Stunned faces stared back.

Gladstone rose. “Good luck,” she said. “Work quickly. Do nothing to spread unnecessary panic. And God save the Hegemony.” She turned and swept from the room.

Gladstone sat behind her desk. Kolchev, Gibbons, and Albedo sat across from her. The urgency in the air, felt from half-sensed activities beyond the doors, was made more maddening by Gladstone’s long delay before speaking. She never took her eyes off Councilor Albedo. “You,” she said at last, “have betrayed us.”

The projection’s urbane half-smile did not waver. “Never, CEO.”

“Then you have one minute to explain why the TechnoCore and specifically the AI Advisory Council did not predict this invasion.”

“It will take only one word to explain this, M. Executive,” said Albedo. “Hyperion.”

“Hyperion shit!” cried Gladstone, slamming her palm down on the ancient desk in a most un-Gladstone-like explosion of temper. “I’m sick and tired of hearing about unfactorable variables and Hyperion the predictive black hole, Albedo. Either the Core can help us understand probabilities or they’ve been lying to us for five centuries. Which is it?”

“The Council predicted the war, CEO,” said the gray-haired image. “Our confidential advisories to you and the need-to-know group explained the uncertainty of events once Hyperion became involved.”

“That’s crap,” snapped Kolchev. “Your predictions are supposed to be infallible in general trends. This attack must have been planned decades ago. Perhaps centuries.”

Albedo shrugged. “Yes, Senator, but it is quite possible that only this administration’s determination to start a war in the Hyperion System caused the Ousters to go through with the plan. We advised against any actions concerning Hyperion.”

Speaker Gibbons leaned forward. “You gave us the names of the individuals necessary for the so-called Shrike Pilgrimage.”

Albedo did not shrug again, but his projected posture was relaxed, self-confident. “You asked us to come up with names of Web individuals whose requests to the Shrike would change the outcome of the war we predicted.”

Gladstone steepled her fingers and tapped at her chin. “And have you determined yet how these requests would change the outcome of that war… this war?”

“No,” said Albedo.

“Councilor,” said CEO Meina Gladstone, “please be apprised that as of this moment, depending upon the outcome of the next few days, the government of the Hegemony of Man is considering declaring that a state of war exists between us and the entity known as the TechnoCore. As de facto ambassador from that entity, you are entrusted with relaying this fact.”

Albedo smiled. He spread his hands. “M. Executive, the shock of this terrible news must have caused you to make a poor joke. Declaring war against the Core would be like… like a fish declaring war against water, like a driver attacking his EMV because of disturbing news of an accident elsewhere.”

Gladstone did not smile. “I once had a grandfather on Patawpha,” she said slowly, her dialect thickening, “who put six slugs from a pulse rifle into the family EMV when it did not start one morning. You are dismissed, Councilor.”

Albedo blinked and disappeared. The abrupt departure was either a deliberate breach of protocol—the projection usually left a room or let others leave before deliquescing—or it was a sign that the controlling intelligence in the Core had been shaken by the exchange.

Gladstone nodded at Kolchev and Gibbons. “I won’t keep you gentlemen,” she said. “But be assured that I expect total support when the declaration of war is submitted in five hours.”

“You’ll have it,” said Gibbons. The two men departed.

Aides came in through doorways and hidden panels, firing questions and cueing comlogs for instructions. Gladstone held up a finger.

“Where is Severn?” she asked. At the sight of blank faces, she added, “The poet… artist, I mean. The one doing my portrait?”

Several aides looked at one another as if the Chief had come unhinged.

“He’s still asleep,” said Leigh Hunt. “He’d taken some sleeping pills, and no one thought to awaken him for the meeting.”

“I want him here within twenty minutes,” said Gladstone. “Brief him. Where is Commander Lee?”

Niki Cardon, the young woman in charge of military liaison, spoke up. “Lee was reassigned to perimeter patrol last night by Morpurgo and the FORCE:sea sector chief. He’ll be hopping from one ocean world to another for twenty years our time. Right now he’s… just translated to FORCE:SEACOMCEN on Bressia, awaiting offworld transport.”

“Get him back here,” said Gladstone. “I want him promoted to rear admiral or whatever the hell the necessary staff rank would be and then assigned here, to me, not Government House or Executive Branch. He can be the nuclear bagman if necessary.”

Gladstone looked at the blank wall a moment. She thought of the worlds she had walked that night; Barnard’s World, the lamplight through leaves, ancient brick college buildings; God’s Grove with its tethered balloons and free-floating zeplens greeting the dawn; Heaven’s Gate with its Promenade… all these were first-wave targets. She shook her head. “Leigh, I want you and Tarra and Brindenath to have the first drafts of both speeches—general address and the declaration of war—to me within forty-five minutes. Short. Unequivocal. Check the files under Churchill and Strudensky. Realistic but defiant, optimistic.

Sol, the Consul, Father Duré, and the unconscious Het Masteen were in the first of the Cave Tombs when they heard the shots. The Consul went out alone, slowly, carefully, testing for the storm of time tides which had driven them deeper into the valley.

“It’s all right,” he called back. The pale glow of Sol’s lantern lighted the back of the cave, illuminating three pale faces and the robed bundle that was the Templar. “The tides have lessened,” called the Consul.

Sol stood. His daughter’s face was a pale oval below his own. “Are you sure the shots came from Brawne’s gun?”

The Consul motioned toward the darkness outside. “None of the rest of us carried a slugthrower. I’ll go check.”

“Wait,” said Sol, “I’ll go with you.”

Father Duré remained kneeling next to Het Masteen. “Go ahead. I’ll stay with him.”

“One of us will check back within the next few minutes,” said the Consul.

The valley glowed from the pale light of the Time Tombs. Wind roared from the south, but the airstream was higher tonight, above the cliff walls, and the dunes on the valley floor were not disturbed. Sol followed the Consul as he picked his way down the rough trail to the valley floor and turned toward the head of the valley. Slight tugs of déjà vu reminded Sol of the violence of time tides an hour earlier, but now even the remnants of the bizarre storm were fading.

Where the trail widened on the valley floor, Sol and the Consul walked together past the scorched battlefield of the Crystal Monolith, the tall structure exuding a milky glow reflected by the countless shards littering the floor of the arroyo, then climbing slightly past the Jade Tomb with its pale-green phosphorescence, then turning again and following the gentle switchbacks leading up to the Sphinx.

“My God,” whispered Sol and rushed forward, trying not to jar his sleeping child in her carrier. He knelt by the dark figure on the top step.

“Brawne?” asked the Consul, stopping two paces back and panting for breath after the sudden climb.

“Yes.” Sol started to lift her head and then jerked his hand back when he encountered something slick and cool extruding from her skull.

“Is she dead?”

Sol held his daughter’s head closer to his chest as he checked for a pulse in the woman’s throat. “No,” he said and took a deep breath.