Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (52 page)

“So, what’s your point?” Jessica says.

“I’m not sure.”

“You showed me how use my Stone so Ryzaard couldn’t see it. All you have to do is wrap the lines of light around it. Remember?” Yarah stares at her hand.

“I know.” Matt tosses his Stone up and down. “But it’s risky. It requires concentration and focus. I don’t think we should try it unless we absolutely have to. But I’ve been thinking. Maybe there’s another way. A better way.” His eyes drift up to Yarah and Jessica. “What if the lid is open and I put a Stone on the
inside
?”

Yarah and Jessica both shrug their shoulders.

Jessica leans forward. “I don’t think you should—”

Before she can finish her sentence, Matt drops his Stone inside the empty box and watches it. “Get ready to run if something crazy happens.” He stares down into the open box.

Something crazy happens.

The Stone begins to glow light purple.

“Interesting.” Matt’s gaze goes to Yarah. “Try to use your Stone.”

She uncurls her small fingers from around her Stone and focuses on its surface. A look of fierce concentration causes furrows to appear on her soft forehead.

She looks up at Matt. “Nothing. My Stone is still dead. Just like always.”

“Drop it in the box,” Matt says.

Yarah stretches out her hand and lets the Stone fall through the opening. It enters the box, appearing to occupy the same space as Matt’s Stone, except that it’s tip is pointing the other way. It starts to glow light purple.

They both get big smiles on their faces. Matt reaches out to the familiar flow of time and finds it.

“Are you sure you know what you’re—”

Jessica’s face and body freeze. A small speck of dust hangs motionless in the sunlight between Matt and Yarah.

“Let’s go have a quick look.” Matt opens the door and steps out with Yarah behind him. “If I’m right, the cloaking box is still working, making it impossible for Ryzaard to detect our Stones.” They both start to jog down the street to the gathered crowd. “If I’m wrong, I want to be as far away from Jessica as possible so she doesn’t get hurt when Ryzaard comes. We’ll find out soon enough.”

They turn a corner, and the large torii gate of the Shinto shrine comes into view. Its grounds are already filled to capacity with people. An overflow crowd of hundreds waits nearby.

All of them stand frozen in the act of walking or talking.

Coming closer to the torii gate, Michiko is just passing under it. Beyond her, a single line has formed and winds back and forth over the white pebble square in front of the shrine. A priest in white robes and a tall black hat stands on a platform at the top of a flight of marble steps. A bell dangles from a rope over his head. He is in the act of reaching up with one hand to jerk the bell. In the other hand, he holds a blue jewel. A woman is just about to walk down the steps on the other side.

She has the implant in place behind her right ear.

The Shinto priest is personally giving each person the jewel. On a table behind him, an exquisite crystal bowl holds thousands of them like tiny jelly beans.

Reaching in, Matt grabs a small handful of the blue gems, each roughly the shape of a miniature Stone. He drops them into his pocket and walks away to mingle among the people that have just passed through the line and received the implant.

The looks of ecstasy on their faces are unmistakable.

“OK,” Matt says. “I think we’ve seen enough. Let’s get back to the car and start the world up again.”

Yarah reaches out for his hand. They walk back through the sea of statues and turn the corner.

“Where’s the car?” Matt’s heart stops as he searches, not finding it.

Yarah points. “Right over there, where we left it.”

Matt stares at it and realizes he’s been looking on the wrong side of the road. “I want to do one more test with the Stone.” He jumps them both to the side of the car. “Looks like that works, too.” Stooping down, he looks inside. Jessica still sits in the front seat looking into the back with her mouth open in midsentence.

Slipping into his seat next to Yarah, Matt releases his grip on the flow of time.

“—doing?” Jessica stares at Matt.

He smiles at her and winks at Yarah. “Yes, Jess. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“T
he Stones work inside the box?”

Jessica looks into Matt’s face, over to Yarah and back to Matt.

“Yes,” Matt says. “As long as they’re inside the box with the lid
open
.”

“But I don’t get it,” Jessica says. “If Ryzaard can’t detect them, how can you use them?”

Matt looks at Yarah and nods. “Tell her.”

Yarah giggles. “If I go into my Stone, I can see it. Millions of tiny hairs of energy coming off the Stone, like rays of the sun. When it’s in the box, it holds all the filaments inside, even though the lid’s open. Like a magnet. Nothing gets out of the box, so there’s nothing for anyone to detect.”

Jessica nods. “But you can still use it?”

“Exactly,” Matt says. “We’ve tested it, and it works.” He leans back in the seat. “I’d say this new development places us in a much better position than we’ve been for a long time. It’s easy to use the Stones, and Ryzaard can’t trace us. The best of both worlds.”

“Agreed.” Jessica looks suspiciously at a man walking past the car to the shrine. “What about Michiko? Shall we tell her when she gets back?”

“No. Not yet.” Matt turns to Yarah. “But when we get home, I’ve got a special job for you.”

Yarah’s face turns into a smile. “What do you want me to do?”

“I have a feeling Michiko’s going to be spending a lot of time on the Mesh. See if you can hitch a ride inside her mind and find out what it’s like.”

Yarah nods her head up and down vigorously.

An hour later, Michiko turns the corner and walks down the street to the car in her blue kimono. When she approaches the side, the door pops open and she slips down into the driver’s seat.

Matt holds his breath, waiting for her to speak.

She looks in the rear-view mirror at the blue jewel behind her right ear.

“Well?” Jessica asks.

Michiko starts up the car and engages the motor-tone. “It’s painless. Nothing more than the feeling of something pressed against your skin.” Easing forward, she does a U-turn on the street, heading back in the direction they came from. “I don’t feel any differently.”

Matt leans forward. “What about the Mesh?”

“I haven’t tried to access it yet.” Michiko stares through the windshield. “I thought it best to wait until we get back home.”

She drives in silence, all eyes upon her.

At the house, they all enter the back room with the low table. The three of them sit down, waiting for Michiko.

She moves down the hall to her room. “I need to change out of this old kimono before I forget how to breathe.” A door slides shut behind her.

“Can you tell what she’s doing?” Jessica looks at Yarah and pours grape juice into cups for each of them.

Matt puts the cloaking box on the table with the lid open. Two Stones superimposed on each other glow inside.

Yarah sits on the tatami floor and closes her eyes. “I haven’t tried yet. I’m going in.”

“Wait.” Matt moves close to Yarah, his hand on her shoulder. “I’m coming with you. I need to see what’s going on inside the Mesh.”

“How is that possible?” Jessica says.

Yarah opens her eyes and turns to Matt. “I think it’ll work if I come to you first. Open yourself to me and just let me come inside. Then I’ll take us to Michiko, and we can see what she’s doing.”

Jessica stands and walks across the room to a spot where two pulse rifles are leaning against the wall, their butts on the tatami floor. “I don’t like this. You’ll both be in a trance if anything happens.” She grabs the rifles and checks the projectile packs for each one. “Don’t be gone long.”

“Don’t worry. Technically, I’m not going anywhere. We’ll be back soon.” Matt sits in a lotus position, closes his eyes and fills his lungs with fresh oxygen. Relaxing, he opens his mind as the air slowly flows out through his nostrils. “Ready.”

Sitting beside him so their knees touch, Yarah closes her eyes. “OK. Here I come.” Her hands slowly uncurl with the palms facing up to the ceiling. “You feel a little tense. Relax more and open up. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Matt floats in the darkness behind his eyes and focuses only on the rise and fall of his belly. All fear floats out in the breath until his mind and emotions become empty vessels. He senses a massive presence behind him and fights the urge to turn and look. As it comes closer and looms over him, he drops all defenses and lets it settle over him.

A burst of light brings pressure behind his eyes. For an instant, he loses contact with his senses. Then a voice with multiple echoes pierces the silence and fills the inside of his head.

I’m inside your mind. I’m going to make the jump to Michiko. Not sure how this will feel to you.

The voice ends abruptly.

He fights back the claustrophobia. All he feels is incredible forward motion through empty vacuum. Counting backwards from ten, he slams into a wave of sound and color when he gets to three. It swirls around him like the vortex of a storm.

You’re floating away. Focus on something. Grab it.

A blue square dances in the chaos. Matt reaches for it. After a jerk, the dizzy motion stops. Colors turn into images, sounds into words.

He floats in an endless white space. Multi-chromatic dots move above and below, in all directions.

Sorry for the rough ride. Michiko was just connecting to the Mesh when we made the jump into her mind. We both see and feel what she sees and feels.

He relaxes and tries to speak back to Yarah, but he has no voice or mouth to speak with.

Gazing out at the inside of the Mesh, his eyes are pulled away to focus on a floating dot. Colors blur by on all sides, as though shooting through narrow tubes at light speed. When they stop, he stands in front of a massive luxury hotel, its shape and colors more pristine and sharp than any he has ever experienced in the real world. It rises hundreds of stories above him. Or below him. It doesn’t matter. There’s no sense of gravity or direction.

So this is a Mesh-point,
Matt thinks.

“That’s right.” Yarah’s voice booms in his mind. “It’s all so pretty!”

Matt tries to move to the open door directly in front.

Instead, he shoots up in a blur to the middle of the building and enters through another door. Claustrophobic terror returns. He wants to scream out to Yarah that he has no control over anything but his own thoughts and is completely captive to Michiko’s sensory input.

Yarah’s voice fills his head again, sounding much more mature than the little girl he knows.

Matt, I know your fear. Don’t fight it. Relax. We’re just riding in Michiko’s mind. She’s in control. I’ll pull us out if anything bad happens.

Carried forward through the door, Matt sees a live band playing on a rotating disc of gold just above eye level. A crowd of twenty thousand fans fills the hall in a ring around the band. From the outside, it is no larger than a standard hotel room. On the inside, it has hundred foot ceilings and spreads out like a football stadium.

It’s clear Michiko is a fan of the Cubes. The all-woman band on the stage bears more than a slight resemblance to their terrestrial selves, but their exquisite muscles and body proportions exude a sense of impossible perfection that reminds Matt of Michelangelo’s David. He is crushed under the weight of the sound. Vibrations cut through him like rolling waves of lightning.

But more than the sound, Matt is deluged by the sharp visual clarity and intense pastel colors far beyond anything possible in the real world. Every surface and texture is like transparent glass lit from within. The aroma of vanilla whiskey adds to the atmosphere of barely contained ecstasy.

Michiko’s eyes carry Matt to focus on one of the band members. From a distance, her shirt has a shimmering bronze appearance, but the view zooms in on alternating metallic fibers of blue and red that contrast like stripes on the American flag.

In that moment, Matt receives a visceral understanding of the terrible beauty of the blue jewel. Like the powerful derm patches he has heard of, once you taste this form of non-reality, nothing less real will ever satisfy.

No wonder people are rioting over the implants.

Michiko mingles with the crowd. The music lifts them all until they float around the center stage like asteroids orbiting the sun.

Then her gaze turns back to the entrance. She floats past humanoid, avian and reptile avatars of Mesh skimmers caught in the trance of the sound. Moving through the open door, she emerges into the brilliant white space between Mesh-points.

Guess we must be going somewhere else now
, Matt thinks.

Colors fly past in a narrow tube until they stop in front of a traditional Japanese country house with a thick thatch roof, a high peak in the middle and low-hanging eaves over the entrance.

“
Gomen kudasai!
”

This time, the voice is Michiko’s. It sounds like she’s talking at the bottom of a pool of water.