Free Prayers to Broken Stones by Dan Simmons Page B

a surprise for you!”
    “I’m not sure we need any more surprises,” Bremen mumbled.
    “This
one we do,” she said, and she was upstairs, humming and thrashing around in the closet.
    She led them, Gernisavien following reluctantly, to a trail that led off in the same general direction as the highway that had once been in front of the house. It led up through pasture to the east and over the rise. They carried the picnic basket between them, Bremen repeatedly asking for clues, Gail repeatedly denying him any.
    They crossed the rise and looked down to where the path ended. Bremen dropped the basket into the grass. In the valley where the Pennsylvania Turnpike once had been was an ocean.
    “Holy shit!” Bremen exclaimed softly.
    It was not the Atlantic. At least not the New Jersey Atlantic that Bremen knew. The seacoast looked more like the area near Mendocino where he had taken Gail on their honeymoon. Far to the north and south stretched broad beaches and high cliffs. Tall breakers broke against black rock and white sand. Far out to sea, the gulls wheeled and pivoted.
    “Holy shit!” Bremen repeated.
    They picnicked on the beach. Gernisavien stayed behind to hunt insects in the dune grass. The air smelled of salt and sea and summer breezes. It seemed they had a thousand miles of shoreline to themselves.
    Gail stood and kicked off her dress. She was wearing a one-piece suit underneath. Bremen threw his head back and laughed. “Is that why you came back? To get a suit? Afraid the lifeguards would throw you out?”
    She kicked sand at him and ran to the water. Three strides in and she was swimming. Bremen could see from the way her shoulders hunched that the water was freezing.
    “Come on in!” she called, laughing. “The water’s fine!”
    He began walking toward her.
    The blast came from the sky, the earth, the sea. It knocked Bremen down and thrust Gail’s head underwater. She flailed and splashed to make the shallows, crawled gasping from the receding surf.
    NO!!!
    Wind roared around them and threw sand a hundred feet in the air. The sky twisted, wrinkled like a tangled sheet on the line, changed from blue to lemon-yellow to gray. The sea rolled out in a giant slack tide and left dry, dead land where it receded. The earth pitched and shifted around them. Lightning flashed along the horizon.
    When the buckling stopped, Bremen ran to where Gail lay on the sand, lifted her with a few stern words.
    The dunes were gone, the cliffs were gone, the sea had disappeared. Where it had been now stretched a dull expanse of salt flat. The sky continued to shift colors down through darker and darker grays. The sun seemed to be rising again in the eastern desert. No. The light was moving. Something was crossing the wasteland. Something was coming to them.
    Gail started to break away, but Bremen held her tight. The light moved across the dead land. The radiance grew, shifted, sent out streamers that made both of them shield their eyes. The air smelled of ozone and the hair on their arms stood out.
    Bremen found himself clutching tightly to Gail and leaning toward the apparition as toward a strong wind. Their shadows leaped out behind them. The light struck at their bodies like the shock wave of a bomb blast. Through their fingers, they watched while the radiant figure approached. A double form became visible through the blaze of corona. It was a human figure astride a huge beast. If a god had truly come to Earth, this then was the form he would have chosen. The beast he rode was featureless, but besides light it gave off a sense of … warmth? Softness?
    Robby was before them, high on the back of his teddy bear.
    TOO STRONG CANNOT KEEP
    He was not used to language but was making the effort. The thoughts struck them like electrical surges to the brain. Gail dropped to her knees, but Bremen lifted her to her feet.
    Bremen tried to reach out with his mind. It was no use. Once at Haverford he had gone with a promising student to