I looked at him sharply. “You know him; don’t you?”
“Oh, we all knew the Sun King, back in the Summer of Love,” said Julien Advent. “But yes, I knew him personally, back in the day. I knew him as just a man, before he burst out of his cocoon and became the Sun King. I left the Nightside to go travel the world and see how much it had changed, since my day, when Victoria was still on the Throne and the British Empire was the greatest the world had ever seen . . . So much had changed, and so much hadn’t, and the more I saw, the less I understood. In the summer of 1967, I went to San Francisco to wear some flowers in my hair. It made as much sense as anything else. These days, the word hippy has become an insult, but back then they were the bravest of the brave, determined to overthrow an unjust society without using violence. That was a revelation to me. My generation changed the world through brute force, with armies and opium and gunboat diplomacy. But these were a new kind of young people, gentle people with strong convictions, dedicated to non-violent action. Sticking flowers in the barrels of soldiers’ guns, knowing that some of those soldiers were quite prepared to shoot them. Standing up to be counted even though they knew someone would club them down. And the Sun King . . . was the very best of them.
“His real name was Harry Webb. No-one knew much about who or what he was before he came to America and made his way to San Francisco. Another young Englishman, walking across the USA, to see what there was to see. He found his way to Haight-Ashbury, and the counter-culture, and following the path of so many of the questing souls of those glorious days, he turned on, tuned in, and dropped out. We met when we crashed together in the same cheap boarding-house. I liked being among people who’d never heard of me, and we all sat and talked for hours about everything under the sun.
“So far, only another story of times past. But then one day, right at the height of the Summer of Love, Harry Webb went to the park and took what Timothy Leary would call an heroic dose of LSD. His mind expanded and exploded, and in that transcendental state . . . he made mental contact with Entities from Beyond.
“Now, a good many people said they did, while under the influence of the many and various mind-expanding chemicals of the day; but Harry really did. The Entities talked to him of many things, and he listened, and when he finally came down again, he wasn’t Harry Webb any more. He wasn’t human any more. He was transformed, he was transmogrified, he was the Sun King. The living god of LSD, the true Acid Sorcerer, the Miracle Man. Psychedelic rock and roll played around him wherever he went, manifesting out of nowhere—a glorious music that we could never remember or reproduce afterwards. He and his music led us through the streets of San Francisco, like a psychedelic pied piper. Hundreds, thousands strong, our minds blown and expanded by his very presence. We would have followed him anywhere, done anything for him. Lived for him, died for him. Oh yes, I was there, swept up in it all. He was our leader, our prophet, our guru. And all he ever wanted of us was that we should become like him, shine like him. He wanted to raise us all up, into all we’d ever wanted or hoped we could be. A world of turned-on, non-violent superhumans.
“The gentle knights, the lords and ladies of a new Camelot.
“He walked through Haight-Ashbury, and we followed after him, hundreds of thousands strong, singing Hallelujah. He healed the sick with a look, raised up the broken-spirited with just a word, turned on the straights and blasted everyone’s minds into something better. A living god, he walked in sunlight wherever he went, and miracles and wild happenings burst out all around him.
“The local authorities totally freaked out. The cops arrived first, with their uniforms and guns and night-sticks; and the Sun King stopped them in their tracks and stunned them with the truth. Of who they really were, as opposed to who they’d wanted to be. And some of them joined us, and some of them ran away to hide in the shadows, and some of them drew their guns and opened fire. But the Sun King smiled, and their bullets turned into flowers and fell out of the air.
“So they called in reinforcements, and they met us with armoured vans, and bigger guns, and water cannon; but none of them made any difference. The Sun King had no weapons; he was benevolence personified, and the natural world itself rose up to protect him. He . . . made you want to be better, to do better, by example. And through his presence, his example, we were.”
Julien stopped talking, his eyes far-away, lost in the past. I’d never heard him say so much, or speak so eloquently. Or talk about someone else the way most people talked about him. The Great Victorian Adventurer; the crusading editor of the Night Times; the man even his enemies admired.
“What happened?” I said. “What went wrong?”
“He went back to the park,” said Julien Advent. “And he raised up a huge and wonderful White Tower, with nothing more than a wave of his hand. It appeared before us, huge and magical, all complete in a moment, a Tower with no doors or windows. He walked through the wall and disappeared inside the Tower, shutting himself off from the clamour of the world, and his followers, so that he could meditate on what to do next, and commune with the Entities from Beyond. All the people came from far around, in their psychedelic clothes and pretty painted faces, with flowers in their hair and in their hands, and they sat around the Tower in endless ranks, closely packed circles spreading out for as far as the eye could see. All the beautiful people, the flower people, the good and groovy people. And there they sat, talking and singing, waiting patiently. Until the light went out of the day, and night fell over the park, and the White Tower blazed like a beacon. And still they stayed, eating and drinking, laughing and loving, dancing and singing in celebration of what they’d seen and the hope of new wonders to come. For twenty-four hours they waited for the Sun King to come out and lead them to glory.
“And exactly twenty-four hours after he disappeared into the White Tower, the Tower with no doors and no windows . . . after they’d all exhausted themselves and there was no more singing or dancing . . . the Tower disappeared. No-one saw it go. No sound or fury, no great explosions of colour; people looked up, and it wasn’t there any more. No trace to show it had ever been there. Strangely enough, there weren’t any tears or protests, no demands for explanations. Slowly, a few at a time, the people went away. And within a few days, most of them had forgotten about the Sun King, and everyone got on with their lives. The Sun King became another marvellous story from that magical time.”
“You were there,” I said. “You sat and watched, outside the Tower in the park. Didn’t you?”
“Yes. I was there. I knew him, walked with him, saw what he could do. I walked beside him, as he entered the White Tower. It wouldn’t let me in. I can still remember how the white wall felt, under my fingertips. Like cold coral, from the bottom of the sea. I waited, because I believed in him and wanted to see what he would do; but when the Tower vanished and took him with it, I knew it was over.
“Hardly anyone talks about the Sun King now. Perhaps because he promised so much and disappointed so many. So that they wanted, needed, to forget him. There are conspiracy sites that dismiss the whole story as CIA black propaganda. Disinformation, to discredit the counter-culture. But he was real. I was there. And they were right; he was dangerous because he was the best drug ever. A transforming presence, a way to break out of the Reality Trip, and lead a better life. He was the revolution. Or, he could have been.”
“Do you think . . . the authorities of that time were responsible for his disappearance?” I said.
“I don’t know. I always thought he’d be back someday . . . but not like this.”