Tom O'Bedlam Read online

  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 hell. 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 Ceupassear on the hood. The giant papier-mâché 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?”

  “God only knows. But this better be the Seventh Place, because we aren’t going to go any farther, for damned 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 hell.”

  2

  BUFFALO had 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 shit-ass. He looked real tough, sure, but inside him there was just brown shit 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 goddamned 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 enou
gh to carry that might be worth something and get the hell 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 hell—”

  “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 cockeyed 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.”

  3

  JUST as Jill stepped up on the porch of the long wooden building that she thought might be the dormitory, a lanky dark-haired man came running out of it and slammed straight into her. They collided with a solid thunk and went bouncing back from each other, and they stood there for a moment looking at each other, both of them a little stunned.

  He was wearing a white coat and had the look of someone who might be on the staff. “Sorry,” Jill said. “Hey, can you tell me, is this where they keep the patients?”

  “Get out of my way,” he said. He had a sort of crazed look in his eye.

  “I just want to know, is this where—”

  “What do you want here? What are all you people doing here? Get out.” He waved his arms at her. It was the craziest thing she had ever seen.

  “I’m looking for my sister. April Cranshaw. She’s a patient here and I want to—”

  But he was gone, sprinting past her like a maniac, disappearing into the storm. All right, Jill thought. Be like that. See if I care. She wondered how crazy the patients here must be, if that was what the staff was like. Man looked like a doctor, maybe a psychiatrist. They were all crazy anyway. Of course, the fact that thousands of cars had just driven onto the grounds and the whole Mongol horde was charging around on the lawn out there might have upset him a little.

  She went into the building. Yes, it did look like a dorm. Bulletin board up, notices posted, a lot of little rooms opening off the hallway.

  “April?” she called. “April, honey, it’s Jill. I came to get you, April. Come on out, if you’re in here. April? April?”

  She looked in one room after another. Empty. Empty. Empty. Then in a room down at the end of the corridor she saw a man sitting on the floor, but he was either drunk or dead, she couldn’t tell which. She shook him, but he didn’t wake up. “Hey, you. You! I’m trying to find my sister.” But it was like talking to a chair. She started to go out, but then she heard sounds coming from the bathroom, someone singing or humming. “Hello?” Jill said. “Whoever’s in there.”

  “You want to use the bathroom? I can’t let you. I have to be in it. I’m supposed to stay in here until Dr. Waldstein comes back, or Dr. Lewis.”

  “April? That you, April?”

  “Dr. Lewis?”

  “This is Jill. For Christ’s sake, your sister Jill. Open the door, April.”

  “I have to stay in here until Dr. Waldstein or Dr.—”

  “So stay in there. But open the door. I need to pee, April. Do you want me to pee in my pants? Open it.”

  A moment of silence. Then the door opened.

  “Jill?”

  It was like the voice of a little girl. But the woman who was behind it was like a mountain. Jill had forgotten how huge her older sister was; either that or April had really been piling it on since she’d come up here. Some of both, Jill thought. April looked weird, too—weirder than Jill remembered, totally spaced-out, her eyes gleaming and strange, her face very white, the fat cheeks sagging.

  “Are you here to help me make the Crossing?” April asked. “Mr. Ferguson made the Crossing a little while ago. And Tom says we all will. We’ll go to the stars today. I don’t know if I want to go to the stars, Jill. Is that what happens today?”

  “What happens today is that I’m going to get you out of this place,” Jill said. “It isn’t safe here any more. Give me your hand. Here. Come on, April. Nice April. Pretty April.”

  “I’m supposed to stay in the bathroom. Dr. Waldstein is coming right back and he’ll give me an injection so I’ll feel better.”

  “I just saw Dr. Waldstein running like a lunatic in the other direction,” Jill said. “Come on. You can trust me. Let’s go for a little walk, April.”

  “Where will they send me? To the Nine Suns? To the Green World?”

  “You know about them?” Jill asked, surprised.

  “I see them every night. I can almost see them now. The Sphere of Light.

  The Blue Star.”

  “That’s right. Maguali-ga will open the gate. Chungirá-He-Will-Come, he will come. There’s nothing to worry about. Give me your hand, April.”

  “Dr. Waldstein—”

  “Dr. Waldstein asked me to get you and bring you outside,” Jill said. “I just spoke with him. Tall man, dark hair, white coat? He said, Tell April I won’t have time to come right back, so you get her.”

  “He said that?” April smiled. She put her hand in Jill’s and took a step or two out of the bathroom. Come on, April. Come on. That’s right. Jill led her sister across the room, past the dead or unconscious man sitting on the floor, toward the door. Out into the hall, down the corridor. They were almost to the exit when the outside door opened and two people came running in. Barry, for Christ’s sake. And that red-headed woman of his.

  “Jill?”

  “I found my sister. This is April.”

  “Then this is the patient dormitory?” the redhead asked.

  “Right. You looking for someone too?”

  “My partner. I told you, he was a patient here.”

  “Nobody else around in here. No, wait, there’s one guy. In the last room on the left, down the hall. I think he’s drunk, though. Might even be dead. Sitting on the floor, big grin on his face. What’s happening outside?”

  “The Inner Host is trying to get everything calm,” Jaspin said. “They’ve fanned out through the crowd, carrying the holy images. It’s almost a riot but they may just be able to quiet things down.”

  “And the Senhor? The Senhora?”

  “In their bus, far as I know.”

  Jill said, “The Senhor ought to come out. That’s the only way to quiet things.”

  “I’m going down the hall,” the redheaded woman said.

  Jill told Jaspin, “You ought to go to the Senhor, ask him to speak to the crowd. Otherwise you know it’s all going to turn berserk, and then what happens to the pilgrimage? Go talk to him, Barry. He’ll listen to you.”

  “He won’t listen to anyone. You know that.”

  From down the hall the woman called, “Can you come here, Barry? I found Ed, but I don’t think he’s alive.”

  “He made the Crossing,” April said, like someone talking in her sleep.

  “I better go,” Jaspin said. “What are you going to do?”

  “Take April, find a safe place, wait for everything to settle down.”

  “Isn’t this a safe place right here?”

  “Not when ten thousand people decide to come in out of the rain all at once. Old rickety building like this, they’ll knock it right over.”
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  The redheaded woman was returning, now. “He is dead,” she said. “I wonder what happened. Poor Ed. He was a bastard, but still—dead?—”

  “Come on, April,” Jill said. “We got to get out of here.”

  She led her sister around Jaspin and out on the dormitory porch. The scene in front of her was wilder than ever. Cars were stacking up like flood debris. People everywhere, yelling, bewildered, churning around like bees in a hive. No room for anybody to move: they were all butted up one against the next. In the center of everything was the Senhor’s bus. In front of it the eleven members of the Inner Host could be seen, all decked out in their high tumbondé drag and carrying the soggy images of the great gods. They were moving slowly forward, cutting a path through the throng. People were trying to give way before them but it was hard: they had no place to go.

  Then Jill saw a stocky little man with a big mop of red hair climb up the side of the Senhor’s bus, do something to the protective screen on one of the windows that somehow disconnected it, and go wriggling inside.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Barry? Barry? Come on out here! It’s important!”

  Jaspin poked his head out the door. “What is it?”

  “The Senhor,” Jill said. “I just saw some kind of scratcher break into his bus. The Host is out marching the statues around, and nobody’s guarding the Senhor, and somebody just broke into the bus. Come on. We’ve got to do something.”

  “Us?”

  “Who else? April, you stay here until we get back, you understand? Don’t go anywhere. Not anywhere at all.” Jill beckoned fiercely to Jaspin. “Come on, will you? Come on.”

  4

  TOM felt the ecstasy rising and rising and rising. It was as though all the worlds were coming to him at once, the light of a thousand suns illuminating his spirit, Ellullimiilu and Nine Suns and the Double Kingdom and all the myriad capitals of the Poro and the Zygerone and the Kusereen flooding through him at the same time. It seemed to him that even the awesome ancient godlike Theluvara themselves were warming his soul from their eyrie at the farthest reaches of space.