“Listen, Shaw! Ordinarily you would have to suffer through many years of initiation to understand this, but we have no time, and I have no patience. The Sphere of the Sun is at the peak of creation, fons et origo. The Sphere of Mars lies below ours in the Cosmic Ordering. That is to say, it has a lower energy state—it is colder, and slower. ‘The light is not above one-half, and its heat one-third of ours.’ Daniel Defoe said that. Not so cold as icy Jupiter, or the unthinkable depths of Saturn, but cold enough. If it has inhabitants, they may be like our friend in the room next door—simple and frail creatures. Do you see? Ripe for exploration.”
“Exploration.”
“Yes.”
“And what do you plan to do there?”
“We shall test our courage and our will against the universe itself.”
“This is madness, Atwood.”
“We won’t go far tonight. An evening stroll down a country lane; that’s all. But you must see, and understand.”
“I’ll see what there is to see, I suppose.”
“You say that as if that isn’t the very hardest thing in the world to do. Now, listen. Focus your gaze upon the black dot—there, do you see? On the tattva. Empty your mind; think of nothing but my voice. Do not blink. Do not move your gaze. Not yet! When I say. Soon you will see that the red circle will vanish, then the blue, and lastly the yellow…”
It worked just as Atwood said it would, though it took some time, because at first whenever one of the circles began to fade to white Arthur found his attention drawn to where it had been, and then there it was again. But with a little discipline, the card was soon white as a snowfield, but for the black dot. Arthur thought it a very striking optical illusion. Meanwhile, Atwood chanted something. It was Greek, Arthur thought, or mostly Greek, and he didn’t know what it meant. But sometimes there were words of English in it—for instance, sometimes Atwood said Up! and Arthur felt a tug that nearly caused him to stand. Sometimes he said Down! and Arthur felt his stomach lurch as it does when one wakes from a dream of falling. At the edge of his vision, the walls of the library seemed to recede. He felt that he was on the verge of fainting.
Arthur stared at the dot. He’d taken it at first for a tiny spot of black paint, but further investigation revealed a very small and intricate design. It must have taken extraordinary patience and a steady hand to paint so small. The dot was a black hexagon. Within that was a black hexagram. Within that was a circle. And within that was another hexagon. Around the edges of his vision there were lights now, as Atwood named the planets and the stars. Within the hexagon another hexagram, and within that, another circle. Up! and Down! Atwood named the numbers and the gods. A hexagon, a hexagram, a circle. He fell. A hexagon, a hexagram. A ray of black light spiralling down into the dark, touching each point of the star as it descended: a black star, weaving a black star. When Atwood’s voice said Wake! Now! Arthur jumped up from his chair. Up and up, weightlessly. There was no chair. He was nowhere at all. All around him was darkness, lit with stars. He looked down and couldn’t see his hands or his feet or anything at all.
“Steady.” It was Atwood’s voice, from behind Arthur’s shoulder, or where his shoulder would have been; but Atwood was nowhere to be seen. Arthur felt terrible vertigo. Unwisely, he looked down.
Above him and around him were stars. Beneath him, at an unthinkable distance, was London—or, more accurately, Atwood’s house. Most of the rest of the city was fog, except for Rugby Street, the Museum, parts of the river. Atwood’s house was fog too—it was made of fog—a shape in the clouds—faint fog in a mirror. Arthur could see dimly through its roof, as if it were the wax-paper window of a doll’s house, and he could see himself and Atwood sitting around a table, faint grey demi-solidities in the mist …
He felt himself descending.
“No,” Atwood said. “Not until I permit it.”
End this trick at once, Arthur tried to say, but he couldn’t speak.
“Look up,” Atwood said.
The stars, again, all around, and darkness. In the infinite distance, where one might on a clear night ordinarily expect to see the Milky Way, there was a faint rainbow of coloured light. A cold wind rushed past Arthur’s head, or where it seemed to him that his head should be—as if he were standing atop Nelson’s Column at night.
“The first gyre. Thank me, Shaw. There are thousands in London who would give up all that they have for such a vision.”
Arthur tried again to demand that Atwood end his trick—that he let him down.
“No,” Atwood said.
Arthur was afraid, and very angry.
He looked down again, and tried to will himself down. Atwood’s voice boomed No, and Arthur shook, buffeted by the wind. The misty earth below him reeled as he spun weightlessly and at great speed, tumbling in orbit. By the time he regained control of himself and looked down again, the misty scene far below might have been Africa, for all he could tell, or the Pacific.
“See, Shaw? You have a great deal to learn.”
Atwood’s self-satisfied voice sounded from just beside Arthur’s ear. Arthur stumbled and turned towards Atwood as if he might somehow be able to hit him. Atwood breathed no and Arthur was off again, tumbling head over heels, over Antarctica and the Cape of Good Hope and Bombay—he thought he saw great grey cloud-elephants in the zoo—and Land’s End and who knows where else. A girdle ’round the Earth, he thought, in forty minutes … but forty minutes was for ever, it seemed. Overhead, the stars were all shooting—white lines of pure crystalline motion. He dug in his heels—or he would have, if he’d had heels—and came to a halt over John O’Groats. Grey rocks and grey sea and ragged islands. Atwood was there behind him laughing no! and Arthur was off yet again, the clouds tumbling beneath him, the stars zigzagging above. Like a cat Atwood followed him, and as soon as he next came to rest, Atwood repeated his trick. Arthur was furious. He had a sudden notion of what it might look like to someone below, if they’d looked up, if there was a below: a great fat oaf of a comet in shirt-sleeves bouncing back and forth across the sky, uttering curses! He laughed, then, and he began to master his anger. He told himself that the clouds, the stars, were only illusion. He’d been hypnotised. The clouds weren’t there, and he was still in Atwood’s library.
He came to rest. When Atwood spoke behind him, Arthur concentrated with all his strength on the notion that he was not moving, he was not falling, he was still. He was twice Atwood’s size. Atwood could not bat him about like a cat with a mouse.
He was still.
He felt Atwood’s red-hot irritation.
He planted himself more firmly.
Hot winds buffeted him.
Atwood said, “Enough.”
* * *
At once they were back in Atwood’s library. There was no wind. They were both sitting at Atwood’s table, and Arthur was panting and holding the white tattva card in his hands so tightly that his fingers hurt. His heart beat as if he’d run to and from all those places he’d glimpsed in his vision.
For just a moment Atwood looked flustered, and sweaty.
“Well,” he said, smoothing his hair. “Not bad for a beginner. But you have a lot left to learn, Shaw.”
Atwood got up from the table. He went to the far side of the room and replaced the cards and the book on the shelf.
Arthur stole a dizzy glance upwards, and saw to his relief that the ceiling was real and solid. No stars were visible. He got to his feet. He touched his face, ran his hands across his scalp. He ached. His skin was raw, as if he’d stood out in a high wind for hours.
It occurred to him that he wasn’t really a raw beginner in this sort of thing. Certainly he’d never attempted magic before; but two months in Gracewell’s Engine was a solid foundation in the art of self-discipline.
He looked at Atwood, standing by the shelf, head bowed, as if studying the spines of the books. Infuriating, sinister; undeniably somewhat magnetic. A madman, perhaps, but not a fraud or a fool. He knew that he was be
ing stared at, of course. Like an actor, he seemed to take it for granted.
At last Atwood sighed and said, “Josephine is far more remote. Adrift in utter darkness. She will not find her way home unaided.”
“I believe you. Good night, Atwood. I’m going to see that she’s comfortable.”
“That was a game. Our real goal is a thousand times more difficult and more remote. Past the moon and onwards. We cannot reach it without Gracewell.”
“Well, Atwood: in the morning we can plan again.”
Arthur was half-way up the winding stairs that led to the gallery when he heard a knocking noise. He stopped. It came again.
“Do you hear that, Atwood?”
Atwood had not moved from where he stood. He was watching the door in the corner of the room—the door that led to the little side library where he kept his rare books, and the native of the Spheres.
Something behind that door knocked and scratched and scraped.
Atwood slowly approached the door. Arthur went to stand beside him. If Atwood were brave enough to open the door, Arthur didn’t see how he could in good conscience do any less.
The knocking and scratching ceased.
Atwood took the key down from its hook. His eyes were bright with excitement and anticipation, and his hands shook as he unlocked the door. It stuck. “Shaw—help me. There’s something…” Arthur put his back into it and the door opened. The weight that had blocked it rolled over. It was the creature itself, slumped against the door, curled up on the floor. It was still alive; its mottled indigo hide rose and fell with soft fluttering breaths. There was an overpowering stench of dead flowers and stagnant water.
It leapt to its feet, faster than Arthur’s eye could follow, legs extending to their full impressive height. It began to flap its long arms about in rapid herky-jerky motions like a puppet being shaken. Perhaps it was trying to signal something, but Arthur had no idea what, and the flurry of motion lasted only instants before it charged. Arthur tried to block it, but it dodged around him with ease and then it was out into the library.
It leapt effortlessly up onto the table. It appeared frenzied, as if this was the last strength of its dying moments.
“Stop!” Atwood commanded. “This is my house. I bind you, creature of the Spheres, in the name of Earth, Terra Mater! I bind you in the name of the Sun! I bind you in the name of God! I bind you in the name of Mercury! I bind you in the name of…”
Arthur got a good look at its silvery eyes. He didn’t like what he saw. They seemed to him to be full of malice.
It leapt up off the table and into the air. Its legs were thin but they were long and springy, and it weighed very little, so it reached a good height—rather like a grasshopper. At the height of its jump it fanned out its wings with a noise like sails snapping full of wind. No question any more that they were wings, wide and blue and complex in their structure, but they found no purchase on the dusty air of Atwood’s library. The creature fell back onto the table and rolled onto the floor.
Arthur ran for the rifle. The creature didn’t try to stop him. Perhaps it didn’t know what a rifle was. It leapt again, caught the edge of the gallery with one long-fingered hand, and pulled itself up. It looked around. It didn’t seem to recognise the door as a means of escape. Arthur was terrified regardless, thinking of Josephine upstairs, Abby watching over her. God bless Abby, who seemed like a stalwart girl to have put up with all that she had put up with, but if that monster crashed through the door of the bedroom, there wouldn’t be much Abby could do to stop it …
He shot at it. He missed and hit books instead. Atwood kept up his chant, which seemed to leave the creature quite unimpressed. Arthur worked the rifle’s bolt. It was an old Lee-Metford, which was a stroke of rare good luck, because he’d once written about the Lee-Metford, free-lance for the Military Recorder, and had shot at tin cans with one or two. He wasn’t a wholly bad shot. He fired and missed again. The creature wouldn’t keep still.
It darted back and forth along the gallery, then climbed over the railing, stumbled, and fell back down to the floor of the library. Arthur was sure it had died. Atwood came and stood over it. Just as he said, “What a waste!” it lurched up and slashed his cheek with its wing. He cried out and fell.
The creature rose to its full height. It fanned out its wings, which began to change colour, rapidly and kaleidoscopically, while from their motions there arose a strange high thrum.
Arthur shot it.
It fell. The stench of dead flowers filled the room, and he gagged.
Atwood stood. Blood ran from his cheek down his collar. Good, Arthur thought; serves him right. He was mumbling unpleasantly, urgently, wetly—what a waste, poor thing, imagine it, lost in our world!
Instead, Arthur imagined Josephine, lost in theirs. A horrible thought.
Good shot, Atwood mumbled, well done, still, what a waste.
“It was dying anyway, Atwood. I think it—it started to fall before I shot it. It was…”
Could it breathe on Earth? Could it fly? He tried to take into account the atmosphere of Mars, surely thinner than Earth’s, its gravity, the physical difficulties a native of Mars might experience here. He was too tired. Besides, was it from Mars? Or Venus? Or the Moon? Or none of those places, but from some other realm separated from London by more than mere distance? He didn’t know. He knew nothing, and understood nothing.
“It looked wild,” he said.
Atwood had found a little folding hand mirror, and was examining the gash on his cheek. He was mumbling still, swearing and venting his frustrations. Arthur didn’t give a damn. The wound in his side had started to hurt again. He supposed he’d probably torn something.
He went to the desk and put the rifle back on its hooks.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. “We can plan tomorrow. But I will not have Josephine spend another night in this God-forsaken house; do you hear?”
Chapter Seventeen
The Company maintained their learning in a dozen or more hand-written journals, which Arthur was permitted, under an oath of utter secrecy, to study. Jupiter referred to them as the notes, and Atwood called them the Liber Ad Astra, or A.A. for short, or the Book.
It was a hodge-podge of Masonry, Greek myth, Egyptian fantasy, debased Christianity, third-hand Hinduism, and modern and ancient astronomy, promiscuously and nonsensically mixed. Some of it was in Atwood’s handwriting, some of it in Jupiter’s. Parts of it were in Latin. SAPERE AUDE was written on the frontispiece: DARE TO KNOW. Atwood’s notes hinted that the parts of the Book that had been entrusted to Arthur were merely the outer learning, and that certain other books might contain higher and deeper and more exclusive principles, and the identities of the Hidden Masters from whom those principles derived. Arthur took that to be a sort of bluff. Josephine had told him the way this sort of odd little occult fraternity generally operated: the esoteric knowledge that was not shared with initiates and therefore could not be questioned; the rumour of hidden sages in Tibet or Russia or Paris or other places more interesting and romantic than the Edgware Road, or Bromley, or Surbiton, where the ancient knowledge had almost certainly been cobbled together last Tuesday.
The Book was riddled throughout with paradox, and absurdity, and contradiction. Thinking too long or too hard on it caused something like vertigo; it was as bad in its way as Gracewell’s Work. But after a week or two of study, Arthur began to enjoy it. He felt guilty about enjoying it, but he did. There was some satisfaction to be had in learning the secret rules that governed the universe. It was like being in a rather important and exclusive sort of club. He even developed a sneaking suspicion that he was rather good at it, despite what Atwood said. He supposed there were worse things to be good at.
I: SUN
First: the Company imagined a sort of Copernican cosmos of invisible concentric spheres, which carried the visible planets in their rotations through the heavens. Of course these spheres were not mechanical things—nothing so crude—but n
or were they mere metaphors. They were made of something that was not quite like earthly matter, but not quite nothing either: aether. They were best understood as states of energy, or consciousness, or vibration, or perhaps spirit, whatever spirit meant. Atwood was fond of quoting Corinthians: Not all flesh is alike … There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies, but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial another. It was in their nature to move in endless, perfect circles.
The Sphere of the Sun stood at the centre and apex of Creation. It turned endlessly, and each atom of it was like a rose of ten thousand angels endlessly revolving—and yet it was unchanging. In the lesser spheres, Atwood believed, time was circular; the centre of things was timeless, or alternatively time moved so rapidly there that it might as well be timeless. If the Sun had an inhabitant it was God: singular, and self-sufficient, like the God of the Jews.
The Company had also discovered (or hallucinated) a complicated system of occult correspondences between the heavenly spheres and the things of the Earth. Among other things, the Sun corresponded to the colours gold and white; to fire, diamonds, musk, and the lion; and to the Ouroboros and Kether, the Crown of the Sephiroth. The manipulation of these signs and correspondences was at the heart of the Company’s magic.
The man who occupied the role of Sun refused to give Arthur any other name. One was enough, he liked to say. The Company sometimes called him Mr Sun, as if it were the name he’d been born with. He was stocky, white-haired and bearded, with dark intelligent eyes. He dressed in the English manner, in dark suits, but always with a touch of vivid aestheticism: a bright tie, a golden tie-stud, some fine fur. The golden ring on his index finger depicted the Ouroboros. He clearly knew some doctoring. He carried himself like a man with important business interests. He was muscular despite his age: wrists thick and powerful, hands callused and square. Atwood said that Sun was an importer of antiquities—he made it sound shady. At the Company’s meetings Sun spoke little, listening thoughtfully while Atwood and Jupiter argued and paced and argued again, and Thérèse Didot made sarcastic interjections. When he spoke, his deep voice startled everyone, and demanded attention.
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