“It is good to doubt it,” Fraa Jad said. “After all, the Warden of Heaven’s mistake was failure to doubt. But one must choose the target of one’s doubt with care. Your third Gan detected a flow of information from another cosmos, and saw it as cryptic messages from his ancestors. Your Prags, ever since, have doubted both halves of the story. You disbelieve only one half: that the signal came from your ancestors. But you may still believe that the signal exists while discarding the third Gan’s incorrect notions as to its source. Believe, then, that information—the Hylaean Flow—passes between cosmi.”

“But if I may ask—have you learned the power to modulate that signal, to send messages thus?”

I was all ears. But Fraa Jad said nothing. Gan Odru waited for a few moments, then said, “I suppose we’ve already established that, haven’t we? You apparently got inside Prag Eshwar’s head somehow.”

“What signal did the third Gan receive nine centuries ago?” I asked.

“A prophecy of terrible devastation. Robed priests massacred, churches torn down, books burning.”

“What gave him the idea it was from the past?”

“The churches were enormous. The books, written in unfamiliar script. On some of their burning leaves were geometrical proofs unknown to us—but later verified by our theors. On Urnud we had legends of a lost, mythic Golden Age. He assumed that he was being given a window into it.”

“But what he was really seeing was the Third Sack,” I said.

“Yes, so it seems,” said Gan Odru. “And my question is: did you send us the visions, or did it just happen?”

We have come…we have answered your call. Was he the last priest of a false religion? Was he no different from the Warden of Heaven?

“The answer is not known to me,” said Fraa Jad. He turned to look at me. “You shall have to search for it yourself.”

“What about you?” I asked him.

“I am finished here,” Fraa Jad said.

Part 12

REQUIEM

Something was pressing hard against my back—accelerating me forward. That couldn’t be good.

No, it was just gravity, or some reasonable facsimile, pulling me down against some flat firm thing. I was monstrously cold. I started to shiver.

“Pulse and respiration are looking more normal,” said a voice in Orth. “Blood oxygenation coming up.” Jules was translating this into some other language. “Core temp is getting into a range compatible with consciousness.”

That would, perhaps, be my consciousness they were talking about. I opened my eyes. The glare faded. I was in a small but nice enough room. Jules Verne Durand was seated on the edge of my bed, looking clean and sleek. This more than anything else confirmed the vague impression that a lot of time had passed. I was hooked up to a bunch of stuff. A tube was cinched under my nose, blowing something cold, dry, and sweet into my nostrils. A physician—from Arbre!—was glancing back and forth between me and a jeejah. A woman in a white coat—a Laterran—was looking on, running a big piece of equipment that was circulating warm water to—well—you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, and then you’d wish I’d kept such details to myself.

“You have questions, my friend,” Jules said, “but perhaps you should wait until—”

“He’s fine,” said the Arbran. He was dressed in a bolt and chord. He had a tube strapped across his upper lip. He shifted his attention to me. “You’re fine—as far as I can tell. How do you feel?”

“Unbelievably cold.”

“That’ll change. Do you know your name?”

“Fraa Erasmas of Edhar.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“I would guess on one of the orbs on the Daban Urnud. But there are some things I don’t understand.”

“I am Fraa Sildanic of Rambalf,” said the physician, “and I need to tend to your comrades. I need Jules to come with me as interpreter, and Dr. Guo here to supervise the core warming procedure. Speaking of which, we’ll be needing that.”

Dr. Guo now punctuated this statement in the most dramatic way you can possibly imagine by reaching up under my blankets from the foot of the bed and disconnecting me from the core warmer. For the first time in a long time, I uttered a religious oath.

“Sorry,” said Fraa Sildanic.

“I’ll live. So—”

“So we are going to have to leave your questions unanswered,” Fraa Sildanic continued, “but one is waiting outside who will, I think, be happy to lay it all out for you.”

They left. Through the opening door I glimpsed a pleasant view over open water, with green growing things all over the place, soon blocked by a small figure coming in at speed. A moment later, Ala was lying full-length on top of me, sobbing.

She sobbed and I shivered. The opening half-hour was all about raising my core temp and getting her calmed down. We made a great team that way; Ala was just what the doctor ordered as a way to raise my temperature, and using me as a mattress seemed to be good for what ailed her. During the bone-breaking shivering that hit its peak about fifteen minutes in, she clung to me as if I were an amusement park ride, and kept me from vibrating right off the bed. This kind of thing gave way, in due course, to other fascinating biological phenomena, which I can’t set down here without turning this into a different kind of document.

“Okay,” she finally said, “I’ll report to Fraa Sildanic that you have excellent blood flow to all of your extremities.” It was the first complete sentence that had come out of her mouth. We’d been together for an hour and a half.

I laughed. “I was thinking Heaven? But Heaven wouldn’t have these.” I tugged gently at the hissing tube under her nose. She snorted, and batted my hand away. “Oxygen from Arbre?” I asked.

“Obviously.”

“How did it—and you—get here?”

She sighed, seeing that I was determined to ask tedious questions. She pushed herself up, straddled me. I raised my knees and she leaned back against them. Snatched a pillow, propped herself up, got comfortable, fiddled with her oxygen tube. She looked at me, and once again the I’m in Heaven hypothesis floated to the top. But it couldn’t be. You had to deserve Heaven.

“After you went up,” she said, “the Pedestal rodded all of our space launch infrastructure.”

“I’m aware of it.”

“Oh yes. I forgot. You had a vantage point. So, we got the message that they were extremely cross with us over the two-hundred-missile launch. But they had fallen for the decoy—the inflatable thing you launched. They sent us detailed phototypes of the wreckage. Were they ever triumphant!”

“Maybe they were only pretending to fall for it.”

“We considered that. But, remember—a few days later, you guys were able to just walk right in.”

“Well, it was a little more difficult than you make it sound!” I was trying to laugh, but it was hard, with her weight on my tummy.

“I get that,” she said immediately, “but what I’m trying to say is—”

“The Pedestal hadn’t taken any extraordinary precautions,” I agreed, “they were totally surprised.”

“Yes. So, one moment, they are feeling triumphant. The next, out of nowhere, all of a sudden, their World Burner has been wrecked. A bunch of their people are dead. One of the twelve Vertices has been seized by Arbran commandos.”

“Wow! The Valers did all that?”

“They sneaked onto the World Burner and planted three of the four shaped charges they had with them. Then they headed for a certain window—”

“Pardon me, a window?”

“That vertex is a sort of command post and maintenance depot for all things World Burner. There is a conference room with windows that look out over the bomb. Osa and company had a plan, apparently, to rendezvous there. Along the way, they were noticed, and came under assault by the maintenance workers who were out there in space suits. But the workers didn’t have weapons per se.”