“It is true,” said Sek Hardeen. “The prophecies have come to us… spoken to the True Voices over the generations… humankind is doomed, but with their doom will come a new flowering for pristine environments in all parts of what is now the Hegemony.”

Trained in Jesuit logic, devoted to the evolutionary theology of Teilhard de Chardin, Father Paul Duré was nonetheless tempted to say, But who the hell cares if the flowers bloom if no one is around to see them, to smell them? Instead, he said, “Have you considered that these prophecies were not divine revelations, but merely manipulations from some secular power?”

The Templar sat back as if slapped, but the Bishop leaned forward and curled two Lusian fists which could have crushed Duré’s skull with a single blow. “Heresy! Whoever dares deny the truth of the revelations must die!”

“What power could do this?” managed the True Voice of the World-tree. “What power other than the Muir’s Absolute could enter our minds and hearts?”

Duré gestured toward the sky. “Every world in the Web has been joined through the TechnoCore’s datasphere for generations. Most people of influence carry comlog extension implants for ease of accessing… do you not, M. Hardeen?”

The Templar said nothing, but Duré saw the small twitch of fingers, as if the man were going to pat his chest and upper arm where the microimplants had lain for decades.

“The TechnoCore has created a transcendent… Intelligence,” continued Duré. “It taps incredible amounts of energy, is able to move backward and forward in time, and is not motivated by human concerns. One of the goals of a sizeable percentage of the Core personalities was to eliminate humankind… indeed, the Big Mistake of the Kiev Team may have been deliberately executed by the AIs involved in that experiment. What you hear as prophecies may be the voice of this deus ex machina whispering through the datasphere. The Shrike may be here not to make humankind atone for its sins, but merely to slaughter human men, women, and children for this machine personality’s own goals.”

The Bishop’s heavy face was as red as his robe. His fists pummeled the table, and he struggled to his feet. The Templar laid a hand on the Bishop’s arm and restrained him, somehow pulled him back to his seat.

“Where have you heard this idea?” Sek Hardeen asked Duré.

“From those on the pilgrimage who have access to the Core. And from… others.”

The Bishop shook a fist in Duré’s direction. “But you yourself have been touched by the Avatar… not once, but twice. He has granted you a form of immortality so you can see what he has in store for the Chosen People… those who prepare Atonement before the Final Days are upon us!”

“The Shrike gave me pain,” said Duré. “Pain and suffering beyond imagination. I have met the thing twice, and I know in my heart that it is neither divine nor diabolical, but merely some organic machine from a terrible future.”

“Bah!” The Bishop made a dismissive gesture, folded his arms, and stared out over the low balcony at nothing.

The Templar appeared shaken. After a moment, he raised his head and said softly, “Yon had a question for me?”

Duré took a breath. “I did. And sad news, I’m afraid. True Voice of the Tree Het Masteen is dead.”

“We know,” said the Templar.

Duré was surprised. He could not imagine how they could receive that information. But it did not matter now. “What I need to know, is why did he go on the pilgrimage? What was the mission that he did not live to see completed? Each of us told our… our story. Het Masteen did not. Yet somehow I feel that his fate held the key to many mysteries.”

The Bishop looked back at Duré and sneered. “We need tell you nothing, priest of a dead religion.”

Sek Hardeen sat silent a long moment before responding. “M. Masteen volunteered to be the one to carry the Word of the Muir to Hyperion. The prophecy has lain in the roots of our belief for centuries that when the troubled times came, a True Voice of the Tree would be called upon to take a treeship to the Holy World, to see it destroyed there, and then to have it reborn carrying the message of Atonement and the Muir.”

“So Het Masteen knew that the treeship Yggdrasill would be destroyed in orbit?”

“Yes. It was foretold.”

“And he and the single energy-binder erg from the ship were to fly a new treeship?”

“Yes,” said the Templar almost inaudibly. “A Tree of Atonement which the Avatar would provide.”

Duré sat back, nodded. “A Tree of Atonement. The thorn tree. Het Masteen was psychically injured when the Yggdrasill was destroyed. Then he was taken to the Valley of the Time Tombs and shown the Shrike’s thorn tree. But he was not ready or able to do it. The thorn tree is a structure of death, of suffering, of pain… Het Masteen was not prepared to captain it. Or perhaps he refused. In any case, he fled. And died. I thought as much… but I had no idea what fate the Shrike had offered him.”

“What are you talking about?” snapped the Bishop. “The Tree of Atonement is described in the prophecies. It will accompany the Avatar in his final harvest. Masteen would have been prepared and honored to captain it through space and time.”

Paul Duré shook his head.

“We have answered your question?” asked M. Hardeen.

“Yes.”

“Then you must answer ours,” said the Bishop. “What has happened to the Mother?”

“What mother?”

“The Mother of Our Salvation. The Bride of Atonement. The one you called Brawne Lamia.”

Duré thought back, trying to remember the Consul’s taped summaries of the tales the pilgrims had told on the way to Hyperion. Brawne had been pregnant with the first Keats cybrid’s child. The Shrike Temple on Lusus had saved her from the mob, included her in the pilgrimage.

She had said something in her story about the Shrike Cultists treating her with reverence. Duré tried to fit all this into the confused mosaic of what he had already learned. He could not. He was too tired… and, he thought, too stupid after this so-called resurrection. He was not and never would be the intellectual Paul Duré once had been.

“Brawne was unconscious,” he said. “Evidently taken by the Shrike and attached to some… thing. Some cable. Her mental state was the equivalent of brain death, but the fetus was alive and healthy.”

“And the persona she carried?” asked the Bishop, his voice tense.

Duré remembered what Severn had told him about the death of that persona in the megasphere. Evidently these two did not know about the second Keats persona—the Severn personality that at this moment was warning Gladstone about the dangers of the Core proposal. Duré shook his head. He was very tired. “I don’t know about the persona she carried in the Schrön loop,” he said. “The cable… the thing the Shrike attached to her… seemed to plug into the neural socket like a cortical shunt.”

The Bishop nodded, evidently satisfied. “The prophecies proceed apace. You have served your purpose as messenger, Duré. I must leave now.” The big man stood, nodded toward the True Voice of the World-tree, and swept across the platform and down the stairs toward the elevator and terminex.

Duré sat across from the Templar in silence for several minutes. The sound of leaves blowing and the gentle rocking of the treetop platform was marvelously lulling, inviting the Jesuit to doze off. Above them, the sky was fading through delicate saffron shades as the world of God’s Grove turned into twilight.

“Your statement about a deus ex machina misleading us for generations through false prophecies was a terrible heresy,” the Templar said at last.

“Yes. But terrible heresies have proven to be grim truths many times before in the longer history of my Church, Sek Hardeen.”

“If you were a Templar, I could have you put to death,” the hooded figure said softly.

Duré sighed. At his age, in his situation, and as tired as he was, the thought of death created no fear in his heart. He stood and bowed slightly. “I need to go, Sek Hardeen. I apologize if anything I said offended you. It is a confused and confusing time.”