Tintagel (23 page)

Charlie fretted, watching Lanier change his clothing. "Jesus, I can't believe that the President's gone under. It seems almost impossible."

"Believe it," Lanier said, preoccupied.

Lanier came out of the door, bouncing on one foot, trying to draw up a boot on the other. His long coat dangled like great wings. He fell into a chair.

"Where's the Vice President?" he asked them. "Have the Joint Chiefs been notified?"

Christy answered, "Ken Collins got the word out to everyone necessary after they shut up the theater with everyone in it."

Lanier smiled. "Hostage?"

"That's the word." Charlie gritted his teeth. "Euphemism, more likely."

"But the Vice President."

"Down with the worst case of Cambodian flu on record," Christy informed him. "Appears as if he is the only one with it on the entire east coast."

Lanier sat astonished, fearing the answer to his next question, but knowing that there was now only one answer.

"And the Speaker of the House?"

Charlie and Christy exchanged careful looks. Charlie said, "He appears to be missing."

"Missing." Not a question. A statement.

"That's what I'm told." Charlie looked at his friend; behind his eyes the cogs and gears were clicking into place. Charlie sat back in the chair, somewhat pale.

Lanier stared evenly at them both. The computer printout rattled distantly from Christy's office.

"Then that means no one is at the controls, right?"

Nobody responded. Lanier stood up like an angel of death in his long dark coat. He adjusted the priest's collar. He pulled out his Malachi, cocked it, then put it back into its holster.

"Well, boys and girls, it looks like we have a situation on our hands. Time to go to work."

Sitting in his usual half-lotus position on the cool floor of his workroom, he found it somewhat difficult to calm down. Many things rambled through his mind; many questions, many answers. There was a time in his life when he welcomed the emotional depths that the very best of classical music had to offer. Making love to Erik Satie's
Gymnopédies
. Walking, broke and lonely, through the New Mexico snow with Mahler's
Das Lied von der Erde
going through his mind. But to lose himself, now, to such forces would undermine his whole life, as it had done three years ago with Marie. Now it seemed to be happening once again.

Slow down, cowboy
, he thought.
Be dispassionate, act on the knowledge of the last hour, but don't let it act on you
.

Christy dimmed the lights and Lanier fought for his mantra. Images of Ellie Estevan and Albertson Randell shifted across his mind, mixing in with the beautiful music of Roy Harris's neglected
Seventh Symphony
. There came to him memories of Nacimiento, memories of Hell. But he held on to the sound that the mantra generated. His heart slowed. One by one, he let each single thought separate itself and fall away. Memories were turned aside. His breathing was controlled. Only the music itself remained.

Indian Summer. By the way the sunlight seemed tired and drawn, Lanier guessed that here it was near the first of autumn. The air was balmy, the walnut and beech trees still held their leaves. The oaks let their leaves stir in the slight wind that followed him down across the village lane. He could smell hickory on the air.

Appalachia
, he guessed. The vibrations were unmistakable. He was back home in some primordial archetype of ancient America. The houses that lined the cobbled street came from a different era, though. He thought that it might be late colonial. Women, bearing baskets of bread and preserves, were stepping from small shops. They wore white bonnets typical of the Puritan mode, their dresses dropping conservatively to their ankles. Someone's chickens were running loose in the middle of the road, and they all scattered as a young man in a buckboard came driving by, their feathers rising like flakes of snow.

The adult men on the sidewalks resembled the Puritan fathers of the country. Lanier almost expected to rub shoulders with Edward Taylor on his way back to his secluded cabin to write another meditational prayer-poem. Or perhaps Cotton Mather, dark and brooding, marching down the street with an air of self-righteousness. Trouble and damnation on his mind.

But this wasn't New England—quite.

Lanier couldn't place the locus of the vibrations, but, given the many shifts of theme in Harris's symphony, it appeared to him that this village was an amalgam of various aspects of early Americana. Not exactly the Plymouth Colony, though William Bradford would be a fitting governor here, and it wasn't quite like the old Virginia plantations; it seemed to be a mixture of all of them. And much more.

Looking up over the tops of the picturesque gabled cottages and log cabins, Lanier was very surprised to see a fantastic tower, constructed of wood, at the far end of the town. It rose forty meters, and was something no early colony would have ever seen, or built.

The tower appeared to be something like a watchtower common along the forts of the western frontier of America. Composed of sturdy logs—possibly cedar and oak—its octagonal pillar lifted above the forest. On the top, a cantilevered command post stood out, balanced on the tall column. There were window slits on all sides, and, for the most part, the whole structure seemed unassailable from the ground.

Just what the tower was for, he had no idea.

As he passed down the street, his coat buttoned tightly over the utility belt and Malachi, no one looked at him curiously. Everyone went about their affairs in a peaceful fashion, ignoring the presence of a priest. And the ominous tower.
Ominous
, he realized,
that's the word for it
. However peaceful these people seemed among themselves, the tower was there for a purpose.

Stepping up onto the wooden plank sidewalk, he tried to relax. A man wearing a wide-brimmed black hat, drawing behind him a reluctant daughter, smiled embarrassedly at him. Lanier nodded and smiled back. He kept on walking. He felt very uneasy.

He knew that of all the patients he had, Katie Babcock was easily the most important. Whatever the reasons for her succumbing, he had to get her out and back into the real world.

Although
, he thought idly,
this world isn't all that bad
.

As he walked, he distantly wondered if this village had any kind of threat, such as the British tax laws, or the French massing to the north—or plagues, or Indians. If this was a genuine replica of an early American settlement, then there would have to be a balance somewhere.
Fudd-Smith's Law
. Only a foolish romantic would get consumed in a setting such as this, although Lanier did feel a slight twinge of nostalgia for the life his forefathers led. Perhaps it was the music itself. He was
sure
it was the music, because life back then was extremely hazardous. Only the most rugged and determined of individuals survived. And Lanier could see it on the faces of these people. He immediately noticed that the women here were not the beautiful, well-fed, beaming beauties of his century. Life here in this world was just as rough and wild as it had been five hundred years ago.

He stopped near a torch-lamppost to survey the community. The vibrations that Katie Babcock gave off were strong at this point, but not nearly as strong as they should be. What he felt was despair, and grief. The music, which was running through his mind at a low pitch, composed the world quite efficiently, and it was Katie's misery that made everything fall suddenly under dark shadows.

Where is she
? he wondered, looking around.
Back off behind the main street, hoeing a garden? Somewhere churning butter? Is she, perhaps, someone's wife condemned to a life of drudgery
?

Just at that point, a deep, resonant clanging came from the tower. A large bell sounded from the top. Everyone in the street suddenly halted where they were and looked toward the tower.

It rang twice, no one moved. Three times, the same.

When it struck a fourth time, the women screamed and scattered up and down the street. Two men beside Lanier ran for the tower so fast and so suddenly that they lost their wide-brimmed black hats. The bell kept sounding.

Lanier, spinning in the maze of panicked settlers, pulled himself aside into a bakery storefront. A young man, dusting his hands of flour, stepped out.

"What's going on?" Lanier addressed him.

The young man, obviously a baker's apprentice, whipped off his apron.

"Four times, that's the signal! It rang four times!" He looked helplessly at Lanier. Terrified, he said, "They're coming!"

He disappeared back into the shop, leaving Lanier out on the sidewalk.

Lanier noticed that some of the people who had fled to their homes were now back out, running down the street toward the tower. Women dragged their children behind them frantically, and the men carried flintlock rifles and bags of shot and silver-gray gunpowder.

The baker's apprentice sped past Lanier carrying a small bundle beneath his arm: loaves of bread wrapped in cloth.

A horse attached to a carriage reared in confusion, throwing the driver to the street. The carriage was loaded with foodstuffs bound for the tower. People were running everywhere.

It's like an air raid
, he thought suddenly.

His heart began racing even though he had yet to feel sufficiently threatened. It was Katie Babcock's doing. Lanier had harmonized with the music so well that the apprehensions of the approaching danger were heightened merely because Katie herself was frightened. Wherever she was, she knew what was happening. And it horrified her.

Another young boy ran by. Lanier pulled him over.

"Hey," he said hurriedly. "Who's coming? What's going on?"

The boy jerked his arm free from Lanier's grasp. "Shawnee! There!" He pointed to the sky beyond the tower, then sped off down the avenue.

Lanier looked into the sky.

The sun was bright and pleasantly warm, and the sky itself was a perfect azure, like the inside of a Japanese ceramic bowl. There were no clouds, and it seemed peaceful. He could see nothing.

Lanier reached inside his coat and pulled out the amplified binoculars. Adjusting the power, he scanned the horizon as the colonists scattered around him like a herd of frightened cattle. He tried to ignore them as best as he could. After all, he had a Malachi and enough explosives to level the village.

He could spot nothing along the horizon, and nothing beyond the trees behind the community. In every direction he looked, all there was to be seen was bright blue sky and forest.

All directions except one. He looked straight up. Above the village, and particularly high above the tower, Lanier could see tiny, boat-shaped craft descending slowly, as if at the mercy of the wind. They were quite high and moving sluggishly. Not aircraft, not balloons, they were boats.

Indians? Shawnee, did he say
? Lanier squinted at them.
What kind of colonial world is this
?

The only thing he could do for the present was to go to the tower with the rest of the townfolk. The overhead boats were only minutes away from the tower. He could see no immediate threat from the craft. But he could be wrong.

Since the villagers might not let him inside the tower—being so obviously an outsider to the community—he decided to do something useful. He leaped out into the street and aided the merchant with the bolting horse. The man was having a difficult time controlling the animal.

An old hand with horses, Lanier ran to the opposite side of the horse and grabbed the reins that fluttered about the huge neck of the beast. He pulled the animal off to one side, facing away from the fleeing villagers, away from the commotion.

"I got him," he said to the merchant, swinging up on the rider's seat. "Here, I'll help you. Let's go!"

The merchant didn't argue, and a temporary look of relief spread to his face. The horse had almost been too much for him to handle on his own.

"But my wife! I've got to get her," he said, running back into his store, which Lanier noticed was a candle shop and waxworks. "Wait here for me!"

Although somewhat apprehensive, he didn't feel the same sense of urgency as the settlers did. His mantra drifted evenly in his mind. Nothing moved him.
Om Mani Padmi Hum
…

The man came back out with his wife, a frumpy woman who was as frightened as her husband. She kept squealing, "Jack, oh Jack!" And the merchant kept shoving her toward the carriage where Lanier waited, tugging at the reins, quieting the horse. The animal was still very restless.

Suddenly something struck the carriage solidly with a loud, ugly
thump
! Lanier spun around and saw a massive iron dartlike object imbedded in a flour sack. Another dart fell into the street, followed by another.

The woman shrieked, ridden with hysteria. Jack, the merchant, lifted her bodily into the back of the carriage with the food. She screamed, rolling over in a rustle of petticoats, rumpling like an enormous flower. She came face-to-face with the dart. Seeing it, inches away from her nose, she fainted in a cloud of flour dust.

The darts fell all about the villagers.

Lanier turned the horse around, slapped the reins along its backside.

"Yah! Up there!" And the carriage jerked, taking off down the street.

The merchant, holding on to his hat, looked up. "Damn Shawnee! Look out! Look out! Good God!"

Lanier glanced up when a huge shadow mooned over them. One of the craft was only fifty meters above them, and he could see a number of men—Shawnee presumably—dropping whole racks of the dart objects.

A deadly rain of the sharp, barbed darts plunged right in front of their horse. The darts struck the dusty street, digging in deeply. Two men were felled by them, impaled neatly. One dart caught a woman in the hip, thrusting her to the ground. She uttered no sound, going down instantly dead. Another man, like a pinned insect, vomited blood onto the street, the dart protruding from his stomach.