Tom O'Bedlam Part 27

"That April, she's hard to miss, you know."

Elszabet smiled. "I'd like to find them. If they wander in while you're still here, will you call over to the gym, tell Dante Corelli? Then send them over there."

"Sure thing, Dr. Lewis."

"And have you seen Tom? You know, the new one, the one with the peculiar eyes?"

"Tom, yeah. He hasn't been here this morning either."

"Strange. Tom's someone who hates to miss a meal. Well, same thing there. If you see him, call Dante."

"Right, Dr. Lewis."

Elszabet went outside again. She felt curiously peaceful, an eye-of-the-hurricane kind of feeling. First thing, she thought, head over to the dorm, see if maybe April was still in bed, or Ferguson. Morning like this, they might just have decided not to get up, especially since there had been no pick-call today.

The rain whipped at her face. Nastier and nastier, almost like a real midwinter storm.

The ground was soaking everything up, it was so dry after five straight months of fair weather, but if the stuff continued to come down like this they'd be sloshing around in mud by tonight. In the summer months you tended to forget, she thought, how messy the rainy season could be.

First find April and Ferguson, yes. Then track down Tom. And then she'd have to get herself out toward the front gate to see how Lew Arcidiacono was coming along with the energy-wall installation. After that it would just be a matter of waiting out the day, doing what she could to make sure that the marchers from San Diego went around the Center instead of straight through it. The marchers were a problem she didn't really need at this time, a stupid extraneous distraction. She knew that Tom was the big event that she should be dealing with right now, Tom and his visions, his almost magical powers, Tom and his galactic worlds - the worlds that she understood now, thanks to the Starprobe cameras, to be the real thing, actual authentic inhabited planets that were sending beckoning images of themselves through the strange mind of this one man of Earth - As if on cue something tickled at the corners of Elszabet's mind. Eerie light began to glow behind her eyes. No, she thought furiously. Not now. For G.o.d's sake, notnow.

Everything she saw was casting twin shadows, one outlined in yellow, one in reddish orange. In the sky a pale pink nebula sprawled like some great octopus across the horizon. And creatures moving around, spherical, blue-skinned, cl.u.s.ters of tentacles wiggling on their heads. She recognized that landscape, those stars, those spherical beings. Double Star Three was drifting into her mind. Right this minute, out here in the driving rain, as she walked from the mess hall toward the dorms, she was sliding away into that other world.

No, she thought. No. No.No.

She staggered a couple of steps, went lurching into a big rhododendron in the middle of the lawn, grabbed a couple of its branches and held on tight, dizzy, swaying, fighting the vision back. This is a rhododendron bush, she told herself. This is a rainy morning in October, 2103. This is Mendocino County, California, planet Earth. I am Elszabet Lewis and I am a human being native to planet Earth and I need to have all my wits about me today.

A rasping voice behind her said, "You all right, lady? You need some help?"

She swung around, startled, disoriented. Double Star Three shattered into fragments and fell away from her, and she found herself facing three strangers. Rough-looking types, nasty-looking. One with a thick black beard and deep-set eyes almost buried in black rings, one with a lean face scarred all over with the deep craters of some skin disease, and one, short and ugly with a wild thatch of red hair, who seemed even meaner than the other two.

Elszabet faced them and, as coolly as she could, brushed her hand against her hair, switching the transmitter on. It should still be tuned to B frequency. Dante Corelli would be picking it up right over there in the gym.

"Who are you?" she said. "What are you doing here?"

"You don't need to be scared, ma'am," said the one with the scarred face. "We don't mean no harm. We thought you was sick or something, hanging there on that bush."

"I asked you who you were," she said, a little more crisply. It annoyed her that the scar- faced man thought she was frightened, even though it was true. "I asked you what you were doing here." "Well, we - we -" the one with the scars began.

"Shut up, Buffalo," the one with the black beard said. Then to Elszabet: "We were just pa.s.sing through. Trying to find a friend who seems to have strayed in here."

"A friend?"

"Man named Tom, maybe you know him. Tall, skinny, a little strange-looking -"

"I know who you mean, yes. Do you know that you're on private property, Mr. - Mr.

"I'm Charley."

"Charley. You're with the tumbonde march, is that it?"

"You mean the San Diego mob? All those crazies? Hey, no, not us. We're just traveling through. We thought maybe we could find our friend Tom, take him with us, move along before the crazies. .h.i.t. You know how many they got out there, just down the road?"

Elszabet could see Dante now emerging from the gym, two or three others with her.

They were keeping back, watching cautiously, listening in on Elszabet's conversation with the three strangers. Elszabet said, "Your friend Tom's not around right now. And in any case I don't think he plans to go anywhere. What I suggest you do is take yourselves off our grounds right away, for your own good, okay? As you say, there's quite a mob just down the road, and if they break in here I can't be responsible for your safety.

Besides which, you happen to be trespa.s.sing."

"You just let us talk to Tom a minute, then we -"

"No."

Dante was gesturing as if to say, Give me a signal, I'll knock them out. Dante was terrific with the anesthetic-dart gun at almost any range up to a hundred meters. But Elszabet wasn't so sure. Certainly these three were armed: knives, spikes, maybe guns.

That looked like a laser bracelet on the black-bearded man's wrist. If Dante opened fire, one of them might have time to fire back and it wouldn't be anesthetic pellets he'd be firing.

The red-haired one said, "Charley, look behind us."

"What's back there, Stidge?"

"Couple people. Watching us."

Charley nodded. Very carefully he turned and looked.

"What you want to do?" Stidge asked. "Grab this one, make her help us find Tom?" "No," Charley said. "Nothing like that, Stidge." To Elszabet he said, "We don't mean no trouble. We're going to move along. You see our friend Tom, you give him our regards, okay?" He was gesturing to the others, and they were starting to slip away toward the woods, the scar-faced one first, then Stidge. Charley remained where he was another moment, until the other two were out of sight in the trees. "Hope we didn't trouble you any, ma'am," he said. "We're just pa.s.sing through, on our way. All right?" He was edging away as he spoke. "You tell Tom that Charley and the boys were looking for him, okay?"

Then he was gone too. Elszabet realized that she was shivering: soaked through and more than a little shaken up. A delayed reaction was sweeping over her. Her teeth chattered. Some flickering fragments of s.p.a.ce visions were dancing at the outer reaches of her mind, like pale transparent flames dancing on the embers of a bonfire.

Dante came running toward her, Teddy Lansford just behind.

"Everything all right?" Dante asked.

Elszabet brushed at the rain streaming across her forehead and fought back a shudder.

"I'll be okay. I'm a little wobbly, I guess."

"Who were they?"

"I think they were the scratchers Tom used to travel with. Looking for him. They want to get out of the neighborhood before the tumbonde people pa.s.s through, and they want to take Tom with them wherever they're going."

"Grubby b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Dante said. "As if we didn't have enough problems to deal with today, we have to have scratchers too."

"Should we call the police?" Lansford asked.

Dante laughed. "Police? What police? Any police this county has, they're down by Mendo trying to control the tumbonde mob this morning. No, we'll have to watch out for those three ourselves. In our spare time." She looked at Elszabet. "You're still pretty shaky, aren't you?"

"I was trying to sidetrack a s.p.a.ce vision. And then I turned around and there were three scary-looking strangers standing right behind me. Yeah, I'm still shaky."

"Maybe this'll help," said Dante. She stepped closer and put her hands on Elszabet's back and shoulders, and began to move things around in there, rearranging bones and muscles and ligaments as though she were shuffling papers on a desk. Elszabet gasped in surprise and pain at first, but then she felt the tension and distress beginning to leave her, and she swayed back against Dante, letting it happen. Gradually a sense of some balance returned to her. "There," Dante said finally. "That a little better now?"

"Oh, my. Absolutely tremendous." "Loosen up the back, it loosens up the mind. Hey, did you ever find out where April and Ferguson were?"

Elszabet put her hand to her lips. "G.o.d. I forgot all about them. I was on my way over to the dorm when the vision started to hit and then -"

Suddenly the voice of Lew Arcidiacono said out of the speaker just back of her right ear, "Elszabet? I think it's starting now. We've got the word that there's a whole mess of tumbonde people not very far down the road and they're probably going to be heading smack in our direction very soon."

Elszabet switched to A frequency. "Terrific. How are you doing with the energy walls?"

"We've got a solid line of defense up all along the probable line of approach. But if the march gets sloppy they may begin to come at us from one of the unshielded sides. I can use all the extra personnel you can send down here now."

"Right. I'll have Dante head out your way with everyone she has. Stay in touch, Lew."

"What's happening?" Dante asked.

"They're getting near us," Elszabet said. "The tumbonde crowd, just a little way down the road."

"Here we go, huh?"

"We'll be able to handle it. But Lew's calling for help on the front line. Take everybody from the gym and go on down there p.r.o.nto, okay? I'll look in at the dorm for April and Ferguson and meet you there in five minutes."

"I'm on my way," Dante said.

Elszabet summoned up a fragile grin. "Thanks for the backrub," she said.

The dormitory building lay twenty paces to her right. She trotted over, slipping and sliding on the muddied path and rain-slicked gra.s.s. The storm was getting worse all the time. Half-stumbling, Elszabet pulled herself up onto the dorm porch and went clomping into the building, leaving big muddy tracks. "h.e.l.lo?" she called. "Anybody here?"

All quiet. She wandered down the hallway, peering into this room, and that, the little dens where her unhappy patients pa.s.sed their unhappy days. No sign of anyone around.

At the far end of the hall she paused at number seven, Ed Ferguson's room. As she touched her hand to the doorplate she heard odd crooning sounds coming from inside, deep, heavy, slow.

April squatted crosslegged in the middle of the floor, rocking steadily back and forth, singing tonelessly to herself, sobbing a little. Behind her, half-obscured by the big woman's bulk, Ed Ferguson was sitting motionless on the floor, leaning against one of the beds, his head thrown back and his arms dangling alongside his hips. He looked drugged.

Elszabet went first to April and dug her fingers into the soft flesh of the big woman's shoulder, trying to slow her rocking.

"April? April, it's me, Elszabet. It's all right. Don't be afraid. What's the matter, April?"

"Nothing. There isn't anything the matter." Thick husky voice, heavy with emotion. "I'm fine, Elszabet." Tears running down her face. She would not look up. Rocking even harder now, she began to sing again. "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring - ".

The song gave way to the sort of rhythmic humming a woman who was holding a baby might make, and then to unintelligible crooning. But April seemed calm, at least. She seemed lost in some private world. Elszabet rose and walked over to Ferguson. He didn't move at all. The look on his face was unfamiliar, a strangely benign expression that completely altered his normal tense and sour appearance; at a quick glance she might not have been able to recognize this man as the grim, bitter, gloomy Ed Ferguson.

He was transfigured. His eyes were wide and shining with some ineffable bliss; his face was relaxed, almost slack; his mouth was drawn back in a broad smile of the deepest happiness.

So extraordinary was that beatific expression of Ferguson's that it was another moment before Elszabet realized that his eyes were remaining open without blinking, that he didn't seem to be drawing breath.

She knelt beside him, alarmed. "Ed?" she said sharply, shaking him. "Ed? Can you hear me?" She put her hand to his chest and felt for a heartbeat. She listened for the sounds of breathing. She grasped his limp cool wrist and searched as best she knew how for a pulse. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all.

She looked across at April, who was rocking harder and harder. She was singing another children's song, one that seemed almost familiar, but her voice was so blurred and indistinct that Elszabet was unable to make out any of the words. "April, what happened to Ed Ferguson?"

"To Ed Ferguson," April repeated very carefully, as if examining those sounds to discover some possible meaning in them.

"To Ed, yes. I want to know what happened to Ed."

"To Ed. To Ed. Oh,Ed " April giggled. "He made the Crossing. Tom helped him do it.

We all held hands, and Tom sent him to the Double Kingdom."

"He what?"

"It was very easy, very smooth. Ed just let go. He just dropped the body, that's all he did. And off he went to the Double Kingdom." Good G.o.d, Elszabet thought.

"Who was here with you then?"

"Oh, everybody."

"Who?"

"Well, there was Tom, and Father Christie, and Tomas and . . ." April's voice trailed off.

She disappeared once more into gibberish and began rocking again. In the middle of it she became still and turned to Elszabet and said in a completely lucid voice, "I'm scared, Elszabet. Tom said that we're all going to be going over there soon. To the stars.

Is that right, Elszabet? It's the time, he said. He has the full power now, and he's going to send us all, one by one, just like he sent Ed. I suppose I'll go soon. Isn't that so? I don't know where I'll be going, though. I don't know what it'll be like for me there. It can't be any worse than it's been for me here, can it? But even so, I'm scared. I'm so scared, Elszabet." And she began to sob again, and then to sing once more.

Elszabet shook Ferguson again. His head lolled over.

Dead? Really? The idea stunned her. She felt her cheeks flush hot with guilt. Ferguson, dead? One of my patients, dead? That lolling head, those sightless eyes. Elszabet shivered. All this talk of Crossings, of shining alien worlds, seemed bizarre and absurd to her now against this ugly unanswerable reality. Over and over again she heard herself thinking.One of my patients is dead. No patient had ever died at the Center before.

Suddenly - with all the chaos swirling outside- - the riot and the skulking scratchers and Tom going around doing G.o.d only knew what kind of witchcraft - there was just one thought in Elszabet's head, which was that someone who had been entrusted to her care had died. All the work she had done this year with Ferguson, the elaborate tests, the closely watched charts, the counselling, the carefully monitored pick program - and there he was. Dead.

Maybe he wasn't, not really. Maybe he was just in some kind of deep trance. She was no doctor. She had never seen a dead person this close. There were states of consciousness, she knew, that seemed just like death but were merely suspended animation. Maybe he was in one of those. She said to April, "What exactly did Tom do to him, can you tell me? When he made the Crossing. What was it like?"

But April was far away. Elszabet crouched beside Ferguson, feeling numb. Rain drummed hard on the rooftop. Somewhere down near the main road a huge mob of cultists was wandering around just outside the Center, and on the other side in the woods three sinister-looking scratchers were lurking about, and Tom had gone G.o.d knew where, and here was Ferguson dead or maybe in a trance, and April - She heard footsteps in the hall. Jesus, what now?

Someone out there calling her name. "Elszabet?Elszabet? " Bill Waldstein, it sounded like.

"I'm in room seven." Waldstein came running in at full tilt, nearly tripped over April, and brought himself to an abrupt skidding halt. "Dante was worried about you and sent me over to see how you were doing," he said, then noticed Ferguson. "What the h.e.l.l - ?"

"I think he's dead, Bill. But you'd know better. Please take a look at him . . ."

Waldstein stared. "Dead?"

"I think so. But check it. You're a doctor, not me."

Waldstein bent over Ferguson, probing him here and there. "Like an empty sack," he said. "There's n.o.body here."

"Dead, you mean?"