“Well,” says the Consul, still smiling, “let them try to shoot me down. Manned ships haven’t been able to land near the Valley of the Time Tombs for two centuries anyway: ships land perfectly, but their crews disappear. Before they slag me, I’ll be hanging on the Shrike’s tree.” The Consul closes his eyes a moment and imagines the ship landing, empty, on the plain above the valley. He imagines Sol, Duré, and the others—miraculously returned—running for shelter in the ship, using its surgery to save Het Masteen and Brawne Lamia, its cryogenic fugue and sleep chambers to save little Rachel.

“My God,” whispers Theo and the shocked tone slams the Consul out of his reverie.

They have come around the final turn in the river above the city.

The bluffs rise higher here, culminating to the south in the carved-mountain likeness of Sad King Billy. The sun is just setting, igniting low clouds and buildings high on the eastern bluffs.

Above the city, a battle is raging. Lasers lance into and through the clouds, ships dodge like gnats and burn like moths too close to a flame, while parafoils and the blur of suspension fields drift beneath the cloud ceiling. The city of Keats is being attacked. The Ousters have come to Hyperion.

“Oh, sweet fuck,” Theo whispers reverently.

Along the forested ridge northwest of the city, a brief spout of flame and a flicker of contrail mark a shoulder-launched rocket coming directly toward the Hegemony skimmer.

“Hang on!” snaps Theo. He takes manual control, throws switches, banks the skimmer steeply to starboard, trying to turn inside the small rocket’s own turning radius.

An explosion aft throws the Consul into the crashweb and blurs his vision for a moment. When he can focus again, the cabin is filled with smoke, red warning lights pulse through the gloom, and the skimmer warns of systems failure in a dozen urgent voices. Theo is slumped grimly over the omni-controller.

“Hang on,” he says again, needlessly. The skimmer slews sickeningly, finds a grip in the air, and then loses it as they tumble and sideslip toward the burning city.

I blinked and opened my eyes, disoriented for a second as I looked around the immense, dark space of St. Peter’s Basilica. Pacem.

Monsignor Edouard and Father Paul Duré leaned forward in the dim candlelight, their expressions intense.

“How long was I… asleep?” I felt as if only seconds had elapsed, the dream a shimmer of images one has in the instants between lying peacefully and full sleep.

“Ten minutes,” said the Monsignor. “Can you tell us what you saw?”

I saw no reason not to. When I was finished describing the images, Monsignor Edouard crossed himself. “Mon Dieu, the ambassador from the TechnoCore urges Gladstone to send people to those… tunnels.”

Duré touched my shoulder. “After I talk to the True Voice of the Worldtree on God’s Grove, I will join you on TC². We have to tell Gladstone the folly of such a choice.”

I nodded. All thoughts of my going to God’s Grove with Duré or to Hyperion itself had fled. “I agree. We should depart at once. Is your… can the Pope’s Door take me to Tau Ceti Center?”

The Monsignor stood, nodded, stretched. Suddenly I realized that he was a very old man, untouched by Poulsen treatments. “It has a priority access,” he said. He turned to Duré. “Paul, you know that I would accompany you if I could. The funeral of His Holiness, the election of a new Holy Father…” Monsignor Edouard made a small, rueful sound. “Odd how the daily imperatives persist even in the face of collective disaster. Pacem itself has fewer than ten standard days until the barbarians arrive.”

Duré’s high forehead gleamed in the candlelight. “The business of the Church is something beyond a mere daily imperative, my friend. I will make my visit on the Templar world brief, then join M. Severn in his effort of convincing the CEO not to listen to the Core. Then I will return, Edouard, and we will try to make some sense of this confused heresy.”

I followed the two of them out of the basilica, through a side door that led to a passageway behind the tall colonnades, left across an open courtyard—the rain had stopped and the air smelled fresh—down a stairway, and through a narrow tunnel into the papal apartments. Members of the Swiss Guard snapped to attention as we came into the apartments’ anteroom; the tall men were dressed in armor and yellow-and-blue striped pantaloons, although their ceremonial halberds were also FORCE-quality energy weapons. One stepped forward and spoke softly to the Monsignor.

“Someone has just arrived at the main terminex to see you, M. Severn.”

“Me?” I had been listening to other voices in other rooms, the melodious rise and fall of oft-repeated prayers. I assumed it had to do with preparation for the Pope’s burial.

“Yes, an M. Hunt. He says that it is urgent.”

“Another minute and I would have seen him at Government House,” I said. “Why not have him join us here?”

Monsignor Edouard nodded and spoke softly to the Swiss Guard, who whispered into an ornamental crest on his antique armor.

The so-called Pope’s Door—a small farcaster portal surrounded by intricate gold carvings of seraphim and cherubim, topped with a five-station bas-relief illustrating Adam and Eve’s fall from grace and expulsion from the garden—stood in the center of a well-guarded room just off the Pope’s private apartments. We waited there, our reflections wan and tired-looking in the mirrors on each wall.

Leigh Hunt was escorted in by the priest who had led me to the basilica.

“Severn!” cried Gladstone’s favorite advisor. “The CEO needs you at once.”

“I was just going there,” I said. “It would be a criminal mistake if Gladstone allowed the Core to build and use the death device.”

Hunt blinked—an almost comical reaction on that basset-hound countenance. “Do you know everything that happens, Severn?”

I had to laugh. “A young child sitting unattended in a holo pit sees much and understands very little. Still, he has the advantage of being able to change channels and turn the thing off when he grows tired of it.” Hunt knew Monsignor Edouard from various state functions, and I introduced Father Paul Duré of the Society of Jesus.

“Duré?” managed Hunt, his jaw almost hanging slack. It was the first time that I had seen the advisor at a loss for words, and I rather enjoyed the sight.

“We’ll explain later,” I said and shook the priest’s hand. “Good luck on God’s Grove, Duré. Don’t be too long.”

“An hour,” promised the Jesuit. “No longer. There is merely one piece of the puzzle I must find before speaking to the CEO. Please explain to her about the horror of the labyrinth… I will give her my own testimony later.”

“It’s possible that she’ll be too busy to see me before you get there anyway,” I said. “But I’ll do my best to play John the Baptist for you.”

Duré smiled. “Just don’t lose your head, my friend.” He nodded, tapped in a transfer code on the archaic diskey panel, and disappeared through the portal.

I bid farewell to Monsignor Edouard. “We will get all this settled before the Ouster wave gets this far.”

The old priest raised a hand and blessed me. “Go with God, young man. I feel that dark times await us all but that you will be especially burdened.”

I shook my head. “I’m just an observer, Monsignor. I wait and watch and dream. Little burden there.”

“Wait and watch and dream later,” Leigh Hunt said sharply. “Her Nibs wants you within reach now, and I have a meeting to get back to.”

I looked at the little man. “How did you find me?” I asked needlessly.

Farcasters were operated by the Core, and the Core worked with the Hegemony authorities.

“The override card she gave you also makes it easier to keep track of your travels,” Hunt said, his impatience audible. “Right now we have an obligation to be where things are happening.”