"I'm trying."
"Not hard enough," came the reply.
She paused a moment before daring the next question.
"I'm dead, aren't I?" she said.
"Dead? No."
"No?"
"The Nuncio preserved you. You're alive and kicking, but your body's still back at the Mission. I want it here. We've got business to do."
The good news, that she was still alive, albeit separated flesh from spirit, fuelled her. She thought hard of the body she'd almost lost, the body she'd grown into over a period of thirty-two years. It was by no means perfect, but at least it was all hers. No silicone; no nips and tucks. She liked her hands and her fine-boned wrists, her squinty breasts with the left nipple twice the size of the right, her cunt, her ass. Most of all she liked her face, with its quirks and laugh-lines.
To imagine it was the trick. To picture its essentials, and so bring it into this other place where her spirit had come. The old man was aiding her in the process, she guessed. His gaze, though still on the door, was directed inward. The sinews of his neck stood out like harp strings; his lipless mouth twitched.
His energies helped. She felt herself losing her lightness, becoming substantial here, like a soup thickening in the heat of her imagining. There was a moment of doubt, when she almost regretted losing the ease of being thought, but then she remembered her face smiling back at her when she stepped from the shower in the morning. It was a fine feeling, maturing in that flesh, learning to enjoy it for its own sake. The simple pleasure of a good belch, or better yet a solid fart: the kind that had Butch blaming himself. Teaching her tongue to distinguish between vodkas; her eyes to appreciate Matisse. There were more gains than losses in bringing her body to her mind.
"Almost," she heard him say.
"I feel it."
"A little more. Conjure."
She looked down at the ground, aware that she had the freedom to do so. Her feet were there, standing on the threshold, naked. So, solidifying in front of her eyes, was the rest of her body. She was stark naked.
"Now..." said the man at the fire. "Close the door."
She turned and did so, her nakedness embarrassing her not at all, particularly after the effort she'd used bringing her body here. She worked out at the gym three times a week. She knew her belly was trim and her ass tight. Besides, her host was unconcerned, both with his own nudity and, it seemed, with giving her more than a cursory glance. If there'd ever been lechery in those eyes it had long ago dried up.
"So," he said. "I'm Kissoon. You're Tesla. Sit. Talk with me."
"I've got a lot of questions," she told him.
"I'd be surprised if you hadn't."
"I can ask?"
"Ask. But first, sit."
She squatted down on the opposite side of the fire to him. The floor was warm; the air too. Within thirty seconds her pores had begun to ooze. It was pleasant.
"First—" she said "—how did I get here? And where am I?"
"New Mexico is where you are," Kissoon replied. "And the how of it? Well, that's a more difficult question, but what it comes down to is this: I've been watching you—you and several others—waiting for a chance to bring someone here. Your near-death, and the Nuncio, helped erode your resistance to the journey. Indeed you had little choice."
"How much do you know about what's happening in the Grove?" she asked him.
He made dry sounds with his mouth, as though trying to summon saliva. When he finally replied it was with a weary tone.
"Oh God in Heaven, too much," he said, "I know too much."
"The Art, Quiddity...all that?"
"Yes," he said, with the same dispirited air. "All that. It was me began it, fool that I am. The creature you know as the Jaff once sat where you're sitting now. He was just a man then. Randolph Jaffe, impressive in his way—he had to have been to have got here in the first place—but still just a man."
"Did he come the way I came?" she asked. "I mean, was he near death?"
"No. He just had a greater hunger for the Art than most who went after it. He wasn't put off by the smoke screens, and the shams, and all the tricks that throw most people off the scent. He kept looking, until he found me."
Kissoon regarded Tesla with eyes narrowed, as if he might sharpen his sight that way, and get inside her skull.
"What to tell," he said. "Always the same problem: what to tell."
"You sound like Grillo," she remarked. "Have you spied on him?"
"Once or twice, when he crossed the path," Kissoon said. "But he's not important. You are. You're very important."
"How do you figure that?"
"You're here, for one. Nobody's been here since Randolph, and look what consequences that brought. This is no normal place, Tesla. I'm sure you've already guessed that. This is a Loop—a time out of time—which I made for myself"
"Out of time?" she said. "I don't understand."
"Where to begin," he said. "That's the other question, isn't it? First, what to tell. Then, where to begin...Well. You know about the Art. About Quiddity. Do you also know about the Shoal?"
She shook her head.
"It is, or was, one of the oldest orders in world religion. A tiny sect—seventeen of us at any one time—who had one dogma, the Art, one heaven, Quiddity, and one purpose, to keep both pure. This is its sign," he said, picking a small object up from the ground in front of him and tossing it across to her. At first glance she thought it was a crucifix. It was a cross, and at its center was a man, spreadeagled. But a closer perusal gave the lie to that. On each of the four arms of the symbol other forms were inscribed, which seemed to be corruptions of, or developments from, the central figure.
"You believe me?" he said.
"I believe you."
She threw the symbol back over to his side of the fire.
"Quiddity must be preserved, at any cost. No doubt you understood this from Fletcher?"
"He said that, yes. Was he one of the Shoal?"
Kissoon looked disdainful. "No, he'd never have made the grade. He was just an employee. The Jaff hired him to provide a chemical ride: a short-cut to the Art, and Quiddity."
"That was the Nuncio?"
"It was."
"Did it do the job?"
"It might have done, if Fletcher hadn't been touched with it himself."
"That was why they fought," she said.
"Yes," Kissoon replied. "Of course. But you know this. Fletcher must have told you."
"We didn't have much time. He explained bits and pieces. A lot of it was vague."
"He was no genius. Finding the Nuncio was more luck than talent."
"You met him?"
"I told you, nobody's been here since Jaffe. I'm alone."
"No you're not," Tesla said. "There was somebody outside—"
"The Lix, you mean? The serpent that opened the door? Just a little creation of mine. A doodle. Though I have enjoyed breeding them..."
"No. Not that," she said. "There was a woman, in the desert. I saw her."
"Oh really?" Kissoon said, a subtle shadow seeming to cross his face. "A woman?" He made a little smile. "Well, forgive me," he said. "I do dream still, once in a while. And there was a time when I could conjure whatever I desired by dreaming it. She was naked?"
"I don't think so."
"Beautiful?"
"I didn't get that close."
"Oh. A pity. But best for you. You're vulnerable here and I wouldn't want you hurt by a possessive mistress." His voice had lightened, become almost artificially casual.
"If you see her again, keep your distance," he advised. "On no account approach her."
"I won't."
"I hope she finds her way here. Not that I could do much now. The carcass..." He looked down at his withered body, "...has seen better days. But I could look. I like to look. Even at you, if you don't mind me saying."