The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (204 page)

“Did it act threatening?” I’d asked A. Bettik a few minutes
earlier. I had been trying to get him to hold the 16-gauge shotgun—no weapon is easier for a weapon’s novice to use than a shotgun—but all he would do was keep it by him as he sat by the fire.

“It did not act anything at all,” he had replied. “It simply stood there on the beach—tall, spiked, dark but gleaming. Its eyes were very red.”

“Was it looking at you?”

“It was looking east, down the river,” A. Bettik had replied.

As if waiting for Aenea and me to return
, I had thought.

So I sat by the flickering fire, watched the aurora dance and shimmer over the wind-tossed jungle, tracked the will-o’-the-wisps as they jiggled in the jungle darkness, listened to the subsonic thunder rumbling like some great, hungry beast, and passed the time wondering how the hell I’d got myself here. For all I knew, there were velociraptors and packs of carrion-breed kalidergas slinking through the jungle toward us even as we sat fat and stupid by the fire. Or perhaps the river would rise—a wall of water could be rushing downstream toward us at that very moment. Camping on a sand spit was not terribly bright. We should have slept in the ship with the air lock sealed tight.

Aenea lay on her stomach looking into the fire. “Do you know any stories?” she said.

“Stories!” I cried. A. Bettik looked up from where he sat hugging his knees beyond the fire.

“Yes,” said the girl. “Like ghost stories.”

I made a noise.

Aenea propped her chin on her palms. The fire painted her face in warm tones. “I just thought it might be fun,” she said. “I like ghost stories.”

I thought of four or five responses and held them back. “You’d better get to sleep,” I said at last. “If the ship’s right about the short day, we don’t have too much night.…”
Please, God, let that be true
, I was thinking. Aloud, I said, “You’d better get some sleep while you can.”

“All right,” said Aenea, and took one last look across the fire at the wind-tossed jungle, the aurora, and the St. Elmo’s fire in the forest, and rolled into her sleeping bag and went to sleep.

A. Bettik and I sat in silence for a while. Occasionally I would converse with my bracelet comlog, asking the ship to inform me immediately if the river started rising, or if it detected some mass displacement, or if …

“I would be happy to take the first watch, M. Endymion,” said the android.

“No, go ahead and sleep,” I said, forgetting that the blue-skinned man required very little sleep.

“We will watch together, then,” he said softly. “But do feel free to doze when you need to, M. Endymion.”

Perhaps I did doze off sometime before the tropical dawn about six hours later. It was cloudy and stormy all night; the ship never got its star fix while we were there. No velociraptors or kalidergas ate us. The river did not rise. The storm aurora did not harm us, and the balls of swamp gas never came out of the swamp to burn us.

What I remember most about that night, besides my galloping paranoia and terrible tiredness, was the sight of Aenea sleeping with her brown-blond hair spilled out over the edge of her red sleeping bag, her fist raised to her cheek like an infant preparing to suck its thumb. I realized that night the import and the terrible difficulty in the task ahead of me—of keeping this child safe from the sharp edges of a strange and indifferent universe.

I think that it was on this alien and storm-tossed night that I first understood what it might be like to be a parent.

We got moving at first light, and I remember that morning mixture of bone-tiredness, gritty eyes, stubbled cheeks, aching back, and sheer joy that I usually felt after my first night on a camping trip. Aenea went down to the river to wash up, and I have to admit that she looked fresher and cleaner than she should have, given the circumstances.

A. Bettik had heated coffee over the cube, and he and I drank some while we watched the morning fog curl up from the quickly moving river. Aenea sipped from a water bottle she’d brought from the ship, and we all munched on dry cereal from a ration pak.

By the time the sun was shining over the jungle canopy, burning away the mists that rose from the river and forest, we were ferrying the gear downriver on the hawking mat. Since Aenea and I had done the fun part the previous evening, I let A. Bettik fly the gear while I dragged more stuff out of the ship and made sure we had what we needed.

Clothing was a problem. I had packed everything I thought I might need, but the girl had only the clothes she’d been wearing on Hyperion and carrying in her pack, and a few shirts we’d cut down from the Consul’s wardrobe. With more than 250 years to think about rescuing the child, one would think that the old poet would have thought to pack some clothes for her. Aenea seemed happy enough with what she had brought, but I was worried that it would not be enough if we ran into cold or rainy weather.

The EVA locker was a help there. There were several suit liners fitted out for the spacesuits, and the smallest of these came close to fitting the girl. I knew that the micropore material would keep her warm and dry in any but the most arctic conditions. I also appropriated a liner for the android and myself; it seemed absurd to be packing for winter in the rising tropical heat of that day, but one never knew. There was also an old outdoors vest of the Consul’s in the locker: long but fitted with more than a dozen pockets, clips, tie-on rings, secret zippered compartments. Aenea let out a squeal when I dug it out of the tumbled mess of the locker, put it on, and wore it almost constantly from then on.

We also found two EVA geology specimen bags with shoulder straps, which made excellent packs. Aenea hoisted one to her shoulder and loaded the extra clothes and bric-a-brac we were finding.

I still was convinced that there had to be a raft there, but no amount of digging and opening locker compartments revealed one.

“M. Endymion,” said the ship when I mentioned to the child what I was rooting around for, “I have a vague memory.…”

Aenea and I stopped what we were doing and listened. There was something strange, almost pained, about the ship’s voice.

“I have a vague memory of the Consul taking the inflatable raft … of him waving good-bye to me from it.”

“Where was that?” I asked. “Which world?”

“I do not know,” said the ship in that same bemused, almost pained tone. “It may not have been a world at all.… I remember stars shining
below
the river.”

“Below the river?” I said. I was worried about the ship’s mental integrity after the crash.

“The memory is fragmented,” said the ship in a brisker
tone. “But I do remember the Consul departing in the raft. It was a large raft, quite comfortable for eight or ten people.”

“Great,” I said, slamming a compartment door. Aenea and I carried out the last load—we had rigged a metal folding ladder to hang down from the air lock, so climbing in and out was not the struggle it had been earlier.

A. Bettik swooped back after ferrying the camping gear and food cartons down to the waterfall, and new I looked at what remained: my backpack filled with my personal gear, Aenea’s backpack and shoulder bag, the extra com units and goggles, some of the food paks, and—lashed under the top of my pack—the folded plasma rifle and the machete A. Bettik had found yesterday. The long knife was awkward to carry, even in its leather sheath, but my few minutes in the jungle the day before had convinced me that we might need it. I had also dug out an ax and an even more compact tool—a folding shovel, actually, although for millennia we idiots who had joined the infantry had been trained to call it “an entrenching tool.” All of our cutlery was beginning to take up space.

I would have been happy to have skipped the ax and brought along a cutting laser to fell the trees for the raft—even an old chain saw would have been preferable—but my flashlight laser wasn’t up to that sort of work, and the weapons locker had been strangely devoid of cutting tools. For one long self-indulgent moment I considered bringing the old FORCE assault rifle and just blasting and burning those trees down, splitting them with pulse bolts if need be, but then I rejected the idea. It would be too loud, too messy, and too imprecise. I would just have to use the ax and sweat a bit. I did bring one of the tool kits with hammer, nails, screwdrivers, screws, pivot bolts—all the things I might need for raft building—as well as some rolls of waterproof plastalum that I thought might make crude but adequate flooring for the raft. On top of the tool kit were several hundred meters of nylon-sheathed climbing rope in three separate coils. In a red waterproof pouch, I’d found some flares and simple plastique, the kind that had been used for blasting stumps and rocks out of fields for countless centuries, as well as a dozen detonators. I included those, although they would be of doubtful use in felling trees for a raft. Also included in this pile for the next trip east were two medkits and a bottle-sized water purifier.

I had carried the EM-flying belt out, but the thing was bulky with its harness and power pak. I propped it against my pack
anyway, thinking that we might need it. Also propped against my pack was the 16-gauge shotgun, which the android had not bothered taking with him during his flight east. Next to it were three boxes of shells. I had also insisted on bringing the flechette pistol, although neither A. Bettik nor Aenea would carry the thing.

On my belt was the holster holding the loaded .45, a pocket for an old-fashioned magnetic compass we’d found in the locker, my folded pair of night goggles and daytime binoculars, a water bottle, and two extra clips for the plasma rifle. “Bring on the velociraptors!” I muttered while taking inventory.

“What?” said Aenea, looking up from her packing.

“Nothing.”

Aenea had her things packed neatly in her new bag by the time A. Bettik touched down on the sand. She had also packed the android’s few personal items in the second shoulder bag.

I have always enjoyed breaking camp, even more than setting it up. I think it’s the neatness of packing everything away that I enjoy.

“What are we forgetting?” I said to the other two as we stood there on the narrow beach, looking at the packs and weapons.

“Me,” said the ship through the comlog on my wrist. The spacecraft’s voice did sound a bit plaintive.

Aenea walked across the sand to touch the curved metal of the beached ship. “How are you doing?”

“I have begun repairs, M. Aenea,” it said. “Thank you for inquiring.”

“Do you still project six months for repairs?” I asked. The last of the clouds were dissipating overhead, and the sky was that pale blue again. The green and white fronds moved against it.

“Approximately six standard months,” said the ship. “That is for my internal and external condition, of course. I do not have the macromanipulators to repair such things as your broken flybikes.”

“That’s all right,” said Aenea. “We’re leaving them all behind. We’ll fix them when we see you again.”

“When will that be?” said the ship. Its voice seemed smaller than usual coming from the comlog.

The child looked at A. Bettik and me. None of us spoke. Finally Aenea said, “We
will
need your services again, Ship.
Can you conceal yourself here for months … or years … while you repair yourself and wait?”

“Yes,” said the ship. “Would the river bottom do?”

I looked out at the great gray mass of the ship rising from the water. The river was wide here, and probably deep, but the thought of the wounded ship backing itself into it seemed strange. “Won’t you … leak?” I said.

“M. Endymion,” said the ship in that tone that made me think it was acting haughty, “I am an interstellar spacecraft capable of penetrating nebulae and existing quite comfortably within the outer shell of a red giant star. I shall hardly—as you put it—
leak
because of being immersed in H
₂
O for a brief period of years.”

“Sorry,” I said, and then—refusing to have the ship’s rebuke as the last word—“Don’t forget to close your air lock when you go under.”

The ship did not comment.

“When we come back for you,” said the girl, “will we be able to call you?”

“Use the comlog bands or ninety-point-one on the general radio band,” said the ship. “I will keep a buggy-whip antenna above waterline to receive your call.”

“Buggy-whip antenna,” mused A. Bettik. “What a lovely phrase.”

“I am sorry that I do not recall the derivation of that term,” said the ship. “My memory is not what it used to be.”

“That’s all right,” said Aenea, patting the hull. “You’ve served us well. Now you
get
well.… We want you in top shape when we return.”

“Yes, M. Aenea. I will be in contact and monitoring your progress until you transit the next farcaster portal.”

A. Bettik and Aenea sat on the hawking mat with their packs and our last boxes of gear taking up the rest of the space. I strapped the bulky flying belt on. It meant that I had to carry my own pack against my chest with a strap looped over my shoulder, the rifle in my free hand, but it worked all right. I knew how to operate the thing only from books—EM belts were useless on Hyperion—but the controls were simple and intuitive. The power indicator showed full charge, so I did not anticipate being dropped into the river for this short hop.

The mat was hovering about ten meters above the river when I squeezed the handheld controller, lurched into the air, almost
clipped a gymnosperm, found my balance, and flew out to hover next to them. Hanging from this padded body harness was not as comfortable as sitting on a flying carpet, but the exhilaration of flying was even stronger. With the controller still held in my fist, I gave them the thumbs-up, and we flew east along the river, toward the rising sun.

There weren’t many other sand spits or beaches between the ship and the waterfall, but there was a good spot just below the waterfall, along the south side of the river where it widened into a lazy pool just beyond the rapids, and it was here that A. Bettik unpacked our camping gear and the first load of material. The noise from the falls was loud as we stacked the last of the small crates. I unlimbered the ax and looked at the nearest gymnosperms.