The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (15 page)

“Father Duré had died the true death. We returned the remains to the Perecebo Plantation where he was buried following a full funeral Mass.” Hoyt took a deep breath. “Over my strong objections, M. Orlandi destroyed the Bikura village and a section of the Cleft
wall with shaped nuclear charges he had brought from the plantation. I do not believe that any of the Bikura could have survived. As far as we could tell, the entrance to the labyrinth and the so-called basilica also must have been destroyed in the landslide.

“I had sustained several injuries during the expedition and thus had to remain at the plantation for several months before returning to the northern continent and booking passage to Pacem. No one knows of these journals or their contents except M. Orlandi, Monsignor Edouard, and whichever of his superiors Monsignor Edouard chose to tell. As far as I know, the Church has issued no declaration relating to the journals of Father Paul Duré.”

Father Hoyt had been standing and now he sat. Sweat dripped from his chin and his face was blue-white in the reflected light of Hyperion.

“Is that … all?” asked Martin Silenus.

“Yes,” managed Father Hoyt.

“Gentlemen and lady,” said Het Masteen, “it is late. I suggest that you gather your luggage and rendezvous at our friend the Consul’s ship on sphere 11 in thirty minutes or sooner. I will be using one of the tree’s dropships to join you later.”

   Most of the group was assembled in less than fifteen minutes. The Templars had rigged a gangway from a work pier on the interior of the sphere to the ship’s top-tier balcony, and the Consul led the way into the lounge as crew clones stowed luggage and departed.

“A fascinating old instrument,” said Colonel Kassad as he ran one hand across the top of the Steinway. “Harpsichord?”

“Piano,” said the Consul. “Pre-Hegira. Are we all here?”

“Everyone except Hoyt,” said Brawne Lamia as she took a seat in the projection pit.

Het Masteen entered. “The Hegemony warship has granted permission for you to descend to Keats’s spaceport,” said the Captain. He glanced around. “I will send a crew member to see if M. Hoyt needs assistance.”

“No,” said the Consul. He modulated his voice. “I’d like to get him. Can you tell me the way to his quarters?”

The treeship Captain looked at the Consul for a long second and then reached into the folds of his robe.
“Bon voyage,”
he said, handing over a wafer. “I will see you on the planet, sometime before our midnight departure time from the Shrike’s Temple in Keats.”

The Consul bowed, “It was a pleasure traveling within the protective branches of the Tree, Het Masteen,” he said formally. Turning to the others, he gestured. “Please make yourselves comfortable in the lounge or the library on the deck below this. The ship will see to your needs and answer any questions you might have. We will depart as soon as Father Hoyt and I return.”

   The priest’s environment pod was halfway up the treeship, far out on a secondary branch. As the Consul expected, the comlog direction wafer Het Masteen had given him also served as a palmlock override. After useless minutes tapping the announcer chime and pounding on the access portal, the Consul triggered the override and stepped into the pod.

Father Hoyt was on his knees, writhing in the center of the grass carpet. Bedclothes, gear, garments, and the contents of a standard medkit were strewn on the floor around him. He had torn off his tunic and collar and sweated through his shirt so that it now hung in damp folds, ripped and tattered where he had clawed through the fabric. Hyperion light seeped through the pod wall, making the bizarre tableau appear to be staged underwater—or, thought the Consul, in a cathedral.

Lenar Hoyt’s face contorted in agony as his hands raked at his chest. Muscles on his exposed forearms writhed like living creatures moving beneath his pale tarp of a skin. “The injector … 
malfunctioned
,” gasped Hoyt. “
Please
.”

The Consul nodded, commanded the door to close, and knelt next to the priest. He removed the useless injector from Hoyt’s clenched fist and ejected the syrette ampule. Ultramorphine. The Consul nodded again and took out an injector from the medkit he had brought from his ship. It took less than five seconds to load the ultramorph.

“
Please
,” begged Hoyt. His whole body spasmed. The Consul could almost see the waves of pain passing through the man.

“Yes,” said the Consul. He took a ragged breath. “But first the rest of the story.”

Hoyt stared, reached weakly for the injector.

Sweating himself now, the Consul held the instrument just out of reach. “Yes, in a second,” he said. “After the rest of the story. It’s important that I
know
.”

“Oh, God, sweet Christ,” sobbed Hoyt.
“Please!”

“Yes,” gasped the Consul. “Yes. As soon as you tell me the truth.”

Father Hoyt collapsed onto his forearms, breathing in quick pants. “You fucking bastard,” he gasped. The priest took several deep breaths, held one until his body quit shaking, and tried to sit up. When he looked at the Consul, there was something like relief in the maddened eyes. “Then … you’ll give me … the shot?”

“Yes,” said the Consul.

“All right,” Hoyt managed in a sour whisper. “The truth. Perecebo Plantation … like I said. We flew in … early October … Lycius … eight years after Duré … disappeared. Oh,
Christ
, it hurts! Alcohol and endos don’t work at all anymore. Only … pure ultramorph …”

“Yes,” whispered the Consul. “It’s ready. As soon as the story is done.”

The priest lowered his head. Sweat dripped from his cheeks and nose onto the short grass. The Consul saw the man’s muscles tense as if he were going to attack, then another spasm of pain wracked the thin body and Hoyt sagged forward. “Skimmer wasn’t destroyed … by tesla. Semfa, two men, and I … forced down near the Cleft while … while Orlandi searched upriver. His skimmer … had to wait while the lightning storm died down.

“Bikura came in the night. Killed … killed Semfa, the pilot, the other man … forget his name. Left me … alive.” Hoyt reached for his crucifix, realized that he had torn it off. He laughed briefly, stopping before the laughter turned to sobs. “They … told me about the way of the cross. About the cruciform. Told me about … the Son of the Flames.

“Next morning, they took me to see the Son. Took me … to
see him.” Hoyt struggled upright and clawed at his own cheeks. His eyes were wide, the ultramorph obviously forgotten despite the pain. “About three kilometers into the flame forest … big tesla … eighty, a hundred meters tall, at least. Quiet then, but still a lot … a lot of charge in the air. Ash everywhere.

“The Bikura wouldn’t … wouldn’t go too close. Just knelt there with their goddamned bald heads bowed. But I … went close … had to. Dear God … Oh, Christ, it was him. Duré. What was
left
of him.

“He’d used a ladder to get three … maybe four meters … up on the bole of the tree. Built a sort of platform. For his feet. Broken the arrestor rods off … little more than spikes … then sharpened them. Must’ve used a rock to drive the long one through his feet into the bestos platform and tree.

“His left arm … he’d pounded the stake between the radius and ulna … missed veins … just like the goddamned Romans. Very secure as long as his skeleton was intact. Other hand … right hand … palm down. He’d driven the spike first. Sharpened both ends. Then … impaled his right hand. Somehow bent the spike over. Hook.

“Ladder’d fallen … long ago … but it was bestos. Hadn’t burned. Used it to climb up to him. Everything’d burned away years ago … clothes, skin, top layers of flesh … but the bestos pouch was still around his neck.

“The alloy spikes still conducted current even when … I could see it … 
feel
it … surging through what was left of the body.

“
It still looked like Paul Duré
. Important. I told Monsignor. No skin. Flesh raw or boiled away. Nerves and things visible … like gray and yellow roots. Christ, the smell.
But it still looked like Paul Duré!

“I understood then. Understood it all. Somehow … even before reading the journals. Understood he’d been hanging there … oh, dear God … seven years. Living. Dying. The cruciform … forcing him to live again. Electricity … surging through him every second of those … those seven years. Flames. Hunger. Pain. Death. But somehow the goddamned … cruciform … leeching substance from the tree maybe, the air, what was left … rebuilding
what it could … forcing it to
live
, to feel the pain, over and over and over.…

“But he
won
. Pain was his ally. Oh, Jesus, not a few hours on the tree and then the spear and rest, but
seven years
!

“But … he won. When I removed the pouch, the cruciform on his chest fell away also. Just … fell right off … long, bloody roots. Then the thing … the thing I’d been sure was a corpse … the
man
raised its head. No eyelids. Eyes baked white. Lips gone. But it looked at me and smiled.
He
smiled. And he died … really died … there in my arms. The ten thousandth time, but
real
this time. He smiled at me and died.”

Hoyt stopped, communed in silence with his own pain, and then continued between bouts of clenching his teeth. “Bikura took me … back to … Cleft. Orlandi came the next day. Rescued me. He … Semfa … I couldn’t … he lasered the village, burned the Bikura where they stood like stupid sheep. I didn’t … didn’t argue with him. I
laughed
. Dear God, forgive me. Orlandi nuked the site with shaped charges they used to … to clear the jungle … fiberplastic matrix.”

Hoyt looked directly at the Consul and made a contorted gesture with his right hand. “The painkillers worked all right at first. But every year … every day … got worse. Even in fugue … the pain. I would have had to come back anyway. How could he … 
seven years
! Oh, Jesus,” said Father Hoyt and clawed at the carpet.

The Consul moved quickly, injecting the full ampule of ultramorph just under the armpit, catching the priest as he collapsed, and gently lowering the unconscious form to the floor. His vision unclear, the Consul ripped open Hoyt’s sweat-sodden shirt, casting the rags aside. It was there, of course, lying under the pale skin of Hoyt’s chest like some great, raw, cross-shaped worm. The Consul took a breath and gently turned the priest over. The second cruciform was where he had expected to find it, a slightly smaller, cross-shaped welt between the thin man’s shoulder blades. It stirred slightly as the Consul’s fingers brushed the fevered flesh.

The Consul moved slowly but efficiently—packing the priest’s belongings, straightening the room, dressing the unconscious man
with the gentle care one would use in clothing the body of a dead family member.

The Consul’s comlog buzzed. “We need to go,” came Colonel Kassad’s voice.

“We’re coming,” replied the Consul. He coded the comlog to summon crew clones to fetch the luggage, but lifted Father Hoyt himself. The body seemed to weigh nothing.

The pod door dilated open and the Consul stepped out, moving from the deep shadow of the branch into the blue-green glow of the world which filled the sky. Deciding what cover story he would tell the others, the Consul paused a second to look at the sleeping man’s face. He glanced up at Hyperion and then moved on. Even if the gravity field had been full Earth standard, the Consul knew, the body in his arms would have been no burden.

Once a parent to a child now dead, the Consul walked on, knowing once again the sensation of bearing a sleeping son to bed.

2

It had been a warm, rainy day in Keats, Hyperion’s capital, and even after the rains stopped a layer of clouds moved slow and heavy over the city, filling the air with the salt scent of the ocean twenty kilometers to the west. Toward evening, as the gray daylight was beginning to fade into gray twilight, a double sonic boom shook the town and then echoed from the single, sculpted peak to the south. The clouds glowed blue-white. Half a minute later an ebony spacecraft broke through the overcast and descended carefully on a tail of fusion flame, its navigation lights blinking red and green against the gray.