“You will drop this body, yes. For a better one in a better place. This corruptible must put on incorruption. This mortal must put on incorruptibility. And death is swallowed up in victory.”
Ferguson studied him uneasily. They were all crowding close about him now. “Wait a second,” he said. He wasn’t floating so much now. He felt heavier now. “I’m not sure. Ease off a little. I’m not sure. What all this means.”
“No one will force you,” Tom said.
“Just let me think. Let me think.”
Tomás Menendez appeared. His face was radiant. “This is the day when Chungirá will come!”
“Yes,” Tom said. “And Ed here, he’s going to be the first to make the Crossing into the stars. I know he will. He’ll go to the Double Kingdom.”
“He will go to Chungirá,” Menendez said. “And that will be the signal; and then Chungirá will come to us. Yes. Yes, I know it.” Menendez seemed to be speaking out of a trance. “The Senhor is very close. I can feel him. Come, we will send Ferguson to Chungirá; and then I will go to the Senhor, I will welcome his coming. I will be Maguali-ga; I will be the opener of the gate.” He put his hand on Ferguson’s wrist. “You are ready, Ed? You will accept?”
Ferguson shook his head slowly, trying to understand. He would drop the body. He would make the Crossing. He would go to some other planet. The first twitches and flickers of fear began to awaken in him. What were they trying to say? What did they want to do to him? He would die, right? That was what all this meant, this dropping the body. Yes? No? He didn’t understand any of this. For a moment all the old suspicions flared in him. They were trying to put something over on him, weren’t they? They wanted to use him. They wanted to hurt him.
He said, “Am I going to die?”
“Your life will only just be beginning,” Tom said.
They surrounded him, moving in close, smiling, stroking him. April, Alleluia. Father Christie, Menendez, Tom. Telling him that they loved him, that they envied him, that they would follow him very soon. But he had to be the first. He was the one who was ready. Is that so? he wondered. Am I ready? How do they know?
“Someone must be the first,” Tom said.
“Let me think. Let me think.”
“Let him think,” said Father Christie. “He mustn’t be pushed.”
Ferguson sucked his breath in deep and hard down to the bottom of his lungs. Visions were starting to rise in him again. The Green World, gentle glistening glades. The world of light. All the worlds of the heavens shining in his mind. Vast beings walking to and fro. They wanted to send him there. They wanted him to be the first. He felt that cold knot of suspicions loosening, melting, draining away.
He wasn’t interested in dying. But would it be dying if he made the Crossing? Would it? Would it?
“Don’t say anything,” someone said. “Just let him work it out.”
Hey, why not? Ferguson thought. Feeling lighter again. The floating sensation coming back.
Do it, he thought. For once in your crappy life, do it. You be the one to go. Show them the way. Do it for them. Maybe even do it for yourself, who knows, but at least do it for them. For once in your life, just once. What do you have to lose? What’s so wonderful for you here on Earth that you want to stay? Do it, Ed. Do it. Do it.
He blinked, shook his head, smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Go ahead. Send me. Wherever you want.”
“Are you certain?” Tom said.
Ferguson nodded. It surprised him, how calm he was. How completely willing, eager, unafraid, now. Father Christie, by his side, was murmuring in Latin. Praying for him? Probably. All right, let him pray. A little praying couldn’t hurt. Everything was going to be okay. He was smiling. He was totally at peace. He couldn’t remember ever having felt this way before.
“Everyone join hands,” Tom said. His voice seemed to be coming from a vast distance. “Join hands, stand close around us, focus your minds. Help me help him to Cross, all of you. I can’t do it alone, but with your help we can manage it. And you, Ed. Put your hands in mine. The way you did yesterday in the forest. Put your hands in mine.”
4
Elszabet left her office, went down the hall to the double door at the end and stepped through, out into the storm. It was about eight in the morning and everything seemed under control so far. She paused on the porch to check the little communications system she was wearing. “Lew?” she said. “Lew, can you hear me?” Transmitter and receiver and bone-induction speaker, the three units together smaller than a fingernail, taped just back of her right ear. Tiny microphone mounted along her cheek. Military equipment: if there was going to be a war today, she would have to be the general.
Arcidiacono said, “I hear you clear, Elszabet.” It sounded as if he were standing right next to her.
The rain was starting to get serious now. It was riding a stiff wind down from the north and pounding hard against the sides of the buildings in gusty cascades. Elszabet figured that was a bit of luck on their side. The marchers, the tumbondé people, were less likely to go wandering where they didn’t belong if it was raining, wasn’t that so? They’d stay inside their buses and vans and just keep right on going toward the North Pole, or wherever it was that their prophet was leading them.
So she hoped, anyway. All the same, it seemed like a good idea to get the energy walls up and keep them up until the marchers had gone through. Just in case a couple of hundred thousand strangers saw the Center sitting there at the edge of the woods looking warm and snug and decided to come in out of the wet for a while.
She said to Arcidiacono, “What’s going on out there?”
“All quiet. We’re still setting up the generators. You get any news from the county police about the tumbondés?”
“Just talked to them. They say the marchers haven’t broken camp yet this morning.”
“Where are they staying, do you know?”
“Seems like they’re all over. There’s one main batch of them just outside Mendo but they spread far and wide, both sides of Highway One. Closest group maybe two-point-five kilometers south and west of us.”
“Jesus,” said Arcidiacono. “Pretty close.”
“You ready to handle it, if they start coming through in an hour or so?”
“Whenever. We’ll be ready here. I’m not worrying.”
“Okay,” Elszabet said. “If you’re not worried I’m not. Everything’s going to be okay, Lew. Sure you have enough people?”
“For now,” the technician said. “Little later, once they get on the move, I’ll want more. So we can start shifting the equipment from place to place.”
“We’ll all be out there by then. I’ll check back every fifteen minutes.”
“Do that, yes,” Arcidiacono said.
Elszabet gave the receiver a light tap, switching it over to B frequency, Dante Corelli in the gym fifty meters away. “It’s me, Elszabet,” she said. “Just testing. Everything okay there?”
“Pretty much. Patients are straggling in from breakfast.”
“They know what’s going on?”
“More or less. I’ve told them the general outlines. Nobody’s particularly alarmed. Bill Waldstein gives each one a little shot of pax as they show up—we minimize it, we say it’s just to keep them relaxed, nothing to fret about. A lot of visions happening. Everybody here’s pretty spacy right now, Elszabet.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I wonder, on account of the rain, do we really want to bring them out to the perimeter? We could just keep them all here, pax them out, couple of supervisory personnel—”
“Let’s wait and see,” Elszabet said. “Maybe the whole thing’s going to be a false alarm anyway.”