The Consul smiled. “You’re right that standard EMVs aren’t reliable here. Too much mass-to-lift ratio. But the hawking mat is all lift, almost no mass. I’ve tried it here when I lived in the capital. It’s not a smooth ride… but it should work with one person aboard.”

Sol glanced back down the valley, past the glowing forms of the Jade Tomb, Obelisk, and Crystal Monolith, to where the shadows of the cliff wall hid the entrance to the Cave Tombs. He wondered if Father Duré and Het Masteen were still alone… still alive. “You’re thinking of going for help?”

“Of one of us going for help. Bringing the ship back. Or at least freeing it and sending it back unmanned. We could draw lots to see who goes.”

It was Sol’s turn to smile. “Think, my friend. Duré is in no condition to travel and does not know the way in any case. I…” Sol lifted Rachel until the top other head touched his check. “The voyage might last several days. I—we—do not have several days. If something is to be done for her, we must remain here and take our chances. It is you who must go.”

The Consul sighed but did not argue.

“Besides,” said Sol, “it is your ship. If anyone can free it from Gladstone’s interdiction, you can. And you know the Governor-General well.”

The Consul looked toward the west. “I wonder if Theo is still in power.”

“Let’s go back and tell Father Duré our plan,” said Sol. “Also, I left the nursing paks in the cave, and Rachel is hungry.”

The Consul rolled the carpet, slipped it in his pack, and stared down at Brawne Lamia, at the obscene cable snaking away into darkness.

“Will she be all right?”

“I’ll have Paul come back with a blanket to stay with her while you and I carry our other invalid back here. Will you leave tonight or wait until sunrise?”

The Consul rubbed his cheeks tiredly. “I don’t like the thought of crossing the mountains at night, but we can’t spare the time. I’ll leave as soon as I put some things together.”

Sol nodded and looked toward the entrance to the valley. “I wish Brawne could tell us where Silenus has gone.”

“I’ll look for him as I fly out,” said the Consul. He glanced up at the stars. “Figure thirty-six to forty hours of flying to get back to Keats. A few hours to free the ship. I should be back here within two standard days.”

Sol nodded, rocking the crying child. His tired but amiable expression did not conceal his doubt. He set his hand on the Consul’s shoulder.

“It is right that we try, my friend. Come, let us talk to Father Duré, see if our other fellow traveler is awake, and eat a meal together. It looks as if Brawne brought enough supplies to allow us a final feast.”

When Brawne Lamia had been a child, her father a senator and their home relocated, however briefly, from Lusus to the wooded wonders of Tau Ceti Center’s Administrative Residential Complex, she had seen the ancient flatfilm Walt Disney animation of Peter Pan. After seeing the animation, she had read the book, and both had captured her heart.

For months, the five-standard-year-old girl had waited for Peter Pan to arrive one night and take her away. She had left notes pointing the way to her bedroom under the shingled dormer. She had left the house while her parents slept and lain on the soft grass of the Deer Park lawns, watching the milkish-gray night sky of TC² and dreaming of the boy from Neverland who would some night soon take her away with him, flying toward the second star to the right, straight on till morning. She would be his companion, the mother to the lost boys, fellow nemesis to the evil Hook, and most of all, Peter’s new Wendy… the new child-friend to the child who would not grow old.

And now, twenty years later, Peter had finally come for her.

Lamia had felt no pain, only the sudden, icy rush of displacement as the Shrike’s steel talon penetrated the neural shunt behind her ear.

Then she was away and flying.

She had moved through the datumplane and into the datasphere before. Only weeks before, her time. Lamia had ridden into the TechnoCore matrix with her favorite cyberpuke, silly BB Surbringer, to help Johnny steal back his cybrid retrieval persona. They had penetrated the periphery and stolen the persona, but an alarm had been tripped, BB had died. Lamia never wanted to enter the datasphere again.

But she was there now.

The experience was like nothing she had ever had with comlog leads or nodes before. That was like full stimsim—like being in a holodrama with hill color and wraparound stereo—this was like being there.

Peter had finally come to take her away.

Lamia rose above the curve of Hyperion’s planetary limb, seeing the rudimentary channels of microwaved dataflow and tightbeamed commlink that passed for an embryonic datasphere there. She did not pause to tap into it, for she was following an orange umbilical skyward toward the real avenues and highways of datumplane.

Hyperion space had been invaded by FORCE and by the Ouster Swarm, and both had brought the intricate folds and latticework of the datasphere with them. With new eyes, Lamia could see the thousand levels of FORCE dataflow, a turbulent green ocean of information shot through with the red veins of secured channels and the spinning violet spheres with their black phage outriders that were the FORCE AIs.

This pseudopod of the great Web megadatasphere flowed out of normal space through black funnels of shipboard farcasters, along expanding wave fronts of overlapping, instantaneous ripples that Lamia recognized as continuous bursts from a score of fatline transmitters.

She paused, suddenly unsure of where to go, which avenue to take.

It was as if she had been flying and her uncertainty had endangered the magic—threatening to drop her back to the ground so many miles below.

Then Peter took her hand and buoyed her up.

–Johnny!

–Hello, Brawne.

Her own body image clicked into existence at the same second she saw and felt his. It was Johnny as she had last seen him—her client and lover—Johnny of the sharp cheekbones, hazel eyes, compact nose and solid jaw. Johnny’s brownish-red curls still fell to his collar, and his face remained a study in purposeful energy. His smile still made her melt inside.

–Johnny! She hugged him then, and she felt the hug, felt his strong hands on her back as they floated high above everything, felt her breasts flatten against his chest as he returned the hug with surprising strength for his small frame. They kissed, and there was no denying that that was real.

Lamia floated at arms’ length, her hands on his shoulders. Both their faces were lighted by the green and violet glow of the great datasphere ocean above them.

–Is this real? She heard her own voice and dialect in the question even though she knew she had only thought it.

–Yes. Real as any part of the datumplane matrix can be. We’re on the edge of the megasphere in Hyperion space. His voice still held that elusive accent that she found so beguiling and maddening.

–What happened? With the words, she conveyed images to him of the Shrike’s appearance, the sudden, terrible invasion of the blade-finger.

–Yes, thought Johnny, holding her more tightly. Somehow it 'freed' me from the Schrön loop and jacked us directly into the datasphere.

–Am I dead, Johnny?

The face of Johnny Keats smiled down at her. He shook her slightly, kissed her gently, and rotated so that they could both see the spectacle above and below. No, you’re not dead, Brawne, although you may be hooked to some kind of bizarre life support while your datumplane analog wanders here with me.

–Are you dead?

He grinned at her again. Not any longer, although life in a Schrön loop isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It was like dreaming someone else’s dreams.