She drove to Ca.s.sadaga during her second trimester, and found Earth Cathedral. She parked exactly where she would that fateful day years later, and made her way to the front doors. She stood there for some time, her heart beating madly, her hands shaking. She stared at the door, thinking of what Dan had told her about her people's habits of opening doors to other worlds, to other times. Finally, she knocked.

After a second knock, she heard shuffling feet echoing inside, then a large bolt being drawn. The door opened, its bottom sc.r.a.ping along the cement floor.

Sarah's mouth dropped open. Her eyes darted from the man's face to his feet, then back again. His skin was the color of marble in moonlight; it was at once wrinkled and tight, his body stiff but somehow supple beneath it all. He looked to be covered in a kind of bark. But he was, beneath all the years, unmistakably the boy she had once known. "Montague?" she whispered.

The man's dry lips cracked open, formed a strange smile. His eyes, still young and alert, were bright. "Sarah," he said.

"Dear G.o.d, I never thought I'd see you again," the old man said.

They sat in Montague's-Monty, she thought, he calls himself Monty now-office, which consisted of two benches sitting against opposite walls. Sarah's head was spinning. "How . . ." she began, her hands up in a kind of protest.

Monty only smiled. "Dan broke his cardinal rule. I learned quickly, and I found I had a gift he didn't have."

As it had been since she'd arrived, her mouth was wide-open. She just didn't have any words to fill it.

"This world, this universe, and all you see around you is only one plane of existence. I've heard people talk about parallel universes, but most of them speak as if there were only a couple."

"And there are-"

"Infinite, Sarah," said Monty, leaning forward. "All you need to do is find the doors. But as in most gifts, there's a catch."

"Which is?"

The old man leaned against the wall, pointed at the cracked and sagging flesh of his face. "It's dangerous. If you open a door, things can get out as well as in."

Sarah didn't answer.

"And what about you?" he asked, suddenly changing the subject. "As I expected, you've become a beautiful woman. And not alone, I see."

Sarah glanced down, smiling.

"Your first?"

She nodded.

"You must be scared. You've been disconnected from your people for so long."

"I'm terrified."

Monty stared at her. At first, she thought he was only thinking of what to say, but then it became clear he wasn't. He looked her over, not speaking, for a long time. Finally, he got up, left the room and returned with a box, which he set at her feet. "A few years ago, an old woman gave me a set of blank diaries she'd made herself. She told me she'd always wanted to set the story of her life down, but had never gotten around to it. Am I right in thinking you won't be introducing your child to his relatives?"

Again, she nodded.

"At least share a piece of yourself, Sarah. This child won't be quite like everyone else, and he's bound to have questions. And at some point, my dear, we all die, and when you do, you won't be able to answer his questions, will you?"

Sarah remembered Monty's remark the day she gave birth. She was laying in the hospital bed, waiting to meet her son, when her hand grazed her neck. And she felt it.

Just under her chin was a rock-hard lymph node.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Beyond the Door.

1.

Robert had been walking for what felt like years. His lips were chapped, his throat parched, his legs aching.

There were no paths. He knocked away branches, kept an eye out for whatever wildlife might inhabit this place, and drove on, telling himself that he'd find water sooner or later, or a branch heavy with fruit. Beyond this he did his best not to think, at least for now. Here, under a sky that should not exist, walking on land that should not hold him, watching out for beasts that should not have been, thoughts were only a special kind of madness. Above all, he did not think of his mother. He did not think about her standing nude before him when he was only a boy; he did not think about the vaporous light that had swirled around her, taking her; he did not think about what she'd told him-oh, son, follow me, you won't believe it-and he did not close his eyes now and again to see her disappearing, her arms outstretched, her eyes gla.s.sy with tears and visions.

After a time, he came to the edge of the forest. Beyond it was an uneven land of stone. They appeared to have been shoved into the ground by huge hands: some stood perfectly vertical, reminiscent of Stonehenge, other were flat, and still others skewed or broken, as if they'd fallen from the sky and crashed here. He cursed, couldn't imagine climbing over and around them. He was so tired. So he collapsed on the ground, leaned back and stared at the sky. It was dense with clouds, which were no longer gray but tinged with a red as dark as brick. Behind this brick, a yellowish ribbon of light swirled through the heavens. All was backlit and split by lightning. Tilting his head back, he opened his mouth and tasted rain. It fell slowly at first, in fat drops, then the sky burst open and Robert flattened himself against the dirt, finally satisfied that this was no dream, that he could think about where he lay.

The rain tasted good-it tasted clean.

As he lay there, he thought back to some time ago. (You could not measure time here-nothing set or rose, so it got neither brighter nor darker. It was a world of eternal twilight.) Shortly after Monty had shoved him through the door, ha had seen the beach to the east of the forest and had burst through the foliage and over a dune, only to stop before the motionless and eerily silent sea. He sat in the sand, scooping it over his legs, watching the ocean almost imperceptibly whisper before him. Then he searched the sky, but found no sun, no moon. Only beasts roamed the clouds. The sky was gunmetal highlighted with pastels, the sand a soft tan, the forest behind him a washed-out green that spiraled around lemon-shaded bark.

He stood, licked his lips, wondering if the water was heavy with salt. He almost didn't care. Approaching the water, which stretched flat as a pond, he watched for signs of life beneath. There was only his face, and it stopped him. He c.o.c.ked his head, staring-he was no longer bony, no longer gaunt, and he could find no traces of the disease. Was he dreaming? Had he failed to awaken from the hypnosis? He shook his head, dropped to his knees, and reached out his hand over the water, dangling it over the mirror, and finally touched it down.

And screamed.

Something like a seizure ran through him. He reared back, his hand stuck in water that no longer looked like water at all, but like an endless floor of silver, solid enough to walk across or to be buried under. But Robert couldn't see it. He was seeing past the world, through to the river of time, of s.p.a.ce, of All: In the center of a vast jungle a pyramid touches the sky. Painted men encircle it, shouting, jabbing the b.l.o.o.d.y tips of spears into the air.

The surface of a lake is broken by skin, a blue-gray head. A ma.s.sive tail propels it toward a rain forest. Above, the sky is ice and fire. The animal is dying. The world is dying.

At the bottom of a sea across a universe, a broken vessel lies forever still. Beasts no eye has witnessed move in and out of a grand room, their great mouths snapping in the darkness.

In the center of the cosmos lies a dark planet, a dead planet. Buried in its surface are the remains of several civilizations, each unknown to the next. It is only a single world, but it is every world.

Still screaming, Robert escaped the sea, toppled back into the sand. These images had not come in a sequence, but all at once. It was madness.

After a time, he realized he was lying on a beach. He stared at the sky. It was darker now. Like a boy, he tried to make shapes out of the clouds.

"What is it?" he whispered. "What was it?"

The memory of what he'd seen rushed toward him again and he shut his eyes but it didn't help, and days pa.s.sed, years pa.s.sed, a century pa.s.sed, or perhaps it was only a moment, but then, under the pale light of an alien sky, Robert Lieber fell asleep.

He thought of that day often. Perhaps it was a day ago, perhaps a week, or a year. It had taken him some time to clear his head of what he'd seen, but then again, although the sheer weight of the images had nearly crushed him, he did not want to merely forget. He did not know what that silvery surface beyond the sand was; rather, he only knew what it was not: It was not an ocean. Beyond that, who knew? All he had was conjecture, or perhaps an untenable hypothesis, which was this: This place was not a place at all. It didn't make sense in a material way. But if it were some sort of physical manifestation of a spiritual way station, if the water, the lake, the ocean, the whatever, was some sort of continuum, if it was some kind of current of . . . what? Of what? Robert sat up, stood, started for the stones. Of life? No, that wasn't it, but he was close. He'd seen things that only made sense if you thought in terms of the cosmos's history, if you thought about all of humanity. But even that wasn't enough.

And then he knew. He didn't think of it. It didn't come to him in a flash of excitement. Robert exhaled, stopping atop a jagged stone, a peace spreading through him. He stared into the sky. He hadn't quite figured out what this place was, or where, but he understood the water.

It was everything.

Creation, all that had been, or was to come. It was the story of matter, the story of anti-matter, the tale of a paradox, the narrative of All. Somehow, he'd touched the water of G.o.d's mind, and had seen everything there was to see. That ocean was a mountain atop all of creation, and looking over it had been terrifying, the view impossible.

Robert had been exploring for what had to be days when he found the cave. It was at the bottom of a ravine. Leaves and foliage partially concealed its mouth. He tried to scale the slope, but ended up sliding down most of it. Glancing back, he surmised it was a hundred or more feet back up, and there was nothing to grab hold of. While it had been relatively easy ending up down here, it would be the devil's work returning to the top.

When he took a step, he nearly fell. Wincing, he saw that some sort of vine had wrapped itself around his ankle. He yanked his foot, but was answered only by a needle of pain. He touched the dry, green surface of the vine, and immediately withdrew his hand with a hiss. Something had cut his finger. He squinted and looked closer. Sure enough, almost translucent silver needles shot out all over the vine. One had entered the top of his foot, running just over a prominent vein. He held his breath, bent over, touched his foot. The needle moved beneath his skin, but didn't offer to slip out. Sitting down, he gently pushed on the vine. Any movement at all hurt.

He exhaled a curse, stopped messing with it a moment to look at the opposite end of the pit. Four thin trees stood taller than the ravine behind them. All over the valley, the land sloped upwards. The only thing down here was the cave. Again, he looked at the vine and its needles, trying to figure out a painless solution. But he wasn't thinking clearly: He hadn't eaten a thing since being shoved through the door, and he could feel the machine of his body slowing. He couldn't move quickly, couldn't think with any speed.

"Okay," he said, leaning over. "You're gonna have to come out, one way or another."

But saying it didn't make it any better. How was he going to get that thing out? He couldn't grab hold of the vine without depositing a clan of those silver things in his hands-so what was the plan, Stan?

He stared at it for a while, c.o.c.king his head in one direction and then the other, and it finally came to him.

"Call the village, I've found the idiot," he said, reaching down, pressing his thumb and forefinger to the needle. He took a breath, and snapped it off the vine. Slowly, with the thing still worming around over a vein, he uncoiled the vine, stepped out of it, and hopped back a pace or two. With his hands behind him, he lowered himself onto the ground and situated his legs into an Indian-style position. With his feet not more than a hand's distance from his eyes, he took stock of how deeply it was lodged, and approximately how much pressure this little operation would take. He pressed on it and it hurt, but he was too exhausted to scream, so he cursed silently, pressured it again, shoving it back toward the original hole. It was excruciating-he had an idea that the needle had microscopic barbs on its sides, and was sc.r.a.ping along the vein and the underside of his skin. But at last, its nearly translucent head showed, and he took it between his fingers. With a symphony of pain accompanying it, the splinter ripped out.

Robert sat there for a time with the thing between his fingers, staring at it. Finally, he tossed it aside, took to his feet, and started for the cave.

To his astonishment, he found something to eat not more than a hundred feet inside. Long cylindrical objects glistened in the half-light, and for a moment he thought they were some sort of hibernating animal. But as he approached, he made out their green color. Then he touched them. To be careful, he plucked one from its stem and took a bite. A small bite. He waited for a few minutes. He didn't keel over, and that was good enough for him.

When he'd finished, he counted twenty-one rinds on the cave's stone floor.

He sat down, leaned his head against a rock and blanked out, stupidly digesting.

Robert awoke feeling better than he had in a long, long time. He took a look around, saw that an entire wall was ripe with fruit, and smiled. He shook his head, trying not to think about this place, but of course that was impossible. There was a light at the mouth of the cave, a pale, uncertain luminescence created by a star he could not see. The faint scent of water, mildew almost, permeated the air. The heavy wash of wings descended on the clearing, but he could hear it all over the island, those nameless beasts swimming through the sky. So all he could do, really, was think about this place: it was all around him. Fine, he thought. Aside from the water, what do I know?

He knew that his mother had been sent here. Well, that wasn't exactly right. He didn't know if she'd come here, or some other dimension, but he did have a hunch. That wasn't the same as knowing, was it?

She had disappeared in front of him, he did know that. And he supposed he'd always known it, even if his conscious mind hadn't allowed the memory to surface via normal channels. So if his mother had vanished, and the same man had opened the door, was it foolish to believe he'd sent them both here? Wasn't Monty the Wizard trying to give him answers? Maybe his hunch was a reasonable a.s.sumption, after all.

Of course, the more he knew, the greater the questions. If he understood the sea, and he knew that Monty had sent both he and his mother here, he still had no clear understanding of what here was. And that was really the question, wasn't it?

The more he turned it over, the more he considered it, the more he attempted to answer this question, the more Robert Lieber understood that some questions could not be answered by human minds. He was beginning to see that mankind's a.s.sumption that the physical world was all-important was only the Dark Ages flat-world theory taken to its inverse, exponential extreme. He wasn't even sure the material plane made sense.

All the unanswerable questions, then, came down to one: He was here-but what, exactly, was he doing here?

Robert looked toward the mouth of the cave, at the light spilling inside. "Finding her," he whispered.

But where?

Just as when he'd realized what the water was, the connection didn't blast into him, it didn't jolt him out of his reverie. It was a sudden peace, an inner calm. He sat up, wrapped his arms around his knees, remembering when he'd first thought he might be sick, and how he'd immediately checked on his daughter. He'd watched her sleep for a while, and then anger had come over him. Not anger over the possibility of sickness-that would come later-but anger over the possibility that he would miss her journey from childhood to adulthood. Wouldn't his mother have had a similar reaction? If she couldn't physically stand next to her son as he made his own journey, she had been determined to watch. And she'd found a way, trapped in that silvery portal, to place her hand in the material world: The letter, the destruction of the porch. She understood that her presence in this strange purgatory had upset the balance of things, so she'd guided him to Monty, who had reopened the door.

He might never know what or where this place was, but he certainly knew what here was: Here was a place a mother could find, could see, her son.

The ocean.

A tear slid down Robert's cheek. She had been with him all along.

After a long and arduous climb out of the valley, he started for the sea.

He got lost many times on his way back. More than once he had to stop, listening for creeping animals or for the cries of beasts overhead, but heard nothing. Saw nothing. Still, he felt watched.

After a time, he came to the land of stone, smiled and thought, Okay, I'm on the right path. But his good mood faded once he set to climbing over, around and in between the sentinel-like rocks. More than once he slipped, lost his footing or just plain fell, and by the time he reached the other side, he had to take a break. Almost immediately, it began to storm.

Lightning flashed along the treetops. He couldn't see more than a few feet ahead. Wind howled, rushed through the forest. Leaves swept wetly around him and stuck to his skin. He was reminded of a Florida summer, when the sky broke open every afternoon. Despite this, he pressed on and the weather got worse, the rain falling in great spears, and he began to shake in the razor cold.

When he made it to the edge of the forest and walked out from under the trees, it was worse still. But he was heartened minutes later when the land rose, and he knew he was nearly there.

The water appeared to be boiling as the rain pelted the sea.

Robert stood at the edge for a moment, taking stock of the slope, hoping he'd descend this much slower than he had the last one. He looked around for any of those pesky vine formations, but once the cliff broke there was only mud and stone. Even if he slid part of the way, there was sand to land in.

He started down, and although he soon found himself sliding, the grade was gentle and the beach below proved to be soft despite the storm.

And then he was standing before what had previously been a motionless sea. He took a step towards it, then paused. It wasn't colored like the ocean back home, which was green and gray and navy blue in spots. Here the water was mostly a bright, almost evanescent blue, almost as if there was a great light at the bottom of the sea giving the water the quality of a precious stone.

He took another step, lifted his foot, but didn't touch it down immediately. He was suddenly unsure of his experience here. Had it been pain he'd felt, or had it been the bending of his perceptions to a new way of seeing? Was the human mind capable of processing thousands of pieces of information at once? He hesitated no longer, knowing that if he did he might never take the chance.

He touched his foot down.

Again, the liquid found a way in. It rushed into him, his nerves cried out, screaming to life, but he kept his foot in the sea.

There was, however, a subtle difference this time. Although images rushed into him, millions of them, they did not explode into him. He saw a battle, thousands of naked humans throwing spears and slaying others with blades hewn from teeth; a great cloud flattening in the heavens above a city, mushrooming; a man sitting before a fire in a desert night. These things and more careened his way, but instead of making contact, they sped past; it was as if he was traveling in the wrong direction down the center lane of a freeway, and cars were speeding past him on both sides.

For a moment, he imagined his hand was lifting, but realized he wasn't moving at all; he'd somehow projected his body into the vision. His astral hand reached out and, as if they were electricity, the images buzzed and shocked him. But they slowed, so he held them static for a second, wondering how he might find something relevant. It's all relevant, something told him, and he instinctively knew this to be true, but he knew he didn't have time to watch the history of the earth, or the universe, or perhaps the cosmos, unfold before him.

Suddenly, a woman with straight brown hair appeared. She was reared back, she was laughing, and she was his mother. He c.o.c.ked his head to one side, remembering the pose, and then he saw that she was surrounded by friends, and his father before her, a camera lens covering his eye. Then he snapped Robert's favorite picture of his mother.

After this, random images of her life blazed past-she was pregnant, he was born, she was sick, she was outside Earth Cathedral that day, light surrounded her, took her.

"Slow down," said Robert, and to his surprise everything did.

And then he said it, the words that changed everything. "Go back."

For a moment, all was black. Then two white and black animals appeared in the darkness, and he squinted, thinking he wasn't seeing things clearly, but then he saw the wagon. A mother and a father sat beside a little girl he immediately knew was his own mother.

They were approaching a town.