The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle Read Free Page A

which had belonged to a younger, healthier, less cynical Lenar Hoyt.
    Next to the priest sat a man whose image had been familiar to most citizens of the Hegemony some years before. The Consul wondered if the collective attention span in the Worldweb was as short now as it had been when he had lived there. Shorter, probably. If so, then Colonel Fedmahn Kassad, the so-called Butcher of South Bressia, was probably no longer either infamous or famous. To the Consul’s generation and to all those who lived in the slow, expatriate fringe of things, Kassad was not someone one was likely to forget.
    Colonel Fedmahn Kassad was tall—almost tall enough to look the two-meter Het Masteen in the eye—and dressed in FORCE black with no rank insignia or citations showing. The black uniform was oddly similar to Father Hoyt’s garb, but there was no real resemblance between the two men. In lieu of Hoyt’s wasted appearance, Kassad was brown, obviously fit, and whip-handle lean, with strands of muscle showing in shoulder, wrist, and throat. The Colonel’s eyes were small, dark, and as all-encompassing as the lenses of some primitive video camera. His face was all angles: shadows, planes, and facets. Not gaunt like Father Hoyt’s, merely carved from cold stone. A thin line of beard along his jawline served to accent the sharpness of his countenance as surely as blood on a knife blade.
    The Colonel’s intense, slow movements reminded the Consul of an Earth-bred jaguar he had seen in a private seedship zoo on Lusus many years before. Kassad’s voice was soft but the Consul did not fail to notice that even the Colonel’s silences commanded attention.
    Most of the long table was empty, the group clustered at one end.Across from Fedmahn Kassad sat a man introduced as the poet Martin Silenus.
    Silenus appeared to be quite the opposite of the military man across from him. Where Kassad was lean and tall, Martin Silenus was short and visibly out of shape. Countering Kassad’s stone-cut features, the poet’s face was as mobile and expressive as an Earth primate’s. His voice was a loud, profane rasp. There was something, thought the Consul, almost pleasantly demonic about Martin Silenus, with his ruddy cheeks, broad mouth, pitched eyebrows, sharp ears, and constantly moving hands sporting fingers long enough to serve a concert pianist. Or a strangler. The poet’s silver hair had been cropped into rough-hewn bangs.
    Martin Silenus seemed to be in his late fifties, but the Consul noticed the telltale blue tinge to throat and palms and suspected that the man had been through more than a few Poulsen treatments. Silenus’s true age might be anywhere from ninety to a hundred and fifty standard years. If he were close to the latter age, the Consul knew, the odds were that the poet was quite mad.
    As boisterous and animated as Martin Silenus seemed upon first encounter, so the next guest at the table exuded an immediate and equally impressive sense of intelligent reticence. Sol Weintraub looked up upon introduction and the Consul noted the short gray beard, lined forehead, and sad, luminous eyes of the well-known scholar. The Consul had heard tales of the Wandering Jew and his hopeless quest, but he was shocked to realize that the old man now held the infant in his arms—his daughter Rachel, no more than a few weeks old. The Consul looked away.
    The sixth pilgrim and only woman at the table was Brawne Lamia. When introduced, the detective stared at the Consul with such intensity that he could feel the pressure of her gaze even after she looked away.
    A former citizen of the 1.3-g world of Lusus, Brawne Lamia was no taller than the poet two chairs to her right, but even her loose corduroy shipsuit did not conceal the heavy layers of muscle on her compact form. Black curls reached to her shoulders, her eyebrows were two dark lines dabbed horizontally across a wide brow, and her nose was solid and sharp, intensifying the aquiline quality of herstare.