A Vision of Fire (24 page)

The wave of lava would overwhelm the courtyard soon. Caitlin
had to find Bayarmii. She followed the sightline of tall columns away from the courtyard to the west, where the columns pierced the sea, shining green from their capstones. A full moon was gasping for breath between breaks in the clouds, strobing its blue-white light across the roiling ocean. The sea was flinging itself at the sky, hunching its back in titanic waves and bucking and kicking at the columns and the shore . . .

And at ships. Ships with long, graceful dragon's heads, each carved with a symbol of crescents entwined, the symbol that appeared on the capstones of the columns and in the paving stones of the courtyard—the sole remnant of a time before the rise of conflicting factions, chaos that helped bring a civilization to this precipice.

Focus, Caitlin, remember why you're here
, she told herself. She remembered a young man, a granddaughter, a seal, and felt her mind suddenly fuse with the grandmother's. She was holding Bayarmii's hand—

Then the earth shifted as a huge sea wave struck hard, and she fell. When she clambered upright Bayarmii was gone. Caitlin looked back, peering through smoke and mist, ash and flame. She saw that Bayarmii had run back to the white and gray seal, who was mad with fear inside the house. The trees burned outside the front door. It was too late. Too late to join the boy on the boat.

“The
cazh
!” screamed the grandmother. “It's our last chance to ascend together!”

The girl obeyed. One of the burning trees fell against the door, trapping the girl and seal inside. A flaming branch cracked on impact, slashed toward her, simultaneously shearing and cauterizing her arm. The words of the prayer became more powerful and immediate and the spirit of the girl rose . . .

Caitlin could only hope that Maanik was not experiencing this, that Bayarmii was subsumed in the moment. But her hope was overwhelmed by the grandmother's willpower. She would not abandon her granddaughter. She, too, knew the words. She had been a devotee
of the Priests in her youth. She spoke the
cazh
; she focused on the pulsing energy gathered above the dead and dying in the temple courtyard. Even as waves ran toward her and hot ash sizzled on her bare neck and arms, she spoke . . .

• • •

Ben saw Caitlin smile. Her expression was almost euphoric. She spoke with gestures: “Hundreds of feet in the air! I want to rise with the sea, with the wind, in a great swell! I want to look down at the white ice cliffs and the black columns . . .”

The conference room was vibrating as though a subway train were passing underneath, but it wasn't
moving
. Ben glanced outside. Through the driving rain and wind he thought he saw the East River rising in ­fifteen-foot waves. It had to be a trick of the thick glass, the rain, the mist.

He turned back to Caitlin. Her head was upraised, her arms in a pose he had seen when Maanik was at her most distressed, just before they used the blackberries cue. Caitlin's left fingers were spreading and reaching farther, seeking or pointing, he couldn't tell. There was a rippling above her, like rising heat.

“It's everywhere!” Caitlin cried out in English.

Where is the guard?
Ben thought.
Isn't he hearing any of this?

He could feel something building in the room, but it was ephemeral, invisible. A hot wind coiled around him. Was he experiencing what Caitlin felt with Maanik, a spillover of some ancient energy, hovering unseen like the air itself?

“What is everywhere?” he called.

“The transpersonal plane!” she cried. “Souls are rising! My god, it is
powerful
! I am ascendant! But there's more . . . I can't see . . .”

• • •

Other minds brushed past her, transcending spirits interlacing with each other as they departed one realm and entered another, unified in
a churning mass soul. Yet everywhere, too, bodies were perishing before the ritual could be completed, before they could link with the group soul. Those souls were rising alone.

She could still question, she could still think:
Is that the key? But how can I stop so many from completing the
cazh
at once?

But she threw the questions away, wanting only to be here and now, with them. One spirit turned from the group and looked into Caitlin's eyes.

Not you
, the grandmother told her.
You are not one of us.

Though Caitlin longed to complete the transcendence with them, see what was out there, she obeyed.

I am still Caitlin
, she told herself
.

She held back, then withdrew. She focused on the conference room floor beneath her feet, heard the pounding rain on the windows.

I must remain myself.

She thought of the people in the park in Tehran, the men and women doing Tai Chi, moving with sublime balance. She pressed her left foot hard against the conference room floor, like a sprinter pushing her foot into a starting block. This reality, coming in through her left, would hold her here a little longer.

I am still me.

She felt stabilized, literally with one foot in each world. But she still had to stop the mass soul that was forming around her, above her, in Galderkhaan. The souls that were seeking other traumatized souls in Caitlin's present.

• • •

Ben saw Caitlin's smile vanish. He noticed the change in her position. She was speaking again but he was finding it harder to hear her. He realized suddenly that it wasn't her voice that was changing; there was a pressure increasing in his head, and his eardrums were throbbing, as though he were in an airplane that had depressurized. He opened his
mouth wide, worked his jaw, swallowed; it succeeded for an instant and then the pressure returned. With one eye on Caitlin he moved to the windows, trying to locate the source of the pressure. A vent . . . an ill-fitting window . . . a gap in the ceiling . . . ?

There was nothing. The wind threw rain at the windows like stones.

He set his cell phone on the table and ventured closer to Caitlin, staggering against the pressure in his head. Caitlin's hair was still floating. Her eyes were shut, her mouth was moving, her arms helping to fashion unfamiliar words. He fought against his brutal headache, to make his feet move toward the tin of tea.

“What do I do?” he whispered, half-praying for an answer.

• • •

Caitlin did not hear. Everywhere she looked, she could see the dead or dying. Beyond the trees she could see the same young man from Atash's vision, performing the
cazh
. Across the water she watched as a boat smashed into one of the largest pillars, coming to pieces, its inhabitants clawing at the waves, or raising their hands in supplication even as they drowned.
Gaelle
, Caitlin thought helplessly. There was nothing she could do to save them from their deaths. She had to press on, had to stop the rising group soul and protect others in the present . . .

• • •

Ben saw smoke rising from her flesh.

“Caitlin!”

“Don't . . . touch . . . me!”

There was a decanter of water on the conference table. He would use it if he had to. He did not understand very much but he knew this: they might never have this chance again. He had to let it play out.

• • •

Caitlin had no time left to think and not much of a rational mind to think with. Instead, she
felt
herself rise from the temple, rise from the conference room, beyond the ash and beyond the rain, into a cloud that was thunder and darkness, that was the coldness of the grave multiplied by eternity. Despite the grandmother's warning, Caitlin allowed herself to ascend, carried by the older woman's soul. Caitlin's grip on her own living body grew weaker.

Two worlds were merging violently. The storm seemed to roil above Manhattan as Galderkhaan was pulled into the sea with the roaring hiss of dying flames. The innumerable souls of the ascended were everywhere.

Caitlin clung single-mindedly to one thought, one objective: the group soul trying to form and cross the barrier of time. She thought of the young people she knew and did not know in her own world, others like Maanik and Gaelle and Atash who were made vulnerable by trauma and were probably being assaulted, their own souls being dragged painfully upward along with those of these ancient beings, for reasons still unknown. She had to stop them.

Below her, she saw the entire city, the roads and streets, the line of columns that ran from the volcano to the sea, glowing green with their strange energy—but also, in the capstone of the tallest column in the sea, a symbol. A triangle made of crescents within crescents. It was the same symbol she had seen Gaelle draw. The same one Maanik had drawn.

Caitlin glanced at the powerful, rising group soul, and then she knew what she had to do. She turned and plunged across the sky toward the largest column. There was no sense of weight or weightlessness, no sense of motion, only a sensation of sudden, lightning-like extension—point to point to point. Arms outstretched, she grabbed at the energy around the column as if it were tangible.

And it was.
She felt it writhe in her embrace, become one with her, like the power she'd received from the snake but exponentially more. She wrenched her body around and with a long sweep of her arms, she cast the power toward the courtyard. It flew through and away
from her, as in Haiti when, out of control, Caitlin had thrown Gaelle against a wall.

But this time she directed it.

The tsunami of lava was perilously close to the city as the energy reached the courtyard and infused it. The paving stones erupted in light from beneath, a brilliant glow that blazed through the huge triangle carved into them, the crescents within crescents.

Those who were still standing and chanting the
cazh
, those shocked Galderkhaani, screamed as the fusion of earth, fire, water, and light swept over them. Their movements changed from swaying to lurching tremors as their souls were yanked one from the other from the other, unlinked. Abruptly, their mortal screams stopped as their right and left brains ceased to function together. Their mouths remained frozen for a moment; an instant later the right sides of their bodies crumpled. They fell heavily to the stones where they died. Thick, bloody liquid flowed from their noses and mouths onto their burning white and yellow robes.

And Caitlin saw that once more their souls rose, invisible yet somehow tangible. But with this death, a death without the
cazh
, they were ascending as individuals. The group soul was no more. Whatever its purpose had been, that goal was unrealized. Whatever power had allowed the bonded souls to reach through time, that was gone.

The mammoth wave of lava broke over the city and destroyed it. There was nothing epic or prolonged about its demise: one moment Galderkhaan struggled, then it was gone. Caitlin felt the ecstasy of the energy depart from her; no longer immaterial, she plummeted into the sea . . .

And dropped to the floor of the conference room. Ben broke her fall.

There was a quiet hiss as the smoke rising from her body was suddenly doused. Ben stroked her hair back. Her eyes were closed, her mouth relaxed.

“Cai?”

There was no response. He flipped the top from the tin, brought the jasmine tea to her nose, and held her tightly with his free arm. After a moment he heard her very quietly inhale.

“Cai? Are you . . . here?”

She opened her eyes, struggled to focus. Then, finding his face, she smiled.

“Yeah,” she said. “I'm here.”

CHAPTER 33

C
aitlin woke the next morning to see Jacob, fully dressed, leaning over her, smoothing her hair from her face. Caitlin blinked at the light shining from the hall through the open door, the tall figure of her father in the frame. Weak sunlight was filtering around the corners of her curtains.

“I'm going to school with Grandpa,” Jacob signed, then pasted himself to her for a hug and a kiss. Smiling, she watched the bedroom door shut quietly behind them.

Her eyes closed and she suddenly felt achingly alone, lonelier than she'd ever felt in her life. She had been bonded in a group the night before, in a still-unimaginable way, and now that was gone. She ran a hand through her hair; it felt too fine and unfamiliar.

Knowing it was four a.m. in Santa Monica, she phoned her sister anyway. Abby sounded wide awake.

“Whoa . . . I was
just
thinking about you.”

Caitlin was silent, staring at the ceiling. There was no way to tell her about any of it.

“Cai? Are you there? Did you butt-dial me?”

“Abby, do you think souls are real?”

“That's . . . unexpected.”

“I know, I'm just—I don't know. You've been around death. I mean, person-to-person. Much more than I have.”

“Too much of it,” Abby said. “Too much of it young, sudden,
needless
. Drugs, drinking, texting while driving, hit by cars, shot in malls.”

“And?”

“And, yeah, I do. This may sound nutty but sometimes when people die—only for an instant, the kind of moment that's so fast you wonder if it happened—I can feel them. Not always, but briefly, after the life signs are gone, it's very clear to me that I'm not the only person in the room. The feeling is stronger if I'm holding their hand.” Abby waited a moment. “Why are you asking?”

Caitlin had expected the question; there was no easy answer. “Just soul searching,” she joked.

“Cute,” Abby groaned. “Dad says you've been traveling.”

“Oh yeah,” Caitlin said. “That I have. Call you later?”

“Sure. I've got to go anyway.”

“Wait—you were just
thinking
about me? What are you doing up at this hour?”

“Got an early surgery,” Abby said.

“Ah. Good luck.”

“Thanks. Burn victim.”

When Abby said “burn victim,” Caitlin felt herself tense. She wondered if that would always happen, going forward.

Their call ended and she lay back. Her eyes closed, her mind closed, and she was asleep again.

Three hours later, when Caitlin was fully awake and caffeinated, the tabby Arfa draped across her lap, she opened her computer and her e-mail. At the top of the list was one from Ben, subject line:
2.5M hits in 4 hrs
. Caitlin clicked on the attached video—and she was watching brightly painted trucks full of men and lumber driving into something like a shopping center in India, but a wrecked, distressed shopping center. It looked as if it had been through a hurricane. The men piled out of the trucks and hurried to greet the few people who
were edging cautiously toward them from nearby houses. Then the video jumped to show construction—men repairing domed roofs—and people setting up long tables with lunch.

Caitlin called Ben and he picked up immediately.

“What am I watching?” she said, smiling as she saw little kids helping to drag planks toward a blasted shop front.

“The solution to all our problems,” he said. “This video was posted at around noon Jammu time and it went viral faster than any video in history. This shopping center saw a showdown between armed forces with guns, bombs, you name it. That's what I was watching the night after we—after I stayed over. Apparently, truckloads of Pakistanis and Indians just converged on the city and now they're rebuilding everything, the temple, the stores, the cinema. When the video went viral there was an international outcry calling for reconciliation. Both delegations showed up this morning to make a deal. It was—actually, it was very strange, like they'd all woken from a fever or something.”

“That's amazing,” Caitlin said. “It's too . . .”

“Impossible?” Ben asked. “Nevertheless, that was all it took. Supposed enemies treating each other as people, with dignity. Cooperation. Kindness.”

“And the governments listened,” she mused.

“Listened? This was just the face-saving grassroots stuff they were praying for.”

“What does that mean for Kashmir?”

“We're not sure,” Ben said. “Both governments agreed to pull their troops from the region. It'll take some effort before they actually
do
it, but the ambassador and his counterpart are hard at work on that now. He has a second wind, I'll tell you that.” Ben chuckled. “Actually, I guess I don't have to tell you that.”

“How is Maanik?”

“The ambassador said she's herself again.”

“Specifics?”

“She has her energy back, her joy, her enthusiasm, and she's been on the phone with her friends nonstop.”

“Does she remember anything?”

“Honestly, Cai, nobody wants to ask her. She was told she had a very bad lung infection and she didn't question it.”

“What about the dog?”

“He's fine too,” Ben said. “That was the third thing I asked: how's the world, how's Maanik, how's Jack London.”

“He's a part of this somehow,” Caitlin said. “Like the snake in Haiti, possibly even those rats that massed downtown.”

“Odd grouping, wouldn't you say?”

“I would.”

“Any idea how they're connected?”

“None,” she admitted. But the claw tips of the crescent symbol flashed through her brain.

“Speaking of which, you and the snake showed up in a YouTube video,” Ben said.

“What?”

“Yeah. I'll send you the link. Don't worry. Only a couple hundred hits. You haven't gone viral.”

“Am I identified?” she asked.

“Not by name,” he replied. “Now I have one more question before I head back into the conference room. How are
you
?”

She chuckled mirthlessly. “Honestly? I have no idea. My brain is present and accounted for but . . . there's been a shift of some kind.” She extended a hand toward the little sliver of Hudson River she could see outside the window. “There's something . . . different. I can't explain it.”

“You self-hypnotized into quite a state,” Ben said. “I'm not surprised you're a little disoriented.”

“Disoriented but connected.”

“To what?”

“I don't know that either.” She let her hand drop. “To something.”

There was more to say, a lot more, but Caitlin let it go. Everything she'd experienced would require a great deal more reflection and investigation.

“Can I assume that whatever it was, whatever
they
were, they're gone now?” Ben asked.

“I'm not sure. I'm not sure they were ever
here
.”

“If by ‘here' you mean ‘on earth,' the linguistic evidence certainly supports their existence,” Ben said. “You and Maanik didn't make that up.”

“No,” Caitlin agreed. “But a civilization that may have existed before we began recording history . . . a civilization that still seems to have active moving parts, probably
did
make it up.”

“And—group hug—a civilization you and I seem to have discovered,” he added proudly.

“That too. It's a very big idea to process.”

“One which I'm thrilled to investigate,” he said. “I was looking at the data from yesterday. There are a lot of new words and two of them kept repeating, something about ‘those of spirit' and ‘those of mechanism.' ”

“Priests and Technologists,” Caitlin said.

“Yes, that's about right.” He hesitated. “You want to talk about it?”

“I'm still unclear about what the Technologists were doing. The Priests were attempting to escape their physical bodies and ascend, but they were also trying to unite.”

“You mean join hands, like that kid's game, Ring Around the Rosie?”

“No, more like what I said before, a séance. A ritual where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. A joining that was very powerful and getting stronger, that was fishing for souls here, now. That's why I did what I did. I felt that if I could interfere with their ceremony, they would be unable to rise as a group.”

“What was the point of their joining?”

“I don't know.”

Ben was silent.

“Go ahead,” Caitlin said. “Say it.”

“Cai, do you actually believe any of that? Especially the part about going into the past? Not physically, obviously, but out-of-body?”

“I must have,” she said. “I mean, reverse-engineer it, Ben. Maanik is okay.”

“Yes . . .”

“The things I just described fit with the words you translated.”

“Also true,” Ben agreed.

“So how else do you explain it?”

Ben was quiet again.

Caitlin fell silent too, sifted through scraps of memory. “Ben, did anything happen with my hair?”

“Why do you ask?”

“It's acting . . . unruly today.”

“Yes,” he said, and she heard reluctance. “It was standing on end.”

“Moving as if in a wind or water?”

“No, standing as if it got zapped with static electricity,” Ben answered thoughtfully. “A charge built up by the storm, I figured.”

“A charge I felt through those blast-proof windows? That you didn't feel?”

Again, Ben was silent.

“Well, one puzzle at a time,” she said. “Something changed Maanik after the assassination attempt, and something yesterday changed her back. The world is a little saner today. Maybe that's enough for now.”

“Not for me,” Ben admitted. “I'm still stuck on the simple, non-metaphysical question of how Galderkhaan could have existed at all.”

She started at that. “You know its name?”

“Yeah, you said it last night.”

“Galderkhaan,” she repeated.

Ben continued. “And it fits the rest of the language, vaguely Mongolian. How could modern humans—they were modern, weren't they?”

“They appeared to be,” she answered. “Shorter, maybe? A golden tinge, though that may have been the play of light and smoke.”

“Okay, but not Neanderthal or an early hominid,” Ben said. “How could they have thrived when our species was supposedly still lemurs in the trees?”

“I don't know.” She was silent for a moment. “There is one thing I do know, though.”

“What's that?”

“I've got to get going. A psychiatrist walks into her office—”

“Okay, go,” Ben said.

They ended the call and Caitlin gazed at the bright world outside, petted the purring cat. She noticed she was petting with her right hand. She switched to petting with her left hand and felt a flow of
something
roll up through her fingers to her heart, settling her, calming her. Arfa purred louder.

“What do you have to do with this?” she asked the cat. She gazed at pigeons on the ledge. “All of you?”

But even as Caitlin felt herself calm, a part of her stood back, apart, wondering what life was going to be like now.

She sighed and set the cat aside, returned to common ground between the old self and the new—her e-mail. She noticed near the top a message from Gaelle Anglade. There was something in the subject line that never would have been there just a few days before.

A smiley face.