Tom O'Bedlam Part 28

"Sometimes it's hard to be completely sure just by looking. But he seems plenty dead to me. n.o.body home at all. Christ, look at that empty grin on his face."

"April says that Tom showed him how to make the Crossing."

"The Crossing?"

"He's gone off to some star, April says. They all held hands and sent him somewhere."

Waldstein glanced at April: rocking, crooning, sobbing. He turned his head slowly from side to side. "Ferguson went to another star, you're telling me? To anotherstar? Jesus, Elszabet!"

"I don't know where he is. I've told you what April told me. He's dead, isn't he? What from? If hedidn't make the Crossing, what did he die of, a man in apparent perfect health? She said they all held hands, Tom, Father Christie, Tomas -"

"And you believe this?"

"I believe they did what April says they did, yes. That they joined hands and performed some sort of rite. And I even half-believe that Tom really did send him off to one of the star worlds . . . more than half-believe, maybe. Look at his face, Bill. Look at his face.

Have you ever seen such a blissful expression? It's the way somebody would look who knows he's going straight to heaven. But Ferguson didn't believe in heaven."

"And now he's on some star?"

"Maybe he is," Elszabet said. "How would I know?"

Waldstein stared at her. "We ought to find Tom and kill him right this minute."

"What are you saying, Bill?"

"Listen, there are no two ways about this. Are you going to let him wander around this place murdering people?" Elszabet gestured helplessly. She didn't know what answer to make. Murder? That wasn't the right word, she thought. Tom wouldn't murder anyone. But yet - but yet - if Tom had touched Ferguson as April had said, and Ferguson had died - Waldstein said, "If Tom is for real, if he's genuinely able to lift people out of their bodies and ship them who knows where and leave nothing but an empty sh.e.l.l behind, then he's the most dangerous man in the world. He's a one-man horror show. He can just walk around from place to place, making Crossings or whatever for people until there's n.o.body left alive. Just snap his fingers and send people to the G.o.dd.a.m.n stars - you think that's a good thing? You think that's something we should allow him to do?" She looked at him but still couldn't find anything to say. He went on, "That's if youbelieve any of this crazy garbage. And if you don't, well, we still have the problem of finding out how he managed to kill Ferguson and -"

There was a sudden crackling noise out of the speaker taped behind Elszabet's ear. She heard Arcidiacono's voice, ragged, m.u.f.fled, almost hysterical.

"Say that again?" she told him.

Waldstein began to speak. She held up her hand to shush him. "Not you, Bill." Into her microphone she said, "I didn't hear what you were just saying, Lew. Slow down. Give it to me clearly."

"I said Tomas Menendez just switched off one of the energy walls and the tumbondes are pouring through our line."

"Oh, Lew, no.No. "

"We had everything under control. Colossal mob of them out there, but they couldn't get in. Menendez was carrying generators around. Working as hard as anybody. Then he seemed to spot someone he knew out there in that mob, and he yelled that he was the opener of the gate, or something. And he opened it. He turned the wall right off. We've got thousands of them coming into the Center right this minute, Elszabet. Millions of them. I don't know. They're all over the place. Another two minutes, they'll be down your way."

"Oh, my G.o.d," she said. A strange tranquility began to come over her. She felt almost like laughing.

"What's he telling you?" Waldstein asked.

Elszabet closed her eyes and shook her head. "The wall is down, the tumbonde people are coming in. Oh, Jesus, Bill. That's the finish. Here we go. Jesus, here we go."

Eight.

With a heart of furious fancies Whereof I am commander, With a burning spear and a horse of air To the wilderness I wander.

By a knight of ghosts and shadows I summoned am to tourney Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end Methinks it is no journey.

Yet will I sing, "Any food, any feeding, Feeding, drink or clothing?

Come, dame or maid Be not afraid, Poor Tom will injure nothing."

- Tom O' Bedlam's Song.

JASPINhunched forward, gripping the stick as tightly as he could, using body English to keep the car from flipping over or skidding into a tree. There was no road any more.

They were driving across slick slippery sodden gra.s.s, some sort of lawn churned into a quagmire by the wheels of the vehicles ahead of him. The rain was coming down so hard it flowed across the windshield in thick streams.

Jill said, "I'm sure this is where my sister is. Find a place to park and I'm going to get out and look for her."

"Park? With umpteen thousand cars coming right behind me?"

"I don't care. You pull up by one of those buildings. I'm going to go in there and get her.

She isn't right in the head. If I don't protect her, somebody's going to find her and rape her or maybe kill her. This isn't a procession any more, Barry. It's a crazy mob now."

"So I notice."

"Well, you stop and let me go find April."

"Sure," he said, nudging the brake panel. "You can get out right here and go find her."

The car squiggled over the oozing mud and slid to a stop practically up against some big leafy bush. He kept the engine running. "Park by one of the buildings," Jill said. "Not here."

"I'm not parking anywhere," Jaspin told her. "I'm going to try to circle around and find some road out of here up that way. But you go on. You go look for your sister."

"You're not going to stop?"

"Look," he said, "this is a dead end, you see? Christ only knows why the Senhor turned in this way, but what we have is some buildings right in front of us and a G.o.dd.a.m.ned redwood forest behind the buildings, and in back of us we've got the whole tumbonde pilgrimage rumbling forward like a herd of maddened dinosaurs. I stay in here, I'm going to get squeezed flat up against those buildings or those trees. So you go look for your sister. I'm going to make a left turn up that dirt road and keep on going as far as I can, and if the road gives out I'm going to get out of my car and go on foot. Because what's going to happen in here this morning is the Black Hole of Calcutta. People are going to get trampled by the thousands. Now you get out and you go look for your sister, if that's what you want. Come on. Out."

She gave him a venomous look. "How will I find you again?"

"That's your problem." Jaspin pointed off to the left. "You head that way, and maybe when things calm down a little I'll come back and look for you. Maybe. Go on, now."

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she said. She glared at him again. Then she shook her head and got out of the car. He watched her for a moment, running off toward the old weatherbeaten gray wooden buildings just ahead. Instantly she was soaked through. She looked like a giant half-drowned chicken sprinting through the rain.

He wondered about Lacy.

She had her own car, somewhere back in the main body of the procession. Not too far back, he hoped. He had told her last night, when the forecast of rain came in, that she should try to move forward, drive as close to the front as she could. He knew the rain was going to scramble everything up, though he hadn't expected this, the sudden swerve off Highway One onto the county road, the blundering crashing intrusion on this peaceful rural neighborhood. It was impossible to figure what, if anything, the Senhor had had in mind, turning in this direction. He had just turned. There had been energy walls blocking their way, and then for some reason the walls went down and everybody went rolling right on. And now here they were. What a lousy mess, Jaspin thought.

Jill disappeared between two of the buildings. Two to one I'll never see her again, he told himself. Well, what the h.e.l.l. He got the car moving again. He felt the wheels digging ruts in the lawn and heard sucking sounds as they pulled free of the muck. Easy, easy - there, he was on a gravel road now, heading up along the front of a shallow- crested hill - just keep your head down and go right on slithering until you're out of here, kid - But there was no place for him to go. The gravel road ended at a kind of garbage dump, and there was just what looked like a vegetable garden on the far side and then the forest. Dead end no matter where you went. Jaspin looked back and saw hundreds of cars and vans piling up insanely in the triangular area between the two groups of buildings, with more and more and more coming on from the west. The ones to the rear didn't seem to realize that there was no road in front, and kept on going, grinding blithely on into what was sure to be the biggest vehicular cataclysm in human history.

It didn't make sense to drive back down the gravel road and join the frolic. Jaspin abandoned his car at the edge of the vegetable garden and made his way through the downpour as far as an enormous wide-branching tree. Standing under it, he was able to keep more or less dry, and he had a good view of the carnage.

They were just ramming helplessly into each other down there, the big vans going right up over some of the small cars. Like dinosaurs, yes, Jaspin thought, exactly like a herd of dinosaurs running amok. He saw the Senhor's bus and the bus of the Inner Host right in the middle of it all. Banners were waving in the rain on top of the Senhor's bus, and someone had mounted the statues of Narbail and Rei Ceupa.s.sear on the hood. The giant papier-mache images were beginning to melt.

Jaspin wished he'd been driving with Lacy instead of Jill. At least that way he would know where she was, now. Jill probably wouldn't have cared. But the Senhor did. The Senhor had found out that he was getting it on with someone other than his divinely chosen wife Jill, and the Senhor hadn't liked it. Bacalhau himself had conveyed that information to Jaspin: You touch the red-haired woman, you make the Senhor very angry. So Jaspin and Lacy had been going easy the last couple of days. It was never wise to make the Senhor angry. And now Lacy was down there lost in all that madness and - No. There she was. Clearly visible, red hair blazing in the midst of a crowd of maybe a thousand people who had left their cars and were lurching around chaotically on the lawn.

"Lacy!Lacy! "

Somehow she heard him. He saw her looking about. He jumped up and down, wigwagging frantically until she saw him.

"Barry?"

"Get out of there," he called. She started up the gravel road toward him, and he ran to meet her. She was drenched, her tight neat ringlets uncurling, her hair plastered to her skull. Jaspin held her for a moment, trying to steady her. She was quivering, whether from fright or chill he wasn't sure.

Her eyes looked wild. "What happened? Why did we come in here?"

"G.o.d only knows. But this better be the Seventh Place, because we aren't going to go any farther, for d.a.m.ned sure." Sadly he said, "Holy Jesus, what a catastrophe this is turning into."

"Do you know what this place is?" "Some kind of boarding school, you think?"

"It's the Nepenthe Center," she said. "The mindpick place. I saw the sign when we went through the gate. This is the place where my old partner Ed Ferguson was undergoing treatment."

"Well, it's out of business as of right now," said Jaspin. "It's going to be a complete ruin in a little while. Look how they're just swarming right through it."

"I've got to find Ed," Lacy said.

"Are you kidding?"

"I mean it. He's probably wandering around dazed in that mob. I want to get him out and up here before he gets hurt. He lives in some kind of dormitory. We ought to be able to find it."

"Lacy, it's crazy to go down there."

"Ed may be in trouble."

"But is he worth risking your life for? I thought you said he was a louse."

"He was my partner, Barry. Louse or not, I need to try to get him out. It's not that I love him or even like him. But I can't just stand by and watch this place get torn apart with him in it and not try to help him."

"Like Jill," Jaspin said. "Jill's in there already, looking for her sister."

"I'm going in there too. You going to wait here?"

"No," Jaspin said. "I'll come with you. What the h.e.l.l."

2.

BUFFALOhad been saying all morning, We got to get out of here, Charley, that mob is coming, that mob is going to stampede right through this place. But Charley had said no, let's hold on a little longer, Tom's got to be around here somewhere and I want to take him.

Stidge couldn't understand either of them. That Buffalo, he was just a s.h.i.t-a.s.s. He looked real tough, sure, but inside him there was just brown s.h.i.t from head to knees.

You hit a little trouble, first thing he wants to do is clear out. Charley, now, he wasn't really afraid of anything - say that for him - but sometimes it was real hard to figure him. Like this thing he had for the looney, Tom. Take him along, all the way from the far side of the Valley, clear to San Francisco, now up here to Mendo, for what? For G.o.dd.a.m.ned what? Gives me the creeps, Stidge thought, just looking at that guy's eyes.

And now Charley waiting around in the forest in the rain trying to find him, take him along again. Made no sense at all. Charley said, "They had energy walls up. Then they took them down. I wonder why they did a thing like that. They're wide open, now.

"Maybe Tom did it," Buffalo said. "Found the generator and shut it down, let them all come running right through."

"Why'd he want to do that?" Charley asked. "I don't think he would. Must have been someone else, or maybe the power just conked out on its own. Tom likes this place. He wouldn't want a mob running over it."

Stidge said, "Man's crazy. Crazy man would do anything."

Charley grinned. "You think Tom's crazy, Stidge? Shows how little you know."

"Says he's crazy himself, out of his own mouth. And the visions he has -"

"Crazy like a fox," said Buffalo.

"Yeah," Charley said. "Listen, Stidge, those visions of his, they're not crazy, they're true visions. He sees right into the stars. That make any sense to you? Nah, I bet it don't. But I tell you, he's not crazy. Only way he can keep from scaring people with that power of his, he has to say he's crazy. But you can't understand stuff like that, can you? All you understand is hurting people. Times I wish I never met you, Stidge."

"All I understand," Stidge said, "is that one of these days that Tom's going to bug me too much, I going to put a spike in him. All summer long you been riding me, Stidge don't do this, Stidge don't do that, Stidge let Tom alone. I'm pretty sick of your Tom, you hear me, Charley?"

"And I'm pretty sick of you," Charley said. "I tell you one more time, anything happen to Tom, you're done, Stidge. You're done." He turned toward Buffalo. "You know what we ought to do? We ought to take one more look around those buildings, find Tom, pick up anything light enough to carry that might be worth something and get the h.e.l.l away from here."

"Yeah," Buffalo said. "Before they come rampaging into the woods and tip over our van or something."

Stidge said, "Instead of Tom, the one we ought to find is that woman, the tall one we saw before. Or that hot-looking one who was out on the road with the limping guy. Find one of them, bring her along, that's what makes sense to me."

"Count on you, saying something like that," said Charley. "Just what we need, kidnap a woman now. Tom's what we want. Find Tom, get away from here. You clear on that, Stidge?"

"I don't know why the h.e.l.l -"

"You clear on that, Stidge?" "Yeah," Stidge said. "I hear you, man."

"I hope you do. Come on, now."

"You two go look for Tom," Stidge said. "I got another idea. You see that bus out there, the one with the c.o.c.keyed statues on top, all the flags? I think I'll take a sniff in there. I bet it's the treasure bus."

"What treasure you talking about?" Charley asked.

"The marchers' treasure. I bet it's their holy bus, all kinds of rubies and emeralds and diamonds in there. I'll just take a little look. That okay with you, Charley? While you're hunting around for Tom?"

Charley was silent a moment. Finally he nodded. "Sure," he said. "Grab yourself a sack of rubies."