Дэн Симмонс: Endymion

And now I had returned.

A bald man with blue skin and cobalt-blue eyes came through the door, set underwear and a simple daysuit of what looked like homespun cotton on the bed, and said, “Please get dressed.”

I admit that I stared silently as the man turned and went out the door. Blue skin. Bright-blue eyes. No hair. He… it… had to be the first android that I had ever seen. If asked, I would have said that there were no androids left on Hyperion. They had been illegal to biofacture since before the Fall, and although they had been imported by the legendary Sad King Billy to build most of the cities in the north centuries ago, I had never heard of one still existing on our world. I shook my head and got dressed. The daysuit fit nicely, despite my rather unusually large shoulders and long legs.

I was back at the window when the android returned. He stood by the open door and gestured with an open hand. “This way please, M. Endymion.”

I resisted the impulse to ask questions and followed him up the tower stairs. The room at the top took up the entire floor. Late-afternoon sunlight streamed in through yellow-and-red stained-glass windows. At least one window was open, and I could hear the rustle of the leaf canopy far below as a wind came up from the valley.

This room was as white and bare as my cell had been, except for a cluster of medical equipment and communication consoles in the center of the circle. The android left, closing the heavy door behind him, and it took me a second to realize that there was a human being in the locus of all that equipment.

At least I thought it was a human being.

The man was lying on a flowfoam hoverchair bed that had been adjusted to a sitting position. Tubes, IV drips, monitor filaments, and organic-looking umbilicals ran from the equipment to the wizened figure in the chair. I say “wizened,” but in truth the man’s body looked almost mummified, the skin wrinkled like the folds of an old leather jacket, the skull mottled and almost perfectly bald, the arms and legs emaciated to the point of being vestigial appendages. Everything about the old man’s posture made me think of a wrinkled and featherless baby bird that had fallen out of the nest. His parchment skin had a blue cast to it that made me think android for a moment, but then I saw the different shade of blue, the faint glow of the palms, ribs, and forehead, and realized that I was looking at a real human who had enjoyed—or suffered—centuries of Poulsen treatments.

No one receives Poulsen treatments anymore. The technology was lost in the Fall, as were the raw materials from worlds lost in time and space. Or so I thought. But here was a creature at least many centuries old who must have received Poulsen treatments as recently as decades ago.

The old man opened his eyes.

I have since seen eyes with as much power as his, but nothing in my life to that point had prepared me for the intensity of such a gaze. I think I took a step back.

“Come closer, Raul Endymion.” The voice was like the scraping of a dull blade on parchment. The old man’s mouth moved like a turtle’s beak.

I stepped closer, stopping only when a com console stood between me and the mummified form. The old man blinked and lifted a bony hand that still seemed too heavy for the twig of a wrist. “Do you know who I am?” The scratch of a voice was as soft as a whisper.

I shook my head.

“Do you know where you are?”

I took a breath. “Endymion. The abandoned university, I think.”

The wrinkles folded back in a toothless smile. “Very good. The namesake recognizes the heaps of stone which named his family. But you do not know who I might be?”

“No.”

“And you have no questions about how you survived your execution?”

I stood at parade rest and waited.

The old man smiled again. “Very good, indeed. All things come to him who waits. And the details are not that enlightening… bribes in high places, a stunner substituted for the deathwand, more bribes to those who certify the death and dispose of the body. It is not the ’how’ we are interested in, is it, Raul Endymion?”

“No,” I said at last. “Why.”

The turtle’s beak twitched, the massive head nodded. I noticed now that even through the damage of centuries, the face was still sharp and angular—a satyr’s countenance.

“Precisely,” he said. “Why? Why go to the trouble of faking your execution and transporting your fucking carcass across half a fucking continent? Why indeed?”

The obscenities did not seem especially harsh from the old man’s mouth. It was as if he had sprinkled his speech with them for so long that they deserved no special emphasis. I waited.

“I want you to run an errand for me, Raul Endymion.” The old man’s breath wheezed. Pale fluid flowed through the intravenous tubes.

“Do I have a choice?”

The face smiled again, but the eyes were as unchanging as the stone in the walls. “We always have choices, dear boy. In this case you can ignore any debt you might owe me for saving your life and simply leave here… walk away. My servants will not stop you. With luck you will get out of this restricted area, find your way back to more civilized regions, and avoid Pax patrols where your identity and lack of papers might be… ah… embarrassing.”

I nodded. My clothes, chronometer, work papers, and Pax ID were probably in Toschahi Bay by now. Working as a hunting guide in the fens made me forget how often the authorities checked IDs in the cities. I would soon be reminded if I wandered back to any of the coastal cities or inland towns. And even rural jobs such as shepherd and guide required Pax ID for tax and tithe forms. Which left hiding in the interior for the rest of my life, living off the land and avoiding people.

“Or,” said the old man, “you can run an errand for me and become rich.” He paused, his dark eyes inspecting me the way I had seen professional hunters inspect pups that might or might not prove to be good hunting dogs.

“Tell me,” I said.

The old man closed his eyes and rattled in a deep breath. He did not bother to open his eyes when he spoke. “Can you read, Raul Endymion?”

“Yes.”

“Have you read the poem known as the Cantos?”

“No.”

“But you have heard some of it? Surely, being born into one of the nomadic shepherd clans of the north, the storyteller has touched on the Cantos?” There was a strange tone in the cracked voice. Modesty, perhaps.

I shrugged. “I’ve heard bits of it. My clan preferred the Garden Epic or the Glennon-Height Saga.”

The satyr features creased into a smile. “The Garden Epic. Yes. Raul was a centaur-hero in that, was he not?”

I said nothing. Grandam had loved the character of the centaur named Raul. My mother and I both had grown up listening to tales of him.

“Do you believe the stories?” snapped the old man. “The Cantos tales, I mean.”

“Believe them?” I said. “That they actually happened that way? The pilgrims and the Shrike and all that?” I paused a minute. There were those who believed all the tall tales told in the Cantos. And there were those who believed none of it, that it was all myth and maundering thrown together to add mystery to the ugly war and confusion that was the Fall. “I never really thought about it,” I said truthfully. “Does it matter?”

The old man seemed to be choking, but then I realized that the dry, rattling sounds were chuckles. “Not really,” he said at last. “Now, listen. I will tell you the outline of the… errand. It takes energy for me to speak, so save your questions for when I am finished.” He blinked and gestured with his mottled claw toward the chair covered with a white sheet. “Do you wish to sit?”