Enigmatic Pilot (33 page)

Now that the notion of investigating the source of the music had passed from his mind, Lloyd was without a plan of action and had half a mind to return to the Clutters’ and try to go to sleep, but there did not seem any harm in at least having a peek in the storehouse to see what was going on. Picking his way through the pea patch he became more intrigued, as from its exterior the storehouse appeared to be abandoned, and he had not seen buildings that were not being used in the town. Something was going on inside, though.

He crept up close to the yawning, empty window frame, which, with the softness of the mud underfoot, was infuriatingly just a little too high for him to see into. There was no choice but to stand on tiptoe and hold on to the ledge. By hoisting himself up just a few inches, he would be able to peer inside. Of course, his fingers might be visible from within, but there was no other way, short of trying to sneak in the heavy barn-width door, which might well have been barred anyway.

As quietly as he could, he reached up and grabbed hold of the rough-troweled masonry and dragged himself into the square of light cast from inside the storehouse. In the blend of moonlight and diffused gleam from within, he could see that the chinks in the slapdash brickwork had been patched with mortar and mud, and were flecked with old desiccated wasp nests and cobwebs. He tried to brace his boots against the chinks without making a scraping sound. What he saw at first surprised him as much as the sight that had greeted his eyes when the Vardogers’ music box had opened.

It was the Quists, all gathered together in a circle around a group of tallow candles arranged in a Star of David pattern atop a cross, which from his point of view was upside down. There were perhaps twenty or thirty adults, with a couple of older kids and a few mother-cradled infants. Everyone, even the babes in
their mothers’ arms, were swathed in red turbans and staring with rapt attention as a man straddling the candle flames rising from the sod floor passed around what looked to Lloyd like pieces of sun-dried tree bark with funny markings etched into them. He struggled to maintain his hold on the ledge and to strain up a bit higher to get a better look.

The man who held sway in the center of the group was none other than Increase McGitney, lately arrived in Independence under cover of darkness with an armed escort, to lead his people west and south to a promised land they knew they would recognize when they came to it. The surviving Quists had congregated in this unusually derelict building at a late hour in a ritual of renewal, hoping to find the strength and focus to lead them forward, beyond the reach of their persecutors, to some green valley that lay on the other side of the wolf-roaming plains and scorching deserts. They had turned back to the sacred scriptures upon which their beliefs were founded, not the Book of Buford but the very Headstones that Kendrick Quist himself had uncovered on his way home from the fateful horse gelding in Indiana.

The sections of petrified wood were produced from a strongbox that McGitney’s guards carried, but, unlike the relics and holy texts of other less democratically minded faiths, they were not hoarded away as they had been back in the days of Buford’s prophetic leadership. Truth be known, McGitney had many personal reservations about the Book of Buford, and was privately of (the arguably heretical) opinion that the Headstones held a deeper mystery than either the great Kendrick or his relative had fathomed. In any case, ever since his inadvertent moment of courageous abandon, McGitney had grasped an often overlooked element of effective leadership: the sharing of authority whilst never shirking from responsibility. And so, at this crucial juncture in his people’s journey, he had deemed it appropriate to renew their collective sense of awe and devotion.

It was a risky move, for at first nothing could have seemed
plainer or humbler than the old bits of engraved bark that came out of the box. Lloyd gripped like a cat to the ledge, eyes probing through the glassless space—not, of course, knowing what it was he was witnessing but perceiving, in the quality of attention in the shining eyes of the turbaned group, that it was something important.

Then, very gradually, the effect McGitney had counted on began to manifest itself. What before—at least, at the distance from which Lloyd was viewing them—had looked like the vehement gnawings of insects or the scratchings of some demented child in the ancient bark now began to glow. Over the course of a minute, the glow deepened and brightened as if magnetizing the moonlight. The unexplained phenomenon caused the desired stir around the circle of the Quists and set Lloyd wriggling to gain a clearer view. There was an inexplicable aura of bioluminescence about the markings now, as if they had come to life in the candlelight and indeed outshone the tapers with a weird green phosphorescence that revealed a new level of detail in the figures. To Lloyd’s amazement, he found that he recognized the radiant markings as the unmistakable likenesses of the hierograms of the Martian Ambassadors! The shock sent him tumbling to earth outside the window.

“Wait!” called Increase McGitney, becoming hypertense. “Go see what that was!” he instructed the guards, who bolted out between the candles. Trouble had followed the Quists wherever they had gone and they were prepared for more before they made their departure across the prairie. Three burly men in red turbans stormed out of the storehouse, one carrying a torch, the other two cudgels. Before Lloyd could scramble to his feet, they were upon him.

M
C
G
ITNEY’S GUARDS PLUCKED
L
LOYD FROM THE MOON-SOAKED
mud and hauled him inside the storehouse like a sack of spuds. For all his fearsome intellect, the boy was powerless in their hands. When he recovered from his shock, he was standing, forcibly propped between two turbaned men on the perimeter of the candles that he had been observing moments earlier, with the face, or rather the dense red beard and glittering eyes, of Increase McGitney poking down at him.

“Who are ya, boy?” the Quist headman demanded.

“He’s a spy!” a woman cried out.

“I’m Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd,” the boy answered, and shook the big hands off his shoulders with an authority or an arrogance that made McGitney pause.

“Am I to know that name?” McGitney asked, hoping to raise a chuckle among his agitated congregation.

Lloyd instantly regretted proffering his name, but as he could not retract it he let the statement stand and sent his eyes out around the group.

“What brings a lad like you out so late, then?” the Quist leader tried, concerned about this disruption in their ceremony but not afraid. He doubted that any terror gang would send so young a child to scout them.

Lloyd ignored the question, in part because he did not want to have to explain about trying to sleep in a coffin. Instead, he reached out with his hand for the nearest of the thin wooden tablets.

The gray-bearded man who held it pulled back in alarm, but not quite fast enough. As the boy’s hand brushed the bark, the luminous glyphs pulsed with brightness.

“I know those markings,” Lloyd announced. “I’ve seen the likes of them before.”

“Are you … a Quist, then?” McGitney sputtered. “Because naught but the Quists has ever laid eyes on the sacred Headstones.”

Lloyd again refused to answer—he was too enthralled by the shimmering writings. He reached out his hand again toward the bark section the bearded man held close to his chest, and this time the fluorescence illuminated the whole of the man’s face, as if he were clasping a lidded lantern from which the light wanted to escape.

“My Lord!” a woman on the other side of the storehouse cried. “Look!”

One of the other tablets started pulsing more intently, too. Then another. Murmurs and moans spread throughout the storehouse. McGitney sensed some impending crisis of authority in the presence of this boy and the uncanny effect he seemed to have on the Headstones. But he was curious, too.

“Take out the others,” he directed his assistants.

The remaining Headstones were produced from the strongbox and all were now beaming brilliantly, casting their runic mysteries upon the faces and the walls like magic-lantern pictures. The Quists let out a collective gasp and then turned their frightened, composite scrutiny on the boy.

The Book of Buford had promised that there would be another prophet—a true messianic figure to lead the tribe forward into the light of the future and their destiny as spiritual pilgrims and prosperous citizens in the new America that was to
come. It was one of the crucial points of the revealed doctrine that McGitney had unquestioning belief in. He knew in his heart that he was but a chieftain of the moment—a trailblazer to spur them westward. He had no private delusions (or “affinity with divinity,” as he called it), however shrewdly he played upon his role to achieve the ends he deemed best for his flock. Now here was an undeniable call from beyond, in the sect’s own terms. It could not be brushed aside.

“How are you doing this, lad?” he asked, in as calm a voice as he could muster. He was relieved at Lloyd’s reply.

“I don’t know that I am doing it—or doing anything. I just know I’ve seen these kinds of markings before.”

The Headstones sparkled in response, as if emphatically agreeing, triggering more exclamations and whispers.

“Where?” McGitney demanded. The Quists’ claim to be a chosen people hinged on the uniqueness of the Headstones. And yet, had not he, their own leader, always harbored the belief that there was more to the glyphic codes than the Book of Buford had disclosed? Was not the very hope upon which the Quist religion was founded—their fundamental tenet of faith—that revelation was not just real but continuing? The ancient wisdom embodied in the Headstones was alive. That was what the Book of Buford and all the Quists believed. The illumination of the tablets was proof of this.

“Are you some kind of proph-et?” one of the black men on the other side of the circle asked with a tremor in his voice.

Lloyd was not sure how to answer this question, and so repeated what he had said before. “I am Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd. I have seen these markings before. These things you have are not the only examples.”

“Order!” McGitney called, as the commotion this assertion caused threatened to upset the entire proceeding, not to mention draw unwelcome attention.

“Well, young Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd. My name is Increase McGitney, and the people you see gathered around you are my
devoted compatriots in a holy mission of discovery and fulfillment. We call ourselves Quists. You may have heard of our trials—or have even been warned away from us. That is, provided you are not a spy. Are you a spy, young Lloyd?”

Lloyd shook his head violently. It occurred to him that if he were a spy he was not a very adept one. Hattie would have been dark with him.

“And where have you seen these writings, Lloyd? In a dream?”

“No,” the boy answered.

“Then where? Where are you from?”

“Zanesville, Ohio.”

“And is that where you saw them?” McGitney pestered. Even if by some fluke the boy was speaking the truth, if another example of the Headstones lay at a distance, perhaps lost, his claim could not be proved. Perhaps the effect the boy seemed to have on the tablets could be explained away and they could return to their ceremony.

Still, he could not get around his own intuition that the boy’s appearance was somehow fated. A defining moment in Quistory.

Lloyd hesitated. He had become so intrigued by the sight of markings like the Ambassadors’—and by their unexplained luminescence—that he had forgotten for a moment about his precarious situation. Surrounded by strangers with strange beliefs, late at night in a foreign frontier town—his parents not knowing where he was—he knew that his goal should have been to get back to the Clutters’ in one piece and get to bed without his parents knowing that he had been gone. He realized that he was always endangering their safety, and reproached himself for it. But he could not curb his curiosity—or his need to show these head-wrapped wayfarers the error of their ways.

“I have it with me,” he replied at last, which set the Quists chattering and speculating, while the light from the Headstones
held in various hands around the circle bloomed brighter. “A short distance from here,” he added, as McGitney held up his hands for quiet.

“Then you must fetch it,” the Quist patriarch commanded. “Drucker and Soames, go with him. We must prove the truth of this claim here and now.”

“No,” Lloyd insisted. “I will not let you take it from me. It was given to me.”

“Who by, lad?”

“That is not for me to say to you,” Lloyd fired back. “But I will not fetch it for you to steal.”

The circle of faces erupted in discord.

“Hush!” McGitney demanded. “Lad, whoever you are, and wherever you are from, know this: the Quists are not thieves. More honest, law-abiding folk you would be hard pressed to find, wherever laws are fair and allow for freedom of faith. We are merely humble believers in the revealed truth the great Saint Kendrick bestowed upon us. We mean you no harm, as we hope to have none done to us. But see here. You have made a bald, bold claim that strikes at the heart of what we have risked and lost good lives to defend and protect. If what you speak is the truth, then something of your destiny is entwined with ours—whether the genuine nature of this can be fathomed by any of us gathered at this crossroads or not. I say to you—I give our word—you will not be harmed. Your property will not be appropriated. And if you are in the shadow of any danger, as we are, perhaps we may even be of help to you. And yours. You have family, I take it? Unless you just rose out of the ground to haunt us. Or did you fall from the sky?”

This last query had a noticeable effect on Lloyd, for he could not help seeing and hearing the pitiful Ambassadors as they were swept away into the cruel blue above the Mississippi. He had repaid their hermetic trust with betrayal, abandonment, and almost certain execution, unless Hattie’s theory held some
hope. In any case, all that remained of them now seemed to be the box he had been given with their cryptic language engraved on it. His head churned with questions and doubts—yet he could not shake free his desire to know if the markings on the box he carried were also capable of coming to phosphorescent life like the Headstones, and he recalled the singular line of speculation that had been triggered by Hattie. He had to know more.