would be the only master of his fate, the only judge of his behavior.
Fortunately, in the midst of his intellectual crisis, Preston had come across a most useful quote by Francis Crick, one of the two scientists who won the Nobel prize for the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. In a crisis of his own, Crick had reached a point at which he no longer believed that a sound scientific case could be made for evolution through natural selection. All life at even a molecular level was so irreducibly complex that it argued for intelligent design, which convinced Crick, who also wasn’t too keen on this God business that every form of life on Earth — all flora and fauna, the entire ecosystem — had been created not by God, but by an alien race of incomprehensibly vast intelligence and powers, a race that might also have created this universe itself, and others.
Extraterrestrials.
Extraterrestrial worldmakers.
Mysterious extraterrestrial worldmakers.
If that theory satisfied Francis Crick, Nobel laureate, it was plenty damn good enough for Preston Claudius Maddoc. Extraterrestrial worldmakers were no more likely to care what their creations did with their lives, in a moral sense, than any nerdy kid with an ant farm cared whether the ants inhabiting it were behaving their itty-bitty selves according to a posted set of rules.
In fact, Preston had a theory to explain why an alien race of incomprehensibly vast intelligence and powers might skip across the universe making worlds and seeding them with infinite varieties of life, intelligent and otherwise. It was a good theory, a fine theory, a brilliant theory.
He knew it was brilliant, pure genius, but as he stood here spitting on his shoes, he could not remember his splendid theory, not a word of it.
Spitting on his shoes? Disgusting.
He shouldn’t be standing around, spitting on his shoes, when he hadn’t found a window yet. The windows of any house were arranged in certain classic patterns dating back to the Stone Age and seeded in the human racial memory, so they ought to be easy to find even in this bizarre and rambling opium den.
Windows. Hidden windows. Find one of the mysterious hidden windows. Most likely, an extraterrestrial will be behind the damn thing, big grin on its worldmaker face.
He had their number. He knew what they were about. Perverse bunch of incomprehensibly intelligent and vastly powerful old farts.
His theory — yes, he remembered it now — his brilliant theory was that they built worlds and seeded life on them because they got off on the suffering of the species that they created. Not necessarily got off on in the sense of experienced orgasms. This was a brilliant theory, not a tacky one. But they built us to die, to die by the tens of billions over the centuries, because our deaths did something for them, provided them with something of value. Maybe there was a form of energy released every lime a creature perished, an energy beyond the human ability to detect, which they employed to power their star-ships and toasters, or which they personally absorbed in order to guarantee themselves eternal life. Oh, they were the ultimate utilitarians, ethical in all their undertakings, creating us to be of use to them and using every one of us fully, wasting none of us.
Move over, Francis Crick. Move over, all you other lame Nobel laureates. The academy would award him not just the coveted prize, but all of Sweden, if he could prove what he had theorized.
Seeking to confirm his theory, Preston had spent the past four and a half years ricocheting around the country, from one UFO sighting to another, meeting with gaggles of alien abductees, everywhere from Arkansas backwaters to Seattle, to purple mountain majesties, across the fruited plain, yearning to be beamed up and to have a chance to present his theory to the incomprehensibly intelligent worldmakers themselves in their bib overalls and straw hats, which is why he came here to Nun’s Lake, only to be disappointed again, only to wind up in want of a window, spitting in his lap.
Spitting in his lap? What a repulsive act. Next thing you knew, he’d be pissing his pants. Maybe he already had.
Yet in spite of his fastidiousness, it was true: Here he sat in a peculiar corner of an odd sort of place, repeatedly and vigorously hawking up clots of vile black phlegm and spitting them in his lap. He was also ranting aloud about his theory. Deeply humiliated to hear himself raving like a booze-addled street person, he nevertheless could not shut up because, after all, deep intellectual analysis and philosophical rumination were the essence of his work. That’s what he did. That’s who he was. Analyzer, ruminator, killer. The only thing that perhaps he needed to be embarrassed about was that he had been talking aloud to himself… but then he realized that he wasn’t alone, after all.
He had company.
The pall of smoke retreated like a gray tide, and the air in the immediate vicinity grew clean, and into this sudden clarity came a visitor of extraordinary appearance. It was about the size of the Hand, but not the Hand, not anything that Preston had ever previously seen or dreamed about. Feline, but not like a cat. Canine, but not
like a dog. Covered in lustrous while fur, glossy as ermine, but fur that sometimes appeared to be feathers, yes, that certainly was both fur and feathers — and yet neither. Round and golden eyes, as large as teacups, pellucid and luminous eyes that in spite of their beauty struck fear in him, even though he understood that the visitor meant him no harm.
When it spoke, he was not surprised, though its voice — that of a young boy, mellifluous enough for the Vienna choir — was not what he expected. Evidently it had listened to his ranting, for it said, “One problem with the theory. If incomprehensibly intelligent aliens made this world and everything in it — who made the aliens?”
An answer eluded Preston, and he could come up with nothing but another glutinous wad of black phlegm.
The gray tide flooded over him again, and the visitor retreated into the gloom, dissolved into a white blur, moving away, and then a final glimmer of luminous gold as just once it glanced back.
He felt an inexpressible loss at its departure.
The thing had been a figment of his imagination, of course, born of blood loss and toxic fumes. Figments seldom spoke. This one had spoken, though Preston couldn’t remember what it had said.
The firelight dimmed as thickening haze screened it. Evidently, too many pipes were being smoked here in the old opium den.
From a far corner came a peculiar sound, a protracted thuuuuuud. Then again: thuuuuuuud. And yet a third time: thuuuuuuud. Like giant dominoes toppling into one another in slow motion. Ominous.
He felt death coming. A wave. Sudden darkness, absolute. And no air, only soot that his lungs sought to store up by the pound.
Preston Maddoc screamed into a black pillow, screamed in terror at the realization that his time had come to provide a little power for the starship.
Thuuuuuuud…
Last in line, moving toward the rear of the house, toward fire where fire had not been earlier, Noah worriedly looked back in the direction that they had come, back into air where blackened magazine pages glided like stingrays, back into the schools of lanternfish, and he saw the suspended black tsunami abruptly pour forward through the maze, and he cried out much as he had cried out when his aunt Lilly shot him so many years ago.
Thuuuuuuud…
Maze walls were collapsing, stacks of bundled newspapers and other trash falling into the walls beside them, triggering further collapses.
Thuuuuuuud…
The floor shook with the third crash, which proved to be the last one for the time being, but the tsunami kept coming, racing toward them, a smothering tide of smoke, so dense that as it came, it muffled the voice of the fire that continued to rage behind it.
“Down!” Noah shouted.
They couldn’t outrun this. They could only hit the floor, press their faces to the well-worn tongue-and-groove, and hope that an inch of sustaining air might be compressed beneath the black cloud.
Here, now. Oh, God. Darkness as deep as caves and crypts. And only a thin sour air even at the floor. Then thinner and more sour. And then no air at all, and then—
The black tide relented, dissolved away from them, until they huddled together in a miraculous clearing,
