Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  As much as they served the Darkness, Colin was sworn to oppose them, but what could one man do against the inertia of the government? Some of the children he taught preached revolution, but Colin knew from bitter experience that a revolution would not save them. It would only produce the chaos that would allow a dictatorship to take explicit control.

  Colin thought briefly of Thorne, and the people Thorne called his sacred clowns. Could turning the streets into a circus actually be what was needed? Or was what was needed, as it had always been, no harder—and no easier—than men of good will keeping faith?

  He could not know. Ultimate certainty was reserved to the Light Itself, not to mortal, fallible men. Colin could only hope, and act in accordance with his own conscience.

  He thought again of James Rudbeck, trapped and terrified by the unleashed power of his own mind. Of Claire as he had first known her, hostile and tormented by a gift for whose existence there was no room in the conventional worldview.

  These were his people. These were the ones he must find, and reach, and teach. Each soul he could save from fear was a blow against the Darkness. This was his new war, and now he must find the field on which it was to be fought. And he had been his own master for far too long to continue to devote half his life to something he couldn’t respect.

  “I have to say that I’m delighted to see you here, Dr. MacLaren,” the man behind the desk said.

  The Rhodes Group had spacious offices on the fifteenth floor of one of the anonymous new office buildings that had begun to infest the financial district of San Francisco. Anyone entering the foyer would be forgiven for believing that this, too, was some high-level think tank, or perhaps an international financial firm, teak office suite and English-accented receptionist included. And, in a manner of speaking, this was a research organization.

  The Rhodes Group was a for-profit foundation dedicated to study and investigation of the paranormal in all its guises. It investigated mediums and haunted houses, tested self-proclaimed psychics, and correlated reports from all over the world about advances in the field of parapsychology. Its research library was internationally famous and it held a contract as a government consultant in the field of the paranormal, but the majority of the group’s support came from the individuals and organizations to whom it provided its services, those individuals whose lives had somehow been touched by the uncanny, and who now needed expert counsel.

  “I’m delighted to be here, Mr. Davenant,” Colin responded.

  “Please. Call me Michael,” Michael Davenant responded. He was a few years younger than Colin, with the darkly brilliant good looks that were a hallmark of his Irish ancestry.

  Behind him, through the wall of glass that formed the outside wall of the office, Colin could see the entire sweep of the City spread out before him like the proverbial land of dreams. It was a sunny, late spring day, the start of the long rainless stretch that made up three seasons of the California year.

  “And I’m Colin.”

  Davenant smiled. “Colin, then. As you’ve probably guessed, the reason I’ve asked you back here today is to offer you the position. It would be a great asset to us to have a field researcher with your reputation working with the group, and frankly, I deem it lucky that you’re willing to consider us. The board was favorably impressed with your CV … and fully sympathizes with your decision to leave Berkeley.”

  “Thank you. Although you could say that it was as much Berkeley’s decision as it was mine.”

  His resignation from the university had been a relief all around. They didn’t want a parapsychologist on their staff, and Colin was more and more impatient with the time he was forced to devote to the disciplines that a hundred other men could teach as well. Once he’d made the decision to leave, he’d toyed with the idea of simply returning to New York, but he’d managed to put down roots in the six years he’d lived here, and had made friends he would miss. And it was California that was the center of the Occult Renaissance, from the Church of Satan that Lady Ellen had spoken of …

  To Thorne Blackburn.

  “Well, you may find we’re a more liberal master than the university. No one here cares what a man’s politics are, and as for an interest in the paranormal, that’s why we’re here,” Davenant said.

  Colin had received the full tour of the facility on his previous visit. It was an impressive facility, including interview rooms and two laboratories which could be used for everything from remote viewing experiments to astral travel. He’d be able to devote more time to his parapsychological interests, and the Rhodes Group considered cooperation with the Bay Area police departments as good PR, so they would have no objections to his continuing to make himself available to law enforcement agencies.

  “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 FRANCI
SCO, 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. Ed Sull—”

  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,” Thorne 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.”