Tom O'Bedlam Part 4

5.

ITwas the third day since Charley had managed to get the ground-effect van started up.

They were down out of the foothills now, into the sweltering eastern side of the San Joaquin Valley. So far, so good, Tom thought. Maybe they'd let him travel with them all the way to San Francisco.

"Look at this G.o.dforsaken c.r.a.ppy place," Charley said. "My grandfather came from around here. He was a G.o.dd.a.m.ned rich man, my grandfather. Cotton, wheat, corn, I don't know what. He had eighty men working for him, you know?"

It was hard to believe that this had been farming country only thirty or forty years back.

For sure, n.o.body was farming much here any more. The land was starting to go back to desert, the way it had been four hundred years ago, before the irrigation ca.n.a.ls. Under the summer heat everything was brown and twisted and dead.

"What's that town off there?" Buffalo asked.

"I don't think anybody remembers," Charley said.

"It's Fresno," said the man named Tamale, who was full of information, all of it wrong.

"s.h.i.+t," Charley said. "Fresno's way down in the south, don't you know that? And don't tell me Sacramento, neither. Sacto's out this way. Anyhow, those are cities. This thing's just a town, and n.o.body remembers its name, I bet."

Buffalo said, "They got towns in Egypt ten thousand years old, everybody remembers their name. This place, you leave it alone thirty years, who the h.e.l.l knows anything?" "Let's go over there," Charley said. "Maybe there's something useful still lying around.

Let's go scratch some."

"Scratch scratch," said the little Latino one they called Mujer, and all of them laughed.

Tom had traveled with scratchers before. He preferred that to traveling with bandidos. It was safer in a lot of ways. Sooner or later bandidos did something so dumb that they wound up getting wiped out. Scratchers were better at looking after their own skins. On the average they weren't as wild as bandidos, and maybe a little smarter. What scratchers did was a mix of scavenging and banditry, whatever worked, whatever they had to do to stay alive as they moved around the outskirts of the cities. Sometimes they killed, but only when they had to, never just for the fun of it. Tom felt easy falling in with this bunch. He hoped he could stay with them at least as far as San Francisco. If not, well, that was okay too. Whatever happened was okay. There was no other way to live, was there, but to accept whatever happened? But he preferred to keep on traveling with Charley and his scratchers. They would look after him. This was rough country out here. It was rough country everywhere, but this was rougher than most.

And he figured he was safe with them. He had become a sort of mascot for them, a good-luck charm.

It wasn't the first time he had played that role. Tom knew that to a certain kind of person, someone like him was desirable to have around. They regarded him as crazy but not particularly dangerous or unpleasant - crazy in a nice way - and somebody like that had some appeal for men of that sort. You needed all the luck you could get, and a crazy like Tom had to be lucky to have lived as long as he had, wandering around on the edge of the world. So now he was their pet. They all liked him, Buffalo and Tamale and Mujer, Rupe and Choke and Nicholas, and especially Charley, of course. All but Stidge.

Stidge still hated him, probably always would, because he had gotten beaten up on Tom's account. But Stidge didn't dare lay a hand on him, out of fear of Charley, or maybe just because he thought it would bring bad luck. Whatever. Tom didn't care what reason, so long as Stidge kept away from him.

"Look at that place," Charley kept saying. "Lookat it!"

It was dismal, all right. Broken streets, slabs of asphalt rising at steep tilts everywhere, the sh.e.l.ls of houses, dry gra.s.s poking up through shattered pavement. Sand creeping in from the fields. A couple of dead cars lying on their sides, everything stripped.

"They must have had one mean war here," Mujer said.

"Not here," said Choke, the skeleton-looking one with the crisscross scars on his forehead. "Weren't no war here. The war was back east of here, dummy - Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, where they dropped the dust."

"Anyhow," said Buffalo, "dust don't smash a town up like this. Dust just garbage it all with hard stuff, so you burn when you touch anything."

"So what did this?" Mujer wanted to know. "The people moving away, that's what did it," Charley said in a very quiet voice. "You think these towns repair themselves? The people left because there wasn't any more farming here, maybe too much dust in the air bringing hard stuff from the dead states, or maybe it was because the ca.n.a.l broke somewhere up north and n.o.body knew how to fix it. I don't know. But they move on, off to Frisco or down south, and then the pipes rust and you get an earthquake or two and n.o.body's here to fix anything and it all gets worse and worse, and then the scratchers move in to grab what's left. You don't need no bombs to destroy a place. You don't need anything. Let it be, and it just falls apart. They didn't build these places to last, like they built Egypt, hey, Buffalo? They built them for thirty, forty years, and the thirty-forty years, they used up."

"s.h.i.+t," Mujer said. "What a world we got!"

"We'll go to San Francisco," said Charley. "It's not so bad there. Spend the summer. At least it's cool there, the fog, the breeze."

"What a screwed-up world," said Mujer.

Tom, standing a little way apart from them, said, "For the indignation of the Lord is upon all the nations, and His fury upon all their armies: He hath utterly destroyed them, He hath delivered them to the slaughter."

"What's the looney saying now?" Stidge asked.

"It's the Bible," said Buffalo. "Don't you know the Bible?"

"And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls."

Charley said, "You know it all by heart?"

"A lot of it," said Tom. "I was a preacher for a time."

"Whereabouts was that?"

"Up there," Tom said, jerking his thumb over his right shoulder. "Idaho. Was.h.i.+ngton State, some."

"You've been around."

"Some."

"You ever been really east?"

Tom looked at him. "You mean, New York, Chicago, like that?"

"Like that, yeah."

"How?" Tom said. "Fly?" "Yeah," said Mujer, laughing. "Fly! On a broomstick!"

"They once did," Tamale said. "Coast to coast. You get on a plane in San Francisco, it take you to New York, three hours. My father told me that."

"Three hours," said Stidge. "s.h.i.+t. That's just s.h.i.+t."

"Three hours," Tamale repeated. "Who you calling s.h.i.+t?" He had his knife out. "You calling my father s.h.i.+t? Go on, call it again. Call my mother something too, Stidge. Go on. Go on."

"Quit it," Charley said. "We came here to scratch. Let's do some scratching. Stidge, you're a pain in the a.s.s."

"You think I'm gonna believe that? Three hours and you're in New York?"

"My father said it," Tamale muttered.

"A different world then," said Charley. "Before the Dust War it was all different. Maybe it was five hours, huh, Tamale?"

"Three."

Tom felt all this talk pressing on his skull like a brain tumor. Three hours, five, what did it matter? That world was gone. He walked away from them.

He sensed that a vision was coming on.

Good. Good. Let it come. Let them bicker, let them cut themselves up if that was what they wanted. He dwelled in other, finer worlds. He walked up a little way, around the raw jagged upended block of pavement, past a ma.s.s of rusty iron gridwork, and sat down on the curb of a sand-choked street with his back against an enormous palm tree that looked as though it meant still to be here when California and everything man had built in California had been swept away by time.

The vision came rus.h.i.+ng on, and it was a big one, it was the entire deal all at once.

Sometimes he got it all, not just one alien world but the great stupendous mult.i.tude of them coming one on top of another. At times like that he felt himself to be the focus of the cosmos. Whole galactic empires surged through his soul. He had the full vision of the myriad realms beyond realms that lay out there beyond mankind's comprehension.

Come to me! Ah, yes, come, come!

Before his astounded bugging eyes came the grandest procession he had ever seen, a sequence of worlds upon worlds. It was like a torrent, a wild flood. The green world and the empire of the Nine Suns and the Double Kingdom first, and then the Poro worlds and the worlds of the Zygerone who were the masters of the Poro, and rising above them the figure of a Kusereen overlord from the race that ruled who knew how many galaxies, including those of the Zygerone and the Poro. He saw quivering transparent life-forms too strange to be nightmares. He saw whirling disks of light stretching to the core of the universe. Through him raced libraries of data, the lists of emperors and kings, G.o.ds and demons, the texts of bibles sacred to unknown religions, the music of an opera that took eleven galactic years to perform. He held on the palm of his hand a jewelled sphere no larger than a speck of dust in which were recorded the names and histories of the million monarchs of the nine thousand dynasties of Sapiil. He saw black towers taller than mountains rising in an unbroken row to the horizon. He had full perception in all directions in time as well as s.p.a.ce. He saw the fifty demiG.o.ds of the Theluvara Age that had been three billion years ago when even the Kusereen were young, and he saw the Eye People of the Great Starcloud yet to come, and the ones who called themselves the Last, though he knew they were not. My G.o.d, he thought, my G.o.d, my G.o.d, I am as nothing and You have brought all this wonder upon me. I Tom your servant. If I could only tell them the things You show me. If I could only. How can I serve You who created all this, and so much more besides? What need do You have of me? Is it to tell them? Then I will tell them. I willshow them. I will make Thy wonders manifest in their eyes. My G.o.d, my G.o.d, my G.o.d! And still the vision went on, and on and on, worlds without end.

Then it was gone, winking out with a snap, and he lay sprawled in a ruined street in a deserted town, stupefied, gasping for breath. His clothing was drenched with sweat.

Charley's worried face hovered before him.

"Tom? Tom? Can you talk, Tom?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"We thought you had a stroke."

"It was the big one," he said. "I saw it all. I saw the power and the glory. Oh, poor Tom, poor poor Tom! It was the big one, and never will it come again!"

"Let me help you up," Charley said. "We're ready to move on. Can you stand? There.

There. Easy. You had another vision, huh? You see the green world?"

Tom nodded. "I saw it, yeah. I saw everything," he said. "Everything."

Two.

Of thirty bare years have I Twice twenty been enraged And of forty been three times fifteen In durance sadly caged.

On the lordly lofts of Bedlam With stubble soft and dainty Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips, ding-dong With wholesome hunger plenty.

And now 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.

THEREwas unexpected trouble with Nick Double Rainbow that morning, something close to a three-alarm psychotic break coming out of nowhere and more than a little violent acting-out, ugly stuff and difficult to deal with. Which was why Elszabet was late getting to the monthly staff meeting. All the others were there already - the psychiatrists, Bill Waldstein and Dan Robinson; Dante Corelli, the head of physical therapy; and Naresh Patel, the neurolinguistics man, deployed around the big redwood- burl conference table in their various relaxation modes - when she finally entered the room a little past eleven.

Dante was staring into the pumping whorls of golden light coming from a little Patternmaster in her hand. Bill Waldstein was leaning back contemplating the flask of wine sitting in front of him. Patel looked to be lost in meditation. Dan Robinson was fingering his pocket keyboard, jamming inaudible music into the recorder circuit for playback later. They all straightened up as Elszabet took her place at the head of the table.

"Finally!" Dante said stagily, overplaying it as if Elszabet were two years late for the meeting, minimum.

"Elszabet's just been showing us that she knows how to be pa.s.sive-aggressive too," said Bill Waldstein.

"Screw you," Elszabet told him casually. "Thirteen big minutes late."

"Twenty," said Patel, without appearing to break his deep trance.

"Twenty. So shoot me. You want to pa.s.s some of that wine over here, please, Dr.

Waldstein?"

"Before lunch, Dr. Lewis?" "It hasn't been a wonderful morning," she said. "I will thank all of you to recalibrate for a lower bulls.h.i.+t quotient, okay? Thank you. I love you all." She took the wine from Waldstein, but drank only the tiniest sip. It tasted sharp, full of little needles. Her jaw was aching. She wondered if her face was going to swell. "We've got Double Rainbow cooled out on fifty milligrams of pax," Elszabet said tiredly. "Bill, will you check in on him after lunch and consult with me afterward? He decided he was Sitting Bull on the warpath. Smashed up I don't know how many hundreds of dollars of equipment and took a swing at Teddy Lansford that knocked him halfway across the room, and I think he would have made a lot more trouble than that if Alleluia hadn't miraculously come floating into the cabin and corraled him. She's amazingly strong, you know. Thank G.o.dshe wasn't the one who psychoed out."

Waldstein leaned toward her, hunching over a little. He was a tall, thin man, about forty, whose dark hair was just starting to go. When he hunched his shoulders like that, Elszabet knew, it was a gesture of concern, protectiveness, even overprotectiveness. She didn't care much for that, coming from him. Quietly Waldstein said, "The n.o.ble red- man hit you too, didn't he, Elszabet?"

She shrugged. "I got an elbow in the mouth, more or less incidentally. Nothing detached, nothing even bent. I'm not planning to file charges."

Scowling, Waldstein said, "The crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He must have been out of his mind, hittingyou. Poke Lansford, I can understand, but hittingyou ? When you're the one who sits up half the night listening to him sob on and on and on about his martyred ancestors?"

"I beg to remind," said Dante. "Allthese people here are crazy. That's why they're here.

We can't expect them to behave rationally, right? Anyway, Double Rainbow doesn't remember how nice Elszabet's been to him. That stuff's been picked."

"No excuse," Waldstein said sourly. "We all have martyred ancestors. f.u.c.k him and his martyred ancestors: I don't even think he's the Sioux he says he is." Elszabet looked at Waldstein in dismay. He liked to think of himself as genial and mellow, even playful; but he had an astonis.h.i.+ng capacity for irrelevant indignation. Once he got worked up he could go on quite a while. "I think he's a phony," Waldstein said. "A con man, like sweet Eddie Ferguson. Nick Double Rainbow! I bet his name is Joe Smith. Maybe he isn't even crazy. This is a nice rest home, isn't it, out here in the redwoods? He might just -"

"Bill," Elszabet said.

"He hit you, didn't he?"

"All right. All right. We're running late, Bill." She wanted to rub her throbbing jaw, but she was afraid it would touch off another volley of outrage from him. It might have been simpler, she thought, if she hadn't turned Waldstein down when he'd made that sudden but not altogether unpredictable play for her a year or three back. She hadn't let him get anywhere. If she had, maybe at least she wouldn't have to endure his ponderous chivalry all the time now. But then she thought, no, it wouldn't have made anything any simpler if she had done that. Then or ever. Switching on the little recorder in front of her, Elszabet said, "Let's get started, people, shall we? Monthly staff meeting for Thursday, July 27, 2103, Elszabet Lewis presiding, Drs. Waldstein and Robinson and Patel and Ms. Corelli in attendance, 1121 hours.

Okay? Instead of starting with the regular progress reports, I'd like to open with a discussion of the unusual problem that's cropped up in the past six days. I'm referring to the recurrent and overlapping dreams of a - well, fantastic nature that our patients seem to be experiencing, and I've asked Dr. Robinson to prepare a general rundown for us. Dan?"

Robinson flashed a brilliant smile, leaned back, crossed his legs. He was the senior psychiatrist at the Center, a slender, long-legged man with light coffee-colored skin, very capable, always wondrously relaxed: truly the mellow man that Bill Waldstein imagined himself to be. He was also probably the most reliable member of Elszabet's staff.

He put his hand on the mnemone capsule in front of him, hit the glossy red activator stud, and waited a moment to receive the databurst. Then he pushed the little device aside and said, "Okay. The s.p.a.ce dreams, we're starting to call them. What we are finding, either by direct report from the patients or as we go through the daily pick data to see what it is that we're combing out of their minds, is a pattern of vivid visionary dreams, very s.p.a.cy stuff indeed. The first of these came from the synthetic woman Alleluia CX1133, who on the night of July seventeenth experienced a glimpse of a planet - she identified it as a planet in her consultation the following morning with me - with a dense green sky, a thick green atmosphere, and inhabitants of an alien form, gla.s.sy in texture and extremely elongated in bodily structure. Then, on the night of July nineteenth, Father James Christie experienced a view of a different and far more elaborate cosmological set-up, a group of suns of various colors simultaneously visible in the sky, and an imposing figure of apparent extraterrestrial nature visible in the foreground. Because of his clerical background, Father Christie interpreted his dream as a vision of divinity, regarding the alien being as G.o.d, and I gather he underwent considerable emotional distress as a result. He reported his experience the following morning to Dr. Lewis - rather reluctantly, I gather. I've termed Father Christie's dream the Nine Suns dream, and Alleluia's the Green World dream."

Robinson paused, looking around. The room was very still.

"Okay. Now on the night of July nineteenth Alleluia had a second s.p.a.ce dream. This one involved a double-star system, a large red sun and a smaller blue one that seems to be what astronomers call a variable star because it has a pulsating kind of energy output.

This dream too was a.s.sociated with an impressive extraterrestrial figure of great size - a horned being standing on a monolithic slab of white stone. I call this dream the Double Star dream. It's possible that Alleluia has had this dream several times; she's become a little evasive on the whole subject of s.p.a.ce dreams." Robinson paused again.