God of Tarot (19 page)

Sure of what? He shook his head. Sure he was not pursuing this vision because he suspected he might have some sort of power over her here, some way to make her amenable to… to what? He had no legitimate business with her, unless it was to use her relief-map torso to find his way out of here. Since she was not an assigned watcher, her very presence here threatened to distort his whole mission, especially since her body and personality were so…

He was going around in circles! Was it better to try to escape this Animation, so as to be able to set it up properly at another time instead of more or less by accident, or should he plunge ahead, now that he was this far along? He was hopelessly confused, now, about his own motives. He needed more objective advice. But he could not seek it without vacating this Animation (the Key Six scene seemed to be frozen obligingly in place, in all its foggy detail, while he wrestled with his uncertainties), and that would be a decision in itself, perhaps an error. That meant he was on his own, regardless. Unless, somehow, he could obtain a guide within the Animation itself.

Well, why not? “I want,” he said aloud, clearly, “to select an adviser, who will then guide me through this Animation.”

“Don’t we all!” a voice agreed.

Brother Paul looked around. It had been a male voice, yet both figures before him, though obscure, were definitely female. “Where are you?”

“Up here on cloud nine.”

Brother Paul looked up. The former boatman looked down. “Are you up there by choice?” Brother Paul inquired.

“Not that I’m aware of. I was poling my wife and kid across the river, when suddenly—” The man paused. “I don’t even
have
a wife or kid! Am I going crazy?”

“No,” Brother Paul reassured him. “You are part of a scene I conjured from the Tarot cards.”

“You
conjured it? I thought
I
conjured it!” The man scratched his head. “But if it fits your notions, it must be yours, because I never set out to fly!”

Was this a real man, a colonist, participating, like Brother Paul himself, in the Animation? Or was he entirely a figment of the evoked picture? Brother Paul hesitated to inquire, since he was not sure he could trust the answer. He should be able to work it out for himself in due course. “Well, maybe we can get you down from there. I’m about to deal another card.”

“Wait!” the man cried in alarm. “If you deal away this cloud, I’ll fall and break my leg!”

Brother Paul started to laugh, but immediately reconsidered. There was little doubt that these Animations were three-dimensionally projected visions, that even a camera’s lens could see (and he hoped his recorder was watching well, because who on Earth would otherwise believe this story?)—but within them, there had to be some core of physical reality. People
did
die while experiencing Animations. If this man was real, he might actually be perched up in a tree, and if his “cloud” disappeared so that he believed he had to fall, he might very well topple from his branch and suffer serious injury. Brother Paul did not want to be responsible for that!

“Very well. I will leave this card, and merely summon spokespersons for each separate Tarot deck, if that turns out to be possible. I’m sure you will be secure.” If the man believed him, he
would
be safe. Faith was the key, if his present understanding were correct.

“Couldn’t you just conjure me a ladder, so I can climb down?” the man asked plaintively.

Brother Paul considered. “I’m not sure I can do that. So far, I have formed these scenes by laying down cards and concentrating on the scenes they depict. I have no card with a ladder. If I try to put a ladder in
this
card, where it does not belong—well, when I introduced myself into a scene before, it changed. I fear it is not possible to make any change in an existing scene without breaking up the whole pattern. So the attempt to introduce a ladder might abolish the ground on which the ladder rests and lead to the very fall we seek to avoid. Maybe spot changes would be possible if I had greater experience with Animation, but right now I’m afraid to—”

“I get the message,” the man said. “Do it your way. I’ll wait. This cloud is pretty comfortable, for now.”

Brother Paul concentrated. “Oldest Tarot, bring forth your spokesman,” he intoned, suddenly quite apprehensive. This business of Animating visions was tricky in detail, like donning roller skates for the first time. One might master the basic principle, but lack the coordination for proper performance, and take a painful tumble. He was not at all sure he was following the rules of the game, now, for this was an indefinite command rather than a pictorial image.

A figure appeared. Had it actually worked? This seemed to be a king, garbed in suitably rich robes. The king spoke. But the words were incomprehensible. It was a foreign language! He should have known he could not glean information from cardboard; it was balking him again. Still…

Brother Paul listened carefully. In the course of his schooling, he had taken classes in French and German, and had had a certain flair for linguistics. But that had been a decade ago. He had been better at German, but this figure did not look German. French? Yes, possibly the French of six centuries ago, the time of the earliest known authentic Tarot deck! This must be King Charles VI of circa 1400, who commissioned the famous Gringonneur decks of cards.

The figure gestured, and a scene materialized. An Animation figure making a new Animation? Maybe so! This new scene was full of people. Three couples were walking gaily, as in a parade. The young men were dressed in medieval garb, the young ladies in elegant headdresses and trailing skirts. Above them, the cloud-borne man had fissioned into two military figures with drawn bows. They were aiming their arrows down at the happy marchers. What carnage had he loosed now?

Brother Paul smiled. This was not an ambush or a symbol of split personality, but romance. The cloud-men were adult Cupids, striking people with the arrows of love. He hardly needed the running French commentary to understand this card! But his purpose was to find a guide, not to evoke detailed derivatives of a particular Tarot concept. In any event, a guide whose advice he could not properly understand, because it was in a barely familiar language, would not do.

“Sorry,” he said. “You may be the original Tarot, with impeccable taste, but I shall have to pass you by. Next!”

The scene faded, including the king, to be replaced by what Brother Paul took to be an Italian, though he could not say precisely on what evidence he made this judgment. It was a man, advanced in years, partially armored with sculptured greaves and wearing a sword. He had a thigh-length cape or topcoat, intricately decorated, and a crownlike headdress. Obviously a person of note.

The man made a formal little bow. “Filippo Maria Visconti,” he said.

So this was the famous (or infamous) Duke of Milan about whom Brother Paul had read, who had commissioned the beautiful Visconti-Sforza Tarot to commemorate the marriage of his daughter to the scion of Sforza. A rigorous, brutal man, the Duke, but intelligent and politically powerful. He had paid a small fortune for the paintings, and the deck was the handsomest of the medieval Tarots.

Brother Paul returned the bow. “Brother Paul of the Holy Order of Vision,” he said, introducing himself. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Yet his pleasure was tempered by a nagging memory: hadn’t this Duke fed human flesh to his dogs?

Visconti commenced his presentation—in Italian. Another linguistic barrier! The Duke gestured, and another scene materialized. This one had just three figures: the young couple, and a winged Cupid on a pedestal between them—which got the poor man down from the cloud—but Cupid was blindfolded, and held an arrow in each hand, that he was about to fling at the people below.
Love is blind
! Brother Paul thought.

“Francesco Sforza… Bianca Maria Visconti…” The names leaped out of the opaque commentary. The betrothed young couple, uniting these two powerful families. A truly pretty picture. But old Filippo Maria Visconti would not do as a guide.

“Next,” Brother Paul said.

This time a small figure appeared: a child. There was a haunting familiarity about it; did he know this person? Brother Paul shook his head. This child was perhaps four or five years old, six at the most, and not quite like any he had seen on Earth.

The child spoke in French, and though Brother Paul was able to make out more words than before, this was still too much of a challenge for him. However, his lingering curiosity about this child caused him to listen politely. Was it a boy or a girl? Female, he decided.

She gestured, and a scene appeared. “Marseilles,” she said clearly. And this most closely approached the original, fuzzy picture: a young man between two women, with a winged Cupid above, bow drawn and arrow about to be loosed. If Brother Paul didn’t get that man safely down from that cloud pretty soon, he might be provoked actually to let that shaft fly!

But this picture was more like a cartoon than the previous two had been. Though the figures were three-dimensional and solid-seeming, they were obviously artificial, as though shaped crudely from plastic and painted in flat blue, red, yellow, and pink. This was the kind of scene a child would appreciate, almost devoid of subtle nuances of art. But by the same token, its meaning was quite clear: the man had to choose between the pretty young woman and the ugly old one. Or was the old hag the mother, officiating benignly at the romance of her son or daughter? Doubtless the child’s narration explained this, but Brother Paul could not make out enough of it.

Regretfully he turned down this potential guide. “I’m sure I would enjoy your company, little girl,” he said gently. “But since I cannot understand your words, I must seek other guidance. Next.”

A lady appeared, garbed quite differently. She seemed to be Egyptian, wearing the ancient type of headdress held in place by an ornament shaped like a little snake, and an ankle-length dark dress with black bands passing horizontally around it at intervals. She tended to face sidewise, to show her face in profile, in the manner of Egyptian paintings.

“I hope you speak my language,” Brother Paul murmured. Egyptian was entirely out of his range!

“Oh, I do,” she said, startling him. “I represent the Sacred Tarot of the Brotherhood of Light.”

Brother Paul had some familiarity with the Church of Light Tarot, but it differed in rather fundamental respects from the Vision Tarot. For one thing, the Hebrew letter associated with this Key differed. Brother Paul knew it as Zain, meaning Sword; the Light deck listed it as Vau, meaning Nail. The astrological equivalence also differed; to the Holy Order of Vision it was Gemini, while to the Brotherhood of Light it was Venus.

The woman gestured, her arm moving in a stylized manner, and her card manifested. A man stood between two women. All were clothed in ancient Egyptian garb. The man’s arms were crossed, his hands on his own shoulders; the ladies’ arms were bent upward at the elbows, the hands leveled at shoulder height. Thus each woman had one hand touching a shoulder of the man, though she faced away from him, while he looked at neither. Above, a demonic figure within a sunlike circle drew an ornate bow, aiming a long arrow.

“This is Arcanum Six, entitled The Two Paths,’” the female announcer said. “Note the two roads dividing, as in the poem by Robert Frost; the choice of paths is all-important. This Arcanum relates to the Egyptian letter
Ur
, or Hebrew
Vau
, or English letters V, U, and W. Its color is yellow, its tone E, its occult science Kabalism. It expresses its theme on three levels: in the spiritual world it reflects the knowledge of good and evil; in the intellectual world, the balance between liberty and necessity; in the physical world, the antagonism of natural forces, the linking of cause and effect. Note that the woman on the left is demurely clad, while the one on the right is voluptuous and bare-breasted, with a garland in her hair and her translucent skirt showing her legs virtually up to the waist. Remember, then, son of Earth, that for the common man the allurement of vice has a far greater fascination than the austere beauty of virtue.”

Brother Paul was impressed. “You have really worked out the symbolism,” he commented. “But most scholars regard this card as symbolizing love rather than choice.”

“Venus governs the affections and the social relations,” she replied, undismayed. “It gives love of ease, comfort, luxury, and pleasure. It is not essentially evil, but in seeking the line of least resistance it may be led into vice. When it thus fails to resist the importunities of the wicked, it comes under the negative influence of Arcanum Two, Veiled Isis—”

“Wait, wait!” Brother Paul protested. “I don’t want to get tangled up with the High Priestess or other cards at the moment; I just want to understand this one as a representative of your Tarot deck, so I can compare it to the equivalent cards of the other decks. Are you saying this is a card of love, or of choice? A simple yes or no will do—I mean, one description or the other.”

She glanced at him reproachfully. “If you seek simplistic answers to the infinitely complex questions of eternity, you have no business questioning the Brotherhood of Light.”

Brother Paul had not expected such a direct and elegant rebuff from a conjured figure. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It’s just that I’m not really looking for the full symbolism, but for a guide who can bring me most rapidly and certainly to the truth. I know I shall never master the Tarot as thoroughly as you have done, but perhaps you could show me—”

She softened. “Perhaps so. I will try to provide your simplistic answers. This is a card of love
and
choice, for the most difficult decisions involve love. Note that the man stands motionless at the angle formed by the conjunction of the two roads, as it seems you stand now. Each woman shows him her road. Virtue carries the sacred serpent at her brow; Vice is crowned with the leaves and vine of the grape. Thus this represents temptation.”

“Temptation,” Brother Paul echoed. Her “simplistic” answer did not seem very simple to him, but he appreciated her attempt to relate to him on his own level. He saw that she herself most closely resembled, in dress and manner, the figure of Virtue, yet her demure apparel did not entirely conceal the presence of excellent breasts, legs, and other feminine attributes. She reminded him of—well, of the colonist Amaranth. And there was temptation again! But logic did not concur.