Chapter 20 Chapter Nineteen
They gathered at the head of the Valley of the Time Tombs, Braun Lamia and Martin Silenus carrying as many backpacks and pockets as they could, Saul Winterberg, the Consul, and Father Durey Standing aside silently, like a tribunal of patriarchs.The first shadows of the afternoon were beginning to creep eastward, across the valley, like fingers of darkness toward the softly lit tombs.
"I'm still not sure if it's good for us to separate like this." The consul said, rubbing his chin.Hot weather.Sweat trickled down his stubbled cheeks and down his neck.
Lamia shrugged. "We all know that sooner or later you'll all be alone with the Shrike. What does it matter hours apart? We need food. You three can go if you want."
The Consul and Saul glanced at Father Duré.The pastor was clearly exhausted.The search for Kassad had drained the man of what was left of his life in hell.
"Somebody has to stay here in case the colonel comes back," Saul said.The child in his arms looked small.
Lamia nodded in agreement.She put the straps around her shoulders and neck. "Okay. It will take about two hours to get to the fort. I'm afraid it will be a little longer to come back. With an hour for loading, we should be back before dark. Closer to dinnertime."
The Consul and Duré shook hands with Martin Silinas respectively.Thor hugged Lamia. "Back in peace." He whispered.
She touched the man's cheek, which had grown a beard, and the baby's head, then turned and walked briskly down the valley.
"Hey, wait the fuck, don't leave me behind!" Martin Silenus yelled, lunch box and water jug clinking as he ran.
The two stepped out of the saddle between the cliffs together.Silenus glanced back and saw the other three men, dwarfed by the distance, like colored candy sticks among the rocks and dunes near the Sphinx. "It doesn't seem to be going according to plan, does it?" he said.
"I don't know," Lamia said.She had changed into shorts for the excursion, and her short, muscular legs were muscular, glistening in the glow of sweat. "What were you planning?"
"My plan is to finish the greatest poem in the universe and go home," Silenus said.He picked up the last bottle of water and took a sip. "Damn, wish we had brought enough booze to get through these days."
"I didn't plan anything," Lamia said, half to herself.Her short curly hair was disheveled with sweat and stuck to her rough neck.
Martin Silenus snorted a laugh. "You wouldn't have come here if it weren't for your cyber lover..."
"Client," she snapped.
"All the same. It was John Keats' reconstructed personality who felt compelled to come here. That's why you brought him here...you still wear the Shuklon ring, don't you?"
Lamia absently touched the tiny nerve shunt behind her left ear.A permeable polymeric membrane keeps sand and dust out of this knob-sized electrical outlet. "right."
Silenas laughed again. "If there is no data network to interact with him, what the hell is that thing doing, boy? You might as well leave that Keats personality in Luthers or something." The poet paused for a second, rationalized Belts and backpacks. "So, can you visit this personality alone?"
Lamia recalled other dreams from the night before.The man in the dream felt like Johnny...but those images were from the Web again.Is it multiple memories? "No," she said, "I can't access the Shukron Ring by myself. It carries too much data for a hundred simple implants. Why don't you just shut up and go your way ?” She quickened her pace, leaving him standing alone.
The sky was cloudless, green and clear, dotted with a few deep azure blues.The rocky clearing ahead extends to the Gobi to the southwest, which is lost to the Duneland.The two walked in silence for thirty minutes, separated by five meters, each thinking about their own thoughts.The Hyperion sun hung to their right, small and bright.
“The dunes are steeper on this side,” Lamia said, as they fought their way up to the summit and down the other side.The surface of the dunes is hot, and the shoes are already filled with sand.
Silenas nodded, stopped, and wiped his face with a silk handkerchief.His scruffy purple beret hung low over his brow and left ear, providing little shade. "It's easier to go along the northern highlands. It's near the dead city."
Braun Lamia shaded the sun and looked in that direction. "We'll waste at least half an hour going that way."
"It will waste more time on your current road." Silinas sat on the dune and sipped water from the water bottle.He took off his cloak, folded it, and stuffed it into the largest knapsack.
"What's in your backpack?" Lamia asked. "It looks full."
"It's none of your business, Sanba."
Lamia shook her head and rubbed her cheeks, feeling that they were sore from the sun.She wasn't used to being exposed to the sun for so many days, and Hyperion's atmosphere barely absorbed ultraviolet light.She fumbled in her pocket for a tube of sunscreen and dabbed some on her face. "Okay," she said. "We'll just take a detour that way. Follow the ridge, go all the way over the hardest sand dunes, and then cut back to the road that leads directly to the fort." The mountain looms high on the horizon, never seeming to get close.The snow-capped peaks teased her with their alluring cool breeze and clear water.The valley of the Time Tombs behind him was gone, and the view was blocked by sand dunes and rocky ground.
Lamia adjusted her backpack, turned to the right, and slid all the way down the crumbling sand dunes.
They came out of the desert into the needle-meadows where the low gorse grew on the ridge, and Martin Silenus gazed rapturously at the ruins of the city of poets.Lamia took the left side of the city to avoid encountering anything, except for the stones of the ring road half hidden under the sand dunes, all other roads lead to the Gobi, and finally disappeared under the sand dunes.
Silenus fell behind, farther and farther, until he finally stopped and sat on a collapsed stilt in what had once been a porch where machine workers paraded after working in the fields.Now, those fields are gone.Collapsed stones, hollows in the sand, sand-smoothed stumps of trees that once shaded waterways and pleasant alleys, are the only things from which the former ditches, canals, and roads can be deduced.
Martin Silenus wiped his face with his beret and looked out at the ruins.The city is still white... as white as bones not drowned in quicksand, as white as teeth in khaki skulls.From where Silenas sits, he can see that many buildings have not changed much from the ones he saw more than 150 years ago.The unfinished ruins of the Poets' Amphitheater are still regal, an otherworldly white Roman amphitheater festooned with desert vines and morning glory vines.The majestic atrium faces the sky, and the rainy and windy commercial corridors are scattered here and there-Selinas knows that it is not because of the erosion of time, but because of the useless security personnel under King Billy, who have been in the city for decades after the evacuation. Here, damage was done with probes and spears and blasting charges.They wanted to kill the Shrike.After Grendel ravaged Mead Hall, they wanted to kill Grendel with a continuous beam of electricity and fury.
Martin Silenus leaned over, giggling, suddenly hot and dizzy.
Silenus saw the majestic dome of the Congregation Hall, where he had dined many times, first with hundreds of fellow art lovers, and then with Billy after he moved to Keats, with The people who stay silent for some reason are finally alone.Alone.Once, when he put down his wine glass, the echo would linger under the vine-strewn dome for half a minute.
Alone, with only those Morlocks with me.Silenas thought.But in the end, even Morlock parted from me.Only my muse remains.
There was a sudden burst of sound, and dozens of white pigeons huffed and flew from their nests among the broken towers in Sad King Billy's former palace.Silenus watched them circle the scorchingly hot skies, marveling at how they had managed to survive for centuries on the fringes of this uninhabited region.
If I can do it, why can't they?
There are shadows in the city, pools of sweet shade.Silenas wondered if the wells were still pure. Those great underground reservoirs, filled before the arrival of the human seed ships, were still overflowing with sweet, clear water.He thought of his wooden workbench, an old antique brought from the old place, and wondered if it was still placed in the hut where a large number of "Psalms" were written.
"What's wrong?" Braun Lamia turned back and stood beside him.
"It's okay." He asked her squinting.The woman looked like a stubby tree, her thighs like a mass of black roots, tanned bark, frozen energy.He tried to imagine her tired... but the effort was exhausting him. "I just realized," he said, "that we were wasting our time walking all the way back to the fort. There's a well in the city. And maybe a food store."
"Yes," said Lamia, "the Consul and I have thought about that, and discussed it. But the ruined city has been plundered for centuries. The Shrike Pilgrims must have been there sixty or even eighty years ago The reserves have been depleted. The wells here are also unreliable... The aquifer has been altered, and the water source may be contaminated. We have to go to the fort."
Silinas felt that in the face of this woman's unbearable arrogance, anger was surging up, no matter what the situation, she would use a momentary thought to influence everyone's behavior. "I'll go find out myself," he said. "That might save us hours of travel."
With her back to the sun, Lamia moved in front of him, her jet-black curls shining with the halo around the eclipse. "No. If we waste time here, we won't be able to get back before dark."
"Go away, then," snapped the poet, amazed at what he had said. "I'm tired. I'm going to check the warehouse behind the congregation hall. Maybe I'll remember some storage place that the pilgrims will never find."
He saw the woman tense, considering whether to pull him up and drag him back to the dune.They were still about a third of the way down the hills, and there were long steps leading up to the fortress.Her muscles relax. "Martin," she said, "others are counting on us. Please don't mess it up."
He laughed, leaning his back against the collapsed pillar. "Fuck you," he said, "I'm tired. You know, you're going to move ninety-five percent of the stuff back anyway. I'm old, thirty-eight. Older than you can imagine .Let's stop and rest for a while. Maybe I can find something to eat. Maybe I can write something."
Lamia knelt down beside him, touching the backpack. "That's what you memorized. Your manuscript. The Psalms."
"Of course," he said.
"You still think getting close to the Shrike will do it?"
Silenus shrugged, feeling the heat and dizziness dance around him. "That thing is a fucking killer, a Grendel cast in hell out of sheet metal," he said, "but it's my muse."
Lamia sighed, squinted at the sun that was already setting towards the mountains, and then looked back at the way they had come. "Go back," she said softly, "Go back to the valley." She hesitated for a while, "I will go back with you, and then come back."
Silinas grinned, parting his chapped lips. "Go back to what? To play with those three old guys until our cuties come and grab us to munch on? No thanks, I might as well rest here and write something. You go , woman. You can carry more than three poets.” With difficulty, he removed the empty knapsack and water bottle and handed them to her.
Lamia grabbed the tangled shoulder straps, her fists were short and hard like hammers. "Are you sure you want to do this? We can take our time."
He struggled to his feet, irritated by her pity and condescension, and suddenly regained his spirits. "Fuck you, get the hell out of here, you Lutherian. Let me remind you again, the purpose of the pilgrimage is to come here to say hello to the Shrike. Your friend Hoyt has not forgotten. Kassad understands too Rules of the game. The fucking shrike is probably chewing his stupid soldier's bones. I wouldn't be surprised if the three of us left don't get to eat and drink anymore. You go. Get the fuck out .I'm too lazy to travel with you."
Braun Lamia still squatted for a while, looking up at him dangling there.At last he stood up, tapped him on the shoulder, picked up his backpack and water bottle, turned around and left quickly, his pace was so brisk that even he when he was young couldn't keep up. "I'll be back here in a few hours," she yelled, without looking back at him. "Stay on the edge of the city. We'll go back to the cemetery together."
Martin Silenus watched in silence as she dwindled and disappeared over the rough terrain to the southwest.The mountains shimmered in the heat.He lowered his head and saw the kettle she had left for him lying on the ground.He spit, took the kettle, and walked into the waiting shadows of the abandoned city.
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