Buddenbaum looked incredulous. "Just like that?" he aid, his voice rising a little. "You're replacing me without o much as a word of warning? Oh, that simply breaks my heart! "
Be careful, Tesla thought. The line about his heart breaking sounded a tad phoney.
"It was inevitable," Rare Utu said, taking a couple of steps towards Buddenbaum. Finally she too was giving up the illusion of humanity, her childish body swelling and glistening as it retrieved its strange divinity. "There are only so many stories in one head, Owen, and we've exhausted your supply."
"Oh you'd be surprised," Buddenbaum replied. "Amazed, even, if you knew how much I haven't shown YOU."
"Well it's too late now," Haheh said. "Our decision's made, and it's final. Tesla Bombeck will be our guide as we approach the millennium."
"Well, congratulations," Buddenbaum said to Tesla sourly, and as he spoke took a step towards her, sliding between Haheh and Rare Utu. He was close enough now that Tesla could see his face plainly, and she read the look in his eyes. He wanted her gone, and quickly.
She retreated from him, as though his proximity distressed her. "It wasn't planned this way," she protested. "I didn't seek this out."
"Frankly," he replied, "I don't care one way or the other." He reached out and casually caught hold of Rare Utu's frail arm as he spoke. This was plainly an unusual, perhaps even unique, contact, because the Jai-Wai shuddered, staring down at his hand in some distress. "What are you doing, Owen?" she said, the folds of her bejeweled flesh shuddering.
"Just making my farewells," Owen replied. Haheh's gaze was approaching the spot that Buddenbaum had vacated. The asphalt there was brightening and softening.
"What have you been up to?" he said, staring down.
Behind Tesla, Yie murmured, "Keep away but Haheh was deaf to the warning. He took another step, while the street continued to brighten. Rare Urn was meanwhile attempting to shake off Buddenbaum's hold, but he refused to let her go. Eyes fixed on Tesla, he smiled through clenched teeth and told her, "Goodbye."
She started to turn but as she did so the ground on which Haheh was standing suddenly blazed, and he was enveloped. Rare Utu loosed the word Owen like a shriek, and started to pull at her captor, while Haheh's body ran like butter in a furnace, the blebs bursting in wheels of colors and pouring off into the street.
Tesla had already seen too much. It was dangerous to stay, lethal, probably. But she'd never been good at averting her eyes, whatever the wisdom of it. She kept drinking down the scene in front of her, until Buddenbaum screamed, "Get the fiwk out of here!" and as he did so pitched Rare Utu back into the light that had claimed Haheh. She went shrieking, but her cry was cut short once the light sealed itself around her. Throwing back her head, she opened her arms as though surrendering to the sensation.
"I said. Go!" Buddenbaum yelled at Tesla, and this time she tore her eyes from the spectacle and turned, only to meet a rush of sour, cold air, and Yie, coming at her.
"You tricked us!" he said, his voice like scalpels. It cut her courage to ribbons. She froze, staring into his doll-like face, while at her back Rare Utu uttered a shivering sigh and murmured, "This... is... wonder.fuL"
"What have you done to her?" Yie demanded. The questions was directed at Buddenbaum, but he caught hold of Tesla as he asked it, and hauled her close to his body. His limbs were far from strong; she could have broken the hold if she'd wanted to. But she didn't. The influence of this flesh was like peyote. She felt it invade her, Lifting her out of her fear.
"Set them free!" Yie said to Buddenbaum.
"I'm afraid it's too late for that," said Owen.
"I'll kill your woman if you don't," the Jai-Wai warned.
"She's not mine," came the reply. "Do whatever you need to do." Dreamily, Tesla glanced back over her shoulder at Buddenbaum, and by the light pouring from the ground saw him plainly for the first time. He was pitifully cold; his humanity consumed long ago in the effort that had brought him to this place. No doubt all he'd boasted in the Nook was true: The years had made him wiser than the Jaff. But his wisdom would do him no good. The Art would break him the way it had broken Randolph. Snap his reason and melt his mind.
Beyond him, in the blaze, Rare Utu had almost disappeared, but even now, with her substance pouring off into the ground where Haheh had already gone, she spoke.
"What happens next... ?" she said.
"Take her out of there!" Yie yelled to Buddenbaum.
"I told you: It's too late," he replied. "Besides, I don't think she wants to go."
Rare Utu was laughing now. "What's next?" she kept saying, her laughter growing insubstantial. "What? What?"
The ground at her feet was as soft as she, ribbons of brightness running off along the streets.
"Stop this!" Yie demanded again, his din so brutal that this time Tesla's body simply surrendered beneath its assault. Her legs failed, her bladder gave out, and she stumbled from Yie's grip towards the blaze.
"No you don't!" Buddenbaum snapped, retreating across the incandescent earth to protect the spot where Rare Utu had stood. "The Art's mine!"
"The Art?" Yie said, as though it was only now he understood the purpose of this trap. "Never, Buddenbaum... " his voice was rising with each syllable. "You will not have it!"
His lacerating din was too much for Tesla's beleaguered body. She felt something in her head break; felt her tongue slacken in her mouth and her lids fall. Saw, as darkness came, the bright ground divide before her And there it was, shining in the dirt: the cross of crosses, the sign of signs. In the long, slow moments of her dying fall, she remembered with a kind of yearning how she'd solved the puzzles of that cross; seen the four journeys that were etched upon it. One to the dream world, one to the real; one to the bestial, one to the divine. And there at the heart of these joumeys-where they crossed, where they divided, where they finished and began-the human mystery. It was not about the flesh, that mystery: It was not about hanging broken from a cross or the triumph of the spirit over suffering. It was about the living dream of mind, that made body and spirit and all they tookjoy in.
Remembering the revelation now the time between that moment and this-the years she'd spent wandering the roads of the lost Americas-folded up and fled. She had glimpsed the vast eternal sitting in the earth beneath Palomo Grove, and now she was dying into it, her lids closing, her heart stopping.
Somewhere far off she heard Yie shrieking, and knew the power here had claimed him as it had claimed the others.
She wanted to tell him not to be afraid; that he was going into a place where the future of being lay in wait. A time out of time when the singularity from which all things came would be whole again. But she had no tongue. No, nor breath. No, nor life.
It was over.
Harry, Raul, and Maeve O'Connell had just come in sight of the crossroads when Tesia slid from Yie's grasp, and stumbled forward.
Though they were a hundred yards from the spot or more, the light was exquisitely particular, and kept no detail of the expression on Tesia's face from Harry's eyes. She was dead, or dying, but her slackening features carried a look of strange contentment.
The luminous ground was no longer solid where she fell. It received her like a shining grave, and she was gone.
"Oh Jesus Harry breathed. "Oh Jesus Chnst in Heaven... "
He picked up his pace and raced towards the intersection, following the braided rivulets of light that ran in the ground beneath his feet.
Behind him, Maeve had started to shout.
"I know that man!" she hollered. "That's Buddenbaum! My Lord, that's Buddenbaum! That's the bastard started all this!" Wresting herself from Raul's custody, she started to hobble after D'Amour.