The Totem

Lucas squinted around and heard other bizarre conversations. He didn't understand it. What was going on? At first he'd thought that he had looked suspicious to this man. But he had made a point of cutting off his beard and trimming back his hair, of buying clothes as conventional as he could tolerate. Hell, he was even wearing cowboy boots, but the reaction he'd received was due apparently to what was going on, whatever that was, and he waited, and the policeman stared at him again.

"What's all-?"

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to see the chief."

"What's going on?"

"I said, you'll have to see the chief." The policeman gestured toward the glassed-in office.

"Can I leave my suitcase by the door?"

The policeman waved him impatiently away and spoke again to a staticky voice on the radio. "If he's been bitten, get him to the hospital. Keep him in the back seat of the cruiser. Don't go near him."

Lucas set the suitcase by the door and crossed the room, hearing the urgent voices around him, staring at the troubled policemen, then reaching the entrance to the glassed-in section of the office.

"Quarantine won't work now. I don't care what Parsons says. We've got-" The big man stopped and looked at him. "What is it?"

"Well, I guess I picked the wrong time, but the man out there said I should see you. I've been out of town for quite a while. I've come to see my father, but I think he might make trouble for me."

"Trouble?"

"Yes, my name is Lucas Wheeler."

The big man only shook his head, puzzled, as if the name meant nothing to him.

In contrast, the wasted man in the wrinkled suit snapped to attention. "Wheeler? You're the rancher's boy?"

"Thank God. I was afraid no one remembered or would help me."

"Rancher's boy?" the big man asked.

"The murder back in nineteen seventy," the wasted man said. "He's the kid who testified against his father."

"And my father said that if he got the chance he'd kill me," Lucas said. "I need protection."

But the big man only leaned back in his chair and wiped his face. "Look, can't it wait a few days? We've got trouble here."

"My father wasn't kidding," Lucas said.

"But I don't have the men. Just wait a while, and I'll go out with you myself."

"A few days? I don't have enough money to stay in a hotel that long."

And the big man sighed as he glanced toward the ceiling.

"Never mind. I'll handle this," the wasted man said.

"No. I want you with me."

"Nothing's going to threaten you while you're here. I just need to talk with him. You like some coffee, Lucas? Have you got a little time to talk with me?" "I want to see my father."

"And you'll see him. But I have a couple of questions." "About what?" 'The commune." And the horror of it all returned to him.

FIVE

The thing came struggling down the street. It crawled on its hands and knees and tried to shield its eyes from the sunlight, but the pain was too intense, and all it did was crawl on blindly. It was snarling, foaming at the mouth, although it didn't do that willingly. The broken white line stretched before it, and it wavered to one side and then the other as in agony it tried to move directly down the center. Objects angled past it, beeping. It heard voices, sensed the people crowding near it, and it snarled at them and bared its foamy teeth and kept on crawling. How it reached here, it could not remember. Trees and grassland it remembered. But this hot black surface and this white line, it could not recall or understand. It just kept struggling down the white line. Someone screamed. More objects inched past, beeping. And the pain. The awful pain. It fell, face cracking on the hot black surface. It squirmed forward on its stomach, the white line stretching forward from its nose. It pawed at its skull. It jerked its head from side to side. As the murmurs gathered closer, it snarled to defend itself.

SIX

Rettig stopped the cruiser, puzzled by the crowd that filled the main street. He saw cars and trucks stopped, drivers getting out, people on the sidewalk pointing, others coming from the side streets, from Sunday brunch in restaurants. He was stepping from the cruiser, putting on his hat, and with his hand near his revolver, he moved forward. What the hell was this about? He'd seen so many bad things in the last few days that he had no idea what worse could happen. And this morning. Word had gotten around so fast that even for a small town it was startling. People in a panic, leaving town or gathered in small groups and talking wildly. He had seen three traffic jams this morning, forced to waste time clearing them. He'd shot a frenzied dog, had helped its bleeding owner to a doctor. He had found a mangled woman by a laundromat. But now a mob that filled the street. He didn't like where this was heading.

Weak from lack of sleep and scared because the town would shortly be in chaos, worried for his family, he had phoned his sister down in Denver to make arrangements for his wife and daughter to go there. They were packing right now, and he knew that many others had made plans to leave the town as well.

But all the same, he thought he knew what to expect- more of this but surely nothing worse. Yet even as he walked up to the crowd to part it, he was sensing something that was far beyond his knowledge, something that when he reached out to shift the crowd would show him some dark final truth that ever after would change everything.

He heard the words but didn't understand them, couldn't make them out, a snarled fog-throated muttering. He pushed on through the crowd and stopped and stared, and it must once have been a person, but its trunk was cloaked with furs. Its arms and legs were bloody. It was snarling, drooling, jerking, its hair down to its waist and falling all around it, a beard down to its stomach, its face dark from dirt and scabs, and bugs were crawling on it as it leered up, blinking. "Own oom," it was choking. Rettig didn't understand the sounds. He stumbled back against the crowd, his heart beating faster. Then he understood the choking, rasping, barking. "Throne room," it repeated. "Throne room, throne room, throne room."

SEVEN

They were standing in the hallway, staring through the window at the figure on the bed in there. The figure wore a gown now, the collar of it showing just above the sheet that covered him. His beard was trimmed, his hair was cut, an intravenous bottle hung beside him, leading to the needle in his arm. Although he was unconscious, straps restrained him.

"Do you recognize him?" Slaughter asked.

Lucas Wheeler concentrated. "I'm not certain. It's been lots of years. I mean, I doubt many people could identify me after so long. How can I be certain about him?"

"But is there anything at all familiar?"

"Oh, a little. That thin nose and mouth. The thing is, I knew several people like that, but the commune had a couple hundred members, and I wasn't up there long enough to meet them all. Plus, no one was as gaunt as he is. Let's say he was twenty back then. Now he'd be forty-three. A man can change a lot in that time.

Slaughter glanced at Dunlap. Then he scratched his wrinkled brow and turned to Lucas once again. "Well, would it help if you were closer to him?"

"I don't think I want that."

"He's unconscious. Those straps are secure. He isn't any threat to you."

"I know that. But you have to understand how much that commune scared me."

Slaughter narrowed his gaze. "What do you mean?"

"Look, I never said this back in nineteen-seventy, but when my father came to get me, I'd been praying all along for something like that. I was scared I'd never get away from there. When that policeman found me in the ditch for the latrine, I wasn't hiding from him. It was Quiller I was hiding from."