But now something began to scratch at the wall from the other side. She heard it humming to itself as it worked, like a lover digging at the stone of her cell, determined to reach her. She listened, and waited, no longer quite so forgetful, nor so indifferent to escape.. Her name came back to her first, heard in the hum from outside. Then a memory of the pain the bullet had brought with it, and the grinning face of Tommy-Ray, and Raul, and the Mission, and—
Nuncio.
That was the power she'd come looking for, and now in its turn it was looking for her, eroding the walls of limbo. Her exchanges with Fletcher about its transforming talents had been all too brief, but she understood its basic function well enough. It ran with whatever baton it was passed; a race against entropy towards some conclusion not even its client/victim could guess, much less its subject. Was she ready for such a proving touch? It had made a swollen evil of Jaffe, and a bewildered saint of Fletcher. What might it make of her?
At the last possible moment Raul doubted the wisdom of this medicine, and reached to take Tesla out of the way of the Nuncio's touch, but it was already leaping from the shattered vial towards her face. She inhaled it like a liquid breath. Around her head the other drops flew towards her scalp and neck.
She gasped, her whole body responding with tremors to the entry of the messenger. Then, just as suddenly, every jitter in her joints and nerves ceased.
Raul murmured:
"Don't die. Don't die."
He was about to put his mouth to hers in one last snatch at preserving her when he saw the motion behind her closed lids. Her eyes were roving back and forth wildly, scanning some sight only she could see.
"Alive..."he murmured.
Behind him, the women—who'd witnessed this entire scene without comprehending any of it—began to pray and wail, either out of gratitude or of fear of what they'd seen. He didn't know. But he added his own muttered prayers, no more certain of his reasons than of theirs.
The walls went suddenly. Like a dam first breached in a tiny place, then broken from side to side by the flood behind it. She had expected the world she'd left to be waiting when the walls were rubble. She was wrong. There was no sign of the Mission, nor of Raul. Instead there was laid before her a desert lit by a sun which had yet to reach its full ferocity, and crossed by a gusting wind which picked her up the instant the walls fell, and carried her over the ground. Her velocity was terrifying, but she had no way to slow herself, or indeed change direction, because she possessed neither limbs nor body. She was thought here; pure, in a pure place.
Then, ahead, a sight that gave the lie to that. There was sign of human occupancy on the horizon; a town set in the middle of this nowhere. Her speed didn't slow as she approached. This, apparently, was not her destination, if indeed she had one. It occurred to her that perhaps she could simply travel and travel. That this state of being was simply one of motion; a journey without purpose or conclusion. She had time, as she passed through the Main Street, to register that though the town was solidly constructed stores and houses arrayed to either side—it was also completely characterless. That is, unpeopled, and unparticularized. There were no signs on the stores or at the cross-streets; no mark of human presence whatsoever. Even as she registered this weirdness she was at the other side of the town, and once more speeding over sun-scorched ground. The sight of the town, however brief, had given weight to her suspicion that she was utterly alone here. Not only was her journey to be endless, but unaccompanied too. This was Hell, she thought; or a good working definition of same.
She began to wonder how long it would be before her mind took refuge from this horror in insanity. A day? A week? Were there even such distinctions here? Did the sun set, and rise again? She strained to turn her sight skyward, but the sun was behind her, and having no body she neither threw a shadow by which to read its position nor possessed the power to turn and see it for herself.
There was something else to see, however, more curious than the town: a single tower or pylon, built of steel, standing in the middle of the desert, with wires tethering it as though it might at any moment float away. Again she was at it and past in seconds. Again, it gave her no comfort. But once beyond it a new sensation crept over her: that she, and the clouds and the sand beneath her were all fleeing from something. Had some entity been lurking in that blank town, just out of sight, and now, aroused by a human presence here, was coming after her? She couldn't turn, she couldn't hear, she couldn't even feel its footsteps in the earth as it approached. But it would come. If not now, then soon. It was relentless, inevitable. And the first moment she saw it would be her last.
Then, refuge! A fair distance away yet, but growing in size as she speeded towards it, what appeared to be a small stone hut, its walls painted white. Her sickening pace slowed. The ride apparently had a destination after alclass="underline" this hovel.
Her sight was fixed upon the place, looking for signs of occupancy, but her peripheral vision nevertheless caught sight of a movement way off to the right of the hut. Though slowing, her speed was still considerable, and her inability to scan the scene prevented her catching more than a glimpse of the figure. But it was human; female; clothed in rags: that much she did grasp. Even if the hut turned out to be as empty as the town, she had the comfort—albeit slight—that some other soul wandered these wastes. She looked hard for the woman again, but she'd come and gone. And there was more urgent business: the fact that the hut was almost upon her, or her upon it, and her speed was still sufficient to demolish hovel and visitor on impact. She readied herself, reflecting that a death by dashing would be preferable to the unending journey she'd feared.
And then, she was at a dead stop; and at the door. From two hundred miles an hour to zero in half a heartbeat.
The door was closed, but she sensed something over her shoulder (bodiless though she was, it was impossible not to think of over and behind) which reached into her field of vision. It was serpentine, the thickness of her wrist, and so dark that even in bright sunlight she could make out no detail of its anatomy. It had no patterning; no head; no eyes; no mouth; no digits. It had strength however. Enough to push the door open. Then it withdrew, leaving her undecided as to whether she'd seen the whole beast, or merely one of its limbs.
The hut was not large; one glance and she'd taken it in. The walls unadorned stone, the floor bare earth. There was no bed, nor any furniture. Only a small fire, burning in the middle of the floor, its smoke given an escape route through a hole in the middle of the roof but instead choosing to stay and dirty the air between her and the hut's sole occupant.
He looked as old as the stone of this hovel's walls, naked and grimy, his paper skin stretched to splitting point over bird's bones. He'd singed off his beard patchily, leaving clumps of gray hairs in places. She wondered he had the wit to do that. The expression on his face suggested a mind in an advanced state of catatonia.
But no sooner had she entered than he looked up at her, seeing her despite the fact that she had no substance. He cleared his throat, splitting the phlegm into the fire.
"Close the door," he said.
"You can see me?" she replied. "And hear me?"
"Of course," he replied. "Now close the door."
"How do I do that?" she wanted to know. "I've got...no hands. Nothing."
"You can do it," he replied. "Just imagine yourself."
"Huh?"
"Oh for fuck's sake how difficult can it be? You've looked at yourself often enough. Picture what you look like. Make yourself real. Go on. Do it for me." His tone veered between that of bully and wheedler. "You have to close the door..."