“He’s been my advisor,” added Layton.
They went out together, across the street and into the auditorium. As they came along the aisle, Father Bundren raised his black-clad arm to call them to him. Manco was there, too, in beaded buckskin shirt and headband. Thunstone and Sharon took seats next to them, while Layton and Kyoki found places directly behind. A moment later, Shimada appeared and sat behind in his turn. Again Thunstone peered this way and that among the occupants of the auditorium, in search of Thome or Grizel Fian or both, and again he found neither.
“No, Thome is not here,” said Kyoki behind Thunstone, as though he had read Thunstone’s thoughts. “I do not know where he is, but he is not here.”
“Shinto, I suppose,” said Thunstone.
“Yes, Shinto helps me to know.”
“And Grizel Fian?”
“She is not here, either. I read her to be in her house, her big house. And she is not very happy there.”
Voices died down as Lee Pitt appeared on stage and advanced to the lectern. He adjusted the microphone, and spoke into it.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “In a program such as ours, now and then comes a terrible moment when the chairman makes a speech. This is that terrible moment.” A murmur of laughter, and he waved it away. “I have been directed to say something about the importance of fantasy in the literature of America.”
He arranged a paper on the lectern and studied it for a moment.
“Fantasy,” he repeated. “Maybe we’d better start by defining the term. We could go along with a dictionary into which I looked before I came here to speak, where it says that fantasy is imagination, is the paying of attention to supernatural matters. All right then, fantasy has been with us from the very first known writings of mankind. The Odyssey, says Robert Graves, is the oldest novel in the history of literature, though it may be that Gilgamesh is an older one. In either case, fantasy is there, complete with witches, battles with monsters, curses, ventures to the very brink of hell itself. Good fantasy, too, because when we read those books the happenings seem real to us.”
He paused a moment. Then:
“Here as Americans, we began early. The witchcraft reports of Cotton Mather can be a good place to start. When we became our own nation, there was fantasy with Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne—on ahead to Mark Twain, who spent his boyhood on a marvelconscious frontier and who at the end of his career wrote The Mysterious Stranger; with a final chapter that will make your hair stand up and give you nightmares. And in the twentieth century, Scott Fitzgerald wrote fantasy, and so did William Faulkner, and so do writers today. Read the bestseller lists, and you’ll find their works named there.”
Somebody near Thunstone muttered about that, Pitt spoke on, mentioning distinguished authors past and present. “Dreams,” he said, “Dreams, perhaps you call these things, as Mercutio does in Romeo and Juliet, 'Which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy.’ Yet Charles Dickens didn’t disdain to dream, and wrote A Christmas Carol Nor did H. G, Wells, with his strange stories, unbelievably believable. Fantastic dreams become wakeaday facts, As facts they become commonplaces, and we split the atom and fly to the moon and cure the plagues we thought were incurable. We mustn’t dismiss dreams as idle, our own dreams or the dreams of others. Because dreams keep coming true.”
He came to a close. “This afternoon, at three o’clock, we’ll hear Professor Tashiro Shimada,” he said. “Whatever he may tell us, I predict it will be interesting* And tonight after dinner, at eight o’clock, our speaker will be John Thunstone, about whose accomplishments I could talk forever. But I’m through up here now.”
There was loud applause, and everyone rose and babbled together. Yet again Thunstone looked here and there for a sign of Grizel Fian or Rowley Thome, If they were present, they contrived to be invisible.
He and Sharon went along the aisle and Reuben Manco and Father Bundren came behind them, and back of them Shimada and Kyoki and Layton.
“I’d advise that we should stay together,” said Father Bundren. “Without pretending to any extrasensory perception, I feel that our enemies are growing fairly desperate, and they’ll try some desperate move.”
“That’s true talk,” approved Manco, “Where shall we go?”
“Why not to my room?” offered Thunstone. “We can have some lunch sent up, and consider whatever had better be considered.”
“And Layton and I will go to my quarters,” said Kyoki from behind.
He and Layton headed across the campus. The other party went to the Inn and to the elevator, Thunstone thought that they moved as a purposeful escort to Sharon, and was glad for this sturdy companionship. In his room, he gave Sharon the most comfortable chair and put Father Bundren in the other. Manco sat on the floor in a comer, his legs crossed. Thunstone and Shimada sat together on the bed. Thunstone kept his cane on the spread beside him.
“We seem to have organized ourselves as some sort of brain trust,” said Father Bundren. “I hope we qualify. What first?”
“Smoke first,” declared Manco, fetching out his stone elephant pipe. “Ritual smoke. Indians always start councils with that.”
Thunstone handed him a pouch. Manco zipped it open and sniffed thoughtfully.
“This will be good,” he announced. “Kinnickinnick, yuh, and bark of red willow in with the tobacco. Strong medicine.”
“It was mixed for me by my friend Long Spear,” Thunstone told him. “He’s of the Tsichah tribe, and he’s a chief and a medicine man, like you.”
“Strong medicine,” said Manco again, and carefully filled the pipe. From his pocket he brought a wooden match, snapped it afire on his thumbnail, and kindled the mixture in the bowl of the pipe. He drew a lungful of the smoke and blew it out in a blue cloud. Then he leaned to hand the pipe to Sharon.
“You too,” he said. “For strength, for safety.”
Sharon put the stem between her red lips, inhaled diffidently, and blew out her own cloud. She passed the pipe to Thunstone on the bed. He smoked in turn and handed the thing on to Shimada, who followed suit and gave the pipe to Father Bundren. The priest blew smoke and returned the pipe to Manco.
“Now,” said Manco, “pray to your gods, all of you.”
Again he emitted clouds, to the north, the west, the south, the east, and up and finally down. The six directions, Thunstone recognized, each with its own sacred significance. Sitting silently as Manco accomplished his ritual, Thunstone said a prayer deep within himself. Shimada and Father Bundren held their heads low; they must have been praying, too. And Sharon bowed and clasped her hands devoutly. Quiet hung in the room, for about ten seconds.
At last Manco laid his pipe aside and looked around at them. “We are ready now,” he said, in the deep voice that Indians use for formal pronouncements.
“Could we be ready for lunch, perhaps?” asked Thunstone. “What would you like?”
“I leave the ordering to you,” said Shimada. “For myself, I do not feel that I require much just now.”
“Nor do I,” said Sharon. “Nor I,” added Father Bundren. And Manco lifted a brown hand, as though in endorsement.
“I would be glad for just a sandwich,” said Sharon. Thunstone took the telephone and called room service. He ordered ham and cheese sandwiches and a pot of coffee. While they waited, they talked of what would happen, of what might possibly happen.
“When I speak this afternoon, I mean to be frank about the situation here,” declared Shimada. “Maybe I won’t name names, but I’ll go into interesting details.” He smiled. “Embarrassing details, perhaps. To bring them more into the open. You will be enchanted with what I say, I promise you. Yes, that much of a promise, at least.”
“I’m always enchanted with what you say,” said Father Bundren, “just as, so far, I’m not enchanted with what Rowley Thome and Grizel Fian may say.”
They looked at each other, all around the room. Thunstone spo
ke.
“It’s up to us to come to a practical solution of what seems to be a downright unknown situation,” he said. “Be a brain trust, as Father Bundren puts it. Work together as a unit, for mutual defense and offense. Find out what they’ll try next, and head them back.”
“They hate us,” said Sharon softly.
“Hate is an active principle with them,” nodded Father Bundren. “They not only hate us, they hate all humanity— they hate each other, they hate themselves. Here I’m at a disadvantage. As a priest, it’s up to me to love all humanity, love every living soul. Can love be stronger than hate?”
“I would say no to that,” spoke up Manco from where he squatted. “Hate doesn’t owe anything to anybody.”
A knock at the door, and Thunstone opened it. A waiter wheeled in a cart with a great tray of sandwiches, a coffee pot and cups. Thunstone paid him and gave him a tip, and they sat down and ate and talked.
“You have the right of it,” said Shimada to Thunstone. “We must come to a plan of campaign here, and carry it out.”
“It’s our duty,” said Father Bundren. “Somebody once said, duty is the most sublime word in the language.”
“Wasn’t that Robert E. Lee?” asked Sharon.
“Lee was a soldier, and duty was always there to be performed,” said Father Bundren.
Manco, cross-legged in his comer, bit into a sandwich and sipped coffee. “Coleridge had a different view of duty. He felt that duty was imposed on all of us from childhood, by parents and teachers. And duty, he said, is a command, and every command is in the nature of an offense. Don’t stare at me like that. I sit here wearing Indian beads and braids, but I did graduate from Dartmouth. They even gave me a Phi Beta Kappa key.”
“Coleridge,” Thunstone repeated. “He seems to have known the supernatural on close terms. Look at the fear in ‘The Ancient Mariner,’ in ‘Christabel,’ in ‘Kubla Khan,’ which he never finished. Which begins as a rhapsody and ends in fear.”
“ ‘Beware, beware,’ ” quoted Father Bundren. “ ‘Close your eyes in holy dread.’ But we aren’t holding a literary seminar just now. We’ve got to settle matters with Rowley Thome and Grizel Fian.”
“Exactly,” said Manco into his coffee cup.
The telephone rang. Thunstone picked it up. “Yes?” he said.
“Mr. Thunstone,” came the taut voice of Grizel Fian. “I want to talk to you Maybe come to whatever terms you want to make.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m here at the Inn, I’ve taken a room. Number 408, on the floor above you. Will you come up? Are you afraid to come up?”
“Not in the least,” he said. “I’ll come there.”
Rising, he picked up his cane. “Will you excuse me for a minute or so?” he asked, “Go on with your council, I’ll concur in anything you decide.”
“Where are you going?” Sharon asked him, “Be careful, please be careful.”
“Naturally,” he said and went out. He sought the stairs and mounted a flight to the corridor above. Almost at once he saw the number 408 on a door, and knocked. Grizel Fian opened it. She wore red-brown slacks and top, with a deeply scooped neckline to show the upper rises of those breasts of which she was so manifestly proud. She gazed at him with wide-drawn eyes, with a mouth that quivered.
“Come in,” she said huskily.
He entered the room, looked in all comers of it. He crossed to the bathroom door, and looked to see that it was empty. He went to the closet and looked into it, too.
“No,” she said, “we’re all alone here.”
“Forgive me, but I had to be sure,” he said, with the slightest of smiles.
She sat in a chair. He sat in another, his cane in his hand.
“Suppose,” she said, “that I made a virtue of necessity and ran up the white flag?”
“That would be better than running up a black one.”
She fluttered her wide, bright eyes. “You’re being witty, Mr. Thunstone. Let’s get down to the reason I asked you to come.”
“I’m waiting,” he said easily.
She made a trembling gesture, palms outward. “A white flag, I said. I asked you to come and hear me say that. I want to quit.”
“I’ve heard someone else say that.”
“You mean Exum Layton. He did quit my organization, didn’t he? And is he happy about it?”
“More or less, it seems,” said Thunstone.
“All right, all right. What if I were to do the same? What if I disbanded the worship I’ve conducted here? Gave it up? Confessed I was wrong—”
“And what might Rowley Thome think about that?” She tossed her head. Her hair stirred as if blown in a breeze.
“Rowley Thome is here because I could call him here,” she said. “Call him out of the strange land where he was a prisoner. I could help you dispose of him again.”
“Very likely you could, if you mean what you say.”
Her face clamped fiercely into deep lines. “You think I’m lying,” she accused.
Thunstone’s smile grew wide. “I’m afflicted to say, that’s just what I think.”
She was silent then, her eyes as bright and hard as jewels. At last:
“They say you’re a brave man,” she said between clenched teeth. “Is it brave to insult a woman?”
“I make a virtue of necessity, too,” said Thunstone. “I have something to do in this town and on this campus, and I’ve learned to smell a trap set for me. You say that I insult you because I don’t believe you, but I’d be a damned fool if I did believe you.”
“All right, it’s war again!” she half screamed at him. “Now you do tell the truth,” he smiled, still more widely. She sprang from her chair, flung her arms out, and began to babble what must have been a curse, in a language Thunstone did not know. He half drew his silver blade. The hilt sang in his hand. Grizel Fian walked across the floor, then swung around to glare at him.
“Get out!” she spat.
He rose and bowed. “I’ll be only too glad to.”
He went out at the door and closed it carefully behind him. He could hear her furious voice, but could not make out the words. Back he went and down the stairs and again to his own room. The others looked up at him as he entered.
“Well, now what?” demanded Manco.
“I was talking to Grizel Fian. She said she wanted to quit her devil worship and be on our side. Help us defeat Rowley Thome.”
“From what I know of her so far, I’d say she was lying,” said Sharon, speaking strongly for the first time since they had come together that morning. “She was trying to trick you.”
“I felt that I had to say that very thing to her,” said Thunstone. “And it made her angry. She said some kind of curse on me and told me to get out. So I got out and came back here. You see, they’re still very much at war with us. War—she used that word to me.”
“Yuh, ” boomed out Manco. “War. But I come from a people good at all kinds of war. Many times, we win our wars.”
“We came to a sort of decision, and we hope you’ll be with us on it,” Father Bundren said to Thunstone. “We stay together all the time and try to force them into the open. Then we do our own best to bring the whole matter to a close, this very night.”
“Somehow,” said Manco, half to himself.
“When I speak in a little while, I will make them a challenge,” said Shimada. “I will name names. I will say what they have in mind as I see it. I would like to talk to young Oishi Kyoki, but he wanted to spend the morning in meditation.”
“Second sight?” asked Sharon.
“Second sight, if you will. He would try to see and hear at a distance.”
“You’ll say all those things when you speak today,” said Thunstone to Shimada.
“And after me, you speak tonight,” said Shimada. “You will follow up, you will close in on them. Bring them to what will be the end of this struggle.”
Thunstone gazed at him for a moment, wonder
ing how he would manage to do that. Finally he said, “All right. I’m with you. I said I’d be with you, and I meant it.”
Shimada looked at the watch on his wrist. It was square and brilliantly jeweled, on a broad gold band figured in green.
“It comes to the time when I must go and say what I will say,” he said. “I would be glad if all of you came to hear.”
“That’s exactly what we intend to do,” Father Bundren assured him. “We’ll follow you over to that auditorium.”
XII
They walked out together, crossed the street, and headed for the auditorium. Shimada moved nimbly at the head of their group. Next came Thunstone and Sharon, her hand holding his arm confidently while his other hand carried his cane. At the rear were Father Bundren and Manco, talking as though to some good purpose. Thunstone glanced from one to another of his comrades, and to the third. These were three wise men, each strong and confident in his special conviction, the best allies he could hope for.
Inside the auditorium, again a great, jabbering throng of people. The speeches were drawing interested crowds. Lee Pitt met Shimada and they headed for the stage entrance. The others sat in a row together, Thunstone, then Sharon, then Father Bundren, then Manco. Thunstone gazed around him at the audience. Well back in it sat Grizel Fian, in her bright red dress.
“She’s here,” he reported, “but not Rowley Thome.”
“Who can tell that?” asked Manco from beyond Father Bundren. “Maybe he’s here. Maybe he can be unseen.”
“I somehow think I’d know,” said Thunstone.
Up on the stage, Pitt was introducing Shimada. Shimada came to the lectern. His teeth and his spectacles shone. He made a slight, swift bow.
“How gratifying to me that so many have come to hear what I may say,” he began. “Gratifying and flattering. I can’t truly promise that all of you will like what I am going to tell you, but I think that all of you will find things of interest in it.”
Again a bow.
“In Japan these days, especially in our cities, you might feel that we Japanese are like you Westerners,” he went on. “Especially our young people, our modem opposite numbers of your students here at Buford State University. Those young people over there like to wear jeans and T-shirts with figures and slogans. They listen to rock and roll music, and they rock and roll with it. They play video games, play them well. They eat hamburgers and hot dogs—lots of those. Eat them gladly. In Japan, we busily manufacture computers and automobiles and sell them here in America. Yes, and television sets—I would conjecture that, among you who have television, your sets are made in Japan for the most part. Here and there in our cities, you might feel that you were in San Francisco or Chicago.”
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