One of the reporters looked up in perplexity. "According to this, Dr. Lautermilch, you have a degree in physics and a doctorate in mechanical engineering. I thought you were some kind of psychic?"
Lautermilch smiled gently. "I am both, you see. I am a psychic scientist. That's why the orthodox scientists can't stand me, the same as with Velikovsky. The degrees are genuine. And so am I."
Ash from violent volcanic eruptions is hurled into the upper air, where it lingers and, it is thought, reflects back some of the heat of the sun. In the year 1815 the volcano Tambora had such an eruption. In the following year, crops failed to ripen in much of Western Europe, and in the United States the summer was so cold that the year was called Eighteen-Hundred-and-Froze-to-Death.
Monday, December 21st. 2:15 PM.
Danny Deere leaned forward and banged on the window. "Roll it down, Joel! Roll the goddam window down!"
The driver nodded to show he had understood, and reached back to press the partition button. "Yes, Danny?"
"Keep your eyes open now!"
Joel grinned patiently. "I don't have to, Danny," he said. "I can hear 'em."
Danny spluttered in indignation that his driver could hear something he could not hear, and then pressed his own button to roll down all the car's outside windows at once. It was true. It was only a confused shouting at first, but the rhythm was unmistakable, and as the car slowed for a light on Wilshire Boulevard the words came clear: "Let the world know—IT'S OVER!" In a moment Danny could see them, at least thirty people in a double row in front of the Los Angeles County Art Museum, their shirts bright red or orange, their faces black, doing the side-to-side shuffle exactly as he had rehearsed them.
He regarded them silently as they waited for the light to change, and then conceded, "Not too bad. Joel! Up on the corner, see her?"
"I see her, Danny." Opposite the May Company store there was a tall, fair-haired girl in camouflage-streaked orange denims, moving from car to car among the traffic waiting on the cross street. Her face was made up jet black, lips and all. Joel de Lawrence eased the limo to the curb just past the intersection. The girl saw Danny and came gravely over, pausing to do the shuffle on the way. She handed in the collection can and received an empty one from Danny in return. He grunted acknowledgement to her, and as the car moved off toward the next solicitor he held the can to his ear and shook it gently. "Not too bad," he said again; by the weight it was more than half full, and the muted sound of the money inside suggested that there were bills to cushion the silver. There were three of the collectors stationed along the block across from the museum, and Danny gave each of them a fresh collection can in exchange for a partly filled one. "Make a U-turn, Joel," he ordered.
"Danny, if there's a cop anywhere around—"
"Make a U-turn, Joel!" He watched out the window as Joel obeyed. No cops. They made the U-turn successfully, but as they glided to a stop before the plump young man in blackface at the park entrance Danny saw that his hands were empty.
"It isn't my fault, Danny," he began at once. "Some guys ripped me off. "
Danny regarded him with distaste, then opened the door. "Get in," he barked. "Joel, get on over to the ashram."
"They were heavy guys, Danny," the young man said apprehensively. "I think they had a gun."
"You think? You didn't see it?"
"I didn't argue with them, Danny! 'Hand it over,' they said, so I did. I didn't sign up for any shit like this."
"Shut up," Danny said, staring out the window as Joel made a right turn, heading for Melrose. "What's your name?"
"Buck. Buck Swayne. Listen, there wasn't much in the can anyway. Nobody goes into the park from there, and if they do they don't see the main bunch first. If I had a corner with a light and a lot of traffic—"
"Will you shut up?" Danny screamed. "I want to think."
It was the first time any of the collectors had had his money taken away from him, and it was not a precedent Danny Deere wanted to see followed. Buck was able to give a pretty good description of the two men—youngish but not really young; dangerous-looking. It didn't sound like kids, dopers, or drifters. It didn't sound good at all. It didn't even sound sensible, and Danny sat glowering to himself, not speaking, all the way down Wilshire Boulevard to the side street with the ashram.
The ashram had been dressed up considerably since he had seen it last. It was a narrow storefront, between a massage parlor and a plumbing supply wholesaler, but it stood out even against the psychedelic paint of the massage parlor. The windows were painted black, with scarlet and gold lettering:
The True Believers of JUPITER FULGARIS
A small loudspeaker played wailing sitar music from the record player inside. Danny appraised it swiftly as he got out of the car, nodded at the fund collector to follow and charged into the store. "Where's Siroca?" he demanded of that black fellow, Robinson.
"He ain't here right now, Mr. Deere."
"Then where the hell is he?"
Robinson folded his hands on his belly and rocked back. "Well, Mr. Deere, he's been trying to score some, uh, some tradin' goods for the troops. "
"Trading goods? What's trading goods?"
"The good mellow stuff, Mr. Deere. Smokin' weed."
"Oh, for God's sake," Danny said, but it was not an objection. Or not exactly. He was calculating in his mind the risk involved in steering Robinson to his caretakers, who certainly had plenty to sell. It was not something Danny Deere was anxious to do; he had stayed completely away from drug dealing. "Where's he gone for it?" he asked.
"Well, Mr. Deere," said Robinson, "see, I don't exactly know. He called his lady in Puerto Rico to see did she score, but she didn't. He was talking about goin' with her when she comes back west. Supposed to be some great stuff on the islands. "
"Islands?" Danny exploded. "Jesus, you guys take the cake! Well, listen, when he gets back, you tell him I want this guy fired. Right now!"
"Buck? Buck's one of our best men, Danny," Robinson said mildly. "I don't think we ought to fire him."
"Then stick him in with the main bunch. He ain't fit to be trusted with the money. Get one of the big guys out with the cans."
Robinson shook his head slowly. "I don't think that would work out real well, Danny," he observed. "The little girls and the, uh, the inoffensive kind of looking guys like Buck here, they're the ones that bring in the money."
Danny stared at him, frustrated. Then he stared around the room. "Just get him off the collections," he grumbled. "What's that stuff?" He was looking at the black drapes that draped the entire room that comprised the front half of the store. A plywood partition divided it from the private section in back, where the money was counted and the actual members of the group gathered for assignments.
"That's muslin," Robinson said comfortably. "We got it for a dollar and a quarter a yard and my daughter dyed it with Tintex."
Danny nodded. "All right, but you don't want all black. Get some bright red in there, and what the fuck is that?" He was scowling at a stand with a huge Chinese vase on it, draped in what looked like a white bedsheet.
"Dennis found the vase. It's got a big crack in it, is why we got the sheet around it. It's for like love offerings. We been getting fifteen, twenty dollars a—a week. "
Danny looked at him suspiciously, then looked around the room. "I got some stuff for you. Joel! Go get the stuff out of the trunk. Over there," he decided, pointing at a space on the rear partition next to the overlapping section of drapery that hid the door to the rear room. "I want you to hang one of these posters Joel's bringing in. It's actually from a movie, shows Los Angeles falling down, and I want you to keep a big candle burning in front of it all the time. No, wait. A little candle, and I want you to have a lot of little candles that people can buy and light up. And I've got a whole bunch of posters, so you can sell them to anybody wants to buy one. Five dollars apiece. Maybe ten. And we've got some books about disasters, and I want you to sell them, too. I got the prices all covered up with stickers, and we'll sell them at a special price. You got a lot of people coming in?"