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 flow 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 Duré’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 AI 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 farcaster nexus in…” She glanced at her comlog. “…twelve minutes.”