Dan Simmons - The rise of Endymion

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The Rise of Endymion (v4.8)

Dan Simmons, 1997

v4.5 ?????

v4.8 12.05.2002 - Anaerobic - Scanning errors fixed, Paragraph breaks restored

The final chapter of this magnificent saga begins with two momentous events: the death and

resurrection of Pope Julius XIV and the coming-of-age of the new messiah. Her name is Aenea and

she is the only person who can counter the pope and his plan to unleash the Pax Fleet, the

Church's military wing, on a final genocidal Crusade to gain total dominion over the universe. The

Church is allied with the infamous Also Core, which has offered immortality to humankind -- or at

least to those faithful who pledge total obedience to the Church -- but at what terrible price?

The Core has its own dark motives and secrets, and only Aenea knows what they are.

Aenea, too, has an ally. Her protector, Raul Endymion, onetime shepherd and convicted murderer,

finds her in exile undergoing a strange apprenticeship on Old Earth.

Here she has gained access to an information matrix created by the Others -- the same

mysterious Others who moved Old Earth to save it from the Core.

But who are these Others? What has Aenea learned from them? And why has Old Earth been turned

into a stage upon which cybrids from the past -- from John Keats to Frank Lloyd Wright -- repeat

historical dramas of human genius for purposes known only to the Others? The answers to these

questions must wait. Together with the android A. Bettik, Endymion and his beloved Aenea embark on

a final mission to find and comprehend the underlying fabric of the universe. The surprising

nature of this medium and Aenea's ability to instruct her growing army of disciples in its

discovery and use could provide the one weapon powerful enough to thwart their enemies while

liberating humanity. Meanwhile, the enigmatic Shrike -- monster, angel, killing machine -- has

followed them on their intergalactic sojourn and now stands ready to complete its own mission,

revealing at last the long-held secret of its origin and purpose.

In The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons masterfully weaves together the complex strands of this

extraordinary series. He answers all of the unsolved mysteries posed in the earlier volumes and

brings the story full circle to the planet Hyperion, where it all began. A work of unparalleled

power and vision, The Rise of Endymion is a masterpiece of the imagination by one of our most

gifted writers.

DAN SIMMONS, a full-time public school teacher until 1987, is one of the few writers who

consistently work across genres, producing novels described as science fiction, horror, fantasy,

and mainstream fiction, while winning major awards in all these fields. His first novel, Song of

Kali, won the World Fantasy Award; his first science fiction novel, Hyperion, won the Hugo Award.

His other novels and short fiction have been honored with numerous awards, including nine Locus

Awards, four Bram Stoker Awards, the French Prix Cosmos 2000, the British SF Association Award,

and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. In 1995, Wabash College presented Simmons with an honorary

doctorate in humane letters for his work in fiction and education. He lives in Colorado along the

Front Range of the Rockies.

We are not stuff that abides, but xiii patterns that perpetuate themselves.

-- Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

The universal nature out of the universal substance, as if it were wax, now moulds the figure

of a horse, and when it has broken this up, it uses the material for a tree, next for a man, next

for something else; and each of these things subsists for a very short time. But it is no hardship

for the vessel to be broken up, just as there was none in its being fastened together.

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, Existent behind all laws, that

made them and, lo, they are!

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And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of three sounds he

frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

-- Robert Browning, Abt Vogler

If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it may not be, I will but [sic] you

in the place where I began in this series of thoughts -- I mean, I began by seeing how man was

formed by circumstances -- and what are circumstances? -- but touchstones of his heart -- his and

what are touch stones? -- but proovings [sic] of his hearrt [sic]? -- and what are the proovings

[sic] of his heart but fortifiers or alterers of his nature? and what is his altered nature but

his soul? -- and what was his soul before it came into the world and had These provings and

alterations and perfectionings? -- An intelligences [sic] -- without Identity -- and how is this

Identity to be made? Through the medium of the Heart? And how is the heart to become this Medium

but in a world of Circumstances? -- There now I think what with Poetry and Theology you may thank

your Stars that my pen is not very longwinded -

-- John Keats, In a letter to his brother

PART ONE

"The Pope is dead! Long live the Pope!"

The cry reverberated in and around the Vatican courtyard of San Damaso where the body of Pope

Julius XIV had just been discovered in his papal apartments. The Holy Father had died in his

sleep. Within minutes the word spread through the mismatched cluster of buildings still referred

to as the Vatican Palace, and then moved out through the Vatican State with the speed of a circuit

fire in a pure-oxygen environment. The rumor of the Pope's death burned through the Vatican's

office complex, leaped through the crowded St. Anne's Gate to the Apostolic Palace and the

adjacent Government Palace, found waiting ears among the faithful in the sacristy of St. Peter's

Basilica to the point that the archbishop saying Mass actually turned to look over his shoulder at

the unprecedented hiss and whispering of the congregation, and then moved out of the Basilica with

the departing worshipers into the larger crowds of St. Peter's Square where eighty to a hundred

thousand tourists and visiting Pax functionaries received the rumor like a critical mass of

plutonium being slammed inward to full fission.

Once out through the main vehicle gate of the Arch of Bells, the news accelerated to the speed

of electrons, then leaped to the speed of light, and finally hurtled out and away from the planet

Pacem at Hawking-drive velocities thousands of times faster than light. Closer, just beyond the

ancient walls of the Vatican, phones and comlogs chimed throughout the hulking, sweating Castel

Sant'Angelo where the offices of the Holy Office of the Inquisition were buried deep in the

mountain of stone originally built to be Hadrian's mausoleum. All that morning there was the

rattle of beads and rustle of starched cassocks as Vatican functionaries rushed back to their

offices to monitor their encrypted net lines and to wait for memos from above.

Personal communicators rang, chimed, and vibrated in the uniforms and implants of thousands of

Pax administrators, military commanders, politicians, and Mercantilus officials. Within thirty

minutes of the discovery of the Pope's lifeless body, news organizations around the world of Pacem

were cued to the story: they readied their robotic holocams, brought their full panoply of in-

system relay sats on-line, sent their best human reporters to the Vatican press office, and

waited. In an interstellar society where the Church ruled all but absolutely, news awaited not

only independent confirmation but official permission to exist.

Two hours and ten minutes after the discovery of Pope Julius XIV'S body, the Church confirmed

his death via an announcement through the office of the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal

Lourdusamy. Within seconds, the recorded announcement was tightcast to every radio and holovision

on the teeming world of Pacem.

With its population of one and a half billion souls, all born-again Christians carrying the

cruciform, most employed by the Vatican or the huge civilian, military, or mercantile bureaucracy

of the Pax state, the planet Pacem paused to listen with some interest. Even before the formal

announcement, a dozen of the new archangel-class starships had left their orbital bases and

translated across the small human sphere of the galaxy arm, their near-instantaneous drives

instantly killing their crews but carrying their message of the Pope's death secure in computers

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and coded transponders for the sixty-some most important archdiocese worlds and star systems.

These archangel courier ships would carry a few of the voting cardinals back to Pacem in time for

the election, but most of the electors would choose to remain on their homeworlds -- foregoing

death even with its sure promise of resurrection -- sending instead their encrypted, interactive

holo wafers with their eligo for the next Supreme Pontiff.

Another eighty-five Hawking-class Pax ships, mostly high-acceleration torchships, made ready to

spin up to relativistic velocities and then into jump configurations, their voyage time to be

measured in days to months, their relative time-debt ranging from weeks to years. These ships

would wait in Pacem space the fifteen to twenty standard days until the election of the new Pope

and then bring the word to the 130-some less critical Pax systems where archbishops tended to

billions more of the faithful. Those archdiocese worlds, in turn, would be charged with sending

the word of the Pope's death, resurrection, and reelection on to lesser systems, distant worlds,

and to the myriad colonies in the Outback.

A final fleet of more than two hundred unmanned courier drones was taken out of storage at the

huge Pax asteroid base in Pacem System, their message chips waiting only for the official

announcement of Pope Julius's rebirth and reelection before being accelerated into Hawking space

to carry the news to elements of the Pax Fleet engaged in patrol or combat with the Ousters along

the so-called Great Wall defensive sphere far beyond the boundaries of Pax space.

Pope Julius had died eight times before. The Pontiff's heart was weak, and he would allow no

repair of it -- either by surgery or nanoplasty.

It was his contention that a pope should live his natural life span and -- upon his death --

that a new pope should be elected. The fact that this same Pope had been reelected eight times did

not dissuade him from his opinion. Even now, as Pope Julius's body was being readied for a formal

evening of lying in state before being carried to the private resurrection chapel behind St.

Peter's, cardinals and their surrogates were making preparations for the election.

The Sistine Chapel was closed to tourists and made ready for the voting that would occur in

less than three weeks. Ancient, canopied stalls were brought in for the eighty-three cardinals who

would be present in the flesh while holographic projectors and interactive datumplane connections

were set in place for the cardinals who would vote by proxy. The table for the Scrutineers was set

in front of the Chapel's high altar.

Small cards, needles, thread, a receptacle, a plate, linen cloths, and other objects were

carefully placed on the table of the Scrutineers and then covered with a larger linen cloth. The

table for the Infirmarii and the Revisors was set to one side of the altar. The main doors of the

Sistine Chapel were closed, bolted, and sealed. Swiss Guard commandos in full battle armor and

state-of-the-art energy weapons took their place outside the Chapel doors and at the blastproof

portals of St. Peter's papal resurrection annex.

Following ancient protocol, the election was scheduled to occur in no fewer than fifteen days

and no more than twenty. Those cardinals who made their permanent home on Pacem or within three

weeks' time-debt travel canceled their regular agendas and prepared for the enclave. Everything

else was in readiness.

Some fat men carry their weight like a weakness, a sign of self-indulgence and sloth. Other fat

men absorb mass regally, an outward sign of their growing power. Simon Augustino Cardinal

Lourdusamy was of the latter category. A huge man, a veritable mountain of scarlet in his formal

cardinal robes, Lourdusamy looked to be in his late fifties, standard, and had appeared thus for

more than two centuries of active life and successful resurrection.

Jowled, quite bald, and given to speaking in a soft bass rumble that could rise to a God-roar

capable of filling St. Peter's Basilica without the use of a speaker system, Lourdusamy remained

the epitome of health and vitality in the Vatican. Many in the inner circles of the Church's

hierarchy credited Lourdusamy -- then a young, minor functionary in the Vatican diplomatic machine

-- with guiding the anguished and pain-ridden ex-Hyperion pilgrim, Father Lenar Hoyt, to finding

the secret that tamed the cruciform to an instrument of resurrection. They credited him as much as

the newly deceased Pope with bringing the Church back from the brink of extinction.

Whatever the truth of that legend, Lourdusamy was in fine form this first day after the Holy

Father's ninth death in office and five days before His Holiness's resurrection. As Cardinal-

Secretary of State, president of the committee overseeing the twelve Sacred Congregations, and

prefect of that most feared and misunderstood of those agencies -- the Sacred Congregation for the

Doctrine of the Faith, now officially known once again after more than a thousand-year interregnum

as the Holy Office of the Universal Inquisition -- Lourdusamy was the most powerful human being in

the Curia. At that moment, with His Holiness, Pope Julius XIV, lying in state in St. Peter's

Basilica, the body awaiting removal to the resurrection annex as soon as night should fall, Simon

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Augustino Cardinal Lourdusamy was arguably the most powerful human being in the galaxy.

The fact was not lost on the Cardinal that morning.

"Are they here yet, Lucas?" he rumbled at the man who had been his aide and factotum for more

than two hundred busy years. Monsignor Lucas Oddi was as thin, bony, aged-looking, and urgent in

his movements as Cardinal Lourdusamy was huge, fleshy, ageless, and languid.

Oddi's full title as under-secretary of state for the Vatican was Substitute and Secretary of

the Cypher, but he was usually known as the Substitute. "Cypher" might have been an equally apt

nickname for the tall, angular Benedictine administrator, for in the twenty-two decades of smooth

service he had given his master, no one -- not even Lourdusamy himself -- knew the man's private

opinions or emotions. Father Lucas Oddi had been Lourdusamy's strong right arm for so long that

the Secretary-Cardinal had long since ceased to think of him as anything but an extension of his

own will.

"They have just been seated in the innermost waiting room," answered Monsignor Oddi.

Cardinal Lourdusamy nodded. For more than a thousand years -- since long before the Hegira that

had sent humankind fleeing the dying Earth and colonizing the stars -- it had been a custom of the

Vatican to hold important meetings in the waiting rooms of important officials rather than in

their private offices. Secretary of State Cardinal Lourdusamy's innermost waiting room was small --

no more than five meters square -- and unadorned except for a round marble table with no inset com

units, a single window that, if it had not been polarized to opaqueness, would have looked out

onto a marvelously frescoed external loggia, and two paintings by the thirtieth-century genius

Karotan -- one showing Christ's agony in Gethsemane, the other showing Pope Julius (in his pre-

papal identity of Father Lenar Hoyt) receiving the first cruciform from a powerful but androgynous-

looking archangel while Satan (in the form of the Shrike) looked on powerlessly.

The four people in the waiting room -- three men and a woman -- represented the Executive

Council of the Pancapitalist League of Independent Catholic Transstellar Trade Organizations, more

commonly known as the Pax Mercantilus. Two of the men might have been father and son -- M. Helvig

Aron and M. Kennet Hay-Modhino -- alike even to their subtle, expensive capesuits, expensive,

conservative haircuts, subtly bio-sculpted Old Earth Northeuro features, and to the even more

subtle red pins showing their membership in the Sovereign Military Order of the Hospital of St.

John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta -- the ancient society popularly known as the Knights

of Malta. The third man was of Asian descent and wore a simple cotton robe. His name was Kenzo

Isozaki and he was this day -- after Simon Augustino Cardinal Lourdusamy -- arguably the second

most powerful human in the Pax. The final Pax Mercantilus representative, a woman in her fifties,

standard, with carelessly cropped dark hair and a pinched face, wearing an inexpensive work suit

of combed fiberplastic, was M. Anna Pelli Cognani, reputedly Isozaki's heir apparent and rumored

for years to be the lover of the female Archbishop of Renaissance Vector.

The four rose and bowed slightly as Cardinal Lourdusamy entered and took his place at the

table. Monsignor Lucas Oddi was the only bystander and he stood away from the table, his bony

hands clasped in front of his cassock, the tortured eyes of Karotan's Christ in Gethsemane peering

over his black-frocked shoulder at the small assembly.

M.'s Aron and Hay-Modhino moved forward to genuflect and kiss the Cardinal's beveled sapphire

ring, but Lourdusamy waved away further protocol before Kenzo Isozaki or the woman could approach.

When the four Pax Mercantilus representatives were seated once again, the Cardinal said, "We are

all old friends. You know that while I represent the Holy See in this discussion during the Holy

Father's temporary absence, any and all things discussed this day shall remain within these

walls." Lourdusamy smiled.

"And these walls, my friends, are the most secure and bugproof in the Pax."

Aron and Hay-Modhino smiled tightly. M. Isozaki's pleasant expression did not change. M. Anna

Pelli Cognani's frown deepened. "Your Eminence," she said. "May I speak freely?"

Lourdusamy extended a pudgy palm. He had always distrusted people who asked to speak freely or

who vowed to speak candidly or who used the expression "frankly." He said, "Of course, my dear

friend. I regret that the pressing circumstances of the day allow us so little time."

Anna Pelli Cognani nodded tersely.

She had understood the command to be precise. "Your Eminence," she said, "we asked for this

conference so that we could speak to you not only as loyal members of His Holiness's Pancapitalist

League, but as friends of the Holy See and of yourself."

Lourdusamy nodded affably. His thin lips between the jowls were curled in a slight smile. "Of

course."

M. Helvig Aron cleared his throat. "Your Eminence, the Mercantilus has an understandable

interest in the coming papal election."

The Cardinal waited.

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"Our goal today," continued M. Hay-Modhino, "is to reassure Your Eminence -- both as Secretary

of State and as a potential candidate for the papacy -- that the League will continue to carry out

the Vatican's policy with the utmost loyalty after the coming election."

Cardinal Lourdusamy nodded ever so slightly. He understood perfectly. Somehow the Pax

Mercantilus -- Isozaki's intelligence network -- had sniffed out a possible insurrection in the

Vatican hierarchy. Somehow they had overheard the most silent of whispers in whisperproof rooms

such as this: that it had come time to replace Pope Julius with a new pontiff. And Isozaki knew

that Simon Augustino Lourdusamy would be that man.

"In this sad interregnum," M. Cognani was continuing, "we felt it our duty to offer private as

well as public assurances that the League will continue serving the interests of the Holy See and

the Holy Mother Church, just as it has for more than two standard centuries."

Cardinal Lourdusamy nodded again and waited, but nothing else was forthcoming from the four

Mercantilus leaders. For a moment he allowed himself to speculate on why Isozaki had come in

person. To see my reaction rather than trust the reports of his subordinates, he thought. The old

man trusts his senses and insights over anyone and anything else. Lourdusamy smiled. Good policy.

He let another minute of silence stretch before speaking. "My friends," he rumbled at last, "you

cannot know how it warms my heart to have four such busy and important people visit this poor

priest in our time of shared sorrow."

Isozaki and Cognani remained expressionless, as inert as argon, but the Cardinal could see the

poorly hidden glint of anticipation in the eyes of the other two Mercantilus men.

If Lourdusamy welcomed their support at this juncture, however subtly, it put the Mercantilus

on an even level with the Vatican conspirators -- made the Mercantilus a welcomed conspirator and

de facto co-equal to the next Pope.

Lourdusamy leaned closer to the table. The Cardinal noticed that M. Kenzo Isozaki had not

blinked during the entire exchange. "My friends," he continued, "as good born-again Christians" --

he nodded toward M.'s Aron and Hay-Modhino -- "Knights Hospitaller, you undoubtedly know the

procedure for the election of our next Pope. But let me refresh your memory. Once the cardinals

and their interactive counterparts are gathered and sealed in the Sistine Chapel, there are three

ways in which we can elect a pope -- by acclamation, by delegation, or by scrutiny. Through

acclamation, all of the cardinal electors are moved by the Holy Spirit to proclaim one person as

Supreme Pontiff. We each cry eligo -- "I elect" -- and the name of the person we unanimously

select. Through delegation, we choose a few of those among us -- say a dozen cardinals -- to make

the choice for all. Through scrutiny, the cardinal electors vote secretly until a candidate

receives two-thirds majority plus one. Then the new pope is elected and the waiting billions see

the fumata -- the puffs of white smoke -- which means that the family of the Church once again has

a Holy Father."

The four representatives of the Pax Mercantilus sat in silence. Each of them was intimately

aware of the procedure for electing a pope -- not only of the antiquated mechanisms, of course,

but of the politicking, pressuring, deal-making, bluffing, and outright blackmail that had often

accompanied the process over the centuries. And they began to understand why Cardinal Lourdusamy

was emphasizing the obvious now.

"For the last nine elections," continued the huge Cardinal, his voice a heavy rumble, "the Pope

has been elected by acclamation ... by the direct intercession of the Holy Spirit." Lourdusamy

paused for a long, thick moment. Behind him, Monsignor Oddi stood watching, as motionless as the

painted Christ behind him, as unblinking as Kenzo Isozaki.

"I have no reason to believe," continued Lourdusamy at last, "that this election will be any

different."

The Pax Mercantilus executives did not move. Finally M. Isozaki bowed his head ever so

slightly. The message had been heard and understood. There would be no insurrection within the

Vatican walls. Or if there were, Lourdusamy had it well in hand and did not need the support of

the Pax Mercantilus. If the former were the case and Cardinal Lourdusamy's time had not yet come,

Pope Julius would once again oversee the Church and Pax. Isozaki's group had taken a terrible risk

because of the incalculable rewards and power that would be theirs if they had succeeded in

allying themselves with the future Pontiff. Now they faced only the consequences of the terrible

risk. A century earlier, Pope Julius had excommunicated Kenzo Isozaki's predecessor for a lesser

miscalculation, revoking the sacrament of the cruciform and condemning the Mercantilus leader to a

life of separation from the Catholic community -- which, of course, was every man, woman, and

child on Pacem and on a majority of the Pax worlds -- followed by the true death.

"Now, I regret that pressing duties must take me from your kind company," rumbled the Cardinal.

Before he could rise and contrary to standard protocol for leaving the presence of a prince of

the Church, M. Isozaki came forward quickly, genuflected, and kissed the Cardinal's ring.

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"Eminence," murmured the old Pax Mercantilus billionaire.

This time, Lourdusamy did not rise or leave until each of the powerful CEO'S had come forward

to show his or her respect.

An archangel-class starship translated into God's Grove space the day after Pope Julius's

death. This was the only archangel not assigned to courier duty; it was smaller than the new ships

and it was called the Raphael.

Minutes after the archangel established orbit around the ash-colored world, a dropship

separated and streamed into atmosphere. Two men and a woman were aboard. The three looked like

siblings, united by their lean forms, pale complexions, dark, limp, short-cropped hair, hooded

gazes, and thin lips. They wore unadorned shipsuits of red and black with elaborate wristband

comlogs.

Their presence in the dropship was a curiosity -- the archangel-class starships invariably

killed human beings during their violent translation through Planck space and the onboard

resurrection créches usually took three days to revive the human crew.

These three were not human.

Morphing wings and smoothing all surfaces into an aerodynamic shell, the dropship crossed the

terminator into daylight at Mach 3. Beneath it turned the former Templar world of God's Grove -- a

mass of burn scars, ash fields, mudflows, retreating glaciers, and green sequoias struggling to

reseed themselves in the shattered landscape. Slowing now to subsonic speeds, the dropship flew

above the narrow band of temperate climate and viable vegetation near the planet's equator and

followed a river to the stump of the former Worldtree. Eighty-three kilometers across, still a

kilometer high even in its devastated form, the stump rose above the southern horizon like a black

mesa. The dropship avoided the Worldstump and continued to follow the river west, continuing to

descend until it landed on a boulder near the point where the river entered a narrow gorge. The

two men and the woman came down the extruded stairs and reviewed the scene. It was midmorning on

this part of God's Grove, the river made a rushing noise as it entered the rapids, birds and

unseen arboreals chittered in the thick trees farther downriver. The air smelled of pine needles,

unclassifiable alien scents, wet soil, and ash. More than two and a half centuries earlier, this

world had been smashed and slashed from orbit. Those two-hundred-meter-high Templar trees that did

not flee to space had burned in a conflagration that continued to rage for the better part of a

century, extinguished at last only by a nuclear winter.

"Careful," said one of the men as the three walked downhill to the river. "The monofilaments

she webbed here should still be in place."

The thin woman nodded and removed a weapon laser from the flowfoam pak she carried. Setting the

beam to widest dispersal, she fanned it over the river. Invisible filaments glowed like a spider's

web in morning dew, crisscrossing the river and wrapping around boulders, submerging and

reemerging from the white-frothed river.

"None where we have to work," said the woman as she shut off the laser. The three crossed a low

area by the river and climbed a rocky slope. Here the granite had been melted and flowed downhill

like lava during the slagging of God's Grove, but on one of the terraced rockfaces there were even

more recent signs of catastrophe. Near the top of a boulder ten meters above the river, a crater

had been burned into solid rock. Perfectly circular, indented half a meter below the level of the

boulder, the crater was five meters across.

On the southeast side, where a waterfall of molten rock had run and splattered and fountained

to the river below, a natural staircase of black stone had formed. The rock filling the circular

cavity on top of the boulder was darker and smoother than the rest of the stone, looking like

polished onyx set in a granite crucible.

One of the men stepped into the concavity, lay full length on the smooth stone, and set his ear

to the rock. A second later he rose and nodded to the other two.

"Stand back," said the woman. She touched her wristband comlog.

The three had taken five steps back when the lance of pure energy burned from space. Birds and

arboreals fled in loud panic through the screening trees. The air ionized and became superheated

in seconds, rolling a shock wave in all directions. Branches and leaves burst into flame fifty

meters from the beam's point of contact. The cone of pure brilliance exactly matched the diameter

of the circular depression in the boulder, turning the smooth stone to a lake of molten fire.

The two men and the woman did not flinch. Their shipsuits smoldered in the open hearth-furnace

heat, but the special fabric did not burn. Neither did their flesh.

"Time," said the woman over the roar of the energy beam and widening firestorm. The golden beam

ceased to exist. Hot air rushed in at gale-force winds to fill the vacuum. The depression in the

rock was a circle of bubbling lava.

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One of the men went to one knee and seemed to be listening. Then he nodded to the others and

phase-shifted. One second he was flesh and bone and blood and skin and hair, the next he was a

chrome-silver sculpture in the form of a man.

The blue sky, burning forest, and lake of molten fire reflected perfectly on his shifting

silver skin. He plunged one arm into the molten pool, crouched lower, reached deeper, and then

pulled back. The silver form of his hand looked as if it had melted onto the surface of another

silver human form -- this one a woman. The male chrome sculpture pulled the female chrome

sculpture out of the hissing, spitting cauldron of lava and carried it fifty meters to a point

where the grass was not burning and the stone was cool enough to hold their weight. The other man

and woman followed. The man shifted out of his chrome-silver form and a second later the female he

had carried did the same. The woman who emerged from the quicksilver looked like a twin of the

short-haired woman in the shipsuit.

"Where is the bitch child?" asked the rescued female. She had once been known as Rhadamanth

Nemes.

"Gone," said the man who rescued her. He and his male sibling could be her brothers or male

clones. "They made the final farcaster."

Rhadamanth Nemes grimaced slightly. She was flexing her fingers and moving her arms as if

recovering from cramps in her limbs. "At least I killed the damned android."

"No," said the other woman, her twin. She had no name. "They left in the Raphael's dropship.

The android lost an arm, but the autosurgeon kept him alive."

Nemes nodded and looked back at the rocky hillside where lava still ran. The glow from the fire

showed the glistening web of the monofilament over the river. Behind them, the forest burned.

"That was not ... pleasant ... in there. I couldn't move with the full force of the ship's lance

burning down on me, and then I could not phase-shift with the rock around me. It took immense

concentration to power down and still maintain an active phase-shift interface. How long was I

buried there?"

"Four Earth years," said the man who had not spoken until now.

Rhadamanth Nemes raised a thin eyebrow, more in question than surprise. "Yet the Core knew

where I was ... "

"The Core knew where you were," said the other woman. Her voice and facial expressions were

identical to those of the rescued woman. "And the Core knew that you had failed."

Nemes smiled very thinly. "So the four years were a punishment."

"A reminder," said the man who had pulled her from the rock.

Rhadamanth Nemes took two steps, as if testing her balance. Her voice was flat.

"So why have you come for me now?"

"The girl," said the other woman. "She is coming back. We are to resume your mission."

Nemes nodded.

The man who rescued her set his hand on her thin shoulder. "And please consider," he said,

"that four years entombed in fire and stone will be nothing to what you may expect if you fail

again."

Nemes stared at him for a long moment without answering. Then, turning away from the lava and

flames in a precisely choreographed motion, matching stride for stride, all four of them moved in

perfect unison toward the dropship.

On the desert world of Madre de Dios, on the high plateau called the Llano Estacado because of

the atmosphere generator pylons crisscrossing the desert in neat ten-kilometer grid intervals,

Father Federico de Soya prepared for early morning Mass.

The little desert town of Nuevo Atlan held fewer than three hundred residents -- mostly Pax

boxite miners waiting to die before traveling home, mixed with a few of the converted Mariaists

who scratched out livings as corgor herders in the toxic wastelands -- and Father de Soya knew

precisely how many would be in chapel for early Mass: four -- old M. Sanchez, the ancient widow

who was rumored to have murdered her husband in a dust storm sixty-two years before, the Perell

twins who -- for unknown reasons -- preferred the old run-down church to the spotless and air-

conditioned company chapel on the mining reservation, and the mysterious old man with the

radiation-scarred face who knelt in the rearmost pew and never took Communion.

There was a dust storm blowing -- there was always a dust storm blowing -- and Father de Soya

had to run the last thirty meters from his adobe parish house to the church sacristy, a

transparent fiberplastic hood over his head and shoulders to protect his cassock and biretta, his

breviary tucked deep in his cassock pocket to keep it clean. It did not work. Every evening when

he removed his cassock or hung his biretta on a hook, the sand fell out in a red cascade, like

dried blood from a broken hourglass. And every morning when he opened his breviary, sand gritted

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between the pages and soiled his fingers.

"Good morning, Father," said Pablo as the priest hurried into the sacristy and slid the cracked

weather seals around the door frame.

"Good morning, Pablo, my most faithful altar boy," said Father de Soya. Actually, the priest

silently corrected himself, Pablo was his only altar boy. A simple child -- simple in the ancient

sense of the word as mentally slow as well as in the sense of being honest, sincere, loyal, and

friendly -- Pablo was there to help de Soya serve Mass every weekday morning at 0630 hours and

twice on Sunday -- although only the same four people came to the early morning Sunday Mass and

half a dozen of the boxite miners to the later Mass.

The boy nodded his head and grinned again, the smile disappearing for a moment as he pulled on

his clean, starched surplice over his altar-boy robes.

Father de Soya walked past the child, ruffling his dark hair as he did so, and opened the tall

vestment chest. The morning had grown as dark as the high-desert night as the dust storm swallowed

the sunrise, and the only illumination in the cold, bare room was from the fluttering sacristy

lamp.

De Soya genuflected, prayed earnestly for a moment, and began donning the vestments of his

profession.

For two decades, as Father Captain de Soya of the Pax Fleet, commander of torchships such as

the Balthasar, Federico de Soya had dressed himself in uniforms where the cross and collar were

the only signs of his priesthood.

He had worn plaskev battle armor, spacesuits, tactical com implants, datumplane goggles,

godgloves -- all of the paraphernalia of a torchship captain -- but none of those items touched

him and moved him as much as these simple vestments of a parish priest. In the four years since

Father Captain de Soya had been stripped of his rank of captain and removed from Fleet service, he

had rediscovered his original vocation.

De Soya pulled on the amice that slipped over his head like a gown and fell to his ankles.

The amice was white linen and immaculate despite the incessant dust storms, as was the alb that

slid on next. He set the cincture around his waist, whispering a prayer as he did so.

Then he raised the white stole from the vestment chest, held it reverently a moment in both

hands, and then placed it around his neck, crossing the two strips of silk. Behind him, Pablo was

bustling around the little room, putting away his filthy outside boots and pulling on the cheap

fiberplastic running shoes his mother had told him to keep here just for Mass.

Father de Soya set his tunible in place, the outer garment showing a T-cross in front. It was

white with a subtle purple piping: he would be saying a Mass of Benediction this morning while

quietly administering the sacrament of penance for the presumed widow and murderer in the front

pew and the radiation-scarred cypher in the last pew.

Pablo bustled up to him. The boy was grinning and out of breath. Father de Soya set his hand on

the boy's head, trying to flatten the thatch of flyaway hair while also calming and reassuring the

lad. De Soya lifted the chalice, removed his right hand from the boy's head to hold it over the

veiled cup, and said softly, "All right." Pablo's grin disappeared as the gravity of the moment

swept over him, and then the boy led the procession of two out of the sacristy door toward the

altar.

De Soya noticed at once that there were five figures in the chapel, not four. The usual

worshipers were there -- all kneeling and standing and then kneeling again in their usual places --

but there was someone else, someone tall and silent standing in the deepest shadows where the

little foyer entered the nave.

All during the Renewed Mass, the presence of the stranger pulled at Father de Soya's

consciousness, try as he might to block out all but the sacred mystery of which he was part.

"Dominus vobiscum," said Father de Soya. For more than three thousand years, he believed, the

Lord had been with them ... with all of them.

"Et cum spiritu tuo," said Father de Soya, and as Pablo echoed the words, the priest turned his

head slightly to see if the light had illuminated the tall, thin form in the dark recess at the

front of the nave. It had not.

During the Canon, Father de Soya forgot the mysterious figure and succeeded in focusing all of

his attention on the Host that he raised in his blunt fingers. "Hoc est enim corpus meum," the

Jesuit pronounced distinctly, feeling the power of those words and praying for the ten-thousandth

time that his sins of violence while a Fleet captain might be washed away by the blood and mercy

of this Savior. At the Communion rail, only the Perell twins came forward. As always. De Soya said

the words and offered the Host to the young men. He resisted the urge to glance up at the figure

in the shadows at the back of the church.

The Mass ended almost in darkness. The howl of wind drowned out the last prayers and responses.

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This little church had no electricity -- it never had -- and the ten flickering candles on the

wall did little to pierce the gloom. Father de Soya gave the final benediction and then carried

the chalice into the dark sacristy, setting it on the smaller altar there. Pablo hurried to shrug

out of his surplice and pull on his storm anorak.

"See you tomorrow, Father!"

"Yes, thank you, Pablo. Don't forget ... " Too late. The boy was out the door and running for

the spice mill where he worked with his father and uncles. Red dust filled the air around the

faulty weather-stripped door.

Normally, Father de Soya would have been pulling off his vestments now, setting them back in

the vestment chest. Later in the day, he would take them to the parish house to clean them. But

this morning he stayed in the tunicle and stole, the alb and cincture and amice. For some reason

he felt he needed them, much as he had needed the plaskev battle armor during boarding operations

in the Coal Sack campaign. The tall figure, still in shadows, stood in the sacristy doorway.

Father de Soya waited and watched, resisting the urge to cross himself or to hold the remaining

Communion wafer up as if to shield against vampires or the Devil.

Outside, the wind went from a howl to a banshee scream.

The figure took a step into the ruby light cast by the sacristy lamp. De Soya recognized

Captain Marget Wu, personal aide and liaison for Admiral Marusyn, commanding officer of Pax Fleet.

For the second time that morning, de Soya corrected himself -- it was Admiral Marget Wu now, the

pips on her collar just visible in the red light. "Father Captain de Soya?" said the Admiral. The

Jesuit slowly shook his head. It was only 0730 hours on this twenty-three-hour world, but already

he felt tired.

"Just Father de Soya," he said.

"Father Captain de Soya," repeated Admiral Wu, and this time there was no question in her

voice. "You are hereby recalled to active service. You will take ten minutes to gather your

belongings and then come with me. The recall is effective now."

Federico de Soya sighed and closed his eyes. He felt like crying. Please, dear Lord, let this

cup passeth from me. When he opened his eyes, the chalice was still on the altar and Admiral

Marget Wu was still waiting.

"Yes," he said softly, and slowly, carefully, he began removing his sacred vestments.

On the third day after the death and entombment of Pope Julius XIV, there was movement in his

resurrection créche. The slender umbilicals and subtle machine probes slid back and out of sight.

The corpse on the slab at first lay inanimate except for the rise and fall of a bare chest, then

visibly twitched, then moaned, and -- after many long minutes -- raised itself to one elbow, and

eventually sat up, the richly embroidered silk and linen shroud sliding around the naked man's

waist.

For several minutes the man sat on the edge of the marble slab, his head in his shaking hands.

Then he looked up as a secret panel in the resurrection chapel wall slid back with less than a

hiss. A cardinal in formal red moved across the dimly lit space with a rustle of silk and a rattle

of beads. Next to him walked a tall, handsome man with gray hair and gray eyes. This man was

dressed in a simple but elegant one-piece suit of gray flannel.

Three steps behind the Cardinal and the man in gray came two Swiss Guard troopers in medieval

orange and black. They carried no weapons.

The naked man on the slab blinked as if his eyes were unaccustomed to even the muted light in

the dim chapel. Finally the eyes focused.

"Lourdusamy," said the resurrected man. "Father Duré," said Cardinal Lourdusamy.

He was carrying an oversized silver chalice.

The naked man moved his mouth and tongue as if he had awakened with a vile taste in his mouth.

He was an older man with a thin, ascetic face, sad eyes, and old scars across his newly

resurrected body. On his chest, two cruciforms glowed red and tumescent. "What year is it?" he

asked at last.

"The Year of Our Lord 3131," said the Cardinal, still standing next to the seated man.

Father Paul Duré closed his eyes.

"Fifty-seven years after my last resurrection. Two hundred and seventy-nine years since the

Fall of the Farcasters." He opened his eyes and looked at the Cardinal. "Two hundred and seventy

years since you poisoned me, killing Pope Teilhard the First."

Cardinal Lourdusamy rumbled a laugh. "You recover quickly from resurrection disorientation if

you can do your arithmetic so well."

Father Duré moved his gaze from the Cardinal to the tall man in gray. "Albedo. You come to

witness? Or do you have to give courage to your tame Judas?"

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The tall man said nothing. Cardinal Lourdusamy's already thin lips tightened to the point of

disappearance between florid jowls. "Do you have anything else to say before you return to hell,

Antipope?"

"Not to you," murmured Father Duré and closed his eyes in prayer.

The two Swiss Guard troopers seized Father Duré's thin arms. The Jesuit did not resist. One of

the troopers grabbed the resurrected man by the brow and pulled his head back, stretching the thin

neck in a bow.

Cardinal Lourdusamy took a graceful half step closer. From the folds of his silken sleeve

snicked a knife blade with a horn handle. While the troopers held the still passive Duré, whose

Adam's apple seemed to grow more prominent as his head was forced back, Lourdusamy swept his arm

up and around in a fluid, casting-away gesture. Blood spurted from Duré's severed carotid artery.

Stepping back to avoid staining his robes, Lourdusamy slid the blade back into his sleeve,

raised the broad-mouthed chalice, and caught the pulsing stream of blood. When the chalice was

almost filled and the blood had ceased spurting, he nodded to the Swiss Guard trooper, who

immediately released Father Duré's head.

The resurrected man was a corpse once again, head lolling, eyes still shut, mouth open, the

slashed throat gapping like painted lips on a terrible, ragged grin. The two Swiss Guard troopers

arranged the body on the slab and lifted the shroud away. The naked dead man looked pale and

vulnerable -- torn throat, scarred chest, long, white fingers, pale belly, flaccid genitals,

scrawny legs. Death -- even in an age of resurrection -- leaves little or no dignity even to those

who have lived lives of sustained self-control.

While the troopers held the beautiful shroud out of harm's way, Cardinal Lourdusamy poured the

heavy chalice's blood onto the dead man's eyes, into his gaping mouth, into the raw knife wound,

and down the chest, belly, and groin of the corpse, the spreading scarlet matching and surpassing

the intensity of color in the Cardinal's robes.

"Sie aber seid nicht fleischlich, sondern geistlich," said Cardinal Lourdusamy. "You are not

made of flesh, but of spirit."

The tall man raised an eyebrow. "Bach, isn't it?"

"Of course," said the Cardinal, setting the now-empty chalice next to the corpse. He nodded to

the Swiss Guard troopers and they covered the body with the two-layered shroud. Blood immediately

soaked the beautiful fabrics.

"Jesu, meine Freunde," added Lourdusamy.

"I thought so," said the taller man. He gave the Cardinal a questioning look.

"Yes," agreed Cardinal Lourdusamy.

"Now."

The man in gray walked around the bier and stood behind the two troopers, who were completing

their tucking-in of the blood-soaked shroud. When the troopers straightened and stepped back from

the marble slab, the man in gray lifted his large hands to the back of each man's neck. The

troopers' eyes and mouths opened wide, but they had no time to cry out: within a second their open

eyes and mouths blazed with an incandescent light, their skin became translucent to the orange

flame within their bodies, and then they were gone -- volatilized, scattered to particles finer

than ash. The man in gray brushed his hands together to rid them of the thin layer of micro-ash.

"A pity, Councillor Albedo," murmured Cardinal Lourdusamy in his thick rumble of a voice.

The man in gray looked at the suggestion of airborne dust settling in the dim light and then

back at the Cardinal. His eyebrow rose once again in query.

"No, no, no," rumbled Lourdusamy, "I mean the shroud. The stains will never come out. We have

to weave a new one after every resurrection." He turned and started toward the secret panel, his

robes rustling. "Come, Albedo. We need to talk and I still have a Mass of Thanksgiving to say

before noon."

After the panel slid shut behind the two, the resurrection chamber lay silent and empty except

for the shrouded corpse and the slightest hint of gray fog in the dim light, a shifting, fading

mist suggestive of the departing souls of the more recent dead.

On the week that Pope Julius died for the ninth time and Father Duré was murdered for the fifth

time, Aenea and I were 160,000 light-years away on the kidnapped planet Earth -- Old Earth, the

real Earth -- circling a G-type star that was not the sun in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy

that was not the Earth's home galaxy.

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