He knew, then.
Titan fever!
What else could it be, here on Hyperion, but that strange pyrexia that mutated Man's gametes?
So there was no hope for him, no answer....
He never knew for sure what happened after that—how much was reality, how much fever-madness.
For delirium came, and in that state he wandered. The hills rolled down in lowering barriers of menace, and flowers talked to him, and he walked beside strange streams.
And then, sometimes, it seemed that Eileen stood beside him ... that he could hear her rippling laughter echo, and taste her lips, and smell the fragrance of her hair.
But Eileen was still a prisoner of the Helgae, sealed in a sphere somewhere within their weird, domed cities.
That meant he had to find her.
So he wandered on, babbling of mekronal and chandak ... precious chandak, the only remedy that could save him from his fate.