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.
Chapter 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.
At one thousand meters the craft’s landing beacons flared and three beams of coherent light from the spaceport north of town locked the ship in a welcoming ruby tripod. The spacecraft hovered at three hundred meters, slipped sideways as smoothly as a mug sliding on a wet table top, and then settled weightlessly into a waiting blast pit.
High-pressure jets of water bathed the pit and the base of the ship, sending up billows of steam to blend with the curtains of drizzle blowing across the paved plain of the spaceport. When the water jets ceased there was no noise except the whisper of rain and the random ticks and creaks of the cooling spaceship.
A balcony extruded itself from the ship’s bulkhead twenty meters above the pit wall. Five figures emerged. “Thank you for the ride, sir,” Colonel Kassad said to the Consul.
The Consul nodded and leaned on the railing, taking in deep breaths of fresh air. Droplets of rain beaded on his shoulders and eyebrows.
Sol Weintraub lifted his baby from her infant carrier. Some change in pressure, temperature, scent, motion, noise, or a combination of all of these had awakened her and now she began to cry lustily. Weintraub bounced her and cooed to her but the wailing continued.
“An appropriate comment upon our arrival,” said Martin Silenus. The poet wore a long purple cape and a red beret which slouched to his right shoulder. He took a drink from a wineglass he had carried out from the lounge. “Christ on a stick, this place looks different.”
The Consul, who had been away only eight local years, had to agree. The spaceport had been a full nine klicks from the city when he lived in Keats; now shacks, tents, and mud streets surrounded the landing field’s perimeter. In the Consul’s day, no more than a ship a week had put in at the tiny spaceport; now he counted more than twenty spacecraft on the field. The small administration and customs building had been superseded by a huge, prefabricated structure, a dozen new blast pits and dropship grids had been added where the field had been hastily extended to the west, and the perimeter now was littered with scores of camouflage-sheathed modules which the Consul knew must serve as everything from ground control stations to barracks. A forest of exotic antennae grew skyward from a cluster of such boxes at the far end of the landing apron. “Progress,” murmured the Consul.
“War,” said Colonel Kassad.
“Those are people,” said Brawne Lamia, pointing toward the main terminal gates on the south side of the field. A wave of drab colors crashed like a silent surf against the outer fence and the violet containment field.
“My God,” said the Consul, “you’re right.”
Kassad produced his binoculars and they took turns staring at the thousands of forms tugging at the wire, pressing against the repelling field.
“Why are they here?” asked Lamia. “What do they want?” Even from half a kilometer away, the mindless will of the mob was daunting. Dark forms of FORCE:Marines could be seen patrolling just within the perimeter. The Consul realized that between the wire, the containment field, and the Marines a strip of raw earth almost surely signified mines or a deathbeam zone, or both.
“What do they want?” repeated Lamia.
“They want out,” said Kassad.
Even before the Colonel spoke, the Consul realized that the shack city around the spaceport and the mob at the gates were inevitable; the people of Hyperion were ready to leave. He guessed that there must be such a silent surge toward the gates each time a ship landed.
“Well, there’s one who’ll be staying,” said Martin Silenus and pointed toward the low mountain across the river to the south. “Old Weeping William Rex, God rest his sinful soul.” The sculpted face of Sad King Billy was just visible through the light rain and growing darkness. “I knew him, Horatio,” said the drunken poet. “A man of infinite jest. Not one of them funny. A real horse’s ass, Horatio.”
Sol Weintraub stood just inside the ship, shielding his baby from the drizzle and removing her cries from the vicinity of the conversation. He pointed. “Someone is coming.”
A groundcar with its camouflage polymer inert and a military EMV modified with hoverfans for Hyperion’s weak magnetic field were crossing the damp hardpan.
Martin Silenus’s gaze never left Sad King Billy’s dour visage. Silenus said in a voice almost too soft to be heard:
“Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,
Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung above his head
Like cloud on cloud.…”
Father Hoyt came onto the balcony, rubbing his face with both hands. His eyes were wide and unfocused, a child rising from his nap. “Are we there?” he asked.
“Fucking aye,” cried Martin Silenus, returning the binoculars to the Colonel. “Let’s go down and greet the gendarmes.”
The young Marine lieutenant seemed unimpressed with the group even after he had scanned the authorization wafer Het Masteen had passed along from the task force commander. The lieutenant took his time scanning their visa chips, letting them wait in the drizzle, occasionally making a comment with the idle arrogance common to such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power. Then he came to Fedmahn Kassad’s chip and looked up with the expression of a startled stoat. “Colonel Kassad!”