She certainly didn't seem suicidal! She was happy, almost glowing with excitement. Yet she wasn't trying to vamp him either. She obviously knew the significance of what they had done, and was if anything pleased with herself, not ashamed. She wanted him with her, but this was something else.
Yet what could there possibly be atop the mountain at this hour? He could think of nothing. Nothing they might want to encounter! Had Tappy really gone over the edge? Had she convinced herself that there was some kind of salvation or atonement up there?
If she was crazy, it was his fault. All he could do now was go along and try to see that nothing else happened to her. "This way," he said, taking over. "We found a better route on the way down, remember? Here." He followed his light to the route he remembered.
Then he remembered the book. "Tappy, that mountain gets steep. You'll need your hands, and you can't tuck the book into your shirt. You have no shirt. Here." He checked the jacket she wore, opened it wide, and found a huge pocket in the inner lining. The book just fit. Then he closed the jacket around her slight torso, inadvertently brushing one of her breasts in the process, and buttoned it up. He suffered a pang of guilt, condemning himself for even thinking about what he never should have done.
There ensued two hours of struggle. What had seemed open in the daytime seemed impenetrable in the darkness. Branches loomed out of nothingness to bar their passage, and vines caught at their feet. They were both tired from the prior day's exertions. But Tappy was driven by some imperative he could not fathom, and despite his misgivings some of it translated to him. They scrambled together for the summit, heedless of the bruises on their bodies and the tears in their clothing. The night was chill, but they were laboring so hard it didn't matter; in fact, it helped them keep going.
As they got closer to the top, Tappy's urgency only increased. She was desperate to get there faster, and that communicated itself to him; he found his heart beating with more than the considerable exertion. When they encountered the worst of the climb, where a section was almost vertical, he picked her up and virtually hurled her to the higher ledge, then scrambled up himself. It was all moss and grass and dirt, no sharp edges, but at this point they didn't care about abrasions. They had to get there at the ultimate speed.
The sky was thinking about brightening as they made it to the edge of the bald summit. Just as well; he had turned off his flashlight whenever he could, to conserve its waning power, but it had almost expired by this time. Now Tappy clambered up so quickly that he could hardly keep up. They would be at the top to see the dawn come in— yet what was that to her, blind?
Could it be that she was recovering her sight? Had she wanted to test it on the most wonderful thing she remembered, the sunrise? Yet she had given no evidence of sight; she had not flinched when his flashlight played across her face.
She charged, panting, toward the rock that had fascinated her by day, gesturing to him to follow. She oriented on it unerringly, as though she could see it.
They came there, and almost collapsed on the stone. Tappy was so excited she was virtually dancing; her smudged face shone with expectancy. She grasped his hand with her left, and with her right reached out to touch the rock.
Nothing happened, of course. He touched it with his free hand, somehow feeling the need to verify its solidity. It was cool and hard, exactly as a rock should be.
"But what brought you here?" he asked her.
She clung to his hand, not responding, not disappointed. She stood by the rock, expectantly.
"Tappy, I want to understand," he said. "You brought me here for a reason. You can tell me, if you want to. I have heard you speak in your sleep. Please, I want so much to know about you. Maybe if you talk, you won't have to go to that clinic. Anything I can do—"
She faced him, her eyes not quite finding his. She spread her hands in a gesture of incapacity. She would not, or could not, speak to him in words.
He started to move away, but instantly she grabbed him, catching his shirt. She would not let him leave.
"All right, I'll wait," he said. "Just let me sit down." He turned, about to settle on the rock.
This time she almost tackled him. She shoved him away from the rock, but held his arm, refusing to let him go either.
He could not understand what she wanted, but he waited with her there by the rock while the sky brightened gloriously in the east. Dawn was coming. Too bad he had not brought his paints.
Every few seconds Tappy touched the rock, delicately, as if afraid it would explode. There was something about it that mesmerized her. But this seemed to make no sense! Was she, after all, losing touch with such reality as she had known?
The sunrise swelled to its full wonder. He was tired and battered, but he loved it. He stood there, describing its colors to Tappy, as the phases of it manifested.
Then the first beam of direct sunlight speared through and touched the rock. He was remarking on that, aloud, when Tappy grasped his hand again, and reached for the rock once more.
This time her hand passed into it. It was as if the stone were fog. As he stared, not quite believing his eyes, she made an inchoate sound and half stepped, half tumbled into the rock.
Her body disappeared within it. He opened his mouth to exclaim in amazement— but then her trailing hand hauled on his arm, urgently drawing him after her.
Jack understood none of this, except for one thing: Tappy was not crazy. She had somehow known that this rock would change, and that she could enter it as the first sunbeam touched it. It had been some kind of a window, a portal— to what? To Imago?
Her hand tugged again, becoming desperate. Tappy was going there, unafraid, and she wanted him with her. Could he refuse?
What was there to hold him in his familiar world? Trial on a charge of rape? No, he had reason to go elsewhere. Far elsewhere!
He knew that if he took any time at all to think about it, he would know better. He had no business stepping into rocks! But he could not let her go alone.
Jack entered the rock. Its substance enveloped him, passing across his body with a faint electrical tingle. Then his head followed, and he was through.
Chapter 2
Later, he wondered why he had entered the immense boulder. If he had stopped to consider the outré dangers that might await them, he would have yanked Tappy from the boulder.
His will and his reason at that moment seemed to have stepped outside for a chat, leaving his body without guidance. He felt numb, though something thrilled beneath the crystalline surface of his frozen brain. Still not believing that he would find the rock anything but impenetrable or that he could ignore its petrous imperative, he stepped forward. He did not know what to expect when his hand, holding Tappy's, went into the rock.
He found a soft resistance which forced him to lean against it, and then he was in darkness. He was unable to breathe; his nostrils were covered with a semi-liquid stuff. Silicon had become silicone.
Her hand pulled on his, and, holding his breath and hoping that he would not have to do it for long, he went two more steps. Air flowed around him. Light touched his shut eyelids. He opened them and breathed deeply.
He looked around. For a moment, he felt like a preliterate confronted with his first photograph. He could make no sense or order out of what he saw. It was all just a snarl of lines with no meaning. Tappy was the only thing not unchaotic. She was standing facing the sun, her blue-gray eyes open, her head tilted back as if bathing in the light. She looked happy.
Then the landscape seemed to shift and to fall into an arrangement which was, if not familiar, at least Terrestrial enough to be reassuring. The boulder from which they had emerged was about six feet higher than the one they had gone into. The other side had been pinkish-gray granite. This looked like black basalt. It was near a shallow creek about two hundred feet broad at this point, and it was in a valley extending for half a mile on both sides.