I want to say something to make this all right, but I can't think of anything.
"Hm" is all she says in response to my not knowing about her book.
A couple of seconds later the dog's ears prick up, and he acts as though something's about to happen. Then, two or three minutes after that, I hear the sound of Burlem's key in the lock and feel the blast of cold air as the front door opens and closes again.
The dog knew, I think. The dog knew that Burlem was almost back.
How does that work?
For the first time since all this happened, I feel my understanding of the world start to shift, as if it's only now—now that I know this is all true—that I can allow myself to start answering all the questions I have: to start adding up all the pieces of information and all my experiences. The dog knows, I realize, because we all potentially know everything about what other people are thinking and doing. We all potentially have access to one another's thoughts. I wonder properly where the Troposphere is, and what it is, now that I'm convinced it isn't just a figment of my imagination. Is it hovering less than a particle away from us, perhaps in another dimension to which we have access only some of the time? Or does it work in another way entirely? But I am suddenly sure that the moment when you catch someone's eye, or the moment you think someone's looking at you, or the moment when you think of someone and then they ring, or the moment when you start getting lost in a building you know so well because most other people in it are lost—these aren't accidents. They relate in some way to the structure of the physical world, to the fact that all our minds are as connected as everything else.
I wonder what Lura's book is about? I was lying, of course, when I said I knew nothing about it. It was sitting there in the back of Burlem's mind the whole time I was with him. Lura's Book. Lura's Book. It's important, but she hasn't taken this opportunity to tell me anything about it. I wonder what would make her trust me.
We eat vegetable curry and rice at the table with a bottle of white wine from the fridge. Planck goes back into his basket and falls asleep as we all start questioning one another on the Troposphere, and what my experiences in it could possibly mean.
"I'm intrigued by this god, Apollo Smintheus," Burlem says.
"Yeah," I say. "I thought I was going mad."
"Maybe you were," he says. "I never met any gods in the Troposphere. In fact, I've never met any other beings in the Troposphere. I didn't think it was possible."
We talk about Apollo Smintheus some more and all the questions of religion I was thinking about earlier today. It seems that neither Burlem nor Lura has thought about the Troposphere in a religious context, apart from noting the detail about the interference caused by churches. Lura seems vaguely—but only vaguely—impressed by my feminist analysis of all major religions, but Burlem seems uncertain about me lumping Buddhism in with everything else.
"Zen," he says gruffly. "Zen's different. And the Tao."
And I remember his desire for the void, tempered by his need to lose desire altogether. And that makes me think of Adam and what happened to him. I hardly know Adam, but I miss him more than I thought possible.
"We've all got our own ways of aiming for enlightenment," Lura says. "I'm writing the book, but he's meditating all the time, trying to see outside everything we already know. There's still so much..." But she doesn't finish the sentence. Instead, she yawns. "Oh. What a day."
Our conversation has meandered around so much. We've discussed Pedesis, and the possibility of time travel using people's ancestors, and Burlem has confirmed that the milky images you get in the console when you're in someone else's mind relate to all their living ancestors: That's why the mice had hundreds and he only had one (his mother). The way you can most effectively go back in time is to use living ancestors until they run out (presumably, for example, Burlem's mother has none, so, if you got to her, you'd have to jump into another person rather than pick another image from the console, and then go back as far as possible using that person's ancestors). We discussed this point for some time, as I couldn't quite see how you'd ever get beyond people who are living now. But then Lura reminded me that distance is time in the Troposphere, and that by jumping across the world using ancestors, you also go back in time, sometimes by years rather than months. When I jumped from Molly to Burlem, I was jumping from Hertfordshire to Devon, and that's what got me back to before Christmas. If Burlem had been in Scotland, I may have ended up in August or September; if he'd been in Australia, I may have gone back three or four years. If you're lucky (or if your journey is well planned), you'll eventually find living ancestors who were dead when your journey started, and each time you jump, you'll go farther back in time. It sounded like a slow process, but Burlem reminded me that the jumps themselves are very quick. He also pointed out that this is obviously what Mr. Y was doing when he died. Mr. Y is a fictional character, but Lumas isn't. Burlem made it clear that this was also how Lumas must have died, and everyone else who was "cursed" by the book. Pedesis is dangerous, just as I discovered when I did it to get to Burlem.
I've also learned that Burlem's Troposphere is indeed the Victorian city he was thinking about when I was in his mind. Lura gets a little cagey when we start comparing our personal Tropospheres. When I ask her how she experienced it, she tucks her hair behind her ear and says, simply, "Oh, a scientific matrix kind of thing. Not something anyone else could visualize, really." And then she gives Burlem a meaningful look.
"We'd better all go to bed soon," he says. "We can pick this up in the morning. There's still so much to talk about. And Lura, why don't you make use of Ariel. She may be able to help you in some way. She's better with science than I am."
"I'm really not," I say.
And Lura looks at me for a second as though she's sizing me up, and then her eyes drop as I clearly fail. Whatever Burlem thinks, we're not just going to settle down together cozily to work out a theory of the Troposphere, or whatever. Not unless I can convince her to stop disliking me.
All night I dream of Adam. In my dream he's telling me that he loves me; that he will never leave me. Dreams are so cruel sometimes. I'm never going to have that life. In fact, these shreds of life that I'm left with—I'm not sure they add up to anything very much.
Chapter Twenty-four
Saturday and Sunday pass by in the same sort of way, with haphazard discussions and my growing sense that there's a lot I don't know, and that Burlem and Lura are trying to work out when to tell me something. We punctuate each day with tea, coffee, and sandwiches, as if our lives are just one long conference. Each evening we all go into the church across the street before having our last cup of tea before bed. I get the impression that Burlem and Lura discuss me when I'm not there, and that Burlem's still trying to persuade her to trust me. They are obviously still jumpy about me being here and pretty much put me under house arrest, apart from the visits to the church. Burlem tries to explain to me about his meditation and Lura mainly avoids me. In the evenings I sit up with Burlem and try not to flirt with him. I'm not sure what is going on with the two of them, but I don't want to get in the middle of it. Every so often the phone goes, but Lura always lets the machine get it. I have the impression that they have a friend whom they've only recently fallen out with, but I don't get any more details than that.