The rasping noise died away, and they waited. Bonnie felt streams of sweat pour down her back, but her hands were like ice.
The speakers crackled back to life, a female voice pouring forth in a sweet, melodic alto. “I’m here. Is Bonnie out there?”
Bonnie took a quick step forward. Mama’s voice! There was no doubt about it! She shouted, “Here I am! I’m right here!”
Her father extended the microphone. “She can’t hear you without this.”
Bonnie hesitated. Her father’s eerie, dark silhouette morphed in the dim red glow that covered him with a deep crimson shroud. He looked like a specter of death handing her a bloody rose.
She reached to take the microphone, and when she saw her hand shaking, she grasped the throat with both hands. Pushing the talk button with her thumb, she lifted it slowly and spoke, her voice soft and trembling. “Mama? It’s Bonnie.” She released the button and waited a few seconds, nervously licking her quivering lips.
The voice boomed again from the speakers. “Bonnie, my darling! Is it really you?”
Bonnie’s tears flowed, and her legs wobbled. She replied, both laughing and crying at the same time. “Yes . . . yes, Mama, it’s me.” She wiped hot wet streams from her cheeks, and her voice broke into a mournful lament. “Mama, I’ve missed you so much!”
A few more seconds passed before a soft, comforting voice replied. “I’ve missed you, too, sweetheart! But don’t despair, we’ll be back together soon.”
“But how, Mama? How?” Bonnie looked at her father and then at Ashley, searching their eyes for an answer.
The voice from the speakers became softer, more urgent. “Bonnie, I need you to come in here, inside the candlestone. I’ll attach my light energy to yours, and you can draw me out.”
With cold fingers of fear creeping all over her body, Bonnie could barely speak, her voice cracking and choking. “I . . . I’ll do anything to help you, but I don’t know how to get in there.”
The loudspeaker coughed and spat out a round of rough static, and the voice disintegrated into buzzing chaos. Bonnie could barely make out the words. “Don’t worry, honey. They’ll teach you—”
The voice died. Dr. Conner twisted dials on the panel, but his adjustments were to no avail.
The microphone trembled in Bonnie’s hand. She laughed, though streams of tears spilled down her cheeks. Her mother’s confusing words mixed with the eerie lights and frenzied static. Steadying her hands, she pushed the microphone button again. “Mama? Are you there?”
Ashley touched Bonnie’s shoulder and turned on a small lamp attached to the control panel. “It takes a lot of energy for her to communicate,” she explained. “She has to decipher our energy input and then create a light energy answer for our computer to decode.”
She took the microphone and set it on the control panel. “The computer then uses her digitized voiceprint to make the output sound like her voice. It doesn’t take long for her to get too tired to continue.” She tenderly wiped a new tear from Bonnie’s cheek. “Remember, she was already mortally wounded when your father transluminated her, and her life force is still weak. But don’t worry. She’ll be fine. And if you’re willing, you can help us get her out in the morning.”
Bonnie’s father switched off the laser, and the gun descended toward the floor. “That’s the big ‘if’—if you’re willing. It’s dangerous. We’ve succeeded in sending people into the candlestone, but only for a couple of minutes, max. They’re not able to stay long, because they don’t have the same makeup as you do. They have no natural light receptors, so they go into the stone out of the proper phase. We believe that you can go in and attach yourself to your mother and pull her out.”
Bonnie gazed at the tiny stone, imagining a miniature universe within its crystalline cage. “How can I do that? Once I’m in there, won’t it trap me like it did Mama and the slayer?”
Ashley flipped a switch on the panel’s side. The static died away, and silence filled the room. “We have what we call an energy anchor, a boy named Derrick that we’ve trained to attach himself to the person going into the candlestone. He has a perfect record in being able to hang on to our diver.”
“Diver?”
Ashley motioned with her hand, making it look like a person diving into the water. “That’s what we call whoever’s going into the stone.”
Bonnie nodded slowly. “Okay, but how do they get changed back to normal?”
Ashley turned up the ceiling lights and gestured for Bonnie to come to the center of the room. While Dr. Conner put the candlestone away, Ashley explained the system of glass cylinders. “This one,” she said, pointing to the cylinder opposite the main panel, “we call the diver’s dome.” She rubbed a slender flexible hose joining that cylinder to one that sat to the left of the master board. “It’s hooked to what we call the anchor dome by this special tube. Each dome transluminates the person inside, and the anchor stretches his light energy through this tube and attaches himself to the diver’s energy.”
Bonnie imagined a stream of light leaping from one cylinder to the other, passing through what looked like thirty feet of vacuum cleaner hose and popping out at the other cylinder. The second cylinder stood a third of the way around the perimeter of the circle, so someone would have to stretch out real far to get it done.
“As you can see,” Ashley continued, pointing back to the first dome, “the diver’s dome has an outlet hole and a plain glass tube that ends near the candlestone. When I open the tube, the candlestone draws the diver’s light into itself while the anchor hangs on. The anchor remains here in the lab, because most of his energy is held in the special tube between the domes where he can attach to crystalline spurs that mimic the candlestone’s absorption properties, except that they don’t permanently entrap his energy.”
Ashley held out her two fists and pumped them like she was pulling down on a chin-up bar. “These spurs act sort of like friction grips for photons, something that Derrick can hang onto, anchoring him in place. After a while, as the candlestone keeps pulling, the anchor’s attachment point gets stretched out, and he begins to lose contact with the diver. That’s when we shift everything into reverse.”
Bonnie put her hand on the hose. It felt like dimpled glass, wrinkled and semitransparent. “Reverse? You mean you bring the diver back?”
“Right. I created synthetic photoreceptors, just like the natural ones your mother has in her blood and you have in yours. They change light energy into matter. That’s why dragons live so long; they’re constantly regenerating. I figured out how it all works by analyzing Excalibur’s beam. I was able to capture the beam’s profile, even though we were only able to turn the beam on in short bursts. I discovered that Excalibur’s effects can be reversed by slowing the newly created tachions and reversing their space and time framework, in effect, making them anti-tachions. As their hyperlight speed slows toward the mass-energy asymptote, the photoreceptors cause the energy to begin a reassimilation process, using light-encoded cell structure information, data that should still exist in your mother’s energy matrix.”
Bonnie tried to replay Ashley’s explanation in her mind, but the technical terms flew right by. As soon as her brain grabbed one of the hundred-letter words, another zipped through. It was like trying to grab a handful of fog. “I have no clue what you’re talking about,” she said, “but I heard one word that bothers me.”
“One word? What word was that?”
“You said, ‘should,’ that her information ‘should’ still exist. How do you know it’ll work?”
Ashley ran a single finger across the dome’s glass surface. “It worked for Derrick and the girls.” She pressed a button at the base, and the dome began rising. “We first transluminated rats and then larger animals before we considered using humans.” She sat on the base and rested her chin in her hands. “The animals didn’t go into the candlestone, though, until we started training Derrick to be an anchor. We lost a few animals until he learned h
ow to hold on, but now he’s a real pro. He held on to a chimp that we sent into the stone, and it was a complete success. The chimp came back with all of her faculties and memories in place. After several perfect trials, we decided to send in Karen. We really needed someone who could tell us what it was like inside before we could analyze what it would take to draw your mother out.”
“And what happened?”
“It worked fine. Karen is perfectly normal with no aftereffects, except for being a bit embarrassed.”
This part of the story sounded familiar, and Bonnie had a good idea why. “Embarrassed? Why?”
“We didn’t figure it out at first, because Derrick always wore cotton, but it seems that the translumination only affects certain organic substances. Karen was wearing something synthetic and came back dressed only in her cotton underwear.” Ashley laughed but stopped abruptly when Bonnie didn’t laugh with her. “Sorry; I guess it’s not really funny.”
Bonnie waved her hand. “It’s okay. I wasn’t thinking about that.” She felt better when she heard corroboration of Karen’s story. It meant that Ashley was really telling the truth. Maybe she wasn’t hiding anything after all, but there was something that still bothered her. “I was wondering why it’s dangerous. It sounds like everything’s working great.”
Ashley rose from the dome base and heaved a deep sigh. “There’s one part of the procedure that’s never been tried. Although Karen was able to perceive another entity in the candlestone, she was never able to make contact with it.” Ashley reached for one of Bonnie’s wings and held the outside edge in her hand. “We believe that with your dragon-like genetics, you would probably transluminate into a similar photo-dimension, a sort of light energy frequency that matches your mother’s, and you’ll be able to find her. But once you attach to her, we don’t know if you’ll be able to pull her out or if you’ll be drawn completely in and cut off from the outside world. It just hasn’t been tested.”
Bonnie peeked at her father through the corner of her eye. He was studying meter readings on the panel and scribbling notes in a spiral journal. She drew in a deep breath. “Where will my mother show up when I bring her out?”
Ashley released Bonnie’s wing and smiled. “When you bring her out? I like your attitude.” She led Bonnie to the third glass cylinder. “This is the recovery tube. We sometimes call it the restoration dome. When Derrick pulls you out, you’ll be attached to your mother in your dome. We told her that she’s supposed to go through another crystalline pipeline on the opposite side of Derrick’s, passing through a series of photo analyzers that will read her encoded light structure. You see, her encoding may be shifted or out of phase because it’s been so long since she was transluminated. She went inside in an agitated state, but after a while, her light energy settled down. It’s sort of like a reflection in a pond that gets disturbed by throwing in a rock. Eventually, the water settles down, and you can see the image again. All the parts of the messed up image are the same as the clear image, except that they’re scrambled. So, if slowing your mother’s tachions doesn’t create an auto-assimilation, I’ll have to use the computer to rephase her structure.”
Bonnie pressed her palms on her temples. “You’re making my brain explode.”
Ashley pulled Bonnie’s hands down and laughed. “It sounds worse than it is. I tested it with a rabbit by messing up her encoding and shifting her frequency phasing. Then, I passed her light through the analyzer. No problem. She came out a perfectly healthy bunny.” She tapped on the cylinder’s glass with her knuckles. “In short, a few seconds after you show up in your dome, you’ll see your mother in this restoration dome. We don’t know for sure what kind of condition she’ll be in, but we’re convinced that since we can communicate with her, she will be out of the coma, maybe even perfectly well. It could be that you’ll be in each other’s arms less than a minute later.”
Bonnie’s heart thumped in her chest like a dozen excited bongo drums. Could it really be true? Could all of this really work? Would she finally see her mother, who she thought had died months ago?
“We’re waiting for morning,” Ashley continued, “so Derrick will be wide awake and strong. Anchoring is a grueling job, and he gets exhausted after just a few minutes. But that’s okay, because we don’t want to go longer than a few minutes anyway. The light energy begins getting out of phase in about 250 seconds. We have to be sure to throw it into reverse before we hit that time mark.”
Bonnie put her hands on her temples again and closed her eyes.
Ashley’s tone softened. “Did I give you a headache?”
Bonnie smiled but kept her eyes closed. “No. I’m just praying.” She peeked under one eyelid. Ashley’s lips parted, and her eyes widened, as though with all of her great intelligence and learning, she beheld a sight she truly didn’t understand but wanted to learn more about.
Bonnie finished her prayer, opened her eyes, and took Ashley’s hand in hers. “I’ll do it.”
Ashley grinned from ear to ear and began talking in rapid-fire fashion as she led Bonnie back to the dorm. “That’s awesome! You need to get plenty of rest, and we’ll make sure the robe fits you better so it won’t drag the floor of the dome. But don’t worry; it won’t really matter anyway. It all gets changed into light. And translumination doesn’t hurt at all; at least that’s what they tell us. Derrick’s done it about twenty-five times, and Karen’s done it about a dozen or so.”
As they entered the hall, Bonnie started laughing.
Ashley stopped abruptly. “What’s so funny?”
Bonnie pulled a wing to the front and held the edge in her hand. “You act like you think I might be scared.”
Ashley’s dark eyebrows arched downward. “Aren’t you?”
Bonnie grinned and shook her head. “I’m excited, but I’m not scared. Not really.”
Ashley fussed with her keys as she unlocked their dorm room. “You must have a lot more faith than I do. I don’t think I’d be so calm.”
“Why? You’re the one who’s been propping me up, telling me why it’s all going to work.”
Ashley pushed the door open but blocked Bonnie from entering. “It’s not the technology.” She looked down the hall and then lowered her voice to a whisper. “Have you forgotten? Devin’s in the candlestone, too.”
Bonnie’s throat grew a lump the size of a golf ball. In all the joy and excitement of hearing her mother’s voice, she really had forgotten about the dragon slayer. “But . . . but he’s on a different phase or something, isn’t he?”
Ashley motioned with her head for Bonnie to come inside, and she closed the door quietly. She sat on the bed under the Einstein poster and patted the space next to her. Bonnie joined her, her legs trembling as she sat down.
Ashley kept her tone low. “Devin has always communicated with us on the alpha frequency, and your mother’s always been on the beta. I think you’ll go in with your mother’s phase, and he probably won’t even know you’re there. But there’s one problem. Sometimes I search for him in his phase, and I can’t find him. I think something’s up. I don’t trust him.”
CHAPTER 10
LOVE LIFTS THE VEIL
Ashley had been asleep for more than an hour when Bonnie decided to make her move. The room was nearly dark, but enough light came from under the door to allow her to find her way around.
Bonnie slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the room toward the wall hook next to Ashley’s dresser where her keys dangled. She held up her nightgown’s skirt to keep its hem from sweeping the floor. Ashley had been so sweet earlier in the evening to help her cut and stitch holes for her wings in the silky soft material. While they worked, they had chatted about sewing and clothes, and giggled while they flipped through the pages of an old magazine and made fun of the badly outdated fashions.
Bonnie lifted the keys from the hook and tiptoed to the closet. She slipped her jeans from the hanger, slid a new pair of tennis shoes from the shelf, and gently turned the doorknob until t
he latch gave way. With a gentle tug, the door swung open a crack, but the rusty hinge squawked like a bad-tempered chicken. Bonnie spun her head toward Ashley’s bed. Whew! Still sleeping.
Folding her wings in tightly, she squeezed through the gap and left the door unlatched. After pulling on her jeans under her gown, she crossed the hall to Karen’s door and gave it a couple of little taps. Less than two seconds later it flew open, and Karen appeared.
“You ready?” Bonnie whispered.
“Ready.” Karen showed no signs of sleepiness, her eyes shining brightly.
Bonnie bent down to slip her shoes over the socks she’d worn to bed. She tied the laces hurriedly and then headed for the hall exit, winding up the lower part of her gown and tucking it inside her jeans as she walked. She stopped at the door and searched through the keys while Karen looked on. “It was one of the brown ones,” Bonnie muttered, “but there’s a bunch of them.”
Karen pointed at a key with a rounded end. “I think it’s that one.”
Bonnie tried Karen’s choice, and the lock turned smoothly. She cracked the door and peeked out into the dark laboratory chamber. The lamp of the main control panel gleamed in the dark, but there was no sound, no movement. Bonnie opened the door fully and entered the chamber, waiting for Karen to follow before silently closing the door.
Bonnie hopped up to the lab platform and headed straight for the main control panel, hoping to find her father’s spiral-bound notebook. Yes! There it is! She picked it up, placed it under the lamp, and studied the last few pages, hoping to find a record of what she had seen for herself.
A strange array of numbers and letters filled most of the entry— characters that were hard to read, made with dark hasty strokes scratched across the paper without regard for the lines. Each number had a code letter next to it, but the cryptic message seemed indecipherable. Bonnie flipped back to earlier pages, scanning them for words she could understand. Finally, near the front of the notebook, she found something, a narrative penciled in more careful script. She read while Karen looked over her shoulder.