Chapter 2: Out of the Shadows

All those memories, pain and anger, flood back one by one
They must be just around the bend, they always come
At night as I lay sleeping they come to me in herds
Their lies remain, the dreams the same, it's only fleeting words

Burke wiped a hand across his forehead and flicked away the moisture from his fingertips. The unrelenting sun of the desert hung high in the morning sky, making him squint against the glare off the sand. Behind him, the concrete wall surrounding Alba rose fifty meters out of rock and sand. From this close to the wall, he could barely see the glint off the metal dome. Next to him, Virdon stood with a hand on one hip, the other raised to shield his eyes as he surveyed the activity around them.

Pale canvas-covered yurts dotted the vista in front of them, intermingled with more modern structures of metal and composite materials. Gorillas dressed in colorful garb labored alongside humans and angels as they reassembled the nomadic village, upgraded with additions from Alba. Josh had put together a medical treatment building, a food preparation area, and a school.

Galen shuffled through the sand toward the two astronauts. He had abandoned his green tunic for the loose, light-weight robes the desert gorillas wore. He raised a hand in greeting. "I'm glad you could come."

"Of course, Galen," Virdon replied with a smile as he clapped Galen on the shoulder. "What can we do to help?"

"It's Grul. He's the... well, I don't know exactly how to explain his role in the greater scheme of things. He calls his position the 'Keeper of Prophecy', which means he's something of religious leader, although the tribe is ruled by a council of elders, something they must have remembered from their time in the city.

"Anyway, Grul's main role is to pass down this oral tradition of the Prophecies, and to interpret their meanings for the masses—"

"Is this the same Prophecy that got them all following Urko?" Burke interrupted with a frown.

"One of them." Galen shook his head. "They have an expansive set of prophecies that has been passed from one generation to the next since they started wandering in the desert. Elias is helping me to record the history of these people in a written form." Galen tilted his head to one side. "And I believe that some of these prophecies are about you two." He pointed two fingers at them.

"Us?" Virdon asked as his eyebrows shot upward. "Why would a tribe of nomadic desert gorillas have prophecies about us?"

Galen shrugged. "You'll have to hear them for yourself. Grul has agreed to allow you to sit in on a recitation of Prophecy. The entire thing is accompanied by an elaborate ritual." When Burke began to roll his eyes, Galen added, "It's a great honor to be allowed to attend and witness the Prophecy."

"All right. But if he pulls out a Ouji board and the table starts floating on its own, I am outta there," Burke insisted.

"When will this ritual take place, Galen?" Virdon asked. He was anxious to complete their preparations for the trip to Kirtland.

"Now," Galen answered. "There is an equally elaborate cleansing and purification ceremony that you must go through before you will be prepared to receive the Prophecy so you can understand its message."

Virdon grinned "All right." He looked toward Burke. "I'm game if you are."

"Greeeeaaaat," Burke drawled. "As long as this cleansing doesn't include a high colonic, I'm in."

Virdon watched a drop of sweat roll off the end of his nose and drip into the sand. Rivulets of perspiration slid down his bare chest and back to be absorbed by the waistband of the wrap that hung low on his hips. He glanced over at Burke, who perched with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Burke's dark hair slicked against his head from the moisture that hung in the air as a fine mist. On either side of Burke sat Galen and Grul. The chimpanzee looked as wilted as the two humans, but the gorilla looked comfortable and relaxed.

The canvas tent was lashed closed to keep in the heat radiating from the large pile of stones in the center of the space. From a small bucket of water, Grul occasionally threw a ladle-full onto the stones, sending up a fresh gout of steam. They'd entered the small yurt around midday after shucking their clothes, with only a simple length of cloth wrapped around their hips to protect their modesty. They sat on slatted wooden benches that formed a ring around periphery of the tent. Burke had voiced a token objection to stripping down, but Galen had reassured him that they were just going to sit in quiet contemplation.

Virdon knew the theory behind this ritual. Growing up in Texas, he'd been fascinated, like many a young boy, about Native American traditions like sweat lodges and vision quests. One summer, he'd read every book the local library had on the subject. Stressing the body with heat, mild dehydration, hunger, and general discomfort, combined with meditation, freed the mind to wander. Whether the result was hallucination or divinely-gifted vision, he couldn't say.

Grul reached into a satchel beside him and pulled out a handful of dried leaves that he threw onto the hot stones. After a few minutes, a narrow column of smoke drifted upward, spreading into a thin miasma. The old gorilla picked up two rawhide-wrapped bundles of jet-black feathers and waved them in a slow, arcing motion to draw the smoke toward him. He inhaled deeply with a contented sigh, then passed the bundles to Virdon, miming that the astronaut should copy his motions.

Virdon drew in a lungful of smoke through his nose; the sweet scent tickled at the edges of his memory. After a few passes of the feather bundles, he handed them on to Galen after Grul nodded his approval. He continued breathing deeply, trying to place the smell. Desert sage, perhaps, or a variant on it. Sage was used by many cultures in ceremonies for cleansing and purification.

He blinked as a strange sensation of expansion washed over him. His mind buzzed as his thoughts shifted to a higher level. He should have been alarmed as he realized the smoke was entheogenic—containing psychoactive substances intended to "create the divine" for those who inhaled it. But all notions of apprehension or panic drained away.

And the universe opened to show him possibilities.

Virdon's gaze was drawn again and again to stare at the convoluted eddies of the smoke as it rose into the air. His eyes felt unfocused, but he could still see the complex patterns of twist and turns despite the dimness of the tent, lit only by the light filtering through the canvas. He became convinced that he could predict the path of the smoke, possibly even influence its wafting just by willing where it should go. His thoughts wandered as he wondered if the others realized that they could move the smoke with their minds, then snapped back to the smoke. The pattern, if he could just figure out its meaning, would tell him something important—but it danced away from him just out of reach.

"Alan?" Virdon looked through the smoke at his fellow astronaut. Burke's expression was a cross between confusion and annoyance. "What are we doing here, Al?"

"Galen wanted us to do this ceremony—,"

"No, here. On this planet. In this crazy future. Running off into the desert searching for someplace that doesn't exist anymore?"

Virdon's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"Albuquerque. Kirtland." Pause. "Houston." Burke shook his head when Virdon winced at the mention of his home. "They're all radioactive pits. Houston's gone. Johnson Space Center is gone. NASA's gone. Hell, the whole U S of A is gone." His tone was harsh, his words clipped as he ticked off each place on his fingers. "Why are we chasing ghosts?"

Shock battled anger across Virdon's face. "We can find a way home. We can travel back to the past." His voice was strident and desperate.

Burke made a rude snorting noise. "Yeah. Right. Travel through time. Why don't we just find some ruby slippers and you can click your heels together? You'd have a better chance." He leaned forward, annunciating each word. "This. Is. Home. Now."

A hand suddenly reached out to caress the back of Virdon's neck. The soft fingers traced a familiar pattern through the fine hairs on his nape. His head whipped around to stare at the hand's owner. "He's right, Alan," Sally Virdon said. "This is your home now. You need to let us go, me and Chris."

Virdon eyes stung as his vision went watery. He reached a shaking hand toward his wife, to touch the long blonde hair that hung over her shoulders. "Sal?" his voice broke. "I can't. I have to—I have to get back to you."

Sally's smile held an edge of melancholy. "We were okay, Alan. We missed you, but we got on with our lives. I had a good, long life. Chris grew into a wonderful man. Now you need to grab onto what happiness you can with both hands." She clasped his arm to emphasize her words, but it was her pleading eyes that he couldn't look away from.

She stood and leaned over him to brush a feather-light kiss on his forehead.

"It's all right, Alan. I'll always love you, but you can let go now."

When the walls of the tent began to breathe, Burke realized something was wrong. His head felt two sizes too big for his neck, and he was sure the slightest movement would start it wobbling uncontrollably, like the world's largest bobble-head.

He gingerly swiveled his oversized noggin toward Galen, to ask him if he saw the canvas that surrounded them expanding and contracting, if he also heard the soft susurration of air being drawn in and pushed out. But as he opened his mouth to form the question, he was wracked by a searing, agonizing pain across his shoulders.

His spine arched as all the muscles across his back rippled and convulsed, throwing his arms out from his sides. He tried to surge to his feet, as an adrenaline-fueled flight-or-flight instinct overpowered rational thought. But when another wave of pain tore through him, his legs buckled and he sprawled in the sand on his hands and knees.

With a growl that ended in a scream, he wrenched himself upright to his knees and got a quick glance at his companions. Virdon and Galen sat placidly in their places, their faces fixed in expressionless masks, oblivious to Burke's plight. Only Grul seemed to notice something was amiss; he leaned forward on his bench, his attention fixed on Burke with a curious tilt of his head.

Burke reached behind him to touch where the white-hot stabbing was the worst. He expected to feel the ragged edges of torn flesh, the sticky warmth of his own blood. Instead, his questing fingers found... the slick, glossy softness of large feathers.

Wings. He was sprouting his own pair of wings.

Another spasm of lesser intensity still pulled a groan from him, and he felt the feathers push past his hand, as the wings spurted from his back. He struggled upright and staggered toward the door-flap of the tent. Although the pain was lessening by the moment, the confines of the tent—the weird, breathing tent—were too close, too stifling. He needed air.

The direct sunlight was harsh after the filtered glow inside the tent, and he raised an arm to shield his eyes. The flexing of his shoulder shifted his newly grown wing so the feathers brushed against the back of his bare thigh and calf. He shrugged his shoulders, causing the muscles to bunch and ripple, and the wings fluttered in answer.

Burke focused on the muscles across his upper back again, on the stretch and contraction needed to move the wings, and they responded by beating up and down. With a leap into the air, he was aloft. The sensation distressed him initially, and his flight path dipped dangerously close to the sand. He recovered his wits and put a burst of extra effort into driving his wings up and down; the ground fell away at dizzying speeds as he soared high into the crisp blue sky. He laughed out loud with unrepressed joy. The feel of the wind through his feathers and the hair on his arms and legs was exhilarating, almost erotic.

He flew for hours, surprised that despite the unfamiliar exertion of his back and shoulder muscles, he didn't fatigue. As he circled Alba, the geodesic pattern of the dome twinkled against the sand, the sun reflecting off the transparent aluminum. A glare flashed into his eyes, making him squint painfully and turn his head away.

He abruptly dropped twenty feet. A pocket of clear-air turbulence, he thought; as a jet pilot, he knew the havoc that thermals and wind shear could wreak. He'd just leveled out when a feather slapped into his chin. Reaching for it, he pulled it away and examined it more closely. A brown feather, very close to the color of his hair.

The world lurched to the side as Burke suddenly tumbled pell-mell, falling out of control. Loose feathers slid across his skin, some of them painfully as the barbs of the stiff flight feathers left shallow cuts. Burke's heart began to race, panic tight in his throat. His descent gained speed, although some part of his logical brain remembered that he would reach terminal velocity, about 150 miles per hour, in about fifteen seconds.

The denuded wings, mostly bone and skin, flapped uselessly a few times before they began to melt back into Burke's back. The wind roared past at a deafening level. The horizon spun as he cartwheeled, plummeting to his certain death. Ironic, he thought, that as a jet pilot and astronaut, he should die because he tried to learn to fly.

Then the world went black.

Galen watched his friends settle into quiet contemplation. Both astronauts sat unmoving and unspeaking, watching the smoke and steam flowering from the rocks in the center of the tent. Their expressions grew slack, their eyes half-lidded, but not in sleep.

He yawned, thinking that he should close his eyes for just a few minutes to rest. After all, his participation in this ritual was only one of support. His human friends were the real beneficiaries. The words of the prophecy would be for them. He could close his eyes, just for a few minutes.

His eyes popped open in a panic; he was sure he had been snoring.

The tent was gone. Virdon, Burke, and Grul were gone. He was laying flat on his back, staring up at a night sky that sparkled with innumerable stars. A brighter band of white arched overhead.

He sat up, his body feeling strange and alien. He raised a hand before his face and gasped both at its child-like size and the white fur covering it. The skin of the palm was pink and translucent instead of the rough, thick, brown skin he was used to seeing. Almost like a human's skin. But the hand was definitely that of an ape. Raising it to touch his face, his shock grew when he encountered a larger muzzle, a more pronounced brow ridge than his familiar features.

Something pushed into him from behind, followed by a raspy tongue roughly licking his back. With a yelp, he jumped to his feet and whirled on his accoster. Large blue eyes stared at him from a canine face. The animal had fur variegated from charcoal to pale gray with a tip of white on the bushy tail that flapped back and forth. It tilted its head in a distinctly ape-like expression of curiosity and a low, questioning whine escaped its muzzle.

You okay? the noise asked, although Galen didn't know how he understood its meaning so clearly. The animal's head came up to his chest even when it rested on four paws as large as dinner plates. If the wolf—no, not quite, the body was too wiry and sleek, more like a coyote—decided to attack him, it could easily snap his neck between those large jaws. But Galen didn't feel any fear toward the animal.

"I'm... fine," Galen said aloud, stammering in his confusion. His new voice was higher pitched, reminding him of how it had sounded in his adolescence.

The animal approached him again; Galen steeled his nerve to not retreat. It butted its head affectionately into his chest, and Galen instinctively reached up to bury his hands in the fur behind the creature's ears. It sighed as a bliss-filled expression glazed its eyes.

Galen looked at his surroundings for the first time as he scratched the coyote. They stood in the middle of a dirt street; the husks of shattered buildings hunched in the shadows all around them. A hot wind blew, bringing the fetid stench of decomposition, and beneath it, the rustling of things moving in the ruins.

The animal's ears perked up and swiveled as it raised its head to scent the wind. It barked, a harsh, sharp sound.

Walkers. We should go.

The coyote lowered the front of his body, and Galen understood what he was to do. He grabbed handfuls of fur and swung a leg over to sit astride the coyote's back. Then the animal rose and began to run.

The landscape flew by at a dizzying speed, much too fast for Galen to follow where they were going. He focused on the coyote's head to keep from getting nauseous. Only when the ruins fell away to open desert did he look up at the rolling dunes of endless sand. When the coyote veered to the right, it took a few minutes for Galen to see the rock formation sticking out of the sand.

The entrance to the cave loomed up, a darker spot in the gloom. The coyote meandered up to the area in front of the cave, its nose to the ground checking for strange scents. Just inside the opening, he stopped and turned to look at Galen. He slid down from its back into the cool sand. Ducking its snout under his hand, the coyote led Galen deeper into the cave. With the other hand extended in front of him, Galen felt the rough-hewn table before he tripped over it. A small pile of banked coals gave off an almost imperceptible glow in a recess in the back wall. Galen searched the table until he found a candle and a small lighting stick next to it. Scooping them up, he shuffled carefully back to the fire for a light.

Once the candle flared to life, he quickly surveyed the spartan furnishings in what he knew was his home. A table and one chair, some tools for cooking and eating, a jug of water. Tucked away in an other crevice was a pallet. The coyote padded to this sleeping area and walked a circle in the dirt next to the pallet before curling up on the ground. It raised its head and whined at Galen.

Sleep now. It's late.

Galen reached over to the water jug and pulled a dipper of water from the half-full vessel. From the candle in his other hand, the meager light reflected off the surface of the water, and Galen glanced down at it.

Red eyes stared back at him.

He drank the water, then stepped over the coyote to lay on the pallet. He blew out the candle and settled down to sleep.

In his dreams, he saw human men, with no wings to propel them into the heavens, fall from the sky.

Grul watched the three strangers as they swayed and rocked in place, their eyes closed to guard the visions that the divine universe chose to reveal to them. He smiled, showing a mouthful of sharp, pointed teeth. He could sense their minds returning to the present moment, but with a channel to a greater awareness still open. It was time. They were ready to hear and understand.

"When the life of Botis had spanned beyond the time of his brothers or his brothers' children, or his brothers' children's children, he appeared one night at the village fire, his great Kai-outaim by his side once more. The animal's fur had faded from dark gray to white, and its eyes once blue as the clear sky were clouded and dull. Botis's fur, still white as sun-bleached bones, seemed to glow in the light of the fire. His blood-red eyes were sharp, seeing deep into the hearts and minds of all who fell under his gaze. 'I bring you one last story,' Botis told the elders when they questioned him. 'Then I will return to the Paradise that waits for us all at the end of the path.'

"The elders wailed in protest. Surely if Botis had lived beyond three lifetimes, he would never perish. Botis heard their words and shook his head. 'The universe is not so cruel as to curse me with an immortal life. All things in this world must come to an end, although not always the end of their choosing.' The Kai-outaim howled at that and whimpered as it pressed its muzzle into his hand.

"'Behold,' Botis cried, 'from the stars will come an Emim, a man out of time, called the Ashima. He will fall from the sky and walk among those that he wishes to call his brothers. But he will be hated and reviled, for he will foretell the fall of their false Paradise. He will come to show a new way, for he will not know what has gone before. He will gather to him those who wish to walk out of the darkness. But that path is thick with thorns, and he will leave a trail of despair and death in his wake, for all will know great hardship.'

"The elders quailed before his words, for they could not imagine following an Emim with so grim a Destiny. When they had finished their rending of garments and gnashing of teeth, Botis spoke once more.

"'The Ashima will topple dreams and smash hopes. But there is a way he can avoid the anguish he will bring to himself and everyone around him. He must learn that to win forth a new future, a new world, he must learn to let go, to surrender. Only by giving up can he succeed.'

"Here ends the last prophecy of Botis."