The Fall of Hyperion

One

On the day the armada went off to war, on the last day of life as we knew it, I was invited to a party. There were parties everywhere that evening, on More than a hundred and fifty worlds in the Web, but this was the only party that mattered.

I signified acceptance via the datasphere, checked to make sure that my finest formal jacket was clean, took my time bathing and shaving, dressed with meticulous care, and used the one-time diskey in the invitation chip to farcast from Esperance to Tau Ceti Center at the appointed time.

It was evening in this hemisphere of TC2, and a low, rich light illuminated the hills and vales of Deer Park, the gray towers of the Administration complex far to the south, the weeping willows and radiant femfire which lined the banks of River Tethys, and the white colonnades of Government House itself. Thousands of guests were arriving, but security personnel greeted each of us, checked our invitation codes against DNA patterns, and showed the way to bar and buffet with a graceful gesture of arm and hand.

“M. Joseph Severn?” the guide confirmed politely.

“Yes,” I lied. It was now my name but never my identity.

“CEO Gladstone still wishes to see you later in the evening. You will be notified when she is free for the appointment.”

“Very good.”

“If you desire anything in the way of refreshment or entertainment that is not set out, merely speak your wish aloud and the grounds monitors will seek to provide it.”

I nodded, smiled, and left the guide behind. Before I had strolled a dozen steps, he had turned to the next guests alighting from the terminex platform.

From my vantage point on a low knoll, I could see several thousand guests milling across several hundred acres of manicured lawn, many of them wandering among forests of topiary. Above the stretch of grass where I stood, its broad sweep already shaded by the line of trees along the river, lay the formal gardens, and beyond them rose the imposing bulk of Government House. A band was playing on the distant patio, and hidden speakers carried the sound to the farthest reaches of Deer Park. A constant line of EMVs spiralled down from a farcaster portal far above. For a few seconds I watched their brightly clad passengers disembark at the platform near the pedestrian terminex. I was fascinated by the variety of aircraft; evening light glinted not only on the shells of the standard Vikkens and Altz and Sumatsos, but also on the rococo decks of levitation barges and the metal hulls of antique skimmers which had been quaint when Old Earth still existed.

I wandered down the long, gradual slope to the River Tethys, past the dock where an incredible assortment of river craft disgorged their passengers. The Tethys was the only webwide river, flowing past its permanent farcaster portals through sections of More than two hundred worlds and moons, and the folk who lived along its banks were some of the wealthiest in the Hegemony. The vehicles on the river showed this: great, crenulated cruisers, canvas-laden barks, and five-tiered barges, many showing signs of being equipped with levitation gear; elaborate houseboats, obviously fitted with their own farcastcrs; small, motile isles imported from the oceans of Maui-Covenant; sporty pre-Hegira speedboats and submersibles; an assortment of hand-carved nautical EMVs from Renaissance Vector; and a few contemporary go-everywhere yachts, their outlines hidden by the seamless reflective ovoid surfaces of containment fields.

The guests who alighted from these craft were no less flamboyant and impressive than their vehicles: personal styles ranged from pre—

Hegira conservative evening wear on bodies obviously never touched by Poulsen treatments to this weeks highest fashion from TC2 draped on figures moulded by the Web’s most famous ARNists. Then I moved on, pausing at a long table just long enough to fill my plate with roast beef, salad, sky squid filet, Parvati curry, and fresh-baked bread.

The low evening light had faded to twilight by the time I found a place to sit near the gardens, and the stars were coming out. The lights of the nearby city and Administration Complex had been dimmed for tonight’s viewing of the armada, and Tau Ceti Center’s night sky was More clear than it had been for centuries.

A woman near me glanced over and smiled. “I’m sure that we’ve met before.”

I smiled back, sure that we had not. She was very attractive, perhaps twice my age, in her late fifties, standard, but looking younger than my own twenty-six years, thanks to money and Poulsen. Her skin was so fair that it looked almost translucent. Her hair was done in a rising braid. Her breasts, more revealed than hidden by the wispwear gown, were flawless. Her eyes were cruel.

“Perhaps we have,” I said, “although it seems unlikely. My name is Joseph Severn.”

“Of course,” she said. “You’re an artist!”

I was not an artist. I was… had been… a poet. But the Severn identity, which I had inhabited since my real persona’s death and birth a year before, stated that I was an artist. It was in my All Thing file.

“I remembered,” laughed the lady. She lied. She had used her expensive comlog implants to access the datasphere.

I did not need to access… a clumsy, redundant word which I despised despite its antiquity. I mentally closed my eyes and was in the datasphere, sliding past the superficial All Thing barriers, slipping beneath the waves of surface data, and following the glowing strand of her access umbilical far into the darkened depths of “secure” information flow.

“My name is Diana Philomel,” she said. “My husband is sector transport administrator for Sol Draconi Septem.”

I nodded and took the hand she offered. She had said nothing about the fact that her husband had been head goon for the mould-scrubbers union on Heaven’s Gate before political patronage had promoted him to Sol Draconi… or that her name once had been Dinee Teats, former crib doxie and hopstop hostess to lungpipe proxies in the Mid-sump Barrens… or that she had been arrested twice for Flashback abuse, the second time seriously injuring a halfway house medic… or that she had poisoned her half-brother when she was nine, after he had threatened to tell her stepfather that she was seeing a Mudflat miner named…

“Pleased to meet you, M. Philomel,” I said. Her hand was warm.

She held the handshake an instant too long.

“Isn’t it exciting?” she breathed.

“What’s that?”

She made an expansive gesture that included the night, the glow-globes just coming on, the gardens, and the crowds. “Oh, the party, the war, everything,” she said.

I smiled, nodded, and tasted the roast beef. It was rare and quite good, but gave the salty hint of the Lusus clone vats. The squid seemed authentic. Stewards had come by offering champagne, and I tried mine. It was inferior. Quality wine, Scotch, and coffee had been the three irreplaceable commodities after the death of Old Earth. “Do you think the war is necessary?” I asked.

“Goddamn right it’s necessary.” Diana Philomel had opened her mouth, but it was her husband who answered. He had come up from behind and now took a seat on the faux log where we dined. He was a big man, at least a foot and a half taller than I. But then, I am short.

My memory tells me that I once wrote a verse ridiculing myself as “…

Mr. John Keats, five feet high,” although I am five feet one, slightly short when Napoleon and Wellington were alive and the average height for men was five feet six, ridiculously short now that men from average worlds range from six feet tall to almost seven. I obviously did not have the musculature or frame to claim I had come from a high-g world, so to all eyes I was merely short. (I report my thoughts above in the units in which I think… of all the mental changes since my rebirth into the Web, thinking in metric is by far the hardest. Sometimes I refuse to try.)

“Why is the war necessary?” I asked Hermund Philomel, Diana’s husband.

“Because they goddamn asked for it,” growled the big man. He was a molar grinder and a cheek-muscle flexer. He had almost no neck and a subcutaneous beard that obviously defied depilatory, blade, and shaver. His hands were half again as large as mine and many times More powerful.

“I sec,” I said.

“The goddamn Ousters goddamn asked for it,” he repeated, reviewing the high points of his argument for me. “They fucked with us on Bressia and now they’re fucking with us on… in… whatsis…”

“Hyperion system,” said his wife, her eyes never leaving mine.

“Yeah,” said her lord and husband, “Hyperion system. They fucked with us, and now we’ve got to go out there and show them that the Hegemony isn’t going to stand for it. Understand?”

Memory told me that as a boy I had been sent off to John Clarke’s academy at Enfield and that there had been More than a few small-brained, ham-fisted bullies like this there. When I first arrived, I avoided them or placated them. After my mother died, after the world changed, I went after them with rocks in my small fists and rose from the ground to swing again, even after they had bloodied my nose and loosened my teeth with their blows.

“I understand,” I said softly. My plate was empty. I raised the last of my bad champagne to toast Diana Philomel.

“Draw me,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Draw me, M. Severn. You’re an artist.”

“A painter,” I said, making a helpless gesture with an empty hand.

“I’m afraid I have no stylus.”

Diana Philomel reached into her husband’s tunic pocket and handed me a light pen. “Draw me. Please.”

I drew her. The portrait took shape in the air between us, lines rising and falling and turning back on themselves like neon filaments in a wire sculpture. A small crowd gathered to watch. Mild applause rippled when I finished. The drawing was not bad. It caught the lady’s long, voluptuous curve of neck, high braid bridge of hair, prominent cheekbones… even the slight, ambiguous glint of eye. It was as good as I could do after the RNA medication and lessons had prepared me for the persona. The real Joseph Severn could do better… had done better. I remember him sketching me as I lay dying.

M. Diana Philomel beamed approval. M. Hermund Philomel glowered.

A shout went up. “There they are!”

The crowd murmured, gasped, and hushed. Glow-globes and garden lights dimmed and went off. Thousands of guests raised their eyes to the heavens. I erased the drawing and tucked the light pen back in Hermund’s tunic.

“It’s the armada,” said a distinguished-looking older man in FORCE dress black. He lifted his drink to point something out to his young female companion. “They’ve just opened the portal. The scouts will come through first, then the torchship escorts.”

The FORCE military farcaster portal was not visible from our vantage point; even in space, I imagine it would look like nothing More than a rectangular aberration in the starfield. But the fusion tails of the scoutships were certainly visible—first as a score of fireflies or radiant gossamers, then as blazing comets as they ignited their main drives and swept out through Tau Ceti System’s cislunar traffic region. Another cumulative gasp went up as the torchships farcast into existence, their firetails a hundred times longer than the scouts’. TC’s night sky was scarred from zenith to horizon with gold-red streaks.

Somewhere the applause began, and within seconds the fields and lawns and formal gardens of Government House’s Deer Park were filled with riotous applause and raucous cheering as the well-dressed crowd of billionaires and government officials and members of noble houses from a hundred worlds forgot everything except a jingoism and war lust awakened now after More than a century and a half of dormancy.

I did not applaud. Ignored by those around me, I finished my toast—not to Lady Philomel now, but to the enduring stupidity of my race—and downed the last of the champagne. It was flat.

Above, the More important ships of the flotilla had translated in-system. I knew from the briefest touch of the datasphere—its surface now agitated with surges of information until it resembled a storm-tossed sea—that the main line of the FORCE:space armada consisted of More than a hundred capital spinships: matte-black attack carriers, looking like thrown spears, with their launch-arms lashed down; Three—

C command ships, as beautiful and awkward as meteors made of black crystal; bulbous destroyers resembling the overgrown torchships they were; perimeter defense pickets, More energy than matter, their massive containment shields now set to total reflection—brilliant mirrors reflecting Tau Ceti and the hundreds of flame trails around them; fast cruisers, moving like sharks among the slower schools of ships; lumbering troop transports carrying thousands of FORCE:Marines in their zero-g holds; and scores of support ships—frigates; fast attack fighters; torpedo ALRs; fatline relay pickets; and the farcaster JumpShips themselves, massive dodecahedrons with their fairyland arrays of antennae and probes.

All around the fleet, kept at a safe distance by traffic control, flitted the yachts and sunjammers and private in-system ships, their sails catching sunlight and reflecting the glory of the armada.

The guests on the Government House grounds cheered and applauded.

The gentleman in FORCE black was weeping silently.

Nearby, concealed cameras and wideband imagers carried the moment to every world in the Web and—via fatline—to scores of worlds which were not.

I shook my head and remained seated.

“M. Severn?” A security guard stood over me.

“Yes?”

She nodded toward the executive mansion. “CEO Gladstone will sec you now.”

Two

Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written. Meina Gladstone was just such a leader for our Final Age, although none then could have dreamed that there would be no one but me to write the true history of her and her time.

Gladstone had been compared to the classical figure of Abraham Lincoln so many times that when I was finally ushered into her presence that night of the armada party, I was half surprised not to find her in a black frock coat and stovepipe hat. The CEO of the Senate and leader of a government serving a hundred and thirty billion people was wearing a gray suit of soft wool, trousers and tunic top ornamented only by the slightest hint of red cord piping at seems and cuffs. I did not think she looked like Abraham Lincoln… nor like Alvarez-Temp, the second most common hero of antiquity cited as her Doppelganger by the press.

I thought that she looked like an old lady.

Meina Gladstone was tall and thin, but her countenance was More aquiline than Lincolnesque, with her blunt beak of a nose; sharp cheekbones; the wide, expressive mouth with thin lips; and gray hair rising in a roughly cropped wave, which did indeed resemble feathers. But to my mind, the most memorable aspect of Meina Gladstone’s appearance was her eyes: large, brown, and infinitely sad.

We were not alone. I had been led into a long, softly lighted room lined with wooden shelves holding many hundreds of printed books. A long holoframe simulating a window gave a view of the gardens. A meeting was in the process of breaking up, and a dozen men and women stood or sat in a rough half-circle that held Gladstone’s desk at its cusp.

The CEO leaned back casually on her desk, resting her weight on the front of it, her arms folded. She looked up as I entered.

“M. Severn?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for coming.” Her voice was familiar from a thousand All Thing debates, its timbre rough with age and its tone as smooth as an expensive liqueur. Her accent was famous—blending precise syntax with an almost forgotten lilt of pre-Hegira English, evidently now found only in the river-delta regions other home world of Patawpha. “Gentlemen and ladies, let me introduce M. Joseph Severn,” she said.

Several of the group nodded, obviously at a loss as to why I was there.

Gladstone made no further introductions, but I touched the datasphere to identify everyone: three cabinet members, including the Minister of Defense; two FORCE chiefs of staff; two aides to Gladstone; four senators, including the influential Senator Kolchev; and a projection of a TechnoCore Councilor known as Albedo.

“M. Severn has been invited here to bring an artist’s perspective to the proceedings,” said CEO Gladstone.

FORCE:ground General Morpurgo snorted a laugh. “An artist’s perspective7 With all due respect, CEO, what the hell docs that mean?”

Gladstone smiled. Instead of answering the General, she turned back to me. “What do you think of the passing of the armada, M. Severn?”

“It’s pretty,” I said.

General Morpurgo made a noise again. “Pretty? He looks at the greatest concentration of space-force firepower in the history of the galaxy and calls it pretty?” He turned toward another military man and shook his head.

Gladstone’s smile had not wavered. “And what of the war?” she asked me. “Do you have an opinion on our attempt to rescue Hyperion from the Ouster barbarians?”

“It’s stupid,” I said.

The room became very silent. Current real-time polling in the All Thing showed 98 percent approval of CEO Gladstone’s decision to fight rather than cede the colonial world of Hyperion to the Ousters. Glad-stone’s political future rested on a positive outcome of the conflict. The men and women in that room had been instrumental in formulating the policy, making the decision to invade, and carrying out the logistics.

The silence stretched.

“Why is it stupid?” Gladstone asked softly.

I made a gesture with my right hand. “The Hegemony’s not been at war since its founding seven centuries ago,” I said. “It is foolish to test its basic stability this way.”

“Not at war!” shouted General Morpurgo. He gripped his knees with massive hands. “What the hell do you call the Glennon-Height Rebellion?”

“A rebellion,” I said. “A mutiny. A police action.”

Senator Kolchev showed his teeth in a smile that held no amusement.

He was from Lusus and seemed More muscle than man. “Fleet actions,” he said, “half a million dead, two FORCE divisions locked in combat for More than a year. Some police action, son.”

I said nothing.

Leigh Hunt, an older, consumptive-looking man reported to be Glad-stone’s closest aide, cleared his throat. “But what M. Severn says is interesting. Where do you see the difference between this… ah… conflict and the Glennon-Height wars, sir?”

“Glennon-Height was a former FORCE officer,” I said, aware that I was stating the obvious. “The Ousters have been an unknown quantity for centuries. The rebels’ forces were known, their potential easily gauged; the Ouster Swarms have been outside the Web since the Hegira.

Glennon-Height stayed within the Protectorate, raiding worlds no farther than two months’ time-debt from the Web; Hyperion is three years from Parvati, the closest Web staging area.”

“You think we haven’t thought of all this?” asked General Morpurgo.

“What about the Battle of Bressia? We’ve already fought the Ousters there. That was no… rebellion.”

“Quiet, please,” said Leigh Hunt. “Come on, M. Severn.”

I shrugged again. “The primary difference is that in this case we are dealing with Hyperion,” I said.

Senator Richeau, one of the women present, nodded as if I had explained myself in full. “You’re afraid of the Shrike,” she said. “Do you belong to the Church of the Final Atonement?”

“No,” I said, “I’m not a member of the Shrike Cult.”

“What are you?” demanded Morpurgo.

“An artist,” I lied.

Leigh Hunt smiled and turned to Gladstone. “I agree that we needed this perspective to sober us, CEO,” he said, gesturing toward the window and the holo images showing the still-applauding crowds, “but while our artist friend has brought up necessary points, they have all been reviewed and weighed in full.”

Senator Kolchev cleared his throat. “I hate to mention the obvious when it seems we are all intent on ignoring it, but does this… gentleman… have the proper security clearance to be present at such a discussion?”

Gladstone nodded and showed the slight smile so many caricaturists had tried to capture. “M. Severn has been commissioned by the Arts Ministry to do a series of drawings of me during the next few days or weeks. The theory is, I believe, that these will have some historical significance and may lead to a formal portrait. At any rate, M. Severn has been granted a T-level gold security clearance, and we may speak freely in front of him. Also, I appreciate his candor. Perhaps his arrival serves to suggest that our meeting has reached its conclusion. I will join you all in the War Room at 0800 hours tomorrow morning, just before the fleet translates to Hyperion space.”

The group broke up at once. General Morpurgo glowered at me as he left. Senator Kolchev. stared with some curiosity as he passed. Councilor Albedo merely faded into nothingness. Leigh Hunt was the only one besides Gladstone and me to remain behind. He made himself more comfortable by draping one leg over the arm of the priceless pre—

Hegira chair in which he sat. “Sit down,” said Hunt.

I glanced at the CEO. She had taken her seat behind the massive desk, and now she nodded. I sat in the straight-backed chair General Morpurgo had occupied. CEO Gladstone said, “Do you really think that defending Hyperion is stupid?”

“Yes.”

Gladstone stcepled her fingers and tapped at her lower lip. Behind her, the window showed the armada party continuing in silent agitation.

“If you have any hope of being reunited with your… ah… counterpart,” she said, “it would seem to be in your interest for us to carry out the Hyperion campaign.”

I said nothing. The window view shifted to show the night sky still ablaze with fusion trails.

“Did you bring drawing materials?” asked Gladstone.

I brought out the pencil and small sketchpad I had told Diana Philomel I did not have.

“Draw while we talk,” said Meina Gladstone.

I began sketching, roughing in the relaxed, almost slumped posture, and then working on the details of the face. The eyes intrigued me.

I was vaguely aware that Leigh Hunt was staring intently at me.

“Joseph Severn,” he said. “An interesting choice of names.”

I used quick, bold lines to give the sense of Gladstone’s high brow and strong nose.

“Do you know why people are leery of cybrids?” Hunt asked.

“Yes,” I said. “The Frankenstein monster syndrome. Fear of anything in human form that is not completely human. It’s the real reason androids were outlawed, I suppose.”

“Uh-huh,” agreed Hunt. “But cybrids are completely human, aren’t they?”

“Genetically they are,” I said. I found myself thinking of my mother, remembering the times I had read to her during her illness. I thought of my brother Torn. “But they are also part of the Core,” I said, “and thus fit the description of not completely human.'”

“Are you part of the Core?” asked Meina Gladstone, turning full face toward me. I started a new sketch.

“Not really,” I said. “I can travel freely through the regions they allow me in, but it is More like someone accessing the datasphere than a true Core personality’s ability.” Her face had been more interesting in three-quarters profile, but the eyes were More powerful when viewed straight on. I worked on the latticework of lines radiating from the corners of those eyes. Meina Gladstone obviously had never indulged in Poulsen treatments.

“If it were possible to keep secrets from the Core,” said Gladstone, “it would be folly to allow you free access to the councils of government.

As it is…” She dropped her hands and sat up. I nipped to a new page.

“As it is,” said Gladstone, “you have information I need. Is it true that you can read the mind of your counterpart, the first retrieval persona?”

“No,” I said. It was difficult to capture the complicated interplay of line and muscle at the corners of her mouth. I sketched in my attempt to do so, moved on to the strong chin and shaded the area beneath the underlip.

Hunt frowned and glanced at the CEO. M. Gladstone brought her fingertips together again. “Explain,” she said.

I looked up from the drawing. “I dream,” I said. “The contents of the dream appear to correspond to the events occurring around the person carrying the implant of the previous Keats persona.”

“A woman named Brawne Lamia,” said Leigh Hunt.

“Yes.”

Gladstone nodded. “So the original Keats persona, the one thought killed on Lusus, is still alive?”

I paused. “It… he… is still aware,” I said. “You know that the primary personality substrate was extracted from the Core, probably by the cybrid himself, and implanted in a Schron-loop bio-shunt carried by M. Lamia.”

“Yes, yes,” said Leigh Hunt. “But the fact is, you are in contact with the Keats persona, and through him, with the Shrike pilgrims.”

Quick, dark strokes provided a dark background to give the sketch of Gladstone More depth. “I am not actually in contact,” I said. “I dream dreams about Hyperion that your fatline broadcasts have confirmed as conforming to real-time events. I cannot communicate to the passive Keats persona, nor to its host or the other pilgrims.”

CEO Gladstone blinked. “How did you know about the fatline broadcasts?”

“The Consul told the other pilgrims about his comlog’s ability to relay through the fatline transmitter in his ship. He told them just before they descended into the valley.”

Gladstone’s tone hinted of her years as a lawyer before entering politics. “And how did the others respond to the Consul’s revelation?”

I put the pencil back in my pocket. “They knew that a spy was in their midst,” I said. “You told each of them.”

Gladstone glanced at her aide. Hunt’s expression was blank. “If you’re in touch with them,” she said, “you must know that we’ve received no message since before they left Keep Chronos to descend to the Time Tombs.”

I shook my head. “Last night’s dream ended just as they approached the valley.”

Meina Gladstone rose, paced to the window, raised a hand, and the image went black. “So you don’t know if any of them are still alive?”

“No.”

“What was their status the last time you… dreamt?”

Hunt was watching me as intensely as ever. Meina Gladstone was staring at the dark screen, her back to both of us. “All of the pilgrims were alive,” I said, “with the possible exception of Het Masteen, the True Voice of the Tree.”

“He was dead?” asked Hunt.

“He disappeared from the windwagon on the Sea of Grass two nights before, only hours after the Ouster scouts had destroyed the treeship Yggdrasill. But shortly before the pilgrims descended from Keep Chronos, they saw a robed figure crossing the sands toward the Tombs.”

“Het Masteen?” asked Gladstone.

I lifted a hand. “They assumed so. They were not sure.”

“Tell me about the others,” said the CEO.

I took a breath. I knew from the dreams that Gladstone had known at least two of the people on the last Shrike Pilgrimage; Brawne Lamia’s father had been a fellow senator, and the Hegemony Consul had been Gladstone’s personal representative in secret negotiations with the Ousters.

“Father Hoyt is in great pain,” I said. “He told the story of the cruciform. The Consul learned that Hoyt also wears one… two actually. Father Dure’s and his own.”

Gladstone nodded. “So he still carries the resurrection parasite?”

“Yes.”

“Does it bother him More as he approaches the Shrike’s lair?”

“I believe so,” I said.

“Go on.”

“The poet, Silenus, has been drunk much of the time. He is convinced that his unfinished poem predicted and determines the course of events.”

“On Hyperion?” asked Gladstone, her back still turned.

“Everywhere,” I said.

Hunt glanced at the chief executive and then looked back at me. “Is Silenus insane?”

I returned his gaze but said nothing. In truth, I did not know.

“Go on,” Gladstone said again.

“Colonel Kassad continues with his twin obsessions of finding the woman named Moneta and of killing the Shrike. He is aware that they may be one and the same.”

“Is he armed?” Gladstone’s voice was very soft.

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

“Sol Weintraub, the scholar from Barnard’s World, hopes to enter the tomb called the Sphinx as soon as—”

“Excuse me,” said Gladstone, “but is his daughter still with him?”

“Yes.”

“And how old is Rachel now?”

“Five days, I believe.” I closed my eyes to remember the previous night’s dream in greater detail. “Yes,” I said, “five days.”

“And still aging backward in time?”

“Yes.”

“Go on, M. Severn. Please tell me about Brawne Lamia and the Consul.”

“M. Lamia is carrying out the wishes of her former client… and lover,” I said. “The Keats persona felt it was necessary for him to confront the Shrike. M. Lamia is doing it in his stead.”

“M. Severn,” began Leigh Hunt, “you speak of the Keats persona' as if it had no relevance or connection to your own…”

“Later, please, Leigh,” said Meina Gladstone. She turned to look at me. “I’m curious about the Consul. Did he take his turn at telling his reason for joining the pilgrimage?”

“Yes,” I said.

Gladstone and Hunt waited.

“The Consul told them about his grandmother,” I said. “The woman called Siri who started the Maui-Covenant rebellion More than half a century ago. He told them about the death of his own family during the battle for Bressia, and he revealed his secret meetings with the Ousters.”

“Is that all?” asked Gladstone. Her brown eyes were very intense.

“No,” I said. “The Consul told them that he had been the one to trigger an Ouster device which hastened the opening of the Time Tombs.”

Hunt sat straight up, his leg dropping off the arm of the chair.

Gladstone visibly took a breath. “Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“How did the others respond to his revelation of… betrayal?” she asked.

I paused, tried to reconstruct the dream images in a more linear fashion than memory provided. “Some were outraged,” I said. “But none feels overwhelming loyalty to the Hegemony at this point. They decided to go on. I believe that each of the pilgrims feels that punishment will be dealt out by the Shrike, not by human agency.”

Hunt slammed his fist down on the arm of the chair. “If the Consul were here,” he snapped, “he’d fast discover otherwise.”

“Quiet, Leigh.” Gladstone paced back to her desk, touched some papers there. All of the comm lights were glowing impatiently. I found myself amazed that she could spend such so much time talking to me at such an hour. “Thank you, M. Severn,” she said. “I want you to be with us for the next few days. Someone will show you to your suite in the residential wing of Government House.”

I rose. “I’ll return to Esperance for my things,” I said.

“No need,” said Gladstone. “They were brought here before you had stepped off the terminex platform. Leigh will show you out.”

I nodded and followed the taller man toward the door.

“Oh, M. Severn…” called Meina Gladstone.

“Yes?”

The CEO smiled. “I did appreciate your candour earlier,” she said.

“But from this point on, let us assume you are a court artist and a court artist alone, sans opinions, sans visibility, sans mouth. Understood?”

“Understood, M. Executive,” I said.

Gladstone nodded, already turning her attention to the blinking phone lights. “Very good. Please bring your sketchbook to the meeting in the War Room at 0800 hours.”

A security guard met us in the anteroom and started to lead me toward the maze of corridors and checkpoints. Hunt called out for him to stop and strode across the wide hall, his steps echoing on the the. He touched my arm. “Make no mistake,” he said. “We know… she knows… who you are and what you are and whom you represent.”

I met his gaze and calmly extracted my arm. “That’s good,” I said, “because at this point, I am quite sure that I do not know.”

Three

Six adults and an infant in a hostile landscape. Their fire seems a small thing against the darkness falling. Above them and beyond them, the hills of the valley rise like walls while closer in, wrapped in (lie darkness of the valley itself, the huge shapes of the Tombs seem to creep closer like saurian apparitions from some antediluvian age.

Brawnc Lamia is tired and aching and very irritable. The sound of Sol Weinhaub’s baby crying sets her teeth on edge. She knows the others are also tired; none has slept More than a few hours in the past three nights, and the day just ending has been filled with tension and unresolved terrors. She sets the last piece of wood on the fire.

“There’s no More where that came from,” snaps Martin Silenus. The fire lights the poet’s satyrish features from below.

“I know it,” says Brawnc Lamia, too tired to put anger or any other energy into her voice. The firewood is from a cache carried in by the pilgrim groups of years gone by. Their three small tents are set in the area traditionally used by the pilgrims in their last night before confronting the Shrike. They are camped close to the Time Tomb called the Sphinx, and (lie black sweep of what may be a wing blots out some of the sky.

“We’ll use the lantern when this is gone,” says the Consul. The diplomat looks even More exhausted than the others. The flickering light casts a red tint over his sad features. He had dressed in diplomatic finery for the day, but now the cape and tricornc cap look as soiled and wilted as the Consul himself.

Colonel Kassad returns to the fire and slides the night visor up onto the top of his helmet. Kassad is wearing full combat gear, and the activated chameleon polymer sliows only his face, floating two meters above the ground. “Nothing,” he says. “No movement. No heat traces. No sound besides the wind.” Kassad leans the FORCE multipurpose assault riHe against a rock and sits near the others, the fibers of his impact armor deactivating into a matte black not much More visible than before.

“Do you think the Shrike will come tonight?” asks Father Hoyt. The priest has his black cloak wrapped around him and seems as much a part of the night as Colonel Kassad. The thin man’s voice is strained.

Kassad leans forward and pokes the fire with his baton. “There is no way to tell. I’ll stand watch just in case.”

Suddenly all six look up as the star-filled sky spasms with color, orange and red blossoms unfolding silently, obliterating the starfield.

“There hasn’t been much of that in the past few hours,” says Sol Weintraub, rocking his infant. Rachel has quit crying and now tries to grasp her father’s short beard. Weintraub kisses her tiny hand.

“They’re testing Hegemony defenses again,” says Kassad. Sparks rise from the prodded fire, embers floating into the sky as if seeking to join the brighter flames there.

“Who won?” asks Lamia, referring to the silent space battle which had filled the sky with violence all the night before and much of that day.

“Who fucking cares?” says Martin Silcnus. He searches through the pockets of his fur coat as if he might find a full bottle there. He does not. “Who fucking cares,” he mutters again.

“I care,” the Consul says tiredly. “If the Ousters break through, they may destroy Hyperion before we find the Shrike.”

Silenus laughs derisively. “Oh, that would be terrible, wouldn’t it?

To die before we discover death? To be killed before we are scheduled to be killed? To go out swiftly and without pain, rather than to writhe forever on the Shrike’s thoms? Oh, terrible thought, that.”

“Shut up,” says Brawne Lamia, and her voice again is without emotion but this time is not devoid of threat. She looks at the Consul. “So where is .the Shrike? Why didn’t we find it?”

The diplomat stares at the fire. “I don’t know. Why should I know?”

“Perhaps the Shrike is gone,” says Father Hoyt. “Perhaps by collapsing the anti-entropic fields you’ve freed it forever. Perhaps it’s carried its scourge elsewhere.”

The Consul shakes his head and says nothing.

“No,” says Sol Weintraub. The baby is sleeping against his shoulder.

“It will be here. I feel it.”

Brawne Lamia nods. “So do I. It’s waiting.” She had retrieved several ration units from her pack, and now she pulls heating tabs and passes the units around.

“I know that anticlimax is the warp and woof of the world,” says Silenus. “But this is fucking ridiculous. All dressed up with nowhere to die.”

Brawne Lamia glowers but says nothing, and for a while they eat in silence. The flames fade from the sky, and the densely packed stars return, but embers continue to rise as if seeking escape.

Wrapped in the dream-hazy tumble of Brawne Lamia’s thoughts twice-removed, I try to the events since last I dreamt their lives.

The pilgrims had descended into the valley before dawn, singing, their shadows thrown before them by the light from the battle a billion kilometers above. All day they had explored the Time Tombs. Each minute they expected to die. After some hours, as the sun rose and the high desert cold gave way to heat, their fear and exultation faded.

The long day was silent except for the rasp of sand, occasional shouts, and the constant, almost subliminal moan of the wind around rocks and tombs. Kassad and the Consul each had brought an instrument that measured the intensity of the anti-entropic fields, but Lamia had been the first to notice That these were not needed, that the ebb and flow of the time tides could be felt as a slight nausea overladen with a sense of dejd vu which did not fade.

Nearest to the entrance of the valley had been the Sphinx; then came the Jade Tomb, its walls translucent only in morning and evening twilight; then, less than a hundred meters farther in, rose the tomb called the Obelisk; the pilgrim path then led up the widening arroyo to the largest tomb of them all, centrally placed, the Crystal Monolith, its surface devoid of design or opening, its flat-topped roof flush with the tops of the valley walls; then came the three Cave Tombs, their entrances visible only because of the well-worn paths that led to them; and finally—almost a kilometer farther down the valley—sat the so-called Shrike Palace, its sharp flanges and outflung spires reminiscent of the spikes of the creature said to haunt this valley.

All day they had moved from tomb to tomb, none venturing off alone, the group pausing before entering those artifacts which might be entered. Sol Weintraub had been all but overcome with emotion upon seeing and entering the Sphinx, the same tomb where his daughter had contracted the Merlin sickness twenty-six years earlier. The instruments set out by her university team still sat on tripods outside the tomb, although none in the group could tell if they still functioned, carrying out their monitoring duties. The passageways in the Sphinx were as narrow and labyrinthine as Rachel’s comlog entries had suggested, the strings of glow-globes and electric lights left behind by various research groups now dark and depleted. They used hand torches and Kassad’s night visor to explore the place. There was no sign oftlie room Rachel had been in when the walls closed in on her and the sickness began. There were only vestigial remnants of the once-powerful time tides. There was no sign of the Shrike.

Each tomb had offered its moment of terror, of hopeful and dreadful anticipation, only to be replaced by an hour or More of anticlimax as dusty, empty rooms appeared just as they had to the tourists and Shrike Pilgrims of centuries past.

Eventually the day had ended in disappointment and fatigue, the shadows from the eastern valley wall drawing across the Tombs and valley like a curtain closing an unsuccessful play. The day’s heat had vanished, and the high desert cold returned quickly, borne on a wind that smelled of snow and the high reaches of the Bridle Range, twenty kilometers to the southwest. Kassad suggested that they make camp.

The Consul had shown the way to the traditional grounds where Shrike Pilgrims had waited their last night before meeting the creature they sought. The flat area near the Sphinx, showing traces of litter from research groups as well as pilgrims, pleased Sol Weintraub, who imagined his daughter had camped there. No one else objected.

Now, in full darkness with the last piece of wood burning, I sensed the six of them drawing closer… not merely to the fire’s warmth, but to each other… drawn by the fragile but tangible cords of shared experience forged during their voyage upriver on the levitation barge Benares and in their crossing to Keep Chronos. More than that, I sensed a unity More palpable than emotional bonds; it took a moment, but I soon realized that the group was connected in a microsphere of shared data and senseweb. On a world whose primitive, regional data relays had been shredded by the first hint of combat, this group had linked comlogs and biomonitors to share information and to watch over one another as best they could.

While the entry barriers were obvious and solid, I had no trouble sliding past, through, and under them, picking up the finite but numerous clues—pulse, skin temperature, cortical wave activity, access request, data inventory—which allowed me some insight into what each pilgrim was thinking, feeling, and doing. Kassad, Hoyt, and Lamia had implants, the flow of their thoughts were easiest to sense. At that second, Brawne Lamia was wondering if it had not been a mistake to seek out the Shrike; something was nagging at her, just under the surface but unrelenting in its demand to be heard. She felt as if she were ignoring some terribly important clue which held the solution to… what?

Brawne Lamia had always despised mysteries; it was one of the reasons she had left a life of some comfort and leisure to become a private investigator. But what mystery? She had all but solved the murder of her cybrid client… and lover… and had come to Hyperion to fulfill his final wish. Yet she sensed that this nagging doubt had little to do with the Shrike. What?

Lamia shook her head and poked the dying fire. Her body was strong, raised to resist Lusus’s 1.3 standard gravity, and trained to even greater strength, but she had not slept in several days and she was very, very tired. She became vaguely aware that someone was speaking.

“…just to take a shower and get some food,” says Martin Silenus.

“Perhaps use your comm unit and fatline link to see who’s winning the war.”

The Consul shakes his head. “Not yet. The ship is for an emergency.”

Silenus gestures toward the night, the Sphinx, and the rising wind.

“You think that this isn’t an emergency?”

Brawne Lamia realizes that they are talking about the Consul bringing his spacecraft here from the city of Keats. “Are you sure that the absence of alcohol isn’t the emergency you’re referring to?” she asks.

Silenus glares at her. “Would it hurt to have a drink?”

“No,” says the Consul. He rubs his eyes, and Lamia remembers that he too is addicted to alcohol. But his answer to bringing the ship here had been no. “We’ll wait until we have m.”

“What about the fatline transmitter?” says Kassad.

The Consul nods and removes the antique comlog from his small pack. The instrument had belonged to his grandmother Siri and to her grandparents before her. The Consul touches the diskey. “I can broadcast with this, but not receive.”

Sol Weintraub has set his sleeping child in the opening of the closest tent. Now he turns toward the fire. “And the last time you transmitted a message was when we arrived in the Keep?”

“Yes.”

Martin Silenus’s tone is sarcastic. “And we’re supposed to believe that… from a confessed traitor?”

“Yes.” The Consul’s voice is a distillation of pure weariness.

Kassad’s thin face floats in the darkness. His body, legs, and arms are discernible only as a blackness against the already dark background.

“But it will serve to call the ship if we need it?”

“Yes.”

Father Hoyt hugs his cloak tighter around him to keep it from flapping in the rising wind. Sand scrapes against wool and tent fabric. “Aren’t you afraid that the port authorities or FORCE will move the ship or tamper with it?” he asks the Consul.

“No.” The Consul’s head moves only slightly, as if he is too tired to shake it completely. “Our clearance pip was from Gladstone herself. Also, the Governor-General is a friend of mine… was a friend.”

The others had met the recently promoted Hegemony governor shortly after landing; to Brawne Lamia, Theo Lane had seemed a man catapulted into events too large for his talents.

“The wind’s coming up,” says Sol Weintraub. He turns his body to protect the baby from flying sand. Still squinting into the gale, the scholar says, “I wonder if Het Masteen is out there?”

“We searched everywhere,” says Father Hoyt. His voice is muffled because he has lowered his head into the folds of his cloak.

Martin Silenus laughs. “Pardon me, priest,” he says, “but you’re full of shit.” The poet stands and walks to the edge of the firelight. The wind ruffles the fur of his coat and rips his words away into the night.

“The cliff walls hold a thousand hiding places. The Crystal Monolith hides its entrance to us… but to a Templar? And besides, you saw the stairway to the labyrinth in the deepest room of the Jade Tomb.”

Hoyt looks up, squinting against the pinpricks of blowing sand. “You think he’s there? In the labyrinth?”

Silenus laughs and raises his arms. The silk of his loose blouse ripples and billows. “How the fuck should I know. Padre? All I know is that Het Masteen could be out there now, watching us, waiting to come back to claim his luggage.” The poet gestures toward the Mobius cube in the center of their small pile of gear. “Or he could be dead already.

Or worse.”

“Worse?” says Hoyt. The priest’s face has aged in the past few hours.

His eyes are sunken mirrors of pain, his smile a rictus.

Martin Silenus strides back to the dying fire. “Worse,” he says.

“He could be twisting on the Shrike’s steel tree. Where we’ll be in a few—”

Brawne Lamia rises suddenly and grasps the poet by his shirtfront.

She lifts him off the ground, shakes him, lowers him until his face is on a level with hers. “Once More,” she says softly, “and I’ll do very painful things to you. I won’t kill you, but you will wish I had.”

The poet shows his satyr’s smile. Lamia drops him and turns her back. Kassad says, “We’re tired. Everyone turn in. I’ll stand watch.”

My dreams of Lamia are mixed with Lamia’s dreams. It is not unpleasant to share a woman’s dreams, a woman’s thoughts, even those of a woman separated from me by a gulf of time and culture far greater than any imagined gap of gender. In a strange and oddly mirrorlike way, she dreamed of her dead lover, Johnny, of his too-small nose and his too-stubborn jaw, his too-long hair curling over his collar, and his eyes—those too-expressive, too-revealing, eyes that too-freely animated a face which might, except for those eyes, belong to any one of a thousand peasants born within a day’s ride of London.

The face she dreamed was mine. The voice she heard in that dream was mine. But the lovemaking she dreamed of—remembering now– was nothing that I had shared. I sought to escape her dream, if only to find my own. If I were to be a voyeur, it might as well be in the tumble of manufactured memories which passed for my own dreams.

But I was not allowed to dream my own dreams. Not yet. I suspect that I was born—and born again from my deathbed—simply to dream those dreams of my dead and distant twin.

I resigned myself, ceased my struggles to awaken, and dreamed.

Brawnc Lamia comes awake swiftly, jarringly, shaken from a pleasant dream by some sound or movement. For a long second she is disoriented; it is dark, there is a noise—not mechanical—which is louder than most sounds in the Lusus Hive where she lives; she is drunk with fatigue but knows that she has awakened after very little sleep; she is alone in a small, confined space, in something resembling an oversized body bag.

Raised on a world where enclosed places mean security from vicious air, winds, and animals, where many people suffer from agoraphobia when confronting the rare open space but few know the meaning of claustrophobia, Brawne Lamia nonetheless reacts as a claustrophobe: clawing for air, pushing aside bedroll and tent flaps in a panicked rush to escape the small cocoon of fiberplastic, crawling, pulling herself along by her hands and forearms and elbows until there is sand under her palms and sky above.

Not really sky, she realizes, suddenly seeing and remembering where she is. Sand. A blowing, raging, whirling sandstorm of particles, stinging her face like pinpricks. The campfire is out and covered with sand Sand has banked on the windward side of all three of the tents, their sides flapping, cracking like rifle shots in the wind, and dunes of new-blown sand have grown up around the camp, leaving streaks and furrows and ridges in the lee of tents and gear. No one stirs from the other tents. The tent she was sharing with Father Hoyt is half-collapsed, all but buried by the rising dunes.

Hoyr.

It had been his absence which awakened her. Even in her dreams, some part of her consciousness had been aware of the soft breathing and almost indistinguishable moans from the sleeping priest as he wrestled with his pain. Sometime in the past half hour, he had left. Probably not More than a few minutes before; Brawne Lamia knew that even as she had dreamed of Johnny she had been half aware of a rustling, sliding sound above the rasp of sand and roar of the wind.

Lamia gets to her feet and shields her eyes from the sandstorm. It is very dark, the stars are occluded by high cloud and the surface storm, but a faint, almost electrical radiance fills the air and reflects from rock and dune surface. Lamia realizes that it is electrical, that the air is filled with a static which makes the curls of her hair leap and writhe in Medusalike gyrations. Static charges creep along her tunic sleeves and float over the tent shrfaces like St. Elmo’s fire. As her eyes adapt. Lamia realizes that the shifting dunes are aglow with pale fire. Forty meters to the east, the tomb called the Sphinx is a crackling, pulsing outline in the night. Waves of current move along the outflung appendages often called the wings.

Brawne Lamia looks around, sees no sign of Father Hoyt, and considers calling for help. She realizes that her voice will not be heard above the wind roar. She wonders for a second whether the priest has merely gone to one of the other tents or to the crude latrine twenty meters west, but something tells her that this is not the case. She looks at the Sphinx and—for the briefest second—seems to see the shape of a man, black cloak flapping like a falling pennant, shoulders hunched against the wind, outlined against the static glow of the tomb.

A hand falls on her shoulder.

Brawne Lamia twists away, falls into a fighting crouch, left fist extended, right hand rigid. She recognizes Kassad standing there. The Colonel is half again as tall as Lamia—and half as broad—and miniature lightning plays across his thin form as he leans closer to shout in her ear. “He went that way!” The long, black, scarecrow arm extends toward the Sphinx.

Lamia nods and shouts back, her voice almost inaudible to herself above the roar. “Shall we wake the others?” She had forgotten that Kassad was standing watch. Did the man never sleep?

Fedmahn Kassad shakes his head. His visors are up and the helmet destructured to form a hood on the back of his combat-armored coverall.

Kassad’s face looks very pale in the glow from his suit. He gestures toward the Sphinx. His multipurpose FORCE rifle is nestled in the crook of his left arm. Grenades, binocular case, and more-mysterious items are draped from hooks and web belts on his impact armor. He points again toward the Sphinx.

Lamia leans forward and shouts. “Did the Shrike take him?”

Kassad shakes his head.

“Can you see him?” She gestures toward his night visor and binoculars.

“No,” says Kassad. “The storm. Fouls up heat signatures.”

Brawne Lamia turns her back to the wind, feeling the particles striking her neck like needles from a flechette gun. She queries her comlog but it tells her only that Hoyt is alive and moving; nothing else is being transmitted on the common band. She moves until she is next to Kassad, their backs forming a wall against the gale. “Are we going to follow him?” she shouts.

Kassad shakes his head. “We can’t leave the perimeter unguarded. I left telltales, but…” He gestures toward the storm.

Brawne Lamia ducks back in the tent, tug'i on her boots, and emerges with her all-weather cape and her father’s automatic pistol. A More conventional weapon, a Gier stunner, is in the breast pocket of the cape. “I’ll go then,” she says.

At first she thinks that the Colonel has not heard her, but then she sees something in his pale eyes and knows that he has. He taps the military comlog on his wrist.

Lamia nods and makes sure that her own implant and comlog are set to the widest bandwidth. “I’ll be back,” she says and wades up the growing dune. Her pant legs glow with static discharge, and the sand seems alive with silver-white pulses of current fleeting across its variegated surface.

Twenty meters from the camp, and she can see nothing of it. Ten meters farther, and the Sphinx rises above her. There is no sign of Father Hoyt; footsteps do not survive ten seconds in the storm.

The wide entrance to the Sphinx is open, has been open as long as mankind has known of this place. Now it is a black rectangle in a faintly glowing wall. Logic suggested that Hoyt would have gone there, if only to get out of the storm, but something quite beyond logic tells her that this is not the priest’s destination.

Brawne Lamia trudges past the Sphinx, rests in its lee for several moments to wipe the sand from her face and to breathe freely again, and then she moves on, following a faint, hard-packed trail between the dunes. Ahead of her, the Jade Tomb glows a milky green in the night, its smooth curves and crests oily with an ominous glow.

Squinting, Lamia looks again and sees someone or something outlined against that glow for the most fleeting of instants. Then the figure is gone, either inside the tomb or invisible against the black semicircle of its entrance.

Lamia puts her head down and moves forward, the wind pushing and shoving at her as if hurrying her toward something important.

Four

The military briefing droned on toward midmorning. I suspect that such meetings had shared the same qualities—brisk monotone continuing like a background buzz, the stale taste of too much coffee, the pall of smoke in the air, stacks of hard copy and the cortical overlay vertigo of implant access—for many centuries. I suspect it was simpler when I was a boy; Wellington rounded up his men, those he dispassionately and accurately called “the scum of the earth,” told them nothing, and sent them off to die.

I brought my attention back to the group. We were in a large room, gray wails relieved by white rectangles of light, gray carpet, gunmetal gray horseshoe table with black diskeys and the occasional carafe of water. CEO Meina Gladstone sat at the center of the arc of table, ranking senators and cabinet ministers near her, military officers and other second-rank decision makers farther along the curve. Behind them all, not at the table, sat the inevitable clusters of aides, none of the FORCE people below the rank of colonel, and behind them—on less comfortable looking chairs—the aides to the aides.

I had no chair. With a cluster of other invited but obviously purposeless personnel, I sat on a stool near a rear corner of the room, twenty meters from the CEO and even farther from the briefing officer, a young colonel with a pointer in his hand and no hesitation whatsoever in his voice. Behind the Colonel was the gold and gray slab of a caliup template, before him the slightly raised omnisphere of the kind found in any holopit. From time to time, the caliup clouded and leaped to life; at other times the air misted with complex holos. Miniatures of these diagrams glowed on every diskey plate and hovered above some comlogs.

I sat on my stool, watched Gladstone, and drew an occasional sketch.

Awakening that morning in the Government House guest room, bright Tau Ceti sunlight streaming between peach-colored drapes which had opened automatically at my 0630 wake-up time, there was a second when I was lost, displaced, still in pursuit of Lenar Hoyt and in fear of the Shrike and Het Masteen. Then, as if some power had granted my wish to leave me to dream my own dreams, there was a minute where confusion compounded, and I sat up gasping, looking around in alarm, expecting the lemon carpet and peach-colored light to fade like the fever dream it was, leaving only the pain and phlegm and terrible hemorrhages, blood on linen, the light-filled room dissolving into the shadows of the dark apartment on the Piazza di Spagna, and looming over all, the sensitive face of Joseph Severn leaning forward, leaning forward, watching and waiting for me to die.

I showered twice, first with water and then with sonic, dressed in a new gray suit that lay set out for me on the just-made bed when I emerged from the bathroom, and set off to find the east courtyard where—a courtesy pip left near my new clothing had told me—breakfast was being served for Government House guests.

The orange juice was fresh squeezed, 'The bacon was crisp and authentic.

The newspaper said that CEO Gladstone would be addressing the Web via All Thing and media at 1030 hours Web standard. The pages were full of war news. Flat photos of the armada glowed in full color. General Morpurgo stared out grimly from page three; the paper called him “the hero of the Second Height Rebellion.” Diana Philomel glanced over toward me from a nearby table where she dined with her Neanderthal husband. Her gown was More formal this morning, dark blue and far less revealing, but a slit up the side allowed a hint of last night’s show. She kept her eyes on me as she lifted a strip of bacon with lacquered nails and took a careful bite. Hermund Philomel grunted as he read something agreeable on the folded financial pages.

“The Ouster migration cluster… commonly known as a Swarm… was detected by Hawking distortion-sensing equipment in the Camn System a little More than three standard years ago,” the young briefing officer was saying. “Immediately upon detection, FORCE 'I ask Force 42, preconfigurcd for evacuation of Hypcrion System, spun up to C-plus status from Parvati with sealed orders to create a farcaster capability within portal range of Hyperion. At the same time. Task Force 87.2 was dispatched from Solkov-Tikata Staging Area around Camn III with orders to rendezvous with the evacuation force in Hyperion System, to find the Ouster migration cluster, and to engage and destroy their military components…” Images of the armada appeared on the caliup temp and in front of the young colonel. He gestured with his pointer and a line of ruby light cut through the larger holo to illuminate one of the Three-C ships in the formation. “Task Force 87.2 is under the command of Admiral Nashita aboard the HS Heb-rides…”

“Yes, yes,” grumbled General Morpurgo, “we know all this, Yani. Cut to the quick.”

The young colonel simulated a smile, nodded imperceptibly toward the General and CEO Gladstone, and resumed in a voice a trifle less confident. “Coded fatline transmissions from IF 42 during the past seventy-two hours, standard, report pitched battles between scouting elements of the evacuation task force and forward elements of the Ouster migration cluster—”

“The Swarm,” interrupted Leigh Hunt.

“Yes,” said Yani. He turned toward the caliup, and five meters of frosted glass burned to life. To me the display was an incomprehensible maze of arcane symbols, colored vector lines, substrate codes, and FORCE acronyms which added up to total gibberish. Perhaps it made no sense to the big brass and senior politicians in the room either, but no one let on that this was the case. I began a new drawing of Gladstone, with the bulldog profile of Morpurgo in the background.

“Although first reports suggested Hawking wakes in the neighborhood of four thousand drives, this is a misleading figure,” continued the colonel named Yani. I wondered whether that was his first or last name. “As you know. Ouster… ah… Swarms can be constituted of up to ten thousand separate drive units, but the vast majority of these are small and either unarmed or of negligible military significance.

Microwave, fatline, and other emission signature evaluation suggests—”

“Excuse me,” said Meina Gladstone, her weathered voice in sharp contrast to the briefing officer’s syrupy flow, “but could you tell us how many of the Ouster ships are of military significance?”

“Ah…” said the colonel, and glanced toward his superiors.

General Morpurgo cleared his throat. “We think about six… seven hundred, tops,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

CEO Gladstone raised an eyebrow. “And the size of our battle groups?”

Morpurgo nodded toward the young colonel to stand at ease. Morpurgo answered. “Task Force 42 has about sixty ships, CEO. Task Force—”

“Task Force 42 is the evacuation group?” said Gladstone.

General Morpurgo nodded, and I thought I saw a hint of condescension in his smile. “Yes, ma’am. Task Force 87.2, the battle group, which translated in-system about an hour ago, will—”“Were sixty ships adequate to face six or seven hundred?” asked Gladstone.

Morpurgo glanced toward one of his fellow officers as if asking for patience. “Yes,” he said, “More than adequate. You have to understand, CEO, that six hundred Hawking drives may sound like a lot, but they’re nothing to worry about when they’re pushing singleships, or scouts, or one of those little five-person attack craft they call lancers. Task Force 42 consisted of almost two dozen main line spinships, including the carriers Olympus Shadow and Neptune Station. Each of these can launch More than a hundred fighters or ALRs.” Morpurgo fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a recom smokestick the size of a cigar, appeared to remember that Gladstone disapproved of them, and struck it back in his coat. He frowned. “When Task Force 87.2 completes its deployment, we’ll have More than enough firepower to deal with a dozen Swarms.” Still frowning, he nodded toward Yani to continue.

The colonel cleared his throat and gestured with his pointer toward the caliup display. “As you can see. Task Force 42 had no trouble clearing the necessary volume of space to initiate farcaster construction.

This construction was begun six weeks ago, WST, and completed yesterday at 1624 hours, standard. Initial Ouster harassing attacks were beaten off with no casualties for IF 42, and during the past forty-eight hours, a major battle has been waged between advance units of the task force and main Ouster forces. The focus of this skirmish has been here"—Yani gestured again, and a section of the caliup pulsed with blue light beyond the tip of his pointer—"twenty-nine degrees above the plane of the ecliptic, thirty AU from Hypcrion’s sun, approximately 0.35 AU from the hypothetical rim of the system’s Oort cloud.”

“Casualties?” said Leigh Hunt.

“Quite within acceptable limits for a firefight of this duration,” said the young colonel, who looked like he had never been within a light-year of hostile fire. His blond hair was carefully combed to the side and gleamed under the intense glow of the spots. “Twenty-six Hegemony fast attack fighters destroyed or missing, twelve torpedo-carrying ALRs, three torchships, the fuel transport Asquith’s Pride, and the cruiser Draconi 111.”

“How many people lost?” asked CEO Gladstone. Her voice was very quiet.

Yani glanced quickly at Morpurgo but answered the question himself.

“Around twenty-three hundred,” he said. “But rescue operations are currently being carried out, and there is some hope of finding survivors of the Draconi.” He smoothed his tunic and went on quickly. “This should be weighed against confirmed kills of at least a hundred and fifty Ouster warships. Our own raids into the migration clust– the Swarm have resulted in an additional thirty to sixty destroyed craft, including comet farms, ore-processing ships, and at least one command cluster.”

Meina Gladstone rubbed her gnarled fingers together. “Did the casualty estimate—our casualties—include the passengers and crew of the destroyed treeship Yggdrasill, which we had chartered for the evacuation?”

“No, ma’am,” Yani responded briskly. “Although there was an Ouster raid in progess at the time, our analysis shows that the Yggdrasill was not destroyed be enemy action.”

Gladstone again raised an eyebrow. “What then?”

“Sabotage, as far as we can tell at this time,” said the Colonel. He prompted another Hyperion System diagram onto the callup.

General Morpurgo glanced at his comlog and said, “Uh-uh, skip to the ground defenses, Yani. The CEO has to deliver her speech in thirty minutes.”

I completed the sketch of Gladstone and Morpurgo, stretched, and looked around for another subject. Leigh Hunt seemed a challenge, with his nondescript, almost pinched features. When I glanced back up, a holoed globe of Hyperion ceased spinning and unwound itself into a series of flattened projections: oblique equirectangular. Bonne, orthographic, rosette. Van der Grinten, Cores, interrupted Goode homolosine, gnomonic, sinusoidal, azimuthal equidistant, polyconic, hypercorrected Kuwatsi, computer-eschered, Briesemeister, Buckminster, Miller cylindrical, multicoligraphed, and satplot standard, before resolving into a standard Robinson-Baird map of Hyperion.

I smiled. That had been the most enjoyable thing I’d seen since the briefing began. Several of Gladstone’s people were shifting with impatience. They wanted at least ten minutes with the CEO before the broadcast began.

“As you know,” began the colonel, “Hyperion is Old Earth standard to nine point eight nine on the Thuron-Laumier Scale of—”

“Oh, for Chrissakes,” growled Morpurgo, “get to the troop dispositions and get it over with.”

“Yessir.” Yani swallowed and lifted his pointer. His voice was no longer confident. “As you know… I mean…” He pointed to the northernmost continent, floating like a poorly done sketch of a horse’s head and neck, terminating jaggedly where the beast’s chest and back muscles would begin. “This is Equus. It has a different official name, but everyone’s called it that since… this is Equus. The chain of islands running southeast… here and here… is called the Cat and Nine Tails. Actually, it’s an archipelago with More than a hundred… anyway, the second major continent is called Aquila, and perhaps you can see it’s shaped something like an Old Earth eagle, with the beak here… on the northwest coast… and the talons extended here, to the southwest… and at least one wing raised here, running to the northeast coast. This section is the so-called Pinion Plateau and is almost inaccessible due to the flame forests, but here… and here… to the southwest, are the main fiberplastic plantations…”

“The disposition of troops,” growled Morpurgo.

I sketched Yani. I discovered that it is impossible to convey the sheen of sweat with graphite.

“Yessir. The third continent is (Jrsus… looks a bit like a bear… but no FORCE troops landed there because it’s south polar, almost uninhabitable, although the Hyperion Self-defense Force keeps a listening post there…” Yani seemed to sense he was babbling. He drew himself up, wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand, and continued in a More composed tone. “Primary FORCE:ground installations here… here… and here.” His pointer illuminated areas near the capital of Keats, high on the neck of Equus. “FORCE:space units have secured the primary spaceport at the capital as well as secondary fields here… and here.” He touched the cities of Endymion and Port Romance, both on the continent of Aquila. “FORCE:ground units have prepared defensive installations here…” Two dozen red lights winked on; most on the neck and mane areas of Equus, but several in Aquila’s Beak and Port Romance regions. “These include elements of the Marines, as well as ground defenses, ground-to-air and ground-to-space components.

High Command expects that, unlike Bressia, there will be no battles on the planet itself, but should they attempt an invasion, we will be ready for them.”

Meina Gladstone checked her comlog. Seventeen minutes remained until her live broadcast. “What about evacuation plans?”

Yani’s regained composure crumbled. He looked in some desperation toward his superior officers.

“No evacuation,” said Admiral Singh. “It was a feint, a lure for the Ousters.”

Gladstone tapped her fingers together. “There are several million people on Hyperion, Admiral.”

“Yes,” said Singh, “and we’ll protect them, but an evacuation of even the sixty thousand or so Hegemony citizens is quite out of the question. It would be chaos if we allowed all three million into the Web. Besides, for security reasons, it is not possible.”

“The Shrike?” queried Leigh Hunt.

“Security reasons,” repeated General Morpurgo. He stood up, took the pointer from Yani. The young man stood there for a second, irresolute, seeing no place to sit or stand, and then he moved to the rear of the room near me, stood at parade rest, and stared at something near the ceiling—possibly the end of his military career.

“Task Force 87.2 is in-system,” said Morpurgo. “The Ousters have pulled back to their Swarm center, about sixty AU from Hyperion. To all intents and purposes, the system is secure. Hyperion is secure. We’re waiting for a counterattack, but we know that we can contain it. Again, to all intents and purposes, Hyperion is now part of the Web. Questions?”

There were none. Gladstone left with Leigh Hunt, a pack of senators, and her aides. The military brass gravitated to huddles, apparently as dictated by rank. Aides scattered. The few reporters allowed in the room ran to their imager crews waiting outside. The young colonel, Yani, remained at parade rest, his eyes unfocused, his face very pale.

I sat for a moment, staring at the caliup map of Hyperion. The continent Equus’s resemblance to a horse was greater at this distance.

From where I sat, I could just make out the mountains of the Bridle Range and the orange-yellow coloring of the high desert below the horse’s “eye.” There were no FORCE defensive positions marked northeast of the mountains, no symbols at all besides a tiny red glow which might have been the dead City of Poets. The Time Tombs were not marked at all. It was as if the Tombs had no military significance, no part to play in the day’s proceedings. But somehow I knew better.

Somehow I suspected that the entire war, the movement of thousands, the fate of millions—perhaps billions—depended upon the actions of six people in that unmarked stretch of orange and yellow.

I folded my sketchbook, stuffed my pencils in pockets, looked for an exit, found and used it.

Leigh Hunt met me in one of the long hallways that led to the main entrance. “You are leaving?”

I took a breath. “Aren’t I allowed to?”

Hunt smiled, if one could call that upward folding of thin lips a smile. “Of course, M. Severn. But CEO Gladstone has asked me to tell you that she would like to speak to you again this afternoon.”

“When?”

Hunt shrugged. “Any time after her speech. At your convenience.”

I nodded. Literally millions of lobbyists, job seekers, would-be biographers, business people, fans of the CEO, and potential assassins would give almost anything to have a minute with the Hegemony’s most visible leader, a few seconds with CEO Gladstone, and I could see her “at my convenience.” No one ever said the universe was sane.

I brushed past Leigh Hunt and made for the front door.

By long tradition. Government House had no public farcaster portals within its walls. It was a short walk past the main-entrance security baffles, across the garden, to the low, white building that served as press headquarters and terminex. The newsteeps were clustered around a central viewing pit, where the familiar face and voice ofLcwellyn Drake, “the voice of the All Thing,” gave background to CEO Gladstone’s speech “of vital importance to the Hegemony.” I nodded in his direction, found an unused portal, presented my universal card, and went in search of a bar.

The Grand Concourse was, once you got there, tlie one place in the Web where you could farcast for free. Every world in the Web had offered at least one of its finest urban blocks—TC2 provided twenty-three blocks—for shopping, entertainment, fine restaurants, and bars.

Especially bars.

Like River Tethys, the Grand Concourse flowed between military sized farcaster portals two hundred meters high. With wraparound, the effect was of an infinite main street, a hundred-kilometer torus of material delights. One could stand, as I did that morning, under the brilliant sun of Tau Ceti and look down the Concourse to the nighttime midway of Deneb Drei, alive with neon and holos, and catch a glimpse of the hundred-tiered Main Mall ofLusus, while knowing that beyond it lay the shadow-dappled boutiques of God’s Grove with its brick concourse and elevators to Treetops, the most expensive eatery in the Web.

I didn’t give a damn about all that. I just wanted to find a quiet bar.

TC2 bars were too filled with bureaucrats, teeps, and business types, so I caught one of the Concourse shuttles and stepped off on Sol Draconi Septem’s main drag. The gravity discouraged many—it discouraged me—but it meant that the bars were less full, and those there had come to drink.

The place I chose was a ground-level bar, almost hidden under the support pillars and service chutes to the main shopping trellis, and it was dark inside: dark walls, dark wood, dark patrons—their skin as black as mine was pale. It was a good place to drink, and I did so, starting with a double Scotch and getting More serious as I went along.

Even there I couldn’t be free of Gladstone. Far across the room, a flatscreen TV showed the CEO’s face with the blue-and-gold background she used for state broadcasts. Several of the other drinkers had gathered to watch. I heard snatches of the speech: “…to insure the safety of Hegemony citizens and… cannot be allowed to endanger the safety of the Web or our allies in… thus, I have authorized a full military response to…”

“Turn that goddamned thing down!” I was amazed to realize that it was me shouting. The patrons glowered over their shoulders, but they turned it down. I watched Gladstone’s mouth move a moment, and then I waved to the bartender for another double.

Sometime later, it might have been hours, I looked up from my drink to realize that there was someone sitting across from me in the dark booth. It took me a second, blinking, to recognize who it was in the dim light. For an instant my heart raced as I thought, Fanny, but then I blinked again and said, “Lady Philomel.”

She still wore the dark blue dress I’d seen her in at breakfast. Somehow it seemed cut lower now. Her face and shoulders seemed to glow in the near-darkness. “M. Severn,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

“I’ve come to redeem your promise.”

“Promise?” I waved the bartender over, but he did not respond. I frowned and looked at Diana Philomel. “What promise?”

“To draw me, of course. Did you forget your promise at the party?”

I snapped my fingers, but the insolent barkeep still did not deign to look my way. “I did draw you,” I said.

“Yes,” said Lady Philomel, “but not all of me.”

I sighed and drained the last of my Scotch. “Drinking,” I said.

Lady Philomel smiled. “So I see.”

I started to stand to go after the bartender, thought better of it, and sat back slowly onto the weathered wood of the bench. “Armageddon,”

I said. “They’re playing with Armageddon.” I looked at the woman carefully, squinting slightly to bring her into focus. “Do you know that word, m'lady?”

“I don’t believe he will serve you any More alcohol,” she said. “I have drinks at my place. You could have one while you draw.”

I squinted again, craftily now. I might have had a few too many Scotches, but they hadn’t impaired my awareness. “Husband,” I said.

Diana Philomel smiled again, and that too was radiant. “Spending several days at Government House,” she said, truly whispering now.

“He can’t be far from the source of power at such an important time.

Come, my vehicle is just outside.”

I don’t remember paying, but I assume I did. Or Lady Philomel did.

I don’t remember her helping me outside, but I assume that someone did. Perhaps a chauffeur. I remember a man in gray tunic and trousers, remember leaning against him.

The EMV had a bubble top, polarized from the outside but quite transparent from where we sat in deep cushions and looked out. I counted one, two portals, and then we were out and away from the Concourse and gaining altitude above blue fields under a yellow sky.

Elaborate homes, made from some ebony wood, sat on hilltops surrounded by poppy fields and bronze lakes. Renaissance Vector? It was too difficult a puzzle to work on right then, so I laid my head against the bubble and decided to rest for a moment or two. Had to be rested for Lady Philomel’s portrait… hell, hell.

The countryside passed below.

Five

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad follows Brawne Lamia and Father Hoyt through the dust storm toward the Jade Tomb. He had lied to Lamia; his night visor and sensors worked well despite the electrical discharge flickering around them. Following the two seemed the best chance for finding the Shrike. Kassad remembered the rock-lion hunts on Hebronóone tethered a goat and waited.

Data from the telltales he had set around the encampment flickers on Kassad’s tactical display and whispers through his impiant. It is a calculated risk to leave Weintraub and his daughter, Martin Silenus and the Consul sleeping there, unprotected except for the automatics and an alarm. But then, Kassad seriously doubts whether he can stop the Shrike anyway. They are all goats, tethered, waiting. It is the woman, the phantom named Moneta, whom Kassad is determined to find before he dies.

The wind has continued to rise, and now it screams around Kassad, reducing normal visibility to zero and pelting his impact armor. The dunes glow with discharge, and miniature lightning crackles around his boots and legs as he strides to keep Lamia’s heat signature in clear view.

Information flows in from her open comlog. Hoyt’s closed channels reveal only that he is alive and moving.

Kassad passes under the outstretched wing of the Sphinx, feeling the weight invisible above him, hanging there like a great boot heel. Then he turns down the valley, seeing the Jade Tomb as an absence of heat in infrared, a cold outline. Hoyt is just entering the hemispherical opening; Lamia is twenty meters behind him. Nothing else moves in the valley. The telltales from the camp, hidden by night and storm behind Kassad, reveal Sol and the baby sleeping, the Consul lying awake but unmoving, nothing else within the perimeter.

Kassad slips the safety off on his weapon and moves forward quickly, his long legs taking great strides. He would give anything at that second to have access to a spottersat, his tactical channels complete, rather than have to deal with this partial picture of a fragmented situation.

He shrugs within his impact armor and keeps moving.

Brawne Lamia almost does not make the final fifteen meters of her voyage to the Jade Tomb. The wind has risen to gale force and beyond, shoving her along so that twice she loses her footing and falls headlong into the sand. The lightning is real now, splitting the sky in great bursts that illuminate the glowing tomb ahead. Twice she tries calling Hoyt, Kassad, or the others, sure that no one could be sleeping through this back at the camp, but her comlog and implants give her only static, their widebands registering gibberish. After the second fall. Lamia gets to her knees and looks ahead; there has been no sign of Hoyt since that brief glimpse of someone moving toward the entrance.

Lamia grips her father’s automatic pistol and gets to her feet, allowing the wind to blow her the last few meters. She pauses before the entrance hemisphere.

Whether due to the storm and electrical display or something else, the Jade Tomb is glowing a bright, bilious green which tinges the dunes and makes the skin of her wrists and hands look like something from the grave. Lamia makes a final attempt to raise someone on her comlog and then enters the tomb.

Father Lenar Hoyt of the twelve-hundred-year-old Society of Jesus, resident of the New Vatican on Pacem and loyal servant of His Holiness Pope Urban XVI, is screaming obscenities.

Hoyt is lost and in great pain. The wide rooms near the entrance to the Jade Tomb have narrowed, the corridor has wound back on itself so many times, that now Father Hoyt is lost in a series of catacombs, wandering between greenly glowing walls, in a maze he does not remember from the day’s explorations or from the maps he has left behind.

The pain—pain which has been with him for years, pain which has been his companion since the tribe of the Bikura had implanted the two cruciforms, his own and Paul Dure’s—now threatens to drive him mad with its new intensity.

The corridor narrows again. Lenar Hoyt screams, no longer aware that he is doing so, no longer aware of the words he cries out—words which he has not used since childhood. He wants release. Release from the pain. Release from the burden of carrying Father Dure’s DNA, personality… Dure’s sou/… in the cross-shaped parasite on his back. And from carrying the terrible curse of his own foul resurrection in the cruciform on his chest.

But even as Hoyt screams, he knows that it was not the now-dead Bikura who had condemned him to such pain; the lost tribe of colonists, resurrected by their own cruciforms so many times that they had become idiots, mere vehicles for their own DNA and that of their parasites, had been priests also… priests of the Shrike.

Father Hoyt of the Society of Jesus has brought a via! of holy water blessed by His Holiness, a Eucharist consecrated in a Solemn High Mass, and a copy of the Church’s ancient rite of exorcism. These things are forgotten now, sealed in a Perspex bubble in a pocket of his cloak.

Hoyt stumbles against a wall and screams again. The pain is a force beyond description now, the full ampule of ultramorph he had shot only fifteen minutes earlier, helpless against it. Father Hoyt screams and claws at his clothes, ripping off the heavy cloak, the black tunic and Roman collar, pants and shirt and underclothes, until he is naked, shivering with pain and cold in the glowing corridors of the Jade Tomb and screaming obscenities into the night.

He stumbles forward again, finds an opening, and moves into a room larger than any he remembers from the day’s searches there. Bare, translucent walls rise thirty meters on each side of an empty space.

Hoyt stumbles to his hands and knees, looks down, and realizes that the floor has become almost transparent. He is staring into a vertical shaft beneath the thin membrane of floor; a shaft that drops a kilometer or More to flames. The room fills with the red-orange pulse of light from the fire so far below.

Hoyt rolls to his side and laughs. If this is some image of hell summoned up for his benefit, it is a failure. Hoyt’s view of hell is tactile; it is the pain which moves in him like jagged wires pulled through his veins and guts. Hell is also the memory of starving children in the slums of Armaghast and the smile of politicians sending boys off to die in colonial wars. Hell is the thought of the Church dying out in his lifetime, in Dure’s lifetime, the last of its believers a handful of old men and women filling only a few pews of the huge cathedrals on Pacem. Hell is the hypocrisy of saying morning Mass with the evil of the cruciform pulsating warmly, obscenely, above one’s heart.

There is a rush of hot air, and Hoyt watches as a section of floor slides back, creating a trapdoor to the shaft below. The room fills with the stench of sulfur. Hoyt laughs at the cliche, but within seconds the laughter turns to sobs. He is on his knees now, scraping with bloodied nails at the crucifonns on his chest and back. The cross-shaped welts seem to glow in the red light. Hoyt can hear the flames below.

“Hoyt!”

Still sobbing, he turns to see the woman—Lamia—framed in the doorway. She is looking past him, beyond him, and raising an antique pistol. Her eyes are very wide.

Father Hoyt feels the heat behind him, hears the roar as of a distant furnace, but above that, he suddenly hears the slide and scrape of metal on stone. Footsteps. Still clawing at the bloodied welt on his chest, Hoyt turns, his knees rubbed raw against the floor.

He sees the shadow first: ten meters of sharp angles, thorns, blades… legs like steel pipes with a rosette of scimitar blades at the knees and ankles. Then, through the pulse of hot light and black shadow, Hoyt sees the eyes. A hundred facets… a thousand… glowing red, a laser shone through twin rubies, above the collar of steel thorns and the quicksilver chest reflecting flame and shadow…

Brawne Lamia is firing her father’s pistol. The slap of the shots echo high and flat above the furnace rumble.

Father Lenar Hoyt swivels toward her, raises one hand. “No, don’t!” he screams. “It grants one wish! I have to make a…”

The Shrike, which was there—five meters away—is suddenly here, an arm’s length from Hoyt. Lamia quits firing. Hoyt looks up, sees his own reflection in the fire-burnished chrome of the thing’s carapace… sees something else in the Shrike’s eyes at that instant… and then it is gone, the Shrike is gone, and Hoyt lifts his hand slowly, touches his throat almost bemusedly, stares for a second at the cascade of red which is covering his hand, his chest, the cruciform, his belly…

He turns toward the doorway and sees Lamia still staring in terror and shock, not at the Shrike now, but at him, at Father Lenar Hoyt of the Society of Jesus, and in that instant he realizes that the pain is gone, and he opens his mouth to speak, but More, only More red comes out, a geyser of red. Hoyt glances down again, notices for the first time that he is naked, sees the blood dripping from his chin and chest, dripping and pouring to the now-dark floor, sees the blood pouring as if someone had upended a bucket of red paint, and then he sees nothing as he falls face first to the floor so far… so very far… below.

Six

Diana Philomel’s body was as perfect as cosmetic science and an ARNist’s skills could make it. I lay in bed for several minutes after awakening and admired her body: turned away from me, the classic curve of back and hip and flank offering a geometry More beautiful and powerful than anything discovered by Euclid, the two dimples visible on the lower back, just above the heart-stopping widening of milk-white derriere, soft angles intersecting, the backs of full thighs somehow More sensual and solid than any aspect of male anatomy could hope to be.

Lady Diana was asleep, or seemed to be. Our clothes lay strewn across a wide expanse of green carpet. Thick light, tinged magenta and blue, flooded broad windows, through which gray and gold treetops were visible. Large sheets of drawing paper lay scattered around, beneath, and on top of our discarded clothes. I leaned to my left, lifted a sheet of paper, and saw a hasty scribble of breasts, thighs, an arm reworked in haste, and a face with no features. Doing a life study while drunk and in the process of being seduced is never a formula for quality art.

I moaned, rolled on my back, and studied the sculptured scrollwork on the ceiling twelve feet above. If the woman beside me had been Fanny, I might never want to move. As it was, I slipped out from under the covers, found my comlog, noted that it was early morning on Tau Ceti Center—fourteen hours after my appointment with the CEO– and padded off to the bathroom in search of a hangover pill.

There were several varieties of medication to choose from in Lady Diana’s drug bin. In addition to the usual aspirin and endorphins, I saw stims, tranks. Flashback tubes, orgasm derms, shunt primers, cannabis inhalers, non-recom tobacco cigarettes, and a hundred less identifiable drugs. I found a glass and forced down two Dayafters, feeling the nausea and headache fade within seconds.

Lady Diana was awake and sitting up in bed, still nude, when I emerged. I started to smile and then saw the two men by the east doorway. Neither was her husband, although both were as large and shared the same no-neck, ham-fisted, dark-jowled style that Hermund Philomel had perfected.

In the long pageant of human history, I am sure that there has been some human male who could stand, surprised and naked, in front of two fully clothed and potentially hostile strangers, rival males as it were, without cringing, without having the urge to cover his genitals and hunch over, and without feeling totally vulnerable and at a disadvantage… but I am not that male.

I hunched over, covered my groin, backed toward the bathroom, and said, “What… who… ?”! looked toward Diana Philomel for help and saw the smile there… a smile that matched the cruelty I had first seen in her eyes.

“Get him. Quicfe’y!” demanded my erstwhile lover.

I made it to the bathroom and was reaching for the manual switch to dilate the door closed when the closer of the two men reached me, grabbed me, thrust me back into the bedroom, and threw me to his partner. Both men were from Lusus or an equally high-g world, or else they subsisted exclusively on a diet of steroids and Samson cells, for they tossed me back and forth with no effort. It didn’t matter how large they were. Except for my brief career as a school-yard fighter, my life… the memories of my life… offered few instances of violence and even fewer instances where I emerged from a scuffle the victor. One glance at the two men amusing themselves at my expense and I knew that these were the type one read about and did not quite believe in—individuals who could break bones, flatten noses, or crack kneecaps with no More compunction than I would feel about tossing away a defective stylus.

“Quickly” Diana hissed again.

I canvased the datasphere, the house’s memory, Diana’s comlog umbilical, the two goons’ tenuous connection to the information universe… and although I now knew where I was: the Philomel country estate, six hundred kilometers from the capital ofPirre in the agricultural belt of terraformed Renaissance Minor… and precisely who the goons were: Debin Farrus and Hemmit Gorma, plant security personnel for the Heaven’s Gate Scrubbers Union… I had no idea why one was sitting on me, his knee in the small of my back, while the other crushed my comlog under his heel and slipped an osmosis cuff over my wrist, up my arm…

I heard the hiss and relaxed.

“Who are you?”

“Joseph Severn.”

“Is that your real name?”

“No.” I felt the effects of the truthtalk and knew that I could confound it merely by going away, stepping back into the datasphere or retreating fully to the Core. But that would mean leaving my body to the mercy of whoever was asking the questions. I stayed there. My eyes were closed but I recognized the next voice.

“Who are you?” asked Diana Philomel.

I sighed. It was a difficult question to answer honestly. “John Keats,”

I said at last. Their silence told me that the name meant nothing to them. Why should it? I asked myself. I once predicted that it would be a name “writ in water.” Although I couldn’t move or open my eyes, I found no trouble in canvasing the datasphere, following their access vectors. The poet’s name was among eight hundred John Keatses on the list offered to them by the public file, but they didn’t seem too interested in someone nine hundred years dead.

“Who do you work for?” It was Hermund Philomel’s voice. For some reason I was mildly surprised.

“No one.”

The faint Doppler of voices changed as they talked amongst themselves.

“Can he be resisting the drug?”

“No one can resist it,” said Diana. “They can die when it’s administered, but they can’t resist it.”

“Then what’s going on?” asked Hermund. “Why would Gladstone bring a nobody into the Council on the eve of war?”

“He can hear you, you know,” said another man’s voice—one of the goons.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Diana. “He’s not going to live after the interrogation anyway.” Her voice came again, directed toward me.

“Why did the CEO invite you to the Council… John?”

“Not sure. To hear about the pilgrims, probably.”

“What pilgrims, John?”

“The Shrike Pilgrims.”

Someone else made a noise. “Hush,” said Diana Philomel. To me she said, “Are those the Shrike Pilgrims on Hyperion, John?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a pilgrimage underway now?”

“Yes.”

“And why is Gladstone asking you, John?”

“I dream them.”

There was a disgusted sound. Hermund said, “He’s crazy. Even under truthtalk he doesn’t know who he is, now he’s giving us this. Let’s get it over with and—”

“Shut up,” said Lady Diana. “Gladstone’s not crazy. She invited him, remember? John, what do you mean you dream them?”

“I dream the first Keats retrieval persona’s impressions,” I said. My voice was thick, as if I were talking in my sleep. “He hardwired himself into one of the pilgrims when they murdered his body, and now he roams their microsphere. Somehow his perceptions are my dreams.

Perhaps my actions arc his dreams, I don’t know.”

“Insane,” said Hermund.

“No, no,” said Lady Diana. Her voice was strained, almost shocked.

“John, are you a cybrid?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Christ and Allah,” said Lady Diana.

“What’s a cybrid?” said one of the goons. He had a high, almost feminine voice.

There was silence for a moment, and then Diana spoke. “Idiot. Cybrids were human remotes created by the Core. There were a few on the Advisory Council until last century, when they were outlawed.”

“Like an android or something?” said the other goon.

“Shut up,” said Hermund.

“No,” answered Diana. “Cybrids were genetically perfect, recombed from DNA going back to Old Earth. All you needed was a bone… a fragment of hair… John, can you hear me? John?”

“Yes.”

“John, you’re a cybrid… do you know who your persona template was?”

“John Keats.”

I could hear her take a deep breath. “Who is… was… John Keats?”

“A poet.”

“When did he live, John?”

“From 1795 to 1821,” I said.

“Which reckoning, John?”

“Old Earth a.d…” I said. “Pre-Hegira. Modern era—”

Hermund’s voice broke in, agitated. “John, are you… are you in contact with the TechnoCore right now?”

“Yes.”

“Can you… are you free to communicate despite the truthtalk?”

“Yes.”

“Oh fuck,” said the goon with the high voice.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” snapped Hermund.

“Just a minute More,” said Diana. “We’ve got to know…”

“Can we take him with us?” asked the deep-voiced goon.

“Idiot,” said Hermund. “If he’s alive and in touch with the dataspherc and Core… hell, he lives in the Core, his mind’s there… then he can tip Gladstone, ExecSec, FORCE, anybody”

“Shut up,” said Lady Diana. “We’ll kill him as soon as I’m finished. A few More questions. John?”

“Yes.”

“Why does Gladstone need to know what’s happening to the Shrike Pilgrims? Does it have something to do with the war with the Ousters?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Shit,” whispered Hermund. “Let’s go.”

“Quiet. John, where arc you from?”

“I’ve lived on Esperance the last ten months.”

“And before that?”

“On Earth before that.”

“Which Earth?” demanded Hermund. “New Earth? Earth Two?

Earth City? Which one?”

“Earth,” I said. Then I remembered. “Old Earth.”

“Old Earth?” said one of the goons. “This is fucked. I’m getting out of here.”

There came the frying-bacon sizzle of a weapons laser. I smelled something sweeter than frying bacon, and there was a heavy thump.

Diana Philomel said, “John, are you talking about your persona template’s life on Old Earth?”

“No.”

“You—the cybrid you—were on Old Earth?”

“Yes,” I said. “I woke from death there. In the same room on the Piazza di Spagna in which I died. Severn was not there, but Dr. dark and some of the others were…”

“He is crazy,” said Hermund. “Old Earth’s been destroyed for More than four centuries… unless cybrids can live for More than four hundred years… ?”

“No,” snapped Lady Diana. “Shut up and let me finish this. John, why did the Core… bring you back?”

“I don’t know for sure.”

“Does it have something to do with the civil war going on between the AIs?”

“Perhaps,” I said. “Probably.” She asked interesting questions.

“Which group created you? The Ultimates, Stables, or Volatiles?”

“I don’t know.”

I could hear a sigh of exasperation. “John, have you notified anyone of where you are, of what’s happening to you?”

“No,” I said. It was a sign of the lady’s less than impressive intelligence that she waited so long to pose that question.

Hermund also let out a breath. “Great,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here before…”

“John,” said Diana, “do you know why Gladstone manufactured this war with the Ousters?”

“No,” I said. “Or rather, there might be many reasons. The most probable is that it is a bargaining ploy in her dealings with the Core.”

“Why?”

“Elements in the leadership FROM of the Core are afraid of Hyper-ion,” I said. “Hyperion is an unknown variable in a galaxy where every variable has been quantified.”

“Who is afraid, John? The Ultimates, Stables, or Volatiles? Which group of AIs is afraid of Hyperion?”

“All three,” I said.

“Shit,” whispered Hermund. “Listen… John… do the Time Tombs and the Shrike have something to do with all this?”

“Yes, they have a lot to do with it.”

“How?” asked Diana.

“I don’t know. No one does.”

Hermund, or someone, hit me sharply, viciously, in the chest. “You mean the rucking Core Advisory Council hasn’t predicted the outcome of this war, these events?” Hermund growled. “Are you expecting me to believe that Gladstone and the Senate went to war without a probability prediction?”

“No,” I said. “It has been predicted for centuries.”

Diana Philomel made a noise like a child being confronted with a large mound of candy. “What has been predicted, John? Tell us everything.”

My mouth was dry. The truthtalk serum had dried up my saliva. “It predicted the war,” I said. “The identities of the pilgrims on the Shrike Pilgrimage. The betrayal of the Hegemony Consul in activating a device that will open—has opened—the Time Tombs. The emergence of the Shrike Scourge. The outcome of the war and the Scourge…”

“What is the outcome, John?” whispered the woman I had made love to a few hours earlier.

“The end of the Hegemony,” I said. “The destruction of the World-web.” I tried to lick my lips but my tongue was dry. “The end of the human race.”

“Oh, Jesus and Allah,” whispered Diana. “Is there any chance that the prediction could be in error?”

“No,” I said. “Or rather, only in the effect ofHyperion on the result.

The other variables are accounted for.”

“Kill him,” shouted Hermund Philomel. “Kill it… so we can get out of here and inform Harbrit and the others.”

“All right,” said Lady Diana. Then, a second later. “No, not the laser, you idiot. We’ll inject the lethal close of alcohol as planned. Here, hold the osmosis cuff so I can attach this drip.”

I felt a pressure on my right arm. A second later there were explosions, concussions, a shout. I smelled smoke and ionized air. A woman screamed.

“Get that cuff off him,” said Lcigh Hunt. I could see him standing there, still wearing a conservative gray suit, surrounded by Executive Security commandos in full impact armor and chameleon polymers.

A commando twice Hunt’s height nodded, shouldered his hellwhip weapon, and rushed to do Hunt’s bidding.

On one of the tactical channels, the one I had been monitoring for some time, I could see a relayed image of myself… naked, spread-eagled on the bed, the osmosis cuff on my arm and a rising bruise on my rib cage. Diana Philomel, her husband, and one of the goons lay unconscious but alive in the splinter and broken-glass rubble of the room. The other enforcer lay half in the doorway, the top part of his body looking the color and texture of a heavily grilled steak.

“Are you all right, M. Severn?” asked Lcigh Hunt, lifting my head and setting a membrane-thin oxygen mask over my mouth and nose.

“Hrrmmmggh,” I said. “Arret.” I swam to the surface of my own senses like a diver coming up too quickly from the deeps. My head I hurt. My ribs ached like hell. My eyes were not working perfectly yet, || but through the tactical channel, I could see Leigh Hunt give the small | twitch of thin lips that I knew passed for a smile from him.

“We’ll help you get dressed,” said Hunt. “Get you some coffee on the flight back. Then it’s back to Government House, M. Severn. You’re late for a meeting with the CEO.”

Seven

Space battles in movies and holies had always bored me, but Watching the real thing held a certain fascination: rather like seeing live coverage of a series of traffic accidents. Actually, the production values for reality—as had doubtless been the case for centuries—were much lower than for even a moderate-budget holo-drama. Even with the tremendous energies involved, the overwhelming reaction one had to an actual battle in space was that space was so large and humanity’s fleets and ships and dreadnoughts and whatnots were so small.

Or so I thought as I sat in the Tactical Information Center, the so-called War Room, with Gladstone and her military ganders, and watched the walls become twenty-meter holes into infinity as four massive holoframes surrounded us with in-depth imagery and the speakers filled the room with fatline transmissions: radio chatter between fighters, tactical command channels rattling away, ship-to-ship messages on wideband, lasercd channels, and secure fatline, and all the shouts, screams, cries, and obscenities of battle which predate any media besides air and the human voice.

It was a dramatization of total chaos, a functional definition of confusion, an unchorcographed dance of sad violence. It was war.

Gladstone and a handful of her people sat in the middle of all this noise and light, the War Room floating like a gray-carpeted rectangle amidst the stars and explosions, the limb of Hyperion a lapis lazuli brilliance filling half of the north holowall, the screams of dying men and women on every channel and in every ear. I was one of the handful of Gladstone’s people privileged and cursed to be there.

The CEO rotated in her high-backed chair, tapped her lower lip with steepled fingers, and turned toward her military group. “What do you think?”

The seven bemedaled men there looked at one another, and then six of them looked at General Morpurgo. He chewed on an unlighted cigar. “It’s not good,” he said. “We’re keeping them away from the farcaster site… our defenses are holding well there… but they’ve pushed far too far in-system.”

“Admiral?” asked Gladstone, inclining her head a fraction toward the tall, thin man in FORCE:space black.

Admiral Singh touched his closely trimmed beard. “General Morpurgo is correct. The campaign is not going as planned.” He nodded toward the fourth wall, where diagrams—mostly ellipsoids, ovals, and arcs—were superimposed upon a static shot of the Hyperion system.

Some of the arcs grew as we watched. The bright blue lines stood for Hegemony trajectories. The red tracks were Ouster. There were far More red lines than blue.

“Both of the attack carriers assigned to Task Force 42 have been put out of action,” said Admiral Singh. “The Olympus Shadow was destroyed with all hands and the Neptune Station was seriously damaged but is returning to the cislunar docking area with five torchships for escort.”

CEO Gladstone nodded slowly, her lip coming down to touch the top of her steepled fingers. “How many were aboard the Olympus Shadow, Admiral?”

Singh’s brown eyes were as large as the CEO’s, but did not suggest the same depths of sadness. He held her gaze for several seconds. “Forty-two hundred,” he said. “Not counting the Marine detachment of six hundred. Some of those were off-loaded at Farcaster Station Hyperion, so we do not have accurate information on how many were with the ship.”

Gladstone nodded. She looked back at General Morpurgo. “Why the sudden difficulty, General?”

Morpurgo’s face was calm, but he had all but bitten through the cigar clamped between his teeth. “More fighting units than we expected, CEO,” he said. “Plus their lancers… five-person craft, miniature torchships, really, faster and More heavily armed than our long-range fighters… they’re deadly little hornets. We’ve been destroying them by the hundred, but if one gets through, it can make a dash inside fleet defenses and wreak havoc.” Morpurgo shrugged. “More than one’s got through.”

Senator Kolchev sat across the table with eight of his colleagues.

Kolchev swivelled until he could see the tactical map. “It looks like they’re almost to Hyperion,” he said. The famous voice was hoarse.

Singh spoke up. “Remember the scale, Senator. The truth is that we still hold most of the system. Everything within ten AU of Hyperion’s star is ours. The battle was out beyond the Oort cloud, and we’ve been regrouping.”

“And those red… blobs… above the plane of the ecliptic?” asked Senator Richeau. The senator wore red herself; it had been one of her trademarks in the Senate.

Singh nodded. “An interesting stratagem,” he said. “The Swarm launched an attack of approximately three thousand lancers to complete a pincers movement against Task Force 87.2’s electronic perimeter. It was contained, but one has to admire the cleverness of—”

“Three thousand lancers?” Gladstone interrupted softly.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Gladstone smiled. I stopped sketching and thought to myself that I was glad that I had not been the beneficiary of that particular smile.

“Weren’t we told yesterday, in the briefing, that the Ousters would field six… seven hundred fighting units, tops?” The words had been Morpurgo’s. CEO Gladstone swivelled to face the General. Her right eyebrow arched.

General Morpurgo removed the cigar, frowned at it, and fished a smaller piece from behind his lower teeth. “That’s what our intelligence said. It was wrong.”

Gladstone nodded. “Was the AI Advisory Council involved in that intelligence assessment?”

All eyes turned toward Councilor Albedo. It was a perfect projection; he sat in his chair amongst the others, his hands curled on the armrests in a relaxed fashion; there was none of the haziness or see-through common to mobile projections. His face was long, with high cheekbones and a mobile mouth which suggested a hint of a sardonic smile even at the most serious of moments. This was a serious moment.

“No, CEO,” said Councilor Albedo, “the Advisory Croup was not asked to assess Ouster strength.”

Gladstone nodded. “I assumed,” she said, still addressing Morpurgo, “that when the FORCE intelligence estimates came in, they incorporated the Council’s projections.”

The FORCE:ground General glared at Albedo. “No ma’am,” he said.

“Since the Core acknowledges no contact with the Ousters, we felt that their projections wouldn’t be any better than our own. We did use the OCS:HTN aggregate AI network to run our assessments.” He thrust the foreshortened cigar back into his mouth. His chin jutted. When he spoke, it was around the cigar. “Could the Council have done better?”

Gladstone looked at Albedo.

The Councilor made a small motion with the long fingers of his right hand. “Our estimates… for this Swarm… suggested four to six thousand fighting units.”

“You—” began Morpurgo, his face red.

“You did not mention this during the briefing,” said CEO Gladstone.

“Nor during our earlier deliberations.”

Councilor Albedo shrugged. “The General is correct,” he said. “We have no contact with the Ousters. Our estimates are no More reliable than force’s, merely… based upon different premises. The Olym-pus Command School Historical Tactical Network docs excellent work.

If the AIs there were one order of acuity higher on the TuringDemmler scale, we would have to bring them into the Core.” He made the graceful gesture with his hand again. “As it is, the Council’s premises might be of use for future planning. We will, of course, turn over all projections to this group at any time.”

Gladstone nodded. “Do so immediately.”

She turned back to the screen, and the others did so also. Sensing the silence, the room monitors brought the speaker volume back up, and once again we could hear the cries of victory, screams for help, and calm recitation of positions, fire-control directions, and commands.

The closest wall was a real-time feed from the torchship HS N’djamena as it searched for survivors among the tumbling remnants of Battle Group B.5. The damaged torchship it was approaching, magnified a thousand times, looked like a pomegranate burst from the inside, its seeds and red rind spilling in slow motion, tumbling into a cioud of particles, gases, frozen volatiles, a million microelectronics ripped from their cradles, food stores, tangled gear, and—recognizable now and then from their marionette tumble of arms or legs—many, many bodies.

The N’dyamena’s searchlight, ten meters wide after its coherent leap of twenty thousand miles, played across the starlit frozen wreckage, bringing individual items, facets, and faces into focus. It was quite beautiful in a terrible way. The reflected light made Gladstone’s face look much older.

“Admiral,” she said, “is it pertinent that the Swarm waited until Task Force 87.2 translated in-system?”

Singh touched his beard. “Are you asking if it was a trap, CEO?”

“Yes.”

The Admiral glanced at his colleagues and then at Gladstone. “I think not. We believe… I believe… that when the Ousters saw the intensity of our force commitment, they responded in kind. It does mean, however, that they are totally resolved to take Hyperion system.”

“Can they do it?” asked Gladstone, her eyes still on the tumbling wreckage above her. A young man’s body, half in a spacesuit and half out, tumbled toward the camera. The burst eyes and lungs were clearly visible.

“No,” said Admiral Singh. “They can bloody us. They can even drive us back to a totally defensive perimeter around Hyperion itself.

But they cannot defeat us or drive us out.”

“Or destroy the farcaster?” Senator Richeau’s voice was taut.

“Nor destroy the farcaster,” said Singh.

“He’s right,” said General Morpurgo. “I’d stake my professional career on it.”

Gladstone smiled and stood. The others, including myself, rushed to stand also. “You have,” Gladstone said softly to Morpurgo. “You have.” She looked around. “We will meet here when events warrant it. M. Hunt will be my liaison with you. In the meantime, gentlemen and ladies, the work of government shall proceed. Good afternoon.”

As the others left, I took my seat again until I was the only one left in the room. The speakers came back up to volume. On one band, a man was crying. Manic laughter came through static. Above me, behind me, on both sides, the starfields moved slowly against blackness, and the starlight glinted coldly on wreckage and ruin.

Government House was constructed in the shape of a Star of David, and within the center of the star, shielded by low walls and strategically planted trees, there was a garden: smaller than the formal acres of flowers in Deer Park but no less beautiful. I was walking there as evening fell, the brilliant blue-white ofTau Ceti fading to golds, when Meina Glad-stone approached.

For a while, we walked together in silence. I noticed that she had exchanged her suit for a long robe of the kind worn by grand matrons on Patawpha; the robe was wide and billowing, inset with intricate dark blue and gold designs which almost matched the darkening sky. Gladstone’s hands were out of sight in hidden pockets, the wide sleeves stirred to a breeze; the hem dragged on the milk-white stones of the path.

“You let them interrogate me,” I said. “I’m curious as to why.”

Gladstone’s voice was tired. “They were not transmitting. There was no danger of the information being passed on.”

I smiled. “Nonetheless, you let them put me through that.”

“Security wished to know as much about them as they would divulge.”

“At the expense of any… inconvenience… on my part,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And does Security know who they were working for?”

“The man mentioned Harbrit,” said the CEO. “Security is fairly certain that they meant Emiem Harbrit.”

“The commodities broker on Asquith?”

“Yes. She and Diana Philomel have ties with the old Glennon-Height royalist factions.”

“They were amateurs,” I said, thinking of Hermund mentioning Harbrit’s name, the confused order of Diana’s questioning.

“Of course.”

“Are the royalists connected to any serious group?”

“Only the Shrike church,” said Gladstone. She paused where the path crossed a small stream via a stone bridge. The CEO gathered her robe and sat on a wrought-iron bench. “None of the bishops have yet come out of hiding, you know.”

“With the riots and backlash, I don’t blame them,” I said. I remained standing. There were no bodyguards or monitors in sight, but I knew that if I were to make any threatening move toward Gladstone, I would wake up in ExecSec detention. Above us, the clouds lost their last tinge of gold and began to glow with the reflected silver light ofTC"s countless tower cities. “What did Security do with Diana and her husband?” I asked.

“They’ve been thoroughly interrogated. They’re being… detained.”

I nodded. Thorough interrogation meant that even now their brains were floating in full-shunt tanks. Their bodies would be kept in cryogenic storage until a secret trial determined if their actions had been treasonable. After the trial, the bodies would be destroyed, and Diana and Hermund would remain in “detention,” with all sensory and comm channels turned off. The Hegemony had not used the death for centuries, but the alternatives were not pleasant. I sat on the long bench, six feet from Gladstone.

“Do you still write poetry?”

I was surprised by her question. I glanced down the garden path where floating Japanese lanterns and hidden glow-globes had just come on. “Not really,” I said. “Sometimes I dream in verse. Or used to…”

Meina Gladstone folded her hands on her lap and studied them. “If you were writing about the events unfolding now,” she said, “what kind of poem would you create?”

I laughed. “I’ve already begun it and abandoned it twice… or rather, he had. It was about the death of the gods and their difficulty in accepting their displacement. It was about transformation and suffering and injustice. And it was about the poet whom he thought suffered most at such injustice.”

Gladstone looked at me. Her face was a mass of lines and shadows in the dimming light. “And who are the gods that are being replaced this time, M. Severn? Is it humanity or the false gods we created to depose us?”

“How the hell should I know?” I snapped and turned away to watch the stream.

“You are part of both worlds, no? Humanity and TechnoCore?”

I laughed again. “I’m part of neither world. A cybrid monster here, a research project there.”

“Yes, but whose research? And for what ends?”

I shrugged.

Gladstone rose and I followed. We crossed the stream and listened to water moving over the stones. The path wound between tall boulders covered with exquisite lichen which glowed in the lantern light.

Gladstone paused at the top of a short flight of stone steps. “Do you think the Ultimates in the Core will succeed in constructing their Ultimate Intelligence, M. Severn?”

“Will they build God?” I said. “There are those AIs which do not want to build God. They learned from the human experience that to construct the next step in awareness is an invitation to slavery, if not actual extinction.”

“But would a true God extinguish his creatures?”

“In the case of the Core and the hypothetical UI,” I said, “God is the creature, not the creator. Perhaps a god must create the lesser beings in contact with it in order for it to feel any responsibility for them.”

“Yet the Core has appeared to take responsibility for human beings in the centuries since the Al Secession,” said Gladstone. She was gazing intently at me, as if gauging something by my expression.

I looked out at the garden. The path glowed whitely, almost eerily in the dark. “The Core works toward its own ends,” I said, knowing as I spoke that no human being knew that fact better than CEO Meina Gladstone.

“And do you feel that humanity no longer figures as a means toward those ends?”

I made a dismissive gesture with my right hand. “I’m a creature of neither culture,” I said again. “Neither graced by the naivete of the unintentional creators, nor cursed by the terrible awareness of their creatures.”

“Genetically, you are fully human,” said Gladstone.

It was not a question. I did not respond.

“Jesus Christ was said to be fully human,” she said. “And also fully divine. Humanity and Godhead at intersection.”

I was amazed at her reference to that old religion. Christianity had been replaced first by Zen Christianity, then Zen Gnosticism, then by a hundred More vital theologies and philosophies. Gladstone’s home-world was no repository for discarded beliefs and I assumed—and hoped—that neither was the CEO. “If he was fully human and fully God,” I said, “then I am his antimatter image.”

“No,” said Gladstone, “I would imagine that the Shrike your pilgrim friends are confronting is that.”

I stared. It was the first time she had mentioned the Shrike to me, despite the fact that I knew—and she knew that I knew—that it had been her plan which led the Consul to open the Time Tombs and release the thing.

“Perhaps you should have been on that pilgrimage, M. Severn,” said the CEO.

“In a way,” I said, “I am.”

Gladstone gestured, and a door to her private quarters opened. “Yes, in a way you are,” she said. “But if the woman who carries your counterpart is crucified on the Shrike’s legendary tree of thorns, will you suffer for all eternity in your dreams?”

I had no answer, so I stood there and said nothing.

“We will talk in the morning after the conference,” said Meina Gladstone. “Good night, M. Severn. Have pleasant dreams.”

Eight

Martin Silenus, Sol Weintraub, and the Consul are staggering up the dunes toward the Sphinx as Brawne Lamia and Fedmahn Kassad return with Father Hoyt’s body. Weintraub clutches his cape tight around him, trying to shelter his infant from the rage of blowing sand and crackling light. He watches as Kassad descends the dune, his long legs black and cartoonish against electrified sand, Hoyt’s arms and hands dangling, moving slightly with each slide and step.

Silenus is shouting, but the wind whips away 'words. Brawne Lamia gestures toward the one tent still standing; the storm has collapsed or ripped away the others. They crowd into Silenus’s tent. Colonel Kassad coming last, passing the body in gently. Inside, their shouts can be heard above the crack of fibcrplastic canvas and the paper-splitting rip of lightning.

“Dead?” shouts the Consul, peeling back the cloak Kassad had wrapped around Hoyt’s nude body. The cruciforms glow pinkly.

The Colonel points to the telltales blinking on the surface of the FORCE-issue medpak adhered to the priest’s chest. The lights blink red except for the yellow winking of the systems-sustaining filaments and nodules. Hoyt’s head rolls back, and now Weintraub can see the millipede suture holding the ragged edges of the slashed throat together.

Sol Weintraub tries to locate a pulse manually; finds none. He leans forward, sets his car to the priest’s chest. There is no heartbeat, but the welt of the cruciform there is hot against Sol’s cheek. He looks at Brawne Lamia. “The Shrike?”

“Yes… I think… I don’t know.” She gestures toward the antique pistol she still holds. “I emptied the magazine. Twelve shots at… whatever it was.”

“Did you see it?” the Consul asks Kassad.

“No. I entered the room ten seconds after Brawne, but I didn’t see anything.”

“What about your fucking soldier gadgets?” says Martin Silenus. He is crowded in the back of the tent, huddled in a near-fetal position.

“Didn’t all that FORCE shit show something?”

“No.”

A small alarm sounds from the medpak, and Kassad detaches another plasma cartridge from his belt, feeds it into the pak’s chamber, and sits back on his heels, nipping his visor down to watch out the opening of the tent. His voice is distorted by the helmet speaker. “He’s lost More blood than we can compensate for here. Did anyone else bring first aid equipment?”

Weintraub rummages in his pack. “I have a basic kit. Not enough for this, though. Whatever slashed his throat cut through everything.”

“The Shrike,” whispers Martin Silenus.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Lamia, hugging herself to stop her body from shaking. “We’ve got to get help for him.” She looks at the Consul.

“He’s dead,” says the Consul. “Even a ship’s surgery won’t bring him back.”

“We have to try!” shouts Lamia, leaning forward to grab the Consul’s tunic front. “We can’t leave him to those… things…” She gestures toward the cruciform glowing beneath the skin of the dead man’s chest.

The Consul rubs his eyes. “We can destroy the body. Use the Colonel’s rifle…”

“We’re going to die if we don’t get out of this fucking storm!” cries Silenus, The tent is vibrating, fiberplastic pounding the poet’s head and back with each billow. The sound of sand against fabric is like a rocket taking off just outside. “Call the goddamned ship. Call it!”

The Consul pulls his pack closer, as if guarding the antique comlog inside it. Sweat glistens on his cheeks and forehead.

“We could wait the storm out in one of the Tombs,” says Sol Weintraub.

“The Sphinx, perhaps.”

“Fuck that,” says Martin Silenus.

The scholar shifts in the cramped space and stares at the poet. “You came all this way to find the Shrike. Are you telling us that you’ve changed your mind now that he seems to have made an appearance?”

Silenus’s eyes gleam out from under his lowered beret. “I’m not telling you anything except that I want that goddamned ship of his here, and I want it now.”

“It might be a good idea,” says Colonel Kassad.

The Consul looks at him.

“If there’s a chance to save Hoyt’s life, we should take it.”

The Consul is in pain himself. “We can’t leave,” he says. “Can’t leave now.”

“No,” agrees Kassad. “We won’t use the ship to leave. But the surgery might help Hoyt. And we can wait out the storm in it.”

“And maybe find out what’s happening up there,” says Brawne Lamia, jerking her thumb toward the roof of the tent.

The baby, Rachel, is crying shrilly. Weintraub rocks her, holding her head in his broad hand. “I agree,” he says. “If the Shrike wants to find us, it can find us on the ship as easily as out here. We’ll make sure that no one leaves.” He touches Hoyt’s chest. “As horrible as it sounds, the information the surgery gives us on how this parasite works could be priceless to the Web.”

“All right,” says the Consul. He pulls the ancient comlog from his pack, lays his hand on the diskey, and whispers several phrases.

“Is it coming?” asks Martin Silenus.

“It’s confirmed the command. We’ll need to stow our gear for transfer.

I told it to land just above the entrance to the valley.”

Lamia is surprised to find that she has been weeping. She wipes her cheeks and smiles.

“What’s funny?” asks the Consul.

“All this,” she says, stabbing at her cheeks with the back other hand, “and all I can think about is how nice it’ll be to have a shower.”

“A drink,” says Silenus.

“Shelter from the storm,” says Weintraub. The baby is taking milk from a nursing pak.

Kassad leans forward, his head and shoulders outside the tent. He raises his weapon and clicks off the safety. “Telltales,” he says. “Something’s moving just beyond the dune.” The visor turns toward them, reflecting a pale and huddled group, the paler body of Lenar Hoyt.

“I’m going to check it out,” he says. “Wait here until the ship arrives.”

“Don’t leave,” says Silenus. “It’s like one of those fucking ancient horror holos where they go one by one to… hey!” The poet falls silent. The entrance to the tent is a triangle of light and noise. Fedmahn Kassad is gone.

The tent is beginning to collapse, stakes and wire anchors giving way as tlie sand shifts around them. Huddled together, shouting to be heard over the wind roar, the Consul and Lamia wrap Hoyt’s body in his cloak. Readouts on the medpak continue to blink red. Blood has ceased to flow from the crude millipede suture.

Sol Weintraub sets his four-day-old child in the infant carrier on his chest, folds his cape around her, and crouches in the entrance. “No sign of the Colonel!” he shouts. As he watches, a lightning bolt strikes the outstretched wing of the Sphinx.

Brawne Lamia moves to the entrance and lifts the priest’s body. She is amazed at how light it is. “Let’s get Father Hoyt to the ship and in surgery. Then some of us will come back to search for Kassad.”

The Consul tugs his tricorne cap low and shrugs his collar high.

“The ship has deep radar and movement sensors. It’ll tell us where the Colonel’s gone.”

“And the Shrike,” says Silenus. “Can’t forget our host.”

“Let’s go,” says Lamia and gets to her feet. She has to lean into the wind to make progress. Loose ends of Hoyt’s cloak flap and crack around her, while her own cloak streams behind. Finding the path by the intermittent flashes of lightning, she moves toward the head of the valley, glancing back only once to see if the others are following.

Martin Silenus steps away from the tent, lifts Het Masteen’s Mobius cube, and his purple beret whips away in the wind, climbing as it goes.

Silenus stands there and curses impressively, stopping only when his mouth begins to fill with sand.

“Come,” shouts Weintraub, his hand on the poet’s shoulder. Sol feels the sand striking his face, littering his short beard. His other hand covers his chest as if sheltering something infinitely precious. “We’ll lose sight of Brawne if we don’t hurry.” The two help each other move forward against the wind. Silenus’s fur coat ripples wildly as he detours to retrieve his beret from where it has come down in the lee of a dune.

The Consul is the last to leave, carrying both his own pack and Kassad’s. A minute after he leaves the small shelter, stakes give way, fabric tears, and the tent flies into the night, surrounded by a halo of static electricity. He staggers the three hundred meters up the trail, occasionally catching glimpses of the two men ahead of him, More frequently losing the path and having to walk in circles until he comes across it again. The Time Tombs are visible behind him when the sandstorm ebbs a bit and the lightning flashes follow one another in close succession. The Consul sees the Sphinx, still glowing from repeated electrical strikes, the Jade Tomb beyond it, its walls luminescent, and beyond them the Obelisk, no glow there, a vertical swipe of pure black against the cliff walls. Then the Crystal Monolith. There is no sign of Kassad, although the shifting dunes, blowing sand, and sudden flashes make it seem as if many things are moving.

The Consul looks up, seeing the wide entrance to the valley now and the rushing clouds low above it, half expecting to see the blue fusion glow of his ship lowering through them. The storm is terrible, but his spacecraft has landed in worse conditions. He wonders if it is already down and the others are waiting at the base of it for him to arrive.

But when he reaches the saddle between cliff walls at the opening of the valley, the wind assaults him anew, he sees the four others huddled together at the beginning of the broad, flat plain, but there is no ship.

“Shouldn’t it be here by now?” shouts Lamia as the Consul approaches the group.

He nods and crouches to extract the comlog from his pack. Weintraub and Silenus stand behind him, bending over to offer some shelter from the blowing sand. The Consul extracts the comlog and pauses, looking around. The storm makes it appear as if they are in some mad room where the walls and ceiling change from instant to instant, one second closing in on them, scant meters away, the next second receding to the distance, the ceiling floating upward, as in the scene where the room and Christmas tree expand for Clara in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.

The Consul palms the diskey, bends forward, and whispers into the voice square. The ancient instrument whispers back to him, the words just audible above the rasp of sand. He straightens up and faces the others. “The ship was not allowed to leave.”

There is a babble of protest. “What do you mean 'not allowed'?” asks Lamia when the others fall silent.

The Consul shrugs and looks skyward as if a blue tail of flame might still announce the ship’s coming. “It wasn’t given clearance at the spaceport in Keats.”

“Didn’t you say you had clearance from the fucking queen?” shouts Martin Silenus. “Old Gallstone herself?”

“Gladstone’s clearance pip was in the ship’s memory,” says the Consul.

“Both the FORCE and port authorities knew that.”

“So what the hell happened?” Lamia wipes her face. The tears she had shed back at the tent have left tiny rivulets of mud in the coating of sand on her cheeks.

The Consul shrugs. “Gladstone overrode the original pip. There’s a message here from her. Do you want to hear it?”

For a minute, no one answers. After their week of voyage, the thought of being in touch with someone outside their own group is so incongruous that it does not register at once; it was as if the world beyond the pilgrimage had ceased to exist except for the explosions in the night sky. “Yes,” Sol Weintraub says, “let’s hear it.” A sudden lull in the storm makes the words seem very loud.

They gather around and crouch near the old comlog, setting Father Hoyt in the center of their circle. In the minute they have left him unattended, a small dune has begun to form itself around his body.

The telltales are all red now except tor the extreme-measures monitors glowing amber. Lamia sets another plasma cartridge in place and makes sure that the osmosis mask is secure on Hoyt’s mouth and nose, filtering pure oxygen in and keeping sand out. “All right,” she says.

The Consul triggers the diskey.

The message is a fatline squirt, recorded by the ship some ten minutes earlier. The air mists with the data columns and spherical-image colloid which characterizes comlogs dating back to the Hegira. The image of Gladstone shimmers, her face distorting bizarrely and then almost comically as millions of specks of windblown sand rip through the image.

Even at full volume, her voice is almost lost to the storm.

“I’m sorry,” says the familiar image, “but I cannot allow your spacecraft to approach the Tombs just yet. The temptation to leave would be too great, and the importance of your mission must override all other factors. Please understand that the fate of worlds may rest with you.

Please be assured that my hopes and prayers are with you. Gladstone out.”

The image folds into itself and fades away. The Consul, Weintraub, and Lamia continue to stare in silence. Martin Silenus stands, throws a handful of sand at the empty air where Gladstone’s face had been seconds earlier, and screams, “Goddamn fatherfucking asshole politician moral paraplegic dipshit drag-queen bitch!” He kicks sand in the air. The others shift their stares to him.

“Well, that really helped,” Brawne Lamia says softly.

Silenus waves his arms in disgust and walks away, still kicking at dunes.

“Is there anything else?” Weintraub asks the Consul.

“No.”

Brawne Lamia crosses her arms and frowns at the comlog. “I forget how you said this thing works. How are you getting through the interference?”

“Tightbeam to a pocket comsat I seeded as we came down from the Yggdrasill,” says the Consul.

Lamia nods. “So when you reported in, you just sent brief messages to the ship, and it sent fatline squirts to Gladstone… and your Ouster contacts.”

“Yes.”

“Can the ship take off without clearance?” asks Weintraub. The older man is sitting, his knees raised and his arms draped on them in a classic posture of pure fatigue. His voice is also tired. “Just override Gladstone’s prohibition?”

“No,” says the Consul. “When Gladstone said no, FORCE set a class-three containment field over the blast pit where we parked the ship.”

“Get in touch with her,” says Brawne Lamia. “Explain things.”

“I’ve tried.” The Consul holds the comlog in his hands, sets it back in the pack. “No response. Also, I mentioned in the original squirt that Hoyt was badly hurt and that we needed medical help. I wanted the ship’s surgery ready for him.”

“Hurt,” repeats Martin Silenus, striding back to where they huddled.

“Shit. Our padre friend is dead as Glennon-Height’s dog.” He jerks his thumb in the direction of the cloak-wrapped body; all monitor displays are red.

Brawne Lamia bends closer and touches Hoyt’s cheek. It is cold.

Both his comlog biomonitor and the medpak begin chirping brain-death warnings. The osmosis mask continues to force pure 0; into his lungs, and the medpak simulators still work his lungs and heart, but the chirping rises to a scream and then settles to a steady, terrible tone.

“He lost too much blood,” says Sol Weintraub. He touches the dead priest’s face, his own eyes closed, head bowed.

“Great,” says Silenus. “Fucking great. And according to his own story, Hoyt’s going to decompose and recompose, thanks to that goddamned cruciform thing… two of the goddamn things, the guy’s rich in resurrection insurance… and then come lurching back like some brain-damaged edition of Hamlet’s daddy’s ghost. What are we going to do then?”

“Shut up,” says Brawne Lamia. She is wrapping Hoyt’s body in a layer of tarp she has brought from the tent.

“Shut up yourself,” screams Silenus. “We’ve got one monster lurking around. Old Grendcl himself is out there somewhere, sharpening his nails for his next meal, do you really want Hoyt’s zombie joining our happy crew? You remember how he described the Bikura? They’d been letting the cruciforms bring them back for centuries, and talking to one of them was like talking to an ambulatory sponge. Do you really want Hoyt’s corpse hiking with us?”

“Two,” says the Consul.

“What?” Martin Silenus whirls, loses his footing, and lands on his knees near the body. He leans toward the old scholar. “What did you say?”

“Two cruciforms,” says the Consul. “His and Father Paul Dure’s. If his story about the Bikura was true, then they’ll both be… resurrected.”

“Oh, Christ on a stick,” says Silenus and sits in the sand.

Brawne Lamia has finished wrapping the priest’s body. She looks at it. “I remember that in Father Dure’s story about the Bikura named Alpha,” she says. “But I still don’t understand. The Law of Conservation of Mass has to come in there somewhere.”

“They’ll be short zombies,” says Martin Silenus. He pulls his fur coat tighter and pounds the sand with his fist.

“There is so much we could have learned if the ship had arrived,” says the Consul. “The autodiagnostics could have…"He pauses and gestures. “Look. There is less sand in the air. Perhaps the storm is…”

Lightning flashes, and it begins to rain, the icy pellets striking their faces with More fury than the sandstorm had shown.

Martin Silenus begins to laugh. “It’s a rucking desert1.” he shouts toward the sky. “We’ll probably drown in a flood.”

“We need to get out of this,” says Sol Weintraub. His baby’s face is visible between the gaps in his cloak. Rachel is crying; her face is very red. She looks no older than a newborn.

“Keep Chronos?” says Lamia. “It’s a couple of hours…”

“Too far,” says the Consul. “Let’s bivouac in one of the Tombs.”

Silenus laughs again. He says:

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, 0 mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?

“Does that mean yes?” asks Lamia.

“That means fucking 'why not7' “laughs Silenus. “Why make it hard for our cold muse to find us? We can watch our friend decompose while we wait. How long did Dure’s tale say it took for one of the Bikura to rejoin the flock after death interrupted their grazing?”

“Three days,” says the Consul.

Martin Silenus slaps his forehead with the heel of his palm. “Of course. How could I forget? How wonderfully fitting. New Testament-wise. In the meantime, maybe our Shrike-wolf will carry off a few of this flock. Do you think the padre would mind if I borrowed one of his cruciforms just in case? I mean, he has a spare…”

“Let’s go,” says the Consul. Rain drips from his tricorne cap in a steady stream. “We’ll stay in the Sphinx until morning. I’ll carry Kassad’s extra gear and the Mobius cube. Brawne, you carry Hoyt’s things and Sol’s pack. Sol, you keep the baby warm and dry.”

“What about the padre?” asks the poet, jerking his thumb in the direction of the body.

“You’re carrying Father Hoyt,” Brawne Lamia says softly, turning.

Martin Silenus opens his mouth, sees the pistol in Lamia’s hand, shrugs, and bends to lift the body to his shoulder. “Who’s going to carry Kassad when we find him?” he asks. “Of course, he could be in enough pieces that we could all—”

“Please shut up,” Brawne Lamia says tiredly. “If I have to shoot you, it will give us one More thing to carry. Just walk.”

With the Consul leading, Weintraub coming closely behind, Martin Silenus staggering along some meters back, and Brawne Lamia in the rear, the group once again descends the low col into the Valley of the Tombs.

Nine

CEO Gladstone’s schedule that morning was a busy one. Tau Ceti Center has a twenty-three-hour day, which makes it convenient for the government to run on Hegemony Standard Time without totally destroying local diurnal rhythms. At 0545 hours, Gladstone met with her military advisors. At 0630 hours she breakfasted with two dozen of the most important senators and with representatives of the All Thing and the TechnoCore. At 0715 the CEO farcast to Renaissance Vector, where it was evening, to officially open the Hermes Medical Center in Cadua. At 0740 she ’cast back to Government House for a meeting with her top aides, including Leigh Hunt, to go over the speech she was to give to the Senate and All Thing at 1000 hours. At 0830 Gladstone met again with General Morpurgo and Admiral Singh for an update on the situation in the Hyperion system. At 0845 hours, she met with me.

“Good morning, M. Severn,” said the CEO. She was behind her desk in the office where I’d first met her three nights earlier. She waved her hand toward a buffet against the wall where hot coffee, tea, and caffta sat in sterling silver pots.

I shook my head and sat down. Three of the holographic windows showed white light, but the one to my left offered the 3-D map of Hyperion System that I had tried to decode in the War Room. It seemed to me that Ouster red now covered and infiltrated the system like dye dissolving and settling into a blue solution.

“I want to hear your dreams,” said CEO Gladstone.

“I want to hear why you abandoned them,” I said, voice flat. “Why you left Father Hoyt to die.”

Gladstone could not have been used to being spoken to in that tone, not after forty-eight years in the Senate and a decade and a half as

CEO, but her only reaction was to raise one eyebrow a fraction of an inch. “So you do dream the real events.”

“Did you doubt it?”

She set down the work pad she had been holding, keyed it off, and shook her head. “Not really, but it is still a shock to hear about something that no one else in the Web knows about.”

“Why did you deny them the use of the Consul’s ship?”

Gladstone swiveled to look up at the window where the tactical display shifted and changed as new updates changed the How of red, the retreat of blue, the movement of planets and moons, but if the military situation was to have been part other explanation, she abandoned that approach.

She swiveled back. “Why would I have to explain any executive decision to you, M. Severn? What is your constituency? Whom do you represent?”

“I represent those five people and a baby you left stranded on Hyperion,”

I said. “Hoyt could have been saved.”

Gladstone made a fist and tapped her lower lip with a curved forefinger.

“Perhaps,” she said. “And perhaps he was already dead. But that wasn’t the issue, was it?”

I sat back in the chair. I had not bothered to bring a sketchbook along, and my fingers ached to hold something. “What is, then?”

“Do you remember Father Hoyt’s story… the story he told during their voyage to the Tombs?” asked Gladstone.

“Yes.”

“Each of the pilgrims is allowed to petition the Shrike for one favor.

Tradition says that the creature grants one wish, while denying the others and murdering those he denies. Do you remember what Hoyt’s wish was?”

I paused. Recalling incidents from the pilgrims’ past was like trying to remember details of last week’s dreams. “He wanted the cruciforms removed,” I said. “He wanted freedom for both Father Dure’s… soul, DNA, whatever… and for himself.”

“Not quite,” said Gladstone. “Father Hoyt wanted to die.”

I stood up, almost knocking my chair over, and strode to the pulsing map. “That’s pure bullshit,” I said. “Even if he did, the others had an obligation to save him… and so did you. You let him die.”

“Yes.”

“Just as you’re going to let the rest of them die?”

“Not necessarily,” said CEO Meina Gladstone. “That is their will… and the Shrike’s, if such a creature actually exists. All I know at this point is that their pilgrimage is too important to allow them a means of… retreat… at the moment of decision.”

“Whose decision? Theirs? How can the lives of six or seven people… and a baby… affect the outcome of a society of a hundred and fifty billion?” I knew the answer to that, of course. The Al Advisory Council as well as the Hegemony’s less sentient predictors had chosen the pilgrims very carefully. But for what? Unpredictability. They were ciphers that matched the ultimate enigma of the entire Hyperion equation.

Did Gladstone know that, or did she know only what Councilor Albedo and her own spies told her? I sighed and returned to my chair.

“Did your dream tell you what the fate of Colonel Kassad was?” asked the CEO.

“No. I awoke before they returned to the Sphinx to seek shelter from the storm.”

Gladstone smiled slightly. “You realize, M. Severn, that for our purposes it would be More convenient to have you sedated, prompted by the same truthtalk your Philomel friends used, and connected to subvocalizers for a More constant report on the events on Hyperion.”

I returned her smile. “Yes,” I said, “that would be More convenient.

But it would be less than convenient for you if I slipped away into the Core via the datasphere and left my body behind. Which is precisely what I will do if put under duress again.”

“Of course,” said Gladstone. “That is precisely what I would do if put in such circumstances. Tell me, M. Severn, what is it like in the Core? What is it like in that distant place where your consciousness truly resides?”

“Busy,” I said. “Did you want to see me for anything else today?”

Gladstone smiled again and I sensed that it was a true smile, not the politician’s weapon she used so well. “Yes,” she said, “I did have something else in mind. Would you like to go to Hyperion? The real Hyperion?”

“The real Hyperion?” I echoed stupidly. I felt my fingers and toes tingle as a strange sense of excitement suffused me. My consciousness might truly reside in the Core, but my body and brain were all too human, all too susceptible to adrenaline and other random chemicals.

Gladstone nodded. “Millions of people want to go there. Farcast to somewhere new. Watch the war from close up.” She sighed and moved her work pad. “The idiots.” She looked up at me, and her brown eyes were serious. “But I want someone to go there and report back to me in person. Leigh is Using one of the new military farcast terminals this morning, and I thought that you might join him. There might not be time to set down on Hyperion itself, but you would be in-system.”

I thought of several questions and was embarrassed by the first one that emerged. “Will it be dangerous?”

Neither Gladstone’s expression nor tone changed. “Possibly. Although you will be far behind the lines, and Leigh has explicit instructions not to expose himself… or you… to any obvious risk.”

Obvious risk, I thought. But how many less-than-obvious-risks were there in a war zone, near a world where a creature like the Shrike roamed free? “Yes,” I said, “I’ll go. But there’s one thing…”

“Yes?”

“I need to know why you want me to go. It seems that if you just want me for my connection to the pilgrims, you’re running a needless risk in sending me away.”

Gladstone nodded. “M. Severn, it’s true that your connection to the pilgrims… although somewhat tenuous… is of interest to me. But it is also true that I am interested in your observations and evaluations.

Your observations.”

“But I’m nothing to you,” I said. “You don’t know who else I might be reporting to, deliberately or otherwise. I’m a creature of the TechnoCore.”

“Yes,” said Gladstone, “but you also may be the least-affiliated person on Tau Ceti Center at this moment, perhaps in the entire Web. Also, your observations are those of a trained poet, a man whose genius I respect.”

I barked a laugh. “He was a genius,” I said. “I’m a simulacrum. A drone. A caricature.”

“Are you so sure?” asked Meina Gladstone.

I held up empty hands. “I haven’t written a line of poetry in the ten months I have been alive and aware in this strange afterlife,” I said. “I do not think in poetry. Isn’t that proof enough that this Core retrieval project is a sham? Even my false name is an insult to a man infinitely More talented than I will ever be… Joseph Severn was a shade in comparison to the real Keats, but I sully his name by using it.”

“That may be true,” said Gladstone. “And it may not. In either case, I’ve requested that you go with'M. Hunt on this brief trip to Hyperion.”

She paused. “You have no… duty… to go. In More than one sense, you are not even a citizen of the Hegemony. But I would appreciate it if you did go.”

“I’ll go,” I said again, hearing my own voice as if from a distance.

“Very good. You’ll need warm clothes. Wear nothing that would come loose or cause embarrassment in free-fall, although there is little likelihood that you will encounter that. Meet M. Hunt in the primary Government House fai caster nexus in…” She glanced at her comlog.

“…twelve minutes.”

I nodded and turned to go.

“Oh, M. Severn…”

I paused by the door. The old woman behind the desk suddenly looked rather small and very tired.

“Thank you, M. Severn,” she said.

It was true that millions wanted to farcast to the war zone. The All Thing was shrill with petitions, arguments for letting civilians ’cast to Hyperion, requests by cruise lines to run brief excursions, and demands by planetary politicians and Hegemony representatives to be allowed to tour the system on “fact-finding missions.” All such requests had been denied. Web citizens—especially Web citizens with power and inHuence—were not used to being denied access to new experiences, and for the Hegemony, all-out war remained one of the few experiences still untried.

But the CEO’s office and the FORCE authorities remained adamant: no civilian or unauthorized farcasting to the Hyperion system, no uncensored newsteep coverage. In an age where no information was inaccessible, no travel denied, such exclusion was maddening and tantalizing.

I met M. Hunt at the executive farcaster nexus after showing my authorization pip to an even dozen security nodes. Hunt was wearing black wool, undecorated but evocative of the FORCE uniforms present everywhere in this section of Government House. I had had little time to change, returning to my apartments only to grab a loose vest with many pockets to hold drawing materials and a 55-mm imager.

“Ready?” said Hunt. The basset-hound face did not look pleased to see me. He carried a plain black valise.

I nodded.

Hunt gestured toward a FORCE transport technician, and a onetime portal shimmered into existence. I knew that the thing was tuned to our DNA signatures and would admit no one else. Hunt took a breath and stepped through. I watched the quicksilver portal surface ripple after his passage like a stream returning to calm after the slightest of breezes, and then I stepped through myself.

It was rumored that the original farcaster prototypes had offered no sensation during transition and that the AI and human designers had altered the machinery to add that vague prickling, ozone-charged feeling to give the traveler a sense of having traveled. Whatever the truth of that, my skin was still alive with tension as I took a step away from the portal, paused, and looked around.

It’s strange but true that war-going spacecraft have been depicted in fiction, film, holo, and stimsim for More than eight hundred years; even before humankind had left Old Earth in anything but atmosphere-skimming converted airplanes, their flatfilms had shown epic space battles, huge interstellar dreadnoughts with incredible armament lunging through space like streamlined cities. Even the spate of recent war holies after the Battle of Bressia showed great fleets battling it out at distances two ground soldiers would find claustrophobic, ships ramming and firing and burning like Greek triremes packed into the straits of Artemisium.

It’s little wonder then that my heart was pounding and my palms were a bit moist as I stepped onto the flagship of the fleet, expecting to emerge onto the broad bridge of a warship out of the holies, giant screens showing enemy ships, klaxons sounding, craggy commanders huddled over the tactical command panels as the ship lurched first right, then left.

Hunt and I were standing in what could have been a narrow corridor of a power plant. Color-coded pipes twisted everywhere, occasional handholds and airtight hatches at regular intervals suggested that we were indeed in a spacecraft, state-of-the-art diskcy and interact panels showed that the corridor served some purpose other than access to elsewhere, but the overall effect was one of claustrophobia and primitive technology. I half expected to see wires running from circuit nodes. A vertical shaft intersected our corridor; other narrow, cluttered avenues were visible through other hatches.

Hunt looked at me and shrugged slightly. I wondered if it was possible that we had farcast to the wrong destination.

Before either of us said anything, a young FORCE:space ensign in black battle dress appeared from one of the side corridors, saluted Hunt, and said, “Welcome to HS Hebrides, gentlemen. Admiral Nashita has asked me to convey his compliments and to invite you to the combat control center. If you will follow me, please.” With that the young ensign wheeled, reached for a rung, and pulled himself into a cramped vertical shaft.

We followed as best we could. Hunt struggling not to drop his valise and me trying not to have my hands ground under Hunt’s heels as we climbed. After only a few yards, I realized that the gravity was far less than one-standard here, was not, in fact, gravity at all, but felt More like a multitude of small but insistent hands pressing me “down.” I knew about spacecraft using a class-one containment field throughout a ship to simulate gravity, but this was my first direct experience of it. It was not a truly pleasant sensation; the constant pressure was rather like leaning into a wind, and the effect added to the claustrophobic qualities of the narrow corridors, small hatches, and equipment-cluttered bulkheads.

The Hebrides was a Three-C ship, Communication-Control-Command, and the combat control center was its heart and brain—but it was not a very impressive heart and brain. The young ensign passed us through three airtight hatches, led us down a final corridor past Marine guards, saluted, and left us in a room perhaps twenty yards square, but one so crowded with noise, personnel and equipment that one’s first instinct was to step back outside the hatch to get a breath of air.

There were no giant screens, but dozens of young FORCE:space officers hunkered over cryptic displays, sat enmeshed in stimsim apparatus, or stood before pulsing callups which seemed to extend from all six bulkheads. Men and women were lashed into their chairs and sensory cradles, with the exception of a few officers—most looking More like harried bureaucrats than craggy warriors—who wandered the narrow aisles, patting subordinates on the back, barking for More information, and plugging into consoles with their own implant jacks. One of these men came over in a hurry, looked at both of us, saluted me, and said, “M. Hunt?”

I nodded toward my companion.

“M. Hunt,” said the overweight young Commander, “Admiral Nash-ita will see you now.”

The commander of all Hegemony forces in the Hyperion system was a small man with short white hair, skin far smoother than his age suggested, and a fierce scowl that seemed carved in place. Admiral Nashita wore high-necked dress black with no rank insignia except for the single red-dwarf sun on his collar. His hands were blunt and quite powerful-looking, but the nails were recently manicured. The Admiral sat on a small dais surrounded by equipment and quiescent callups.

The bustle and efficient madness seemed to How around him like a fast stream around an impervious rock.

“You’re the messenger from Gladstone,” he said to Hunt. “Who’s this?”

“My aide,” said Leigh Hunt.

I resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow.

“What do you want?” asked Nashita. “As you see, we’re busy.”

Leigh Hunt nodded and glanced around. “I have some materials for you. Admiral. Is there anyplace we can go for privacy?”

Admiral Nashita grunted, passed his palm over a rheoscnse, and the air behind me grew denser, coalescing into a semisolid mist as the containment field reined. The noise of the combat control center disappeared.

The three of us were in a small igloo of quiet.

“Hurry it up,” said Admiral Nashita.

Hunt unlocked the valise and removed a small envelope with a Government House symbol on the back. “A private communication from the Chief Executive,” said Hunt. “To be read at your leisure. Admiral.”

Nashita grunted and set the envelope aside.

Hunt set a larger envelope on the desk. “And this is a hard copy of the motion of the Senate regarding the prosecution of this… ah… military action. As you know, the will of the Senate is for this to be a speedy exercise of force to achieve limited objectives, with as little loss of life as possible, followed by the standard offer of help and protection to our new… colonial asset.”

Nashita’s scowl twitched slightly. He made no move to touch or read the communication containing the will of the Senate. “Is that all?”

Hunt took his time responding. “That is all, unless you wish to relay a personal message to the CEO through me. Admiral.”

Nashita stared. There was no active hostility in his small, black eyes, only an impatience that I guessed would not be quenched until those eyes were dimmed by death. “I have private fatline access to the Chief Executive,” said the Admiral. “Thank you very much, M. Hunt. No return messages at this time. Now if you will kindly return to the midships farcaster nexus and let me get on with prosecuting this military action.”

The containment field collapsed around us, and noise flowed in like water over a melting ice dam.

“There is one other thing,” said Leigh Hunt, his soft voice almost lost under the technobabble of the combat center.

Admiral Nashita swiveled his chair and waited.

“We’d like transport down to the planet,” said Hunt. “Down to Hyperion.”

The Admiral’s scowl seemed to deepen. “CEO Gladstone’s people said nothing about arranging a dropship.”

Hunt did not blink. “Governor-General Lane knows that we might be coming.”

Nashita glanced at one of his callups, snapped his fingers, and barked something at a Marine major who hurried over. “You’ll have to hurry,” the Admiral said to Hunt. “There is a courier just ready to leave from port twenty. Major Inverness will show you the way. You will be brought back up to the primary JumpShip. The Hebrides will be departing this position in twenty-three minutes.”

Hunt nodded and turned to follow the Major. I tagged along. The Admiral’s voice stopped us.

“M. Hunt,” he called, “please tell CEO Gladstone that the flagship will be too busy from this point on for any More political visits.” Nashita turned away to flickering callups and a line of waiting subordinates.

I followed Hunt and the Major back into the maze.

“There should be windows.”

“What?” I had been thinking about something, not paying attention.

Leigh Hunt turned his head toward me. “I’ve never been in a dropship without windows or viewscreens. It’s strange.”

I nodded and looked around, noticing the cramped and crowded interior for the first time. It was true that there were only blank bulkheads, and heaps of supplies and one young lieutenant in the passenger hold of the dropship with us. It seemed to conform to the claustrophobic ambience of the command ship.

I looked away, returning to the thoughts that had preoccupied me since we left Nashita. Following the other two to port twenty, it had suddenly occurred to me that I was not missing something I had expected to miss. Part of my anxiety toward this trip had lain in the thought of leaving the datasphere; I was rather like a fish contemplating leaving the sea. Part of my Consciousness lay submerged somewhere in that sea, the ocean of data and commlinks from two hundred worlds and the Core, all linked by the invisible medium once called datumplane, now known only as the megasphere.

It struck me as we left Nashita that I could still hear the pulse of that particular sea—distant but constant, like the sound of the surf half a mile from the shore—and I had been trying to understand it all during the rush to the dropship, the buckling in and separation, and the ten-minute cislunar sprint to the fringes of Hyperion’s atmosphere.

FORCE prided itself on using its own artificial intelligences, its own dataspheres and computing sources. The ostenible reason lay in the requirement to operate in the great spaces between Web worlds, the dark and quiet places between the stars and beyond the Web mega-sphere, but much of the real reason lay in a fierce need for independence which FORCE had shown toward the TechnoCore for centuries. Yet on a FORCE ship in the center of a FORCE armada in a non-Web, non-Protectorate system, I was tuned to the same comforting background babble of data and energy that I would have found anywhere in the Web. Interesting.

I thought of the links the farcaster had brought to Hyperion system: not just the JumpShip and farcaster containment sphere floating at Hyperion’s L3 point like a gleaming new moon, but the miles of gi-gachannel fiber-optic cable snaking through permanent JumpShip far-caster portals, microwave repeaters mechanically shuttling the few inches to repeat their messages in near real-time, command ship tame AIs requesting—and receiving—new links to the Olympus High Command on Mars and elsewhere. Somewhere the datasphere had crept in, perhaps unknown to the FORCE machines and their operators and allies. The Core AIs knew everything happening here in Hyperion system. If my body were to die now, I would have the same escape path as always, fleeing down the pulsing links that led like secret passages beyond the Web, beyond any vestige of datumplane as humanity had known it, down datalink tunnels to the TechnoCore itself. Not really to the Core, I thought, because the Core surrounds, envelops the rest, like an ocean holding separate currents, great Culf Streams which think themselves separate seas.

“I just wish there was a window,” whispered Leigh Hunt.

“Yes,” I said. “So do I.”

The dropship bucked and vibrated as we entered Hyperion’s upper atmosphere. Hyperion, I thought. The Shrike. My heavy shirt and vest seemed sticky and clinging. A faint susurration from without said that we were flying, streaking across the lapis skies at several times the speed of sound.

The young lieutenant leaned across the aisle. “First time down, gentlemen?”

Hunt nodded.

The Lieutenant was chewing gum, showing how relaxed he was.

“You two civilian techs from the Hebrides?”

“We just came from there, yes,” said Hunt.

“Thought so,” grinned the Lieutenant. “Me, I’m running a courier pack down to the Marine base near Keats. My fifth trip.”

A slight jolt ran through me as I was reminded of the name of the capital; Hyperion had been repopulated by Sad King Billy and his colony of poets, artists, and other misfits fleeing an invasion of their homeworld by Horace Glennon-Height—an invasion which never came. The poet on the current Shrike Pilgrimage, Martin Silenus, had advised King Billy almost two centuries earlier in the naming of the capital. Keats.

The locals called the old part Jacktown.

“You’re not going to believe this place,” said the Lieutenant. “It’s the real anal end of nowhere. I mean, no datasphere, no EMVs, no farcasters, no stimsim bars, no nothing. It’s no wonder that there are thousands of the fucking indigenies camped around the spaceport, just tearing down the fence to get oftworld.”

“Are they really attacking the spaceport?” asked Hunt.

“Naw,” said the Lieutenant and snapped his gum. “But they’re ready to, if you know what I mean. That’s why the Second Marine Battalion has set up a perimeter there and secured the way into the city. Besides, the yokels think that we’re going to set up farcasters any day now and let ’em step out of the shit they got themselves into.”

“They got themselves into?” I said.

The Lieutenant shrugged. “They must’ve done something to get the Ousters cricked at them, right? We’re just here to pull their oysters out of the fire.”

“Chestnuts,” said Leigh Hunt.

The gum snapped. “Whatever.”

The susurration of wind grew to a shriek clearly audible through the hull. The dropship bounced twice and then slid smoothly—ominously smoothly—as if it had encountered a chute of ice ten miles above the ground.

“I wish we had a window,” whispered Leigh Hunt.

It was warm and stuffy in the dropship. The bouncing was oddly relaxing, rather like a small sailing ship rising and falling on slow swells.

I closed my eyes for a few minutes.

Ten

Sol, Brawne, Martin Silenus, and the Consul carry gear, Het Mastecn’s Mobius cube, and the body ofLenar Hoyt down the long incline to the entrance of the Sphinx. Snow is falling rapidly now, twisting across the already writhing dune surfaces in a complex dance of wind-driven particles. Despite their comlogs” claim that night nears its end, there is no hint of sunrise to the east. Repeated calls on their comlog radio link bring no response from Colonel Kassad.

Sol Weintraub pauses before the entrance to the Time Tomb called the Sphinx. He feels his daughter’s presence as a warmth against his chest under the cape, the rise and fall of warm baby’s breath against his throat. He raises one hand, touches the small bundle there, and tries to imagine Rachel as a young woman of twenty-six, a researcher pausing at this very entrance before going in to test the anti-entropic mysteries of the Time Tomb. Sol sliakes his head. It has been twenty-six long years and a lifetime since that moment. In four days it will be his daughter’s birthday. Unless Sol does something, finds the Shrike, makes some bargain with the creature, does something, Rachel will die in four days.

“Are you coming, Sol?” calls Brawne Lamia. The others have stored their gear in the first room, half a dozen meters down the narrow corridor through stone.

“Coming,” he calls, and enters the tomb. Glow-globes and electric lights line the tunnel but they are dead and dust covered. Only Sol’s flashlight and the glow from one of Kassad’s small lanterns light the way.

The first room is small, no More than four by six meters. The other three pilgrims have set their baggage against the back wall and spread tarp and bedrolls in the center of the cold floor. Two lanterns hiss and cast a cold light. Sol stops and looks around.

“Father Hoyt’s body is in the next room,” says Brawne Lamia, answering his unasked question. “It’s even colder there.”

Sol takes his place near the others. Even this far in, he can hear the rasp of sand and snow blowing against stone.

“The Consul is going to try the comlog again later,” says Brawne.

“Tell Gladstone the situation.”

Martin Silenus laughs. “It’s no use. No fucking use at all. She knows what she’s doing, and she’s never going to let us out of here.”

“I’ll try just after sunrise,” says the Consul. His voice is very tired.

“I will stand watch,” says Sol. Rachel stirs and cries feebly. “I need to feed the baby anyway.”

The others seem too tired to respond. Brawne leans against a pack, closes her eyes, and is breathing heavily within seconds. The Consul pulls his tricorne cap low over his eyes. Martin Silenus folds his arms and stares at the doorway, waiting.

Sol Weintraub fusses with a nursing pak, his cold and arthritic ringers having trouble with the heating tab. He looks in his bag and realizes that he has only ten More paks, a handful of diapers.

The baby is nursing, and Sol is nodding, almost sleeping, when a sound wakes them all.

“What?” cries Brawne, fumbling for her father’s pistol.

“Shhh!” snaps the poet, holding his hand out for silence.

From somewhere beyond the tomb comes the sound again. It is flat and final, cutting through the wind noise and sand rasp.

“Kassad’s rifle,” says Brawne Lamia.

“Or someone else’s,” whispers Martin Silenus.

They sit in silence and strain to hear. For a long moment there is no sound at all. Then, in an instant, the night erupts with noise… noise which makes each of them cringe and cover his or her ears.

Rachel screams in terror, but her cries cannot be heard over the explosions and rendings beyond the tomb.

Eleven

I awoke just as the dropship touched down. Hyperion, I thought, still separating my thoughts from the tatters of dream.

The young lieutenant wished us luck and was the first out as the door irised open and cool, thin air replaced the pressurized thickness of the cabin atmosphere. I followed Hunt out and down a standard docking ramp, through the shield wall, and onto the tarmac.

It was night, and I had no idea what the local time was, whether the terminator had just passed this point on the planet or was just approaching, but it felt and smelled late. It was raining softly, a light drizzle perfumed with the salt scent of the sea and the fresh hint of moistened vegetation. Field lights glared around the distant perimeter, and a score of lighted towers threw halos toward the low clouds. A half dozen young men in Marine field uniforms were quickly unloading the dropship, and I could see our young lieutenant speaking briskly to an officer thirty yards to our right. The small spaceport looked like something out a history book, a colonial port from the earliest days of the Hegira. Primitive blast pits and landing squares stretched for a mile or More toward a dark bulk of hills to the north, gantries and service towers tended to a score of military shuttles and small warcraft around us, and the landing areas were ringed by modular military buildings sporting antennae arrays, violet containment fields, and a clutter of skimmers and aircraft.

I followed Hunt’s gaze and noticed a skimmer moving toward us.

The blue and gold geodesic symbol of the Hegemony on one of its skirts was illuminated by its running lights; rain streaked the forward blisters and whipped away from the fans in a violent curtain of mist.

The skimmer settled, a Perspcx blister split and folded, and a man stepped out and hurried across the tarmac toward us.

He held out his hand to Hunt. “M. Hunt? I’m Theo Lane.”

Hunt shook the hand, nodded toward me. “Pleased to meet you, Governor-General. This is Joseph Severn.”

I shook Lane’s hand, a shock of recognition coming with the touch.

I remembered Theo Lane through the deja vu mists of the Consul’s memory, recalling the years when the young man was the Vice-Consul; also from a brief meeting a week earlier when he greeted all of the pilgrims before they departed upriver on the levitation barge Benares. He seemed older than he had appeared just six days before. But the unruly lock of hair on his forehead was the same, as were the archaic eyeglasses he wore, and the brisk, firm handshake.

“I’m pleased you could take the time to make planetfall,” Governor—

General Lane said to Hunt. “I have several things I need to communicate to the CEO.”

“That’s why we’re here,” said Hunt. He squinted up at the rain. “We have about an hour. Is there somewhere we can dry off?”

The Governor-General showed a youthful smile. “The field here is a madhouse, even at 0520 hours, and the consulate is under siege. But I know a place.” He gestured toward the skimmer.

As we lifted off, I noticed the two Marine skimmers keeping pace with us but I was still surprised that the Governor-General of a Protectorate world flew his own vehicle and did not have constant bodyguards.

Then I remembered what the Consul had told the other pilgrims about Theo Lane—about the young man’s efficiency and self-effacing ways—and realized that such a low profile was in keeping with the diplomat’s style.

The sun rose as we lifted off from the spaceport and banked toward town. Low clouds glowed brilliantly as they were lighted from below, the hills to the north sparkled a bright green, violet, and russet, and the strip of sky below the clouds to the east was that heart-stopping green and lapis which I remembered from my dreams. Hyperion, I thought, and felt a thick tension and excitement catch in my throat.

I leaned my head against the rain-streaked canopy and realized that some of the vertigo and confusion I felt at that moment came from a thinning of the background contact with the datasphere. The connection was still there, carried primarily on microwave and fatline channels now, but More tenuous than I had ever experienced—if the datasphere had been the sea in which I swam, I was now in shallow water indeed, perhaps a tidal pool would be a better metaphor, and the water grew even shallower as we left the envelope of the spaceport and its crude microsphere. I forced myself to pay attention to what Hunt and Governor-General Lane were discussing.

“You can see the shacks and hovels,” said Lane, banking slightly so we had a better view of the hills and valleys separating the spaceport from the suburbs of the capital.

Shacks and hovels were too-polite terms for the miserable collection of fiberplastic panels, patches of canvas, heaps of packing crates, and shards of flowfoam that covered the hills and deep canyons. What obviously had once been a scenic seven-or eight-mile drive from the city to the spaceport through wooded hills now showed land stripped of all trees for firewood and shelter, meadows beaten to barren mudflats by the press of feet, and a city of seven or eight hundred thousand refugees sprawled over every flat piece of land in sight. Smoke from thousands of breakfast fires floated toward the clouds, and I could see movement everywhere, children running in bare feet, women carrying water from streams that must be terribly polluted, men squatting in open fields and waiting in line at makeshift privies. I noted that high razorwire fences and violet containment field barriers had been set along both sides of the highway, and military checkpoints were visible every half mile. Long lines of FORCE camouflaged ground vehicles and skimmers moved both directions along the highway and low-level flyways.

“…most of the refugees are indigenies,” Governor-General Lane was saying, “although there are thousands of displaced landowners from the southern cities and the large fiberplastic plantations on Aquila.”

“Are they here because they think the Ousters will invade?” asked Hunt.

Theo Lane glanced at Gladstone’s aide. “Originally there was panic at the thought of the Time Tombs opening,” he said. “People were convinced that the Shrike was coming for them.”

“Was it?” I asked.

The young man shifted in his seat to look back at me. “The Third Legion of the Self-Defense Force went north seven months ago,” he said. “It didn’t come back.”

“You said at first they were fleeing the Shrike,” said Hunt. “Why did the others come?”

“They’re waiting for the evacuation,” said Lane. “Everyone knows what the Ousters… and the Hegemony troops… did to Bressia.

They don’t want to be here when that happens to Hypcrion.”

“You’re aware that FORCE considers evacuation an absolute last resort?” said Hunt.

“Yes. But we’re not announcing that to the refugees. There have been terrible riots already. The Shrike Temple has been destroyed… a mob laid siege, and someone used shaped plasma charges stolen from the mineworks on Ursus. Last week there were attacks on the consulate and the spaceport, as well as food riots in Jacktown.”

Hunt nodded and watched the city approach. The buildings were low, few over five stories, and their white and pastel walls glowed richly in the slanting rays of morning light. I looked over Hunt’s shoulder and saw the low mountain with the carved face of Sad King Billy brooding over the valley. The Hoolie R'ver twisted through the center of the old town, straightening before it headed northwest toward the unseen Bridle Range, twisting out of sight in the weirwood marshes to the southeast, where I knew it widened to its delta along the High Mane. The city looked uncrowded and peaceful after the sad confusion of the refugee slums, but even as we began to descend toward the river, I noticed the military traffic, the tanks and APCs and GAVs at intersections and sitting in parks, their camouflage polymer deliberately deactivated so the machines would look More threatening. Then I saw the refugees in the city: makeshift tents in the squares and alleys, thousands of sleeping forms along the curbs, like so many dull-colored bundles of laundry waiting to be picked up.

“Keats had a population of two hundred thousand two years ago,” said Governor-General Lane. “Now, including the shack cities, we’re nearing three and a half million.”

“I thought that there were fewer than five million people on the planet,” said Hunt. “Including indigenies.”

“That’s accurate,” said Lane. “You see why everything’s breaking down. The other two large cities. Port Romance and Endymion, are holding most of the rest of the refugees. Fiberplastic plantations on Aquila are empty, being reclaimed by the jungle and flame forests, the farm belts along the Mane and the Nine Tails aren’t producing—or if they are, can’t get their food to market because of the breakdown of the civilian transport system.”

Hunt watched the river come closer. “What is the government doing?”

Theo Lane smiled. “You mean what am I doing? Well, the crisis has been brewing for almost three years. The first step was to dissolve the Home Rule Council and formally bring Hyperion into the Protectorate. Once I had executive powers, I moved to nationalize the remaining transit companies and dirigible lines—only the military moves by skimmer here now—and to disband the Self-Defense Force.”

“Disband it?” said Hunt. “I would think you would want to use it.”

Governor-General Lane shook his head. He touched the omni control lightly, confidently, and the skimmer spiraled down toward the center of old Keats. “They were worse than useless,” he said, “they were dangerous. I wasn’t too upset when the 'Fighting Third' Legion went north and just disappeared. As soon as the FORCE:ground troops and Marines landed, I disarmed the rest of the SDF thugs. They were the source of most of the looting. Here’s where we’ll get some breakfast and talk.”

The skimmer dropped in low over the river, circled a final time, and dropped lightly into the courtyard of an ancient structure made of stone and sticks and imaginatively designed windows: Cicero’s. Even before Lane identified the place to Leigh Hunt I recognized it from the pilgrims’ passage—the old restaurant/pub/inn lay in the heart of Jacktown and sprawled over four buildings on nine levels, its balconies and piers and darkened weirwood walkways overhanging the slow-moving Hoolie on one side and the narrow lanes and alleys of Jacktown on the other.

Cicero’s was older than the stone face of Sad King Billy, and its dim cubicles and deep wine cellars had been the true home of the Consul during his years of exile here.

Stan Leweski met us at the courtyard door. Tall and massive, face as age darkened and cracked as the stone walls of his inn, Leweski was Cicero’s, as had been his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him.

“By damn!” declared the giant, clapping the Governor-General/de facto dictator of this world on his shoulders hard enough to make Theo stagger. “You get up early for a change, hell? Bring your friends to breakfast? Welcome to Cicero’s!” Stan Leweski’s huge hand swallowed Hunt’s and then mine in a welcome that left me checking fingers and joints for damage. “Or is it later—Web time—for you?” he boomed.

“Maybe you like a drink or dinner!”

Leigh Hunt squinted at the pub owner. “How did you know we were from the Web?”

Leweski boomed a laugh that sent weathervanes on the roofline spinning.

“Hah! Hard to deduct, yes? You come here with Theo at sunrise—you think he give everybody a ride here?—also wearing wool clothes when we got no sheeps here. You’re not FORCE people and not fiberplastic plantation big shots… I know all those! Ipso fact toto, you farcast to ships from Web, drop down here for good food. Now, you want breakfast or plenty to drink?”

Theo Lane sighed. “Give us a quiet corner, Stan. Bacon and eggs and brine kippers for me. Gentlemen?”

“Just coffee,” said Hunt.

“Yes,” I said. We were following the owner through the corridors now, up short staircases and down wrought-iron ramps, through More corridors. The place was lower, darker, smokier, and More fascinating than I remembered from my dreams. A few regulars looked up at us as we passed, but the place was far less crowded than I remembered.

Obviously Lane had sent troops to throw out the last of the SDF barbarians who had been occupying the place. We passed a high, narrow window, and I verified that hypothesis by catching a glimpse of a FORCE:ground APC parked in the alley, troops lounging on and near it with obviously loaded weapons.

“Here,” said Leweski, waving us into a small porch which overhung the Hoolie and looked out onto the gabled rooftops and stone towers ofJacktown. “Dommy be here in two minutes with your breakfast and coffees.” He disappeared quickly… for a giant.

Hunt glanced at his comlog. “We have about forty-five minutes before the dropship is supposed to return with us. Let’s talk.”

Lane nodded, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. I realized that he had been up all night… perhaps several nights. “Fine,” he said, setting the glasses back in place. “What does CEO Gladstone want to know?”

Hunt paused while-a very short man with parchment-white skin and yellow eyes brought our coffee in deep, thick mugs and set down a platter with Lane’s food. “The CEO wants to know what you feel your priorities are,” said Hunt. “And she needs to know if you can hold out here if the fighting is prolonged.”

Lane ate for a moment before responding. He took a long sip of coffee and stared intently at Hunt. It was real coffee from the taste of it, better than most Web-grown. “First question last,” Lane said. “Define prolonged.”

“Weeks.”

“Weeks, probably. Months, no way.” The Governor-General tried the brine kippers. “You see the state of our economy. If it wasn’t for the supplies dropped in by FORCE, we’d have food riots every day instead of once a week. There are no exports with the quarantine. Half the refugees want to find the Shrike Temple priests and kill them, the other half want to convert before the Shrike finds them.”

“Have you found the priests?” asked Hunt.

“No. We’re sure they escaped the temple bombing, but the authorities can’t locate them. Rumor has it that they’ve gone north to Keep Chronos, a stone castle right above the high steppe where the Time Tombs are.”

I knew better. At least, I knew the pilgrims had not seen any Shrike Temple priests during their brief stay in the Keep. But there had been signs of a slaughter there.

“As for our priorities,” Theo Lane was saying, “the first is evacuation.

The second is elimination of the Ouster threat. The third is help with the Shrike scare.”

Leigh Hunt sat back against oiled wood. Steam lifted from the heavy mug in his hands. “Evacuation is not a possibility at this time—”

“Why?” Lane fired the question like a hellwhip bolt.

“CEO Gladstone does not have the political power… at this point… to convince the Senate and All Thing that the Web can accept five million refugees—”

“Bullshit,” said the Governor-General. “There were twice that many tourists flooding Maui-Covenant its first year in the Protectorate. And that destroyed a unique planetary ecology. Put us on Armaghast or some desert world until the war scare is past.”

Hunt shook his head. His basset-hound eyes looked sadder than usual. “It isn’t just the logistical question,” he said. “Or the political one. It’s…”

“The Shrike,” said Lane. He broke a piece of bacon. “The Shrike is the real reason.”

“Yes. As well as fears of an Ouster infiltration of the Web.”

The Governor-General laughed. “So you’re afraid that if you set up farcaster portals here and let us out, a bunch of three-meter Ousters are going to land and get in line without anyone noticing?”

Hunt sipped his coffee. “No,” he said, “but there is a real chance of an invasion. Every farcaster portal is an opening to the Web. The Advisory Council warns against it.”

“All right,” said the younger man, his mouth half-full. “Evacuate us by ship then. Wasn’t that the reason for the original task force?”

“That was the ostensible reason,” said Hunt. 'Our real goal now is to defeat the Ousters and then bring Hyperion fully into the Web.”

“And what about the Shrike threat then?”

“It will be… neutralized,” said Hunt. He paused while a small group of men and women passed by our porch.

I glanced up, started to return my attention to the table, and then snapped my head back around. The group had passed out of sight down the hallway. “Wasn’t that Melio Arundez?” I said, interrupting Governor-General Lane.

“What? Oh, Dr. Arundez. Yes. Do you know him, M. Severn?”

Lcigh Hunt was glaring at me, but I ignored it. “Yes,” I said to Lane, although I had never actually met Arundez. “What is he doing on Hyperion?”

“His team landed over six local months ago with a project proposal from Reichs University on Freeholm to do additional research on the Time Tombs.”

“But the Tombs were closed to research and tourists,” I said.

“Yes. But their instruments—we allowed data to be relayed weekly through the consulate fatline transmitter—had already shown the change in the anti-entropic fields surrounding the Tombs. Reichs University knew the Tombs were opening… if that’s really what the change means… and they sent the top researchers in the Web to study it.”

“But you did not grant them permission?” I said.

Theo Lane smiled without warmth. “CEO Gladstone did not grant them permission. The closure of the Tombs is a direct order from TC2.

If it were up to me, I would have denied the pilgrims passage and allowed Dr. Arundez’s team priority access.” He turned back to Hunt.

“Excuse me,” I said and slipped out of the booth.

I found Arundez and his people—three women and four men, their clothing and physical styles suggesting different worlds in the Web– two porches away. They were bent over their breakfasts and scientific comlogs, arguing in technical terms so abtruse as to leave a Talmudic scholar envious.

“Dr. Arundez?” I said.

“Yes?” He looked up. He was two decades older than I remembered, entering middle age in his early sixties, but the strikingly handsome profile was the same, with the same bronzed skin, solid jaw, wavy black hair going only slightly gray at the temples, and piercing hazel eyes. I understood how a young female graduate student could have quickly fallen in love with him.

“My name is Joseph Severn,” I said. “You don’t know me, but I knew a friend of yours… Rachel Weintraub.”

Arundez was on his feet in a second, offering apologies to the others, leading me by the elbow until we found an empty booth in a cubicle under a round window looking out on red-tiled rooftops. He released my elbow and appraised me carefully, taking in the Web clothing. He turned my wrists over, looking for the telltale blueness of Poulsen treatments.

“You’re too young,” he said. “Unless you knew Rachel as a child.”

“Actually, it’s her father I know best,” I said.

Dr. Arundez let out a breath and nodded. “Of course,” he said.

“Where is Sol? I’ve been trying to trace him for months through the consulate. The authorities on Hebron will only say that he’s moved.”

He gave me that appraising stare again. “You knew about Rachel’s… illness?”

“Yes,” I said. The Merlin’s sickness which had caused her to age backward, losing memories with each day and hour that passed.

Melio Arundez had been one of those memories. “I know that you went to visit her about fifteen standard years ago on Barnard’s World.”

Arundez grimaced. “That was a mistake,” he said. “I thought that I would talk to Sol and Sarai. When I saw her…"He shook his head.

“Who are you? Do you know where Sol and Rachel are now? It’s three days until her birthday.”

I nodded. “Her first and last birthday.” I glanced around. The hallway was silent and empty except for a distant murmur of laughter from a lower level. “I’m here on a fact-finding trip from the CEO’s office,” I said. “I have information that Sol Weintraub and his daughter have traveled to the Time Tombs.”

Arundez looked as though I’d struck him in the solar plexus. “Here? On Hyperion?” He stared out at the rooftops for a moment. “I should have realized… although Sol always refused to return here… but with Sarai gone…"He looked at me. “Are you in touch with him? Is she… are they all right?”

I shook my head. “There are no radio or datasphere links with them at present,” I said. “I know that they made the trip safely. The question is, what do you know? Your team? Data on what is occurring at the Time Tombs might be very important to their survival.”

Melio Arundez ran his hand through his hair. “If only they’d let us go there! That damned, stupid, bureaucratic shortsightedness… You say you’re from Gladstone’s office. Can you explain to them why it’s so important for us to get there?”

“I’m only a messenger,” I said. “But tell me why it’s so important, and I’ll try to get the information to someone.”

Arundez’s large hands cupped an invisible shape in midair. His tension and anger were palpable. “For three years, the data was coming via telemetry in the squirts the consulate would allow once a week on their precious fatline transmitter. It showed a slow but relentless degradation of the anti-entropic envelope—the time tides—in and around the Tombs. It was erratic, illogical, but steady. Our team was authorized to travel here shortly after the degradation began. We arrived about six months ago, saw data that suggested that the Tombs were opening… coming into phase with now… but four days after we arrived, the instruments quit sending. All of them. We begged that bastard Lane to let us just go and recalibrate them, set up new sensors if he wouldn’t let us investigate in person.

“Nothing. No transit permission. No communication with the university… even with the coming of FORCE ships to make it easier.

We tried going upriver ourselves, without permission, and some of Lane’s Marine goons intercepted us at Karia Locks and brought us back in handcuffs. I spent four weeks in jail. Now we’re allowed to wander around Keats, but we’ll be locked up indefinitely if we leave the city again.” Arundez leaned forward. “Can you help?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I want to help the Weintraubs. Perhaps it would be best if you could take your team to the site. Do you know when the Tombs will open?”

The time-physicist made an angry gesture. “If we had new data!” He sighed. “No, we don’t know. They could be open already or it could be another six months.”

“When you say 'open,' “I said, “you don’t mean physically open?”

“Of course not. The Time Tombs have been physically open for inspection since they were discovered four standard centuries ago. I mean open in the sense of dropping the time curtains that conceal parts of them, bringing the entire complex into phase with the local flow of time.”

“By ‘local’ you mean… ?”

“I mean in this universe, of course.”

“And you’re sure that the Tombs are moving backward in time…from our future?” I asked.

“Backward in time, yes,” said Arundez. “From our future, we can’t say. We’re not even sure what the 'future' means in temporal/physical terms. It could be a series of sine-wave probabilities or a decision-branch megaverse, or even—”

“But whatever it is,” I said, “the Time Tombs and the Shrike are coming from there7”

“The Time Tombs are for certain,” said the physicist. “I have no knowledge of the Shrike. My own guess is that it’s a myth fueled by the same hunger for superstitious verities that drives other religions.”

“Even after what happened to Rachel?” I said. “You still don’t believe in the Shrike?”

Melio Arundez glowered at me. “Rachel contracted Merlin’s sickness,” he said. “It’s an anti-entropic aging disease, not the bite of a mythical monster.”

“Time’s bite has never been mythical,” I said, surprising myself with such a cheap bit of homespun philosophy. “The question is—will the Shrike or whatever power inhabits the Time Tombs return Rachel to the 'local' time flow?”

Arundez nodded and turned his gaze to the rooftops. The sun had moved into the clouds, and the morning was drab, the red tiles bleached of color. Rain was beginning to fall again.

“And the question is,” I said, surprising myself again, “are you still in love with her?”

The physicist turned his head slowly, fixing me in an angry gaze. I felt the retort—possibly physical—build, crest, and wane. He reached into his coat pocket and showed me a snapshot holo of an attractive woman with graying hair and two children in their late teens. “My wife and children,” said Melio Arundez. “They’re waiting on Renaissance Vector.” He pointed a blunt finger at me. “If Rachel were… were cured today, I would be eighty-two standard years old before she again reached the age she was when we first met.” He lowered the finger, returned the holo to his pocket. “And yes,” he said, “I’m still in love with her.”

“Ready?” The voice broke the silence a moment later. I looked up to see Hunt and Theo Lane in the doorway. “The dropship lifts off in ten minutes,” said Hunt.

I stood and shook hands with Melio Arundez. “I’ll try,” I said.

Governor-General Lane had one of his escort skimmers return us to the spaceport while he went back to the consulate. The military skimmer was no More comfortable than his consulate machine had been, but it was faster. We were strapped and fielded into our webseats aboard the dropship before Hunt said, “What was all that about with that physicist?”

“Just renewing old ties with a stranger,” I said.

Hunt frowned. “What did you promise him that you’d try?”

I felt the dropship rumble, twitch, and then leap as the catapult grid launched us skyward. “I told him I’d try to get him in to visit a sick friend,” I said.

Hunt continued to frown, but I pulled out a sketchpad and doodled images of Cicero’s until we docked at the JumpShip fifteen minutes later.

It was a shock to step through the farcaster portal into the executive nexus in Government House. Another step took us to the Senate gallery, where Meina Gladstone was still speaking to a packed house. Imagers and microphones carried her speech to the All Thing and a hundred billion waiting citizens.

I glanced at my chronometer. It was 1038 hours. We had been gone only ninety minutes.

Twelve

The building housing the Senate of the Hegemony of Man was patterned More after the United States Senate building of eight centuries earlier rather than the More imperial structures of the North American Republic or tlie First World Council. The main assembly room was large, girded with galleries, and big enough for the thrce-hundred-plus senators from Web worlds and the More than seventy nonvoting representatives from Protectorate colonies. Carpets were a rich wine red and radiated from the central dais where the President Pro Tern, the Speaker of the All Thing, and, today, tlie Chief Executive Officer of the Hegemony had their scats. Senators’ desks were made of muirwood, donated by the Templars of God’s Crovc, who held such products sacred, and the glow and scent of burnished wood filled the room even when it was as crowded as it was today.

Lcigh Hunt and I entered just as Gladstone was finishing her speech.

I keyed my comlog for a quick readout. As with most of her talks, it had been short, comparatively simple, without condescension or bombast, yet laced with a certain lilt of original phrasing and imagery which carried great power. Gladstone had reviewed the incidents and conflicts that led to the current state ofbclligerancy with the Ousters, proclaimed the time-honored wish for peace, which still was paramount in Hegemony policy, and called for unity within the Web and Protectorate until this current crisis was past. I listened to her summation.

“…and so it has come to pass, fellow citizens, that after More than a century of peace we are once again engaged in a struggle to maintain those rights to which our society has been dedicated since before the death of our Mother Earth. After More than a century of peace, we must now pick up—however unwillingly, however distastefully—the shield and sword, which have ever preserved our birthright and vouchsafed our common good, so that peace may again prevail.

“We must not… and shall not… be misled by the stir of trumpets or the rush of near-joy which the call to arms inevitably produces.

Those who ignore history’s lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do More than relive them… they may be forced to die by them.

Great sacrifices may lie ahead for all of us. Great sorrows may lie in store for some of us. But come what successes or setbacks must inevitably occur, I say to you now that we must remember these two things above all: First, that we fight for peace and know that war must never be a condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we suffer as a child does a fever, knowing that health follows the long night of pain and that peace is health. Second, that we shall never surrender… never surrender or waver or bend to lesser voices or More comfortable impulses… never waver until the victory is ours, aggression is undone, and the peace is won. I thank you.”

Leigh Hunt leaned forward and watched intently as most of the senators rose to give Gladstone an ovation that roared back from the high ceiling and struck us in the gallery in waves. Most of the senators.

I could see Hunt counting those who remained sitting, some with arms folded, many with visible frowns. The war was less than two days old, and already the opposition was building… first from the colonial worlds afraid for their own safety while FORCE was diverted to Hyperion, then from Gladstone’s opponents—of which there were many since no one stays in power as long as she without creating cadres of enemies, and finally from members of her own coalition who saw the war as a foolish undoing of unprecedented prosperity.

I watched her leaving the dais, shaking hands with the aged President and young Speaker, then taking the center aisle out—touching and talking to many, smiling the familiar smile. All Thing imagers followed her, and I could feel the pressure of the debate net swell as billions voiced their opinions on the interact levels of the megasphere.

“I need to see her now,” said Hunt. “Are you aware that you’re invited to a state dinner tonight at Treetops?”

“Yes.”

Hunt shook his head slightly, as if incapable of understanding why the CEO wanted me around. “It will run late and will be followed by a meeting with FORCE:command. She wants you to attend both.”

“I’ll be available,” I said.

Hunt paused at the door. “Do you have something to do back at Government House until the dinner?”

I smiled at him. “I’ll work on my portrait sketches,” I said. “Then I’ll probably take a walk through Deer Park. After that… I don’t know… I may take a nap.”

Hunt shook his head again and hurried off.

Thirteen

The first shot misses Fedmahn Kassad by less than a meter, splitting a boulder he is passing, and he is moving before the blast strikes him; rolling for cover, his camouflage polymer fully activated, impact armor tensed, assault rifle ready, visor in full targeting mode. Kassad lies there for a long moment, feeling his heart pounding and searching the hills, valley, and Tombs for the slightest hint of heat or movement. Nothing. He begins to grin behind the black mirror of his visor.

Whoever had shot at him had meant to miss, he is sure. They had used a standard pulse bolt, ignited by an 18-mm cartridge, and unless the shooter was ten or More kilometers away… there was no chance of a miss.

Kassad stands up to run toward the shelter of the Jade Tomb, and the second shot catches him in the chest, hurling him backward.

This time he grunts and rolls away, scuttling toward the Jade Tomb’s entrance with all sensors active. The second shot had been a rifle bullet.

Whoever is playing with him is using a FORCE multipurpose assault weapon similar to his own. He guesses that the assailant knows he is in body armor, knows that the rifle bullet would be ineffective at any range. But the multipurpose weapon has other settings, and if the next level of play involves a killing laser, Kassad is dead. He throws himself into the doorway of the tomb.

Still no heat or movement on his sensors except for the red-and-yellow images of his fellow pilgrims’ footsteps, rapidly cooling, where they had entered the Sphinx several minutes before.

Kassad uses his tactical implants to switch displays, quickly running through VHF and optical comm channels. Nothing. He magnifies the valley a hundredfold, computes in wind and sand, and activates a moving-target indicator. Nothing larger than an insect is moving. He sends out radar, sonar, and lorfo pulses, daring the sniper to home in on them. Nothing. He calls up tactical displays of the first two shots; blue ballistic trails leap into existence.

The first shot had come from the Poets’ City, More than four klicks to the southwest. The second shot, less than ten seconds later, came from the Crystal Monolith, almost a full klick down the valley to the northeast. Logic dictates that there have to be two snipers. Kassad is sure that there is only one. He refines the display scale. The second shot had come from high on the Monolith, at least thirty meters up on the sheer face.

Kassad swings out, raises amplification, and peers through night and the last vestiges of the sand-and snowstorm toward the huge structure.

Nothing. No windows, no slits, no openings of any sort.

Only the billions of colloidal particles left in the air from the storm allow the laser to be visible for a split second. Kassad sees the green beam after it strikes him in the chest. He rolls back into the entrance of the Jade Tomb, wondering if the green walls will help deter a green light lance, while superconductors in his combat armor radiate heat in every direction and his tactical visor tells him what he already knows: the shot has come from high on the Crystal Monolith.

Kassad feels pain sting his chest, and he looks down in time to see a five-centimeter circle of invulnarmor drip molten fibers onto the floor.

Only the last layer has saved him. As it is, his body drips with sweat inside the suit, and he can see the walls of the tomb literally glowing with the heat his suit has discarded. Biomonitors clamor for attention but hold no serious news, his suit sensors report some circuit damage but describe nothing irreplacable, and his weapon is still charged, loaded, and operative.

Kassad thinks about it. All of the Tombs are priceless archaeological treasures, preserved for centuries as a gift to future generations, even if they are moving backward in time. It would be a crime on an interplanetary scale if Colonel Fedmahn Kassad were to put his own life above the preservation of such priceless artifacts.

“Oh fuck it,” whispers Kassad and rolls into firing position.

He sprays laser fire across the face of the Monolith until crystal slags and runs. He pumps high-explosive pulse bolts into the thing at ten-meter intervals, starting with the top levels. Thousands of shards of mirrored material By out into the night, tumbling in slow motion toward the valley floor, leaving gaps as ugly as missing teeth in the building’s face. Kassad switches back to wide-beam coherent light and sweeps the interior through the gaps, grinning behind his visor when something bursts into flames on several floors. Kassad fires bhees—beams of high-energy electrons—which rip through the Monolith and plow perfectly cylindrical fourteen-centimeter-wide tunnels for half a kilometer through the rock of the valley wall. He fires cannister grenades, which explode into tens of thousands of needle flechettes after passing through the crystal face of the Monolith. He triggers random pulse-laser swaths, which will blind anyone or anything looking in his direction from the structure. He fires body-heat-seeking darts into every orifice the shattered structure offers him.

Kassad rolls back into the Jade Tomb’s doorway and flips up his visor.

Flames from the burning tower are reflected in thousands of crystal shards scattered up and down the valley. Smoke rises into a night suddenly without wind. Vermilion dunes glow from the flames. The air is suddenly filled with the sound of wind chimes as More pieces of crystal break and fall away, some dangling by long tethers of melted glass.

Kassad ejects drained power clips and ammo bands, replaces them from his belt, and rolls on his back, breathing in the cooler air that comes through the open doorway. He is under no illusion that he has killed the sniper.

“Moneta,” whispers Fedmahn Kassad. He closes his eyes a second before going on.

Moneta had first come to Kassad at Agincourt on a late-October morning in a.d. 1415. The fields had been strewn with French and English dead, the forest alive with the menace of a single enemy, but that enemy would have been the victor if not for the help of the tall woman with short hair, and eyes he would never forget. After their shared victory, still dappled with the blood of their vanquished knight, Kassad and the woman made love in the forest.

The Olympus Command School Historical Tactical Network was a stimsim experience closer to reality than anything civilians would ever experience, but the phantom lover named Moneta was not an artifact of the stimsim. Over the years, when Kassad was a cadet at FORCE Olympus Command School and later, in the fatigue-drugged postcathartic dreams that inevitably followed actual combat, she had come to him.

Fedmahn Kassad and the shadow named Moneta had made love in the quiet corners of battlefields ranging from Antietam to QomRiyadh.

Unknown to anyone, unseen by other stimsim cadets, Moneta had come to him in tropical nights on watch and during frozen days while under siege on the Russian steppes. They had whispered their passion in Kassad’s dreams after nights of real victory on the island battlefields of Maui Cffvenant and during the agony of physical reconstruction after his near-death on South Bressia. And always Moneta had been his single love—an overpowering passion mixed with the scent of blood and gunpowder, the taste of napalm and soft lips and ionized flesh.

Then came Hyperion.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad’s hospital ship was attacked by Ouster torchships while returning from the Bressia system. Only Kassad had survived, stealing an Ouster shuttle and crash-landing it on Hyperion.

On the continent of Equus. In the high deserts and barren wastelands of the sequestered lands beyond the Bridle Range. In the valley of the Time Tombs. In the realm of the Shrike.

And Moneta had been waiting for him. They made love… and when the Ousters landed in force to reclaim their prisoner, Kassad and Moneta and the half-sensed presence of the Shrike had laid waste to Ouster ships, destroyed their landing parties, and slaughtered their troops. For a brief time, Colonel Fedmahn Kassad from the Tharsis slums, child and grandchild and great-grandchild of refugees, citizen of Mars in every sense, had known the pure ecstasy of using time as a weapon, of moving unseen amongst one’s enemies, of being a god of destruction in ways not dreamt of by mortal warriors.

But then, even while making love after the carnage of battle, Moneta had changed. Had become a monster. Or the Shrike had replaced her.

Kassad could not remember the details; would not remember them if he did not have to in order to survive.

But he knew that he had returned to find the Shrike and to kill it.

To find Moneta and to kill her. To kill her? He did not know. Colonel Fedmahn Kassad knew only that all the great passions of a passionate life had led him to this place and to this moment, and if death awaited him here, then so be it. And if love and glory and a victory that would make Valhalla quake awaited, then so be it.

Kassad slaps down his visor, rises to his feet, and rushes from the Jade Tomb, screaming as he goes. His weapon launches smoke grenades and chaff toward the Monolith, but these offer little cover for the distance he must cross. Someone is still alive and firing from the tower; bullets and pulse charges explode along his path as he dodges and dives from dune to dune, from one heap of rubble to the next.

Flechcttes strike his helmet and legs. His visor cracks, and warning telltales blink. Kassad blinks away the tactical displays, leaving only the night-vision aids. High-velocity solid slugs strike his shoulder and knee.

Kassad goes down, is driven down. The impact armor goes rigid, relaxes, and he is up and running again, feeling the deep bruises already forming.

His chameleon polymer works desperately to mirror the no-man’s-land he is crossing: night, flame, sand, melted crystal, and burning stone.

Fifty meters from the Monolith, and ribbons of light lance to his left and right, turning sand to glass with a touch, reaching for him with a speed nothing and no one can dodge. Killing lasers quit playing with him and lance home, stabbing at his helmet, heart, and groin with the heat of stars. His combat armor goes mirror bright, shifting frequencies in microseconds to match the changing colors of attack. A nimbus of superheated air surrounds him. Microcircuits shriek to overload and beyond as they release the heat and work to build a micrometer-thin field of force to keep it away from flesh and bone.

Kassad struggles the final twenty meters, using power assist to leap barriers of slagged crystal. Explosions erupt on all sides, knocking him down and then lifting him again. The suit is absolutely rigid; he is a doll thrown between flaming hands.

The bombardment stops. Kassad gets to his knees and then to his feet. He looks up at the face of the Crystal Monolith and sees the Hames and fissures and little else. His visor is cracked and dead. Kassad lifts it, breathes in smoke and ionized air, and enters the tomb.

His implants tell him that the other pilgrims are paging him on all the comm channels. He shuts them off. Kassad removes his helmet and walks into darkness.

It is a single room, large and square and dark. A shaft has opened in the center and he looks up a hundred meters to a shattered skylight.

A figure is waiting on the tenth level, sixty meters above, silhouetted by flames.

Kassad drapes his weapon over one shoulder, tucks his helmet under his arm, finds the great spiral staircase in the center of the shaft, and begins to climb.

Fourteen

“Did you have your nap?” Leigh Hunt asked as we stepped onto the farcaster reception area of Treetops.

“Yes.”

“Pleasant dreams, I hope?” said Hunt, making no effort to hide either his sarcasm or his opinion of those who slept while the movers and shakers of government toiled.

“Not especially,” I said and looked around as we ascended the wide staircase toward the dining levels.

In a Web where every town in every province of every country on every continent seemed to brag of a four-star restaurant, where true gourmets numbered in the tens of millions and palates had been educated by exotic fare from two hundred worlds, even in a Web so jaded with culinary triumphs and resraurantic success, Treetops stood alone.

Set atop one of a dozen highest trees on a world of forest giants, Treetops occupied several acres of upper branches half a mile above the ground. The staircase Hunt and I ascended, four meters wide here, was lost amid the immensity of limbs the size of avenues, leaves the size of sails, and a main trunk—illuminated by spotlights and just glimpsed through gaps in the foliage—more sheer and massive than most mountain faces. Treetops held a score of dining platforms in its upper bowers, ascending in order of rank and privilege and wealth and power. Especially power. In a society where billionaires were almost commonplace, where a lunch at Treetops could cost a thousand marks and be within the reach of millions, the final arbiter of position and privilege was power—a currency that never went out of style.

The evening’s gathering was to be on the uppermost deck, a wide, curving platform ofweirwood (since muirwood cannot be stepped upon), with views of a fading lemon sky, an infinity of lesser treetops stretching off to a distant horizon, and the soft orange lights of Templar treehomes and houses of worship glowing through far-off green and umber and amber walls of softly stirring foliage. There were about sixty people in the dinner party; I recognized Senator Kolchev, white hair shining under the Japanese lanterns, as well as Councilor Albedo, General Morpurgo, Admiral Singh, President Pro Tern Denzel-Hiat-Amin, All Thing Speaker Gibbons, another dozen senators from such powerful Web worlds as Sol Draconi Septem, Deneb Drei, Nordholm, Fuji, both the Renaissances, Metaxas, Maui-Covenant, Hebron, New Earth, and Ixion, as well as a bevy of lesser politicians. Spenser Reynolds, the action artist, was there, resplendent in a maroon velvet formal tunic, but I saw no other artists. I did see Tyrena Wingreen-Feif across the crowded deck; the publisher-turned-philanthropist still stood out in a crowd in her gown made of thousands of silk-thin leather petals, her blue-black hair rising high in a sculpted wave, but the gown was a Tedekai original, the makeup was dramatic but noninteractive, and her appearance was far More subdued than it would have been a mere five or six decades earlier. I moved in her direction across the crowded floor as guests milled about on the penultimate deck, making raids on the numerous bars and waiting for the call to dine.

“Joseph, dear,” cried Wingreen-Feif as I closed the last few yards, “how in the world did you get invited to such a dreary function?”

I smiled and offered her a glass of champagne. The dowager empress of literary fashion knew me only because of her week-long visit to the Esperance arts festival the previous year and my friendship with such Web-class names as Salmud Brevy III, Millon De Havre, and Rithmet Corber. Tyrena was a dinosaur who refused to become extinct—her wrists, palms, and neck would have glowed blue from repeated Poulsens if it had not been for makeup, and she spent decades on short-hop interstellar cruises or incredibly expensive cryogenic naps at spas too exclusive to have names; the upshot was that Tyrena WingreenFeif had held the social scene in an iron grip for More than three centuries and showed no signs of relinquishing it. With every twenty-year nap, her fortune expanded and her legend grew.

“Do you still live on that dreary little planet I visited last year?” she asked.

“Esperance,” I said, knowing that she knew precisely where each important artist on that unimportant world resided. “No, I appear to have moved my residence to TC2 for the present.”

M. Wingreen-Feif made a face. I was vaguely aware that there was a group of eight to ten hangers-on watching intently, wondering who this brash young man was who had moved into her inner orbit. “How dreadful for you,” said Tyrena, “to have to abide on a world of business people and government bureaucrats. I hope they allow you to escape soon!”

I raised my glass in a toast to her. “I wanted to ask you,” I said, “weren’t you Martin Silenus’s editor?”

The dowager empress lowered her glass and fixed me with a cold stare. For a second I imagined Meina Gladstone and this woman locked in a combat of wills; I shuddered and waited for her answer. “My darling boy,” she said, “that is such ancient history. Why would you bother your pretty young head about such prehistoric trivia?”

“I’m interested in Silenus,” I said. “In his poetry. I was just curious if you were still in touch with him.”

“Joseph, Joseph, Joseph,” rutted M. Wingreen-Feif, “no one has heard from poor Martin in decades. Why, the poor man would be ancient1.”

I didn’t point out to Tyrena that when she was Silenus’s editor, the poet was much younger than she.

“It is odd that you mention him,” she continued. “My old firm, Transline, said recently that they were considering releasing some of Martin’s work. I don’t know if they ever contacted his estate.”

“His Dying Earth books?” I said, thinking of the Old Earth nostalgia volumes which had sold so well so long ago.

“No, oddly enough. I believe they were thinking of printing his Cantos,” said Tyrena. She laughed and held out a cannabis stick ensconced in a long, ebony cigarette holder. One of her retinue hurried to light it. “Such an odd choice,” she said, “considering that no one ever read the Cantos when poor Martin was alive. Well, nothing helps an artist’s career More than a little death and obscurity, I always say.”

She lauglied—sharp little sounds like metal chipping rock. Haifa dozen of her circle laughed along with her.

“You’d better make sure that Silenus is dead,” I said. “The Cantos would make better reading if they were complete.”

Tyrena Wingreen-Feif looked at me strangely, the chimes for dinner sounded through shifting leaves, Spenser Reynolds offered the grande dame his arm as people began climbing the last staircase toward the stars, and I finished my drink, left the empty glass on a railing, and went up to join the herd.

The CEO and her entourage arrived shortly after we were seated, and Gladstone gave a brief talk, probably her twentieth of the day, excluding her morning speech to the Senate and Web. The original reason for tonight’s dinner had been the recognition of a fundraising effort for the Arniaghast Relief Fund, but Gladstone’s talk soon turned to the war and the necessity of prosecuting it vigorously and efficiently while leaders from all parts of the Web promoted unity.

I gazed out over the railing while she spoke. The lemon sky had dissolved to a muted saffron and then quickly faded to a tropical dusk so rich that it seemed as if a thick, blue curtain had been drawn across the sky. God’s Grove had six small moons, five of them visible from this latitude, and four were racing across the sky as I watched the stars emerge. The air was oxygen rich here, almost intoxicating, and carried a heavy fragrance of moistened vegetation which reminded me of the morning visit to Hyperion. But no EMVs or skimmers or flying machines of any sort were allowed on God’s Grove—petrochemical emissions or fusion-cell wakes had never polluted these skies—and the absence of cities, highways, and electrical lighting made tlic stars seem bright enough to compete with the Japanese lanterns and glow-globes hanging from branches and stanchions.

The breeze had come up again after sunset, and now the entire tree swayed slightly, the broad platform moving as softly as a ship on a gentle sea, weirwood and muirwood stanchions and supports creaking softly with tlie gentle swells. I could see lights shining up through distant treetops and knew that many of them came from “rooms"—a few of thousands leased by the Templars—which one could add to one’s multi-world farcaster-connected residence if one had the million-mark beginning price for such an extravagance.

The Templars did not sully themselves with the day-to-day operations of Treetops or the leasing agencies, merely setting strict, inviolable ecological conditions to any such endeavor, but they benefited from the hundreds of millions of marks brought in by such enterprises. I thought of their interstellar cruise ship, the Yggctrasill, a kilometer-long Tree from the planet’s most sacred forest, driven by Hawking drive singularity generators and protected by the most complex force shields and Erg force fields that could be carried. Somehow, inexplicably, the Templars had agreed to send the Yggdrasill on an evacuation mission that was a mere cover for the FORCE invasion task force.

And as things tend to happen when priceless objects are set in harm’s way, the Yggdrasill was destroyed while in orbit around Hyperion, whether by Ouster attack or some other force not yet determined. How had the Templars reacted? What conceivable goal could have made them risk one of the four Treeships in existence? And why had their Treeship captain—Het Masteen—been chosen as one of the seven Shrike Pilgrims and then proceeded to disappear before the windwagon reached the Bridle Range on the shores of the Sea of Grass?

There were too damned many questions, and the war was only a few days old.

Meina Gladstone had finished her remarks and urged us all to enjoy the fine dinner. I applauded politely and waved over a steward to have my wineglass filled. The first course was a classic salad a la the empire period, and I applied myself to it with enthusiasm. I realized that I’d eaten nothing since breakfast that day. Spearing a sprig of watercress, I remembered Governor-General Theo Lane eating bacon and eggs and kippers as the rain fell softly from Hyperion’s lapis lazuli sky. Had that been a dream?

“What do you think of the war, M. Severn?” asked Reynolds, the action artist. He was several seats down and across the broad table from me, but his voice carried very well. I could see Tyrena raise an eyebrow toward me from where she sat, three seats to my right.

“What can one think of war?” I said, tasting the wine again. It was quite good, though nothing in the Web could match my memories of French Bordeaux. “War does not call for judgment,” I said, “merely survival.”

“On the contrary,” said Reynolds, “like so many other things humankind has redefined since the Hegira, warfare is on the threshold of becoming an art form.”

“An art form,” sighed a woman with short-cropped chestnut hair.

The datasphere told me that she was M. Sudette Chier, wife of Senator Gabriel Fyodor Kolchev and a powerful political force in her own right.

M. Chier wore a blue and gold lame gown and an expression of rapt interest. “War as an art form, M. Reynolds! What a fascinating concept!”

Spenser Reynolds was a bit shorter than Web average, but far handsomer.

His hair was curled but cropped short, his skin appeared bronzed by a benevolent sun and slightly gilded with subtle body paint, his clothes and ARNistry were expensively Hamboyant without being outre, and his demeanor proclaimed a relaxed confidence that all men dreamed of and precious few obtained. His wit was obvious, his attention to others sincere, and his sense of humor legendary.

I found myself disliking the son of a bitch at once.

“Everything is an art form, M. Chier, M. Severn.” Reynolds smiled.

“Or must become one. We are beyond the point where warfare can be merely the churlish imposition of policy by other means.”

“Diplomacy,” said General Morpurgo, on Reynolds’ left.

“I beg your pardon. General?”

“Diplomacy,” he said. “And it’s ‘extension of,’ not ‘imposition of.’”

Spenser Reynolds bowed and made a small roll of his hand. Sudette Chier and Tyrena laughed softly. The image of Councilor Albedo leaned forward from my left and said, “Von Clausewitz, I believe.”

I glanced toward the Councilor. A portable projection unit not much larger than the radiant gossamers flitting through the branches hovered two meters above and behind him. The illusion was not as perfect as in Government House, but it was far better than any private holo I had ever seen.

General Morpurgo nodded toward the Core representative.

“Whatever,” said Chier. “It is the idea of warfare as art which is so brilliant.”

I finished the salad, and a human waiter whisked the bowl away, replacing it with a dark gray soup I did not recognize. It was smoky, slightly redolent of cinnamon and the sea, and delicious.

“Warfare is a perfect medium for an artist,” began Reynolds, holding his salad utensil aloft like a baton. “And not merely for those… craftsmen who have studied the so-called science of war, either.” He smiled toward Morpurgo and another FORCE officer to the General’s right, dismissing both of them from consideration. “Only someone who is willing to look beyond the bureaucratic limits of tactics and strategies and the obsolescent will to ‘win’ can truly wield an artist’s touch with a medium so difficult as warfare in the modern age.”

“The obsolescent will to win?” said the FORCE officer. The data-sphere whispered that he was Commander William Ajunta Lee, a naval hero of the Maui-Covenant conflict. He looked young—middle fifties perhaps—and his rank suggested that his youth was due to years of traveling between the stars rather than Poulsen.

“Of course obsolescent,” laughed Reynolds. “Do you think a sculptor wishes to defeat the clay? Does a painter attack the canvas? For that matter, docs an eagle or a Thomas hawk assault the sky?”

“Eagles are extinct,” grumbled Morpurgo. “Perhaps they should have attacked the sky. It betrayed them.”

Reynolds turned back to me. Waiters removed his abandoned salad and brought the soup course I was finishing. “M. Severn, you are an artist… an illustrator at least,” he said. “Help me explain to these people what I mean.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” While I waited for the next course, I tapped my wineglass. It was filled immediately. From the head of the table, thirty feet away, I could hear Gladstone, Hunt, and several of the relief fund chairmen laughing.

Spenser Reynolds did not look surprised at my ignorance. “For our race to achieve the true satori, for us to move to that next level of consciousness and evolution that so many of our philosophies proclaim, all facets of human endeavor must become conscious strivings for art.”

General Morpurgo took a long drink and grunted. “Including such bodily functions as eating, reproducing, and eliminating waste, I suppose.”

“Most especially such functions!” exclaimed Reynolds. He opened his hands, offering the long table and its many delights. “What you see here is the animal requirement of turning dead organic compounds to energy, the base act of devouring other life, but Treetops has turned it into an art! Reproduction has long since replaced its crude animal origins with the essence of dance for civilized human beings. Elimination must become pure poetry!”

“I’ll remember that the next time I go in to take a shit,” said Morpurgo.

Tyrena Wingreen-Feif laughed and turned to the man in red and black to her right. “Monsignor, your church… Catholic, early Christian isn’t it?… don’t you have some delightful old doctrine about mankind achieving a More exalted evolutionary status?”

We all turned to look at the small, quiet man in the black robe and strange little cap. Monsignor Edouard, a representative of the almost-forgotten early Christian sect now limited to the world of Pacem and a few colony planets, was on the guest list because of his involvement with the Armaghast relief project, and until now he had been quietly applying himself to his soup. He looked up with a slightly surprised look on a face lined with decades of exposure to weather and worry.

“Why yes,” he said, “the teachings of St. Teilhard discuss an evolution toward the Omega Point.”

“And is the Omega Point similar to our Zen Gnostic idea of practical satori?” asked Sudette Chier.

Monsignor Edouard looked wistfully at his soup, as if it were More important than the conversation at that moment. “Not really too similar,” he said. “St. Teilhard felt that all of life, every level of organic consciousness was part of a planned evolution toward ultimate mergence with the Godhead.” He frowned slightly. “The Teilhard position has been modified much over the past eight centuries, but the common thread has been that we consider Jesus Christ to have been an incarnate example of what that ultimate consciousness might be like on the human plane.”

I cleared my throat. “Didn’t the Jesuit Paul Dure write extensively on the Teilhard hypothesis?”

Monsignor Edouard leaned forward to see around Tyrena and looked directly at me. There was surprise on that interesting face. “Why yes,” he said, “but I am amazed that you’re familiar with the work of Father Dure.”

I returned the gaze of the man who had been Dure’s friend even while exiling the Jesuit to Hyperion for apostasy. I thought of another refugee from the New Vatican, young Lenar Hoyt, lying dead in a Time Tomb while the cruciform parasites carrying the mutated DNA of both Dure and himself carried out their grim purpose of resurrection.

How did the abomination of the cruciform fit into Teilhard and Dure’s view of inevitable, benevolent evolution toward the Godhead?

Spenser Reynolds obviously thought that the conversation had been out of his arena for too long. “The point is,” he said, his deep voice drowning out other conversation halfway down the table, “that warfare, like religion or any other human endeavor that taps and organizes human energies on such a scale, must abandon its infantile preoccupation with Ding an sich literalism—usually expressed through a slavish fascination with ‘goals’—and revel in the artistic dimension of its own ocuvre. Now my own most recent project—”

“And what is your cult’s goal, Monsignor Edouard?” Tyrena Win-green-Feif asked, stealing the conversational ball away from Reynolds without raising her voice or shifting her gaze from the cleric.

“To help mankind to know and serve God,” he said and finished his soup with an impressive slurp. The archaic little priest looked down the table toward the projection of Councilor Albedo. “I’ve heard rumors, Councilor, that the TechnoCore is pursuing an oddly similar goal. Is it true that you are attempting to build your own God?”

Albedo’s smile was perfectly calculated to be friendly with no sign of condescension. “It is no secret that elements of the Core have been working for centuries to create at least a theoretical model of a so-called artificial intelligence far beyond our own poor intellects.” He made a deprecating gesture. “It is hardly an attempt to create God, Monsignor. More in the line of a research project exploring the possibilities your St. Teilhard and Father Dure pioneered.”

“But you believe that it’s possible to orchestrate your own evolution to such a higher consciousness?” asked Commander. Lee, the naval hero, who had been listening attentively. “Design an ultimate intelligence the way we once designed your crude ancestors out of silicon and microchips?”

Albedo laughed. “Nothing so simple or grandiose, I’m afraid. And when you say 'you,' Commander, please remember that I am but one personality in an assemblage of intelligences no less diverse than the human beings on this planet… indeed, in the Web itself. The Core is no monolith. There are as many camps of philosophies, beliefs, hypotheses—religions, if you will—as there would be in any diverse community.” He folded his hands as if enjoying an inside joke. “Although I prefer to think of the quest for an Ultimate Intelligence as a hobby More than a religion. Rather like building ships in a bottle, Commander, or arguing over how many angels would fit on the head of a pin, Monsignor.”

The group laughed politely, except for Reynolds who was frowning unintentionally as he no doubt pondered how to regain control of the conversation.

“And what about the rumor that the Core has built a perfect replica of Old Earth in the quest for an Ultimate Intelligence?” I asked, amazing myself with the question.

Albedo’s smile did not falter, the friendly gaze did not quiver, but there was a nanosecond of something conveyed through the projection.

What? Shock? Fury? Amusement? I had no idea. He could have communicated with me privately during that eternal second, transmitting immense quantities of data via my own Core umbilical or along the unseen corridors we have reserved for ourselves in the labyrinthine datasphere which humankind thought so simply contrived. Or he could have killed me, pulling rank with whatever gods of the Core controlled the environment for a consciousness like mine—it would have been as simple as the director of an institute calling down to order the technicians to permanently anesthetize an obnoxious laboratory mouse.

Conversation had halted up and down the table. Even Mcina Glad-stone and her cluster of ultra-VIPs glanced down our way.

Councilor Albedo smiled More broadly. “What a delightfully odd rumor! Tell me, M. Severn, how does anyone… especially an organism such as the Core, which your own commentators have called ‘a disembodied bunch of brains, runaway programs that have escaped their circuits and spend most of their time pulling intellectual lint out of their nonexistent navels’… how does anyone build ‘a perfect replica of Old Earth’?”

I looked at the projection, through the projection, realizing for the first time that Albedo’s dishes and dinner were also projected; he had been eating while we spoke.

“And,” lie continued, obviously deeply amused, “has it occurred to the promulgators of this rumor that ‘a perfect replica of Old Earth’ would be Old Earth to all intents and purposes? What possible good would such an effort do in exploring the theoretical possibilities of an enhanced artificial intelligence matrix?”

When I did not answer, an uncomfortable silence settled over the entire midsection of the table.

Monsignor Edouard cleared his throat. “It would seem,” he said, “that any… ah… society that could produce an exact replica of any world—but especially a world destroyed these four centuries– would have no need to seek God; it would be God.”

“Precisely!” laughed Councilor Albedo. “It’s an insane rumor, but delightful… absolutely delightful!”

Relieved laughter filled the hole of silence. Spenser Reynolds began telling about his next project—an attempt to have suicides coordinate their leaps from bridges on a score of worlds while the All Thing watched—and Tyrena Wingreen-Feif stole all attention by putting her arm around Monsignor Edouard and inviting him to her after-dinner nude swimming party at her Hoating estate on Mare Infinitus.

I saw Councilor Albedo staring at me, turned in time to see an inquisitive glance from Leigh Hunt and the CEO, and swiveled to watch the waiters bring up the entrees on silver platters.

The dinner was excellent.

Fifteen

I did not go to Tyrena’s nude swimming party. Nor did Spenser Reynolds, whom I last saw speaking earnestly with Sudette Chier.

I do not know whether Monsignor Edouard gave in to Tyrena’s enticements.

Dinner was not quite over, relief fund chairpeople were giving short speeches, and many of the More important senators had already begun to fidget when Leigh Hunt whispered to me that the CEO’s party was ready to leave and my presence was requested.

It was almost 2200 hours Web standard time, and I assumed the group would be returning to Government House, but when I stepped through the one-time portal—I was the last in the party to do so except for the Praetorian bodyguards bringing up the rear of the group—I was shocked to be looking down a stone-walled corridor relieved by long windows showing a Martian sunrise.

Technically, Mars is not in the Web; the oldest extraterrestrial colony of humankind is made deliberately difficult to reach. Zen Gnostic pilgrims traveling to the Master’s Rock in Hellas Basin have to ’cast to the Home System Station and take shuttles from Ganymede or Europa to Mars. It is an inconvenience of only a few hours, but to a society where everything is literally ten steps away, it makes for a sense of sacrifice and adventure. Other than for historians and experts in brandy cactus agriculture, there are few professional reasons to be drawn to Mars. With the gradual decline of Zen Gnosticism during the past century, even the pilgrim traffic there has grown lighter. No one cares for Mars.

Except for FORCE. Although the FORCE administrative offices are on TC2 and the bases are spread through the Web and Protectorate, Mars remains the true home of the military organization, with the Olympus Command School as the heart.

There was a small group of military VIPs waiting to greet the small group of political VIPs, and while the clusters swirled like colliding galaxies, I walked over to a window and stared.

The corridor was part of a complex carved into the upper lip ofMons Olympus, and from where we stood, some ten miles high, it felt as if one could take in half the planet with a single glance. From this point the world was the ancient shield volcano, and the trick of distance reduced access roads, the old city along the cliff walls, and the Tharsis Plateau slums and forests to mere squiggles in a red landscape which looked unchanged from the time the first human set foot on that world, proclaimed it for a nation called Japan, and snapped a photograph.

I was watching a small sun rise, thinking That is the sun, enjoying the incredible play of light on the clouds creeping out of darkness up the side of the interminable mountainside, when Leigh Hunt stepped closer. “The CEO will see you after the conference.” He handed me two sketchbooks which one of the aides had brought from Government House. “You realize that everything you hear and see in this conference is highly classified?”

I did not treat the statement as a question.

Wide bronze doors opened in the stone walls, and guidelights switched on, showing the carpeted ramp and staircase leading to the War Room table in the center of a wide, black place which might have been a massive auditorium sunk in a darkness absolute except for the single, small island of illumination. Aides hurried to show the way, pull out chairs, and blend back into the shadows. With reluctance, I turned my back on the sunrise and followed our party into the pit.

General Morpurgo and a troika of other FORCE leaders handled this briefing personally. The graphics were light-years away from the crude callups and holos of the Government House briefing; we were in a vast space, large enough to hold all eight thousand cadets and staff when required, but now most of the blackness above us was filled with omega-quality holos and diagrams the size of freeball fields. It was frightening in a way.

So was the content of the briefing.

“We’re losing this struggle in Hyperion System,” Morpurgo con eluded. “At best we will achieve a draw, with the Ouster Swarm held at bay beyond a perimeter some fifteen AU from the farcaster singularity sphere, with attrition from their small-ship raids a constant source of harassment. At worst, we will have to fall back to defensive positions while we evacuate the fleet and Hegemony citizens and allow Hyperion to fall into Ouster hands.”

“What happened to the knockout blow we were promised?” asked Senator Kolchcv from his place near the head of the diamond-shaped table. “The decisive attacks on the Swarm?”

Morpurgo cleared his throat but glanced at Admiral Nashita, who rose. The FORCE:spacc commander’s black uniform left the illusion of only his scowling face floating in darkness. I felt a tug of deja vu at the thought of that image, but I looked back at Mcina Gladstone, illuminated now by the war charts and colors floating above us like a holospectrum version of Damocles’s famous sword, and commenced drawing again. I had put away the paper sketchpad and now used my light stylus on a flexible caliup sheet.

“First, our intelligence on the Swarms was necessarily limited,” began Nasliita. Graphics changed above us. “Rccon probes and long-distance scouts could not tell us the full nature of every unit in the Ouster migration fleet. The result has been an obvious and serious underestimation of actual combat strength in this particular Swarm. Our efforts to penetrate Swarm defenses, using only long-range attack fighters and torchships, has not been as successful as we had hoped.

“Second, the requirement of maintaining a secure defensive perimeter of such a magnitude in the Hyperion system has made such demands on our two operative task forces that it has been impossible to devote sufficient numbers of ships to an offensive capability at this time.”

Kolchcv interrupted. “Admiral, what I hear you saying is that you have too few ships to carry out the mission of destroying or beating off this Ouster attack on Hyperion System. Is that correct?”

Nashita stared at the senator, and I was reminded of paintings I had seen of samurai in the seconds before the killing sword was removed from its scabbard. “That is correct, Senator Kolchcv.”

“Yet in our war cabinet briefings as recently as a standard week ago, you assured us that the two task forces would be enough to protect Hyperion from invasion or destruction and to deliver a knockout blow to this Ouster Swarm. What happened, Admiral?”

Nashita drew himself up to his full lieight—greater than Morpurgo’s but still shorter than Web average—and turned his gaze toward Glad-stone. “M. Executive, I have explained the variables that require an alteration in our battle plan. Shall I begin this briefing again?”

Meina Gladstone had her elbow on the table, and her right hand supported her head with two fingers against her cheek, two under her chin, and a thumb along her jawline in a posture of tired attention.

“Admiral,” she said softly, “while I believe Senator Kolchev’s question is totally pertinent, I think that the situation you have outlined in this briefing and earlier ones today answers it.” She turned toward Kolchev.

“Gabriel, we guessed wrong. With this commitment of FORCE, we get a stalemate at best. The Ousters are meaner, tougher, and More numerous than we thought.” She turned her tired gaze back toward Nashita. “Admiral, how many More ships will you need?”

Nashita took a breath, obviously thrown off stride at being asked this question so early in the briefing. He glanced at Morpurgo and the other joint chiefs and then folded his hands in front of his crotch like a funeral director. “Two hundred warships,” he said. “A( least two hundred. It is a minimum number.”

A stir went through the room. I looked up from my drawing. Everyone was whispering or changing position except Gladstone. It took a second for me to understand.

The entire FORCE:space fleet of warships numbered fewer than six hundred. Of course each was hideously expensive—few planetary economies could afford to build More than one or two interstellar capital ships, and even a handful of torchships equipped with Hawking drives could bankrupt a colonial world. And each was hideously powerful: an attack carrier could destroy a world, a force of cruisers and spinship destroyers could destroy a sun. It was conceivable that the Hegemony ships already massed in Hyperion system could—if vectored through the FORCE large transit farcaster matrix—destroy most of the star systems in the Web. It had taken fewer than fifty ships of the type Nashita was requesting to destroy the Glennon-Height fleet a century earlier and to quell the Mutiny forever.

But the real problem behind Nashita’s request was the commitment of two-thirds of the Hegemony’s fleet in the Hyperion system at one time. I could feel the anxiety flow through the politicians and policy makers like an electrical current.

Senator Richeau from Renaissance Vector cleared her throat. “Admiral, we’ve never concentrated fleet forces like that before, have we?”

Nashita’s head pivoted as smoothly as if it were on bearings. The scowl did not flicker. “We have never committed ourselves to a fleet action of this importance to the future of the Hegemony, Senator Ri-cheau.”

“Yes, I understand that,” said Richeau. “But my question was meant to ask what impact this would have on Web defenses elsewhere. Isn’t that a terrible gamble?”

Nashita grunted, and the graphics in the vast space behind him swirled, misted, and coalesced as a stunning view of the Milky Way galaxy as seen from far above the plane of the ecliptic; the angle changed as we seemed to rush at dizzying speed toward one spiral arm until the blue latticework of the farcaster web became visible, the Hegemony, an irregular gold nucleus with spires and pseudopods extending into the green nimbus of the Protectorate. The Web seemed both random in design and dwarfed by the sheer size of the galaxy… and both of these impressions were accurate reflections of reality.

Suddenly the graphic shifted, and the Web and colonial worlds became the universe except for a spattering of a few hundred stars to give it perspective.

“These represent the position of our fleet elements at this time,” said Admiral Nashita. Amidst and beyond the gold and green, several hundred specks of intense orange appeared; the heaviest concentration was around a distant Protectorate star I recognized belatedly as Hyperion’s.

“And these the Ouster Swarms as of their most recent plottings.” A dozen red lines appeared, vector signs and blue-shift tails showing the direction of travel. Even at this scale, none of the Swarm vectors appeared to intersect Hegemony space except for the Swarm—a large one—that seemed to be curving into Hyperion system.

I noticed that FORCE:space deployments frequently reflected Swarm vectors, except for clusterings near bases and troublesome worlds such as Maui-Covenant, Bressia, and QomRiyadh.

“Admiral,” said Gladstone, preempting any description of these de-' ployments, “I presume you have taken into account fleet reaction time should there be a threat to some other point on our frontier.”

Nashita’s scowl twitched into something that might have been a smile.

There was a hint of condescension in his voice. “Yes, CEO. If you notice the closest Swarms besides the one at Hyperion…” The view zoomed toward red vectors above a gold cloud, which embraced star systems I was fairly certain included Heaven’s Gate, God’s Grove, and Mare Infinitus. At this scale, the Ouster threat seemed very distant indeed.

“We plot the Swarm migrations according to Hawking drive wakes picked up by listening posts in and beyond the Web. In addition, our long-distance probes verify Swarm size and direction on a frequent basis.”

“How frequent. Admiral?” asked Senator Kolchev.

“At least once every few years,” snapped the Admiral. “You must realize that travel time is many months, even at spinship velocities, and the time-debt from our viewpoint may be as much as twelve years for such a transit.”

“With gaps of years between direct observations,” persisted the senator, “how do you know where the Swarms are at any given time?”

“Hawking drives do not lie. Senator.” Nashita’s voice was absolutely flat. “It is impossible to simulate the Hawking distortion wake. What we are looking at is the real-time location of hundreds… or in the case of the larger Swarms, thousands… of singularity drives under way. As with fatline broadcasts, there is no time-debt for transmission of the Hawking effect.”

“Yes,” said Kolchev, his voice as flat and deadly as the Admiral’s, “but what if the Swarms were traveling at less than spinship velocities?”

Nashita actually smiled. “Below hyperlight velocities. Senator?”

“Yes.”

I could see Morpurgo and a few of the other military men shake their heads or hide smiles. Only the young FORCE:sea commander, William Ajunta Lee, was leaning forward attentively with a serious expression.

“At sublight velocities,” deadpanned Admiral Nashita, “our great-great-grandchildren might have to worry about warning their grandchildren of an invasion.”

Kolchev would not desist. He stood and pointed toward where the closest Swarm curved away from the Hegemony above Heaven’s Gate.

“What about if this Swarm were to approach without Hawking drives?”

Nashita sighed, obviously irritated at having the substance of the meeting suborned by irrelevancies. “Senator, I assure you that if that Swarm turned off their drives now, and turned toward the Web now, it would be"—Nashita’s eyes blinked as he consulted his implants and comm links—"two hundred and thirty standard years before they approached our frontiers. It is not a factor in this decision, Senator.”

Meina Gladstone leaned forward, and all eyes shifted toward her. I stored my previous sketch in the caliup and started a new one.

“Admiral, it seems to me the real concern here is both the unprecedented nature of this concentration of forces near Hyperion and the fact that we’re putting all of our eggs in one basket.”

There was a murmur of amusement around the table. Gladstone was famous for aphorisms, stories, and cliches so old and forgotten that they were brand-new. This might have been one of them.

“Are we putting all of our eggs in one basket?” she continued.

Nashita stepped forward and set his hands on the table, long fingers extended, pressing down with great intensity. That intensity matched the power of the small man’s personality; he was one of those rare individuals who commanded others’ attention and obedience without effort. “No, CEO, we are not.” Without turning, he gestured toward the display above and behind him. “The closest Swarms could not approach Hegemony space without a warning time of two months in Hawking drive… that is three years of our time. It would take our Heet units in Hyperion—even assuming they were widely deployed and in a combat situation—less than five hours to fall back and translate anywhere in the Web.”

“That does not include fleet units beyond the Web,” said Senator Richeau. “The colonies cannot be left unprotected.”

Nashita gestured again. “The two hundred warships we will call in to make the Hyperion campaign decisive are those already within the Web or those carrying JumpShip farcaster capabilities. None of the independent fleet units assigned to the colonies will be affected.”

Gladstone nodded. “But what if the Hyperion portal were damaged or seized by the Ousters?”

From the shifting, nodding, and exhalations from the civilians around the table, I guessed that she had hit upon the major concern.

Nashita nodded and strode back to the small dais as if this were the question he had been anticipating and was pleased irrelevancies were at an end. “Excellent question,” he said. “It has been mentioned in previous briefings, but I will cover this possibility in some detail.

“First, we have redundancy in our farcaster capability, with no fewer than two JumpShips in-system at this time and plans for three More when the reinforced task force arrives. The chances of all five of these ships being destroyed are very, very small… almost insignificant when one considers our enhanced defensive capabilities with the reinforced task force.

“Second, chances of the Ousters seizing an intact military farcaster and using it to invade the Web are nil. Each ship… each individual… that transits a FORCE portal must be identified by tamperproof, coded microtransponders, which are updated daily—”

“Couldn’t the Ousters break these codes… insert their own?” asked Senator Kolchev.

“Impossible.” Nashita was striding back and forth on the small dais, hands behind his back. “The updating of codes is done daily via fatline one-time pads from FORCE headquarters within the Web—”

“Excuse me,” I said, amazed to hear my own voice here, “but I made a brief visit to Hyperion System this morning and was aware of no codes.”

Heads turned. Admiral Nashita again carried out his successful impression of an owl turning its head on frictionless bearings. “Nonetheless, M. Severn,” he said, “you and M. Hunt were encoded– painlessly and unobtrusively by infrared lasers, at both ends of the farcaster transit.”

I nodded, amazed for a second that the Admiral had remembered my name until I realized that he also had implants.

“Third,” continued Nashita as if I had not spoken, “should the impossible happen and Ouster forces overwhelm our defenses, capture our farcasters intact, circumvent the fail-safe transit codes systems, and activate a technology with which they are not familiar, and which we have denied them for More than four centuries… then all their efforts would still be for naught, because all military traffic is being routed to Hyperion via the base at Madhya.”

“Where?” came a chorus of voices.

I had heard of Madhya only through Brawne Lamia’s tale of her client’s death. Both she and Nashita pronounced it “mud-ye.”

“Madhya,” repeated Admiral Nashita, smiling now in earnest. It was an oddly boyish smile. “Do not query your comlogs, gentlemen and ladies. Madhya is a 'black' system, not found in any inventories or civilian farcaster charts. We reserve it for just such purposes. With only one habitable planet, fit only for mining and our bases, Madhya is the ultimate fallback position. Should Ouster warships do the impossible and breach our defenses and portals in Hyperion, the only place they can go is Madhya, where significant amounts of automated firepower are directed toward anything and everything that comes through. Should the impossible be squared and their fleet survive transit to the Madhya system, outgoing farcaster connections would automatically self-destruct, and their warships would be stranded years from the Web.”

“Yes,” said Senator Richeau, “but so would ours. Two-thirds of our fleet would be left in Hyperion system.”

Nashita stood at parade rest. “This is true,” he said, “and certainly the joint chiefs and I have weighed the consequences of this remote… one would have to say statistically impossible… event many times. We find the risks acceptable. Should the impossible happen, we still would have More than two hundred warships in reserve to defend the Web. At worst, we would have lost the Hyperion system after dealing a terrible blow to the Ousters… one which would, in and of itself, almost certainly deter any future aggression.

“But this is not the outcome we anticipate. With two hundred warships transferred soon—within the next eight standard hours—our predictors and the AI Advisory Council predictors… see a 99 percent probability of total defeat of the aggressive Ouster Swarm, with inconsequential losses to our forces.”

Meina Gladstone turned toward Councilor Albedo. In the low light the projection was perfect. “Councilor, I did not know the Advisory Group had been asked this question. Is the 99 percent probability figure reliable?”

Albedo smiled. “Quite reliable, CEO. And the probability factor was 99.962794 percent.” The smile broadened. “Quite reassuring enough to have one put all one’s eggs into one basket for a short while.”

Gladstone did not smile. “Admiral, how long after you get the reinforcements do you see the fighting going on?”

“One standard week, CEO. At the most.”

Gladstone’s left eyebrow rose slightly. “So short a time?”

“Yes, CEO.”

“General Morpurgo? Thoughts from FORCE:ground?”

“We concur, CEO. Reinforcement is necessary, and at once. Transports will carry approximately a hundred thousand Marines and ground troops for the mopping up in the remnants of the Swarm.”

“In seven standard days or less?”

“Yes, CEO.”

“Admiral Singh?”

“Absolutely necessary, CEO.”

“General Van Zeidt?”

One by one, Gladstone polled the joint chiefs and top-ranking military there, even asking the commandant of the Olympus Command School, who swelled with pride at being consulted. One by one, she received their unequivocal advice to reinforce.

“Commander Lee?”

All gazes shifted toward the young naval officer. I noticed the stiffness of posture and scowls of the senior military men and suddenly realized that Lee was there at the invitation of the CEO rather than the benevolence of his superiors. I remembered that Gladstone had been quoted as saying that young Commander Lee showed the kind of initiative and intelligence which FORCE had sometimes lacked. I suspected that the man’s career was forfeit for attending this meeting.

Commander William Ajunta Lee shifted uncomfortably in his comfortable chair. “With all due respect, CEO, I’m a mere junior naval officer and am not qualified to give an opinion on matters of such strategic importance.”

Gladstone did not smile. Her nod was almost imperceptible. “I appreciate that. Commander. I am sure your superiors here do also.

However, in this case, I wonder if you would indulge me and comment on the issue at hand.”

Lee sat upright. For an instant his eyes held both conviction and the desperation of a small, trapped animal. “Well then, CEO, if I must comment, I have to say that my own instincts—and they are only instincts: I am profoundly ignorant of interstellar tactics—would advise me against this reinforcement.” Lee took a breatli. “This is a purely military assessment, CEO. I know nothing of the political ramifications of defending Hyperion system.”

Gladstone leaned forward. “Then on a purely military basis, Commander, why do you oppose the reinforcements?”

From where I sat half a table away, I could feel the impact of the FORCE chiefs’ gazes like one of the one-hundred-million-joule laser blasts used to ignite deuterium-tritium spheres in one of the ancient inertial confinement fusion reactors. I was amazed that Lee did not collapse, implode, ignite, and fuse before our very eyes.

“On a military basis,” Lee said, his eyes hopeless but his voice steady, “the two biggest sins one can commit are to divide one’s forces and to… as you put it, CEO… put all of your eggs in a single basket.

And in this case, the basket is not even of our own making.”

Gladstone nodded and sat back, steepling her fingers beneath her lower lip.

“Commander,” said General Morpurgo, and I discovered that a word could, indeed, be spat, “now that we have the benefit of your… advice… could I ask if you have ever been involved in a space battle?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you ever been trained for a space battle. Commander?”

“Except for the minimal amount required in OCS, which amounts to a few history courses, no, sir, I have not.”

“Have you ever been involved in any strategic planning above the level of… how many naval surface ships did you command on Maui—

Covenant, Commander?”

“One, sir.”

“One,” breathed Morpurgo. “A large ship. Commander?”

“No, sir.”

“Were you given command of this ship. Commander. Did you earn it? Or did it fall to you through the vicissitudes of war?”

“Our captain was killed, sir. I took command by default. It was the final naval action of the Maui-Covenant campaign and—”

“That will be all. Commander.” Morpurgo turned his back on the war hero and addressed the CEO. “Do you wish to poll us again, ma’am?”

Gladstone shook her head.

Senator Kolchev cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should have a closed cabinet meeting at Government House.”

“No need,” said Meina Gladstone. “I’ve decided. Admiral Singh, you are authorized to divert as many fleet units to the Hyperion system as you and the joint chiefs see fit.”

“Yes, CEO.”

“Admiral Nashita, I will expect a successful termination of hostilities within one standard week of the time you have adequate reinforcements.”

She looked around the table. “Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot stress to you enough the importance of our possession of Hyperion and the deterrent of Ouster threats once and for all.” She rose and walked to the base of the ramp leading up and out into the darkness. “Good evening, gentlemen, ladies.”

It was almost 0400 hours Web and Tau Ceti Center time when Hunt rapped at my door. I had been fighting sleep for the three hours since we ’cast back. I had just decided that Gladstone had forgotten about me and was beginning to doze when the knock came.

“The garden,” said Leigh Hunt, “and for God’s sake tuck your shirt in.”

My boots made soft noises on the fine gravel of the path as I wandered the dark lanes. The lanterns and glow-globes barely emitted light. The stars were not visible above the courtyard because of the glare of TVs interminable cities, but the running lights of the orbital habitations moved across the sky like an endless ring of fireflies.

Gladstone was sitting on the iron bench near the bridge.

“M. Severn,” she said, her voice low, “thank you for joining me. I apologize for it being so late. The cabinet meeting just broke up.”

I said nothing and remained standing.

“I wanted to ask about your visit to Hyperion this morning.” She chuckled in the darkness. “Yesterday morning. Did you have any impressions?”

I wondered what she meant. My guess was that the woman had an insatiable appetite for data, no matter how seemingly irrelevant. “I did meet someone,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Yes, Dr. Melio Arundez. He was… is…”

“…a friend of M. Weintraub’s daughter,” finished Gladstone. “The child who is aging backward. Do you have any updates on her condition?”

“Not really,” I said. “I had a brief nap today, but the dreams were fragmented.”

“And what did the meeting with Dr. Arundez accomplish?”

I rubbed my chin with fingers suddenly gone cold. “His research team has been waiting in the capital for months,” I said. “They may be our only hope for understanding what’s going on with the Tombs.

And the Shrike…”

“Our predictors say that it is important that the pilgrims be left alone until their act is played out,” came Gladstone’s voice in the darkness.

She seemed to be looking to the side, toward the stream.

I felt sudden, inexplicable, implacable anger surge through me. “Father Hoyt is already 'played out,' “I said More sharply than I intended.

“They could have saved him if the ship had been allowed to rendezvous with the pilgrims. Arundez and his people might be able to save the baby—Rachel—even though there are only a few days left.”

“Less than three days,” said Gladstone. “Was there anything else?

Any impressions of the planet or Admiral Nashita’s command ship which you found… interesting?”

My hands clenched into fists, relaxed. “You won’t allow Arundez to fly up to the Tombs?”

“Not now, no.”

“What about the evacuation of civilians from Hyperion? At least the Hegemony citizens?”

“That is not a possibility at this time.”

I started to say something, checked myself. I stared at the sound of the water beneath the bridge.

“No other impressions, M. Severn?”

“No.”

“Well, I wish you a good night and pleasant dreams. Tomorrow may be a very hectic day, but I do want to talk to you about those dreams at some point.”

“Good night,” I said and turned on my heel and walked quickly back to my wing of Government House.

In the darkness of my room, I called up a Mozart sonata and took three trisecobarbitals. Most probably they would knock me out in a drugged, dreamless sleep, where the ghost of dead johnny Keats and his even More ghostly pilgrims could not find me. It meant disappointing Meina Gladstone, and that did not dismay me in the least.

I thought of Swift’s sailor, Gulliver, and his disgust with mankind after his return from the land of the intelligent horses—the Houyhnhnms—a disgust with his own species which grew to the point that he had to sleep in the stables with the horses just to be reassured by their smell and presence.

My last thought before sleep was To hell with Meina Gladstone, to hell with the war, and to hell with the Web.

And to hell with dreams.