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the Shrikething is real, it is not human. I am partial to human beings." 'Yes,' said Hoyt, ransacking his mental arsenal for potent arguments, 'but the Bikura are such a small mystery. At the most you're going to find a few dozen indigenies living in a region so cloudy and smoky and… unimportant that even the colony's own mapsats haven't noticed them. Why choose them when there are big mysteries to study on Hyperion.. · like the labyrinths!' Hoyt had brightened. 'Did you know that Hyperion is one of the nine labyrinthine worlds, Father?" 'Of course,' said Dur. A rough hemisphere of smoke expanded from him until air currents broke it into tendrils and tributaries.

'But the labyrinths have their researchers and admirers throughout the Web, Lenar, and the tunnels have been there – on all nine worlds -for how long? Half a million standard years? Closer to three quarters of a million, I believe. Their secret will last. But how long will the Bikura culture last before they're absorbed into modern colonial society or, more likely, are simply wiped out by circumstances?"

Hoyt shrugged. 'Perhaps they're already gone. It's been a long time since Spedling's encounter with them and there haven't been any other confirmed reports. If they are extinct as a group, then all of your time-debt and labor and pain of getting there will be for nothing." 'Precisely,' was all that Father Paul Dur had said and puffed calmly on his pipe.

It was in their last hour together, during the dropship ride down, that Father Hoyt had gained the slightest glimpse into his companion's thoughts. The limb of Hyperion had been glowing white and green and lapis above them for hours when suddenly the old dropship had cut into the upper layers of atmosphere, flame had briefly filled the window, and then they were flying silently some sixty kilometers above dark cloud masses and starlit seas with the hurtling terminator of Hyperion's sunrise rushing toward them like a spectral tidal wave of light.

'Marvelous,' Paul Dur had whispered, more to himself than to his young companion.

'Marvelous. It is at times like this that I have the sense… the slightest sense ·.. of what a sacrifice it must have been for the Son of God to condescend to become the Son of Man."

Hoyt had wanted to talk then, but Father Dur had continued to stare out the window, lost in thought. Ten minutes later they had landed at Keats Interstellar, Father Dur was soon swept into the whirlpool of customs and luggage rituals, and twenty minutes after that a thoroughly disappointed Lenar Hoyt was rising toward space and the Nadia Oleg once again.

'Five weeks later of my time, I returned to Pacem,' said Father Hoyt. 'I had mislaid eight years but for some reason my sense of loss randeeper than that simple fact.

Immediately upon my return, the bishop informed me that there had been no word from Paul Dur during the four years of his stay on Hyperion. The New Vatican had spent a fortune on fatline inquiries, but neither the colonial authorities nor the consulate in Keats had been able to locate the missing priest."

Hoyt paused to sip from his water glass and the Consul said, 'I remember the search. I never met Dur6, of course, but we did our best to trace him. Theo, my aide, spent a lot of energy over the years trying to solve the case of the missing cleric. Other than a few contra-dietory reports of sightings in Port Romance, there was no trace of him. And those sightings went back to the weeks right after his arrival, years before. There were hundreds of plantations out there with no radios or cornlines, primarily because they were harvesting bootleg drugs as well as fiberplastic. I guess we never talked to the people at the right plantation. At least I know Father Dur's file was still open when I left."

Father Hoyt nodded. 'I landed in Keats a month after your replacement had taken over at the consulate. The bishop had been astonished when I volunteered to return. His Holiness himself