Endymion

The time is around 250 years after the fall of Hegemony. The church of Pax has perfected the cruciform resurrection process - immortality at hand, of course only as long as you are of the true faith. With Hegemony gone, Pax slowly takes its place, as more and more humans accept the cross (and the cruciform with it).

Although not many know it, Aenea, the girl that disappeared into the Sphinx centuries ago, is about to return. One party that does await her is Pax - warned by visions of its pope, the church considers the girl an abomination that must be detained, and a huge contingent of troops is deployed around the Sphinx to that very end.

Pax is not the only one to expect the girl though - Martin Silenius, the famous poet who wrote Cantos, knows of her arrival and plans to rescue the girl from the trap laid by Pax. Although not quite as planned, the rescue attempt succeeds, and the girl leaves the Sphinx and Hyperion with half of the Pax soldiers slaughtered and the other half tailing her in pursuit.

The flight takes Aenea and her companions (M. Endymion, a young hunter from Hyperion that happened to assist her in her flight, and A. Bettik, an android that lived with Martin Silenius) through some of the worlds that used to be linked by the river Tethys. To those that want to see, the strange route shows something is wrong with the world governed by Pax - and it is not only for Aenea and her companions, some of their pursuers are beginning to wonder as well ...