The night and storm passed. Another stormfront raced ahead of the
approaching dawn. Gymnosperms two hundred meters tall bent and whipped
before the coming torrent. Just before first light, the Consul's ebony
spaceship rose on a tail of blue plasma and punched through thickening
clouds as it climbed toward space and rendezvous.
ONE
The Consul awoke with the peculiar headache, dry throat, and sense of
having forgotten a thousand dreams which only periods in cryogenic fugue
could bring. He blinked, sat upright on a low couch, and groggily
pushed away the last sensor tapes clinging to his skin. There were two
very short crew clones and one very tall, hooded Templar with him in the
windowless ovoid of a room. One of the clones offered the Consul the
traditional post-thaw glass of orange juice. He accepted it and drank
greedily.
'The Tree is two light-minutes and five hours of travel from Hyperion,'
said the Templar, and the Consul realized that he was being addressed by
Het Masteen, captain of the Templar treeship and True Voice of the Tree.
The Consul vaguely realized that it was a great honor to be awakened by
the Captain, but he was too groggy and disoriented from fugue to
appreciate it.
'The others have been awake for some hours,' said Het Masteen and
gestured for the clones to leave them.
'They have assembled on the foremost dining platform."
'Hhrghn,' said the Consul and took a drink. He cleared his throat and
tried again. 'Thank you, Het Masteen,' he managed. Looking around at
the egg-shaped room with its carpet of dark grass, translucent walls,
and support ribs of continuous, curved weirwood, the Consul realized
that he must be in one of the smaller environment pods. Closing his
eyes, he tried to recall his memories of rendezvous just before the
Templar ship went quantum.
The Consul remembered his first glimpse of the kilometer-long treeship
as he closed for rendezvous, the treeship's details blurred by the
redundant machine and
erg-generated containment fields which surrounded it like a spherical
mist, but its leafy bulk clearly ablaze with thousands of lights which
shone softly through leaves and thin-walled environment pods, or along
countless platforms, bridges, command decks, stairways, and bowers.
Around the base of the treeship, engineering and cargo spheres clustered
like oversized galls while blue and violet drive streamers trailed
behind like ten-kilometer-long roots.
'The others await,' Her Masteen said softly and nodded toward low
cushions where the Consul's luggage lay ready to open upon his command.
The Templar gazed thoughtfully at the weirwood rafters while the Consul
dressed in semiformal evening wear of loose black trousers, polished
