Then he picked it up, flipping through it quickly. It seemed to be a manual on how to survive the Apocalypse. These were words of wisdom from Mormon Brethren to members of the Church, telling them that all would be well; that they had God's living oracles, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles to watch over them and advise them. All they needed to do was take of that advice, spiritual and practical, and whatever the future brought could be survived.
"If ye are prepared, ye need, not fear" was the hope—no, certainty—of these pages. "Be pure in heart, love many, be just, and stand in holy places. Maintain a year's supply. "
He flipped on through it. Why had Hotchkiss selected this book? Hurricanes, forest fires and floods? What did they have to do with Trinity?
And then there it was: a grainy photograph of a mushroom cloud, and the words beneath, identifying the place where it had been detonated.
Trinity, New Mexico.
He read no further. Book in hand he ran out into the lot, animals scattering in front of him, and got into the car. His call to Abernethy would have to wait. How the simple fact that Trinity was the birthplace of the bomb fitted into this story he didn't know, but perhaps Tesla would. And even if she didn't he'd have the satisfaction of bringing her the news. It was absurd, he knew, to be so suddenly pleased with himself, as though this information made some difference to things. The world was going to end (The Ride Is Over) yet having this small piece of the puzzle in his hands was enough to momentarily put the terror of that fact aside. He knew no greater pleasure than to be a bringer of news, a messenger, a Nuncio. It was the closest he'd ever got to understanding the word happy.
Even in the short time—no more than four or five minutes—that he'd spent at the Mall the Grove's stability had deteriorated further. Two streets that had been accessible on his way down from the Hill now no longer were. One had virtually disappeared entirely—the earth had simply opened up and guzzled it—the other was strewn with wreckage from two toppled houses. He found a third route that was still passable, and began up the Hill, the tremors in the ground becoming so violent that on occasion he could barely control the car. A few observers had appeared on the scene during his absence, in three unmarked helicopters, the largest of which was hovering directly over the Vance house, its passengers attempting to make, no doubt, an assessment of the situation. They must have guessed by now that this was no natural phenomenon. Perhaps they even knew the root cause. D'Amour had told Tesla the existence of the Iad was known to the highest of the high. If so, there should have been firepower ranged around the house hours before, instead of a few frightened cops. Had they not believed the evidence in their hands, the generals and the politicians? Were they too pragmatic to think that their empire could be put in jeopardy by something that belonged on the other side of dreams? He couldn't blame them. He wouldn't have lent that notion a moment's credibility seventy-two hours ago. He'd have judged it a nonsense: like the talk of God's living oracles in the book on the seat beside him, an overheated fantasy. If the observers stayed where they were, directly over the schism, they'd have a chance to change their minds. Seeing was believing. And see they would.
The gates of Coney Eye had been toppled; so had its perimeter wall. He left the car in front of the pile of rubble, and clutching the book climbed towards the house, upon the face of which something he took to be a cloud-shadow seemed to sit. The ructions had opened up the fissures in the driveway and he had to tread with care, his concentration befuddled by a distressing quality in the atmosphere around the house. The closer he got to the door the darker the shadow seemed to get. Though the sun was still beating down on the back of his head, and on Coney Eye's cake-in-the-rain facade, the whole scene was grimy, as though a layer of dirty varnish had been painted over everything. It made his head ache to see it; his sinuses pricked, his ears popped. More distressing than these minor discomforts was a palpable sense of dread that grew stronger in him with every step he took. His head started to fill up with sickening images, culled from his years in the newsrooms of a dozen papers, looking at photographs no editor, however squalid, would have put to the press. There were automobile wrecks, of course, and plane crashes—bodies in pieces that would never be reassembled. Inevitably, there were murder scenes. But it wasn't these that headed this assault. It was pictures of innocents, and the harm done to them. Babies and children, beaten, maimed, dumped out with the trash; the sick and the old brutalized; the retarded humiliated. So many cruelties, all filling up his head.
"The Iad," he heard Tesla say, and swung his eyes around in the direction of her voice. The air between them was thick, her face grainy, as though reproduced. Not real. None of it real. Pictures on a screen.
"It's the Iad coming," she said. "That's what you're feeling. You should get away from here. There's no use in your staying—"
"No," he said, "I've got...a message."
He was having difficulty holding on to that thought. The innocents kept appearing, one after the other, bearing every kind of wound.
"What message?" she said.
"Trinity."
"What about it?"
She was shouting, he realized, but still her voice was barely audible.
"You said Trinity, Grillo."
"Yes?"
"What about it?"
So many eyes, looking at him. He couldn't think past them; past their hurt and their powerlessness.
"Grillo!"
He focused his attention as best he could on the woman shouting his name in a whisper.
"Trinity, " she said again.
The book in his hand had the answer to her question, he knew, though the eyes, and grief in the eyes, kept on distracting him. Trinity. What was Trinity? He raised the book and gave it to her, but as she took it from him he remembered.
"The bomb," he said.
"What?"
"Trinity is where they exploded the first atomic bomb."
He saw a look of comprehension cross her face.
"You understand?" he said.
"Yes. Jesus! Yes!"
She didn't bother to open the book he'd brought, she just told him to get away, back towards the road. He listened as best he could but he knew there was another piece of information he needed to convey. Something almost as vital as Trinity; and as much about death. Try as he might he couldn't bring it to mind.
"Go on back," she told him again. "Out of this filth."
He nodded, knowing he was useless to her, and stumbled away through the dirty air, the sunlight brightening the further he got from the house, the images of the dead innocents no longer dominating his thoughts. As he turned the corner of the driveway, and came in sight of the Hill again, he remembered the information he'd failed to convey. Hotchkiss was dead; murdered; head crushed. Somebody or something had committed that murder, and they were still loose in the Grove. He had to go back and tell her; warn her. He waited a moment, to let the images the Iad's proximity had induced clear from his cortex. They didn't go entirely; he knew that the instant he went back towards the house they'd return with fresh intensity. The poisoned air that had brought them on was spreading, and had already caught up with him again. Before it befuddled him afresh he pulled out a pen he'd brought from the motel in case he'd needed to take notes. He'd brought a paper too, from the receptionist's desk, but the parade of cruelties was coming at him again and he feared losing the thought while finding the pad, so he simply scrawled the word on the back of his hand.
"Hotchk—" was as much as he could manage. Then his fingers lost the power to write, and his mind the power to hold anything but grief for dead innocents and the thought that he had to see Tesla again. Message and messenger one flesh, he turned about and stumbled back into the Iad's cloud of influence. But when he reached the place where the woman who shouted in whispers had been, she'd gone closer still to the source of these cruelties, where he doubted his sanity could survive to follow.