Дэн Симмонс - The Fall of Hyperion

They talked about Sol and Rachel. In the past six months, hundreds of people had tried to enter the Sphinx; one had succeeded—a quiet Ouster named Mizenspesht Ammenyet.

The Ouster experts had spent months analyzing the Tombs and the trace of time tides still surviving. On some of the Structures, hieroglyphs and oddly familiar cuneiform had appeared after the Tombs’ opening, and these had led to at least educated guesses as to the various Time Tombs’ functions.

The Sphinx was a one-way portal to the future Rachel/Moneta had spoken of. No one knew how it selected those it wished to let pass, but the popular thing for tourists was to try to enter the portal. No sign or hint of Sol and his daughter’s fate had been discovered. Brawne found that she thought of the old scholar often.

Brawne, the Consul, and Martin Silenus drank a toast to Sol and Rachel.

The Jade Tomb appeared to have something to do with gas giant worlds. No one had been passed by its particular portal, but exotic Ousters, designed and bred to live in Jovian habitats, arrived daily to attempt to enter it. Both Ouster and FORCE experts repeatedly pointed out that the Tombs were not farcasters, but some other form of cosmic connection entirely. The tourists didn’t care.

The Obelisk remained a black mystery. The tomb still glowed, but it now had no door. Ousters guessed that armies of Shrikes still waited within. Martin Silenus thought that the Obelisk was only a phallic symbol thrown in the valley’s decor as an afterthought. Others thought it might have something to do with the Templars.

Brawne, the Consul, and Martin Silenus drank a toast to True Voice of the Tree Hot Masteen.

The resealed Crystal Monolith was Colonel Fedmahn Kassad’s tomb.

Decoded markings set in stone talked of a cosmic battle and a great warrior from the past who appeared to help defeat the Lord of Pain.

Young recruits down from the torchships and attack carriers ate it up.

Kassad’s legend would spread as more of these ships returned to the worlds of the old Web.

Brawne, the Consul, and Martin Silenus drank a toast to Fedmahn Kassad.

The first and second of the Cave Tombs seemed to lead nowhere, but the Third appeared to open to labyrinths on a variety of worlds.

After a few researchers disappeared, the Ouster research authorities reminded tourists that the labyrinths lay in a different time—possibly hundreds of thousands of years in the past or future—as well as a different space. They sealed the caves off except to qualified experts.

Brawne, the Consul, and Martin Silenus drank a toast to Paul Duré and Lenar Hoyt.

The Shrike Palace remained a mystery. The tiers of bodies were gone when Brawne and the others had returned a few hours later, the interior of the tomb the size it had been previously, but with a single door of light burning in its center. Anyone who stepped through disappeared.

None returned.

The researchers had declared the interior off-limits while they worked to decode letters carved in stone but badly eroded by time. So far, they were certain of three words—all in Old Earth Latin—translated as “colosseum,” “rome,” and “repopulate.” The legend had already grown up that this portal opened to the missing Old Earth and that the victims of the tree of thorns had been transported there. Hundreds more waited.

“See,” Martin Silenus said to Brawne, “if you hadn’t been so fucking quick to rescue me, I could’ve gone home.”

Theo Lane leaned forward. “Would you really have chosen to go back to Old Earth?”

Martin smiled his sweetest satyr smile. “Not in a fucking million years. It was dull when I lived there and it’ll always be dull. This is where it’s happening.” Silenus drank a toast to himself.

In a sense, Brawne realized, that was true. Hyperion was the meeting place of Ouster and former Hegemony citizen. The Time Tombs alone would mean future trade and tourism and travel as the human universe adjusted to a life without farcasters. She tried to imagine the future as the Ousters saw it, with great fleets expanding humankind’s horizons, with genetically tailored humans colonizing gas giants and asteroids and worlds harsher than preterraformed Mars or Hebron. She could not imagine it. This was a universe her child might see… or her grand-children.

“What are you thinking, Brawne?” asked the Consul after silence stretched.

She smiled. “About the future,” she said. “And about Johnny.”

“Ah yes,” said Silenus, “the poet who could have been God but who wasn’t.”

“What happened to the second persona, do you think?” asked Brawne.

The Consul made a motion with his hand. “I don’t see how it could have survived the death of the Core. Do you?”

Brawne shook her head. “I’m just jealous. A lot of people seem to have ended up seeing him. Even Melio Arundez said he met him in Jacktown.”

They drank a toast to Melio, who had left five months earlier with the first FORCE spinship returning Webward.

“Everyone saw him but me,” said Brawne, frowning at her brandy and realizing that she had to take more prenatal antialcohol pills before turning in. She realized that she was a little drunk: the stuff couldn’t harm the baby if she took the pills, but it had definitely gotten to her.

“I’m heading back,” she announced and stood, hugging the Consul. “Got to be up bright and early to watch your sunrise launch.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to spend the night on the ship?” asked the Consul. “The guest room has a nice view of the valley.”

Brawne shook her head. “All my stuff’s at the old palace.”

“I’ll talk to you before I go,” said the Consul and they hugged again, quickly, before either had to notice Brawne’s tears.

Martin Silenus walked her back to the Poets’ City. They paused in the lighted galleria outside the apartments.

“Were you really on the tree, or only stimsiming it while sleeping in the Shrike Palace?” Brawne asked him.

The poet did not smile. He touched his chest where the steel thorn had pierced him. “Was I a Chinese philosopher dreaming that I was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that I was a Chinese philosopher? Is that what you’re asking, kid?”

“Yes.”

“That’s correct,” Silenus said softly… “Yes. I was both. And both were real. And both hurt. And I will love and cherish you forever for saving me, Brawne. To me, you will always be able to walk on air.” He raised her hand and kissed it. “Are you going in?”

“No, I think I’ll stroll in the garden for a minute.”

The poet hesitated. “All right. I think. We have patrols—mech and human—and our Grendel-Shrike hasn’t made an encore appearance yet… but be careful, OK?”

“Don’t forget,” said Brawne, “I’m the Grendel killer. I walk on air and turn them into glass goblins to shatter.”

“Uh-huh, but don’t stray beyond the gardens. OK, kiddo?”

“OK,” said Brawne. She touched her stomach. “We’ll be careful.”

He was waiting in the garden, where the light did not quite touch and the monitor cameras did not quite cover.

“Johnny!” gasped Brawne and took a quick step forward on the path of stones.

“No,” he said and shook his head, a bit sadly perhaps. He looked like Johnny. Precisely the same red-brown hair and hazel eyes and firm chin and high cheekbones and soft smile. He was dressed a bit strangely, with a thick leather jacket, broad belt, heavy shoes, walking stick, and a rough fur cap, which he took off as she came closer.

Brawne stopped less than a meter away. “Of course,” she said in little more than a whisper. She reached out to touch him, and her hand passed through him, although there was none of the nicker or fuzz of a holo.