Anatoli himself gave off this illusion of being back in time. He stood tensed; his eyes were mad. “This is the spot, Rebbe. Three hundred paces north, fifty south. This is it.”

“What’s he talking about?” Dr. Talcott leaned over to catch her breath.

Aharon felt a cold hand on his neck at Anatoli’s words, as if the angel of death were touching him there. He could now see that the glints in the trees were long metallic strips nailed to the bark. Someone had marked this clearing—Anatoli, probably. And if Aharon was not very much mistaken he knew why it had been marked.

Aharon’s feet felt pinned to the earth. He had stepped into someone else’s nightmare. They were here, at the very spot where Kobinski and his group had made their last stand. And chasing them through the woods were men with guns, maybe dogs.

The blond goy, Wyle, was looking around the place wide-eyed and grinning, his hands out in front of him as if he were in a fun house. “Oh, man!” he breathed. So Wyle knew, too.

Dr. Talcott waved her hand at Anatoli. “Hello? What is this place? Why have we stopped?”

“Shhhh!” The old man put a bony finger to his lips. “They’ll hear you. Now everyone, we must pray! Fill your hearts with prayer, and you have to mean it!”

“Goddamn it, we have to move!” Talcott looked at all of them as if to ask why they weren’t doing something. “If we’re going to run, then let’s at least do it properly.”

“Shhhht!” Aharon hissed. He’d heard something.

They all froze. There was the rustle of brush, just barely there. Someone was right behind them.

Anatoli moved with a speed and ferocity that seemed beyond his years. He snatched the manuscript from Aharon’s hand and held it up maniacally.

“Is this what you want? It this what you all want?” he screamed.

As if in slow motion, Aharon saw the old man’s arm come up, and then he threw the thing. It spun end over end in the air, its pages ruffling, straight into the heart of the cluster of trees, into the heart of those silver strips.

All Aharon could see was that bright white paper in the moonlight. All he could feel was the need in every part of himself to protect that sacred—and dangerous—knowledge, to keep it safe. The worry and fear of the past few months bore down on him at this one moment. Without a thought he found himself flying in the air, hand outstretched to catch the manuscript.

Jill ran forward knowing that she had to get her hands on that sheaf of paper or die trying. She was so sudden and so ferocious that she pulled Nate, still gripping her hand, right along with her.

Calder had them in his sights. He could see them huddled together, arguing, in a small clearing. He had his gun drawn, but he realized, looking around, that his agents were not with him. They’d fallen behind. He cursed under his breath, was debating whether to step forward on his own, when the old man, a stumbling corpse practically, grabbed something from one of the others and threw it into the air. Calder saw Dr. Talcott run after it. She was heading for the trees! No fucking way would he lose her again.

Calder came barreling out from his cover, gun cocked and aimed in his outstretched arms. “Freeze!” he shouted. He was prepared to shoot. Hell, he wanted to shoot.

Just then there was a flash, like an explosion, only noiseless, like flashbulbs, only a million times brighter. Except the color was not just light but something that seemed to echo in his very cells, not a sound but penetrating deeper than any sound he’d ever heard. Calder squinted, cursed, tried to regain his view of the clearing.

In a halo of an afterglow—Calder wasn’t sure if the glow was really there or if it was an aftereffect of the flash on his eyes—he saw that several people had disappeared, including Dr. Talcott.

Calder pushed past the old man. “Stop! Stop!” he shouted. He peered into the woods beyond, rubbing at his eyes, but he couldn’t see anything thanks to that damn flash, nothing but an eerie bluish glow.

And then there was another flash. This one seemed to come from inside him, as if the explosion originated in the center of his brain. Reality fell apart.

Denton stood to one side of the clearing, hands gripping his poor mistreated ribs, mouth hanging open. Bam! Bam, bam, bam! One by one the others had disappeared: the rabbi, Dr. Talcott, Nate, and then some lunatic police guy with a gun.

Anatoli sank to the ground, staring at the blank space, mind fried. And the manuscript was gone. The manuscript was gone. From the woods came the sound of men approaching.

“Ah, hell,” Denton said.

He felt the strangest sensation, as if he were removed from the scene, observing his own decision-making process. Not that it was a decision. No, it was nothing as deliberate as that. Even while part of him screamed that he was crazy, nutso, freaking insane, excitement and a slick thrill of destiny, of fate, rocked him into action. It was like that dizzy compulsion some people got in high places. He wanted…

He wanted to jump. He giggled nervously.

He took a step, knees shaking, and another, and another, a weird joy bubbling up inside him. And then he was running and the light claimed him.

Book Two.

On Jacob’s Ladder

14

This world is like an antechamber before the World to Come. Prepare yourself in the antechamber before you enter the palace… This good [the Future World] is not given as a reward, but as a direct result of a person’s binding himself to good. A person attains that to which he binds himself.

14.1. Sixty-Forty Denton Wyle

There was no time to be afraid. The pull was so inexorable, so much larger than himself. He was a bug perched on a freight train. There wasn’t even a thought of resisting.

He must have shut his eyes. The ground, solid beneath his feet, came as a surprise to him; he hadn’t realized it was gone until it was back. Bright sunlight was red against his eyelids, warm on his cheeks. His body felt strangely light. He wobbled, off-balance, put his arms out to steady himself, and opened his eyes.

He half sat, half fell down in surprise. He was in a jungle, a rain-forest eruption of vegetation. The green was so vivid and bright and obscene it hurt his eyes.

Denton was on the side of a slope. About a half mile away was a foaming waterfall that disappeared into the smothering verdure. And flowers! Christ—from where he sat alone he could see a hundred varieties, screaming with color, stinking with perfume. He could taste the breath in his mouth—warm and chewy and textured with scent. The world blurred dizzily. He flopped back on the carpeting of grasses and ferns, heart racing madly, and found himself looking up at a deep turquoise sky. Above his head a magenta phallic-shaped fruit dangled on a fuzzy-leafed tree.

It had to be a dream. Had to be.

It wasn’t a dream.

The vertigo was manageable, if he moved slowly. He got to his feet.

“Hello! Dr. Talcott? Rabbi Handalman? Nate?” His cries were sucked up by the forest. “Molly?” he muttered.

He spent several minutes tromping around the slope but saw nothing, not a trace of an exit anywhere, no microscopic black holes, no shining gateways, and no evidence that any of the others had ever come this way. It was just him and the flowers and a few weird-ass birds. Oh, yeah, and no way back.

Despite the heat he felt a chill and rubbed his arms. Okay. So perhaps jumping through the gateway had not been the most intelligent thing he’d ever done. Where was everyone? Why weren’t they here?