I growled, "Knock it off."
"Soul Mates," he said. "Yeah I can't compete with that."
This guy was no end of surprises.
I said gruffly, "What th' hell do you know about it, cop?"
He just showed me a sad smile and replied, "I know I can't compete with it."
I had no response to that. I was still staring at the painting in silence when a long moment later Alvarez cleared his throat and said, "Well, I'll leave you to your study. I'm gonna go sing with the angels. Don't, uh, don't go off the deep end here, eh."
I muttered, "Thanks. I'm fine, Bob."
He walked away, joining the others in song as he approached them.
I certainly did not feel like singing.
I did not know what I felt like at that moment. A bit sad, I think, an almost mournful sadness—no, different than that—more subtle—disappointment...or some sort of wistful...
I did know that I had seen enough of that painting, for the moment anyway. It had a very disturbing effect on me. I was standing near the hallway door so I roused myself from that depressing whatever I was falling into and just stepped on through and found my way around to the kitchen. From there I could hear the Chinese girls busily clearing the dinner table in the dining room. The kitchen was clear. I went through to the door I'd noted earlier during my inspection of the house, tried it, found it unlocked, entered.
There was, yeah, a cellar.
I found a light switch at the head of the stairs and counted twenty steps as I descended. It was very neat and tidy down there, stone walls, stone flooring, evidently a pantry area and wine cellar combined. Really did not know what I was looking for. Well, yes, I guess I did. Because I found it another door set flush into the stone and barely noticeable behind a stand of wine racks.
It featured a trick pivot like the one in the elevator pit. Two square flashlights—similar to the navy's battle lanterns—were affixed to a rough rock wall just inside. I took one down and tried it. It worked and the battery seemed fully charged. Another long flight of stairs invited me downward.
Devils, eh?
I didn't know about that.
But I had the very eerie feeling that maybe I was descending into the pits of hell...while the angels sang— upstairs.
The concept of heaven being located up there and hell down there is probably as old as man himself. But that view is tied in very closely to early man's model of reality. Even the enlightened Greeks of Plato's time still used the mythical cosmology derived from the much earlier Sumerians and Babylonians, whose model of reality divided existence into the spheres of celestial air, celestial water, and a crystal celestial fortress which floats in the celestial water and in which is embedded the physical world which man inhabits.
This was a very small world.
The crystal celestial fortress (or sphere) of Sumerian- Babylonian legend is divided into twelve zodiacal parts. Within the sphere, which rather looks like a round bowl with a transparent dome, the waters of the Bitter Lake fill the bowl and support the earth's disk (which is flat) beneath the dome, which is filled with celestial air.
The Babylonians believed that their Ziggurat, the Tower of Babel, was situated in the precise center of the celestial sphere, so that all of the created world radiated out from that center.
As I said, it was a very small world.
Above the Ziggurat is stacked the vault of the sky, divided into three parts; below lies the city of the dead, which is surrounded by seven walls containing within them the dwelling places of the inhabitants of those nether regions.
The Greeks of course decided that Mount Olympus occupied the precise center of the universe. They still had the earth as a disk floating upon the bitter (salt) waters. The Mediterranean flowed in through the Strait of Gibralter (Pillars of Hercules) at the extreme western edge of the disk, almost splitting the world into two equal parts with the continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia grouped about it.
That was the whole universe, pal, even for the Greeks.
They put Hades, the Underworld, in the far west where the sun sinks into the sea. But this too was a nether region inhabited by spooks and demons, and there was no way there save by Charon's ferry.
It may be interesting to consider that the Greeks of Plato's time would have regarded North and South America, if they'd found it, as Hades. More interesting though is the realization that on the surface of a sphere, any stretch toward any direction—north, east, south, or west—is also a stretch downward: down under, as we regard Australia today; the other side of the sphere is the nether region.
Neither the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Stone Age Greeks or any other early people actually believed that hell was a hole in the ground. They simply had no conceptual basis for such an idea. Indeed man became man during the eternal winter of the last great ice age, and those who survived to emerge into the true dawn of mankind did so by and large because they had found comforting refuge from the cold within the greatly hospitable Mother Earth, in her nether regions of perfect ambient temperature control.
Man became man as dwellers of the underworld.
Would he forget so soon his origins, and learn to fear them as the habitat of spooks and demons?
I think not. So I prefer to believe that the early mythical cosmology never intended to so characterize the womb of mankind. I believe they knew, or had been told somehow, that their model of the universe was seriously deficient and that other peoples on other lands existed beyond the Pillars of Hercules. They accounted for this knowledge through their mythologies, wondrous tales of the imagination designed to describe the indescribable—or the inexperienced.
That is my belief now and it was my belief on that night at Pointe House as I descended the nether stairway of the angels.
So why was I so damned spooked by the possible presence of demons?
It's in the genes I guess...in the genes. And mine were crying like a babe in the darkness alone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Bodies Immortal
The descent was by curving stairway cut into a smooth stone wall—and by smooth I mean like polished marble or heavy glass. The darkness was so absolute at the top of that journey that the beam cast by the flashlight defined only a narrow cone of reality for my senses to focus on, producing a vertigolike effect and encouraging me to maintain sensory contact with one hand along the wall during that early descent. I had the distinct sensation though of descending around the sides of a large round hollow—not a narrow passageway twisting downward but rather like being inside a large vessel and spiraling slowly downward along its inner walls.
I recall reflecting upon the fact that my guiding hand upon the wall encountered no seams or flaws of any kind to interrupt that smooth texture. I have no idea how deep the descent. I paused at several points to cast the beam of light about in attempts to gauge the dimensions of the chamber, but could see nothing beyond the few steps below and above my route and a few yards of the wall that provided it.
Again though—as earlier with Francesca—I began to note the subtle change in atmosphere as I continued the descent. It was definitely warmer and the air pure and almost sweet in the nostrils. I even noted that my breathing became easier. Shortly thereafter I began coming into the light; very pale at first, then growing steadily until suddenly all was light; not the kind in which you stand blinking for adjustment but an all-encompassing kind of light that is bright white yet softly illuminating and does not cast shadows.
And I was definitely in a different kind of place.
It was a huge chamber, yes—I think—and totally filled with that strange light—yet I could not see the ends of it.
It appeared to be some sort of technological facility, though not of any technology I'd ever experienced. This was nothing at all like the mission control center I'd dreamed about. There were no people, no gadgets or machinery—but a sort of tinkling sound seemed to faintly fill the whole place—remember the wind chimes I mentioned earlier when Francesca and I fou
nd the access to the tidal cave?—like that, only a bit louder and constant, and I had the feeling that the sound was somehow associated with whatever this place was about.
I call it a place for lack of a better word.
But it was more than a place; it was an experience involving the whole mind and the whole body. I was aware
that something that is essentially me was somehow, in some way, responding to something present there within that experience, but I have never come to any better understanding than that. I just knew that this was technology rather than spiritology—and that whatever the nature of my response, it was at least 99 percent a this-world response wholly within time and space.
It was not a city, or a dwelling, or a craft of any kind that I could understand—but then how would a cockroach describe to his friends his first venture from the musty darkness into a modem human kitchen with its fluorescent lights, gleaming tiles, electronic digital gadgets, and wide flowing spaces? What would be his point of reference? No point whatever, that's right; and there was no point of reference or relativity for me either within that place.
Certainly I no longer needed the flashlight. It seems like I would have turned it off at some point when it was no longer needed, but I do not recall doing so, nor do I remember the transition from stairway to place. I just know that suddenly there I was in the light, everything that is me vibrating to some strange new quality to existence, being drawn almost magnetically deeper into the light.
Then suddenly I saw Hai Tsu, a somehow different kind of Hai Tsu. She was naked, and her body was like some denser concentration of the light, almost incandescent, yet I could see through it. She was about ten paces ahead of me but when she spoke it was like speaking inside my head instead of from her position outside of me.
"A thousand pardons, Ash Shen, but you must not be here."
"Where is here, Hai Tsu?"
"Here is where you must not be, my master. How do I forbid you? Yet I must. Go back, please."
"I cannot go back without understanding."
"You would understand the understanding that is not yours to know? Please, do not command me in this."
I am not relating a dream here. This happened, exactly as I am giving it.
And then Valentinius happened.
He "appeared in glory" beside Hai Tsu—much more physically substantial than she—in whole body I mean, but that body was shooting light just like hers.
His words occurred through my ears, not inside the head like Hai Tsu's. "We must respect her imperatives, Ashton."
"We must?"
"To be sure. I, no less than you."
It occurred to me then—just popped into the head; I don't know from where—but I had to ask: "She is one of the Immortals?"
"In the way we think of it, yes."
"How 'bout the way she thinks of it?"
"She was sent to serve, Ashton. But not to reveal."
"That is her imperative? To not reveal?"
"One of them, to be sure. You must not challenge it."
“Is this the real Hai Tsu then? This...light?”
"There is no unreal Hai Tsu," he told me. "All that you see is very real."
"What is this place, Valentinius?"
He replied, "It has been called The Isle. But of course it is not an island, not as you would think of it."
"The Isle of the Immortals," I guessed.
"It has been so characterized. But now, please, we distress our hostess. We must depart."
I said, "Wait!" and spoke directly to Hai Tsu: "Why would you choose to live forever like this? You are a ghost serving ghosts! What is the point?"
She replied in my head: "The greatest joy is to serve. Hai Tsu very happy. Sometimes, Ash Shen, least is most and most is least."
That sentiment sounded a bit familiar. I think Jesus said it though maybe not just that way.
She was at me again. "Please, you must go. Danger here. Not just for Ash Shen, but danger for his servant too. Please go back."
Valentinius stretched out a hand to me, said, "Come, Ashton."
It was not a self-volitional movement—I mean, I did not decide to do that; I simply obeyed: I stepped forward and took his hand and heard myself singing "The Whiffenpoof Song" at the top of my lungs in company with all my friends at the piano. There was no sensation of moving through space or time, dimensional barriers, or anything else; I was just suddenly there beside Valentinius on the piano seat.
So...did all that really happen?
You can bet my ass it happened.
I still had the flashlight clutched tightly in my other hand, and it was still shining brightly.
Francesca was now beside Valentinius at the piano and they were entertaining with a four-hand exercise at the keyboard. I'd made a quick break for the bar and had my Scotch-rocks firmly in one hand and the blazing flashlight inanely in the other when Alvarez made it over to me and accusingly asked me, "How the hell did you do that?"
He looked like hell, all wild in the eyes and several different shades of color mottling his face.
"Do what?" I asked, still a bit dazed myself.
He growled, "The same thing these other people did. I was standing with Miss Amalie not two feet from that piano when you just suddenly showed up there beside the ancient man. Jesus Christ, I hope I never have to testify to any of this in court!"
I said in a rather weak voice, "Simmer down, there's a perfectly sane explanation for all this. I'll share it with you as soon as I find it."
The cop said, "Yeah, sure you will. You're a hypnotist, huh. You caught me off guard and put this whammy on me. Now I'm—"
I said, "Wish I was that good a hypnotist, pal, but I am not. If you think you've been abased, you should have been with me just now."
He said, "Just tell me how you did that!"
I said wearily, "I didn't do it, had nothing to do with it, was nowhere around here. I was outside somewhere, downside somewhere, clear out of the house, far away. Valentinius came and took my hand and—"
"Bullshit! He was right here the whole time you were gone, what d'you mean he took your hand?—he was playing the goddamn piano and the rest of us were singing and...and..."
I said, "Remind me to tell you about bilocation when we have more time. How long was I gone?"
"Gone? Gone? Man, I think you're still gone. What're you doing with that fucking flashlight? What d'you think you are, a fucking miner or something? I leave you looking at the picture and the next I know you're—will you turn that damned thing off?—next I know you're singing "poor little lambs" with us with that fucking flashlight!"
I muttered, "Hey keep it down...the ladies."
"Ladies, hell," he growled, but he did glance around and lower his voice. "That woman really did do a striptease; I mean...I never saw it done that way before!"
I said, "Ah well, it's only bodies celestial so what the hell. Or maybe bodies immortal; still what the hell. Take these Chinese girls now, they have—"
“Come on, Ash. Cut the bullshit, will you. Where'd you go? And how'd you get back here that way?”
I replied, "Would you believe that I visited the Isle of the Immortals?"
The cop said, "Right now, I would not believe a damned thing you told me."
"Think back," I said. "Remember a time when you were a little boy on your grandpappy's knee and he's telling you stories his grandpappy told him about the Golden Ones, the Great Ones who came from far across the sea in great, shining canoes that captured the sun and gave birth to the moon and all the stars in the heavens."
Alvarez was giving me an odd look. He slid onto a bar stool and rested his chin on a balled first, very quietly said, "You did hypnotize me, huh. I don't remember telling you anything about that."
"Didn't have to tell me," I replied. "The story has been told in many variations from Cape Horn to Alaska, even on Easter Island and throughout the archipelagoes of the Pacific. This was the only way those ancient peoples could relate the mind-blowing visitatio
ns by a highly advanced race who came to instruct and enlighten. It found its way into Chinese legend as the Way of the Tao and the Isle of the Immortals, into Egyptian lore as the Isle of Isis and Atlantis. It's the Mount Olympus of the Greeks and it's the Roman Pantheon, and I believe it to be the source of all mankind's early wisdom and the first intimations of immortality."
"Are you trying to tell me how you did that?"
I replied, "No, I am trying to tell you what did me. But I think we'd better wait for that. I think we may be approaching the moment of crisis, and I want to get ready for that."
"You hypnotized me, huh."
I said, "I'm trying to unhypnotize you, pal. You've got to get it together. Because I think I may really need your help before this night is done."
He sighed, looked around the big room, said, "I think it's already done for me. I'm ready to bail out of here."
I could appreciate that.
Fifty-one percent of me wanted to do the same thing.
But I knew that I had to see the night through.
One does not, I say again, defy the angels. And clearly I was the man for Valentinius.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Show Goes On
As by some hidden signal, the jolly partying came to an end and all the characters save Francesca moved to a solemn inspection of the art display. She stood haughtily removed from all that, arms folded at the breast and eyes directed stonily upward to the wall above.
I had a flash then—a genuine burst of under- standing—about Francesca and that art.
I left Alvarez steeped in thought at the bar—thought, I took it, aimed at Francesca herself because he was staring a hole through her. I realized of course that the guy had seemed fascinated by the lady from their first meeting; I had taken it as a romantic interest; now I was not so sure about that.
Anyway I corralled the lady and strong-armed her into a walk-through of the improvised gallery, she protesting all the way in terms not especially complimentary to me or my ancestry. But I forced her to look, and to discuss the style and technique of several of the paintings until I could confirm my hunch and play the only hand I'd decided I had to play.
Heart to Heart Page 15
