“Very well.” I nodded at the Monsignor and his aide, beckoned to Hunt, and tapped in the three-digit code for Tau Ceti Center, added two digits for the continent, three more for Government House, and added the final two numbers for the private terminex there. The farcaster’s hum went up a notch on the scale, its opaque surface seemed to shimmer with expectancy.

I stepped through first, stepped aside to give Hunt room as he followed.

We are not in the central Government House terminex. As far as I can tell, we are nowhere near Government House. A second later, my senses total the input of sunlight, sky color, gravity, distance to horizon, smells, and feel of things, and decide that we aren’t on Tau Ceti Center.

I would have jumped back through the portal then, but the Pope’s Door is small. Hunt is coming through—leg, arm, shoulder, chest, head, second leg appearing—so I grab his wrist, pull him through roughly, say “Something’s wrong!” and try to step back through, but too late, the frameless portal on this side shimmers, dilates to a circle the size of my fist, and is gone.

“Where the hell are we?” demands Hunt.

I look around and think. Good question. We are in the country, on a hilltop. A road underfoot winds through vineyards, goes down a long hill through a wooded vale, and disappears around another hill a mile or two distant. It is very warm, and the air hums with the sounds of insects, but nothing larger than a bird moves in this vast panorama.

Between bluffs to our right, a blue smear of water is visible—either an ocean or sea. High cirrus ripples overhead; the sun is just past the zenith. I see no houses, no technology more complicated than the vineyard rows and the stone-and-mud road underfoot. More importantly, the constant background buzz of the datasphere is gone. It is somewhat like suddenly hearing the absence of a sound one has been immersed in since infancy; it is startling, heart-stopping, confusing, and a bit terrifying.

Hunt staggers, claps his ears as if it is true sound he is missing, taps at his comlog. “Goddamn,” he mutters. “Goddamn. My implant’s malfunctioning. Comlog’s out.”

“No,” I say. “I believe we’re beyond the datasphere.” But even as I say this, I hear a deeper, softer hum—something far greater and far less accessible than the datasphere. The megasphere? The music of the spheres, I think, and smile.

“What the hell are you grinning about, Severn? Did you do this on purpose?”

“No. I gave the proper codes for Government House.” The total absence of panic in my voice is a kind of panic itself.

“What is it then? That goddamned Pope’s Door? Did it do this? Some malf or trick?”

“No, I think not. The door didn’t malfunction, Hunt. It brought us just where the TechnoCore wants us.”

“The Core?” What little color left in that basset countenance quickly drains away as the CEO’s aide realizes who controls the farcaster. Who controls all farcasters. “My God. My God.” Hunt staggers to the side of the road and sits in the tall grass there. His suede executive suit and soft black shoes look out of place here.

“Where are we?” he asks again.

I take a deep breath. The air smells of fresh-turned soil, newly mown grass, road dust, and the sharp tinge of the sea. “My guess is that we’re on Earth, Hunt.”

“Earth.” The little man is staring straight ahead, focusing on nothing. “Earth. Not New Earth. Not Terra. Not Earth Two. Not…”

“No,” I say. “Earth. Old Earth. Or its duplicate.”

“Its duplicate.”

I go over and sit beside him. I pull a strand of grass and strip the lower part of its outer sheath. The grass tastes tart and familiar. “You remember my report to Gladstone on the Hyperion pilgrims’ stories? Brawne Lamia’s tale? She and my cybrid counterpart… the first Keats retrieval persona… traveled to what they thought was an Old Earth duplicate. In the Hercules Cluster, if I remember correctly.”

Hunt glances up as if he can judge what I am saying by checking constellations. The blue above is graying slightly as the high cirrus spreads across the dome of sky. “Hercules Cluster,” he whispers.

“Why the TechnoCore built a duplicate, or what they’re doing with it now, Brawne didn’t learn,” I say. “Either the first Keats cybrid didn’t know, or he wasn’t saying.”

“Wasn’t saying,” nods Hunt. He shakes his head. “All right, how the hell do we get out of here? Gladstone needs me. She can’t… there are dozens of vital decisions to be made in the next few hours.”

He jumps to his feet, runs to the center of the road, a study in purposeful energy.

I chew on the stalk of grass. “My guess is that we don’t get out of here.”

Hunt comes at me as if he is going to assault me then and there.

“Are you insane! No way out? That’s nuts. Why would the Core do that?” He pauses, looks down at me. “They don’t want you talking to her. You know something that the Core can’t risk her learning.”

“Perhaps.”

“Leave him, let me go back!” he screams at the sky.

No one answers. Far out across the vineyard, a large black bird takes flight. I think it is a crow; I remember the name of the extinct species as if from a dream.

After a moment, Hunt gives up on addressing the sky and paces back and forth on the stone road. “Come on. Maybe there’s a terminex wherever this thing goes.”

“Perhaps,” I say, breaking off the stalk of grass to get at the sweet, dry upper half. “But which way?”

Hunt turns, looks at the road disappearing around hills in both directions, turns again. “We came through the portal looking… this way.” He points. The road goes downhill into a narrow wood.

“How far?” I ask.

“Goddammit, does it matter?” he barks. “We have to get somewhere!”

I resist the impulse to smile. “All right.” I stand and brush off my trousers, feeling the fierce sunlight on my forehead and face. After the incense-laden darkness of the basilica, it is a shock. The air is very hot, and my clothing is already damp with sweat.

Hunt starts walking vigorously down the hill, his fists clenched, his doleful expression ameliorated for once by a stronger expression—sheer resolve.

Walking slowly, in no hurry, still chewing on my stalk of sweet grass, eyes half-closed with weariness, I follow him.

Colonel Fedmahn Kassad screamed and attacked the Shrike. The surreal, out-of-time landscape—a minimalist stage designer’s version of the Valley of the Time Tombs, molded in plastic and set in a gel of viscous air—seemed to vibrate to the violence of Kassad’s rush.

For an instant there had been a mirror-image scattering of Shrikes—Shrikes throughout the valley, spread across the barren plain—but with Kassad’s shout these resolved themselves to the single monster, and now it moved, four arms unfolding and extending, curving to greet the Colonel’s rush with a hearty hug of blades and thorns.

Kassad did not know if the energy skinsuit he wore, Moneta’s gift, would protect him or serve him well in combat. It had years before when he and Moneta had attacked two dropships’ worth of Ouster commandos, but time had been on their side then; the Shrike had frozen and unfrozen the flow of moments like a bored observer playing with a holopit remote control. Now they were outside time, and the was the enemy, not some terrible patron. Kassad shouted and put his head down and attacked, no longer aware of Moneta watching, nor of the impossible tree of thorns rising into the clouds with its terrible, impaled audience, nor even aware of himself except as a fighting tool, an instrument of revenge.

The Shrike did not disappear in its usual manner, did not cease being there to suddenly be here. Instead, it crouched and opened its arms wider. Its fingerblades caught the light of the violent sky. The Shrike’s metal teeth glistened in what might have been a smile.