Gods Without Men (24 page)

It wasn’t all good, though, not by any means. She thought she and Wolf were together and he more or less acted that way until the night he took his bedroll and went to sleep next to some new girl from Wisconsin, calmly, like it was nothing. Dawn had been studying hard. She understood possessiveness was a kind of negative energy and true souls of Light shone their love indiscriminately on the world, but she still felt hurt and more or less followed Wolf around until he told her to stop. She said she loved him and he said he loved her too but his love was too big to be confined to any one person or thing. For a while she holed up on her own and even thought about leaving and going back to town, but Pilgrim Billy talked her out of that, and soon enough she was snuggling down next to him under a scratchy Indian blanket, while his big gentle carpenter’s hands explored her body, making her feel the world wasn’t so bad.

At that time they were all sleeping in the big dome, except for Judy and Joanie and Clark Davis, who had their own cabins. The metal skin made it stifling hot during the day, and even at night it was a sweaty, busy place, the air roiled by body smells and mesquite smoke from the cook fire and farting and coughing and the sudden flickerings of pipes and matches and the rake of flashlight beams as people hunted about for space to crash. They were naked most of the time, and though she was shy at first, she gradually got used to it, to the sight of bodies, to the hearing and the seeing of sex, which was natural and beautiful, not “intercourse,” full of fear and guilt. She thought about Uncle Ray, and Frankie and the red-faced sheriff, about how scared they all were, and to her surprise, she actually began to feel a little sorry for them.

Further on down the line she found out nothing came for free. She was a starchild, a love giver, but it was easier to shine your light on some people than others. After Billy there was Guru Bob and then Floyd, who
she didn’t really want to go with, because he had a skin condition, but it was hard to deny someone without generating negativity and giving aid to the Dark Forces. Then one night Mountain told her Clark wanted to see her. She knew what was coming. He’d let her know in small ways that she owed him, and though he was supposed to be with Maa, he liked to get laid and was persistent and paranoid about rejection and sooner or later everyone had to give it up, just to get some peace. You were only unlucky if he took a shine to you, was what she’d heard. Dawn made sure he got bored quick enough. She lay there like a dead fish while he did his business, thinking about how righteous and moral he’d been with Ray at the law office, and how he and her uncle were probably more or less the same age.

None of the bad stuff mattered. Not when you were in contact with beings from other stars, part of the earthly salvation mission of the Ashtar Galactic Command. Wolf and the others had a saying:
Music is the message
. That was to say, it was communication, a way of making contact with the Command. Almost everyone on the compound played an instrument, and those that didn’t, like Dawn, knew how to chant or bang something or clap in time.

Listen. We repeat. Listen
.

They’d meet in the dome, or just sit out under the stars. And it would start, the low bass drone of the Tronics circling round and round, opening a space for the drums to make patterns. Then the strings and pipes would add their lines and the great noise would swell and people would begin to chant
this is our message this is our message are you receiving us are you receiving come in
and soon they’d feel the presence of others, higher-density beings, contributing their beautiful overtones to the cosmic music, until all were one with the harmonic vibrations of the Universal Field.

We speak in the names of all sentient beings in the thirty-three sectors of the Universe, in the name of the Ascended Masters and the Conclave of Interdimensional Unity. We bring this music to you, the Star People, so that you may understand
.

Of course there were sugar cubes and blotters and acid punch, and this was where she learned how to let her mind shatter without feeling afraid, how to open up to the wonder of existence and let the vastness
of the Universe enter in. It altered her on the molecular level, changed her from little Dawnie Koenig into a true starchild, the substance of her body stretching out through time and space, making contact, bringing her closer to the celestial realms of Jesus-Sananda and the Ashtar Galactic Command.

It wasn’t the drugs. The drugs were just a tool, a key to unlock the door. The other tool was the Tronics, built by Wolf’s hermit brother, who spent his time alone in a room dug under the rocks, fooling about with wire and valves and solder. He made oscillators, tone generators. He made filters and processors. He took the sounds made by the musicians, transformed them into cosmic energy and sent them up into space. He was a scientist, Coyote, though Dawn suspected he stole a lot of the things he said he made himself. The Tronics looked too sleek and expensive to be cooked up in a dusty hole under a rock.

They timed the sessions to important cosmic events—solstices, the Perseid meteor shower. People would arrive days beforehand, on bikes gleaming with chrome, in beat-up buses, carrying instruments and amplifiers, eating and crashing together amid snaky tangles of cable in the dome. Ash-covered sitarists, Nashville junkies in soiled Nudie suits with pedal steel guitars. Once an old flatbed truck sputtered its way into the compound, disgorging the entire congregation of a peyote church from over the border in Arizona, solemn men in workshirts manhandling giant drums, their women following behind, carrying cauldrons of corn mush and foil-wrapped rounds of fry bread. Here was some fat old poet, withered buttocks wrapped in a sarong, twanging on a Jew’s harp and pronouncing the scene wholly holy. There was a tattooed vet, hair only half grown out, stalking around with a bedroll and a harmonica, looking for a place to dig a foxhole. All come to plug into the Tronics, to have their sounds converted into etheric waves. To feel the Universe unfolding, the drone sweeping them far away.

When the compound was full of strangers, setting up for the session, you’d spot Coyote flitting here and there, setting up microphones, adjusting settings. It was more or less the only time you’d ever see him out of his cave; he was so secretive that for a while Dawn thought Wolf was playing some kind of joke on her, and he didn’t really have a brother
at all. They weren’t alike. It wasn’t that Coyote was bad-looking, exactly.
Uncouth
would be a word.
Flea-bitten
. He looked like someone who ate out of dumpsters. For ages you’d never run into him and bit by bit you’d start forgetting he existed. When he turned up it’d be a shock. Always, every time. You’d stumble on him doing something low and disgusting, flopping his cock out of his filthy jeans, rummaging through your stuff. You’d try and avoid him, but suddenly he’d be everywhere, standing over the lunch table, grabbing food and chewing with his mouth open, making lewd remarks at you when you were getting ready to go to sleep. His teeth were mossy. His grimy hands were twisted back on themselves, the nails black with dirt. Amazing he could do anything with electronics. Dawn always thought you had to be clean for that. Before a session he’d rush through the dome with a damp joint glued to his bottom lip, splicing things, coaxing dead connections into life, sticking his nose in and upsetting everyone, but somehow getting it all together, making the thing happen. In a manic mood like that he’d electrocute himself once, twice a day. Plugging in the wrong cable, knocking over a bottle of water. Before a session, he always carried the stink of burned hair. He smelled like the onset of a migraine.

In the early days, before the paranoia set in, Clark or Joanie would lead everyone in the invocation.
In the name of the Great Master Jesus-Sananda and of Ashtar, Commander of the Brotherhood of Light …
They’d talk about the project, about the tsunami of negative energy emanating from the darkness and the certainty that, unless it was countered by an intergalactic union of Lightworkers, the Earth would tilt on its axis and human civilization would be wiped out.
Think of the libraries, the great repositories of knowledge! Think of the treasure houses of gold!

All the works of all the hands.

We will not fear
, says Clark Davis, as the drone of the Tronics cranks up into life. Worlds unfolding, vibrating deep in the body, sending waves shuddering through to the bone.
Forty million are with us, forty million souls!

This message is going out to whosoever will listen and understand
.

During the evacuation
, explains Maa Joanie,
some will be lost, but others, who make it to the motherships, will undergo extraordinary experiences. Your
minds will be quickened by the rays in which you bathe, the blue rays and the green rays and the violet ray and the elemental ray, the carrier of all our higher communications. Your cells will be regenerated. You will live for two hundred years
.

We will not fear

Know that attempts have been made by powers on Earth to persuade you that your reality as Star People is false. These powers, strongly magnetized to the Darkness, must be resisted at all costs. They seek to destroy you, and plunge you into the brute negativity of matter
.

We are pure spirit
.

We are the high gods
.

Do not fear

Do not fear, Children of Light! Each of your names is punched into record cards held in the brains of our giant computers! We know exactly where you are!

We know exactly where you are! Do not fear!

Do not fear! Fifteen fleets of ships are orbiting the Earth. Millions of vessels, each one assigned a quota of souls. Families separated during the evacuation will be reunited. Special care will be taken of the children. Release your hold on the ones left behind. They shall only be left behind because something in the core of their being tells them to stay. Release those souls into the infinite world soul, the many-mansioned House that is the body of the Father. The ships are beautiful. The ships are filled with joy. Your children will play in huge soft rooms filled with light
.

Remain calm when it comes. There are no accidents. There are no coincidences. All is in the plan
.

The ships are beautiful
.

The ships are filled with joy
.

Remain calm
.

Do not fear

Do not fear

Do not fear

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Do not fear

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Do not fear

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Do not fear

Do not fear

Do not fear

Do not fear

Do not fear

Do not fear

Do not fear

Do not fear

Do not fear

Do not fear

Do not fear

Discontinue
.

Jaz surveyed his new perimeter, the afternoon sun, the pale blue lining of the motel pool. A tactical retreat. He smeared more sunscreen on his face and lay down on the creaky plastic lounger, listening to the traffic on the highway, waiting for the sound of their rental car pulling into the front lot.

He slept for a while, woke up dry-mouthed. The shadows were long, distorted black streaks thrown across the paving, ghosts of chairs and sunshades. He went out and stood by the road, holding the boy’s hand. Raj was bored, twisting from side to side and making clicking sounds. They spent a while spotting trucks, the bigger the better. Raj liked trucks, though he covered his ears with his hands when they went by.

The manager came out of the office and stood watching them.

“You folks not been out today?”

She was wearing a striking outfit, shiny pants and some kind of tapestry vest woven with a wizardy pattern of stars and planets.

“Everything OK? Not sick or nothing, is he?”

“Just waiting for my wife. She went to run some errands. She’ll be back soon.”

The manager pursed her lips around a skinny menthol cigarette, exhaled skeptically. “Sure, honey. You just yell if you need anything. If you’re hungry, there’s take-out menus in the rec room. Pizza place delivers.”

He dialed Lisa’s cell. If she was off sulking somewhere it was time for her to stop. The phone went straight to voicemail. Ten minutes later he called again. The light softened to a pinkish gold, tumbling over the pool like gauze. He and Raj played an interminable game: Raj fetched
pebbles, placed them in an arc by his seat. Jaz moved them to the other side. Raj moved them back. There was a system. Order. Cooperation. Every so often, he hit redial.

Voicemail.

And again.

With a click and a buzz, the motel lighting came on. The red glow of the sign leaped up. The string of Christmas lights tacked to the eaves burst out in a sudden scatter of multicolored points. What if she’d been in an accident? She was upset, she could have crashed the car.

As if summoned by the setting sun, the English guy emerged from his room, drowsily scratching his ass. Raj dropped his pebbles and ran straight toward him, skirting the pool in a busy arm-flapping run. He careered into his knees like a football player going in for a tackle. The English guy looked embarrassed.

“Well, hello there.”

“I’m so sorry. I’ve never seen him do that before. Raj, come here. Come to Daddy.”