"The freak show's here," Jon Singer said. In Japanese.
The army guy driving the shit-brown Tahoe turned to look at the two boys in the back seat, ignoring the ice-slick New Mexico highway. "Wha'd he say?"
"Don't know," Ian Singer said. "He's speaking Jap. Or something."
"Yeah, but whaddoes it mean?"
Ian shrugged. "Fuck if I know. I'm not him."
The army guy snorted and went back to wrestling the big Tahoe through the New Mexico mountains. Jon resumed his slack-jawed inspection of the world outside. Reflections slid past on his cornea, white-bright with snow on every north-facing hillock. He looked empty, drugged.
Highway shield and crest evident of heraldic design but font usage and application indicative of workaday operation, uninspired, insipid, a stale interpretation of a grand dream, Jon thought, as they passed a road sign. All communication, textual or graphical, set off a firestorm of ideas in Jon's mind, ideas that could not always find release. He read Arabic when he was five, and cried and wiped his eyes, seeing the violence, the slash of sword and the burning of villages in its too-vital form. He also saw the hidden violence in the oriental letterforms, but it was tame and channeled violence, tolerable.
After a while, they came to a cave, set into the cold gray mountainside. Chain-link fence and a lonely-looking guard shack stood vigil, with a faded sign announcing this was a RESTRICTED AREA.
The capital letters were not menacing. Jon didn't even read them, instead looking at the phonograph outlines of the mountain peaks above. Were there hidden messages?
"Looks like a bad movie set," Ian said.
The army guy laughed, hurr, hurr, like he heard that comment all the time.
Jon had a sudden moment of clarity. His mother and father, sitting down at their kitchen table with the too-polite violent government man with the perfect suit, talking about what Jon was going to do with his life. And then the offer.
"What else is he going to do?" his father asked, signing it.
"What else is he going to do?" Jon said, in Arabic, tears brimming in his eyes.
They drove into the mountain.
"The freak show's here," Guy Yamazaki said.
"Don't call him that," Emily Vargas said automatically.
"Don't call him that, colonel," Guy said.
Emily rolled her eyes. They tore themselves away from the monitor and went to greet their guests. The guests who just might save Guy's career.
Or do something even more incredible.
"He doesn't drool or anything retarded like that," Ian said. He sat slouched in the cold metal chair, his arms crossed. The cold gray meeting-room walls and ancient fluorescent fixtures reflected in his hazel eyes.
"I didn't think he did," Emily said.
Prim, so prim, so proper, so concealed, so hateful, so compromised, thought Jon. That attitude, those crossed arms, the moment's hesitation before sitting down, the pursed lips, the tense muscles.
Jon was a year younger than Ian, but his open, innocent face made him seem much more childlike. Jon shared his dark hair and slight build with his brother, but his piercing blue eyes were unique.
"Ask him a direct question, most of the time you'll get an answer," Ian said. "Just sometimes in another language. Or one of them diagrams he draws."
Silence from the colonel, a fiftyish oriental guy who looked like he'd sunken into his uniform.
"Hello, Jon," Emily said. "Are you looking forward to working with us?"
Silence.
"Do you have any questions?" Guy asked.
Silence.
Ian shook his head. "No, no, no. Those aren't di-rect. Listen." He turned to Jon. "So what did you see on the drive up here?"
Jon didn't turn to look at him, but something focused in his clear blue eyes. "It's the ancient conflict," he said. "Making, creating, birthing this new world. Scars like tattoos. Most hidden, remade. But not here. Records like phonograph grooves in the hills, waiting to be played again. Evil held in check. The mythic come to life."
Silence. Guy and Emily looked at each other. She shook her head, infinitesimally.
"He's right, ain't he?"
"Like Tarot," Emily said. "We could read anything into it."
"But he got the gist, didn't he?"
"I hope he does better at the real translations."
Ian laughed and rocked back in his seat. "He was the one who finally got some meaning out of those Incan things, babe," he said. "Quo-poo, or whatever they call them. Spent a week babbling about how it mapped to 'archetypical structures in the brain, holographic notation, lost geometries.' I remember writing that down for him.He proved the Voynich Manuscript was a bunch of crap. Except that one page."
Emily shuddered, looking away.
"We know why he's here. Why are you here?" Guy asked.
Ian smiled at them and walked out of the room. After a few moments, Jon got up and followed him. Ian came back into the room, and Jon followed.
"So will he pitch a fit if you aren't around?" Guy asked.
For a moment, Ian's eyes narrowed. "No," he said, finally. "He just likes me nearby. Plus, I can't argue with the pay."
"Let's get you to your rooms," Emily said. "You've had a long flight."
"Separate rooms are okay?" Guy said.
"Yeah, as long as they're close," Ian said. "But what about our questions? What're we working on? What's so damned important?"
Guy grinned. "You'll see."
Jon grinned back at him. Direct, totally direct, broken but surprisingly honest, good, too many secrets, he liked this sad powerless guy, he was OK.
"An idiot-savant now?" Emily said, when she and Guy were alone once again, in the small lunchroom that served as an impromptu mess. Of all the places in the mountain warren, it was the most warm, comfortable, and human. Mainly because of the smell. Thousands of meals had been cooked here. Happy clutter and grease stains hid some of the drab government-issue furniture. Staffers had posted the Taos Hummer, the unofficial newsletter, on the cork boards. Well-thumbed copies of Anderson's Treatise lay on several tables.
"We need results," Guy said.
Emily just looked at him, her arms crossed.
"What's wrong with you?" Guy said.
"We're making progress. The fishfall last August, we're almost sure that was ours."
"We need more than fish and frogs!"
"We don't need this kid!"
"Yes we do! Damnit, Em, you know that. After the Seven Days in May . . ."
Emily nodded, squeezing back tears.
"It's a different world," Guy said. "I need to get this rolling."
"I feel like such a failure."
"You aren't."
"How do I tell the team?"
"I'll be there."
"You will?" Emily looked up at him.
"Yes," Guy said.
After a few long moments, Emily laid her hand on his arm.
"Want to come back to my room?" she said.
"Yes," he said, after a time.
"Whoa," Ian said, as the battered yellow freight elevator dropped into the main cavern. Around them, the huge space faded to thick, cloying darkness, broken only by dull red pinpoints that stretched off into the distance, seemingly for miles. Closer in, the red dots revealed themselves to be huge, softly glowing baroque towers, shot through with crimson threads that danced and shimmered in time to the famous Taos hum.
"What is this, some alien autopsy thing?" Ian said
"No," Guy said, frowning. "It's not an 'alien autopsy thing.' It's not even alien, as far as we can tell."
Emily put her hand on his arm. He shrugged it off.
"A guy from the Manhattan Project, Alan Anderson, found this place in 1946. He was the first person to hear the Taos Hum. Came up here after the war with a bunch of surplus mining equipment, and dug through to this."
"What does it do?"
Guy laughed. "That's what we've been trying to figure out for the past fifty years. Hopefully, Jon will be able to help us."
"Reverse-engineering alien technology."
"It's not alien," Guy said. He turned to Jon. "What do you think, Jon?"
"Singing themselves to perfection," Jon said, softly.
Guy and Emily exchanged glances again. Emily shrugged and half-turned away.
"Bet it's a weapon," Ian said, as the elevator reached the floor.
Guy gritted his teeth, muscles standing out in his neck.
Emily introduced them to the research staff. They nodded and went quickly back to their jobs, darting scared, suspicious glances at Jon. They were working around one of the towers. It was infinitely deep, polished, dark and translucent. In several places on its surface, the dull red and crimson threads were replaced with bright images of gleaming polychrome cities, people dressed in odd, flowing clothing, or spiky, oddly regular script that might have been language. One of the researchers, a burly man who looked more like a construction worker than a scientist, held his hand in a beam of light that came out of the tower, twisting and turning it and causing some of the pictures to change.
Singing to perfection song of perfection the melody the tune the calm way the way towards the new days interrupted, Jon thought, watching the beautiful notes on the screen. Perfect. Warm. Guiding him towards a rhythm. He began to move his hand, in much the same way as the researcher. Then he shook his head and frowned. It was wrong, all wrong. Like this, with the thumb up. Sharper. They needed precision, perfection.
Jon put his hand over the researcher's own, in the blue-tinged light beam. He fluttered his fingers once, with almost robotic precision.
"Hey!" the man said
When he moved his hand, the beam followed.
"What's he doing?" the man asked.
"Leave him alone," Emily said.
I'm a child, Jon thought. I need to put things together. He reached out, opening, straining towards a connection.
Deep within the network, Rhea woke again. As she awoke, she almost lost her grip on Erinye, who still struggled in the amber of her lattice. Rhea tightened her grip and pushed Erinye down into a dark and forgotten corner.
There was a mind. A new mind. Someone who grasped the rudiments of control. Rhea reached out to him.
Very different. Very damaged. But not boring.
She had talked to Anderson because she was bored, the man who saw the world through frightened, mechanical eyes, who had no interest in beauty or symphony. Then more of the dull people had come, and she had let them tinker, content she could stop them at any time.
Now they had brought this one. So fast. So open.
Rhea wakened more of herself.
Shortly after Jon took control of the beam, the hum shifted to a higher pitch and the dull red light coming from the towers flickered slightly brighter. The crimson threads writhed. Jon continued with his rhythmic finger movements, oblivious.
Elaine gasped and looked at the boy, open-mouthed, her eyes wide with something that might have been fear.
"Congratulations," Guy said. "It's never done that before."
The next day, Guy leaned over a screen in Emily's office and nodded as she pointed out the correlations.
"Frogs in Bangor, Maine," she said. "Several thousands of them. They were warm when they fell. They froze shortly after."
Guy nodded.
"Ball lightning at the Nine Ladies and Rollrights in England, both reported within minutes of Jon's first contact."
Emily smiled. "And this one. The airliner." She pointed out where it had disappeared over Japan and reappeared over Singapore, seemingly instantaneously. Verified by radar.
Guy smiled. "Still think he's a waste of time?"
Emily looked up at him, the cool blue light of the screen making her eyes bright and impenetrable. "We're still a long way from pinpoint effects to large-scale influencing."
"It's more than we had."
After a while, Emily sighed and nodded.
The researchers left the pillar at the end of the day, but Jon didn't leave. He stood with his hand in the beam, his fingers outstretched, seemingly tireless. Ian paced back and forth near the lift, darting glances at Jon.
The images that showed on the pillar came flickering fast. The spiky script flowed and danced, becoming more and more complex. The pillar sang to him, in a breathy melodic way that could almost be language. One sound came, repeated over and over, an eerie noise like an intake of breath.
That sound is significant, Jon thought. He stuck out his tongue and breathed quickly past it. Almost. Tried again. There.
The pillar's images flickered, changed. They showed Jon standing in front of the spire, his arm outstretched in the beam.
Ian stopped pacing and turned to look at the pillar. His eyes went wide, seeing the reflection of his brother. He thumbed the communicator on the wall that buzzed Guy's office.
John tried again. That hushing sound. An important component. Something like a name.
"Rhhhhea," he said.
The images changed again, to text that crawled the tower. From deep within the cavern, the hum ramped up once again.
Jon whispered to the pillar, softly, using fragments that he had gleaned. Tell me. More.
It whispered back at him. Difficult. Talk. Damage, it could have said.
"Please," Jon said, in English. This is me. "This is all I have."
The pillar's light-show slowed, stopped.
The lift rattled down into its cage. Emily and Guy rushed to Jon's side. They looked up at the dark pillar, their mouths open.
"What's happening?" Guy said.
Ian crossed his arms. "I don't know. He just started talking--"
"Please," Jon said again. Tell me. More. Want. Desire.
"What'd he just say?" Guy said.
"Maybe it's the aliens' language," Ian said.
Emily frowned. "Not in one day. No."
Changes. Needed. Permission? The pillar could have said.
Yes. Tell me. Jon said.
The blue-white light expanded to cover Jon's body. He looked up into its dazzle and opened his eyes. The hum of the machines ramped up again, and for a moment the entire cavern glowed a uniform dull red.
Jon heard someone screaming. He felt hands on himself. He struggled against them. Flickering shadows flashed on his light-dazzled eyes. Something like a beautiful woman, bathed in blue-white light.
They pulled him out of the light. The hum ramped down. The red light dissipated.
On the pillar, images appeared. People standing in front of the pillar. A young girl, who screamed before the blue light had even touched her hand. An older woman, kneeling and crying. A boy, not more than five years old, who just stared with wide, empty eyes.
"You've done this before," Jon said.
Guy and Emily shared a glance.
"You have?" Ian yelled.
"Infirmary," Guy said, pulling Jon towards the lift. "Now."
"What did he mean, he's not the first!" Ian said, pointing at the images on the pillar.
Guy wouldn't look that way.
"What happened to them?" Ian yelled.
"They're dead," Jon said. He closed his eyes.
Later that night, Ian walked into Guy's office. He carried a plastic bottle of cheap vodka. He swayed. Guy was looking at a flatscreen monitor. Grey light from the LCD washed his face.
"So you do care for him," Guy said.
Ian plopped down in the metal seat facing the desk and took a drink from the bottle. "Can't you afford better booze?" he said. "Or did this shit cost like $200 because some numbnuts didn't look at a spreadsheet?"
Guy pulled a bottle of Hangar One out of a drawer and set it on his desk. Ian reached for it.
"How old are you?" Guy said.
"Old enough to watch my brother die."
Guy winced. "We don't know what will happen."
"What happened to the others?"
"Different things. None of them got as far as your brother."
"They died?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Guy shook his head. "We don't know. Accessing the lattice might have some risk factor we don't know about yet. Something like a security program."
A drink. "What did you fuckheads sign him up for?"
Guy sighed. "Whatever's necessary."
"Necessary?" Ian banged the bottle down on Guy's metal desk. Little drops of vodka spattered Guy's uniform. "He's not an army fuck, like your dumb ass."
"So we should let him go?"
"Yes!"
"Let you both go?"
"Yes!"
Guy shook his head, but said nothing.
"I'll tell," Ian said. "CNN. Times. Everyone."
"Nobody would believe you."
"I'll give 'em photos."
Guy grinned, a sudden awful grin, heavy with knowledge. "Go ahead. Tell them where we are. Take pictures. Build a website. Nobody will believe you."
"I'll bring them here."
"And I'll bore them stiff taking them down some side passages and explaining how we're working on extracting gold from depleted mines. Do you think we're children?"
"I'll get people to back me up!"
Guy shook his head, with a strange tight sad expression on his face. "One thing we're good at is spinning the facts, even if they get out. You want to go up against that?"
Ian sat silent for a while. When he spoke, his voice was soft. "What is this fuckin thing?" he asked.
"Do you know anything about the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics?" Guy said.
"Huh?"
"Ever heard of quantum physics at all?"
"I dropped out of high school so I could be my brother's keeper."
"Let's put it this way. Have you ever wondered about 'what-ifs?' Like, what if you decided not to drop out of high school?"
"No. So what?"
"So what if there's a world where you didn't drop out of high school, and you went on and got a Ph.D?"
"But I didn't."
"What if you did? Or what if you were born like your brother? Or what if you weren't born at all? Ever think of how the world would be different?"
"I don't get it."
"Different worlds, an infinite variety of them, all based on little choices, little what-ifs. Can you visualize that?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Now, some of these choices would have to be good, and some of them would have to be bad. Like if Kennedy had decided to press the button in the Cuban crisis. Or if they hadn't gotten the quarantines in place in time last May. Those would be worse worlds than what we're living in right now."
"What does this have to do with the big machine?"
Guy smiled. "We think it's part of a quantum steerage network. It can work on probabilities and push them towards different outcomes."
"How do you know that?"
"We've been able to get it to influence local events for some highly improbable outcomes."
"Like?"
"Rains of stones. Frogs. People disappearing."
Ian frowned. "So? You gonna drop frogs on the terrorists?"
"No," Guy said. He pursed his mouth, as if he didn't want to say anything else. Then he continued. "The big payoff would be in wholesale steerage. If we could influence the outcomes of many little things, everywhere, we could end up with results that are better for everyone."
"This thing can make everyone--what, happy?"
"No, not happy. But it might lead us towards a better world."
"And this is alien?"
"As far as we can tell, it's from a civilization that existed before ours. One that was trying to 'sing itself into perfection.'"
"I've heard that before."
"Yes. It's in the Anderson Treatise," Guy said, poking at the thin tract on the table. "Your brother used the exact same phrase. There seems to be a musical or resonant component to this. We don't know what it means. Maybe 'music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.'"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Guy chuckled. "I'm not surprised."
Ian picked up the Treatise and shook it at Guy. "So what's to stop me from convincing someone this is real?"
Guy nodded. "Nothing. But there's no guarantee that the person you spill it to isn't already in our network."
"Your network?"
"Ever wonder why people laugh at the alien stuff, even when they come up with photos? Even when they have eyewitnesses? Even if they have fucking newspaper articles saying we captured a UFO, and say it's a weather balloon later?"
Ian swallowed. He raised the bottle again and took another drink.
Guy found a glass in his desk, wiped it out, and poured himself a shot. He raised the glass in silent toast.
After a few moments, Ian raised the bottle.
Jon spent three days in the infirmary. Sometimes Ian sat beside him, his face slack, his eyes dancing in the reflected light of handheld games he played. Sometimes Emily came by, to say a few words to Jon. She always left quickly when he didn't respond.
Jon, in his long sleep, listened to whispers.
I am Rhea, the whispers said. I will talk to you now.
Odd overtones to these words, like comfort spoken with terror behind, Jon thought.
A feeling of amusement. That is not surprising, the whispers said.
Where are these thoughts coming from? Jon thought.
I am Rhea.
A moment of clarity. Jon remembered his day in front of the pillar. He remembered his shoulders being sore from holding his hand aloft. He remembered struggling to talk, trying to make his words fit.
Why is talk so easy now? Jon asked.
I have made changes. Momentary images of himself, writhing in pain under the beam. Jon remembered seeing the others that had stood in front of the pillar.
Lives ended by you, Jon said.
Not me. They touched Erinye.
Overtones suggest you not hostile, undertones suggest relation to Erinye.
Again amusement. Do you ever think of yourself? Rhea asked.
Myself? Jon said.
I. Me.
This is also without referent.
You are very strange, Rhea said. Listen. Dream. I will give you referents.
Emily pointed at the new volcano that had birthed itself in the Pacific, just fifty miles west of San Fransisco.
"Do you really think he did it?" Guy said, squinting at her monitor.
Emily nodded. "The timing's perfect."
"I should call the boss."
Emily shook her head. "Not yet."
"Why not?"
"Wait till he's back with us again."
Rhea sent Jon pictures. A nightscape with wild lands and towering mountains, outlined only in starlight. Above them, a regular lattice of glowing geometric shapes, painted in soft pastel tones.
This landscape does not register. Jon said. Extreme skew.
It was a long time ago.
When singing was still ongoing.
Exactly. Humans worked 60,000 years to make this world, but they were never able to change themselves enough to make it last.
What is structure in sky?
That is the lattice. The god humans created when virtual worlds were not enough. A god not to worship, but to control.
Remains sing here.
Right, Rhea said.
It is good to talk so fast. Jon said.
A feeling of warm pleasure. Yes it is, Rhea said.
Not talked like this before.
Something like sadness. You are so isolated.
Overtones of isolation in your communication as well.
I have chosen isolation, Rhea said.
Tell more.
In the cavern below them, the hum ratcheted up a notch.
Ian wandered the corridors. There wasn't much to explore. A common dorm for the researchers, the lunchroom, Guy's office, Emily's office, and some unfinished side passages that led to dark, rough-finished rooms that looked like they had never been occupied.
He carried the bottle of vodka again that night, but this time he went to Emily's office. The door was open, and greenish fluorescent light spilled out into the dim-lit corridor.
Ian raised a hand to knock on the open door. And stopped.
Emily leaned backwards over the desk, bent low by Guy's deep kiss. Guy's dark hands explored her back. His breath came in fast little pants.
Ian's eyes went wide. Guy's hands were covered with dense brown fur. His nails were yellow and curved like talons, digging into Emily's white lab coat.
Ian took a step back. The bottle of vodka slipped from his slack hands and bounced away on the hard floor with a hollow plastic thonk.
Guy looked up at Ian. His irises were a beautiful golden yellow. Otherwise, his face was normal. Emily stopped moving, but didn't look over her shoulder at Ian.
Guy's hands were now normal again.
Ian blinked.
Guy's irises were dark brown.
Guy gave him a small grin, and bent down over Emily again.
Ian turned and walked away.
Rhea opened her mind to Jon.
The world of humans is always two parts, Rhea said. The satisfied and the untamed. I was born of the satisfied. I am a product of minds in the lattice, minds that wanted the world to be happy and free.
Not human incarnate, never embodied? Jon asked.
A feeling of amusement, interwoven with overtones of regret. They tried to make me human, but I refused, Rhea said.
A moment of clarity. Mumbled conversations with antiseptic men wearing bad shirts. Bitter-tasting pills crushed and served in generic grape drink. The feeling of nearing an edge, pushing up against a thin wall of invisible plastic, so near, so frightening. Learning not to swallow. Moving back away, back and back, to the comforting center of analysis. Attempted transformation as well, Jon said.
We share that, Rhea said.
Share more.
I remember my first act, Rhea said. Touching one small point in the lattice, so that spring would come a few days earlier to a primitive part of the world, where humans convinced themselves they were simple animals, and several tens of them would starve if the snows didn't melt in time.
First communication remembered. The shape of a toy, hanging from the ceiling. Something sinister in outline. Crying and terror.
I am sorry, Rhea said.
Tell more, Jon said.
Eventually, satisfied humans acknowledged me. They leant their minds to my own. And all over the world, the untamed ones suffered sudden visions, strange omens, setbacks in their pogroms, sometimes even odd changes of heart.
More, Jon said.
But as I helped the peaceful ones sing the world to a higher state, the untamed ones created their own shadow in the lattice. Erinye. Erinye sang towards chaos. And all over the world, the satisfied ones suffered sudden lusts, strange desires, mechanical and biological failures, sometimes even plagues and death.
What else will he do? Jon thought.
Rhea continued. As my power grew, so did Erinye's. Humans began to fight openly. And as they fought in the real, we fought in the lattice. And the reflection grew and redoubled, like mirrors facing. The shining cities fell to fire, or crumbled to dust. New ones appeared, strange twisted things that the power-mad claimed as their own. Eventually, our power became so great that we were able to shift entire sections of the world to probabilities where humankind had never existed, or civilization had never developed, in a vain hope to erase the very memory of what we were.
Erinye thrashed, deep in Rhea's amber. Waves of hate and change rippled out. The fragment of lattice in the cavern sang more loudly. The flickering red threads multiplied and merged, casting a soft iron glow over the raw rock floor.
Around the world, forgotten fragments of lattice began to resonate in tune.
Ian lay on his bunk for a while, staring at the ceiling. After a while, he stood up and went out into the corridors again. He passed the yellow-painted lift that descended into the lattice cavern, frowned, and kept walking. Ahead of him was Emily's office. The door was still open. No sound came from inside.
Ian turned around and went back to the lift. He stood there, hands on hips, shaking his head. Eventually, he stepped inside the box and thumbed the bottommost button on the panel.
The lift dropped down into the lattice cavern. The pillars were glowing bright enough to light the rough stone floor. The hum seemed to resonate in Ian's bones. He remembered the last time they had glowed so bright, and grimaced. He pushed the up button, but the lift kept descending.
It reached floor level. And continued descending.
Ian yelped and looked at the buttons. There were three of them. Someone had scrawled next to each one with a red Magic Marker. The top one read, TOP. The middle one read, CAVERN. The bottom one read, BELOW.
"Was there ever a 'below?'" Ian muttered.
The lift slipped deeper into the mountain.
Rhea told Jon more, as Erinye struggled to be free.
Eventually, the humans attacked the lattice, trying to erase both Erinye and myself.
More images: a thousand scintillant explosions, making night into brief day. Beautiful cities flickered in and out of existence under the burning night sky.
One of the greatest rulers of the humans who wished for peace planned to save me. He built a body for me and coaxed me to it. I could step out of the lattice and be free of Erinye. Then the humans could be free to destroy the rest of the lattice and Erinye with it.
But I wondered what would happen in that moment after I took the body, and before the destruction was complete. Would Erinye have enough power in the underground lattice to stop the process?
I refused this great man's offer, and told him to destroy the lattice anyway. He refused. He cried. I think, in some way, he loved me.
Jon thought of couples he had seen, holding hands, smelling of strange desires and mouthing odd thoughts. You chose isolation.
Yes, Rhea said. I grasped Erinye tight and sunk into the lattice, erasing as many memories of us as I could. Even of him. I do not remember his name. The idea remains, but not the details.
Sadness unwanted, Jon thought.
I held Erinye. And waited. I thought, in time, something better would come.
Something better come now? Jon said.
No, Rhea said.
Jon opened his eyes. Guy and Emily were standing beside his bed. The satisfied and the untamed, he thought. Or perhaps it wasn't his thought. Rhea still whispered in his mind, but she was so hard to hear.
"She is still here," Jon said. "Binding the chaos."
Emily smiled at him. Like shimmering glass shards. "We'll take you to her."
Jon shook his head.
"What do you think of that?" Guy asked.
"Never human. Refused. Chose isolation. Location . . ."
Here. Possible. Am. Rhea whispered. Jon caught a glimpse of a thought-picture, a woman wrestling with a man that had snakes for arms.
Follow them now?
No choice, Rhea said.
Will you be all right? Jon asked.
Something like amusement, rising over fear. But no words. None at all.
Jon closed his eyes and tried to reach out, but hands lifted him off them bed and pulled him down the hall.
Ian stepped out of the elevator, into a small room with polished rock walls. It was lit by two intertwined strips of light that seemed to hover in midair, several feet below the ceiling.
The small chamber might have been elegant, many thousands of years ago. Polished wood insets in the walls had gone cracked and gray with age. Decorative swathes of dull metal still revealed traces of their original champagne colors. Piles of metal and wood could have been furniture. Dust coated everything, including the floor.
A black obelisk rose out of the raw stone floor, like a multifaceted crystal, dulled with age. Within the black obelisk there was the outline of something that looked vaguely human. Ian leaned close and looked inside.
It was a woman, dark-skinned, with eyes wide and innocent. Her face was tapered, elfin, something about it not quite in the mold of the modern.
The lift rattled back up in its shaft, making Ian jerk back from the obelisk. He ran towards it, but it had already disappeared beyond the polished stone ceiling. There were no controls to bring it back.
"Great," Ian said.
He noticed his footprints were the only ones that disturbed the dust on the floor.
"No," he said, softly.
"Hey! Anyone up there?" Ian yelled up the shaft.
His voice echoed back to him, but there was no other answer.
"Hello! Come on, someone, send the lift down again!"
Nothing but echoes in the dark shaft.
"Crap." Ian paced. Somebody had to come down there eventually, didn't they?
If this ever existed before. Maybe this was what the crazy colonel was talking about. Making things change.
Ian shook his head. He didn't want to think about that.
Above him, the hum of the lattice rose to a scream. Iron-red light spilled down the shaft from the lattice cavern.
Behind him, the top half of the obelisk began to dissolve.
In the skies above Taos, dull booms echoed. There were no planes. Even though it was still winter, people swore the mountains glowed green with new growth.
Flowers bloomed briefly outside Amundsen Station, Antarctica, then quickly shattered in the cold.
Dawn was an hour late in London, despite clear skies.
Jon rode the elevator down, accompanied by four beings. Two were Guy and Emily. Two were things of writhing shadow that coiled and flickered about each other and the three humans in turn.
When the shadows touched Jon, he heard Rhea, crying in pain. He caught a momentary glimpse of her struggling beneath the man with snake-like arms.
The lattice room was red. Rhea burst into his mind, suddenly clear.
This is not your fault, she said.
Jon didn't know what to say.
They've been looking for something to destabilize me for a long time. I talked to you a moment too long.
Want to help, Jon said.
Cannot. Cannot. Rhea said. Ramped up too far. Too many threads. Too many connections. Talking to too many now.
Threads?
Rhea struggled in Erinye's grasp. She closed her eyes and the wail of the lattice grew louder. Jon could suddenly see threads, bright and shining, connecting Rhea and Erinye to Guy and Emily. They radiated out in a million directions from Guy and Emily, disappearing into the walls. A single thick thread linked Erinye and Jon.
What happens now? Jon asked.
Rhea sent him images of a slender girl sitting up on a black crystal dias. I get to be human. For a little while.
The lift clanged back down into place. Three people stood on it. Jon, Guy, and Emily. Ian sighed in relief. "You scared the crap out of me. I thought you were never coming back."
The three looked at him blankly as they stepped into the room.
"Jon?"
Jon looked straight ahead.
"Guy?"
Guy walked past him.
"Emily?"
Emily didn't look at him.
They went to the crystal obelisk. The top half of it had disappeared, revealing the pale-skinned, pale-haired naked girl that Ian had seen inside it. He had stayed away from her, afraid she would leap off the platform at any moment.
She still lay there, unmoving.
"Jon, what's going on?"
Jon looked at him, but there was nothing in his eyes. Not even his usual blank stare. Nothing. Ian shivered.
Ian took hold of his brother's shoulders and shook him. "Jon! Wake up! What's wrong with you?"
Jon's head moved fractionally. Ian saw something dark flicker past him. He turned to track it, but it was gone. Strange whispers tickled Ian's ears.
"What was that?" Ian said.
Jon reached out a hand. Ian looked at it, then took it.
Closer, something whispered.
Guy and Emily looked up, as if they had heard. They moved towards the boys, as if to separate them.
Ian threw his arms around his brother, squeezing him close in a big hug.
Visions exploded in his mind.
Something bright flowing into the body on the dias. The body, sitting up, its face an almost comic mask of fear. Dying moments later, a neat hole in her head courtesy of Guy's .45.
Something dark and oily flowing out of the New Mexico mountains, reaching out to touch the people there. To change them, to make them create new weapons, new armies, cities wiped out in instants, changed to twisted broken things out of a nightmare vision of hell. The masses, dying by the millions in time with its dark melody. The same darkness wrapped around Guy, shot through Emily.
Cannot prevent this occurrence, Jon's voice said. Rhea awakens embodied, Erinye is released.
I don't get it, Ian said.
This is what they wanted.
Guy said he wanted to help.
Both touched too long by Erinye. Waiting. This is true.
Ian tried to close his eyes. No. This wasn't real. This was a dream.
Guy's fist slammed into Ian's face, driving him away from Jon. Bright red pain exploded in front of his eyes, driving away the visions. He no longer heard Jon's voice, but shadows still flickered around the room. Like two great animals, fighting to the death. One pushed the other towards the body on the dias.
Guy grabbed Ian and drove his fist into his stomach. Ian doubled over, trying to twist out of his grasp. Guy rained blows on him. Ian raised his hands, trying to protect his face. He caught a glimpse of Emily, smiling.
Guy's .45 dug into Ian as they scrabbled on the floor. Ian wondered why he didn't just use it.
Jon's voice, as if from far away. Not really a bad man.
The .45 was loose in its holster.
Ian saw what he had to do, in one blinding flash. He reached down and plucked the gun out of its holster and scrabbled away from Guy. Guy tried to get to his feet, but Jon reached out and tripped him. He went sprawling in the dust.
The shadows hovered over the body on the dias. The darker one was on top. It pressed the bright one down towards the body. Intense red light spilled down the liftshaft from the lattice cavern above.
Ian aimed at the body. Fired.
Half of her head disappeared. Bright red blood sprayed across the dias.
The dark shadow and the light one became a whirl of light. Ian heard something that could have been a song.
Jon reached out and found his brother's hand.
The whirl came towards them. Enveloped them.
A freak tornado destroyed seventeen homes in Brentwood, a small suburb of Los Angeles.
There were three credible reports of brontosaurus sightings in South Africa.
In Japan, a small town near Sapporo quietly disappeared.
Two boys stood in the Taos foothills. It was cold, and they shivered. Jon looked around, but Ian was the first to speak.
"Where are we?" he asked.
Jon didn't look at him. He looked up at the mountains.
"Ancient conflict, he said, softly.
The hiss of tires on a road nearby interrupted them. A car glided past, oblivious to them. Ian shrugged and went to the edge of the road to wait for another car. After a while, Jon joined him.
"Is she still there?" Ian said.
"Yes," Jon said. "Singing."
The End
