The Magicians

by James Gunn

  “And then?” I asked, but I knew the answer.

  “He died a month ago."

  “Murder?"

  “He just seemed to waste away,” she said. “Come on.” She got up. My arm fell away. In her hands was a V-shaped wire made of bobby pins bent and hooked together. She held the two ends, muttered something under her breath, and walked up a few steps holding the wire horizontally in front of her. Or maybe, I got the uneasy feeling, it was pulling her.

  She stopped and turned toward one blank gray wall. I scrambled up after her. She moved her hand against the wall as if she were removing condensation from the inside of a window. An opening appeared in the wall. We looked out through it into the lobby as if it were a pane of glass or a one-way mirror.

  People were streaming out of the elevator. I didn't recognize anybody I had seen in the Crystal Room. But I did recognize some of them. One was an energy multimillionaire; I had seen his face on a recent cover of Time. Another was the most recent Hollywood sex goddess, only from here she looked neither like a goddess nor particularly sexy. A third was a country rock star whose talent escaped me but who was capable of sending audiences into spasms of enthusiasm. A fourth was a notorious gambler whose winnings at every kind of game had made him internationally famous. A fifth was a man reputed to be in charge of all Mafia operations on the East Coast. A sixth was a woman whose predictions had made her syndicated columns popular in several hundred newspapers....

  I recognized about half the people passing through the lobby, and I felt as if I ought to know about half of the remainder. “Are these your members?” I asked Ariel in a whisper. I didn't know whether it was necessary, but it felt appropriate.

  She shrugged.

  “Is any of them Solomon?” I asked.

  She shrugged again.

  “Why do they appear to us like this?” I asked. I was getting frustrated with questions for which I could find no answers.

  “I don't know,” she said. It seemed to me that she was speaking the truth; she was really puzzled. “It may be a trick to throw us off. It may be an illusion like the bottomless stairs. Or it may be real. Under certain conditions—reflections in mirrors, for one—people are shown the way they really are. Maybe my counter-magic has acted like a mirror. In the area of spells and counter-spells, we have a great deal yet to learn. The most important thing to learn, however, is that you can't trust anything."

  “Or anyone?” I added.

  “Or anyone,” she said. And added, gratuitously I thought, “Including me."

  A moment later we stepped into the lobby. By then the others were gone, and I had no opportunity to notice if they changed into someone else. The lobby was only a lobby, the plain, everyday, ordinary place I had left a few hours before. The wood fire was still scenting the air. People were walking purposefully toward exits or from them, or seated on a sofa talking to others, or reading a newspaper in one of the armchairs. I didn't recognize any of them.

  I looked back the way we had come. The open stairs went up to a landing, turned, and ascended toward the mezzanine. I faced Ariel. My knees were trembling, but I managed to keep my voice steady. “What would have happened,” I asked, “if we had just kept going down?"

  But she refused to speculate. “It was just an illusion, you know."

  Ariel got her steak. It was broiled, rare, and she ate with enthusiasm, which in other circumstances I would have enjoyed. My appetite was gone, and I was able to get down only half a hamburger before my stomach announced that it was unused to these kind of carryings-on and would cooperate no more.

  In spite of all my problems, I found myself watching Ariel, and I realized that so soon after Suzie I was growing fond of the girl. Suzie had taught me nothing. But Ariel was so different. Suzie had been more beautiful, but Ariel was prettier. Moreover, Ariel was pleasant, warm, talented, and she seemed to be interested in me when she didn't have a steak in front of her.

  I was beginning to wonder if she was interested in temporary arrangements when I remembered what her talent was. A man doesn't want to walk out on a witch; that sort of thing could be permanent, and I resolved to put any such thoughts out of my head before she sensed them. I had the feeling that she was good at that as well. “People don't just waste away,” I said.

  She shook her head. “There are lots of ways to kill a person with magic. The old books are full of them, and some of them really work. You don't even have to believe in them, or know about them. Everybody has heard of wax dolls and pins, but dolls—sometimes they're called mommets—can also be made out of clay and left in a stream; and if the mommet has a connection with a real person the person will slowly die as the doll dissolves."

  “What kind of—of connection?” I asked.

  “If you know the person's real name and call the doll by it, for instance. Or if you have hair or fingernail clippings or handwriting or a photograph or a recording—anything associated with the person."

  “The law of contagion,” I said.

  “That's right,” she said in surprise. “How did you know that?"

  “The program this morning,” I said gloomily. “I learn. I learn slowly, but I do learn."

  She was thoughtful for a moment as if she were remembering some painful experience. “Just before he died, Father told Uriel that somebody had said a Mass of St. Secaire for him. But by then his mind was wandering."

  A Mass of what? I thought. I would never get everything straight. They kept pulling new terms on me.

  “A Black Mass,” Ariel said. “Sometimes it's described as the customary mass that's said for the dead, but it is said for someone who isn't dead—yet. Sometimes it includes all sorts of demonic reversals. You know, like inverting the cross, starting the Lord's Prayer with ‘Our Father who wert in heaven.’ Instead of the Host, they eat and drink all kinds of vile substances. Sometimes they copulate on the altar, kill animals, some say human children, all sorts of nastinesses that I hate to think about, much less describe—"

  I was trying to understand the kind of people who would do these things, not just for fun but seriously. “Why would people with such power descend into those kinds of perversions?"

  “For some of them it's part of the process of getting the power,” Ariel said. “For others it's a religion. The Cathari and the Albigensians were still powerful religious sects in twelfth-century France before the Pope declared a holy crusade against them, and a vast army of Christians swept down on southern France to wipe out whole towns, heretics and faithful alike, with plenty of rape and plunder. And what the crusade didn't destroy, the beginnings of the Inquisition mopped up."

  “But—a religion—” I began. To me there was only one religion, Christianity with all its splintered faiths which, along with atheism, provided opportunity for any variety of conviction to find a home. To me the other religions of the world were just a kind of exotic playacting, often with costumes and strange architecture and peculiar fascinations.

  “The Cathari drew much of their beliefs from the Gnostics and the Manichees,” Ariel said. “They believed that the Old Testament God was a demon, that the world was the creation of the Devil, the Monster of Chaos, that physical existence was evil, that it should be ended as soon as possible, that people should not have children. Many of their practices ended up associated with witchcraft."

  “You—you believe in this sort of thing?” I asked, fearful of an answer even here in the polished plastic and chrome of the coffee shop. Ordinary people were going about their ordinary concerns, waitresses clanked dishes and silverware and snarled at the customers, the air was filled with the smell of potatoes and meat and coffee, and I was back in the Dark Ages with heretics and the Inquisition.

  “Of course not,” she said. “That's all superstition. But other people believe it, and they act upon their beliefs. You see, witchcraft and magic have two separate traditions. One believes in the worship of the Devil and his demons; it practices pollution, sacrilege, desecration, violation, and other kinds of fi
lth. The other believes in the ability of the human mind to command secret forces, in compelling them to do the bidding of man through knowledge and moral force."

  Yeah, I thought. Black magic and white magic.

  “To call them black and white is an oversimplification,” Ariel said. “Every magician believes that his magic is white."

  “Every one?"

  “Well,” she admitted, “maybe not every magician. Like ordinary people, some of them enjoy sadism and degradation. Anyway, my father told Uriel that he had been wrong and Uriel was right. He said they should have given the Art to the world as soon as they had demonstrated that it worked."

  “Or, better yet, burned it,” I said gloomily.

  “My father said that, too,” Ariel continued. “'I'll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my book.’ But he was out of his head then and had confused himself with his namesake. He and Uriel had agreed long before that this was no solution. Real knowledge is indestructible. Someone else would have discovered it. Somebody less scrupulous. Like some of the people who wormed their way into the society."

  My mood had changed from that of a half-hour before when I had imagined all the possible benefits of a world in which magic worked. It wouldn't be that way at all. Instead, every man and woman would suspect his neighbor of working secret evil against him or of succeeding beyond his own abilities. There would be no public laundries or barber shops or manicure salons unless they were carefully guarded and every item and clipping protected. Nobody would allow pictures to be taken or records to be made. Birth certificates would all have to be destroyed, and files of all kinds containing names. Devils would lurk everywhere; no one's property or person would be safe; wars would be fought with regiments of demons, battalions of zombies, and batteries of spells and curses. Nothing would be real but hate and fear...

  “My father and Uriel used to discuss what kind of world it would be where magic was as common as electricity,” Ariel said. “They agreed it wouldn't make that much difference. People would learn to live with it in the same way they learned to live with the airplane and the automobile and television, and soon it would provide a new source of power to improve the conditions and the potential of humanity."

  “Like making people waste away?” I suggested.

  “Father always was so careful,” she said. “He burned his nail clippings and hair combings. Of course we didn't know much about this sort of thing. We weren't interested in experimenting in that area, Gabriel, but some—"

  “My name isn't Gabriel,” I said. “You know that. It's—"

  “Sh-h-h,” she hushed me, holding up her hand for emphasis and looking around at the people seated nearby. None of them seemed interested in our conversation. “You mustn't speak your real name. Anyone who knows it has power over you. That must have been what happened to Father. Several people knew his name. Many of them knew where he had taught; most of his career was a public record. Someone must have mentioned it."

  “To whom?"

  She looked cautiously around the coffee shop again. She lowered her voice. “To Solomon. He's always been Father's rival, and he was the leader of the group that opposed making the Art public. And now that Father is dead, Solomon has made himself Magus. No one will ever again suggest releasing the Art."

  “But couldn't anybody talk? Couldn't you and Uriel publish an article or tell the newspapers or stage a demonstration or—"

  That frightened her. “Oh, we couldn't! You don't know what Solomon could do if he had an excuse! He could mobilize the entire society against us if he could convince the members that we were a threat to all of them. Only Father had a chance of defying Solomon, and he's dead. Did you notice how feeble Uriel looked today? I'm scared, Gabriel. If something happens to Uriel, I'll be all alone."

  “But if you knew his name,” I said slowly, “you'd have a weapon you could use against him. You could protect yourself."

  “That's right,” she said eagerly. “Could you do that? Could you find out his name for me, Gabriel? I'd pay you. I'd—"

  “What do you think I am?"

  She paused as if she were considering the question for the first time. “I don't know,” she said quietly. “What are you?"

  “I'm a private detective,” I said. “I follow people and discover things they'd rather hide. But I have a client."

  “It isn't Solomon, is it?” she asked quickly.

  I thought about it for a moment. “No, it isn't Solomon.” And then I reconsidered. “At least I don't think so."

  “Then couldn't you do this, too? What does your other client want you to do?"

  “The same as you."

  “Then it wouldn't hurt to tell me if you find it out, would it, Gabriel?” she said urgently. “Please, Gabriel.” Her blue eyes were anxious on mine. I looked into them as long as I dared.

  “I guess not,” I said. I never could resist blue eyes that looked trustingly into mine.

  She breathed again. “Who is your other client?"

  “I'm not supposed to tell you that,” I said, “but I guess it doesn't matter. I don't suppose it's her real name, or maybe even her real appearance. It's a Mrs. Peabody. A little old lady. Know her?"

  She shook her head impatiently. “It could be anybody. We all go under assumed names when we're together, and most of us change our appearances, too, so that we won't be recognized."

  I thought of something for the first time. “You mean you don't really look like this?"

  “Oh, not me,” she said. She smiled innocently. “Everybody knows me."

  I wanted to believe her. “That makes it tougher to pin down Solomon. No name. No face. If we assume he's American, male, and adult, we only have about fifty or sixty million people to choose from.” Suddenly I snapped my fingers and got up.

  “What's the matter?"

  “Idea!"

  I breezed into the lobby and up to the desk. Charlie looked up respectfully, but his face fell into more familiar lines as he recognized me.

  “The fellow who told you how to put that notice on the board,” I said. “Is he registered here?"

  Charlie scowled at me. “Tricks?” he said.

  “No tricks. Scout's honor."

  “Penthouse,” he said.

  “How'd he register?"

  Charlie pulled out a drawer and leafed through a block of cards. He flipped one out on the desk. I looked at it hopefully. Then my hopes sank into the pit of my stomach. In bold black letters on the card was printed the name “SOLOMON MAGUS."

  He was bold and confident. He flaunted himself and his society in the face of the world, sure of its blindness. But did his daring approach the foolhardy? Was he getting overbold, overconfident? It was a key to his character. Maybe it would be the key to his downfall.

  “You let him sign the register like that?” I asked.

  Charlie shrugged, sorry now that he had let me talk him into a breach of confidence. “Why not? He had a credit card with the same name."

  “Thanks,” I said, and went back to Ariel. “What was the meaning of that trap on the stairs?” I asked. “Why did they do it?"

  She put down her coffee cup. It had no lipstick stains on it; I liked that. “That was a warning, I think,” she said.

  “To you or to me?"

  “I'd thought it was to me,” she said slowly. “But now—"

  “Yeah,” I said. “Be good or be dead."

  “What are you going to do?” Ariel asked, her eyes fixed on me as if I were the most important person in her life.

  I had been wavering before. I liked to tell myself that I was another Philip Marlowe and trouble was my business even if I drew the line at magic and witchcraft. Not now. I wasn't really tough. I was just mad. “I don't like warnings,” I said.

  Chapter 5

  GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

  HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man;

  But will they come when you do ca
ll for them?

  - William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2

  Ariel said that it would be safer if we weren't seen together. I didn't like that. I argued that we had already sat through the morning session, had been seen talking in the hall and in the lobby and eating lunch together, and whoever set the trap on the stairs knew more about us than either of us liked. But her caution prevailed, and I sat through the afternoon program alone. It made a difference not having a comforting presence beside me.

  I was more attentive and more frightened. Magic. It was real and prosaic, and the latter was the more frightening of the two. Magic was a casual, everyday thing, done by the light of the sun; they accepted it, like the water that comes out of a pipe when you twist a faucet or the lights that turn on when you flick a switch, like the voice that speaks from a telephone or the face that appears on a television set.

  A middle-aged man with brown hair and a neat brown goatee talked about familiars and their practical uses. An unseen hand turned the pages of his manuscript; a glass raised itself to his mouth when he stopped for a drink of water. I thought to myself that it could have been done just as easily, and perhaps with less effort, by hand.

  “Proof!” shouted someone from the audience.

  Solomon was beside the speaker, lean, dark, and compelling, as if he had materialized on the spot instead of moving forward from the row of chairs at the back of the platform. “Will the person who spoke stand and make his objection clear?"

  Uriel stood up in the front row. I saw his pink bald spot gleaming from where I sat near the back. “What proof does the speaker have of the existence of familiars? Where do these mysterious creatures come from? How do they exist? Why should we postulate them when there are simpler explanations—?"

  “You've just seen—” the speaker began, motioning toward the glass and the manuscript.

  “Telekinesis,” Uriel scoffed. “Anyone here could do the same things without summoning a familiar."