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From his case, Cholmondeley passed us virtuous reality helmets. The room went black as I slipped mine on. Again as before, a few seconds' undignified fumbling followed, with all of us trying to find our neighbors' hands.
And then we were back in the Nine Beyonds: blacker than black, hot, wet, fetid. Somehow I got the idea the One Called Night knew we were there faster than he had before.
I couldn't see anything, but the space around me already felt tight and strained, as if my spirit was trying to fit into a pair of pants a couple of inches too small for it.
"Boy, this may be the Other Side, but it's sure not the high-rent district," Tony Sudakis said. When he spoke, he became visible to me in the midst of the darkness. When I met him, I thought he looked like somebody who'd been a good football player till the competition got too big for him to handle. Well, his virtuous reality image was about seven feet tell and maybe four feet wide through the shoulders: big enough to make a good football team, not just a player.
Other than size, though, it looked like Tony.
This is what I warned you about," I said, mostly to make myself known to him. Madame Ruth and Nigel Cholmondeley spoke up, too, and appeared in my second sight as they did so. No trace of Judy. I hadn't expected one, but you never give up hope.
Cholmondeley turned to Tony Sudakis. "If this is to work, it had best work soon: the advantage of surprise, don't you know?" he said. "The longer the One Called Night has to gather his resources against us, the worse our likely plight."
"Okay." Tony's virtuous voice was nearly an octave deeper than the one he really had. He reached inside the shirt that had grown with his torso, pulled out the little amber amulet I'd seen him use the first time I walked into his office.
Here, though, it didn't seem like just amber. It shone like a tiny piece of the sun, and shed real light through the gloom of the Nine Beyonds. Looking at trees and mud and stagnant water wasn't much, but it beat looking at hostile, smothering black nine ways from Sunday.
In that rumbling, thunderous voice. Tony Sudakis called,
"Perkunas, Thunderer, hear your loyal subject Do for us, trapped here in the Nine Beyonds, as you did for the Morning Star at her wedding: give us, I pray you, the Nine Suns in the sky!"
He'd sworn by Perkunas and the Nine Suns a couple of times, enough to make me think his god might have some power in the Nine Beyonds that the One Called Night wouldn't expect. If ever a Power seemed ideally suited to influence another's home environment, this was the time.
I waited for what felt like forever, though I knew time was, to say the least, arbitrary in the realm of virtuous reality.
Then that glowing bit of what had been amber flew off the chain around Tony's neck and streaked for the black sky.
Surely you've wished on a falling star. There in the Nine Beyonds, I wished on a rising one.
Up and up the shining spark flew. No matter how high it rose, it didn't get any dimmer. Its progress halted directly over what would have been my head if I could have sensed myself in virtuous reality.
Another pause, and then a great explosion of light, enough and more to dazzle the eyes I didn't have here. The sky stayed black, but suddenly nine suns blazed there, in the most beautiful ring I'd ever seen.
"By Jove," Nigel Cholmondeley murmured.
"No," Tony said smugly. "By Perkunas."
Light spread over the Nine Beyonds for the first time since the One Called Night shaped his realm from the raw stuff of the Other Side. I could see what was around me and, in a different way, I could perceive the whole domain at once.
I could be wrong, but I thought each of the Nine Suns illuminated a different Beyond. I sensed all Nine Beyonds.
All I'll say about them is that, even illuminated, each was less attractive than the next. If the One Called Night had designed this place for his personal comfort, well, if you ask me, he should have hired a decorator.
And there, off in the distance and yet at the same time close enough to reach out and touch, I saw something that didn't belong in this dark jungle. "Judy!" I cried. The One Called Night might have tried to hide her, but he couldn't, not with Perkunas' Nine Suns blazing down from the black sky.
No sooner had I called her name than she stood there beside me. As I've said, virtuous reality images have a way of improving on mundane reality. Not, you understand, that I ever thought Judy needed improving on, but seeing her there made me understand all at once how Beatrice must have looked to Dante.
Dante hadn't needed virtuous reality to see that way, but Dante was an artist and a genius. Me, I'm just an EPA man.
However it had come to me, I knew I'd cherish Judy's virtuous image the rest of my days.
You know what else? By her expression, I didn't look half bad to her, either.
She said, "Thank you, David. I was begi
"I never lost hope, either," I said. "I-" The light that filled the Nine Beyonds got dimmer. I looked up into the sky. The Nine Suns were still there, but they seemed to fade more with every apparent second I watched.
"We have to escape at once," Madame Ruth said urgently.
"This is the domain of the One Called Night. Perkunas and the Nine Suns may have taken him by surprise, but Perkunas is not the ruling Power here."
"My colleague is correct," Nigel Cholmondeley said. "We must break the virtuous reality circle. Remember your fleshly forms; will them to separate one from the other, to loose the hands you are now holding. Quickly!"
I concentrated on the body I'd left behind at the West Hills Temple of Healing. Remembering I had hands, let alone moving them, took more effort than I thought I had in me. And all the while, the Nine Beyonds got darker and darker and darker. I felt the power of the One Called Night closing in around us.
And then I was back in room 547 again. I was still holding hands with Tony Sudakis and Madame Ruth, so I hadn't been the one to let go. That was the first thing I noticed as I did turn loose of my companions and snatch the virtuous reality helmet off my head. Only then, as I blinked against light that seemed much too bright, did I realize the One Called Night hadn't tried to chase us as we left his domain this time.
You have to understand - all that passed through my mind in a fraction of a second, and a small fraction to bootThen I stopped caring about it, because Judy had taken off her helmet, too. She was sitting up in her bed, looking over her shoulder at me, and smiling bright as all Nine Suns put together.
I smiled back. So did Tony, Nigel Cholmondeley, Hr. Murad, and the constable who'd been keeping watch on her. she wasn't wearing her own clothes, just a pure white healing gown of virgin linen, and all it had in back was a couple of ties that didn't do much to hold it together.
When Judy figured that out, she squeaked and wiggled around so the part of the gown that actually covered her was frontways to us. Then she said to me, "David, I think you'd better introduce me to these people. You got to me through virtuous reality, didn't you?"
"That's right," I said, and did as she'd asked. After the hellos and thank-yous, I went on, "You told me you wanted to get involved in the new technology. I don't suppose you wanted to see it from the inside out, though."
"No." She shook her head so her hair flew every which way, a Judy gesture I'd seen since the day I met her. It made any tiny doubts I'd had disappear: she was back on This Side, fully and completely. "It was still interesting," she added. "I'd recognize all of you from the way I saw you in the Nine Beyonds, but you, David, you looked just the same to me."