The Clown's Graveyard
Chapter Seven: The Church of the Divine Blackness

We left the radio off and drank beer from cans in little brown bags, dry evening air roaring past the open windows as we sped down the silken Interstate, the sun setting behind the Diablo Mountains to our right, to our left the vast, irrigation-fed bounty of the valley. I relaxed into the shot seat springs of the Cutlass as the adrenaline abated, and managed at last to register relief at our narrow escape. In hindsight, we could have thought the plan through in a little more detail, yet here we were, our perfect record intact. I had to smile at how quickly we'd regained our old form. The once and again familiar territory of the getaway car brought back long-neglected memories of the golden age, of the Journey to the Center of Greenwood and the North Side Cab Episode and John Henry's Last Stand, which had played out so beautifully in the cool shadows of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway grandstand. The chimp in the back seat only added to the sense of adventure.

Now that I'd gotten over the initial shock, I began to see Lou more clearly. He was more reserved now, hardly the manic colt I'd known at Cornsilk, but his feral spirit remained unbroken. Meanwhile a dozen years of experience had honed his instincts and sharpened his cunning. I saw him in roadhouse back rooms, at high stakes casino tables, moving like a shadow through the corridors of power and the alleyways of despair, master of every situation, rivaled by none. He got the girl and left her before dawn without so much as a note on the pillow to answer the call of the road. I'd been wise to call on him.

Lou kept glancing at Joe in the rearview mirror and shaking his head. I looked back and he bared his teeth in a laconic, lipless smile that stretched from one side of his muzzle to the other.

"I figure he can eat regular people food," I said.

Lou laughed. "Of course, Andy," he said. "Of course we can keep the monkey."

"Chimp," I corrected him.

We had reached the point in the drive when Lou's stories always began and I wasn't surprised to see him winding up to one now, silhouetted against the open window. "Did I ever tell you about the Church of the Divine Blackness?" he said.

"Doesn't ring a bell," I said. "Are we talking about the color or the person?"

"It's the religion I founded when I was in the bin," he said. That got my attention. Lou had never spoken about the mental institution from which he'd transferred to Cornsilk, aside from telling me that he'd been there. Emboldened, I ventured to ask what he'd been in for.

Lou shifted in his seat. "It was all a big misunderstanding," he said. It seemed for a moment that he would leave it at that, but then he smiled. "I was quite the handful when I was young. It was all my parents could do to keep me in the house. Once I slipped my leash I'd be gone for hours, days. Nothing bad, mind you. Just curious. You can only learn so much at school.

"So one night, must have been a little after midnight, I happened to slip into a paint factory—"

"What age are we talking about?"

"Let's see ... nine, I reckon. Anyway, it was just my luck to pick the night that the owner torched the place. I smelled the smoke and got out in time, but I stuck around to watch. If you've never seen a paint factory fire I highly recommend it. I was enjoying this one so much I didn't even notice the cops. They saw me at the scene, figured out I'd been inside, and the next thing you know I'm in the slammer. They looked at the fire in light of my colorful permanent record and made me out to be a budding sociopath. My dad kept me out of juvie by putting me in the nuthouse. He thought it would be easier to keep quiet. He was right about that. So I spent the next two years in the Heinrich Lascher Institute for Aberrant Youth."

"It took them two years to figure out you weren't a firebug?"

"They gave me a bunch of tests when I got there. Written tests, interviews, games with blocks and dolls and such. You should have seen it," he chuckled, "they had me jumping around like a damn monkey. No offense, Joe." Joe Bananas waved dismissively from the back seat. "They never told me a thing, of course. Just that they thought I should stay in a little while longer. For observation. Always just a few more tests." Lou tapped a fresh cigarette on the dashboard.

"Didn't your parents find that odd?"

He shrugged. "Anyway, it wasn't that bad a place in a lot of ways. It was an big brick building on a big plot of land out near Richmond. Bunch of old German guys in white lab coats with clipboards. Sheet restraints at night, barrels of leeches out back. Good food, a little heavy on the starch. When you weren't doing tests or eating you were free to amuse yourself. There was a big stone wall around the grounds so you weren't going anywhere. They trimmed the trees up to about ten feet to keep us from climbing them.

"Anyway, for whatever danger I may have posed to myself or society, I was Opie Taylor compared with some of the kids in there. Cat killers, grandma stabbers, compulsive masturbators."

"Nice," I said. "You must've had some great times together."

"We sure did," he said. "What was left of them after they were medicated was perfectly pleasant. Really a good group of people. And they worshipped me. Literally."

"How did you manage that?"

"You should have seen it. See, I was going through a sleight-of-hand phase at the time. It started as a way to cheat at cards, but before you knew it I was pulling coins out of peoples' ears, making rubber balls disappear, restoring torn paper, the whole bit. Nothing any hack couldn't do with a two-bit kit but it really wowed the neighborhood kids. I got in the habit of carrying a few props with me wherever I went, and I brought some of my favorites into the bin with me. I would've brought a lot more if I'd known how long I was going to be staying. But what I did bring was enough to convince a few of my fellow inmates that I was the Son of God." The sun sank below the hills. A three-quarter moon hung high in the deep Eastern sky. "Hence the Church of the Divine Blackness."

"I'm sure you were a just and merciful god."

"Oh yeah, sure," he said. "And I kept them busy from dawn 'til dusk. I had them gathering offerings, building temples, carrying each other on their shoulders, rubbing my feet—whatever mood I was in that day. They'd come to me for moral guidance, ask questions about the meaning of life, have me settle disputes. And I'll tell you, if you think the real god is cryptic, you should have heard some of the business I gave these guys. But hey, I'm sure Mohammed got a few funny looks when he was starting out. The bottom line was, these kids needed structure and I gave it to them. They were content. Hell, Doc Lascher should have been put me on the payroll."

I'd found Lou's story increasingly disconcerting, and now my uneasiness coalesced into a suspicion. "Wait a minute. Are you trying to make a point about Integrated Consciousness?"

Lou acted surprised, poorly. "Integrated Consciousness? What similarity could that possibly have to suckering a bunch of mental defectives with a bogus religion?"

"None at all," I said, flushing.

"Certainly not," he agreed. "For one thing, I didn't make a dime off of the Church of the Divine Blackness."

"That's way out of line. Listen, maybe I've got some issues with IC, but I'll stand behind the good it does my customers. They get their money's worth and then some. Nine times out of ten—more than that—they're happier and more content within days of signing up. I've seen it happen."

"Sure, sure. So have I. There was this one kid, all he ever did was cry and cry all day long. You should have seen it. Tears everywhere, and he always had a line of snot running from his nose straight down into his mouth. But once he got saved and discovered that I loved him and had a special plan for him, he perked right up. Did my heart good."

I fumed in silence, frustrated to have risen to Lou's bait and at my inability to counter it more effectively. I knew there must be a fundamental distinction to be made but I was too angry to think it through. Finally Lou broke the tension. "Hey," he said. "I'm just giving you a hard time," he said. I studied his face carefully for signs of condescension. "Really. I'm sure you're right. Most people probably are more comfortable with IC than with the alternative. The point is, you're not most people. You said it yourself: you've got some issues with IC, so it's got to go. Most people will have to suck it up and deal with it."

"Sure," I said as my heat dissipated. "They did all right before IC came along. They'll be fine without it." Who was I kidding? People would forget that Integrated Consciousness ever existed as soon as the next big lifestyle technology came along. It hadn't even done me all that much good, and at the end of the day that's all I ever really cared about. Let down, I stared at the ridgeline of the Diablos under the fading sunset.

"Yeah, I had it pretty good for a while there," said Lou after a moment as if he'd never stopped. "Almost a shame it had to end."

"What was your downfall?" I asked, bringing myself back with an effort.

"The usual," he said. He opened another beer and took his time wiping the top before pulling the tab. "Annabel von Stein was her name."

"It was a co-ed nuthouse? What was she crazy with?"

He repeated my question, half to himself. "Pathological creativity," he said. "You never knew what she was going to say. Sometimes it would be true but a lot of the time it would be the most ridiculous thing you ever heard. If people busted her for telling an obvious lie, she wouldn't even blink an eye, just change the subject and keep on talking. She seemed like a bitch so I ignored her at first. I had the devout to keep me busy. But she had a way of appearing out of thin air when I wasn't looking, and she talked so damned much I ended up getting kind of sucked in. She may or may not have been crazy, but she sure could make stuff up. Like, out of the blue she'd start talking to me like she was my wife, and I was a TV producer, and we lived in Manhattan in the 1950s. I'd go along with it, and we'd pass hours and hours living this whole other life. Whole nights sometimes. It could be private eyes, prospectors, anything. Of course, if you ever stepped out of character that would be the end of it. She'd get mad, drop it. She could be pretty mean."

"How did your followers deal with the competition?" I asked, warming again to his story.

"I made her my high priestess so they couldn't complain. But most of them were scared to death of her anyway. They kept their distance." He shook his head and sighed. "Man, that girl was something else.

"So one day, Annabel and I were sneaking around after lights out, the detective and his smart-ass sidekick. I led us down the hall to Doctor Lascher's office. She suggested we investigate it. I turn the knob. Unlocked. We go in. It's full of doctor stuff. I pick up this evil-looking stainless steel probe. 'This could be a clue,' I say, and I put it in my robe. Then we notice there's a door ajar on the opposite side of the room with a light on inside. We look through the crack. There's a big armchair on an oriental rug and all these bookcases lining the walls. We hear soft music start up, someone singing in another language on a scratchy record. Then Lascher himself walks into view. He's wearing a old-fashioned evening dress, a floor-length red velvet number, pearls around his neck, high heels on his feet, long gloves going halfway up his old German arms. He sits down slowly in the chair, crosses one leg over the other, sighs, takes a drink from a brandy snifter." Lou smiled at the memory. "It was beautiful to behold.

"Then Annabel snorts, the guy calls out, and we bolt. On the way out she bumps into a skeleton on a rack, jumps, knocks the whole thing over. Chaos. Bones everywhere. We could hear him yelling all the way back to the dorm.

"The next day they had this big inquisition. They lined us all up and got on us about how someone had vandalized the Doctor's office. They held back everyone's medication that morning so kids were pretty edgy. They said they'd get to the bottom of it, and whoever was responsible was going to be in deep, deep trouble. Remember, these are Germans we're talking about. They almost had me sweating, but I figured Annabel would spin one of her tall tales, and I was hardly going to spill the beans, so we'd be fine.

"Then they start taking kids back to the scene of the crime one at a time for a one-on-one interrogation. They come for her before me. She's white as a sheet, and she looks at me for a second like she's never seen me before in her life. Then she blurts out, 'Lou Black did it. Look in the pocket of his robe.' And she starts crying all over the place. They look in my robe, find the probe, and that's pretty much that." He pursed his lips and nodded philosophically. "That was pretty much that."

"So did you narc on her?" I asked when he showed no sign of going on. He shook his head.

"No, but I didn't stick around much longer. I'd lost interest in my followers, and nothing else seemed all that interesting either. I stopped being difficult and checked out a couple of months later."

He turned and looked at me. "What are you going to do?" he said.

We rode on into the evening in the green glow of the dashboard, little bugs bouncing off the windshield and the smell of sage in the air, Joe Bananas snoring softly in the back seat.

It was nearly eleven when we got to Twenty-nine Palms. Lou checked into the Saguaro Pines Motel while I waited in the car. I was dying to see the late news. How was my abduction being covered? What were the police saying about it? What would Blanston's sound bite be? Admittedly, I was also curious to hear how I would be described. As famous as I was, I never got tired of hearing what a great guy I was.

The room was nothing fancy. Twin beds covered by wool blankets so worn you could see the sheets underneath. Matchstick chairs and a chipped table arranged under a single bare light bulb. But it had the cable TV promised by the sign outside. It was perfect.

Joe, still groggy from his long nap, ambled into the room and curled up on the far bed. "I'm not sleeping with the monkey," Lou said.

"Relax," I said. "Chimp. I will."

"Chimp," he said. We toasted our success with a bottle of Southern Comfort from the trunk while we waited for the TV to warm up. It took a few minutes. The sound came before the picture. We caught the end of a commercial, then a tease of an upcoming segment on an experimental anti-aging drug. "Our top story tonight, the unveiling of a new consumer product that has a lot of people talking. Elaine?"

"Bob, today Andy Hunter, the visionary behind Integrated Consciousness, appeared before an estimated audience of twenty-eight million cross-media viewers with a message about Integrated Consciousness 2.0. This breakthrough product ..." I was baffled. I was no TV journalist but it seemed to me they were taking a long time getting to the good part. The screen cut to my image, standing on a balcony before an idealized Golden Gate sunset. To my right stood a popular screen actress whose name I couldn't place, laughing at something I had said.

"Wait a minute," Lou said.

I hushed him. "This is going to be good," I said.

Lou leaned over and turned up the set. "What it comes down to, folks," I was saying, "is as simple as this: you deserve to enjoy the best, most fulfilling lifestyle this rich culture of ours has to offer—just the way you like it." I didn't recognize a word I was saying. Lou was nowhere to be seen.

Lou and I stared at each other, mouths agape. I turned back to the screen. Elaine was talking to a monitor with the face of a lifestyle reporter identified as Stephanie. The screen cut to a close-up of Stephanie's face.

In a bizarre sideline to today's Simulcast, a mentally disturbed individual released a rambling statement earlier this evening stating that demands would be forthcoming following the kidnapping of Andy Hunter. Contacted for a statement, Mr. Hunter said, "To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of my disappearance have been greatly exaggerated. I'm always amazed at the lengths to which confusion can drive a person. Tell this guy he should contact me at IC headquarters and I'll set him up with a one-year membership—no charge. He sounds like he needs it." Elaine?

"Thank you, Stephanie," Elaine laughed. "Bob?"

"Stephanie," said Bob.

Lou paced the motel room half the night, measuring off the steps from the door to the vanity in the corner to the end of his bed to the end of mine. He was obsessed with the idea that he'd been had, that IC had outsmarted him. Not only had he stolen something of no value to them—me—he'd gone further and actually helped them tie up a loose end in their own plans—me again. It was clear that Blanston had intended to fake the Omnicast all along. The Consortium had decided that my erratic behavior posed a risk and they'd done something about it.

"Sons of bitches," Lou said. He went into the bathroom and closed the door.

"Well Joe," I said to the sleeping chimp, "this is another fine mess I've gotten us into." He shifted and resumed snoring.

It was a worst-case scenario. We'd not only failed to put a dent in Integrated Consciousness but I'd abdicated my former life as well. This morning I was successful, powerful, wealthy. Now I was none of those things. I'd even lost the position of official Andy Hunter. How had a few bad dreams led to this?

While I waited for Lou to return from the bathroom, I was struck by the impulse to tiptoe out of the room and catch a bus back to San Francisco, see if there wasn't still time to patch things up with Blanston. But of course not; they didn't need me anymore. The image of the digital Andy Hunter burned in my mind's eye. They'd done a great job. A new and better me had stepped seamlessly into my life at the exact point I'd left it. They had my image, they had my voice; thanks to the time I'd spent wired to the database, they had my thoughts, memories, and aspirations as well. In the eyes of the world it was me up there on the screen, leading my flock to the new world of Integrated Consciousness 2.0. And it sounded pretty good, too.

Digital Andy was everything I was, and everything I wasn't. He was confident where I was confused, rational where I was panicked, in control where I was stymied on a threadbare motel bed. His image vibrated with contempt for me, with hatred and scorn for the superstitious little misfit from Cornsilk Academy who never played well with the other children, the stupid little daydreamer who couldn't get with the program. I felt him reaching out through a million miles of wires to snuff me like a candle flame.

I shuddered and tried to shake the image. "Hey, what's the deal in there?" I called through the bathroom door. "You fall in or something?"

When Lou didn't answer I tried the door. It was locked, but with a kind of lock Lou had once shown me could be picked. As I pushed it open, a nervous joke died on my lips.

Lou was slumped on the toilet, fully clothed, asleep. At least I hoped he was asleep. I clenched my teeth and pulled the syringe from his swollen purple vein, then felt for a pulse as a black trickle ran slowly down his arm. A beat stumbled absent-mindedly past my thumb, then another a moment later. I filled a plastic cup with cold water and threw it in his face. He opened his eyes and they focused grudgingly on my face. "Someone's in here," he said weakly.

Chapter Eight: Desert Interlude