gestured and the Consul followed the tall, robed figure through a dilation in the pod onto an ascending walkway which curved up and out of sight around the massive bark wall of the treeship’s trunk. The Consul paused, moved to the edge of the walkway, and took a quick step back. It was at least six hundred meters down – down being created by the one-sixth standard gravity being generated by the singularities imprisoned at the base of the tree – and there were no railings.
They resumed their silent ascent, turning off from the main trunk walkway thirty meters and half a trunk-spiral later to cross a flimsy suspension bridge to a five-meter-wide branch. They followed this outward to where the riot of leaves caught the glare of Hyperion’s sun.
‘Has my ship been brought out of storage?’ asked the Consul.
‘It is fueled and ready in sphere eleven,’ said Het Masteen. They passed into the shadow of the trunk and stars became visible in the black patches between the dark latticework of leaves. ‘The other pilgrims have agreed to ferry down in your ship if the FORCE authorities give permission,’ added the Templar.
The Consul rubbed his eyes and wished that he had been allowed more time to retrieve his wits from the cold grip of cryonic fugue. ‘You’ve been in touch with the task force?’
‘Oh, yes, we were challenged the moment we tunneled down from quantum leap. A Hegemony warship is . . . escorting us . . . this very moment.’ Het Masteen gestured toward a patch of sky above them.
The Consul squinted upward but at that second segments of the upper tiers of branches revolved out of the treeship’s shadow and acres of leaves ignited in sunset hues. Even in the still shadowed places, glowbirds nestled like Japanese lanterns above lighted walkways, glowing swingvines, and illuminated hanging bridges, while fireflies from Old Earth and radiant gossamers from Maui-Covenant blinked and coded their way through labyrinths of leaves, mixing with constellations sufficiently to fool even the most starwise traveler.
Het Masteen stepped into a basket lift hanging from a whiskered-carbon cable which disappeared into the three hundred meters of tree above them. The Consul followed and they were borne silently upward. He noted that the walkways, pods, and platforms were conspicuously empty except for a few Templars and their diminutive crew clone counterparts. The Consul could recall seeing no other passengers during his rushed hour between rendezvous and fugue, but he had put that down to the imminence of the treeship going quantum, assuming then that the passengers were safe in their fugue couches. Now, however, the treeship was traveling far below relativistic velocities and its branches should be crowded with gawking passengers. He mentioned his observation to the Templar.
‘The six of you are our only passengers,’ said Het Masteen. The basket stopped in a maze of foliage and the treeship captain led the way up a wooden escalator worn with age.
The Consul blinked in surprise. A Templar treeship normally carried between two and five thousand passengers; it was easily the most desirable way to travel between the stars. Treeships rarely accrued more than a four- or five-month time-debt, making short, scenic crossings where star systems were a very few light-years apart, thus allowing their affluent passengers to spend as little time as necessary in fugue. For the treeship to make the trip to Hyperion and back, accumulating six years of Web time with no paying passengers would mean a staggering financial loss to the Templars.
Then the Consul realized, belatedly, that the treeship would be ideal for the upcoming evacuation, its expenses ultimately to be reimbursed by the Hegemony. Still, the Consul knew, to bring a ship as beautiful and vulnerable as the Yggdrasill – one of only five of its kind – into a war zone was a terrible risk for the Templar Brotherhood.
‘Your fellow pilgrims,’ announced Het Masteen as he and the Consul emerged onto a broad platform where a small group waited at one end of a long wooden table. Above them the stars burned, rotating occasionally as the treeship changed its pitch or yaw, while to either side a solid sphere of foliage curved away like the green skin of some great fruit. The Consul immediately recognized the setting as the Captain’s dining platform, even before the five other passengers rose to let Het Masteen take his place at the head of the table. The Consul found an empty chair waiting for him to the left of