distance sections of its facade appeared to be little more than a shell.
But for all that, to come upon such a stark, incongruous spectacle thrusting skyward from the heart of a wasteland took their breath away.
'That's what you saw in your dream?' asked Eileen, moving up beside Jacob on the driver's seat.
'Close enough,' said Jacob, mouth going dry, heart thumping against his ribs. The sight seemed to paralyze him.
'You too?' asked Eileen.
Peering out from the shelter of the canvas flap, Kanazuchi nodded.
'Okay,' said Eileen slowly, trying to center her mind on practical concerns. 'What do we do now?'
'I haven't the slightest idea,' said Jacob.
'But—But you said you'd know what to do when you saw it.'
'Give me a moment, dear, please. It's unnerving enough to come across something like this to begin with. Without even considering the implications of... of what...' He faltered badly. She noticed the reins trembling in his hands.
Good God, I've made a terrible mistake, Eileen realized. I've been assuming the poor man had some sort of plan, that if what they had dreamt about turned out to be true, he would be able to lead us through whatever followed, but he's frightened and fragile and may have no better idea about how to proceed from here than I do.
'Of course, Jacob,' she said. 'Bit of a stunner, after all. We'll just have to see, won't we?'
He ran a hand nervously over his chin and couldn't seem to tear his eyes off the tower. She handed him a canteen and held the reins for him as he took a long drink.
'I'm so thirsty,' he said quietly and drank again.
A groaning of wood from the wagon's interior. Eileen peered back through the flap; Kanazuchi had ripped up one of the planks in the floor bed with his bare hands. Reaching down, he laid his long sword inside the cavity beneath the boards.
'What are you doing?' she asked.
He didn't answer. She noticed he had changed back into his black pajamalike coolie clothes; Jacob's clothes lay folded in a neat bundle. Kanazuchi replaced the plank, concealed his second smaller sword, no more than a long knife, in the waist of his belt, then moved next to them at the opening.
'Jacob,' he said quietly.
Jacob turned abruptly to face him, sweat running off his brow, fear lighting his eyes, his breathing rapid and shallow. Their looks engaged. Kanazuchi reached out a hand, and with the tips of his fingers touched Jacob gently on the forehead. Jacob's eyes closed and Kanazuchi's features settled into an expression Eileen had never seen him wear in the short time she had known him; no less feral and alert than before but tempered by a softening of character that suggested deep kindness and a wellspring of compassion.
How completely unexpected, thought Eileen. But then the man claims to be a priest, doesn't he?
Jacob's breathing slowed and settled; the bunched lines on his forehead smoothed. After a minute of this contact, Kanazuchi took his hand away and Jacob opened his eyes.
They were clear again. The fear was gone.
'Remember,' said Kanazuchi.
Jacob nodded. Kanazuchi started toward the back; boldly, Eileen reached out and took him by the arm.
'What did you just do?' asked Eileen.
He studied her for a moment; she felt no danger and saw depths in his eyes, realizing how much of himself he kept concealed.
'Sometimes we must remind each other,' said Kanazuchi, 'of who we really are.'
He bowed his head slightly, respectfully. Eileen released her grip. Then, moving like a shadow, Kanazuchi slipped silently out the back of the wagon. Eileen watched him sprint across a stretch of desert and disappear behind a stand of rocks. She looked carefully but did not see him again.
'What did he just do to you?' she asked Jacob.
'If I didn't know any better, and I do, I would say it was something along the lines of... a laying on of hands,' he said, climbing into the back.
'Fiddlesticks.'
'Now, now; just because a man carries a sword doesn't mean he's a bad person.'
'He chops people's heads off.'
'My dear lady, we shouldn't impose the values of our culture onto a person from one so completely different from our own, should we?'
'Heaven forbid. And just to show how open-minded I am, maybe I'll take up head shrinking as a hobby.'
'I'm sure he could furnish you with a regular supply for practice,' he said laughing. 'Excuse me, Eileen; before we arrive, I think it best if I changed back into my own clothes. You're supposed to be carrying a sick old rabbi in this rattletrap.' He closed the flap and picked up a few wispy scraps of hair from the floor of the wagon. 'The beard, I'm afraid, is a total loss.'
'If anyone asks, tell them it's a side effect of your disease.'
She cracked the reins, urging their mules to catch the other wagons. Moments later, from the back she heard Jacob whistling happily away.
What a remarkable change had come over Jacob since Kanazuchi attended to him, wondered Eileen. But they were both priests and they shared that strange dream; perhaps that meant they had more in common than she could possibly imagine.
'Seems we have company,' said Jacob, looking out the back of the wagon. Clouds of dust rose in the far distance on the road behind them; another string of wagons.
Moments later a convincing, albeit beardless, rabbi again, Jacob rejoined Eileen, took the reins, and enjoyed his first look at The New City. The town lay half a mile ahead; twin rows of sturdily constructed clapboard buildings lined either side of a main avenue that terminated at the tower construction site. Only a few of the buildings grouped near its midpoint carried a second story; from there ramshackle houses, little more than shacks, spread out in a disorderly sprawl that extended as far as they could see. The hump of a domed barnlike warehouse, the only other sizeable structure, rose out of their midst to the south.
'My,' said Jacob. 'These people have been very, very busy.'
Directly ahead another guardhouse stood in their way. High barbed wire fences, ran away from it in both directions and encircled the settlement, leaving a broad bare hundred-yard stretch of desert between the fence and the city limits. Armed guards wearing the same white tunics moved out from the gate to meet them as the wagons approached.
'Jacob, I don't mean to be a bother....' She was chewing her lip.
'Yes, dear.'
' 'Have you had any more thoughts about my original question?'
'I have, actually; I suggest we smile a great deal and do exactly what is expected of us, while patiently acquiring a sense of the town and who is in charge. You are scheduled to perform here for a week, yes? So we have some time, and as welcome guests this may require less effort than you might suppose. Particularly for someone so effortlessly charming as yourself.'
'Okay.' Not bad so far.
'Then, very quietly, we should try to find out where they are keeping the books.'
'And then?...'
Jacob turned to her and smiled. 'Please, my dear, a little forbearance; I'm having to improvise here.'
'Sorry,' she said, striking a match and lighting a cigarette.
'Part of my training; I like to have all my lines before I walk out on stage.'
'Perfectly understandable.'
'And him,' she said, nodding toward the rocks where Kan-azuchi had disappeared. 'What about him?'
'I assume our mysterious friend will proceed along similar lines. We know he's left his weapon here in the wagon; at some point, he'll certainly come back for it.'
'We can't very well sit in the wagon all night waiting for him....'
'If he needs us for any reason, he seems more than capable of finding where we are.'
