“Instead, I tumbled half a meter to a marble floor. Here, not two hundred meters from this spot, in the private chambers of Pope Urban XVI—who, it so happens, had died of old age not three hours before I fell through his private farcaster. The “Pope’s Door” the New Vatican calls it. I felt the pain-punishment from being so far from Hyperion—so far from the source of the cruciforms—but pain is an old ally now and no longer holds sway over me.

“I found Edouard. He was kind enough to listen for hours as I told a story no Jesuit has ever had to confess. He was even kinder to believe me. Now you have heard it. That is my story.”

The storm had passed. The three of us sat by candlelight beneath the dome of St. Peter’s and said nothing at all for several moments.

“The Shrike has access to the Web,” I said at last.

Duré’s gaze was level. “Yes.”

“It must have been some ship in Hyperion space…”

“So it would seem.”

“Then we might be able to get back there. Use the… the Pope’s Door?… to return to Hyperion space.”

Monsignor Edouard raised an eyebrow. “You wish to do this, M. Severn?”

I chewed on a knuckle. “It’s something I’ve considered.”

“Why?” the Monsignor asked softly. “Your counterpart, the cybrid personality Brawne Lamia carried on her pilgrimage, found only death there.”

I shook my head, as if trying to clear the jumble of my thoughts through that simple gesture. “I’m a part of this. I just don’t know what part to play… or where to play it.”

Paul Duré laughed without humor. “All of us have known that feeling. It is like some poor playwright’s treatise on predestination. Whatever happened to free will?”

The Monsignor glanced sharply at his friend. “Paul, all of the pilgrims… you yourself… have been confronted with choices you made with your own will. Great powers may be shaping the general turn of events, but human personalities still determine their own fate.”

Duré sighed. “Perhaps so, Edouard. I do not know. I am very tired.”

“If Ummon’s story is true,” I said. “If the third part of this human deity fled to our time, where and who do you think it is? There are more than a hundred billion human beings in the Web.”

Father Duré smiled. It was a gentle smile, free of irony. “Have you considered that it might be yourself, M. Severn?”

The question struck me like a slap. “It can’t be,” I said. “I’m not even… not even fully human. My consciousness floats somewhere in the matrix of the Core. My body was reconstituted from remnants of John Keats’s DNA and biofactured like an android’s. Memories were implanted. The end of my life… my ’recovery' from consumption… were all simulated on a world built for that purpose.”

Duré was still smiling. “So? Does any of this preclude you from being this Empathy entity?”

“I don’t feel like a part of some god,” I said sharply. “I don’t remember anything, understand anything, or know what to do next.”

Monsignor Edouard touched my wrist. “Are we so sure that Christ always knew what to do next? He knew what had to be done. It is not always the same as knowing what to do.”

I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t even know what has to be done.”

The Monsignor’s voice was quiet. “I believe that what Paul is saying is that if the spirit creature you say is hiding here in our time, it may well not know its own identity.”

“That’s insane,” I said.

Duré nodded. “Much of the events on and around Hyperion have seemed insane. Insanity seems to be spreading.”

I looked closely at the Jesuit. “You would be a good candidate for the deity,” I said. “You’ve lived a life of prayer, contemplating theologies, and honoring science as an archaeologist. Plus, you’ve already been crucified.”

Duré’s smile was gone. “Do you hear what we’re saying? Do you hear the blasphemy in what we’re saying? I’m no candidate for the Godhead, Severn. I’ve betrayed my Church, my science, and now, by disappearing, my friends on the pilgrimage. Christ may have lost his faith for a few seconds; He did not sell it in the marketplace for the trinkets of ego and curiosity.”

“Enough,” commanded Monsignor Edouard. “If the identity of this Empathy part of some future, manufactured deity is the mystery, think of the candidates just in the immediate troupe of your little Passion Play, M. Severn. The CEO, M. Gladstone, carrying the weight of the Hegemony on her shoulders. The other members of the pilgrimage… M. Silenus who, according to what you told Paul, even now suffers on the Shrike’s tree for his poetry. M. Lamia, who has risked and lost so much for love. M. Weintraub, who has suffered Abraham’s dilemma… even his daughter, who has returned to the innocence of childhood. The Consul, who—”

“The Consul seems more Judas than Christ,” I said. “He betrayed both the Hegemony and the Ousters, who thought he was working for them.”

“From what Paul tells me,” said the Monsignor, “the Consul was true to his convictions, faithful to the memory of his grandmother Siri.”

The older man smiled. “Plus, there are a hundred billion other players in this play. God did not choose Herod or Pontius Pilate or Caesar Augustus as His instrument. He chose the unknown son of an unknown carpenter in one of the least important stretches of the Roman Empire.”

“All right,” I said, standing and pacing before the glowing mosaic below the altar. “What do we do now? Father Duré, you need to come with me to see Gladstone. She knows about your pilgrimage. Perhaps your story can help avert some of the bloodbath which seems so imminent.”

Duré stood also, folding his arms and staring toward the dome as if the darkness high above held some instructions for him. “I’ve thought of that,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s my first obligation. I need to go to God’s Grove to speak to their equivalent of the Pope—the True Voice of the Worldtree.”

I stopped pacing. “God’s Grove? What does that have to do with anything?”

“I feel that the Templars have been the key to some missing element in this painful charade. Now you say that Het Masteen is dead. Perhaps the True Voice can explain to us what they had planned for this pilgrimage… Masteen’s tale, as it were. He was, after all, the only one of the seven original pilgrims who did not tell the story of why he had come to Hyperion.”

I paced again, more rapidly now, trying to keep anger in check. “My God, Duré. We don’t have time for such idle curiosity. It’s only"—I consulted my implant—"an hour and a half until the Ouster invasion Swarm enters the God’s Grove system. It must be bedlam there.”

“Perhaps,” said the Jesuit, “but I still will go there first. Then I will speak to Gladstone. It may be that she will authorize my return to Hyperion.”

I grunted, doubting that the CEO would ever let such a valuable informant return to harm’s way. “Let’s get going,” I said, and turned to find my way out.

“A moment,” said Duré. “You said a while ago that you were sometimes able to… to ‘dream’… about the pilgrims while you were still awake. A sort of trance state, is it?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, M. Severn, please dream about them now.”

I stared in amazement. “Here? Now?”

Duré gestured toward his chair. “Please. I wish to know the fate of my friends. Also, the information might be most valuable in our confrontation with the True Voice and M. Gladstone.”

I shook my head but took the seat he offered. “It might not work,” I said.

“Then we have lost nothing,” said Duré.

I nodded, closed my eyes, and sat back in the uncomfortable chair.

I was all too aware of the other two men watching me, of the faint smell of incense and rain, of the echoing space surrounding us. I was sure that this would never work; the landscape of my dreams was not so close that I could summon it merely by closing my eyes.

The feeling of being watched faded, the smells grew distant, and the sense of space expanded a thousandfold as I returned to Hyperion.