Posted by One week after his arrival at the conclave, the Bisop of New Hope was already growing tired and irritable. His feet hurt. His back hurt. His head ached from too much sleep, too much wine, and the close atmosphere of his sleeping quarters. The other attendees who’d arrived by that point were also proving to be less than stimulating conversation partners.
He wheezed as he once more let himself into the Amphitheater of the Reconstruction, the holiest site in all the Order. It was a huge empty space with a large, raised dais at the center, surrounded by thousands of numbered seats. He carefully removed his artifact from its hiding place in his robes. Round and no larger than his thumb, running an index finger around the lip of it he could feel the smooth metallic surface of the seal, and he admired the ancient craftsmanship. Generations of handling had burnished the metal, but the letters and numbers were still legible: Sec. H, Row 22, Seat BB. Or was that Seat BD? Well, it would all get sorted out over the next few weeks, as the thousands of other artifacts arrived.
Though it was ancient, the stasis drop inside his artifact was intact, of course. Not even an axion blast could dent that protective bubble of non-being. Reminded of this, for a fleeting moment the Bisop felt young again, as he had on the day when he’d first received his artifact. It was an awesome responsibility, and as he pondered this fact a deep metaphysical piety rumbled in his chest. It passed a moment later and left him feeling hungry and thirsty. He set about finding a tavern.
Standing alone at the Kadinala’s bedside at the moment he died, the Dikon could not believe his luck. The arrival of news of the Reconstruction conclave had proved too much for the old man. How ironic, the Dikon thought, that the desiccated devil had spent his entire life consumed by ambition, scheming for this very day. And then—pop!—a small blood vessel had failed him.
The Dikon took a moment to say a perfunctory blessing for the Kadinala’s wizened soul. He carried out this propriety so that if questioned he could answer truthfully that it was his first act. For his second act, he stripped back the quilt and began to search the now-stiffening corpse. He found the artifact stitched into the inseam of the old man’s underwear. By the Right of Propinquity, the Kadinala’s artifact now belonged to the Dikon. The invitation to the Reconstruction thereby transferred to him as well. The Dikon next called for assistance to prepare the body for dispersal, and calmly set about making plans for his travel off-world.
The alarm bell sounded from the clock tower of the Abbey of Tsom. Hearing it while she wandered the marketplace, the peal of the bell set Lurie the novice careening through the bustling streets, scattering all the goats and chickens in her path.
The tower bell sounded a second time. The cacophony now followed in Lurie’s wake through the narrow alleys bordering the outer walls of the Abbey.
The tocsin sounded a third time. It echoed like summer thunder in the surrounding mountains. But today Lurie would have no time to admire the beautiful scenery around the town, the blue-pink sky overhead with its two swift moons and reddish suns, and she would have no time to smell the savory freshwater eel roasting upon the street vendor’s carts. The alarm bell meant the AbbX had summoned her, and one is duty-bound to answer a call from those who were dying.
Lurie rounded the corner just outside the main gate of the Abbey and collided with a donkey pulling a cart full of geese. Braying and honking erupted, along with the clatter of hooves on ancient cobblestones. It sounded like a family squabble in the marketplace. Surprised by the kerfuffle, Lurie stumbled and fell into a puddle, scraping the palm of her right hand and coating the front of her saffron robe with mud.
The alarm bell sounded a fourth time. The passageway leading directly into the Abbey was now at hand. Thankfully, it was empty. Lurie rushed through it and into the inner courtyard, then bounded up a dozen stone steps in five huge leaps, stumbling once on a loose flagstone near the top.
In the courtyard, Fra Paulsen’s biology class was gathered beneath the alcantha tree. The dozen children now buzzed with excitement, turning around to get a good look at Lurie. It wasn’t every day the alarm bell sounded, and it wasn’t every day you saw someone running at the Abbey. Something exciting was afoot.
Fra Paulsen paused in his lecture; a bit startled as Lurie rushed past. Lurie knew that she looked like she’d fallen into a slop cart, but before Fra Paulsen could ask if she was alright, she had reached the far end of the courtyard and knocked on the door to the AbbX’s private chambers.
She stood now panting in the doorway, trying to catch her breath, while she brushed the mud as best she could from her robes. She winced as the scrape on her hand began to throb.
“Enter!” the AbbX called out from behind the heavy wooden door. The voice seemed strong for someone on the verge of death. Lurie turned the gnarled handle, leaned her shoulder into the wooden door and pushed it open, startled a bit by the groan from its ancient rusty hinges. Then she ventured inside.
The AbbX’s chambers were brightly lit, with warm pink sunshine cascading through a series of high open windows. Piles of books and papers, manuscript printouts, and tri-vid terminals were scattered about, seemingly at random. In the center of the room was the traditional massive AbbX’s bed, molded from a living baltava tree. The mattress was overstuffed, and the bed linens unkempt.
“Come closer, child, I need to see you.” Lurie was on the cusp of adulthood, and she tolerated this diminutive address from the AbbX, but no one else, knowing it was an affectation of theirs. The AbbX sat in the middle of the huge bed, as disheveled as their surroundings, a small frail figure propped against a huge mound of duck-feather pillows. White hair burst from their temples as if shot from a spray pistol, a contrast to the dark brown skin, which looked thin as parchment. They had missed a few shaves for the last few days, and a gray stubble covered their chin.
“AbbX…” Lurie was still panting from her running: “You called for me.”
“Yes, I did. I called for you, and here you are.” The AbbX made a vague listless motion with the right hand. “But now I can’t see you, Lurie. Come closer.”
“AbbX, your visor.” Lurie motioned toward the prosthetic on the table beside the bed.
“Yes, yes, yes. It’s on the blink again, so I shall die as blind as a cave snake,” the AbbX groused. “I’ve made my peace with the notion that the Great One we claim to worship—if He/She/It/They exist—eventually takes us all back into their embrace. But why do they insist upon humiliating us in the process?”
“AbbX!” Even after five years of study with the AbbX, Lurie was still sometimes shocked by the old teacher’s irreverence.
“Oh, child. Lighten your mood. I’m the one who’s dying. The prosthetic no longer fits, and it’s beginning to irritate.” Now that the AbbX had mentioned it, Lurie saw the inflamed patches on the temples where the implants lay just beneath the skin. Both temples looked sore, and the right one looked like it was already getting infected. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? “I’ve already asked you twice, Lurie. Come closer so I can see you properly.” The AbbX was beginning to sound a bit cross.
Lurie had never been in the AbbX’s bedroom before. They’d always worked together in the study next door. But this past week the weakness and trembling in the AbbX’s limbs had worsened, so the AbbX had taken to bed. Lurie hadn’t seen the AbbX at all the last few days, and the new changes she observed, the slight tremble in the fingers, the hollowness of their cheeks, the overall weariness, it was all a bit shocking to her.
The AbbX motioned for Lurie to pull up a chair and to sit close to them, and when she did the AbbX blinked as they tried focus on Lurie’s face, leaning close into her. As a result, the AbbX nearly slid off the mound of pillows that propped them up. Lurie could see—now that the AbbX no longer wore the prosthetic—that their eyes were milk-white with streaks of crimson. A symptom of the retrovirus.
“Whatever happened to you girl?”
“I was in such a hurry. I didn’t see the goose cart.”
“Oh child,” the AbbX softened. “Don’t kill yourself answering my call. I’m not going to drop off just yet.”
Lurie relaxed at that and asked: “What can I help you with, AbbX?”
“Questions. This one is always so full of questions.” The AbbX spoke to the room while taking a deep rasping breath. Then they lay back once more, almost sinking into the mound of pillows. They were quiet for what seemed a very long time, and then the AbbX finally said. “I called you here for a very important reason, Lurie.”
The AbbX then rallied a bit and plumped the pillows behind their own back. Wheezing now, they paused to recoup their thoughts for a moment after that effort. This level of distractibility of the AbbX’s was new. Lurie waited, her hands folded in her lap, watching the AbbX with concern.
When news of the conclave had arrived on New Hope, the Bisop could barely contain his excitement, and he’d immediately booked passage. He’d been the first to arrive because his small colony world happened to be physically the closest to the site of the Reconstruction. He’d known it would take weeks for all the other representatives from the scattered worlds of the Dominion to gather, so he could have dithered a bit and taken his time. But was he really needed on New Hope? His daily life on that agricultural world consisted of endless chatter with farmers and goatherds, the ritual blessing of donkeys, prayers over baskets of corn, and the settling of minor theological disputes. The Bisop felt himself growing old with the burden of these spiritual chores.
He’d been called to the posting on New Hope as a young man and he’d been earnest, at first. Now in middle age, some days he felt his heart was no longer in the work. But he asked himself, where would those rustics be without the cultural memory, the teachings, and the traditions that the Order provided? Asking the question was as far as he ever got before becoming distracted by other things. So, over the years he soldiered on, seeking warmth and good cheer with a few close friends, those to whom he could open his heart, and speak of his lingering doubts.
After his arrival at the conclave, the crowds had worsened day by day. Ships arrived from the farthest star systems in the Dominion, announced with blasts of trumpets and heraldry. Each representative of the Order tried to outdo the others with the pomp and splendor of their entourage. The influx of the well-appointed drove the price of lodgings and food to astronomical heights. This forced the Bisop out of his original, very comfortable, suite and caused him to move into a cramped little space that he now shared with a little Dikon from Alterra, a stiff and uninteresting soul with a narrow grey face and hawklike eyes. The man had no appreciation of food, wine, or music, nor could he carry on a pleasant conversation. How could people like that keep from boring themselves to death with their own company? Oh, misery. Even finding a decent dinner had become nearly impossible because the Bisop could no longer afford the necessary bribes. The Reconstruction was going to make the locals quite rich, and more supplicants, thousands upon thousands, arrived every day. How many pieces of Rūkaki could there be? The Bisop wondered.
There seemed to be no one in charge of things on the asteroid, though the High Council was supposed to be overseeing the Reconstruction itself. In that information vacuum, with no real news, rumors circulated: One claimed that the Reconstruction had been canceled. Another that the last artifact had arrived, and so the Reconstruction was being called the very next day. Another claimed that faulty equipment had been found in the ancient and venerable amphitheater, and the High Council was striving to fix it. Another rumor held that a long-running civil war on the outer rim had led to the destruction of an entire block of data, overwhelming the highly redundant error-correcting properties of the artifact network. None of these rumors proved true, or at least none of them proved to be the full truth. Nor were any of these rumors addressed or acknowledged on those rare days when the High Council circulated one of its cryptic and oracular official statements. Those irregular edicts asked the gathered faithful to be patient and assured them that all was in order. This only caused everyone to doubt that it was true.
The Bisop carried on as best he could, but his money was running out. He began to wonder: Was the local sect of the Order, the one that was responsible for hosting the conclave, were they taking kickbacks from the vendors? Then he chided himself for being so naive as to think it could possibly be otherwise. Always a gregarious fellow, the Bisop set out to make some new friends among these worthies.
The precious artifact, the Dikon’s ticket to the Reconstruction, lay hidden in his crotch under the seam of his black jumpsuit. It took all the self-discipline he could muster to keep himself from constantly checking to make sure it was still there.
He had arrived at the conclave nearly a week before, and the first day he’d spent exploring the limited tourist spots. It had taken only a few hours. Now, glowering, he merely skulked about the passageways and sulked. Why in Rūkaki’s name had they chosen this little chunk of tumbling rock in the middle of nowhere as the site for the Amphitheater of Reconstruction?
Bored to tears, the Dikon had even taken a walk upon the pockmarked surface of the little world. Sixty credits for a sixty-minute spacesuit rental. Pan-galactic robbery. And it was as horrid an hour as he’d ever spent in his life. Space, black as night, lay all around him like a suffocating cloak. A ringed planet whose name he’d already forgotten hovered like a heavy weight directly overhead. And all those stars. The shear abundance of them made his stomach queasy. When he’d climbed back through the tourist airlock his body was shaking from head to toe.
Meanwhile, the gathering crowds poured in from everywhere in the Dominion. A mixture of excitement, anticipation, and sheer entrepreneurial greed coursed like an electric current through the mingled tens of thousands. A festival atmosphere developed in the zocalo near the amphitheater, with jugglers, along with clowns and techno-mages, and even three-headed hydramen from Cletus—newly admitted to the Order. Smoke hung in the air of the passageways from hundreds of traditional grills used to roast sacrificial meats. With their open-pit fires, it seemed the more purist and reactionary sects were intent on subjecting everyone else to carbon monoxide poisoning.
The overcrowding was so bad that the Dikon had had to triple-bunk with two others in a tiny box of a cabin. His cabin mates proved to be a corpulent Bisop and an elderly Abbot or Abbess, or something or other, who had not yet even arrived. They were from small worlds the Dikon had never heard of. What could he possibly have in common with such provincials?
A bee bird began to sing just outside the AbbX’s open window. The shrill song was loud and startling as it echoed off the walls of the enclosed courtyard. Fra Paulsen’s droning lecture on sex continued outside under the alcantha tree. At this distance Lurie could only recognize his voice, not the words spoken, but she knew he was using the tree as a teaching prop, something the faculty often did when the weather allowed.
The alcantha tree was the spiritual center of the Abbey, and it presented many allegorical possibilities for discretely introducing the topics of sexual reproduction to the youngest students, along with the relation between people, plants, and animals, or nature more generally. The tree was formed of a helically entwined pair of trunks that opened into a broad and weeping canopy. This distinctive shape figured in the Abbey’s iconography, it appeared on the Abbey’s stationery and signage, on the signet ring of the AbbX, and on the left breast of the robes of members of the Abbey. The tree flowered in springs, provided shelter from the suns in summers, and its branches dropped tart fruits in the brief and intermittent falls.
No one knew how old the tree was. One apocryphal story held that Rūkaki had once taught beneath it, but no one at the Abbey believed this to be literally true. They viewed it instead as a pleasant kind of folk poetry. All that was known for certain of the tree’s history was that the Abbey had been built around it, so it was very old.
The Abbey had been established by a group of monks dedicated to the preservation of arcane and esoteric texts from all the ancient worlds. Most were electronic in form, in a thousand different formats and ten thousand languages, but others were on moldering paper or parchment, held in special vaults. A few of these texts were believed to be from the centuries prior to the time of Rūkaki and the later Great Chaos.
For all its problems, the poor construction, the cold rooms, bad plumbing and leaking roof-joints, the Abbey had become Lurie’s home these last few years because it was a place of learning, where ideas mattered. A place where she could speak her mind without fear. All the children at the Abbey were there by choice, and all were free to leave whenever they felt a desire to move on. A few, like Lurie, chose to stay and enter the Order as scholars.
“AbbX?”
“Hmmm…oh, yes. Sorry, I must have dozed off.” The AbbX rubbed their forehead as if trying to tease out a thought stuck behind the bone. “Lurie, we have talked about many things these last years, and you’ve been an excellent student. But it’s now time for you to teach me.”
“AbbX, how could I ever…?”
“Please, humor me. All will become clear. Or at least I hope some of the fuzziness will go away.” The AbbX stopped rubbing their head and lay back once more, sighing deeply, staring up at the ceiling of the room as if the ideas they were searching for lay up among the cobwebs: “What is memory, Lurie?”
“Hard one.”
This was a kind of game they played. If the answer to a question came immediately to mind it was a ‘no-brainer’ or ‘trivial’, while if it took some thought it was a ‘hard one’ or a ‘stumper’. Lurie usually made some headway even with the stumpers. “Bear with me, Lurie. My reason for asking will become clear.”
To buy time while she composed her answer, Lurie began with a list, a pedant’s trick she’d learned from the AbbX: “There are many types of memory. Tri-vids have a memory, along with all the computers we use. And of course, living things have memory, which I believe is what you are most interested in. Neural memory. Genes. The immune system.”
“Is memory fixed?”
“No, of course not. It can’t be. Information is always physically embodied, therefore calling up a memory is always a kind of reconstruction, a kind of re-memory. That’s why it’s always changing over time, written and overwritten…” Lurie stopped. This was skirting close to heresy, depending upon how widely the ideas were applied. But the AbbX had taught her to follow her thoughts wherever they might lead.
“Keep going. Any other examples, my child?”
“Languages form a kind of memory. They have hidden within them snippets of the past, like those complex etymologies you find so fascinating.”
The AbbX chuckled at that, and this sound made Lurie feel a warmth in her chest. “Very good. The language shifts beneath our feet, something we must be alive to when we read the old texts and the teachings of Rūkaki.” Then the AbbX said abruptly: “Can we also say that institutions have memory, as well as cultures?”
Where were they going with this? Lurie wondered. But she continued: “All evolving systems require memory. Otherwise, change is merely random. Without memory, there is no learning.”
“Excellent.” The AbbX now pounced: “Can learning occur without change?”
Lurie hesitated, but the AbbX insisted that she continue, so she answered: “No. I don’t see how learning is possible without change.” He nodded quietly, lost in their ruminations.
And so it went for another pleasant hour, until the AbbX dozed off again, contented, but having forgotten to tell Lurie why they’d the alarm bell rung.
The Bisop had arrived just a few days prior to the Dikon. So that meant the fat fool had already commandeered the best bunk of the three available in their sleeping quarters, arranged as they were around the walls of the claustrophobic little space. The Dikon chafed at the unfairness of the arrangement and viewed it as an inversion of the proper social order.
The curved walls of the room were gray, painted with a sealant that was slippery and cold to the touch. It felt almost as if the rock were weeping. The fourth wall, the one without a bunk, held the hatchway exit to the outer passage.
The hatch had an emergency airlock in it with an automatic release that would trip in case of catastrophic loss of pressure. Warning signs were painted in large red letters informing the reader to keep the hatchway clear under pain of fines, caning, or—upon a third conviction—spacing. No one the Dikon had spoken to seemed to know the last time a catastrophic loss of pressure had happened, nor when the air locks and hatches had last been inspected. What a nightmare. He resolved not to think about it. And so, the Dikon spent most of his time outside the sleeping quarters, wandering the maze of narrow passageways, trying to bide his time until the Reconstruction.
As the weeks went by, and more and more of the scattered Order arrived, room rents and food charges soared. Hustlers roved freely among the gathered throngs. The wealthier brethren were often separated from their money through the purchase of luxury items they couldn’t bear to be without: whiskey, wine, fresh fruit, fresh meat, and sex. The Dikon could smell roasting pig, goat, and chicken in the zocalo. But with his limited funds real meat was an extravagance he could no longer afford. He had to budget himself, not knowing how long the conclave would last.
A group of Schismatic priests from Ballatrae took to roasting small animals that looked and sounded like dogs, apparently a delicacy for them, an exotic feature of their antinomian practices. Most of the Order shunned the Schismatics corridors, filled as they were with all that tedious yapping and barking, and the smell of dog fur and day-old offal. The Dikon wrinkled his nose in distaste as he passed by, and continued to wend his way through the crowds, ruminating on his sufferings.
One day, just outside the main entrance to the amphitheater, someone used a laser augur to dig a pit large enough to bury a dozen men standing up, filled it with coals, and covered them with a huge slab of vat beef. Such ersatz flesh the Dikon could afford. Although savory and well-seasoned, it gave him diarrhea for two days.
The AbbX stared hazily out the window, drifting back to their earlier thoughts: “So far, Lurie, you have only given me a list of things which have memory, but you haven’t really answered the question. What is the common aspect? What is required before something can be said to have a memory? If I take a hot knife and poke it into a slab of wax, the wax retains the imprint. Can it be said that the wax retains a memory of the knife?”
“Perhaps, but that’s a crude kind of physical memory, AbbX, not a very interesting one.”
The AbbX smiled at her, acknowledging the point. “Sharp as that knife, you are. But still, you haven’t given me a hint of how you would distinguish something that has memory, in an interesting sense, from a rock that merely retains its shape, or from a riverbed that retains the patterns of past meanders…”
“…or from a dozen pink moons,” she finished the sentence for them, with that flip silliness the AbbX often used with students. “I would say that memory has to do with correlations. Memory of the interesting sort gives you the ability to reconstruct something, to essentially retell the story of it, at least in its most important aspects.”
“Good! I love stories. Tell me more.” The AbbX was plumping the pile of pillows under their back once again. A small duck-feather avalanche had brought them low a moment before. They sneezed. “Let’s follow that thought. Correlations. Good. What do you mean by correlations?” The AbbX was now energized and animated, enjoying the play of ideas.
“The state of one part of a system is tied to the state of another part. If I perform an observation of the state of the first part, I can infer something about the state of the second part.”
“What about entangled states?”
“A quantum version. You start with two independent quantum systems, then entwine their wave functions so they become a single mixed system.”
“How complex a system can I entangle?”
Lurie paused. A frown crossed her face as she puzzled over the question. They’d just discussed these ideas only a week before, so the essentials were fresh in her mind. She summarized her understanding for the AbbX. The entangled system could be arbitrarily complex, in principle, but in practice it was usually limited to small systems, physically close. As she spoke, the AbbX nodded with their eyes closed, as if listening to a piece of music.
Still with their eyes closed, the AbbX said: “But what if I can isolate subparts of the entangled system while preserving the long-range quantum correlations?”
“Are you thinking of stasis?” The AbbX nodded that this was correct, and so they talked awhile about the physics of stasis bubbles and quantum error correction.
And, finally, they came to speak of Reconstruction.
“So, Lurie, by now you can guess why I called for you today.”
“I think you want me to consider the Order itself as a kind of memory,” Lurie said.
“Right on target.” The AbbX sat up in a slightly more erect posture, nodding vigorously. “Yes, the Order. And what memory does the Order preserve?”
“Rūkaki’s teachings, of course.”
“Yes, let’s come back to those.” The AbbX now changed the subject, or at least they appeared to: “But right now, I called you here for something a bit more urgent.”
The AbbX reached under their nightshirt and pulled out a locket that hung around their neck attached by a leather string. It took a moment to pull over their head, and their hands shook with the effort. Lurie stood up and moved to help, but the AbbX gently waved her back. A moment later the AbbX rested, breathing heavily, and the locket lay in their frail and knobby hand.
“Well, that was a bitch,” the AbbX said under their breath. They shook their head, wheezing again, and coughed to clear their throat. “It’s amazing how much effort every little thing takes when your body starts to fail. Here, child. I give it to you.” And with that, the AbbX held out the locket containing the artifact. “The conclave of Reconstruction has been called, and I’m too weak to attend. You will go in my stead.”
“AbbX, I couldn’t…”
“Of course you can. And you will. Trust that I know what I’m doing.”
Lurie examined the locket now in her hand. It was small, only about the size of her thumb, a gray spherical drop of something hard, sealed with a narrow band of yellowish metal. There was also an engraved set of letters and numbers, what appeared to be a location address of some kind.
The AbbX frowned, and then spoke so quietly that Lurie had to lean in close to make sure she could hear. “Whatever I give to you, Lurie, you deserve. But I am afraid this particular gift is not a kindness.” The AbbX now indicated a packet of material on their desk that would explain things further, and then urged her to leave today for the conclave. She was to tell no one outside the Abbey where she was bound, for there were spies, even on Tsom.
The AbbX’s tone of voice softened, now, and for the first time the AbbX touched Lurie’s hand as they spoke, holding it gently as they implored her to do as asked: “I had hoped to teach you about so many things when the time seemed appropriate. But we have run out of time.”
The urgency in the AbbX’s voice was unmistakable. It was so unlike them. She reluctantly agreed to do what the AbbX asked, even though she didn’t fully understand. Visibly relieved, the AbbX now lay back and closed their eyes. Exhausted, they were soon asleep.
Lurie quietly said goodbye to the dozing AbbX and picked up the packet of material on the desk. Within it, she found a personal letter from the AbbX addressed to her. Lurie left that unopened for now, deciding she would read it on the journey, when her mind was more settled. There was also a letter of credit that gave Lurie access to a substantial sum of money for use on the journey, money that the Abbey could ill afford to give up. Finally, the AbbX provided Lurie with a formal letter of introduction addressed “To Whom it May Concern,” in case anyone questioned her right to join the conclave.
A day came when the mood in the zocalo changed. Rumors flew that the final artifact would soon be here. Crowds gathered at the arrival platform, curious to see who it was they had all been waiting for. No trumpets blew at the docking port when the display lit up showing the passenger manifest and world of origin: a small agricultural colony, a backwater called Tsom. Only a few in the crowd recognized the name, those versed in arcana and banned apocrypha. It was a world rumored to be home to more than a few heresies.
The access door opened without ceremony and through it stepped a young woman in the saffron robes of a novice. On her left breast a few noticed the striking icon of her abbey: an alcantha tree with two entwined trunks beneath a weeping canopy. She blinked uneasily at the crowd before her, startled by the sudden attention. But then she realized that everyone was looking behind her, waiting for someone else. She continued on her way without a word, melting into the crowd before the gathered throng realized that there would be no one else. Lurie had been the only passenger aboard the shuttle.
“Apple?” The Dikon offered Lurie a slice, holding it out on the blade of his small pocketknife. She’d been pretending to sleep, he knew, lying with her back to him, facing the chill gray wall. It was the only privacy the little room afforded. A Bisop, a Dikon, and a beautiful young novice share a small dusty room. It sounded like the opening line of a dirty joke.
Nearby, the Bisop snored in a gentle, blubbery manner, with an occasional snort or groan. He was a man who even slept with gusto. Lurie rose on her elbow and turned slightly, avoiding the Dikon’s direct gaze, and politely declined his offer of the apple slice. Then she lay back down to face the wall once more. The Dikon arched his left eyebrow significantly, an involuntary facial tick of annoyance which also caused the corners of his mouth to curl downward slightly. At least he was trying to be congenial.
He sat on his cot with his back to the wall, letting his head sag back limply, enjoying the quiet thud as it struck the solid wall. He did it again. And again.
Then he sighed, sucking at the apple slice, enjoying its cool sweetness while he let his eyes roam along the novice’s flank. She was comely, yes, but a young snot from all he’d seen. She’d barely said three words to him in as many days. There had been such a hullaballoo surrounding her arrival with the final artifact, but that excitement had now dissipated. Here they were, a week later, and it was back to the same gray dullness that had characterized the previous few months of waiting, waiting, waiting.
The High Council seemed unable, or unwilling, to carry out the Reconstruction. What could that possibly signify? Let’s get on with it! the Dikon thought, and as he did so an involuntary groan of frustration erupted from his belly which caught on its way up into his throat and, when Lurie stirred, he converted it into a cough. The Dikon’s artifact, still sewn into the crotch of his garment, shifted into an untenable position, causing him almost to jump from his cot.
Lurie now sat up at the disturbance and eyed him tensely. His irritation became uncontrollable. He couldn’t readjust the positioning of the stasis bubble in front of her. In anger, he clamped his lips shut, leapt to his feet, and fled the cabin in search of a private toilet stall.
After the Dikon’s abrupt exit, Lurie decided that no matter how much she might dislike locking eyes with him, it would be safer to sleep with her back to the wall. So, she rolled over and closed her eyes again. The Bisop awakened at this movement. He had a quizzical and dazed expression on his smooth round face.
“Are you not well, child? You look positively ashen.”
“I am well enough. Thank you for asking, Bisop.” And she closed her eyes once more. The Bisop was soon snoring again.
This feeling of being physically unsafe was new to Lurie. All her life, either at home with family, or at the Abbey, she had been surrounded by people she trusted. This trust had been so deep and abiding that she had never noticed it, never once given it a passing thought. It had simply been in the nature of things.
Now she felt completely alone and vulnerable. She sensed that the people around her calculated her value to themselves first before deciding how to address her, how to respond to her when she spoke, or even to acknowledge her presence. There were the more benign ones, like the Bisop. The more aggressive ones had already tried to steal her artifact, or to use her in ways she found repulsive, more concerned with their own appetites than what she might want or be feeling. Perhaps it was unfair of her, but she sensed the Dikon was a man like that, and so around him she needed to always stay on her guard.
Lurie thought of the AbbX often. These thoughts gave her strength, but she found that her memories of the AbbX were already growing fuzzy at the edges. She remembered bits and pieces of them, their knobbed and hairy brown knuckles, the unkempt sprays of white hair about the temples, the downturned mouth, the way they laughed at silly things. But she could not conjure up a complete picture: What color had their eyes been before they’d contracted the virus? Did they write with the left or right hand? How many furrows did they have in their forehead? These were the physical details of a person she’d spent time with every day for the last five years. Could it be that the person who had loomed larger than any other in her short life was now reduced to odd tidbits of memory? This seemed wrong to her.
Yet she could sense her mind reworking these memories, too. Softening them. She no longer felt irritation at her memories of the AbbX’s fussiness, nor could she bring back the sense of aggravation she’d felt when they’d gone off on one of their —often sacrilegious—tangents for what seemed hours on end. It was as if those memories of frustration, of mild alarm, of unsettling disorientation, were evaporating like morning dew, leaving behind only the solid ground of her abiding affection for the AbbX and their shared love of learning.
The Dikon eventually returned from the restroom. By that time Lurie was sound asleep. As he gazed upon her pleasant face, empty now of disdain for him, the Dikon found the wench even more desirable than before. She was a most beautiful young woman, with soft brown hair and olive-colored skin which seemed even darker against the saffron of her robes. When awake, she had a comely face with lively hazel eyes that always gave her the look of being about to ask a question.
The Bisop snorted and rolled over on his cot, the cot groaning in an alarming fashion under his weight.
The Dikon carefully lay himself down and tried to sleep, but he spent most of the night ruminating upon how much he hated his life.
The next day brought news of the AbbX’s death. At first Lurie felt only a numbness in her mind and heart, and a strong desire to be home again at the Abbey. Failing that, she wanted only to be alone. So, she arranged to take a long walk on the surface of the asteroid, hoping it would clear her mind and give her a chance to absorb all that had happened to her. So much was changing, and all too quickly. She sometimes felt a bit dizzy.
After the slug of air hissed out of the airlock, she cycled the hatch and stepped onto the silent mottled black-brown surface. The horizon seemed close enough to reach out and touch. The ringed planet overhead was spectacular, so she spent the first few minutes simply admiring its beauty.
The asteroid had a rotational period of about five minutes, and that motion was clearly visible. It lent a stately dance to the entire sky, and it seemed as though the stars and the planet wheeled overhead while Lurie stood still. Amazing. Her first emotion was sadness paired with the thought that the AbbX would never see this sight.
The rotation that she found so awe-inspiring was also what gave the interior of the asteroid its artificial gravity. The tourist airlock lay nearly at the axis of rotation, which was safe, but the rotation would toss Lurie into space if she wandered too close to the equatorial plane. The officious attendant at the airlock had told her, repeatedly, that the boundary of her allowed range was clearly marked. An alarm would sound in her helmet radio if she got too close. So, she set off without thinking much about where she was headed.
At first, walking was difficult in such feeble gravity but after a few minutes she got a feel for the rhythm of it, a kind of slow-motion controlled forward fall. In three big hops she mounted the walls of a small impact crater, and then bounded steadily away from the access hatch, first with one foot and then the other, a rhythm which carried her for a time in repetitive mindlessness.
Lurie had lost all sense of how far she had traveled when she stumbled and fell, sliding for what seemed an eternity along the rough surface before coming to a halt in a wide-open area. A dozen meters ahead of her, Lurie could make out a line of bright orange pylons about hip high with warning transponders. Her suit radio broadcast: “Safety limit…Turn back…Safety limit…Turn back…” So she turned to her right and followed the perimeter for a bit.
A few minutes later the rotation of the asteroid took her out of sight of the ringed planet. Plunged into darkness, the distant stars now filled the sky overhead in all their superabundance. One of those stars was home, but it was far away and so very faint. Lurie tried to find it among the bright blue stars of the Platea constellation. There was the handle, and there was the bowl, one finger’s breadth to the left of Meriope. And there, where the parent stars of her home should be, Lurie could see only the dimmest possibilities.
She then looked a bit to the side of where Tsom should be, a trick the AbbX had taught her for finding faint objects, and now she thought she could see the twin reddish stars. So dim. So very far away. And seemingly irrelevant to everything now happening around her at the conclave.
In all those myriad worlds that filled her field of view, the AbbX was nowhere. They had gone missing from this world. How could Lurie best honor their memory? What would the AbbX want her to do? What did she herself want to do?
An idea now occurred to her; one she was sure would meet with the AbbX’s approval.
Tentatively at first, then with a growing boldness, Lurie tried seeing how high she could jump, moving closer to the perimeter line of transponders every few bounds, noticing how her hang time increased perceptibly. She was not quite able to launch herself into orbit, but near the line of warning pylons even a small jump meant she was off the ground for almost a full minute. Try as she might to avoid it, every kick imparted a bit of rotation, so she didn’t come back down feet-first but on her hands, or her side. She always came back down slowly, oh so slowly, as if in a dream, and she could compensate.
The surface of the asteroid moved beneath her as the complicated mini-orbit took her up, and then down again, to intersect the uneven and highly non-spherical surface. She knew that the orbits in the vicinity of irregular bodies like this were wickedly complex, something the AbbX had taught her in lessons on celestial mechanics. What she was doing, in fact, was very dangerous, since she couldn’t see what lay over the horizon less than a kilometer away, and that unseen landscape rotated toward her during the hang time.
But the thrill of it all, the stars, the ringed planet, the dark and mottled landscape she could almost escape by jumping, it was all such a wonder. So, she continued to leap, higher and higher toward the sheltering darkness with each bound. She started to laugh. The sense of flying made her giddy. This embrace of the wild beauty of the world was a gift from the AbbX, and Lurie felt the tension of the last two weeks break up and melt away like floes of ice on a frozen river. Then the tears began to flow, and it became hard to see.
“Outrageous!” The Dikon leapt to his feet, shouting: “This is a scandal!”
Sitting beside him in the amphitheater, Lurie also shook her head in disbelief. For the third time in a week the High Council had announced the gathering. Five thousand of the faithful had dutifully made their way to their assigned seats, guided by the ever-watchful eyes of the High Council guards. After a confused hour of growing frustration, the entire amphitheater had erupted in protest when the High Council announced yet another postponement. The huge bowl-shaped arena was now seething.
Rūkaki had been encoded with high levels of redundancy, and this allowed for error correction. From the AbbX’s lessons on the subject of Reconstruction, Lurie knew that this very public obsession with the geometry and arrangement of artifacts was a performance by the High Council that served to hide something. She was beginning to believe that some of the darker rumors she’d heard were correct, that perhaps the delays might not be due to faulty physical alignments among the artifacts, but the eroding political alignments among the High Council. This notion would have been unthinkable to her before arriving at the conclave. Why would anyone not want to carry out the Reconstruction? Her mind was too full of questions to sit still, so she returned to her quarters, declining offers to eat dinner with either the Bisop or the Dikon.
Over the next few hours, the mood throughout the hive-like asteroid turned ugly, from the zocalo to the various gathering places, the bars and taverns, the sleeping quarters, and all the narrow passageways. The place became a cauldron of frustration and resentment.
That night Lurie spent a clotted evening alone, attempting to read by the dim light available in her quarters. All the while, she listened nervously to the angry voices that carried up and down the corridors outside. Several fist fights broke out. Shouting. Shoving. And once she heard a cry of pain, but by the time she ran out into the passageway, to see if she could help, the crowd had moved on. The incident had resolved itself into a confusing and desultory nothing.
The Dikon returned first. After a perfunctory exchange of greetings with Lurie, he settled onto his cot, opened the Book of Rūkaki on his tablet, and began to read.
An hour later the Bisop returned from dinner, quite tipsy. He’d somehow navigated the growing tumult outside their quarters by ingratiating himself with all he met. He threw himself onto his cot and immediately fell into a deep sleep, snoring his bilious snore, punctuated by occasional rumbling belches. He later got up and left their quarters to visit the toilet, smiling sheepishly at Lurie, as if to apologize for his aging bladder.
All this time, the Dikon sat on his cot pretending to read while casting furtive glances at different parts of her, thinking she wouldn’t notice.
One time in the deep of night, after things had quieted outside in the passageway, returning from his third or fourth trip to the restroom, the Bisop spoke quietly to Lurie: “Reading in that dim light will hurt your eyes, child.” It was something the AbbX used to say to her.
She smiled, because it was meant kindly, but she was working her way through a chapter on quantum error correction and time-reversible encoding. It seemed important to her that she understand.
Not wanting to be rude to the Bisop, she lay her tablet down in her lap and asked him: “What do you think will happen, Bisop, if they do not carry out the Reconstruction?”
“Oh, I think it will happen. Sooner or later. Tomorrow or the next day. You’ll see.”
“Please humor me. I don’t possess your equanimity.”
He shrugged: “We will carry on as before.”
“But everyone is already so angry. I feel as if something is about to break.”
The Dikon, who’d continued reading the entire night, now coughed meaningfully, gathering himself up as if he were about to speak portents. Lurie had pointedly avoided his eye, facing only the Bisop, but it was impossible to have a two-way conversation in such a small three-person room. The Dikon finally said: “You are correct, my young novice. Something is about to erupt.”
“With all respect, Dikon. While I am a novice, I am not your novice.”
The Bisop chuckled, and slapped his knee, as if she’d told a good joke: “She has you to rights, Dikon. You are taking liberties.”
The Dikon blushed and said coldly to the Bisop: “The young novice may need a protector in coming days.”
The Bisop stiffened: “Oh. There it is. Out in the open now, is it? Are you offering to guard young Lurie here, Dikon? Against what? Or should I say, against who?”
Lurie bristled: “Why do you both talk as if I’m not in the room?”
“Against whom, you bumpkin.” The Dikon ignored Lurie, while correcting the Bisop’s grammar with all the haughtiness someone from Alterra could muster. His lips puckered primly, and he looked like he’d eaten something sour.
The Bisop now rose to his feet, reddening in the face, his jowls quivering. He aimed for the movement to be imposing, but with his bulk and the low-slung cot it took longer than he intended, and the effort caused him to groan when he meant to have roared.
Finally on his feet, the Bisop rounded on the Dikon: “What an unpleasant man.” He wheezed a little. “The question stands in all its ungrammatical glory: Whom do you believe would threaten young Lurie?”
“Now it’s who. Not whom.”
“No, it’s not. Make up your mind.” Now the Bisop was almost shouting.
“Go back to sleep, you drunken old fool.”
“Please, both of you, stop arguing,” Lurie said. “I am right here, and quite capable of looking after myself.” Her voice shook, however. She opened her tablet once again, and made a show of returning to her reading, though she knew she would be unable to concentrate for quite a while.
The Bisop raised his hands to Lurie in a sign of peace, begged forgiveness of both Lurie and the Dikon for raising his voice, and lay down once more on his cot, rolling heavily onto his side. Under his breath he muttered for a bit, who and whom, and whom and who, but he was soon fast asleep, snoring loudly.
The Dikon returned to reading the Book of Rūkaki, and he returned to his side eye, admiring especially the iconography on Lurie’s left breast. The shape of the spreading alcantha tree highlighted nicely the shape of her body under her novice’s robes. He eventually went to sleep, dreaming of unmet desires.
Lurie calmed eventually and was once again able to think. After what seemed like hours, she finally fell off to sleep, her mind full of math.
In the amphitheater, the young novice sat to the Dikon’s immediate left. She seemed a bit tense, wide-eyed and, he supposed, alas innocent. She was taking it in, as if watching it all from a distance. After a simple hello upon seating, she had then ignored the Dikon once more. Attractive though she might be this uppity and self-impressed young woman’s behavior would severely limit her prospects. The Dikon was an elder of the Order, a man with a great deal of experience of the world. One who understood the vagaries of power and privilege, a man used to navigating the halls and courts of the elite. He meant only to help her find her way among the wolves. This smug self-reliance of hers, this unwillingness to accept his sincere offer of assistance, this could only hurt her in the end. Good riddance.
To his far left, beyond the girl, the Bisop sat like a chubby man-child. The Dikon held such people in contempt. They had no gravitas. They were human barnacles, attaching themselves to institutions like the Order, soaking up resources, taking the place of more worthy people, contributing nothing. The Dikon seemed to recall that barnacles ate their own brains after attachment. He chuckled at this idea, finding it apt. After the Reconstruction, when Rūkaki manifested among the faithful once more, such encrustations on the Church would have to be scraped off. Good riddance, again.
Like the Dikon, many of those present in the amphitheater believed that Rūkaki would soon break bread with his true followers. Many of those present, like the Dikon, believed there was only one true faith. But it was a faith beset by pretenders, a faith surrounded by a buzzing swarm of heresies. For them, Rūkaki’s return would settle things, once and for all.
Meanwhile, the conclave today still seethed with anger. Kept waiting for months, the crowds now sensed they might have to force the issue and compel the High Council to carry out the Reconstruction. For some, the pitch of excitement was almost too much to bear. Voices were raised in the amphitheater, the Dikon’s among them, and there was much shouting. A few fist fights and shoving matches broke out.
The High Council now entered the forum and mounted the stage. The lights dimmed and, after a few moments of confusion, the crowd grew silent.
The Bisop was growing bored. All these wasted weeks. And now today, after being called to conclave again, they sat and waited once more. Alas.
To his immediate right sat the charming young novice, Lurie. She was pleasant enough to spend time with, though she could be a bit standoffish when caught up in her own ruminations. They’d shared a few meals, just the two of them, and he’d grown to like her quite a bit, even though he found conversation with her could be taxing. She was so damned earnest, bubbling over with so many strange ideas, asking so many odd questions. And she had such a passion for abstraction. Had he ever been so naively curious about each and every thing? He didn’t think so.
To his far right, beyond the young woman, sat the Dikon, surely the most disagreeable man in all creation. The Bisop looked forward to the day, coming soon, when he no longer had to share a sleeping space with the Dikon, and they no longer breathed the same air.
Regarding the Reconstruction itself, the Bisop tried to keep an open mind. It would be exciting to be a part of history, he supposed. But in his most private heart of hearts, he had to admit that theological and metaphysical matters never really interested him. All the energetic fervor that he saw hereabouts wearied him and made him nervous for the future. Things seemed to be on the cusp of great changes. Alas and alack.
After an interminable wait the lights of the amphitheater finally dimmed. The Bisop pulled out the crunchy and salty snacks he’d kept hidden under his robes and shared them with Lurie. But not the Dikon.
Lurie waited patiently, observing the crowd with curiosity, unsure of what to expect from the coming ceremony. She knew enough about the technology used, and the theory behind it, to recognize the challenge of reconstructing someone fully intact after ten centuries. It had never been done before.
A group of a dozen figures now mounted the stage. It was hard for Lurie to make out their bodily forms, to discern whether they were human or otherwise, covered as they were by their robes and from this distance. The only exception was a single three-headed hydraman from Cletus. One or two others wore gray and shiny robes, open at the neck, with short skirts that left their arms and knobby legs exposed. Others wore robes of more ancient design, dark brown and hooded, that covered their bodies and reached to the floor. Still others were attired in robes of lavish colors, burgundy and cerulean blue. These more colorful beings stood apart on the stage, a head taller than the others, thin and slender as reeds. The robed figures now spread themselves out, negotiating their positions to arrive at a tense but respectful distance from one another on the dais.
For the first time in living memory, the full High Council of all the Dominion worlds had appeared in public together.
It had gradually become clear to Lurie over the last few weeks that the High Council had been driven to risk a Reconstruction because of the threat of schism. Many of those present today hoped that a successful Reconstruction would provide the means for the Order to stamp out heresies. They hoped to tame the creative and destabilizing character of their faith, to push back on its syncretic tendencies as it tried to absorb and accommodate all the diverse forms of intelligent life on the scattered worlds. All purists could agree there was only one truth, but no two of them could agree what it was.
At first, the crowd took no notice of the High Council, too caught up in arguing with one another, expecting that perhaps this was another in a long line of false alarms. But with each passing moment the mood shifted. Then the lights dimmed in the arena leaving only the dais fully illuminated. The tumult in the audience reduced to a murmur.
The High Archon of the Council, the tall and painfully thin figure in cerulean, signaled for complete silence. When he spoke, his voice was amplified through some unseen mechanism, echoing through the amphitheater, grave and unsettling. He called for prayers of thanks, humility, and forgiveness.
To Lurie’s right, the Dikon began fidgeting, nervously worrying at his artifact. He turned it over and over in his hand, prepared to slip it into the mount at his elbow.
A series of ecumenical prayers now began, led by each member of the High Council in turn. Each prayer was followed by a long moment of silence and meditation. This first part of the ceremony took over an hour.
Finally, the High Archon stepped forward once again: “Please take out your sacred artifacts and prepare to insert them.”
The Dikon grumbled under his breath: “Finally.”
To Lurie’s left, the Bisop blinked once, twice. He’d dozed a bit during the prayers, but he was now rummaging in his robes, muttering. He found his artifact and prepared to place it in his chair’s mount. Lurie had her artifact at the ready, too. While they sat waiting, some members of the audience had already inserted the artifacts they held, jumping the gun. Others shouted about the danger of preemption. Arguments again broke out.
“Please proceed.” The High Archon bowed, and the Council now left the stage.
A buzz of excitement filled the room as the assembled crowd moved en masse to insert the thousands of artifacts into their assigned mounts. The remaining lights in the amphitheater dimmed further to black. Quiet returned. A hushed anticipation grew.
One long minute passed. Then two.
“It’s a fraud!” Someone cried out from high up in one of the balconies, far from the stage.
A murmur rippled through the crowd, followed by a heaving sigh, and then a rising tide of what seemed to Lurie a monumental upwelling of grief. But then a flicker of something began to appear far below them on the stage. A small movement near the dais, dim at first but growing brighter. Shapeless, starting as a ghostly shimmer like a hologram but gradually becoming more sharply drawn.
The crowd grew silent as the assembled thousands saw the Reconstruction proceed before their eyes, piece by piece, falling into place, assembling itself as if from a prior and utterly silent chaos. It was unsettling to watch, this vagueness around being and non-being. The form seemed to be taking shape into something recognizable, but always on the outer edge of it, not finished, not clearly one thing or another.
Was there a figure of a person? A man? A woman? Perhaps not a human at all, but one of the other species of the Dominion? That would be a shock to most of the Orders. To be sure, there were apocryphal books from the outer rim worlds that told a different story of Rūkaki’s life, heretical traditions that held they were not a member of the dominant species, but one of the formerly colonized peoples. It was hard to resolve these disputes because most records of that historical period of Rūkaki’s life had been lost in the Great Chaos before the unification of the Dominion.
Though it seemed to stabilize for a bit, there was nothing to hang onto in the Reconstruction before them. No well-formed legs or arms, no well-defined shape where a head should be. Nothing that could resolve the matter of Rūkaki’s species, gender, or race. Instead, there was this shape-shifting formlessness. And now next to it there was another shape resolving in light, a larger form that overtopped the standing figure and filled the entire stage. Something that looked like a tree.
Lurie gasped as this image resolved itself in a vibrant snap of brilliance, revealing two entwined trunks, a weeping canopy, and pink spring blossoms.
The figure beneath the tree began to speak. Blurred speech. No language she’d ever heard before. Her translator implants failed to identify it. The figure spoke haltingly, earnestly struggling to articulate some thought. The image flickered, then broke up. He/she/they were gone, along with the alcantha tree. The stage was dark and empty once more.
To her right the Dikon was stunned for only a moment, but then he rose abruptly to his feet and shouted: “This cannot stand! The Reconstruction was corrupted!”
Angry voices like the Dikon’s echoed throughout the amphitheater, shocking in their ferocity.
Half an hour later—now safely ensconced in a quiet little drinking establishment he knew of—the Bisop sat across from Lurie as they pondered their next moves. With the High Council rumored to be in hiding, things were developing quickly, and the mood was darkening. The Bisop might not be a careful student of theological disputes, but Lurie sensed he had a sharp intelligence when it came to self-preservation. So, she’d followed him out of the turmoil in the amphitheater to this small oasis of fragile calm.
The hallways outside the tavern were growing more crowded by the minute. Stunned and angry members of the conclave continued to spill out of the amphitheater, shouting, pushing, forming into separate densely packed groups of like-minded souls in the zocalo, heads bent together in muffled conversation, gathering their wits after the shock of recent events began to wear off. All in a mass, as if mustering up for a coming battle, they began to answer a felt call to some kind of action. But what action would they take? It was all so muddled, so unfocused. For now.
A man elbowed roughly past the two of them and sat at the next table, joining a group that was already on its third round of ale. A voice from somewhere else in the crowd shouted loudly: “Fuck the High Council! We should space the lot of ‘em.” Murmurs of agreement coursed around the room.
The Bisop leaned forward a bit, so his conversation with Lurie would not be overheard: “You look worried, child. What concerns you?”
“I am worried about how we’ll get back to our quarters tonight. And I’m worried about how to get home after that. Surely, all the transports are fully booked at this point.” She hadn’t thought quickly enough about such things. “I am a bit overwhelmed by what just happened, and I can’t quite think clearly.”
“You’re wondering why I suggested coming here first, rather than returning to our quarters?”
She nodded that, yes, this thought had crossed her mind.
Just then, the Dikon appeared at the entry hatchway and peered into the tavern. He stood outside in the brightness of the corridor, which meant that he would be unable to see the two of them in the dark corner where they huddled. The Bisop and Lurie both instinctively pulled back further into the pool of shadow. A moment later, the Dikon turned away and continued his hunt elsewhere. A shudder ran down Lurie’s spine.
Now that the Dikon had moved on, the Bisop seemed to relax a bit. Settling into his seat, and having given the waitress their drink order, he turned to Lurie and cocked his head ever so slightly. His gaze fell upon the left breast of her saffron robe, the one with the Abbey’s alcantha tree on it. He looked her closely in the eye, seeming to size her up, perhaps seeing her in a new light.
When he finally spoke, he asked her gently: “Whatever does it mean, this tree of yours?”
“I am as mystified as you are, Bisop.”
He thought about this for a moment before answering. The two drinks they’d ordered now arrived, and the Bisop moved to pay the waitress, waving away Lurie’s attempt to pay for her own drink. When he finally spoke, he said: “Perhaps to be mystified is a good answer. You should stick to that.”
After the waitress was out of earshot, the Bisop continued: “You might also wish to change out of your robes, until you are safely home. I’ll lend you one of mine.”
She tried to envision herself in one of his robes and failed. Two Luries could fit into one Bisop.
“I brought needle and thread,” he said. “You can make modifications.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“I’m not exactly sure. It’s not like me. Anyone on New Hope will tell you that I’m self-centered, and completely clueless about politics. But even I know that things have changed suddenly. My sense is that people like you are the future, while people like the Dikon are of the past. Good riddance.”
“And yourself?”
He patted her hand: “Life is short, and I only ask to be left alone. All these strident squabbles, the schisms, and the factions, the breaking up and the tearing down, all those struggles are over things of which I know little, and of which I understand even less. Such grievance artists prevent the rest of us from enjoying what life has to offer, do they not?”
Lurie was surprised to realize that she agreed with this, or at least she didn’t disagree.
“Giving me your robe is a very kind offer,” she said. “Thank you, Bisop. I accept.”
“Such formality. You are most welcome.”
That important matter settled and needing to while away the time for a bit before returning to their quarters, they now turned to their drinks. His was a full pint of robust ale, frothy and a meal unto itself, hers a half-pint of mead, a bit too sweet for her taste, but mild in flavor and light in alcoholic content. The Bisop had insisted that she drink something, pointing out that if she didn’t partake in such an establishment, they’d toss her out in favor of a paying customer.
“Chins up,” the Bisop toasted. He drank heartily. Lurie sipped.
After a length of time that the Bisop judged to be safe, they slipped out, avoiding the Dikon who still prowled the corridors hunting for her. A few hours later, the Bisop watched as Lurie boarded the last weekly transport off-world, having given her the seat he’d reserved for himself.
In coming years, it became clear that instead of preventing a schism the Reconstruction proved to be the trigger of it, a brief and violent historical epoch which later historians came to call the Teleportation Wars. It was an age where different groups advanced competing claims to the one true Reconstruction. And so, another round of ideological struggles got underway, reopening wounds that had never really healed from the earlier Great Chaos.
By the time the Dikon returned home to Alterra, the faction he’d originally aligned with had been overthrown and a new Relativist faction had installed itself in the Kadinala’s Palace. Throughout this tumult and for all his remaining days the Dikon was a minor figure. Untrusted by any faction, he lived his life a bitter man, his love of power unrequited.
After helping Lurie to escape the conclave unharmed, the Bisop returned to New Hope after many harrowing months, including a time as a castaway on the notorious Starship Medusa. He spoke of it only rarely. On New Hope, the Bisop came to lead one of those factions that claimed not to be a faction at all. They instead embraced the daily practice of hospitality and good fellowship as the path to spiritual fulfillment. He kept his bishopric only because the Order had bigger problems to deal with elsewhere. The Bisop died quietly in his bed, surrounded by a few close friends.
Upon the return to Tsom, Lurie became the youngest AbbX in the Abbey’s long and venerable history. Tsom was an out-of-the-way backwater, and it thereby missed taking part in the larger struggles that wracked the Dominion worlds during those decades. The post-Reconstruction years for Lurie were largely peaceful, even dull. Under Lurie’s leadership the influence of the Abbey on Tsom grew, and its work began to attract the attention of scholars from other systems, too.
Lurie never spoke about the Reconstruction, at least not in full. They never told anyone of the belief that they’d seen the AbbX one last time on the stage, healthy and young again, teaching a lesson beneath their beloved alcantha tree. But Lurie couldn’t be certain of it. The image had stabilized only briefly, leaving the barest flicker of an impression in Lurie’s mind.
And yet over the years, as they thought about it again and again, reworking the memory until it was polished smooth, Lurie came to believe that they’d seen what they wanted to see in a moment of chaos and uncertainty. That it was not in fact their AbbX, but some palimpsest of all the earlier generations of teachers who’d come before. Ancestors who’d kept alive a faith in the value of learning, who saw the light of mind in the eyes of every child.
Even in old age, AbbX Lurie could be found lecturing beneath the alcantha tree, bringing new generations into the mysteries of quantum teleportation. Lurie became a beloved figure. However, it did cause some consternation when Lurie invited certain pilgrims to the Abbey who came for a long sabbatical visit, a phalanx of three-headed hydramen from Cletus. Lurie had so many questions.
Image: Avonde (Evening): The Red Tree. Piet Mondrian, 1908.
Copyright © Eugene R. Tracy. All rights reserved. If you enjoyed this piece, please share it, while respecting the Terms of Use.
The Icarus Question 