Tom O'Bedlam Read online

  “Hey, what’s the hurry?” he called to her. Suddenly she was striding along like a house on fire, leaving him far behind.

  She turned and gave him a mischievous smile. “You having trouble keeping up, Ed?”

  “Screw you,” Ferguson said amiably. “We all know you’re a superior life-form. You don’t have to prove the goddamn point. Now slow down a little and let’s hike it together, okay?”

  “Right now I feel like moving fast,” she told him. “Getting my heart pumping some.”

  “You get out of sight, you’ll get lost altogether. You may be perfect but you don’t know where you’re heading, do you? Go on. You just charge off through the woods. Maybe I’ll see you again, maybe not.”

  Her laughter came floating back to him. Feeling anger rising, Ferguson began to walk faster, keeping his eyes fixed on her. Bitch, he thought. Challenging him like this. A real bitch. But you have to admit she’s a magnificent bitch.

  He had never known a woman anything like her, and he had known a lot of women. So tall and supple, practically his own height. And beautiful: all that jet-black hair, those breasts, those legs. And strong: the long flat muscles rippling beneath her satiny skin, that aura she had of tremendous power just barely held in reserve. And strange: you could never predict what she would do. The way her mind worked, she seemed like a Martian sometimes. A woman from Betelgeuse Five. Ferguson wondered what sort of problems had landed her in mindpick. The first thing they told you at Nepenthe Center was that you weren’t supposed to discuss your past with your fellow patients; the past was where your wounds were, they said, and you were supposed to let it all slough off under the pick. When you reintegrated in the final phase of the treatment, they told you, the useful part of your past would come back, the wounds would be forever gone; so it wasn’t useful to cut the memory grooves any deeper by talking about where you were coming from. Ferguson had broken that rule, of course. He broke all the rules, just as a matter of habit. But Alleluia hadn’t told him a thing about the disturbances that had brought her to the Center. She had gone into fits of crazy depression, maybe, the Gelbard stuff, and maybe even killed people with her bare hands to cheer herself up, for all he knew. Whatever it was, she kept it to herself. Maybe she didn’t even know. Maybe she had already sloughed all her memories off under the pick, he thought. A strange woman. But gorgeous. Gorgeous.

  He was damned if he’d let her get this far ahead of him. She was almost out of sight up there. He started into a half-trot, breathing hard, breaking into a light sweat, stumbling a little on the soft loose forest duff. Ferguson was surprised at how short a time it took for him to get out of breath. Then he began to feel the beginning of some pain behind his breastbone, nothing too agonizing, just a sharp little pressure. No big deal. But a little on the scary side all the same.

  Hell, he thought, huffing and puffing, you ought to be able to outrun a girl, right?

  Wrong, he told himself. Don’t be an asshole. That was no girl, that was a superhuman artificial being, and she had a hundred-meter head start on him. Besides, he was fifty years old. Not exactly a boy any more. It was nutty to go chasing after her like this through the woods.

  But he kept on all the same. His shirt was soaked now and his heart was pounding and there were sharp little pressures all up and down his chest, but he couldn’t let himself be bested this way. “Goddamn you, Allie, wait up for me!” he yelled, running even harder. He couldn’t even see her now: a close-set stand of enormous redwoods rose like a wall before him. Screw her. I’ll just let her run away and get lost, he thought. I’ve got all the food, right? But still he didn’t slow down. And then he caught his foot in some sort of gopher hole and went toppling heavily to the ground, and felt the ankle twist beneath him as he landed.

  Pain blazed in his whole leg. He sat up, touching himself here and there. The ankle was throbbing. He tried carefully to stand and discovered that he couldn’t: the leg wanted to buckle when he put the slightest weight on it. How was he going to get to Ukiah now? He cupped his hand to his mouth and called to her: “Allie? Allie? Come on back, I hurt myself!”

  Five minutes, no sign of her. Ferguson massaged his ankle, hoping it would unsprain itself fast; but when he tried again to get to his feet it felt worse than before. His foot was beginning to swell up.

  “Alleluia? God damn you, Alleluia, where are you?”

  “Easy, easy. I’m right here.”

  He looked up and saw her loping toward him like a gazelle, running in high splendid bounds. When she halted beside him she was not in the least winded: her breathing was as calm as if she had been sauntering.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “Tripped. Sprained it. I can’t walk, Allie!”

  “Sure you can. I’ll make a crutch for you.”

  “Jesus, a crutch? I don’t know how to use a crutch. And what am I going to do, hobble for thirty miles? Why the hell did you have to go running off like that? I wouldn’t have tripped if I hadn’t been chasing after you. And—”

  “Take it easy,” she said. He watched in astonishment as she bent a little tree to ground level, broke off the top third of its trunk, and began stripping away the branches. “You don’t have to go that far. There’s a road just up ahead. We’ll flag somebody down and ask for a ride into Ukiah. They don’t want to go to Ukiah, we’ll persuade them.”

  “A road?”

  “A little paved highway, just on the other side of those big trees, maybe five minutes up ahead. I was there when I heard you calling. A few cars going by, even. Don’t worry, okay?” She scooped him to a standing position as if he were a sack of feathers and propped the improvised crutch under his armpit. It was a little too long. Supporting him with one arm, she brought the crutch up across her shin and snapped off the tip. “There,” she said. “Ought to be the right length now.” If he hadn’t seen it done, he wouldn’t have believed that she had been able to snap a green sapling as thick as her wrist with one quick little gesture. How hard would it be for her to break someone’s arm or leg?

  The crutch helped. It was a clumsy business, but he limped along, letting his injured foot dangle. She walked beside him, her arm around his shoulders, giving him an extra lift. The ground sloped upward until they reached the dense stand of redwoods, but then on the far side it angled down and leveled out and before long they emerged into a clear space and saw the highway. It was an old two-lane county road, potholed and worn, no vehicle-control devices visible at all in it, the sort of road they had had a hundred fifty years ago. He listened for cars but heard nothing: total silence. Behind them, the sun was getting low, starting to drop toward the Pacific.

  “Something’s coming,” Alleluia said.

  “I don’t hear a thing.”

  “Neither do I. But I can see it, down the road. And now I can hear the engine, more or less. Probably a ground-effect car, since it’s so quiet.”

  He saw no sign of anything, not even a speck in the distance. Her senses were awesome. A couple of minutes went by, and then he began to make it out, a dark van coming toward them from the south. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to creep a little way back into the woods. You stand out here and flag them down.”

  “Will they stop?”

  “People got to be out of their minds not stopping for a woman looks like you, out here by yourself with night coming on. They’ll stop. When they do, you tell them your husband’s back there with an injured leg, will they mind driving us to Ukiah. I’ll be coming out. Not much they can do about it then, when I come out. Meanwhile you get close to the driver. He show any sign of pulling out, you reach in the window, you put your hand on his throat, right? Not to hurt him, you understand, just to keep him cooperative.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You better get out of sight.”

  “Yeah,” Ferguson said, and went hobbling off into the underbrush. He settled in behind a tree to watch. A moment later the van appeared. It was a ground-effect job, all right, a real antique, maybe even
a prewar model, with big garish bolts of lightning painted in red and yellow along its sides. Alleluia was standing in the middle of the road, wigwagging her arms; and, sure enough, the van slowed to a stop a short distance in front of her. He saw a couple of men in the front seat. They probably figured they were in for a night’s hot fun, terrific brunette, lonely country road. They tried anything with Allie, though, they’d find out different in a hurry.

  He heard them talking with her. Ferguson started to emerge from his hiding place. We won’t even bother hitching a ride, he thought. I’ll just have Allie toss them out into the shrubbery and we’ll drive to Ukiah ourselves and take it on north tomorrow morning to Oregon.

  Then he got a closer look at things and realized that beside the ones in the front seat there was a whole mob of men in the back of the van—three, four, maybe five of them. Scratchers, most likely. Or maybe even bandidos.

  Damn, he thought. Even she can’t take on seven guys. I can’t even take on one, with my leg like this. Abruptly he saw how their escape from the Center was going to end: with him lying in the weeds with his throat slit, and Alleluia, kicking and screaming all the way, being dragged off somewhere for a night of gangbanging.

  They were getting out of the van. Four, five, six, seven, yes. No, eight. Coming up to Alleluia, clustering around her, looking her over appreciatively. One of them, an evil-looking cat with a greasy face and a lot of untidy red hair, was staring at her breasts as if he hadn’t touched a woman in three years. Another, with washed-out blue eyes and a face full of acne scars, was actually licking his lips. Ferguson wanted to turn and get away, but it was too late, too late, they had seen him. At his hobbling pace they’d catch him in half a second.

  “That your husband over there?” one of the scratchers asked, a stocky, tough-looking one with a short thick black beard. He pointed toward Ferguson. What a dumb way to die this is going to be, Ferguson said to himself. He prayed for Alleluia to go into action, grab three or four of them and snap their necks the way she had snapped that sapling, fast, before they knew what was happening. But she didn’t seem about to do that. She looked calm and cheerful and relaxed. Goddamn weird woman. He halted, leaning on his crutch by the side of the road, wondering what was going to happen next.

  What happened next was that still another of the scratchers, a tall skinny one with long arms like a monkey’s and wild gleaming eyes, came over and peered at him in a peculiar intense way, staring into his face as if trying to read a map, and said earnestly, “Are you hurting a lot? I don’t mean your leg, I mean your soul. I think your soul’s hurting some. Just remember, this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

  “What the hell,” Ferguson said, his voice thick with fear and bewilderment.

  “Don’t pay him no mind,” said the red-haired scratcher. “He ain’t nothing but a looney, that one. That crazy bastard Tom.”

  “Crazy, huh?” Ferguson said. He looked slowly around, beginning to think maybe they would come out of this in one piece after all. The thing was to stay cool, to start talking and talk a whole lot, to make himself seem useful to these men. “If he’s a real mental case,” he said, “you guys are in the right place, then. Take him over to the Center on the other side of that redwood forest there and he’ll feel completely at home. With all the other nuts they got there. Feed him, give him a bath, treat him nice and kindly, that’s what they’ll do for him over there, your crazy friend Tom.”

  The dark-bearded man moved closer to Ferguson. “Center? What sort of center you mean?”

  * * *

  Five

  The palsy plagues my pulse

  When I prig your pigs or pullen,

  Your culvers take, or mateless make

  Your Chanticleer, or sullen—

  When I want provant with Humphrey

  I sup, and when benighted,

  I repose in Paul’s with waking souls

  Yet never am affrighted.

  But 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

  SENHOR Papamacer said, “The beginning, that is what is important, Jaspeen. I tell you this already? Well, you listen again: it is the most important. How the gods first visited themselves into me, the new gods.”

  Jaspin waited patiently. The Senhor had told him this already, yes, more than once. More than twice, in fact. But there was never any percentage, Jaspin knew, in trying to direct these conversations. The Senhor said only what the Senhor wanted to say. That was his privilege: he was the Senhor. Jaspin was merely the scribe.

  Besides, Jaspin had learned that if he was content to sit still while the Senhor was running through familiar stuff, sooner or later the Senhor would dredge up some new revelation. This afternoon, for instance, Jaspin noticed a large cardboard portfolio on the floor next to the Senhor. The Senhor was sitting with the stubby fingers of his left hand spread out wide over the portfolio, a sure sign that it was important. Jaspin wanted to know what was inside it, and he had a notion that if he simply sat still and waited, he would find out. He sat still. He waited.

  “It was in the beginning with a dream.” Senhor Papamacer said. “I lay in the dark one night and Maguali-ga he show himself to me and say, I am the opener of the gate, I am the bringer of what is to come. And I know at once that this is the god speaking from across the ocean of stars, and that I am the chosen voice of the god. You know?”

  Yes, Jaspin thought. He knew. He knew what came next, too. And I arose in the night and I went to the window, and the nine stars of Maguali-ga were shining in the heavens, and I reach my arms out and I feel the great light of the seven galaxies upon me. He knew it all word by word, by now. Senhor Papamacer was dictating a scripture to him and wanted to make sure he got it down right. There was no doubt. I felt the truth at once.

  He studied the lean sculptured face, the obsidian eyes. This little man who meant to change the world and maybe would: this prophet, this holy monster, latest and perhaps last in a long line of prophets. Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Senhor Papamacer. The Senhor liked to bracket himself with them: Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Senhor Papamacer. Maybe he was right.

  “And I arose in the night,” said the Senhor, “and I went to the window, and the nine stars of Maguali-ga were shining in the heavens—”

  Ah, yes. And the great light of the seven galaxies.

  “The thing that I know instantly,” the Senhor said, “is that these gods are real and they will come to Earth to rule us.” That was the interesting thing, Jaspin told himself, that great bounding leap of faith. Knowing instantly. Faith in the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Six months ago that would have been incomprehensible to Jaspin; but he had seen also: Chungirá-He-Will-Come on the scorching hillside back of San Diego, and then Maguali-ga so many times in his dreams, and Rei Ceupassear, Narbail of the thunders, O Minotauro. He too had seen; he too had believed instantly. To his own amazement. “How do I know this, you ask?” Senhor Papamacer went on. “I know it that I know it, is all. That is sufficient only. Verdademente a verdad, truly the truth. You know that you know.”

  “Just as when Moses asked God to tell him His name,” Jaspin ventured eagerly, “and all that God would answer was, ‘I AM THAT I AM.’ And that was good enough for Moses.”

  Senhor Papamacer gave him a frosty look. Jaspin was here to listen, not to supply commentary. Jaspin wanted to sink out of sight.

  But after a moment the Senhor continued as though Jaspin had not spoken. “One must believe, you know, Jaspeen? In the face of the absolute truth one believes absolutely. So it was with me. I yielded myself to the truth and one by one the gods made themselves known to me, Rei Ceupassear and Prete Noir the Negus and O Minotauro and Narbail and the others, each gave me the vision in turn. I saw their worlds and their stars and I knew that they
love us and watch over us and are making ready for their coming among us. I was the first to know this, but because I held the truth others came to me and I shared my knowledge with them. Now there are many thousands of us, and one day all the world will be joined with us: joined in blood, in the rite of tumbondé, to make ourselves worthy of the final god who will bring the blessings of the stars.”

  Hesitantly, feeling he had to say something, Jaspin intoned, “Chungirá-He-Will-Come, he will come.”

  For once it was the right thing. The Senhor nodded benevolently. “Maguali-ga, Maguali-ga,” he replied. Together they made the sacred signs.

  Then the Senhor said suddenly, surprisingly, “You know what I was, before the gods came to me? You will not know. This you must put in your book, Jaspeen. I drive the taxi, in Chula Vista. Twenty years I drive there, and before that I drive in Tijuana, and when I am young I drive in Rio, before the big war. Take me here, take me there, can you drive any faster, keep the change.” He laughed. Jaspin had never heard the Senhor laugh before: a dry harsh shivering laugh, reeds rubbing together in a windswept arroyo. “All in one night I am made new by the gods, I never drive again. You put that in the book, Jaspeen. I give you photographs: my taxi, my chauffeur license. Mohammed, he drive camels, Moses he was a shepherd, Jesus a carpenter. And Papamacer a taxi-man.”

  There they were again, the big four, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Papamacer. Jaspin tried to imagine this formidable deep-voiced coiled spring of a man, this charismatic prophet of the high gods of the stars, buzzing around San Diego in some old jalopy of a cab scrounging up fares and tips. The Senhor reached for the cardboard portfolio. The taxicab photos, Jaspin figured. But instead Senhor Papamacer said, “When you close your eyes, Jaspeen, you see the gods, yes?”