Melio Arundez turned, smiled at Theo’s expression, and whispered, “Ousters.”
Stunned, Theo Lane could do little more than shake his head and listen to the music. Ousters were barbarians, not these beautiful and sometimes ethereal creatures. Ouster captives on Bressia, not to mention the bodies of their infantry dead, had been of a uniform body sort—tall, yes, thin, yes, but decidedly more Web standard than this dizzying display of variety.
Theo shook his head again as the Consul’s piano piece rose to a crescendo and ended on a definitive note. The hundreds of beings in the field beyond applauded, the sound high and soft in the thin air, and then Theo watched as they stood, stretched, and headed different ways … some walking quickly over the disturbingly near horizon, others unfolding eight-meter wings and flying away. Still others moved toward the base of the Consul’s ship.
The Consul stood, saw Theo, and smiled. He clapped the younger man on the shoulder. “Theo, just in time. We’ll be negotiating soon.”
Theo Lane blinked. Three Ousters landed on the balcony and folded their great wings behind them. Each of the men was heavily furred and differently marked and striped, their pelts as organic and convincing as any wild creature’s.
“As delightful as always,” the closest Ouster said to the Consul. The Ouster’s face was leonine—broad nose and golden eyes framed by a ruff of tawny fur. “The last piece was Mozart’s Fantasia in D Minor, KV. 397, was it not?”
“It was,” said the Consul. “Freeman Vanz, I would like to introduce M. Theo Lane, Governor-General of the Hegemony Protectorate world of Hyperion.”
The lion gaze turned on Theo. “An honor,” said Freeman Vanz and extended a furred hand.
Theo shook it. “A pleasure to meet you, sir.” Theo wondered if he were actually still in the recovery tank, dreaming this. The sunlight on his face and the firm palm against his suggested otherwise.
Freeman Vanz turned back to the Consul. “On behalf of the Aggregate, I thank you for that concert. It has been too many years since we have heard you play, my friend.” He glanced around. “We can hold the talks here or at one of the administrative compounds, at your convenience.”
The Consul hesitated only a second. “There are three of us, Freeman Vanz. Many of you. We will join you.”
The lion head nodded and glanced skyward. “We will send a boat for your crossing.” He and the other two moved to the railing and stepped off, falling several meters before unfurling their complex wings and flying toward the horizon.
“Jesus,” whispered Theo. He gripped the Consul’s forearm. “Where are we?”
“The Swarm,” said the Consul, covering the Steinway’s keyboard. He led the way inside, waited for Arundez to step back, and then brought the balcony in.
“And what are we going to negotiate?” asked Theo.
The Consul rubbed his eyes. It looked as if the man had slept little or not at all during the ten or twelve hours Theo had been healing.
“That depends upon CEO Gladstone’s next message,” said the Consul and nodded toward where the holopit misted with transmission columns. A fatline squirt was being decoded on the ship’s one-time pad at that moment.
Meina Gladstone stepped into the Government House infirmary and was escorted by waiting doctors to the recovery bay where Father Paul Duré lay. “How is he?” she asked the first doctor, the CEO’s own physician.
“Second-degree flash burns over about a third of his body,” answered Dr. Irma Androneva. “He lost his eyebrows and some hair … he didn’t have that much to start with … and there were some tertiary radiation burns on the left side of his face and body. We’ve completed the epidermal regeneration and given RNA template injections. He’s in no pain and conscious. There is the problem of the cruciform parasites on his chest, but that is of no immediate danger to the patient.”
“Tertiary radation burns,” said Gladstone, stopping for a moment just out of earshot of the cubicle where Duré waited. “Plasma bombs?”
“Yes,” answered another doctor whom Gladstone did not recognize. “We’re certain that this man ‘cast in from God’s Grove a second or two before the farcaster connection was cut.”
“All right,” said Gladstone, stopping by the floating pallet where Duré rested, “I wish to speak to the gentleman alone, please.”
The doctors glanced at one another, waved a mech nurse to its wall storage, and closed the portal to the ward room as they departed.
“Father Duré?” asked Gladstone, recognizing the priest from his holos and Severn’s descriptions during the pilgrimage. Duré’s face was red and mottled now, and it glistened from regeneration gel and spray-on painkiller. He was still a man of striking appearance.
“CEO,” whispered the priest and made as if to sit up.
Gladstone set a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Rest,” she said. “Do you feel like telling me what happened?”
Duré nodded. There were tears in the old Jesuit’s eyes. “The True Voice of the Worldtree didn’t believe that they would really attack,” he whispered, his voice raw. “Sek Hardeen thought that the Templars had some pact with the Ousters … some arrangement. But they did attack. Tactical lances, plasma devices, nuclear explosives, I think … ”
“Yes,” said Gladstone, “we monitored it from the War Room. I need to know everything, Father Duré. Everything from the point when you stepped into the Cave Tomb on Hyperion.”
Paul Duré’s eyes focused on Gladstone’s face. “You know about that?”
“Yes. And about most other things to that point. But I need to know more. Much more.”
Duré closed his eyes. “The labyrinth … ”
“What?”
“The labyrinth,” he said again, voice stronger. He cleared his throat and told her about his voyage through the tunnels of corpses, the transition to a FORCE ship and his meeting with Severn on Pacem.
“And you’re sure Severn was headed here? To Government House?” asked Gladstone.
“Yes. He and your aide … Hunt Both of them intended to ‘cast here.”
Gladstone nodded and carefully touched an unburned section of the priest’s shoulder. “Father, things are happening very quickly here. Severn is missing and so is Leigh Hunt. I need advice about Hyperion. Will you stay with me?”
Duré looked confused for a moment. “I need to get back. Back to Hyperion, M. Executive. Sol and the others are waiting for me.”
“I understand,” said Gladstone soothingly. “As soon as there’s a way back to Hyperion, I’ll expedite your return. Right now, however, the Web is under brutal attack. Millions are dying or in danger of dying. I need your help, Father. Can I count on you until then?”
Paul Duré sighed and lay back. “Yes, M. Executive. But I have no idea how I—”
There was a soft knock and Sedeptra Akasi entered and handed Gladstone a message flimsy. The CEO smiled. “I said that things were happening quickly, Father. Here’s another development. A message from Pacem says that the College of Cardinals has met in the Sistine Chapel … ” Gladstone raised an eyebrow. “I forget, Father, is that the Sistine Chapel?”
“Yes. The Church took it apart stone by stone, fresco by fresco, and moved it to Pacem after the Big Mistake.”
Gladstone looked down at the flimsy. “ … met in the Sistine Chapel and elected a new pontiff.”
“So soon?” whispered Paul Duré. He closed his eyes again. “I guess they felt they must hurry. Pacem lies—what?—only ten days in front of the Ouster invasion wave. Still, to come to a decision so quickly … ”
“Are you interested in who the new Pope is?” asked Gladstone.
“Either Antonio Cardinal Guarducci or Agostino Cardinal Ruddell, I would guess,” said Duré. “None of the others would command a majority at this time.”
“No,” said Gladstone. “According to this message from Bishop Edouard of the Curia Romana … ”
“Bishop Edouard! Excuse me, M. Executive, please go on.”
“Accor
ding to Bishop Edouard, the College of Cardinals has elected someone below the rank of monsignor for the first time in the history of the Church. This says that the new Pope is a Jesuit priest … a certain Father Paul Duré.”
Duré sat straight up despite his burns. “What?” There was no belief in his voice.
Gladstone handed the flimsy to him.
Paul Duré stared at the paper. “This is impossible. They have never elected a pontiff below the rank of monsignor except symbolically, and that was unique … it was St. Belvedere after the Big Mistake and the Miracle of the … no, no, this is impossible.”
“Bishop Edouard has been trying to call, according to my aide,” said Gladstone. “We’ll have the call put through here at once, Father. Or should I say, Your Holiness?” There was no irony in the CEO’s voice.
Duré looked up, too stunned to speak.
“I will have the call put through,” said Gladstone. “We’ll arrange your return to Pacem as quickly as possible, Your Holiness, but I would appreciate it if you could keep in touch. I do need your advice.”
Duré nodded and looked back at the flimsy. A phone began to blink on the console above the pallet.
CEO Gladstone stepped out into the hall, told the doctors about the most recent development, contacted Security to approve the farcast clearance for Bishop Edouard or other Church officials from Pacem, and cast back to her room in the residential wing. Sedeptra reminded her that the council was reconvening in the War Room in eight minutes. Gladstone nodded, saw her aide out, and stepped back to the fatline cubicle in its concealed niche in the wall. She activated sonic privacy fields and coded the transmission diskey for the Consul’s ship. Every fatline receiver in the Web, Outback, galaxy, and universe would monitor the squirt, but only the Consul’s ship could decode it. Or so she hoped.
The holo camera light winked red. “Based on the automated squirt from your ship, I am assuming that you chose to meet with the Ousters, and they have allowed you to do so,” Gladstone said into the camera. “I am also assuming that you survived the initial meeting.”
Gladstone took a breath. “On behalf of the Hegemony, I have asked you to sacrifice much over the years. Now I ask you on behalf of all of humankind. You must find out the following:
“First, why are the Ousters attacking and destroying the worlds of the Web? You were convinced, Byron Lamia was convinced, and I was convinced that they wanted only Hyperion. Why have they changed this?
“Second, where is the TechnoCore? I must know if we are to fight them. Have the Ousters forgotten our common enemy, the Core?
“Third, what are their demands for a cease-fire? I am willing to sacrifice much to rid us of the Core’s domination. But the killing must stop!
“Fourth, would the Leader of the Swarm Aggregate be willing to meet with me in person? I will farcast to Hyperion system if this is necessary. Most of our fleet elements have left there, but a JumpShip and its escort craft remain with the singularity sphere. The Swarm Leader must decide soon, because FORCE wants to destroy the sphere, and Hyperion then will be three years time-debt from the Web.
“Finally, the Swarm Leader must know that the Core wishes us to use a form of deathwand explosive device to counter the Ouster invasion. Many of the FORCE leaders agree. Time is short. We will not—repeat, not—allow the Ouster invasion to overrun the Web.
“It is up to you now. Please acknowledge this message and fatline me as soon as negotiations have begun.”
Gladstone looked into the camera disk, willing the force of her personality and sincerity across the light-years. “I beseech you in the bowels of humankind’s history, please accomplish this.”
• • •
The fatline message squirt was followed by two minutes of jerky imagery showing the deaths of Heaven’s Gate and God’s Grove. The Consul, Melio Arundez, and Theo Lane sat in silence after the holos faded.
“Response?” queried the ship.
The Consul cleared his throat. “Acknowledge message received,” he said. “Send our coordinates.” He looked across the holopit at the other two. “Gentlemen?”
Arundez shook his head as if clearing it. “It’s obvious you’ve been here before … to the Ouster Swarm.”
“Yes,” said the Consul. “After Bressia … after my wife and son … after Bressia, some time ago, I rendezvoused with this Swarm for extensive negotiations.”
“Representing the Hegemony?” asked Theo. The redhead’s face looked much older and lined with worry.
“Representing Senator Gladstone’s faction,” said the Consul. “It was before she was first elected CEO. Her group explained to me that an internal power struggle within the TechnoCore could be affected by our bringing Hyperion into the Web Protectorate. The easiest way to do that was to allow information to slip to the Ousters … information that would cause them to attack Hyperion, thus bringing the Hegemony fleet here.”
“And you did that?” Arundez’s voice showed no emotion, although his wife and grown children lived on Renaissance Vector, now less than eighty hours away from the invasion wave.
The Consul sat back in the cushions. “No. I told the Ousters about the plan. They sent me back to the Web as a double agent. They planned to seize Hyperion, but at a time of their own choosing.”
Theo sat forward, his hands clasped very tightly. “All those years at the consulate … ”
“I was waiting for word from the Ousters,” the Consul said flatly. “You see, they had a device that would collapse the anti-entropic fields around the Time Tombs. Open them when they were ready. Allow the Shrike to slip its bonds.”
“So the Ousters did that,” said Theo.
“No,” said the Consul, “I did. I betrayed the Ousters just as I betrayed Gladstone and the Hegemony. I shot the Ouster woman who was calibrating the device … her and the technicians with her … and turned it on. The anti-entropic fields collapsed. The final pilgrimage was arranged. The Shrike is free.”
Theo stared at his former mentor. There was more puzzlement than rage in the younger man’s green eyes. “Why? Why did you do all this?”
The Consul told them, briefly and dispassionately, about his grandmother Siri of Maui-Covenant, and about her rebellion against the Hegemony—a rebellion which did not die when she and her lover, the Consul’s grandfather, died.
Arundez rose from the pit and walked to the window opposite the balcony. Sunlight streamed across his legs and the dark blue carpet. “Do the Ousters know what you did?”
“They do now,” said the Consul. “I told Freeman Vanz and the others when we arrived.”
Theo paced the diameter of the holopit. “So this meeting we’re going to might be a trial?”
The Consul smiled. “Or an execution.”
Theo stopped, both hands clenched in fists. “And Gladstone knew this when she asked you to come here again?”
“Yes.”
Theo turned away. “I don’t know whether I want them to execute you or not.”
“I don’t know either, Theo,” said the Consul.
Melio Arundez turned away from the window. “Didn’t Vanz say they were sending a boat to fetch us?”
Something in his tone brought the other two men to the window. The world where they had landed was a middle-sized asteroid which had been encircled by a class-ten containment field and terraformed into a sphere by generations of wind and water and careful restructuring. Hyperion’s sun was setting behind the too-near horizon, and the few kilometers of featureless grass rippled to a vagrant breeze. Below the ship, a wide stream or narrow river ambled across the pastureland, approached the horizon, and then seemed to fly upward into a river turned waterfall, twisting up through the distant containment field and winding through the blackness of space above before dwindling to a line too narrow to see.
A boat was descending that infinitely tall waterfall, approaching the surface of their small world. Humanoid figures could be seen near the bow and stern.
“Christ,” whispered T
heo.
“We’d best get ready,” said the Consul. “That’s our escort.”
Outside, the sun set with shocking rapidity, sending its last rays through the curtain of water half a kilometer above the shadowed ground and searing the ultramarine sky with rainbows of almost frightening color and solidity.
FORTY
It is midmorning when Hunt awakens me. He arrives with breakfast on a tray and a frightened look in his dark eyes.
I ask, “Where did you get the food?”
“There’s some sort of little restaurant in the front room downstairs. Food was waiting there, hot, but no people.”
I nod. “Signora Angeletti’s little trattoria,” I say. “She is not a good cook.” I remember Dr. Clark’s concern about my diet; he felt that the consumption had settled in my stomach and he held me to a starvation regime of milk and bread with the occasional bit of fish. Odd how many suffering members of humankind have faced eternity obsessed with their bowels, their bedsores, or the meagerness of their diets.
I look up at Hunt again. “What is it?”