We were about fifty meters from the summit and the temple when a form stepped out of the blackness of shadow behind a boulder and blocked our way. I thought Shrike and foolishly clenched my hands into fists before I saw what it was.

A very tall man stood before us, dressed in lance-slashed, vacuum combat armor. Standard Pax Fleet Marine and Swiss Guard issue. I could see his face through the impact-proof visor—his skin was black, his features strong, and his short-cropped hair was white. There were fresh and livid scars on his dark face. His eyes were not friendly. He was carrying a Marine-class, multipurpose assault rifle, and now he raised it and leveled it at us. His transmission was on the skinsuit band.

“Stop!”

We stopped.

The giant did not seem to know what to do next.

The Pax finally have us, was my first thought.

Aenea took a step forward. “Sergeant Gregorius?” came her voice on the skinsuit band.

The man cocked his head but did not lower the weapon. I had no doubt that the rifle would work perfectly in hard vacuum—either flechette cloud, energy lance, charged particle beam, solid slug, or hyper-k. The muzzle was aimed at my beloved’s face.

“How do you know my…” began the giant and then seemed to rock backward. “You’re her. The one. The girl we sought for so long, across so many systems. Aenea.”

“Yes,” said Aenea. “Are there others who survived?”

“Three,” said the man she had called Gregorius. He gestured to his right and I could just make out a black scar on black rock, with blackened remnants of something that might have been a starship escape bulb.

“Is Father Captain de Soya among them?” said Aenea.

I remembered the name. I remembered de Soya’s voice on the dropship radio when he had found us and saved us from Nemes and then let us go on God’s Grove almost ten of his and Aenea’s years ago.

“Aye,” said Sergeant Gregorius, “the captain’s alive, but just barely. He was burned bad on the poor old Raphael. He’d be atoms with her, if he hadn’t passed out an’ given me the opportunity to drag him to a lifeboat. The other two are hurt, but the father-captain’s dyin’.” He lowered the rifle and leaned on it wearily. “Dyin’ the true death… we have no resurrection créche and the darlin’ father-captain made me promise to slag him to atoms when he went, rather than let him be resurrected a mindless idiot.”

Aenea nodded. “Can you take me to him? I need to talk to him.”

Gregorius shouldered the heavy weapon and looked suspiciously at A. Bettik and me.

“And these two…”

“This is my dear friend,” said Aenea, touching A. Bettik’s arm. She took my hand. “And this is my beloved.”

The giant only nodded at this, turned, and led the way up the final stretch of slope to the summit to the Temple of the Jade Emperor.

On Hyperion, several hundred light-years toward galactic center from the events and the people on T’ien Shan, a forgotten old man rose out of the dreamless sleep of long-term cryogenic fugue and slowly became aware of his surroundings. His surroundings were a no-touch suspension bed, a gaggle of life-support modules encircling him and nuzzling him like so many feeding raptors, and uncountable tubes, wires, and umbilicals finishing their work of feeding him, detoxifying his blood, stimulating his kidneys, carrying antibiotics to fight infection, monitoring his life signs, and generally invading his body and dignity in order to revive him and keep him alive. “Ah, fuck,” rasped the old man. “Waking up is a fucking, goddamn, dung-eating, corpse-buggering, shit storm of a nightmare for the terminally old. I’d pay a million marks if I could just get out of bed and go piss.”

“And good morning to you, M. Silenus,” said the female android monitoring the old poet’s life signs on the floating biomonitor. “You seem to be in good spirits today.”

“Bugger all blue-skinned wenches,” mumbled Martin Silenus. “Where are my teeth?”

“You haven’t grown them back yet, M. Silenus,” said the android. She was named A. Raddik and was a little over three centuries old… less than one-third the age of the ancient human mummy floating in the suspension bed.

“No need to,” mumbled the old man. “Won’t fucking be awake long enough. How long was I under?”

“Two years, three months, eight days,” said A. Raddik. Martin Silenus peered up at the open sky above his tower. The canvas roof on this highest level of his stone turret had been rolled back.

Deep lapis blue. The low light of early morning or late evening. The shimmer and flit of radiant gossamers not yet illuminating their fragile half-meter butterfly wings.

“What season?” managed Silenus.

“Late spring,” said the female android.

Other blue-skinned servants of the old poet moved in and out of the circular room, bent on obscure errands. Only A. Raddik monitored the last stages of the poet’s revival from fugue.

“How long since they left?” He did not have to specify who the “they” were. A. Raddik knew that the old poet meant not only Raul Endymion, the last visitor to their abandoned university city, but the girl Aenea—whom Silenus had known three centuries earlier—and whom he still hoped to see again someday.

“Nine years, eight months, one week, one day,” said A. Raddik. “All Earth standard, of course.”

“Hggrhh,” grunted the old poet. He continued peering at the sky. The sunlight was filtered through canvas rolled to the east, pouring light onto the south wall of the stone turret while not striking him directly, but the brightness still brought tears to his ancient eyes. “I’ve become a thing of darkness,” he mumbled. “Like Dracula. Rising from my fucking grave every few years to check on the world of the living.”

“Yes, M. Silenus,” agreed A. Raddik, changing several settings on the control panel.

“Shut up, wench,” said the poet.

“Yes, M. Silenus.”

The old man moaned. “How long until I can get into my hoverchair, Raddik?”

The hairless android pursed her lips. “Two more days, M. Silenus. Perhaps two and a half.”

“Aw, hell and damn,” muttered Martin Silenus. “Recovery gets slower each time. One of these times, I won’t wake at all… the fugue machinery won’t bring me back.”

“Yes, M. Silenus,” agreed the android. “Each cold sleep is harder on your system. The resuscitation and life-support equipment is quite old. It is true that you will not survive many more awakenings.”

“Oh, shut up,” growled Martin Silenus. “You are a morbid, gloomy old bitch.”

“Yes, M. Silenus.”

“How long have you been with me, Raddik?”

“Two hundred forty-one years, eleven months, nineteen days,” said the android. “Standard.”

“And you still haven’t learned to make a decent cup of coffee.”

“No, M. Silenus.”

“But you have put a pot on, correct?”

“Yes, M. Silenus. As per your standing instructions.”

“Fucking aye,” said the poet.

“But you will not be able to ingest liquids orally for at least another twelve hours, M. Silenus,” said A. Raddik.

“Arrrggghhh!” said the poet.

“Yes, M. Silenus.”

After several minutes in which it looked like the old man had drifted back to sleep, Martin Silenus said, “Any word from the boy or child?”

“No, sir,” said A. Raddik. “But then, of course, we only have access to the in-system Pax com network these days. And most of their new encrypting is quite good.”

“Any gossip about them?”

“None that we are sure of, M. Silenus,” said the android. “Things are very troubled for the Pax… revolution in many systems, problems with their Outback Crusade against the Ousters, a constant movement of warships and troopships within the Pax boundaries… and there is talk of the viral contagion, highly coded and circumspect.”