“The contagion,” repeated Martin Silenus and smiled a toothless smile. “The child, I would guess.”

“Quite possibly, M. Silenus,” said A. Raddik, “although it is quite possible that there is a real viral plague on those worlds where…”

“No,” said the poet, shaking his head almost violently. “It’s Aenea. And her teachings. Spreading like the Beijing Flu. You don’t remember the Beijing Flu, do you, Raddik?”

“No, sir,” said the female, finishing her check of the readouts and setting the module to auto. “That was before my time. It was before anyone’s time. Anyone but you, sir.”

Normally there would have been some obscene outburst from the poet, but now he merely nodded. “I know. I’m a freak of nature. Pay your two bits and come into the sideshow… see the oldest man in the galaxy… see the mummy that walks and talks… sort of… see the disgusting thing that refuses to die. Bizarre, aren’t I, A. Raddik?”

“Yes, M. Silenus.”

The poet grunted. “Well, don’t get your hopes up, blue thing. I’m not going to croak until I hear from Raul and Aenea. I have to finish the Cantos and I don’t know the ending until they create it for me. How do I know what I think until I see what they do?”

“Precisely, M. Silenus.”

“Don’t humor me, blue woman.”

“Yes, M. Silenus.”

“The boy… Raul… asked me what his orders were almost ten years ago. I told him… save the child, Aenea… topple the Pax… destroy the Church’s power… and bring the Earth back from wherever the fuck it went. He said he’d do it. Of course, he was stinking drunk with me at the time.”

“Yes, M. Silenus.”

“Well?” said the poet.

“Well what, sir?” said A. Raddik.

“Well, any sign of him having done any of the things he’s promised, Raddik?”

“We know from the Pax transmissions nine years and eight months ago that he and the Consul’s ship escaped Hyperion,” said the android. “We can hope that the child Aenea is still safe and well.”

“Yes, yes,” muttered Silenus, waving his hand feebly, “but is the Pax toppled?”

“Not that we can notice, M. Silenus,” said Raddik. “There were the mild troubles I mentioned earlier, and offworld, born-again tourism here on Hyperion is down a bit, but…”

“And the sodding Church is still in the zombie business?” demanded the poet, his thin voice stronger now.

“The Church remains ascendant,” said A. Raddik. “More of the moor people and the mountain people accept the cruciform every year.”

“Bugger all,” said the poet. “And I don’t suppose that Earth has returned to its proper place.”

“We have not heard of that improbability occurring,” said A. Raddik. “Of course, as I mentioned, our electronic eavesdropping is restricted to in-system transmissions these days, and since the Consul’s ship left with M. Endymion and M. Aenea almost ten years ago, our decryption capabilities have not been…”

“All right, all right,” said the old man, sounding terribly tired again. “Get me into my hoverchair.”

“Not for another two days, at least, I am afraid,” repeated the android, her voice gentle.

“Piss up a rope,” said the ancient figure floating amid tubes and sensor wires. “Can you wheel me over to a window, Raddik? Please? I want to look at the spring chalma trees and the ruins of this old city.”

“Yes, M. Silenus,” said the android, sincerely pleased to be doing something for the old man besides keeping his body working.

Martin Silenus watched out the window for one full hour, fighting the tides of reawakening pain and the terrible sleepy urge to return to fugue state. It was morning light. His audio implants relayed the birdsong to him. The old poet thought of his adopted young niece, the child who had decided to call herself Aenea… he thought of his dear friend, Brawne Lamia, Aenea’s mother… how they had been enemies for so long, had hated each other during parts of that last great Shrike Pilgrimage so long ago… about the stories they had told one another and the things they had seen… the Shrike in the Valley of the Time Tombs, its red eyes blazing… the scholar… what was his name?… Sol… Sol and his little swaddled brat aging backward to nothing… and the soldier… Kassad… that was it…

Colonel Kassad. The old poet had never given a shit about the military… idiots, all of them… but Kassad had told an interesting tale, lived an interesting life… the other priest, Lenar Hoyt, had been a prig and an asshole, but the first one… the one with the sad eyes and the leather journal… Paul Duré… there had been a man worth writing about…

Martin Silenus drifted back to sleep with the light of morning flooding in on him, illuminating his countless wrinkles and translucent, parchment flesh, his blue veins visible and pulsing weakly in the rich light. He did not dream… but part of his poet’s mind was already outlining the next sections of his never-finished Cantos.

Sergeant Gregorius had not been exaggerating. Father Captain de Soya had been terribly battered and burned in the last battle of his ship, the Raphael, and was near death.

The sergeant had led A. Bettik, Aenea, and me into the temple. The structure was as strange as this encounter—outside there was a large, blank stone tablet, a smooth-faced monolith—Aenea mentioned briefly that it had been brought from Old Earth, had stood outside the original Temple of the Jade Emperor, and had never been inscribed during its thousands of years on the pilgrims’ trail—while inside the sealed and pressurized courtyard of the echoing temple itself, a stone railing ran around a boulder that was actually the summit of T’ai Shan, the sacred Great Peak of the Middle Kingdom. There were small sleeping and eating rooms for pilgrims in the back of the huge temple, and it was in one of these that we found Father Captain de Soya and the other two survivors. Besides Gregorius and the dying de Soya, there were two other men—Carel Shan, a Weapons Systems Officer, now terribly burned and unconscious, and Hoagan Liebler, introduced by Sergeant Gregorius as the “former” Executive Officer of the Raphael. Liebler was the least injured of the four—his left forearm had been broken and was in a sling, but he had no burns or other impact bruises—but there was something quiet and withdrawn about the thin man, as if he were in shock or mulling something over.

Aenea’s attention went immediately to Captain Federico de Soya. The priest-captain was on one of the uncomfortable pilgrim cots, either stripped to the waist by Gregorius or he had lost all of his upper uniform in the blast and reentry. His trousers were shredded. His feet were bare. The only place on his body where he had not been terribly burned was the parasite cruciform on his chest—it was a healthy, sickening pink. De Soya’s hair had been burned away and his face was splashed with liquid metal burns and radiation slashes, but I could see that he had been a striking man, mostly because of his liquid, troubled brown eyes, not dulled even by the pain that must be overwhelming him at this moment. Someone had applied burn cream, temporary dermheal, and liquid disinfectant all over the visible portions of the dying priest-captain’s body—and started a standard lifeboat medkit IV drip—but this would have little effect on the outcome. I had seen combat burns like this before, not all from starship encounters.

Three friends of mine during the Iceshelf fighting had died within hours when we had not been able to medevac them out. Their screams had been horrible to the point of unendurable. Father Captain de Soya was not screaming. I could see that he was straining not to cry out from the pain, but he remained silent, his eyes focused only on the terrible concentration to silence until Aenea knelt by his side. At first he did not recognize her. “Bettz?” he mumbled. “VIRO Argyle? No… you died at your station. The others too… Pol Denish… Elijah trying to free the aft boat… the young troopers when the starboard hull failed… but you look… familiar.”