Just barely, I think.

He reaches out to hold onto my arm, and the energy intensifies tenfold, bubbling through my body until I feel like I'll explode in a burst of white, black, and orange light.

The light breaks through the darkness over me, and looking up, I see in the black and brilliant orange two of them floating amid the miasmic colors.

The woman is beautiful, black hair, brown face. The others are here, she says, and I can sense them all; children, adults, the chaperon, all of them who dove into the Pool, the weave of Telen from a world of minds shaping the conduit we are floating in. They are pure spirit. Come, join us, she says. I'm here to greet you. We've been waiting for you.

I can't swim, says Glim, grabbing harder onto my arm, and I realize that white light and black and orange continue to surround me and now ooze out to envelop Glim as well. I can't touch bottom anymore.

I can't swim, Glim repeats. I sweep him up in my arms and hold him, his arms going around my neck; he isn't too heavy for me, which can't be right.

Don't worry, I a.s.sure him, I'll teach you how.

The more complete contact brings our minds together, and the meld is dizzying.

Glim says, I'm not sure.

Glim, I love you. I promise you, I'll teach you how to swim. We'll always be together. Like this-- not separated by a disrupter or a telepist or anything.

The color and light are all around us, and we begin to float up, into it, our physicality bleeding away. The others around the Pool fade back into the other reality, further away every moment.

I look up at the woman. Her hair is silver now, and her shape wavers as the current moves around her. She is glorious, but the welcome I felt only moments before is now colored with something sour.

Drop him, she says to me.

What? is my response. I cannot have heard her. I can feel the thought of my heart begin to thump in my chest.

I said, drop him. He's weak like the others. Don't tie yourself to such a one, she repeats. There's no reason for you to waste yourself on a lowly warrior.

There are many more worthy for your attention.

This is the Telen I have been hearing since our arrival. These are the Ellysians. The consequences rattle through my brain as we float, stunned by the light and beauty.

Jude, Glim's Telen seems to emanate from my own mind, I can't swim, he says. But what if I can't teach him? The woman keeps beckoning. We float without effort toward her, Glim trailing behind clinging to my arm. Drop him? No. Never.

No.

Resist, I say to Glim/me.

You can't resist, the Ellysian says. You've already been altered. You can't survive in that dimension any longer. We've been waiting for you. There are so many who want to see you.

Resist, I say. I can feel Glim joining with me to pull away from the Ellysian.

The sinews of our minds weave together as one. Resist, we say. We start to slow.

I look back toward the darkness where our world was only moments ago, the world where we worked together and sacrificed so much only to make a place for ourselves, a place that is tentative at best, but a place nonetheless.

The Ellysian speaks again, but I close my eyes to her, feeling Glim against me, embracing him. This way, she orders me. Come this way, her ordering turning to pleading.

No, we say. We continue to pull away. The darkness becomes our focus. Together we push away from the woman. She starts to fade as the darkness envelops us even as the conduit attempts to close about us. Weight rea.s.serts itself, and our flesh begins to bubble, searing away from the bone. Hideous pain, but our minds are still joined.

You will die, she blasts, and I can sense her need, the need of her race, their need for the strength of my Telen. We feel her pull at me, trying to seduce me into coming to them, the salving effect of the light countering the b.u.m of the darkness.

We will stay together. Struggling back to the physical world in an explosion of pain, a searing blaze of energy, a joined sharing on into infinity.

You will die, she screams again as we drift farther. Look at what we offer you.

Just look. How can you reject it? Life is better than the fate you are choosing.

Our pain ripples back up through her as our limbs wither, and we now understand the twisted artifacts in the Justice building.

Not apart. The conduit pulls at us more desperately.

No, she howls, come back.

Together. We resist.