“I wish I could just laugh at that,” I said, and kissed him on the cheek.
There was a phone in the back, between the men’s and women’s toilets. I found myself looking around to make sure no one was nearby, then realized how meaningless that was. They could be following me, they could have microphones everywhere, including this phone line, they could masquerade as anybody. I wasn’t even sure who “they” were. The government? Devoted Ones? Malignant Ones? It seemed to me that we could hope for two things. If the government wanted to get rid of us they could do so at any time, whatever systems Alison had set up. So probably they did not take us seriously. And as for the Bright Beings, well, I had to hope that Channing couldn’t bring in any Malignant Ones without confusing their Benign Friends. And that the Benign Ones would not directly try to harm us. Against their nature. I just prayed to all of my guardians that they wouldn’t try to help us, the way they’d tried to help Joan.
When I announced myself to Alison’s secretary she told me, “Oh, Ms Pierson. Thank you for calling. Ms Birkett has been trying to reach you.”
“Ellen,” Alison said when she came on the line. “You’ve heard the news.”
“No,” I said. “No. What news?”
“Timmerman’s ready to go public. He’s gotten permission to do an enactment in honour of Rebecca Rainbow inside the New York Stock Exchange. With a promise of live network television. This is where he makes his charges public, Ellen. I’m convinced of it.”
I said, “And this is where they destroy him.”
“What?”
“I know what they’re going to do,” I said. “I know exactly what they’re going to do. I just don’t know what the goddamn hell we can do to stop them.”
6
Standing in the visitors’ gallery above the trading floor, looking down through the thick glass, I was struck most by how crowded the stock market was. Not just the people, some of whom were frantically making deals and filling quotas in the final minutes before Timmerman and his entourage would enter, others of whom had given up all thought of business as they milled around, telling jokes, pounding drums covered in bills, eating sandwiches, or just standing alone or in groups, looking up towards Rebecca Rainbow’s body, suspended in her glass coffin above the business floor, or else towards the dark red bell in its glass cage, also high above the floor against the back wall. Beyond the dense and nervous crowd, equipment filled the room—clusters of phones on poles or in banks, spiritual supply posts where traders could find flash powder, paper enactment robes, representation dolls and other SDA-approved paraphernalia for last-minute help on some important deal, and especially the trading posts themselves.
There was something very animal-like about the trading posts. In the centre of each stood a huge dark box, painted over with spirit emblems for prosperity and containing the computer circuitry that linked all the deals. Thick poles containing cables rose from these boxes to join a maze of latticework just below the gold-embossed ceiling. Artbirds hung on thin wires from the latticework, a whole flock of the life-like bright birds, their voice circuits set for songs of wealth and harmony. Timmerman had wanted to set loose genuine pigeons so that Rainbow might speak through them but, according to Alison’s contacts, the SDA refused to disrupt the calculated songs of the artbirds.
From the central cable box, each trading post opened out in a figure eight of counterspace where the actual work got done. The counters too were packed with people and equipment. Above the counters double banks of video screens showed the various transactions. Smaller video monitors hung just over the heads of the crowd on the ends of metal poles which extended out and downwards from the larger videos. The poles looked like legs, giving the dozen or so trading posts the appearance of giant insects swarming over the floor, about to attack the humans, small and vulnerable beneath them.
Above it all, in the visitors’ gallery, squeezed in among the crowds swarming to watch Alexander Timmerman put on a show, I felt alone with myself despite the press of people. I’d brought my own special protection, a whole bag full of power objects given to me by Annie-O, who’d met me the day before in the Wild Refuge of Inner Wood Park at the northern tip of Manhattan. The bag was large—a leather satchel—and heavy from a group of rocks Annie had included. I held it against my chest while the room filled up behind me.
I thought of Alison, constantly on the phone, trying for the past three days to reach somebody, anyone who would listen to us and could somehow do something to stop what was going to happen. I thought of our efforts to reach Timmerman himself and the information from his staff that he had gone deep travelling and no one could bring him out of his meditations until the day of the enactment. And the clear message that they could hardly spare any time for absurd conspiracy theories of sabotaged enactments and manipulated Devoted Ones. So now I was here, by myself, with Alison still at her office, still trying to stop it any way she could, and I just knew she wouldn’t succeed, Timmerman would march or dance confidently into the trap. And I found myself just watching, a spectator like everyone around me.
Maybe my detachment came from all the waiting, with Timmerman not yet in the building and nothing happening other than a few exchange workers putting on masks or enactment robes over their colour-coded jackets. Or maybe it was my relief that I’d gotten through the moment I’d dreaded most of all—meeting Paul. Halfway down Broad Street on my way to the visitors’ entrance, I’d almost turned back when I’d realized I would have to take an elevator, that there was no way I could talk the tourist guides into unlocking the emergency stairs.
In the lobby as well, I’d just stood there, with my official visitor’s pass crunched in my hand, wondering what the point of my watching was if I couldn’t do anything, and why didn’t I just go home, and what would Alison say if I couldn’t face it. Finally, I told myself it was only the third floor, it wouldn’t take more than ten seconds. I waited until the car had filled up, then slipped in before the door closed.
The last time I’d ridden in an elevator, the day I’d decided that I would keep healthier if I just took the stairs everywhere, the building super—it was Harry’s apartment building, actually—had let the husk—Paul’s husk—run down. The nylon “hair” had mostly fallen off, the eye dots had rubbed out and kids had covered the pole itself with their own gang enactment signs. I remember how I’d wanted to trap that goddamn super in the elevator and bang his head against the door and scream at him, “That’s my cousin!” Instead, I’d just stopped riding in elevators.
Now, when I saw the polished steel, the actual jewels used for eyes, what looked like real human hair, I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or more enraged. Instead, I looked away, unable to let him see me. And then it was over and I was upstairs by the lobby outside the visitors’ gallery, and I didn’t have to worry about it again until the time came to go down.
Though the thick glass of the gallery made it impossible to actually hear anything down on the floor, the operators of the Exchange had set up loudspeakers for us to hear the enactment and Timmerman’s speech. Now someone had thrown the switch on the mikes, for suddenly a boom of noise filled the narrow corridor, people shouting or running, telephones ringing, prayer wheels spinning, drums with the sloppy rhythms of weekend spirit-travellers, strange popping noises I couldn’t identify…Several people in the gallery screamed, others held their ears. For me, it came like an alarm waking me from a kind of drugged state. Setting down the bag, I pressed my hands against the window, making sure no one could get between me and a clear view.