PART SEVEN
SOULS AT ZERO
I
Presidents, messiahs, shamans, popes, saints and lunatics had attempted—over the passage of a millennium—to buy, murder, drug and flagellate themselves into Quiddity. Almost to a one, they’d failed. The dream-sea had been more or less preserved, its existence an exquisite rumor, never proved, and all the more potent for that. The dominant species of the Cosm had kept what little sanity it possessed by visiting the sea in sleep, three times in a life span, and leaving it, always wanting more. That hunger had fuelled it. Made it ache; made it rage. Made it do good in the hope, often unconscious, of being granted more regular access. Made it do evil out of the idiot suspicion that it was conspired against by its enemies, who knew the secret but weren’t telling. Made it create gods. Made it destroy gods. The few who’d taken the journey that Howie, Jo-Beth, Tommy-Ray and twenty-two guests from Buddy Vance’s house were taking now had not been accidental travellers. They’d been chosen, for Quiddity’s purposes, and gone (for the most part) prepared. Howie, on the other hand, was no more prepared for this than any stick of furniture hauled into the throat of the schism. He was pitched first through loops of energy and then into what appeared to be the middle of a thunderhead, lightning setting brief, bright fires all around him. Any trace of sound from the house had disappeared the moment he’d entered the throat. So had the pieces of trash that had flown in along with him. Helpless to steer or orient himself, all he could do was tumble through the cloud, the lightning becoming less frequent and more brilliant, the passages of darkness between steadily more profound, until he wondered if perhaps his eyes were closing, and the darkness—along with the falling sensation that accompanied it—was in his head. If so, he was happy with its embrace, his thoughts now also in free-fall, fixing momentarily on images which appeared out of the darkness, seeming to be completely solid though he was almost certain they were in his mind’s eye.
He conjured Jo-Beth’s face over and over again, always glancing back at him over her shoulder. He recited words of love to her; simple words that he hoped she heard. If she did they didn’t bring her any closer. He wasn’t surprised. Tommy-Ray was dissolved in the same thought-shot cloud that he and Jo-Beth were falling through, and twin brothers had claims on their sisters that went back to the womb. They’d floated together in that first sea, after all, their minds and cords intertwining. Howie envied Tommy-Ray nothing in all the world—not his beauty, his smile, nothing—except that time of intimacy he’d shared with Jo-Beth, before sex, before hunger, before breath even. He could only hope that he’d be with her at the end of her life the way Tommy-Ray had been at the beginning, when age took sex, appetite and, finally, breath away.
Then her face, and the envy, were gone, and new thoughts came to fill his head, or snapshots of same. No people now, only places, appearing and vanishing again as though his mind was sifting through them looking for one in particular. It found what it was searching for. A blurred blue night, which flew into solidity all around him. The falling sensation ceased in a heartbeat. He was solid in a solid place, running on echoing boards, a fresh cold wind blowing in his face. At his back he heard Lem and Richie calling his name. He ran on, looking over his shoulder as he did so. The glance solved the mystery of where he was. Behind him was the Chicago skyline, its lights brilliant against the night, which meant that the wind on his face was coming off Lake Michigan. He was running along a pier, though he didn’t know which, with the Lake slopping around its struts. It was the only body of water he’d ever been familiar with. It influenced the city’s weather, and its humidity; it made the air smell a different way in Chicago than any other place; it bred thunderstorms and threw them against the shore. Indeed the Lake was so constant, so inevitable, that he seldom thought about it. When he did it was as a place where people who had money took their boats, and those who’d lost it drowned themselves.