Дэн Симмонс - Endymion

I whistled at this. The Vatican Swiss Guard was the elite of the elite, the best-trained, best-equipped military force in the far-flung expanse of the Pax. A dozen Vatican Guard troops in full regalia could have beaten the entire ten thousand troops of Hyperion’s Home Guard. “So,” I said, “I have forty-two hours to get to Equus, cross the Sea of Grass and the mountains, somehow get past twenty or thirty thousand of the Pax’s best troops, and rescue the girl?”

“Yes,” said the ancient figure in the bed.

I managed not to roll my eyes. “What then?” I said. “There is nowhere we can hide. The Pax controls all of Hyperion, all spacecraft, the spacelanes, and every world of what used to be the Hegemony. If she is as important as you say, they will turn Hyperion upside down until they find her. Even if we could somehow get offplanet, which we can’t, there would be no way we could escape.”

“There is a way for you to get offplanet,” the poet said in a tired voice. “There is a ship.”

I swallowed hard. There is a ship. The idea of traveling between the stars for months while decades or years passed back home took my breath away. I had joined the Home Guard with the childish notion of someday belonging to the Pax military and flying between the stars. A foolish notion for a youngster who had already decided not to accept the cruciform.

“Still,” I said, not truly believing that there was a ship. No member of the Pax Mercantilus would transport fugitives. “Even if we make it to another world, they would have us. Unless you see us fleeing by ship for centuries of time-debt.”

“No,” said the old man. “Not centuries. Not decades. You will escape by ship to one of the nearest worlds of the old Hegemony. Then you will go a secret way. You will see the old worlds. You will travel the River Tethys.”

I knew now that the old man had lost his reason. When the farcasters fell and the AI TechnoCore abandoned humankind, the WorldWeb and Hegemony had died that same day. The tyranny of interstellar distances had been reimposed upon humanity. Now only the Pax forces, their puppet Mercantilus, and the hated Ousters braved the darkness between the stars.

“Come,” rasped the old man. His fingers would not uncurl as he gestured me closer. I leaned over the low com console. I could smell him… a vague combination of medicine, age, and something like leather.

I did not need the memories of Grandam’s campfire tales to explain the River Tethys and to know why I now knew that the old man was far gone into senility. Everyone knew about the River Tethys; it and the so-called Grand Concourse had been two constant farcaster avenues between the Hegemony worlds. The Concourse had been a street connecting a hundred-some worlds under a hundred-some suns, its broad avenue open to everyone and stitched together by farcaster portals that never closed. The River Tethys had been a less-traveled route, but still important for bulk commerce and the countless pleasure boats that had floated effortlessly from world to world on the single highway of water.

The Concourse had been sliced into a thousand separate segments by the Fall of the WorldWeb farcaster network; the Tethys had simply ceased to exist, the connecting portals useless, the single river on a hundred worlds reverted to a hundred smaller rivers that would never be connected again. Even the old poet seated before me had described the river’s death. I remembered the words from Grandam’s recitation of the Cantos:

“Come closer,” whispered the old poet, still beckoning me with his yellowed finger. I leaned closer. The ancient creature’s breath was like a dry wind out of an unsealed tomb—free of odor, but ancient, somehow redolent of forgotten centuries—as he whispered to me:

I pulled my head back and nodded as if the old man had said something sensible. It was clear that he was mad.

As if reading my mind, the old poet chuckled. “I have often been called insane by those who underestimate the power of poetry. Do not decide now, Raul Endymion. We will meet later for dinner and I will finish describing your challenge. Decide then. For now… rest! Your death and resurrection must have tired you.” The old man hunched over, and there came the dry rattling that I now understood as laughter.

The android showed me back to my room. I caught glimpses of courtyards and outbuildings through the tower windows. Once I saw another android—also male—walking past clerestory windows across the courtyard.

My guide opened the door and stepped back. I realized that I would not be locked in, that I was not a prisoner.

“Evening clothes have been set out for you, sir,” said the blue-skinned man. “You are, of course, free to go or wander the old university grounds as you wish. I should warn you, M. Endymion, that there are dangerous animals in the forest and mountains in this vicinity.”

I nodded and smiled. Dangerous animals would not keep me from leaving if I wished to leave. At the moment I did not.

The android turned to leave then, and on impulse I stepped forward and did something that would change the course of my life forever.

“Wait,” I said. I extended a hand. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Raul Endymion.”

For a long moment the android only looked at my extended hand, and I was sure that I had committed some breach of protocol. Androids had been, after all, considered something less than human centuries ago when they had been biofactured for use during the Hegira expansion. Then the artificial man grasped my hand in his and shook firmly. “I am A. Bettik,” he said softly. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

A. Bettik. The name had some resonance for me that I could not place. I said, “I would like to talk to you, A. Bettik. Learn more about… about you and this place and the old poet.”

The android’s blue eyes lifted, and I thought I glimpsed something like amusement there. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I would be happy to speak with you. I fear that it must be later, since there are many duties I have to oversee at this moment.”

“Later, then,” I said, and stepped back. “I look forward to it.”

A. Bettik nodded and descended the tower stairs.

I walked into my room. Except for the bed being made and a suit of elegant evening clothes laid out there, the space was just as it had been. I went to the window and looked out over the ruins of Endymion University. Tall everblues rustled in the cool breeze. Violet leaves tumbled from the weirwood stand near the tower and scraped across the flagstone pavement twenty meters below. Chalma leaves scented the air with their distinctive cinnamon. I had grown up only a few hundred kilometers northeast, on the Aquila moors between these mountains and the rugged area known as the Beak, but the chill freshness of the mountain air here was new to me. The sky seemed a deeper lapis than any I had seen from the moors or lowlands. I breathed in the autumn air and grinned: whatever strangeness lay ahead, I was damned glad to be alive.