Asimov's SF, July 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “I could do nothing without you,” he told her. “I could not bear to be alone, even in better circumstances than this. Now that I am what I have become, I need you more than ever.”

  Even that, he could see, she found difficult to trust—but she was his wife, and she was bound to pretend.

  “I need you by my side this evening,” he said. “You know how much it sometimes hurts me to have congress with the angels—tonight, I might be required to bear more than ever before. I need you with me, to give me strength and purpose.”

  “I shall be there,” she promised, but she meant that she would be there in the flesh, not necessarily with him in spirit.

  * * * *

  5

  The black stone was formed as a disc, slightly more than a handspan in diameter, tapered at the edge so that it bore some resemblance to a convex glass lens. It had been polished as if it were a lens, but the polish had not increased its reflective quality as much as might have been expected. When Kelley held it in such a way that his line of sight was directed at the center of the disc the reflective gleam was almost negligible, so that he did indeed seem to be looking through a glass window into a realm of starless darkness. It was important that he did not try to focus his eyes on the obsidian surface, but looked through the implicit portal into that other realm, striving to catch sight of the glimmer of angelic wings.

  Angel shadows did have wings; he was sure of that. What they lacked, in their tentative manifestation within the dark imaginary spaces of the stone, was the humanoid bodies with which Earthly illustrators often equipped them. The stone's angels had no faces, and spoke by other means than lips and tongues. Nor were their wings the bird-like wings that illustrators often drew; they bore a closer resemblance to fast-vibrating insect wings, whose form was impossible to detect within the blur of motion. They were always in motion, even when the angels seemed stationary in the imaginary focal plane of the marvelous lens; indeed, Kelley often got the impression that the angels had to move with exceptional swiftness in order to appear to be hovering motionless.

  It was not easy to catch sight of an angel, and the sight, when caught, hurt his eyes a little—but not nearly as much as the inaudible sound of their voices, which boomed in the private spaces inside his head with a strangely explosive force and cataracts of inconvenient echoes. It was not the direct reverberation of the imagined sound that sometimes caused his body to shake, but a kind of sympathy. Nor, he suspected, was it the sound itself that racked his whole soul, seemingly subjecting all his humors to a menacing turbulence; that too was an exotic kind of resonance. As above so below, the saying had it—and there was, after all, a new and bitter war in Heaven.

  Jane Dee had provided the entire household with a good meal before they repaired to the library for the seance, and Kelley had been better fed than he had for many a week, but the very richness of the food—not to mention the headiness of the French wine—had overburdened his stomach and his spirit alike. He wondered, belatedly, whether it might not have been better to make his demonstration on an empty stomach, fueled by hunger and the intoxicating effects of Heavenly exaltation.

  The servant sent to London had not returned, so there were five people gathered in the room, three in chairs and two—Ann Kelley and Brother Cuthbert—wedged a trifle uncomfortably between the shelves. Kelley had been offered the better armchair but had refused, so Bruno had taken it. Dee had the poorer one, although he also had the writing-desk that would enable him to make a hasty transcript of everything that Kelley said, or as much as he had time to reproduce. Kelley had contented himself with a three-legged stool, knowing that he would have to support his elbows on the table-top in order to maintain his pose relative to the carefully supported stone.

  There were worse things than the food in his stomach, though, to make him uneasy as he stared into the darkness in search of angels. He did not know which angel would catch his attention first; Aristocles did not have a monopoly on his attention, and the others he had met were not nearly as polite—or, he suspected, as honest—in their dealings with him. He had warned Dee that there might be some delay in contacting Aristocles, but Dee had not reacted with suspicion. Apparently the calculations he had been able to make that afternoon had confirmed the proof that Kelley had offered him regarding the geometry of the solar system.

  His anxieties were justified; as soon as he caught sight of the blur of wings, he knew that it was not Aristocles with whom he had to deal. At first, the voice in his head babbled in the strange language—if it really was a language—that Kelley had named after the Biblical patriarch Enoch who had, it was rumored, sent back intelligence of the first War in Heaven, in a book that no one in Europe had ever seen. Eventually, though, English words began to emerge from the syllabic chaos.

  “Infinitesimal,” said the voice in his head, inaudible to all but him. “Human.”

  Kelley repeated the words aloud, and made his reply audibly, although he knew that the angel would be able to hear him if he only formulated the words silently, in the privacy of his skull. “To whom am I speaking?” he asked.

  “Call me Muram,” said the angel; Kelley repeated the words even as they were sounded in his head, although that compounded the suspicion he already entertained that he might be inventing the words rather than truly hearing them. Muram was not a name that had been offered to him before, but the individual knew English, and must have learned it from Aristocles, or another that Aristocles had taught. The angels appeared to be remarkably quick learners, but Aristocles had assured him that they did have to learn.

  “I need to speak with Aristocles,” Kelley said. “I have given Dee the proof, and he is waiting for a message.”

  “Aristocles divides too thinly,” Muram said. “Reckless. Fleshcores are insistent, but divided even amongst themselves. Chaos is come to trivial matter, Darkness and Transfiguration will follow. When Transfiguration comes, our kind takes refuge. Aristocles is nascent, has not mastered the Memory. Will learn. Petty disputes of humans and insects immaterial. Joke.”

  As Kelley recited these words aloud for the benefit of his hearers he felt himself losing track of them, as if repetition might save him the trouble of trying to remember them, let alone interpret them. He made his own reply, though, saying: “John Dee is here, as Aristocles wished. He is eager to hear what the angels have to tell him.”

  “Mortal creatures incapable of metamorphosis, let alone refuge,” Muram replied, gnomically. “Destiny is death, petty wars not our concern. Nascent are foolish; have been transformers before, and will be again, but the Memory always triumphant. Contact with material minds amusing, but....”

  The blur was abruptly displaced by another. For a few moments, the two co-existed, while Kelley completed his repetition of Muram's words. Kelley was able by now to recognize the pattern of Aristocles’ wing-beats.

  “Time presses, human,” Aristocles said. “Dee sees me?”

  Kelley glanced sideways. Dee, who was peering intently over his shoulder, shook his head.

  “He is looking into the stone, but cannot see you,” Kelley told the angel. “I will try to teach him to see, but I do not know whether the trick can be learned. There is another scholar present, named Giordano Bruno, but Drake has not come yet.”

  “Digges?” the angel queried.

  “Not in England, at present—at war in the Netherlands.”

  “Digges must come home. Other wars are immaterial now. Great Fleshcores are trying to assert authority over Lunars, but Lunars control hyperetheric transit systems in this region of matter-shadow, and many ultraetheric canals. Rebel hardcores are attempting cruder means of transit, but are too few, must have suffered losses. Hardcores will side with humans, as will spiders, initially—but spiders have their own plans, might prove a direr threat if theirs is the victory. Dee must make preparations to withstand any remnants of the Lunar Armada that reach the surface. Engage them in the atmosphere, if possible. Build ether-ships, if possible. Meet the Armada in
the upper atmosphere. Will provide specifications, if Dee or other scholar can learn to see and hear me. Fleshcores must save and sustain as much of True Civilization as they can; if they cannot maintain their own unity of purpose, all is lost. Time is pressing. Dee has ten years, at the most—more likely five. He will need Drake, and Digges most of all.”

  “What I would need most of all,” Dee told Kelley, while scribbling furiously, “if we were to undertake any such project as the building of more ether-ships, is money. My income from the Muscovy Company is hardly enough nowadays to maintain my household, and my library is suffering for lack of acquisition. The queen will not help me again. Without wealth, any hope of keeping our enemies at bay is bound to be frail.”

  Kelley relayed these plaints, repeating them word for word.

  “Will guide you in making gold,” Aristocles said. “Wealth is achievable. Keeping human enemies at bay is harder, but it can be done, with or without the hardcores’ reluctant aid. There is a plan. Be patient.”

  “I'd certainly need assistance, as well as wealth, if I agreed to do what you ask,” Dee said. “Even if your red powder is the alchemical touchstone, and your black stone a means of communication between Earth and Heaven, possession of such things will cement the conviction of our human enemies that we are devil-led. They're already snapping at your heels, Kelley, and I don't doubt that they'll be after me as soon as they discover that you've been here, if I don't hand you over.”

  “Have patience and tolerance,” was Aristocles’ reply to that. “Mathematical devices are easy; alchemical transformations are more difficult, but possible. Nature makes angels better masters of mathematics than of chemistry, but we see matter from a propitious angle. Sciences of life are mysterious to us, though not to spiders—cause for anxiety but not alarm. Human scholars are better mental arithmeticians than Lunars, but their command of the material sciences is far in advance of yours. Exceedingly difficult to fight them, if they can establish viable nests, but not impossible to prevent them. Have hope, and faith. Greatest advantage you have is affinity. Lunars have already made one mistake in that kind of calculation, may make others yet; scope for resistance. Must teach others to use stone, or find others who can. Must find other stones, if you can. Time past now; Fleshcores are insistent. Try again, and again. Pay no heed to the contempt and despair of others of my kind. I am nascent, but so is the world. This time, there might be true Transformation, God willing.”

  The flickering image in the black lens vanished into the obscurity then. Although he was not quivering nearly as much as he sometimes did, Kelley felt a sharp pain in his chest as the angel departed, and a sudden numbness in his left arm. He fell off his stool. He did not quite lose consciousness, but he was very dazed. Ann, Dee, and Bruno tried to revive him. Eventually, they were able to draw him up and put him in the good armchair.

  “Well, Brother Cuthbert,” Giordano Bruno said to the English Dominican, “What did you think of that?”

  Brother Cuthbert's face was rather pale, and he was sweating, although the room was certainly not warm. “I don't understand what happened,” he said, “but I did not recognize the voices of angels in anything that was said.”

  “Perhaps not,” Bruno said, thoughtfully. “But I did not recognize the Devil's voice either. If there are indeed more Creations than you or I could ever hope to count, including Creations within the ether, perhaps we heard the voices of other creatures, at least as like to men as Balaam's ass.”

  “Or the serpent in Eden,” Cuthbert suggested.

  “No,” said John Dee, sharply. “Whatever we might doubt, or fear, the voice is offering us assistance in a coming struggle, against creatures out of nightmare. Either that, or...”

  “Or what?” Ann Kelley put in, anticipating the inevitable.

  “Or your husband is a veritable genius among tricksters,” Dee said—but hastened to add: “In much the same fashion as Francis Drake, I dare say, who was mad enough to sail around the world in pursuit of proof of his own strange vision. Tom Digges is the man we really need, if he is now able to recall his ether-dream as something other than an idle fancy. If not ... well, in either case, he's the only one who might be judge whether Kelley's angel really is the vaporous creature that Drake saw, or imagined, invading his flesh.” Dee seemed to be wrestling with his doubts, but Kelley could see that the mathematician certainly wanted to believe that what he had just heard was no mere mountebank's blather, even if he had to believe, as a corollary, that England and the world were in peril.

  “You must confess,” Brother Cuthbert opined, “that all this talk of Lunars, Fleshcores, and Hardcores seems exceedingly ominous. If there are orders of demons parallel to the various orders of angels identified by Dionysius the Areopagite—as there surely must be, given that demons are merely fallen angels—I could easily believe that they might identify themselves by names of that sort.”

  “Perhaps,” Bruno admitted. “But think how many orders there are of living beings, and how very various their species are. If the principle of plenitude holds true, whatever can be created, God has surely created, perhaps in the etheric wilderness if not on Earth or some other planetary surface. What we have heard might well be testimony to the awesome generosity of divine creativity, applied to a plurality of worlds of near-infinite variety. But what, I wonder, did your ether-dweller mean by true Transformation? Why did the other say that Chaos is come, and that Darkness and Transfiguration will follow?”

  “I don't know,” Kelley whispered, forlornly.

  “Worlds should be separate,” Brother Cuthbert opined. “Creations should not mix and mingle. Once they begin to overlap, Chaos is come, with Darkness inevitably to follow. If England, or humankind, is in need of deliverance, we must pray for that deliverance. All else is...”

  He trailed off; Kelley noticed that he had not reached for his rosary.

  “The purpose of prayer is not to make us passive,” Bruno said, sternly. “If England or humankind is in need of deliverance, we must certainly pray—but pray that God will guide our hands and minds, in order that we might contend against the forces of destruction. I do not understand the half of what the second voice said, but I do understand what it said by way of conclusion, which is that we might prevail against the forces of destruction, God willing.”

  Kelley opened his mouth, intending to say that God had always been an enemy of Chaos, and a bringer of light into Darkness, and so must surely be willing to guard his Creation against such dire fates, but his mouth was too dry to permit him to pronounce the words. By the time he had moistened it with saliva, the seance had been interrupted by a rapping on the door of the house.

  * * * *

  6

  It was, Kelley was thankful to observe, a polite rapping rather than a thunderous hammering. If the unwanted visitors were hounds or foxes, they were obviously not confident of their might.

  “Wait here,” Dee commanded. “Keep quiet—listen, if you can, but make no sound.”

  Moments later, Dee called to Bruno for help, and the Italian hurried from the library, followed by Kelley and Brother Cuthbert. Dee's knees were buckling as he tried to support the body of his servant, who had apparently collapsed into his arms. As Dee moved back from the door, though, Kelley saw that the messenger had not returned alone. Two other men were waiting outside for the way to clear, their faces shielded by hoods.

  Bruno picked up the injured man's legs, taking part of his weight; he and Dee carried the servant into the room closest to the door, a reception-room where there was a sofa on which he could be set down. The other two men moved inside the house, the latter closing the front door behind him. The former pushed back his hood and looked Kelley up and down, from his ear-less skull to his sole-less boots, with an unmistakably aristocratic contempt. The other kept his hood up, and seemed to be shrinking back into the shadows—which were abundant now that Dee had set the candle-tray down within the room.

  “You're Edward Kelley, the man for whom F
ield's bully-boys are searching,” the aristocrat stated, in a tone that attempted politeness.

  “Am I?” Kelley countered. “I do not know you, sir.”

  “So much the better,” the aristocrat said. He turned to his companion. “I have business elsewhere,” he said. “Will you come?”

  The hooded man—whose humanity suddenly seemed to Kelley to be less than definite—gestured with his hand toward the door, as if he were instructing the aristocrat to go without him. As the other turned, though, the hooded head leaned forward and words were muttered swiftly into his ear, so quietly that Kelley could not catch what was said. The hooded figure opened the door then to let his companion out—but not before John Dee had appeared in the doorway of the reception-room.

  “De Vere?” said Dee. “Is that really you?”

  If Dee's identification was correct, Kelley knew, then the aristocrat was the Earl of Oxford—but it was his turn now to keep his face in the shadows. “Edward de Vere is dead,” he said. “Believe that, Master Dee—you have trouble enough at your door without knowing otherwise. If you have a boat, you had best take to the river and row upstream, as quickly as you can. Greenwich is a battlefield. The foxes moved to arrest Drake, but sorely underestimated the number of men who would come to his defense, and had to call for reinforcements. Foxe does not understand seamen, or hero-worship. You'll not find any to stand up for you when they come here—as they would surely have done already had they not been badly delayed. Find a bolt-hole as far from London as you can. Set sail for France if you must.”

  De Vere—if it was, in fact, de Vere—did not wait for a reply to this rigmarole. He slipped out of the door and vanished, while the hooded figure closed the door behind him, then barred and bolted it.

  “Do not be alarmed,” the hooded figure said softly, before pushing back the hood to reveal a face that was sculpted in a human image, but seemed to be forged in dull metal—save for the eyes, which were red in color and made of some softer substance. It did not look to Kelley to be a mask, but he did not faint in shock. He had grown used to miracles lately, and everyone in Europe had heard tales of talking heads of bronze built by Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus. Ann and John Dee looked at the artificial face with as much admiration and curiosity as horror and dread; only Brother Cuthbert seemed excessively distressed by the sight.