At last a submarine spotted them when it surfaced for a solar ceremony. After some discussion with his crew the captain radioed for permission to bring the group to Amsterdam. There the mayor met them and a hotel offered to put them up for free. On their third day in Amsterdam the Heineken brewery took them on a tour ending with a party. Unfortunately, a terrorist organisation had infiltrated the catering agency. Half the group died from eating poisoned herring.
The remainder of the pilgrims stayed in Amsterdam for two weeks, visiting the shrine in the dunes every day. The water always produced the same effect, a sense of something almost remembered, then lost again when they lifted their faces. Meanwhile, their numbers continued to dwindle. One met a boy walking along a canal and went to live with him in the boy’s commune. One night the commune members all transported together. When they returned to their bodies the pilgrim and the boy entered each other’s bodies by mistake. In the confusion the two of them fell through an open window. Another two pilgrims joined a balloon club, only to have the balloon punctured by a stray laser beam from an American-owned laboratory.
The remaining five pilgrims met in their hotel lobby to talk about everything that had happened to them. It seemed, they all said, as if they could never rest, but must always run from some enchantment. They wept and hugged each other and promised to stay together for the rest of their lives. When they stepped outside them found themselves carried off in a mob running from the police. A group of students had tried to seize an office building. The police chased them with tear gas and clubs, only to fall back themselves before an onslaught of motorcycle gangs who had come in from Rotterdam and Groningen for the excitement. Only one of the five pilgrims survived.
Isolated from the rest of humanity, this last member of her tribe flew back to New York. For weeks she did nothing but walk up and down the streets. One day she was passing the Fifth Avenue Picture Hall when she heard voices inside. Only as she walked up the steps did she remember that the day was June 21, the Day of Truth. She walked in and sat down in the same seat she’d occupied all those years ago, when Valerie Mazdan had interrupted the Teller.
And there at the back stood Courageous Wisdom, and there at the front sat the Living Master, and there she saw all the others, all in their places, each one believing that she or he alone had survived the rolling death. They looked at themselves and they saw the same clothes and smelt the same air, and just as they realized that no time had passed, that they’d never left their seats, that all the years had evaporated like a dream in sunlight, Valerie Mazdan’s voice thundered from the back of the Hall.
‘And that is the meaning of a story.’
18
The next time Jennie saw Karen was two weeks later, on a bright Saturday morning. Jennie was half-heartedly attempting to clear the refrigerator when the doorbell rang. Wishing she could ignore it she shoved the vegetable bin back in place and stood up. She groaned at the pain in her back and legs as she turned the corner from the dinette into the living room. She stopped.
An SDA van stood parked in the road in front of the house. Around it, like a clump of dark bushes in the sunlit snow, stood a crowd of Jennie’s neighbours. None of them had come onto the property, but they stood two and three deep in the street. The moment Jennie appeared before the picture window they all began talking. Some made hand signs at her. Feeling slovenly, with her hair greasy and her face streaked, Jennie wanted to run out to the back. The bell rang again. Wishing she could at least wash her face Jennie went and yanked open the door.
A whole group stood round the door. Karen, Gloria and Al Rich, Marcy Carpenter, Jim Browning, Jackie Schoenmaker, and two people Jennie had never seen. One was a woman in an open grey overcoat, a man’s double-breasted suit, and wingtip shoes, with her hair cut short and parted on the side. Her aviator sunglasses and her gold tieclip both bore the winged insignia of the SDA Special Branch. The flying squad. Behind her, looking around with great curiosity, stood a young man wearing rubber boots, red gloves, a shapeless green coat, and a thick woollen dress hung with small bones and feathers, screws and nails, and broken bits of tools and kitchen utensils. A black silk rope tied the dress around the waist. At first Jennie thought him a Speaker on loan from some oracle centre, and she assumed they’d come to do a reading. But then she saw the drum he carried in his left hand. It was made from a two gallon oil can with the ends cut out and some kind of skin stretched tight over one of the holes. In his right hand he dangled a bone about seven inches long. Jennie wondered if it came from a dead teacher. As she looked at him his face opened in a huge smile. He was a healer, one of those they called ‘pure’ from his lack of a system, or medicine, or props other than his ‘boat’, the drum. For a moment Jennie thought of the precursor she and Mike had seen in Bermuda.
‘What is this?’ Jennie said, ‘a vigilance committee?’
Jim Browning said, ‘Yeah, you can call us that. Those old committees did a lot of good.’ Despite the cold he wore an open corduroy jacket over a flannel shirt, with no gloves or scarf. Like the others he wore his raccoon hat.
Jennie turned her head to look directly at Karen. She said, ‘So you brought me some help. I should have known I could count on you.’ Karen looked at the ground.
The SDA woman spoke in a soft voice that jarred with her outfit. ‘Are you Jennifer Mazdan?’ she asked.
‘Sure,’ Jennie said.
‘I order you to invite us in.’
‘And if I don’t?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, but added, ‘Oh, come on. Come on in.’ When they’d all marched inside Jennie said, ‘You can put your coats on the chair over there. I’m sure you won’t mind if I don’t offer you coffee. Shall I close the curtains?’
‘We prefer them open,’ the woman said.
‘Fine.’ She turned and saw Marcy Carpenter squinting at her. ‘Spot something, Marcy?’ she said. ‘My fangs showing?’
‘Look,’ Marcy said. ‘She’s marked her forehead. She’s made a mark there.’
Jennie leaned over to look in the narrow mirror facing the couch. She laughed. ‘That’s a smudge,’ she said. ‘From cleaning the sink. Do you ever clean your sink, Marcy?’
‘Let’s get started,’ the cop said. ‘Everybody sit down.’ The healer squatted on the rug.
Jennie said, ‘You’ll have to bring chairs from the dinette.’ She thought of sitting on the couch to see if anyone would join her. But then she would have to get up again if anyone did. She sat in the green chair beside the mirror.
In the centre of the room the SDA woman, still standing, took a miniature cassette recorder from her jacket pocket. Her thumb clicked it on and she recited the date, the address, and ‘Investigation of Jennifer Mazdan on charges of possession and/or conspiracy with Malignant Ones and/or beings unknown.’
Marcy testified first. Her pregnant sister had come to visit her, she said. Before she came she went for a check-up and the doctor pronounced the foetus in perfect health. On the third day of her visit she’d gone for a walk and had passed Jennifer Mazdan’s house. That night she’d doubled over in pain while watching television. By the time they’d got her to the hospital she’d lost the baby.
‘Has she ever miscarried before?’ Jennie asked.
Looking at the cop Marcy said, ‘What difference does that make?’
Jennie laughed. ‘None at all. Just curious.’
Gloria leaned forward on the couch. ‘You can make all the jokes you like,’ she said. Al tried to pull her back but she pushed him away. ‘You’re going to get what you deserve.’
Softly, Karen said, ‘Shit.’
‘What’s the matter,’ Jennie said to her. ‘Aren’t you happy? You’re getting me help.’
Jackie Schoenmaker came next, testifying that Jennie had caused her and her girlfriend to break up. ‘She’s gone to live in the women’s world. That one by Wappingers,’ she said, twisting the end of a yellow silk scarf and hunching up her right shoulder. ‘She’d never do something like that. I was the one
who wanted to go there, not her. She never wanted to go there. She wanted to come here.’
It was like her and Mike, Jennie thought. He’d been the one to insist on moving into the hive, and now he was in some loft on Greene Street. To Jackie she said, ‘Have you tried going after her?’
With a vehemence that startled Jennie, Jackie said, ‘Why? So you can curse us again?’
Jennie said, ‘I didn’t curse you.’
‘We loved each other. She never would have left me. Never.’
Jim Browning then charged that Jennie had prevented Allan Lightstorm from moving to Poughkeepsie. It was simple, he said, when the SDA woman asked him to explain. Lightstorm had volunteered to speak in Poughkeepsie. No one had asked him. Obviously he planned to move there as long as he got the right reception. Well, the whole town had turned out. It was a reception good enough for a Founder. All but Jennifer Mazdan. She’d gone to sleep. She said. And the next thing they knew they’d never heard from Lightstorm again.
The cop looked at Jennie. ‘No questions,’ she said. She hoped she sounded like that lawyer on television, the one who was always solving murders. And possessions.
Gloria came next. ‘This woman,’ she said, and pointed at Jennie, ‘cursed her whole block on the Day of Truth. Because of her—because of her helpers,’—she looked around the room as if she could spot the Ferocious Ones floating in the air—‘none of us could truly merge with the Picture. We all came longing for our Master’s voice, but she blocked us.’
‘How’d I do that?’ Jennie asked. ‘Just by staying away?’
‘Do you really think we believe your little story about falling asleep?’
‘Believe whatever you want. But I’ve got a question. Have you ever “truly merged with the Picture”?’
‘You’re not going to trick us,’ Gloria said.
‘You’re just tricking yourself. After you get rid of me what’s your next excuse going to be? The Tellers have deserted you, can’t you see that?’ Silence. Karen began to cry, while the cop squinted at Jennie.
Gloria held out her hand towards Al. ‘The box, please,’ she said, and Jennie thought how Gloria must watch the same lawyer show on television. Al handed her a wooden box about four inches wide and two inches deep. It looked like something you’d buy to keep paper clips in and rubber bands. She opened it up and passed it to the cop, who glanced inside, then handed it back. Half standing, Jennie could see a small pile of ashes. When she’d closed the box Gloria said, ‘My children found these ashes buried in Jennifer Mazdan’s back yard.’
Jennie laughed. ‘Do your children usually go digging in my back yard?’
‘Don’t you dare interrupt me,’ Gloria told her. To the cop she said, ‘These ashes are all that’s left of an effigy she made. A raccoon effigy, burned on the Day of Truth to prevent us from merging with Allan Lightstorm.’
Jennie said, ‘Even if your little brats had found the ashes how do you know they came from an effigy?’
‘Because of this,’ Gloria said loudly, and reached in her purse for a raccoon hat with one side charred, as if someone had held it over a candle. ‘This lay beside the ashes,’ she said, just like the great lawyer springing a trap. ‘It wouldn’t burn because it represents the immortal part of us.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Jennie said. ‘Where did you get that, Gloria? It looks like a children’s size. Did you steal it from one of your own kids?’ Gloria smiled at her. No doubt she considered it a smile of triumph. Jennie thought it looked sickly.
Al got up from the couch to stand beside the SDA cop. When he took the pipe out of his mouth his smile looked anything but sickly. He said, ‘I think the record should show the look of contempt filling this woman’s face. She thinks she can just go ahead and curse her neighbours, and the SDA, and now even the Tellers. And I think we can see why, too.’ He puffed once on his pipe and then turned the stem to point to Jennie’s stomach. ‘She thinks her Malignant friend will protect her. The one who gave her that thing she’s carrying around inside her.’
‘Al,’ Karen said, ‘I told you—you promised—you know how that happened. And why we’ve got to help her. You promised me, Al. I told you—’
‘You told us what she told you. I would think, Karen, that even you would realise—’
‘What do you mean, even me?’
‘All right,’ the cop said. ‘That’s enough. You can all fight it out later in your block meeting.’
Gloria said, ‘Don’t you see what she’s doing? We never used to fight. Karen, Al and I love you, don’t you know that? We love all the raccoons.’
Karen said, ‘Oh, Gloria, will you just shut up?’
‘This is your fault,’ Gloria said to Jennie. ‘You and that monster you’re hiding inside you.’
‘That’s enough,’ the SDA woman said loudly. ‘Sit down.’ When Al and Gloria had retreated to the couch she said, ‘Any more charges?’ No one said anything, but first Al, then Gloria, and then the others looked at Karen, who stared at the floor. ‘Any more charges?’ the woman repeated. The healer pounded once on his drum. Briefly the woman squatted down beside him to stroke his cheek. The sun through the window lit the two of them like some vision during a mountain pilgrimage. The cop smiled and stood up again.
Karen said, ‘I’ve got a charge.’ She lifted her eyes to look at Jennie. ‘I’ve got a charge.’ For several seconds she said nothing more, then ‘Two weeks ago she came to my house. And she gave me her Name beads, and some sacred aids…’ She paused. ‘And the book. The Book of All Wisdom,’ she said, giving The Lives Of The Founders its official epithet. ‘She wouldn’t explain why, and when I begged her to keep them she laughed at me and said she’d just throw them away.’
‘Did I laugh?’ Jennie asked. ‘I don’t remember laughing.’
Karen went on, ‘I put them all in an honoured place. And then—’ She stopped, and Al told her, ‘Go on, Karen. Tell us what happened.’
‘Yeah,’ Jennie said. ‘I can’t wait to hear it.’
‘You be quiet,’ Gloria ordered. A warning look from the SDA woman pushed her back in her seat.
Karen said, ‘Well, for a couple of nights I kept hearing crying. I’d hear it while I was sleeping and then I’d wake up and it would go away.’
The cop said, ‘Did you get the dream analysed?’
‘No. It wasn’t a dream. It had nothing to do with my dreams. It was someone crying in the house. I just kept hearing it. Then, one night, it happened again, and when I woke up I could still hear it. And when I went and looked, it was the Book. It was the Founders. They were crying because she’d tortured them.’ Her eyes, which she’d kept on Jennie the whole time, fell away.
‘What?’ Jennie said. ‘I tortured them? Are you out of your soul?’
Half crying, Karen said, ‘They told me—’
The SDA woman cut her short. ‘When did they tell you? Right then? In the room?’
Karen said, ‘No. No, it—when I went back to sleep. They talked to me in my sleep.’
‘And they said she had tortured them? Jennifer Mazdan?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘They thanked me. For rescuing them.’
Jennie said, ‘Rescuing them? I brought them to you. I asked you to take them because I didn’t want to destroy them.’
Gloria shouted, ‘She’s admitting it. She’s admitting it.’
To Karen Jennie said, ‘If I was having such a great time torturing them why would I give them up?’
Gloria said, ‘Because you couldn’t control them. You knew they’d contact us. You knew our loyalty was too strong for you. You and your helpers.’
‘So I went and gave the book to Karen D’arcy. Isn’t she one of the loyal ones?’
No one answered. A moment later the cop asked Jennie, ‘Do you deny these charges?’
‘I don’t deny that I gave away my copy of The Lives. And some other things. But that’s all. The rest of it, it’s just garbage.’
‘Why did you give away your copy
of The Lives?’
Jennie’s thoughts jammed with answers, excuses, declarations. Finally she sat back and said nothing.
‘Why did you give away The Lives?’ the cop repeated.
‘I wanted to.’
‘Why did you want to?’
Jennie stood up. ‘All this is supposed to lead up to a scan, right? Otherwise they’re just verbal accusations. And you can’t charge me with anything until the scan shows up positive, right? So let’s go.’ She looked at Al and laughed. ‘Let the record show the accused consented to have her configurations scanned.’ She laughed again.
The healer laughed as well. He untied the black rope from around his waist, then looked around the room. He slid over to the couch. With a crooked finger and a tilt of his head he gestured at Jackie Schoenmaker to come join him on the floor.
Jennie ignored them. ‘Where do we do it?’ she said.
The cop looked at her curiously. ‘Outside,’ she said. ‘The equipment’s in the van.’
‘Can I get my coat? And my shoes?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Rolled along by fury, Jennie marched into the bedroom and kicked off her slippers. She was pulling on her boots when the rage broke in her like the water surrounding a baby. A scan, she thought, and realised she’d resisted doing one for months. The doctor had suggested it, Karen (good old Karen), the clerk at the Oneiric Agency, even Maria at work. Each time, Jennie had pushed the idea from her mind. She realized now how scared she’d been. Scared not that they’d find something, but that they wouldn’t. Like the clerk who couldn’t find the elements of Jennie’s dream in the catalogue. Scared she’d fallen so far out of the pattern that nothing at all would show. A blanked out spirit.
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