Armageddon Crazy

FIVE

Carlisle

"Revelations nine!"

The lights on the stage had dimmed to a velvet black. Allen Proverb stood under a single pin spot that beamed straight down. The impression created was that of his being touched by the finger of God.

"Yes, my friends. Revelations nine."

As Proverb's voice resonated through the auditorium, a murmur ran through the crowd. Revelations nine was a Proverb showstopper. For him to use it so early in the show would seem to indicate that he was planning to go for broke. The crowd was excited at the promise of fireworks. Someone in the seats behind Harry Carlisle let out a whoop.

"Good rockin' tonight."

Some of the crowd laughed. Harry Carlisle shook his head in the darkness. It had to be an Elvi.

There was a high sustained note, somewhere between a trumpet and a violin. It seemed to hang in the roof darkness of the Garden. Tiny pinpoints of light danced high in the air.

"And the fifth angel sounded…"

Proverb's voice was as much a force as any other factor in the spectacle. The naturally powerful baritone had been amplified and deepened; it had been enhanced and juiced in every conceivable way until it sounded as if some holy orchestra were buried in the words. When he fell into the rolling rhythm of his Bible reading, during which he tacked a punching aah sound to the ends of many of his words, the effect was even more pronounced. It became a voice ready to part the waters – -Moses with the gift of advanced electronics.

"… and I saw a star fell from heaven unto the earth:…"

The lights vanished, and the note faded. A deep sub-bass rumble seemed to be vibrating the foundations of the building. A deep glow, the color of blood, was crawling across the stage like something alive.

"… and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."

The voices became the roar of a hurricane.

"And he opened the bottomless pit!"

It was an illusion, but for an instant, it seemed as if the floor of the Garden had opened up. For a fraction of a second, the crowd felt as if they were falling. There were screams. Carlisle looked around. The show had only just started, and the Garden was already in total chaos. The cops who were supposed to be protecting Proverb were quite helpless. In the darkness, and with all the movement in the crowd, there was no way that they would be able to spot a sniper.

"And there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit."

All hell was majestically breaking loose. Green and purple evil was crawling down the walls while magenta doom rose to meet it. The bloody glowing mist was flowing off the stage and down into the crowd. Things seemed to be moving in the middle of it. People were pushing back, recoiling from its advance. Carlisle's ears were assaulted by a cacophony of shouts and screams and the terrible flapping of leathery wings. All around him, people were clutching their ears: some were down on their knees, eyes closed, sobbing. Carlisle knew that Proverb was a wildman, but if the preacher kept the intensity up at this level through a full three-hour show, he would have half his flock clean out of their minds at the end – if they had not killed each other in some mass psych-out.

An atonal chorus cut through the desperate noise and hung in the air above the heads of the milling crowd like a blanket of doom.

"Come not, Lucifer."

"Come not, Lucifer."

"Come not, Lucifer."

Proverb himself was rising above the red glow on a small, elevating platform. Hands seemed to be reaching out of the stuff to drag him back down.

"And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power."

"Power."

"Power."

"Power."

"And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle."

Proverb was down on one knee. The heavy Bible was brandished on high. Even forced to his knees, Alien Proverb kept on fighting. He was high above the stage, surrounded by a golden aura. His voice had dropped to a terrifying whisper.

"And on their heads were as it were crowns like gold… And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle."

The bloody glow was fading, but it was being replaced by lurking, hovering blackness that hinted of men on horses and threatening spears. Harsh metallic noise seemed to be coming from a long way off.

"And the four angels were loosed… for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand; and I heard the number of them."

"Kill meeeee!"

"Kill meeeee!"

The metallic noise was coming closer. The dark shapes loomed over the audience.

"And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as of the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone."

Carlisle did not have a clue how the effects were achieved, but as the metallic noise grew louder and louder, the black shapes were in among the audience. White, skeletal forms appeared in the middle of them, indistinct but brandishing weapons, topped by the faces of screaming skulls. The crowd was reacting again. Carlisle started to realize that what Arlen Proverb was really providing was just a grand version of old-fashioned horror-movie grab and scream. It was a rollercoaster ride of fright-night biblical effects, and the crowd was more than happy to throw itself into it with a vengeance. It was all part of the show and probably provided those poor dumb bastards with more genuine thrills and spills than they had experienced all year. Carlisle's real worry was that since this was not merely an old-time honor show but something that touched psyches heavily dosed with years of religious mania, the spills might spill over into a full-blown bout of mass psychosis. He did not want to be officiating at a riot.

The metal noise had reached pain threshold. It was as if a dozen old-fashioned railroad trains were screaming through the place with their throttles wide open, while on board a barbarian horde was howling in unison and beating on steel shields. The vague skeletal shapes were much more clearly defined, demon holograms stalking the aisles and putting the very real fear of eternal damnation into the hearts of the crowd. Above it all, Proverb, protected by his aura, continued to rant.

"By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths… And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk."

An indistinct, shifting demon face was projected onto the backdrop behind Proverb. It bore a definite resemblance to Larry Faithful.

"Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, not of their fornication, nor of their thefts."

At the last ringing word, everything stopped with breathtaking suddenness. The interior of the Garden was full of ringing silence and pitch oppressive black.

After three seconds, there was a blinding white flash, and Proverb's voice rang out like a roll of thunder.

"I bring you tidings of great joy that shall be to all people. "

The auditorium was filled with a golden light. Proverb was back down on the stage, no longer raised up on the elevated platform. Carlisle felt unnaturally good. He was at peace. He slowly looked around. Everyone in the place was beaming with brotherly love.

Carlisle quickly let out his breath. "Goddamn it to hell."

A couple of nearby people looked at him in amazement. He glared back at them, and they looked away. The good feeling had abruptly fallen off. Proverb was using some sort of highspeed visual hypnotic, an industrial version of the Jesus Wave. With this crowd, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Over half of them were jelloed on the pocket-size A-wave already. Carlisle resented the indiscriminate use of mass mood movers. People were crazy enough as it was. For his own part, he objected to the intrusion on his privacy. He did not like anyone modifying his mind without his express permission. Ironically, the hypnotic was probably now heightening his irritation. Once one had fought the initial euphoria, the tendency was to plummet to the basement of ill temper.

A telescopic catwalk was extending down the central aisle, and Proverb was moving onto it. He was actually going out into the crowd. If a hitter was waiting there, Proverb's move was an open invitation. Every couple of paces he would pause and acknowledge some individual or group in the audience. He began handing out silk scarves. He seemed to be Dulling scarves out of the high collar of his spangled costume as if it were a magic act. It was practically an Elvi ceremony. Between scarves, he would reach out and grasp the hands that were stretched up to him. He dropped to one knee and prayed to selected knots of people.

When he came to the end of the catwalk, he surveyed the crowd and slowly raised his hands. "Oh, my friends, I do bring you tidings of great joy and they shall be to all people. Very, very great joy."

Kline

Deacon Booth gripped a large glass of cognac and regarded the small, spotlit figure of Arlen Proverb with a bleak expression. "I think tonight he may finally go too far."

Longstreet, who was standing next to him, raised a questioning eyebrow. "It depends what you mean by too far."

"Far enough so we can finally wrap him with a full-scale, watertight heresy indictment."

"Is there such a thing as a watertight heresy indictment? Isn't it all a matter of theological interpretation?"

"There's a line beyond which interpretation no longer applies. That's why we've given this one so much rope."

Booth gave Longstreet a look that seemed to indicate he was another one who had had more than enough rope.

The smart cynical elite in the VIP lounge watched the performance with as much rapt attention as any of the common believers on the floor of the Garden, but their motivations were very different. The celebrities, the tycoons, and the city officials, who were staring through the panoramatic glass that looked out over the whole arena or else watching the banks of monitors that were mounted at strategic points all around the room, had come to see what amounted to an advanced freakshow. They accepted champagne from the circulating waiters and laughed at the excesses of both performer and audience.

"He is good. He really does have them in the palm of his hand."

"It's not hard to have morons in the palm of his hand. I mean, just look at them. They'd believe anything."

"He's also spending a fortune on special effects."

"He is good, though. He must be good to do what he does and have stayed out of a camp for this long."

"I don't think Proverb has anything to worry about. Faithful's afraid of him and his following."

"For God's sake, keep your voice down."

The last speaker, a well-fed, agribusiness executive in a quilted burgundy tuxedo, looked around nervously. There were also a great many senior deacons in the VIP lounge. They were not there to see a freakshow – they were looking for an excuse. They made absolutely no secret that they were there to see Proverb publicly nail his own coffin. The way things stood in the aftermath of the mess on Fifteenth Street and the continuing embarrassment of the Lefthand Path running loose, the deacons obviously needed the kind of spectacular arrest and show trial that the taking down of Proverb would provide. It went deeper than that, however. The agribusiness executive's companion was right. Faithful was afraid of Arlen Proverb, as were all of the hierarchy. He was an unpredictable maverick, and there was no place for mavericks in their brave new world. That, on the other hand, did not stop them looking around at the other guests as if speculating what their long-term fate might be. It was an old deacon trick, but that did not stop it from striking cold fear into anyone who faced one of those cold stares.

Cynthia Kline herself was close to cold fear. She had arrived, once again, as Longstreet's protegee and had been very much treated as such – she had been largely ignored. He had introduced her to a couple of people, but they had been singularly uninterested in her claim to fame. There was no way that she could compete with what was going on on the stage. If she had had less brain and more ego, she might have put it down to the much more conservative uniform that Longstreet had chosen for the night's outing. Cynthia, though, was smart enough to realize that she was already becoming yesterday's news, and that her moment of phony glory was into its final flare. The realization produced mixed feelings. There was a certain relief that she would soon be allowed to sink back into her previous covert anonymity, but it was tempered by a regret that she would no longer be in the public eye. There had been a certain exhilaration to being the center of attention.

In the VIP lounge at Madison Square Garden, Cynthia rapidly became aware that not to be the center of attention might actually constitute a blessing. The mild pique that came from hardly being noticed quickly subsided as she saw the nature of the crowd. The deacons, all high-ranking officers, some of whom she had seen around the corridors or in the elevators at the Astor Place complex, made up at least a third of those present. They looked like a pack of vultures waiting for a kill. The other two-thirds were the kind of successful self-satisfied sleaze who circled any concentration of power – not the leftover jetsetters of the previous night, but the predators, parasites, and scavengers who had actually prospered under the Faithful regime. The only one of them she recognized was Raoul, the Chilean software runner. She had felt a moment of panic when she had thought that Webster was with him and might accidentally let drop some incriminating remark. To her relief, she saw that his companion was some other willowy and anemic blonde.

The way in which she had been summoned to the event had made mingling with that kind of crowd even more difficult. A high level of paranoia had been established from the start. Long-street had called only a matter of minutes after she had garbaged the mysterious instructions that had told her to go to the Proverb show.

"I think you should come with me to the Arlen Proverb extravaganza at the Garden. I've got passes for the VIP lounge."

As if she was not spooked already, that was more than enough to make her sit quickly down on the bed. The incidence of coincidence was well into the red. For a couple of seconds, she was unable to speak.

At the other end of the phone, Longstreet had sounded irritable. "You're that hung over?"

Finally she had found her voice. "I guess so. It was a long night."

"So drink some coffee and pull yourself together. I want you in my office here at five, and we'll go on from there."

"How should I dress?"

"That'll all be taken care of."

She sat on the bed for some minutes wondering if she should just cut and run. She had been told to go to the Garden and wait to be contacted. Was she going to be contacted in the VIP lounge? If that was the case, did it mean that Longstreet was somehow linked to the organization? Or did it mean that the whole thing was a setup? That was the very basic and absolute root of her fear. It was bad enough to feel that she was little more than a puppet with faceless people pulling invisible strings. The idea that these strings could be walking her to her death made her feel sick.

In the end, she decided reluctantly to go. It was not that she had all that courage; it was more because she could not think of a sound alternative. She only had the identity of Cynthia Kline, clerical auxiliary, and no travel papers would allow her to get back into Canada or away to Europe. Her only alternatives were either to become a nameless fugitive without money or support, or to continue to go with this increasingly dubious program. In the end she took a deep breath and started undressing to take a shower. It felt like walking naked straight into the lion's mouth.

Arrival at the Garden did not do anything to allay the gnawing fears. The streams of people that were still milling outside looked crazy, and the VIP lounge resembled nothing more than an anteroom to hell. Even Longstreet was fazed by the concentration of top deacons. As they walked past security on the door and were checked off on the guest list, he muttered under his breath, "My God, the brass is out in force and looking for blood."

Cynthia silently prayed that the blood would not be hers.

Longstreet quickly recovered. "Let's smile nicely and slide into the fray."

Fortunately, the fray proved to be less intense than she had expected. After the initial round of circulation, she was able to take a glass of champagne from a waiter and find a vantage point from where she could watch the show and hardly be noticed.

Longstreet hissed at her. "Try not to get drunk two days in a row."

"I'll watch it."

She sipped her drink and concentrated on what was happening on the stage. All her life she had done her best to avoid TV preachers. Even back in the old days, they had filled her with a restful unease. It was not just the creepy smiles, the overblown histrionics, and the constant demands for money – the thing that angered her the most was their absolute certainty about everything. How did anyone have the gall to presume to be so right? She had to admit, however, that this guy Proverb had a lot more going for him. He was a throwback to the scenery-chewing Elmer Gantrys of the mid-twentieth century, and the special effects were like something out of an old-time rock-and-roll spectacular. Despite herself, she found that she was soon halfway caught up in his act.

After an orgy of multimedia hellfire, he was pouring liquid honey over the masses. Bliss blue poured onto the stage, and an invisible choir of country-and-western angels harmonized in wrap sound.

"The word is joy, my friends. The word is rapture. Do you all know the meaning of the word 'rapture'? Do you know the meaning of the word 'joy'? Joy, my friends, my brothers and my sisters, that's the feeling when you feel so good that you want to jump up and yell out loud, when you want to throw your arms up in the air and just haul off and holler out: Praise the Lord, I feel so good!"

The sound was juiced on the final shout so that it came out as if Proverb were hollering from the mountaintop. Cynthia had to admit that the presentation was slick. All over the floor of the auditorium, the more exuberant sections were leaping in the air and yelling the line right back to the spangled figure on the stage.

"Praise the Lord!"

"Praise the Lord, I feel so good!"

"Praise the Lord!"

The deacons in the VIP lounge were watching in stony silence. There was no conversation above the music and the crowd noise that was being relayed through the monitor speakers. The choir was getting louder. Proverb raised a hand, and the faithful fell silent,

"I'll say it again." His delivery became stylized and mythmic. "Joy-a is when you feel-a so good-a that you want to jump in the a-ir and holler out-a: Praise the Lord, I feel so good-a!"

That time the punchline had been shouted from an even higher mountain. The crowd repeated the jumping and shouting. The choir had grown to a couple of thousand strong and was smoothly sliding into a do-wop back beat.

"Doop-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop."

"Joyyyyyyyyyyyyyy."

"Joyyyyyyyyyyyyyy."

"The message of Jesus is joy-a to the world-a. "

The audience roared their agreement, but even as they were roaring, the rollercoaster ride started to climb again. The choir was fading. The blue light was closing on Proverb. Again the crowd fell silent. Cynthia wondered how it must feel to have such power and control; what it felt like to have command of all those special effects. It was a miracle that Proverb was able to stay sane, if indeed he did. It was also quite clear why the deacons loathed him. He was now talking one on one, down home to the crowd.

"Now, I guess it's no secret that when I was a young boy, I was kinda wild. And I gotta tell you, way back then, one of the things that put me off coming to know Jesus sooner than I did was that I had this crazy idea that Christian folks didn't have no fun. I thought that being one with the Lord was a matter of giving up this and forgoing that and walking around with a long face and a sorrowful disposition. We know better than that now – don't we?"

The crowd howled, and Proverb beamed. A huge image of his face had come up on the back projection screen.

"We know that Jesus came to Earth to bring us joy. We know that Jesus came to Earth to make us know a true happiness. When I began to walk with Jesus, the first thing that I learned was that Jesus wants us all to have a good time."

Proverb paused to let that sink in. The eyes of the huge image seemed to be glowing slightly. For half a second Cynthia felt that they were looking deep inside her. She shook her head with a quick jerky motion. It was far too easy to be sucked in by this stuff.

"Now you may be saying, 'Hey, I may feel good right now, but there are times when I get downright miserable.' You may be saying, 'Hey, times are hard, Reverend Proverb. There are days when I ain't sure that I'm going to make it.' "

The stage began to darken. Gray storm clouds were driven across the screen behind the huge image of Proverb.

"Hard times, my friends. Hard times, friends and neighbors. Make no mistake about that. The whole of this country is being sorely tried and tested. The one thing you shouldn't believe, though, is that these hard times come from Jesus. It's the good times that come from Jesus. The hard times come from one place and one place only. They come straight from Hell. That's right! Straight from Hell! These hard times are the works of Satan – and don't let anyone tell you different!"

Proverb was in full cry.

"We all know them. We all know so-called good Christians who go around preaching doom and gloom, telling you that hard times are sent by Jesus because you've been weak, or because you've been bad. Well, my friends, I've got something right here and now to tell those so-called Christians. If they're not damned liars then they've been very badly informed."

There was the loudest roar yet from the crowd. They seemed to know who the damned liars were. Cynthia sneaked a covert glance at the deacons. They were in a tight knot around Senior Deacon Booth over on one side of the panoramatic window. They were watching Proverb like a flock of hawks. Booth was already red in the face and huffing and puffing. He barked at an aide.

"I want comprehensive tapes of this seditious nonsense on my desk first thing in the morning. You hear me?"

The aide nodded vigorously. Cynthia scowled. That had to be one bitch of a job, nursemaiding a piece of slime like Booth.

When he had sufficiently terrorized the aide, Booth turned to the other senior officers with a look of grim triumph. "I think, gentlemen, mere's one thing of which we can be certain. After this display – " He nodded contemptuously in the direction of the stage, " – we have ample, legitimate grounds to require the Reverend Proverb to provide answers to the Fifteen Questions."

Cynthia raised an eyebrow. The Fifteen Questions, as laid out in the Second Amendment to the Mandatory Articles of Faith, were invariably the prelude to an indictment for capital heresy. She looked down at the roaring crowd and wondered: Did Booth and the others really think they could do that to Proverb without his millions of followers going violently bananas?

She saw that Longstreet was coming toward her. He had a wry look on his face.

He moved close to her and whispered. "I fear that my superiors are planning to make even bigger fools of themselves than they already are. They seriously believe that they can arrest Proverb, and his followers will just roll over. Do you want some more champagne? You seem to have been a good girl so far."

He signaled to a waiter. Longstreet apparently had not been a good boy. His breath smelled of brandy, and his eyes were unnaturally bright.

Cynthia accepted the glass. "You seem to have broken your drinking rule."

"Who wouldn't, at an affair like this? I feel the cold wind from the camps when I'm in the same room as Booth."

Cynthia quickly swallowed her champagne. If Longstreet was afraid, what hope did she have?

"What do you think would happen if they did try Proverb for heresy?" she asked.

"Civil war, if this crowd's anything to go by."

"Oh, come on."

"First-degree ghetto burning, at a very minimum."

"You shouldn't joke about all this. Not in public."

"I don't really – " He was suddenly staring across the room at a group of late arrivals. "What the hell is this? The Night of the Long Knives?"

Matthew Dreisler was in the center of the group.

"Dreisler the headhunted."

"The head of the DIA?"

"The very same, and he never socializes unless there's a purpose to it. He's no butterfly."

Cynthia could feel the ripple of fear go through the room.

Longstreet seemed transfixed. "God, he's always immaculate."

A black leather coat was thrown casually over the perfect shoulders of Dreisler's silk, double-breasted evening jacket. A black velour trilby was tilted over one eye, and, of course, there were the inevitable old-fashioned sunglasses. He was flanked by two large men who were clearly his bodyguards, and slightly behind him were two less strapping young men who had to be aides or assistants. The party was completed by a tall spindly figure wrapped in an all-enveloping cowled overcoat. It was hard to guess exactly what his function was, but he had the look of a personal spiritual advisor – and a strange one at that.

Advancing through the VIP lounge, they seemed to be very much aware of the effect they were having on the rest of the guests. They did not swagger like stormtroopers – Dreisler was too sophisticated for that. The air of menace – and the relish that he clearly took in that menace – was subtle, almost understated. It was also quite unmistakable. It became plain that they were going for Booth.

Longstreet propelled Cynthia forward. "Let's move a little nearer. I don't want to miss any of this."

Cynthia resisted. "I don't want to be anywhere near those people. I'm not drunk, and they scare me to death."

The pressure on her arm was insistent. "We don't have anything to worry about. Dreisler fries bigger fish than us."

Cynthia let herself be pushed toward the other end of the room, hoping that Longstreet had not found his deathwish. To her relief, he stopped at what would be a safe distance from the confrontation between Dreisler and Booth.

Dreisler was affable and smiling, although his eyes were still hidden behind the black glasses. "How are you, Deacon Booth?"

Even Booth's florid cheeks seemed to have paled a little. "I'm well, thank you, Deacon Dreisler."

"I didn't know you were a follower of the Reverend Proverb."

It looked as if only an accustomed fear was keeping Booth from exploding. "Indeed I am not."

Dreisler was still smiling pleasantly. "Indeed?"

"I came here to see for myself how far the man would go."

"And how far has he gone so far?"

"Sadly, I have to tell you that serious questions are being raised regarding the loyalty of the Reverend Proverb."

Dreisler regarded Booth from over the top of his glasses. "But you haven't told me how for he's gone. Isn't that what you came here for?"

The pallor had gone from Booth's face. He was turning purple. "For a start, he's as good as – "

Dreisler waved a autocratic hand, summarily cutting Booth off. "I'll see for myself."

He stepped up to the window and looked down at the stage. He could not have picked a better time. Proverb was on a full tilt roll. The fire of damnation was all around him.

"Prophets of doom in the pulpit, and the money changers grow fat on the humble offerings of the poor. The chatter of commerce and the clash of the register drown the Word. The Light grows dim in the midnight of deception."

Dreisler looked back at nobody in particular. "He really is a little radical."

"John, chapter two, verse thirteen." Proverb gave the quote as if it was the ultimate authority. For many there, it was.

"And Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: and when he had made a scourge out of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; and said unto them that sold doves, take these things hence; make not my Father's house a house of merchandise."

Dreisler glanced back at Booth. "He seems to be quoting holy scripture."

"The Devil can quote scripture."

Dreisler turned back to the window. "Of course."

Proverb had put down his Bible.

"Now I don't think there are too many sheep and oxen around the temples of our land today – " Proverb suddenly grinned, " – although there are times when I ain't so sure." He paused for the explosion of laughter and then became serious. "One thing I do know for sure is that there are plenty of money changers and the like hanging around, getting fat while the rest of us get poorer."

There were some militant shouts. Everybody seemed to have overlooked the fact that the very last thing that Alien Proverb ever got was poorer.

"Fat cats in Washington and fat cats in Los Angeles talking the name of Jesus but walking this country, this land of the free, into harder times than we've ever seen."

Booth flashed Dreisler a look of triumph. "He's directly referring to the administration and the hierarchy."

Proverb had his arms outstretched. "But let me promise you one thing, friends and neighbors. The fat cats' days are numbered."

There was a blaze of light in the auditorium.

"There will be a cleansing of the temple. Believe me, friends and neighbors…" Again the voice came from the mountain-top. "There will be a cleansing of the temple!"

Dreisler turned away from the window. Cynthia was looking directly at him. For a fleeting instant, she saw a smile of intense and pure delight, that of a small boy who was seeing an elaborate practical joke coming together. Then it was gone. In shock she glanced at Longstreet, but he appeared not to have noticed anything.

Winters

All around him, people were shouting and cheering. It was like a battle cry.

"There will be a cleansing of the temple!"

Winters was lost. He did not know what to think. There was open sedition and heresy right there in Madison Square Garden and then, at the height of Proverb's headlong flight into blasphemy, out came that phrase, trumpeted in that terrible amplified voice. It was that same phrase that had so mysteriously appeared on his primary computer screen a few days earlier and, from that moment on, had caused him so much soul-nagging unease. He looked about for another of the deacons from his team. No one was in sight. All around him was a chaos of jumping, waving people, bumping and jostling him as they allowed themselves to become obscenely carried away by Proverb's cheap tricks. They were out of their seats and out of control, surging toward the stage like mindless lemmings. The security did nothing to stop them. It was a pagan hysteria that verged on violence. All order and control was deliberately being broken down, and if that was not criminal, Winters did not know what was. He was being carried forward by the bovine stampede. He pushed back, hunching his shoulders and letting them flow around him. They had to be insane, the staring eyes, the outstretched hands. Wordless noise came from the gaping mouths. There was something terribly perverted in the way that Proverb was able to take hold of those people's minds. He had to be more than just a cynical hustler. Was he a real agent of the Antichrist?

The crowd had closed in around him, and he was being carried forward again. In that instant, he hated those people. He hated them with a cold, unforgiving venom. They were ugly, stupid, and dangerous, and there was no place for them in the world that they were trying to create. Why did they not just move the army in and clean out the whole bunch of them? It would have to come one day. He was repulsed by the physical intensity of the whole thing. It was the complete and extreme opposite of the clean, cold godliness that was the core of his beliefs. A big burly man with triangular sideburns and greasy hair, and smelling of beer and cheap aftershave was thumping him on the back and yelling into his face. The man had to be an Elvi. There was sweat running down his cheeks and flecks of spittle on his chin.

"Praise the Lord, brother. The day is coming. There will be a cleansing of the temple."

Winters was eaten up with a blind fury. He loathed being touched by strangers. He wanted to strike out at the man, but the offender was already gone.

"You stupid hillbilly bastard!"

He wanted to go on screaming at the crowd that they were sick, that they were abandoning themselves to an unnatural evil. His hatred and outrage were, however, tempered by a deep-seated fear. Those very same words had appeared on his primary screen, and he did not know what they meant. Could he somehow be a part of all this?

He spotted Rogers through the mass of people. Rogers, too, was pushing his way backward, struggling against the tick. Winters cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. "Hey, Rogers! Over here!"

Rogers did not respond.

Winters yelled again. "Rogers! Over here!"

Rogers was looking around. He spotted Winters and began moving toward him. "This is getting to be a mess."

"He ought to be arrested right now."

"There'd be a riot."

They kept moving back. Now that there were two of them, it was a great deal easier. The identical dark suits immediately labeled them as deacons, and people stepped out of their way. Finally they were behind the main milling body of the audience. They stopped for breath.

Winters, feeling dizzy from the A-waves, shook his head. "This should never have been permitted."

Rogers nodded. He looked around the floor of the Garden with bleak, narrowed eyes. "This is going to be the last one. He's gone too far this time. If this cleansing the temple stuff isn't stamped on hard, we're going to see it scrawled on every wall in the city. It'll be a rallying cry for every hell-spawned subversive."

Winters experienced a sudden flash of guilt. He was on the verge of telling Rogers about the way that the slogan had appeared on his terminal, but at the last minute he stopped himself. An instinct told him that it was something he had to hide, but in that instant of holding back, he also felt that he had become a part of whatever it meant. The words had appeared on his terminal and, as far as he knew, no one else's. It was as if the Antichrist already had a hold on him.

Speedboat

The woman was down on her knees, speaking in tongues; her eyes rolled, and her body jerked and spasmed. Speedboat watched in horrified fascination. All round her, male Elvi swayed in unison through their knee-snapping, hip-swaying, ritual dance. A second woman, young and quite pretty by the archaic standards of the Elvi, dropped into a glazed, unsteady duck-walk, arms thrashing and face contorting from vacant bliss to teeth-clenching paroxysm. She teetered precariously on tiptoe and toppled over on to her side. Her legs started kicking. Some of the male Elvi whooped and hollered as her skirt flew up to reveal pink stockings and garters, white thighs, and black lace panties. Speedboat wondered what really happened to them when they had those fits. What went on in their minds? Did they simply blank out, or did they really go to some other place. The wordless raving of both women was lost in the general din, but that did not seem to bother any of those, Elvi and non-Elvi alike, who had gathered around. As far as they were concerned, the Lord was manifesting himself right there on the floor of Madison Square Garden, and that was what they had paid their money to see. It was the direct intervention of God, and maybe a look at a girl's underwear into the bargain.

"Praise the Lord!"

"Amen!"

All over the auditorium, similar groups had gathered around other individuals who had dropped into their own random mystic states. Up on the stage, Proverb was milking it to the maximum.

"Total communion, brothers and sisters! Let's take it to total communion! Jesus is among us! He has arrived!"

The bursts of A-waves were coming like hammer blows, and the lights were strobing close to the epileptic frequencies. The music was deafening. Speedboat had never realized that the Christians allowed themselves to become so radically crazed. If the doombeams had known about this, they would have joined in droves: It was not too different from dropping doomers. Either way, the person fell over.

Speedboat had had the foresight to swallow a couple of ten-milligram icebergs as the show started; otherwise some of the excesses of Proverb's special effects, coupled with the antics of the crowd, might have panicked him out of the place. They also helped prevent him being bent out of alignment by the subliminal hypnotics. The damn place was awash with audiovisual moodifiers, and he preferred to maintain a certain chemical distance from so much religion. After all, he could not afford to lose sight of the reason he was there.

Through with the total communion bit, Proverb had backed off again, and soaring electronics were playing 'Love Me Tender'. It was the Elvi's moment. They were moving up to the front of the stage. The lights were going down, and a velvet darkness was settling over the arena. Tiny blue stars floated high in the roof, orbiting each other with slow dignity as the music soared. The crowd fell silent. It was the hush of expectancy. Suddenly there were more blue lights in among the audience. At first Speedboat thought that it was another special effect, but then he saw that it was the Elvi themselves. Men and women alike were taking out small spheres, each about the size of a softball, which they appeared to warm in their hands. The spheres started to glow, the same soft blue as the stars above. When an Elvi right next to him took out a sphere and activated it, Speedboat had a chance to look at one close up. The glow was not the simple diffused light of a regular bulb. It was as if there was a tiny pinpoint of intensely bright light at the center of a solid globe of blue glass. Speedboat could not figure out exactly how it worked. It was probably nothing more than some new knicknack from one of the home shopping outfits, but a thousand or more of them, all softly shining in the darkness, had an eerie beauty. Those who did not have the spheres began striking matches, or flipping lighters and holding them up. The music fell away. Proverb's voice came over the top of it.

"Love me tender, love me true. All my dreams fulfill."

Speedboat knew that it was nothing but crafty manipulation, but despite himself, he found that a lump was forming in his throat. Half-ashamed that such a tear-jerk setup could even start to get to him, he focused hard on his own business at hand. The only dream he wanted fulfilled was to be out of this insane country.

1346408 Stone

The screen had abruptly blanked out, as if someone had jerked the plug on the program feed. The prisoners in D block glanced at each other. Nobody wanted to be the first to venture an explanation as to why the Alien Proverb show had so abruptly gone off the air – they never knew when their conversations were being monitored.

It was Sunday night and the end of a bad week. There were few good weeks in the Joshua Redemption Center, but this one had been particularly awful. Early in the week, a gray, polluted overcast had descended on the camp and the swampland that surrounded it, accentuating the ever-present atmosphere of depression and hopelessness. Midweek, there had been the punishment. The grapevine said that the two women prisoners were already dead when they had been brought to the infirmary. They had died while still secured to the whipping post, maybe even before the flogging had run its course. A full-blown, ceremonial punishment, whether a flogging or a hanging, always left a lasting impression not unlike a grim emotional hangover on both inmates and guards. The prisoners adopted a hunched, glassy-eyed shuffle as if weighted down by a heightened awareness of their own fragile mortality. The hope that they might one day leave Joshua, other than in a blue plastic bodybag, diminished until it was all but invisible. The guards went to the opposite extreme, becoming viciously buoyant. Trivial infractions of the rules that they normally blind-eyed were penalized with considerable relish. The bosses seemed dedicated to making the prisoners' lives even more miserable than they already were. Kicks and blows were freely given, and the abuse was nonstop during the waking hours and salted with constant references to the two women who had been publicly beaten to death.

Sunday had arrived with a certain measure of relief. The inmates had been marched to the compulsory three hours of remedial prayer and Bible study. Once that was over they were, by camp tradition, returned to their cell blocks and their own devices. Even heretics were permitted a God-given day of rest. But this Sunday, in keeping with the rest of the week, proved to be the exception to the general rule. A tour party of Young Crusaders and their parents had come through to look at sinners and observe their fate. It seemed a thoroughly sick way to spend the weekend, but the prisoners had no say over who came to inspect them. "In this hell, Dante comes in a tour bus with his whole damned family," 1346597 Ravel had muttered to Stone as they had been paraded for an extra two hours of special religious services staged for the visitors.

"Except this is no divine comedy."

"That's a fact. What do you think these kids did to qualify for such a treat?"

"Who the hell knows? Probably turned in their teacher to the deacons."

A boss was looking in their direction, and they quickly shut up. Ravel was a convicted porno dealer and comparatively new to Joshua. He was still a little too fond of taking chances for his own good. Sooner or later, they would break him in the bunker.

Even when the Young Crusaders had gone and the inmates were finally returned to their blocks, they still were not left alone. The TV monitor was blaring, relaying the Alien Proverb rally from Madison Square Garden. There was no way either to shut it off or even to turn down the volume. At first, the prisoners in D block sat sullenly on their bunks staring at the raucous TV, taking minimal consolation in the fact that they were sitting down and not being marched anywhere or harangued by the guards. After a while, though, they started to sit up and take notice. Something weird was happening on the screen. Proverb was completely deviating from tike normal routine of the TV preacher. He actually seemed to be issuing a direct challenge to the Faithful establishment, as good as calling the president and his people crooks and charlatans and promising a cleansing of the temple. And then the screen went blank. Someone had decided that Proverb needed to be censored. The only question was whether that censorship was confined to the camp, or if the plugs had been pulled on him all across the country.

After five minutes of silence and a blank screen, the TV flickered and a Danny & Crank cartoon appeared. Under the cover of the noisy audio, Ravel ventured the first comment.

"Looks to me like the Reverend Proverb might be joining us all in the quite near future."

Carlisle

Harry Carlisle positioned himself near one of the exits. If anyone had been intending to kill Proverb, he would have done it by now. The show was winding toward its grand finale. All he wanted to do was to get out of this madhouse as soon as possible. Proverb was going for broke, and Carlisle did not want to be around when things started getting broken. His cop's instinct told him that something bad was going to happen. Bad invariably put the PD right in the line of fire. He had no clear idea of how it was going to go down, but however and whenever, he intended to stay out from under. He had been detailed to stop an assassin. The assassin had failed to show, and when Proverb's act was through, Carlisle would be signing off. He wanted no part of what might come later. He would not put it past the deacons to be stupid enough to try to bust Proverb on the spot. He had heard that most of the deke brass were up in the VIP lounge. On a much more mundane level, he would also prefer to be long gone when the true believers came streaming out and hit the streets around the Garden, loaded to the gills on A-wave and audivid.

He had plenty to think about. When that phrase had come up, it had completely thrown him. "There will be a cleansing of the temple." First Dreisler, and then Alien Proverb. His cop's instinct would not swallow coincidence. It was a sign, a signal, a code. It was a secret, maybe even a conspiracy. It went even deeper. He was certain that, whatever it was, Dreisler was trying to pull him into it. That on its own scared the hell out of him.

Mansard

They were coming up to the reprise of Revelations 9 and the final set piece. It was getting to be hard going. Despite the double glazing in the control booth, he could feel that the juiced waves from the stage were getting to him. He was having trouble maintaining control of the second eyes. The bright electronic landscape wavered and slid. At the periphery, it was breaking down into hilly undulations. He was becoming very much aware of the close promixity of the big audio net. He was even having trouble focusing his physical eyes. It was like being drunk but with none of the relaxation. He was well aware that he had, at a number of points in the show, pushed the effects much closer to the limits than he had intended. As far as he was concerned, Proverb had gone recklessly hog wild in his use of the hypnotics. Mansard, protected by two layers of armored glass, was being seriously hindered by them. Out in the auditorium, the crowd had to be plain crazy.

"Precue Rev nine reprise."

Mansard pulled what remained of his senses together. It was the final haul.

"On precue. Fading to black."

He pulled the hellfire to his fingertips. The monster shapes were parked in the mid-distance of the second eyes' landscape. He was ready. And as soon as this was over, he could throw on the Horsemen program and let it rip.

"Last set is down. Cue on my mark."

Mansard tensed.

"Three… two… one… mark!"

Speedboat

The bloodred fire was creeping down the wall. Purple flames leapt up behind the dark figure of Proverb. They were back in a rerun of the opening horror show. The ghosts were starting to crowd the aisles, and the hologram monsters stalked the artificial gloom. The wraparound electronic choir filled the air with its voices.

"Come not Lucifer!"

"Come not Lucifer!"

"Come not Lucifer!"

The crowd was beyond nuts. Some danced, loose-limbed, heads lolling, eyes unfocused, apparently unaware of the light and sound effects that swirled around them. Others sagged back in their seats, staring openmouthed, awed into limp submission. Still more went to the opposite extreme and lost themselves in deep-seated hellfear. They moaned and screamed. They wrung their hands and clutched for religious charms and tokens. For them, the special effects had become horribly real. A knot of Elvi held up their blue globes as if they believed that some inner magic would keep the devil at bay.

"Come not Lucifer!"

"Come not Lucifer!"

"Come not Lucifer!"

Speedboat glanced down at a woman next to him. She had sunk to her knees, sobbing and covering her face. Her body was racked with spasms, and she pleaded with the demons that she so obviously believed had come to get her.

"No, please, not me. I've lived a good life. Don't take me. Please don't take me!"

Speedboat held out a hand. "It's okay lady. Nothing's going to get you. It's only a show."

Speedboat could not have received a more hostile reception if he had exposed himself. She recoiled from his hand as if it were a striking snake and started to back away from him, scrabbling sideways on all fours with a contorted, crablike motion and making terrified mewing sounds. Her pantihose were ripped, her makeup was streaked and smeared, and her beehive hairdo had fallen into straggling disrepair.

Speedboat held up his hands. "Okay, okay. I was only trying to help."

He had seen enough freakouts in his time, but this had to beat all. The crowd itself had started to resemble extras in a scene from the Inferno. A gaping death's head hologram passed right through him, and he felt a shuddering chill. The icebergs had to be wearing off.

"Come not Lucifer!"

"Come not Lucifer!"

"Come not Lucifer!"

He started easing back through the disorganized throng. He wanted to get as far as he could from the stage and its A-wave pushers. He also started looking around, trying to figure out the easiest way to reach the backstage area after all the craziness was over. He had retreated about half way up the main floor when everything abruptly changed. A high, melodic tone, like a sudden breath of ice-cold air, cut through the 'Come not Lucifer' chorus. The flames and demons faded into the darkness, and a single, intense white light grew on the stage. It was as if Proverb himself had become white hot. The light expanded into a single, blinding horizontal band. Proverb's voice rolled through the Garden as if carving the words on stone.

"Lucifer shall not come. He has no dominion over the children of the living God!"

It was like the sun coming up. Even Speedboat had to stand and stare. The choir's harmonics went straight up to heaven. Golden light streamed from Proverb, its warmth melting away the audience's previous hysteria. The music was climbing to a final crescendo.

"Go forth and rejoice. The day is at hand. Go forth and rejoice. There will be a cleansing of the temple. "

The lights on the stage slowly went down. The show was over. The house lights had not yet come up, but a lot of the crowd were starting to gather themselves together to face the real world. Then a strange rhythm started. At first it was just a feeling, low and indistinct, but it quickly gathered momentum. It was the hubbub of thousands of whispering voices.

"Go outside, look to the skies."

"Go outside, look: to the skies."

The audience was picking up the cadence.

"Go outside, look to the skies."

"Go outside, look to the skies."

They were marching to the exits with a dogged, shell-shocked determination. They really believed that their day was at hand.

Mansard

He let out a long, heartfelt sigh, pulled off his headset, and slumped back into the chair. He felt like a pilot who had just flown around the world single-handed. He lay for almost a minute with his eyes closed, then reached up and gingerly eased the plugs from the DNI receptors in his neck. The physical world took back his senses. Sweat was running down his face, and his shirt was soaked. The light seemed unnaturally bright, and the roar of voices around him seemed deafening. People were slapping him on the back and applauding. He smiled automatically.

"I think we hit them where they live."

There was a red light flashing on the board in front of him. He picked up the headset again and put it to his ear. The voice of Jimmy Gadd came through loud and clear.

"Ready to go with the Horsemen when you are."

"Everything checks out? "

"Perfect."

"You're sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure. It's perfect."

"How's the weather?"

"Perfect."

"Is the crowd out on the street yet?"

"The first ones are coming out now."

"What's the status on the streetlights?"

"The Con Ed guy got the envelope, and there ain't one alight for three blocks in any direction."

"Traffic?"

"Eighth Avenue diverted from Twenty-third up to Thirty-eighth. Seventh Avenue is normal. We're going to have to live with that. It doesn't really matter though. Most of the light from the traffic is blocked by the Penn Plaza Tower."

"So we got about as much as we could have hoped for?"

"We did pretty damn good."

"Okay, so give it a fifteen count and let the Horsemen ride. If they don't push things over the edge, nothing will."

Someone had put a drink in front of him.