Steve Erickson - Our Ecstatic Days

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.”