Glimmering

Only of course that wasn’t true. Because Trip was sure that everyone on God’s green earth would hear the explosion when he crashed and burned. He’d been the first Xian artist to receive full media superstar treatment, with his “Don’t Forsake Me” video in constant rotation worldwide, an interactive disc, global concert tours, and Trip’s face on the cover of every mainstream magazine and gracing computer screens from Salt Lake City to Beijing. It was the face that did it, of course. Equal parts choirboy and catamite, his strong jaw offset by that full lower lip with its hint of a pout, those slanted electric blue eyes; the faint golden stubble on his chin and his yellow hair, like the sky streaked with emerald and bronze, the simple gold chain and cross nestled against his chest. John Drinkwater had a fit when he saw Trip’s dyed hair. Peter Paul Joseph, the president of Mustard Seed Music, only nodded, his thick face impassive but his eyes sharp and bright as needles.

“The kids’ll eat it up,” he drawled, and gave Trip a look that made the singer’s flesh prickle. “Hope you’re ready for it, Trip.” Then, to John Drinkwater, “He can paint his face blue for all I care. But not the dancing. None of that jumping into the crowd stuff. You understand, Trip—gets out of hand. You could get hurt.”

To make sure it didn’t get out of hand, Peter Paul Joseph hired a manager for the band. By then they were calling themselves Stand in the Temple. The manager was Lucius Chappell, a lean young man only four years older than Trip, with lupine eyes and a Maltese cross tattooed onto his shaved skull. He had put himself through law school managing another Xian group, and eventually signed them to a major label. When Trip and the other band members saw their morality clause, it was Lucius who had drawn it up, and Lucius who presented the signed document with a flourish to Peter Paul Joseph.

“Let the games begin,” Lucius said. His smile revealed white teeth glittering with tiny silver crosses that to Trip looked like miniature gravestones.

“Damn cracker,” Jerry muttered disdainfully; but Lucius just laughed.

At Trip’s insistence, John Drinkwater stayed with the band. There was a pretense of giving him duties, like checking everyone into hotels. But really he was just Trip’s moral support, his last threadbare lifeline to Moody’s Island. It was Lucius who made the arrangements, Lucius who knew how to get fuel for the tour bus and food for the crew, Lucius who somehow got through to booking agents and reporters and online magazines when the phone lines were down and the rest of the world seemed paralyzed.

“I got connections,” Lucius would say, raising his eyebrows and grinning to show his cruciferous enamel. He did, too. Not just with an extensive network of Christian compounds with impressive stockpiles of ethanol, petroleum, and advanced information technologies; but with radical Xian groups like Blood on the Door, which targeted women who had had abortions, and the Blue Antelope Fellowship, youthful preservationists whose firebombings had already killed twenty-three legislators who opposed various endangered species acts. In fact, Lucius’s outside interests took up much of the time in which he should have been monitoring Stand in the Temple. Refueling stops provided opportunities to talk to the pro-life radicals, who in some parts of the South and Northeast controlled much of the black market in firearms as well as fuel. There were cranks, too, with real metal spines protruding from their skulls alongside spiky hair, and metal chastity belts dangling from their waists and groins. Onstage Trip avoided their eyes, meth-crazed and staring, and tried to filter out their manic shrieks when Jerry struck the opening chords of a song they recognized.

It proved more difficult to avoid Blue Antelope. Radical Xian environmentalism was Chappell’s pet cause, and Blue Antelope was its army. During and after performances, he arranged meetings with local members and insisted that Trip greet them. The organization’s demographics were similar to those of the band’s ideal audience: young, white, rebellious Christians who had co-opted the term “Xian” from their neo-pagan counterparts. Their manager even encouraged Trip to write songs inspired by Blue Antelope.

“They’ve got money, man!” Lucius rubbed his fingers together and leered. “Many talents, Trippo—not to mention God on our side.”

“Uh, I’ll think about it,” Trip demurred, wondering how good it would be for album and ticket sales if word got out they were writing songs for the terrorist group that had firebombed an Arizona hospital because its new temporary wing encroached upon a nesting site of the blue-throated hummingbird.

“Where does he get off with this ‘our side’ shit?” Jerry fumed; but Trip had other things to think about. Because, busy as he was with Blue Antelope, Lucius Chappell wasn’t paying much attention to Trip’s gyrations onstage.

So: