Gods Without Men, page 2
Davis listened to his story without saying a word. It was several weeks before he visited again.
Schmidt busied himself with signaling and watching the sky, plowing the furrow he’d started with those few scattered quotations. His search had led him first to the Bible, and then other books. He always suspected that any valuable truth would be hidden, that unless you had to dig for a thing, it wasn’t worth possessing. A year or two passed, and he’d found himself in Seattle, pushing a mop around the inside of a T-hangar as engineers worked on aircraft whose size and complexity seemed like a miracle. Watching the great machines take off and land, the way the Earth relinquished them and gently welcomed them back, he felt that here was the secret made manifest. He decided to become a pilot, but when he went for a sight test, they told him he was astigmatic. That route was closed.
He went to the office and asked how to get a job as an aircraft mechanic. Technical school, replied the manager, and soon Schmidt was taking classes during the day and working nights as a security guard. By the time the war in Europe started, he had a steady job at Boeing Field and a bungalow full of books, their margins blackened by his spidery writing. The shape of his project was becoming clear: how to connect the mysteries of technology with those of the spirit. He knew the aircraft he worked on—with their tangled skeins of electrical cable, their hydraulics, their finely calibrated gauges that monitored fuel levels and engine power—were only half the story. There were forces greater and more intangible than thrust and torque and lift. It had fallen to him to unify them. Perhaps when he was brought before his maker, he would be judged not as a monster but as a bringer of light, a good man.
After Pearl Harbor he was reassigned to the XB-29 project, rushing out a new long-range bomber for use against the Japanese. The schedule was punishing. The aircraft had all kinds of problems, overheating engines, mysterious electrical faults that took days to trace. One day a test pilot lost control of a prototype, crashing through a power line into a nearby packing plant. The ground crew jumped into trucks and cars and drove toward the burning building, trying to get close enough to the wreckage to see if anyone could be saved. Thirty people died.
The engine problems wouldn’t go away, and once the bomber went into production just about every part the plants churned out was defective. The generals wanted the planes in China to start operations, but on the date they were due to leave, not a single one was ready. Schmidt was posted to Wichita, working double shifts in a snowstorm, overseeing a crew performing final mods on the navigation system. They had to turn around every twenty minutes, because that was the longest anyone could stay outside before frostbite set in. At last the planes started flying east, only to be grounded in Egypt when the engines, which had more or less worked at freezing point, started malfunctioning in the hundred-and-twenty-degree heat. Schmidt was sent out to retrofit new baffles and a cooling system, designed more or less on the fly by a team working out of a hangar at the Cairo airfield.
The B-29s limped on; Schmidt went with them. Cockpit temperatures climbed to a hundred and seventy, then fell to minus twenty over the Himalayas as the airframes were tested almost to destruction by violent downdrafts and side winds that threw the giant planes around like balsawood toys. He peered through the clouds and caught glimpses of valleys and gorges, rivers, villages, every so often the bright unnerving gleam of aluminum wreckage on the black mountainsides. Something protected him, and a week after flying over the hump he was standing on the tarmac at Hsinching. Peasants straightened up from their paddies at the airfield’s edge, shielding their eyes to watch ninety bombers of the 58th Wing take off on their way to the Showa steelworks in Anshan. He was almost hallucinating with tiredness, having spent the previous forty-eight hours field-modding the big Wright Cyclone engines, trying to stop the cascade of horrors that unfolded when things went wrong in midair: valve heads flying off and chewing up the cylinders, tiny leaks of hydraulic fluid that could prevent the pilot from feathering a stalled prop, so that it started to drag and then sheared off, or worse, seized up the whole engine, which then twisted right out of the wing. The planes looked like huge white birds, like angels. He felt a sort of queasy elation. He was atoning; he was helping win the war.
In early ’45 they moved forward operations to the Mariana Islands. On Guam, Schmidt spent his breaks sitting in a deck chair by the enlisted men’s mess at North Field, reading Isis Unveiled in an edition he’d bought from a Theosophical bookshop in Calcutta. Beyond the perimeter, out in the jungle, were wild animals and half-feral Japanese who’d been stranded when the Imperial Army evacuated. He, on the other hand, was out in the open, in the clear. For the first time in years he allowed himself to feel happy. He heard from aircrew about the incendiary raids, and somehow that didn’t touch him, but then he was transferred to Tinian. The 509th Composite acted like they were the second coming, strutting around as if they owned the whole Pacific and everyone else ought to pay them for the privilege of using it. Rumor was they were testing some new superweapon; as he watched the Enola Gay take off for Hiroshima, Schmidt knew it wasn’t carrying the standard payload, but that was all. Like the rest of the world, he found out through pictures: the burned children, the watches stopped at 8:15. His beautiful gleaming aircraft, the harbingers of light, had been used to unleash darkness. He’d been betrayed.
By the fall of ’46 he was back in Seattle but couldn’t settle into the routine of civilian work. The world seemed to be sliding toward some terrible new evil. The spiritual promise of energy had been perverted: Instead of abolishing poverty and hunger, atomic power would turn the planet into a wasteland. Unable to face going outside, he began to neglect his work. The bungalow was cold and damp. In the evenings he sat in front of the fire and shivered until he fell asleep, imagining the tall conifers outside the window closing in and blotting out the sky.
He quit before they could fire him, withdrew his savings from the bank, packed his library and his papers into his ’38 Ford pickup and headed for the desert. In his mind he saw himself as one of the prophets of old, an ascetic sitting cross-legged in a cave. He would mortify his body, purify his mind. The world had split in two, either side of the Iron Curtain. He would heal the wound. His intention was to summon the only force powerful enough to transcend Communism and Capitalism and halt the cascade of destructive energies. Since the dawn of history there had been contact with extraterrestrial intelligences. Ezekiel’s wheels within wheels, the Mayan space pilots, the cosmic weaponry of Vedic India—the visitors possessed a spiritual technology far in advance of the crude mechanisms of earth science. It was time for them to manifest themselves, to intervene in the lives of men.
So he sent out his invitation. Two hours a night—two hours to atone for Lizzie, for the bombing raids, for all the misery of existence on Earth. As he scanned the skies, he saw many things: meteor showers, bright lights moving in formation over the Tehachapi Mountains. Sometimes military jets flew overhead, threading vapor trails through the blue.
One hot night he was sitting outside, dozing after his usual dinner of canned franks and beans. In the distance a coyote was whining, and the sound penetrated his sleep. He opened his eyes and stretched, thinking about going down into the bunker to get a cigarette. That was when he saw it: a bright point of light hanging low over the horizon. The sky was hazy, loaded with dust whipped up by a couple of days of high winds, and it took a few moments before he was sure of what he was seeing. As he watched, dry-mouthed, the object got larger, approaching at incredible speed. There was no roar of engines, no sound at all. As it came toward him, he saw it was disk-shaped, featureless but for a ring of iridescent lights round the rim, like gemstones or feline eyes. His body began to tingle with electrical charge, the hairs on his bare arms standing upright. The huge oval hovered overhead, hanging above the rocks as if surveying the ground. Then it descended, stately and imperial, landing in front of him without raising the slightest eddy of sand from the desert floor. It was, he thought, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Once it had landed, the craft began to pulse—that was the only way he could put it—glowing pale green, then modulating through purple and rose, a gentle throb like a heartbeat. He couldn’t suppress a gasp as a door opened in the hull and a ramp unfolded, like the tendril of a tropical plant. In the threshold stood two human figures, one male, the other voluptuously female. Their blond hair was agitated by some ethereal wind, though the night air was close and still. Their skin was so pale as to be almost translucent, and in each of their noble faces was set a pair of remarkable gray eyes, animated with profound compassion and intelligence. The pair were dressed in simple white robes, belted at the waist with bright metallic chains. They smiled at him, and he was bathed in a sensation of all-encompassing benevolence. Come, said a voice—not out loud but silently, in the depths of his mind. It was rich and sonorous. It resonated through him like a prayer. Come inside. We have something to show you. At last, he thought. Smiling, he stepped forward into the light.
2008
Oh baby oh what you want went down to the crossroads got down on my mojo black cat whatever. In Nicky’s opinion, the whole Americana thing had gone beyond a joke. He watched the lads sprawled on the big leather studio sofas. Lol in his trucker cap. Jimmy trying to play slide on his shiny new National, making gravelly noises in his throat like he was some old bluesman instead of a skinny Essex electrician’s son with a smack habit. You’re all wankers, he told them. Uh huh unh unh, went Jimmy. Ned was on the phone to his accountant. No one looked up. Fuck it, he thought. Fuck this and fuck them.
Out in the car park the sun beat down out of a boring blue L.A. sky. Nicky smoked a fag and watched the Mexicans hanging about on the corner, same as every day. According to the engineer they were waiting for someone to come past in a lorry and give them a job. Gardening. Carrying stuff on a building site. What a life. Think about it, he’d said to Lol. One roll of the dice and it could have been us, know what I mean? Not me, went Lol. I’m too tall to be a Mexican.
What happened? Three years ago they’d been running round Camden, blagging into shows, doing crap speed in the bogs at the Good Mixer. Not a care in the world.
And now look.
Of course most people would sell their grandmothers to be in a band like theirs. If you get the big tap on the shoulder, hit singles and telly and that, then start moaning about how it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get treated like a mental case. You’re living the dream, right? So shut up. He’d learned pretty quickly to keep certain things to himself. Smile and talk bollocks to journalists. Don’t tell them you lie awake at night wondering why you aren’t more happy. Klonopin, Ambien, Percocet, Xanax. He ought not to point the finger at Jimmy. His own bathroom was like a chemist’s shop.
He was leaning on Noah’s car, a lovely old Merc convertible sprayed with multicolored hippie swirls. You could tell which one was the studio by the cars. All the buildings on the block looked the same: big gray bunkers with metal doors. Only one had this collection of motors outside. There was his own orange Camaro, rented back when they first arrived and he was excited by America; Jimmy’s Porsche, skewed across two spaces, big scratch down the passenger side where he’d scraped it against a pillar in a parking garage. Jimmy couldn’t drive for shit, even when he wasn’t twisted. Nicky wasn’t a hundred percent sure he still had a license.
So what was he going to do? Go back in and be a good boy and try and write songs with the bunch of cunts who used to be his mates? He couldn’t picture it, couldn’t see the point. Oh there were millions of points, of course, about two and a half million ones for him alone if you counted straight-up advance money, before you got into all the crooked record-company arithmetic and everything vanished again. They were supposed to be in L.A. making their West Coast record, the one with Sunset Strip and Laurel Canyon good vibes sprinkled over it like fairy dust. Instead, in three months, all they’d done was bicker and buy stuff and get wasted in bars full of people who looked as if they’d just been unwrapped from their packaging, all shiny and expensive, like audio equipment. People who came with curls of foam and polythene bags and cable ties.
Three fucking months. Break America? Other way round, mate. At first him and Jimmy thought all they had to do was drive up and down and absorb it and they’d suddenly channel the Byrds or someone and make good music. They drove up and down. They made crap—worse—crap that didn’t even sound like them. They’d have been better off in London, even with all the bullshit—Jimmy’s dealer hanging about, Anouk, the tabloids. In L.A. Nicky felt like a tourist. What was he going to do, write a song about palm trees? About lawn sprinklers? Bikram yoga? He told Jim he was homesick, but Jim didn’t want to know, went on about the nights back in Dalston when they’d got high, playing Gram Parsons and banging on to one another about cosmic American music. He was just beginning to get into the scene, he said. He wanted to shag actresses and go to parties in big glass houses where you could see the lights down in the valley. All Nicky really wanted was a kebab.
Sometimes he got wasted and went to bed with someone. He wasn’t exactly chuffed with himself, but at the end of the day, Anouk only had herself to blame. He wouldn’t have done it if she’d been around. He’d told her to come over, but there was a job in Moscow. Then another one, a TV ad in Phuket. The next time it was Paris fashion week. It was always fucking fashion week.
Don’t whine, she told him. She didn’t like it when he whined.
Nicky had a rule: Never get sentimental about birds. After all, half the world’s gash, at the end of the day. But Anouk was different. She didn’t fall for his act. In her funny, bored way, she saw right through him. He hated putting the phone down on her, but you had to play the game. Never let them get the upper hand.
After the fashion-week conversation, he did what he always seemed to do nowadays when he had a problem—worked through the minibar. First vodkas, then gins, whiskies, then whatever was left. He watched bad telly and looked at YouTube. He could feel himself spiraling into the dark place. Her voice had sounded so flat. Who was she with, over there in Paris? Most of the blokes in fashion were queer, which, if you were going out with a model, was a mercy, but there were always more than enough straight ones sniffing about. Photographers, for a start. Lecherous bastards all. And those fifty-year-old rich geezers you only seemed to see at fashion parties, the ones with orange tans and a thing for teenagers. Sick industry, when you came to think about it.
Not a good night. Not proud of himself the next morning. Terry gave him a lecture, said the hotel weren’t happy and did he realize how much it cost to keep the police out of it. Nicky told him it was his fault for putting him in a crap room. He ought to have had one with a bigger balcony. The look on Terry’s face. A day or two later he made it up with Anouk, but it was obvious he’d have to get along without her for a while. He sent flowers, wrote lyrics, thought about sending her the lyrics, tore them up.
L.A. was a nightmare. The place was so uptight. Everything seemed to be inappropriate. Sorry, sir, this is a nonsmoking environment. Sorry, sir, we don’t permit English people talking loudly or having a laugh with their mates in our poncey white-painted restaurant. He wanted to walk to the corner shop. He wanted to get on a bus. Valet parking? What was that about? How were you supposed to get home when you were pissed in a city where there was no such thing as a cab? No one could even understand his accent. I’ll have the tuna sandwich. Cheena? I’m sorry, sir, what is cheena? One day he was trying to get a glass of water. Water, he said. Water. The stuff that comes out of the tap. The waitress was getting shirty. I don’t understand, she hissed, what is it you require? Noah had to intervene. Water, he said. Wah-dah. They sat around repeating it. Wah-dah, not wor-uh.
He phoned Anouk.
“Drop everything. I’ll tell Terry to put you on the first plane.”
“I can’t. I can’t just ‘drop everything.’ ”
“I need you, babe. It’s serious. I’m not pissing about.”
“I have a job.”
“Fuck’s sake, Nookie, you don’t work in an office. Turn something down for once, eh?”
“Nicky, you decided to go and be out there. You left me, not the other way round. It was your choice.”
“I didn’t leave you.”
“You could have found a studio anywhere. It’s just a room with a lot of stupid black boxes. Not even any windows. What does it matter where you are?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No, of course not. I’m so stupid. I’m just stupid and good for fucking and being on your arm to have your picture taken.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You’re a selfish asshole, you know that? A spoilt little boy.”
“So I’m a little boy? Who’s the man, Nookie? Who’s the real man in your life?”
“What?”
“I know you. You’ve got someone. Who is he? Tell the truth, Anouk.”
“You’re being ridiculous. I don’t want to talk to you if you’re going to be like this.”
Click.
He stood in the car park and thought about Anouk and tried to work out if the sick feeling in his gut meant he was in love with her. He wrote love songs, or what passed for them. But what did he actually feel about her? When he wanted something, he hated not being able to have it, that was all. He tried to think of reasons to go back into the studio. A pickup stopped on the corner beside the Mexicans. The driver gestured and some of them climbed on the back. He wondered what would happen if he got on too. Where he’d go. What kind of life he’d lead.
