“No thank you,” Denton said.

Yule smiled. “You can stay sick also. It is up to you.”

That night, Denton let himself into the old man’s hut. It was no different from any of the others in the village on the outside. Inside, the smoke was thick and it had a sharp, bitter taste. Over the fire pit, a pot was boiling. Yule squatted next to it, his long skinny legs folded like a crane’s. He wore an undyed tunic. The only other person present was a young male who attended the pot, throwing in dried herbs in pinches and stirring carefully.

It was about what Denton had expected, but he almost chickened out. He had nothing against hallucinogenics. They were all very well and good in the right place and time. But taking major drugs while he was already sick as a dog had little appeal.

Yule was looking at him.

Denton cleared his throat trying to disengage the lump. Damn, it hurt so freaking bad. “Do you truly think this will help?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

Denton’s legs were shaky, strengthless. He took a seat on a blanket and propped his back up against the wall, panting.

Words were chanted over the potion; gestures were made in the air. It was all very Carlos Castaneda. Into the potion went the juice of several black spiky fruits. There was more stirring. Steam was coming from the pot now and, along with the smoke, created a miasma in the air. The potion was poured into a cup and it was thick like dirty oil and only slightly greener. Denton got a whiff of it on a breeze—yeasty and bad, like something that had lain in a mausoleum for several weeks.

But somehow it didn’t matter anymore. The smoke was settling his stomach, soothing his throat, and making him feel… drowsy. Cool. He relaxed into the wall more and more, his limbs heavy. It was the first relief he’d had in days.

The assistant had prepared a blanket for the old man on the opposite side of the fire. Yule lowered himself down and stretched out on his back. When he had arranged himself he raised his torso on one elbow and reached out his hand. The assistant placed the cup in it. Yule muttered a final prayer or incantation and then took a large gulp. He handed the cup back to the assistant and lay down, shutting his eyes. The assistant rose and came over to Denton. Denton watched him approach from the far, far, far side of the moon. And when the hand stretched out to him holding the cup, his own hand reached up and took it.

The stuff in the cup tasted bad—bad bad. It was a taste that said, You really shouldn’t drink me. It was a taste that said, This stuff is not intended for living things. With its hideousness it snapped him out of his warm and fuzzy state. He had to swallow repeatedly to keep it down. He scanned for water, anything, but there was nothing in sight.

Time got indistinct. How long had he been looking for water? He didn’t know. But the cup was gone and the assistant was on the other side of the fire. Denton looked at Yule’s face. The old man was changing. Denton saw a tremor go through Yule’s lean body. He looked shinier in the firelight. A veil of sweat had broken out all over his skin. He was absolutely still. Denton could not see him breathing. He appeared dead.

The floor began to spin. Denton crawled onto his back on his blanket. The fabric was rough and scratchy against the skin of his arms. The texture of the ceiling swam, as if covered with insects. The air grew thick and hot.

These were distant facts, lightly noted, as a co-pilot might assimilate the state of certain levers and lights before take-off. Denton closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but that was like trying to fly through the air after being hit by a truck. He had no choice and no control. He was falling…

He was lying pinned to the blanket, deep under, deep, deep under. He had been under for some time. He became aware of someone speaking in the hut, low, mumbling words that seemed meaningful even though he couldn’t make them out. He opened his eyes.

He could see nothing. The hut was pitch-black. He could feel the rough texture of the blanket under his stomach and chest, felt its fibrous stamp on his cheek, heard his own breath. He turned over on his back and, just as he did so, saw a figure slipping out the doorway of the hut. The figure was dressed in a strange outfit—bare feet and a woolen shift of the type popularized in Christian paintings. It was shining white. And he knew who the man was, even from the back: Kobinski.

Denton called out his name, but nothing came from his mouth. He wanted to get up, to follow Kobinski, but couldn’t move. The fire nearby was smoldering embers. Hadn’t it just been dark? Where was everyone? Was he really awake? Had he been dreaming earlier? Had he only dreamed he had seen Kobinski?

He was about to call out for help when a noise came to him, subtle and soft but absolutely the most terrifying sound he had ever heard. He froze, listening… There. A sound like an enormous, heavy snuffle. It was the sound of some extremely large animal scenting the air, and it was right on the other side of the wall.

A skalkit. There was a skalkit outside the hut. At any moment its jaws would rip through the grass roof, delicately, like peeling tinfoil back from a chicken breast, and Denton would feel its teeth dig into him like ten-inch knives as it grabbed him around his rib cage, swung him up into the air, and bite him in two. He could almost feel the slimy texture of the beast’s throat as he went down, suffocating.

He was suffocating. Where was he? He was on the blanket. The skalkit was only a few inches away, on the other side of a roof made of freaking fronds. Dare he whisper for help? Dare he move? Denton forced his head to turn and now he could see the old man. The assistant was gone; only the old man was there. He was floating several feet above his blanket, eyes shut utterly to this world, not breathing.

Now the beast was pawing the logs of the wall, high up, nearly at the roofline. Denton thought he could see the roof shimmy and shake as the enormous nose pushed at it, testing. His heart was racing so fast it hurt. He had never been this terrified in his life—well, yes, he had, when he’d been watching the skalkits eat the Sapphians. He had never wanted to be that afraid again and now he was. He was that afraid. To be dead and gone would be better than this. The terror was nauseating. It was unbearable. He could die from this fear alone.

But he was creating the terror. He could choose it—he did have that power, didn’t he? A rabbit cornered by a dog cannot choose not to be afraid. But a human can choose, can’t he? A man can choose.

He closed his eyes.

Kobinski. He was the key to all of this. Denton had almost forgotten that. He had read Kobinski’s manuscript but hadn’t understood it, not really. It had rolled off his oiled skin like almost everything did. But now he could almost see the binder in front of him, could sense that this was what he needed, that this was what had been burning inside him and what could give him relief.

What had Kobinski said about these other worlds? About going through the light?

The binder opened. And suddenly the hut and the skalkit were gone. And Denton was looking at, was suspended in, the night sky.

It was breathtaking, so crisp and real. He could see stars by the millions in front of him and then the entire universe filling the dark sky. Its galaxies were mere dots and clouds of dots, their color blazing primarily white but dusted with blue and purple and red, tiny arms spiraling like dancers.

He blinked and everything shifted. Now the universe was far away, no bigger than a harvest moon. And it was not alone. There were hundreds, thousands of universes filling the sky, and then he blinked again and now he could see the ladder. The dazzling wispy balls of light were on a tilted continuum, forming a rectangle in the void. At the right end of the ladder the universes grew increasingly smaller and dimmer until the tip of the continuum was an inky unredeemed blackness. At the left end of the ladder the universes became more increasingly bathed in light until all individual stars were lost from view in a shining brightness.