An Evening at the Carnival with Mister Christian

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Heavy thunderstorms appeared over the Eurasian landmass, torrential rains began that afternoon, and the largest displays of undulatus asperatus clouds ever recorded followed during the evening. The eerie formations unsettled people from the Russian steppes to the desert regions south of Tehran. The fearful faithful gathered and pointed at the sky, sure that God was about to visit a mighty wrath on all mankind.

The first ships, completely invisible to radar, appeared over Tehran and Moscow in the deep of night, and not a half hour later over Mecca and Jerusalem. St Peter's in Rome and All Saints' Church in Wittenberg followed. One more appeared before sunrise over a forest glade in the foothills of the Himalayas, and later that morning, at noon local time, the last ship drifted into place over a small Shinto shrine not far from Osaka.

The significance of these locations was not lost on the world's religious leaders, and within hours almost the entire population of the earth was on their knees, praying to objects in the sky, asking for forgiveness -- all wondering what they had done to anger their God -- and what might happen next.

And yet the objects remained motionless -- and silent -- for days, then weeks.

And during this period, all the earth's mammalian marine life swam to seven points in the seven seas, and they waited in quiet depths, perhaps not knowing what was coming, but completely unconcerned about their future.

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"The Phage. They approach at velocities we have never seen. It is a matter of weeks now, before they arrive."

Hope Sherman looked at Spud as he paced back and forth on her bed, looking for all the world just like Ted now. There was hair on his head now, his genetically derived illusion almost complete.

"So, is there still time?" Sherman said.

"Your leadership is paralyzed. Industries have collapsed, even agricultural productivity has ceased. Your people continue to pray -- even as they starve to death. This is the most irrational display we have ever seen, and it may account for the increase in velocity we have noted. The Phage will not let this force spread among the stars."

"The colony ships?"

"Perhaps, but you know how the Master's feel about this."

"I do, but..."

"But you feel responsible. You think that if you'd never built Hyperion, none of this would have happened."

"Yes."

"Perhaps. Yet the Phage would have noticed such an intense and irrational discontinuity sooner or later. Perhaps we could have completed our mission without your assistance, yet time distortions from your seas completely altered our plans. Your arrival made our intervention necessary. We are grateful."

"But not enough to...?"

"We will try. That is all we can say now. We will try."

Hope Sherman looked at 'her Spud,' her translator, and wondered what he felt about humanity, yet at times like this she asked herself if he felt anything at all. As just one small part of a larger, rapidly evolving organism, one with the constant input of hundreds of translators and negotiators passing every waking moment, Sherman was amazed Spud could sort through the incoming data fast enough to form even one coherent sentence -- let alone help formulate long term strategies. Yet she had to consider when she was talking to Spud she was also in direct contact with Moe -- who was himself linked to Masters across the galaxy. The concept was almost impossible to wrap her head around, and even after months among them it still troubled her, yet she found the process oddly comforting. When she spoke with Spud she wasn't getting one point of view -- she was getting hundreds -- simultaneously. 'Spud' essentially collated data and presented a consensus point of view, with his Master, the one she called Moe, though he/she/it was, in effect, commanding what was relayed, what she heard.

And what she'd heard still troubled her.

Humanity was irrelevant to the 'Vulcans,' a sideshow before the main event. There was one 'extra' colony ship available to transport humans, as well as space on the large command ship that had off-loaded cargo on Mars. Perhaps two million people could be resettled.

But who? Who would go?

And who would choose?

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urJenn sat on Sumner's lap, in her way trying to console him. Liz and Carol looked at one another, then Ted stood and walked to the rail, hopped over to Hyperion and disappeared below.

"So? That's it? These hell raisers, the Phage? They get here in a few weeks, find the remains of the human race and lay waste to the planet? Is that what you're telling me is going to happen? The human race ends in a few weeks, maybe a month from now?"

"As I said, there may be room for more of you. Perhaps two million humans in total, more if we have less mass to move. A world is being prepared even now, but there is no guarantee the Phage won't respond to your movement. We must keep the others on a different world, an ocean world well away from your new world. We must protect them at all cost, but you will be on your own -- once we've helped you re-establish industry and agriculture. What you do with this new world will be your species future, or perhaps it's legacy."

Carol stood and walked over to Hyperion, leaving Liz and Sumner to look away into the night sky. Sumner felt her leave then too, his Jennifer, and he wondered where she went, and why -- but it didn't matter now. Nothing at all really mattered.

He, his people, even this world -- had just been sentenced to death -- and now they humanity came to rest in this, their collective twilight, watching the last of the sun fade against the purple mountains majesty of their homes.

And their last trip to Cassis had been spooky, almost terrifying, with only a few farmers present selling produce and roving bands pillaging everything unguarded. For the past several days they had diving for fish -- and finding nothing -- yet now he understood why...

"Perhaps? Is that what she said?" Liz asked.

"Yup -- if things work out, maybe two million."

"Seems kind of small, when you think about it."

"Hmm? What's that," Sumner said, lost in a passing thought.

"Two million people, out of almost nine billion? That's not a lot, is it?"

"It's better than nothing, I suppose."

"Who will they choose?"

"I have no idea," but he knew the ideal candidate would be young enough to propagate the species, and intelligent enough to be valuable to a re-emergent technological society. 'That leaves me out, too,' he told himself.

Liz stood and walked forward to the bow pulpit. She held onto the rail as she looked up into the sky, while Charley came and settled on Sumner's lap. The pup looked up into his eyes and licked his chin, then the tears that rolled down his face.

He heard Carol running through Hyperion, heard her running up the companionway steps up and into the cockpit...

"He's gone!" she screamed.

Sumner stood after Charley barked and jumped from his lap. "Who? Ted?"

"Smithfield was down there, and his sister too, and when I came in they all just disappeared!"

"Well, hell," Sumner Collins said as he walked aft, grinning. "Hopie was here? Ain't that grand?!"

Then he too turned to the stars -- and he laughed at them -- while he shook his fist at the night sky.

Then he felt her there, down there in the sea -- and he turned and looked at those two scars glowing in the night. He dove off the stern, dove deep -- so deep he felt his lungs about to burst -- and when he saw her there beside him he knew she would never leave him.

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Ted Sherman and his sister, Hope, as well as a startled Grover Smithfield, blinked into existence on the new Hyperion loading platform, the one attached to 'Moe's' command ship, still in Mar's orbit. They made their way to the hastily constructed conference room off Hope's sleeping cabin and sat around an oxygen polisher -- that now performed double duty as a table.

"This is your meeting, Grover. What's on your mind?" Hopie said as she looked at him.

"The final figure is 1.2 million people. That's it. That's all they're able to transport. That means nine billion people are at risk."

"The terraformed world they've chosen for our people," Hope sighed, "the one that's immediately habitable, is a quarter the size of our moon. Within decades we'll reach it's peak ability to sustain life. Within one hundred years we'll have to be prepared to send out colonists, or our population growth will cause another implosion."

"I understand that," Smithfield sighed. "But do you understand -- seven billion people? That many people are going to die if we can't...?"

"I do," Hope said. "What would you have me say?"

"We have to find another world. Another Earth, someplace else for us to go."

She looked at Smithfield, knew what he wanted, but she'd exhausted those possibilities weeks ago. Humanity had exhausted this planet, and even without the Phage it's time here was limited. Population explosion, resource depletion, climate change...earth really had become a paradise lost.

Yet Ted was looking at his sister just then, just as Hope's 'urTed' translator blinked into the room. Ted had never seen his doppelgänger before, though he had almost gotten used to the urJennifer that always seemed to be somewhere close to Sumner; now, seeing his near self in such close proximity was unsettling -- and he instinctively pulled away from 'it'.

Hope, of course, smiled at his discomfort, at least until the urTed began speaking.

"The human population on the surface has reduced by 3.4 billion. A religious reaction, but starvation, panic, sudden military interventions have been observed. By the end of this week we project more than 5 billion will have perished. We are authorized to tell you that three new colony ships will arrive, room for twenty million people has been developed on a system of synthetic moons. These moons orbit in a system where three planets are being terraformed. It is possible these worlds will be ready for human habitation within ten standard years."

"By Golly," Smithfield said, "that's wonderful news. How can we express our gratitude?"

The urTed looked at Smithfield, his eyes sad, full of pain. "There will be a price, a set of conditions," he said, his voice now dull and flat. "We are sorry, but this must be. We cannot risk attracting the Phage."

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[Log entry SailingVessel Gemini: 7 August, 1430 hrs GMT.

COG: moored, Marseilles, old port;

SOG: na;

Temp: 107F;

Winds: SSW at 22kts;

Barometer 29.95 rising;

GPS: 43°17'38.04"N 5°22'0.21"E.

Still unseasonably hot. Very dry wind coming off North Africa, last night the low temperature was 97F. Almost no food available in the city, but there is power, and we have been able to fill the diesel tanks.]

Sumner Collins had just finished moving Gemini back to the relative safety of the marina in Marseilles' old port, a deeply sheltered harbor almost completely surrounded by the oldest part of the city, yet now he was uneasy, felt like he was being watched all the time. Ted had been gone for weeks now; he had disappeared that night with Hopie and Smithfield, leaving Carol alone on Hyperion for several days -- and then she too had simply vanished. Last week he'd heard what he thought was a thunderclap and gone on deck to check the sky -- only to find Hyperion gone. One minute the boat was there, then clap-boom -- she was gone. The event had seriously unsettled him, enough to consider moving back to 'civilization.'

Liz had grown increasingly despondent after the urJenn's revelation the Phage were coming, and much sooner than expected, yet she rallied for a time -- with Carol's help. She assumed if there was room for older people she might find a way off-world, she might survive the coming of the Phage -- and then Carol vanished. Liz fell into a downward spiral after that, and was sleeping into mid-afternoon most days now, and rarely eating. She helped when she could but the sense of onrushing doom left her paralyzed more often than not, and for days at a stretch.

Then Liz watched as Sumner grew increasingly disenchanted with the idea leaving, of ever living anywhere but Earth. He said there was no room 'for people like me' -- out among the stars, and when she'd asked what he meant by this, about what exactly he he thought he'd done to exclude a future together, he'd grown sullen and withdrawn -- and she shut down further. She'd noticed he'd fallen into spells like this, ever since he'd come back from Israel, and while she didn't understand -- she couldn't get him to talk about what happened, either.

And by this point, only Charley seemed to exercise any sort of hold on Sumner, and their unique bond only seemed to grow stronger with time -- even as Liz's hold on Sumner seemed to diminish -- especially after Hyperion vanished. She didn't truly understand Charley or what the pup meant to Sumner, or how he would -- in effect -- choose a dog to confide in over her, yet that's what it felt like. She grew more distant and depressed -- causing Sumner's further withdrawal -- and the cycle spiraled beyond their ability to control.

Food had became harder to find after the arrival, farmer's markets were overrun as fuel dependent transportation and distribution networks broke down. Pelagic sea life had all but disappeared, but Sumner soon found shellfish and after that they were feasting on crab and oysters almost every meal -- and an occasional lobster could be had with patience -- but even that diet grew stale after a week. On top of it all, he had to run the engine to make water, and as that bit into their fuel reserves it meant they had to find fuel. And fuel was running out, getting harder to find.

So, the zero-sum end game that the urJenn laid out for them was slowing coming to pass, only quicker than expected. Collins listened to the world's death throes on his single side band radio night after night; stories of heroism filled the airwaves -- but he saw little evidence of that on the streets. Tens of millions of people on their knees, overwhelming helplessness the order of the day, and yet, of all the nations of the earth, only one seemed to soldier-on almost completely unaffected by the peculiar fatalism sweeping through the remaining people of the Earth. America, and to a lesser extent Canada, had proven more resilient to the religious fatalism sweeping the eurasian landmass, but only just.

One day Collins walked along the waterfront until he came to the Cathédral de Major, Marseilles's largest cathedral, and he looked at it's odd mishmash of styles, then at the hundreds of uncollected bodies on the plaza surrounding the building. He heard singing inside and walked past the dead and the dying until he gained the entry, and at the entry he pulled a woman's bloated body from the door and walked inside.

There were no people inside, no one sitting in the pews -- not one soul listening to the music, but he walked inward between rows of pews to the transept -- where he paused and looked up -- then he walked deeper into the building, to the choir. He watched an immaculately dressed choir of men and women singing, watched a string ensemble nearby accompanying the organ, and found a place in the shadows to sit and listen.

He drifted within the music, sat and fell into the arms of that spirit which is ultimately most human, and he found he almost felt like crying as the music washed over his parched soul. He knew the music, music somewhere from his past, a piece the Jennifer had loved, perhaps. It was Duruflé's Requiem, and the choir was moving into the Paradisum, those final few moments of the piece -- long regarded as the most intimate ever scored, the composer's intent to unleash the music of heaven on those clinging fast to life.

As Sumner Collins drifted he wondered when he'd lost his faith -- indeed -- if he'd ever possessed anything resembling faith. He'd spent his entire life hurting people -- killing so many, torturing more than a few -- and now, listening to this music he wanted to know why he'd done those things. Why he'd turned away from beauty, from love. Why he'd embraced such infinite darkness -- in the name of --? What? A Father? His country? He didn't feel like a murderer, yet he was, and in the worst possible way. He'd found no enjoyment in his actions, only a sort of grim satisfaction when the ends proved the means justified, and he'd marched right along to the anthems of this chosen life -- like any good soldier.

But that hadn't always been the case, had it? He thought back to Smithfield's wife, to her easy capitulation over the Atlantic, and he contrasted that experience with hundreds of others in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each human disintegration had been burned into his soul, each broken body was superimposed over his own, and there were times now when he lost track of himself, when he felt his own decomposing soul atop the piles of his victims. Was this, he wondered, what it felt like to take another's life -- in the name of some greater good?

The last chords of the requiem washed through the cathedral and broke over his soul, cast him adrift as voices drifted off into evening aires. He felt all his tears just then, the tears he'd held in check for so many years. First Jennifer, then Charley and Deborah, and now he could feel Liz falling away, falling into her own peculiar darkness -- only now he felt completely powerless to do anything but watch his life unfolding in the last warmth of twilight. He'd done everything he could to help Jennifer, everything to save her life, then when that was not enough he'd been content to ease her suffering. Because nothing, nothing he did mattered, and in the end death came for her. And Deborah's hallucinogenic passing, with something akin to Debussy at her side, with Lennon beckoning from the shadows? What did it all mean?

He stood after a while, saw the choir had already left and he wondered how long he'd been sitting in the darkness. He thought of Phoebe, lost up there on the Norman coast with that lip smacking psychiatrist...and he wanted to see her again, hold her when the time came...but no, she'd finally found someone to hold, as her own night came. He'd talked to them last week, heard her playing the Orgeron piece once again while he talked to Mann, and Collins knew he couldn't ever say goodbye. They were too close for such expressions, so thoroughly conjoined words would never suffice.

Why, he wondered as he looked up at the vaulted ceiling, was it irrational to believe in something greater than ourselves? Why had the visitor's ships descended upon and hovered over humanity's symbols of mystery, the home of all her irrational imaginings? Had those alien minds known that earth's people had already reached a tipping point of dissolution, that humanity had arrived at that point where faith unquestioned so long simply snapped under the weight of it's inherent contradictions? Had those distant minds known that the human spirit was, in the end, doomed to fade away when fantasy overwhelmed reality?

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And why was it was that not one of their huge ships had settled over an American city?

Was it that the people of the Americas were isolated in other ways -- by their oceans, perhaps, or the relative newness of their civilizations. The people of North America, in particular, had seemed to grow ever more resilient when they looked at the ships over Rome and Jerusalem, Mecca and the Himalayan foothills. Their faith, the 'Vulcans' sensed, seemed rooted more in themselves, more in the material world than in something so nebulous as God, and the 'Vulcans' realized they were looking at perhaps the most utterly human of all the varied races they'd observed on this planet.