"You're nice, Gillie," I said after a pause, "but I can only take one spiritual companion at a time, and she's upstairs at the moment. Grab a coupla glasses, will you?" I lifted the bottle and gripped the stems of three wine glasses between my fingers.
If she felt rejected she didn't show it, and again I wondered if I hadn't imagined the come-on.
"I understand what you're saying," she said, holding a glass in each hand, "but if you ever do feel a need . . ."
She deliberately left the rest unsaid and naturally my imagination continued to indulge itself. She turned away, but not before smiling at me with her eyes, not mockingly, not even seductively, but as if she understood a lot more than I did. Probably she was right.
"Tell me one other thing," I said, bringing her to a halt. "Why here?"
She looked puzzled.
"Why did Mycroft base his Synergist Temple here? He's American, and from what I gathered when I was at the Temple, so are quite a few of his followers, so why bring his organization all the way over to England?"
"Because this is the—"
"Gillie."
The voice was calm enough, yet the girl's head spun around as though she'd been lashed.
Kinsella stood on the bottom stair, hands inevitably tucked into back pockets. He was smiling amiably, but I thought I detected just a hint of irritation filtering through his expression.
"We were wondering what had happened to you both," he said agreeably.
"On our way," I responded, holding the wine and glasses aloft. "Gillie was just filling in on some of the Synergist background, although I've gotta own up, I'm not much wiser."
"Well, the man himself is under your roof, Mike. Mycroft can explain better than any of us. But you know we've never wanted to thrust any of this down your throat before, that's not our style."
"I'm not that curious. Just making conversation."
"Sure. Lemme give you a hand with those glasses."
"I can manage. You lead the way."
Kinsella glanced around the room as if looking for something before retreating up the stairs.
Again I asked myself what it was about Gramarye that made him so nervous.
"The limits of the human mind are those imposed by ourselves."
Mycroft looked from face to face, examining the effects of his statement on both the initiated and the uninitiated— the latter being Midge and myself. He was seated in the round room's only armchair, while Midge and Gillie sat on the sofa, with me on the sofa's arm; Kinsella and Joby lounged on the floor, sipping wine and watching their leader intently. A single lamp lit the room and outside the windows there seemed to be nothing but blackness.
"Civilization itself has served to dull our minds' intrinsic faculties," he went on, "the new material and scientific knowledge increasingly diminishing our self-knowledge. It's not by chance that the child without so-called matured wisdom has a greater psychic capability than the adult."
"I understand what you mean," I said, "and it's hardly an original theory." (I didn't mind being rude—we'd already sat through nearly twenty minutes of Mycroft's proselytizing and I was steadily becoming bored.) "But look, knowledge tells me I can't fly: not believing that, or being unaware of it, doesn't alter the fact."
"No, Mike," he replied patiently. "SW/-knowledge informs you that you can't fly. But in even that, you've learned to think merely in terms of your physical body, and not of your consciousness. Ultimately there is nothing that can restrict your own psyche. The force that's within us all— the psychic energy, if you wish—cannot be bound by the physical aspects of our lives. Unless we, ourselves, dictate otherwise."
Somehow he no longer looked so bland. Maybe the shadows cast by the lamp gave depth to his features where none had been apparent before; or maybe it was the intensity in his eyes.
Midge spoke up, and I noticed she was hugging herself as though cold. "If this energy is there inside every one of us, why can't we reach it? Why can't we use it?"
"First we have to discover the ability within ourselves. We must become fully aware of the source, must realize and accept its presence. And we have to learn to control and keep fettered all knowledge that isn't relevant to our true selves. For that we need guidance." He smiled indulgently at Midge, but to me it was like the grin a spider saves for a fly. Why was it that the more I saw of these people, the less I liked them? Could be, I mused, that I had a natural antagonism against anything that smacked of fanaticism. And for all their quiet, amicable ways, the Synergists had that fanatical air about them.
"The Synergist Temple," Mycroft continued, his language becoming less matter-of-fact and more high-flown by the moment, "is no more than a foundation in which we seek our truth, where both the conscious and subconscious minds learn to combine with the omnispirit that governs us all, the spirit that exists within yet is apart, is individual yet is greater than the individual."
My eyes were beginning to glaze over. This was worse than Sunday sermon (as far as I could remember).
I stole a glance at Midge, and her face was serious, her eyes fixed on Mycroft's.
"How is it achieved?" she asked, and I shifted awkwardly on the arm of the sofa; she was spoon-feeding him all the right questions. "How does a person learn to combine with this spirit?"
Mycroft let his smile wander among his followers, and they smiled back as if they shared the secret. "It takes time," he said, returning his gaze to Midge, "and it requires a great deal of humility. Adoptives must surrender their thoughts, their wills. They must let the Founder have responsibility for all they do."
Even Midge, in her present state of blind fascination, blanched at that.
"That's asking a lot of someone, isn't it?" I remarked.
"The rewards are impressive," he countered smoothly.
"What would they be?"
"Oneness in spirit."
"Sounds terrific."
His flicker of annoyance was barely discernible.
"A regeneration of the mind's powers."
I nodded as though checking off a list.
"A harnessing of earthly thaumaturgic potency."
Now that did sound impressive, whatever the hell it meant. I felt it only right that I should ask.
"Unless you subjected yourself to each stage of the Synergist development," he said by way of an answer, "you could not hope to understand. Would you acknowledge now, for instance, that vast sources of power lie beneath our feet?"
I caught some anxious expressions directed at him from the others in the room, but Mycroft remained impassive.
"Of course," I replied. "Everybody accepts there's huge energy resources in the earth. There's nothing astounding about that proposition."
"I'm referring to a power much more intangible, Mike, but equally real. Something incorporeal, yet vast in its reserves. And we, mankind, have almost—almost— forgotten how to avail ourselves of that force."
Self-knowledge, oneness, regeneration, potency, thaumaturgic (thaumaturgic?), intangible, incorporeal (always a good one), and now of course, mankind—all those profound (and cliché) words you find in books on religion or the occult which sound great but leave you scratching your head wondering what it's all about.
"You've lost me completely," I said flatly.
He smiled maddeningly again and I think my dumb incomprehension came almost as a relief to him, as though my provocation had led him into giving away too much, and now he was able to draw back. His philosophy obviously had to be administered in much smaller doses.
But Midge was more persistent. "Is that how you healed Mike's hand so quickly, somehow combining your will with this special force? Is this power the spirit, the Divine Spirit, that you've mentioned before?"