“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 Earth-like 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?”