USING THE MOST ADVANCED TECHNIQUES AVAILABLE to them, the local forensic experts are available to lift unidentified fingerprints from a mess-hall coffee cup in spite of the many washings the cup has undergone over the past two months. Of the thousands of latent prints, all are laboriously identified as belonging to garrison troops or visiting fisherman except for this one reconstructed print. It is set aside with unidentified DNA evidence.
“During the Web days,” says Dr. Holmer Ryum, the chief forensic effort, “the megadatasphere would have put us in touch with central Hegemony files within seconds via the fatline. We could get a match almost instantly.”
“If we had some cheese, we could have a ham-and-cheese sandwich,” replies Father Captain de Soya, “if we had some ham.”
“What?” says Dr. Ryum.
“Never mind,” says de Soya. “I expect to have a match within days.”
Dr. Ryum is puzzled. “How, Father Captain? We’ve checked the planetary data banks. Run checks against every poacher you’ve captured … and I have to say, there’s never been a mass arrest like this on Mare Infinitus before. You’re upsetting a delicate balance of corruption that has existed here for centuries.”
De Soya rubs the bridge of his nose. He has not slept much in the past weeks. “I am not interested in delicate balances of corruption, Doctor.”
“I understand,” says Ryum. “But I fail to understand how you can expect a match within days. Neither the Church nor Pax Central has files of all the citizens on various Pax worlds, much less of the Outback and Ouster areas.…”
“All Pax worlds keep their own records,” de Soya says quietly. “Of baptisms and cross sacraments. Of marriages and deaths. Military and police records.”
Dr. Ryum opens his hands in helplessness. “But where would you start?”
“Where the odds are the best in finding him,” answers Father Captain de Soya.
MEANWHILE, NOTHING IS FOUND OF THE HAPLESS Lieutenant Belius within the six-hundred-fathom depths to which the two deep-sea submersibles agree to descend. Hundreds of rainbow sharks are stunned to the surface and the contents of their stomachs analyzed. Still no Belius, neither remnants of him nor of his cruciform. Thousands of other sea scavengers are harvested within a two-hundred-klick radius, and bits of two poachers are identified in gullets, but no sign of Belius or the stranger. A funeral mass is held on Station Three-twenty-six Mid-littoral for the lieutenant, who is said to have died the true death and found true immortality.
De Soya orders the deep-sea submersible captains to go deeper, looking for artifacts. The captains refuse.
“Why?” demands the priest-captain. “I brought you here because your machines can go to the bottom. Why won’t you?”
“The Lamp Mouths,” says the senior of the two captains. “To search, we’ll have to use lights. To six hundred fathoms, our sonar and deep radar can detect them rising and we could beat them to the surface. Below that, and we wouldn’t have a chance. We won’t go deeper.”
“You will go deeper,” says Father Captain de Soya, the papal diskey glowing against the black of his cassock.
The senior captain takes a step closer. “You can arrest me, shoot me, excommunicate me … I won’t take my men and machine down to certain death. You haven’t seen a Lamp Mouth, Father.”
De Soya sets a friendly hand on the captain’s shoulder. “I will not arrest, shoot, or excommunicate you, Captain. And I will see a Lamp Mouth soon. Perhaps more than one.”
The captain does not understand.
“I’ve ordered in three more of the Ocean Fleet’s attack submarines,” says de Soya. “We are going to find, flush, and kill every Lamp Mouth and any other threatening ’canth within five hundred klicks. When you dive, the area will be completely safe.”
The senior captain looks at the other deep-sea submersible captain and then back to de Soya. Both of the captains appear to be in shock. “Father … Captain … sir … do you know how much a Lamp Mouth is worth? To the offworld sport fishermen and the big factories at Thérèse … sir.”
“About fifteen thousand Mare-Eye seidons,” says de Soya. “That’s about thirty-five thousand Pax florins. Almost fifty thousand Mercantilus marks. Each.” De Soya smiles. “And since you two will receive thirty percent finders’ fees for locating the Mouths for the navy, I wish you good hunting.”
The two deep-submersible captains hurry out the door.
FOR THE FIRST TIME DE SOYA SENDS SOMEONE ELSE off in the Raphael to run his errands. Sergeant Gregorius travels alone in the archangel, carrying the DNA and fingerprint information, as well as threads from the hawking mat.
“Remember,” says de Soya over tightbeam from the platform a few minutes before Raphael spins up to total quantum state, “there’s still a heavy Pax presence on Hyperion and at least two torchships in-system at all times. They will bring you to the capital of St. Joseph’s for a proper resurrection.”
Lashed into his acceleration couch, Sergeant Gregorius only grunts. His face looks relaxed and calm on camera, despite his imminent death.
“Three days there, of course,” continues de Soya, “and—I would think—no more than one day to go through the files. And then you return.”
“Got it, Captain,” says Gregorius. “I won’t waste any time in any Jacktown bars.”
“Jacktown?” says de Soya. “Oh, yes … the old nickname for the capital. Well, Sergeant, if you want to spend your one real evening on Hyperion in a bar, be my guest. It’s been a dry few months with me.”
Gregorius grins. The clock says thirty seconds before quantum leap and his painful extinction. “I ain’t complainin’, Captain.”
“Very good,” says de Soya. “Have a good trip. Oh … and Sergeant?”
“Yessir?” Ten seconds.
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
There is no response. Suddenly there is nothing on the other end of the coherent tachyon tightbeam. Raphael has made its quantum leap.
FIVE LAMP MOUTHS ARE TRACKED AND KILLED BY the navy. De Soya flies to each carcass in his command thopter.
“Good Lord, they’re larger than I could have imagined,” he says to Lieutenant Sproul when they arrive above the spot where the first one floats.
The grub-white beast is easily three times the size of the station platform: a mass of eyestalks, gaping maws, fibrillating gill slits each the size of the thopter, pulsating tendrils extending hundreds of meters, dangling antennae each carrying a cold-light “lantern” of great brilliance—even out here in the daylight—and mouths, many mouths, each large enough to swallow a fleet submarine. As de Soya watches, the harvesting crews are already flocking over the pressure-exploded carcass, sawing off tendrils and eyestalks and cutting the white meat to portable cubes before the hot sun spoils it all.
Satisfied that the area is cleared of Mouths and other deadly ’canths, the two deep-dive captains take their submersibles twelve thousand fathoms down. There, amid forests of tube worms the size of Old Earth redwood trees, they find an amazing array of old wrecks—poacher submersibles crushed to the size of small suitcases by the pressure, one naval frigate that has been missing for more than a century. They also find boots—dozens of boots.
“It’s the tanning process,” says Lieutenant Sproul to de Soya as the two watch the monitors. “It’s an oddity, but it was true on Old Earth as well. Some of the oldest deep-sea salvage operations—a surface ship called the Titanic, for instance—never turned up bodies, the sea’s too hungry for that, but lots of boots. Something in the tanning process of leather discourages sea critters there … and here.”
“Bring them up,” commands de Soya over the umbilical link.
“The boots?” comes back the submersible captain’s voice. “All of them?”
“All of them,” says de Soya.
The monitors show a profusion of junk on the seabed: things lost by the platform station crew over almost two centuries of carelessness, personal belongings of the drowned poachers and sailors, metal and p
lastic garbage tossed by the fishermen and others. Most items are corroded and misshapen by deep-sea crustaceans and unimaginable pressure, but a few are new enough and tough enough to be identified.
“Bag those and send them up,” says de Soya as they encounter shiny objects that might be a knife, a fork, a belt buckle, a …
“What’s that?” demands de Soya.
“What?” says the captain of the deepest submersible. He is watching the remote handlers rather than his monitors.
“That shiny thing … It looks like a handgun.”
The monitor shifts its view as the submersible turns. The powerful searchlights track, return, and illuminate the object as the camera zooms in. “It is a handgun,” comes the captain’s voice. “Still clean. Damaged some by pressure, but basically intact.” De Soya can hear the click of the single-frame imager capturing this from the monitor. “I’ll collect it,” says the captain.
De Soya has the urge to add “carefully“—but does not speak. His years as torchship captain have taught him to let his people do their jobs. He watches as the grapple arm appears on the monitor and the remote handler gently lifts the shiny object.
“It could be Lieutenant Belius’s flechette pistol,” says Sproul. “It went over with him and hasn’t been recovered yet.”
“This is quite a bit farther out,” muses de Soya, watching the image shift and change on the monitor.
“The currents here are powerful, weird,” says the young officer. “But I have to admit that it didn’t look like a flechette pistol. Too … I don’t know … squarish.”
“Yes,” says de Soya. The underwater searchlights are flickering over the encrusted hull of a submersible that has been buried down there for decades. De Soya is thinking of his years in space and how empty that different unknown is from any ocean on any world, teeming with life and history. The priest-captain is thinking about the Ousters and their strange attempt to adapt themselves to space the way these tube worms and ’canths and bottom-hugging species have adapted themselves to eternal darkness and terrible pressures. Perhaps, he is thinking, the Ousters understand something about humanity’s future that we in the Pax have only denied.
Heresy. De Soya shakes away the thoughts and looks at his young liaison officer. “We’ll know what it is soon enough,” he says. “They’re bringing this load up within the hour.”
GREGORIUS RETURNS FOUR DAYS AFTER HIS DEPARTURE. He is dead. Raphael sends out its sad beacon, a torchship rendezvouses with it twenty light-minutes out, and the sergeant’s body is removed and brought to the resurrection chapel at St. Thérèse. De Soya does not wait for the man’s revival. He orders the courier pouch brought to him at once.
Pax records on Hyperion have positively identified the DNA taken from the hawking mat, and have also matched the partial fingerprint on the cup. Both belong to the same man: Raul Endymion, born A.D. 3099 on planet Hyperion, not baptized; enlisted in the Hyperion Home Guard in Thomas-month of the year A.D. 3115, fought with the 23rd Mechanized Infantry Regiment during Ursus Uprising—three commendations for bravery, including one for rescuing a squadmate while under fire—stationed at Fort Benjing in the South Talon region of the continent of Aquila for eight standard months, served out the remainder of his time at Kans River Station 9 on Aquila, patrolling the jungle there, guarding against rebel terrorist activity near the fiberplastic plantations. Final rank, sergeant. Mustered out (honorable discharge) on Lentmonth 15, A.D. 3119, whereabouts unknown until less than ten standard months ago, Ascensionmonth 23, A.D. 3126, when he was arrested, tried, and convicted in Port Romance (continent of Aquila) for the murder of one M. Dabil Herrig, a born-again Christian from Renaissance Vector. Records showed that Raul Endymion refused offers to accept the cross and was executed by deathwand one week after the arrest, on the 30th of Ascensionmonth, A.D. 3126. His body was disposed of at sea. The death certificate and autopsy reports were notarized by the local Pax Inspector General.
The next day latent prints on the crushed, ancient .45-caliber automatic pistol brought up from the ocean floor are matched: Raul Endymion and Lieutenant Belius.
Bits of thread from the hawking mat are not so easily identified by Hyperion Pax records, but the human clerk doing the search included a handwritten note that such a mat figures prominently in the legendary Cantos composed by a poet who had lived on Hyperion until a century or so ago.
AFTER SERGEANT GREGORIUS IS RESURRECTED, rests a few hours, and flies to Station Three-twenty-six Midlittoral to report, de Soya tells him the various findings. He also informs the sergeant that the two dozen Pax engineers who have been swarming over the farcaster portal for three weeks report only that there is no sign that the ancient arch had been activated, despite sightings of a bright flash by several fishermen on the platform that night. The engineers also report that there is no way to get inside the ancient Core-constructed arch, nor to tell where—if anywhere—someone might have been transported through it.
“Same as Renaissance V.,” says Gregorius. “But at least you have some idea of who helped the girl escape.”
“Possibly,” says de Soya.
“He came a long way to die here,” says the sergeant.
Father Captain de Soya leans back in his chair. “Did he die here, Sergeant?”
Gregorius has no answer.
Finally de Soya says, “I think we’re finished on Mare Infinitus. Or will be in a day or two.”
The sergeant nods. Through the long bank of windows here in the director’s office, he can see the bright glow that precedes the moonrise. “Where to next, Captain? Back on the old search pattern?”
De Soya is also watching the east, waiting for the giant orange disk to appear above the darkened horizon. “I’m not sure, Sergeant. Let’s get things tidied up here, Captain Powl handed over to Pax Justice in Orbit Seven, and soothe Bishop Melandriano’s feathers.…”
“If we can,” says Sergeant Gregorius.
“If we can,” agrees de Soya. “Then we’ll pay our respects to Archbishop Kelley, get back to Raphael, and decide where to jump next. It may be time for us to come up with some theories on where this child is headed and try to get there first, not just follow Raphael’s shortest-line pattern.”
“Yes, sir,” says Gregorius. He salutes, goes to the door, and hesitates there a moment. “And do you have a theory, sir? Based on just the few things we’ve found here?”
De Soya is watching the three moons rise. He does not turn his chair around to face his sergeant as he says, “Perhaps. Just perhaps.”
36
We leaned on our poles and stopped the raft’s forward motion before it crashed into the ice wall. We had all of our lanterns lit now, the electric lamps throwing their beams into the frigid darkness of this ice cavern. Mist rose from the black waters and hung beneath the jagged roof of the cavern like ominous spirits of the drowned. Crystal facets distorted and then threw back the beams of puny light, making the surrounding darkness all the more profound.
“Why is the river still liquid?” asked Aenea, hugging her hands under her arms and stamping her feet. She had on every layer she had brought, but it was not enough. The cold was terrible.
I went to one knee at the edge of the raft, lifted a palmful of river water to my lips, and tasted. “Salinity,” I said. “This is as salty as Mare Infinitus’s sea.”
A. Bettik played his handlamp on the ice wall ten meters ahead of us. “It comes down to the water’s edge,” he said. “And extends somewhat beneath it. But the current still flows.”
For an instant I had a surge of hope. “Shut down the lanterns,” I said, hearing my voice echo in the vaporous hollow of the place. “Turn off the handlamps.”
When this was accomplished, I had hoped to see a glimmer of light through or under the ice wall—a hint of salvation, an indication that this ice cavern was finite and that only the exit had collapsed.
The darkness was absolute. No amount of waiting gave us night vision. I cursed and wished for the night goggl
es I had lost on Mare Infinitus: if they worked here, it would have meant that light was seeping in from somewhere. We waited another moment in the blindness. I could hear Aenea’s shaking, actually feel the vapor from all of our breaths.
“Turn the lights on,” I said at last. There had been no glimmer of hope.
We played the beams on the walls, roof, and river again. Mist continued to rise and condense near the ceiling. Icicles fell constantly into the steaming water.
“Where … are … we?” asked Aenea, trying without total success to stop the chattering of her teeth.
I dug in my pack, found the thermal blanket I had packed at Martin Silenus’s tower so long ago, and wrapped it around her. “That will hold the heat in. No … keep it on.”
“We can share,” said the girl.
I crouched near the heating cube, turning its conductive power to maximum. Five of the six ceramic faces began to glow. “We’ll share it when we have to,” I said. Playing the light over the ice wall that blocked our way, I said, “To answer your question, my guess is Sol Draconi Septem. Some of my richer … and tougher … fen clients hunted arctic wraiths there.”
“I concur,” said A. Bettik. His blue skin made him look even colder than I felt as he huddled near the glowing lantern and heating cube. The microtent had become frost laden and as brittle as thin metal. “That world has a one-point-seven-g gravity field,” he said. “And since the Fall and destruction of the Hegemony terraforming project there, most of it is said to have returned to its state of hyperglaciation.”
“Hyperglaciation?” repeated Aenea. “What does that mean?” Some color was returning to her cheeks as the thermal blanket captured her warmth.
“It means that most of the atmosphere of Sol Draconi Septem is a solid,” said the android. “Frozen.”