Tom O'Bedlam

“Yeah, Charley?”

  The black-bearded man hunkered down next to him and tossed a narrow log on the fire. “Good job,” he said. “I like a neat fire, everything lined up straight like this.” He moved a little closer to Tom and peered around this way and that as if making sure no one else was nearby. “I heard what you were saying when you were in that fit,” Charley went on. His voice was low, barely more than a whisper. “About the green world. About the crystal people. Their shining skins. Their eyes, like diamonds. How did you say the eyes were arranged?”

  “In rows of three, on each side of their heads.”

  “Four sides to the head?”

  “Four, yes.”

  Charley was silent a while, poking at the fire. Then he said, in an even quieter voice, “I dreamed of a place just like that, about six nights ago. And then again night before last. Green sky, crystal people, eyes like diamonds, four rows of three around their heads. I saw it like I was seeing it in a show. And now you come along talking about the same place, shouting it out like you’re possessed, and it’s just the same place I saw. How in hell is that possible, that we could both have the same crazy dream? You tell me: How in hell is that possible?”

  2

  THE sun was still half an hour on the far side of the Sierra Nevada when Elszabet awoke and stepped out on the porch of her cabin, naked, just the way she had slept. The coolness of the summer morning enfolded her. A soft blanket of fog lingered on out of the night, shrouding the tops of the redwoods and drifting more thinly down to ground level.

  Beautiful, she thought. From all sides came the quiet plunking sounds of condensation, clear cool droplets falling from the lofty branches and hitting the soft carpet of deep brown duff. The hundreds of sword-ferns on the hillside in front of her cabin glistened as though they had been polished. Beautiful. Beautiful. Even the bluejays, shrieking as they started their day’s work, seemed beautiful.

  An altogether gorgeous morning. There was no other kind here, winter or summer. You had to like to be an early riser, here at the Nepenthe Center, because all the useful mindpick work necessarily was done before breakfast. But that was all right. Elszabet couldn’t imagine not liking to awaken at dawn, when the dawn was a dawn like this. And there was no reason not to go to sleep early. What was there to do in the evenings, out here in the boonies hundreds of miles north of San Francisco?

  She touched the face of her watch and the morning’s schedule came scrolling up in clear glowing letters:

  0600

  Father Christie, A Cabin

  Ed Ferguson, B Cabin

  Alleluia, C Cabin

  0630

  Nick Double Rainbow, B Cabin

  Tomás Menendez, C Cabin

  0700—

  A quick delicious shower, using the outdoor rig behind her cabin, first. Then she slipped into shorts and halter and made a fast breakfast of cider and cheese. No sense bothering to go all the way up to the staff mess hall this early in the morning. By five of six Elszabet was on her way up the steps of A Cabin, taking them two at a time. Father Christie was there already, slouched in the mindpick chair while Teddy Lansford bustled around him getting the pick set up.

  Father Christie didn’t look good. He rarely did, this hour of the morning. This morning he seemed even farther off center than usual: pale, sweaty-jowled, yellowish around the eyeballs, almost a little dazed-looking. He was a short plump man, forty-five or so, with a great mass of curling grayish hair and a soft pleading face. Today he was wearing his clerical outfit, which never managed to look as though it fit him. The collar was soiled; the black jacket was rumpled and askew as if he had buttoned it incorrectly.

  But he brightened as she entered: phony brightness, stage cheer. “Good morning, Elszabet. What a lovely sight you are!”

  “Am I?” She smiled. He was always full of little compliments. Always trying for little peeks at her thighs and breasts, too, whenever he thought she wouldn’t notice. “You sleep well, Father?”

  “I’ve had better nights.”

  “Also worse ones?”

  “Worse also, I suppose.” His hands were trembling. If she hadn’t known better, she would have guessed he’d been drinking. But of course that was impossible. You didn’t drink any more, not even on the sly, once you had had a conscience chip implanted in your esophagus.

  Lansford called out from the control console, “Blood sugar okay, respiration, iodine uptake, everything checks. Delta waves present and fully secured. Everything looks fine. I’m popping the Father’s pick module into the slot now. Elszabet?”

  “Hold it a second. What reading do you get on mood?”

  “The usual mild depression, and—hey, no, not depression, it’s agitation, actually. What the hell, Father, you’re supposed to be depressed this time of morning!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Father Christie meekly. The comers of his lips were twitching. “Does that upset your programming for me?”

  The technician laughed. “This machine, it can compensate for anything. It’s already done it. We’re all set if you are. You ready for the pick, Father?”

  “Any time,” he said, not sounding as if he meant it.

  “Elszabet? Okay?”

  “No, wait,” Elszabet said to Lansford. “Look at the lines there. Screen two. He’s past threshold on anxiety. I want to talk to him first.”

  “Should I stay?” the technician asked without much show of concern.

  “You go over to B and set up for Mr. Ferguson, okay? Give me a couple of minutes alone with the Father.”

  “Sure thing,” Lansford said, and went out.

  The priest peered up at Elszabet, blinking like an uncomfortable schoolboy about to be lectured by a truant officer. “I’m all right,” he said. “I’m fine. Really, I am.”

  “I don’t quite think so.”

  “No. No, I’m not.”

  Gently she said, “What is it then, Father?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Are you frightened of the pick?”

  “No. Why should I be? I’ve gone under the pick plenty of times before, haven’t I?” He looked at her in sudden uncertainty. “Haven’t I?”

  “Over a hundred times. You’ve been here four months.”

  “That’s what I thought. April, May, June, July. The pick’s nothing new for me. Why should I be scared of it?”

  “No reason at all. The pick’s an instrument of healing. You know that.”

  “Yes.”

  “But your lines are all over the screen. Something’s got you up in a turmoil this morning, and it must have been something that happened in the night, yes? Because your readings were fine yesterday. What was it, Father? A dream?”

  He fidgeted. He was looking worse and worse by the moment.

  “Can we go outside, Elszabet? I think some fresh air would do me good.”

  “Of course. I was thinking the same thing.”

  Elszabet led him out to the back porch of the little wooden building and made him stand still beside her, inhaling deeply. She towered over him, almost a head and a half taller; but then, she towered over many men. All the same, the difference in height made him seem even more like a bewildered boy, though he was ten years older than she was. She could sense the physical need in him, the inarticulate urge to touch her and the powerful fear of doing it. After a moment she took his hand in hers. It was within the rules of the Center to offer the patients some physical comfort.

  “Elszabet,” he said. “What a beautiful name. And strange. Almost Elizabeth, but not quite.”

  “Almost Hungarian,” she said. “But not quite. There was an actress, Hungarian, very big in the lasers in the mid-twenty-first century, Erzsebet Szabo. My mother was her biggest fan. Named me for her. Spelled it wrong.” Elszabet chuckled. “My mother was never much on spelling.” She had told Father Christie about her name at least thirty times before. But of course he forgot everything every morning, when the mindpick flushed him clean of short-term recollections and an unp
redictable quantity of the long-term ones. After a bit she said, “What frightened you last night, Father?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But you’re ambivalent about undergoing pick today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You promise you won’t put this in my records?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure I can promise that.”

  “Then I might not tell you.”

  “Is it that embarrassing?”

  “It might be, if it got back to the archdiocese.”

  “Church stuff? Well, I can be discreet about that. Your bishop doesn’t have access to Center records, you know.”

  “Is that true?”

  “You know it is.”

  He nodded. A little color came into his face. “What it is, Elszabet, is that I had a vision last night, and I’m not sure I want to surrender my memory of it to the pick.”

  “A vision?”

  “A very powerful vision. A wonderful and surprising vision.”

  “The pick might take it from you,” she said. “Very probably will.”

  “Yes.”

  “But if you want to be healed, Father, you have to give yourself up totally to the pick. Yielding the good stuff along with the bad. Later on, you’ll integrate your spirit and you’ll be free of the pick. But for now—”

  “I understand. Even so—”

  “Do you want to tell me about the vision?”

  He reddened and squirmed.

  “You don’t have to. But it might help to tell me.”

  “All right. All right.”

  He was silent, working at it. Then in a desperate rush he blurted, “What it was, I saw God in His heavens, Elszabet!”

  She smiled, trying to keep it sincere and unpatronizing. Gently she said, “How wonderful that must have been, Father.”

  “More than you can imagine. More than anyone can.” He was trembling again. He was beginning to weep, and long wet tracks gleamed on his face. “Don’t you see, Elszabet, I have no faith. I have no faith. If I ever did, it went away from me long ago. Isn’t that pathetic? Isn’t it a joke? That classic clown, the priest who doesn’t believe. The Church is just my job, don’t you see? And I’m not even very good at that, but I do my diocesan duties, I make my calls, I practice my profession the way a lawyer or an accountant does, I—” He caught himself. “Anyway, for God to come to me—not to the pope, not to the cardinal, but to me, me without faith—!”

  “What was it like, the vision? Can you say?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I can tell you. It was the most vivid thing possible. There was purple light in the sky, like a veil, a luminous veil hanging across the sky, and nine suns were shining at once, like jewels. An orange one, a blue one, a yellow one like ours, all kinds of colors crossing and mixing. The shadows were fantastic. Nine suns! And then He came into view. I saw Him on his throne, Elszabet. Gigantic. Majestic. Lord of Lords, who else could that have been, with nine suns for His footstools! His brow—His forehead—light streamed from it, grace, love. More than that: holiness, sanctity, the divine force. That’s what came from Him. A sense that I was seeing a being of the highest wisdom and power, a mighty and terrible god. I tell you, it was overwhelming. The sweat was pouring off me. I was sobbing, I was wailing, I thought I’d have a heart attack, it was so wondrous.” The priest paused and squinted at her quickly, a furtive worried glance. Then, without looking at her, he said in a low anguished voice full of shame, “Just one thing, though. You know, they say we’re made in His image? It isn’t so. He isn’t anything like us. I know that what I saw was God: I am as convinced of that as I am that Jesus is my Savior. But He doesn’t look anything like us.”

  “What does he look like, then?”

  “I can’t begin to say. That’s the part I don’t dare share, not even with you. But He looked—not—human. Splendid, magnificent, but—not—human.”

  Elszabet had no idea how to respond to that. Again she gave him her professional smile, warm, encouraging.

  He said, “I need to keep that vision, Elszabet. It’s the thing I’ve prayed for all my life. The presence of the divine, illuminating my spirit. How can I give that up now that I’ve experienced it?”

  “You need to give yourself over to the pick, Father. The pick will heal you. You know that.”

  “I know that, yes. But the vision—those nine suns—”

  “Perhaps it’ll stay with you even after the pick.”

  “And if not?” His brow darkened. “I think I want to withdraw from treatment.”

  “You know that’s not possible.”

  “The vision—”

  “If you lose it, surely it’ll be granted you again. If God has revealed Himself to you this night, do you think He’ll abandon you afterward? Do you? He will return. What opened for you in this night just past will open for you again. The nine suns—the Father on His throne—”

  “Oh, do you think so, Elszabet?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Trust me,” she said. “Trust God, Father.”

  “Yes.”

  “Come on, now. Shall we go back inside?”

  The priest looked transfigured. “Yes. Certainly.”

  “And I’ll send Lansford over to you?”

  “Of course.” Tears were cascading down his cheeks. She had never seen him as animated as this, as vigorous, as alive.

  Over in B Cabin, Lansford had the pick set up for Ed Ferguson, who seemed annoyed by the delay. “You go across to the Father,” Elszabet told Lansford. “I’ll take care of Mr. Ferguson.” The technician nodded. Ferguson, a chilly-faced man of about fifty who had been convicted of some vast and preposterous real-estate swindle before being sent to Nepenthe Center, began telling her about a trip to Mendocino that he wanted to take this weekend to meet a woman who’d be podding up from San Francisco to see him, but Elszabet listened with only half an ear. Her mind was full of Father Christie’s vision. How radiant the poor bedraggled incompetent priest had become while telling the tale. No wonder he feared going under the pick this morning. Losing the one bit of divine grace, weird and garbled though it might be, that had ever been vouchsafed him.

  When Elszabet was done with Ferguson and had looked in on the third cabin, where Alleluia, the synthetic woman, was being treated, she hurried back to A Cabin. Father Christie was sitting up, smiling in the amiable muddled way characteristic of someone who has just had his mind swept clean of a host of memories. Donna, the morning recovery nurse, was with him, running him through his basic recall routines—making sure he still knew his own name, the year, where he was and why. The pick was supposed to remove just the short-term memories, but it could abrade more deeply, sometimes a lot more deeply. Elszabet nodded to the younger woman. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll take over, thanks.” She was surprised how hard her heart was pounding. When Donna had gone, Elszabet sat down beside the priest and put her hand lightly on his wrist. “Well, how’s the Father now?” she asked. “You look nice and relaxed.”

  “Oh, yes, Elizabeth. Very relaxed.”

  “Elszabet,” she reminded him gently.

  “Ah. Of course.”

  She leaned close. He was trying to stare down the front of her halter. Good for him, she thought. “Tell me,” she said. “Have you ever had a dream in which you saw nine suns in the sky all at once?”

  “Nine suns?” he said blankly. “Nine suns all at once?”

  3

  JASPIN was late leaving his apartment in San Diego that morning. That wasn’t unusual for him. When he finally got himself into gear he hurried down the freeway to the Chula Vista turnoff, swung inland, took the Otay Valley shunt toward the unmonitored county roads. Twenty minutes later he came to the roadblock set up by the tumbondé people as he was crossing a dry hot plateau.

  They had the road completely closed, which was flat-out illegal, but no one in San Diego County was likely to try to
tell the tumbondé folks what to do. An energy wall ran across the highway from shoulder to shoulder, and six or seven somber-looking bronze-skinned men with wide cheekbony faces were standing behind it, arms folded. They wore tumbondé costumes: silver jackets, tight black leggings with red piping, wide black sombreros, crescent-moon pendants dangling on their chests. They appeared to be wearing masks, too, but they weren’t; those were simply their faces, aloof, impassive. None of them seemed the least bit interested in the pale gringo in the old battered car. But Jaspin knew the routine. He leaned out and said, “Chungirá-He-Will-Come, he will come.”

  “Maguali-ga, Maguali-ga,” replied one of the tumbondé men.

  “Senhor Papamacer teaches. Senhora Aglaibahi is our mother. Rei Ceupassear rules.”

  “Maguali-ga, Maguali-ga.”

  He was doing all right so far. “Chungirá-He-Will-Come, he will come,” Jaspin said a second time.

  “The parking is two kilometer,” said one of the tumbondé men indifferently. “Then you walk five hundred meter. Better you run: is already starting, the procession.”

  “Maguali-ga, Maguali-ga,” Jaspin said, as the barrier winked out. He drove past the unsmiling guards and down the dusty potholed road until he saw small boys waving him toward the parking lot. There were at least a thousand cars there, most of them even older than his own. He found a nook under a huge old oak tree, left the car there, set out at a trot down the road. Though it was not yet noon, the heat was intense. It felt like Arizona heat, no moisture in it at all, a pure furnace. He tried to imagine what it was like to stand around in black pants and a black sombrero under midday sunlight in that heat.

  In a few minutes he caught sight of the congregation, milling chaotically on a high knoll just off the road. There were thousands of them, some dressed in full tumbondé gear but most, like him, in ordinary street clothes. They were carrying banners, placards, little images of the great ones. From unseen loudspeakers came a deep, unhurried, relentless drumming. The ground shook. They probably had it wired, Jaspin thought. Electrostatic nodes all over the place, and synchronized pulsation chips. Tumbondé might be primitive and elemental but it didn’t seem to scorn technology.