The Last Second

by Catherine Coulter

  “Devi was only a tool. She served her purpose. She was of no importance any longer.”

  We know you’re wondering if that is why the Heaven Stone doesn’t want to become one with you.

  “No, I have no doubts. Maybe the Heaven Stone needs time to understand what my goal is, what we are all planning to do together. Isn’t that possible?”

  Yes, perhaps that is possible. There is so much work left to do.

  “Everything is in place. I have the Heaven Stone so I am now immortal, so I can be one with you and live forever. I’ve placed the bomb aboard the satellite, the countdown is underway. Two more days, and there will be no more noise in the heavens, no more noise on Earth. And you will come to me.”

  Only two more days, Nevaeh.

  “Yes, I will be high on my mountaintop awaiting you. In two days, at the apex of the lunar eclipse, the skies will glow with an explosion of such magnitude that, like I said, all the satellites will go dead, and then the world around us will be dark and silent, as I came to believe you wanted. That will be your moment, that is when you will be able to enter Earth’s atmosphere unharmed. All will be open to you, and I will welcome you and we will begin our journey to save Earth.”

  We know you have worked relentlessly to make us recognized by all, to make us know and condemn your enemies. Soon, Nevaeh, soon—

  “Yes, we will bring peace to Earth together. I will rule, you at my side, my confidants, my advisers. No one will ever betray me again, all will revere me—and you.”

  She waited in the silence of the dark, quiet water but they said no more.

  She rose, stepped out of the chamber and into the low light.

  It was time to set the world on fire.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. People with schizophrenia may seem like they have lost touch with reality.

  —National Institute of Mental Health

  Manhattan, New York

  July 19, 2012

  Nevaeh stepped out of the cab on Fifth Avenue into the sweltering July day. Summer in the city was loud and sticky. She was excited, and not a little nervous, to be taking this step. It felt momentous. She’d waited four months to get on the schedule with Dr. Claire Fontaine, a leading psychiatrist with a specialty in schizophrenia who no longer took new patients. But Nevaeh hadn’t given up. When the call finally came—the doctor had a cancellation, would be willing to make an exception, could she be there tomorrow?—Nevaeh had quickly packed a bag and was on the first flight out of Houston.

  Fontaine was her ticket back to NASA, back to the space station, she knew it in her heart. Yes, she’d quit, but flight director Franklin Norgate had reached out time and again, telling her she had a place on the NASA team. He’d made it clear they wanted her back to train other astronauts, and maybe, with the right mission, the right timing, she could get assigned a mission of her own. Did he really believe it? Nevaeh didn’t know if it would ever happen as long as that vindictive bitch Rebecca Holloway was in charge. But maybe after today, Holloway would have to back off, she would have to admit Nevaeh wasn’t insane. Fontaine was that good, that respected, that listened to.

  As for her situation, as Norgate liked to refer to it, it had been kept private. It wasn’t good press to have an astronaut quit the program like she had. And when it happened, as it did occasionally, NASA battened down the hatches.

  Norgate, a man she no longer admired, kept referring to her recovery from her “ordeal.” Ordeal? What a stupid thing to call a life-changing event. He would eat his words as well, beg her to come back, lead her own mission.

  She took the elevator to the fifth floor and found Fontaine’s office. The waiting room was simply furnished with blond modern sofas and chairs. A bored young woman checked her in and took her payment. So Dr. Fontaine didn’t take insurance, fine with her, she would happily pay ten times what the woman was charging to get Fontaine’s assurances of her sanity.

  After a few minutes, the wooden door opened and a kind-faced brown-haired woman wearing a sleeveless black sheath dress and bright red lipstick gestured her inside. Dr. Fontaine was in her early fifties, runner-fit, and from fifteen feet away, Nevaeh could see the intelligence in her light-colored eyes. She felt a surge of hope. Nevaeh didn’t think this woman would make up her mind until she had all the facts.

  They spoke for a few minutes, introductions, really, then the doctor said, “What may I help you with, Dr. Patel?”

  “I’m having a—situation”—ah, that word again—“and I want to get your confirmation I’m not suffering from any sort of delusions or mental incapacities. It’s a delicate matter.”

  Fontaine looked interested. “Go on.”

  She told the story clearly and cleanly, giving specifics, the way she’d been trained. The doctor nodded and wrote a few things down, but for the most part simply listened. When Nevaeh finished, she said, “It’s been a year since you left NASA?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the Numen haven’t appeared to you in any corporeal form? They’re only auditory?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Fascinating.”

  “I have my files from NASA. I can—”

  “Let’s talk some more, first. I’ll do my homework before our next meeting. Tell me about your family. Your upbringing.”

  “I don’t have mommy or daddy issues. I loved my parents deeply, and they loved me. They always supported me. Always.”

  “They’re gone?”

  “Yes, unfortunately.”

  “I can see by the look on your face you’re experiencing a strong memory right now. Tell me what you’re seeing, Dr. Patel. What are you remembering?”

  “Funny how you say it, a strong memory. Yes, I was remembering how I became an astronaut in the first place. It was July 20, 1969, the mission was Apollo 11. The television was on in the living room, one of the square, squat things, brown and ugly. I was sitting in front of it, and the pictures were grainy, black-and-white, and it was incredible, seeing the moon, the dust being kicked up. I was transported there, it was so hauntingly beautiful. My mother started to speak and my father told her to stop talking. Then we heard the words, tinny on the television’s weak speakers. I’ve heard the real recordings. They don’t do Armstrong justice.”

  “The words?”

  “ ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ When Armstrong took his first step on the moon, I knew immediately I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to do what they were doing. It seemed incredible, indescribably amazing.”

  “And your parents? How did they react?”

  “My mother said, ‘Oh, my darling girl, you do? I think you would be a wonderful astronaut.’ My father, who was always more practical, said, ‘Do you know how much schooling is involved?’ I didn’t, of course, so he explained to me all the science and math I would have to do, and when I got excited instead of deterred, they did everything they could to help me reach my goal. I was already good at math, and an early reader. We lived in Connecticut at the time, my father taught at Yale. They took me out of public school and enrolled me in a private elementary that fed to Andover, which in turn opened all the doors to Stanford. They took me on vacations to Cape Canaveral to watch launches—it was incredible, earth-shattering, to be in the presence of so much power. I studied hard, pushed myself, and achieved my goals.”

  “I’d say a Ph.D. in astrophysics from MIT would be an achievement for anyone.”

  Nevaeh was pleased. This doctor, this brilliant respected psychiatrist, would see to it she would go back into space. Nevaeh knew it. She said, “So you know some of my story.”

  Dr. Fontaine looked at her notebook. “I glanced at the files you provided, briefly.”

  “Then you’ll know the Ph.D. wasn’t all I craved. The schooling was necessary, but I had to be special to get NASA’s attention. I first published when I was twenty, in the Journal of the
Aeronautical Sciences, a paper on the future of manned space flight. It got attention from many quarters. I got my pilot’s license when I was sixteen, then went on to be certified in both fixed wing and helicopter. All I was missing was a tour overseas in the military. Every step I took from the age of eight was designed to make me stand out when I applied for the astronaut program. I was among an elite group of extremely well-educated and committed individuals, all of whom were freakishly smart. I had to be better than good, I had to be invincible. And it worked. I got their attention, and I went to work for NASA, became an astronaut.”

  “How did you feel when you were chosen for the program?”

  “Transcendent.”

  “And how did you feel when you were told you had to rotate off the space station and come home for evaluation?”

  “Furious. It wasn’t fair. They made me come back because they thought I was crazy. I am not crazy. How could I be? Look at all I’ve accomplished. I’ve never had an incident in the past. Why would I start now?”

  “Dr. Patel. You had a severe trauma in an unfamiliar environment. Sometimes trauma can cause a dissociative state. It’s the mind’s way of helping you cope.”

  “I know what a dissociative state is. I had all the psychological training before I went up to the space station. They only choose those who exhibit the proper mental capacities for space flight. And once they’d screened out those who wouldn’t be able to handle it, they trained us to handle it all. We were warned about hallucinations, depression, claustrophobia, anger, anxiety. How lonely we would feel, how disconnected. We still don’t understand exactly what microgravity does to the body, to the brain, to the blood, don’t know how to mitigate these very real emotions.

  “But I know myself. That’s not what happened. I wasn’t suffering from anything.”

  “Tell me what you think happened.”

  “It’s not what I think, it’s what I know. I went on the walk, did my assigned repair. I was finished, getting in place to come back inside. My hand slipped and I missed the rung. The negative inertia pushed me away from the ladder. I began to float away, and my tether snapped. I had no way to get back to the station. And then a hand gripped mine, and that’s when they spoke.”

  “They?”

  “The Numen.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Dr. Fontaine said, without a hitch, without an ounce of disbelief, “The Numen? Did they name themselves, or is this a name you gave them?”

  “They identified themselves, I believe.”

  “All right. Go on.”

  “They said, ‘You are not going to die today. But you must tell them we’re here.’ And that’s what I’ve been trying to do, and everyone thinks I’ve gone mad. That I have some sort of space sickness that’s impaired me. But it’s not true.”

  “You’re getting upset. Try to calm yourself. Square breathing. Of course you know what that is.”

  Nevaeh obediently breathed in for a count of four, held her breath for four, blew it out, then sat. She did this twice more before Dr. Fontaine said, “All right. That’s better. Now. When you hear the Numen, are they external to your body? Or does it feel like your own internal voice speaking to you?”

  “They’re external, they’re not inside me.”

  “And how often do they speak? Do they wait until they are spoken to, or do they interrupt you?”

  “It’s often in response to my speaking to them.”

  “Do they tell you to do things?”

  Nevaeh needed to be careful here. The longer she was away from space, the quieter the voices got, and she hated it, like missing an arm.

  She said simply, “They want me to keep telling people of their existence. They mean us no harm. They want to help us achieve peace.”

  “If you’re walking down a busy street, could you talk to them?”

  “No. I need quiet. Calm. They don’t like the noise. That’s part of what they want, for us to turn down the noise. All the phones and computers and satellites—it’s stopping them from being able to talk to more people. They see nothing but a violent ending for our species from the takeover of technology. They know there’s no end in sight.”

  “So they’ve made contact with people before?”

  “I don’t know. They haven’t said. Do you believe me?”

  Nevaeh saw Dr. Fontaine’s eyes widen, though of course she’d been trained to school her face.

  “Nevaeh, it doesn’t matter what I believe. We’re here to discuss what you believe. Do you think you’re exhibiting signs of schizophrenia, or schizoaffective disorder?”

  “No, I don’t. I feel completely normal. My cognitive function is not impaired. I feel no decompensation of my abilities. I have no symptoms of any sort of mental illness other than the occasional conversation with some space travelers.”

  She sounded bitter, she knew she did. She hadn’t chosen to be the conduit through which the Numen held a discourse with Earth. At times she wished they hadn’t chosen her. But of course, they’d saved her. How could she repudiate them?

  Dr. Fontaine said, “I wasn’t entirely forthcoming earlier. I have taken a cursory look at the records you provided me from your doctors at NASA. It’s well-documented that sometimes astronauts hallucinate in space. They feel that’s what happened. On your EVA, you suffered from a hallucination, and it has cemented itself in your imagination and become real for you. This is not unheard of.”

  “The operative words there are ‘in space.’ They’ve tried a hundred different explanations for what happened. I was trying to commit suicide because I had separation anxiety and desperately wanted to get back to Earth. I was deprived of oxygen when my tether snapped and it caused a hypoxic event. I forgot to eat my rations, I had a love affair, then a breakup with a fellow astronaut and wanted to end my mission early.

  “None of this is true. I heard what I heard, I felt what I felt. And I want to feel it again. I want to be with the Numen again, to feel their love, their acceptance, their desire to bring peace to the Earth.”

  “Ah. So you want to escape reality, get away from our noisy world.”

  Why was she dragging this out? Nevaeh said, “If I wanted to escape reality, I’d load up on heroin and float away. No. I want you to verify there is nothing organic wrong with my brain, which is why I’m here—for testing. I’ve filled out all your forms, I’ve provided all my medical files. If you want to do blood work today I am more than happy to comply. I welcome the tests and your results.” She paused a moment, then said simply, “I need you to tell NASA I can go back to space. Tell them I’m not schizophrenic, I have my full faculties.”

  “Why must you go back to space?”

  “I have to talk to the Numen again. Now, given the distance and all the noise, as I already said, it’s not enough for them or for me. I need to hear them clearly. To find out what they want me to do next. Please, Dr. Fontaine. You’re my last hope.”

  “Ah.”

  “What do you mean, ah?”

  “Dr. Patel—Nevaeh—a diagnosis, or lack of, from me won’t sway your bosses at NASA. I know you hope my recommendation as to your sanity would do the trick. But do you know what? I think you also recognize it is possible you are having some sort of extended dissociative episode. It can ingrain in your mind as a real event, and when you revisit it, over and over, you make it part of your value system. It’s something Freud called abreaction. It’s a method of bringing traumatic events back to the surface, reliving them, and becoming conscious of them as a repressed event. It’s how your mind deals with a horror. In your case, you were faced with the most frightening aspect of space travel—disappearing into a void. Literally. And so your mind has created a reality in which you spoke to an alien species who want to bring peace to Earth, who saved your life. You believe without them, you might be dead. It’s a powerful delusion.”

  Nevaeh wanted to leap over the table and strangle the woman. But she kept her temper, smiled, said calmly, “You’re missing the point, Dr. Fon
taine. NASA prepared me for the idea I might die during the mission. You spend months planning to strap yourself inside a tin can that will be tied to a rocket and shot into space, and see if they don’t cover the very real possibility you might die. I wasn’t afraid of dying.”

  “No? What did you feel the moment you realized all the failsafes had collapsed and you were truly untethered?”

  “I started the sequence of steps to get myself back to the ship, stat. I did what I trained for, exactly as I trained. It didn’t work.”

  “But what did you feel, Nevaeh, when you realized you weren’t going to be able to reattach, that you were going to die?”

  “I felt—numb. Disbelief, I suppose, that it could end like this because I made a stupid mistake.”

  “Perhaps, if you’re willing to be honest with yourself, you might recognize your magnificent brain wanted to protect you from the knowledge that you would die, and so created a savior in the form of an alien species who quite literally handed you back to the space station. I’d like you to consider the possibility you saved yourself.”

  “That’s not what happened. I know what happened, I was there.”

  Nevaeh’s voice was rising, she couldn’t help it. Fontaine wasn’t any different from Holloway.

  Dr. Fontaine sat forward, clasped her hands on the desk. “Listen, Nevaeh, you wanted the truth, I’m giving it to you.”

  It was over, all over. She had failed to convince this woman. She said, “You don’t believe me.”

  “I believe you believe you, which is what matters here.”

  “So what do we do next? If you won’t talk to NASA for me, are you going to tell me to take this or that drug and all this will go away? I’ll never hear from the Numen again?”

  “Well, if you were schizophrenic, or suffering from a schizo-affective disorder, I would. I don’t believe you are. I do believe you’re suffering from a severely traumatic experience that your mind has built a wall around, and you’re going to need some serious work to unlock it.”