A Vision of Fire (23 page)

Unnerved, Caitlin broke the gaze and glanced at the girl, who was flashing a smile, then coyly turning her face to look down at her seal.

Caitlin felt the young man start to move toward the girl. She felt a gust of cool air, only now realizing how pleasantly warm the evening had been. The boy took the girl's hands and Caitlin felt their connection. She realized then, with certainty, that Maanik and this girl had been merged ever since the visions started. And if this girl's soul, or transpersonal identity, or whatever it was, was connected to Maanik,
then the girl was not going to leave with the boy on his ship. Something else had happened.

Caitlin let go and the boy let go and suddenly she was back in Maanik's bedroom, with Maanik staring at her. Caitlin quickly took both of the girl's hands, not to reconnect but to make sure she didn't get away.

“Maanik?”

The girl seemed confused. She tried to let go of Caitlin's hands but Caitlin held hers tightly.

“No. Stay with me.”

“I have to go,” the girl said frantically. “I don't belong here.”

“Where?”

“Alive.”

Horrified, Caitlin almost let go of her. This wasn't Maanik. This was the merged identity, some strange hybrid—part Maanik, part the other. It was not a split personality, not post-traumatic stress as anyone understood it, not even “possession.” It was something else, something new. More importantly, she suddenly understood
why
they were merged.

“Listen to me,” Caitlin said. The girl tried to withdraw her left hand. Caitlin gripped it and focused. “Listen. I know you're trying to complete the ritual, and I know you're trying to join the others and transcend. But something goes wrong each time your people—”

Suddenly her grip broke and cold wind blew against the back of Caitlin's head. She felt her hair rising, heard shouts and screams from every side. She saw a sky turning red with fire that was shot from the earth to heights she could not imagine.

The girl before her was heaving sobs. Her hands were trying to lift into the air, not in the gestures of the strange language but with drooping wrists, with the awful helplessness of a child crying inconsolably. Caitlin was crying too now, feeling the girl's gasping, choking cries in her own body.

The young man was not present. The grandmother was not pres
ent. There was just the girl in the midst of chaos. Clearly the crisis had come early. People had not been prepared. The well-planned exodus the young man had spoken of had not taken place.

But this was not Caitlin's concern. It was not something she could repair. She had only one objective.

“Maanik!” Caitlin called, hoping to reach her. “What you see around you is not happening. It already
happened
. You are not there.”

The girl shook her head as embers fell and scorched her bare arms. “I . . .
am
. I must . . . transcend.”

“No, you must not!”

“It is already being done,” she said through tears.

This wasn't working; Caitlin would have to go through this girl to get to Maanik. “Tell me your name.”

“Bayarmii,” the girl wept.

“Bayarmii, you must listen. The ritual is not going to work. I know you want to join with the others, but something is going wrong.”

“Why?” she wailed.

“I don't know yet. But I do know that this isn't working. You have to stop taking Maanik back with you.”

“No, I need her.”

“But you're
killing
her!”

“Yes,” the girl said, rubbing at her face, trying to see through her tears. “If she dies, we will go together. That is what we were told.”

“You've been told a lie,” Caitlin said. “Bayarmii, you
will
ascend through your own private prayer. This ritual—what you're doing now, the
cazh
—it's something else. Please, let go.”

The girl looked around. “I can't!” Her face was twisted, tortured, terrified.

Then there was silence. Maanik's bedroom began to waver back into Caitlin's vision.

“Bayarmii?” There was no response. Then, hopefully, Caitlin looked at the girl standing before her and said, “Maanik?”

“Yes,” Maanik said, trembling.

Caitlin knew that something was still terribly wrong—the bedroom would not steady around them. The other place was still flashing in and through it.

“Maanik, do you understand what Bayarmii said?”

“Yes.” Maanik was shaking hard. Caitlin took her hands again. “She's not letting go of me, though,” Maanik said. “She's so scared. She wants to come with me.”

“You must tell her
no
.”

“But . . . she says she'll die if she remains. She says she has to come with me!”

She is already dead
, Caitlin wanted to tell her. “Maanik, Bayarmii is very frightened and very confused but that's not
your
responsibility. It's not your job.” Caitlin held her hands tightly as words spilled out of her. “Just like it wasn't your job to save your father. That was up to the bodyguard and he did it, he protected your papa.” Maanik was weeping again. “You did what
you
were supposed to do. You kept yourself safe and that's exactly what you have to do here. You have to tell her no. Helping her is my job, and I will do it. But you have to come back to me first.”

Maanik shuddered, sobbing.

“Listen to me. Your parents love you. Stay here for them and stay here for you.”

“I
can't
,” she choked out, trying to pull her hands away.

Caitlin held fast. “You can. Listen to my voice. Follow it.”

“I'm lost—”

“You're here, with me, with your family, your mother and your father who love you dearly.”

“Papa . . .”

“That's it,” Caitlin encouraged her.

“Papa . . . papa . . .
papa
!”

CHAPTER 32

M
aanik's final cry seemed to empty her. She collapsed and then they were both on the floor. The bedroom stabilized around them and the other place disappeared. Caitlin put her arms around Maanik and held on to her tightly as the girl wept into her neck. Caitlin could see the Pawars standing behind Ben, tears coursing down their faces. Caitlin beckoned them with a nod and then moved aside so the family could fall into each other's arms.

“Is she . . . ?” the ambassador asked.

“For the moment,” Caitlin told him. “But we're not done. You must keep her here.”

“Of course.”

“No, I mean here in this time and place,” Caitlin said. “I'm sorry, I don't have time to explain more fully.”

She instructed the ambassador to help his daughter to stand, then led the family back to the living room and had Maanik lie down on the couch again. She placed the ambassador's right hand on his daughter's left. “Don't let go of this hand. Talk to her—about anything, it doesn't matter. Send good energy through your right hand and she'll absorb it through her left. Hopefully she'll keep shifting any bad energy out through her right.”

The ambassador was confused but he didn't move his hand, and Caitlin quickly walked over to Ben. “I have to find a way to make this permanent.”

“How?”

But Caitlin was already hurrying away. “Mrs. Pawar, please get Jack London and keep him with Maanik, close. I believe that will help. And would you mind if I borrowed something from your kitchen?”

Mrs. Pawar nodded and Caitlin searched through the kitchen cabinets until she found what she was looking for: jasmine tea.

“Ben, can you come with me?” Caitlin asked. “I need your help.”

“Of course,” he said, moving to her side.

As they returned to the living room Ambassador Pawar asked, “Where are you going, Dr. O'Hara?”

“Not too far,” Caitlin said evasively. “Does Maanik's bedroom door lock?”

“Not from the outside.”

“All right, can you please figure out how to obstruct the door, maybe with furniture or duct tape, or both? But make sure someone is always holding Maanik's left hand.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “And if the flames start again?”

“If it comes to that, do what your wife did last time and put her in the shower. But Maanik should sleep now and hopefully I'll be back soon.”

The ambassador nodded wearily but with a grateful look in his eyes.

As Caitlin and Ben walked briskly to the door, Caitlin asked, “Do you feel it, smell it?”

“Faintly,” he replied. “I mean, there
was
a fire—”

“No,” Caitlin shook her head. “Death.”

“Jesus—no, Cai.”

Caitlin did not bother to elaborate. She and the other place were still joined, somehow; the dead and dying were not far away.

Waiting for the elevator, Caitlin pushed the tin of tea into Ben's
hands. “If I start to disappear or burn or god knows what, and you want to bring me back, open this and hold it under my nose.”

“Mystic smelling salts?” he asked, sincerely confused.

“It's a little more aggressive than that,” she said. “This is my ‘blackberries,' a connection to a place that made a strong impression in the present.”

“I see,” he said, but didn't.

The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. Both were silent until Ben reached for her. She started to respond but stopped herself, kept her distance.

“Sorry,” Ben said. “I only—”

“I know, it's just—whatever happens, don't touch me and don't let me touch you.”

“Am I that irresistible?” he joked.

She smiled. “It's not that. There's just an energy balancing act going on inside me and I don't want to upset it.”

“Can you explain?”

“Then and now. There and here. I'm holding them both. I don't want any outside energy to distract me.”

He looked at her. “Was that meant to clarify?”

The door opened at the lobby and they hurried toward the street.

“It's like hypnagogia,” she told him. “Half-wakefulness. Like when you're wrenched from a nightmare but you still feel partly trapped in it.”

Ben held open the front door for her. “You don't seem half-asleep to me, Cai—girl with rivets—”

“Right, like the big strong ocean liner that ran into an iceberg,” she said.

“But you're alert.”

“Guarded,” she corrected him. Under the entrance canopy she hesitated, peering around at the soft rain. “It's back,” she said. “The feeling I had here before.”

“Of being watched?”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes, shutting out the glistening blackness of the street, seeing the high columns of that strange other place, the black pillars covered with misty sea spray.

“So where
are
we going?” Ben asked.

She snapped her eyes open. “I need to go to the United Nations.”

“Okay. You want a cab?”

She shook her head and quickly started walking the few blocks to the Secretariat Building, silent the entire way, Ben's fingers hovering near Caitlin's elbow. She felt his energy, his care.

The rain intensified. The asphalt of the streets shone more and more like polished black stone and it was difficult to stay present here, now. Caitlin focused on the white lights of the thirty-nine-story oblong United Nations tower; they read like lines of Braille through the darkness. She did not speak until Ben had flashed his ID to the guard and brought her to the elevators.

“My office?” he asked.

“No. I want to go to the room where the Kashmir negotiations are taking place.”

Ben froze. “The guard will want to know why,” he said, anxiety in his face. “So do I.”

“Trauma.”

“I don't follow.”

“You saw how Maanik's room was a magnet, a nexus?”

“You lost me. I thought
she's
the conduit, not the place.”

“She is, but once that horror was out, it stayed. Jack London sensed it. I'm not a direct conduit the way Maanik is, so I can't go back without something that will act like a bellows, fanning the fire. I need more trauma, pain and fear.”

“You know how that sounds?” Ben asked.

“Yeah. Sad, masochistic—and necessary.”

“Rewind. You said ‘go back.' To do what, exactly?”

“To work with them,” she said, “the entities from Antarctica millions of years ago.”

“Are you loopy? Assuming you
can
get there, this goes beyond racial memory, Cai, beyond Jung. I mean,
way
beyond.”

“I know. Crazy as it sounds, I believe their souls were in the middle of something that locked them there, in that state, before some force from inside the earth vaporized their physical bodies.”

“And they've been doing
what
in limbo for all these millennia? Trying to get back?”

“It's the transpersonal plane, not limbo, and yes, I think so. Maybe some of them have succeeded, cases that have been misdiagnosed as everything from demonic possession to severe schizophrenia.”

“You got all this from a
vision
that may not be real, that may
never
have been real.”

“That and a Hindu cleric.”

“Oh, that makes it all right,” Ben said.

“Damn it, Ben. Maanik catching fire was very real. We have to discuss this later, we're wasting time.”

“No. You want in, you're going to have to tell me what you're planning,” Ben said. “I'm worried about you too.”

Caitlin sighed. She would have done the same thing if the roles were reversed. “What I think I saw were the souls of many individuals melding into one. They want to be joined in the transpersonal plane, in their afterlife, for some reason. And they can only do that as they are in the process of transitioning.”

“You mean, the ultimate group hug before death? Or else your soul flies solo?”

“That's my general understanding,” Caitlin said. “If they go individually, like the ancient girl struggling to take Maanik, it'll derail the purpose of the ceremony. I bought us some time by bargaining with that girl, Bayarmii, on her own. That weakens the ancient ritual but it's not going to hold. They'll pull Bayarmii back in and she will try and get to Maanik again. That's what's been happening, over and over. I think I have to encounter
all
the individuals while they're in the pro
cess of transitioning into their group soul, and try to stop the transformation.”

“How?”

“I'm not entirely sure, but I'm going to try doing what people do at séances: turn on the light, break the spell. I can self-hypnotize but to go back and interact with them I need power, Ben, and trauma seems to be a key. Right now, the most traumatic event taking place near me is the struggle over Kashmir.”
The locus of frustration and pain touching all the ends of the earth.

“Cai . . . I hear you, but this is crazy talk.”

“I prefer to call it a big leap of faith.” She smiled a little. “Two agnostics walk into a bar . . .”

He couldn't even manage a nervous laugh. He stared at her a long moment, saw the resolve in her eyes. And punched button 38 on the elevator bank.

When they reached the floor Ben showed the guard his ID, introduced Caitlin as a special consultant from Geneva—she showed her WHO credentials—and they were escorted down the hall and admitted to an empty conference room. The guard returned to his post at the end of the long corridor.

Caitlin stopped Ben from turning on the lights of the room. She could already feel the buzzing of energy in the air. She felt high emotion in her lungs, her belly, the small of her back. She removed her coat and scarf, began to walk through the room, moving with a flow she couldn't see, only feel. Ben followed protectively, but at a distance.

Ambient light from the city glowed through a wall of exterior windows at the far end of the room. Caitlin bumped into the first of a couple dozen wide, golden leather chairs. There was only room for one person to comfortably walk around the table at a time, and nowhere to shove the chairs other than into their stations at the table. She considered standing on the table so there would be room to move if she needed it, but diffuser panels were slung low beneath the lights.
She was sure her head would come too close to them for comfort. Navigating to the end of the table, she found she had about four feet of space to the windows. It would have to be enough.

“What can I do to help?” Ben asked softly.

She shook her head slightly, gazed outside. “How strong are those windows?”

“Very. The recent renovations replaced all five thousand windows with the latest blast-proof panes. In a hurricane, this is one of the safest places you could be.”

“What about a volcano?” she asked.

He didn't know if she was kidding. He didn't answer.

The city seemed small compared to the immensity of the time and distance she was beginning to feel. Caitlin was scared. She stopped moving and placed a hand on a conference room chair to steady herself.

Immediately she saw a vision of a human body on fire. The vision was slightly unclear, juddering back and forth as if seen with a handheld camera. She realized that was exactly what was happening. This was the video of the woman who had self-immolated over her dead son, the few seconds of footage Caitlin had seen on her tablet. She heard voices shouting across the table, all around her, and then the people shouting . . .

. . . were there, in the courtyard, just beyond her fingertips. Suddenly she was one of many. Many voices, some chanting the
cazh
, some crying, some screaming. A few were just beginning to express the wonder of transcendence. Their bodies moved like reeds in a pond in their white and yellow robes. Then, as though the air and energy left them in a rush, their bodies dropped to the paving stones of the courtyard, across the huge crescents carved into the flat, black rocks.

Above their heads a pulsing force drew Caitlin's attention. She could not see it but she could feel it, and the presence grew as the bodies fell to the ground.

• • •

Ben watched every tendril of Caitlin's hair lift in a breeze he didn't feel. She opened her mouth and exhaled, but it was not the sigh of a single soul. It was the combined sound of multitudes.

Ben stepped back, reached for the tin of tea he had placed on the table. He stopped himself.

Not yet.
But he was ready.

Now Caitlin was breathing heavily. Her arms were moving. Ben heard words, identified a few, combined them with the gestures to understand the superlatives. It was too late to set up his camera but he took out his cell phone and began recording.

“The fire!” she said. “So much death. The end is here!”

• • •

All around her, Caitlin could see the destruction of a civilization, and she was part of it, part of this place—Galderkhaan. She knew its name now, only as it was dying. Standing here by the temple, the Hall of the Priests, she could see the volcano to the east, blowing the center of the earth into the sky.

A towering, sulfurous wave of glaring orange and gold lava spewed from the volcano's mouth, knocking down the first of a long line of tall, glowing columns that led from the volcano to the sea.
Connecting yin and yang, the left hand to the right hand
,
Caitlin thought with sudden realization. The Technologists had built the array, which gathered energy and passed it from column to column, like tuning forks growing exponentially more powerful. Was this some kind of technological response to the
cazh
? If so, something had gone wrong with this process as well. One by one, the pillars collapsed beneath the juggernaut of lava rolling toward the city. Clouds of red and black, fire and cinders, fell on the courtyard and buildings. Heaps of hot ash piled onto white and yellow robes that once held souls and were now just incendiary masses of flesh.