TCH

Sophia was disappointed by how cold the  greenhouse turned  out to be. There was a vegetable garden inside, but the glass only kept away snow and wind.

SOPHIA: [How'd you punch the right number so fast? Just lucky?]

KIM: [No,  I guess my God-given talent is  pushing  electricity around]

To make her point she illuminated the whole greenhouse  without touching a power switch.

The Japanese-American fellow who maintained the greenhouse came calling at the sound of their voices and he seemed quite angry.

Kim bowed deeply.

KIM: [Please forgive the intrusion, sir. We escaped from another part of  the camp but  as you can  see we  are not dressed  for the cold. We came in here by necessity]

The man's initial anger at finding Kim and Sophia hiding in his garden faded to pity when Kim told him they had been held pris- oner in   the clinic since  June. Not even the  first  wartime internees arrived until August. Still, he demanded to know their names.

KIM: [I am Kimberly Zinter and this is my sister Sophia. We're just kids from a place named Headwater]

The man in turn identified himself as George Kaneko.

SOPHIA: [What a coincidence, Kim. Another coincidence!]

KIM: [Yes, not only did Bath Kol teach us about the camps,  che taught us about this very internee,  Mr. Kaneko. And his fami- ly. The strange part is, I can remember even the smallest  de- tail of the lecture]

GEORGE: [What do you mean?]

KIM: [I know  your parents are issei,  sir. They were born   in Nippon  but immigrated  here and became  American citizens. And you are nisei. You were born here which makes you every bit  as American  as   we are. You have  your wife   with   you,   and three  sansei  daughters. I know that you   and  your   family worked very   hard and made  a good  life on   your  strawberry farm in Washington. But after the internment was announced you were tricked into selling your land for pennies on the  dollar. Now you are forced to crowd into a  single-room in  a  barracks where  you shit,  shower, and shave with  three other  families and eat in a common  room that serves the  whole block. And all this happened out of the fear that descended on the country  in the wake of Pearl Harbor."

SOPHIA: [Land  of  the free, home  of  the  brave. And Tolson bragged of making it all happen]

George Kaneko  wanted to  know  why  schoolchildren were  being taught about his family, but time was pressing.

GEORGE: [I'm very sorry, but you cannot stay in my  greenhouse. When they find you they will punish me]

KIM: [I understand completely. But please, Mr. Kaneko, do your daughters have any clothing to spare? We will not last very long outdoors wearing these hospital gowns]

GEORGE: [They  are too young, nothing they have would fit  you. But I will give you garments  of my own, and when you  are cap- tured you can say you stole them from my greenhouse]

SOPHIA: [You are very kind, Mr. Kaneko,  but what makes you  so sure we will be captured?]

GEORGE: [A barbed-wire fence began to go up in October, much to our dismay. It is nearly complete. We thought perfect  obedi- ence during the internment would prove our loyalty to  America, but we  were mistaken, and armed men watch the gap  that  still remains]

When they  were buffered against the cold as well as  could  be  Kim  and   Sophia bowed  to Mr. Kaneko once more. They  were deeply grateful to him and  Dory,  whose vivid  mental  imagery of  the  future extended beyond their captivity,  told  Kim  he would be rewarded beyond what his little help merited.

The  gap remaining in  the new  fence lay along  the west  side of the   camp  well  away from  the train   platform. It  was guarded by two towers with high-power  searchlights while seven lesser-equipped towers guarded the rest. The whole perimeter was well lit.

Dory told them timing was all-important now and made them  wait out of sight before giving them clearance to make their attempt to escape. When Sophia asked her why, Dory said a train  was involved.

Kim and   Sophia headed for  the fence  along  the  tracks  and chose a section well away from the guard towers. They were spot- ted, of  course,  but none of the guards  opened  fire  because they knew the fence was intact at that location.

Kimberly touched  a lamp post. The light overhead went out  as though she had somehow reached up there and pulled the wires.

Sophia touched a fence post and it snapped it off at the  base. The fence dangled suspended  by the two nearest  intact  posts. That allowed Kim and Sophia to just roll right under it.

At that point the guards did  fire but none of  them scored any hits as the area was very dark. The girls ran for the  tracks. The guards  couldn't leave their posts  so  they  reported  the breakout by phone.

Sophia found   the  manual turnout  switch the  used  to   move trains onto the  siding  where new  internees disembarked. She broke the metal  left/right sign with just  a touch. With the reflective  sign  no  longer indicating  the position   of  the switch she and Kim worked together. Throwing their weight into it, they moved a  lever to  divert traffic  to the  siding just before the next train would arrive.

SOPHIA: [Just before the next train, Dory says. The coincidences just keep on coming, don't they?]

The train in question came along a few minutes later and veered onto the side track as expected. The engineer realized something was wrong and  brought the  train to  a stop  as quickly  as he could. He knew the  siding  was short. This caused an  empty gondola car to end  up right  in front of  the girls  just long enough for them to climb inside and get out  of sight. Then the train went into reverse.

When he was  entirely  on the  main  line once more the   engi- neer climbed down and  manually  moved  the shunt  to  where it  was supposed to  be. After that the train resumed its   passage north  and east before anyone running the internment camp  even realized it had stopped.

This freight run between Cody and Billings was not scheduled to make a stop in Powell but the engineer did so anyway to phone in the  broken indicator  back  at Heart  Mountain. That gave the cousins of Kim and Sophia a  very short window of  time to save them.

The train was a half  mile long and not even Dory knew  exactly which car the girls had chosen to stow away in. After the short run the girls were both unconscious from exposure but the  last report Dory received from Kim was brown rolling stock  with  an  open top, about  half the height of a box car.

Jashen drove beside  the motionless  train for  a quarter  mile before reaching the first run of gondola cars. Everyone got out of his station wagon and began  calling Sophia and Kim  by name but no heads poked up over the sides.

Ruman used handrails to climb one of the rail cars but he found only inch-thick sheets of steel stacked to within eighteen inch- es of  the top. The next car back was the same. But the  car behind that  had two piles of  rags huddled against  the  front wall that must  have been the girls. Ruman climbed  back  down and pointed at the correct  vehicle.

RUMAN: [They're in that one!]

He sprinted  toward the rolling stock and hoped he  was  right. There was only the light of a half-moon for anyone to see.

The train began to roll forward once  more. Thinking fast, Ru- man took the Staff of Melchizedek  in hand. When the   gondola car with Kim  and  Sophia  approached Ruman  lay the fold-space bubble on  the coupling and snapped it off. Much of the  steel fitting and the associated cable simply disappeared.

The half of the  train with  a locomotive  continued to  accel- erate while  the rear half, with the  girls onboard,  began  to slow to a halt.

Jashen edged his station wagon forward to follow the half of the train that was slowing while his kids followed on foot. Already, Dory felt a great sense of  relief. Things were still in  play but no matter what happened  her friends were  no longer  on  a one-way  trip into eternity by way of the Rockies.

Dory climbed to the top of the gondola car and saw it was indeed Kim and Sophia. She let out a single big  sob: it had  been so long since she'd  seen them.

Ruman took a big bite out of the side of the car with the  Rel- ic. A half-circle of rusted steel ceased to exist.

DORY: [No, you're too close, you'll  slice their feet]

The forward half of the train still under power was slowing down now too. Ruman laid  the end  of the staff about  two  feet  behind  the first cut. Dory told him that was better. So he took a  second and third bite. The chute he made had a hump in the middle but otherwise it  was  smooth as a mirror with not  a  single  atom sticking up.

Jashen  Shybear got out  of the station wagon  and  joined  his son, ready to catch the girls when they came down the slide.

Dory saw how Kim and Sophia were wrapped in  blankets and men's clothing. She dragged the Kimberly bundle to the  slide and let her go. Then she waited for Jashen and Ruman to pile the girl into the station wagon before dragging Sophia to the slide.

Two flashlights danced a thousand  feet away, crewmen  from the caboose investigating why the train had snapped in two.

When Jashen was ready Dory pushed Sophia off the rail car  into his waiting arms and Dory slid down after  her. Jashen put the girl in  the passenger side  front seat. Dory piled on top  of her.

Inside the  vehicle Ruman saw  Kim was wearing  men's  clothing under an old  blanket. She looked for all  the  world like  a homeless bum, but everything smelled  clean. The interior of the station wagon smelled worse than  Kimberly did. He dug through fabric to reach skin and found Kim was dangerously cold.

DORY: [Skin to skin, that's  the secret]

Ruman didn't need much convincing of that.

RUMAN: [Just one foot of steel between them and sixty miles  an hour  of  November wind, at two AM, in Wyoming! Poor Kim. Poor Sophia]

Sophia stirred awake  under Dory's  ministrations. Perhaps she just didn't want to miss anything.

DORY: [You're free, baby!]

Dory plied Sophia with kisses even as she broke into  an  erup- tion of   happy tears that  was a release  more  than  anything else.

Dory's  father  Jashen  was  a  member  of  the   clergy. The wartime X ration sticker  on  his windshield  let him  buy  un- limited quantities of gasoline just like any cop or fireman  or politician  in Washington DC. Without it the rescue would have been impossible.

The way home  doubled back  to the  southwest, parallel  to the tracks. When Jashen drove  past the  Heart  Mountain camp  Kim stirred to life, as if sensitive  to the mere proximity  of her former prison. She luxuriated in the attention Ruman  lavished on her.

KIM: [I like this afterlife]

Hell's Half Acre is a  patch of badlands in the center of  Wyo- ming. It is bigger than the  name suggests, more  like  Hell's Half Square  Mile. The nearest sandstone  and shale  scarp that looked anything like it was in South Dakota.

SOPHIA: [I'm pretty sure that cheeseburger is not kosher,  Seer Shybear]

JASHEN: [Bar-El made a rule against  eating blood, another  one against eating pork, and one more against eating shellfish. It was about food safety, really. Prohibiting the mixture of meat and dairy was never on his mind]

Jashen made the Sign of  the Cross and took  a big bite  of his cheeseburger.

In the lull Ruman  looked around  the restaurant.

RUMAN: [Do you think stopping here is safe?]

DORY: [Clyde knew you were gone but it was too dark. By the time we were in Cody he  was searching around the  camp for two dead girls in hospital gowns and stolen blankets. I guess right now he's trying to make heads or tails of that damaged rail car  in Powell. That we might be here hasn't entered into his wildest imagination]

Kim thought about Dory's talent, and Sophia's talent,  and  her own, and had a sudden epiphany.

KIM: [Seer Shybear. Your wife! Dear God, she's not just named after Laylah from the  Green Book,  she's the original Laylah!]

JASHEN: [And no wonder, since I'm the original Shybear]

SOPHIA: [Impossible,  he was  born a hundred  years  ago. You don't even look forty.

DORY: [Eternal Wednesday]

SOPHIA: [Eternal Wednesday? What does that mean?]

DORY: [Think about it. Dad was an officer of the Church  from the very beginning, and he did the Last Rites every  Wednesday. How  did he pull it off? Simple! Every day was Wednesday  for mom and dad. They squeezed fifty-six years into eight."

JASHEN: [Binah bumped us along, between here and Kemen]

DORY: [Then in 1930 Josef Lange quit, moved to Palestine to reo- pen the Academy there, and dad became our Seer at the ripe  old age of twenty-four. Rankled Earl Warner to no end, that did"

SOPHIA: [The bumps on the back of our head, what are they?]

JASHEN: [They're the only external evidence that you are of the B'nei Elohim.

SOPHIA: [B'nei Elohim? Children of the gods?]

JASHEN: [Don't be alarmed. I have a bump. Doriel and Ruman have them too, but they came in just a little before yours did. Think of it  as a birth defect that manifests after  puberty. Bar-El didn't want our brain to lock down until it was fully developed]

KIM: [Clyde did say something about our brains being, ah, dead]

JASHEN: [Mr. Tolson doesn't have the complete picture]

SOPHIA: [What is the complete picture?]

JASHEN: [You already know  the ancient  controversy from  read- ing the Green Book. Bar-El is enjoined from communicating  with any eloah on the other side of his parents, and  so, by  exten- sion, is Binah, although there is nothing formal stated  there. But they can  listen, and last year about the time  when  Pearl Harbor was attacked  there was even bigger news. Have you ever listened to Ma Perkins?"

KIM: [Land o' Goshen, there  ain't a  hull lot of  folks  never heard Ma]

JASHEN: [I see you have. And now the eloah named  Gevurah  has also heard Ma]

KIM: [Oh, that's wonderful news! It means we've already won!]

JASHEN: [Not yet, Kimberly, but for the eleventh time in histo- ry the Elohim have received signals from planet-dwellers. Gevu- rah only has  a direction  to Earth,  not  the  distance. But soon other elohim will  pick up broadcasts  from Earth and  re- alize  you  are not very far out  of reach. The  Elohim  will have found  the  Students at last! And they will   wonder  how there can be a  stable yellow sun in their  midst  yet   remain unquickened. Questions will arise and things will grow sticki- er for Malkuth and Kether from there]

RUMAN: [Meanwhile, the elohim listen with rapt attention to the first soap opera, sponsored by Oxydol, the whiter, whiter soap, and they fail to understand  a single word]

JASHEN: [True, but the  broadcasts in question  aired in  1933, so we know Gevurah must be the star known here on Earth as Siri- us]

SOPHIA: [I wonder if the elohim will be coming to visit us now]

JASHEN: [They will   send  avatars,  Sophia,  like  remote-con- trol rockets, but only on flybys]

SOPHIA: [Right. After it gets a certain distance from an  eloah the link is too thin  to pass any propellant. I know that much from the Green Book]

JASHEN: [Correct! So to finally  answer your question about the big picture, starting from right here at  point A, we're  going to help Binah catch one of  those incoming avatars  at point  Z and  bring  it inside herself, inside the star that she   shares with Bar-El. And that will not be easy  at  all,  because  the avatar will  be moving  at seven-tenths of the speed of light]

KIM: [Binah is asking us to do  this? This is not a command?]

JASHEN: [Certainly not! True, we are her servants, but none of this can be forced upon any of us. Binah's plan to capture Gevu- rah's avatar, and all of human  history, in  fact,  is  nothing more than the greatest love story  never told,  overcoming  ev- ery barrier   Malkuth and Kether  and can  throw up   to  block the wedding of elohim  and humanity!]

At these words Ruman felt moved  to come around to Kim's  chair and kneel  beside her. Ruman braced himself for  courage  and looked Kimberly in the eyes.

RUMAN: [Kim, from the day we  became lab  partners in school  I loved you. Every day you were gone it  tore me  apart. Then dad said we   had  one narrow  chance to  save your   life  and   I couldn't  sleep for  a minute until  I saw you  again, and  when I did you  were frozen half  to death  on  a stack   of  steel. That moment changed  me forever. Now more than anything I want to spend my life with you]

Kim took each of his hands in her own.

KIM: [I  love you too, Ruman. It's true! I  loved   you  even after  you  went skinny dipping under  the mountain  during  my father's  funeral. But we're Church of Green Dome and you  know there's rules]

RUMAN: [But we really are cousins!]

JASHEN: [He's right, Kim. I'm your uncle Jash]

KIM: [I know, but as far as the Bunners are concerned I'm White Wing and you're Red Wing and that's that. It's not like we can produce Gramma  Lilith's birth certificate to  straighten  this out]

SOPHIA: [Stop. I know the Bible says never  put God  to  the test but here's a smaller love story  than human  history  with much  smaller artificial barriers. If you can't fix this, Seer Shybear, then I won't take this job you say is voluntary]

Dory clearned her throat and nodded her head.

DORY: [I'm  with Sophia on  this, Dad. Kim must  become  Mrs. Ruman Shybear. That's point B]

JASHEN: [Josef never   set   down   mandatory  cousin-marriage. That was a bone thrown to the members of the Church who were of European  descent. He needed to salve their endemic racism. But this, what you're asking now will split the Church in two. That racism is still endemic. If anything, it's worse now]

KIM: [So be it. Let the external visage of the Church finally conform with the internal rot]

Jashen tried to shine  a good  light on  it.

JASHEN: [Once   the nomadic  people  of  the   North   American plains had  to  choose between  removing to   the  reservations or starving. The Church offered a third way. That is the good I want to hold fast to here]

RUMAN: [And what I feel for Kim is another good]

DORY: [But the White Wing...eventually their options will narrow until they feel compelled to murder Kimberly]

Sophia found that hard to believe.

SOPHIA: [Murder to stop a wedding?]

Kimberly, alerted by Dory's pronouncement of her doom,  thought back to the coincidences that piled up at Hart Mountain leading to her escape.

KIM: [How do you know all that, Dory? And how did you arrange to meet us at Hart Mountain just when that train arrived?]

DORY: [I really am a seer. The future piles up in my head like a daydream. And every time I do something different from what I see  the daydream collapses like a house of cards and starts  to pile up again]

JASHEN: [Warner has watched me  for a very long time. He knows the office of Prophet must alternate between the White and  Red wings, so he knows he must come  after I'm gone. But he thinks I'm aging  so slowly."

DORY: [And he thinks the Staff of Melchizedek has everything to do with that]

Jashen fell silent for a time, and the kids went quiet too, out of respect. They assumed he was deep in thought.

JASHEN: [I just took a telephone call. Tell me, Kimberly,  how would  you  reply  if I asked  you to offer no   resistance  to your killers?]

KIM: [I'm  not  in a big hurry  for my life to  end. Not when I've just started]

JASHEN: [And what did the cross teach you?]

KIM: [That death is a door. Hamon went through it and returned to show us how death is not the end. But that was just a magic trick like Ruman with his coins, wasn't it? The resurrection was just a prank by Lilith doing her shape shifting trick. Ha- mon never really went through that door. So let me  understand why I must not resist  my own murder]

JASHEN: [Kimberly, Binah will not order you to do what  you are unwilling to do, so  let us speak  of something  else. If you stay with Dory and Ruman and go home in the Chrysler  you  will not arrive in Headwater until tonight, but if you go  with  me, Binah can bring you to a reunion with your mother in almost  no time at all]

And Kim, who felt a little guilty telling Jashen no on the first thing, told  him yes on  the other. Jashen gave Dory some gas money to fill up in Casper.

After hugging  her farewells Kim hiked  with Jashen down  to  a the  cave  at  the bottom  of the ravine that  lay  one  hundred fifty feet below the restaurant. When she followed him   into the cave it  grew light again, a little warmer, and  soon  they were kicking through fallen leaves piled  up to  their   knees. But there was  still plenty of green. She saw a stand of Doug- las Fir.

KIM: [Christmas trees!]

More of  them  covered  mountains she could  see  through  bare branches of maple  and alder. Kim saw they were standing on  a mountain also, near the top.

JASHEN: [This is just a short side trip]

KIM: [Where are we now?]

JASHEN: [We are still in our country. This state is the one that is furthest to the north and furthest to the west]

KIM: [Washington!]

JASHEN: [Very soon I will no longer be the Seer of the  Church. But Earl Warner will not replace me by  any means. It will  be you]

KIM: [Me? Why not Dory? After all, she really is a seer]

JASHEN: [Frequently Binah's plans are really just the best  she can pick from a limited set of alternatives. After you   behold the abomination  that  makes  desolate,  and  the  temple   has been defiled, she wants you to lead a migration of  the  faith- ful here with members from both halves of the Church]

KIM: [If Binah could take me here, she could have taken me  out of Hart Mountain any time]

JASHEN: [Ah yes, but now all four of you know what you  can  do and  how to perform as a team, not just as a band. Think of it as like one of those rehearsals of yours]

Kim  looked through the trees  to the bottom land  at the  foot of  the mountain. The rich soil  there had been  laid down  by  repeated  mud   flows  from  a large  nearby  volcano  and   she remembered the Japanese-American fellow  at Heart  Mountain who helped her and Sophia escape by giving them clothing and advice.

KIM: [Back  in  Wyoming there's a  Mr.  Kaneko  who   lost  his strawberry farm when they sent him and his family to the camp. I want to buy a new one for him. Right there. Do you see?]

JASHEN: [I do see, Kimberly]

He produced a thick envelope from  an inside pocket.

JASHEN: [Yes. George Kaneko will have his  land after the  war when the relocation camp  is no  more. That is  a very   kind thought, Kimberly. But this money is  for your   mother,  to  return  home  to  her parents  back  east. I am   offering   it without  any conditions]

Kim accepted the envelope gratefully.

JASHEN: [Be of good cheer! Between here and the point Z I spoke of with Gerurah's probe there will be prank upon prank. At the very least you will never grow bored!]

At the next Temple Jashen said he was setting aside the  disci- pline of the Church that restricted marriage to first or second cousins. With a loud outcry of righteous  indignation  Apostle Earl Warner stood up and left the sanctuary. He took half  the White Wing with him.

Warner declared himself the Prophet of the Reformed  Church  of Green Dome. Forbidding interracial marriage was his first arti- cle of faith, but there were many more.

Listing the "original" articles of faith that was  handed  down from Jesus  himself made up the bulk of Warner's  first  Sunday sermon following the disastrous split in the Church.

Warner said  the  curse of God lay upon all  those  who  played cards.

Parishioners who engaged in dancing were in danger of God's holy judgment.

Those who permitted themselves to even listen to race music, let alone dance  to it, would face the fires of hell.

He told his flock to let not one single drop of Demon Rum  pass their lips.

To prove  they were indwelt of the Holy Spirit he  ordered  the faithful to roll in the sawdust on the floor of the barn out on River  Road that was their new "temple". That was just as well, as there were not enough benches for everyone to sit.

The actual Temple of Green Dome was prominently visible glisten- ing in the morning light at the source of the Squaw River,  and it seemed to mock them just by continuing to exist. Many got up to leave during the service. Most alarming of all to Warner, the plate came back largely empty of cash.

Alfred Shoenherr, the Apostle of the reformed church, then went door-to-door to the homes of White Wingers passing out hastily- mimeographed tracts that promised eternal damnation to backslid- ers who were tempted to stay in the mother church and there was an array of  especially cruel torments reserved for  those  who had left but subsequently returned to the original temple.

Many of the white parishioners weighed the peril to their souls if they remained in schism. Most of them found the barn situa- tion to be intolerably pathetic. Pressure mounted on Warner to meet with Jashen to negotiate a healing of the breach.