They entered down a ramp of wood set on a flight of stairs lit by torches in brackets on the walls. Workers were laying sheets of slate on one section of floor. Others chipped away at arches and portals; some applied mortar to cracks between the blocks of stones. Kanazuchi pushed his wheelbarrow into the central chamber of the church, unable to distinguish the high reaches of the walls rising above him in the dim light. Hut he could feel the cold, black sense of dread in the room.
He remembered drawings the priest at their monastery had shown him of European cathedrals and thought they must feel similar to this place; cold and threatening, designed to frighten and browbeat its worshipers. In his land, churches were gentle buildings, tied to the land around them, built to inspire harmony and inner peace. He wondered again what sort of god they followed in these Western countries that needed so badly to be feared.
In his vision, Kanazuchi had been shown a chamber buried below the main hall of the tower, a room where he had seen the Chinese men working. Perhaps it lay somewhere beneath where he was standing now; the debris behind the church could have come from such an excavation. If the room did exist, he needed time to search out its entrance.
A row of rectangular gaps in the walls on either side of the hall awaited windows, but stained glass had been installed in one opening; a round window directly above the rear doors was illuminated by a bright beam of moonlight that projected the image in the glass onto the black stone floor:
A perfect red circle of light, pierced by three jagged bolts of lightning.
He noticed the floor sloped in a gentle concavity toward its center, where this red circle projected. Kneeling to look closer, he saw that narrow gutters had been carved in the stone throughout the room, leading down to a network of connecting grills in the lowest point of this subtle basin. A cool wind blew up through the grillwork from below.
As Kanazuchi reached to examine the grills, bells in the tower above him began to ring, creating a deafening din inside the building. At the first strokes, the workers around him immediately stopped what they were doing, laid down their tools, and moved toward the front of the cathedral. Kanazuchi followed, mixing in with the workers as they funneled through the open doorway. He hid himself in their midst, a hundred of them, as they massed silently before the entrance; he spread his senses into the crowd around him and realized with a jolt: Only one mind at work here. No thoughts, no noise, no inner voices. One mind directing all these bodies.
Foremen dressed in black appeared on either side, armed with rifles. Looking ahead, Kanazuchi saw another equally sized group of white shirts approaching from the west: the next shift. More brown, black, and yellow faces than white, he noticed; the same as those around him.
The two work details moved past each other, exchanging only vacant smiles. The new group entered the church and the sounds of methodical labor resumed. Kanazuchi's shift marched half a mile west, splintered into smaller groups, and entered three low buildings; workers' residences. He obediently trailed the ones before him into their dormitory under the watchful eye of stationed armed guards; none paid him any attention.
Rows of double bunks lined the room's interior, accommodations for forty, both men and women. Exhausted workers dropped into the first bunk they came to; many fell asleep instantly.
Kanazuchi climbed into an upper bunk. The building closely watched from every side by guards. No other options; with the wound on his back still healing his body needed rest: He would sleep for a while.
The Reverend A. Glorious Day arrived an hour late for dinner. By then the actors, as was their custom, had long since consumed every edible substance placed within arm's reach. After passing what remained of the afternoon quietly at their hotel— the printed rules stated no one from outside the community could wander around town without an escort and none had been offered—the Penultimate Players had been summoned precisely at eight o'clock and led straight to the Reverend's private residence.
The House of Hope, announced the sign outside the large adobe hacienda, the most elegant of the buildings lining Main Street. Its dining room, like the rest of the quarters they caught a glimpse of on their way in, sported an odd melange of lavish decorative styles—plush Victorian chairs, light Norwegian hutches, Persian carpets, oriental statuary—as if a dozen millionaire's households had been scrambled and redistributed.
Silent, cheerful, and attentive white shirts served a dinner of satisfying fare spiced with a Mexican accent. At its conclusion, Rymer seized the floor and proposed a toast with the fine red wine they were drinking—although alcohol was forbidden in The New City, according to their fliers, the House of Hope apparently had a separate set of rules. Rymer spent the last live minutes of his oratory congratulating his own great good sense on having brought the Players to this obviously enlightened outpost of civilization.
"Bravo, Mr. Rymer; your graciousness is exceeded only by your epic loquacity."
They turned. Reverend Day stood in the open doorway; he'd been there throughout Bendigo's lengthy testimonial, but no one in the company had seen or heard him enter. Bendigo bowed deeply in the Reverend's direction, almost certain that he had been complimented.
"Now you really must explain for me," the Reverend went on, "how ever did you arrive at such a fascinating name for your little troupe?"
"Because if I do say so myself," came Rymer's reply, screwing himself up to his full sixty-seven inches, "we pride ourselves on providing our audiences with the penultimate in theatrical experience."
"Is that so?" said the Reverend, lowering into his seat; Eileen to his right, Bendigo to his left, then Jacob Stern. "Are you by any chance aware that the definition of penultimate is 'next to the last'?"
The self-satisfied grin on Rymer's face froze like a flower in a hail of sleet; his brain locked to a dead stop.
This one will be easier, realized Day, than taking candy from a dead baby.
Eileen appreciated the Reverend's jab, but as he sat down beside her and she got a first good look at him, the breath caught in her throat.
Her first thought: This man is dying.
The Reverend moved like an insect, stiff and mechanical, as if a steel rod had assumed the place of his spine. A dark suit hung on his thin body like limp masted sails. A spiny hump rounded his left shoulder and his left leg appeared to have withered. His hands were long and slender, loosely limbed, and covered with coarse black hair; they looked like the hands of an ape. The man's face appeared skeletaclass="underline" a high domed forehead rising above deep-set luminous green eyes,' cheeks collapsing above a white bony jawline. Black and gray tangles of lank hair fell from the crown of his head to his shoulders. Lumpish blood vessels coiled around the sides of his forehead, pulsating dimly. Bright, livid scars crisscrossed his stark marbled skin, as if he'd been cut apart and inexpertly reassembled.
I know this face, she said to herself. I've seen it before; I don't know where or why, but God knows it's not one you'd soon forget. She thought of bringing it up, but strong instinct warned her not to speak to him.
The Reverend made no attempt at introductions; he knew the names that were important to him, everyone quickly figured out who he was, and the actors all lost their voices the instant he appeared. His voice oozed with a deep southern accent—or was there a hint of British underneath?