(04-41) The Rider


"I knew exactly what heaven was that day," Bergamo said. He was scraping shit off his boot. "Goddamned nagual animals are getting very rude with this back to the earth realism." Roland's expression was hard to read. It could have been fear. He'd begun to tell himself that as the father of Jules he outranked Indian Shadow and perhaps even Bergamo. He'd broached the subject by asking Bergamo his relationship to Jules.

Bergamo had taken him walking here, in the Pastures of Heaven. Like the train, the houses, and most of the people, it was produced by unknown phenomena Bergamo called active psychology. "It's different from studying the psyche," he said. "It's more like riding an animal more powerful than you, that knows more than you know. Your only advantage is that you have the power of self reflection and it doesn't, but that's enough to make you the rider."

The Pastures of Heaven wasn't differentiated into a self-sustaining system until consciousness was imposed on it. There was no point in trying to figure out who was coming in and out of Ash Fork because this was no ordinary outpost of bands on the run from the law, or loners searching for adventure, maybe a meeting with the deercat. This was a migration of refugees from churches and synagogues and mosques and temples. They were like rats walking the mooring lines from sinking ships, searching for a seaworthy vessel.

"We've got energy out the ass," Bergamo said, and at the same time farted, which made Father Roland give him a quick appraising glance. "The problem is finding a way to tune it. You need a central turning fork of a myth, or a set of laws, where everybody can begin to tune in."

"If you build it they will come?" ventured Father Roland.

"That's right. If you can create a tuning fork and strike a conscious vibration, you have a conscious group of people, or even a conscious civilization of people."

"What makes it conscious?" Father Roland asked.

They walked across a broad meadow of flat bladed green grass. There was nothing unreal about the visual aspect of the scene. It was formed not from photographic sources, but from the visual memory of Jules. When he saw a field of grass it was perfectly real. There was no noise in the system. There was nothing in his mind which was not formed and projected so perfectly an observer would not be able to tell the difference. "What do you think makes a vibration conscious?"

"Heavens, I don't know. A good piano tuner?"

"Close enough. But I got sidetracked from your original question about your status."

"If I gave you the impression I was asking about my status it was inadvertent."

"I know that. You priests have a way of being sneaky and thinking you're doing it to not hurt somebody's feelings, like it would hurt my feelings if you outranked me. That's what I mean about the vibration, man. You can't fake the real thing. All you can do is take advantage of the fact that it's silent, and talk over it all the time, which is what you tend to do. So what it boils down to is that if you ever outrank me, you and I will know it at the same time."

"I'm sorry if I offended you in any way by asking about your relationship to my ... to Jules. It sounds like you had an extraordinary moment with him."

Bergamo knew that the pastures were being brought into existence by Jules, and that according to him they were always on the verge of existence. "It's like a room that's in the dark," he'd said. "Everything's already there, but nobody can see it. I come in and turn on the lights." But knowing it quickly became less a matter of remembering than of faith, because the senses could not differentiate it from ordinary experience. Even Bergamo had to keep himself focused in the faith that he was in a symbiotic energy field, and not an organic reality. The strongest consciousness was streaming the event field, and he wasn't it. But, as Jules liked to tell him, "You're among the top two."

The reason Father Roland couldn't outrank him was that if he focused too much on Father Roland, he got caught up in a web composed of gossamer questions and suggestions, all with the ulterior motive of catching prey for mother.





He knew that Father Roland was the biological father of Jules, but he also knew that he was the spiritual father of Jules. "It sounds like I had an extraordinary moment with him." Jules did a perfect imitation of Roland's voice, reflecting him back. "It was, though, only a moment."

Roland didn't reply. He was seeing his shadow. He'd always imagined that the subtle messages in his speaking were sophisticated, and allowed him to deal with other people in a way that exercised power in a civilized way. He wasn't used to hearing himself played back with the accuracy of a digital recording, with the underlying and unsaid words brought up to the surface.

"I was on Blue Mesa the night the missile hit the hogan," Bergamo said, "and I'm the one who got Jules out of that pickup bed, and the one who hid him out from the search and destroy mission that night. But I didn't just happen along at the right time, like Jones. I felt the energy field shift when he was born, and separated himself from his mother's organic system. So yea, my bringing him aboard my ship took just a moment. But in my universe, that moment contains everything else."

"I didn't mean for you to get defensive," Roland said smoothly. "I was above the scene at a different moment, and was given the coordinates by which I located Blue Mesa, and subsequently, the hogan where Jules was still in the body of an infant. He called me there to tell me that I am his father, and you could have knocked me over with a feather, and Cary, too. Which reminds me, how do we communicate with our loved ones we've left behind when we're out here in Space?"

"You have a nasty habit of saying something provocative and then asking a question. If you want to know the truth about how to communicate with Cary, you have to find the truth first, because, man, no matter how much you love somebody, you'll never love them the way you can love truth. She's a lover to die for, because she's the path of survival. Now, you're the priest because your sperm got accidentally selected by a fire fight and a bowl of creamed corn. It was a container for an alien intelligence that had to use whatever was a hand in an emergency."

Roland's ears turned red as the insult struck home. He couldn't speak. Bergamo studied him for a few seconds like he was looking at a road map and deciding which road to take. "I knew what heaven was like that day," he said, "because Jules expanded everything. So what I'm telling you is that what you're thinking about just doesn't make any sense in this place. The only thing that makes sense is being so in love with the truth that you tell elaborately styled lies to make her laugh."

Because Ash Fork was being energized by Jules, its existence was referential, so that everybody there who was connected to him understood Jules was the creator. They also knew who his parents were. The Gunfighter was in Ash Fork because in his many faces, for good and evil, courage and dominance, he was the container into which Americans had invested a knight who could deliver them from the darkness. Father Roland was a different kind of container. He carried the shadow of darkness. That was why he was dressed as a priest.

On the other side of the Pastures of Heaven there was a hillside, and into it there were set snow white smart houses. The skin of the houses absorbed sunlight, and through DNA computers, sensed their occupants like a mother bear sensing her cubs. As Father Roland and Bergamo returned from their pastoral walk which, Roland had suggested, would give them a chance to get to know one another, the house was defended and three men who looked like American Indians were outside. "Admission refused," the house said. "Please move back from the security perimeter, compatible residents are approaching. If you refuse to move back from the perimeter your nervous systems will be scrambled and your musculature rendered ineffectual."

The three Indians reluctantly moved away from the house.

"What did you want here?" Bergamo asked.

"We're looking for Darlene," one of them said. "She's a whore, and this is where her flyer said she lives."

"Let me see that." Bergamo held out his hand and the Indian gave him the flyer. It was an imitation of an old color photocopy, and did in fact give this address as where Darlene was open for business. The picture of Darlene was snapped at the moment she locked eyes with Indian Shadow on the train, provoking in him an outburst of undifferentiated emotion.

It could have as easily been directed into love for Darlene, but that was too complicated. She wasn't Paris, for one thing, and for the other thing, she wasn't an ordinary whore. He'd recognized her when he saw her but he couldn't place her. Her hair hadn't been red the first time he'd seen her. She was the girl who'd come to hold Jules, and to laugh as if she was truth, and he was entertaining her with outrageous invention.

Now she stared out at Bergamo from the photograph, and beneath it there was the question, "Are you a real Indian?" He handed it back to the suitor. "I'm sure you're all real Indians," he said, "but I think Darlene has her eye on somebody else." He moved into the defense perimeter and toward the open doorway. He looked back at Roland. "Are you coming inside?"

"Not quite yet," he said. He smiled at the visitors and said with liquid interest, "So many of the Indians here are wolves or coyotes or bobcats or owls or what have you. My friend was remarking today about how real the nagual animal spirits are. But we don't see many real Indians."

"We're not really Indians," the one with the flyer said. "We just wanted to meet Darlene. We heard she's Jules' consort or something."

"Whore is, I believe, the word you're looking for." Father Roland smiled thinly.

One of the other men, slender and dark, said, "We ain't looking for no words, mister. We're looking for Darlene."

Posted: Mon - July 10, 2006 at 05:23 PM