The Soul Continuum (27 page)

“As far as I can see, it's identical.”

“Good. Nothing we didn't expect. Let's move on to our mysterious stone, shall we?”

She opens the tin, and I take the stone, holding it for a moment in my palm. It still feels wrong. Utterly wrong. It isn't just the steady pulse emanating from it; it is the gut-twisting instinct that this piece of rock should not even exist. My stomach produces another small somersault when I remember the shadow man in the gentlemen's club. Without dwelling on the stone any longer than I have to, I use the tongs to place it in the cradle, and Edith adjusts the Bunsen flame. I want to squint at that moment, as if expecting the stone to suddenly explode at the presence of heat, but it does nothing unusual. A flame emerges from the stone, and it flares outward in a bright yellow plume.

“That's consistent with lapis lazuli,” Edith says.

“It appears so, but let's see what the spectrum emissions tell us.”

I place the casing around it, and Edith fixes a new absorption plate at the far end to catch the refracted light. We wait a few moments, saying nothing, watching the different colored strands as they appear.

“Recognize it yet?” I ask.

Edith shakes her head and begins flicking through the catalogued charts, her head bobbing up and down as she compares each page. “Ah! Here,” she says. “This looks like it could be it.”

I look at the image her finger is tapping on and then look at the plate. It is very similar. “Lazurite,” I say.

“Yes. It doesn't help us much, though, does it? We still don't know . . .”

My eyes are still on the catalogue when she trails off, and I look first at her confused expression and then at the plate.

“Did you see it?” she says.

“No, what was it?”

“Keep watching,” she says. “I may have imagined it.”

“Well, what do you think you saw?”

She starts chewing the inside of her mouth, not answering, so I continue to watch the static lines of reds and blues, waiting for whatever it is she thinks she saw. Then, just as I blink, I think I see it too.

“There!” she says, almost shouting. “Did you see that? Did you?”

“I'm not sure.” I continue watching. “It looked like . . .”

“Like a complete change in the spectrum, no?”

It happens again. Only for a fraction of a second, but the sight of it causes me to snatch my breath sharply. “Yes,” I whisper. “The colors disappeared and there was . . . it looked like an equal distribution of yellow lines.”

“Then I am not seeing things,” she says.

“I think you are seeing things, Edith,” I say, “but I think those things are real. We've found something here.”

“But what? This isn't possible, is it?”

I continue staring at the image. What I want to say is that the stone is not possible either. It shouldn't be here, but it is. Again the lines shift and change, but this time they stay changed. A completely different spectrum shines on the plate: multiple interlaced green strands fading into yellow to the left and to indigo on the right. The image holds for a second more, then reverts to the original lazurite spectrum. My skin crawls with icy pinpricks as I try to reconcile what I am seeing. She is quite correct: this is not possible.

Edith shakes her head, mouth open. “Shall we remove the box?”

I nod and lift the shielding from the Bunsen and cradle. “To hell with the shielding,” I say and find an alternative slit panel, setting it in front of the lens. This way we can see if anything happens to the burning stone as it shines through.

A few more seconds pass and again the pattern changes.

“No change in the stone or the flame,” she says.

“Not possible,” I insist. “This cannot be.”

“Well, we are looking at it.” She smiles, then grasps my arm. “You know what this means.”

“I have absolutely no idea. I would say it must be an impurity but—”

“No!” She grips my arm tighter. “This is a discovery. A real discovery.”

“Let's not get carried away.” Though of course, I know she is right. “There are a few things we should rule out first.”

“Such as?”

“Well, as I was saying, there could be impurities in the—”

“Oh, what nonsense. Even if there were impurities in the stone, it wouldn't cause behavior like this. You would still see a constant spectrographic image.”

“Well . . .”

Her eyebrows are raised in expectation and she's sucking her bottom lip again. She waits a few moments, then slowly cranes her head forward—a mocking but friendly gesture that tells me she knows I cannot think of anything other than the unthinkable.

“We're witnessing changes at a molecular level?” I say.

“My thought too,” she says. “But the stone.”

“It isn't changing. If there really was a change at a
molecular level, then surely we would see a change in the rock, even if it was small. If not the rock, definitely the flame,
but that isn't what we're seeing.”

“Confusing, isn't it?”

I turn off the Bunsen. “That's an understatement.”

“Should we tell Withering?”

“Usually I would wait until the paper is written, but this does seem to be rather a significant find, and all he really wanted was an analysis to find out what it is, which I think we've confirmed as lapis lazuli. It's just the doubt around this behavior.” I stare at the glowing stone in its cradle, now smoldering slightly from the flame. “But yes, we should ask Withering's opinion. He may know of a phenomenon that accounts for it.”

Edith offers me a skeptical look because she knows this is not just a simple anomaly. This is a major discovery—we just don't understand what it means yet. She has the air of excitement, her face glowing, and I smile back as we share a long moment that may one day be considered momentous. She suddenly grasps my hand and presses the back of it to her lips, holding it there for several seconds before letting it go, obviously embarrassed.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “It's just that I am a little giddy.”

She focuses for a moment longer on my eyes, perhaps expectantly, but I return the sentiment only with the gentlest incline of my head and a reserved smile to let her know that her apology is accepted. Edith blinks hard several times as if wincing at the pain of embarrassment, and then with a quick smile but no eye contact, she hurries from the laboratory without another word.

I might have reacted to her with greater enthusiasm, but the stone has sapped all warmth from me. My insides squirm like an eel when I look at it. I cannot help but feel we have uncovered something forbidden, something dark and sickening, and to make my fears tangible, the nausea and lightheadedness make their return with renewed vigor.

I
am back under the oak tree again. It was only the day before yesterday that I last sat here, and I am astounded at how different I feel now. My aspirations and expectations have fluttered away like ash. I have no tangible reason to sense this doom upon me, but I am unable to escape it. Ever since I came into possession of Withering's infernal stone, I have been ill and haunted, some dark specter always beyond sight yet close enough to breathe on the back of my neck following my every step. If I were an irrational man I might suppose that this malevolence had in fact already revealed itself in the form of the man I saw in the window box at the gentlemen's club.

As before, the sullen body of the university and the surrounding vista mirror my mood. This time it is a foreboding image. The building cowers beneath the shadow of storm clouds, and the driving rain has created a hazy curtain in front of it so that I can no longer see it clearly. I am getting wet and the light is fading, yet I find I have no desire to return either to my room at the gentlemen's club or to the university. I will choose one soon enough. For now I will sit, waiting for the moment when I come back to my senses and shrug off this ridiculous superstition. But it is not just the mystery of the stone that disturbs me. My behavior toward Edith has been less than admirable. I believed myself to be a man of creditable values, but the evidence seems not to support that. I am not even able to taste the
bitterness of my mistakes, let alone swallow the pride that allows it to remain unchallenged. I should apologize. Properly.

In the dim light of dusk it is hard to make out any movement other than the flapping of flags in the wind, especially through the rain, yet I am sure I can see a buffeted figure trudging through the field below me, heading this way, hunched. As the minutes pass and the figure draws closer, I am convinced it is an old man wearing a dark raincoat, shielding himself against the increasingly hostile
weather with a tattered black umbrella. He is small in stature,
but he seems quite determined to press on, undaunted by the elements. Is he coming to see me? Is it . . . him?

The penetrating rain finally finds a way through the leaves of the oak, splashing against me with engorged droplets. One hits my neck, sneaks below my collar, and runs down my back, causing me to stand as a chill runs through me. The man stops. He is obviously observing me, but I cannot make him out in the waning light. He is only a few paces from the shelter of the tree now.

“Brighty? That's you, I hope.”

I hadn't realized I had been holding my breath, but at the sound of Underwood's voice I feel the tension drain
out of my shoulders, replaced quickly by the irritation of misplaced fear. “Yes. What the hell are you doing out here, man?”

“Came to see you, obviously. What's your excuse?”

“Came to be alone.”

He huffs, coming under the shelter of the tree and shaking his umbrella before closing it. “Well, now you're not.”

“Plainly. Whatever it is you came to see me for must be
urgent. I can't imagine why you'd press through this infernal
weather otherwise. What is it?”

“It's more a case of privacy than urgency. Can we sit?”

I sit on the bench and nod to the empty space next to me. He sits, not caring that it is now wet with rain. He says nothing.

“Are you going to get to the point, Underwood?”

He observes me like a doctor examining a patient. “How are you feeling?”

“Cold, wet, and if you must know, still in need of some solitude.”

“But do you still feel unwell, like you did yesterday? Do the symptoms persist?”

“Look, what's this about? Why this sudden concern for my welfare?”

“It's everyone's welfare I'm concerned about. I fear we are all in very grave danger.”

“Oh?” Though reluctant to give in to his melodrama, I turn to face him.

“It's the stone Withering gave you for analysis,” he says.

“The stone.” My response is flat and a little mocking,
but I already know this is just my attempt to cover the anxiety
I feel at its mention.

“Yes. The stone. Has he told you anything about it?”

“Nothing illuminating, no. Why?”

Underwood reaches inside his coat and produces the notebook he has been absorbed in recently. “This is why. It came from the same person who gave Withering that stone. He asked me to read it with a view to critique.”

“Yes, we gathered that. What's so special about it?”

“It's Miss Collins's notes on an archaeological dig she was invited to almost a year ago in the State of Iraq. It's very detailed. Extremely comprehensive. She discovered something there. Now”—Underwood places a palm over
the cover of the notebook—“I realize that you're not in the most receptive of moods at the moment, Brighty, and Lord knows I shouldn't have bitten your head off yesterday, but—”

“For God's sake, Underwood, just spit it out.”

Underwood presses his lips together hard and breathes heavily through his nose, staring intently at me all the while. He seems to be plucking up the courage to say something preposterous, and I'm sure he will.

“Collins says she found the tree of life.”

Preposterous, indeed. Slowly, I place my palm over my eyes and shake my head.

“Or it could be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” Underwood goes on. “
Yggdrasil
,
Jubokko
, the burning tree, whatever you want to call it. The point is, whatever it was she discovered, it is no ordinary tree. The locals have kept it hidden for centuries, maybe even thousands of years in a sacred temple garden, and Collins found it.”

I raise a hand to stop him, but he lifts the book as if it's a weapon, holding it in front of my face. “This is not a joke, Clifford, and if you would stop being an ass for just one moment and remember that it's not some crackpot talking
to you, but a serious scholar with years of academic credits
behind him, perhaps you might be able to save us all an awful lot of bother!”

It takes a lot for me not to respond to his rant in kind, but it is his desperation that stops me more than his words.

“And,” he says with a little more restraint, “I know you know something. I see it in your eyes, and you wouldn't be out here in the pouring rain after the sun has set unless something was bothering you. If you don't believe—”

“All right, all right,” I concede, “I'm listening.”

“Good.” He rests the book in his lap and opens it. “But I don't want you to listen now. I want you to read.” He hands it to me. “There. Right there.”

I study him for a moment, unnerved by the fear in his eyes
.

The page is jaundiced by excessive sunlight and tattered at the edges. At the center is a sketch of a tree, impossibly gnarled with tortured faces staring out of it, as if an army of men had been absorbed into its trunk and melted into the bark. Underwood is pointing at the text below it, and I tap it out of the way so that I can read it.