Barry Malzberg - Phase IV

“Yes,” he said, also without words, understanding then, feeling that he understood everything at last and was drawn unto the queen, his queen, fingers flowing, both of them flowing, and then they were wound and falling together—

Down a long tube that terminated in air, he and she fell through it together and—

From that tube was an embryo, eyes growing, legs bursting through, first fishlike, then birdlike, mammalian, and then it was an ant and then it was not; instead it had become a human fetus, the fetus growing, growing and filling the landscape until at last it possessed it fully, no longer a fetus but a baby, a child, clustering with animals: lions, birds, bears, huge towers in the distance with indeciperable writing upon it on which more animals gamboled, and the child walked toward it slowly, carrying the sun in his hand, the universe in a fold of its flesh, all of eternity in a palm—

“What is this?” Hubbs said and came to light.

“We’re saved,” Eldridge said, and then he saw—

“What has happened?” Mildred said and—

Clete was running, running desperately, screaming, but he could not get away and then—

HUBBSELDRIDGEMILDREDCELETE: On a mountain somewhere folded together in the talons of a stone, gripped in a fist that was a heart—

LESKOKENDRA: Looked at the thing on the other side of the mountain.

Between it and them were the heads of ants. Ants were perched on their little cilia, looking at them with understanding and compassion. Eyes blinked; the ants signaled and they signaled back. The crawling thing on the other side of the mountain labored toward them and then stopped as the ants stroked it.

The dead green and yellow light came from behind them as they held together on the mountain. It bathed them and they felt its warmth. It was all that they—and the thing on the other side—would ever need.

A voice said, “Clear all channels. Clear all channels. Please clear all channels,” and phase five began.