“Yeah,” Charley grunted. “Jesus, Tom. You had no business. That was crazy, what you did. Walking in like that. Mujer, he might have put the spike right through you and Stidge both. You know that?”
“I would not let another life be taken. The Lord is the only judge.”
“You had no call messing in. It wasn’t your place to decide things here. It was crazy, Tom. Doing what you did just then. Okay? That’s what I call it, crazy. It wasn’t your place at all. Now get the hell out of here until we’re finished. Go on, get out.”
“Okay,” Tom said. He went out. But he looked back through the window, just long enough to see Charley lift the laser bracelet on his wrist and aim a shaft of fiery light at the terrified farmboy cowering against the wall. The boy fell, most likely dead before he hit the ground. Tom winced and muttered a prayer. A little while later Charley came out of the house. “I saw that,” Tom said. “How could you do that? I don’t make sense out of it. You got angry when Stidge killed the man and the woman. And then you yourself—”
Charley spat. “Once there’s killing, there got to be more killing. Kill the parents, you better kill the son too, or he’ll track you down no matter where you go. The other two boys got away, and I hope to hell they didn’t see our faces.” Then, shaking his head, he said, “What’s the matter? I told you not to stick around. You had to look, didn’t you? Well, so you saw. You think I’m a goddamn saint, Tom?” He laughed. “This ain’t no time for being a saint. Come on, now. Come on. Tell me some more about the Eye People. You really see all this shit, don’t you? Like it’s really real to you. You’re amazing, you crazy son of a bitch. Tell me. Tell me what you see.”
4
Ferguson said to April Cranshaw, “You’re honest to God not making all this up? The sky full of light? The flying jellyfish beings? Hey, hey, do me a favor and own up to it. It’s all just a big joke, right? Right?”
“Ed,” she said reproachfully, as if he had just peed on her party dress. “Stop trying to do that to me, Ed. I’m going to walk away from you if you keep messing with my head. Be nice, Ed.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be nice.”
The bastards were all in a sweat over this stuff. Talked of almost nothing else. First thing in the morning when you went in for your pick, they wanted to know about your dreams. Then they had meetings all afternoon. People being summoned for special testing, questioning, whatnot.
Not him. Never him. He didn’t get the dreams, not ever. That puzzled them. Puzzled him, too. Made him wonder why he was singled out, the only one. Made him wonder if the dreams were happening at all. Bastards, the bunch of them. Trying to cut him out, trying to fool him all the time.
“Just give me a straight answer,” he said. “You aren’t making this up? You really do have dreams like that?”
“Every night,” she said. “I swear.”
He studied her face like it was a prospectus for an oceanfront development scheme. She looked like a pudding, bland and jiggly. She looked sincere as hell. Sweet wide smile, gentle blue-green eyes. Ferguson didn’t see how she could be capable of lying. Not this one. The others, sure, but not this one.
“Sometimes even during the day,” she went on. “I close my eyes a minute, still awake, and I get pictures under my eyelids.”
“You do? Daytimes?”
“This very day. The jellyfish people, middle of the morning.”
“After you were picked, then.”
“That’s right. It’s still fresh.”
“Go on. Tell me what you saw.”
“You know we aren’t supposed to tell each other—”
“Tell me,” he said.
He wondered if he had ever slept with her. Probably not: she was eighty, a hundred pounds overweight, not his type at all. His recorder didn’t have any information on the subject, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t happened, only that he hadn’t bothered to feed the data about it into the recorder, and now it was too late to know. He could have shtupped her ten times last month and neither of them would have any way of knowing it now. Things came and went. That time last month when Mariela had visited—she had been like a stranger to him, he didn’t really know her at all. Or want to. His own wife. If he hadn’t put it on the recorder he wouldn’t even know she’d been here.
Uncomfortably April said, “Dr. Lewis told me I must absolutely not reveal my dream content except during the interrogatory sessions, that it would contaminate the data.”
“You always do whatever you’re told?”
“I’m here to be healed, Ed.”
“You give me a pain, April. You and that sea wind that blows all the time.”
“Let’s walk a little,” she said.
They were at the edge of the woods, going along the trail through the redwood forest just east of the Center. It was the free-time part of the afternoon. The wind, cool and strong, was coming in off the ocean like a fist, the way it always did this time of day. Every afternoon they gave you an hour or two of free time. No therapy in the afternoon; they wanted you to go out and stroll in the forest, or play skill games in the rec room, or just futz around with your fellow inmates.
Ferguson would rather have been with Alleluia right now. But he didn’t know where she was, and somehow April had found him. She had a way of doing that, somehow, during free-time.
“You’re really obsessed with the space dreams, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Isn’t everybody?”
“But you keep asking all the time, what are they like, what are they like.”
“It’s because I don’t get them myself.”
“You will,” she said softly. “It just isn’t your turn, yet. But your turn will come.”
Yeah, he thought. When? This had been going on, what, two weeks now? Three? Hard to keep track of time in this place. After you had had a little picking, each day started to flow seamlessly into the one before, the one after. But the dreams, everyone was having them, the inmates and at least one of the staff technicians, that queer Lansford, and maybe even a few of the doctors. Everyone but him. That was the thing of it: everyone but him. It was almost like they were all getting together behind his back to fake up a gigantic mountain of bullshit to pile on top of him, this space-dream stuff.
“I know your turn will come,” she said. “Oh, Ed, the dreams are so beautiful!”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “Let’s go this way. Into the woods.”
She giggled nervously. Almost a whinny.
Ferguson didn’t think he’d slept with her. So far as his ring-recorder indicated, Alleluia was the only one since he’d been here. Women April’s size had never been his thing, though he could certainly see the potential prettiness deep down inside all that flesh, the buried cheekbones, the nice nose and lips. About thirty-five, came from L.A. like him, very screwed up like everybody here. What bothered him more than the fat was the way her head worked, so ready to believe all sorts of fantastic things. That we all had lived lots of lives and could get in touch with our previous selves, and that some people really were able to read minds, and that gods and spirits and maybe even witches and elves were real and existed all around us, and so on. It made no sense to him, all her goofy beliefs. The real world hadn’t treated her very well so she lived in a bunch of imaginary ones. She had showed him pictures of herself dressed up in costumes, medieval clothes, even one in a suit of armor, a fat lady knight ready to go off to the Crusades. Jesus. No wonder she loved the space dreams.