Tom O'Bedlam

  “Where did you grow up?” she asked him.

  “A whole lot of places. Nevada, I think. And Utah.”

  “Deseret, you mean?”

  “Deseret, yeah, that’s what they call it now. And Wyoming, though of course you can’t live in a lot of Wyoming, on account of the dust that blew in from Nebraska, right? And some other places. Why?”

  “Just wondering. I didn’t think you were from California.”

  “No. No. I been to California before, though. Three years ago, I think. In San Diego. Stayed there five, six months. Nice and warm, San Diego. All kinds of strange people there, though. They don’t even speak English, a lot of them. Foreigners. The Africans. The South Americans. I knew a few of them there.”

  “What brought you to San Diego?” she asked.

  “Traveling. I got caught in the hot wind one day. You know what I mean, the hot wind? Radiation. This was when I was back living in Nevada. I can feel it, you know, when there’s radiation blowing on the wind, hard dust, makes my head tingle inside, right over here, the left side. And I felt it coming, but where can you go? That mean east wind, picking the stuff up Kansas way, maybe, blowing it and blowing it and blowing it, clear out to Nevada. No place to hide, that happens. You don’t get that stuff here, do you? This far west. But I got a dose, and I was sick for a while, my hair fell out, you know? So I thought I’d rest me in San Diego until I was better. Then I moved on. Got tired of the foreigners. I never stay the same place long. You never know, someone’s going to hurt you.”

  “No one’s going to hurt you here, Tom.”

  “Oh, you won’t hurt me. But that don’t mean no one will. Not even here. Poor Tom. Tom’s always wandering. And the wandering won’t stop, will it, till we get to the Last Days and make the Crossing. But the Last Days are almost here, you know.”

  She leaned forward, body tensed. That always happened when he came around to that subject. This was the third or fourth time he had talked with her this week, here in this little office of hers with the big green screen on the wall, and each time, the moment he had mentioned the Crossing or the other worlds or anything like that, he had seen the change in her right away.

  She said, “Do you want to tell me some more about the Crossing this morning?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “All about it. Whatever you want to tell me.”

  “There’s so much. I don’t know where to begin.”

  She said, “We’re all going to go to the stars, is that it? To jump across space somehow and take up new lives on other worlds?”

  “That’s it, yes.” She had a little machine in front of her, something to record his words. He saw a red light glowing. Well, that was all right. He trusted her. He had never trusted many people, but he trusted her. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt him. “I mean, we’re not going to go in our actual bodies. We’re going to drop our bodies behind us here, and just our essences are going to go over to the new worlds.”

  “And they’ll give us bodies there? If we go to the Green World, say, will we get the crystalline bodies, with the gleaming skins and the rows of eyes?”

  Tom stared at her. “You know about the Green World?”

  “I know about them all, Tom.”

  “And you know that they’re real?”

  Softly she said, “No, I don’t know that. I just know that I’ve seen them in my mind, and so have a lot of other people. I’ve walked around on the Green World with the crystalline people, Tom. In my mind. And I’ve seen the people of the other worlds, too, the Nine Suns people with the one big eye, and the Sphere of Light people with all the dangling appendages—”

  “Sphere of Light, yes, that’s a good name for it. That’s the Great Starcloud, that light. Those are the Eye People that live there. All these places are real, you know.”

  “How long have you known about them?”

  “Ever since I can remember.”

  “And you’re how old, did you say?”

  He shrugged. “Thirty-five, I think. Maybe thirty-three. Somewhere around there.”

  “Born just before the Dust War?”

  “No, just after it started,” he said.

  “Your mother was in the radiation zone when it broke out?”

  “On the edge,” Tom said. “Eastern Nevada, I’m pretty sure that’s where we lived. Or maybe across the line in Deseret. Utah. I know she got a little radiation, just a touch, while she was carrying me. She was sick a lot afterward, died when I was a kid. It was a lousy time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.” She really was. He could feel it. How nice she is, he thought. I hope she has a good Crossing, this Elszabet, this good kind woman.

  “And the visions? They go right back to your childhood?”

  “Like I said, as far back as I can remember. At first, like, I thought everybody must see these things, and then I found out nobody else did and I thought I was crazy.” He grinned. “I guess I am crazy, huh? You live with stuff like this in your mind all these years, it makes you kind of crazy for sure. But now everybody’s seeing the stuff I see. Last couple of years, people around me have been talking, saying they have dreams, they see the Green World and the rest. A few. There was this black man in San Diego, a foreigner, South American, drove a taxicab: I stayed in his house a while, town called Chula Vista, he rented a room to me. He started seeing them, the visions. Dreaming them, I mean. Told all his friends. He seemed real crazy to me. I got out of there. And then other people, the scratchers I was traveling with, some of them saw them—and here you say you see them too—everybody’s starting to see them, right? And me, I see them better, clearer, sharper. I get a lot more detail now. The power’s been deepening in me almost day by day: I can feel it changing. That’s how I know the Time of Crossing is coming near. They picked me, the space people, who knows why but they picked me as a kind of forerunner, the first one to know about them, you follow me? But now everybody will know. And then one by one we’ll start to go to their worlds. It’s all part of the Kusereen plan. The Design.”

  “Kusereen?”

  “They rule the Sacred Imperium. They’re the current great race, been in charge millions of years, everybody reveres them, even the Zygerone, who are extremely great themselves, especially the Fifth Zygerone. I think the Fifth Zygerone will be the next great race. It does change, every I don’t know how many millions of years. It was the Theluvara before the Kusereen, three billion years ago. It says in the Book of Suns that the Theluvara may still exist, somewhere way out at the end of the universe, but nobody’s heard anything from them for a long time, and—”

  “Wait a second,” Elszabet said. “I’m getting lost. The Kusereen, the Zygerone, the Theluvara—”

  “It takes time to learn it all. I was jumbled up about it maybe ten years until it came clear. There are a zillion races, you know—practically every sun has planets, and the planets are inhabited, even ones that you would think couldn’t possibly have life on them because their sun is too hot or too cold, but there is life all the same. Everywhere. Like on Luiiliimeli where the Thikkumuuru people live, it’s a planet of this big hot blue star Ellullimiilu that’s like a furnace, the ground itself melts there. But the Thikkumuuru don’t care about that, because they don’t have flesh, they’re like spirits, you know?”

  “Blue Giant,” said Elszabet, almost to herself. “Yes.”

  “And the Kusereen, we were talking about their plan: they want new races all the time, they want life moving around from world to world so nothing gets old, nothing gets stale, there’s always change and rebirth. That’s why they keep making contact with the young races. Like us, we’re only a million years old, that’s no time at all to them. But now they want us to come to them and live among them and exchange ideas with them, and they know it has to be soon, because we’ve been in big trouble here, always on the edge of blowing ourselves up or dusting ourselves to death or something, and this is the last chance, right now. So we’re going to mak
e the Crossing. And—”

  “Are there wars among these races?” Elszabet asked. “Do they fight with each other for supremacy?”

  “Oh, no,” Tom said. “They don’t have wars. They’re way beyond that. Any race that thought it wanted to make war, it destroyed itself long ago, millions, billions of years ago. That always happens to the warlike races. The ones that survive understand how stupid war is. Anyway, it’s impossible to have wars in the stars because the only way you can get from star to star is by making the Crossing, and you can’t Cross unless the host world is willing to receive you and opens the way for you, so how could there ever be an invasion? There was a time once during the Veltish Overlordry in the Seventh Potentastium when—”

  “Wait,” she said. “You’re going too fast again. You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to make a list. All the different worlds, their names, the physical form of the people who live on each planet. We’ll put it into the computer, put it right up on the wall here where the big screen is. Just so I can get everything sorted out. And then after that I want you to tell me about the histories of these different worlds, whatever you know, the dynasties of ruling races and all that, just talk it all out and we’ll organize it later. Will you do that with me?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you bet I will. It’s important that everybody knows these things, so that when we make the Crossing we aren’t all bewildered. That we know about the Design, that we know which the Pivot Worlds are, and all.” Tom felt the fever of joy rising in him so strong that he thought it might even call up a vision right here. This woman, this wonderful woman—he had never known anyone like her. “Where I think it begins,” Tom said, “is with the Theluvara, when they ruled the Imperium—”

  She held up her hand. “No, not right now, Tom. I’m awfully sorry. There isn’t time this morning. I’ve got to get out and see the people I look after here, the sick people. Suppose I give you a day to think about things, okay? And then we’ll meet again here tomorrow, and the same time every morning until you’ve told me all you want to tell me. Is that all right?”

  “Sure. Whatever you like, Elszabet.”

  There was a knock at the door. On the little screen just next to the door Tom saw the image of the person standing outside, a big soft round-bodied sweet-faced woman in a pale pink sweater. Tom had seen her around before. “Come in, April,” Elszabet called, and pushed something that automatically opened the door. “Tom, this is April Cranshaw. She’s one of the people I look after here. I thought you and she would like to get to know each other a little better, maybe. Take a walk with her now, just stroll around the grounds—I think you two will like each other very much.”

  Tom turned to the fat woman. She looked very young, almost like some sort of huge little girl, although he could tell that actually she must be as at least as old as he was and it was simply the flesh of her, like baby fat, that smoothed out all the lines in her face. And she was wide open, as wide open as anyone he had ever known. As tightly as that man Ed Ferguson was shut, that was how wide this April was open. Tom had the feeling that all he needed to do was touch his fingertip to her plump wrist and every vision he had ever seen would go pouring into her, she was that wide open. She seemed to know it, too: she was staring at him in a timid, fearful way. Look, he wanted to say, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not Stidge, I’m not Mujer. I won’t do anything bad to you.

  “Is that all right with you, April?” Elszabet asked. “Will you take Tom for a walk?”

  In a soft fluttery voice April said, “If you want me to.”

  Elszabet frowned. “Is something wrong, April?”

  The fat girl was bright red. “Should I say? In front of—”

  “It’s all right. Just tell me.”

  “I guess I’m a little upset this morning,” she said, soft-voiced, breathy-sounding, little girl within a big huge body. “I know you want me to go for a walk with him, but I just feel kind of upset.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know.” A wary look in Tom’s direction. “The space dreams. The visions. They’re coming so close together, Dr. Lewis. Sometimes I almost don’t know where I am, they’re so strong. Whether I’m here or on one of those worlds, I mean. And since I walked into your office just now—I mean—that is—”

  “Go on, April.” Elszabet was leaning forward again, giving the fat girl her fullest attention, no longer looking at Tom at all.

  “I mean it’s—getting—very—hard—for—me—to—think—straight—”

  “April? April?”

  “She’s going to fall down,” Tom said. He rushed toward her as she tottered and managed to get his arms around her just in time, under her breasts, and hold her up. She was heavy. She was incredibly heavy. Must weigh two, three times as much as me, he thought, struggling with her. Elszabet went around to the other side and helped him. Together they eased her down to the floor. She lay there on her back, gasping. Elszabet turned to him with a nervous smile and said, “Will you go out and down the hall, Tom, and ask Dr. Robinson to come in here? You know who he is, the tall dark-skinned man? Go send him here, Tom. Will you, please?”

  “Did I do that to her?” Tom asked.

  “It’s hard to know that, isn’t it? But she’ll be all right in a minute or two.”

  “I guess I’ll have to take that walk with her some other time,” he said. “Okay. Dr. Robinson. I’ll go send you Dr. Robinson. Thanks for talking to me, Miss Elszabet. It means a lot to me, having someone to talk to.”

  He went out, down the hall.

  “Dr. Robinson? Dr. Robinson?”

  That poor fat girl, Tom thought. Passing out like that. It’ll be a blessing, dropping the body, that one. The poor fat girl. I wish her an early Crossing, he thought. But that’s what I wish us all, every one of us, an early Crossing. I hope we can go next week, even. Tomorrow, even. Tomorrow.

  3

  WHEN Ferguson came back to the dorm after morning therapy he found two letters lying in the middle of his bed. He scooped them up, dropped them on the floor next to the bed, and sprawled out, bone-weary. He could play the letters later. Wasn’t ever anything in the mail worth knowing, anyway. Dr. Lewis went through everybody’s letters first, cut out anything that might be considered disturbing.

  Tired. Suffering Jesus. First an hour-long interview with Dr. Patel, the precise little British-accented Indian, who always came at you with questions from six different unexpected angles. He was still working on space dreams, how Ferguson felt about them, the fact that other people were having them and he was not. Or was he? “You are not now by any chance beginning to experience the perceptions of that sort, are you, Mr. Ferguson?” Screw you, Dr. Patel. I wouldn’t tell you even if I was. And then an hour jumping up and down like a lunatic in in the rec center, physical therapy session led by that ferocious dykey broad Dante Corelli—holy Jesus, they make you dance until you drop and don’t even apologize—

  If only I had managed to get the hell out of this place when I tried it, Ferguson thought. But no, no, they had their goddamn little chip in me, they just sent out their copter and reeled me in like a fish—that was how it was, wasn’t it, I actually did escape, me and Allie, we were gone three goddamn hours, was it? Five, maybe. And then they reeled me in.

  He looked around the room. Same old dismal roommates. Nick Double Rainbow zonked out on his bed, brooding about Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill. Poor bastard, he must wipe out General Custer ten times a day in his head. Lot of good it does him. And over there, the other sad case, the Chicano, Menendez. Chanting and muttering to himself all the time, praying to the Aztec gods. Nice peaceful guy, probably dreaming of putting us all on the altar and cutting out our hearts with a stone knife. Jesus. Jesus, what a looney bin!

  Ferguson picked up one of his letters and stuck the little cube into the playback slot. On the three-by-five screen the image of a good-looking blonde woman appeared. She’d have been terrific if she didn’t look so solemn.

&nb
sp; “Ed,” she said. “This is Mariela. Your wife, in case they’ve picked that out of you.”

  Well, they had. How were you supposed to deal with all this? Ferguson halted the letter and touched his ring. “Request wife,” he said.

  Back at him came the data he had stored: “Wife: Mariela Johnston. Birthday August seventh. She’ll be thirty-three this summer. You married her in Honolulu on July fourth, 2098—”

  He let it play on to the finish, wondering how the people in charge here expected him to make sense out of anything, since they didn’t know he had this little ring-recorder to fill him in on his own history. He activated the letter-cube again and Mariela returned to the screen. “I just want you to know, Ed, that I’m going back to Hawaii. I’m booked on a boat next Tuesday, which is a day after you’ll get this. It isn’t that I don’t love you any more, because that isn’t so, but I felt after that visit I had with you at the mindpick center in July that there simply wasn’t anything happening between us any more, that maybe you didn’t even remember who I was, that you certainly didn’t care for me any more, and so I want to go away from California before they release you. For both our sakes. I’ll be filing the papers in Honolulu, and—”

  All right, Mariela. Who cares anyway?

  He killed the cube and put the other one in. This letter was from a gorgeous hot-looking redhead who called herself Lacy. “Request Lacy,” he told his ring, and found out that she was a San Francisco woman, evidently a girlfriend of his, partner in the Betelgeuse Five deal. Okay. He got her back on the screen, thinking maybe she was going to tell him she had arranged to come up here for a visit, and wondering if that would cause him any problems with Alleluia.

  But that wasn’t what she was planning at all.

  “Ed, I have to tell you something marvelous, which is that I’ve found happiness and meaning in my life for the very first time,” she said. “Do you remember that time in the summer when I said I had had a weird dream, the strange planet, the creature from outer space with the horns? That was the beginning of it for me. It was a religious revelation, though I didn’t understand that then. But since then I have discovered the tumbondé movement, which maybe you don’t know much about—it started in San Diego, a great man named Senhor Papamacer, who is leading us toward a union with the gods, and I have gone into it heart and soul. I have joined the march north, hundreds of thousands of us following the leadership of the Senhor, and I feel completely transformed and even redeemed. It’s as though I’ve been purified of all the shady bad things I used to do—forgiven, handed a clean slate. And all because of the vision I had, that weird figure under those two strange suns—”