Tom O'Bedlam Part 29

3.

JUSTas 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? Getout. " 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.

"h.e.l.lo?" 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 s.p.a.ced-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. Chungira-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."

"n.o.body 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.

The redheaded woman was returning, now. "Heis dead," she said. "I wonder what happened. Poor Ed. He was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, 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 b.u.t.ted 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 tumbonde drag and carrying the soggy images of the great G.o.ds. 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 n.o.body's guarding the Senhor, and somebody just broke into the bus. Come on. We've got todo 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? Comeon. "

4.

TOMfelt 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, Ellullilimiilu 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 G.o.dlike Theluvara themselves were warming his soul from their eyrie at the farthest reaches of s.p.a.ce.

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 cras.h.i.+ng about in the open s.p.a.ce 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 smas.h.i.+ng 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.

THElawn in front of the dorm was a sea of mud. Jaspin, slos.h.i.+ng 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, pus.h.i.+ng, 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, vanis.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.mped 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.