by Ian Watson
At last he understood the full significance of that little book of magic, the Lemegeton, the “little key”. It contained many symbols of power—and symbols, as Tom Havelock had suggested at that meeting of the Group in February, possessed an existence of their own beyond any individual mind that experienced them. This had to be so—for the higher order systems in the universe, which caused lower order systems to arise, evolve towards them, and finally become them, were powerful symbol-entities, symbol systems superior to the “event-thoughts” that formed the web of ordinary consensus events in which Humanity still dwelt.
Yet the disconnected sketches of “keys” to these symbol-forces, as presented by the Lemegeton were like so many different components of a dismantled engine being used, by all too human sorcerers, not together to power a vehicle, but separately as so many blunt instruments to kill or maim, or find buried treasure, or compel success in love: as so many tools to sustain human Ego.
Just so had Deacon first launched himself into UFO-consciousness research: to see his name on startling research papers, to attract Air Force dollars from America, to win power over the UFO force. He remembered with a wry amusement, now, his childish euphoria at these prospects—and that grotesque press conference when he returned from Egypt When he’d returned to Granton this last time, though, there had been none of that. It had been burnt out of him. He had surrendered it—along with himself—to the force that took him into its heart in the Mojave Desert.
The little book contained a whole array of little partial keys; and side by side was a list of the lusts, aggressions, ambitions and false desires, covetings and appetites they catered for. He had become nakedly aware of these on board Khidr’s UFO craft as he tried to navigate towards the truth at the same time as he desired Suzie and assaulted her, seduced Michael, and killed Shep with casual, misdirected power. But that was gone now, burnt out, he was sure… and the Khidr force had even corrected his excesses in the event network—for he was very nearly there—bringing about, instead, awakenings…
At long last be felt in control, of himself.
“Where is this place?” he asked, touching the map.
“Right here, John,” smiled the stranger. “Right now! You can enter it anywhere. Only, you can’t return again—except extraordinarily.”
The map was a one-way membrane, leading to another state.
“You can’t afford to modify reality overmuch. John, Or you harm the world before its time. The miracle must always be from outside, from somewhere alien. From this alien city, here.”
The stranger laid a finger on the map, at a point where Deacon now recognized the UFO field diagram (which supposedly invoked the monster Forneus, who could teach the operator all arts and sciences) integrated at long last into the over-pattern.
“You too can lose your name now, if you wish.” The stranger took him by the arm.
“I wish it,” said the one who had been called John Deacon.
The map stretched vastly now, becoming in reality what it had only hitherto been the emblem of. As it became fully real to him, he stepped inside it with the stranger—who was no longer strange at all…
• • •
Briefly, a sea appears. An empty sea. A sea of Void, it rests in perfect balance. Nothing disturbs it. It contains nothing but its own self. It has no separate parts, no dimensions to define such parts, nor time, nor space to locate them. Every point in it is the same point; empty, it is infinitely dense…
He recognizes that sea—and just as he recognizes it: instantly, a world of time and space projects from it—all the peaks and valleys of existence—as though an infinite Pacific has been drained this very moment.
Life whirlpools out, to know this object-world: mind-islands afloat in a common sea of awareness, all unaware at first of the fluid which is their mutual medium, yet linked in a pattern of consciousness, in a fluid city with many pathways, many buildings, many architectures. This city.
An infinitely branching U-tube links all consciousness. And it separates it, too, cupping consciousness in separate transmitters: here, there, there…
Every amoeba, every fly, every cat and human being, every alien being wherever, is an arm of this same multi-branching tube, “cutting out” in its separateness all the separate items of the world. All kinds of linkages are possible to one who knows, across space-time…
• • •
The city stands around him, alive, thinking, unfolding. Buildings, avenues, mazes of mind, with doorways yielding into other lives, other existences.
Free now from ego-binding, yet still aware of a “self”, he can phase into any other life; become a dinosaur, an insect, a dervish. Which is one way: the way of the untutored who die into the void sea and struggle clear, grasping for another time-bound life. The way of karma. Choosing another way, he can soar far through the city of mind to where alien minds elsewhere in the universe, more aware minds, will welcome him. For there exists a higher consciousness level, he knows now; there are beings on alien planets circling alien suns who are also, in their minds, inhabitants of this same city, of its palaces and mazes. The city extends itself as they think fit: they who shape the Pattern they have come to inhabit.
Surely such beings as the Gebraudi must actually exist: on another world elsewhere, elsewhen, orbiting some alien sun. For the symbolic visions that Michael experienced in the alien Moonbase, and the symbolic alien presences he met there, surely came economically from elsewhere in the network of mind which Deacon had only just begun to tread. Surely the Gebraudi—living creatures somewhere in space and time, in constant touch with the higher patterns—must be aware of this city. Down through the infinite branches of the U-tube, and up again, surely they can be found. He prepares to soar. To dive.
His companion who has freed himself many years ago, to join this network—quickly takes his arm.
“You’re still impetuous. Don’t be too hasty. Don’t enter the mind-space of other branches yet,” warns his companion. “It can harm your own separate self, and theirs. You might lose yourself in another’s existence. First, learn control. First, learn your duty to your world. You’re part of what is unknowable to the world, now. Part of the guiding suction. We have to help the world evolve, isn’t that so? You have world enough and time. There are doors and windows to everywhere. When you are ready, re-enter. But remember: you are unknowable. You are an enigma now. You offer no proof, you can only offer clues.”
And he nods. He nods. It is so.
So they set out together, at an easy pace, to explore the nearer sector of the city which lies at the centre of the world, and of every world.
• • •
John didn’t return home.
He became a missing person. Yet Mary was sure he was alive somewhere in the world. Hiding under an alias. Curiously, she bore no regrets. Nor did she resent his childish defection, his abandonment. Occasionally site dreamt of him; when she did so he seemed more intensely present than ever he had previously. Waking did no!, strangely, produce a sense of emptiness.
His defection solved several matters. Celia seemed bitterly glad, swimming back again to shore, homeward from the waves she had flirted with, as though she had only wanted the excuse to return. Rob involved himself deeply in his own hobbies, amateur botany, geology. As autumn came round again, he even persuaded his mother to cook some of that year’s crop of parasol mushrooms.
Which, in fact, tasted quite delicious.
Thirty-Five
Now that he’d graduated and been posted to Tanta in the Delta, Salim visited the Cairo headquarters of the Fihi’iya Order less often; however, a small zawiya—a lodge of the Order—existed in Tanta too. He suspected he may have been assisted to his post in Tanta, rather than some other town, to help reinforce the Order there.
One weekend in October he came back to Cairo to visit his parents. In the evening he set out for Gamaliya. His father only grumbled mildly, since Salim now had a proper job. On impulse Salim quit his bus in al-Azha
r Street, to walk south through the old inner city towards Bab Zuweyla.
That gate of execution, where the last sultan had been crucified, towered darkly over evening crowds, market stalls and tardy taxis, its tenuous minarets at odds with the burly towers beneath. He saw an old woman thrust a scrap of cloth in between the wood and nails of the gate—begging the sympathy of the saint al-Mutawalli who flew from here clear to Baghdad by the power of thought in the days after the gate had ceased to be a place of death and become one of life. A few other rags and ribbons and even some pieces of paper with petitions scribbled on them clung to the ancient wood.
An old white Mercedes drew up. Salim’s heart quickened as he recognized the driver, and in the rear the Sheikh himself, speaking to someone.
Surely it was that Englishman, Dr Deacon? He who had been part of the miracle… God be praised, thought Salim, recognizing him. He wondered why the Englishman had returned to Cairo. Yet something made him hesitate about intruding. As he watched, Deacon got out of the Sheikh’s car. For a moment the Englishman gazed across the roof of the Mercedes, and met Salim’s eyes. His expression looked very different from that of bewilderment, and even anger, which Salim remembered on his earlier visit; it was one of kindly amusement, now. It was a look that Salim remembered well: the glance of the dervish-robed stranger in the courtyard.
Salim waved, but a truck loaded with sacks of potatoes came in between, blocking his view. When it passed, the Englishman had gone.
Sheikh Muradi sat gazing up at the old gateway while humanity thronged past the stationary car in their midst. A taxi hooted, flicked its headlights up, then detoured. And still the Sheikh sat watching, as though the gateway was a gate of dreams.
Salim walked over and cleared his throat.
“Sidi—”
The Sheikh blinked. For a moment he seemed not to know who addressed him.
“Ah, Salim—it’s you!” Muradi exclaimed. “Thank you. Thank you for helping me to be heedless!” It was too kindly said to be a real rebuke for breaking his train of thought. Muradi opened the rear door and shifted over, offering Salim a lift along into Gamaliya.
As Salim slammed the door, he glanced up at the looming gateway; and as he looked, he saw a bright star flick out of position in its constellation and fly away across the night sky. A fighter plane, no doubt, on patrol.
“Tell me how our brothers are in Tanta?”
“They’re all well. The work goes well… Master—I saw Dr Deacon just now, sitting where you are sitting. You were speaking to him. How does he come to be in Cairo? Is this like last time?”
“I’m glad you saw him. This time, Salim, he came in full knowledge.”
“He saw me too, standing across the street. I thought he looked… like the one we met in the courtyard. He had the same expression.”
“Ah, but did you see how he went?”
Salim shook his head. “No. A truck got in the way. He was gone by the time it passed.”
The Sheikh squinted up out of the bright tunnel of the street, at the dark speckled sky. “You really didn’t see?”
Salim frowned. “How could I? I suppose he went through Bab Zuweyla.”
“And no one else saw, either. It isn’t time yet for you, Salim. So the world goes on,” The Sheikh settled back against the cream upholstery. “Do tell me about the engineering work!”
So Salim told him: about a bridge he’d helped erect across one of the many streams of the Nile delta. It had been a fine bridge. He’d brought a photograph home to show his father; and his father had been proud.
• • •
Somewhere else,
Khidr smiled.
