Adnarel came in the morning, in his seraphic form. Sandy said, “I’ve been thinking.” After all, not only Dennys could think.
Adnarel smiled. “Sometimes that is a good idea. Sometimes not.”
“Dennys and I are in the middle of the story of Noah and the flood, aren’t we?”
Adnarel’s azure eyes regarded him. “So it would seem.”
“How are we going to get home?”
Adnarel shrugged his golden wings. “The way you arrived, perhaps?”
“Somehow, I don’t chink, that’s going to be possible. In the meanwhile, Dennys is in one of Noah’s tents, halfway across the oasis.”
“That is true. But he is nearly ready to come to you.”
“It’s a long way. Is he strong enough to walk it?”
“Possibly.”
“I was thinking maybe you could call a unicorn for him.”
“Certainly. That is a possibility.”
“But then I thought”—Sandy’s forehead wrinkled anxiously—“when we were riding the unicorns to the oasis, he went out with the unicorn.”
“That is no problem,” Adnarel reassured him. “If we should call a unicorn to bring him from Noah’s tents to Lamech’s, and if, for some reason, they were both to go out, then we would recall the unicorn to Grandfather Lamech’s tent, and Dennys would be here, too.”
Sandy asked curiously, “If Dennys fell off the unicorn right away, and if the unicorn went out of being with him, could you call them to Grandfather Lamech’s tent faster than it would take them in, sort of, the ordinary way.”
“Oh, certainly. Fear not.”
“Wow. Wait till I tell our father. That’s what he’s working on, traveling without the restrictions of time. Tessering.”
Adnarel nodded. “That is indeed one way of thinking about it. Your father is on the right track.”
Sandy wrinkled his brow in concentration. “Okay, then. If Dennys and the unicorn went out, and then you called them back into being, and they appeared here, that would be a quantum leap, wouldn’t it?”
“Tell me what you mean.” Adnarel’s azure eyes probed Sandy.
“Well, it’s like, oh, in particle physics—well, you can measure a quantum where it is, but not on its journey from there to here. At least—you can’t measure a quantum in both its speed and its place in space, not at the same time. A quantum can be measured where it is, and then it can be measured where it’s got to. So—“ He paused for breath.
“So?” Adnarel asked, smiling.
“Oh, I wish Dennys was here. He could explain it better than I can. But . . . when you call a unicorn into being, you can see it, maybe measure it. But you can’t measure it when it’s gone out. Not until you call it back into being. So maybe that’s what space and time travel is going to have to be like. A quantum leap. Or what my father would call a tesseract.”
“You are an intelligent young man,” Adnarel said. “This is not easy to understand.”
Sandy realized that he had closed his eyes, almost stopped breathing, in order better to concentrate. He opened his eyes, took in a deep gulp of air. “Can you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Tesser. Take a quantum leap.”
Adnarel smiled again. “When I am in the scarab beetle, as I have told you, I am limited by what limits the beetle. When I am in my seraphic form, I have fewer limits.”
“Can you get off this planet if you want to?” Sandy asked. “I mean, can you travel to other solar systems or other galaxies?”
“Oh, certainly. We are here because there is need. Our brothers, the nephilim, cannot leave this planet. They have lost some of their freedoms.”
“Why?” Sandy asked.
But Adnarel was examining Sandy’s healed skin, “You are beginning to get a nice protective tan. When your twin comes, each of you must spend a little time, and then a little more, in the sun, until your skin can bear the rays without burning. You must always remember to stay in the tent during the noon hours. Even in the shade, you can burn from the sun’s reflection.”
“I’ve been sunburned before,” Sandy said. “Once when our Scout troop went to the beach for the day, and we all got burned. But it was nothing like this.”
“I think you come from a more northerly part of the planet,” Adnarel said, “and this sun is younger than it is in your time.”
“And not so much pollution now between earth and sun. Does anybody here ever have allergies?”
Adnarel smiled. “Allergies do not come until later.”
“Hey,” Sandy said. “Grandfather Lamech’s granddaughter Yalith, the one with hair the color of you when you’re in the scarab beetle—why has she never come back with the night-light? Why is it always somebody else?”
“Yalith has been busy, taking care of your brother.”
For a moment Sandy was washed over with a sick wave of jealousy. He shook himself. If he and Dennys were not interested in mythical beasts, neither were they interested in girls. They went to the regional school dances, but usually stuck with the other members of the hockey and basketball teams. There was going to be plenty of time for girls later. Sometime after they had their driver’s licenses and weren’t dependent on parents to drive them. Sometime when they met girls who were not silly and giggly and showing off.
But Yalith was not silly or giggly and she did not show off and she was not at all like any of the girls at school. Even though he had been dizzy with fever that first night in Grandfather Lamech’s tent, his memory of Yalith was as vivid as though she had come with the stone lamp the night before. Her bronze hair had held sunlight even in the dark shadows of the tent. Her body was tiny and perfect. Her eyes, like her hair, held sunlight. Trying to keep his voice level and not succeeding, for it cracked immediately, he said, “Well, I wish Yalith would bring the night-light tonight.”
Adnarel looked at him, and Sandy blushed. He understood why he was feeling the way he was feeling, and at the same time he did not at all understand the way he was feeling, and this conflicting mixture of emotion confused him.
His cheeks were as hot as they had been from fever and Sunburn. He wondered how much Adnaret saw. But the seraph looked at him calmly. “Now I have business elsewhere. You worked very hard in the garden this morning during the dawn hours. Good work. You may stay out for fifteen more minutes. I will send my griffin friend to tell you when it is time to go inside “
“What’s a griffin?”
“Ah, yes, I forget again,” Adnarel said. “A griffin is a mythical beast.”
“Not like the manticore. I hope.” Sandy was not likely to forget the manticore.
“Griffins have a larger vocabulary than the manticore. Some of them can be fierce, but my friend is as gentle as a lamb.”
“What does he look like?”
“She is half lion, half eagle.”
“Which half is which?” Sandy’s mind for the moment was on Yalith.
“Her front half is that of an eagle, her rear half that of a lion. She can fly like an eagle, and she has the strength of a lion.” Adnarel turned and strode through Grandfather Lamech’s grove of royal palms, date palms, coconut palms, scrub palms, all of which blocked the hot wind and provided such a thick shade that Sandy felt comfortably cool. He lay back and looked at the vast expanse of sky, then quickly shut his eyes against the glare.
At home the summer sky was blue, and the blue was made brighter by the white cumulus clouds. Except for an occasional grey day, the sky was constantly in motion, protected by the encircling hills. Here the sky stretched naked from horizon to horizon, licked by volcanic flames, burning in the sun.
A shadow deeper than the shadow of the trees fell across his face. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the griffin.
Instead, a young woman was looking down at him. He caught his breath. She was the most spectacularly beautiful girl he had ever seen. Tiny, like all the people of the oasis. She wore a white goatskin which covered one shoulder. Her hair was a sunburst of red. Her eyes were almond shaped and as green as the spring grass at home. Her body was perfect, her skin the color of a peach.
“Hello!” she said, looking at him with a radiant smile. “I’m really glad to see you again.”
Sandy looked at her in astonishment.
“You haven’t forgotten me, have you? I’m really sorry for what happened, when my father and brother …”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sandy could not keep his eyes off her.
“About when you suddenly appeared in our tent, and my father and brother . . .” Again her words trailed off, as though she didn’t want to finish the sentence.