All about her is darkness, as usual. There are no flames anywhere near her. Everything is perfectly still. The angel is gone. She is in her own cabin, aboard the Wotan. Alone. Trembling. She has failed again.
I’m going to give it one more shot,” she tells the year-captain.
“But if the risk is so great—”
“I don’t know that it really is.”
“You said—”
“I said, yes. But maybe I was wrong. I’ll try one more time, and we’ll see.”
He is silent for a long while.
“You don’t want me to do it,” Noelle says eventually, in a completely neutral tone, nothing reproachful about it.
“I do and I don’t,” the year-captain says. “I’ve been the one pushing you toward this all along. And pulling you back with the other hand. I’m afraid of losing you, Noelle. We need to see what these things are, yes. But I’m afraid of losing you.” And he says, after another almost interminable pause, “You know that I love you, Noelle.”
“Yes.”
“And if something should happen to you—”
“Nothing will happen to me,” she says. “Nothing bad.”
This time as she enters the gray Intermundium she pauses before even beginning to search for the angel, and sends a shaft of thought across the light-years to Earth, to Yvonne.
She has had no contact of the kind that she once had enjoyed with Yvonne for months, nothing on the level of message-interchange. But she knows Yvonne is still there and trying to reach her, and in some indefinable way the link between them is still open, however clouded it is by the interference caused by the proximity of the angels. It is that link that Noelle attempts to widen and strengthen now.
Yvonne? Can you hear me? Can you feel me?
There is the hint of a hint of an affirmative reply. Only the hint of a hint, is all, but that is better than nothing.
Ride with me, Yvonne. When I want you to let me lean on you, be there beside me. Let me draw strength from you. I’m going to need you soon.
Does Yvonne hear? Does she know?
I love you, Yvonne. You are me. I am you. We are in this together.
Noelle thinks she feels Yvonne’s silent affirmative presence. Hopes she does.
And now. Now. Noelle moves deeper into the void beyond the ship. She can feel the force of the angel now, the vast godlike thing that waits for her out there.
Angel? Listen to me, angel! This is Noelle!
The angel is listening. The angel is waiting.
I am Noelle. I come to you in love, angel. I give myself to you, angel.
This time she holds nothing back. She yields herself completely, permitting herself no fear. Yvonne is with her. Yvonne stands beside her, lending her her strength.
I am yours, Noelle tells the angel.
Contact.
optic chiasma thalamus
sylvian fissure hypothalamus
medulla oblongata limbic system
pons varolii reticular system
corpus callosum cingulate sulcus
cuneus orbital gyri
cingulate gyrus caudate nucleus
— cerebrum!—
claustrum operculum
putamen fornix
choroid globus medial lemniscus
— mesencephalon!—
dura mater
dural sinus
arachnoid granulation
subarachnoid space
pia mater
cerebellum
cerebellum
cerebellum
The universe splits open. The whole cosmos is burning. Bursts of wild silver light streak across the shining metal dome of the sly. Walls smolder and burst into flames. Worlds turn to ash. There is contact, yes. A sensory explosion — a dancing solar flare — a stream of liquid fire — a flood tide of brilliant radiance, irresistible, unendurable, running into her, sweeping over her, penetrating her, devouring her. Light everywhere. Fire. A great blaze in the firmament.
Semele.