Earth Cult (2 page)

‘I'd like to register.'

‘Have you made a reservation?'

Frank regarded the small pale man, who seemed quite serious, and frowned in mild surprise. With a growing sense of impatience, he said:

‘No, I haven't made a reservation. But if you have vacancies …'

‘We have vacancies, as I've already told you,' said the clerk, ‘but it's customary to book in advance. It's management policy here at the Cascade.'

‘Well, I'm sorry about that,' Frank said. ‘Next time I'll remember.' He stood his ground and looked at the clerk's pale wrinkled forehead in the dimness; even now the man seemed hesitant to offer him a room and for a moment Frank experienced the crazy notion that they were going to stand facing one another until the light completely drained from the room. It was like a dream in which the simplest, most commonplace act is impossible to accomplish.

At last the clerk made a move and abruptly swivelled the register and held out a leaky ballpen. Frank saw that it had stained the man's fingers and used his own to sign his name and home address. The clerk reached behind him for a key
and at the same time said in his flat, slightly nasal voice, ‘You're from Chicago.'

It seemed neither a question nor a statement, and whatever it was Frank felt no obligation to respond. He picked up the key, glanced at the number on the metal tag, and dropped it into his pocket.

The clerk said, ‘Is it just for the one night?'

Frank picked up his leather grip. He faced the man and said, ‘More than likely. But if it isn't I'll let you know.' His impatience had fed a slow burning annoyance, fanned by this churlish reception, and he didn't see why he should placidly answer the man's questions and volunteer any more information than was strictly required by law. They had his name and home address; they could whistle for the rest.

He went to an open staircase with curving oak banisters and paused before he mounted the first step, aware that the clerk was still watching him.

‘I take it you have a dining-room in this establishment.'

The man's pale thin face nodded slowly in the dimness.

‘And a bar?'

‘Same place. Dining-room opens at seven and you can get a drink there too.'

‘Thank you,' Frank said, trying to keep the irony out of his voice.

‘One second.'

Frank turned at the bend in the staircase and supported himself with an outstretched arm against the banister. ‘What is it?'

‘You didn't ask the price of the room.'

‘I imagine I can afford it. And I have an American Express card if I run short.'

‘Twenty dollars a night,' the clerk informed him stonily.

‘That's with breakfast.'

‘Without.'

It was more than such an hotel was entitled to ask, but Frank didn't feel like arguing. He had his mind on the shower, the stiff drink, the meal. Perhaps later, or in the
morning, he would feel angry about it, but just now he wasn't in the mood to haggle with a desk clerk who looked prematurely aged. In any case it was probably the only hotel in Gypsum, which was why they had the nerve to charge so much.

After the shower he felt better, and after the first drink better still. His preference was Southern Comfort, without ice or water, and he was glad to see the barman (who was also the waiter) pour him a generous measure. It was eight o'clock when he got around to eating, by which time darkness had descended on the town, the street outside lit by a few rather faint lamps which if anything seemed to intensify the blackness and the vivid night sky, spangled with sharp icy stars.

Of course, Frank thought, we're over a mile above sea level here. The air is thinner and there's less atmospheric disturbance. And with the mountain ranges encircling them the usual gentle Mid-Western sunsets would be blocked out. It really gave him a feeling of being cut off, out here in the middle of the continent surrounded by walls of granite several miles thick. It was hardly surprising that the people exhibited an insularity of character when their entire lives were spent in such remote isolation.

The steak was good, thick and juicy, and the coffee strong and black. He mellowed a little in his appraisal of the place and lit a cigarette to round off the meal. It was his ninth of the day – yet another attempt to break himself of the habit by strictly rationing his intake. The penalty of a desk job and especially that of being a writer when the mind is scrabbling for a thought decent enough to clothe with words.

The difference between himself and a journalist, as Frank Kersh was always too ready to point out, was that for a journalist the stories neatly categorized themselves and could almost be written off the top of his head. But articles and features dealing with difficult and complex scientific concepts – which comprised Frank's daily grind – had each to be approached individually and given the right sort of
treatment.
Science Now
wasn't an abstruse technical journal filled with learned university papers, like say
Nature
or
Physics Review
, but was aimed at a broader readership which encompassed graduates, students and the intelligent lay reader. His training in biochemistry was useful but all the same he was expected to grapple with cosmology, astrophysics, quantum mechanics and a host of other scientific disciplines which no one man could be expected to master.

Even so, he prided himself on having achieved sufficient grounding in all the main categories to be able to hold a creditable conversation at a fairly high level. And when he wasn't sure he made a point of asking.

From his corner table in the small dining-room he could see through into the lobby, which in the last ten to fifteen minutes had filled up; pink frosted wall lamps threw a soft glow over a small crowd of people, including the cowboy in his white stetson and shiny spurs. There were cattle ranches hereabouts, Frank knew, and he guessed that the man must be the genuine article and not a drug store dude.

He called the barman-waiter across, a young man in his twenties with a prominent sunburnt nose and a jutting Adam's apple which seemed to complement it, and asked what was going on.

‘Reg'lar meetin',' said the young man, who had an exaggerated drawl which sounded in Frank's ears like an impersonation of a youthful Jimmy Stewart. ‘Folks come into town to listen to the preacher. He whips ‘em up, they get drunk, fight a little, then sleep it off. Gettin' to be two, three times a week recently.'

‘You mean to say it's a Prayer Meeting?' Frank said, still not sure that he understood.

‘Guess so.' The young man nodded and wiped his large red knuckly hands on his apron. ‘Guess you could call it that.'

‘And they hold the meeting right here in the lobby?'

The young man shook his head. ‘Naw, they get together here to wait for the preacher, Mr Cabel. He ain't got no
reg'lar place to preach, so's they wait here till he gits hisself all fixed up in the street. Then the proceedin's commence.'

He pronounced it
co-mmence
.

Frank had heard how some of the small Mid-West communities went in strongly for religious meetings, still carrying on the traditions of the fire-and-brimstone preachers who had wandered the country at the turn of the century, but it seemed odd that red-necked ranchers, farmers and mineworkers should be such devoted students of the good book. It only went to show that living in the city gave you a distorted perspective on what the rest of America was up to; for Frank Kersh it was like stepping back eighty years into the past.

He said, ‘What denomination does Mr Cabel represent?'

The young man had absently picked up a knife from the table and was polishing it. ‘Calls hisself a member of the Telluric Faith. The folks round here don't seem to care what the hell he is so long as he preaches a good sermon. And Mr Cabel sure does that right enough.'

‘Telluric?' Frank repeated. He took a sip of Southern Comfort. ‘Is that some local religious sect? I've never heard of it before.'

‘Somethin' to do with the earth,' the young man advised him. ‘Mr Cabel talks a lot about earth and fire and water – calls ‘em the prime sources from which everything springs. Myself I don't know too much about it. I listen in now and then but it don't seem to make a heck of a lot of sense.'

The lobby was now full and amongst the gathering Frank caught sight of the hotel clerk. His small thin figure and pale narrow face with its set of corrugated vee-shaped wrinkles seemed conspicuously out-of-place alongside the broad-sunburned ranchers and miners. There were no women present.

‘I see the desk clerk's a member of the congregation.'

The young man snorted down his nose. ‘That's Stringer. He helps organize the meetings and goes round with the plate. If you ask me he's the one behind all this.'

‘Behind all what?' Frank said curiously.

But the young man had moved away, still polishing the knife, as if he hadn't heard – or chose to ignore – Frank's question. There was a small bar with half a dozen bottles and some upturned glasses on a tray and he busied himself behind it, keeping his face averted.

After a moment he said, ‘Can I get you another drink, mister? I mean
sir
– they keep telling me I should call hotel guests
sir
.'

‘Unless they happen to be women.'

The barman-waiter turned his prominent red nose in Frank's direction. ‘Huh?' he said, his expression blank.

‘You don't get many customers in here.'

‘They'll be in later, after the meeting. We get pretty busy about ten onwards.' He seemed willing to talk once again. ‘You prob'bly won't get much sleep, mister –
sir
– they go on drinkin' and yappin' till all hours, and here's me got to get up at five-thirty in the mornin'.' He puckered his lips and thrust them forward in a comical expression of pained martyrdom. ‘An' Chuck's the worst one of all,' he muttered, half to himself.

‘I guess Chuck is the cowboy.'

‘That's right.' The young man leaned his sharp elbows on the bar, his head sunk between his shoulders. ‘But don't let Chuck hear you call him that. Chuck Strang is a
rancher
. Runs a breeding herd of 600 head along by Roaring Fork there. The Lazy W ranch.'

‘What does he get out of the Telluric Faith? Does it help fatten up his cattle?'

The young man's eyes shifted evasively and he traced the wet imprint of a glass on the bar-top with a bony finger. ‘No use askin' me. I just serve them beer and bourbon.'

‘You can serve me another Southern Comfort,' Frank said. He looked towards the lobby and saw that the people were slowly filing outside. The preacher must have arrived and the meeting proper was about to begin. As if a light had suddenly gone on inside his head Frank realized the significance of the word Telluric: it derived from the Latin
tellus
meaning of or pertaining to the Earth. What were these
people – Earth worshippers? In one way, he supposed, it did make a weird kind of sense. Miners spent their working lives underground, digging into the bowels of the earth, so it was logical that they had a certain kind of reverence for it. But as for actually worshipping the planet and making it the focus of their religious homage – no, that didn't seem to square with the miners he had met in the past, tough hard-working men who wouldn't take bullshit from anybody, much less a fire-breathing preacher who had invented his own screwball religion.

The young man set the drink down in front of him. He said, ‘You movin' on in the morning, mister?'

‘Not right away.' There had seemed more than just a casual inquiry in the young man's tone; or was he reading devious meanings into something that was innocent and blameless, himself affected by this strange cult he had stumbled across in the middle of nowhere? He thought with a flash of wry humour that if they were of the Telluric Faith they probably referred to themselves as Tellurians: inhabitants of the Earth.

The young man had remained at the table, apparently still waiting for an answer. He wrapped his large raw-boned hands in the folds of his apron, imitating the motion of wiping them, even though they were perfectly dry. Frank Kersh interpreted this as a sign of unease.

He said, not seeing why he should conceal anything, ‘I'm here on business. There's a scientific establishment in the area which I'm covering for my journal. I'm a science writer,' he added, to forestall the inevitable query as to whether this meant he was a reporter. People didn't seem to understand or appreciate the difference anyway.

The young man moved slowly away. The information didn't appear to have registered, or at any rate hadn't produced a reaction, but Frank saw that he was mistaken when the young man said, ‘Does Stringer know why you're here?'

‘You mean the desk clerk?'

‘He's the owner of this place.'

‘No, I didn't tell him. He never asked and I don't see what business it is of his.'

‘Then I wouldn't, mister. Don't tell him.'

Frank laughed. ‘You make it sound mysterious.'

‘I'm jus' saying: if he doesn't know, don't tell him.'

‘Doesn't he get along with the scientists working on the Deep Hole Project?'

‘None of them do. No way.'

‘You mean the rest of the sect?'

‘None of them,' the young man repeated flatly. He turned and said, ‘Is that the official name of that place – Deep Hole?'

‘That's how it's known to other scientists. Its official designation is the Rocky Mountain Astrophysical Neutrino Research Station. Why should Stringer have anything against the people who work there? I shouldn't think he has a clue about what they're doing there.'

‘He doesn't need to know – what matters to Stringer and the others is where they've situated the damn thing.'

‘You mean an old abandoned working on the side of the mountain?'