I unite my will with the will of God
through the merits of my Savior Jesus Christ,
through the merits of the holy Virgin Mary
I ask thee to obtain my earnest petition,
provided it be for the greater glory of God
and my own sanctification.
Guide and purify my intention,
O Holy Protectress and advocate,
so that I may obtain the pardon of all my sins
and the grace to persevere my ordeal,
as thou didst in walking with courage, generosity, and fidelity down the path of life.
Let me survive dissolution into the pale horror
Let me find what dwells within
Let me win their inhuman hearts
Let me overcome their malice of indifference
Let them agree to free me
Let me return to life
Let me cross the desolation of heaven
Let me return to Earth
The blue waters and blue skies of Earth, the sweet scents of Earth
Let me feel my lover’s arms again
Let me face certain death in certain knowledge that my savior lives
What I ask is impossible; and I who ask it am helpless
Saint Rita, advocate of the impossible, pray for us!
Saint Rita, advocate of the helpless, pray for us!
16. Not to Worry
A.D. 68010
As Montrose put the needle reverently away, Mickey saw his face and asked him what troubled him.
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me, since you asked. Rania gave me a prayer she wants all the world to say for her. I ain’t once got on my knees to pray for her return. Not once in sixty-six thousand years.”
Mickey said jovially, “Not to worry! My people back in the day performed many rituals to placate the Swan Princess who stole the divine fire from heaven and hid it in a diamond for the sake of Man, the Lady of Hope. Two turtledoves is the proper sacrifice for the poor, and a white ewe without blemish for those any goddess of bounty has blessed. So our devotion makes up for your lack! Were there any Witches aboard her ship?”
Mickey had evidently forgotten how long ago she had launched, or perhaps he had never been able to grasp the true magnitude of eons involved. The Hermetic dated from before the Ecpyrosis, the destruction of the world by fire; therefore, to Mickey, her ship was no more real than the ship of Noah from before the Deluge, the destruction of the world by flood.
Montrose said, “Damn! I need a priest. I reckon I should do some confessing.”
“Eh? And all this time I had you pegged as a confirmed skeptic, Menelaus Montrose.”
“Well, my religion was more like, Shut up and shoot straight, but I am beginning to think that is theologically insufficient for my spiritual needs. All these damned years; one drop at a time, time enough to fill a ocean, are weighing on me, piled on like I was at the bottom of a sea trench; all this hostile void and vacuum and emptiness and death outside the few little bright blue planets men live on; all these vast thinking machines, big as gas giants, and bigger. They are inhuman. Like things out of a nightmare of Saint Johnny on Patmos. Facing this, a man needs something more than a bottle of hooch to put the spirit in him.”
“You should take some of my pharmaceuticals, and it would open your third eye and allow you to walk the winds.”
“Or give me one more thing to fess up to the parson, I guess. Do they still have priests, these days? I suppose they must.”
“There is a group that calls itself the Sacerdotal Order, which is under the protection of the Fifth Humans. They say they are the heirs of the Old, Strong religion, and the successors to Saint Peter, but their doctrines have grown confused and corrupt with time. They say Peter holds the Keys to Heaven and Hell. My people taught that Peter lives with the souls of dead children called the Lost Boys, and he never grows old and never completed the journey to the afterlife, but dwells in the great star Canopus, the second-brightest star to the right of Sirius, the Dog Star. The tiny and bright spirit who dwells with him shines her light and rings her bell and calls the lost and wandering ghosts to her. She died, sacrificing her life saving Peter, but is resurrected when the innocent clap their hands, for their faith brings the dead to life again. You can see from where these Sacerdotes derive their ideas and myths: all is but a holdover from the pagan roots of yore.”
“Hm. Could be a different Peter. In any case, I feel pretty bad that I let a doubt about her come to trouble me and let it grow stronger as she got closer.”
“What doubt? Did you think her love would fail? That? Is that what has been disturbing your slumber these last few millennia? My dear friend: sleep now in perfect peace. I will stay awake and guard you. When you next wake, you will see her.”
Montrose patted him on the shoulder. “But what is Blackie up to?”
Mickey said, “He is already ignoring the return of Rania and looking to the next age, or the one beyond that. His eyes are on the future.”
Montrose said sadly, “Then maybe I shouldn’t worry. I know by now. The future will never arrive.”
3
The Hour of Her Advent
1. The Looking Glass World
A.D. 69396 OR 1 ULTRAVINDICATION
Montrose woke suddenly and completely. That was the first surprise.
Before he even opened his eyes, he was aware of three things. First, his entire mind, operating at the very lowest ranges of a Potentate level, was gathered into one coherent system. Last time he slept, he had not commanded the resources necessary to perform the reintegration processes. He had not had the money, or whatever they used for money in that era.
Second, someone or something had interfered with his method of what he called sleeping with one eye open, which meant his ability kept a partial on standby alert, watching the data streaming through the dreaming mind of mad Tellus watching for spikes or strange attractors in the cliometric chords and glissandos of the symphony of history.
Third, something was strange about his eyes. The darkness inside of his eyelids did not have the normal pattern of phosphenes he expected upon waking from slumber. This in turn indicated that his entire brain capacity, roughly equal to a logic diamond the size of the core of the planet Mercury, or to a mountain of compressed murk substance, had been fitted inside one mobile biological body.
This was starkly impossible, unless he had been transferred without his knowledge into another body. The fact that he did not feel a sense of shock implied one of two things: either his subconscious mind had been subliminally conditioned or prepared to receive the knowledge that he was waking in a new body without a shock, or the new mental geometry he occupied was better able to adapt without shock to new paradigms than his old.
But, then, what was this feeling of lightness, of joy, this sensation he remembered from his childhood? He recalled waking up in the wee hours of Christmas morning, long before the sun was up, unwilling to step out of bed for fear of waking the snoring hulks of his many older brothers, unwilling to put his unshod foot on the cold, hard, harsh floor. Instead, he hovered between sleep and waking, wrapped in the warmth of the rough blankets impregnated with antiseptics and antibiotics, like floating in a cocoon, safe from the fear that winter would come and never leave, eager with a greedy, happy elation of expectation, that only a day of gifts and feasts and visits and pine trees shining with ornaments provoke or fulfill. It was a day too wonderful to be true.