“Here,” said Leweski, waving us into a small porch which overhung the Hoolie and looked out onto the gabled rooftops and stone towers of Jacktown. “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?”

Leigh 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 abstruse 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?”