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rushed to reach the coast, losing four indigenie bearers, all of his equipment and records, and his left arm to the “quiet” forest in the three months it took him to escape.
    “My God,” Father Hoyt had said as he lay in his hammock on the
Nadia Oleg
, “why the Bikura?”
    “Why not?” had been Father Duré’s mild reply. “Very little is known about them.”
    “Very little is known about
most
of Hyperion,” said the younger priest, becoming somewhat agitated. “What about the Time Tombsand the legendary Shrike north of the Bridle Range on Equus?” he said. “They’re
famous
!”
    “Precisely,” said Father Duré. “Lenar, how many learned papers have been written on the Tombs and the Shrike creature? Hundreds? Thousands?” The aging priest had tamped in tobacco and now lighted his pipe: no small feat in zero-g, Hoyt observed. “Besides,” said Paul Duré, “even if the Shrike-thing 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 Duré. 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 Duré 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 dropshiphad 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 Duré 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 Duré had continued to stare out the window, lost in thought. Ten minutes later they had landed at Keats Interstellar, Father Duré 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 ran deeper than that simple fact. Immediately upon my return, the bishop informed me that there had been no word from Paul Duré during the four years of his stay on Hyperion. The New Vatican had spent a fortune on fatline inquiries, but neither the