At one point I stopped the car and listened.
“What?” Hawk said.
“Hear it? The silence?” We listened.
“Strange,” Matt said.
For all the trundling vehicles, the massed humanity, an odd quietude filled the air, as if the wall of the Column a mile ahead of us were sucking the polluting noise from the air and replacing it with soothing silence.
I started the engine and we continued. Perhaps five minutes later we were forced by the crowds to park up and walk the rest of the way.
The point of this section was taken up with buildings, on the top of which was an array of monitoring equipment, dishes and antennae and probes.
The closest we could get to the golden light was perhaps a hundred metres, but my disappointment was tempered by the sight of the Column. Its glow seemed to pull at you, draw you in, promise some ineffable fulfilment if only you could approach and become one with the light.
I looked up, and up; I craned my neck, and high above the Column seemed to curve, describe a great parabola, as it shot into the stratosphere.
I was standing beside the chain-link fence that separated this section from the next, and only after a few minutes did I notice that someone was watching us.
I turned. A young girl was staring at me through the diamond mesh of the fence, her fingers hooked around the wire. The way her mouth hung open suggested either disbelief or awe. She looked barely in her teens, fifteen at the oldest. Blonde curls and blue eyes brought an ache to my chest.
At last she said, “You know…”
I stared at her. The others joined me.
I said, in barely a whisper, “Know what?” Only then did I see the symbol, tattooed high on the girl’s left cheek: >=<, the connected minds sigil of an accredited telepath.
I felt suddenly uneasy in her scrutiny.
“You know the truth,” she said in a whisper.
Matt looked at me. “Best if we get out of here,” he said, “before the crowds find out.”
The girl raised a hand, as if to forestall our departure. She said, “Don’t fear. I won’t tell anyone. Your secret is safe with me.”
She wore a silver one-piece, and I noticed that the other devotees in her section were similarly garbed. “We are the Upholders of the Ultimate,” she said. “We can apprehend the truth. Come, follow me, if you would like to lay hands upon the Ultimate.” I hesitated and she smiled. “Your friends can come too.”
Quickly she did something to a post supporting the mesh fencing, then pulled aside the wire. We stepped through, watched by the silver-suited acolytes who milled beyond the girl. A murmur passed through their ranks as she led us forward, towards the glow of the Column, past staring devotees to a laser cordon ten metres before the Column.
She spoke with a silver-haired man, who had the air and bearing of a high priest, and he nodded his consent and touched a control on the pedestal which projected the light barrier. Instantly it died and the girl gestured us through.
I glanced at Maddie. She was staring, transfixed, at the Column. Hawk caught my glance and smiled. Matt said, “I never thought we’d get this close.”
We stepped towards the Golden Column. At close quarters, the curve of the great shaft was not discernible: it appeared as a vast, flat wall, extending to either side of us and soaring as if to infinity.
We paused a couple of metres from the glow. The girl stood beside us, smiling at our wonder.
She said, “Go on, approach. Touch. Join with the Ultimate.”
Maddie said, “I don’t think I dare.”
I stared at the light. Its glow blurred my vision. It was pulling at me, drawing me towards it. I felt an ache in my chest, a longing.
Matt stepped forward first, reaching out, followed by Hawk. Not to be left out, I joined them. My heart was beating fast and I realised that I was shaking.
I reached out, slowly bringing my flattened palm to the light as if in some bizarre form of greeting. Beside me, Matt and Hawk matched my gesture. Together, we laid our hands upon the Column.
I was not sure what to expect: my senses told me to anticipate warmth, even though I knew that reports indicated the light was cold. Beyond the physical, I think I expected to commune with some higher power, be granted the Secret, or at least be flooded with sensations of joy and peace.
None of these things happened.
What did happen was that I felt a sudden, freezing cold shoot through my body, and I was filled with the strangest sensation. It was an alien feeling, a feeling so other that it had no analogue in the human realm. I knew, suddenly, that I knew nothing, that I was minuscule in the vastness of the expanding cosmos—that existence was a mystery I had no hope of fathoming.
And the odd thing was that, instead of being filled with existential despair at the futility of our collective plight, I brimmed with joy at the fact of my humanity, my ability to experience the day to day wonder of being alive, my friendship for the three people at my side.
For Maddie had joined us now, and had touched the Column with her bare hand.
She smiled at me. “I’m touching it,” she whispered, as I stepped back from the light with Hawk and Matt and watched her.
She remained there for a full minute, hand raised, beatific smile on her face. Then she closed her eyes and backed away.
I looked at the others. Matt said, “Not what I was expecting, but…”
“It’s given us something,” Hawk said. “Not sure quite what…” Maddie said softly, “Our humanity?” She smiled at us. “I felt, I really felt it, our smallness, the vastness, and it didn’t hurt.” She fell silent.
The girl was at our side again. She gestured back towards the rent in the fence and we followed her.
As we were about to step through, she touched my arm and said,
“Well, will you help the Yall?”
I stared at her. “What?”
The others had stopped and were watching us.
The girl smiled. “Last night,” she said, “they requested your help, and in return they would soothe your dreams. Well, will you accede to their request?”
I shook my head. “I… I don’t know what they want,” I stammered, and hurried through the fence and back to the car.
As we were driving back through the sector, Matt broke the silence, “What was all that about?”
Hawk turned and regarded me. I sensed Maddie’s gaze on me, too.
I said, “I thought it was a dream. That’s why I didn’t say anything. I dreamed… thought I dreamed… that I was visited by the apparition. It asked for my help, and said it would stop my nightmares in return.”
“Nightmares?” Hawk asked.
I gripped the steering wheel. “Nightmares about my daughter,” I said. “She died three years ago.”
Hawk reached out and touched my arm. Matt said, “But the apparition didn’t tell you what it wanted?”
I shook my head. “No. Nothing. It just asked for my help.”
We made the journey back to Magenta in relative silence, stopping once at a small settlement for a meal. I could sense my friends’ curiosity. I wondered if they felt I might be holding back still more from them. The atmosphere was uneasy, camouflaged by forced small talk.
A couple of hours later we arrived home and, as if by tacit consent, returned to the Mantis and checked the monitoring equipment. It was blank; the ship had not been visited in our absence.
I opened a bottle of wine and we sat in the lounge, discussing the events of the day. We agreed that we were on the brink of something vast—too vast, Matt said, for us to fully apprehend, and I was visited once again by the feeling I had experienced when touching the Column, of the smallness and at the same time of the wonder of my humanity, and I felt hope.
We discussed what we had experienced, compared our feelings, and came to the conclusion that we must be patient; that the Yall had contacted us for a reason, and that we must wait for them to make that reason apparent.
Matt laughed.
Hawk turned to him. “What?”
“I’ve been thinking,” Matt said. “It’s almost as if we’ve been chosen—chosen by the Yall. But what if we’re as deluded as all the crackpot cults back there?”
I said, “You mean, we’re just another bunch of cranks?”
Maddie was shaking her head. “I know what I felt,” she said with conviction.
For the next hour or so we drank and chatted. Matt told us about the planets he’d visited, and Hawk matched this with stories of his piloting days, though he said nothing about the Nevada run. Maddie told us about her childhood in England, and I waxed drunkenly about the beauty of British Columbia. To their credit, none of my friends asked about Carrie.
At one point Hawk said, “I’ll drop by tomorrow afternoon, go over the crate again.”
“And if the apparition visits you again tonight,” Matt said, censure in his eyes, “ask how you can help it, okay?”
I smiled. “Yes, sir.”
In the early hours, with no evidence of apparitions that night, I left them drinking and dragged myself off to bed.
In the event I spent a restful, dream-free night.