Driving the Mountaineer, Bridget would follow the same route, though our little squad had in mind a different destination and an even more urgent purpose.
We stood by the Mountaineer, watching the Sprinters follow their headlights into the desert dark, while we took a few minutes to discuss what we’d learned and to be sure we were agreed on the nature of the problem and the best solution.
Back at the Oasis, none of the cultists might yet have found Emmerich and Soul Timothy on the lowest level or the dead physician on the floor that included the kitchen. Soon, however, they would become aware of gaps in the functioning of the staff. Even the self-adoring and uncurious soul children ought to include at least one among them who would have the capacity to put down his wineglass, forgo whatever drugs were arranged like canapés on silver trays, ignore for ten minutes the insistent effect of Viagra, shift his attention from the multitude of crotches that attracted him, and have a look beyond the happening scene to eventually discover that their godling and sugar daddy had assumed room temperature. What would happen then I could not clearly imagine. If some despaired, would they pull a Jim Jones and swill poisoned Kool-Aid? Poisoned Dom Pérignon? A few perhaps, but not many. With so much expensive art—Tiffany lamps, original paintings by Tamara de Lempicka, works in silver by Jean Puiforcat—the temptation to loot the place and pack an antique car full of treasures would be great; and the soul children had been shapen never to resist temptation.
At first, a frenzy of violence seemed unlikely—until you considered they were schooled in bigotry and paranoia. Emmerich blamed all the ills of the world on ignorant, regressive Moujiks, peasant masses who insisted on the rightness of interdictions that limited the behavior and power of the enlightened. If the Light himself had been shot to death, who could the perpetrator be but a Moujik in their midst, masquerading as a soul child? A firestorm of suspicion could be ignited in mere minutes. Accusations and counteraccusations. Such a sexualized culture as theirs already valued sensation and emotion above reason, which could so easily lead to cruel and irrational actions; the fuse was lit.
As we watched the taillights of the Mercedes Sprinters dwindle in the dark, Sparky said, “Were there any Nihilim in that place? I thought it’d be a nest of wormheads, but we didn’t find even one.”
Panthea said, “Their mission is corruption and misery. The corruption of the Oasis and the cult members was complete. Emmerich and his savage sophisticates could visit misery on the Specials and the Asian workers as well as could the Nihilim. The beasts moved on from here some time ago.”
The last red sunlight had bled away in the west, and the moon still lay abed in the east. Contrary to Hakeem Kaspar’s promise, I didn’t see any immense dark form, any alien craft without running lights, blotting out the stars. I never would.
However, I knew where one Nihilim had curled in the heart of an apple for a long time. In memory of Annie Piper and as justice for Keiko Ishiguro, we could go nowhere now but to Phoenix and find who at Mater Misericordi? had been referring the fairest and gentlest among its girls for abduction and imprisonment at the Oasis. The same wicked person—or more likely a Nihilim in human masquerade—had ensured the murder of Litton Ormond by somehow locating his fugitive father, Corbett, and revealing to the murderer that his boy was sheltered under another name at the orphanage. I’d not had time to consider what lesser pains and sadnesses that same individual might have inflicted on the sisters and their charges, but I thought I knew in what identity the Nihilim had so successfully concealed itself for so many years.
|?36?|
In Phoenix, as in any large city, there would be numerous sources from which we could obtain yet another untraceable vehicle at an exorbitant price, but we didn’t risk the Mercury Mountaineer by parking in front of the orphanage, where we were likely to be seen arriving or fleeing. The issue wasn’t cost. We still possessed over a hundred forty thousand dollars in drug-gang money. Whenever we needed more, we had psychic magnetism to locate a Nottingham. Frankly, the problem was exhaustion—emotional more than mental exhaustion, mental more than physical, though we were also tired in muscle and bone. Being champions of the natural law was draining work. Plus we were hungry. By the time we completed our mission at Mater Misericordi?, Hector Salcidero might already have escorted the Specials and the Asian workers to a TV studio and gotten them on air during the late news, after which my friends and I were likely to be public figures, known faces, once again hotly pursued by ISA agents with DNA on their minds. Thereafter, we would be well advised to get our meals only at the drive-up service windows of fast-food franchises, with baseball caps pulled low over our brows, and it would be more important than ever to be in a vehicle unknown to the authorities. Maybe in a couple of days, or even tomorrow, we could seek a replacement for our current wheels. As for undertaking that task tonight—forget about it.