"Not at first, Your Holiness. Our special teams will go planetside, find the girl, and remove her to an archangel convoy that shall bring her here to Pacem, where she will be revived, isolated, interrogated, and..."

"Executed," sighed the Pope. "To show those millions of rebels on sixty worlds that their putative messiah is no more."

"Yes, Your Holiness."

"We look forward to speaking to this person, Simon Augustino. The Devil's Child or not."

"Yes, Your Holiness."

"And when will Captain de Soya take the bait and appear for his destruction, do you think?"

Cardinal Lourdusamy looked at his comlog. "Within hours, Your Holiness. Within hours."

"Let us pray for a successful conclusion," whispered the Pope. "Let us pray for the salvation of our Church and our race."

Both men bowed their heads in the Room of Tears.

IN THE DAYS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING OUR RETURN from the Dalai Lama's Potala palace, I get the first hints of the full scope of Aenea's plans and power.

I am amazed at the reception upon our return. Rachel and Theo weep as they hug Aenea. A. Bettik pounds me on the back with his remaining hand and hugs me with both arms. The usually laconic Jigme Norbu first hugs George Tsarong and then comes down the line of us pilgrims, hugging all of us, tears streaming down his thin face. The entire Temple has turned out to cheer and clap and weep. I realize then that many had not expected us-or at least Aenea-to return from the reception with the Pax. I realize then what a close thing it had been that we had returned.

We set to work finishing the reconstruction of Hsuan-k'ung Ssu. I work with Lh.o.m.o, A. Bettik, and the high riggers on the last touches to the highest promenade, while Aenea, Rachel, and Theo surpervise detail work throughout the compound.

That evening, all I can think of is turning in early with my beloved, and from our hurried but pa.s.sionate kisses during our few minutes alone on the high walk after the communal dinner, I guess that Aenea reciprocates the wish for immediate and intense intimacy. But it is one of her scheduled "discussion group" evenings-her last as it turns out-and more than a hundred people are there in the central gompa platform as darkness falls. Luckily, the monsoons have held off after the first foretaste of their gray rain, and the evening is lovely as the sun sets to the west of K'un Lun Ridge. Torches crackle along the main axis stairways and prayer pennants snap.

I am amazed by some of those in attendance this night: the Tromo Trochi of Dhomu has returned from Potala in spite of his declared need to move west with his wares; the Dorje Phamo is there with all nine of her favorite priests; there are numerous famous guests from the palace reception-mostly younger people-and the youngest and most famous of all, trying to appear incognito in a plain red robe and hood, is the Dalai Lama himself, minus his Regent and Lord Chamberlain, accompanied only by his personal bodyguard and Chief Crier, Carl Linga William Eiheji.

I stand at the back of the crowded room. For an hour or so, the discussion group is a discussion group, sometimes led but never dominated by Aenea. But slowly her questioning turns the conversation her way. I realize that she is a master of Tannic and Zen Buddhism, answering monks who have spent decades mastering those disciplines in koan and Dharma. To a monk who demands to know why they should not accept the Pax offer of immortality as a form of rebirth, she quotes Buddha as teaching that no individual is reborn, that all things are subject to annicca annicca-the law of mutability-and she then elaborates on the doctrine of anatta anatta, literally "no-self," the Buddha's denial that there is any such thing as a personal ent.i.ty known as a soul.

Responding to another query about death, Aenea quotes a Zen koan: "A monk said to Tozan, 'A monk has died; where has he gone?' Tozan answered, 'After the fire, a sprout of gra.s.s.'"

"M. Aenea," says Kuku Se, her bright face flushed, "does that mean mu?"

Aenea has taught me that mu mu is an elegant Zen concept that might translate as-"Unask the question." is an elegant Zen concept that might translate as-"Unask the question."

My friend smiles. She is sitting farthest from the door, in an open s.p.a.ce near the opened wall of the room, and the stars are bright and visible above the Sacred Mountain of the North. The Oracle has not risen.

"It means that to some extent," she says softly. The room is silent to hear. "It also means that the monk is as dead as a doornail. He hasn't gone anywhere-more importantly, he has gone nowhere. But life has also gone nowhere. It continues, in a different form. Hearts are sorrowed by the monk's death, but life is not lessened. Nothing has been removed from the balance of life in the universe. Yet that whole universe-as reproduced in the monk's mind and heart-has itself died. Seppo once said to Gensha, 'Monk Shinso asked me where a certain dead monk had gone, and I told him it was like ice becoming water.' Gensha said, 'That was all right, but I myself would not have answered like that.' 'What would you have said?' asked Seppo. Gensha replied, 'It's like water returning to water.'"

After a moment of silence, someone near the front of the room says, "Tell us about the Void Which Binds."

"Once upon a time," begins Aenea as she always begins such things, "there was the Void. And the Void was beyond time. In a real sense, the Void was an orphan of time...an orphan of s.p.a.ce.

"But the Void was not of time, not of s.p.a.ce, and certainly was not of G.o.d. Nor is the Void Which Binds G.o.d. In truth, the Void evolved long after time and s.p.a.ce had staked out the limits to the universe, but unbound by time, untethered in s.p.a.ce, the Void Which Binds has leaked backward and forward across the continuum to the Big Bang beginning and the Little Whimper end of things."

Aenea pauses here and lifts her hands to her temples in a motion I have not seen her use since she was a child. She does not look to be a child this night. Her eyes are tired but vital. There are wrinkles of fatigue or worry around those eyes. I love her eyes.

"The Void Which Binds is a minded minded thing," she says firmly. "It comes from minded things-many of whom were, in turn, created by minded things. thing," she says firmly. "It comes from minded things-many of whom were, in turn, created by minded things.

"The Void Which Binds is st.i.tched of quantum stuff, woven with Planck s.p.a.ce, Planck time, lying under and around s.p.a.ce/ time like a quilt cover around and under cotton batting. The Void Which Binds is neither mystical nor metaphysical, it flows from and responds to the physical laws of the universe, but it is a product of that evolving universe but it is a product of that evolving universe. The Void is structured from thought and feeling. It is an artifact of the universe's consciousness of itself. And not merely of human thought and feeling-the Void Which Binds is a composite of a hundred thousand sentient races across billions of years of time. It is the only constant in the evolution of the universe-the only common ground for races that will evolve, grow, flower, fade, and die millions of years and hundreds of millions of light-years apart from one another. And there is only one entrance key to the Void Which Binds..."

Aenea pauses again. Her young friend Rachel is sitting close to her, cross-legged and attentive. I notice now for the first time that Rachel-the woman whom I have been foolishly jealous of these past few months-is indeed beautiful: copperish-brown hair short and curly, her cheeks flushed, her large green eyes flecked with tiny specks of brown. She is about Aenea's age, early twenties, standard, and hued to a golden brown by months of work in high places under T'ien Shan's yellow sun.

Aenea touches Rachel's shoulder.

"My friend here was a baby when her father discovered an interesting fact about the universe," says Aenea. "Her father, a scholar named Sol, had been obsessed for decades about the historical relationship between G.o.d and man. Then one day, under the most extreme of circ.u.mstances, when faced with losing his daughter for a second time, Sol was granted satori satori-he saw totally and intuitively what only a few others have been privileged to see clearly through the million years of our slow ponderings...Sol saw that love was a real and equal force in the universe...as real as electromagnetism or weak nuclear force. As real as gravity, and governed by many of the same laws. The inverse square law, for instance, often works as surely for love as it does for gravitational attraction.

"Sol realized that love was the binding force of the Void Which Binds, the thread and fabric of the garment. And in that instant of satori satori, Sol realized that humankind was not the only seamstress of that gorgeous tapestry. Sol glimpsed the Void Which Binds and the force of love behind it, but he could not gain access to that medium. Human beings, so recently evolved from our primate cousins, have not yet gained the sensory capacity to see clearly or enter the Void Which Binds.

"I say 'to see clearly' because all humans with an open heart and mind have caught rare but powerful glimpses of the Void landscape. Just as Zen is not a religion, but is is religion, so the Void Which Binds is not a state of mind, but religion, so the Void Which Binds is not a state of mind, but is is the state of mind. The Void is all probability as standing waves, interacting with that standing wave front which is the human mind and personality. The Void Which Binds is touched by all of us who have wept with happiness, bidden a lover good-bye, been exalted with o.r.g.a.s.m, stood over the grave of a loved one, or watched our baby open his or her eyes for the first time." the state of mind. The Void is all probability as standing waves, interacting with that standing wave front which is the human mind and personality. The Void Which Binds is touched by all of us who have wept with happiness, bidden a lover good-bye, been exalted with o.r.g.a.s.m, stood over the grave of a loved one, or watched our baby open his or her eyes for the first time."

Aenea is looking at me as she speaks, and I feel the goose-flesh rise along my arms.

"The Void Which Binds is always under and above the surface of our thoughts and senses," she continues, "invisible but as present as the breathing of our beloved next to us in the night. Its actual but unaccessible presence in our universe is one of the prime causes for our species elaborating myth and religion, for our stubborn, blind belief in extrasensory powers, in telepathy and precognition, in demons and demiG.o.ds and resurrection and reincarnation and ghosts and messiahs and so many other categories of almost-but-not-quite satisfying bulls.h.i.t."

The hundred-some listening monks, workers, intellectuals, politicians, and holy men and women shift slightly at this statement. The wind is rising outside and the platform rocks gently, as it was designed to do. Thunder rumbles from somewhere to the south of Jo-kung.

"The so-called 'Four Statements of the Zen Sect' ascribed to Bodhidharma in the sixth century A.D A.D. are an almost perfect signpost to find the Void Which Binds, at least to find its outline as an absence of otherworldly clutter," continues Aenea. "First, no dependence on words and letters "First, no dependence on words and letters. Words are the light and sound of our existence, the heat lightning by which the night is illuminated. The Void Which Binds is to be found in the deepest secrets and silences of things...the place where childhood dwells.

"Second, a special transmission outside the Scriptures. Artists recognize other artists as soon as the pencil begins to move. A musician can tell another musician apart from the millions who play notes as soon as the music begins. Poets glean poets in a few syllables, especially where the ordinary meaning and forms of poetry are discarded. Chora wrote- "Two came here, Two flew off- b.u.t.terflies.

"-and in the still-warm crucible of burned-away words and images remains the gold of deeper things, what R. H. Blyth and Frederick Franck once called 'the dark flame of life that burns in all things,'...and 'seeing with the belly, not with the eye; with "bowels of compa.s.sion."'

"The Bible lies. The Koran lies. The Talmud and Torah lie. The New Testament lies. The Sutta-pitaka Sutta-pitaka, the nikayas nikayas, the Itivuttaka Itivuttaka, and the Dhammapada Dhammapada lie. The Bodhisattva and the Amitabha lie. lie. The Bodhisattva and the Amitabha lie. The Book of the Dead The Book of the Dead lies. The lies. The Tiptaka Tiptaka lies. All Scripture lies...just as I lie as I speak to you now. lies. All Scripture lies...just as I lie as I speak to you now.

"All these holy books lie not from intention or failure of expression, but by their very nature of being reduced to words; all the images, precepts, laws, canons, quotations, parables, commandments, koans, zazen, and sermons in these beautiful books ultimately fail by adding only more words between the human being who is seeking and the perception of the Void Which Binds.

"Third, direct pointing to the soul of man. Zen, which best understood the Void by finding its absence most clearly, wrestled with the problem of pointing without a finger, of creating this art without a medium, of hearing this powerful sound in a vacuum with no sounds. Shiki wrote- "A fishing village; Dancing under the moon, To the smell of raw fish.

"This-and I do not mean the poem-is the essence of seeking the key to the portal of the Void Which Binds. A hundred thousand races on a million worlds in days long dead have each had their villages with no houses, their dancing under the moon in worlds with no moons, the smell of raw fish on oceans with no fish. This This can be shared beyond time, beyond words, beyond a race's span of existence. can be shared beyond time, beyond words, beyond a race's span of existence.

"Fourth, seeing into one's nature and the attainment of Buddhahood. It does not take decades of zazen or baptism into the Church or pondering the Koran to do this. The Buddha nature is, after all, the after-the-crucible essence of being human. Flowers all attain their flowerhood. A wild dog or blind zygoat each attain their doghood or zygoathood. A place-any place-is granted its placehood. Only humankind struggles and fails in becoming what it is. The reasons are many and complex, but all stem from the fact that we have evolved as one of the self-seeing organs of the evolving universe. Can the eye see itself?"

Aenea pauses for a moment and in the silence we can all hear thunder rumbling somewhere beyond the ridge. The monsoon is holding off a few days, but its arrival is imminent. I try to imagine these buildings, mountains, ridges, cables, bridges, walkways, and scaffolds covered with ice and shrouded by fog. The thought makes me shiver.

"The Buddha understood that we could sense the Void Which Binds by silencing the din of the everyday," says Aenea at last. "In that sense, satori satori is a great and satisfying silence after listening to a neighbor's blasting sound system for days or months on end. But the Void Which Binds is more than silence...it is the beginning of hearing. Learning the language of the dead is the first task of those who enter the Void medium. is a great and satisfying silence after listening to a neighbor's blasting sound system for days or months on end. But the Void Which Binds is more than silence...it is the beginning of hearing. Learning the language of the dead is the first task of those who enter the Void medium.

"Jesus of Nazareth entered the Void Which Binds. We know that. His voice is among the clearest of those who speak in the language of the dead. He stayed long enough to move to the second level of responsibility and effort-of learning the language of the dead. He learned well enough to hear the music of the spheres. He was able to ride the surging probability waves far enough lo see his own death and was brave enough not to avoid it when he could. And we know that-at least on one occasion while dying on die cross-he learned to take that first step-to move through and across the s.p.a.ce/time web of the Void Which Binds, appearing to his friends and disciples several paces into the future from where he hung dying on that cross.

"And, liberated from the restrictions of his time by his glimpse of the thnelessness on the Void Which Binds, Jesus realized that it was he who was die key-not his teachings, not Scriptures based on his ideas, not groveling adulation to him or the suddenly evolving Old Testament G.o.d in which he solidly believed-but him him, Jesus, a human man whose cells carried the decryption code to unlock the portal. Jesus knew that his ability to open that door lay not in his mind or soul but in his skin and bones and cells...literally in his DNA.

When, during die Last Supper, Jesus of Nazareth asked his followers to drink of his blood and eat of his body, he was not speaking in parable or asking for magical transubstantiation or setting die place for centuries of symbolic reenactment. Jesus wanted them to drink of his blood...a few drops in a great tankard of wine...and to eat of his body...a few skin sc.r.a.pings in a loaf of bread Jesus wanted them to drink of his blood...a few drops in a great tankard of wine...and to eat of his body...a few skin sc.r.a.pings in a loaf of bread. He gave of himself in die most literal terms, knowing that those who drank of his blood would share his DNA, and be able to perceive the power of the Void Which Binds the universe.

"And so it was for some of his disciples. But, confronted with perceptions and impressions far beyond their power to absorb or to set in context-nail but driven mad by the unceasing voices of the dead and their own reactions to the language of the living-and unable to transmit their own blood music to others-these disciples turned to dogma, reducing die inexpressible into rough words and turgid sermons, tight rules and fiery rhetoric. And the vision paled, then failed. The portal closed."

Aenea pauses again and sips water from a wooden mug. I notice for the first time that Rachel Rachel and Theo and a few others are weeping. I swivel where I am sitting om the fresh tatami and look behind me. A. Bettik is standing in the open doorway, his ageless blue face serious and intent on our young friend's words. The android is holding his shortened forearm with his good right hand. and Theo and a few others are weeping. I swivel where I am sitting om the fresh tatami and look behind me. A. Bettik is standing in the open doorway, his ageless blue face serious and intent on our young friend's words. The android is holding his shortened forearm with his good right hand. Does it pain him? Does it pain him? I wonder. I wonder.

Aenea speaks again. "Strangely enough, the first children of Old Earth to rediscover the key to the Void Which Binds were the TechnoCore. The autonomous intelligences, attempting to guide their own destiny through forced evolution at a million times the rate of biological humankind, found the DNA keycode to seeing the Void...although 'seeing' is not the correct word, of course. Perhaps 'resonating' better expresses the meaning.

"But while the Core could feel and explore the outlines of the Void medium, send their probes into the multidimensional post-Hawking reality of it, they could not understand it they could not understand it. The Void Which Binds demands a level of sentient empathy which the Core had never bothered evolving. The first step toward true satori satori in the Void is learning the language of the beloved dead- in the Void is learning the language of the beloved dead-and the Core has no beloved dead. The Void Which Binds was like a beautiful painting to a blind man who chooses to burn it like firewood, or like a Beethoven symphony to a deaf man who feels the vibration and builds a stronger floor to damp it out.

"Instead of using the Void Which Binds as the medium it is, the TechnoCore tore bits of it loose and offered it to humankind as clever technologies. The so-called. Hawking drive did not truly evolve from the ancient master Stephen Hawking's work as the Core said, but was a perversion of his findings. The Hawking-drive ships that wove the WorldWeb and allowed the Hegemony to exist functioned by tearing small holes in the nonfabric at the edge of the Void-a minor vandalism, but vandalism nonetheless. Farcasters were a different thing. Here my similes will fail us, my friends...for teaming to step across the medium of the Void Which Binds is a bit like learning to walk on water, if you will pardon the scriptural hubris, while the TechnoCore's farcaster burrows were more like draining the oceans so as to build highways across the seabed. Their farcaster tunneling through the boundaries of the Void was harming several billion years of organic growth there. It was the equivalent of paving great swaths through a vital, green forest-although that comparison also fails, because the forest would have to be made out of the memories and voices of the millions we have loved and lost-and the paved highways thousands of kilometers wide-for you to understand even a hint of the damage done.

"The so-called fatline which allowed for instantaneous communication across the Hegemony was also a perversion of the Void Which Binds. Again, my similes are clumsy and inept, but imagine some human aborigines discovering a working electromagnetic telecommunications grid-studios, holocameras, sound equipment, generators, transmitters, relay satellites, receivers, and projectors-and then tearing down and tearing up everything they can reach so that they can use the junk as signal flags. It is worse than that. It is worse than pre-Hegira days on Old Earth when humanity's giant oil tankers and ocean going ships deafened the world's whales by filling their seas with mechanical noise, thus drowning out their Life Songs-destroying a million years of evolving song history before human beings even knew it was being sung. The whales all decided to die out after that; it was not the hunting of them for food and oil that killed them, but the destruction of their songs."

Aenea takes a breath. She flexes her fingers as if her hands are cramping. When she looks around the room, her gaze touches each of us.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm wandering. Suffice it to say, that with the Fall of the Farcasters, the other races using the Void decided to stop the vandalism of the fatline. These other races had long since sent observers to live among us..."

There is a sudden whispering and murmuring in the room. Aenea smiles and waits for it to subside.

"I know," she says. "The idea surprised me, as well, even though I knew this before I was born. These observers have an important function...to decide if humanity can be trusted to join them in the Void Which Binds medium, or if we are only vandals. It was one of these observers among us who recommended that Old Earth be transported away before the Core could destroy it. And it was one of these observers who designed the tests and simulations carried out on Old Earth during the last three centuries of its exile in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud to better explain our species to them and measure the empathy of which we are capable.

"These other races also sent their observers-spies, if you will-to dwell among the elements of the Core. They knew that it had been the Core tampering which had damaged the boundaries of the Void, but they also know that that we we created the Core created the Core. Many of the...residents is not quite the right word-collaborators? cocreators?-on the Void Which Binds are ex-silicon constructs, nonorganic autonomous intelligences in their own right. But not of the variety which rules the TechnoCore today. No sentient race can appreciate the Void medium without having evolved empathy."

Aenea raises her knees a bit and sets her elbows on them, leaning forward now as she speaks.

"My father-the John Keats cybrid-was created for this reason," she says, and although her voice is level, I can hear the subtext of emotion there. "As I have explained before, the Core is in a constant state of civil war, with almost every ent.i.ty there fighting for itself and for no one else. It is a case of hyper-hyper-hyperparasitism to the tenth degree. Their prey-other Core elements-are not so much killed as absorbed, their coded genetic materials, memories, softwares, and reproductive sequences cannibalized. The cannibalized Core element still 'lives' but as a subcomponent of the victorious element or elements, which soon enough turn on one another for parts. Alliances are temporary. There are no philosophies, creeds, or ultimate goals-only contingency arrangements to optimize survival strategies. Every action in the Core is a result of the zero-sum game that has been playing there since the Core elements evolved into sentience. Most elements of the Core are capable of dealing with humankind in only those zero-sum terms...optimizing their parasite strategy in relation to us. Their gain, our loss. Our gain, their loss.

"Over the centuries, however, some of these Core elements have come to understand the true potential of the Void Which Binds. They understand that their empathy-free species of intelligence can never be part of that amalgam of living and past races. They have come to understand that the Void Which Binds was not so much constructed as evolved, like a coral reef, and that they will never find shelter there unless they change some of the parameters of their own existence.

"Thus evolved some members of the Core-not altruists, but desperate survivalists who realized that the only way ultimately to win their never-ending zero-sum game was to stop the game. And to stop the game they needed to evolve into a species capable of empathy.

"The Core knows what Teilhard de Chardin and other sentimentalists refused to acknowledge: that evolution is not progress, that there is no 'goal' or direction to evolution. Evolution is change. Evolution 'succeeds' if that change best adapts some leaf or branch of its tree of life to conditions of the universe. For that evolution to 'succeed' for these elements of the Core, they would have to abandon zero-sum parasitism and discover true symbiosis. They would have to enter into honest co-evolution with our human race.

"First the renegade Core elements continued cannibalizing to evolve more empathy-p.r.o.ne Core elements. They rewrote their own code as far as they were able. Then they created the John Keats cybrid-a full attempt at simulating an empathie organism with the body and DNA of a human being, and the Core-stored memories and personality of a cybrid. Opposing elements destroyed the first Keats cybrid. The second one was created in the first's image. It hired my mother-a private detective-to help him unravel the mystery of the first cybrid's death."

Aenea is smiling and for a moment she seems oblivious of us or even of her own storytelling. She seems to be reliving old memories. I remember then what she once casually mentioned during our trip from Hyperion in the Consul's old ship-"Raul, I had my mother's and father's memories poured into me before I was born...before I'd become a real fetus even. Can you imagine anything more destructive to a child's personality than to be inundated with someone else's lives even before you've begun your own? No wonder I'm a screwed-up mess."

She does not look or act like a screwed-up mess to me at this moment. But then I love her more than life.

"He hired my mother to solve the mystery of his own persona's death," she continues softly, "but in truth he knew what had happened to his former self. His real reason for hiring my mother was to meet my mother, to be with my mother, to become my mother's lover." Aenea stops for a moment and smiles, her eyes seeing distant things. "My Uncle Martin never got that part right in his muddled-up Cantos Cantos. My parents were married and I don't think Uncle Martin ever told of that...married by the Bishop at the Shrike Temple on Lusus. It was a cult, but a legal one, and my parents' marriage would have been legal on two hundred worlds of the Hegemony." She smiles again, looking across the crowded room directly at me. "I can be a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you know, but I wasn't born one.

"So they were married, I was conceived-probably before that ceremony-and then Core-backed elements murdered my father before my mother could begin the Shrike pilgrimage to Hyperion. And that should have been the end of any contact between my father and me except for two things-his Core persona was captured in a Schron Loop implanted behind my mother's ear. For some months she was pregnant with two of us-me in her womb and my father, the second John Keats persona, in the Schron Loop. His persona could not communicate directly to my mother while imprisoned in its endless-cycle Schron Loop, but it communicated with me easily enough. The hard part was defining what 'me' was at that point. My father helped by entering the Void Which Binds and taking the fetal 'me' with him. I saw what was to be-who I would be-even how I would die-before my fingers were fully formed.

"And there was one other detail which Uncle Martin left out of his Cantos Cantos. On the day that they had gunned down my father on the steps of the Shrike Temple in the Lusian Concourse Mall, my mother was covered with his blood-the reconstructed, Core-augmented DNA of John Keats. What she did not fully understand at the time was that his blood was literally the most precious resource in the human universe at that moment. His DNA had been designed to infect others with his single gift-access to the Void. Mixed with fully human DNA in the right way, it would offer the gift of blood that would open the portal to the Void Which Binds to the entire human race.

"I am that mix. I bring the genetic ability to access the Void from the TechnoCore and the too-seldom-used human ability to perceive the universe through empathy. For better or worse, those who drink of my blood shall never see the world or the universe the same again."

So saying, Aenea rises to her knees on the tatami mat. Theo brings a white linen cloth. Rachel pours red wine from a vase into seven large goblets. Aenea takes a small packet from her sweater-I recognize it as a ship's medkit-and removes a sterile lancet and an antiseptic swab. She pauses before using the lancet and sweeps her gaze across the crowd. There is no sound-it is as if the more than hundred people there are holding their breath.

"There is no guarantee of happiness, wisdom, or long life if you drink of me this evening," she says, very softly. "There is no nirvana. There is no salvation. There is no afterlife. There is no rebirth. There is only immense knowledge-of the heart as well as the mind-and the potential for great discoveries, great adventures, and a guarantee of more of the pain and terror that make up so much of our short lives."

She looks from face to face, smiling as she meets the gaze of the eight-year-old Dalai Lama. "Some of you," she says, "have attended all of our discussion sessions over the past standard year. I have told you what I know about learning the language of the dead, learning the language of the living, learning to hear the music of the spheres, and learning how to take a first step."

She looks at me. "Some of you have heard only some of these discussions. You were not here when I discussed the real function of the Church's cruciform or the real ident.i.ty of the Shrike. You have not heard the details of learning the language of the dead or the other burdens of entering the Void Which Binds. For those of you with doubts or hesitation, I urge you to wait. For the rest of you, I say again-I am not a messiah...but I am a teacher. If what I have taught you these months sounds like truth, and if you wish to take this chance, drink of me this night. Be warned, that the DNA which allows us to perceive the medium of the Void Which Binds cannot coexist with the cruciform. That parasite will wither and die within twenty-four hours of the time you drink of my blood. It will never grow within you again. If you seek resurrection through the cruciform cross, do not drink the blood of my body in this wine.

"And be warned that you will become, like me, the despised and sought-out enemy of the Pax. Your blood will be contagious. Those with whom you share it-those who choose to find the Void Which Binds via your shared DNA-will become despised in turn.

"And finally, be warned that, once having drunk this wine, your children will be born with the ability to enter the Void Which Binds. For better or worse, your children and their children will be born knowing the language of the dead, the language of the living, hearing the music of the spheres, and knowing that they can take a first step across the Void Which Binds."

Aenea touches her finger with the razor edge of the lancet. A tiny drop of blood is visible in the lantern light. Rachel holds a goblet up as the tiny drop of blood is squeezed into the large volume of wine. Then again with the next goblet, and so on until each of the seven cups has been...contaminated? Transubstantiated? My mind is reeling. My heart is pounding in something like alarm. This seems like some wild parody of the Catholic Church's Holy Communion. Has my young friend, my dear lover, my beloved...has she gone insane? Does she truly believe that she is a messiah? No, she said that she is not. Do I I believe that I will be transformed forever by drinking of wine that is one part per million my beloved's blood? I do not know. I do not understand. believe that I will be transformed forever by drinking of wine that is one part per million my beloved's blood? I do not know. I do not understand.

About half of the people there move forward to line up and sip from one of the large goblets. Chalices? This is blasphemy. It's not right. Or is it? Chalices? This is blasphemy. It's not right. Or is it? One sip is all they take, then return to their places on the tatami mats. No one seems especially energized or enlightened. No horns of light shine from anyone's forehead after they partake of the wine. No one levitates or speaks in tongues. They each take a sip and sit down. One sip is all they take, then return to their places on the tatami mats. No one seems especially energized or enlightened. No horns of light shine from anyone's forehead after they partake of the wine. No one levitates or speaks in tongues. They each take a sip and sit down.

I realize that I have been holding back, trying to catch Aenea's gaze. I have so many questions...Belatedly, feeling like a traitor to someone I should trust without hesitation, I move toward the back of the shortening line.

Aenea sees me. She holds her hand up briefly, palm toward me. The meaning is clear-Not now, Raul. Not yet now, Raul. Not yet. I hesitate another moment, irresolute, sick at the thought of these others-these strangers-entering into an intimacy with my darling when I cannot. Then, heart pounding and face burning, I sit back on my mat.

There is no formal end to the evening. People begin to leave in twos and threes. A couple-she drank of the wine, he did not-leave together with their arms around one another as if nothing has changed. Perhaps nothing has has changed. Perhaps the communion ritual I've just watched is all metaphor and symbolism, or autosuggestion and self-hypnosis. Perhaps those who will themselves hard enough to perceive something called the Void Which Binds will have some internal experience that convinces them that it has happened. Perhaps it's all bulls.h.i.t. changed. Perhaps the communion ritual I've just watched is all metaphor and symbolism, or autosuggestion and self-hypnosis. Perhaps those who will themselves hard enough to perceive something called the Void Which Binds will have some internal experience that convinces them that it has happened. Perhaps it's all bulls.h.i.t.

I rub my forehead. I have such a headache. Good thing I didn't drink the wine, I think. Wine sometimes brings on migraines with me. I chuckle and feel ill and empty for a moment, left behind.

Rachel says, "Don't forget, the last stone will be set in place in the walkway tomorrow at noon. There'll be a party on the upper meditation platform! Bring your own refreshments."

And thus ends the evening. I go upstairs to our shared sleeping platform with a mixture of elation, antic.i.p.ation, regret, embarra.s.sment, excitement, and a throbbing headache. I confess to myself that I didn't understand half of Aenea's explanation of things, but I leave with a vague sense of letdown and inappropriateness...I'm sure, for instance, that Jesus Christ's Last Supper did not end with a shouted reminder of a BYOB party on the upper deck.

I chuckle and then swallow the laugh. Last Supper. That has a terrible ring to it. My heart begins pounding again and my head hurts worse. Hardly the way to enter one's lover's bedroom.

The chili air on the upper platform walkway clears my head a bit. The Oracle is just a sliver above towering c.u.mulus to the east. The stars look cold tonight.

I am just about to enter our shared room and light the lantern when suddenly the skies explode.

21.

-hey all came up from the lower levels-all of the ones who had stayed at the Temple Hanging in Air after most of the work had been finished-Aenea and A. Bettik, Rachel and Theo, George and Jigme, Kuku and Kay, Chim Din and Gyalo Thondup, I Lh.o.m.o and Labsang, Kim Byung-Soon and Viki Groselj, Kenshiro and Haruyuki, Master Abbot Kempo Ngha w.a.n.g Tashi and his master, the young Dalai Lama, Voytek Majer and Ja.n.u.sz Kurtyka, brooding Rimsi Kyipup and grinning Changchi Kenchung, the Dorje Phamo the Thunderbolt Sow and Carl Linga William Eiheji. Aenea came to my side and slipped her hand in mine as we watched the skies in awed silence.

I am surprised that we were not all blinded by the light show going on up there where the stars had been a moment earlier: great blossoms of white light, strobes of sulfur yellow, blazing red streaks-far brighter than a comet or meteor's tail-crisscrossed with blue, green, white, and yellow slashes-each as clear and straight as a diamond scratch on gla.s.s, then sudden bursts of orange that seemed to fold into themselves in silent implosions, followed by more white strobes and a resumption of red slashes. It was all silent, but the violence of light alone made us want to cover our ears and cringe in a sheltered place.

"What in ten h.e.l.ls is it?" asked Lh.o.m.o Dondrub.

"s.p.a.ce battle," said Aenea. Her voice sounded terribly tired.

"I do not understand," said the Dalai Lama. He did not sound afraid, merely curious. "The Pax authorities a.s.sured us that they would have only one of their starships in orbit-the Jibril Jibril, I believe is its name-and that it was on a diplomatic mission rather than a military one. Regent Reting Tokra also a.s.sured me of this."

The Thunderbolt Sow made a rude noise. "Your Holiness, the Regent is in the pay of the Pax b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

The boy looked at her.

"I believe it to be true, Your Holiness," said Eiheji, his bodyguard. "I have heard things in the palace."

The sky had faded almost to black but now it exploded again in a score of places. The rocky cliff face behind us bled reflections of red, green, and yellow.