Дэн Симмонс: Endymion

“Retrieve your friend,” I said to the last man, Poneascu. I carried the weapons back to the skiff, unloaded them, sealed the shotguns in the watertight compartment under the bow, and carried the boxes of shells to the stern. Izzy’s headless corpse had already begun to stiffen as I eased it over the side. The bottom of the skiff was awash with her blood. I went back to the stern, stowed the shells, and stood leaning on the pole.

The three hunters returned eventually, awkwardly paddling their own floats while pulling the one in which M. Herrig was sprawled. The fat man was still hanging over the side, his face pale. They climbed into the skiff and began trying to pull the floats aboard.

“Leave them,” I said. “Tie them to that chalma root. I’ll come back for them later.”

They tied off the floats and pulled M. Herrig aboard like some obese fish. The only sounds were the birds and insects of the fen coming alive and M. Herrig’s continued retching. When he was aboard, the other three hunters seated and muttering, I poled us back to the plantation as the sun burned through the last of the morning vapors rising from the dark waters.

And that should have been the end of it. Except, of course, it was not.

I was making lunch in the primitive kitchen when M. Herrig came out of the sleeping barracks with a stubby military flechette gun. Such weapons were illegal on Hyperion; the Pax allowed no one except the Home Guard to carry them. I could see the white, shocked faces of the other three hunters peering from the barracks door as M. Herrig staggered into the kitchen amid a fog of whiskey fumes.

The fat man could not resist the impulse to give a short, melodramatic speech before killing me. “You crossdamned heathen son of a bitch…” he began, but I did not stand around to listen to the rest. I threw myself down and forward even as he fired from the hip.

Six thousand steel flechettes blew apart the stove, the pan of stew I had been cooking on the stove, the sink, the window above the sink, and the shelves and crockery on the shelves. Food, plastic, porcelain, and glass showered over my legs as I crawled under the open counter and reached for M. Herrig’s legs, even as he leaned over the counter to spray me with a second burst of flechettes.

I grabbed the big man’s ankles and jerked. He went down on his back with a crash that sent a decade’s worth of dust rising from the floorboards. I clambered up over his legs, kneeing him in the groin as I climbed, and grabbed his wrist with the intention of forcing the gun out of his hands. He had a firm grip on the stock; his finger was still on the trigger. The magazine whined softly as another flechette cartridge clicked into place. I could smell M. Herrig’s whiskey-and-cigar breath on my face as he grimaced triumphantly and forced the weapon’s muzzle toward me. In one movement I slammed my forearm against his wrist and the heavy gun, squeezing it tight under M. Herrig’s fleshy chins. Our eyes met for the instant before his struggles made him complete his squeeze of the trigger.

I told one of the other hunters how to use the radio in the common room, and a Pax security skimmer was setting down on the grassy lawn within the hour. There were only a dozen or so working skimmers on the continent, so the sight of the black Pax vehicle was sobering, to say the least.

They banded my wrists, slapped a cortical come-along to my temple, and hurried me into the holding box in the rear of the vehicle. I sat there, dripping sweat in the hot stillness of the box, while Pax-trained forensic specialists used needle-nosed pliers to try to retrieve every shard of M. Herrig’s skull and scattered brain tissue from the perforated floor and wall. Then, when they had interrogated the other hunters and had found as much of M. Herrig as they were going to find, I watched through the scarred Perspex window as they loaded his body-bagged corpse aboard the skimmer. Lift blades whined, the ventilators allowed me a bit of cooler air just as I thought I could no longer breathe, and the skimmer rose, circled the plantation once, and flew south toward Port Romance.

My trial was held six days later. M’s. Rolman, Rushomin, and Poneascu testified that I had insulted M. Herrig on the trip to the fen and then assaulted him there. They pointed out that the hunting dog had been killed in the melee that I had begun. They testified that once back at the plantation, I had brandished the illegal flechette gun and threatened to kill all of them. M. Herrig had tried to take the weapon away from me. I had shot him at point-blank range, literally blowing his head off in the process.

M. Herrig was the last to testify. Still shaken and pale from his three-day resurrection, dressed in a somber business suit and cape, his voice shook as he confirmed the other men’s testimony and described my brutal assault on him. My court-appointed attorney did not cross-examine him. As born-again Christians in good standing with the Pax, none of the four could be forced to testify under the influence of Truthtell or any other chemical or electronic form of verification. I volunteered to undergo Truthtell or fullscan, but the prosecuting attorney protested that such gimmickry was irrelevant, and the Pax-approved judge agreed. My counselor did not file a protest.

There was no jury. The judge took less than twenty minutes to reach a verdict. I was guilty and sentenced to execution by deathwand.

I stood and asked that the sentence be delayed until I could get word to my aunt and cousins in north Aquila so that they could visit me one last time. My request was denied. The time of execution was set for sunrise on the following day.

A priest from the Pax monastery in Port Romance came to visit me that evening. He was a small, somewhat nervous man with thinning blond hair and a slight stutter. Once in the windowless visiting room, he introduced himself as Father Tse and waved the guards away. “My son,” he began, and I felt the urge to smile, since the priest looked to be about my age, “my son… are you prepared for tomorrow?”

Any urge to smile fled. I shrugged.

Father Tse chewed his lip. “You have not accepted Our Lord…” he said, voice tense with emotion.

I had the urge to shrug again but spoke instead. “I haven’t accepted the cruciform, Father. It might not be the same thing.” His brown eyes were insistent, almost pleading. “It is the same thing, my son. Our Lord has revealed this.” I said nothing.

Father Tse set down his missal and touched my bound wrist. “You know that if you repent this night and accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, that three days after… tomorrow… you will rise to live again in the grace of Our Lord’s forgiveness.” His brown eyes did not blink. “You do know this, do you not, my son?”

I returned his gaze. Some prisoner in the adjoining cell block had screamed most of the last three nights. I felt very tired. “Yes, Father,” I said. “I know how the cruciform works.”

Father Tse vigorously shook his head. “Not the cruciform, my son. The grace of Our Lord.”

I nodded. “Have you gone through resurrection, Father?”

The priest glanced down. “Not yet, my son. But I have no fear of that day.” He looked up at me again. “Nor must you.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. I had been thinking about this for almost every minute of the past six days and nights. “Look, Father,” I said, “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but I made the decision some years ago not to go under the cruciform, and I don’t think that this is the right time to change my mind.”

Father Tse leaned forward, eyes bright. “Any time is the right time to accept Our Lord, my son. After sunrise tomorrow there will be no more time. Your dead body will be taken out from this place and disposed of at sea, mere food for the carrion fish beyond the bay…”