Her tone was lower, almost reverent. "You are in the Temple of the Western Sun," she said. "You have been granted an audience with the Exalted One. He has already seen you and laid his hand upon you."
I frowned. Phrases came back to me from the previous night, and from somewhere came an image of a very brown man with luminous black eyes staring at me, bending close. And I remembered why I had been brought here. I looked sharply at the woman. Her husband had saved my life. And they had said something about the alien voices.
"I owe you my life," I said. "Your husband pulled me out of the car."
She smiled. "We saw it happen. Henry swam out and got you. Then when you said you had heard a voice, that an evil voice had forced you to turn off the road—"
"There's someone else here who has heard the voices?" I asked eagerly. "You said—"
"The Exalted One hears," she said calmly. "It's strange that you should have heard them when so many of us have tried so hard and failed. But the waters of God's purpose are deep and hard to fathom."
The last words dropped incongruously from the woman's lips, spoken with a kind of mechanical precision that was very familiar to me: the recitation by rote of an approved answer by a student who does not understand. The curiosity growing in me was checked by some misgivings. I was eager to meet the man she called the Exalted One. I had heard of mystical religious cults, of course—their numbers had grown rapidly in recent years—and it was probable that I had stumbled upon one of these. But I grasped at the straw of fact that was offered to me: the man had heard bodiless voices. However he might have interpreted them, wasn't it possible that he might have heard the aliens?
"When can I see him? I'd like to talk to him now."
"He is in contemplation," the woman said. "But it won't be long now." She nodded toward the window, through which one could perceive only a sliver of blue sky. "When the sun is overhead he will call you."
Her expression became grave. "You will want to prepare yourself. I will come for you then."