Aenea paused again and looked at the shaven heads and bright, dark eyes. These were not religious fanatics, I saw, not mindless servants or self-punishing ascetics, but were, instead, row upon row of intelligent, questioning, alert young men and women. I say “young,” but among the fresh and youthful faces were many with gray beards and subtle wrinkles.
“My dear friend the Lama tells me that there are more now who wish to share in communion with the Void Which Binds this day,” said Aenea.
About one hundred of the monks in the front rows went to their knees.
Aenea nodded. “So it shall be,” she said softly. The Lama brought flagons of wine and many simple bronze cups. Before filling the cups or lancing her finger for the drops of blood, Aenea said, “But before you partake of this communion, I must remind you that this is a physical change, not a spiritual one. Your individual quest for God or Enlightenment must remain just that … your individual quest. This moment of change will not bring setori or salvation. It will bring only … change.”
My young friend held up one finger, the finger she was about to prick to draw blood. “In the cells of my blood are unique DNA and RNA arrangements along with certain viral agents which will invade your body, starting through the digestive lining of your stomachs and ending in every cell of your body. These invasive viruses are somatic … that is, they shall be passed along to your children.
“I have taught your teachers and they have taught you that these physical changes will allow you—after some training—to touch the Void Which Binds more directly, thus learning the language of the dead and of the living. Eventually, with much more experience and training, it may be possible for you to hear the music of the spheres and take a true step elsewhere.” She raised the finger higher. “This is not metaphysics, my dear friends. This is a mutant viral agent. Be warned that you will never be able to wear the cruciform of the Pax, nor will your children nor their children’s children. This basic change in the soul of your genes and chromosomes will ban you from that form of physical longevity forever.
“This communion will not offer you immortality, my dear friends. It insures that death will be our common end. I say again—I do not offer you eternal life or instant setori. If these are the things you seek most dearly, you must find them in your own religious searchings. I offer you only a deepening of the human experience of life and a connection to others—human or not—who have shared that commitment to living. There is no shame if you change your mind now. But there is duty, discomfort, and great danger to those who partake of this communion and, in so doing, become teachers themselves of the Void Which Binds, as well as fellow carriers of this new virus of human choice.”
Aenea waited, but none of the hundred monks moved or left. All remained kneeling, heads slightly bowed as if in contemplation.
“So be it,” said Aenea. “I wish you all well.” And she pricked her finger, squeezing a droplet of blood into each prepared cup of wine held out by the elderly Lama.
It took only a few minutes for the hundred monks to pass the cups down their rows, each drinking but a drop. I rose from my cushion then, determined to go to the end of the row nearest me and partake of this communion, but Aenea beckoned me to her.
“Not yet, my dear,” she whispered in my ear, touching my shoulder.
I was tempted to argue—why was I being excluded from this?—but instead returned to my place next to A. Bettik. I leaned over and whispered to the android, “You haven’t done this so-called communion, have you?”
The blue man smiled. “No, M. Endymion. And I never shall.”
I was about to ask why, but at that moment the communion ended, the twelve hundred monks rose to their feet, Aenea walked among them—chatting and touching hands—and I saw from her glance toward me over shaven heads that it was time for us to leave.
NEMES, SCYLLA, AND BRIAREUS REGARD THE SHRIKE across the expanse of the suspension bridge, not phase-shifting for a moment, appreciating the real-time view of their enemy.
It’s absurd, sends Briareus. A child’s bogeyman. All spikes and thorns and teeth. How silly.
Tell that to Gyges, responds Nemes. Ready?
Ready, sends Scylla.
Ready, sends Briareus.
The three phase-shift in unison. Nemes sees the air around them go thick and heavy, light becoming a sepia syrup, and she knows that even if the Shrike now does the obvious—cutting the suspension-bridge supports—that it will make no difference: in fast time, it will take ages for the bridge to begin to fall … time enough for the trio to cross it a thousand times.
In single file, Nemes leading, they cross it now.
The Shrike does not change position. Its head does not move to follow them. Its red eyes gleam dully, like crimson glass reflecting the last bit of sunset.
Something’s not right here, sends Briareus.
Quiet, commands Nemes. Stay off the common band unless I open contact. She is less than ten meters from the Shrike now and still the thing has not reacted. Nemes continues forward through thick air until she steps onto solid stone. Her clone sister follows, taking up position on Nemes’s left. Briareus steps off the bridge and stands on Nemes’s right. They are three meters in front of the Hyperion legend. It remains quiescent.
“Move out of the way or be destroyed.” Nemes shifts down long enough to speak to the chrome statue. “Your day is long past. The girl is ours today.” The Shrike does not respond.
Destroy it, Nemes commands her siblings and phase shifts.
The Shrike disappears, shifting through time.
Nemes blinks as the temporal shock waves ripple over and through her and then surveys the frozen surroundings with the full spectrum of her vision. There are a few human beings still here at the Temple Hanging in Air, but no Shrike.
Shift down, she commands and her siblings obey immediately. The world brightens, the air moves, and sound returns.
“Find her,” says Nemes.
In a full jog, Scylla moves to the Noble Eightfold Path axis of Wisdom and lopes up the staircase to the platform of Right Understanding. Briareus moves quickly to the axis of Morality and leaps to the pagoda of Right Speech. Nemes takes the third stairway, the highest, toward the high pavilions of Right Mindfulness and Right Meditation. Her radar shows people in the highest structure. She arrives in a few seconds, scanning the buildings and cliff wall for concealed rooms or hiding places. Nothing. There is a young woman in the pavilion for Right Meditation and for an instant Nemes thinks that the search is over, but although she is about the same age as Aenea, it is not her. There are a few others in the elegant pagoda—a very old woman—Nemes recognizes her as the Thunderbolt Sow from the Dalai Lama’s reception—the Dalai Lama’s Chief Crier and Head of Security, Carl Linga William Eiheji, and the boy himself—the Dalai Lama.
“Where is she?” says Nemes. “Where is the one who calls herself Aenea?”
Before any of the others can speak, the warrior Eiheji reaches into his cloak and hurls a dagger with lightning speed.
Nemes dodges it easily. Even without phase-shifting, her reactions are faster than most humans. But when Eiheji pulls a flechette pistol, Nemes shifts up, walks to the frozen man, encloses him in her shift field, and flings him out the open floor-to-ceiling window into the abyss. Of course, as soon as Eiheji leaves her field envelope, he seems to freeze in midair like some ungainly bird thrown from the nest, unable to fly but unwilling to fall.
Nemes turns back to the boy and shifts down. Behind her, Eiheji screams and plummets out of sight.
The Dalai Lama’s jaw drops and his lips form an O. To him and the two women present, Eiheji had simply disappeared from next to them and reappeared in midair out the open shoji doors of the pavilion, as if he had chosen to teleport to his death.
“You can’t …” begins the old Thunderbolt Sow.
“You are forbidden …” begins the Dalai Lama.
“You won’t …” begins the woman whom Nemes guesses is either Rachel or Theo, A
enea’s compatriots.
Nemes says nothing. She shifts up, walks to the boy, folds her phase field around him, lifts him, and carries him to the open door.
Nemes! It is Briareus calling from the pavilion of Right Effort.
What?
Instead of verbalizing on the common band, Briareus uses the extra energy to send the full visual image. Looking frozen in the sepia air kilometers above them, fusion flame as solid as a blue pillar, a spaceship is descending.
Shift down, commands Nemes.
THE MONKS AND THE OLD LAMA PACKED US A lunch in a brown bag. They also gave A. Bettik one of the old-fashioned pressure suits of the kind I had seen only in the ancient spaceflight museum at Port Romance and tried to give two more to Aenea and me, but we showed them the skinsuits under our thermal jackets. The twelve hundred monks all turned out to wave us off through the First Heavenly Gate, and there must have been two or three thousand others pressing and craning to see us leave.
The great stairway was empty except for the three of us, climbing easily now, A. Bettik with his clear helmet folded back like a cowl, Aenea and me with our osmosis masks turned up. Each of the steps was seven meters wide, but shallow, and the first section was easy enough, with a wide terrace step every hundred steps. The steps were heated from within, so even as we moved into the region of perpetual ice and snow midway up T’ai Shan, the stairway was clear.
Within an hour we had reached the Second Heavenly Gate—a huge red pagoda with a fifteen-meter archway—and then we were climbing more steeply up the near-vertical fault line known as the Mouth of the Dragon. Here the winds picked up, the temperature dropped precipitously, and the air became dangerously thin. We had redonned our harnesses at the Second Heavenly Gate, and now we clipped on to one of the bucky-carbon lines that ran along each side of the staircase, adjusting the pulley grip to act like a brake if we fell or were blown off the increasingly treacherous staircase. Within minutes, A. Bettik inflated his clear helmet and gave us a thumbs-up, while Aenea and I sealed our osmosis masks.
We kept climbing toward the South Gate of Heaven still a kilometer above us, while the world fell away all around. It was the second time in a few hours that such a sight had presented itself to us, but this time we took it all in every three hundred steps as we took a break, standing and wheezing and staring out at the early afternoon light illuminating the great peaks. Tai’an, the City of Peace, was invisible now, some fifteen thousand steps and several klicks below the icefields and rock walls through which we had climbed. I realized that the skinsuit corn-threads gave us privacy once again, and said, “How you doing, kiddo?”
“Tired,” said Aenea, but she leavened the comment with a smile from behind her clear mask.
“Can you tell me where we’re headed?” I said.
“The Temple of the Jade Emperor,” said my friend. “It’s on the summit.”
“I guessed that,” I said, setting a foot down on the wide step, then raising the next foot to the next step. The stairway passed up and through a rock-and-ice overhang at this point. I knew that if I turned around to look down, that vertigo might overcome me. This was infinitely worse than the paragliding. “Can you tell me why we’re climbing to the Temple of the Jade Emperor when everything is going to hell behind us?”
“How do you mean going to hell?” she said.
“I mean Nemes and her ilk are probably after us. The Pax definitely is going to make its move. Things are falling apart. And we’re on pilgrimage.”
Aenea nodded. The wind was roaring now, as thin as it was, as we actually climbed into the jet stream. Each of us was moving forward and up with our heads bowed and our bodies arched, as if carrying a heavy load. I wondered what A. Bettik was thinking about.
“Why don’t we just call the ship and get the hell out of here,” I said. “If we’re going to bail out, let’s get it over with.”
I could see Aenea’s dark eyes behind the mask that reflected the deepening blue sky. “When we call the ship, there’ll be two dozen Pax warships descending on us like harpy crows,” said Aenea. “We can’t do it until we’re ready.”
I gestured up the steep staircase. “And climbing this will make us ready?”
“I hope so,” she said softly. I could hear the rasp of her breathing through my hearpatches.
“What’s up here, kiddo?”
We had reached the next three hundredth step. All three of us stopped and panted, too tired to appreciate the view. We had climbed into the edge of space. The sky was almost black. Several of the brighter stars were visible and I could see one of the smaller moons hurtling toward the zenith. Or was it a Pax ship?
“I don’t know what we’ll find, Raul,” said Aenea, her voice tired. “I glimpse things … dream things again and again … but then I dream the same thing in a different way. I hate to talk about it until I see which reality presents itself.”
I nodded understanding, but I was lying. We began climbing again. “Aenea?” I said.
“Yes, Raul.”
“Why don’t you let me take … you know … communion?”
She made a face behind the osmosis mask. “I hate calling it that.”
“I know, but that’s what everyone calls it. But tell me this, at least … why don’t you let me drink the wine?”
“It’s not time for you to, Raul.”
“Why not?” I could feel the anger and frustration just below the surface again, mixing with the roiling current of love that I felt for this woman.
“You know the four steps I talk about …” she began.
“Learning the language of the dead, learning the language of the living … yeah, yeah, I know the four steps,” I said almost dismissively, setting my very real foot on a very physical marble step and taking another tired pace up the endless stairway.
I could see Aenea smile at my tone. “Those things tend to … preoccupy the person first encountering them,” she said softly. “I need your full attention right now. I need your help.”
That made sense to me. I reached over and touched her back through the thermal jacket and skinsuit material. A. Bettik looked across at us and nodded, as if approving of our contact. I reminded myself that he could not have heard our skinsuit transmissions.
“Aenea,” I said softly, “are you the new messiah?”
I could hear her sigh. “No, Raul. I never said I was a messiah. I never wanted to be a messiah. I’m just a tired young woman right now … I’ve got a pounding headache … and cramps … it’s the first day of my period …”
She must have seen me blink in surprise or shock. Well, hell, I thought, it’s not every day that you get to confront the messiah only to hear that she’s suffering from what the ancients used to call PMS.
Aenea chuckled. “I’m not the messiah, Raul. I was just chosen to be the One Who Teaches. And I’m trying to do it while … while I can.”
Something about her last sentence made my stomach knot in anxiety. “Okay,” I said. We reached the three hundredth step and paused together, wheezing more heavily now. I looked up. Still no South Gate of Heaven visible. Even though it was midday, the sky was space black. A thousand stars burned. They barely twinkled. I realized that the hiss and roar of the jet stream had gone away. T’ai Shan was the highest peak on T’ien Shan, extending into the highest fringes of the atmosphere. If it had not been for our skinsuits, our eyes, eardrums, and lungs would have exploded like overinflated balloons. Our blood would be boiling. Our …
I tried to shift my thoughts onto something else.
“All right,” I said, “but if you were the messiah, what would your message to humanity be?”
Aenea chuckled again, but I noticed that it was a reflective chuckle, not a derisive one. “If you were a messiah,” she said between breaths, “what would your message be?”
I laughed out loud. A. Bettik could not have heard the sound through the near vacuum separating us, but he must have seen me throw my head back, for he looked over quizzically. I waved at
him and said to Aenea, “I have no fucking clue.”
“Exactly,” said Aenea. “When I was a kid … I mean a little kid, before I met you … and I knew that I’d have to go through some of this stuff … I was always wondering what message I was going to give humankind. Beyond the things I knew I’d have to teach, I mean. Something profound. Sort of a Sermon on the Mount.”
I looked around. There was no ice or snow at this terrible altitude. The clear, white steps rose through shelves of steep, black rock. “Well,” I said, “here’s the mount.”
“Yeah,” said Aenea, and I could hear the fatigue once again.
“So what message did you come up with?” I said, more to keep her talking and distracted than to hear the answer. It had been a while since she and I had just talked.
I could see her smile. “I kept working on it,” she said at last, “trying to get it as short and important as the Sermon on the Mount. Then I realized that was no good—like Uncle Martin in his manic-poet period trying to outwrite Shakespeare—so I decided that my message would just be shorter.”
“How short?”
“I got my message down to thirty-five words. Too long. Then down to twenty-seven. Still too long. After a few years I had it down to ten. Still too long. Eventually I boiled it down to two words.”
“Two words?” I said. “Which two?”
We had reached the next resting point … the seventieth or eightieth three hundredth step. We stopped gratefully and panted. I bent over to rest my skinsuit-gloved hands on my skinsuit-sheathed knees and concentrated on not throwing up. It was bad form to vomit in an osmosis mask. “Which two?” I said again when I got some wind back and could hear the answer over my pounding heart and rasping lungs.