“I’m not staying,” Rick replied quietly. “I just stopped by to let you both know I’m doing fine. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Right now I have to go.” He turned to the door, then stopped, held by a strong feeling that something was left undone. He turned back and added quietly, “Just know that I love you, and I’m doing fine. Really.”
It was the image of his parents standing there, openmouthed and shocked into stillness by his quiet determination, that brought a smile to his face as he raced across the park and flagged down a passing taxi. He gave the driver the address, then panicked until he felt his wallet there in his back pocket. Rick settled back, the smile still in place. Whatever had brought him back had shown the good sense to return him to his own clothes, and not left him in the uniform of a lieutenant on a Hegemony vessel.
Consuela’s apartment building was just as ratty and dismal as he remembered. He mounted the stairs two at a time, pressed forward by a strange sense of urgency, which he could neither explain nor disregard. To his surprise, he found an envelope pinned to the apartment door, marked for Consuela. After a moment’s hesitation he pulled it down, opened it, and read:
“Dear Consuela, your mother had a bad attack on Wednesday. The doctor says it is nothing to worry about, but he has kept her over at Providence General for observation. I try to visit her every evening. The number is listed below. Your mother’s room number is 238. In Christ, Daniel Mitchum.”
Rick refolded the letter and pinned the envelope back in place. Then he raced back to the waiting taxi and ordered the driver to hurry over to the hospital.
At the door to room 238, he hesitated. What was he going to say to her? Then he heard the muffled sound of a man’s voice. He knocked and pushed through to find Daniel there and seated beside the bed.
Daniel looked up, his eyes widened, and he waved Rick inside. “This is a friend of Consuela’s, Harriet. Do you remember Rick?”
Rheumy eyes turned his way. The slack muscles of her face tensed as she squinted and tried to draw him into focus. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Your daughter is fine,” Rick said, following Daniel’s hand signals and drawing up a chair. “She’s doing something very important and asks you not to worry.”
“There, see,” Daniel said, his voice infinitely gentle. “Consuela was so concerned about you she sent Rick all the way back just to let you know everything was going to be all right.”
“She’s a good girl,” the woman mumbled.
“Consuela is a gem,” Daniel agreed. To Rick he went on, “We shouldn’t stay much longer. The nurse will soon be in to give Harriet her medication.” Turning back to the bed, he said, “We were just talking about something, though, weren’t we?”
The woman lay as though uncomfortable with her own skin, shifting about, never still. Her words were a rambling monotone. “Something nice. You talked about something real nice.”
“It is nice, isn’t it?” Daniel agreed, smiling with genuine pleasure. “I was telling you how God continually sustains the universe. It is a constant, never-ending gift. Were He to stop for even a moment, everything around us would collapse into chaos.”
Perhaps it was the quiet assurance with which he spoke, perhaps the strength that radiated with his words. Whatever the reason, he had a calming effect on Consuela’s mother. Her erratic motions slowed, then stopped. Her eyes ceased their endless search and settled upon Daniel’s face. Her forehead scrunched into furrows with the effort of concentrating upon him and what he was saying.
“Think of a hot air balloon,” he said. “Without the gas to hold it aloft, it collapses into a useless heap. What is true in the outside world is also true within us. We have been given the freedom to choose for ourselves, but without God our internal world is chaos. A universe of distraught emotions and conflicting aims.”
Rick watched the woman nod slowly. Here was something she could understand. An internal chaos. She clearly knew it well.
“‘My father has never yet ceased his work. And I am working too,’” Daniel said from memory. “Those were the words of Jesus, when He was questioned about His doing good deeds on the Sabbath. It means that if we allow Him into our lives, He will work within us continually. Without ceasing, without holidays, without moments alone when old despairs might slip in and overwhelm us.”
Rick could not help watching the woman on the bed. She looked awful and smelled worse. Yet Daniel sat there, pleasant and gentle and seeming to enjoy himself. Amazing.
As he watched, Rick found himself feeling as though Daniel’s message was meant not just for the woman, but for him as well. This unsettled him tremendously. What could he have in common with a bedridden old lady?
“The old order has passed away,” Daniel went on in his gentle way, “not just now and then, but for good. The new order is brought into being. This is Christ’s work, granting all of us living in our fallen internal universes to become transformed. We are born anew, into a universe ruled by eternal love, eternal peace, eternal healing, eternal order.”
****
Soon the nurse entered and to Rick’s relief asked them to leave. He promised Consuela’s mother to take good care of her little girl, then allowed Daniel to usher him outside. But the unsettled feeling did not leave. As they walked down the hospital corridor, Rick was struck with the vivid impression that this hospital visit and Daniel’s message were the real reasons behind his being back.
They stopped in the hospital cafeteria for a cup of coffee. Daniel sat across from Rick and listened with singular intensity as he sketched out all that had happened since the roller coaster ride. To Rick’s surprise, Daniel showed no consternation over the tale, and all his questions indicated that he believed Rick entirely. When he had finished, Rick asked, “Don’t you find all this a little hard to accept?”
“Yes and no.” Daniel eyed Rick over the rim of his cup. “I think we all have stories left unspoken. Tales the outside world would find impossible to believe. How is Consuela holding up with Wander being taken?”
“All right, I guess.” Rick squared his shoulders. “I’m helping her out all I can.”
There was a piercing quality to Daniel’s gaze as he sat and watched Rick, but he said nothing. Not, that is, until Rick swayed and reached for his forehead, and then came close to sliding from his chair. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure.” Suddenly Rick felt infinitely weary, more tired than he had ever been in his life. It felt as though all the hours of all the nights when he had done anything other than sleep were all gathered together, pressing him down and enveloping him in vast crushing waves of fatigue.
Daniel leaned across the table and gripped his arm. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know. All of a sudden I feel so tired.”
He understood instantly. “Maybe this is your callback.”
Rick yawned so wide his jaws popped. “My what?”
“It’s as good a name for it as any.” Daniel lifted him from the chair and half led, half supported him through the cafeteria and out into the lobby. “Come on, let’s go to my car.”
“Why?”
“If you’re leaving, we’ve got to get you into a place where you won’t be noticed going away.” Daniel hustled him through the glass entrance doors, across the road, and through the parking lot until they came to a white Buick. He fumbled with his keys. “Slide into the backseat. There’s a blanket on the window ledge, pull it up around you.”
Daniel stood and watched as Rick used every last vestige of his strength to settle onto the seat, then leaned over and said, “Be sure to tell Consuela that I have spoken to the church’s prayer circle. We surround you both with our prayers.”
****
Consuela had so much difficulty falling asleep that she scarcely realized it when it finally happened.
All the pains she had faced in her life—the poverty, the loneliness, her mother’s drinking problem—nothing compared with this. It was not so much that this pain was
worse. Yet somehow all the others had been outside her, at least in part. This one was totally within. Totally hers. Missing Wander was an ache that sealed her heart in a sheath of stone.
This time, there was no way she could run away to some other place. No matter where she went, this sorrow would go with her. Her love for Wander was etched into every cell of her being. She found herself wondering sometimes, if she had it all to do over again, knowing that this would come, would she still want to give her heart away? The answer was an unswerving yes. This love now defined her world, for better or for worse.
For hours and hours that night she lay in her bed, exhausted by all that had transpired, made worse by the nervous strain of missing Wander. There in the darkness she discovered that the loss and the hurt had another effect, one she had never thought possible. All the lies and the shields within herself were stripped away. Everything she was had been laid bare. She felt open and utterly vulnerable. Her personality, her character, her makeup, all were opened to her honest inspection.
There was no running away from the insecurities and the questions any longer. Hard as it was to face this with her longing for Wander, the truth that was reflected in her loneliness could not be denied. And above all the other questions echoed the continual refrain, Who am I, really?
She fell asleep with that question unanswered, drawn into the overly active dreams of nervous exhaustion. She spent uncounted hours chasing down hallways without end for answers she could never find.
Then she started awake with a gasp so explosive it drew her upright.
She flung aside the covers, swung her feet to the unseen floor, and searched for a trace of what she had sensed. Desperately she hoped it was not just a dream. It could not have been. It was too real, too powerful.
Then it came, an image and a message and a flavor that was all his own. She felt his nearness even while knowing that the space between them was immeasurable in earth-bound terms. The message was vivid, a picture without words, given only with a single wafting note of his love and his yearning for her. Intense and demanding and precious. As quickly as it came, it departed, leaving behind a vacuum so dark and empty that the scream felt torn from her throat.
“Wander!”
Chapter Eight
She was looking at a box of space.
The image floated above the desk, square and stationary and dark. Dunlevy lifted a silver rod tipped with light, handed it to her, and said, “Press that little button on the side when you have the correct position. I will reorder the intensity once we have the coordinates. Try and remember as carefully as you can. This could be what we’re looking for.”
The captain interrupted, “You’re absolutely positive it was Wander?”
“Yes.” Consuela cut off further talk by closing her eyes. Arnol had alternated between excitement and doubt ever since he had been summoned. Dunlevy, on the other hand, had shown no hesitation whatsoever.
As soon as she cleared away the impatient pressure she felt emanating from the others, the image popped back into her mind. It remained as clear and as prescient as before. And still it carried that faint trace of Wander.
She opened her eyes and began to draw.
The image made little sense to her. But there was no questioning the feeling of rightness as she pressed the button and saw stationary points of light appear within the dark box. It did not take long for her to finish.
She handed the control back to Dunlevy, pointed in and said, “This one is very bright, a burning blue-white globe.” She watched him make an adjustment by twisting the back of the control, then touching the indicated light. Instantly it grew to dominate the box. “Yes. And these four don’t have any light. They’re just round circles.” Again the adjustments, as though he understood what she meant almost before she spoke. “Okay, and this one is a really big star, but not a globe like the first one. Sort of reddish orange. Yeah, that’s it. These two are smaller. And this one is really bright too, but almost completely white, like an arc lamp. No, brighter than that, but smaller. Like that. Oh, and there’s another little globe right next to this one.” It struck her then with chilling force. “That’s a moon, isn’t it?”
Dunlevy nodded impatiently. “What else?”
She closed her eyes, recalled three more distant lights, added them. Took a deep breath, forced herself to hold the memory as vividly as she could, opened her eyes, and tried to overlay her mental image upon the one in the box. “I think that’s all.”
Dunlevy looked at her with piercing gravity. “You’re sure?”
She did the exercise once more, her forehead knotted with the strain. “Yes.”
Dunlevy eased up from his crouched position, turned to Arnol, asked, “Do you recognize it?”
“No,” he said, his craggy features holding a sense of wonderment as he glanced from the box to Consuela and back again. “Never seen an approach like that before in my life.”
“Nor I,” Dunlevy agreed. “And I have spent my entire adult life studying the skies.”
“Excuse me,” Consuela said. “But what is it?”
“A star chart,” Captain Arnol explained. “It appears that your boy has managed to transmit a landing approach for a system neither of us has ever seen before.”
Dunlevy leaned closer, pointed at the shining globe that dominated the corner closest to her. “I want you to think very hard. This is crucial. Did he give any impression as to which of the planets circling this sun was their destination?”
Consuela started to shake her head, but something nagged at the back of her mind. She closed her eyes once more, and there it was. The final part of the message, held in place until she was ready and able to both accept and understand. Sent to her with an appeal so strong and so full of frightened desperate panic that she almost screamed again. Instead, she opened her eyes and stabbed into the box, her finger pointed straight at the planet with the single moon. “Here! Wander is here!”
Chapter Nine
Grim did not begin to describe Wander’s surroundings.
The castle walls were so thick that even the air seemed imprisoned, unmoving and lifeless. The halls and chambers were cold, stern, and utterly silent. The castle possessed a morbid quality, as though every vestige of energy and vitality had been sucked out.
It was the first time in memory that Wander heard no ethereal communication. Not even a whisper.
The planet itself was not just arid. There was no water whatsoever. It baked under a too-close, too-intense sun, holding its meager atmosphere at the temperature of a roaring furnace. Its single moon was overlarge, and swept up hurricane-force winds with each six-hour revolution. The surface was utterly flat and featureless, all mountains and other protrusions having been blasted into nothingness by the dry heat and the savage winds.
The castle stood at the base of a fissure ten miles deep and half as wide. Overhead there was no sky, only a continual raging fury of sand and dust and endless gales. The castle itself could hardly be distinguished from the surrounding crevasse, for it had been carved from the very same stone. Boulders sliced from the cliff sides had been shaped into great blocks as tall and thick as ten men, erected with such precision that no mortar had been required to hold them in place. The few windows were mere slits through which little could be seen, only craggy stone and jagged cliffs and furious flaming red clouds roaring overhead.
“Enough of this time-wasting,” said his escort, an impatient youth with dark, pinched features and an aggressive manner. “Let’s get a move on.”
Reluctantly Wander retreated out of the narrow tunnel leading to the corridor’s single window. Although the outside view offered little, still there was a sense of expanse. But no freedom. The slit-window was imbedded in a stone tunnel fifteen paces long, the outer wall’s thickness. Beyond the thick glass was a vista more desolate and forbidding than anything he had ever seen or imagined. Despite their density, the swirling clouds at the top of the castle’s canyon were illuminated by the over-bright sun.
From underneath, the furious dust clouds looked like continual blasts of fire and brimstone, a flaming curtain shutting him from all space, all sky, all hope.
Wander allowed himself to be led down the silent stone corridor by the only person he had seen since his arrival. The corridor was lined by one closed door after another, tall and impenetrable. The castle appeared as void of life as it did of sound. Their footsteps scratched and echoed down a hallway without end.
Wander had been too weak to do more than protest against his kidnapping on Avanti, and the soldiers had paid his words no mind whatsoever. The diplomat had only looked his way once as they had made their final approach toward the waiting spaceship via floater. He had peered down at where Wander sat exhausted and feeble in the power-chair, and sneered, “You would do well to harbor what strength you have, Scout. You will need every shred soon enough. And more besides.”
The diplomat’s vessel was jet black, formed with some substance that seemed to suck up all light and reflect nothing back. They had not gone through the spaceport, but rather floated down directly alongside the mighty ship. The warriors had obeyed the diplomat’s sharp command and had taken Wander to a featureless cabin, dumped him from the chair onto the floor, and left him lying there. His protests had meant nothing at all.
Wander felt as well as sensed the ship’s gradual upsurge in power. He managed to drag himself into his bunk. He remained upon his back, as calm as he could make himself, knowing that he had to reach beyond his crying heart and his aching sense of loss, and observe.
To his surprise, the ship did not enter directly into interstellar transport.
The ship raced out beyond Avanti’s double moons, then began powering up to full thrusters, racing faster and faster outbound while at the same time reaching toward null-space without benefit of an energy net. Wander had never heard of such a maneuver, had not even known that it was possible. Yet as the ship’s thrusters continued to build up to peak power, he understood how such a maneuver would keep the planet-bound tower personnel from sensing exactly where the ship was destined.
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