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Authors: Dean Koontz
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answer.
He turned away from it and went back to sit on the first step of the stairway. Instead of thinking about his plight, his mind traveled to thoughts of Della, where it dwelled for long, pleasant minutes.
He tried to picture her, lying in bed yet, warm, curled up, one hand drawn to her mouth, almost as if she would begin sucking her thumb. It was how she always slept; he had little trouble envisioning her.
But he could do better than that. He bored a hole in the obsidian walls around his mental landscape and projected a beam of cognition, seeking her.
Della
See her: frightened.
She dislikes things that crawl, centipedes, caterpillars, waterbugs, snakes, and she draws away, cold with the fear of being touched by them. She never shows this fear because she doesn't want you to think of her as a typical female, as a ninny afraid of her own shadow. She is terrified of cancer, of tumors that bring death unknown, unsuspected and unwanted. She is frightened of the way you sometimes drive too fast, corner too closely, pass other cars when there is little room to pass. Some nights, she dreams of being killed in the Thunderbird, crushed, canned, bleeding across asphalt paving while ambulence lights flicker and sirens wail and doctors hopelessly try to extricate her from the mass of steel and upholstery and glass
See her: confident.
She is not afraid of people, open and candid, willing to accept everyone. She is self-sufficient and knows she can extricate herself from any circumstance, be it embarrassing, dangerous or boring. As long as her adversary is always another human being, she knows she can handle the situation. She is not afraid of being poor, of watching her belongings drain away in some recession or depression or through some catastrophe of nature. She knows that she will always be able to provide for herself. She is not frightened of love-making or the joys of flesh, for she holds no faith in deities who punish for joy or in codes that restrict without reason. She is not frightened of herself, either.
His appetite for exploring her mind, for knowing the innermost of her opinions on every subject, was almost crippling in its intensity, at once both unbearable and deliriously desirable.
Was this what love had always been leading to, what love always should have been, this tasting of her way down inside and finding her both ugly and radiant? Each new bit of datum that he acquired was another link between them. Here, through such deep exploration of her, he was finding a truer, stronger love than he had ever known before. She was becoming so well-known to him that they were one and the same. And one can never hate himself, not actually, not below whatever facade he may erect. She was of himself, and he loved her.
He relived parts of her past, terrors and warmths, parental spankings and Christmas Eves. He studied her dreams of the future.
One by one, he probed the areas of her life, seeking the Della he had only known peripherally before. At times, he was pleased at how close her reality matched the image he had always had of her. Other times, the deviation between his image and herself was so great that he was shocked by his own blindness in all their relationships.
And then, as he prepared to sweep through her childhood again, investigating her memories and attitudes more thoroughly, the white mental sphere intruded, dominating his horizons. It ballooned, testing his mental shields, trying to breach them.
He opened his eyes, shaking off the post-telepathic lethargy that possessed him.
In the nearby regions of the tunnels, footsteps echoed against the stone walls. They sounded wet and heavy, and they belied the advance of three
He turned away from it and went back to sit on the first step of the stairway. Instead of thinking about his plight, his mind traveled to thoughts of Della, where it dwelled for long, pleasant minutes.
He tried to picture her, lying in bed yet, warm, curled up, one hand drawn to her mouth, almost as if she would begin sucking her thumb. It was how she always slept; he had little trouble envisioning her.
But he could do better than that. He bored a hole in the obsidian walls around his mental landscape and projected a beam of cognition, seeking her.
Della
See her: frightened.
She dislikes things that crawl, centipedes, caterpillars, waterbugs, snakes, and she draws away, cold with the fear of being touched by them. She never shows this fear because she doesn't want you to think of her as a typical female, as a ninny afraid of her own shadow. She is terrified of cancer, of tumors that bring death unknown, unsuspected and unwanted. She is frightened of the way you sometimes drive too fast, corner too closely, pass other cars when there is little room to pass. Some nights, she dreams of being killed in the Thunderbird, crushed, canned, bleeding across asphalt paving while ambulence lights flicker and sirens wail and doctors hopelessly try to extricate her from the mass of steel and upholstery and glass
See her: confident.
She is not afraid of people, open and candid, willing to accept everyone. She is self-sufficient and knows she can extricate herself from any circumstance, be it embarrassing, dangerous or boring. As long as her adversary is always another human being, she knows she can handle the situation. She is not afraid of being poor, of watching her belongings drain away in some recession or depression or through some catastrophe of nature. She knows that she will always be able to provide for herself. She is not frightened of love-making or the joys of flesh, for she holds no faith in deities who punish for joy or in codes that restrict without reason. She is not frightened of herself, either.
His appetite for exploring her mind, for knowing the innermost of her opinions on every subject, was almost crippling in its intensity, at once both unbearable and deliriously desirable.
Was this what love had always been leading to, what love always should have been, this tasting of her way down inside and finding her both ugly and radiant? Each new bit of datum that he acquired was another link between them. Here, through such deep exploration of her, he was finding a truer, stronger love than he had ever known before. She was becoming so well-known to him that they were one and the same. And one can never hate himself, not actually, not below whatever facade he may erect. She was of himself, and he loved her.
He relived parts of her past, terrors and warmths, parental spankings and Christmas Eves. He studied her dreams of the future.
One by one, he probed the areas of her life, seeking the Della he had only known peripherally before. At times, he was pleased at how close her reality matched the image he had always had of her. Other times, the deviation between his image and herself was so great that he was shocked by his own blindness in all their relationships.
And then, as he prepared to sweep through her childhood again, investigating her memories and attitudes more thoroughly, the white mental sphere intruded, dominating his horizons. It ballooned, testing his mental shields, trying to breach them.
He opened his eyes, shaking off the post-telepathic lethargy that possessed him.
In the nearby regions of the tunnels, footsteps echoed against the stone walls. They sounded wet and heavy, and they belied the advance of three
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