"Perhaps I am right?" Wendi exclaimed rather archly. "Child, have you not known me long enough now to know that I am always right, and no perhaps about it?"
" nd modest to a fault as well.
We both laughed, but Wendi soon enough became even more earnest. "On the one hand, you wish not to delay your pursuit of career and muse for a moment, and on the other hand, you fear that the first sight of this most puissant of your lovers will forthwith subsume your newfound intellectual passions under a tsunami of amour and cause you to give it all over in favor of clinging as a consort to his side, ne."
"Quelle chose!" I protested. "Do you take me for a mooning romantic ready to throw my life away for love?"
Wendi cocked her head, shrugged, and regarded me more as an equal sister now, or so it seemed. "Quien sabe?" she said almost gaily. "Who of us knows the answer to that until the moment of truth comes? But certainement, the tale of your wanderjahr is not over until it does, nor is The Tale of the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt going to be concluded in a manner suitable to inclusion in the Matrix without its climactic scene."
Wendi patted me on the knee and spoke gently. "The former I tell you as woman to woman, my dear. Come what may, you can never be content until you learn what is in your own heart. What is there to fear, after all? Either you will enjoy a romantic reunion for a sweet interlude, free yourself of your erotic indifference thereby, and then resume your own path, or you will find the eternal mate of your soul and alter your vector through life in freely given joy."
Wendi sat back at a greater distance and spoke somewhat more distantly. "But the latter I tell you in my editorial capacity, and it is she who was commissioned to assure that your story is put into proper form for the Matrix who speaks now. We must end our account with your reunion on Alpa with Pater Pan, even should it mean that you run off with him forever, are jilted within a year, never tell a tale again, and end up as a tantric performer on some rude frontier world. That is what it means to swear the oath of our lodge, ma chere. Your life and happiness come second, ruespieler; your first allegiance must be to the tale."
I looked away from her for a moment to gaze up at the ersatz stars of the vivarium sky, beyond which lay the true reality, the deep Void through which all our lives journeyed, and scattered among all that daunting firmament, the oases of our spirit in the desert of the night, the far-flung worlds of men. Was it not a tale which we had followed out across the stars from our ancestral trees? Were we not both the teller and protagonist thereof? Was not the Yellow Brick Road the same as the tale-teller's path? Had not both Pater Pan and Wendi Sha Rumi justly declared that before the singer comes the song?
"Vraiment, Wendi, you are right," I told her at length. "We must find the true ending of one tale before we can properly begin another, ne. In the spirit of our calling, there is no other choice."
"In this case even more well spoken than you comprehend, Sunshine," Wendi said somewhat owlishly. "For speaking now finally as one colleague to another, we have enjoyed a long voyage at the expense of public benefaction on the grounds that reuniting you with Pater Pan was a legitimate requirement of our collaboration, and as even the most extreme of ivory tower artistes must sooner or later discover, we Pipers are not the only ones capable of demanding our pay."
***
Strange to say, once having resolved thusly to following the Pied Piper of my wanderjahr to the conclusion of this tale, my spirits lifted, and indeed it soon enough seemed to me that I had been foolishly jousting with shadows.
For what was there to fear? Did I really believe that upon seeing Pater Pan again the Child of Fortune that I had been would fling herself into his arms and give over entirely the new path that the woman I sought to become had found? Or that that woman could not countenance perceiving the domo of her Golden Summer as a Child of Fortune as just another natural man?
Mayhap that had been the source of my trepidations, for I could conceive no other. The floating cultura would await my return from Alpa, as would the vie of the teller of tales, which had existed as long as sapient speech and would persist as long as humankind. The only things I had to fear, certainement, were within my heart, and neither ruespieler nor author of word crystals could remain on the Yellow Brick Road by refusing to learn the secrets of her own soul.
And so I threw myself into completing our work as best I presently could and brooded not over the missing climactic scene until even Wendi finally declared that every word and syllable of what we had on word crystal was as perfect as it could become.
"Indeed," she declared as we ate a late supper of barbecued fruits de mer in the refectory after what was to be the last of these lapidary sessions, "there is a point beyond which further revisions only cause one's prose to devolve. Hola, in my editorial capacity, I do declare we have certainly reached that point now. C'est fini! There is no more useful work to be done until we reach Alpa. Avail yourself of the divertissements the Grand Palais has to offer, take a lover, have several, besot yourself with toxicants, celebrate a justly earned holiday in the best traditions of our craft."
I shook my head. "Now that I have resolved to properly end the tale, and now that there is nothing to be done but await its conclusion, I fear I will be able to do nothing but rattle fecklessly about this Grand Palais and then that of the Arrow of Time, wanting only for the endless days to pass ..."
"Well then, why bother?" Wendi said airily.
"Why bother?"
"Were this a romance I was creating, I would simply make a time-jump to the next meaningful scene rather than bore my audience with a detailed description of a period of prolonged ennui," Wendi said. "Why not grant yourself the same mercy? We will reach Flor del Cielo in a day or two, and when we do, why do you not simply proceed to Alpa in the dormodule of the Arrow of Time? While you sleep the dreamless sleep, I will voyage in the Grand Palais thereof and do some work of my own that I have been neglecting, and by the time you awake, I should have found Pater Pan's encampment thereon for you."
I snapped my fingers, once, twice, thrice. "Like the Rapide!"
* * *
And so once more I found myself climbing a metal ladder in the long central corridor of a dormodule stacked from floor to ceiling with glass cubicles and taking my place among the less- than-Honored Passengers sleeplessly dreaming around me.
But now I felt no fear as I laid myself down on the padded pallet with the spiderwork helmet behind my head. Nor claustrophobic dread when the cubicle door slid shut behind me. So much had come to pass since I had trepidatiously essayed my first such journey from Glade to Edoku. I had left the world of my birth, braved Great Edoku itself, survived the perils of the Bloomenveldt, voyaged as a true Honored Passenger, found my life's calling, and soon, vraiment in the next augenblick of my waking existence, I would reach the planet where the tale of my wanderjahr was to end. And had not Pater Pan's own words, confirmed by the Matrix itself, told me that he had survived this selfsame process scores or mayhap even hundreds of times?
Vraiment, did not esthetic justice require that I journey to him thusly?
And so I felt only peace as hidden machineries began to hum, and my head was touched by a cool, calm, mechanical caress that promised an instant translation to the triumphant conclusion of my wanderjahr's tale. Snap! Snap! Snap! Like the --
***
-- Rapide!
The door to my cubicle slid open as I awoke, and, rubbing sleep from my eyes with a casual gesture as if arising from a short nap, I rolled off the pallet, and climbed down the ladder, expecting to find myself in the midst of the sort of debarkation bustle and excitement which had greeted me when I had similarly awoken in the dormodule of the Bird of Night upon my arrival at Edoku.
Instead I found myself alone in the dormodule corridor save for Wendi Sha Rumi and the Med Crew Maestro of the Arrow of Time. There were no fellow passengers climbing down from their cubicles, no floaters bearing luggage, no announcements by the ship's annunciator, no electricity in the air -- only Wendi, the Med Crew Maestro, and myself amidst stacks and rows of silent sleepers.
And if this was not a rude enough awakening, there was Wendi's demeanor to contend with. Never had I seen her so somber, so trepidatious. Indeed, she seemed to be avoiding direct contact with my eyes.
"What's wrong?" I demanded.
"There have been no anomalies in the revival procedure, I assure you," the Med Crew Maestro burbled. "I am merely present in the ordinary line of --"
"Why have none of the other passengers been awakened? Has there been some dreadful malfunction in --"
"Certainly not!" the Med Crew Maestro snapped indignantly. "Rather ask this personage here why proper procedure has been interfered with to awake you a day earlier by special dispensation, for we are yet a good twenty-four hours or more out of Alpa!"
"This is so?" I asked Wendi. She only nodded. "Why?"
"Because you have a difficult choice to make, Sunshine," she said with uncharacteristic lack of energy. "We must have time to discuss ..." She cast nervous sidelong glances at the rows of sleeping voyagers which walled us in, at the sour demeanor of the Med Crew Maestro. "But certainement, not in here!"
To this I could readily enough agree despite my anxious curiosity, for the ambiance of the dormodule was one to impose hushed silence, the Med Crew Maestro was quite impatient for us to be gone, Wendi's mood was more than enough to fill me with dread, and I could hardly imagine a venue less suited to the absorption of dark tidings. I therefore held my tongue and allowed her to lead me out of the dormodule, along the ship's spinal corridor, and into her stateroom, all in silence.
Once the door was closed behind us and we were seated side by side on the bed, Wendi laid a hand on my knee, and, still not quite meeting my gaze squarely, she spoke.
"True to my word, I have located Pater Pan," she said. "He resides in the resort town of Florida on the Cote Grande of the equatorial continent of Solaria, where he is the domo of a Child of Fortune tribe of sorts."
"But that's marvelous!" I exclaimed. "But why then the long face? Why --"
Wendi held up her hand for silence, and at last she met my gaze directly, albeit with troubled eyes. "I must now make what I know all too well will be a futile gesture ... she said. "In my editorial capacity, I am ready to declare that your entry is suitable for the Matrix in its present form, and that a trip to Florida would be worse than superfluous now."
"What? But you were the one who insisted --"
"Woman to woman, friend to friend, I must attempt to advise you to accept this boon at face value, and quit Alpa as soon as we arrive in orbit, on the first Void Ship to anywhere else," Wendi said without any real conviction, or so it seemed to me.
"What are you talking about, Wendi?" I demanded. "Such crypticism has hardly been your style!"
"In both my editorial capacity and as the friend of your heart, I must tell you that what you would find in Florida would be anything but an esthetically satisfying denouement for your wanderjahr's tale."
"Merde, Wendi, spit this unwholesome morsel out no matter how vile it may be," I told her angrily. "Do you imagine that either the teller of tales or the natural woman could allow you to prevent her from seeking the true ending to her wanderjahr's tale? Was it not you who made me swear our tribal oath that our first allegiance must be to the tale?"
"Vraiment," Wendi said with a little shrug, "but I can find no way to construe what you wish now to learn as anything but a violation of the spirit thereof."
"Cease this mystification!" I fairly shouted. "Do you expect me to contain my curiosity on a matter so dear to both my spirit and my art on the grounds that ignorance would be relative bliss?"
Wendi's demeanor altered entirely. "I said that a futile gesture was required, liebchen," she said in quite a harder tone of voice, "for what a beast you would have thought me if I had not at least made it, after you hear what you must hear now. So think me not a beast also when I say that, colleague to colleague, I would have thought the less of you if I had succeeded."
"Wendi --"
" -- Pater Pan has become a Charge Addict, that is the long and short of it, my pauvre petite, he follows the path of the Up and Out."
I must have shouted wordlessly, but all I remember of that moment is slumping there on the bed in a sudden daze as if my psyche had been rung by a mallet.
Images out of memory, rather than words, poured in a foaming tide through my brain. Pater Pan's gaily smiling face haloed by his golden mane of sunshine. The brilliant orb of the rising sun above the Bloomenveldt. The sight of the ocean on my triumphant return to the worlds of men. Guy Vlad Boca smiling at me lustfully across our rijsttafel in the Crystal Palace as we happily played at guile and assignation. Guy's slack and vacant visage beneath the band of the Charge console in the Hotel Pallas. Guy beaming at me beatifically on his lotus in perfect Bloomenkind bliss. But of the visage of that against which all my white-hot anger and darkest despair might seek its proper vengeance, as to whatever adversary now sought to claim the spirit of Pater Pan as in the Perfumed Garden it had finally claimed Guy, here there was only the featureless face of the Void.