Hari Kunzru - Gods Without Men

Soon after that, Sheriff Waghorn found occasion to fly his plane right out to the Pinnacles. He landed it on the dry lake near the rocks and invited himself in for a neighborly tour of the property. When he got back, he held a meeting in the back room of Mulligan’s Lounge and Grill, just the usual half-dozen of them — the mayor, Mulligan, Mr. Hansen from the gas station, the Rotarians basically — and soon enough the town knew the feller with the burned face was called Davis and had taken the sheriff around very politely, shown him a bakery and some kind of windmill thing, but the place was a nuthouse, there were easily over twenty of them living there, including a naked chick and two niggers, which detail made it officially the biggest beatnik outbreak in the history of the county and ensured that Dawn and her friends Lena and Sheri wasted no time in giving their respective boyfriends the slip and heading over to get themselves some life experience.

It was a Friday night and they’d seen some lights out at the rocks which suggested a party. After a lot of ebb and flow on the telephone to coordinate excuses they found themselves in Lena’s truck having an argument that wasn’t really about was it OK to like Tommy James and the Shondells, but was it OK for Lena to have let Robbie Molina put his hand inside her panties at the Methodist Barbecue and Dance when he’d so recently had his hand inside Dawn’s panties and then been such a pig as to tell the basketball team after.

When they got to the compound, they sat in the dark for a while, fighting about what to do. Some kind of weird music was floating on the air. Dawn felt nervous. The three girls had finally screwed up their courage to get out of the truck when a pack of evil-looking characters pulled up beside them on motorcycles, gunning the engines and craning their necks to see into the cab. Right then they thought they were about to be victimized in some kind of chain-wielding greaser sex attack but instead the main one asked all soft and nice why they weren’t heading on in. It was none other than the dark leaner-on-the-counter from the store, the good-looking one with the Mexican mustache. He said his name was Wolf and smiled to show his big white teeth.

They didn’t really have a choice. They got out of the truck and followed Wolf and his buddies through the compound gate, trying to pretend it was the kind of thing they did all the time. Right away, Wolf ran into some chick and started walking along with his arm around her, though Dawn was vaguely trying to walk next to him on that side. They were projecting colors onto the rocks, slides and oil drops and such, and a whole bunch of people were sitting in a circle around a fire, playing drums and pipes and other instruments into this thing in the center, a sort of mound of microphones and boxy electrical devices.

No one paid much attention when they joined the circle. A few people nodded hello. The musicians just carried on playing. Dawn really dug the music, though it wasn’t like anything she’d normally listen to. “What do you call it here?” she asked the girl sitting next to her, who was wrapped in a Navajo blanket.

“This,” said the girl, “is the prime terrestrial hub of the Ashtar Galactic Command.”

“The what?”

“Our secret Earth base. Our first one. There are going to be a lot more eventually.”

Dawn didn’t know what to say to that, so she nodded and brushed her hair out of her face, to let the girl know she was interested.

“A lot more bases,” said the girl pensively. “Maybe hundreds. When we break through a lot more people are gonna get reintegrated. More bases’ll just naturally come then. Do you want to look through my glasses?”

She was wearing an odd pair of granny glasses, whose lenses were faceted like gemstones. Dawn put them on. The fire broke up into splinters of prismatic color.

“The Urim and Thummim,” said the girl. “They show you the past and the future.” Dawn had no idea what she was talking about.

“How did you find out about all this?”

“About what?”

“Bases and such.”

“Oh, I can’t remember. Feels like I’ve always known. I met Judy on the street in L.A. and she introduced me to Joanie and Clark and they asked me if I wanted to come and live out here. That’s about it.”

“Joanie and Clark?”

The girl pointed to the other side of the fire. One thing was for sure: The crazy lady looked a lot less crazy out there at the rocks. She was wearing a flower-print maxi dress that made her seem old-timey, pioneering. Her hair was combed out long and straight, a gray curtain falling on either side of her face. She and one-eyed Mr. Davis weren’t sitting cross-legged on the ground like the others. They were provided with high-backed wooden armchairs, sturdy things like countrified thrones: Ma and Pa, with Miss Judy at their feet, still looking All-American, bright and fresh, propping her head on her hands like she was at morning assembly.

Dawn smiled over, but Little Miss Judy stared straight through her like they’d never met.

Navajo Blanket Girl didn’t seem to mind talking, so Dawn carried on asking questions. Turned out the old lady was called Ma Joanie, except you said it with a long aah sound, because it was from The East. Maa Joanie. Maaaaa … So was she crazy or wasn’t she? Lena and Sheri, sitting on Dawn’s far side, widened their eyes to show her she was being rude.

“She’s seen a lot of things you and I haven’t,” said the girl. “She’s very highly advanced.”

Which sort of sounded like a yes.

Lena mouthed Let’s go . Dawn wanted to stay. There was all kinds of good stuff to look at, such as the light show and the well-built young guy with no pants on dancing by the fire, just shaking his thing from side to side in a way that would not have come naturally to Frankie or Robbie or in fact any of the boys they knew.

“What about Judy? She seems kind of aloof.”

Navajo Blanket Girl lowered her voice to a whisper. “Judy’s the most important person here. Judy’s the Guide.”

“To what?”

“Say, can I have my glasses back?”

Just like that, without saying good-bye, Navajo Blanket Girl got up and wandered away, humming to herself. Dawn was confused, but she had to recover quickly, had to check she was put together OK and was acting cool, because Wolf stretched out beside her, propped himself up on one elbow and offered her a hit on a long, skinny joint. The important thing was not to say or do anything stupid.

“Hi,” he said.

“Dawnie,” whispered Sheri. “Let’s get out of here. A person could get cooties just from the ground.”

Dawn was about to smoke her first pot and had no intention of leaving, for Sheri or anyone, so she shot her a shut-your-trap look and they listened to the music for a while. Dawn smoked some of the joint and handed it to Sheri, who didn’t want any. Lena took a hit and then started to cough like a sick cat, which was kind of funny. Then Wolf asked if she’d like to meet some people and she said yes, and he helped her to her feet and she ignored the sight of Sheri pointing angrily at her watch and Lena holding up her car keys. She walked with Wolf, like in a procession or a dance, around to the other side of the fire.

“Dawn,” he said. “You won’t even have to change your name.”

As she put the car into drive, Lisa saw her hands were shaking. She was on the verge of tears and somehow that made her even more angry, a vicious cycle that tightened her throat and blurred her vision as she drove down the hill toward the strip of fast-food restaurants. She muttered under her breath. Damn Jaz. So often he made her feel like this, playing Mr. Scientist, the peer-reviewed voice of reason. No, darling, do it this way. Not like that, you’ll damage the mechanism.