The texture of the stone shifted again; something seemed to part, like water, like veils, and he was looking into the stone, his sight traveling toward the heart of the secret-
The surface of the lake rippled again; more flashes of light, brighter, to the point of pain, hot needles driving into his head, needles the size of spears, needles of light and oh God if that was what this stone meant, he wanted to get out, get out get away get away
Be… careful…
And then he was out, floating away more weightless than weightless, consisting of less than the empty space between his dreams, as if everything that was himself had been distilled down to one pure thought.
It felt right; it felt more than right, something he'd been meant to do all his life.
The bone white was a bed; he was looking down at himself lying in it, and the sight was receding like a tiny image at the wrong end of the telescope.
Stop.
The movement stopped, and he had a sense of waiting.
Rippling on the lake disturbed the air, and he felt how the air pressed up, parted around him; the movement of the kid in the next bedroom turning fitfully in his own bed, tangled in the sheets and in a situation of his own making.
Jones, the kid had said at one point. Aloud? Had to be, he remembered the kid babbling to him when they'd been alone once. Jones. Jones was dead. No, Jones wasn't dead. No, Jones was dead, but only sometimes. Schrodinger's Jones. What was Schrodinger's Jones? Putting cats in boxes with vials of poison gas; strange habit. No stranger than Schrodinger's video, though, the one he kept making over and over because he couldn't seem to get it right, and it wouldn't leave him alone until he did, and the Beater couldn't understand, which was why he was on this deal with Galen and Joslin. That was supposed to fix Schrodinger's video. Maybe it would also do something about Schrodinger's dick, which he also suffered with from time to time. It was a stone-home Schrodinger world, when you came right down to it.
He could feel the stone against his hands, the smooth-rough surface surrounding him as he surrounded it, but his body was still far, far away, sprawled on the bed like a cast-off exo. On the bed, floating on the lake, ripples striking sparks all around, secret world in the stone, and no mark to point the way home-
There was a stranger on the stony shore, turning slowly, turning slowly to him, turning like the seasons, like the moon, and he was afraid to see what face the stranger would show him this time, what face, what face, turning from the darkness, what face face
Gina. Relief shuddered through him. This time, Gina. It was like seeing her clearly for the first time in a long time, as if he'd been looking at her through layers and layers of veils or fog or something. Twenty years would build up a lot of layers. He had almost forgotten she was beautiful to him.
She had the greatest color of skin, all her own, a gift of nature, though he'd seen the same shade in various dye-joints around town, tagged "Wild Forest Hardwood." She'd never been much of a peacock type, it never seemed that important lo her, she had other stuff to do. Dreadlocks pretty much took care of themselves, he guessed; they spilled down her forehead, past her ears, onto her shoulders, down her back in fluid, thickly graceful lines. Strong features, extraordinary eyes. No one else in the world looked like her, better now than twenty years ago when she'd first appeared with her laptop and a homemade simulation, crazy to make videos. Not more than sixteen or seventeen then, couldn't have been, but he didn't know. All this time and he'd never gotten around to saying, How old are you?
She knew how old he was. He could see it in her face, still turning through the light and her gaze sweeping across him, she knew how old he was, she knew-She knew.
That was in her face as well, and he could see it clearly now, what he had not seen at the time when he had been standing on the courthouse steps while Galen and Joslin danced around the kid (because they didn't know), trying to draw him into the rhythm and the pattern, meaning to strangle him with it, while he stood there and watched, and the sight that had passed into him without his noticing and buried itself in his brain showed itself to him now, the shadow in the deeper shadows, watching from hiding. Some stray little bit of light had found her and ignited itself in her eyes. Now he saw the glint he had not seen then, felt the way her breathing had sent ripples across the lake.
Gina, I'm sorry.
And she was turning from him, and he saw himself again sprawled on the shifting texture of the bed and knew that it was time to go back. If he was going back.
This was the part of Schrodinger's video that he could never be sure of. Every other time he had gone back, but this might be the time he didn't, this time.
Be careful.
Teetering, about to fall, he could fall either way-
He was lying facedown on the floor, one cheek pressed against the carpet and the afterimages of bright sparks fading in his vision. The fingers of his left hand were curled clawlike around a piece of air the shape of a good-sized stone.
Weird stone fucking shit, he thought, using the bed to help himself up. Have some fucking stone-home crazy dreams and then fall out of bed. With a fucking Purge headache, too. Christ, if they ever did that to him again, he'd take a walk and keep walking, over hill, over dale, over the fucking ocean, he didn't care if they had the stone-home Secret of the Universe in a chocolate candy-fucking-coating, no more fucking Purge, the-fucking-end.
He found his clothes wadded up in a fat, overstuffed chair and dressed slowly, smoothing away the wrinkles with his hand and wondering if he should be concerned about a change of underwear. Diversifications was a pretty detox/safe-sex kind of outfit. If it hadn't been for Joslin's big-deal project, he was pretty sure Diversifications wouldn't have wanted any part of him, or Gina either.
The memory of Gina was like a physical blow. It caught him off balance with one leg in his pants. He staggered across the room, and for a moment he saw the stony shore in the velour smooth of the carpet before he fell sideways onto the bed.
He lay with the breath knocked out of him, more by surprise than by the fall. She had been there, and he'd been too toxed to register the sight of her then, but his brain had saved her for later, for the lake with the stony shore.
Sitting up, he pushed the pants down his leg with his other foot, stamped them into a wad, and tossed them over on the chair again. "Did it wrong," he muttered. He had to be carefu about that these days, doing things wrong, because wheneve he did, he found himself toppling over onto that shore of egg-smooth stones again, and sometimes it took him a long time to find his way back to where he'd been. And that was different from just going there on his own for Schrodinger's video, because-
But he couldn't say why, really. Except maybe it was just better to jump than to be pushed, the way it was better to burn out than to fade away.
And that was something of the lake with the stony shore, too. One of the multitude of secret worlds there could show him the way out, but the deal with Galen and Joslin was also a way out, and a surer thing. Or so the Beater had convinced him, when the deal was done.
It may be better to burn out than to fade away, Mark, but It's best of all not to do either. And you know you're burning out. Don't you?
Yes, I do, old pal, and how tactful of you to say so. I should have told you when it happened that you had a hand in it as much as anything else, maybe more. You put your ax away too soon, my man; when you closed up your synthesizer for the final time, I heard the lid closing on my coffin as well.