Our Ecstatic Days

by Steve Erickson

  “Make an extra one,” Tapshaw tells them. “I want you both in Strategy as soon as you’re ready.”

  He and Wang make their way back down the rampart. “Thirty minutes, Major?” Wang says, heading to his quarters; Tapshaw stops in his tracks. “Are we going to argue about the boy again?”

  “Something else,” says Tapshaw.

  “What?”

  “We can talk about it in Strategy too.” Tapshaw has a funny look.

  the second vision being of the Chinese man whose love letters to another

  “All right. When they bring us the transmission.”

  “I’m bringing in our geologist too.”

  Our geologist? thinks Wang. “All right,” and he turns and heads back down the tunnel to his quarters. The same guard is at his door and the picture is still there, but Wang is relieved to note as he enters his quarters that the blank square of wall where he had the other picture taken down is still blank. He goes quickly to the desk to the computer and fills in the password, but there’s still no answer to his message; he takes off his coat and lies back down on the cot, determined not to fall asleep. He’s beginning to doze, however, when the computer wakes him. “Message,” the cybervoice calmly announces. Wang sits up and looks at the time on the computer and realizes he’s due in the strategy room; first he checks the message box.

  To: FalseMartyr@4june89.net

  From: MistressL@aquamail.com

  zen-toy,

  Come at 1.

  your Mistress

  Wang looks at his watch. It’s almost 10:30. He’ll need to leave by 11:30 to safely make it across the lake in time, assuming his boatman responds to the flare, and Wang can never be sure about that until he actually appears. He smiles ruefully: If that boy ever doesn’t show, I’ll never live it down with Tapshaw. Wang deletes from the computer mailbox both the new message and his own that he sent earlier, turns off the account and the computer, pulls on his

  woman named Kristin I intercepted by chance five years ago, who I then saw

  coat and walks from his quarters, guard snapping to attention as he leaves. This time he heads down the tunnel in the other direction, deeper underground.

  Wang reaches yet another tunnel that leads to a door where two guards part for him to pass, one of them opening the door for him. Inside, seven men and the female transcriber rise from their seats around the table as he enters. He’s a little surprised; this is at least two more people than he expected. There are a couple of other officers besides Tapshaw plus an unfamiliar face that Wang assumes is the geologist, plus the cryptographer who always attends the post-broadcast sessions. Including the transcriber and the recorder, all of them sit around an egg-shaped table. Wang takes his seat and Tapshaw nods at the recorder who puts a disk on the sound system at the end of the room.

  As the disk begins to play, Tapshaw hands another disk to Wang, who slips it in his coat pocket. The sound of the earlier broadcast is reproduced with new clarity; when it’s finished the nine sit around the table pondering. “Do you want to hear it again?” Tapshaw finally asks. “All right,” answers Wang, for no reason at all. The song begins again, very martial and anthemic Blood on the T. V., ten o ’clock news. /Souls are invaded, heart in a groove. / Beatin’ and beatin’ so outta time. / What’s the mad matter with the church chimes? “What’s the matter with the what?” one of the officers says; there’s the same perplexed silence as the song continues. “Church chimes,” the transcriber finally answers, although she seems less than certain.

  Humans are running, lavender room.

  Hoverin’ liquid, move over moon for my space monkey. Sign of the time-time

  The song ends and after several speechless moments the cryptographer finally suggests, “It seems clear the ‘church chimes’

  working the docks out at Port Justine with the small round monocle in his hand

  are the key.”

  “What about the lavender room?” the young transcriber asks, immediately mortified by her temerity. Several of the men around the table glare at her. “Well it’s a good question,” Wang says, then asks her, “Do you have a hard copy?” and the grateful young woman hands him a copy of the transcription. He begins to rise from his seat and everyone else begins to rise with him when Tapshaw says, “There’s something else.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “The other matter I mentioned.”

  “Yes.” Wang looks at his watch; it’s almost eleven. “It can’t wait?”

  “If you don’t mind. Particularly given this transmission.”

  “All right.”

  Everyone sits again. “This is Professor Stafford,” Tapshaw says.

  “Professor.”

  “Sir.” Stafford the geologist momentarily hesitates. “I’ll try to be as brief as possible.”

  “I would appreciate it.”

  “One night,” he begins, “about nine years ago, there was … a strange geological disturbance in the area.”

  “I was under the impression the whole last sixteen years had been a strange geological disturbance.”

  “Well, yes sir,” the geologist says, “but this was unique even by recent standards.”

  “You don’t have to call me sir.” Sometimes he can’t help it

  “Uh,” the geologist looks around at the others, confused, “OK. As you know, after the lake first began to appear—as you say, sixteen years ago—within those first few years it rose very

  through which could be seen the lake, who watched me climb the billboard

  quickly, completely flooding most of the basin and some of the outlying valleys. After that, over the next five years or so the lake rose more slowly.”

  “May I interrupt?” Wang asks.

  “Of course.”

  “Am I correct no one’s ever established the reason for the lake in the first place?”

  “No, sir. I mean, that’s correct, sir.”

  Sighing heavily, Wang continues. “Or where it comes from.”

  “Well, we know where it comes from.”

  “The hole in the bottom.”

  “Yes.”

  “But beyond that, no one’s ever established why a hole appeared in the city and a lake came up through it.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “All right.”

  “One night nine years ago, the lake rose three feet—there feet and two inches by precise calculations—and feel again to exactly the level it had been, all within a matter of minutes. No one has ever accounted for it.”

  Wang pointedly looks at his watch and back at the professor.

  “Then for eight years,” the geologist continues, “up until fourteen months ago, the lake didn’t move at all. Not so much as an inch. By what we’ve been able to determine it didn’t rise or fall, it maintained exactly its same level—there weren’t even the usual signs of water evaporation, seepage, displacement by natural erosion of the shoreline, any of the things that would account for the normal life of a lake.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t seem to be your normal sort of lake.”

  “No, sir.”

  where I might lie in the red wind and gaze on a sky menstruating in tandem

  “You said up until fourteen months ago.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What happened fourteen months ago?”

  “The lake began to drain.”

  “It began to drain?”

  “Yes.”

  Wang scratches his neck. “Do lakes drain?”

  “Not like this. It’s not your normal sort of lake, sir.”

  “I think I just said that.”

  “Yes, sir. They don’t drain like this one is draining,” the geologist goes on. “This one is draining the way it rose.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it’s going back where it came from.”

  “But we don’t know where it came from.”

  “Well, no.”

  “So…?”

  “I mean it’s returning to its source,�
� the geologist explains.

  “The source?”

  “I mean it’s going back down the hole.”

  Silence around the table. Wang finally says, “Back down the hole.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this began fourteen months ago.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “This is Wilson,” Tapshaw indicates another officer on his right, “in intelligence. Our operation up in Oxnard sent him down a few days ago at my request.”

  “Really?” says Wang. “Did you and I talk about this?”

  “No.”

  “You requested this transfer on your own initiative?”

  “‘On my own initiative’?” the officer says, standing. “Yes, I certainly did.”

  with my own blood, and the third vision being the strange presence of a young

  “Well then,” Wang says after a moment.

  Everyone is tense. “Wilson,” Tapshaw finally continues, “has a particular sort of expertise, having to do with theological cult phenomenology, that I thought—”

  “Theological what?” Before the other man can answer Wang says, “Never mind. Go on.”

  “Sir,” Wilson the theological cult phenomenologist begins, “have you heard of the Order of the Red?”

  “Some sort of theological cult phenomenon?” says Wang.

  “A religion,” nods Wilson, “of several hundred followers. They set up their church nine or ten years ago out on one of the old hotel-islands in the West Hollywood part of the lagoon and then seem to have dispersed, moving inland fourteen months ago.”

  “Just as the lake started going down. That’s what you’re getting at, right?”

  “And I should add, sir, before anyone knew the lake was draining, sir.”

  “I have a feeling,” Wang says to Tapshaw, “you’re going to point out this was also about the time the broadcasts began.”

  Tapshaw holds a small bundle wrapped in leather. He opens it and places a small object in the middle of the table.

  For a while everyone sitting around the table stares at it. Something about the moment strikes Wang as absurd but he reminds himself that, more and more, he has that reaction to

  woman about my own age, tiny with long straight gold hair almost to her

  everything. When he reaches for the object, he’s aware of the way the other people at the table surreptitiously regard his other hand, so that when the young transcriber works up the nerve to ask, “What is it?” for a moment everyone is shocked before realizing she’s referring to the object Wang holds up to her.

  “A religious icon,” Tapshaw answers after a moment.

  “It looks like a toy,” she says.

  “Is it a monkey?” someone says.

  “In a red space suit,” says Wang.

  “To try and make a long story short—” Wilson begins.

  “It’s a little late for that, but go ahead.”

  “—the founders of the Order of the Red claimed to have had a vision, which they called the Epiphany of Saint Kristin, nine years ago on the morning after the lake rose and fell those several feet, during the inexplicable geological event that Professor Stafford referred to.”

  For a moment Wang is stunned. “Saint Kristin?” he finally says.

  “Accounts have it that a disturbed young woman took a boat out to the place above the lake’s source, slipped into the water and never resurfaced. Her body was never recovered. Hundreds of people saw this. It was a highly unusual day, given the phenomenon of the previous night regarding the level of the lake, as well as other meteorological occurrences.”

  “What meteorological occurrences?” says the geologist.

  “People’s recollection of that day,” the intelligence officer continues, “is vivid. Everyone remembers the strange winds and a great deal of volatile storm activity, and, uh …” He stops for a moment. “That the sky was red.”

  “Her name was Kristin?” says Wang.

  “The young woman reportedly sailed a silver boat almost

  waist, there in the passage right beside me but going the other way, being born

  two miles along the Hollywood shoreline. Even on an overcast day, people high in the hills saw the boat on the water. Those following her from the shoreline—and there seem to have been hundreds—are consistent in their observations, such as the fact she wasn’t wearing anything. We don’t know much else about her except her name, that she was in approximately her mid-twenties, that there was nothing particularly remarkable about her except that she lived in the hills in a small house which she allegedly set on fire the night before.”

  “You don’t think that’s remarkable?”

  “There’s speculation that whatever it was that happened with the lake on that particular night triggered this woman’s final collapse into some sort of dementia that led to her suicide. Apparently she was already something of a local oddity, referred to by the other people of the area as the Madwoman of the Lake, the Madwoman in Red, that sort of thing, given her refusal to conform to the blue attire of the other residents. Regional legend has it that, some years before, she abandoned her small son out on the lake at the same place she drowned herself on this particular day, setting him adrift in the same silver boat in which she returned on the day of her own death.”

  “If she set him adrift in the same boat,” Wang says, “how did she still have it?”

  “That’s a good question,” the intelligence officer admits. “It’s a little confused.”

  “So a religion sprang up around this crazy woman?” asks another officer. No one at the table says anything until Wang, still studying the toy monkey in his hand—Tribulation II, or III?—says, “Well, no cult was ever inspired by anyone who was normal,” wondering if he himself is the exception that proves the rule.

  “At any rate,” Wilson says, pointing at the toy monkey,

  into the lake that I’ve left behind me, expelled from the rubble and fire and

  “on the morning the woman took the boat out to the spot on the lake above the source, every eyewitness has her sitting there for several moments staring at the water. Some say she appears to have been praying, but since no one was close enough to hear, we don’t really know. Many of those watching that morning report seeing her reach into the water and take something from it. It may have been what you have there in your hand”—indicating the toy monkey—“but we don’t really know that either. Accounts of those who saw her disembark from the shore don’t mention her taking anything with her, and recall the boat as empty except for the oars and pole. No one remembers seeing her take anything from the water as she sailed along the shoreline, but of course it’s possible she did and everyone just missed it. When she lowered herself into the water above the source and didn’t reemerge, others sailed out to retrieve the silver boat and found in it only the toy.”

  Tapshaw turns to Wang. “I think the question now is what tonight’s broadcast means in relation to this.”

  “I don’t understand what bearing,” says the officer who asked how it was religions spring up around psychotic young women, “any of this has on the Crusade.” This reminds Wang that it’s always good to include in such meetings one or two people with no imagination whatsoever; they ask the very obvious questions that force everyone to not overlook the obvious.

  “Yes,” Wang answers, rising from the table as everyone else stands, “I’ll leave you all to ponder that very thing.” He picks up the little red monkey from the table. “I’ll take my icon with me,” pressing it to his forehead, “and ruminate upon its mystical properties. Or play with it in my bath.” Only the young female transcriber laughs; this sort of humor just confounds everyone else.

  Wang smiles at her conspiratorially. He’s had to teach himself that too much irony just makes everyone nervous. He slips the monkey in his pocket with the extra disk of the night’s

  confusion and terror and chaos of the new age’s single greatest moment of

  broadcast, and one of the guards
opens the door for him as Wang hurries from the room up the tunnel; finally breaking into a trot, he can hear in his head the chaotic discussion that’s no doubt exploded in his wake. He looks at his watch and thinks to himself, Be there. Emerging from under ground into the night and the ever-present sound of shelling, he heads for the dock down the dark embankment outside the barricades of the Tribulation compound. He glances over his shoulder to make sure Tapshaw isn’t following. Be there. If i’m a little late, my Mistress will punish me, he thinks with a small thrill; but he can’t be too late, or not show up at all, without jeopardizing the relationship altogether.

  At the top of the embankment, at the top of the wooden steps leading down to the dock, a guard allows Wang to pass on recognition, but an officer—undoubtedly alerted by Tapshaw—presents himself as Wang starts down the steps. “Sir,” the officer says to him, but Wang doesn’t stop. “I can have one of the men accompany you, sir,” calls the officer. Resolutely Wang continues down the steps toward the lake; when he reaches the bottom, stepping out on the wharf he sees no one. Then the boatman is there. As always he says nothing, greeting Wang only with silence, maybe a nod although it’s difficult to be sure in the dark; even in the moonlight—and these assignations, like the broadcasts that trigger them, always take place during a full moon—Wang can never completely make him out, but the boy can’t be any older than seventeen or eighteen, maybe younger.

  Like Tapshaw and the others, Wang takes the boy’s lack of verbal communication for a kind of dimwittedness. But if the boy is slow then he’s the lake’s idiot savant, a master of its strange currents that recently have gotten only stranger, gliding the boat among Zed’s dark zones that have gotten only darker, avoiding the full moon’s exposure and thus the notice of enemy search parties in the nearby hills.

  horror, hurled through the birth canal of the lake in a full-force gale of ash

  Then it occurs to Wang. Of course the currents have gotten stranger and the dark zones darker: the lake is draining. Immediately the young boatman pushes the vessel out into the water with one of the oars, then at his end of the boat begins to row.

  Wang watches him. The lake is draining, he almost blurts to the boy but stops himself.