ALEC: An Action & Adventure Fantasy Novel (Alexander Trilogy)

by Stan I. S. Law

  10

  The Next Step

  Three days passed before he really missed Sandra. He’d been so busy with school and the return of his parents. Of course, he thought about her when going to bed or when just playing on his computer; but he didn’t feel that hunger for her company. However, as he’d already learned, Sandra didn’t have a cell phone. Perhaps she only came when she was needed. Really needed. Like last week. Or perhaps she was holding court somewhere.

  But she did come back.

  She came when he least expected her. It was Saturday night. He was sitting alone, in his room, on his bed. He was tired from a hard match against Pete; it went to a tie-breaker in all three sets. Eventually Alec had won. It was, like all the others, a friendly match, but they each gave their best. Always. To do otherwise would be insulting.

  Sandra came back with a song—a melody, really, that wasn’t really a melody. It sounded like blades of grass rubbing against each other, like tiny bows on tiny violins, millions of them, perhaps swaying in the wind, and producing a swelling and receding harmony. Just harmony. Long, elongated chords, interlocking with each other. He didn’t really hear the music, if music it was. He was in it. And, in a strange way, part of it.

  “The music of the spheres,” he heard a distant whisper. Quiet, as though not to interrupt the sweet strains.

  His heart beat just a little faster. A phrase from Twelfth Night flowed across this mind, “If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it...” Yes, since that first time mother had read to him, he’s already tasted a little Shakespeare from the volume his father had given him. This is what he wanted. He wanted to be filled with this music to excess. Completely. To be lost in this food of love. Never to come out.

  “Perhaps I do all things to excess, he mused?

  For a moment he couldn’t say anything. It was almost as though he’d grown shy. Then he swallowed his pride.

  “I missed you,” he said, finally.

  “I know.”

  “Then why didn’t you come?”

  “I never left.”

  So we were back to this again: “I’m always with you only you can’t see me or hear me, or be aware of me in any other way.” He cut his thought stream short when he heard the old, familiar giggle.

  “I’m sorry,” she smiled.

  He knew she wasn’t apologizing for her absence, only for the giggle.

  “I suppose I deserve that,” he acknowledged. The strange music seemed to rise between them, smoothing over the instantaneous anger. It swelled, then ebbed like a gentle tide lapping on a shore. After quite a while, he emerged with a question. “Will I ever be able to hear you all the time?”

  “You would grow tired of me,” she quipped.

  “Seriously...?”

  “Yes. I promise you, here and now, that a time will come when you will be unable to tell the difference between you and me.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Shhhh...”

  “Sorry, I know you can hear me. It’s just, well, you and me... You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “I very seldom kid. But I like listening to your jokes.”

  “I’ve never told you any.”

  “That’s true. But I’ve heard them, anyway. And jokes, to me, are not just funny words. In fact, more often than not, they are expressed in actions. And you are very good at those.”

  Alec wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he took her words as a compliment. Perhaps he should try harder to amuse her? After all, he was still her knight.

  “Oh, but you do, Alec. You really do. And you don’t have to try. Just be yourself.”

  After a moment’s silence, Sandra’s tone changed. “Would you like to take the Next Step?”

  He had no idea what she meant, but agreed immediately. “Yes, please...” Any step she wanted him to take, to anywhere... Any...

  The next instant he was again suspended in the middle of the Universe—stars all around him. His first reaction was utter panic. The immensity of the Universe seemed much larger than on his previous visit. The Far Country became the Infinite Country. Not enormous: infinite. There was one difference, though—Sandra wasn’t there. She was nowhere to be seen, or felt. He was all alone.

  Alone in the whole wide Universe.

  He strained his hearing to detect any echo of her presence—he grew afraid. He was as alone as anyone can be. Much, much more alone than when his parents went away. For a moment his panicking mind strayed, wondering if his parents’ absence had been an exercise, a forerunner of this experience. He almost laughed at himself.

  That was child’s play.

  In that very moment he realized that he didn’t feel like a child. Like a boy. It’s not that he felt old or mature, it’s just that age had nothing to do with his present condition. He seemed to hover in a realm where the difference between time and non-time, whatever that was, seemed hazy. Blurred. He could never describe, for instance, how long he hovered there, a mere speck in the vastness of space.

  He tried to see himself, but it was too dark. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. Wherever his face was. And then another wave of panic gripped him with renewed force. He lost awareness of his body. He was an observer observing only that which was outside himself. His own physical being seemed to cease to exist. Oh, he knew he was there. He knew he had arms and legs, but this knowledge was, in a way, theoretical. Not backed up by the evidence of his senses.

  Like that feeling of falling just before you get to sleep. You did not feel the wind rushing past nor hear things nor feel anything solid. He would just see the land moving faster and faster, and feel with total conviction that he was falling.

  He blinked several times in disbelief.

  And yet he could see. He was observing it as though watching his own thoughts. As he directed his attention in any particular direction, the stars in that segment of Everywhere became clearer, brighter, perhaps nearer. And, yes, if he concentrated, they approached him as if he were looking through a powerful telescopic lens.

  “Home...” his thoughts directed.

  And the Home planet loomed almost instantaneously before him. There was neither time nor motion involved, no way to be sure if he had zoomed to the planet or it had zoomed to him. They were just simply closer, instantly. This was like nothing that had happened to him before. No matter, the planet was close, beautiful, familiar. Oh, how very familiar. His previous waves of panic vanished. He was Home.

  “Sandra!?”

  “I knew you could do it.” Her happiness was palpable. He sensed it with his whole being. He was filled with it to overflowing.

  “Where am I?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I don’t mean above my Home world.” He smiled. “I mean here…” There were no words he could find to describe his present whereabouts.

  “We are in the no-man’s-land between the two worlds. The world of imagination and the world created by your mind.” The concepts she fed him came slowly, as though giving time for them to sink in.

  “Created...”

  “...by your mind,” she confirmed.

  He was fully aware that he couldn’t possibly imagine the Universe with its endless worlds, worlds within worlds, the zillions of stars. Was there really no end to them? Miss Brunt never talked about such places in her geography lessons.

  This was bigger, vaster, more fabulous than anything he’d ever dared imagine. The Home world was where his feet were, but all around him… the enormous sun and the many planets were all mere dots in the endless ocean of forever. He lost all sensation of time, all feeling for the enormousness of space. This was also true of the world of his dreams, but not like this. Here he had to give it reality. It did not exist in its own right. This didn’t evolve, this happened. Somehow, inexplicably, he made it happen. All around him, all of it came out of his mind. Of his will.

  “It’s like being Merlin! The greatest Wizard of all time!” The thought flashed through his mind.<
br />
  She didn’t say anything. She waited for his reactions to find their own ground. The silence was all-encompassing. Alec attempted to reconcile his sense of power with a strange feeling of being terribly little. As little as he was in that cathedral, in Paris, on the way back from the Middle East, when he was only five or six. Only much, much more so. In this vastness, the gigantic stars were little more than candles flickering on the altar of Infinity.

  “I made it happen,” he thought, hardly believing his own words. “It’s almost like being a god,” he whispered, “yet so very insignificant...”

  Back in his room, spent and exhausted, Alec collapsed on his bed. The images remained vivid for hours. For a while he seemed to oscillate between the physical and the world of his mind. The factors that determined his reality were unclear. Overlapping. He felt tired, yet didn’t want to let go of the freedom the black Universe had offered. Black? Black with the countless stars, suns, with the light energy pouring at him from all directions...

  He’d experienced something that had nothing to do with his many travels, his many jaunts into the imaginary realities. This was as different from those exploits as the inner worlds were from the physical surroundings. They were all as real. Yet the scale, the sense of freedom, even the sense of power, were incomparable.

  Just before he sank into a deep, dreamless sleep, he knew that he had taken the Next Step. To where? To when, for that matter? This he had a lifetime to discover.

  Perhaps much longer.

  ***

  Alicia had other problems than just coping with her son’s vivid imagination. Now that that her ladies’ painting group had grown to seven semi-professional artists, it was time to think about a joint exhibition. Alicia raised the subject once or twice before, but she didn’t detect particular interest. Perhaps they didn’t have enough canvases to be proud of, at least not in public.

  Even as she was trying to trace the contours of the slightly overweight model with charcoal onto her paper, she mused how would her partners react if she were to present them with a fait accompli.

  As though the matter that has been already arranged.

  The seven of them were sitting in a three-quarter circle, changing places ever half-hour, to try different angles. It was amazing how different the model looked from every side; not just the contours of her body changed but the lighting made all the difference.

  “Light is everything,” mentioned pontifically a visiting professional artist. It just so happened that he was right.

  Alicia peeked over the edge of her easel. On her own, she preferred landscapes. Here she learned to control other media. She was a quick sketcher and invariably finished before most of her colleagues. Immediately on her right was Pat. Pat was plump, nice, what is normally referred to as still pretty. Although only in her late fifties, the signs of a bon vivant were beginning to catch up with her. What she lacked in talent she made up in good disposition.

  Next to her was Joan. In her early forties, Joan was the only one Alicia could count on to help her organize the show. She was tall, energetic, pretty in a vaguely inaccessible way, well spoken though not very tolerant when it came to abject stupidity. She spoke her mind out and “to hell with Burgundy”, as she liked to point out when people objected to her opinions without grounding their opinions in facts. Her canvas displayed her character. Even in charcoal her lines were sharp, confident, without hesitation. She would be good at etching in metal—an unforgiving but permanent medium.

  Judy? Well Judy had a chip on her narrow shoulders. She never had enough room.

  “Move over a bit, Mary!”

  Or… Jean, Pat, or whoever was encroaching on her real or imagined territory.

  Alicia often wondered why the others tolerated her. Actually herself and Joan were the only two whom she’d never attempted to bully. It all wouldn’t be so ridiculous if Judy would be a bit bigger physically. As it was, she hardly cleared five feet. To respond to her complaints one had to look downwards, and then try hard to hide a smile.

  As for Jean and Mary, they displayed quite amazing lack of distinguishing characteristics, except that they both came from Westmount and thus were well bread, well behaved, and well supported by their husbands.

  And then there was Zaza.

  Zaza was definitely talented. She could probably break out on her own and make good money. Only, it seemed, that she didn’t need it. What she needed were nudes. Lots and lots of nudes. Even when others were trying to catch the models poses in charcoal she, with but a few stokes of her beloved acrylic immortalized the various aspects of their pulchritude in vivid color.

  Alicia had to admit to herself, that there had been moments when she’d suspected that Zaza might harbor latent lesbian tendencies. And then, on just one occasion, they had a male model. Alicia noticed how Zaza’s breathing quickened the moment the model threw off his robe. And then there was no hiding the passion that that was visible in her eyes.

  For now, Zaza remained an enigma.

  11

  The Enigma

  The day after the Baldwins got back from the vacations, Alex Senior received an invitation to attend a conference in London. That’s London, England. Just three days, but all expenses paid. Considering he was only a consultant, as against a partner, he felt flattered that the firm had chosen him to attend the annual meeting of The Society of Professional Engineers in UK. Although the Society was established only in 1969, it combined the engineering societies of the whole Commonwealth under a single umbrella.

  It was a singular distinction to be invited.

  He’d only just got back from Singer Island and now he’d be off again—the day after tomorrow.

  While Alicia didn’t like missing him for a few days, there was so much to catch up on. She made a whole list of her friends to whom she wanted to recount the experiences Alex and she shared in board the Catalina. And about Don, of course, with his imaginary artillery, his li’l patch, and li’l oil wells. Considering that Texas invariably laid claim to have everything bigger than anyone else on the North American continents, if not the world, she found it amazing how they liked the word li’l to describe considerable size.

  “You simply wouldn’t believe, daaahling! His boat, I mean ship, really a ship, with sails and motor, and cabins and a fully-fledged galley. That’s kitchen, daaahling, aboard a ship. I mean a yacht, of course, but really a ship. Why, she was wider than this room, daaahling. Really, wider than this room!”

  She meant that the Catalina sported a beam of almost 14 feet. She wasn’t sure about the overall length, but was sure that it was a lot longer then her friend’s house.

  She practiced in front of a mirror for the command performances she’d perform in her husband’s absence. According to her hastily put together list, she’d have to deliver this li’l speech at least seven times. She could have called all her friends together and told them the story all at once. But, surely, it wouldn’t have been as much fun. Just watching their faces, one at a time, and hearing the oohs and aahs, was worth repeating the same story a dozen times, let alone seven.

  But first the beauty salon. After the li’l experience with Don’s thrusting hands and the consequent swim in the ocean, and the then repeated dips in the Bahamian waters, her hair needed all the love and attention they surely deserved. François would do them justice. N’est-ce pas?

  Alicia was happy.

  ***

  The pace for a thirteen-year-old is quite different from that of an adult. He did not have to save the world. He didn’t have to decide whether or not they should increase or kill international trade with China. Or bomb some godforsaken country just because they were harbouring some terrorists. His problems were of a more practical nature. They dealt with what this or that girl said to him in school, or would she laugh at him if he asked her something. Or how to beat Pete at tennis. He also had to decide if he could grow taller faster, how to broaden his shoulders, or expand his chest, and how to solve the problems with his voice. He
talked normally, and suddenly his voice would rise into a frustrated chicken’s lilt, only to drop lower than before. These were serious problems for a normal thirteen-and-a-half-year-old.

  The more he thought about last night’s experience, the more it didn’t make sense. Was he no more than an observer, or did he have something more to do with the reality he visited? The first time Sandra took him there, well, almost there, he supposed, the world was, let’s face it, already there. Wherever there was! It could not have had anything to do with the activity of his mind. What did she mean, "world created by your mind”? That’s crazy. He couldn’t create a spec of dust, never mind a single world. But that? The endless Universe???

  Things always happen for a purpose, he was told; he forgot by whom. His parents had gone to London. He had a lot of thinking to do. Thinking he couldn’t share with anyone. Except Sandra, of course. But Sandra, well...

  Sandra kept her own hours.

  The day was sunny, the first sunny Sunday in a long time. A walk along the canal wouldn’t do any harm. Sometimes his mind cleared when he walked. Outside, that is. Away from the traffic, or crowds, or even the sound of TV. He’d used that footpath along the canal before for that very purpose. To get away, to feel the change of pace.

  He sat down on a tree stump and watched concentric circles forming on the water, caused by some gnat being scooped up by a hungry fish. The circles grew and grew, rather like the scale of his inner worlds. Why did the physical world seem to remain the same size, while what happened inside him was expanding at such an incredible rate? He did not doubt for a moment that what he’d seen or really felt last night wasn’t real. He could describe every detail, recount the exact order in which events unfolded. They were real, all right. A little too real for his liking.