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 s.e.x, 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 s.e.x, appet.i.te 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 sh.o.r.e. 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.

Now, however, as he ran on down the length of the pier, Lem's calls fading behind him, the thought of the Lake waiting at the end moved him as never before. He was small; it was vast. He was full of contradictions; it simply embraced everything, making no judgments on sailors or suicides.

He picked up his pace, barely feeling the pressure of his soles on the boards, the sense growing in him that however real this scene felt it was another of his mind's inventions, shaped from fragments of memory to ease him through what would otherwise have driven him mad: a stepping stone between the dreaming wakefulness of the life he'd left and whatever paradox lay ahead. The closer he got to the end of the pier the more certain he became that this was the case. His step, already light, became lighter still, his strides longer and longer. Time softened, and extended. He had a chance to wonder if the dream-sea truly existed, at least in the way that Palomo Grove existed, or whether the pier he'd created jutted into pure thought.

If so, there were many minds meeting there; tens of thousands of lights moving in the waters ahead, some breaking surface like fireworks, others diving deep. Howie had found some incandescence of his own, he realized. Nothing to boast about, but there was a distinct glow in his skin, like a faint echo of an echo of Fletcher's light.

The barrier at the end of the pier was a few feet from him. Beyond it, the waters of what he'd now ceased to think of as the Lake. This was Quiddity, and in moments it would be closing over his head. He wasn't afraid. Quite the reverse. He couldn't get to the barrier quickly enough, throwing himself at it rather than waste time with steps. If any further proof had been required that none of this was real he had it on impact, the barrier flying into laughing splinters as he touched it. He flew too. A falling flight into the dream-sea.

The element he plunged into was unlike water in that it neither soaked nor chilled him. But he floated in it nevertheless, his body rising through brilliant bubbles to the surface without any effort on his part. He had no fear of drowning. Only the profoundest sense of grat.i.tude that he was here, where he belonged.

He looked back over his shoulder (so many backward glances) at the pier. It had served its purpose, making a game of what might have been a terror. Now it was flying into pieces, like the barrier.

He watched it go, happily. He was free of the Cosm, and floating in Quiddity.

Jo-Beth and Tommy-Ray had gone into the schism together, but their minds had found different ways to picture the journey and the plunge.

The horror Jo-Beth had felt as she'd been s.n.a.t.c.hed had been wiped from her head in the thunder cloud. She forgot the chaos, and felt calm. It was no longer Tommy-Ray who gripped her arm, but Momma, in earlier years, when she'd still been able to face the world. They were walking in a soothing twilight, with gra.s.s underfoot. Momma was singing. If it was a hymn, she'd forgotten the words. She was making up nonsense to fill the lines, which seemed to have the rhythm of their step. Every now and then Jo-Beth would say something she'd learned at school, so Momma would know what a good student she was. All the lessons were about water. About there being tides everywhere, even in tears, about how the sea was where life had begun, and how bodies were made more of water than any other element. The counterpoint of fact and song went on a long, easy while, but she sensed subtle changes in the air. The wind became gustier, and she smelled the sea. She put her face up to it, forgetting her lessons. Momma's hymn had grown softer. If they were still holding hands, Jo-Beth couldn't feel it. She kept walking, not looking back. The ground wasn't gra.s.sy any longer, but bare, and somewhere up ahead it fell away into the sea, where there seemed to be countless boats bobbing, with candles lit on their prows and masts.

The ground went suddenly. There was no fear, even as she fell. Only the certainty that she'd left Momma behind.

Tommy-Ray found himself at Topanga, either at dawn or dusk, he wasn't sure which. Though the sun was no longer in the sky he wasn't alone here. He heard girls in the murk, laughing, and talking in breathy whispers. The sand beneath his bare feet was warm where they'd been lying, and sticky with suntan oil. He couldn't see the surf, but he knew which way to run. He started in the direction of the water, knowing that the girls were watching him. They always did. He didn't acknowledge their stares. When he was out there on the crests, really moving, he'd maybe flash them a smile. Then on the way back up the beach he'd let one of them get lucky.

Now, as the waves came in sight ahead of him, he realized that things weren't right here. Not only was the beach gloomy, and the sea dark, but there seemed to be bodies lolling in the surf, and, worse still, phosph.o.r.escence in their flesh. He slowed his pace, but knew he couldn't stop and turn around. He didn't want anyone on the beach, particularly the girls, to think he was afraid. He was, however; horribly. Some radioactive s.h.i.t was in the sea. The surfers had fallen from their boards, poisoned, and were being washed up by the very crests they'd gone to ride. He could see them clearly now, their skin silvery in places and black in others, their hair like blond haloes. Their girls were with them, dead as the surfers in the tainted foam.

He had no choice but to join them, he knew. The shame of turning away and climbing back up the beach was worse than dying. They'd all be legends after this. Him, and the dead riders, carried off by the same tide. Steeling himself, he stepped into the sea, which instantly became deep, as though the beach had simply fallen away under his feet. The poison was already burning up his system; he could see his body getting brighter. He stared to hyperventilate, each breath more painful than the one before.

Something brushed his side. He turned, thinking it would be another dead surfer, but it was Jo-Beth. She said his name. He couldn't find any words to answer with. As much as he wanted not to show his fear he couldn't help it. He was p.i.s.sing now in the sea; his teeth were chattering.

"Help me," he said. "Jo-Beth. You're the only one who can help me. I'm dying."

She looked at his chattering face.

"If you're dying, we both are," she said.

"How did I get here? And why are you here? You don't like the beach."

"This isn't the beach," she said. She took hold of his arms, their motion making them bob like buoys. "This is Quiddity, Tommy-Ray. Remember? We're on the other side of the hole. You pulled us through."

She saw memory flooding his face as he spoke.

"Oh my G.o.d...oh Jesus G.o.d..." he said.

"You remember?"

"Yes. Jesus, yes." The chattering turned into sobs, as he pulled them close together, wrapping his arms around her. She didn't resist. There was little purpose in being vengeful, when they were both in such jeopardy.

"Hush," she said, letting him bury his hot, stricken face against her shoulder. "Hush. There's nothing we can do."

Nothing needed to be done. Quiddity had him, and he would float, and float, and perhaps-eventually-catch up with Jo-Beth and Tommy-Ray. Meanwhile, he liked being lost in this immensity. It made his fears-his whole life, in fact-seem inconsequential. He lay on his back and looked up at the sky. It was not, as he'd first thought, a night sky. There were no stars, either fixed or falling. No clouds, hiding a moon. In fact it seemed completely featureless at first, but as the seconds pa.s.sed-or minutes; or hours; he neither knew nor much cared-he realized the subtlest waves of color were hundreds of miles across, moving over it. The Aurora Borealis seemed small stuff beside this show, in which, at intervals, he thought he saw forms swooping and climbing, like flocks of half-mile manta-rays, feeding in the stratosphere. He hoped they'd come down a little way, so he could see them more clearly, but perhaps, he mused, they had no more clarity to show. Not everything was available to the eye. Some sights defeated focus, and capture, and a.n.a.lysis. Like all he felt for Jo-Beth, for instance. That was every bit as strange and difficult to fix as the colors above his head, or the forms that made play there. Seeing them was as much a matter of feeling as of retina. The sixth sense was sympathy.

Content with his lot, he gently flipped himself over in the ether and experimented with swimming in it. The basic strokes worked well enough, though it was difficult to be certain he was making much progress with nothing to relate his motion to. The lights in the sea all around him-fellow pa.s.sengers like himself, he supposed, though they seemed not to have form as he did-were too indistinct to be used as markers. Were they dreaming souls, perhaps? Infants, lovers and the dying, all travelling in Quiddity's waters as they slept, to be soothed and rocked, touched by a calm that would carry them, as the tide carried them, through the tempest they'd wake to? A life to be lived, or lost; love they'd go in fear of staling or disappearing after this epiphany. He put his face beneath the surface. Many of the light-forms were far below him, some so deep they were no larger than stars. Not all of them were moving in the same direction as he. Some, like the half-mile mantas above, were in groups, shoals, rising and falling. Others went side by side. The lovers, he a.s.sumed, though presumably not all the dreamers here, who were sleeping beside the lover of their lives, had that feeling reciprocated. Perhaps very few. Which thought led him back to the time he and Jo-Beth had travelled here; and to her present whereabouts. He had to be careful the calm didn't stupefy him; make him forgetful of her. He raised his face from the sea.

In doing so he avoided, by moments, a collision. Yards from him, its appearance shocking in the middle of such tranquility, was a fragment of garishly colored wreckage from the Vance house. And a few yards beyond that, more distressing still, a piece of flotsam far too ugly to belong here, yet not recognizably of the Cosm. It stood four or more feet above the water-line, and hung as far or further below; a gnarled, waxy island floating like pale dung in this pure sea. He reached out and took hold of the wreckage ahead of him, throwing himself on to it and kicking. His action carried him closer to the enigma.

It was alive. Not simply occupied by something living, but entirely made of living matter. He heard the thump of two heartbeats from it. Its surface had the unmistakable sheen of skin, or some derivative of same. But what it actually was didn't become apparent until he was almost brushing against it. Only then did he see the thin figures-two of the party guests-clutching each other with looks of fury on their faces. He hadn't been privileged to keep the company of Sam Sagansky, or hear the nimble fingers of Doug Frank on the keyboards. All he saw were two enemies, locked not only together but at the heart of an island that seemed to have sprung out of them. From their backs, like huge hunches. From their limbs, like further limbs that put up no defense against their enemy but fused with his flesh. The structure was still sprouting further nodules, the beginning of new growth, bursting along the limbs, each variation referring not to the root form-an arm, a spine-but to its immediate predecessor, so that each successive variation became less human, and less fleshy. The image was more fascinating than distressing, the focus of the combatants upon each other suggesting they felt no pain at this process. Watching the structure grow and spread Howie vaguely comprehended that this was the birth of solid ground. Perhaps the fighters would die and decay eventually, but the structure itself was not so corruptible. Already the perimeters of the island, and its heights, resembled coral rather than flesh, tough and encrusted. When the fighters died they'd become fossils buried in the heart of an island they themselves had created. The island itself would float on.

He let go of the raft of wreckage and kicked on, past the island. Flotsam and jetsam littered the surface of the sea now: furniture, clumps of plaster, lighting fixtures. He swam past the head and neck of a carousel horse, its painted eye glaring backwards as if horrified by its dismemberment. But there was no sign of island-making amid this litter. Quiddity didn't create, it seemed, from things without minds, though he wondered if its genius would respond-given time-to the evidence of the minds that had made these artifacts. Could Quiddity grow from the head of a wooden horse some island named for the horse's maker? Anything was possible.

Never a truer word said or thought.

Anything was possible.

They weren't alone here, Jo-Beth knew. It was not much comfort, but it was some. Every now and then she'd hear somebody calling out, their voices distressed on occasion, but just as often ecstatic, like a congregation half in terror, half in awe, spread across the surface of Quiddity. She didn't answer any of the calls. For one thing, she'd seen forms floating past, always at some distance, that suggested people didn't stay human here. They grew freakish. She had enough problems dealing with Tommy-Ray (who was the second reason she didn't reply to the calls) without inviting more bad news. He demanded her constant attention; speaking to her as they floated, his voice drained of all emotion. He had a good deal to say, between the apologies and the sobs. Some of it she already knew. About how good he'd felt when their father had returned, and how betrayed when she'd rejected them both. But there was a lot more, and some of it broke her heart. He told her first about the trip to the Mission, his story mostly fragments but suddenly becoming stream-of-consciousness descriptions of the horrors he'd witnessed and performed. She might have been tempted to disbelieve the worst of it-the murders, the visions of his own decay-but for his lucidity. She'd never in her life heard him so articulate as when he told her how it felt to be the Death-Boy.

"Remember Andy?" he said at one point. "He had a tattoo...it was a skull...on his chest, above his heart?"

"I remember," she said.

"He used to say one day he'd go out on the crests at Topanga-one last ride-and never come back. Used to say he loved Death. But he didn't Jo-Beth..."

"No."

"He was a coward. He made a lot of noise but he was a coward. I'm not, am I? I'm no momma's boy..."

He started to sob again, more violently than ever. She tried to hush him but this time none of her soothing worked.

"Momma..." she heard him saying, "Momma..."

"What about Momma?" she said.

"It wasn't my fault."

"What wasn't?"

"I only went looking for you. It wasn't my fault."

"I said what wasn't?" Jo-Beth demanded, pushing him off her a little way. "Tommy-Ray, answer me. Did you hurt her?"

He looked like a chided child, she thought. Any pretense to machismo had been stripped from him. He was a raw, snotty child. Pathetic and dangerous: the inevitable combination.

"You hurt her," she said.

"I don't want to be the Death-Boy," he protested. "I don't want to kill anybody-"

"Kill?" she said.

He looked straight at her, as though his direct look might convince her of his innocence. "It wasn't me. It was the dead people. I went looking for you, and they followed me. I couldn't shake them off. I tried, Jo-Beth, I really tried."

"My G.o.d!" she said, thrusting him out of her arms.

Her action wasn't that violent, but it churned Quiddity's element out of all proportion to the size of her motion. She was vaguely aware that her repugnance was the cause of this; that Quiddity was matching her mental agitation with its own.

"It wouldn't have happened if you'd stayed with me," he protested. "You should have stayed, Jo-Beth."

She kicked away from him, her feelings making Quiddity boil.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she yelled at him. "You killed her! You killed her!"

"You're my sister," he said. "You're the only one who can save me!"

He reached for her, his face a mess of sorrow, but all she could see in his features was Momma's murderer. He could protest his innocence to the end of the world (if they weren't beyond that already), she'd never forgive him. If he saw her revulsion he chose to ignore it. He began grappling with her, his hands clutching her face, then her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Don't leave me!" he started to shout. "I won't let you leave me!"

How many times had she made excuses for him, because they'd been twin eggs in the same tube? Seen his corruption, and still extended a forgiving hand? She'd even coaxed Howie into putting his disgust at Tommy-Ray aside, for her sake. Enough was enough. This man might be her brother, her twin, but he was guilty of matricide. Momma had survived the Jaff, Pastor John and Palomo Grove, only to be killed in her own house, by her own son. His crime was beyond forgiveness.

He reached for her again, but this time she was ready. She hit him across the face, once, then once again, as hard as she could muster. Shock at the blows made him give up his hold on her for a moment and she started away from him, kicking the churning sea up in his face. He threw his arms in front of him to shield himself and she was gone out of his reach, vaguely aware that her body was not so sleek as it had been, but not taking time to discover why. All that was important now was to be as far from him as she could be; to keep him from touching her ever again; ever. She struck out strongly, ignoring his sobs. This time she didn't look behind her, at least until his din had faded. Then she slowed her pace, and glanced back. He wasn't in sight. Grief filled her up-agonized her-but a more immediate horror was upon her before the full consequences of Momma's death could touch her. Her limbs felt heavy as she pulled them from the ether. Tears half blinding her she raised her hands in front of her face. Through the blur she saw that her fingers were encrusted, as though she'd dipped her hands in oil and oatmeal; her arms were misshapen with some similar filth.

She started to sob, knowing all too clearly what this horror signified. Quiddity was at work on her. Somehow it was making her fury solid. The sea had made her flesh a fertile mud. Forms were springing from it as ugly as the rage which inspired them.

Her sobs became a yell. She'd almost forgotten what it was like to unleash a shout like this, tamed as she'd been by so many years being Momma's domesticated daughter, smiling for the Grove on Monday mornings. Now Momma was dead, and the Grove was probably in ruins. And Monday? What was Monday? Just a name arbitrarily attached to a day and a night in the long history of days and nights which were the life of the world. They meant nothing now: days, nights, names, towns or dead mothers. All that made sense to her was Howie. He was all she had left.

She tried to picture him, desperate to hold on to something in this insanity. His image slipped from her at first- all she could see was Tommy-Ray's wretched face-but she persevered, conjuring him by particulars. His spectacles, his pale skin, his odd gait. His eyes, full of love. His face, flushed with blood the way it was when he spoke with pa.s.sion, which was often. His blood and love, in one hot thought.

"Save me," she sobbed, hoping against hope that Quiddity's strange waters carried her despair to him. "Save me, or it's over."

II.

"Abernethy?"

It was an hour before dawn in Palomo Grove, and Grillo had quite a report to file.

"I'm surprised you're still in the land of the living," Abernethy growled.

"Disappointed?"

"You're an a.s.shole, Grillo. I don't hear from you for days then you call up at six o'clock in the f.u.c.king morning."

"I've got a story, Abernethy."

"I'm listening."

"I'm going to tell it the way it happened. But I don't think you're going to print it."

"Let me be the judge of that. Spit it out."

"Piece begins. Last night in the quiet residential town of Palomo Grove, Ventura County, a community set in the secure hills of the Simi Valley, our reality, known to those who juggle such concepts as the Cosm, was torn open by a power that proved to this reporter that all life is a movie-"

"What the f.u.c.k?"

"Shut up, Abernethy. I'm only going to tell you this once. Where was I? Oh yeah...a movie. This force, wielded by one Randolph Jaffe, broke the confines of what most of our species believed to be the only and absolute reality, and opened a door to another state of being: a sea called Quiddity-"

"Is this a resignation letter, Grillo?"

"You wanted the story n.o.body else would dare print, right?" Grillo said. "The real dirt. This is it. This is the great revelation."

"It's ridiculous."

"Maybe that's the way all earth-shattering news sounds. Have you thought of that? What would you have done if I'd tried to file a report on the Resurrection? Crucified man rolls away the stone. Would you have printed that?"

"That's different," Abernethy said. "That happened."

"So did this. I swear to G.o.d. And if you want proof, you're going to get it real soon."

"Proof? From where?"

"Just listen," Grillo said, and picked up his report again. "This revelation about the fragile state of our being took place in the midst of one of the most glamorous gatherings in recent movie and TV history, when about two hundred guests-Hollywood's movers and shakers-a.s.sembled at the hill-top house of Buddy Vance, who died here in Palomo Grove earlier in the week. His death, under circ.u.mstances both tragic and mysterious, began a series of events which climaxed last night with a number of the guests at his memorial party being s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the world as we know it. There are no details yet as to the complete list of victims; though Vance's widow Roch.e.l.le was certainly among them. Nor is there any way of knowing their fate. They may be dead. They may simply exist in another state of being which only the most foolhardy of adventurers would dare enter. To all intents and purposes they have simply vanished off the face of the earth."

He expected Abernethy to interrupt at this juncture, but here was silence from the other end of the line. So profound a silence, indeed, that Grillo said: "Are you still there, Abernethy?"

"You're nuts, Grillo."

"So put the phone down on me. Can't do it, can you? See, there's a real paradox here. I hate your f.u.c.king guts but I think you're just about the only man with the b.a.l.l.s to print this. And the world's got to know."

"You are nuts."

"You watch the news through the day. You'll see...there's a lot of famous people missing this morning. Studio executives, movie stars, agents-"

"Where are you?"

"Why?"

"Let me make some calls, then get back to you."

"What for?"

"See if there's any rumors flying. Just give me five minutes. That's all I'm asking. I'm not saying I believe you. I don't. But it's one f.u.c.k of a story."

"It's the truth, Abernethy. And I want to warn people. They have to know."