by Дэн Симмонс
“I’ll get the…” I began.
“No you won’t,” said Aenea and pulled me closer.
Even kissing demands new skills in zero-g. Aenea’s hair coiled around her head in a sunlit corona as I held her face in my hands and kissed her—her lips, eyes, cheeks, forehead, and lips again. We began tumbling slowly, brushing the smooth and glowing wall. It was as warm as my dear friend’s flesh.
One of us pushed off and we tumbled together into the middle of the oval pod space.
Our kissing became more urgent. Each time we moved to hold the other more tightly, we would begin to pivot around an invisible center of mass, arms and legs entangled as we pressed tighter and rotated more quickly. Without disentangling or interrupting our kiss, I held out one arm, waited for the flesh-warm walls to reach us, and stopped our tumble. The contact pushed us away from the curved, warmly glowing wall and sent us spinning very slowly toward the center again.
Aenea broke our kiss and moved her head back a moment, still holding my arms, regarding me from arm’s length. I had seen her smile ten thousand times in the last ten years of her life—had thought that I knew all of her smiles—but this one was deeper, older, more mysterious, and more mischievous than any I had seen before.
“Don’t move,” she whispered, and, pushing softly against my arm for leverage, rotated in space.
“Aenea…” was all I could say and then I could say nothing. I closed my eyes, oblivious of everything except sensation. I could feel my darling’s hands tight on the backs of my legs, pulling me closer to her. After a moment, her knees came to rest against my shoulders, her thighs bumping softly against my chest. I reached out to the hollow of her back and pulled her closer, sliding my cheek along the strong muscle of her inner thigh. At Taliesin West, one of the cooks had owned a tabby cat. Many evenings, when I was sitting alone out on the western terrace watching the sunset and feeling the stones lose their day’s heat, waiting for the hour when Aenea and I could sit in her shelter and talk about everything and nothing, I would watch the cat lap slowly from her bowl of cream. I visualized that cat now, but within minutes I could visualize nothing but the immediate and overpowering sense of my dear friend opening to me, of the subtle taste of the sea, of our movements like the tide rising, of all of my senses being centered in the slow but growing sensation at the core of me.
How long we floated this way, I have no idea. Such overwhelming excitement is like a fire that consumes time. Total intimacy is an exemption from the space-time demands of the universe.
Only the growing prerogatives of our passion and the ineluctable need to be even closer than this penultimate closeness marked the minutes of our lovemaking.
Aenea opened her legs wider, moved away, released me with her mouth but not her hand. We pivoted again in the sepia light, her tight fingers and my excitement the center of our slow rotation. We kissed, lips moist, Aenea’s grasp tightening around me. “Now,” she whispered.
I obeyed.
If there is a true secret to the universe, it is this… these first few seconds of warmth and entry and complete acceptance by one’s beloved. We kissed again, oblivious of our slow tumbling, the rich light taking on a heart warmth around us. I opened my eyes long enough to see Aenea’s hair swirling like Ophelia’s cloak in the wine-dark sea of air in which we floated. It was indeed like holding my beloved in deep, salty water—buoyed up and weightless, the warmth of her around me like the rising tide, our movements as regular as the surf against warm sand.
“Oops…” whispered Aenea after only a moment of this perfection.
I paused in my kissing long enough to assess what was separating us. “Newton’s Law,” I whispered against her cheek.
“For every action…” whispered Aenea, chuckling softly, holding my shoulders like a swimmer pausing to rest.
“is… an equal and opposite reaction…” I said, smiling until she kissed me again.
“Solution,” whispered Aenea. Her legs closed tight around my hips. Her breasts floated between us, the nipples teasing my chest.
Then she lay back, again the swimmer, floating this time, her arms spread but her fingers still interlaced with mine. We continued to pivot slowly around our common center of gravity, a slow tumble, my head coming over and down and around like a rider on a porpoise doing slow cartwheels in the sunlit depths, but I was no longer interested or aware of the elegant ballistics of our lovemaking, but only in the lovemaking. We moved faster in the warm sea of air.
Some minutes later, Aenea released my hands, moved upright and forward as we tumbled together, still moving, sank her short nails into my back even while she kissed me with a wild urgency, and then moved her mouth away to gasp and cry out, once, softly. At the same instant as her cry, I felt the warm universe of her close around me with that short, tight throb, that intimate, shared pulse. A second later it was my turn to gasp, to cling to her as I throbbed within her, to whisper into her salty neck and floating hair—“Aenea… Aenea.” A prayer. My only prayer then. My only prayer now.
For a long time we floated together even after we had become two people again rather than one. Our legs were still intertwined, our fingers stroking and holding one another. I kissed her throat and felt her pulse like a memory echo against my lips. She ran her fingers through my sweaty hair.
I realized that for this moment, nothing in the past mattered. Nothing terrible in the future mattered.
What mattered was her skin against me, her hand holding me, the perfume of her hair and skin and the warmth of her breath against my chest. This was satori. This was truth.
Aenea kicked away to the pod cubby just long enough to return with a small, warm, and wet towel.
We took turns wiping some of the sweat and slickness from us. My shirt floated by, the empty sleeves attempting to swim in the gentle air currents. Aenea laughed and lingered in her washing and drying, the simple act quickly turning into something else. “Oops,” said Aenea, smiling at me. “How did that happen?”
“Newton’s Law?” I said.
“That makes sense,” she whispered. “Then what would be the reaction if I were to do… this?” I think we were both surprised by the instant result of her experiment. “We have hours until we have to meet the others on the treeship,” she said softly. She said something to the living pod and the curved wall went absolutely transparent. It was as if we were floating among these countless branches and sail-sized leaves, the sun’s warmth bathing us one moment and then being submerged in night and stars when we looked out the other side of the clear pod.
“Don’t worry,” said Aenea, “we can see out, but the exterior is opaque on the outside. Reflective.”
“How can you be sure?” I whispered, kissing her neck again, seeking the soft pulse.
Aenea sighed. “I guess we can’t without going out to look in. Sort of a David Hume problem.” I tried to remember my philosophy readings at Taliesin, recalled our discussions of Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, and chuckled. “There’s another way we can check,” I said, rubbing my bare feet along her calves and the backs of her legs. “How’s that?” murmured my friend, her eyes closed.
“If anyone can see in,” I said, floating behind her, rubbing her back without letting her float away, “there’s going to be a huge crowd of Ouster angels and Templar treeships and comet farmers hanging out there in about thirty minutes.”
“Really,” said Aenea, eyes still closed. “And why is that?”
I began to show her.
She opened her eyes. “Oh, my,” she said softly.
I was afraid that I was shocking her.
“Raul?” she whispered.
“Hmmm?” I said, not stopping what I was doing. I closed my eyes.
“Maybe you’re right about the pod being reflective on the outside,” she whispered and then sighed again, more deeply this time. “Mmmhmm?” I said. She grabbed my ears and floated around, pulled herself closer, and whispered, “Why don’t we leave the outside transparent and make the insi
de wall reflective?”
My eyes snapped open.
“Just kidding,” she whispered and pushed away from the pod wall, pulling me with her into the central sphere of warm air.
The stars blazed around us.
We wore formal black outfits to the dinner party and conference on the Yggdrasill. I was tense with excitement to be aboard one of the legendary treeships and it was a bit of an anticlimax when I realized that I had not noticed when we had crossed from the biosphere branches to the treeship trunk. It was only when hundreds of us were gathered on a series of platforms and opened pods, when the treeship had actually cast off and moved away from the encircling city-sized leaves, province-sized branches, and continent-sized trunks that I realized that we were aboard and moving.
The Yggdrasill must have been a bit more than a kilometer in length, from the narrowed crown of the tree to the resplendent root system of boiling fusion energy at its base. A bit of gravity returned under drive—probably only a few percentage points of microgravity—but it was still disconcerting after so much zero-g. It did help with our orientation though, the scores of us able to sit at tables and look one another in the eyes rather than float for a polite position… I thought of Aenea and our last hours together and blushed at this thought. There were tables and chairs on the multitiered platforms and many who were not seated there thronged on the flimsy suspension bridges that connected platforms to more far-flung branches, or on the helixes of spiral stairways winding up through branches, leaves, and binding the central trunk like vines, or hung from swingvines and leafy bowers.
Aenea and I were seated at the round central table along with the True Voice of the Tree Het Masteen, the Ouster leaders, and two score of other Templars, refugees from T’ien Shan, and others. I was on Aenea’s immediate left. The Templar dignitaries were seated to her right. Even now I can remember the names of most of the others present at the central table.
Besides the captain of the treeship, Het Masteen, there were half a dozen other Templars there, including Ket Rosteen—introduced as the True Voice of the Startree, High Priest of the Muir, and Spokesman of the Templar Brotherhood. The dozen Ousters at the main table included Systenj Coredwell and Navson Hamnim, but there were others who looked little like these tall, thin Ouster archetypes: Am Chipeta and Kent Quinkent, two shorter, darker Ousters—a married couple, I thought—with lively eyes and no webs between their fingers; Sian Quintana Ka’an, a female who was either wearing a resplendent robe of bright feathers or who had been born with them, and her blue-feathered partners Paul Uray and Morgan Bottoms. Two others better fit the Ouster image—Drivenj Nicaagat and Palou Koror—for they were vacuum-adapted and wore their silvery skinsuits through the entire banquet.
There were four of the Hebronese Seneschai Aluit present—LL-EEOONN and OO-EEAALL, whom I had met at the earlier gathering, as well as another pair of the willowy green figures introduced by Aenea as AA-LLOOEE and NN-EELLOO. I could only assume that the four were related or marriage-bound in some complex way.
The alien Akerataeli appeared to be missing until Aenea pointed to a place far out among the branches where the microgravity was even less, and there—between the gossamers and glowbirds—floated the platelet beings. Even the erg binders who were controlling the treeship’s containment field were present by proxy in the form of three Möbius cubes with translator discs embedded in their black matrices.
Father Captain Federico de Soya sat to my left and his aide, Sergeant Gregorius, sat to the left of him. Next to the sergeant sat Colonel Fedmahn Kassad in his formal FORCE black uniform, looking like a holo from the deep Hegemony past. Beyond Kassad sat the Thunderbolt Sow, as upright and proud as the old FORCE warrior to her right, while next to her—eyes bright and attentive—sat Getswang Ngwang Lobsang Tengin Gyapso Sisunwangyur Tshungpa Mapai Dhepal Sangpo, the boy Dalai Lama.
All of the other refugees from T’ien Shan were somewhere on the dining platform, and I saw Lhomo Dondrub, Labsang Samten, George and Jigme, Haruyuki, Kenshiro, Voytek, Viki, Kuku, Kay, and others present at the main table. Just beyond the Templars around the table from us were A. Bettik, Rachel, and Theo Bernard.
Rachel never took her eyes off Colonel Kassad, except to look at Aenea when she spoke. It was as if the rest of us were not there.
Tiny Templar servants whom Aenea whisperingly described as crew clones served water and stronger drinks and for a while there was the usual murmuring and polite, predinner conversation. Then there was a silence as thick as prayer. When Ket Rosteen, the True Voice of the Startree, stood to speak, everyone else rose as well.
“My friends,” said the small, hooded figure, “fellow Brothers in the Muir, honored Ouster allies, sentient sisters and brothers of the ultimate Lifetree, human refugees from the Pax, and”—the True Voice of the Startree bowed in Aenea’s direction—“the most revered One Who Teaches.
“As most of us gathered here know, what the Shrike Church once called the Days of Atonement—with us now for almost three centuries—are almost done. The True Voices of the Brotherhood of the Muir have followed the path of both prophecy and conservation, awaiting events as they came to pass, planting seeds as the soil of revelation has proved fertile.
“In these coming months and years, the future of many races—not just the human race—will be determined. Although there are those among us now who have been granted the gift of being able to glimpse patterns of the future, probabilities tossed like dice on the uneven blanket of space and time, even these gifted ones know that no single future has been preordained for us or our posterity. Events are fluid. The future is like smoke from a burning forest, waiting for the wind of specific events and personal courage to blow the sparks and embers of reality this way or that.
“This day, on this treeship… on the reborn and rechristened Yggdrasill… we shall determine our own paths to our own futures. My own prayer to the Lifeforce glimpsed by the Muir is not just that the Startree Biosphere survives, not just that the Brotherhood survives, not just that our Ouster brethren survive, not just that our hunted and harried sentient cousins of the Seneschai and the Akerataeli and the erg and the zeplin survive, not just that the species known as humankind survives, but that our prophecies begin to be realized this day and that all species of beloved life—humanity no more than the soft-shelled turtle or Mare Infinitus Lantern Mouth, the jumping spider and the tesla tree, the Old Earth raccoon and the Maui-Covenant Thomas hawk—that all species beloved of life join in rebirth of respect as distinct partners in the universe’s growing cycle of life.”
The True Voice of the Startree turned to Aenea and bowed. “Revered One Who Teaches, we are gathered here today because of you. We know from our prophecies—from those in our Brotherhood and elsewhere who have touched the nexus known as the Void Which Binds—that you are the best, single hope of reconciliation between humanity and Core, between humankind and otherkind. We also know that time is short and that the immediate future holds the potential for both the beginnings of this reconciliation and our liberation… or for near total destruction. Before any decisions can be made, there are those among us who must ask their final questions. Will you join in discussion with us now? Is this the time to speak of those things which must be spoken of and understood before all the worlds and abodes of Ouster and Templar and Pax and disparate humankind join in the final battle for humanity’s soul?”
“Yes,” said Aenea.
The True Voice of the Startree sat down.
Aenea stood, waited. I slipped my ’scriber from my vest pocket.
Ouster Systenj Coredwell. M. Aenea, Most Respected One Who Teaches, can you tell us with any certainty whether the Biosphere, our Startree, will be spared destruction and the Pax assault?
Aenea. I cannot, Freeman Coredwell. And if I could, it would be wrong for me to speak of it. It is not my role to predict probabilities in the great epicycles of chaos which are the futures. I can say without doubt that the next few days and weeks will determine whether this amazi
ng Biosphere shall survive or not. Our own actions will, to a great extent, determine this. But there is no single correct course of action. And if I may ask a question… there are friends of mine here new to the Startree and to Ouster space. It would help in our discussion if one of our hosts were to explain the background of the Ouster race, of the Biosphere and other projects, and of the Ouster and Templar philosophy.
Ouster Sian Quintana Ka’an. I would be pleased to speak to our new guests, Friend Aenea. It is important that all present in these deliberations understand our stake in the outcome. As all of our Ouster and Templar brethren here well know, the Ouster race was created more than eight hundred years ago in scores of star systems far-flung from one another. Human seedships with colonists trained in the genetic arts were sent out from Old Earth System in the great pre-Hegira expansions. These seedships were—for the most part—slower-than-light craft: fleets of crude Bussard ramjets, solar sailing ships, ion scoops, nuclear-pulse propulsion craft, gravity-launched Dyson spherelets, laser-driven containment sailing ships… only a few dozen of the later seedships were early Hawking-drive C-plus craft.
These colonists, our ancestors—most traveling in cold sleep deeper than cryogenic fugue—were among the best ARN-ists, nanotechs, and genetic engineers Old Earth System had to offer. Their missions were to find habitable worlds and—in the absence of terraforming technology—to bioengineer and nanotech the millions of Old Earth life-forms frozen aboard their ships into viable adaptations for those worlds.
As we know, a few of the seedships reached habitable worlds—New Earth, Tau Ceti, Barnard’s World. Most, however, reached worlds in systems where no life-forms could survive. The colonists had a choice—they could continue on, hoping that their ship life-support systems would sustain them for more long decades or centuries of travel—or they could use their gene-engineering skills to adapt themselves and their ark’s embryos to conditions far harsher than the original seedship planners had imagined.