Yet a part of him was in the golem, which was also exhilarating. He had constructed the creature bigger this time, made it a fierce and unstoppable killing machine, the better to terrorize the bigshot hero and his bitch. Its immense shoulders were his shoulders, too, and its powerful arms were his to use. Curling those arms, feeling the inhuman muscles flex and contract and flex, was so thrilling that he could barely contain his excitement over the hunt before him.
“… sixteen… seventeen… eighteen…”
He had made this giant from dirt and clay and sand, given its body the appearance of flesh, and animated it — just as the first god had created Adam from lifeless mud. Although his destiny was to be a more merciless divinity than any who had come before him, he could create as well as destroy; no one could say that he was less a god than others who had ruled, no one. No one.
Standing in the middle of Pacific Coast Highway, towering there, he gazed out upon the still and silent world, and was pleased with what he had wrought. This was his Greatest and Most Secret Power — the ability to stop everything as easily as a watchmaker could stop a ticking timepiece merely by opening the casing and applying the proper tool to the key point in the mechanism.
“… twenty-four… twenty-five…”
This power had arisen within him during one of his psychic growth surges when he was sixteen, though he had been eighteen before he had learned to use it well. That was to be expected. Jesus, too, had needed time to learn how to turn water into wine, how to multiply a few loaves and fishes to feed multitudes.
Will. The power of the will. That was the proper tool with which to remake reality. Before the beginning of time and the birth of this universe, there had been one will that had brought it all into existence, a consciousness that people called God, though God was no doubt utterly different from all the ways that humankind had pictured Him — perhaps only a child at play who, as a game, created galaxies like grains of sand. If the universe was a perpetual-motion machine created as an act of will, it also could be altered by sheer will, remade or destroyed. All that was needed to manipulate and edit the first god’s creation was power and understanding; both had been given to Bryan. The power of the atom was a dim light when compared to the blindingly brilliant power of the mind. By applying his will, by intently focusing thought and desire, he found that he could make fundamental changes in the very foundations of existence.
“… thirty-one… thirty-two… thirty-three…”
Because he was still earnestly Becoming and was not yet the new god, Bryan was able to sustain these changes only for short periods, usually no more than one hour of real time. Occasionally he grew impatient with his limits, but he was certain the day would arrive when he could alter current reality in ways that would be permanent if he so wished. In the meantime, as he continued to Become, he satisfied himself with amusing alterations that temporarily negated all the laws of physics and, at least for a short while, tailored reality to his desire.
Although it would appear to Lyon and Gulliver that time had ground to a halt, the truth was more complicated than that. By the application of his extraordinary will, almost like wishing before blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, he had re-conceived the nature of time. If it had been an ever-flowing river of dependable effect, he transformed it into a series of streams, large placid lakes, and geysers with a variety of effects. This world now lay in one of the lakes where time advanced at such an excruciatingly slow rate that it appeared to have stopped flowing — yet, also at his wish, he and the two cops interacted with this new reality much as they had with the old, experiencing only minor changes in most of the laws of matter, energy, motion, and force.
“… forty… forty-one…”
As if making a birthday wish, as if wishing on a star, as if wishing to a fairy godmother, wishing, wishing, wishing with all his considerable might, he had created the perfect playground for a spirited game of hide-and-seek. And so what if he had bent the universe to make a toy of it?
He was aware that he was two people of widely disparate natures. On the one hand he was a god Becoming, exalted, with incalculable authority and responsibility. On the other hand, he was a reckless and selfish child, cruel and prideful.
In that respect he fancied that he was like humankind itself — only more so.
“… forty-five…”
In fact, he believed he had been anointed precisely because of the kind of child he had been. Selfishness and pride were merely reflections of ego, and without a strong ego, no man could have the confidence to create. A certain amount of recklessness was required if one hoped to explore the limits of one’s creative powers; taking chances, without regard for consequences, could be liberating and a virtue. And, as he was to be the god who would chasten humankind for its pollution of the earth, cruelty was a requirement of Becoming. His ability to remain a child, to avoid spending his creative energy in the senseless breeding of more animals for the herd, made him the perfect candidate for divinity.
“… forty-nine… fifty!”
For a while he would keep his promise to hunt them down only with the aid of ordinary human senses. It would be fun. Challenging. And it would be good to experience the severe limitations of their existence, not in order to develop compassion for them — they did not deserve compassion — but to enjoy more fully, by comparison, his own extraordinary powers.
In the body of the hulking vagrant, Bryan moved from the street into the fabulous amusement park that was the dead-still, whisper-less town.
“Here I come,” he shouted, “ready or not.”
2
A dangling pinecone, like a Christmas ornament suspended by a thread from the bough above, had been arrested in mid-drop by the Pause. An orange-and-white cat had been stilled while leaping from a tree branch to the top of a stucco wall, airborne, forepaws reaching, back legs sprung out behind. A rigid, unchanging filigree of smoke curled from a fireplace chimney.
As she and Harry ran farther into the strange, unbeating heart of the paralyzed town, Connie did not believe that they would escape with their lives; nonetheless she frantically conceived and discarded numerous strategies to elude Ticktock for one hour. Under the hard shell of cynicism that she had nurtured so lovingly for so long, like every poor fool in the world, she evidently treasured the hope that she was different and would live forever.
She should have been embarrassed to find within herself such a stupid, animal faith in her own immortality. Instead, she embraced it. Hope could be a treacherous kind of confidence, but she couldn’t see how their predicament could be made worse by a little positive thinking.
In one night she had learned so many new things about herself. It would be a pity not to live long enough to build a better life on those discoveries.
For all of her fevered thinking, only pathetic strategies occurred to her. Without slowing, between increasingly ragged gasps for breath, she suggested they change streets often, turning this way and that, in the feeble hope that a twisting trail would somehow be harder to follow than one that was arrow-straight. And she guided them along a downhill route where possible because they could cover more ground in less time if they weren’t fighting a rising grade.
Around them, the inert residents of Laguna Beach were oblivious to the fact that they were running for their lives. And if she and Harry were caught, no screams would wake these enchanted sleepers or bring help.