Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (59 page)

 
          
"Come
in," Colin said.

 
          
Hunter
Greyson sidled through the door. He was dressed with scrupulous normalcy in tie
and blazer, as though going for a job interview.

 
          
Or
reporting to his parole officer,
Colin thought caustically. The tone of his
thoughts made him feel guilty; he had less reason than before to think badly of
Hunter Greyson.

 
          
"You'd
wanted to see me, sir?" Grey said.

 
          
"Sit
down," Colin said, wondering how to begin the interview. After he'd spoken
with Dr. Romney, he'd spoken to Grey's faculty advisor, Professor Rhys of the
Drama Department, and reviewed Grey's original transfer application. But the
Hunter Greyson he really needed to know about wasn't in any of those things.

 
          
"A
number of members of the faculty have spoken on your behalf," Colin began.

 
          
Grey
stood up, suddenly angry. "And so you're seeing me because they
blackmailed you into it. Forget that."

 
          
"Sit
down."
Colin rarely raised his voice in anger, but he had a commanding
presence when he chose to use it. Grey sat, his gaze fixed firmly on the
gleaming silver hilt of the sword-in-stone paperweight balanced precariously
atop a pile of journals.

 
          
"No
one blackmails me. Not the college administration, and not you, Mr. Greyson, so
relax." Colin, following the direction of his gaze, picked it up and moved
it to a safer location. "The Bidney Institute is world famous in its
field, which means it's a lodestone for crackpots, cranks, fanatics, and
freaks. I have no desire to admit students to the curriculum who will be seeing
UFOs or announcing that they're possessed by the devil half a semester later.
Now, your application to the college looks very promising, so why don't we
start at the beginning, and you can tell me why it is that you wanted to come
to the Bidney Institute and what you expect to do here?"

 
          
If
Grey didn't exactly squirm in his chair, Colin could see the effort he made not
to fidget.

 
          
"I
think I may have given you the wrong idea about me," Grey said with
painful care. "I'm not particularly interested in parapsychology, except
to lay a groundwork for my other studies. You can spend till Doomsday trying to
prove its reality to the mundane world, and someone like the Amazing Randi is
always going to come along and cast doubt on your results by duplicating them
through stage illusionism
—
as if there wasn't more than one way to skin a cat. With
all due respect
—
and believe me, I do understand why what the Bidney Institute
does is necessary
—
I'm just not interested in saying my ABCs over and over
until the end of time. We know these abilities exist. We know how to develop
them. It's time to move on to what comes next."

 
          
Colin
felt himself warm to Grey's sincerity, and this time, he did not suppress the
feeling.

           
"Taking that as a given, Grey,
what
can
we do for you? If you're not interested in parapsychological
investigation or research, what do you want from us?"

 
          
Grey
hesitated, obviously mulling over in his head whether he wanted to tell Colin
the truth. Finally he spoke.

 
          
"I'm
interested in studying magick."

 
          
It
must have taken a certain amount of nerve to say that, especially to someone he
couldn't believe to be a sympathetic audience.

 
          
"You
know that we don't offer courses in magick here," Colin said gently.

 
          
"No,"
Grey said quickly, "but I can study both Theater Arts and Psychology
here, and that's a start toward what I want to do out in the real world. And
the Bidney Collection is one of the best accumulations of books on the occult
available to the public. For the rest, I know I'd have to work on my own
—
I joined an OTO Encampment
out in
California
, but they made me leave
when they found out I wasn't eighteen." Grey shrugged. "I thought you
might help me."

 
          
It
wasn't sponsorship into one of the private Magickal Lodges that Hunter Greyson
was talking about
—
Colin would have been surprised if the boy, for all his
well-traveled sophistication, suspected that such things existed ... at least
in this life.

 
          
"Why
me?" Colin asked.

 
          
"The
truth?" Grey countered warily.

 
          
"Ideally."

 
          
"Well
... I could find you. And you're not a nut like LaVey, or a fraui like
—
well, you know. And I didn't
want to have to start by swearing a lot of oaths and making a lot of promises
before I knew what was going on. I mean, a lot of these modern so-called secret
societies are just an excuse for some los to feel like God, and that'd just be
a waste of time for me."

 
          
"So
you're only willing to follow the principles of a Magickal Order providing it
meets your standards?" Colin asked.

 
          
"Well
. . . would you follow principles that didn't?" Grey asked reason ably.
Colin could not help smiling.

 
          
"And
what is your ultimate goal?" Colin asked. "Why study magick at all? I
know you've already done your basic reading, and have a little experience if
you were a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis. So it all comes down to
'why'?"

 
         
"Because
there
are
answers," Grey said earnestly, leaning forward. "Why
should humankind be such a complex, evolved, self-aware creature if we're only
supposed to live seventy years and die? What is it for? What are
we
for?
I don't believe we ought to just ignore questions like that. I want to know the
truth
—
but
the sciences say it isn't possible to study something like this. Philosophy's
self-referential and morally bankrupt
—
and religion only wants us
to accept the status quo. So what does that leave? We have to gather our own
information and make our own decisions
—
but we also have to accept
that ethical behavior has a basis in objective reality. That just leaves
magick."

 
          
It
was impossible not to be engaged by Grey's fervor.

           
"Very well." Colin pulled
open the drawer to his desk and rummaged through the papers there. "Here's
a reading list
—
let me know which ones you've already read, and prepare me
written reports on all of them
—
as long as you like, but fifteen hundred words minimum.
I'll sign your admission into the advanced courses
—
Practices and Ethics
is still a prerequisite, and
if I don't see you there every single session, you'll get an 'F for
all
your
parapsychology courses. Do you agree?"

 
          
"Yes,
sir," Grey said meekly. But his eyes were shining.

 
          
Colin
looked out over the heads of his latest freshmen class
—
had he ever been so young?
It seemed that they got younger as the world turned darker, and while his
students in the dawn of the sixties had spoken of changing the world, at the
end of the seventies, students spoke of finding a place in the world as it was,
as if change were no longer possible.

 
          
"Professor
MacLaren?" A hand went up in the back
—
Jeremy, a good student but
cautious. "Could you tell us
—
in your opinion
—
what it's all
for?
I
mean, supposing you can prove that psychic powers exist, everybody still isn't
going to have them. So what practical use could they have?"

 
          
It
was a common question, for which Colin had a practiced answer. For a moment his
mind wandered
—
to his contemporaries, to those other students whose lives
he had touched through the years. To Grey, who in his senior year remained an endless
challenge to authority. He thought of the sacrifices two generations had made,
the losses both had suffered in trying to realize their dreams. Was it all for
this
—
that
the world should end neither with a bang nor a whimper, but with some slow
inexorable dwindling, impossible to mark?

 
          
February
second fell on a Monday, and the New Year had come in with a bitter black cold
that did not fall as snow, but sheathed every stem and branch with a brilliant
coating of dense ice. Colin had been director of the institute for eight years
now, and was beginning to look toward the day when he'd hand the institute off
to someone else. But not yet. He still had more to do here.

 
          
Colin
drove carefully along the slippery roads. It would not do to put the car in a ditch
and be late for his own surprise party.

 
          
He
was, of course, not supposed to know, though half a dozen clearer heads had
warned him clandestinely
—
including Christie, who knew her boss's temperament well
enough to know that surprise parties worked out better when the victim
cooperated. Since he'd known what was afoot, it had been easy to collaborate in
all the runaround errands designed to keep him from getting home too soon.

 
          
Sixty-one
this year. I hope they haven't tried to put a candle on for every year
—
they'll burn the house
down,
Colin thought whimsically. He'd done his best to avoid this sort of
observance of his birthday
—
a date of interest, now, to no one but himself
—
but since it was
inescapable, he found himself actually looking forward to it.
You're turning
into a foolish old man, Colin MacLaren.

           
He turned onto
Greyangels Road
and could now see the
farmhouse in the distance. All the windows were dark, but nothing could
disguise the wealth of tire tracks leading up the empty drive.

 
          
/
wonder where they parked?
Colin thought to himself, before deciding that
it was probably down in the old orchard. The apple orchard behind the house was
long past its fruiting days, though it still produced blossoms in spring and a
few apples in the fall, and the ground was hard-frozen enough to allow the easy
passage of even
Eden
's 4WD Jeep. He spared a hope that Grey'd had the sense to
hitch a ride with someone else
—
a motorcycle wasn't safe on these winter roads, though Grey
rode his year-round in most weather, with a fine disregard for his personal
safety.

 
          
Colin
pulled in to the top of the gravel drive and stopped. Leaving the motor
running, he got out to drag open the doors of the woodshed-cum-garage before
getting back into the car and driving it inside. The wide wood planks of the
floor testified to the building's earlier incarnation as a stables and carriage
house.

 
          
Several
cords of wood
—
a winter's supply
—
were stacked along the side
wall, and along the back were a wheelbarrow and various gardening implements,
the grace notes of country life. Fortunately Greyangels' owner, Ted Zacharias,
took care of what groundskeeping the place required. Colin was no gardener and
had never had any ambitions in that direction, though Claire, who had an
apartment in
Glastonbury
, came out and fussed over
his flowers occasionally. She'd offered him a kitten from Poltergeist's latest
litter, but Colin had not accepted; cats were at far more risk in the country
from foxes and weasels than in the city, though it was never a good idea to let
a pet animal roam.