Unassigned Territory (38 page)

With Richards gone the only sound in the camp was the sound Judy Verity was making in the trailer. The sound was hard on the nerves and there really wasn’t, he supposed, much point in hanging around. For whatever had gone down here, or was going down, or whatever he had come to believe about his critical faculties, there were a couple of items he was sure of. He didn’t much like being had. And he knew the end when he saw it. The quest for the next dimension had gone the way of countless other such quests before it. It was out of gas. But it wasn’t just the egg on his face. It was those fifteen fucking miles of bad road, in the dead of the night. It was the missing jeep. It wasn’t just that B&J were assholes. It was that just maybe they were something worse. No city of gold, Bud, just more swamp. He felt that he should hitch up his pants, but he didn’t. He hadn’t the heart. He pointed himself toward fifteen miles of the most lonesome road he could imagine and he started down it. He went out past the rocks that Bill Richards had pissed on. They shone softly in the moonlight. The woman continued to cry—a weak, plaintive sob muted by aluminum walls; it was what followed him into the night.

The night welcomed him. Her embrace, however, was that of the strange woman whose feet are descending into Sheol. His first impulse was to blame it on Judy Verity. Her crying had set his nerves on edge. There had been a lot on his mind. The upshot was, he lost the road. One minute it was right there—an irregular strip of earth slightly less cluttered with rock than what was around it, and the next it was flat gone, swallowed by the ground which now looked the same in all directions. He actually went down on all fours, groping after the thing like a blind man after his cane.

He’d been counting on the mining site for his landmark, knowing at that point just how much farther he had to go to reach the highway, knowing, too, that from there the road would be easier to follow. As things stood now, however, he might not even be able to find the mining site. And without the mining site... the thought slipped away from him. There was a lump in his throat the size of a baseball. It occurred to him that there may have been beer left in the trash barrel at camp. There may have even been bottled water. He had, of course, not thought to look. There came a time—he knew it—when a man had to learn to think, lest the world make short work of him. Perhaps, he thought, his had already come and gone.

In the end he decided his best bet would be to get to the top of the ridge in whose shadow he rested. If he could see nothing in the moonlight he would sit on the thing until the sun came up. Perhaps with the first light he could see more, could find the road.

He had guessed the summit to be reasonably close but it seemed to take him forever to reach it. Rocks slipped and rolled away beneath him. At times things got steep and he went down on all fours. The air burned in his lungs. He yearned for the beers he had forgotten to bring, for the water he’d forgotten to look for. He thought about this book he’d seen in a desert bookstore called
The Victims of Death Valley.
It was a collection of stories about people who had fucked up in a large way. There was one in it about a couple of guys who’d gone off hiking in the middle of summer clad only in tennis shoes and shorts. They’d hiked for four hours to get wherever it was they were going. It was by then high noon, time to turn around and hike back. The trouble was, their water was gone and the ground temperature was up to around a hundred and fifty degrees. One guy made it, the other guy died. He remembered thinking about how stupid that was as he’d stood in the store. He wondered now what he would think about it tomorrow, if he couldn’t find the road.

When at last he reached a kind of rock cap that formed the crest of the ridge, he was amazed to find the entire Table Mountain mining site spread out almost directly beneath him—its spidery, skeletal towers and ruptured sheet metal shacks all silvery and black in the light of a high, white moon.

He was so amazed by the discovery, and then so elated, that he nearly cried out loud. He wanted to do something, to jump, to wave his arms. What he did instead was twist the holy shit out of his ankle.

It happened getting off the ridge. He wanted to get off the crest as quickly as possible and it had felt good, after the climb, to suddenly be making what seemed like decent time, to feel the wind generated by his own speed in his face and for a moment he’d actually gone fairly hopping down the grade, sliding here and there, using the large outcroppings of rock to break his speed. But he’d felt in control. He’d felt in control right up to the moment in which his ankle twisted beneath him with an audible pop and he landed hard on his hip, sliding another fifteen yards in loose rock.

When he stopped sliding, he sat looking down on his ankle, one hand wrapped around his shin, the other pressed against the ground beneath him. He was almost sure the miserable thing was broken. It hurt like hell. He tried moving it. Then he tried moving his toes. Both things worked, so he guessed maybe it wasn’t broken after all. When he tried to put weight on it, however, bright flashes of pain exploded in the darkness around him. It was almost something he could see.

He actually wound up working his way back to more level ground on his hands and knees. When he was on something that looked like the road he had lost he tried walking once more.

The ankle hurt but he found that he could move on his feet. It was slow going. He was down among the shacks now and the night smelled of dirt and rust and he had begun to look for something he might make a crutch out of when he saw the car.

He went down flat on his stomach in the road and inched his way over to the nearest bit of shelter—a scrap heap of rusted sheet metal and old wood. He lay there looking back toward the car. It was an odd-looking car, light-colored, with circular bits of chrome that shone in the moonlight. The hood was open, as was the trunk and one of the doors. There was just no telling what someone might be up to out here. The night was filled with phantoms and what Obadiah thought about, his chest pressed to the ground, were the photographs on the front page of the
Trona Star Eagle.
He thought about the discoveries one might make in the empty shacks around him—the debris left by a few psychos just doing their own thing out here by the light of a dispassionate moon.

He lay there for a long time, looking at the car, listening for noises. Nothing happened. No one came or went. He heard nothing. At last he got to his hands and knees. Maybe there was something in the car, he thought. Maybe there was something there he wouldn’t want to see. Or maybe there would be keys. Or maybe there would be some regular citizen around who would take him back to the Blue Heaven Motel and Delandra Hummer. Not likely. But what the hell. Dozens of possibilities crossed his mind, some worse than others. The blood banged in his ears. He reached the car without incident and used it to pull himself up. There was nothing in the trunk. He worked his way around to the passenger-side door, where he saw there was something in the backseat. When it showed no signs of life he pulled the seatback forward for a better look. The black shape was a guitar case. The side facing him was blank. He reached for the handle and stood the thing up on its edge. He was not without hope. A light-colored sticker with black letters was plainly visible by the light of the moon and when he saw that he went down hard on his ass, on the running board of the car. He put his face in his hands and he began to weep.

W
hen Rex Hummer was turned back at the Ridgecrest turnoff by the California Highway Patrol, his disappointment was temporary. He started back in the direction from which he had come and upon reflection understood that this was as it should be.

Everything had its purpose, its given function in the economy of the universe. The rantings of Dina Vagina, for instance. In the time Rex had spent with her she had done a lot of talking, much of it gibberish, much of it hateful. And yet in the end the oyster had given up its pearl. It had come in the form of what Dina knew about the Frenchman’s tunnel.

Rex had heard of the Frenchman’s tunnel. He’d known it was somewhere in the vicinity of Table Mountain. What he hadn’t known was that the thing was no longer a dead end.

The Frenchman had once lived in the town of Table Mountain. Rex knew little more of him than that. For some reason all his own the man had spent the last fifteen years of his life digging a tunnel into the side of the Table Mountain range. He had apparently hoped to reach the Table Mountain valley on the other side. In terms of any practical necessity, the project was totally useless. For the Frenchman it was something to do. The desert was filled with things just like it. The Frenchman dug for fifteen years and died. He left the project unfinished. One man Rex knew of who had seen it had called it the Frenchman’s hole. A tunnel, he had explained, was something that opened out at either end. This was a goddamn hole.

For a time after the Frenchman’s death, his wife had attempted to turn the hole into a tourist attraction. She’d built a concession stand in front and something like an altar at the dead end. The altar contained a rack of small candles and a portrait of the Frenchman. The concession stand sold souvenirs and saltwater taffy. The attraction failed. The town went bust. Twenty years later few people remembered. Even locals like Rex, while having perhaps heard of it, would have been hard pressed to find it.

Ceton Verity, however, had found it. He had found as well, in the course of his explorations with the Table Mountain People, that the tunnel was set up in almost a direct line from the town to the Electro-Magnetron which had been built closer to Trona, on the valley floor. He conceived immediately of a secret access route into his dome. He had in fact discovered the purpose behind the Frenchman’s seemingly arbitrary act. He would later point out to his followers that the Frenchman had been “directed” in his work.

It was left to Verity and his group to complete what the Frenchman had begun and when they were finished there was indeed an underground route virtually no one but themselves knew anything about. And now, thanks to the motormouth of Dina Vagina, it was known to Rex Hummer as well. And Rex was able to see not only why the Frenchman had dug his hole but why Verity had chosen to extend it. He saw why Dina had spoken of it and why there were Highway Patrolmen at the Ridgecrest turnoff. It was beautiful, really. He marveled that there were people in the world who believed in the existence of chance. At one point, so secure was he in this belief, that he decided on a little test. Passing through the town of Trona he stopped at the first store he saw—it happened to be a bookstore—and walked inside. He went to the rear of the store and took a book from the shelf. While looking at the fluorescent tube above his head he allowed it to fall open, at random. He looked down. A passage had been clearly marked in red ink:

The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time an inconceivable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle.

Satisfied, he left the store. Stepping back onto the sidewalk he found that there was an enormously fat Indian peering into the bed of his truck. When the man saw Rex coming he turned and walked away. Rex could see him for some time, however, waddling along in the sunlight. The man wore high-topped moccasins with silver ornamentation. He wore tan pants and a black vest. The silver on the man’s moccasins flashed in the sunlight, as did his hair, which was thick and black and long enough to reach his shoulders.

Rex turned to his truck. He wanted to be sure that there were no signs of tampering. This done, he looked back into the street. The Indian was gone. He supposed the man could have gone into one of the three or four buildings which lined one side of the street in that direction. He supposed that if he looked into those buildings he would see the man again. His truck was fine, however, and he saw no real point in taking the time. He crossed the street and went into the market which faced the bookstore. He purchased two half-pint bottles of an inexpensive bourbon—he liked the way the half pints fit the hip pocket of his jeans—beef jerky, and Planters peanuts. He resumed his drive.

The sunlight leaped before him. The earth glowed in the light of her fire. Rex broke the seal on the bottle of bourbon. There was something about the heat of the whiskey in the heat of the day. He settled in behind it. But he continued to think about the Indian. The hair like that of a woman. The silver. One could not pretend that these were without meaning and for the first time since leaving the junction Rex had the feeling that he was being followed.

By the time he reached the ruined entrance of the eastern road the sun was low in the west. He pulled off the highway and killed his engine. It was where he had once fought with Dina Vagina. This time he would not worry about the condition of the road. There had been a lot of sunlight between now and then. Between then and now he understood that the road had been made right for him. The Indian continued to bother him, however, and when he walked back to the turnout to get another look down the highway, it seemed to him that there was something—not a car. A motorcycle? He listened. There was no sound, only the soft hiss of a gentle breeze against his ears. A horse, perhaps? The road was filled with curves, gentle hills, and dips as it snaked its way among the outcroppings of rock and sandy washes which marked the beginnings of the Table Mountains and it seemed to him that when at first he had put his boot upon the asphalt and looked to the southwest he had, in fact, seen something—a dark shape cutting quickly off the highway, vanishing among the rocks. But then the light was becoming tricky—the road filled with lengthening shadows—and as Rex returned to his truck the sound of his boots, first upon asphalt, then gravel, was all that he heard.

•     •     •

The first stars had already appeared when Rex found the yellow outcropping of rocks the girl had told him to look for. And past the rocks, up a wash, then a shallow gorge, so that it was well hidden from the road, he found the entrance to the Frenchman’s tunnel The Table Mountain People had used what was left of a concession stand to build a gate for the tunnel entrance. Above the gate they had hung a circular piece of wood. The wood looked to have had something painted on it at one time but it appeared to Rex, moving his light across it, that someone had been using the thing for target practice, so that there was not much left of the original surface—just a lot of scarred wood, streaked here and there with shiny bits of paint.