The 97th Step (37 page)

Somebody who could break eggs while smiling.

There was more. Standing there in the downpour. Pen had also understood that in making the mistakes he had made, he had learned a major thing about himself. What Moon had tried to tell him. What Von had tried to teach him. What had been there all along: he did
not
need anyone else to be whole. He didn't need a cause. He really
was
okay alone. More, until he realized that, he would never have anything to offer anybody else. Until he knew who he was, how could he give of himself to another person or some monumental effort? Knowing that he did not know was the first step. Not being attached to the desire to know was the second step.

There it was, simple and yet glorious. Not the cosmic lightning, but maybe a close enough passage of it for him to feel a static electric harmonic. He did not have to have all the answers. Hell, he didn't have to have any of them. All he could do was the best he could. Nothing else much mattered worth a damn.

So there it was. Whatever skill or luck or magic was needed to topple the Confed, he did not have it.

Surprisingly, the thought did not bring with it disappointment; to the contrary, it freed him. So, he had picked the wrong path. It had cost him twenty years, and was an expensive mistake, but that was better than wasting his entire life on it. Better to learn slow than not at all.

It had given him knowledge. Maybe it had been by the process of elimination—he'd had to learn all kinds of things he was not—but some people never understood. In that tiny fraction of time, holding life and death in his hand over that soldier, having that power, something came through, and for the first time in his life, he felt complete within himself. The words he had first heard so many years past came to him:

"When you know who you are, you know what to do."

My, my. Aren't we being philosophical?

Yes. Tomorrow, he might be a different man, beset with different feelings and thoughts. That was to be expected. People changed, constantly, and certainty might well be the most ephemeral emotion of all, but there and then, in that moment, he had
known
.

He laughed softly to himself, remembering the picture that had hung on the wall of Von's zendo, on Koji.

The leaping man. He knew now why the man had done it. Because he had to or he needed to or he
wanted
to. That was reason enough. Whether he had made the jump successfully, how he had gotten down, those things weren't important. There was a way the man must have known who he was, to take that risk. Even if he had been a fool, he had known. Just as Pen now knew. Damn. He felt good, as good as he had ever felt. He knew who he was, for now, at least, and so he knew what to do.

He was going back to Earth. To Manus Island. To Moon.

He had not found God, but he had found something much more important.

He had found himself.

Thirty-Seven

COMING IN FROM orbit, the clouds were broken up enough so that he could actually see Manus Island. It looked like he remembered: a fish with a hooked nose, small turds dribbling from its rear.

Had it really been more than twenty years? How fast the time had gone. It seemed quick, but it also seemed a lifetime; he could hold both views easily.

When he stepped off the local shuttle into the tropical summer at the port on Manus, a shrouded figure stood there waiting for him. She could just as easily have been naked, for he would have recognized her through a mound of
kawa
.

"Hello, Pen."

"Hello, Moon."

He couldn't say who moved first, but a moment later, they were hugging each other tightly.

"Welcome home," she said. Her voice broke, and he very nearly started crying. The years dropped away, and she felt the same in his arms as she had the last time they had embraced.

Eons later, he pulled back and smiled at her. Arms around each other's waists, they walked slowly toward a waiting ground car.

"I don't have to walk this time?"

"Well, it's not every day a legend returns. Some of the younger sibs wanted to stage a welcome at the port, no doubt carrying you back to the compound on their shoulders."

"They must be thinking of somebody else."

"You know students. They're impressed by almost anything. No one has ever walked more of the pattern on their first try than you did."

"A bunch of slow learners."

She hugged him to her tighter. "I'm glad to see you," she said. "You can't know how glad."

"Yes, I can. I was afraid you might have found someone else."

"There have been others. I have had lovers, made friends, I haven't been sitting around pining or anything.

But I think we each only get one soulmate."

He nodded. "I think you're right." He smiled through his shroud, seeing her do the same beneath her own covering. "I think I found what I was looking for."

"I know you did."

They reached the car. "Oh?" he asked. "How so?"

"I knew you wouldn't come back until you had."

"You always were sure of yourself."

"Not really. I've missed you."

"And I have missed you, Moon."

Moon talked as she drove. "Not much has changed. We've put a new coat of everlast on here and there.

Some of the buildings have recent additions. I told you a lot of it in my letters."

"The bonsai still growing?"

"Still are. And the wine cellar has been expanded."

"I'm still not sure I've learned the lesson of patience you tried to teach me doing those chores."

"You've learned something. There's a solidity in you that wasn't there before."

He laughed. "It only took a score of years for me to figure it out. I wonder what the new students would think about that, speaking of slow learners."

"Better late than never."

He reached over and put his hand on her leg just above the knee and massaged her gently. When he spoke, the essence of twenty years was in his voice. All of them boiled down into one simple statement:

"That's what I found out—better late than never."

The place hadn't changed all that much. Some of the shrubbery was taller and thicker, some of the buildings a different hue than he recalled, and there were some additions. The feel of the compound was the same. Except for the lack of insects. He said something about it to Moon.

"A project from the biolab," she said. "A few years ago, one of the more creative students got the idea to breed mules for most of the bug pests native to the island. Souped-up their pheromones so the local females would breed with them exclusively. He left the bees and beetles and ants alone. A year later, we shut down the repellors, except for the weather. Every now and then, somebody cranks out a new lot of sterile bugs and turns 'em loose. It seems to be working."

Thunder rumbled in the distance as they pulled into the fenced compound. Moon waved at the gate guard.

"Hear from Von?" Pen said.

"Now and again. He's still on Koji, helping to keep the Confed interference there to a minimum. He's come back to visit a few times."

Pen turned that thought over in his mind. Nope. It didn't bother him. What he'd felt for Moon before had not been real love. Being "in love," having a romantic fixation that was more an addiction than anything else was not the same as truly loving somebody. You had to be standing on fairly solid ground to think that way. For the moment, at least, the earth felt firm enough beneath his boots, physically and spiritually.

"Glad to hear it."

Moon pulled the car to a halt. The two of them alighted. Moon walked toward the barracks, and Pen followed her.

She went to her room.

Inside, she said, "There are a lot of things we need to talk about. We’ve had a breakthrough in integratic science. There are things happening, big things."

As she spoke, she began to disrobe. "But we can talk later."

Pen grinned, and began to remove his own shroud. He pulled his hood off, so she could see his smile.

"Yes," he said. "Talking later is a good idea."

The years had been kind to her, he saw. Her hair was gray, but her muscles still remained firm; her skin was wrinkled some but still clear and ghostly pale. Protection from the sun and weather had its benefits.

Her nose was still slightly crooked, her mouth a hair too wide, and she was still beautiful. Older, yes, but still Moon.

When he touched her, it was as if he had never been away. At the same time, it was like the first time he had ever felt her body next to his.

They stood pressed nakedly against each other for a moment. Then, in a move he never expected, she picked him up in her arms and carried him to the bed, dropped him, and then fell on top of him. Talk would come later, but right now, laughter was fine.

It was all just fine.

He could not keep from touching her, even after he was completely drained sexually. He leaned his hip against hers, raised himself onto one elbow and draped his leg over her, twining with her legs. Gods, how good she felt!

For her part, Moon seemed as glad to be with him.

"We have some catching up to do," he said. He bent and kissed her hair. It looked terrific gray.

"Yes. We'll have awhile before…" She stopped, letting the last word trail off.

"Before what?"

"Nothing. Are you hungry?"

"Not in the least."

"We should go out. The others will want to see you."

"They can wait."

"Well, aside from the new students, there's Agate."

"Still tending the bonsai?"

"Yes." She paused for a beat, then smiled at him. "And Spiral."

"Spiral is here? I thought sure he'd be off taming some frontier planet somewhere."

"He's about ready to become Elder Brother."

Pen blinked at her. "Spiral? Are you planning on retiring?"

"In a manner of speaking. He's better qualified than any of us. Pen. He's been touched by the
Relampago
, has been burning with the cosmic fire for years."

"Good old Spiral." Pause. "Where are you going?"

"There are a lot of things that need to be done. I'll show you later."

He smiled at her. "Look, I know there are people out there, but do you suppose we could just lie here and hold hands for a little while longer?"

She returned his smile with a grin of her own. "I guess we could manage that."

"Hey?"

"Urn?"

"I love you, Moon. For the right reasons, this time."

"I know. I love you, too. I always have."

Later, Pen and Moon went out, and he was introduced to new siblings and reintroduced to those he'd known before. He hadn't realized how good it would feel to actually be here again.

He sensed Spiral approaching before he saw him. He caught Moon watching him carefully as he turned to see the source of the energy he felt warming the already hot afternoon air. His HSP was stronger than ever before. It wasn't just Moon, he knew. It was him.

"Ah, Pen."

"Spiral!"

The two men embraced, and Pen felt the warmth grow hotter. It was not a physical sensation so much as an awareness on a psychic level. Spiral did indeed burn with some kind of spiritual glow. Hard to say exactly what it was, he didn't shine like a candle or anything, but there it was, for certain.

Spiral pulled back and smiled beneath his shroud. "You've changed, Pen. For the better."

"Looks like you have too, friend. Ever learn how to do Flower Unfolding properly?"

Spiral shook his head. "Your memory is as bad as ever."

"Your foot was crooked."

"I confess that it was," Spiral said, laughing. "The least of my many errors."

Spiral had changed, all right. Pen felt the lack of ego about the man, the same energy he had noticed about Babaji and other holy souls he'd met over the years. A childlike bearing and innocence, a high optimism.

"Moon tells me you are about to become Elder Brother."

"Well, for a short while, at least."

"Already grooming a replacement? You aren't
that
old."

"I confess also that worldly matters are concerning me less and less. I'll be a caretaker for a year or two for the next Elder Brother."

"Anybody I know?"

"You, of course."

Pen stared at him. "Me? That's a good one."

"No less than the truth."

Pen turned to look at Moon. She said, "I told you big things were happening."

Pen thought about it. All right. He could live with that. He did not have to hide behind his ego to know he was qualified, and probably better than most. Sure. No problem. He
was
learning.

"Come on. You’ve been wandering in the wilderness a long time, my love. It's time you learned what we’ve been up to while you were gone."

One of the additions to the auditorium was a full-scan holoproj room. It was, Moon told him as they entered the dimly lit space, tied into a superframe viral matrix computer complex orbiting Earth near L-5 prime. A very bright computer, she said, and very fast. For years, the Siblings had been programming integratic calculations into the complex. The programs were coded, of course, so that a Confederation check would show something vaguely consistent with the stated programs of history, business and what-not. But the electrochemviral brain was producing results. Crunching several billion bits of information every second, it had come up with some very interesting data.

"This is Moon," she said to the empty room. "Give us the latest scan on Project Savior. Visual graphics for climax point, please."

The air lit with a swirl of bright colors that snapped into sharp focus. A graph appeared, spiky peaks rising from a flat table, the tops increasing in height in a kind of inward spiral toward the center. The innermost peak jutted twice the height of the pointed fingers surrounding it.

A second projection flicked into life, smaller, but no less bright. It was a stellar system, three planets orbiting a G-class star. Even at this magnification, the detail was fine enough to show several moons and a blinking dot that must represent a wheel world.

A third graphic flowered in the air. This was a two-dimensional chart that showed the first graph superimposed over the second.