“The best lack all conviction,” he thought, “while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Duré turned and walked to the edge of the platform. And stopped.

The staircase was gone. Thirty vertical meters and fifteen horizontal meters of air separated him from the next lower platform where the elevator waited. The Worldtree dropped away a kilometer or more into leafy depths beneath him. Duré and the True Voice of that Tree were isolated here on the highest platform. Duré walked to a nearby railing, raised his suddenly sweaty face to the evening breeze, and noticed the first of the stars emerging from the ultramarine sky. “What’s going on, Sek Hardeen?”

The robed and cowled figure at the table was wrapped in darkness.

“In eighteen minutes, standard, the world of Heaven’s Gate will fall to the Ousters. Our prophecies say that it will be destroyed. Certainly its farcaster will, and its fatline transmitters, and to all intents and purposes, that world will have ceased to exist. Precisely one standard hour later, the skies of God’s Grove will be alight from the fusion fires of Ouster warships. Our prophecies say that all of the Brotherhood who remain —and anyone else, although all Hegemony citizens have long since been evacuated by farcaster—will perish.”

Duré walked slowly back to the table. “It’s imperative that I ’cast to Tau Ceti Center,” he said. “Severn… someone is waiting for me. I have to speak to CEO Gladstone.”

“No,” said True Voice of the Worldtree Sek Hardeen. “We will wait. We will see if the prophecies are correct.”

The Jesuit clenched his fists in frustration, fighting the surge of violent emotion that made him want to strike the robed figure. Duré closed his eyes and said two Hail Marys. It didn’t help.

“Please,” he said. “The prophecies will be confirmed or denied whether I am here or not. And then it will be too late. The FORCE torchships will blow the singularity sphere, and the farcasters will be gone. We’ll be cut off from the Web for years. Billions of lives may depend upon my immediate return to Tau Ceti Center.”

The Templar folded his arms so that his long-fingered hands disappeared in the folds of his robe. “We will wait,” he said. “All things predicted will come to pass. In minutes, the Lord of Pain will be loosed on those in the Web. I do not believe in the Bishop’s faith that those who have sought Atonement will be spared. We are better off here, Father Duré, where the end will be swift and painless.”

Duré searched his tired mind for something decisive to say, to do.

Nothing occurred to him. He sat at the table and stared at the cowled and silent figure across from him. Above them, the stars emerged in their fiery multitudes. The world-forest of God’s Grove rustled a final time to the evening breeze and seemed to hold its breath in anticipation.

Paul Duré closed his eyes and prayed.

We walk all day. Hunt and I, and toward evening we find an inn with food set out for us—a fowl, rice pudding, cauliflower, a dish of macaroni, and so forth—although there are no people here, no sign of people other than the fire in the hearth, burning brightly as if just lit, and the food still warm on the stove.

Hunt is unnerved by it; by it and by the terrible withdrawal symptoms he is suffering from the loss of contact with the datasphere. I can imagine his pain. For a person born and raised into a world where information was always at hand, communication with anyone anywhere a given, and no distance more than a farcaster step away, this sudden regression to life as our ancestors had known it would be like suddenly awakening blind and crippled. But after the rantings and rages of the first few hours of walking, Hunt finally settled down into a taciturn gloom.

“But the CEO needs me!” he had shouted that first hour.

“She needs the information I was bringing her,” I said, “but there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“Where are we?” demanded Hunt for the tenth time.

I had already explained about this alternate Old Earth, but I knew he meant something else now.

“Quarantine, I think,” I said.

“The Core brought us here?” demanded Hunt.

“I can only assume.”

“How do we get back?”

“I don’t know. I presume that when they feel it’s safe to allow us out of quarantine, a farcaster portal will appear.”

Hunt cursed softly. “Why quarantine me, Severn?”

I shrugged. I assumed it was because he had heard what I said on Pacem, but I was not certain. I was certain of nothing.

The road led through meadows, vineyards, winding over low hills and twisting through valleys where glimpses of the sea were visible.

“Where does this road go?” Hunt demanded just before we discovered the inn.

“All roads lead to Rome.”

“I’m serious, Severn.”

“So am I, M. Hunt.”

Hunt pried a loose stone from the highway and threw it far into the bushes. Somewhere a thrush called.

“You’ve been here before?” Hunt’s tone was one of accusation, as if I had pirated him away. Perhaps I had.

“No,” I said. But Keats had, I almost added. My transplanted memories surged to the surface, almost overwhelming me with their sense of loss and looming mortality. So far from friends, so far from Fanny, his one eternal love.

“You’re sure you can’t access the datasphere?” asked Hunt.

“I’m positive,” I answered. He did not ask about the megasphere, and I did not offer the information. I am terrified of entering the megasphere, of losing myself there.

We found the inn just at sunset. It was nestled in a small valley, and smoke rose from the stone chimney.

While eating, darkness pressing against the panes, our only light the flicker of the fire and two candles on a stone mantle, Hunt said, “This place makes me half-believe in ghosts.”

“I do believe in ghosts,” I said.

Night. I awake coughing, feel wetness on my bare chest, hear Hunt rumbling with the candle, and in its light, look down to see blood on my skin, spotting the bedclothes.

“My God,” breathes Hunt, horrified. “What is it? What’s going on?”

“Hemorrhage,” I manage after the next fit of coughing leaves me weaker and spotted with more blood. I start to rise, fall back on the pillow, and gesture toward the basin of water and towel on the night-stand.

“Damn, damn,” mutters Hunt, searching for my comlog to get a med reading. There is no comlog. I had thrown away Hoyt’s useless instrument while we were walking earlier in the day.

Hunt removes his own comlog, adjusts the monitor, and wraps it around my wrist. The readings are meaningless to him, other than to signify urgency and the need for immediate medical care. Like most people of his generation, Hunt had never seen illness or death—that was a professional matter handled out of sight of the populace.

“Never mind,” I whisper, the siege of coughing past but weakness lying on me like a blanket of stones. I gesture toward the towel again, and Hunt moistens it, washes the blood from my chest and arms, helps me sit in the single chair while he removes the spattered sheets and blankets.

“Do you know what’s going on?” he asks, real concern in his voice.

“Yes.” I attempt a smile. “Accuracy. Verisimilitude. Ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.”

“Make sense,” snaps Hunt, helping me back into the bed. “What caused the hemorrhage? What can I do to help?”

“A glass of water, please.” I sip it, feel the boiling in my chest and throat but manage to avoid another round of coughing. My belly feels as if it’s on fire.

“What’s going on?” Hunt asks again.

I talk slowly, carefully, setting each word in place as if placing my feet on soil strewn with mines. The coughing does not return. “It’s an illness called consumption,” I say. “Tuberculosis. The final stages, judging from the severity of the hemorrhage.”