And deeper within, behind and beyond all the turmoil of the surface, there seems to be a zone of shining stillness, like a wall separating the flamboyant forces of the angel’s face from the calm, imperturbable core of the giant being. Noelle longs to reach that quiet core. But how? How? The roaring all about her numbs her soul. She can barely think in that great tumult.

Angel? Angel, do you hear me? This is Noelle.

Roaring. Hissing. Crackling. Sizzling.

Touch me, angel. But touch me only a little, touch me gently. Gently, please. Because I am so very small and you are such a giant.

A silence, a stillness. Then searing ropes of flame reach up as though to caress her.

Oh. Oh.

Around her the whole universe is aflame. The fire — the fire — that burning ocean — those grasping arms of flame — Noelle recoils from them, those writhing fiery strands that are reaching for her—

She pulls back, afraid. Still afraid. It is too much for her; she will be destroyed. She turns. Flees.

Finds a safe place, somewhere. Halts. Draws deep breaths.

Opens her eyes.

All about her is darkness, as usual. There are no flames anywhere near her. Everything is perfectly still. The angel is gone. She is in her own cabin, aboard the Wotan. Alone. Trembling. She has failed again.

I’m going to give it one more shot,” she tells the year-captain.

“But if the risk is so great—”

“I don’t know that it really is.”

“You said—”

“I said, yes. But maybe I was wrong. I’ll try one more time, and we’ll see.”

He is silent for a long while.

“You don’t want me to do it,” Noelle says eventually, in a completely neutral tone, nothing reproachful about it.

“I do and I don’t,” the year-captain says. “I’ve been the one pushing you toward this all along. And pulling you back with the other hand. I’m afraid of losing you, Noelle. We need to see what these things are, yes. But I’m afraid of losing you.” And he says, after another almost interminable pause, “You know that I love you, Noelle.”

“Yes.”

“And if something should happen to you—”

“Nothing will happen to me,” she says. “Nothing bad.”

This time as she enters the gray Intermundium she pauses before even beginning to search for the angel, and sends a shaft of thought across the light-years to Earth, to Yvonne.

She has had no contact of the kind that she once had enjoyed with Yvonne for months, nothing on the level of message-interchange. But she knows Yvonne is still there and trying to reach her, and in some indefinable way the link between them is still open, however clouded it is by the interference caused by the proximity of the angels. It is that link that Noelle attempts to widen and strengthen now.

Yvonne? Can you hear me? Can you feel me?

There is the hint of a hint of an affirmative reply. Only the hint of a hint, is all, but that is better than nothing.

Ride with me, Yvonne. When I want you to let me lean on you, be there beside me. Let me draw strength from you. I’m going to need you soon.

Does Yvonne hear? Does she know?

I love you, Yvonne. You are me. I am you. We are in this together.

Noelle thinks she feels Yvonne’s silent affirmative presence. Hopes she does.

And now. Now. Noelle moves deeper into the void beyond the ship. She can feel the force of the angel now, the vast godlike thing that waits for her out there.

Angel? Listen to me, angel! This is Noelle!

The angel is listening. The angel is waiting.

I am Noelle. I come to you in love, angel. I give myself to you, angel.

This time she holds nothing back. She yields herself completely, permitting herself no fear. Yvonne is with her. Yvonne stands beside her, lending her her strength.

I am yours, Noelle tells the angel.

Contact.

optic chiasma thalamus

sylvian fissure hypothalamus

medulla oblongata limbic system

pons varolii reticular system

corpus callosum cingulate sulcus

cuneus orbital gyri

cingulate gyrus caudate nucleus

— cerebrum!—

claustrum operculum

putamen fornix

choroid globus medial lemniscus

— mesencephalon!—

dura mater

dural sinus

arachnoid granulation

subarachnoid space

pia mater

cerebellum

cerebellum

cerebellum

The universe splits open. The whole cosmos is burning. Bursts of wild silver light streak across the shining metal dome of the sly. Walls smolder and burst into flames. Worlds turn to ash. There is contact, yes. A sensory explosion — a dancing solar flare — a stream of liquid fire — a flood tide of brilliant radiance, irresistible, unendurable, running into her, sweeping over her, penetrating her, devouring her. Light everywhere. Fire. A great blaze in the firmament.

Semele.

The angel smiles and she quakes. Open to me, Noelle, cries the vast tolling voice, and she opens and the force enters fully, taking possession of every nook and cranny of her brain, sweeping resistlessly through her.

And she and the angel are one. She lies within its bosom, resting, regaining her strength steadily, moment by moment, as its great warmth fills her and revives her.

After a while she is strong enough to rise and move about within the angel. She discovers that she can travel freely and at will, going as she pleases into any sector of the great being. She drops down beyond the zone of outer turbulence, past the huge fiery cells of angel-stuff that come constantly floating up from the interior, and disappears into the tranquillity of the angel’s core, the cool hidden place where no firestorms rage and the deepest of wisdom resides. There she remains for a considerable while, feeling a peace that she has never known before, until at last it comes to seem to her that if she does not move along she will stay there forever; and so she moves upward again, toward the surface, entering the realm of fiery turmoil that is the angel’s outer semblance. But the fire does not harm her. She is of the angel now; the angel is of Noelle.

Come. Let me show you things.

They drift across the face of the cosmos together. There are angels everywhere, a vast choir of them wherever she looks — great ones, small ones, bright ones, faint ones, some massed in clusters, some burning in solitary splendor. The sound of their voices fills the heavens.

She and her guide halt in a place of deep darkness, and there Noelle sees what she understands to be a new angel coming into being, barely glimmering as it is born. It coalesces swiftly as she watches, out of a cool, dark cloud of dust that is collapsing inward on itself to become a compact ball. As it shrinks and takes on spherical form it begins to turn, slowly and then faster and then much faster yet, and to give off heat, faintly at first, and then with increasing force, until it is glowing red-hot, white-hot. It has begun to spit matter into the void too, feverishly hurling segments of itself in every direction in what seems like a tantrum: a prodigious and prodigal outpouring of energy, ferocious and yet somehow comical.

A playful baby. An infant angel savoring the first throes of life. They watch for a while; and then they leave it in the midst of its sport.

Come along, now. Onward.

Onward, yes. The sky is very bright here, full of angels, and all of them are singing as angels should sing, a wonderful celestial choir whose harmonies fill the void. There is brightness everywhere, a sea of light.

Here Noelle sees a giant angel that burns with so steady and fierce a radiance that she does not understand why it has not already exhausted its own substance. It blazes in the firmament like an angry blue eye, unwearyingly hurling its fires outward to an immense distance. It is more like a god than an angel, this giant, an angry god, pouring itself forth in inexplicable wrath upon the fabric of the universe.