There was nothing she could do but watch. In ghostly calmness she scanned the scene from north to south, from south to north, strangely calm, paralyzed by shock and despair, watching. Watching.
Then she caught sight of Tom. That was Tom over there, surely. Yes. Appearing out of nowhere a little way uphill, drifting past the far side of the dormitory building, going around to the left. Down toward the middle of the madness.
Like everybody else he was flecked with mud and soaked to the skin, clothing sticking to his spare fleshless body. And yet he seemed uncaring of that, invulnerable to the weather, as if he were surrounded by some invisible sphere of protection. He was walking slowly, almost casually. He had a sort of entourage with him: Father Christie, Alleluia, April, Tomás Menendez. They were all holding hands, as though they were frolicking off to a picnic in the forest, and they all seemed extraordinarily serene.
I’ve got to go to them, Elszabet thought. April and the others are in no shape to be left wandering around on their own in this riot. And I’ve got to get him away from them too. Before he helps any more of them make the Crossing. Find them a safe place, she thought. And then take Tom and put him somewhere safe too, where he can’t harm anyone and no one can do any harm to him.
But she made no move to leave the rose garden. Taking so much as a single step seemed impossible.
“Elszabet?” someone called.
She turned slowly. Bill Waldstein, flushed-looking, big smears of black mud all over his white clinical jacket.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
“Watching it. It’s worse even than we imagined it could be.”
“For Christ’s sake, Elszabet. You look absolutely stupefied, do you know that? Where’s April?”
Elszabet pointed vaguely toward the middle of the lawn.
“I left her with you,” Waldstein said. “I was just going over to the infirmary to get a sedative for her. How could you leave her alone? Why did you come out here? What’s the matter with you, Elszabet?”
She shrugged. “Look at what’s going on.”
“Come on, snap out of it. We need to round up the patients before they get hurt. And we need to find Tom and seal him away somewhere so he can’t—”
“Tom?” she said. “Tom’s right over there.”
Waldstein peered into the dimness. “Jesus, yes. And April’s with him, and Menendez, and Father Christie—” He stared at her. “You’re just letting him waltz away with them like that? You know what he’s likely to do to them?” Suddenly Waldstein looked as berserk as any of the tumbondé people. “I’m going to kill him, Elszabet. He’s brought all this insanity down on us, with plenty more to come. He’s got to be stopped. I’m going to kill him—”
“Bill, for God’s sake—”
But Waldstein had already broken into a run. She watched him run across the swampy lawn, fall, scramble to his feet, fall again, scramble up. With agility he sidestepped a group of tumbondé people who were carrying what looked like pipes torn from some building’s heating system, waving them around like baseball bats. He ran up toward Tom, shouting and gesturing. Elszabet saw Tom turn toward Waldstein with a benign smile. She saw Waldstein leap at Tom and both men go sprawling. Then she saw Alleluia pluck Waldstein free of Tom the way one might pluck an insect from one’s arm, and hurl him at least fifteen or twenty meters through the air, sending him crashing into the trunk of a towering pine.
Even at this distance, Elszabet plainly heard the sound of the impact as Waldstein struck the tree head first. He dropped without a quiver and lay without moving.
Dante Corelli came around the side of the gymnasium at a fast jog just at that moment and pulled up next to Elszabet. Elszabet turned to her and said almost in a conversational tone, “That was Bill, did you see? He jumped on Tom and Alleluia simply picked him up and—”
“Elszabet, we’ve got to get out of here. We’re all going to get trampled to death.”
“I think Bill must be dead, Dante. I heard the way his head hit the tree—”
“Dan’s on his way down from GHQ. He’ll be here in a minute and then the three of us are going to run for the woods, do you hear me, Elszabet? Look, there’s a whole new mob charging up the hill right now. You see them coming? Holy Christ, do you see them?”
Elszabet nodded. Confusions gripped her spirit. She knew she was sinking deeper into that strange paralysis of the will. Simply paying attention to what was happening was an effort. A mob, Dante had said? Where? Yes. Oh, yes. There. They were streaming up out of the central chaos like some unstoppable torrent, overrunning everything in their way. They were heading toward the place where Tom and his little band of followers stood. “Oh, God,” Elszabet murmured. “Tom. Tom! ”
Father Christie went running forward to meet the tumbondé people, waving his arms, crying out to them. Offering a blessing, perhaps. The comfort of the Church in a time of chaos. They swept up and over him and he disappeared beneath their feet. Alleluia was next. She planted herself squarely in the path of the advancing mob and with astonishing energy that seemed almost diabolical began scooping them up and flinging them against the trees, one, five, a dozen of them, tossing them to their deaths, until she too was pulled down and was lost to view.
“Tom,” Elszabet said quietly. She could no longer see him, or April, or Menendez.
She heard Dante saying to someone, “It’s like she’s gone out of her mind. She just stands here, watching.”
“Hey. Elszabet.” It was Dan Robinson. He touched her arm. “We have to get out while we still can, Elszabet. The Center’s in ruins. The mob’s completely out of control. We’ll slip off into the forest and take the rhododendron trail, okay? We should be able to get deep enough in so they won’t bother us there and—”
“I have to find Tom,” Elszabet said.
“Tom’s probably dead by now.”
“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. But if he’s alive we have to find him. And find out what he is. There are things we have to know about him, about what he’s doing, don’t you see that? Please, Dan. Do you think I’m crazy? Yes, you do, both of you. I can see that. But I tell you, I’ve got to find Tom. Then we can leave. Not until then. Please try to understand. Please.”
7
Tom held the fat woman with one hand and the Mexican man with the other and stood his ground calmly while the crazy people went rushing by. He knew they wouldn’t hurt him. Not now, not while the Crossing was actually under way. He was safe because he was the chosen vehicle of the star people, and surely everyone knew that.
It was too bad, he thought, losing the priest and the artificial woman. Now they would never have a chance to make the Crossing. But even without them, it would still be possible for him to invoke the power. It was getting easier. With each new one he sent, his strength grew. A great tranquility was on his soul, a sense of the divine righteousness of his mission.
“Here,” Tom said. “This is the next one that we’ll send.”
“Double Rainbow,” the Mexican man said. “Yes, he is a good one. We will give him to Maguali-ga.”
This one was an Indian. Tom realized that right away. He had seen a lot of Indians in his time. This one was a thick-bodied flat-nosed man with dark glossy hair, maybe a Navaho, maybe something else, but certainly an Indian. The Indian was standing with his back to a burning building, hurling clods of mud at the rioters as they ran by and calling out things to them in a language Tom didn’t understand. The Mexican went up to the Indian and said something to him, and the Indian’s eyebrows lifted and he laughed; and the Mexican said something else and the two men clapped each other on the back, and the Indian came striding over to Tom.