Penult (23 page)

I became exhausted to an extent I had
rarely experienced in the Liminality. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe
it was all my mental exertion. Whatever the case, I was feeling
drowsy and sluggish. I got up and waddled back to the
porch.

“
Hey guys. I might try and
hit the sack.”

“
So early?” said Bern,
adjusting the straps on his already overloaded pack
frame.

“
We should let the boy
rest,” said Lille, who was systematically miniaturizing their
possession one by one and arranging them neatly in the tweed
suitcase. ” He’s had a long and tiring day. We can finish up our
packing inside.”

Bern helped her drag the suitcase into
the cabin.

I plopped down on the mattress and
peeled back the covers.

“
Hey … uh …
guys?”

Bern popped his head around the door
frame.

“
Yes, James?”

“
If I fade before the
morning … it was real nice seeing you both.”

“
Goes without saying,” said
Bern. “It is always a pleasure to have you with us.”

“
Sweet dreams, James,”
called Lille.

***

I conked out quickly. Dreams soon
overtook me. The visions that came early in my slumber I’m pretty
sure were simply dreams. Playing out back behind my old house in
Fort Pierce. Mom and dad carrying dishes out onto the picnic table
on the deck.. A birthday party with just the three of us. I
couldn’t even tell whose birthday it was. Was it mine? Did it
matter?

And then there I was on a long strand
of windswept beach, only it didn’t feel like Fort Pierce anymore.
The sand stung my face and drove salty grit into my mouth. I had
wings strapped to my back and the wind threatened to blow me over.
Like an idiot, I spat up wind and the saliva splatted right back
into my face. Things were getting too real. I was crossing some
kind of threshold.

I recognized this feeling now and it
excited me. This was the Singularity calling. I directed every
ounce of my will towards extracting another vision of Karla, some
hint of whose city streets she could have possibly been strolling
in my last fleeting vision of her.

I repeated her name over and over like
a mantra. I erected an image of her in my brain, tacking together
memories like a collage. Her sharp but elegant nose and chin. Those
intelligent eyes. That slender waist. Subtle but pretty breasts.
Slim but well-muscled legs. The nooks and crannies that delineated
her collar bone and shoulder blades.

But it was all for naught. The
Singularity did not respond to my bidding. Instead, I was yanked
off the beach like a newbie paraglider being towed by a power boat
twirling out of control.

I was back under the dome, zipping
from head to head, then outside in the tunnels from pod to pod,
feeling the fear and joy of those new to Root, to the simple minds
of the Reapers, though their intellect was greater than I had ever
imagined. They too could feel fear and hope and anger. They too had
souls, simple ones, but souls just the same.

I burst out onto the surface, passing
through armies of cherubs with heads even more barren than the
Reapers, to a surprised Seraph who shunted me away as if I were a
gnat, to stragglers and squatters huddled in hiding places across
the plains and hills, to the distant mesas far up the river valley,
where the resistance was making its last stand.

I kept on going, crossing
an ocean, passing from ship to sleek ship powered by the same
engines that drove the wings of Seraphim, with incubating Cherubim
lining the decks shoulder to shoulder like
18
^th
century slaves, a single Seraph strapped in its heart,
powering batteries of cogged turbines with simple flexes of his
shoulder.

And my mind dove into those engines,
to the impossibly responsive material that amplified every action a
hundredfold or more, deeper and deeper, smaller and smaller, until
I could see the very nanomolecular structures that made the engines
work, a series of conical and collapsible nanotubes melding carbon
and silicon and nitrogen in ways I could instantly understand even
though I had resisted my mother’s attempts to teach me chemistry
back in my home schooling days.

I saw exactly how the damned things
worked, and why a sidelong force had no effect while a head-on
collision gave back a thousand-fold what it received. Someone,
something was helping me see through the magic. I was not alone. I
was being guided. I was not alone. Billions of souls shuttling
through the Singularity beside me, most on their own errands and
missions. To some others whose identities remained obscure, I was
the mission and they were my guides.

They whisked me away from the boats
and pressed on across the sea, to the windswept beaches where I
left my dreams. But my excursion did not stop there. I continued on
across a gleaming desert to hills studded and riddled with temples
and villas and grottoes almost too brilliant and white to gaze
upon.

Again I hopped from soul to soul, all
Freesouls now, though I could sense that their only difference from
Cherubim was their level of consciousness. There were Hashmallim
here and many suspicious and inscrutable Seraphim and categories of
these so-called angels I had yet to encounter. This was Penult and
as I climbed up into its hills, the mansions grew ever more
extravagant, the minds ever more private and immune to the
Singularity. I homed in on one head, drawn to it like a meteor to a
planet and slammed into its thoughts.

I had never known a mind so placid and
content, with all worries and anxieties delegated absolutely and
unapologetically to other souls. My mind had never approached such
a state once I abandoned infancy. And yet here I was infesting it,
forcing it to consider a possibility it had never
entertained.

My target screamed in fury, both
internally and externally. It mobilized a cyclone of feelings awash
in every hue of outrage and shock and righteous fury. I felt my
grip loosen and I was blown away like a leaf in a gale.

The Singularity shattered into
fragments of dream, confused and jumbled like a disorganized
nightmare. I awoke sweating on the mattress on the floor of Bern
and Lille’s cabin, with my hosts staring down at me with concern in
the yellow glow of the faux candle in Bern’s hand.

“
James? Is everything
alright?”

“
Whoa!” That was all I
could say.

“
Bad dreams
again?”

“
No, not
dreams.”

I hopped up from the mattress and went
to the window of the cabin. “When time do the lights come on in
this place?”

“
Soon, I would expect,”
said Lille. “If you want we could put out some more
candles.”

“
Could you? I’m going out
into the garden. I … I have an idea. And I don’t want to lose
it.”

***

Hours, I plugged away in a circle of
candle light while the artificial sky of the bubble steadily
brightened strand by strand. Luther had even created a patch of
brightness that migrated slowly across the dome, the way a sun
might. It was nothing compared to the perfect illusion of the
original Burg but it was a start. I never realized how hard Luther
had to work to create his simulacra.

Two dozen replicas of the Seraph’s
wing joint were strewn before me, perfect copies of the knobs and
arcs, cogs and ratchets of the original. One by one I dove in and
applied my vision of the nanomolecular pattern I had witnessed via
the Singularity to the critical surface, and one by one I created a
functional engine.

I knew I had the problem licked when
the first one I tested slapped my palm back so hard it raised a
blood blister. Thereafter, I tested them with a tiny strand of root
no wider than a grass stalk. Brushing them with a feather’s touch
was enough to get the joint to cycle through its entire range of
motion, lifting its appendage vertical before pumping downward with
power. Now I saw what such an engine could do with a
wing.

As I reached to create engine number
twenty-five I noticed that I could barely see my fingertips. The
fade! It was finally starting to happen.

“
Bern!” I
shouted.

He came running out of the
cabin.

“
Is everything
alright?”

“
I’m fading. I don’t know
when I’ll be back, if ever. Say bye to Lille. Thanks for
everything. And … you need to get these to Luther and Olivier. But
be careful, touch them wrong and they have a nasty kick. Tell
Olivier that I … I—”

But I was already gone.

Chapter 22:
Awakened

I did not wake up on that futon in
Fiona and Britt’s attic. Dazed and befuddled, at first I didn’t
know where I was, all tangled in sweaty sheets surrounded by clicks
and beeps and the competing murmurs of multiple televisions and
conversations.

But this was a hospital, of course.
The sun poured through a window framed with ivy. I recognized the
worn and variegated brick of the building across the street. Karla
and I had bought cappuccinos from the outdoor café it housed at
ground level. It was the same medical center we had come to visit
Renfrew.

I was alone in the room, with an IV in
my arm, all wired up to a heart monitor. A nurse bustled by the
open door, glanced and did a double take.

“
Mr. Moody! You’re awake.
How lovely.”

“
Why am I here?”

“
Because your friends found
you unconscious,” said the nurse.

“
So? Maybe I was
sleeping.”

“
You were basically …
comatose as far we could tell. Unresponsive to any stimuli
whatsoever.” She came over and slapped a blood pressure cuff on my
upper arm.

Jessica bopped into the room, a
magazine tucked under her arm.

She beamed when she saw me.
“James?”

“
Why the heck did you bring
me to the freaking hospital? I’m fine.”

“
We were worried. We
thought you might have OD’ed or something.”

“
On what? You know I don’t
do that shit. Anymore.”

“
We couldn’t know that for
sure. You were convulsing at one point. We had to call the
ambulance to take you.”

“
Be right back,” said the
nurse. “Everything looks good, but I’m going to fetch the
doctor.”

“
Thirsty? Can I get you
something to drink?” said Jess.

I waited for the nurse to leave and
lowered my voice. “Jess. Of all people, you should know better. You
know what happens when the roots take me.”

“
But James, your blackouts
were never like this. Your heart rate dropped to forty beats a
minute. Your blood pressure fell dangerously low. You were barely
breathing. The doctors were convinced it was a heroin overdose but
the naloxone did nothing. You were out cold for two days
solid.”

I waited for the cobwebs to clear from
my head.

“
Is Karla back?”

“
No.”

“
Any word from
her?”

“
Nothing.”

“
Damn!”

“
So you were in that place?
The … before … after … life place.”

“
Yeah. This trip … was a
doozy.”

“
So how are things over
there?”

“
Terrible. It’s been
invaded.”

“
By who?”

I just shook my head. “You wouldn’t
understand.”

“
O-kay.” The look on her
face told me she had mixed feelings about pursuing the topic any
further. I was more than happy to drop the subject.

“
So … no news about
Karla?”

“
No, but—”

“
Did you tell anyone she’s
missing? Did you tell the police?”

“
You told us not to, but
Helen—”

“
Helen did
what?”

“
She placed an anonymous
report.”

“
She did what?”

“
We had to do something.
And the thing is, they traced her call and showed up at the
house.”

“
Crap.”

“
But maybe they can find
her.”

“
I guess, but—“

“
So the interviewed us.
Collected some of the things she left behind. They’d like to talk
to you as well, when you’re feeling better. But that was that. They
said they’d be in touch.”

“
But I can’t talk to them!
I’m here illegally.”

“
We gave them your assumed
name. No worries, right? You have a matching passport.”

“
A fake one. But … what’s
done is done.” I sighed. “So how’s Ren doing?”

“
Um … well … he’s down the
hall, actually. They re-admitted him for complications. His lungs
were more damaged than they thought. He’s got a touch of pneumonia
now. He’s actually just a few rooms down the hall from you. They
were going to make you roomies but he needed some special
equipment. So he’s in the ICU. But I should mention, Fiona says
there were some strange messages on her answering machine. And
someone left a note under the door. Just a phone number and a
name.”