THE RAT GREW EXCITED ...as Simon Farber attached the electrodes to the terminals projecting from its skull. Images drawn from its mind appeared in the Visualizer; dim, flickering. There was no laboratory, only the surrounding desert--but hotter, drier than the scrub grass surrounding the Phoenix Brain Research Institute. Something solid stood in the midst of the desert--a pyramid, a tetrahedron, indistinct and wavering as though made of some ethereal substance. Inside were dark forms, shadows, horizontal and vertical shapes--buildings? Was it a city he was seeing? But like no city on this earth...Farber worked quickly to capture the images on holographic film before they faded. The drug wore off, returning the projections in the cybernetic machine to mundane reality: the cage, the scientist's hand as Farber placed the rat back in its cage. He held the holograms up to the light. Always the same, he thought. More than one hundred test animals, more than a dozen species--yet AZOT always produces identical hallucinations.... He repeated the procedure with a second rat. Again there was the transformed desert with the mysterious shape rising from it, the luminous mass that had no right to be there. He was puzzled, vexed. It distracted him even from his sister's problems: Sophie was dropping acid again. After a divorce that had left her injured, crippled. As a scientist, he appreciated what the drug could do for someone if the setting was highly controlled, but to use the drug wildly in a party atmosphere of blind chance--it was dangerous. Behavior like this, wild, uncontrolled use of LSD, would probably lead to psychedelic drug research being made illegal once more--after a century in which scientists had labored in darkness, the only experiments the chance experiences of street people hippies, zoccies with no idea of what it all meant. At the end of the day he shut off the Visualizer, locked the cages and drove toward the artificial lake, the land-reclamation project, carrying the holograms he had made that day. His aircar was sleek silver in the night, like a comet flying low in the sky. He flew north into the desert; yet after a few miles the parched, barren land was replaced by new terrain: The headlights flashed on wisps of grass, anchored along the tops of dunes, then shrubs, small trees, a forest. Flying low, once he passed a deer beneath him; it lifted its head in curiosity at the moon-colored machine overhead. And the moon is a metal lady. He flew west along a narrow lane of asphalt, there for the trucks which were necessary to transport the rare chemicals for the polywater plant--the water of the artificial lake shone in the moonlight. No ripples disturbed the placid surface, unnaturally still in the moonlit night. He halted at a cinderblock building. The structure was four stories tall. Streams of water poured from an orifice occupying half of one wall of the building--the gushers did not fall as water ordinarily does, but split into globules like mercury; the ripples where they fell died down rapidly--a few hundred meters from the source the lake was quiet again. Farber rang the buzzer three times. The door finally opened; a technician greeted Farber. "I don't believe we've met," he said, extending his hand. "I'm Sal Barnabas, one of the plant's engineers." Farber's tone became urgent: "Diana's here tonight, isn't she?" "Diana Benjamin? Yes..." Barnabas led Farber to a rung ladder, pointed upward. "She's there--at the end of the catwalk." Ben--as her friends called her--was silhouetted against blue-white floods, on a narrow metal strand above an open tank the size of a swimming pool. Farber called to Diana, but she did not hear him. His voice was drowned in rushing noise. Then she descended the latter, her hair silver in the blue-white light. On seeing her boyfriend embraced him, gave him a light kiss. Then she looked worried. "What brings you here? It must be something urgent if you had to come while I was at work...." "AZOT. The drug. The new psychedelic--it's more than that, I think...." He told her about his experiments. "An archetype?" Ben asked. She had taken a course in Jungian sociobiology at the University of Montana--there was still a little of the cowgirl in her; she wore a Western shirt and Tony Lama boots. With rhinestones the large-breasted woman would not have been out of place in some Vegas cathouse. She continued, "It's been postulated that archetype formation begins even in sub-social mental systems." Then he showed her the holograms; Ben was disturbed by what she saw, turned the holograms about quite awhile. Finally she asked, "What do you think it is?" Farber replied, "I don't know--it appears to be another Phoenix--the city transformed. I intend to find out what it is: I'm going to take the chimp from the lab, map out some of the alternate landscape around Phoenix tonight." Diana Benjamin hugged him. "I'll come with you!" He said sternly, like an angry Father, "No, it's too dangerous: I'm not authorized to perform any of these experiments; I don't want you to share the penalty if I'm caught--Dr. Smith would blow a cork...." She hugged him again, gave him a penetrating kiss. "Please..." Farber reluctantly agreed; he'd always been a sucker for a pretty face. The transmuted water made a gurgling noise as it fell into that great hole, to pass outward, into the lake while Ben made arrangements to take the rest of the night off. Farber stood patiently waiting--waiting for the Moon. As they stepped out of the lab he perceived the wonder of a silver crescent disappearing between the twin peaks of her breasts. The pendant was in the shape of the moon. A half an hour later Farber's aircar settled with a whine beside Diana's conapt. They had been talking of living together for some time; the specter of marriage rose up in Farber's mind like the rising wind. Sophie flirted with his stream of consciousness, images of his twin sister burning her brain out with experimental drugs; but the images were lost in the moment as Diana slipped into something a little more comfortable. It was sheer. It was chic. It was pure filmy, see-through elegance. She sat down beside him, put her arm around him. With long nails glistening ruby in the glo-tubes, she reached into his shirt pocket, took out the packet of holograms. "Strange..." was all she said. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," Farber said. "What?" "An old history of science book--one hundred years old...but profound: Normal science consists of a paradigm, a shared model which all researchers work on, to fill in the gaps. But when anomalies occur, so does a Scientific Revolution...the old paradigm must be overturned--what I've got here...it's a Scientific Revolution. After AZOT, the world will never be the same again!" Ben didn't say anything, but her embracing arm pulled him tighter--two seekers of Light and Life alone against the night. He didn't want to do it. But he had to: Animal experiments only take you so far, then--you have to grope upwards to the next level of organization...which meant a human experiment. Farber knew who would be the first: himself. Probably against all Smith's orders, a clandestine experiment that could cost him his mind...if he saw Ben...Diana...again, it might be from behind the bars of a psychiatric hospital. But normal life, like normal science, had to proceed until it was time for the new paradigm to shatter neurophysiological and psychodynamic models. So he dismissed these thoughts and put his arm around her, reached down to touch a flawless breast, traced the outline of a nipple, and kissing her asked, "Will you marry me?" She moved her hand to his aching firmness. "Yes...for a little love. A little sex. Tonight. Before we take off for an alien world--a journey to the center of the mind." He thought of his Catholic childhood. He thought of the avenging nuns with rulers in hand beating him when they caught him in the coat closet looking at porno magazines. He'd had no idea until then that sex was wrong; had grown up sexually repressed--until he had become a scientist and rejected religion for agnosticism. So he touched her intimately--though not without the haunting memory of Sister Mary Catherine like some sorceress sending him to the Principal's office. He brushed a thigh, fingers creeping up violet nylons toward the perfection of a bush--a burning bush, he thought, thinking of how Freud's Moses and Monotheism--had been absorbed into the reductionistic whole which was sociobiology--a revolutionary science. Rapidly undressing, eager, he entered--and he, too, burned. His thrusts were violent, the Sun raping the sky at dawn when the Moon is in twilight--then suddenly the image of the crystal city flooded him like some acid dream that brought impotence. Shuddering, he withdrew. Ben perceived his problem, asked, "What's wrong?" "The city...the holograms...as a Catholic child, I believed magic was the work of the devil; as a scientist, I don't believe in it--but that city is magical! There are demons in that great pellucid mass--and even you...transmuted somehow, a witch and not the woman I love. Something...the city took all the love out of me." She bent to the limp thing, took it in her hand, saying, "Everyone gets impotent sometimes...don't blame it on magic; you've just been working too hard." Yet when he remained limp she stopped feeling him, trying to get his manhood to rise again. "You'll still marry me?" He nestled his head against her shoulder where her bra strap was filigreed and black like a crow's wings, saying, "Yes." She continued to toy with him until she fell to sleep--which only left him more frustrated. As she snored beside him he tried to sleep, but if he slept he was awake in his dreams. He saw the neon of Phoenix; saw the glinting silver of the moon--and he heard the wind.... When he awoke it seemed that he was dreaming or stoned as he ate a quick breakfast of cold cereal, thinking, Perhaps the same thing happened to me that happened to Hoffman...when he discovered LSD he accidentally spilled some on his hand--at first he thought he was insane, then guessed what had happened....He took the rest of the day off, rode his bicycle home: That must've been some bicycle ride.... Then with the abrupt transition of drugs or insanity he was in the lab, Friday night, Saturday morning--he wasn't sure of the hour; Diana at his side....But now he was wide awake; saw with the crystal clarity of vision, a naked sword. Mikey protested as the needle pierced his skin, even as Simon took the portable Visualizer from the shelf. Diana watched in fascination as the terminals on the chimpanzee's skull glinted gold in the moonlight. Then they were outside, leading Mikey away into the soft light of a full moon obscured by clouds... Ben clutched his hand. It reminded him of her stroking, trying to rouse his sexual ardor; he withdrew and gripped the wheel more tightly. She was dressed, not as a scientist participating in a Scientific Revolution, but in her Western clothes, her cowboy hat, her white men's shirt with its delicate beadwork, blue jeans and boots--more as if they were on a date than rewriting the history of science. Perhaps she had intentions of actually turning this into a date, stopping in an all-night bar somewhere...when the drug peaked, the Visualizer beamed a projection in the holo-cube--and she gasped in astonishment, then was struck dumb. The illusory city was incredibly large compared to the real Phoenix; the material city glowed with blinking neon lights; the other city glowed with a cold phosphorescence, refracted through its walls, like glass refined into vitriol by some alchemist. And there were cities above Simon and Diana, cities suspended on crystal casting shadows in moonlight that played on parks, Earth contrasting with the vitriol which supported it, diamond hard and shiny; there were tall, spired buildings around and above the two of them--the crystal city rose for miles and miles above the earth. Farber was caught up in the beauty and majesty of the projections in the cybernetic device when Diana gasped, "Look!" Simon Farber glanced at the Visualizer, then looked toward the real Phoenix to see what had alarmed Diana: Everything was transmuted in the machine, but this one remained unchanged: an old man, an Indian walking in a dark alleyway--a corridor of light in the Visualizer. Farber swung the aircar around, pointing its headlights down the alley. He got out, yelled, "Who are you? I'd like to talk to you!" The medicine man--he was dressed in ceremonial Navajo robes--glanced over his shoulder, paused awhile. As Diana also started screaming for him to stop the figure fled, vanishing into darkness and distance. As they continued on their lonely journey the headlights flashed on a familiar figure: miniskirt, rouge, black leather boots and pearl necklace. "What's she doing out here?" Diana asked. "Especially in that get-up; she looks like some sort of..." She didn't finish the sentence. Farber brought the flying craft to Earth; cut the turbos. "I'll find out--I may have to turn her in...no matter how close we are...!" Cold wind swirled about Simon as he approached her. "What are you doing here, sister?" he asked Sophie. Cold fire flamed in her eyes. But she was silent; in the dark shadows her sensuous costume made her seem like a fertility god from some forgotten religion. Simon thought of turning her in to Smith, not knowing that Smith already knew and was impotent under the spell of love. Or at least lust. Seeing Sophie's serpentine sleekness, Simon almost knew lust himself...."Have you been using acid again, Soph-kid? Don't you know how dangerous it can be if you don't carefully control the..." "Please." Sophie stood rigid, like a soldier at attention. The world was cracked, bifurcated as she stared icily. Yet now she spied Mikey in the front seat of Simon's expensive imported aircar and knew that he was up to something. She wasn't sure just yet--but it had to be connected to that new experimental drug that he was testing.... Farber finally gave up pleading--he had to finish mapping the alternate Phoenix before the AZOT wore off the chimp; Ben and Simon departed to continue their psychedelic quest--just a few minutes before Smith rescued her from this street of damnation. But now Sophie, like Farber, conspired to get ahold of a sample of AZOT for herself--before they made it illegal, like everything else that expanded the mind.... Smith took her home and she laughed. She didn't mention that she'd seen Simon with the chimp, conducting some unsanctioned experiment--the love of a sister for a brother, the cohesiveness of what was a system and not an aggregate, bade her hide what she knew as dawn brought violent purple and red to the clouds, lingering acid twilight... # GEORGE TWO WAYS Trying to track down the mysterious shaman Ben and Simon had seen before meeting Sophie in the red-light district, Farber was back at the place where he had seen the old Indian. As he scrutinized the run-down buildings and the last of the hookers and their pimps vanishing into the brightness of oncoming day, Farber caught sight of a beggar on the steps of a dilapidated bar, one leg a stump, crutches by his side. Farber was alone--he had sneaked off by himself to search for the Navajo; realization of the dangers he was exposing Diana to had kept him from informing her where he was. "Say mister, can you spare a quarter? Help an old man out?" "Sure, sure," Farber handed him a five. "Listen: Could you do me a favor?" "Anything, buddy, anything for an old buddy like you," the old wino chortled, gleeful at having received much more than he had asked for. Farber hoped it would be enough--he had yet to experience the terror which is Two Ways. But he would know it soon.... "I'm looking for a man, an Indian, a medicine man...." "Sure, I know him," the wino laughed. "Fellow goes by the name of Two Ways--yes, that's it, George Two Ways. Or maybe he's a Four Ways by now. Old Indian smokes a lot of mushrooms, peyote and stuff. He's one of them medicine men, you know. Last of his kind, they say...." His voice trailed off. "Do you know where I can find him?" The wino suddenly grew sullen. "Can't say--can't say. Nobody knows where he lives, where he goes or comes from. Can't say. If Two Ways wants to, he can find you. They say you can't hide from Two Ways if he's looking for you...." Farber decided that he had learned all he could from the beggar, so he walked on. Behind him the wino dragged himself upright, hobbled into the bar. Two Ways, Farber thought. Well, at least now the stranger has a name. And I know he's a peyote user, perhaps a member of the Native American Church. I might be able to locate him through them.... The Native American Church had grown more prosperous since the drug laws had been reformed: Their headquarters were a splendid cathedral, located in the far western suburbs. The stained glass windows were filled with imagery drawn from Indian mythology: Coyote, Wolf, Bear, Snake. Farber met with the shaman who presided there in his little office at the rear of the Church. "I am Howard Silver Eagles," he said, shaking Farber's hand. "And you are Simon Farber--I recognize you from the homeopapes." Farber said, "I'm looking for someone you might possibly know--another peyote user." "Ah, yes." Silver Eagles smiled. "We are all a brotherhood, you know--those of us who use peyote as a sacrament, blessed by the Church...." "Then perhaps you will know this man. His name is George Two Ways." Silver Eagles paled. "Aieee! Two Ways! He is not a member of this Church! He is Coyote, the Trickster! We cast him out years ago--he uses forbidden herbs from the Andes, and practices old, demonic rites which were forbidden by our ancestors!" Farber said, "I...I did not know--that he practices forbidden rites. Look...I'm a scientist experimenting with psychedelic drugs and I'd like to analyze some of the stuff he's taking...." "In that case..." Silver Eagles muttered, hesitating before speaking again. "I am always willing to support drug research, especially where psychoactive plants are concerned. I might be able to give you the address of someone who consults Two Ways regularly. She calls herself the Widow Ting and casts the I-Ching over in a shop on east 50th St." A few minutes later Farber stood before a Chinatown herbarium: The windows of the brick storefront were decorated with wooden carvings of pagodas. The paint was peeling, faded. Inside the room was decorated with an eclectic assortment of occult symbols: tarot signs; zodiacs; carved jade Buddhas; the gods and goddess of classical myth; Native American gods: Coyote, Wolf, Bear, Snake. The lady who greeted Farber was ancient, wrinkled; beautiful in spite of her age. Her figure was hidden by layered silk robes, richly embroidered with Oriental dragons. As he entered Ting took Farber's hand, led him to an over-stuffed chair. "Please come in, sit down--Farber. I know why you have come here--but can you tell me the meaning of your name?" "Don't ask me riddles," Simon Farber said. "I am here because I am looking for George Two Ways." She laughed, a hollow laugh like some decrepit witch. She said, "Dyer. Farber is German for Dyer: 'God is a Dyer:' The Gospel of Philip...and I can tell you right away that what you suspect is true: There are two Universes; they are the Sun and the Moon.: Farber was startled--it was as though she had read his mind, knew what he was beginning to suspect: that the test animals were seeing into an alternate universe. But his rational mind told him that Silver Eagles might have phoned her to tell her that he was coming....a cold wind sprang from nowhere, like a ghost's ethereal breath, as she thrust a fragrant cup of spice tea on him. It tasted of nutmeg. Even as the tea cup left her right hand with her left she picked up some yarrow stalks, saying, "I will tell you where to find Two Ways if you allow me to read your fortune." Farber smiled. "I am not a superstitious man." "But you must know the future if you are to deal with it--you are going to a different world, a plane where the alchemists won the Scientific Revolution." The yarrow stalks clattered in spite of Farber's protests: "Do not leave the crystal city, for in that there is great danger: If you leave Phoenix you will die, for the Phoenix is the symbol of resurrection, of Christ. But Woman will be your salvation, Mercury, the Androgyne, to your Sulfur--the Sulfur and Mercury of the alchemists were not the crude, earthly substances but their perfected, Spiritual forms--their goal was to fuse these Two into One...." "Fine," Farber said, laughing a little, but suddenly becoming afraid again as the strange chill swept over him anew. It seemed as though he stood on the portal to another dimension; he feared what he might find there. Then he shrugged off the sensation, saying, "You've had your fun; now tell me where I can find Two Ways." She laughed, seeming an incarnation of the dragon-spirits which graced her robes. "Go to Lion Hill; you will find Two Ways in the twilight...." Farber tried to get more out of her, but after that she became sullen and withdrawn, saying, "I have told you too much already--the Salamander's spirit is angry with me. But I will tell you one more thing before you leave, no matter what hell it might send me to: We will meet again, you and I, in a different world...." Then she fell to silence once more. In an eerie, brooding, somber state Farber left. It seemed as though in the brightness of day he had caught a glimpse of the twilight world of ghosts and spirits--a frightening world. The world of Two Ways. Then his aircar drifted away from the little alchemist's den in Chinatown; it became but one more of the little stores selling rare herbs and aphrodisiacs....as he rushed on in oncoming twilight Simon to find the hill--it was the shape of a lion's head from erosion. Simon climbed it along the lion's mane, sprawled out to rest on the northernmost ear. The sun had sunk below the horizon, but the halflight still lingered--suddenly there was a flicker of movement which caught Farber's eye: The Indian appeared from behind the lion's other ear. "I am Two Ways. I know who you are and what you will become. I have seen your birth and rebirth, and it is glorious." Farber shouted into the rising wind, "Is Ting right? Do you see into another world? Can you see another Phoenix, even now?" Two Ways laughed eerily. "I will only tell you this: What saves is the Knowledge of who we are, where we have been, what birth is--and what rebirth is." Now the wind was kicking dust and sand into the air around them. Farber approached the old Indian. Abruptly, Two Ways ran down the crest of the hill. Farber chased him, but the old man moved with an unnatural speed. The wind grew fiercer, the dust reduced visibility until Two Ways' retreating figure was a shadow like a smoky wraith drifting across the crest of the dunes. Two Ways vanished into smoke, leaving Farber alone in oncoming night. # End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.