The Omega Point

5. QUETZALCOATL

Caroline Light followed Sam Taylor through the lovely front of the house. He’d been described to her as a “minder,” and he looked considerably tougher than the nurse who had originally met her, a gentle lady called Nurse Cross.

Coming here had been the hardest thing she had ever done. Leaving her dad, and him so old and the situation so perilous—it had taken all the strength she possessed to turn her back on him. His old driver, Vincent, had gotten her here in just over fourteen hours, traveling back roads, bypassing cities, avoiding the interstates where a car like the Mercedes was a definite target.

And now here she was in the place where the legendary Aubrey Denman had just lost her life—and in certain danger herself.

Dad had wept quietly as she left. She had, too, but not quietly. The last she’d seen of him was that proud old figure, narrow but immensely dignified, standing before their beloved Mayfair, the house Dad’s father had bought after being blessed with the friendship of Herbert Acton. Dad’s last words to her had been a cavalier wave and a confident, “See you on the other side.” The tears, though, had been silent testament to the truth: they were beyond the edge of the age now. Not even Herbert Acton had been able to see clearly into this period of chaos.

The future was on her shoulders now, hers and David’s.

They reached the end of the long corridor that split the second story. Before them was a black door locked by a fingerprint reader. It looked like the entrance to a gas chamber or a prison, or the underworld. He touched the reader and the door clicked, then opened onto a white institutional corridor lit by fluorescents.

She needed to seem like just another patient, and saw a chance to do a little acting. She stopped.

“Excuse me, Sir. Mr. Taylor?”

“Ma’am?”

“What is this? Where are we going?”

“Your things are being moved into your room now, and I’m taking you on a tour of the facility.”

“Fair enough, as long as I don’t have to fraternize with the other nuts.” Lay it on, girl.

They entered a large room, and for the first time she saw some of her compatriots. She hadn’t seen her classmates since they were children, but she could recognize almost all of them. In any case, she knew their names, so she would be able to identify even the ones who were most spectacularly different.

Being close to them again was every bit as eerie as her father had warned her that it would be. Most of them had not the slightest idea who she was, and those who did weren’t going to show it.

David had been expected to remember her immediately. Her mention of Quetzalcoatl had been the trigger that was supposed to break his amnesia.

It hadn’t worked, so now what? Mrs. Denman was dead, and she dared not talk about such a subject with Dad on the phone, even if she was able to get through. Obviously the enemy was right here in this place. Could even be this Mr. Toughguy with a heart of gold, for all she knew.

“This is the activity area,” Sam said. “This is where we meet friends, make new friends, that kind of thing. There are games, there’s a poker game, there’s bridge, of course, we have two leagues and an annual championship, there’s backgammon, a lot of stuff like that. Also, we have an art room where you can paint or sculpt or do pottery. Actually, we have practically everything.”

She noticed a guy ogling her. He had not been in the class, so he was one of the real patients, and his nostrils were actually dilating. What a creep.

“Who’s he?”

“Graham Mining.”

“If we go by our company names, that makes me Daddy’s Little Girl. We have no company. We’re post-work.”

The patient followed her with his sick eyes. Then, annoyingly, he got up and came sliding over. Big, imposing man with a carefully tuned smile. “They call me Mack the Cat,” he said.

She understood why, too. He moved like a jaguar. You wanted to step back.

“May I know your name, Miss?”

“No.”

“ ‘No’ is a good name. Easy to spell.”

“And it gets the point across. Incidentally, you drool, but cats don’t. From now on, you’re Mack the Dog.”

The smile froze. She wondered if he was marked yet. If not, her guess was that his truth would soon emerge. This was a bad man. Written all over him. So, enemy or not? Bad was certain, the bastard had rape in his eyes. But the enemy—wouldn’t he be charming, fit right in? So no, this one was probably just damned unpleasant. Good window dressing for the clinic, though.

Mack the Cat met Sam Taylor’s eyes, and Caroline saw that they knew each other all too well. Sam’s hand came to her elbow.

“Ma’am, we need—”

“Oh, be quiet.” But she followed him. No excuse needed to get away from Mack and his drool.

They went down some steel stairs and suddenly they were in another lovely room, back in the old house. It was large, glassed in, and full of sunlight. There were three patients there, each with an attendant. Two of them were in straitjackets, struggling and growling. The third paced back and forth, back and forth.

She sucked hard breaths, forcing herself to appear calm, but she was seeing Monty Offut who had been so strong and Carl Winston who’d read Greek and Latin, and pacing in a state of paranoid frenzy, Jenny Offut, Monty’s sister. They had swung together on the old swing that had been under one of the oaks out back, and dreamed the dreams of little girls.

“This is the old solarium,” Sam said.

“I know what it is!”

“You do?”

“I—of course. It’s obviously a solarium, you stupid jerk.”

She felt him tighten—felt a hurt, a disappointment come from him—and thought that she did not like playing this role of the testy, overwrought neurotic.

But look at the tile floor, at the walls painted with those vines, even the old sunporch couch over there—she’d lain on that couch and gazed out at the marching clouds.

The nostalgia was tremendous, and seeing her friends like this—it was also agonizing.

“I think we need to move on,” Sam said. Tough, gentle man.

“Yes…”

This had been the classroom, where Daddy had taught them the secrets of the old gods, and given them their ancient names. She was Citilalinique, the Lady of the Starry Skirt, and her work was to bring the light of understanding to an ignorant age. Light the bringer of light. Nominative determinism. Not funny, though. Funny was in the past.

Finally, she could bear it no longer and turned away. She went toward the living room, where you had been allowed to sit and read, but certainly not play or roughhouse, and not endanger the collection of Fabergé eggs that was no doubt locked away upstairs somewhere nowadays.

She had curled up in that chair right over there and read—what had she read? Yes, The Philosopher’s Stone. She had memorized her formulas and what alchemists called confections, the assembly of the different components that would go into the extratemporal matter she was here to make.

Her father had brought her out of her own amnesia ten days ago. Prior to that, he had been awakened by Mrs. Denman, who had come on a day and at a time that had been specified by Herbert Acton fifty years ago, and showed Daddy a glyph of Huehueteotl, the Aztec god of life and the polestar… also the symbol of guidance, but not to the current polestar, not to Polaris. No, when the time came, they would journey toward a new polestar.

“Miss, patients are requested not to use these rooms.”

She sat down in her old chair, regarding him with mild interest. Would he drag her out? He certainly could.

“Thank you for letting me know,” she said.

He inclined his head. The guardian servant, then. Fine, she could stay.

She let her mind seek back over the events of the past few tumbling, chaotic days.

When Mrs. Denman had shown Dad the image of Huehueteotl, his eyes had grown steady and hard, and he had set his jaw like the soldier that he was. Then he’d embraced the cadaverous old woman, who had left as silently and mysteriously as a nun under vows.

That evening, he had been very quiet, refusing to speak of what had happened. Eventually, he had gone to one of Granddad’s wonderful handmade books, the one called the Book of Silence. He had opened it to two beautifully colored images and said to her, “Remember.”

As she had looked upon Quetzalcoatl and Citilalinique, a whole hidden life had come flooding back. She recalled swinging in the garden at Mr. Acton’s house, and Daddy being their teacher, tall and rangy then, full of smiles and remembrance of Mother, and Mrs. Acton, incredibly ancient, looking down on them from the upstairs windows with appraising eyes. She had been the master behind the class, Daddy’s teacher, but they only met her once or twice.

Caroline had been ten, and Mom’s sudden death had then still been at the center of her life. The night before it happened, it was as if her parents had known—which, on a deep level, not then conscious, they indeed had.

The two of them had sat together in their private study into the small hours, talking in a loving way, touching each other and kissing, and Caroline had watched, and seen a kind of wonder between them, as if they were privy to a miraculous secret that was at once deeply serious and deeply joyous, perhaps the secret of life itself.

Mom had died of an aortal aneurysm, so suddenly that she had not even had time to cry out.

Mom had ascended, Dad had said. She would not be returning to earth again. Dad had explained, back then, that almost everyone who had ever been born was alive in the world now, every human soul returned to the flesh to experience judgment. And, he had added, by 2020—not 2012—they would all be here, all who needed to be.

Mom didn’t need to stay, she was finished here, he had told her.

All well and good, but it didn’t change a daughter’s grief. When there is a death between people who love each other deeply—husband and wife, parent and child—the relationship continues on in the heart of the survivor, and Caroline had told her dad that she wanted to follow Mom, she wanted to go, too.

He’d explained in his gentle way, “You and I are working-class, girl, we stay put. Only the saints and the sinners get to take off early.”

Since Mom’s death, he’d spent many an evening in that study, reading poems he had explored together with his wife, and Caroline had, in recent years, made a habit of joining him, and they had shared their grief and their love, enjoying their memories.

She recalled once again the images of Quetzalcoatl and Citilalinique, intricately painted, their seemingly bizarre faces going deep into mind and memory. The Mayan and Aztec gods were representations, among other things, of the human unconscious, the purest ever created by the mind of man… the unconscious in all its wonder and playfulness, and all its paradoxical savagery.

On softest wings, when she had first seen them, memory had come, bringing with it a love that had been hidden in her heart for years.

She had remembered David.

Now, she recalled watching him curse and, on the wide lawn, trying to fly a kite. She’d laughed until her sides ached. David was so clumsy and so sincere and so very dear to her, and she thought that they had known one another across many lifetimes.

“Daddy,” she said to her own secret heart, “tell me how to make him remember me.”

When he was awakened—if—he would become their leader, assuming the role and the power of protector and healer. The knowledge that the new world that was coming would rest on his shoulders made her proud of him, and proud to be his promised love.

Except, what if he did not remember? People change, even locked in the amber of amnesia. What if he had somebody else now? There were attractive nurses here and people under pressure form attachments fast. In war, whole lives are lived in days, and this was just like war. It was war.

“Miss, we have a lot still to see. I want to show you the dining facilities and the kitchen. It’s quite a wonderful kitchen.”

“Sure,” she said. The poor guy was practically dancing, he was so eager to get her out of the so-called restricted area. As if she’d somehow damage carpets on which she’d played Monopoly on rainy afternoons.

She followed Sam through a pair of double doors with mirrored windows in them, entering a spotless, magnificently appointed, but very busy kitchen—all of which was new. This had been the music room in the old days. Now, the piano was in what had been the old smoking room, opposite the solarium.

The new kitchen revealed a fine spread of marble countertops and high end appliances. She counted four chefs in toques, surrounded by rushing crowds of assistants. It looked like the kitchen of the Queen Mary II back before she’d disappeared in that storm.

“Miss Caroline, this is Ray Weller, our executive chef. He’s the one who’ll read your preferences list.”

“Hello, Ray.”

The way he smiled told her that he knew her. So this fellow classmate was not in total amnesia. Dad had said that some would be and others not, but that she was to show everyone their glyphs, because the sight of their particular image would end all amnesia. Those hidden in psychosis, though, were a different matter. They were the stars, the powerful ones, the essentials, the most important and therefore the most deeply concealed.

“We aim to please,” Ray said, “so do think carefully about your desires. We can do just about anything, as long as supplies aren’t short, of course.”

“Now we’re going to the art room,” Sam said.

She followed him through double doors that led back into the patient wing, but this room was brightened by big windows that overlooked the lovely grounds. There were men and women in paint-smeared jeans and T-shirts, some painting on canvases large and small, some drawing, others creating clay sculptures.

She was satisfied to see a group of potters working industriously, their kiln casting a glow that she found extremely realistic. They were actually firing pots in it, but it was not really a kiln—or rather, not only that. In fact, right now, it was the most important machine on planet earth, because of what she was going to do with it.

An old classmate, Susan Denman, sat reading The Philosopher’s Stone. She looked up at Caroline and smiled through what was obviously great personal sadness. Her father had told her that, if all else failed, a sufficiently intense shock could often cause spontaneous remission of artificially induced psychosis. The murder of Susan’s mother had obviously, in her case, been enough.

Caroline returned just the slightest glimmer of recognition. She and Susan Denman had studied subspace together, learning how to form holographic realities that would be at once in a single place and in all places at the same time—essential knowledge, given Caroline’s mission. And Susan would bring the colors and prepare the brushes.

She sighed as she walked, wishing that things were different, that they weren’t so hard and so dangerous. Class had been a joy—the joy of their childhoods, and she was so grateful to Mr. Acton and to her dad and granddad for all they had given.

She’d been glad to be recognized by Susan at least, because this business of concealing the group inside induced symptoms of mental disease, and turning Mr. Acton’s beautiful home into a fake mental asylum, was even more horrible than she’d feared it would be.

Susan might be awake, but over there, Aaron Stein, painting that horrific thing—what was it, a woman colliding with a gigantic penis?—obviously still needed to wake up.

“What’s that guy’s problem?”

“Schizoaffective disorder,” Sam replied in a self-important tone. Proud of his jargon.

Beautiful, poetic Aaron, so quick to laugh and so full of gentle wisdom…

She would soon be painting as well, but it wouldn’t be an outlet for mental illness, far from it.

It was essential that it be completed quickly, for there would come a time soon that the chaos would be too great, and it would be impossible to finish it. Even the color of the sky was going to change, and without good color, she could not make this artifact that was to be a perfect confluence of the knowledge of science and the energy of art.

If Mr. Acton’s plan worked.

“Let’s get out of here,” she muttered to Sam.

Another member of the class—a grinning Amy Makepeace—looked up from a painting of what appeared to be some sort of grim tower, and smiled the too-radiant smile of a madwoman.

“What’s your death going to be?” she asked, her tone crisply genial, her eyes button-bright. “Me, I prefer to jump.”

At least there was plenty of painting going on, which was an important part of the plan. The device she had been trained in class to create would appear to be a painting, at least at first. Later, as it developed, it would reveal itself to be a doorway through time, and when it did, nobody would imagine for a moment that it was just a picture.

By balancing the artistic skill and scientific knowledge in her mind, all enhanced by the power of the alchemical gold she would make, she was actually generating their escape route. What she would create in this room would look like a painting for a while. But it was not a painting, not at all.

“Ma’am, we want to move on.”

“Sure. Gotta cover my cage, I’m too noisy.”

“The tower,” the woman said, “you walk and you fall.” She thrust her grinning face into Caroline’s. “And you fall…”

And Caroline saw an opportunity to reinforce her own feigned symptoms. She pretended to have a seizure, letting herself pitch backward shaking. She hit the floor so hard that she blacked out.

A moonlike face appeared, its demon eyes fearsome. She gasped, then screamed—and the face of Mack Graham smiled, and it was as if the demon had withdrawn—hidden, once again, in its lair in the man’s heart.

He helped her to her feet. “I’m so sorry, Miss—”

Do not tell him your name.

Brushing herself off, she scrambled away from him.

“Maybe your medications are affecting your balance,” Sam said.

“That’s just it! I’m not on any. I’ve run out so I came here—” She looked around the room. Every eye was on her, and she was looking at gargoyles, at smoldering sex maniacs, at wild-eyed schizophrenics, at paranoids in their sullen corners—it was awful, a gallery of the damned in the faces of people she loved dearly and respected enormously. That brilliant class of wonderful kids were the center of her heart and to see them like this was almost enough to induce actual insanity in her.

She smiled, forced a laugh. “I won’t miss that step again,” she sang out. “Let’s see my suite.”

“Of course, Ma’am.”

Sam laid an arm around her shoulder, or rather, his big arm came oozing around her with the muscular stealth of a python. She allowed herself to be guided out of the art room and down yet another long institutional corridor.

Ahead was another of the black doors, looming at her like a hungry trap. “Do we have to go back in there?”

“Your suite is there.”

“Where does Mack live?”

“Next door, actually.”

“No,” she said, “no. I need to live in the house, you see. It’s what I’m used to. This—oh, my God, it’s a prison.”

“The rooms are nice, Ma’am. So, please—”

She had to lay it on. She had to continue to seem insane, here. She must not raise the suspicions of that monster Mack, and he was suspicious already, there could be no doubt of that. She pulled away from her minder. “Look, I’ve made a mistake. I can’t do this. I’m going home.”

“Caroline—”

“I’m going home!” But now she found herself confronting not just dear old Sam, but David and his assistant, Katrina Starnes. Katrina, the modern name of the Mexican goddess of death.

“Caroline, you need to go in now,” she said.

“Please, Caroline,” David added—and the lack of recognition stabbed her heart.

“We’re still processing your intake,” the death goddess said. “Someone will be along to help you with your program in a few minutes.”

She had to continue her act.

“I’m free to leave,” she snapped. As she tried to push between them, the enforcer laid his thick—and surprisingly gentle—hands on her shoulders.

Drawing herself away from him, she cried out, “How dare you touch me!”

His body blocked her way, but when she tried to get around him, he proved to be as adept as any dancer.

“What’s she doing, Doctor?”

“I don’t know.”

She turned on David. “Get these people out of my face!”

As she tried to make her way back into the main house, Katrina dropped a leather strap around her arms and pinned them to her sides. Even fighting as hard as she did, she could not free herself.

She did a little method acting, imagining what it would be like if this were real, if she were actually mad and being trapped, and terror exploded through her with such intensity that she just burst out screaming, surprising even herself with the ferocity of it.

The sounds of the struggle echoed up and down the corridor, and the cries of other patients were soon added to her own screams. As patients came out of the art room and other public rooms, some of them laughed, their voices warbling high with hysteria, while others shouted for help, or came rushing forward to do battle on her behalf.

Susan Denman watched, amused and appalled at the baroque antics.

But before any of this chaos could resolve itself, she was dragged backward hard, there was a great crash and sudden silence, and she was on the floor looking up into David’s dear, empty face.

“Okay,” he said, “she’s controlled. Now, Caroline, can you hear me?”

She continued her act. “Bastards! Bastards!”

“All right, all right. You’re angry and I would be, too. Now, I want you to get yourself together, Caroline. Can you do that?”

Despite all that she knew, she could not help being genuinely furious, if not at his ignorance, then certainly at his condescension. “I’m not one of your patients,” she wanted to say, “I’m part of your heart.”

She managed a choked, “Yes, Doctor.”

This was hideous, to see him like this.

“I’m going to have Katrina here release you. Is that all right? Are we able to calm down now?”

“I’m calm! So get me out of this damned thing!”

“Uh, Doctor, is this wise? She’s very agitated.”

“Do it. But step away. Step behind her.”

“I’m not going to do anything,” she said as Nurse Katrina freed her. “Just keep that other guy away from me. Sam. I mean, what is that, a giant dwarf? A troll?”

“The hell…”

“Leave it, Sam. Caroline, we’ll address all of these issues in our intake interview.”

“I thought we did that.”

“No. No, not entirely. We did not.” David pranced toward her, all officious professionalism. He took her elbow and in a moment they were in a small room, sparsely furnished with a cot and a recliner that took up far too much of the space.

“Now,” he said, “you can collect yourself. Get in the recliner, it’s great! I mean, you talk about relaxing, these things—all the patients just really love them.”

“It’s a chair, for God’s sake.” But she sat down. After a moment, she pulled the lever and leaned back. She noticed that the ceiling lights were protected by wire cages.

“What is this, one of the cells? Am I a prisoner, because I better not be. I did a voluntary commitment, remember that.”

“This is a safe room. We call it a safe room. Now, close your eyes.” He began rubbing her temples and she let herself drift, let the distant sounds of the institution die away, let the world drift and drift… on a quiet ocean… ocean of silence.

“I have a little something,” he said.

“I don’t want anything.”

“You’re very agitated.”

“Oh, it’s just this sun business! I can’t quit thinking about it.”

“Take deep breaths, let it go, let the trembling go.”

She was trembling? Yes, actually shaking like a leaf. She could feel the dark gods coming, smelling her weakness, coming with their jaws clicking, their obsidian eyes flickering with inner fire. Xipe Totec, the Flayed One, skinned by the sun, dead but alive, and coming out of the bloody mouth of Mack the Cat.

She was aware of movement in the room, the clink of glass. When she opened her eyes, a nurse was there with a small paper pill cup and a glass of water.

“What is it?” she asked David.

“A mild sedative.”

“No.”

His hands were gentle, insistent. She felt his subtle power and liked the feeling. She saw plumes of red and blue around him, feathers in the wind.

“And he will descend into hell and gather the bones of men, and he will spread them on the earth, and his wisdom will make them dance.”

“And that is?”

“The work of Quetzalcoatl. The bringer of peace, the builder of heaven.” She saw him in David’s eyes, just as she had when they were children, and she had thought him the most beautiful creature that God had ever made.

He touched her temples again. “Take it easy, Miss. Right now, you’re agitated. Let’s cross this bridge first.” He took the pill cup from the nurse and handed it to her.

She pretended to take what she recognized as a Xanax. She did not take it, though. She needed her wits.

“Good. That’ll help.”

“David?”

“Dr. Ford. I’m Dr. Ford.”

“Okay,” she said, fighting to keep the pain out of her voice. “Dr. Ford, I want you to humor me. Indulge a little innocent paranoia. Don’t tell anybody my last name. Can you do that?”

He blinked as if surprised, and she wondered immediately how much he did remember. Clearly, he wasn’t entirely clueless.

“Patient surnames are confidential. Nobody gets your surname except from you.”

His hands caressed her temples so gently, so firmly, that this time when she closed her eyes she did indeed drift away.

Then, seemingly without more than a moment passing, she came to understand that he had not been rubbing her temples, not for some time. In fact, not for a long time.

With a shocked gasp, she opened her eyes. At first, she couldn’t see anything at all—and then she could, a line of light floating ahead of her. A line of light… which she moved toward.

She understood that she was on a low bed. And naked, she was also naked, or rather, in one of those loose hospital gowns that tie in the back. She leaned down and touched the line of light, running her fingers along it. A faint coolness brushed them—air, she realized, from outside.

Once she understood that this was the door, her disorientation resolved itself and she stood up, feeling for the doorknob. She found it and turned it, but it was locked tight.

She called, “Hello, I’m awake! Hello!”

Not a sound came in reply.

She tried to look at her watch, but couldn’t find it on her wrist. Taken. Not stolen, of course, she didn’t think that.

They’d overdone this, and she saw a chance to put on a performance.

“Hey! HEY!” She shook the door, then hammered on it.

Nothing.

She felt the walls and found a quiltlike surface on them. She ran her palms along it. Soft. So was the floor, soft, quilted. There was no window. The ceiling no longer had caged lights on it, but rather flush glass fixtures that emitted a faint nocturnal glow.

He’d doped her with something more than Xanax, that clever David, good at every job he’d ever done. And she’d thought she hadn’t swallowed the pill. She hadn’t been meant to—or rather, it hadn’t mattered. Whatever had done this to her had been in the water.

So, okay, here we go. He wanted crazy, he was going to get crazy.

She backed up, then took in a deep breath and screamed her lungs out.

And—wow, that was something! Her heart was hammering, her body flushing with adrenaline. She did it again, then threw herself against the door.

The padding absorbed the blow without the slightest effect, which was genuinely disturbing and isolating, and made it quite easy to scream more, so she screamed and screamed and screamed, and roamed the cell, hurling herself against the walls, against the door, dropping to the floor and rolling and screaming, and screaming and screaming and screaming. But, then again, that’s what a padded cell is for.

She stopped. This was all well and good. She was putting on what must be a convincing performance. But she was also here for serious reasons. She needed to get the arc furnace running. There was a lot of gold to make and only a little from Guatemala to start the process, far less than she had expected to find. And there was the matter of the painting. It would be a meticulous, difficult process, enormously intimidating, and all of it needing to be done on a very tight and very precise schedule.

The whole world had arrived at the border of an unknown country, a rare shadow land that few men ever enter and fewer recall. Already, they were advanced into it, for the death of Aubrey Denman, an incalculable disaster, had not been predicted in any of the writings of Herbert Acton.

This was because he had not foreseen it. Her father had told the class, “There is a period at the end of a cycle of time that we call its omega point, where life itself enters the unknown. An omega point is a dark labyrinth from which only the few will escape.” He had smiled then, this gentle and compassionate man, a smile filled with hope and pain. “Be among the few,” he had said.

She rattled the door again, and this time it was no game. “Let me out,” she shouted. But there was only silence in reply.

This time, when she screamed, it was no act, and she screamed and screamed and screamed.