Clive Barker - The Great and Secret Show

"Help me, Poppa," he said.

The man opened his arms, saying nothing, nor needing to. Tommy-Ray fell into them, clutching at Jaffe in return.

Tesla offered him one last chance to assist her.

"Are you coming or not?"

The answer was simple:

"Not," he said.

She didn't bother to waste breath on the issue. The boy had a prior claim; a primal claim. She watched their embrace tighten, as though they were squeezing the breath from each other, then she again set her sights on the tower and began to run.

Though she forbade herself a backward glance, as she came to the tower—her lungs already aching, and still a bruising distance to go before she found the hut—she looked. Father and son had not moved. They stood in a patch of brightness, wrapped around each other, with the clots still assembling behind them. From this distance their construction resembled the work of a monumental and funereal lace-maker. She studied the curtain a moment, her mind racing through interpretations and finding a solution to its existence both preposterous and plausible: that this was a veil behind which the Iad Uroboros were going to rise. Indeed there seemed to be motion behind its folds already; a greater darkness, assembling.

She took her gaze from the sight, glanced up briefly at the tower and its lethal load, then started off again in the direction of the hut.

The trip in the opposite direction, through the town towards the perimeter of the Loop, was no easier than Tesla's. They'd all been on too many journeys: into the earth, into the sea, to islands, caves and to the limits of their sanity. This last trip demanded energies they scarcely had to give. With every other step their bodies threatened to give out, the hard desert floor looking comfortable by contrast with the agony of advancing. But the oldest fear known to man drove them on: that of the pursuing beast. It had neither claws nor fangs, of course, but it was all the more lethal for that. A beast of fire. It was only when they reached the town that they slowed their pace long enough to exchange a few gasping words.

"How much farther?" Jo-Beth wanted to know.

"Just on the other side of the town."

Howie was staring back at the Iad curtain, which had now mounted a hundred feet and more.

"Do you think they see us?" he said.

"Who?" said Grillo. "The Iad? If they do they don't seem to be following."

"That isn't them," Jo-Beth said. "That's just their veil."

"So we've still got a chance," Howie said.

"Let's take it," said Grillo, and set the pace down the Main Street. It wasn't chance. Tesla's mind, befuddled as it was, had the route across the desert to the hut inscribed deep into it. As she trotted (running was beyond her) it was the conversation she'd had with Grillo back at the motel that she went over in her mind, the exchange in which she'd confessed to him the extent of her spiritual ambition. If she died here in the Loop—and that was virtually inevitable—she knew she'd come to understand more about the workings of the world in the days since she'd arrived in Palomo Grove than in all the years previous. She'd had adventures beyond her body. She'd encountered incarnations of good and evil, and learned something of her condition because she resembled neither. If she was gone from this life soon, either at the instant of detonation, or at the Iad's arrival, she had no complaint at that.

But there were so many souls who had not yet made their peace with extinction, nor should have to. Infants, children, lovers. Peaceable people the planet over, whose lives were still in the making and enriching, who, if she failed now, would wake up tomorrow with any chance to taste the same adventures in spirit she'd had denied them. Slaves of the Iad. What justice was there in that? Before coming to the Grove she'd have given the twentieth century's answer to that question. There was no justice because justice was a human construct and had no place in a system of matter. But mind was in matter, always. That was the revelation of Quiddity. The sea was the crossroads, and from it all possibilities sprang. Before everything, Quiddity. Before life, the dream of life. Before the thing solid, the solid thing dreamt. And mind, dreaming or awake, knew justice, which was therefore as natural as matter, its absence in any exchange deserving of more than a fatalistic shrug. It merited a howl of outrage; and a passionate pursuit of why. If she wished to live beyond the impending holocaust it was to shout that shout. To find out what crime her species had committed against the universal mind that it should now be tottering on execution. That was worth living to know-The hut was in sight. Behind her the suspicion she'd had that the Iad were rising behind the veil of clots, was confirmed. The giants of her childhood nightmares were emerging from the schism, and would soon draw that veil away. When they did they'd surely see her, and come in a few thunderous strides to stamp her out. But they didn't hurry. Their vast limbs took time to draw up from Quiddity; their heads (the size of houses, every window blazing) were immense, and needed the full machinery of their anatomies before they could be raised. When she began again towards the hut the glimpse she'd had of the emergents began to resolve itself in her mind's eye, her wits making coherence of their titanic mystery.

The door of the hut was closed, of course. But it wasn't locked. She pulled it open.

Kissoon was waiting for her. The shock of the sight of him took her breath away, and she was about to retreat out into the sun until she realized that the body propped up against the far wall was vacated by spirit, its system ticking on to preserve it from mortification. There was nobody behind the glazed eyes. The door slammed closed, and without wasting any more time she named the only spirit here that could possibly be holding the moment in Kissoon's stead.

"Raul?"

The weary air in the hut whined with his unseen presence.

"Raul? For God's sake, I know you're here. I know you're afraid. But if you can hear me, show me somehow, will you?"

The whine intensified. She had the sense that he was circling the hut, like a fly trapped in a jar.

"Raul, you've got to let go. Trust me and let go. "

The whine was beginning to hurt her.

"I don't know what he did to you to make you give up your body, but I know it wasn't your fault. He tricked you. He lied to you. He did the same to me. Do you understand? You're not to blame."

The air began to settle somewhat. She took a deep breath and began her persuasions again, remembering how she'd first bullied him into coming with her, back at the Mission.

"If it's anybody's fault, it's mine," she said. "Forgive me, Raul. We've both of us come to the end. But if it's any comfort, so's Kissoon. He's dead. He won't be coming back. Your body...won't be coming back. It's destroyed. There was no other way of killing him."

The hurt of the whine had been replaced by another, deeper ache: that of knowing how much his spirit must be suffering, dislocated and frightened, unable to let go of the moment. Kissoon's victim, as they'd both been. In some ways, so much alike. Nunciates both, learning to climb out of their limitations. Strange bedfellows, but bedfellows nevertheless. Which thought inspired another.

She spoke it.

"Can two minds occupy the same body?" she said. "If you're afraid...come into me. "

She let that notion hang in the silence, not pressing him for fear his panic would escalate. She waited beside the cold ashes of the fire, knowing every second he remained unper-suaded gave the Iad another foothold, but devoid of further arguments or invitations. She'd offered him more than she'd offered anyone in her life: total possession of her body. If he didn't accept she had no more persuasions.