29

he Yggdrasill continued on. The Tree of Pain its captain, the Templar True Voice of the Tree Het Masteen, called it. I could not argue. Each jump took more energy from my Aenea, my love, my poor, tired Aenea, and each separation filled the depleting pool of energy with a growing reservoir of sadness. And through it all the Shrike stood useless and alone on its high platform, like a hideous bowsprit on a doomed ship or a macabre dark angel on the top of a mirthless Christmas tree.

After leaving Colonel Kassad on Mars, the treeship jumped to orbit around Maui-Covenant. The world was in rebellion but deep within Pax space and I expected hordes of Pax warships to rise up in challenge, but there was no attack during the few hours we were there.

“One of the benefits of the armada attack on the Biosphere Startree,” Aenea said with sad irony. “They’ve stripped the inner systems of fighting ships.”

It was Theo whose hand Aenea took for the step down to Maui-Covenant. Again, I accompanied my friend and her friend.

I blinked away the white light and we were on a motile isle, its treesails filling with warm tropical wind, the sky and sea a breathtaking blue. Other isles kept pace while dolphin outriders left white wakes on either side of the convoy.

There were people on the high platform and although they were mystified by our appearance, they were not alarmed. Theo hugged the tall blond man and his dark-haired wife who came forward to greet us.

“Aenea, Raul,” she said, “I am pleased to introduce Merin and Deneb Aspic-Coreau.”

“Merin?” I said, feeling the strength in the man’s handshake.

He smiled. “Ten generations removed from the Merin Aspic,” he said. “But a direct descendant. As Deneb is of our famed lady, Siri.” He put his hand on Aenea’s shoulder. “You have come back just as promised. And brought our fiercest fighter back with you.”

“I have,” said Aenea. “And you must keep her safe. For the next days and months, you must keep clear of contact with the Pax.”

Deneb Aspic-Coreau laughed. I noticed without a trace of desire that she might be the healthiest, most beautiful woman I had ever seen. “We’re running for our lives as it is, One Who Teaches. Thrice we’ve tried to destroy the oil platform complex at Three Currents, and thrice they have cut us down like Thomas hawks. Now we are just hoping to reach the Equatorial Archipelago and hide among the isle migration, eventually to regroup at the submersible base at Lat Zero.”

“Protect her at all costs,” repeated Aenea. She turned to Theo. “I will miss you, my friend.”

Theo Bernard visibly attempted to keep from weeping, failed, and hugged Aenea fiercely. “All the time … was good,” Theo said and stood back. “I pray for your success. And I pray that you fail … for your own good.”

Aenea shook her head. “Pray for all of our success.” She held her hand up in farewell and walked back to the lower platform with me.

I could smell the intoxicating salt-and-fish scent of the sea. The sun was so fierce it made me squint, but the air temperature was perfect. The water on the dolphins’ skin was as clear to me as the sweat on my own forearms. I could imagine staying in this place forever.

“We have to go,” said Aenea. She took my hand.

A torchship did appear on radar just as we climbed out of Maui-Covenant’s gravity well, but we ignored it as Aenea stood alone on the bridge platform, staring at the stars.

I went over to stand next to her.

“Can you hear them?” she whispered.

“The stars?” I said.

“The worlds,” she said. “The people on them. Their secrets and silences. So many heartbeats.”

I shook my head. “When I am not concentrating on something else,” I said, “I am still haunted by voices and images from elsewhere. Other times. My father hunting in the moors with his brothers. Father Glaucus being thrown to his death by Rhadamanth Nemes.”

She looked at me. “You saw that?”

“Yes. It was horrible. He could not see who it was who had attacked him. The fall … the darkness … the cold … the moments of pain before he died. He had refused to accept the cruciform. It was why the Church sent him to Sol Draconi Septem … exile in the ice.”

“Yes,” said Aenea. “I’ve touched those last memories of his many times in the past ten years. But there are other memories of Father Glaucus, Raul. Warm and beautiful memories … filled with light. I hope you find them.”

“I just want the voices to stop,” I said truthfully. “This …”I gestured around at the treeship, the people we knew, Het Masteen at his bridge controls. “This is all too important.”

Aenea smiled. “It’s all too important. That’s the damned problem, isn’t it?” She turned her face back to the stars. “No, Raul, what you have to hear before you take a step is not the resonance of the language of the dead … or even of the living. It is … the essence of things.” I hesitated, not wanting to make a fool of myself, but went on:

Aenea broke in:

She smiled again. “I wonder how Uncle Martin is. Is he cold-sleeping the years away? Railing at his poor android servants? Still working on his unfinished Cantos? In all my dreams, I never manage to see Uncle Martin.”

“He’s dying,” I said.

Aenea blinked in shock.

“I dreamed of him … saw him … this morning,” I said. “He’s defrosted himself for the last time, he’s told his faithful servants. The machines are keeping him alive. The Poulsen treatments have finally worn off. He’s …” I stopped.

“Tell me,” said Aenea.

“He’s staying alive until he can see you again,” I said. “But he’s very frail.”

Aenea looked away. “It’s strange,” she said. “My mother fought with Uncle Martin during the entire pilgrimage. At times they could have killed one another. Before she died, he was her closest friend. Now …” She stopped, her voice thick.

“You’ll just have to stay alive, kiddo,” I said, my own voice strange. “Stay alive, stay healthy, and go back to see the old man. You owe him that.”

“Take my hand, Raul.”

The ship farcast through light.

AROUND TAU CETI CENTER WE WERE IMMEDIATELY attacked, not only by Pax ships but by rebel torchships fighting for the planetary secession started by the ambitious female Archbishop Achilla Silvaski. The containment field flared like a nova.

“Surely you can’t ’cast through this,” I said to Aenea when she offered the Tromo Trochi of Dhomu and me her hands.

“One does not ’cast through anything,” said my friend, and took our hands, and we were on the surface of the former capital of the late and unlamented Hegemony.

The Tromo Trochi had never been to TC², indeed, had never been off the world of T’ien Shan, but his merchant interests were aroused by the tales of this onetime capitalist capital of the human universe.

“It is a pity that I have nothing to trade,” said the clever trader. “In six months on so fecund a world, I would have built a commercial empire.”

Aenea reached into the shoulder pack she had carried and lifted out a heavy bar of gold. “This should get you started,” she said. “But remember your true duties here.”

Holding the bar, the little man bowed. “I will never forget, One Who Teaches. I have not suffered to learn the language of the dead to no avail.”

“Just stay safe for the next few months,” said Aenea. “And then, I am confident, you will be able to afford transport to any world you choose.”

“I would come to wherever you are, M. Aenea,” said the trader with the only visible show of emotion I had ever seen from him. “And I would pay all of my wealth—past, future, and fantasized—to do so:”

I had to blink at this. It occurred to me for the first time that many of Aenea’s disciples might be—probably were—a little bit in love with her, as well as very much in awe of her. To hear it from this coin-obsessed merchant, though, was a shock.

Aenea touched his arm. “Be safe and stay well.”

The Yggdrasill was still under attack when we returned. It was under attack when Aenea ’cast us away from the Tau Ceti System.

The inner city-world of Lusus was much as I remembered it from my brief sojourn there: a series of Hive towers above the vertical canyons of gray metal. George Tsarong and Jigme Norbu bade us farewell there. The stocky, heavily muscled George—weeping as he hugged Aenea—might have passed for an average Lusian in dim light, but the skeletal Jigme would stand out in the Hive-bound crowds. But Lusus was used to offworlders and our two foremen would do well as long as they had money. But Lusus was one of the few Pax worlds to have returned to universal credit cards and Aenea did not have one of these in her backpack.

A few minutes after we stepped from the empty Dreg’s Hive corridors, however, seven figures in crimson cloaks approached. I stepped between Aenea and these ominous figures, but rather than attack, the seven men went to their knees on the greasy floor, bowed their heads, and chanted:

“The Shrike Cult,” I said stupidly. “I thought they were gone—wiped out during the Fall.”

“We prefer to be referred to as the Church of the Final Atonement,” said the first man, rising from his knees but still bowing in Aenea’s direction. “And no … we were not ‘wiped out’ as you put it … merely driven underground. Welcome, Daughter of Light. Welcome, Bride of the Avatar.”

Aenea shook her head with visible impatience. “I am bride of no one, Bishop Duruyen. These are the two men I have brought to entrust to your protection for the next ten months.”

The Bishop in red bowed his bald head. “Just as your prophecies said, Daughter of Light.”

“Not prophecies,” said Aenea. “Promises.” She turned and hugged George and Jigme a final time.

“Will we see you again, Architect?” said Jigme.

“I cannot promise that,” said Aenea. “But I do promise that if it is in my power, we will be in contact again.”

I followed her back to the empty hall in the dripping corridors of Dreg’s Hive, where our departure would not seem so miraculous as to add to the Shrike Cult’s already fertile canon.

ON TSINTAO-HSISHUANG PANNA, WE SAID GOOD-BYE to the Dalai Lama and his brother, Labsang Samten. Labsang wept. The boy Lama did not.

“The local people’s Mandarin dialect is atrocious,” said the Dalai Lama.

“But they will understand you, Your Holiness,” said Aenea. “And they will listen.”

“But you are my teacher,” said the boy, his voice near anger. “How can I teach them without your help?”

“I will help,” said Aenea. “I will try to help. And then it is your job. And theirs.”

“But we may share communion with them?” asked Lab-sang.

“If they ask for it,” said Aenea. To the boy she said, “Would you give me your blessing, Your Holiness?”

The child smiled. “It is I who should be asking for a blessing, Teacher.”

“Please,” said Aenea, and again I could hear the weariness in her voice.

The Dalai Lama bowed and, with his eyes closed, said:

“This is from the ‘Prayer of Kuntu Sangpo,’ as revealed to me through the vision of my terton in a previous life—

Aenea bowed toward the boy. “The Palace of the Primal Space of Emptiness,” she murmured. “How much more elegant than my clumsy description of the ‘Void Which Binds.’ Thank you, Your Holiness.”

The child bowed. “Thank you, Revered Teacher. May your death be more quick and less painful than we both expect.”

Aenea and I returned to the treeship. “What did he mean!” I demanded, both of my hands on her shoulders. “ ‘Death more quick and less painful’? What the hell does that mean? Are you planning to be crucified? Does this goddamned messiah impersonation have to go to the same bizarre end? Tell me, Aenea!” I realized that I was shaking her … shaking my dear friend, my beloved girl. I dropped my hands.

Aenea put her arms around me. “Just stay with me, Raul. Stay with me as long as you can.”

“I will,” I said, patting her back. “I swear to you I will.”

ON FUJI WE SAID GOOD-BYE TO KENSHIRO ENDO AND Haruyuki Otaki. On Deneb Drei it was a child whom I had never met—a ten-year-old girl named Katherine—who stayed behind, alone and seemingly unafraid. On Sol Draconi Septem, that world of frozen air and deadly wraiths where Father Glaucus and our Chitchatuk friends had been foully murdered, the sad and brooding scaffold rigger, Rimsi Kyipup, volunteered almost happily to be left behind. On Nevermore it was another man I had not had the privilege of meeting—a soft-spoken, elderly gentleman who seemed like Martin Silenus’s kindlier younger brother. On God’s Grove, where A. Bettik had lost part of his arm ten standard years earlier, the two Templar lieutenants of Het Masteen ’cast down with Aenea and me and did not return. On Hebron, empty now of its Jewish settlers but filled now with good Christian colonists sent there by the Pax, the Seneschai Aluit empaths, Lleeoonn and Ooeeaall ’cast down to say good-bye to us on an empty desert evening where the rocks still held the daytime’s glow.

On Parvati, the usually happy sisters Kuku Se and Kay Se wept and hugged the both of us good-bye. On Asquith, a family of two parents and their five golden-haired children stayed behind. Above the white cloud-swirl and blue ocean world of Mare Infinitus—a world whose mere name haunted me with memories of pain and friendship—Aenea asked Sergeant Gregorius if he would ’cast down with her to meet the rebels and support her cause.

“And leave the captain?” asked the giant, obviously shocked by the suggestion.

De Soya stepped forward. “There is no more captain, Sergeant. My dear friend. Only this priest without a Church. And I suspect that we would do more good now apart than together. Am I right; M. Aenea?”

My friend nodded. “I had hoped that Lhomo would be my representative on Mare Infinitus,” she said. “The smugglers and rebels and Lantern Mouth hunters on this world would respect a man of strength. But it will be difficult and dangerous … the rebellion still rages here and the Pax takes no prisoners.”

“ ’Tis not th’ danger I object to!” cried Gregorius. “I’m willin’ to die the true death a hundred times over for a good cause.”

“I know that, Sergeant,” said Aenea.

The giant looked at his former captain and then back to Aenea. “Lass, I know ye do not like to tell the future, even though we know you spy it now and then. But tell me this … is there a chance of reunion with my captain?”

“Yes,” said Aenea. “And with some you thought dead … such as Corporal Kee.”

“Then I’ll go. I’ll do your will. I may not be of the Corps Helvetica anymore, but the obedience they taught me runs deep.”

“It’s not obedience we ask now,” said Father de Soya. “It is something harder and deeper.”

Sergeant Gregorius thought a moment. “Aye,” he said at last and turned his back on everyone a moment. “Let’s go, lass,” he said, holding out his hand for Aenea’s touch.

We left him on an abandoned platform somewhere in the South Littoral, but Aenea told him that submersibles would put in there within a day.

ABOVE MADREDEDIOS, FATHER DE SOYA STEPPED forward, but Aenea held up her hand to stop him.

“Surely this is my world,” said the priest. “I was born here. My diocese was here. I imagine that I will die here.”

“Perhaps,” said Aenea, “but I need you for a more difficult place and a more dangerous job, Federico.”

“Where is that?” said the sad-eyed priest.

“Pacem,” said Aenea. “Our last stop.”

I stepped closer. “Wait, kiddo,” I said. “I’m going with you to Pacem if you insist on going there. You said that I could stay with you.” My voice sounded querulous and desperate even to me.

“Yes,” said Aenea, touching my wrist with her cool fingers. “But I would like Father de Soya to come with us when it is time.”

The Jesuit looked confused and a bit disappointed, but he bowed his head. Evidently obedience ran even deeper in the Society of Jesus than it did in the Corps Helvetica.

In the end, the T’ien Shan bamboo worker Voytek Majer and his new fiancée, the brickmaker Viki Groselj, volunteered to stay on MadredeDios.

On Freeholm, we said good-bye to Janusz Kurtyka. On Kas-trop-Rauxel, recently reterraformed and settled by the Pax, it was the soldier Jigme Paring who volunteered to find the rebel population. Above Parsimony, while Pax warships turned the containment field into a torrent of noise and light, a woman named Helen Dean O’Brian stepped forward and took Aenea’s hand. On Esperance, Aenea and I bid farewell to the former mayor of Jo-kung, Charles Chi-kyap Kempo. On Grass, standing shoulder high in the yellow world prairie, we waved goodbye to Isher Perpet, one of the bolder rebels once rescued from a Pax prison galley and gathered in by Father de Soya. On Qom-Riyadh, where the mosques were quickly being bulldozed or converted to cathedrals by the new Pax settlers, we ’cast down in the dead of night and whispered our farewells to a former refugee from that world named Merwin Muhammed Ali and to our former interpreter on T’ien Shan, the clever Perri Samdup.

Above Renaissance Minor, with a horde of in-system warships accelerating toward us with murderous intent, it was the silent ex-prisoner, Hoagan Liebler who stepped forward. “I was a spy,” said the pale man. He was speaking to Aenea but looking directly at Father de Soya. “I sold my allegiance for money, so that I could return to this world to renew my family’s lost lands and wealth. I betrayed my captain and my soul.”

“My son,” said Father de Soya, “you have long since been forgiven those sins, if sins they were … by both your captain and, more importantly, by God. No harm was done.”

Liebler nodded slowly. “The voices I have been listening to since I drank the wine with M. Aenea …”He trailed off. “I know many people on this world,” he said, his voice stronger. “I wish to return home to start this new life.”

“Yes,” said Aenea and offered her hand.

ON VITUS-GRAY-BALIANUS B, AENEA, THE DORJE Phamo, and I ’cast down to a desert wasteland, far from the river with its farm fields and brightly painted cottages lining the way where the kind people of the Amoiete Spectrum Helix had nursed me to health and helped me escape the Pax. Here there was only a tumble of boulders and dried fissures, mazes of tunnel entrances in the rock, and dust storms blowing in from the bloody sunset on the black-cloud horizon. It reminded me of Mars with warmer, thicker air and more of a stench of death and cordite to it.

The shrouded figures surrounded us almost immediately, flechette guns and hellwhips at the ready. I tried again to step between Aenea and the danger, but the figures in the blowing red wind surrounded us and raised their weapons.

“Wait!” cried a voice familiar to me, and one of the shrouded soldiers slid down a red dune to stand in front of us. “Wait!” she called again to those eager to shoot, and this time she unwrapped the bands of her cowl.

“Dem Loa!” I cried and stepped forward to hug the short woman in her bulky battle garb. I saw tears leaving muddy streaks on her cheeks.

“You have brought back your special one,” said the woman who had saved me. “Just as you promised.”

I introduced her to Aenea and then to the Dorje Phamo, feeling silly and happy at the same moment. Dem Loa and Aenea regarded one another for a moment, and then hugged.

I looked around at the other figures who still hung back in the red twilight. “Where is Dem Ria?” I asked. “Alem Mikail Dem Alem? And your children—Bin and Ces Ambre?”

“Dead,” said Dem Loa. “All dead, except Ces Ambre, who is missing after the last attack from the Bombasino Pax.”

I stood speechless, stunned.

“Bin Ria Dem Loa Alem died of his illness,” continued Dem Loa, “but the rest died in our war with the Pax.”

“War with the Pax,” I repeated. “I hope to God that I did not start it …”

Dem Loa raised her hand. “No, Raul Endymion. You did not start it. Those of us in the Amoiete Spectrum Helix who prized our own ways refused the cross … that is what started it. The rebellion had already begun when you were with us. After you left; we thought we had it won. The cowardly troops at Pax Base Bombasino sued for peace, ignored the orders from their commanders in space, and made treaties with us. More Pax ships arrived. They bombed their own base … then came after our villages. It has been war since then. When they land and try to occupy the land, we kill many of them. They send more.”

“Dem Loa,” I said, “I am so, so sorry.”

She set her hand on my chest and nodded. I saw the smile that I remembered from our hours together. She looked at Aenea again. “You are the one he spoke of in his delirium and his pain. You are the one whom he loved. Do you love him as well, child?”

“I do,” said Aenea.

“Good,” said Dem Loa. “It would be sad if a man who thought he was dying expressed such love for someone who did not feel the same about him.” Dem Loa looked at the Thunderbolt Sow, silent and regal. “You are a priestess?”

“Not a priestess,” said the Thunderbolt Sow, “but the abbess of the Samden Gompa monastery.”

Dem Loa showed her teeth. “You rule over monks? Over men?”

“I … instruct them,” said the Dorje Phamo. The wind ruffled her steel-gray hair.

“Just as good as ruling them.” Dem Loa laughed. “Welcome then, Dorje Phamo.” To Aenea she said, “And are you staying with us, child? Or just touching us and passing on as our prophecies predict?”

“I must go on,” said Aenea. “But I would like to leave the Dorje Phamo here as your ally and our … liaison.”

Dem Loa nodded. “It is dangerous here now,” she said to the Thunderbolt Sow.

The Dorje Phamo smiled at the shorter woman. The strength of the two was almost a palpable energy in the air around us.

“Good,” said Dem Loa. She hugged me. “Be kind to your love, Raul Endymion. Be good to her in the hours granted to you by the cycles of life and chaos.”

“I will,” I said.

To Aenea, Dem Loa said, “Thank you for coming, child. It was our wish. It was our hope.” The two women hugged again. I felt suddenly shy, as if I had brought Aenea home to meet my own mother or Grandam.

The Dorje Phamo touched both of us in benediction. “Kale pe a,” she said to Aenea.

We moved away in the twilight dust storm and ’cast through the burst of white light. On the quiet of the Yggdrasill’s bridge, I said to Aenea, “What was that she said?”

“Kale pe a,” repeated my friend. “It is an ancient Tibetan farewell when a caravan sets out to climb the high peaks. It means—go slowly if you wish to return.”

AND SO IT WENT FOR A HUNDRED OTHER WORLDS, each one visited only for moments, but each farewell moving and stirring in its own way. It is hard for me to say how many days and nights were spent on this final voyage with Aenea, because there was only the ’casting down and ’casting up, the treeship entering the light one place and emerging elsewhere, and when everyone was too tired to go on, the Yggdrasill was allowed to drift in empty space for a few hours while the ergs rested and the rest of us tried to sleep.

I remember at least three of these sleep periods, so perhaps we traveled for only three days and nights. Or perhaps we traveled for a week or more and slept only three times. But I remember that Aenea and I slept little and loved one another tenderly, as if each time we held each other it might be our last.

It was during one of these brief interludes alone that I whispered to her, “Why are you doing this, kiddo? Not just so we can all become like the Ousters and catch sunlight in our wings. I mean … it was beautiful … but I like planets. I like dirt under my boots. I like just being … human. Being a man.”

Aenea had chuckled and touched my cheek. I remember that the light was dim but that I could see the perspiration still beaded between her breasts. “I like your being a man too, Raul my love.”

“I mean …” I began awkwardly.

“I know what you mean,” whispered Aenea. “I like planets too. And I like being human … just being a woman. It’s not for some Utopian evolution of humankind into Ouster angels or Seneschai empaths that I’m doing … what I have to do.”

“What then?” I whispered into her hair.

“Just for the chance to choose,” she said softly. “Just for the opportunity to continue being human, whatever that means to each person who chooses.”

“To choose again?” I said.

“Yes,” said Aenea. “Even if that means choosing what one has had before. Even if it means choosing the Pax, the cruciform, and alliance with the Core.”

I did not understand, but at that moment I was more interested in holding her than in fully understanding.

After moments of silence, Aenea said, “Raul … I also love the dirt under my boots, the sound of the wind in the grass. Would you do something for me?”

“Anything,” I said fiercely.

“If I die before you,” she whispered, “would you return my ashes to Old Earth and sprinkle them where we were happiest together?”

If she had stabbed me in the heart, it would not have hurt as much. “You said that I could stay with you,” I said at last, my voice thick and angry and lost. “That I could go anywhere you go:”

“And I meant it, my love,” whispered Aenea. “But if I go ahead of you into death, will you do that for me? Wait a few years, and then set my ashes free where we had been happiest on Old Earth?”

I felt like squeezing her until she cried out then. Until she renounced her request. Instead, I whispered, “How the goddamned hell am I supposed to get back to Old Earth? It’s in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, isn’t it? Some hundred-sixty thousand light-years away, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Aenea.

“Well, are you going to open the farcaster doors again so I can get back there?”

“No,” said Aenea. “Those doors are closed forever.”

“Then how the hell do you expect me to …”I closed my eyes. “Don’t ask me to do this, Aenea.”

“I’ve already asked you, my love.”

“Ask me to die with you instead.”

“No,” she said. “I’m asking you to live for me. To do this for me.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Does that mean yes, Raul?”

“It means shit,” I said. “I hate martyrs. I hate predestination. I hate love stories with sad endings.”

“So do I,” whispered Aenea. “Will you do this for me?”

I made a noise. “Where were we happiest on Old Earth?” I said at last. “You must mean Taliesin West, because we didn’t see much else of the planet together.”

“You’ll know,” whispered Aenea. “Let’s go to sleep.”

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” I said roughly.

She put her arms around me. It had been delightful sleeping together in zero gravity on the Startree. It was even more delightful sleeping together in our small bed in our private cubby in the slight gravity field of the Yggdrasill. I could not conceive of a time when I would have to sleep without her next to me.

“Sprinkle your ashes, eh?” I whispered eventually.

“Yes,” she murmured, more asleep than awake.

“Kiddo, my dear, my love,” I said, “you’re a morbid little bitch.”

“Yes,” murmured my Aenea. “But I’m your morbid little bitch.”

By and by, we did get to sleep.

ON OUR LAST DAY, AENEA ’CAST US TO A STAR SYSTEM with an M3 class red dwarf at its core and a sweet Earthlike world swinging in close orbit.

“No,” said Rachel as our small group stood on Het Masteen’s bridge. The three hundred had left us one by one, Aenea’s many disciples left sprinkled among the Pax worlds like so many bottles cast into a great ocean but without their messages. Now Father de Soya remained, Rachel, Aenea, the captain Het Masteen, A. Bettik, a few crew clones, the ergs below, and me. And the Shrike, silent and motionless on its high platform.

“No,” Rachel said again. “I’ve changed my mind. I want to go on with you.”

Aenea stood with her arms folded. She had been especially quiet all this long morning of ’casting and bidding farewells to disciples. “As you will,” she said softly. “You know I would not demand that you do anything, Rache.”

“Damn you,” Rachel said softly.

“Yes,” said Aenea.

Rachel clenched her fists. “Is this ever going to fucking end?”

“What do you mean?” said Aenea.

“You know what I mean. My father … my mother … your mother … their lives filled with this. My life … lived twice now … always fighting this unseen enemy. Running and running and waiting and waiting. Backward and forward through time like some accursed, out-of-control dreidel … oh, damn.”

Aenea waited.

“One request,” said Rachel. She looked at me. “No offense, Raul. I’ve come to like you a lot. But could Aenea bring me down to Barnard’s World alone.”

I looked at Aenea. “It’s all right with me,” I said.

Rachel sighed. “Back to this backward world again … cornfields and sunsets and tiny little towns with big white houses and big wide porches. It bored me when I was eight.”

“You loved it when you were eight,” said Aenea.

“Yeah,” said Rachel. “I did.” She shook the priest’s hand, then Het Masteen’s, then mine.

On a whim, remembering the most obscure verses of the old poet’s Cantos, remembering laughing about them at the edge of the campfire’s light with Grandam having me repeat them line for line, wondering if people ever really said such things, I said to Rachel, “See you later, alligator.”

The young woman looked at me strangely, her green eyes catching the light from the world hanging above us. “After a while, crocodile.”

She took Aenea’s hand and they were gone. No flash of light when one was not traveling with Aenea. Just a sudden … absence.

Aenea returned within five minutes. Het Masteen stepped back from the control circle and folded his hands in the sleeves of his robe. “One Who Teaches?”

“Pacem System, please, True Voice of the Tree Het Masteen.”

The Templar did not move. “You know, dear friend and teacher, that by now the Pax will have recalled half of their fighting ships to the Vatican’s home system.”

Aenea looked up and around at the gently rustling leaves of the beautiful tree on which we rode. A kilometer behind us, the glow of the fusion drive was pushing us slowly out of Barnard’s World’s gravity well. No Pax ships had challenged us here. “Will the ergs be able to hold the fields until we get close to Pacem?” she asked.

The captain’s small hands came out of the sleeves of his robe and gestured palms up. “It is doubtful. They are exhausted. The toll these attacks have taken on them …”

“I know,” Aenea said. “And I am very sorry. You need only be in-system for a minute or two. Perhaps if you accelerate now and are ready for full-drive maneuvers when we appear in Pacem System, the treeship can ’cast out before the fields are overwhelmed.”

“We will try,” said Het Masteen. “But be prepared to ’cast away immediately. The life of the treeship may be measured in seconds after we arrive.”

“First, we have to send the Consul’s ship away,” said Aenea. “We will have to do it now, here. Just a few moments, Het Masteen.”

The Templar nodded and went back to his displays and touch panels.

“Oh, no,” I said when she turned to me. “I’m not going to Hyperion in the ship.”

Aenea looked surprised. “You thought that I was sending you away after I said that you could accompany me?”

I folded my arms. “We’ve visited most of the Pax and Outback worlds … except Hyperion. Whatever you’re planning, I can’t believe that you’ll leave our homeworld out of it.”

“I’m not going to,” said Aenea. “But I’m also not ’casting us there.”

I did not understand.

“A. Bettik,” said Aenea, “the ship should be about ready to depart. Do you have the letter I wrote to Uncle Martin?”

“I do, M. Aenea,” said the android. The blue-skinned man did not look happy, but neither did he look distressed.

“Please give him my love,” said Aenea.

“Wait, wait,” I said. “A. Bettik is your … your envoy … to Hyperion?”

Aenea rubbed her cheek. I sensed that she was more exhausted than I could imagine, but saving her strength for something important yet to come. “My envoy?” she said. “You mean like Rachel and Theo and the Dorje Phamo and George and Jigme?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And the three hundred others.”

“No,” said Aenea, “A. Bettik will not be my envoy to Hyperion. Not in that sense. And the Consul’s ship has a deep time-debt to pay via Hawking drive. It … and A. Bettik … will not arrive for months of our time.”

“Then who is the envoy … the liaison on Hyperion?” I asked, certain that this world would not be exempted.

“Can’t you guess?” My friend smiled. “Dear Uncle Martin. The poet and critic once again becomes a player in this endless chess game with the Core.”

“But the others,” I said, “all took communion with you and …”I stopped.

“Yes,” said Aenea. “When I was still a child. Uncle Martin understood. He drank the wine. It was not hard for him to adapt … he has been hearing the language of the dead and of the living for centuries in his own poet’s way. It is how he came to write the Cantos in the first place. Why he thought the Shrike was his muse.”

“So why is A. Bettik taking the ship back there?” I said. “Just to bring your message?”

“More than that,” said Aenea. “If things work out, we will see.” She hugged the android and he awkwardly patted her back with his one hand.

A moment later, welling up with more emotion than I had imagined possible, I shook that blue hand. “I will miss you,” I said stupidly.

The android looked at me for a long moment, nodded, and turned toward the waiting ship.

“A. Bettik!” I called just as he was about to enter the ship.

He turned back and waited while I ran to my small pile of belongings on the lower platform, then jogged back up the steps. “Will you take this?” I said, handing him the leather tube.

“The hawking mat,” said A. Bettik. “Yes, of course, M. Endymion. I will be happy to keep this for you until I see you again.”

“And if we don’t see each other again,” I said and paused. I was about to say, Please give it to Martin Silenus, but I knew from my own waking visions that the old poet was near death. “If we don’t happen to see each other again, A. Bettik,” I said, “please keep the mat as a memento of our trip together. And of our friendship.”

A. Bettik looked at me for another quiet moment, nodded again, and went into the Consul’s ship. I half expected the ship to say its good-byes, filled with malapropisms and misinformation, but it simply conferred with the treeship’s ergs, rose silently on repellors until it cleared the containment field, and then moved away on low thrusters until it was a safe distance from us. Its fusion tail was so bright that it made my eyes water as I watched it accelerate out and away from Barnard’s World and the Yggdrasill. I wished then with all of my heart and will that Aenea and I were going back to Hyperion with A. Bettik, ready to sleep for days on the large bed at the apex of the ship, then listen to music on the Steinway and swim in a zero-g pool above the balcony—

“We have to go,” Aenea said to Het Masteen. “Could you please prepare the ergs for what we are about to encounter.”

“As you wish, Revered One Who Teaches,” said the True Voice of the Tree.

“And Het Masteen …” said Aenea.

The Templar turned and awaited further orders.

“Thank you, Het Masteen,” she said. “On behalf of all of those who traveled with you on this voyage and all those who will tell of your voyage for generations to come, thank you, Het Masteen.”

The Templar bowed and went back to his panels. “Full fusion drive to point nine-two. Prepare for evasive maneuvers. Prepare for Pacem System,” he said to his beloved ergs wrapped around the invisible singularity three quarters of a kilometer below us. “Prepare for Pacem System.”

Father de Soya had been standing quietly nearby, but now he took Aenea’s right hand in his left hand. With his right hand, he gave a quiet benediction in the direction of the Templar and the crew clones—“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritu Sanctus.”

“Amen,” I said, taking Aenea’s left hand.

“Amen,” said Aenea.