“Well … good.”
He walked her to the door of the apartment and shook her hand. He had big hands, but his grip was surprisingly gentle. “Anything else you want to know, I’ll be glad to help.”
She risked a gibe. “So long as I call ahead for an appointment, right?”
He did not smile. “Right.”
Driving back across the bay, she reflected that the danger was now clear. A terrorist group might conceivably be able to cause an earthquake. They would need accurate data on critically stressed points on the fault line, and perhaps on seismic windows, but that was obtainable. They had to have someone to interpret the data. And they needed some way to send shock waves through the earth. That would be the most difficult task, but it was not out of the question.
She had the unwelcome task of telling the governor’s aide that the whole thing was horrifyingly possible.
5
Priest woke at first light on Thursday.
He generally woke early, all the year round. He never needed much sleep, unless he had been partying too hard, and that was rare now.
From the governor’s office there had been nothing but a maddening silence. They acted as if no threat had been made. So did the rest of the world, by and large. The Hammer of Eden was rarely mentioned in the news broadcasts Priest listened to on his car radio.
Only John Truth took them seriously. He kept taunting Governor Mike Robson in his daily radio show. Until yesterday, all the governor would say was that the FBI was investigating. But last night Truth had reported that the governor had promised a statement today.
That statement would decide everything. If it was conciliatory, and gave at least a hint that the governor would consider the demand, Priest would rejoice. But if the statement was unyielding, Priest would have to cause an earthquake.
He wondered if he really could.
Melanie sounded convincing when she talked about the fault line and what it would take to make it slip. But no one had ever tried this. Even she admitted she could not be one hundred percent sure it would work. What if it failed? What if it worked and they were caught? What if it worked and they were killed in the earthquake — who would take care of the communards and the children?
He rolled over. Melanie’s head lay on the pillow beside him. He studied her face in repose. Her skin was very white, and her eyelashes were almost transparent. A strand of long ginger-colored hair fell across her cheek. He pulled the sheet back a little and looked at her breasts, heavy and soft. He contemplated waking her. Under the covers, he reached out and stroked her, running his hand across her belly and into the triangle of reddish hair below. She stirred, swallowed, then turned over and moved away.
He sat up. He was in the one-room house that had been his home for the last twenty-five years. As well as the bed, it had an old couch in front of the fireplace and a table in the corner with a fat yellow candle in a holder. There was no electric light.
In the early days of the commune, most people lived in cabins like this, and the kids all slept in a bunkhouse. But over the years some permanent couples had formed, and they had built bigger places with separate bedrooms for their children. Priest and Star had kept their own individual houses, but the trend was against them. It was best not to fight the inevitable: Priest had learned that from Star. Now there were six family homes as well as the original fifteen cabins. Right now the commune consisted of twenty-five adults and ten children, plus Melanie and Dusty. One cabin was empty.
This room was as familiar as his hand, but lately the well-known objects had taken on a new aura. For years his eye had passed over without registering them: the picture of Priest that Star had painted for his thirtieth birthday; the elaborately decorated hookah left behind by a French girl called Marie-Louise; the rickety shelf Flower had made in woodwork class; the fruit crate in which he kept his clothes. Now that he knew he might have to leave, each homely item looked special and wonderful, and it brought a lump to his throat to look at them. His room was like a photograph album in which every picture unchained a string of memories: the birth of Ringo; the day Smiler nearly drowned in the river; making love to twin sisters called Jane and Eliza; the warm, dry autumn of their first grape harvest; the taste of the ‘89 vintage. When he looked around and thought of the people who wanted to take it all away from him, he was filled with a rage that burned inside him like vitriol in his belly.
He picked up a towel, stepped into his sandals, and went outside naked. His dog, Spirit, greeted him with a quiet snuffle. It was a clear, crisp morning, with patches of high cloud in the blue sky. The sun had not yet appeared over the mountains, and the valley was in shadow. No one else was about.
He walked downhill through the little village, and Spirit followed. Although the communal spirit was still strong, people had customized their homes with individual touches. One woman had planted the ground around her house with flowers and small shrubs: Priest had named her Garden in consequence. Dale and Poem, who were a couple, had let their children paint the outside walls, and the result was a colorful mess. A man called Slow, who was retarded, had built a crooked porch on which stood a wobbly homemade rocking chair.
Priest knew the place might not be beautiful to other eyes. The paths were muddy, the buildings were rickety, and the layout was haphazard. There was no zoning: the kids’ bunkhouse was right next to the wine barn, and the carpentry yard was in the midst of the cabins. The privies were moved every year, to no avail: no matter where they were sited, you could always smell them on a hot day. Yet everything about the place warmed his heart. And when he looked farther away and saw the forested hillsides soaring steeply from the gleaming river all the way to the blue peaks of the Sierra Nevada, he had a view that was so beautiful it hurt.
But now, every time he looked at it, the thought that he might lose it stabbed him like a knife.
Beside the river, a wooden box on a boulder held soap, cheap razors, and a hand mirror. He lathered his face and shaved, then stepped into the cold stream and washed all over. He dried himself briskly on the coarse towel.
There was no piped water here. In winter, when it was too cold to bathe in the river, they had a communal bath night twice a week and heated great barrels of water in the cookhouse to wash one another: it was quite sexy. But in summer only babies had warm water.
He went back up the hill and dressed quickly in the blue jeans and workshirt he always wore. He walked over to the cookhouse and stepped inside. The door was not locked: no doors had locks here. He built up the fire with logs and lit it, put on a pan of water for coffee, and went out.
He liked to walk around when the others were all abed. He whispered their names as he passed their homes: “Moon. Chocolate. Giggle.” He imagined each one lying there, sleeping: Apple, a fat girl, lying on her back with her mouth open, snoring; Juice and Alaska, two middle-aged women, entwined together; the kids in the bunkhouse — his own Flower, Ringo, and Smiler; Melanie’s Dusty; the twins, Bubble and Chip, all pink cheeks and tousled hair…
He passed the workshop, where they kept spades and hoes and pruning shears; the concrete circle where they trod the grapes in October; and the barn where the wine from last year’s harvest stood in huge wooden casks, slowly settling and clarifying, now almost ready to be blended and bottled.
He paused outside the temple.
He felt very proud. From the very beginning they had talked of building a temple. For many years it had seemed an impossible dream. There was always too much else to do — land to clear and vines to plant, barns to build, the vegetable garden and the free shop and the kids’ lessons. But five years ago the commune had seemed to reach a plateau. For the first time, Priest was not worried about whether they would have enough to eat through the coming winter. He no longer felt that one bad harvest could wipe them out. There was nothing undone on the list of urgent tasks he carried in his head. So he had announced that it was time to build the temple.
