The priests are in good form, however. I watch a dozen or so parishioners leave the chapel and realize that both de Soya and Duré have celebrated an early Mass while I was snoring. Bassin Kee comes by, greets me in much too loud a voice, and shows me a small structure that is the men’s washhouse. Plumbing consists of cold water pumped to an overhead reservoir that one can spill onto oneself in one quick, bone-marrow-freezing second of shower. The morning is Pacem-cool, much like mornings at the eight-thousand-meter altitude on T’ien Shan, and the shower wakes me up very quickly. Kee has brought clean new clothes for me—softened corduroy work trousers, a finely spun blue wool shirt, thick belt, and sturdy shoes that are infinitely more comfortable than the boots I have stubbornly worn for more than a standard year in the Schrödinger cat box. Shaven, clean, wearing different clothes, holding a steaming mug of coffee that Kee’s young bride has handed me, the ’scriber hanging from a strap over my shoulder, I feel like a new man. My first thought at this swell of well-being is, Aenea would love this fresh morning and the clouds obscure the sunlight for me again. Fathers Duré and de Soya join me on a large rock overlooking the absent river. The rubble of the Vatican looks like a ruin from ancient days. I see the windshields of moving groundcars glinting in the sharp morning light and catch a glimpse of the occasional EMV flying high above the wrecked city and realize again that this is not another Fall—even Pacem has not been dropped back into barbarism. Kee had explained that the morning coffee had been shipped in by transport from the largely untouched agricultural cities in the west. The Vatican and the ruins of the administrative cities here are more of a localized disaster area: rather like survivors choosing to rebuild in the wake of a regional earthquake or hurricane.

Kee joins us again with several warm breakfast rolls and the four of us eat in agreeable silence, occasionally brushing crumbs away and sipping our coffee as the sun rises higher behind us, catching the many columns of smoke from campfires and cookstoves. “I’m trying to understand this new way of looking at things,” I say at last. “You’re isolated here on Pacem compared to the days of the Pax empire, but you’re still aware of what’s going on elsewhere… on other worlds.”

Father de Soya nods. “Just as you can touch the Void to listen to the language of the living, so can we reach out to those we know and care for. For instance, this morning I touched the thoughts of Sergeant Gregorius on Mare Infinitus.”

I had also heard Gregorius’s distinctive thoughts while listening to the music of the spheres before freecasting, but I say, “Is he well?”

“He is well,” says de Soya. “The poachers and smugglers and deep-sea rebels on that world quickly isolated the few Pax loyalists, although the fighting between various Pax outposts did much damage to many of the civilian platforms.

Gregorius has become sort of a local mayor or governor for the mid-littoral region. Quite in opposition to his wishes, I might add. The sergeant was never interested in command… he would have been an officer many years ago if he had been.”

“Speaking of command,” I say, “who’s in charge of… all this?” I gesture at the ruins, the distant highway with its moving vehicles, the EMV transport coming in toward the east bank.

“Actually the entire Pacem System is under the temporary governorship of a former Pax Mercantilus CEO named Kenzo Isozaki,” says Father de Soya. “His headquarters is in the ruins of the old Torus Mercantilus, but he visits the planet frequently.”

I show my surprise at this. “Isozaki?” I say. “The last I saw of him in preparing my narrative, he was involved in the attack on the Startree Biosphere.”

“He was,” agrees de Soya. “But that attack was still under way when the Shared Moment occurred. There was much confusion. Elements of the Pax Fleet rallied to Lourdusamy and his ilk, while other elements—some led by Kenzo Isozaki who held the title of Commander of the Order of the Knights of Jerusalem—fought to stop the carnage. The loyalists kept most of the archangel starships, since they could not be used without resurrection. Isozaki brought more than a hundred of the older Hawking-drive starships back to Pacem System and drove off the last of the Core attackers.”

“Is he a dictator?” I ask, not caring too much if he is. It is not my problem.

“Not at all,” says Kee. “Isozaki is running things temporarily with the help of elected governing councils from each of the Pacem cantons. He’s excellent at arranging logistics… which we need. In the meantime, the local areas are running things fairly well.

It’s the first time there has ever been a real democracy in this system. It’s sloppy, but it works. I think that Isozaki is helping to shape a sort of capitalist-with-a-conscience trading system for the days when we begin moving freely through old Pax space.”

“By freecasting?” I say.

All three of the men nod.

I shake my head again. It is hard to imagine the near future: billions… hundreds of billions… of people free to move from world to world without spacecraft or farcaster. Hundreds of billions able to contact each other by touching the Void with their hearts and minds. It will be like the height of the Hegemony WorldWeb days without the Core façade of farcaster portals and fatline transmitters. No, I realize at once, it will not be like the Hegemony days at all. It will be something completely different.

Something unprecedented in human experience.

Aenea has changed everything forever.

“Are you leaving today, Raul?” asks Father Duré in his soft French accent.

“As soon as I finish this fine coffee.” The sun is growing warm on my bare arms and neck.

“Where will you go?” asks Father de Soya.

I start to answer and then stop. I realize that I have no idea. Where do I look for Aenea’s child? What if the Observer has taken the boy or girl to some distant system that I cannot reach by ’casting? What if they have returned to Old Earth… can I actually freecast one hundred and sixty thousand light-years? Aenea did. But she may have had the help of the Lions and Tigers and Bears. Will I someday be able to hear those voices in the complex chorus of the Void? It all seems too large and vague and irrelevant to me.

“I don’t know where I’m going,” I hear myself saying in the voice of a lost boy. “I was going to Old Earth because of Aenea’s wish that I… her ashes… but…” Embarrassed at showing emotion again, I wave at the mountain of melted stone that had been Castel Sant’Angelo. “Maybe I’ll go back to Hyperion,” I say. “See Martin Silenus.” Before he dies, I add silently.

All of us stand on the boulder, pouring out the last drops of cold coffee from the mugs and brushing away the last crumbs from the delicious rolls.

I am suddenly struck by an obvious thought. “Do any of you want to come with me?” I say. “Or go anywhere else, for that matter. I think that I will remember how to freecast… and Aenea took us with her just by holding the person’s hand. No, she freecast the entire Yggdrasill with her just by willing it.”

“If you are going to Hyperion,” says Father de Soya, “I may wish to accompany you. But first I have something to show you. Excuse us, Father Duré. Bassin.”

I follow the short priest back to the village and into his little church. In the tiny sacristy, barely large enough for a wooden wardrobe cupboard for vestments and the small secondary altar in which to store the sacramental hosts and wine, de Soya pushes back a curtain on a small alcove and removes a short metal cylinder, smaller than a coffee thermos. He holds it out to me and I am reaching for it, my fingers just centimeters away, when suddenly I freeze in midmotion, unable to touch it.

“Yes,” says the priest. “Aenea’s ashes. What we could recover. Not much, I am afraid.”