by Robert Maxxe
A generation, Carrie thought. "Then they're not being taken—transported? Getting through is only . . . making contact."
"It will be a greeting," Peale acknowledged. "A confirmation. A kind of touching. But also something more. Until today the children have pursued their goal without full awareness. With this, they will become enlightened."
Carrie looked around at the children—the chosen, the teachers—and finally her gaze came to rest on Nick and Dana. Thirty years from now they would have their own children, another generation coming along behind them that had been prepared. It was all in the plan.
If she could believe Peale.
"You were given the knowledge before, by other means," she said to him, then waved her hand in a gesture encompassing the arcade. "Why go through all this to enlighten the children?"
"Because they are precious beings, Mrs. Foster. Because there is something about them, and you—about our form of life—that our visitors know is valuable, and must be held sacred whenever possible. Something that, as the price of my 'education,' had to be sacrificed. You see, I've become too much of what this other being is: an intelligence that functions by pure reason, logic, analysis of the data. Wholly without emotion." His lips were touched by a faint ironic smile. "I told you they knew the pitfalls of human nature. But they also appreciate its incomparable gift: our emotions, Passion, love, pity, joy, regret, yearning, hope, fear—they have none of that. They exist as intelligence, pure and simple. They make decisions by expedience, practicality. As such they have concluded, logically, that while we are dangerous, we are also wondrous, So the very thing that they know imperils them—and us—is also the thing they come seeking. They know that when our emotions are joined to their intelligence, it will make us both complete." He paused, glanced at the screen, then hurried through a few more words. "It's almost time. But you do see the children are safe, Mrs. Foster? They are not the ones who will have suffered to show us our stars." He turned away to the screen, and rested a hand on Nick's shoulder.
Carrie, Lon, and Patrick looked mutely at one another, overcome by a sense of isolation and helplessness, of time passing them by—a realization that the world no longer belonged to them.
It was Patrick who spoke first, rendering a verdict. "It sounds goddamn marvelous to me. Business as usual for the next thirty years, and then some surprise visitors dropping in. If I have it right, they've chosen their own welcoming committee for when the times comes. Who could blame them? As for right now, what else is there to do but join the party? We're about to get a mind-blowing long-distance call from our cousins in the Milky Way—and I for one wouldn't have missed it . . . not for the world." Stepping away, he took a place behind the spacies at the machine next to Nick's.
"THERE!"
The shout seemed to go up from all the spacies in a simultaneous roar.
The light changed in the arcade, the soft golden glow becoming more brilliant and brassy as the white dot that had been growing slowly at the center of the screens suddenly flared out to fill them.
A fizz of breathless excited whispers filled the air.
holy shit this is it we 're really gonna do it hang on everybody this for real take it easy I can't believe it stay cool now baby stay cool can you believe it this is too much man just too much
Still standing apart, still not ready to yield him to the future, Carrie watched Nick's face, his skin and eyes reflecting the light from the screen. The brilliant white took on a blue cast, then became a play of many colors, as if he were caught in a ray of sun, flickering through clouds to fall across a stained-glass window.
"Carrie," Lon said quietly, and stretched out his hand to her.
She hesitated. He came closer, then reached and seized her hand and held on, pressing it between both of his.
She let him lead her to the machine, to watch from behind Nick and Dana.
The screen was filled with circles within circles, and along the lines that defined each one, smaller circles, also brilliantly colored, spun like planets in orbit. Within each of these, there were sparkling lights like tiny explosions, and each time there was an explosion—just for the barest fraction of a second—Carrie thought she saw a pattern of geometric lines like the living circuit she had seen through the microscope.
Then, though Carrie could see nothing herself that would have triggered it, a crescendo of expectant yells went up from the spacies.
Hey hey hey hey . . . this is IT
Separately and together. But building, building . . .
Until, like kids going over the top of a roller coaster, they let out a unified whoop, and a gleeful declaration.
"NOW!!!"
Then Carrie heard Nick murmur, "And through we go," and he began to jiggle the joystick at a furious rate.
"Go," Dana echoed in a whisper.
"Go, boy," Peale said.
Lon put his arm around Carrie.
She stared at the screen, trying to perceive some effect of Nick's manipulations. There was no change, as far as she could see.
Yet at the same time her lips moved automatically, silently forming a word. She didn't know herself what she had meant to say.
But then she surrendered to the energy in the arcade, the fission of hope and joy all around her. And she gave herself to it, the word came again.
"Go," she said, her voice beginning to rise, exultant as in a song. "Go, Nick. God, yes . . . go . . . go . . . go . . . go . . . !"
Then the colors in the endless distance beyond her tears turned to a field of jewels.
GO
She sang it in a choir of minds.
And then they were through.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37