Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04

by Heartlight (v2. 1)

  "I suppose that all there is left to do is make certain that you still want the job," Davenant said.

  "Yes, I think so. It should be an interesting association," Colin said. Working with the Rhodes Group was only an interim solution, of course, to keep him in the game while he took his bearings.

  But it would be an intriguing one.

  The rest of the formalities managed to consume a couple of hours, and then Davenant had insisted on taking Colin out to lunch at the Galley in the Alley down on Maiden Lane. Despite its overly quaint conceit—the front of the restaurant was built in the shape of a galleon's prow, complete with buxom mermaid figurehead—the food was good, and Davenant exerted himself to be amusing.

  Afterward, Colin took advantage of the combination of leisure and a beautiful day to walk around the City. Between Dame Ellen's revelations and the letter of censure from UC Berkeley, he'd withdrawn into a routine of work and research, the better not to have to confront these concerns.

  Colin realized that he hadn't seen much of any of his friends since his visit, to London last October. Katherine was due to have the baby—he only hoped Claire had persuaded her to go to a hospital, instead of having the baby at home in the middle of a magickal ritual, as the young couple seemed to intend. Finding out was reason enough for a visit.

  And from such innocent, nearly unconscious decisions, the future is woven.

  Colin took the cable car for the first leg of his journey—it was jammed as always, and he rode standing on the outside, handing his fare in to the conductor over the heads of his fellow passengers. The motorman rang the bell in the rhythmic double-clangs that were a worldwide aural symbol of the City by the Bay as the cable car proceeded at its magisterial eight miles per hour through the colorful residential district of the most cosmopolitan city on earth.

  San Francisco is a city made to be savored at a walking pace, and walking had always been one of Colin's great recreations. The closer he got to the Hashbury, the more crowded the streets were. Spare change was a constant request, and Colin gave what he could. The runaway population was reaching alarming numbers; the tally increased with each passing month, and many of the children fell into the hands of shadowy Fagins who turned their bright futures into a dark one of prostitution and hard drugs.

  What was it they were seeking? Why did they come in their hundreds? Were their lives so empty and unhappy that they would come hundreds of miles in pursuit of a dream?

  You might as well ask when people had become desperate to keep what they had, rather than confident that more would always be there, Colin thought bleakly. It was easier now to understand the frenzy that drove this postwar generation in its twin quests for political power and transcendence. The unconscious mind always knows what the conscious does not even suspect, and on some level, these children realized they were the last defenders of the Golden Age, and that if they did not win here, the loss was for all time.

  Thorne would, of course, say such a notion was Old Aeon thinking, that the Golden Age of Gods and Men could be summoned at any time, no matter what had gone before.

  And for the first time, Colin began to wish that Thorne was right and his own Lodge was wrong.

  SEVEN

  SAN FRANCISCO, APRIL 1967

  But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

  — WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Othello

  Thorne Blackburn's star had risen dramatically in the last several months; his public rituals now drew sizeable crowds. He'd attracted the attention of the national press, anxious to harvest new fodder from the Age of Aquarius, and stories about him—distorted almost to gibberish—had appeared in both Time and Newsweek. High Magick was being merchandized as if it were rock music, turned into a quaint sideshow that the rest of the world could pass by. And Thorne, with his outrageous claims—no, demands for belief—was in the forefront of that movement, shaping it, catering to it, for reasons Colin could not understand.

  The Voice of Truth occupied the whole of the Victorian now, and it was no longer white. The house had been repainted in bright acid colors, exuberant as a comic book. Its ground floor apartment had been turned into what the hippies called a "head shop"—it sold the Voice of Truth as well as underground comics (or "comix" as they were now labeled), black lights, and less-identifiable paraphernalia. There was an office of sorts for the newspaper in the shop's back room that also contained the press off which it was run, and the smell of printer's ink mingled with the scent of incense and pot in the air of the shop.

  People gazed at Colin curiously as he entered, but no one stopped or questioned him as he made his way through the crowded aisle.

  Possibly he didn't look as much like a policeman as he had the first time he'd seen Thorne. Or perhaps Thorne's messianic roadshow attracted all kinds. Thorne, in his way, was a refutation of the fear that the twentieth century had lost its battle with the Shadow. Even if the New Aeon he preached seemed to be nothing other than Chaos come again, it was a hopeful chaos.

  "Colin!" Katherine Jourdemayne greeted Colin warmly. A tiny baby was looped into a sling made of Indian-print fabric that Katherine wore, bandolier-style, across her bosom. "Did you come to see Truth? Isn't she the most perfect baby? Pilgrim adores her."

  The boy—he must be seven by now—regarded Colin gravely, his hands covered with the chalk he was using to draw on the wall. Colin had never found out who Pilgrim's mother was—Katherine had never claimed him as hers—and thought it would probably be futile to ask. Thorne seemed to treat all of his liaisons and their products with equal fondness, and certainly Colin had never seen anything approaching jealousy among the ones he knew about.

  Colin admired the baby for a few minutes, taking care to give equal attention to Pilgrim. (Why wasn't the boy in school? He was afraid to ask.) The formalities over, Colin asked after Thorne.

  "Oh, he'll be back soon," Katherine said. "Things are really starting to happen for us now. But c'mon upstairs—I'll make us a cup of tea while we wait. C'mon, Pil, let's go see Auntie Irene."

  The apartment was occupied as always. Thorne's star might be on the rise, but the apartment was as shabby as it had ever been. Colin had discovered that Thorne held a more or less permanent house party for anyone who cared to come, and Colin had never been able to keep track of those who came and went. Its current occupants were scattered about the living room, and Pilgrim ran to the woman sitting on the floor—she had bright red hair and wore a spangled scarf tied over it in a gypsy fashion.

  "There's a little love," the woman said. "Come to Irene." Her accent was English, and she gave her name the three-syllable pronunciation common in Europe. She scooped the little boy into her lap and handed him a deck of Tarot cards.

  Colin followed Katherine into the kitchen. As Katherine puttered among the tea things—the baby seeming to be perfectly content in her strange cradle—she explained to Colin that Thorne's latest plan was to use magick to end the Vietnam War.

  "—in Washington; we're planning to go to the Pentagon and beam love-thoughts at them until they become incapable of bombing anyone. Thorne wants to get all the magicians in the Bay Area working together on this; he says that only when the enlightened take social as well as spiritual responsibility can the Great Work proceed without interruption. But Anstey's been really trying to bring him down—"

  "Anstey?" Colin asked in bewilderment. "Simon Anstey?"

  "He wants us to stop what we're doing," Katherine said, stirring her tea slowly. "He's been saying that all Thorne wants is money. That's so stupid, Colin! Anstey's got more money than Thorne does—"

  "Money, and position, and a positively sheeplike devotion to his own consequence," Thorne Blackburn said, walking into the kitchen. He set the camera he was carrying down on the table, grabbed Katherine's teacup and drained it at a gulp, and then leaned over to kiss her and nuzzle Truth, still holding an armful of papers.

  "Hi, Colin. If you've got any influence with Anstey or the city council, it'
d be really groovy if you used it." He flopped down into a kitchen chair and dropped the papers onto the table, then plucked the baby out of her makeshift cradle.

  "What's the problem?" Colin asked.

  "City council's denied us a permit to assemble . . . again. And Anstey did an op-ed piece in the Chronicle—which isn't as bad as what he's saying in person." Thorne sighed, and for the first time since Colin had known him, looked truly tired.

  "He's just jealous," Katherine Jourdemayne said loyally.

  "He's saying that I'm running a mind-control cult; of course, Anstey's so square he thinks rock ought to be banned. . . ." Thorne said. He glanced at Colin provocatively; Thorne knew that Colin and Simon were acquainted; Colin made no secret of it.

  "Haven't you said that everyone should be free to express themselves?" Colin asked. He could not imagine what had set Thorne and Simon on a collision course. The two men lived—almost literally—in different worlds.

  "Yeah, but—Jesus, not when they disagree with me," Thorne said reasonably. "Anstey's into the occult up to his forty-dollar haircut—and he's got the nerve to call me a cult-running phony? Just because he's Alison Margrave's anointed successor and has spent half his life chasing ghosts around the haunted houses of Europe gives him no basis for judging me or my work."

  The baby, awakened by Thorne's vehemence, began to fuss. Thorne joggled her in his arms, trying to quiet her. "But you'll show them all, won't you, sweetheart? You won't just hear about the New Aeon—you'll live there, won't you?"

  "Oh, give her here, Thorne, I think she's hungry," Katherine said, sounding like every young mother since the beginning of time. Thorne relinquished the baby, and Katherine pulled down the neckline of her peasant blouse to give the child access to her breast.

  Thorne got up and walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out two beers, popping both bottlecaps and setting one in front of Colin.

  "I'm glad you came," he said. "There's something I want to ask you about. EdSull—"

  The sound of shouting from down in the street interrupted him, and Thorne ran to the living room window to look out. Colin followed, more curious than worried—until he recognized the voice.

  "Blackburn!" Simon Anstey shouted. "Come out here, you libelous fraud—I'll sue, damn you!"

  The rest of what Simon had to say was lost in the jeering of the street people gathering around. Colin looked out the window. He could see Simon's Mercedes standing in the street, and Simon himself standing on the sidewalk. Simon was dressed in a turtleneck and a dark suit. The contrast between him and Thorne's tatterdemalion acolytes couldn't be more marked.

  "Hey, Anstey!" Thorne's voice was gleeful as he leaned out the open window. "Want a drink?" He tilted the beer bottle out into space, pouring carefully. There was a roar of rage from below.

  "Thorne, for God's sake!" Colin said, managing to grab the bottle away from him before it was quite empty. He dragged Thorne away from the window. "This isn't going to solve anything!"

  "If he's mad now, wait until he sees the Voice of Truth. We're doing a cover story on him," Thome said, laughing happily. "Simon Anstey: New Age Ninny or Old Aeon Fraud?"

  In the street below, there was the sound of a car door slamming and the roar of the Mercedes' high-powered engine as Simon gunned it and drove away.

  "This is not worthy of you," Colin said to Thorne.

  Thorne regarded him brightly.

  "Exactly whose idea of a messiah am I supposed to be, Colin? His? Yours? Or mine?"

  "—and I'm afraid it's only going to get worse, my dear," Alison Margrave said sadly.

  The two friends were sitting out on Greenhaven's terrace, enjoying the fine (though still cool) May weather and the sense of being suspended high above the city, like a pair of hawks hovering among the clouds. It was Saturday, and Colin had finally accepted Alison's standing invitation to visit, repairing a lapse of months.

  Alison had warmly applauded Colin's decision to leave Berkeley and join the Rhodes Group, and Colin supposed he ought to be thinking about finding a place on this side of the Bay, but he was by nature a packrat and hated the thought of moving. But after the small talk and pleasantries, the discussion had turned, as it inevitably did, to magick and its practitioners.

  "Compared to the troubles we see on the streets these days, I don't suppose a battle between two magicians is anything much, and Lord knows being seen by the mundane world and treated by the press as nothing but a pack of kooks is not a new experience for any of us—except maybe Simon—but it's the people he and Blackburn draw in after them that I'm worried about. Blackburn's playing pretty rough, and I'm afraid Simon will be tempted to strike back in the same way that Blackburn is attacking him."

  The quarrel between the two men had begun with Blackburn's antiwar rituals. When Simon had attacked them for being both dangerous and frivolous, Thorne had counterattacked by pointing out that Simon, by reason of his deferment, was in no danger of being drafted, something that was more dangerous to more people than any magick Thorne could ever perform.

  "Surely Thorne isn't working magick against Simon?" Colin asked.

  But he knew, with a sinking feeling deep inside him, that it would be perfectly in character for Thorne to do such a thing. / wish to know in order to serve. . . . That was the credo that Thorne had rejected.

  "Well, he's said he is, of course. And something certainly rattled the doors and windows around here a few nights ago. If it was Blackburn's doing, I'd say he's got a pretty impressive string of firecrackers at his disposal," Alison said. "Fortunately my wards held."

  This was more evidence—not that Colin had needed it—that Thorne had rejected the rules which bound the Adepts of the Right-Hand Path, the Adepts for whom magickal power was only a by-product of the Path of Self-Knowledge. If not Black, Thorne's approach was certainly Grey.

  "Of course Simon is absolutely livid," Alison went on. "I've told him that the best course is simply to ignore it. I dare say I've taught him enough about shielding himself and his home and possessions that Simon shouldn't have a thing to worry about, any more than I do. But Simon doesn't always take my advice," she finished, sighing.

  "And Thorne has never taken anyone's advice at all," Colin said ruefully. "He certainly won't listen to anything I have to say. Maybe Claire can make him see reason; he's always been fond of her."

  But Claire had no more success than Colin had in changing Thorne Blackburn's mind. Colin had the sense that Thorne was simply baiting Simon, mocking him because—at least to Thorne—Simon Anstey represented both the mundane and the magickal Establishment. Thorne was doing his best to make Simon an object of public ridicule as a form of sympathetic magic, and Simon was determined to run Thorne out of the Bay Area. Neither Thorne nor Simon would break off the feud. It had become increasingly personal and bitter, at least on Simon's side, and it was polarizing the Bay Area occult community.

  Those who were members of more traditional Magickal Orders—the Ordo Templi Orientis, the Golden Dawn, the Builders of the Adytum, the Rosicrucian Fellowship in America—had taken this opportunity to flock to Simon Anstey's banner. Thorne had made too many enemies among traditional occultists with his breezy, publicity-seeking style and grandiose claims for the Old Guard to be able to resist the temptation to strike back at him now.

  Thorne's supporters were mostly drawn from among his own growing band of followers, and from the membership of the increasing number of new Wiccan and Neo-Pagan groups that were springing up everywhere like mushrooms after rain. These new groups had few ties to traditional occultism, condemning it as monotheistic and patriarchal. Their credo—"an ye harm none, do what thou wilt"—captured perfectly the spirit of the Age of Aquarius, and like Thorne, they, too, wished to remove magick from the Temples and set it loose in the streets.

  The dispute even made the pages of the Examiner with an article that cast Simon in the role of a noted parapsychologist exposing a depraved charlatan. Certainly Thorne didn't make as favorable an impressi
on as Simon did on members of the Establishment—in fact, he sounded very much like a crank by the time the reporter was through with him. But Thorne had other avenues of attack than the Establishment press, and he used them all.

  At any other time, Colin would have considered this a tempest in a teapot. Now, he regarded it as a symptom of a graver divisiveness: the factions of the Light embroiled in petty quarrels at a time when their cooperation was most needed.

  Which side are you on? Thorne had asked him once. Now Colin wondered the same thing about the young magician. Which did Thorne serve: the Light or the Dark? Did even he know?

  June 1967. Colin had found an apartment in North Beach and had moved across the Bay a few weeks before. He was now working with the Rhodes Group full-time. Most of it was fairly routine—if the investigation of hauntings and possession could ever be said to be routine—and the majority of the cases presented to him so far had boasted distinctly mundane solutions. Those which had not had been easily explicable through misunderstood but truly mundane causes had been the rare but hardly supernatural manifestations of common (for lack of a better word) psychic powers—telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, clairvoyance—though many came with occult trappings attached.

  Most people who discovered themselves to be in the tiny psychic minority of mankind turned to the occult for the explanation of their seemingly irrational abilities. They had little choice, since Religion and Science had both failed them—Religion by consigning their gifts to the realm of devil-worship and Science by denying that they existed at all.

  It was no wonder that the majority of psychics were neurotic, as they attempted to reconcile the evidence of their senses with the teachings of their culture. Though Colin disagreed with Thorne's platform of revealing all the Great Secrets, surely there was some middle ground of psychic education, so that normal, conservative people didn't have to choose between the Devil and madness when confronted with the Unknown?