Gladstone and Hunt waited.

“The Consul told them about his grandmother,” I said. “The woman called Siri who started the Maui-Covenant rebellion more than half a century ago. He told them about the death of his own family during the battle for Bressia, and he revealed his secret meetings with the Ousters.”

“Is that all?” asked Gladstone. Her brown eyes were very intense.

“No,” I said. “The Consul told them that he had been the one to trigger an Ouster device which hastened the opening of the Time Tombs.”

Hunt sat straight up, his leg dropping off the arm of the chair.

Gladstone visibly took a breath. “Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“How did the others respond to his revelation of… betrayal?” she asked.

I paused, tried to reconstruct the dream images in a more linear fashion than memory provided. “Some were outraged,” I said. “But none feels overwhelming loyalty to the Hegemony at this point. They decided to go on. I believe that each of the pilgrims feels that punishment will be dealt out by the Shrike, not by human agency.”

Hunt slammed his fist down on the arm of the chair. “If the Consul were here,” he snapped, “he’d fast discover otherwise.”

“Quiet, Leigh.” Gladstone paced back to her desk, touched some papers there. All of the comm lights were glowing impatiently. I found myself amazed that she could spend such so much time talking to me at such an hour. “Thank you, M. Severn,” she said. “I want you to be with us for the next few days. Someone will show you to your suite in the residential wing of Government House.”

I rose. “I’ll return to Esperance for my things,” I said.

“No need,” said Gladstone. “They were brought here before you had stepped off the terminex platform. Leigh will show you out.”

I nodded and followed the taller man toward the door.

“Oh, M. Severn…” called Meina Gladstone.

“Yes?”

The CEO smiled. “I did appreciate your candour earlier,” she said. “But from this point on, let us assume you are a court artist and a court artist alone, sans opinions, sans visibility, sans mouth. Understood?”

“Understood, M. Executive,” I said.

Gladstone nodded, already turning her attention to the blinking phone lights. “Very good. Please bring your sketchbook to the meeting in the War Room at 0800 hours.”

A security guard met us in the anteroom and started to lead me toward the maze of corridors and checkpoints. Hunt called out for him to stop and strode across the wide hall, his steps echoing on the building. He touched my arm. “Make no mistake,” he said. “We know… she knows… who you are and what you are and whom you represent.”

I met his gaze and calmly extracted my arm. “That’s good,” I said, “because at this point, I am quite sure that I do not know.”

Three

Six adults and an infant in a hostile landscape. Their fire seems a small thing against the darkness falling. Above them and beyond them, the hills of the valley rise like walls while closer in, wrapped in the darkness of the valley itself, the huge shapes of the Tombs seem to creep closer like saurian apparitions from some antediluvian age.

Brawne Lamia is tired and aching and very irritable. The sound of Sol Weintraub’s baby crying sets her teeth on edge. She knows the others are also tired; none has slept more than a few hours in the past three nights, and the day just ending has been filled with tension and unresolved terrors. She sets the last piece of wood on the fire.

“There’s no more where that came from,” snaps Martin Silenus. The fire lights the poet’s satyrish features from below.

“I know it,” says Brawne Lamia, too tired to put anger or any other energy into her voice. The firewood is from a cache carried in by the pilgrim groups of years gone by. Their three small tents are set in the area traditionally used by the pilgrims in their last night before confronting the Shrike. They are camped close to the Time Tomb called the Sphinx, and the black sweep of what may be a wing blots out some of the sky.

“We’ll use the lantern when this is gone,” says the Consul. The diplomat looks even more exhausted than the others. The flickering light casts a red tint over his sad features. He had dressed in diplomatic finery for the day, but now the cape and tricorne cap look as soiled and wilted as the Consul himself.

Colonel Kassad returns to the fire and slides the night visor up onto the top of his helmet. Kassad is wearing full combat gear, and the activated chameleon polymer shows only his face, floating two meters above the ground. “Nothing,” he says. “No movement. No heat traces. No sound besides the wind.” Kassad leans the FORCE multipurpose assault rifle against a rock and sits near the others, the fibers of his impact armor deactivating into a matte black not much more visible than before.

“Do you think the Shrike will come tonight?” asks Father Hoyt. The priest has his black cloak wrapped around him and seems as much a part of the night as Colonel Kassad. The thin man’s voice is strained.

Kassad leans forward and pokes the fire with his baton. “There is no way to tell. I’ll stand watch just in case.”

Suddenly all six look up as the star-filled sky spasms with color, orange and red blossoms unfolding silently, obliterating the starfield.

“There hasn’t been much of that in the past few hours,” says Sol Weintraub, rocking his infant. Rachel has quit crying and now tries to grasp her father’s short beard. Weintraub kisses her tiny hand.

“They’re testing Hegemony defenses again,” says Kassad. Sparks rise from the prodded fire, embers floating into the sky as if seeking to join the brighter flames there.

“Who won?” asks Lamia, referring to the silent space battle which had filled the sky with violence all the night before and much of that day.

“Who fucking cares?” says Martin Silenus. He searches through the pockets of his fur coat as if he might find a full bottle there. He does not. “Who fucking cares,” he mutters again.

“I care,” the Consul says tiredly. “If the Ousters break through, they may destroy Hyperion before we find the Shrike.”

Silenus laughs derisively. “Oh, that would be terrible, wouldn’t it? To die before we discover death? To be killed before we are scheduled to be killed? To go out swiftly and without pain, rather than to writhe forever on the Shrike’s thorns? Oh, terrible thought, that.”

“Shut up,” says Brawne Lamia, and her voice again is without emotion but this time is not devoid of threat. She looks at the Consul. “So where is the Shrike? Why didn’t we find it?”

The diplomat stares at the fire. “I don’t know. Why should I know?”

“Perhaps the Shrike is gone,” says Father Hoyt. “Perhaps by collapsing the anti-entropic fields you’ve freed it forever. Perhaps it’s carried its scourge elsewhere.”

The Consul shakes his head and says nothing.

“No,” says Sol Weintraub. The baby is sleeping against his shoulder. “It will be here. I feel it.”

Brawne Lamia nods. “So do I. It’s waiting.” She had retrieved several ration units from her pack, and now she pulls heating tabs and passes the units around.

“I know that anticlimax is the warp and woof of the world,” says Silenus. “But this is fucking ridiculous. All dressed up with nowhere to die.”

Brawne Lamia glowers but says nothing, and for a while they eat in silence. The flames fade from the sky, and the densely packed stars return, but embers continue to rise as if seeking escape.

Wrapped in the dream-hazy tumble of Brawne Lamia’s thoughts twice-removed, I try to reconstruct the events since last I dreamt their lives.

The pilgrims had descended into the valley before dawn, singing, their shadows thrown before them by the light from the battle a billion kilometers above. All day they had explored the Time Tombs. Each minute they expected to die. After some hours, as the sun rose and the high desert cold gave way to heat, their fear and exultation faded.