Mining began, and went on with frantic greed. The descendants of the original three hundred and eighty-four split the regions further. Over the generations and over the centuries, the owners proliferated: thousands, tens of thousands, finally millions. Boundary surfaces were carefully drawn and ownership rights observed.

Four centuries later, it was all over. The Yang Diamond was gone, divided into a trillion separate fragments and dispersed across the system. But once the diamond had been mined out of any volume, that space became available for general occupation and rental. In place of the Yang Diamond sat a polyglot, polyfunctional melange of industries, the Hong Kong of the 26th century.

Of course, the Vault of Hyperion no longer exported diamond — for there was none to export. Instead it operated its own manufacturing industries from imported raw materials, and showed a degree of independence of central government that exceeded any civilization in the system. The storage vaults located in the major tentacles had an unmatched reputation, but they followed their own rules and they took little notice of any edicts from Ceres. In another fine display of idiosyncrasy, the colonists of the Deep Vault had banned the Mattin Link from use anywhere in their domain. When Luther Brachis went to Hyperion, he was able to Link only as far as Titan. After that he was obliged to travel the rest of the way on a laden cargo vessel. It was transporting food concentrates to the Vault residents. Despite the denials of the crew, it stank.

Brachis cursed and grumbled. Godiva took it all in her stride, wearing formal gowns for every dinner and dazzling the ship s crew with her ineffable beauty. Luther could not take his eyes from her, and somehow he was not jealous of the other men’s stares.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” he asked, on the last leg of their journey before his descent into the black depths of the Vault.

Godiva shook her head. “If you force me to, I will. But I told you I don’t want to, even before we left Ceres. I’m afraid of what I might find there.” She took his right hand in hers, inspecting it closely. The skin on the emerging fingers and thumb was soft and delicate, and the first dark imprint of nails was forming on the tips. “Please be careful, Luther. You don’t want another experience like the one that did this.”

Brachis said nothing. He would tell Godiva Lomberd anything she wanted to hear, but in his own mind there was no reassurance. He had thought about the Margrave a great deal since the Adestis encounter. Although that cunning and inventive mind demanded every respect, not even Fujitsu could see in detail what lay beyond the grave. The Margrave had not known how or when he would die, or in what circumstances. It called for an unusual intellect to make any plans for vengeance from within the tomb, but such plans could only operate in terms of probabilities — how, who, where, when? Unless Luther became sloppy, all the advantage lay with him.

The Margrave was a chess master. So was Brachis. They would both look many moves ahead, but now Luther had the supreme advantage of real-time inputs. With the catacombs of Enceladus disposed of, he had concluded that the Margrave’s preferred off-Earth haven for his other Artefacts had to be the Hyperion Vault.

The descent passed through many levels. Brachis looked carefully around him as they went down, noting the safety points and shelters. Three blow-outs and nine thousand deaths in thirteen years had made the Vault inhabitants super-cautious. Each level had its own system of locks and deadman switches.

Below the seventeenth level the grey rock walls of Hyperion’s silicon interior were left behind. To assure their own survival, the original miners had employed non-commercial impure diamond as supporting walls, buttresses, and columns. Lit by the cold light of closed ecology bioluminescent spheres, the Deep Vault was a sinister grotto of light and color. The green-white glow of marine electrophores scattered from yellow and red diamond crystals, and the whole visible spectrum shattered at sharp comers and edges.

Down forever, layer after layer, on through the jumbled settlements. The guide was an emaciated woman with a bent back and drooping shoulders. At last she paused at a branch point and gestured downwards. “Storage starts here. Well be joined by a coldtank supervisor. How much do you want to see?’

He had already answered that question, and clearly she had not believed him. “Everything.”

“Take a long time, even if you only want to look. Do you just want to look?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

She nodded. Other men and women had followed her through the coldtanks. She knew what they usually wanted. “Let’s go. Don’t talk price with the supervisor. We’ll sort all that out when we’re finished.”

The slow drift through the stacks began. Brachis insisted on seeing every chamber and examining each ID and storage unit.

It took three days. The tanks had not been laid out in logical or time-sequenced order. Even Brachis, familiar with the wilderness of interior Ceres, felt at times that the Deep Vault was even more convoluted. It was amazing to see that the supervisor knew how to navigate every dim-lit corridor and tunnel, without a computer guide.

At the end, Brachis handed his companion a list. It contained seven identifications. “These. What will it take to transfer them to my full custody?”

She managed to appear startled. Just possibly she was. “You mean transfer permanently ?”

“I mean exactly that. With no trace left in the Vault records.”

“Impossible.”

“I was told that in the Deep Vault nothing is impossible. How much?”

She rubbed at her left eye, where the reddened lid drooped to match her wilting shoulders. “Stay here. Don t move, and don’t talk to anybody even if they want to.”

She was back in less than an hour. “It may be doable. But we don’t use trade crystals.”

Brachis said nothing.

“We do need volatiles, though,” she went on. “And we’ve been having trouble with permits. If you could arrange a shipment in from the Harvester …”

“No problem. But you’ve got no Link Exit here on Hyperion.”

“Delivery to Iapetus, we’ll worry about transfer from there. Ten thousand tons, FOB Kondoport on Iapetus.”

“That’s a high price. I won’t know what I have until they’re out of cold storage.”

“Not our worry. Once they’re out, they’re yours. Records here won’t show they ever existed, so don’t think you can bring them back. Once they’re warm they rot, unless you bring them all the way back to consciousness. So you take them wherever you want. And you pay shipping charges. Far as we’re concerned, once they re out of the Vault they’re gone .”

Brachis weighed his options, and decided that he didn’t have any. Even if six out of seven were false alarms, he could not risk missing that seventh one. As for shipping charges, he did not intend that anything he took from the storage tanks would ever leave Hyperion. If Godiva asked, she would be told that the search for Margrave Artefacts on Hyperion had drawn a blank.

“How soon after I place the order for volatiles do I get them?”

“Soon as you want. Let me watch when you file the order with the Harvester, and you can take them with you right away. All seven.” She smiled, a radiant, gap-toothed smile that sent a tremor through Luther’s hardened soul. “They’ll be all yours, Commander — to do just what you like with.”