by Дэн Симмонс
Outside, the Germans are shouting at the Polish driver and his Polish helpers. I hear one of the helpers shout “Gas!” in Polish and there comes the sound of a pipe or hose being coupled somewhere under our truck. The engine starts again with a roar.
Some of those around me continue praying with me, but most of the men begin screaming. The van starts to move, very slowly. I know that we are taking the narrow, asphalted road that the Germans built from Chelmno into the forest. All of the villagers marveled at this, because the road goes nowhere… it stops in the forest where the road widens so that there is room for the vans to turn around. But there is nothing there but the forest and the ovens the Germans ordered built and the pits the Germans ordered dug. The Jews in the camp who worked on that road and who dug the pits out there and who worked to build the ovens in the forest have told us this. We had not believed them when they told us, and then they were gone… transported.
The air thickens. The screams rise. My head hurts. It is hard to breathe. My heart is pounding wildly. I am holding the hands of a young man—a boy—on my left, and an old man to my right. Both are praying with me.
Somewhere in our van, someone is singing above the screams, singing in Yiddish, singing in a baritone that has been trained for opera:
“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken us? We have been thrust into the fire before, but we have never denied Thy Holy Law.”
Aenea! My God! What?
Shhh. It’s all right, my dear. I’m here.
I don’t… what?
My name is Kaltryn Cateyen Endymion and I am the wife of Trorbe Endymion, who died five local months ago in a hunting accident. I am also the mother of the child named Raul, now three Hyperion-years old, who is playing by the campfire in the caravan circle as aunts watch him.
I climb the grassy hill above the valley where the caravan wagons have circled for the night. There are a few triaspen along the stream in the valley, but otherwise the moors are empty of any landmarks except short grass, heather, sedge, rocks, boulders, and lichen. And sheep.
Hundreds of the caravan’s sheep are visible and audible on the hills to the east as they mill and surge to the sheepdogs’ herding.
Grandam is mending clothes on a rock outcropping with a grand view down the valley to the west. There is a haze over the western horizon that means open water, the sea, but the immediate world is bound about by the moors, the evening sky of deepening lapis, the meteor streaks silently crossing and crisscrossing that sky, and the sound of the wind in the grass.
I take a seat on a rock next to Grandam. She is my late mother’s mother, and her face is our face but older, with weathered skin, short white hair, firm bones in a strong face, a blade of a nose, and brown eyes with laugh lines at the corners.
“You’re back at last,” says the older woman. “Was the voyage home smooth?”
“Aye,” I say. “Tom took us along the coast from Port Romance and then up the Beak Highway rather than paying the ferry toll through the Fens. We stayed at the Benbroke Inn the first night, camped along the Suiss the second.” Grandam nods. Her fingers are busy with the sewing. There is a basket of clothes next to her on the rock. “And the doctors?”
“The clinic was large,” I say. “The Christians have added to it since last we were in Port Romance. The sisters… the nurses… were very kind during the tests.”
Grandam waits.
I look down the valley to where the sun is breaking free from the dark clouds. Light streaks the valley tops, throws subtle shadows behind the low boulders and rocky hilltops, and sets the heather aflame. “It is cancer,” I say. “The new strain.”
“We knew that from the Moor’s Edge doctor,” says Grandam. “What did they say the prognosis is?” I pick up a shirt—it is one of Trorbe’s, but belongs to his brother, Raul’s Uncle Ley. I pull my own needle and thread from my apron and begin to sew on the button that Trorbe had lost just before his last hunting trip north. My cheeks are hot at the thought that I gave this shirt to Ley with the button missing.
“They recommend that I accept the cross,” I say.
“There is no cure?” says Grandam. “With all their machines and serums?”
“There used to be,” I say. “But evidently it used the molecular technology…”
“Nanotech,” says Grandam.
“Yes. And the Church banned it some time ago. The more advanced worlds have other treatments.”
“But Hyperion does not,” says Grandam and sets the clothes in her lap aside.
“Correct.” As I speak, I feel very tired, still a little ill from the tests and the trip, and very calm. But also very sad. I can hear Raul and the other boys laughing on the breeze. “And they counsel accepting their cross,” says Grandam, the last word sounding short and sharp-edged.
“Yes. A very nice young priest talked to me for hours yesterday.” Grandam looks me in the eye. “And will you do it, Kaltryn?”
I return her gaze. “No.”
“You are sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Trorbe would be alive again and with us now if he had accepted the cruciform last spring as the missionary pleaded.”
“Not my Trorbe,” I say and turn away. For the first time since the pain began seven weeks ago, I am crying. Not for me, I know, but at the memory of Trorbe smiling and waving that last sunrise morn when he set out with his brothers to hunt salt ibson near the coast.
Grandam is holding my hand. “You’re thinking of Raul?”
I shake my head. “Not yet. In a few weeks, I’ll think of nothing else.”
“You do not have to worry about that, you know,” Grandam says softly. “I still remember how to raise a young one. I still have tales to tell and skills to teach. And I will keep your memory alive in him.”
“He will be so young when…” I say and stop.
Grandam is squeezing my hand. “The young remember most deeply,” she says softly. “When we are old and failing, it is the memories of childhood which can be summoned most clearly.”
The sunset is brilliant but distorted by my tears. I keep my face half turned away from Grandam’s gaze. “I don’t want him remembering me only when he is old. I want to see him… every day… see him play and grow up.”
“Do you remember the verse of Ryokan that I taught you when you were barely older than Raul?” says Grandam.
I have to laugh. “You taught me dozens of Ryokan verses, Grandam.”
“The first one,” says the old woman. It takes me only a moment to recall it. I say the verse, avoiding the singsong quality to my voice just as Grandam taught me when I was little older than Raul is now: “How happy I am As I go hand in hand With the children, To gather young greens In the fields of spring!”
Grandam has closed her eyes. I can see how thin the parchment of her eyelids is. “You used to like that verse, Kaltryn.”
“I still do.”
“And does it say anything about the need to gather greens next week or next year or ten years from now in order to be happy now?”
I smile. “Easy for you to say, old woman,” I say, my voice soft and affectionate to temper the disrespect in the words. “You’ve been gathering greens for seventy-four springs and plan to do so for another seventy.”
“Not so many to come, I think.” She squeezes my hand a final time and releases it. “But the important thing is to walk with the children now, in this evening’s spring sunlight, and to gather the greens quickly, for tonight’s dinner. I am having your favorite meal.” I actually clap my hands at this. “The Northwind soup? But the leeks are not ripe.”
“They are in the south swards, where I sent Lee and his boys to search. And they have a pot full. Go now, get the spring greens to add to the mix. Take your child and be back before true dark.”
“I love you, Grandam.”
“I know. And Raul loves you, Little One. And I shall take care that the circle remains unbroken. Run on now.”
I come awake falling. I have b
een awake.
The leaves of the Startree have shaded the pods for night and the stars to the out-system side are blazing.
The voices do not diminish. The images do not fade. This is not like dreaming. This is a maelstrom of images and voices… thousands of voices in chorus, all clamoring to be heard.
I had not remembered my mother’s voice until this moment. When Rabbi Schulmann cried out in Old Earth Polish and prayed in Yiddish, I had understood not only his voice but his thoughts.
I am going mad.
“No, my dear, you are not going mad,” whispers Aenea. She is floating against the warm pod wall with me, holding me. The chronometer on my comlog says that the sleep period along this region of the Biosphere Startree is almost over, that the leaves will be shifting to allow the sunlight in within the hour. The voices whisper and murmur and argue and sob. The images flit at the back of my brain like colors after a terrible blow to the head. I realize that I am holding myself stiffly, fists clenched, teeth clenched, neck veins straining, as against a terrible wind or wave of pain.
“No, no,” Aenea is saying, her soft hands stroking my cheek and temples. Sweat floats around me like a sour nimbus. “No, Raul, relax. You are so sensitive to this, my dear, just as I thought. Relax and allow the voices to subside. You can control this, my darling. You can listen when you wish, quiet them when you must.”
“But they never go away?” I say.
“Not far away,” whispers Aenea. Ouster angels float in the sunlight beyond the leaf barrier sunward.
“And you have listened to this since you were an infant?” I say.
“Since before I was born,” says my darling.
“My God, my God,” I say, holding my fists against my eyes. “My God.”
My name is Amnye Machen Also Ata and I am eleven standard years old when the Pax comes to my village of Qom-Riyadh. Our village is far from the cities, far from the few highways and skyways, far, even, from the caravan routes that crisscross the rock desert and the Burning Plains.
For two days the evening skies have shown the Pax ships burning like embers as they pass from east to west in what my father says is a place above the air. Yesterday the village radio carried orders from the imam at Al-Ghazali who heard over the phone lines from Omar that everyone in the High Reaches and the Burning Plains Oasis Camps are to assemble outside their yurts and wait. Father has gone to the meeting of the men inside the mud-walled mosque in our village.
The rest of my family stands outside our yurt. The other thirty families also wait.
Our village poet, Farid ud-Din Attar, walks among us, trying to settle our nerves with verse, but even the adults are fearful.
My father has returned. He tells Mother that the mullah has decided that we cannot wait for the infidels to kill us. The village radio has not been able to raise the mosque at Al-Ghazali or Omar. Father thinks that the radio is broken again, but the mullah believes that the infidels have killed everyone west of the Burning Plains.
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 créche 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.
