"But the music," said Tex.

  "The music is the message," said Beale. "It is, if you will, the effort of the tree to express itself—to say, This is what I am. Now, please; pay closer attention."

  Tex tried. This time, instead of sound, he was seized by a vision: a discomfiting image of writhing twisty things wrapping around each other, coming unwrapped, grabbing other things that floated in a viscous stew, nurturing blobs of quivering matter, breaking apart, recombining.

  "This is the genetic material," said Beale. "This is the level at which the tree attempts to transcribe the music of life into the mechanics of living tissue. Only as you see, it is plunging into chaos. Its organization is disrupted. The implicate tree and the explicate tree—the timeless idea and the living reality—are no longer in balance. This is an unstable situation that cannot continue. The most likely outcome is the plant will die."

  "Great," said Tex. "More death. It's the story of my life."

  "In this case, however," said Beale, sounding infinitely regretful, "a different outcome is possible. In fact, it is all but inevitable. Watch."

  Tex watched. Now what he perceived was texture. Wet, warm, slick, foaming with trapped gases, thick with minerals, coalescent with proteins. Neither solid nor liquid but something else. Protoplasmic. Tex thought of a slab of raw liver, a handful of cold spaghetti, a loaded condom.

  "Yich," he declared.

  "Behold," said Beale. "The prima materia. The cellular constituents from which life is sculpted. Remember, the music is the message. The genes are the tools, the intermediaries. This is the medium itself. This is how the life-idea expresses itself."

  Tex liked the concept. He let the yicky warm gooey stuff seethe around him. "So, where does creation come in?"

  "On a very gross level," said Beale, "it can be driven by the living substance. A shortage of one thing, a surfeit of another, can force an adaptive response at the next level, the genetic material. Let's go back there."

  They went. Tex watched the chromosomes dance, long stringy molecules writhing and splitting and changing partners.

  "Now another way of effecting change," said Beale, "is to intervene at this finer level. You insert a new strand, or induce an error in copying an old one. These things happen quite naturally all the time, mostly through the migration of viruses and viroids. In this way, new molecular ideas spread democratically throughout the biome. It's as though you reached into an orchestra and pulled out the tuba player and inserted a mandolin. As to the music itself, however—"

  Then they were floating gloriously free, drifting on etheric chords. It was recognizably the same as before and yet ever-changing, ever unfolding.

  "Here," Beale said, "is the level at which genuine creativity comes into play. Not coarse manipulation of the artistic tools, or even coarser disruption of the raw clay. Rather a change, if you will, in the mind of the artist."

  "The Artist?" said Tex. "You mean, like..."

  "No," said Beale. "I am not talking about one of your gods. I'm talking about the damned spruce tree. I'm talk-about the organism itself. Haven't you ever stopped to consider what an organism actually is? Haven't you for an instant wondered what is the difference between a lump of organic matter wrapped in cellophane at the supermarket, and a lump of organic matter walking around chewing grass in a field?"

  "Believe me," said Tex—imagining himself lying at the bottom of a well, being chewed up by hungry little ... you don't want to know—"I wonder about shit like that all the time."

  "The difference is, the lump of living matter is not just a heap of parts but a whole. Its own master. Its own god, in a sense. It is both the thing and the idea of the thing—the possible and the actual. Is this too philosophical for you?"

  Tex cleared his throat. "Sort of a top-down versus bottom-up approach, right? I can dig that. But still, it kind of seems like the real question isn't how. Like, how does biology really work—I mean, who cares? The real question is why? Why do cool new things keep happening? Why does all this newness keep popping up?"

  Beale made a clucking noise. "Don't you realize," he said, "that what you are asking is, in effect, the oldest and hoariest question in the book? It's that tired and, I'm afraid, rather lame old riddle, Where do ideas come from?"

  "That's it!" said Tex. "Exactly. Where do ideas come from?"

  "Oh, for heaven's sake," said Beale. "Isn't that obvious?"

  WHOME

  Beale spoke a word then that Tex could not hear. Not because he wasn't listening. But because the sound of that primal syllable ripped his inner self like a tsunami and swept him away. Away from spruce trees and copper pipes and nutrient baths.

  Away from the former Goddin Air Force Base.

  Away from Dublin County, Maine.

  Away from green fields and forests and spring air and sunshine.

  Away from the troposphere of a planet being jarred into chaos.

  Away from everything he had ever been near to. And then farther.

  Away from qualities.

  Away from Time.

  Away from Tex.

  Until finally

  awareness that was not fixed upon anything nor tethered to any mind

  rose from a centerless place to occupy all of creation

  and every possible good thing

  —palm trees, laughter, northern lights, Ludi's amber nipples, the green flash at sunrise, omelets, warm sand, Andrew's Dark Brown Ale, innocence, rock & roll, summer evenings with Molly, colors, coldness, surprise—

  existed

  effortlessly together

  as near and easy as a thought

  and where and who Tex had been was only explosive delight

  Then he thought, This is where ideas come from?

  And Beale said

  No

  And it was gone, all of it. And there was only

  dark.

  LEAVING WHOME

  Tex felt like crying or actually cried—without a physical body the distinction was hard to draw—and he felt royally ripped off and he raged and swore, et cetera. The memory of that Place or that Level of Consciousness (for which, of course, no known word would do) would not leave him; yet however he tried he could not get any nearer to the feeling of what being There had been like. He felt stripped and cast out and inconsolable.

  And Beale, who must have known and who must not have cared, said: "This is where ideas some from."

  "This?" said Tex, looking around. Seeing nothing. Well, the darkness.

  The absence.

  The loss.

  Beale said, "Here. Now. After you have left. While you can remember. In the moments when you suspect you have found a way back. Even a dream in which you

  seem to be back. In this place, these moments, ideas are born."

  "No."

  "Yes. Of course yes. Why is it that fresh new ideas invariably seem so familiar? Why do we recognize them by their beauty? Why do the people most blessed with creativity tend so oddly often to go mad? Because the moments when the channel opens are not easy to bear. How many times would you care to repeat this?''

  "Hey," said Tex, "once or twice a month would be plenty."

  Beale gave a graveyard chuckle. "Having departed from There and finding ourselves Here, most of us are content to live out our years or our millennia with no more than the faintest recollection of what it was like. We find a makeshift sort of happiness here in the Manifest, and we await with some mixture of fear and cautious hope the day when we are taken back again. Only now and then—sometimes quite by accident—do any of us risk opening the doors of creation. Still, they never remain closed for very long. Some awareness somewhere is forever prying them open, just a crack. And so you find new ideas, or more properly new creations, occurring all the time, everywhere, without surcease. That is the blessing and the curse of this outer world. The desire, and the possibility, however faint, of going back."

  "Going back where?" said Tex. Worried that this was a dangerous question. Needing to ask it anyway. "Where was that?"

  Beale did not reply for a while. Then, after a measureless interval, he groaned as though making a tremendous exertion and he said

  "There is some reason to think

  that Place is called

  Whome."

  or

  "may be it's pronounced like whom,"

  * * *

  Tex said.

  "No," said Molly. She was very sure of herself. "Like home."

  "How do you know?"

  She shrugged. Who knew? But she knew. "It comes from Finnegans Wake," she said.

  "You've never read Finnegans Wake," said Tex, who knew a few things himself. A few more, now, in fact, than he could really handle.

  Molly shrugged again. "So what? Nobody else has either. But everybody knows that's where quark comes from. So I guess somebody thought, Well, if the word for the smallest possible unit of existence came out of this book that nobody understands, why not find some word in here that means the opposite? Right? Because the whole problem with modern times is that we've gotten really good at breaking everything into little pieces and scattering them on the floor until nothing works, because nothing means anything—it's all just a pile of random pieces. So what we need is to find a new language for talking about whole things. Things that work. And the obvious place to start is with a term for the biggest whole thing of all, which is Everything—not just the Universe but everything that's not the Universe also. Get it? The big unity beyond all the differences. So: Whome. There's no place like it."

  "That's for sure," said Tex.

  He sat on the sofa clutching a big pillow whose stuffing had settled mostly to one side. He felt unsteady, insecure. These transformations were getting to him. Nothing was certain anymore. Which maybe had always been the case, but now the understanding of this had slithered inside of him. Unwillingly, he grokked it. On WURS, Bad Cathy was tossing off a not exactly reassuring set including but not limited to:

  "Miserable" by Portishead

  "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows" by Guided by Voices

  "Treacherous Cretins" by Frank Zappa

  "Muscoviet Musquito" by Clan of Xymox

  "Hey," purred the Cath, who had not kicked her college deejay habit of stepping on opening rhythm chords, "this one goes out to all you folks swabbing yourselves down with Green Ban and getting ready to face the day."

  Tex moaned. He did not want to face this or any day. He wanted to lie in his bunk and feel the tide rise and fall beneath him and inhale a little reefer.

  Before him, cheerfully, Molly placed the steaming Sun mug from which rose a tangy perfume of bergamot.

  "Why haven't we run out of this stuff?" Tex grumbled, accepting the mug and staring disconsolately into its depths.

  "I must make," croaked Ronny Moorings, "myself clear."

  "Then sing so we can understand you," Tex suggested.

  "Bear," said Molly, "you're talking back to the radio again."

  "Yeah?" He propped himself up a little straighter. He tried a sip of the Earl Grey. Not bad. Unsatisfying, but still: a ritual.

  "It's the Afterlife," Molly said. "That's why we never run out. You know, the cauldron that's never empty? The apple that's eaten but never consumed?" She raised her Moon mug to her lips and smiled at him with her eyes.

  From the next room, the sleeping compartment, came the sound of yawning. The boat swayed a bit as someone rose and crossed the deck; then the hatch popped open and Gene Deere strode (naked, youthful, well hung: the bastard, thought Tex) through the living room and into the head.

  "How long do we have to put up with this?" Tex asked Molly.

  She hummed lightly, tilting her head. Tex imagined that he could hear the sound of Ludi's breathing in the room next door: faint, warm, regular.

  Gene Deere emerged from the head accompanied by the sound of water being discharged into the holding tank. "I hope they remember to get that pumped," said Tex.

  "Bear," said Molly. "You're growling."

  "It is the nature of bears," said Tex, standing his ground, "to growl."

  "You're jealous."

  "You're crazy. What are they staying here for, anyway?''

  "Because it's theirs," Molly explained, infinitely patient today.

  "It is not. It's mine. Ours."

  "Don't you see? It's a thing they've got together. It's not her place, and it's not his. It doesn't involve that kind of decision. Plus, it's a secret."

  "Then how come we know about it?"

  "We don't count."

  "Wedon't count? It's our boat. And if you ask me, it's getting kind of crowded in here."

  "Let's go out on deck, then."

  "All right," said Tex. "All right, damn it. You've been trying all morning to get me up. I'll get up. I'll go out and soak up some goddamn fresh air and sunshine. Probably I'll be the first dead person in history to get skin cancer."

  "There," said Molly, rising perkily, smoothing out her cushion (though it showed no impression of where she had sat). "That's the old Bear spirit."

  ON A CLEAR DAY

  From the deck, with her good right eye, Molly could see, no kidding, forever. Some of what she saw was good and some of it was disturbing and some of it she didn't understand.

  On the whole, the part she didn't understand was the most interesting. She gazed here and there until she felt a headache coming on. She felt Tex tugging gently at her sleeve.

  "Raven," he whispered. "We've got company."

  Gene and Ludi had come out from the cabin to stand at the rail, just behind the deck chairs where Tex and Molly sat.

  "What's he doing?" Tex said.

  In one hand Gene held something about the size of a checkbook. He pressed this to his ear, waited a few moments, then started to talk.

  "Sefyn?" he said. "Listen, is Chas in yet? Yes, I know what time it is. I mean actually I don't know. Has Chas been—''

  "I'm not absolutely sure," said Molly, "but I think he may be talking on a cellular phone."

  "A cellular telephone?" Tex was halfway out of his chair. "On my boat?"

  Molly stroked his arm. "Shh, calm down. I'm sure he'll be taking it with him when he leaves."

  "When he leaves," fumed Tex. "I've been waiting a day and a half for the guy to leave. I don't think he's ever going to leave. Why should he?"

  "To go to work?" said Molly. It wasn't something either of them was familiar with. "Be quiet."

  "I understand," said Gene. "Believe me. Just tell him—no, forget it. I'll tell him."

  Ludi wandered away from him. She came to stand between Tex and Molly, staring down absentmindedly at the breakfast table. Suddenly her eyes focused. Her arm reached down and, with due caution, her fingers touched the Sun mug. Slowly she lifted it, stared at the tea swirling inside, raised it to her mouth.

  "It's still warm," she said quietly.

  "What's warm?" said Gene. "Not you, Sefyn."

  "Nothing," said Ludi. She swirled the mug, staring into the dark interior. Then she glanced around the deck, up to the flying bridge, over the railing at the peaceful waters of Cold Bay.

  "Thanks," said Gene. "I guess I'll see you when I see you. I've got to take a shower first. Or something."

  He returned the phone to his shirt pocket. "I'm sorry," he told Ludi. "Were you saying something? I couldn't get Sefyn to be quiet once I got him going—you know how he is."

  "No," said Ludi. "Nothing." She placed the Sun mug down gently, right where she had found it. "Just the usual stuff."

  Gene watched her a moment, as though hearing something odd or unfamiliar in her voice. Then she smiled so brilliantly that his brain must have been wiped.

  "I think I love you," he told her.

  "I kind of figured that," she said.

  "How about you?" he said.

  She tapped the side of her mouth with one long finger. "I think," she said, "I'm not in my right mind at the moment. And I think this boat is probably not the best place to try to get sane again."

  "You want me to take you home?" he said, obviously and instantly concerned. Even to Tex, he seemed touchingly vulnerable. "You want to be alone for a while?"

  "No," said Ludi. "I like it this way."

  Gene exhaled in relief.

  Tex gritted his teeth.

  Molly sighed.

  Ludi said, "You probably ought to go to work, I guess."

  "Yeah. Sefyn says Chas is apeshit because these security guys are everywhere and the King is coming to town. And I've got a report due."

  "Let me borrow your phone," she said. "I need to call the bookstore."

  "You can have it," said Gene. "I'm sick of telephones. Are you in trouble at work, do you think?"

  "Oh, no," said Ludi. "Work is the trouble. I'm going to tell them I quit."

  Gene thought for a moment and then shook his head. He did not know what to make of her.

  "Get used to it," said Tex.

  "I'm trying," he said.

  "What?" said Ludi, cupping her hand over the phone. "Did you say something?"

  "I don't think so," he said.

  "Maybe I'm just hearing things."

  "Me too."

  "It's this boat."

  The Linear Bee rocked. The harbor swells rolled. The sun crawled higher and Rose Moon, hidden beneath its glare, waxed a tiny bit more full.

  "I think it's haunted," Ludi confided, to no one in particular.

  "There are no such things as ghosts," said Gene.

  "You sure?"

  "No," he said readily. "I'm not too sure about anything. Do you have any idea what day it is?"

  "June, I think."

  He walked over and kissed her. She tossed the telephone overboard. It floated for a while, then a wave slapped it against the hull, and Tex never saw it again.

  FACE THE MUSIC

  Time waits for no one? Maybe. But everybody on the payroll of the Gulf Atlantic Corporation seemed to be waiting for Gene Deere by the time he rolled in to his office a couple of hours later. He was wearing a crisply ironed shirt and a job-interview-grade tie and a sport jacket that still had the dry cleaner's tag stapled to the loop in back. He was showered and shaved and combed and generally burnished. His skin was tanned from sunbathing naked on the houseboat. Despite all this he managed to feel scrungy and unkempt, and found himself half humming and half growling an early Tom Waits tune, "Whistlin Past the Graveyard," as he strolled into the made-over hangar. Sefyn looked up at him and registered a note of honest surprise.