— So define “innocent”? came the vaguely amused, faintly querulous voice which Sol associated with these arguments.
— A child is innocent, thought Sol. Isaac was. Rachel is.
— “Innocent” by the mere fact of being a child?
— Yes.
— And there is no situation where the blood of the innocent must be shed for a greater cause?
— No, thought Sol. None.
— But the “innocent” are not restricted to children, I presume.
— Sol hesitated, sensing a trap, trying to see where his subconscious interlocutor was heading. He could not. No, he thought, the “innocent” include others as well as children.
— Such as Rachel? At age twenty-four? The innocent should not be sacrificed at any age?
— That’s right.
— Perhaps this is part of the lesson which Abraham needed to learn before he could be father to the blessed of the nations of the earth.
— What lesson? thought Sol. What lesson? But the voice in his mind had faded and now there were only the sounds of night birds outside and the soft breathing of his wife beside him.
Rachel could still read at age five. Sol had trouble remembering when she had learned to read—it seemed she always had been able to. “Four standard,” said Sarai, “It was early summer … three months after her birthday. We were picnicking in the field above the college, Rachel was looking at her Winnie-the-Pooh book, and suddenly she said, ‘I hear a voice in my head.’ ”
Sol remembered then.
He also remembered the joy he and Sarai had felt at the rapid acquisition of new skills Rachel had shown at that age. He remembered because now they were confronted with the reverse of that process.
“Dad,” said Rachel from where she lay on the floor of his study, carefully coloring, “how long has it been since Mom’s birthday?”
“It was on Monday,” said Sol, preoccupied with something he was reading. Sarai’s birthday had not yet come but Rachel remembered it.
“I know. But how long has it been since then?”
“Today is Thursday,” said Sol. He was reading a long Talmudic treatise on obedience.
“I know. But how many days?”
Sol put down the hard copy. “Can you name the days of the week?” Barnard’s World had used the old calendar.
“Sure,” said Rachel. “Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday …”
“You said Saturday already.”
“Yeah. But how many days ago?”
“Can you count from Monday to Thursday?”
Rachel frowned, moved her lips. She tried again, counting on her fingers this time. “Four days?”
“Good,” said Sol. “Can you tell me what 10 minus 4 is, kiddo?”
“What does minus mean?”
Sol forced himself to look at his papers again. “Nothing,” he said. “Something you’ll learn at school.”
“When we go home tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
One morning when Rachel went off with Judy to play with the other children—she was too young to attend school any longer—Sarai said: “Sol, we have to take her to Hyperion.”
Sol stared at her. “What?”
“You heard me. We can’t wait until she is too young to walk … to talk. Also, we’re not getting any younger.” Sarai barked a mirthless laugh. “That sounds strange, doesn’t it? But we’re not. The Poulsen treatments will be wearing off in a year or two.”
“Sarai, did you forget? The doctors all say that Rachel could not survive cryogenic fugue. No one experiences FTL travel without fugue state. The Hawking effect can drive one mad … or worse.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Sarai. “Rachel has to return to Hyperion.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” said Sol, angered.
Sarai gripped his hand. “Do you think you’re the only one who has had the dream?”
“Dream?” managed Sol.
She sighed and sat at the white kitchen table. Morning light struck the plants on the sill like a yellow spotlight. “The dark place,” she said. “The red lights above. The voice. Telling us to … telling us to take … to go to Hyperion. To make … an offering.”
Sol licked his lips but there was no moisture there. His heart pounded. “Whose name … whose name is called?”
Sarai looked at him strangely. “Both of our names. If you weren’t there … in the dream with me … I could never have borne it all these years.”
Sol collapsed into his chair. He looked down at the strange hand and forearm lying on the table. The knuckles of the hand were beginning to enlarge with arthritis; the forearm was heavily veined, marked with liver spots. It was his hand, of course. He heard himself say: “You never mentioned it. Never said a word …”
This time Sarai’s laugh was without bitterness. “As if I had to! All those times both of us coming awake in the dark. And you covered with sweat. I knew from the first time that it was not merely a dream. We have to go, Father. Go to Hyperion.”
Sol moved the hand. It still did not feel a part of him. “Why? For God’s sake, why, Sarai? We can’t … offer Rachel …”
“Of course not, Father. Haven’t you thought about this? We have to go to Hyperion … to wherever the dream tells us to go … and offer ourselves instead.”
“Offer ourselves,” repeated Sol. He wondered if he was having a heart attack. His chest ached so terribly that he could not take in a breath. He sat for a full minute in silence, convinced that if he attempted to utter a word only a sob would escape. After another minute he said: “How long have you … thought about this, Mother?”
“Do you mean known what we must do? A year. A little more. Just after her fifth birthday.”
“A year! Why haven’t you said something?”
“I was waiting for you. To realize. To know.”
Sol shook his head. The room seemed far away and slightly tilted. “No. I mean, it doesn’t seem … I have to think, Mother.” Sol watched as the strange hand patted Sarai’s familiar hand.
She nodded.
Sol spent three days and nights in the arid mountains, eating only the thick-crusted bread he had brought and drinking from his condenser therm.
Ten thousand times in the past twenty years he had wished that he could take Rachel’s illness; that if anyone had to suffer it should be the father, not the child Any parent would feel that way—did feel that way every time his child lay injured or racked with fever. Surely it could not be that simple.
In the heat of the third afternoon, as he lay half dozing in the shade of a thin tablet of rock, Sol learned that it was not that simple.
— Can that be Abraham’s answer to God? That he would be the offering, not Issaac?
— It could have been Abraham’s. It cannot be yours.
— Why?
As if in answer, Sol had the fever-vision of naked adults filing toward the ovens past armed men, mothers hiding their children under piles of coats. He saw men and women with flesh hanging in burned strips carrying the dazed children from the ashes of what once had been a city. Sol knew that these images were no dreams, were the very stuff of the First and Second Holocausts, and in his understanding knew before the voice spoke in his mind what the answer was. What it must be.
— The parents have offered themselves. That sacrifice already has been accepted. We are beyond that.