The 97th Step

by Steve Perry

  The ceremony for full enshroudment would be held in the morning. He would be surrounded by his friends and teachers, the manto would be draped over his shoulders by the Elder Sister—his lover Moon—and he would be a Full Brother, with all the rights and privileges attached thereto. He had been at the compound for nearly four years. During that time, he had seldom left the grounds, and he had never left the small island of Manus itself, save for short boat trips around the perimeter. He had no desire to ever leave, for this was his home in a way no other place had ever been. Everything should be perfect, and yet-Something was missing.

  There was a lack, some feeling or energy or something he could not pin down. Like a mosquito buzzing just outside his reach, it drew his attention, but when he turned to look directly at it, this thing, whatever it was, was no longer there.

  What was it? He had Moon, he had status, he had a sense of accomplishment unlike anything he had ever done. His knowledge had increased tremendously, his physical powers were at their peak, he had learned to calm his mind and spirit through quiet meditations. Or so he had thought.

  He should be at peace, and yet, he was not. Some unrest bubbled in the caldron of his soul, and he could not see or touch or hear what it was. He only knew that it was there.

  He would have asked Moon, but she had withdrawn from him. Not physically, and she was as responsive as ever to his questions, but there was a wall there that had not existed before. He was afraid to thicken the barrier by admitting to a flaw, by being less than perfect. If she knew, it might make things worse, and yet, there was no one else he could talk to about it.

  Tomorrow should be the greatest day of his life. Full Shroud, entry into the siblinghood, and the respect and admiration of all who aspired to that same state. But that invisible mosquito buzzed and would not be still, and the faint hum of its wings threatened to become the roar of a giant waterfall in his mind, engulfing and drowning him.

  There was something he was missing. He was incomplete, somehow, a piece of truth about him lay hidden. It was within him, he felt, beneath the murk of who he thought he was, and he had to find it or he would never be whole. The thought of it frightened him as much as anything ever had. What if, as he suspected, he figured out how to get to the center of who he was, and—his core was rotten? How would he live with that?

  And what would Moon do if she knew?

  Twenty-Seven

  HE STOOD ON the raised platform in front of the other students and instructors as Moon draped the manto over his shoulders.

  "Not an end, but a beginning," Moon said. It was the ritual statement that always accompanied the cloak.

  Now Pen understood at least a part of its implication. He, for one, did not have all of the answers.

  The students cheered as Pen wrapped the cloak around himself and fastened the closures. For the first time, he stood completely dressed in the costume of his order, Full Shroud at last. There was a power in it, despite his newly discovered worry about his spiritual lack. It was what he had worked for all this time. He had come much further than ever he had expected. From a farm boy to thief, to vagrant to priest. How odd life was.

  Yes, came his nagging inner voice, and now what?

  "So, now what?" Spiral asked. "Off to save the galaxy?" Pen sat across the cafeteria table from his friend, who was maybe six or eight months away from earning his own manto. A few other students and faculty sat at nearby tables or moved out after finishing their lunches. The smell of roast duck, a special meal prepared in honor of Pen's promotion, wafted through the room.

  "I expect I'll stay and teach slow learners such as yourself how to walk the pattern without falling," Pen said.

  "Hey, you haven't seen me fall in two months, pal."

  "Probably only because I haven't been watching you."

  "Funny." Spiral paused to chew thoughtfully at a mouthful of duck in cherry sauce. Despite his joking, Spiral seemed to have an inner peace that radiated outward from him. Pen hadn't noticed it before.

  "You seem rather calm these days," Pen said.

  Spiral swallowed his food and nodded. "Mmm. I've been having some real clear meditation. Sort of dancing on the edge of a real powerful feeling. Like I'm about to cross over into the promised land. But you know all about that."

  Pen nodded mechanically. No. He didn't know. His own meditation had never produced those blissful states some of the siblings achieved. You could see them, glowing like spiritual lamps plugged into the cosmic generator. It was called many things: Relampago, the lightning; Zen-mind; siddhi-spirit; sa-madhi; the Buddha-Christ-Baba soul; cosmic consciousness. They were, according to the teachings, all the same. His physiology teacher had been more pragmatic, talking about hyper-oxygenated brains and self-hypnosis, but no one who was around a man or woman burning with the cosmic fire could deny their power: they had been touched by the Finger of God.

  A delusion, perhaps, but none the less potent for that. And Spiral assumed that because Pen was higher in rank he was also higher in spiritual achievement. It was not so. Part of his problem. Pen knew. He should be higher, he felt, but he had somehow failed.

  One of the newer students, dressed only in first layer under-shroud, approached their table.

  "Pen?" the young woman asked tentatively. Pen smiled under his hood—she had not been here long enough to pierce the shrouds and recognize the people under them. He remembered when he had been unable to do so. It seemed like such a long time ago.

  "Yes?"

  "Moon would see you in her office, at your convenience."

  "Thank you."

  The girl scurried off. Pen stood. "I'd better go see what the old lady wants."

  "Who told you we call her that?"

  "Nobody, to my face. But I'm not altogether deaf."

  As Pen started away, Spiral said, "She probably wants to take back your cloak, Pen. It was all a joke, letting you have it."

  It was supposed to be funny, but Pen did not feel like laughing. He had thought the same thing, and the fear it brought up was altogether too real.

  Moon stood by the window of her office, staring out through the thincris at something Pen could not see.

  She did not turn when, he entered.

  "You wanted to see me?"

  Still facing away from him, she said, "Yes." Then she turned, slowly, and from her body language, he knew whatever it was she wanted was bad.

  "You have learned all we can teach you here," she said. Was that a quaver in her voice? No, it couldn't be. Not Moon. "What you need can't be gotten cooped up in our private world. I—I wish that it could."

  Pen stood stock still, feeling rooted to the floor. He knew what was coming. His worst fear, that which he dreaded more than failure, more than death itself.

  Moon took a deep breath. It was ragged. Almost a sob.

  "You have to leave," she said.

  Pen's voice, when he spoke, was as calm as deep vacuum. "I see."

  Moon shook her head. "No, you don't. That's my fault. I bound you to me, I wanted what you offered, and I allowed myself to lose my own center. I knew better."

  "You regret what we have had together?"

  "No. Never that. Only my selfishness. I measured what you needed against what I wanted, and I filled my own cup. I warmed myself by your fire."

  "So. You made some kind of mistake—not that I understand what the hell it was—and I have to leave because of it?" He felt the anger fill him with heat.

  Moon stood silent for a moment, then closed her eyes. "Yes. Now we both pay the price."

  "I am being kicked out of my home! What are you losing.

  Moon?" The rage flowed now, unchecked, a torrent. " What the fuck are you losing?!"

  Her answer, when it finally came, was soft, a single word: "You."

  You. It killed his anger, flash-froze the heat like a bath of liquid air.

  You. The power of a single word, backed by truth of Moon's emotion and he could not deny the love he felt from her, could not protest, for all
her soul seemed wrapped in that word.

  "Oh, God, Moon!"

  She came to him and they embraced, both crying, like children confronted with the death of loved parents. Tears and sobs and mindless groping for comfort. Somewhere in it, Pen felt a moment of empathy. He did not understand why she was sending him away, but he understood that she truly loved him. That making him leave was done from that love, and that it was the hardest thing Moon had ever faced.

  He did not understand, but because he could feel her pain, he accepted it.

  Not that he had any choice.

  Twenty-Eight

  THERE WASN'T MUCH to do to get ready. There was no deadline, no admonition to be gone before the sun set, but the implication was clear enough: the sooner the better.

  What Pen owned could be put into a small bag. A second shroud, that was the extent of his wardrobe.

  He had long since recycled his "civilian" clothing. He hadn't gathered much in the way of things: he had a reader and a dozen or so marble-sized recording spheres he could call his own; a piece of sculpture Moon had given him, a nude female dancer cast in bronze, not much larger than his hand; pocket tools, which he carried in his utility pouch. His old credit cube, much depleted, but with enough stads still banked to live on for a year or two, provided he was frugal. Small odds and ends.

  The things he carried would not weigh him down. The memories were what lay heavily upon him.

  Especially when he began to say his good-byes.

  He was dry-eyed and numb through most of it. Smiling under his hood, nodding at his teachers. In the kitchen and wine cellar and storeroom and powerhouse, he smiled and nodded, shook hands, embraced some, slapped others on the back. He exercised the ritual of leaving, performed the dance robotically, and he tried to sit atman upon his own shoulder to watch it. Tried, and failed. It was hard.

  Spiral was harder. They danced around it.

  "You know, I'm going to miss you. Pen."

  "Yeah. Me, too, you."

  "Now I know there was a better way, a more peaceful method, but I'll never forget taking out that Confed quad."

  "We had some good times, all right."

  "You give 'em hell out there, Pen. If anybody can, it's you. I'm sure it's all for the best."

  "Sure, Spiral. You take care of yourself."

  In the bonsai garden, among the tiny trees he'd never see reach maturity, he found Agate. They walked among the small and ancient plants. Pen felt a catch in his throat as he realized he might never see this garden again.

  Next to a small recycled stream, Agate perched upon one of the three rocks—granite, pumice and quartz—and asked if she might recite a poem for him.

  "Yes, of course," he said.

  "I didn't write this one," she said. "But I offered to say it."

  Pen took a deep breath and let it escape. He didn't ask who wrote the poem before he heard it.

  Afterward, he didn't need to ask.

  There is no comfort in change—but also no learning in the steady drone of peace There will be no greater sorrow than watching you go—except for watching you grow old and tired here—clarity awaits elsewhere.

  It was short, pithy, bittersweet, and he fought to keep the tears from welling as he thanked her. Part of it he understood, part of it still not. But it touched him, nonetheless.

  Surprising how little time it actually took to make the rounds. A few hours to close out four years. They were both sad and happy for him, most of them, and he appreciated that, though none of them understood how he felt. No mixture of emotions for him, no joy of leaving. He would have done anything to be able to stay.

  Moon was not inside the compound. He didn't need anybody to tell him that, he felt her distance, just as he knew where to go to find her.

  He left by the Northwest Gate, and walked north toward the ocean. The sound of the breaking waves droned in the salty, fishy air as he climbed a small hill that overlooked a steep drop to the blue-gray water. There he found Moon, staring out to sea, the wind trying vainly to unravel her wrappings with its chilly and insistent fingers.

  He moved to stand next to her. For a long time, neither spoke. Only the wind sang, and its voice was no more than a moan.

  After several eons. Moon pointed at the spot on the water a few hundred meters offshore. "That's a Langmuir slick," she said. "Do you know about them?"

  "No."

  "It's a spot where dust and debris, seaweed and such, collect. An odd circulation habit of surface water under a steady wind. Doesn't seem to matter how hard the wind blows; in anything short of a hurricane, you get that kind of dead spot." Her voice was deliberate, as if she were lecturing to a class.

  Pen didn't say anything.

  "You wouldn't think that such things would exist. There's a place in one of the Earth's oceans hundreds of kilometers in area where it does that. Called the Sargasso Sea. Old-time sailors used to fear being trapped in the seaweed that collected there."

  "Moon—"

  Her voice changed. Pain entered it. "That's what this place has become for you. Pen. A Langmuir slick."

  She turned to face him. "If you stayed here, you'd only stagnate, spinning in the eddy of our order, going nowhere, learning nothing. You have to go."

  "No. Don't say anything. I want you to stay. More than almost anything I don't want you to leave. I would have you be here, with me. But if I keep you, you will never be as much as you should be. Some day, you'd blink away the scales and see what I had done to you, and you would hate me for it."

  "I'd never hate you," he said.

  "You would. And I couldn't bear it. So, what I'm doing isn't particularly noble or altruistic. You're missing a part of yourself, Pen, and I want you whole, more than I want you to stay. They don't teach us about love here. Maybe it can't be taught. I don't know. If I could love you a little less, I could keep you. But I can't, Pen. I have enough of my center, and I know the truth of it."

  He felt very small in that moment. The universe was too daunting, too hard, too overwhelming to bear.

  He could hear the love in her voice, and yet, she was sending him away. There was something wrong with him. He had failed her. He had failed himself, and there was nothing he could do to fix it. Never had he felt so helpless, not as a boy under his father's lash, not when Stoll and Shar had died. In the depths of his drunken odyssey, he had not been so alone as he was right now. He was a man who had found Paradise—twice!—and had been thrown out both times. Once in anger and death, and now again, with love. Why? What god had he offended so, to be punished this way?

  What was he going to do?

  For once, his sarcastic inner voice remained quiet, even that part of him crushed and silenced under this new weight. He had to find the truth, whatever it was that Moon wanted him to find, no matter how much work nor how long it took, but—how was he going to do it?

  How?

  Part Three

  The Ninety-Seventh Step

  The truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.

  —ANONYMOUS

  Twenty-Nine

  MOON HAD ARRANGED for him to receive a new credit cube. It identified him as "Pen," and the number of stads so credited was easily twice that in his old account. The name he'd used for the old cube was an alias and unlikely to be in anybody's look-far comp, but according to the new cube, he was a fully accredited member of the Siblings of the Shroud, with all of the rights and privileges attendant thereto.

  As far as the Confed was concerned, he was a new man. The brainwave pattern imprinted on the read-only chip imbedded in the cube was almost legitimate, slightly different than that recorded for the twelve-year-old Mwili Kalumu—enough to keep a Confed computer from matching the two on first pass, but close enough so that an encephaloscan would probably be forgiving. Tolerances were pretty slim, but there was a range the machines were programmed to allow.

  A new man—but one with the same old dreads.

  He busied himself with mundane-tasks as long as he could, but eventua
lly it was time. All that he owned was packed in a bag hung over his shoulder. One of the palliates had been detailed to drive him to the port, a boy who seemed still in his teens. He made Pen feel old.

  "Thanks just the same," Pen said. "I'll walk. Might as well go out the same way I came in."

  The palliate seemed altogether too respectful, as if Pen were some kind of awe-inspiring figure, and that raised a sad smile under the shroud. If only you knew, boy.

  Moon was gone. He had not seen her since they had stood together by the cliff, watching the sea. He reached for some feel of her, but wherever she was was beyond his range to sense. Just as well; a tearful parting scene might undo him completely. Better to remember the Moon of before.

  So, with the day's first thunderheads building over him, Pen walked away from the place he had called home for the past four years. As time went, four years wasn't all that long, even in a man's life. He was, by biological reckoning, still young. He had skills and knowledge he hadn't had before, and money enough to keep him for a time. And once again, none of it deadened the echoes inside of him, that empty, hollow feeling.

  Down the road he walked, wrapped in an emotional flux as tangible as his clothing. He managed only a few hundred meters before he had to stop and look back.

  Gathered inside the gate stood maybe fifteen shrouded forms, watching him.

  Pen's indrawn breath was nearly a sob. His teachers and friends had turned out to watch him leave. The sense of what he was losing almost had him then, washing over him like a breaker. He managed to turn away without waving, but he felt a sense of bittersweetness as he began walking again, something he hadn't thought of before.

  Maybe they were going to miss him a little, too.