She felt a sudden moment of new tension, a tension she had never before experienced, a sort of suspension of the soul; and then came a release. The last thing she saw was Tom’s taut stricken face, full of desperate love for her. Then the greenness rose up about her like a fountain of joyous light, and she felt herself setting forth, beginning the wondrous voyage outward.
9
It looked like a battlefield now. The rain was coming down harder than ever, and the lawns and gardens and meadows were churned into a great sea of muck, and all the buildings were smashed or burning or both. Some people were wandering about like blind men, staggering in the storm, and some were hunkered down behind the cars and buses, shooting at each other. Tom took a last look at the smiling woman lying at his feet, and walked away, still hearing Elszabet’s voice saying, “Come with me,” and his own, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”
How could he have gone now, with the Crossing only begun?
He wondered if he were ever going to get to go at all. There were so many to send, and he was the only one with the power, wasn’t he? Maybe he could teach others, somehow. But even so—there were so many who had to go. And he thought again, as he so often had before, of Moses, leading his people to the promised land and peering into it from the outside, and the Lord saying to him, I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. Was that what was going to happen to him?
Tom looked up toward the sky, trying to pierce through the clouds to the stars. Those golden empires, waiting. Those godlike beings. Those shining cities, millions of years old.
You out there, you Kusereen who planned all this…is that your plan, to use me only as the instrument, the vehicle, and then leave me behind when the world ends?
He couldn’t believe that was so. He didn’t want to. They’d come for him right at the end. They had to, when all the others had made the Crossing. But maybe not. Maybe they’d just leave him here all by himself. How could he presume to understand the Kusereen? Well, he thought, if that’s what it is, that’s what it is. I’ll only find out when the time comes.
Meanwhile there’s work to do.
Charley came up to him, shrouded in mud.
“There you are,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d ever find you again.”
Tom smiled. “You ready for your Crossing now, Charley?”
“You’re really doing it? Sending people? To the Green World and all?”
“That’s right,” Tom said. “I been sending them all morning. To different worlds, Green World, Nine Suns, all of them. I even sent Stidge. He pulled his spike on me, and I sent him.”
Charley was staring. “You sent him, did you? Where’d he go?”
“Luiiliimeli.”
“Loollymooly. Good old Loollymooly. I hope he’s happy there. That goddamn Stidge. Going to live on Loollymooly.” Charley laughed. He looked somewhere past Tom. He seemed to be lost for a moment in his own dreams of other worlds.
Then he focused his attention again and said in a different voice, businesslike and quick, “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here, Tom.”
“I can’t, not yet. I got a few more things to do first—”
“Christ. Christ, Tom, what’s wrong with you? Let’s go find the van and start moving. Before one of these crazies takes us out. Can’t you see? They’re shooting at each other all over the place.”
“Don’t you want to make the Crossing, Charley?”
“Thanks all the same,” Charley said. “That’s not what I’ve got in mind right now.”
“I’ll give you the Green World for sure.”
“Thanks all the same,” Charley said again. And then he said something else, but Tom wasn’t able to make it out. All this noise, the shouting, the drumming of the rain. The crowd came surging by again and Charley was swept away. Tom shrugged. Well, maybe it wasn’t Charley’s time yet. He wandered on. Around him, people were slipping and sliding and falling down everywhere. Now and then someone turned toward him with what seemed an appeal in his eyes, and Tom would touch him and send him to one of the welcoming worlds. After a while he saw another familiar face come looming up out of the confusion, a man with rough pitted skin, hard blue eyes. “Hello, Buffalo,” Tom said. “How’s it going?”
“Tom. Hey. That’s Charley over there, isn’t it?”
Tom turned. For a moment he caught a glimpse of Charley once more, trying to shove his way through seven or eight frantic people. “Yeah,” Tom said. “That’s Charley. I was with him before but we got separated. Look, here he comes.”
Charley burst through the crowd and ran up to them, breathing hard, face shiny with rain and exertion. “Hey, Buffalo,” he said, “Christ, am I glad to see you.”
“Charley. Hey. Who else’s around?”
“Nobody. There’s none of us left but you and me. Maybe Mujer, I’m not sure. Let’s go look for the van, okay? We got to get ourselves the hell away from this place.”
“You bet,” Buffalo said.
“And you, Tom?” Charley said. “You come with us. We’ll ride away south, just like we talked about.”
Tom nodded. “Maybe in a little while, a few hours.”
“We’re going now,” Charley said. “Staying here any more is crazy.”
“Then you go without me.”
“For Christ’s sake—”
“I got to stay a few more hours,” Tom said. “People here, they need me. I can’t go yet. In a little while, sure. Maybe by dark.” Yes, he thought, maybe by dark. By then he would have done all that he needed to do here, and he could move along. He had made friends here and he had sent them to the stars. Now he would send some of these other people, the ones who had followed the little black man from San Diego, the taxi driver. And then he’d find Charley and Buffalo and ride off with them. He’d go somewhere else. Make other friends. Send them too. “You go find the van,” Tom said. “That’ll take you a little while. Later on, maybe, I’ll go back there in the woods and catch up with you, okay? Okay?”
He looked through and past them and it seemed to him that he could see Elszabet over there. Smiling. Come with me, she had said. I can’t, he had said. Okay. Whatever. Poor Tom. He could hardly bear to think about her. Wherever she was now. Green World, that was it. At least he had told her he loved her. At least he had managed to say that much. Come with me, that was what she had said. When he thought about that, what she had said, he felt like crying. But he couldn’t allow himself that, He didn’t have time to cry today. Maybe later. There was too much work to do. Walk down there where all those people were, touch them, help them to go. Elszabet glowed in his mind with the brightness of a new sun. Come with me, come with me. I can’t, he had said. He shook his head.
Charley and Buffalo were still standing there, staring at him.
“You really going to stay?” Charley asked.
“Only a few more hours,” he said again, very softly. “Then maybe I’ll catch up with you. You go look for the van. Okay, Charley? You go look for the van.”
10
It seemed to Dan Robinson that he had been running for hours: on and on in effortless strides, his heart pumping like some sort of untiring machine, his legs driving him over the sodden ground. It was the anger, he knew, that kept him going this way. He boiled with a rage so intense that he could contain it only by this blind, furious flight into the forest. Bizarre lunacy loose in the world, the Center in ruins, Elszabet gone… Elszabet gone…