Prayers to Broken Stones (9 page)

The wind came up a bit and moved the leaves of the orchard. The soft rustling had a sad, end-of-summer sound to it.

“All right,” she said after a while, “that explains how
you
got here. How about me? Am I a figment of your imagination, Jerry?”

Bremen felt her shiver. Her skin was like ice. He took her hand and roughly rubbed some warmth back into it. “Come on, Gail,
think.
You weren’t just a memory to me. For over six years we were essentially one person with
two bodies. That’s why when … that’s why I went a little crazy, tried to shut my mind down completely for a couple of years. You
were
in my mind. But my ego sense, or whatever the hell keeps us sane and separate from the babble of all those minds, kept telling me that it was only the
memory
of you. You were a figment of my imagination … the way we all are. Jesus, we were both dead until a blind, deaf, retarded kid, a goddamn vegetable, ripped us out of one world and offered us another one in its place.”

They sat for a minute. It was Gail who broke the silence. “But how can it seem so real?”

Bremen stirred and accidentally knocked his paper plate off the arm of the chair. Gernisavien jumped to one side and stared reproachfully at them. Gail nudged the cat’s fur with the toe of her sandal. Bremen squeezed his beer can until it dented in, popped back out.

“You remember Chuck Gilpen, the guy who dragged me to that party in Drexel Hill? The last I heard he was working with the Fundamental Physics Group out at the Lawrence Berkely Labs.”

“So?”

“So for the past few years they’ve been hunting down all those smaller and smaller particles to get a hook on what’s real. And when they get a glimpse of reality on its most basic and pervasive level, you know what they get?” Bremen took one last swig from the beer can. “They get a series of equations that show standing wavefronts, not too different from the squiggles and jiggles Goldmann used to send me.”

Gail took a deep breath, let it out. Her question was almost lost as the wind rose again and stirred the tree branches. “Where is Robby? When do we see
his
world?”

“I don’t know,” Bremen replied. He was frowning without knowing it. “He seems to be allowing us to define what should be real. Don’t ask me why. Maybe he’s enjoying a peek at a new universe. Maybe he can’t do anything about it.”

They sat still for a few more minutes. Gernisavien brushed up against them, irritated that they insisted on sitting out in the cold and dark. Bremen kept his mindshield raised sufficiently to keep from sharing the information
that his sister had written a year ago to say that the little calico had been run over and killed in New York. Or that a family of Vietnamese had bought the farmhouse and had already added new rooms. Or that he had carried the .38 police special around for two years, waiting to use it on himself.

“What do we do now, Jerry?”

We go to bed.
Bremen took her hand and led her into their home.

Bremen dreamed of fingernails across velvet, cold tile along one cheek, and wool blankets against sunburned skin. He watched with growing curiosity as two people made love on a golden hillside. He floated through a white room where white figures moved in a silence broken only by the heartbeat of a machine. He was swimming and could feel the tug of inexorable planetary forces in the pull of the riptide. He was just able to resist the deadly current by using all of his energy, but he could feel himself tiring, could feel the tide pulling him out to deeper water. Just as the waves closed over him he vented a final shout of despair and loss.

He cried out his own name.

He awoke with the shout still echoing in his mind. The details of the dream fractured and fled before he could grasp them. He sat up quickly in bed. Gail was gone.

He had taken two steps toward the stairway before he heard her voice calling to him from the side yard. He returned to the window.

She was dressed in a blue sundress and was waving her arms at him. By the time he was downstairs she had thrown half a dozen items into the picnic basket and was boiling water to make iced tea.

“Come on, sleepyhead. I have a surprise for you!”

“I’m not sure we need any more surprises,” Bremen mumbled.

“This
one we do,” she said, and she was upstairs, humming and thrashing around in the closet.

She led them, Gernisavien following reluctantly, to a trail that led off in the same general direction as the highway that had once been in front of the house. It led up through pasture to the east and over the rise. They carried the picnic basket between them, Bremen repeatedly asking for clues, Gail repeatedly denying him any.

They crossed the rise and looked down to where the path ended. Bremen dropped the basket into the grass. In the valley where the Pennsylvania Turnpike once had been was an ocean.

“Holy shit!” Bremen exclaimed softly.

It was not the Atlantic. At least not the New Jersey Atlantic that Bremen knew. The seacoast looked more like the area near Mendocino where he had taken Gail on their honeymoon. Far to the north and south stretched broad beaches and high cliffs. Tall breakers broke against black rock and white sand. Far out to sea, the gulls wheeled and pivoted.

“Holy shit!” Bremen repeated.

They picnicked on the beach. Gernisavien stayed behind to hunt insects in the dune grass. The air smelled of salt and sea and summer breezes. It seemed they had a thousand miles of shoreline to themselves.

Gail stood and kicked off her dress. She was wearing a one-piece suit underneath. Bremen threw his head back and laughed. “Is that why you came back? To get a suit? Afraid the lifeguards would throw you out?”

She kicked sand at him and ran to the water. Three strides in and she was swimming. Bremen could see from the way her shoulders hunched that the water was freezing.

“Come on in!” she called, laughing. “The water’s fine!”

He began walking toward her.

The blast came from the sky, the earth, the sea. It knocked Bremen down and thrust Gail’s head underwater. She flailed and splashed to make the shallows, crawled gasping from the receding surf.

NO!!!

Wind roared around them and threw sand a hundred feet in the air. The sky twisted, wrinkled like a tangled sheet on the line, changed from blue to lemon-yellow to gray. The sea rolled out in a giant slack tide and left dry, dead land where it receded. The earth pitched and shifted around them. Lightning flashed along the horizon.

When the buckling stopped, Bremen ran to where Gail lay on the sand, lifted her with a few stern words.

The dunes were gone, the cliffs were gone, the sea had disappeared. Where it had been now stretched a dull expanse of salt flat. The sky continued to shift colors down through darker and darker grays. The sun seemed to be rising again in the eastern desert. No. The light was moving. Something was crossing the wasteland. Something was coming to them.

Gail started to break away, but Bremen held her tight. The light moved across the dead land. The radiance grew, shifted, sent out streamers that made both of them shield their eyes. The air smelled of ozone and the hair on their arms stood out.

Bremen found himself clutching tightly to Gail and leaning toward the apparition as toward a strong wind. Their shadows leaped out behind them. The light struck at their bodies like the shock wave of a bomb blast. Through their fingers, they watched while the radiant figure approached. A double form became visible through the blaze of corona. It was a human figure astride a huge beast. If a god had truly come to Earth, this then was the form he would have chosen. The beast he rode was featureless, but besides light it gave off a sense of … warmth? Softness?

Robby was before them, high on the back of his teddy bear.

TOO STRONG CANNOT KEEP

He was not used to language but was making the effort. The thoughts struck them like electrical surges to the brain. Gail dropped to her knees, but Bremen lifted her to her feet.

Bremen tried to reach out with his mind. It was no use. Once at Haverford he had gone with a promising student to the coliseum, where they were setting up for a rock concert. He had been standing in front of a scaffolded bank of
speakers when the amplifiers were tested. It was a bit like that.

They were standing on a flat, reticulated plain. There were no horizons. White banks of curling fog were approaching from all directions. The only light came from the Apollo-like figure before them. Bremen turned his head to watch the fog advance. What it touched, it erased.

“Jerry, what …” Gail’s voice was close to hysteria.

Robby’s thoughts struck them again with physical force. He had given up any attempt at language, and the images cascaded over them. The visual images were vaguely distorted, miscolored, and tinged with an aura of wonder and newness. Bremen and his wife reeled from their impact.

With the images came the emotional overlay, almost unbearable in its knife-sharp intensity: discovery, loneliness, wonder, fatigue, love, sadness, sadness, sadness.

Both Bremen and Gail were on their knees. Both were sobbing without being aware of it. In the sudden stillness after the onslaught, Gail’s thoughts came loudly.
Why is he doing this? Why won’t he leave us alone?

Bremen took her by the shoulders. Her face was so pale that her freckles stood out in bold relief.

Don’t you understand, Gail? It’s not him doing it.

Not??? Who…?????

Gail’s thoughts rolled in confusion. Splintered images and fragmented questions leaped between them as she struggled to control herself.

It’s me. Gail. Me.
Bremen had meant to speak aloud, but there was no sound now, only the crystalline edges of their thoughts.
He’s been fighting to keep us together all
along. I’m the one. I don’t belong. He’s been hanging on for me, trying to help me to stay, but he can’t resist the pull any longer.

Gail looked around in terror. The fog boiled and reached for them in tendrils. It was closing around the god figure on his mount. Even as they watched, his radiance dimmed.

Touch him,
thought Bremen.

Gail closed her eyes. Bremen could feel the wings of her thought brushing by him. He heard her gasp.

My God, Jerry. He’s just a baby. A frightened child!

If I stay any longer, I’ll destroy us all.
With that thought Bremen conveyed a range of emotions too complex for words. Gail saw what was in his mind and began to protest, but before she could pattern her thoughts, he had pulled her close and hugged her fiercely. His mindtouch amplified the embrace, added to it all the shades of feeling that neither language nor touch could communicate in full. Then he pushed her away from him, turned, and ran toward the wall of fog. Robby was visible as only a faint glow in the white mist, clutching the neck of his teddy bear. Bremen touched him as he passed. Five paces into the cold mist and he could see nothing, not even his own body. Three more paces and the ground disappeared. Then he was falling.

The room was white, the bed was white, the windows were white. Tubes ran from the suspended bottles into his arm. His body was a vast ache. A green plastic bracelet on his wrist said
BREMEN, JEREMY H
. The doctors wore white. A cardiac monitor echoed his heartbeat.

“You gave us all quite a scare,” said the woman in white.

“It’s a miracle,” said the man to her left. There was a faint note of belligerence in his voice. “The EEG scans were flat for five days, but you came out of it. A miracle.”

“We’ve never seen a case of simultaneous seizures like this,” said the woman. “Do you have a history of epilepsy?”

“The school had no family information,” said the man. “Is there anyone we could contact for you?”

Bremen groaned and closed his eyes. There was distant conversation, the cool touch of a needle, and the noises of leavetaking. Bremen said something, cleared his throat as they turned, tried again.

“What room?”

They stared, glanced at each other.

“Robby,” said Bremen in a hoarse whisper. “What room is Robby in?”

“Seven twenty-six,” said the woman. “The intensive care ward.”

Bremen nodded and closed his eyes.

He made his short voyage in the early hours of the morning when the halls were dark and silent except for the occasional swish of a nurse’s skirt or the low, fitful groans of the patients. He moved slowly down the hallway, sometimes clutching the wall for support. Twice he stepped into darkened rooms as the soft, rubber tread of quickly moving nurses came his way. On the stairway he had to stop repeatedly, hanging over the hard, metal railing to catch his breath, his heart pounding.

Finally he entered the room. Robby was there in the far bed. A tiny light burned on the monitor panel above his head. The fat, faintly odorous body was curled up in a tight fetal position. Wrists and ankles were cocked at stiff angles. Fingers splayed out against the tousled sheets. Robby’s head was turned to the side, and his eyes were open, staring blindly. His lips fluttered slightly as he breathed, and a small circle of drool had moistened the sheets.

He was dying.

Bremen sat on the edge of the bed. The thickness of the night was palpable around him. A distant chime sounded once and someone moaned. Bremen reached his hand out and laid a palm gently on Robby’s cheek. He could feel the soft down there. The boy continued his labored, asthmatic snoring. Bremen touched the top of the
misshapen head tenderly, almost reverently. The straight, black hair stuck up through his fingers.

Bremen stood and left the room.

The suspension on the borrowed Fiat rattled over the rough bricks as Bremen swerved to avoid the streetcars. It was quite early, and the eastbound lane on the Benjamin Franklin Bridge was almost empty. The double strip of highway across New Jersey was quiet. Bremen cautiously lowered his mindshield a bit and flinched as the surge of mindbabble pushed against his bruised mind. He quickly raised his shield. Not yet. The pain throbbed behind his eyes as he concentrated on driving. There had not been the slightest hint of a familiar voice.