11

The gold letters on the window heralded the second-floor tenant.

CORDOVA SECURITY CONSULTANTS

LTD.

Jack shook his head. Ltd. Who did he think he was going to impress with that? Especially when his Ltd. was situated over a Tremont Avenue oriental deli with signs in English and Korean sharing space in its windows.

The inset door to the second floor lay to the left, sandwiched between the deli and a neighboring bakery. He walked past it twice, close enough to determine that it was secured with a standard pin and tumbler lock, and an old one to boot. He also noticed a little video lens pointed down at the two steps that led up to the door.

He hurried back to the car and pulled his camo boonie hat from the duffel, then returned to Tremont—officially East Tremont Avenue, but hardly anybody used the East—or the Avenue, for that matter.

Still a fair number of people on the sidewalks, even at this hour; mostly black and Hispanic. He waited till he had a decent window between strollers, then stepped up to the door, pick gun in hand. He kept his head down, letting the brim of the hat hide his face from the camera. Probability was ninety-nine percent that it was used to check on who wanted to be buzzed in and not connected to a recorder, but why take chances? He set to work on the lock. Took a whole five seconds to open it, and then he was in.

Atop the stairway he found a short hall. Two offices up here, Cordova's facing the street, the second toward the rear. He stepped up to the first door, an old wooden model that had been slathered with countless coats of paint over the years. An opaque pane of pebbled glass took up a good portion of the upper half. When Jack spotted the foil strip running around its perimeter, he knew where Cordova had stashed his dirt: right here.

Why pay for a security system at home when his office was alarmed?

But if this system was as antiquated as it appeared, Cordova was going to pay.

Oh, how he was going to pay.

But Jack needed to lay a little groundwork first. He'd tackle that tomorrow.

12

Back in his apartment, Jack thought about calling Gia to see how she was feeling, but figured she'd be asleep by now. He'd planned to watch a letterbox version of Bad Day at Black Rock in all its widescreen glory on his big TV—John Sturges and William Mellor knew how to stretch CinemaScope to the breaking point—but that would have to wait. The Book of Hokano was calling.

So Jack settled into his big recliner and opened the copy he'd picked up at Barnes & Noble. The two-inch spine was intimidating, but he opened it and began to read.

Abe hadn't been kidding: Dormentalism was a mishmash of half a dozen different religions, but the original parts were way over the top. And dull. The Book of Hokano made a civics textbook read like The Godfather.

He flipped through until he came to the appendices. Appendix A was called The Pillars of Dormentalism—a rip-off of the Pillars of Islam, maybe?

Looked like there were more than five. A lot more. Oh, goody.

He began to read…

First… there was the Presence and only the Presence. The Presence created the World, and it was good.

The Presence created Man and Woman and made them sentient by endowing each with a xelton, a Fragment of Its Eternal Self.

In the beginning Man and Woman were immortal—neither the flesh of the body nor the xelton within sickened or aged.

But Man and Woman rebelled against the Presence by believing they were the true Lords of Creation. This so displeased the Presence that It sundered Creation, dividing it in half The Presence erected the Wall of Worlds to separate this, the Home world, from its twin, the Hokano world.

These two parallel hemi-creations are mirrors of each other. Therefore each object in the Home world, living or inanimate, material or immaterial, has an exact counterpart in the Hokano world—separate but intimately linked.

When Creation was divided, so was each xelton. At first the halves remained linked across the Wall of Worlds, but through the millennia this link has stretched and attenuated as the xelton half within fell into a deep sleep. As a result, people on the Home side of the Wall are no longer aware of the existence of their xelton or their Hokano counterparts.

Another result of the Great Sundering was that human flesh was no longer immortal. It aged and decayed while the xelton within, being a fragment of the Presence itself, remained immortal. Each xelton passes through a succession of humans, being reborn immediately into a new body after an old one dies.

All the miseries that afflict humanity—war, pestilence, hunger, greed, hate, even death itself—are a direct result of our sleeping xelton and our loss of awareness and estrangement from our Hokano counterpart.

All the miseries that afflict humanity—war, pestilence, hunger, greed, hate, even death itself—can be conquered by awakening the inner xelton, reestablishing its contact with its Hokano counterpart, and fusing with it.

These Truths were unknown to Mankind until 1968 when they were revealed to Cooper Blascoe in the Black Rock desert of Nevada by a glowing Hokano traveler. The Hokano's name was Noomri and he was sacrificing his life by crossing the Wall of Worlds to bring the Good News to our side: All the Hokano people have awakened their xeltons and are anxiously awaiting contact from their counterparts in this world.

But Noomri said that strengthening contact across the Wall of Worlds requires effort on both sides. The Hokanos are alert and trying to fortify the links, but our Home world remains unaware. Without effort from our side, the links will remain attenuated.

Noomri revealed that there are ten levels of contact that if diligently pursued will result infusion of the sundered xelton halves. The human hosting a fused xelton will experience wondrous benefits—success, happiness, long life, contentment, fulfillment, and seemingly magical powers.

But that is only a small part of the reward for fusion. Noomri foretold that once enough xeltons are reunited and fused with their missing half, once the two parts again become one, the Presence will be pleased and will remove the Wall of Worlds. Then will come the Great Fusion when the two halves of Creation will rejoin into an Eternal Paradise.

Noomri warned that those beings on either side, flesh and xelton alike, who have not yet rejoined with their Hokano counterpart by the time of the Great Fusion, will be blasted from existence and will not partake of the Eternal Paradise.

Noomri sadly added that over the millennia a certain number of xelton halves have deteriorated to a state from which they cannot be awakened. These unfortunate xeltons and the people housing them are called "nulls" and will never experience fusion. Noomri was a null, and since he would never see the Eternal Paradise, he was bravely sacrificing himself for his fellow Hokanos and the people of the Home world. His time was running out, for one cannot long survive after crossing the Wall of Worlds.

Before he burst into flame and died, Noomri begged Cooper Blascoe to carry his words to all the people of the Home side.

Cooper Blascoe has done exactly this, forsaking all his personal needs and goals to create the Dormentalist Church to carry out this sacred mission.

Jack slumped in the chair and slowly shook his head. How could people—tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of them—fall for this line of bull? It read like bad science fiction.