Ginny cocked her head at me. "You don't look too miserable about this."

I laughed. "No. Barney and I brooded over the problem for a while and hatched us quite an egg; I'm actually enjoying myself by now, sort of. Life's too tame of late. Which is why I asked if you'd like get in on the fun."

"Tonight?"

"Yes. The sooner the better. I'll give you the details after our young hopeful's gone to bed."

Ginny's own growing smile faded. "I'm not sure I can get a sitter on notice that short. This is final exam week at the high school."

"Well, if you can't, what about Svartalf?" I suggested. "You won't be needing a familiar, and he can see to the elementary things, keep guard, dash next door and yowl a neighbor awake if she gets collywobbles—"

"She might wake up and want us," Ginny objected, not too strongly.

I disposed of that by reminding her we'd bought a sleep watcher for Val, after a brief period when she seemed to have occasional nightmares. The little tin soldier didn't merely stand by her bed, the dream of him stood with his musket at the edge of her dreams, ready to chase away anything scary. I don't believe gadgets can substitute for parental love and presence; but they help a lot.

Ginny agreed. I could see the eagerness build up in her. Though she'd accepted a housewife's role for the time being, no race horse really belongs on a plowing team.

In this fashion did we prepare the way for hell to break loose, literally.

XXI

THE NIGHT FELL MOONLESS, a slight haze dulling the 1 stars. We left soon after, clad alike in black sweaters and slacks, headlights off. Witch-sight enabled us to make a flight that was safe if illegal, high over the city's constellated windows and lamps until our stick, swung downward again toward the industrial section. It lay still darker and emptier than was normal at this hour. I saw practically no tiny bluish glimmers flit around the bulks of shops and warehouses. The Good Folk were passing up their nocturnal opportunity for revels and curious window-peeking when man wasn't around. That which was going on had frightened them.

It centered on Nornwell's grounds. They shone forth, an uneasy auroral glow in a air. As we neared, the wind that slid past, stroking and whispering to me bore odors-flesh and sweat, incense, an electric acridity of paranatural energies. The hair stood erect along my spine. I was content not be in wolf-shape to get the full impact of that last.

The paved area around the main building was packed close to solid with bodies. So was the garden that made our workers' warm-weather lunches pleasant, nothing remained of it except mud and cigaret stubs. I estimated five hundred persons altogether, blocking any except aerial access. Their mass was not restless, but the movement of individuals created an endless rippling through it, and the talk and footshuffle gave those waves a voice.

Near the sheds, our lot was less crowded. Scattered people there were taking a break from the vigil to fix a snack or flake out in a sleeping bag. They kept a respectful distance from a portable altar at the far end, though from time to time, someone would kneel in its direction.

I whistled, long and low. "That's arrived since I left." Ginny's arms caught tighter around my waist.

A Johannine priest was holding service. Altitude or no, we couldn't mistake his white robe, high-pitched minor-key chanting, spread-eagle stance which he could maintain for hours, the tau crucifix that gleamed tall and gaunt behind the altar, the four talismans—Cup, wand, sword, and Disc—

upon it. Two acolytes swung censers whence came the smoke that sweetened and, somehow, chilled the air.

"What's he up to?" I muttered. I'd never troubled to learn much about the new church. Or the old ones, for that matter. Not that Ginny and I were ignorant of modern scientific discoveries proving the reality of the Divine and things like absolute evil, atonement, and an afterlife. But it seemed to us that so little is known beyond these bare hints, and that God can have so infinitely many partial manifestations to limited human understanding, that we might as well call ourselves Unitarians.

"I don't know," she answered. Her tone was bleak. "I studied what's public about their rites and doctrines, but that's just the top part of the iceberg, and it was years ago for me. Anyhow, you'd have to be a communicant—no, a lot more, an initiate, ultimately an adept, before you were told what a given procedure really means.

I stiffened. "Could he be hexing our side?"

Whetted by alarm, my vision swept past the uneasy sourceless illumination and across the wider scene. About a score of burly blue policemen were posted around the block. No doubt they were mighty sick of being jeered at. Also, probably most of them belonged to traditional churches. They wouldn't exactly mind arresting the agent of a creed which said that their own creeds were finished.

"No," I replied to myself, "he can't be, or the cops'd have him in the cooler this minute. Maybe he's anathematizing us. He could do that under freedom of religion, I suppose, seeing as how man can't control God but can only ask favors of Him. But actually casting a spell, bringing goetic forces in to work harm—" I interrupted my thinking aloud. "The trouble is," she said, "when you deal with these Gnostics, you don't know where their prayers leave off and their spells begin. Let's get cracking before something happens. I don't like the smell of the time stream tonight."

I nodded and steered for the principal building. The Johnny didn't fret me too much. Chances were he was just holding one of his esoteric masses to encourage the demonstrators. Didn't the claim go that his church was the church of universal benevolence? That it actually had no need of violence, being above the things of this earth? "The day of the Old Testament, of the Father, was the day of power and fear; the day of the New Testament, of the Son, has been the day of expiation; the day of the Johannine Gospel, of the Holy Spirit, will be the day of love and unveiled mysteries." No matter now.

The police were interdicting airborne traffic in the immediate vicinity except for whoever chose to leave it. That was a common-sense move. None but a minority of the mob were Johnnies. To a number of them, the idea of despising and renouncing a sinful material world suggested nothing more than that it was fashionable to wreck that world. The temptation to flit overhead and drop a few Molotov cocktails could get excessive.

Naturally, Ginny and I might have insisted on our right to come here, with an escort if need be. But that could provoke the explosion we wanted to avoid. Altogether, the best idea was to slip in, unnoticed by friend and foe alike. Our commando-type skills were somewhat rusty, though; the maneuver demanded our full attention.

We succeeded. Our stick ghosted through a skylight left open, into the garage. To help ventilate the rest of the place, this was actually a well from roof to ground floor. Normally our employees came and went by the doors. Tonight, however, those were barred on two sides-by the bodies of the opposition, and by protective force-fields of our own which it would take an expert wizard to break.

The Pinkerton technician hadn't conjured quite fast enough for us. Every first-story window was shattered. Through the holes drifted mumbled talk, background chant. Racking the broom, I murmured in Ginny's ear-her hair tickled my lips and was fragrant "You know, I'm glad they did get a priest.

During the day, they had folk singers."

"Poor darling." She squeezed my hand. "Watch out for busted glass." We picked our way in the murk to a hall and upstairs to the R & D section. It was defiantly lighted. But our footfalls rang too loud in its emptiness. It was a relief to enter Barney Sturlason's office.

His huge form rose behind the desk. "Virginia!" he rumbled. "What an unexpected pleasure."

Hesitating: "But, uh, the hazard—"

"Shouldn't be noticeable, Steve tells me," she said. "And I gather you could use an extra thaumaturgist."

"Sure could." I saw how his homely features sagged with exhaustion. He'd insisted that I go home and rest. This was for the practical reason that, if things went sour and we found ourselves attacked, I'd have to turn wolf and be the main line of defense until the police could act. But he'd stayed on, helping his few volunteers make ready. That, far more than his best competence as a research man, was his mark of bosshood.

"Steve's explained our scheme?" he went on. His decision to accept her offer had been instantaneous. "Well, we need to make sure the most delicate and expensive equipment doesn't suffer.

Quite apart from stuff being ruined, imagine the time and cost of recalibrating every instrument we've got, from dowsers to tarots! I think everything's adequately shielded, but I'd certainly appreciate an independent check by a fresh mind. Afterward you might cruise around the different shops and labs, see what I've overlooked and arrange its protection."

"Okay." She'd visited sufficiently often to be familiar with the layout. "I'll help myself to what I need from the stockroom, and ask the boys in—in the alchemistry section did you say, dear?—for help if necessary." She paused. "I expect you two'll be busy for a while."

"Yes, I'm going to give them one last chance out there," Barney said, and in case somebody gets overexcited, I'd better have Steve along for a bodyguard."

And I still believe you might as well save your breath," I snorted.

"No doubt you're right, as far as you go," Barney said; "but don't forget the legal aspect. I don't own this place, I only head up a department. We're acting on our personal initiative after the directors agreed to suspend operations. Jack Roberts' approval of our plan was strict sub rosa. Besides, ownership or not, we can no more use spells offensively against trespassers than we could use shotguns. The most we're allowed is harmless defensive forces to preserve life, limb, and property."

"Unless we're directly endangered," I said.

"Which is what we're trying to prevent," he reminded me. "Anyhow, because of the law, I have to make perfectly clear before plenty of witnesses that we intend to stay within it."

I shrugged and shed my outer garments. Underneath was the elastic knit one-piecer that would keep me from arrest for indecent exposure as a human, and not hamper me as a wolf. The moonflash already hung around my neck like a thick round amulet. Ginny kissed me hard. "Take care of yourself, tiger,"

she whispered.

She had no strong cause to worry. The besiegers were unarmed, except for fists and feet and possibly some smuggled billies or the like—nothing I need fear after Skinturning. Even knives and bullets and fangs could only inflict permanent harm under rare and special conditions, like those which had cost me my tail during the war. Besides, the likelihood of a fight was very small. Why should the opposition set on us? That would launch the police against them; and, while martyrdom has its uses, closing down our plant was worth more. Nonetheless, Ginny's tone was not completely level, and she watched us go down the hall till we had rounded a corner.

At that time, Barney said, "Wait a tick," opened a closet, and extracted a blanket that he hung on his arm. "If you should have to change shape," he said, "I'll throw this over you."

"Whatever for?" I exclaimed. "That's not sunlight outside, it's elflight. It won't inhibit transformation."

"It's changed character since that priest set upshot. I used a spectroscope to make certain. The glow's acquired enough ultraviolet-X500 angstroms to be exact that you d have trouble. By-product of a guard against any that we might try to use offensively.

"But we won't!"

"Of course not, It's pure ostentation on his part. Clever, though. When they saw a shieldfield established around them, the fanatics and naive children in the mob leaped to the conclusion that it was necessary; and thus Nornwell gets reconfirmed as the Enemy." He shook his head. "Believe me, Steve, these demonstrators are being operated like gloves, by some mighty shrewd characters."

"You sure the priest himself raised the field?"

"Yeah. They're all Maguses in that clergy, remember—part of their training—and I wonder what else they learn in those lonesome seminaries. Let's try talking with him."

"Is he in charge?" I wondered. "The Johannine hierarchy does claim that when its members mix in politics, they do it strictly as private citizens."

"I know, Barney" said. "And I am the Emperor Norton."

"No, really," I persisted. "These conspiracy theories; are too bloody simple to be true. What you've got is a—uh, a general movement, something in the air, people, disaffected—"

But then, walking, we'd reached one of the ornamental glass panels that flanked the main entrance.

It was smashed like the windows, but no one had thought to barricade it, and our protective spell forestalled entry. Of course, it did not affect us. We step through, onto the landing, right alongside the line bodies that was supposed to keep us in.

We couldn't go farther. The stairs down to ground were paced solid. For a moment we weren't noticed. Barney tapped one straggle-bearded adolescent on the shoulder. "Excuse me," he said from his towering height. "May I?" He plucked a sign out of the unwashed hand, hung the blanket over the placard, and waved his improvised flag of truce aloft. The color was bilious green.

A kind of gasp like the puff of wind before a storm, went through the crowd. I saw faces and faces and faces next to me, below me, dwindling off into the dusk beyond the flickering elflight. I don't think it was only my haste and my prejudice that made them look eerily alike.

You hear a lot about long-haired men and shorthaired women, bathless bodies and raggedy clothes.

Those were certainly present in force. Likewise I identified the usual graybeard radicals and campus hangers-on, hoodlums, unemployables, vandals, True Believers, and the rest. But there were plenty of clean, well-dressed, terribly earnest boys and girls. There were the merely curious, too, who had somehow suddenly found themselves involved. And everyone was tall, short, or medium, fat, thin, or average, rich, poor, or middleclass, bright, dull, or normal, heterosexual, homosexual, or I know not what, able in some fields, inept in others, interested in some things, bored by others, each with an infinite set of memories, dreams, hopes, terrors, loves-each with a soul.

No, the sameness appeared first in the signs they carried. I didn't count how many displayed ST.

JOHN 13:34 or I JOHN 2:9-11 or another of those passages; how many more carried the texts, or some variation like LOVE THY NEIGHBOR or plain LOVE: quite a few, anyway, repeating and repeating.

Others were less amiable:

DEMATERIALIZE THE MATERIALISTS!

WEAPONMAKERS, WEEP!

STOP GIVING POLICE DEVILS HORNS

KILL THE KILLERS, HATE THE HATERS, DESTROY THE DESTROYERS!

SHUT DOWN THIS SHOP

And so it was as if the faces-worse, the brains behind them had become nothing but placards with slogans written across.

Don't misunderstand me. I wouldn't think much of a youngster who never felt an urge to kick the God of Things As They Are in his fat belly. It's too bad that most people lose it as they get old and fat themselves. The Establishment is often unendurably smug and stupid; the hands it folds so piously are often bloodstained.

And yet . . . and yet . . . it's the only thing between us and the Dark Ages that'd have to intervene before another and probably worse Establishment could arise to restore order. And don't kid yourself that none would. Freedom is a fine thing until it becomes somebody else's freedom to enter your house, kill, rob, rape, and enslave the people you care about. Then you'll accept any man on horseback who promises you'll have some predictability back into life, and you yourself will give him his saber and knout.

`

Therefore isn't our best bet to preserve this we've got? However imperfectly, it does function; it's ours, it shaped us, we may not understand it too well but surely we understand it better than something untried and alien. With a lot of hard work, h thinking, hard-nosed good will, we can improve it.

You will not, repeat not, get improvement if wild-blue-yonder theorists who'd take us in one leap outside the whole realm of our painfully acquired experience; or from dogmatists mouthing the pat words of reform movements that accomplished something two generations or two centuries ago; or college sophomores convinced they have the answer to every social problem over which men like Hammurabi, Moses, Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, Jefferson, Burke, Lincoln, a thousand others broke their heads and their hearts.

But enough of that. I'm no intellectual; I try to think for myself. It depressed me to see these mostly well-meaning people made tools of the few whose aim was to bring the whole shebang down around their ears.

XXII

THE INDRAWN BREATH returned as a guttural sigh that edged toward a growl. The nearest males took a step or two in our direction. Barney waved his flag. "Wait!" he called, a thunderous basso overriding any other sound. "Truce! Let's talk this over! Take your leader to me!"

"Nothing to talk about, you murderers!" screamed a pimply girl. She swung her sign at me. I glimpsed upon it PEACE AND BROTHERHOOD before I had to get busy protecting my scalp.

Someone began a chant that was quickly taken up by more and more: "Down with Diotrephes, down with Diotrephes, down with Diotrephes—"

Alarm stabbed through me. Though Diotrephes is barely mentioned in John's third epistle, the Johannines of today made him a symbol of the churches that opposed their movement. (No doubt he also meant other things to their initiates and adepts.) The unbelieving majority of the purely rebellious hadn't bothered to understand this. To them, Diotrephes became a name for the hated secular authority, or anyone else that got in their way. Those words had hypnotized more than one crowd into destructive frenzy.

I took her sign away from the girl, defended my eyes from her fingernails, and reached for my flash.

But abruptly everything changed. A bell sounded. A voice cried. Both were low, both somehow penetrated the rising racket.

"Peace. Hold love in your hearts, children. Be still in the presence of the Holy Spirit."

My attacker retreated. The others who hemmed us in withdrew. Individuals started falling on their knees. A moan went through the mob, growing almost orgasmic before it died away into silence.

Looking up, I saw the priest approach.

He traveled with bell in one hand, holding onto the upright of his tau crucifix while standing on its pedestal. Thus Christ nailed to the Cross of Mystery went before him. Nothing strange about that, I thought wildly, except that other churches would call it sacrilegious to give the central sign of their faith yonder shape, put an antigrav spell on it and use it like any broomstick. Yet the spectacle was weirdly impressive. It was like an embodiment of that Something Else on which Gnosticism is focused.

I'd regarded the Johnnies' "ineffable secrets" as unspeakable twaddle. Tonight I knew better. More was here than the ordinary paranatural emanations. Every nerve of my werewolf heritage sensed it. I didn't think the Power was of the Highest. But whence, then?

As the priest landed in front of us, though, he looked entirely human. He was short and skinny, his robe didn't fit too well, glasses perched precariously on his button nose, his graying hair was so thin I could hardly follow the course of his tonsure-the strip shaven from ear to ear, across the top of the head, that was said to have originated with Simon Magus.

He turned to the crowd first. "Let me speak with these gentlemen out of love, not hatred, and righteousness may prevail," he said in his oddly carrying tone. "'He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.' "

"Amen," mumbled across the grounds.

As the little man faced back toward us, I had a sudden belief that he really meant that dear quota-tion. It didn't drive away the miasma. The Adversary knows well how to use single-minded sincerity.

But I felt less hostile to this priest as a person.

He smiled at us and bobbed his head. "Good evening," he said. "I am Initiate Fifth Class Marmiadon, at your service."

"Your, uh, ecclesiastical name?" Barney asked.

"Why, of course. The old name is the first of the things of this world that must be left behind at the Gate of Passage. I'm not afraid of a hex, if that is what you mean, sir."

"No, I suppose not." Barney introduced us, a cheap token of amity since we were both easily identifiable. "We came out hoping to negotiate a settlement."

Marmiadon beamed. "Wonderful! Blessings! I'm not an official spokesman, you realize. The Committee for National Righteousness called for this demonstration. However, I be glad to use my good offices."

"The trouble is," Barney said, we can't do much about their basic demands. We're not against world peace and universal disarmament ourselves, you understand; but those are matters for international diplomacy. In the same way, the President and Congress have to decide whether to end the occupation formerly hostile countries and spend the money social uplift at home. Amnesty for rioters is up to our city governments. School courses in Gnostic philosophy and history have to be decided on by elect authorities. As for total income equalization and phasing out of materialism, hypocrisy, injustice " He shrugged. "That needs a Constitutional amendment at least.

"You can, however, lend your not inconsiderable influence to forwarding those ends," Marmiadon said. "For example, you can contribute to the Committee's public education fund. You can urge the election of the proper candidates and help finance their campaigns. You can allow proselytizers to circulate among your employees. You can stop doing business with merchants who remain obstinate."

He spread his arms. "In the course of so doing my children, you can rescue yourselves from eternal damnation!"

"Well, maybe; though Pastor Karlslund over at St. Olaf's Lutheran might give me a different opinion on that," Barney said. "In any case, it's too big a list to check off in one day."

"Granted, granted." Marmiadon quivered with eagerness. "We reach our ends a step at a time.

'While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.' The present dispute is over a single issue."

"The trouble is," Barney said, "you want us to cancel contracts we've signed and taken money for.

You want us to break our word and let down those who trust us."

His joy dropped from Marmiadon. He drew himself to his full meager height, looked hard and straight at us, and stated: "These soldiers of the Holy Spirit demand that you stop making equipment for the armed forces, oppressors abroad, and for the police, oppressors at home. Nothing more is asked of you at this time, and nothing less. The question is not negotiable."

"I see. I didn't expect anything else," Barney said. "But I wanted to put the situation in plain language before witnesses. Now I'm going to warn you."

Those who heard whispered to the rest, a hissing from mouth to mouth. I saw tension mount anew.

"If you employ violence upon those who came simply to remonstrate," Marmiadon declared, "they will either have the law upon you, or see final proof that the law is a creature of the vested interests . . .

which I tell you in turn are the creatures of Satan."

"Oh, no, no," Barney answered. "We're mild sorts, whether you believe it or not. But you are trespassing. You have interfered with our work to the point where we're delayed and shorthanded. We must carry on as best we can, trying to meet our contractual obligations. We're about to run an experiment. You could be endangered. Please clear the grounds for your own safety.'

Marmiadon grew rigid. "If you think you can get away with a deadly spell-"

"Nothing like. I'll tell you precisely what we have in mind. We're thinking about a new method of transporting liquid freight. Before going further, we have to run a safety check on it. If the system fails, unprotected persons could be hurt." Barney raised his volume, though we knew some of the police officers would have owls' ears tuned in. "I order you, I warn you, I beg you to stop trespassing, and get off company properly. You have half an hour.

We wheeled and were back inside before the noise broke loose. Curses, taunts, obscenities, and animal howls followed us down the halls until we reached the blessed isolation of the main alchemy lab.

The dozen scientists, technicians, and blue-collar men whom Barney had picked out of the volunteers to stay with him, were gathered there. They sat smoking, drinking coffee brewed on Bunsen burners, talking in low voices. When we entered, a small cheer came from them. They'd watched the confrontation on a closed-loop ball. I sought out Ike Abrams, the warehouse foreman. Ever since we soldiered together, I'd known him as a good man, and had gotten him his job here. "All in order?" I asked.

He made a swab-O sign. "By me, Cap'n, she's clear and on green. I can't wait."

I considered him for a second. "You really have it in for those characters, don't you?"

"In my position, wouldn't you?" He looked as if he were about to spit.

In your position, I thought, or in any of a lot of other positions, but especially in yours, Ike-yes.

As a rationalist, I detested the irrationality at the heart of Gnosticism. Were I a devout Christian, I'd have more counts against the Johannine Church: its claim to be the successor of all others, denying them any further right to exist; worse, probably, its esotericism, that would deny God's grace to nearly the whole of mankind. Rationalist and religionist alike could revolt against its perversion of the Gospel According to St. John, perhaps the most beautiful and gentle if the most mystical book in Holy Writ.

But if you were Jewish, the Johnnies would pluck out of context and throw at you texts like "For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist." You would see reviving around you the ancient nightmare of anti-Semitism.

A little embarrassed, I turned to Bill Hardy, our chief paracelsus, who sat swinging his legs from a lab bench. "How much stuff did you produce?" I asked.

"About fifty gallons," he said, pointing.

"Wow! With no alchemy?"

"Absolutely not. Pure, honest-to-Berzelius molecular interaction. I admit we were lucky to have a large supply of the basic ingredients on hand."

I winced, recalling the awful sample he'd whipped up when our scheme was first discussed. "How on Midgard did that happen?"

"Well, the production department is—was—filling some big orders," he said. "For instance, a dairy chain wanted a lot of rancidity preventers. You know the process, inhibit the reaction you don't want in a test tube, and cast a sympathetic spell to get the same effect in ton lots of your product. Then the government is trying to control the skunk population in the Western states, and—" He broke off as Ginny came in.

Her eyes glistened. She held her wand like a Valkyrie's sword. "We're set, boys." The words clanged.

"Let's go." Barney heaved his bulk erect. We followed him to the containers. They were ordinary flat one-gallon cans such as you buy paint thinner in, but Solomon's seal marked the wax that closed each screw top and I could subliminally feel the paranatural forces straining around them. It seemed out of keeping for the scientists to load them on a cart and trundle them off.

Ike and his gang went with me to my section. The apparatus I'd thrown together didn't look especially impressive either. In fact, it was a haywire monstrosity of coils and wires enclosing a big gasoline-driven electric generator. Sometimes you need more juice for an experiment than the carefully screened public power lines can deliver.

To cobble that stuff on, I'd have to remove the generator's own magnetic screens. Therefore, what we had was a mass of cold free iron; no spell would work in its immediate vicinity. Ike had been in his element this afternoon, mounting the huge weight and awkward bulk on wheels for me. He was again, now, as he directed it along the halls and skidded it over the stairs.

No doubt he sometimes wished people had never found how to degauss the influences that had held paranatural forces in check since the Bronze Age ended. He wasn't Orthodox; his faith didn't prohibit him having anything whatsoever to do with goetics. But neither was he Reform or Neo-Chassidic. He was a Conservative Jew, who could make use of objects that others had put under obedience but who mustn't originate any cantrips himself. It's a tribute to him that he was nonetheless a successful and popular foreman.

He'd rigged a husky block-and-tackle arrangement in the garage. The others had already flitted to the flat roof. Ginny had launched the canisters from there. They bobbed about in the air, out of range of the magnetic distortions caused by the generator when we hoisted its iron to their level. Barney swung the machine around until we could ease it down beside the skylight. That made it impossible for us to rise on brooms or a word. We joined our friends via rope ladder.

"Ready?" Barney asked. In the restless pale glow, I saw sweat gleam on his face. If this failed, he'd be responsible for unforeseeable consequences.

I checked the connections. "Yeah, nothing's come loose. But let me first have a look around."

I joined Ginny at the parapet. Beneath us roiled the mob, faces and placards turned upward to hate us. They had spied the floating containers and knew a climax was at hand. Behind his altar, Initiate Marmiadon worked at what I took to be reinforcement of his defensive field. Unknown phrases drifted to me: ". . . Heliphomar Mabon Saruth Gefutha Enunnas Sacinos . . ." above the sullen mumble of our besiegers.

The elflight flickered brighter. The air seethed and crackled with energies. I caught a thunderstorm whiff of ozone.

My darling wore a slight, wistful smile. "How Svartalf would love this," she said.

Barney lumbered to our side. "Might as well start," he said. "I'll give them one last chance." He shouted the same warning as before. Yells drowned him out. Rocks and offal flew against our walls.

"Okay," he growled. "Let 'er rip!"

I went back to the generator and started the motor, leaving the circuits open. It stuttered and shivered. The vile fumes made me glad we'd escaped depending on internal combustion engines. I've seen automobiles, as they were called, built around 1900, shortly before the first broomstick flights.

Believe me, museums are where they belong-a chamber of horrors, to be exact.

Ginny's clear call snapped my attention back. She'd directed the canisters into position. I could no longer see them, for they floated ten feet over the heads of the crowd, evenly spaced. She made a chopping gesture with her wand. I threw the main switch.

No, we didn't use spells to clear Nornwell's property. We used the absence of spells. The surge of current through the coils on the generator threw out enough magnetism to cancel every charm, ours and theirs alike, within a hundred-yard radius.

We'd stowed whatever gear might be damaged in safe conductive-shell rooms. We'd repeatedly cautioned the mob that we were about to experiment with the transportation of possibly dangerous liquids. No law required us to add that these liquids were in super-pressurized cans which were bound to explode and spray their contents the moment that the wall-strengthening force was annulled.

We'd actually exaggerated the hazard . . . in an attempt to avoid any slightest harm to trespassers.

Nothing vicious was in those containers. Whatever might be slightly toxic was present in concentrations too small to matter, although a normal sense of smell would give ample warning regardless. Just a harmless mixture of materials like butyl mercaptan, butyric acid, methanethiol, skatole, cadaverine, putrescine ... well, yes, the organic binder did have penetrative properties; if you got a few drops on your skin, the odor wouldn't disappear for a week or two . . .

The screams reached me first. I had a moment to gloat. Then the stench arrived. I'd forgotten to don my gas mask, and even when I'm human my nose is quite sensitive. The slight whiff I got sent me gasping and retching backward across the roof. It was skunk, it was spoiled butter, it was used asparagus, it was corruption and doom and the wheels of juggernaut lubricated with Limburger cheese, it was beyond imagining. I barely got my protection on in time.

"Poor dear. Poor Steve." Ginny held me close.

"Are they gone?" I sputtered.

"Yes. Along with the policemen and, if we don't get busy, half this postal district."

I relaxed. The uncertain point in our plan had been whether the opposition would break or would come through our now undefended doors in search of our lives. After my experience I didn't see how the latter would have been possible. Our chemists had builded better than they knew.

We need hardly expect a return visit, I thought in rising glee. If you suffer arrest or a broken head for the Cause, you're a hero who inspires others. But if you merely acquire for a while a condition your best friends won't tell you about because they can't come within earshot of you-hasn't the Cause taken a setback?

I grabbed Ginny to me and started to kiss her. Damn, I'd forgotten my gas mask again! She disentangled our snouts. "I'd better help Barney and the rest hex away those molecules before they spread," she told me. "Switch off your machine and screen it."

"Uh, yes," I must agree. "We want our staff returning to work in the morning."

What with one thing and another, we were busy for a couple of hours. After we finished, Barney produced some bottles, and the celebration lasted till well nigh dawn. The eastern sky blushed pink when Ginny and I wobbled aboard our broom and hiccoughed, "Home, James."

The air blew cool, heaven reached high. "Know something?" I said over my, shoulder. "I love you."

"Purr-rr-rr." She leaned forward to rub her cheek against mine. Her hands wandered.

"Shameless hussy," I said.

"You prefer some other kind?" she asked.

"Well, no," I said "but you might wait a while. Here I am in front of you, feeling more lecherous every minute but without any way to lech."

"Oh, there are ways," she murmured dreamily. "On a broomstick yet. Have you forgotten?"

"No. But dammit, the local airlanes are going to be crowded with commuter traffic pretty soon, and I'd rather not fly several miles looking for solitude when we've got a perfectly good bedroom nearby."

"Right. I like that thought. Only fifteen minutes away, in the privacy of your own home—Pour on the coal, James."

The stick accelerated.

I was full of glory and the glory that was her. She caught the paranatural traces first. My indication was that her head lifted from between my shoulder blades, her arms loosened around my waist while the finger nails bit through my shirt. "What the Moloch?" I exclaimed.

"Hsh!" she breathed. We flew in silence through the thin chill dawn wind. The city spread darkling beneath us. Her voice came at last, tense, but some how dwindled and lost:-"I said I didn't like the scent of the time-stream. In the excitement and everything, I forgot."

My guts crawled, as if I were about to turn wolf. Senses and extrasenses strained forth. I've scant thaumaturgic skill-the standard cantrips, plus a few from the Army and more from engineering training but a lycanthrope has inborn instincts and awarenesses. Presently I also knew.

Dreadfulness was about.

As we flitted downward, we knew that it was in our house.

We left the broomstick on the front lawn. I turned my key in the door and hurled myself through.

"Val!" I yelled into the dim rooms. "Svartalf!"

No lock had been forced or picked, no glass had been broken, the steel and stone guarding every paranatural entry were unmoved. But chairs lay tumbled, vases smashed where they had fallen off shaken tables, blood was spattered over walls, floors, carpets, from end to end of the building.

We stormed into Valeria's room. When we saw that little shape quietly asleep in her crib, we held each other and wept.

Finally Ginny could ask, "Where's Svartalf? What happened?"

"I'll look around," I said. "He gave an epic account of himself, at least."

"Yes-" She wiped her eyes. As she looked around the wreckage in the nursery, that green gaze hardened. She stared down into the crib. "Why didn't you wake up?" she said in a tone I'd never heard before.

I was already on my way to search. I found Svartalf in the kitchen. His blood had about covered the linoleum. In spite of broken bones, tattered hide, belly gashed open, the breath rattled faintly in and out of him. Before I could examine the damage further, a shriek brought me galloping back to Ginny.

She held the child. Blue eyes gazed dully at me from under tangled gold curls. Ginny's face, above, was drawn so tight it seemed the skin must rip on the cheekbones. "Something's wrong with her," she told me. "I can't tell what, but something's wrong.'

I stood for an instant feeling my universe break apart. Then I went into the closet. Dusk was giving place to day, and I needed darkness. I shucked my outer clothes and used my flash. Emerging, I went to those two female figures. My wolf nose drank their odors.

I sat on my haunches and howled.

Ginny laid down what she was holding. She stayed completely motionless by the crib while I changed back.

"I'll call the police," I heard my voice, say to her. "That thing isn't Val. It isn't even human."

XXIII

I TAKE CARE not to remember the next several hours in detail.

At noon we were in my study. Our local chief had seen almost at once that the matter was beyond him and urged us to call in the FBI. Their technicians were still busy checking the house and grounds, inch by inch. Our best service was to stay out of their way. I sat on the day bed, Ginny on the edge of my swivel chair. From time to time one of us jumped up, paced around, made an inane remark, and slumped back down. The air was fogged with smoke from ashtray, overflowing cigarets. My skull felt scooped out. Her eyes had retreated far back into her head. Sunlight, grass, trees were unreal in the windows.

"You really ought to eat," I said for the ?-th time. "Keep your strength."

"Same to you," she answered, not looking at me or at anything I could tell.

"I'm not hungry."

"Nor I."

We returned to the horror.

The extension phone yanked us erect. "A call from Dr. Ashman," it said. "Do you wish to answer?"

"For God's sake yell" ripped from me. "Visual." Momentarily, crazily, I couldn't concentrate on our first message from the man who brought Valerie into the world. My mind spun off into the principles of telephony. Sympathetic vibrations, when sender and receiver are spelled to the same number; a scrying unit for video when desired; a partial animation to operate the assembly—Ginny's hand seized mine. Its cold shocked me into sanity.

Ashman's face looked well-nigh as exhausted as hers. "Virginia," he said. "Steve. We have the report."

I tried to respond and couldn't.

"You were right," he went on. "It's a homunculus."

"What took you so long?" Ginny asked. Her voice wasn't husky any more, just hoarse and harsh.

"Unprecedented case," Ashman said. "Fairy changelings have always been considered a legend.

Nothing in our data suggests any motive for nonhuman intelligences to steal a child . . . nor any method by which they could if they wanted to, assuming the parents take normal care . . . and certainly no reason for such hypothetical kidnappers to leave a sort of golem in its place. " He sighed. "Apparently we know less than we believe."

"What are your findings?" The restored determination in Ginny's words brought my gaze to her.

"The police chirurgeon, the crime lab staff, and later a pathologist from the University hospital worked with me," Ashman told us. "Or I with them. I was merely the family doctor. We lost hours on the assumption Valerie was bewitched. The simulacrum is excellent, understand. It's mindless—the EEG

is practically flat—but it resembles your daughter down fingerprints. Not till she ... it ... had failed to respond to every therapeutic spell we commanded between us, did we think the body might be an imitation. You told us so at the outset, Steve, but we discounted that as hysteria. I'm sorry. Proof required a whole battery of tests. For instance, the saline content and PBI suggest the makers of the homunculus had no access to oceans. We clinched the matter when we injected some radioactivated holy water; that metabolism is not remotely human."

His dry tone was valuable. The horror began to have some shadowy outline; my brain creaked into motion, searching for ways to grapple it. "What'll they do with the changeling?" I asked.

"I suppose the authorities will keep it in the hope of-of learning something, doing something through it," Ashman said. "In the end, if nothing else happens, it'll doubtless be institutionalized. Don't hate the poor thing. That's all it is, a poor thing, manufacturer some evil reason but not to blame."

"Not to waste time on, you mean," Ginny rasped. "Doctor, have you any ideas about rescuing Val?"

"No. It hurts me." He looked it. "I'm only a medicine man, though. What further can I do? Tell me and I'll come flying."

"You can start right away," Ginny said. "You've heard, haven't you, my familiar was critically wounded defending, her? He's at the vet's, but I want you to take over. '

Ashman was startled. "What? Really—Look, I can't save an animal's life when a specialist isn't able."

"That's not the problem. Svartalf will get well. But vets don't have the expensive training and equipment used on people. I want him rammed back to health overnight. What runes and potions you don't have, you'll know how to obtain. Money's no object."

"Wait," I started to say, recalling what leechcraft costs are like.

She cut me off short. "Nornwell will foot the bill, unless a government agency does. They'd better.

This isn't like anything else they've encountered. Could be a major emergency shaping up." She stood straight. Despite the looted eyes, hair hanging lank, unchanged black garb of last night, she was once more Captain Graylock of the 14th United States Cavalry. "I am not being silly, Doctor. Consider the implications of your discoveries. Svartalf may or may not able to convey a little information to me about what he encountered. He certainly can't when he's unconscious. At the least, he's always been a good helper, and we need whatever help we can get."

Ashman reflected a minute. "All right," he said.

He was about to sign off when the study door opened. "Hold it," a -voice ordered. I turned on my heel, jerkily, uselessly fast.

The hard brown face and hard rangy frame of Robert Shining Knife confronted me. The head of the local FBI office had discarded the conservative business suit of his organization for working clothes. His feather bonnet seemed to brush the ceiling; a gourd stuck into his breechclout rattled dryly to his steps, the blanket around his shoulders and the paint on his skin were patterned in thunderbirds, sun discs, and I know not what else.

"You listened in," I accused.

He nodded. "Couldn't take chances, Mr. Matuchek. Dr. Ashman, you'll observe absolute secrecy.

No running off to any blabbermouth some shaman or goodwife think should be brought in consultation.'

Ginny blazed up. "See here-"

"Your cat'll be repaired for you," Shining Knife promised in the same blunt tone. "I doubt he'll prove of assistance, but we can't pass by the smallest possibility. Uncle Sam will pick up the tab—on the QT—and Dr. Ashman may as well head the team. But I want to clear the other members of it, and make damn sure they aren't told more than necessary. Wait in your office, Doctor. An operative will join you inside an hour."

The physician bristled. "And how long will he then take to certify each specialist I may propose is an All-American Boy?"

"Very little time. You'll be surprised how much he'll know about them already. You'd also be surprised how much trouble someone would have who stood on his rights to tell the press or even his friends what's been going on." Shining Knife smiled sardonically. "I'm certain that's a superfluous warning, sir. You're a man of patriotism and discretion. Good-bye."

The phone understood him and broke the spell.

"Mind if I close the windows?" Shining Knife asked as he did. "Eavesdroppers have sophisticated gadgets these days." He had left the door ajar; we heard his men move around in the house, caught faint pungencies and mutterings. "Please sit down. He leaned back against a bookshelf and watched us.

Ginny controlled herself with an effort I could feel. "Aren't you acting rather high-handed?"

"The circumstances require it, Mrs. Matuchek," he said.

She bit her lip and nodded.

"What's this about?" I begged.

The hardness departed from Shining Knife. "We're confirming what your wife evidently suspects,"

he said with a compassion that made me wonder if he had a daughter of his own. "She's a witch and would know, but wouldn't care to admit it till every hope of a less terrible answer was gone. This is no ordinary kidnapping."

"Well, of course-!"

"Wait. I doubt if it's technically any kind of kidnapping. My bureau may have no jurisdiction.

However, as your wife said the case may well involve the national security. I'll have to communicate with Washington and let them decide. In the last analysis, the President will. Meanwhile, we don't dare rock the boat."

I looked from him to Ginny to the horror that was again without form, not a thing to be fought but a condition of nightmare. "Please, I whispered.

Shining Knife's mouth contorted too for an instant. He spoke flatly and fast: "we've ascertained the blood is entirely the cat's. There are some faint indications of ichor, chemical stains which may have been caused by it, but none of the stuff itself. We got better clues from scratches and gouges in floor and furnishings. Those marks weren't left by anything we can identify, natural or paranatural; and believe me, our gang is good at identifications."

"The biggest fact is that the house was never entered. Not any way we can check for-and, again, we know a lot of different ones. Nothing was broken, forced, or picked. Nothing had affected the guardian signs and objects; their fields were at full strength, properly meshed and aligned, completely undisturbed.

Therefore nothing flew down the chimney, or oozed through a crack, or dematerialized past the walls, or compelled the babysitter to let it in.

3

"The fact that no one in the neighborhood was alerted is equally significant. Remember how common, hex alarms and second-sighted watchdogs are. Some thing paranatural and hostile in the street would touched off a racket to wake everybody for three blocks around. Instead, we've only got the Delacorts next door, who heard what they thought was a catfight."

He paused. "Sure," he finished, "we don't everything about goetics. But we do know enough about its felonious uses to be sure this was no forced entry."

"What, then?" I cried.

Ginny said it for him: "It came in from the hell universe."

"Theoretically, could have been an entity from Heaven." Shining Knife's grin was brief and stiff.

"But that's psychologically-spiritually-impossible. The M.O. is diabolic.

Ginny sat forward. Her features were emptied of expression, her chin rested on a fist, her eyes were half-shut, the other hand drooped loosely over a knee. She murmured as if in a dream:

"The changeling fits your theory quite well, doesn't it? To the best of our knowledge, matter can't be transferred from one space-time plenum to another in violation of the conservation laws of physics.

Psychic influences can go, yes. Visions, temptations, inspirations, that sort of thing. The uncertainty principle allows them. But not an actual object. If you want to take it from its proper universe to your own, you have to replace it with an identical amount of matter, whose configuration has to be fairly similar to preserve momentum. You may remember Villegas suggested this was the reason angels take more or less anthropomorphic shapes on earth."

Shining Knife looked uneasy. "This is no time to be unfriends with the Most High," he muttered.

"I've no such intention," Ginny said in her sleepwalker's tone. "He can do all things. But His servants are finite. They must often find it easier to let transferred matter fall into the shape it naturally wants to, rather than solve a problem involving the velocities of ten to the umpteenth atoms in order to give it another form. And the inhabitants of the Low Continuum probably can't. They aren't creative. Or so the Petrine churches claim. I understand the Johannine doctrine includes Manichaean elements.

"A demon could go from his universe to a point in ours that was inside this house. Because his own natural form is chaotic, he wouldn't have to counter-transfer anything but dirt, dust, trash, rubbish, stuff in a high-entropy condition. After he finished his task, he'd presumably return that material in the course of returning himself. It'd presumably show effects. I know things got generally upset in the fight, Mr.

Shining Knife, but you might run a lab check on what was in the garbage can, the catbox, and so forth."

The FBI man bowed. "We thought of that, and noticed its homogenized condition," he said. "If you could think of it, under these circumstances—"

Her eyes opened fully. Her speech became like slowly drawn steel: "Our daughter is in hell, sir. We mean to get her back."

I thought of Valeria, alone amidst cruelty and clamor and unnamable distortions, screaming for a Daddy and a Mother who did not come. I sat there on the bed, in the night which has no ending, and heard my lady speak as if she were across a light-years-wide abyss:

"Let's not waste time on emotions. I'll continue outlining the event as I reconstruct it; check me out.

The demon—could have been more than one, but I'll assume a singleton—entered our cosmos as a scattered mass of material but pulled it together at once. By simple transformation, he assumed the shape he wanted. The fact that neither the Adversary nor any of his minions can create—if the Petrine tradition is correct—wouldn't handicap him. He could borrow any existing shape. The fact that you can't identify it means nothing. It could be a creature of some obscure human mythology, or some imaginative drawing some where, or even another planet.

"This is not a devout household. It'd be hypocrisy, and therefore useless, for us to keep religious symbols around that we don't love. Besides, in spite of previous experience with a demon or two, we didn't expect one to invade a middle-class suburban home. No authenticated case of that was on record.

So the final possible barrier to his appearance was absent.

"He had only a few pounds of mass available to him. Any human who kept his or her head could have coped with him-if nothing else, kept him on the run, too busy to do his dirty work, while phoning for an exorcist. But on this one night, no human was here. Svartalf can't talk, and he obviously never got the chance to call in help by different means. He may have outweighed the demon, but not by enough to prevail against a thing all teeth, claws, spines, and armor plate. In the end, when Svartalf lay beaten, the demon took our Val to the Low Continuum. The counter-transferred mass was necessarily in her form.

"Am I right?"

Shining Knife nodded. "I expect you are."

"What do you plan to do about it?"

"Frankly, at the moment there's little or nothing we can do. We haven't so much as a clue to motive."

"You've been told about last night. We made bad enemies. I'm inclined to take at face value the Johnnies' claim that their adepts have secret knowledge. Esotericism has always been associated more with the Low than the High. I'd say their cathedral is the place to start investigating."

Behind his mask of paint, Shining Knife registered unhappiness. "I explained to you before, Mrs.

Matuchek, when we first inquired who might be responsible, that's an extremely serious charge to make on no genuine evidence. The public situation is delicately balanced. Who realizes that better than you?

We can t afford fresh riots. Besides, more to the point, this invasion could be the start of something far bigger, far worse than a kidnapping."

I stirred. "Nothing's worse," I mumbled.

He ignored me, sensing that at present Ginny was more formidable. "We know practically zero about the hell universe. I'll stretch a point of security, because I suspect you've figured the truth out already on the basis of unclassified information; quite a few civilian wizards have. The Army's made several attempts to probe it, with no better success than the Faustus Institute had thirty years ago. Men returned in states of acute psychic shock, after mere minutes there, unable to describe what'd happened.

Instruments recorded data that didn't make sense."

"Unless you adopt Nickelsohn's hypothesis," she said.

"What's it?"

"That space-time in that cosmos is non-Euclidean, violently so compared to ours, and the geometry changes from place to pace." Her tone was matter-of-fact.

"Well, yes, I'm told the Army researchers did decide-" He saw the triumph in her eyes. "Damn!

What a neat trap you set for me!" With renewed starkness. "Okay. You'll understand we dare not go blundering around when forces we can't calculate are involved for reasons we can scarcely guess. The consequences could be disastrous. I'm going to report straight to the Director, who I'm sure will report straight to the President, who I'm equally sure will have us keep, alert but sit tight till we've learned more.'

"What about Steve and me?"

"You too. You might get contacted, remember."

"I doubt it. What ransom could a demon want?"

"The demon's master—"

"I told you to check on the Johnnies."

"We will. We'll check on everything in sight, reassonable or not. But it'll take time."

"Meanwhile Valeria is in hell."

"If you want a priest we've clergy of most faiths cleared to serve our personnel. I can bring one here if you like."

The red head shook. "No, thanks. Ask them to pray for her. It can't hurt. I doubt it'll help much, either. Certainly none of them can help us two. What we want is a chance to go after our daughter."

My heart sprang. The numbness tingled out of me. I rose.

Shining Knife braced himself. "I can't permit that. Sure, you've both accomplished remarkable things in the past, but the stakes are too high now for amateurs to play. Hate me all you want. If it's any consolation, that'll pain me. But I can't let you jeopardize yourselves and the public interest. You'll stay put. Under guard."

"You—" I nearly jumped him. Ginny drew me back.

"Hold on, Steve," she said crisply. "Don't make trouble. What we'll do, you and I, if it won't interfere with the investigation, is choke down some food and a sleeping potion and cork off till we're fit to think again."

Shining Knife smiled. "Thanks," he said. "I was certain you'd be sensible. I'll go hurry 'em along in the kitchen so you can get that meal soon."

I closed the door behind him. Rage shivered me.

"What the blue deuce is this farce?" I stormed. "If he thinks we'll sit and wait on a gaggle of bureaucrats-"

"Whoa." She pulled my ear down to her lips. "What he thinks," she whispered, "is that his wretched guard will make any particular difference to us."

"Oh-ho!" For the first time I laughed. It wasn't a merry or musical noise, but it was a laugh of sorts.

XXIV

WE WEREN'T EXACTLY under house arrest. The well-behaved young man who stayed with us was to give us what protection and assistance we might need. He made it clear, though, that if we to leave home or pass word outside, he'd suddenly and regretfully discover reason to hold us for investigation of conspiracy to overthrow the Interstate Commerce Commission.

He was a good warlock, too. An FBI agent must have a degree in either sorcery or accounting; and his boss wanted to be sure we didn't try anything desperate. But at supper Ginny magicked out of him the information she required. How she did that, I'll never understand. I don't mean she cast a spell in the technical sense. Rather, the charm she employed is the kind against which the only male protection is defective glands. What still seems impossible to me is that she could sit talking, smiling, Bashing sparks of wit a across a surface of controlled feminine sorrow, waggling her eyelashes and leading him on to relate his past exploits . . . when each corner of the place screamed that Valeria was gone.

We retired early, pleading exhaustion. Actually we were well rested and wire-taut. "He's sharp on thaumaturgy," my sweetheart murmured in the darkness of our bedroom, "but out of practice on mantics.

A smoothly wrought Seeming ought to sucker him. Use the cape."

I saw her intent. A cold joy, after these past hours in chains, beat through me. I scrambled out of my regular clothes, into my wolf suit, and put the civvies back on top. As I reached for the Tarnkappe—

unused for years, little more than a war souvenir—she came to me and pressed herself close. "Darling, be careful!" Her voice was not steady and I tasted salt on her lips.

She had to stay, allaying possible suspicion, ready to take the ransom demand that might come.

Hers was the hard part.

I donned the cloak. The hood smelled musty across my face, and small patches of visibility showed where moths had gotten at the fabric. But what the nuts, it was merely to escape and later (we hoped) return here in. There are too many counter-agents these days for Tarnkappen to be effective for serious work, ranging from infrared detectors to spray cans of paint triggered by an unwary foot. Our friendly Fed no doubt had instruments ready to buzz him if an invisibilizing field moved in his vicinity.

Ginny went into her passes, sotto voce incantations, and the rest. She'd brought what was necessary into this room during the day. Her excuse was that she wanted to give us both as strong a protection against hostile influences as she was able. She'd done it, too, with the FBI man's admiring approval. In particular, while the spell lasted, I'd be nearly impossible to locate by paranatural means alone.

The next stage of her scheme was equally straightforward. While terrestrial magnetism is too weak to cancel paranatural forces, it does of course affect them, and so do its fluctuations. Therefore ordinary goetic sensor devices aren't designed to register minor quantitative changes. Ginny would establish a Seeming. The feeble Tarnkappe field would appear gradually to double in intensity, then, as I departed, oscillate back to its former value. On my return, she'd phase out the deception.

Simple in theory. In practice it took greater skill to pull off without triggering an alarm than her record showed she could possess. What the poor old FBI didn't know was that she had what went beyond training and equipment, she had a Gift.

At her signal, I slipped through the window. The night air was chill and moist; dew glistened on the lawn in the goblin glow of street lamps; I heard a dog howl. It had probably caught a whiff of my cloak.

And no doubt the grounds were under surveillance . . . yes, my witch-sight picked out a man in the shadows beneath the elms across the way . . . I padded fast and softly down the middle of the pavement, where I'd be least likely to affect some watchbeast or sentry field. When it comes to that sort business, I'm pretty good myself.

After several blocks, safely distant, I reached the local grade school and stowed my Tarnkappe in a playground trash can. Thereafter I walked openly, an unremarkable citizen on his lawful occasions. The night being new, I did have to be careful that no passer-by recognized me. At the first phone booth I called Barney Sturlason's home. He said to come right on over. Rather than a taxi, I took a crosstown carpet, reasoning I'd be more anonymous as one of a crowd of passengers. I was.

Barney opened the door. Hallway light that got past his shoulders spilled yellow across me. He let out a soft whistle. "I figured you'd be too bushed to work today, Steve, but not that you'd look like Monday after Ragnarok. What's wrong?"

"Your family mustn't hear," I said.

He turned immediately and led me to his study. Waving me to one of the leather armchairs, he relocked the door, poured two hefty Scotches, and settled down opposite me. "Okay," he invited.

I told him. Never before had I seen anguish on those features. "Oh no," he whispered.

Shaking himself, like a bear malting ready to charge, he asked: "What can I do?"

"First off, lend me a broom," I answered.

"Hold on," he said. "I do feel you've been rash already. Tell me your next move."

"I'm going to Siloam and learn what I can."

"I thought so." The chair screaked under Barney's shifting weight. "Steve, it won't wash. Burgling the Johnny cathedral, maybe trying to beat an admission out of some priest—No. You'd only make trouble for yourself and Ginny at a time when she needs every bit of your resources. The FBI will investigate, with professionals. You could wreck the very clues you're after, assuming they exist. Face it, you are jumping to conclusions." He considered me. "A moral point in addition. You didn't agree that mob yesterday had the right to make its own laws. Are you claiming the right for yourself?"

I took a sip and let the whisky burn its loving way down my gullet. "Ginny and I've had a while to think," I said. "We expected you'd raise the objections you do. Let me take them in order. I don't want to sound dramatic, but how can we be in worse trouble? Add anything to infinity and, and, and"—I must stop for another belt of booze—"you've got the same infinity.

"About the FBI being more capable. We don't aim to bull around just to be doing something; Please give us credit for some brains. Sure, the Bureau must've had agents in the Johannine Church for a long while, dossiers on its leaders, the standard stuff. But you'll remember how at the HCUA hearings a few years back, no evidence could be produced to warrant putting the Church on the Attorney Generals list, in spite of its disavowal of American traditions.'

"The Johnnies are entitled to their opinions," Barney said. "Shucks, I'll agree with certain claims of theirs. This society has gotten too worldly, too busy chasing dollars and fun, too preoccupied with sex and not enough with love, too callous about the unfortunate-"

"Barney," I snapped, "you're trying to sidetrack me and cool me off, but it's no go. Either I get your help soon or I take my marbles elsewhere."

He sighed, fumbled a pipe from his tweed jacket and began stuffing it. "Okay, continue. If the Feds can't find proof that the Johannine hierarchy is engaged in activities illegal or subversive, does that prove the hierarchy is diabolically clever . . . or simply innocent?"

"Well, the Gnostics brag of having information and powers that nobody else does," I said, "and they do get involved one way or another in more and more of the social unrest going on-and mainly, who else, what else might be connected with this thing that's happened? Maybe even unwittingly; that's imaginable; but connected.'

I leaned forward. "Look, Barney," I went on, "Shining Knife admits he'll have to move slow. And Washington's bound to keep him on tighter leash than he wants personally. Tomorrow, no doubt, he'll have agents interviewing various Johnnies. In the nature of the case, they'll learn nothing. You'd need mighty strong presumptive evidence to get a search warrant against a church, especially one that so many people are convinced bears the final Word of God, and most especially when the temple's a labyrinth of places that none but initiates in the various degrees are supposed to enter.

"Well, if and when you got your warrant, what could you uncover? This was no ordinary job. The usual tests for nigromancy and so forth aren't applicable. Why, if I were High Adept Zarathra, I'd invite the G-men to come inspect everything that's religiously permissible. What could he lose?"

"What could you gain?" Barney replied.

"Perhaps nothing I said. "But I mean to act now, not a week from now; and I won't be handicapped by legal rules and public opinion; and I do have special abilities and experience in dark matters; and they won't expect me; and in short, if anything's there to find, I've the best chance in sight of finding it."

He scowled past me.

"As for the moral issue," I said, "you may be right. On the other hand, I'm not about to commit brutalities like some imaginary Special Agent Vee Eye Eye. And in spite of Shining Knife's fear, I honestly don't see what could provoke a major invasion from the Low World. That'd bring in the Highest, and the Adversary can't afford such a confrontation.

"Which is worse, Barney, an invasion of property and privacy, maybe a profanation of a few shrines

. . . or a child in hell?"

He set his glass down on an end table. "You win!" exploded from him. Blinking in surprise: "I seem to 've smashed the bottom out of this tumbler."

"Finish mine," I said. "I'm on my way."

We rose together. "How about a weapon?" he offered.

I shook my head. "Let's not compound the felony. Whatever I meet, probably a gun won't handle."

It seemed needless to add that I carried a hunting knife under my civvies and, in wolf-shape, a whole mouthful of armament. "Uh, we'll fix it so you're in the clear. I visited you; that can no doubt be proven if they try hard. But I sneaked back after I left and boosted your broom."

He nodded. "I suggest you take the Plymouth," he said "It's not as fast as either sports job, but it runs quieter and the besom was tuned only the other day." He stood for a bit, thinking. Stillness and blackness pressed on the windowpanes. "Meanwhile I'll start research on the matter. Bill Hardy . . .

Janice Wenzel from our library staff . . . hm, we could co-opt your Dr. Ashman, and how about Prof Griswold from the University? ... and more, able close-mouthed people, who'll be glad to help and hang any consequences. If nothing else, we can assemble all unclassified data regarding the Low Continuum, and maybe some that aren't. We can set up equations delimiting various conceivable approaches to the rescue problem, and crank 'em through the computator, and eliminate unworkable ideas. Yeah, I'll get busy right off."

What can you say to a guy like that except thanks'

XXV

IT SEEMED IN character for the Johannine Church to put its cathedral for the whole Upper Midwest not in Chicago, Milwaukee, or any other city, but off alone, a hundred miles even from our modest town. The placing symbolized and emphasized the Gnostic rejection of this world as evil, the idea of salvation through secret rites and occult knowledge. Unlike Petrine Christianity, this kind didn't come to you; aside from dismal little chapels here and there, scarcely more than recruiting stations, you came to it.

Obvious, yes. And therefore, I thought, probably false. Nothing about Gnosticism was ever quite what it seemed. That lay in its very nature.

Perhaps its enigmas, veils behind veils and mazes within mazes, were one thing that drew so many people these days. The regular churches made their theologies plain. They clearly described and delimited the mysteries as such, with the common-sense remark that we mortals aren't able to understand every aspect of the Highest. They declared that this world was given us to live in by the Creator, and hence must be fundamentally good; a lot of the imperfections are due to human bollixing, and it's our job to improve matters.

Was that overly unromantic? Did the Johannines appeal to the daydream, childish but always alive in j us, of becoming omnipotent by learning a sec denied the common herd? I'd made that scornful assumption, and still believed it held a lot of truth. But the more I thought, the less it felt like the whole explanation.

I had plenty of time and chance and need for thought, flitting above the night land, where scattered farms and villages looked nearly as remote as the stars overhead. The air that slid around the windfield was turning cold. Its breath went through and through me, disrupting cobwebs in my head until I saw how little I'd really studied, how much I'd lazily taken for granted. But I saw, too, facts I'd forgotten, and how they might be fitted together in a larger understanding. Grimly, as I traveled, I set myself to review what I could about the Johannine Church, from the ground up.

Was it merely a thing of the past two or three generations, a nut cult that happened to appeal to something buried deep in Western man? Or was it in truth as old as it maintained-founded by Christ himself?

The other churches said No. Doubtless Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant should not be lumped together as Petrine. But the popular word made a rough kind of sense. They did have a mutual interpretation of Jesus' charge to his disciples. They agreed on the_ special importance of Peter. No matter what differences bad arisen since, including the question of apostolic succession, they all derive from the Twelve in a perfectly straightforward way.

And yet . . . and yet . . . there is that strange passage at the close of the Gospel According to St.

John:

"Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee'? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?

follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true."

I don't understand it, and I'm not sure Biblical scholars do either, regardless of what they say.

Certainly it gave rise to a fugitive tradition that here Our Lord was creating something more than any of them but John ever knew—some unproclaimed other Church, within or parallel to the Church of Peter, which would at the end manifest itself and guide man to a new dispensation. Today's cult might have originated entirely in this century. But the claim it trumpeted had been whispered for two thousand years.

The association of such a claim with otherworldliness was almost inevitable. Under many labels, Gnosticism has been a recurring heresy. The original form, or rather forms, were an attempt to fuse Christianity with a mishmash of Oriental mystery cults, Neoplatonism, and sorcery. Legend traced it back to the Simon Magus who appears in the eighth chapter of Acts, whose memory was accordingly held in horror by the orthodox. Modern Johanninism was doubly bold in reviving that dawn-age movement by name, in proclaiming it not error but a higher truth and Simon Magus not a corrupter but a prophet.

Could that possibly be right? Might the world actually be at the morning of the Reign of Love? I didn't know; how could I? But by using my brains, as the Petrine tradition held we should, rather than my emotions, I'd decided the Johannine dogma was false. Its spreading acceptance I found due to plain human irrationality.

So you got communities of Truth Seekers, settling down to practice their rites and meditations where nobody would interfere. They drew pilgrims, who needed housing, food, services. The priests, priestesses, acolytes, and lay associates did too. A temple (more accurate than cathedral, but the Johnnies insisted on the latter word to emphasize at they were Christians) needed income; and as a rule it had a substantial endowment, shrewdly managed. Thus a town often grew up around the original foundation—like Siloam, where I was headed.

Simple. Banal. Why did I bother marshaling information that any reader of the daily papers had?

Merely to escape thinking about Valeria? No. To get as much as possible straight in my head, when most was tangled and ghostly.

The Something Else, the Thing Beyond . . . was it no illusion, but a deeper insight? And if so, an insight—into what? I thought of the Johannines' intolerance and troublemaking. I thought of the frank assertion, that their adepts held powers no one else imagined and that more was revealed to them every year. I thought of stories told by certain apostates, who hadn't advanced far in their degrees when they experienced that which scared them off: nothing illegal, immoral, or otherwise titillating; merely ugly, hateful, sorrowful, and hence not very newsworthy; deniable or ignorable by those who didn't want to believe them. I thought of the Gnostic theology, what part of it wash made public: terrible amidst every twist of revelation and logic, the identification of their Demiurge with the God of the Old Testament with Satan.

I thought of Antichrist.

But there I shied off, being agnostic about such matters, as I've said. I took my stand on the simple feeling that it didn't make sense the Almighty would operate in any such fashion.

Light glimmered into view, far off across the prairie. I was glad of journey's end, no matter what happened next. I didn't care to ride further with those reflections of mine.

Siloam was ordinary frame houses in ordinary yards along ordinary streets. A sign beneath the main airlane, as you neared, said Pop. 5240; another announced that the Lions Club met every Thursday at the Kobold Kettle Restaurant. There were a couple of small manufacturing enterprises, a city hall, an elementary school, a high school, a firehouse, a bedraggled park, a hotel, more service stations than needed. The business district held stores, a cafe or two, a bank, chirurgeon's and dentist's offices above a Rexall apothecary . . . the American works.

That homeliness made the rest freezingly alien. Though the hour lacked of midnight, downtown was a tomb. The residential streets were nearly as deserted nobody out for a stroll, no teenagers holding hands, scarcely a stick or a wagon moving, beneath the rare lamps-once in a while a robed and hooded figure slowly pacing. Each home lay drawn into itself, behind drawn shades. Where the inhabitants weren't asleep, they were probably not watching crystal or playing cards or having a drink or making love, they were most likely at the devotions and studies they hoped would qualify them for a higher religious degree, more knowledge and power and surety of salvation.

And everything centered on the cathedral. It soared above the complex of boxlike ancillary buildings that surrounded it, above town and plain. The pictures I'd seen of it had not conveyed the enormity. Those flat, bone-white walls went up and up and up, till the roof climbed farther yet to make the vast central cupola. From afar, the windows looked like nailheads, one row to a story; but then I saw the stained glass air, each filling half the facade it occupied with murky colors and bewildering patterns, Mandala at the west end and Eye of God at the east. From the west, also, rose the single tower, which in a photograph only looked austere, but now became one leap into the stars.

Light played across the outside of the cathedral and shone dimly from its glass. I heard a chant, men's voices marching deep beneath the wild icy sweepings and soarings of women who sang on no scale I could identify, in no language of earth.

". . . Helfioth Alaritha arbor Neniotho Melitho Tarasunt Chanados Umia Theirura Marada Seliso . . ."

The music was so amplified as to be audible to the very outskirts of town. And it never ended. This was a perpetual choir. Priests, acolytes, pilgrims were always on hand to step in when any of the six hundred and, one wearied. I failed to imagine how it must be to live in that day-and-night haze of canticle. If you were a dweller in Siloam, perhaps not even a Johnny, you'd soon stop noticing on a conscious level. But wouldn't the sound weave into your thoughts, dreams, bones, finally into your soul?

I couldn't interpret the extrasensation I felt, either, more powerful for every yard I approached.

Wrongness—or rightness of a kind that I was simply unable to fathom?

After all, the attendant at the gate was a pleasant young man, his tow hair and blue eyes right out of folk who'd been hereabouts for more than a hundred years, his friendliness out of Walt Whitman's own America. When I had parked my broom in the lot that stretched wide and bare into the dark, approached him, and asked, "Okay to go in?" he regarded me for a moment before answering lightly, "You're not a communicant, are you?"

"N-no," I said, a bit taken aback.

He chuckled. "Wanna know how I can tell? They've got to the Elphue. We'd wait till Mary's invocation was finished before we entered."

"I'm sorry, I—"

"S Okay. Nobody minds, longs you're quiet. In theory, you're damned anyway. I don't buy that myself, know what I mean? My girl's a Methodist. I'll go along with the red tape the priests want before they let me marry her, but I can't believe she'll burn." He realized he might have spoken too freely and added in haste: "How come you're this late? The tourists arrive in the daytime."

I decided he wasn't a lay brother, just an employee, and no more fanatical than the average Christian of any type-in short, one of the decent majority you find in all organizations, all countries. I was prepared for his question. "I travel in ankhs," I said. "Got an appointment in town early tomorrow morning before moving on. Got hung up today and didn't reach here till now. Your choir is so famous I didn't want to miss it."

"Thanks." He handed me a leaflet. "You know the rules? Use the main door. Take a seat in the Heath-uh, the Spectators' Corner. No noise, no picture-taking. When you, want to leave, do it quietly, same way as you came.'

I nodded and walked through the gate. The auxiliary buildings formed a square around a paved yard centered on the cathedral. Where they did not butt directly on each other, walls had been raised between, making the only entrances three portals closable by wire gates. The offices, storerooms, living quarters were plain, in fact drab. A few cenobites move about, male scarcely distinguishable from female in their robes , and overshadowing cowls. I remembered a complete absence of any scandals, anywhere in the world, though the Johannines mingled the sexes in celibacy. Well, of course their monks and nuns weren't simply consecrated; they were initiates. They had gone beyond baptism, beyond the elementary mystery rites and name-changing (with the old public name retained for secular use) that corresponded to a Petrine confirmation. For years they had mortified the flesh, disciplined the soul, bent the mind to mastering what their holy books called divine revelation, and unbelievers called pretentious nonsense, and some believers in a different faith called unrecognized diabolism . . .

Blast it, I thought, I've got to concentrate on my. job. Never mind those silent sad figures rustling past. Ignore, if you can, the overwhelmingness of the cathedral you are nearing and the chant that now swells from it to fill the whole night. Deny that your werewolf heritage senses things it fears to a degree that is making you ill. Sweat prickles forth on your skin, tuna cold down our ribs and reeks in your nostrils. You see the word through a haze of dream and relentless' music. But Valeria is in hell.

I stopped where the vague shifty light was and read the leaflet. It bade me a courteous welcome and listed the same regulations as the gatekeeper had. On the flip side was a floor plan of the basilica section of the main building. The rest was left blank. Everybody realized that an abundance of rooms existed on the levels of the north and south sides, the tower, and even the cupola. It was no secret that great crypts lay beneath. They were used for certain ceremonies, some of them, anyhow. Beyond this information: nothing.

The higher in degree you advanced, the more you were shown. Only adepts might enter the final sanctums, and only they knew what went on there.

I mounted the cathedral steps. A couple of husky monks stood on either side of the immense, open door. They didn't move, but their eyes frisked me. The vestibule was long, low-ceilinged, whitewashed, bare except for a holy water font. Here was no cheerful clutter of bulletin board, parish newsletter, crayon drawings from the Sunday school. A nun standing at the middle pointed me to a left entrance.

Another one at that position looked from me to a box marked Offerings and back until I had to stuff in a couple of dollars. It might have been funny except for the singing, the incense, the gazes, the awareness of impalpable forces which drew my belly muscles taut.

I entered an aisle and found myself alone in a roped-off section of pews, obviously for outsiders. It took me a minute to get over the impact of the stupendous interior and sit down. Then I spent several more minutes trying to comprehend it, and failing.

The effect went beyond size. When everything was undecorated, naked white geometry of walls and pillars and vaulting, you had nothing to scale by; you were in a cavern that reached endlessly on. God's Eye above the altar, Mandala above the choir loft, dominated a thick dusk. But they were unreal too, more remote than the moon, just as the candles glimmering from place to place could have been stars.

Proportions, curves, intersections, all helped create the illusion of illimitable labyrinthine spaces. Half a dozen worshipers, scattered along the edge of the nave, were lost. But so would any possible congregation be. This church was meant to diminish its people.

A priest stood at the altar with two attendants. I recognized them by their white robes as initiates. At their distance they were dwarfed nearly to nothing. Somehow the priest was not. In the midnight-blue drapery and white beard of an adept, he stood tall, arms outspread, and I feared him. Yet he wasn't moving, praying, anything . . . Smoke from the hanging censers drugged my lungs. The choir droned and shrilled above me. I had never felt more daunted.

Hauling my glance away, I forced myself to study the layout as if this were an enemy fortress to be penetrated: which it was, for me tonight, whether or not it bore any guilt for what had happened to my little girl. The thought of her started a rage brewing that soon got strong enough to serve for courage.

My witch-sit didn't operate here; counterspells against such things must have been laid. Normal night vision was adapting, though, stretched to the same ultimate as every other faculty I had.

The noncommunicants' section was as far as could be from the altar, at the end of the extreme left side aisle. So on my right hand were pews reaching to the nave, on my left a passage along the north wall. The choir loft hung over me like a thundercloud. Directly ahead, at the end of a field of empty benches, rose one of the screens that cut off most of the transept from view, ornamented with a black crux ansata.

This isn't helping me figure out how to burgle the joint, I thought.

A monk went past me on soft-sandaled feet. Over his robe he wore a long surplice embroidered with cabalistic symbols. Halfway to the transept halted before a many-branched sconce, lit a candle, and prostrated himself for minutes. Rising, bowing, and backing off seven steps, he returned in my direction.

From pictures, I recognized his outer garment the one donned by choristers. Evidently he'd be been relieved and, instead of taking straight off to shuck his uniform, had acquired a bit of merit first. When he had gone by, I twisted around to follow his course. The pews did not extend the whole way back to the vestibule wall. They left some clear space at the rear end. The choral balcony threw it into such gloom that I could barely see the monk pass through a door in the corner nearest me.

The idea burst forth like a pistol from the holster. I sat outwardly still, inwardly crouched, and probed from side to side of the basilica. Nobody was paying attention to me. Probably I wasn't even visible to celebrants or worshipers; this placement was designed to minimize the obtrusiveness of infidels. My ears, which beneath the clamant song picked out the monk's footfalls had detected no snick of key in lock. I could follow him.

Then what? I didn't know and didn't greatly care. If they nailed me at once, I'd be a Nosy Parker.

They'd scold me and kick me out, and I'd try some different approach. If I got caught deeper in the building: well, that was the risk I'd come courting.

I waited another three hundred million microseconds, feeling each one. The monk needed ample time to get out of this area. During the interval I knelt, gradually hunching lower and lower until I'd sunk out of sight. It drew no stares or inquiries. Finally I was on all fours.

Now! I scuttled, not too fast across to that shadowy corner. Risen, I looked behind me. The adept stood like a gaunt eidolon, the initiates handled the four sacred objects in complicated ways, the choir sang, a man signed himself and left via the south aisle. I waited till he had exited before gripping the doorknob. It felt odd. I turned it most slowly and drew the door open a crack. Nothing happened.

Peering in, I saw dim blue lights.

I went through.

Beyond was an anteroom. A drapery separated it from a larger chamber, which was also deserted.

That condition wouldn't last long. The second of the three curtained openings gave on a spiral staircase down which the hymn came pouring. The third led to a corridor. Most of the space was occupied by racks on which hung surplices. Obviously you bowed one after receiving your instructions elsewhere, and proceeded to the choir loft. At the end of your period, you came back this way. Given six hundred and one singers, reliefs must show quite often. Maybe they weren't so frequent at night, when the personnel were mostly clergy with more training and endurance than eager-beaver laymen. But I'd best not stick around.

I could ditch my outer garments, that'd hamper a wolf, under one of those pullovers. However, somebody who happened to spy me barefoot, in skin-tight briefs, would be hard to convince of my bona fides. I settled for unsnapping the sheath from my inner belt and stuffing my knife in a jacket pocket before I stepped into the hall.

XXVI

LINED WITH DOORS for the length of the building, the corridor might have been occupied by any set of prosaic offices. Mostly they were closed, and the light overhead was turned low. Names on the frosted glass ran to such as "I-2 Saktinos, Postal Propaganda." Well, a lot of territory was controlled from here. A few panels glowed yellow. Passing by one, I heard a typewriter. Within the endless chant, that startled me as if it'd been the click of a skeleton's jaws.

My plans were vague. Presumably Marmiadon, the priest at the Nornwell demonstration, operated out of this centrum. He'd have returned and asked his brethren to get the stench off him. An elaborate 11

too expensive for the average person, would clean him up sooner than nature was able. At least, he was my only lead. Otherwise I could ransack this warren for a fruitless decade.

Where staircases ran up and down, a directory was posted on the wall. I'd expected that. A lot of civilians and outside clergy had business in the nonreserved sections. Marmiadon's office was listed as 413. Because an initiate in the fifth degree ranked fairly high—two more and he'd be a candidate for first-degree adept status—I'd assumed he was based in the cathedral rather than serving as a mere chaplain or missionary. But it occurred to me that I didn't know what his regular job was.

I took the steps quietly, by twos. At the third-floor landing, a locked wrought-iron gate barred further passage. Not surprising, I thought; I'm getting into officer country. It wasn't too big for an agile man to climb over. What I glimpsed of that hall looked no different from below, but my skin prickled at a strengthened sense of abnormal energies.

The fourth floor didn't try for any resemblances to Madison Avenue. Its corridor was brick, barrel-vaulted, lit by Grail-shaped oil lamps hung in chains from above, so that shadows flickered huge.

The chant echoed from wall to wall. The atmosphere smelled of curious, acrid musks and smokes.

Rooms must be large, for the pointed-arch doors stood well apart. They weren't numbered, but they bore nameplates and I guessed the sequence was the same as elsewhere.

One door stood open between me and my goal. Incongruously bright light spilled forth. I halted and stared in slantwise at selves upon shelves of books. Some few appeared ancient, but mostly they were modern—yes, that squat one must be the Handbook of Alchemy and Metaphysics, and yonder set the Encyclopaedia Arcanorum, and there was a bound file of Mind—well, scientists need reference libraries, and surely very strange research was conducted here. It was my hard luck that someone kept busy this late at night.

I glided to the jamb and risked a closer peek. One man sat alone. He was huge, bigger than Barney Sturlason, but old, old; hair and beard were gone, the face might have belonged to Rameses' mummy.

An adept's robe swathed him. He had a book open on his table, but wasn't looking at it. Deep-sunken, his eyes stared before him while a hand walked across the pages. I realized he was blind. That book, though, was not in Braille.

The lights could be automatic, or for another worker in the stacks. I slipped on by.

Marmiadon's place lay several yards further. Beneath his name and rank, the brass plate read

"Fourth Assistant Toller." Not a bell ringer, for God's sake, that runt . . . was he? The door was locked. I should be able to unscrew the latch or push out the hinge pins with my knife. Better wait till I was quite alone, however. Meanwhile I could snoop—

"What walks?"

I whipped about. The adept stood in the hall at the library entrance. He leaned on a pastoral staff; but his voice reverberated so terribly that I didn't believe he needed support. Dismay poured through me.

I'd forgotten how strong a Magus he must be.

"Stranger, what are you?" the bass cry bayed.

I tried to wet my sandpapery lips. "Sir-your Enlightenment—"

The staff lifted to point at me. It bore a Johannine capital, the crook crossed by a tau. I knew it was more than a badge, it was a wand. "Menace encircles you," the adept called. "I felt you in my darkness.

Declare yourself."

I reached for the knife in my pocket, the wereflash under my shirt. Forlorn things; but when my fingers closed on them, they became talismans. Will and reason woke again in me. I thought beneath the hammering:

It'd have been more luck than I could count on, not to get accosted. I meant to try and use the circumstance if it happened. Okay, it has. That's a scary old son of a bitch, but he's mortal. Whatever his powers are, they don't reach to seeing me as I see him, or he'd do so.

Nonetheless I must clear my throat a time or two before speaking, and the words rang odd in my ears. "I-I beg your Enlightenment's pardon. He took me by surprise. Would he please tell me . . . where Initiate Marmiadon is?"

The adept lowered his staff. Otherwise he didn't move. The dead eyes almost rested on me, unwavering: which was worse than if they actually had. "What have you with him to do?"

"I'm sorry, your Enlightenment. Secret and urgent. As your Enlightenment recognizes, I'm a, uh, rather unusual messenger. I can tell him I'm supposed to get together with Initiate Marmiadon in connection with the, uh, trouble at the Nornwell company. It turns out to be a lot more important than it looks.

"That I know, and knew from the hour when he came back. I summoned—I learned—enough. It is the falling stone that may loose an avalanche.'

I had the eldritch feeling his words weren't for me but for someone else. And what was this about the affair worrying him also? I dared not stop to ponder. "Your Enlightenment will understand, then, why I'm in a hurry and why I can't break my oath of secrecy, even to him. If he'd let me know where Marmiadon's cell is—"

"The failed one sleeps not with his brothers. The anger of the Light-Bearer is upon him for his mismanagement, and he does penance alone. You may not seek him before he has been purified." An abrupt snap: "Answer me! Whence came you, what will you, how can it be that your presence shrills to me of danger?"

"I . . . I don't know either," I stammered.

"You are no consecrate-"

"Look, your Enlightenment, if you, if he would—Well, maybe there's been a misunderstanding. My, uh, superior ordered me to get in touch with Marmiadon. They said at the entrance I might find him here, and lent me a gate key." That unobtrusive sentence was the most glorious whopper I ever hope to tell. Consider its implications. Let them ramify. Extrapolate, extrapolate. Sit back in wonder. "I guess they were mistaken."

"Yes. The lower clerics have naturally not been told. However-"

The Magus brooded.

"If your Enlightenment 'ud tell me where to go, who to see, I could stop bothering him."

Decision. "The night abbot's secretariat, Room 107. Ask for Initiate-Six Hesathouba. Of those on duty at the present hour, he alone has been given sufficient facts about the Matuchek case to advise you."

Matuchek case?

I mumbled my thanks and got away at just short of a run, feeling the sightless gaze between my shoulder blades the vole distance to the stairs. Before climbing back over the gate, I stopped to indulge in the shakes.

I knew I'd scant time for that. The adept might suffer from a touch of senility, but only a touch. He could well fret about me until he decided to set inquiries afoot, which might not end with a phone call to Brother Hesathouba. If I was to have any chance of learning something real, I must keep moving.

Where to, though in this Gormenghast house? How? What hope? I ought to admit my venture was sheer quixotry and slink home.

No! While the possibility remained, I'd go after the biggest windmills in sight. My mind got into gear. No doubt the heights as well as the depths of the cathedral were reserved for the ranking priests.

But the ancient mystery religions had held their major rites underground. Weren't the crypts my best bet for locating Marmiadon?

I felt a grin jerk of itself across my face. They wouldn't lighten his ordeal by spelling the smell off him. Which was another reason to suppose he was tucked away below, out of nose range.

Human noses, that is.

I retraced my steps to the first level. From there I hastened downward. No one happened by. The night was far along; sorcerers might be at work, but few people else.

I descended past a couple of sublevels apparently devoted to storage, janitorial equipment, and the like. In one I glimpsed a sister hand-scrubbing the hall floor. Duty? Expiation? Self-abasement? It was a lonely sight. She didn't see me.

A ways beyond, I encountered another locked gate. On its far side the stairway steepened, concrete no longer but rough-hewn stone. I was down into bedrock. The well was chilly and wet to touch, the air to breathe. Modern illumination fell behind. My sole lights were candles, set in iron sconces far apart.

They guttered in the draft from below. My shadow flapped misshapen around them. Finally I could not hear the mass. And still the path led downward.

And downward, until after some part of eternity it ended.

I stepped onto the floor of a natural cave. Widely spaced blue flames picked stalactites and stalagmites'', out of dense, unrestful murk. These burned from otherwise inactivated Hands of Glory fastened over the entrances to several tunnels. I knew that the Johannine hierarchy had used its influence to get special police licenses for such devices. Was that really for research? From one tunnel I heard the rushing of an underground river; from another glowed wan lights, drifted incense and a single quavering voice. Prayer vigil, theurgy, or what? I didn't stop to investigate. Quickly I peeled off suit, socks, shoes, and hid behind a rock. The knife I clipped back onto my elastic shorts.

Turning the lens on myself, I transformed, trying not to let the quasi-sexual sensation get to me, much. Instead I held tight in my diminished cerebral cortex the purpose I had, to use animal senses and sinews for my human end.

Therefore I noted a resistance to the change. I needed twice as long as normal to complete it. More counterspells no doubt. I probably couldn't have lycoed if I'd not had the right chromosomes, unless I were a most powerful thaumaturge.

Never mind. I was wolf again!

The feeble illumination ceased being a handicap. Wolves don't depend on their eyes the way men do. Ears, feet, tongue, every hair on my body, before all else my nose, drank a flood of data. The cave was not now a hole to stumble in, it was a place that I understood.

And . . . yes, faint but unmistakable from one tunnel came a gust of unforgettable nastiness. I checked a bunter's yelp barely in time and trotted off in that direction.

XXVII

THE PASSAGE WAS LENGTHY, twisting, intersected by many others. Without my sense of smell for a guide, I'd soon have been lost. The lighting was from Hands, above the cells dug out of the rock at rare intervals. It was public knowledge that every candidate for primary initiation spent a day and night alone here, and the devout went back on occasion. Allegedly the soot: benefited from undisturbed prayers and meditations. But I wasn't sure what extra influences crept in subliminally as well. Certain odors, at the edge of my lupine perception, raised the fur on my neck.

After a while they were drowned out by the one was tracing. Wolves have stronger stomachs than people, but I began to gag. When finally I reached the source, I held my breath while looking in.

The dull blue glow from the fingers over the entrance picked out little more than highlights in the cubicle. Marmiadon was asleep on a straw pallet. He wore his robe for warmth; it was grubby as his skin. Otherwise he had some hardtack, a ferry can of water, a cup, a Johannine Bible, and a candle to read it by. He must only have been leaving his cell to visit an oubliette down the tunnel. Not that it would have made any large difference if he didn't. Phew!

I backed off and humanized. The effluvium didn't strike me too hard in that shape, especially after my restored reasoning powers took charge. No doubt Marmiadon wasn't even noticing it any more.

I entered his quarters, hunkered, and shook him. My free hand drew the knife. "Wake up, you."

He floundered to awareness, saw me, and as did. I must have been a pretty grim sight, black-clothed where I wasn't nude and with no mercy in my face. He looked as bad, hollow-eyed in that corpse-light.

Before he could yell, I clapped my palm over his mouth. The bristles of unshavenness felt scratchy, the flesh doughlike. "Be quiet," I said without emphasis, "or I'll cut your guts out."

He gestured agreement and I let go. "M-m-mister Matuchek," he whispered, huddling away from me till the wall stopped him.

I nodded. "Want to talk with you."

"I—How—In God's name, what about?"

"Getting my daughter home unharmed."

Marmiadon traced crosses and other symbols in the air. "Are you possessed?" He became able to look at me and answer his own question. "No. I could tell—"

"I'm not being puppeted by a demon," I grunted, "and I haven't got a psychosis. Talk."

"Bu—bu—but I haven't anything to say. Your daughter? What's wrong? I didn't know you had one."

That rocked me back. He wasn't lying, not in his state. "Huh?" I could only say. He grew a trifle calmer, fumbled around after his glasses and put them on, settled down on the pallet and watched me.

"It's holy truth," he insisted. "Why should I have information about your family? Why should anyone here?"

"Because you've appointed yourselves my enemies," I said in renewed rage.

He shook his head. "We're no man's foe. How can we be? We hold to the Gospel of Love." I sneered. His glance dropped from mine. "Well," he faltered, "we're sons of Adam. We can sin like everybody else. I admit I was furious when you pulled that . . . that trick on us . . . on those innocents—"

My blade gleamed through an arc. "Stow the crap, Marmiadon. The solitary innocent in this whole miserable business is a three-year-old girl, and she's been snatched into hell."

His mouth fell wide. His eyes frogged.

"Start blabbing," I said.

w

For a while he couldn't get words out. Then, in complete horror: "No. Impossible. I would never, never—"

"How about your fellow priests? Which of them?"

"None. I swear it. Can't be." I pricked his throat with the knife point. He shuddered. "Please. Let me know what happened. Let me help."

I lowered the blade, shifted to a sitting position,, rubbed my brow, and scowled. This wasn't according, to formula. "See here," I accused him, "you did your best to disrupt my livelihood. When my life itself is busted apart, what am I supposed to think? If you're not responsible, you'd better give me a lot of convincing."

The initiate gulped. "I . . . yes, surely. I meant no harm. What you were doing, are doing—it's sinful.

You're damning yourselves and aiding others to do likewise. The Church can't stand idle. More of its ministers volunteer to help than don't."

"Skip the sermon," I ordered. Apart from everything else, I didn't want him working up enough to stop being dominated by me. "Stick to events. You were sent to abet that mob."

"No. Not- Well, I was on the list of volunteers. When this occasion arose, I was the one allowed to go. But not to . . . do what you say . . . instead to give aid, counsel, spiritual guidance—and, well, yes, defend against possible spells—Nothing else! You were the ones who attacked."

"Sure, sure. We began by picketing, and when that didn't work. We started on trespass, vandalism, blockade, terrorizing—Uh-huh. And you were so strictly acting as a private citizen that when you failed, your superiors comforted you and you're back at your regular work already."

"My penance is for the sin of anger," he said.

A tiny thrill ran along my spine. We'd reached a significant item. "You aren't down here simply because you got irritated with us," I said. "What'd you actually do?'

Fear seized him afresh. He raised strengthless hands. "Please. I can't have—No." I brought my knife close again. He shut his eyes and said fast: "In my wrath when you were so obdurate, I laid a curse on your group. The Curse of Mabon. My reverend superiors—I don't know how they knew what I'd done, but adepts have abilities—When I returned here, I was taxed with my sin. They told me the consequences could be grave. No more. I wasn't told there . . . there'd been any. Were there really?"

"Depends," I said. "What is this curse?"

"No spell. You do understand the distinction, don't you? A spell brings paranatural forces to, to bear, by using the laws of goetics. Or it summons nonhuman beings or—It's the same principle as using a gun, any tool, or whistling up a dog, Mr. Matuchek. A prayer is different. It's an appeal to the Highest or His cohorts. A curse is nothing except a formula for asking Them to, well, punish somebody. They do it if They see fit—it's Them alone—"

"Recite it."

"Absit omen! The danger!"

"You just got through saying it's harmless in itself."

"Don't you know? Johannine prayers are different from Petrine. We're the new dispensation, we've been given special knowledge and divine favor, the words we use have a potency of their own. I can't tell what would happen if I said them, even without intent, under uncontrolled conditions like these."

That was very possibly right, I thought. The essence y of Gnosticism in the ancient world had been a search for power through hidden knowledge, ultimately power, over God Himself. Doubtless Marmiadon was sincere in denying his church had revived that particular concept. But he hadn't progressed to adept status; the, final secrets had not been revealed to him. I thought reluctantly, that he wasn't likely to make it, either, being at heart not a bad little guy.

My mind leaped forward. Let's carry on that idea, I thought in the space of half a second. Let's assume the founders of modern Gnosticism did make so discoveries that gave them capabilities not known before, results that convinced them they were exert direct influence on the Divine. Let's further suppose they were mistaken—deceived—because, hang it, the notion that mortals can budge Omnipotence is unreasonable. What conclusion do these premises lead us to? This: that whether they, know it or not, the blessings and curses of the Johannines are in fact not prayers, but peculiarly subtle and powerful spells.

"I can show you the text," Marmiadon chattered, "you can read for yourself. It's not among the forbidden chapters."

"Okay." I agreed.

He lit his candle and opened the book. I'd glanced at Johannine Bibles but never gotten up the steam to get through one. They replaced the Old Testament with something that even a gentile like me considered blasphemous, and followed the standard parts of the New with a lot of the Apocrypha, plus other stuff whose source never has been identified by reputable scholars. Marmiadon's shaky finger touched a passage in that last section. I squinted, trying to make out the fine print. The Greek was paralleled with an English translation, and itself purported to render the meaning of a string of words like those in the canticles upstairs.

Holy, holy, holy. In the name of the seven thunders. O Mabon of righteousness, exceeding great, angel of the Spirit, who watcheth over the vials of wrath and the mystery of the bottomless pit, come thou to mine aid, wreak sorrow upon them that have done evil to me, that they may know contrition and afflict no longer the servants of the hidden truth and the Reign that is to come. By these words be thou summoned, Heliphomar Mabon Saruth Gefutha Enunnas Sacinos. Amen. Amen. Amen.

I closed the book. "I don't go for that kind of invocation," I said slowly.

"Oh, you could recite it aloud," Marmiadon blurted. "In fact, an ordinary communicant of the Church could, and get no response. But I'm a toiler. A summoner, you'd call it. Not too high-ranking or skillful; nevertheless, certain masteries have been conferred."

"Ah, s-s-so!" The sickening explanation grew upon me. "You raise and control demons in your regular line of work—"

"Not demons. No, no, no. Ordinary paranatural beings for the most part. Occasionally a minor angel."

"You mean a thing that tells you it's an angel."

"But it is!"

"Never mind. Here's what happened. You say you got mad and spoke this curse, a black prayer, against us. I say that knowingly or not, you were casting a spell. Since nothing registered on detectors, it must've been a kind of spell unknown to science. A summons to something from out of this universe.

Well, you Johnnies do seem to 've acquired a pipeline to another world. You believe, most of you, that world is Heaven. I'm convinced you're fooled; it's actually hell."

"No," he groaned.

"I've got reason, remember. That's where my kid was taken."

"She couldn't have been."

"The demon answered your call. It happened that of the Nornwell people around, my wife and I had the—one household exposed that night to his action. So the revenge was worked on us."

Marmiadon squared his puny shoulders. "Sir, I don't deny your child is missing. But if she was taken . . . as an unintended result of my action . . . well, you needn't fear."

"When she's in hell? Supposing I got her back this minute, what'll that place have done to her?"

"No, honestly, don't be afraid." Marmiadon ventured to pat my hand where it clenched white-knuckled around the knife. "If she were in the Low Continuum, retrieval operations would involve temporal phasing. Do you know what I mean? I'm not learned in such matters myself, but our adepts are, and a portion of their findings is taught to initiates, beginning at the fourth degree. The mathematics is beyond me. But as I recall, the hell universe has a peculiar, complex space-time geometry. It would be as easy to recover your daughter from the exact instant when she arrived; there as from any other moment."

The weapon clattered out of my grasp. A roar went through my head. "Is that the truth?"

"Yes. More than I'm canonically allowed to tell you—"

I covered my face. The tears ran out between my fingers.

"—but I want to help you, Mr. Matuchek. I repent my anger." Looking up, I saw him cry too.

After a while we were able to get to business. "Of course, I must not mislead you," he declared.

"When I said it would be as easy to enter hell at one point of time as another, I did not mean it would not be difficult. Insuperably so, indeed, except for our highest adepts. No geometers are alive with the genius to find their way independently through those dimensions.

"Fortunately, however, the question doesn't arise. I just wanted to reassure you enough so you'd listen to the real case. It may be that your daughter was removed in answer to my curse. That would account for the displeasure of my superiors with me. But if so, she's under angelic care."

"Prove it," I challenged.

"I can try. Again, I'm breaking the rules, especially since I'm under penance and you're an unbeliever. Still, I can try to summon an angel." He smiled timidly at me. "Who knows? If you recant, your girl could be restored to you on the spot. A man of your gifts and energy would make a wonderful convert. Conceivably that's been God's purpose right along." '

I didn't like the idea of a Calling. In fact, I was bloody well chilled by it. Marmiadon might think the creature that arrived was from Heaven. I didn't. But I was prepared to dace worse than devils on this trip.

"Go ahead."

He turned his Bible to another passage I didn't recognize. Kneeling, he started to chant, a high-pitched rise and fall which sawed at my nerves.

A wind blew down the tunnel. The lights didn't go out, but a dimness came over my eyes, deepening each second, as if I were dying, until I stood alone in a whistling dark. And the night was infinite and eternal; and the fear left me, but in its place there fell the suddenly remembered absolute despair. Yet never had I known a grief like this-not the three times before, not when Valeria was taken, not when my mother died-for now I had reached in the body the final end of every hope and looked upon the ultimate emptiness of all things; love, joy, honor were less than as they had never been, and I stood hollow as the only existence in hollow creation.

Far, far away a light was kindled. It moved toward. me, a spark, a star, a sun. I looked upon the vast mask of a face, into the lifeless eyes; and the measured voice beat through me:

"The hour is here. Despite the afreet, the salamander, the incubus, and mortal man, your destiny has endured, Steven. It was not my will or my planning. I foresaw you would be among my keenest enemies in this cycle of the world, the danger that you would wreck my newest great enterprise. But I could not know what would bring you to confront my works: the thoughtless call of one fool, the rash obedience of another. Now you would seek to storm my inner keep.

"Be afraid, Steven. I may not touch you myself, buts I have mightier agents to send than those you met before. If you go further against me, you go to your destruction. Return home; accept your loss as humbly as befits a son of Adam; beget other children, cease meddling in public matters, attend solely to what is your own. Then you shall have pleasure and wealth, and success in abundance, and your days shall be long in the land. But this is if you make your peace with me. If not, you will be brought down, and likewise those you care for. Fear me."

The sight, the sound, the blindness ended. I sagged, wet and a-reek with sweat looking stupidly at Marmiadon in the candlelight. He beamed and rubbed his hands. I could scarcely comprehend him:

"There! Wasn't I right? Aren't you glad? Wasn't he glorious? I'd be down on my knees if I were you, praising God for His mercy."

"Hu-u-uh?" dragged out of me.