Gillian Anderson - The Sound of Seas

“We are within sight of Aankhaan,” the Standor said. “The motu-varkas is churning smoke from its mouth and from the columns that serve as vents.”

“I know,” Caitlin said. She did not have to see it. The image was still fresh in her mind from her spiritual visit. “What are your intentions?”

“Clearly, we cannot moor to any of the columns,” the Standor said.

“Nor should you try,” Caitlin said somberly.

Standor Qala approached with her hands open, imploring. “Cayta-laahn,” she said with obvious effort and respect, “the citizens below are anxious. They gather in groups and many are leaving the city by cart or foot. A few are trying to get to boats, though the seas are rough. Many wave to us. The colored banners for the Night of Miracles are blowing unattended in the courtyards and from parapets. I see Priests and Technologists conferring—”

“They’re too late,” Caitlin said. “Too late.”

“I thought—if you could tell me what I can do to help,” Qala said. “We can lower ladders, ropes, but I fear a panic, that people will fall, or that the weight of so many will pull us down.”

Caitlin left the hammock and stood in front of Qala. She looked up into the woman’s golden eyes. They glowed hauntingly in the preternatural darkness. “ Standor , I say again, I implore you—take your crew and head to sea,” Caitlin told her, gesturing powerfully in emphasis. “Do this before—”

An explosion from below rocked the airship hard.

Caitlin knew immediately what it was. She had heard it before. “Go to sea now !” she screamed as she pushed past Qala, left the cabin, and braced herself against an unbroken section of railing. She was forced to grip it tightly as the ship shuddered from a second and third shockwave. The sound was loud and ugly, like a clutch of thunderclaps layered one over the other.

Below, Caitlin saw the caldera of a volcano on the outskirts of the capital. It looked more like a sinkhole that had opened up in the foothills of a mountain range. There were low white structures around it—no doubt the control center for the Source, the place where Vol had gone and was still present. These stone buildings were burning and crumbling, falling along the sides of the small volcano like pilgrims before an enraged god.

Red fury rose from that circular mouth, knocking down the first of the long line of tall, glowing columns that led from the volcano to the sea. Some distance away, on the opposite side, the motu-varkas had been spared.

Caitlin was looking down at the masses of people, at the terrified groups beginning to cazh , at the ritual that brought her here what seemed like ages ago. Houses were burning and collapsing, flaming banners fluttered through the sky and died like exotic birds. Then, slowly, knowingly, Caitlin’s eyes were drawn toward the dark heavens, for she knew—and feared—what she would find there.

Qala came up behind her, shouting back for the boy to remain in the doorway.

“No, come here!” Caitlin called over to him, wriggling her fingers toward her son. He dashed forward, awkward on the rocking deck, and clutched her hand to his chest. Caitlin pulled him close as her eyes sought the Standor . “He must stay with me.”

“But it’s not safe!” Qala said as, suddenly, her own sparkling eyes followed Caitlin’s and were drawn to a glow in the heavens almost directly in front of them. The Standor simply stared for a long moment before uttering, “It is not… possible!”

Caitlin had to suppress a scream as she tried to process what she was witnessing. There, before them, her back to the airship, hovered the spirit Caitlin O’Hara. She was extending her arms, throwing power toward the ground, disrupting the deadly ceremony. The body of Bayarma reacted strongly to the spirit’s appearance, lurching forward as though they were harnessed. Qala had to grab Caitlin tightly around the waist to prevent her from going over the side. The boy dug the heels of his sandals into the deck to keep her close.

“Turn the ship away!” the Standor cried to the usa-femora . “Head to sea!”

As the young woman acknowledged the officer’s command, Caitlin felt herself leaving the grip of the Standor , leaving the ship, leaving her body…

Magma, boiling water, and ascending souls rose furiously from below, mingling in a holocaust of physical death and spiritual anguish. Caitlin relived the pain. She saw it through familiar eyes, the eyes through which she had seen it at the United Nations… when, with the help of Ben Moss, she saved Maanik from an unwanted cazh , prevented her from transcending with the dying of Galderkhaan.

She saw her spirit fall away and fade into the churning smoke of a dying civilization. But then the tableau changed. The destruction grew vaporous and unclear. The souls vanished. The fires went from red to orange to gold. There was nothing around Caitlin but light.

I am gone… yet I am here , she thought as the glow coalesced around her. And she was certain she was not alone but she was too rapt to try and penetrate the glow. She let it talk to her.

The light was now a small, brightly gleaming band, a circle that resembled the olivine tiles but had neither substance nor size—it could be a wedding band or a galaxy. Lights glittered within; but they were not anonymous pinpoints, they were pulsing threads. They were visible but immaterial, undulating and entwining, and growing. Soon she saw other serpentine lights within the outer layer… and more within those.

In her mind, Caitlin wanted to panic. But it was only a thought; she didn’t seem able to act on it. She tried to look around for Jacob but she had no body to move and there was nothing to see, save the light and the seemingly infinite gleaming parts that comprised it.

Then the light went out. Simultaneously, in its place was a universe. Space, familiar in its parts but unfamiliar in its crisp definition—or composition. There were red stars within twisting galaxies, nebulae paler than she had ever seen yet no vast distances between them. They were like a drawing Jacob might have made, all the pieces densely arranged, arranged like graceful, overlapping lengths of string that had neither beginning nor end.

String , she thought. Superstring .

Caitlin did not know much about superstring theory, only that some physicists believed that strings were both the smallest and largest structures in existence, and that the small might well be one and the same with the large in some curved concept of time-space.

As she looked out, Caitlin wasn’t convinced this mightn’t be some form of temporary lunacy, or perhaps a delirium transpiring as she died in Galderkhaan. Not her life passing before her eyes but all life, everywhere, that ever was.

There were sounds created by the moving strings. Notes. They rose and fell, had depth and inflection, changed in time with the movement of the strings. It was almost like the Galderkhaani superlatives, arms moving to support speech. Caitlin did not understand, possibly because there was nothing to understand, only to experience.

Slowly —or swiftly , she couldn’t be sure of time—the strings tightened into a ball that compressed into a spot of light so brilliant that it almost seemed to balance the crushing darkness around it. That light that never quite surrendered its autonomy before erupting again in a flash of hot light.

A new universe is born , she thought as the strings enlarged and expanded outward and there were once again infinite lights within. And then the lights merged and glowed and burst and caused more small lights as well as dark clouds of early nebulae. The lights—the protostars—writhed around and among the gaseous expanses, burning and dying, exploding and being reborn…