But Kayla had bounded off from the table before Anne had finished her sentence. Reverend Daniels continued to eat his beef while his wife watched him for another few seconds.
“Honey, is everything … all right?”
He paused and looked up at her. “Sure, just fine. Why?”
“It’s just … I don’t know, you seem a bit distracted lately.”
“Well, honestly, sweetheart, I don’t see how a man can have his full bearings when you’ve prepared as delectable a feast as this.”
“Oh, Will, give me a break,” she said with a laugh.
“Everything is fine, sweetie,” he said. “And I promise, if it wasn’t, you’d be the first to know about it.”
She nodded. For a few seconds, they ate in silence.
“He’ll come back,” Anne suddenly said, softly. “He’s full of confusion, that’s all. He still loves us, and he still respects you. And I know he misses his baby sister. He’ll come round. Believe you me, he’ll be comin’ home any day now.”
Reverend Daniels nodded. “Amen,” he said.
Kayla returned carrying a small drawing depicting a cartoon figure wearing some kind of headgear, which she displayed theatrically for her father.
“Like it?”
“I love it!” the reverend replied. “What is it?”
Kayla looked shocked. “It’s Andrew Leland!”
“Oh!” Reverend Daniels replied, nodding in fake recognition. He squinted. “What’s that he’s got on his head?”
And now Kayla turned mad. “It’s a fisherman’s hat!” she declared, the annoyance in her voice palpable.
“But why’s he wearing a fisherman’s hat?”
“Because he’s in disguise as a fisherman!” Kayla exclaimed, at this point totally exasperated. She put the drawing back on the table and went back to eating her sweet potatoes.
“Oh, well, now that you say so, yes, yes, that makes sense. That’s a terrific drawing, honey!”
The girl smiled forgivingly and scooped a heap of potatoes into her mouth. “Papa,” she asked, speaking with her mouth full, “why’s Andrew Leland hidin’?”
“That’s a really good question, honey,” Reverend Daniels responded, and he put down his fork and knife for a moment and looked at his daughter thoughtfully. “I wish I could give you an answer that’s just as good as your question, but the truth is, we don’t really know for sure. We can only guess that it’s because he’s not ready to give us his message. And that when he is, he’ll come.”
“But why not?”
“Well, again, we just don’t know. The only person who could answer that is Andrew himself. All we can do is hope that when he’s good and ready to give it to us, we’ll be good and ready to receive it. In the meantime, we’ve just gotta sit tight and wait.”
Kayla shook her head and pouted. “Micah says waitin’ is for horsecockies!”
Anne’s eyes widened in shock. “Kayla! We do not use that kind of language, not here at the table, not anywhere!”
Reverend Daniels laughed, but stopped quickly after a sharp glance from his wife. He wondered, though, if she was also secretly amused by this inventive swearword that indicated Micah’s father might be spending too much time at the racetracks.
“Your mama’s right, pumpkin,” he said. “But there might be some point in what Micah says; a lot of people don’t like waiting. I don’t like it much myself, but then I wonder if maybe that’s what faith is all about. Maybe faith is always just waiting. And hoping and praying and believing that whatever you’re waiting for, sooner or later, is really gonna come about.”
The reverend could see Anne smiling at him out the corner of his eye, no doubt at the absurdity of this impromptu sermon delivered to a six-year-old who obviously wouldn’t appreciate it. And he knew his wife was probably right, but then again, what difference did it make whether or not the girl understood? Because the whole point was surely about to become irrelevant, anyway.
The long wait was finally going to be over.
* * *
At around ten o’clock, Reverend Daniels told Anne that he was going out to visit a patient at the clinic who hadn’t been doing well and who wished to keep things private. As he drove over, he felt a little guilty that he’d allowed Anne to think his recent distractedness was as a result of their son. Of course he missed their boy and thought and wondered about him all the time, but he was also firmly convinced that once the truth became known to the world, once the message had been revealed, the kid would come right back home, ready to repent for all his waywardness. Now, the stunning revelation would be happening even sooner than he’d expected.
When he arrived at the clinic, Dr. Rogers was inserting the largest needle he’d ever seen into an unconscious Andrew Leland’s arm.
“It’s a jab stick,” Rogers explained as Reverend Daniels entered the room. “They use it for elephants. We had it ordered special yesterday.”
Reverend Daniels closed the door behind himself. “How’s he doing tonight?”
“Better. Heart rate has steadied and blood pressure’s now at a healthy 116 over 75. Breathing is good, too, if a little irregular. And his reflexes … well, to say they’ve improved would be an understatement.”
“What do you mean?”
“Here, let me show you something.”
Dr. Rogers opened a drawer and removed a small rubber hammer. He then lifted up Leland’s left leg and repositioned it so that it was dangling slightly off the edge of the gurney.
“Watch closely,” he said and, very gently, tapped the spot right below Leland’s knee with the hammer.
After a second, Reverend Daniels shook his head.
“Was something supposed to happen? I didn’t see anything.”
Dr. Rogers smiled. “That’s exactly the point, Reverend. His leg moved so fast you can’t hardly see it. All his reflexes are the same way, like lightning. And I don’t think that’s all, either. You’re still dead set against an MRI or CT scan?”
“Absolutely, Eddie. We can’t take him off these premises; the exposure is way too dangerous.”
“Well, I’ve just got a funny feeling that if we did do any of those tests, we’d find that the bones underneath his skin aren’t like any bones we’ve ever seen. If they’re bones at all.”
The reverend smiled and shook his head in wonder. “You see what’s happening, Eddie?”
“What’s happening, Reverend?”
“Everything! It’s all happening, and it’s beyond our wildest dreams. When he comes out of this thing, he’s gonna have a hell of a thing to tell us, just you wait. To tell the world. The time has come, Eddie.” He paused, stared at the doctor. “You don’t seem convinced.”
Dr. Rogers shrugged. “With all due respect, Reverend, without us here circulating his blood and giving him the proper fluids, this man would be dead.”
“Okay, but don’t you see? We’re all part of the plan. And it’s all coming together now, like pieces in a puzzle.”
“I can appreciate that, Reverend, and when I look at that gurney, I see a very special man. But a man nonetheless, and a man who, while no doubt remarkably different from other men and in astounding shape given his present predicament, is still in a pretty bad way.”
Reverend Daniels chuckled. “Oh, Eddie, you would have said the same thing if you’d seen Jesus bleeding on the cross.”
“I probably would have, Reverend.”
Reverend Daniels walked over to Leland’s bedside and leaned in close. “Andrew,” he whispered into his ear. “Don’t worry. We’re here, we’re waiting for you, and we’re not giving up, so keep pushing, keep on moving. We’re ready to receive you. And we’re ready to receive your word.” He turned to Dr. Rogers. “You think he can hear us when we talk?”
Dr. Rogers shook his head. “While nothing’s for sure, at this stage, he’d still be in what’s called the ‘true coma’ phase. He wouldn’t be having any sensory perceptions whatsoever.”
Reverend Daniels stared at Lelan
d, lying flat on the gurney with his eyes closed, looking so peaceful.
“What about dreaming? Could he be having dreams?”
Dr. Rogers shook his head again. “At this stage right here, we can safely assume that his mind is basically shut off,” he said. “He is nowhere, and he isn’t dreaming, he isn’t thinking, he isn’t anything. If he’s experiencing anything at all, it’s nothing but blackness.”
CHAPTER 28
The colors swirl before his eyes. Crimson, violet, neon yellow, some colors that Leland feels he can’t recognize, let alone name. Swirling before him like smoke, hazy and translucent one moment, stark and clear and so damn bright the next, constantly moving, forming spontaneous works of art, cloudy abstract images, until suddenly they are no longer clouds, no longer abstract, no, they are taking shape. They are becoming more and more defined, crystallized, until they form a room or some version of a room, a bedroom or some bedroom-like place from back there, and he knows this room he is in, though this surely isn’t what it had looked like then. Now, he can hear her calling his name from somewhere else, somewhere beyond the room …
“Andrew!” she cries out again in her soft honeycomb voice, and he runs to the window and looks up and out into the night, and there is a spiraling rope bridge ascending straight from his bedroom window up into a haze of lavender mist.
“Andrew!” she calls once more from above, from somewhere beyond that mist.
He knows tonight is the night, and he crawls out the window and proceeds to climb the bridge, moving higher and higher, not daring to look down at the steep nothingness below, only up at the misty unknown above, and soon he’s moving through that mist, more colors, not just lavender but cherry red, midnight blue, hot pink, swirling around him as he does, and all of a sudden, he has found himself passed through, in the clear, standing on some extremely high plateau with that entire world spread out below him like a blueprint for itself.
And here she is, smiling, those wide and brilliant green eyes sparkling, and she approaches and kisses him on the lips.
The night he is reliving in this dream is the night they have both been planning for. He is a wanted man, a traitor marked for death, but she will lead him to safety and restore him to his original human body. Then he will fly away on a spaceship specially designed for him, and, following an advanced and secret formula of his own devising, he will attempt to pass through the cosmic shield at such a speed and angle that he will wind up on the other side in the present instead of the past. He will probably fail at that, but if he somehow succeeds, he will return home to Earth, and his entire time on this world will fade into obscure memories and hazy dreams like the one he is experiencing right now.
“Are you ready?” she asks as their lips part.
“I’ll never be ready,” he answers. The same thing he said the first time he lived this moment.
“If you stay here, they’ll finish you.”
“Or I could just do as they ask and take down the shield.”
“And watch your whole world be destroyed?”
“The most destructive world in the galaxy. Maybe we deserve it.”
“Some of your kind do. Many more don’t.” She extends her hand. “Come. We don’t have much time.”
He reaches out, takes her hand, and the two of them leap from their spectacular height into a massive cloud below, and soon the cloud gives way to that blueprint, that map, their entire world below getting closer and closer, wider and wider. He can see a suspension bridge far below, tall and stately and orange, he knows this bridge, and it’s getting bigger and bigger until suddenly they are right on it, and now they are running across it, hand in hand, moving at the speed of a car or a train, but they are running or some version of running, something like running, some way in which they are moving very fast. He turns to his left and there’s a magnificent city passing by, glowing majestically in the night, dense and tall with an enormous skyscraper with burning antennas, and he recognizes that, of course, it’s the Chicago skyline—he spent time there as a child, and it looks just like it looked then, no Franklin Center yet, no Trump Tower—and he turns to his right and there is another city, this one even larger and grander and also lighting up the night with dazzling skyscrapers and towers, and who in this galaxy or any other wouldn’t recognize the Big Apple? And up ahead, the two giant orange towers from which the bridge’s suspension cables descend—yes, of course, the Golden Gate Bridge—and the sky above is filled with shining stars, and the sea below is dark and full of mystery as they race across the bridge.
Just then, they hear a sound they feared but knew they’d hear eventually: helicopter blades. They glance over their shoulders, and in the distance behind them, up in the night sky, are hundreds of strange flying black vehicles with six rotors apiece, moving together in a menacing flock formation.
They are after him.
“Come,” she says, and suddenly she leaps over the side of the Golden Gate Bridge, dragging him with her, and there goes Chicago in one insane blur, and now they’re falling so fast, and beneath them, where is the water? No water, as he would expect, but instead yet another city, this one flat and neon and thick with blue smoke, but though they’re falling toward it, it’s not getting any closer. They are falling, he wants to cry out, and it is not getting any closer. But no sooner has he made this realization when suddenly it rushes up at them, and they pass right through it as though it was all an illusion or yet another cloud of mist of neon yellow, midnight blue, fuchsia. They continue to fall, hand in hand, and now he can see below them a dark and vast sea rising up, and just as they’re about to hit the water, she says, “Don’t be afraid,” and an ancient-looking rowboat glides in beneath them, and they land gently and gradually into its hull.
The boat drifts and sways in the darkness, sandwiched between the twinkling sea of stars above and the sea reflecting those stars below, and they are surrounded by enormous cliffs on all sides, and in the distance he can see a great Gothic structure with bat-like gargoyles and spires and a bell tower and, somehow above all of that, a giant silver dome.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“That’s the observatory,” she answers. “That’s where your body is.” She pauses. “Your real body.”
She picks up one of the oars and hands him the other, and they begin to row, softly and gently in the direction of the observatory. He looks at her face, wondering if he can still discern the sweet, innocent, and mischievous child inside of her. But that child is nowhere to be seen, not tonight. Tonight she is all steely resolve, all mission. She is his savior and also everything he will lose by being saved, and he knows that the price is too fucking high.
But then, as he watches her, she suddenly starts to fade, everything starts to fade, the boat and the water and the Gothic observatory in the distance, and he can feel the surface on which he lies and foreign protrusions in his body, and he can hear the distant murmur of voices, medical terms being bandied about somewhere close by.
The real world is trying to break through, but he’s just going to hold on to this dream that much harder, for as long as he can.
He’s lived this night before, he knows that, but everything must have been different. It had to have been. For one thing, he hadn’t had a name to be called, and for another, she and he are far too much like people right now, and they were nothing like people back then. And, of course, there was no New York City on that world or Chicago or Golden Gate Bridge, and those are just some of many reasons why he knows that everything must have been different when it had actually happened in real life. But if different, then different only in the details, in the specifics. The heart will remember what the mind no longer can. He’s lived this night before, and it was nothing like this and it was everything like this.
CHAPTER 29
Shawn Ferris lay on his stiff cot, staring up at the ceiling, whispering to no one: “Dynamene, Dysona, Dyukov, Dwingeloo…”
He’d been in the cell over two days, and in the fir
st day, he’d gone through all the major physics theories of the twentieth century and their corresponding years, and in the second, all the theoretical physics laws named after people who were still alive, and now he had taken to naming all the minor planets, in alphabetical order to the best of his abilities. All of this had been in an effort to stave off insanity, though to anyone watching, that surely would have seemed ironic.
“Dzhalil, Dzhangar, Dzhanibekov,” he continued, then paused. Was that it for the Ds? He was pretty sure it was. What is the first planet to start with E? Eamonlittle? No. Eades?
He took a deep breath.
I’m going to die in here, he thought, not for the first time. His cell was six by nine feet with gray concrete walls and consisted of the cot, an industrial silver toilet bowl, and a security camera pointing downward from the corner of the ceiling.
Rachel’s words from before now echoed in his ears: “We’re not individuals here … we need to progress, and we need to progress fast, much faster than we have been if we’re going to have any future…”
Facing the prospect of a lifetime in this cell, he had to admit her arguments suddenly seemed far more persuasive.
“Ambius might seem dirty to you … it is on the front lines in the war against our extinction … everything it does needs to be seen in that light…”
Shawn stared at the security camera above him. A thought that had occurred to him earlier now came back to him once more. The idea had originally come to him sometime after he’d made his quantum tunneling breakthrough, which had occurred sometime before he began naming physics theories.
He toyed with this thought again. He didn’t like it, but what choice did he have?
Fuck it, he decided finally. He was done with this cage.
Shawn got to his feet and stood up on the cot and stared right into the security camera above him. Besides the cyanide capsule in his tooth, Shawn had managed to smuggle one other object into the cell, a sealed two-inch ampoule of a chemical compound known as amyl nitrite, which he’d hidden in a sock and which he now held between the middle and ring fingers of his right hand, jutting out from behind so that as long as his palm stayed facing the camera, the ampoule wasn’t visible to it.
The Return Page 19