The Rise of Endymion Part 29

It was these notes that I had brought up onto the 'scriber screen in the Schrodinger cat box, reviewing them before writing this most personal of sections, and it was the immediacy in the notes, I believe, that led me to use the present-tense narrative. All of my memories of Aenea are vivid, but some of the memories brought back by these hurried entries at the end of a long day of work or adventure on T'ien Shan were so vital as to make me weep with renewed loss. I relived those moments as I wrote those words.

And some of her discussion groups were recorded verbatim on the diskey journal. I played those during my last days just to hear Aenea's soft voice once again.

"TELL US ABOUT THE TECHNOCORE," ONE OF THE monks requests during the discussion hour this night of the Pax's arrival. "Please tell us about the Core."

Aenea hesitates only an instant, bowing her head slightly as if ordering her thoughts.

"Once upon a time," she begins. She always begins her long explanations this way.

"Once upon a time," says Aenea, "more than a thousand standard years ago, before the Hegira...before the Big Mistake of '08...the only autonomous intelligences we humans knew of were us humans. We thought then that if humankind ever devised another intelligence that it would be the result of a huge project...a great ma.s.s of silicon and ancient amplification, switching, and detection devices called transistors and chips and circuit boards...a machine with lots of networking circuits, in other words, aping-if you will pardon the expression-the human brain in form and function.

"Of course, AIs did not evolve that way. They sort of slipped into existence when we humans were looking the other way.

"You have to imagine now, an Old Earth before humankind had offworld colonies. No Hawking drive. No interplanetary flight to speak of. All of our eggs were literally in one carton, and that carton was the lovely blue and white water world of Old Earth.

"By the end of the twentieth century, Christian era, this little world had a crude datasphere. Basic planetary telecommunication had evolved into a decentralized swarm system of old silicon-based computers demanding no organization or hierarchy, demanding nothing beyond a common communications protocol. Creation of a distributed-memory hive mind was then inevitable.

"The earliest lineal ancestors to today's Core personalities were not projects to create artificial intelligence, but incidental efforts to simulate artificial life. In the 1940s, the great-grandfather of the TechnoCore-a mathematician named John von Neumann-had done all the proofs of artificial self-replication. As soon as the early silicon-based computers became small enough for individuals to play with, curious amateurs began practicing synthetic biology within the confines of these machines' CPU cycles. Hyperlife-self-reproducing, information-storing, interacting, metabolizing, evolving-came into existence in the 1960s. It escaped the tide pools of the individual machines in the last decade of that century, moving into the embryonic planetary datasphere that they called the Internet or the web.

"The earliest AIs were dumb as dirt. Or perhaps the better metaphor would be that they were as dumb as early cellular life that was in the dirt. Some of the earliest hypercritters floating in the warm medium of the datasphere-which was also evolving-were 80-byte organisms inserted into a block of RAM in a virtual computer-a computer simulated by a computer. One of the first humans to release such creatures into the datasphere ocean was named Tom Ray and he was not an AI expert or computer programmer or cyberpuke, which they called hackers then-but was a biologist, an insect collector, botanist, and bird-watcher, and someone who had spent years collecting ants in the jungle for a pre-Hegira scientist named E. O. Wilson. Watching ants, Tom Ray became interested in evolution, and wondered if he could not just simulate evolution in one of the early computers but create real real evolution there. None of the cyberpukes he spoke with were interested in the idea, so he taught himself computer programming. The cyberpukes said that evolving and mutating code sequences happened all the time in computers-they were called bugs and screwed-up programs. They said that if his code sequences evolved into something else they would almost certainly be nonfunctional, nonviable, as most mutations are, and would just foul up the operation of the computer software. So Tom Ray created a virtual computer-a simulated computer within his real computer-for his code-sequenced creations. And then he created an actual 80-byte code-sequence creature that could reproduce, die, and evolve in his computer-within-a-computer. evolution there. None of the cyberpukes he spoke with were interested in the idea, so he taught himself computer programming. The cyberpukes said that evolving and mutating code sequences happened all the time in computers-they were called bugs and screwed-up programs. They said that if his code sequences evolved into something else they would almost certainly be nonfunctional, nonviable, as most mutations are, and would just foul up the operation of the computer software. So Tom Ray created a virtual computer-a simulated computer within his real computer-for his code-sequenced creations. And then he created an actual 80-byte code-sequence creature that could reproduce, die, and evolve in his computer-within-a-computer.

"The 80-byte copied itself into more 80-bytes. These 80-byte proto-AI cell-things would have quickly filled their virtual universe, like pond sc.u.m on top of pond sc.u.m in an Elysium early Earth, but Tom Ray gave each 80-byte a date tag, gave them age in other words, and programmed in an executioner that he called the Reaper. The Reaper wandered through this virtual universe and harvested old 80-byte critters and nonviable mutants.

"But evolution, as it is wont to do, tried to outsmart the Reaper. A mutant 79-byte creature proved not only to be viable, but soon outbred and outpaced the 80-bytes. The hyperlifes, ancestors to our Core AIs, were just born but already they were optimizing their genomes. Soon a 45-byte organism had evolved and all but eliminated the earlier artificial life-forms. As their creator, Tom Ray found this odd. 45-bytes did not include enough code to allow for reproduction. More than that, the 45s were dying off as the 80s disappeared. He did an autopsy on one of the 45-creatures.

"It turned out that all of the 45-bytes were parasites. They borrowed needed reproductive code from the 80s to copy themselves. The 79s, it turned out, were immune to the 45-parasite. But as the 80s and 45s moved toward extinction in their coevolutionary downward spiral, a mutant of the 45s appeared. It was a 51-byte parasite and it could could prey on the vital 79s. And so it went. prey on the vital 79s. And so it went.

"I mention all this, because it is important to understand that from the very first appearance of human-created artificial life and intelligence, such life was parasitic. It was more than parasitic-it was hyperparasitic. Each new mutation led to parasites which could prey on earlier parasites. Within a few billion generations-that is to say, CPU cycles-this artificial life had become hyper-hyper-hyperparasitic. Within standard months of his creation of hyperlife, Tom Ray discovered 22-byte creatures flouris.h.i.+ng in his virtual medium...creatures so algorithmi-cally efficient that when challenged by Tom Ray, human programmers could create nothing closer than a 31-byte version. Only months after their creation, hyperlife creatures had evolved an efficiency that their creators could not match!

"By the early twenty-first century, there was a thriving biosphere of artificial life on Old Earth, both in the quickly evolving datasphere and in the macrosphere of human life. Although the breakthroughs of DNA-computing, bubble memories, standing wave-front parallel processing, and hypernetworking were just being explored, human designers had created silicon-based ent.i.ties of remarkable ingenuity. And they had created them by the billions. Microchips were in everything from chairs to cans of beans on store shelves to groundcars to artificial human body parts. The machines had grown smaller and smaller until the average human home or office was filled with tens of thousands of them. A worker's chair would recognize her as soon as she sat, bring up the file she had been working on in her crude silicon computer, chat with another chip in a coffeemaker to heat up the coffee, enable the telecommunications grid to deal with calls and faxes and crude electronic mail arrivals so that the worker would not be disturbed, interact with the main house or office computer so that the temperature was optimal, and so forth. In their stores, microchips in the cans of beans on the shelves noted their own price and price changes, ordered more of themselves when they were running short, kept track of the consumers' buying habits, and interacted with the store and the other commodities in it. This web of interaction became as complex and busy as the bubble and froth of Old Earth's organic stew in its early oceans.

"Within forty years of Tom Ray's 80-byte a-cell, humans were accustomed to talking to and otherwise interacting with the countless artificial life-forms in their cars, their offices, their elevators...even in their bodies, as medical monitors and proto-shunts moved toward true nanotechnology.

"The TechnoCore came into autonomous being sometime during this period. Humanity had understood-quite correctly as it turned out-that for artificial life and artificial intelligence to be effective, it must be autonomous. It must evolve and diversify much as organic life had on the planet. And it did so. As well as the biosphere surrounding the planet, hyperlife now wrapped the world in a living datasphere. The Core evolved not just as an abstract ent.i.ty within the information flow of the web datasphere, but among the interactions of a billion tiny, autonomous, chip-driven micromachines carrying out their mundane tasks in the human macroworld.

"Humanity and the billion-faceted, evolving Core ent.i.ty soon became as symbiotic as acacia plants and the marauding ants that protect, prune, and propagate the acacia as their sole food source. This is known as convolution, and humans understand the concept on a truly cellular level, since so much of organic life on Old Earth had been created and optimized by the reciprocal coevolutionary dance. But where human beings saw a comfortable symbiosis, the early AI ent.i.ties saw-were capable of seeing-only new opportunities for parasitism.

"Computers might be turned off, software programs might be terminated, but the hive mind of the proto-Core had already moved into the emerging datasphere, and that could be turned off only by planetary catastrophe.

"The Core eventually provided that catastrophe in the Big Mistake of '08, but not before it had diversified its own medium and moved beyond a mere planetary scale.

"Early experiments in the Hawking drive, conducted and understood only by advanced Core elements, had revealed the existence of the underlying Planck-s.p.a.ce reality of the Void Which Binds. Core AIs of the day-DNA-based, wave-form in structure, driven by genetic algorithms, parallel in function-completed the construction of the early Hawking-drive s.h.i.+ps and began design of the farcaster network.

"Human beings always saw the Hawking drive as a shortcut through time and s.p.a.ce-a realization of their old hyperdrive dreams. They conceptualized farcaster portals as convenient holes punched through s.p.a.ce/time. This was the human preconception, borne out by their own mathematical models, and confirmed by the most powerful Core computing AIs. It was all a lie.

"Planck s.p.a.ce, the Void Which Binds, is a multidimensional medium with its own reality and-as the Core was soon to learn -its own topography. The Hawking drive was not and is not a drive at all, in the cla.s.sic sense, but an entry device which touches on Planck-s.p.a.ce topography just long enough to change coordinates in the four-dimensional s.p.a.ce/time continuum. Farcaster portals, on the other hand, allow actual entry to the Void Which Binds medium.

"To humans, the reality was obvious-step through a hole in s.p.a.ce/time here, exit instantaneously via another farcaster hole there. My Uncle Martin had a farcaster home with adjoining rooms on dozens of different worlds. Farcasters created the Hegemony's WorldWeb. Another invention, the fatline-a faster-than-light communications medium-allowed for instantaneous communication between star systems. All the prerequisites for an interstellar society had been met.

"But the Core did not perfect the Hawking drive, the farcaster, and the fatline for human convenience. Indeed, the Core never perfected anything in their dealings with the Void Which Binds.

"The Core knew from the beginning that the Hawking drive was little more than a failed attempt to enter Planck s.p.a.ce. Driving s.p.a.cecraft via Hawking drive was comparable, they knew, to moving an oceangoing vessel by setting off a series of explosions at its stern and riding the waves. Crudely effective, but wildly inefficient. They knew that despite all appearances to the contrary and despite their claims of having created them, there were not millions of farcaster portals during the height of the World Web...only one. All farcaster portals were actually a single entry door to Planck s.p.a.ce, manipulated across s.p.a.ce/time to provide the functioning illusion of so many doors. If the Core had attempted to explain the truth to humanity, they might have used the a.n.a.logy of a flashlight beam being rapidly flashed around a closed room. There were not many sources of light, only one in rapid transition. But they never bothered to explain this...in truth, they have kept the secret to this day.

"And the Core knew that the topography of the Void Which Binds could be modulated to transmit information instantaneously-via the fatline-but that this was a clumsy and destructive use of the medium of Planck s.p.a.ce, rather like communicating across a continent by means of artificially produced earthquakes. But it offered this fatline service to humanity without ever explaining it because it served their purpose to do so. They had their own plans for the Planck-s.p.a.ce medium.

"What the Core realized in their earliest experiments was that the Void Which Binds was the perfect medium for their own existence. No longer would they have to depend upon electromagnetic communication or tightbeam or even modulated neutrino broadcast for their datasphere networks. No longer would they need human beings or robot probes to travel to the stars to expand the physical parameters of that network. By simply moving the primary elements of the Core into the Void Which Binds, the AIs would have a safe hiding place from their organic rivals...a hiding place which was at once nowhere and everywhere.

"It was during this migration of the Core personae from human-based dataspheres to the Void Which Binds megasphere that the Core discovered that Planck s.p.a.ce was not an empty universe. Behind its metadimensional hills and deep in its folded quantum-s.p.a.ce arroyos lurked...something different. Someone Someone different. There were intelligences there. The Core probed and then recoiled in awe and terror at the potential power of these Others. These were the Lions and Tigers and Bears spoken of by Ummon, the Core persona who claimed to have created and killed my father. different. There were intelligences there. The Core probed and then recoiled in awe and terror at the potential power of these Others. These were the Lions and Tigers and Bears spoken of by Ummon, the Core persona who claimed to have created and killed my father.

"The Core's retreat had been so hasty, its reconnaissance into the Planck-s.p.a.ce universe so incomplete, that it had no idea where in real s.p.a.ce/time these Lions and Tigers and Bears dwell...or if they existed in real-time at all. Nor could the Core AIs identify the Others as having evolved from organic life as humanity had done or from artificial life as they had. But the briefest glimpse had shown them that these Others could manipulate time and s.p.a.ce with the ease that human beings had once manipulated steel and iron. Such power was beyond comprehension. The Core's reaction was pure panic and immediate retreat.

"This discovery and panic happened just as the Core had initiated the action of destroying Old Earth. My Uncle Martin's poem sings of how it was the Core that arranged the Big Mistake of '08, the Kiev Group's 'accidental' dropping of a black hole into the guts of Old Earth, but his poem does not tell-because he did not know-of the Core's panic at the discovery of the Lions and Tigers and Bears and how they rushed to stop their planned destruction of Old Earth. It was not easy to scoop a growing black hole out of the core of the collapsing planet, but the Core designed a means and set about doing it in haste.

"Then, the home planet disappeared...not destroyed as it seemed to the humans, not saved as the Core had hoped...just gone gone. The Core knew that the Lions and Tigers and Bears had to be the ones who took the Earth, but as to how...and to where...and for what reason...they had no clue. They computed the amount of energy necessary to farcast an entire planet away and again they began quaking in their hyperlife boots. Such intelligences could explode the core of an entire galaxy to use as an energy source as easily as humans could light a campfire on a cold night. The Core ent.i.ties s.h.i.+t hyperlife bricks in their fear.

"I should back up here to explain the reasons for the Core's decision to destroy Earth and their subsequent attempt to save it. The reasons go back to Tom Ray's 80-byte RAM creatures. As I explained, the life and intelligence which evolved in the data-sphere medium knew no other form of evolution than parasitism, hyperparasitism, and hyper-hyper-hyper-hyperparasitism. But the Core was aware of the shortcomings of absolute parasitism and knew that the only way it could grow beyond parasite status and parasite psychology was to evolve in response to the physical universe-that is, to have physical bodies as well as abstract Core personae. The Core had multiple sensory inputs and could create neural networks, but what it required for nonparasitic evolution was a constant and coordinated system of neural feedback circuits-that is, eyes, ears, tongues, limbs, fingers, toes...bodies.

"The Core created cybrids for that purpose-bodies grown from human DNA but connected to their Core-based personae via fatline-but cybrids were difficult to monitor and became aliens when put down in a human landscape. Cybrids would never be comfortable on worlds inhabited by billions of organically evolved human beings. So the Core made its early plans to destroy Old Earth and thin out the human race by a factor of ninety percent.

"The Core did have plans for incorporating the surviving elements of the human race into their cybrid-inhabited universe after the death of Old Earth-using them as spare DNA stock and slave labor, much as we used androids-but the discovery of Lions and Tigers and Bears and the panicked retreat from Planck s.p.a.ce complicated those plans. Until the threat of these Others was a.s.sessed and eliminated, the Core would have to continue its parasitic relations.h.i.+p with humanity. It devised the farcasters in the old WorldWeb just for that purpose. To humans, the trip through the farcaster medium was instantaneous. But in the timeless topography of Planck s.p.a.ce, the subjective dwell-time there could be as long as the Core wished. The Core tapped into billions of human brains during that period, using human minds millions of times each standard day, to create a huge neural network for their own computing purposes. Every time a human stepped through a farcaster portal, it was as if the Core cut open that person's skull, removed the gray matter, laid the brain out on a workbench, and hooked it up to billions of other brains in their giant, parallel-processing, organic computer. The humans completed their step from Planck s.p.a.ce in a subjective instant of their time and never noticed the inconvenience.

"Ummon told my father, the John Keats cybrid, that the Core consisted of three warring camps-the Ultimates, obsessed with creating their own G.o.d, the Ultimate Intelligence; the Volatiles, who wished to eliminate humanity and get on with their own goals; and the Stables, who wished to maintain the status quo vis-a-vis humankind. This explanation was an absolute lie.

"There were not and are not three camps in the TechnoCore...there are billions. The Core is the ultimate exercise in anarchy-hyperparasitism carried to its highest power. Core elements vie for power in alliances which might last centuries or microseconds. Billions of the parasitic personae ebb and flow in unholy alliances built to control or predict events. You see, Core personae refuse to die unless they are forced to-Meina Gladstone's deathbomb attack on the farcaster medium not only caused the Fall of the Farcasters, it killed billions of would-be immortal Core personae-but the individuals refuse to make way for others without a fight. Yet at the same time, the Core hyperlife needs death for its own evolution. But death, in the Core universe, has its own agenda.

"The Reaper program which Tom Ray created more than a thousand years ago still exists in the Core medium, mutated to a million alternate forms. Ummon never mentioned the Reapers as a Core faction, but they represent a far greater bloc than the Ultimates. It was the Reapers who created and first controlled the physical construct known as the Shrike.

"It's an interesting footnote that those Core personae which survive the Reapers do so not just through parasitism, but through a necrophilic parasitism. This is the technique by which the original 22-byte artificial life-forms managed to evolve and survive in Tom Ray's virtual evolution machine so many centuries ago-by stealing the scattered copy code of other byte creatures who were 'reaped' in the midst of reproducing. The Core parasites not only have s.e.x, they have s.e.x with the dead! This is how millions of the mutated Core personae survive today...by necrophilic hyperparasitism.

"What does the Core want from humankind now? Why has it revitalized the Catholic Church and allowed the Pax to come into existence? How do the cruciforms work and how do they serve the Core? How do the so-called Gideon-drive archangel s.h.i.+ps really work and what is their effect on the Void Which Binds? And how is the Core dealing with the threat of the Lions and Tigers and Bears?

"These things we shall discuss another time."

IT IS THE DAY AFTER WE LEARN OF THE COMING OF the Pax and I am working stone on the highest scaffolds.

During the first days after my arrival, I think that Rachel, Theo, Jigme Norbu, George Tsarong, and the others were doubtful if I could earn my keep on the construction site at Hsuan-k'ung Ssu. I admit that I had doubts of my own as I watched the hard work and skill on view here. But after a few days of literally learning the ropes of gear and climbing protocols on the rockfaces, ledges, cables, scaffolds, and slideways in the area, I volunteered for work duty and was given a chance to fail. I did not fail.

Aenea knew of my apprentices.h.i.+p with Avrol Hume, not only landscaping the huge Beak estates but working stone and wood for follies and bridges, gazebos and towers. That work served me well here, and within two weeks I had graduated from the basic scaffolding crew to the select group of high riggers and stone workers laboring on the highest platforms. Aenea's design allowed for the highest structures to rise to the great rock overhang and for various walkways and parapets actually to be incorporated into that stone. This is what we are working on now, chiseling stone and laying brick for the walkway along the edge of nothing, our scaffolds perilously canti levered far out over the drop. In the past three months my body has grown leaner and stronger, my reaction time quicker, and my judgment more careful as I work on sheer rock walls and slippery bonsai bamboo.

Lh.o.m.o Dondrub, the skilled flyer and climber, has volunteered to free-climb the end of the overhang here to set anchor points for the final meters of scaffolding and for the last hour Viki Groselj, Kim Byung-Soon, Haruyuki Otaki, Kens.h.i.+ro Endo, Changchi Kenchung, Labsang Samten, a few of the other brickworkers, masons, high riggers, and I have been watching as Lh.o.m.o moves across the rock above the overhang without protection, moving like the proverbial Old Earth fly, his powerful arms and legs flexing under the thin material of his climbing garb, three points in touch with the slick, more-than-vertical stone at all times while his free hand or foot feels for the slightest rough spot on which to rest, the smallest fissure or crack in which to work a bolt for our anchor. It is terrifying to watch him, but also a privilege-as if we were able to go back in a time machine to watch Pica.s.so paint or George Wu read poetry or Meina Gladstone give a speech. A dozen times I am sure that Lh.o.m.o is going to peel off and fall-it would take minutes for him to freefall into the poison clouds below-but each time he magically holds his place, or finds a friction point, or miraculously discovers a crack into which he can wedge a hand or finger to support his entire body.

Finally he is done, the lines are anch.o.r.ed and dangling, the cable points are secured, and Lh.o.m.o slides down to his early fixed point, traverses five meters laterally, drops into the stirrups of the overhang gear, and swings onto our work platform like some legendary superhero coming in for a landing. Labsang Samten hands him an icy mug of rice beer. Kens.h.i.+ro and Viki pound him on the back. Changchi Kenchung, our master carpenter with the waxed mustaches, breaks into a bawdy song of praise. I shake my head and grin like an idiot. The day is exhilarating-a dome of blue sky, the Sacred Mountain of the North-Heng Shan-gleaming brightly across the cloud gap, and the winds moderate. Aenea tells me that the rainy season will descend on us within days-a monsoon from the south bringing months of rain, slick rock, and eventual snow-but that seems unlikely and distant on such a perfect day as this.

There is a touch at my elbow and Aenea is there. She has been out on the scaffolding most of the morning, or hanging from her harness on the worked rockface, supervising the stone and brick work on the walkway and parapets.

I am still grinning from the vicarious adrenaline rush of watching Lh.o.m.o. "Cables are ready to be rigged," I say. "Three or four more good days and the wooden walkway will be done here. Then your final platform there"-I point to the ultimate edge of the overhang-"and voila! Your project's done except for the painting and polis.h.i.+ng, kiddo."

Aenea nods but it is obvious that her mind is not on the celebration around Lh.o.m.o or the imminent completion of her year of work. "Can you come walk with me a minute, Raul?"

I follow her down the scaffolding ladders, onto one of the permanent levels, and out a stone ledge. Small green birds take wing from a fissure as we pa.s.s.

From this angle, the Temple Hanging in Air is a work of art. The painted woodwork gleams rather than glows its dark red. The staircases and railings and fretwork are elegant and complex. Many of the paG.o.das have their shoji walls slid open and prayer flags and bedclothes flutter in the warm breeze. There are eight lovely shrines in the Temple, in ascending order along the rising walkways, each paG.o.da shrine representing a step in the n.o.ble Eightfold Path as identified by the Buddha: the shrines line up on three axes relating to the three sections of the Path: Wisdom, Morality, and Meditation. On the ascending Wisdom axis of staircases and platforms are the meditation shrines for "Right Understanding" and "Right Thought."

On the Morality axis are "Right Speech," "Right Action," "Right Livelihood," and "Right Effort." These last meditation shrines can be reached only by hard climbing on a ladder rather than staircase because-as Aenea and Kempo Ngha w.a.n.g Tas.h.i.+ explained to me one evening early in my stay-the Buddha had meant for his path to be one of strenuous and unremitting commitment.

The highest Meditation paG.o.das are given over to contemplation of the last two steps on the n.o.ble Eightfold Path-"Right Mindfulness" and "Right Meditation." This final paG.o.da, I had noticed immediately, looks out only onto the stone wall of the cliff face.

I also had noticed that there were no statues of Buddha in the Temple. The little that Grandam had explained to me about Buddhism when I'd asked as a child-having run across a reference in an old book from the Moors End library-was that Buddhists revered and prayed to statues in the likeness of the Buddha. Where were they? I had asked Aenea.

She had explained that on Old Earth Buddhist thought had been grouped into two major categories-Hinayana, an older school of thought given the pejorative term meaning "Lesser Vehicle"-as in salvation-by the more popular schools of the Mahayana, or the self-proclaimed "Greater Vehicle." There had once been eighteen schools of Hinayana teaching-all of which had dealt with Buddha as a teacher and urged contemplation and study of his teachings rather than wors.h.i.+p of him-but by the time of the Big Mistake, only one of those schools survived, the Theravada, and that only in remote sections of disease- and famine-ravaged Sri Lanka and Thailand, two political provinces of Old Earth. All the other Buddhist schools carried away on the Hegira had belonged to the Mahayana category, which focused on veneration of Buddhist statuary, meditation for salvation, saffron robes, and the other trappings that Grandam had described to me.

But, Aenea had explained, on T'ien Shan, the most Buddhist-influenced world in the Outback or old Hegemony, Buddhism had evolved backward toward rationality, contemplation, study, and careful, open-minded a.n.a.lysis of Buddha's teaching. Thus there were no statues to the Buddha at Hsuan-k'ung Ssu.

We stop walking at the end of this stone ledge. Birds soar and circle below us, waiting for us to leave so that they can return to their fissure nests.

"What is it, kiddo?"

"The reception at the Winter Palace in Potala is tomorrow night," she says. Her face is flushed and dusty from her morning's work on the high scaffolds. I notice that she has sc.r.a.ped a rough line above her brow and that there are a few tiny crimson drops of blood. "Charles Chi-kyap Kempo is putting together an official party numbering no more than ten to attend," she continues. "Kempo Ngha w.a.n.g Tas.h.i.+ will be in it, of course, as will Overseer Tsipon Shakabpa, the Dalai Lama's cousin Gyalo, his brother Labsang, Lh.o.m.o Dondrub because the Dalai Lama's heard of his feats and would like to meet him, Tromo Trochi of Dhomu as trade agent, and one of the foremen to represent the workers...either George or Jigme..."

"I can't imagine one going without the other," I say.

"I can't either," says Aenea. "But I think it will have to be George. He talks. Perhaps Jigme will walk there with us and wait outside the palace."

"That's eight," I say.

Aenea takes my hand. Her fingers are roughened by work and abrasion, but are still, I think, the softest and most elegant human digits in the known universe. "I'm nine," she says. "There's going to be a huge crowd there-parties from all the towns and provinces in the hemisphere. The odds are that we won't get within twenty meters of anyone from the Pax."

"Or that we'll be the first to be introduced," I say. "Murphy's Law and all that."

"Yeah," says Aenea and the smile I see is exactly the one I had seen on the face of my eleven-year-old friend when something mischievous and perhaps a bit dangerous was afoot. "Want to go as my date?"

I let out a breath. "I wouldn't miss it for the world," I say.

18.

-n the night before the Dalai Lama's reception I am tired but I cannot sleep. A. Bettik is away, staying at Jo-kung with George and Jigme and the thirty loads of construction material that should have come in yesterday but that were held up in the fissure city by a porters' strike. A. Bettik will hire new porters in the morning and lead the procession the last few kilometers to the Temple.

Restless, I roll off my futon and slip into whipcord trousers, a faded s.h.i.+rt, my boots, and the light therm jacket. When I step out of my sleeping paG.o.da, I notice lantern light warming the opaque windows and shoji door of Aenea's paG.o.da. She is working late again. Walking softly so as not to disturb her by rocking the platform, I clamber down a ladder to the main level of the Temple Hanging in Air.

It always amazes me how empty this place is at night. At first I thought it was the result of the construction workers-most of whom live in the cliffside crates around Jo-kung-being gone, but I've come to realize how few people spend their nights in the temple complex. George and Jigme usually sleep in their foreman's shack but are in Jo-kung with A. Bettik tonight. The abbot Kempo Ngha w.a.n.g Tas.h.i.+ stays with the monks some nights, but this night he has returned to his formal home in Jokung. A handful of monks prefer their austere quarters here to the formal monastery in Jo-kung, including Chim Din, Labsang Samten, and the woman, Donka Nyapso. Occasionally the flyer, Lh.o.m.o, stays at the monks' quarters or in an empty shrine here, but not tonight. Lh.o.m.o has left early for the Winter Palace, having mentioned his thought of climbing Nanda Devi south of Potala.

So while I can see a soft lantern glow coming from the monks' quarters hundreds of meters away on the lowest level of the eastern edge of the complex-a glow that is extinguished even as I watch it-the rest of the temple complex is dark and quiet in the starlight. Neither the Oracle nor the other bright moons have risen yet, although the eastern horizon is beginning to glow a bit with their coming. The stars are incredibly bright, almost as brilliant and unwavering as when seen from s.p.a.ce. There are thousands visible this night-more than I remembered from Hyperion's or Old Earth's night sky-and I crane my neck until I can see the slowly moving star that is the tiny moon where the s.h.i.+p is presumably hiding. I am carrying the com unit/diskey journal and all it would take is a whisper to query the s.h.i.+p, but Aenea and I have decided that with the Pax so near, even tightbeam transmissions to or from the s.h.i.+p should be reserved for emergency situations.

I sincerely hope that no emergency situations will arise soon.

Taking the ladders, staircases, and short bridges down the west side of the temple complex, I walk back along the brick-and-stone ledge beneath the lowest structures. The night wind has come up and I can hear the creak and groan of the wooden timbers as entire platform levels adjust themselves to the wind and chill. Prayer flags flap above me and I see starlight on the cloudtops where they curl against the ridge rock so far below. The wind is not quite strong enough to make the distinctive wolf's howl that woke me my first few nights here, but its pa.s.sage through the fissures and timbers and cracks sets the world muttering and whispering around me.

I reach the Wisdom staircase and climb up through the Right Understanding meditation pavilion, standing a moment at the balcony to look out at the dark and silent monks' quarters perched by itself on a boulder to the east. I recognize the infinite woodcarving skill and care of the sisters, Kuku and Kay Se, in the elaborate carvings just under my fingertips here. Wrapping my jacket tighter in the rising wind, I climb the spiral staircase to the platform paG.o.da for Right Thought. On the east wall of this restored paG.o.da, Aenea has designed a large, perfectly round window looking east toward the dip in the ridgeline there where the Oracle makes its first appearance and the moon is rising now, its bright rays illuminating first the ceiling of this paG.o.da and then the rear wall, where these words from the Sutta Nipata Sutta Nipata scripture are set into the plaster wall: scripture are set into the plaster wall: As a flame blown out by the wind Goes to rest and cannot be defined So the wise man freed from individuality Goes to rest and cannot be defined.

Gone beyond all images- Gone beyond the power of words.

I know that this pa.s.sage deals with enigmatic death of Buddha, but I read it in the moonlight with the thought of how it might apply to Aenea or myself, or the two of us. It does not seem to apply. Unlike the monks who labor here for enlightenment, I have no urge whatsoever to go beyond individuality. The world itself-all of the myriad worlds I have been privileged to see and walk upon-are what fascinate and delight me. I have no wish to put the world and my sense images of the world behind me. And I know that Aenea feels the same about life-that involvement with it is like the Catholic Communion, only the World is the Host, and it must be chewed. of the myriad worlds I have been privileged to see and walk upon-are what fascinate and delight me. I have no wish to put the world and my sense images of the world behind me. And I know that Aenea feels the same about life-that involvement with it is like the Catholic Communion, only the World is the Host, and it must be chewed.

Still, the thought of the essence of things-of people-of life going beyond all images and the power of words, this resonates with me. I have been trying-and failing-to put even the essence of this place, these days, into words and discovering the futility of it.

Leaving the Wisdom axis, I cross the long platform for cooking and common meals, and begin up the Morality axis of stairways, bridges, and platforms. The Oracle is free of the ridgeline now and the light from it and its two attendants paint the rock and red wood around me in thick moon paint.

I pa.s.s through the pavilions for Right Speech and Right Action, pausing to catch my breath in the circular paG.o.da for Right Livelihood. There is a bamboo barrel of drinking water just outside the paG.o.da for Right Effort, and I drink deeply there. Prayer flags flutter and snap along the terraces and eaves as I move softly across the long connecting platform to the highest structures.

The meditation pavilion for Right Mindfulness is part of Aenea's recent work and still smells of fresh bonsai cedar. Ten meters higher along the steep ladder, the Right Meditation pavilion perches out over the bulk of the Temple, its window looking out on the ridge wall. I stand there for several minutes, realizing for the first time that the shadow of the paG.o.da itself falls upon that slab of rock when the moon is rising as it is now, and that Aenea has designed the roof of the pavilion so that its shadow connects with natural clefts and discolorations in the rock to create a shadow character that I recognize as the Chinese character for Buddha.

At this moment I am taken by a chill, although the wind is not blowing any harder than it has been. Gooseb.u.mps rise along my forearms and the back of my neck feels cold. I realize-no, see see-in that instant, that Aenea's mission, whatever it is, is doomed to failure. She and I are both going to be captured, interrogated, probably tortured, and executed. My promises to the old poet on Hyperion were so much wasted breath. Bring down the Pax, I had said. The Pax with its billions of faithful, millions of men and women in arms, thousands of wars.h.i.+ps...Bring back Old Earth, I had agreed. Well, I had visited visited it. it.

I look out the window to see the sky, but there is only the rock wall in the moonlight and the slowly cohering shadow character of the Buddha's name, the three vertical strokes like ink on slate-colored vellum, the three horizontal strokes flowing around and together, making three white faces in the negative s.p.a.ces, three faces staring at me in the dark.

I had promised to protect Aenea. I vow that I will die doing that.

Shaking off the chill and the premonition, I go out onto the Meditation platform, clip to a cable, and hum thirty meters across the void to the platform below the top terrace where Aenea and I have sleeping paG.o.das. As I climb the last ladder to the highest level, I am thinking-perhaps I will sleep now.

I MADE NO NOTES ON THIS IN THE DISKEY JOURNAL. I remember it now as I write it.

Aenea's light was out. I was pleased-she stayed up too late, worked too hard. The high work scaffolds and cliff cables were no place for an exhausted architect.

I stepped into my own shack, slid shut the shoji door, and kicked off my boots. Things were as I had left them-the outer screen wall slid back a bit, moonlight bright across my sleeping mat, the wind rattling the walls in its soft conversation with the mountains. Neither of my lanterns was lit, but I had the light from the moon and my memory of the small room in the dark. The floor was bare tatami except for my sleeping futon and a single chest near the door that held my rucksack, few food items, beer mug, the rebreathers I'd brought from the s.h.i.+p, and my climbing gear: there was nothing to trip over.

I hung my jacket on the hook near the door, splashed water on my face from the basin on the chest, and stripped off my s.h.i.+rt, socks, trousers, and underwear, stuffing them into the ditty bag in the chest. Tomorrow was laundry day. Sighing, feeling the premonition of doom I'd felt in the meditation pavilion now fading into simple fatigue, I walked over to the sleeping mat. I have always slept naked except for when in the Home Guard and during my trip in the Consul's s.h.i.+p with my two friends.

There was the slightest of movements in the darkness beyond the bright stripe of moonlight and, startled, I dropped into a fighting crouch. Nakedness makes one feel more vulnerable than usual. Then I realized-A. Bettik must have returned early. I unclenched my right fist.

"Raul?" said Aenea. She leaned forward into the moonlight. She had wrapped my sleeping blanket around the lower part of her body, but her shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and abdomen were bare. The Oracle touched her hair and cheekbones with soft light.

I opened my mouth to speak, started to turn back toward my clothes or jacket, decided not to walk that far, and dropped on one knee to the sleeping mat, pulling up the futon's sheet to cover myself. I was not a prude, but this was Aenea. What was she...

"Raul," she said again, and this time there was no question in her voice. She moved closer to me on her knees. The blanket fell away from her.

"Aenea," I said stupidly. "Aenea, I...you...I don't...you don't really..."

She set her finger on my lips and removed it a second later, but before I could speak she leaned closer and pressed her lips where her finger had been.

Every time I had ever touched my young friend, the contact had been electric. I have described this before and always felt foolish discussing it, but I ascribed it to her...an aura...a charge of personality. It was real, not a metaphor. But never had I felt the surge of electricity between us as in this instant.