“Some nights, yes. I dream the visions two, three times a week.”
“You see all seven loving galaxies?”
“By now, yes,” said Jaspin. “All seven.”
“And you believe, these are the homes of the gods, verdademente a verdad? ”
“I believe it, yes,” Jaspin said. He wondered what the Senhor was getting at.
“You ever wonder, maybe it is only dream, maybe it is a foolishness of the night that you have, that I have, that all of us have?”
“I believe the gods are true gods,” Jaspin said.
“Because you have the faith. Because you know that you know.”
Jaspin shrugged. “Yes.”
“I have here the proof absolute,” said the Senhor. He opened the portfolio. Jaspin saw a thick stack of holographic repros inside. Senhor Papamacer passed the top one across to Jaspin. “You know this place?” he asked.
Jaspin stared. Even in the dim light of Senhor Papamacer’s bus the holo gleamed with an inner radiance. It showed a string of dazzling suns—he counted six, seven, eight, nine—strewn out across a dark purple sky, and an alien landscape, eerie and bewildering, all harsh angles and impossible perspectives. And in the foreground stood a massive sixlimbed figure with a single great glowing compound eye in the center of its broad forehead. Jaspin began to tremble inside.
“What is this, a photograph?” he asked.
“No, not a photograph. A painting only. But a very real painting, no? What is this place? Who is that standing there?”
“That’s Maguali-ga,” Jaspin murmured. “The nine suns. The Rock of the Covenant.”
“Ah, you know these things. You recognize.”
“It looks exactly the way I’ve seen them myself.”
“Yes. Yes. How interesting. You look at this one, now.” He passed Jaspin a second holo. It was a different view of the world of Maguali-ga now: the angle much steeper, and instead of Maguali-ga by himself there were five such beings. This repro too could have passed for a photograph; but now that Jaspin had been given the clue he was able to see that in fact it was only a painting, probably computer-generated and very realistic but nonetheless a work of the imagination. “And this,” said the Senhor, laying a third view of Maguali-ga’s planet down in front of Jaspin: somewhat different technique, considerably different subject matter—this time a strange stone building was in view, highvaulted and rugged, with Maguali-ga standing at its threshold—but there was no question that it depicted the same world as the other two. “Now these,” the Senhor said, and dealt three more pictures from his pack. Red sun, blue sun, fiery arch in the sky, golden figure in the foreground with curving ram’s-horns. Each of the three was clearly the work of a different artist; but all three showed the same thing, identical in all details. Jaspin shivered. “Chungirá-He-Will-Come.”
“Yes. Yes. And these?”
Three more. Green world, thick wisps of fog, shimmering crystalline figures moving about. Three of a world of blazing light, the entire sky one vast sun. Three of a fiery world whose sun was blue, and there was Rei Ceupassear, soaring high overhead in a shining radiant bubble. Three of a world whose suns were yellow and orange—
“What are these things?” Jaspin asked finally.
The Senhor beamed like an ebony Buddha. He had never looked so joyous. “It is truly the truth, and I know that I know it. But others are not so sure, and there are some who will oppose us. So I have had the truth made into pictures for them. You know, there are devices, they turn the pictures in a man’s mind into a picture on a screen, and then it can be made like this. I sent for three different people and I said, Make pictures of the worlds of the gods. Put them into this machine, so everyone can see the visions that you see. Well, Jaspeen, you can see. If you make the photograph, three people, you point the camera at the same street in Los Angeles, you will get the same picture. And here too we have the same picture, although it just comes out of people’s minds. So everyone is seeing the same thing. Look, this is Maguali-ga, this is Narbail, this is where O Minotauro dwells—who can doubt it now? These things are true and real. When they come into our minds, they are coming from true places. Because we all see the same. There can be no doubt now. You agree? There can be no doubt!”
“I never doubted,” said Jaspin, dazed. But he knew that he was lying. Some part of him had maintained its skepticism all along. Some part had insisted that what he was experiencing was only some sort of crazy hallucination. But if everyone was having the same hallucinations—exactly—down to the little details—these weird little plantlike things here that he had seen so often but which he had never mentioned to anyone else, here they were, in this holo and in that one and here too—
He was altogether stunned. He had not asked for these proofs; he had been willing to act on faith alone; but the holograms before him were overwhelming.
“Truly the truth,” Senhor Papamacer said.
“Truly the truth,” Jaspin murmured.
“You go now. Write down what you feel, how you think this minute. Now. You go, Jaspeen.”
He nodded and rose and went stumbling through the dim musty bus, groping in the darkness of the chapel, then out the front way. A few men of the Inner Host were sprawled on the steps of the bus: Carvalho, Lagosta, Barbosa. They smirked up at him. White eyes flashed mockingly in dark faces. He moved sideways through them, carefully, not giving a damn about their smartass smirks: the presence of the gods was still on him. Go write down what you feel, how you think. Yes. But first he had to tell Jill.
Dusk was coming on. The air was cool. They were somewhere up near Monterey now, inland a little way, camped in what had been somebody’s artichoke field before a hundred thousand pilgrims had driven their buses and vans and trailers into it. Jaspin heard the sound of chanting in the distance. Three enormous campfires were blazing, sending black columns of smoke into the darkening sky. He looked into his car for Jill. Not there.
From behind him he heard laughter. More Inner Host: Cotovela, Johnny Espingarda, leaning against their little orange-and-yellow bus. He glanced toward them.
“Something funny?”
“Funny? Funny?”
“Either of you see my wife?”
They laughed again, forcing it a little. They were deliberately trying to make him feel uncomfortable. He despised them, these chilly-faced inscrutable Brazilian bastards, these apostles of the Senhor. So smug in their assumption of superior holiness.
“Your wife,” Johnny Espingarda said. He made it sound dirty.
“My wife, yes. Do you know where she is?”
Johnny Espingarda balled his hand into a fist, put it to his mouth, coughed into it. Cotovela seemed to be choking back laughter. Jaspin felt the awe and astonishment that the Senhor’s holograms had aroused in him vanishing under the weight of his anger and irritation. He swung around, turned away from them, peered around for Jill in the gathering darkness. He walked to the far side of his car, thinking she might have spread a blanket over there. No Jill there either. When he came around to the front again, though, he saw her, walking toward the car from the general direction of the Inner Host bus. She looked flushed, sweaty, rumpled; she seemed to be fumbling with the belt of her jeans. Behind her, Bacalhau had emerged from the bus and was saying something to Cotovela and Johnny Espingarda: Jaspin heard their rough laughter. Oh, Christ, he thought. Christ, no, not Bacalhau.
“Jill?” he said.
Her eyes were a little out of focus. “You been visiting the Senhor?”