ALBERT ENDED THE conversation by announcing that he had a surprise for me. We all departed from his house and, while the others traveled ahead by thought, Albert suggested that he and I walk a while, Katie joining us. "I could tell that Arthur's words disturbed you," he said. "They shouldn't. The people he referred to have nothing to do with you."

"Why do I keep worrying about Ann then?" I asked.

"You're still concerned about her. It will take some time before that ends. But there's no connection between Ann and what Arthur was talking about."

I nodded, wanting to believe him. "I wish, to God, there were direct communication," I said. "A few words between us and everything would be resolved." I looked at him. "Will it ever happen?" I asked.

"It must, one day," he said. "It is a complex problem though. Not one of distance, as I've indicated, but of difference in vibration and belief. At present, only the most advanced psychics on earth can cope with it."

"Why can't everyone on earth handle it?" I asked.

"They could, with proper training," Albert said. "The only ones we know of that can do it, though, are those born with the gift--or who acquire it by accident."

"The gift?"

"An ability to utilize the etheric senses despite their encapsulation in the physical body."

"Can't I find a psychic with that ability?" I asked. "Communicate with him? With her?"

"What if that person wasn't anywhere near your wife?" he said. "More likely, what if you did manage to communicate with such a person, he or she transmitted the message to your wife and she refused to believe it?"

I nodded, sighing. "And the one time I might have communicated," I recalled, "it went so badly that it probably destroyed any possibility of Ann's ever believing."

"That was unfortunate," Albert agreed.

"And he saw me," I said, dismayed by the memory. "He actually read my lips."

"He, also, thought your discarded double was you," Albert reminded me.

"That was hideous," I said. He put an arm across my shoulders. "Try to have faith, Chris," he told me. "Ann will be with you; it's meant to be. And, in the meantime, perhaps a thought relay might help."

I looked at him curiously.

"Sometimes a group of minds can join forces to contact someone left on earth," he explained. "Not in words," he added quickly, seeing my expression. "In feeling. Seeking to impart a sense of comfort and assurance."

"Would you do this?" I asked.

"I'll set it up as soon as possible," he said. "Put your hand on Katie now and take my hand.

I did so and, immediately, found myself beside him at the edge of an enormous amphitheatre which was below ground level. It was crowded with people.

"Where are we?" I asked, straightening up from Katie.

"Behind the Hall of Music," he said.

I looked around. It was a stunning spot in the twilight illumination, the descending amphitheatre surrounded by lawns and masses of beautiful flowers with tall trees in the background.

"Is there going to be a concert?" I asked.

"Here's someone to explain it to you," Albert said, smiling. He turned me around.

I knew him in an instant, Robert. There was very little difference in the way he looked. His appearance was one of vigorous health but he hadn't grown younger, looking much as I remembered him. "Uncle!" I cried.

"Hello, Chris!" he greeted me. We embraced each other, then he looked at me. "So you're with us now," he said, smiling.

I nodded, smiling back. Uncle Sven was always my favorite, as you know.

"Katie, my girl," he said, stooping to pet her. She was obviously pleased to see him.

He stood up, smiling at me again. "You're surprised at how I look," he said. I didn't know what to say.

"A natural curiosity," he said. "One can remain at any age one chooses here. I prefer this one. Wouldn't it be silly to have nothing but young people here?" I had to laugh at the quizzical look he gave Albert.

Albert laughed too, then told me he was going to try and arrange for the thought relay.

After he was gone, I explained about Ann and Uncle nodded. "Good, the relay will help," he said. "I've seen it work."

His confident manner made me feel much better. I even managed a smile. "So you're working in music," I said. "I'm not surprised."

"Yes, music was always a great love," he said. He gestured toward the grass. "Let's sit," he said. "You'll like it better here than in the amphitheatre; I won't tell you why, I'll let you be surprised."

We sat and Katie lay beside us. "Is there a lot of music here?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, it plays a large role in Summerland," he answered. "Not only as diversion but as a way by which a person can achieve higher levels."

"What is it you do?" I asked.

"I specialize in the study of the best methods of conveying musical inspiration to those who have a talent for composition on earth," he said. "Our studies are tabulated and transferred to another group who consider the best means of communicating with these talented people. A third group does the actual transmission. Then--but I'll tell you about it later, the concert is about to start." How he knew I couldn't tell since everything was out of sight beneath ground level.

He was right though; it was about to begin. I know you're not a classical music lover, Robert, but it might intrigue you to read that the main composition to be performed was Beethoven's Eleventh Symphony.

I saw quickly why Uncle had suggested that we sit above the level of the amphitheatre. Listening is not the whole experience. No sooner had the orchestra begun to play--an unfamiliar overture by Berlioz--than a flat, circular surface of light rose from it to float level with the topmost seats.

As the music continued, this circular sheet of light became more dense, forming a foundation for what followed.

First, four columns of light shot up into the air at equal spaces. These long, tapering pinnacles of luminosity remained poised, then descended slowly to become broader until they resembled four circular towers each topped with a dome.

Now the basic surface of light had thickened and risen slowly to form a dome above the entire amphitheatre. This continued to rise until it was higher than the four columns. There, the immense musical form remained stationary.

Soon, the most delicate of colors began diffusing throughout the structure. As the music went on, this coloration altered constantly, one subtle shade blending into the next.

Because I couldn't see the amphitheatre, orchestra or audience, it was as though some kind of magical architecture was taking place in front of me. I learned that all music emits shapes and color but not every composition creates such vivid formations.

The value of any musical thought form depends on the purity of its melodies and harmonics. In essence, the composer is a builder of sound, creating edifices of visible music.

"Does it vanish when the music ends?" I whispered, then realized that, since we spoke by thought, I didn't have to whisper.

"Not immediately," he answered. "Time must be allowed between pieces for the form to dissolve so as not to conflict with the next one."

I was so enchanted by the shimmering architecture that I was scarcely conscious of the music which created it. I recalled that Scriabin had tried combining light and music and wondered if that inspiration had come from Summerland.

I, also, thought how Ann would love this sight.

The beauty of the color reminded me of a sunset she and I had watched together at Sequoia.

This was not the trip we made when Ian was a baby. This was sixteen years later, our first camping trip without the children. We took a walk our first afternoon in the Dorst Creek campground; a two-mile hike to Muir Grove. The trail was narrow and I walked behind her, thinking more than once, how cute she was with her jeans and white sneakers, her red and white jacket tied around her waist, scuffing the dust as she moved, looking around with childlike curiosity, stumbling often because she didn't watch the path. Nearing fifty, Robert, and she seemed younger to me than ever.

I remember sitting, cross-legged, in the grove with her, side by side, our eyes closed, palms upturned, closely ringed by five immense Sequoia trees, the only sound a faint but steady rushing of wind far above us. A thought occurred to me; the first line of a poem: Wind in the high trees is the voice of God.

Ann loved that afternoon as I did. There was something about nature--in particular the stillness of a forest--to which she reacted well; the total silence seeping into one's very flesh. Outside of our home, it was one of the few places she felt entirely free of anxieties.

When we walked back to the campground, it was nearing sunset. We stopped at an enormous, sloping rock face that overlooked a vista of giant stands of redwood trees.

We sat there watching the sunset, talking quietly. First about the landscape and what it must have been like before the first man saw it. Then about how man has taken this magnificence and methodically demolished it.

Gradually, we talked about ourselves; our twenty-six years together.

"Twenty-six," Ann said as though she couldn't quite believe it. "Where did they go, Chris?"

I smiled and put my arm around her. "They were well spent."

Ann nodded. "We've had our times though."

"Who hasn't?" I answered. "It's better now than ever, that's all that matters."

"Yes." She leaned against me. "Twenty-six years," she said. "It doesn't seem possible."

"I'll tell you what it seems like," I told her. "It seems like last week that I spoke to a cute little X-ray technician trainee on the beach in Santa Monica and asked her what time it was and she pointed at a clock." She laughed. "I wasn't very friendly, was I?"

"Oh, I persevered," I said, squeezing her. "You know, it's odd. It really does seem like last week. Does Louise actually have two children of her own? Is 'baby' Ian on the verge of college? Have we really lived in all those houses, done all those things?"

"We really have, Chief," Ann said. She grunted, amused. "How many open houses have we gone to at the children's schools, I wonder? All those desks we sat at, hearing what our kids were being taught."

"Or what they were doing wrong."

She smiled. "That too."

"All those cookies and coffee in Styrofoam cups," I recalled.

"All those horrible fruit punches."

I laughed. "Well..." I stroked her back. "I think we did a reasonable job of raising them."

"I hope so," she said. "I hope I haven't hurt them."

"Hurt them?"

"With my anxieties, my insecurities. I tried to keep it all from them."

"They're in good shape, Mother," I told her. I rubbed her back slowly, looking at her. "So, I might add, are you."

She looked at me with a tiny smile. "We've never had the camper to ourselves before."

"I hope it doesn't rock too much at night," I said. "We'll be the scandal of the campground."

She made an amused sound. "I hope not too."

I sighed and kissed her temple. The sun kept going down, the sky bright red and orange. "I love you, Ann." I told her. "And I love you."

We sat in silence for a while before I asked, "Well, what next?"

"You mean right now?"

"No; in years to come."

"Oh, we'll do things," she told me.

Sitting there, we planned the things we'd do. Lovely plans, Robert. We'd come to Sequoia in the autumn to see the changing colors. We'd camp OB the river at Lodgepole in the spring, before the crowds began arriving. We'd backpack into the high country, maybe even try cross-country skiing in the winter if our backs held out We'd ride a raft down a rushing river; rent a houseboat and sail it through the back rivers of New England. We'd travel to the places in the world we'd never seen. There was no end to the things we could do now that the children were grown and we could spend more time together.

I woke up suddenly. Ann was crying out my name. Confused, I looked around in the darkness, trying to remember where I was.

I heard her cry my name again, and suddenly, remembered. I was in the camper, in Sequoia. It was the middle of the night and she had taken Ginger outside. I'd woken when she left, then fallen back asleep again.

I was out of the camper in seconds. "Ann?!" I shouted. I ran to the front of the truck and looked toward the meadow. There was a flashlight beam.

I began to smile as I started toward it. This had already happened, I knew. She'd walked into the meadow with Ginger and suddenly her flashlight beam had startled a feeding bear. She'd screamed my name in fright and I'd gone running to her, held her in my arms and comforted her.

But, as I moved toward the flashlight beam, it changed. I felt myself go cold as I heard the growling of a bear, then Ginger snarling. "Chris!" Ann shrieked.

I rushed across the uneven ground. This isn't really happening, I remember thinking. It didn't go this way at all. Abruptly, I was on them, gasping -at the sight: Ginger fighting with the bear, Ann sprawled on the ground, the flashlight fallen. I snatched it up and pointed it at her, crying out in shock. There was blood on her face, skin hanging loose.

Now the bear hit Ginger on the head and, with a yelp of pain, she fell to the ground. The bear turned toward Ann and I jumped in front of it, bellowing to chase it away. It kept coming and I hit it on the head with the flashlight, breaking it. I felt a bludgeoning pain on my left shoulder and was knocked to the ground. I twisted around. The bear was on Ann again, snarling ferociously.

"Ann!" I tried to stand but couldn't; my left leg wouldn't hold my weight and I crumpled back to the ground. Ann screamed as the bear began to maul her. "Oh, my God," I sobbed. As I crawled toward her, my right hand touched a rock and I picked it up. I lunged at the bear and grabbed its fur, began to smash at its head with the rock. I felt blood running warmly on my hands; Ann's blood, mine. I howled in rage and horror as I pounded on the bear's head with the rock. This couldn't be! It had never happened!

"Chris?"

I started violently, refocusing my eyes.

Albert was standing next to me; the music still played. I looked up at his face. His tight expression harrowed me. "What's wrong?" I asked. I stood up quickly.

He looked at me with an expression of such anguish that it seemed as though my heart stopped beating. "What is it?" I asked.

"Ann has passed on."

First, a jolt; as though I'd been struck. Then a feeling of excitement mixed with sorrow. Sorrow for the children, excitement for myself. We'd be together again!

No. The look on Albert's face did not encourage such a feeling and a sense of cold, aching dread engulfed me. "Please, what is it?" I begged.

He put his hand on my shoulder. "Chris, she killed herself," he said. "She's cut herself away from you."

It was the return of nightmare.

One harrowing possibility I FELT NUMB as I sat on the grass, listening to Albert. He'd led me from the amphitheatre; we were seated in a quiet glade.

I say that I was listening but I really wasn't. Words and phrases reached my consciousness disjointedly as thoughts of my own opposed the continuity of what he said, Troubled recollections mostly; of the times I'd heard Ann say "If you died, I'd die too." "If you went first, I don't think I could make it."

I knew, then, why I'd felt that sense of constant dread despite the fascinations of my first exposure to Summerland. Somewhere, deep inside, an apprehension had been mounting; an inner knowledge of something terrible about to happen to her.

I knew why I'd had those nightmarish visions of her begging me to save her. Again, in memory, I saw her look of terror as she slid across the cliff edge, sank beneath the churning waters of the pool, fell in bloody shock before the bear's attack. The cliff and pool and bear had all been symbols of my fear for her, not dreams but premonitions. She'd been pleading for my help, asking me to stop her from doing what she'd felt herself about to do.

Albert's voice reached my attention. "Because of her childhood traumas, the children grown, your death--" I stared at him. Had he said something about sleeping pills? His thought broke off and he nodded.

"God.'' I put my face in my hands and tried to weep. But I could summon nothing; I was empty.

"The death of someone with whom a person has been long and closely associated leaves a literal vacuum in that person's life," Albert said. "The streams of psychic energy directed toward that lost someone now have no object."

Why was he telling me these things? I wondered.

"That sitting may have played a part as well," he said. "They, sometimes, distort the mental balance."

I looked up at him; not with understanding.

"Despite what your wife said," he continued, "I think she hoped there was an afterlife. I think she placed considerable reliance on that sitting. When it turned out to be, from her standpoint, a delusion, she--" His voice trailed off.

"You said you'd keep an eye on her," I reminded him. "We did," he said. "There was no way of knowing what she planned to do though."

"Why was I told that she was scheduled to come across at the age of seventy-two?"

"Because she was," he said. "In spite of what was scheduled though, she possessed the will to circumvent that scheduling. That's the problem, don't you see? There's a natural time fixed for each of our deaths but--''

"Then why am / here?" I asked. "Was that accident the natural time for my death?"

"Presumably so," he answered. "Maybe not. At any rate, you weren't responsible for that death. Ann was responsible for hers. And to kill one's self is to violate the law because it deprives that self of working out the needs of its life."

He looked upset now, shaking his head. "If only people would realize," he said. "They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it, Chris. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A continuation under circumstances so much more painful--"

"Where is she, Albert?" I interrupted.

"I have no idea," he said. "When she killed herself, she merely discarded the denser part of her body. What remains is held magnetically by earth--but where on earth could be impossible to discover. The corridor between the physical and astral worlds is, to all intents and purposes, endless."

"How long will she be there?"

He hesitated.

"Albert?"

His sigh was heavy. "Until her natural departure time arrives."

"You mean--?" I stared at him in disbelieving shock. I couldn't restrain my gasp. "Twenty-four years?"

He didn't answer. He didn't have to; I knew the answer myself by then. Nearly a quarter of a century in the "lower realm"--that place I hadn't dared to even think about before because it had evoked such apprehensions in me. A sudden hope. I clutched at it. "Won't her etheric body die as mine did?"

"Not for twenty-four years," he said. "It will survive as long as she's held in the etheric world."

"It isn't fair" I said. "To punish someone who was out of her mind."

"Chris, it isn't punishment" he said. "It's law."

"But she had to be out of her mind with grief," I persisted.

He shook his head. "If she had been, she wouldn't be where she is," he answered. "It's as simple as that. No one put her there. That she's there is proof that she made a willful decision."

"I can't believe it," I said. I stood and walked away from him.

Albert rose and followed me. When I stopped to lean against a tree, he stood beside me. "It can't be all that awful where she is," he tried to reassure me. "She always tried to live an honorable life, was a good wife and mother, a decent human being. Her plight certainly isn't that of those who have lived basely. It's just that she's lost her faith and has to stay where she is until her time comes."

"No,'' I said, determinedly.

He didn't reply. I sensed his confusion and looked at him.

He knew, then, what I had in mind and, for the first time since we'd come together, I saw a look of disquiet on his face. "Chris, you can't," he told me.

"Why?"

"Well... in the first place, I don't believe it can be done," he said. "I've never seen it done, never heard of anyone even attempting it."

A cold dread seized me. "Never?"

"Not at this level," he answered.

I gazed at him helplessly. Then resistance came again, restoring my determination. "Then I'll be the first," I said. "Chris--" He regarded me with deep concern. "Don't you understand? She's there for a purpose. If you help, you distort that purpose, you--"

"I have to, Albert," I said, desperately. "Don't you understand? I can't just leave her there for twenty-four years. I have to help her."

"Chris--"

"I have to help her," I repeated. I braced myself. "Will someone try to stop me?"

He avoided the question. "Chris, even if you found her, which is probably impossible, she'd look at your face and not recognize you. Hear your voice and not remember it at all. Your presence would be incomprehensible to her. Not only would she not accept your offers of help, she wouldn't even listen to you."

I asked again. "Will someone try to stop me?"

"That's not the point, Chris," he said. "You have no conception of the dangers in--"

"I-don't-care!" I said. "I want to help her!"

"Chris, there's nothing you can do.''

I struggled to control myself. "Albert, isn't there the remotest possibility that my talking to her might make a difference? That she might, in some infinitesimal way, achieve some kind of understanding which might help to make her state a little more endurable?"

He looked at me in silence for what seemed an endless time before replying. "I wish I could say yes," he said, "but I can't."

I felt myself slump. Willfully, I stood erect again. "Well, I have to try," I told him. "I will try, Albert. I don't care how dangerous it is."

"Chris, please don't speak so thoughtlessly about those dangers," he said. Another first. I'd never heard the faintest tinge of criticism in his voice before. I'd heard it now.

We stood in silence, looking at each other. Finally, I spoke. "Will you help me find her, Albert?" I asked. He began to speak but I cut him off. "Will you help me, Albert? Please?" Silence again. At last, he replied. "I'll try," he said. "I don't believe it's possible but--" He raised a hand to keep me from speaking. "I'll try, Chris," he said.

Time with its multiple torments had returned to my existence.

I was waiting outside a building in the city, pacing anxiously. Albert was inside, trying to arrange a mental link with Ann. He'd warned me more than once that I would probably be disappointed. He'd never seen a link successfully made to anyone in the lower realm. Certain people could travel there, Albert among them. They could not locate specific individuals in advance, however, since all those in the lower realm were barred from communication by their own particular insularity.

Only if they asked for help--

I had to slump down on a bench as weariness--a sense of inner weight--returned to me as well. I closed my eyes and prayed that Albert would locate her somehow.

My Ann.

As I thought her name, a vision filled my consciousness: night time; she and I sitting in bed together, my arm around her shoulders as we watched television.

She'd fallen asleep again. She always seemed to fall asleep when I held her with her head resting on my chest. I never woke her and did not this time. As always, I sat motionless, the television set forgotten as I gazed at her face. As always, tears welled slowly in my eyes. No matter the threading of gray in her hair, the lines of time on her face. She always had that trusting child's expression in her sleep.

At least when I was holding her.

She was clutching my hand as she often did, her fingers twitching now and then. My hand ached from her grip but I didn't stir. Better that my hand ached than I woke her. So I sat immobile, gazing at her face as she slept, thinking how much I loved this dear, sweet child-woman pressed against me.

"Chris?"

I started, opening my eyes. Albert stood before me. Rising hastily, I looked at him. He shook his head.

At first, I refused to believe. "There has to be a way," I insisted.

"She's cut off," he said. "Not asking for help because she doesn't believe that such a thing exists."

"But--"

"They couldn't find her, Chris," he said. "They tried every possible way. I'm sorry."

Walking to a nearby brook, I sat on its bank and stared into the crystal, moving water.

Albert sat beside me, patting my back. "I'm truly sorry," he said.

"Thank you for trying," I murmured.

"I did discover one thing," he told me.

I looked at him quickly.

"You feel so strongly about each other because you're soul mates."

I didn't know how to take that, how to react. I'd heard the phrase, of course, but only in the most banal of ways, within the context of trivial ballads and poetry.

"What it means, literally," Albert said, "is that you both possess the same wave length, your auras a vibratory unison."

Reaction failed me still. What good was knowing this if it didn't help Ann?

"That's why you fell in love with her so quickly when you met her on the beach that day," Albert had continued. "Your soul was celebrating a reunion with her."

I could only stare at him. Somehow, the news did not surprise me. I'd never been superstitious in life. Yet I'd always insisted, to Ann, that we hadn't met by accident.

Still, of what value was it to know this?

"That's why you felt so strongly about being with her after your death,'' Albert said. "Why you never stopped--''

"Then it's why she felt so strongly," I broke in. "She had to kill herself. To join me; achieve that unison again."

"No." Albert shook his head. "She didn't do it to join you. How could she have when she didn't believe that was possible?" He shook his head again. "No, she killed herself to terminate her existence, Chris. As she believes your existence was terminated."

"To terminate her pain, Albert."

"All right, her pain," he said. "It wasn't her decision to make though. Can't you see that?"

"I know she was suffering, that's all I know."

He sighed. "It is the law, Chris, take my word for it. No one has the right--"

"What good is knowing all this if it can't help me find her?" I interrupted, miserably.

"Because," he said, "since you are soul mates, I've been authorized to continue helping you in spite of my reservations."

I gazed at him, confused. "If she can't be found--" I broke off haplessly, a sudden vision jarring me: the two of

us, like Flying Dutchmen of the spirit, wandering eternally in search of Ann. Is that what he meant?

"There's one way left," he said. He put a hand on my shoulder. "One harrowing possibility."