Chapter 9: Headquarters

he sunlight dappled through the tree leaves, casting crescent-shaped glories on the forest floor as the scarecrow, the tin man, lion, Professor Marvel and I made our way along the path. I was entranced by the breathtaking beauty of the day, and it occurred to me that I felt no hunger or exhaustion, though some great amount of time had evidently passed. How long has it been? A few hours? A day? Or more? The unexpected brilliance of the daylight when the Professor opened his cottage door wiped out my temporal sense, and I no longer had any feel for the passage of time.

It felt good.

A brief emotion -- perhaps sadness -- passed through me as I tried to remember the Professor's computer screen. It was impossible for me to resolve this emotion, and I found with some surprise that I couldn't clearly recall what I had seen on the monitor. It was ...something. But the details were completely gone.

Fine. Let it be like that. It was too beautiful a day to worry about it; the sky was a color blue that I haven't seen since that day in Flushing when I was four years old and watching the clouds. There was a freshness to the air that completely invigorated me, and it was exciting to know that we were approaching the shrine. Something important was about to be played out, and it somehow involved me; I found the idea exhilarating.

The path that we were travelling was well-kept, though apparently not often trod. As an occasional hiker, I'm used to noting the signs of overuse; ruts that have been worn around difficult passages, the way the forest growth seems unnaturally cleared along the sides of the trail, and, of course, litter. Always litter. I sometimes wished that hikers were required to wear a twenty-gallon garbage bag at all times when they're out in the wild; I was often amazed that somebody couldn't be bothered to put a gum wrapper in their pocket, rather than toss it onto the path. This trail, though, was perhaps better-kept than any hiking trail I've ever been on.

Up ahead, the trail rounded a series of rock outcroppings that stood perhaps twenty feet high, and I thought that it might be fun to climb one. Besides, the five of us had spent quite a bit of time together, and I felt a short break from them wouldn't be too bad an idea. I ran ahead to the first of these outcrops, but couldn't find a good handhold for climbing. The second and third were similar, and after five or ten minutes I gave up the idea and turned to rejoin my friends.

As they came back into view, though, something was wrong. I can't put into words exactly what the problem was, but there was something that just felt "off," like the camaraderie between us had dissipated when I ran off. And then the scarecrow disappeared.

The scarecrow ...disappeared? He was there. I was looking at him. Then I blinked ...and he was gone. I stopped dead, and said weakly, "Earl?"

They looked straight at me, the three of them -- yes, one, two, and three, Earl had definitely vanished. They looked at me with no emotion whatsoever in their eyes.

A gnat buzzed by my face, and I absently swatted it away. As my hand brushed across my field of vision, the scene changed again. Professor Marvel was gone. There were two.

I blinked again.

I was alone.

I ran around the megaliths, calling, but there was no answer. The forest was not dense, and it was possible to see quite a distance; but there was no sign of the foursome. They had simply and without fuss, disappeared.

I ran along the path in the direction we were heading, running hard, trying not to think. This is where they wanted to bring me, I thought, this was to be our destination, so I'm going to try my best to make it, even if I'm alone. Maybe that's where they are; I won't disappoint them. Disappointment..? If I had to characterize what I was feeling at that moment, that's exactly what it was. Disappointment. I suppose that I should have been somewhat afraid as I found myself alone in an unknown land that apparently did not subscribe to the laws of my known universe. The evidence that people or things could simply vanish points to a terrifyingly arbitrary existence, and I was surprised that I did not feel so troubled by this that I would find myself rooted to the spot in which I was standing. No, what washed over me was not fear, but simply a profound sadness for the loss of friendship. I exhaled hard, and the sigh that escaped turned uncontrollably into a moan. I fell down to sit cross-legged, Indian-style, on the sward. I began to cry.

The eastbound Monkeehead caravan had taken to the side streets, but as they approached the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame traffic became intolerable even on the private roads. Twice they were passed at stop signs by news vans, one by the local AM station WWWE and then again by CNN. Nightgown suspected that it was their proximity to the stadium and that it had something to do with the Indians getting into the playoffs -- a parade or something, so he popped the Shaun Cassidy tape out of the deck and flipped on the radio.

"...the downtown area until it can be brought under control. Police are asking local businesses to encourage their employees to remain in the buidings until the situation clears. We have more at the scene live now from Tom Brokaw. Tom?"

"Therese, I'm standing in front of the Tower Building, and to describe the scene here... well, the entire central downtown area is at a complete standstill. These animals are still coming from the direction of Euclid Avenue, and for all the world to me it looks like a cattle drive. A huge cattle drive, but not just steer; there are cows, and horses, and... and, well, every farm or ranch animal seems to be part of this, this... massing. Whatever its cause, and I have not as heard what might be causing this, the skies in the downtown area are absolutely filled with birds. They're setting down on the streetlights, on the cars... looks like these cars are going to be here for quite a while, too, many have just been abandoned in the gridlock... The police here have attempted to close off some streets in order to control the animals, and it looks like they're heading towards the lake... This is Tom Brokaw reporting live for Three-W-E. Back to you, Therese?"

"Thank you. That was Tom Brokaw, and we'll be going back live to him every fifteen minutes..."

Melhi clicked the radio off, and they turned to look at each other. Beautymoon* was the first to speak.

"Did we do that?"

Tami called down from the roof, "Mel, the white Voyager on the right's is pulling out. Take the spot, and we'll walk to the museum. It's just up ahead."

Just visible over the top of the Grand Am in front of them, was the top of the 150-foot-high glass pyramid of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Mel grabbed the parking spot.

NiteShade was the first of the westbound caravan members to reach the summit of Shiprock. He had broken away from the rest of the group as they began nearing the top of the trail, and excitedly called down, "Glenn! Heath! Brad! Everybody! Hurry, you've gotta see this!" Then he ran ahead over the edge of the arete, and disappeared from view. The other Monkeeheads were winded, and so continued their unhurried pace -- until they heard the scream.

They broke into a dead run, with Riachia and sharon -- who in an inexplicable way was not Sharon -- in the lead and the rest not far behind. They crested the top of the trail, and tried to make sense of what they saw.

It was a glass pyramid, standing about fifty feet high, set fast into the volcanic basalt of the mountain. Between it and the Monkeeheads, near the edge of the arete, was a dark-haired young woman; on her shirt was printed the word "EVA," and she had in the space of half a minute completely wrapped and sealed NiteShade into a seven-foot-long cocoon of party-pink Saran Wrap.

She crouched down. "Ku'u lei," she said in a soft voice as she laid her hand alongside the cocoon. "Ku'u ipo." She looked silently then at the form for a few seconds, stood up, and with a quick movement kicked NiteShade over the edge of the mountain. She looked directly at the Monkeeheads.

"Cool," said Glenn. Twice.

How long I sat there, oblivious to everything, I had no way of knowing. Minutes or hours, it was all meaningless. At length, I felt the gnat graze my face again. When I reached up to brush it away, though, I felt that it wasn't in fact a gnat, but some kind of film, plastic. I looked to my right in time to see a young woman running past me, looking for all the world like one of the silhouette figures in Bergman's The Seventh Seal as she trailed from upraised arms a long train of the plastic, which I now recognized as green-colored Saran Wrap... The front of her t-shirt bore the words "I AM ZAN," and as she passed me I saw -- during the brief moment when her chestnut-colored hair bounced away from her shirt -- that the back of the shirt said simply "ZAN I AM." For a moment she looked at me over her shoulder as if she expected me to follow, and then continued her half-run, half-dance.

I stood up and turned to give chase, when I saw her destination. Off to my left about five hundred feet away was a glass pyramid, about a hundred feet high, glinting in the sun. If it had been there the whole time I sat in the grass, I wouldn't have been surprised. Saran Wrap be damned. I stood up, and began walking, then running, toward the Shrine.