He'd felt like a stunned fish when he'd walked in earlier and found the panels open with Amurri standing before it. He'd been about to shout for Jensen when he noticed that Amurri made no attempt to hide what he was doing. His lack of furtiveness had allayed Luther's suspicions. And his open curiosity about the meaning of the lights on the globe had seemed genuine.
Obviously he had no idea of the apocalyptic significance of what he'd seen.
Luther's thoughts slipped back to that late winter day in college when he first saw the globe. It had existed only in his mind then. He'd been a frosh, away from his strict Scottish-American home for the first time in his eighteen years, and making the most of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the early seventies. He was into his first tab of acid, with a couple of more experienced guys guiding him through the trip, when the globe had appeared, suspended and spinning in the center of the room. He remembered pointing it out to the others but he was the only one who could see it.
Not a Rand McNally globe, but a battered, pockmarked sphere with brown, polluted oceans ancl bilious chemical clouds shrouding the land. As he'd watched, red dots began to glow on all the continents and oceans, and then glowing red lines arced out from each to connect with the others, creating a globe-spanning network of scarlet threads. And then black circles appeared at some of the intersections of those threads. Soon after, the black circles began glowing white, one by one, and when all were lit, the globe glowed red, then white hot. Finally it exploded, but the scattered pieces returned and reformed into a new world of fertile green continents and pristine blue oceans.
The vision altered the course of Luther's life. Not immediately, not that night, but in the weeks and months afterward as it returned on a nightly basis, with or without chemical enhancement.
At first he was uneasy, thinking it was a recurring flashback and that he'd really screwed up his head. But after a while he got used to it. It became part of his quotidian existence.
But he was terrified when he first heard the voice. Never during his waking hours, only in his sleep, only during the vision. He began to think he might be schizophrenic.
At first it was an indistinct muttering—definitely a voice, but he couldn't understand a word. Gradually it grew louder, the mutterings progressing to distinguishable speech. But although he understood the individual words, they seemed disjointed and he could make no sense of them.
That too changed and by his senior year he came to understand that this world, the ground on which he stood, was destined to change and merge with a sister world in another space-time continuum. Those here who helped speed the fusion would survive the transition from a polluted planet to paradise; the rest of humanity would not. The voice told him to find the places designated by the white lights, to buy the land there, and wait.
Buy up pieces of land? He was a college student, virtually penniless. The voice didn't say how, but it implied that his future well-being depended on it.
And then, shortly after graduation, the book arrived. He found it on his bed in the apartment he was renting. No mailer, no note saying who it was from… just this weird, thick book. It looked ancient, but its title was in English: The Compendium ofSrem. The text was in English as well. He began reading.
The voice stopped with the arrival of the book. Reading it changed his life.
Toward the end of all the strange and wondrous legends the Compendium recounted, he found an animated drawing of his vision globe. The text following the illustration explained Opus Omega.
And then he understood the dream and what he must do with his life.
So Luther went hunting for the locations. By then he had seen the globe so many times he could picture every detail in his mind. He found those places—some of them at least—and when he looked up the deed holders he discovered a startling trend: Many of the parcels were owned by a man named Cooper Blascoe.
A little more research revealed that Blascoe was the leader of a com-mune in northern California. Luther went out to check on him and what he found, what he learned there, changed his life forever.
For he realized then that the vision and the voice had come from the Hokano world. Cooper Blascoe had stumbled on a cosmic truth; he would provide the means for Luther to fulfill the prophecy of the voice.
Yes, the Hokano world was real, and maybe xeltons were too—who could say for sure?—but the Fusion concept and the ladder to achieve it were all products of Brady's imagination, all designed to aid him in completing Opus Omega.
And now, after decades of struggle, only a few more tasks remained before completion.
Luther stepped closer to the spinning globe and reached out to it. As the ridges of its mountains and flats of its plains and oceans brushed against his fingertips, he closed his eyes. Just a few more locations and his work would be done.
But the final steps were proving difficult. Some of the needed land was terribly expensive, some simply not for sale. But Luther was sure he could overcome all obstacles. All he needed was money.
It always seemed to come down to the same thing: never enough money.
But perhaps Jason Amurri could remedy that, at least in part.
And then the final white bulbs could be lit… and the Great Fusion—the only real fusion in the tapestry of lies he'd created—would begin, joining this world with Hokano.
And in that new, better world, Luther Brady would be rewarded above all others.
5
Gia felt moisture between her legs. She hurried to the bathroom and groaned with dismay when she saw the bright red blood on the pad she'd been wearing.
Bleeding again.
She calmed herself. It wasn't much and Dr. Eagleton had warned her to expect some intermittent spotting for a few days afterward. But this was a little more than spotting.
She'd been tired all morning but noticed an uptick in her ambition level. She'd been planning on trying some painting, but now…
The good news was she wasn't having any pain. Monday night she'd felt as if someone had kicked her in the stomach. Not even a cramp now.
She'd watch and wait. She didn't want to be an alarmist, jumping on the phone for every little thing.
She'd take it slow and easy. Put her feet up and put off painting till tomorrow or the next day. Another thing she'd put off was telling Jack. He'd have a squad of EMTs here in seconds.
She had to smile at the thought of him. He was so confident and competent in so many areas of life, but where this baby was concerned, he was as jumpy as a cat. He cared so much.
Now, if he'd just find a lifestyle that wouldn't cause Gia to wonder every time he walked out the door whether this might be the last time she'd see him alive, he'd make a great father.
6
Dressed in street clothes, Sister Maggie stepped into the dimness of Julio's. Jack had said he wanted to meet with her and she felt this Upper West Side bar would be the least likely place she'd be seen by a Lower East Side parishioner.
She spotted Jack waiting at the same table against the wall and rushed over to him.
"It's true?" she said, clutching the edge of the table in a death grip. "What you said on the phone—they're gone?"
Jack nodded. "Your worries are over. I wiped out his files."
Maggie felt her knees weaken. Blood thundered in her ears as she sagged into a chair.
"You're sure? Absolutely sure?"
"Nothing's absolute, but I'm as sure as I can be without strapping him to a chair and taping live wires to delicate parts of his anatomy."
"That's… that's wonderful. Not what you just said," she added quickly. "What you said before."
Jack laughed. "I gotcha."
She didn't know how to ask this, and felt her face turning crimson. Finally she blurted it out.