Though the journey from G.o.dolphin"s house in Primrose Hill to the Tabula Rasa"s tower was short, and Dowd got him up to Highgate on the dot of six, Oscar suggested they drive down through Crouch End, then up through Muswell Hill, and back to the tower, so that they"d arrive ten minutes late.
"We mustn"t seem to be too eager to prostrate ourselves," he observed as they approached the tower for a second time. "It"ll only make them arrogant."
"Shall I wait down here?"
"Cold and lonely? My dear Dowdy, out of the question. We"ll ascend together, bearing gifts."
"What gifts?"
"Our wit, our taste in suits-well, my my taste-in essence, ourselves." taste-in essence, ourselves."
They got out of the car and went to the porch, their every step monitored by cameras mounted above the door. The lock clicked as they approached, and they stepped inside. As they crossed the foyer to the lift, G.o.dolphin whispered, "Whatever happens tonight, Dowdy, please remember-"
He got no further. The lift doors opened, and Bloxham appeared, as preening as ever.
"Pretty tie," Oscar said to him. "Yellow"s your color." The tie was blue. "Don"t mind my man Dowd here, will you? I never go anywhere without him."
"He"s got no place here tonight," Bloxham said.
Again, Dowd offered to wait below, but Oscar would have none of it. "Heaven forfend," he said. "You can wait upstairs. Enjoy the view."
All this irritated Bloxham mightily, but Oscar was not an easy man to deny. They ascended in silence. Once on the top floor Dowd was left to entertain himself, and Bloxham led G.o.dolphin through to the chamber. They were all waiting, and there was accusation on every face. A few-Shales, certainly, and Charlotte Feaver-didn"t attempt to disguise their pleasure that the Society"s most ebullient and unrepentant member was here finally called to heel.
"Oh, I"m sorry," Oscar said, as they closed the doors behind him. "Have you been waiting long?"
Outside, in one of the deserted antechambers, Dowd listened to his tinny little radio and mused. At seven the news bulletin brought a report of a motorway collision which had claimed the lives of an entire family travelling north for Christmas, and of prison riots that had ignited in Bristol and Manchester, with inmates claiming that presents from loved ones had been tampered with and destroyed by prison officers. There was the usual collection of war updates, then the weather report, which promised a gray Christmas, accompanied by a spring-like balm. This would on past experience coax the crocuses out in Hyde Park, only to be spiked by frost in a few days" time. At eight, still waiting by the window, he heard a second bulletin correcting one of the reports from the first. A survivor had been claimed from the entangled vehicles on the motorway: a tot of three months, found orphaned but unscathed in the wreckage. Sitting in the cold gloom, Dowd began to weep quietly, which was an experience as far beyond his true emotional capacity as cold was beyond his nerve endings. But he"d trained himself in the craft of grief with the same commitment to feigning humanity as he had learning to shiver: his tutor, the Bard; Lear Lear his favorite lesson. He cried for the child, and for the crocuses, and was still moist-eyed when he heard the voices in the chamber suddenly rise up in rage. The door was flung open, and Oscar called him in, despite shouts of complaint from some of the other members. his favorite lesson. He cried for the child, and for the crocuses, and was still moist-eyed when he heard the voices in the chamber suddenly rise up in rage. The door was flung open, and Oscar called him in, despite shouts of complaint from some of the other members.
"This is an outrage, G.o.dolphin!" Bloxham yelped.
"You drive me to it!" was Oscar"s reply, his performance at fever pitch. Clearly he"d been having a bad time of it. The sinews in his neck stood out like knotted string; sweat gleamed in the pouches beneath his eyes; every word brought flecks of spittle. "You don"t know the half of it!" he was saying. "Not the half. We"re being conspired against, by forces we can barely conceive of. This man Chant was undoubtedly one of their agents. They can take human form!"
"G.o.dolphin, this is absurd," Alice Tyrwhitt said.
"You don"t believe me?"
"No, I don"t. And I certainly don"t want your b.u.m-boy here listening to us debate. Will you please remove him from the chamber?"
"But he has evidence to support my thesis," Oscar insisted.
"Oh, does he?" said Shales.
"He"ll have to show you himself," Oscar said, turning to Dowd. "You"re going to have to show them, I"m afraid," he said, and as he spoke reached into his jacket.
An instant before the blade emerged, Dowd realized G.o.dolphin"s intent and started to turn away, but Oscar had the edge, and it came forth glittering. Dowd felt his master"s hand on his neck and heard shouts of horror on all sides. Then he was thrown back across the table, sprawling beneath the lights like an unwilling patient. The surgeon followed through with one swift stab, striking Dowd in the middle of his chest.
"You want proof?" Oscar yelled, through Dowd"s screams and the din of shouts around the table. "You want proof? Then here it is!"
His bulk put weight behind the blade, driving it first to the right, then to the left, encountering no obstruction from rib or breastbone. Nor was there blood; only a fluid the color of brackish water, that dribbled from the wounds and ran across the table. Dowd"s head thrashed to and fro as this indignity was visited upon him, only once raising his gaze to stare accusingly at G.o.dolphin, who was too busy about this undoing to return the look. Despite protests from all sides he didn"t halt his labors until the body before him had been opened from the navel to throat, and Dowd"s thrashings had ceased. The stench from the carca.s.s filled the chamber: a pungent mixture of sewage and vanilla. It drove two of the witnesses to the door, one of them Bloxham, whose nausea overtook him before he could reach the corridor. But his gaggings and moans didn"t slow G.o.dolphin by a beat. Without hesitation he plunged his arm into the open body and, rummaging there, pulled out a fistful of gut. It was a knotty ma.s.s of blue and black tissue-final proof of Dowd"s inhumanity. Triumphant, he threw the evidence down on the table beside the body, then stepped away from his handiwork, chucking the knife into the wound it had opened. The whole performance had taken no more than a minute, but in that time he"d succeeded in turning the chamber"s table into a fish-market gutter.
"Satisfied?" he said.
All protest had been silenced. The only sound was the rhythmical hiss of fluid escaping an opened artery.
Very quietly McGann said, "You"re a f.u.c.king maniac."
Oscar reached gingerly into his trouser pocket and teased out a fresh handkerchief. One of poor Dowd"s last tasks had been its pressing. It was immaculate. He shook out its scalpel creases and began to clean his hands.
"How else was I going to prove my point?" he said. "You drove me to this. Now there"s the evidence, in all its glory. I don"t know what happened to Dowd-my b.u.m-boy, I think you called him, Alice-but wherever he is this thing thing took his place." took his place."
"How long have you known?" Charlotte asked.
"I"ve suspected for the last two weeks. I was here in the city all the time, watching its every move while it-and you-thought I was disporting myself in sunnier climes."
"What the b.u.g.g.e.r is it?" Lionel wanted to know, prodding a sc.r.a.p of alien entrail with his finger.
"G.o.d alone knows," G.o.dolphin said. "Something not of this world, clearly."
"What did it want?" Alice said. "That"s more to the point."
"At a guess, access to this chamber, which-" he looked at those around the table one by one "-I gather you granted it three days ago. I trust none of you was indiscreet." Furtive glances were exchanged. "Oh, you were," he said. "That"s a pity. Let"s hope it didn"t have time to communicate any of its findings to its overlords."
"What"s done"s done," McGann said, "and we must all bear some part of the responsibility. Including you, Oscar. You should have shared your suspicions with us."
"Would you have believed me?" Oscar replied. "I didn"t believe it myself at first, until I started to notice little changes in Dowd."
"Why you?" Shales said. "That"s what I want to know. Why would they target you for this surveillance unless they thought you were more susceptible than the rest of us? Maybe they thought you"d join them. Maybe you have have."
"As usual, Hubert, you"re too self-righteous to see your own frailties," G.o.dolphin replied. "How do you know I am am the only one they targeted? Could you swear to me every one of your circle is above suspicion? How closely do you watch your friends? Your family? Any one of them might be a part of this conspiracy." the only one they targeted? Could you swear to me every one of your circle is above suspicion? How closely do you watch your friends? Your family? Any one of them might be a part of this conspiracy."
It gave Oscar a perverse joy to sow these doubts. He saw them taking root already, saw faces that half an hour before had been puffed up with their own infallibility deflated by doubt. It was worth the risk he"d taken with these theatrics, just to see them afraid. But Shales wouldn"t leave this bone alone.
"The fact remains this thing was in your employ," he said.
"We"ve heard enough, Hubert," McGann said softly. "This is no time for divisive talk. We"ve got a fight on our hands, and whether we agree with Oscar"s methods or not-and just for the record, I don"t-surely none of us can doubt his integrity." He glanced around the table. There were murmurs of accord on all sides. "G.o.d knows what a creature like this might have been capable of had it realized its ruse had been discovered. G.o.dolphin took a very considerable risk on our behalf."
"I agree," Lionel said. He"d come around to Oscar"s side of the table and placed a gla.s.s of neat malt whisky in the executioner"s freshly wiped fingers. "Good man, I say," he remarked. "I"d have done the same. Drink up."
Oscar accepted the gla.s.s. "Salut," he said, downing the whisky in one.
"I see nothing to celebrate," said Charlotte Feaver, the first to sit down at the table despite what lay upon it. She lit a fresh cigarette, expelling the smoke through pursed lips. "a.s.suming G.o.dolphin"s right, and this thing was attempting to get access to the Society, we have to ask why why."
"Ask away," Shales said dryly, indicating the corpse. "He"s not going to be telling us very much. Which is no doubt convenient for some."
"How much longer do I have to endure this innuendo?" Oscar demanded.
"I said we"ve heard enough, Hubert," McGann remarked.
"This is a democratic gathering," Shales said, rising to challenge McGann"s unspoken authority. "If I"ve got something to say-"
"You"ve already said it," Lionel remarked with well-lubricated vim. "Now why don"t you just shut up?"
"The point is, what do we do now?" Bloxham said. He"d returned to the table, his chin wiped, and was determined to rea.s.sert himself following his unmanly display. "This is a dangerous time."
"That"s why they"re here," said Alice. "They know the anniversary"s coming up, and they want to start the whole d.a.m.n Reconciliation over again."
"Why try and penetrate the Society?" Bloxham said. "To put a spoke in our wheels," Lionel said. "If they know what we"re planning, they can outmaneuver us. By the way, was the tie furiously expensive?"
Bloxham looked down to see that his silk tie was comprehensively spattered with puke. Casting a rancorous look in Lionel"s direction, he tore it from his neck.
"I don"t see what they could find out from us anyway," said Charlotte Feaver, in her distracted manner. "We don"t even know what the Reconciliation is."
"Yes, we do," Shales said. "Our ancestors were trying to put Earth into the same orbit as Heaven."
"Very poetic," Charlotte remarked. "But what does that mean mean, in concrete terms? Does anybody know?" There was silence. "I thought not. Here we are, sworn to prevent something we don"t even understand."
"It was an experiment of some kind," Bloxham said. "And it failed."
"Were they all insane?" Alice said.
"Let"s hope not," Lionel put in. "Insanity usually runs in the family."
"Well, I"m not crazy," Alice said. "And I"m d.a.m.n sure my friends are as sane and normal and human as I am. If they were anything else, I"d know it."
"G.o.dolphin," McGann said, "you"ve been uncharacteristically quiet."
"I"m soaking up the wisdom," Oscar replied.
"Have you reached any conclusions?"
"Things go in cycles," he said, taking his time to reply. He was as certain of his audience as any man could ever hope to be. "We"re coming to the end of the millennium. Reason"ll be supplanted by unreason. Detachment by sentiment. I think if I were a fledgling esoteric with a nose for history, it wouldn"t be difficult to turn up details of what was attempted-the experiment experiment, as Bloxham called it-and maybe get it into my head that the time was right to try again."
"Very plausible," said McGann.
"Where would such an adept get the information?" Shales inquired.
"Self-taught."
"From what source? We"ve got every tome of any value buried in the ground beneath us."
"Every one?" said G.o.dolphin. "How can we be so sure?" one?" said G.o.dolphin. "How can we be so sure?"
"Because there hasn"t been a significant act of magic performed on earth in two centuries," was Shales" reply. "The esoterics are powerless; lost. If there"d been the least sign of magical activity we"d know about it."
"We didn"t know about G.o.dolphin"s little friend," Charlotte pointed out, denying Oscar the pleasure of that irony dropping from his own lips.
"Are we even sure the library"s intact?" Charlotte went on. "How do we know books haven"t been stolen?"
"Who by?" said Bloxham.
"By Dowd, for one. They"ve never been properly catalogued. I know that Leash woman attempted it, but we all know what happened to her."
The tale of the Leash woman, who had been a member of the Society, was one of its lesser shames: a catalogue of accidents that had ended in tragedy. In essence, the obsessive Clara Leash had taken it upon herself to make a full account of the volumes in the Society"s possession and had suffered a stroke while doing so. She"d lain for three days on the cellar floor. By the time she was discovered, she was barely alive and quite without her wits. She survived, however, and eleven years later was still a resident in a hospice in Suss.e.x, witless as ever.
"It still shouldn"t be that difficult to find out if the place has been tampered with," Charlotte said.
Bloxham agreed. "That should be looked into," he said. "I take it you"re volunteering," said McGann. "And if they didn"t get their information from downstairs," Charlotte said, "there are other sources. We don"t believe we have every last book dealing with the Imajica in our hands, do we?"
"No, of course not," said McGann. "But the Society"s broken the back of the tradition over the years. The cults in this country aren"t worth a d.a.m.n, we all know that. They cobble workings together from whatever they can sc.r.a.pe up. It"s all piecemeal. Senseless, None of them have the wherewithal to conceive of a Reconciliation. Most of them don"t even know what the Imajica is. They"re putting hexes on their bosses at the bank."
G.o.dolphin had heard similar speeches for years. Talk of magic in the Western World as a spent force: self-congratulatory accounts of cults that had been infiltrated and discovered to be groups of pseudo-scientists exchanging arcane theories in a language no two of them agreed upon; or s.e.xual obsessives using the excuse of workings to demand favors they couldn"t seduce from their partners; or, most often, crazies in search of some mythology, however ludicrous, to keep them from complete psychosis. But among the fakes, obsessives, and lunatics was there perhaps a man who instinctively instinctively knew the route to the Imajica? A natural Maestro, born with something in his genes that made him capable of reinventing the workings of the Reconciliation? Until now the possibility hadn"t occurred to G.o.dolphin-he"d been too preoccupied by the secret that he"d lived with most of his adult life-but it was an intriguing, and disturbing, thought. knew the route to the Imajica? A natural Maestro, born with something in his genes that made him capable of reinventing the workings of the Reconciliation? Until now the possibility hadn"t occurred to G.o.dolphin-he"d been too preoccupied by the secret that he"d lived with most of his adult life-but it was an intriguing, and disturbing, thought.
"I believe we should take the risk seriously," he p.r.o.nounced. "However unlikely we think it is."
"What risk?" McGann said.
"That there is is a Maestro out there. Somebody who understands our forefathers" ambition and is going to find his own way of repeating the experiment. Maybe he doesn"t want the books. Maybe he doesn"t a Maestro out there. Somebody who understands our forefathers" ambition and is going to find his own way of repeating the experiment. Maybe he doesn"t want the books. Maybe he doesn"t need need the books. Maybe he"s sitting at home somewhere, even now, working out the problems for himself." the books. Maybe he"s sitting at home somewhere, even now, working out the problems for himself."
"So what do we do?" said Charlotte.
"We purge purge," said Shales. "It pains me to say it, but G.o.dolphin"s right. We don"t know what"s going, on out there. We"ve kept an eye on things from a distance, and occasionally arranged to have somebody put under permanent sedation, but we haven"t purged. I think we"ve got to begin."
"How do we go about that?" Bloxham wanted to know. He had a zealot"s gleam in his dishwater eyes.
"We"ve got our allies. We use them. We turn over every stone, and if we find anything we don"t like, we kill it."
"We"re not an a.s.sa.s.sination squad."
"We have the finance to hire one," Shales pointed out. "And the friends to cover the evidence if need be. As I see it, we have one responsibility: to prevent, at all costs, another attempt at Reconciliation. That"s what we were born born to do." to do."
He spoke with a total lack of melodrama, as though he were reciting a shopping list. His detachment impressed the room. So did the last sentiment, however blandly it was presented. Who could fail to be stirred by the thought of such purpose, reaching back over generations to the men who had gathered on this spot two centuries before? A few bloodied survivors, swearing that they, and their children, and their children"s children, and so on until the end of the world would live and die with one ambition burning in their hearts: the prevention of another such apocalypse.
At this juncture McGann suggested a vote, and one was taken. There were no dissenting voices. The Society was agreed that the way forward lay in a comprehensive purge of all elements-innocent or not-who might presently be tampering, or tempted to tamper, with rituals intended to gain access to so-called Reconciled Dominions. All conventional religious structures would be excluded from this sanction, as they were utterly ineffectual and presented a useful distraction for some souls who might have been tempted towards esoteric practices. The shams and the profiteers would also be pa.s.sed over. The pier-end palmists and fake psychics, the spiritualists who wrote new concertos for dead composers and sonnets for poets long since dust-all these would be left untouched. Only those who stood a chance of tripping over something Imajical, and acting upon it, would be rooted out. It would be an extensive and sometimes brutal business, but the Society was the equal of the challenge. This was not the first purge it had masterminded (though it would be the first of this scale); the structure was in place for an invisible but comprehensive cleansing. The cults would be the prime targets: their acolytes would be dispersed, their leaders bought off or incarcerated. It had happened before that England had been sluiced clean of every significant esoteric and thaumaturgist. Now it would happen again.
"Is the business of the day concluded?" Oscar asked. "Only Ma.s.s calls me."
"What"s to be done with the body?" Alice Tyrwhitt asked.
G.o.dolphin had his answer ready and waiting. "It"s my mess and I"ll clear it up," he said, with due humility. "I can arrange to have it buried in a motorway tonight, unless anybody has a better idea?"
There were no objections.
"Just as long as it"s out of here," Alice said.
"I"ll need some help to wrap it up and get it down to the car. Bloxham, would you oblige?"
Reluctant to refuse, Bloxham went in search of something to contain the carca.s.s.
"I see no reason for us to sit and watch," Charlotte said, rising from her seat. "If that"s the night"s business, I"m going home."