She let her argument rest there for a little while, as much because she was exhausted as for any other reason. Jaffe didn't follow through. He just stared at the pseudofire, which would soon be guttering out, and then at his hands. It was only after a minute of this that he said:
"You came down here to tell me that?"
"Yes. Don't tell me I came on a fool's errand."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Help us."
"There's no help to be had."
"You opened the hole, you can close it."
"I'm not going near that house."
"I thought you wanted Quiddity," Tesla said. "I thought being there was your great ambition."
"I was wrong."
"You got all that way, just to discover you were wrong? What changed your mind?"
"You won't understand."
"Try me."
He looked back towards the fire. "That was the last of them," he said. "When the light goes, we're all in the dark."
"There must be other ways out of here."
"There are."
"Then we'll take one of them. But first . . . first.. . tell me why you changed your mind."
He took a lazy moment to contemplate his answer, or whether he was going to give it at all.
Then he said:
"When I first began looking for the Art, all the clues were about crossroads. Not all. But many. Yes, many. The ones that made any sense to me. And so I kept looking for a crossroads. I thought that was where I'd find the answer. Then Kissoon drew me into his Loop, and I thought, here he is, the last of the Shoal, in a hut in the middle of nowhere. No crossroads. I must have been wrong. And all that's happened since: at the Mission, in the Grove . . . none of it happened at a crossroads. I was being literal, you see. I've always been so damn literal. Physical. Actual. Fletcher thought of air and sky, and I thought of power and bone. He made dreams from people's heads, I made stuff from their guts and sweat. Always thinking the obvious. And all the time . . ." his voice was thickening with feeling; hatred in it, self-directed, " . . . all the time I didn't see. Until I used the Art, and realized what the crossroads were—"
"What?"
He put the less injured of his hands to his shirt, fumbling inside it. There was a medallion around his neck, on a fine chain. He pulled, hard. The chain broke, and he tossed the symbol over to Tesla. She knew before she caught it what it was going to be. She'd played this scene once before, with Kissoon. But that time she'd not been ready to understand what she understood now, holding the Shoal's sign in her hand.
"The crossroads," she said. "This is its symbol."
"I don't know what symbols are any longer," he replied. "It's all one."
"But this stands for something," she said, looking again at the forms inscribed on the arm of the cross.
"To understand it is to have it," Jaffe said. "At the moment of comprehension it's no longer a symbol."
"Then . . . make me understand," Tesla said. "Because I look at this and it's still just a cross. I mean, it's beautiful an' all, but it doesn't mean a whole lot. There's this guy in the center, looks like he's being crucified, 'cept there's no nails. And then all these creatures."
"Doesn't it make any sense?"
"Maybe if I wasn't so tired."
"Guess."
"I'm not in the mood for guessing games."
A sly look came over Jaffe's face. "You want me to come with you—help you stop whatever's coming through Quiddity—but you haven't got any grasp of what's going on. If you did have, you'd understand what you've got in your hand."
She realized what he was proposing before he said it.
"So if I can work it out, you'll come?"
"Yeah. Maybe."
"Give me a few minutes," she said, looking down at the Shoal symbol with fresh eyes.
"A few?" he said. "What's a few? Five maybe. Let's say five. My offer's good for five minutes."
She turned the medallion over in her hand, suddenly self-conscious.
"Don't stare at me," she said.
"I like to stare."
"You're distracting me."
"You don't have to stay," he replied.
She took him at his word, and got up, her legs unsteady, returning to the crack she'd entered through.
"Don't lose it," he said, his tone almost satiric. "It's the only one I've got."
Hotchkiss was a yard beyond the entrance.
"You heard?" she said to him.
He nodded. She opened her palm and let him look at the medallion. The sole light source, the decaying terata, was fitful, but her eyes were well accustomed to it by now. She could read the expression of befuddlement on Hotchkiss's face. There'd be no revelations from that source.
She claimed the medallion from his fingers and looked over to Grillo, who hadn't moved.
"He's fallen apart," Hotchkiss said. "Claustrophobia."
She went to him anyway. He wasn't staring at the ceiling any longer, nor at the body in the water. His eyes were closed. His teeth were chattering.
"Grillo."
He chattered on.
"Grillo. It's Tesla. I need your help."
He shook his head; a small, violent motion.
"I have to know what this means."
He didn't even open his eyes to find out what she was talking about.
"Thanks a bunch, Grillo," she said.
On your own, babe. No help to be had. Hotchkiss doesn't get it, Grillo won't; and Witt's dead in the water. Her eyes went to the body, momentarily. Face down, arms spread. Poor bastard. She'd not known him at all, but he'd seemed decent enough.
She turned away, opened her palm, and looked at the medallion again, her concentration completely fucked by the fact that the seconds were ticking by.
What did it mean?
The figure in the center was human. The forms that spread from it were not. Were they familiars, maybe? Or the central figure's children? That made more sense. There was a creature between the spread legs like a stylized ape; beneath that something reptilian; beneath that—
Shit! They weren't children, they were ancestors. It was devolution. Man at the center, ape below; lizard, fish and protoplasm (an eye, or a single cell) below that. The past is below us, Hotchkiss had said once. Maybe he'd been right.
Assuming that to be the correct solution, what did it imply about the designs on the other three arms? Above the figure's head something seemed to be dancing, its head huge. Above that the same form, only simplified; and again above that, a simplification, which reached its conclusion as another eye (or single cell) which echoed the shape below. In the light of the first interpretation this wasn't so difficult to understand. Below were images of life leading up to man; above, surely, beyond man, the species elevated to a perfect spiritual state.
Two out of four.
How long did she have?
Don't think about the time, she told herself, just solve the problem.
Reading from right to left across the medallion, the sequence was by no means as easy as south to north. At the extreme left was another circle, with something like a cloud in it. Beside it, closer to the figure's outstretched arm, a square, divided into four; closer still what looked to be lightning; then a splash of some kind (blood from the hand?); then the hand itself. On the other side a series of even less comprehensible symbols. What might have been another spurt from the figure's left hand; then a wave, perhaps, or snakes (was she committing Jaffe's sin here? being too literal?); then what could only be described as a scrawl, as though some sign had been scratched out, and finally the fourth and final circle, which was a hole, bored in the medallion. From solid to insolid. From a circle with a cloud to an empty space. What the hell did it mean? Was it day and night? No. Known and unknown, maybe? That made better sense. Hurry, Tesla, hurry. So what was round, and cloudy, and known?
Round, and cloudy. The world. And known. Yes. The world; the Cosm! which implied that the empty space on the other arm, the un-known, was the M
etacosm! Which left the figure in the middle: the crux of the whole design.
She started back towards the cave, where Jaffe was waiting for her, knowing there could only be seconds left.
"I've got it!" she shouted through to him, "I've got it!" It wasn't quite true, but the rest would have to be instinct.
The fire inside the cave was very low, but there was a horrible brightness in Jaffe's eyes.
"I know what it is," she said.
"You do?"
"It's evolution on one axis, from a single cell to God-hood."
She knew by the look on his face that she'd got that part right at least.
"Go on," he said. "What's the other axis?"
"It's the Cosm and the Metacosm. It's what we know and what we don't know."
"Very good, "he said. "Very good. And in the middle?"
"Us. Human beings."
His smile spread. "No," he said.
"No?"
"That's an old mistake, isn't it? It's not as simple as that."
"But it's a human being, right there!" she said.
"You still see the symbol."
"Shit. I hate this! You're so damn smug. Help me!"
"Time's up!"
"I'm close! I'm really close, aren't I?"
"You see how it is? You can't work it out. Even with a little help from your friends."
"I didn't get any help. Hotchkiss can't do it. Grillo's lost his mind. And Witt's—"
Witt's lying in the water, she thought. But didn't say that, because the image had suddenly struck her with revelatory force. He was lying sprawled in the water with his arms spread out and his hands open.
"My God," she said. "It's Quiddity. It's our dreams. It's not flesh and blood at the crossroads, it's the mind."
Jaffe's smile disappeared, and the light in his eyes got brighter; a paradoxical brightness that didn't illuminate but took light from the rest of the chamber, into itself.
"It is, isn't it?" she said. "Quiddity's the center of everything. It's the crossroads."
He didn't answer her. He didn't need to. She knew without the least doubt that she'd got it right. The figure was floating, in Quiddity, arms spread out as he, she, or it dreamed in the dream-sea. And somehow that dreaming was the place where everything originated: the first cause.
"No wonder," she said.
He spoke now as if from the grave.
"No wonder what?"
"No wonder you couldn't do it," she replied. "When you realized what you faced in Quiddity. No wonder."
"You may regret this knowledge," he said.
"I never regretted knowing anything in my life."
"You'll change your mind," he said. "I guarantee it."
She allowed him his sour grapes. But a deal was a deal and she was ready to insist upon it.
"You said you'd come with us."
"I know I did."
"You will, won't you?"
"It's useless," he said.
"Don't try and get out of it. I know what's at stake here just as much as you do."
"And what do you propose we do about it?"
"We go back to the Vance house and we try and close the schism."
"How?"
"Maybe we have to take some advice from an expert."
"There are none."
"There's Kissoon," she said. "He owes us one. In fact he owes us several. But first, we have to get out of here."
Jaffe looked at her for a long time, as though he wasn't yet certain whether to acquiesce or not.
"If you don't do this," she said, "you'll end up here in the dark where you spent how long . . . twenty years? The Iad will break through and you'll be here, underground, knowing the planet's been taken. Maybe they'll never find you. You don't eat, do you? You're beyond eating. You can survive, perhaps a hundred years, a thousand years. But you'll be alone. Just you and the dark and certain knowledge of what you did. Does that sound tasty enough for you? Personally, I'd prefer to die trying to stop them getting through—"
"You're not very persuasive," he said. "I can see right through you. You're a talkative bitch, but the world's full of them. Think you're clever. You're not. You don't know the first thing about what's coming. But me? I can see, I've got that fucking son of mine's eyes. He's moving towards the Metacosm, and I can feel what's up ahead. Can't see it. Don't want to. But I feel it. And let me tell you, we don't have a fucking chance."
"Is this some last-ditch effort to stay put?"
"No. I'll come. Just to watch the look on your face when you fail, I'll come."
"Then let's do it," she said. "You know a way out of here?"
"I can find one."
"Good."
"But first—"
"Yes?"
He extended his less broken hand.
"My medallion."
* * *
Before they could begin the climb she had to coax Grillo from his catatonia. He was still sitting beside the water when she emerged from her conversation with Jaffe, his eyes closed tight.
"We're getting out of here," she said to him softly. "Grillo, do you hear me? We're getting out of here."
"Dead," he said.
"No," she told him. "We're going to be all right." She put her arm through his, the pains in her side stabbing her with every movement she made. "Get up, Grillo. I'm cold and it's going to get dark soon." Pitch black, in fact; the luminescence from the decaying terata was dimming fast. "There's sun up there, Grillo. It's warm. It's light."
Her words made him open his eyes.
"Witt's dead," he said.
The waves from the cataract had pushed the corpse to the shore.
"We're not going to join him," Tesla said. "We're going to live, Grillo. So get the fuck up."
"We . . . can't. . . swim up .. ."he said, looking at the cataract.
"There's other ways out," Tesla said. "Easier ways. But we have to be quick."
She looked across the chamber to where Jaffe was surveying the cracks in the walls, looking, she presumed, for the best exit. He was in no better shape than the rest of them, and a strenuous climb was going to be out of the question. She saw him call Hotchkiss over, and put him to work digging out rubble. He then moved on to survey other holes. It crossed Tesla's mind that the man didn't have any more clue how to get out of here than they did, but she distracted herself from that anxiety by returning to the business of getting Grillo to his feet. It took some more coaxing, but she succeeded. He stood up, his legs almost buckling beneath him until he rubbed some life back into them.
"Good," she said. "Good. Now let's go."
She allowed herself one last glance at Witt's body, hoping that wherever he was, it was a good place. If everybody got their own Heaven she knew where Witt would be now. In a celestial Palomo Grove: a small, safe town in a small, safe valley, where the sun always shone and the realty business was good. She silently wished him well, and turned her back on his remains, wondering as she did so if perhaps he'd known all along that he was going to die today, and was happier to be part of the foundation of the Grove than wasted in smoke from a crematorium.
Hotchkiss had been called away from his rubble-cleaning at one crack to the same duties on another, fuelling Tesla's unwelcome suspicion that Jaffe didn't know his way out of here. She went to Hotchkiss's aid, bullying Grillo out of his lethargy to do the same. The air from the hole smelled stale. There was no breath of anything fresh from above. But then perhaps they were too deep for that.
The work was hard, and harder still in the gathering darkness. Never in her life had she felt so close to complete collapse. There was no sensation in her hands whatsoever: her face was numb; her body sluggish. She was sure most corpses were warmer. But an age ago, somewhere in the sun, she'd told Hotchkiss she was as able as any man, and she was determined to make that claim good. She drove herself hard, pulling at the rocks with the same gusto as he did. But it was Grillo who did the bulk of the work, his eagerness undoubtedly fuelled by desperation. He cleared the largest
of the rocks with a strength she'd not have thought him capable of.
"So," she said to Jaffe. "Do we go?"
"Yes."
"This is the way out?"
"It's as good as any," he said, and took the lead.
There began a trek that was in its way more terrifying than the descent. For one, they had only a single torch between them, which Hotchkiss, who followed after Jaffe, carried. It was pitifully inadequate, its light more like a beam for Tesla and Grillo to follow than a means to illuminate the path. They stumbled, and fell, and stumbled again, the numbness welcome in a way, postponing as it did any knowledge of what harm they were doing themselves.
The first part of the route didn't even take them up, it merely wound through several small compartments, the sound of water roaring in the rock around them. They passed along one tunnel that had clearly been a recent water-course. The mud was thigh-deep; and dripped from the ceiling on to their heads, for which, a little while on, they were duly grateful, when the passage narrowed to the point where had they not been slick with the stuff they'd have been hard pressed to squeeze through. Beyond this point they began to climb, the gradient gentle at first, then steepening. Now, though the sound of water diminished, there was a new threat in the walls: the grinding of earth on earth. Nobody said anything. They were too exhausted to waste breath on the obvious, that the ground that the Grove was built upon was in revolt. The sounds got louder the higher they climbed, and several times dust fell from the tunnel roof, spattering them in the darkness.
It was Hotchkiss who felt the breeze first.
"Fresh air," he said.
"Of course," said Jaffe.
Tesla looked back towards Grillo. Her senses were so whacked out she wasn't sure of them any longer.
"You feel it?" she said to him.
"I think so," he said, his voice barely audible.
The promise speeded their advance, though it was tougher going all the time, the tunnels actually shaking at several points, such was the violence of the motion in the ground around them. But there was more than a hint of clean air to coax them on now; there was the faintest suspicion of light somewhere above them, which became more of a certainty by and by, until they could actually see the rock they were climbing up, Jaffe hauling himself one-handed, with a strange, almost floating ease, as though his body weighed next to nothing. The others scrambled after, barely able to keep up with him despite the adrenaline that had begun to pump through their weary systems. The light was strengthening, and it was that which led them on, its glare making them squint. It continued to get brighter, and brighter still. They climbed to it with fervor now, all caution in their hand and footholds forgotten.