What Lies Beyond the Stars

by Micael Goorjian

  Adam gave another small nod but still didn’t say anything.

  Hank shook his head. “Sorry, buddy, but I guess she really had to go somewhere.”

  “Yes,” Adam finally said. “She did.”

  Hank glanced up at Adam’s face, surprised he was taking it so well. He dragged his smoke again before adding, “She did say, just before she left, that if you were to ever come around looking for her, you’d be able to figure out how to find her.”

  Just find the first orange peel, the boy softly whispered.

  Back up in the harbor parking lot, a truck was pulling in with a small sailboat trailing behind it. Hank squinted at it. Recognizing the driver, he gave a wave as if to say he’d be right there. “I’m gonna need to go deal with that.”

  Adam nodded and smiled. “No problem. Thanks for your help, Hank.”

  “Sure. Best of luck to you. Hope you find her.” Hank dropped his smoke and stepped on it. He started to leave, but then stopped as if something else had crossed his mind. “Oh, hey, you mind doing me a favor?”

  “Sure, what?”

  “Well, if you’re planning on seeing Red again, she left a few things in the back of my truck. I’ve actually been meaning to throw them out, but if you think you’ll see her, you mind taking them to her?”

  “What’d she leave?”

  “Just a shovel and some rope. Nothing special, but, you know, it’s a nice shovel and pretty expensive-lookin’ rope.”

  Slowly a smile spread over Adam’s face. The first orange peel had come into view.

  He was better prepared this time around, arriving at Little River Cemetery at 1 P.M., an hour and a half before the day’s low tide. Adam had the rope and shovel from Hank, as well as an additional hand shovel, several plastic buckets, two wooden planks he thought could be useful as wall supports, towels, and a lantern with extra batteries. He hoped he wouldn’t need the metal detector this time around.

  The sinkhole hadn’t seemed to notice the years that had passed since Adam’s last visit. The place was timeless. But Adam had changed, enough to now see why Beatrice had said there were few places like this in the world. It was a natural wonder that also contained something not of the material earth—a place where the physical and allegorical sides of the worlds met, where “skies grow thin.” Although Adam was ready for a physical challenge, the job turned out to be much quicker and easier than he had anticipated. Digging in the alcove below the strange white mark was still exhilarating. Like a boy running through a grass field toward a redwood grove, he felt the life force within his body so fully that he even snapped a picture of the moment from high above.

  Adam hit the metal box four feet down. It was almost too easy. So for fun, before leaving the tunnel, he decided to refill the hole, even though the coming waves would have surely done the job for him.

  Back in the sinkhole, Adam ate a light lunch before prying open the metal box. Inside he found several thick, waterproof plastic bags. They contained a stack of nautical charts, a copy of Navigations of the Hidden Domain, a note with his name on it, and a shriveled-up, petrified orange peel.

  Adam unfolded the note.

  Dear Thief,

  I know in my heart that you will one day read this. I know because I can see you here now, down in our private grotto, sitting in the sand only a few feet from where I now write this letter. But there is something different about this Adam. This new Adam is no longer searching for a Reset button. This Adam has finally freed himself from his impenetrable suit of armor.

  As much as I wanted to, I realized it was not my job to save you. “Freedom is never given, only earned,” as my father is fond of reminding me.

  I still believe you belong with us, that you were always meant to play a role in the work we are doing. Just like you, the world is facing a time of reckoning. Whatever the outcome, the signs of a great struggle are near. I have left charts and directions that will lead you to where I am heading. The journey will not be easy. Just know that wherever I go, I will always leave a trail of orange peels for you.

  You are forever in my heart and I in yours. And as long as you keep moving forward, I will keep pulling you toward me, and eventually we will meet again, and touch again, and with our hands melted together as one, we will peek behind the celestial curtain and see the new world waiting for us, just beyond the stars.

  Yours (and yours alone),

  Beatrice

  CHAPTER 35

  LEAVING THE SPHERE OF ATTENTION

  With the tear across his mainsail mended, the Man prepared at long last to enter those uncharted waters he had sought from the outset of his journey. He had faced off against relentless headwinds, violent gales, and unexpected swells. He had spent countless lifetimes dead in the water and a greater number struggling to stay afloat. He had faced external challenges at every turn, but none compared to the inner despair inflicted by those powerful currents, those invisible strings beneath his vessel, dragging him around in endless recurrence, leading him forever back to the shallows he so longed to escape. The Man’s decision to aim his bow directly into an approaching storm had at first appeared to be an act of insanity. But through this irrational embrace of his own annihilation, his vessel had at last slipped free, breaking from the enchanted circle he had been locked within. Untethered, the Man now moved forth from Purgatory and into the undiscovered domains beyond.

  Chapter 27—A Break in the Circle

  Navigations of the Hidden Domain

  Adam gazed out at the sun dipping toward the horizon off the port side. With a poled-out Genoa sail and his mainsail well out too, Adam’s boat eased west at roughly five knots. There had been no squalls in the past 48 hours, and it looked as if he was in for a relatively calm evening. There also seemed to be a possible break in the cloud cover, promising a viewing of the stars Adam had yet to see since leaving Noyo Harbor several weeks before.

  He had noticed the For Sale sign before even knowing he would need a boat. On that first day Adam had returned to Noyo Harbor, on his way out to Beatrice’s slip before speaking with Hank, the handsome blue-and-white sailboat caught his eye. Glancing down at the name on the back of the stern, The Blue Sea Horse, Adam felt a light flutter in his chest as if the boy was tickling him. Several times since leaving the hospital, he had experienced these presentiments and was learning to pay more attention to them.

  “That’s Al Marcotti’s boat. Big Al,” Hank told Adam when he came back to Noyo Harbor the following day to take another look at it. The Blue Sea Horse was a 37-foot Tartan built in 1987. Even Adam, who knew nothing about boats, could tell that it had been well maintained.

  “Been for sale for about two years. Lots of potential buyers, but Big Al, well . . .” Hank shrugged. “I gotta warn you. He’s been a bit of a dickwad in terms of who he’s willing to sell her to.”

  “Why’s that?” Adam said without a hint of concern. He could already see the boat would soon be his.

  “That boat means one hell of a lot to Big Al. Calls it his ‘baby-love.’ He used to sail her all over the world with his wife, Maria, but then Maria died. She wasn’t that old; lymphoma, I think.” Hank’s fingers looked like they were anxious for a cigarette to squeeze. “Al tried sailing on his own after that. Had the boat rigged to sail single-handed. See how the trimming lines all run to the aft cockpit?”

  Hank pointed them out as he reached for the Camel Lights in his breast pocket.

  “But I guess it just wasn’t the same without his wife, so he stopped sailing ten years ago, maybe. Seriously, I doubt Big Al will sell it to you. I think he just put the sign on it to make his new wife, Barb, happy.” Hank let out a stream of smoke as he glanced around the docks. “There’s some other boats around here for sale, maybe—”

  “No. This is the one,” Adam said. “Would you introduce me to Big Al?”

  Hank shrugged and smiled. “What the hay, let’s give him a ring.”

  Despite Hank’s enthusiastic endorsement of Adam over the phone, Big A
l was reluctant to come down to meet him. He was especially skeptical after hearing that Adam had little sailing experience. And by the time Al pulled into the Noyo Harbor parking lot, he had already made up his mind not to sell.

  It took less than 20 minutes for Al to change his mind. “I just liked the fella,” Al sheepishly told Barb on the phone after agreeing to sell the boat. “I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe the way he touched the railings, the mast, the lines—with respect, like he really gave a damn. He’s right, Barb; I just know it.”

  Al did have one condition for handing over The Blue Sea Horse. Since Adam insisted on paying the asking price, which Al had inflated just to turn people away, Al insisted on giving Adam sailing lessons. “You aren’t heading off nowhere with my baby-love until I say you’re good and ready.” Big Al extended a big hand, and Adam shook it.

  Notorious for its rough waters, Cape Mendocino was not the ideal place to learn the finer points of sailing, but Big Al was an excellent teacher and Adam was no ordinary student. By the time Adam was ready to leave several weeks later, Al considered him a more than able seaman. “He reads wind and water as good as any old salt,” Big Al bragged to Hank.

  Adam was vague about where he was heading and what exactly his plans were, but Hank and Big Al never pushed him on it. They merely helped him stock the right supplies for a long journey, then wished him “fair winds and following seas” on the morning he set out from the California coast.

  As dusk began to stretch across the evening sky, the winds and seas continued to settle. Adam set his wind vane and checked the autopilot before heading below deck. He loved the interior of his boat. The layout was simple and practical, every conceivable space serving a specific purpose. But the functionality of the space was balanced by aesthetic form. “During extended lengths at sea,” Big Al had warned, “with no land in sight and nowhere to go other than below deck, if a sailor does not feel at home inside his vessel, the freedom of the sea will turn into a stint in solitary.”

  With Big Al’s approval, Adam had made a few small changes to the cabin, adding touches to make the space more his own: abalone shells on the wall beside the main hatch, a collection of his favorite books stacked above the navigation station, sea glass of various colors glued onto the railing around the galley. Of course it was nowhere near as personalized as the interior of Beatrice’s boat, but it was a start. The only picture inside The Blue Sea Horse was one that Adam had had framed and mounted on the wall in the galley—the photograph Michael had given him back at the Presidio House.

  Adam placed a teapot on the stove then pulled a slab of tuna steak out of the icebox to thaw. While waiting for the water to boil, he leaned back against the counter and looked over at the picture. It was a large group shot taken in front of an academic building. At the top of the photo was printed: EXTENDED DIMENSIONAL ATTENTION STUDIES—CAL BERKELEY 1970.

  The group was a roughly even split of men and women, most of them wearing tie-dyed shirts, paisley, and bell-bottoms. But Adam could tell that these weren’t your average turned-on, tuned-in, and dropped-out hippies. These were intelligent, inquisitive faces, eyes full of optimism. Also apparent was how close they seemed to be—arms wrapped around neighbors, hands holding hands, some sitting on each other’s laps. And theirs weren’t just mandatory smiles for the camera. These were honest smiles. Open smiles.

  At the back of the group, standing on the steps of the building and just visible above everyone else, were two slightly older men, side by side, the two sides of the brains behind the study. They were dressed more conservatively than the others. Adam, of course, recognized their faces from the first moment he had looked at the picture.

  Rene Adiklein—in his midthirties with long, raven-black hair and sharp European features—stood on the left. He looked more like the bass player of a psychedelic band than a psychologist. Virgil Coates—in his early forties, his bushy, red hair and full beard unkempt, looking very much the impassioned professor—stood on the right.

  The two men had their arms around each other.

  There was another face in the photograph that Adam recognized, although not right away. In the third row down from the top, directly in the heart of the group, a young African-American man stood a head taller than his neighbors. His deep brown eyes were staring directly into the camera, as if he could see Adam looking back at him from the future. He wore a tight, blue tee shirt the color of Superman’s costume, but instead of a giant red S on his chest, there was a large rainbow-colored butterfly.

  Black print at the bottom of the photograph listed the names of everyone in the picture. Searching through the list, Adam had eventually found the name he was looking for. Michael Papillon.

  Time you start flying, brother. For both of us.

  Adam was doing just that. And before setting out, he had done a few other things on Michael’s behalf as well.

  Water boiling, Adam turned the stove off and fixed his tea. Unless he was dealing with severe weather conditions, his evening routine was simple. First, tea and chart work. Then, a quick peek above deck for a position and horizon check. Then prepare supper, eat, and wash up. Finally, another trip above deck for a last check, followed by reading before bed. Big Al had taught Adam to scan for possible oil tankers or other large entities he might collide with, at least every 20 minutes, day and night.

  “Managing your sleep is by far your biggest challenge,” Al warned. “It’s not easy keeping your eyes open when all you wanna do is close ’em. Chew ice, slap your face, sing at the top of your lungs if you need to.” Al had installed alarm clocks and timers below deck to help with this annoying yet obligatory task. The boat also had a radar sensor with a collision alarm meant to give Adam enough time to react if any oil leviathans did try to sneak up on him.

  But the farther out to sea Adam got, the less he found the need for alarm clocks or other tricks to stay awake. He wasn’t near any major shipping routes, for one thing. But there was another reason Adam felt safe spending time belowdecks. With so few distractions around, that new sensitivity of his seemed to amplify the farther out he traveled. He discovered this early on in his journey, when one evening The Blue Sea Horse did happen to come into range of another boat. Well before the radar sounded its alarm, Adam woke, already aware there was another vessel close by. And before he even saw the boat’s lights, he was on deck, adjusting course.

  Adam sat down with his tea to go over the charts and mark his daily progress. After calculating his new coordinates, Adam used a pencil to make a dot, then draw a line from yesterday’s dot to today’s. The 121 nautical miles was below his daily average, but it wasn’t bad. On his map the jagged dotted line representing his total journey stretched out over 5,000 miles of ocean. Beatrice hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said the location was remote.

  When Adam first looked at the coordinates she had provided him with, the numbers evoked an odd sense of familiarity. It was weeks later, after he had already set sail, when one night he happened to notice the symbol on the cover of Navigations of the Hidden Domain and understood why.

  According to the coordinates she had given him, he would be arriving soon. Sometimes the thought did float through Adam’s mind that this journey just might lead nowhere, since conventional charts and maps showed nothing but endless ocean in the area he was trying to reach. Or even worse, what if there was something at that final red dot, but Beatrice had already moved on? For the most part these thoughts were fleeting, and Adam did his best to stay focused on just sailing, one day at a time.

  “And as long as you keep moving forward, I will keep pulling you toward me, and eventually we will meet again, and touch again, and with our hands melted together as one, we will peek behind the celestial curtain and see the new world waiting for us, just beyond the stars.”

  Adam put away his charts and returned to the galley to start dinner. Tonight’s menu was seared tuna steak, sauerkraut, and dried fruit and nuts for dessert.

  After dinner, he washed
up. He was just about to sit down and relax for a bit when he felt that little tickle in his chest, tugging him to go above deck for a horizon check. At first Adam shrugged it off. Unless it’s a super-tanker ready to make The Blue Sea Horse into its hood ornament, I’d rather read for a while first. His mind still housed that data-crunching machine that had ruled his existence back at Virtual Skies, and although tamed, it still hungered for problems to solve and puzzles to piece together. To scratch that itch he had a thick book of modern chess theory. But there was also the copy of Navigations of the Hidden Domain that Beatrice had left for him. And reading that book now, after his time in the hospital, Adam had discovered another, deeper layer within it that he had not been aware of before. Hidden meanings buried throughout its pages, not for his mind to digest, but placed there for the benefit of the underdeveloped boy in his chest.

  Tonight, unfortunately, that boy had no interest in reading, as it continued nagging Adam to go above deck. Throwing on his big, blue parka, he headed up to investigate.

  Adam stepped on deck and immediately noticed something odd. There was no wind on his face. Looking to the sails, he saw they both sagged lifelessly. Then he noticed the absence of sound. Thick and heavy silence, the kind he had not even thought possible out here at sea. But the real phenomenon for which Adam had been drawn above deck was what he saw when he looked up. Even with the boat lights on, the view of the heavens was unparalleled to any he had experienced in his lifetime.

  In all directions, without obstruction, the starry dome arched down to meet the glassy, still ocean all around him. The reflection of the stars even seemed to be dancing on the water’s surface. Then to Adam’s astonishment, he realized that the glow was not simply a mirror, but billions of specks of bioluminescent algae that had come out to greet their starry companions above.