Passing Through the Flame (91 page)

Bright sun rising on the moment of our birth...

Bringing the fire of the gods to a dying earth...

“POWER TO THE PEOPLE!” Sargent heard the ragged scream of the forty crazies even over the music, and through the steel stilts of the stage tower, he could see the whole mob of them throw themselves howling against the fence, grabbing great handfuls of the chainlink mesh and shaking the whole section like the maniacs they were, throwing their whole bodies into it, doing everything but foam at the mouth.

“POWER TO THE PEOPLE! POWER TO THE PEOPLE! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”

Dozens of rentacops brandishing billies ran across the stage compound, converging on the sector of the fence where Sargent had planted his berserkers, scores of guards now, leaving the quadrant of the fence opposite the strike force momentarily unguarded.

Sargent leaped up, whipping his M-16 out of its wrapping, shouting, already charging forward. “This is it! Move out!”

The Boys unwrapped their M-16’s, the recruits eagerly whipped out their pistols, and they all ran forward, scattering the people in front of them, sending them sprawling. It took the citizens about two seconds to freak at the sight of all that hardware, and then they were all screaming and yelling and running around in circles, falling all over themselves trying to get out of the way.

Sargent flipped a grenade out of his pack, armed it, tossed it high against the chain-link fence, and watched it explode, perfectly in a burst of orange and black, blasting a big enough hole in the fence to drive a jeep through. In the next moment, two more grenades hit the fence, demolishing the whole section.

“On the double! Move your fucking asses!” Sargent practically shoved his squad of deadheads through the gap in the fence, then let them fend for themselves as he converged with Baum, Bellows, Coleman, Billingham, and Ortiz. In a tight wedge, they sprinted across about sixty yards of open space, scattering chicks, flunkies, and even some asshole filming it all with a camera, none of whom was stupid enough to get in the way of six men armed with automatic weapons.

They reached the foot of the tower without opposition. There was one fat dude in a brown uniform standing in front of the stairs that led to the stage, looking just about ready to shit. “Don’t do anything stupid,” Sargent said, shoving the muzzle of his M-16 right into blubber’s gut. “Get your ass out of here while we’re still feeling generous.” The guard ran off toward a whole shitload of brown uniforms that were high-tailing it toward the tower.

“Billingham, Ortiz, take the recording shack, clear the citizens out of there, then secure the roof and stairwell.” Sargent led the others up the stairs to the stage, burst out of the shade into the bright sunlight, blinked his vision clear, then made for the center of the stage where the musicians were, as Bellows, Baum, and Coleman took up firing positions at the outer edge of the stage, a hundred and twenty degrees apart, commanding the entire stage compound and every guard in it in their combined field of fire.

Sargent snatched a microphone off the electric organ, then paused to assess the situation. Pulaski’s squad had cut through the fence and were herding the so-called revolutionaries through the mob that was pouring through the two gaps in the fence and toward the stairs to the stage. A group of guards was angling over to try to cut them off, but they weren’t going to make it. The recruits the Boys had brought in had managed to form a ragged perimeter around the foot of the stage tower. With a scream of parting metal, the berserkers finally tore down their section of the fence and surged inside the compound, with a crazy mob of people at their back. The rentacops were mostly running around like headless chickens, no more together than the citizens.

Like clockwork, Sargent thought, running like clockwork.

Pulaski’s group reached the stage tower, and Sargent could feel the vibrations of their feet clanging up the metal stairs, while the guards that had been trying to cut them off pulled up in confusion at the sight of the ring of pistoleros around the base of the tower.

Sargent blew a sharp breath into the microphone, grinned as a huge electronic raspberry echoed from the hillsides, freezing everything for a moment like a strobe. “Nobody freaks, nobody gets hurt.” His voice reverberated back to him in huge amplified metallic echoes. “We’ve taken over in the name of the people.”

“ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!” the crazies surrounding the tower roared. It was repeated by the second group of crazies snaking through the mob to the tower. Half of them were waving guns, and that was enough for the rentacops. They froze in their tracks wherever they stood and didn’t attempt to stop the troops in the mob from joining the armed cordon around the stage tower.

Pulaski chugged breathlessly up onto the stage, the Provisional Revolutionary Council staggering in a daze behind him, and the crazies down below where they belonged. He looked at Sargent questioningly.

“It’s secured,” Sargent said.

“Son of a bitch! And
without
firing a fuckin’ shot!”

“You are covered by automatic weapon fire. We are also armed with grenades which we can throw accurately for a hundred feet in any direction. Nobody do anything stupid.”

Through the viewfinder of his camera, Paul watched the crouched, authoritative commander of the revolutionaries rap out his succinct summation of the situation. Slowly, he pulled back from the tight shot on the commander, bringing one of the gunmen on the edge of the stage into the frame, squatting on the balls of his feet with his automatic rifle pointed out into the crowd. Paul edged backward, feeling the resistance of bodies, and continued to pull back as he panned slowly down the tower to the circle of men in army shirts who surrounded it.

The effect was that of an armed fortress surrounded by its own troops—a stunning and chilling reversal of polarities. The speed and precision with which the coup had taken place were now mirrored in the hard and savage competence exuded by the men who had carried it out.

She watched Chris Sargent stalk the stage like a metallic killer cat, the terrible strength of his saw-tooth vibrations shattering all other realities. He was an awesome presence, dominating the stage tower, converting it into his own instrument—but for what?

Fear radiated from Barry Stein, Ivan Blue, and the rest of the Movement group in sickening green waves. Only Ruby Berger drew strength from Sargent’s hard metal aura, watching him with cool, approving eyes while the rest of them huddled in a tight group and tried not to focus any attention on his dominating presence at all. Chris Sargent was no instrument of theirs! He wasn’t leading
their
revolution.

And the people seemed to know this.

They had poured through the smashed fence, and now the great sea of people washed in an unbroken tide from the far ridgelines to the very foot of the stage tower. There were no longer barriers of separation between the stage and the people—no fence, no line of guards, no empty circle of peoplelessness. Now the stage was an island floating in the sea of the people. It should have been a moment of oneness.

But instead, the stage tower had been turned into a terrible metal beast of guns and command and black, black vibes that bestrode the soft flesh of the people like a conqueror, seeking to bend them to its unknown will. An empty black nothingness leered down from the center of the visible world.

And the people felt this in their hearts. Star saw confusion in the aura of the multitude—an unstable sparky pattern of earth colors flashing in and Out of a matrix of blackness that threatened to devour it from within and leap into full dreadful being. The beast on the stage called to the beast in the crowd. And yet the people seemed to resist the darkness that swaggered over them and the darkness within. Everything was poised on the knife-edge interface.

Chris Sargent moved back into the center of the stage as one of his men herded the Movement people to this focal point to meet him.

“The revolution has arrived,” Sargent said into Bobby’s microphone, his words reverberating in the body of the people. “Here’s a man to do the talking.” And he handed the microphone to a gray-faced Ivan Blue, an Ivan Blue whose normal sunshine vibes were crushed under the weight of the people’s sullen confusion, of Chris Sargent’s unmasked karmic power.

Sargent’s eyes fell on her as he handed the microphone over, and she put every ounce of her being into holding them, into pouring her light through them, into reaching the soft place in him that she had reached once before, into banishing the darkness at its very core. She could sense something struggling in there, trying to rise from the blackness to meet the sun. She could see his eyes soften, his face pass through a moment of sadness....

But then the contact was broken as he turned to give a whispered order to one of his men, who disappeared down the stairwell. And the juggernaut of darkness rolled on.

Barry Stein saw a sickened fear on Ivan’s face that matched the fear in his own gut as Sargent handed him the microphone, throwing him into the center of the giant bummer that Sargent himself had created. That we let him create. That we’ve all created.

“Sunset City now belongs to the people!” Ivan said, the amplification of the sound system magnifying the hollow quality of his voice. “All power to the people!”

The few answering shouts were drowned out by an ugly avalanche of boos, an ominous rumbling sound punctuated by swirling currents of random movements in the crowd, restless foot shuffling on a cosmic scale. Ivan quailed visibly. He’d never faced this many people in this kind of a mood. Who of us has?

“We’ve taken over Sunset City in the name of the people, and now we’re going to turn it over to you,” Ivan said, trying again. But the sight of Sargent’s armed mercenaries on the stage and the presence of the armed street freaks in their midst made what was being said as hollow as the voice that was saying it in the minds of the people. More boos. Bits of paper and garbage were thrown halfheartedly in the direction of the stage.

“This is
your
festival now,” Ivan went on, “and we’re going to turn it into the permanent capital of Woodstock Nation, a liberated zone in the body of the Pig, where we can all be what we want to be, free and together....”

The booing was a continuous sound now, an angry massive hooting, but with a nervous undertone of fear. A dreadful sadness overcame Stein as he realized that he was watching the passing of a vision that had filled the center of his life. The Movement’s dream of revolution was confronting the people’s reality; it was being held out to the people, theirs for the taking, and they were angrily rejecting it. The dream is failing. We’re watching it die. We’re killing it ourselves.

“Come on, people, hey, listen to the good news I’m telling you,” Ivan said, forcing a smile in the face of a world of sullen faces, a rumbling of boos, and a snowstorm of garbage thrown at the stage. “All of this belongs to us now, and we don’t have to give it back!”

“We want the music!” a loud voice shouted. Other voices took it up. “We want the music! We want the music!” Ten thousand feet began to beat time to it, and fifty thousand voices began to chant. “WE WANT THE MUSIC! WE WANT THE MUSIC!” Strangely, even as Stein watched the people turning on his dream, rejecting what he imagined his life had stood for, he could not help feeling a fierce pride in them as they voiced their own demand, independent of their self-appointed leaders, and defiant of the fortress of guns that the stage had become.

“WE WANT THE MUSIC! WE WANT THE MUSIC!”

The people were speaking for themselves, and wasn’t that the essence of any true revolution? Leaders who forgot that for very long became power trippers, not leaders of the people. And the people would not follow them for very long.

“WE WANT THE MUSIC! WE WANT THE MUSIC!”

“POWER TO THE PEOPLE! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!” Paul Conrad felt the skin on the back of his neck rise as the armed street freaks in army shirts at the foot of the tower waved their pistols over their heads and started chanting back at the huge angry mob. He could feel the awful tension rising.

“What do you have?” he shouted in Emmett Francis’ ear. “Lot of ruckus in the crowd; some people seem to like what’s goin’ on, and some don’t. Lot of punch-ups and yelling. We’re getting it.”

“The helicopter?”

“Still chasing fires.”

“Get it up here, the stage is where it’s happening. I want all the footage we can get of that.”

Jesus Christ, Chris Sargent thought, what’s going on? What’s wrong with these lame assholes? Where the hell is Pulaski with the record album tapes?

Ivan Blue was just standing there like a seasick general hanging his green face over the rail while the whole damn situation was getting out of control. What seemed like a million people were stomping their feet and chanting for the music while the troops around the tower were starting to freak out, howling for blood.

Coleman glanced at Sargent as if asking what came next, Ortiz was just plain scared, and Bellows had that slit-eyed look that meant he was getting trigger-happy. Where the fuck are those album tapes? What are the rentacops doing out there? When is Blue going to get down to it? We’ve got to get our asses out of here fast, before the whole shit pile goes up!

Finally, he felt the vibrations of footfalls behind him and turned to see six recruits stagger up onto the stage loaded down with big reels of tape spilling like spaghetti from opened cans. Pulaski came up right on their heels and lurched up to him, looking really spooked. “It’s all fucked down there!” he said. “Somerevolution! Guards are pushing right through the crowd, and no one’s stopping them! We’ve gotta get the fuck
out
of here!”

“Yeah, well we’re going to get this shit over with fast, don’t you worry,” Sargent said. “Have ‘em pile the tapes, spill ‘em out of the cans, and then get them off of here.”

He dashed across the stage and ripped the microphone from Blue’s hand. “The tapes!” he shouted in Blue’s ear. “Tell ‘em the first act of the revolution is going to be the trashing of the rip-off record album tapes, and make it damn good.”