What happened next was that still another of the scratchers, a tall skinny one with long arms like a monkey’s and wild gleaming eyes, came over and peered at him in a peculiar intense way, staring into his face as if trying to read a map, and said earnestly, “Are you hurting a lot? I don’t mean your leg, I mean your soul. I think your soul’s hurting some. Just remember, this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
“What the hell,” Ferguson said, his voice thick with fear and bewilderment.
“Don’t pay him no mind,” said the red-haired scratcher. “He ain’t nothing but a looney, that one. That crazy bastard Tom.”
“Crazy, huh?” Ferguson said. He looked slowly around, beginning to think maybe they would come out of this in one piece after all. The thing was to stay cool, to start talking and talk a whole lot, to make himself seem useful to these men. “If he’s a real mental case,” he said, “you guys are in the right place, then. Take him over to the Center on the other side of that redwood forest there and he’ll feel completely at home. With all the other nuts they got there. Feed him, give him a bath, treat him nice and kindly, that’s what they’ll do for him over there, your crazy friend Tom.”
The dark-bearded man moved closer to Ferguson. “Center? What sort of center you mean?”
Five
1
Senhor Papamacer said, “The beginning, that is what is important, Jaspeen. I tell you this already? Well, you listen again: it is the most important. How the gods first visited themselves into me, the new gods.”
Jaspin waited patiently. The Senhor had told him this already, yes, more than once. More than twice, in fact. But there was never any percentage, Jaspin knew, in trying to direct these conversations. The Senhor said only what the Senhor wanted to say. That was his privilege: he was the Senhor. Jaspin was merely the scribe.
Besides, Jaspin had learned that if he was content to sit still while the Senhor was running through familiar stuff, sooner or later the Senhor would dredge up some new revelation. This afternoon, for instance, Jaspin noticed a large cardboard portfolio on the floor next to the Senhor. The Senhor was sitting with the stubby fingers of his left hand spread out wide over the portfolio, a sure sign that it was important. Jaspin wanted to know what was inside it, and he had a notion that if he simply sat still and waited, he would find out. He sat still. He waited.
“It was in the beginning with a dream.” Senhor Papamacer said. “I lay in the dark one night and Maguali-ga he show himself to me and say, I am the opener of the gate, I am the bringer of what is to come. And I know at once that this is the god speaking from across the ocean of stars, and that I am the chosen voice of the god. You know?”
Yes, Jaspin thought. He knew. He knew what came next, too. And I arose in the night and I went to the window, and the nine stars of Maguali-ga were shining in the heavens, and I reach my arms out and I feel the great light of the seven galaxies upon me. He knew it all word by word, by now. Senhor Papamacer was dictating a scripture to him and wanted to make sure he got it down right.There was no doubt. I felt the truth at once.
He studied the lean sculptured face, the obsidian eyes. This little man who meant to change the world and maybe would: this prophet, this holy monster, latest and perhaps last in a long line of prophets. Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Senhor Papamacer. The Senhor liked to bracket himself with them: Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Senhor Papamacer. Maybe he was right.
“And I arose in the night,” said the Senhor, and I went to the window, and the nine stars of Maguali-ga were shining in the heavens—”
Ah, yes. And the great light of the seven galaxies.
“The thing that I know instantly,” the Senhor said, “is that these gods are real and they will come to Earth to rule us.” That was the interesting thing, Jaspin told himself, that great bounding leap of faith. Knowing instantly. Faith in the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Six months ago that would have been incomprehensible to Jaspin; but he had seen also: Chungirá-He-Will-Come on the scorching hillside back of San Diego, and then Maguali-ga so many times in his dreams, and Rei Ceupassear, Narbail of the thunders, O Minotauro. He too had seen; he too had believed instantly. To his own amazement. “How do I know this, you ask?” Senhor Papamacer went on. “I know it that I know it, is all. That is sufficient only. Verdademente a verdad, truly the truth. You know that you know.”
“Just as when Moses asked God to tell him His name,” Jaspin ventured eagerly, “and all that God would answer was, ‘I AM THAT I AM.’ And that was good enough for Moses.”
Senhor Papamacer gave him a frosty look. Jaspin was here to listen, not to supply commentary. Jaspin wanted to sink out of sight.
But after a moment the Senhor continued as though Jaspin had not spoken. “One must believe, you know, Jaspeen? In the face of the absolute truth one believes absolutely. So it was with me. I yielded myself to the truth and one by one the gods made themselves known to me, Rei Ceupassear and Prete Noir the Negus and O Minotauro and Narbail and the others, each gave me the vision in turn. I saw their worlds and their stars and I knew that they love us and watch over us and are making ready for their coming among us. I was the first to know this, but because I held the truth others came to me and I shared my knowledge with them. Now there are many thousands of us, and one day all the world will be joined with us: joined in blood, in the rite of tumbondé, to make ourselves worthy of the final god who will bring the blessings of the stars.”
Hesitantly, feeling he had to say something, Jaspin intoned, “Chungirá-He-Will-Come, he will come.”
For once it was the right thing. The Senhor nodded benevolently. “Maguali-ga, Maguali-ga,” he replied. Together they made the sacred signs.
Then the Senhor said suddenly, surprisingly, “You know what I was, before the gods came to me? You will not know. This you must put in your book, Jaspeen. I drive the taxi, in Chula Vista. Twenty years I drive there, and before that I drive in Tijuana, and when I am young I drive in Rio, before the big war. Take me here, take me there, can you drive any faster, keep the change.” He laughed. Jaspin had never heard the Senhor laugh before: a dry harsh shivering laugh, reeds rubbing together in a windswept arroyo. “All in one night I am made new by the gods, I never drive again. You put that in the book, Jaspeen. I give you photographs: my taxi, my chauffeur license. Mohammed, he drive camels, Moses he was a shepherd, Jesus a carpenter. And Papamacer a taxi-man.”
There they were again, the big four, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Papamacer. Jaspin tried to imagine this formidable deep-voiced coiled spring of a man, this charismatic prophet of the high gods of the stars, buzzing around San Diego in some old jalopy of a cab scrounging up fares and tips. The Senhor reached for the cardboard portfolio. The taxicab photos, Jaspin figured. But instead Senhor Papamacer said, “When you close your eyes, Jaspeen, you see the gods, yes?”