“I don’t know where I’m going,” I hear myself saying in the voice of a lost boy. “I was going to Old Earth because of Aenea’s wish that I… her ashes… but…” Embarrassed at showing emotion again, I wave at the mountain of melted stone that had been Castel Sant’Angelo. “Maybe I’ll go back to Hyperion,” I say. “See Martin Silenus.” Before he dies, I add silently.
All of us stand on the boulder, pouring out the last drops of cold coffee from the mugs and brushing away the last crumbs from the delicious rolls.
I am suddenly struck by an obvious thought. “Do any of you want to come with me?” I say. “Or go anywhere else, for that matter. I think that I will remember how to freecast… and Aenea took us with her just by holding the person’s hand. No, she freecast the entire Yggdrasill with her just by willing it.”
“If you are going to Hyperion,” says Father de Soya, “I may wish to accompany you. But first I have something to show you. Excuse us, Father Duré. Bassin.”
I follow the short priest back to the village and into his little church. In the tiny sacristy, barely large enough for a wooden wardrobe cupboard for vestments and the small secondary altar in which to store the sacramental hosts and wine, de Soya pushes back a curtain on a small alcove and removes a short metal cylinder, smaller than a coffee thermos. He holds it out to me and I am reaching for it, my fingers just centimeters away, when suddenly I freeze in midmotion, unable to touch it.
“Yes,” says the priest. “Aenea’s ashes. What we could recover. Not much, I am afraid.”
My fingers trembling, still unable to touch the dull metal cylinder, I stammer, “How? When?”
“Before the final Core attack,” de Soya says softly. “Some of us who liberated the prisoners thought it prudent to remove our young friend’s cremated remains. There are actually those who wanted to find them and hold them as holy relics… the start of another cult. I felt strongly that Aenea would not have wished that. Was I correct, Raul?”
“Yes,” I say, my hand shaking visibly now. I am still unable to touch the cylinder and almost unable to speak. “Yes, absolutely, completely,” I say vehemently. “She would have hated that. She would have cursed at the thought. I can’t tell you how many times she and I discussed the tragedy of Buddha’s followers treating him like a god and his remains as relics. The Buddha also asked that his body be cremated and his ashes scattered so that…” I have to stop there.
“Yes,” says de Soya. He pulls a black canvas shoulder bag from his cupboard and sets the cylinder in it. He shoulders the bag.
“If you would like, I could bring this with us if we are to travel together.”
“Thank you,” is all I can say. I cannot reconcile the life and energy and skin and flashing eyes and clean, female scent of Aenea, her touch and laugh and voice and hair and ultimate physical presence with that small metal cylinder. I lower my hand before the priest can see how badly it is shaking.
“Are you ready to go?” I say at last.
De Soya nods. “Please allow me to tell a few of my village friends that I will be absent for a few days. Would it be possible for you to drop me off here later on your way… wherever you go?”
I blink at that. Of course it will be possible.
I had thought of my leave-taking today as final, an interstellar voyage. But Pacem… as everywhere else in the known universe… will never be farther than a step away for me as long as I live.
If I remember how to hear the music of the spheres and freecast again. If I can take someone with me. If it was not a onetime gift which I have lost without knowing it. Now my entire frame is shaking. I tell myself it is just too much coffee and say raggedly, “Yeah, no problem. I’ll go chat with Father Duré and Bassin until you’re ready.”
The old Jesuit and the young soldier are at the edge of a small cornfield, arguing about whether it is the optimum time to pick the ears. I can hear Paul Duré admitting that much of his opinion to pick immediately is swayed by his love of corn on the cob. They smile at me as I approach. “Father de Soya is accompanying you?” says Duré.
I nod.
“Please give my warmest regards to Martin Silenus,” says the Jesuit. “He and I shared some interesting experiences in a roundabout way, long ago and worlds away. I have heard of his so-called Cantos, but I confess that I am loath to read them.” Duré grins. “I understand that the Hegemony libel laws have lapsed.”
“I think he’s fought to stay alive this long to finish those Cantos,” I say softly. “Now he never will.”
Father Duré sighs. “No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing.”
“How so?” I ask, but before Duré can answer, Father de Soya and several of the villagers come up and there is a buzz of discussion and farewells and invitations for me to return. I look at the black shoulder bag and see that the priest has filled it with other things as well as the canister holding Aenea’s ashes.
“A fresh cassock,” says de Soya, seeing the direction of my glance. “Some clean underwear. Socks. A few peaches. My Bible and missal and the essentials for saying Mass. I am not sure when I will be back.” He gestures toward the others crowding in. “I forget exactly how this is done. Do we need more room?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “You and I should be in physical contact, maybe. At least for this first try.” I turn and shake hands with Kee and Duré. “Thank you,” I say.
Kee grins and steps back as if I’m going to rise on a rocket exhaust and he does not want to get burned. Father Duré clasps my shoulder a final time. “I think that we will see each other again, Raul Endymion,” he says. “Although perhaps not for two years or so.”
I do not understand. I’ve just promised to return Father de Soya within a few days. But I nod as if I do comprehend, shake the priest’s hand a second time, and move away from his touch.
“Shall we hold hands?” says de Soya.
I put my hand on the smaller priest’s shoulder much as Duré had gripped mine a second earlier and check to make sure that my ’scriber is secure on its strap. “This should do it,” I say.
“Homophobia?” says de Soya with a mischievous boy’s grin.
“A reluctance to look silly more often than I have to,” I say and close my eyes, quite certain that the music of the spheres will not be there this time, that I will have forgotten completely how to take that step through the Void. Well, I think, at least the coffee and conversation are good here if I have to stay forever.
The white light surrounds and subsumes us.
34
I had assumed that the priest and I would step out of the light into the abandoned city of Endymion, probably right next to the old poet’s tower, but when we blinked away the glare of the Void, it was quite dark and we were on a rolling plain with wind whistling through grass that came to my knees and to Father de Soya’s cassocked thighs. “Did we do it?” asked the Jesuit in excited tones. “Are we on Hyperion? It doesn’t look familiar, but then I saw only portions of the northern continent more than eleven standard years ago. Is this right? The gravity feels as I remember it. The air is… sweeter.”
I let my eyes adapt to the night for a moment. Then I said, “This is right.” I pointed skyward. “Those constellations? That’s the Swan. Over there are the Twin Archers. That one is actually called the Water Bearer, but Grandam always used to kid that it was named Raul’s Caravan after a little cart I used to pull around.” I took a breath and looked at the rolling plain again. “This was one of our favorite camping spots,” I said. “Our nomad caravan’s. When I was a child.” I went to one knee to study the ground in the starlight. “Still rubber tire marks. A few weeks old. The caravans still come this way, I guess.”