Tom O'Bedlam Read online

  He had done it. He had initiated the Time of the Crossing at last. He still quivered with the power of the sensation that had engulfed him at the moment when he had felt the soul of that man, that Ed, rising from his body and arching upward, soaring toward its destination in the distant galaxies.

  Now, ablaze with joy, Tom wandered like a Blade of the Imperium through the Center, from one deserted building to the next. Two of his followers were with them, two of those who had loaned him their strength when he had lifted that man, that Ed, to his Crossing. But there had been two others when they had done that, the Mexican man and the heavy-set woman, and they had disappeared when all the shouting and excitement began.

  I need to find them, Tom thought. I may not be strong enough with just these two to undertake the rest of the Crossings.

  The strength that he had received from the other four, when he had sent the man to the stars, had been essential. That he knew. It had taken immense energy to achieve the Crossing. In the instant of the separation of Ferguson’s body and his soul Tom had been able to feel every particle of his own vitality at risk. It had been like the dimming of the lights in a room when too much energy was required at one time. And then the other four, the Mexican and the heavy-set woman and the artificial woman and the priest, had come to his rescue, had sent their own power roaring through the chain of linked hands, and Tom had been able to accomplish the Crossing for Ferguson. There were other Crossings now to do. He had to find the missing two.

  Prowling from building to building, he scarcely noticed the rain. He was vaguely aware of the great mob of strangers that had erupted into the Center grounds and was crashing about in the open space between the dormitory and the staff cabins, but that didn’t seem important. Whoever they were, they meant nothing to Tom. In a little while everything would be calm again, and all these frantic strangers would be setting forth on their journeys to the stars.

  A voice at Tom’s elbow said, “It was the real thing, wasn’t it? The actual Crossing?”

  Tom looked down and saw the priest. “Yes.”

  “Where did he go, do you know? Ferguson.”

  “The Double Kingdom,” Tom said. “I’m certain of it.”

  “And which is that, then?”

  “One sun is blue, and one is red. It is a world of the Poro, who are subject to the Zygerone. Who are ruled by the Kusereen, who are the highest masters of all, the kings of the universe. They have gathered him in. He is among them at this moment.”

  “Already there, do you think?” Alleluia asked. “So far away?”

  “The journey is an instant one,” Tom said. “When we Cross, we move at the speed of thought.”

  “One sun is blue, one is red,” Father Christie murmured. “I know that place! I’ve seen it!”

  “You’ll see them all,” said Tom. He spread out his arms to them. Down below on the lawn, cars and trucks were smashing against each other with idiotic fury. “Come, follow me. We’ll go out there and find other people who are ready to Cross, and we’ll guide them to their new homes. But first we have to see where our other helpers have gone. The fat woman, the Mexican—”

  “There’s April,” Father Christie said. “Outside the dormitory.”

  Tom nodded. She was standing on the porch in the rain, turning from side to side, smiling uncertainly. Tom ran over to her. “We need you. For making the rest of the Crossings.”

  “I’m supposed to wait here for my sister.”

  “No,” Tom said. “Come with us.”

  “Jill said she’d be right back. She went down that way, where all the people are running around and shouting. Are you going to send me to some planet?”

  “Afterward,” Tom said. “First you’ll help to send others. And then, when I can spare you, I’ll send you after them.” He reached for her hand. Her fingers were plump and limp and cold, like sausages. Her hand lay squidlike in his. He tugged at her. “Come. Come. There’s work for us to do.” In a slow shuffling way she followed him out into the rain.

  5

  THE lawn in front of the dorm was a sea of mud. Jaspin, sloshing along behind Jill, had a sudden vision of it all turning to quicksand, everybody sinking down beneath the surface of the earth and disappearing, and the whole place restored to peace again.

  Jill was moving like a demon, clearing the way, shoving, pushing, elbowing. Jaspin followed along in her wake. A kind of general screaming was going on, nothing coherent, simply an all-purpose roar of confusion that sounded like the grinding of giant machinery. Little openings formed in the crowd, just for a moment, and closed again. A couple of times Jaspin stumbled and nearly went down, but he kept his balance by grabbing the nearest arm and hanging on. If you fall you die, he thought. Already he could see people crawling around at ground level, dazed, unable to get up, vanishing in a forest of legs. Once it seemed to him that he had trampled someone himself. But he didn’t dare look down.

  “This way,” Jill yelled. She was practically to the Senhor’s bus now.

  Someone’s flailing arm caught him in the mouth. Jaspin felt a jolt of pain and tasted salty blood. He struck back instantly, automatically, bringing the sides of his hands down like hatchets on the man’s shoulders. Maybe not even the one who had bumped him, he realized. He heard a grunt. Jaspin couldn’t remember the last time he had hit anyone. When he was nine, ten years old, maybe. Strange how satisfying it felt, striking out like that in response to the pain.

  Just ahead Jill was struggling with a big hysterical farmboy-looking guy who had caught hold of her right in front of the door to the bus. “Maguali-ga, Maguali-ga,” he was roaring, gripping her with his arms around her waist. He didn’t seem to be defending the Senhor’s bus or doing anything else that had any purpose; he was just out of control. Jaspin came up behind him and hooked his arm around the big man’s throat. He squeezed hard until he heard a little hoarse yoiking gagging sound.

  “Let go,” Jaspin said. “Just take your hands off her.”

  The man nodded. He let go and Jaspin swung him around and heaved, sending him reeling off in the other direction. Jill dashed up the steps and into the bus, Jaspin right behind her.

  The interior of the bus was an island of weird tranquility in the maelstrom of chaos. Dark and silent, smelling of sour incense. Flickering candles. The heavy draperies seemed to filter out the drumming of the rain and the booming cries of the mob. Cautiously Jaspin and Jill moved to the rear of the antechamber and pulled back the brocaded curtains that concealed the middle section of the bus, Senhor Papamacer’s chapel.

  “Look, there he is,” Jill whispered. “Oh, thank God! Is he all right, do you think?”

  The Senhor appeared to be in a trance. He sat immobile in his familiar lotus pose, face to the wall, staring rigidly at an image of Chungirá-He-Will-Come. Around his neck was the enormous golden breastplate, studded with emeralds and rubies, that he wore only on the most solemn occasions. Plainly he was off on some other world. Jaspin started to go over to him; but then he heard a sound like a panicky whimpering cry coming from the farthest room, the living quarters of the Senhor and the Senhora. A woman, crying out in some unknown language—an unmistakable plea for help—

  Jill turned to him. “The Senhora’s in there, Barry—”

  “Yeah.” He took a deep breath and lifted the curtain.

  On the far side, the innermost kingdom of the Senhor, everything was in disarray. The draperies were dangling, the wooden images of Maguali-ga and Chungirá-He-Will-Come had been knocked over, and the Senhor’s storage cabinets were overturned. The contents of the cabinets had been spilled out helter-skelter onto the floor—ceremonial robes, ornate helmets and sashes and boots, all the flamboyant regalia of the tumbondé rites.

  In the rear corner of the bus Senhora Aglaibahi stood backed up against the wall. Just in front of her was the stocky red-headed scratcher, the one whom Jill had seen clambering into the side window of the bus. The Senhora’s white sari was ripped down the front and her heavy breasts, glea
ming with sweat, had tumbled into view. Her eyes were bright with terror. The scratcher was holding her by one wrist and was trying to get hold of the other. Probably he had come into the bus with burglary in mind, but there must not have been anything here that he considered worth taking, so he was turning his attention now to rape.

  “Leave her alone, you son of a bitch,” Jill said in a voice of such ferocity that Jaspin was momentarily astounded by it.

  The scratcher whirled around. His eyes went from Jill to Jaspin and back to Jill. It was the look of a cornered beast. “Watch it,” Jaspin said. “He’s going to come right at us.”

  “Stay back,” the little man said. He was still gripping Senhora Aglaibahi by the wrist. “Get over there, by the wall. I’m getting out of here and you aren’t going to try to stop me.”

  Jaspin now saw a weapon in his other hand, one of those things they called spikes, deadly little things that delivered lethal electrical charges.

  “Careful,” he said quietly to Jill. “He’s a killer.”

  “But the Senhora—”

  “You stay back,” the little man said again. He tugged at the Senhora’s arm. “Come on, lady. Let’s you and me get off the bus, okay? You and me. Let’s go.”

  Jaspin watched, not daring to move.

  The Senhora began to wail and howl. It was a high keening unearthly cry that might have been the song of Maguali-ga himself, an intense rising-and-falling screech, a terrifying sound that very likely could be heard all the way to San Francisco. The red-haired man shook her arm fiercely and said, “Cut that out!”

  Then things began to happen very fast.

  The curtain lifted and the Senhor appeared in the doorway, looking dazed, as though he were still at least in part deep in his trance. For a long moment he stared in amazement at what was going on; then the awesome deep-freeze look came into his eyes, and he raised both his arms like Moses about to smash the tablets of the Ten Commandments, and he cried out unintelligible words in a colossal voice, as if trying to knock the intruder over by sheer decibel impact alone. In the same instant Jill sprang forward and attempted to pry the Senhora loose. The scratcher turned to her and in one quick unhesitating movement drew his spike across Jill’s ribcage from side to side. There was a little flash of blue light and Jill went crashing back against the wall. Then the scratcher released Senhora Aglaibahi and lunged forward, trying to get past the Senhor. As he came up alongside him he paused, as if noticing for the first time the jeweled breastplate the Senhor was wearing. The scratcher yanked at it but the clasp held firm. The scratcher did not let go. He started up the middle of the bus toward the front exit, dragging the Senhor along by the breastplate.

  Jaspin looked back at Jill. She lay crumpled and motionless, her arms and legs twisted into knots. The Senhora was in a heap on the other side of the bus, trembling, sobbing convulsively. The scratcher, pulling Senhor Papamacer with him, was halfway across the chapel now, heading toward the antechamber. Jaspin looked around for a weapon. The best thing he could find was the little statue of Maguali-ga. He snatched it up and ran toward the other end of the bus.

  The Senhor and the scratcher had reached the driver’s compartment of the bus. As Jaspin came toward them they stepped outside, onto the little platform that led down to ground level. There they halted, still struggling, the scratcher yanking and pulling on the breastplate, Senhor Papamacer booming out curses and pounding the scratcher with his fists, both of them in full view of the astonished crowd of the Senhor’s followers.

  Jaspin peered out into the surging rain-drenched mob. There was real hysteria out there now. He could hear them yelling, “Papamacer! Papamacer!” But no one went to the Senhor’s aid. Jesus, Jaspin thought, where’s the Host? They must see what’s going on. Why don’t they come help the Senhor? Then he realized that it was impossible for anyone around the bus to move, they were all so tightly jammed. A human gridlock out there.

  Then it’s up to me, Jaspin told himself.

  He lifted the statue of Maguali-ga like a club and maneuvered for an opening, trying to get into position to bring it down on the arm that held the spike. But the two of them were thrashing too wildly for him to be able to get a clear shot at the weapon.

  Maybe now—now—

  Jaspin swung the statue with all his force. It came down hard, but on the wrong arm, the one with which the scratcher was trying to pull Senhor Papamacer’s breastplate loose. The scratcher grunted sharply and let go of the Senhor, who was slammed by his own momentum against the open door of the bus. Jaspin tried to push him back inside, but to his amazement Senhor Papamacer shook his head and rushed forward, seizing the scratcher by both his shoulders, pulling him around, shaking him furiously, showering him with what sounded like Brazilian obscenities. All the monstrous intensity of Senhor Papamacer’s soul was pouring forth in a frenzied attack on this grubby stranger who had dared to violate the holy sanctuary. The scratcher, blinking and gaping, did not seem to know what to do in the face of such an insane onslaught.

  A couple of members of the Host were getting through the crowd, now. Jaspin saw them down below, ten, fifteen meters from the steps of the bus.

  The scratcher saw them too. He brought his spike up in a sudden desperate swipe and jammed it against Senhor Papamacer’s chest. There was another puff of blue light and the Senhor, arms and legs convulsing, sprang high into the air, fell back, dropped heavily to the ground. The scratcher, without pausing, jumped down beside him, made one last unsuccessful grab at the breastplate, then darted off to the left, disappearing into the crowd just as Bacalhau and Johnny Espingarda came running up.

  Bacalhau knelt beside the Senhor. With trembling hands he touched the Senhor’s cheek, his forehead, his throat, then looked up, and his face was the face of someone who had seen the end of the world.

  “He is dead,” Bacalhau cried in a voice like thunder. “Is dead, the Senhor.”

  And then everything went wild.

  6

  ELSZABET realized that somehow she had crossed from the dormitory to the gymnasium, though she had no recollection of having done it. Now she stood just at the edge of the little rose garden outside the gym, numb, watching in disbelief as the mob of tumbondé people tore the Center apart.

  It was very much like a dream. Not a space dream, but the ordinary sort of anxiety dream, she thought, the kind in which it’s the opening day of classes and you don’t know where the course you’ve registered for is supposed to meet, or the kind in which you’re trying to get from one side of a crowded room to the other to speak to someone important, and the air is thick as molasses, and you swim and swim and swim and can’t get anywhere.

  These people, these cultists, were going to destroy everything. And there was nothing at all she could do about it. She knew what she had to do: round up the patients, get them to a safe place, if there was any such thing left. And find Tom before he carried out any more Crossings. But she was frozen where she stood. She felt paralyzed. She had tried to protect the Center and she had failed, and now it seemed too late to do anything. Except stand and watch.

  It was getting very crazy out there now.

  It had been bad enough at the beginning, when they were simply pouring in with their cars and vans and parking them all over the place, banging up against one another in a great screech of crumpling metal, and then getting out and running round and round until there was no room for anybody to move. But now it was much worse; now it had entered an entirely different and more frenzied phase.

  The real trouble had started after that little black man in the strange costume had been killed on the steps of that multicolored bus right in the middle of everything. He must have been their leader, their prophet, Elszabet decided. She had seen the whole thing, just as she was coming out of the dorm to go in search of Tom. The little black man and the other one, the redheaded hoodlum who had accosted her earlier, coming out of the bus and fighting just outside it. The third man coming out of the bus waving that heavy wooden st
atuette around, trying to club the scratcher with it. And then the scratcher hitting the cult leader with his spike—that was when things had gone truly berserk.

  In their grief the tumbondé people were ripping everything apart. They surged back and forth like the tides of a human ocean, crashing into cabins and knocking them off their foundations, pulling up bushes and shrubs, overturning their own vans. The craziness was feeding on itself: the rioters appeared to be trying to outdo each other in displays of rage and sorrow, and it looked as though even those who had no idea what had touched off the upsurge of violence were joining the rampage.

  From her vantage point at the edge of the Center Elszabet had a view of almost everything that was happening. The GHQ building seemed to be on fire, black smoke rising from it in the rain. Down the other way the pick cabins were being smashed to splinters—all that intricate and costly equipment, Elszabet thought sadly, everything so painstakingly matched and calibrated, and all the files, all the records—and beyond them she could just make out the staff cabins, her own cabin, nestling in the woods, people swarming all over them, hurling things out the windows, kicking in the walls, even tearing up the ferns on the hillside just outside. Her books, her cubes, her records, the little journal that she sometimes kept—everything out in the mud by now, she supposed, trampled underfoot—

  There was nothing she could do but watch. In ghostly calmness she scanned the scene from north to south, from south to north, strangely calm, paralyzed by shock and despair, watching. Watching.

  Then she caught sight of Tom. That was Tom over there, surely. Yes. Appearing out of nowhere a little way uphill, drifting past the far side of the dormitory building, going around to the left. Down toward the middle of the madness.

  Like everybody else he was flecked with mud and soaked to the skin, clothing sticking to his spare fleshless body. And yet he seemed uncaring of that, invulnerable to the weather, as if he were surrounded by some invisible sphere of protection. He was walking slowly, almost casually. He had a sort of entourage with him: Father Christie, Alleluia, April, Tomás Menendez. They were all holding hands, as though they were frolicking off to a picnic in the forest, and they all seemed extraordinarily serene.