The Traveler (30 page)

"We knew you couldn't resist," Antonio said.

"You're right about that. Fifty years ago the government wasted millions of dollars building this ridiculous missile site." Sophia moved past the trailer and pointed at the site. Gabriel saw three enormous concrete disks set in rusty steel frames. "Right over there 
are
the silo lids. They could be opened and shut from the inside. That was where they stored the missiles."

She turned on her heel and pointed to a mound of dirt about half a mile away. "After the missiles were pulled out, the county turned that area over there into a dump. Beneath nine inches of dirt and a plastic tarp is twenty years of rotting garbage that sustains an enormous population of rats. The rats eat the garbage and multiply. The king snakes eat the rats, then live and breed in the silo. I study
splendida
and it's been quite successful, so far."

"So what are we going to do?" Gabriel asked.

"Have lunch, of course. Better eat this bread before it goes stale."

Sophia gave them all jobs and they prepared a meal with the perishable food. Maya was in charge of slicing a loaf of bread and she seemed annoyed with the dull knife. Lunch was simple, but delicious. Fresh tomatoes mixed with oil and vinegar. A very rich goat cheese cut into chunks.
Rye bread.
Strawberries.
For dessert, Sophia took out a bar of Belgian chocolate and gave everyone exactly two squares.

Snakes were everywhere. If they got in the way, Sophia picked them up firmly and carried them over to a moist patch of ground near the shed. Maya sat yoga style at the table as if one of the reptiles might slither up her leg. During the meal, Gabriel learned a few more facts about Sophia Briggs. No children.
Never married.
She had consented to hip surgery a few years ago but—other than that—she tried to stay away from doctors.

In her forties, Sophia began to make annual trips up to the Narcisse Snake Dens in Manitoba to study the fifty thousand red-sided garter snakes that emerged from limestone caves during their annual breeding cycle. She became close friends with a Catholic priest living in the area and, after many years, he revealed that he was a Pathfinder.

"Father Morrissey was an amazing man," she said. "Like most priests, he presided over thousands of christenings, weddings, and funerals, but he had actually learned something from the experience. He was a perceptive person.
Very wise.
Sometimes I felt he could read my mind."

"So why did he pick you?" Gabriel asked.

Sophia smeared the soft goat cheese on a piece of bread. "My people skills aren't the best in the world. In fact, I don't like people all that much. They're vain and foolish. But I've trained myself to be observant. I can focus on one thing and get rid of the extraneous details. Maybe Father Morrissey could have found someone better, but he got lymphatic cancer and died seventeen weeks after the diagnosis. I took a semester off and sat by the hospital bed while he gave me his knowledge."

When everyone had finished eating, Sophia stood up and looked at Maya. "I think it's time for you to go, young lady. I've got a sat phone in the trailer and it works most of the time. I'll call Martin when we're done."

Antonio picked up the empty canvas bags and headed back down the road. Maya and Gabriel stood close to each other, but neither one of them spoke. He wondered what he could say to her. Take care of yourself. Have a safe journey. See you soon. None of the commonplace farewells seemed to apply to a Harlequin.

"Goodbye," she said.

"Goodbye."

Maya went a few feet, then stopped and looked back at him. "Keep the jade sword with you," she said. "Don't forget. It's a talisman."

And then she was gone, her body becoming smaller and smaller as she disappeared down the road.

"She likes you."

Gabriel turned around and realized that Sophia had been watching them. "We respect each other ..."

"If a woman told me that, I would consider her to be extraordinarily dim-witted, but you're just a typical man." Sophia returned to the table and began to pick up the dirty dishes. "Maya likes you, Gabriel. But that's absolutely forbidden for a Harlequin. They have great power. In exchange for this gift they're probably the loneliest people in the world. She can't allow emotions of any sort to cloud her judgment."

As they stored the food and washed the dishes in a plastic tub, Sophia questioned Gabriel about his family. Her scientific training was evident in the systematic way she went about getting information. "How do you know that?" she kept asking. "What makes you think that's true?"

The sun drifted toward the western horizon. As the rocky ground began to cool, the wind grew stronger. It made the parachute above them snap and billow like a sail. Sophia looked amused when Gabriel described his failed attempts to become a Traveler. "Some Travelers can learn how to cross over on their own," she said. "But not in our frantic world."

"Why not?"

"Our senses are overwhelmed by all the noise and bright lights around us. In the past, a potential Traveler would crawl into a cave or find sanctuary in a church. You have to be in a quiet environment, like our missile silo." Sophia finished covering the food boxes and faced him. "I want you to promise that you'll remain in the silo for at least eight days."

"That seems like a long time," Gabriel said. "I thought you'd know fairly soon if I had the power to cross over."

"This is your discovery, young man, not mine. Accept the rules or go back to Los Angeles."

"Okay. Eight days. No problem." Gabriel walked over to the table to get his knapsack and the jade sword. "I want to do this, Dr. Briggs. It's important to me. Maybe I can contact my father and my brother—"

"I wouldn't think about that. It's not very helpful." Sophia brushed a king snake away from a storage bin and picked up a propane lantern. "You know why I like snakes? God created them to be clean, beautiful—and unadorned. Studying snakes, I've been inspired to get rid of all the clutter and foolishness in my life."

Gabriel looked around him at the missile site and the desert landscape. He felt like he was about to leave everything and go on a long journey. "I'll do whatever is necessary."

"Good. Let's go underground."

A thick black power cable ran from the windmill's electric generator to the missile silo. Sophia Briggs followed the cable across the concrete pad to a ramp that led down to a sheltered area with a steel floor.

"When they stored the missiles here, the main entrance was through a freight elevator. But the government took the elevator away when they sold the site to the county. The snakes get in a dozen different ways, but we have to use the emergency staircase." Sophia set her propane lantern on the ground and lit the wick with a wooden match. When the lantern was burning with a white-hot flame, she pulled up a hatch cover with two hands, exposing a steel staircase that led into darkness. Gabriel knew that the king snakes weren't dangerous to humans, but it made him uneasy to see a large specimen gliding down the steps.

"Where's he going?"

"One of many places.
There are between three and four thousand
splendida
in the silo. It's their breeding area." Sophia went down two steps and stopped. "Do the snakes bother you?"

"No. But it does seem a little unusual."

"Every new experience is unusual. The rest of life is just sleep and committee meetings. Now come along and shut the door be-hind you."

Gabriel hesitated a few seconds, and then shut the hatch. He was standing on the first step of a metal staircase that spiraled around the outside of an elevator shaft protected by a chain-link cage. Two king snakes were on the stairs in front of him and several more were inside the cage, moving up and down the old conduit pipes as if they were branches of a snake highway. The reptiles slithered past each other as their little tongues darted in and out, tasting the air.

He followed Sophia down the staircase. "Have you ever guided a person who thought he was a Traveler?"

"I've had two students in the last thirty years: a young woman and an older man. Neither one of them could cross over, but maybe that was my fault." Sophia glanced over her shoulder. "You can't
teach
people to be Travelers. It's more of an art than a science. All a Pathfinder can do is
try
to pick the right technique so that people can discover their own power."

"And how do you do that?"

"Father Morrissey helped me memorize
The 99 Paths.
It's a handwritten book of ninety-nine techniques and exercises developed over the years by visionaries from different religions. If you weren't prepared for the book, you might think it was all magic and moonbeams—a lot of nonsense thought up by Christian saints, Jews who studied the Kabbalah, Buddhist monks, and so on. But
The 99 Paths
isn't mystical at all. It's a practical list of ideas with the same goal: to break the Light free of your body."

They reached the bottom of the elevator shaft and stopped in front of a massive safety door still hanging on one hinge. Sophia connected two parts of the electrical cable and a lightbulb went on near a discarded power generator. They pushed open the door, walked down a short corridor, and entered a tunnel that was wide enough for a pickup truck. Rusted girders lined the walls like the ribs of an enormous animal. The floor was constructed with flat steel plates. Ventilation ducts and water pipes hung above them. The old fluorescent fixtures had been disconnected, and the only light came from six ordinary bulbs attached to the power cable.

"This is the main tunnel," Sophia said. "From end to end, it's about a mile long. The whole area is like a giant lizard buried underground. We're standing in the middle of the lizard's body. Walk north to the head and you'll reach missile silo one. The lizard's front legs lead to silos two and three, and the two rear legs lead to the control center and the living quarters. Walk south to the end of the tail and you'll find the radio antenna that was stored underground."

"Where are all the snakes?"

"Beneath the floor or in the crawl space above you."
Sophia guided him down the tunnel. "It's very dangerous to explore this place if you don't know where you're going. All the floors are hollow, set on steel springs that could take the shock of an explosion. There are levels built on levels and, in some places, you can fall a long way."

They turned into a side corridor and entered a large round room. The outer walls were made of concrete blocks, painted white, and four half walls divided the room into sleeping areas. One of the areas had a folding cot with a sleeping bag, pillow, and foam-rubber mattress. A second propane lantern, a covered bucket, and three water bottles were placed a few feet from the cot.

"This used to be the staff dormitory. I stayed underground for a few weeks when I was doing my first population count of
splendida."

"And I'm supposed to live here?"

"Yes. For eight days."

Gabriel looked around at the bare room. It reminded him of a prison. No complaints, he thought. Just do what she says. He dropped his knapsack on the floor and sat on the cot.

"All right.
Let's get going."

Sophia moved restlessly around the room, picking up pieces of broken concrete and flicking them into a corner. "I'll run through the basics first. All living things carry around a special kind of energy called the Light. You can call it a `soul' if you want. I don't worry too much about theology. When people die, their Light returns to the energy that surrounds us. But Travelers are different. Their Light can go away and then return to their living body."

"Maya said that the Light travels to different realms."

"Yes. People call them `realms' or `parallel worlds.' Once again, you can use any term that makes sense to you. The scripture of every major religion has described different aspects of these realms. They're the source of all mystical visions. Many saints and prophets have written about the realms, but the Buddhist monks living in Tibet made the first attempt to understand them. Before the Chinese invaded, Tibet was a theocracy for more than a thousand years. The peasants supported monks and nuns who could examine the accounts of Travelers and organize the data into a system. The six realms aren't a Buddhist or a Tibetan concept. The Tibetans are simply the first people who described the whole thing."

"So how do I get there?"

"The Light breaks out of your body. You have to be moving slightly for the process to happen. The first time it's surprising—even painful. Then your Light has to cross four barriers to reach each of the different realms. The barriers are composed of water, fire, earth, and air. There is no particular order to cross them. Once your Light finds the passageway through, you'll always find it again.

"And then you enter the six realms," Gabriel said. "So what are they like?"

"We're living in the Fourth Realm, Gabriel. That's human reality. So what is our world like?
Beautiful.
Horrible.
Painful.
Exhilarating."
Sophia picked up a shard of concrete and tossed it across the room. "Any reality with king snakes and mint chocolate-chip ice cream has its good side."

"But the other places?"

"Each person can find traces of the realms within their own heart. The realms are dominated by a particular quality. In the Sixth Realm of the gods, the sin is pride. In the Fifth Realm of the half gods, the sin is jealousy. You need to understand that we're not talking about God, the power that created the universe. According to the Tibetans, the gods and half gods are like human beings from another reality."

"And we're living in the Fourth Realm ..."

"Where the sin is desire."
Sophia turned and watched a king snake moving slowly down a conduit pipe. "The animals of the Third Realm are ignorant of all others. The Second Realm is inhabited by the hungry ghosts who can never be satisfied. The First Realm is a city of hate and anger, ruled by people without compassion. There are other names for this place: Sheol, Hades,
Hell
."

Gabriel stood up like a prisoner ready for a firing squad. "You're the Pathfinder. So tell me what I'm supposed to do."

Sophia Briggs looked amused. "Are you tired, Gabriel?"
Its
been a long day."

"Then you should go to sleep."

Taking a felt-tip marker out of her pocket, Sophia walked over to the wall. "You need to break down the distinction between this world and your dreams. I'm going to show you the eighty-first path. It was discovered by the Kabbalist Jews who lived in the northern Galilee town of Safed."

Using the marker, she wrote four Hebrew letters on the wall. "This is the tetragrammaton—the four-letter name of God. Try to keep the letters in your mind when you start to go to sleep. Don't think about yourself or me—or
splendida.
Three times during your sleep, you should ask yourself, `Am I awake or am I dreaming?' Don't open your eyes, but stay within the dream world and observe what happens."

"And that's all?"

She smiled and began to walk out of the room. "It's a start."

Gabriel pulled off his boots, lay down on the cot, and stared at the four Hebrew letters. He couldn't read or pronounce them, but the shapes themselves began to float through his mind. One letter looked like a shelter from the storm.
A cane.
Another shelter.
And then a small curving line that looked like a snake.

He fell into a deep sleep, and then he was awake or half awake—he wasn't sure. He was looking down at the
tetragrammaton
drawn with red-colored sand on a gray slate floor. As he watched, a gust of wind blew God's name away.

***

GABRIEL WOKE UP covered with sweat. Something had happened to the lightbulb in the dormitory and the room was dark. A faint light came from the corridor that led to the main tunnel.

"Hello!" he shouted. "Sophia?"

"I'm coming."

Gabriel heard footsteps enter the dormitory room. Even in the darkness, Sophia seemed to know where she was going. "This happens all the time. Moisture seeps through the concrete and it gets into the electrical connections." Sophia tapped her finger on the lightbulb and the filament lit up. "There we go."

She walked over to the cot and picked up the kerosene lantern. "This is your lantern. If the lights go out or you want to go exploring, take it along with you." She studied his face. "So how did you sleep?"

"It was okay."

"Were you aware of your dream?"

"Almost.
Then I couldn't stay in it anymore."

"All this takes time. Come with me. And bring that sword with you.

Gabriel followed Sophia out, into the main tunnel. He didn't know how long he'd been sleeping. Was it morning or still night? He noticed that the lightbulbs kept changing. Eighty feet above them, wind was rattling the leaves of the Joshua trees and pushing the blades of the windmill. Sometimes the wind blew strongly and the lights burned brightly. When the wind faded, the only power came from batteries, and the bulb filaments glowed dark orange like embers from a dying fire.

"I want you to work on the seventeenth path. You brought along that sword, so it seems like a good idea. This path was invented by people in Japan or China: some kind of sword culture. It teaches you how to focus your thoughts by not thinking."

They stopped at the end of the tunnel and Sophia pointed to a patch of water on the rusty steel plates. "Here we go ..." "What am I supposed to do?"

"Look up, Gabriel.
Straight up."

He raised his head and saw a drop of water forming on one of the arched girders above them. Three seconds later the drop fell off the girder and splattered on the steel in front of him.

"Draw your sword and cut the drop in half before it hits the ground."

For a second he thought that Sophia was teasing him with an impossible task, but she wasn't smiling. Gabriel drew the jade sword. Its polished blade gleamed in the shadows. Holding the weapon with two hands, he got into a kendo stance and waited to attack. The water drop above him grew larger, trembled,
then
fell. He swung the sword and missed completely.

"Don't anticipate," she said. "Just be ready."

The Pathfinder left him alone beneath the girder. A new water drop was forming. It was going to fall in two seconds. One second.
Now.
The drop fell and he swung the sword with hope and desire.