by Дэн Симмонс
To the left of His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the Lord Chamberlain, abbot of abbots. This man is quite old and smiling broadly at the phalanxes of guests. To his left is the State Oracle, a thin young woman with severely cropped hair and a yellow linen shirt under her red robe. Aenea has explained that it is the State Oracle’s job to predict the future while in a deep trance. To the left of the State Oracle, their faces largely blocked from my view by the gilded pillars of the Dalai Lama’s throne, stand five emissaries from the Pax—I can make out a short man in cardinal’s red, three forms in black cassocks, and at least one military uniform.
To the right of the Regent’s throne stands the Chief Crier and Head of His Holiness’s Security, the legendary Carl Linga William Eiheji, Zen archer, watercolorist, karate master, philosopher, former flyer, and flower arranger.
Eiheji looks to be built of coiled steel wrapped about with pure muscle as he strides forward and fills the immense hall with his voice: “Honored guests, visitors from beyond our world, Dugpas, Drukpas, Drungpas—those from the highest ridges, the noble fissures, and the wooded valley slopes—Dzasas, honored officials, the Red Hats and the Yellow Hats, monks, abbots, getsel novices, Ko-sas of the Fourth Rank and higher, blessed ones who wear the su gi, wives and husbands of those so honored, seekers of Enlightenment, it is my pleasure to welcome you here tonight on behalf of His Holiness, Getswang Ngwang Lobsang Tengin Gyapso Sisunwangyur Tshungpa Mapai Dhepal Sangpo—the Holy One, the Gentle Glory, Powerful in Speech, Pure in Mind, of Divine Wisdom, Holding the Faith, Ocean-Wide!” The small brass and bone trumpets blow high, clear notes. The great horns bellow like dinosaurs. The gong sends vibrations through our bones and teeth.
Chief Crier Eiheji steps back. His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks, his child’s voice soft but clear and firm across the great space.
“Thank you all for coming this night. We shall greet our new friends from the Pax in more intimate circumstances. Many of you have requested to see me… you shall receive my blessing in private audience tonight. I have requested to speak with some of you. You shall meet me in private audience tonight. Our friends from the Pax will speak with many of you this evening and in the days to come. In speaking to them, please remember that these are our brothers and sisters in the Dharma, in the quest for Enlightenment. Please remember that our breath is their breath, and that all of our breath is the breath of Buddha. Thank you. Please enjoy our celebration this night.” And with that the dais, throne and all, slides silently back through the opening wall, is hidden by a sliding curtain, then by another curtain, and then by the wall itself, and the thousands in the main reception hall let out a breath as one.
The evening was, as I remember, a nearly surreal combination of a gala ball swirling around a formal papal reception. I had never seen a papal reception, of course—the mystery Cardinal on the now-curtained dais was the highest official of the Church encountered in my experience—but the excitement of those being received by the Dalai Lama must have been similar to a Christian meeting the Pope, and the pomp and circumstance surrounding their presentation was impressive. Soldier-monks in red robes and red or yellow hats escorted the lucky few through the tented curtains and then through more curtains and finally through the door in the wall to the Dalai Lama’s presence while the rest of us moved and mixed across the torchlit parquet floor, or browsed the long tables of excellent food, or even danced to the music of a small band—no brass and bone trumpets or four-meter horns there. I admit that I asked Aenea if she would like to dance, but she smiled, shook her head, and led our group to the nearest banquet table. Soon we were engaged in conversation with the Dorje Phamo and some of her female priests.
Knowing that I might be committing a faux pas, I nonetheless asked the beautiful old woman why she was called the Thunderbolt Sow. As we munched on fried balls of tsampa and drank delicious tea, the Dorje Phamo laughed and told us the story. On Old Earth, the first such abbess of an all-male Tibetan Buddhist monastery had gained the reputation of being the reincarnation of the original Thunderbolt Sow, a demigoddess of frightening power. That first Dorje Phamo abbess was said to have transformed not only herself but all of the lamas in her monastery into pigs to frighten away enemy soldiers.
When I asked this last reincarnation of the Thunderbolt Sow if she had retained the power of transforming into a sow, the elegant old woman lifted her head and said firmly, “If that would frighten away these current invaders, I would do so in an instant.”
In the three hours or so during which Aenea and I mixed and chatted and listened to music and watched the lightning through the grand skylight, this was the only negative thing we heard spoken—aloud—about the Pax emissaries, although under the silk finery and gala gaiety, there seemed to be an undercurrent of anxiety to the evening. This seemed natural since the world of T’ien Shan had been—except for the occasional free trader’s dropship—isolated from the Pax and the rest of post-Hegemonic humanity for almost three centuries. The evening was growing late and I was becoming convinced that Labsang Samten’s statement that the Dalai Lama and his Pax guests had wished to see us was erroneous, when suddenly several palace officiaries in great, curved red and yellow hats—looking rather like illustrations I had seen of ancient Greek helmets—sought us out and asked that we accompany them to the Dalai Lama’s presence.
I looked at my friend, ready to bolt with her and cover our retreat if she showed even a hint of fear or reticence, but Aenea simply nodded in compliance and took my arm. The sea of partygoers made way for us as we crossed the vast space behind the officials, the two of us walking slowly, arm in arm, as if I were her father giving her away in a traditional Church wedding… or as if we had always been a couple ourselves. In my pocket was the flashlight laser and the diskey journal-com unit. The laser would be worth little if the Pax was determined to seize us, but I had decided to call the ship if the worst happened.
Rather than allow Aenea to be captured, I would bring the ship down on blazing reaction thrusters, right through that lovely skylight. We passed through the outer curtain and entered a canopied space where the sounds of the band and merrymaking were still quite audible. Here several red-hat officials asked us to extend our arms with our palms upward. When we did so, they set a white silk scarf in our hands, the ends hanging down. We were waved forward through the second curtain. Here the Lord Chamberlain greeted us with a bow—Aenea responding with a graceful curtsy, me with an awkward bow in return—and led us through the door into the small room where the Dalai Lama waited with his guests.
This private room was like an extension of the young Dalai Lama’s throne—gold and gilt and silk brocade and wildly ornate tapestries with reversed swastikas embroidered everywhere amid images of opening flowers and curling dragons and spinning mandalas. The doors closed behind us and the sounds of the party would have been shut out completely except for the audio pickups of three video monitors set in the wall to our left.
Real-time video of the party was being fed in from different locations around the Main Reception Hall and the boy on the throne and his guests were watching it raptly. We paused until the Lord Chamberlain gestured us forward again. He whispered to us as we approached the throne and the Dalai Lama turned in our direction. “It is not necessary to bow until His Holiness raises his hand. Then please bow forward until after he releases his touch.”
We paused three paces from the raised throne platform with its shimmering quilts and draped cushions. Carl Linga William Eiheji, the Chief Crier, said in soft but resonant tones, “Your Holiness, the architect in charge of construction at Hsuan-k’ung Ssu and her assistant.”
Her assistant? I moved forward a step behind Aenea, confused, but grateful that the Crier had not announced our names. I could see the five Pax figures out of the corner of my eye, but protocol demanded that I keep my gaze directed toward the Dalai Lama but lowered.
Aenea stopped at the edge of the high throne platform, her arms still held in front of her, the scarf taut between h
er hands. The Lord Chamberlain set several objects on the scarf and the boy reached forward and whisked them off quickly, setting them to his right on the platform. When the objects were gone, a servant stepped forward and took away the white scarf. Aenea put her hands together as if in prayer and bowed forward. The boy’s smile was gentle as he leaned forward and touched my friend—my beloved—on the head, setting his fingers like a crown on her brown hair. I realized that it was a blessing. When he removed his fingers, he lifted a red scarf from a stack by his side and set it in Aenea’s left hand. Then he took her right hand and shook it, his smile broadening. The Lord Chamberlain gestured for Aenea to stand in front of the Regent’s lower throne as I stepped forward and went through the same quick ceremony with the Dalai Lama.
I just had time to notice that the objects set on the white scarf by the Lord Chamberlain and whisked away by the Dalai Lama included a small gold relief in the shape of three mountains, representing the world of T’ien Shan Aenea later explained, an image of a human body, a stylized book representing speech, and a chorten, or temple, shape representing the mind. The appearing and disappearing act was over before I had time to pay more attention to it, and then the red scarf was in one hand while the boy’s tiny hand was in my large one. His handshake was surprisingly firm. My gaze was lowered, but I could still make out his broad smile. I stepped back next to Aenea.
The same ceremony was quickly performed with the Regent—white scarf, symbolic objects placed and removed, red scarf. But the Regent did not shake hands with either of us. When we had received the Regent’s blessing, the Lord Chamberlain gestured for us to raise our heads and gazes.
I almost made a grab for the flashlight laser and started firing wildly. Besides the Dalai Lama, his monk servants, the Lord Chamberlain, the Regent, the State Oracle, the Crier, the short Cardinal, the three men in black cassocks, there was a woman in a black-and-red Pax Fleet uniform. She had just stepped around a tall priest so we could see her face for the first time. Her dark eyes were fixed on Aenea. The woman’s hair was short and hung over her pale forehead in limp bangs. Her skin was sallow. Her gaze was reptilian—simultaneously remote and rapt.
It was the thing that had tried to kill Aenea, A. Bettik, and me on God’s Grove some five of my years—more than ten of Aenea’s—ago. It was the inhuman killing device that had defeated the Shrike and would have carried Aenea’s head away in a bag had it not been for the intervention of Father Captain de Soya in his orbiting spacecraft; he had used the full fusion power of the ship to lance the monster downward into a cauldron of bubbling, molten rock.
And here it was again, its black, inhuman eyes fixed on Aenea’s face. It had obviously sought her across the years and light-years, and now it had her. It had us.
My heart was pounding and my legs felt suddenly weak, but through the shock my mind was working like an AI. The flashlight laser was tucked in a pocket in the right side of my cape. The com unit was in my left trouser pocket. With my right hand I would flash the cutting beam into the woman-thing’s eyes, then flick the selector to broad and blind the Pax priests. With my left hand I would trigger the squirt command to send the prerecorded message via tightbeam to the ship. But even if the ship responded immediately and was not intercepted by a Pax warship on its flight, it would be several minutes before it could descend through the palace skylight. We would be dead by then. And I knew the speed of this thing—it simply had disappeared when it fought the Shrike, a chrome blur. I would never get the flashlight laser or com unit out of my pockets. We would be dead before my hand made it halfway to the weapon. I froze, realizing that although Aenea must have recognized the woman at once, she had not reacted with the shock I felt. To outward appearances, she had not reacted at all. Her smile remained. Her gaze had passed over the Pax visitors—including the monster—and then returned to the boy on the throne.
It was Regent Reting Tokra who spoke first. “Our guests asked for this audience. They heard from His Holiness of the reconstruction going on at the Temple Hanging in Air and wished to meet the young woman who had designed the construction.”
The Regent’s voice was as pinched and ungiving as his appearance.
The Dalai Lama spoke then and his boy’s voice was soft but as generous as the Regent’s had been guarded. “My friends,” he said, gesturing toward Aenea and me, “may I introduce our distinguished visitors from the Pax. John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa of the Catholic Church’s Holy Office, Archbishop Jean Daniel Breque of the Papal Diplomatic Corps, Father Martin Farrell, Father Gerard LeBlanc, and Commander Rhadamanth Nemes of the Noble Guard.”
We nodded. The Pax dignitaries—including the monster—nodded. If there was a breech of protocol by His Holiness the Dalai Lama doing the introductions, no one seemed to notice.
John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa said in a silken voice, “Thank you, Your Holiness. But you have introduced these exceptional people only as the architect and her assistant.” The Cardinal smiled at us, showing small, sharp teeth. “You have names, perhaps?”
My pulse was racing. The fingers of my right hand twitched at the thought of the flashlight laser. Aenea was still smiling but showed no sign of answering the Cardinal. My mind galloped to come up with aliases. But why? Certainly they knew who we were. All this was a trap. The Nemes thing would never let us leave this throne room… or would be waiting for us when we did.
Surprisingly, it was the boy Dalai Lama who spoke again. “I would be pleased to complete my introductions, Your Eminence. Our esteemed architect is called Ananda and her assistant—one of many skilled assistants I am told—is called Subhadda.”
I admit that I blinked at this. Had someone told the Dalai Lama these names? Aenea had told me that Ananda had been the Buddha’s foremost disciple and a teacher in his own right; Subhadda had been a wandering ascetic who had become the Buddha’s last direct disciple, becoming a follower after meeting him just hours before he died. She also told me that the Dalai Lama had come up with these names for our introduction, apparently appreciating the irony in them. I failed to see the humor.
“M. Ananda,” said Cardinal Mustafa, bowing slightly. “M. Subhadda.” He looked us over. “You will pardon my bluntness and ignorance, M. Ananda, but you seem of a different racial stock than most of the people we have met in the Potala or the surrounding areas of T’ien Shan.”
Aenea nodded. “One must be careful in making generalizations, Your Eminence. There are areas of this world settled by seedship colonists from many of Old Earth’s regions.”
“Of course,” purred Cardinal Mustafa. “And I must say that your Web English is very unaccented. May I inquire as to which region of T’ien Shan you and your assistant call home?”
“Of course,” responded Aenea in as smooth a voice as the Cardinal’s. “I came into the world in a region of ridges beyond Mt. Moriah and Mt. Zion, north and west of Muztagh Alta.”
The Cardinal nodded judiciously. I noticed then that his collar—what Aenea later said was called his rabat or rabbi in Church terminology—of a scarlet watered silk the same color as his red cassock and skullcap.
“Are you perchance,” he continued smoothly, “of the Hebrew or Muslim faiths which our hosts have told us prevail in those regions?”
“I am of no faith,” said Aenea. “If one defines faith as belief in the supernatural.”
The Cardinal’s eyebrows lifted slightly. The man called Father Farrell glanced at his boss. Rhadamanth Nemes’s terrible gaze never wavered.
“Yet you labor to build a temple to Buddhist beliefs,” said Cardinal Mustafa pleasantly enough.
“I was hired to reconstruct a beautiful complex,” said Aenea. “I am proud to have been chosen to this task.”
“Despite your lack of… ah… belief in the supernatural?” said Mustafa. I could hear the Inquisition in his voice. Even on the rural moors of Hyperion, we had heard of the Holy Office.
“Perhaps because of it, Your Eminence,” said Aenea. “And because of the trust in my ow
n human abilities and those of my coworkers.”
“So the task is its own justification?” pressed the Cardinal. “Even if it has no deeper significance?”
“Perhaps a task well done is the deeper significance,” said Aenea.
Cardinal Mustafa chuckled. It was not an alt pleasant sound. “Well said, young lady. Well said.”
Father Farrell cleared his throat. “The region beyond Mt. Zion,” he said musingly. “We noticed during our orbital survey that there was a single farcaster portal set onto a ridgeline in that area. We had thought that T’ien Shan had never been a part of the Web, but our records showed that the portal was completed very shortly before the Fall.”
“But never used!” exclaimed the young Dalai Lama, lifting one slim finger. “No one ever traveled to or from the Mountains of Heaven via the Hegemony farcaster.”
“Indeed,” said Cardinal Mustafa softly. “Well, we assumed as much, but I must tender our apologies, Your Holiness. In our ship’s zeal to probe the structure of the old farcaster portal from orbit, it accidentally melted the surrounding rocks onto it. The doorway is sealed forever under rock, I am afraid.”
I glanced at Rhadamanth Nemes when this was said. She did not blink. I had not seen her blink. Her gaze was riveted to Aenea.
The Dalai Lama swept his hand in a dismissive gesture. “It does not matter, Your Eminence. We have no use for a farcaster portal which was never used… unless your Pax has found a way to reactivate the farcasters?” He laughed at the idea. It was a pleasant boyish laugh, but sharp with intelligence.
