Almost holding my breath, I said, "All right. I'm ready, kiddo. Teach me."

Aenea smiled again. "That's the irony, Raul, my love. If I choose to do this, I'll always be known as the One Who Teaches. But the silly thing is, I don't have to teach it. I only have to share this virus to impart each of these stages to those who wish to learn."

I looked down at where her slim fingers encircled a part of my wrist. "So you've already given me this...virus?" I said. I felt nothing except the usual electric tingle that her touch always created in me.

My friend laughed. "No, Raul. You're not ready. And it takes communion to share the virus, not just contact. And I haven't decided what to do...if I should should do this." do this."

"To share with me?" I said, thinking, Communion? Communion?

"To share with everyone," she whispered, serious again. "With everyone ready to learn." She looked directly at me again. Somewhere in the desert, a coyote was yipping. "These...levels, stages...can't coexist with a cruciform, Raul."

"So the born-again can't learn?" I said. This would rule out the vast majority of human beings.

She shook her head. "They can learn...they just can't stay born-again. The cruciform has to go."

I let out my breath. I did not understand most of this, but that's because it seemed to be double-talk. Don't all would-be messiahs speak double-talk? Don't all would-be messiahs speak double-talk? asked the cynical part of me in Grandam's level voice. Aloud, I said, "There's no way to remove a cruciform without killing the person wearing it. The true death." I had always wondered if this fact had been the main reason I had been unwilling to go under the cross. Or perhaps it was just my youthful belief in my own immortality. asked the cynical part of me in Grandam's level voice. Aloud, I said, "There's no way to remove a cruciform without killing the person wearing it. The true death." I had always wondered if this fact had been the main reason I had been unwilling to go under the cross. Or perhaps it was just my youthful belief in my own immortality.

Aenea did not respond directly. She said, "You like the Amoiete Spectrum Helix people, don't you?"

Blinking, I tried to understand this. Had I dreamed that phrase, those people, that pain? Wasn't I dreaming now? Or was this a memory of a real conversation? But Aenea knew nothing of Dem Ria, Dem Loa, and the others. The night and stone-and-canvas shelter seemed to ripple like a shredding dreamscape.

"I like them," I said, feeling my friend remove her fingers from my wrist. Wasn't my wrist shackled to the headboard? Wasn't my wrist shackled to the headboard?

Aenea nodded and sipped her cooling tea. "There's hope for the Spectrum Helix people. And for all the thousands of other cultures which have reverted or sprung up since the Fall. The Hegemony meant h.o.m.ogeneity, Raul. The Pax means even more. The human genome...the human soul...distrusts h.o.m.ogeneity, Raul. It-they-are always ready to take a chance, to risk change and diversity."

"Aenea," I said, reaching for her. "I don't...we can't..." There was a terrible sense of falling and the dreamscape came apart like thin cardboard in a hard rain. I could not see my friend.

"WAKE UP, RAUL. THEY ARE COMING FOR YOU. THE Pax is coming."

I tried to awaken, groping toward consciousness like a sluggish machine crawling uphill, but the weight of fatigue and the painkillers kept dragging me down. I did not understand why Aenea wanted me awake. We were conversing so well in the dream.

"Wake up, Raul Endymion." Wek op, Rool Endmyun Wek op, Rool Endmyun. It was not Aenea. Even before I was fully awake and focused I recognized the soft voice and thick dialect of Dem Ria.

I sat straight up. The woman was undressing me! I realized that she had pulled the loose nightshirt off and was tugging my undershirt on-cleaned and smelling of fresh breezes now, but unmistakably my undershirt. My undershorts were already on. My twill pants, overshirt, and vest were laid across the bottom of the bed. How had she done this with the handcuff on my...

I stared at my wrist. The handcuffs were lying open on the bedclothes. My arm tingled painfully as circulation returned. I licked my lips and tried to speak without slurring. "The Pax? Coming?"

Dem Ria pulled my shirt on as if I were her child, Bin...or younger. I motioned her hands away and tried to close the b.u.t.tons with suddenly awkward fingers. They had used b.u.t.tons rather than seaitabs at Taliesin West on Old Earth. I thought I had grown used to them, but this was taking forever.

"...and we heard on the radio that a dropship had landed at Bombasino. There are four people in unknown uniforms-two men, two women. They were asking the Commandant about you. They just lifted off-the dropship and three skimmers. They will be here in four minutes. Perhaps less."

"Radio?" I said stupidly. "I thought you said that the radio didn't work. Isn't that why the priest went to the base to get the doctor?"

"Father Clifton Clifton's radio was not working," whispered Dem Ria, pulling me to my feet. She held me steady as I stepped into my trousers. "We have radios...tightbeam transmitters...satellite relays...all of which the Pax knows nothing about. And spies in place. One has warned us...hurry, Raul Endymion. The ships will be here in a minute."

I came fully awake then, literally flushed with a surge of anger and hopelessness that threatened to wash me away. Why won't these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds leave me alone? Why won't these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds leave me alone? Four people in unknown uniforms. Pax, obviously. Evidently their search for Aenea, A. Bettik, and me had not ended when the priest-captain-de Soya-had let us escape the trap on G.o.d's Grove more than four years earlier. Four people in unknown uniforms. Pax, obviously. Evidently their search for Aenea, A. Bettik, and me had not ended when the priest-captain-de Soya-had let us escape the trap on G.o.d's Grove more than four years earlier.

I looked at the chronometer readout on my comlog. The ships would be landing in a minute or so. There was nowhere I could run in that time where Pax troopers would not find me. "Let me go," I said, pulling away from the short woman in the blue robe. The window was open, the afternoon breeze coming through the curtains. I imagined that I could hear the near-ultrasonic hum of skimmers. "I have to get away from your house..."I had images of the Pax torching the home with young Ces Ambre and Bin still in it.

Dem Ria pulled me back from the window. At that moment, the man of the household-young Alem Mikail Dem Alem-came in with Dem Loa. They were carrying the Lusian bulk of the Pax trooper who had been left to guard me. Ces Ambre, her dark eyes bright, was lifting the guard's feet while Bin struggled to pull one of the man's huge boots off. The Lusian was fast asleep, mouth open, drool moistening the high collar of his combat fatigues.

I looked at Dem Ria.

"Dem Loa brought him some tea about fifteen minutes ago," she said softly. She made a graceful gesture that caused the blue sleeve of her robe to billow. "I am afraid that we used the rest of your ultramorph prescription, Raul Endymion."

"I have to go..." I began. The ache in my back was bearable, but my legs were shaky.

"No," said Dem Ria. "They will catch you within minutes." She pointed to the window. From outside there came the unmistakable subsonic rumble of a dropship on EM drive, followed by the thud and bark of its thrusters. The thing must be hovering right above the village, seeking a landing site. A second later the window vibrated to a triple sonic boom and two black skimmers banked above the adobe buildings next door.

Alem Mikail had stripped the Lusian to his thermal-weave underwear and had laid him out on the bed. Now he snapped the man's ma.s.sive right wrist into the handcuffs and snicked the other cuff around the headboard bar. Dem Loa and Ces Ambre were sweeping up the layers of fatigue clothing, body armor, and huge boots and stuffing them in a laundry bag. Little Bin Ria Dem Loa Alem tossed the guard's helmet in the bag. The thin boy was carrying the heavy flechette pistol. I started at the sight-children and weapons was a mix I learned to avoid even when I was a child myself, learning to handle power weapons while our caravan rumbled its way across the Hyperion moors-but Alem smiled and took the pistol from the boy, patting him on the back. It was obvious from the way Bin had held the weapon-fingers away from the trigger guard, pointing the muzzle away from himself and his father, checking the safety indicator even as he gave the pistol up-that he had handled such a device before.

Bin smiled at me, took the heavy bag with the guard's clothing in it, and ran out of the room. The noise outside rose to a crescendo and I turned to look out the window.

A black skimmer kicked up dust less than thirty meters down the street that ran along the ca.n.a.l. I could see it through a gap between the houses. The larger dropship lowered itself out of sight to the south, probably landing in the gra.s.sy open area near the well where I had collapsed in pain from the kidney stone.

I had just finished wiggling into my boots and securing my vest when Alem handed me the flechette pistol. I checked the safety and propellant charge indicators out of habit, but then shook my head. "No," I said. "It would be suicide to attack Pax troopers with just this. Their armor..."I was not actually thinking about their armor at that moment, but, rather, about the return fire from a.s.sault weapons that would level this house in an instant. I thought of the boy outside with the laundry bag of trooper's armor. "Bin..." I said. "If they catch him..."

"We know, we know," said Dem Ria, pulling me away from the bed and into the narrow hallway. I did not remember this part of the house. My universe for the past forty-some hours had been the bedroom and adjoining lavatory. "Come, come," she said.

I pulled away again, handing the pistol to Alem. "Just let me run," I said, my heart pounding. I gestured toward the snoring Lusian. "They won't think that's me for a second. They can tightbeam the doctor-if she's not already in one of those skimmers-to ID me. Just tell them"-I looked at the friendly faces in their blue robes-"tell them that I overpowered the guard and held you at gunpoint..."I stopped then, realizing that the guard would destroy that cover story as soon as he awoke. The family's complicity in my escape would be self-evident. I looked at the flechette pistol again, half-ready to reach for it. One burst of steel needles and the sleeping trooper would never awaken to destroy the cover-up and endanger these good people.

Only I could never do it. I might shoot a Pax trooper in a fair fight-indeed, the adrenaline rush of anger that was burning through my weakness and terror told me that it would be a welcome relief to have that opportunity-but I could never shoot this sleeping man.

But there would be no fair fight. Pax troopers in combat armor, much less these mysterious four in the dropship-Swiss Guard?-would be immune to flechettes and anything else short of Pax a.s.sault weapons. And the Swiss Guard would be immune to those. I was screwed. These good people who had shown me such kindness were screwed.

A rear door slammed open and Bin slid into the hallway, his robe hiked up to show spindly legs covered with dust. I stared at him, thinking that the boy would not get his cruciform and would die of cancer. The adults might well spend the next standard decade in a Pax prison.

"I'm sorry..." I said, hunting for words. I could hear the commotion in the street as troopers hurried through the evening rush of pedestrians.

"Raul Endymion," said Dem Loa in her soft voice, handing me the rucksack they had brought from my kayak, "please shut up and follow us. At once." At once."

THERE WAS A TUNNEL ENTRANCE BENEATH THE floor of the hallway. I had always thought that hidden pa.s.sages were the stuff of holodramas, but I followed Dem Ria into this one willingly enough. We were a strange procession-Dem Ria and Dem Loa sweeping down the steep staircase ahead of me, then me carrying the flechette pistol and fumbling the rucksack on my back, then little Bin followed by his sister, Ces Ambre, then, carefully locking the trapdoor behind him, Alem Mikail Dem Alem. No one stayed behind. The house was empty except for the snoring Lusian trooper.

The stairway went deeper than a normal bas.e.m.e.nt level, and at first I thought that the walls were adobe like the ones above. Then I realized that the pa.s.sage was cut from a soft stone, perhaps sandstone. Twenty-seven steps and we reached the bottom of the vertical shaft and Dem Ria led the way down a narrow pa.s.sage illuminated by pale chemical glowglobes. I wondered why this average, working-cla.s.s home would have an underground pa.s.sage.

As if reading my mind, Dem Loa's blue cowl turned and she whispered, "The Amoiete Spectrum Helix demands...ah...discreet entrances to one another's homes. Especially during the Twice Darkness."

"Twice Darkness?" I whispered back, ducking under one of the globes. We had already gone twenty or twenty-five meters-away from the ca.n.a.l-river, I thought-and the pa.s.sage still curved out of sight to the right.

"The slow, dual eclipse of the sun by this world's two moons," whispered Dem Loa. "It lasts precisely nineteen minutes. It is the primary reason that we chose this world...please excuse the pun."

"Ahh," I said. I did not understand, but it didn't seem to matter at that moment. "Pax troops have sensors to find spider-holes like this," I whispered to the women in front of me. "They have deep radar to search through rock. They have..."

"Yes, yes," said Alem from behind me, "but they will be held up a few minutes by the Mayor and the others."

"The Mayor?" I repeated rather stupidly. My legs were still weak from the two days in bed and pain. My back and groin ached, but it was a minor pain-inconsequential-compared to what I had pa.s.sed through (and what had pa.s.sed through me) during the last couple of days.

"The Mayor is challenging the Pax's right to search," whispered Dem Ria. The pa.s.sage widened and went straight for at least a hundred meters. We pa.s.sed two branching tunnels. This wasn't a bolt-hole; it was a b.l.o.o.d.y catacombs. "The Pax recognizes the Mayor's authority in Lock Childe Lamonde," she whispered. The silken robes of the five family members in blue were also whispering against the sandstone as we hurried down the pa.s.sage. "We still have law and courts on Vitus-Gray-Balia.n.u.s B, so they are not allowed unlimited search and seizure rights."

"But they'll download permission from whatever authority they need," I said, hurrying to keep up with the women. We came to another juncture and they turned right.

"Eventually," said Dem Loa, "but the streets are now filled with all of the colors of the Lock Childe Lamonde strand of the Helix-reds, whites, greens, ebonies, yellows-thousands of people from our village. And many more are coming from nearby Locks. No one will volunteer which house is the one where you were kept. Father Clifton has been lured out of town on a ruse, so he can be of no help to the Pax troopers. Dr. Molina has been detained in Keroa Tambat by some of our people and is currently out of touch with her Pax superiors. And your guard will be sleeping for at least another hour. This way."

We turned left into a wider pa.s.sage, stopped at the first door we had seen, waited for Dem Ria to palmlock it open, and then stepped into a large, echoing s.p.a.ce carved into the stone. We were standing on a metal stairway looking down on what appeared to be a subterranean garage: half a dozen long, slim vehicles with oversized wheels, stern wings, sails, and pedals cl.u.s.tered by primary colors. These things were like buckboards set on spidery suspensions, obviously powered by wind and muscle power, and covered over with wood, bright, silky polymer fabrics, and Perspex.

"Windcycles," said Ces Ambre.

Several men and women in emerald-green robes and high boots were preparing three of the wagons for departure. Lashed in the back of one of the long wagonbeds was my kayak.

Everyone was moving down the clattering staircase, but I stopped at the head of the stairs. My balking was so sudden that poor Bin and Ces Ambre almost crashed into me.

"What is it?" said Alem Mikail.

I had tucked the flechette pistol in my belt and now I opened my hands. "Why are you doing this? Why is everyone helping? What's going on?"

Dem Ria took a step back up the metal staircase and leaned on the railing. Her eyes were as bright as her daughter's had been. "If they take you, Raul Endymion, they will kill you."

"How do you know?" I said. My voice was soft but the acoustics of the underground garage were such that the men and women in green looked up from where they were working below.

"You spoke in your sleep," said Dem Loa.

I c.o.c.ked my head, not understanding. I had been dreaming of Aenea and our conversation. What would that have told these people?

Dem Ria took another step upward and touched my wrist with her cool hand. "The Amoiete Spectrum Helix has foretold this woman, Raul Endymion. This one named Aenea. We call her the One Who Teaches."

I felt goose b.u.mps at that moment, in the chill glowglobe light of this buried place. The old poet-Uncle Martin-had spoken of my young friend as a messiah, but his cynicism leaked into everything he said or did. The people of Taliesin West had respected Aenea...but to believe that the energetic sixteen-year-old was actually a World Historical Figure? It seemed unlikely. And the girl and I had spoken of it in real life and in my ultramorph dreams, but...my G.o.d, I was on a world scores of light-years away from Hyperion and an eternal distance from the Lesser Magellanic Cloud where Old Earth was hidden. How had these people...

"Halpul Amoiete knew of the One Who Teaches when he composed the Helix Symphony," said Dem Loa. "All of the people of the Spectrum were descended from empath stock. The Helix was and is a way to refine that empathie ability."

I shook my head. "I'm sorry, I don't understand..."

"Please understand this, Raul Endymion," said Dem Ria, her fingers squeezing my wrist almost painfully. "If you do not escape this place, the Pax will have your soul and body. And the One Who Teaches needs both these things."

I squinted at the woman, thinking that she was jesting. But her pleasant, unlined face was set and serious.

"Please," said little Bin, setting his little hand in my free one and pulling. "Please hurry, Raul."

I hurried down the stairs. One of the men in green handed me a red robe. Alem Mikail helped me fold and wrap it over my own clothes. He wrapped the red burnoose and cowl in a dozen quick strokes. I would never have been able to arrange it properly. I realized with a shock that the entire family-the two older women, teenaged Ces Ambre, and little Bin-had stripped naked from their blue robes and were arranging red ones around them. I saw then that I had been wrong thinking that they were like Lusians-for although their bodies were shorter than Pax s.p.a.ce average and heavily muscled, they were perfectly proportioned. None of the adults had any hair, either on their heads or elsewhere. Somehow this made their compact, perfectly toned bodies more attractive.

I looked away, realizing that I was blushing. Ces Ambre laughed and jostled my arm. We were all in red robes now, Alem Mikail being the last to pull his on. One glance at his heavily muscled upper torso told me that I would not last fifteen seconds in a fight with the shorter man. But then, I realized, I probably would not last more than thirty seconds with Dem Loa or Dem Ria either.

I offered the flechette pistol to Alem but he gestured for me to keep it and showed me how to tuck it in one of the multiple sashes of the long, crimson robe. I thought of my lack of weapons in the little backpack-a Navajo hunting knife and the little flashlight laser-and nodded my grat.i.tude.

The women and children and I were hurried into the back of the windcycle wagon that held my kayak and red fabric was pulled tight over the stays above us. We had to crouch low as a second layer of fabric, some wooden planks, and various crates and barrels were set in around and above us. I could just make out a glimpse of light between the tailgate and the wagon cover. I listened to footsteps on stone as Alem went up front and crawled onto one of the two pedaling saddles. I listened as one of the other men-also now in a red robe-joined him on the cycling seat on the other side of the central yoke.

With the masts still lowered above us, fabric sails reefed, we began rolling up a long ramp out of the garage.

"Where are we going?" I whispered to Dem Ria, who was lying almost next to me. The wood smelled like cedar.

"The downstream farcaster arch," she whispered back.

I blinked. "You know about that?"

"They gave you Truthtell," whispered Dem Loa from the other side of a crate. "And you did speak in your sleep."

Bin was lying right next to me in the darkness. "We know the One Who Teaches has sent you on a mission," he said almost happily. "We know you have to get to the next arch." He patted the kayak that curved next to us. "I wish I could go with you."

"This is too dangerous," I hissed, feeling the wagon roll out of the tunnel and into open air. Low sunlight illuminated the fabric above us. The windcycle wagon stopped for a second as the two men cranked the mast erect and unfurled the sail. "Too dangerous." I meant them taking me to the farcaster, of course, not the mission that Aenea had sent me on.

"If they know who I am," I whispered to Dem Ria, "they'll be watching the arch."

I could see the silhouette of her cowl as she nodded. "They will be watching, Raul Endymion. And it is dangerous. But darkness is almost here. In fourteen minutes."

I glanced at my comlog. It would be another ninety minutes or more until twilight according to what I had observed the previous two days. And then almost another full hour until true nightfall.

"It is only six kilometers to the downstream arch," whispered Ces Ambre from her place on the other side of the kayak. "The villages will be filled with the Spectrum celebrating."

I understood then. "The Twice Darkness?" I whispered.

"Yes," said Dem Ria. She patted my hand. "We must be silent now. We will be moving into traffic along the saltway."

"Too dangerous," I whispered one last time as the wagon began creaking and groaning its way into traffic. I could hear the chain drive rumbling beneath the buckboard floor and feel the wind catch the sail. Too dangerous Too dangerous, I said only to myself.

If I had known what was happening a few hundred meters away, I would have realized how truly dangerous this moment was.

I PEERED OUT THROUGH THE GAP BETWEEN WAGON wood and fabric as we rumbled along the saltway. This vehicle thoroughfare appeared to be a strip of rock-hard salt between the villages cl.u.s.tered along the raised ca.n.a.l and the reticulated desert stretching as far north as I could see. "Waste Wahhabi," whispered Dem Ria as we picked up speed and headed south along the saltway. Other windcycle wagons roared past heading south, their sails fully engaged, their two pedalers working madly. Even more brightly canvased wagons tacked north, their sails set differently, the pedalers leaning far out for balance as the creaking wagons teetered on two wheels, the other two spinning uselessly in the air.

We covered the six kilometers in ten minutes and turned off the saltway onto a paved ramp that led through a cl.u.s.ter of homes-white stone this time, not adobe-and then Alem and the other man furled the sail and pedaled the windcycle slowly along the cobblestone street that ran between the homes and the ca.n.a.l-river. High, wispy ferns grew along the ca.n.a.l banks there between elaborately fashioned piers, gazebos, and mult.i.tiered docks to which were tied ornate houseboats. The city seemed to end here where the ca.n.a.l widened into a waterway much more riverlike than artificial, and I raised my head enough to see the huge farcaster arch a few hundred meters downstream. Through and beyond the rusted arch, I could see only fern forest on the riverbanks and desert waste to the east and west. Alem guided the windcycle onto a brick loading ramp and pulled under the cover of a copse of tall ferns.

I glanced at my comlog. Less than two minutes until the Twice Darkness.

At that instant there was a rush of warm air and a shadow pa.s.sed over us. We all crouched lower as the black Pax skimmer flew out over the river at an alt.i.tude of less than a hundred meters; the aerodynamic, figure-eight shape of the thing clearly visible as it banked more steeply steeply and then swooped low above the ships headed north and south through the arch. River traffic was brisk here where the river widened: sleek racing sculls with rowing teams of four to twelve, gleaming powerboats throwing up glistening wakes, sailboats ranging from single-person jitabouts to wallowing, square-sailed junks, canoes and row-boats, some stately houseboats churning against the current, a handful of silent electric hovercraft moving within their haloes of spray, and even some rafts that reminded me of my earlier voyage with Aenea and A. Bettik. and then swooped low above the ships headed north and south through the arch. River traffic was brisk here where the river widened: sleek racing sculls with rowing teams of four to twelve, gleaming powerboats throwing up glistening wakes, sailboats ranging from single-person jitabouts to wallowing, square-sailed junks, canoes and row-boats, some stately houseboats churning against the current, a handful of silent electric hovercraft moving within their haloes of spray, and even some rafts that reminded me of my earlier voyage with Aenea and A. Bettik.

The skimmer flew low over these ships, pa.s.sed over the farcaster arch headed south, flew back under it headed north, and disappeared in the direction of Lock Childe Lamonde.

"Come," said Alem Mikail, folding back the fabric tarp above us and pulling at the kayak. "We must hurry."

Suddenly there was a rush of warm air, followed by a cooler breeze that kicked dust off the riverbank, the fernheads rustled and shook above us, and the sky grew purple and then black. Stars came out. I glanced upward just long enough to see a beaded corona around one of the moons and the burning disc of the second, lower satellite as it moved into place behind the first.

From north along the river, back in the direction of the linear city that included Lock Childe Lamonde, there came the most haunting and mournful sound I had ever heard: a long wailing, more human-throated than siren-caused, followed by a sustained note that grew deeper and deeper until it fell into the subsonic. I realized that I had heard hundreds-perhaps thousands-of horns played at the same instant that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of human voices had joined in chorus.

The darkness around us grew deeper. The stars blazed. The disc of the lower moon was like some great backlit dome that threatened to drop on the darkened world at any moment. Suddenly the many ships on the river to the south and the ca.n.a.l-river to the north began wailing with their own sirens and horns-a cacophonous howl, this, nothing like the descending harmony of the opening chorus-and then began firing off flares and fireworks: multicolored starsh.e.l.ls, roaring St. Catherine's Wheels, red parachute flares, braided strands of yellow, blue, green, red, and white fire-the Spectrum Helix?-and countless aerial bombs. The noise and light were all but overwhelming.

"Hurry," repeated Alem, pulling the kayak from the wagonbed. I jumped out to help him and pulled off my concealing robe, tossing it into the back of the wagon. The next minute was a flurry of coordinated motion as Dem Ria, Dem Loa, Ces Ambre, Bin, and I helped Alem and the unnamed man carry the kayak down to the river's edge and set it afloat. I went into the warm water up to my knees, stowed my backpack and the flechette pistol inside the little c.o.c.kpit, held the kayak steady against the current, and looked at the two women, two young people, and two men in their billowing robes.

"What is to happen to you?" I asked. My back ached from the aftermath of the kidney stone, but at the moment the tightening of my throat was the more painful distraction.

Dem Ria shook her head. "Nothing bad will happen to us, Raul Endymion. If the Pax authorities attempt to make trouble, we will simply disappear into the tunnels beneath Waste Wahhabi until it is time to rejoin the Spectrum elsewhere." She smiled and adjusted her robe on her shoulder. "But make us one promise, Raul Endymion."