The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [150]
Jacob's breathing slowed and settled; the bunched lines on his forehead smoothed. After a minute of this contact, Kanazuchi took his hand away and Jacob opened his eyes.
They were clear again. The fear was gone.
"Remember," said Kanazuchi.
Jacob nodded. Kanazuchi started toward the back; boldly, Eileen reached out and took him by the arm.
"What did you just do?" asked Eileen.
He studied her for a moment; she felt no danger and saw depths in his eyes, realizing how much of himself he kept concealed.
"Sometimes we must remind each other," said Kanazuchi, "of who we really are."
He bowed his head slightly, respectfully. Eileen released her grip. Then, moving like a shadow, Kanazuchi slipped silently out the back of the wagon. Eileen watched him sprint across a stretch of desert and disappear behind a stand of rocks. She looked carefully but did not see him again.
"What did he just do to you?" she asked Jacob.
"If I didn't know any better, and I do, I would say it was something along the lines of... a laying on of hands," he said, climbing into the back.
"Fiddlesticks."
"Now, now; just because a man carries a sword doesn't mean he's a bad person."
"He chops people's heads off."
"My dear lady, we shouldn't impose the values of our culture onto a person from one so completely different from our own, should we?"
"Heaven forbid. And just to show how open-minded I am, maybe I'll take up head shrinking as a hobby."
"I'm sure he could furnish you with a regular supply for practice," he said laughing. "Excuse me, Eileen; before we arrive, I think it best if I changed back into my own clothes. You're supposed to be carrying a sick old rabbi in this rattletrap." He closed the flap and picked up a few wispy scraps of hair from the floor of the wagon. "The beard, I'm afraid, is a total loss."
"If anyone asks, tell them it's a side effect of your disease."
She cracked the reins, urging their mules to catch the other wagons. Moments later, from the back she heard Jacob whistling happily away.
What a remarkable change had come over Jacob since Kanazuchi attended to him, wondered Eileen. But they were both priests and they shared that strange dream; perhaps that meant they had more in common than she could possibly imagine.
"Seems we have company," said Jacob, looking out the back of the wagon. Clouds of dust rose in the far distance on the road behind them; another string of wagons.
Moments later a convincing, albeit beardless, rabbi again, Jacob rejoined Eileen, took the reins, and enjoyed his first look at The New City. The town lay half a mile ahead; twin rows of sturdily constructed clapboard buildings lined either side of a main avenue that terminated at the tower construction site. Only a few of the buildings grouped near its midpoint carried a second story; from there ramshackle houses, little more than shacks, spread out in a disorderly sprawl that extended as far as they could see. The hump of a domed barnlike warehouse, the only other sizeable structure, rose out of their midst to the south.
"My," said Jacob. "These people have been very, very busy."
Directly ahead another guardhouse stood in their way. High barbed wire fences, ran away from it in both directions and encircled the settlement, leaving a broad bare hundred-yard stretch of desert between the fence and the city limits. Armed guards wearing the same white tunics moved out from the gate to meet them as the wagons approached.
"Jacob, I don't mean to be a bother...." She was chewing her lip.
"Yes, dear."
' 'Have you had any more thoughts about my original question?"
"I have, actually; I suggest we smile a great deal and do exactly what is expected of us, while patiently acquiring a sense of the town and who is in charge. You are scheduled to perform here for a week, yes? So we have some time, and as welcome guests this may require less effort than you might suppose. Particularly for someone so effortlessly charming as yourself."
"Okay." Not bad so far.
"Then, very quietly, we should try to find out where they