“This used to be the staff dormitory. I stayed underground for a few weeks when I was doing my first population count of splendida.”

“And I’m supposed to live here?”

“Yes. For eight days.”

Gabriel looked around at the bare room. It reminded him of a prison. No complaints, he thought. Just do what she says. He dropped his knapsack on the floor and sat on the cot.

“All right. Let’s get going.”

Sophia moved restlessly around the room, picking up pieces of broken concrete and flicking them into a corner. “I’ll run through the basics first. All living things carry around a special kind of energy called the Light. You can call it a ‘soul’ if you want. I don’t worry too much about theology. When people die, their Light returns to the energy that surrounds us. But Travelers are different. Their Light can go away and then return to their living body.”

“Maya said that the Light travels to different realms.”

“Yes. People call them ‘realms’ or ‘parallel worlds.’ Once again, you can use any term that makes sense to you. The scripture of every major religion has described different aspects of these realms. They’re the source of all mystical visions. Many saints and prophets have written about the realms, but the Buddhist monks living in Tibet made the first attempt to understand them. Before the Chinese invaded, Tibet was a theocracy for more than a thousand years. The peasants supported monks and nuns who could examine the accounts of Travelers and organize the data into a system. The six realms aren’t a Buddhist or a Tibetan concept. The Tibetans are simply the first people who described the whole thing.”

“So how do I get there?”

“The Light breaks out of your body. You have to be moving slightly for the process to happen. The first time it’s surprising-even painful. Then your Light has to cross four barriers to reach each of the different realms. The barriers are composed of water, fire, earth, and air. There is no particular order to cross them. Once your Light finds the passageway through, you’ll always find it again.”

“And then you enter the six realms,” Gabriel said. “So what are they like?”

“We’re living in the Fourth Realm, Gabriel. That’s human reality. So what is our world like? Beautiful. Horrible. Painful. Exhilarating.” Sophia picked up a shard of concrete and tossed it across the room. “Any reality with king snakes and mint chocolate-chip ice cream has its good side.”

“But the other places?”

“Each person can find traces of the realms within their own heart. The realms are dominated by a particular quality. In the Sixth Realm of the gods, the sin is pride. In the Fifth Realm of the half gods, the sin is jealousy. You need to understand that we’re not talking about God, the power that created the universe. According to the Tibetans, the gods and half gods are like human beings from another reality.”

“And we’re living in the Fourth Realm…”

“Where the sin is desire.” Sophia turned and watched a king snake moving slowly down a conduit pipe. “The animals of the Third Realm are ignorant of all others. The Second Realm is inhabited by the hungry ghosts who can never be satisfied. The First Realm is a city of hate and anger, ruled by people without compassion. There are other names for this place: Sheol, Hades, Hell.”

Gabriel stood up like a prisoner ready for a firing squad. “You’re the Pathfinder. So tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

Sophia Briggs looked amused. “Are you tired, Gabriel?”

“It’s been a long day.”

“Then you should go to sleep.”

Taking a felt-tip marker out of her pocket, Sophia walked over to the wall. “You need to break down the distinction between this world and your dreams. I’m going to show you the eighty-first path. It was discovered by the Kabbalist Jews who lived in the northern Galilee town of Safed.”

Using the marker, she wrote four Hebrew letters on the wall. “This is the tetragrammaton-the four-letter name of God. Try to keep the letters in your mind when you start to go to sleep. Don’t think about yourself or me-or splendida. Three times during your sleep, you should ask yourself, ‘Am I awake or am I dreaming?’ Don’t open your eyes, but stay within the dream world and observe what happens.”

“And that’s all?”

She smiled and began to walk out of the room. “It’s a start.”

Gabriel pulled off his boots, lay down on the cot, and stared at the four Hebrew letters. He couldn’t read or pronounce them, but the shapes themselves began to float through his mind. One letter looked like a shelter from the storm. A cane. Another shelter. And then a small curving line that looked like a snake.

He fell into a deep sleep, and then he was awake or half awake-he wasn’t sure. He was looking down at the tetragrammaton drawn with red-colored sand on a gray slate floor. As he watched, a gust of wind blew God’s name away.

GABRIEL WOKE UP covered with sweat. Something had happened to the lightbulb in the dormitory and the room was dark. A faint light came from the corridor that led to the main tunnel.

“Hello!” he shouted. “Sophia?”

“I’m coming.”

Gabriel heard footsteps enter the dormitory room. Even in the darkness, Sophia seemed to know where she was going. “This happens all the time. Moisture seeps through the concrete and it gets into the electrical connections.” Sophia tapped her finger on the lightbulb and the filament lit up. “There we go.”

She walked over to the cot and picked up the kerosene lantern. “This is your lantern. If the lights go out or you want to go exploring, take it along with you.” She studied his face. “So how did you sleep?”

“It was okay.”

“Were you aware of your dream?”

“Almost. Then I couldn’t stay in it anymore.”

“All this takes time. Come with me. And bring that sword with you.”

Gabriel followed Sophia out into the main tunnel. He didn’t know how long he’d been sleeping. Was it morning or still night? He noticed that the lightbulbs kept changing. Eighty feet above them, wind was rattling the leaves of the Joshua trees and pushing the blades of the windmill. Sometimes the wind blew strongly and the lights burned brightly. When the wind faded, the only power came from batteries, and the bulb filaments glowed dark orange like embers from a dying fire.

“I want you to work on the seventeenth path. You brought along that sword, so it seems like a good idea. This path was invented by people in Japan or China: some kind of sword culture. It teaches you how to focus your thoughts by not thinking.”

They stopped at the end of the tunnel and Sophia pointed to a patch of water on the rusty steel plates. “Here we go…”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Look up, Gabriel. Straight up.”

He raised his head and saw a drop of water forming on one of the arched girders above them. Three seconds later the drop fell off the girder and splattered on the steel in front of him.

“Draw your sword and cut the drop in half before it hits the ground.”

For a second he thought that Sophia was teasing him with an impossible task, but she wasn’t smiling. Gabriel drew the jade sword. Its polished blade gleamed in the shadows. Holding the weapon with two hands, he got into a kendo stance and waited to attack. The water drop above him grew larger, trembled, then fell. He swung the sword and missed completely.

“Don’t anticipate,” she said. “Just be ready.”

The Pathfinder left him alone beneath the girder. A new water drop was forming. It was going to fall in two seconds. One second. Now. The drop fell and he swung the sword with hope and desire.