Chapter 30 Chapter Twenty Nine
The night the Consul left Saul was filled with fervent hope.They are finally making a difference.Or work towards it.Thor doesn't believe that the cryogenic stasis chamber of the Consul spacecraft will be the answer to save Rachel - the medical experts of Renaissance Vector have pointed out that using a cryogenic stasis chamber is extremely dangerous - but it is always good to have a choice, as long as there is a benefit choose.Thor felt that their passive situation had lasted too long, always waiting unilaterally for the Shrike's will, like convicted criminals waiting to be guillotined.
Tonight, the interior of the Sphinx looked quite sinister, so Saul moved their belongings out onto the wide granite porch of the tomb, and together with Dooley gave Masty the Eun and Braun tucked in blankets and cloaks, padded their backpacks for pillows, and tried to make them as comfortable as possible.Braun's medical monitors still refused to show any brainwave activity, but she lay there comfortably.Masteen was tossing and turning in a fit of high fever.
"What do you think is wrong with the saint?" Du Lei asked, "Is it sick?"
"It's easy to see," Thor said, "that after being kidnapped in a wind transport, he's been wandering aimlessly through the wilderness and come to this Valley of the Time Tombs. He's been drinking snow until now. Lozenges, no other food."
Du Lei nodded, and checked the military medical film they had placed inside Masteen's arm.The signal device indicates that the infusion of intravenous solution is stable. "But there seems to be something else," said the Jesuit, "that borders on madness."
"The Saints have an almost telepathic connection with their treeship," Saul said, "and Masteen, the speaker of the tree, must have almost Crazy. Especially when he somehow knows it has to be destroyed."
Du Lei nodded, and continued to wipe the saint's sallow forehead with a sponge.It was past midnight and the wind picked up, a lazy whirlwind of vermilion dust that wailed on the wings and rough edges of the sphinx.The tombs glowed flickeringly.This one suddenly lights up, and that one suddenly goes out again, in no definite order.Occasionally the force of the tide of time would hit them both, gasping for breath and clutching at the rock, but the wave of hallucinatory memories and dizziness would soon fade.Braun Lamia was still tethered to the sphinx by the string that was tightly attached to her skull, and they couldn't leave.
Sometime before dawn, the clouds parted and the sky was clearly visible again, with a dense cluster of stars almost unbearably clear.Now, only the occasional molten trail and the narrow diamond-scratched mark on the pane of night still showed the great fleet fighting there, but soon, the distant explosion began to bloom again, and within an hour, even The light of the tomb was dwarfed by the fierce battle overhead.
"Which side do you think will win?" Father Durley asked.The two sat with their backs against the stone wall of the sphinx, their faces turned up, looking at the drop-shaped sky between the forward-curving wings of the tomb.
Rachel was asleep on her stomach, her little bottom arched slightly under the thin blanket, and Saul rubbed her back. "From what others have said, the Ring seems to be doomed to a harsh war."
"So you believe in the predictions of the AI Advisory Council?"
Thor shrugged in the dark. "I really don't know anything about politics...or the accuracy of the kernel in predicting things. I'm just a second-rate scholar in a small academy on a self-contained planet. But I have a feeling that there will be something terrible something happened to us..."
Du Lei smiled. "Yeats," he said.Then the smile faded. "I suspect this place is New Bethlehem." He looked down at the glowing tombs in the valley. "My whole life has been devoted to teaching Saint Thea's theory of evolution towards the Omega point. But instead of our evolution, we get this: the folly of man in the sky, and the dreaded false Christ waiting to take over the rest everything."
"You think the Shrike is a false Christ?"
Father Duré rested his elbows on his arched knees and clenched his hands. "If not, we'll be in trouble." He smiled wryly. "Not long ago, I should have been happy to discover this false Christ... Even if there is some kind of evil force pretending to be a god, it can be in any form. A form of god sustaining my crumbling faith."
"And now?" Saul asked softly.
Du Lei spread his ten fingers. "I too was crucified once."
Saul recalls the vision in Rainer Hoyt's tale of Duré; the aged Jesuit nailing himself to a Tesla tree, suffering years of pain and rebirth without committing himself to the cruciform DNA The nematodes succumbed, and those nematodes were still hiding under the flesh of his chest even now.
Du Lei lowered his head and stopped looking at the sky. "There will be no Father to meet us," he said softly. "Never believe that pain and sacrifice are worth it. Pain is just pain. Pain, darkness, and then pain."
Thor stopped rubbing the baby's back. "That's what made you lose your faith?"
Dure looked at Saul. "On the contrary, it makes me feel the need for faith all the more. Pain and darkness have garrisoned our domain since. But there must be hope, we can rise to a higher level... Consciousness can evolve to Another plane, more benevolent than its counterpart in this hardwired indifferent universe."
Sol nodded slowly. "During Rachel's years of struggle with Merlin's disease, I kept having a dream... the same is true for my wife Sara... In the dream, I was ordered to sacrifice my only daughter."
"I know," Durey said, "I've heard the synopsis on the Consul's disk."
"Then you know my answer," said Saul, "in the first place, that the obedience of Abraham can no longer be followed, even though it is the word of God. Second, how many sacrifices have we made to God through the ages...in exchange All that comes is pain, and this has to stop."
"But you're still here." Du Lei said, pointing to the valley, the tombs and the night.
"I did come," Thor admitted, "but I didn't come to grovel, but to see how the gods would respond to my decision." He began to rub his daughter's back again. "Rachel is only a day and a half old now, and getting smaller every second. If the Shrike is the one who started this cruel situation, I want to face it, even if he is your false Christ. If there is a God who did such a thing, I, too, would show contempt in front of him."
"Actually, maybe we have already shown too much contempt." Du Lei pondered.
Beyond the distant sky, more than a dozen dazzling small spots of light rippling out ripples and plasma explosion shock waves, Thor looked up to the sky. "I really hope we have high-end technology, enough to fight him on an equal footing before God." He said this nervously, with a low voice. "Let's dare to pluck the hair from the tiger's head, avenge all the injustices that have befallen human beings, let him change his smug, arrogant temper, or blow him back to hell."
Father Du Lei raised his eyebrows, then smiled. "I can understand your anger." The pastor touched Rachel's head tenderly. "Let's take a break before sunrise, shall we?"
Saul nodded and lay down next to his child, pulling the blanket up over his face.He heard Dooley whisper something, maybe a soft good night, or a prayer.
Sol hugged his daughter, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.
That night, the Shrike did not come.The next day, when the sun painted the cliffs to the southwest with morning colors and shone on the top of the Crystal Monolith, it still hadn't come.Thor awoke as the sun crept into the valley; he saw Dure sleeping beside him, Masteen and Braun still unconscious.Rachel moved and yelled.Her cry is the sound of a newborn baby wanting to be fed.There were not many milk packs left, so Saul fed her a pack, pulled on the heating plate, and waited for the milk to rise to body temperature.Overnight the cold had taken root in the valley, and the steps leading to the Sphinx shone bright with frost.
Rachel ate greedily, making the soft smack and sizzle that Saul remembered when Sarai nursed her more than fifty years earlier.When she was full, Sol burped her softly, then took her on his shoulders, rocking her gently back and forth.
Only a day and a half left.
Thor was exhausted.Despite a Paulson session a decade ago, that hasn't stopped him from getting old.If everything develops normally, he and Sarai will no longer have to fulfill their parental obligations—the only child enters the research institute and travels to remote areas to participate in archaeological excavations—but Rachel has fallen into the clutches of Merlin’s disease, and the raising obligations are very difficult. Soon it will fall upon them again.As Sol and Sarai grew older, the curve of duty rose—and then there was an air crash in Bana Fields, leaving Sol alone—and now he was pretty tired, sleepy to the brim.But even so, despite all the misfortunes that had happened to him, Saul was content to think that he had taken care of his daughter every day without regret.
Only a day and a half left.
Not long after, Father Duley woke up, and the two ate some canned food that Braun had brought back for breakfast.Height Masteen did not wake up, but after Du Lei connected him with a medical kit, the saints began to receive fluids and intravenous nutrition, and the medical kit was the last one left.
"Do you think the last medical kit should be used by Lamia?" Du Lei asked.
Saul sighed and checked her comlog monitor again. "I don't think so, Paul. Judging from this, the blood sugar level is high... The nutritional monitoring results show that she just had a big meal."
"But how is it possible?"
Sol shook his head. "Maybe that damn thing is some kind of umbilical cord." He gestured to the wires running down her skull where the nerve shunt sockets used to be.
"So what are we going to do today?"
Thor stared at the sky, which had faded to green and blue for a while, and they had grown accustomed to the color of Hyperion's sky. "Let's wait," he said.
Shortly after the sun reached zenith, Heit Masteen woke up to the heat.Suddenly the saint sat up straight and cried, "Tree!"
Du Lei, who was pacing below, hurried up the steps.Saul lifted Rachel from the shadow of the wall and walked over to Masteen.The saint's eyes focused on something above the cliff.Thor looked up, but could only see the fading light of the sky.
"Tree!" cried the Saint again, raising a calloused hand.
Du Lei hugged the man tightly. "He's hallucinating. He thinks he's seeing his treeship Yggdrasil."
Heite Masteen struggled to free themselves from their grasp. "No, not the Yggdrasil," he took a deep breath through chapped lips. "Trees. Trees of Doom. Trees of Pain!"
So they both looked up, but the sky was clear and clear, except for small clusters of clouds blowing in from the southwest.Just then, a wave of time tide hit, and Sol and the priest hung their heads in sudden dizziness.Then the tide recedes.
Heite Masteen tried to get to his feet.The eyes of the saint are still fixed on something far away.His skin was hot, Thor's hand was hot to the touch.
"Bring the last medical kit," Saul said abruptly, "Supermorphine and anti-hyperthermia are prescribed as planned." Du Lei hastily complied.
"Tree of Pain!" said Het Masteen at last. "I was going to be its voice! I was going to use the erg to drive it through time and space! The bishop and the loyal voice of the giant tree chose me! I can't let them down." He tried to break Thor's arm for a moment, then fell back Stone corridor on the ground. "I am truly chosen," he said softly, energy draining from him like air from a deflated balloon, "I must guide the Tree of Pain in the hour of atonement." He closed his eyes eyes.
Du Lei connected the last medical kit, confirmed that the monitors were set to monitor the saint's metabolism and the drastic changes in body chemicals, and then activated adrenaline and painkillers.Thor hugged the robed figure.
"That's neither a saint's term nor their religious belief system," Durey said. "He's speaking the language of the Shrike Church." The pastor's words caught Saul's eye. "That way, some mysteries can be explained... especially the mysteries in the story of Lamia. For some reason, the saints are colluding with the sect of doomsday salvation... the Church of the Shrike."
Saul nodded, put his comlog on Masteen's wrist, and adjusted the monitor.
"The Tree of Pain must be the fabled Shrike's Tree of Thorns," Dure muttered, looking up at the empty sky where Masteen had been gazing before. "But what did he mean when he said that he and Ergo were chosen to drive the tree through time and space? Did he really think that the Saints could pilot the Shrike's tree like a treeship? What the hell is going on?"
"You can ask him in your next life," Thor said wearily. "He's dead."
Du Lei checked the monitor and connected Rainer Hoyt's comlog to it.They tried the resuscitative stimulation of the medical kit, CPR, and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.The monitor signaling device did not blink once.Heit Masteen, saint, faithful voice of the tree and Shrike pilgrim, was truly dead.
They waited an hour, suspecting a miracle in this eerie valley of the Shrike, but the monitors began to show the body rapidly decomposing, and they buried Masteen in a cave fifty meters from the trail leading to the mouth of the valley. In a shallow tomb.Kassad left behind a collapsible shovel—labeled "trench digging tool" in the military term—and the two dug alternately, while the other tended to Rachel and Braun Lamia.
The two, one rocking the child, stood in the shadow of a boulder while Duley chanted some words and poured the dirt over the makeshift fiberplastic shroud.
"I don't really know Mr. Masteen," said the pastor, "and I have different beliefs than he does. But we have the same profession; the voice of the tree Masteen has spent most of his life doing what he thinks is God's work, pursuing God's will in Muir's writings and in the beauty of nature. His faith was unbridled—tried through all odds, made firm by obedience, and finally, sealed by sacrifice."
Du Lei paused, narrowed his eyes and looked at the sky shining with bronze light. "Receive your servant, Lord, God. Take him into your bosom, as you will someday welcome us into your bosom, these lost lambs who follow you. In the spirit of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit Name, Amen."
Rachel started crying.Sol led her around, and Dure shoveled dirt onto the fibrous plastic bales of the human figure.
They returned to the corridor of the Sphinx and gently moved Lamia under what little shadow remained.There was no way to shield her from the twilight light except by sending her inside the tomb, and neither of them wanted to do that.
"The consul must have traveled halfway by now, closer to the spaceship." The pastor said after taking a long sip of water.His forehead was tanned and covered with beads of sweat.
"Yes." Saul said.
"By this time tomorrow, he'll be back here. We can rescue Lamia with a laser cutter and put her in the ship's medical room. Maybe Rachel's age-reversed age can also be saved in a frozen slumber." suppressed, even though the doctors said it was impossible."
"yes."
Du Lei put down the water bottle and looked at Sol. "Do you believe this will happen?"
Thor looked back at the other man. "Do not believe."
The shadows of the cliff face to the southwest gradually lengthen.The heat of the day condenses impenetrably, then dissipates slightly.A few clouds from the south drifted over.
Rachel fell asleep in the shadows near the door.As Paul Dooley stood overlooking the valley, Saul stepped forward and put a hand on the priest's shoulder. "What are you thinking, my friend?"
Du Lei didn't look back. "I was thinking, if I didn't really believe that suicide was an unforgivable crime, I would end everything and give young Hoyt a chance to survive." He looked at Saul and smiled slightly. "But at that time, the nematodes on my chest...the nematodes on his chest will bring me back to life one day, even though I don't want to...Is that called suicide?"
"If Hoyt is brought back to the present world," Saul asked calmly, "is that a gift to him?"
Du Lei didn't speak for a while.Then he took Thor's upper arm. "I think I should go for a walk."
"Where are you going?" Sol squinted his eyes and looked outside, the desert afternoon was steaming with heavy heat.Despite the low clouds overhead, the valley was still as hot as a furnace.
The pastor pointed vaguely. "The valley below. I'll be back soon."
"Careful," Saul said, "remember, if the Consul encounters a patrol skimmer along the Hawley River, he could be back as early as this afternoon."
Du Lei nodded, walked over to pick up a water bottle, touched Rachel tenderly, and then walked down the long steps of the Sphinx, walking slowly and carefully, like an old man dying.
Sol watched him gradually go away, the figure became smaller and smaller, distorted and deformed as he went further and further away in the heat wave.Then Saul sighed and went back to sit beside his daughter.
Paul Dooley tried to stay in the shadows all the time, but even there the heat was overwhelming, and they hung like a great chain around his shoulders.He walked past the Emerald Tomb and followed the path to the cliffs and obelisks to the north.The thin shadow of the tomb casts pale shadows on the rose-coloured stone and dust of the valley floor.Du Lei continued to walk down, walking carefully among the broken stones around the Crystal Monolith. He looked up, and a gentle wind blew from between the dilapidated panes, blowing high above the front of the tomb. whistle.He saw his own reflection in the lower surface, and suddenly recalled the organ music he had heard the evening wind sing in the Great Rift when he had found Bikura high up in the Feathered Plateau.That felt like a lifetime ago.It was indeed a few lifetimes ago.
Du Lei could feel the damage to his consciousness and memory caused by the cross-shaped restructuring of the body.Disgusting - literally synonymous with continuing to suffer from strokes with no hope of recovery.Meditation, once child's play for him, now required extreme concentration, sometimes beyond his capacity.Words eluded him.Feelings come and go like the tides of time, coming and going with ferocity.On several occasions, he had to leave the other pilgrims and weep alone, for reasons unknown.
other pilgrims.Now only Saul and his children are left.If the two men could escape their fate, Father Durley would gladly give his life.He thought, is it a sin to make deals with false Christs?
He was far down the valley now, almost to the point where it began to wind its way east, where the land suddenly opened up to a dead end, and the labyrinthine shadows of the Shrike's temple weaved among the rocks.The trail winds its way to the Crypt, reaching near the northwest wall.Lured by the cool air in the first mound, Du Lei wanted to enter, just to escape the heat, recover his sanity, and close his eyes for a short nap.
But he kept going.
The petroglyphs at the entrance to the second mound were even more ornate, and Dure remembered the ancient basilicas he had found in the Great Rift—the huge crosses and altars "worshiped" by the mentally retarded Bikura.What they worshiped was the disdainful eternal life that the crucifix offered, not the chance of a true resurrection that the crucifix promised.But what's the difference?Du Lei shook his head, trying to shake off the fog and cynicism that blinded all thinking.The trail winds up to a third mound, slightly elevated, and the shortest and most unremarkable of the three.
In the third mound there is light.
Du Lei stopped, took a breath, and then looked back at the valley below.The Sphinx was clearly visible about a kilometer away, but he had trouble making out Thor in the shadows.For a while, Dooley wondered if the place where they had camped the day before was the third mound... if one of them had left a lantern there.
Not the third crypt.No one had entered the tomb for three days except when looking for Kassad.
Father Durley knew that he should ignore the light and go back to Thor to hold vigil for the man and his daughter.
But the others also encountered the Shrike individually.Why should I refuse the call?
Du Lei felt moisture on his cheeks and realized that he was weeping silently subconsciously.He wiped away the tears with the back of his hand and stood where he was, clenched his fists.
My mind is the most infamous right now.I was once a wise Jesuit, firmly in the tradition of Santa Thea and Plaza.Even the theology that I've been trying to push forward in church, in seminary students, in the small minority of believers who still listen, is emphasizing the mind, emphasizing the wonderful Omega point of consciousness.God is nothing but a clever algorithm.
Well, some things can't be solved with wisdom alone, Paul.
Du Lei walked into the third cave mound.
Thor woke up with a start, convinced that something was creeping towards him.
He jumped up and looked around.Rachel woke up from sleep when her father woke up, babbling softly.Braun Lamia lay motionless in the same place, the medical signal device flashing green and the brain wave activity reader glowing pale red.
He had been asleep for at least an hour; shadows had crept across the valley floor, and only the top of the Sphinx was exposed as the sun broke through the clouds.Arrows of sunlight pierced obliquely from the entrance of the valley, illuminating the opposite cliff wall.The wind gradually picked up.
But there was no movement in the valley.
Saul lifted Rachel, rocked her to stop her crying, and went down the steps to look behind the Sphinx and the other tombs.
"Paul!" His voice echoed among the rocks.The wind blew dust and rushed towards the top of the jade tomb, but there was no movement in other tombs.Thor still felt that something was quietly approaching him, that he was being watched.
Rachel screamed and writhed in his arms, her voice the high-pitched wail of a newborn.Thor glanced at the comlog.An hour later, she had only one day to live.He searched the sky for the Consul's spaceship, cursing himself in a low voice, then walked back to the entrance of the Sphinx, changed the baby's diaper, checked Braun's condition, and pulled out a milk bag from his backpack , grabbed a cloak.After the sun goes down, the heat in the air quickly dissipates.
In the remaining half-hour of dusk, Saul quickly walked down the valley, calling Du Lei's name loudly, checking every tomb, but did not enter.Past the Emerald Tomb, where Hoyt had been killed, its side walls had begun to glow milky green.Pass the dark obelisk, its shadow cast high on the southeast cliff face.Past the Crystal Monolith, its upper edge still glowing in the last light of the sky, then fading away as the sun went down somewhere outside the City of Poets.In the sudden cool and silence of night Thor passed the mounds, calling out to each of the tombs, feeling the damp air against his face like cold breath from an open mouth.
No one answered.
In the last twilight Thor reached the bend of the valley, the tangle of bladed pillars of the nearby Shrike Temple looming ominously in the growing gloom.Thor stood at the entrance, trying to make sense of the black shadows and spires and rafters and stylobates, and he called out into the dark interior; only an echo answered him.Rachel started crying again.
Thor trembled and felt a chill on the back of his neck. He kept spinning in circles, trying to catch the ghostly watcher by surprise, but he only saw darker and darker shadows, the initial shadows between the clouds above his head. Several stars had also appeared, and he hurriedly turned back to the direction of the Sphinx in the valley. At first, he walked quickly, and then the night wind blew, like many children screaming in unison, he almost strode past the emerald. grave.
"Damn it!" Saul finally reached the top steps leading to the Sphinx, gasping for breath.
Braun Lamia was gone.The body was gone, and so was the metal umbilical cord.
Saul cursed and hugged Rachel tightly, frantically looking for a flashlight in his backpack.
Ten meters away in the thick corridor, Thor found the blanket that Braun had been wrapped in before.Other than that, nothing.The corridor branched and twisted in all directions, now wide and now narrow, and now the ceiling was so low that Saul had to crawl on the ground, holding the baby in his right hand so that his face was close to hers.He hated being in this tomb.His heart was beating violently, and he almost felt that he was about to have an arteriosclerosis attack.
The final corridor narrows and becomes a dead end.The stone into which the wire had snaked was now nothing but stone.
Thor bit the flashlight in his mouth and slapped the rocks, shoving the stones as big as rooms, maybe some of the panels would break open, revealing the tunnel behind.
Nothing at all.
Saul hugged Rachel tighter and started walking all the way out, making a few wrong turns, feeling lost and his heart beating even wilder.Then he went into a hallway, recognized the place, turned into the main hallway, and finally went out.
He carried the child down the steps and walked away from the Sphinx.Near the mouth of the valley, he stopped, sat down on a low rock, and took a deep breath of fresh air.Rachel's cheek was still on her neck, and the kid was very quiet, neither barking nor moving, just curling soft fingers to scratch at his beard.
The wind blows from the barren surface behind.Overhead the clouds parted and gathered, obscuring the stars, so that the only light came from the uncomfortable glow of the Time Tombs.Saul was afraid that the beating of his heart would scare the child, but Rachel curled up quietly against him, her warmth reassuring.
"Damn it," Thor whispered.Lamia was on his mind.He misses all the pilgrims now that they have all left him.Thor's decades of academic career had given him the habit of finding patterns in things, a speck of mental sand on the Stone of Experience, but nothing that happened on Hyperion followed any pattern— — only chaos and death.
Thor gently rocked his child, looked out at the Barrens, and considered whether to leave here immediately... Walk to the dead city or the Fortress of Time...Walk northwest to the seaside, or southeast Go to the Bridle Mountains that cut across the Sea of Grass.Thor raised trembling hands and rubbed his face; there was no salvation in that wilderness.The move away from the Valley didn't bring Martin Silenas a life.The Shrike was said to have been active south of the Bridle Mountains—as far as Andymirn and other southern cities—and hunger and thirst would stalk the monster even if it let them go.Thor might survive on bark roots, rat meat, and meltwater from the highlands—but Rachel's milk was limited, even with the supplies Braun had brought back from the fort earlier.And then he realized that no amount of milk is actually going to help...
In less than a day, I will be alone.Thinking of this, Thor couldn't help moaning.His determination to save the child has taken him twenty-five years and hundreds of light-year journeys.His determination to return Rachel's life and health became a palpable force, a powerful energy that he and Sarai had shared before, and which he has retained now, like a church member. The priest kept the holy fire of the church.No, God is my witness, everything has a sequence of events, under this seemingly chaotic platform of events, there must be a moral pillar, Saul Winterberg is willing to bet on his own life and the life of his daughter, this belief must be established.
Sol got up and walked slowly down the path to the Sphinx, climbed the steps, found a heating cloak and some blankets, and made a small nest for them both on the high steps. The winds of Berlian howled, and the Tombs of Time grew brighter.
Rachel lay on top of him, her cheek resting on his shoulder, and she kept squeezing and releasing her little hands, letting go of the world in her hands and entering the realm of baby sleep.Thor heard her soft breathing as she fell into a deep sleep, the soft sound of her spitting out little bubbles of saliva.After a while, he also let go of his obsession with the world, and fell asleep with her.
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