This meeting is adjourned. I have spoken.

Later that evening, in the warm light of our private cubby, Aenea and I made love, spoke of personal things, and had a late, second supper of wine and zygoat cheese and fresh bread. Aenea had gone off to the kitchen cubby for a moment and returned with two cystal bulbs of wine. Offering me one, she said, “Here, Raul, my beloved… take this and drink.”

“Thanks,” I said without thinking and started to raise the bulb to my lips. Then I froze.

“Is this… did you…”

“Yes,” said Aenea. “It is the communion that I have delayed so long for you. Now it is yours if you choose to drink. But you do not have to do this, my love. It will not change the way I feel about you if you choose not to.”

Still looking into her eyes, I drained the wine in the bulb. It tasted only of wine.

Aenea was weeping. She turned her head away, but I had already seen the tears in her lovely, dark eyes. I swept her up in my arms and we floated together in the warm womb light.

“Kiddo?” I whispered. “What’s wrong?” My heart ached as I wondered if she was thinking of the other man in her past, her marriage, the child… The wine had made me dizzy and a bit sick. Or perhaps it was not the wine.

She shook her head. “I love you, Raul.”

“I love you, Aenea.”

She kissed my neck and clung to me. “For what you have just done, for me, in my name, you will be hunted and persecuted…”

I forced a chuckle. “Hey, kiddo, I’ve been hunted and persecuted since the day we rode the hawking mat out of the Valley of the Time Tombs together. Nothing new there. I’d miss it if the Pax quit chasing us.”

She did not smile. I felt her tears against my throat and chest as she clung more tightly. “You will be the first among all those who follow me, Raul. You will be the leader in the decades and decades of struggle to come. You will be respected and hated, obeyed and despised… they will want to make a god of you, my darling.”

“Bullshit,” I whispered into my friend’s hair. “You know I’m no leader, kiddo. I haven’t done anything except follow in all the years we’ve known each other. Hell… I spend most of my time just trying to catch up.”

Aenea raised her face to mine. “You were my Chosen One before I was born, Raul Endymion. When I fall, you will continue on for us. Both of us must live through you…”

I put my heavy finger against her lips. I kissed the tears from her cheeks and lashes. “No talking of falling or living without the other,” I commanded her. “My plan is simple… to stay with you forever… through everything… to share everything. What happens to you, happens to me, kiddo. I love you, Aenea.” We floated in the warm air together. I was cradling her in my arms.

“Yes,” whispered my friend, hugging me fiercely, “I love you, Raul. Together. Time. Yes.”

We quit talking then. I tasted wine and the salt from her tears in our kisses. We made love for more hours, then drifted off to sleep together, floating entwined in the other’s embrace like two sea creatures, like one wonderfully complex sea creature, drifting on a warm and friendly tide.

The next day we took the Consul’s ship out toward the sun.

I had awakened expecting to be feeling some sort of enlightenment, overnight satori from the communion wine, a deeper understanding of the universe at the very least, omniscience and omnipotence at best. Instead, I awoke with a full bladder, a slight headache, but pleasant memories of the night before. Aenea was awake before me and by the time I came out of the toilet cubby, she had coffee hot in the brewing bulb, fruit in its serving globe, and fresh, warm rolls ready.

“Don’t expect this service every morning,” she said with a smile.

“Okay, kiddo. Tomorrow I’ll make breakfast.”

“Omelet?” she said, handing me a coffee bulb.

I broke the seal, inhaled the aroma, and squeezed out a drop, taking care not to burn my lips or to let the globule of hot coffee get away. “Sure,” I said. “Anything you like.”

“Good luck in finding the eggs,” she said, finishing her roll in two bites. “This Startree is neat, but short on chickens.”

“Pity,” I said, looking through the transparent pod wall. “And so many places to roost.” I changed tones to serious. “Kiddo, about the wine… I mean, it’s been about eight standard hours and…”

“You don’t feel any different,” said Aenea. “Hmm, I guess you’re one of those rare individuals on which the magic doesn’t work.”

“Really?” My voice must have sounded alarmed, or relieved, or both, because Aenea shook her head.

“Uh-uh, just kidding. About twenty-four standard hours. You’ll feel something. I guarantee it.”

“What if we’re… ah… busy when the time comes?” I said, wiggling my eyebrows for emphasis. The motion made me float free a bit from the sticktite table.

Aenea sighed. “Down, boy, before I staple those eyebrows in place.”

“Mmm,” I said, grinning at her over the coffee bulb. “I love it when you talk dirty.”

“Hurry,” said Aenea, setting her bulb in the sonic washer bin and recycling the eating mat. I was content to munch my roll and look at the incredible view through the wall.

“Hurry? Why? Are we going somewhere?”

“Meeting on the ship,” said Aenea. “Our ship. Then we have to get back and see to the last provisioning of the Yggdrasill for departure tomorrow evening.”

“Why on our ship?” I said. “Won’t it just be crowded compared to all these other places?”

“You’ll see,” said Aenea. She had slipped into soft blue zero-g trousers, pulled tight at the ankle, with a tucked-in white shirt with several sticktite-sealing pockets. She wore gray slippers. I had gotten used to going barefoot around the cubby and in the various stems and pods.

“Hurry,” she said again. “Ship’s leaving in ten minutes and it’s a long vine ride to the docking pod.”

It was crowded. And although the internal containment field held the gravity to one-sixth-g, it felt like a Jovian pull after sleeping in freefall. It seemed strange to be crowded in on one dimensional plane with everyone, letting all that airspace overhead go to waste. On the library deck of the Consul’s ship with us, seated at the piano, on benches, in overstuffed chairs, and along holopit ledges, were the Ousters Navson Hamnim, Systenj Coredwell, Sian Quintana Ka’an resplendent in her feathers, the two silver, vacuum-adapted Ousters Palou Koror and Drivenj Nicaagat, as well as Paul Uray, and Am Chipeta. Het Masteen was there, as was his superior, Ket Rosteen. Colonel Kassad was present—as tall as the towering Ousters—and so were the Dorje Phamo, looking ancient and regal in an ice-gray gown that billowed beautifully in the low gravity, as well as Lhomo, Rachel, Theo, A. Bettik, and the Dalai Lama.

None of the other sentient beings were there.

Several of us stepped out on the balcony to watch the inner surface of the Startree fall behind as the ship climbed toward the central star on its pillar of blue fusion flame.

“Welcome back, Colonel Kassad,” the ship said as we gathered on the library level.

I raised an eyebrow at Aenea, surprised that the ship had managed to remember his passenger from the old days.

“Thank you, Ship,” said the Colonel. The tall, dark man seemed distracted to the point of brooding.

Climbing away from the inner shell of the Biosphere Startree gave me a sense of vertigo quite distinct from watching the sphere of a planet grow smaller and fall behind. Here we were inside the orbital structure, and while the view from within the branches of the Startree had been one of open gaps between the leaves and trunks, glimpses of starfields on the side opposite the sun and everywhere great spaces, the view from a hundred thousand klicks and climbing was of a seemingly solid surface, the huge leaves reduced to a shimmering surface—looking for all the world like a great green, concave ocean—and the sense of being in some huge bowl and unable to escape was almost overwhelming.