Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (25 page)

 
          
He
closed the door. Claire stared at it for a moment, a baffled expression on her
face, and then it cleared.

 
          
"Of
course. Debbie told him about Peter. I must have mentioned him when I was
talking to her."

 
          
Colin
was looking up the street toward his car. Even from here he could see the white
banner of a parking ticket fluttering on his windshield, though the VW bus
parked right in front of him didn't seem to be similarly flagged.

 
          
"It's
the first rule of the psychic fraud," he agreed slowly. "Always have
a good intelligence network. But
Blackburn
doesn't strike me as your usual sort of fraud. What did
you think of him, Claire? Honestly?"

 
          
"I'm
not sure." Claire's voice was troubled and thoughtful. "He's charming,
of course.
And
knows it. And he doesn't seem to be an out-and-out charlatan,
for what that's worth. He seems to be doing
something,
though I'll be
blessed if I can figure out exactly what."

JUNE  1965

 
          
WHAT
IS THERE LEFT TO SAY ABOUT THORNE BLACKBURN, NOW THAT A quarter of a century
has already passed its judgment? When I met him, it was as what my generation
still called "a young matron," happily married and happy with myself
for the first time
—
so to a certain extent, I was insulated from Thome's
indisputable charisma, about which so much
—
fair and otherwise
—
has been written.

 
          
He
charmed everyone he met
—
even Colin, though I know it went much against Colin's
instincts. I think he did it because Thorne loved tricks and pranks of all
kinds, though there was very little malice in him; his delight in his own jokes
stemmed more from an appreciation of their technical difficulty than from any
distress they may have caused.

 
          
It
was hard to stay angry with Thorne at the worst of times; he loved to tease,
and eventually you would realize you were simply
tired
of being exasperated
with him
—
and it was too much trouble to stay mad, anyway.

 
          
The
dark side of that charm was that Thorne Blackburn listened as little to good
advice as he did to anything else. He was convinced that once other people
understood his philosophy they would agree with it, and nothing Colin or I
could say would ever change his mind.

 
          
I've
always been a very prosaic person
—
I suppose it is the
inevitable result of the Gift that seems to run in my bloodline: when so much
that seems strange and wonderful to other people comes so easily to you, you
tend to become very matter-of-fact about everything. The only thing that ever
truly astounded me was discovering that people were willing to take me on trust
and believe in my sanity: once I had accepted that gift, nothing else that the
world had to offer was ever quite so surprising.

 
          
And
so perhaps I was not as surprised by Thorne and what he was trying to
accomplish as perhaps I should have been. It is only looking back across a gulf
of years that I realize how extraordinary his ambitions were, even for the time
he lived in. At the time
—
that vivid, turbulent time
—
what he was doing seemed as
if it were only one more wonder in an era crammed full of wonders. But Thorne
wanted more than to amuse, dazzle, and delight.

 
          
Thorne
Blackburn meant to change the world.

BERKELEY
, OCTOBER 1966

The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.

—
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

 
          
THROUGH
THE AUTUMN OF '65 AND THE FOLLOWING SPRING, THE EMBATtled university
administration, increasingly under fire from all sides, began responding to the
unceasing attacks on its authority by wave after wave of draconian measures
directed against the only group over which it had any semblance of control: the
faculty.

 
          
The
message Colin MacLaren received was clear: stop teaching
Berkeley
students mumbo-jumbo. Toe
the line. Preach the status quo. But even if he had been no more than a
conventional academic, Colin would not have been able to do that. His students
were hungry for a meaning that would replace the conventional piety of their
parents' generation. They searched for it in drugs, in politics, in mysticism
of every shade and stripe. When they asked Colin his opinion, there was little
he could offer them but his honesty
—
something that brought him
increasingly into conflict with the trustees of the university.

 
          
The
Vietnam War appalled him, even as it forced a generation to choose between the
letter of the law and the spirit of a country. As the Outer Planes were the
reflection of the Inner, Colin could not refrain from that fight. He fought, as
he always had, for the Spirit.

 
          
The
visit from General Jonathan Griswold Ashwell II had not improved matters. Just
as he had said he would, Jonathan had dropped out of school and gone to live in
Thorne Blackburn's commune in
San Francisco
. Jonathan's father had come
to Colin's office at the beginning of the fall term demanding that Colin
—
Jonathan's teacher and
advisor
—
produce
his son at once. When Colin's answers had not satisfied him, the general had
gone to the president of the college.

 
          
Colin
had called Thorne to warn him.

 
          
The
two men had continued to meet after that first night, and looking back on that
first evening
—
odd as it had been
—
Colin sometimes thought
nostalgically of it as the last island of peace in a life grown increasingly
turbulent and free of signposts.

 
          
He
deplored what Thorne was doing, of course: the
Voice of Truth
was a
hopeless farrago of New Age jargon, Eastern philosophy, metaphysics,
Mystery
School
teachings, and Thome's own
brand of peculiar edification. Thorne preached the gospel of High Magick at
every opportunity
—
a magick without limits, without the safeguards that Colin
had been taught were absolutely necessary to its practice. Reckless
endangerment
—
as the Order had charged
—
indeed.

 
          
But
despite his disapproval of all that Thorne stood for, Colin could not help but
like the man himself, and hope that maturity would temper the young Magus'
youthful exuberance. For his part, Thorne recognized in Colin a like mind, one
for whom he did not have to explain his concepts, only justify them. It was an
odd friendship, built on differences, and one with surprisingly strong bonds.

 
          
The
phone rang late in the day, summoning Colin MacLaren's attention from the pile
of papers before him. The paperwork seemed to increase with every year; after
five years at
Berkeley
, he was no longer teaching
introductory courses, but the advanced students seemed to generate as much in
the way of paper, if not more.

 
          
"MacLaren,"
Colin said curtly into the phone.

 
          
"Colin?
It's Thorne," a familiar voice said cheerfully.

 
          
"Thorne?
What can I do for you?" Colin asked cautiously. After his last appearance
on the
Berkeley
campus, Thorne Blackburn
was persona non grata within its gates.

 
          
"Well,"
Thorne said amiably, "this is my one phone call. So I was kind of hoping
you'd come down and bail me out."

 
          
"Which
station?" Colin said, reaching for a pad and pencil.

 
          
Colin
reached the station house ninety minutes later. This was hardly the first time
Thorne Blackburn had been arrested, even in the few months Colin had known him,
but so far he had not been convicted of any offense that carried with it a jail
term.

 
          
This
time might be different. Thorne had been arrested for assaulting a police
officer at an antiwar demonstration earlier today. Though a bail bondsman
—
as planned
—
had been waiting at the
station to help demonstrators effect their release, Thorne hadn't been able to
arrange bail.

 
          
The
inside of the station smelled like disinfectant and tear gas; the combination
made Colin's nose prickle. Once he'd explained what he'd come for, the paperwork
was quickly completed, and after a few minutes Thorne was brought out.

 
          
His
appearance was startling. Dried blood from a split lip was smeared across his
jaw and throat, and his shirt
—
decorated with the Stars and Stripes, and thus a red flag
to the riot police
—
was ripped at the shoulder and missing most of its
buttons.

 
          
"Good
Lord," Colin said mildly.

 
          
Thorne
grinned cockily and winced. "Fell getting into the van," he said,
with a mocking glance at the officer behind him. The man's face was set in a
rigid mask of distaste, making Colin wonder for a brief, shocked moment what he
might have done if Colin weren't here as witness.

 
          
"Well,
let's get you out of here," Colin said harshly. "Are we free to
go?" he asked.

 
          
"Sure,
buddy. He's all yours."

 
          
A
short stop to recover the rest of Thorne's personal effects
—
including the broken
remnants of a picket sign with a photo of LBJ on it
—
and they were in the outside
air once more.

 
          
"My
camera. They broke my camera," Thorne groaned, holding the battered remains
of what had once been a Leica cupped in his hands as they walked toward his
car. He was limping slightly. Colin wasn't surprised that Thorne had brought a
camera to the rally
—
Thorne was an enthusiastic amateur photographer, and liked
to document everything. "Maybe I can at least save the film."

 
          
"What
really happened?" Colin asked suspiciously. While he was no stranger to
institutionalized brutality, it was odd and unsettling to realize that the
practice was so entrenched in
America
that even its victims were
matter-of-fact about it. When had
America
become a police state?

 
          
"You
sure you really want to know?" Thorne asked. "Oh, before I forget
—
here's your money
back." He tucked the shattered camera tenderly into his knapsack and then
dug into his wallet to pull out a wad of twenties, holding them out to Colin.

 
          
At
Colin's blank expression he laughed. "So why did I call you when I had the
money for my bail? Just a little matter of having to
pay
my bail before
I could get my hands on it. They do that all the time. It's harassment, but
it's legal. They want us off the streets; that's no secret."

 
          
"Perhaps
if you weren't so antagonistic . . ." Colin took the money and folded it
into his pocket.

 
          
"Like
we were last fall, when the Angels came down on us and the cops just stood back
and watched? Wake
up,
Colin
—
there's a war on for the
soul of
America
, and it's being fought in
the streets. Which side are you on?"

 
          
It
was a question Colin had answered long ago: he was pledged to serve the Light.
Only when he had made that pledge, the world had been a simpler place. Today,
he was not certain that any of the sides he could identify were of the Light,
if things like this could happen here in
America
.

           
"I suppose you're convinced
there have to be sides?" Colin asked, temporizing. "And know which
one's right?" They'd reached the car; Colin opened the passenger door and
Thorne climbed in.

 
          
"Hell,
yes!" Thorne burst out. "If a bunch of guys who can't even vote yet
are frying babies under orders over in '
Nam
, what am I supposed to do
—
sit back and say that napalm
is an instrument of national policy? They're the bad guys
—
they want to turn the
United States
of Amerika-with-a-K into a
police state so they can skim off the profits. Lockheed and Dow Chemical are
hand in hand with the Pentagon
—
you can't sit this one out, man! It's a rat race, and the
rats are winning. You have to take a stand
—
you're on the
Berkeley
faculty; if you speak out,
it would count for a lot."

 
          
In
fact Colin had already spoken out, but political activism was the least of the
things that Thorne advocated, and much of his philosophy Colin could not agree
with.

 
          
"I
don't want to argue with you now, Thorne," Colin said, starting the engine.
While he honored his friend's political views
—
and honored the American
tradition of dissent as well
—
what he could not stomach was the cavalier way Thorne
squandered his birthright and training to make a mockery of the things Colin
held most dear.

 
          
"You
don't want to argue with me
ever,"
Thorne complained. "Not down
in the trenches where it counts. Damn it, you didn't even tell me you were one
of us."

 
          
Colin
flicked his glance sideways, and saw Thorne make that same curious half-salute
that Toller Hasloch had made years before. With an effort of will, he forced himself
to ignore it. None of the Order was ever to acknowledge the Initiate it had
cast out.

 
          
"I'm
not one of you, Thorne," Colin said evenly. "Whatever it is that you
think you are. Now. Where shall I take you? Back to my place?"

 
          
"The
Bellflower Clinic over on College," Thorne said unexpectedly.
"Claire's there. Kate's with her; we were supposed to meet back there
after I got out of jail, anyway." Like many experienced activists, Thorne
expected
—
in fact, actively sought
—
to be arrested each time he
participated in a demonstration.