"Hey, man, want some lovin'?" Was it a man's voice or a woman's? McCurdy scurried across the street to avoid finding out.
A giant spotted cat winked its neon eye from the far side of the street. The Polka Dot Pussy. A big black man with tattooed arms crossed upon his chest stood beside the door. He partially obstructed a glass panel where nude photos of timpani-titted temptresses beckoned indiscriminately. "Must be 18," a peeling sign reminded.
As McCurdy hurried by, loud music belched from the bowels of the cat.
More windows ahead. Rap booths. Adult movies. Live sex shows.
"Step right in, m'man," grinned the silver-toothed hustler outside The Golden Ring. The window sign offered "Fantastic Fighting Foxes." Beside it, a poster-size photo of a blonde in striped micro-shorts, her breasts bigger than her boxing gloves, smiled enticingly. Above it, a hand-lettered sign said, "This girl can't wrestle, but cum in and see her box."
A sailor staggered out of the next doorway, almost colliding with McCurdy. The lurching man steadied himself against the side of a parked van and threw up against the windshield.
The driver, a skinny spic in bell-bottoms, got out, grabbed the sailor by the epaulets, and threw him to the sidewalk. One swift kick, and the sailor puked again.
Nighttimers, McCurdy thought. The soulless ones.
Two black women stood on a street corner talking in loud staccato voices and waving at the infrequent passing cars. "Com'on, Daddy. Two fo'da price a one," McCurdy heard one of them say. His eyes rested a moment on her purple, high-heeled boots.
When he turned away a man was in his path.
McCurdy stopped short.
The haggard specimen made no move to get out of the way. Slack-jawed, lips crusted with sputum, he stared at McCurdy with vapid, nearly dead eyes. The long greasy hair on the right side of his head was swept back. The left side grew wild and sparse, as if someone had pulled it out by the fistful. A scabby scalp glistened like Vaseline underneath.
In the hot moist air the man's stench of urine and filth was almost powerful enough to push McCurdy back. He turned aside, forced to detour around the standing garbage. Garbageman, McCurdy thought.
Before McCurdy could walk away, the man spoke. "Spare a half, Doctor?"
"No . . . I . . ." McCurdy arced around him, about to hasten away. Then he stopped.
He called me Doctor. How did he know?
McCurdy turned. Squinting, he searched the dirt-streaked face for some recognizable feature. The man was smiling oddly. Missing front teeth seemed to hold the squirming tongue at bay. The bulbous nose was a crimson weavework of burst capillaries.
Chuckling, the man reached down to the curbside for half a cigarette. He broke off the filter, tossed it away, and popped the remainder into his mouth.
McCurdy's stomach lurched wetly when the man began to chew the tobacco.
"You come with me now, Doctor." The man's voice was gruff, garbled. "Tonight's your night. It's time for us to meet. Come on. I want to lead you away from here."
McCurdy didn't move as the man turned away. Streaks of some slippery-looking brown substance smeared the back of the man's shapeless, ill-fitting trousers. A pint flask, brown paper twisted around its neck, protruded from a hip pocket.
The man didn't look back. "Come on now, Doctor. Your time's awastin'."
McCurdy couldn't believe his eyes. His ears were lying to him, too. How could he follow? Was this some kind of undercover operation? Could this be the man with whom he'd corresponded via the computer? Was this his contact?
"Wait."
The man stopped, turned. Now he wasn't smiling.
Somewhere, a car door slammed and McCurdy jumped. The man glared at him. "You're not cooperating, Dr. McCurdy. We can't talk here. You were informed we would meet. Now you must come with me."
"But I . . . You—"
"Enough. Come now. We have work to do."
"But first . . . Wait. Don't you have some kind of—"
"Identification?" The smile was back. It was thin, tight, deadly as a razor. "No. None at all. I'm homeless. Nameless. Without hope. But in a moment you'll have little doubt who I am. Come. Walk with me. I'll explain."
McCurdy took a guarded step. The next one came easier, and in a moment he was beside the man as they made their way north on Washington Street. "Where we going?
"My house. Come on. Just follow me."
"Why?" McCurdy slowed his pace ever so slightly.
"I want to tell you things," the man said. "Things about yourself." He spat on the sidewalk. "It is important for you to see how well I know you. Quite possibly as well as you know yourself. I've studied you a long time."
They were walking swiftly enough so that the man's acrid odor was not so nauseating.
Turning left, there was an unlighted, trash-littered alleyway between the old Flynn Theater and St. Catherine's Roman Catholic Church. The garbageman stepped into the lush shadows, but McCurdy held back. Without turning, without looking over his shoulder, the man said, "Come now. Almost there."
"Where are you taking me?" The shadows in the alley loomed thick and deep. The smells were foul.
"Church. We're going to church. Don't be afraid."
McCurdy watched as his companion hunkered down and lifted a rectangular metal mesh from the cellar window of St. Catherine's. Uneasily, McCurdy hovered over him, bending down just a little. He could see the three-paned cellar window was nailed shut. The man took the head of one of the loose-fitting nails in his fingertips, and pulled it out of the wooden frame. The nail moved easily, like a bolt in a lock. He pulled out a second nail and the window swung up. Carefully, he placed the nails on the windowsill.
"You're probably not used to going to church my way," the man said with a soft, noncommittal chuckle. Then he slithered through the two-foot opening.
A crippling, immobilizing fear seized McCurdy. It would be so easy to turn and run. He could be back at the Academy in twenty minutes, or he could hail a cab and be home in half an hour. But this—unlikely as it seemed—was his contact. This was the man he'd been waiting to meet. Duty overrode fear as McCurdy sat on the ground and slid his feet through the open window.
The great, brass-piped organ was directly below the steeple. On either side of the three-tiered keyboard, light oak panels of wainscoting connected the organ to the wall, making it appear that the instrument was solidly and forever built into the structure of the church.
The man slid a panel of wainscoting aside, revealing a passageway that led behind the organ. Work space for repairmen, McCurdy thought.
"Gimme a match," the man said.
McCurdy fished around in the pocket of his cardigan for his lighter. The garbageman took it, lighted it. Using it as a torch, he led McCurdy through the sliding wooden door and into the tight passageway.
The area behind the organ was the size of a closet. At a glance, McCurdy guessed the total floor space was no more than three feet by eight feet. Coffin-sized. The hideaway reeked of tobacco smoke and the sour scent of mildewed fabric.
It was obvious that the man lived here in this claustrophobic nest. A pile of ratty blankets formed the vague shape of a bed on the floor.
Stuffed plastic bags passed for pillows. Near the head of the bed, on top of an overturned milk crate, two stubby candles occupied red glass holders. No doubt stolen from the altar. An open box of Blue Diamond matches lay equidistant between the candles.
Here and there, litter—McDonald's bags, plastic foam boxes, and empty plastic cups—suggested meals were taken here, meals no doubt salvaged from the trash cans of the Combat Zone.
The man lit the candles and returned McCurdy's lighter. Then he motioned for McCurdy to sit on the floor.
"We'll be safe here," the man said, the jagged nail of his right index finger picking at an infected-looking pimple on the lobe of his right ear. "They don't open the church till nine in the morning, so we got time. And it's quiet here. We got the whole place to ourselves."
McCurdy sat
on the wooden floor, avoiding contact with the filthy blankets. He studied the man's face in the pulses of candlelight. If the garbageman was wearing a disguise, it was an awfully good one. Stringy hair dangled limp and filthy around a face wild with whiskers, slashed with grime. Eyes, lifeless and discolored, teeth and gums, a brown, pulpy mass. And the smell, the odor of human waste and decay, surely it was something impossible to fake.
The man spoke in a hoarse whisper. "You were in the war, a fighter pilot in Vietnam. There, you had a religious experience. Am I right?"
McCurdy nodded, very much on his guard.
"What you saw there is not important to our discussion or to the work we must do. But let me say simply that it is your religious conviction that makes you ideally suited for your role at the Academy. The work you do there must be tempered by a strong Christian spirit. It is dangerous work, as you well know; it requires a sound mind and a sturdy Christian soul. What you are doing with your electronic equipment would not have been possible at any other time in history. That it can be done now marks a whole new step in human development. Would you agree with me?"
Again McCurdy nodded. His stomach had contracted into a tight, lumpy knot. He was sweating and his mouth tasted strongly of copper. For a moment he thought he was going to faint.
The man settled back against the wall, stretching his legs out in front of him. McCurdy could see the holes in the soles of his mismatched shoes.
"Your theories about the degeneration of mankind are not far from wrong. What's happening to the human race is a problem of numbers, really. There are more people now than ever before. I mean the number of people alive right now, as we speak, by far outnumbers all those who have ever been born, and who died throughout the entire history of this planet. And soul, Dr. .McCurdy, soul is a commodity of which there is a precious limited supply. In short, for way too long there just hasn't been enough of it to go around."
McCurdy's head reeled. How could this man know about soul? McCurdy had never shared this theory with anyone.
"Do you believe that, Dr. McCurdy?"
McCurdy cleared his throat. "Ah . . . believe what?"
"That soul is quantifiable. That it is in limited supply. That there is nowhere near enough of it to go around. That it is a precious resource that has been shamefully squandered."
"I've . . . ah, well, I've considered it."
"And if it is true, would you agree that it is therefore possible for certain people to be born with too little of it to be called human? Would you say it is possible that some individuals are born with none at all? That they can mature, mate and marry, then give birth to generations of soulless progeny?"
McCurdy had secretly considered all these things, but he had never spoken of them, not to his father, not to Rev. McNaughton, not to the other members of the congregation. And hearing them spoken aloud made McCurdy realize how eccentric they sounded.
"Is this a difficult question for you, Dr. McCurdy?"
Still, he didn't answer. Nonetheless, it had always been clear to him: if soul is the quality that can make human beings divine, then the absence of soul is the only thing that could explain the rabid growth of evil in the world. Terrorists, serial killers, preteen murderers, opportunistic politicians. The soulless ones. The Nighttimers.
Without soul there can be no incentive to accomplish good works, no possibility of redemption, no chance for earning divinity.
"Dr. McCurdy . . . ?"
The walls of the little cubicle seemed to close in on him. The candle appeared to lose its light. Suddenly the humid heat was unbearable. McCurdy tapped his fingertips against his knee. His eyes darted from side to side. He swallowed rapidly, feeling his gorge rising. How could this man know his unspoken thoughts? How?
A series of memories presented themselves in a revealing sequence: in McCurdy's mind the Combat Zone was a vision of Hell on earth, something he was compelled to study, night after night on his aimless walks among the Nighttimers. Yet this man had said, "I want to lead you away from here."
Then he had taken him to what he described as "My house." Only it was a church.
And now the stranger was articulating some of McCurdy's deepest, most carefully protected suspicions.
Without changing visibly, the soiled and homely face suddenly took on a different light. And suddenly McCurdy was in his plane above bamboo shacks and rice fields. Below, the brown earth exploded into churning smoky mushrooms. Machine guns spat and charges erupted. Jet engines roared like dragons as again McCurdy rolled out of a dense cloud and soared toward the blue-black heavens.
And again he saw the light, the brilliant white flaming pillar that divided the horizon like a slice cut out of the sky. A vision. I'm having a vision! It was then—way back in 1969—that he had seen the face of God.
And now he knew the stranger across from him. "What would you like me to do?" he whispered.
Burlington. Vermont
Karen stared in terror at the television screen.
The black and white videotaped image had all the newsreel immediacy of a Fredrick Weisman documentary.
She had watched the image of the masked, black-suited men as they tied the naked prisoner to a heavy wooden chair, watched the white-clad medic tape the sensor wires to the captive's skin, heard the electronically altered voice introduce the tethered Denny LaChance and read off his list of crimes.
And the recorded demonstration began.
When LaChance started to twitch, Karen felt ill. Bile sloshed against the back of her throat. She had to swallow rapidly to keep it down.
When he convulsed as if hit by a million volts of electricity, she looked away and reached for her gin and tonic. By the time LaChance bit off his tongue, Karen was in tears, her eyes hidden in her hands.
"Turn it off," she said, jumping to her feet. Before Jeff could find the remote, she had crossed the room. Just prior to hitting the TV's OFF button she noticed viscous liquid from LaChance's exploded eyeballs running down his cheeks, blending with the black blood surrounding his mouth.
Karen flicked the switch and the TV screen went dead.
"That's awful, Jeff. It's . . ." her voice was uneven, wracked by stifled sobs. "I've never seen anything so . . . so horrible."
Jeff walked closer, extending his arms to embrace her, but she pulled away.
"I don't care if he is a criminal," she said, "how could anyone do something like that to another human being?"
"I warned you it would be rough, Karen, but I had to let you see it. You have to understand what I'm so panicked about."
She used the paper napkin from under her gin and tonic glass to dry her eyes. The ring of moisture felt cool and good against her face. Then she sat down, trying to compose herself. She thought of Casey, sleeping in the spare room. How fortunate the girl was not aware of the ghastly research her father was involved in.
Hyperventilating, Karen wrestled with the urge to shout at Jeff, to tell him that he'd have to wake Casey and leave at once. How dare he involve her, not to mention his own daughter, in something like this? How dare he just bulldoze into her life and force her to watch something so grotesque, so inhuman?
Her anger, she knew, was born of a deep-rooted, bone-crushing fear. If only she didn't have to see, didn't have to witness, that such inhumanity existed. She felt sick. Sick in her heart, sick in her soul. She had never seen anyone suffer and die so violently. Swimming somewhere in her vague memory she recalled a news broadcast from the Vietnam war era. It involved a Vietnamese officer putting a pistol against the head of some skinny pajama-clad soldier and blowing him away, executing him with a single merciful bullet. The victim dropped out of sight and it was done. Ugly as it was, at least it had been quick. What she had watched tonight seemed to go on and on. It was torture.
"Where did you get that awful tape?"
"I told you, Karen, I took it from Skipp McCurdy's office. I stole it. I knew I would have to have some proof."
"W-what did they do to him? Was it elect
rocution or what?"
Jeff sat beside her on the couch. She fought the urge to get up and move away from him.
"I don't think it was electrocution."'
"The wires . . ."
"Just as they said, sensors. They recorded his vital signs and brain wave activity while they were killing him."
"Couldn't it have been a trick?"
"I don't—"
"Maybe they staged the whole thing, maybe the whole thing is bogus?"
"It would be great if that were true."
"You believe it, Jeff? You really believe they killed him with . . . with . . ."
"Magic."
Karen started to cry again, this time it came in great heaving sobs. "No, no it can't be. They poisoned him before he sat down, or . . . or . . . maybe they really did use those wires to electrocute him. How do you know they didn't? Huh, Jeff? How do you know for sure?"
Jeff rested his hand on her shoulder. This time she let it remain. He spoke quietly but insistently. "All I know is what McCurdy told me about what the Academy is up to.
"Look, Karen, I know how whacked out all this must sound. It smacks of witchcraft, and voodoo, and Indian magic, and all the other stuff our parents and teachers told us just can't be real. But the trouble is, it is real. I can't deny it; you have to stop denying it.'
"The Academy has been using that damn computer to gather all sorts of magical data from all around the world: old, new, the well-known and the seemingly insignificant. Everything. Crazy or not, that's McCurdy's million-dollar idea. And he was able to explain it convincingly enough to sell our government the kind of bill of goods that earned him a multimillion-dollar research grant.
The Reality Conspiracy Page 19