Perhaps even his greatest revelation—that she was immortal, like him—was a lie. Perhaps once he had made use of her, she was meant to die in the conflagration along with everyone else…
She had risen again in the choked air, and now—after skimming over a range of jagged mountains, newly formed by the shattering of the earth’s crust—she found herself above the crater of the comet’s immolation.
And what a hateful place. It was so large that, even through gaps in the smoke, she could not see the other side. There was no sign of the ocean that had once rippled here, or of the islands that had protruded above the water, let alone her own island, and its towns, and its hospital. Instead she looked upon a vast sunken plain that was seething with flame and steam and mud.
And yet from somewhere she felt again the touch of the foreigner’s mind, watching on. He was closer now, his emotions more evident. And to him, she sensed, the crater was beautiful, a matter of deep satisfaction, of justice…
And all at once, finally, she understood.
The heat seemed to be stinging her eyes. Or perhaps she was crying. Everything was blurred now. The light was changing. And suddenly the noises and smells of the crater were gone. She woke to the soft crackle of her radio. The white ceiling, the white walls. Her hands and feet tied to the bed. She was back in the locked ward. Those six days had not yet passed, and the comet had not yet hit.
She blinked away the last tears. There was so much mourning in her, over the depth of his betrayal, but more for the loss of his love. Even if it had never been real, it was the only love she’d ever known. But there was no time for self-pity. The comet had not yet hit, it was true, and indeed it was not yet even on the right path to hit. But all too soon the foreigner would come for her. He would spirit her back into the iciness of space and begin to push upon the rock again until its path was right.
She could resist him, perhaps, while she was wide awake, but when she fell asleep, or when she was drugged again, she would be helpless. He could take her then, and use her power however he wished. That could not be allowed.
The strange thing was that, even as she’d woken, she’d seen the solution there in her mind, in all its fitting cruelty. And it was the foreigner himself who had shown her. Long ago now, it seemed. When he was trying so hard to prove that he was real, and trustworthy. Maybe that was another reason for her tears, and her mourning. She wept a little for what she must do to him.
But she mustered her strength anyway, her vision, her anger.
And then she reached out to the volcano.
30
Of course, her cell had no windows, and she could not simply see through the walls. Nor could she, without the foreigner’s help, leave her body and soar from the room. But she still possessed all her old sensitivities, honed now to a finer pitch than ever before, and a thousand telling vibrations came to her from the outside. She knew it must be evening. She felt the cooks clattering in the distant kitchen, cleaning up after dinner. She felt water running in the shower-block pipes as the last patients were washed down before nightfall. She felt the snap in the electrical wires as lights were switched on and off. The hospital fairly hummed to her, crowded at day’s end.
Which was perfect. She wanted as many people around as possible when it happened. They would add to the confusion.
She let her unseeing eye slip further away, beyond the grounds, and down into the earth beneath the mountain. There, all was calm. Nothing moved in the chambers that led from the volcano’s mouth to the magma reservoirs—the semi-liquid, semi-rock at the bottom was congealed into a turgid mass, a plug.
The mountain slept.
The question was, could she wake it? On her own? She had to believe that she could. The strength had been there before, after all. If the foreigner had been able to exploit it to move something as massive as the comet, then surely it was available for her own use.
She reached down to the reservoirs.
Warm them, that was where she had to start. Warm the magma until it glowed white, until pressure sent it creeping towards the surface. She held the reservoirs in her mind and willed them to rise in temperature. But it was like sinking into mud. Cold, clammy, reluctant. The stone did not want to heat up, or to move. It wasn’t possible that a single body such as her own could ever contain enough energy to change that.
Ah…but it wasn’t just her own energy. The vision of the comet’s impact had taught her that much. She had access to something greater, to the aura of life enfolding the whole planet. So it wasn’t a matter of squeezing the power from herself, it was a matter of shaping her mind into a conduit through which the energy could pass—and then of inviting the power to flow from the planet’s vast supply.
The orphan took a deep breath, considered the magma once more. Then she breathed out, opened her mind, and asked…
And the living world answered.
Ha! It was like being accelerated to an incredible speed while standing still, it was like being lifted by a thousand warm hands. It was wonderful. And as the energy burnt through her, she turned it and focused it upon the underground reservoirs. The magma turned to livid gold. And then to white hot, bursting upwards.
Slowly, the orphan reminded herself amid her elation. Slowly. She did not want to blow the top off the mountain, or to bury the island under a flood of lava. She was not like the foreigner, she sought no cataclysmic end here. She had a plan, and for the moment only a small eruption was needed. She eased off, finessing the reservoirs now. Tremors ran out through the ground. The orphan was gratified to hear, even in her room, a low rumbling, and to feel her bed tremble. She wanted a small eruption, yes, but also a noisy one. One that would cause panic.
To that end she chose a single fracture in the upper reaches of the volcano, and directed the uplifting magma along it. There came a booming detonation, profound enough to shake the hospital walls and rattle the roof. The orphan laughed. She hadn’t blown the top off the mountain, but she had blown a sizeable chunk from one flank. Outside, she knew, onlookers would be watching a great cloud go up in the evening sky, and red fountains of lava rising from near the volcano’s peak.
Indeed, she heard the cries now. Footsteps from the compound and the hallways. People running, shouting. Good. Now all she had to do was keep the volcano bubbling, and the ground quaking, until the staff evacuated the hospital. Someone would have to come to her room then. And remove her bonds.
It was puzzling, though. Here she was, manipulating the earth at will…and yet she knew that if she ordered the straps around her arms and legs to untie themselves, nothing would happen. The breeze, the volcano, even the flow of blood in the foreigner’s groin—all such natural things she could command. The plastic straps, however, were beyond her. The mystery of that she could not even begin to plumb.
For an hour she listened to the fuss of the evacuation. Vehicles arrived in the driveway, and first the patients from the front wards were hustled out and away to safety. Then the back wards followed, a slower process, and more confused, but at times she sent gouts of flame bursting from the mountainside, just to maintain the urgency. Lastly it was the locked ward’s turn, and by now the orphan was tugging impatiently at the straps. Footsteps slapped outside, and a key hit her door.
But when it opened, she had to laugh.
Her rescuer, of all people, was the night nurse.
He didn’t look happy about being there. He fumbled with her straps, snarling curses at her, and she should have hated him still, but he was so pale and afraid he hardly seemed worth it. She stared out to the hall. Male nurses hurried by, escorting wild-eyed inmates she had never seen before. The violently mad, loose from their cells. Oh yes, it would be chaos outside. They would never have the time to worry about her. Then finally the straps were gone and the drip removed and she was free.
She rolled from the bed, as stiff and sore as if she had suffered a beating. The night nurse had hold of her wrist and was tugging her out the door. She allowed herself to be led until they left th
e locked ward and returned to the back wards proper, where people were dashing about in all directions. Then the orphan pulled up sharply. The night nurse was making for the exit, but that wasn’t the way she wanted to go.
Annoyed, he tried to drag her forward, and for a moment there was a bizarre tug-of-war over her hand. He was suddenly furious, screaming at her, all his fear and yes, perhaps his shame too, bursting forth. In response, the orphan, in her haste, opened her mind wide and hurled the full disgust she felt for him directly into his own head. He reeled back as if struck, appalled by her, and for an instant she felt ten feet tall, unveiled to the fool boy at last in all her magnificence.
But there wasn’t time for any of this. Leaving the night nurse to gape stupidly in her wake, she turned away and forgot him. She strode back through the hallways. The lights flickered on and off, unsteady, and tremors shook the floor. Here and there she passed other staff, and a last few patients being led out, but she ignored them all. Her greatest fear now was that the foreigner might already have been moved, that she would have to search all through the hospital, or outside, to find him.
But no, when she came to the crematorium she found it silent and undisturbed. Darkness reigned in the empty dayroom. And abandoned in his cell, there on the bed, the foreigner lay sleeping, his eyes shut fast. Yes. Of course. In some unacknowledged part of their minds, the staff must have known by now what kind of man he was, and so shunned him. He would be the last to be saved, if they saved him at all.
The orphan quite agreed. But even so, she could not resist—she pulled back the sheet and took one last look. His mind did not stir. He slept in exhaustion still from his exertions with the comet. But his body was so beautiful. And how wonderful it had been to believe that it was hers alone to touch.
A pretence. A trick. All his long courting of her, all the times he had made her feel special, he had done it simply to gain access to her strength. Even their one attempt at sex—she had to admit this to herself now—had been initiated by him for the same cold purpose. All he’d wanted to do that day was awaken her power, using his own broken body, his own useless cock, as the lure and the test.
Enough. A wheelchair was waiting by the bed. She wrapped the sheet around the foreigner, then manhandled him into the seat. His head flopped and cracked against the bedframe, and his eyes opened at last.
As she had been dreading all along, his voice awoke too.
Orphan? What’s happening?
It was only a gentle inquiry as he rose from sleep, but already she could feel his mind reaching out for hers, and she threw up barriers to prevent it.
The volcano again? That’s strange…
His thoughts were roaming, studying the eruption. Then suddenly he was more alert. Somehow he had read the truth in the mountain.
You did this!
She ignored him. She pushed his wheelchair out through the dayroom and into the halls. The lights were flickering again—light, then darkness, light, then darkness—and there seemed to be nobody left but the two of them.
But why? Did you think this would help us escape?
His mind was prying at her own again, trying to find answers. The orphan was slightly amazed at how well she could keep him out—and at how wrong his assumptions were. He thought she was still worried about the surgery, that she was trying to run away with him, that she was still in love with him!
It won’t work, you know. We won’t get away. There’ll be confusion for a day or two—but then everything will be the same again.
No, nothing would be the same again, ever. But he’d find that out soon enough.
They emerged finally to the compound, and a glow in the sky. A rain of fine ash was falling. Figures ran here and there, shouting, but the orphan recognised no one, and in turn no one paid her and the foreigner any attention. She paused to stare up at the volcano. It was only a vague shape through the curtain of ash, but about two-thirds of the way up, a rift was visible where sprays of lava rose and fell.
It was all as she’d hoped. She pushed the wheelchair across the yard, straining, because the ash bogged the wheels.
Where are we going, orphan?
The pressure from his mind was greater now, like fingers probing at her skull, and she could feel his doubt, his frustration with her.
Why are you hiding from me?
She could not prevent some of her inner turmoil leaking through. Her pain at his betrayal. Her anger at his lies.
And now he came wide awake. Lies? What lies?
That he had ever loved her!
But of course I love you.
No, he didn’t. He was lying again. He had lied about it all—and the comet was the final proof of all the other lies.
The comet?
She showed him the memories of her future vision.
But orphan—that was just a dream! A nightmare. It won’t be anything like that. It certainly won’t be the end of the world.
No. Every instinct told her the vision was true, she would never doubt that. The planet itself had spoken to her in its own defence.
But why would I do such a thing? Why would I cause such total destruction? Why would I so harm the earth?
Because the earth had harmed him, that was why. Time and time again. Crushed him, suffocated him, roasted him, drowned him—five lives over. Hadn’t he told her every detail? The earth was his enemy. It was toxic to him. Why, even the atmosphere, the very air that gave everyone else life, it had turned into a fiery barricade that burnt and killed him rather than allow him to pass through.
I’ve suffered, yes, but I’ve always survived.
Physically, perhaps. But his mind—ah, she should have seen it sooner. But she was so used to other types of madness, and he had distracted her by always talking about other types of madness—anyone’s madness, except his own. But she could see it now, building through all his lives, through all his failures, until his last death had broken him, and all he could think about was striking back at his tormentor, no matter how blindly, and no matter what the consequences for every living thing on earth.
Hence the comet.
No, the comet is for you, only for you. To save you.
Save her! The orphan grunted her derision as she struggled with the wheelchair. It had nothing to do with her. She could guess how it must have been. He’d woken from his fifth death, and in his all-consuming rage at the planet he had chanced upon a girl who had the strength to move mountains—or to move something even more deadly. Everything from that moment on had been about bringing the giant rock down to smash the world. It was never about her. It was only about his hatred.
I don’t hate the world.
Of course he hated it! He’d never had the chance to do anything about it before, that was all. He’d been too weak. But he hated, sure enough. From the very first moment ninety-two years ago when the landslide had buried him, it was his fury at being killed that had kept him alive. And it still did.
I didn’t choose this immortality!
Did he really believe that? Then he belonged in the crematorium after all. He was more delusional than any of them—the duke, the witch, the archangel, the virgin. Well, he could keep his eternal life. It wouldn’t matter soon.
Orphan, you are terribly confused. I was too rough with you earlier, and I apologise, but you have everything wrong…
They came to the rear fence of the compound. In the darkness the orphan felt for the gap in the wire, and when she found it, she tugged at it until the hole was wide enough to allow the wheelchair through. She would have to carry him eventually, she knew, but she could push him for a while yet.
Why? Where are you taking me?
And again, she could not completely resist him, enough escaped from her mind for him to grasp at least a little of what she was planning. And he was struck silent—a man who did not fear even death, because he could not die.
But he was afraid now.
Shoving the chair through the fence, the orphan began the long climb.
>
31
She had expected protests from him. She had expected anger, and some kind of struggle, a grappling for her mind, an attempt to turn her from her course. Perhaps she had even expected pleading. But for a long while, as she heaved and levered the wheelchair up the uneven path through the jungle, he said nothing. His body flopped against the seat, passive, a dead weight. And when finally he did break his silence, it was merely to ask a question. Quietly. Thoughtfully.
Orphan, have you ever wondered if any of this is real?
Real? What did he mean—real?
Well, you live in a hospital for the insane, after all. And you’ve always imagined strange things about yourself. That you can predict the weather, for instance, and that you can overhear people’s thoughts. So maybe…
Ha. Was she imagining the volcano erupting?
I don’t mean the volcano. I mean you and me. All we’ve done together. Are you sure any of it actually happened?
The orphan frowned against a sudden chill within her. Of course she was sure. She remembered every moment of it.
But how do you know I’m not just part of some fantasy? How do you know I exist outside your head? How do you know I’m real?
He was real. The weight of the wheelchair was proof enough of that.
Oh, the man in the chair is real. But what proof do you have that he is me? Or that I’m him? All you have is a voice.
She faltered a second—a crevice in the track had caught one of the wheels. Of course the man was the foreigner! His voice had only ever come from the one place. Why, she had been looking directly into his eyes when he first spoke. She had been on her knees before him, that first day, as the volcano erupted.
Ah yes, but maybe this man was just a convenient empty vessel. Maybe your own mind spoke that day, and just pretended to be him?
She was shaking her head. No. It wasn’t even just her who had been aware of him. From the moment the foreigner had arrived, the weird happenings had begun, all those disturbances with the catatonics and the geriatrics…
Wonders of a Godless World Page 27