The red dot shot up into the air like a firefly, and exploded. Nguyen Seth finished his rite, and sat down, exhausted, among his dead followers.
Duroc saw the dot whizzing up into the vaulted arches of the Tabernacle. The central chamber was a hundred and twenty feet high, and the light was careening off the ceiling.
There was a great wind. Hawkins' briefcase came open, and a storm of papers circled like a tornado.
Duroc suddenly felt tired, as if all his strength were being sapped in a single draught. He sank to his knees, his head swimming, and held fast to one of the chairs. A great weight seemed to fall upon him, pushing him downwards.
The floor was covered in sticky blood.
He tried to raise his head, to look up, but couldn't.
Above him, floating under the domes of the Tabernacle was something vast, unearthly and hungry. It had forced itself through into the world with Nguyen Seth, and nourished itself on the lives of the Elders of Joseph.
Duroc was surrounded by hanging tentacles, as if an unimaginably huge jellyfish were hovering above him. The tendrils brushed him, but did no harm. He felt almost lulled by the contact. The sensations they brought were entirely new, beyond pleasure or pain. It would be easy to sit here forever under this shower, exploring the new feelings.
Then the tentacles were gone.
"Roger," said Seth. "Permit me to present to you one of the Dark Ones whom we serve."
Duroc forced himself to look up at the enormous, amorphous entity that hung above them. It was beautiful, it was terrible. He had been expecting an angel, a demon or a monster, but this was none of those. This was a prodigy, an anomaly. He wasn't sure it actually existed. Its surface rippled as if it were a liquid, or a turbulent gas contained in a molecule-thin balloon of living matter. It had eyes, faces, mouths, hands, but they were like nothing Duroc had seen on any earthly creature. Inside it somewhere, organs pumped and pulsed and squirted. It had a smell, a taste, a sound.
For the first time since leaving the seminary, Roger Duroc felt like worshipping something.
The Jibbenainosay descended. No, it expanded downwards, extruding thick feelers with tips like clawed mouths. One slunk towards Duroc, but his raised hand warded it away, and it fastened instead on the dead head of Elder Hawkins.
Other tentacles came for the other corpses. Some burrowed through the black cloth covering the backs of men who had fallen face-forward onto the table, some attached to hands, some to shoulders, some to stomachs. One clasped Beach by the face, and dug through his head, swelling his neck as it latched onto the inside of his chest.
"It needs flesh, Roger," said Seth.
"Why have you brought it here?"
The Elder took off his dark glasses. His eyes gleamed.
"The Krokodil must die."
VII.
Krokodil needed him now. She used up three days' water cleaning herself off, and asked him to cut her hair. Using a stiletto she gave him, he did his best to shear away her black tent, and then she tied what was left up in a knot. She looked a little like some of the women on the Reservation. She found her eyepatch, and slipped it on. Then she dressed in clean clothes, and sat cross-legged in the courtyard. Hawk-That-Settles sensed her nervousness, her uncertainty. If this was the Sixth Level of Spirituality, he was glad to remain comparatively unenlightened. For a moment, she was the old Jesse, then she was the coldblooded reptile woman again. The song was drawing to its close. In some old movie he had seen, there was an Indian who got up every morning, looked around, and said "this is a good day to die." He had thought that absurd. He had a bottle of tequila left, but he just poured it out and watched it seep into the sand.
"Gentlemen, I'm afraid this is all completely beyond me. My background is purely in the military uses of satellite technology."
"Mr President, this is completely beyond all of us. It's an anomaly we can't explain, like the business with the Sea of Tranquillity last year."
"Run the stats by me again, General Pendarves."
"Well, one of our geostationary spy satellites was knocked off course last year by an electrical failure. Its orbit has been deteriorating ever since, and we expect it to burn up sometime in late 1999. We have not been able to control it, but we have still been able to get data from its sensors."
"So we've been peeking in backyards?"
"More or less. Until recently, we've just been able to track a few wolves and trappers in the Canadian wastes. But three weeks ago, we had another kink in the course, and the damn thing ended up over Utah."
"Deseret, General. Deseret. We renamed it, remember? It was a plank of the election platform."
"Yes sir, Deseret. Since it's only notionally United States territory, we saw no harm in taking a look. Some of the reports that have been creeping back have been disturbing."
"I have every confidence in Nguyen Seth, gentlemen. He is a true example of the pioneer spirit that has made this country great."
"Yes, yes, yes…but there are things going on in Salt Lake that we have no explanations for. Mr Fenin has been monitoring them."
"There have been disturbances."
"What, earthquakes? Typhoons?"
"Maybe, Mr President. But along with that they have an assortment of phenomena we have no handle on. Mr Fenin is from our ESP division."
"Mr Fenin?"
"Mr President."
"We turned the data over to him."
"And…?"
"And I have a few precedents for this, but nothing that makes sense. There's an immense power source of some sort in Salt Lake City, apparently in the depths of the Josephite Tabernacle itself."
"But the Josephites are back-to-the-Iand types, surely. They're not tekkies. They wouldn't set up a nuclear power plant, would they?"
"Not that kind of power, sir. Non-physical power. We haven't really got a name for it. Psychic force, spiritual energy, call it what you will."
"The United States of America does not recognize ghosties and ghoulies, Mr Fenin. And I can't recall authorizing any expenditure for a department of magical crackpots!"
"Sir, if you'll recall, the Soviets are very advanced in this field. The previous administration felt there was a psychic gap. President Heston appointed James Earl Carter to head the Commission."
"Balloon juice, gentlemen. I won't hear any of this."
"But, Mr President, there is every possibility of some cataclysmic force being unleashed…"
"That is abject nonsense, and you are aware of it. I believe it might be time to relieve you of your command, General."
"Mr President…"
"I'll hear no more of this. Mr Fenin, good day. General Pendarves, you will report to this office tomorrow for reassignment. The issue is closed. Ghosts…pah!"
Dr Ottokar Proctor saw the Indian cutting the woman's hair, and kept out of their way. Afterwards, he went into the cell, and gathered up the hair. It was soft, and smelled sweet. He wanted it.
Inside his mind, a crate from Tasmania shook. Nails came loose.
His eyes focused properly. His knife slipped as he was working on Bugs' teeth, and he cut himself.
Licking his finger, he tasted blood.
"Your holiness, we believe the ground zero will be in Southern Arizona, near the Mexican border. In the Gila Desert."
Pope Georgi I looked at the mapscreen. Father O'Shaughnessy amplified the projection and narrowed down the area.
"Somewhere about here." He tapped the screen with his pointer.
"What's this name?"
"Santa de Nogueira. It's an old monastery."
"Ours?"
"It was, but it's been empty for over a century and a half. We still own the ground, but only through a Spanish land grant that probably has no legal status."
"Is anybody there?"
"Somebody must be, or the demon wouldn't be on its way."
"Who?" .
O'Shaugnessy lit his pipe. "There, Holy Father, you have me. Cardinal Mapache is scouting the area…"
"The prophet?"
"He's an esper, Holiness."
"Indeed."