"I can't stop them this time, David."

"We can dust 'em," Mike said. "Give us back our guns."

"No," David said. "You need to let this happen. Just be sure they're orderly, because there're going to be more."

The people began to hesitate, then to cl.u.s.ter in uneasy groups, when guards on the perimeter showed themselves.

"Go in and retrieve your weapons," Glen told the two soldiers.

David saw men, women, and children, he saw dogs on leads, cats in carriers, people hauling suitcases and straining under heavy backpacks.

As people flooded into the compound, it became possible to observe great, long columns of them stretching off along the road as far as could be seen.

Glen called to his men, "Pull it in, stay in front of them!"

As the guards on the gate began backing up, the others came in off the walls.

Del fired his gun into the air.

"NO!" David said. "Not that."

A woman tried to settle a barking dog, but other than that, there was silence from the whole enormous and swelling ma.s.s.

A man came forward, his hands in the air, a white handkerchief in one fist. "Please," he said, "let our children come with you."

"They know about the portal," David said.

"How?" Mike asked.

"A lot more people are going to know about it. It's going to be seen all over the world by the ones who need to see it."

"Seen? How?"

"As time pa.s.ses, it becomes more ... I guess the best word is 'focused.' And the more focused it is, the more people see it."

Mike shook his head.

"It's hyperdimensional. It's outside of s.p.a.ce-time as we know it. What's happening is that it's growing in hypers.p.a.ce, like a gigantic crystal made of time. Does that make sense to you?"

"No, Sir, it does not. But I a.s.sume it means that a whole lot of people are going to go through it."

David drew on his now clear memories of what he'd learned in the cla.s.s. "Around a million worldwide," he said. He called to the crowd, "You're welcome on the grounds. But the building is off limits, do not attempt to enter the building."

To emphasize this, the security guards moved toward them in a line, arms linked. The crowd spread into the broad front garden, but there were still many more coming.

"Man, look at the moon," Mike said. "Look at it!"

The orb was dark red from dust, and the familiar face was now gone.

What had been the dark side was now facing earth.

"Man, that sucker could be about to come out of its...o...b..t," Mike said. "If it hits us, we're done."

The last time the moon had rotated was four hundred and fifty million years ago, before even single-celled life-forms trembled in the waters. It had been struck, then, by an even larger asteroid-actually a small planet-and a huge piece of it had crashed to earth. The crater it had left remained the largest landform on earth. It is called the Pacific Ocean.

Now the whole crowd was watching, and people were coming out of the house, all looking up at the greatest cosmic spectacle that any man had ever witnessed.

From within the ma.s.s of them, there arose a female voice, clear in the cathedral silence of the moment.

" 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.' " And although her tone was filled with fear and even the ragged edge of desperation, a chorus took up the lines, until by the time the final verse was uttered, it was a solemn chant, clear and determined, from many thousands of throats.

In the silence that followed, they watched as bright sparks flickered in waves across the new face of the moon.

"Jesus, it's the fishing tackle lady," Del said. He went into the crowd to the woman who had spoken out.

David saw that she and her husband and kids carried an extraordinary variety of angling equipment, and he thought that it might prove very useful if where they were going was as undeveloped as it appeared. So far, no matter what direction he had pointed the portal in, he hadn't seen a sign of any sort of structure. He feared that a great many people were going to be thrown into a very primitive environment, and that was going to be a very hard situation for them to face, especially after the h.e.l.lish conditions they were enduring here.

"It's beautiful," a voice said from behind them. David did not need to turn to know that Caroline was there. Suddenly and with great intensity, he remembered her body close to his, and her gentle, insistent ways.

"David," she said, "I'm having a problem with the portal. It's flickering. It looks like it's failing somehow."

Terror like lightning shot through him. He looked out at the crowd. "Don't tell them," he said, and followed her back into the building.

25.

THE OMEGA POINT.

Looking at it on its easel, David could see at once how it was changing. There was something dim and grainy about it now. He touched it. "It looks like a painting again," he said.

The cla.s.s was cl.u.s.tered around it. As it turned out, they had survived the worst of the a.s.sault by hiding in the attic and ductwork of the patient wing. They had been clever about hiding, and only two lives had been lost.

"Before we moved, I thought we should wait for dawn over there," Caroline said. "I didn't expect this."

David did not say that he thought that Caroline had made a mistake. How could anybody be blamed for anything now?

He addressed the group. "We need to start getting people through. We need to do it right now."

n.o.body moved.

George Noonan said, "All those people, one by one? Through this?" He shook his head.

"I don't see how we can help them," Aaron added. "Not with such a small opening."

"I think we have to," a voice replied. It was Peggy Turnbull, who had been a tomboy in the days of their cla.s.s, interested only in hunting and horses. In recent years, she had become a poet. Her false psychosis had been depression. He regarded her narrow face, pale in the candlelight. How long would this delicate creature survive in the wilderness that they would soon be entering?

At that moment, there was light so bright that it glared in through the blankets that had been hung over the windows, and from outside there came a howling uproar of terror.

There followed a clap of thunder so enormous that it shattered the few remaining windows.

"Bolide," Mike said. "Big one. Hit just below the horizon, so better hold on."

The world began shaking.

He grabbed David. "If we can go through that thing, we need to do it do it!"

The shaking got rapidly worse. Caroline and others staggered, then she fell to her knees. As David went to her, there arose from outside a clamor of shouts, followed by the chatter of an automatic weapon.

"NO!" David shouted, but his cry was lost in the thunder of the earthquake, as the whole patient wing trembled and cracks raced up the walls. Still, though, the earthquake increased, and David threw his body over Caroline, and could practically feel the ceiling above them getting ready to give way.

"We have to get it outside," she shouted above the din of crackling plaster and collapsing window frames.

Again light, so intense this time that heat came with it, searing, burning, their exposed skin.

The air was sucked out of David's lungs, and he thought that he must die.

"It's coming down," a voice cried, and then Glen and Mike were there, and everyone was running for the doors. Glen helped them up, and Caroline took the portal.

As they went toward the door that led into the side garden, the wall collapsed before them.

"The front," George Noonan shouted. "It's our only chance."

They picked their way through the rubble of the front of the house, moving in a fog of dust almost too thick to navigate at all, but then there were lights ahead, bobbing closer. There came a girl of perhaps twenty, her tired face full of sadness. David remembered her from the bus, and thought, She has lost her future, that's what a child is. She has lost her future, that's what a child is.

An agony deeper than blood filled him, because he thought not only of her and the others outside, but all the millions who were suffering this without even the slight hope of survival represented by something like the portal.

"Help us," the girl said, reaching out and taking David's hand. "I buried my baby just a while ago. But I want to live. I want to live for him."

In his heart, David felt that the baby had ascended, but he would explain it to the mother later. He found himself being led onto the front porch with its now teetering colonnade. Behind him, Caroline brought the portal and the cla.s.s came with her, struggling, covered with dust, some of them nursing injuries. But n.o.body was screaming, and the house still stood, and the quake was subsiding into a series of more and more distant shudders, and thuds as if a giant was walking off into the forest behind the house.

Caroline raised the portal up before the crowd. "If we stay calm," she shouted, "if we get in line and take our time-"

Susan Denman said, "Isn't it holographic? I remember your dad taught us that it would be."

"I know what he said, but look at it! We need to deal with what we have."

"But this is all wrong, then! We didn't give our lives to save a couple of hundred people. This is supposed to be about millions!"

Had they been lied to? Were they, in fact, the most elite of the elite?

She returned to the crowd. "Let's start now, and n.o.body rush forward. Just take it easy-"

Without warning, a shock pa.s.sed through the earth with such force that it hurled people flat, causing the whole crowd to drop in a confusion of possessions, pets, and terrified, screaming children.

The power of it caused trees to leap out of the ground as if they were being fired from buried cannons, and the Acton mansion itself, as strongly built as it was, shuddered and kept shuddering.

People were unable to stay on their feet, and David was no exception. Struggling, falling, clawing the heaving earth, it was like being in a nightmare where you ran but went nowhere.

"Get away from it," he cried-but then Caroline pointed, and he looked up to the great roof and saw a figure there, a man with a rifle. "Glen," he shouted, "get that man to come down off there!"

"He's not one of mine, David!"

But David didn't need to be told. He had recognized Mack the Cat. Despite the gigantic shaking, Mack remained absolutely still and steady as he raised the rifle and fired down, at first, David thought, at him and Caroline. But he was not shooting at them, he was shooting at the portal, and David understood instantly that he cared only for one thing now: if he couldn't use it, n.o.body would.

It took all of his effort and all of his strength, but he managed to get to his feet and to stagger along the heaving ground and throw himself onto it, pressing it against the earth beneath him. The front of it was to the ground, and the back still seemed like nothing more than canvas stretched on a frame. But then he saw a bullet hole in it, and something like starlight leaking out onto the backing, as if the tear was oozing the blood of time.

Behind him there was a sound that was almost human, a great, grinding sigh, which for all the world sounded like the death rattle of a very old man. He turned in time to see the great mansion implode, the figure of Mack disappearing into the dust and chaos of its disintegration.

One after another, the great columns fell, and when the collapse had ended, David was struck by how very much the place resembled the rubble of an ancient Roman palace, and he felt the echo of ruins.

The dust grew as thick as the air in a cave. Around David there was now no more movement, nothing except material falling from the sky, stones, bricks, bits of furniture, and red-hot sc.r.a.ps of what he supposed must be a meteor that had struck close by. To the west, violet light swam in blackness. The supernova was setting. In the east, there was blood on the horizon. But the northern sky was different. The northern sky was glowing, then going dark again, then glowing more brightly.

"David, it's damaged!"

Caroline's eyes were fierce with panic, which surprised David. In these past few moments, he had stopped struggling. Too much was wrong, and his heart was telling him that they must fail.

"It's clear," Caroline cried. "Oh, my G.o.d, look at it!"

As the crowd drew closer, people coming tentatively up through the grounds, families, pets, children, the portal not only became clear again, the rip made by the bullet simply faded into the image itself.

But then something else happened, that made David's mind go blank with amazement, as the portal also began to get larger, as if curtains were spreading or clouds parting.

Caroline no longer held it, but only stood beside it. The portal had taken on an existence of its own, spreading wider and wider until it was ten feet wide, then fifty feet, then filling the whole grounds.

Tears streamed down her face, which was transfixed with joy.

David grabbed her shoulders and looked into her blazing, triumphant eyes.

As the portal grew, it looked like a gate into heaven, leading away from the roaring, dust-choked catastrophe that surrounded them.

Like ghosts, people came out of the dust clouds, moving tentatively toward the crystal predawn that spread before them.

But they did not enter it. Instead they began throwing themselves to their knees, pleading.

"They don't understand," Caroline said. "David, help them."

He tried to raise his voice, but the dust that choked his throat made that impossible. Finally, he took a man by the shoulders and guided him toward the portal, but he shrank back.

"Don't be afraid," David said. He did not think any of them would be here if they bore the mark. By now most of those-the ones who were not hiding in bunkers-must surely have come to their ends. But what if he pushed this man and he burned, then what?

Before he could decide how to proceed, the light from the north came soaring above the horizon, an immense, flaming ma.s.s, the largest thing that any creature for the last half a billion years had seen in the sky of earth.

David called to the cla.s.s, "Help them," he shouted. "We have to help them!"