Chapter 36 Chapter Twelve

"Can you tell me which part of the Shrike legend you intend to use in your poem?" King Billy asked me softly. "Of course," I said, "according to the Gospel of the Shrike Church founded by the indigenous people, the Shrike is the king of mourning, the angel of salvation at the end of the day, and came here from beyond time to announce the end of the human race. I like this A whim." "The end of the human race," King Billy repeated. "Yes. He's Archangel Michael, Moroni, Satan, masked entropy, Frankenstein monster. All rolled into one." When it is time for humans to join the dodo, the gorilla, and the sperm whale as the latest additions to the extinction list, he will come out and unleash his havoc."

"Frankenstein monster," mused the short, fat fellow behind a crumpled leather mask, "why Frankenstein monster?" I took a deep breath. "Because the Church of the Shrike believes that it was man who created this thing, and he was somehow created by man," I said to him, though I knew everything King Billy in me knew, and he knew more than me. "Do they know how to kill it?" he asked. "I don't know that. He is said to be immortal, beyond time." "god?" I hesitated for a moment. "Not really," I finally said, "it's more like the universe's worst nightmare coming to life. A bit like the Grim Scythe Reaper, but with a penchant for nailing people to giant thorn trees...and their souls still in their flesh."

King Billy nodded. "Look," I said, "if you're going to start out with out-of-the-way theology and work on this trivial stuff, why don't you just fly over to Jacktown and ask one of those church pastors?" "Yes," said the king, his pudgy fist resting on his chin, looking a little absent-minded, "they're already on the seed ship, and they're being interrogated. It's all so unbelievable." I got up to leave, wondering if he would stop me. "Martin?" "Ok." "Before you go, can you come up with something that will help us understand this thing?"

I stopped at the door, my heart pounding against my ribs, trying to burst out of my chest. "Okay," I said, my voice hovering on the edge of calm, "I can tell you who and what the Shrike really is." "Oh?" "It's my muse," I said, then turned away and went back to my room to continue writing. The Shrike was, of course, summoned by me.I know it well.I took up the pen and wrote the epic, the epic about it, I summoned it.At first there were words. I renamed my poem Hyperion Psalms.It's not about this planet, but about how a group of humans who called themselves Titans perished.It's about a race of mindless insolence that, through carelessness, destroys its own homeland, and then takes that dangerous arrogance to the stars, only to meet there the wrath of a god who turns out to be human Created by myself.It's the first serious work I've done in so many years, and it's the best I've ever written.This work, funny and serious, a tribute to John Keats and my last reason to live, is an epic in an age of mediocre farce. The Hyperion Psalter uses a skill of words I will never acquire, a knowledge I will never attain, a voice that sings that is not my own.The end of the human race is my theme.The Shrike is my muse.

Twenty more died before King Billy evacuated the City of Poets.Some evacuated to Endymirn, or Keats, or a couple of other boomtowns, but most decided to return to the Ring in seed ships.Billy King's dream of this creative utopia is shattered.Still, the king himself took up residence in Keats' gloomy palace.The leadership of the colony was given to the Zemstvo Council, which applied to the Overlord for membership in the Protectorate, and a Self-Defense Force was established thereupon.This self-defense force, originally composed mainly of natives, who were clubbing each other ten years ago, is now commanded by self-appointed officers from our new colonies.All they've accomplished is disturbing the silence of the night with their automated skimmer patrols and combining their mechanized surveillance mechs with the homecoming of the desert.

Surprisingly, I wasn't the only one who didn't go; at least two hundred people stayed, though most of us avoided social contact, meeting up on Poets' Walk or eating alone in the echoing emptiness of the Dining Hall Sometimes, it's just a polite smile at each other. The murders and disappearances continued, averaging once every two weeks.The bodies are usually not found by us, but by the head of the Regional Self-Defense Force, who ordered a head count of the townspeople every few weeks. The image of the first year still lingers in my mind, and it is rare in everyone's mind: that night, we gathered in the House of Commons and watched the seed ship disappear forever.It was the heyday of the autumn meteor shower, and Hyperion's night sky was already glowing with golden streaks and the red flames of the seedship engines criss-crossing, and a sun the size of a mung bean shone brightly.For an hour, we watched our friends and fellow artists recede into the distance as a fusion flame.That night, Billy the Sad King also came among us, and I still remember he glanced at me as he left, and then solemnly re-entered the gorgeous car and returned to the safe place of Keats.

In the ensuing ten years, I only left the city five or six times; one time was to find a biological sculptor to help me get rid of my perverted clothes, and the other times I went out to buy food and daily necessities.At the time, the Shrike Church had resumed the Shrike Pilgrimage, and on my journey out of the city, I would use their exquisite way to death, but in the opposite direction—I would walk to the Fortress of Time, take the The cable car crosses the Halter Mountains, and then travels down the Hawley River by wind-powered carrier and Hades Ferry.On my return trip, I would gaze at the pilgrims, wondering who would survive.

Few people patronize the city of poets.Our half-way castle began to crumble into ruins.Vines covered the majestic metal-glass domes and hidden arcades of the Wind and Rain Galleria; cremation weeds and scar weeds flourished among the stone slabs.The Self-Defense Forces also came out to add to the chaos. They placed booby traps and traps to kill the Shrike, but only destroyed the once beautiful city.The water conservancy collapsed.Ditch collapsed.Desert encroachment.I am in King Billy's abandoned palace, going back and forth from room to room, I continue to write my poems, waiting for my muse.

When you think about it, this causality is like the crazy logical loop instructions of the data artist Carlo Russ, or it is like an Escher engraving: The appearance of the Shrike is due to the meaning of my poem. The power of the spell, but these poems could not exist without the threat of the Shrike or presence as a muse. In more than ten years, one person died suddenly, and this city of amateur art lovers became more and more deserted. In the end, only the Shrike and I were left.The annual Shrike Pilgrimage Passage is a small thrill to the city, as faraway caravans travel across the desert to the Tombs of Time.Sometimes a few people would come back and flee across the vermilion sandy land to the Time Fortress, a refuge twenty kilometers to the southwest.More often, no one will come out.

I watch from the shadows of the city.My hair and beard grew so wild that they finally covered up the rags I was wearing.I came out mostly at night, and wandered among the ruins like a furtive shadow, and sometimes I gazed at my bright palace and castle, as David Hume gazed at his windows, and pronounced his verdict solemnly: he Not hitting the nail on the head.I've never moved the food synthesizer from the dining hall to my room, and I like to eat in the echoing emptiness beneath the cracked Italian cathedral.I feel like some stupid Illo fattening himself up just to feed the morlocks who can't hide.

I've never seen a shrike.Many nights, just before dawn, I would wake up from my doze by a sudden sound—the sound of metal scraping against stone, the rustling of something walking in the sand.Although I am often sure that something is watching me, I have never seen the watcher. Sometimes I'll take a short trip and set off to the Tombs of Time, especially at night, when I'll walk into the complex shadows of the Sphinx, or gaze at the stars through the emerald green walls of the Emerald Tomb while dodging anti-entropy The soft and frightening tug of the tides of time.It was on returning from one of these evening pilgrimages that I found an unexpected visitor in the study. "It's so touching, ma-ma-ma-Martin," said Billy King, patting a pile of manuscripts, and there were several piles here and there in the room.Sitting in an oversized chair at the edge of the long table, the failed king looked terribly older, more molten than ever.Apparently, he'd been reading there for hours. "Do you really-re-really think that humanity should-should-should end like this?" he asked softly.I haven't heard this stammer for more than ten years. I went into the room, but there was no answer.For more than twenty standard years, Billy had been my friend and benefactor, but at this moment, I wanted to chop him up.The thought of someone reading mine without authorization fills me with rage. "Your poem-poetry-poem... Psalm note-note-note time?" said Billy King, flipping through a stack of poems I had recently completed.