“Anything special you want me to bring back, Clay?”
Clay wiped his forehead on his sleeve and looked out into the bright sunlight. “Couple of six-packs.”
Seth grunted. “Yeah. You didn’t have to tell me that.” He went out to the van and got in. The van was a big oven. He almost blistered his hand on the steering wheel. And he was getting a headache.
He hadn’t had a headache since his transition. In fact, this one felt like the ones he used to get when he was approaching transition. But you only went through that once. The sun must have been affecting him. Best to get moving and let the wind cool him off.
He started down the winding dirt path that led to the edge of his property. The path crossed railroad tracks and met a gravel road. That road led to the main highway. The place was isolated, all right. It was a bad place to get sick. And Seth was getting sick. It wasn’t the heat—or, if it was, the wind blowing through the van window wasn’t helping. He felt worse than ever. He was just reaching the railroad tracks when he lost control of the van.
Something slammed into his thoughts as though his mental shield didn’t exist. It was an explosion of mental static that blotted out everything else, left him able to do nothing other than endure it, and endure the fierce residue of pain and shock that followed it.
By some miracle, he did not wreck the van. He ran it into the sign that identified his property as the something-or-other ranch. But the dry wooden signpost snapped easily against the bumper and fell without damaging the van.
Seth lost consciousness for a moment. When he came to, he saw that he had managed to stop the van and that he had fallen across the horn. He sat up wondering whether he had made enough noise to alert Clay, back at the shack.
Several seconds later, he heard someone—it must have been Clay—running toward the van. Then all real sound was drowned by the “sound” within his head. Mental static welling up again agonizingly. It was not like transition. He received no individual violent incidents that he could distinguish. Instead he felt himself seized, held, and somehow divided against himself. When he tried to shield himself from whatever was attacking him, it was as though he had tried to close a door while his leg or arm was still in the doorway. He was being used against himself somehow.
He was vaguely aware of the van door opening, of Clay asking what had happened. He did not even try to answer. If he had opened his mouth, he would have screamed.
When he finally found the strength to try again to defend himself against whatever had attacked him, his defense was thrown back in his face. With it, he received his only comprehensible communication from his attacker. A one-word command that left him no opportunity for argument or disobedience.
Come.
He was being drawn westward, toward California, toward Los Angeles, toward Forsyth, one of the many suburbs of Los Angeles, toward …
He could see the house he was to go to, a white stucco mansion. But he could not see who called him there, or why he had been called, or how his caller was able to exert such influence over him. Because he would definitely go to Forsyth. He had no choice. The pull was too strong.
The intensity of the call lessened to a bearable din and the shock of the attack passed.
He and Clay would go to California. He couldn’t leave Clay here alone in the desert. And he couldn’t stay to see Clay settled in. He couldn’t stay for anything at all. Clay’s independence would have to wait. Everything would have to wait.
Rachel Davidson
Rachel had made herself sick by following Eli’s suggestion. Thus it seemed only reasonable that Eli take her place and preach the sermon today. And it was only reasonable that she stay at the hotel, relaxed, semiconscious, so that her body did not shake from this one illness that she was helpless against.
And since everything was so reasonable, she thought, why had she brought herself to full consciousness despite her shaking? Why was she now in a cab on her way to the church, hastily dressed, her hair barely combed, without a prepared sermon? Returning Eli would say, like an addict to her heroin.
Well, let Eli say whatever he wanted to. Let him do whatever he wanted to. But when she reached the church, let him not stand in that pulpit one minute longer than it took him to introduce her. But he would know that. He would take one look at her face and get out of her way.
He and his ideas of how a healing should be performed! He had never performed one in his life. Never dared to try, because he knew that, even if he managed to succeed a time or two with great help from the sick person’s own suggestibility, he would never equal Rachel. He could never perform one tenth of the healings she performed, because she never failed. What he would strain to do, what he would sweat over and call for divine assistance with, she could do easily. Easily, but not without cost. The power, the energy she used in a healing service had to come from somewhere. Eli had called her a parasite, a second Doro. He had talked her into forgoing her usual “price.” She had tried, and that was why she was sick now. That was why the taxi driver, who was black too and who knew the church at the address she gave, asked her sympathetically whether she was going to see “that traveling faith healer.”
“I’m going to see her, all right,” said Rachel through her teeth. Her grimness must have surprised him. He asked no more questions. A few moments later, when he pulled up at the church, she threw him a few bills and ran in without waiting for her change.
She managed to remember her robe because wearing it had become such a habit with her. Eli, as much a showman as a minister, had insisted on it through all the six years that they had worked together. A flowing white robe.
The congregation was singing when she walked into the auditorium. Watery, pallid, uninspired singing. They were making uncoordinated noises with their throats. And their number! In her tours, Rachel was used to people sitting in the aisles, pushing in from outside when there was no more room for them. She had filled circus-type tents when she appeared in them. But there were empty seats out there now.
Had her last performance been so bad? Had following Eli’s stupid advice hurt her so much?
She needed more people. She took a deep breath and walked into view from one of the choir doors. Today, of all days, she needed more people.
“Sister Davidson! Praise the Lord, she’s here!” The cry went up in the middle of the song, and the song would have died away had she not joined in and kept it going. Her voice was a strong, full contralto that her audiences loved. She could have moved them with her singing even if she had nothing else. But she had a great deal more to offer than singing. If only there were more of them!
Eli Torrey gave her a long, bitter look. She knew the expression on her own face as she looked back at him. She could see it as he saw it. She could see it through his eyes. The hungry, drawn look that so many mistook for religious fervor.
Eli started to step away from the pulpit as the song ended.
She stopped him with a thought. Introduce me!
Why? She had to pluck his thoughts from his mind. He was only a latent. He could not project in any controlled way. You think there’s one person out there who doesn’t know who you are?
Introduce me, Eli, or I’ll control you and do it myself. I’ll run you like a puppet! She did not bother to take his reply.
Furious as he was, he was too much of a showman not to give her the best introduction he could.
The service.
She could have preached to her people in Chinese and it literally would not have mattered. All that mattered was that she was there and she had them. From that first song, they were hers. Not one of them could have gotten up and walked out of the church. Not one of them would have wanted to. Her control of them was not usually so rigid, but, then, she was not usually so desperate in her need of them. Their minds were full of her. Their voices, the very swaying, hand-clapping movements of their bodies were for her. When their mouths said, “Yes, Jesus!” and “Preach it!” and “Amen!” they really meant “Rachel,
Rachel, Rachel!” She drank it in and loved them for it. She demanded more and more.
By the time the service was half over, they would have cut their own throats for her. They fed her, strengthened her, drove out her sickness, which was, after all, no more than a need for them, for their adoration.
Eli said she was playing God, perverting religion, turning good, Christian people into pagans who worshiped only her. Eli was right, of course. He should have been. He was one of her first and oldest worshipers. But his conscience bothered him, and, from time to time, he managed to infect her with some of his guilt.
Behind her was a childhood spent in a home that was Christian before it was anything else. Eli’s home. Eli was a distant cousin of hers. Doro had had her adopted by Eli’s minister parents. Both his father and his mother were ministers. But in spite of the pressure they had put on Rachel she had rejected much of their religious teaching. All she retained was enough to make her nervous sometimes. Nervous and vulnerable to Eli. But not now.
Now she drew all she dared from the small crowd, forcing herself to stop before she was satisfied, to avoid doing them any real harm. Then she prepared to repay them. The candidates for healing had already formed a line in the main aisle.
And the healing began.
Eyes closed, she would mouth a prayer and lay her hands on the candidate. Sometimes she shouted, imploring God to hear and answer her. Sometimes she seemed to have trouble and have to try a second time.
Showmanship! Eli and his parents had taught her some of it. The rest she had learned from watching real faith healers. It meant nothing, as far as the actual healing was concerned.
In her years of healing, she had learned enough to diagnose quickly just by allowing her perception to travel over the candidate’s body once. That was useful in that many of the people who came to her did not really know what was wrong with them. Even some who came with doctors’ diagnoses were mistaken. Thus she saved a few seconds of looking for a nonexistent problem and went right to work on whatever was really wrong. The work?
Stimulating the growth of new tissues—even brain and nerve tissues that were not supposed to regenerate. Destroying tissue that was useless and dangerous—cancer, for instance. Strengthening weak organs, “reprogramming” organs that malfunctioned. More. Much more. Psychological problems, injuries, birth defects, etc. Rachel could have been even more spectacular than she was. The totally deaf child gained hearing, but the one-armed man—he had come to get help in his fight against alcoholism—did not grow a new arm. He could have. It would have taken weeks, but Rachel could have handled it. To do so, though, she would have had to show herself to be more than a faith healer. She was afraid of what people might decide she was. Whether or not she accepted the story of Christ as fact, she realized that anyone with abilities like his—and hers—would get into trouble if he really put them to work.
Eli knew what she could do. And he knew all that she could make him understand about how she did it. Because she had to tell someone. Eli was her family now that his parents were dead. And he filled other functions. Doro had said he would. Cousin, business manager, lover, slave. She was a little ashamed of that last sometimes, but never ashamed enough to let him go.
Now, though, she was almost content. She had fed. It was not enough, but it would hold her until the next night, when, no doubt, a bigger crowd would gather. Soon she would send this small crowd home tired, weak, spent, but eager to return and feed her again. And eager to bring their friends and families out to see her.
She accepted only a limited number of candidates—again as a matter of self-protection—and that number was almost exhausted when the interruption came. Interruption. …
It was a mental explosion that, for uncounted seconds, blotted out her every other sense. She had been standing, one hand on a woman in a wheelchair, the other raised in apparent supplication. Now she froze there, blind, deaf, mute with shock. The only thing that kept her on her feet was her habit of strictness with herself. Minor theatrics she had always used. They were part of her show. Uncontrolled hysterics—especially of the kind that she could have—were absolutely forbidden.
Somehow when the din inside her head lessened she finished with the woman in the wheelchair, sent her away walking slowly, pushing her own chair, and crying.
Then, without explanation, Rachel handed the service back to Eli and walked away from her bewildered congregation. She shut herself in an empty Sunday-school classroom to be alone to fight the thing that was happening to her.
Sometime later, she heard Eli in the hall calling her. By then the battle was ended, lost. By then Rachel knew she had to go to Forsyth. Someone had called her in a way that she could not ignore. Someone had made a puppet of her. There was justice in that, she supposed. She reached out to Eli, called him to her to tell him that she was leaving.
Jesse Bernarr
Jesse and the girl, this one’s name was Tara, slept late, then got up and drove into Donaldton. It was Sunday and Jesse’s twenty-sixth birthday. He was feeling generous enough to ask the girl what she wanted to do instead of telling her.
She wanted to get a lunch and go to the park. There, though she did not say it, she wanted to show Jesse off. She would be the envy of the female population of Donaldton and she knew it. Best to show him off while she had him. She knew she could only have him until someone else caught his eye. When that happened, he would send her home to her husband and her turn might not come again for months—might not ever come again.
Jesse smiled to himself as he read her thoughts. Donaldton girls, even shy, undemanding ones like Tara, thought that way when they were with him. They worked as hard as they could to keep him and flaunt him—which was understandable and all right as far as Jesse was concerned. But sometimes Jesse went after girls from the surrounding towns. Girls who didn’t know him even by reputation, and who weren’t quite so eager.
He and Tara went to a little cafe and had a lunch prepared. There was only one waitress on duty and there were two other customers waiting to be served when Jesse arrived. But they didn’t mind waiting a little longer. They wished him a happy birthday.
Jesse wasn’t carrying any cash. He rarely did. He never needed it in Donaldton. The waitress smiled at him as he and Tara took the lunch and went back to the car.
Tara drove to the lake as she had driven into Donaldton. Jesse had wrecked three cars and nearly killed himself before he gave up driving. There was just no future in it for someone who might at any time be hit by mental disturbances from other drivers, pedestrians, whatever. It wasn’t as bad as it had been during his transition, but it still happened. Doro said his mental shielding was defective. Jesse didn’t worry about it. The advantages of his sensitivity outweighed the disadvantages. And Tara was a good driver. All his girls were.
There were other Sunday picnickers in the park—old people sunning themselves and families with young children. And there was a scattering of young couples and teen-agers. Donaldton, Pennsylvania, was small and didn’t offer much in the way of entertainment or recreation. People who would have preferred something more exciting wound up in the park.
The people were well spread out, though. There was plenty of room. There was so much room, in fact, that Tara was silently annoyed when Jesse chose a place only a few yards from another couple.
Jesse pretended not to notice her annoyance. “Want to go for a swim before we eat?”
“Oh, but … we don’t have suits. I didn’t know we were coming here when we left the house …”
Jesse glanced around, seemingly casually. “That girl over there has a new one that will fit you,” he said, nodding toward the female half of the nearby fully clothed couple.
“Oh.” He was in one of his moods again, she was thinking. She was going to be humiliated. This wasn’t like taking food from the cafe. That had been more like a gift. But this girl had brought her bathing suit for her own use.
Jesse smiled, reading her every thought. “Go on. Go get i
t. And while you’re at it, get the guy’s trunks for me.”
She cringed inside but got up to do as he said. He watched her walk toward the couple.
The distance was too great for him to hear what she said to them clearly, so he picked up the conversation mentally.
“Could I borrow … I mean … Jesse wants your bathing suits.” She could not have felt more completely foolish, but she expected nothing more than that the couple would hand her the suits and let her escape back to Jesse.
The girl took one look at Tara and at the watching Jesse and started to get her suit out. The man didn’t move. It was his reaction that Jesse was waiting for. He didn’t have to wait long.
“You want to borrow our what?”
“Bathing suits.” Tara looked at the girl. “You’re from town, aren’t you? Tell him.”
“You tell him.” The girl didn’t particularly resent the loss of the suit. Donaldton people never resented giving Jesse what he wanted. The girl resented Tara.
Tara didn’t want to be there. She didn’t even want the damned suits. If the girl couldn’t realize that … “Never mind. I’ll have Jesse come over and tell him.” She started away.
“All right, wait. Wait!” When Tara turned back to face the girl, the girl was holding out her own suit and the man’s trunks. But before Tara could take them, the man snatched them away.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The girl was angry now, and the man was the only one she could take her anger out on safely. “He’s Jesse Bernarr and he wants to borrow our suits. Will you please let me give them to him?”
“No! Why the hell should I?” He glanced at Tara. “Look, you go back and tell Jesse Bernarr, whoever he is. …” He stopped as Jesse’s shadow fell across him. He looked up, confused, and by now angry. He was a big man, Jesse noticed. He would be tall when he stood up. Massive shoulders and chest. He looked a little bigger than Jesse, in fact. And he did not like not knowing what was going on.
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