Dan Simmons - Phases of Gravity

He swam higher. He could feel the cold biting at him now, but he ignored it, working hard to overcome the riptides and pressures, which threatened to pull him back. And then, suddenly, there was no further need for effort and Baedecker hovered far up, seeing the planet again as the blue-and-white ball it was, curtained in black velvet, small enough and beautiful enough for him to put his arms around. Closer, tantalizingly close, was the great white-and-gray serrated curve of his other world. But even as he pivoted and prepared to stroke across the short distance remaining, he knew that this one thing was denied to him. No, not denied he realized, for once it had been allowed. Only return was denied. But then, as if in recompense, he was floating over the familiar white peaks and shadowed craters, and he could see even more clearly than before.

He could see the gold-and-silver devices his friend and he had left, dead metal, useless now, their minimum warmth and mindless activity leeched away by years of baking days and freezing nights. But he also saw the more important things they had left, his friend and he, not the tumbled flag or dust-covered machines, but their footprints, as deep and sharp-edged as the second they had lifted their boots away, and a few true artifacts catching the rising sun — a small photograph, a belt buckle set to face the crescent earth.

Then, before returning, chilled and shivering, Baedecker saw one more thing. Crossing the band between light and dark where knife-black shadows cut ragged holes in the faint earthlight, Baedecker saw the lights. Strings of lights. Circles of lights. Lights of cities and transportways and quarries and communities, some burrowing, some spreading proudly across the dark mare and highlands, all waiting tenaciously for the dawn.

And then Baedecker returned. He paused a few times, paddling to stay in place, but mostly he allowed the great tug of the earth to pull him in, gently, inexorably. It was only then, holding his breath for a short while at the end, floating gently above the high shoal of the butte and seeing the blue pickup stop below, watching the young woman emerge and break into a run up the tiny trail . . . it was only then that he finally accepted the pull of the earth and saw clearly that it was more than the mindless call of matter to matter. And with that realization, Baedecker felt the same energy in himself, flowing through him and from him, bringing together and binding people as well as things.

Baedecker hovered there, but even as he did so he felt the return of the warmth of the sun on his face, knew that he was sleeping, heard the familiar voice calling in the distance, and knew that in a second he would wake and rise and call back to Maggie. But for a few more seconds he was content to hover there, neither earthbound nor free, waiting, knowing there was much to be learned and happy to be waiting and willing to learn.

Then Baedecker touched the mountain, smiled, and opened his eyes.

DAN SIMMONS, a full-time public school teacher until 1987, is one of the few writers who consistently work across genres, and perhaps the only one to have won major awards in all of them. He has produced science fiction, horror, fantasy, and mainstream fiction,and is now launching stunning works in the thriller category. His first novel, Song of Kali, won the World Fantasy Award; his first science fiction novel, Hyperion, won the Hugo Award. His other novels and short fiction have been honored with numerous awards, including nine Locus Awards, four Bram Stoker Awards, the French Prix Cosmos 2000, the British SF Association Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. In 1995, Wabash College presented Simmons with an honorary doctorate in humane letters for his work in fiction and education. He lives in Colorado along the Front Range of the Rockies.