I thought, in the floating lightheadedness to which stress had brought me: Perhaps we’ll be forbidden to try.
We picked the Berkeley Philosophical Laboratory for our calling. It was a new, large, splendidly outfitted wing tacked onto the shabby old structure that housed Griswold’s department before the salamander episode. Here senior and graduate physical-science students learned how to apply IM forces to natural research. So it had every kind of apparatus we could imagine needing. The main chamber was wide and high, uncluttered by more than a few shelves and workbenches along the walls. Light fell cool through
Cray-green glass in the Gothic windows. Zodiacal symbols on the deep-blue ceiling encircled a golden Bohr atom. You’d never find a place further in spirit from that cathedral at Siloam. My kind of people had raised this. I felt some measure of its sanity enter me to strengthen.
Griswold locked the door. Ginny took off the Seemings and let Svartalf out. He padded into a corner, tail going like a metronome. Karlslund laid an altar cloth on a bench, arranged on it cross, bell, chalice, sacred bread, and wine. The rest of us worked under Barney. We established a shieldfield and an antispy hex around the area in the usual way. Next we prepared to open the gates between universes.
So the popular phrase has it, altogether inaccurately. In truth there are no gates, there are means of transmitting influences from one continuum to another, and fundamentally it does not depend on apparatus but on knowing how. The physical things we set out Bible and Poimanderes opened to the appropriate passages, menorah with seven tall candles lit by flint and steel, vial of pure air, chest of consecrated earth, horn of Jordan water, Pythagorean harp-were symbolic more than they were sympathetic.
I want to emphasize that, because it isn’t as well known as it should be: one reason why Gnosticism caught on. The Petrine tenet goes along with the higher non-Christian faiths and the findings of modern science. You can’t compel Heaven. It’s too great. You can exert an influence, yes, but it won’t have effect unless the Highest allows, any more than a baby’s tug on your trouser cuff can turn you from your path by itself.
Our prayer was an earnest of our appeal, which God had already read in our hearts. In a way, its purpose was to convince us that we really meant what we said we wanted. Likewise, our spells would help any spirit that chose to come here. But he or she didn’t really need assistance. What would matter was that we were doing our best.
Hell is another case entirely. In physical terms, it’s on a lower energy level than our universe. In spiritual terms, the Adversary and his minions aren’t interested in assisting us to anything except our destruction. We could definitely force our way in and lay compulsions on the demons by sheer weight of wizardry—if we swung enough power!—and we would definitely have to if Val was to be rescued.
The formulas for trying to summon Heavenly aid aren’t common knowledge, but they aren’t hidden either. You can find them in the right reference works. Our hell spells were something else. I will never describe them. Since you may well guess they involve an inversion of the prayer ritual, I’ll state that we employed these articles: a certain one of the Apocrypha, a Liber Veneficarum, a torch, a globe of wind from a hurricane, some mummy dust, thirteen drops of blood, and a sword. I don’t swear to the truthfulness of my list.
We didn’t expect we’d require that stuff right away, but it was another demonstration of intent. Besides, Ginny needed a chance to study it and use her trained intuition to optimize the layout.
Karlslund’s bell called us. He was ready. We assembled before the improvised altar. “I must first conesecrate this and hold as full a service as possible,” he announced. I looked at my watch—damn near five—but dared not object. His feeling of respect for the process was vital.
He handed out prayer books and we commenced. The effect on me was curious. As said, I don’t believe any set of dogmas is preferable to any other or an upright agnosticism. On the rare occasions I’ve been in church, I’ve found that the high Episcopalians put on the best show, and that’s it. Now, at first, I wanted to whisper to Ginny, “Hey, this is a secret service.” But soon the wish for a joke slipped from me together with the racked emotions that generated it. Out of that simple rite grew peace and a wordless wonder. That’s what religion is about, I suppose, a turning toward God. Not that I became a convert; but on this one occasion it felt as if some aspect of Him might be turning toward us.
“Let us pray.”
“Our Father, Who art in Heaven—”
There was a knock on the door.
I didn’t notice at first. But it came again, and again, and a voice trickled through the heavy panels: “Dr. Griswold! Are you in there? Phone call for you. A Mr. Knife from the FBI. Says it’s urgent.”
That rocked me. My mood went smash. Ginny’s nostrils dilated and she clutched her book as if it were a weapon. Karlslund’s tones faltered.
Griswold pattered to the door and said to the janitor or whoever our Porlockian was: “Tell him I’ve a delicate experiment under way. It can’t be interrupted. Get his number, and I’ll call back in an hour or so.”
Good for you! half of me wanted to shout. The rest was tangled in cold coils of wondering about God’s mercy. Thy will be done . . . but what is Thy will? Can’t be everything that happens, or men would be mere puppets in a cruel charade.
God won’t frustrate us. He won’t let a little girl stay in hell.
He’s done it on occasion. Read police records.
But death finally released those victims, and they were given comfort. Or so the churches claim. How do the churches know? Maybe nothing exists but a blind interplay of forces; or maybe the Lowest and Highest are identical; or-No, that’s the despair of hell, which you have met before. Carry on, Matuchek. Don’t give up the crypt. “Onward, Christian so-oldiers” in your irregular baritone. If this doesn’t work out, we’ll try something else.
And at last we had struggled through the service to the benediction. Then Karlslund said, troubled: “I’m not sure we’re going to get anywhere now. The proper reverence is lost.”
Hardy replied unexpectedly, “Your church puts its prime emphasis on faith, Pastor. But to us Catholics, works count too.”
Karlslund yielded. “Well—all right. We can make the attempt. What exact help do you wish?”
Barney, Ginny, and the rest exchanged blank looks. I realized that in the rush, they’d forgotten to get specific about that. It probably hadn’t seemed urgent, since Heaven is not as narrowly literal-minded as hell. Our formula could be anything reasonable . . . presumably.
Barney cleared his throat. “Uh, the idea is,” he said, “that a first-rank mathematician would go on learning, improving, gaining knowledge and power we can’t guess at, after passing on. We want a man who pioneered in non-Euclidean geometry.”
“Riemann is considered definitive,” Falkenberg told us, “but he did build on the work of others, like Hamilton, and had successors of his own. We don’t know how far the incomparable Gauss went, since he published only a fraction of his thought. On the whole, I’d favor Lobachevsky. He was the first to prove a geometry can be self-consistent that denies the axiom of parallels. Around 1830 or 1840 as I recall, though the history of mathematics isn’t my long suit. Everything in that branch of it stems from him.”
“That’ll do,” Barney decided, “considering we don’t know if we can get any particular soul for an ally. Any whatsoever, for that matter,” he added raggedly. To Falkenberg: “You and the pastor work out the words while we establish the spell.”
That took time also, but kept us busy enough that it wasn’t as maddening as the service had been after the distraction. We mad e the motions, spoke the phrases, directed the will, felt the indescribable stress of energies build toward breaking point. This was no everyday hex, it was heap big medicine.