The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (338 page)

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
Yggdrasil’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 Mas-teen’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 flicking 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.

They hit us less than two seconds after we ’cast into the system, the torchships and archangels converging fire on us much as the rainbow sharks had once converged on me in the seas of Mare Infinitus.