The eerie quiet of the Oasis unnerved me. Nothing moved but the leaves and fronds of the trees, stirred by a faint breeze, and the birds that flew among them. The warblers and swallows and phoebes that darted from shelter to shelter were songless in the heat. I had not given full credit to Panthea’s assurance that everyone slept by day and lived by night, for that seemed impractical and suggested a regimentation that could not be imposed on an entire community, even if it was a congregation of true believers who had surrendered their free will to a guru who called himself the Light. Yet as we ascended the wide ramp to the flying-saucer entrance, no one challenged us. The Oasis seemed to be as devoid of other human life as any crater on the moon.
The ramp was skinned with slate aluminum, as if it were a part of the craft that had lowered hydraulically, and the dark metal door to the saucer was embossed with runes beyond our interpretation, set in a richly detailed architrave. The entrance offered no handle or keyhole.
“Does this maybe feel like a trap?” I wondered.
Bridget said, “My sense is . . . Emmerich feels no need for traps. He’s lived by his own rules for so long, untouched and untouchable by any authority, never hearing the word no from anyone, that he feels invulnerable.”
“Megalomaniacal,” Panthea diagnosed. “His psychosis might be chemically induced, but he’s psychotic nonetheless. He’s not just your standard-issue cult con man who convinced a bunch of weak-minded followers that he has a direct line to God. He pretty much thinks he is a god, a god of sorts, immortal or destined to be. His PR became his dream of who he was, and his dream evolved into a toxic fantasy, and the fantasy became his truth. He’s enchanted by all the lies that are his life.”
“A freakin’ bad dude,” Sparky said succinctly.
Winston sniffed the ramp outside the rune-marked door. A low noise issued from his throat, the opposite of a purr.
“I don’t need a key,” Panthea said. “We are what we are, and we need to have faith in that.” She placed one palm flat against the door and closed her eyes. Her brow furrowed. Her nostrils flared.
As though I might be developing a foreseeing talent of my own, the skin on my scalp seemed to crawl on the bone, and in spite of the desert heat, a chill as quick as a millipede climbed my spine.
With a pneumatic hiss, the door whisked aside. Beyond lay a realm of golden light.
|?31?|
It was a garage, just a garage, but a huge garage containing many millions of dollars’ worth of vehicles displayed like items on a jeweler’s velvet tray at Tiffany’s. By also using it as a reception hall—a foyer—Emmerich no doubt meant to ensure that visitors would be abashed by the splendor of his wealth, reminded of the smallness of their achievements, and thus subtly prepared to be submissive. He was, after all, a man who knew the value of power and all the ways it could be employed to control others.
The width of the exterior ramp and the size of the pneumatic door ought to have been clues to the purpose of the faux flying saucer. However, we’d so primed ourselves for immersion in lunatic strangeness if not horror that we couldn’t read the clues. Entering the garage, we held fast to the expectation of a loathsome surprise in spite of the surrounding, dazzling spectacle of automotive art.
In that six-or seven-thousand-square-foot circular chamber, cars were displayed in a double row around the perimeter. Each was revealed by ceiling-recessed projection lamps with apertures shaped to limit the light to the sensuous form of the vehicle, so that it seemed to float in a surrounding pool of shadow. Buicks, Cadillacs, and Fords from the 1930s and ’40s. Bentleys and Rolls-Royces from the same period. Contemporary sports cars—Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Porsches. There were two McLaren Speedtails, a stunning vehicle with over one thousand horsepower, a top speed of 250 miles per hour, and a price tag well above two million dollars.
A few quick peeks into interiors revealed that, in the older cars, the keys were in the ignitions. Electronic keys for the new vehicles were in cup holders. No one seemed to fear that thieves could get in or get successfully away.
A fleet of four Mercedes Sprinter Cruisers, each seating eight or ten, seemed to indicate that there had been a time when followers of the Light ventured out in groups, surely for something more than pizza and bowling. It was difficult to imagine what such an outing might entail, other than perhaps the abduction of attractive candidates for brainwashing and induction into the dwindling ranks of the cult, for one unthinkable purpose or another. Our sense was that Emmerich and his apostles had in recent years turned inward until the residents of the Oasis were spiraling toward agoraphobia. The world now brought to them whatever they needed; therefore, they could reject the world with the smug presumption that they were superior to the unenlightened masses.