Дэн Симмонс - The Fall of Hyperion

“But the Tombs were closed to research and tourists,” I said.

“Yes. But their instruments—we allowed data to be relayed weekly through the consulate fatline transmitter—had already shown the change in the anti-entropic fields surrounding the Tombs. Reichs University knew the Tombs were opening… if that’s really what the change means… and they sent the top researchers in the Web to study it.”

“But you did not grant them permission?” I said.

Theo Lane smiled without warmth. “CEO Gladstone did not grant them permission. The closure of the Tombs is a direct order from TC 2. If it were up to me, I would have denied the pilgrims passage and allowed Dr. Arundez’s team priority access.” He turned back to Hunt.

“Excuse me,” I said and slipped out of the booth.

I found Arundez and his people—three women and four men, their clothing and physical styles suggesting different worlds in the Web–two porches away. They were bent over their breakfasts and scientific comlogs, arguing in technical terms so abstruse as to leave a Talmudic scholar envious.

“Dr. Arundez?” I said.

“Yes?” He looked up. He was two decades older than I remembered, entering middle age in his early sixties, but the strikingly handsome profile was the same, with the same bronzed skin, solid jaw, wavy black hair going only slightly gray at the temples, and piercing hazel eyes. I understood how a young female graduate student could have quickly fallen in love with him.

“My name is Joseph Severn,” I said. “You don’t know me, but I knew a friend of yours… Rachel Weintraub.”

Arundez was on his feet in a second, offering apologies to the others, leading me by the elbow until we found an empty booth in a cubicle under a round window looking out on red-tiled rooftops. He released my elbow and appraised me carefully, taking in the Web clothing. He turned my wrists over, looking for the telltale blueness of Poulsen treatments.

“You’re too young,” he said. “Unless you knew Rachel as a child.”

“Actually, it’s her father I know best,” I said.

Dr. Arundez let out a breath and nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Where is Sol? I’ve been trying to trace him for months through the consulate. The authorities on Hebron will only say that he’s moved.”

He gave me that appraising stare again. “You knew about Rachel’s… illness?”

“Yes,” I said. The Merlin’s sickness which had caused her to age backward, losing memories with each day and hour that passed.

Melio Arundez had been one of those memories. “I know that you went to visit her about fifteen standard years ago on Barnard’s World.”

Arundez grimaced. “That was a mistake,” he said. “I thought that I would talk to Sol and Sarai. When I saw her…” He shook his head. “Who are you? Do you know where Sol and Rachel are now? It’s three days until her birthday.”

I nodded. “Her first and last birthday.” I glanced around. The hallway was silent and empty except for a distant murmur of laughter from a lower level. “I’m here on a fact-finding trip from the CEO’s office,” I said. “I have information that Sol Weintraub and his daughter have traveled to the Time Tombs.”

Arundez looked as though I’d struck him in the solar plexus. “Here? On Hyperion?” He stared out at the rooftops for a moment. “I should have realized… although Sol always refused to return here… but with Sarai gone…” He looked at me. “Are you in touch with him? Is she… are they all right?”

I shook my head. “There are no radio or datasphere links with them at present,” I said. “I know that they made the trip safely. The question is, what do you know? Your team? Data on what is occurring at the Time Tombs might be very important to their survival.”

Melio Arundez ran his hand through his hair. “If only they’d let us go there! That damned, stupid, bureaucratic shortsightedness… You say you’re from Gladstone’s office. Can you explain to them why it’s so important for us to get there?”

“I’m only a messenger,” I said. “But tell me why it’s so important, and I’ll try to get the information to someone.”

Arundez’s large hands cupped an invisible shape in midair. His tension and anger were palpable. “For three years, the data was coming via telemetry in the squirts the consulate would allow once a week on their precious fatline transmitter. It showed a slow but relentless degradation of the anti-entropic envelope—the time tides—in and around the Tombs. It was erratic, illogical, but steady. Our team was authorized to travel here shortly after the degradation began. We arrived about six months ago, saw data that suggested that the Tombs were opening… coming into phase with now… but four days after we arrived, the instruments quit sending. All of them. We begged that bastard Lane to let us just go and recalibrate them, set up new sensors if he wouldn’t let us investigate in person.

“Nothing. No transit permission. No communication with the university… even with the coming of FORCE ships to make it easier.

We tried going upriver ourselves, without permission, and some of Lane’s Marine goons intercepted us at Karia Locks and brought us back in handcuffs. I spent four weeks in jail. Now we’re allowed to wander around Keats, but we’ll be locked up indefinitely if we leave the city again.” Arundez leaned forward. “Can you help?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I want to help the Weintraubs. Perhaps it would be best if you could take your team to the site. Do you know when the Tombs will open?”

The time-physicist made an angry gesture. “If we had new data!” He sighed. “No, we don’t know. They could be open already or it could be another six months.”

“When you say 'open,'” I said, “you don’t mean physically open?”

“Of course not. The Time Tombs have been physically open for inspection since they were discovered four standard centuries ago. I mean open in the sense of dropping the time curtains that conceal parts of them, bringing the entire complex into phase with the local flow of time.”

“By ‘local’ you mean… ?”

“I mean in this universe, of course.”

“And you’re sure that the Tombs are moving backward in time…from our future?” I asked.

“Backward in time, yes,” said Arundez. “From our future, we can’t say. We’re not even sure what the 'future' means in temporal/physical terms. It could be a series of sine-wave probabilities or a decision-branch megaverse, or even—”

“But whatever it is,” I said, “the Time Tombs and the Shrike are coming from there?”

“The Time Tombs are for certain,” said the physicist. “I have no knowledge of the Shrike. My own guess is that it’s a myth fueled by the same hunger for superstitious verities that drives other religions.”

“Even after what happened to Rachel?” I said. “You still don’t believe in the Shrike?”

Melio Arundez glowered at me. “Rachel contracted Merlin’s sickness,” he said. “It’s an anti-entropic aging disease, not the bite of a mythical monster.”

“Time’s bite has never been mythical,” I said, surprising myself with such a cheap bit of homespun philosophy. “The question is—will the Shrike or whatever power inhabits the Time Tombs return Rachel to the 'local' time flow?”

Arundez nodded and turned his gaze to the rooftops. The sun had moved into the clouds, and the morning was drab, the red tiles bleached of color. Rain was beginning to fall again.

“And the question is,” I said, surprising myself again, “are you still in love with her?”

The physicist turned his head slowly, fixing me in an angry gaze. I felt the retort—possibly physical—build, crest, and wane. He reached into his coat pocket and showed me a snapshot holo of an attractive woman with graying hair and two children in their late teens. “My wife and children,” said Melio Arundez. “They’re waiting on Renaissance Vector.” He pointed a blunt finger at me. “If Rachel were… were cured today, I would be eighty-two standard years old before she again reached the age she was when we first met.” He lowered the finger, returned the holo to his pocket. “And yes,” he said, “I’m still in love with her.”