“My Uncle Martin never got that part right in his muddled-up Cantos. My parents were married and I don’t think Uncle Martin ever told of that… married by the Bishop at the Shrike Temple on Lusus. It was a cult, but a legal one, and my parents’ marriage would have been legal on two hundred worlds of the Hegemony.”

She smiles again, looking across the crowded room directly at me. “I can be a bastard, you know, but I wasn’t born one.

“So they were married, I was conceived—probably before that ceremony—and then Core-backed elements murdered my father before my mother could begin the Shrike pilgrimage to Hyperion. And that should have been the end of any contact between my father and me except for two things—his Core persona was captured in a Schrön Loop implanted behind my mother’s ear. For some months she was pregnant with two of us—me in her womb and my father, the second John Keats persona, in the Schrön Loop.

His persona could not communicate directly to my mother while imprisoned in its endless-cycle Schrön Loop, but it communicated with me easily enough. The hard part was defining what “me” was at that point. My father helped by entering the Void Which Binds and taking the fetal “me” with him. I saw what was to be—who I would be—even how I would die—before my fingers were fully formed.

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

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

So saying, Aenea rises to her knees on the tatami mat. Theo brings a white linen cloth.

Rachel pours red wine from a vase into seven large goblets. Aenea takes a small packet from her sweater—I recognize it as a ship’s medkit—and removes a sterile lancet and an antiseptic swab. She pauses before using the lancet and sweeps her gaze across the crowd.

There is no sound—it is as if the more than hundred people there are holding their breath.

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

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

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

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

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

Aenea touches her finger with the razor edge of the lancet. A tiny drop of blood is visible in the lantern light. Rachel holds a goblet up as the tiny drop of blood is squeezed into the large volume of wine. Then again with the next goblet, and so on until each of the seven cups has been… contaminated? Transubstantiated? My mind is reeling. My heart is pounding in something like alarm.

This seems like some wild parody of the Catholic Church’s Holy Communion. Has my young friend, my dear lover, my beloved… has she gone insane? Does she truly believe that she is a messiah? No, she said that she is not. Do I believe that I will be transformed forever by drinking of wine that is one part per million my beloved’s blood? I do not know. I do not understand.

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

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

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

There is no formal end to the evening. People begin to leave in twos and threes. A couple—she drank of the wine, he did not—leave together with their arms around one another as if nothing has changed.

Perhaps nothing has changed. Perhaps the communion ritual I’ve just watched is all metaphor and symbolism, or autosuggestion and self-hypnosis. Perhaps those who will themselves hard enough to perceive something called the Void Which Binds will have some internal experience that convinces them that it has happened. Perhaps it’s all bullshit.

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

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

And thus ends the evening. I go upstairs to our shared sleeping platform with a mixture of elation, anticipation, regret, embarrassment, excitement, and a throbbing headache. I confess to myself that I didn’t understand half of Aenea’s explanation of things, but I leave with a vague sense of letdown and inappropriateness…