by Dan Simmons
“Yes,” said Aenea. “I’ve touched those last memories of his many times in the past ten years. But there are other memories of Father Glaucus, Raul. Warm and beautiful memories … filled with light. I hope you find them.”
“I just want the voices to stop,” I said truthfully. “This …” I gestured around at the treeship, the people we knew, Het Masteen at his bridge controls. “This is all too important.”
Aenea smiled. “It’s all too important. That’s the damned problem, isn’t it?” She turned her face back to the stars. “No, Raul, what you have to hear before you take a step is not the resonance of the language of the dead … or even of the living. It is … the essence of things.” I hesitated, not wanting to make a fool of myself, but went on:
“… So
A million times ocean must ebb and flow,
And he oppressed. Yet he shall not die,
These things accomplished. If he utterly …”
Aenea broke in:
“… Scans all depths of magic, and expounds
The meanings of all motions, shapes, and sounds;
If he explores all forms and substances
Straight homeward to their symbol-essences;
He shall not die …”
She smiled again. “I wonder how Uncle Martin is. Is he cold-sleeping the years away? Railing at his poor android servants? Still working on his unfinished Cantos? In all my dreams, I never manage to see Uncle Martin.”
“He’s dying,” I said.
Aenea blinked in shock.
“I dreamed of him … saw him … this morning,” I said. “He’s defrosted himself for the last time, he’s told his faithful servants. The machines are keeping him alive. The Poulsen treatments have finally worn off. He’s …” I stopped.
“Tell me,” said Aenea.
“He’s staying alive until he can see you again,” I said. “But he’s very frail.”
Aenea looked away. “It’s strange,” she said. “My mother fought with Uncle Martin during the entire pilgrimage. At times they could have killed one another. Before she died, he was her closest friend. Now …” She stopped, her voice thick.
“You’ll just have to stay alive, kiddo,” I said, my own voice strange. “Stay alive, stay healthy, and go back to see the old man. You owe him that.”
“Take my hand, Raul.”
The ship farcast through light.
Around Tau Ceti Center we were immediately attacked, not only by Pax ships but by rebel torchships fighting for the planetary secession started by the ambitious female Archbishop Achilla Silvaski. The containment field flared like a nova.
“Surely you can’t ’cast through this,” I said to Aenea when she offered the Tromo Trochi of Dhomu and me her hands.
“One does not ’cast through anything,” said my friend, and took our hands, and we were on the surface of the former capital of the late and unlamented Hegemony.
The Tromo Trochi had never been to TC2, indeed, had never been off the world of T’ien Shan, but his merchant interests were aroused by the tales of this onetime capitalist capital of the human universe.
“It is a pity that I have nothing to trade,” said the clever trader. “In six months on so fecund a world, I would have built a commercial empire.”
Aenea reached into the shoulder pack she had carried and lifted out a heavy bar of gold. “This should get you started,” she said. “But remember your true duties here.”
Holding the bar, the little man bowed. “I will never forget, One Who Teaches. I have not suffered to learn the language of the dead to no avail.”
“Just stay safe for the next few months,” said Aenea. “And then, I am confident, you will be able to afford transport to any world you choose.”
“I would come to wherever you are, M. Aenea,” said the trader with the only visible show of emotion I had ever seen from him. “And I would pay all of my wealth—past, future, and fantasized—to do so.”
I had to blink at this. It occurred to me for the first time that many of Aenea’s disciples might be—probably were—a little bit in love with her, as well as very much in awe of her. To hear it from this coin-obsessed merchant, though, was a shock.
Aenea touched his arm. “Be safe and stay well.”
The Yggdrasill was still under attack when we returned. It was under attack when Aenea ’cast us away from the Tau Ceti System.
The inner city-world of Lusus was much as I remembered it from my brief sojourn there: a series of Hive towers above the vertical canyons of gray metal. George Tsarong and Jigme Norbu bade us farewell there. The stocky, heavily muscled George—weeping as he hugged Aenea—might have passed for an average Lusian in dim light, but the skeletal Jigme would stand out in the Hive-bound crowds. But Lusus was used to offworlders and our two foremen would do well as long as they had money. But Lusus was one of the few Pax worlds to have returned to universal credit cards and Aenea did not have one of these in her backpack.
A few minutes after we stepped from the empty Dreg’s Hive corridors, however, seven figures in crimson cloaks approached. I stepped between Aenea and these ominous figures, but rather than attack, the seven men went to their knees on the greasy floor, bowed their heads, and chanted:
“BLESSED BE SHE
BLESSED BE THE SOURCE OF OUR SALVATION
BLESSED BE THE INSTRUMENT OF OUR
ATONEMENT
BLESSED BE THE FRUIT OF OUR
RECONCILIATION
BLESSED BE SHE.”
“The Shrike Cult,” I said stupidly. “I thought they were gone—wiped out during the Fall.”
“We prefer to be referred to as the Church of the Final Atonement,” said the first man, rising from his knees but still bowing in Aenea’s direction. “And no … we were not ‘wiped out’ as you put it … merely driven underground. Welcome, Daughter of Light. Welcome, Bride of the Avatar.”
Aenea shook her head with visible impatience. “I am bride of no one, Bishop Duruyen. These are the two men I have brought to entrust to your protection for the next ten months.”
The Bishop in red bowed his bald head. “Just as your prophecies said, Daughter of Light.”
“Not prophecies,” said Aenea. “Promises.” She turned and hugged George and Jigme a final time.
“Will we see you again, Architect?” said Jigme.
“I cannot promise that,” said Aenea. “But I do promise that if it is in my power, we will be in contact again.”
I followed her back to the empty hall in the dripping corridors of Dreg’s Hive, where our departure would not seem so miraculous as to add to the Shrike Cult’s already fertile canon.
On Tsintao-Hsishuang Panna, we said good-bye to the Dalai Lama and his brother, Labsang Samten. Labsang wept. The boy Lama did not.
“The local people’s Mandarin dialect is atrocious,” said the Dalai Lama.
“But they will understand you, Your Holiness,” said Aenea. “And they will listen.”
“But you are my teacher,” said the boy, his voice near anger. “How can I teach them without your help?”
“I will help,” said Aenea. “I will try to help. And then it is your job. And theirs.”
“But we may share communion with them?” asked Lab-sang.
“If they ask for it,” said Aenea. To the boy she said, “Would you give me your blessing, Your Holiness?”
The child smiled. “It is I who should be asking for a blessing, Teacher.”
“Please,” said Aenea, and again I could hear the weariness in her voice.
The Dalai Lama bowed and, with his eyes closed, said:
“This is from the ‘Prayer of Kuntu Sangpo,’ as revealed to me through the vision of my terton in a previous life—
“HO! The phenomenal world and all existence, samsara and nirvana,
All has one foundation, but there are two paths and two results—
Displays of both ignorance and Knowledge.
Through Kuntu Sangpo’s aspiration,
&nbs
p; In the Palace of the Primal Space of Emptiness
Let all beings attain perfect consummation and
Buddhahood.
“The universal foundation is unconditioned,
Spontaneously arising, a vast immanent expanse,
beyond
expression,
Where neither samsara nor nirvana exist.
Knowledge of this reality is Buddhahood,
While ignorant beings wander in samsara.
Let all sentient beings of the three realms
Attain Knowledge of the nature of the ineffable foundation.”
Aenea bowed toward the boy. “The Palace of the Primal Space of Emptiness,” she murmured. “How much more elegant than my clumsy description of the ‘Void Which Binds.’ Thank you, Your Holiness.”
The child bowed. “Thank you, Revered Teacher. May your death be more quick and less painful than we both expect.”
Aenea and I returned to the treeship. “What did he mean?” I demanded, both of my hands on her shoulders. “Death more quick and less painful’? What the hell does that mean? Are you planning to be crucified? Does this goddamned messiah impersonation have to go to the same bizarre end? Tell me, Aenea!” I realized that I was shaking her … shaking my dear friend, my beloved girl. I dropped my hands.
Aenea put her arms around me. “Just stay with me, Raul. Stay with me as long as you can.”
“I will,” I said, patting her back. “I swear to you I will.”
On Fuji we said good-bye to Kenshiro Endo and Haruyuki Otaki. On Deneb Drei it was a child whom I had never met—a ten-year-old girl named Katherine—who stayed behind, alone and seemingly unafraid. On Sol Draconi Septem, that world of frozen air and deadly wraiths where Father Glaucus and our Chitchatuk friends had been foully murdered, the sad and brooding scaffold rigger, Rimsi Kyipup, volunteered almost happily to be left behind. On Nevermore it was another man I had not had the privilege of meeting—a soft-spoken, elderly gentleman who seemed like Martin Silenus’s kindlier younger brother. On God’s Grove, where A. Bettik had lost part of his arm ten standard years earlier, the two Templar lieutenants of Het Masteen ’cast down with Aenea and me and did not return. On Hebron, empty now of its Jewish settlers but filled now with good Christian colonists sent there by the Pax, the Seneschai Aluit empaths, Lleeoonn and Ooeeaall ’cast down to say good-bye to us on an empty desert evening where the rocks still held the daytime’s glow.
On Parvati, the usually happy sisters Kuku Se and Kay Se wept and hugged the both of us good-bye. On Asquith, a family of two parents and their five golden-haired children stayed behind. Above the white cloud-swirl and blue ocean world of Mare Infinitus—a world whose mere name haunted me with memories of pain and friendship—Aenea asked Sergeant Gre-gorius if he would ’cast down with her to meet the rebels and support her cause.
“And leave the captain?” asked the giant, obviously shocked by the suggestion.
De Soya stepped forward. “There is no more captain, Sergeant. My dear friend. Only this priest without a Church. And I suspect that we would do more good now apart than together. Am I right; M. Aenea?”
My friend nodded. “I had hoped that Lhomo would be my representative on Mare Infinitus,” she said. “The smugglers and rebels and Lantern Mouth hunters on this world would respect a man of strength. But it will be difficult and dangerous … the rebellion still rages here and the Pax takes no prisoners.”
“ ’Tis not th’ danger I object to!” cried Gregorius. “I’m willin’ to die the true death a hundred times over for a good cause.”
“I know that, Sergeant,” said Aenea.
The giant looked at his former captain and then back to Aenea. “Lass, I know ye do not like to tell the future, even though we know you spy it now and then. But tell me this … is there a chance of reunion with my captain?”
“Yes,” said Aenea. “And with some you thought dead … such as Corporal Kee.”
“Then I’ll go. I’ll do your will. I may not be of the Corps Helvetica anymore, but the obedience they taught me runs deep.”
“It’s not obedience we ask now,” said Father de Soya. “It is something harder and deeper.”
Sergeant Gregorius thought a moment. “Aye,” he said at last and turned his back on everyone a moment. “Let’s go, lass,” he said, holding out his hand for Aenea’s touch.
We left him on an abandoned platform somewhere in the South Littoral, but Aenea told him that submersibles would put in there within a day.
Above Madrededios, Father de Soya stepped forward, but Aenea held up her hand to stop him.
“Surely this is my world,” said the priest. “I was born here. My diocese was here. I imagine that I will die here.”
“Perhaps,” said Aenea, “but I need you for a more difficult place and a more dangerous job, Federico.”
“Where is that?” said the sad-eyed priest.
“Pacem,” said Aenea. “Our last stop.”
I stepped closer. “Wait, kiddo,” I said. “I’m going with you to Pacem if you insist on going there. You said that I could stay with you.” My voice sounded querulous and desperate even to me.
“Yes,” said Aenea, touching my wrist with her cool fingers. “But I would like Father de Soya to come with us when it is time.”
The Jesuit looked confused and a bit disappointed, but he bowed his head. Evidently obedience ran even deeper in the Society of Jesus than it did in the Corps Helvetica.
In the end, the T’ien Shan bamboo worker Voytek Majer and his new fiancée, the brickmaker Viki Groselj, volunteered to stay on MadredeDios.
On Freeholm, we said good-bye to Janusz Kurtyka. On Kas-trop-Rauxel, recently reterraformed and settled by the Pax, it was the soldier Jigme Paring who volunteered to find the rebel population. Above Parsimony, while Pax warships turned the containment field into a torrent of noise and light, a woman named Helen Dean O’Brian stepped forward and took Aenea’s hand. On Esperance, Aenea and I bid farewell to the former mayor of Jo-kung, Charles Chi-kyap Kempo. On Grass, standing shoulder high in the yellow world prairie, we waved goodbye to Isher Perpet, one of the bolder rebels once rescued from a Pax prison galley and gathered in by Father de Soya. On Qom-Riyadh, where the mosques were quickly being bulldozed or converted to cathedrals by the new Pax settlers, we ’cast down in the dead of night and whispered our farewells to a former refugee from that world named Merwin Muhammed Ali and to our former interpreter on T’ien Shan, the clever Perri Samdup.
Above Renaissance Minor, with a horde of in-system warships accelerating toward us with murderous intent, it was the silent ex-prisoner, Hoagan Liebler who stepped forward. “I was a spy,” said the pale man. He was speaking to Aenea but looking directly at Father de Soya. “I sold my allegiance for money, so that I could return to this world to renew my family’s lost lands and wealth. I betrayed my captain and my soul.”
“My son,” said Father de Soya, “you have long since been forgiven those sins, if sins they were … by both your captain and, more importantly, by God. No harm was done.”
Liebler nodded slowly. “The voices I have been listening to since I drank the wine with M. Aenea …”He trailed off. “I know many people on this world,” he said, his voice stronger. “I wish to return home to start this new life.”
“Yes,” said Aenea and offered her hand.
On Vitus-Gray-Balianus B, Aenea, the Dorje Phamo, and I ’cast down to a desert wasteland, far from the river with its farm fields and brightly painted cottages lining the way where the kind people of the Amoiete Spectrum Helix had nursed me to health and helped me escape the Pax. Here there was only a tumble of boulders and dried fissures, mazes of tunnel entrances in the rock, and dust storms blowing in from the bloody sunset on the black-cloud horizon. It reminded me of Mars with warmer, thicker air and more of a stench of death and cordite to it.
The shrouded figures surrounded us almost immediately, flechette guns and hellwhips at the ready. I tried again to step between Aenea and the dang
er, but the figures in the blowing red wind surrounded us and raised their weapons.
“Wait!” cried a voice familiar to me, and one of the shrouded soldiers slid down a red dune to stand in front of us. “Wait!” she called again to those eager to shoot, and this time she unwrapped the bands of her cowl.
“Dem Loa!” I cried and stepped forward to hug the short woman in her bulky battle garb. I saw tears leaving muddy streaks on her cheeks.
“You have brought back your special one,” said the woman who had saved me. “Just as you promised.”
I introduced her to Aenea and then to the Dorje Phamo, feeling silly and happy at the same moment. Dem Loa and Aenea regarded one another for a moment, and then hugged.
I looked around at the other figures who still hung back in the red twilight. “Where is Dem Ria?” I asked. “Alem Mikail Dem Alem? And your children—Bin and Ces Ambre?”
“Dead,” said Dem Loa. “All dead, except Ces Ambre, who is missing after the last attack from the Bombasino Pax.”
I stood speechless, stunned.
“Bin Ria Dem Loa Alem died of his illness,” continued Dem Loa, “but the rest died in our war with the Pax.”
“War with the Pax,” I repeated. “I hope to God that I did not start it …”
Dem Loa raised her hand. “No, Raul Endymion. You did not start it. Those of us in the Amoiete Spectrum Helix who prized our own ways refused the cross … that is what started it. The rebellion had already begun when you were with us. After you left, we thought we had it won. The cowardly troops at Pax Base Bombasino sued for peace, ignored the orders from their commanders in space, and made treaties with us. More Pax ships arrived. They bombed their own base … then came after our villages. It has been war since then. When they land and try to occupy the land, we kill many of them. They send more.”
“Dem Loa,” I said, “I am so, so sorry.”
She set her hand on my chest and nodded. I saw the smile that I remembered from our hours together. She looked at Aenea again. “You are the one he spoke of in his delirium and his pain. You are the one whom he loved. Do you love him as well, child?”