Slow down, he told himself. Got to be careful. But the stairs began to shiver like a living creature. Suddenly a bolt was ripped out of the wall and fell through the air to the shadows below. Gabriel stopped and listened to the bolt ricochet off the platform. And then, sounding like bullets from a machine gun, a line of bolts snapped out of the concrete, and the stairs began to peel away from the wall.
He let go of the lantern and held on to the railing with both hands as the upper part of the staircase fell toward him. The weight of the collapsing structure pulled out more bolts and then he was falling outward, only to slam back into the concrete, about twenty feet below the entrance ledge. Only one of the support brackets still held the railing.
Gabriel hung from the railing for a moment, overcome by fear. The silo yawned below him like a portal into endless darkness. Slowly, he began to climb up the railing, and then he heard a roaring sound in his ears. Something was wrong with the right side of his body. It felt paralyzed. As he tried to hold on, he saw a shadow arm composed of small points of light emerge from his body while his right arm fell motionless to his side. He was holding on with one hand, but all he could do was stare at the light.
“Hold on!” Sophia shouted. “I’m right above you!”
The sound of the Pathfinder’s voice made the shadow arm disappear. Gabriel couldn’t see where Sophia was standing, but a length of knotted nylon rope fell down and slapped against the concrete wall. He was just able to reach out and grab the rope as the support bracket ripped away from the concrete. The railing fell past him, smashing onto the launchpad.
Gabriel pulled himself up to the ledge, and then lay there for a while, gasping for breath. Sophia stood over him, holding her lantern.
“You all right?”
“No.”
“I was up on the surface when the generator shorted out. I got it going again and came down immediately.”
“You-you locked me in.”
“That’s right. There was only one more day to go.”
He stood up and headed back down the passageway. Sophia followed him.
“I saw what happened, Gabriel.”
“Yeah. I almost got killed.”
“I’m not talking about that. Your right arm went limp for a few seconds. I couldn’t see it, but I know that the Light came out of your body.”
“I’m not sure if it’s day or night, if I’m dreaming or awake.”
“You’re a Traveler like your father. Don’t you realize that?”
“Forget it. I don’t like any of this. I just want to have a normal life.”
Without another word, Sophia took a quick step toward Gabriel. She reached out, grabbed the back of his belt, and jerked hard. Gabriel felt as if something was ripping, tearing inside him. And then he felt the Light break out of its cage and float upward while his body collapsed facedown onto the floor. He was terrified, desperately wanting to return to what was familiar.
Gabriel looked at his hands and saw that they had been transformed into hundreds of points of light, each precise and glimmering like a star. As Sophia knelt beside the discarded body, the Traveler floated upward, passing through the concrete ceiling.
The stars seemed to move closer together as he became a concentrated point of energy. He was an entire ocean contained within a drop of water, a mountain squeezed into a grain of sand. And then the particle that contained his energy, his true consciousness, entered into a sort of channel or passageway that propelled him forward.
This moment could have lasted a thousand years or for only a single heartbeat; he had lost consciousness of time. All he knew was that he was moving very quickly, racing through darkness, following the curved edge of a contained space. And then the movement ended and a transformation occurred. A single breath, more fundamental and pervasive than lungs and oxygen, filled his being.
Go now. Find the way.
44
Gabriel opened his eyes and found himself falling through blue sky. He looked down and from side to side but saw nothing. There was no ground below him. No landing place or final destination. This was the barrier of air. He realized that he had always known of its existence. Attached to a parachute, he had tried to re-create this feeling in his own world.
But now he was free of the jump plane and the inevitable descent back to earth. Gabriel closed his eyes for a while, then opened them again. He arched his back and spread his arms, controlling his movement through the air. Look for the passageway. That’s what Sophia had told him. There was a passageway that led across all four barriers and into the other realms. Leaning to the right, he began to spiral downward like a hawk looking for prey.
Time passed and then, in the distance, he saw a thin black line, like a shadow floating in space. Gabriel extended his arms, pulled out of the tight circle, and fell quickly to the left on a sharp diagonal. The shadow grew into an oval shape and he glided into its dark center.
ONCE AGAIN, HE felt a compression of light, a movement forward and the life-giving breath. Opening his eyes, he found himself standing in the middle of a desert, the red dirt cracked open as if it were gasping for air. Gabriel turned on one heel, surveying this new environment. The sky above him was a sapphire blue. Although the sun had disappeared, light glowed on every part of the horizon. No rocks or plants. No valleys or mountains. He was captive in the earth barrier, the only thing vertical in a flatland world.
Gabriel began walking. When he stopped and looked around, his perspective hadn’t changed. Kneeling down, he touched the red dirt with his fingers. He needed a second point on the landscape, some other feature that would confirm his own existence. He kicked and clawed at the earth until he scraped together a pile of dirt about ten inches high.
Like a small child who had thrown down a cup and thereby changed the world, he circled the pile several times just to make sure it was still there. Once again, he started walking and counted his steps. Fifty. Eighty. One hundred. But when he looked over his shoulder, the pile had disappeared.
Gabriel felt a surge of panic push through his heart. He sat down, closed his eyes and rested, then stood up again and resumed walking. As he looked for the passageway, he began to feel hopeless and lost. For a while, he kicked at the earth with the toe of his boot. Chips of dirt rose up into the air, fell down, and were instantly absorbed by this new reality.
He looked over his shoulder and saw a patch of darkness behind him. It was his own shadow, following him around on this aimless journey, but the image had an unusual depth and sharpness, as if someone had cut into the ground. Was this the way out? Had it always been there? Closing his eyes, he fell backward and was pulled down the passageway.
BREATHE, HE TOLD himself. Breathe again. And he was kneeling in a dirt street that ran through the middle of a town. Gabriel stood up cautiously, expecting the ground to collapse and drop him into air, water, or the bare desert world. He stomped his feet on the street like a man having a tantrum, but this new reality sustained itself and refused to vanish.
The town reminded him of a frontier outpost in an old-fashioned Western, the sort of place where you’d find cowboys, sheriffs, and dance-hall girls. The buildings were two and three stories high, built with flat boards and shingles. Wooden sidewalks ran on both sides of the street, as if the builders wanted to keep mud from splattering into the doorways. But there was no mud or rain or any water at all. The few trees on the street looked dead; their leaves were dry and brittle-brown.
Gabriel drew the jade sword and held it tightly as he stepped onto the wooden sidewalk. He tried a doorknob-unlocked-and stepped into a one-room barbershop with three chairs. Mirrors hung from the walls and Gabriel stared at his own face and the sword in his hand. He looked frightened, like a man who expected to be attacked at any moment. Leave this place. Hurry. And then he was back on the sidewalk with the clear sky and the lifeless trees.