“Quite a place,” Low murmured. “I feel like I can go anywhere, do anything.”
“Our range is limited, but within that span perception is boundless,” he was told. “Great knowledge is to be had. Existence is endless, and pain banished. Thoughts have consequence. Physical force is irrelevant.”
They showed him, and despite his melancholy he was awed. The whole world, the entire system with its sun, planets, comets, asteroids and related bodies—all were within easy reach. He could penetrate and examine anything at will, be it living or dead. From the cells of a strange swimming invertebrate to the molten heart of the planet, from the eye of a flying creature to the center of the yellow-white star, he could cast himself with ease.
All this was open to his perceptions. But he could not feel, taste or smell so much as an errant weed.
“Enough,” he thought suddenly. “I’ve got to go back.”
“But you are back,” they informed him. “Within this dimension, all points are tangent.” And he saw that it was so.
“No. Back to the real world. Back to the physical dimension. Don’t you miss it yourselves?”
“Breathing,” declared one or a billion. “The sting of dust molecules against retinas. The heaviness of air. Moistness, dryness. The common sensations. These are what we miss most.”
“Then why don’t you go back? Doesn’t the Eye work both ways? Can’t you simply step back through it now that it’s been reactivated?” Shifting his perception, he noted that the requisite instrumentalities continued to function efficiently, that the beams still shone and the lens still rotated.
“Would that we were able.” This time he knew that it was only one addressing him. The first. “Unfortunately, the way has been forever lost. In this dimension of insubstantiality and indirection, there are no landmarks, no signposts. We can perceive the workings of the Eye down to the tiniest component, we can observe the beams and note their confluence, but for all that we cannot locate the Eye itself. It is the one actuality that is closed to us.”
“We have searched for a thousand years,” the distraught thought-forms echoed, “without finding. The Eye cannot be perceived from this side, cannot be found.”
“One would think that the laws of probability…,” began a thousand others.
Orienting himself, Low perceived amid the whiteness and the veiled physicalities a grayish splotch. “But I don’t understand. It’s right there.”
“Of course it is,” exclaimed the weary millions. “It has always been ‘right there.’ It is simply that we cannot locate, cannot perceive.”
“Well, I can.” Low was adamant. He moved himself.
“Impossible!” ten thousand thought-forms chorused.
“Can it be?” The first moved close, to examine the new arrival from the inside out. “His neurology differs. He is similar, close, yet different. Not Cocytan.”
“A blind spot?” theorized the nearest others. “Active and transparent, fixed yet motionless?”
“I’m telling you,” Low asserted, “it’s right here!” The grayish patch was tenuous and indistinct, but real.
“We perceive nothing,” the first insisted. “Were that it were otherwise.”
“You’d give this up to come back?” Low manifested a gesture. “All this knowledge, this opportunity?”
The first confronted him, as much as it was possible to do so given the limitations of their immediate environment. “Listen well, traveler. Immortality is Hell.”
“Then follow me.”
So saying, he entered the gray splotch. He felt a light buffeting, as if he’d suddenly opened the door to his home on a blustery day.
He was standing on the beam that emanated steadily from the fifth islet. The gray globe grew misty behind him.
The breeze struck again. Standing at his shoulder, seven feet tall, was a Cocytan. More massive than the Creator, bright of eye and dynamic of countenance, it inhaled deeply. Much to Low’s surprise, he found he could understand the words when it addressed him.
“In the other place knowledge is absorbed as easily as is food in the physical world. Much was implanted in your thoughts while you were among us. Food!” it exclaimed, as though contemplating all the jewels in the universe. “To eat again. To consume, and process.” Eyeing the muscular form, Low found himself wondering if the Cocytan were vegetarians.
A second alien stepped through the vortex of the Eye, followed by a third.
“Come.” The first gently urged Low downward, back toward the fifth islet. “Now that the way is known, it will not be lost again. We must make room for the others.”
Looking back as he retraced his steps, Low saw Cocytan after Cocytan emerge from the Eye. They paused to stare at the sky, the sea, one another. Soon more were stepping out onto the four other light-bridges and making their way toward the other islets. Cries of delight and booming calls of homecoming echoed across the sky.
He wondered how long it would take for all of them to make the transition. Three billion, the Creator had told him. Would the machinery that powered the Eye continue to function long enough? He put the question to the Cocytan accompanying him.
“Worry not, traveler. Among the first to come through are many who were engineers and builders. They will take control of the mechanism and see to its maintenance. The bridges will not be allowed to fade nor the Eye to dim.” Even as he spoke, long-limbed Cocytans were striding past Low on either side. Their strange singsong speech filled the air with what he could only think of as exclamations of sheer joy. A number leaped and pirouetted with remarkable grace, heedless of the potentially fatal plunge to the ocean below. Others simply paused to inhale deeply of both fresh air and a restored reality. Upon successive reemergence, several embraced. Their joy and delight could not help but communicate itself to Low.
Vividness of expression is more than possible, he thought, without the use of any language at all.
“Where are you going to put everybody?” Low wondered. “Even the central island isn’t very big.”
“There are transportation systems that lead to the nearest continent and from there to the rest of Cocytus. Like so much other carefully tuned machinery, it has been waiting patiently for a return we had come to believe would never take place. I infer that you did not discover them. It is as well. Had you been presented with all of Cocytus to explore, it is likely you would not have found the key to the Eye.
“After transportation, communications will be restored, for on this plane of existence we can no longer simply think at one another. You cannot imagine, cannot conceive of, what an enchantment it is to utilize ordinary speech again.” Alien eyes gazed down at him.
“You cannot imagine our debt to you, Boston Low. What we owe you can never be repaid.”
“Hey, it’s all right. To be perfectly truthful, I didn’t think I was embarked on any kind of good deed. My intentions, my thoughts, were … elsewhere. So don’t give me any credit for it.” The spire that overtopped the fifth islet loomed near. “In the other dimension your physical forms were still preserved?”
“As was yours,” the Cocytan told him. “In the other dimension all memories of the physical world are preserved. And like memories there, they do not age. Now we have regained them at last, along with our heritage.” A powerful, multidigited hand came to rest on Low’s shoulder. “And also, I think, some new friends. You have no idea how much anxiety you caused us. We could observe you but not help, scrutinize but not contact, monitor but not warn. Many sensations were denied to us in the other dimension, but frustration was not one of them.”
As they entered the spire, Low could see numerous Cocytans busying themselves among the instruments and machines. They worked smoothly, efficiently, as if they had left their professions only yesterday. Watching them operate, it was impossible to believe they had been absent from this place for a millennium.
“Since the beginning of our civilization,” Low professed, “my people have wondered about the existence of a Heaven.”
“Heaven.” The Cocytan ruminated. “A paradise beyond and outside the realm of physicality. We found a way to exist without physicalities, but we did not find a Heaven. Perhaps your people may have better luck.”
As they made their way through the chamber, which now rang to the cries and calls of busy Cocytans, Low tried to avoid the place where Maggie’s body lay. Again the strong hand rested upon his shoulder.
“I feel a tenseness within you.”
Low looked up at his new friend. “Can you read minds too?”
“No, but you forget that we have been observing you ever since your arrival on our world. There was little we missed. Your body language as well as the one you speak was learned. You grieve for your female companion, do you not?”
Low could only nod.
“She could not have known how dangerous it was to stand so near to the center when final attainment was achieved. Why do you not speak to her now?”