CHORUS Triumph and tragedy, Festival and funeral, Honored graves, And the work of remembered hands.

We gave to the rockets their thunder And breath to all children Born beyond Earth, We, the quenchers of thirst.

Because of our labor, water falls past greenwoods Into lakes adream Where since the creation Were stone and dust- Cherry blossoms white over Mars!

But now the comet flies moth-swift Out of the mothering darkness Into her left hand.

Flesh would smoke away on the solar wind, Bones crumble, teeth become red coals, Silicon melt in furnace machines.

We flee from the Burning House.

ENGINEER Perhaps we can return after perihelion pa.s.sage.

CHORUS What flames shall billow like pampas gra.s.s In the storms of the coming Summer, What eddying strange mists Shall haunt this land in its Autumn Before the huge stillness Of the thousand-year Winter?

ENGINEER Meanwhile we make ready to evacuate. The ship that brought you will be one of our ferries. Whatever your errand, I fear you have little time to complete it.

PRIEST I wish to visit the dome where holy Rokuro lived and meditated.

ENGINEER What a surprise! I do not believe anyone in living memory has gone there. It is maintained as a shrine, of course, but it stands isolated, at some distance from our settlement; and, alas, we have been over-busied throughout our lives. At present every ground vehicle is engaged. However, if you know the use of s.p.a.cesuit and jetpack, I can lend you them. Fortunately, rotation has newly carried this base and the shrine both into night, so you can safely travel, but make sure you get back ahead of the lethal sunrise.

PRIEST Thank you, I shall. That gives me about nine hours, am I correct?

ENGINEER Yes.

[He puts the s.p.a.cesuit prop across the shoulders of the Priest and hands him the slab]

There, you are outfitted, and this electronic navigation map will conduct you. May your venture be prosperous.

PRIEST Blessings.

[The Engineer bows and exits} PRIEST Time is indeed cruelly short. I will cycle through the main airlock and set forth at once.

[He takes several steps to stage right and then back, indicating a journey. Meanwhile an attendant removes the table and another places a prop representing a large computer before the s.h.i.te pillar.]

I have traveled so fast that already my guide declares I have reached my goal. That dome on yonder ridge, was it his hermitage? I will approach it.

[He moves toward the s.h.i.te pillar]

Well-nigh weightless, like a ghost I go, Wraith-world around me, white and stiff, Forever alone in emptiness.

CHORUS "The eternal silence of those infinite s.p.a.ces Frightens me." But they know no rest.

They grind worlds forth to the tears of things And they grind them back to oblivion.

Everywhere fly the energies, Inaudible hiss of invisible sleet.

I see a crag thrust gaunt as a tombstone Where half the glacier that lay above it Roared aloft this day, a heaven-high fountain Strewn by the sun across the black.

Vast, shuddery streamers hide the stars And the very horizon cries violence, Toppling away into endlessness.

PRIEST Your grace, Amida, came to Rokuro Far from here and long years later.

Yet I will retrace the whole of his path, Praying it still may lead to salvation.

[The Robot enters slowly along the hashigakari]

ROBOT "When rainshowers clear, For a small while comes a scent Of hawthorn in bloom."

As memory...

Oh! A visitor.

[He goes to meet the Priest. They mime tuning in their radio transceivers]

PRIEST Is this the shrine of Rokuro's former residence?

ROBOT It is, although few have ever come. May I ask what has brought you?

PRIEST What but devotion? I am a priest. Do you attend it?

ROBOT I carry out the necessary tasks of maintenance.

PRIEST I am surprised that a machine is curious about my purpose.

ROBOT What you see is merely the mechanism. It is radio-linked to that computer over there, in which dwells an artificial intelligence sufficient to the various and varying requirements of my duty.

[He dances, with appropriate gestures, as the Chorus speaks for him]

CHORUS Long coursed the comet through quietness.

You would think it never was touched by time.

A day or a decade, what difference?

Heaven's River stretched over and under, But there surged no sea around this isle.

You would think it lay at rest, entombed, With stars at its head and stars at its feet.

Yet neither may peace be found in the grave.

Headstones crumble beneath rain, The spalling arrows of day, And the riving frost of night.

The soil itself is a devourer With a thousand secret watery tongues, While rocks burrow upward, more blind than moles.

Mute and slow, these things work on.

The earthquake is not so unrelenting.

And likewise on this dwarf world Nothing but labor staved off destruction, Even in deepest s.p.a.ce, Even in deepest s.p.a.ce.

Only through the Way shall we find peace.

PRIEST Praise to Amida Buddha.

ROBOT Can I be of a.s.sistance? Regrettably, here is no shelter or refreshment to offer you. As you see, the dome stands open, empty except for the computer, a generator, and what equipment I need.

PRIEST Surely Rokuro required heat, light, air, water, food, no matter how austerely he lived.

ROBOT Yes, but when he departed, he told the miners to reclaim all such apparatus. They could use what he no longer would. He did ask that they leave the computer and attendant robot, which they, revering him, had also provided soon after his arrival.

PRIEST Did he already then have such holiness about him?

ROBOT That is not for me to say. Perhaps it was no more than that the miners of that day were kindly and devout. Folk who lead hard, lonely lives often are.

PRIEST In the simplicity of their hearts, they may well have sensed that here was one who would attain Buddhahood.

ROBOT What, did he truly?

PRIEST You have not heard?

ROBOT I have been alone almost since the hour of his farewell.

PRIEST Yes, I was told about that. Nor any communication?

ROBOT Why speak with a machine and an empty sh.e.l.l?

PRIEST Evidently pilgrimage has never been a custom of theirs. That is understandable. Apart from this one site, what is on the comet to seek out? No beauty, no seasons, no hallowed ground, no life, nothing but desolation.

ROBOT He did not find it so.

PRIEST True. That is why I follow in his footsteps, humbly hoping for a few glimpses of what he saw throughout the universe.

ROBOT Sanct.i.ty- [They stand silent a moment]

Can I be of service?

PRIEST Thank you, but I know not how. Well, you can perform your tasks still more zealously, inspecting with care and doing what proves needful. I daresay the approach to the sun is wreaking havoc.

ROBOT Indeed. The dome is anch.o.r.ed to rock, but daily oftener and stronger come tremors, and I have observed that an ice field is slipping this way. I doubt whether anything will survive perihelion.

PRIEST When I return to the base, I will remind them of it. If nothing else, you and the computer should be transported with the people. You are holy relics.

ROBOT Oh, no, sir, not that.

PRIEST You have been a.s.sociated with a saint, as closely as was his rosary, and it is enshrined in Kamakura.

ROBOT Sir, you do not understand. I-I cannot explain. I am only a machine, a program. Have I your leave to go?

PRIEST Certainly.

ROBOT If you need help, you have but to call. I will never be distant or unalert. Your presence brings back to me aspects of existence that I had forgotten, as one forgets a dream.

[He bows and goes behind the computer]

PRIEST Strange. When did ever a robot behave thus or speak in such words?

And how would it know of rain, wind, soil, death? I found myself addressing it as if it were a person. Hold!

[He mimes keeping his balance while the ground shakes beneath him]

That was a powerful temblor. Were it not for the slight gravity, I would have been cast down and very likely hurt. See how the ice is further cracked and the banks of snow-snow that was never water-lie tumbled about. Terrifying. Let me go up to the shrine and pray for serenity.

[He proceeds to the computer screen and kneels before it with folded hands]

CHORUS Praise to Amida Buddha, "In Him the Way, the Law, apart,"

In Whose teaching is deliverance And Whose mercy flows forth Like moonlight across wild seas That taste of tears And Whose grace breaks forth Sudden as flowers on a winter-bare tree.

We call on Him to lead us Out of anger to forgiveness, Out of hatred to love, Out of sorrow to peace, Out of solitude to oneness With all that is And all that was And all that abides forever.

Though a thousand thousand prayers be too few, Yet one cry is enough.

Praise to Amida Buddha.

[The image of the young Rokuro, dressed as a monk, appears on the screen. Astonished, the Priest rises]

PRIEST What, another human being after all? Or do you transmit a message from the base?

ROKURO No, I am not there. Nor am I human as you are.

PRIEST What, then, are you? Know, I am a pilgrim who follows the path of Rokuro from world to world, hoping it may at last lead me too beyond every world.

ROKURO Yes, you have told me.

PRIEST When? I do not recall meeting you before. And scarcely in some former life- Are you a G.o.d, a demon, a ghost, a dream?

ROKURO Mine was the intelligence directing the robot. It has no other.

PRIEST Then you are the program in this computer?

ROKURO I am. And in that fashion I am, as well, in truth a ghost; for I died long ago, long ago.

PRIEST Do I really stand conversing with a shadow? Into what wilderness has my reason wandered? But no, this need not be madness. All is delusion and chaos in the Burning House. Save for the boddhisattvas, everything that lives is a stranger in a strange land.

ROKURO Hear me. Before he entered on the Eightfold Path, Rokuro was a researcher into man-computer linkages.

PRIEST I know. Youthful, he was among the highest achievers. Afterward he wrote, "The nova radiance of intellect blinded me, until one summer dusk in a woodland I heard the low voice of a cuckoo."