As Father Bill nodded, Nick felt a cold weight settle between his shoulder blades. He gestured toward the hole.
"Come on, now. Bottomless? You can't really believe that."
"I never believed the sun would be rising progressively later each day in mid-spring either. Did you?"
"No, but…"
Bottomless? That was patently impossible. Everything had a top and a bottom, a beginning and an end. That was the way things were. It couldn't be any other way.
Someone tapped him on his shoulder. He turned and found one of the grad students.
"We're ready to shoot."
"Great." He turned to Father Bill. "The laser's set. Wait here. In a few minutes we'll have a reading from the bottom—wherever it is."
Bill watched a moment as Nick hurried away toward some odd-looking contraption suspended on a boom over the hole. He was proud of him. He'd come a long way from the bratty little nine-year-old orphan he'd played chess with back in his early days at St. Francis Home for Boys. He was mature and self-assured—at least in the field of physics. He wondered how he was faring socially. Bill knew Nick was more than a little self-conscious about his appearance—the misshapen skull from when he was abused as an infant, the old acne scars. But a lot of worse-looking men had found the girl of their dreams and lived happily ever after. He hoped that would happen for Nick soon.
He turned back to the hole and stared into its black depths.
What was that Nietzsche quote? If thou gaze into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. That was how he now felt as he looked downward, as if he were gazing inward at his own reclusive darkness. The abyss expanded before him, beckoning. What mysteries, what horrors were sequestered in those misty, chaotic depths? For an instant he was gripped by a mad impulse to step off the edge and let himself fall. If it was truly bottomless as Glaeken had said, he would keep falling. And falling. Imagine the vistas, the wonders he'd see. What would he find? Himself? An endless voyage of self-discovery. How wonderful. How could anyone resist? How on earth could anyone with an iota of character refuse? How—?
"Better be careful, Father."
The voice jolted him out of the reverie. To his horror he found himself sitting astride the platform railing, readying to swing his other leg over. The depths loomed below. With a convulsive lunge, he hurled himself back onto the platform and squatted there panting, sweating, and shaking. He looked up and saw one of the city workers standing nearby, looking down at him.
"You okay, Father?"
"I will be in a minute."
"Hey, I din't mean t' scare ya, but I mean we built that railing as sturdy as we could, but it ain't gonna hold a guy your size, know what I mean?"
Bill nodded as he rose shakily to his feet.
"I realize that. Thanks for the warning." Thanks more than you know.
The workman waved and ambled off, leaving Bill alone on the platform. He pulled himself together and moved away from the edge.
What had happened a moment ago? What had he been doing sitting on that railing? Had he actually been readying to jump? What could he have been thinking?
Or had he been thinking at all? More like reacting—but to what? To the abyss?
Bill shuddered. Maybe coming down here hadn't been such a good idea. He'd seen the hole up close. He could watch further developments from Glaeken's window or on the tube. He looked around for Nick and saw him walking his way. His expression was troubled.
"What's wrong, Nick?"
" 'Technical difficulties,' as they say on TV. We'll have it straightened out in a few minutes."
Bill watched Nick's face closely. His upper lip was beaded with perspiration.
"You didn't get the reading you expected, did you."
"We didn't get any reading. A glitch in the receiver, that's all."
Bill allowed himself a quick shot of relief. He wanted very much for Nick to find the bottom of that hole. He wanted Glaeken to be wrong, just once. Not out of animosity or envy, but because Glaeken had been right about everything so far, and everything he was predicting was bad. Bill felt he'd be able to rest a little better at night if just once Glaeken was proven wrong.
And then a thought struck him like an icy wind, carrying off any sense of relief.
"Wait a minute, Nick. You said you didn't receive any signal. Isn't that what would happen if the hole was bottomless?"
"It's not bottomless, Fa—"
"Isn't that what would happen?"
"Well…yes. But that's not the only reason. There are scores of reasons why we wouldn't get a signal back."
"But one of them is that the beam didn't find anything to bounce off, and so therefore it never came back. Am I right?"
Nick sighed. "You're right." Suddenly he sounded tired. "But the hole's not bottomless. It can't be. Nothing's bottomless."
One of the grad students rushed up to Nick with a green-striped printout. Bill could tell from Nick's expression that he didn't like what he saw there. He handed the slip back to the student.
"Do it again. And do it right."
"But we are," the student said, looking offended. "Everything checks out a hundred percent. The beam and the receiver are working perfectly."
Nick tapped the printout. "Obviously not."
"Maybe something down there's absorbing the beam."
"Absorbing the beam," Nick said slowly. He seemed to like the idea. "Let's look into that." He turned to Bill. "I'm going to be tied up for awhile, Father, but hang around. We'll crack this yet." He winked and walked away.
Bill headed back to the apartment in mid-afternoon to grab a bite and make a pit stop before Nick started his descent.
He had to hand it to Nick—he was as inventive as he was stubborn. He wouldn't admit defeat. When Nick had heard there was a working diving bell on display down at South Street Seaport, he made a few calls and arranged to rent it. His plan was to get in that thing and ride it as far down into the hole as the cable would allow, then take another laser reading from down there. Bill wanted to be back in time to see him off.
He had to fight through the crowd on Central Park West. The area around the lower end of the park had become an impromptu street festival. Well, why not? The sun was out and the area was jammed with curious people. Anyone with anything to sell, from hot dogs to shishkebab, to balloons, to knock-off Rolexes was there. The air was redolent of a variety of ethnic foods wide enough to shame the U.N. cafeteria. He spotted someone hawking "I saw the Central Park Hole" tee-shirts, still wet from the silk screener.
In the apartment he found Glaeken, as expected, at the picture window.
"What have they decided down there?" the old man said without turning.
"They've decided that due to various technical glitches they can't figure out how deep it is at this time."
Even at noon, with the sun shining directly into the hole, they hadn't been able to see the bottom. The blackness had been driven further down, but it was still there, obscuring the bottom.
Now Glaeken turned. His smile was rueful.
"They've constructed these fabulous instruments for exact measurements, yet they refuse to believe the data they're receiving. Amazing how the mind resists the truth when the truth conflicts with preconceptions."
"I can't really blame them. It's not easy to accept the impossible."
"I suppose. But impossible is a useless word now." He turned back to the window. "What's that they're rigging up?"
"A derrick. Nick going down into the hole to—"