house and the riverbank. There was no sign of her. 1 returned to the dark interior and would have gladly attributed her appearance to my imagination, a waking dream after so many months of enforced cryogenic dreamlesshess, but for a single, tangible proof of her presence. There in the cool darkness burned a lone red votive candle, its tiny flame flickering to unseen drafts and currents.
I am tired of this city. I am tired of its pagan pretensions and false histories. Hyperion is a poet's world devoid of poetry. Keats itself is a mixture of tawdry, false classicism and mindless, boomtown energy. There are three Zen Gnostic assemblies and four High Muslim mosques in the town, but the real houses of worship are the countless saloons and brothels, the huge marketplaces handling the fiberplastic shipments from the south, and the Shrike Cult temples where lost souls hide their suicidal hopelessness behind a shield of shallow mysticism. The whole planet reeks of mysticism without revelation.
To hell with it.
Tomorrow I head south. There are skimmers and other aircraft on this absurd world but, for the Common Folk, travel between these accursed island continents seems restricted to boat- which takes forever, I am told- or one of the huge passenger dirigibles which de!arts from Keats only once a week.
I leave early tomorrow by dirigible.
Day 10:
Animals.
The firstdown team for this planet must have had a f',ation on animals. Horse, Bear, Eagle. For three days we were creeping down the east coast of Equus over an irregular coastline called the Mane. We've spent the last day making the crossing of a short span of the Middle Sea to a large island called Cat Key. Today we are offloading passengers and freight at Felix, the 'major city' of the island. From what I can see from the observation promenade and the mooring tower, there can't be more than five thousand people living in that random collection of hovels and barracks.
Next the ship will make its eight-hundredkilometer crawl down a series of smaller islands called the Nine Tails and then take a bold leap across seven hundred kilometers of open sea and the equator. The next land we see then is the northwest coast of Aquila, the so-called Beak.
Animals.
To call this conveyance a 'passenger dirigible' is an exercise in creative semantics.
It is a huge lifting device with cargo holds large enough to carry the town of Felix out to sea and still have room for thousands of bales of fiberplastic. Meanwhile, the less important cargo – we passengers -make do wherewe can. I have set up a cot near the aft loading portal.and made a rather comfortable niche for myself with my personal luggage and three large trunks of expedition gear. Near me is a family of eight- indigenie plantation workers returning from a biannual shopping expedition of their own to Keats -and although I do not mind the sound or scent of their caged pigs or the squeal of their food hamsters, the incessant, confused crowing of their poor befuddled rooster is more than I can stand some nights.
Animals!
Day 11:
Dinner tonight in the salon above the promenade deck with Citizen Heremis Denzel, a retired professor from a small planters' college near Endymion. He informed me that the Hyperion firstdown team had no animal fetish after all; the official names of the three continents are not Equus, Ursa, and Aquila, but Creighton, Allensen, and Lopez. He went on to say that this was in honor of three middle-level bureaucrats in the old Survey Service.
Better the animal fetish!
It is after dinner. I am alone on the outside promenade to watch the sunset. The walkway here is sheltered by the forward cargo modules so the wind is little more than a salt-tinged breeze. Above me curves the orange and green skin of the dirigible. We are between islands; the sea is a rich lapis shot through with verdant undertones, a reversal of sky tones. A scattering of high cirrus catches the last light of Hyperion's toosmall
I am tired of this city. I am tired of its pagan pretensions and false histories. Hyperion is a poet's world devoid of poetry. Keats itself is a mixture of tawdry, false classicism and mindless, boomtown energy. There are three Zen Gnostic assemblies and four High Muslim mosques in the town, but the real houses of worship are the countless saloons and brothels, the huge marketplaces handling the fiberplastic shipments from the south, and the Shrike Cult temples where lost souls hide their suicidal hopelessness behind a shield of shallow mysticism. The whole planet reeks of mysticism without revelation.
To hell with it.
Tomorrow I head south. There are skimmers and other aircraft on this absurd world but, for the Common Folk, travel between these accursed island continents seems restricted to boat- which takes forever, I am told- or one of the huge passenger dirigibles which de!arts from Keats only once a week.
I leave early tomorrow by dirigible.
Day 10:
Animals.
The firstdown team for this planet must have had a f',ation on animals. Horse, Bear, Eagle. For three days we were creeping down the east coast of Equus over an irregular coastline called the Mane. We've spent the last day making the crossing of a short span of the Middle Sea to a large island called Cat Key. Today we are offloading passengers and freight at Felix, the 'major city' of the island. From what I can see from the observation promenade and the mooring tower, there can't be more than five thousand people living in that random collection of hovels and barracks.
Next the ship will make its eight-hundredkilometer crawl down a series of smaller islands called the Nine Tails and then take a bold leap across seven hundred kilometers of open sea and the equator. The next land we see then is the northwest coast of Aquila, the so-called Beak.
Animals.
To call this conveyance a 'passenger dirigible' is an exercise in creative semantics.
It is a huge lifting device with cargo holds large enough to carry the town of Felix out to sea and still have room for thousands of bales of fiberplastic. Meanwhile, the less important cargo – we passengers -make do wherewe can. I have set up a cot near the aft loading portal.and made a rather comfortable niche for myself with my personal luggage and three large trunks of expedition gear. Near me is a family of eight- indigenie plantation workers returning from a biannual shopping expedition of their own to Keats -and although I do not mind the sound or scent of their caged pigs or the squeal of their food hamsters, the incessant, confused crowing of their poor befuddled rooster is more than I can stand some nights.
Animals!
Day 11:
Dinner tonight in the salon above the promenade deck with Citizen Heremis Denzel, a retired professor from a small planters' college near Endymion. He informed me that the Hyperion firstdown team had no animal fetish after all; the official names of the three continents are not Equus, Ursa, and Aquila, but Creighton, Allensen, and Lopez. He went on to say that this was in honor of three middle-level bureaucrats in the old Survey Service.
Better the animal fetish!
It is after dinner. I am alone on the outside promenade to watch the sunset. The walkway here is sheltered by the forward cargo modules so the wind is little more than a salt-tinged breeze. Above me curves the orange and green skin of the dirigible. We are between islands; the sea is a rich lapis shot through with verdant undertones, a reversal of sky tones. A scattering of high cirrus catches the last light of Hyperion's toosmall
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