The boy disappeared. Only Malabar, solid and real, stood before Nicholas; he ran to it, touched its rough bark with his hand, and then saw beyond it a fourth tree, similar too to the Ceylon tree, around which a boy peered with averted head. Nicholas watched him for a moment, then said, “I see.”
“Do you?” the monkey chattered.
“It’s like a mirror, only backward. The light from the front of me goes out and hits the edge, and comes in the other side, only I can’t see it because I’m not looking that way. What I see is the light from my back, sort of, because it comes back this way. When I ran, did I get turned around?”
“Yes, you ran out the left side of the segment, and of course returned immediately from the right.”
“I’m not scared. It’s kind of fun.” He picked up a stick and threw it as hard as he could toward the Malabar tree. The stick vanished, whizzed over his head, vanished again, slapped the back of his legs. “Did this scare Diane?”
There was no answer. He strode farther, palely naked boys walking to his left and right, but always looking away from him, gradually coming closer.
D
on’t go farther,” Dr. Island said behind him. “It can be dangerous if you try to pass through the Point itself.”
“I see it,” Nicholas said. He saw three more trees, growing very close together, just ahead of him; their branches seemed strangely intertwined as they danced together in the wind, and beyond them there was nothing at all.
“You can’t actually go through the Point,” Dr. Island Monkey said. “The tree covers it.”
“Then why did you warn me about it?” Limping and scarred, the boys to his right and left were no more than two meters away now; he had discovered that if he looked straight ahead he could sometimes glimpse their bruised profiles.
“That’s far enough, Nicholas.”
“I want to touch the tree.”
He took another step, and another, then turned. The Malabar boy turned too, presenting his narrow back, on which the ribs and spine seemed welts. Nicholas reached out both arms and laid his hands on the thin shoulders and, as he did, felt other hands—the cool, unfeeling hands of a stranger, dry hands too small—touch his own shoulders and creep upward toward his neck.
“Nicholas!”
He jumped sidewise away from the tree and looked at his hands, his head swaying. “It wasn’t me.”
“Yes, it was, Nicholas,” the monkey said.
“It was one of them.”
“You are all of them.”
In one quick motion Nicholas snatched up an arm-long section of fallen limb and hurled it at the monkey. It struck the little creature, knocking it down, but the monkey sprang up and fled on three legs. Nicholas sprinted after it.
He had nearly caught it when it darted to one side; as quickly, he turned toward the other, springing for the monkey he saw running toward him there. In an instant it was in his grip, feebly trying to bite. He slammed its head against the ground, then catching it by the ankles swung it against the Ceylon tree until at the third impact he heard the skull crack, and stopped.
He had expected wires, but there were none. Blood oozed from the battered little face, and the furry body was warm and limp in his hands. Leaves above his head said, “You haven’t killed me, Nicholas. You never will.”
“How does it work?” He was still searching for wires, tiny circuit cards holding micro-logic. He looked about for a sharp stone with which to open the monkey’s body, but could find none.
“It is just a monkey,” the leaves said. “If you had asked, I would have told you.”
“How did you make him talk?” Nicholas dropped the monkey, stared at it for a moment, then kicked it. His fingers were bloody, and he wiped them on the leaves of the tree.
“Only my mind speaks to yours, Nicholas.”
“Oh,” he said. And then, “I’ve heard of that. I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought it would be in my head.”
“Your record shows no auditory hallucinations, but haven’t you ever known someone who had them?”
“I knew a girl once. . . .” He paused.
“Yes?”
“She twisted noises—you know?”
“Yes.”
“Like, it would just be a service cart out in the corridor, but she’d hear the fan, and think . . .”
“What?”
“Oh, different things. That it was somebody talking, calling her.”
“What?” He sat up in his bunk. “Maya?”
