Part 13 (1/2)
”Impossible to say. There appears to be room for about everybody.” We started to rise at an accelerating rate. The individuals merged back into the granular texture and then into a smooth gray; mountains shrank to pebbles and themselves disappeared. The horizon didn't change, though.
”What happens if you fly in one direction for a long time?”
”It doesn't seem to change. You never come to an edge. But 'a long time' doesn't mean much here. The illusion of time belongs to worlds like yours. Here, there's only will and chance.”
”What do you mean by that? Time an illusion?”
”When you studied mathematics, you used the idea of infinity.”
”Of course. You couldn't do calculus without it.”
”And you believe the universe is infinite.” I nodded. ”So stars and planets and nebulae go on forever.”
”Of course.”
”Well, I have news for you: they don't. Within your lifetime, scientists will suspect that there's an edge to it. Within another lifetime, they'll prove there is.”
”That's curious. So what's beyond it?”
”Another universe. And another and another. Every instant, from the universe's birth to its death, exists side by side, in a way. Think of it as an Edison cinematograph, writ very large: one frozen moment, then the next, and so on.
”Furthermore, every possible universe exists as well. Many where the Civil War didn't happen or was won by the South. Many where you did kill yourself Thursday evening. Many where you had biscuits for breakfast, instead of toast. With everything else in the universe unchanged. There's room for them all.
”What you perceive as time is your translation from one possible moment to the next, because of something you did or something the universe did to you.”
”Free will and predestination?” I said.
”Decision and chance,” the raven said, ”inextricably intertwined.”
We had risen so high that a featureless gray plane faded off into mist. Above the mist, blackness, no stars.
”But this place, this is beyond that?”
”Yes. This is where people go when they stop moving from moment to moment.”
”So maybe thisis heaven?”
He just looked at me. ”Close your eyes. We're going back to the angels.”
I didn't close my eyes, at first-after all, while we were traveling, I didn't seem to exist as an a.s.semblage of body parts, so what did ”closed eyes” mean? In a few seconds it became pretty obvious, if not describable. Like seasickness, but somehow larger, longer, with the threat that it could last forever. I did something like closing eyes and the room disappeared, and I only felt miserable. The smell of musk changed to lemon.
Then it was cinnamon and we were there, on the Dantean planet. Through the open door, the seven angels braided together in the oven heat. ”Let me speak to them first,” Raven said. He hopped over to the dark soft patch he called their brain.
They were momentarily still, rigid, and then resumed a rhythmic twining. ”Now you,” he said. ”Shoes off.”
The ground was like hot flour between my toes. But I remembered not to dig in when I stepped onto their coolness.
At first I didn't hear or feel anything. Then there was something like a quiet song, a wordless hymn in my mind. I concentrated, but couldn't make any sense of it. Then it was gone.
”Won't you use words?” I said. But they just curled and uncurled in silence.
The raven was back in the yellow room. ”I think they're done. Come on.”
I crossed the hot sand, looking back at them. ”Did they tell you anything?”
”Nothing I didn't already know. They like you.”
I couldn't take my eyes off them, as I backed into the cube. ”Then why didn't they say anything?” It smelled of mint tea.
”They don't so much say things as do things.” The yellow wall appeared. ”Close your eyes.”
This time I obeyed. ”Are we going back?”
”Yes and no.” I squeezed my eyes shut. The dislocation seemed about as long as the first one.
”You can look now.” The door was open on a scene of incredible desolation, stone buildings battered to rubble, a few steel skeletons standing. Everything blackened by fire.
”Where is this?”
”Times Square, New York City.” He had turned into Gordon, who blinked away tears. I had never seen him cry. ”Your world, about a hundred years after you were born.”
”Like... like the lizards' world?”
”Exactly. No human left alive.” He turned to me with a kind of smile. ”I feel like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. This is what usually happens. Not always in the middle of the twentieth century. Sometimes it takes another hundred or even a thousand years.”
”But it always happens.”
”Not always.” He changed back into Raven. ”You don't want to go outside here. You would die. Close your eyes.”
”Where are we going?”
He didn't reply, but I felt weight on my body, the compression of stays around my waist, and took one quick look. Instead of the strange skintight suit, I was wearing my warm-weather teaching clothes, the light gray Gibson Girl suit I'd mail-ordered from San Francisco.
I screwed my eyes shut again, against the rush of nausea. ”We're going back to Sitka?”
”Yes.”
”I'll freeze to death in this!”
”You'll manage.”
The machine stopped. I felt a breath of cool forest air and heard crickets.
We were back in the woods where we'd started. But there was no snow. The light of a full moon filtered through the forest canopy. An owl called and flapped away. I stepped out onto soft humus and the yellow room disappeared behind me.
”Months have pa.s.sed,” I said. ”It must be June or July.” I slapped a mosquito.
Raven beat the air with his wings and rose to an eye-level branch. ”Something has pa.s.sed.”
I had a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. ”You said you were a guardian, but not my guardian. Are you going off to save someone else now?”