In the evenings he would play with Rachel and then take a walk in the foothills with Sarai as Judy or one of the other neighbor girls watched their sleeping child. One weekend they went away to New Jerusalem, just Sol and Sarai, the first time they had been alone together for that long since Rachel returned to live with them seventeen standard years before.
But everything was not idyllic. Too frequent were the nights when Sol awoke alone and walked barefoot down the hall to see Sarai watching over Rachel in her sleep. And often at the end of a long day, bathing Rachel in the old ceramic tub or tucking her in as the walls glowed pinkly, the child would say, “I like it here, Daddy, but can we go home tomorrow?” And Sol would nod. And after the good-night story, and the lullaby, and the good-night kiss, sure that she was asleep, he would begin to tiptoe out of the room only to hear the muffled “ ’Later, alligator” from the blanketed form on the bed, to which he had to reply “ ’While, crocodile.” And lying in bed himself, next to the softly breathing and possibly sleeping length of the woman he loved, Sol would watch the strips of pale light from one or both of Hebron’s small moons move across the rough walls and he would talk to God.
Sol had been talking to God for some months before he realized what he was doing. The idea amused him. The dialogues were in no way prayers but took the form of angry monologues which—just short of the point where they became diatribes—became vigorous arguments with himself. Only not just with himself. Sol realized one day that the topics of the heated debates were so profound, the stakes to be settled so serious, the ground covered so broad, that the only person he could possibly be berating for such shortcomings was God Himself. Since the concept of a personal God, lying awake at night worrying about human beings, intervening in the lives of individuals always had been totally absurd to Sol, the thought of such dialogues made him doubt his sanity.
But the dialogues continued.
Sol wanted to know how any ethical system—much less a religion so indomitable that it had survived every evil mankind could throw at it—could flow from a command from God for a man to slaughter his son. It did not matter to Sol that the command had been rescinded at the last moment. It did not matter that the command was a test of obedience. In fact, the idea that it was the obedience of Abraham which allowed him to become the father of all the tribes of Israel was precisely what drove Sol into fits of fury.
After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.
— So define “innocent”? came the vaguely amused, faintly querulous voice which Sol associated with these arguments.
— A child is innocent, thought Sol. Isaac was. Rachel is.
— “Innocent” by the mere fact of being a child?
— Yes.
— And there is no situation where the blood of the innocent must be shed for a greater cause?
— No, thought Sol. None.
— But the “innocent” are not restricted to children, I presume.
— Sol hesitated, sensing a trap, trying to see where his subconscious interlocutor was heading. He could not. No, he thought, the “innocent” include others as well as children.
— Such as Rachel? At age twenty-four? The innocent should not be sacrificed at any age?
— That’s right.
— Perhaps this is part of the lesson which Abraham needed to learn before he could be father to the blessed of the nations of the earth.
— What lesson? thought Sol. What lesson? But the voice in his mind had faded and now there were only the sounds of night birds outside and the soft breathing of his wife beside him.
Rachel could still read at age five. Sol had trouble remembering when she had learned to read—it seemed she always had been able to. “Four standard,” said Sarai, “It was early summer … three months after her birthday. We were picnicking in the field above the college, Rachel was looking at her Winnie-the-Pooh book, and suddenly she said, ‘I hear a voice in my head.’ ”
Sol remembered then.
He also remembered the joy he and Sarai had felt at the rapid acquisition of new skills Rachel had shown at that age. He remembered because now they were confronted with the reverse of that process.
“Dad,” said Rachel from where she lay on the floor of his study, carefully coloring, “how long has it been since Mom’s birthday?”
“It was on Monday,” said Sol, preoccupied with something he was reading. Sarai’s birthday had not yet come but Rachel remembered it.
“I know. But how long has it been since then?”
“Today is Thursday,” said Sol. He was reading a long Talmudic treatise on obedience.
“I know. But how many days?”
Sol put down the hard copy. “Can you name the days of the week?” Barnard’s World had used the old calendar.
“Sure,” said Rachel. “Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday …”
“You said Saturday already.”
“Yeah. But how many days ago?”
“Can you count from Monday to Thursday?”
Rachel frowned, moved her lips. She tried again, counting on her fingers this time, “Four days?”
“Good,” said Sot. “Can you tell me what 10 minus 4 is, kiddo?”
“What does minus mean?”
Sol forced himself to look at his papers again. “Nothing,” he said. “Something you’ll learn at school.”
“When we go home tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
One morning when Rachel went off with Judy to play with the other children—she was too young to attend school any longer—Sarai said: “Sol, we have to take her to Hyperion.”
Sol stared at her. “What?”
“You heard me. We can’t wait until she is too young to walk … to talk. Also, we’re not getting any younger.” Sarai barked a mirthless laugh. “That sounds strange, doesn’t it? But we’re not. The Poulsen treatments will be wearing off in a year or two.”
“Sarai, did you forget? The doctors all say that Rachel could not survive cryogenic fugue. No one experiences FTL travel without fugue state. The Hawking effect can drive one mad … or worse.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Sarai. “Rachel has to return to Hyperion.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” said Sol, angered.
Sarai gripped his hand. “Do you think you’re the only one who has had the dream?”
“Dream?” managed Sol.
She sighed and sat at the white kitchen table. Morning light struck the plants on the sill like a yellow spotlight. “The dark place,” she said. “The red lights above. The voice. Telling us to … telling us to take … to go to Hyperion. To make … an offering.”
Sol licked his lips but there was no moisture there. His heart pounded. “Whose name … whose name is called?”
Sarai looked at him strangely. “Both of our names. If you weren’t there … in the dream with me … I could never have borne it all these years.”
Sol collapsed into his chair. He looked down at the strange hand and forearm lying on the table. The knuckles of the hand were beginning to enlarge with arthritis; the forearm was heavily veined, marked with liver spots. It was his hand, of course. He heard himself say: “You never mentioned it. Never said a word …”
This time Sarai’s laugh was without bitterness. “As if I had to! All hose times both of us coming awake in the dark. And you covered with sweat. I knew from the first time that it was not merely a dream. We have to go, Father. Go to Hyperion.”
Sol moved the hand. It still did not feel a part of him. “Why? For God’s sake, why, Sarai? We can’t … offer Rachel …”
“Of course not, Father. Haven’t you thought about this? We have to go to Hyperion … to wherever the dream tells us to go … and offer ourselves instead
.”
“Offer ourselves,” repeated Sol. He wondered if he was having a heart attack. His chest ached so terribly that he could not take in a breath. He sat for a full minute in silence, convinced that if he attempted to utter a word only a sob would escape. After another minute he said: “How long have you … thought about this, Mother?”
“Do you mean known what we must do? A year. A little more. Just after her fifth birthday.”
“A year! Why haven’t you said something?”
“I was waiting for you. To realize. To know.”
Sol shook his head. The room seemed far away and slightly tilted. “No. I mean, it doesn’t seem … I have to think, Mother.” Sol watched as the strange hand patted Sarai’s familiar hand.
She nodded.
Sol spent three days and nights in the arid mountains, eating only the thick-crusted bread he had brought and drinking from his condenser therm.
Ten thousand times in the past twenty years he had wished that he could take Rachel’s illness; that if anyone had to suffer it should be the father, not the child. Any parent would feel that way—did feel that way every time his child lay injured or racked with fever. Surely it could not be that simple.
In the heat of the third afternoon, as he lay half dozing in the shade of a thin tablet of rock, Sol learned that it was not that simple.
— Can that be Abraham’s answer to God? That he would be the offering, not Issaac?
— It could have been Abraham’s. It cannot be yours.
— Why?
As if in answer, Sol had the fever-vision of naked adults filing toward the ovens past armed men, mothers hiding their children under piles of coats. He saw men and women with flesh hanging in burned strips carrying the dazed children from the ashes of what once had been a city. Sol knew that these images were no dreams, were the very stuff of the First and Second Holocausts, and in his understanding knew before the voice spoke in his mind what the answer was. What it must be.
— The parents have offered themselves. That sacrifice already has been accepted. We are beyond that.
— Then what? What!
Silence answered him. Sol stood in the full glare of the sun, almost fell. A black bird wheeled overhead or in his vision. Sol shook his fist at the gunmetal sky.
— You use Nazis as your instruments. Madmen. Monsters. You’re a goddamn monster yourself.
— No.
The earth tilted and Sol fell on his side against sharp rocks. He thought that it was not unlike leaning against a rough wall. A rock the size of his fist burned his cheek.
— The correct answer for Abraham was obedience, thought Sol. Ethically, Abraham was a child himself. All men were at that time. The correct answer for Abraham’s children was to become adults and to offer themselves instead. What is the correct answer for us?
There was no answer. The ground and sky quit spinning. After a while Sol rose shakily, rubbed the blood and grit from his cheek, and walked down to the town in the valley below.
“No,” Sol told Sarai, “we will not go to Hyperion. It is not the correct solution.”
“You would have us do nothing then.” Sarai’s lips were white with answer but her voice was firmly in control.
“No. I would have us not do the wrong thing.”
Sarai expelled her breath in a hiss. She waved toward the window where their four-year-old was visible playing with her toy horses in the backyard. “Do you think she has time for us to do the wrong thing … or anything … indefinitely?”
“Sit down, Mother.”
Sarai remained standing. There was the faintest sprinkling of spilled sugar on the front of her tan cotton dress. Sol remembered the young woman rising nude from the phosphorescent wake of the motile isle on Maui-Covenant.
“We have to do something,” she said.
“We’ve seen over a hundred medical and scientific experts. She’s been tested, prodded, probed, and tortured by two dozen research centers. I’ve been to the Shrike Church on every world in this Web; they won’t see me. Melio and the other Hyperion experts at Reichs say that the Shrike Cult has nothing like the Merlin sickness in their doctrine and the indigenies on Hyperion have no legends of the malady or clues to its cure. Research during the three years the team was on Hyperion showed nothing. Now research there is illegal. Access to the Time Tombs is granted only to the so-called pilgrims. Even getting a travel visa to Hyperion is becoming almost impossible. And if we take Rachel, the trip may kill her.”
Sol paused for breath, touched Sarai’s arm again. “I’m sorry to repeat all this, Mother. But we have done something.”
“Not enough,” said Sarai. “What if we go as pilgrims?”
Sol folded his arms in frustration. “The Church of the Shrike chooses its sacrificial victims from thousands of volunteers. The Web is full of stupid, depressed people. Few of these return.”
“Doesn’t that prove something?” Sarai whispered quickly, urgently. “Somebody or something is preying on these people.”
“Bandits,” said Sol.
Sarai shook her head. “The golem.”
“You mean the Shrike.”
“It’s the golem,” insisted Sarai. “The same one we see in the dream.”
Sol was uneasy. “I don’t see a golem in the dream. What golem?”
“The red eyes that watch,” said Sarai. “It’s the same golem that Rachel heard that night in the Sphinx.”
“How do you know that she heard anything?”
“It’s in the dream,” said Sarai. “Before we enter the place where the golem waits.”
“We haven’t dreamed the same dream,” said Sol. “Mother, Mother … why haven’t you told me this before?”
“I thought I was going mad,” whispered Sarai.
Sol thought of his secret conversations with God and put his arm around his wife.
“Oh, Sol,” she whispered against him, “it hurts so much to watch. And it’s so lonely here.”
Sol held her. They had tried to go home—home would always be Barnard’s World—half a dozen times to visit family and friends, but each time the visits were ruined by an invasion of newsteeps and tourists. It was no one’s fault. News traveled almost instantaneously through the megadatasphere of a hundred and sixty Web worlds. To scratch the curiosity itch one had only to pass a universal card across a terminex diskey and step through a farcaster. They had tried arriving unannounced and traveling incognito but they were not spies and the efforts were pitiful. Within twenty-four standard hours of their reentry to the Web, they were besieged. Research institutes and large med centers easily provided the security screen for such a visit, but friends and family suffered. Rachel was news.
“Perhaps we could invite Tetha and Richard again …” began Sarai.
“I have a better idea,” said Sol. “Go yourself, Mother. You want to see your sister but you also want to see, hear, and smell home … watch a sunset where there are no iguanas … walk in the fields. Go.”
“Go? Just me? I couldn’t be away from Rachel …”
“Nonsense,” said Sol. “Twice in twenty years—almost forty if we count the good days before … anyway, twice in twenty years doesn’t constitute child neglect. It’s a wonder that this family can stand one another, we’ve been cooped up together so long.”
Sarai looked at the tabletop, lost in thought. “But wouldn’t the news people find me?”
“I bet not,” said Sol. “It’s Rachel they seem to key on. If they do hound you, come home. But I bet you can have a week visiting everyone at home before the teeps catch on.”
“A week,” gasped Sarai. “I couldn’t …”
“Of course you can. In fact, you must. It will give me a few days to spend more time with Rachel and then when you come back refreshed I’ll spend some days selfishly working on the book.”
“The Kierkegaard one?”
“No. Something I’ve been playing with called The Abraham Problem.”
“Clumsy title,” said Sarai.
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“It’s a clumsy problem,” said Sol. “Now go get packed. We’ll fly you to New Jerusalem tomorrow so you can ’cast out before the Sabbath begins.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, sounding unconvinced.
“You’ll pack,” said Sol, hugging her again. When the hug was completed he had turned her away from the window so that she faced the hallway and the bedroom door. “Go. When you return from home I’ll have thought of something we can do.”
Sarai paused. “Do you promise?”
Sol looked at her. “I promise I will before time destroys everything. I swear as Rachel’s father that I’ll find a way.”
Sarai nodded, more relaxed than he had seen her in months. “I’ll go pack,” she said.
When he and the child returned from New Jerusalem the next day, Sol went out to water the meager lawn while Rachel played quietly inside. When he came in, the pink glow of sunset infusing the walls with a sense of sea warmth and quiet, Rachel was not in her bedroom or the other usual places. “Rachel?”
When there was no answer he checked the backyard again, the empty street.
“Rachel!” Sol ran in to call the neighbors but suddenly there was the slightest of sounds from the deep closet Sarai used for storage. Sol quietly opened the screen panel.
Rachel sat beneath the hanging clothes, Sarai’s antique pine box open between her legs. The floor was littered with photos and holo-chips of Rachel as a high school student, Rachel on the day she set off for college, Rachel standing in front of a carved mountainside on Hyperion. Rachel’s research comlog lay whispering on the four-year-old Rachel’s lap. Sol’s heart seized at the familiar sound of the confident young woman’s voice.