Alternities (15 page)

Dunstanburgh Castle at dawn was a spectacle Jason March had long ago come to love. The gaunt ruins of the thirteenth-century fortress overlooked the choppy North Sea from a desolate clifftop eyrie. The cold morning sunlight fired a diamondlike sparkle in the slick coating of sea dew which decorated leaf and stone alike.

Thickly matted green creepers covered many of the crumbling remains of the enceinte and barbican, invading even the inner courts of the donjon. It seemed to March as though the earth herself was grasping at the castle, seeking to pull down the walls and return the stone building blocks to the natural storehouse from which they had been drawn.

Part of that impression came from the isolation. Dunstanburgh Castle seemed to belong to the earth by default, abandoned even by the tourists, who would sooner continue up the coast to the restored showplaces at Bamburgh and Berwick-upon-Tweed than fight the rutted dirt lane that led to the squat age-battered shell.

When the station car that had ferried March up from Alswick had bumped its way back to the main road, the illusion was complete. The castle belonged to the earth and the sea. He was merely a trespasser in Time.

As he picked his way into the central bailey, he felt the first faint tug of the gate. Using a broken wall as a makeshift staircase, he followed the call up to the tunnel-like archers’ gallery, high in the battlements.

The darkness of the gallery was broken at intervals by light streaming in the loopholes where soldiers had once stood to defend the approach to their liege’s home. But the scant sunlight was inadequate to offer relief from the bone-numbing chill of the damp stone passageway.

The gate was close now. A side passage brought March into a darker and colder place, a chamber in the heart of the armored gate house. He brought out his transit light and banished the darkness, homing on the gate by the jangling of his nerves. His entire skin was an antenna for its energies. If he closed his eyes, he could see the dancing lights which betrayed the gate’s proximity.

It was there in the chamber below, pulsing faintly, its pale light suffusing the dank enclosure.

How many ghost stories have you inspired
, March wondered with a faint smile.
How many demon nightmares have you starred in?
Hooking his thumbs under the straps of his backpack to pull it snug against him, he lowered his head and plunged through.

The Yellow node was uphill from the gate. He climbed, dragging himself forward on the invisible substance of the maze, boots slipping, hands clawing. March had once heard a runner compare moving though the maze to climbing a taffy mountain in the dark. It was an apt enough description.

When he reached the node, he expected to sense three channels, geometrically spaced like the spread fingers of a hand. One led to Home. One, perversely, a long way around to itself. The third led to points unknown, having taken two skilled crackers without giving up its secrets.

But, to his sudden and acute distress, March realized he could see-sense only two channels at the node, and it was the channel to Home which was gone. He knew where it should be, and yet it was not there. He knew the shape of the maze at that point, and yet found it different.

Where the channel should be was a blank spot—no, a blind spot in his perceptions. It was as though he were touching something with a nerve-deadened hand. Something was interfering with his sight, preventing him from seeing what, despite the evidence of his senses, he knew had to be there.

He stood frozen in the node, trying to understand the anomalous reports from his senses. It was as though a door had come down, a giant’s shadow fallen across the unreal world. Suddenly March knew real fear, a white knot of terror uncurling in his stomach like a spitting firework snake. His skin crawled with the nearness of something—

—Something so cold that it seemed to draw the heat from his body and sap the fundamental energy of the maze.

—Something so alien that to let it touch him would mean a screaming death in the silence of the maze.

Curiosity fled. Courage fled. And March fled, clawing his way back down toward the Dunstanburgh gate, plunging into a living recreation of the young boy’s worst nightmare: being chased by the thing that cannot die.

When at last he reached the end and dove through the gate to find himself lying on the algae-slimed floor of the lower chamber, it was like waking up in a room he no longer knew and being terrorized again by the disorientation. It was not until he stood shaky-legged in the morning sunlight on the topmost wall of the ruined castle that he could begin to believe that he was safe.

Even then. March knew that safety was a fleeting thing. For, as much as he hated the thought in that moment, the maze was the only way Home, and all too soon he would have to return to the gate and try again.

It was a little church, just off M Street, within shouting distance of Embassy Row. St. Dunstan’s Cathedral. O’Neill could not clearly remember who Saint Dunstan was. English, certainly. There was something about Dunstan and a king. Or a king’s wife. Was he the patron saint of musicians? Or of blacksmiths? Both seemed right. Maybe it was both. The Church had had its renaissance men, too.

Not that it mattered. St. Dunstan’s offered everything he needed. It was unlocked and empty. And unlike at National Cathedral, no one knew him here. There was no one to see and no one to wonder.

He pushed open the oak doors separating the narthex from the nave and walked slowly up to aisle toward the altar. The crucifix hanging in the apse was grotesque, a son of Swedish-modern-Gothic monstrosity in hammered iron. Blacksmiths. Blacksmiths and armorers, he remembered. And musicians, too, for all he knew. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered Three pews from the front, O’Neill genuflected and sat down. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the back of the pew in front of him, looked up to see a Daliesque black iron Virgin Mary looking down on him from an alcove. Her metallic features were ambiguous—his mind supplied the detail, interpreting shadow and glistening highlight.

He looked away to the crucifix and saw it with different eyes. There was a rawness, a tortured quality to the very material itself. It vitalized the icon, sweeping away the memory of a thousand tranquil-faced ceramic Saviors rendered in inoffensive pastels. The faintest hint of a pleased expression appeared on O’Neill’s face, then disappeared as he lowered his head to pray.

Dear God—

Self-consciousness cut short the orison. Since childhood, a silent prayer had always seemed to O’Neill to somehow be less real than the same prayer spoken. It was cheating somehow, shallow and easy, the unwitnessed thoughts so easily deniable. Hiding behind the skirts of God’s omniscience.
Of course He can hear you—

O’Neill drew a deep breath and began again. “Dear God,” he whispered. “I’ve struggled to find the meaning. I’ve tried to see the majesty of Your Design in this. I don’t think I can do it alone. The thoughts I’ve had—I wonder if there are many Gods for the many worlds. Like Franklin believed. All the Deists who built this city—this country—a more forgiving way to think. Too easy. Too easy.”

Hanging his head, O’Neill squeezed his eyes closed and fought for order and control.

“It’s not that I can’t believe You can shape Creation this way. I see Your hand in it, the power of a will that shapes the Universe to its bidding. But I can’t see the reason why. I’ve been reading Revelations, wondering. A sign of the endtime. Always the prophets. This week, this year, next year, the millennium. Someday one will be right.

“Or a sign for the age of science. A Gordian knot that no Einstein can unravel, to call the skeptics back to faith. How do You reveal yourself to a world armored against the touch of the divine? A mystery for a time when all mysteries have been unmasked. A challenge to explain the unexplainable.

“Oh, Father, what reason is enough to fill worlds with copies of your children? What am I to them, they to me? Are we reflections, brothers—more than brothers? Nothing to say that each soul must be unique, nothing except the wrongness that fills me when I think that mine is not.

“I’ve wondered, too, about Your old rival. I never believed, still doubt. To believe in him is to worship him. To believe is to give him power. And this—the teachings say that the Dark Lord’s power is to destroy, not to create. How could this be his work? Perhaps his power to deceive could make this real, but to what end? What gain? It’s even harder to divine his motive than Yours.

“The thought that comes back again and again is that perhaps this isn’t about us at all. I know that You love all Your creatures, and so many have fallen. Perhaps this is neither sign nor temptation, but a judgment on us for our stewardship. Do elephants still walk the plains of other worlds? Do eagles soar in their skies? So many have fallen—

“But most of all I wonder if this was knowledge You never meant for us to have. A secret stolen from You like fire from Olympus, stumbled on in the dark. And that the question ‘why?’ has no answer with any meaning on our scale.”

O’Neill opened his eyes to the dense grain of the wood before him, blinked away a trace of moisture. Pressing his Ups into a hard line, he drew a deep breath, fighting the tightness in his chest. Then he closed his eyes, sighed, and slid back against the harsh support of the pew.

It was always hard to gauge the good prayer did. Sometimes, like now, O’Neill felt a measure of inner release when he was done, a touch of quiet at the center of his being. But did that come from outside or from within? There were no new answers offering themselves for his examination, no voices guiding his thoughts. No magic. Was it the act itself which brought the blessing—an exercise of the psyche, with God as psychiatrist? He had never answered the question to his satisfaction.

Opening his eyes. O’Neill looked up at the crucifix. “But then, even You had questions till the end,” he said softly, and rose to leave.

On the way out, he wondered how long the man pretending to be asleep in the last pew had been there.

The young saxophonist was blowing hot and sweet, a tumbling cascade of notes that seemed to whirl around the club like chromatic ghosts. Donovan’s was not a good place for talking. The owner liked his music loud, and even the piano was double-miked. But even if it had been, the ax man had made clear early that tonight was a night for listening. He ripped off lines so complex that they demanded his audience’s full attention, playing loving games with key and interval, stroking the ear with solos as clean as they were electrifying.

Wallace and March had come to the little downtown walk-up to hear Jo-Jo Richards, a refugee from the much-loved but long disbanded Northeast combo Street Heat. But most of the night the headliner had been under siege, hunched over the keys of his upright, hard pressed to match his sideman’s energy and altitude. The cellist and drummer had long ago faded into the background, becoming almost more a part of the audience than the performance.

Now, in the last number of the set, Jo-Jo and the kid were coming together on a musical Seventh Circle, flying so high and in such perfect synchrony that Wallace’s heart ached to hear them and know that in a few moments it would all end. Every note was charged with the excitement of spontaneous creation, for the two musicians had pushed each other past the safe areas bounded by the limits of rehearsal. The audience sensed it, and seemed to hold its breath as it waited to see if they would rise or fall together.

Trading licks, they created a dialogue between sax and piano, then made them speak together in elegant harmony. What sounded like a closing crescendo mutated into harmonic digression, then became the prologue to an even more subtle and elegant closure, surprising and yet exactly right.

The hundred-odd patrons of the tiny club were on their feet by the last bar, and their cheers and applause drowned out the final notes. “Beautiful,” Wallace shouted to Marsh across the little table. “It doesn’t get better than that.”

March smiled and nodded in agreement.

“And not a recorder in the hall, is the hell of it.”

“That’s why you’ve gotta come out,” March called. “There’s just too much good music that never gets near vinyl.”

The musicians were exiting without fanfare, and the bargirls started fanning out to blanket the room during the break. “What do you think about staying for another set?” Wallace asked.

“I think we’ve heard the best they’ve got,” March said, “Besides, Jo-Jo’s going to garrot the kid backstage for stealing the show, and then who’ll want to listen?”

As if in reply, the club owner came to the microphone just then and announced. “I’ve been asked to tell you that in response to your requests, Jo-Jo is going to do a solo set after this break, so don’t go away—”

They looked at each other and laughed. “That does it,” Wallace said. “We’re leaving.”

“We won’t take a threat like that sitting down,” March said, snatching up his glass and draining the long-nursed last ounce of warmish beer.

As they reached the sidewalk, Wallace checked his watch. “Almost eleven. Are we done in?”

“I’m not.”

“Good. What about going down to Blue Tony’s? There’s no cover after eleven, and the band goes ’til one.”

March showed a mock shiver. “Two thousand years of ballads. No, thanks. What about Deep Harbor Lounge?”

“Canned music.”

“I might want to dance.”

“Riding heavy? Well, I don’t want to stand in the way of love,” Wallace said with a shrug, reaching in his pocket for the keys to the Spirit.

“Let’s walk,” March suggested. “It’s only a few blocks.”

Wallace shot him a quizzical look. “Try about eight.”

“I’ve been sitting too long. I need to unwind.”

Wallace shrugged and fell in beside March as they started down the sidewalk. “Ruthann’d have a fit if she saw this.”

“Why?”

“Oh, we had a fight about the car. She wanted to go out sightseeing with it this afternoon and I had to point out how much all her extra driving was costing.”