Read Online Prayers to Broken Stones by Dan Simmons - Free Book Online Page B

Budweiser. “What’s wrong with just being home, kiddo?”
    There’s nothing wrong with being home. But where are we?
    Bremen concentrated on turning a radish in his fingers. It had tasted salty, sharp, and cool.
    What is this place?
Gail looked toward the dark line of trees at the edge of the orchard. Fireflies winked against the blackness.
    Gail, what is the last thing you can remember?
    “I remember dying.” The words hit Bremen squarely in the solar plexus. For a moment he could not speak or frame his thoughts.
    Gail went on. “We’ve never believed in an afterlife, Jerry.”
Hypocritical fundamentalist parents. Mother’s drunken sessions of weeping over the Bible.
“I mean … I don’t … How can we be …”
    “No,” said Bremen, putting his dish on the arm of the chair and leaning forward. “There may be an explanation.”
    Where to begin? The lost years, Florida, the hot streets of the city, the day school for retarded blind children.
Gail’s eyes widened as she looked directly at this period of his life. She sensed his mindshield, but did not press to see the things he withheld.
Robby. A moment’s contact. Perhaps playing a record. Falling.
    He paused to take a long swallow of beer. Insects chorused. The house glowed pale in the moonlight.
    Where are we, Jerry?
    “What do you remember about awakening here, Gail?”
    They had already shared images, but trying to put them into words sharpened the memories. “Darkness,” she said. “Then a soft light. Rocking.
Being rocked. Holding and being held.
Walking. Finding you.”
    Bremen nodded. He lifted the last piece of steak and savored the burnt charcoal taste of it.
It’s obvious we’re with Robby.
He shared images for which there were no adequate words. Waterfalls of touch. Entire landscapes of scent. A movement of power in the dark.
    With Robby,
Gail’s thought echoed.
????????? In his mind.
“How?”
    The cat had jumped into his lap. He stroked it idly and set it down. Gernisavien immediately raised her tail and turned her back on him. “You’ve read a lot of storiesabout telepaths. Have you ever read a completely satisfying explanation of how telepathy works? Why some people have it and others don’t? Why some people’s thoughts are loud as bullhorns and others’ almost imperceptible?”
    Gail paused to think. The cat allowed herself to be rubbed behind the ears. “Well, there was a really good book—no, that only came close to describing what it
felt
like. No. They usually describe it as some sort of radio or TV broadcast.
You
know that, Jerry. We’ve talked about it enough.”
    “Yeah,” Bremen said. Despite himself, he was already trying to describe it to Gail. His mindtouch interfered with the words. Images cascaded like printouts from an overworked terminal. Endless Schrödinger curves, their plots speaking in a language purer than speech. The collapse of probability curves in binomial progression.
    “Talk,” Gail said. He marveled that after all the years of sharing his thoughts she still did not always see through his eyes.
    “Do you remember my last grant project?” he asked.
    “The wavefront stuff,” she said.
    “Yeah. Do you remember what it was about?”
    “Holograms. You showed me Goldmann’s work at the university,” she said. She seemed a soft, white blur in the dim light. “I didn’t understand most of it, and I got sick shortly after that.”
    “It was based on holographic research,” Bremen interrupted quickly, “but Goldmann’s research group was working up an analog of human consciousness … of thought.”
    “What does that have to do with … with
this?
” Gail asked. Her hand made a graceful movement that encompassed the yard, the night, and the bright bowl of stars above them.
    “It might help,” Bremen said. “The old theories of mental activity didn’t explain things like stroke effects, generalized learning, and memory function, not to mention the act of thinking