The Lincoln's horn woke me. We were in an insane jam of cars all trying to gas up before the weekend rush. The hospital was less than a mile away but we couldn't get through the snarled intersection where the gas stations were. Cars were lined up bumper-to-bumper for blocks. Joe finally swung about and took a wide detour around the tangle. By the time we got to the gate at the hospital grounds, the dashboard clock showed we had less than a half hour before flight time. What's more, the drive up to the main building was blocked by a police car slanted into the curb. We couldn't get around it.
"Grab your bags!" Joe switched off the Lincoln right where it sat. "Maybe Mortimer's still on the ward."
He sprinted off like a track star. I picked up my shoulder bag and my suitcase and followed groggily after him, reluctant to leave the big car's torpor. But that surprise at my morning Ching should have forewarned me; this was not going to be a peaceful cruise. When I rounded the squad car I encountered a tableau that stopped me in my tracks.
The car was still idling, all four doors open. At the rear a stout state trooper and two overweight police matrons were trying to bring down an Unidentified Flying Object. The thing was far too fast for them, a blur of noise and movement, whirling in and out of the haze of exhaust, hissing and screeching and snarling. Honking, too, with some kind of horn-on-a-spear. It used this spear to slash and honk at the circle of uniforms, holding them at bay.
Two burly hospital aides came loping to help out, a sheet stretched between them dragnet fashion. Reinforced thus, the herd charged. The UFO was silenced beneath half a ton of beef. Then there was a high, sharp hiss followed by a beller of pain and the thing whirled free again. It scurried right through the legs all the way around the herd into one rear door of the car and out the other, twittering curses in some language from a far speedier dimension. By the time the pursuers had circled the car, their quarry was arrowing down the drive for the open gate. The herd was already slackening their halfhearted chase – anybody could see that there was nothing earthly capable of catching up – when, to everybody's astonishment, the arrow missed that huge two-lane opening by a good five feet and crashed full tilt into the Cyclone fence. It spronged back, spun erratically a moment on the gleaming green, then went down a second time under the welter of uniforms. There was a final piteous little squank from beneath the pile on the lawn, then nothing but heavy puffing and panting.
"Come on!" Joe had returned and jerked me out of my gawk. "Don't worry. You couldn't hurt that little cyclone with fifty fences."
He led me through a lobby full of carpenters, past the elevator, and up a long, echoing ramp. The ramp leveled off to a metal door. Joe unlocked it and I found myself back on Dr. Mortimer's ward. Everything was in upheaval for the Hollywood renovation, new stuff and old piled in the halls. Mortimer wasn't in his office. Neither was his secretary. We hurried past the staring patients to the nurse's station at the ward's intersection. The duty nurse and the secretary were both there, sharing a box of Crackerjacks.
"Omigod!" the nurse exclaimed as though caught. "Dr. Mortimer just left."
"Left for where!"
"The lot… Possibly the airport."
"Joannie! You get on the phone to the main gate."
"Yes, Dr. Gola." The secretary hurried back to the office.
"Miss Beal, you try the CB in the lobby, in case he's still at the motor pool. I'll run down to the lot."
The nurse trotted off, Crackerjacks rattling in the pocket of her white cardigan. Joe sprinted back the way we'd come, leaving me alone in the fluorescent buzz.
Well, not exactly. Robed specters were trolling back and forth past the windows and open half door of the nurse's station, casting looks in at me. I turned my back on them and sat down on the counter, pretending to peruse a back issue of OMNI. As the minutes hummed past I could feel eyes picking at my neck. I traded OMNI for a copy of National Enquirer, rattling the big pages. The hum seemed to caramelize right over the noise of the paper like a clear glaze. Spells in the blueberries. U.F.O.s on the lawn. Now this. I am in no condition for this. Then the glaze was shattered by a screech at the Admissions Door.
"- fascist snotsucking shitmother pigs! Don'cha know whosoever wields the Diamond Sword of ACHALA wields burning justice? Where's my cane you ignorant assholes and don't whisper to me Cool it! Like, you're so hip? So with it? Don'cha know this messing with blood sacraments in the name of revolution must fucking cease?"
The high twittering hiss had been slowed but it was still sharp; the words chopped through the impacted air like an ax through ice.
"Down with dilettantes who mouth dopey slogans and muddy the flow of change! May the lot of you be slit butthole to bellybutton by the diamond edge of ACHALA Lord of Hot Wisdom, whose face is bloody fangs, who wears a garland of severed heads, who turns Rage to Accomplishment, who is clad in gunpowder and glaciers and lava, who saves honest tormented spirits from filth-eating fascist pig ghosts! In His name I curse you: NAMAH SAMANTHA VAJRANAM CHANGA!"
It sounded like some militant soprano Gary Snyder tongue-lashing a strip miners' meeting. I joined the others in the hall to see what it was that could sound so pissed-off and poetic all at once.
"MAHROSHANA SHATA YA HUM TRAKA HAM MAM!"
It was a girl, still years and inches short of legal age or full growth, bony and bone-colored, skin, hair, eyes, clothes, and all. There was a checkerboard pattern up her front from the crash with the Cyclone fence, but no cuts, no purple bruises. The only color in the whole composition was a green swatch down the side of her close-cropped head, probably from the scuffle on the lawn. She fingered the air before her a moment, like a cave lizard, then lunged.
"Give me my fucking stick you faggot!"
"No you don't, Lissy." The biggest-butted aide held it high out of her reach. "This could be a weapon in hostile hands.'"
I saw that the spear had originally been the kind of lightweight staff used by the Vision Impaired. The white paint was all but gone from the battered aluminum, and it had been thonged from tip to handle with feathers and beads, like an Indian spear. Just in front of the handle was lashed the staffs main mojo – a rubber squeeze-toy head of Donald Duck, his angry open bill forward and his rubber sailor cap within thumb's reach. This was how she had been able to swing the thing and quack it at the same time.
"Give it give it give it!" she screeched.
"I won't won't won't!" the aide mocked, parading ahead like a fat-assed drum major with a baton. The girl took squinting aim at the plump target and kicked; she missed as wide as she had missed the gate. She would have fallen if the matron hadn't been gripping her arms.
"What about my glasses then? Am I going to deathray somebody with my fucking glasses? I'm fucking legally blind, you stupid shits! If I don't get my glasses immediately every turd of you is gonna fry! My whole fucking family are lawyers."