“I think you are,” she agreed.
Gently but persistently selling her on this alliance, Mark said, “Doctor, we both have set ourselves against those forces of ignorance and fear and self-interest that want to keep the world in darkness.”
“Remember, I once worked for them.”
“But turned.”
A car swung off Pacific Coast Highway and paused to pick up Joshua. It was followed through the gate and along the driveway by a second car.
Rose, Mark, and Joe got to their feet as the two vehicles—a Ford trailed by a Mercedes—circled the fountain and stopped in front of them.
Joshua stepped from the passenger door of the Ford, and a young brunette woman got out from behind the steering wheel. The Mercedes was driven by an Asian man of about thirty.
They all gathered before Rose Tucker, and for a moment everyone stood in silence.
The steadily escalating wind no longer spoke merely through the rustling foliage of the trees, through the cricket-rasping branches of the shrubbery, and through the hollow flutelike music issuing from the eaves of the mansion, for now it also enjoyed a voice of its own: a haunted keening that curled chillingly in listening ears, akin to the muted but frightful ululant crying of coyote packs chasing down prey in some far canyon of the night.
In the landscape lights, the shuddering greenery cast nervous shadows, and the gradually paling moon gazed at itself in the shiny surfaces of the automobiles.
Watching these four people as they watched Rose, Joe realized that they regarded the scientist not solely with curiosity but with wonder, perhaps even with awe, as though they stood in the presence of someone transcendent. Someone holy.
“I’m surprised to see every one of you in mufti,” Rose said.
They smiled, and Joshua said, “Two years ago, when we first set out on this mission, we were reasonably quiet about it. Didn’t want to excite a lot of media interest… because we thought we’d largely be misunderstood. What we didn’t expect was that we’d have enemies. And enemies so violent.”
“So powerful,” Mark said.
“We thought everyone would want to know the answers we were seeking—if we ever found them. Now we know better.”
“Ignorance is a bliss that some people will kill for,” said the young woman.
“So a year ago,” Joshua continued, “we adopted the robes as a distraction. People understand us as a cult—or think they do. We’re more acceptable when we’re viewed as fanatics, neatly labelled and confined to a box. We don’t make people quite so nervous.”
Robes.
Astonished, Joe said, “You wear blue robes, shave your heads.”
Joshua said, “Some of us do, yes, as of a year ago—and those in the uniform pretend to be the entire membership. That’s what I meant when I said the robes are a distraction—the robes, the shaved heads, the earrings, the visible communal enclaves. The rest of us have gone underground, where we can do the work without being spied on, subjected to harassment, and easily infiltrated.”
“Come with us,” the young woman said to Rose. “We know you may have found the way, and we want to help you bring it to the world—without interference.”
Rose moved to her and put a hand against her cheek, much as she had touched Joe in the cemetery. “I might be with you soon, but not tonight. I need more time to think, to plan. And I’m in a hurry to see a young girl, a child, who is at the centre of what is happening.”
Nina, Joe thought, and his heart shuddered like the shadows of the wind-shaken trees.
Rose moved to the Asian man and touched him too. “I can tell you this much… we stand on the threshold you foresaw. We will go through that door, maybe not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or next week, but in the years ahead.”
She went to Joshua. “Together we will see the world change forever, bring the light of knowledge into the great dark loneliness of human existence. In our time.”
And finally she approached Mark. “I assume you brought two cars because you were prepared to give one to Joe and me.”