Dan Simmons - Hyperion 03 by Endymion

Author:Endymion [Endymion]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-02-15T22:51:31.543000+00:00

About five thousand meters up, gasping for air and leaning out over the edge of our little carpet, things seemed a lot scarier than they had on the raft. The violet sea was very big, very empty, and our raft only a speck below, a tiny black rectangle on the reticulated violet-and-black sea. From this altitude, the waves that had seemed so serious on the raft were invisible.

"I think I've found another level of that 'fellowship with essence' response to nature that your father wrote about," I said.

"What's that?" Aenea was shivering in the cold air of the jet stream. She had worn just the undershirt and vest she had been wearing on the raft.

"Scared shitless," I said.

Aenea laughed. I have to say here that I loved Aenea's laugh then, and I warm at the thought of it now. It was a soft laugh, but full and unselfconscious and melodic to the extreme. I miss it.

"We should have let A. Bettik come up to scout instead of us," I said.

"Why?"

"From what he said about his high-altitude scouting before," I said, "evidently he doesn't need to breathe air, and he's impervious to little things like depressurization."

Aenea leaned back against me. "He's not impervious to anything," she said softly. "They just designed his skin to be a little tougher than ours -- it can act like a pressure suit for short periods, even in hard vacuum -- and he can hold his breath a bit longer, that's all."

I looked at her. "Do you know a lot about androids?"

"No," said Aenea, "I just asked him." She scooted forward a bit and laid her hands on the control threads. We flew "east."

I admit that I was terrified of the thought of losing contact with the raft, of flying around this ocean-planet until these flight threads lost their charge and we plummeted to the sea, probably to be eaten by a Lamp Mouth Leviathan. I'd programmed my inertial compass with the raft as a starting point, so unless I dropped the compass -- which was unlikely because I now kept it on a lanyard around my neck -- we would find our way back, all right. But still I worried.

"Let's not go too far," I said.

"All right." Aenea was keeping the speed down, about sixty or seventy klicks, I guessed, and had swooped back down to where we could breathe more easily and the air was not so cold. Below us, the violet sea stayed empty in a great circle to the horizon.

"Your farcasters seem to be playing tricks on us," I said.

"Why do you call them my farcasters, Raul?"

"Well, you're the one they ... recognize."

She did not answer.

"Seriously," I said, "do you think there's some rhyme or reason to the worlds they're sending us to?"

Aenea glanced over her shoulder at me. "Yes," she said, "I do."

I waited. The deflection fields were minimal at this speed, so the wind tossed the girl's hair back toward my face.

"Do you know much about the Web?" she asked.

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