by Mark Hodder
“Certainly. The Marquess of Waterford founded it in 1841, three years or so after an angel visited him in the grounds of his estate. The marquess came to believe that angels hold the key to the advancement of mankind.”
“Advancement? In what way?”
“Spiritually, Mr. Harris. Beresford—the marquess’s name was Henry Beresford—didn’t regard angels as messengers of God. In fact, he regarded the belief in God as a repudiation of responsibility. The human race, he said, should be accountable only to itself. It should feel shame for its many mistakes and pride for its many achievements, abandoning the notion of an unknowable divine plan, to which these things are so often attributed. As for religion, he wanted it dismantled, for it is nothing but a primitive form of politics, enabling an elite minority to control and feed off the masses.”
“This Beresford fella sounds like an astute guy, but what did he think angels are, then?”
“The liberated spirits of humans, sir. He attempted to make the Enochians the seed of a movement he named ‘Libertarianism.’ This had as its basis the philosophies of the Marquis de Sade, which he perceived as the means through which we can cast off the church-imposed moralities that quash the natural expansiveness of the human spirit. We don’t require a supreme deity, he proposed, because we ourselves, like the angel he saw, can become godlike.”
“You say ‘attempted’? So he didn’t succeed?”
“He didn’t. It went wrong about ten years ago, when Beresford tried to recruit a group of influential artists led by a man named Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti rejected his philosophy and instead formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which went on to produce many paintings linking human dignity with Christian religious themes—a direct challenge to Beresford’s ideas. Rossetti was then made the government’s minister of arts and culture. From that position, he was able to influence the Home Office, instigating the repression of Libertine activity. Many Enochians were arrested on charges ranging from lewd behaviour to being drunk and disorderly, but the biggest loss was that of Mr. Francis Galton.”
“Who’s he?” Burton asked.
“A scientist. He joined the Enochians early in ’forty-four and immediately shook things up by introducing to Beresford the idea that angels—he designated the species Supreme Man—must develop at some point in future history, and if they are godlike in their abilities, then they should be able to penetrate the barrier of time, if not physically then certainly mentally. Beresford had long been fascinated by the works of the sixteenth-century occultist John Dee—”
“Dee?” Burton interrupted. “The same name as the gent who just left us?”
“Yes, Mr. Harris. I often wonder whether such coincidences indicate some deep pattern in the substance of time, don’t you? Anyway, as I was saying, the marquess was already well versed in the theories of Dee, who was much obsessed with the summoning of angels, and so responded with great enthusiasm when Galton suggested that angels could communicate from the future. This idea provided a new impetus for the Enochians, and the art of summoning became its primary focus. Indeed, very quickly, the club achieved its first contact with Perdurabo, who, via a mediumistically talented member, instructed Galton in great detail with regard to a new science called Eugenics. This, it was hoped, would give Galton the means to artificially hasten the transformation of man into Supreme Man. Unfortunately, disaster followed. The medium suffered heart failure, and there was no one strong enough to channel Perdurabo again, so Galton was forced to proceed without further assistance from him. The experiments went wrong, Eugenics was banned by the government, and the experience caused Galton to lose his sanity.”
Burton adjusted his face into an expression of concern and confusion. “Hold on there! Are you sayin’ that my knowledge of the interplanetary realm is nothin’ but hogwash? That angels ain’t the supernatural beings I take ’em for?”
Kenealy made a calming gesture and smiled. “Not necessarily, sir. It might well be that you have insight into the nature—or perhaps I should say, super-nature—of future humans.”
Burton said, “I guess. So what happened?”
“After Galton? Not a great deal, unfortunately. From the mid ’forties, the Enochians lacked a medium strong enough to summon Perdurabo—or any other entity, for that matter. There was no progress until the start of this year, when I was approached by Mr. Dee and his companion, Mr. Kelley, who had with them Count Sobieski. They informed me that someone wanted to communicate with me from the Afterlife. I consented to a séance, during which Perdurabo took possession of the count. He revealed his true nature—not a spirit from Beyond but, as Galton had suggested, a being from the future—and told me Henry Beresford’s time on Earth was nearly done and that I should move to take over the running of the League of Enochians. New and influential members would join to support me, he said. Well, I was a lawyer at the time, Mr. Harris, and my career was in tatters after my decision to defend the poisoner William Palmer, in which undertaking I’d failed miserably, so I was very much enthused by this new opportunity. During January and February I started to wrest control of the Enochians from Beresford, and in March was greatly assisted by a man named Laurence Oliphant, who is Lord Elgin’s private secretary. Oliphant’s interest in summoning was inspired by your work, sir, which is how I became aware of you and the enormous contribution you might make to our cause. On the evening of the twenty-eighth of March, Dee, Kelley, Oliphant, Sobieski, and I conducted a séance during which Perdurabo again possessed the count. He informed us that the marquess would die on the morrow and we must now prepare for an undertaking of inordinate significance, upon which humanity depended. He then asked for private audiences, first with Dee and Kelley, then with Oliphant, and finally with me. During mine, he informed me that each of us was being set a task, which we must not discuss with each other. My own was the simplest: I was to close the Enochians to further membership, establish a secret route into the clubhouse, prevent intruders from entering, and follow whatever instructions Dee and Kelley issued. For this, he said, I would be amply rewarded.”
“Incredible!” Burton exclaimed. “Such specific communication with a supernatural being is far beyond what I’ve experienced. They’ve come to me in dreams and imaginings but—phewee!—never in the flesh, so to speak.”
“Tonight, sir, we intend to remedy that. Tonight, Perdurabo will address you directly, if you are willing.”
Burton picked up his wine glass and drained it. “For sure!” he cried out. “For sure! But, say, did it happen? Did the marquess kick the bucket the next day?”
“He did. He fell from his horse and broke his neck.”
The door opened and Damien Burke stepped in. He said, “It’s all prepared.”
Kenealy stood. “I hope you’ll forgive my deception, Mr. Harris. I feel positive your presentation would have fascinated us all, but I trust the experience we offer you instead will prove more edifying even than the applause of an admiring audience.”
“Tactfully put, Mr. Kenealy,” Burton said as he got to his feet. “You have in me an eager subject.”
“Then let us go at once to the temple chamber.”
Kenealy and “Dee” conducted Burton out of the room and along a hallway. It was hung with paintings, all depicting the manifestation of angels.
They came to double doors, which Dee pushed open to reveal a large square room hung with purple drapes into which sigils had been embroidered with silver thread. A circular table stood at its centre, with twenty-four chairs arranged around it, twenty-one of them occupied by men dressed in white robes. Burton noted that Sobieski held a position of prominence, his chair being throne-like and raised higher than the rest. Kenealy instructed Burton to take an empty seat directly opposite the medium. He and Burke then sat to either side of the count.
As he settled, Burton examined the tabletop, which was inset with a silver pentagram with a border of engraved Enochian letters. Seven candles were arranged in a circle in the middle of the pentagram. Insi
de them, an extremely complex symbol had been painted—using what appeared to be beeswax—around the base of a large crystal ball.
Kenealy clicked his fingers. A man stood and moved around the chamber extinguishing the lamps until the only illumination was that provided by the candles. He returned to his seat.
Gesturing toward the crystal ball, in which the beeswax symbol was peculiarly reflected, Kenealy said, “Please devote your attention to the Sigillum dei Aemeth, Mr. Harris. You must fixate on the speculum, for through it Perdurabo will show you visions of the future; of what must be if we fail in our great cause.”
Burton gazed at the glass ball. The twisting and distorted lines of the symbol—the Sigillum dei Aemeth, as Kenealy had called it—confused his eyes, and the more he looked, the more aware he became that they were somehow pushing him into a trance-like state. He allowed it to happen, but at the same time devoted part of his mind to a Sufi exercise, establishing a “fenced-off” segment of consciousness, which, he hoped, would be resistant to external influence.
Count Sobieski said, “It begins. It is fast tonight. Perdurabo is eager to speak. Geh londoh mica olz busd gohed.”
The assembly chanted, “Exarpe, bit to em, he co ma, na en ta.”
The hairs at the back of Burton’s neck stood on end. The temperature suddenly dropped and the atmosphere of the room prickled his skin.
The men to either side of Burton took hold of his hands. All around the table, the Enochians formed a chain in this manner.
Damien Burke said, “Ra asa i Raphael.”
Kenealy said, “Sobo el i Gabriel.”
The man to Burton’s left leaned close to him and whispered, “Pronounce aloud: Baba ge i Michael.”
Burton did as he was told. “Baba ge i Michael.”
Sobieski jerked in his seat and his head lolled forward. He murmured, “Od luca el i Perdurabo.”
The gathering intoned, “Mi cama, un al, i alpo re, o i veae, dasa ta, bia he, asa peta, ta!”
Burton felt the reassuring presence of the pistol in his waistband.
The count loosed a long groan. He slowly raised his head. His eyes glinted in the candlelight. They were black from edge to edge.
“Faithful,” he said, “I give you my thanks. Much has already been achieved.”
The voice was as Burton had heard twice before, glutinous and comprised of innumerable but perfectly concerted parts.
“The great work has commenced,” Perdurabo said. “The flow of events is being adjusted and corrected in preparation for my incarnation in corporeal form and your ascendance to a new mode of existence.”
Sobieski’s dreadful eyes settled on Burton. “You are the American, Thomas Lake Harris?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m most gratified by your presence. I have a special place reserved for you in the new world that is to come, Mr. Harris. You will occupy a position of honour and influence. You shall be as a king among your brethren. Look into the shew-stone, please, that I might unveil to you that which we work to avoid.”
Burton turned his attention back to the crystal ball. The lines and shapes within it moved as the candles flickered. He felt himself drawn in and didn’t resist, though he was careful to strengthen the part of his mind he’d separated. Gradually, the confusion of angles and surfaces coalesced around him, until he felt himself embedded in the midst of a vision.
“Africa,” Perdurabo said. “Mr. Harris, a war of indescribable ferocity is coming, and this is where it will end.”
Incongruously, amid the rolling savannahs that were unveiled in Burton’s mind, a city sprawled; a metropolis of British character, spread out in the shadow of a tall green-topped column of rock. Burton recognised the geological structure immediately. It marked the position of Kazeh, the Arabian outpost where the Orpheus had taken on supplies before flying east to Zanzibar. But the city? That most certainly hadn’t been there.
“Tabora,” Perdurabo said. “The last bastion of the British Empire. You are looking at the future, Mr. Harris, the year 1918. The final days of a war that will grow out of unbridled German ambition.”
Burton observed a vast ring of cannons—many of them poking out of heavily armoured vehicles—surrounding the city and bombarding it relentlessly. Refugees were fleeing in droves, thousands being brutally cut down by relentless gunfire. Burton saw men, women, and children falling.
“Death,” Perdurabo said. “Nothing but death. Here comes the final blow.”
The vision swung dizzyingly around Burton until he was looking into the sky. There was something there—a machine or creature? He couldn’t tell. It bore some similarity to a dirigible but also to a gigantic pea pod, with a tulip-like flower pulsating at one end, driving it along.
“A weapon of such terrible potency that it will obliterate the last vestiges of the British—a demise which has been, in this future, long overdue. It is the consequence of mistakes made in the present.”
The perspective changed. Burton watched as a gigantic steam sphere powered out of Tabora. He saw on its side the name SS Britannia. Behind it, a blinding white flash suddenly burst from the city. When the glare receded, it revealed an ugly yellow cloud boiling into the atmosphere.
“There are many possible futures,” Perdurabo said, “but the war comes in all of them. Generations are annihilated, and we have only ourselves to blame.”
The cloud, billowing into the shape of a vast mushroom, fell away into the distance and was lost from view as the vision followed the escaping steam sphere.
“Your own country will suffer, too, of that you can be sure. The German Empire will become greedy for America’s many resources. I have shown you the end of the British Empire. America will be next.”
The scene blurred and reshaped itself. Now the SS Britannia was lying motionless and damaged on the floor of a wide shallow crater.
The Pico Santa Isabel. Fernando Po.
The steam sphere wavered, became a transparent globe of shifting colours, and was suddenly a crystal ball, on a table, with a complex symbol reflected in it.
Burton looked up at Count Sobieski. Perdurabo addressed him through the Russian’s toothless mouth.
“The future you have just witnessed is disastrous not only for our countries, but for the human race. It will set back our natural development and long delay the emergence of individuals like myself—a new species that has dominion over nature and even time itself. It is of utmost importance, therefore, that we alter the present in order to avoid its catastrophic consequences. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” Burton said.
“Very good. As I am sure you are aware, the British government is about to enter into an alliance with a newly formed Central German Confederation. This will give the Germanic states a new cohesion and the means to create a powerful manufacturing base. The seed of German expansionism is being planted right now. We can’t allow it. The Germans must be weakened, not strengthened.”
Burton was aware of an acute mesmeric influence needling into his consciousness. He didn’t resist, but retreated into the protected area of his mind, and from there said, “I can’t doubt what you say. Hell, when a man sees something like that with his own eyes, he ain’t gonna sit back an’ do nothin’.”
“Then you’ll join our crusade against this abomination? You’ll undertake a task for us, one that will save your country from the horror you’ve just witnessed?”
“For sure.”
“Good, Mr. Harris! Very good! Your task is a simple one. Are you aware of a man named Abraham Lincoln?”
“Yup! Who isn’t?”
“A year from now he will be elected as president of your country. His opposition to slavery will cause the Southern states to rebel and plunge America into a bloody civil war. The British Empire can ill-afford a potential ally to be so distracted. Thus we have to reshape history. The conflict must be avoided so America is free to join us in an incisive attack on Germany. There is only one way to achieve this, Mr. Harris, and you are
the key.”
Perdurabo paused. His black eyes glittered.
Burton said, “Tell me what to do.”
“You must return to America at once and shoot Abraham Lincoln dead.”
“I had during the fever-fit, and often for hours afterwards, a queer conviction of divided identity, never ceasing to be two persons that generally thwarted and opposed each other.”
—RICHARD F. BURTON, THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA
Burton was led out of the League of Enochians Gentlemen’s Club by the same route through which he’d entered, guided by a man named Doyle, who ducked back into Brundleweed’s without having uttered a single word.
The explorer could feel the aftermath of Perdurabo’s mesmeric influence and was strongly inclined to book passage to America, there to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
He liberated the enclosed portion of his mind. It flooded into the rest and drowned the insistent suggestion. Lincoln would be safe from him, and from Thomas Lake Harris, too.
It was half-past midnight by the time the explorer met Swinburne outside the Queen’s Arms. The pub had just closed and the poet was leaning against a lamppost, careless of the rain that was pattering on and around him, quietly reciting poetry to himself. The velocipedes were standing at the side of the road.
He looked up as the explorer approached. “Hallo! Hallo! You’re still in one piece, then? Was it worth it?”
“Most definitely. Are you sober?”
“Horribly. It’s a thoroughly objectionable state. What next?”
“How awake are you? We haven’t had much sleep recently.”
“Wide.”
“To Battersea Power Station, then. I have the measure of our enemy. Let us now meet our mysterious ally, if that he be.”
“Rather!” Swinburne enthused.
They mounted their vehicles, started the engines, and went rattling down St. Martin’s Lane. The streets were mostly empty and quiet but for the hiss of rain, so they rode side by side while Burton described what had occurred in the club.