Jesus, Ferguson thought bleakly. Listen to her. Like a convent girl, she sounds. And these crazy dreams, changing everybody’s lives. The whole world’s gone nuts. Everybody but me.
“—And we are marching toward the Seventh Place where the final redemption will be offered. What I mean to say is that we will probably be passing close to Mendocino in a little while, and I think if you could somehow get yourself out of the Nepenthe and join us, if you could give yourself over to tumbondé and accept the guidance of Senhor Papamacer, you too would find yourself transformed, you would feel all the bitterness and unhappiness that has marked your life fall away from you in a moment, as it has for me, and—”
Sure. Just waltz out of here and sign on with the Senhor, whoever he might be. Was that all that it took? Dr. Lewis has already played this letter, Lacy baby. If there was a chance in a million that I could get away from this place to join you, do you think I’d be hearing you now? Do you?
“—Am confident that the blessing of Maguali-ga will be conferred upon you also, that the shining light of Chungirá-He-Will-Come will enter your soul—if only you would join us, dear Ed, come forth to us as we undertake our pilgrimage toward the Seventh Place—”
He scowled and shut off the cube. What crazy shit. Going off to have a union with the gods? The other one, going back to her family in Hawaii, at least that made a little sense. But this—this crazy stuff—
So he was rid of them both, that was how it looked. All right. All right. There was still Alleluia, who was as good as both of them put together. Somehow there was always another woman better than the last one when he needed her. Ferguson shook his head, trying to clear it. He wondered what Alleluia was doing now. He’d see if he could find her. Maybe a little walk in the woods—their customary midday frolic—
“Ed?” called a voice from outside. “Ed, you there?”
Ferguson frowned. “Who is it?”
“Me, Tom. You got some time free?”
One more lunatic. Well, why not? “Sure,” he said. “Hold on, I’ll let you in.”
He opened the door. Tangle of wild hair, strange wild staring eyes. There was something wrong with this guy, no question about it. Definitely not playing with a full deck. Ferguson stood there uncertainly, wondering what, if anything, was on Tom’s mind.
“Today’s the big day for you,” Tom said.
“Yeah? It is?”
“You remember last week, the first time we talked? When I said I’d show you how to have the space dreams?”
“You said that?”
“In the mess hall, yes. We were sitting with the little priest, and you gave me some bourbon and then—”
“I don’t remember shit about last week,” Ferguson said wearily. “Don’t you know that? I remember that we met somewhere, I know your name’s Tom, all the rest is gone. Picked. That’s what they do in this place, they ream out your mind. You know that, don’t you?”
Tom made a funny little gesture, as though he were dismissing what Ferguson had just said as so much noise. “Well, if you don’t remember, I do. I can feel your misery, friend. And I mean to help you up from all that. Come on, let’s go for a little walk. Into the woods a ways, where it’s quiet, where it’s peaceful. You still haven’t had a space dream, that right?”
“No,” Ferguson said. “As far as I can remember, no, I haven’t. Except—” He paused.
“Except what?”
Ferguson frowned. “I’m not sure. But there was something. Hold on, let me check.” He went into the john so that Tom would not see what he was doing, and touched his ring and requested his file of unusual events, week of October eighth. His own voice, small and quiet, came up out of the recorder, running through all sorts of stuff, anything that had happened to him in the past few days that he had thought might be worth saving from pick. Most of it was just junk. But then came an entry for two nights earlier: “Something a little like a space dream last night, maybe. Just the outside flicker of it, anyway—a feeling that the world was wrapped up in green fog. I think that’s something like one of the dreams they have, the Green World dream. That was all I got, the fog. I don’t think that’s the real thing. But it was a beginning, maybe.”
Tom was looking at him strangely when he came out.
“You talking to yourself in there?”
“Yeah,” Ferguson said. “A little conference with myself. Listen, one of the space dreams, it has to do with green fog, doesn’t it?”
“That’s the Green World. A very beautiful place.”
“I wouldn’t know. All I saw was fog. In my sleep, night before last. Green fog.”
“That’s all? Just fog?”
“Just fog.”
“Okay,” Tom said. “The dreams are trying to break through, then. You’ve made a start. Maybe because I’m right here the influence is stronger. But you see? You can do it just like anybody else, Ed. You come on along with me now. Out into the woods.”
“What for?”
“I told you. I’m going to give you a space dream. But we ought to go where nobody can bother us, because you got to concentrate. Okay, Ed? Come on. Come on, now.”
“It isn’t going to work. You tell me: How can I have a dream when I’m wide awake?”
“Just come with me,” Tom said.
Ferguson shrugged. Nothing to lose, was there? Might as well try it. He nodded to Tom and they went out into the warm autumn morning, around the side of the gymnasium and onto the path into the woods. They passed a couple of people as they walked: Dante Corelli, April Cranshaw, Mug Watson the gardener. Dante smiled and waved to them, the gardener paid no attention, fat April gave them a quick frightened look and immediately turned the other way, as if she had seen a couple of werewolves out for a stroll. Poor nutty fat broad, Ferguson thought. Thing that would make her feel better would be getting laid once or twice. But who would want to, with her? Not me, you betcha. Holy Jesus, not me.
“What about here?” he said to Tom.
“Fine. This is just fine. Sit down here on this rock. Next to me, that’s right. Now the thing you have to know,” Tom said, “is that the universe is full of benevolent beings. Okay? There are more suns than anybody can count, and all of those suns have planets, and those planets have people on them, not people like us, but people all the same. They’re all alive and out there right this minute, going about their lives. Okay? And they know that we’re here. They’re beckoning to us. They love us, every one of us, and they want to gather us to their bosom. You with me, Ed? You got to believe this. Through the vehicle of dreams they have contacted me, and I am the emissary, I am the forerunner who will lead everyone into the stars.” He was leaning close to Ferguson now, his dark strange eyes drilling in hard. “Does this sound like a lot of crazy stuff to you, Ed? You must try to believe. Just for the time being, put aside all your anger, put aside all your hatred, all the deadly stuff that sits inside you like a lump of ice. Tell yourself this guy Tom is crazy, sure, but you’ll pretend, just for a minute, that he knows what he’s talking about. Okay? Okay? You’ll pretend. Nobody’s going to know that Ed Ferguson allowed himself to believe something weird for sixty seconds. Tom won’t tell anybody. Believe me, Tom won’t tell. Tom loves you. Tom wants to help you, Ed, to guide you. Give me your hands, now. Put your hands in mine.”
“What the fuck,” Ferguson said. “Holding hands, now?”
“Believe in me. Believe in them. You want to go on feeling the way you’ve felt all your life? Just for once, let everything go. Let it all open up. Let grace come flooding in. Give me your hands. What do you think, that I’m some sort of queer? Uh-uh. Just trying to help you. The hands, Ed.”
Tentatively, uneasily, Ferguson put out his hands.
“Now relax. Let yourself go. You know how to smile? I don’t think I ever see you smile. Do it now. Fake it, if that’s what you have to do. Just a silly grin, corners of the mouth turn up, don’t worry how silly it is. There. There. That’s it. I want you to keep on smiling. I want
you to tell yourself that within you is an immortal spirit created by God, who has loved you every instant of your life. Smile, Ed! Smile! Think of love. Think of the worlds out there waiting for you. Think of the new life that will be yours when you drop the body and make the Crossing. You can be anyone you want up there, you know. You don’t have to be you. You can be tender and loving and kind and nobody will laugh at you for being that way. It’s a new life. Keep smiling, Ed. Smiling. Smiling. That’s it. You don’t look silly at all, you know? You look wonderful. You look transformed. Now give me your hands. Give—me—your—hands—”
Ferguson felt helpless. He wanted to resist, he wanted to put up a wall against whatever it was that was trying to batter its way into his mind, and for a moment he had the wall actually built; but then it collapsed and he was unable to resist in any way. His hands drifted upward like a couple of balloons, and Tom reached for them, grasped them firmly in his, and in the moment of contact something like an electrical force went jolting through Ferguson’s brain. He wanted to pull away but he couldn’t. He had no strength at all. He sat there feeling the power of the galaxies come flooding through him and there was no way he could resist it.
And he saw.
He saw the Green World, with long slender shining people moving delicately around in a glittering glass pavilion. He saw the blue sun, pouring out pulsing streams of fire. He saw the planet of the nine suns.
He saw—he saw—he saw—
A torrent of images. Dizzying him, dazzling him. His mind whirled with the multitude of them. The whole thing, all the dreams at once, world upon world upon world. Landscapes, cities, strange beings, the empires of the stars. He trembled and shook. Nothing would hold still. A strange joy overwhelmed him, a hurricane of bliss. He cried out and toppled, slipping forward, falling practically at Tom’s feet, and lay there sprawled on his belly with his forehead pressed against the damp soil, while the first tears that he could remember shedding came welling up and spilling out in hot streams down his cheeks.
4
THE moon was a bright gleaming sickle out there over the Pacific and Venus was gleaming right alongside, a cold clean point of white light. It was a clear, mild night, the air free of fog but nevertheless a little soft around the edges, maybe a hint of the oncoming rainy season that was still hanging back, lurking somewhere north of Vancouver. Jaspin said, “What was the name of that little town we passed yesterday?”
“Santa Rosa,” Lacy said. “It used to be a pretty good-sized city.”
“Used to be,” Jaspin murmured. “This is the Land of Used-to-Be.”
They were sitting on the side of a low snubby hill, rounded and curved almost like a breast, that rose out of a broad sloping pasture, a sea of grass. This unspoiled Northern California landscape up here above San Francisco was very different from what he was accustomed to growing up in Los Angeles, where the scars inflicted in the prewar days of vast population and intensive development were everywhere, ineradicable.
Though the moon was only a crescent it cast stark shadows: the gnarled solitary oak trees, upjutting rocks, the rough surface of withered brown grass—everything stood out sharply. The ocean was a couple of kilometers in front of them. Behind them lay the enormous chaos of the tumbondé caravan, practically an ocean itself, an innumerable multitude of vehicles stretching a bewildering distance back toward the inland freeway and beyond. In San Francisco and Oakland the Senhor had gained so many new adherents that the size of the procession was just about doubled now. The Pied Piper of Space, Jaspin thought, scooping up eager followers with both hands as he marched merrily along toward the Seventh Place.
Jaspin let his hand rest lightly on Lacy’s shoulders. This was the first time he had managed to find her in three days, since they had broken camp outside Oakland. He had begun to wonder whether she had turned around and gone back to San Francisco for some reason, even after telling him how much tumbondé meant to her. But she hadn’t, of course. She was simply off somewhere, swept up in the maelstrom of worshippers. The procession was so big now that it was easy to get lost in it. Jaspin had finally spotted her tonight, trying to get through the frantic mob in front of the platform where Senhor Papamacer was supposed to appear. “Forget it,” he had told her. “The Senhor’s changed his mind. He’s having a private communion with Maguali-ga tonight. Let’s go for a walk.” That was two hours ago. Now they were on the coastal side of the hills and the sounds of the caravan were faint in the distance.
“I never realized California was this huge,” Jaspin said. “I mean, what the hell, I’ve seen it on maps. But you don’t understand the size of it until you set out to march up the length of it from the bottom to the top.”
“It’s bigger than a lot of countries,” Lacy said. “Bigger than Germany, England, maybe Spain. Bigger than a lot of important places. That’s what Ed Ferguson told me once. My former partner. Have you ever been to another country, Barry?”
“Me? Mexico, a few times. Doing field research.”
“Mexico’s right next door to where you lived. I mean really another country. Europe, for instance.”
“How would I have gotten to Europe?” he asked. “Magic carpet?”
“People go to Europe from America, don’t they?”
“From the East Coast, maybe. I think they run some ships back and forth. But not from here. How would you do it from here, with the whole dusted zone in between that you’d have to get across?” Jaspin shook his head. “There was a time when people went all over the world in an afternoon, you know. Australia, Europe, South America, wherever, you just got on a plane and you went.”
“They still have planes. I’ve seen them.”
“Sure, planes. Maybe some of them still fly across oceans, I don’t know. But the politics is all wrong now. With the old countries broken up into all sorts of pieces, Republic of This and Free State of That, fifty visas needed to get from here to there—no, it’s a mess, Lacy. Maybe a mess that’s completely beyond fixing by now.”
“When the gate is open and Chungirá-He-Will-Come has arrived, everything will be put to rights,” Lacy said.
“You really believe that?”
She turned her head sharply toward him. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”
“You don’t entirely, do you, Barry? There’s still something holding back somewhere in you.”
“Maybe.”
“I know there is. But it’s all right. I’ve known people like you before. I was one myself. Cynical, doubting, uncertain—why not? What else would anybody with half a grain of sense be, growing up in a world where you travel half an hour outside the cities and you’re in bandido territory, and everything for a thousand kilometers on the other side of the Rockies is a radioactive mess. But it can all drop away from you, all those doubts, all those wiseacre attitudes, if you just let it happen. You know that.”
“Yes. I do.”
“And we’re at the end of a long bad time, Barry. We’ve come down to the bottom, where there’s hardly any hope left, and suddenly there’s hope. The Senhor has brought it. He tells us the word. The gate will open; the great ones will come among us and make things better for us. That’s what’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen very soon, and then everything will be okay, maybe for the first time ever. Right? Right?”
“You’re a very beautiful woman, Lacy.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“I don’t know. I just thought I’d tell you.”
“You think I am, huh?”
“You have any doubt?”
She laughed. “I’ve heard it before. But I’m never sure. There isn’t a woman alive who thinks she’s really beautiful, no matter what men tell her. I think my hair is very good, my eyes, my nose. But I don’t like my mouth. It spoils everything.”
“You’re wrong.”
“On the other hand I think my body is quite satisfactory.”
“Is it?” he said.
Her eyes were very bright. Jaspin saw the sickle moon reflected in them, and he thought he could even make out the brilliant white point that was Venus. With the arm that was around her shoulders he pulled her toward him; he brought the other arm up and let his hand wander lightly across her breasts. She was wearing a soft green sweater, very thin material, nothing underneath. Yes, he thought, quite satisfactory. He wanted to put his head between her breasts and rest there. Vaguely he wondered where Jill was, what she was doing now. His wife. A farce that was. He hadn’t even seen her in two days. Apparently she had lost interest in the Inner Host, or more likely they had lost interest in her; but there were plenty of others around here to amuse her. He’d been right about her the first time: a drifter, a waif, scruffy, useless. Lacy was a different story: shrewd, wise, a woman who had seen a lot and who understood what she had seen. If in her earlier life she’d been a con artist, a swindler, so what? So what? You were a con artist yourself, Jaspin told himself, remembering his UCLA days when he’d made a career that hadn’t amounted to much more than hastily patching together his lectures out of other people’s ideas. A scholar, you think? No, a phony. You might just as well have been peddling real estate on Betelgeuse Five. But none of that mattered any more. We will soon all be changed, he thought. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
He began to pull her sweater upward. Smiling, Lacy moved his hands away and drew it up herself, and tossed it aside. Her jeans followed a moment later. She seemed almost to glow in the moonlight, skin very pale, curling red hair standing out luminously against it.