The Celestial Instructi0n (13 page)

He passed through Boise in the early evening. His
latest ride was in a Toyota Avalon of vintage several years earlier, but kept
in mint condition. The man who had picked him up was older than Joe—in his
middle 60’s—and tended toward talk, and not a little toward snacks, as his bulk
testified. It reminded Joex of the many meals he had missed in the last couple
of weeks.

“Nice to hear that you might get work east. Myself,
I work as a summer pastor for the church. I organize the camping activities,
the youth groups. I make sure all the T’s are dotted and the capital I’s
crossed,” he said. He chuckled at his own wit. “I like helping people. It’s
just what I do.” “Pastor Ted, will you help me with my homework? Pastor Ted,
will you help me put on sunscreen? Pastor Ted, can I talk to you about a
problem? Pastor Ted, can I borrow some money?” “Yes, sir. They come to me and I
help them.”

He looked at Joex appraisingly in the darkness of
the compartment. “Maybe you could use some luggage, a few clothes to put in it,
and maybe a shower? Pastor Ted can set you up; get a good night’s sleep, get a
good start in the morning with a home-cooked breakfast.”

“Thank you, Pastor. I am hoping to get along before
the end of the week to see about the job,” said Joex.

“Joe, a good night’s rest and you’ll look like a
million for your interview.” He winked his red right eye. “Ever have a little
port and walnuts? It puts you right to sleep. You can sleep in my wife’s
bedroom, as she has been traveling for quite some time. I keep it neat as a pin—why
I changed the sheets and towels just this morning.”

Joex was monitoring Pastor’s Ted chatter only
enough to make the affirmative grunts and “So right!” as responsives to the
sermon.

“Here we go!” said Pastor Ted as they turned into
the gigantic parking lot of the Multi-mart. “Biggest one around. Let’s get you
some property so you have something to change into after your shower.”

Joex didn’t object: he was getting a free ride, so
in worst case he could toss whatever he was given the next ride he got. It
would feel good to stretch his legs.

“It’s getting ready to close, Joe. Why don’t you
pick out a change of clothes; I get you a bag to put it in a meet you at the
register.”

“Sure, Pastor Ted.”

Joex went in to and wandered around to the back where
the men’s work clothes were racked. He selected denim trousers, a button-down
oxford work shirt in two different sizes each. He draped the clothing over his
arm and went into the changing room. The store was practically empty. In the
changing room he tried on the different combinations until he found the best
fit. He decided to see if Pastor Ted liked them and would pay for them as he
had promised.

Wearing his new clothes out of the changing room,
he stepped up to the front of the store where only one of half a dozen
registers was operating. He did not see Pastor Ted; he heard him distantly
instead through the doors of the store; he was speaking even faster than usual.

“Who the hell are you boys? Let me go Goddamnit.”

Once again, Joex’s ancient capacity to draw a fast
conclusion from scant information was forced upon him.

Outside the store, under the set of working flood
lamps lighting the entrance to the store and the near side of the parking lot
was Pastor Ted. On each side of him was a young man with the style of work
overalls as Joex had just shed in the changing room. Partially restrained and
very angry, Pastor Ted was pointing into the store.

Joex’s mind enumerated the possibilities. None of
them was favorable. He dumped the clothes he was carrying on the floor,
searched for the tags he had left on his trousers and shirt to rip them off. He
turned off to the dark gardening area of the store to leave by that exit. He
used the exist that warned “Alarmed at night, use Front Exit,” but no alarm
went off. Outside in the dark, it was warm and the gusts of wind that had
buffeted his rides earlier in the day had died down.

He headed directly away from the parking lot and
toward the outbuilding of what appeared to be a tilled farm, preparing for the
spring wheat planting. What appeared to be a hundred yards from the Multi-mart
was closer to three hundred yards. Virtually collapsing, Joex fell between an
outbuilding and the bulk of a detached cultivator and its probing tines.

First Celestial Michael Voide motioned for the
spotter to train on another machine and took his place above Security Throne
Adam Kingston.

“Surely you can do another 50 pounds, Adam,” said
the First Celestial.

“Yes, Celestial.” Kingston was sweating heavily. He
waited for the topmost angel of the Church of the Crux to add the weight to the
bar above him, and then did five reps with some difficulty; the bar made a
uneven clang on the last as he racked it.

“You know Principality Geedam is no longer with us,
Kingston,” the First Celestial moved the chalk bag away as Throne Kingston
reached for it.

“Yes, Celestial.” The Throne wiped his sweating
hand on his jersey instead and started to get up.

The First Celestial gently put his hand on his
Security Throne’s chest and pushed him back to the bench, as if he were
seducing him.

“Surely you can do another ten reps, Adam.”

“Yes, Celestial.”

Throne Kingston wiped his hand again doubtfully,
unracked the bar and did four quick reps. The fifth and sixth were noticeable
slower, the seventh was very slow and a reddish cast fell over the head and
shoulders of the Church of the Crux’s chief of security.

“I have my complete faith in you, Throne Kingston,”
said the First Celestial as he rested both hand lightly on the top of the
weighted bar. “I understand Baroco was in the Portland Church, enlisted, was
introduced to the Games Machine, was even interviewed in his first confessional.
He has been tracked to Idaho. And now is lost once more.” The First Celestial
bent down slightly over the grimacing Throne and whispered in a lover’s tone.
“Is that fucking right?”

The Throne pushed against the added resistance of
the First Celestial and shouted “eight.”

“That’s enough for now, Adam.” The First Celestial
forced the weight back in the rack.

“Riu Bao was arrested this morning. The news
blackout expires this evening. I am angry, Adam. I want you to make me happy.
Are you able to do that, Adam?”

“Yes, Celestial.”

“Things have been set into motion. The world is
going into a time of crisis. It will need guidance, a plan. This is the
opportunity for the Church to help the world. You would like to have that
happen during your lifetime, Adam, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, Celestial.” “Very much so,” he added.

“I want to talk to you again tomorrow, Throne, “I
want you to report on the penance of Angel Millen under the discipline of
Archangel Jack. And then we can discuss your own penance, Throne.”

“Yes, Celestial.”

The First Celestial walked over to the private elevator
to his clerestory apartment and punched in a code. He needed the report of Dominion
Jones of New York. He considered the matching pair of ivory chopsticks with
their intricate engravings that he kept at the head of his command desk. The
coolies are mistaken if they believe we are about wealth, Michael thought.
Michael Voide’s imagination fluttered among the wealth and power and virtue of
kings. He had the ability to simultaneously and utterly believe in the power of
the Games Machine, the mission of the Church of the Crux, and that, he, Michael
Voide, was the pinnacle of that civilization.

Joex had walked for a couple of hours after he had
left the store in a random direction away from the highway and the last he saw
of Pastor Ted. He had slept in the cab of some large piece of farm equipment
that offered a glass-walled shelter from the night. He awoke before first light
in the morning, chilled, and stiff, walked south, further away from the
Multi-mart and the main thoroughfare off Interstate 84. While it began to warm
him up, it was slow, messy, and cumbersome walking going over the turned clods
of earth. There was nothing before him to the horizon. His new jeans were staining
at the ankle. He had to stop every dozen furrows or so to put back the heel of
deck shoe that was coming off or to empty out the pebbles and dirt that they
had accumulated. To the east, he thought he saw and heard a truck in the
distance, but couldn’t tell because the morning sun was low in the sky. The
ground smelled good.

After a little over an hour, he hit an unmarked
one-lane graveled road that ran east west; he decided to walk toward the sun
that was warming him. He realized that he had left the printout with his
virtually aged photograph in the pocket of the overalls he had left in the
dressing room. Besides the question of how he was tracked to Idaho so quickly,
the larger question of the reason for his persecution remained. If a vehicle
followed him from Portland, why had they not captured him along the way as he
flagged down rides? If they had flown out agents, why had they not brought
enough people so that he would not have escaped? Why were they dressed as
Church rank-and-file rather than as cool Mr. Brillo? It seemed so long ago that
his arc of personal dissolution was disrupted; the irony was that the path that
he was on and the end sought by Mr. Brillo were the same except for speed. It
began by him simply stopping going in to work years ago; to speed things up he
could also simply check in to a local Church of the Crux, ask “why?” and see
what happened. He kept walking along the road.

By late morning, his legs were starting to hurt and
his stomach had settled into a resentful knot. He saw a cluster of buildings
ahead with a windsock flying over them. Joex squatted in the shade of a
building as he watched the activity of a couple of people working on the field,
which turned out to be a tiny agricultural airport. One fellow, dressed like a
mechanic with a grimy scowl ignored him as he walked past into the office. A
few minutes later, a young man of seventeen or eighteen with what looked like
WWI-vintage flight goggles up over his forehead left the office walking toward
the field.

“Good morning,” the young man said, “Need a lift?”
he joked.

“Well, sure,” Joex replied.

The young pilot stopped and twisted his face in a
wry grin, “if you can hold your lunch, I’m going down to Mountain Home right
now.”

“Why not?” Joex shrugged and accompanied the pilot
onto the field.

He stopped before a beautiful vintage biplane
outfitted with pipes and tanks underneath apparently used for crop dusting.

“This is my Kaydet. Well not mine, actually. But
I’ve flown her since I was fifteen,” he said proudly. “My name’s Bill.” Joex considered
for a moment, “Joe X.” Nice to meet you. He held out his hand.

“I’m going to pre-flight. There are some extra
goggles somewhere in the second seat. The step ladder is around back.”

They touched down an hour later. The biplane did
not have headphones and so Joex was alone with his thoughts under the unique
roar of the uncowled engine.

It turned out that Mountain Home was near the
Interstate that legged southeast from Boise. Joex walked across the small town
to the entrance ramp, smiled, and stuck out his thumb. Bill had given him four
extremely crumpled dollars. Joex was ashamed in accepting help from this kid,
but he would have to figure out later how to make it right.

The African sun eight-and-a-half degrees north of
the equator is always cutting and glorious and there was nothing east past the
old refinery that would block it from the Datatel Café. There was also nothing
that stopped the flashes from the polished machetes that the go-boys swung
toward each other in mock intricacy. Through the louvered vents that surrounded
the ceiling of the ground floor, Sam saw and wondered what these flashes were.
The click and ting and plangent clatter on the door instantly tied it together.
Sam was up and away shedding his cardboard shell like a new moth, up the narrow
broken mud-brick steps to the next floor he flew, unencumbered by anything except
a modesty cloth he had sewn together with fine wire from tie-dyed rags.

Sam hopped up on a table and looked down through
the louver to the street. Seeing the boys, he hopped down and escaped over out
to the terrace and over the side, using as a single step the principle internet
junction box linking the café and the world at large. Sam and Ouest were one at
this moment: a mercurial amalgam of silent, quick and brilliant in the fresh
morning.

Joex was dropped off near Salt Lake City late
afternoon. His last ride had been a balding man in bib overalls with his two
young sons riding in the cab of an elderly pickup truck. Joex had to squeeze in
and kept his right arm out the window which didn’t roll up all the way anyway.
He was offered a massive homemade sandwich from a plastic tub that was slipping
around on the dash. “The love-of-my-life always makes one more. ‘Strapping boys,’
she says. Why waste it? Anyway, you’ve got a long walk if you want to get
somewhere before dark.”