Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (19 page)

 
          
The
bogeyman of a generation, Nikita Khrushchev, fell from power. Oswald was
guilty and had acted alone (so the Warren Commission found), China had the
Bomb, Vatican II had abolished the Latin Mass. Students everywhere had left the
campus and taken to the streets, demanding that their voices be heard. All
around them, the world changed, growing farther from certainties with each day.

 
          
And
Thorne Blackburn arrived in
San Francisco
.

 
          
1965
began with another assassination
—
this time of black activist Malcolm X. Violence seemed
entrenched on the American political scene, along with something called the
Students for a Democratic Society. In March, protesters in
Selma
,
Alabama
, were attacked by state
police, and in the crucible of August the
Watts
ghetto would erupt in
hysterical, self-destructive violence. No one could be unaffected by the winds
of change that blew with hurricane force through American society
—
least of all someone who
taught on one of the most turbulent campuses in
America
.

 
          
"Kids
today," Colin MacLaren said with a sigh.

 
          
"You're
too young for that statement," Alison chided him gently. She and Colin
were sitting on the terrace of Greenhaven, looking out over the sunlit city
below
—
a
city that had become world news as runaways from every corner of the globe
flooded into the
Haight-Ashbury
district. They strained
city services to the breaking point and proclaimed the birth of a new nation
based on peace, love, and rock 'n' roll.

 
          
"Forty-five
this last February," Colin reminded her with a sigh. Not an old man by any
standard, but somehow the future he'd been planning to live in hadn't been here
when he reached it. How could anyone who'd been present on V-E Day have
predicted that this was what would happen to the unscathed industrial giant
among the Allied Powers? And it had happened so fast . . . could anyone have
predicted this frenzied self-destructive collapse on that day not so long ago
when all the world was cheering?

 
          
No.
But somewhere, out there, there were people who had worked toward it, and who
now celebrated their dark victory. Since Kennedy's assassination, Colin read
the daily papers with increasing dread, searching for the dead hand of the
Armanenschaft
in every new outbreak of chaos. Were its members behind these tides of
social collapse
—
or was he the only one who saw the collapse? Perhaps these
social upheavals were the pangs of a joyous birth instead. . . .

 
          
"Colin?
Hello?" Alison broke into his thoughts, and Colin realized how far he'd
drifted.

           
"Sorry, Alison. I was
woolgathering," he admitted.

 
          
"You
must have been!" she said, laughing. "But I'll do my best to anchor
you to the Earth Plane. How's Claire?"

 
          
"She
and Peter are both doing well
—
he's been promoted, and they're on the same shift most of
the time, now. I saw her last week, and she told me she was thinking of listing
with an agency and switching to temp work. I believe _ they're thinking of
starting a family, once things settle down."

 
          
"What
a waste," Alison said gently. "Don't frown at me so, Colin
—
I have to say it. You know
as well as I do that a gift like Claire's is rare. And you also know that a
woman with a husband doesn't have any freedom
—
any life
—
of her own. She's always
looking after
him."

 
          
"Someone
has to," Colin offered diffidently. "We men are the most incapable
of creatures, left to ourselves."

 
          
Alison
snorted eloquently.

 
          
"And
it was Claire's choice," Colin reminded his friend. "Both to marry,
and to set aside the Path for this lifetime. She has other things to learn, and
other ways of learning them."

 
          
"We
never stop learning," Alison admitted. "And you're certainly doing
well with young Ashwell
—
there may be something to that boy, with time. But I think
you might have exercised more influence on Claire than you did, all but
flinging her into Moffat's arms."

 
          
"There
we must agree to disagree, Alison," Colin said firmly. "Claire is not
my disciple; she has not come to me to have her feet set upon the Path once
more. But we won't spoil such a lovely day with such an old argument. Tell me
about Simon
—
what have you and he been doing? I've read your monograph,
by the way; you must be very proud of your disciple.
A Natural History of
the Poltergeist?
Ambitious."

 
          
Alison
smiled as the gentle barb struck home. "Oh, Simon is a jewel! And his
exoteric career is doing so well, too
—
I dread the thought of his
music taking him completely away from me, though I suppose it will at some
point. But we had a lovely time
—
in
Ohio
, of all places! Fascinating
haunted house: poltergeists, mediumship, apportation, all the classic manifestations.
Simon's working up my notes, but I'm not sure if we'll publish, at least not
for a few years yet. The family involved has two young children, and the last
thing they need right now is more publicity. But Simon will be here soon
—
why not ask him about it?
You know he'd love to tell you all about it."

 
          
"And
behold: speak the name, and the Disciple appears!" Simon cried genially,
opening the garden's back gate and stepping through it. Now that he was of
legal age and in control of the fortune he'd earned as a child, Simon had
bought a condominium in one of the new high-rise buildings going up all over
the
Twin
Peaks
area, but he was still a frequent guest in Alison's house.

 
          
"Simon!"
Alison rose to her feet to receive a kiss upon the cheek, and Colin rose also,
to shake his hand. Simon had a powerful grip, but forbore to use it in petty
contests of strength.

 
          
In
the last several years Simon Anstey had changed from an intense,
self-conscious, teenager to a graceful, self-possessed young man. He'd grown
several inches and filled out through the chest and shoulders, fulfilling the
early promise of physical power his body had held. Recently, Colin knew, Simon
had tried his hand at conducting, in addition to composing and performing, and
a conductor must have as much physical presence as any Olympic athlete.

 
          
"Colin
—
it's great to see you again;
it's been far too long. I hear you've been
—
what's the phrase?
—
'assisting the police with
their inquiries'?" He grinned impishly, and Colin found himself smiling in
return.

 
          
"Something
of the sort. The police often consult specialists, and Claire and I have been
able to be of some help to them on a few occasions."

 
          
"Small
potatoes," Simon said, not unkindly. He sat down at the table and accepted
a glass of the white wine Alison was drinking. "The two of you ought to
devote some time to the kind of two-legged jackals the police can't touch. I
understand that the Rhodes Group makes rather a specialty of it."

 
          
"Simon,"
Alison said chidingly.

 
          
"Well,
it's true, Alison. And you remember what happened in
Ohio
—
the moment the first dish
flew, the Kenyons were besieged by every sort of witch doctor, fake exorcist,
ghostbreaker, and I don't know what. They came out of the woodwork, and none of
them had any more occult power than that cat!"

 
          
Simon
gestured at the white cat sunning itself on the stone wall. As if it had taken
offense at his gesture, it leaped from the wall and vanished in a flirt of
plumy tail.

 
          
"But
they certainly wanted enough money for their services," Simon went on.
"Thousands of dollars
—
for what boiled down to a few fake mystic passes and
lighting a few sticks of incense. Someone should sic the Better Business Bureau
on them! And there are people like them everywhere
—
here, in fact."

 
          
"Unfortunately,"
Colin said, "there aren't any regulating agencies for psychics, let alone
for parapsychologists. It's a young field
—
something I constantly seem
to be telling my students
—
which means that accrediting programs are few and far
between."

 
          
"There's
that place out in
New York
. Near where you used to
live, Colin
—
you've heard of it?" Alison asked. She frowned,
summoning the name into memory. "The Bidney Institute," she said.
"They're affiliated with a small college; don't they offer a degree?"

 
          
"I
know they offer a prize . . . one million dollars to the first person who can
prove the existence of psychic powers. I don't think the prize is ever going
to be claimed," Colin said.

 
          
"Amateur
table-tippers with a steamer trunk full of juju," Simon sneered. "You
can't quantify the occult and reduce it to a book full of charts and
graphs."

 
          
"Maybe
not," Colin said gently, more amused than otherwise by Simon's sulkiness.
"But the occult isn't parapsychology, any more than parapsychology is the
occult. It's the fact that people have gotten the two of them tangled together
for so many years that's caused all the trouble. Now we finally have the chance
to separate them."

           
"Oh, well spoken, Colin!"
Alison applauded. "And if anyone can do it, I think you will."

 
          
Even
Simon smiled, a little crookedly. "Good luck, Colin
—
you'll need it, especially
these days. Ever hear of somebody named Thorne Blackburn?"

 
          
Thorne
Blackburn, it seemed, was another low-rent messiah with a cult following who
had invaded the Bay Area and set up shop in the
Haight-Ashbury
. He claimed, according to
Simon, to be a god
—
among other things
—
and supported himself and
his ragtag followers with public displays of magic.

 
          
"That's
the disgusting thing," Simon said. "Apparently somewhere this jerk
managed to get some real training. He didn't know what to do with it though, or
maybe he just wanted to put on a show: it's all muddled up with stage
illusionism and rock music. It's a carnival sideshow!"

 
          
"Everything
is, lately." Alison sighed. "Lunacy may be the only logical response
when our own government is firebombing women and children overseas. How did we
come to this in twenty years?" she asked, the direction of her thoughts a
despairing echo of Colin's own.

 
          
"You
still believe that the
U.S.
government wears the white
hats, don't you, Alison?" Simon said, with odd gentleness. "Us
—
Them
—
it's really all the same.
Government is by its very nature corrupt."

 
          
"/
f
that's true, we don't need to help it along," Alison said tartly, and the
talk had turned to politics and then to less weighty matters.