The House of Rumour A Novel - By Jake Arnott Page 0,76

Higher Ones and had come from another planet.

Cato glanced at the blue-skinned man on the cover of Incredible Stories. He suddenly thought of a joke. Brother, he mused, nodding at the illustration, you aliens can come blue-skin or green-skin, just make sure you don’t come black-skinned when you land on this here planet. He laughed and coughed. He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the bedside table.

Quit smoking, Jimmy had told him. Quit smoking and quit drinking. Quit eating pork. Lead a righteous life. Quit going with white women, Jimmy had said. Cato sighed. His mouth was dry and tasted bitter. Sharleen had just got more and more screwy. He didn’t even know whether to believe her when she said she was pregnant. Only that there was trouble ahead and it was time to go. She told him the FBI were listening in to their phone conversations. She believed that the Nazis were controlling the space programme. She saw UFOs all the time. She could give details of many species of extraterrestrial, their particular worldly influence and their secret ambitions. The one thing she didn’t understand, thought Cato as he cleared his throat, was that his people were the true aliens on this here earth.

He picked up the magazine once more and curled up on his side.

As he made his way through the day the Hermit met with some of the other Higher Ones of Hollywood. Doc Hegarty, who handed out pamphlets that warned against the eating of meat, fish and nuts, explaining that protein caused unnatural lusts; Preacher Bill, who could give clear advice on the coming apocalypse; and Madame Pompadour, an ancient ex-prostitute who walked the streets now out of habit and would often fetch coffee and doughnuts for the girls who still worked the boulevard. But mostly he tried to minister to the needs of the desperate souls who passed him by.

In all the time he had walked the earth, tramped its highways, hitched rides or jumped freight trains, he had never known such a forlorn place as Los Angeles. A city so ravaged by materialism and a people weighed down by so many possessions, deluded by ambition and the painful need for adulation. After his first report he was ordered to stay here. To continue to observe these extreme conditions. And maybe to help to bring some relief to this barbaric region.

It was not enough, his superiors had decided, simply to make contact with the most advanced and privileged classes of this strange planet. The Hermit had known the civilisation of the shanty towns, the refined society of mission halls and soup kitchens. And he had learnt much in the great university of Camarillo State Hospital, where white-gowned students came to learn wisdom from some of the greatest minds on the face of the globe. But he had to go beyond, to bear witness to the barren emptiness of this bright and gaudy wilderness.

There came a knock on the door. It was Jimmy.

‘You ready?’ he asked Cato.

‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘But listen—’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Jimmy broke in. ‘Just give it a try, that’s all I’m saying. Islam is the natural religion for black folks.’

They went together to a meeting hall that called itself a temple. Jimmy tried to hustle them both to the front but Cato shook his head and took a chair at the back. Jimmy shrugged and sat next to him. A light-skinned black man in a leopard-skin fez started talking. Cato had heard some of it before. That the African had been deceived by the slave-masters, cut off from their true knowledge and true religion. The Original Man was black and his was the root of all ancient civilisation. Cato yawned quietly. He felt all the weariness of his life flood through his body and pool onto the floor of the meeting hall. He was overcome by a blessed sense of calm. He closed his eyes. God is not a spook, came the voice of the preacher. God is a man. The devil is a man also.

Cato let go and felt himself falling. Then the physical weight of his body seemed to drop away and his spirit began to soar. The voice spoke of the civilisations that existed on other worlds, of how the moon and the earth were once one planet before they were split apart in a huge explosion. Then it was dark in his head. No sound, no light. No space, no time. A moment that lingered