“Yes-fine,” she said, embarrassed. “Very sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
He glanced beyond her in the direction from which she had come. “You’ve been to the society.”
“I have. Yes,” she said as if this explained everything. She made to edge past him and move on.
“Rosemary said there was someone yesterday. Was that, by chance, you?” He spoke matter-of-factly, and Cass placed a soft Irish accent.
“I suppose it was,” she allowed. “Are you one of them?”
He chuckled. “We’re not as bad as all that, I hope.” Before Cass could draw breath to apologise, the thin man smiled and offered his hand. “Brendan Hanno at your service,” he said, his light Irish burr going down like butter. She took the offered hand and clasped it diffidently. “And you are?” he asked.
“My name is Cassandra.”
“Yes,” he replied pleasantly. “I expect it would be. I was on my way to the society just now. Would you like to accompany me? We can have a cup of tea and see if we can find answers to all your questions.” He gestured towards the lane. “Shall we?”
Cass fell into step beside him. “How do you know I have questions?”
“Everyone who comes to us has questions,” he observed mildly. “I have a few myself-such as, how do you find Damascus?”
“It’s nice,” replied Cass lamely. “I’ve never seen any place like it. Then again, I’ve only been here a day, and I haven’t seen very much.”
“Well, we must do something about that,” he said. “To know Syria is to love Syria.”
They reached the society entrance, and Brendan fumbled a key out of his pocket and into the lock, opened the door, and beckoned her in, snapping on electric lights as he went. From somewhere they could hear a warbly humming. “That will be Mrs. Peelstick making tea. We live on tea, it seems. Take a seat, and I will tell her we’re here.”
Cass sat down in one of the damask-covered overstuffed chairs and took in the room once more-the shelves of books, the old-fashioned sitting room furniture, the dusty windows barred to the street.
A moment later Brendan poked his head back into the room to announce that they would take their refreshment in the courtyard. “This way, please. It is far more pleasant outside.”
He led her along a high-ceilinged corridor to a door that opened onto a commodious enclosed courtyard of the distinctive black-andwhite-banded stone. The square, paved yard was open to the sky, but half shaded by a striped canvas awning. The air was cool and fresh and alive with the gentle tinkling splash of a small octagonal fountain standing in the centre of the courtyard; the bowl of the fountain was covered in a blanket of red rose petals floating on the surface of the water. A tall potted palm stood in a large terracotta pot in one corner, and in another stood a round teak table beneath a square blue umbrella.
“It is so very pleasant this time of day,” Brendan observed, waving Cass to a seat. Presently the woman from the day before appeared with a tray full of tea things. “I think you have met Mrs. Peelstick,” announced Brendan.
“Yes, good morning, Mrs. Peelstick,” replied Cass.
“Please, call me Rosemary.”
“Rosemary, then. I am sorry if yesterday I seemed somewhat… brittle. I am still a bit uncertain about all this.”
“Understandable, dear,” replied the woman. “Think nothing of it.”
“Rosemary has been with the society since its inception,” explained Brendan with a teasing smile.
“Nonsense!” scoffed the woman lightly. “Not by a long chalk.” She bent to the teapot and began the ritual of pouring black tea into glasses containing fresh mint leaves. Passing a glass to Cass, she said, “I want you to know that you are among friends. From now on we will treat one another like the friends we hope to become.”
“In short,” continued Brendan, completing the thought, “we will speak frankly.”
“Please,” replied Cass, taking a sip of hot minty tea. “I welcome it.”
The sun was warm, and the palm fronds rustled gently in the light breeze. Small white butterflies flitted here and there among the jasmine strands growing up the courtyard wall. Cass felt the anxiety and trepidation that had marked her first visit melting away. Inexplicably, everything seemed right and in order; all was as it should be-although nothing much, really, had changed at all.
They drank their tea, and Cass listened to the Irishman talk about the courtyard and the building the society maintained and how they had come to own it. He described what it was like to live in Damascus-a place that, as he said, “In the immortal words of Mark Twain, measured time not in hours or days or even years, but in empires that arose and flourished and crumbled to dust.”
Finally they came back around to the reason for Cassandra’s visit. “We know you are a traveller,” Mrs. Peelstick said, “a traveller for whom time and space are little impediment. Otherwise, you would not be here. That is a fact. It is also a fact that there are only two ways to become such a traveller: either you are initiated by another traveller, or you are simply born with the ability-passed on, perhaps, genetically. The former is the usual way; the latter is more rarely the case.”
Brendan, nodding slowly, added, “One means confers no great benefit over the other, although those born with the ability to leap from one dimensional reality to another may be physically more sensitive to the active mechanisms involved.” He fixed her with a quizzical expression. “Which sort of traveller are you, Cassandra?”
“So far as I know,” she answered thoughtfully, “no one in my family has ever experienced anything like this. I think I would have heard about it if they had. I guess I was initiated.”
“By whom, may I ask, were you initiated?”
“A man-a Native American. We call him Friday.”
“You knew this fellow well, did you?”
“Not well, no. We worked together sometimes, is all. He was a member of an archaeological dig that I was-that I am — involved with in Arizona.” She thought a moment. “But I don’t think you could call it an initiation at all,” she said. “I followed him into a canyon near the site one day and… it just happened.”
Brendan sipped his tea. “That must have been something of a shock for you.”
“It was,” Cass agreed. “It still is. I don’t even know how I ended up here.”
“You have a gift-or have been given one,” said Rosemary. “Either way, it amounts to the same thing in the end. You are now an astral traveller.”
“I like the term inter-dimensional explorer,” put in Brendan, “because it carries no unfortunate occult overtones. You simply cannot imagine the amount of blather and nonsense that has crept into the subject over the years.”
“And always, it seems, by people who do not know the first thing about it,” Mrs. Peelstick said, extending a plate of tiny, round sesame-seed-and pistachio biscuits. “Try one; they are delicious.”
“Much of that nonsense is useful, of course,” observed Brendan, his Irish lilt dancing, “for it obfuscates the subject sufficiently to protect our work.”
“Protect it?” wondered Cass. “Why does your work need protecting?”
“This would merely be a somewhat arcane, not to mention foolhardy, pursuit if it did not serve a far greater purpose,” Brendan told her. “It is not too much to say that the future of humankind may depend on the work of the society. We are engaged in a project of such importance to humankind that its success will usher in the final consummation of the universe.”
“Gosh!” remarked Cass; to her embarrassment it sounded like sarcasm, which she had not intended.
Brendan paused, gauging her receptiveness to hear what came next. “I suppose it does sound a little overblown,” he admitted, “but it is true nonetheless. In short, the Zetetic Society was formed to offer aid and support to our members who are engaged in a very particular project. Our aim is nothing less than achieving God’s own purpose for His creation.”