I’m sure, for instance, that Jesus Christ’s Last Supper did not end with a shouted reminder of a BYOB party on the upper deck.

I chuckle and then swallow the laugh. Last Supper. That has a terrible ring to it. My heart begins pounding again and my head hurts worse. Hardly the way to enter one’s lover’s bedroom.

The chill air on the upper platform walkway clears my head a bit. The Oracle is just a sliver above towering cumulus to the east. The stars look cold tonight.

I am just about to enter our shared room and light the lantern when suddenly the skies explode.

They all came up from the lower levels—all of the ones who had stayed at the Temple Hanging in Air after most of the work had been finished—Aenea and A. Bettik, Rachel and Theo, George and Jigme, Kuku and Kay, Chim Din and Gyalo Thondup, Lhomo and Labsang, Kim Byung-Soon and Viki Groselj, Kenshiro and Haruyuki, Master Abbot Kempo Ngha Wang Tashi and his master, the young Dalai Lama, Voytek Majer and Janusz Kurtyka, brooding Rimsi Kyipup and grinning Changchi Kenchung, the Dorje Phamo the Thunderbolt Sow and Carl Linga William Eiheji. Aenea came to my side and slipped her hand in mine as we watched the skies in awed silence.

I am surprised that we were not all blinded by the light show going on up there where the stars had been a moment earlier: great blossoms of white light, strobes of sulfur yellow, blazing red streaks—far brighter than a comet or meteor’s tail—crisscrossed with blue, green, white, and yellow slashes—each as clear and straight as a diamond scratch on glass, then sudden bursts of orange that seemed to fold into themselves in silent implosions, followed by more white strobes and a resumption of red slashes. It was all silent, but the violence of light alone made us want to cover our ears and cringe in a sheltered place.

“What in ten hells is it?” asked Lhomo Dondrub.

“Space battle,” said Aenea. Her voice sounded terribly tired.

“I do not understand,” said the Dalai Lama. He did not sound afraid, merely curious. “The Pax authorities assured us that they would have only one of their starships in orbit—the Jibril, I believe is its name—and that it was on a diplomatic mission rather than a military one. Regent Reting Tokra also assured me of this.”

The Thunderbolt Sow made a rude noise. “Your Holiness, the Regent is in the pay of the Pax bastards.” The boy looked at her.

“I believe it to be true, Your Holiness,” said Eiheji, his bodyguard. “I have heard things in the palace.”

The sky had faded almost to black but now it exploded again in a score of places. The rocky cliff face behind us bled reflections of red, green, and yellow.

“How can we see their laser lances if there is no dust or other colloidal particles to highlight them?” asked the Dalai Lama, his dark eyes bright. Evidently the news of his Regent’s betrayal was not surprising to him… or at least not as interesting as the battle going on thousands of kilometers above us. I was interested to see that the supreme holy person of the Buddhist world had been tutored in basic science.

Again, it was his bodyguard who answered. “Some ships must have been hit and destroyed already, Your Holiness,” said Eiheji. “The coherent beams and CPB’s would become visible in the expanding fields of debris, frozen oxygen, molecular dust, and other gases.”

This caused a moment of silence in our group.

“My father watched this once, on Hyperion,” whispered Rachel. She rubbed her bare arms as if there had been a sudden chill.

I blinked and looked at the young woman. I had not missed Aenea’s comment about her friend’s father, Sol… I knew my Cantos well enough to identify Rachel as the infant on the legendary Hyperion pilgrimage, daughter of Sol Weintraub… but I admit that I had not completely believed it. The infant Rachel had become the almost mythical woman, Moneta, in the Cantos—someone who had traveled back in time in the Time Tombs with the Shrike. How could that Rachel be here, now? Aenea put her arm around Rachel’s shoulders. “My mother as well,” she said softly. “Only then it was thought to be the Hegemony forces against the Ousters.”

“Who is this, then?” demanded the Dalai Lama. “The Ousters against the Pax? And why have the Pax warships come unbidden to our system?”

Several white spheres of light pulsed, grew, dimmed, and died. We all blinked away the retinal echoes. “I believe that the Pax warships were here since their first ship arrived, Your Holiness,” said Aenea. “But I do not think that they are fighting Ousters.”

“Who then?” said the boy. Aenea turned her face back to the sky. “One of their own,” she said. Suddenly there came a series of explosions quite different than the others… a closer, brighter series of explosions, followed by three blazing meteor trails. One exploded quickly in the upper atmosphere, trailing a score of minor debris trails that quickly died out. The second shot to the west, blazing from yellow to red to pure white, breaking up twenty degrees above the horizon and spilling a hundred lesser trails across the cloudy western horizon. The third screeched across the sky from west of the zenith to the eastern horizon—and I say “screeched” deliberately because we could hear the noise, at first a teakettle whistle, then a howl, then a terrible tornadic roar, diminishing as quickly as it came—finally to break up into three or four large, blazing masses in the east, all but one of which died out before reaching the horizon. This last burning fragment of starship seemed to wiggle in its flight at the last moment, with yellow bursts of light preceding it, slowing it, before it was lost to sight. We waited another half hour on the upper platform, but except for dozens of fusion-flame streaks for the first few minutes—starships accelerating away from T’ien Shan, I knew—there was nothing left to see. Eventually the stars were once again the brightest things in the sky and everyone moved off—the Dalai Lama to sleep in the monks’ quarters here, others to permanent or temporary quarters on the lower levels.

Aenea bid a few of us to stay—Rachel and Theo, A. Bettik and Lhomo Dondrub, and me.

“That is the sign I’ve been waiting for,” she said very softly when all the others had left the platform. “We must leave tomorrow.”

“Leave?” I said. “To where? Why?”

Aenea touched my forearm. I interpreted this as saying, I will explain later. I shut up as the others spoke.

“The wings are ready, Teacher,” said Lhomo.

“I have taken the liberty of checking over the skinsuits and rebreathers in M. Endymion’s quarters while you were all away,” said A. Bettik. “They are all serviceable.”

“We’ll finish up the work and organize the ceremony tomorrow,” said Theo.

“I wish I were going,” said Rachel.

“Going where?” I said again, despite my best efforts to shut up and listen.

“You’re invited,” said Aenea, still touching my arm. That did not really answer my question. “Lhomo, and A. Bettik… if you’re both still game.”

Lhomo Dondrub gave his broad grin. The android nodded. I began to think that I was the only one in the temple compound that didn’t understand what was going on.

“Good night, all,” said Aenea. “We’ll be off at first light. You don’t need to see us off.”

“To hell with that,” said Rachel. Theo nodded agreement. “We’ll be there to say goodbye,” continued Rachel.

Aenea nodded and touched their arms. Everyone clambered down ladders or slid down cables.

Aenea and I were alone on the top platform.

The skies seemed dark after the battle. I realized that clouds had risen above the ridgeline and were wiping the stars away like a wet towel drawn across a black slate board. Aenea opened the door to her sleeping room, went in, lit the lantern, and returned to stand in the entrance. “Coming, Raul?”