by Дэн Симмонс
She does not look or act like a screwed-up mess to me at this moment. But then I love her more than life.
“He hired my mother to solve the mystery of his own persona’s death,” she continues softly, “but in truth he knew what had happened to his former self. His real reason for hiring my mother was to meet my mother, to be with my mother, to become my mother’s lover.” Aenea stops for a moment and smiles, her eyes seeing distant things.
“My Uncle Martin never got that part right in his muddled-up Cantos. My parents were married and I don’t think Uncle Martin ever told of that… married by the Bishop at the Shrike Temple on Lusus. It was a cult, but a legal one, and my parents’ marriage would have been legal on two hundred worlds of the Hegemony.”
She smiles again, looking across the crowded room directly at me. “I can be a bastard, you know, but I wasn’t born one.
“So they were married, I was conceived—probably before that ceremony—and then Core-backed elements murdered my father before my mother could begin the Shrike pilgrimage to Hyperion. And that should have been the end of any contact between my father and me except for two things—his Core persona was captured in a Schrön Loop implanted behind my mother’s ear. For some months she was pregnant with two of us—me in her womb and my father, the second John Keats persona, in the Schrön Loop.
His persona could not communicate directly to my mother while imprisoned in its endless-cycle Schrön Loop, but it communicated with me easily enough. The hard part was defining what “me” was at that point. My father helped by entering the Void Which Binds and taking the fetal “me” with him. I saw what was to be—who I would be—even how I would die—before my fingers were fully formed.
“And there was one other detail which Uncle Martin left out of his Cantos. On the day that they had gunned down my father on the steps of the Shrike Temple in the Lusian Concourse Mall, my mother was covered with his blood—the reconstructed, Core-augmented DNA of John Keats. What she did not fully understand at the time was that his blood was literally the most precious resource in the human universe at that moment. His DNA had been designed to infect others with his single gift—access to the Void. Mixed with fully human DNA in the right way, it would offer the gift of blood that would open the portal to the Void Which Binds to the entire human race.
“I am that mix. I bring the genetic ability to access the Void from the TechnoCore and the too-seldom-used human ability to perceive the universe through empathy. For better or worse, those who drink of my blood shall never see the world or the universe the same again.”
So saying, Aenea rises to her knees on the tatami mat. Theo brings a white linen cloth.
Rachel pours red wine from a vase into seven large goblets. Aenea takes a small packet from her sweater—I recognize it as a ship’s medkit—and removes a sterile lancet and an antiseptic swab. She pauses before using the lancet and sweeps her gaze across the crowd.
There is no sound—it is as if the more than hundred people there are holding their breath.
“There is no guarantee of happiness, wisdom, or long life if you drink of me this evening,” she says, very softly. “There is no nirvana. There is no salvation. There is no afterlife. There is no rebirth. There is only immense knowledge—of the heart as well as the mind—and the potential for great discoveries, great adventures, and a guarantee of more of the pain and terror that make up so much of our short lives.”
She looks from face to face, smiling as she meets the gaze of the eight-year-old Dalai Lama. “Some of you,” she says, “have attended all of our discussion sessions over the past standard year. I have told you what I know about learning the language of the dead, learning the language of the living, learning to hear the music of the spheres, and learning how to take a first step.”
She looks at me. “Some of you have heard only some of these discussions. You were not here when I discussed the real function of the Church’s cruciform or the real identity of the Shrike. You have not heard the details of learning the language of the dead or the other burdens of entering the Void Which Binds. For those of you with doubts or hesitation, I urge you to wait. For the rest of you, I say again—I am not a messiah… but I am a teacher. If what I have taught you these months sounds like truth, and if you wish to take this chance, drink of me this night. Be warned, that the DNA which allows us to perceive the medium of the Void Which Binds cannot coexist with the cruciform. That parasite will wither and die within twenty-four hours of the time you drink of my blood. It will never grow within you again. If you seek resurrection through the cruciform cross, do not drink the blood of my body in this wine.
“And be warned that you will become, like me, the despised and sought-out enemy of the Pax. Your blood will be contagious. Those with whom you share it—those who choose to find the Void Which Binds via your shared DNA—will become despised in turn.
“And finally, be warned that, once having drunk this wine, your children will be born with the ability to enter the Void Which Binds. For better or worse, your children and their children will be born knowing the language of the dead, the language of the living, hearing the music of the spheres, and knowing that they can take a first step across the Void Which Binds.”
Aenea touches her finger with the razor edge of the lancet. A tiny drop of blood is visible in the lantern light. Rachel holds a goblet up as the tiny drop of blood is squeezed into the large volume of wine. Then again with the next goblet, and so on until each of the seven cups has been… contaminated? Transubstantiated? My mind is reeling. My heart is pounding in something like alarm.
This seems like some wild parody of the Catholic Church’s Holy Communion. Has my young friend, my dear lover, my beloved… has she gone insane? Does she truly believe that she is a messiah? No, she said that she is not. Do I believe that I will be transformed forever by drinking of wine that is one part per million my beloved’s blood? I do not know. I do not understand.
About half of the people there move forward to line up and sip from one of the large goblets. Chalices? This is blasphemy. It’s not right. Or is it? One sip is all they take, then return to their places on the tatami mats. No one seems especially energized or enlightened. No horns of light shine from anyone’s forehead after they partake of the wine. No one levitates or speaks in tongues. They each take a sip and sit down.
I realize that I have been holding back, trying to catch Aenea’s gaze. I have so many questions… Belatedly, feeling like a traitor to someone I should trust without hesitation, I move toward the back of the shortening line.
Aenea sees me. She holds her hand up briefly, palm toward me. The meaning is clear—Raul. Not yet. I hesitate another moment, irresolute, sick at the thought of these others—these strangers—entering into an intimacy with my darling when I cannot. Then, heart pounding and face burning, I sit back on my mat.
There is no formal end to the evening. People begin to leave in twos and threes. A couple—she drank of the wine, he did not—leave together with their arms around one another as if nothing has changed.
Perhaps nothing has changed. Perhaps the communion ritual I’ve just watched is all metaphor and symbolism, or autosuggestion and self-hypnosis. Perhaps those who will themselves hard enough to perceive something called the Void Which Binds will have some internal experience that convinces them that it has happened. Perhaps it’s all bullshit.
I rub my forehead. I have such a headache. Good thing I didn’t drink the wine, I think. Wine sometimes brings on migraines with me. I chuckle and feel ill and empty for a moment, left behind.
Rachel says, “Don’t forget, the last stone will be set in place in the walkway tomorrow at noon. There’ll be a party on the upper meditation platform! Bring your own refreshments.”
And thus ends the evening. I go upstairs to our shared sleeping platform with a mixture of elation, anticipation, regret, embarrassment, excitement, and a throbbing headache. I confess to myself that I didn’t understand half of Aenea’s explanation of th
ings, but I leave with a vague sense of letdown and inappropriateness…
I’m sure, for instance, that Jesus Christ’s Last Supper did not end with a shouted reminder of a BYOB party on the upper deck.
I chuckle and then swallow the laugh. Last Supper. That has a terrible ring to it. My heart begins pounding again and my head hurts worse. Hardly the way to enter one’s lover’s bedroom.
The chill air on the upper platform walkway clears my head a bit. The Oracle is just a sliver above towering cumulus to the east. The stars look cold tonight.
I am just about to enter our shared room and light the lantern when suddenly the skies explode.
21
They all came up from the lower levels—all of the ones who had stayed at the Temple Hanging in Air after most of the work had been finished—Aenea and A. Bettik, Rachel and Theo, George and Jigme, Kuku and Kay, Chim Din and Gyalo Thondup, Lhomo and Labsang, Kim Byung-Soon and Viki Groselj, Kenshiro and Haruyuki, Master Abbot Kempo Ngha Wang Tashi and his master, the young Dalai Lama, Voytek Majer and Janusz Kurtyka, brooding Rimsi Kyipup and grinning Changchi Kenchung, the Dorje Phamo the Thunderbolt Sow and Carl Linga William Eiheji. Aenea came to my side and slipped her hand in mine as we watched the skies in awed silence.
I am surprised that we were not all blinded by the light show going on up there where the stars had been a moment earlier: great blossoms of white light, strobes of sulfur yellow, blazing red streaks—far brighter than a comet or meteor’s tail—crisscrossed with blue, green, white, and yellow slashes—each as clear and straight as a diamond scratch on glass, then sudden bursts of orange that seemed to fold into themselves in silent implosions, followed by more white strobes and a resumption of red slashes. It was all silent, but the violence of light alone made us want to cover our ears and cringe in a sheltered place.
“What in ten hells is it?” asked Lhomo Dondrub.
“Space battle,” said Aenea. Her voice sounded terribly tired.
“I do not understand,” said the Dalai Lama. He did not sound afraid, merely curious. “The Pax authorities assured us that they would have only one of their starships in orbit—the Jibril, I believe is its name—and that it was on a diplomatic mission rather than a military one. Regent Reting Tokra also assured me of this.”
The Thunderbolt Sow made a rude noise. “Your Holiness, the Regent is in the pay of the Pax bastards.” The boy looked at her.
“I believe it to be true, Your Holiness,” said Eiheji, his bodyguard. “I have heard things in the palace.”
The sky had faded almost to black but now it exploded again in a score of places. The rocky cliff face behind us bled reflections of red, green, and yellow.
“How can we see their laser lances if there is no dust or other colloidal particles to highlight them?” asked the Dalai Lama, his dark eyes bright. Evidently the news of his Regent’s betrayal was not surprising to him… or at least not as interesting as the battle going on thousands of kilometers above us. I was interested to see that the supreme holy person of the Buddhist world had been tutored in basic science.
Again, it was his bodyguard who answered. “Some ships must have been hit and destroyed already, Your Holiness,” said Eiheji. “The coherent beams and CPB’s would become visible in the expanding fields of debris, frozen oxygen, molecular dust, and other gases.”
This caused a moment of silence in our group.
“My father watched this once, on Hyperion,” whispered Rachel. She rubbed her bare arms as if there had been a sudden chill.
I blinked and looked at the young woman. I had not missed Aenea’s comment about her friend’s father, Sol… I knew my Cantos well enough to identify Rachel as the infant on the legendary Hyperion pilgrimage, daughter of Sol Weintraub… but I admit that I had not completely believed it. The infant Rachel had become the almost mythical woman, Moneta, in the Cantos—someone who had traveled back in time in the Time Tombs with the Shrike. How could that Rachel be here, now? Aenea put her arm around Rachel’s shoulders. “My mother as well,” she said softly. “Only then it was thought to be the Hegemony forces against the Ousters.”
“Who is this, then?” demanded the Dalai Lama. “The Ousters against the Pax? And why have the Pax warships come unbidden to our system?”
Several white spheres of light pulsed, grew, dimmed, and died. We all blinked away the retinal echoes. “I believe that the Pax warships were here since their first ship arrived, Your Holiness,” said Aenea. “But I do not think that they are fighting Ousters.”
“Who then?” said the boy. Aenea turned her face back to the sky. “One of their own,” she said. Suddenly there came a series of explosions quite different than the others… a closer, brighter series of explosions, followed by three blazing meteor trails. One exploded quickly in the upper atmosphere, trailing a score of minor debris trails that quickly died out. The second shot to the west, blazing from yellow to red to pure white, breaking up twenty degrees above the horizon and spilling a hundred lesser trails across the cloudy western horizon. The third screeched across the sky from west of the zenith to the eastern horizon—and I say “screeched” deliberately because we could hear the noise, at first a teakettle whistle, then a howl, then a terrible tornadic roar, diminishing as quickly as it came—finally to break up into three or four large, blazing masses in the east, all but one of which died out before reaching the horizon. This last burning fragment of starship seemed to wiggle in its flight at the last moment, with yellow bursts of light preceding it, slowing it, before it was lost to sight. We waited another half hour on the upper platform, but except for dozens of fusion-flame streaks for the first few minutes—starships accelerating away from T’ien Shan, I knew—there was nothing left to see. Eventually the stars were once again the brightest things in the sky and everyone moved off—the Dalai Lama to sleep in the monks’ quarters here, others to permanent or temporary quarters on the lower levels.
Aenea bid a few of us to stay—Rachel and Theo, A. Bettik and Lhomo Dondrub, and me.
“That is the sign I’ve been waiting for,” she said very softly when all the others had left the platform. “We must leave tomorrow.”
“Leave?” I said. “To where? Why?”
Aenea touched my forearm. I interpreted this as saying, I will explain later. I shut up as the others spoke.
“The wings are ready, Teacher,” said Lhomo.
“I have taken the liberty of checking over the skinsuits and rebreathers in M. Endymion’s quarters while you were all away,” said A. Bettik. “They are all serviceable.”
“We’ll finish up the work and organize the ceremony tomorrow,” said Theo.
“I wish I were going,” said Rachel.
“Going where?” I said again, despite my best efforts to shut up and listen.
“You’re invited,” said Aenea, still touching my arm. That did not really answer my question. “Lhomo, and A. Bettik… if you’re both still game.”
Lhomo Dondrub gave his broad grin. The android nodded. I began to think that I was the only one in the temple compound that didn’t understand what was going on.
“Good night, all,” said Aenea. “We’ll be off at first light. You don’t need to see us off.”
“To hell with that,” said Rachel. Theo nodded agreement. “We’ll be there to say goodbye,” continued Rachel.
Aenea nodded and touched their arms. Everyone clambered down ladders or slid down cables.
Aenea and I were alone on the top platform.
The skies seemed dark after the battle. I realized that clouds had risen above the ridgeline and were wiping the stars away like a wet towel drawn across a black slate board. Aenea opened the door to her sleeping room, went in, lit the lantern, and returned to stand in the entrance. “Coming, Raul?”
We did talk. But not right away.
Lovemaking seems all too absurd when described—even the timing of our lovemaking seems absurd in the telling, with the sky literally falling and my lover having carried out a sort
-of Last Supper convocation that night—but lovemaking is never absurd when you are making love to the person you truly love. And I was. If I had not realized that before the Last Supper night, I did then—completely, totally, and without reservation. It was perhaps two hours later when Aenea pulled on a kimono and I donned a yukata and we moved away from the sleeping mat to the open shoji screens. Aenea brewed tea on the small burner set in the tatami, and we took our cups and sat with our backs against the opposing shoji frames, our bare toes and legs touching, my right side and her left knee extending over the kilometers-long drop. The air was cool and smelled of rain, but the storm had moved north of us. The summit of Heng Shan was shrouded with clouds, but all the lower ridges were illuminated by a constant play of lightning. “Is Rachel really the Rachel from the Cantos?” I said.
It was not the question I most wanted to ask, but I was afraid to ask it. “Yes,” said Aenea. “She’s the daughter of Sol Weintraub—the woman who caught the Merlin Sickness on Hyperion and aged backward twenty-seven years to the infant whom Sol brought on the pilgrimage.”
“And she was also known as Moneta,” I said. “And Mnemosyne…”
“Admonisher,” murmured Aenea. “And Memory. Appropriate names for her role in that time.”
“That was two hundred and eighty years ago!” I said. “And scores of light-years away… on Hyperion. How did she get here?”
Aenea smiled. The warm tea breathed vapors that rose to her tousled hair. “I started life more than two hundred and eighty years ago,” she said. “And scores of light-years away… on Hyperion.”
“So did she get here the same way you did? Through the Time Tombs?”
“Yes and no,” said Aenea. She held up one hand to stop my protest. “I know that you want straight talk, Raul… no parables or similes or evasions. I agree. The time for plain talk is here. But the truth is that the Sphinx Time Tombs are only part of Rachel’s journey.”
