by John Walters
“Come now; come, miss.” He reached out to grab her arm.
She ran. At first she thought she was running blindly, but then she realized she was being guided; whenever she would come to an intersection she would know which way to turn. Once outside she kept running through the rain. Just before she reached the hotel she slipped and fell into one of the gutters, drenching her jeans to the hips in foul-smelling water.
She arrived in her room panting, soaking wet, and stinking like a sewer. She was thankful that her roommates had gone to the hotel lobby to chat with other travelers, so that they would not see her like this.
While she was showering, more pictures came to her. This time they came like a movie, one scene after another in progression. Four men sat with Paul in a room similar to hers at the Amir Kabir; three of them dressed in gray suits looked like businessmen or bureaucrats, and the fourth was an emaciated hippy with shaggy blonde hair and a blonde beard. Next she saw them all entering the American Embassy together. Then the thin balding man sat behind a desk stamping paperwork while Paul sat opposite and the other two gray-suited men flanked him on either side. At first she couldn’t quite focus on the writing on the forms the man was filling in, but then one detail stood out from the rest: destination: San Francisco.
That’s it then, she thought. They took him back to the States. But… Who were they? Why did they want him? And where is he now?
One more scene came: They all left the embassy, the two bigger men still on either side of Paul like guards, and got into a car and drove away. Then it faded, as if they had gotten out of range of the young man’s perception.
After washing and hanging up the clothes that had been soaked by the gutter water and neatly rearranging her belongings in her backpack, Sunny lay on her bed and closed her eyes. This young man, whoever he was, must have been aware of her presence since she arrived in Tehran; and previously, of Paul’s presence as well. Perhaps he was unable to get around much physically, so he did his wanderings psychically. Somehow he was able to discern who had the inner voice and who did not, but never having learned language, he communicated through visions. He must have been trying to get through to her earlier when she saw pictures of Paul and his visitors and of carpets, but at first she was unable to put together the various images.
She gradually felt drowsiness overcome her. As she drifted off, in the insubstantial state between wakefulness and sleep, he appeared to her. It was not in her room, nor in the shop at the Grand Bazaar, but in a misty place without ceiling or walls, not inside or outside but somewhere else. They faced each other and he smiled uncertainly, as if he was not used to smiling or he did not know how. He touched his lips and his ears and shook his head. Then an image of Paul appeared, and of an airplane flying above them. The Iranian pointed to Paul, then to the airplane, then to Sunny. He pointed to Paul again, then held his hands together as if handcuffed. Then he pointed to Sunny, held his hands together again, and pulled them abruptly apart as if the cuffs broke.
“You want me to help Paul,” Sunny said. “Yes, I want to help Paul, but to do that I have to go to India first.”
His expression was pleading; he looked as if he was almost ready to cry. He pointed to Paul again, then held his hands together, then pointed to Sunny. Then he pointed to himself, touched his lips and his ears, shook his head, and pointed to Sunny again.
“I want to help him, but what can I do?” she said.
She saw a picture of the American Embassy, and of a visa being stamped into a passport.
“But I can’t go to the States,” she said.
He pointed one more time to Paul, then to the plane, then to her, and then he vanished.
She awakened puffy-eyed, her three roommates sleeping soundly, sunlight streaming through a crack in the curtains.
Had it been a dream born of her fears for Paul’s safety, or had she really communicated with the carpet weaver? Had she been awake or asleep? Since she’d left Greece she’d thought of nothing but getting to Goa as soon as possible, but what now? Should she go to India, or to the States?
She sat up and shook her head. She saw a picture of carpets and of steaming hot Iranian coffee. He was there with her.
A picture of the American Embassy.
“Okay, okay,” she whispered. “I get the idea. But even if I wanted to go to the States, it’s not that easy. I don’t even know if I can get a visa. I don’t have much money to show and I don’t have a sponsor and I don’t have a return ticket. And if those guys who caught Paul are connected with the embassy then it’s not even safe to go inside; they might even have my name on file if my uncle is looking for me.”
She paused, and thought for a moment. Then she pulled her purse out of her backpack, thumbed through the documents and currency, and pulled out the credit card her uncle had given her. She knew it would be risky to use it, but using it was the only chance she had to make it to the States. Perhaps she could buy an airline ticket and hurry to the embassy and get her visa and then hurry to the airport and catch her plane before the information was processed and they tracked her and caught her in Iran, but they would be aware of her destination and surely by the time the plane landed they would have people waiting for her to grab her. Unless… Maybe she could find a flight that had an earlier stopover and she could hop off and find another way to get to San Francisco. Still, it was dangerous. By exposing herself she might get caught by those who had caught Paul, and in trying to rescue him she might only make matters worse. Shit. Why couldn’t things be back the way they were before all this happened, when she was wandering around alone, free to do what she wanted, answerable to nobody, responsible to nobody, with nothing more to think about than seeing the sights and getting stoned? Now everything seemed so complicated, when she had to think of so many others besides herself. But… Did she really want to be all alone again? In her heart of hearts she realized that responsibility was the price of love, and that it was a small price to pay.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay, okay, okay. I’ll do it; I’ll go for it. Why the hell not? America, here I come.”
Chapter 16
Lost Ones
They sat cross-legged in a circle listening, eyes closed, hands clasped, the newcomers scattered among them.
“When we allowed you to come here we had no idea you would become so involved in the affairs of this planet,” Aahamarada said. “At first some did not think it wise that you come at all. Then it was decided that perhaps the journey would be beneficial as an educational experience. We did not understand that more than curiosity was pulling you here. We did not grasp the importance of your humanity. Though you have never lived here, you have inherited the strengths and weaknesses of your species, and you have an affinity for them that causes you to empathize with their pain and want to relieve it in some way.”
“It hurts deeply. It is loneliness as vast as the emptiness between stars.”
“I know. I have felt it. Your experiment in drawing these others here, to test their ability to unite and to find a way to relieve the loneliness, is commendable. You have been learning to love each other, and have been reviewing some of the basic customs and mental rhythms; this is all good. But you have unknowingly put them and yourselves in great danger. When we brought you here, though we sensed the Furen presence, we did not realize to what extent they had infiltrated this world. They began tracking you the moment you landed, thinking that you were Ahana. They have managed to capture someone who they thought at first was one of you, but was one who had come into contact with you and had acquired the inner voice. They intend to study him and take the power for themselves.”
“Who is he? Where is he?”
“I have him under observation; you can do nothing for him at this time. But there are others: lost ones, wandering ones, those you have called who have encountered difficulties on their way.”
“We are searching for them.”
“When they are found, and your teams have returned, we will discuss the
next course of action.”
Then Aahamarada’s presence was gone.
Margaret opened her eyes and looked around. “Who was that? Where did he go?”
Valiant smiled. “He is our pilot and our guardian. Only his mind was here; he himself is beyond the atmosphere, orbiting Earth. He is Ahana; he is similar to human in some ways but very different in others. Close your eyes.”
When she did she saw a garden-like landscape; he took her hand and led her along a path of sparkling multicolored gravel through a grove of young trees, past a meadow dotted with purple and pink flowers, beside a brook of splashing, dancing water. On a green hillside was a gleaming white village that seemed to be composed of one elaborate interconnected building that spread all over the slope, section after section, level upon level, in cubes and spheres and pyramids and spirals and tubes and ramps and stairways that at first looked random and confusing but upon closer inspection had an intricate order and precision. “Home,” Valiant said. “I was brought up here by the Ahana, as were the others.”
“But who are the Ahana?” Margaret asked.
She saw tall, slim, gray-eyed humanoids in dark blue robes. “These are Ahana, as they were before the plague. Now, they look different. Each is unique. Aahamarada, for example, is a spacecraft, but much more than that, of course. Taahamanatha, who also accompanied us, is an outpost, and a portal.”
Margaret shook her head, and opened her eyes. “You’ve really lost me now.”
“I’ve gotten ahead of our briefing schedule,” Valiant said. “As a result, I’ve confused you.” He took her hand. “Come, let’s take a walk, and I’ll explain further.”
* * *
Jimmy Thornberg looked around furtively, then sat down on the warm stone steps in the dirty alley. Though the smell of urine and rotting garbage almost overwhelmed him, it was the only private place he had been able to find. He pulled six cigarette papers out of a packet and glued them all together, then he opened two cigarettes and spread the tobacco on the paper, then he crumbled a lump of soft black hashish into the tobacco. He carefully rolled it as tightly as he could, licked it all over so it would burn evenly, and finally lit it. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and held it there until the ache became unbearable. It had the strong bitter flavor of good quality hash. He exhaled a thick blue cloud; his head immediately began buzzing. Slowly he smoked the rest of the joint; when the roach became too small and hot, he held it with a split matchstick so he wouldn’t waste anything, then chewed and swallowed the resin-soaked paper that remained.
When he had reached Rawalpindi he had found a few rupees that the thieves had missed in one of his pockets. Mentally he had debated his options. He could go to Islamabad to the American Embassy and explain what had happened and plead with them to give him a new passport for free, but what if they refused to help? He’d have spent all his money in vain. He could find a cheap hotel room and rest, but then he wouldn’t be able to buy anything to eat. He could spend it on food, but then he wouldn’t have a place to stay.
Finally he had bought the hashish from a Pakistani who had approached him and asked him if he wanted to change dollars. Upon discovering that Jimmy didn’t have dollars, the man offered him everything else available on the black market: whiskey, drugs, women, boys.
Fuck everything, he thought. I never should have left the university. Now I can’t go back, can’t go forward, can’t stay where I am. The situation is hopeless; I might as well get stoned.
So he did. Unsteadily he got to his feet and swayed back and forth, wondering where to go. This is some powerful shit, he thought. I’m really fucked up. I can hardly think, let alone walk. Let’s see… I don’t want to stay here; it stinks. It’s getting dark. Gotta go somewhere, but where? I could just wander and space out on things. That’d be a trip; it would be like exploring an alien civilization on another planet. That’s it, yeah. I can make it like an adventure, a grand experience. I can stroll along and look at the people and their strange clothes, and the shops and all the strange stuff they sell, and the streets and all the strange vehicles and animals and things. I can get into the colors and the smells and the sounds and it’ll be exotic; it’ll flip me out into another world.
For a short time, a few brief euphoric moments, Jimmy was in near ecstasy, contemplating the prospects of a Rawalpindi hash high. Then he began to reconsider. What if the guy who sold me the hashish was a narc? What if he followed me and is waiting until I’m zonked out of my head and helpless so he can grab me and haul me off to the police station and beat me and throw me in jail? Then I’ll spend the rest of my life eating cockroaches and getting sodomized by the police and prisoners.
The shadows lengthened like the arms of demons seeking him. When a rat scurried away nearby he jumped backward and smacked his head on the wall behind him.
He stood motionless for a long time as dusk became night, until he began to imagine phantom figures in the deep darkness of the alleyway. Cautiously he stepped out onto the main street. Expecting to find it crowded and colorful, instead he realized that it was almost deserted and most of the shops were closed. All the color had been leeched out of it, as if he were in a black-and-white horror film. The passers-by, all men, cast suspicious, furtive glances in his direction. They seemed to know something he didn’t know. Perhaps they could see in Jimmy’s eyes, in his gait, in his attitude, that he had just been smoking hashish. He sensed their animosity and their disapproval. Perhaps an alert had gone out in Urdu on the news, that a foreigner was wandering the streets stoned and the police should be notified if he were spotted. Perhaps these men were part of a gang, and had run off to call their comrades, and were setting an ambush around the next corner. Or the corner after that, or the next, or the next.
He had lost control. It was similar to the mushroom high at the university dorm in California, only this time he had no room in which to hide. He never should have smoked the hashish. In his despair he had completely lost sight of why he had come all this way. Goa seemed as far away as California. Now he would die alone in the darkness in a strange land, as a penalty for his failure. He had sullied the purity of the call he had heard; he had let down Mildred Winters. He was glad at least that she would never find out what had happened to him. Most likely he would disappear without a trace, possibly sliced to bits or beaten and then buried.
He quickened his pace, though he was finding it hard to breathe. Everywhere he turned, dark-eyed, dark-spirited men stared at him as if they recognized him. His perceptions spun in hellish kaleidoscopic confusion: the weight of the darkness, the angry accusing looks of dark-cloaked men, visions of prison bars and prison beatings and prison rapes and corpses rotting in unmarked graves.
He ran. He didn’t even know why. He just ran because standing still was intolerable, too confusing, too obscure, too threatening. In the midst of a nightmare, he ran through an interstellar space in which there were no stars, only tiny dots of color that were supposed to form coherent patterns but didn’t. The buildings had disappeared, as had the roads, the streetlights, the dark-cloaked inquisitors, the instruments of torture. All that remained were the evil pursuing shadows flanking him, keeping pace with him, waiting to close in for the kill. They had followed him all the way from California like beasts of prey, lingering in the darkness for a chance to spring on him and tear him apart and suck out every drop of his soul. Physical pain was endurable, but it was the soul-sucking that terrified him.
Somehow he found himself outside the city, trudging along a dirt road in the darkness, a pale moon overhead. He seemed to be the only person left in the universe, but still apprehensive that someone might be following him, he crossed a barren field, dry dirt-clods crumbling underfoot, to a leafless tree. He leaned against the gnarled trunk, trying to look as little and inconspicuous as possible; above, the branches spread over him like skeletal arms, hands, and fingers.
The man in the moon was a demon like the dark-cloaked Pakistanis, in league with his pursuers, telling them wh
ere he might be found.
Somewhere in a tiny corner of his consciousness a rational Jimmy Thornberg was trapped by the viscous cloying blob-like resinous power of the drug. He wished he was still living with his parents, a kid who didn’t know anything about anything, still enchanted by birthday parties and Easter egg hunts and Christmas presents, his needs provided, his protection assured, his ignorance a cocoon to guard him from noticing the stark realities of the outside world.
He waited for death. As he waited, he wondered if the drug would ever wear off.
He tried to relax his mind and get in touch with the cosmos, but whenever he did, fear would surge up from within him, like thick phlegm blocking his lungs and suffocating him.
Was that a noise? The crackle of twigs, the sigh of displaced dirt, the shuffle of footsteps. Was it real or was he hallucinating? “No,” he whispered.
Minds tried to probe his; he blocked them out. “No, no, no.”
He wanted to get up and run but he couldn’t move. He closed his eyes and saw ghostly shapes and monsters.