Black Easter Page 4

  Since the Moslem calendar is lunar, Ramadan is a moveable festival, which this year fell close to Christmas. Baines half suspected that Theron Ware would refuse to see him in so inauspicious a season for servants of Satan, but Ware made no objection, remarking only (by post), ‘December 25th is a celebration of great antiquity.’ Hess, who had been reading dutifully, interpreted Ware to mean that Christ had not actually been born on that date – ‘though in this universe of discourse I can’t see what difference that makes,’ he said. ‘If the word “superstition” has any of its old meaning left at all by now, it means that the sign has come to replace the thing – or in other words, that facts come to mean what we say they mean.’

  ‘Call it an observer effect,’ Baines suggested, not entirely jokingly. He was not disposed to argue the point with either of them; Ware would see him, that was what counted.

  But if the season was no apparent inconvenience to Ware, it was a considerable one to Father Domenico, who at first flatly refused to celebrate it in the very maw of Hell. He was pressed at length and from both sides by the Director and Father Uccello, whose arguments had no less force for being so utterly predictable; and – to skip over a full week of positively Scholastic disputation – they prevailed, as again he had been sure they would.

  Mustering all his humility, obedience and resignation – his courage seemed to have evaporated – he trudged forth from the monastery, excused from sandals, and mounted a mule, the Enchiridion of Leo III swinging from his neck under his cassock in a new leather bag, and a selection of his thaumaturgic tools, newly exorcised, asperged, fumigated and wrapped in silken cloths, in a satchel balanced carefully on the mule’s neck. It was a hushed leave-taking – all the more so in its lack of any formalities or even witnesses, for only the Director knew why he was going, and he had been restrained with difficulty from bruiting it about that Father Domenico actually had been expelled, to make a cover story.

  The practical effect of both delays was that Father Domenico and Baines’s party arrived at Ware’s palazzo on the same day, in the midst of the only snowstorm Positano had seen in seven years. As a spiritual courtesy – for protocol was all-important in such matters, otherwise neither monk nor sorcerer would have dared to confront the other – Father Domenico was received first, briefly but punctiliously; but as a client, Baines (and his crew, in descending order) got the best quarters. They also got the only service available, since Ware had no servants who could cross over the invisible line Father Domenico at once ruled at the foot of his apartment door with the point of his bolline.

  As was customary in southern Italian towns at this time, three masked kings later came to the gate of the palazzo to bring and ask presents for the children and the Child; but there were no children there and the mummers were turned away, baffled and resentful (for the rich American, who was said to be writing a book about the frescoes of Pompeii, had previously shown himself open-handed), but oddly grateful too; it was a cold night, and the lights in the palazzo were of a grim and distant colour.

  Then the gates closed. The principals had gathered and were in their places; and the stage was set.

  Three Sleeps

  It requires more courage and intelligence to be a devil than the folk who take experience at hearsay think. And none, save only he who has destroyed the devil in himself, and that by dint of hard work (for there is no other way) knows what a devil is, and what a devil he himself might be, as also what an army for the devils’ use are they who think the devils are delusion.

  The Book of the Sayings of Tsiang Samdup

  Father Domenico’s interview with Theron Ware was brief, formal and edgy. The monk, despite his apprehensions, had been curious to see what the magician looked like, and had been irrationally disappointed to find him not much out of the ordinary run of intellectuals. Except for the tonsure, of course; like Baines, Father Domenico found that startling. Also, unlike Baines, he found it upsetting, because he knew the reason for it – not that Ware intended any mockery of his pious counterparts, but because demons, given a moment of inattention, were prone to seizing one by the hair.

  ‘Under the Covenant,’ Ware told him in excellent Latin, ‘I have no choice but to receive you, of course, Father. And under other circumstances I might even have enjoyed discussing the Art with you, even though we are of opposite schools. But this is an inconvenient time for me. I’ve got a very important client here, as you’ve seen, and I’ve already been notified that what he wants of me is likely to be extraordinarily ambitious.’

  ‘I shan’t interfere in any way,’ Father Domenico said. ‘Even should I wish to, which obviously I shall, I know very well that any such interference would cost me all my protections.’

  ‘I was sure you understood that, but nonetheless I’m glad to hear you say so,’ Ware said. ‘However, your very presence here is an embarrassment – not only because I’ll have to explain it to my client, but also because it changes the atmosphere unfavourably and will make my operations more difficult. I can only hope, in defiance of all hospitality, that your mission will be speedily satisfied.’

  ‘I can’t bring myself to regret the difficulty, since I only wish I could make your operations outright impossible. The best I can proffer you is strict adherence to the truce. As for the length of my stay, that depends wholly on what it is your client turns out to want, and how long that takes. I am charged with seeing it through to its conclusion.’

  ‘A prime nuïsance,’ Ware said. ‘I suppose I should be grateful that L haven’t been blessed with this kind of attention from Monte Albano before. Evidently what Mr Baines intends is even bigger than he thinks it is. I conclude without much cerebration that you know something about it I don’t know.’

  ‘It will be an immense disaster, I can tell you that.’

  ‘Hmm. From your point of view, but not necessarily from mine, possibly. I don’t suppose you’re prepared to offer any further information – on the chance, say, of dissuading me?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Father Domenico said indignantly. ‘If eternal damnation hasn’t dissuaded you long before this, I’d be a fool to hope to.’

  ‘Well,’ Ware said, ‘but you are, after all, charged with the cure of souls, and unless the Church has done another flipflop since the last Congress, it is still also a mortal sin to assume that any man is certainly damned – even me.’

  That argument was potent, it had to be granted; but Father Domenico had not been trained in casuistry (and that by Jesuits) for nothing.

  ‘I’m a monk, not a priest,’ he said. ‘And any information I give you would, on the contrary, almost certainly be used to abet the evil, not turn it aside. I don’t find the choice a hard one under the circumstances.’

  ‘Then let me suggest a more practical consideration,’ Ware said. ‘I don’t know yet what Baines intends, but I do know well enough that I am not a Power myself – only a fautor. I have no desire to bite off more than I can chew.’

  ‘Now you’re just wheedling,’ Father Domenico said, with energy. ‘Knowing your own limitations is not an exercise at which I or anyone else can help you. You’ll just have to weigh them in the light of Mr Baines’s commission, whatever that proves to be. In the meantime, I shall tell you nothing.’

  ‘Very well,’ Ware said, rising. ‘I will be a little more generous with my information, Father, than you have been with yours. I will tell you that you will be well advised to adhere to every letter of the Covenant. One step over the line, one toe, and I shall have you – and hardly any outcome in this world would give me greater pleasure. I’m sure I make myself clear.’

  Father Domenico could think of no reply; but none seemed to be necessary.

  As Ware had sensed, Baines was indeed disturbed by the presence of Father Domenico, and made a point of bringing it up as the first order of business. After Ware had explained the monk’s mission and the Covenant under which it was being conducted, however, Baines felt somewhat relieved.

  ‘Just a nuisance,
as you say, since he can’t actually intervene,’ he decided. ‘In a way, I suppose my bringing Dr Hess here with me is comparable – he’s only an observer, too, and fundamentally he’s probably just as hostile to your world-view as this holier-than-us fellow is.’

  ‘He’s not significantly holier than us,’ Ware said with a slight smile. ‘I know something he doesn’t know, too. He’s in for a surprise in the next world. However, for the time being we’re stuck with him – for how long depends upon you. Just what is it you want this time, Dr Baines?’

  ‘Two things, one depending on the other. The first is the death of Albert Stockhausen.’

  ‘The anti-matter theorist? That would be too bad. I rather like him, and besides, some of the work he does is of direct interest to me.’

  ‘You refuse?’

  ‘No, not immediately anyhow, but I’m now going to ask you what I promised I would ask on this occasion. What are you aiming at, anyhow?’

  ‘Something very long-term. For the present, my lethal intentions for Dr Stockhausen are strictly business-based. He’s nibbling at the edges of a scholium that my company presently controls completely. It’s a monopoly of knowledge we don’t want to see broken.’

  ‘Do you think you can keep anything secret that’s based in natural law? After the McCarthy fiasco I should have supposed that any intelligent American would know better. Surely Dr Stockhausen can’t be just verging on some mere technicality – something your firm might eventually bracket with a salvo of process patents.’

  ‘No, it’s in the realm of natural law, and hence not patentable at all,’ Baines admitted. ‘And we already know that it can’t be concealed forever. But we need about five years’ grace to make the best use of it, and we know that nobody else but Stockhausen is even close to it, barring accidents, of course. We ourselves have nobody of Stockhausen’s calibre, we just fell over it, and somebody else might do that. However, that’s highly unlikely.’

  ‘I see. Well … the project does have an attractive side. I think it’s quite possible that I can persuade Father Domenico that this is the project he came to observe. Obviously it can’t be – I’ve run many like it and never attracted Monte Albano’s interest to this extent before – but given sufficient show of great preparations, and difficulty of execution, he might be deluded, and go home.’

  ‘That would be useful,’ Baines agreed. The question is, could he be deceived?’

  ‘It’s worth trying. The task would in fact be difficult – and quite expensive.’

  ‘Why?’ Jack Ginsberg said, sitting bolt upright in his carved Florentine chair so suddenly as to make his suit squeak against the silk upholstery. ‘Don’t tell us he affects thousands of other people. Nobody ever cast any votes for him that I know of.’

  ‘Shut up, Jack.’

  ‘No, wait, it’s a reasonable question,’ Ware said. ‘Dr Stockhausen does have a large family, which I have to take into account. And, as I’ve told you, I’ve taken some pleasure in his company on a few occasions – not enough to balk at having him sent for, but enough to help run up the price.’

  ‘But that’s not the major impediment. The fact is that Dr Stockhausen, like a good many theoretical physicists these days, is a devout man – and furthermore, he has only a few venial sins to account for, nothing in the least meriting the attention of Hell. I’ll check that again with someone who knows, but it was accurate as of six months ago and I’d be astonished if there’s been any change. He’s not a member of any formal congregation, but even so he’s nobody a demon could reasonably have come for him – and there’s a chance that he might be defended against any direct assault.’

  ‘Successfully?’

  ‘It depends on the forces involved. Do you want to risk a pitched battle that would tear up half of Düsseldorf? It might be cheaper just to mail him a bomb.’

  ‘No, no. And I don’t want anything that might look like some kind of laboratory accident – that’d be just the kind of clue that would set everybody else in his field haring after what we want to keep hidden. The whole secret lies in the fact that once Stockhausen knows what we know, he could create a major explosion with – well, with the equivalent of a blackboard and two pieces of chalk. Isn’t there any other way?’

  ‘Men being men, there’s always another way. In this instance, though, I’d have to have him tempted. I know at least one promising avenue. But he might not fall. And even if he did, as I think he would, it would take several months and a lot of close monitoring. Which wouldn’t be altogether intolerable either, since it would greatly help to mislead Father Domenico.’

  ‘What would it cost?’ Jack Ginsberg said.

  ‘Oh – say about eight million. Entirely a contingent fee this time, since I can’t see that there’d be any important out-of-pocket money needed. If there is, I’ll absorb it.’

  That’s nice,’ Jack said. Ware took no notice of the feeble sarcasm.

  Baines put on his adjudicative face but inwardly he was well satisfied. As a further test, the death of Dr Stockhausen was not as critical as that of Governor Rogan, but it did have the merit of being in an entirely different social sphere; the benefits to Consolidated Warfare Service would be real enough, so that Baines had not had to counterfeit a motive, which might have been detected by Ware and led to premature further questions; and finally, the objections Ware had raised, while in part unexpected, had been entirely consistent with everything the magician had said before, everything that he appeared to be, everything that his style proclaimed, despite the fact that he was obviously a complex man.

  Good. Baines liked consistent intellectuals, and wished that he had more of them in his organization. They were always fanatics of some sort when the chips were down, and hence presented him with some large and easily grasped handle precisely when he had most need of it. Ware hadn’t exhibited his handle yet, but he would; he would.

  ‘It’s worth it,’ Baines said, without more than a decorous two seconds of apparent hesitation. ‘I do want to remind you, though, Dr Ware, that Dr Hess here is one of my conditions. I want you to allow him to watch while you operate.’

  ‘Oh, very gladly,’ Ware said, with another smile that, this time, Baines found disquieting; it seemed false, even unctuous, and Ware was too much in command of himself to have meant the falsity not to be noticed. ‘I’m sure he’ll enjoy it. You can all watch, if you like. I may even invite Father Domenico.’

  Dr Hess arrived punctually the next morning for his appointment to be shown Ware’s workroom and equipment. Greeting him with a professional nod – ‘Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary,’ Hess found himself quoting in silent inanity – Ware led the way to a pair of heavy, brocaded hangings behind his desk, which parted to reveal a heavy brass-bound door of what was apparently cypress wood. Among its fittings was a huge knocker with a face a little like the mask of tragedy, except that the eyes had cat-like pupils in them.

  Hess had thought himself prepared to notice everything and be surprised by nothing, but he was taken aback when the expression on the knocker changed, slightly but inarguably, when Ware touched it. Apparently expecting his startlement, Ware said without looking at him, There’s nothing in here really worth stealing, but if anything were taken it would cost me a tremendous amount of trouble to replace it, no matter how worthless it would prove to the thief. Also, there’s the problem of contamination – just one ignorant touch could destroy the work of months. It’s rather like a bacteriology laboratory in that respect. Hence the Guardian.’

  ‘Obviously there can’t be a standard supply house for your tools,’ Hess agreed, recovering his composure.

  ‘No, that’s not even theoretically possible. The operator must make everything himself – not as easy now as it was in the Middle Ages, when most educated men had the requisite skills as a matter of course. Here we go.’

  The door swung back as if being opened from the inside, slowly and soundlessly. At first it yawned on a deep scarlet gloom,
but Ware touched a switch and, with a brief rushing sound, like water, sunlight flooded the room.

  Immediately Hess could see why Ware had rented this particular palazzo and no other. The room was an immense refectory of Sienese design, which in its heyday must often have banquetted as many as thirty nobles; there could not be another one half as big in Positano, though the palazzo as a whole was smaller than some. There were mullioned windows overhead, under the ceiling, running around all four walls, and the sunlight was pouring through two ranks of them. They were flanked by pairs of red-velvet drapes, unpatterned, hung from traverse rods; it had been these that Hess had heard pulling back when Ware had flipped the wall switch.

  At the rear of the room was another door, a broad one also covered by hangings, which Hess supposed must lead to a pantry or kitchen. To the left of this was a medium-sized, modern electric furnace, and beside it an anvil bearing a hammer that looked almost too heavy for Ware to lift. On the other side of the furnace from the anvil were several graduated tubs, which obviously served as quenching baths.

  To the right of the door was a black-topped chemist’s bench, complete with sinks, running water and the usual nozzles for illuminating gas, vacuum and compressed air; Ware must have had to install his own pumps for all of these. Over the bench on the back wall were shelves of reagents; to the right, on the side wall, ranks of drying pegs, some of which bore contorted pieces of glassware, others, coils of rubber tubing.

  Farther along the wall towards the front was a lectern bearing a book as big as an unabridged dictionary, bound in red leather and closed and locked with a strap. There was a circular design chased in gold on the front of the book, but at this distance Hess could not make out what it was. The lectern was flanked by two standing candlesticks with fat candles in them; the candles had been extensively used, although there were shaded electric-light fixtures around the walls, too, and the small writing table next to the lectern bore a Tensor lamp. On the table was another hook, smaller but almost as thick, which Hess recognized at once: the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, forty-seventh edition, as standard a laboratory fixture as a test tube; and a rank of quill pens and inkhorns.