Slowly Tree turns her face toward mine. Her eyes are glowing orange-red.
“She’s at the Temple of Heaven,” I say. “I found her in the glow.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
“I don’t know why I did it,” Tree laments hoarsely. “I just did it, Lord God in Heaven.”
“You did it, all right,” I say, fanning the good doctor with the city map of Beijing. We are in a taxi speeding toward the Temple of Heaven Park, having flagged the driver just as he arrived at what was recently a serviceable hospital gate. Everyone who witnessed Tree’s little tantrum is still running, as far as I know.
Some Chinese can really move.
“You’re totally dehydrated,” I say, offering Tree the two fingers of water remaining in my bottle. She takes a tiny sip. As I fan her face, I look out at a cityscape that seems somehow very odd. The light, perhaps. I’ve noticed for some time that a hollow, yellow-green dusk seems to have settled over midday. For a moment, I wonder whether Her Tree-ness may have damaged the solar system. The cabbie shouts something. I ask for a translation.
“He says the Temple of Heaven Park is closed,” reports Tree.
“I know it’s closed.”
There’s no alternative now to following my desperate gut-feel that Lil is alive and waiting, that Tim Dobbins has somehow leveraged the Chinese into smuggling her out of that place in an extra-large body bag, to be delivered—where else but the Temple of Heaven Park? To whatever awaits us in that chamber beneath the Circular Mound Altar.
Suddenly I know something else, or suspect it. Just like everything else at the temple complex, the Hall of Abstinence may serve a dual function. Ostensibly a place for the emperor to spend three nights of fasting before the Worshiping Heaven Ceremony, that place could have been designed, as well, to accommodate nine fledgling Dobbinses as they prepare for their own little ceremony. I ask myself how many of the intended nine are actually waiting there. Is Lil now self-disclosing before a whole new set of siblings? Or did they rip each other to pieces at first scent? Again, there’s nothing to do but go there.
“I’m done, baby,” says Tree, drooping. “It’s all on you now.”
“Why is the light so strange, Tree?”
“It’s the eclipse.”
My breath catches. The eclipse. I’ve forgotten about it. Turning to peer through the side window of the cab, I try to catch sight of a shadow. There’s a very thin one alongside a passing truck. The sun is all but directly above us, and here I am, exactly when and where Timothy Dobbins wants me.
Our driver brakes and delivers us to the edge of an empty parking lot. When the taxi departs, Tree and I are alone—or very nearly. There is a lone figure seated near the huge ornamental gate. He seems to be gazing at us. I watch the man rise awkwardly to his feet.
“Is that who I think it is?”
“Who?” says Tree. “Where?”
Taking Tree’s hand, I lead her toward an approaching bespectacled Chinese man in a white cotton shirt. Tree squints in his direction. A moment later, she cries, “Oh, my God!”
A smiling Cangming Xu limps into Tree’s hug. Impatiently I wait as they blather and hoot for their usual minute and a half. Finally I insinuate my face before Xu’s. “What are you doing here?”
“Recovering my strength,” says Xu with a grin. “See the razor-wire along the top of that wall?”
I do, just as Bi Yu Nu said I would.
“It’s electrified,” says Xu. “I found out the hard way.”
“But why here?” I press.
“I’m chasing an eclipse,” replies Xu.
Freeing himself from Tree’s embrace, Xu pulls a GPS from his pocket and gives it a shake. “This thing is practically useless now, but it’s gotten me this far. The Thirteen arrives in”—Xu checks the three analog watches strapped to his arm—”twenty-seven minutes. At that moment, the moon’s shadow will be centered ninety meters on the other side of that wall, directly over the Circular Mound Altar. How’s that for a coincidence?”
“It’s not a coincidence.”
“Listen to this man,” Tree says to Xu. “He knows his temples.”
He blinks. “But how could—are you saying that someone anticipated this eclipse six hundred years ago? And built the Altar on that spot?”
“Five hundred, ninety-six,” I correct him.
“But—why?”
“Ever heard of throwing a monkey wrench in the works? What if that structure were designed to take the incoming evolutionary energy—and give it a nice little twist?”
Xu’s mouth falls slowly open. “The nines,” he whispers. “They’re intervening between the Eight and the Thirteen. And they’re coming from here.”
I nod. “More by the second. Not to alarm anyone, but when the center of the moon’s shadow hits the Heaven’s Heart Stone, I think there may be a problem.”
“Unless we get there first,” says Tree.
Xu, ashen, shakes his head. “There’s no possible way to get over that wall.”
Wordless, I stride toward to the thumbprint-reading device Bi Yu Nu was kind enough to alert me to. I place my right thumb at its center. A moment later, the enormous gate begins to motor noisily open. As I wait, I note that the dim overhead sun is more than half in shadow. Because the moon, scratched a quill some centuries ago, does not know how to drink wine, she has given me this shadow for company…
Tentatively Xu, Tree, and I step inside the gate. “This way,” I say, starting along the smoothly paved promenade. As the gate begins to motor closed behind us, my eyes fix on the first triple gate ahead. To reach the Circular Mound Altar, one passes through a series of heavily ornamented gates arranged in sets of three, the center portal reserved for the emperor’s feet alone. Since 1949, those central gates have been locked tight and the smaller ones opened for the use of tourists. Today those smaller gates are closed and the central portal wide open, though arguably not for the emperor’s feet.
As we pad along the promenade, the sky seems to darken another half shade, and I glance up at low, scatting clouds now boiling up beneath the hollow grey-green of the sky. We are arriving at syzygy. Through the approaching triple gate and the one beyond it, I see the sharp glisten of white marble.
“I’m feeling seriously strange,” pants Tree, trying to keep up.
“Same here,” says Xu.
“I’ve never felt better in my life,” I say.
It’s true. I could almost be walking downhill.
“You guys want to take a look at this?” says Xu, gazing at his three analog wristwatches. The hands of each now show nine minutes past nine. I look down at my own analog. Its hands read the same.
“I think we’d better hurry,” says Tree.
We pause before the penultimate triple gate. I stick my head inside. A glance to either side reveals no one, yet I feel the farthest thing from alone. I step inside. Tree and Xu follow suit. Immediately they begin to reel.
“Oh my God,” says Xu.
“Oh my God,” echoes Tree.
A third voice says, “Julian! I might have known.”
As one, we turn to look behind us, but no one is there. I look up. Above the doorway we’ve just entered, clinging like a ninja to the ornately sculpted lintel, is a human face. With a very green eye. And a very blue one. Both stare at me accusingly.
“My intuition has pointed to you all along,” says Ana Manguella. “Now I see why.”
Ana, her clothing the exact color and texture of the wall, drops to the pavement and pulls off a tight cap, loosing a tumult of dark tresses.
“It wasn’t enough to bring down the Earth’s most advanced civilization twelve thousand years ago,” she says to me. “Now you’ve come to destroy what little remains.”
I cover my belly with both hands and back away. “You stay away from me.”
Ana takes a menacing step closer. “Do you deny that you are Tlecort, architect of the Great Temple of Atlantis?”
“This man,” says Tree authoritative
ly, “has permission to be here.”
We all turn toward Tree. She just spoke aloud yet I, for one, didn’t hear her voice.
“I’ve received no such notification,” replies Ana.
“You’re receiving it now,” says Tree.
A look of irritation crosses Ana’s features. Meanwhile I shake my head. Either these people are speaking telepathically or I’ve gotten a really bad eggroll.
Tree says, “This man is here because he designed the Great Temple of Atlantis.” She points toward the innermost triple gate. “Inside that gate is an architectural weapon aimed directly at the heart of this planet. Who would you send in there to disarm it?”
All eyes go to me. I back up a little, bringing me slightly closer to the Altar.
Ana says to Tree, “My soul group knows nothing about any of this. Whoever you are, you’ve entered this planetary space under false—”
“We had to, sweetie,” replies Tree softly, using her voice. “And now you have to manifest some faith because we are slap running out of time. Either this man gets to that altar before the—”
“Why so impatient, Julian?” interrupts Ana.
“Who, me?” I’ve just taken another step closer to the Altar.
“And why is it,” says Ana, “that only you seem to be comfortable here?”
“It’s complicated,” I say.
“It’s way complicated,” say Tree. “Julian’s body, his genetics, were designed with this place in mind, okay? To jibe with this energy. That’s why only he can do this. He’s the only one of us who can go up there.”
Tree turns to me. “Sorry, Jules. I knew all along, but I couldn’t say anything.” She teeters for a moment, steadying herself against the gate. “Listen, honey,” she says wearily to Ana, “there’s nothing we can do now but send that boy up there and trust that the higher angels of his nature will prevail. Jesus, Joseph, and Aphrodite.”
Ana shakes her head. “I’ve seen that altar up close, and no one here is prepared to deal with it—least of all you, Julian. Each of the three tiers takes you deeper into—”
Ana’s voice falters. After a moment, she wipes her face with both hands and continues, “It’s a mythical space. Up there, even the smallest thing opens out into an epic story. Any flaw in your intention can become exaggerated beyond all proportion. I threw something up there. Just a pocketknife. What landed there was not a pocketknife but a gold-hilted double-edged sword. From a pocketknife, Julian. God only knows what will happen if we send you up there.”
Xu says, “Uh, there’s not much time.”
We turn toward Xu, who just spoke telepathically and seems a bit surprised at it. He’s staring at his forefinger, which appears as a bouquet of forefingers. Nine of them, to be exact. We each examine our own multi-forefinger arrays. I resist the urge to check inside my pants.
Folding her blur of fingers into a fist, Ana says, “Is it true, Julian? Can you really stop that thing?”
“Umm… ,” I begin.
“Don’t give me umm,” she snaps. “Your intention has to be very pure up there, or we are done, understand?”
Tree places a hand on Ana’s shoulder and says, “He’s all we got, baby.”
Ana’s eyes close for a moment. When they re-open, she says, “Okay. Julian, you’re on point. Nothing sudden, nothing stupid. You two,” she says to Tree and Xu, “stay here.”
“Nobody’s staying anywhere,” says Tree, grabbing a hold of Xu for support.
“We’re right behind you,” says Xu, gazing uncertainly at the final triple gate before us.
Not until we pass inside the innermost wall do we fully see what it encloses. The three-tiered obelisk of the Circular Mound Altar, open to the brooding sky, is now nine charming obelisks, each glowing a different red-orange hue, each seemingly afloat upon the fetid air, each overlapping the others, no one of them evidently substantial enough to step on. Between the gate we have just entered and the floating nine-fold array before us wafts the foul smoke of a nearby sacrificial oven. I can’t help but wonder who’s for lunch.
“What do you think, Julian?” asks Ana, her eyes foggy.
I don’t reply. I’m busy scowling at the sculpted gargoyles guarding the first tier. And yet I feel a nearly irresistible urge to taste those cool marble steps with the bare soles of my feet.
I hear a gasp. Tree has fallen against one side of the gateway. She sinks slowly to the paving stones. Trying to assist, Xu grabs at her and goes down, as well. Ana’s knees, meanwhile, are visibly shaking. “What do you know about that structure?” she asks me.
“There’s an underground chamber. Inside are some people. Loosely speaking.”
“What else?”
“That’s all I know. What do you know?”
Ana shakes her head. “Could be we’re seeing a probability array. Once you put your foot down on one of those altars, maybe they all collapse into one. But be careful. My soul group is telling me that, up there, things are not what they are but what they are becoming. You have to read the metaphor, find a doorway into the story.”
“A doorway into the story,” I say, edging a bit closer to the Altar.
“You’re sure to encounter a portal guardian,” she says, and I stop edging.
“What kind of portal guardian?”
“I don’t know,” replies Ana. “If we’re dealing with an underground chamber, it may be the Guardian of the Underworld.”
She gazes at me. “More commonly known as the Hydra.”
I really stop edging.
“If so,” Ana continues, “you can only survive the encounter as Heracles. That’s your doorway. You’ll need a club and a lion-skin.” Turning to Tree and Xu, Ana calls weakly, “We need a wooden club.”
Tree and Xu, sprawled side-by-side on the paving stones, give her a dazed look.
“Listen, Julian,” continues Ana. “I don’t—” Her voice breaks into a ragged cough. A moment later, she is on her hands and knees, blood bubbling from her nose.
“Ana?” I say, kneeling beside her.
Wiping her face on a white sleeve, she says, “Listen to me. I don’t know what nine means anywhere else, but on this planet it means completion leading to rebirth. It’s the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. That’s the way it’s done here. The epochs build one atop the other, no interruption, no going back. Civilization after civilization, apocalypse after apocalypse, cycle after cycle, lesson after bitter, failed lesson—and success after incremental success. Each step takes us farther along an evolutionary arc that must—”
Ana surrenders to another horrid fit of coughing. Xu appears, crawling. He hands her something that would appear to be a wooden leg. “Maybe this can work?” he says.
Ana grabs the prosthesis and tells me hoarsely, “Take this. It’s your club.”
“Thanks so much,” I say as Xu crawls away on all threes.
Ana struggles to her knees. “Julian, Earth must survive. The experiments here must go on. We are the free will planet. We take freedom of choice farther than it’s ever gone anywhere, and we’ve not even begun. The work here must find completion.”
Ana rips a sleeve from her bloodied white shirt. “Here. Heracles tied a cloth over his face for protection from the Hydra’s breath.” Now she hands me a small butane lighter. “Heracles had a helper, a cousin named Iolaus who used fire to cauterize the—”
Ana, listing to one side, now begins to fall. I grab her just before her head strikes the pavement. “Ana!”
I drag the limp body back to the triple gate.
She croaks, “You’ll have to do without an Iolaus. Give me everything from your pockets. Whatever you carry up there will take on a life of its own.”
Handing her my wallet and personal pair of chopsticks, I ask, “What’s going to happen to me up there?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “The watch, too. And the moldavite. What else do you have?”
With a sigh, I hand over my titanium-bound journal.
&nbs
p; She extends her hand again.
With another sigh, I hand over the last two good German-made pencils in all of China. “Listen, Ana. I’m sorry about the whole boy-girl thing. I wish it had turned out—”
I’m interrupted by a rude slap across the face. “Cowboy up,” says Ana, her eyes blurry. A moment later, the eyes roll close and the bloody head falls back against the earth.
Eyes widening, hand on my stinging check, I rise and turn to face the Circular Mound Altar. Gazing straight up, I see that the low, scatting clouds have gathered in a broad, eddying circle, their center point directly above the swirling multi-altar display. I lift Xu’s prosthesis and begin to walk.
Life is so whatever.
“And don’t you take no mess,” calls Tree’s gritty voice, “from no ugly monster. You hear me?”
I pass the sacrificial oven, my nostrils burning with the acrid smoke. I’m close enough to see the charred remains on the grate. On the paving stones beneath the oven is a half-melted pair of spectacles, their frames black and perfectly round.
I never did like Bellamy all that much.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Ana was right. The closer I draw to the nine-fold Circular Mound Altar, the more the multi-dimensional display collapses into a single structure. Finally it is a solitary step that invites my tentative toes. Unable to quite set my foot on the step, I back away and take a deep breath. Maybe I should have given this whole matter a bit more thought.
Reaching into a pocket, I extract Ana’s butane lighter, rear back and throw it onto the upper terrace. I can’t see it land, but what I hear is a series of loud metallic clangs. Jesus, what arrived up there, a fire truck? Ana was telling the truth about this place. Things up there are what they’re becoming.
I’m becoming somewhat reluctant. In fact I’d toss this chunk of eucalyptus and book if not for that gut-level pull that seems stronger by the moment. Despite everything, I find myself leaning forward. As though by its own volition, my foot lifts itself to step.
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