“No!” screamed Father Paul Duré.

“Go!” cried the True Voice of the Worldtree and pushed the Jesuit through the farcaster portal even as the platform, the Worldtree’s trunk, and the Templar’s robe burst into flames.

The farcaster shut down even as Duré tumbled through, slicing off the heel of his shoe as it contracted, and Duré felt his eardrums rupture and his clothes smolder even as he fell, struck something hard with the back of his head, and fell again into darkness more absolute.

Gladstone and the others watched in horrified silence as the civilian satellites sent images of the death throes of God’s Grove through the farcaster relays.

“We have to blow it now,” cried Admiral Singh over the crackling of forests burning. Meina Gladstone thought that she could hear the screams of human beings and the countless arboreals who lived in the Templar forests.

“We can’t let them get closer!” cried Singh. “We have only the remotes to detonate the sphere.”

“Yes,” said Gladstone, but although her lips moved she heard no sound.

Singh turned and nodded toward a FORCE:space colonel. The Colonel touched his tactical board. The burning forests disappeared, the giant holos went absolutely dark, but the sound of screams somehow remained. Gladstone realized that it was the sound of blood in her ears.

She turned toward Morpurgo. “How long…” She cleared her throat. “General, how long until Mare Infinitus is attacked?”

“Three hours and fifty-two minutes, M. Executive,” said the General.

Gladstone turned toward the former Commander William Ajunta Lee. “Is your task force ready, Admiral?”

“Yes, CEO,” said Lee, his face pale beneath a tan.

“How many ships will be in the strike?”

“Seventy-four, M. Executive.”

“And you will hit them away from Mare Infinitus?”

“Just within the Oort Cloud, M. Executive.”

“Good,” said Gladstone. “Good hunting, Admiral.”

The young man took this as his cue to salute and leave the chamber.

Admiral Singh leaned over and whispered something to General Van Zeidt.

Sedeptra Akasi leaned toward Gladstone and said, “Government House Security reports that a man just farcast into the secured GH terminex with an outdated priority access code. The man was injured, taken to the East Wing infirmary.”

“Leigh?” asked Gladstone. “Severn?”

“No, M. Executive,” said Akasi. “The priest from Pacem. Paul Duré.”

Gladstone nodded. “I’ll see him after my meeting with Albedo,” she said to her aide. To the group, she announced, “Unless anyone has anything to add to what we saw, we shall adjourn for thirty minutes and take up the defense of Asquith and Ixion when we reassemble.”

The group stood as the CEO and her entourage stepped through the permanent connecting portal to Government House and filed through a door in the far wall. The rumble of argument and shock resumed when Gladstone was out of sight.

Meina Gladstone sat back in her leather chair and closed her eyes for precisely five seconds. When she opened them, the cluster of aides still stood there, some looking anxious, some looking eager, all of them waiting for her next word, her next command.

“Get out,” she said softly. “Go on, take a few minutes to get some rest. Put your feet up for ten minutes. There’ll be no more rest for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

The group filed out, some looking on the verge of protest, others on the verge of collapse.

“Sedeptra,” said Gladstone, and the young woman stepped back into the office. “Assign two of my personal guard to the priest who just came through, Duré.”

Akasi nodded and made a note on her faxpad.

“How is the political situation?” asked Gladstone, rubbing her eyes.

“The All Thing is chaos,” said Akasi. “There are factions but they haven’t coalesced into effective opposition yet. The Senate is a different story.”

“Feldstein?” said Gladstone, naming the angry senator from Barnard’s World. Less than forty-two hours remained before Barnard’s World would be attacked by the Ousters.

“Feldstein, Kakinuma, Peters, Sabenstorafen, Richeau… even Sudette Chier is calling for your resignation.”

“What about her husband?” Gladstone considered Senator Kolchev the most influential person in the Senate.

“No word from Senator Kolchev yet. Public or private.”

Gladstone tapped a thumbnail against her lower lip. “How much time do you think this administration has before a vote of no confidence brings us down, Sedeptra?”

Akasi, one of the most astute political operatives Gladstone had ever worked with, returned her boss’s stare. “Seventy-two hours at the outside, CEO. The votes are there. The mob just doesn’t know it’s a mob yet. Somebody has to pay for what’s happening.”

Gladstone nodded absently. “Seventy-two hours,” she murmured. “More than enough time.” She looked up and smiled. “That will be all, Sedeptra. Get some rest.”

The aide nodded but her expression showed her true opinion of that suggestion. It was very quiet in the study when the door closed behind her.

Gladstone sat thinking for a moment, her fist to her chin. Then she said to the walls, “Bring Councilor Albedo here, please.”

Twenty seconds later, the air on the other side of Gladstone’s broad desk misted, shimmered, and solidified. The representative of the TechnoCore looked as handsome as ever, short gray hair gleaming in the light, a healthy tan on his open, honest face.

“M. Executive,” began the holographic projection, “the Advisory Council and the Core predictors continue to offer their services in this time of great—”

“Where is the Core, Albedo?” interrupted Gladstone.

The Councilor’s smile did not falter. “I’m sorry, M. Executive, what was the question?”

“The TechnoCore. Where is it?”

Albedo’s friendly face showed a slight puzzlement but no hostility, no visible emotion other than bemused helpfulness. “You’re certainly aware, M. Executive, that it has been Core policy since the Secession not to reveal the location of the… ah… physical elements of the TechnoCore. In another sense, the Core is nowhere, since—”

“Since you exist on the datumplane and datasphere consensual realities,” said Gladstone, voice flat. “Yes, I’ve heard that crap all of my life, Albedo. So did my father and his father before him. I’m asking a straight question now. Where is the TechnoCore?”

The Councilor shook his head bemusedly, regretfully, as if he were an adult being asked for the thousandth time the child’s question Why is the sky blue, Daddy?

“M. Executive, it is simply not possible to answer that question in a way that would make sense in human three-dimensional coordinates. In a sense we… the Core… exist within the Web and beyond the Web. We swim in the datumplane reality which you call the datasphere, but as for the physical elements… what your ancestors called 'hardware,' we find it necessary to—”

“To keep it a secret,” finished Gladstone. She crossed her arms. “Are you aware, Councilor Albedo, that there will be those people in the Hegemony… millions of people… who will firmly believe that the Core… your Advisory Council… has betrayed humankind?”

Albedo made a motion with his hands. “That will be regrettable, M. Executive. Regrettable but understandable.”

“Your predictors were supposed to be close to foolproof, Councilor. Yet at no time did you tell us of the destruction of worlds by this Ouster fleet.”

The sadness on the projection’s handsome face was very close to convincing. “M. Executive, it is only fair to remind you that the Advisory Council warned you that bringing Hyperion into the Web introduced a random variable which even the Council could not factor.”

“But this isn’t Hyperion!” snapped Gladstone, her voice rising. “It’s God’s Grove burning. Heaven’s Gate reduced to slag. Mare Infinitus waiting for the next hammer blow! What good is the Advisory Council if it cannot predict an invasion of that magnitude?”