A Dream of Ice

by Gillian Anderson

  The specificity of her allegation caused Pao to hesitate. He turned to Rensat.

  “Is this so?” he asked, in shock, deep hurt, but also belief. He knew Rensat’s passion for her faith.

  “There is no reason to exist without Candescence!” Rensat cried.

  “But . . . Galderkhaan would still end, it would die with its citizens. That is not the goal we have worked toward.”

  Pao seemed utterly lost but Rensat’s gaze was pure in its hate. Caitlin hoped that Rensat would continue to hate, for just a few moments longer. As long as she was directing rage at Caitlin, she could not turn it on Jacob. Caitlin’s fingers continued to roam—

  And then she found it. A section of mosaics above her, the heart of the construction, a sequence of stones that carried her like a living bolt of lightning from tile to tile, from mosaic to mosaic, from chamber to chamber throughout Galderkhaan. The charge that raced through Caitlin was greater than the one she had experienced at the United Nations or in the park. Unlike the ruins in modern Antarctica, this network of olivine stones was complete in ancient Galderkhaan. Complete and powered by forces that were like nothing on this planet.

  There were visions, images, whiteness so pure it hurt, pain so deep it defied description, glory so great it could not be fathomed—all of that in a moment, a moment that Caitlin could not sustain.

  Harvesting power greater than her mind or body could bear, Caitlin released it with a primal, nuclear flash. But it was not a destructive force, it was a cleansing wave, like the proverbial power of prayer raised exponentially. It wiped away the anomalies in time, rid the universe of those who did not belong there. Pao and Rensat contorted into something that resembled the drawing of a young child, stiff and ungainly and out of proportion. Then something else rose from below—a flaming face, bubbling up and rising through the center of the column, a soul being ripped from its fiery shell.

  Enzo, Caitlin realized.

  Dimly, through the omnipotent power of the tiles, Caitlin heard the echoing screams of two transcending souls being torn from the earth. The cries grew fainter by the moment, leaving a void that quickly filled with the heat and unrest of the magma. And then she felt the souls of Pao and Rensat vanish, just as she had felt the souls of the dying of Galderkhaan vanish. As soon as they were gone she saw the flaming remains of Enzo shoot skyward, dragging another face with it, a woman, not Galderkhaani but one whom she did not recognize. The woman fell away, dissipated, as the lost soul of Enzo continued to rise, to ascend to the lowest of the realms.

  All of this effort, the eternity of flame, of waiting, and she did not even transcend. The tragedy was profound and weighed on Caitlin despite all they had done.

  But when Caitlin tried to go she found that she herself could not break free.

  The power she had plugged into was holding her. Caitlin had released it but it had not released her. Without knowing how much time she had—it could have been a moment or it could have been eternity—Caitlin fought hard to see Jacob in the smoke. And then she saw him for a flashing instant before his face vanished.

  “I love you!” she cried.

  And then the tower itself was gone, along with all sight, hearing, and touch and every other sensation . . .

  • • •

  In Flora’s basement, moments after the tile fought its acoustic confinement and came fiercely to life, Ben’s eyes rolled blank and his legs failed. Though he was still breathing, he slumped down the wall into a heap on the floor. Flora and Adrienne stared at him. Adrienne rose from her stool.

  “No!” Flora snapped. “That wasn’t a faint. It was like an epileptic seizure, without the tremors.”

  “So shouldn’t we—”

  “We’re not touching a damned thing,” Flora said, watching his ears and nose for a sign of liquefied brain.

  Adrienne sat back down. The eyes of both women turned back to the tile. It remained in suspension but it was like a green sun, outwardly quiescent.

  “Almost like it’s alive,” Flora said.

  “It’s a stone,” Adrienne told her.

  “It is a stone with secrets,” Flora said, correcting her. “Secrets I believe Dr. Caitlin O’Hara has just begun to unlock.”

  As she spoke, Ben came to. He looked around, momentarily confused.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “You appeared to have a seizure of some kind,” Flora told him. “Can I get you anything?”

  “How long have I been out?”

  “A little more than a minute, I’d say.”

  Ben struggled to stand. “Caitlin’s doing that,” he said, referring to the stone.

  “Very likely,” Flora said.

  “She shouldn’t be.”

  “Also true.”

  On unsteady feet, he made his way as quickly as he could from the room. He tried calling Caitlin as he left but all he got was voice mail. He searched for a text. Nothing new had come through.

  With sickness rising in his throat, he limped into a night that suddenly seemed very much darker than before.

  CHAPTER 24

  In Washington Square Park, the water of the central fountain exploded in flame.

  The few people who were in the park saw it and screamed. A second later they were pulling out their phones.

  Minutes later, two fire trucks shrieked down Fifth Avenue and firefighters poured through the arch, running toward the fountain. Spraying water on the twenty-foot-high flames proved its inadequacy. They switched to using fire-retardant foam and that had some effect. One captain shouted into his radio, ordering as much foam as the firehouses in that quadrant of Manhattan possessed. Several firefighters ran toward the NYU buildings to collect fire extinguishers.

  No one saw a figure in the southeast corner with her arms outstretched, as though she were worshipping the moon.

  No one saw that figure topple to the ground.

  And no one saw Minetta Brook begin to burn in its culvert underground.

  Lying beneath the trees, Caitlin could only glimpse a sky that was the wrong shade of orange, coming from her right. She climbed to her hands and knees, then knelt upright, noticing that her clothes were smoking but not on fire. She craned her neck out from the thicket and saw flashing lights from fire trucks, then the fire shooting up from the water fountain.

  She rose unsteadily and looked around. At the southwest corner of the park, flames were blowing out of the windows of the NYU law school library. There was the boom of another explosion and the flames shot tens of feet in the air. Bystanders were screaming; some firefighters were shouting while others aimed white jets of foam at the building. All the nearby trees were festooned in white foam and yet as the foam fell on the flames, the fire seemed to find apertures and surge through, still alive.

  Then another blast, this time from a building on the west side of the park, flames coursing through the windows and more sirens in the distance.

  Caitlin tried to move from her spot, but her legs wouldn’t have it. They slipped from under her, and once again she was on her back.

  Shutting her eyes, too spent to keep them open, she saw shadows of black and amber play on her closed lids. The colors formed the hint of a face, like one of those afterimages of Abraham Lincoln she used to stare at in the encyclopedia.

  You are not finished, a voice said to her. It was a familiar voice. The ascended Yokane?

  Caitlin thought, Screw you. I did what you asked.

  The face faded, along with all traces of light. But before it went, it said:

  It is not I who asks.

  And then everything was gone.

  • • •

  Ben had been walking blind; he knew that. He called Caitlin’s phone repeatedly and got only voice mail. But with Caitlin’s history it was a fair bet to head toward the action, and Washington Square Park was certainly that.

  He heard the trouble before he saw it or smelled it.

  Red lights were flashing everywhere, and fires crackled with long shadows in al
l directions. The bloops of sirens sounded as smaller emergency vehicles sped down side streets to join the fire trucks. The sky was a seething orange and smoke was blowing every which way.

  Ben approached a cop at the north entrance to the park. “Please,” he said, “I need to get in. I think my friend is in there.”

  “No one is allowed at this time,” she replied.

  Ben pulled out his ID. “I’m from the United Nations. I’m really worried about her.”

  “Sir, I cannot let you in. Injured persons are being transported to the Lenox Hill emergency room on Twelfth and Seventh.”

  Frustrated, Ben glanced west, where the fire trucks had clumped together.

  “Are they having trouble putting out the fire?” he asked.

  “It’s under control,” the cop said, but Ben noticed her hesitation and the surprise in her eyes. He walked away before she could think twice.

  The west side of the park was obviously going to be impassable so Ben headed around the quieter east side instead. All the park entrances were blocked by police but there was one ambulance over on the east side, and EMTs were carrying someone on a gurney toward it.

  Ben’s feet sped up before his mind caught on. He was running by the time he realized the patient was Caitlin. He got to the vehicle just as they were lifting the gurney into the back. His stomach lurched as he saw her face, her closed eyes.

  “Let me through!” he shouted at the small knot of bystanders and paramedics, pushing at them. “I know her. I have to go with her.”

  “Sir, you can’t—”

  “I’m her boyfriend,” Ben snapped at the EMT, and climbed into the ambulance. “How bad is it?”

  “She’s unconscious,” said the paramedic sitting beside her.

  “How unconscious?”

  The paramedic flashed him a look. Ben noticed that the man was sinking his thumbnail into the nail bed of Caitlin’s right pinky finger. Then he let go of her hand.

  “No reaction,” he said as the door clunked shut behind them.

  Ben felt his heart stop for a second. He picked up Caitlin’s hand and held it as the ambulance peeled away from the park.

  • • •

  Shortly after Ben had left, Flora rose from her stool.

  The stone seemed to have calmed and stabilized, and she wanted to try to reconnect with Mikel.

  Ambling down the basement corridor, Flora reached into her pocket for her phone to check messages and alerts. As she climbed the stairs to the first floor her phone rang in her hand. It was Mikel calling via the radio.

  “Caitlin O’Hara is in danger!” he called over static.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Galderkhaani . . . I spoke with them. They want her to go back and change everything!”

  “Dear Lord.”

  “Is she still there?”

  Before Flora could answer, she felt a hand grip her chin and a sharp point press against her throat. In a mirror across the room, she saw that Casey Skett was holding one of their ancient knives to her neck. With his foot he closed the door of the office behind them.

  “Flora?” Mikel shouted urgently over the static. “Flora!”

  “Hang up,” Casey whispered.

  Flora ended the call.

  “I’m going to sit you down now, Flora,” Casey said. He put one of his knees behind one of hers and nudged until she took a step. “But even when I let you go, remember that I can still kill you before you can scream.”

  He nudged her again.

  “What are you doing Casey—” she started.

  “It’s time you understood our point of view,” Casey said, and walked her across her office.

  • • •

  In the basement, the stone had flickered brilliant green, just once, after Flora left. Adrienne was not asleep—not exactly. Her eyes were still open and suddenly she was swimming joyfully in the sea, entirely in touch with her senses in a way she had never experienced.

  She was frolicking with penguins, hundreds of swimming penguins, but taking her time, not yet ready to return to shore. There was so much information to take in. Every part of her body seemed to be tuned, monitoring the changing swell of deep water all around her. A map was forming for her, a village she was remembering as if she were someone else. Then she was back on shore, locating masses of ice and whales swimming hundreds of feet away in the same direction as the penguins. They were all heading toward a long cliff of ice, the ocean running beneath it. She heard the call of home just as they did, and her will and her consciousness and her body were wholly one.

  My god, she thought. I can feel everything.

  • • •

  Jacob O’Hara drummed on the wall. There was no answer.

  “Mommy?” he said and signed, eyes still closed.

  “She’s not here right now, Jacob,” a sweet voice told him.

  The boy rubbed the sleep off and looked up to see a vaguely familiar face. His eyebrows reflected his confusion.

  “Remember me?” Anita tried to sign. “From your mother’s office?”

  “Your signing is bad,” Jacob said mildly, reaching for the box with his hearing aids.

  “I am pretty terrible,” she admitted. “So maybe you will show me how to do it better?”

  The intercom buzzed down the hall. Anita motioned that she’d come back, then headed to the white box on the wall and peered at its screen. In the predawn light the camera showed a very thin black woman with high cheekbones, a kerchief over her hair and a blue bag in her arms. Behind her stood a younger black man wearing sunglasses.

  Anita hit the “talk” button. “Yes?”

  “I am a friend to Dr. O’Hara,” said Madame Langlois. “She is in the coils of the great serpent. Let me come in.”

  EPILOGUE

  There was nothing to hold on to.

  Caitlin tried again and again. Her strongest memory of Jacob in their shared history was not moving her. She tried reaching for Ben. She even attempted to invoke the night they spent together, when they’d expanded so far beyond themselves that reality was eclipsed by total joy. Though the memory warmed her slightly, Ben wasn’t there.

  In fact, she could not feel a path away from this place. Nothingness surrounded her.

  “Azha?” she called tentatively.

  Nothing.

  A cold death seemed to have taken over the tiles, too. She felt nothing from them, not the ones in the South Pole, not the two just to the north.

  It’s not possible to feel nothing, she told herself. Not unless—

  But she wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. She still had conscious thought. Then those thoughts turned to the dead of Galderkhaan—all those she’d been speaking to. They were dead. They had conscious thought.

  Frightened now, Caitlin argued with herself. She was fairly sure that Rensat and Pao were gone, truly gone, so she took comfort in that. Perhaps the void left by their departure was responsible for what she was feeling—some kind of psychic aftershock, a spiritual coma. Maybe she would come out of it if she was patient.

  But that wasn’t happening. Nothing was. That was the operative word right now for all sensation: nothing.

  Self-doubt began to fill her, along with exhaustion and the urge to give up.

  “No!” she said. “I have a son and I’m getting back to him, goddamn it!”

  Her voice didn’t even echo. It didn’t have a sound. It was only in her head. What was this?

  I’m breathing, she suddenly realized. I must be in shock.

  Deciding to assume that she wasn’t dead and still had a body, Caitlin chose to remember the moment when she was most thoroughly inhabiting it, when she had been almost completely consumed by her body, all other consciousness blanked out. That wasn’t a time with Ben or any other man. It was the overwhelming pain of giving birth to Jacob. She remembered the joyous agony, felt it, reached through it—

  Still, there was no hook. There was no connection.

  Caitlin wanted to weep but moaned ins
tead. She tightened her hands into fists.

  Wait—you did that!

  She felt her hands, balled tight. A surge of excitement swept through her. She flexed her fingers. She couldn’t have done that if she were dead or injured.

  Toes—she tested her toes. She felt them, too.

  Relax, she told herself. You’re alive—just let this happen now.

  She went back to thoughts, to images.

  My god, she told herself, almost giddy with the thrill of it: these images were unfamiliar but they felt exactly like dreams, nothing like any of the visions she’d experienced over the last few weeks. No emotions were associated with them, either her own or anyone else’s. She was simply watching a huge sheet of ice move, creeping a millimeter forward. Then, in the kind of non sequitur of a normal dream, suddenly she was watching eels twist and plunge through the ice, which of course was impossible. Fish—strange fish, but maybe not strange for South Polar waters—leaped for the sky, a sky of vivid blue, with clouds and . . . nets? Huge cigar-shaped balloons?

  Well, this is a dream . . . a lucid dream . . . allowing me to editorialize on the strangeness of it.

  And then she was awake, with the normal if pronounced feeling of early-in-the-morning laziness.

  The sun was shining on her eyelids. Had she lain in the damn park all night? Was she in a hospital room? She breathed in, stretching out her arms, and smelled faint traces of sulfur and jasmine. Then she spread her fingertips into the sunlight for warmth, and the sensation was hers but the hand was not.

  Nor was the world of strange buildings and airships that surrounded her.

  Begin the EarthEnd Saga with Book One

  A Vision of Fire

  * * *

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  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  © STEPHEN BUSKEN

  GILLIAN ANDERSON is an award-winning film, television, and theater actress whose credits include the roles of Special Agent Dana Scully in the long-running and critically acclaimed drama series The X-Files, ill-fated socialite Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, and Lady Dedlock and Miss Havisham in the BBC productions of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and Great Expectations, respectively. She is currently playing the roles of DSI Stella Gibson in The Fall and Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier in Hannibal. She lives in the UK with her daughter and two sons.