by Matt Ruff
After a few moments, she excused herself—cutting off Des Moines in the middle of a monologue—and moved on to another table. As Hillary continued to work the room, Ruby relaxed, realizing that these folk too were inclined to take her at face value. Nor did they seem especially alien to her, the main difference between them and other rich, self-important white people she had encountered being their willingness to converse with her. About necromancy. But even the talk of magic wasn’t that peculiar, for most of them spoke of it as they would of money, or politics, or any other means of bending the world to their will.
She found she didn’t like them much, and she had no compunction at all about lying to them. Among the general run of fools and cranks were some truly awful human beings.
While pretending to be spellbound by Denver’s ruminations on mind control, Hillary leaned back to eavesdrop on Los Angeles and Las Vegas at the table behind her. Vegas, puzzled over having been snubbed by San Francisco earlier, said, “I don’t know what the hell’s eating him,” and Los Angeles laughed and said, “I do.” Then he said that you could fuck someone on a deal or you could trust their restaurant recommendation, but only a moron did both.
A little while later, she joined a table full of Southerners. Dallas was a middle-aged cowgirl with a husky voice and a bawdy sense of humor, and Richmond, Atlanta, and New Orleans were cultured gents who grasped the distinction between charming and repulsive. It was the most pleasant encounter Hillary had had so far, until the topic of conversation swung without warning to what the men all referred to as “the nigras.” Dallas used a more familiar pronunciation.
It was nothing Ruby hadn’t heard, or overheard, a million times before. But there was a difference between having people talk about you, or at you, and having them talk to you, believing you were one of them and expecting you to think as they did. It took a significant effort on Hillary’s part not to give herself away, and to extricate herself from the conversation without telling the one sort of lie Ruby considered unpardonable—silence, in the face of some things, being damning enough.
And then there was Coeur d’Alene, a blond skeleton with crazy eyes and an expression so perpetually hate-filled that if he’d stood up and begun firing a rifle into the crowd, it would have come as no particular surprise. He had a whole corner of the ballroom to himself, as none of the other guests would come near him—and in this, Hillary followed the general wisdom. But as she made her escape from the Southerners’ table, she happened to glance his way, and a certainty came over her that the rage blasting from his eyes was of the same species as the vileness on Dallas’s lips.
Awful people. After nearly an hour among them she’d had enough, and started looking around the room for Caleb Braithwhite, wanting him to come so this could be over. But whatever grand entrance he was planning, it wasn’t time yet. She did spot his partner, Chicago, having what looked like an intense conversation with the lodge representative from Amesboro, Wisconsin. And then she saw Des Moines, on his feet and headed her way. That was when, seeking shelter, she went over and said hello to New York.
New York had managed to flag down one of the circulating waiters, a tall, dark-skinned Negro in his twenties. As she selected a glass of champagne from the tray he offered her, she gave him a long look and said, “My, you’re a strapping one, aren’t you, dearie?” The waiter, his true self almost as well hidden here as Ruby’s, only smiled politely, as if New York had complimented him on his choice of bow tie, and turned quickly to offer the tray to Hillary. “Miss?”
“No, thank you,” Hillary said.
“You’re not drinking?” New York said, watching the waiter walk away.
“I can’t. I have a condition.”
“Pity.” She drained her own glass in a few gulps. “Well, come on, dearie. Let’s have a look at Lancaster’s prize before another line forms.”
On the wall at one end of the ballroom hung a painting of a gray-bearded frontiersman riding a horse along a riverbank; visible behind him was a hilltop fort flying the Stars and Stripes. Ruby surmised that this was Morgan Glastonbury, who according to Caleb Braithwhite had founded the Chicago chapter of the Order in 1847. In his youth, Glastonbury had been a member of Titus Braithwhite’s coven—one of the lucky ones, who’d been deemed too inexperienced or too untalented to participate in the apocalyptic ritual.
A display case had been installed under Glastonbury’s portrait and was being guarded by six of the dark-suited security men. Inside the case, a large and ancient-looking book lay open, its exposed pages covered in strange letters. “The Book of Names,” New York said, gazing even more lustfully at the pages than she had at the waiter. Ruby peered out from behind Hillary’s eyes, curious, that title evoking for her the book in which the Heavenly Father records the names of the saved. But this Book of Names didn’t look like it was in God’s hand.
“Pardon me.” New York addressed the man in charge of the book’s guard detail. “Mister . . .”
“Burke.”
“Mr. Burke, this is the Winthrop copy?”
“Yes.” A mean little grin appeared on his face as he anticipated her next question and his own answer to it.
“There’s a page in the second appendix I’d very much like a look at. Could you—”
“Sorry,” Burke said, not sorry at all. “The case stays locked.”
“I understand you don’t want me handling it. But perhaps you could—”
“If I opened the case for you, I’d have to open it for everyone. And then we’d have problems.”
New York pursed her lips. “In my invitation to this event, I was given to understand—”
“I don’t care what you were given to understand,” Burke said, enjoying himself. “My orders are, the case stays locked.”
“I don’t care for your tone, young man.”
Hillary backed up, not wanting to get caught in the crossfire if New York started casting lightning bolts with her cane. She felt someone behind her and turned.
It was Chicago. He had the face of a retired boxer who’d given up the ring for a barstool, but behind that brutish mask was a perceptive intelligence that, just now, he let show. “You must be the delegate from Nantucket,” he said, offering his hand.
“Rose Endecott,” Hillary said, taking it. His grip was firm and communicated a strength that could easily have crushed her fingers.
“John Lancaster,” he said. “I’m glad you could come. A little surprised, too. When Braithwhite told me he’d invited you I didn’t think you’d accept, given the history between your lodges.”
“Our dispute was with Braithwhite’s father,” Hillary said.
“All water under the bridge, huh?” He studied her, his face not a boxer’s now but a cop’s.
“Lancaster!” New York elbowed her way in between them. “Lancaster, a word . . .”
“Sorry, Madeleine,” Lancaster said. “I’ve got to get the show started. We’ll talk later.” A last glance at Hillary and he walked away, faster than New York with her cane could follow.
Lancaster headed for the open space beneath the chandelier at the center of the ballroom. “Attention!” he called. “Everybody, give me your attention!” The room fell silent. “At this time, I need everyone who isn’t security or an invited guest to clear out!” The Negro waiters made their way (not unhappily, Ruby thought) towards the exit, a few guests jumping up to grab more champagne as they went by. When the staff had left and the doors were shut, Lancaster signaled to one of his men, who dimmed all the lights except those on the chandelier.
“Welcome to Chicago,” Lancaster said. “Thanks for coming. I know it’s a long way, for some of you, not just in terms of miles but in terms of trust. I appreciate your restraint, agreeing to treat this as neutral ground.” He smiled paternally, as at a group of exceptionally well-behaved children. “I’m not much of a speech-maker,” he continued. “My predecessor, Bill Warwick, he could give a hell of a speech. I’ve always been more of a doer than a talker. But I k
now how to listen, and I know good sense when I hear it.
“Late last summer I got a call from the new lodgemaster of Ardham, saying he had a proposal. I was skeptical. If you know the history between Chicago and Ardham, you know it’s not exactly hearts and flowers. And here’s this kid, Samuel Braithwhite’s kid, calling me on the phone saying he wants to sit down. Well, I could have hung up on him. Or I could have lured him in and taken his head for old times’ sake. But I decided to hear him out . . . and what I heard made good sense.
“Now, he is young,” Lancaster cautioned. “And because of that, I know some of you are going to have trouble taking him seriously. This is the Order of the Ancient Dawn, after all. Most of us prefer to take our cues from those with a little more life experience.” He brushed a hand over his graying flattop. “So I’m going to ask you to listen to him as if he were speaking for me. Because he is. And if you give our proposal a fair hearing, I think you’ll find it makes good sense for you, too.
“Mr. Braithwhite, the floor is yours.” Lancaster raised a hand towards a table at the edge of the open space, clearly expecting Braithwhite to be there; but his gesture was directed at an empty chair. He looked left and right, trying to see where Braithwhite had got to. The moment grew awkward, then comical. “Braithwhite?” he said. There were chuckles in the crowd, and a louder laugh Ruby recognized as belonging to Dallas. Lancaster went over to one of his men, whispering, “Where the hell is he?”
And then suddenly Braithwhite was there, stepping forward, seemingly out of thin air, to occupy the central space that Lancaster had just abandoned. Nice trick, Ruby thought, and around her she sensed the other guests thinking the same thing. Only Lancaster missed it, continuing to scowl at his man for a few more seconds until Braithwhite said, his voice soft but carrying: “Thank you, Lodgemaster.” Lancaster spun around, startled and angry, but Braithwhite acted as if nothing unusual had happened and only bowed his head respectfully. Lancaster got control of himself; he nodded back and ceded the floor, going to sit in the chair where Braithwhite hadn’t been.
Then Braithwhite raised his head and looked around at the assembled guests. The lights on the chandelier seemed to brighten, flattering him in a way they hadn’t done for Lancaster, revealing him to be not just more attractive but more present, somehow. More vital. Lancaster had called him young, and he was, but young, in this light, didn’t seem like a bad thing at all.
“Thank you all for coming,” Caleb Braithwhite said. “I’d like to start by clearing up a misconception. You all know my father died last June, and by now I’m sure you’ve all heard the rumor of how it happened. He was trying to complete the ritual first attempted by Titus Braithwhite in 1795. The ritual failed, less spectacularly this time—the house and the servants were spared—but all of the members of the lodge perished, except one.” He pressed a hand to his chest.
Los Angeles spoke mockingly from the crowd: “So, then. No survivors of note.”
Braithwhite took the barb gracefully. “Some people might feel that way,” he acknowledged. “But again, I’m here to clear up a misconception. Not spread more ignorance.
“As I was saying: You’ve heard the rumor of how my father died. But what you’ve heard is false. The ritual didn’t fail.
“It probably would have. My father himself put the odds of success at no more than fifty-fifty. My own calculations were more pessimistic. I estimated the likelihood of failure was closer to eighty percent, with a significant chance of catastrophe.
“Eighty percent,” Caleb Braithwhite said. “Four out of five. For a long time I thought about playing those odds, but in the end I decided it just wasn’t good enough. I needed to be sure. And I wanted them all dead.”
There was a slow stirring among the listeners as they grasped the import of his words. Ruby saw Lancaster frown, this particular revelation apparently not part of the speech he’d sanctioned.
“That’s right,” Braithwhite went on. “I sabotaged the ritual. I killed them all, the whole damn lodge. You know why? Because I was tired of the bullshit.
“Understand, I admired my father. I respected him—up to a point. He had a first-rate intelligence and a virtuoso’s grasp of the art. His defect lay elsewhere. It was the same flaw that Titus Braithwhite suffered from, the same flaw that afflicts all too many of you. He had a scientist’s mind, a modern mind, but his heart was old. It was an alchemist’s heart. A wizard’s heart.”
Another, louder stir. Ruby had spent enough of her life in church to recognize the cause: blasphemy. Lancaster was on his feet now, looking like he might call a halt before the crowd could become a mob. But Braithwhite was just getting warmed up.
“‘The Adamite Order of the Ancient Dawn,’” he said, his tone sneering. “Does that sound like a scientific organization to you? Because I’ll tell you what it sounds like to me: a joke.
“Alchemists!” he shouted. “Alchemists, all toiling away in your little claques. Jealous of each other. Keeping secrets from each other. When you’re not busy plotting, you waste most of your time reinventing the wheel, rediscovering esoteric wisdom that ought to be common knowledge by now. And if you do learn something new? You hoard it. Lock it away, up here.” He tapped his forehead. “Or write it down in one book, and then hide that book. And when the odds catch up to you? When the ritual goes wrong, when the book is lost, when the mind that wrote it is destroyed . . . Then it’s back to square one, for the next generation.
“I could have waited my turn. Could have waited for my father to blow up the house, just like Titus Braithwhite did a century and a half ago; or for one of his associates to stab him in the back, or curse him, or cast him into an alternate dimension. But I value my time, and I don’t see the point of running an experiment whose outcome is a foregone conclusion. I’m sick of belonging to an Order that wants to change the world but can’t even change itself. I’m tired of the bullshit.
“So I decided to hurry my father along, get him to the end of the road he was traveling, so I could get started forging a new path. A modern path. A no-bullshit path.
“And the reason I’m here talking to you tonight is that I believe—I hope—that some of you might be ready to forge a new path too. Might be ready to come together and start acting like scientists. Not alchemists.”
He paused, and the silence that met him was respectful, or at least attentive.
Richmond spoke up: “What is it you have in mind, Mr. Braithwhite? Union?”
“Union,” Braithwhite agreed. Smiling: “Or confederacy, if you prefer.”
“That’s been tried before,” said Las Vegas.
“On a small scale, yes,” said Braithwhite. “Two or three lodges talking about a merger, with plans for further expansion. But it never goes beyond the first step, because somebody always gets greedy, or decides the other party is about to betray them. And then it ends in tears.”
“So what’s going to be different this time?” asked Baltimore. “You think you can merge all of us at once? You think that’ll be easier?”
“Not easier, no,” Caleb Braithwhite said. “But absolutely worth trying . . . One lodge, spanning the entire country, so big and powerful that any natural philosopher worth the name will want to be part of it. Your individual chapters will still control their own affairs, but you’ll operate under one set of by-laws, administered by a board of directors empowered to settle disputes. There’ll be no more hoarding or needless duplication of effort—like the scientists we claim to be, we’ll share information. We’ll share resources and risk, as well. If you have a particularly urgent research project”—here he looked at some of the older and frailer guests—“you’ll be able to apply for help with it. And we’ll decide, together, how to exploit the discoveries we make. How to change the world, once we can.”
“And who’s going to run this fantasy organization?” Los Angeles said. “If you’ve got a board of directors, you’re going to need a chairman, right?”
“Or a chairwoman,” put in Dalla
s.
“I have an idea for that,” Braithwhite said. “I—”
“I’ll just bet you do,” said Los Angeles. “You know, Braithwhite, there’s more than one story going around about your father. I heard a rumor that right before he died, he found a living descendant of Titus Braithwhite. A direct bloodline descendant.” Ruby saw a few other guests nod, but it appeared that this was news to much of the crowd. “Now what occurs to me,” L.A. continued, “you must know there’s no way in hell we’d accept a squirt like you as our leader. But maybe you and Lancaster are cooking up a scheme to put this long-lost cousin of yours in charge.” Braithwhite didn’t react, but Lancaster laughed, louder than he probably intended to. “I’m sorry, did I say something funny?”
“I don’t think you’re funny,” Braithwhite said. “But you’re right, we are going to need a leader. I won’t insult you by pretending I don’t have an idea who that leader should be. And if there were a living descendant of Titus Braithwhite, and if I thought by trotting him out I could sway some of you to my point of view, well, I’d be tempted. But the problem with appeals to authority is that they’re ultimately subjective. One man’s honored tradition is another’s superstition—and that’s where the knives come out.
“Fortunately, as natural philosophers, we have a more objective standard to rely on: merit. We’re students of nature, and nature has rules, rules that can’t be bent or broken or bargained with, only understood—and through that understanding comes power, power that can be demonstrated. Objectively.
“So I propose we do that,” Caleb Braithwhite said. “Chicago has been the site of two World’s Fairs—two exhibitions of scientific progress. I say we hold an exhibition of our own. I say we meet back here, a few months from now, on Midsummer’s Day. Each lodge will bring an example of its best work, its truest and most advanced expression of the art. We’ll all show what we can do, and then we’ll see. We’ll see who really is the best among us. Who deserves to lead.”
