Star Winds

by Barrington J. Bayley

  Shortly he was to receive more evidence that the duke richly deserved his reputation for insanely wanton sensuality. Perceiving that his charge was by now surfeited with new impressions, the haughty aesthete observed that the Aegis’s day was well advanced, and that it was time to repair to the regular evening banquet.

  While the meal progressed he turned the pages of The Root of Transformations, commenting lengthily on the text and pointing out significances in the illustrations, even in fine details, which were entirely novel to Rachad, and which he suspected would have been so even to Gebeth. Closing the book, the duke continued, in the vague and faltering voice that clearly belied a keen intellect, to talk of alchemical principles in general. He spoke of the fusion of positive and negative, of the alchemical marriage which must always take place within a sealed vessel, of the joust of the red and black knights, and so on. Going on from that, he gave Rachad the first clear account he had ever heard of the three primordial forces of sulphur, quicksilver and salt.

  To this one-sided discourse Rachad added little, firstly because he knew little, but also because the duke’s table habits left him stupefied. His own food was familiar and appetizing, but to the duke there was served dish after dish of different foods altogether—unrecognizable stuffs which gave off bizarre aromas. The flavors, it seemed, were equally strange, a combination of the delicious and nauseous so overpowering that several times the duke lost control and turned to vomit into an urn placed near his chair.

  Nor were his table pleasures limited to this stretching of the range of the palate. Rachad’s eyes bulged as, at intervals, young women, youths, even children, came forward from the sides of the hall and, in full view of everyone present, performed lascivious and perverted acts upon the duke’s person. In mid-sentence the duke would pause to grunt and moan, turning up his eyes in ecstasy. Then, giving Rachad a friendly leer, he would continue the talk where he had left off.

  Finally he pushed away the latest offering, a plate of odious-smelling pale fruit, and gestured to the retainer to indicate that he was satisfied. Rachad looked around the hall. The other diners, who talked little, and came and went as they pleased, had noticed nothing unusual. The denizens of the Aegis were individualistic, little given to formality, and mostly pursued private interests.

  The duke leaned close. “One thing is plain, young man—you know little of alchemy. Do not prevaricate, now.”

  Rachad grimaced ruefully. “I am only an apprentice,” he admitted. “My hope is to become Master Amschel’s assistant in the completion of the work. Then I will return to my own master and impart to him, the method of the preparation of the stone.”

  The duke pursed his lips, adjusting his dress and brushing away the fondling hand of a maiden who bent over him.

  “I shall speak to Amschel of your desire,” he murmured.

  A silence descended, the same dead, stifling silence that Rachad had noted before. He realized that the duke was a classic case of self-obsession. He was trapped within his own consciousness, encased to a point that in the outside world would have been regarded as insanity, but that here passed without comment. Indeed, the whole Aegis was a hymn to solipsism, to the rejection of any outward involvement, to the creation of a world that sprang solely from one’s own desires.

  “And when shall I meet Master Amschel?” Rachad asked.

  “Tomorrow. But enough—the hour is late, and my strength flags.”

  The duke rose and sauntered toward the wall, turning just before he reached it. “And so to my bed of slime. I bid you good night.”

  A section of wall slid aside. Within, Rachad saw a small chamber containing a sort of bath or coffin rimmed with ornate gilt and filled with the same muddy concoction he had seen in the orchid garden.

  The duke entered. Before the wall closed again an attendant helped him strip. He lowered his bony body into the bath. His eyes closed, the slime enclosing him and leaving only his face showing.

  A footman approached Rachad. “Allow me to show you to suitable apartments,” he said quietly. “Any reasonable service you require is available. You may, if you wish, partake of a slime-bed. But I warn you, once you have sampled it you will not willingly leave the Aegis again.”

  “Thank you—all I need is a place where I can sleep normally.”

  The footman led him away, and Rachad’s mind became busy. He could not dislike the duke, but there was the awful extent of his degeneracy. This was not the healthy, robust world Rachad knew.

  Up until now he had not been sure whether he would in fact attempt to carry out the mission Baron Matello had set him. But now he found it easy to rationalize such treachery. He was, he told himself, furthering not only his own ambitions but also helping mankind to defend itself against the Kerek.

  At the earliest opportunity he would endeavor to open up the Aegis.

  Chapter ELEVEN

  After a long sleep between linen sheets, Rachad was awakened by a maid-servant who brought him a breakfast of fruit and crumbly flavored bread. Shortly, when he had washed and dressed himself, a footman arrived and escorted him to a part of the Aegis he had not seen before. The sumptuous luxury with which the walls were normally draped gave way once more to gray adamant, bare and metallic.

  The Duke of Koss, clasping the lead-bound pages of The Root of Transformations, waited for him at the entrance to a featureless corridor. He smiled, and seemed refreshed.

  “Good morning, young Caban. You slept well, I trust?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Rachad answered, addressing the duke as etiquette would elsewhere have required, though in the Aegis it scarcely seemed necessary.

  “I, too. Our evening meal was delightful, when experienced for the second time.”

  The duke pointed into the corridor. “At the heart of the Aegis there lies a second stronghold, protected by an adamant maze of great intricacy and cunning. It is, almost, an aegis within an aegis—there is machinery by which its structure can be rearranged, so that even if an intruder knows his way through the person it protects can render this knowledge useless. If the maze shifted around him in mid-journey, in fact, he would be trapped.”

  He tightened his robe about him. “I installed Amschel’s laboratory there, to save him from meddlesome curiosity-seekers. We will go to him now.”

  “We can get through safely, I take it?” Rachad asked, staring down the corridor.

  “Oh, indeed. One needs but to memorize a certain sequence of numbers, which I have done by means of a mnemonic system.” Again the duke smiled, sardonically this time. “Of course, if Master Amschel takes it into his head to alter the maze, we will be lost.”

  They set forth, walking side by side. “What’s the reason for this inner fortress?” Rachad asked as they went “Is it in case the Aegis itself is breached?”

  The duke shook his head. “No—such a possibility was never admitted by the alien beast who constructed the Aegis, which is specified to be invulnerable. Ostensibly he included it so as to offer a place of shelter should warfare break out within the Aegis.”

  Rachad kept silence as the duke threaded his way through the maze, muttering to himself and hesitating only occasionally. The maze was, as he had said, extremely complicated. They moved not only through a labyrinth of corridors but also up and down winding ramps and steep staircases. Their route twisted and turned at such a rate that it was impossible to estimate the size of the maze in terms of space, and Rachad lost all sense of direction.

  Always there seemed to be at least half a dozen possible directions to take. Once the duke stopped, and gestured to Rachad, pointing to a passage ahead of them.

  “Walk down there,” he ordered.

  Rachad attempted to obey, but came up against an invisible wall of what felt like glass.

  The duke laughed softly. “You have just walked into a mirror.”

  “But I am not reflected in it!” Rachad protested. “And neither are you!” Bewildered, he glanced behind him. “In fact it doesn’t reflect our surro
undings at all.”

  “True—it’s a trick mirror. The image is conveyed from elsewhere by means of lenses and visual conduits. Just one more means to confuse the wanderer in the maze. He never knows whether what he sees is real or not.”

  Rachad thought of the viewscreen aboard the Bucentaur. They passed on, and presently came to what he took to be the maze’s indwelling secret, emerging into a small wood of stunted trees, the uneven floor being carpeted with moss. The overhead glow-globes were dim; the wood seemed to be cast in dusk.

  Sitting in a hillock was a small, round-shouldered old man with silky hair which fell to his shoulders, and who turned at the sound of their footsteps. His age, Rachad guessed, was close to Gebeth’s, or he could have been even older. At first glance his face was monkey-like and melancholy, but this impression faded quickly. The brown eyes did, indeed, seem more introspective than was usual, but their steadfastness, and the general air of collectedness that surrounded him, dispelled any resemblance to a dodderer. One hand on his knee, he watched as the two visitors approached.

  The duke bowed respectfully. “Master Amschel, I bring what was promised—the missing sections of the book. In addition, may I introduce its bearer, Master Rachad Caban, also an aspirant in the Great Work.”

  Rachad felt Amschel inspecting him without visible change of expression. “Master Caban has named a price for his donation of the text,” the duke continued. “He wishes to join you in the preparation of the stone. I find,” he added, in a sterner tone which showed he expected no opposition, “the request to be a reasonable one.”

  “Indeed,” the artifex replied in a mild voice. He reached out and accepted the tome. Opening its lead covers, he spent what seemed like a long time poring over the pages.

  Then he looked up at Rachad. “And what stage have you reached in the preparation of the stone?”

  Rachad faltered, and swallowed. “No stage at all,” he admitted timidly, intimidated by the alchemist’s air of self-assurance. “I am here on behalf of my own teacher, Master Gebeth of the planet Earth, who has spent a life-time striving for success.”

  The brown eyes lingered on him.

  “Are the chapters all they should be, Master Alchemist?” asked the duke eagerly.

  “They appear to be authentic. The book is complete. We may resume work.”

  “And how long before the stone is ours?”

  Amschel rose to his feet. He barely reached up to Rachad’s shoulder.

  “If we use the lightning method, the operation itself is almost instantaneous. But the preparation of the primus agens may take a good deal of time, as will the construction of the necessary apparatus.”

  “Then I will bid you good day, and I wish you success,” the duke said distantly. Without another word he strolled off the way he had come, leaving Rachad alone with Amschel.

  The alchemist beckoned to him. Together they walked through the silent wood, between gnarled, twisted trees, until an adamant wall loomed up ahead of them.

  A square portal slid open. Amschel led Rachad through it. Behind his back the door closed with a loud, decisive clang.

  “This,” said Amschel, “is my laboratory.”

  ***

  The air was charged with pungent, penetrating smells. Rachad recognized the bite of acids, the stink of heated metals, and the acerbic odor of the energy known as infusoration.

  He could not immediately see how extensive the laboratory was. It resembled a crypt, consisting of vault-ceilinged chambers connected by arched openings, and these seemed to go on and on. But already the variety and scope of the apparatus bewildered him, used as he was to Gebeth’s back room. He could see not only the usual array of furnaces, descensories, sublimatories, crucibles and flasks, but also devices whose purpose he could not remotely guess at, tended by up to a dozen white-smocked workers.

  Amschel, however, directed Rachad to a chair, and sat opposite him, knee to knee, The Root of Transformations on his lap.

  “So, let’s find out about you. Ask me a question.”

  “What?”

  “It’s to discover your level of knowledge. Ask me something you, or your master, would like to know but haven’t been able to find out. Something specific.”

  Rachad thought for a moment or two, then nodded. “There is something,” he said. “What is the correct sulphur-mercury ratio for gold? We know that all metals are composed of sulphur and mercury, and can be converted into one another by altering the ratio between the two. But Gebeth could never discover what the various ratios are.”

  “Well, that tells me roughly your level of competence,” Amschel said wryly. “The sulphur-mercury theory of metals is wrong, and any efforts made in that direction are a waste of time. Never mind. Tell me more about your master.”

  Nonplussed to learn that his ignorance was even deeper than he had believed, Rachad began, haltingly at first, to speak of Gebeth, describing what he could of his methods. But he dissembled when it came to relating how he had left Earth, implying that Gebeth himself had given him his part of the book, and making no mention of Baron Matello. Amschel, however, gave no sign that he suspected duplicity and only asked where Gebeth had obtained the book. Rachad said that it had come from the last surviving priest of an ancient temple, at which he seemed satisfied.

  Finally Amschel leaned back with a sigh, eyeing Rachad. “It strikes me you are a rash and impulsive young man,” he said. “Such qualities can be useful, even in the Work, in which caution is a handicap. Of greater use, however, are patience and the capacity for long, careful thought—these I believe you lack. Nevertheless you may join my staff and I will teach you what I can. Does that suit you?”

  Rachad nodded. “I have one further question, Master Amschel,” he said.

  “What is that?”

  Rachad hesitated. “On Earth, where I come from, gold is precious. But here in Maralia it is common. Why, then, do men such as yourself still wish to manufacture it? It seems to me that the aim of the art is redundant.”

  Amschel smiled. He, too, hesitated. Then he seemed to make up his mind to speak.

  “We are in a secret place,” he said. “The Aegis is secret, and this, the center of the inner maze, is a secret within a secret. So now I will tell you a secret within a secret within a secret—the making of gold is not the object of the Hermetic Art. That was a screen, erected for the gullible in the distant past—though to be sure, it has often happened that men who in the beginning were motivated by greed for gold have found in the end that the Art has worked an inner alchemy upon them, and their greed is transmuted into desire for knowledge, for its own sake.”

  “I don’t understand, Master Amschel,” Rachad said, bewildered. “If not gold—then what?”

  “The goal is the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone, also known as the Tincture, or the Elixir, an ultimate state of matter which can accomplish much more than the mere transmuting of lead into gold—though if need be, it can achieve that too. For that reason the making of gold is a symbol, or by-product, of the alchemical goal. But we will speak of the Stone later.”

  Amschel rose. “For today I will show you some of our simpler apparatus. The more difficult equipment can wait until you have a better appreciation of our work.”

  Laying aside the book, he stepped through the nearest opening. In the adjoining chamber Rachad saw a huge brick structure that reached almost from floor to ceiling.

  “This furnace can deliver three hundred and eighty different temperatures at one and the same time,” Amschel said. “I designed it myself. It greatly reduces the time that need be spent on routine operations.”

  In another chamber stood ten smaller furnaces. These were cylindrical and high-necked, and smoked slightly. “These sublimatories supply a variety of unusual substances,” Amschel explained. “They are in constant use.”

  “What happens to the fumes?” Rachad asked.

  “They are carried out of the Aegis by a system of flues. We can also admit starlight by opening
other small shafts. The light of certain stars can exert a subtle influence on some specially delicate operations, as can planetary configurations.”

  They moved on. “I have taken a particular interest in etheric compounds,” the artifex said. “Prominent among these, as you may know, is light. Here is something intriguing.”

  They had come to a bench neatly laid out with labeled bottles and sample boxes. From a felt-lined tray Amschel picked up a stony blue pellet, or possibly a semiprecious gemstone. “These are found on the planet Aggryxa. Watch.”

  Fixing the stone in a nearby bracket, he gestured to the assistant who had been following them, and who took from a cupboard a peculiar-looking lamp which was backed by a concave mirror, presumably to focus its light in one direction.

  The attendant lit the wick, and directed the ensuing flame’s bright glow onto the stone. For nearly a minute nothing happened, and Rachad began to grow impatient. Then, without warning, a dazzling shaft of blue light shot from the pellet and struck the adamant wall opposite, scattering in all directions in a coruscating display.

  In seconds the emission ceased. The assistant blew out the lamp and put it back in the cupboard.

  “The light projected by this gem has special properties,” Amschel informed Rachad. “A beam of it will travel endlessly without spreading. If focused through a lens, it is able to slice even diamond. I believe the material of the gem achieves this by storing and modifying the light of the lamp in some way. I have tried to duplicate the effect artificially, and have manufactured an inferior variety of Aggryxa gems by impregnating ruby with metallic sublimates.”