gistfile1.txt

He blinked, realizing that something was wrong with the image.
Then it came to him: besides the thickness of the light and his
enhanced perception of energy fields, nothing was moving. The 
Ouster troops, even those set in attitudes of motion, were as
stiff as the toy soldiers he had played with as a boy in the 
Tharsis slums. The EM tanks were dug into their hull-down 
positions, but Kassad noticed that now even their acquisition
radars—visible to him as concentric purple arcs—were motionless.
He glanced skyward and saw some sort of large bird hanging in 
the sky, as unmoving as an insect frozen in amber. He passed
a cloud of windblown dust hanging suspended, extended one 
chrome hand, and flicked spirals of particles to the ground.

Ahead of them, the Shrike strode casually through the red maze
of sensor-mines, stepped over the blue lines of tripbeams, 
ducked under the violet pulses of the autofire scanners, passed
through the yellow containment field and the green wall of the
sonic defense perimeter, and walked into the assault boat’s shadow.
Moneta and Kassad followed.

—How is this possible? Kassad realized that he had posed the 
question through a medium that was something less than telepathy
but something far more sophisticated than implant conduction.

—He controls time.

—The Pain Lord?

—Of course.

Hyperion
THE SOLDIER’S TALE:
THE WAR LOVERS