Consequences manifested themselves immediately. The beam deepened in color and intensity as a subtle vibration passed through the floor. Lips compressed tightly, Low continued to feed life crystals into the mechanism at sixty-second intervals.
Could the device be overloaded, he found himself wondering? From their position alongside the central mechanism they couldn’t see the central island. He passed the remaining crystals to an attentive Robbins.
“Keep dropping them in. I need to see what effect this is having on the nexus.”
“All right.” She resumed fueling the machine as she watched him make his way to the gap in the wall.
He kept his head low and his eyes three-quarters shut and averted as he passed beneath the beam. Considering its strength, he thought it remarkable that he felt no heat or vibration. What would happen if he stuck his hand into it? Would the Eye fall and shatter? Would it swerve and tremble? Or would his hand simply disintegrate like wheat straw in a furnace? He decided against performing the experiment.
Robbins called out to him as she dropped another crystal into the slot. “See anything?”
Standing in the opening beneath the beam, Low shouted back over his shoulder. “Everything looks the same to me! Maybe the bubble effect enveloping the lens is slightly more solid! It’s hard to say. Might just be a disturbance in the atmosphere. You still loading crystals?”
“Every minute,” she yelled back. “Why don’t we just dump them all in at once?”
He turned to peer back into the chamber. “Maggie, I’m not sure that’s such a good—”
He never finished the sentence. The concussion was deafening. It blew him off his feet and out through the gap. He landed hard on the rocks outside, bruising his face and arms.
Rolling over, he caught his breath before climbing to his feet and stumbling back toward the gap. Lights danced before his eyes and he couldn’t hear a thing. Overhead, the beam had turned a deep purple that appeared solid as steel, but he wasn’t interested in the beam anymore.
“Maggie!” He fell to his knees, cursing his recalcitrant legs, and forced himself erect again. “Maggie, talk to me!” Dazed and bleeding, he staggered into the chamber. “Where the hell are you? What happened?”
There was no reply.
Not far from the base of the primary mechanism, which appeared undamaged, he found her lying facedown on the floor. A glance revealed that the feeder slot had sealed itself shut. Sated, he decided, just like a carnivore after a big feed. As his hearing began to return, his ears rang as if he’d just finished a year as chief apprentice bell-ringer to Quasimodo himself. He turned her over. Her eyes were closed.
Too stunned to cry, he slipped his arms beneath her and carried her back to the gap in the wall. She’d been so tough, so enduring, that the lightness of her body surprised him. Laying her down gently just inside the opening, he cradled her head in his hand and raised it so that she could see. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Look, Maggie. Can you see? Can you see what we did? What you did?”
Across the intervening ocean the slowly rotating lens had accelerated tremendously on its luminous axis. So fast was it spinning that it resembled a globe instead of a lens.
Or an eye.
It was a deception of speed, of course. There was no rigid gray globe out there, hovering above the center of the main island at the nexus of the five beams. It was simply the original lens, spinning so fast that it gave the illusion of solidity. If it had rotated in his direction and blinked, he wouldn’t have been surprised.
“Worked,” she whispered. He had to strain to hear the single word.
“Yeah, it worked, all right.” With his other hand he took her fingers in his and squeezed gently. “Kill or cure. You shouldn’t have done it, Maggie.”
A hand reached up to caress his lips with shaky fingers. “Please, Boston. Don’t be angry.” She smiled, and he could sense the effort it required.
“Don’t worry. If you … if you slip away, I’ll use one of the life crystals to bring you back.”
Her fingers dropped to coil tightly around his wrist. “There are no more, Boston. I put them all in the machine, and the machine took them.” She struggled to see. “It’s kind of pretty, isn’t it? With all the lights?”
“Yeah. It’s real pretty.” His voice choked.
“But no return ticket. Our asteroid-ship hasn’t moved.” She smiled again. “Hell of a bang, wasn’t it?” Her back arched slightly as every muscle in her body tensed. Her eyes squeezed shut.
“Maggie?”
She slumped back against him. “It’s … okay. I’ve been in this position before, you know.”
“You mean, lying down?” He tried to smile back, without much success.
She could only laugh with her eyes. “You astronauts. Always kidding.” She tried to punch him, but couldn’t raise her arm high enough. Blood began to run from her nostrils. “I think I’m dying, Boston. I feel all broken inside.”
The concussion had blown him clear through the gap in the wall. Much nearer the source, what had it done to her? He was afraid to feel along her ribs for fear of what he might find.
“You’re not going to die, Maggie. You’re not going to leave me here alone.”
“What, another order?” She coughed, and what came up finally started his tears flowing. “Don’t try to fool an experienced reporter.” For an instant her eyes seemed to focus. “Listen to me, Boston Low. If you can get home, if you can find a way, you do it. Promise me.”
“I promise.” He wiped angrily at his eyes. “Brink still had some life crystals on him when he went over. I’ll find a way down, come back with one—”
“No.” Her strength was fast ebbing, but her voice remained strong. “No life crystals for this girl reporter, Boston. No resurrections.”
“But it worked for Brink. It’ll work for you.”
“No. He wasn’t the same … after. You saw it. The crystals took him over, remade him as well as revived him. I don’t want to be remade. Who knows what would have happened to him if he’d lived? He might have gone a little madder each day. Or maybe one day, without warning, the crystals just stop working and you fall over. No thanks. None of that for me. I’d rather die peacefully than live like that.”
He found himself shaking his head in disagreement. “You’re not going to die.”
“Right. I’ll just lie here and relax. Keep holding me, Boston. It feels right.”
Silently they watched the convergent beams, which showed no sign of diminishing, and the spinning lens, which gave no indication of slowing. Was the reaction now self-sustaining? What was taking place deep within the complex interlinked instrumentation? Could he turn it off now even if he wanted to?
None of it mattered. Not even finding a way home was important anymore. All that mattered was the woman lying in his arms, her eyes half-closed as she continued to breathe shallowly.
“Hey,” she blurted abruptly, “take it easy.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re beating up on yourself. You didn’t do anything, Boston. No regrets, comprende? You wouldn’t have liked living with a journalist anyway. We talk all the time, and I’m told that female journalists are the worst of the lot.”
He dredged up a smile. “I’m surprised to hear stereotypes from you, Maggie.”
“What the hell. When the muse fails, you fall back on clichés.” She coughed again, harder this time, her body wracked by the spasm.
His touch light, he brushed hair from her forehead. “I think I could’ve gotten used to it. We would’ve managed. I could have done the heroic deeds and you could have reported on them.”
“S’truth. Here I am sitting on the story of a lifetime and I can’t get a word out. Probably doesn’t matter. My regular audience wouldn’t believe a word of it.”
“Pictures, Maggie. Video.”
She smiled up at him. “Special effects. Morphing. People believe what they want to believe.” Her fingers tightened against him. “It hurts, Boston.”
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say. He knew there must be something else, but he couldn’t think of it. It was ever so at such moments.
“The beams. Find out what they’re for. Find out for me. It’s pan of the story, you know. You can’t leave out critical parts of the story. Bad journalism.”
“I’ll try. I’m just a little ol’ jet jockey, but I’ll try. You can help me find out. Right? Right, Maggie?” Her eyes had closed again. That’s when he thought of the right words, but by then it was too late. It always was.
“I love you, Maggie.”
She died there in his arms without saying another word. There was no eloquence to it, no beauty in it, as the poets postulated. She just went away.