The Distance Beacons (9 page)

"Just what we read in the paper this morning," Bobby said. "Why?"

I summarized my case and my first less-than-spectacular morning on it, omitting O'Malley's version of Bobby's favorite story.

"Jesus, Wally," Bobby said, "mixed up with the Feds and O'Malley. You're doin' great."

"Thanks a lot."

"Why don't you come to work for me full-time and get these other guys off your back?"

"You can protect me from the Feds?"

"I have some small influence," Bobby replied, his dignity wounded.

"Watch out, Wally, or you'll be back in the army scavengin' copper wire in DC," Doctor J warned me.

I tried to smile. It wasn't all that funny. Everyone had a better idea about what I should do with my life. And now, half a day into my case, I already needed help. "Bobby, what are the chances I could rent your van for the afternoon?"

"Are you shittin' me?" Bobby asked. "You can't even drive."

"Well, I guess I have to rent Mickey too. I want to check out this lead in Concord, and O'Malley's thugs took my bike, and besides, you guys don't look like you're doing anything today. I'll pay you whatever you think it's worth."

Bobby looked very uncomfortable. You don't use motor vehicles for just any old activity. "Maybe we can find you another bike," he suggested.

"It's getting pretty late," I said, "and Concord is pretty far from here." I hated this. Asking favors from my friends was exactly what I didn't want to do.

"Let's go," Mickey said to me.

"It's not your van!" Bobby shouted.

"I'll get the gas," Doctor J said, and he went into the warehouse.

"You're both fired!"

Mickey and I followed Doctor J into the warehouse, leaving Bobby fuming at the card table. He didn't have quite the authority Jim O'Malley did. On the other hand, I had a feeling Santoro and Grimes wouldn't have crossed the street to save O'Malley's life, while Doctor J and Mickey would've crossed the continent to save Bobby's.

Bobby's warehouse was mostly filled with junk from the old days; the valuable stuff—the weapons and the computer parts—he wisely kept locked and hidden upstairs, past a dog named Brutus who despised me. Just inside the doors sat the gray Ford van that was Bobby's prized possession. Mickey started doing a final check of the van while Doctor J poured precious gasoline into it. Mechanically ignorant, I kept away from the van (and Brutus) and felt uncomfortable.

"This isn't funny, you know," Bobby said, following us inside.

"We'll be back by dark," I said. "Promise."

"You aren't gonna be in any danger, are you?"

"Oh. Right. Can I rent a couple of guns, too?"

"Not funny," he muttered. But he went to get the weapons. By the time he returned, Mickey and Doctor J were finished. I got in the passenger side next to Mickey. "Name your price," I said to Bobby. "I'm serious."

"You're an asshole," Bobby said.

Mickey backed us out into the street. Doctor J waved. Brutus barked. I could feel Bobby glaring at us until we turned the corner.

* * *

"I really want to pay him," I said to Mickey.

Mickey just laughed. I gave up.

We crossed into Boston proper, drove through the city, then over the Charles River into Cambridge. From there we made our way through Cambridge and up the old Route 2. Mickey whistled as he dodged the craters and the boulders and the assorted debris in the roadway. He enjoyed this; I didn't. I said a please-don't-collapse prayer each time we approached a bridge; I watched out for police who might stop us to ask for a permit that we didn't possess; I wondered what would happen if we had a mechanical problem that Mickey couldn't fix. In the old days, of course, there were tow trucks to call and service stations to walk to; now there is only you and your ingenuity to keep you from disaster. Lacking the ingenuity, I couldn't do anything but worry.

"Where exactly are we going?" Mickey asked.

"The Church of the New Beginning," I said. "It's up by Walden Pond, I'm pretty sure."

"Weirdoes," Mickey said.

I smiled. Mickey was not the kind to be in sympathy with the church. "Ever hear of Walden Pond?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Know how to get there."

"In the old days a guy went there to get away from civilization, and he wrote a famous book about it. I'll lend it to you, if you like."

"That's okay." Mickey isn't much of a reader. "Sounds stupid, actually. What's wrong with civilization? I mean, you'd have to be pretty strange to want to drive on a road like this instead of buzzin' along one of them old superhighways at seventy miles an hour."

I couldn't disagree. "I suppose it's easy to criticize civilization," I said, "if you know it's there when you need it. After a tough day of criticism, you can leave your hut in the woods and go back to your high-rise condo and have a hot bath and cook up a frozen dinner in the microwave and watch TV all night. It'd work out pretty well, I bet."

Mickey laughed. "Sure was different back then, Wally. You watch TV in England?"

"A little."

"It was really strange of you to come back, you know that?"

"Um."

"If I made it to England, you better believe you'd never see me in Boston again."

"Well, I hope you get the chance."

We were silent for a while, as Mickey dreamed of England and the old days and I worried about flat tires and broken axles. We turned off the highway by Walden Pond, traveled a bit further, then stopped when we ran into a boy in a homespun robe leading a flock of sheep across the road. I asked him the way to the church, and he pointed us in the right direction.

We ended up jouncing along a dirt path through sparse woods until we reached a large new wood-frame building on a rise overlooking acres of farmland. On top of the building was a cross, tilted to the right, with its arms bent slightly down, so that it looked a little like an arrow pointing off into the sky. "I guess this is the place," Mickey said. He didn't sound glad to be here.

People were staring at us. You didn't have to be a private eye to figure out why; you only had to look at their homemade robes and leather sandals and horse-drawn carts and the rough-hewn construction of the building. The Church of the New Beginning had turned its back on high-rise condos and frozen dinners for good.

"You stay here in the van," I said to Mickey. "This probably won't take long."

"Okay, Wally." He reached for the shotgun that Bobby had given us.

"There won't be any trouble," I said.

"You never can tell."

You never could. I opened the door and climbed down from the van. "Hi," I said to no one in particular. "Anyone know where I can find Flynn Dobler?"

A bearded man who looked like he'd stepped out of the Bible pointed to the building.

"Thanks a lot," I said, and I went inside.

The place looked solidly built, but strange. Where were the light fixtures and the electrical sockets and the radiators? No one built new buildings anymore. What was the point, with a population that could fit in one-tenth the available housing? The entrance hall in which I was standing was high-ceilinged and airy, and smelled of the woods. It made me nervous.

A woman appeared at the end of the hall and walked toward me. She was wearing a powder-blue robe and leather sandals, and she was gorgeous, with long, straight black hair and piercing blue eyes. She made me nervous too. "Can I help you?" she asked. Her accent sounded strange—not foreign, not local, as if she had learned how to speak English from a book.

I thought about using my ingratiating smile, but gave up the idea. Her gaze was too direct, her eyes too honest. "I'd like to talk to Flynn Dobler," I said.

"Why?" she asked. From her, the question didn't sound rude.

"I—I'm thinking of joining your church."

She nodded, although I doubt that she believed me. "Wait," she said, and walked away.

I waited. There were no chairs. No decorations on the walls—no paintings, no old posters. No books to read. It was as if these people had just moved in and hadn't gotten around to unpacking yet. After a couple of minutes the woman reappeared and gestured for me to follow her.

"My name's Walter Sands. What's yours?" I managed to say as she led me up a twisty flight of stairs to an open gallery.

She stopped and glanced back at me. "Marva," she said. Her tone suggested that this was information I was entitled to have, but that no further information would be forthcoming. I followed Marva along an open gallery. We passed through a small room with an uncomfortable-looking bed in it, then out onto a balcony overlooking the farmland.

On the balcony, a man was sitting at a simple wooden table. He too was wearing a robe and sandals. He was writing on a sheet of paper with a quill pen. "Brother Flynn," Marva said, "this is Walter Sands." And then she left us, shimmering away in a powder-blue haze.

Brother Flynn put the pen down, blotted the paper, and looked up at me.

I have a friend who thinks he is Jesus Christ. He wanders through Boston with long hair and a beard, wearing a robe and sandals and carrying a cross. He looks a bit like Flynn Dobler. Except that you take one look at my friend, and you know that something is not quite right inside him. Looking at Flynn Dobler, I wasn't at all sure. His dark eyes were alive with a vision, but I couldn't tell whether it was a vision of madness, or whether he was viewing a truth no one else had yet seen.

"Please sit," Dobler said. I obeyed. "Marva says you want to join our church." His eyes seemed to be sucking everything out of my brain.

"I'm thinking about it," I said.

"I don't believe you." That made me very nervous. "You came in a motor vehicle," Dobler pointed out. "The man who came with you has a gun."

"Well," I said, "you're not that easy to get to from the city. And I'm not real sure about joining. So when I had a chance to get a ride, I thought I better take it."

Dobler continued to gaze at me. I was pretty sure he didn't buy my story, but at least he didn't throw me out. "What do you know about the Church of the New Beginning, Walter Sands?" he asked.

"Well," I said, "you're trying to purify yourself, to get rid of everything from the past and make a fresh start. The old civilization got us into the mess we're in, so you want no part of it. You're trying to develop your own instead."

Dobler nodded. I felt as if I had gotten back on track. "There are many who curse the War," he said. "Many who waste their lives crying over what has been lost. But we see the War as a blessing, an opportunity that will not come again. Look." He gestured to the farmland that stretched out in front of him, freshly plowed and ready for planting. "Much of what you see used to be a golf course, where men would come and hit little balls while people starved and went homeless, while our air and water were being poisoned, while governments plotted to destroy each other. Now it is part of a community in which all care for each, in which we strive to find what is most important in life and to live in accordance with Nature, not with the artificial customs and duties that have been imposed upon us by our culture. We try to use nothing that comes from the old days. We do not read their books, we do not live in their buildings, we do not wear their clothes. Someday we will speak our own language. The new generation will have no memories to torment them, and nothing at all will remain of the past. We have lost our golf balls, Walter Sands, but we have gained our souls."

I had the feeling he had said this sort of thing many times before, but still it made a powerful impression. I could see why Henry Fisher thought Dobler was the most capable opponent of the Feds. I could also see why Henry didn't like him. Here was a guy who was ignoring the past with a vengeance—who was making a religion out of it. To Dobler, Henry's book was not just a mistake; it was heresy. "You make a lot of sense," I said. "And your community looks quite impressive."

"We have been here seven years. There were just a few when we began, but now we are many."

Seven years, I thought. Since just after the Feds moved in and made it possible for people to do what Flynn Dobler had done. "And the government leaves you alone?"

Dobler stood up. His robe flapped in a sudden breeze. I could imagine a cheering throng beneath the balcony, taking in his every word as if it came straight from God. If he had a military-style crew cut and wore clothes from the Salvage Market instead of a robe and sandals, would he have looked so impressive? "The government cannot defeat us," he said, "because we possess the truth, and the truth is the most powerful weapon in the universe."

I wasn't at all sure that this was true, but I let it pass. "Does the government try to defeat you?" I persisted.

He glanced down at me. Had the question seemed suspicious? "It makes an effort once in a while," he replied, "but we pay no attention. The government is part of the death throes of the old civilization. If the War had only been more destructive, we would not have to put up with those death throes now."

If the War had been more destructive, I thought, none of us would be around to put up with anything. "But the government worries me," I said. "There's this referendum, you know."