Kalifornia (17 page)

Besides, that bitch in black was trying to set him up somehow, he
was sure of it. If he worked fast, maybe he could stop her. Which meant finding
her. She’d held the advantage right from the start, breaking in with those
snuff jobs he’d done on his way up from the gutter, those crystals he wished he’d
never agreed to record—not that he’d had any choice at the time. It’d been blackmail
then, too; his addictions had betrayed him, held him captive on a daily basis.

Not that—and it was hard to admit it now—there hadn’t been a
little hate in his heart back then, motivating him. Hate of the system, which
had nailed a white-as-rice family to the top of the ratings in a state where
whites had been a distinct minority for years. The Spanish surname Figueroa
couldn’t disguise the fact that they were white, white, white. There were
ethnic family programs, but they seemed to succeed in spite of the support they
didn’t
receive, and their wholesome, untroubled
life-styles, so out of touch with ghetto and barrio realities, seemed even more
artificial than the Figueroas’. Consequently they never gathered any loyal
following or touched any deeper nerve. So, yes, he’d done his part in the
kidnapping mainly because of the knife held to his throat . . . but
there had been a darker spot of delight in him at first. Until he got to know
Poppy as a person, and not as a symbol of his frustrations. And then his sense
of being out of control had begun steadily to worsen. . . .

Well, now was time to take back control. Get the bitch where she
lived. Make some of his own moves for a change, instead of just jumping
whenever anyone poked him.

He went back into the house with a cube in each hand. Sandy showed him a huge console in the den. It was an elaborate system, with whole panels
of function keys Clarry had never seen before. Sandy dropped the cubes into
twin player slots.

“One thing,” Sandy said. “Don’t say a word about this to my
father, all right? I don’t want him getting his hopes up.”

“Sure thing.”

“Thanks, man. If Poppy trusted you, I guess I can.”

The thought of Poppy’s trust was like a dagger. Clarry forced a
smile. He had a mouthful of rope juice and wasn’t sure where to spit it. Sandy made him nervous. He swallowed.

“Sure thing,” Clarry said again.

“Okay, now lead me through it. The police cube first. The
broadcast I saw.”

Clarry bent over the console, already feeling a professional envy.
What a system! Finding exactly the spot he wanted was as easy as drawing a
breath. It came bleeding up from his wires, pervading him, a scene frozen in
time.

Here’s where I went too far, he thought. Past the point of no
return.

For a moment he felt an inexplicable panic. He was afraid to feel
it again, to relive it.

But the panic was not entirely his own. Some was Poppy’s,
wire-borne, as the scene started moving.

Night. Vertigo. He stared down at the crowds, hearing the sounds
of pursuit. A wagon stalled below.

Now,
came a soft, subvocal cue, just like one of his
own thoughts, but in a girl’s soft voice. Poppy’s voice.

He hugged a small body close to his breast for a fleeting instant.
The baby.
Which I never even got to hold or touch, except
for patting Poppy’s belly.

Before he could appreciate Calafia, he let go of her.

He watched the soundless fall, saw the swaddled infant plunge into
the bed of the station wagon, saw the car start forward into traffic. A pang
came from somewhere deeper than the wires. He’d lost something of himself in
that instant—something irretrievable.

“Back up,” Sandy said from outside the scene.

The image blurred and held. Then the wagon rolled back into place,
the child fell upward into Poppy’s arms, the crowd babbled like a group of
maniacs drowning in reverse.

It all started again.

Panic. The child falling. The wagon moving.

Full stop. Reverse. The wagon moved backward, the child tumbled up
toward his/her outstretched hands. Froze in midair.

“Okay,” Sandy said. “Call up the other copy, same point.”

It took only seconds to match the two scenes. Clarry focused on
the baby, fixing her at the same point of her fall in both versions. Both
channels held simultaneously. He was Poppy twice over now, Clarry inside of
Poppy inside of Poppy inside of Clarry. An embodied echo. Both versions of
Poppy were identical. He saw no discrepancy in the baby, either.

But down below, in the street, it was another story.

Sandy
said it first: “Something’s wrong.”

“The wagons,” Clarry said. “They’re completely different. Look at
that—different color, model, everything. The driver’s different, too. There’s
no wood paneling in the original.”

Suddenly it was obvious. The master crystal had been altered—but
how? And by whom? The police wouldn’t tamper with it. This was their only clue
to tracking down the vehicle.

Unless they—or someone with access to evidence—hadn’t wanted the
vehicle to be found.

In the master cube that the cops had seized and returned, the
driver was a tall white man with thinning hair. In the original recording just
now taken from the van deck, the driver was a huddled figure wrapped in black.

The wagon in the cops’ cube was white with fake wood paneling
along the sides, the one in the original, black and bare-sided—like the wagon
he’d arranged for the substitution. If he had watched the sequence after
getting the master back, he would have noticed the change immediately. But he’d
never bothered. And the police had been looking for a white wagon driven by a
white man.

If they were looking at all.

“All right,” Sandy said, “isolate the wagon from the original
image.” He spoke to the computer rather than Clarry. “I want to know where
those things come from. Where are they used? That’s an old gas burner. They’re
not even legal anymore except . . . oh, shit. Except in
the Holy City.”

He stammered this out just as the computer completed its analysis:
“Gas wagons are currently illegal in California. The only area exempt from
emission restrictions, for constitutional reasons, is district CL-37, the
so-called Holy City.”

In place of the kidnapping scene, Clarry now found himself
hovering above a map of California. The Holy City was marked out by red tints
in the middle of the Frange, just south of Snozay, where the bicentennial
sequence had been taped. “The Holy City,” Clarry murmured.

“It fits,” said Sandy. “Most of the sects in there are pretty
primitive. I’ll bet that’s where the wagon came from—and where it went with my
niece.”

“Jay Cee,” Clarry said. “But who’s crazy enough to go in there
after it? Where do we start?”

“I know just where to start,” Sandy said. “And maybe you can help
me.”

Sandy
’s enthusiasm was contagious. And he did want to
catch up that bitch in her own net. He could do this—he could help undo his
errors.

“Yeah, Sandy, sure. What’s your idea?”

“I used to be a sender. I’ve still got the wires for it. I’ll flip
the switch and do it again, but on a closed circuit this time. I’ll pay you
whatever you ask to stay at the receiver and monitor my progress. One guy alone
in there shouldn’t attract too much attention.”

Clarry let out a low whistle. “You’re going into the Holy City?”

Sandy
nodded. “Going in
live.
”

S01E08.
 
Kalifornia,
 
Here
 
I
 
Come

As Sandy huddled down behind a pile of metal scrap, his nose an
inch from wet cement that reeked of oil and garbage, he had the sense,
illusory, that he could feel his polynerves. Unless there were another cause
for all the chills that racked him.

Fear, maybe?

Nah.

He raised himself on his elbows and looked over the scrap heap,
but he couldn’t see a thing. Too dark. The absence of noise worried him more
than that of light. The Holy City was suddenly quieter than a librarian’s tomb.

A minute ago, he’d been sure he was being followed, and now there
was nothing to suggest that the forbidden zone was even occupied. Two obvious
explanations occurred to him: either he’d shaken his pursuers and they’d gone
off somewhere else entirely, or else they were waiting out there, waiting
with all the patience of skilled trackers, until he betrayed himself with some
stupid action.

Some stupid little thing like snagging his cuff on a bit of burred
metal, which pulled the whole tortious scrap heap down on him.

Sandy
managed not to cry out, but the wreckage had a
voice of its own. The parts clanked and clamored down on him. In seconds, he
was half buried in the stuff; he lay pinned with only his arms slightly free.

The pile settled into a new, more stable position. Sandy gave up on silence. With a groan he stretched forward, grabbed hold of a handy post,
and started to haul himself out from under the scrap.

“Leggo my leg.”

The post shook off his hand. Sandy looked up but still couldn’t
see anything, not so much as a silhouette. He had to admit it was all pretty
dramatic. Clarry might make good use of it someday, despite the dark picture.
Part of his deal with the wireman was that when all this was over, Starko could
mix it into a package and sell broadcast rights for whatever he could get.

In that final cut, this voice would sound great booming out of the
darkness. It suggested a big, somewhat oafish character. He waited for it to
say something else.

“Who are you?” it said.

Sandy
groaned, shifting his weight to pull out of the
slag. He freed his legs and started to rise, but something shoved him back
again.

“Don’t move. I said, who are you?”

“Slack off, I’m not bothering you.”

“You’re messing up my stoop. You got five seconds to tell me who
you are, then I throw you to the Holy Rollers. It’s time for the midnight
patrol.”

The Holy Rollers. Sandy didn’t know them, but he knew he never wanted
to.

“My name’s Sandy,” he said. “I’m looking for a church.”

The voice laughed.

“You came to the right place,” said the voice. “Any church in
particular?”

“Is . . . is there any difference?”

Now the voice crowed. “You must be new around here.”

In the distance Sandy heard what sounded like wolves howling,
along with a continuous clatter he couldn’t identify. Firecrackers, maybe. Or
dull thunder.

“Okay, newboy. I’ll let you come inside until they pass, then you
gotta keep moving. My lama is in heavy meditation; I’m supposed to keep up the
banishing rites nonstop. He wouldn’t like it if he caught me bringing strangers
in. Evil influences, you know. So keep quiet, okay?”

“Sure,” Sandy said. Anything to avoid the Holy Rollers.

A hand took hold of him and helped him to his feet; he was pulled
stumbling through debris he couldn’t see and up a short flight of steps.

“Quiet, now. Not a word.”

Sandy
nodded, pointless though the gesture seemed. He
had the feeling this guy could see him in the dark. It made Sandy wish he’d
brought along night-spex. His original logic was that by seeming defenseless he
would attract the pity of some compassionate religious group, which would have
the pleasure of adopting him as one of their own.

The wolf howls were closer now. He heard
yip-yip-yip-
ing,
eerie cries echoing between the invisible buildings, and a softer sound nearby
that might have been someone sobbing or mumbling or tunelessly speaking the
words to a song.

Suddenly a gong clanged in his ear. Sandy dropped to the ground. A
horn began to wail a ghostly reveille, then broke off abruptly as the deep
voice of his unseen benefactor started declaiming mystic threats against a
background of eerie humming:

“Ho, demons! You’re treading on thin ice around here. Whoa now, I’ll
tell you, some fuzzy-faced evil guy with three eyes came around last night and
he didn’t live to regret it!”

Sandy
sat up, hugging his knees. The horn wailed
again, cymbals crashed. Out in the street, the clatter was incredible. The Holy
Rollers were right on top of them. He made out words in their wailing:

“Hallelujah!
Awoo-oo-oo
!”

“Glory be! Glory Hallelujah!”

“We’re comin’, Lord! We’re countin’ on your radiant mercy, Lord!
You just show us the way to the trespassin’ unbeliever—we’ll make him sorry he
was ever born to your glorious light!”

“Mercy! Oh, have mercy! I feel you, Lord!”

Meanwhile, Sandy’s companion let up on the trumpet and continued
with his own impassioned cries:

“Now hear this! All demons must evacuate this area immediately or
suffer eternal punishments. Any demon remaining within the proximity of my
voice in five seconds is going to have his eyes boiled in his head, his own
tongue eaten for dessert, and his genitals lopped off and stuck on a stake as
an example to others. That’s five seconds and counting! One . . . two . . . three
. . .”

“Lord, you’s beautiful as they come!”

“Hallelujah!”

“Awoo-woo-woo!”

“. . . three and a half . . .”

“Guide us, Lord! Show us the way!”

“I smell a sinner!”

“I smell dinner!”

“Show yourself, sinner-dinner! Let yourself be purged from the
sight of God!”

“Four . . . four and a half . . .”

The cries went fading down the avenue, along with the unholy
clamor of their passing. It sounded like they were dragging something that
scraped on the street and made a terrible din. If only the light had been
better. He wondered what Clarry made of all this, way out there somewhere in
the profane Franchise, living out of his van, plugged into monitors. Cornelius
was with him, too. The sealman had begged Sandy not to go, then finally had
sworn to stay at Starko’s side until Sandy was safe at home again with little
Calafia in his arms.

“Four and three-quarters . . . ”

“Awoo-oo-oo!”

“Five! That’s it. All you demons who hung around are dead meat
now. Come on, show yourselves.”

Sandy
cleared his throat, making the least possible
sound.

“I see nobody challenged me. That was pretty smart of them.”

Sandy
felt his hand being taken. Fie stood up and was
guided carefully back outside, down the steps, and into the street.

“I wish one of those demons would stick around someday. I could do
with a little excitement.”

“Good act,” Sandy said. “I’m not surprised they took off. You’re a
scary dude.”

“Dude? Well, I never—get out of here! Go on! Get moving or you’ll
get the demon treatment yourself!”

“Sorry, uh, ma’am,” he said, hurrying off through the scrap that
had buried him a few minutes before.

“Ma’am?” the voice cried after him. “You are the most insulting—I
should have thrown you to the Rollers!”

He moved down the street, dragging his hands along the faces of
buildings. It was hard going, but he got better at sensing obstacles without
actually running into them. Even so, he finally decided to wait for daylight
before going on. He slipped inside the next open doorway and huddled in a
corner with his insulated jacket pulled tight around him. It offered minimal
protection against the chill of the night, but he was exhausted. Within minutes
he jerked back from a hypnagogic demon, and then sank instantly the rest of the
way into sleep.

He didn’t remember his dreams, and wires couldn’t record them.

***

“Wake up and show your mark.”

“Maybe he’s a deaf-’n’-dumb, Reb. Poke him.”

Sandy
’s eyes opened on a gray and
dismal scene. He was too groggy to avoid the boot toe that jabbed him in the
ribs.

Three figures in cowled cloaks fenced him into the doorway.
Steady drizzle had dampened the cloaks, making them look limp and heavy. The
trio didn’t seem to be in very good
 moods.

“G’morning,” Sandy said. “You don’t have to kick me, you know. I
was waking up anyway.”

“I said show your mark,” said the middle boy, the one called Reb.
All three were teenage boys, but this one, the tallest, looked like the leader.
He turned to his right-hand man and said, “You do it, Zev.”

Zev grabbed Sandy’s left hand and pulled it closer, palm up. They
stared at the skin as if measuring his lifeline. Then Reb looked into Sandy’s eyes and laughed.

“He ain’t got one,” said Zev.

“One what?” Sandy asked.

“A mark that says what sect you’re with,” said Reb.

“Hey, Reb, maybe he’s with the No-Mark Sect!”

The boys all laughed.

“Is that a crime?” Sandy asked.

They looked at each other. “Might be,” said Reb. “But it’s good
luck for us. We get a commission on any hunk of fresh god-bait we pick up.”

“God-bait?” Sandy said.

“Grab him,” Reb said, standing back.

The other two stooped and grabbed Sandy by either arm. He was
bigger than either of them, but he didn’t think resistance was a good idea.
This was more or less what he wanted, right?

Rain hit his face as they dragged him into the street.

“I’m coming, I’m coming, guys. Don’t go so rough.”

They didn’t seem to hear him. Reb walked ahead, sloshing through
puddles, every now and then turning to make sure the rest were following.

“What’s this about a mark?” Sandy called to him. “If I need one I’ll
be happy to get it. I don’t want to break any rules. I’m new around here.”

“Obviously,” Reb called over his shoulder. “Don’t worry—as soon as
we figure out where to sell you, you’ll get one. The Wandering Jews run the
best placement service in Holy City. Course, you might not get out much after
that. Depends on where you end up.”

As they walked on, Sandy saw the Holy City revealed by daylight.
He saw people in the buildings, people on the sidewalks, people staring down
from old freeway overpasses as the Jews led their captive through the streets.
Some had shaved heads with red rings painted on their pates like targets; some
apparently never cut their hair and wore it like veils across their faces. Some
went naked, others were wrapped in lengths of rusty wire or coaxial cable. One
old man with a six-foot beard leaned from a shattered window and harangued the
Jews as they passed. Reb stopped to lob a brick at the guy. He hit his mark.

“Don’t proselytize, Rapunzel!” he shouted.

The old man looked humbled . . . or simply
stunned.

“Oy vey,” Reb said as they walked on. “You can’t tell this was
ever America. Religious freedom went right out the window when no one was
looking.”

“What about my freedom?” Sandy asked boldly.

Reb shrugged. “You should have held on to it tighter. Don’t worry,
you’ll do all right. We have some good regular customers. Like the Church of Christ, Nuclear Scientist. They’re pretty interesting. Claim they can split the
Holy Trinity to produce safe, clean energy efficiently. They need research
subjects. You want to donate your immortal soul to a power company?”