TOWARD THE MIDDLE OF Nolight the two of them began making their way once again. Their extrasensory allowed them to see with little more effort than was needed in daylight. Thomas kept himself loose as he jogged through the wasteland. He calculated that they were running in twenty-minute bursts, which they alternated with brisk walks of a half-hour or so. Only one of them at any one time was conscious of the power of endurance, of a shortness of breath or fatigue. Whenever Thomas got tired, he would release his brother Levi’s senses, now carried in the back of his mind. Levi would then become the aware one. And still walking or jogging beside Levi, Thomas would rest his own senses inside Levi’s head.
This cooperation between them worked well to ease Thomas’ desperate need to put as much space between himself and Miacis as he could for as long as he could. Yet, from the moment he had run, he had known that Miacis would chase him and eventually would catch him. It was all part of his plan.
The Nolight of Dustland grew monotonous. Thomas imagined he was alone, tricked by his senses into thinking he was on a treadmill which carried him through unending time. His fear grew unbearable that Miacis would overtake him before he was ready.
The next moment Thomas remembered how cleanly he had stolen Levi from under Justice’s powerful protection. His breaking from the unit had knocked each of them senseless. He had been ready for that and quickly come to. He’d taken over his brother’s unconscious mind and left Levi’s illusion.
Now Thomas ran through Dustland with Levi at his side. However, they could not possibly be running. But they were. He was definitely running, definitely escaping. He knew he was on his way, but maybe he was headed nowhere, to no purpose.
Abruptly, Thomas came to, hearing Levi call him from in back of his own mind. Thomas had fallen asleep on his feet again, as he would do when he was at the edge of exhaustion. He found himself standing still in the Nolight with a mindless Levi at his side.
Yeah? answering Levi’s call. How long have I been out? Were you asleep, too?
Levi traced from the back of Thomas’ mind: I must’ve been asleep. But I don't think either of us was out for long. I usually wake up fast when you stop in your tracks like that.
Yeah. Through his thoughts Thomas caught the strain Levi was under. He had no time to dwell on it, however. For Dustland’s striking dawn was upon them.
He traced a quick warning: Brace yourself!
The persona of Levi cringed and lay low in back of Thomas’ mind.
Thomas never permitted himself to admit how truly spectacular was Dustland’s dawning. He held fast to his hate of all aspects of the future. He told himself that, here, dawn was a sideshow lit up in a carnival. He stuck out his chin and chest, with his hands firmly on the bone weapons around his waist. He wasn’t going to wince. And made faces, stuck out his tongue, as the dawn grew. He would show his weakling brother, safe in his own head, that nothing in the world at any time could scare him.
Light of dawn broke and splintered. It attached to every particle of dust. In the air and on the ground, waves of dust grew miraculous with lights. Thomas breathed in and exhaled colors. His clothing was coated with rainbows. The space around him danced with a dizzying array of multicolored sparks.
I can hold blues in the palms of my hands!
He mixed greens with orange on his tongue. A simple flexing of arm muscles sent colors caroming at a thousand angles. Bloodred eddies and golden flurries skidded against mauve caps of dust breaking against his chest and shoulders.
He could feel the Levi persona quiver in awe.
Baloney! Thomas traced. He could close his eyes and tone down the colors, but never could he quite shut them out.
A choked tracing: Tom-Tom, seeing is believing.
Baloney, man! Stubbornly, Thomas fought to keep his fury.
In no time the light show of colors began fading, probably when the sun rose above the horizon. The dust felt warm, heating up uncomfortably.
Go ahead and believe whatever you want, he suddenly traced to Levi. It’s the way it is, just like we saw it.
He stared grimly at the light fixed to dust as it thinned and fell in shards. These dimmed and vanished, leaving the dry heat. Dustland brought forth its dismal, murky day.
It was Levi’s turn to carry them; that is, to feel and think for both of them. Thomas’ persona would now rest in his mind. And Levi came out and back into his own self—what could you call that part of them that seemed to walk, move, have bodies in Dustland? Thomas’ persona flowed into his. Yet Levi did not have his brother’s endurance. All he could manage was a painful stiff-legged trudge through the dust.
We can rest here, if you want to, Thomas traced. Lee, you want to rest here?
Here is any different from back there or up ahead?
“I was only thinking of you,” Thomas said. He found that, within Levi’s mind, there was no need for him to trace.
Well, you don’t have to think of me. The sooner we get farther, the farther away we’ll be.
“That makes a lot of sense,” Thomas said.
Makes as much sense as thinking it matters whether I rest, Lee traced wearily.
“I’m just trying to help you.”
Since when have you thought about me, Tom-Tom? Why you forced me out on this—this death run … I know it wasn’t to help me.
They were silent. Levi stumbled, fell to one knee. He got up, brushing himself off.
“You do need to stop. You can’t go on much longer.”
If I stop, I won’t get going again and Miacis will catch you—is that what you want to happen?
“I thought you were on their side.”
I’m not on anybody’s side.
“But you go along with Her Majesty, with letting Justice lead us into this stink-hole over and over again.”
It has nothing to do with going along with her, Levi traced. It’s … it’s that I know she is the Power.
“Wouldn’t be too sure of it if I was you. Least, not here.”
She is the Power, Tom-Tom. And if she believes we have to come here, that it’s her place, her destiny, I guess you call it, to be here—well, then I’ll do my part to help her get here.
“Even when it means half-killing yourself,” Thomas said.
A pause. They both were aware of the draining effect Dustland seemed to have on Levi.
Even that, finally Levi traced.
“Well, you must need to suffer, buddy. I always knew you had some love of misery. Some death wish!”
Couldn’t be worse than living with you always torturing me.
Thomas couldn’t think of a reply. He remembered he had promised his dumb sister, blind Justice, that he would never again use his power on his brother. Of course, he’d lied. What did she expect, the truth?
And now he felt smothered in Levi’s sorrowing mind. He needed to break out, and he did so. Found himself walking along a few paces in front of Lee. And felt like turning, snarling back at his dummy brother. But what good was it going to do? He shrugged and headed on.
When they walked with each other this way, with neither of them within the other’s mind, Thomas made them both invisible. Nothing whatever of them showed. Although their mind-tracing and talking was as sharp and alive as ever, their physical condition was awful to see, and the reason Thomas kept them invisible. He had blisters on his lips from the daytime grinding heat. His mouth hurt, too. Both his eyes and Levi’s were red-rimmed and strained. Lee had lesions on his neck; festering liquid seeped from them, running in stringy rivulets down his chest.
Thomas wouldn’t let himself think about what was possible, and what was real and not real. Blisters, lesions, dust all over them—what was them? How was it they carried each other’s persona? How to walk or run, the same as they did at home? He knew his skeleton was within his body. But his good sense told him that neither his skeleton nor his body could be here in the future. That went for Levi and the rest of them. Hard enough understanding that their minds were here.
He shivered at the thought of his mind trapped in Dustland and his real, solid and alive body off in the past. Home. A yearning for home touched him deeply and caused him to strangle a cry.
But if the body is at home, what is this, blistering and hurting? Stumbling from exhaustion?
His mind shifting. To die in Dustland? was his next thought. For us, maybe just a feeling of death.
He opened the mysterious corridor between his mind and Levi’s. It was a one-way conduit from him, through which, his brain waves flowed and summoned the identical brain waves of his brother. They fused as one. The passageway allowed Thomas to connect telepathically with Levi whenever he felt like it and to break the connection at will. Levi could not trace telepathically without Thomas or one of the others to start.
Thomas repeated what he had been thinking, adding, If there’s no body to die, how does the mind know to stop?
Then it can’t, Levi traced, not a bit surprised by the intrusion of Thomas’ morbid speculation. For he had become obsessed with similar thoughts. In Dustland we can’t die. Only if something hurt us back home. If our far-real bodies got battered—I mean, our arms and heads and stuff—and our lives came to an end. Would all of us here, whatever there is of us here, go … poof?
That’s what I think, Thomas traced. That’s how I think it would have to be. That’s the reason I make it so we can’t see ourselves right now. Because, seeing us out here with no food for who knows how long it has been, well, logic has to tell us we’re hurting and losing strength.
But in the mind, mind-tracing, we’re as strong as ever!
You got it, Thomas traced quietly.
So here we have to be only—mind.
Mind it is and mind it has always been, traced Thomas. Mind your P’s and Q’s, he joked.
But, Tom-Tom, when you’re not making us invisible, we can see …
Abruptly, Thomas closed the corridor between them. He erased the sentence fragment as Lee formed it. At once he made them visible so Lee would have something else to occupy him other than what Thomas believed was a dangerous line of thought. Like Justice, he was beginning to uncover a clue to the mystery of Dustland.
They, all of them, were mind-travelers in Dustland. They knew that.
Levi shuddered at the sight of his own self. He had always distrusted his body, which grew weaker and more sickly with each time-travel. And now he hollered out as he glimpsed his bloody feet. The grinding quality of the dust had worn away his socks through his sandals. Seeing the wounds, he felt the pain. And moaned softly, done in at last.
Thomas knew he had to get him holed up somewhere right away. And this was as far as his plans would take Levi.
There’s some shelter up ahead. Lee? I think I see some rocks. You can rest by them.
Where … where are they?
Right up ahead. There!
Rocks worn smooth and shining dully through the gloom, as if dimly illuminated from within.
Thomas couldn’t help smiling to himself. He could create the images he needed here in Dustland the same as he could at home. Here his magic was even better. It felt larger and more real than anything he imaged at home. He couldn’t be sure how good he was; he just got better and better.
The rocks up ahead were as real as any clump Thomas had seen anywhere. And yet he wasn’t certain if he had built them there by thinking he needed them, or if he’d suddenly really seen them through the murk where they’d always been.
Well, does it matter? he asked himself. He was becoming at ease with Dustland’s eerie qualities.
I’m not going to let this place spook me the way it has Justice. Getting into what is and isn’t so real will turn you clear around. If she keeps at it, she’ll never work her way out. Which suits me just fine! But definitely the word here is weird. Something sure is going down. Not so sweet, either.
He was sure something strange was going on. And he surrounded the thought in a thick .and searing cold, a subterranean gloom of icewalls that nothing could penetrate.
Mind shifting again, thinking: Oh, man. What is and what isn’t! But I have to admit, it’s the most exciting, oddest thing I’ve ever been into. If I can find out how it all works, I bet I could … take over! Wouldn’t that be something? But never let Justice know. Don’t look at things too closely yourself. It messes up your mind if you do. Don’t dare.
The rocks loomed. Dust hanging in shrouds which curled and waved slowly across the windless land. Dust thicker, than ever.
Levi commenced coughing. By the time they had reached the rocks, he was gasping for air. He leaned close to Thomas for protection.
Thomas tasted grit. He wrapped his arms around his brother’s head and neck, covering him as best he could.
Try breathing through the hood of your tunic like I’m doing, Thomas traced. Here, pull it up and around …
What hood? gasping, Levi traced. You made up these clothes!
Look, there’s something real about everything I make up here. You know there is. And wouldn’t it be—He broke off and started over. We’ll figure it out later. Now, just do what I tell you.
Bowed down against the rocks, Levi held the hood to his mouth. It did seem to help. The dust had gotten so thick he had to keep his eyes shut tight.
Good thing we don’t have to open our mouths to talk, Thomas traced.
Levi broke in on him, etching thoughts in slivers: You’ll get through. I bet if anyone can survive this, it’ll be you.
Stop being so dumb. Holding himself in against feeling.
Tom-Tom? We aren’t here, are we? You said our bodies weren’t.
Echoes in Thomas’ brain like gusts of wind. Sounds of Levi struggling to breathe. Wind sounds in a backward-and-forward flow, as if from the past, where their bodies waited, to the future.
Better not think, Thomas traced.
Lee’s dread spread out around them. He whined: Tom-Tom? My feet. Can’t you do something? Through caked dust, Levi’s feet oozed blood.
Think I’m some healer? Thomas stormed. Well, I’m not. Irritated into being reminded of Justice, and Dorian, the healer.
Wouldn’t mind having Dorian along, though, Thomas thought.
The illusion of Lee he’d made for them had to be still working. Justice would think her favorite brother was still safe beside her. And Miacis would think so, too. If all went as Thomas planned, it would be the real Levi that Miacis brought back and not himself. Thomas grinned. He could hear Justice now, chewing out the dog.
He sniffed the choking dust.
Miacis!
Ever alert, Thomas cut through the dust with his clairvoyance, sensing back along their trail. He used his finely tuned power with caution, fully expecting the animal to still be on their course but at a distance from them. It wasn’t long before he homed in on a life-form racing through.
What shocked him was how close the beast had come. He could sense the sweat-drenched fur, muscles rippling and surging beneath.
Tricked me! How’d she—? Must’ve missed a sense-post. Man!
Miacis was closing in. He had to get away at once.
Thomas had planned ahead, however. Not far behind, he had set up an illusion to slow Miacis down. He’d erected a mighty scaffolding in her way. It was packed with quivering shapes clinging to the supports and braces. Thomas had crashlanded their space vehicle some distance from the scaffolding. Gradually he had expanded the scaffolding into a slime-coated grandstand.
Wait till she hits that baby—it’s sweet!
For it was one of his finest illusions. There were twisted forms, perhaps human, lying quite still in the dust surrounding the crash site. The whole scene was planted to strike terror in anyone stumbling upon it. Those who had survived the entry into earth-future sat up in the arena, shrouded in a mildewing silence.
She’s close. Close! She’s in!
Thomas homed in telepathically as Miacis entered the illusion.
She would be his prey. If he could just terrify the wits out of her, she would turn tail and run. And she would become his slave.
Something’s wrong!
Miacis wasn’t slowing down. She wasn’t seeing anything.
Thomas closed his eyes and saw.
So that’s it! It hit him that Miacis simply couldn’t see a single thing. An illusion had to be seen before it could work.
Stone blind as a bloody bat! I let her catch up and she can’t even see! Well, she won’t catch me!
Miacis would catch Levi. Thomas would place his own aura around his brother, enclosing Levi in the atmosphere of his being. The aura of mental and physical imprints intertwined were similar to scents. Never could they be mistaken for the imprints of anyone else once they were in place.
What of Lee’s aura?
It was not very strong, almost never overpowering. Thomas would thin it out, expand it as far as was safe.
Not to destroy it. Just to put his own in place over it, so you wouldn’t know it was there.
Discovering Thomas’ aura, Miacis wouldn’t question that the boy she captured was anyone but Thomas.
And then Thomas would blank out Lee’s brain and fill it with a fake persona. He would leave clues of himself in Lee’s thin blood and weak muscle.
Just in case Miacis should decide to check it all out, he thought.
Miacis!
Legs churning in a frenzy of running. Her coat as shiny as metal, the grinding dust polishing every hair. Miacis ranging. Tracking. Never tiring. Nothing in Dustland a hindrance to her.
Like searing steam on Thomas’ mind was Miacis’ good humor on his backtrail.
Have to get away from here!
Tom-Tom? It was Lee.
Yeah? as calmly as he could trace it.
Lee’s eyes were shut tight. Tom-Tom. He clutched at the rocks. I’m breathing through the dust, through my hood, like you told me.
Yeah. That’s good.
But you know I can’t breathe through anything. Because I don’t have anything here to breathe with. My flesh and bone isn’t here—right? So what is it I hear and feel breathing? What walked out here and ran—is it me in the past keeps me breathing here—? Tom-Tom? I feel like I’m in a box. I’m afraid I’ll suffocate!
A distance grew in his desperate thoughts, as if some part of him had snapped and separated from the other. Suddenly he was cut off from a sense of the familiar. He was overwhelmed with sadness. His squeezed-shut eyes dribbled uncontrollable tears.
What eyes?
He never knew the moment Thomas slipped away. But, slowly, awareness came to him and revealed that his brother had abandoned him.
Tom-Tom. Why did you do this?
A largeness spread out inside Levi. Huge, it forced its way throughout his inner space. The fake persona squeezed Levi into a corner. It blanketed his mind. What remained of his senses gathered on the far side of knowing in a tiny puff of nothing. Thomas’ aura was all.
So it was that the brother waited. He clung to rocks a few inches from the ground. In case Miacis was already upon him, he pretended he needed rest. Dust gathered strangely around him, howling and blowing, streaming its way into rock crevices. With whistling force, it made its way under the brother’s fingers. Until it covered him, caking him in a putrid grime, which gave him the form and tint of some ancient gargoyle. He who had been Levi might never have existed. Yet Levi was present in form. He represented the two who were so much the same before the form took on a certainty of character. It soon became wholly the brother Thomas.
The brother Thomas crouched, unmoving, yet fierce. He felt exactly like some deformed creature carved from the stone. However, he managed to appear bold and defiant. He had a sudden unpleasant tingling in every joint of his body. And knew Miacis would soon be nibbling at his toes.
Not thirty yards away was the one who was truly Thomas. He was hidden at the side of another clutch of rocks. He intended using his clairvoyance to know what transpired between Miacis and Levi when Miacis arrived. As self in control of Levi’s mind, he had felt tingling and knew Miacis would soon be there.
There came a sharp tug on his foot. A painful nip at his left heel. Thomas leaped up and whirled around.
What—?
There was no one there. What had taken place must have happened to Levi. Over there, Miacis had greeted Levi by nipping at his heel. Over there, the brother sighed and climbed down the rocks. He spat dust from his mouth and snorted it from his nose.
Thomas, watching himself perform, had an urge to applaud himself, but knew better.
You win, I give up, the brother traced to Miacis. I’m too weak to outrun you. But there’ll be other times—right? So take me back, dog. I’m starving. Spoken just the way the real Thomas would have.
Miacis’ shrill laughter pierced the gloom. It broke off in a wheedling bark.
Suddenly Thomas had a striking premonition that his best-laid schemes were blown. In one moment everything he had planned would fall apart, blasted by the dust into smithereens.