Chapter 28 Chapter Twenty Seven

Colonel Feldman Kassad followed Moneta through the portal and found himself in a vast lunar plain where a terrifying thorn tree five kilometers high rose high into the blood-red sky .On the dense branches and spikes, there are human figures twisting everywhere: those who are closer can be recognized as suffering human beings, and those who are too far away look very small, like bunches of gray-white grapes. Kassad's mercury-like skin-like suit covered his head. He blinked, took a breath, looked around, and glanced at the silent Moneta, trying not to look at the disgusting tree. Before, he thought this was the lunar surface plain, but in fact, it was the surface of Hyperion.He was standing at the entrance of the Valley of Time Tombs, but the Hyperion in front of him had undergone earth-shaking changes.The sand dunes have been solidified and distorted, as if they were turned into glass by the flames, and the glaze is shining; the rocks and cliff walls also show signs of flowing and solidifying again, like gray-white stone glaciers.Airless—the sky was gray and full of pale moons, and they were airless, too clear.The sun was not the one Hyperion had been; no one could bear the light.Kassad looked up, the filters on the skin-like suit polarizing to help him adjust to the terrifying energy that littered the sky with blood-red ribbons and flowers of blinding white light.

The valley below seemed to be shaking with some imperceptible vibration.The energy inside the Tomb of Time is constantly shining, pulsating with cold light, spilling out from every entrance, doorway and hole, covering several meters of the valley floor.The tombs looked new, smooth and shiny. Kassad realized that it was the skin-like suit that allowed him to breathe, the warmth of the desert instead of the freezing cold of the moon that allowed him to move.He turned to look at Moneta, wanted to ask a clever question, but didn't say it, he just raised his eyes and gazed again at the incredible tree.

The texture of the thorn tree seemed to be indistinguishable from the Shrike's own steel, chrome, and cartilaginous materials: something clearly man-made, yet horribly living.The root of the trunk is about two to three hundred meters thick, and the lower branches are almost as wide, while the thin branches and thorns shrink sharply, becoming as thin as a dagger. They open towards the sky, and a human fruit hangs on the thorns. It is unbelievable that human beings who have been pierced in this way can survive for a long time; it is a fantasy that they can survive in the vacuum beyond time and space.But they did live, and lived in pain.Kassad watched them squirm.They are all alive.All in deep pain.

Pain, Kassad felt, was an inaudible sound, a relentless, rough, sonorous sound of pain, like a thousand ignorant fingers hitting a thousand keys, Play out loud organ music of pain.When he looked at the burning sky, the pain seemed to be visible only with the naked eye. The tree was like a funeral pyre, or a huge lighthouse, and the waves of pain were clearly visible. Beyond that, there was only blinding light and lunar silence. Kassad increased the magnification of the skin-like bundled objective lens, and searched for branches and thorns one by one.The people twisting on the tree are male and female, old and young.They wore all kinds of ragged clothes, all kinds of dirty makeup, and different styles, with a difference of decades, if not hundreds of years.Many of these patterns were unfamiliar to Kassad, who he guessed were victims from the future.There were thousands... tens of thousands... victims.All alive.All in agony.

Kassad stopped searching, fixed his eyes on a branch four hundred meters above the ground, looked at a clump of thorns and people away from the main trunk, and looked at a single three-meter-long thorn with a familiar purple cloak on it agitating with the waves.The writhing figure turned to look at Feldman Kassad. The impaled body he saw was that of Martin Silenus. Kassad cursed and clenched his fists so that his knuckles ached.He looked around for weapons, zoomed in on the resolution of his field of vision, and looked into the crystal monolith.There is nothing in it. Colonel Kassad shook his head, knowing that the skin-like suit was better than all the weapons he had brought to Hyperion, so he started striding towards the tree.He didn't know how to get up there, but he had to find a way.He didn't know if he could save Silenus alive--save all the victims--and if he did, it was all or nothing.

Kassad took ten paces and stopped on the curve of the congealed dune, with the Shrike standing in his way. He realized that he was laughing maniacally under the chromium field of the skin suit.This was the moment he had been waiting for for years.As early as twenty years ago, during the Masada celebration of the military department, he bet his life and honor on the battle of honor.This is a duel between samurai.A fight to protect the innocent.Kassad grinned, stretched the four fingers of his right hand into a silver blade, and stepped forward. — Kassad! Hearing Moneta's call, he looked back.She pointed toward the valley, the light cascading down the quicksilver surface of her naked body.

Another Shrike emerges from a tomb called the Sphinx.Far down the valley, another Shrike emerged from the mouth of the Emerald Tomb, a blinding light gleaming on the edge of spikes and blades, and only five hundred meters away, another emerged from the obelisk. Kassad ignored them, turning to face the tree and its guardian. Now, a hundred Shrikes stood between Kassad and the tree.He blinked, and a hundred more appeared to the left.He looked behind him to see a large group of Shrikes standing impossibly like statues on the icy dunes and molten desert rock. Kassad landed a fist on the knee.Damn.

Moneta walked over to him and they touched arms.The skinlike suits came together and flowed together, and he felt the warm skin of her forearm.The two stood side by side, their thighs touching each other. —I love you, Kassad. He gazed at the perfect lines of her face, blind to the frenzied sight and color of the reflection, and tried to remember their first encounter, in the forest near Agin Court.He remembered her stunning green eyes and short brown hair.Her plump lower lip, the taste of her tears when he accidentally bit her. Kassad raised a hand and stroked her cheek, feeling the warmth of skin beneath the skin-like suit.If you love me, he sent, stay here.

Then Colonel Federman Kassad turned around and let out a long cry, which only he could hear in the lunar silence-this long cry was mixed with the cries of ancient human beings in rebellion, mixed with military forces. The shouts of the graduates, mixed with karate shouts, mixed with pure contempt.He ran across the dunes, straight for the bramble tree, straight for the Shrike right in front of him. Now, there are thousands of Shrikes in the valley.Their steel claws snapped open; light shone on thousands of scalpel-sharp finger-blades and thorns. Kassad ignored the rest of the Shrikes and ran to the one he thought would appear first.Above the monster's head, a human figure writhed in solitary agony.

The Shrike he was running towards opened his arms as if to embrace him.Its wrists, knuckles, and chest display curved blades as if freshly drawn from their concealed scabbards. Kassad yelled and ran the final distance.