Tom O'Bedlam Read online

  “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 gods.”

  “Listen to him,” Stidge said from the back of the van. “The fucking 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 God 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 it is 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 balls 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

  THE tumbondé 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 tumbondé man said again.

  “Yes,” said Jaspin hoarsely. “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 god.” This? House of the god? Not even any sign of that, really, none of the tumbondé 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-mâché 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 Ceupassear. Maybe they kept the big Chungirá-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 gods?

  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 th
at 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 God’s sake, did Senhor Papamacer want to see him?

  One of the tumbondé 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 tumbondé man could have been a bullfighter. His face was the face of an Aztec god, 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 tumbondé man patted him down for weapons, missing no part of him. Jaspin smelled the fragrance of some sweet oil in the tumbondé man’s thick dark high-piled hair, oil of wintergreen, essence of citrus, something like that. He tried not to tremble as the tumbondé 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 Jew-boy with the skinny shiksa 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 tumbondé 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 tumbondé 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 god Chungirá-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 tumbondé 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.

  “Chungirá-He-Will-Come, he will come,” said Senhor Papamacer in the familiar subterranean voice, three registers below basso. 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 tumbondé?”

  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 shit, 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 tumbondé.”

  “Forgive me,” Jaspin said.

  “Is not to forgive anything,” said Senhor Papamacer. “You pray to Rei Ceupassear, 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 hillside favela near Rio de Janeiro, they said, came to California when the Argentinians dusted Brazil, now worshipped by multitudes. 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 classes. I was doing a lot of funny things. I don’t know. A dark and troubled time in my soul. Truly.”

  “Truly, yes. And tumbondé, 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?”

  The chilly stare told him he had made a bad mistake.

  Jaspin said, “Sometimes I don’t know whether you understand my words. I’m sorry. An anthropologist. Years of training. Even if I wasn’t a professor, I still thought of myself like one.” Color was flooding to his cheeks. Go on, just tell him the real stuff, he thought. He’s got your number anyway. “So I wanted to study you. Your movement. To understand what this tumbondé thing really was.”

  “Ah. The truth. It feels good, the truth?”

  Jaspin smiled, nodded. The relief was enormous.

  Senhor Papamacer said, “You write books?”

  “I was planning to do one.”

  “You no write one yet?”

  “Shorter pieces. Essays, reviews. For anthropological journals. I haven’t written my book yet.”

  “You write a book on tumbondé?”

  “No,” he said. “Not now. I thought perhaps I might, but I wouldn’t do it now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve seen Chungirá-He-Will-Come,” Jaspin said.

  “Ah. Ah. That is truth too.” A long silence again, but not a cold one. Jaspin felt totally at this strange little man’s mercy. He was wholly terrifying, this Senhor Papamacer. At length he said, as though from a great distance, “Chungirá-He-Will-Come, he will come.”

  Jaspin made the ritual response. “Maguali-ga, Maguali-ga.”

  Anger flashed in the obsidian eyes. “No, now I mean something other! He will come, I am saying. Soon. We will march north. It will be almost any day, we leave. Ten, fifty thousand of us, I don’t know, a hundred thousand. I will give the word. It is the time of the Seventh Place, Jaspeen. We will go
north, California, Oregon, Washington, Canada. To the North Pole. Are you ready?”

  “Yes. Truth.”

  “Truth, yes.” Senhor Papamacer leaned forward. His eyes were ablaze. “I tell you what you do. You march with me, with Senhora Aglaibahi, with the Inner Host. You write the book of the march. You have the words; you have the learning. Someone must tell the story for those who come after, how it was Papamacer who opened the way for Maguali-ga, who opened the way for Chungirá-He-Will-Come. That is what I want, that you should march beside me and tell what we have achieved. You, Jaspeen. You! We saw you on the hill. We saw the god coming into you. And you have the words, you have the head. You are a professor and also you are of tumbondé. It is the truth. You are our man.”

  Jaspin stared.

  “Say what you will do,” said Senhor Papamacer. “You refuse?”

  “No. No. No. No. I’ll do it. I’ve been committed to the march since July. Truly. You know I’ll be there. You know I’ll write what you want.”

  Quietly Senhor Papamacer said, in a voice rich with dark mysteries beyond Jaspin’s comprehension, “I have walked with the true gods, Jaspeen. I know the seven galaxies. These gods are true gods. I close my eyes and they come to me, and now not even when they are closed. You will tell that, the truth.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have seen the gods yourself?”

  “I have seen Chungirá-He-Will-Come. The horns, the block of white stone.”

  “In the sky, is what?”

  “A red sun from here to here. And over here, a blue sun.”

  “It is the truth. You have seen. Not the others?”

  “Not the others, no.”

  “You will. You will see them all, Jaspeen. As we march, you will see everything, the seven galaxies. And you will write the story.” Senhor Papamacer smiled. “You will tell only the truth. It will be very bad for you if you do not, you understand that? The truth, only the truth. Or else when the gate is open, Jaspeen, I will give you to the gods who serve Chungirá-He-Will-Come, and I will tell them what you have done. You know, not all the gods are kind. You write not truth, I will give you to gods who are not kind. You know that, Jaspeen? You know that? I say it to you: Not all the gods are kind.”