Otherwise not bad, he decided. Tanned face, deeply lined but the jawline was still firm; dark hair with silver wings brushed back elegantly over his ears; strong shoulders and an erect bearing. God, he'd seen men his age who looked ten, fifteen years older. Positively geriatric.
His little jaunty whistle was cut short when he found that the bathroom light wasn't working. He detested inefficiency, especially when it was to do with anything mechanical, and he jerked the switch uselessly and spitefully several times. Then he tried the fluorescent strip above the mirror, which, thankfully, was still functional. By its light he hung up his dressing gown, opened the shower door with its nymphs and cherubs, and hopped into the tiled cubicle.
He set the controls at seventy-two degrees, medium jet and pushed the stainless-steel lever to the right.
The fourth note of "La Vie en Rose" became a startled gasp as the needle spray stung his scalp and streamed down his goosefleshed body. His eyes smarted terribly. The taste on his lips was bitter, the smell making his nostrils pinch and wrinkle it was so vile.
What the hell was this? Sewer water? Had the bastards gone on strike again?
Cursing, Lautner fumbled blindly for the handle of the door. The dense gasoline vapor now filling the bathroom ignited on the exposed live wires in the overhead light fixture, from which the pearled glass globe and plastic cover had been removed. A blue-edged sheet of flame streaked into the cubicle just as Lautner was emerging and transformed him into a human torch. His mouth yawned to its fullest extent in a scream of agony that never came out because the fierce heat instantly consumed the air in his lungs, suffocating him, and he fell clawing the air with fiery fingers, his own funeral pyre.
Lautner was dead before he landed on the tiled floor of the bathroom. In a few minutes nothing was left except a blackened, smoking, shrunken heap, unrecognizable as something once human, lying in a spreading pool of fat shimmering with little dancing orange and blue flames.
PORTLAND, OREGON
The chairman of the reception committee handed Chase an urgent message the moment they met in the arrivals hall at the airport. It had been cabled ahead by Chase's New York publisher and contained a telephone number and a request to call it immediately.
He did so from the public phone and found himself talking to somebody (he didn't catch her name) from the executive office of the secre-tary-general of the United Nations. Would he be on the first available flight to New York? No, she was sorry, she couldn't give reasons. She would like him to know that the matter was very important and highly confidential. Please call this number again the instant he landed in New York. Thank you so much.
"It must be important, Gavin, for them to have traced you. You have to go." Cheryl smiled. "Leave the rest of the schedule to me, I can handle it. And take Dan with you; it's probably his one and only chance to see New York before they close it down."
The connecting flight to Salt Lake City left two hours later, at 4:30 p.m. Pacific time, father and son aboard: Chase bemused, Dan ecstatic.
A throbbing reverberation rose up and filled the shafts and tunnels and chambers with its deep mournful sound.
Mara raised himself from the straw pallet, instinctively obeying the gong that called the adepts to the evening meal. He came out of his cell and joined the line of figures in their black robes, silent except for the whispered shuffling of sandaled feet on smooth rock.
He had been fourteen when he first came, five years ago. Shy and withdrawn, given to dark moods, he had been one among thousands who started out on the pilgrimage, in his case from Kettering, near Dayton, Ohio. He had been six weeks on the road, sleeping rough, begging for food, when he met up with two other guys and a girl in a Buick Century that was falling apart at the seams. The girl and one of the guys had decided--even before they reached the settlement--that the Faith wasn't for them. Of the thousands who embarked on the trek to Nevada, and actually made it, few stayed longer than a month or two, and fewer still were accepted.
Mara was glad to see them go. Anyone who didn't possess the qualities of iron will and total dedication, the "right stuff" as they were taught, had no right to be there. The Faith had no room for them. Cast them out as weak and unworthy. Let them perish along with the rest.
The gong boomed as the adepts shuffled below. The sound filled Mara's heart with peace. He belonged. His life had purpose.
