Ces Ambre, muttered Dem Loa, her fingers on the chilled plastic centimeters above her triune stepdaughters lined cheek. Sleep well, my darling. Sleep well.
On the command deck, the tall man was standing among the virtual AIs.
Welcome, Petyr, son of Aenea and Endymion, said Saigyô with a slight bow.
Thank you, Saigyô. How are you all?
They told him in terms beyond language or mathematics. Petyr nodded, frowned slightly, and touched Bashos shoulder. There are too many conflicts in you, Basho? You wished them reconciled?
The tall man in the coned hat and muddy clogs said, Yes, please, Petyr.
The human squeezed the AIs shoulder in a friendly embrace. Both closed their eyes for an instant.
When Petyr released him, the saturnine Basho smiled broadly.
Thank you, Petyr.
The human sat on the edge of the table, and said, Lets see where were headed.
A holocube four meters by four meters appeared in front of them. The stars were recognizable. The Helixs long voyage out from human-Aenean space was traced in red. Its projected trajectory proceeded ahead in blue dashesblue dashes extending toward the center of the galaxy.
Petyr stood, reached into the holo cube, and touched a small star just to the right of the projected path of the Helix. Instantly that section magnified.
This might be an interesting system to check out, said the man with a comfortable smile. Nice G2 star. The fourth planet is about a seven-point-six on the old Solmev Scale. It would be higher, but it has evolved some very nasty viruses and some very fierce animals. Very fierce.
Six hundred eighty-five light-years, noted Saigyô. Plus forty-three light-years course correction. Soon.
Petyr nodded.
Lady Murasaki moved her fan in front of her painted face. Her smile was provocative. And when we arrive, Petyr-san, will the nasty viruses
somehow be gone?
The tall man shrugged. Most of them, my Lady. Most of them. He grinned. But the fierce animals will still be there. He shook hands with each of the AIs. Stay safe, my friends. And keep our friends safe.
Petyr trotted back to the three-meter chrome-and-bladed nightmare in the main walkway just as Dem Loas soft gown swished across the carpeted deckplates to join him.
All set? asked Petyr.
Dem Loa nodded.
The son of Aenea and Raul Endymion set his hand against the monster standing between them, laying his palm flat next to a fifteen-centimeter curved thorn. The three disappeared without a sound.
The Helix shut off its containment-field gravity, stored its air, turned off its interior lights, and continued on in silence, making the tiniest of course corrections as it did so.
THE HYPERION CANTOS
Hyperion (1989)
The Fall of Hyperion (1990)
Endymion (1996)
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
The four Hyperion books cover more than thirteen centuries in time, tens of thousands of light-years in space, more than three thousand pages of the readers time, the rise and fall of at least two major interstellar civilizations, and more ideas than the author could shake an epistemological stick at. They are, in other words, space opera.
As the reviewer for the New York Times said of the last book in the series, Yet The Rise of Endymion, like its three predecessors, is also a full-blooded action novel, replete with personal combats and battles in space that are distinguished from the formulaic space opera by the magnitude of what is at stakewhich is nothing less than the salvation of the human soul.
The salvation of the human soulin the sense of finding the essence of what makes and keeps us humanis indeed the binding theme through all of these space battles, dark ages, new societies, and the coming of a new messiah.
Hyperion introduces us to seven pilgrims crossing the WorldWeb of the Hegemony of Man on their way to the Valley of the Time Tombs on the planet Hyperion. In true Chaucerian form, six of the pilgrims (one doesnt survive long enough) tell each other their personal stories and reasons for coming on the pilgrimage as they cross The Sea of Grass and other obstacles to reach the Shrikethe fabled killing creature of the Time Tombs, part machine, part time-traveling god, part avenging angel, and all sharp thorns, spikes, claws, and teeth. The idea is that one of the pilgrims will have his or her request granted by the Shrike; the others will die. Through their stories we learn of the TechnoCorea hidden and manipulative group of Autonomous Intelligences escaped from human controlof the destroyed (or perhaps just kidnapped) Old Earth; of the fake war between the Hegemony and the space-adapted, human-evolved Ousters; and of one Jesuits discoveryand rejectionof a cross-shaped symbiote called the cruciform which can bring about physical resurrection. The story ends with the pilgrims arrival at the Valley of the Time Tombs.
The Fall of Hyperion picks up exactly where Hyperion left off but utilizes totally different narrative techniques and structures to pursue John Keatss themes of individualsand speciesnot happily surrendering their place in the scheme of things when evolution tells them it is time to go. The pilgrims from the first book find that their fates are not as simple as they had thought: the Time Tombs open, mysterious messages and messengers from the future show that the struggle for the human soul continues on for many centuries, the Shrike wreaks havoc but does not kill all, nor does it grant requests, and the complex interstellar society of the Hegemony of Man with its WorldWeb farcaster system is kicked apart like an ant hill by interstellar waralthough whether the war is between Hegemony and Ousters, or Humanity and the TechnoCore, is not clear. Of the pilgrims, one named Brawne Lamia is pregnant by her loverthe John Keats cybrid created by the Coreand it is rumored that her child will be The One Who Teaches, humanitys next Messiah. Another, soldier Fedmahn Kassad, travels to the future to meet his fate in combat with the Shrike. A third, Sol Weintraub, has stopped his daughter from aging backward to nonexistence, but now has to travel with her through a Time Tomb to their own complicated part in the mosaic of the future.