“If I accepted your premise, I’d have to agree.”
“But you don’t.”
“No.”
“You have a better premise, Mr. Quinn?”
“I think Sister Blessing may have known O’Gorman years ago, before she came here.”
“You are quite wrong,” the Master said calmly. “The good Sister never even heard the name until O’Gorman communicated with her from the depths of hell, seeking salvation. My heart bleeds for that poor miserable wretch, but what can I do? His repentance came too late, he will suffer throughout eternity for his ignorance and self-indulgence. Beware, Mr. Quinn, beware. It will happen to you unless you change your ways and renounce the world and its evils, the flesh and its weakness.”
“Thanks for the advice, Master.”
“It is not advice. It is a warning. Renounce and be saved. Repent and rejoice... You see Mother Pureza as an old woman, frail of body and sick of mind. I see her as a creature of God, one of the Chosen.”
“Also one of the taken,” Quinn said. “Just how much of her money was spent on this place?”
“You cannot make me angry again, Mr. Quinn. I regret that you are trying to. Have I not treated you with consideration? Answered your questions? Allowed you to see Sister Blessing? And still you are not satisfied? You are a greedy man.”
“I want to find out what happened to O’Gorman so I can tell his wife the truth.”
“Tell her Patrick O’Gorman is wandering in hell, suffering the torments of the forever damned. That is the truth.”
Outside, Quinn put his shoes back on and straightened his tie while the Master watched from the arched doorway. The sun was beginning to set and smoke was rising from the chimney of the dining hall straight into the windless air. The only members of the cult in sight were Sister Contrition’s two smaller children sliding on flattened cardboard boxes down an incline slippery with pine needles, and Brother Tongue of Prophets approaching the entrance of the Tower carrying his little bird in a cage. Behind him, puffing and red-faced, trotted Brother of the Steady Heart, who had shaved Quinn the previous morning.
The Brothers greeted the Master by touching their foreheads and bowing. Then they nodded politely in Quinn’s direction.
“Peace be with you, Brothers,” the Master said.
“Peace be with you,” Brother Heart echoed.
“What brings you here?”
“Brother Tongue thinks his parakeet is sick. He wants Sister Blessing to look at it.”
“Sister Blessing is in isolation.”
“The parakeet is acting very funny,” Brother Heart said apologetically. “Show the Master, Brother Tongue.”
Brother Tongue put his head on his shoulder and pressed his hand against his mouth.
“The bird no longer speaks,” Brother Heart translated, “and sits with his head hidden.”
Brother Tongue pointed to his chest and moved his hand rapidly back and forth.
“The bird’s pulse is very fast,” Brother Heart said. “It has palpitations. Brother Tongue is very worried, he wants the Sister to—”
“Sister Blessing is in isolation,” the Master repeated sharply. “The bird looks perfectly all right to me. Perhaps it’s as tired of talking as I am of listening. Place a cover over its cage and let it rest. All birds have accelerated heartbeats, it’s quite normal, nothing to worry about.”
Brother Tongue’s mouth quivered and Brother Heart emitted a long deep sigh, but neither of them put up an argument. They disappeared around the corner of the building, their bare feet leaving little puffs of dust.
The brief encounter puzzled Quinn. The bird had looked to him, as well as to the Master, in good health, and he wondered if it had been used as an excuse to obtain permission to see Sister Blessing. Or perhaps, he thought, to take another look at me. No, I’m getting too suspicious. Another couple of hours in this place and I’ll be receiving O’Gorman’s vibrations from hell. I’d better flake off.
The Master had the same idea at the same time. “I can waste no more of my strength on you, Mr. Quinn. You must leave now.”
“All right.”
“Tell Mrs. O’Gorman my prayers are being offered to ease her husband’s agony.”
“I don’t think that will be much of a consolation.”
“It is not my fault he went to hell. If he had come to me I would have saved him... Peace be with you, Mr. Quinn. I shall not expect you back, unless you come humbly and penitently as a convert.”
“I’d prefer an engraved invitation from Capirote,” Quinn said, but the Master had already closed the door.
Quinn walked back to the dirt lane. About a dozen Brothers and Sisters were standing in front of the dining hall when he passed but none of them greeted him. Only one glanced curiously in his direction, and Quinn recognized the leather-skinned face of Brother Light of the Infinite, the man who’d come to the storage shed to rid the mattress of fleas. It was as if the whole colony had been warned to ignore Quinn’s presence because he was a threat to them. But as soon as he walked past he could feel a dozen pairs of eyes on the back of his neck.
The feeling persisted even after he’d reached his car and there was no one in sight. Each tree looked as if it had a Brother or Sister stationed behind it to watch him.
He released the brake and the car started coasting down the dirt lane. His mind went back to his first departure from the Tower, with Brother Crown driving the dilapidated truck before the sun came up. There had been, he recalled, a reason for the timing: to get the truck away from the place before Sister Contrition’s oldest daughter, Karma, tried to hitch a ride to the city.
Quinn broke out in a sweat. The eyes on the back of his neck felt like crawling insects. His hand reached up to rub them off and found nothing but his own cold damp skin.
He said aloud, “Karma?”
There was no answer.
He had reached the main road by this time. He stopped the car, turned off the ignition and got out. Then he opened the back door. “This is the end of the line, friend.”
The gray bundle on the floor stirred and whimpered.
“Come on,” Quinn said. “You can make it back to the Tower before it gets dark if you start now.”
Karma’s long black hair appeared, then her face, blotched with pimples, sullen with resentment. “I’m not going back.”
“A little bird tells me you are.”
“I hate little birds. I hate Brother Tongue. I hate the Master and Mother Pureza and Brother Crown and Sister Glory. Most of all I hate my own mother and those awful yapping children. Yes, and I even hate Sister Blessing.”
“That’s a heap of hate,” Quinn said.
“There’s more. I hate Brother Behold the Vision because his teeth click when he eats and I hate Brother Light because he called me lazy, and I hate—”
“All right, all right, I’m convinced you’re a first-class hater. Now get out of there. Start moving.”
“Please, please take me with you. I won’t be a nuisance, I won’t even speak. You can pretend I’m not here. When we reach the city I’ll find a job. I’m not lazy the way Brother Light claims I am... You’re going to say no, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m going to say no.”
“Is it because you think I’m just a child?”
“There are other reasons, Karma. Now be a good girl, save us both a lot of trouble—”
“I’m already in trouble,” she said calmly. “So are you. I hear things.”
“What things?”
She sat up on the back seat, tucking her long hair behind her ears. “Oh, things. They talk in front of me as if I were too young to understand.”
“Did Sister Blessing talk in front of you?”