The Traveler

Finally the process was complete. A town with empty rooms and dead trees surrounded him. Only then did a degree of clarity return to his mind. Forget the convolutions of philosophy. There were only two states of being: equilibrium and motion. The Tabula worshipped the ideal of political and social control, the illusion that everything should remain the same. But this was the cold emptiness of space, not the energy of the Light.

Gabriel left his refuge and began to look for a shadow. Like a detective searching for a clue, he entered each building and opened the closets and the empty cupboards. He peered beneath beds and tried to look at each object from a different angle. Perhaps he could see the passageway if he stood in the correct position.

When he returned to the street, the air seemed a little warmer. The town was new and complete, but gaining power for the next explosion of flame. Gabriel began to get angry about the inevitability of the cycle. Why couldn’t he stop what was going to happen? He began whistling a Christmas carol, enjoying the feeble noise in the silence. Returning to the church, he yanked open the door and marched toward the wooden altar.

The candle had reappeared as if nothing had ever happened and burned bright in its brass holder. Gabriel licked his thumb and forefinger, then reached out to snuff the flame. The moment he touched the candle, the flame broke off from the wick and began to flutter around his head like a bright yellow butterfly. It came to rest on a rose stem and this dry tinder started to burn. Gabriel tried to crush the fire with the palm of his hand, but sparks escaped and settled on the rest of the altar.

Instead of running from the fire, he sat down in a center pew and watched the destruction spread through the room. Could he die in this place? If his body was destroyed would he reappear again, like the altar and the barbershop chair? He began to feel an intense heat, but tried to deny the new reality. Perhaps all this was a dream, another construction of his mind.

Smoke had risen to the ceiling and now it began to drift downward, pulled toward the half-open door. As Gabriel stood up and began to leave the church, the altar turned into a column of flame. Smoke entered his lungs. He started coughing, then glanced to the left and saw a shadow appear in one of the stained-glass windows. The shadow was black and deep; it floated back and forth like a wavering particle of night. Gabriel grabbed a pew and dragged it over to the wall. He stood on the pew and pulled himself onto the narrow ledge at the bottom of the window frame.

Drawing the sword, he slashed at the shadow and his right hand disappeared into the blackness. Jump, he thought. Save yourself. He began to fall into the dark passageway, pulled forward into space. It was only in the final moment that he looked back and saw Michael standing in the church doorway.

45

With Gabriel’s motorcycle hidden in the back of the van, Maya drove north to Las Vegas. She saw dozens of road signs advertising casinos, and then a cluster of bright towers popped up on the horizon. After cruising past several motels outside the city, she checked into the Frontier Lodge-ten individual rooms designed to look like log cabins. The shower stall had green stains bleeding from the faucet handles and the mattress was saggy, but she placed her sword beside her and slept for twelve hours.

Maya knew the casinos would have surveillance cameras, and some of the cameras might be connected to Tabula computers. When she woke up, she took out a syringe and injected facer drugs into her lips and the skin below her eyes. The drugs made her look overweight and dissipated, like a woman who had a drinking problem.

She drove to a mall and bought cheap, flashy clothes-Capri pants, a pink T-shirt, and sandals-then visited a shop where an older woman wearing a cowgirl costume was selling makeup and synthetic wigs. Maya pointed to a blond wig sitting on a Styrofoam head behind the counter.

“That’s the Champagne Blonde model, honey. You wanna wrap it up or wear it?”

“I’ll put it on right now.”

The clerk nodded her approval. “Men just love that blond hair. It drives ’em crazy.”

Now she was ready. She drove down the main boulevard, turned right at the half-sized Eiffel Tower, and left the van in the parking lot of the Paris Las Vegas Hotel. The hotel was an amusement-park version of the City of Lights. It had a small version of the Arc de Triomphe and painted façades that resembled the Louvre and the Paris Opera House. The ground-floor casino was an enormous room with a domed ceiling that glowed with a dark blue color like an endless Paris twilight. Tourists wandered down cobblestone streets to blackjack tables and rows of slot machines.