The Core summons me with greater force, but that is even more dangerous. I remember Ummon destroying the other Keats in front of Brawne Lamia—squeezing the analog persona to him until it simply dissolved, the basic Core memory of the man deliquescing like a salted slug—No thank you.

I have chosen death to godhood, but I have chores to do before I sleep.

The metasphere frightens me, the Core frightens me more, the dark tunnels of the datasphere singularities I must travel terrify me to my analog bones. But there is nothing for it.

I sweep into the first black cone, swirling around like a metaphorical leaf in an all-too-real whirlpool, emerging on the proper datumplane, but too dizzy and disoriented to do anything but sit there—visible to any Core AI accessing these ROMwork ganglia or phage routines residing in the violet crevices of any of these data mountain ranges—but the chaos in the TechnoCore saves me here: the great Core personalities are too busy laying siege to their own personal Troys to watch their back doors.

I find the datasphere access codes I want and the synapse umbilicals I need, and it is the work of a microsecond to follow old paths down to Tau Ceti Center, Government House, the infirmary there, and the drug-induced dreams of Paul Duré.

One thing my persona does exceptionally well is dream, and I discover quite by accident that my memories of my Scottish tour make a pleasant dreamscape in which to convince the priest to flee. As an Englishman and freethinker, I once had been opposed to anything which smacked of popery, but one thing must be said in tribute to the Jesuits—they are taught obedience even above logic, and for once this stands all of humankind in good stead. Duré does not ask why when I tell him to go… he awakes like a good boy, wraps a blanket around him, and goes.

Meina Gladstone thinks of me as Joseph Severn but she accepts my message as if it is being delivered to her by God. I want to tell her: no, I am not the One, I am only He Who Comes Before, but the message is the thing, so I deliver that and go. Passing through the Core on my way to Hyperion’s metasphere, I catch the burning-metal whiff of civil war and glimpse a great light: which might well be Ummon in the process of being extinguished.

The old Master, if indeed it is he, does not cite koans as he dies, but screams in agony as sincerely as any conscious entity ever has who is in the process of being fed to the ovens.

I hurry on.

The farcaster connection to Hyperion is tenuous at best: a single military farcaster portal and a single, damaged JumpShip in a shrinking perimeter of war-torn Hegemony ships. The singularity containment sphere cannot be protected from Ouster attacks for longer than a few minutes more. The Hegemony torchship carrying the Core deathwand device is preparing to translate in-system even as I come through and find my bearings in the limited datasphere level which allows observation.

I pause to watch what happens next.

“Christ,” said Melio Arundez, “Meina Gladstone’s coming through on a priority-one squirt.”

Theo Lane joined the older man as they watched the override data mist the air above the holopit. The Consul came down the iron spiral staircase from the bedroom where he had gone to brood. “Another message from TC²?” he snapped.

“Not to us specifically,” said Theo, reading the red codes as they formed and faded. “It’s an override fatline transmission to everyone, everywhere.”

Arundez lowered himself into the pit cushions. “Something’s very wrong. Has the CEO ever broadcast on total wideband before?”

“Never,” said Theo Lane. “The energy needed just to code such a squirt would be incredible.”

The Consul stepped closer and pointed to the codes now disappearing.

“It’s not a squirt. Look, it’s a real-time transmission.”

Theo shook his head. “We’re talking transmission values of several hundred million gigaelectron volts here.”

Arundez whistled. “At even a hundred million GeV, it’d better be important.”

“A general surrender,” said Theo. “It’s the only thing that would call for a universal real-time broadcast. Gladstone’s sending it to the Ousters, Outback worlds, and overrun planets as well as the Web. It must be carried on all comm frequencies, HTV, and datasphere bands too. It must be a surrender.”

“Shut up,” said the Consul. He had been drinking.

The Consul had started drinking immediately upon his return from the Tribunal, and his temper, which had been foul even as Theo and Arundez were slapping him on the back and celebrating his survival, had not improved after the lift-off, clearance of the Swarm, and the two hours he spent alone drinking while they accelerated toward Hyperion.

“Meina Gladstone won’t surrender,” slurred the Consul. The bottle of Scotch was still in his hand. “Just watch.”

On the torchship HS Stephen Hawking, the twenty-third Hegemony spacecraft to carry the revered classical scientist’s name. General Arthur Morpurgo looked up from the C' board and hushed his two bridge officers. Normally this class of torchship carried a crew of seventy-five.

Now, with the Core deathwand device loaded in the weapons bay and armed, Morpurgo and four volunteers were the total crew. Displays and discreet computer voices assured them that the Stephen Hawking was on course, on time, and accelerating steadily toward near-quantum velocities and the military farcaster portal stationed at LaGrange Point Three between Madhya and its oversized moon. The Madhya portal opened directly to the fiercely defended Hyperion-space farcaster.

“One minute eighteen seconds to translation point,” said Bridge Officer Salumun Morpurgo. The General’s son.

Morpurgo nodded and keyed up the in-system wideband transmission.

Bridge projections were busy enough with mission data, so the General allowed voice-only on the CEO’s broadcast. He smiled despite himself. What would Meina say if she knew he was at the helm of the Stephen Hawking? Better she didn’t know. There was nothing else he could do. He preferred not to see the results of his precise, hand-delivered orders of the past two hours.

Morpurgo looked at his oldest son with pride so fierce it bordered on pain. There were only so many torchship-rated personnel he could approach about this mission, and his son had been the first to volunteer.

If nothing else, the Morpurgo family’s enthusiasm might have allayed some Core suspicions.

“My fellow citizens,” Gladstone was saying, “this is my final broadcast to you as your Chief Executive Officer.

“As you know, the terrible war which has already devastated three of our worlds and is about to fall upon a fourth, has been reported as an invasion by the Ouster Swarms.

“This is a lie.”

The comm bands flared with interference and went dead. “Go to fatline,” said General Morpurgo.

“One minute three seconds to translation point,” intoned his son.

Gladstone’s voice returned, filtered and slightly blurred by fatline encrypting and decoding. “…to realize that our ancestors… and we ourselves… had made a Faustian bargain with a power not concerned with the fate of humankind.

“The Core is behind the current invasion.

“The Core is responsible for our long, comfortable dark age of the soul.

“The Core is responsible for the ongoing attempt to destroy humanity, to remove us from the universe and replace us with a god-machine of their own devising.”

Bridge Officer Salumun Morpurgo never lifted his eyes from the circle of instruments. “Thirty-eight seconds to translation point.”

Morpurgo nodded. The other two crewmen on the C' bridge showed faces sheened with sweat. The General realized that his own face was wet.

“…have proven that the Core resides… has always resided… in the dark places between farcaster portals. They believe themselves to be our masters. As long as the Web exists, as long as our beloved Hegemony is joined by farcaster, they will be our masters.”