Heartlight

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The quarrel between the two men had begun with Blackburn’s antiwar rituals. When Simon had attacked them for being both dangerous and frivolous, Thorne had counterattacked by pointing out that Simon, by reason of his deferment, was in no danger of being drafted, something that was more dangerous to more people than any magick Thorne could ever perform.

  “Surely Thorne isn’t working magick against Simon?” Colin asked.

  But he knew, with a sinking feeling deep inside him, that it would be perfectly in character for Thorne to do such a thing. I wish to know in order to serve … . That was the credo that Thorne had rejected.

  “Well, he’s said he is, of course. And something certainly rattled the doors and windows around here a few nights ago. If it was Blackburn’s doing, I’d say he’s got a pretty impressive string of firecrackers at his disposal,” Alison said. “Fortunately my wards held.”

  This was more evidence—not that Colin had needed it—that Thorne had rejected the rules which bound the Adepts of the Right-Hand Path, the Adepts for whom magickal power was only a by-product of the Path of Self-Knowledge. If not Black, Thorne’s approach was certainly Grey.

  “Of course Simon is absolutely livid,” Alison went on. “I’ve told him that the best course is simply to ignore it. I dare say I’ve taught him enough about shielding himself and his home and possessions that Simon shouldn’t have a thing to worry about, any more than I do. But Simon doesn’t always take my advice,” she finished, sighing.

  “And Thorne has never taken anyone’s advice at all,” Colin said ruefully. “He certainly won’t listen to anything I have to say. Maybe Claire can make him see reason; he’s always been fond of her.”

  But Claire had no more success than Colin had in changing Thorne Blackburn’s mind. Colin had the sense that Thorne was simply baiting Simon, mocking him because—at least to Thorne—Simon Anstey represented both the mundane and the magickal Establishment. Thorne was doing his best to make Simon an object of public ridicule as a form of sympathetic magic, and Simon was determined to run Thorne out of the Bay Area. Neither Thorne nor Simon would break off the feud. It had become increasingly personal and bitter, at least on Simon’s side, and it was polarizing the Bay Area occult community.

  Those who were members of more traditional Magickal Orders—the Ordo Templi Orientis, the Golden Dawn, the Builders of the Adytum, the Rosicrucian Fellowship in America—had taken this opportunity to flock to Simon Anstey’s banner. Thorne had made too many enemies among traditional occultists with his breezy, publicity-seeking style and grandiose claims for the Old Guard to be able to resist the temptation to strike back at him now.

  Thorne’s supporters were mostly drawn from among his own growing band of followers, and from the membership of the increasing number of new Wiccan and Neo-Pagan groups that were springing up everywhere like mushrooms after rain. These new groups had few ties to traditional occultism, condemning it as monotheistic and patriarchal. Their credo—“an ye harm none, do what thou wilt”—captured perfectly the spirit of the Age of Aquarius, and like Thorne, they, too, wished to remove magick from the Temples and set it loose in the streets.

  The dispute even made the pages of the Examiner with an article that cast Simon in the role of a noted parapsychologist exposing a depraved charlatan. Certainly Thorne didn’t make as favorable an impression as Simon did on members of the Establishment—in fact, he sounded very much like a crank by the time the reporter was through with him. But Thorne had other avenues of attack than the Establishment press, and he used them all.

  At any other time, Colin would have considered this a tempest in a teapot. Now, he regarded it as a symptom of a graver divisiveness: the factions of the Light embroiled in petty quarrels at a time when their cooperation was most needed.

  Which side are you on? Thorne had asked him once. Now Colin wondered the same thing about the young magician. Which did Thorne serve: the Light or the Dark? Did even he know?

  June 1967. Colin had found an apartment in North Beach and had moved across the Bay a few weeks before. He was now working with the Rhodes Group full-time. Most of it was fairly routine—if the investigation of hauntings and possession could ever be said to be routine—and the majority of the cases presented to him so far had boasted distinctly mundane solutions. Those which had not had been easily explicable through misunderstood but truly mundane causes had been the rare but hardly supernatural manifestations of common (for lack of a better word) psychic powers—telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, clairvoyance—though many came with occult trappings attached.

  Most people who discovered themselves to be in the tiny psychic minority of mankind turned to the occult for the explanation of their seemingly irrational abilities. They had little choice, since Religion and Science had both failed them—Religion by consigning their gifts to the realm of devil-worship and Science by denying that they existed at all.

  It was no wonder that the majority of psychics were neurotic, as they attempted to reconcile the evidence of their senses with the teachings of their culture. Though Colin disagreed with Thorne’s platform of revealing all the Great Secrets, surely there was some middle ground of psychic education, so that normal, conservative people didn’t have to choose between the Devil and madness when confronted with the Unknown?

  The flyer stuffed into the door of Colin’s apartment—and most of the rest of the ones on the block—announced a Love Magick Be-In Against the War in Golden Gate Park, to be held Saturday, June 17. Thorne had apparently finally received his long-sought permit to assemble, despite all of Simon’s efforts to the contrary. Colin didn’t expect Simon to attend, but Thorne would almost certainly use the occasion to crow about his victory. Watching Thorne and Simon quarrel irritated him almost beyond reason, so Colin had no plans to go, and he’d thought Claire would stay away as well. Then just last night, Claire had phoned him from Berkeley, saying she was coming to the Be-In after all.

  “It’s just a feeling, Colin—and probably indigestion at that. But I feel as if I might be able to do some good if I’m there. I’m planning to bring Peter along for moral support.”

  Claire was not often wrong in her hunches, and Colin had grown to trust them unquestioningly.

  “Then I’ll meet you there. How bad can it be, after all?” he said.

  The sky glowed a deep faience blue, with a few tiny white clouds radiant with the sunlight that passed through them. The temperature was in the high seventies, and the air was clear.

  The Be-In had attracted the usual collection of street people: mimes, face painters, belly dancers, jugglers, wandering musicians, bubble-pipe blowers. Copies of the Voice of Truth were being hawked, and someone was selling helium balloons. Several of the balloons had already escaped, tangling in the trees or riding the ocean winds high above the city. An outdoor stage—empty of people but already set up with a drum set and amplifiers—made a loose focal point for the crowd that had gathered.

  They wore granny dresses and bell-bottoms, dashikis, crocheted halter tops, denim skirts, bright vests, and fringed leathers. They wore peace symbols and granny glasses in candy store tints; love beads and slogan buttons in all the colors of the rainbow. Their hair was almost universally long, men and women alike, hanging straight and shining down their backs, sometimes pulled back into a long tail. They were barefoot and sandaled, carrying backpacks and shoulder bags and their children. They’d come for the music, or the politics, or just for Thorne, this peaceable tribe that would soon—for one brief, shining moment—be known as the Woodstock Nation—a nation which, like the kingdom of Camelot, would dissolve in the very moment of its realization, leaving its exiled children to yearn for it forever after.

  But today their losses were all in the future.

  “Claire!” Colin said with relief, glad to recognize at least one familiar face. “Where’s Peter? I thought he’d be coming with you.”

  “He was called in to work a case at the last minute,” Claire said. “He said he’d be a
long when he could, but I’m not counting on it, mind.” She smiled.

  Her ensemble made no concession to the thrift-shop look of counterculture fashion, and she stood out from the crowd almost as much as Colin did. Claire was wearing a short-sleeved pantsuit in chocolate brown with inserts of hot pink and bright yellow. Her purse and boots were white patent leather, and her white button earrings matched the wide white frames of the sunglasses she wore against the summer sunshine.

  “I’m glad I found you,” Claire said. “This place is really a zoo, isn’t it? Not much chance of a private word.”

  “I stopped by the house earlier, but Tex told me that the others had already come over here. I’d hoped to get a chance to talk to Thorne alone before all this started,” Colin said.

  “You think he’s going to make another attack on Simon,” Claire guessed.

  “It doesn’t take psychic powers to predict that,” Colin said, grimacing. “And, yes, I’d hoped I could talk Thorne into being reasonable. He’ll never get mainstream acceptance for his ideas if he keeps attacking the Establishment at every turn.”

  “And even if he doesn’t want acceptance,” Claire said, “I don’t think Alison can talk Simon out of a lawsuit against those pieces in the Voice of Truth much longer. And with Thorne’s arrest record, it’s hard to see him winning the case.”

  Colin sighed. “That young man is too stubborn for his own good.”

  “Which one?” Claire asked with a wicked smile.

  Thorne’s extended family was easy enough to spot; while Colin and Claire had been talking, they’d driven the Mystery Schoolbus up as close as possible to the stage and were unloading more equipment from it.

  The Mystery Schoolbus had started life as an ordinary yellow school bus, before it had somehow wound up in Thorne’s hands. He’d gutted the bus, converting it to a combination of a motor home and a rolling church, and it had become a Bay Area landmark in the months since its acquisition. The outside of the bus was now covered in a mural-cum-collage that was in a constant state of flux. Today the sunlight glinted brightly off of a shower of glitter stars painted across the dark-blue backdrop of the front right fender. Colin could see Pilgrim running around among the adults, waving a bubble wand. He was covered in multihued body paint and not much else, and had feathers braided into his long black hair.

  Colin and Claire headed in that direction. Katherine was standing off to one side, balancing her daughter on her hip.

  “How’s Truth?” Claire asked, stopping to admire the baby.

  Truth Jourdemayne was three months old now, the lace cap and terrycloth romper she wore oddly conventional when contrasted with her mother’s tie-dyed overalls and T-shirt.

  “She’s growing so fast,” Katherine said. “The last time Caro was here she couldn’t believe how big she’d gotten. I’m so lucky to have her.”

  Caroline was Katherine’s twin sister. She’d been at the Voice of Truth the first night Colin and Claire had gone there, but she was not a member of Thorne’s group. She had a degree in library science and worked at a library back East.

  “Do you know where Thorne is, Katherine?” Colin asked. Maybe Thorne, in the midst of his own success, would agree at least to stop baiting Simon and let the quarrel die of its own accord.

  “He’s got to be somewhere around here,” Katherine said, frowning thoughtfully. “He’s been working on a new ritual ever since the tide turned at the equinox. He calls it Opening the Way. He was going to try part of it out today.”

  Just like Thorne, to test in public what most magicians would try out in strict privacy.

  “He might be back behind the bus,” Katherine suggested.

  “We’ll try there,” Claire said.

  Thorne was, in fact, behind the bus. He was standing on a battered footlocker, photographing the festival with another in a series of the battered cameras that accompanied him everywhere he went. He was wearing faded jeans and worn sandals, and several strands of love beads gleamed against his bare chest. Jonathan Ashwell—similarly dressed—was standing beside him.

  Both men grinned when they saw them.

  “Claire! And Colin—how’s the ghost business these days?”

  “As ever,” Colin said.

  “Gotta go,” Jonathan said, ducking his head. He was still self-conscious around Colin on the rare occasions when they met, as if he suspected Colin might still be angry about his departure from Berkeley. “Nice seeing you, Professor. Claire.”

  “And what about you?” Claire said, when Jonathan had gone. “Ed Sullivan? I watched it the night Debbie said to, but I didn’t see you.”

  “You should have been in the studio audience, baby.” Thorne grinned at her. “I’m doing the Dating Game next week: ‘Bachelor Number One: when immanetizing the eschaton, do you prefer to use (a) Love under Will (b) Vatican City or (c) a nuclear warhead?’”

  Claire snorted. “They’ll probably throw out the tape from that, too.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Thorne said. “It’s so much fun to jerk the pigs’ chains, I wonder why anyone ever does anything else?” He stepped down off the trunk. “C’mon over here. I want to get a picture of you two. A commemorative.”

  He led Colin and Claire a few yards away from the bus, so that he could position them against a stand of trees.

  “The end of the month I’m taking off on a gig that nobody can censor,” Thome went on, as he adjusted the focus. “Anstey may have queered my pitch here, but I still think that solidarity is going to save us. Nothing is stronger than magick! And nothing can stand in the face of magick!”

  As he spoke, Thorne clicked and wound the camera, snapping several pictures.

  “There,” he said with satisfaction. “You have now entered immortality.”

  “What kind of solidarity are you planning?” Colin asked warily. He hoped he didn’t sound as dubious as he felt.

  “I’m going to become a god,” Thorne said happily. “And get everyone to worship me. There’s no reason the Great Work of Transformation needs to be limited to the subtle body—that’s just Old Aeon crap. The Universal Mystery Tour will bring the Great Work to the attention of more people than ever before. I will transform that fame into money and power and use them to reshape the world.”

  “Thorne—” Colin began, but Thorne’s mercurial attention had been summoned elsewhere. “Hey! There’s Irene! Gotta go!” He slung the camera around his neck and took off at a run.

  Colin sighed sharply.

  “Why does he always have to do his best to sound like a raving lunatic?” Claire asked plaintively. “I talked to Johnny Ashwell last week—the Universal Mystery Tour is just a couple of rock bands going on tour, and they’ve asked Thorne to come along. There isn’t anything in that about … gods.”

  “Nobody ever got television coverage by being reasonable, moderate, and serious,” Colin said. “And Thorne seems to be in the entertainment business, for better or for worse. I’d give a great deal to know what Ed Sullivan made of him.”

  “Well, we know what he made of the Ed Sullivan Show,” Claire said succinctly. “Hash.”

  “I’m going to go look for him,” Colin decided, almost against his better judgment. He still wanted to talk to Thorne; if—as he’d implied—he was giving up on his plan to unite the Magickal Lodges and Bay Area New Age groups in political activism, perhaps Colin could persuade Thorne to settle with Simon as well. And if Thorne would drop his “sacred clown” persona for a few moments, perhaps Colin could even explain to him why unity among the forces of the Light now was so important.

  But Thorne seemed to possess an amazing ability not to be found, no matter how hard Colin looked for him. Meanwhile, the stage where the presentations—including Theme’s—would take place was being decorated with bunting, papier-mâché masks, and posters, including some that said “Speed Kills!” with a skull above crossed hypodermics. Brightly colored banners—pink, yellow, purple, acid green—with hand-painted designs billowed gently in the
cool breeze at all four corners of the stage. The whole spectacle had the bright unreality of an illustration from a book of fairy tales.

  But the world in which it existed was grimly real.

  Where was Thorne? He couldn’t simply have vanished. For one thing, he needed to get into costume—Colin would not grant him the dignity of calling what Thorne wore ritual robes—but Colin feared that if he waited until Thorne returned to the bus there would not be enough time to talk to him, and Thorne was much too excited after a ritual for there to be any possibility of a conversation then.

  While Colin had been searching, one of the bands performing at Thorne’s “Be-In”—the name painted on the drumset was “Narzain Kui”—took the stage. Colin had been heading for the bus, but when Narzain Kui began to play, the crowd closed in around the stage, drawn like iron filings to a powerful magnet. Their mass trapped Colin where he was, and he ground his teeth in frustration.

  The raw noise of their first number hit him like a wall of water, but after a moment or so Colin discovered that he could actually make out the words.

  They made a promise they don’t understand

  Now they’ve gone to a strange foreign land

  Pick up your gun and follow the band

  And find yourself killing for killers—

  The song was apparently well-known to the audience; they responded to it as if it were an anthem, and Colin felt a tingling on his skin as the energy level around him soared. The lead guitarist responded with a break that howled like feedback before the band headed into the second verse.

  Killing for killers—it isn’t your fight

  Come rage against the dying of the light—

  Colin had the sense of an inexorable, powerful beast, only half-aware, but simmering with righteous rage. “Wading through blood—do you know what is right—” It was as if the children around him believed that music could substitute for political activism—and God help the country if they ever realized differently.