Tears started to fill her eyes.
"It's enough?"
Yes. It doesn't have to be terrible alwayv. Even this.
She'd never believe that, not to the end of her days.
What did he say we were? Vesselsfor something "For the infinite. Vessels for the infinite."
"What did you say?" Phoebe murmured.
"It's what he wanted to be," Tesla replied.
No, said Raul. It's what he was all along. Tesla nodded. "You know," she said to Phoebe, "I have a very good soul in my head." She sniffed hard. "The pity of it is, it isn't mine."
Then she let Phoebe turn her around, and together they headed on, up towards the door.
The tide took Joe at last, claiming him from the darkness and bearing him away, the way it had home The Fanacapan before him. For a while he was barely aware of his passage. Indeed he was barely aware of being alive. He drifted in and out of consciousness, his eyes fluttering open long enough for him to glimpse the heavens boiling overhead, as though sky and sea had exchanged places. Once, when he awoke this way, he saw what he thought were burning birds, falling out of the seething air like winged meteors. And once, seeing something glitter from the corner of his eye, he turned his head to catch sight of a 'shu, darting through the churning waters, its gaze gleaming. Seeing it, he remembered the conversation he'd had with Noah on the shore-"Please one 'shu and you please many"-and returned to his dreaming state comforted, thinking perhaps the creature knew him and was somehow guiding him through this maelstrom. When he was not quite awake, which was often, he remembered Phoebe in the weeds; saw her body rising and failing in front of him, lush and pale. And tears came, even in his sleeping state, thinking she had gone from him, back into the living world, and all he would ever have of her from now on was memory.
Then even the dreams of Phoebe faded, and he floated on through a cloud of dirty smoke, his mind too weak to shape a thought. Ships passed him by, but he didn't see them. If he had-if he'd seen how they rocked and creaked, filled to the gunnels with people escaping the Ephemeris-he might have tried to catch hold of a trailing rope and haul himself aboard, rather than let the current they were fighting carry him on towards the archipelago. Or at very least-seeing the terror on the faces of the passengers-he might have prepared himself for what awaited him on the shore. But seeing nothing, knowing nothing, he was carried on, and on, through the remains of splintered vessels that had foundered for want of captains, floating mortuaries of doomed travelers, through places where the sea was thick with yellow ash, and cobs of fire glittered around him like burning fleets.
Steadily the waters grew shallower and less tempestuous, and at last he was carried up onto the shores of an island that in its glory days had been called the island of Mem-6 b'Kether Sabbat. There he lay, among the flotsam and jetsam, his balls bleeding, his mind confounded, while moment by moment the island he had been carried to was undone, and its undoer, the lad Uroboros, came closer to the shore on which he slept.
The distance between the shores of Mem-6 b'Kether Sabbat and the Mountainside where Tesla and Phoebe were climbing was not readily measured. Though generations of thinkers in both the Cosm and the Metacosm had attempted to evolve a theory of distance between the two worlds, there was little consensus on the subject. The only thing the various factions agreed upon was that this distance could not be measured with a rule and an abacus. After all, it was not simply the distance between two points: It was the distance between two states. Some said it was best viewed as an entirely symbolic space, like that between worshipper and deity, and proposed an entirely new system of measurement applicable to such cases. Others argued that a soul moving from the Hefter Incendo into Quiddity underwent such a radical altering that the best way to describe and analyze the distance, if the word distance were still applicable (which they doubted), was to derive it from the vocabulary of spiritual reformation. The notion proved untenable, however, one man's reformation being another's heresy.
Finally, there were those who argued that the relationships between Sapas Humana and the dream-sea were all in the mind, and any attempt to measure distance was doomed to failure. Surely, they opined, the space between one thought and another was beyond the wit of any man to measure. they were accused of defeatism by some of their enemies; of shoddy metaphysics by others. Men and women only entered the dream-sea three times, they were reminded. For the rest of their lives Quiddity was a lot further than a thought away. Not so, the leader of this faction-a mystic from Joom called Carasophia-argued. The wall between the Cosm and the Metacosm was getting steadily thinner, and would-he predicted-soon disappear altogether, at which point the minds of Sapas Humana, which seemed so pathetically literal, would be revealed to be purveyors of the miraculous, even in their present, primal state.
Carasophia had died for his theories, assassinated in a field of sunflowers outside Eliphas, but he would have found comforting evidence for his beliefs had he wandered through the minds of the people gathered along the parade route in Everville. People were dreaming today, even though their eyes were wide open.
Parents dreaming of being free as their children; children dreaming of having their parents' power.
Lovers seeing the coming night in each other's eyes; old folks, staring at their hands, or at the sky, seeing the same.
Dreams of sex, dreams of oblivion; dreams of circus and bacchanalia.
And further down the parade route, sitting by the window from which he'd so recently fallen, a man dreaming of how it would be when he had the Art for himself, and time and distance disappeared forever.
"Owen?" Buddenbaum had not expected to see the boy again; at least not this side of midnight. But here he was, looking as invitingly languorous as ever.
"Well, well-"
"How are you?" Seth said.
"Mending."
"Good. I brought some cold beers."
"That was thoughtful."
"I guess it's a peace offering."
"Consider it accepted," Buddenbaum said. "Come here and sit down." He patted the boards beside him. "You look weary."
"I didn't sleep well."
"Hammefings in heaven?"
"No. I was thinking about you."
"Oh dear."
"Good thoughts," Seth said, settling himself down beside Buddenbaum.
"Really?"
"Really. I want to come with you, Owen."
"Come with me where?"
"Wherever you're going after this." "I'm not going anywhere," Owen said.
"You're going to live in Everville?"
"I'm not going to live anywhere."
"Is that just some way of saying you don't want me around," Seth said,
"'cause if it is, why don't you just come right out and say it and I'll go?"
"No, that's not what I'm saying at all," Owen replied.
"Then I don't understand."
Owen peered out of the window, chewing something over. "I know so little about you," he said. "And yet I feel-"
"What?"
"I've never really trusted anybody," Owen said. "That's the truth of it. I've wanted to many times, but I was always afraid of being disappointed." He looked at Seth. "I know I've cheated myself of a lot of feelings," he went on, his turmoil plain, "maybe even love. But it was what I chose, and it kept me from being hurt."
"You've never loved anybody?"
"Infatuations, yes. Daily. In Italy, hourly. All ridiculous, all of them. Humiliating and ridiculous. But love? No. I could never trust anyone enough to love them." He sighed heavily. "And now it's almost too late."
"Why?"
"Because sentimental love is a human affliction, and I won't be susceptible for very much longer. There. I've said it."