"Just look at the ground," Tesla told Phoebe. "It's no use breaking our hearts."
Eyes downcast, they continued to climb. Tesla was horribly tempted to look up at the victims, but she resisted. Raul was right. There was nothing they could do. Up ahead, the singer was talking to herself in her blissed-out state.
"Hey, Laguna... ? You hear me? I got them, I got right there. Right there. White they are. So white. You wouldn't believe how-"
Tesla put the gun to the woman's temple. The stream of consciousness stopped abruptly, and the woman's eyes flickered open. She was by no means a beauty: her skin was leathery, her eyes tiny and surrounded with coarse bristles, her mouth-which was similarly ringed-was twice the width of any human mouth, her teeth tiny, pointed-perhaps sharpened-and innumerable. Despite her drugged condition, she plainly understood her jeopardy. "I'll sing some more," she said.
"Don't bother," Tesla replied. "Just point us to the door."
"You're not one of the Blessedm'n's company?"
"No.
"Are you Sapas Humana?" she said.
"No. I'm just the lady with the gun," Tesla said.
"You are, aren't you?" the singer replied, her gaze going back and forth between the two women. "You're Sapas Humana! Oh, this is wonderful."
"Are you listening to me?" Tesla said.
"Yes. You want the door. It's there." Without looking round she pointed off into the mist.
"How far?"
"A little way. But why would you want to leave? There's nothing on the other side but more of this mist and a filthy sea. Here's where the wonders are, in the Helter j Incendo. Among Humana, like you."
"Wonders?" said Phoebe.
"Oh yes, oh yes," the woman enthused, ignoring the gun that was still pointed at her head. "We've lived a shadow-life in the Ephemeris, dreaming of being here, where things are pure and real."
My God, is she infor a disappointment, Raul remarked.
But there was more here than a misinformed tourist "Isn't the lad coming through this door?" Tesla asked her.
She smiled. "Oh yes," she said, almost dreamily.
"So why are you hanging around?"
"We're waiting to greet them."
"Then you'll never see the wonders of the Hefter Incendo, will you?"
"Why not?"
"Because the lad's coming to destroy it."
The woman laughed. Threw back her head and laughed. "Who told you that?" she said.
Tesla didn't answer though she had no difficulty remembering. The first person she'd heard that from had been Kissoon. Not perhaps the most reliable of sources. But then hadn't she had the theory supported on several occasions since? It was D'Amour's belief, for certain. According to him the lad was the Enemy of Mankind, the Devil by another name. And hadn't Grillo told her of men and women across the continent who listed on the Reef the weapons they'd use to defend themselves if, or rather when, the holocaust occurred?
Still the woman laughed. "The lad's coming here for the same reason that I came," she said. "they want to live among miracles."
"There aren't any," Phoebe piped up. "Not here."
The singer grew serious. "Perhaps you've lived with them for so long," she said, "you don't see them."
Ask her about the crucifixions, Raul prompted.
"Damn right," Tesia thought. "What about them?" she said, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder.
"The Blessedm'n wanted that. They're spies, he said; enemies of peace."
"Why kill them that way?" Phoebe said. "It's so horrible."
The singer looked genuinely confounded. "the Blessedm'n said it was best for them."
"Best for them?" Tesia said, appalled. "That?" on't you have it in one of your holy books? A god dies that way-"
"Yes, but-"
"And he's reunited with his father, or his mother."
"Father," said Phoebe. "Forgive my ignorance. I've no memory for stories. Songs; that's a different matter. I hear a song once, and I've got it for life. But a joke, or a piece of a gossip, or even a god-tale"-she snapped her fingers-"forgotten!"
Suppose she's telling the truth, Raul muttered.
"About crucifixions?"
About the lad Maybe we've had the whole thing wrong from the beginning.
"And they're just coming to see the sights?" Testa replied. "I don't think so. Remember the Loop?" She brought her one and only glimpse of the lad to mind now, in all its vastness and foulness. Even now, after five years, the memory made her queasy. Perhaps the lad was not the Enemy of Mankind, the Evil One itself, but nor had it seemed to have love and peace on its collective mind.
"Will you join with me?" the singer was saying.
"Doing what?" Testa said.
"She asked if she could smoke," Phoebe said. "Didn't you hear her?"
"I was thinking."
"About what?"
"About how fucking confused I am."
The singer was stroking the tip of her reefer with i match flame. Whatever she was smoking, it wasn't hashish. The smoke was almost sickly sweet, like cinnamon and sugar. She inhaled deeply.
"Again," Testa said. "Inhale again." The woman looked mystified, but obeyed. "And again," Testa said, nudging he gun against the woman's head for emphasis. The woman duty inhaled two more tungfuls. "That's it," Testa said, as a soporific smile spread over the woman's face, and her eyelids began to flutter closed. "One more for luck."
The woman raised the reefer to her lips and inhaled a final time. Halfway through doing so the drug claimed her consciousness. Her hand dropped to her side, the cigarette failing from her fingers. Testa picked it up, nipped off the burning weed, and pocketed the rest.
"You never know," she said to Phoebe. "Let's get going."
Only now, as they started off the slope again, did Testa realize that the sound of sobbing had completely ceased. The last of the spies@rucified as an indulgence of their faithhad died. There was no harm now in looking.
Don't-Raul warned her, but it was too late. She was already turning, already seeing.
Kate Farrell was hanging on the middle cross, her belly bared and lacerated. On her left hand they'd nailed Edward.
On her right "Lucien.
He was the most battered of the three, and the most nearly naked, his thin white chest splashed with blood from a face thankfully almost hidden from her by his hair.
The breath went out of Tesla's body in a rush, and the strength from her limbs. She dropped the gun. Put her hands over her mouth to keep the sobs from coming.
"You know one of them?" said Phoebe.
"All of them," Testa gasped. "All of them."
Phoebe had hold of her, tight. "We can't do anything for them now."
"He was alive... " Testa said, the thought like a skewer in her heart,
"he was alive, and I didn't look, and I could have saved him."
"You didn't know it was him," Phoebe said.
She started to coax Testa away from the spot, turning her as she did so. Testa resisted however, unwilling to take her eyes off Lucien. He looked so Pitifully exposed up there, unable to defend himself against the world. She needed to Put him in the ground, at least. If she left him here he'd be a spectacle: pecked and buffeted and gnawed at. She couldn't bear it. She couldn't.
Somewhere in the turmoil, she heard Raul say: Phoebe's right.
"Leave me alone."
You can't help him. And Tesla: You're not to blame. He made his way. We made ours.
"He was alive."
Af@i,be.
"He saw me,"
IJ'You want to believe that, believe it, Raul said. I'm not going to tn@ and tell you he didn't. But if he did, then maybe that's why he lei go.
"What?"
He Could have called your name, but he didn't. Maybe he juvt laid eyes on you and thought: It's enough.