Veil

'Nobody but Sharon knew. Now, of course, you and Henry also know. The reason for my keeping it a secret is very practical. A moment ago you referred to near-death studies as a spook show—'

'I apologize for that remark,' Veil said quickly, glancing at Sharon.

'No need. That would be the reaction of most people. As I've indicated to you, for now much of the Institute's prestige is linked to my personal prestige and integrity. I can't afford to be linked with a 'spook show,' even if that 'spook show' is, in my opinion, probably the most important research in which we're involved.'

'Why did you feel that I had to be 'handled'? Why have you been lying to me all along?'

'Because the discovery of what you are couldn't be rushed. The moment I saw the similarity between your work and Perry's, I understood the significance. But you had to be peeled like an onion; if you were aware of what I wanted to know, it could interfere with the process.'

'What is the significance?'

'Don't you realize it yet?'

'I've had a few other things on my mind, Jonathan. Also, frankly, I'm not sure I give a damn—not if it won't help answer the other questions I have. We've already decided that I'm not a Lazarus Person.'

'And that is precisely what makes you so important, Veil.' Excitement was beginning to hum in Pilgrim's voice. 'Despite the fact that you've never had a near-death experience, except as an infant, you display most of the characteristics of Lazarus People—including the rarest trait of all, soul- catching.'

Ibber started to say something, but Veil cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand. 'Go ahead, Jonathan. Please.'

'In many ways you act like a Lazarus Person, even though you aren't. The close rapport you've felt with me from the beginning is typical; Lazarus People tend to recognize and like one another. My guess is that the brain damage you suffered as an infant did to you what the near-death experience does to Lazarus People as adults; it literally ripped apart some psychic barrier between your conscious and unconscious states of awareness. Your dreams take you to a special place, and you've painted pictures of it.'

'What about Perry Tompkins?'

'A unique case, like you—but different from you. With Perry we're dealing with a giant, a man with artistic talent and sensitivity almost beyond words. That talent—goosed, if you will, by his approaching death—is his ticket to this special place. You both travel there, but by different routes.'

'What 'place,' Jonathan?'

'It's the place beyond the gate, Veil. The paintings you and Perry produced—that's exactly what it looks like. I know, because I've been there. You and Perry keep poking your heads, your collective consciousness, into a land of the soul I could only reach by dying.'

Veil turned quickly toward Sharon when he heard her gasp.

'Oh, yes,' Pilgrim continued, also looking at the woman. 'I've been through the gate, Sharon; just one more thing I've felt the need to lie about. I still don't understand quite how, but I did manage to wrench myself back through—back here. But I was there, on the astral plane. It's where Veil and Perry travel, in their own separate ways, on the vehicle of imagination, and it's where they will go when they die.'

Veil swallowed and found that his mouth was dry. 'Astral plane, Jonathan?'

'Oh, hell!' Pilgrim snapped with more impatience than Veil had ever seen him display. 'And you, of all people, wonder why I keep secrets. Call it what you will. I use the term 'astral plane'; others would call it something else. There are a thousand different names for it, I'm sure, and it's been part of humankind's collective racial consciousness since we dropped out of the trees and crawled into caves. It spawned religion, feeds art, and was the midwife of science; insistence on the quaint idea that the place must have some kind of caretaker, and disagreement over how the caretaker mows the lawn, has broken our bones, spilled our blood, and pretended to offer hope at the same time as it crushed love and life. The fact of the matter, put as simply as I can manage, is that I needed you here so that I could try to prove that heaven exists.'

Chapter 16

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Veil leapt into space, then spread his arms and arched his back to control the angle of his body in free-fall. As he plummeted, the thought flashed across his mind that he was diving off a hundred-fifty-foot cliff into unknown depths, had been forced to kill an American soldier who was a super-assassin as well as—probably—a double agent, was being hunted by Defense Intelligence Agency operatives, had fallen in love for the first time in his life, had discovered a bizarre personal link with one of the greatest artists who had ever lived, and was now on the first leg of a journey that could end in torture and death—all because of a likable madman's obsession and impossible quest. Nevertheless, his own quest had to continue; he could not walk away from the Institute and Jonathan Pilgrim's insanity without going into hiding, and he had rejected that alternative years before. He preferred to make his stand here, on his unknown enemy's ground.

At the last moment he ducked his head, brought his arms together, and clenched his fists to absorb the force of impact with the water. He sliced down into the cold, dark depths, reversed direction, and pulled easily toward the surface at an angle that would bring him to the surface behind the waterfall.

He came up in roaring darkness and groped forward through swirling foam until his fingers touched stone. He hauled himself up on a ledge and unstrapped the belt that secured a rolled towel to his waist. He tore away the protective layers of plastic wrap, unrolled the towel, and searched through its contents until he found his flashlight, which he turned on.

The mouth of the cave behind the falls was high but relatively shallow, an amphitheater of smooth stone from which radiated a number of smaller caves of various sizes going in different directions. There were two caves, each large enough for him to walk in, which appeared to head toward the east.

Veil set the flashlight down beside him on the ledge and sorted through the rest of the things he had brought with him; jeans and a sweater, sneakers, a dozen extra batteries, chalk, his .38, and a makeshift compass he had fashioned from cardboard, thread, and a needle he had magnetized from the motor in the refrigerator in his chalet.

He dried himself, stripped off his shorts, and dressed in the dry clothes. He rewrapped the other items in the towel, picked up the flashlight, and entered the first cave on his left.

He had gone less than two hundred yards when the cave began to narrow, then abruptly became no more than a crevice that was too narrow for him to enter. He retraced his steps to the amphitheater and entered the second cave. Twenty-five yards in, the second cave suddenly branched off into three others.

Veil stopped to take his compass and chalk from the towel, and as he put the flashlight in his armpit to free his hands the beam passed across something in the middle cave that flashed orange. Veil gripped the light and shone it down the cave, and in an instant knew that he would need neither compass nor chalk to continue his journey. He also knew that he would have to rethink his original assessment of the hospice and the people who stayed there.

Someone at the hospice—Lazarus Person, patient, or staff member—was a spy. A route that could lead only to the Army compound had already been marked; there were orange blaze marks, spaced every fifteen yards, on the walls of the cave, and scuff marks in the dust on the floor.

Veil took his .38 out of the towel and stuck it in his belt. Then he started off on the route marked by the bright orange crosses.

It had taken enormous time and effort, involving much trial and error, to mark the route, Veil thought as he glanced at his watch and found that he was into his third hour underground. The route was not direct, but involved many twists and turns in a succession of radiating caves, many of which cut off initially to the north or south. Time was something neither Lazarus People nor the dying at the hospice had much of, since both groups were, for different reasons, transient. The hospice was essentially a closed society, and not even a permanent staff member could have spent the weeks it must have taken to blaze this route without being missed—unless there had been collusion by either Sharon Solow or Jonathan Pilgrim, or both.

Or unless his original assumption had been wrong, Veil thought, and the longer he spent in the marked caves,