Chapter 41 Chapter Forty

It was morning when Hunter woke me up.He brought me a tray of breakfast, his darkened eyes filled with terror. I asked him, "Where did you get the food?" "Downstairs there's an antechamber with a sort of bistro room in it. There's food there, it's hot, but nobody's there." I nod. "That's Signola Angeletti's tavern," I said, "she's not a good cook." I remembered Dr. Clarke's concern about my diet; Ordered me to start a hunger regimen, leaving me to eat only milk and bread, with the occasional fish.It's strange that so many suffering humans want to live forever, obsessing over their guts, their bedsores, their poor diet.

I looked up again, staring at Hunter. "What's up?" Yueshi's assistant walked to the window and seemed to be concentrating on the view of the square below.I heard the trickle of Bernini's hideous fountain. "You fell asleep just now, and I went out to take a walk," Hunter said slowly, "You think, in case someone is walking outside, or there is some kind of telephone or long-distance transmitter." "Of course." I said. "I just came out of...there..." He turned and licked his lips. "Severn, there's something out there. It's down the street under the steps. I can't tell, but I think it's..."

"Shrike," I said. Hunter nodded. "Did you see it?" "No, but I'm not surprised at all." "It's... so scary, Seven. That monster gives me goosebumps. Come here...you can see it here, in the shadow of the other step." I slowly got up, but suddenly a cough came over me, and I felt a surge of phlegm in my chest and throat, and I fell back on the pillow. "Hunter, I know what it looks like. Don't worry, it's not here for you." My voice sounded more confident than I felt. "I'm looking for you?" "I don't think so," I said, panting. "I think it's just to make sure I don't run away...and die somewhere else."

Hunter returned to the bed. "You won't die, Seven." I didn't say anything. He sat down on the straight-backed chair beside the bed and picked up a cup of herbal tea. "What will happen to me if you die?" "I don't know," I said honestly, "even if I die, I don't know what would happen to me." Severe illnesses have a certain solipsism, and they grab one's full attention the way a gigantic black hole grabs anything that unfortunately falls within its critical boundaries.The day passed slowly, and I was acutely aware of the footsteps of sunlight over the rough walls, feeling the bedding under my palms, the fever rising sickly in my body, then rising into the furnace of my mind, burning exhausted.That's mostly a melting pot of pain.Now, it is no longer my pain, because hours and days of constricting my throat and burning my chest are bearable, just like meeting an annoying friend in a strange city, I He cannot be avoided, but he is still welcome.But the pain in my head belongs to other people...everyone else.It hammered into my head like slate being smashed to pieces, like a hammer hitting an anvil repeatedly, and there was nowhere for me to escape.

My brain takes it all as noise and reassembles it into poetry.Every day and every night, the tide of pain from all things in heaven and earth comes and wanders in the feverish corridors of my mind, becoming poems, images, images in poems, a complex and endless dance of words, sometimes calmly like a flute Solo, sometimes sharp, piercing, chaotic, like a dozen orchestras playing together, but always poetry, always poetry. At sunset, I awoke from a half-sleep, shattering my dream of Colonel Kassad fighting the Shrike for the lives of Thor and Braun Lamia.I found Hunter sitting by the window, his long face colored by the auburn evening light.

"Is it still there?" I asked, with a sound like a file being ground on a stone. Hunter jumped to his feet, then turned to me with a wary smile and the flush of embarrassment I had never seen on his dour face. "Shrike?" he said, "I don't know. I haven't actually seen it. I just feel it is." He looked at me. "How are you?" "Going to die," I immediately regretted the self-indulgence in my flippant words, though I told the truth, I saw that the words caused Hunter great pain, "It's all right," I said almost happily Tell him, "I've died once. It doesn't feel like I'm dead. I'm rooted in a personality at the heart of technology, and I exist in that personality. It's just my body that dies." John Keats' cyborg. A fantasy of twenty-seven-year-old flesh and stolen memories."

Hunter came over and sat on the edge of the bed.I was amazed to find that he had changed my sheets during the day, exchanging my blood-stained sheets with his own. "Your personality is an artificial intelligence in the core," he said, "then you must have a way to connect to the data network." I shook my head, I was too tired to argue with him anymore. "The last time Froome kidnapped you, we traced you through your access route in the data network," he continued. "You don't have to contact Pleasant Stone yourself. Just leave a message and let the security personnel find it." .”

"No," I said gruffly, "the kernel won't let us do that." "Are they holding you back? Stopping you?" "Not yet. But sure." I said each word, panting, as if I were returning a fragile egg to a bird's nest.Suddenly, I remembered a text I had sent to my beloved Fanny, just after a bad coughing up of blood, almost a year before they took my life.I wrote at the time: "If I were to die," I said to myself, "there would be no trace of immortality behind me—recalling this life, my friend would not be proud—and I loved the nature of beauty in all things as much as I still do. Day shall be remembered." And now those words came back to me, futile, selfish, stupid, naive...but I still believed it hopelessly.If I had time... the months I pretended to be a visual artist on Hope; the days Joy Stone wasted in the government halls, I could have written...

"How would you know if you didn't try?" Hunter asked. "What?" I asked him.After trying my best to say these two simple words, I coughed again.Hunter hurriedly brought the washbasin, and I spit out semi-solid blood bubbles into it, and the convulsions finally subsided.I lay back and tried to focus on his face.The cramped room was beginning to darken, and neither of us lit a lamp.The fountain outside was gurgling loudly. "What?" I asked him again.Sleepiness and sleep tug at me, but I try to stay here, "Try what?" "Try leaving a message in the data network," he whispered, "to get in touch with."

"What message, Lee?" It was the first time I called him by his first name. "About where we are. How the kernel kidnapped us. Whatever." "Okay," I said, closing my eyes, "I'll give it a try. I don't think they'll let me get away with it, but I promise you, I'll give it a try." I felt Hunter squeeze my hand tightly.Even with Tired Tides' overwhelming victory, the sudden human contact still brought tears to my eyes. I'll give it a try.I'll give it a try before surrendering to dreams or death. Federman, Kassad yelled the army's offensive slogan, and he rushed forward through the sandstorm to intercept the Shrike, preventing him from completing the last thirty meters.Ahead, Saul Winterberg was crouching next to Braun Lamia.

The Shrike stopped, its head spinning without friction, its red eyes gleaming.Armed with an assault rifle, Kassad rushed down the slope in a rampage. Shrike Swap. Kassad saw it move through time like a slow smear, and he realized that, as he watched the Shrike, all other movement in the valley had stopped, the sand hanging motionless in the air, brilliant The light from the Time Tombs was a rich amber hue.Somehow, Kassad's skin-like suit shifted along with the Shrike, moving through time after him. The monster's head jerked up, and it became attentive, its four arms stretched out like dagger blades, its fingers suddenly opened, and a sharp greeting began. When he was still ten meters away from the monster, Kassad made a sudden stop, triggered the assault rifle, and melted the sand under the Shrike into a pile of slag with the all-powerful wide light pulse wave. The Shrike shimmered, its carapace and plastic-steel legs reflecting the light of hell around it.Then, just as the sand turned into a lake of bubbling glass fluid, the three-meter monster slowly sank.Kassad screamed in ecstasy, stepped forward, and continued to shoot the broad beam over the shrike and the sand, just as he had sprayed his friends with stolen irrigation hoses in the Talsis slums as a child Same. The Shrike continued to sink.Its arms spread out in all directions on the sand and rocks, trying to find a fulcrum.Sparks flew.It shifted places, time reversed, like a reversed hologram, but Kassad still shifted with it.He knew that Moneta was helping him, that her costume was serving him, leading him through time.Then Kassad sprayed the monster with concentrated heat higher than the surface temperature of the sun again, melting the sand under it, and the surrounding rocks burst into flames. The Shrike sank into a furnace of fire and molten rock, opening its wide cracking maw and screaming upward. Kassad was so stunned by the sound of the monster that he almost stopped firing.The Shrike's howl echoed back and forth, like the roar of a dragon, mixed with the roar of fusion rockets.The piercing sound made Kassad uncomfortable, made the cliff tremble and echo, and knocked the suspended dust to the ground.Kassad switched the setting to high-velocity solid bullets and fired ten thousand tiny steel spears at the monster's face. The Shrike shifted places, and Kassad's bones and brain felt a whirl as they went through the shift, across years.They were no longer in the valley, but on a wind-powered transport ship rumbling across the sea of ​​grass.Time resumed, and the Shrike leaped forward, glass dripping from the metal arm as it grabbed Kassad's assault rifle.The colonel didn't let go of his weapon, and the two wobbled in circles as if dancing clumsily, the Shrike's other pair of steel spiked arms and a leg swiped past, Kassad danced and flashed , but still desperately clutching the rifle. They're in a cabin somewhere.Moneta stood in the corner like a shadow.There was also a figure, a tall, hooded man, moving very slowly to avoid the blurry arms and blades that suddenly appeared in the small space.Through the filter of the skin-like suit, Kassad saw a blue-violet energy field formed by an erg binder in the narrow space, which was constantly pulsating and growing, and then shrunk by the time tampering of the Shrike's organic anti-entropy field. The Shrike's arm slashed off, cutting into Kassad's skin-like suit, making flesh-and-blood contact.Blood spattered on the bulkhead.Kassad forced the muzzle of his rifle into the monster's mouth and fired.A mass of two thousand high-speed steel spears slammed the Shrike's head back, as if on a spring, and slammed the monster's body against the far bulkhead.But just as it was retreating, the thorny leg kicked Kassad in the thigh, and the blood sprayed out in a spiral and sprayed on the windows and walls of the wind transporter's cabin. Shrike Swap. Kassad gritted his teeth as he felt the skin-like suit wrap itself around the wound and sew it shut.He glanced at Moneta, nodded, and followed the monster closely, traveling through time and space together. Saul Winterberg and Braun Lamia watched behind them as a terrible whirlwind of heat and light seemed to swirl and then subside.Thor shielded the young woman with his body, preventing the glass liquid from splashing on her body, and the glass liquid hissed and landed on the cold sand.Then the sound died away, and the dust obscured the small bubbling pond where the storm had originated, and Thor's cloak was flapped by the wind as he wrapped it around the two of them. "What the hell is it?" Braun gasped. Sol shook his head and helped her stand up amidst the roar of the wind. "The Time Tomb is opening!" Thor shouted. "Maybe, something exploded." Braun wobbles, balances himself at last, and grabs Saul's arm. "Where's Rachel?" she called over the sound of the storm. Thor clenched his fists.His beard was already covered with sand. "The Shrike... took her away... Can't get into the Sphinx. I'm waiting!" Braun nodded and squinted at the Sphinx. In the fierce swirl of sand and dust, the tomb only showed a shimmering silhouette. "Are you alright?" Thor yelled. "what?" "Are you... all right?" Braun nodded blankly and patted his head.The nerve shunt is gone.Not only were the nasty appendages planted by the Shrike gone, but even the shunt that Jonny had surgically fitted was gone, which she thought happened a long, long time ago, when they were hiding in a scum hive.But now that the shunt and the Shuklon ring are gone forever, she will never see Jonny again.Braun thought of how easily Cloud Gate had destroyed Johnny's personality, crushed it, absorbed it, as easily as he had slapped an insect to death. Braun replied, "It's okay." But her feet gave way, and Saul held her to keep her from falling. What is he shouting.Braun tried to listen attentively, tried to keep his thoughts in the here and now.After experiencing Wanfang.com, reality seems to be limited and narrow. "...no talking here," Thor was shouting, "...back to the Sphinx." Braun shook his head.She pointed to the cliffs to the north of the valley, where the mighty tree of the Shrike emerged, towering over clouds of dust. "The poet... Silenus...here he is. I see him!" "There is nothing we can do!" Thor shouted, shielding them with his cloak.The vermilion sand rattled against the fibrous plastic like a steel spear hitting armor. "Maybe," Braun called, safe in Saul's arms, feeling his warmth.For a split second, she imagined that she could curl up next to him, like Rachel, and fall asleep easily, peacefully. "When I came out of Wanfang... I saw... the wire connection!" she cried, against the howling wind, "By what means the Thorn Tree and the Shrike Temple are connected! If we go there, find a way Save Silenas..." Sol shook his head. "I can't leave the Sphinx. Rachel..." Braun understood.She touched the scholar's cheek and leaned forward, feeling his beard on her face. "The Time Tombs are opening," she said, "I don't know when we'll get another chance." Sol had tears in his eyes. "I understand. I want to help. But I can't leave the Sphinx in case...in case she..." "I see," Braun said, "you go back. I'll go to the Shrike Temple alone to see how it is connected to the thorn tree." Thor grimaced and nodded. "You said in Wanfangwang," he said loudly, "what did you see? What did you know? Keats personality...it—" "I'll talk to you when I get back," Braun called, taking a step back so he could see him clearly.Sol's face was clouded with pain: it was the face of a father who had lost his child. "Go back," she cried resolutely, "and I will meet you at the Sphinx in less than an hour." Saul stroked his beard, "Braun, except for you and me, everyone else is gone. We shouldn't be separated anymore..." "We have to part for a while," Braun yelled, moving away from him, the storm crackling her trousers and coat. "It won't be an hour. Goodbye." Bow down to the inner impulse, and not allow myself to return to his warm arms again.The wind was strong, blowing straight down from the top of the valley, hitting sand around her eyes and attacking her cheeks.Braun bowed her head, only in this way could she recognize the path, and even then, she was only walking on the edge of the path, let alone walking on it.Only the bright flickering light of the Time Tombs illuminated her path.Braun felt the tide pulling at her, as if physically attacking her. A few minutes later, she vaguely felt that she had passed the obelisk and was walking on the debris-strewn path near the Crystal Monolith.Thor and the Sphinx had disappeared behind them, and the Emerald Tomb was just a pale green shadow in the dustwind nightmare. Braun stopped, and she swayed slightly as the wind and the tide of time tugged at her.There is still more than half a kilometer away from the Shrike Temple at the bottom of the valley.When she left Wanfang.com, she suddenly understood the connection between the thorn tree and this tomb, but even so, what could she do after she got there?Besides, what had the damned poet done to her besides cursing her and driving her crazy?Why did she have to die for him? The wind howled in the valley, but in the midst of that sound Braun thought he heard a sharper, more human cry.She looked toward the northern cliffs, but the dust obscured everything. Braun Lamia leaned forward, pulled up the collar of his coat, wrapped himself up, and continued walking into the wind. Meina Yueshi hadn't walked out of the ultra-light chamber when another telephone signal came in, and the voice kept ringing.She sat back again, staring nervously at the holographic pool.The Consul's ship acknowledged her message, but there was no ensuing relay message.Maybe he changed his mind. No.In front of you, the column of data floating in the rectangular prism is showing that the information comes from the Infinity Sea galaxy.She was contacted by Marshal William Ajunta Lee, using a private code she had given him. Gladstone insisted on promoting the naval commander and assigned him to be the "government liaison" originally scheduled for the Hebron strike group.The military's Space Force has been riled up.After the massacre at the Gate of Heaven and the Forest of Gods, the attack mission was sent to the Infinitus Sea galaxy.Seventy-four front-line warships, capital ships heavily protected by torch ships and shield guard ships, the entire task force was ordered to fight the vanguard fleet of the group as quickly as possible, and then attack the center of the group. Lee was a spy for the CEO and was her liaison.Although his new rank and rank allow him to participate in command decision-making, however, there are four military space commanders above him on the scene. It's no big deal.Yue Shi just wanted him to be there and report to her. The holographic pool was covered with mist, and the determined face of William Ajunta Lee filled the entire space. "CEO, I'm starting to report as ordered. Task Force 181.2 has successfully teleported to system 3996.12.22..." Yue Shi blinked in surprise, and then remembered that it was the official code of the G-type star galaxy where Infinitus Sea was located.Geography is rarely described from a perspective beyond the Ring. "...Your group attack ship is still 120 minutes away from the target world's kill radius," Li continued.Yue Shi knew that the so-called kill radius was roughly 13 AU, and as long as this distance was reached, standard ship weapons would be effective, regardless of the presence of ground field shields.But Infinitus Sea has no field protection.The new marshal continued: "It is estimated that at 17:32:26, ​​the ring network standard time, the vanguard will be contacted, that is, about twenty-five minutes later. The task force has been configured for the maximum breakthrough state. The two jumping spacecraft will use New personnel and new weapons, until the teletransmitter is blocked by our side. The cruiser carrying the signal transmitter - 'Gardon. Odyssey' - will carry out your special instructions at the first opportunity. William Lee ,complete." The image collapsed into a whirling white ball, and the relay codes ended their slow crawl. "Reply?" the transmitter's computer asked. "Confirmation received," Yue Shi said, "Continue." Yue Shi went out and came to her study.She found Sydputra Akashy waiting there, his charming face frowned with concern. "What's wrong?" "The Combat Council is about to adjourn again," said the aide. "Korshef is waiting to see you, and he said he has an urgent matter to discuss with you." "Let him in. Tell the council, I'll be there in five minutes." Yue Shi sat behind her old desk, resisting the urge to close her eyes.She is really tired.But her eyes were still open when Kershev entered. "Sit down, Gabriel Fyodor." The big Lutherian paced back and forth. "What the hell are you sitting on. Meina, do you know what's going on?" Yue Shi smiled slightly. "You mean war? The proverbial destruction of life? Don't you?" Kershev punched his own palm. "No, I didn't mean that, damn it. I meant political issues. Are you monitoring the situation?" "I'll pay attention when I get a chance." "Then you must know that MPs and non-MP shakers are mobilizing for a vote of no confidence in you. Meina, you are out of hiding. It's only a matter of time." "I know, Gabriel. Why don't you sit down? We can talk for a minute or two, then go back to the Strategic Resolution Center." Kershev almost fell into the chair. "I'm telling you, damn it, even my wife is busy organizing a vote against you, Meina." Yue Shi's smile became even brighter. "Sude was never a big fan of mine, Gabriel." Then the smile faded, "I haven't monitored the debate for the past twenty minutes. How much time do you think I have?" "Eight hours, maybe less." Yue Shi nodded. "That's enough time." "Enough? What the hell are you talking about, enough? Who else do you think could be a combat executive?" "You," Yueshi said, "you will undoubtedly be my successor." Kershev muttered. "Maybe the war won't last that long." Yue Shi seemed to be talking to himself. "What? Oh, you mean the superweapon of the core? Yes, Albert has built a working model at some military base and wants the council to take the time to go there. If you ask me, then I will say , it's a damn waste of time." Yue Shi felt a cold hand tightly grasping her heart. "Death stick device? Already have one in the core?" "There were several, but only one was loaded onto the torch ship." "Who authorized it, Gabriel?" "Preparation work for the authorization of Mopur Court." The big member sat forward, "What's the matter, Meina, what's the problem? Without the order of the executive officer, this device will not be used." Pleasant Stone stared at the aging fellow MP. "Gabriel, we're still a long way from Overlord, aren't we?" The Lususian muttered again, but there was real pain beneath that gruff visage. "This is all our own damn fault. The previous government followed the advice of the inner core and used Brescia as a bait to lure a group of tourists. After that incident subsided, you followed the advice of other forces in the inner core to take the sea Berlian introduces the Ring Web." "You think that I sent the fleet to defend Hyperion to trigger this all-out war, don't you?" Korschef looked up. "No, no, that's not possible. Those Destroyer ships have been heading towards us for over a century, haven't they? If only we had found them sooner. Or figured out a way to skip this piece of shit. All right." Yueshi's comlog whimpered. "It's time to go back," she said softly. "Advisor Alberto will probably show us the weapons to win the war."

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