FORCE prided itself on using its own artificial intelligences, its own dataspheres and computing sources. The ostensible reason lay in the requirement to operate in the great spaces between Web worlds, the dark and quiet places between the stars and beyond the Web mega-sphere, but much of the real reason lay in a fierce need for independence which FORCE had shown toward the TechnoCore for centuries. Yet on a FORCE ship in the center of a FORCE armada in a non-Web, non-Protectorate system, I was tuned to the same comforting background babble of data and energy that I would have found anywhere in the Web. Interesting.
I thought of the links the farcaster had brought to Hyperion system: not just the JumpShip and farcaster containment sphere floating at Hyperions L3 point like a gleaming new moon, but the miles of gigachannel fiber-optic cable snaking through permanent JumpShip farcaster portals, microwave repeaters mechanically shuttling the few inches to repeat their messages in near real-time, command ship tame AIs requestingand receivingnew links to the Olympus High Command on Mars and elsewhere. Somewhere the datasphere had crept in, perhaps unknown to the FORCE machines and their operators and allies. The Core AIs knew everything happening here in Hyperion system. If my body were to die now, I would have the same escape path as always, fleeing down the pulsing links that led like secret passages beyond the Web, beyond any vestige of datumplane as humanity had known it, down datalink tunnels to the TechnoCore itself. Not really to the Core, I thought, because the Core surrounds, envelops the rest, like an ocean holding separate currents, great Gulf Streams which think themselves separate seas.
I just wish there was a window, whispered Leigh Hunt.
Yes, I said. So do I.
The dropship bucked and vibrated as we entered Hyperions upper atmosphere. Hyperion, I thought. The Shrike. My heavy shirt and vest seemed sticky and clinging. A faint susurration from without said that we were flying, streaking across the lapis skies at several times the speed of sound.
The young lieutenant leaned across the aisle. First time down, gentlemen?
Hunt nodded.
The Lieutenant was chewing gum, showing how relaxed he was.
You two civilian techs from the Hebrides?
We just came from there, yes, said Hunt.
Thought so, grinned the Lieutenant. Me, Im running a courier pack down to the Marine base near Keats. My fifth trip.
A slight jolt ran through me as I was reminded of the name of the capital; Hyperion had been repopulated by Sad King Billy and his colony of poets, artists, and other misfits fleeing an invasion of their homeworld by Horace Glennon-Heightan invasion which never came. The poet on the current Shrike Pilgrimage, Martin Silenus, had advised King Billy almost two centuries earlier in the naming of the capital. Keats.
The locals called the old part Jacktown.
Youre not going to believe this place, said the Lieutenant. Its the real anal end of nowhere. I mean, no datasphere, no EMVs, no farcasters, no stimsim bars, no nothing. Its no wonder that there are thousands of the fucking indigenies camped around the spaceport, just tearing down the fence to get offworld.
Are they really attacking the spaceport? asked Hunt.
Naw, said the Lieutenant and snapped his gum. But theyre ready to, if you know what I mean. Thats why the Second Marine Battalion has set up a perimeter there and secured the way into the city. Besides, the yokels think that were going to set up farcasters any day now and let em step out of the shit they got themselves into.
They got themselves into?
I said.
The Lieutenant shrugged. They mustve done something to get the Ousters cricked at them, right? Were just here to pull their oysters out of the fire.
Chestnuts, said Leigh Hunt.
The gum snapped. Whatever.
The susurration of wind grew to a shriek clearly audible through the hull. The dropship bounced twice and then slid smoothlyominously smoothlyas if it had encountered a chute of ice ten miles above the ground.
I wish we had a window, whispered Leigh Hunt.
It was warm and stuffy in the dropship. The bouncing was oddly relaxing, rather like a small sailing ship rising and falling on slow swells.
I closed my eyes for a few minutes.
Ten
Sol Weintraub pauses before the entrance to the Time Tomb called the Sphinx. He feels his daughters presence as a warmth against his chest under the cape, the rise and fall of warm babys breath against his throat. He raises one hand, touches the small bundle there, and tries to imagine Rachel as a young woman of twenty-six, a researcher pausing at this very entrance before going in to test the anti-entropic mysteries of the Time Tomb. Sol shakes his head. It has been twenty-six long years and a lifetime since that moment. In four days it will be his daughters birthday. Unless Sol does something, finds the Shrike, makes some bargain with the creature, does something, Rachel will die in four days.
Are you coming, Sol? calls Brawne Lamia. The others have stored their gear in the first room, half a dozen meters down the narrow corridor through stone.