Necromancer

Chapter 5

As Paul entered through the automatically-opening front door of Jason Warren's apartment, he saw three people already in the room - a sort of combination office-lounge - he found himself stepping into.

Two of the three were just going out through a rear door. Paul got only a glimpse of them - one, a girl who with a start Paul recognized as the girl with the book he had encountered earlier at Chicago Directory. The other was a flat-bodied man in middle age with an air of quiet competence about him. He, too, had been with the girl and Blunt on the broadcast Paul had witnessed in the mine a year before. Paul wondered briefly if Blunt, also, was nearby. Then the thought passed from his mind. He found himself looking down, slightly, into the dark, mercurial face of Jason Warren.

"Paul Formain," said Paul. "I phoned..."

"Sit down." Warren waved Paul into a chair and took a facing one himself. He looked at Paul with something of the direct, uninhibited stare of a child. "What can I do for you?"

Paul considered him. Warren sat loosely, almost sprawled, but with his thin body held in the balance of a dancer or a highly trained athlete, so that a single movement might have brought him back to his feet.

"I want to grow a new arm," said Paul.

"Yes," said Warren. He flicked a forefinger toward the phone. "I punched information for your public file after you called," he said. "You're an engineer."

"I was," said Paul, and was a little surprised to hear himself say it, now, with such a small amount of bitterness.

"You believe in the Alternate Laws?"

"No," said Paul. "Truthfully - no."

"But you think they might give you an arm back?"

"It's a chance."

"Yes," said Warren. "An engineer. Hard-headed, practical - doesn't care what makes it work as long as it works."

"Not exactly," said Paul.

"Why bother with the Alternate Laws? Why not just have a new arm out of the culture banks grafted on?"

"I've tried that," said Paul. "It doesn't take."

Warren sat perfectly still for a couple of seconds. There was no change in his face or attitude, but Paul got an impression as if something like a delicately sensitive instrument in the other man had suddenly gone click and begun to register.

"Tell me," said Warren, slowly and carefully, "the whole story."

Paul told it. As he talked, Warren sat still and listened. During the fifteen minutes or so it took for Paul to tell it all, the other man did not move or react. And with no warning, even as Paul was talking, it came to Paul where he had seen that same sort of concentration before. It was in a bird dog he had seen once, holding its point, one paw lifted, nose straight and tail in line with the body, as still as painted Death.

When Paul stopped, Warren did not speak at once. Instead, without moving a muscle otherwise, he lifted his right hand into the air between them and extended his forefinger toward Paul. The movement bad all the remote inevitability of a movement by a machine, or the slow leaning of the top of a chopped tree as it begins its fall.

"Look," Warren said slowly, "at my finger. Look at the tip of my finger. Look closely. Right there at the end of the nail, under the nail, you can see a spot of red. It's a drop of blood coming out from under the nail. See it swelling there. It's getting larger. In a moment it'll drop off. But it's getting larger, larger..."

"No," said Paul. "There's no drop of blood there at all. You're wasting your time - and mine."

Warren dropped his hand.

"Interesting," he said. "Interesting."

"Is it?" asked Paul.

"Graduate members of the Chantry Guild," said Warren, "can't be hypnotized, either. But you say you don't believe in the Alternate Laws."

"I seem to be a sort of free-lance, then," said Paul.

Warren rose suddenly from his chair with the single motion Paul had expected. He walked lightly and easily across the room, turned, and came back.

"In order to resist hypnosis," he said, standing over Paul, "you must make use of the Alternate Laws, whether you recognize them as such or not. The keystone of the use of the Alternate Laws is complete independence of the individual - independence from any force, physical or otherwise."

"And vice versa?" asked Paul, smiling.

"And vice versa." Warren did not smile. He stood looking down at Paul. "I'll ask you again," he said. "What do you expect me to do for you?"

"I want an arm," said Paul.

"I can't give you an arm," said Warren. "I can't do anything for you. The use of the Alternate Laws is for those who would do things for themselves."

"Show me how, then."

Warren sighed slightly. It was a sigh that sounded to Paul not only weary, but a little angry.

"You don't know what the hell you're asking," said Warren. "To train whatever aptitude you have for use of the Alternate Laws, I'd have to take you on as my apprentice in necromancy."

"Blunt's book gave me to understand the Guild was eager for people."

"Why, we are," said Warren. "We have an urgent need right now for someone comparable to Leonardo da Vinci. We'd be very glad to get someone with the qualifications of Milton or Einstein. Of course, what we really need is someone with a talent no one has conceived of yet - a sort of X-Genius. So we advertise."

"Then you don't want people."

"I didn't say that," said Warren. He turned and paced the room and came back. "You're serious about joining the Guild?"

"If it'll get me my arm."

"It won't get you your arm. I tell you, no one can put that arm back but you. There's a relation between the Alternate Laws and the work of the Guild, but it isn't what you think."

"Perhaps I'd better be enlightened," said Paul.

"All right," said Warren. He put his hands in his pockets and stood with shoulders hunched slightly, looking down at Paul. "Try this on for size. This is an ill world we live in, Formain. A world sick from a surfeit of too many technical luxuries. An overburdened world, swarming with people close to the end of their ropes." His deep-set eyes were steady on Paul. "People today are like a man who thought that if he made his success in the world, everything else that makes life good would come automatically. Now they've made their success - the perfection of a technological civilization in which no one lacks anything in the way of a physical comfort - and they find themselves in a false paradise. Like an electric motor without a load upon it, the human spirit without the weight of the need to achieve and progress is beginning to rev up toward dissolution. Faster and faster, until they'll fly apart and destroy this world they've made."

He stopped.

"What do you say to that?" he asked.

"It might be the case," said Paul. "I don't really believe that's the situation we're in, myself, but it might be the case."

"All right," said Warren. "Now try this: In a climate of confusion, one of the surest ways of confounding the enemy is to tell him the plain truth. And the Guildmaster has stated the plain truth plainly in his book. The Chantry Guild is not interested in propagating the use of the Alternate Laws. It only wants to train and make use of those who can already use the Laws, to its own end. And that end's to hurry the end that is inevitably coming, to bring about the destruction of present civilization."

Warren stopped. He seemed to wait for Paul to say something. But Paul also waited.

"We," said Warren, "are a small but powerful revolutionary body with the aim of driving this sick world into complete insanity and collapse. The Alternate Laws are real, but most of our structure is completely fake. If you come in as my apprentice, you'll be committed to the job of destroying the world."

"And that's my only way to a use of the Alternate Forces?" asked Paul.

"For you to accept the Guild's philosophy and aim, yes," said Warren. "Otherwise, no."

"I don't believe that," said Paul. "If your Alternate Forces exist, they'll work for me as well as all the Chantry Guild put together."

Warren dropped into a chair and stared at Paul for a long moment.

"Arrogant," he said. "Completely arrogant. Let's see. . . ." He rose lightly to his feet, crossed the room, and touched a spot on one of the walls.

The wall slid back, revealing an area which seemed half modern laboratory and half alchemist's den. On the table in its center were earthenware containers, some metal jars, and a large flask full of dark-red liquid.

Warren opened a drawer in the table, and took out something which his body hid from Paul's view. He closed the drawer, turned, and came back carrying a rather decrepit-looking conch shell, brown-stained and polished by handling and age.

He put the shell down on an occasional table a few feet from Paul's chair.

"What does that do?" Paul asked, looking at it curiously.

"For me," said Warren, "it does a lot of things. Which is no advantage to you except that we might say it's been sensitized to the action of the Alternate Laws. Let's see if this arrogance of yours can do anything with it."

Paul frowned. He stared at the shell. For a second the situation was merely ridiculous. And then it was as if a thread of brightness ran through him. There was a sudden weird sensation, as if a great, deep gong sounded, somewhere deep inside him. And then a rushing, back in the depths of his mind, as if a host of memories long forgotten ran and beat upon a locked door held shut to them since he could not exactly remember when.

The conch shell stirred. It rolled to a point of balance and hung there. The bright daylight lanced through a far window of the room and a faint wisp of some light music sounded from the apartment next door. A thin, reedy voice spoke faintly but clearly from the shell.

"From greater dark into the little light. And then once more to greater dark he goes."

The beating on the locked door in Paul's mind dwindled away into silence. The shell lost its balance and fell over, still, on one side. Across from Paul, Warren drew a deep breath and picked up the shell.

"You may be a natural," he said.

"A natural?" Paul looked up at him.

"There are certain abilities in the province of the Alternate Powers which can be possessed by those who know nothing of the true nature of the Alternate Powers. Mind reading, for example. Or artistic inspiration."

"Oh?" said Paul. "How do you tell the difference between people with that, and your Alternate Power people?"

"Very simply," answered Warren. But the tone of his voice and the way he held the shell and continued to watch Paul did not imply simpleness. "For such people their abilities work spasmodically and unreliably. For us, they always work."

"For example, mind reading?"

"I'm a Necromancer," said Warren, shortly, "not a seer. Besides, I used the common, recognizable term. I'm told minds aren't so much read as experienced."

"When you go into someone else's mind, you lose your own point of view?"

"Yes," said Warren, "you must be a natural." He took the conch shell back across to the cabinet and put it away. He turned around and spoke from where he was.

"You've got something," he said. "It may be a valuable aptitude, and it may not. But I'm willing to take you on as a probationary apprentice. If I think you have promise after a while, you'll be taken fully into the Guild on an apprenticeship basis. If that happens, you'll be required to assign everything you own and all future personal income to the Guild. But if it reaches that point, you needn't worry about material things." Warren's lips twisted slightly. "The Guild will take care of you. Study and learn, and you'll be able to grow your arm back one day."

Paul stood up.

"You guarantee me an arm?" he said.

"Of course," said Warren. He did not move from where he stood, watching Paul across the widths of laboratory and apartment room with unmoving gaze.