Part 23 (2/2)

Creation, all that had been, or was to come. It was the story of matter, the story of anti-matter, the tale of a paradox, the narrative of All. Somehow, he'd touched the water of G.o.d's mind, and had seen everything there was to see. That ocean was a mountain atop all of creation, and looking over it had been terrifying, the view impossible.

Robert had been exploring for what had to be days when he found the cave. It was at the bottom of a ravine. Leaves and foliage partially concealed its mouth. He tried to scale the slope, but ended up sliding down most of it. Glancing back, he surmised it was a hundred or more feet back up, and there was nothing to grab hold of. While it had been relatively easy ending up down here, it would be the devil's work returning to the top.

When he took a step, he nearly fell. Wincing, he saw that some sort of vine had wrapped itself around his ankle. He yanked his foot, but was answered only by a needle of pain. He touched the dry, green surface of the vine, and immediately withdrew his hand with a hiss. Something had cut his finger. He squinted and looked closer. Sure enough, almost translucent silver needles shot out all over the vine. One had entered the top of his foot, running just over a prominent vein. He held his breath, bent over, touched his foot. The needle moved beneath his skin, but didn't offer to slip out. Sitting down, he gently pushed on the vine. Any movement at all hurt.

He exhaled a curse, stopped messing with it a moment to look at the opposite end of the pit. Four thin trees stood taller than the ravine behind them. All over the valley, the land sloped upwards. The only thing down here was the cave. Again, he looked at the vine and its needles, trying to figure out a painless solution. But he wasn't thinking clearly: He hadn't eaten a thing since being shoved through the door, and he could feel the machine of his body slowing. He couldn't move quickly, couldn't think with any speed.

”Okay,” he said, leaning over. ”You're gonna have to come out, one way or another.”

But saying it didn't make it any better. How was he going to get that thing out? He couldn't grab hold of the vine without depositing a clan of those silver things in his hands-so what was the plan, Stan?

He stared at it for a while, c.o.c.king his head in one direction and then the other, and it finally came to him.

”Call the village, I've found the idiot,” he said, reaching down, pressing his thumb and forefinger to the needle. He took a breath, and snapped it off the vine. Slowly, with the thing still worming around over a vein, he uncoiled the vine, stepped out of it, and hopped back a pace or two. With his hands behind him, he lowered himself onto the ground and situated his legs into an Indian-style position. With his feet not more than a hand's distance from his eyes, he took stock of how deeply it was lodged, and approximately how much pressure this little operation would take. He pressed on it and it hurt, but he was too exhausted to scream, so he cursed silently, pressured it again, shoving it back toward the original hole. It was excruciating-he had an idea that the needle had microscopic barbs on its sides, and was sc.r.a.ping along the vein and the underside of his skin. But at last, its nearly translucent head showed, and he took it between his fingers. With a symphony of pain accompanying it, the splinter ripped out.

Robert sat there for a time with the thing between his fingers, staring at it. Finally, he tossed it aside, took to his feet, and started for the cave.

To his astonishment, he found something to eat not more than a hundred feet inside. Long cylindrical objects glistened in the half-light, and for a moment he thought they were some sort of hibernating animal. But as he approached, he made out their green color. Then he touched them. To be careful, he plucked one from its stem and took a bite. A small bite. He waited for a few minutes. He didn't keel over, and that was good enough for him.

When he'd finished, he counted twenty-one rinds on the cave's stone floor.

He sat down, leaned his head against a rock and blanked out, stupidly digesting.

Robert awoke feeling better than he had in a long, long time. He took a look around, saw that an entire wall was ripe with fruit, and smiled. He shook his head, trying not to think about this place, but of course that was impossible. There was a light at the mouth of the cave, a pale, uncertain luminescence created by a star he could not see. The faint scent of water, mildew almost, permeated the air. The heavy wash of wings descended on the clearing, but he could hear it all over the island, those nameless beasts swimming through the sky. So all he could do, really, was think about this place: it was all around him. Fine, he thought. Aside from the water, what do I know?

He knew that his mother had been sent here. Well, that wasn't exactly right. He didn't know if she'd come here, or some other dimension, but he did have a hunch. That wasn't the same as knowing, was it?

She had disappeared in front of him, he did know that. And he supposed he'd always known it, even if his conscious mind hadn't allowed the memory to surface via normal channels. So if his mother had vanished, and the same man had opened the door, was it foolish to believe he'd sent them both here? Wasn't Monty the Wizard trying to give him answers? Maybe his hunch was a reasonable a.s.sumption, after all.

Of course, the more he knew, the greater the questions. If he understood the sea, and he knew that Monty had sent both he and his mother here, he still had no clear understanding of what here was. And that was really the question, wasn't it?

The more he turned it over, the more he considered it, the more he attempted to answer this question, the more Robert Lieber understood that some questions could not be answered by human minds. He was beginning to see that mankind's a.s.sumption that the physical world was all-important was only the Dark Ages flat-world theory taken to its inverse, exponential extreme. He wasn't even sure the material plane made sense.

All the unanswerable questions, then, came down to one: He was here-but what, exactly, was he doing here?

Robert looked toward the mouth of the cave, at the light spilling inside. ”Finding her,” he whispered.

But where?

Just as when he'd realized what the water was, the connection didn't blast into him, it didn't jolt him out of his reverie. It was a sudden peace, an inner calm. He sat up, wrapped his arms around his knees, remembering when he'd first thought he might be sick, and how he'd immediately checked on his daughter. He'd watched her sleep for a while, and then anger had come over him. Not anger over the possibility of sickness-that would come later-but anger over the possibility that he would miss her journey from childhood to adulthood. Wouldn't his mother have had a similar reaction? If she couldn't physically stand next to her son as he made his own journey, she had been determined to watch. And she'd found a way, trapped in that silvery portal, to place her hand in the material world: The letter, the destruction of the porch. She understood that her presence in this strange purgatory had upset the balance of things, so she'd guided him to Monty, who had reopened the door.

He might never know what or where this place was, but he certainly knew what here was: Here was a place a mother could find, could see, her son.

The ocean.

A tear slid down Robert's cheek. She had been with him all along.

After a long and arduous climb out of the valley, he started for the sea.

He got lost many times on his way back. More than once he had to stop, listening for creeping animals or for the cries of beasts overhead, but heard nothing. Saw nothing. Still, he felt watched.

After a time, he came to the land of stone, smiled and thought, Okay, I'm on the right path. But his good mood faded once he set to climbing over, around and in between the sentinel-like rocks. More than once he slipped, lost his footing or just plain fell, and by the time he reached the other side, he had to take a break. Almost immediately, it began to storm.

Lightning flashed along the treetops. He couldn't see more than a few feet ahead. Wind howled, rushed through the forest. Leaves swept wetly around him and stuck to his skin. He was reminded of a Florida summer, when the sky broke open every afternoon. Despite this, he pressed on and the weather got worse, the rain falling in great spears, and he began to shake in the razor cold.

When he made it to the edge of the forest and walked out from under the trees, it was worse still. But he was heartened minutes later when the land rose, and he knew he was nearly there.

The water appeared to be boiling as the rain pelted the sea.

Robert stood at the edge for a moment, taking stock of the slope, hoping he'd descend this much slower than he had the last one. He looked around for any of those pesky vine formations, but once the cliff broke there was only mud and stone. Even if he slid part of the way, there was sand to land in.

He started down, and although he soon found himself sliding, the grade was gentle and the beach below proved to be soft despite the storm.

And then he was standing before what had previously been a motionless sea. He took a step towards it, then paused. It wasn't colored like the ocean back home, which was green and gray and navy blue in spots. Here the water was mostly a bright, almost evanescent blue, almost as if there was a great light at the bottom of the sea giving the water the quality of a precious stone.

He took another step, lifted his foot, but didn't touch it down immediately. He was suddenly unsure of his experience here. Had it been pain he'd felt, or had it been the bending of his perceptions to a new way of seeing? Was the human mind capable of processing thousands of pieces of information at once? He hesitated no longer, knowing that if he did he might never take the chance.

He touched his foot down.

Again, the liquid found a way in. It rushed into him, his nerves cried out, screaming to life, but he kept his foot in the sea.

There was, however, a subtle difference this time. Although images rushed into him, millions of them, they did not explode into him. He saw a battle, thousands of naked humans throwing spears and slaying others with blades hewn from teeth; a great cloud flattening in the heavens above a city, mushrooming; a man sitting before a fire in a desert night. These things and more careened his way, but instead of making contact, they sped past; it was as if he was traveling in the wrong direction down the center lane of a freeway, and cars were speeding past him on both sides.

For a moment, he imagined his hand was lifting, but realized he wasn't moving at all; he'd somehow projected his body into the vision. His astral hand reached out and, as if they were electricity, the images buzzed and shocked him. But they slowed, so he held them static for a second, wondering how he might find something relevant. It's all relevant, something told him, and he instinctively knew this to be true, but he knew he didn't have time to watch the history of the earth, or the universe, or perhaps the cosmos, unfold before him.

Suddenly, a woman with straight brown hair appeared. She was reared back, she was laughing, and she was his mother. He c.o.c.ked his head to one side, remembering the pose, and then he saw that she was surrounded by friends, and his father before her, a camera lens covering his eye. Then he snapped Robert's favorite picture of his mother.

After this, random images of her life blazed past-she was pregnant, he was born, she was sick, she was outside Earth Cathedral that day, light surrounded her, took her.

”Slow down,” said Robert, and to his surprise everything did.

And then he said it, the words that changed everything. ”Go back.”

For a moment, all was black. Then two white and black animals appeared in the darkness, and he squinted, thinking he wasn't seeing things clearly, but then he saw the wagon. A mother and a father sat beside a little girl he immediately knew was his own mother.

They were approaching a town.

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