“I, too, share this terrible fear, my son,” Okino said. “But The Plain is vast, and though the multitude multiplies, it can know no boundaries here, it cannot be restrained by walls. Such was the reason The Plain was chosen by the elders for these yearly rites of spring.”
“A multitude on a vast plain,” Kling said.
“A multitude that’s multiplying ,” Brown said.
“More and more people.”
“Jostling.”
“Ready to explode.”
“Let’s see the next one,” Carella said.
They all looked at the next message:
F rOM WHERE ANKARAstood on the rock tower erected to the gods at the far end of the vast plain, he could see the milling throng moving toward the straw figure symbolizing the failure of the crop, the frightening twisted arid thing the multitude had to destroy if it were to strangle its own fear. The crowd moved forward relentlessly, chanting, stamping, shouting, a massive beast that seemed all flailing arms and thrashing legs, eager to destroy the victim it had chosen, the common enemy, a roar rising as if from a single throat, “Kill, kill,kill !”
“a milling crowd,” Hawes said.
“a killing crowd.”
“A crowd moving toward its victim.”
“Its common enemy.”
“Chanting, stamping, shouting.”
“All flailing arms and thrashing legs.”
“Kill, kill,kill !”
“i hate this son of a bitch,” Carella said.
“Let’s look at the one we got today,” Kling said.
They put it on the desk beside the other two:
S iSHONA’S BLONDhair glistened in the light of the four moons. Everywhere around them, the naked bodies twisted and the voices roared to the night. “The multitude will destroy itself,” she told Tikona. “It will turn upon itself and see in itself the olden enemy. Its fury will blind its eyes. It will know only the enmities of the Ancients.”
“The river runs fast after the Rites of Spring,” Tikona said.
“But the fury rises before,” Sishona answered.
“Where does he get these crazy names?” Kling said. “Sishona.”
“Never mind Sishona,” Brown said. “What’s he trying to tell us here?”
“Sounds like a goddamn orgy,” Hawes said irritably.
“The multitude will destroy itself,” Meyer said.
“Turn upon itself.”
“See in itself the olden enemy.”
“The enmities of the Ancients,” Kling said.
They all looked at each other.
“What we have to do,” Carella said, “is find this goddamn crowd.”
TODAY WAS PINK.
Florry had laminates in four different delightful colors, but the men walking past the security guards were all wearing pink, so he took out his pinkALL ACCESS pass from his pocket, hung it on the lanyard Sanson had provided with the laminate, and then looped the lanyard over his head. He had learned over the years that if you behaved as if you belonged someplace, nobody ever questioned you. The laminate helped. All pink and official-looking, the card passed him through the checkpoint without even a sideward glance from the two security guards.
The concert site was bustling with activity at nine that morning. The technicians and the work crews had begun arriving at sixA .M., before it was light, picking up their laminates at the production trailer, buying early morning breakfasts from the catering tent, and then beginning to load in as morngloam tinted the sky to the east. The concert was a one-off show, which meant that everything erected here today and tomorrow would be torn down next Monday. Florry had deliberately chosen to arrive late, when the men would already be at work. Union people tended to know one another, and there were hordes of them here today. The same held true for sound technicians. All he wanted to do was blend in with the crowd. Move from space to space as if he belonged. Ask no questions. Move around, look around, get the lay of the land.
TheUnion, of course, was IATSE, which curt acronym stood for the very long-winded International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators of the U.S. and Canada. But it was the Teamsters who had unloaded the trucks and it was the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers who were snaking cables all over the place, and men from the Carpenters Local who were sawing and hammering away at the foundation of what would eventually become a huge stage.
The ground was still wet after all the rain this week, and the trucks and milling men had turned it into a quagmire. The sun was shining now, though, and the people from Windows Entertainment were hopeful that the ground would dry out before the crowds came in. Meanwhile, things were progressing on schedule, and there was no doubt that everything would be ready when the first of the groups was scheduled to perform.
Florry enjoyed all this activity.
There must’ve been close to a hundred people working here, all of them experts at what they were doing, all of them with a deadline to meet: By one o’clock this Saturday the stage and the roof over it, and the lighting hanging from it, and the speakers and amps in the sound towers on either side of it, and the delay towers with more speakers and amps, and the control tower for the house mix had to be up and ready to go, rain or shine.
Woodstock, you didn’t have any delay towers, they were too unreliable back then. Now you could calibrate your delays so that the sound coming from the stage stacks was exactly in synch with what was coming from the speakers out in the audience. Back then, all you had on the stage was two giant speakers whereas nowadays it wasn’t unusual to have a half-dozen stacks of speakers going at once. Back then, whenever you sent out a high signal, you distorted the mixer, and had to compensate for it by padding your mike line to reduce the signal. Today, you could correct the distortion right at the console, using your pre-amp gain control.
Still there was nothing today that could match Woodstock for excitement. Well, how could it? You did a Paul Simon concert right here in this same park, you got a crowd of 750,000 people—but that was expected. Woodstock, they were anticipating 200,000 and they got somewhere between half a million and 600,000! This weekend, nobody knew how many would show up. You got rain again, you could fold your tent and go home, even if the concert was free. Still, there were a couple of headliners scheduled to appear, so if the weather was good, you could draw a tremendous crowd. Free, that was the key word. You walked in, you sat on your blanket, and you listened. Big open crowd here in the outdoors. Listening.
It was Florry’s job to make sure they heard the right thing at the right time.
The right time was 1:20P .M.
The right thing was Sanson’s message.
Already burned into the chip and ready to go.
All Florry had to do was get into the console.
But the console wasn’t even up yet, wouldn’t be up till sometime tomorrow most likely.
For now, Florry had seen all he had to see.
He walked toward where a busy crew was erecting a cyclone fence around the backstage area. A pair of security guards were watching the fence go up. Neither of them even glanced at him as he left the construction site.
DEBRA WILKINS seemed to have gained control of herself. This was now a week and a day since her husband was slain by the person the newspapers were currently calling the Sprayer Slayer. In America, everything needed a title because everything was a miniseries concocted for the enjoyment of the populace. This new miniseries was titled The Sprayer Slayer and Part I was subtitled “The Hunt.” If they ever caught him, Part II would be subtitled “The Trial.” But if they wanted to keep their audience, they had better catch him soon. In America, nothing bored people more than something that went on for longer than a week or so. Americans had very short attention spans. Maybe this accounted for the fact that whereas Parker had taken Catalina Herrera to bed only the night before, he was this morning giving the widow Wilkins the eye. If they made a miniseries based on Parker’s romantic adventures, it would probably be titled Cop Lover .