The Alejandra Variations Read Free

walked out into the avenue, staying clear of the panicked natives. He took his steps gingerly, carefully, walking almost like an automaton. There was no escaping it. On the very last day of his life, he knew what he had to do.
    When he reached the seashore he found it deserted, although tension was still in the air as if suspended upon each mote of dust that had been stirred up by the feet of the celebrants. The sirens still wailed deep within the canyons of the city behind him. Upon the steps that led to the dirty waters of the Arabian Sea there was no one to be seen. Above him, angry gulls drifted in the heat, crying out their own confusion.
    He stood on the broken cement steps that led down to the water's edge. Sandals, clothing, and flowers lay strewn haphazardly about. A fractured idol of Siva lay staring sightlessly into an uncaring sky. The sirens wailed like the voices of godlings lost in the shadowy halls of Bombay's decaying cityscape.
    Out in the bay floated a few ships—sloops or junks. Their crews were oblivious to what was happening. Nicholas squinted through the tainted, almond-colored light, watching the waves pulse toward the shore in a glistening of silver.
    Nicholas, the inner dweller in his mind cried out. Help us! We need to know for sure!
    "Stop it!" he screamed finally, grasping his head in his hands. "For the love of God, stop!"
    "Nick!" came an impassioned call.
    This time it was a human voice crying out, not his inner dweller.
    He turned swiftly and saw Rhoanna standing like the battered statue of a Hindu goddess, her arms outstretched, on the balustrade of a weathered hotel. Fainting, she fell against a marble pillar and slid out of sight, leaving behind her a trail of smeared crimson.
    "Rhoanna!"
    Everything came together in his mind: the sirens; the voice; the junks at sea.
    The nuclear device did not fall from the belly of a sinister bomber at sixty thousand feet, as the sirens had led him to fear. Instead, it came bubbling up from the yellow Arabian Sea, like a child spawned from an evil Nereidian womb in the deepest crevice of the ocean.
    Monstrous, it climbed on rubberized treads up onto the carved, ornamental steps of the holy shoreline. It was heading right for him.
    This ocean-borne steel demon was twice the size of a great white shark, and had a head full of deadly plutonium. Water slid down its slime-dark hull and drooled on to its efficient undercarriage. It looked for all the world as if it were smiling.
    That smile was the last thing Nicholas Tejada saw in this life.
    The whole universe suddenly burst with a light brighter than the interior of the brightest supernova in the heavens—as skin, then muscle, then bone, vanished in a terrible explosion. There was no smoke of burned flesh. No ash. Nothing.
    There was only the roar of light and a single, last gasping breath on his lips.
    "Rhoanna," he whispered—and was gone.

Chapter Two

    IN THE DARKNESS of an unimaginable afterlife, Nicholas heard voices—voices that lured him slowly back to the proverbial land-of-the-living. He fought off the limbo that unpleasantly enshrouded him and homed in on the voices that were conferring at the other end of reality.
    He tried to clear his throat, realizing that he was very, very thirsty. He also realized that he had a throat to clear.
    With a foot in each world, he made the leap toward the better one. "Water," he said hoarsely.
    His throat felt as if someone had poured sawdust down it and had followed that with sand. "I need some water," he muttered to anyone who might be listening.
    He slowly opened his eyes and found that he was lying in the white cotton folds of a comfortable hospital bed. But if this was a hospital room, it wasn't like any he'd known before.
    It resembled a luxury-hotel suite but one designed for invalids. The bed was large. Across the room were a few plush chairs and some tall, leafy green plants. There were no other beds. This was a private suite for VIPs. Directly