“Oh, everybody.”
“Who?”
“Well, there was Tom, and Father Christie, and Tomás and…” April’s voice trailed off. She disappeared once more into gibberish and began rocking again. In the middle of it she became still and turned to Elszabet and said in a completely lucid voice, “I’m scared, Elszabet. Tom said that we’re all going to be going over there soon. To the stars. Is that right, Elszabet? It’s the time, he said. He has the full power now, and he’s going to send us all, one by one, just like he sent Ed. I suppose I’ll go soon. Isn’t that so? I don’t know where I’ll be going, though. I don’t know what it’ll be like for me there. It can’t be any worse than it’s been for me here, can it? But even so, I’m scared. I’m so scared, Elszabet.” And she began to sob again, and then to sing once more.
Elszabet shook Ferguson again. His head lolled over.
Dead? Really? The idea stunned her. She felt her cheeks flush hot with guilt. Ferguson, dead? One of my patients, dead? That lolling head, those sightless eyes. Elszabet shivered. All this talk of Crossings, of shining alien worlds, seemed bizarre and absurd to her now against this ugly unanswerable reality. Over and over again she heard herself thinking. One of my patients is dead. No patient had ever died at the Center before. Suddenly—with all the chaos swirling outside-—the riot and the skulking scratchers and Tom going around doing God only knew what kind of witchcraft—there was just one thought in Elszabet’s head, which was that someone who had been entrusted to her care had died. All the work she had done this year with Ferguson, the elaborate tests, the closely watched charts, the counselling, the carefully monitored pick program—and there he was. Dead.
Maybe he wasn’t, not really. Maybe he was just in some kind of deep trance. She was no doctor. She had never seen a dead person this close. There were states of consciousness, she knew, that seemed just like death but were merely suspended animation. Maybe he was in one of those. She said to April, “What exactly did Tom do to him, can you tell me? When he made the Crossing. What was it like?”
But April was far away. Elszabet crouched beside Ferguson, feeling numb. Rain drummed hard on the rooftop. Somewhere down near the main road a huge mob of cultists was wandering around just outside the Center, and on the other side in the woods three sinister-looking scratchers were lurking about, and Tom had gone God knew where, and here was Ferguson dead or maybe in a trance, and April—
She heard footsteps in the hall. Jesus, what now?
Someone out there calling her name. “Elszabet? Elszabet? ” Bill Waldstein, it sounded like.
“I’m in room seven.”
Waldstein came running in at full tilt, nearly tripped over April, and brought himself to an abrupt skidding halt. “Dante was worried about you and sent me over to see how you were doing,” he said, then noticed Ferguson. “What the hell—?”
“I think he’s dead, Bill. But you’d know better. Please take a look at him…”
Waldstein stared. “Dead?”
“I think so. But check it. You’re a doctor, not me.”
Waldstein bent over Ferguson, probing him here and there. “Like an empty sack,” he said. “There’s nobody here.”
“Dead, you mean?”
“Sometimes it’s hard to be completely sure just by looking. But he seems plenty dead to me. Nobody home at all. Christ, look at that empty grin on his face.”
“April says that Tom showed him how to make the Crossing.”
“The Crossing?”
“He’s gone off to some star, April says. They all held hands and sent him somewhere.”
Waldstein glanced at Apriclass="underline" rocking, crooning, sobbing. He turned his head slowly from side to side. “Ferguson went to another star, you’re telling me? To another star? Jesus, Elszabet!”
“I don’t know where he is. I’ve told you what April told me. He’s dead, isn’t he? What from? If he didn’t make the Crossing, what did he die of, a man in apparent perfect health? She said they all held hands, Tom, Father Christie, Tomás—”
“And you believe this?”
“I believe they did what April says they did, yes. That they joined hands and performed some sort of rite. And I even half-believe that Tom really did send him off to one of the star worlds… more than half-believe, maybe. Look at his face, Bill. Look at his face. Have you ever seen such a blissful expression? It’s the way somebody would look who knows he’s going straight to heaven. But Ferguson didn’t believe in heaven.”
“And now he’s on some star?”
“Maybe he is,” Elszabet said. “How would I know?”
Waldstein stared at her. “We ought to find Tom and kill him right this minute.”
“What are you saying, Bill?”
“Listen, there are no two ways about this. Are you going to let him wander around this place murdering people?”
Elszabet gestured helplessly. She didn’t know what answer to make. Murder? That wasn’t the right word, she thought. Tom wouldn’t murder anyone. But yet—but yet—if Tom had touched Ferguson as April had said, and Ferguson had died—
Waldstein said, “If Tom is for real, if he’s genuinely able to lift people out of their bodies and ship them who knows where and leave nothing but an empty shell behind, then he’s the most dangerous man in the world. He’s a one-man horror show. He can just walk around from place to place, making Crossings or whatever for people until there’s nobody left alive. Just snap his fingers and send people to the goddamn stars—you think that’s a good thing? You think that’s something we should allow him to do?” She looked at him but still couldn’t find anything to say. He went on, “That’s if you believe any of this crazy garbage. And if you don’t, well, we still have the problem of finding out how he managed to kill Ferguson and—”
There was a sudden crackling noise out of the speaker taped behind Elszabet’s ear. She heard Arcidiacono’s voice, ragged, muffled, almost hysterical.
“Say that again?” she told him.
Waldstein began to speak. She held up her hand to shush him. “Not you, Bill.” Into her microphone she said, “I didn’t hear what you were just saying, Lew. Slow down. Give it to me clearly.”
“I said Tomás Menendez just switched off one of the energy walls and the tumbondés are pouring through our line.”
“Oh, Lew, no. No. ”
“We had everything under control. Colossal mob of them out there, but they couldn’t get in. Menendez was carrying generators around. Working as hard as anybody. Then he seemed to spot someone he knew out there in that mob, and he yelled that he was the opener of the gate, or something. And he opened it. He turned the wall right off. We’ve got thousands of them coming into the Center right this minute, Elszabet. Millions of them. I don’t know. They’re all over the place. Another two minutes, they’ll be down your way.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. A strange tranquility began to come over her. She felt almost like laughing.
“What’s he telling you?” Waldstein asked.
Elszabet closed her eyes and shook her head. “The wall is down, the tumbondé people are coming in. Oh, Jesus, Bill. That’s the finish. Here we go. Jesus, here we go.”
Eight