Messi@ (53 page)

At this point in the story, Felicity always asked why people didn't sing songs or put on polka-dotted raincoats or why they didn't make their own food and put Tabasco sauce in it.

Because, Major Notz would explain, people had been stripped of their free will by the state, which was a machine that lived in a paper house. The machine made all decisions for them. But the real reason for this sad state of affairs was that there was no salt, no salt in all the world. What the world needed was a hero like Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and brought it to the people.

What was needed was a princess of salt.

“That's me, that's me! I am the princess of salt,” Felicity always shouted. Major Notz would then lower his formidable bulk over her and press a warm kiss on her head.

“That's you, Princess. You are she. And little by little I will tell you how you became the Salt Princess.” But he never quite got around to it, though he'd given her many clues—books to read and pictures to look at. And as she grew older, Felicity had been embarrassed to ask.

“The answer lies in the salt dome,” Notz roared over the noise of the engine. “Do you remember, Felix, what I told you about history?”

“Yes, Uncle,” she said tentatively, like a schoolgirl. “There are three forms of history, one divine history and two human.”

These varieties of history, which the major had drilled into her at a tender age, were often at odds with one another. Divine history was knowable only in those instances when it intersected human history. Those intersections were numerous and constant, but impossible to confirm. They occurred in every place on earth all the time, but they were never properly recorded because of quarreling and competition among religions. Some of these intersections were of such great consequence, however, that they are well known: the encounter of Moses with God, Muhammad taking dictation from God, Prince Siddhartha's tree, the crucifixions of Mani and of Jesus, for instance. The major had no interest in divine history because the motives for the deity's actions were essentially unknowable, thus not worth bothering with. It was an entirely different story with the two types of human history, one of which was simply a cover for the other. The official history was a recording of the deeds of people in time. The other, and this was the only history that interested the major, was a secret history, composed of instances of will that set events in motion. The secret history was small—all its crucial facts could fit in one elegant volume. Of course, such a volume would never be allowed to exist. But he, Major Notz, believed that he was himself such a volume, and he existed to be discovered by Felicity.

He turned to her. “Now, dear Felix, you must open me to the last chapter and read what is written there!”

Felicity smiled, picturing her uncle as a book. The folds of his abundant flesh were the pages on which this secret history was written in minute, coded script. He read her mind and admonished her, “Don't be literal, naughty child.”

“Well, I don't know what you mean, Major. How can I read what you won't reveal to me?”

“What is a book, child?”

“Something with a beginning … a middle … an end?”

“Very good. What does this mean for a book of history?”

“That history has a … beginning, middle, and end?”

“Precisely. Now, before the book is finished, who knows the end?”

“The writer?”

“Who is the writer of the secret history?”

“Those men,” Felicity remembered tentatively, “and women who exercise an active will in the course of events. But this will is always a will for the End. Oh, I see. Every time the conspiracy option is exercised, the goal is an end to history. Each instance of will in history is an end, but only a false end … because history continues.”

“Not bad. Now imagine the true End. Who among us could write it?”

“A person chosen by divine providence?”

“Well, of course,” Major Notz said impatiently. “But who will determine the authenticity of this Messiah? The world is rife with pretenders. Can you truly say that Jeremy ‘Elvis' Mullin, who is about to bring his own end to history, is
not
the Chosen One? Millions of people believe he is.”

At the mention of Mullin and his plans, Felicity remembered where they were going and was rent by anxiety. They should be discussing strategy, not philosophy. She understood, nonetheless, that the major, in his parabolic way, was preparing her for battle.

“He is not the Messiah,” Felicity said, quite certain, “because he is a salesman. The Messiah doesn't sell … she just
is
. She persuades simply by the good news of her presence.”

“Ah,” cried the major, “now we're getting somewhere.” He swiveled his bulk slightly and gazed at Andrea in the rearview mirror. “Who are you?”

“Why, Andrea the Orphan, of course.” Andrea told the truth reflexively, which rarely happened. Her instinct usually made lying more natural.

The major looked disappointed. “Are you Felicity's missing half?”

No one had ever asked her anything this important. Something in the way Felicity sat evoked helplessness before the coming answer. Andrea felt a great power, as if the world depended on what she was going to say.

“Yes, that's what I am … and Felicity is my missing half.”

The major looked at his niece.

“I suppose, Uncle, that now you would like us to become seriously delusional and declare ourselves the Savior of the world. That way we could write the last chapter of your secret book and finish your work.”

“That would be nice.”

“Sorry,” said Felicity. “There is absolutely no inner voice guiding me. I don't have the slightest messianic inclination. I'm not even religious. What's worse, I'm a very bad detective. If I was any good I would have found the Indian girl and stopped Mullin by now.”

From the backseat, Andrea said, “And I'm just a sensualist. I think that the padres at Saint Hildegard's would have rather boinked me, but they educated me instead.”

The word “boink” fell like a chunk of hail on the hood of the Humvee. The land rose steadily as they climbed over the salt domes. Felicity could feel a great activity taking place in the bowels of the earth beneath them. It was not the kind of inspired knowledge that might have heartened Notz, but it was an intuitive power nonetheless. She was sorry to have disappointed him. He looked grimly down the road, like a man trying not to cry. In the backseat, Andrea was grinning foolishly to herself, repeating “boink” in her head. Boink, boink, boink.

Chapter Thirty-six

Wherein the Great Confrontation unfolds

When the the major's Hummer pulled up in front of the Bar & Bait Shop at Armadillo Island, the Shades' bus was already parked there. So were many other cars, including a vintage Oldsmobile. A statue of Saint Barbara, the patron saint of miners and artillerymen, stood guard above the café in a cypress tree.

The women jumped out of the car, but the major did not follow.

“You go on. I'll be right along.” He watched them head for the cabin and then took a small box from under his seat.

Felicity opened the creaky door of the cabin and gasped at the sight of Ben Redman sitting there at a wooden table with a devil.

If Ben had believed in magic before, finding Andrea and Felicity together eliminated whatever residual skepticism he harbored. The oracle that had brought him to Armadillo Island was but one of the many inexplicable ways in which he was guided. Andrea was not surprised to see him, but Felicity, who had not seen him since he left for Israel, felt the wing of an angel touch her. She had found her soul mate and now here was Ben, another missing piece of her soul. Oh, God, she prayed, let Miles come! I will be whole then!

Andrea had neglected to mention the rabbi who had brought her to America, but now some explanation was in order, and facts were proffered, though they paled in comparison to the sheer miracle of their togetherness. Felicity played with Ben's curls and Andrea pinched him playfully on the cheek. They were like three kittens in a basket.

The devil looked on indulgently, his nostrils slightly flared.

Ben tried to impart some of what he had learned in the last few hours. “Listen, this is going to sound crazy, but everything taking place now is part of a divine opera. There are about a million angels all around us.”

Andrea laughed and feigned pulling up Felicity's shirt.

“I know, Ben. ‘Sing, choirs of angels. Sing in exultation. Sing, all ye citizens of heav'n above.'” For the first time since she had returned from Mullin's darkness, she could sing without fear of losing herself.

“That's great, Felix.” Ben was touched by the beauty of Felicity's voice. He had never heard her sing before. And he felt that this was no mere song but an instruction, somehow, conveyed to the invisible world around them. His friend was commanding the spirits. Andrea, he already knew, was mysteriously connected. Everything had become luminous and inescapably significant.

Sing, all ye citizens of heav'n above
. The air grew thick with the spirits of poets, prophets, and founders of religions, who were part of the Council of Minds that had not yet incarnated. Little blue globes of electricity jumped around the room.

“What are all these entities, Felix? They seem to know you,” asked Ben. He put out his hand and touched a smooth blue roundness that gave him a slight shock.

Felicity knew at once. “My cyberlovers. They owe their postmortem sexual lives to me.”

They had flown in from the darkest recesses of cyberspace, the folds of time and the spirals of other dimensions, in answer to her call.

The devil, who had kept his counsel until now, saw them too, and said to Felicity: “Miles is not among them.”

Even the world beyond, animated by the passion of her love, could do nothing to bring Miles back to her. The truth, Felicity told herself, is that I will never be complete. Perhaps the world has already ended and I'm in some kind of intermediary heaven, where I'm being fooled into believing that I've found love. The entities whirled faster when she thought this, and Felicity found herself wishing for destruction. She wanted to die with her friends right here and now in a collective Götterdämmerung, a ball of fire. She wanted to join Miles.

The devil laughed. “You are so right, young lady. The tragedy is not that the whole world might end, but that the world might go on after your own personal world has ended. We will forgive each other only if we all go at the same time, but we will go on causing strife if we keep ending piecemeal. The end of the world is preferable to dying alone. Take it from me, I'm always alone, dead or alive.”

The devil's speech saddened them all, but before they could think of a rejoinder, the door of the cabin burst open and a red-faced major shouted: “Felix, we are going below to see Mullin!”

“I wouldn't dream of going without my friends.”

The major shrugged.

Ben looked enquiringly at the devil, who laughed. “Go on—I'm better behind the scenes anyway.”

Outside, Felicity saw that the Shades had built a fire and were holding hands, keeping a vigil.

Mullin kept his eyes on the monitor from the moment that the foursome boarded the train leading to the Dome elevator. He had discovered immediately that Felicity had not been among the strippers the Bamajans had delivered to him. But now he had them all, coming to him like lambs to the slaughter.

The major looked uncharacteristically glum.

“Everything okay, Uncle?” Felicity put her hand on his round shoulder.

“Oh, child.” He shook his head with evident sadness.

Felicity had never seen the major depressed before. He always had a solution to what he called “apparent misery,” and that solution was always to look for deeper causes, for the events in history that directly caused the distress. In his view, every single pang of emotion, whether of grief, nostalgia, or love, could be traced to an instance of will on someone's part. But now Notz looked ready to cry.

“Isn't there a clear instance of will, Uncle?”

He shook his head. “Promise to think well of me, no matter what happens in the next few hours.”

Felicity promised.

The little train came to a halt and they entered an open elevator. The shaft was as deep below the surface as the Empire State Building was tall. The elevator descended for a long time into the brightness. Andrea saw Felicity's eyes fill with tears, and hers did too, though she tried hard to keep them back.

“It's the salt,” Ben whispered, as he too began crying.

Where were they going? And why? Whatever the imperative driving them, it had not yet made itself clear. The farther down they descended, the saltier the air became. They could taste it on their tongues. The elevator scraped the crystalline walls and a fine powder of salt snowed on them, covering their hair and clothes.

“It's true,” said Felicity, “down is the way. All those pathetic attempts we make at going up … getting high …”

The uneven walls of salt rock sparkled like a billion diamonds. The Dome was at least two miles in diameter and five miles deep. Millions of tons of salt had been scooped out of it to make the cave. The salt crystals acted as lenses, magnifying the lights of the elevator.

When the elevator finally stopped, they stepped out into a cave looking down on a vast technological wonder. Below them, scurrying like ants, lab-coated drones were manipulating keyboards and control panels. Seated on some kind of throne at the center of the vast cave was the tiny figure of Reverend Mullin, twisting a twenty-foot-tall image of a blue rose. Flaming words shot out of it and fell in a shower of sparks.

“It's like the rose tattooed on my butt,” whispered Felicity.

She felt keenly the doubly tragic condition of human beings. “Like birds in a glass house … hit the walls, over and over … but down, down …” She had always thought of Web surfing as a descent. And even when she got high she was going down, to look for Miles.