Saint Antony's Fire

by Steve White

  "What will we have to do to remain in the Near Void?" Virginia Dare demanded.

  "How the Devil should I know? I don't even know if we can do it at all."

  "Perhaps," gasped Shakespeare, breathing heavily as he ran uphill, "if there's something in the human soul that allows us to pass through, then we're not just helplessly borne on the winds of the Void. Our souls are our own, and only God can command them! And surely, unworthy though we are, we do God's work here, seeking the liberation of our own world from the Grella. If we wish ourselves to remain here strongly enough—"

  And as he spoke, it was as Winslow remembered. The sunlit late morning began to fade into a blurred, colorless, unnatural twilight against which his companions stood out in vivid contrast.

  Twelve

  This time, Winslow was expecting it. And he knew he had less than a minute before falling into the bottomless nothingness of the Deep Void.

  He remembered what Shakespeare had said. Of course, the actor had no real knowledge to go on. But no one did, where these things were concerned. His guesses were as good as anyone else's. So Winslow tried emptying his mind of everything except his need to stay here in this strange world where the fate of his own world might be decided.

  That need, he found to his dawning astonishment, was inseparable from thoughts of Virginia Dare.

  He looked at her and at Shakespeare, standing out so weirdly in all their vivid, colorful solidity against the nacreous world around them. He noted that they cast no shadows.

  "Can you hear me?" he called out to them.

  "There's no need to shout," said Virginia Dare archly. Her voice—and his own, come to that—had an odd quality. It seemed to be coming from a great distance, but held a deep resonance and reverberation, as though the ordinary laws that governed the transmission of sound did not apply. But what was interesting was that he could hear their voices at all. In the Deep Void, he had not been able to hear his own scream, any more than he had been able to see his own body, or those of others.

  It must, he decided, be as Riahn had told them. This was a realm that somehow coexisted with physical reality. Or, he mentally amended, remembering Riahn's solid circles surrounded by dashed ones, with each physical reality, each like a bubble afloat in the incomprehensible emptiness of the Deep Void.

  The thought of the Deep Void reminded him that he had allowed his mind to wander. He wrenched his thoughts back to their previous state of concentration. From the looks on their faces, his companions were doing the same.

  "I don't know how long we'll be able to keep this up," said Virginia Dare. Winslow didn't either. It was, he reflected, something he should have thought of before.

  "Captain," Shakespeare said abruptly, "it's here at the portal that we passed on into the Deep Void before. So . . . how if we move away from it?"

  "Move away from it?" Winslow repeated blankly. The possibility of moving while in this state of being had never crossed his mind. "How?"

  "Why . . . by walking, I imagine." The actor suited the action to the word, putting one foot forward, then the other. He walked away from them at the same rate he would have in what had once been the only world Winslow had ever imagined could exist.

  Winslow and Virginia Dare looked at each other, then walked toward Shakespeare. He noted that it wasn't really like ordinary walking. The pressure on the soles of the feet wasn't there. Come to think of it, the grass hadn't seemed to bend under Shakespeare's feet. He decided he'd worry about it later.

  Tentatively, he stopped thinking about the need to stay in the Near Void. Nothing happened. He saw a relaxation on the others' faces that suggested they'd had the same thought.

  "I think you were right, Will," he breathed. He took a moment to look around. Now, for the first time, he could observe the phenomena of the Near Void at leisure. He looked up into the sky. In these conditions, it was almost like looking up through clear water. The sun was a white disk that could be gazed at unblinking. He looked in the direction from which the Grella flyers had been approaching. They had landed, and were presumably in the process of offloading their soldiers.

  "All very well," said Virginia Dare in tones of prim female practicality. "But if we can only get into this Near Void at the portal, then how do we get out of it and back into the solid world, now that we're away from the portal?"

  "I never thought of that," Shakespeare admitted. "But . . . maybe we can only enter the Near Void at a portal because the Near Void is so unnatural for us. Shouldn't it be easier for us to return to where we belong—the good, solid creation that gave us birth?"

  "You mean you think we may not need a portal to return to the world of nature?" Winslow wondered. "But . . . how?"

  "I don't know," Shakespeare admitted with uncharacteristic brevity.

  "We remained in this state by willing it strongly enough," Virginia Dare reminded them. "We may as well try the same way again."

  "You may be right," Winslow nodded. "But I alone will try it. Don't you two even let yourselves think of it. And don't move."

  "Why?" she demanded.

  "Because I'm the only one I know can find the portal again, once back in the real world."

  "All right," she said grudgingly. "But whatever you're going to do, do it quickly. The Grella flyers aren't going to sit on the ground forever. And remember what you yourself said about letting them watch us vanishing into the portal."

  "Yes, yes," he said absently. Most of his attention was on the problem of how to do this thing, if indeed it could be done. Intense concentration on his need to remain in contact with the world of the Eilonwë had sufficed to keep him from falling headlong into the abysses of the Deep Void, but that was all it had done. Something more must be needed to actually return to that world, piercing the impermeable wall that separated it from the Near Void that was in some incomprehensible fashion superimposed on it.

  Shakespeare had spoken of returning to where they belonged. Perhaps he should dismiss all his earlier urgent thoughts of the fate of worlds and concentrate on the essence of that very belongingness—small things rather than great ones. Memories of the meadows through which he had run as a boy, in a springtime that must surely last forever; of the smell of the salt air that blew in off the sea marshes; of the feel of the sun-blessed chill of a winter morning . . .

  With an abruptness for which none of the previous transitions had prepared him, the world was back in all its sharp-focused primary colors and dazzling sunlight.

  He blinked away the dazzlement of the sudden brightness and fought off his disorientation. He looked around him. Shakespeare and Virginia Dare were nowhere to be seen. And in the distance, the Grella flyers were rising into the sky.

  He forced calmness on himself. The crews of those flyers surely weren't observing this hillside yet. He ran in the opposite of the direction they'd walked in the strange way of the Near Void. He cast his eyes about him, watching the contours of the landscape. It all came back into its remembered configurations . . .

  And he was back in the twilight world of the Near Void. Shakespeare and Virginia Dare had obeyed his instructions; they were still standing where he had left them.

  "They didn't see you, did they?" Shakespeare asked nervously.

  "I'm sure they didn't." Winslow looked into the murky distance. The flyers were moving slowly over the valley, conducting a methodical search. "If they had, they'd be speeding in this direction."

  "I only hope you're right," said Virginia Dare. Her tone wasn't as skeptical as her words. She took a deep breath. "So now we know we can move about in the Near Void, and need no portal to depart from it. For now, though, we'd best remain in it."

  "Yes. It's a perfect hiding place. And we're going to need one. In fact, I see no reason why we can't walk all the way back to the Eilonwë refuge while still in it."

  "Will we be able to do what you just did, so far from the portal?" Shakespeare wondered.

  "There's one way to find out," stated Virginia Dare, and she set out down t
he slope, striding through the indistinct twilight-that-was-not-twilight. The two men could only follow.

  They reached the outskirts of the ancient city and began picking their way over crumbled walls and fallen, moss-overgrown pillars. As they progressed, and no dangers appeared, Shakespeare's attentiveness seemed to wander in the presence of those mute ruins and the forgotten memories they held.

  "Leave not the mansion so long tenantless lest, growing ruinous, the building fall and leave no memory of what it was," he said to himself, and gave a satisfied nod and closed his eyes as he put the words into the filing system between his ears.

  "Careful, Will!" Winslow called out as they turned a corner of a half-collapsed structure and a tree appeared, growing through the cracked remains of what had been a street.

  But Shakespeare didn't come out of his reverie in time to notice. He continued on . . . and walked through the tree.

  For a while, they all simply stood, unable to react—especially Shakespeare, who looked back at the tree and down at his own body, for once at a loss for words.

  Virginia Dare finally found her voice. "Why can't we do that?" she asked Winslow.

  "How do you know we can't?" he responded, surprised at his own words. "We haven't tried. Actually, Will didn't try either. Nobody would walk into a solid obstacle, unless his mind was elsewhere as Will's was and he didn't notice it. We've been avoiding bumping into things just as we would if we were out for a walk in the normal world. It's the natural thing to do." He took a breath, squared his shoulders, and strode unflinchingly toward a still-standing segment of an ancient wall—and through it.

  There was a brief instant of darkness as he occupied the same space as the wall, as though a wing beat across the dim, pearly sun. But he felt nothing. And then he was on the far side of the wall.

  "Well, well!" he said softly.

  "Riahn is right," Virginia Dare nodded. "This is a . . . a state of being that somehow overlaps the real world. Even he doesn't understand why we can—more or less—see the real world from it, while we can't be seen."

  "Or, it would seem, be heard," said Shakespeare, and pointed.

  They all froze. A squad of armed Grella were advancing around a hillock that had once been a building but was now a mound with only a few projecting corners of angular stones to suggest that it was anything other than a natural formation.

  They all froze instinctively. But the Grella continued their advance, oblivious. Overhead, Winslow saw a flyer slowly following its search pattern. But he couldn't hear it, any more than he had heard anything from their surroundings ever since they had entered the Near Void. He remembered how Manteo's final scream had faded into inaudibility.

  A sudden wild mood took him. He advanced straight toward one of the Grella soldiers. He heard a sharp intake of breath from Virginia Dare, but ignored it. He walked straight toward the Grell as he had toward the ancient wall . . . and was beyond him. The Grella patrol moved on, oblivious.

  "We are indeed like ghosts," Winslow heard Shakespeare say. "Except that ghosts can sometimes be glimpsed by mortals . . . or so we're told. In truth, I can't claim I've ever seen one."

  "Besides," said Virginia Dare with the matter of factness she could be counted on to bring to bear on Shakespeare's observations, "we aren't dead. Not that I know of, at least."

  "Well," Winslow declared, "if I'd died, I like to think I would have noticed it. And I don't think my spirit would feel as hungry as I do now. So I refuse to worry about it. Let's go. We'll be lucky to reach the Eilonwë refuge before nightfall."

  As it turned out, they couldn't. Their pace increased markedly after walking through rather than around obstacles became second nature to them. Nevertheless, the dim white sun sank toward the west, and began to set.

  But it turned out to make no difference. The indistinct grayness around them grew no dimmer or darker than before. Whatever it was they were seeing the real world by, it evidently wasn't ordinary light. Winslow simply accepted it as a fact, thankfully but without any attempt to understand it. He'd leave that to the likes of Riahn and Dr. Dee. For now, he filed it away as another mystery.

  Shakespeare raised yet another mystery as they walked. "Ah, Captain, I can't help wondering about something."

  "You never can," Virginia Dare muttered.

  "The way we can pass through solid objects," Shakespeare continued, ignoring her. "Well, Aristotle explained that things fall down because it is their nature to fall. So why don't we fall down through the solid ground, and find ourselves beneath the earth?"

  "You're asking me?" An incredulous laugh escaped Winslow. "I understand none of this. But I have noticed something." He told them what he had observed before, about the grass beneath their feet.

  "We must be walking in some fashion beyond ordinary human ken," Shakespeare opined.

  "Well," said Virginia Dare impatiently, "however we're walking, let's do some more of it. I'm hungry too."

  "As am I," Shakespeare agreed. "Though the chameleon love can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat." He gave a particularly satisfied blink and nod, but then took on a perplexed look. "Any yet, after all this walking I feel strangely little weariness in my limbs."

  "Now that you mention it, so do I," Winslow acknowledged, and promptly forgot about it. Another mystery.

  They pressed on. Even in this strange realm of shadows, Virginia Dare had no trouble guiding them into and out of the labyrinth of ancient tunnels. Presently the great old ruined building appeared ahead in the dimness.

  "All right, Tom, tell us how you returned to the world of sound and feeling." It was, Winslow realized, the first time Virginia Dare had ever addressed him by his Christian name. He described to her and Shakespeare the thoughts and feelings he had allowed to take possession of his mind.

  "But," he concluded, "don't try it yet. Let's continue on inside."

  "Why?" Virginia Dare wanted to know. But Winslow hurried on up the curving old staircase, and his companions followed.

  Inside, the artificial illumination gave neither more nor less light than the sun or the starlight had. But they were used to that by now, as they were to the ease with which they passed through the warren of partitions and cubicles. Finally, they came to the central chamber. It was largely empty, this late at night, but at the far end Walsingham and Dee were hunched over a table in conclave with Riahn and a pair of other Eilonwë. Their conversation was inaudible, of course, but worry etched their faces.

  "Now will you tell us why we're still playing ghost?" demanded Virginia Dare, exasperated.

  Winslow turned to her with a wide grin. "One thing I've never been able to do—in fact, I'm not sure anyone has ever been able to do it—is surprise Mr. Secretary Walsingham!"

  The consternation that erupted when he appeared out of nowhere, a second or two before Shakespeare and Virginia Dare, was deeply satisfying.

  Thirteen

  Walsingham finally drove off the swarms of well-wishers, even putting his foot down with the Queen—and, what was rather more difficult, with John Dee and Riahn, both of whom were in a frenzy of curiosity. He insisted that the three returnees be allowed to sleep for what remained of the night.

  Winslow was grateful; despite the odd lack of physical weariness they had noticed, they were mentally and emotionally exhausted. He knew, however, that as usual Mr. Secretary had an ulterior motive. He wanted them alert, refreshed, and able to respond to searching questions at a meeting the following morning.

  That meeting turned out to be as small as Walsingham could arrange. It wasn't that he was worried about what a later era would call security leaks. It was impossible to imagine any of the Eilonwë spying for the Grella, and while only the naïve would doubt that there were humans capable of selling out their own kind, the Grella's arrogance rendered them incapable of exploiting that weakness. No, it was only that he wanted a gathering of manageable size.

  Besides himself it consisted of the Queen (of course)
, Dee, Riahn, John White (limp with relief over the miraculous reappearance of his granddaughter), and Tyralair, an elderly female Eilonwë specialist in the theory of the Void. She, it turned out, was the only member of her race other than Riahn to have mastered English, driven by her desire to extract every possible crumb of information from the colonists about their transition to this world. Now she fidgeted with fascination as Winslow and the others related their adventures.

  " . . . And so we returned," Winslow finished, rather anticlimactically. "Perhaps someone can answer a question Will raised: since we could pass through solid objects, why did we stay atop the ground instead of falling down through it?"

  "First of all," said Tyralair, speaking as though most of her mind was elsewhere, "you were not so much 'passing through' objects as coexisting with them in the same volume of space but in another dimension—another phase of existence, if you will, wherein you could not physically interact with the material world. This last of course, answers your question. Your bodies were not physical objects at all, and therefore were not subject to the force of . . ." Tyralair sought unsuccessfully for an English word, then tried again. "To the mutual attraction between such objects which causes the lesser to seem to fall toward the greater."