Gillian Anderson - A Dream of Ice

Her words had an impact on Pao. He moved closer to the other two, and Mikel could feel their energy shift. “I have spent my adult life looking at existence from many viewpoints,” Pao told her. “That is why I have written—not just to share ideas but to see them as if they belong to someone else, to consider them impartially. And I have come to believe some of what we believe but also aspects of what the Technologists believe.” He faced the other members of the Priesthood. “There are basic questions that remain to be answered. I say wait.”

“What questions?” Rensat asked.

“The question of infusing ourselves into the cosmic plane.”

Vol released Rensat and waved with disgust. “The Technologists are not planning an ‘infusion,’” he said. “They are planning to break into the highest plane, like thieves. Never mind the animal violence inherent in that—by what logic can anyone think of overpowering limitless power? No.” He shook his head. “Our souls must bond. Together we must present ourselves to the infinite. We must merge with the cosmos. That is how the Candescents survived their obliteration.”

“You think that is what they did,” Pao said. “You believe that based on stories passed down since the world was young.”

Vol stood strong, wordlessly defending his faith.

“And you are wrong about the Technologists,” Pao said, correcting him. “They look to target a point in the cosmos, not to crack it or assault it.” Pao looked out at the others. “My friends, think about your approach. Even bonded souls may bounce from the cosmic plane like light from polished metal. One soul, a dozen, a thousand—it may not matter.”

“The Candescents proved it does,” Rensat retorted.

“And you suggest that rising like a geyser-powered stone on molten rock will achieve that goal?” Vol asked.

“I don’t know!” Pao confessed. “I don’t. That is why I say we must wait. The Technologists have built a device that may give us the opportunity to ascend. Even the legends tell us the Candescents rode into the cosmic plane on an inferno.”

“The word is haydonai and no one is sure what it meant,” Vol reminded him. “The ancient Galderkhaani may have meant ‘great glow,’ not ‘fire.’ The great glow may have come from luminous souls working together, not a column of fire. It may be figurative, not literal.”

Pao smiled thinly. “All I am asking is that we save, for later, the one option that might kill everyone here—and then prove too weak to allow us to reach any of the planes beyond death.”

“And I say again, there are risks inherent in all things,” Vol said. “ Your thoughts and words and poetry were instrumental in creating the cazh . Do not abandon us now.”

Vol studied Pao’s reluctant face. Then he made a little open-handed gesture, as if to say, Join us .

“I do not wish to,” Pao said at last. But then he looked long and openly at his two former lovers. Their faces were so familiar, so dear, that the thought of living without them was unthinkable. “And yet I cannot abandon you,” he said.

With an encouraging look from Rensat, Pao finally nodded. Vol clapped the man’s shoulders joyously, then turned and pulled a parchment from its display on a wall and followed Pao as he strode without another word around the spiral toward its center. The other dozen arranged themselves along the basalt path so that they were evenly spaced, close to the fires floating on the water. Pao sat cross-legged in the center. Vol placed the parchment in Pao’s lap, then stood behind him.

The bearded man looked around. He still seemed uncertain.

“These are your words,” Rensat reminded him.

Pao looked at the parchment. It was a gesture, no more, but he placed his name on the document. Then he took a dramatic breath and bowed over his knees, exposing the nape of his neck.

Vol stood before him with his feet shoulder-width apart and closed his eyes. His breath became tremulous. The others held a respectful silence. Vol opened his eyes and extended the first two fingers of his right hand to point exactly at Pao’s neck. He raised his left hand above him and pointed those first two fingers at the lattice dome. Then he looked directly into Mikel’s eyes and smiled.

“Welcome, all,” he said. “In the name of the Candescents, we commit our spirits to wherever the ritual takes us!”

Almost at once, an invisible surge began to manifest itself, a shock wave that grew in power until it was no longer rippling but forcefully expanding—

Mikel jerked back in terror. His hands recoiled from the mosaic and the vision ripped away from his mind. Almost simultaneously, a massive fireball exploded nearby.

Three hours by plane, northeast of Halley VI, on the north coast of Antarctica, the commander of the Norwegian Troll base pushed his way through a huddle of scientists to get a full view of the jagged lines on the computer screen they were all staring at. He had NORSAR, a geoscience research foundation, on the phone and the phone to his ear.

“We’ve never seen seismic activity like this,” he said in awe.

“And no aftershocks?” asked the seismologist on the phone.

“Just that brief burst,” the commander said. An inveterate fidgeter, he began to drum with his fingers on the desk. As if he were reading music, he tapped the long and short lines from the Antarctic bedrock’s seismometer, but the resulting beat was far too arrhythmic to be music.

There were two people in the world who would have recognized the sound.

A psychiatrist seven and a half thousand miles away and her ten-year-old son.

Acat woke from a nap on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and lightly descended from the couch to the floor. He stretched his shoulders, then stood for a moment, still half-asleep. Then he ran at full speed out of the room, down the hall, out of sight.

Caitlin and Jacob O’Hara sat at the table having breakfast, watching Arfa’s impromptu sprint. Caitlin was tempted to go find him but Jacob was in the middle of a dramatic reenactment of what it must have been like to be the chef on the Nautilus and refused to be distracted. He was so fired up he’d been holding a glass of almond milk for at least five minutes despite occasionally sloshing it onto his hand.

Suddenly, Jacob dropped the glass on the table. Raising both fists in the air, he threw his head back, eyes squeezed tight, a picture of frustration.

“Jake, honey?”

Caitlin knelt by his chair suddenly worried that perhaps Jacob’s recovery from the episode at the cooking school was really just the eye of a storm.

“ En…do…, ” he said, as though he were struggling to form words. “ En…dovi… ”

Caitlin reached out and touched him lightly on his face. Jacob reared back as though repulsed by human contact.

Then he brought both fists down on the table. It was a tense but controlled movement—not in a rage, not aimed at anything, more like trying to gather himself—except that the table met his fists with a massive thump. The impact startled him, as if he’d forgotten the table was there. His eyes jerked open and Caitlin, horrified at what she was seeing, realized that Jacob was suddenly himself again. Which meant, even more terrifying, that for those few seconds he had not been himself.

Jacob looked at his hands, looked at the table covered in milk, looked at his mother, and began to cry.

For more than ten minutes, Jacob continued to writhe in Caitlin’s arms.

First he would twist away so he could sign with both hands, then he would turn to his mother to clutch at her neck. Signing was his default, emergency mode, and though he was wearing his hearing aid, he wasn’t responding to anything Caitlin was saying. She didn’t want to break the embrace to face him and sign herself. He was only signing one thing.