The Great and Secret Show

  He saw the terror in her eyes as she lost her balance. Saw Tommy-Ray's arms close around her, in the tightest of embraces. Then the Quiddity claimed them both, sweeping them across the room past their father, and away, into the mystery.

  Howie let out a howl.

  Behind him Tesla was yelling his name. He ignored the call. His eyes on the place where Jo-Beth had gone he took a step towards the door. The power egged him on. He took another step, vaguely aware that Tesla was yelling for him to stop, to turn back before it was too late.

  Didn't she know it had been too late the moment after he'd seen Jo-Beth? Everything had been lost, way back then.

  A third step, and the whirlwind snatched him up. The room turned over and over. He saw his father's enemy for an instant, gaping, followed by the hole, gaping wider still.

  Then he was gone, where his beautiful Jo-Beth had gone, into Quiddity.

  "Grillo?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Can you stand up?"

  "I think so."

  He'd tried twice, and failed, and Tesla had no strength left to pick him up and carry him down to the gate.

  "Give me a moment," he said. Not for the first time his eyes went back to the house they'd barely escaped from.

  "There's nothing to see, Grillo," she said.

  That wasn't true, by any means. The facade was like something from Caligari, the door sucked in, the windows going the same way. And inside, who knew?

  As they stumbled down to the car a figure emerged from the chaos and stumbled out into the moonlight. It was the Jaff. The fact that he'd stood on Quiddity's shore and resisted its waves was testament to his power, but that resistance had taken its toll. His hands were reduced to gnawed flesh, the remains of the left hanging from the bones of his wrist in strips. His face was as brutally devoured, not by teeth but by what he'd seen. Blank-eyed and broken, he staggered down to the gate. Wisps of darkness, the last of the terata, followed him.

  Tesla badly wanted to ask Grillo what glimpse he'd had of Quiddity, but this wasn't the moment. It was enough to know that he was alive to tell. Flesh in a world where flesh was forfeit every moment. Alive, when life ended with each exhalation and began again with every snatched breath.

  In the trough between, there was such jeopardy. And now, as never before. She didn't doubt that the worst had come to pass, and that somewhere on Quiddity's furthest shore the Iad Uroboros were sharpening their envy and starting across the dream-sea.

  PART SEVEN

  Souls at Zero

  I

  PRESIDENTS, messiahs, shamans, popes, saints and lunatics had attempted—over the passage of a millennium—to buy, murder, drug and flagellate themselves into Quiddity. Almost to a one, they'd failed. The dream-sea had been more or less preserved, its existence an exquisite rumor, never proved, and all the more potent for that. The dominant species of the Cosm had kept what little sanity it possessed by visiting the sea in sleep, three times in a life span, and leaving it, always wanting more. That hunger had fuelled it. Made it ache; made it rage. Made it do good in the hope, often unconscious, of being granted more regular access. Made it do evil out of the idiot suspicion that it was conspired against by its enemies, who knew the secret but weren't telling. Made it create gods. Made it destroy gods.

  The few who'd taken the journey that Howie, Jo-Beth, Tommy-Ray and twenty-two guests from Buddy Vance's house were taking now had not been accidental travellers. They'd been chosen, for Quiddity's purposes, and gone (for the most part) prepared.

  Howie, on the other hand, was no more prepared for this than any stick of furniture hauled into the throat of the schism. He was pitched first through loops of energy and then into what appeared to be the middle of a thunderhead, lightning setting brief, bright fires all around him. Any trace of sound from the house had disappeared the moment he'd entered the throat. So had the pieces of trash that had flown in along with him. Helpless to steer or orient himself, all he could do was tumble through the cloud, the lightning becoming less frequent and more brilliant, the passages of darkness between steadily more profound, until he wondered if perhaps his eyes were closing, and the darkness—along with the falling sensation that accompanied it—was in his head. If so, he was happy with its embrace, his thoughts now also in free-fall, fixing momentarily on images which appeared out of the darkness, seeming to be completely solid though he was almost certain they were in his mind's eye.

  He conjured Jo-Beth's face over and over again, always glancing back at him over her shoulder. He recited words of love to her; simple words that he hoped she heard. If she did they didn't bring her any closer. He wasn't surprised. Tommy-Ray was dissolved in the same thought-shot cloud that he and Jo-Beth were falling through, and twin brothers had claims on their sisters that went back to the womb. They'd floated together in that first sea, after all, their minds and cords intertwining. Howie envied Tommy-Ray nothing in all the world—not his beauty, his smile, nothing—except that time of intimacy he'd shared with Jo-Beth, before sex, before hunger, before breath even. He could only hope that he'd be with her at the end of her life the way Tommy-Ray had been at the beginning, when age took sex, appetite and, finally, breath away.

  Then her face, and the envy, were gone, and new thoughts came to fill his head, or snapshots of same. No people now, only places, appearing and vanishing again as though his mind was sifting through them looking for one in particular. It found what it was searching for. A blurred blue night, which flew into solidity all around him. The falling sensation ceased in a heartbeat. He was solid in a solid place, running on echoing boards, a fresh cold wind blowing in his face. At his back he heard Lem and Richie calling his name. He ran on, looking over his shoulder as he did so. The glance solved the mystery of where he was. Behind him was the Chicago skyline, its lights brilliant against the night, which meant that the wind on his face was coming off Lake Michigan. He was running along a pier, though he didn't know which, with the Lake slopping around its struts. It was the only body of water he'd ever been familiar with. It influenced the city's weather, and its humidity; it made the air smell a different way in Chicago than any other place; it bred thunderstorms and threw them against the shore. Indeed the Lake was so constant, so inevitable, that he seldom thought about it. When he did it was as a place where people who had money took their boats, and those who'd lost it drowned themselves.

  Now, however, as he ran on down the length of the pier, Lem's calls fading behind him, the thought of the Lake waiting at the end moved him as never before. He was small; it was vast. He was full of contradictions; it simply embraced everything, making no judgments on sailors or suicides.

  He picked up his pace, barely feeling the pressure of his soles on the boards, the sense growing in him that however real this scene felt it was another of his mind's inventions, shaped from fragments of memory to ease him through what would otherwise have driven him mad: a stepping stone between the dreaming wakefulness of the life he'd left and whatever paradox lay ahead. The closer he got to the end of the pier the more certain he became that this was the case. His step, already light, became lighter still, his strides longer and longer. Time softened, and extended. He had a chance to wonder if the dream-sea truly existed, at least in the way that Palomo Grove existed, or whether the pier he'd created jutted into pure thought.

  If so, there were many minds meeting there; tens of thousands of lights moving in the waters ahead, some breaking surface like fireworks, others diving deep. Howie had found some incandescence of his own, he realized. Nothing to boast about, but there was a distinct glow in his skin, like a faint echo of an echo of Fletcher's light.

  The barrier at the end of the pier was a few feet from him. Beyond it, the waters of what he'd now ceased to think of as the Lake. This was Quiddity, and in moments it would be closing over his head. He wasn't afraid. Quite the reverse. He couldn't get to the barrier quickly enough, throwing himself at it rather than waste time with steps. If any further proof had been required that none of
this was real he had it on impact, the barrier flying into laughing splinters as he touched it. He flew too. A falling flight into the dream-sea.

  The element he plunged into was unlike water in that it neither soaked nor chilled him. But he floated in it nevertheless, his body rising through brilliant bubbles to the surface without any effort on his part. He had no fear of drowning. Only the profoundest sense of gratitude that he was here, where he belonged.

  He looked back over his shoulder (so many backward glances) at the pier. It had served its purpose, making a game of what might have been a terror. Now it was flying into pieces, like the barrier.

  He watched it go, happily. He was free of the Cosm, and floating in Quiddity.

  Jo-Beth and Tommy-Ray had gone into the schism together, but their minds had found different ways to picture the journey and the plunge.

  The horror Jo-Beth had felt as she'd been snatched had been wiped from her head in the thunder cloud. She forgot the chaos, and felt calm. It was no longer Tommy-Ray who gripped her arm, but Momma, in earlier years, when she'd still been able to face the world. They were walking in a soothing twilight, with grass underfoot. Momma was singing. If it was a hymn, she'd forgotten the words. She was making up nonsense to fill the lines, which seemed to have the rhythm of their step. Every now and then Jo-Beth would say something she'd learned at school, so Momma would know what a good student she was. All the lessons were about water. About there being tides everywhere, even in tears, about how the sea was where life had begun, and how bodies were made more of water than any other element. The counterpoint of fact and song went on a long, easy while, but she sensed subtle changes in the air. The wind became gustier, and she smelled the sea. She put her face up to it, forgetting her lessons. Momma's hymn had grown softer. If they were still holding hands, Jo-Beth couldn't feel it. She kept walking, not looking back. The ground wasn't grassy any longer, but bare, and somewhere up ahead it fell away into the sea, where there seemed to be countless boats bobbing, with candles lit on their prows and masts.

  The ground went suddenly. There was no fear, even as she fell. Only the certainty that she'd left Momma behind.

  Tommy-Ray found himself at Topanga, either at dawn or dusk, he wasn't sure which. Though the sun was no longer in the sky he wasn't alone here. He heard girls in the murk, laughing, and talking in breathy whispers. The sand beneath his bare feet was warm where they'd been lying, and sticky with suntan oil. He couldn't see the surf, but he knew which way to run. He started in the direction of the water, knowing that the girls were watching him. They always did. He didn't acknowledge their stares. When he was out there on the crests, really moving, he'd maybe flash them a smile. Then on the way back up the beach he'd let one of them get lucky.

  Now, as the waves came in sight ahead of him, he realized that things weren't right here. Not only was the beach gloomy, and the sea dark, but there seemed to be bodies lolling in the surf, and, worse still, phosphorescence in their flesh. He slowed his pace, but knew he couldn't stop and turn around. He didn't want anyone on the beach, particularly the girls, to think he was afraid. He was, however; horribly. Some radioactive shit was in the sea. The surfers had fallen from their boards, poisoned, and were being washed up by the very crests they'd gone to ride. He could see them clearly now, their skin silvery in places and black in others, their hair like blond haloes. Their girls were with them, dead as the surfers in the tainted foam.

  He had no choice but to join them, he knew. The shame of turning away and climbing back up the beach was worse than dying. They'd all be legends after this. Him, and the dead riders, carried off by the same tide. Steeling himself, he stepped into the sea, which instantly became deep, as though the beach had simply fallen away under his feet. The poison was already burning up his system; he could see his body getting brighter. He stared to hyperventilate, each breath more painful than the one before.

  Something brushed his side. He turned, thinking it would be another dead surfer, but it was Jo-Beth. She said his name. He couldn't find any words to answer with. As much as he wanted not to show his fear he couldn't help it. He was pissing now in the sea; his teeth were chattering.

  "Help me," he said. "Jo-Beth. You're the only one who can help me. I'm dying."

  She looked at his chattering face.

  "If you're dying, we both are," she said.

  "How did I get here? And why are you here? You don't like the beach."

  "This isn't the beach," she said. She took hold of his arms, their motion making them bob like buoys. "This is Quiddity, Tommy-Ray. Remember? We're on the other side of the hole. You pulled us through."

  She saw memory flooding his face as he spoke.

  "Oh my God . . . oh Jesus God . . ." he said.

  "You remember?"

  "Yes. Jesus, yes." The chattering turned into sobs, as he pulled them close together, wrapping his arms around her. She didn't resist. There was little purpose in being vengeful, when they were both in such jeopardy.

  "Hush," she said, letting him bury his hot, stricken face against her shoulder. "Hush. There's nothing we can do."

  * * *

  Nothing needed to be done. Quiddity had him, and he would float, and float, and perhaps—eventually—catch up with Jo-Beth and Tommy-Ray. Meanwhile, he liked being lost in this immensity. It made his fears—his whole life, in fact—seem inconsequential. He lay on his back and looked up at the sky. It was not, as he'd first thought, a night sky. There were no stars, either fixed or falling. No clouds, hiding a moon. In fact it seemed completely featureless at first, but as the seconds passed—or minutes; or hours; he neither knew nor much cared—he realized the subtlest waves of color were hundreds of miles across, moving over it. The Aurora Borealis seemed small stuff beside this show, in which, at intervals, he thought he saw forms swooping and climbing, like flocks of half-mile manta-rays, feeding in the stratosphere. He hoped they'd come down a little way, so he could see them more clearly, but perhaps, he mused, they had no more clarity to show. Not everything was available to the eye. Some sights defeated focus, and capture, and analysis. Like all he felt for Jo-Beth, for instance. That was every bit as strange and difficult to fix as the colors above his head, or the forms that made play there. Seeing them was as much a matter of feeling as of retina. The sixth sense was sympathy.

  Content with his lot, he gently flipped himself over in the ether and experimented with swimming in it. The basic strokes worked well enough, though it was difficult to be certain he was making much progress with nothing to relate his motion to. The lights in the sea all around him—fellow passengers like himself, he supposed, though they seemed not to have form as he did—were too indistinct to be used as markers. Were they dreaming souls, perhaps? Infants, lovers and the dying, all travelling in Quiddity's waters as they slept, to be soothed and rocked, touched by a calm that would carry them, as the tide carried them, through the tempest they'd wake to? A life to be lived, or lost; love they'd go in fear of staling or disappearing after this epiphany. He put his face beneath the surface. Many of the light-forms were far below him, some so deep they were no larger than stars. Not all of them were moving in the same direction as he. Some, like the half-mile mantas above, were in groups, shoals, rising and falling. Others went side by side. The lovers, he assumed, though presumably not all the dreamers here, who were sleeping beside the lover of their lives, had that feeling reciprocated. Perhaps very few. Which thought led him back to the time he and Jo-Beth had travelled here; and to her present whereabouts. He had to be careful the calm didn't stupefy him; make him forgetful of her. He raised his face from the sea.

  In doing so he avoided, by moments, a collision. Yards from him, its appearance shocking in the middle of such tranquility, was a fragment of garishly colored wreckage from the Vance house. And a few yards beyond that, more distressing still, a piece of flotsam far too ugly to belong here, yet not recognizably of the Cosm. It stood four or more feet above the water-line, and hung as far or further below; a gnarled
, waxy island floating like pale dung in this pure sea. He reached out and took hold of the wreckage ahead of him, throwing himself on to it and kicking. His action carried him closer to the enigma.

  It was alive. Not simply occupied by something living, but entirely made of living matter. He heard the thump of two heartbeats from it. Its surface had the unmistakable sheen of skin, or some derivative of same. But what it actually was didn't become apparent until he was almost brushing against it. Only then did he see the thin figures—two of the party guests—clutching each other with looks of fury on their faces. He hadn't been privileged to keep the company of Sam Sagansky, or hear the nimble fingers of Doug Frankl on the keyboards. All he saw were two enemies, locked not only together but at the heart of an island that seemed to have sprung out of them. From their backs, like huge hunches. From their limbs, like further limbs that put up no defense against their enemy but fused with his flesh. The structure was still sprouting further nodules, the beginning of new growth, bursting along the limbs, each variation referring not to the root form—an arm, a spine—but to its immediate predecessor, so that each successive variation became less human, and less fleshy. The image was more fascinating than distressing, the focus of the combatants upon each other suggesting they felt no pain at this process. Watching the structure grow and spread Howie vaguely comprehended that this was the birth of solid ground. Perhaps the fighters would die and decay eventually, but the structure itself was not so corruptible. Already the perimeters of the island, and its heights, resembled coral rather than flesh, tough and encrusted. When the fighters died they'd become fossils buried in the heart of an island they themselves had created. The island itself would float on.

  He let go of the raft of wreckage and kicked on, past the island. Flotsam and jetsam littered the surface of the sea now: furniture, clumps of plaster, lighting fixtures. He swam past the head and neck of a carousel horse, its painted eye glaring backwards as if horrified by its dismemberment. But there was no sign of island-making amid this litter. Quiddity didn't create, it seemed, from things without minds, though he wondered if its genius would respond—given time—to the evidence of the minds that had made these artifacts. Could Quiddity grow from the head of a wooden horse some island named for the horse's maker? Anything was possible.