The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (167 page)

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 flicker or fuzz of a holo.

“This place is still rich in the metasphere fields,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” she agreed, not having the slightest idea what he was talking about. “You’re the other Keats. Johnny’s twin.”

The short man smiled and extended a hand as if to touch her swollen abdomen. “That makes me sort of an uncle, doesn’t it, Brawne?”

She nodded. “It was you who saved the baby … Rachel … wasn’t it?”

“Could you see me?”

“No,” breathed Brawne, “but I could
feel
that you were there.” She hesitated a second. “But you weren’t the one Ummon talked about—the Empathy part of the human UI?”

He shook his head. His curls glinted in the dim light. “I discovered that I am the One Who Comes Before. I prepare the way for the One Who Teaches, and I’m afraid that my only miracle was lifting a baby and waiting until someone could take her from me.”

“You didn’t help
me
 … with the Shrike? Floating?”

John Keats laughed. “No. Nor did Moneta. That was you, Brawne.”

She shook her head vigorously. “That’s impossible.”

“Not impossible,” he said softly. He reached out to touch her stomach again, and she imagined that she could feel the pressure from his palm. He whispered, “Thou still unravished bride of quietness,/ Thou foster-child of silence and slow time …” He looked up at Brawne. “Certainly the mother of the One Who Teaches can exercise some prerogatives,” he said.

“The mother of …” Brawne suddenly had to sit down and found
a bench just in time. She had never been awkward before in her life, but now, at seven months, there was no graceful way she could manage sitting. She thought, irrelevantly, of the dirigible coming in for mooring that morning.

“The One Who Teaches,” repeated Keats. “I have no idea what she will teach, but it will change the universe and set ideas in motion that will be vital ten thousand years from now.”

“My child?” she managed, fighting a bit for air. “Johnny’s and my child?”

The Keats persona rubbed its cheek. “The junction of human spirit and AI logic which Ummon and the Core sought for so long and died not understanding,” he said. He took a step. “I only wish I could be around when she teaches whatever she has to teach. See what effect it has on the world. This world. Other worlds.”

Brawne’s mind was spinning, but she had heard something in his tone. “Why? Where will you be? What’s wrong?”

Keats sighed. “The Core is gone. The dataspheres here are too small to contain me even in reduced form … except for the FORCE ship AIs, and I don’t think I’d like it there. I never took orders well.”

“And there’s nowhere else?” asked Brawne.

“The metasphere,” he said, glancing behind him. “But it’s full of lions and tigers and bears. And I’m not ready yet.”

Brawne let that pass. “I have an idea,” she said. She told him.

The image of her lover came closer, put his arms around her, and said, “
You
are a miracle, madam.” He stepped back into the shadows.

Brawne shook her head. “Just a pregnant lady.” She put her hand on the swelling under her gown. “The One Who Teaches,” she murmured. Then, to Keats, “All right, you’re the archangel announcing all this. What name shall I give her?”

When there was no answer, Brawne looked up.

The shadows were empty.

Brawne was at the spaceport before the sun rose. It was not exactly a merry group bidding farewell. Beyond the usual sadness of saying goodbye, Martin, the Consul, and Theo were nursing hangovers since day-after pills were out of stock on post-Web Hyperion. Only Brawne was in fine temper.

“Goddamn ship’s computer has been acting weird all morning,” grumbled the Consul.

“How so?” smiled Brawne.

The Consul squinted at her. “I ask it to run through a regular pre-launch checklist and the stupid ship gives me verse.”

“Verse?” said Martin Silenus, raising one satyr’s brow.

“Yeah … listen …” The Consul keyed his comlog.

A voice familiar to Brawne said:

Theo Lane said, “A defective AI? I thought your ship had one of the finest intelligences outside of the Core.”

“It does,” said the Consul. “It’s not defective. I ran a full cognitive and function check. Everything’s fine. But it gives me … 
this
!” He gestured at the comlog recording readout.

Martin Silenus glanced at Brawne Lamia, looked carefully at her smile, and then turned back to the Consul. “Well, it looks as if your ship might be getting literate. Don’t worry about it. It will be good company during the long trip there and back.”

In the ensuing pause, Brawne brought out a bulky package. “A going-away present,” she said.

The Consul unwrapped it, slowly at first, and then ripping and tearing as the folded, faded, and much-abused little carpet came into sight. He ran his hands across it, looked up, and spoke with emotion filling his voice. “Where … how did you …”

Brawne smiled. “An indigenie refugee found it below the Karla Locks. She was trying to sell it in the Jacktown Marketplace when I happened along. No one was interested in buying.”

The Consul took a deep breath and ran his hands across the designs on the hawking mat which had carried his grandfather Merin to the fateful meeting with his grandmother Siri.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t fly anymore,” said Brawne.

“The flight filaments need recharging,” said the Consul. “I don’t know how to thank you …”

“Don’t,” said Brawne. “It’s for good luck on your voyage.”

The Consul shook his head, hugged Brawne, shook hands with the others, and took the lift up into his ship. Brawne and the others walked back to the terminal.

There were no clouds in Hyperion’s lapis lazuli sky. The sun painted the distant peaks of the Bridle Range in deep tones and promised warmth for the day to come.

Brawne looked over her shoulder at the Poets’ City and the valley beyond. The tops of the taller Time Tombs were just visible. One wing of the Sphinx caught the light.

With little noise and just a hint of heat, the Consul’s ebony ship lifted on a pure blue flame and rose toward the sky.

Brawne tried to remember the poems she had just read and the final lines of her love’s longest and finest unfinished work:

Brawne felt the warm wind tug at her hair. She raised her face to the sky and waved, not trying to hide or brush away the tears, waving fiercely now as the splendid ship pitched over and climbed toward the heavens with its fierce blue flame and—like a distant shout—created a sudden sonic boom which ripped across the desert and echoed against distant peaks.

Brawne let herself weep and waved again, continued waving, at the departing Consul, and at the sky, and at friends she would never see again, and at part of her past, and at the ship rising above like a perfect, ebony arrow shot from some god’s bow.

On he flared
 …

You are reading this for the wrong reason.

If you are reading this to learn what it was like to make love to a messiah—
our
messiah—then you should not read on, because you are little more than a voyeur.

If you are reading this because you are a fan of the old poet’s
Cantos
and are obsessed with curiosity about what happened next in the lives of the Hyperion pilgrims, you will be disappointed. I do not know what happened to most of them. They lived and died almost three centuries before I was born.