Tom O'Bedlam Part 9

With a thought I took for maudlin, And a cruse of c.o.c.kle pottage, With a thing thus tall, sky bless you all!

I befell into this dotage.

I slept not since the Conquest, Till then I never waked, Till the roguish boy of love where I lay Me found and stripped me naked.

And now I do 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.

THEred-and-yellow ground-effect van was floating westward, floating westward, floating westward, on and on and on. The scratchers hadn't wanted to stay in the San Joaquin Valley after the killings in the farmhouse by the river fork. So westward they went, on a chariot of air, drifting a little way above the dusty August roadbed. Tom felt like a king, riding like that: like Solomon going forth in majesty.

They let him sit up front next to the driver. Charley drove some of the time, and Buffalo, and sometimes the one named Nicholas, who had a smooth boyish face and hair that was entirely white, and who almost never said a thing. Occasionally Mujer drove, or Stidge. Tamale never did, nor Tom himself. Mostly the one who drove, though, was Rupe, beefy and broad-shouldered and red-faced. He just sat there, hour after hour after hour, holding the stick. When Rupe drove, the van never seemed to drift more than a whisker's width from the straight path. But Rupe didn't like Tom to sing when he drove. Charley did; Charley was always calling for songs during his shifts.

"Get out the old finger-piano, man," Charley would say, and Tom would rummage in his pack. He had picked up the finger-piano down San Diego way three years ago from one of the African refugees they had down there. It was just a little hollow wooden board with metal tabs fastened to it, but Tom had learned to make it sound as good as a guitar, picking out the melodies with his thumbs against the tabs. He knew the words of a lot of songs. He didn't know tunes for all of them, but by now he had had enough practice so that he could make tunes up that fitted the words. His voice was a high clear tenor. People liked to hear it, everyone but Rupe. But that was only fair, not bothering Rupe while he was driving.

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear! your true love's coming, That can sing both high and low.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting, Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know.

"Where do you get those songs?" Mujer asked. "I never heard no songs like that."

"I found a book once," Tom said. "I learned a lot of poems out of it. Then I made up the music myself."

"No wonder I never heard none of those songs," said Mujer. "No wonder."

"Sing the one about the beach," Charley said. He was sitting just to the right of Tom.

Mujer was driving, and Tom between them in the front seat. "I liked that one. The sad one, the beach at moonlight." They were getting close to San Francisco now, maybe just another four or five hours, Charley had said. There were a lot of little towns out here, and most of them still were inhabited, though about every third one had been abandoned long ago. The land was still dry and hot, the heavy hand of summer pressing down. The last time they had gotten out of the van to scratch for food, that morning around eleven, Tom had hoped to feel the first cool breeze blowing from the west, and to see wisps of fog drifting their way: San Francisco air, clean and cool. No, Charley had said, you don't feel San Francisco air until you're right there, and then it changes all of a sudden, you can be roasting and you come through the tunnel in the hills and it's cool, it's like a different kind of air altogether.

Tom was ready for that. He was getting tired of the heat of the Valley. His visions came sharper and better when the air was cool, somehow.

He played a riff on the finger-piano and sang: The sea is calm tonight The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

"Beautiful," Charley said.

"I don't like this G.o.dd.a.m.n song neither," said Mujer.

"Then don't listen," Charley said. "Just shut up."

Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back - "It don't make no sense," said Mujer. "It ain't about anything."

"What about the end part?" Charley said. "That's where it's really beautiful. If you got any soul in you. Skip to the end, Tom. Hey, what's that town? Modesto, you think?

Modesto, coming up. Skip to the end of the song, will you, Tom?"

Skipping to the end was all right with Tom. He could sing the songs in any order at all.

He sang: Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor cert.i.tude, nor peace, nor help for pain - "Beautiful," Charley said. "You just listen to that. That's real poetry. It says it all. Take the bypa.s.s, Mujer. We don't want to get ourselves into Modesto, I don't think."

- And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

"Do the rest of it," Charley said, as Tom became silent.

"That's it," said Tom. "That's where it ends.Where ignorant armies clash by night. " He closed his eyes. He saw Eternity come rising up, that ring of blazing light stretching from one end of the universe to the other, and he wondered if a vision was coming on, but no, no, it died away as fast as it had risen. Too bad, he thought. But he knew it would return before long; he could still feel it hovering at the edge of his consciousness, getting ready to break through. Someday, he told himself, a vision of brightness will come and completely take me and carry me off to the heavens, like Elijah who was swept up by the whirlwind, like Enoch, who walked with G.o.d and G.o.d took him.

"Look there," said Charley. "The road to San Francisco turns off there."

The van swung toward the north. Floating, floating, floating toward the sea on a cushion of air. My chariot, Tom thought. I am led in splendor into the white city beside the bay.

A chariot of air, not like that which came for Elijah, which was a chariot of fire, and horses of fire. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. "There is a kind of chariot on the Fifth Zygerone World," Tom said, "that is made of water, I mean the water of that world, which isn't like the water we have here. The Fifth Zygerone people travel in those chariots like G.o.ds."

"Listen to him," Stidge said from the back of the van. "The f.u.c.king looney. What do you keep him for, Charley?"

"Shut it, Stidge," said Charley.

Tom stared at the sky and it became the white sky of the Fifth Zygerone World, a gleaming shield of brilliant radiance, almost like the sky of the Eye People's world except not so total, not so solid a brightness. The two huge suns stood high in the vault of the heavens, the yellow one and the white, with a rippling mantle streaming red between them and around them. And the Fifth Zygerone people were floating back and forth between their palaces and their temples, because it was the holiday known as the Day of the Unknowing when all the past year's pain was thrown into the sea. "Can you see them?" Tom whispered. "Like teardrops, those chariots are, big enough to hold a whole family, the blood-parents and the water-parents both. And all the Fifth Zygerone people float through the sky like princes and masters."

His mind teemed with worlds. He saw everything, down to the words on the pages in their books; and he could understand those words even when the books were not books, the words were not words. It had always been like this for him; but the visions became sharper and sharper every year, the detail richer, more profound.

Charley said, "You just keep driving, Mujer. Don't stop nohow for anything. And don't say nothing."

"The Fifth Zygerone are the great ones, the masters. You can see them now, can't you, getting out of their chariots? They have heads like suns and arms sprouting all around their waists, a dozen and a half of them, like whips - those are the ones. They came to this star eleven hundred million years ago in the time of the Veltish Overlordry, when their old sun started to puff up and turn red and huge. Their old sun ate its worlds, one by one, but the Zygerone were gone by then to their new planets. The Fifth World is the great one, but there are nineteen altogether. The Zygerone are the masters of the Poro, you know, which is astonishing when you think about it, because the Poro are so great that if one of their least servants came to Earth, one of their merest bondsmen, he would be a king over us all. But to the Zygerone the Poro are nothing. And yet there is a race that is master over the Zygerone too. I've told you that, haven't I? The Kusereen, they are, and they rule over whole galaxies, dozens of them, hundreds, the true Imperium."

Tom laughed. His head was thrown back, his eyes were closed. "Do you think, Charley, that the Kusereen yield to a master too? And so on up and up and up? Sometimes I think there is a far galaxy where the Theluvara kings still reign, and every half billion years the Kusereen Overlord goes before them and bows his knee at their throne. Except the Kusereen don't have knees, really. They're like rivers, each one, a shining river that holds itself together like a ribbon of ice. But then who are the kings the Theluvara kings give allegiance to? And there is also G.o.d in majesty at the summit of creation, triumphant over all things living and dead and yet to come. Don't forget Him."

"You ever hear crazy?" Stidge said. "That's crazy for you. That's the real thing."

"I like it better than his songs," said Mujer. "The songs give me a pain. This stuff, it's like watching a laser show, except it's in words. But he tells it real good, don't he?"

"He sees it like it's real to him, yeah," said Buffalo.

Charley said, "He sees it that way because itis real."

"I hear you right, man?" Mujer said.

"You hear me right, yeah. He sees worlds. He looks out across stars. He reads the Book of Suns and the Book of Moons."

"Oh, hey," Stidge said. "Hey, listen to Charley, now!" "Shut your hole," said Charley. "I know what I'm saying, Stidge. You shut it or you'll walk the rest of the way to Frisco, man."

"Frisco," Buffalo said. "It ain't far now. Man, am I going to have some fun in Frisco!"

Charley said, speaking softly to Tom alone, "You don't pay any mind, Tom. You just go on telling us."

But it was over. All Tom saw now was the road to San Francisco, hardly any traffic, heat shimmering on the pavement and big tumbleweed b.a.l.l.s rolling across the highway, fetching up against the old barbed-wire fencing. The Fifth Zygerone World was gone.

That was all right. It would be back, or one of the others. He had no fear of that. That was the one thing he did not fear, that the visions might suddenly desert him. What he did fear was that when it came time for the people of the Earth to embrace the worlds of the Imperium he would be left behind, he would not be able to make the Crossing.

There was a prophecy to that effect. It was an old story, wasn't it? Moses dying at the entrance to the Promised Land? I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither, said the Lord. Tears began to stream down Tom's cheeks. He sat there quietly weeping, watching the road unroll. The van moved silently toward San Francisco, floating, floating, on and on and on.

"San Francisco, forty-five minutes," said Buffalo. "My oh my oh my!"

2.

THEtumbonde man said, "You wait here, we call you when Senhor Papamacer he ready to talk to you. You don't go out of this room, you understand that?"

Jaspin nodded.

"You understand that?" the tumbonde man said again.

"Yes," said Jaspin hoa.r.s.ely. "I understand. I'll wait here until Senhor Papamacer is ready for me."

He couldn't believe this place. It was like a shack, four, five rooms falling apart, falling down; it was like the sort of stuff you would expect to find in Tijuana, except Tijuana hadn't been this run-down in fifty years. This, the headquarters of a cult that had the allegiance of thousands, that was winning new converts by the hundreds every day?

This shack?

The house was in the southeast corner of National City somewhere right down next to Chula Vista, on a low flat sandy hilltop behind the old freeway. It looked about two hundred years old and probably it was: early twentieth century at the latest, patched and mended a thousand times, not the slightest thing modern about it. No protection screen, no glow-windows, no utilities disk on the roof, not even the usual ionization rods that everybody had, the totem poles that were thought to keep away whatever gusts of hard radiation might blow from the east. For all Jaspin could tell, the place had no electricity either, no telephone, maybe not even any indoor plumbing. He hadn't expected anything remotely as primitive as this. "Man, you be ready today, you come hear the word Senhor Papamacer has for you," they had told him. "We come get you, man, we take you to the house of the G.o.d." This? House of the G.o.d? Not even any sign of that, really, none of the tumbonde imagery visible from the front. It was only when you walked up the cracked and weedy wooden steps and around to the side entrance that you got a peek into the carport, where the papier-mache statues of the divinities were stored, leaning casually against the beaver-board wall like discarded props from some laser-show horror program, old tossed-aside monsters. At a quick glance Jaspin had spotted the familiar forms of Narbail, O Minotauro, Rei Ceupa.s.sear. Maybe they kept the big Chungira-He-Will-Come and Maguali-ga ones in some safer place. But in this neighborhood, where Senhor Papamacer was like a king, who would dare to mess around with the statues of the G.o.ds?

Jaspin waited, He fidgeted. At least in a doctor's office they gave you an old magazine to read, a cube to play with, something. Here, nothing. He was very frightened and trying hard not to admit that to himself.

This is a field trip, he thought. This is like you're going for your doctorate and you have to have an interview with the high priest, the mumbo man. That's all it is. You are doing anthropological research today.

Which was true, sort of. He knew why he wanted to see Senhor Papamacer. But why, for G.o.d's sake, did Senhor Papamacer want to seehim?

One of the tumbonde men came back into the room. Jaspin couldn't tell which one: they all looked alike to him, very bad technique for someone who purported to be an anthropologist. In his narrow black-and-red leggings, his silver jacket, his high-heeled boots, the tumbonde man could have been a bullfighter. His face was the face of an Aztec G.o.d, cold, inscrutable, cheekbones like knives. Jaspin wondered if he was one of the top eleven apostles, the Inner Host. "Senhor Papamacer, he almost ready for you,"

he told Jaspin. "You stand up, come over here."

The tumbonde man patted him down for weapons, missing no part of him. Jaspin smelled the fragrance of some sweet oil in the tumbonde man's thick dark high-piled hair, oil of wintergreen, essence of citrus, something like that. He tried not to tremble as the tumbonde man explored his clothing.

They had stopped him after the rites when he and Jill were leaving two weeks ago. Five of them, surrounding him smoothly, while his head was still full of visions of Maguali- ga. This is it, he thought then, half dazed: they are on to human sacrifice, now, and they have noticed the scholarly-looking Jewboy with the skinnyshiksa girlfriend, the wrong kind of ethnics in this very ethnic crowd, and in five minutes we are going to be up in the blood-hut next to the white bull and the three of us, Jill and the bull and me, will have our throats cut. Blood running together in a single chalice. But that wasn't it. "The Senhor, he has words for you," they said "When the time is here, man, he wishes speak to you." For two weeks Jaspin had worried himself crazy with what this thing was all about. Now the time was here.

"You go in now," the tumbonde man said. "You very lucky, face on face with the Senhor." Two more toreros in full costume came into the room. One stationed himself in front of Jaspin, one behind, and they led him down a dark hallway that smelled of dry rot or mildew. It didn't seem likely that they meant to kill him, but he couldn't shake off his fear. He had told Jill to call the police if he wasn't back by four that afternoon. Fat lot of good that would do him, most likely; but he could at least threaten the tumbonde men with it if things turned scary.

"This is the room. Very holy it is here. You go in."

"Thank you," Jaspin said.

The room was absolutely square, lit only by candles, heavy brocaded draperies covering the windows. When Jaspin's eyes adjusted he saw a rug on the floor, jagged patterns of red and green, and a man sitting crosslegged, utterly motionless, on the rug. To the right of him was a small figure of the horned G.o.d Chungira-He-Will-Come carved from some exotic wood. Maguali-ga, squat and nightmarish with one great bulging eye, stood on the man's left. There was no furniture at all. The man looked up very slowly and speared Jaspin with a look. His skin was very dark but his features were not exactly Negroid, and his unblinking gaze was the most ferocious thing Jaspin had ever seen. It was the ebony face of Senhor Papamacer, no doubt of it. But Senhor Papamacer was a giant, at least when he was looming on the top of the tumbonde hill at the place of communion, and this man, so far as Jaspin could tell, considering that he was sitting down, seemed very compact. Well, they can do illusions extremely well, he thought. They probably put stilt-shoes on him and dress him big. Jaspin began to feel a little calmer.

"Chungira-He-Will-Come, he will come," said Senhor Papamacer in the familiar subterranean voice, three registers below ba.s.so. When he spoke, nothing moved except his lips, and those not very much.

"Maguali-ga, Maguali-ga," Jaspin responded.

A glacial smile. "You are Jaspeen? You sit.Por favor. "

Jaspin felt a cold wind sweeping through the room. Sure, he thought, a cold wind in a closed room without windows, in San Diego, in August. The wind wasn't real, he knew; the chill that he felt was. He maneuvered himself down to the red-and-green rug, creakily managing a lotus position to match Senhor Papamacer's. It seemed to him that something might be about to pop loose in one of his hips, but he forced himself to hold the position. He was frightened again in a very calm way.

Senhor Papamacer said, "Why you come to us in tumbonde?"

Jaspin hesitated. "Because this has been a dark and troubled time in my soul," he said.

"And it seemed to me that through Maguali-ga I might be able to find the right path."

That sounds pretty good, he told himself.

Senhor Papamacer regarded him in silence. His obsidian eyes, dark and glossy, searched him remorselessly. "Is s.h.i.t, what you say," he told Jaspin after a bit, laying the words out quietly, without malice or rancor, almost gently. "What you say, it is what you think I want to hear. No.

Now you tell me why white professor comes to tumbonde."

"Forgive me," Jaspin said.

"Is not to forgive anything," said Senhor Papamacer. "You pray to Rei Ceupa.s.sear, he give forgive. Me you just give truth. Why do you come to us?"

"Because I'm not a professor any more."

"Ah. Good. Truth!"

"I was. UCLA. That's in Los Angeles."

"I know UCLA, yes." It was like speaking to a stone idol. The man was utterly unyielding, the most formidable presence Jaspin had ever encountered. Out of some stinking brawling hillsidefavela near Rio de Janeiro, they said, came to California when the Argentinians dusted Brazil, now worshipped by mult.i.tudes. Sitting on the opposite side of this little green-and-red rug, almost within reach. "You leave UCLA when?"

"Early last year."

"They fire you?"

"Yes."

"We know. We know about you. Why they do that, hey?"

"I wasn't coming to my cla.s.ses. I was doing a lot of funny things. I don't know. A dark and troubled time in my soul. Truly."

"Truly, yes. And tumbonde, why?"

"Curiosity," Jaspin blurted, and when the word came out of him it was like the breaking of a rope around his chest. "I'm an anthropologist. Was. You know what that is, anthropology?"