Enigmatic Pilot (35 page)

The pistol exploded in the gang leader’s grip. The men beside him dropped their weapons and slapped their hands to their heads—their eyes. As one single cornered animal, they clamored in horrible unison and then collapsed, wriggling in the sloshy ground like worms. Only their leader did not fall to the ground. He was too busy dancing. A dreadful dance of unbearable pain that sent a wave of sickening fulfillment through Lloyd as he lowered the Eye and closed his fist around it, finding it cool once more.

The netted hat of the vigilante captain had ignited like a
tumbleweed, encasing his face in a blue-green cage of flames, so that not even the stench of burning beard and skin escaped. He darted and weaved for a moment like some crazed new kind of pyrotechnic toy—the image of which might have made children laugh and clap, had the body below been some clever machine, and not a flesh-and-blood man, that could not be rebuilt in time for the next performance. Then he crashed into a wheel-rut puddle. The bloody shattered bone of his pistol hand lay outstretched, the fried black mass of what had been his head half submerged in the narrow ditch of rain, all skull and cobweb now, too hideous to look at.

Which his compatriots would never have to do. To a man, their sight had been seared shut like slits of blank slate—except for the colossus with the pitchfork, whose eyeballs had turned to scalding jelly and had leaked out of their sockets, staining his face and coat like offal flicked with a slotted spoon.

W
HETHER THE INHABITANTS OF
I
NDEPENDENCE WERE SLEEPING
very soundly that night, or whether such trouble had been anticipated in official quarters, after the blinding firestorm that had been released from the Eye, the dark of stars and the dim reflections of the moon in pools and rivulets returned, afterimages dwindling away like fiery leaves turned to ash. A lone stable dog howled at the other end of town, answered by the cry of coyotes or a wild pack in the distance. Soon the morning light would come creeping across the sky, the aroma of breakfasts would begin to rise—steel-cut oats bubbling and freshly laid eggs cracked and popping on buttered grills. Another steamboat would bring wagons and carriageloads of newcomers—barrels and crates of goods, workhorses dragging fresh timber, the smell of smoke, sweat, and the river clinging to their thickening coats. But all was still now, except for the mess of depraved and wounded humanity before them.

“Come quick,” urged Lloyd, pocketing his treasures and trying to raise Soames back up. Drucker kept blinking and batting the air, but it was clear that he had not been permanently debilitated. Both men could see all right again after a few moments, but neither could believe what he had seen. With the exception of the charred leader, the vigilantes lay sprawled on
the mushy ground groaning, limbs tangled, fumbling for one another—for help, for answers to what had happened to them. Lloyd took charge and led the two Quist guards between the bodies and back toward the storehouse as fast as they could move, given their stunned, disoriented condition. After his miraculous performance, Soames and Drucker seemed more than willing to be led, boy though he was.

That Lloyd had no idea what sort of power had been unleashed or how he had unleashed it, he vowed he would not reveal. His one objective now was to return his bewildered new comrades to their families and fellows and deliver the warning about reprisals or further action against them.

Once back at the storehouse, Soames and Drucker poured forth a tale that made the Quists tremble and ululate. Even McGitney, practical man of decision that he had become, was distraught—flapping his arms for order and calling for more details all at once. Lloyd let the hoo-ha run its course and then reemphasized the admonition he had offered the moment they returned through the heavy door.

“You must leave town,” he told them. “By the fastest, straightest way you can. Those that waylaid us will not harm anyone again, but they have friends and other fools ready to do the same that they tried. Every moment you stay in this town you run the risk of being hunted down and—”

“We know, lad.” McGitney nodded. “We know too well the trials and risks we face. We have faced and suffered them before. That’s what brings us here and on the path before us. Our plan was always to leave this burg at first light. It was, in fact, your unexpected arrival that has delayed us. And, as fate or divine will would have it, has saved us, too. This is a night we will muddle over in times to come. But what of you and your family? Are you not at risk from these same marauders, too, now?”

“I don’t reckon this boy is at risk from anyone,” Drucker pronounced. “He is the next prophet—the one that Saint Kendrick foresaw. The box he carries is a match to the Headstones, and
he can draw lightning down from a clear sky and make it do his bidding.”

This statement, presented so forcibly, offered a concise and unavoidable distillation of his and Soames’s initial attempt at a report. Lloyd dutifully presented Urim and Thummin’s box for inspection by McGitney and the others, and squawks of recognition and befuddlement filled the storehouse. The Eye he would not present, and as neither Drucker nor Soames had seen it clearly or grasped what role it had played in their deliverance, he was not about to stir up more chaos and inquiry now. What was more, of course, he had no idea what made the Eye work. It had been but an interesting if grotesque piece of jewelry minutes before—a souvenir of a lost part of his life that he was both afraid and hopeful of finding again. The real value he had placed on it had to do with Hattie LaCroix. The Eyes were a pair that might one day be reunited. That was his dream. That was why he had given her the other one.

McGitney tried with great patience to maintain order and take in the facts presented to him. It would not be long before the blinded vigilantes were found by their co-conspirators and, come the dawn, the tribe of Quists needed to be on the move. But they could not leave without knowing what their night visitor-savior had to tell them.

“Lloyd, are you who we think you are?”

The boy shook his head. “I’m not a prophet or your holy one. But you should listen to me just the same.”

“Because of your power?”

Lloyd dodged this. “Because I speak the truth.”

McGitney opened his arms to the group, as if calling for their opinion.

“You spoke the truth about the sacred markings. You helped save two of our own. I think you are the one Saint Kendrick foresaw. I know I speak for all the Quists when I say we want you to join us, to lead us to the promised land we know awaits us beyond the wilderness.”

Lloyd thought of his parents asleep in their coffins and shook his head. If he could not join the ranks of the Spirosians or the Vardogers, he certainly could not take up with the Quists—and he felt a great weight upon his shoulders when he thought of what he had to tell them, before any more of them were hurt or killed at the hands of night riders.

“I am not your messiah,” he said again. “And your faith … your theology—”

He was trying to think if that was the right word. To him, religion was what people who lacked magic and science had to fall back on.

“Go on,” McGitney encouraged. “We trust you, Lloyd. We would follow you if you would lead us.”

“Well, first I think you should stop this following business,” Lloyd began (which perhaps showed that, in spite of his prodigious mental faculties, his grasp of human nature was still weak or at least self-deceiving, for he himself was an avid follower—the only problem was that he was devoted to a phantom). “Not all can lead, but no one necessarily must follow.”

“What would you have us do?” a pretty young woman, who nestled a sleeping baby to her breast, implored. “Flounder blind like those men Brother Drucker says you left yonder?”

“Those men accosted us—and their blindness is a punishment,” Lloyd replied, not mentioning that he had no idea how that particular form of punishment had been inflicted. “The kind of blindness you mean is just not knowing. Uncertainty. Doubt. If you are not able to face
that
and keep on seeking, you will never find anything worth trusting.”

He thought of the Clutters, seeing a riddle in the simple, albeit esoteric instruction on the bottom of the Vardogers’ music box.

“You will build a church of meaning and procedure upon a mystery you have mistaken. Your church, even if it is a cathedral, will be a house of cards, and the genuine mystery will be missed.”

McGitney scratched his red beard. If this boy was not the Enlightened One that had been promised, he sure sounded like him.

“All right,” he said. “Supposing you are not he whom we have been expecting. Nevertheless you say you have a truth to tell us about the sacred markings and what we believe. Tell us your truth.”

“I’m afraid you won’t like it,” Lloyd answered, shuffling his feet on the sod floor to wipe off the mud he had accumulated.

“It is written that the truth will set you free. This must be why you have found us tonight. There can be no other explanation. And if, as you say, there are things about the Headstones that exceed your understanding, too, then perhaps there is a larger truth at work than any of us knows—or can ever know. But tell us the truth you came to tell, whoever you really are, wherever you really come from. It must be important. After all that has happened tonight, that much is clear.”

Lloyd looked McGitney in the eye, then scanned the faces around the room. Then he held up the box the professor had given him, in what seemed another life.

“The markings on this box, which you can all see are exactly like the markings on the strips of wood you carry, were not made thousands or even a hundred years ago. They were made in recent times by twin brothers. Wild, sad creatures. Freaks of nature, you would call them. From Indiana.”

A great choral sigh was released around the storehouse.

“The twins were deformed and disabled. A man who ran a medicine show had found them and taken them in, intending to exhibit them for profit, although I think he had too much heart to exploit them. Maybe because of their monstrous appearance they seemed to have grown up in their own world, never a part of the life that we know—though alert enough and smart in their own way. At least they were not imbeciles. But they could not speak English. Instead, they spoke a language all their own, which was every bit as odd to hear as these markings
are to look at. The pitchman thought their speech was just animal chatter, but I
know
that it had a pattern and a depth—and a variety at least as great as English, perhaps much greater. I was given this box with their written language carved into it, because I hoped to study it and understand its meaning. I first believed it was something they invented, although both the writing and their speech had a—I’m not sure of the right word—an
authority
that some made-up code is not likely to have. But if they were specimens or representatives of some bigger group or a people whose language this is, I don’t know where to look for them.”

Lloyd paused, and McGitney tugged at his beard.

“You’re saying these writings are the creation of idiots from Indiana, and only a few years old?”

“I did not say they were idiots,” Lloyd answered. “It appears they were from Indiana, but there is no actual proof of that.”

“But why do the characters and symbols spring to life? Why do they glow?”

“That I do not know—yet,” Lloyd responded. “I agree with you that it’s wondrous strange, but you have assumed that the illumination is somehow inherent in the symbols—that they have a life of their own. Maybe the cause lies rather in how the symbols have been made. I have seen luminous fungi in caves. There are water creatures with strange properties, and any number of minerals with unusual characteristics. I cannot account for the capacity just now, but I propose to you that the mystery of the gleaming could be reconciled and the secret of the symbols still remain unsolved.”

“But your contention is that the sacred markings are not old and do not tell of the grand historic legacy that we, the Quists, have come to know and worship through the Book of Buford?”

“The sheets of bark are old,” Lloyd replied. “Clearly. The markings on them may or may not be. But I saw the wild twins making such symbols and figures with my own eyes not long ago. They would use any surface that was made available to
them, and a range of implements from charcoal stick and quill to awl or sharpened bone. You will note that all the illuminated examples we have here are carved, which allows for the indentations to have been treated with some unknown material or by some undetermined process after creation. Sadly, we lack any examples of their writing system produced by pen or chalk on paper or parchment. It would be very interesting to see if such specimens would also demonstrate the same luminosity now. If they did, that would suggest that there is something, however difficult to understand, about the symbols themselves. If not, it would support the theory that the figures have somehow been treated. I myself have never observed the glowing of the writing on my box. In any case, I can see that all this is hard for you to follow, because you did not know other examples of the writing existed. Believing these bark fragments to be unique, you have therefore attributed special significance to them, which by definition they do not have—although they may very well have other kinds.”

“But you say this is not a message to us? That these are not a whole that tell a story. A lost book of revelation and prophecy?” asked a man with a large wart on his forehead that his turban was trying to hide.

Lloyd pursed his lips and then replied, “It seems the one thing that is certain in this matter is that none of us know for certain what these markings mean. The showman who was looking after the brothers thought it was just scribbling. We here all agree that there is a beauty and an order to the markings that lie far beyond any aimless scrawling. Far! This is a language—a true, full, rich language, however indecipherable it may seem. It may even be that it opens an unknown door on the nature of all languages. The characters, their shapes and repetitions, are the most intriguing and hypnotic things to look upon I have ever seen. But why the brothers would need to communicate to each other in writing is unclear. And if they
were writing for someone else to read, who did they have in mind?”