There was a deep, smooth clunk all around Nona, insulated by dint of being in Pyrrha’s lap and also by her body feeling so strange and numb. A huge light swept out in front of them—the headlights from the megatruck had come on automatically—so that there was the darkness, and the road, and the beams of light.
The truck began to roll forward. Pyrrha leant back in the chair and said, “Okay. What now?”
“This,” said Paul.
Paul released a lever, and the truck lurched forward into the darkness. They settled their hands on the wheel. There was nothing in their face but easy surety, not one trace of pain or fear or worry. Everyone had at least a slight trace of anticipation or pain or fear or worry, but not this new person called Paul. Nona felt the truck accelerate—the light ate away the darkness—and a huge, heavy chill settled into the cabin.
Nona’s breath started coming in frosted pants that hung before her face. An urgent whirring started at the front of the cabin—a white, thick fog of condensation had started to build at the bottom of the glass, and then the heater kicked in and it melted into rivulets of water that pooled down, then abruptly started to run upward, up the windshield glass.
Paul leant forward on the accelerator, and then—
JOHN 5:4
IN THE DREAM they were back on the beach with their backs to the sea. The sand was soft and wet and grey—so fine that it dried as they plucked at it, then crumbled through their fingers like ash. The beach was a long, smooth stretch relieved only by hummocks, here and there, of thin grass and silvery driftwood sticking out of the dunes like exposed bone. He was scooping indentations in the sand, making big, print-block child’s letters with the tip of his forefinger. As she watched, he made a pothook—J—then the finned spine of E. He wiped that E clean, and replaced it with A. He wiped that clean, and he drew the prison bars of H. This J and H he barred around with an uneven heart.
She watched, and she said—
“Teacher, may I ask a question?”
“Sure,” he said, surprised, and he shook his fingers free of clinging sand. “Shoot.”
“What does it mean to love God?”
“Decent dinner and a bottle of average rosé. Maybe a movie. I’m not picky,” he said.
She said, less patiently: “Teacher, what does it mean for a child of the Ninth to love God?”
The razor-sharp grasses lay in a shivering mat, cuddled like fearful animals, as the wind swept over them. Fine salty fragments got inside the corners of her mouth. He said, finally—
“You live in a darkened house, and in your darkened house are infinite rooms. By the light of a dying candle you cross the room—knowing that when you reach the threshold of the next room you’ll be gone—the candle passed to someone whose face you can’t see clearly.”
She urged, “Is God the flame? The light? The candle?”
“The love of God is the trust that you won’t have to illumine that darkness alone,” he said.
She said—
“After this, you’ll resurrect them.”
“Yes,” he said, as though halfway dreaming. He stuck his finger in the sand and made a hole so deep that water glimmered at the bottom. Hypnotized, he did it again. “Yes. Once we’ve rested. No, we’ll do it before you’ve rested. You can rest afterward … resurrection is different from waking up. We’ll get them all back … some of them, anyway … or at least, the ones I want to bring back. Anyone I feel didn’t do it. Anyone I feel had no part in it. Anyone I can look at the face of and forgive. And my loved ones … The ones I left, I’ll bring back. I know I can. Even G—。 In fact, G—’ll be easiest—he won’t remember the compound—none of them will have to remember anything. I know where remembrance lives in the brain, and he won’t have any of it. You know that too, don’t you? It’s the easiest thing in the world … to forget.”
She said, “To forget … everything?”
“Yes,” he said, and more sharply— “Yes. It’s the only way.”
“Teacher, why?”
“They won’t forgive themselves,” he said. “They’ll spend the rest of their lives asking what-ifs. ‘What should we have done? How could we have done it differently? Did you need to do it?’ And—I did need to do it, Harrow. There was no other way. Once those bombs were going off, there was no hope for Melbourne anyway—G— was dead meat.”