Rise of Endymion

by Dan Simmons

  We hear the sound of shots from the front of the other yurts. Mother and my oldest sister want to run, but Father orders them to stay. There are screams. I watch the sky, waiting for the infidel Pax ships to reappear. When I look down again, the mullah’s enforcers are coming around the side of our yurt, setting new magazines in their rifles. Their faces are grim.

  Father has us all hold hands. “God is great,” he says and we respond, “God is great.” Even I know that “Islam” means submission to the merciful will of Allah.

  At the last second, I see the embers in the sky—the Pax ships floating east to west across the zenith so high above.

  “God is great!” cries Father.

  I hear the shots.

  “Aenea, I don’t know what these things mean.”

  “Raul, they do not mean, they are.”

  “They are real?”

  “As real as any memories can be, my love.”

  “But how? I can hear the voices … so many voices … as soon as I … touch one with my mind … these are stronger than my own memories, clearer.”

  “They are memories, nonetheless, my love.”

  “Of the dead …”

  “These are, yes.”

  “Learning their language …”

  “In many ways we must learn their language, Raul. Their actual tongues … English, Yiddish, Polish, Parsi, Tamal, Greek, Mandarin … but also their hearts. The soul of their memory.”

  “Are these ghosts speaking, Aenea?”

  “There are no ghosts, my love. Death is final. The soul is that ineffable combination of memory and personality which we carry through life … when life departs, the soul also dies. Except for what we leave in the memory of those who loved us.”

  “And these memories …”

  “Resonate in the Void Which Binds.”

  “How? All those billions of lives …”

  “And thousands of races and billions of years, my love. Some of your mother’s memories are there … and my mother’s … but so are the life impressions of beings terribly far removed from us in space and time.”

  “Can I touch those as well, Aenea?”

  “Perhaps. With time and practice. It took me years to understand them. Even the sense impressions of life-forms so differently evolved are difficult to comprehend, much less their thoughts, memories, and emotions.”

  “But you have done it?”

  “I have tried.”

  “Alien life-forms like the Seneschai Aluit or the Akerataeli?”

  “Much more alien than that, Raul The Seneschai lived hidden on Hebron near the human settlers for generations. And they are empaths—emotions were their primary language. The Akerataeli are quite different from us, but not so different from the Core entities whom my father visited.”

  “My head hurts, kiddo. Can you help me stop these voices and images?”

  “I can help you quiet them, my love. They will never really stop as long as we live. This is the blessing and burden of the communion with my blood. But before I show you how to quiet them, listen a few more minutes. It is almost leafturn and sunrise.”

  My name was Lenar Hoyt, priest, but now I am Pope Urban XVI, and I am celebrating the Mass of Resurrection for John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa in St. Peter’s Basilica with more than five hundred of the Vatican’s most important faithful in attendance.

  Standing at the altar, my hands outstretched, I read from the Prayer of the Faithful—

  “Let us confidently call upon God our Almighty Father Who raised Christ His Son from the dead

  for the salvation of all.”

  Cardinal Lourdusamy, who serves as my deacon for this Mass, intones—

  “That He may return into the perpetual company of the Faithful,

  this deceased Cardinal, John Domenico Mustafa,

  who once received the seed of eternal life through

  Baptism,

  we pray to the Lord.

  “That he, who exercised the episcopal office in the Church

  and in the Holy Office while alive,

  may once again serve God in his renewed life,

  we pray to the Lord.

  “That He may give to the souls of our brothers,

  sisters, relatives,

  and benefactors

  the reward of their labor,

  we pray to the Lord.

  “That He may welcome into the light of His countenance

  all who sleep in the hope of the resurrection,

  and grant them that resurrection,

  that they may better serve Him,

  we pray to the Lord.

  “That He may assist and graciously console

  our brothers and sisters who are suffering affliction

  from the assaults of the godless and the

  derision of the fallen away,

  we pray to the Lord.

  “That He may one day call into His glorious kingdom,

  all who are assembled here in faith and devotion,

  and award unto us that same blessing

  of temporal resurrection in Christ’s name,

  we pray to the Lord.”

  Now, as the choir sings the Offertory Antiphon and the congregation kneels in echoing silence in anticipation of the Holy Eucharist, I turn back from the altar and say—

  “Receive, Lord, these gifts which we offer You on behalf of Your servant, John Domenico Mustafa, Cardinal; You gave the reward of the high priesthood in this world; may he be briefly united with the company of Your Saints in the Kingdom of Heaven and return to us via Your Sacrament of Resurrection. Through Christ our Lord.”

  The congregation responds in unison—

  “Amen.”

  I walk to Cardinal Mustafa’s coffin and resurrection crèche near the communion altar and sprinkle holy water on it, while praying—

  “Father, all-powerful and ever-living God,

  we do well always and everywhere to give You thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord.

  “In Him, Who rose from the dead,

  our hope of resurrection dawned.

  The sadness of death gives way

  to the bright promise of immortality.

  “Lord, for your faithful people life is changed and renewed, not ended.

  When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death we trust in Your mercy and Your miracle to renew it to us.

  “And so, with all the choirs of angels in Heaven

  we proclaim Your glory

  and join in their unending hymn of praise:”

  The great organ in the Basilica thunders while the choir immediately begins singing the Sanctus:

  “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might,

  Heaven and earth are full of Your glory.

  Hosanna in the highest.

  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.

  Hosanna in the highest.”

  After Communion, after the Mass ends and the congregation departs, I walk slowly to the sacristy. I am sad and my heart hurts—literally. The heart disease has advanced once again, clogging my arteries and making every step and word painful. I think—I must not tell Lourdusamy.

  That Cardinal appears as acolytes and altar boys help divest me of my garments.

  “We have received a Gideon-drone courier, Your Holiness.”

  “From which front?” I inquire.

  “Not from the fleet, Holy Father,” says the Cardinal, frowning at a hardcopy message that he holds in his fat hands.

  “From where then?” I say, holding out my hand impatiently. The message is written on thin vellum.

  I am coming to Pacem, to the Vatican.

  Aenea.

  I look up at my Secretary of State. “Can you stop the fleet, Simon Augustino?”

  His jowls seem to quiver. “No, Your Holiness. They made the jump more than twenty-four hours ago. They should be almost finished with their accelerated resurrection schedule and commencing the attack within moments. We cannot outfit a drone and send it in time t
o recall them.”

  I realize that my hand is shaking. I give the message back to Cardinal Lourdusamy. “Call in Marusyn and the other fleet commanders,” I say. “Tell them to bring every remaining capital fighting ship back to Pacem System, immediately.”

  “But Your Holiness,” says Lourdusamy, his voice urgent, “there are so many important task force missions under way at the present …”

  “Immediately!” I snap.

  Lourdusamy bows. “Immediately, Your Holiness.”

  As I turn away, the pain in my chest and the shortness in my breath are like warnings from God that time is short.

  “Aenea! The Pope …”

  “Easy, my love. I’m here.”

  “I was with the Pope … Lenar Hoyt … but he’s not dead, is he?”

  “You are also learning the language of the living, Raul. Incredible that your first contact with another living person’s memories is with him. I think …”

  “No time, Aenea! No time. His cardinal … Lourdusamy … brought your message. The Pope tried to recall the fleet, but Lourdusamy said that it was too late … that they jumped twenty-four hours ago and would be attacking any moment. That could be here, Aenea. It could be the fleet massing at Lacaille 9352 …”

  “No!” Aenea’s cry brings me out of the cacophony of images and voices, memories and sense overlays, not banishing them completely, but making them recede to something not unlike loud music in an adjoining room.

  Aenea has summoned a comlog unit from the cubby shelf and is calling both our ship and Navson Hamnim at the same time.

  I try to focus on my friend and the moment, pulling clothes on as I do so, but like a person emerging from a vivid dream, the murmur of voices and other memories is still with me.

  Father Captain Federico de Soya kneeling in prayer in his private cubby pod on the treeship Yggdrasill, only de Soya no longer thinks of himself as “Father-Captain,” but simply as “Father.” And he is unsure of even this title as he kneels and prays, prays as he has for hours this night, and longer hours in the days and nights since the cruciform was removed from his chest and body by the communion with Aenea’s blood.

  Father de Soya prays for forgiveness of which—he knows beyond doubt—he is unworthy. He prays for forgiveness for his years as a Pax Fleet captain, his many battles, the lives he has taken, the beautiful works of man and God he has destroyed. Father Federico de Soya kneels in the one-sixth-g silence of his cubby and asks his Lord and Savior … the God of Mercy in which he had learned to believe and which he now doubts … to forgive him, not for his own sake, but so that his thoughts and actions in the months and years to come, or hours if his life is to be that short, might better serve his Lord …

  I pull away from this contact with the sudden revulsion of someone realizing that he is becoming a voyeur. I understand immediately that if Aenea has known this “language of the living” for years, for her entire life, that she has almost certainly spent more energy denying it—avoiding these unsolicited entries into other people’s lives—than mastering it.

  Aenea has irised an opening in the pod wall and taken the comlog out to the organic tuft of balcony there. I float through and join her, floating down to the balcony’s surface under the gentle one-tenth-g pull of the containment field there. There are several faces floating above the diskey of the comlog—Het Masteen’s, Ket Rosteen’s, and Navson Hamnim’s—but all are looking away from the visual pickups, as is Aenea.

  It takes me a second to look up at what she is seeing.

  Blazing streaks are cutting through the Startree past beautiful rosettes of orange and red flame. For an instant I think that it is just leafturn sunrise along the inner curve of the Biosphere, squids and angels and watering comets catching the light the way Aenea and I had hours earlier when riding the heliosphere matrix, but then I realize what I am seeing.

  Pax ships cutting through the Startree in a hundred places, their fusion tails slicing away branches and trunk like cold, bright knives.

  Explosions of leaves and debris hundreds of thousands of kilometers away sending earthquake tremors through the branch and pod and balcony on which we stand.

  Bright confusion. Energy lances leaping through space, visible because of the billions of particles of escaping atmosphere, pulverized organic matter, burning leaves, and Ouster and Templar blood. Lances cutting and burning everything they touch.

  More explosions blossom outward within a few kilometers. The containment field still holds and sound pounds us back against the pod wall that ripples like the flesh of an injured beast. Aenea’s comlog goes off at the same instant the Startree curve above us bursts into flame and explodes into silent space. There are shouts and screams and roars audible, but I know that within seconds the containment field must fail and Aenea and I will be sucked out into space with the other tons of debris flying past us.

  I try to pull her back into the pod, which is sealing itself in a vain attempt to survive.

  “No, Raul, look!”

  I look to where she points. Above us, then beneath us, around us, the Startree is burning and exploding, vines and branches snapping, Ouster angels consumed in flame, ten-klick worker squids imploding, treeships burning as they attempt to get under way.

  “They’re killing the ergs!” shouts Aenea above the wind roar and explosions.

  I pound on the pod wall, shouting commands. The door irises open for just a second, but long enough for me to pull my beloved inside.

  There is no shelter here. The plasma blasts are visible through the polarized pod walls.

  Aenea has pulled her pack out of the cubby and tugged it on. I grab mine, thrust my sheath knife in my belt as if it would help fight off the marauders.

  “We have to get to the Yggdrasill!” cries Aenea.

  We kick off to the stemway wall, but the pod will not let us out. There is a roaring through the pod hull.

  “Stemway’s breached,” gasps Aenea. She still carries the comlog—I see that it is the ancient one from the Consul’s ship—and is calling up data from the Startree grid. “Bridges are out. We have to get to the treeship.”

  I look through the wall. Orange blossoms of flame. The Yggdrasil! is ten klicks up and inner surface-east of us. With the swaying bridges and stemways gone, it might as well be a thousand light-years away.

  “Send the ship for us,” I say. “The Consul’s ship.”

  Aenea shakes her head. “Het Masteen is getting the Yggdrasill under way now … no time to undock our ship. We have to be there in the next three or four minutes or … What about the Ouster skinsuits? We can fly over.”

  It is my turn for headshaking. “They’re not here. When we got out of them at the landing platform, I had A. Bettik carry both of them to the treeship.”

  The pod shakes wildly and Aenea turns away to look. The pod wall is a bright red, melting.

  I pull, open my storage cubby, throw clothes and gear aside, and pull out the one extraneous artifact I own, tugging it out of its leather storage tube. Father Captain de Soya’s gift.

  I tap the activator threads. The hawking mat stiffens and hovers in zero-g. The EM field around this section of the Star-tree is still intact.

  “Come on,” I shout as the wall melts. I pull my beloved onto the hawking mat.

  We are swept out through the fissure, into vacuum and madness.

  28

  he erg-folded magnetic fields were still standing but strangely scrambled. Instead of flying along and above the boulevard-wide swath of branch toward the Yggdrasill, the hawking mat wanted to align itself at right angles to the branch, so that our faces seemed to be pointing down as the mat rose like an elevator through shaking branches, dangling bridges, severed stemways, globes of flame, and hordes of Ousters leaping off into space to do battle and die. As long as we made progress toward the treeship, I let the hawking mat do what it wanted.

  There were bubbles of containment-field atmosphere remaining, but most of the erg-fields had died along with the ergs w
ho maintained them. Despite multiple redundancies, air was either leaking or explosively decompressing all along this region of the Startree. We had no suits. What I had remembered in the pod at the last moment was that the ancient hawking mat had its own low-level field for holding passengers or air in. It was never meant as a long-term pressurization device, but we had used it nine years ago on the unnamed jungle planet when we’d flown too high to breathe, and I hoped the systems were still working.

  They still worked … at least after a fashion. As soon as we were out of the pod and rising like a parawing through the chaos, the hawking mat’s low-level field kicked in. I could almost feel the thin air leaking out, but I told myself that it should last us the length of time it would take to reach the Yggdrasill.

  We almost did not reach the Yggdrasill.

  It was not the first space battle I had witnessed—Aenea and I had sat on the high platform of the Temple Hanging in Air not that many standard days, eons, ago and watched the light show in cislunar space as the Pax task force had destroyed Father de Soya’s ship—but this was the first space battle I had seen where someone was trying to kill me.

  Where there was air, the noise was deafening: explosions, implosions, shattering trunks and stemways, rupturing branches and dying squids, the howl of alarms and babble and squeal of comlogs and other communicators. Where there was vacuum, the silence was even more deafening: Ouster and Templar bodies being blown noiselessly into space—women and children, warriors unable to reach their weapons or battle stations, robed priests of the Muir tumbling toward the sun while wrapped in the ultimate indignity of violent death—flames with no crackling, screams with no sound, cyclones with no windrush warning.

  Aenea was huddled over Siri’s ancient comlog as we rose through the maelstrom. I saw Systenj Coredwell shouting from the tiny holo display above the diskey, and then Kent Quinkent and Sian Quintana Ka’an speaking earnestly. I was too busy guiding the hawking mat to listen to their desperate conversations.

  I could no longer see the fusion tails of the Pax Fleet archangels, only their lances cutting through gas clouds and debris fields, slicing the Startree like scalpels through living flesh. The great trunks and winding branches actually bled, their sap and other vital fluids mixing with the kilometers of fiber-optic vine and Ouster blood as they exploded into space or boiled away in vacuum. A ten-klick worker squid was sliced through and then sliced through again as I watched, its delicate tentacles spasming in a destructive dance as it died. Ouster angels took flight by the thousands and died by the thousands. A treeship tried to get under way and was lanced through in seconds, its rich oxygen atmosphere igniting within the containment field, its crew dying in the time it took for the energy globe to fill with swirling smoke.