A Vision of Fire: A Novel

by Gillian Anderson

  “Right. She lost it,” Ben said. “She just went wild and tried to throw herself from the window. Mrs. Pawar said she started to burn. They put her in the shower. She slept for a while and then it was more talk and gesturing, your blackberries cue, sleep—and then the same all over again. The ambassador stepped out of negotiations again to be with her; I basically invented meetings to keep the delegates in the building. I just got here at ten. They’re keeping her out of her bedroom and that seems to be calming her.”

  “Have you been in there?”

  “I’m at the apartment—”

  “No, the bedroom.”

  Another hesitation. “Yeah. Cai, it’s strange.”

  “What is?”

  “The room is dead,” he said. “When I’m in there I don’t hear the pipes in the ceiling, air traffic outside the window. The air is motionless, thin.”

  “Where’s the dog?”

  “In the hall outside the bedroom.” Ben said. “Facing the door.”

  “Is he quiet?”

  “Yes, but he’s definitely on alert,” Ben said. “What do you know?”

  “I think that room has connected, through Maanik, to another time and place. They’re sharing a space like twins sharing a womb, and the older one is feeding on the younger. The room is mirroring what’s happening to Maanik’s mind, almost like a portal.”

  “Caitlin, that’s—”

  “A leap, I know. But I’m going to work on that assumption until someone comes up with a better explanation.”

  “Do you know why these locations are . . . colliding?”

  “Not yet,” she admitted. “Don’t let the Pawars give Maanik anything except water, if she’ll take it.”

  “I’ll try but Mrs. Pawar is pretty desperate. Cai, there’s one more thing.” He hesitated again.

  “Just blurt it out.”

  “Okay. Maanik seems to be emitting . . . something.”

  “Something?”

  “It’s thermal, I guess, but it seems to have substance too. A constant, steady flow from her right hand. Cold, like mist. Please don’t tell me it’s her soul or something.”

  “I don’t think it’s her soul,” Caitlin said. She did not add, But I don’t know what it might be. She looked out the window. “We’re on the expressway now, traffic’s not so bad. I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes.” She hesitated. “Are you okay? What’s happening in Kashmir?”

  She noticed the cab driver’s face tweak, turn slightly toward her. She looked at the name on his license, Shri Kapoor. Their eyes met for a moment in the rearview mirror.

  “The UN sent a small force over there but not in the way we hoped,” Ben said. “We wanted a protectorate but this is playing out like martial law. The allied countries are starting to grandstand big-time, like the Allies after World War II. Everyone is jockeying for post-crisis influence even though we’re not past the crisis yet. Russia was first, on behalf of India. China guaranteed loans for Pakistan. That’s all I can say but it feels like we’re flinging farther away from any kind of sane, predictable political process.” He paused. “Like us,” he said tiredly. “I mean, flinging farther away from each other. Not the politics.”

  She smiled, then promised, “We’re going to fix that.”

  “There’s the old college Cai with the old college try,” he said.

  “Rah,” she said. “But first crisis first. Tell me about the Vikings.”

  “A story in runes,” he joked. There was a flash of the old Ben as he dove in, the enthusiastic kid scholar. It made her laugh, and she could imagine his answering grin. “In the ninth century, the trade route between the Baltic Sea and the Caspian Sea was essentially conquered and controlled for two hundred years by people called the Rus.”

  “Rus as in Russian?”

  “Exactly, but that came later, after they intermingled with the Slavs to the point of absorption.” He was racing, as if he was trying to get it all on the table before she reached him in the cab. “In the early days they were specifically the Varangian Rus—‘Varangian’ is from an Old Norse word—and they came down from Scandinavia. They mostly stuck to the trade-and-raid routes, shopping in Baghdad, periodically attacking Constantinople, as pretty much everyone did for thousands of years—”

  “Three Vikings walk into a bar in Constantinople . . . ,” she said slowly.

  Ben chuckled and sucked down a breath. He realized he was rushing.

  “Okay,” he continued, more slowly. “The Varangian Rus also traveled east beyond Constantinople, to the city of Bolghar on the Volga. The Silk Road was fully active—”

  “But that trade route connecting the West to the East was much more recent than an ice-free Antarctica. What’s this got to do with us?”

  “The fact that it happened,” he said. “This all occurred between the ninth and eleventh centuries. It was written about, mapped, charted. But it could have happened before, any number of times, and if no one wrote about it, or we haven’t found the writings—”

  “Or we haven’t deciphered the writings—”

  “Exactly. And how do we know that in your ‘other time’ things were even written? We’ve witnessed these words and gestures. Maybe there were people who just memorized things, like human computers.”

  And communicated those thoughts en masse, at death, to another brain? Caitlin wondered. Was that also part of the transpersonal plane? She was getting ahead of herself.

  “Ben, we’re coming to the Triborough Bridge and I need a minute to just absorb—”

  “Of course. I’ll see you in a few.”

  “Wait. Do you have your equipment?”

  “After all these years, do you really have to ask?”

  “Thank you, Ben, so much.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She ended the call, sat back, and took a deep breath.

  Under the portentous skies, her mind returned to the task at hand, to Maanik. She had to figure out how to approach her; this could well be her last chance. Without really thinking about it, she reached out with her left hand and touched the frame of the taxi just above her window. At first she felt only the rumble of the road through the steel, but after a second she felt something deeper. She could feel a path extending far beyond the shape of the cab, the traffic outside, even beyond the towers of the city and the angry sky.

  It reminded her of her first day in Central Park, decades ago, when she had walked toward scattered elm trees, then among them—and suddenly the trees aligned in long, straight rows. The feeling of alignment had been almost as audible as a click. Now, here in the cab, her perspective had shifted and extended again. The expansion was clear and energetic and familiar. She had felt this on the airplane in that moment of full physical acceptance of truth. Again she felt radiance in her sternum, and took a long inhale and exhale. She continued to breathe steadily and kept her eyes open, pinging from one visual cue to another: streetlamp to car to fire hydrant to pedestrian.

  Arriving at the Pawars’ apartment, passing through their door, the atmosphere was so heavy it threatened to unbalance her. All was quiet and dead around her, yet there was also turmoil.

  Gales of madness, she thought, flashing back to the experiences with Atash and Gaelle. Is that what Jack London feels?

  “Dr. O’Hara,” the ambassador said with a formal nod.

  “Ambassador Pawar,” she replied. She did not want to get into a conversation with him. Maanik was stretched out on a sofa, covered in a quilt, her mother by her head, stroking her hair. Caitlin took one look at the girl’s drained face and turned to Ben, standing well to the side.

  “Please set up the camera in Maanik’s bedroom.”

  Ben reached for his bag but hesitated, waiting for the Pawars’ approval.

  “No, not there!” Hansa blurted. “She is much worse in her room!”

  “That’s why we have to be there.”

  “But she nearly jumped from the—”

  “I know. We will not let her anywhere nea
r the window. Please, both of you, I know your daughter is still fighting this and I also know that medicine isn’t the answer and that institutionalizing her will do no good. This is our last chance. We can’t possibly succeed with a diluted version of the experience. It has to be vivid and I have to be in there with her.”

  “What do you mean, ‘in there’?” the ambassador asked.

  “I am going to hypnotize us together. I’m not going to listen and analyze like before, I’m going to experience everything that she is experiencing.” She looked at Hansa. “Mrs. Pawar, please put Jack London somewhere else. On the other side of the apartment.”

  “I’ll get him,” Ambassador Pawar said. “He has not been inclined to leave that spot.”

  Caitlin knelt beside Maanik. Left hand, heart hand, spiritual intake, she thought. Right hand, spiritual provider.

  Placing her left hand on her own chest, settling herself, Caitlin placed her right hand in Maanik’s left. Something softened behind the girl’s closed eyes and Caitlin felt a small squeeze of her hand.

  “It’s time now, Maanik,” she said quietly. “Can you come with me?”

  The girl struggled a moment, then nodded. Hansa made way as her daughter rose with an almost ethereal delicacy, as if she were weightless. Caitlin waited while Mr. Pawar slipped by with Jack London. The dog struggled but the ambassador held him tightly against his chest.

  Caitlin led the girl down the hall. As they walked, she felt Maanik begin to stiffen.

  “The room is safe,” Caitlin said.

  “No—”

  “We are not going back to the moment of crisis. We are going to a time an hour or two earlier.”

  “Sho,” she said.

  Caitlin glanced at Ben, who was filming from the other side of the doorway. She didn’t know what the word meant but Ben must have encountered it before because he held up a finger, meaning “one.” One hour before the crisis. Maanik was already on her way back, if indeed she had ever left.

  Maanik took a step into the bedroom and Caitlin felt her try to withdraw. She put the girl’s left hand to her own chest. She could feel her heart throbbing through the fabric of her coat, through Maanik’s hand. She took a deep breath. Maanik took one as well. They stepped into the room together and moved slowly until they reached the center. Then Caitlin took up the girl’s right hand.

  The polarity of Caitlin and Maanik vanished in a swirl. A different place appeared before Caitlin’s eyes, the bedroom a dim backdrop fading with every beat of her heart. She was staring at a low building made of the same dark blocks with curved edges that she had seen in the courtyard. There were trees by a wooden door and Maanik—no, it was no longer Maanik—was moving to sit on a doorstep of stone. Caitlin remembered Maanik had described these trees before as part of her home. The girl held her chin in one hand and petted a white and gray seal by her feet with the other as the animal rubbed its whiskers back and forth along her calf. The girl seemed to be staring at Caitlin while engaging in conversation with an older woman who sat on the step beside her. Both were dressed in thick coats made of a kind of fur. The older woman was addressing the girl, shaking her head.

  “You must not be distressed.”

  “But when it comes, anything could go wrong,” the young girl replied.

  “That is why we must leave before it begins,” the old woman continued. “The power the Technologists are unleashing is potentially deadly.”

  “And the Priests?” asked a third voice, a young man’s voice. Caitlin recognized it as her own, but not her own at the same time—and not the same voice she had spoken with in Atash’s vision. The girl looked at Caitlin, as did the old woman, but they were seeing him.

  The old woman hesitated. “I was once a Believer, but I’m not sure anymore,” she finally said. “In any case, I would rather live now than ascend. Please save seats for us on your ship.”

  “You will leave early though? Otherwise, there may not be time.”

  “You anticipate panic,” the old woman said.

  “When the time comes? I do. Ascent through the cazh requires faith,” the young man replied. “Strong faith. Most people will suddenly discover they want our strong hulls instead. I’ll keep seats for you as long as I can.”

  The old woman looked up, gazed at a full moon brightening in a sky nearing sunset. Caitlin thought perhaps the woman would have made a different decision if it were just herself, without her granddaughter to consider.

  The grandmother rose slowly to her feet and turned to go into the house behind them but kept her eyes on Caitlin’s young man for a second—and suddenly Caitlin felt she was looking at her. “I know you care for her as I do,” she said. “That is where I must put my trust.”

  Unnerved, Caitlin broke the gaze and glanced at the girl, who was flashing a smile, then coyly turning her face to look down at her seal.

  Caitlin felt the young man start to move toward the girl. She felt a gust of cool air, only now realizing how pleasantly warm the evening had been. The boy took the girl’s hands and Caitlin felt their connection. She realized then, with certainty, that Maanik and this girl had been merged ever since the visions started. And if this girl’s soul, or transpersonal identity, or whatever it was, was connected to Maanik, then the girl was not going to leave with the boy on his ship. Something else had happened.

  Caitlin let go and the boy let go and suddenly she was back in Maanik’s bedroom, with Maanik staring at her. Caitlin quickly took both of the girl’s hands, not to reconnect but to make sure she didn’t get away.

  “Maanik?”

  The girl seemed confused. She tried to let go of Caitlin’s hands but Caitlin held hers tightly.

  “No. Stay with me.”

  “I have to go,” the girl said frantically. “I don’t belong here.”

  “Where?”

  “Alive.”

  Horrified, Caitlin almost let go of her. This wasn’t Maanik. This was the merged identity, some strange hybrid—part Maanik, part the other. It was not a split personality, not post-traumatic stress as anyone understood it, not even “possession.” It was something else, something new. More importantly, she suddenly understood why they were merged.

  “Listen to me,” Caitlin said. The girl tried to withdraw her left hand. Caitlin gripped it and focused. “Listen. I know you’re trying to complete the ritual, and I know you’re trying to join the others and transcend. But something goes wrong each time your people—”

  Suddenly her grip broke and cold wind blew against the back of Caitlin’s head. She felt her hair rising, heard shouts and screams from every side. She saw a sky turning red with fire that was shot from the earth to heights she could not imagine.

  The girl before her was heaving sobs. Her hands were trying to lift into the air, not in the gestures of the strange language but with drooping wrists, with the awful helplessness of a child crying inconsolably. Caitlin was crying too now, feeling the girl’s gasping, choking cries in her own body.

  The young man was not present. The grandmother was not present. There was just the girl in the midst of chaos. Clearly the crisis had come early. People had not been prepared. The well-planned exodus the young man had spoken of had not taken place.

  But this was not Caitlin’s concern. It was not something she could repair. She had only one objective.

  “Maanik!” Caitlin called, hoping to reach her. “What you see around you is not happening. It already happened. You are not there.”

  The girl shook her head as embers fell and scorched her bare arms. “I . . . am. I must . . . transcend.”

  “No, you must not!”

  “It is already being done,” she said through tears.

  This wasn’t working; Caitlin would have to go through this girl to get to Maanik. “Tell me your name.”

  “Bayarmii,” the girl wept.

  “Bayarmii, you must listen. The ritual is not going to work. I know you want to join with the others, but something is going wrong.”

  �
��Why?” she wailed.

  “I don’t know yet. But I do know that this isn’t working. You have to stop taking Maanik back with you.”

  “No, I need her.”

  “But you’re killing her!”

  “Yes,” the girl said, rubbing at her face, trying to see through her tears. “If she dies, we will go together. That is what we were told.”

  “You’ve been told a lie,” Caitlin said. “Bayarmii, you will ascend through your own private prayer. This ritual—what you’re doing now, the cazh—it’s something else. Please, let go.”

  The girl looked around. “I can’t!” Her face was twisted, tortured, terrified.

  Then there was silence. Maanik’s bedroom began to waver back into Caitlin’s vision.

  “Bayarmii?” There was no response. Then, hopefully, Caitlin looked at the girl standing before her and said, “Maanik?”

  “Yes,” Maanik said, trembling.

  Caitlin knew that something was still terribly wrong—the bedroom would not steady around them. The other place was still flashing in and through it.

  “Maanik, do you understand what Bayarmii said?”

  “Yes.” Maanik was shaking hard. Caitlin took her hands again. “She’s not letting go of me, though,” Maanik said. “She’s so scared. She wants to come with me.”

  “You must tell her no.”

  “But . . . she says she’ll die if she remains. She says she has to come with me!”

  She is already dead, Caitlin wanted to tell her. “Maanik, Bayarmii is very frightened and very confused but that’s not your responsibility. It’s not your job.” Caitlin held her hands tightly as words spilled out of her. “Just like it wasn’t your job to save your father. That was up to the bodyguard and he did it, he protected your papa.” Maanik was weeping again. “You did what you were supposed to do. You kept yourself safe and that’s exactly what you have to do here. You have to tell her no. Helping her is my job, and I will do it. But you have to come back to me first.”

  Maanik shuddered, sobbing.

  “Listen to me. Your parents love you. Stay here for them and stay here for you.”

  “I can’t,” she choked out, trying to pull her hands away.