“I don’t think this is Jesse’s fault.”
“If I may be frank with you, there’s no other reason they’re coming up here. That’s why Shiv wants him. He’s causing a lot of headaches back in Sacramento…”
“You know about Sacramento, too?”
“I know about the earthly Telos, yes.”
“Shiv told you that?”
“Shiv doesn’t tell me anything. Not intentionally, at least.”
At first, Vivian had trouble understanding the weird doublethink this required the receptionist to perform – to see behind the curtain, and to know the essential falseness of Telos, and yet to buy into it anyway. But then, she thought, Judy seemed exactly who Telos was aimed at. Wealthy and dissatisfied and, if the glimpses of her marriage were anything to go by, lonely as hell. And watching her now, basking in Jesse’s reflected light, she obviously thought her faith had paid off.
Jesse himself turned and went along the ridge, and his words drifted, bell-like, behind him.
There’s another way, he said. Vivian didn’t know whether this was meant to be a straightforward comment about their route down the mountain, or something more cryptic.
The drone of the truck came and went. It sounded busy. Jesse led them around the edge of the boulder field and appeared to be heading back up the mountain. They reached a plateau which was split by what Vivian could only describe as a chasm, a dreadful seam of black even in the moonlight.
Jesse descended into it without a word.
“Jesse?” Vivian called after him. “Are you sure?”
He wandered away from her. She had memories of them trying to navigate Oxford Street during the height of Christmas shopping, she constantly steering him away from the bright lights and dark alleyways and still somehow losing him every five minutes. What a long time ago that was, now. Had it even happened?
This is the way, said Jesse, from inside the abyss.
The caves wormed their way blindly into the mountain but Jesse knew every fissure and tunnel, and always moved with an assurance that Vivian thought so foreign to him. She herself was no spelunker, and found the experience wildly disorientating.
The only person who spoke was Judy. She continued muttering under her breath, and occasionally got excited and said things out loud, like, “We’re close! Oh boy, are we close! I can feel it. Can you feel it?”
Vivian ignored her and fished around in Troy’s bag for something to eat. So strong, that smell of petrol! How had she not noticed it before? She found a box of cereal and ate it awkwardly with one hand as she clambered around the rocks, since Jesse wasn’t slowing or stopping. She offered some to Judy, hoping it might stop her speaking.
“No thank you, miss,” she said. “Shiv and me, we only eat organic. Well, I do. I’m trying to encourage Shiv but he’s got a lot to think about. Anyways. I don’t want to enter Telos weighed down with a lot of toxins. Maybe you should think about that, too.”
Vivian finished the packet in the darkness.
“Shiv’s your husband, then.”
“Twenty-five years, now.”
“And he’s in charge. Right?”
“Only since last year. He got a promotion.” Then she whispered, “His boss passed on.”
“Yeah,” said Vivian. “I know.”
“You know?”
“Your husband had me kidnapped. Did he tell you that?”
“Oh, kidnapped, what a lot of phooey!”
“I think they were planning on killing me. Glenn and the other one.”
“Well, if that’s true, that’s on Glenn’s conscience, not Shiv’s.”
“But everyone works for Shiv, right? He must call the shots.”
Judy stopped briefly. Jesse continued into the labyrinth and the place got darker still.
“My husband may not be perfect, but I’ll have you know he has deep Eastern wisdom. His parents were from Rishikesh. Do you know Rishikesh?”
Vivian shook her head.
“It’s in India. Do you know India?”
“Yes.”
“Rishikesh is energetically very significant. Shiv, he’s got that energy, in spades. He’d be an Ascended Master by now, if he wanted to be. But someone’s got to look after the earthly side of the business, don’t they? Who do you think orders all the crystals? Gets the books printed? Who deals with the indemnity forms and the NDAs and the insurance and taxes? The IRS tried to shut us down last year! The whole programme! And if anyone gets a whiff of this business with the initiates, coming up the mountain when they’re nowhere near ready, then we’ll be in a whole lot more trouble. So yes, sometimes he has to get his hands dirty, for the good of the family. I’m not saying I always agree. But it is what it is.”
“Was that it? He was worried I’d find Jesse’s body?”
“What’s that? No, miss, you’re misunderstanding me. He knew Jesse wasn’t dead. He wanted you to tell him where Jesse was. He thought you knew.”
“Oh,” said Vivian. “And you didn’t want to tell him?”
Judy looked longingly at Jesse, who was some way ahead of them now.
“No I did not,” said Judy. “It’s bad enough I let slip I’d seen him at all. See, Shiv doesn’t believe that Jesse has truly ascended. At first he was worried that your brother had just wandered off and was going to give a whole load of Telurian secrets to the papers… Then I told him I’d seen him up the mountain. Looking like he does. All that gorgeous light! Now he’s worried that this is some kind of game your brother is playing. If Shiv gets his hands on Jesse, well, I don’t know what he’ll do. Take him away from here, that’s for sure. He’s got some temper, you see. He’s not at all happy with the trouble Jesse’s been causing. But look at him, Vivian! If that isn’t an Ascended Master, I don’t know what is!”
“Why didn’t you tell me where he was? When I first got here?”
Judy shrugged her drum.
“Same reason. I didn’t want you taking him away from me. And all your posters… The world and his wife would’ve been up here looking for him! He belongs here, miss. He belongs on the mountain. And if I may be so bold, he belongs to me. I found him.” She paused. “Wait, you’re not still hoping to take him home with you, are you?”
Vivian watched her brother. He was climbing a ledge and slithering around on the flowstone like some luminous axolotl. She had no idea what she was planning on doing with him.
Judy kept pestering her about her intentions but she just murmured something about getting left behind and went on. The air became colder and fresher and she began to see patches of indigo, like trails of spilled ink, in the cave ceiling. The odd star. They heard the sound of rushing water. Jesse climbed down, momentarily out of sight, and they followed him into an icy underground stream, nearly waist-deep, that sapped what little feeling remained in Vivian’s hands and feet. Judy thrashed and gasped in the darkness. Her drum finally detached itself from her back and bobbed through the water where Jesse stood glowing.
“Oh my,” said Judy, still unable to catch her breath. “Oh dear. Won’t I need that in the Crystal City? Jesse?”
Jesse waded on ahead. The river got shallower and the cave opened up and he emerged onto a stony shoal. They were back below the trees. His body illuminated the thick, wrinkled trunks of the cedars. Vivian smelled mulch and earth.
“I don’t understand,” said Judy. “We’re not in the mountain. Are you sure this is the way? I’m sorry, I know it’s not my place to question, but…”
This is the way, said Jesse.
He was waiting on the river bank, unperturbed by the fact that he was wet through and the air temperature wasn’t much above zero. Vivian didn’t know what time it was, but it must have been nearly dawn.
She came and stood beside him while Judy caught up, and still couldn’t think of anything to say, settling on a completely unsatisfactory, “Are you okay?”
I’m okay, said Jesse.
The words echoed strangely, even though they were no longer in the cave.
Vivian listened carefully to him. There seemed a layer of deep silence around him. She couldn’t even hear him breathing.
“This thing—” she said.
I wrote it down.
“But you can’t just tell me.”
No.
“But it’s words?”
Not really.
“A picture?”
Not really.
“Then what is it?”
A shape.
“What kind of shape?”
It’s difficult to describe. It describes itself, if you know what I mean.
“You’re frightening me again, Jesse.”
You’ll understand when you see it. It’s simple. I figured it out.
She looked at him, bewildered. Another memory came back to her. Jesse, at the dinner table again, staring a hole in his mashed potato and occasionally scribbling something in a notepad, or if there was no paper, just scratching it into the varnish of the tabletop. A frown so deep it made him look not quite human. The answer always the same when she or her parents or the help asked him what was wrong: “Just trying to figure something out.” How old had he been then? Seven or eight? His whole life had been one long figuring out.
“Are you going to come home?” said Vivian. “After you’ve shown me the thing, obviously.”
Why? he said.
“Because I miss you. Mum misses you.”
Okay, he said, but it seemed he cared neither one way nor the other.
“Don’t you want to come home?”
I don’t want anything anymore, he said.
Vivian didn’t know what to say to that. As soon as Judy arrived he started wandering away from her again.
“We’re outside again,” said Judy. “Why are we outside? Do you not think I’m ready? I was so sure I was ready! Is it because I lost the drum? Jesse?”
Nobody replied.
The sun came up not long afterwards. It lit the forest gold and green and the mountain seemed to Vivian more beautiful than any tacky pink Crystal City that Judy might have been looking for. The river tumbled over a series of waterfalls and at the bottom of one they found Judy’s drum lying on its side in an eddy. She tried to retrieve it with a stick but only succeeded in poking it further under the water.
They followed the river through its various cascades and meanderings. Vivian didn’t know what side of the mountain they were on, but Jesse still seemed quite sure of where they were going. Judy kept looking wistfully at the rapids, hoping, no doubt, that her sacred instrument might bob to the surface somewhere she could retrieve it. She’d gone very quiet.
The river eventually emptied into a black pool about the size of a tennis court, ringed around with trees. It was still and deep and oily and there was a smell about it that seemed more offensive than just stagnant water or rotting vegetation. Jesse stopped on the edge. Vivian wondered whether he had meant to bring them to this specific spot. They waited. Then they heard it again: the deep-throated rumble of an engine with a lot of horsepower.
Jesse withdrew slightly into the forest. Vivian, too. He seemed less incandescent in the daylight, but there was still no answer to how he was doing it at all. Apart from the answer he had given. The Answer, with a capital “A”.
“Do you think they saw us?” said Vivian. “I mean, up on the mountain? They can’t have followed us. Right? Judy?”
Judy was some way behind them, looking despondent. She shrugged.
The noise of the truck got louder and Vivian saw it emerge on the far side of the pool, nose-first, like an animal at a watering hole. She and Judy ducked down. It performed a series of awkward three-point turns between the trees until it was able to reverse down to the edge of the water. There was a hiss of pneumatics and the bed of the truck was raised to a forty-five-degree angle and its cargo slid and tumbled out the back. Vivian watched the bodies of Eenoo and three others she didn’t recognise hit the surface of the water and disappear almost instantly.
She turned to Judy.
“Sure,” she said, “deep Eastern wisdom.”
24
THEY TOOK the same overgrown logging road the truck had arrived on and followed it till it met a highway that might have been the 55, though Vivian wasn’t sure. Jesse went on silently. He had nothing to say about what they’d all seen. His feet made no noise on the weed-cracked asphalt. Vivian and Judy followed, a pair of ragged disciples. The receptionist was sobbing quietly at the back, ashamed of the scene at the lake, or disappointed by the absence of the Crystal City, or missing her drum, or perhaps just bone-tired like Vivian was.
Three bends in the road and things became familiar. They crossed the creek that led to Piotr Blucas’s cabin and came up through the forest and then Vivian saw it, the unhappy bear with his neon sign, and the western corner of the Cedar Lodge Motel. He was taking them back to room 29. Vivian was absolutely certain of that.
It couldn’t have been eight a.m. yet and the streets were quiet, at least at this end of town. No one saw them as they crossed the parking lot and entered the lobby. Inside, Jerome and Minnie were asleep on the sofa. Jesse’s radiance lit their faces and the furniture and they both seemed to give easy, childlike smiles and stirred slightly. Seeing Jesse in this setting, surrounded by normal things, forced another recalibration in Vivian’s brain. No writing it off as her imagination when it was combined with the stink of cigarettes, and cheap furnishings, and the lines and grey hairs that belonged to the Carters. Yes. The light was real, or none of it was real.
She thought, briefly, that she might speak to Jerome and get him to report what they’d seen up the mountain to his police contacts. But her brother wasn’t stopping, and the thing, the answer, was waiting for her. Besides, she’d have to tell Jerome and Minnie that there was a chance their son was decomposing at the bottom of a stagnant lake, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to have that conversation yet.
Troy wasn’t there.
“Who’s been watching reception?” said Judy, and nobody replied, and this started her crying again.
Vivian followed her brother through the double doors and up the steps, the same way she’d come on the morning she’d checked in.
“It’s in your room, isn’t it?” she said. “The thing.”
Yes, he said.
“I have the key!” said Judy, hurrying up the stairs behind them. Jesse answered by producing his own from his pocket. That was two of them, then. And the third, who had that? Mr Blucas?
“I don’t understand,” said Judy. She sounded more despondent than ever. “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted something from your room? I could have brought it up for you. You didn’t need to come back here.”
Jesse turned the key to room 29 and opened the door and stepped inside. He didn’t need to turn on the light. The glow from his flesh showed up the walls and furniture, as far as could be seen. For the most part, the room was filled – to the ceiling in some areas – with towering piles of books and papers. Vivian went in after him. She inspected the spines of the books and recognised titles from her conversation with her mother. Perhaps one in four of them were part of the Telos imprint. The rest were a mixture of self-help, spirituality, theology and quantum mechanics. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, next to Feynman’s lectures, next to J. B. Purelight’s The Healing Power of Dogs. Hundreds of them, all well-thumbed and annotated and divided up with bookmarks and coloured Post-It notes.
“These all yours, Jesse?” said Vivian.
He didn’t answer.
“What were you doing in here?”
“What do you think he was doing?” said Judy. She was starting to sound ratty.
“You knew about all this? And you put me in the room next door?”
Why hadn’t she made more of an effort to get in? She needn’t have bothered looking for the key. The walls in the motel were so thin she could have just put a fist through from her room into his.
Jesse manoeuvred through the maze he’d built for himself until he reached the desk in the far corner.
He stopped and looked around as if he’d lost something, and he cast kaleidoscopic shapes and blotches onto the walls, and, just to add to the general trippiness of the space, his room also had some complexly patterned wallpaper, its design fibrous and spider-webby and more conducive to madness than mindfulness, Vivian thought.
Jesse opened the drawer in the desk and shut it again. The desktop itself was curiously empty. The kettle had gone. The TV was also missing, and the bracket that had once attached it to the wall.
“What is it?” asked Vivian. “Jesse?”
“Shush!” said Judy. “Why must you keep bothering him?”
He still didn’t reply.
The room was close and stuffy and the light was odd. It reminded Vivian of when she’d had the flu, as a child. She’d been confined to her bedroom for five days, waking and sleeping in a persistent, feverish twilight. Figures who may or may not have been her parents materialising at the foot of her bed with water and boiled sweets, their voices coming to her from some other dimension. That same feeling she had now – that she’d had pretty much since she’d arrived – of being unable to distinguish what was a dream from what wasn’t.
She put down the book she was idly thumbing – Mein Leiben, Meine Weltansicht, all in German, its margins crammed with more text than the body of each page – and took a couple of paces towards him. From this distance she saw that the pattern on the walls did not repeat. In fact, it wasn’t a pattern at all. It was all tiny numbers and letters from the Greek alphabet, interspersed with brackets and mathematical functions and symbols she didn’t recognise. Thousands of equations, or perhaps just one enormous equation, or perhaps not an equation at all, perhaps the scrawlings of a madman. Vivian had only studied mathematics as far as GCSE and as far as she was concerned she could have been looking at the runes Judy had used to embellish her posters, or the “sacred geometry” Forrest had talked about non-stop back at the Sanctuary. As well as the symbols and numbers, Jesse had written notes to himself in the same minuscule handwriting. They were like the notes she’d found in his coat. Some were very simple. Try cutting out sugar, said one. Another said: renormalisation group running of the three gauge couplings in the Standard Model does not meet at EXACTLY same point if hypercharge is normalised so that it is consistent with SU(5) or SO(10) GUTs i.e. GUT groups which lead to a simple fermion unification.
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