Silenus appeared to be quite the opposite of the military man across from him. Where Kassad was lean and tall, Martin Silenus was short and visibly out of shape. Countering Kassad’s stone-cut features, the poet’s face was as mobile and expressive as an Earth primate’s. His voice was a loud, profane rasp. There was something, thought the Consul, almost pleasantly demonic about Martin Silenus, with his ruddy cheeks, broad mouth, pitched eyebrows, sharp ears, and constantly moving hands sporting fingers long enough to serve a concert pianist. Or a strangler. The poet’s silver hair had been cropped into rough-hewn bangs.
Martin Silenus seemed to be in his late fifties, but the Consul noticed the telltale blue tinge to throat and palms and suspected that the man had been through more than a few Poulsen treatments. Silenus’s true age might be anywhere from ninety to a hundred and fifty standard years. If he were close to the latter age, the Consul knew, the odds were that the poet was quite mad.
As boisterous and animated as Martin Silenus seemed upon first encounter, so the next guest at the table exuded an immediate and equally impressive sense of intelligent reticence. Sol Weintraub looked up upon introduction and the Consul noted the short gray beard, lined forehead, and sad, luminous eyes of the well-known scholar. The Consul had heard tales of the Wandering Jew and his hopeless quest, but he was shocked to realize that the old man now held the infant in his arms—his daughter Rachel, no more than a few weeks old. The Consul looked away.
The sixth pilgrim and only woman at the table was Brawne Lamia. When introduced, the detective stared at the Consul with such intensity that he could feel the pressure of her gaze even after she looked away.
A former citizen of the 1.3-g world of Lusus, Brawne Lamia was no taller than the poet two chairs to her right, but even her loose corduroy shipsuit did not conceal the heavy layers of muscle on her compact form. Black curls reached to her shoulders, her eyebrows were two dark lines dabbed horizontally across a wide brow, and her nose was solid and sharp, intensifying the aquiline quality of her stare. Lamia’s mouth was wide and expressive to the point of being sensuous, curled slightly at the corners in a slight smile which might be cruel or merely playful. The woman’s dark eyes seemed to dare the observer to discover which was the case.
It occurred to the Consul that Brawne Lamia might well be considered beautiful.
Introductions completed, the Consul cleared his throat and turned toward the Templar. “Het Masteen, you said that there were seven pilgrims. Is M. Weintraub’s child the seventh?”
Het Masteen’s hood moved slowly from side to side. “No. Only those who make a conscious decision to seek the Shrike may be counted among the pilgrims.”
The group at the table stirred slightly. Each must know what the Consul knew; only a group comprising a prime number of pilgrims might make the Shrike Church–sponsored trip north.
“I am the seventh,” said Het Masteen, captain of the Templar treeship Yggdrasill and True Voice of the Tree. In the silence which followed the announcement, Het Masteen gestured and a group of crew clones began serving the pilgrims their last meal before planetfall.
“So the Ousters are not in-system yet?” asked Brawne Lamia. Her voice had a husky, throaty quality which strangely stirred the Consul.
“No,” said Het Masteen. “But we cannot be more than a few standard days ahead of them. Our instruments have detected fusion skirmishes within the system’s Oört cloud.”
“Will there be war?” asked Father Hoyt. His voice seemed as fatigued as his expression. When no one volunteered a response, the priest turned to his right as if retroactively directing the question to the Consul.
The Consul sighed. The crew clones had served wine; he wished it had been whiskey. “Who knows what the Ousters will do?” he said. “They no longer appear to be motivated by human logic.”
Martin Silenus laughed loudly, spilling his wine as he gestured. “As if we fucking humans were ever motivated by human logic!” He took a deep drink, wiped his mouth, and laughed again.
Brawne Lamia frowned. “If the serious fighting starts too soon,” she said, “perhaps the authorities will not allow us to land.”
“We will be allowed to pass,” said Het Masteen. Sunlight found its way past folds in his cowl to fall on yellowish skin.
“Saved from certain death in war to be delivered to certain death at the hands of the Shrike,” murmured Father Hoyt.
“There is no death in all the Universe!” intoned Martin Silenus in a voice which the Consul felt sure could have awakened someone deep in cryogenic fugue. The poet drained the last of his wine and raised the empty goblet in an apparent toast to the stars:
“No smell of death—there shall be no death, moan, moan;
Moan, Cybele, moan; for thy pernicious Babes
Have changed a god into a shaking palsy.
Moan, brethren, moan, for I have no strength left;
Weak as the reed—weak—feeble as my voice—
Oh, oh, the pain, the pain of feebleness.
Moan, moan, for still I thaw.…”
Silenus abruptly broke off and poured more wine, belching once into the silence which had followed his recitation. The other six looked at one another. The Consul noticed that Sol Weintraub was smiling slightly until the baby in his arms stirred and distracted him.
“Well,” said Father Hoyt hesitantly, as if trying to retrieve an earlier strand of thought, “if the Hegemony convoy leaves and the Ousters take Hyperion, perhaps the occupation will be bloodless and they’ll let us go about our business.”
Colonel Fedmahn Kassad laughed softly. “The Ousters don’t want to occupy Hyperion,” he said. “If they take the planet they’ll loot what they want and then do what they do best. They’ll burn the cities into charred rubble, break the rubble into smaller pieces, and then bake the pieces until they glow. They’ll melt the poles, boil the oceans, and then use the residue to salt what’s left of the continents so nothing will ever grow there again.”
“Well …” began Father Hoyt and then trailed off.
There was no conversation as the clones cleared the soup and salad dishes and brought on the main course.
“You said that there was a Hegemony warship escorting us,” the Consul said to Het Masteen as they finished their roast beef and boiled sky squid.
The Templar nodded and pointed. The Consul squinted but could make out nothing moving against the rotating starfield.
“Here,” said Fedmahn Kassad and leaned across Father Hoyt to hand the Consul a collapsible pair of military binoculars.
The Consul nodded his thanks, thumbed on the power, and scanned the patch of sky Het Masteen had indicated. Gyroscopic crystals in the binoculars hummed slightly as they stabilized the optics and swept the area in a programmed search pattern. Suddenly the image froze, blurred, expanded, and steadied.
The Consul could not avoid an involuntary intake of breath as the Hegemony ship filled the viewer. Neither the expected field-blurred seed of a solo ramscout nor the bulb of a torchship, the electronically outlined image was of a matte-black attack carrier. The thing was impressive in the way only warships through the centuries had succeeded in being. The Hegemony spinship was incongruously streamlined with its four sets of boom arms retracted in battle readiness, its sixty-meter command probe sharp as a Clovis point, and its Hawking drive and fusion blisters set far back along the launch shaft like feathers on an arrow.