Wonders of a Godless World (25 page)

Of course, her cell had no windows, and she could not simply see through the walls. Nor could she, without the foreigner’s help, leave her body and soar from the room. But she still possessed all her old sensitivities, honed now to a finer pitch than ever before, and a thousand telling vibrations came to her from the outside. She knew it must be evening. She felt the cooks clattering in the distant kitchen, cleaning up after dinner. She felt water running in the shower-block pipes as the last patients were washed down before nightfall. She felt the snap in the electrical wires as lights were switched on and off. The hospital fairly hummed to her, crowded at day’s end.

Which was perfect. She wanted as many people around as possible when it happened. They would add to the confusion.

She let her unseeing eye slip further away, beyond the grounds, and down into the earth beneath the mountain. There, all was calm. Nothing moved in the chambers that led from the volcano’s mouth to the magma reservoirs—the semi-liquid, semi-rock at the bottom was congealed into a turgid mass, a plug.

The mountain slept.

The question was, could she wake it? On her own? She had to believe that she could. The strength had been there before, after all. If the foreigner had been able to exploit it to move something as massive as the comet, then surely it was available for her own use.

She reached down to the reservoirs.

Warm them, that was where she had to start. Warm the magma until it glowed white, until pressure sent it creeping towards the surface. She held the reservoirs in her mind and willed them to rise in temperature. But it was like sinking into mud. Cold, clammy, reluctant. The stone did not want to heat up, or to move. It wasn’t possible that a single body such as her own could ever contain enough energy to change that.

Ah…but it wasn’t just her own energy. The vision of the comet’s impact had taught her that much. She had access to something greater, to the aura of life enfolding the whole planet. So it wasn’t a matter of squeezing the power from herself, it was a matter of shaping her mind into a conduit through which the energy could pass—and then of inviting the power to flow from the planet’s vast supply.

The orphan took a deep breath, considered the magma once more. Then she breathed out, opened her mind, and asked…

And the living world answered.

Ha! It was like being accelerated to an incredible speed while standing still, it was like being lifted by a thousand warm hands. It was wonderful. And as the energy burnt through her, she turned it and focused it upon the underground reservoirs. The magma turned to livid gold. And then to white hot, bursting upwards.

Slowly, the orphan reminded herself amid her elation. Slowly. She did not want to blow the top off the mountain, or to bury the island under a flood of lava. She was not like the foreigner, she
sought no cataclysmic end here. She had a plan, and for the moment only a small eruption was needed. She eased off, finessing the reservoirs now. Tremors ran out through the ground. The orphan was gratified to hear, even in her room, a low rumbling, and to feel her bed tremble. She wanted a small eruption, yes, but also a noisy one. One that would cause panic.

To that end she chose a single fracture in the upper reaches of the volcano, and directed the uplifting magma along it. There came a booming detonation, profound enough to shake the hospital walls and rattle the roof. The orphan laughed. She hadn’t blown the top off the mountain, but she had blown a sizeable chunk from one flank. Outside, she knew, onlookers would be watching a great cloud go up in the evening sky, and red fountains of lava rising from near the volcano’s peak.

Indeed, she heard the cries now. Footsteps from the compound and the hallways. People running, shouting. Good. Now all she had to do was keep the volcano bubbling, and the ground quaking, until the staff evacuated the hospital. Someone would have to come to her room then. And remove her bonds.

It was puzzling, though. Here she was, manipulating the earth at will…and yet she knew that if she ordered the straps around her arms and legs to untie themselves, nothing would happen. The breeze, the volcano, even the flow of blood in the foreigner’s groin—all such natural things she could command. The plastic straps, however, were beyond her. The mystery of that she could not even begin to plumb.

For an hour she listened to the fuss of the evacuation. Vehicles arrived in the driveway, and first the patients from the front wards were hustled out and away to safety. Then the back wards followed, a slower process, and more confused, but at times she sent gouts of flame bursting from the mountainside, just to maintain the
urgency. Lastly it was the locked ward’s turn, and by now the orphan was tugging impatiently at the straps. Footsteps slapped outside, and a key hit her door.

But when it opened, she had to laugh.

Her rescuer, of all people, was the night nurse.

He didn’t look happy about being there. He fumbled with her straps, snarling curses at her, and she should have hated him still, but he was so pale and afraid he hardly seemed worth it. She stared out to the hall. Male nurses hurried by, escorting wild-eyed inmates she had never seen before. The violently mad, loose from their cells. Oh yes, it would be chaos outside. They would never have the time to worry about her. Then finally the straps were gone and the drip removed and she was free.

She rolled from the bed, as stiff and sore as if she had suffered a beating. The night nurse had hold of her wrist and was tugging her out the door. She allowed herself to be led until they left the locked ward and returned to the back wards proper, where people were dashing about in all directions. Then the orphan pulled up sharply. The night nurse was making for the exit, but that wasn’t the way she wanted to go.

Annoyed, he tried to drag her forward, and for a moment there was a bizarre tug-of-war over her hand. He was suddenly furious, screaming at her, all his fear and yes, perhaps his shame too, bursting forth. In response, the orphan, in her haste, opened her mind wide and hurled the full disgust she felt for him directly into his own head. He reeled back as if struck, appalled by her, and for an instant she felt ten feet tall, unveiled to the fool boy at last in all her magnificence.

But there wasn’t time for any of this. Leaving the night nurse to gape stupidly in her wake, she turned away and forgot him. She strode back through the hallways. The lights flickered on and off,
unsteady, and tremors shook the floor. Here and there she passed other staff, and a last few patients being led out, but she ignored them all. Her greatest fear now was that the foreigner might already have been moved, that she would have to search all through the hospital, or outside, to find him.

But no, when she came to the crematorium she found it silent and undisturbed. Darkness reigned in the empty dayroom. And abandoned in his cell, there on the bed, the foreigner lay sleeping, his eyes shut fast. Yes. Of course. In some unacknowledged part of their minds, the staff must have known by now what kind of man he was, and so shunned him. He would be the last to be saved, if they saved him at all.

The orphan quite agreed. But even so, she could not resist—she pulled back the sheet and took one last look. His mind did not stir. He slept in exhaustion still from his exertions with the comet. But his body was so beautiful. And how wonderful it had been to believe that it was hers alone to touch.

A pretence. A trick. All his long courting of her, all the times he had made her feel special, he had done it simply to gain access to her strength. Even their one attempt at sex—she had to admit this to herself now—had been initiated by him for the same cold purpose. All he’d wanted to do that day was awaken her power, using his own broken body, his own useless cock, as the lure and the test.

Enough. A wheelchair was waiting by the bed. She wrapped the sheet around the foreigner, then manhandled him into the seat. His head flopped and cracked against the bedframe, and his eyes opened at last.

As she had been dreading all along, his voice awoke too.

Orphan? What’s happening?

It was only a gentle inquiry as he rose from sleep, but already she could feel his mind reaching out for hers, and she threw up barriers to prevent it.

The volcano again? That’s strange…

His thoughts were roaming, studying the eruption. Then suddenly he was more alert. Somehow he had read the truth in the mountain.

You did this!

She ignored him. She pushed his wheelchair out through the dayroom and into the halls. The lights were flickering again—light, then darkness, light, then darkness—and there seemed to be nobody left but the two of them.

But why? Did you think this would help us escape?

His mind was prying at her own again, trying to find answers. The orphan was slightly amazed at how well she could keep him out—and at how wrong his assumptions were. He thought she was still worried about the surgery, that she was trying to run away with him, that she was still in love with him!

It won’t work, you know. We won’t get away. There’ll be confusion for a day or two—but then everything will be the same again.

No, nothing would be the same again, ever. But he’d find that out soon enough.

They emerged finally to the compound, and a glow in the sky. A rain of fine ash was falling. Figures ran here and there, shouting, but the orphan recognised no one, and in turn no one paid her and the foreigner any attention. She paused to stare up at the volcano. It was only a vague shape through the curtain of ash, but about two-thirds of the way up, a rift was visible where sprays of lava rose and fell.

It was all as she’d hoped. She pushed the wheelchair across the yard, straining, because the ash bogged the wheels.

Where are we going, orphan?

The pressure from his mind was greater now, like fingers probing at her skull, and she could feel his doubt, his frustration with her.

Why are you hiding from me?

She could not prevent some of her inner turmoil leaking through. Her pain at his betrayal. Her anger at his lies.

And now he came wide awake.
Lies? What lies?

That he had ever loved her!

But of course I love you.

No, he didn’t. He was lying again. He had lied about it all—and the comet was the final proof of all the other lies.

The comet?

She showed him the memories of her future vision.

But orphan—that was just a dream! A nightmare. It won’t be anything like that. It certainly won’t be the end of the world.

No. Every instinct told her the vision was true, she would never doubt that. The planet itself had spoken to her in its own defence.

But why would I do such a thing? Why would I cause such total destruction? Why would I so harm the earth?

Because the earth had harmed
him
, that was why. Time and time again. Crushed him, suffocated him, roasted him, drowned him—five lives over. Hadn’t he told her every detail? The earth was his enemy. It was
toxic
to him. Why, even the atmosphere, the very air that gave everyone else life, it had turned into a fiery barricade that burnt and killed him rather than allow him to pass through.

I’ve suffered, yes, but I’ve always survived.

Physically, perhaps. But his mind—ah, she should have seen it sooner. But she was so used to other types of madness, and he had
distracted her by always
talking
about other types of madness—anyone’s madness, except his own. But she could see it now, building through all his lives, through all his failures, until his last death had broken him, and all he could think about was striking back at his tormentor, no matter how blindly, and no matter what the consequences for every living thing on earth.

Hence the comet.

No, the comet is for you, only for you. To save you.

Save her! The orphan grunted her derision as she struggled with the wheelchair. It had nothing to
do
with her. She could guess how it must have been. He’d woken from his fifth death, and in his all-consuming rage at the planet he had chanced upon a girl who had the strength to move mountains—or to move something even more deadly. Everything from that moment on had been about bringing the giant rock down to smash the world. It was never about her. It was only about his hatred.

I don’t hate the world.

Of course he hated it! He’d never had the chance to do anything about it before, that was all. He’d been too weak. But he hated, sure enough. From the very first moment ninety-two years ago when the landslide had buried him, it was his fury at being killed that had kept him alive. And it still did.

I didn’t choose this immortality!

Did he really believe that? Then he belonged in the crematorium after all. He was more delusional than any of them—the duke, the witch, the archangel, the virgin. Well, he could keep his eternal life. It wouldn’t matter soon.

Orphan, you are terribly confused. I was too rough with you earlier, and I apologise, but you have everything wrong…

They came to the rear fence of the compound. In the darkness the orphan felt for the gap in the wire, and when she found it, she
tugged at it until the hole was wide enough to allow the wheelchair through. She would have to carry him eventually, she knew, but she could push him for a while yet.

Why? Where are you taking me?

And again, she could not completely resist him, enough escaped from her mind for him to grasp at least a little of what she was planning. And he was struck silent—a man who did not fear even death, because he could not die.

But he was afraid now.

Shoving the chair through the fence, the orphan began the long climb.

She had expected protests from him. She had expected anger, and some kind of struggle, a grappling for her mind, an attempt to turn her from her course. Perhaps she had even expected pleading. But for a long while, as she heaved and levered the wheelchair up the uneven path through the jungle, he said nothing. His body flopped against the seat, passive, a dead weight. And when finally he did break his silence, it was merely to ask a question. Quietly. Thoughtfully.

Orphan, have you ever wondered if any of this is real?

Real? What did he mean—real?

Well, you live in a hospital for the insane, after all. And you’ve always imagined strange things about yourself. That you can predict the weather, for instance, and that you can overhear people’s thoughts. So maybe…

Ha. Was she imagining the volcano erupting?

I don’t mean the volcano. I mean you and me. All we’ve done together. Are you sure any of it actually happened?

The orphan frowned against a sudden chill within her. Of course she was sure. She remembered every moment of it.

But how do you know I’m not just part of some fantasy? How do you know I exist outside your head? How do you know I’m real?

He was real. The weight of the wheelchair was proof enough of that.

Oh, the man in the chair is real. But what proof do you have that he is me? Or that I’m him? All you have is a voice.

She faltered a second—a crevice in the track had caught one of the wheels. Of course the man was the foreigner! His voice had only ever come from the one place. Why, she had been looking directly into his eyes when he first spoke. She had been on her knees before him, that first day, as the volcano erupted.

Ah yes, but maybe this man was just a convenient empty vessel. Maybe your own mind spoke that day, and just pretended to be him?

She was shaking her head. No. It wasn’t even just her who had been aware of him. From the moment the foreigner had arrived, the weird happenings had begun, all those disturbances with the catatonics and the geriatrics…

Those wards hardly ever see a new admission. This man was a strange face, that was all. He upset the other patients a little
.

Well, there was no doubt about what occurred when they moved him to the crematorium. Was he going to deny everything that happened there?

Why, what did happen, do you think?

The duke! The witch! He had rummaged in their minds and aroused their madness and driven them to destruction.

They were mad already, surely. That’s why they were there
.

But they were fine, until he came along.

You mean they were fine until that first eruption came along—that’s when the trouble really began, wasn’t it? That’s when the duke and
the witch changed. But psychiatric patients are always vulnerable to natural disturbances—storms and earthquakes and the like; they read far too much significance into them. Ask any doctor.

For that matter, as you say, it was only after the eruption that you yourself first heard a strange voice talking in your head…

No…the duke’s attack on the tourists, and the witch’s self-mutilation—the volcano didn’t make them do those terrible things. She had been inside their heads, and seen what the foreigner had done to them. He was to blame.

But who says you were really inside their heads? You can’t prove it. Maybe you just made up whatever story suited you?

Oh yes? And what about the virgin and the archangel? Had she made up those freakish acts the two of them performed? Or the fact that the girl was dead?

What—you’ve never heard of two inmates fucking before? It happens all the time here! And those two in particular had profound psychosexual manias, so it was no great surprise that the end result was a violent one. Distressing, yes, but again, there’s no need to conjure some imaginary foreigner to explain it.

The orphan exhaled in exasperation, and stopped pushing. They had emerged from the jungle to the headland that overlooked the hospital. She gazed out at the night. It was too dark to see much—but was the rain of ash beginning to thin? She turned to the volcano. Yes, it was slowly falling quiet, the tremors easing. The path zigzagged away from her up the bare slope, very steep. She would have to carry him from here.

As for his ridiculous claims—well, they were more lies, no matter how disturbing she found it to hear them. Things had never been as bald and simple as he was trying to suggest. Duke, witch, archangel, virgin—their fates had all been intertwined with his.
Everything had been intertwined. All his tales about his many lives and deaths, all his stories about how the world worked…

Wait! That was the proof! The stories he’d told her! After all, how could she have discovered so much about the earth on her own? She couldn’t have.
He
had taught her. About the forces that made volcanoes, and moved continents. About wind and rain and storms. About the ocean. About space.

Not true. You already knew it all.

Nonsense! She didn’t know anything. She’d been thrown out of school, too stupid to teach, and had never learnt anything since. With a heave she lifted his body from the wheelchair and rose with him in her arms. She would not be able to carry him far between rests, she knew. Nevertheless, she started to climb.

You didn’t need school. You taught yourself.

How?

By listening to the radio. By watching television.

More nonsense. All radios were incomprehensible to her, he knew that, and she could see nothing on a TV screen.

Consciously, maybe not. That’s part of your madness. Unconsciously, however, you’ve always understood radio and TV perfectly well. Your mother used to leave you in front of the television for days at a time, didn’t she? And even now, your radio is almost always on. So you’ve heard and seen all sorts of programs over the years. Movies, documentaries, news reports. You’ve absorbed all kinds of information. These stories the foreigner told you—it was simply your own mind releasing that information.

The orphan sagged. He was heavier than she’d thought, that was all. It wasn’t doubt sapping her strength. And yet, the radio…It was true. She always had her radio on. She liked the sound, even without knowing what it meant.

But was it possible…
could
she have known?

She hefted him up again, and trudged on. No. It was all a trick. Another way to manipulate her. This wasn’t madness or delusion. This was real. She had flown, she had seen lands she hadn’t known existed. She had soared high enough to discover the curve of the earth, and its spin. It was impossible that she could have known things so amazing all along, and yet not known that she knew them.

There’s a globe in the office. You’ve always played with it. So you’ve always known the earth is round. And that it spins.

But she had been into space!

So has everyone; there are endless TV shows and movies about it. Any child half your age has seen enough of them to imagine what it would be like to visit space. You fantasised the whole experience. You never left the ground.

No, she had done things, changed things, affected reality. He of all people couldn’t deny that. It had been his sole purpose in cultivating her. Hadn’t she summoned the breeze? Hadn’t she made his blood flow?

The breeze would have blown anyway. As for the blood—raising an erection in a man, even an unconscious one, is no miracle!

But it had been her strength that had blown apart the landslide dam and set the lake free, roaring down the valley.

Who’s to say there ever was such a valley? Or a landslide, or a dam? Why should any of the foreigner’s tales be true?

But the comet! They altered its path!

What comet? There is no comet. You’ve never altered anything. Don’t you see? Even in your madness you know that you can’t affect reality, so you conveniently claim to be responsible for things that happen far away, things you can never prove or disprove. That way nothing can ever spoil the fantasy. It’s classic paranoid delusional behaviour. Otherwise—you even realised this yourself—you would
have removed those arm and leg restraints on your own, rather than waiting for a nurse to do it.

Ah, but she had caused the eruption which had brought the nurse running, hadn’t she? The mountain had answered her call.

Rubbish. It was the other way round. You felt the tremors of the impending eruption, worked out what was about to happen—albeit unconsciously—and then invented a scenario in which you were responsible for it. And look, the eruption is almost over. If you were really in command, how could that happen?

Gasping under his weight, arms and thighs singing, the orphan paused again, throwing her head back to stare up at the mountain. He was right. The fountains of lava had died away, and only a dull glow came now from the high cleft. The ash had stopped falling, and the night sky was beginning to clear.

Well, of course the eruption was dwindling, she was no longer stoking it with her mind. All she had to do was call again…

Try it then.

And she did try. She reached out, sending her mind down into the ground, searching for the shrinking reservoirs to fire them up again…but somehow it didn’t work. She couldn’t seem to concentrate.

But that didn’t mean anything! She was distracted, that was all. His pestering was getting in the way. He could not be telling the truth. Because if it was the truth, then there
was
no ‘he’. It was just her own mind. And why would she do that to herself? It made no sense. Why would she create him?

You created him out of loneliness. You created him out of your longing not to be ugly anymore, not to be useless and scorned and pitied. And, dare I say it, you created him out of your increasingly desperate sexual frustration
.

And what a perfect hero he was. A wondrous, godlike being who could defy death and triumph over every setback. Even better, you made him fall in love with you, you made him want and need you. You gave yourself amazing powers, even more impressive than his. You made yourself beautiful and immortal. What a contrast to the drudgery of your actual life! What a pleasant dream! What an escape!

Every step took immense effort now, every word of his was poisonous, hurting her. Up above, the orphan could see the crest of the first ridge. If she could just make it there, she would rest a while. With rest she would sort it all out. Because it still made no sense. It didn’t. If he was only a delusion whose purpose was to make her happy, then why was he making her unhappy now? Why hadn’t he kept loving her? Why had he turned on her, and started using her to do things she didn’t want to do?

It’s the nature of delusions. They break down when they collide with reality. Your own delusion had made you stop eating, you were losing too much weight—the hospital staff had to take action. And once you found yourself chained to the bed, the delusion was unveiled for what it was. A powerless fantasy. The foreigner could not release you or save you, and so, in your madness, rather than accept the truth, you made him into a betrayer, a liar, an enemy. Indeed, you made him into a world destroyer. Better the earth be ruined by a cataclysm than you having to return to being the idiot girl again.

The idiot girl. No, she could not return to that. Not the dreariness of it, not the dullness. It was too heartbreaking, if that was all she was. The ridge line beckoned. If only her aching legs would push her the last few yards.

And now this—deliberately walking into an eruption zone. It’s the last gasp of your delusion. It shows suicidal tendencies. That’s bad enough—but you’ve also involved an innocent bystander: this poor man you’re carrying.

The orphan staggered, lurched, and crested the ridge at last. Spent, she set the man—the foreigner, he was the foreigner—down on the ground. She hunched there, gulping for air, her hands clenched in the thin layer of ash. She must not stop. She must go through with it. It was the only way to prevent him.

Oh, but if she was wrong…If this man here was really just some catatonic she had fixated upon, if he wasn’t the foreigner after all, then what she was intending to do to him, completely undeserved, it was too horrible, it was—

Worse than murder, that’s what it is.

Tears stung her eyes. But if none of it was true, then what was the voice in her head? Who had been talking to her since this all began?

The voice was only ever your own madness. But things have gone too far. The fantasy is broken. The foreigner is gone.

Then who was talking to her now?

I’m the last rational part of your mind. I’m trying to save you, and to save this man. I’m trying to prevent you from a heinous act.

The orphan clutched the earth wretchedly. He had won. He was too clever for her. Or her own mind, her own voice, was too clever. She couldn’t tell which. And if that was so, if there was no way to choose between right and wrong, madness and logic, then she could not go through with her plan. Even insanity would not excuse her. She would have to turn and carry the man down the hill again to safety.

Despairing, she lifted her eyes to the mountain. It was silent now. She had never touched it, never moved it. And beyond was the night sky, slowly clearing, the ash cloud drifting away over the sea. She had never flown to those heights. She had never soared on the winds, or plummeted through thunderstorms, her every
nerve thrilling. She could not fly. No one could. It was time to take the man back down.

Except…

There was a cobweb in the heavens.

She stared. It was suspended above the rim of the mountain, a wisp of white gauze fixed among the stars, a pale smudge that had not been there before, an object faint and vastly far away—but which was rushing, nevertheless, towards the earth.

Wild relief surged in the orphan’s heart.

It was real, it was all real after all.

Their comet was shining there in the sky to prove it.