were killed."
The Consul looked beyond the stone circle toward the summit already
turning toward night. "So what? I ask for no mercy from this Tribunal.
I suggest no extenuating circumstances. I killed your Freeman Andil
and the three technicians. Kilted them with premediation and malice
aforethought. Killed them with no other goal than to trigger your machine
to open the Time Tombs. It had nothing to do with my wife and
child!"
A bearded Ouster whom the Consul had heard introduced as Spokesman
Hullcare Amnion stepped forward to the inner circle. "The device
was useless. It did nothing."
The Consul turned, opened his mouth, and closed it without speaking.

"A test," said Freeman Ghenga.
The Consul's voice was almost inaudible. "But the Tombs . . .
opened."
"We knew when they would open," said Coredwell Minmun. "The
decay rate of the anti-entropic fields was known to us. The device was
a test."
"A test," repeated the Consul. "I killed those four people for nothing.
A test."
"Your wife and child died at Ouster hands," said Freeman Ghenga.
"The Hegemony raped your world of Maui-Covenant. Your actions
were predictable within certain parameters. Gladstone counted on this.
So did we. But we had to know those parameters."
The Consul stood, took three steps, and kept his back turned to the
others. "Wasted."
"What was that?" asked Freeman Ghenga. The tall woman's bare
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
scalp glowed in the starlight and the reflected sunlight from a passing
comet farm.
The Consul was laughing softly. "Everything wasted. Even my betrayals.
Nothing real. Wasted."
Spokesman Coredwell Minmun stood and arranged his robes. "This
Tribunal has passed sentence," he said. The other sixteen Ousters nodded.

The Consul turned. There was something like eagerness on his tired
face. "Do it, then. For God's sake get it over with."
Spokesman Freeman Ghenga stood and faced the Consul. "You are
condemned to live. You are condemned to repair some of the damage
you have done."
The Consul staggered as if struck in the face. "No, you can't . . .
you must ..."
"You are condemned to enter the age of chaos which approaches,"
said Spokesman Hullcare Amnion. "Condemned to help us find fusion
between the separated families of humankind."
The Consul raised his arms as if trying to defend himself from physical
blows. "I can't . . . won't . . . guilty ..."
Freeman Ghenga took three strides, grasped the Consul by the front
of his formal bolo jacket, and shook him unceremoniously. "You are guilty. And that is precisely why you must help ameliorate the chaos
which is to come. You helped free the Shrike. Now you must return
to see that it is caged once again. Then the long reconciliation must
begin."
The Consul had been released, but his shoulders were still shaking.
At that moment, the mountain rotated into sunlight, and tears sparkled
in the Consul's eyes. "No," he whispered.
Freeman Ghenga smoothed his rumpled jacket and moved her long
fingers to the diplomat's shoulders. "We have our own prophets. The
Templars will join us in the reseeding of the galaxy. Slowly, those who
had lived in the lie called the Hegemony will climb out of the ruins
of their Core-dependent worlds and join us in true exploration . . .
exploration of the universe and of that greater realm which is inside
each of us."
The Consul had not seemed to have heard. He turned away
brusquely. "The Core will destroy you," he said, not facing any of
them. "Just as it has destroyed the Hegemony."
"Do you forget that your homeworld was founded on a solemn covenant
of life?" said Coredwell Minmun.
-------------------------------------------------- 463 --------------------------------------------------
The Consul turned toward the Ouster.
"Such a covenant governs our lives and actions," said Minmun. "Not
merely to preserve a few species from Old Earth, but to find unity in
diversity. To spread the seed of humankind to all worlds, diverse environments,
while treating as sacred the diversity of life we find elsewhere.
"
Freeman Ghenga's face was bright in the sun. "The Core offered
unity in unwitting subservience," she said softly. "Safety in stagnation.
Where are the revolutions in human thought and culture and action
since the Hegira?"
"Terrafonned into pale clones of Old Earth," answered Coredwell
Minmun. "Our new age of human expansion will terraform nothing.
We will revel in hardships and welcome strangeness. We will not make
the universe adapt... we shall adapt."
Spokesman Hullcare Amnion gestured toward the stars. "If humankind
survives this test, our future lies in the dark distances between as well as on the sunlit worlds."
The Consul sighed. "I have friends on Hyperion," he said. "May I
return to help them?"
"You may," said Freeman Ghenga.
"And confront the Shrike?" said the Consul.
"You will," said Coredwell Minmun.
"And survive to see this age of chaos?" said the Consul.
"You must," said Hullcare Amnion.
The Consul sighed again and moved aside with the others as,
above them, a great butterfly with wings of solar cells and glistening
skin impervious to hard vacuum or harder radiation lowered itself
toward the Stonehenge circle and opened its belly to receive the
Consul.
In the Government House infirmary on Tau Ceti Center, Father
Paul Dure slept a shallow and medically induced sleep, dreaming of
flames and the death of worlds.
Except for the brief visit by CEO Gladstone and an even briefer visit
by Bishop Edouard, Dure had been alone all day, drifting in and out
of a pain-filled haze. The doctors here had asked for twelve More hours
before their patient should be moved, and the College of Cardinals on
Pacem had agreed, wishing the patient well and making ready for the
ceremonies--still twenty-four hours away--in which Jesuit priest Paul
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Dure of Villefranche-sur-Saone would become Pope Teilhard I, the
487th Bishop of Rome, direct successor of the disciple Peter.
Still healing, flesh reweaving itself with the guidance of a million
RNA directors, nerves similarly regenerating, thanks to the miracle of
modern medicine--but not so miraculous, Dure thought, that it keeps
me from itching almost to death--the Jesuit lay abed and thought about
Hyperion and the Shrike and his long life and the confused state of
affairs in God's universe. Eventually Dure slept and dreamed of God's
Grove burning while the Templar True Voice of the Worldtree pushed
him through the portal, and of his mother and of a woman named
Semfa, now dead, but formerly a worker on Perecebo Plantation in the
outback of the Outback in fiberplastic country east of Port Romance.
And in these dreams, primarily sad, Dure suddenly was aware of
another presence there: not of another dream presence, but of another dreamer.
Dure was walking with someone. The air was cool, and the sky was
a heart-rending blue. They had just come around a bend in a road,
and now a lake became visible before them, its shores lined with graceful
trees, mountains framing it from behind, a line of low clouds adding
drama and scale to the scene, and a single island seeming to float far
out on the mirror-still waters.
"Lake Windermere," said Dure's companion.
The Jesuit turned slowly, his heart pounding with anxious anticipation.
Whatever he expected, the sight of his companion did not inspire
awe.
A short young man walked next to Dure. He wore an archaic jacket
with leather buttons and a broad leather belt, sturdy shoes, an old fur
cap, a battered knapsack, oddly tailored and frequently patched trousers,
and carried a great plaid thrown over one shoulder and a solid walking
stick in his right hand. Dure stopped walking, and the other man paused
as if welcoming a break.
"The Fells ofFurness and the Cumbrian Mountains," said the young
man, using his stick to gesture beyond the lake.
Dure saw the auburn locks curling out from under the odd cap, noted
the large hazel eyes and the man's short stature, and knew that he had
to be dreaming even as he thought I'm not dreaming!
"Who ..." began Dure, feeling fear surge in him as his heart
pounded.
"John," said his companion, and the quiet reasonableness of that
voice set some of Dure's fear aside. "I believe we'll be able to stay in
Bowness tonight. Brown tells me that there's a wonderful inn there
hard on the lake."
Dure nodded. He had absolutely no idea what the man was talking about.
The short young man leaned forward and grasped Dure's forearm in
a gentle but persistent grip. "There will be one who comes after me,"
said John. "Neither alpha nor the omega but essential for us to find
the way."
Dure nodded stupidly. A breeze rippled the lake and brought the
smell of fresh vegetation from the foothills beyond.
"That one will be born far away," said John. "Farther away than our
race has known for centuries. Your job will be the same as mine
now--to prepare the way. You will not live to see the day of that
person's teaching, but your successor will."
"Yes," said Paul Dure and found that there was no saliva whatsoever
in his mouth.
The young man doffed his cap, tucked it in his belt, and stooped to
pick up a rounded stone. He threw it far out onto the lake. Ripples
spread in slow progression. "Damn," said John, "I was trying to skip
it." He looked at Dure. "You have to leave the infirmary and get back
to Pacem at once. Do you understand?"
Dure blinked. The statement did not seem to belong in the dream.
"Why?"
"Never mind," said John. "Just do it. Wait for nothing. If you don't
leave at once, there will be no chance later."
Dure turned in confusion, as if he could walk back to his hospital
bed. He looked over his shoulder at the short, thin young man standing
on the pebbly shore. "What about you?"
John picked up a second stone, threw it, and shook his head when
the rock skipped only once before disappearing beneath the mirrored
surface. "I'm happy here for now," he said, More to himself than to
Dure. "I really was happy on this trip." He seemed to shake himself
out of his reverie and lifted his head to smile at Dure. "Go on. Move
your ass. Your Holiness."
Shocked, amused, irritated, Dure opened his mouth to retort and
found himself lying in bed in the Government House infirmary. The
medics had lowered the lighting so that he could sleep. Monitor beads
clung to his skin.
Dure lay there a minute, suffering the itching and discomfort from
healing third-degree burns and thinking about the dream, thinking that
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPEB10N ----------------
it was on/y a dream, that he could go back to sleep for a few hours
before Monsignor--Bishop Edouard and the others arrived to escort
him back. Dure closed his eyes and remembered the masculine but
gentle face, the hazel eyes, the archaic dialect.
Father Paul Durf of the Society of Jesus sat up, struggled to his feet,
found his clothes gone and nothing but his paper hospital pajamas to
wear, wrapped a blanket around him, and shuffled off in bare feet before
medics could respond to the tattletale sensors.
There had been a medics-only farcaster at the far end of the hall. If
that failed to get him home, he would find another.
Leigh Hunt carried Keats's body out of the shadow of the building
into the sunlight of the Piazza di Spagna and expected to find the Shrike
waiting for him. Instead, there was a horse. Hunt wasn't an expert at
recognizing horses, since the species was extinct in his time, but this
one appeared to be the same one which had brought them to Rome.
It helped in the identification that the horse was attached to the same
small cart--Keats had called it a vettura--which they had ridden in
earlier.
Hunt set the body on the carriage seat, folding the layers of linen
around it carefully, and walked alongside with one hand still touching
the shroud as the carriage began moving slowly. In' his final hours,
Keats had asked to be buried in the Protestant Cemetery near the Au-
relian Wall^nd the Pyramid of Caius Cestius. Hunt vaguely remembered
that they- had passed through the Aurelian Wall during their
bizarre voyage here, but he could not have found it again if his life--
or Keats's burial--depended on it. At any rate, the horse seemed to
know the way.
Hunt trudged alongside the slowly moving carriage, aware of the
beautiful spring-morning quality to the air and an underlying smell as
of rotting vegetation. Could Keats's body be decomposing already? Hunt
knew little about the details of death; he wanted to learn no More. He
swatted at the horse's rump to hurry the beast up, but the animal stopped, turned slowly to give Hunt a reproachful look, and resumed his plodding
pace.
It was More a glint of light glimpsed out of the corner of his eye than
any sound that tipped Hunt off, but when he turned quickly, the Shrike
was there--ten or fifteen meters behind and matching the pace of the
horse with a solemn but somehow comical march, thorned and barbed
knees high with each step. Sunlight flashed on carapace, metal tooth,
and blade.
Hunt's first impulse was to abandon the carriage and run, but a sense
of duty and a deeper sense of being lost stifled that urge. Where could
he run but back to the Piazza di Spagna--and the Shrike blocked the
only return.
Accepting the creature as a mourner in this insane procession. Hunt
turned his back on the monster and continued walking alongside the
carriage, one hand firm on his friend's ankle, through the shroud.
All during the walk. Hunt was alert for any sign of a farcaster portal,
some sign of technology beyond the nineteenth century, or another
human being. There was none. The illusion that he was walking
through an abandoned Rome in the spring-like weather of February,
a. d. 1821 was perfect. The horse climbed a hill a block from the Spanish
Steps, made several other turns on broad avenues and narrow lanes,
and passed within sight of the curved and crumbling ruin which Hunt
recognized as the Colosseum.
When the horse and carriage stopped. Hunt roused himself from the
walking doze he had drifted into and looked around. They were outside
the overgrown heap of stones Hunt guessed to be the Aurelian Wall,
and there was indeed a low pyramid visible, but the Protestant
Cemetery--if that is what it was--seemed More pasture than cemetery.
Sheep grazed in the shade of cypresses, their bells tinkling eerily in the
thick, warming air, and everywhere the grass grew to knee height or
taller. Hunt blinked and saw the few headstones scattered here and
there, half hidden by the grass, and closer, just beyond the grazing
horse's neck, a newly excavated grave.
The Shrike remained ten meters back, among the rustling cypress
branches, but Hunt saw the glow of its red eyes fixed on the grave site.
Hunt went around the horse, now munching contentedly on high
grass, and approached the grave. There was no coffin. The hole was
about four feet deep, and the heaped dirt beyond smelled of upturned
humus and cool soil. Embedded there was a long-handled shovel, as
if the grave diggers had just left. A slab of stone stood upright at the
head of the grave but remained unmarked--a blank headstone. Hunt
saw the glint of metal on top of the slab and rushed over to find the
first modern artifact he had seen since being kidnapped to Old Earth:
a small laser pen lay there--the type used by construction workers or
artists to scrawl designs on the hardest alloy.
Hunt turned, holding the pen, feeling armed now although the
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPEBION ----------------
thought of that narrow beam stopping the Shrike seemed ludicrous. He
dropped the pen into the pocket of his shirt and went about the business
of burying John Keats.
A few minutes later. Hunt stood near the heap of dirt, shovel in
hand, staring down into the open grave at the small, sheet-wrapped
bundle there, and tried to think of something to say. Hunt had been
at numerous state memorial services, had even written Gladstone's
eulogies for some of them, and words had never been a problem before.
But now nothing came. The only audience was the silent Shrike, still
back among the shadows of the cypresses, and the sheep with their bells
tinkling as they moved nervously away from the monster, ambling
toward the grave like a group of tardy mourners.
Hunt thought that perhaps some of the original John Keats's poetry
would be appropriate now, but Hunt was a political manager--not a
man given to reading or memorizing ancient poetry. He remembered,
too late, that he had written down the snippet of verse his friend had
dictated the day before, but the notebook still lay on the bureau in the
apartment on the Piazza di Spagna. It had been something about becoming
godlike or a god, the knowledge of too many things rushing in
... or somesuch nonsense. Hunt had an excellent memory, but he
couldn't recall the first line of that archaic mishmash.
In the end, Leigh Hunt compromised with a moment of silence, his
head bowed and eyes closed except for occasional peeks at the Shrike, still holding its distance, and then he shoveled the dirt in. It took longer
than he would have imagined. When he was done parting down the
soil, the surface was slightly concave, as if the body had been too
insignificant to form a proper mound. Sheep brushed by Hunt's legs
to graze on the high grass, daisies, and violets which grew around the
grave.
Hunt might not have remembered the man's poetry, but he had no
trouble remembering the inscription Keats had asked to be set on his
headstone. Hunt clicked on the pen, tested it by burning a furrow in
three meters of grass and soil, and then had to stamp out the tiny fire
he had started. The inscription had bothered Hunt when he first heard
it--the loneliness and bitterness audible beneath Keats's wheezing,
gasping effort to speak. But Hunt did not think it was his place to argue
with the man. Now he had only to inscribe it in stone, leave this place,
and avoid the Shrike while trying to find a way home.
The pen sliced into stone easily enough, and Hunt had to practice
on the back side of the headstone before he found the right depth of
line and quality of control. Still, the effect looked ragged and homemade
when Hunt finished some fifteen or twenty minutes later.
First there was the crude drawing which Keats had asked for—he
had shown the aide several rough sketches, drawn on foolscap with a
shaking hand—of a Greek lyre with four of its eight strings broken.
Hunt was not satisfied when he was done—he was even less of an artist
than a reader of poetry—but the thing was probably recognizable to
anyone who knew what the hell a Greek lyre was. Then came the
legend itself, written precisely as Keats had dictated it:
HERE LIES ONE
WHOSE NAME
WAS WRIT IN WATER
There was nothing else: no birth or death dates, not even the poet's
name. Hunt stood back, surveyed his work, shook his head, keyed the
pen off but kept it in his hand, and started back for the city, making a
wide circle around the creature in the cypresses as he did so.
At the tunnel through the Aurelian Wall, Hunt paused to look back.
The horse, still attached to its carriage, had moved down the long slope
to munch on sweeter grass near a small stream. The sheep milled about,
munching flowers and leaving their hoofprints in the moist soil of the
grave. The Shrike remained where it had been, barely visible beneath
its bower of cypress branches. Hunt was almost sure that the creature
still faced the grave.
It was late in the afternoon when Hunt found the farcaster, a dull
rectangle of dark blue humming in the precise center of the crumbling
Colosseum. There was no diskey or punchplate. The portal hung there
like an opaque but open door.
But not open to Hunt.
He tried fifty times, but the surface was as solid and resisting as stone.
He touched it tentatively with fingertips, stepped confidently into and
bounced off its surface, threw himself at the blue rectangle, lobbed
stones at the entrance to watch them bounce off, tried both sides and
even the edges of the thing, and ended up leaping again and again at
the useless thing until his shoulders and upper arms were masses of
bruises.
It was a farcaster. He was sure of it. But it would not let him through.
Hunt searched the rest of the Colosseum, even the underground
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
passages dripping with moisture and bat guano, but there was no other
portal. He searched the nearby streets and all their buildings. No other
portal. He searched all afternoon, through basilica and cathedrals,
homes and huts, grand apartment buildings and narrow alleys. He even
returned to the Piazza di Spagna, ate a hasty meal on the first floor,
pocketed the notebook and anything else he found of interest in the
rooms above, and then left forever to find a farcaster.
The one in the Colosseum was the only one he could find. By sunset
he had clawed at it until his fingers were bloody. It looked right, it
hummed right, it felt right, but it would not let him through.
A moon, not Old Earth's moon judging by the dust storms and clouds
visible on its surface, had risen and now hung above the black curve
of the Colosseum wall. Hunt sat in the rocky center and glowered at
the blue glow of the portal. From somewhere behind him came the
frenzied beat of pigeons' wings and the rattle of a small rock on stone.
Hunt rose painfully, fumbled the laser pen out of his pocket, and
stood, legs apart, waiting and straining to see into the shadows of the
Colosseum's many crevices and arches. Nothing stirred.
A sudden noise behind him made him whirl and almost spray the
thin beam of laser light across the farcaster portal's surface. An arm
appeared there. Then a leg. A person emerged. Then another.
The Colosseum echoed to Leigh Hunt's shouts.
Meina Gladstone had known that as tired as she was, it would be
folly to nap even as long as thirty minutes. But since childhood, she
had trained herself to take five- to fifteen-minute catnaps, shrugging off
weariness and fatigue toxins through these brief respites from thought.
Now, sickened with exhaustion and the vertigo of the previous forty-
eight hours' confusion, she lay a few minutes on the long sofa in her
study, emptying her mind of trivia and redundancies, letting her subconscious
find a path through the jungle of thoughts and events. For
a few minutes, she dozed, and while she dozed she dreamed.
Meina Gladstone sat upright, shrugging off the light afghan and
tapping at her comlog before her eyes were open. "Sedeptra! Get General
Morpurgo and Admiral Singh in my office in three minutes."
Gladstone stepped into the adjoining bathroom, showered and son-
icked, pulled out fresh clothes--her most formal suit of soft, black
whipcord velvet, a gold and red Senate scarf held in place by a gold
pin showing the geodesic symbol of the Hegemony, earrings dating back
to pre-Mistake Old Earth, and the topaz bracelet-cum-comlog given to
her by Senator Byron Lamia before his marriage--and was back in the
study in time to greet the two FORCE officers.
"CEO, this is very unfortunate timing," began Admiral Singh. "The
final data from Mare Infinitus was being analyzed, and we were discussing
fleet movements for the defense ofAsquith."
Gladstone ordered her private farcaster into existence and gestured
for the two men to follow her.
Singh glanced around as he stepped through into gold grass under a
threatening bronze sky. "Kastrop-Rauxel," he said. "There were rumors
that a previous administration had FORCE:space construct a private
farcaster here."
"CEO Yevshensky had it added to the Web," said Gladstone. She
waved, and the farcaster door vanished. "He felt that the Chief Executive
needed someplace where Core listening devices were unlikely."
Morpurgo looked uneasily toward a wall of clouds near the horizon
where ball lightning played. "No place is totally safe from the Core,"
he said. "I've been telling Admiral Singh about our suspicions."
"Not suspicions," said Gladstone. "Facts. And I know where the
Core is."
Both FORCE officers reacted as if the ball lightning had struck them.
"Where?" they said almost in unison.
Gladstone paced back and forth. Her short gray hair seemed to glow
in the charged air. "In the farcaster web," she said. "Between the portals.
The AIs live in the singularity pseudo-world there like spiders in a dark
web. And we wove it for them."
Morpurgo was the first of the two able to speak. "My God," he said.
"What do we do now? We have less than three hours before the torchship
with the Core device translates to Hyperion space."
Gladstone told them exactly what they were going to do.
"Impossible," said Singh. He was unconsciously tugging at his short
beard. "Simply impossible."
"No," said Morpurgo. "It will work. There is enough time. And as
frantic and random as the fleet movements have been during the past
two days ..."
The Admiral shook his head. "Logistically it might be possible. Rationally
and ethically it is not. No, it is impossible."
Meina Gladstone stepped closer. "Kushwant," she said, addressing
the Admiral by his first name for the first time since she had been a
young senator and he an even younger FORCE:space commander,
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPEHION ----------------
"don't you remember when Senator Lamia put us in touch with the
Stables? The AI named Urnmon? His prediction of the two futures--
one holding chaos and the other certain extinction for humankind?"
Singh turned away. "My duty is to FORCE and the Hegemony."
"Your duty is the same as mine," snapped Gladstone. "To the human
race."
Singh's fists came up as if he were ready to fight an invisible but
powerful opponent. "We don't know for sure! Where did you get your
information?"
"Severn," said Gladstone. "The cybrid."
"Cybrid?" snorted the General. "You mean that artisi. Or at least
that miserable excuse for one."
"Cybrid," repeated the CEO. She explained.
"Severn as a retrieval persona?" Morpurgo looked dubious. "And
now you've found him?"
"He found me. In a dream. Somehow he managed to communicate
from wherever he is. That was his role, Arthur, Kushwant. That's why
Ummon sent him to the Web."
"A dream," sneered Admiral Singh. "This . . . cybrid . . . told you
that the Core was hidden in the farcaster web ... in a dream."
"Yes," said Gladstone, "and we have very little time in which to
act."
"But," said Morpurgo, "to do what you suggested--"
"Would doom millions," finished Singh. "Possibly billions. The
economy would collapse. Worlds like TC2, Renaissance Vector, New
Earth, the Denebs, New Mecca--Lusus, Arthur--scores More depend
upon other worlds for their food. Urban planets cannot survive alone."
"Not as urban planets," said Gladstone. "But they can learn to farm
until interstellar trade is reborn."
"Bah!" snarled Singh. "After plague, after the breakdown of authority, after the millions of deaths from lack of proper equipment, medicine,
and datasphere support."
"I've thought of all that," said Gladstone, her voice firmer than
Morpurgo had ever heard it. "I'll be the greatest mass murderer in
history--greater than Hitler or Tze Hu or Horace Glennon-Height.
The only thing worse is to continue as we are. In which case, I--and
you, gentlemen--will be the ultimate betrayers of humankind."
"We can't know that," grunted Kushwant Singh, as if the words were
driven from him by blows to the belly.
-------------------------------------------------- 473 --------------------------------------------------
"We do know that," said Gladstone. "The Core has no More use
for the Web. From now on, the Volatiles and Ultimates will keep
a few million slaves penned underground on the nine labyrinthine
worlds while they use human synapses for what computing needs
remain."
"Nonsense," said Singh. "Those humans would die out."
Meina Gladstone sighed and shook her head. "The Core has devised
a parasitic, organic device called the cruciform," she said. "It. . . brings
back. . . the dead. After a few generations, the humans will be retarded,
listless, and without a future, but their neurons will still serve Core
purposes."
Singh turned his back on them again. His small form was silhouetted
against a wall of lightning as the storm approached in a riot of boiling
bronze clouds. "Your dream told you this, Meina?"
"Yes."
"And what else does your dream say?" snapped the Admiral.
"That the Core has no More need for the Web," said Gladstone.
"Not for the human Web. They'll continue to reside there, rats in the
walls, but the original occupants are no longer needed. The AI Ultimate
Intelligence will take over the major computing duties."
Singh turned to look at her. "You are mad, Meina. Quite mad."
Gladstone moved quickly to grab the Admiral's arm before lie could
activate the farcaster. "Kushwant, please listen to--"
Singh pulled a ceremonial flechette pistol from his tunic and set it
against the woman's breast. "I am sorry, M. Executive. But I serve the
Hegemony and ..."
Gladstone stepped back with her hand to her mouth as Admiral
Kushwant Singh stopped speaking, stared sightlessly for a second, and
fell to the grass. The flechette pistol tumbled into the weeds.
Morpurgo stepped forward to retrieve it, tucking it into his belt before
he put away the deathwand in his hand.
"You killed him," said the CEO. "If he wouldn't cooperate, I'd
planned to leave him here. Maroon him on KastropRauxel."
"We couldn't take the chance," said the General, pulling the body
farther from the farcaster. "Everything depends upon the next few
hours."
Gladstone looked at her old friend. "You're willing to go through
with it?"
"We have to," said Morpurgo. "It will be our last chance to get rid
———————— THE PALL OF HYPERION ————————
of this yoke of oppression. I'll give the deployment orders at once and
hand over sealed orders in person. It will take most of the fleet..."
"My God," whispered Meina Gladstone, looking down at the body
of Admiral Singh. "I'm doing all of this on the strength of a dream."
"Sometimes," said General Morpurgo, taking her hand, "dreams are
all that separate us from the machines."
FORTY-FOUR
Death is not, I discovered, a pleasant experience. Leaving the
familiar rooms on the Piazza di Spagna and the rapidly cooling
body there is similar to being thrust out in the night by
fire or Hood from the familiar warmth of one's home. The rush of shock
and displacement is severe. Thrown headlong into the metasphere, I
experience the same sense of shame and sudden, awkward revelation
which we have all had in our dreams when we realize that we have
forgotten to get dressed and have come naked to some public place
or social gathering.
Naked is the correct word now, as I struggle to keep some shape to
my tattered analog persona. I manage to concentrate sufficiently to
form this almost random electron cloud of memories and associations
into a reasonable simulacrum of the human I had been--or at least
the human whose memories I had shared.
Mister John Keats, five feet high.
The metasphere is no less a frightening place than before--worse
now that I have no mortal shelter to flee to. Vast shapes move beyond
dark horizons, sounds echo in the Void Which Binds like footsteps
on the in an abandoned castle. Under and behind everything there
is a constant and unnerving nimble like carriage wheels on a highway
made of slate.
Poor Hunt. I am tempted to return to him, pop in like Marley's
ghost to assure him that I am better off than I look, but Old Earth is
a dangerous place for me right now: the Shrike's presence burns on
the metasphere datumplane there like flame on black velvet.
The Core summons me with greater force, but that is even More
dangerous. I remember Ummon destroying the other Keats in front
of Brawne Lamia--squeezing the analog persona to him until it simply
THE	FALL	OF	HYPEBION
dissolved, the basic Core memory of the man deliquescing like a salted
slug- No thank you.
I have chosen death to godhood, but I have chores to do before I
sleep.
The metasphere frightens me, the Core frightens me More, the dark
tunnels of the datasphere singularities I must travel terrify me to my
analog bones. But there is nothing for it.
I sweep into the first black cone, swirling around like a metaphorical
leaf in an all-too-real whirlpool, emerging on the proper datumplane,
but too dizzy and disoriented to do anything but sit there--visible to
any Core AI accessing these ROMwork ganglia or phage routines residing
in the violet crevices of any of these data mountain ranges--
but the chaos in the TechnoCore saves me here: the great Core personalities
are too busy laying siege to their own personal Troys to watch
their back doors.
I find the datasphere access codes I want and the synapse umbilicals
I need, and it is the work of a microsecond to follow old paths down
to Tau Ceti Center, Government House, the infirmary there, and the
drug-induced dreams of Paul Dure.
One thing my persona does exceptionally well is dream, and I discover
quite by accident that my memories of my Scottish tour make
a pleasant dreamscape in which to convince the priest to flee. As an
Englishman and freethinker, I once had been opposed to anything
which smacked of popery, but one thing must be said in tribute to
the Jesuits--they are taught obedience even above logic, and for once
this stands all of humankind in good stead. Dure does not ask why
when I tell him to go . . .he awakes like a good boy, wraps a blanket
around him, and goes.
Meina Gladstone thinks of me as Joseph Severn but she accepts my
message as if it is being delivered to her by God. I want to tell her:
no, I am not the One, I am only He Who Comes Before, but the |
message is the thing, so I deliver that and go. '
Passing through the Core on my way to Hyperion's metasphere, 11
catch the burning-metal whiff of civil war and glimpse a great light:
which might well be Ummon in the process of being extinguished. I
The old Master, if indeed it is he, does not cite koans as he dies, but'
screams in agony as sincerely as any conscious entity ever has who is
in the process of being fed to the ovens.
I hurry on.
The (arcaster connection to Hyperion is tenuous at best: a single
military (arcaster portal and a single, damaged JumpShip in a shrinking
perimeter of war-torn Hegemony ships. The singularity containment
sphere cannot be protected from Ouster attacks for longer than a few
minutes More. The Hegemony torchship carrying the Core deathwand
device is preparing to translate in-system even as I come through and find my bearings in the limited datasphere level which allows observation.
I pause to watch what happens next.
"Christ," said Melio Arundez, "Meina Gladstone's coming through
on a priority-one squirt."
Theo Lane joined the older man as they watched the override data
mist the air above the holopit. The Consul came down the iron spiral
staircase from the bedroom where he had gone to brood. "Another
message from TC2?" he snapped.
"Not to us specifically," said Theo, reading the red codes as they
formed and faded. "It's an override fatline transmission to everyone,
everywhere."
Arundez lowered himself into the pit cushions. "Something's very
wrong. Has the CEO ever broadcast on total wideband before?"
"Never," said Theo Lane. "The energy needed just to code such a
squirt would be incredible."
The Consul stepped closer and pointed to the codes now disappearing.
"It's not a squirt. Look, it's a real-time transmission."
Theo shook his head. "We're talking transmission values of several
hundred million gigaelectron volts here."
Arundez whistled. "At even a hundred million GeV, it'd better be
important."
"A general surrender," said Theo. "It's the only thing that would call
for a universal real-time broadcast. Gladstone's sending it to the Ousters,
Outback worlds, and overrun planets as well as the Web. It must be
carried on all comm frequencies, HTV, and datasphere bands too. It
must be a surrender."
"Shut up," said the Consul. He had been drinking.
The Consul had started drinking immediately upon his return from
the Tribunal, and his temper, which had been foul even as Theo and
Arundez were slapping him on the back and celebrating his survival,
---------------- THE PALL OF HYPERION ----------------
had not improved after the lift-off, clearance of the Swarm, and the
two hours he spent alone drinking while they accelerated toward Hyperion.

"Meina Gladstone won't surrender," slurred the Consul. The bottle
of Scotch was still in his hand. "Just watch."
On the torchship HS Stephen Hawking, the twenty-third Hegemony
spacecraft to carry the revered classical scientist's name. General Arthur
Morpurgo looked up from the C' board and hushed his two bridge
officers. Normally this class of torchship carried a crew of seventy-five.
Now, with the Core deathwand device loaded in the weapons bay and
armed, Morpurgo and four volunteers were the total crew. Displays and
discreet computer voices assured them that the Stephen Hawking was
on course, on time, and accelerating steadily toward near-quantum
velocities and the military farcaster portal stationed at LaGrange Point
Three between Madhya and its oversized moon. The Madhya portal
opened directly to the fiercely defended Hyperion-space farcaster.
"One minute eighteen seconds to translation point," said Bridge
Officer Salumun Morpurgo. The General's son.
Morpurgo nodded and keyed up the in-system wideband transmission.
Bridge projections were busy enough with mission data, so the
General allowed voice-only on the CEO's broadcast. He smiled despite
himself. What would Meina say if she knew he was at the helm of the Stephen Hawking? Better she didn't know. There was nothing else he
could do. He preferred not to see the results of his precise, hand-
delivered orders of the past two hours.
Morpurgo looked at his oldest son with pride so fierce it bordered on
pain. There were only so many torchship-rated personnel he could
approach about this mission, and his son had been the first to volunteer.
If nothing else, the Morpurgo family's enthusiasm might have allayed
some Core suspicions.
"My fellow citizens," Gladstone was saying, "this is my final broadcast
to you as your Chief Executive Officer.
"As you know, the terrible war which has already devastated three
of our worlds and is about to fall upon a fourth, has been reported as
an invasion by the Ouster Swarms.
"This is a lie."
The comm bands flared with interference and went dead. "Go to
fatline," said General Morpurgo.
"One minute three seconds to translation point," intoned his son.
Gladstone's voice returned, filtered and slightly blurred by fatline
encrypting and decoding. ". . . to realize that our ancestors . . . and
we ourselves . . . had made a Faustian bargain with a power not concerned
with the fate of humankind.
"The Core is behind the current invasion.
"The Core is responsible for our long, comfortable dark age of the
soul.
"The Core is responsible for the ongoing attempt to destroy humanity,
to remove us from the universe and replace us with a god-machine of
their own devising."
Bridge Officer Salumun Morpurgo never lifted his eyes from the
circle of instruments. "Thirty-eight seconds to translation point."
Morpurgo nodded. The other two crewmen on the C' bridge showed
faces sheened with sweat. The General realized that his own face was
wet.
". . . have proven that the Core resides . . . has always resided . . .
in the dark places between farcaster portals. They believe themselves
to be our masters. As long as the Web exists, as long as our beloved
Hegemony is joined by farcaster, they will be our masters."
Morpurgo glanced at his own mission chronometer. Twenty-eight
seconds. The translation to Hypcrion system would be--to human
senses--instantaneous. Morpurgo was certain that the Core death-
wand device was somehow keyed to detonate as soon as they entered
Hyperion space. The shock wave of death would reach the planet
Hyperion in less than two seconds, would engulf even the most
distant elements of the Ouster Swarm before ten More minutes had
passed.
"Thus," said Meina Gladstone, her voice betraying emotion for the
first time, "as Chief Executive Officer of the Senate of the Hegemony
of Man, I have authorized elements of FORCE:space to destroy all
singularity containment spheres and farcaster devices known to be in
existence.
"This destruction . . . this cauterizing . . . will commence in ten
seconds.
"God save the Hegemony.
"God forgive us all."
Bridge Officer Salumun Morpurgo said coolly, "Five seconds to translation,
Father."
Morpurgo looked across the bridge and locked eyes with his son.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Projections behind the young man showed the portal growing, growing,
surrounding.
"I love you," said the General.
Two hundred and sixty-three singularity containment spheres connecting
More than seventy-two million farcaster portals were destroyed
within two point six seconds of one another. FORCE fleet units, deployed
by Morpurgo under Executive Order and reacting to orders
unsealed less than three minutes before, reacted promptly and professionally,
destroying the fragile farcaster spheres by missile, lance, and
plasma explosive.
Three seconds later, with the clouds of debris still expanding, the
hundreds of FORCE spacecraft found themselves stranded, separated
from each other and any other system by weeks or months via Hawking
drive, and years of time-debt.
Thousands of people were caught in farcaster transit. Many died
instantly, dismembered or torn in half. Many More suffered amputated
limbs as the portals collapsed behind them or before them. Some simply
disappeared.
This was the fate of the HS Stephen Hawking--precisely as
planned--as both entrance and exit portals were expertly destroyed in
the nanosecond of the ship's translation. No part of the torchship survived
in real space. Later tests showed conclusively that the so-called
deathwand device was detonated in whatever passed for time and space
in the strange Core geographies between the portals.
The effect was never known.
The effect on the rest of the Web and its citizens was immediately
obvious.
After seven centuries of existence and at least four centuries where
few citizens existed without it, the datasphere--including the All Thing
and all comm and access bands--simply ceased to be. Hundreds of
thousands of citizens went insane at that moment--shocked into catatonia
by the disappearance of senses which had become More important
to them than sight or hearing.
More hundreds of thousands of datumplane operators, including
many of the so-called cyberpukes and system cowboys, were lost, their
analog personas caught in the crash of the datasphere or their brains
-------------------------------------------------- 4 8 I --------------------------------------------------
burned out by neural-shunt overload or an effect later known as zero-
zero feedback.
Millions of people died when their chosen habitats, accessible only
by farcaster, became isolated deathtraps.
The Bishop of the Church of the Final Atonement--the leader of
the Shrike Cult--had carefully arranged to sit out the Final Days in
some comfort in a hollowed-out mountain, lavishly stocked, deep in
the Raven Range of the north reaches of Nevermore. Redundant far-
casters were the only route in or out. The Bishop perished with several
thousand of his acolytes, exorcists, lectors, and ostiaries clawing to get
into the Inner Sanctum to share the last of the Holy One's air.
Millionaire publisher Tyrena Wingreen-Feif, ninety-seven standard
years old and on the scene for three-hundred-plus years thanks to the
miracle of Poulsen treatments and cryogenics, made the mistake of
spending that fateful day in her farcaster-access-only office on the four
hundred and thirty-fifth floor of the Transline Spire in the Babel section
ofTau Ceti Center's City Five. After fifteen hours of refusing to believe
that farcaster service would not be renewed shortly, Tyrena gave in to
comm call entreaties from her employees and dropped her containment
field walls so that she could be picked up by EMV.
Tyrena had not listened to instructions carefully enough. The explosive
decompression blew her off the four hundred and thirty-fifth
floor like a cork out of an overshaken champagne bottle. Employees
and rescue squad members in the waiting EMV swore that the old lady
cursed a blue streak for the entire four-minute fall.
On most worlds, chaos had earned a new definition.
The majority of the Web's economy disappeared with the local data-
spheres and the Web megasphere. Trillions of hard-earned and ill-gotten
marks ceased to be. Universal cards quit functioning. The machinery of
daily life coughed, wheezed, and shut down. For weeks or months or
years, depending upon the world, it would be impossible to pay for groceries,
charge a ride on public transit, settle the simplest debt, or receive
services without access to black market coins and bills.
But the webwide depression which had hit like a tsunami was a minor
detail, reserved for later pondering. For most families, the effect was
immediate and intensely personal.
Father or mother had 'cast off to work as usual, say from Deneb Vier
to Renaissance V, and instead of arriving home an hour late this eveTHE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
ning, would be delayed eleven years--if he or she could find immediate
transit on one of the few Hawking drive spinships still traveling the hard
way between the worlds.
Well-to-do family members listening to Gladstone's speech in their fashionable multiworld residence looked up to stare at each other, separated
by only a few meters and open portals between the rooms,
blinked, and were separated by light-years and actual years, their rooms
now opening onto nothing.
Children a few minutes away at school or camp or play or the sitter's
would be grown before they were reunited with parents.
The Grand Concourse, already slightly truncated by the winds of
war, found itself blown to oblivion, its endless belt of beautiful shops
and prestige restaurants sliced into tawdry sections never to be reunited.
The River Tethys ceased to flow as the giant portals went opaque
and died. Water spilled out, dried up, and left fish to rot under two
hundred suns.
There were riots. Lusus tore itself apart like a wolf chewing at its
own entrails. New Mecca went into spasms of martyrdom. TsingtaoHsishuang
Panna celebrated deliverance from the Ouster hordes and
then hanged several thousand former Hegemony bureaucrats.
Maui-Covenant also rioted, but in celebration, the hundreds'of thousands
of descendents of the First Families riding the motile isles to
displace the ofiworlders who had taken over so much of the world.
Later, the millions of shocked and displaced vacation-home owners
were put to work dismantling the thousands of oil derricks and tourist
centers which had spotted the Equatorial Archipelago like pox.
On Renaissance Vector there was a brief spurt of violence followed
by efficient social restructuring and a serious effort to feed an urban
world without farms.
On Nordholm, the cities emptied as people returned to the coasts
and the cold sea and their ancestral fishing boats.
On Parvati there was confusion and civil war.
On Sol Draconi Septem there was jubilation and revolution followed
by a new strand of retrovirus plague.
On Fuji there was philosophical resignation followed by an immediate
construction of orbital shipyards to create a fleet of Hawking drive
spinships.
On Asquith there was finger-pointing followed by the victory of the
Socialist Labor Workers' Party in the World Parliament.
On Pacem there was prayer. The new Pope, His Holiness Teilhard
I, called a great council into session--Vatican XXXIX--announced a
new era in the life of the Church, and empowered the council to prepare
missionaries for long voyages. Many missionaries. For many voyages.
Pope Teilhard announced that these missionaries would not be proselytizers,
but searchers. The Church, like so many species grown used
to living on the edge of extinction, adapted and endured.
On Tempe there were riots and death and the rise of demagogues.
On Mars the Olympus Command stayed in touch with its farflung
forces for a while via fatline. It was Olympus which confirmed that the
"Ouster invasion waves" everywhere but Hyperion system had simply
limped to a halt. Intercepted Core ships were empty and unprogrammed.
The invasion was over.
On Metaxas there were riots and reprisals.
On Qom-Riyadh a self-appointed fundamentalist Shiite ayatollah
rode out of the desert, called a hundred thousand followers to him,
and wiped out the Suni Home Rule government within hours. The
new revolutionary government returned power to tlie mullahs and set
back the clock two thousand years. The people rioted with joy.
On Armaghast, a frontier world, things went on pretty much as they
always had except for a dearth of tourists, new archaeologists, and other
imported luxuries. Armaghast was a labyrinthine world. The labyrinth
there stayed empty.
On Hebron there was panic in the offworld center of New Jerusalem,
but the Zionist elders soon restored order to the city and world. Plans
were made. Rare offworld necessities were rationed and shared. The
desert was reclaimed. Farms were extended. Trees were planted. The
people complained to each other, thanked God for deliverance, argued
with God about the discomfort of that same deliverance, and went
about their business.
On Cod's Grove entire continents still burned, and a pall of smoke
filled the sky. Soon after the last of the "Swarm" had passed, scores of
treeships rose through the clouds, climbing slowly on fusion thrusters
while shielded by erg-generated containment fields. Once beyond the
gravity well, most of these treeships turned outward in a myriad of
directions along the galactic plane of the ecliptic and began the long
spin-up to quantum leap. Fatline .squirts leaped from treeship to distant,
waiting Swarms. The reseeding had begun.
On Tau Ceti Center, seat of power and wealth and business and
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
government, the hungry survivors left the dangerous spires and useless
cities and helpless orbiting habitats and went in search of someone to
blame. Someone to punish.
They did not have far to look.
General Van Zeidt had been in Government House when the portals
railed and now he commanded the two hundred Marines and sixty-
eight security people left to guard the complex. Former CEO Meina
Gladstone still commanded the six Praetorians Kolchev had left her
when he and the other ranking senators had departed on the first and
last FORCE evacuation dropship to get through. Somewhere the mob
had acquired anti-space missiles and lances, and none of the other
three thousand Government House employees and refugees would be
going anywhere until the siege was lifted or the shields failed.
Gladstone stood at the forward observation post and watched the
carnage. The mob had destroyed most of Deer Park and the formal
gardens before the last lines of interdiction and containment fields had
stopped them. There were at least three million frenzied people pressed
against those barriers now, and the mob grew larger every minute.
"Can you drop the fields back fifty meters and restore them before
the mob covers the ground?" Gladstone asked the General. Smoke filled
the sky from the cities burning to the west. Thousands of men and
women had been smashed against the blur of containment field by the
throngs behind them until the lower two meters of the shimmering wall
looked as if it had been painted with strawberry jam. Tens of thousands More pressed closer to that inner shield despite the agony of nerve and
bone the interdiction field was causing them.
"We can do that, M. Executive," said Van Zeidt. "But why?"
"I'm going out to talk to them." Gladstone sounded very tired.
The Marine looked at her, sure that she was making some bad joke.
"M. Executive, in a month they will be willing to listen to you . . .
or any of us ... on radio or HTV. In a year, maybe two, after order's
restored and rationing's successful, they might be ready to forgive. But
it will be a generation before they really understand what you did ...
that you saved them . . . saved us all."
"I want to talk to them," said Meina Gladstone. "I have something
to give to them."
Van Zeidt shook his head and looked at the circle of FORCE officers
————————————————————————— 485 —————————————————————————
who had been staring out at the mob through slits in the bunker and
who now were staring at Gladstone with equal disbelief and horror.
"I'd have to check with CEO Kolchev," said General Van Zeidt.
"No," Meina Gladstone said tiredly. "He rules an empire which no
longer exists. I still rule the world I destroyed." She nodded toward her
Praetorians and they produced deathwands from their orange-and-black-
striped tunics.
None of the FORCE officers moved. General Van Zeidt said,
"Meina, the next evacuation ship will make it."
Gladstone nodded as if distracted. "The inner garden, I should think.
The mob will be at a loss for several moments. The withdrawal of the
outer fields will throw them off balance." She looked around as if she
might be forgetting something and then extended her hand to Van
Zeidt. "Goodbye, Mark. Thank you. Please take care of my people."
Van Zeidt shook her hand and watched as the woman adjusted her
scarf, absently touched a bracelet comlog as if for luck, and went out
of the bunker with four of her Praetorians. The small group crossed
the trampled gardens and walked slowly toward the containment fields.
The mob beyond seemed to react like a single, mindless organism,
pressing through the violet interdiction field and screaming with the
voice of some demented thing.
Gladstone turned, raised one hand as if to wave, and gestured her
Praetorians back. The four guards hurried across the matted grass.
"Do it," said the oldest of the remaining Praetorians. He pointed to
the containment field control remote.
"Fuck you," General Van Zeidt said clearly. No one would go near
that remote while he lived.
Van Zeidt had forgotten that Gladstone still had access to codes and
tactical tightbeam links. He saw her raise her comlog, but he reacted
too slowly. Lights on the remote blinked red and then green, the outer
fields winked out and then re-formed fifty meters closer in, and for a
second, Meina Gladstone stood alone with nothing between her and
the mob of millions except a few meters of grass and countless corpses
suddenly surrendered to gravity by the retreating shield walls.
Gladstone raised both arms as if embracing the mob. Silence and
lack of motion extended for three eternal seconds, and then the mob
roared with the voice of a single great beast, and thousands surged
forward with sticks and rocks and knives and broken bottles.
For a moment it seemed to Van Zeidt that Gladstone stood like an
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
impervious rock against that tidal wave of rabble; he could see her dark
suit and bright scarf, see her standing upright, her arms still raised, but
then More hundreds surged in, the crowd closed, and the CEO was
lost.
The Praetorians lowered their weapons and were put under immediate
arrest by Marine sentries.
"Opaque the containment fields," ordered Van Zeidt. "Tell the drop- ships to land in the inner garden at five-minute intervals. Hurry!"
The General turned away.
"Good Lord," said Theo Lane as the fragmented reports kept coming
in over the fatline. There were so many millisecond squirts being sent
that the computer could do little to separate them. The result was a
melange of madness.
"Play back the destruction of the singularity containment sphere,"
said the Consul.
"Yes, sir," said the ship and interrupted its fatline messages for a
replay of the sudden burst of white, followed by a brief blossoming of
debris and sudden collapse as the singularity swallowed itself and everything
within a six-thousand-klick radius. Instruments showed the effect
of gravity tides: easily adjusted for at this distance but playing havoc with the Hegemony and Ouster ships still locked in battle closer to
Hyperion.
"All right," said the Consul, and the rush of fatline reports resumed.
"There's no doubt?" asked Arundez.
"None," said the Consul. "Hyperion is an Outback world again.
Only this time there is no Web to be Outback to."
"It's so hard to believe," said Theo Lane. The ex-Govemor-General
sat drinking Scotch: the only time the Consul had ever seen his aide
indulge in a drug. Theo poured another four fingers. "The Web . . .
gone. Five hundred years of expansion wiped out."
"Not wiped out," said the Consul. He set his own drink, still unfinished,
on a table. "The worlds remain. The cultures will grow apart,
but we still have the Hawking drive. The one technological advance
we gave ourselves rather than leased from the Core."
Melio Arundez leaned forward, his palms together as if praying. "Can
the Core really be gone? Destroyed?"
The Consul listened a moment to the babble of voices, cries, entreaties,
military reports, and pleas for help coming over the fatline
voice-only bands. "Perhaps not destroyed," he said, "but cut off, sealed
away."
Theo finished his drink and carefully set his glass down. His green
eyes had a placid, glazed look. "You think there are . . . other spider-
webs for them? Other fareaster systems? Reserve Cores?"
The Consul made a gesture with his hand. "We know they succeeded
in creating their Ultimate Intelligence. Perhaps that Ul allowed this
. . . winnowing ... of the Core. Perhaps it's keeping some of the old
AIs on line--in a reduced capacity--the way they had planned to keep
a few billion humans in reserve."
Suddenly the fatline babble ceased as if cut off by a knife.
"Ship?" queried the Consul, suspecting a power failure somewhere
in the receiver.
"All fatline messages have ceased, most in midtransmission," said
the ship.
The Consul felt his heart pounding as he thought The deathwand
device. But no, he realized at once, that couldn't affect all of the worlds
at once. Even with hundreds of such devices detonating simultaneously,
there would be lag time as FORCE ships and other far-flung transmission
sources got in their final messages. But what then?
"The messages appear to have been cut off by a disturbance in the
transmission medium," said the ship. "Which is, to my current knowledge,
impossible."
The Consul stood. A disturbance in the transmission medium? The
fatline medium, as far as humans understood it, was the hyperstring
Planck-infinite topography of space-time itself: what AIs had cryptically
referred to as the Void Which Binds. There could be no disturbance
in that medium.
Suddenly the ship said, "Fatline message coming in--transmission
source, everywhere; encryption base, infinite; squirt rate, realtime."
The Consul opened his mouth to tell the ship to quit spouting nonsense
when the air above the holopit misted in something neither image
nor data column, and a voice spoke:
"THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER MISUSE OF THIS CHANNEL. YOU ARE
DISTURBING OTHERS WHO ARE USING IT TO SERIOUS PURPOSE. ACCESS
WILL BE RESTORED WHEN YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS FOR. GOODBYE."
The three men sat in silence unbroken except for the reassuring rush
of ventilator fans and the myriad soft noises of a ship under way. Finally
the Consul said, "Ship, please send out a standard fatline time-location
squirt without encoding. Add 'receiving stations respond.' "
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
There was a pause of seconds--an impossibly long response time for
the AI-caliber computer that was the ship. "I'm sorry, that is not possible,"
it said at last.
"Why not?" demanded the Consul.
"Fatline transmissions are no longer being . . . allowed. The hyperstring
medium is no longer receptive to modulation."
"There's nothing on the fatline?" asked Theo, staring at the empty
space above the holopit as if someone had turned off a holie just as it
was getting to the exciting part.
Again the ship paused. "To all intents and purposes, M. Lane," it
said, "there is no fatline any longer."
"Jesus wept," muttered the Consul. He finished his drink in one long
gulp and went to the bar for another. "It's the old Chinese curse," he
muttered.
Melio Arundez looked up. "What's that?"
The Consul took a long drink. "Old Chinese curse," he said. "May
you live in interesting times."
As if compensating for the loss of fatline, the ship played audio of
in-system radio and intercepted tightbeam babble while it projected a
real-time view of the blue-and-white sphere of Hyperion turning and
growing as they decelerated toward it at two hundred gravities.
FORTY-FIVE
I escape the Web datasphere just before escape ceases to be an
option.
It is incredible and oddly disturbing, the sight of the megasphere
swallowing itself. Brawn Lamia's view of the megasphere as an organic
thing, a semisentient organism More analagous to an ecology than a
city, was essentially correct. Now, as the farcaster links cease to be
and the world inside those avenues folds and collapses upon itself, the
external datasphere simultaneously collapsing like a burning big-top
tent suddenly without poles, wires, guys, or stakes, the living mega-
sphere devours itself like some ravenous predator gone mad--chewing
its own tail, belly, entrails, forepaws, and heart--until only the mindless
jaws are left, snapping on emptiness.
The metasphere remains. But it is More wilderness than ever now.
Black forests of unknown time and space. .
Sounds in the night.
Lions.
And tigers.
And bears.
When the Void Which Binds convulses and sends its single, banal
message to the human universe, it is as if an earthquake has sent
ripples through solid rock. Hurrying through the shifting metasphere
above Hyperion, I have to smile. It is as if the God-analog has grown
tired of the ants scribbling graffiti on Its big toe.
I don't see God--either one of them--in the metasphere. I don't
try. I have enough problems of my own.
The black vortexes of the Web and Core entrances are gone now,
erased from space and time like warts removed, vanished as thoroughly
as whirlpools in water when the storm has passed.
489
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
I am stuck here unless I want to brave the metasphere.
Which I do not. Not yet.
But this is where I want to be. The datasphere is all but gone here
in Hyperion System, the pitiful remnants on the world itself and in
what remains of the FORCE fleet drying up like tidepools in the sun,
but the Time Tombs glow through the metasphere like beacons in
the gathering darkness. If the farcaster links had been black vortexes,
the Tombs blaze like white holes shedding an expanding light.
I move toward them. So far, as the One Who Comes Before, all I
have accomplished is to appear in others' dreams. It is time to do something.
Sol waited.
It had been hours since he had handed his only child to the Shrike.
It had been days since he had eaten or slept. Around him the storm
had raged and abated, the Tombs had glowed and rumbled like runaway
reactors, and the time tides had whipped him with tsunami force. But
Sol had clung to the stone steps of the Sphinx and waited through it
all. He waited now.
Half conscious, pummeled by fatigue and fear for his daughter, Sol
found that his scholar's mind was working at a rapid pace.
For most of his life and for all of his career, Sol Weintraub the
historian-cum-classicist-cum-philosopher had dealt with the ethics of
human religious behavior. Religion and ethics were not always--or
even frequently--mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism
or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often reflected the
worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system
which both man and God could live under with a sense of real justice.
Sol's most famous book, finally titled Abraham's Dilemma when it was
brought out in a mass-market edition in numbers he had never dreamed
of while producing volumes for academic presses, had been written
when Rachel was dying of Merlin's sickness and dealt, obviously
enough, with Abraham's hard choice of obeying or disobeying God's
direct command for him to sacrifice his son.
Sol had written that primitive times had required primitive obedience,
that later generations evolved to the point where parents offered themselves
as sacrifice--as in the dark nights of the ovens which pocked Old
Earth history--and that current generations had to deny any command
for sacrifice. Sol had written that whatever form God now took in human
consciousness--whether as a mere manifestation of the subconscious
in all its revanchist needs or as a More conscious attempt at philosophical
and ethical evolution--humankind could no longer agree to offer up
sacrifice in God's name. Sacrifice and the agreement to sacrifice had
written human history in blood.
Yet hours ago, ages ago, Sol Weintraub had handed his only child
to a creature of death.
For years the voice in his dreams had commanded him to do so. For
years Sol had refused. He had agreed, finally, only when time was gone,
when any other hope was gone, and when he had realized that the
voice in his and Sarai's dreams all those years had not been the voice
of God, nor of some dark force allied with the Shrike.
It had been the voice of their daughter.
With a sudden clarity which went beyond the immediacy of his pain
or sorrow, Sol Weintraub suddenly understood perfectly why Abraham
had agreed to sacrifice Isaac, his son, when the Lord commanded him
to do so.
It was not obedience.
It was not even to put the love of God above the love of his son.
Abraham was testing God.
By denying the sacrifice at the last moment, by stopping the knife,
God had earned the right--in Abraham's eyes and the hearts of his
offspring--to become the God of Abraham.
Sol shuddered as he thought of how no posturing on Abraham's part,
no shamming of his willingness to sacrifice the boy, could have served
to forge that bond between greater power and humankind. Abraham
had to know in his own heart that he would kill his son. The Deity,
whatever form it then took, had to know Abraham's determination, had
to feel that sorrow and commitment to destroy what was to Abraham
the most precious thing in the universe.
Abraham came not to sacrifice, but to know once and for all whether
this God was a god to be trusted and obeyed. No other test would do.
Why then, thought Sol, clinging to the stone stair as the Sphinx
seemed to rise and fall on the storm seas of time, why was this test
being repeated? What terrible new revelations lay at hand for humankind?

Sol understood then--from what little Brawne had told him, from
the stories shared on the pilgrimage, from his own personal revelations
of the past few weeks--that the effort of the machine Ultimate Intelligence,
whatever the hell it was, to flush out the missing Empathy
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPEBION ----------------
entity of the human Godhead was useless. Sol no longer saw the tree
of thorns on its cliff top, its metal branches and suffering multitudes,
but he did see clearly now that the thing was as much an organic
machine as the Shrike--an instrument to broadcast suffering through
the universe so the human God-part would be forced to respond, to
show itself.
If God evolved, and Sol was sure that God must, then that evolution
was toward empathy--toward a shared sense of suffering rather than
power and dominion. But the obscene tree which the pilgrims had
glimpsed--which poor Martin Silenus had been a victim of--was not
the way to evoke the missing power.
Sol realized now that the machine god, whatever its form, was insightful
enough to see that empathy was a response to others' pain, but
the same UI was too stupid to realize that empathy--in both human
terms and the terms of humankind's UI--was far More than that.
Empathy and love were inseparable and inexplicable. The machine UI
would never understand it--not even enough to use it as a lure for the
part of the human UI who had tired of warfare in the distant future.
Love, that most banal of things, that most cliched of religious motivations,
had More power--Sol now knew--than did strong nuclear
force or weak nuclear force or electromagnetism or gravity. Love was these other forces, Sol realized. The Void Which Binds, the subquantum
impossibility that carried information from photon to photon, was
nothing More or less than love.
But could love--simple, banal love--explain the so-called anthropic
principle which scientists had shaken their collective heads over for
seven centuries and more--that almost infinite string of coincidences
which had led to a universe that had just the proper number of dimensions,
just the correct values on electron, just the precise rules for
gravity, just the proper age to stars, just the right prebiologies to create
just the perfect viruses to become just the proper DNAs--in short, a
series of coincidences so absurd in their precision and correctness that
they defied logic, defied understanding, and even defied religious interpretation.
Love?
For seven centuries the existence of Grand Unification Theories
and hyperstring post-quantum physics and Core-given understanding
of the universe as self-contained and boundless, without Big Bang singularities
or corresponding endpoints, had pretty much eliminated any
role of God--primitively anthropomorphic or sophisticatedly post-
Einsteinian--even as a caretaker or pre-Creation former of rules. The
4 9 3
modern universe, as machine and man had come to understand it,
needed no Creator; in fact, allowed no Creator. Its rules allowed very
little tinkering and no major revisions. It had not begun and would not
end, beyond cycles of expansion and contraction as regular and self-
regulated as the seasons on Old Earth. No room for love there.
It seemed that Abraham had offered to murder his son to test a
phantom.
It seemed that Sol had brought his dying daughter through hundreds
of light-years and innumerable hardships in response to nothing.
But now, as the Sphinx loomed above him and the first hint of
sunrise paled Hyperion's sky, Sol realized that he had responded to a
force More basic and persuasive than the Shrike's terror or pain's dominion.
If he was right--and he did not know but felt--then love was
as hardwired into the structure of the universe as gravity and matter/
antimatter. There was room for some sort of God not in the web between
the walls, nor in the singularity cracks in the pavement, nor somewhere
out before and beyond the sphere of things . . . but in the very warp
and woof of things. Evolving as the universe evolved. Learning as the
learning-able parts of the universe learned. Loving as humankind loved.
Sol got to his knees and then to his feet. The time tide storm seemed
to have abated a bit, and he thought he could try for the hundredth
time to gain access to the tomb.
Bright light still emanated from where the Shrike had emerged, taken
Sol's daughter, and vanished. But now the stars were disappearing as
the sky itself lightened toward morning.
Sol climbed the stairs.
, He remembered the time at home on Barnard's World when
Rachel--she was ten--had tried to climb the town's tallest elm and
had fallen when she was five meters from the top. Sol had rushed to
the med center to find his child floating in the recovery nutrient and
suffering from a punctured lung, a broken leg and ribs, a fractured jaw,
and innumerable cuts and bruises. She had smiled at him, lifted a
thumb, and said through her wired jaw, "I'll make it next time!"
Sol and Sarai had sat there in the med center that night while Rachel
slept. They had waited for morning. Sol had held her hand through
the night.
He waited now.
Time tides from the open entrance to the Sphinx still held Sol back
THE	FALL	OF HYPE
like insistent winds, but he leaned into them like an immovable rock
and stood there, five meters out and waiting, squinting into the glare.
He glanced up but did not move back when he saw the fusion flame
of a descending spacecraft slice the predawn sky. He turned to look but
did not retreat when he heard the spacecraft landing and saw three
figures emerge. He glanced but did not step back when he heard other
noises, shouts, from deeper in the valley and saw a familiar figure
lugging another in a fireman's carry, moving toward him from beyond
the Jade Tomb.
None of these things related to his child. He waited for Rachel.
Even without a datasphere, it is quite possible for my persona to
travel through the rich, Void-Which-Binds soup which now surrounds
Hyperion. My immediate reaction is to want to visit the One Who
Will Be, but although that one's brilliance dominates the metasphere,
I am not yet ready for that. I am, after all, little John Keats, not John
the Baptist.
The Sphinx--a tomb patterned after a real creature that will not
be designed by genetic engineers for centuries to come--is a maelstrom
of temporal energies. There are really several Sphinxes visible to my
expanded sight: the anti-entropic tomb carrying its Shrike cargo back
in time like some sealed container with its deadly bacillus, the active,
unstable Sphinx which contaminated Rachel Weintraub in its initial
efforts to open a portal through time, and the Sphinx which has opened
and is moving forward through time again. This last Sphinx is the
blazing portal of light, which, second only to the One Who Will Be,
lights Hyperion with its metasphcrical bonfire.
I descend to this bright place in time to watch Sol Weintraub hand
his daughter to the Shrike.
I could not have interfered with this even if I had arrived earlier. I
would not if I were able. Worlds beyond reason depend upon this
act.
But I await within the Sphinx for the Shrike to pass, carrying its
tender cargo. Now I can see the child. She is seconds old, blotched,
moist, and wrinkled. She is crying her Newborn lungs out. From my
old attitudes of bachelorhood and reflective poet's stance, I find it hard
to understand the attraction this bawling, unaesthetic infant exerts on
its father and the cosmos.
----------------------------------------------- 4 9 S ----------------------------------------------
Still, the sight of a baby's flesh--however unattractive this Newborn
might be--held by the Shrike's bladed talons stirs something in me.
Three paces into the Sphinx have carried the Shrike and the child
hours forward in time. Just beyond the entrance, the river of time
accelerates. If I don't do something within seconds, it will be too
late--the Shrike will have used this portal to carry the child off to
whatever distant-future dark hole it seeks.
Unbidden, the images arrive of spiders draining their victims of
fluids, of digger wasps burying their own larvae in the paralyzed bodies
of their prey, perfect sources for incubation and food.
I have to act, but I have no More solidity here than I had in the
Core. The Shrike walks through me as if I were an unseen holo. My
analog persona is useless here, armless and insubstantial as a wisp of
swamp gas.
But swamp gas has no brain, and John Keats did.
The Shrike takes another two steps, and More hours pass for Sol
and the others outside. I can see blood on the crying infant's skin
where the Shrike's scalpeled ringers have cut into flesh.
To hell with this.
Outside, on the broad stone porch of the Sphinx, caught now in
the flood of temporal energies flowing in and through the tomb, lay
backpacks, blankets, abandoned food containers, and all the detritus
Sol and the pilgrims had left there.
Including a single Mobius cube.
The box had been sealed with a class-eight containment field on
the Templar treeship Yggdrasill when Voice of the Tree Het Masteen
had prepared for his long voyage. It contained a single erg--sometimes
known as a binder--one of the small creatures which might not be
intelligent by human standards but which had evolved around distant
stars and developed the ability to control More powerful forcefields
than any machine known to humankind.
The Templars and Ousters had communicated with the creatures
for generations. Templars used them for control redundancy on their
beautiful but exposed treeships.
Het Masteen had brought this thing hundreds of light-years to complete
the Templar agreement with the Church of the Final Atonement
to help fly the Shrike's thorn tree. But, seeing the Shrike and the tree
of torment, Masteen had not been able to fulfill the contract. And so
he died.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
The Mobius cube remained. The erg was visible to me as a constrained
sphere of red energy in the temporal Hood.
Outside, through a curtain of darkness, Sol Weintraub was just
visible--a sadly comic figure, speeded up like a silent-film figure by
the subjective rush of time beyond the Sphinx's temporal field--but
the Mobius cube lay within the Sphinx's circle.
Rachel cried with the fear even a Newborn can know. Fear of falling.
Fear of pain. Fear of separation.
The Shrike took a step, and another hour was lost to those outside.
I was insubstantial to the Shrike, but energy fields are something
which even we Core-analog ghosts can touch. I canceled the Mobius
cube's containment field. I treed the erg.
Templars communicate with ergs via electromagnetic radiation,
coded pulses, simple rewards of radiation when the creature does
what they want . . . but primarily through a near-mystical form
of contact which only the Brotherhood and a few Ouster exotics
know. Scientists call it a crude telepathy. In truth, it is almost pure
empathy.
The Shrike takes another step into the opening portal to the future.
Rachel cries with the energy only someone newly born to the universe
can muster.
The erg expands, understands, and melds with my persona. John
Keats takes on substance and form.
I hurry the five paces to the Shrike, remove the baby from its hands,
and step back. Even in the energy maelstrom that is the Sphinx, I
can smell the infant-newness of her as I hold the child against my
chest and cup her moist head against my cheek.
The Shrike whirls in surprise. Four arms extend, blades snick open,
and red eyes focus on me. But the creature is too close to the portal
itself. Without moving, it recedes down the storm drain of temporal
flow. The thing's steam-shovel jaws open, steel teeth gnash, but it is
already gone, a spot in the distance. Something less.
I turn toward the entrance, but it is too far. The erg's draining
energy could get me there, drag me upstream against the flow, but not
with Rachel. Carrying another living thing that far against so much
force is More than I can manage even with the erg's help.
The baby cries, and I bounce her gently, whispering nonsense doggerel
in her warm ear.
If we can't go back and we can't go forward, we'll just wait here for
a moment. Perhaps someone will come along.
497
Martin Silenus's eyes widened and Brawne Lamia turned quickly,
seeing the Shrike floating in midair above and behind her.
"Holy shit," Brawne whispered reverently.
In the Shrike Palace, tiers of sleeping human bodies receded in the
gloom and distance, all of the people except Martin Silenus still connected
to the thorn tree, the machine UI, and God knows what else
by pulsing umbilicals.
As if to show its power here, the Shrike had quit climbing, opened
its arms, and floated up three meters until it hung in the air five meters
out from the stone shelf where Brawne crouched next to Martin Silenus.
"Do something," whispered Silenus. The poet was no longer attached
by the neural shunt umbilical, but he was still too weak to hold his
head up.
"Ideas?" said Brawne, the brave remark somewhat ruined by the
quaver in her voice.
"Trust," said a voice below them, and Brawne shifted to look down
toward the floor.
The young woman whom Brawne had recognized as Moneta in
Kassad's tomb stood far below.
"Help!" cried Brawne.
"Trust," said Moneta and disappeared. The Shrike had not been
distracted. It lowered its hands and stepped forward as if walking on
solid stone rather than air.
"Shit," whispered Brawne.
"Ditto," rasped Martin Silenus. "Out of the frying pan back into the
fucking fire."
"Shut up," said Brawne. Then, as if to herself, "Trust what? Who?"
'Trust the fucking Shrike to kill us or stick us both on the fucking
tree," gasped Silenus. He managed to move enough to clutch Brawne's
arm. "Better dead than back on the tree, Brawne."
Brawne touched his hand briefly and stood, facing the Shrike across
five meters of air.
Trust? Brawne held her foot out, felt around on emptiness, closed
her eyes for a second, and opened them as her foot seemed to touch a
solid step. She opened her eyes.
Nothing was under her foot except air.
Trust? Brawne put her weight on her forward foot and stepped out,
teetering a moment before bringing her other foot down.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
She and the Shrike stood facing each other ten meters above the
stone floor. The creature seemed to grin at her as it opened its arms.
Its carapace glowed dully in the dim light. Its red eyes were very bright.
Trust? Feeling the adrenaline rush, Brawne stepped forward on the
invisible steps, gaining height as she moved into the Shrike's embrace.
She felt the fingerblades slicing through fabric and skin as the thing
began to hug her to it, toward the curved blade growing out of its metal
chest, toward the open jaws and rows of steel teeth. But while still
standing firmly on thin air, Brawne leaned forward and set her uninjured
hand flat against the Shrike's chest, feeling the coldness of the carapace
but also feeling a rush of warmth as energy rushed from her, out of
her, through her.
The blades stopped cutting before they cut anything but skin. The
Shrike froze as if the flow of temporal energy surrounding them had
turned to a lump of amber.
Brawne set her hand on the thing's broad chest and pushed.
The Shrike froze completely in place, became brittle, the gleam of
metal fading to be replaced by the transparent glow of crystal, the bright
sheen of glass.
Brawne stood on air being embraced by a three-meter glass sculpture
of the Shrike. In its chest, where a heart might be, something that looked like a large, black moth fluttered and beat sooty wings against
the glass.
Brawne took a deep breath and pushed again. The Shrike slid backward
on the invisible platform she shared with it, teetered, and fell.
Brawne ducked under the encircling arms, hearing and feeling her jacket
tearing as still-sharp fingerblades caught in the material and ripped
as the thing tumbled, and then she was teetering herself, flailing her
good arm for balance as the glass Shrike turned one and a half times
in midair, struck the floor, and shattered into a thousand jagged
shards.
Brawne pivoted, fell to her knees on the invisible catwalk, and crawled
back toward Martin Silenus.
In the last half meter, her confidence failed her, the invisible support
simply ceased to be, and she fell heavily, twisting her ankle as she hit
the edge of the stone tier and managing to keep from falling off only
by grabbing Silenus's knee.
Cursing from the pain in her shoulder, broken wrist, twisted ankle,
and lacerated palms and knees, she pulled herself to safety next to him.
"There's obviously been some weird shit going on since I left," Martin
Silenus said hoarsely. "Can we go now, or do you plan to walk on
water as an encore?"
"Shut up," Brawne said shakily. The two syllables sounded almost
affectionate.
She rested a while and then found that the easiest way to get the
still-weak poet down the steps and across the glass-strewn floor of the
Shrike Palace was to use the fireman's carry. They were at the entrance
when he pounded unceremoniously on her back and said, "What about
King Billy and the others?"
"Later," panted Brawne and stepped out into the predawn light.
She had hobbled down two-thirds of the valley with Silenus draped
over her shoulders like so much limp laundry when the poet said,
"Brawne, are you still pregnant?"
"Yes," she said, praying that that was still true after the day's exertions.
"You want me to carry you?"
"Shut up," she said and followed the path down and around the Jade
Tomb.
"Look," said Martin Silenus, twisting to point even as he hung almost
upside down over her shoulder.
In the glowing light of morning, Brawne could see that the Consul's
ebony spacecraft now sat on the high ground at the entrance to the
valley. But that was not what the poet was pointing toward.
Sol Weintraub stood silhouetted in the glare of the Sphinx's entrance.
His arms were raised.
Someone or something was emerging from the glare.
Sol saw her first. A figure walking amidst the torrent of light and
liquid time flowing from the Sphinx. A woman, he saw, as she was
silhouetted against the brilliant portal. A woman carrying something.
A woman carrying an infant.
His daughter Rachel emerged—Rachel as he had last seen her as a
healthy young adult leaving to do her doctoral work on some world
called Hyperion, Rachel in her mid-twenties, perhaps even a bit older
now—but Rachel, no doubt about that, Rachel with her copperish-
brown hair still ;,hort and falling across her forehead, her cheeks flushed
as they always were as with some new enthusiasm, her smile soft, almost
tremulous now, and her eyes—those enormous green eyes with specks
of brown just visible—those eyes fixed on Sol.
Rachel was carrying Rachel. The infant squirmed with its face against
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
the young woman's shoulder, tiny hands clenching and unclenching
as it tried to decide whether to start crying again or not.
Sol stood stunned. He tried to speak, failed, and tried again.
"Rachel."
"Father," said the young woman and stepped forward, putting her
free arm around the scholar while she turned slightly to keep the baby
from being crushed between them.
Sol kissed his grown daughter, hugged her, smelled the clean scent
of her hair, felt the firm reality of her, and then lifted the infant to his
own neck and shoulder, feeling the shudders pass through the Newborn
as she took a breath before crying. The Rachel he had brought to
Hyperion was safe in his hands, small, red face wrinkled as she tried
to focus her randomly wandering eyes on her father's face. Sol cupped
her tiny head in his palm and lifted her closer, inspecting that small
face for a second before turning toward the young woman.
"Is she ..."
"She's aging normally," said his daughter. She was wearing something
part gown, part robe, made of soft brown material. Sol shook his
head, looked at her, saw her smiling, and noticed the same small dimple
below and to the left of her mouth that was visible on the infant he
held.
He shook his head again. "How . . . how is this possible?"
"It's not for very long," said Rachel.
Sol leaned forward and kissed his grown daughter's cheek again. He
realized that he was crying, but he would not release either hand to
wipe away the tears. His grown Rachel did so for him, touching his
cheek gently with the back of her hand.
There was a noise below them on the steps, and Sol looked over his
shoulder to see the three men from the ship standing there, red faced
from running, and Brawne Lamia helping the poet Silenus to a seat
on the white slab of railing stone.
The Consul and Theo Lane looked up at them.
"Rachel ..." whispered Melio Arundez, his eyes filling.
"Rachel?" said Martin Silenus, frowning and glancing at Brawne
Lamia.
Brawne was staring with her mouth half open. "Moneta," she said,
pointing, then lowering her hand as she realized she was pointing.
"You're Moneta. Kassad's . . . Moneta."
Rachel nodded, her smile gone. "I have only a minute or two here,"
she said. "And much to tell you."
-------------------------------------------------- 5 O I --------------------------------------------------
"No," said Sol, taking his grown daughter's hand, "you have to stay.
I want you to stay with me."
Rachel smiled again. "I will stay with you, Dad," she said softly,
raising her other hand to touch the baby's head. "But only one of us
can . . . and she needs you More." She turned to the group below.
"Listen, please, all of you."
As the sun rose and touched the broken buildings of the Poets' City,
the Consul's ship, the western cliffs, and the taller Time Tombs with
its light, Rachel told her brief and tantalizing story of being chosen to
be raised in a future where the final war raged between the Core-spawned
UI and the human spirit. It was, she said, a future of terrifying and
wonderful mysteries, where humankind had spread across this galaxy
and had begun to travel elsewhere.
"Other galaxies?" asked Theo Lane.
"Other universes," smiled Rachel.
"Colonel Kassad knew you as Moneta," said Martin Silenus.
"Wi// know me as Moneta," said Rachel, her eyes clouding. "I have
seen him die and accompanied his tomb to the past. I know that part
of my mission is to meet this fabled warrior and lead him forward to
the final battle. I have not truly met him yet." She looked down the
valley toward the Crystal Monolith. "Moneta," she mused. "It means
'Admonisher' in Latin. Appropriate. I will let him choose between that
and Mnemosyne--'memory'--for my name."
Sol had not released his daughter's hand. He did not do so now.
"You're traveling back in time with the Tombs? Why? How?"
Rachel lifted her head, and reflected light from the far cliffs
painted her face in warmth. "It is my role. Dad. My duty. They
give me means to keep the Shrike in check. And only I was . . .
prepared."
Sol lifted his infant daughter higher. Startled from sleep, she blew a
single bubble of saliva, turned her face into her father's neck for warmth,
and curled her small fists against his shirt.
"Prepared," said Sol. "You mean the Merlin's sickness?"
"Yes," said Rachel.
Sol shook his head. "But you weren't raised in some mysterious
world of the future. You grew up in the college town of Crawford,
on Fertig Street, on Bamard's World, and your . . ." He stopped.
Rachel nodded. "Sne shall grow up ... up there. Dad, I'm sorry, I
have to go." She freed her hand, drifted down the stairs, and touched
Melio Arundez's cheek briefly. "I'm sorry for the pain of memory," she
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
said softly to the startled archaeologist. "To me it was, literally, a different
life."
Arundez blinked and held her hand to his cheek a moment longer.
"Are you married?" asked Rachel softly. "Children?"
Arundez nodded, moved his other hand as if he were going to remove
the pictures of his wife and grown children from his pocket, and then
stopped, nodded again.
Rachel smiled, kissed him quickly on the cheek again, and moved
back up the steps. The sky was rich with sunrise, but the door to the
Sphinx was still brighter.
"Dad," she said, "I love you."
Sol tried to speak, cleared his throat. "How . . . how do I join you
... up there?"
Rachel gestured toward the open door of the Sphinx. "For some it
will be a portal to the time I spoke of. But, Dad ..." She hesitated.
"It will mean raising me all over again. It means suffering through my
childhood for a third time. No parent should be asked to do that."
Sol managed a smile. "No parent would refuse that, Rachel." He
changed arms holding the sleeping infant, and shook his head again.
"Will there be a time when . . . the two of you . . . ?"
"Coexist again?" smiled Rachel. "No. I go the other way now. You
can't imagine the difficulty I had with the Paradox Board to get this
one meeting approved."
"Paradox Board?" said Sol.
Rachel took a breath. She had stepped back until only her fingertips
touched her father's, both their arms extended. "I have to go. Dad."
"Will I ..." He looked at the baby. "Will '.ve be alone ... up
there?"
Rachel laughed, and the sound was so familiar that it closed around
Sol's heart like a warm hand. "Oh no," she said, "not alone. There
arc wonderful people there. Wonderful things to learn and do. Wonderful
places to see ..." She glanced around. "Places we have not
imagined yet in our wildest dreams. No, Dad, you won't be alone. And
I'll be there, in all my teenage awkwardness and young-adult cockiness."
She stepped back, and her ringers slipped away from Sol.
"Wait a while before stepping through. Dad," she called, moving
back into the brilliance. "It doesn't hurt, but once through you can't
come back."
"Rachel, wait," said Sol.
His daughter stepped back, her long robe flowing across stone, until
-------------------------------------------------- 503 --------------------------------------------------
the light surrounded her. She raised one arm. "See you later, alligator!"
she called.
Sol raised a hand. "After a while . . . crocodile."
The older Rachel was gone in the light.
The baby awoke and began to cry.
It was More than an hour before Sol and the others returned to the
Sphinx. They had gone to the Consul's ship to tend to Brawne's and
Martin Silenus's injuries, to eat, and to outfit Sol and the child for a
voyage.
"I feel silly packing for what may be like a step through a farcaster,"
said Sol, "but no wonder how wonderful this future is, if it doesn't have
nursing paks and disposable diapers, we're in trouble."
The Consul grinned and patted the full backpack on the step. "This
should get you and the baby through the first two weeks. If you don't
find a diaper service by then, go to one of those other universes Rachel
spoke about."
Sol shook his head. "Is this happening?"
"Wait a few days or weeks," said Melio Arundez. "Stay here with us
until things get sorted out. There's no hurry. The future will always be
there."
Sol scratched his beard as he fed the baby with one of the nursing
paks the ship had manufactured. "We're not sure this portal will always
be open," he said. "Besides, I might lose my nerve. I'm getting pretty
old to raise a child again . . . especially as a stranger in a strange land."
Arundez set his strong hand on Sol's shoulder. "Let me go with you.
I'm dying of curiosity about this place."
Sol grinned and extended his hand, shook Arundez's firmly. "Thank
you, my friend. But you have a wife and children back in the Web
... on Renaissance Vector . . . who await your return. You have your
own duties."
Arundez nodded and looked at the sky. "If we can return."
"We'll return," the Consul said flatly. "Old-fashioned Hawking drive
spaceflight stj'l works, even if the Web is gone forever. It'll be a few
years' time-debt, Melio, but you'll get back."
Sol nodded, finished feeding the baby, set a clean cloth diaper on
his shoulder, and patted her firmly on the back. He looked around the
small circle of people. "We all have our duties." He shook hands with
Martin Silenus. The poet had refused to crawl into the nutrient recovery
THE	FALL	OF	HYPEBION
bath or have the neural shunt socket surgically removed. 'I've had these
things before,' he'd said.
"Will you continue your poem?" Sol asked him.
Silenus shook his head. "I finished it on the tree," he said. "And I
discovered something else there, Sol."
The scholar raised an eyebrow.
"I learned that poets aren't God, but if there is a God ... or anything
approaching a God . . . he's a poet. And a failed one at that."
The baby burped.
Martin Silenus grinned and shook Sol's hand a final time. "Give
them hell up there, Weintraub. Tell 'em you're their great-greatgreatgreat-great
grandaddy, and if they misbehave, you'll whop their butts."
Sol nodded and moved down the line to Brawne Lamia. "I saw you
conferring with the ship's medical terminal," he said. "Is everything all
right with you and your unborn child?"
Brawne grinned. "Everything's fine."
"A boy or girl?"
"Girl."
Sol kissed her on the cheek. Brawne touched his beard and turned
her face away to hide tears unbecoming a former private investigator.
"Girls are such a chore," he said, disentangling Rachel's fingers from
his beard and Brawne's curls. "Trade yours in for a boy the first chance
you get."
"OK," said Brawne and stepped back.
He shook hands a final time with the Consul, Theo, and Melio,
shouldered his pack while Brawne held the infant, and then took Rachel
in his arms. "Hell of an anticlimax if this thing doesn't work and I end
up wandering around the inside of the Sphinx," he said.
The Consul squinted at the glowing door. "It will work. Although
how, I'm not sure. I don't think it's a farcaster of any sort."
"A whencaster," ventured Silenus and held up his arm to block
Brawne's blows. The poet took a step back and shrugged. "If it continues
to work, Sol, I have a feeling you won't be alone up there. Thousands
will join you."
"If the Paradox Board permits," said Sol, tugging at his beard the
way he always did when his mind was elsewhere. He blinked, shifted
backpack and baby, and stepped forward. The fields of force from the
open door let him advance this time.
"So long everyone!" he cried. "By God, it was all worth it, wasn't
it?" He turned into the light, and he and the baby were gone.
There was a silence bordering on emptiness wliich stretched for several
minutes. Finally the Consul said, in almost embarrassed tones,
"Shall we go up to the ship?"
"Bring the elevator down for the rest of us," said Martin Silenus.
"M. Lamia here will walk on air."
Brawne glared at the diminutive poet.
"You think it was something Moneta arranged?" said Arundez, referring
to something Brawne had suggested earlier.
"It had to be," said Brawne. "Some bit of future science or something."

"Ah, yes," sighed Martin Silenus, "future science . . . that familiar
phrase from those too timid to be superstitious. The alternative, my
dear, is that you have this hitherto untapped power to levitate and turn
monsters into shatterable glass goblins."
"Shut up," said Brawne, with no undertones of affection in her voice
now. She looked over her shoulder. "Who says another Shrike won't
show up any minute?"
"Who indeed?" agreed the Consul. "I suspect we'll always have a
Shrike or rumors of a Shrike."
Theo Lane, always embarrassed by discord, cleared his throat and
said, "Look what I found among the baggage strewn around the Sphinx."
He held up an instrument with three strings, a long neck, and bright
designs painted on its triangular body. "A guitar?"
"A balalaika," said Brawne. "It belonged to Father Hoyt."
The Consul took the instrument and strummed several chords. "Do
you know this song?" He played a few notes.
"The 'Leeda Tits Screwing Song'?" ventured Martin Silenus.
The Consul shook his head and played several More chords.
"Something old?" guessed Brawne.
" 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,' " said Melio Arundez
"That must be from before my time," said Theo Lane, nodding along
as the Consul strummed.
"It's from before everybody's time," said the Consul. "Come on, I'll
teach you the words as we go."
Walking together in the hot sun, singing off-key and on-, losing the
words and then starting again, they went uphill to the waiting, ship.
EPILOGUE
Five and a half months later, seven months pregnant, Brawne|
Lamia took the morning dirigible north from the capital to the
Poets' City for the Consul's farewell party.
The capital, now referred to as Jacktown by indigenie, visiting
FORCE shipmen, and Ouster alike, looked white and clean in the
morning light as the dirigible left the downtown mooring tower and
headed northwest up the Hoolie River.
The biggest city on Hyperion had suffered during the fighting, but
now most of it had been rebuilt, and a majority of the three million
refugees from the fiberplastic plantations and smaller cities on the southern
continent had elected to stay, despite recent surges of interest in
fiberplastic from the Ousters. So the city had grown like Topsy, with
basic services such as electricity, sewage, and cable HTV service just
reaching the hilltop warrens between the spaceport and the old town.
But the buildings were white in the morning light, the spring air rich
with promise, and Brawne saw the rough slashes of new roads and the
bustle of river traffic below as a good sign for the future.
Fighting in Hyperion space had not lasted long after the destruction
of the Web. De facto Ouster occupation of the spaceport, and capital
had been translated into recognition of the Web's demise and
comanagement with the new Home Rule Council in the treaty brokered
primarily by the Consul and former Governor-General Theo Lane. But
in the almost six months since the death of the Web, the only traffic
at the spaceport had been dropships from the remnants of the FORCE
fleet still in-system and frequent planetary excursions from the Swarm.
It was no longer unusual to see the tall figures of Ousters shopping in
Jacktown Square or their More exotic versions drinking at Cicero's.
Brawne had stayed at Cicero's during the past few months, residing
SOB
507
in one of the larger rooms on the fourth floor of the old wing of the
inn while Stan Leweski rebuilt and expanded the damaged sections of
the legendary structure. "By God, I don't need no help from pregnant
womens!" Stan would shout each time Brawne offered a hand, but she
invariably ended up doing some task while Leweski grumped and mumbled.
Brawne might be pregnant, but she was still a Lusian, and her
muscles had not completely atrophied after only a few months on
Hyperion.
Stan had driven her to the mooring tower that morning, helping her
with her luggage and the package she had brought for the Consul. Then
the innkeeper had handed her a small package of his own. "It's a damn,
dull trip up into that godforsaken country," he'd growled. "You have
to have something to read, hell?"
The gift was a reproduction of the 1817 edition of John Keats's Poems,
leather bound by Leweski himself.
Brawne embarrassed the giant and delighted watching passengers by
hugging him until the bartender's ribs creaked. "Enough, goddammit,"
he muttered, rubbing his side. "Tell that Consul I want to see his
worthless hide back here before I give the worthless inn to my son. Tell
him that, OK?"
Brawne had nodded and waved with the other passengers to well-
wishers seeing them off. Then she had continued waving from the
observation mezzanine as the airship untied, discharged ballast, and
ponderously moved out over the rooftops.
Now, as the ship left the suburbs behind and swung west to follow
the river, Brawne had her first clear view of the mountaintop to the
south where the face of Sad King Billy still brooded down on the city.
There was a fresh ten-meter scar, slowly fading from weather, on Billy's
cheek where a laser lance had slashed during the fighting.
But it was the larger sculpture taking shape on the northwest face of
the mountain which caught Brawne's attention. Even with modern
cutting equipment borrowed from FORCE, the work was slow, and the
great aquiline nose, heavy brow, broad mouth, and sad, intelligent eyes
were just becoming recognizable. Many of the Hegemony refugees left
on Hyperion had objected to Meina Gladstone's likeness being added
to the mountain, but Rithmet Corber III, great-grandson of the sculptor
who had created Sad King Billy's face there--and incidentally the man
who now owned the mountain--had said, as diplomatically as possible,
"Fuck you" and gone on with the work. Another year, perhaps two,
and it would be finished.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
Brawne sighed, rubbed her distended stomach--an affectation she
had always hated in pregnant women but one she now found impossible
to avoid--and walked clumsily to a deck chair on the observation deck. If she was this huge at seven months, what would she be like at full
term? Brawne glanced up at the distended curve of the dirigible's great
gas envelope above her and winced.
The airship voyage, with good tail winds, took only twenty hours.
Brawne dozed part of the way but spent most of the time watching the
familiar landscape unfold below.
They passed the Karia Locks in midmorning, and Brawne smiled
and patted the package she had brought for the Consul. By late afternoon,
they were approaching the river port of Naiad, and from three
thousand feet Brawne looked down on an old passenger barge being
pulled upriver by mantas leaving their V-shaped wake. She wondered
if that could be the Benares.
They flew over Edge as dinner was being served in the upper lounge
and began the crossing of the Sea of Grass just as sunset lighted the
great steppe with color and a million grasses rippled to the same breeze
that lofted the airship along. Brawne took her coffee to her favorite
chair on the mezzanine, opened a window wide, and watched the Sea
of Grass unfold like the sensuous felt of a billiard table as the light
failed. Just before the lamps were lit on the mezzanine deck, she was
rewarded with the sight of a windwagon plying its way from north to
south, lanterns swinging fore and aft. Brawne leaned forward and could
clearly hear the rumble of the big wheel and the snap of canvas on the
jib sail as the wagon have hard over to take a new tack.
The bed was ready in her sleeping compartment when Brawne went
up to slip into her robe, but after reading a few poems she found herself
back on the observation deck until dawn, dozing in her favorite chair
and breathing in the fresh smell of grass from below.
They moored in Pilgrim's Rest long enough to take on fresh food
and water, renew ballast, and change crews, but Brawne did not go
down to walk around. She could see the worklights around the tramway
station, and when the voyage resumed at last, the airship seemed to
follow the string of cable towers into the Bridle Range.
It was still quite dark as they crossed the mountains, and a steward
came along to seal the long windows as the compartments were pressurized, but Brawne could still catch glimpses of the tramcars passing
from peak to peak between the clouds below, and icefields that glinted
in the starlight.
They passed over Keep Chronos just after dawn, and the stones of
the castle emitted little sense of warmth even in the roseate light. Then
the high desert appeared, the City of Poets glowed white off the port
side, and the dirigible descended toward the mooring tower set on the
east end of the new spaceport there.
Brawne had not expected anyone to be there to meet her. Everyone
who knew her thought that she was flying up with Theo Lane in his
skimmer later in the afternoon. But Brawne had thought the airship
voyage the proper way to travel alone with her thoughts. And she had
been right.
But even before the mooring cable was pulled tight and the ramp
lowered, Brawne saw the familiar face of the Consul in the small crowd.
Next to him was Martin Silenus, frowning and squinting at the unfamiliar
morning light.
"Damn that Stan," muttered Brawne, remembering that the microwave
links were up now and new comsats in orbit.
The Consul met her with a hug. Martin Silenus yawned, shook her
hand, and said, "Couldn't find a More inconvenient time to arrive, eh?"
There was a party in the evening. It was More than the Consul leaving
the next morning--most of the FORCE fleet still remaining was heading
back, and a sizable portion of the Ouster Swarm was going with them. A dozen dropships littered the small field near the Consul's
spaceship as Ousters paid their last visit to the Time Tombs and FORCE
officers stopped by Kassad's tomb a final time.
The Poets' City itself now had almost a thousand full-time residents,
many of them artists and poets, although Silenus said that most were poseurs. They had twice tried to elect Martin Silenus mayor; he had
declined twice and soundly cursed his would-be constituency. But the
old poet continued to run things, supervising the restorations, adjudicating
disputes, dispensing housing and arranging for supply flights from Jacktown and points south. The Poets' City was no longer the Dead
City.
Martin Silenus said the collective IQ had been higher when the place
was deserted.
The banquet was held in the rebuilt dining pavilion, and the great
dome echoed to laughter as Martin Silenus read ribald poems and other
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
artists performed skits. Besides the Consul and Silenus, Brawne's round
table boasted half a dozen Ouster guests, including Freeman Ghenga
and Coredwell Minmun, as well as Rithmet Corber III, dressed in
stitched pelts and a tall cone of a cap. Theo Lane arrived late, with
apologies, shared the most recent Jacktown jokes with the audience,
and came over to the table to join them for dessert. Lane had been
mentioned recently as the people's choice for Jacktown's mayor in the
Fourthmonth elections soon to be held--both indigenie and Ouster
seemed to like his style--and so far Theo had shown no signs of declining
if the honor were offered him.
After much wine at the banquet, the Consul quietly invited a few of them up to the ship for music and More wine. They went, Brawne andj
Martin and Theo, and sat high on the ship's balcony while the Consul very soberly and feelingly played Gershwin and Studeri and Brahms
and Luser and Beatles, and then Gershwin again, finally ending with
Rachmaninoff's heart-stoppingly beautiful Piano Concerto No. 2 in C
Minor.
Then they sat in the low light, looked out over the city and valley,
drank a bit More wine, and talked late into the night.
"What do you expect to find in the Web?" Theo asked the Consul.
"Anarchy? Mob rule? Reversion to Stone Age life?"
"All of that and More, probably," smiled the Consul. He swirled the
brandy in his glass. "Seriously, there were enough squirts before the
fatline went dead to let us know that despite some real problems, most
of the old worlds of the Web will do all right."
Theo Lane sat nursing the same glass of wine he had brought up
from the dining pavilion. "Why do you think the fatline went dead?"
Martin Silenus snorted. "God got tired of us scribbling graffiti on his
outhouse walls."
They talked of old friends, wondering how Father Dure was doing.
They had heard about his new job on one of the last fatline intercepts.
They remembered Lenar Hoyt.
"Do you think he'll automatically become Pope when Dure passes
away?" asked the Consul.
"I doubt it," said Theo. "But at least he'll get a chance to live again
if that extra cruciform Dure carries on his chest still works."
"I wonder if he'll come looking for his balalaika," said Silenus,
strumming the instrument. In the low light, Brawne thought, the old
poet still looked like a satyr.
They talked about Sol and Rachel. In the past six months, hundreds
of people had tried to enter the Sphinx; one had succeeded--a quiet
Ouster named Mizenspesht Ammenyet.
The Ouster experts had spent months analyzing the Tombs and the
trace of time tides still surviving. On some of the Structures, hieroglyphs
and oddly familiar cuneiform had appeared after the Tombs' opening,
and these had led to at least educated guesses as to the various Time
Tombs' functions.
The Sphinx was a one-way portal to the future Rachel/Moneta had
spoken of. No one knew how it selected those it wished to let pass, but
the popular thing for tourists was to try to enter the portal. No sign or
hint of Sol and his daughter's fate had been discovered. Brawne found
that she thought of the old scholar often.
Brawne, the Consul, and Martin Silcnus drank a toast to Sol and
Rachel.
The Jade Tomb appeared to have something to do with gas giant
worlds. No one had been passed by its particular portal, but exotic
Ousters, designed and bred to live in Jovian habitats, arrived daily to
attempt to enter it. Both Ouster and FORCE experts repeatedly pointed
out that the Tombs were not farcasters, but some other form of cosmic
connection entirely. The tourists didn't care.
The Obelisk remained a black mystery. The tomb still glowed, but
it now had no door. Ousters guessed that armies of Shrikes still waited
within. Martin Silenus thought that the Obelisk was only a phallic
symbol thrown in the valley's decor as an afterthought. Others thought
it might have something to do with the Templars.
Brawne, the Consul, and Martin Silenus drank a toast to True Voice
of the Tree Hot Masteen.
The resealed Crystal Monolith was Colonel Fedmahn Kassad's tomb.
Decoded markings set in stone talked of a cosmic battle and a great
warrior from the past who appeared to help defeat the Lord of Pain.
Young recruits down from the torchships and attack carriers ate it up.
Kassad's legend would spread as More of these ships returned to the
worlds of the old Web.
Brawne, the Consul, and Martin Silenus drank a toast to Fedmahn
Kassad.
The first and second of the Cave Tombs seemed to lead nowhere,
but the Third appeared to open to labyrinths on a variety of worlds.
After a few researchers disappeared, the Ouster research authorities
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
reminded tourists that the labyrinths lay in a different time--possibly I
hundreds of thousands of years in the past or future--as well as a
different space. They sealed the caves off except to qualified experts.
Brawne, the Consul, and Martin Silenus drank a toast to Paul Dure
and Lenar Hoyt.
The Shrike Palace remained a mystery. The tiers of bodies were gone
when Brawne and the others had returned a few hours later, the interior! of the tomb the size it had been previously, but with a single door of
light burning in its center. Anyone who stepped through disappeared. |
None returned.
The researchers had declared the interior off-limits while they worked
to decode letters carved in stone but badly eroded by time. So far, they |
were certain of three words--all in Old Earth Latin--translated as
"colosseum," "rome," and "repopulate." The legend had already
grown up that this portal opened to the missing Old Earth and that the
victims of the tree of thorns had been transported there. Hundreds More
waited.
"See," Martin Silenus said to Brawne, "if you hadn't been so fucking
quick to rescue me, I could've gone home."
Thco Lane leaned forward. "Would you really have chosen to go I back to Old Earth?"
Martin smiled his sweetest satyr smile. "Not in a fucking million
years. It was dull when I lived there and it'll always be dull. This is
where it's happening." Silenus drank a toast to himself.
In a sense, Brawne realized, that was true. Hyperion was the meeting J
place of Ouster and former Hegemony citizen. The Time Tombs alone I
would mean future trade and tourism and travel as the human universe (
adjusted to a life without farcasters. She tried to imagine the future as '
the Ousters saw it, with great fleets expanding humankind's horizons, i with genetically tailored humans colonizing gas giants and asteroids and |
worlds harsher than preterraformed Mars or Hebron. She could not
imagine it. This was a universe her child might see ... or her grand- i
children, I
"What are you thinking, Brawne?" asked the Consul after silence :
stretched. ';
She smiled. "About the future," she said. "And about Johnny." .
"Ah yes," said Silenus, "the poet who could have been God but who |
wasn't."
"What happened to the second persona, do you think?" asked Brawne.
The Consul made a motion with his hand. "I don't see how it could
have survived the death of the Core. Do you?"
Brawne shook her head. "I'm just jealous. A lot of people seem to
have ended up seeing him. Even Melio Arundez said he met him in
Jacktown."
They drank a toast to Melio, who had left five months earlier with
the first FORCE spinship returning Webward.
"Everyone saw him but me," said Brawne, frowning at her brandy
and realizing that she had to take More prenatal antialcohol pills before
turning in. She realized that she was a little drunk: the stuff couldn't
harm the baby if she took the pills, but it had definitely gotten to her.
"I'm heading back," she announced and stood, hugging the Consul.
"Got to be up bright and early to watch your sunrise launch."
"You're sure you don't want to spend the night on the ship?" asked
the Consul. "The guest room lias a nice view of the valley."
Brawne shook her head. "All my stuffs at the old palace."
"I'll talk to you before I go," said the Consul and they hugged again,
quickly, before either had to notice Brawne's tears.
Martin Silenus walked her back to the Poets' City. They paused in
the lighted galleria outside the apartments.
"Were you really on the tree, or only stimsiming it while sleeping
in the Shrike Palace?" Brawne asked him.
The poet did not smile. He touched his chest where the steel thorn
had pierced him. "Was I a Chinese philosopher dreaming that I was a
butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that I was a Chinese philosopher? Is
that what you're asking, kid?"
"Yes."
"That's correct," Silenus said softly. ."Yes. I was both. And both were
real. And both hurt. And I will love and cherish you forever for saving
me, Brawne. To me, you will always be able to walk on air." He raised
her hand and kissed it. "Are you going in?"
"No, I think I'll stroll in the garden for a minute."
The poet hesitated. "All right. I think. We have patrols--mech and
human--and our Grendel-Shrike hasn't made an encore appearance
yet ... but be careful, OK?"
"Don't forget," said Brawne, "I'm the Grendel killer. I walk on air
and turn them into glass goblins to shatter."
"Uh-huh, but don't stray beyond the gardens. OK, kiddo?"
"OK," said Brawne. She touched her stomach. "We'll be careful."
THE	FALL	OF	HYPERION
He was waiting in the garden, where the light did not quite touch
and the monitor cameras did not quite cover.
"Johnny!" gasped Brawne and took a quick step forward on the path
of stones.
"No," he said and shook his head, a bit sadly perhaps. He looked
like Johnny. Precisely the same red-brown hair and hazel eyes and firm
chin and high cheekbones and soft smile. He was dressed a bit strangely,
with a thick leather jacket, broad belt, heavy shoes, walking stick, and
a rough fur cap, which he took on" as she came closer.
Brawne stopped less than a meter away. "Of course," she said in little More than a whisper. She reached out to touch him, and her hand
passed through him, although there was none of the nicker or fuzz of
a holo.
"This place is still rich in the metasphere fields," he said.
"Uh-huh," she agreed, not having the slightest idea what he was
talking about. "You're the other Keats. Johnny's twin."
The short man smiled and extended a hand as if to touch her swollen
abdomen. "That makes me sort of an uncle, doesn't it, Brawne?"
She nodded. "It was you who saved the baby . . . Rachel . . . wasn't
it?"
"Could you see me?"
"No," breathed Brawne, "but I could feel that you were there." She
hesitated a second. "But you weren't the one Ummon talked about--
the Empathy part of the human UI?"
He shook his head. His curls glinted in the dim light. "I discovered
that I am the One Who Comes Before. I prepare the way for the One
Who Teaches, and I'm afraid that my only miracle was lifting a baby
and waiting until someone could take her from me."
"You didn't help me ... with the Shrike? Floating?"
John Keats laughed. "No. Nor did Moneta. That was you, Brawne."
She shook her head vigorously. "That's impossible."
"Not impossible," he said softly. He reached out to touch her stomach
again, and she imagined that she could feel the pressure from his palm.
He whispered, "Thou still unravished bride ofquietness,/ Thou foster-
child of silence and slow time . . ."He looked up at Brawne. "Certainly
the mother of the One Who Teaches can exercise some prerogatives,"
he said.
"The mother of . . ." Brawne suddenly had to sit down and found
a bench just in time. She had never been awkward before in her life,
but now, at seven months, there was no graceful way she could manage
sitting. She thought, irrelevantly, of the dirigible coming in for mooring
that morning.
"The One Who Teaches," repeated Keats. "I have no idea what she
will teach, but it will change the universe and set ideas in motion that
will be vital ten thousand years from now."
"My child?" she managed, fighting a bit for air. "Johnny's and my
child?"
The Keats persona rubbed its cheek. "The junction of human spirit
and AI logic which Ummon and the Core sought for so long and died
not understanding," he said. He took a step. "I only wish I could be
around when she teaches whatever she has to teach. See what effect it
has on the world. This world. Other worlds."
Brawne's mind was spinning, but she had heard something in his
tone. "Why? Where will you be? What's wrong?"
Keats sighed. "The Core is gone. The dataspheres here are too small
to contain me even in reduced form . . . except for the FORCE ship
Als, and I don't think I'd like it there. I never took orders well."
"And there's nowhere else?" asked Brawne.
"The metasphere," he said, glancing behind him. "But it's full of
lions and tigers and bears. And I'm not ready yet."
Brawne let that pass. "I have an idea," she said. She told him.
The image of her lover came closer, put his arms around her, and
said, "You are a miracle, madam." He stepped back into the shadows.
Brawne shook her head. "Just a pregnant lady." She put her hand
on the swelling under her gown. "The One Who Teaches," she murmured.
Then, to Keats, "All right, you're the archangel announcing
all this. What name shall I give her?"
When there was no answer, Brawne looked up.
The shadows were empty.
Brawne was at the spaceport before the sun rose. It was not exactly
a merry group bidding farewell. Beyond the usual sadness of saying
goodbye, Martin, the Consul, and Theo were nursing hangovers since
day-after pills were out of stock on post-Web Hyperion. Only Brawne
was in fine temper.
"Goddamn ship's computer has been acting weird all morning,"
grumbled the Consul.
---------------- THE FALL OF HYPERION ----------------
"How so?" smiled Brawne.
The Consul squinted at her. "I ask it to run through a regular pre-
launch checklist and the stupid ship gives me verse."
"Verse?" said Martin Silenus, raising one satyr's brow.
"Yeah . . . listen ..." The Consul keyed his comlog.
A voice familiar to Brawne said:
5o, ye three Ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise
My head cool-bedded in ffowery grass;
For I would not be dieted with praise,
A pet lamb in a sentimental farce!
Fade softly from my eyes, and be once More In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn;
Farewell! I yet have visions for the night,
And for the day faint visions there is store;
Vanish, ye Phantoms! from my idle sprite,
Into the clouds, and never More return!
Theo Lane said, "A defective AI? I thought your ship had one of the
finest intelligences outside of the Core."
"It does," said the Consul. "It's not defective. I ran a full cognitive
and function check. Everything's fine. But it gives me . . . this!" He
gestured at the comlog recording readout.
Martin Silenus glanced at Brawne Lamia, looked carefully at her
smile, and then turned back to the Consul. "Well, it looks as if your
ship might be getting literate. Don't worry about it. It will be good company during the long trip there and back."
In the ensuing pause, Brawne brought out a bulky package. "A going-
away present," she said.
The Consul unwrapped it, slowly at first, and then ripping and tearing I
as the folded, faded, and much-abused little carpet came into sight. He | ran his hands across it, looked up, and spoke with emotion filling his
voice. "Where . . . how did you ..."
Brawne smiled. "An indigenie refugee found it below the Karia Locks.
She was trying to sell it in the Jacktown Marketplace when I happened
along. No one was interested in buying."
The Consul took a deep breath and ran his hands across the designs
on the hawking mat which had carried his grandfather Merin to the fateful meeting with his grandmother Siri.
"I'm afraid it doesn't fly anymore," said Brawne.
————————————————————————— g .] 7 ————————————————————.————
"The flight filaments need recharging," said the Consul. "I don't
know how to thank you ..."
"Don't," said Brawne. "It's for good luck on your voyage."
The Consul shook his head, hugged Brawne, shook hands with the
others, and took the lift up into his ship. Brawne and the others walked
back to the terminal.
There were no clouds in Hyperion's lapis lazuli sky. The sun painted
the distant peaks of the Bridle Range in deep tones and promised warmth
for the day to come.
Brawne looked over her shoulder at the Poets' City and the valley
beyond. The tops of the taller Time Tombs were just visible. One wing
of the Sphinx caught the light.
With little noise and just a hint of heat, the Consul's ebony ship
lifted on a pure blue flame and rose toward the sky.
Brawne tried to remember the poems she had just read and the final
lines of her love's longest and finest unfinished work:
Anon rushed by the bright Hyperion,
His flaming robes streamed out beyond his heels,
And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,
That scared away the meek ethereal Hours,
And made fhcir dove-wings tremble. On he flared . . .
Brawne felt the warm wind tug at her hair. She raised her face to the
sky and waved, not trying to hide or brush away the tears, waving fiercely
now as the splendid ship pitched over and climbed toward the heavens
with its fierce blue flame and—like a distant shout—created a sudden
sonic boom which ripped across the desert and echoed against distant
peaks.
Brawne let herself weep and waved again, continued waving, at the
departing Consul, and at the sky, and at friends she would never see
again, and at part other past, and at the ship rising above like a perfect,
ebony arrow shot from some god's bow.
On he flared . . .
The shattering saga begun in The Time Master Trilogy continues.
The Chaos Gate Trilogy
by Louise Cooper
"One of fantasy's finest talents." - Rave Reviews
Kendril Toln is a sorcerer who once intervened in the war
between the Gods of Order and Chaos. With his dying breath
he warned of the coming of a child of Chaos. Now that child
has matured into a young woman who wields all the dark
powers of her realm. Her scheme: to enslave all humanity.
Book I: The Deceiver Book 2: The Pretender Book 3: The Avenger
The Chaos Gate Trilogy
Now on sale wherever Bantam Spectra Books are sold
"Genre-transcending...even better than their earlier
and considerable solo efforts."
--The New York Times Book Review
William Gibson
Bruce Sterling
THE DIFFERENCE
"A visionary steam-powered heavy metal fantasy!
Gibson and Sterling create a high Victorian virtual
reality of extraordinary richness and detail."
--Ridley Scott, director of Blade Runner andAlien
London, 1855. Steam-powered Babbage Engines
are run by an elite group of "clackers," and every
man and woman has a government- issued number.
When paleontologist Edward Mallory,on the verge
of his greatest achievement, finds himself in possession
of a box of punched Engine cards, he finds out
how fleeting fame can be--because someone wants
those cards badly enough to kill for them....
"Bursting -with the kind of demented speculation and
obsessive detailing that has made both Gibson's and
Sterling's work stand out in the past."
--San Francisco Chronicle

AN 200 1/92
On sale now wherever
Bantam Spectra books are sold
In 1982 Clan Simmons won the first Rod Serling Story
Contest and was named by Twilight Zone magazine as the
best new writer of the year. He went on to receive the
World Fantasy Award for his first novel. Song of Kali. He
has published horror (Carrion Comfort) and science fiction (Phases of Gravity, Hyperion.and The Fall ofHyperion) to
equal acclaim. A former teacher and director of programs
for gifted and talented students, he lives in Colorado.