Read Online The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle by Dan Simmons - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dan Simmons
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and gossamers we had seen flitting through the trees yesterday. The forest itself seemed abnormally thick and dark. The Cleft offered a hundred terraces, ledges, and rock balconies to the northeast for entire bands of savages. An army could have hidden there in the crags and ever present mists.
After thirty minutes of fruitless vigilance and foolish cowardice,I returned to the campsite and prepared Tuk’s body for burial. It took me well over two hours to dig a proper grave in the rocky soil of the plateau. When it was filled and the formal service was finished, I could think of nothing personal to say about the rough, funny little man who had been my guide. “Watch over him, Lord,” I said at last, disgusted at my own hypocrisy, sure in my heart that I was mouthing words only to myself. “Give him safe passage. Amen.”
This evening I have moved my camp half a kilometer north. My tent is pitched in an open area ten meters away but I am wedged with my back against the boulder, sleeping robes pulled around, the machete and maser nearby. After Tuk’s funeral I went through the supplies and boxes of equipment. Nothing had been taken except for the few remaining arrestor rods. Immediately I wondered if someone had followed us through the flame forest in order to kill Tuk and strand me here, but I could think of no motive for such an elaborate action. Anyone from the plantations could have killed us as we slept in the rain forest or—better yet from a murderer’s point of view—deep in the flame forest where no one would wonder at two charred corpses. That left the Bikura. My primitive charges.
I considered returning through the flame forest without the rods but soon abandoned the idea. It is probable death to stay and certain death to go.
Three months before the teslas become dormant. One hundred twenty of the twenty-six-hour local days. An eternity.
Dear Christ, why has this come to me? And why was I spared last night if I am merely to be offered up this night … or next?
I sit here in the darkening crag and I listen to the suddenly ominous moaning rising with the night wind from the Cleft and I pray as the sky lights with the blood-red streaks of meteor trails.
Mouthing words to myself.
Day 95
:
The terrors of the past week have largely abated. I find that even fear fades and becomes commonplace after days of anticlimax.
I used the machete to cut small trees for a lean-to, covering the roof and side with gamma-cloth and caulking between the logs withmud. The back wall is the solid stone of the boulder. I have sorted through my research gear and set some of it out, although I suspect that I will never use it now.
I have begun foraging to supplement my quickly diminishing cache of freeze-dried food. By now, according to the absurd schedule drawn up so long ago on Pacem, I was to have been living with the Bikura for some weeks and trading small goods for local food. No matter. Besides my diet of bland but easily boiled chalma roots, I have found half a dozen varieties of berries and larger fruits that the comlog assures me are edible; so far only one has disagreed with me enough to keep me squatting all night near the edge of the nearest ravine.
I pace the confines of the region as restlessly as one of those caged pelops that were so prized by the minor padishahs on Armaghast. A kilometer to the south and four to the west, the flame forests are in full form. In the morning, smoke vies with the shifting curtains of mist to hide the sky. Only the near-solid breaks of bestos, the rocky soil here on the summit plateau, and the hogback ridges running like armor-plated vertebrae northeast from here keep the teslas at bay.
To the north, the plateau widens out and the undergrowth becomes denser near the Cleft for some fifteen kilometers until the way is blocked by a ravine a third as deep and half as wide as the Cleft itself. Yesterday I reached this northernmost point and stared across the gaping barrier with some
After thirty minutes of fruitless vigilance and foolish cowardice,I returned to the campsite and prepared Tuk’s body for burial. It took me well over two hours to dig a proper grave in the rocky soil of the plateau. When it was filled and the formal service was finished, I could think of nothing personal to say about the rough, funny little man who had been my guide. “Watch over him, Lord,” I said at last, disgusted at my own hypocrisy, sure in my heart that I was mouthing words only to myself. “Give him safe passage. Amen.”
This evening I have moved my camp half a kilometer north. My tent is pitched in an open area ten meters away but I am wedged with my back against the boulder, sleeping robes pulled around, the machete and maser nearby. After Tuk’s funeral I went through the supplies and boxes of equipment. Nothing had been taken except for the few remaining arrestor rods. Immediately I wondered if someone had followed us through the flame forest in order to kill Tuk and strand me here, but I could think of no motive for such an elaborate action. Anyone from the plantations could have killed us as we slept in the rain forest or—better yet from a murderer’s point of view—deep in the flame forest where no one would wonder at two charred corpses. That left the Bikura. My primitive charges.
I considered returning through the flame forest without the rods but soon abandoned the idea. It is probable death to stay and certain death to go.
Three months before the teslas become dormant. One hundred twenty of the twenty-six-hour local days. An eternity.
Dear Christ, why has this come to me? And why was I spared last night if I am merely to be offered up this night … or next?
I sit here in the darkening crag and I listen to the suddenly ominous moaning rising with the night wind from the Cleft and I pray as the sky lights with the blood-red streaks of meteor trails.
Mouthing words to myself.
Day 95
:
The terrors of the past week have largely abated. I find that even fear fades and becomes commonplace after days of anticlimax.
I used the machete to cut small trees for a lean-to, covering the roof and side with gamma-cloth and caulking between the logs withmud. The back wall is the solid stone of the boulder. I have sorted through my research gear and set some of it out, although I suspect that I will never use it now.
I have begun foraging to supplement my quickly diminishing cache of freeze-dried food. By now, according to the absurd schedule drawn up so long ago on Pacem, I was to have been living with the Bikura for some weeks and trading small goods for local food. No matter. Besides my diet of bland but easily boiled chalma roots, I have found half a dozen varieties of berries and larger fruits that the comlog assures me are edible; so far only one has disagreed with me enough to keep me squatting all night near the edge of the nearest ravine.
I pace the confines of the region as restlessly as one of those caged pelops that were so prized by the minor padishahs on Armaghast. A kilometer to the south and four to the west, the flame forests are in full form. In the morning, smoke vies with the shifting curtains of mist to hide the sky. Only the near-solid breaks of bestos, the rocky soil here on the summit plateau, and the hogback ridges running like armor-plated vertebrae northeast from here keep the teslas at bay.
To the north, the plateau widens out and the undergrowth becomes denser near the Cleft for some fifteen kilometers until the way is blocked by a ravine a third as deep and half as wide as the Cleft itself. Yesterday I reached this northernmost point and stared across the gaping barrier with some
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