They bumped along the track for ten minutes or so, waking up the little kids, but Ana had no ears for Dulcie's cries of protest, because near the beginning of the drive, off in the undergrowth near the gates, she had seen a man dressed in camouflage clothing; in his hands he held something very much like the bulky shape of a shotgun. She opened her mouth, and shut it, but when she looked up she saw Richard's eyes on her in the rearview mirror. She turned to soothe Dulcie with a story about the lambs and kittens she had seen, furry, warm things to counteract the sudden cold tendrils that had begun to unfurl along the pit of her stomach.
The van emerged from the undergrowth and lurched through a section of slightly better road with fencing on both sides before entering a graveled farmyard where the spring weeds were winning. The buildings showed signs of recent labor, new windows and paint renewed in the last two or three years. All of these seemed to be outbuildings, and indeed the van did not stop there but continued around and past some more fences until it pulled up at the towering backside of what looked like a large country home belonging to a slightly down-at-the-heels family.
Ana thought the building was probably early Victorian, a blunt, purposeful edifice built of a harsh red brick that a century and a half had not dimmed. The kitchen door was standing open and three or four dogs and a large number of cats were scattered about, looking vaguely expectant.
Dulcie made for the cats as soon as she was freed from the van. Jason stood gaping up at the vast and uninspiring redbrick wall that loomed above them, punctuated by four rows of windows and surmounted by a gathered stand of half a dozen chimneys. Ana waited until the driver was by himself at the back of the van, pulling out luggage, and then she approached him.
"Richard, was that man in the woods a policeman?" she asked.
"Better not've been. If he was, there'll be hell to pay. We keep them out—we know our rights, they know our boundaries. Doesn't stop 'em from sitting at the back entrance, writing down plate numbers and playing silly buggers."
"Oh. But I thought… He did have a gun, didn't he?"
"Keeps the rabbits down," he said dismissively, and then over Ana's shoulder he shouted, "Where do you want this lot?"
"In the dining room," a woman's voice answered. "We can sort them out from there."
The bags were whisked inside, followed by the people (Dulcie protesting when a cat was plucked from her arms). They passed through the long kitchen, immediately comforting in its familiarity and the post-lunch clutter, although to Ana's eyes the corners could have used a good scrub. She wished they could have stayed there for a while, been handed a stack of dirty plates for what she remembered the English called the washing up, but they were ushered straight through, past three kitchen workers who stopped to watch their passage. One of them was a tall, straight, blonde girl with a peaceful face and oversized rubber gloves on her hands. She openly watched Jason walk past her; he in turn ducked his head to say something to Dulcie; Ana smiled absently to herself.
There was no TRANSFORMATION mural in this dining room, just a lot of mismatched chairs and tables in states ranging from new and cheap to old and rickety. The room had probably begun life as a ballroom, a place for the Victorian father's numerous daughters to display themselves and catch their husbands, but the decorative wallpaper, velvet drapes, and gilt-edged mirrors had all long since been removed from the walls and the wooden dance floor was worn and speckled with white emulsion from a clumsy paint job. It echoed; the noise in there during a meal would be riotous.
Richard dumped the last of their things and vanished. In his place a familiar tall, dark-haired, ascetic-looking figure walked into the room. Ana had been correct to suspect, when she saw the way the Change members in Arizona acted toward him, that Marc Bennett held a high rank in the organization, because here he was to give them their welcome speech—although very little welcome did it contain. He waited imperiously for their attention before he began his carefully composed talk, delivered in portentous tones.
"Before today, you have known Change as through a glass, darkly. Here, you will see what Arizona will eventually become, years from now. You stand at the very center of the Change movement, and you will find things here very different from what you're used to at Steven's place." ("Steven's place," thought Ana; was it imagination, or had that phrase sounded dismissive?) The Change compound you're used to is just getting started, and it has a long way to go before it makes Transformation. We've been here almost three times as long. Steven began his transformation here before Jonas sent him to Arizona, and he comes back here to continue his own Work.
"Age, of course, is no guarantee of either wisdom or authority." Bennett flicked a brief glance across Ana, the oldest person in the room by nearly a decade, and she felt herself bristle at the implied judgment. "However, here you will find a degree of concentration, a level of physical and spiritual activity that the Arizona community cannot begin to approach. We have been here for twelve years, and not a day has been wasted time.
"Dov has been with us before, but the rest of you were chosen to come here because in Steven's opinion, each of you is worthy of our greater efforts, capable of faster progress than he could give you in Arizona. We are on the edge of a great Work here, and Steven wanted you to be a part of it.
"I don't think I have to tell you what that means in terms of daily life here. I assume you all know that 'Great heat, great hope' is more than just a saying." His eyes bored into each of them except for the small children, seeing comprehension in all, even Jason. Perhaps especially Jason.
Benjamin had clung to Ana during the disembarkation and as they passed through the house, and he still stood, clasping her hand and pressing his body up against her leg. The child seemed frightened of Marc Bennett. Behind Bennett a small cluster of men and women had appeared in the doorway, waiting for him to finish. One of the women moved slightly to see better, and Benjamin spotted her.
"Mommy!" he shouted, interrupting Bennett's dramatic monologue and startling them all. He flew across the wooden floor with his small feet pounding, missing a collision with the speaker by inches before he threw himself into the woman's arms, shouting his greetings and gladness, oblivious to everything else. His mother, however, was not. She tried to shush him, and when he would not contain his joy, she shot Bennett a glance of apology and more than a little apprehension before she ducked out of the door and away.
Bennett, expressionless, waited until the noise of their passing disappeared behind a closing door and picked up as if the interruption had not occurred.
"Here, 'Great heat, great hope' is an everyday reality. The pressures here are greater than you have known in Arizona. You were not ready for it there; now you are. It would have broken you there; now it will make you change."
Ana shifted from one flight-swollen foot to the other, wondering uncomfortably why she had heard none of this in Arizona, and also what it was about men of religion that made them so damnably long-winded. Immediately his hooded eyes flashed back to rest on her. This time the scorn in them was clear.
"I'm not going to lie to you: you will not be comfortable here. You will work hard. You will sweat and strain and come to hate us all, but you will stay because you will be able to see and feel the results of your Work. Some of you will stay," he added, and again his gaze touched Ana. She couldn't think what she had done to offend him, unless if, as she had come to suspect, there was rivalry between the two men, Steven's approval alone had condemned her in Bennett's eyes. Ah, well—all the better if she could turn his disapproving gaze from Steven's other protege, the teenager at her side. Even if Bennett was not the community's leader, he could make life difficult for Jason.