Chapter 32 30

Sol.Wen Chaobo dreamed of the nightmare he had been having since the day Lei Qiu contracted Merlin's disease. He was walking in a large building, pillars the size of mahogany stretched straight into the dark high place, and red lights shot down from the high place one by one.There was the sound of a great fire, and all the world was burning.In front of him lighted two ovals of the darkest crimson. Sol recognized the place, he knew he'd find an altar up ahead, and Rachel lay on top of it. Rachel, who was in her twenties, was unconscious and the voice would sound, making demands. Sol stopped on the low balcony, looking down at the familiar scene.His daughter, the woman he had said goodbye to Shari when she left home for her post-grad work in faraway Hyperion, lay naked on a broad slab of stone above everything else, A pair of blood-red eyeballs of Demon God Jing floated.A long scimitar made of sharpened bone was placed on the altar, and then the voice sounded:

Sol!Take your daughter, your only daughter Rachel, your love, to a place I have designated in Hyperion, and burn her as a sacrifice. Thor's hands trembled with rage and sorrow, and he tore his hair, and shouted into the darkness, repeating what he had answered to the voice before: There will be no more sacrificial offerings, neither children nor parents will, there will be no more sacrifices.The time of obedience and atonement is past.Help us like a friend, or fuck off! In previous dreams, the words would have brought wind and loneliness, the sound of terrible footsteps far away in the dark.But this time the dream continued, the altar shook, and suddenly it was empty, leaving only the bone knife.The pair of red eyeballs are still floating high, two fiery red rubies, as big as a world.

Listen, Sol, said the voice, now at a different volume, no longer booming from above, but whispering almost in his ear.The future of mankind depends on your choices.Would you have given Rachel for love if not for obedience? Just when Sol was still trying to find something to say, he had already heard the answer in his heart, and there would be no more sacrifices.Not just today, not any other day.For the love of God, and the long search for God, human beings have suffered enough, and he thought that for so many centuries, his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complained, quarreled, and condemned the injustice of various things, But it always always comes back to obedience at all costs.How many generations have died in the furnace of hatred, and future generations are also frightened by the cold flames of radiation and new hatred.

Not this time, not ever. Say yes, Daddy. Thor was taken aback when a hand touched his.His daughter, Rachel, stood next to him, neither a baby nor an adult, but an eight-year-old girl he'd known twice before, once growing up and once Rachel getting younger because of Merlin's disease. Light brown hair pulled back in a braid, small figure in denim dress and sneakers. Sol held her hand and held it as tightly as he knew it would not hurt her, and felt her hold his hand back. his daughter. Say yes, Daddy. Sol solves all of Abraham's obedience problems in the face of a God who has become malevolent.In the relationship between humans and their gods, obedience is no longer infinite, but what about the capriciousness of God when that child chooses to be a sacrifice?

Saul knelt beside his daughter and held out his hands.Rachel. She hugged him as tightly as he remembered countless hugs, her chin resting on his shoulders, her arms straining with intense love.She whispered in his ear: Please, Daddy, we must agree. Saul continued to hold her close, feeling her thin arms around him and her warm cheek against his.He was crying silently, feeling his cheeks wet, the tears still trickling down his short beard, but he wouldn't let her go even for the second it took him to wipe them away. I love you, Daddy.Rachel said softly. He stood up and wiped his face with the back of his hand.Still holding Rachel's hand tightly in his left, he began to walk down the long stairs with her, towards the altar.

Saul woke up with a feeling of falling, and reached out to grab the child.She was sleeping on his chest, small fists clenched, thumbs in mouth, but when he woke up and sat up, she woke up, crying and arching instinctively like a frightened newborn .Thor stood up, let the cloak and blanket fall around, and hugged Rachel tightly in his arms. It was dawn, almost noon in fact.While they slept, the night passed and the sunlight crept into the valley and over the time tombs.The sphinx sat above them like a carnivorous beast, its powerful forelegs stretching either side of the ladder on which they slept.

Rachel was moaning, her face crumpled with shock, hunger, and feeling the fear in her father's heart.Thor stood in the strong sunlight and shook her.Then went to the top step of the Sphinx Ladder, changed her diaper, warmed one of the last few packets of milk, fed it to her, let the crying become a soft sucking sound, and then patted her back to let her go. She hiccupped, and then walked around holding her, waiting for her to sink into a shallow sleep again. Her birthday was less than ten hours away.There were less than ten hours before sunset, and his daughter's life was only minutes after that.It wasn't the first time that Thor wanted the time tomb to be a huge glass building, a symbol of the universe and the gods who made it work, so that Thor would throw stones at this place, and beat everything to pieces.

He tried to recall his dream, but the warmth and reassurance of the dream were shattered in the harsh light of the Hyperion sun.He only remembered the promise Rachel whispered.The thought of sacrificing her to the Thorn God made Thor's stomach ache with terror.It doesn't matter, he said to the baby writhing and sighing before going back to sweet sleep: It doesn't matter, child.The consul's spaceship will be here soon, the spaceship will arrive any moment. At noon, the consul's boat did not come.In the middle of the afternoon, the consul's boat hadn't arrived yet.Sol walked up and down the valley, calling for the missing, and Rachel woke up singing some half-forgotten song, humming a lullaby to lull her back to sleep.His daughter was so small and light; six pounds and three ounces at birth, nineteen inches long, and he remembered laughing at the antique units of measure in that antique house on Barnard's Star.

Towards dusk he awoke from half-awake in the shadow of the outstretched claws of the sphinx.He stood up, and Rachel woke up in his arms.A spaceship sails across the deep blue sky. coming!he yelled, and Rachel squirmed in his arms, as if to respond. A blue fusion flame shone with the unique glare of a spaceship in the atmosphere.Thor jumped up and down, relieved for the first time in days.He screamed and danced, making Rachel cry in worry.Thor stopped and lifted her up high, knowing that her eyes could not see clearly, but wanted her to see the beauty of the descending spaceship, as it swept across the distant mountains and towards the high desert. landed down.

He did it!Thor cried: Here he comes, the spaceship will Three heavy bangs echoed into the valley almost simultaneously; the first two were sonic booms from the spaceship's footprint as it slowed down.The third sound is the sound of the ship blowing up. Thor stared as the shining point at the tip of the long fusion tail suddenly brightened like the sun, then expanded into a cloud of fire and boiling gas, and then turned into more than ten thousand burning fragments rolling towards the desert in the distance.He blinked to erase the afterimage on his retina, Rachel was still crying. My God, Sol whispered: My God.The spaceship was undoubtedly completely destroyed, and the subsequent series of explosions vibrated waves of air, even as far as thirty kilometers away, and the fragments fell one after another, trailing black smoke and flames, falling towards the desert, High mountains and the sea of ​​grass beyond.OMG.

Thor sat on the warm sand.He was too exhausted to cry, too empty to do anything but rock his baby until her crying stopped. Ten minutes later, Thor looked up and saw two more fusion tails streaking across the sky, this time heading south from the zenith, one of them exploded so far away that he couldn't hear the sound, and the other disappeared. Behind the cliffs to the south, beyond the Horse Cellar Mountains. Maybe it wasn't the Consul's ship, Thor whispered. Maybe it was an Ouster invasion, and maybe the Consul's ship came to rescue us. But by the end of the afternoon, the spaceship still hadn't come.By the time the light of Hyperion's little sun shone on the cliff and the shadow had reached Sol standing on the top step of the Sphinx, the spaceship hadn't arrived yet.When the entire valley was shrouded in shadow, the spaceship still hadn't arrived. Rachel was born within less than thirty minutes from this second.Sol checked her diaper and found it dry.He feeds her with the last packet of milk.As she nursed, she looked at him with her large black eyes, which seemed to search his face.Sol thought of the first few minutes he had held her, when Sari was resting under a warm blanket; the little baby's eyes had been fixed on him, with the same questioning wonder at discovering such a world. The night wind blew the clouds quickly over the valley, and there was a rumbling sound from the southwest, at first like distant thunder, and then a sad barrage of shelling, probably from a nuclear or electric bomb five hundred kilometers to the south. pulp explosion.Thor searched the sky between the low clouds and saw several bright meteors flying overhead: probably missiles or space landing craft, whatever would bring death to Hyperion. Sol ignored it.He sang softly to Rachel and made her finish her milk.He had come to the mouth of the valley, and now he was walking slowly back to the Sphinx.The chronographs had never been so bright, they flickered in waves, like neon lights glowing brightly under the influence of electrons.Overhead, the last rays of the setting sun turned even the low clouds into a flaming ceiling. It was less than three minutes before the final celebration of Rachel's birth.Even if the consul's spaceship arrived now, Thor knew he wouldn't have time to board it, or send his child to sleep in frozen fugue. He hadn't wanted to. Thor slowly climbed up the steps of the Sphinx, knowing that Rachel had walked this path twenty-six years ago in standard time, but he never thought about the fate waiting in that dark cave. He stopped at the top level and took a deep breath.The sun's light was so bright that it filled the sky and illuminated the wings and upper half of the Sphinx.The time tomb seemed to release stored light, like the stones in the desert of Hebron, the wild place where Thor had wandered years ago seeking enlightenment and finding only sadness.The air vibrates in the light, and the wind blows harder and harder, blowing the sand across the valley floor and then down. Saul got down on one knee on the top step and pulled the blanket off Rachel's body, leaving only the soft cotton newborn clothes, which were actually a piece of cloth wrapped around the baby. Rachel writhed in his hands, her face purple and slippery, her hands small and red from the constant opening and closing.Sol recalled how the baby looked like when the doctor gave him to him.He had looked at his newborn daughter as he did now, and laid her on Sari's belly so the mother could see. Ah, my God, Thor whispered, kneeling the other leg too, and now he was really kneeling. The whole valley was shaking, like an earthquake, and Saul vaguely heard the sound of explosions in the far south continuing to ring.But what worried him even more now was the terrible light from the Sphinx.Thor's shadow leaped fifty meters behind him as the tomb glowed throbbingly, descending the stairs and stretching across the valley floor.Out of the corner of his eye Thor caught glimpses of other time mounds, equally bright like the last few seconds of a gigantic, eerie reactor before it melted down. The entrance to the Sphinx glowed blue, then purple, then horribly white, and behind the Sphinx, on the rock face of the plateau above Tokatsuka Valley, an impossible tree appeared tremblingly, massive. The tall trunks and sharp steel branches reached into the shining clouds and stretched upwards.Sol took a quick look at the three-meter spines and the hideous fruit on them, and then he turned his eyes back to the entrance of the Sphinx. There is the howling of the wind and the rolling of thunder.Thousands of motes of dust blown like a curtain of dried blood hang in the hideous light from the Tombs of Time.Many voices shouted, and many more screamed in unison. Sol paid no attention to it all, his eyes fixed only on his daughter's face, and the shadow behind her that had covered the glowing entrance. The Thorn Demon God appeared.The monster had to bend down so that its three-meter-high body and steel blades would not touch the lintel on top, and walked up to the mouth of the sphinx, half creature, half statue, like a nightmare Deliberately walked slowly. The fading light of the sky flickered on the shell of that thing, flowed down the curved breastplate to the steel spines there, flickered on the razor-sharp fingers and the knives protruding from every joint.Saul hugged Rachel tightly to his chest, staring at the pair of compound eyes that looked like the eyes of the Thorn Demon God's red furnace.The afterglow of the setting sun sharpened into the blood-red glow of Thor's recurring dreams. Jing Demon God's head turned slightly, smoothly, ninety degrees to the right and ninety degrees to the left, the monster seemed to be observing his territory. Jing Demon God took three steps forward and stood less than two meters away from Thor.The four arms of the thing twisted and stretched upwards, and the fingers opened with steel knives. Saul hugged Rachel tightly in front of him.Her skin was moist, her little face was purple and blotchy from the exertion of giving birth, and with only a few seconds left, her eyes moved separately, as if to focus on Sol's face. (Say okay, Daddy.) Sol remembered the dream. The Thorn Demon God's head was lowered until the blood-red eyes under the terrible lids were fixed on Thor and his child.The quick silver jaw parted slightly, revealing rows of steel teeth.Four hands stretched forward, metal palms up, and stopped half a meter from Thor's face. (Say okay, Daddy.) Sol remembers that dream, remembers his daughter's hug, knows that in the end when all the rest is dust we can take it with us to the grave, only the ones we have for the ones we love Loyalty.Vows True vows rest in that love. Thor picked up his newborn and dying child, only seconds old, now breathing her first and last, shrinking child, and handed her over to the Thorn Demon God. The loss of her little weight made Thor feel dizzy. Jing Demon God lifted Lei Qiu, stepped back, and was wrapped in light. Behind the sphinx, the thorn tree ceased to tremble, and entered the present with terrifying clarity. Sol stepped forward, stretching out his hands pleadingly, and the Thorn Demon God retreated into the light and disappeared.The continuous explosions set off pressure waves and knocked Saul to his knees. Behind him, around him, all the tombs were opening.