The light was now a small, brightly gleaming band, a circle that resembled the olivine tiles but had neither substance nor size—it could be a wedding band or a galaxy. Lights glittered within; but they were not anonymous pinpoints, they were pulsing threads. They were visible but immaterial, undulating and entwining, and growing. Soon she saw other serpentine lights within the outer layer… and more within those.
In her mind, Caitlin wanted to panic. But it was only a thought; she didn’t seem able to act on it. She tried to look around for Jacob but she had no body to move and there was nothing to see, save the light and the seemingly infinite gleaming parts that comprised it.
Then the light went out. Simultaneously, in its place was a universe. Space, familiar in its parts but unfamiliar in its crisp definition—or composition. There were red stars within twisting galaxies, nebulae paler than she had ever seen yet no vast distances between them. They were like a drawing Jacob might have made, all the pieces densely arranged, arranged like graceful, overlapping lengths of string that had neither beginning nor end.
String, she thought. Superstring.
Caitlin did not know much about superstring theory, only that some physicists believed that strings were both the smallest and largest structures in existence, and that the small might well be one and the same with the large in some curved concept of time-space.
As she looked out, Caitlin wasn’t convinced this mightn’t be some form of temporary lunacy, or perhaps a delirium transpiring as she died in Galderkhaan. Not her life passing before her eyes but all life, everywhere, that ever was.
There were sounds created by the moving strings. Notes. They rose and fell, had depth and inflection, changed in time with the movement of the strings. It was almost like the Galderkhaani superlatives, arms moving to support speech. Caitlin did not understand, possibly because there was nothing to understand, only to experience.
Slowly—or swiftly, she couldn’t be sure of time—the strings tightened into a ball that compressed into a spot of light so brilliant that it almost seemed to balance the crushing darkness around it. That light that never quite surrendered its autonomy before erupting again in a flash of hot light.
A new universe is born, she thought as the strings enlarged and expanded outward and there were once again infinite lights within. And then the lights merged and glowed and burst and caused more small lights as well as dark clouds of early nebulae. The lights—the protostars—writhed around and among the gaseous expanses, burning and dying, exploding and being reborn…
Forming worlds. They moved around the stars so swiftly that they seemed to be circles, snakes chasing their own tails. Stars glowed and grew and turned red and exploded, consuming their worlds.
Over and over the process repeated itself, Caitlin’s point of view changing from the large to the small as her spirit journeyed through the organized chaos, to a point and time in space, to a world that was newly formed, a planet where the strands of light rose from one end like a microbe with many tails.
The world phased from hot and flaming to cooler and inviting. Caitlin plunged toward it, toward the region ripe with the cosmic strings, to a point where they penetrated the surface. She was suddenly below the crust, where the golden light took on a green patina as it threaded through minerals and rested from its billion-year journey.
The “microbe” she had seen from space was replicated around the core, copied over and over, heated by magma, driven up to the light, the crust, to the new continent, to—
A new home, Caitlin realized.
The microbes did not have thought but they had a collective sentience, and that mind was revealed to her. An unfathomable number of ancient essences… souls… had bonded to survive the destruction of their universe, a previous universe. They had formed a collective to survive a big crunch, a snap back from the ultimate extension of matter as gravity reversed their own ancient Big Bang.
Caitlin thought improbably about Jacob playing with a Slinky. One end of the souls had leaped through time to escape the destruction of the cosmos and dragged the other end with it.
Yet was the thought improbable? she wondered. In the spectacle she had just witnessed, even galaxies didn’t carry much weight. The countless lives within them were insignificant, if scale were the only judge. But it couldn’t be, could it? Every part of every string was a piece of something enormous. Without each part, the structure was incomplete. Incomplete, it was not the perfect structure required to make the leap through time and space. Incomplete, every part of the superstring would have failed.
Either everything matters or nothing does, Caitlin thought. Including a boy with his toy.
The microbes moved beneath a world of muted light, of sunlight seen through water and ice. Then they moved on land. Then they moved on legs. Then they moved the arms they possessed and communicated and bonded and reproduced and cleared the ice and built dwellings and spoke.
They found tiles in which the olivine light, the souls of beings—perhaps an assortment of beings—from the previous universe still resided.
The Candescents.
I am Candescent, Caitlin understood with humbling, then terrifying clarity.
The Caitlin on the airship had been powered by the motu-varkas. Through the powerful tiles she had bonded with herself when that other incarnation appeared to control the energies of ascending and transcending souls. She was possessed by the kind of force that countless cultures spoke about, mythologized about when they spoke of gods and demigods, messiahs and prophets, angels and demons.
With that understanding, Caitlin suddenly realized she had control of what she was witnessing. Euphoria filled her soul. In her mind, she raised her arms and pointed her fingers and moved through the world and time. She watched, for a third time, the fall of Galderkhaan. She saw ice cover its remains. She moved her hands and was back in her own life, her own eyes, at NYU, in Phuket, giving birth to her son—
And then she came to a very hard, absolute stop.
CHAPTER 25
The cry had all but died in Caitlin’s throat when she became aware of Ben hovering beside her on one side, Eilifir on the other.
“Jacob,” she said. “Where is he?”
The others looked puzzled. She turned around, past her shadow, at the tile gleaming softly inside the box. Her eyes went to Antoa and then to Casey Skett. They were standing with looks that ranged from puzzlement to concern. She glanced at Madame Langlois, who sat smoking contentedly. Even Enok appeared relaxed.
“You know,” Caitlin said to the woman.
“I know they are satisfied,” the Haitian replied. “I know the snake is pleased.”
Caitlin turned back to Ben. “Call my home now, please! I want to know if my son is there.”
“His—his—”
“His soul, yes. Is Jacob in his body?”
Ben fumbled for his cell phone and made the call. While he did, the Technologist leader approached Caitlin.
“What happened?” Antoa asked.
“I’m still connected to it,” Caitlin answered, pointing at the tile.
“Where is the tile connected?” Antoa asked.
Caitlin regarded him. “Everywhere.”
“Forgive me, but that is a very general term—”
“Everywhere!” she repeated. “With living access to every time that has ever been.” She shook her head. “I am taking it with me.”