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worth the time and effort to oust me. Everyone was comfortable with me being in charge—why, even the debates on the warships usually had the undertone of ‘we really don’t need them, but with modern automation the maintenance is basically zero and it’d be too much of a pain to decomission them.”
    “But suddenly there’s a whole universe out there of other species, other threats to the entire human race, and the project I had okayed and promoted seems to have potentially begun a war we’re not ready to fight.” He raised a hand. “Please, don’t tell me that’s not fair, I know perfectly well it’s neither a fair nor accurate assessment, but it is the undertone of what Oscar and his people have been saying. We have fear and uncertainty galore now, and people who like to be at the forefront of this kind of thing now have something real to drive them.” He frowned. “And I cannot help but think that anyone who wants power for those reasons really is not the person I want to have it.”
    “Amen to that,” said an unmistakable deep voice from the entrance.
    “Marc!” Simon had no trouble admitting that knowing DuQuesne was back took a tremendous load off his shoulders. “Mentor, why didn’t you—”
    “Because my first loyalties are to Ariane Austin, and she had directed me to take no actions to disturb anyone during their approach,” Mentor answered.
    “Sorry,” Ariane said, becoming visible as DuQuesne left the doorway, her smile lighting the room… or perhaps just my vision of the room, whenever she enters. “Mentor told us you were talking with Commander Maginot so I said not to interrupt.”
    “Quite all right,” Saul said. “Glad that you could make it. I was…”
    He trailed off, jaw literally going slack and eyes staring in utter shock.
    Simon looked back to the entryway to see one of the most outlandish figures he had ever beheld—and given what he’d seen in the Arena, that, as DuQuesne might have said, was really going some. The newcomer wasn’t tall—in fact, if you discounted the spiky-tumbling hair that almost seemed like a ruff or mane atop his head, he was only about as tall as the diminuitive Gabrielle—but he was wearing something that looked as though it came from the overactive imagination of the most sleep-deprived simgame designer, gripping a red-enameled, gold-capped staff in one hand, with a golden band around his head…and his features were definitely not quite human.
    Golden headband? A staff? A tail? Masaka. It can’t be…
    “Sun Wu Kung,” Saul breathed slowly. “By God, DuQuesne, I never thought…”
    “Neither did I, Saul. But thank all the heavens we were wrong.”
    Sun Wu Kung— The Monkey King? —bared his fangs in a cheery grin. “I remember you! You argued with the other men and let DuQuesne take me away! But you were much younger then.”
    Saul nodded, still with a stunned air about him. “You, on the other hand, seem not to have aged a day. Not surprising, I suppose. Welcome to the real world, Sun Wu Kung.”
    “Thanks!” Wu Kung bounced past Saul, catching one of the consoles with his tail to stop in front of Simon. “And you’re Doctor Sandrisson—they told me about you, said you had white hair and looked like a Hyperion genius!”
    Simon didn’t know exactly what to make of that , but the Monkey King’s smile was infectious. “Pleased to meet you, Sun Wu Kung.”
    “Call me Wu, everyone does—Hey, you’re Gabrielle, the healer!”
    A short attention span seems to be one of his characteristics. As the newly-wakened Hyperion transferred his attention to Gabrielle and the AISage manifestations, Simon heard more serious conversation. Saul was talking to DuQuesne: “…of the others?”
    Marc shrugged. “It wasn’t all bad…but not all good, either. She got Jim—leastwise it looks like it was a struggle and there weren’t too many people that could even have found him, let alone beat him. Velocity’s thinking about it; my guess