Cal shrugged and reached for another stick to put on the fire. “Okay. Go on.”
“Remember the notebook.” It was a directive, not a question. “You can have an infinite number of unconnected two-dimensional planes of existence in a space with just one extra dimension. Likewise, I’m saying you can have an infinite number of unconnected three-dimensional planes of existence, all parallel to each other, contained within a space with one extra dimension, which is what I’m calling four-dimensional space.”
Cal scowled again. “I can’t picture it in my mind. I can’t picture all these three-dimensional planes all stacked on top of each other like the paper in your notebook.”
“Neither can I. No one can. Our brains are programmed for three-dimensional space and that is what we picture in our heads. But, just assume that what happens between two and three dimensions also happens between three and four dimensions.”
“Sooooo.” Cal closed his eyes as he tried to put it together. “We have a four-dimensional notebook with three-dimensional pages all stacked on top of each other with none of the pages touching, and there is no way to get from one three-
dimensional page to the next.”
“Yes, yes, you got it! But what has happened in our case is that for some reason, two or more of those pages in the notebook have started touching. They touch at Searles Valley.”
“Like parallel universes coming into contact?”
“No!” Lenny shook his head vehemently. “We are not talking about the multiverse. We are not talking about wormholes or alternate universes. Nothing like that.
“We’re talking about just one universe, our universe, but it has more than three spatial dimensions in it. That allows for many, maybe an infinite number of three-dimensional realities all lined up parallel to each other in the same universe, none of them intersecting the others.”
“But you’re saying that at least one of the other dimensional realities has been touching or intersecting with ours here in Searles Valley. Right?”
Lenny sighed. “Right!”
Cal sighed, too. “But if the other world is that close to us, like paper in a notebook, shouldn’t we see light from it shining into our world? Shouldn’t we feel its gravity?”
As Cal waited for Lenny to answer these questions, it occurred to him that Lenny had been talking for several minutes and had not used the word “dude” once.
“Okay, that worried me, too, at first. Let’s talk about gravity.”
It is still alive!
She and Cal had killed it, or thought they had killed it. But Camm now knew, without a doubt, the green rat was still alive, reaching out to her, touching her.
Those men, how she despised them. Those men at Swift Creek had saved it, had somehow brought it back. Camm could feel it was still alive.
With a start, she realized it was still in the mansion. And it knew she was there, too. She recognized the feelings emanating from the rat. She had felt those same feelings when it came to her home in Pioneer Point, turning off the lights so it could kill her. She could sense it was again reaching out for her, still trying to kill her.
She shook her head violently, trying to keep it from taking hold of her mind. Icy tendrils snaked into her thoughts, trying to contact her, trying to communicate. All at once, she understood its message. It spoke to her not through words, but through cold, desperate feelings.
Know you, it said. You came back. You not hurt me more.
She fought the panic. The rat’s thoughts burned like acid in her mind. It knew Camm and was connecting with her mind. It knew she was on its home ground.
Camm pushed at the air with her hands, as if she could push it away, push it out of her head. She hurried down the passageway, desperate to find the way out. Now that she knew it was still in the mansion, she had to get out more than ever.
The strong sulfur odor chased her down a hard stone tunnel. This was new. The walls of the secret passageways through the mansion were all hard wood panels. Now, the wood paneling had given way to stone walls.
In the dim light, she saw she had come to a set of stone steps leading downward. Again, this was new. These stairs reminded her of the stone steps leading down to the small stone room where she and Cal had first seen the painting of the green rat. But this stairway didn’t spiral down. It plummeted downward at a straight, steep incline. She began to run. These stone steps seemed to be leaving the mansion, and she had to get away before that thing could come for her.
As the passageway got darker, she slowed to feel her way. Suddenly, the essence of the rat seemed to wash through her like a frozen wave, immersing her.
Know you. You made me hurt. Remember you.
The rat seemed to be following her. The sense of it was stronger now—its anger at the memory of what she did to it was palpable. In her mind, Camm saw herself from the rat’s perspective, holding the little pistol and shooting it between the eyes. She saw the anger and intensity in her own face and could hear herself yelling at the rat. But the sounds she made were just noise and didn’t mean anything. For a fraction of a second, she felt its intense pain.
Gasping for breath, Camm reached level ground again. The passageway forked out in two directions. When she faced one direction, the hate struck her like a freezing wind. She sensed the creature was down that passage, hating her, waiting for her.
She turned and hurried down the other passage, heading away from the source of the hate. She had to find a way out, a way that did not lead her back to the rat. Its thoughts followed her down the stone passage, pursuing her in the dimness.
You not hurt me more. Hurt you.
Its thoughts lashed out at her.
Kill you.
At the far end of the passageway, Camm found another stairway. She did not sense the rat down these stairs, so she hurtled down them. But the rat’s feelings followed her down into the darkness. Not the physical rat, but its thoughts, its evil intents, scurried after her as she descended. Though they didn’t speak the same language, Camm knew what it was thinking.
She reached the bottom of the stairs. The light was fading faster than she had expected. The sun was setting. Here, there were no more mirrors, but the walls glowed with their own iridescent sheen. It was almost pitch black. She had to slow down and feel her way.
Know you. Know you here. Know where you are.
Like rocks hurled at her, its feelings and emotions hit her mind.
Find you. Hurt you. Kill you. Eat you.
A vision came into her mind crystal clear. She was looking through the rat’s eyes at her bloodied body lying mangled on a stone floor. Her eyes were wide open in terror. The monstrous rat was tearing at her flesh, devouring her while her blood ran hot. She shuddered. That thing was imagining what it would be like to eat her while she was still alive.
She could hear herself screaming in terror. Her muscles were ripped from her body. The taste of her own flesh was acrid and warm in her mouth as the rat shared its fantasy with her. Again and again, its dripping maw went at her, separating tissue from bone, dismembering her, devouring her. It ate her with relish and abandon, savoring each bite.
The image was so real that Camm, by reflex, pressed her hands to her body, protecting herself. She could tell the rat was not only pleased with its fantasy, but also by the horror the vision caused in Camm. The images became vivid, filling her whole mind. She heard her own screams losing intensity as she died. She was dying!
Camm collapsed to the floor of the passage. The sudden fall and cold stone against her skin broke the hold the rat had on her mind. She wasn’t dead. As she sat up, the rat reached into her mind again, seeking to regain control.
“I am stronger than you!” she shouted.
Taking a deep, calming breath, she pushed the rat’s thoughts away and stood, running her hand up the wall, not only to steady her balance, but also to keep her focus on reality. The rat kept saying, Eat you! Eat you! But its voice was losing strength. She was stronger!
S
he had to get away. She had to find her way out.
It was completely dark now, except for the iridescent sheen of the rocks. She felt her way along the wall. The passageway had become narrow and seemed to go on and on. As fast as she could in the dark, she hurried down a roughhewn tunnel until she came to a dead end.
Desperately, she ran her hands over the stony surfaces in front of her and to each side.
No, no, she thought. This has to lead somewhere. Where is the way out?
She cowered against the wall that now blocked her escape, her eyes wide open in the blackness. Her heart pounded. She felt faint.
Camm closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe slowly to keep from hyperventilating. With all her mental energy, she calmed her mind and again forced the rat out of her head, willing her heart to slow. She took a deep breath. She could do this. She could find her way out.
The passage ended at a rough stone wall. The way out had to be there. She felt up and down the wall with her fingers, touching and pushing each individual stone. As she searched, the rat was still there, its thoughts pushing at her, trying to get in, but she forced herself to focus.
Suddenly, there was a stone that felt different. It stuck out a little from the rest. Camm felt around it. The mortar was missing between this stone and those that surrounded it. She pushed on it, but it didn’t budge. She pushed harder. Still no movement.
Camm spread her feet apart and braced herself. Leaning into the stone, she pushed with all her weight and might. It budged a fraction of an inch, and then a whole inch.
As it moved, so did the wall. A slight filament of moonlight sliced into the den. She could smell the dry desert air. Wedging her shoulder against the wall, she heaved against it for all she was worth. Slowly, silently, it slid open. Camm stepped out into the narrow canyon of a deep dry wash just as the last of the twilight disappeared behind the western mountains.
The rat made one last mental claw at her mind. Find you. Kill you. Eat you.
Camm pushed the stone door shut and ran through the night, running from the mansion, running from the rat. Running until its thoughts could no longer reach her.
Camm knew where she was going. The old men had said the evacuation would be from Pioneer Point on the north to the south end of the valley. She would have to go farther north, past Pioneer Point, past her old home and her old neighborhood, where she and Cal had lived and grown up as children. By foot, it would take her most of the night to get there. It was a long way to Homewood Canyon.
“Now then, gravity is a tricky thing.” Lenny shifted to sit cross-legged in front of the fire. “We can measure gravity. We can predict what it will do, but we don’t know why or how it works. Why do massive objects attract each other? Perhaps mass warps the space around it, like Einstein said. We have no idea. Are there ‘gravitons’ or ‘gravity waves?’ No one knows.
“Since we don’t know what gravity is, we can’t predict whether it will be felt from one plane to another even when both planes are in the same four-dimensional space. Maybe gravity is an independent phenomenon of each separate plane, even when touching. We don’t know.”
Cal brushed his hair back. “Okay, we don’t know about gravity, but what about light?”
Lenny grinned. “Just before the spiders came through, I noticed a wavering-like visual abnormality. Did you see it, too?”
Cal nodded. “I did, like looking through heat waves rising from the ground.”
Lenny leaned forward. “Also, I felt sick to my stomach at the same time.”
“Yeah, me too. And, Martha threw up.”
“I think the wavering images we saw were the result of light-wave interference patterns caused by light from two different dimensional planes crossing through each other. And the nausea we felt was a result of gravity-wave interference patterns caused by gravity from different dimensions tugging on us at the same time.”
Cal considered all this. “So, why are the three-dimensional planes touching now and what do we do about it? I mean, I grew up my whole life in Trona. I have never had that sensation before, never saw giant spiders or giant snakes before. What’s different now?”
“From what you have told me, the answer to your questions is right over there.” Lenny tossed his head in the direction of the mansion. “There are two mansions, right?”
“Right. One here in this world and one back in Trona.”
“Okay, when you were battling the giant green rat, and even before that, the intersection of the different dimensions always occurred at the mansions. That’s why there are two of them, one in each world, somehow linked and somehow controlling the link.”
The light came on in Cal’s brain. “So that is why the first Mr. Samuels built the mansions? So he could travel between dimensions?”
“Exactly. The mansions are the door, the passageway between our three-dimensional plane, where Trona is, and this three-dimensional plane here, where Trona isn’t.”
“So, what happened? Why are the worlds intersecting at other locations now?”
“I don’t know. My guess is those guys from the federal government, you know, uh . . .”
“Swift Creek.”
“Yeah, from Swift Creek, must have turned the mansion off, so to speak, when they found out you guys had killed that big green rat.”
“Yeah, what about that? Why the rat anyway?”
“Again, I’m just guessing, but snakes don’t like rats, except to eat. Maybe this rat was kept at the mansion to keep the snake from coming through the passage to our world. Now that the mansion is turned off and the rat is dead, the worlds can intersect willy-nilly at other locations, and the snake can come through wherever it wants.”
Cal tossed more wood into the fire as he considered everything Lenny had said. “Well, explain this: why does the intersection seem to occur wherever the snake is?”
“I don’t know. I’m still working on that, but I don’t think the snake controls the intersection. I bet the snake can sense a developing cross over between dimensions and is attracted to that location, wherever it might be.”
Cal stopped poking the fire and turned to look directly at Lenny. “Well, if they turned the mansion off, can we turn it back on, so we can get back to Trona?”
“I think so.”
“But it’s just an old mansion. I mean, it didn’t even have electricity or anything. I don’t think I saw an on-off switch.”
Lenny’s eyes brightened. “Oh, I think you did.”
Cal pondered the point, then his eyes widened as the realization hit him. He pointed at Lenny, exclaiming, “The grandfather clock!”
Lenny nodded his head. “That, my good man, is the ticket for our ride home!”
XIII
At first, it was just a steady breeze, blowing in Camm’s face, keeping her cool. The moving air felt refreshingly clean after escaping from her terrifying encounter with the rat’s telepathic threats. The perspiration soaking her shirt was quickly drying out.
As she jogged through the night, the breeze intensified into a gusting hot wind, and then magnified into a steady, howling gale. Camm hated to admit it to herself, but she now faced a stiff northeastern desert wind, a direct headwind, pushing against her, slowing her down as she made her way toward Homewood Canyon.
Trona was a long, thin town, and one could never stray very far to the east or west from Trona Road, the main north-south artery. Nevertheless, Camm tried to stay on the west edge of town, hoping to avoid most of the traffic. By the time she reached the high school, the wind had whipped up into a full-scale desert sandstorm.
Camm was very familiar with these winds, and stayed out of them whenever she could. They usually came in the fall or spring and could be very fierce, sometimes lasting for days. The school in Trona never had to worry about snow days or extremely cold weather. But accommodations had to be made for the howling desert winds, when they came. Children would be hustled directly from the buses to their classrooms. Recess, P.E., and lunchtime would all be alt
ered to keep everyone out of the gale-force winds.
The problem wasn’t just the force of the wind, which was considerable, but also the sand carried by the winds. Sometimes, these winds blew enough sand to cover the whole town with inches of new sand. The high drifts that built up against walls and around corners took weeks to clean up.
Camm felt like she was standing in front of a commercial-grade sandblaster. The sand stung her arms and legs like hundreds of pointy needles. The wind blew sand into her face and eyes, up her nose and into her mouth. Camm’s only defense was to cover her face with her shirt and turn her back to the relentless stabbing pain.
Since the direction she wanted to go was directly into the oncoming gale, it made her progress extraordinarily difficult. She couldn’t face directly into the wind when it was at its worst, and she couldn’t jog backward all the way to Homewood Canyon either. Her progress slowed almost to a standstill.
To make matters worse, Camm was now convinced her escape had been discovered. As she hid in the dark corners of deserted buildings and houses, more to get out of the wind than anything else, she saw black SUVs patrolling the streets along with Sheriff vehicles. Once, she thought she recognized Agent Allen riding in one of the SUVs. At least the wind and blowing sand helped conceal her, but it also made progress excruciatingly slow.
When she reached the north end of the high school campus, near the football field, she found shelter from the wind, where she could see down to the old tennis courts and past them to the traffic on Trona Road. Because of the wind storm, traffic was light and seemed to be mostly government vehicles, probably out looking for her. She knew the hard-blowing sand was not doing the paint on their cars any good. The searchers were probably cursing her right now.
Looking at the football field, Camm smiled, remembering Cal playing on that field. Cal had a talent for football, and the other teams had had a hard time stopping him, especially on Trona’s home field. Like the rest of Trona, the field had no grass, only hard-packed sand and gravel. Other schools hated the Trona football field, which gave the Trona Tornados a real hometown advantage. The passing sand storm, like so many before, would do no harm to the field. It would only add another layer of sand to Trona’s field and strengthen its advantage.
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