We live in a well of time, William told her. Call up your most primitive memory, a cradle memory, something from your childhood. Now think of all the hours that have passed since then, all the ticks of all the clocks in all those years. An ocean of time. Double that amount, he said, and double it again, and multiply it by a hundred and a hundred more, and still, Miriam, still you haven’t scratched the surface of the past. Multiply it by a number so large the zeroes would run off a page and you might reach as far back as the Jurassic or the Precambrian, when the Earth was a planet inhabited by monsters; but only an eyeblink in its history. Multiply again and again and eventually you reach the dawn of life, and again, the planet’s molten origins, again and again, the formation of the sun. And multiply again: the elements that would form the sun and all its planets are forged in the unimaginable furnace of a supernova. And still you haven’t removed more than a grain of sand from Time Itself.
“Lonesome,” Miriam whispered.
And space, William said, was a mystery, infinite but bounded. The galaxy was a mote among billions of galaxies; the sun, a star among billions of stars; this moment, the axis of a wheel as big as the sky.…
“It’s too much. William! How can you stand it?” Her voice was faint and sad. “So lonesome,” she repeated.
But out of all that blind tangle of particles and forces had come life itself. It was a miracle that impressed even the Travellers. Consciousness unfolding from a cocoon of stars and time. Pearls of awareness growing in the dark. “Miriam, how can it be lonely?” He couldn’t disguise the awe in his voice. “We were implicit in the universe from the moment it began. We’re the product of natural law. Every pondering creature in the deeps of the sky. We’re the universe gazing back at itself. That’s the mystery and the consolation. Every one of us is an eye of God.”
She woke three hours after midnight, turned in her bed, and saw William in his sleeping bag with his arms cradled behind his head and his eyes still open in the faint light.
The curse of age was the elusiveness of sleep. An older person, Miriam thought, gets too familiar with the dim hours of the night. But William, the boy-man, was also awake.
Both of us restless, Miriam thought. The aged and the ageless.
“William” she whispered.
He was silent but seemed attentive.
“There is something I wonder about,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about us. Us on this trip. And those in Ohio or other parts of the world—who said no. Who didn’t want that immortality. That… Greater World. Do you think about it?”
His voice small in the darkness: “Yes.”
“Do you think about why?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why some of us chose to stay in our mortal bodies?” Nod.
“William, is there an answer to the question?”
“Lots of answers.” He paused as if to assemble his words. “As many answers as there are people. Sometimes it was religious faith. Though not as often as you might think. People say they believe this or that. But on the deepest level, where the Travellers spoke, words are only words. People call themselves Christians or Moslems, but only a vanishing few held those beliefs so deeply that they turned down immortality.”
“Am I one of those?”
He nodded again.
At least, Miriam thought, I used to be. “And the others?”
“Some are so independent they don’t mind dying for it.” Tom Kindle, she thought.
“And some people want to die. They might not admit it, they might even fear it, but in the deepest part of themselves they long for it.”
Who was that, Miriam wondered. Bob Ganish, the fat used-car dealer? Maybe. Paul Jacopetti, the retired tool-and-die maker? Scared of death but secretly wanting it? Perhaps.
“Some are convinced they don’t deserve immortality. The belief in their own shamefulness has gnawed down to the bone.”
Joey, Miriam thought.
“Or some combination of these.”
Beth.
“Perhaps,” Miriam said, thinking of Colonel Tyler, whom she had distrusted from the day she set eyes on him, “perhaps some of them are simply evil.”
“Perhaps,” William agreed. “But some evil people laid down that part of themselves as gratefully as they might have given up a tumor. Others didn’t. Others… Miriam, this is hard to accept, but some people are born so hollow at the heart of themselves that there’s nothing there to say yes or no. They invent themselves out of whatever scrap comes to hand. But at the center—they’re empty.”
“Colonel Tyler,” Miriam said.
William was silent.
But she recognized the description at once. John Tyler, hollow to the core; she could practically hear the wind whistle in his bones.
“But there are people like Dr. Wheeler—or that Abby Cushman. They don’t seem exceptional.”
The prairie wind rattled a window. William hesitated a long while.
Then he said, “Miriam, did you ever read Yeats?”
“Who is Yates?”
“A poet.”
She had never read any poetry but the Psalms, and she told him so.
“Yeats wrote a line,” William said, “which always stuck in my memory. Man is in love, he said, and loves what vanishes. I don’t think it’s true—not the way the poet meant it. Not of most people. But it may have been true of Yeats. And I think it’s true of a certain few others. Some few people are in love with what dies, Miriam, and they love it so much they can’t bear to leave it behind.”
What a difficult kind of love that must be, Miriam thought.
By some miracle of Traveller intervention, there was water pressure in the restrooms of the truckstop restaurant. A pleasure—Miriam despised chemical toilets.
At dawn, the new Artifact a crescent of pearl and pink on the horizon, Miriam hurried from her camper into the cold green-tiled ladies’ room with the Bible clasped in her hand.
She opened it at random and began to read.
Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Matthew 28:20.
There was blood in the toilet again this morning. I am dying, Miriam thought.
Chapter 30
Fireworks
Matt woke to a knock at the door of his camper: Tom Kindle in ancient jeans, a cotton shirt, high-top sneakers, and a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap. He was carrying a rifle.
“Looks like you’re loaded for bear.”
“Rifle’s for you,” Kindle said. “Kind of a gift.”
“Don’t you need it?”
“I can pick up a fresh one plus ammunition in Laramie. Matthew, you might not like it, but you’re on some dangerous turf these days. You’re liable to need this.”
Matt took the rifle in his hands. He didn’t come from a hunting family, and he’d never done military duty. It was the first time he’d held a rifle. It was heavier than it looked. Old. The stock was burnished where it had been handled over the years. The metal parts had been recently oiled.
He didn’t like the sad weight of it, any more than he liked the sad weight of Kindle’s leaving.
He gave it back. “Not my kind of weapon.”
“Matthew—”
“I mean it.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Don’t be stubborn.”
“Shit,” Kindle said, but he took back the rifle in his left hand and looked more comfortable with it there. “Talked to Abby yet?”
“I’m about to. Not looking forward to it.”
“You could change your mind.” Kindle shrugged. “I doubt it.” He put out his hand; Matt shook it. “Take care of yourself, old man.”