She heard something, over the fires.
A sound—liquid, clotted, awful. It came from inside the tube, weirdly amplified. It was the foreigner, the man in the tunnel, crying aloud. In these final few seconds, he was somehow forcing words from a throat not fully formed. She heard the terror in the sound, and the disbelief. He was pleading with her, perhaps. But she would never know what he said. She was incapable of understanding speech.
Then the fires raged too loud to hear anything else. She watched as the lava, a congealed wave half the height of the trees, rolled laboriously over the mouth of the tunnel. And then she had to turn and run from the heat.
33
But that wasn’t the end of it, of course.
She climbed away from the burning jungle, towards the ridge again. And no, that wasn’t the end of it at all. She might have trapped his body, but that meant very little when he was still free in thought. He could still, even from his freshly formed prison, reach out with his mind. He could still reach into her.
Indeed, as if he’d just remembered the same thing, she felt him come rushing back into her head, as she’d known he would. But she barely recognised him now; he was like a wild thing, a raging animal, grappling brutally at her skull. If she succumbed and let him through, then he could still steal her strength away. And if he could do that, then the tunnel was no prison at all. With her power under his dominion, he need only make the earth quake for him, and the tube would crack wide open.
A deep weariness sank into the orphan. An overwhelming desire to sleep, to which she must not yield. In fact, she could never rest again. Never let down her guard, or he would be there. And that was the crux of it. He would win eventually. As long as she was available to him, then the danger would never go away.
So there was only one answer.
She had to remove herself from him.
She was nearing the top of the ridge, and slowing now, not merely from fatigue. There was a sadness in her too. A reluctance to come to the finish. Because it wasn’t as simple as running away. After all, where could she go? She would never be allowed to leave the island, not on her own, not the poor idiot girl. And even if she could, it wouldn’t help. His mind was not limited by distance. He would track her down wherever she went, even if it was the other side of the planet.
And so that was the real answer.
She had to remove herself from the world.
The orphan stood atop the ridge, and gazed across the smoking wasteland to the volcano. Already the lava flows had cooled, curdling into slag on the lower slopes, and their glow now barely warmed the darkness. There was only one more thing she needed from the mountain. A final, very special eruption.
For the last time she reached out with her senses—feeling him fight her at every moment—and fashioned the heat and the pressure in the underground chambers to one single purpose. It was quite delicate, really, and despite everything she marvelled at her own ability. How wondrous it all could have been, such a talent, if things hadn’t turned out this way, if it hadn’t all been ruined by him.
But it was too late now. She summoned the energy, hurled it into the mountain. There came a single detonation, a profound punch of air. A tight knuckle of smoke belched up from the volcano’s peak, but thrown beyond it, shot far and clear into the night, was a lone, black, spinning piece of rock. This time she really had done it—blown the top off the mountain. The very tip, in fact. She watched calmly as it rose. It was a boulder the size of a house, her own miniature comet, with a very specific target. She had calculated the forces exactly, and knew precisely where it would land.
The foreigner’s savage attacks reached a new frenzy, but she held him out still, staring up. The rock attained the peak of its arc, and seemed to hang above her. She remembered flying. She remembered soaring over the mountaintop with him on the first flight they made together. She remembered seeing a little tree, hidden on the very pinnacle. She had wanted to look, later, for that tree. To prove to herself that everything was real. Well, if the tree existed, it would be up there on that boulder, right now. But she made no effort to see. The rock began to fall.
There was just one last thing she needed to do now, a final risk she must rule out. Because there was a chance—slim, but undeniable—that the foreigner had not lied to her in one special instance. There was a chance that she really was, like him, immortal. In which case, even this falling stone would not be enough. She might survive despite it, and her power with her, still at his disposal.
So, she did it. With a shrug, she gave the power up.
The power, and any hope of life eternal. In a heartbeat, it all slipped away from her like a bathrobe falling from her shoulders.
Which was the strangest thing of all. That it could be done, and so simply. And yet she knew too that such a sacrifice was permissible only as a final act, a choice to be made in the last moment before death, and at no other time. Indeed, it was the choice itself, she saw, that made death possible.
It struck her then, as the rock crept down from the sky, that in all the foreigner’s many endings, he had never surrendered his life. He had always fought against dying, always clung so bitterly to survival, as if there was nothing else that mattered. Even now he was clinging on—clawing despairingly at her thoughts—just as he always had. Refusing death, and hating the world that demanded it of him.
It wouldn’t change even once she was gone, the orphan foresaw. He would refuse death still. Trapped forever in his lightless cell, he would live on and on, the most hideous existence she could imagine. He would come to hate his very immortality. And yet it would never occur to him—and this was the most ghastly aspect—that he could let it go. That he could just say—as he could have all those years ago, beneath the landslide—enough. Enough suffering. Let it end. And thus, truly, die.
But he was gone now. As she cast away her powers, so she cast him away too, moving far beyond his tawdry reach. And in place of all the confusion and weariness and pain, a strange peace and clarity infused the orphan.
How remarkable! Her lifelong madness—it was as if it had vanished. The fog of her thoughts had cleared, the wall around her mind had fallen, and all the things that had been blocked or hidden from her were suddenly free to enter. Memories flooded up, transformed. The boulder was tumbling down, but the orphan felt she had the leisure to relive every minute of her twenty-one years. She felt so aware. So sane.
Images, and print, and music; it was as though she’d comprehended them all along. And speech. A lifetime of speech rushed through her, all those words she’d heard in dumb mystification, she understood them all at last.
And names! She could remember names! Her mother’s name. The names of all the nurses and the patients. And the old doctor’s name. And more—she remembered the name of her town, and of the big town too. She remembered the name of her island, and of the ocean around it, and of all the other oceans. She remembered the name of every city and country in the world. Endless names.
She even remembered her own.
And something was rising in her throat, pushing against vocal cords that had never formed a word, something incredible.
The rock filled the night sky. She could still step back and let it miss her, she knew. She could still withdraw her choice and return to what she had been. There was still time. Why, everlasting life, if she wanted.
But the thing in her throat was bursting.
‘Ha!’ cried the orphan, out loud.
And stepped forward.
Praise for Wonders of a Godless World
‘McGahan is a fabulous writer, not only because of the quality of his writing but also because of his courage as an artist.’
Sydney Morning Herald
‘An impressively sustained feat of imagination.’
Australian Book Review
‘The writing rises to invigorating heights.’
Sunday Tasmanian
‘Brilliantly researched and plotted, intellectually stimulating and rewarding
…there are also plenty of moments where the reader is drawn anxiously to the page – or more accurately – unwilling to even close the page and so miss the possibilities poised to erupt. Like the thundering volcano that features heavily in the lives of its characters, Wonders of a Godless World is sure to awaken the senses of anyone who cares to dip into its explosive pages.’
Australian Women Online
‘I was totally swept up by the passion and energy of McGahan’s writing, the hint of something truly profound lurking within the narrative…I’ll be recommending it to as many people as possible.’
Canberra Times
‘This book is totally unexpected and you won’t be able to put it down. It’s a thriller, an environmental plea, a book about madness, mind control, nature, space travel and just what it means to live forever. If you’re looking to escape the mundane, I recommend you pick up a copy of this book and dive into McGahan’s astonishing imagination.’
Readings.com
‘This story blew my mind. Plain and simple. This book was engaging from start to finish, with twists, turns and a series of intriguing sub-plots. A roller-coaster ride into the imagination.’
The Southlands Times, New Zealand
Also by Andrew McGahan
Praise
1988
Last Drinks
The White Earth
Underground
Copyright
Blue Door
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Published by Blue Door 2010
FIRST EDITION
First published in Australia by Allen & Unwin 2009
Copyright © Andrew McGahan 2009
Andrew McGahan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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EPub Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-35265-4
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Wonders of a Godless World Page 29
