AWAKE, AND TURN THE WORLD AROUND A change in light will awaken a sleeping man. Not merely a brightening of the light; darkness, too, can awaken a man: A shadow crossed Farber's face and he awoke to something clinging to the wall outside the cell--someone: Smith. The doppelganger sprayed some Alkahest, the Universal Solvent, onto the crystal wall. The glass melted away where the thin stream of liquid touched it. A hot desert breeze caressed Farber's face. A robot guard opened the prison door, rushed in at them but the intruder sprayed more Alkahest onto his assailant. The metal gnome melted, dissolved, leaving pitted glass on the floor where it had been. Alarms went off. Smith handed Farber a set of gloves and boots. Their surfaces were studded with Sympathetic Magnets, mystical glass which magically adhered to the pellucid city as Farber crawled behind his savior onto the vitriol wall, crossing an endless plain broken here and there by crevasses--drainage ditches. Above him, planes and round, fat dirigibles circled, stacked up around the airport on the level above. They moved across that endless transparent plane until they came to a dark, square outcropping of metal, silhouetted against the moon. A breeze rose from the cube, blasts of hot air. It was part of the city's circulatory system. They entered through a hole in the screen; corroded like the crystal wall by the Universal solvent. Crawling along the hot, humid shaft until Farber was dripping with sweat, they dropped through a trapdoor onto a pellucid street, entered the transit tubes. The rising sun smoldering on the horizon became a heart, blazing on an altar in AZOT flashback--Farber was certain now that something had gone wrong, that he was stuck in this alternate universe...that Salamander was devouring him, a great blackness sucking away his heart; a blackness in the shape of a man... The motion of the transit system swept Farber by the city; the buildings merged into a lone, shadowy pile: a cathedral. Its doors and windows were constructed of the same tenuous substance as the night. But the illusion appeared too bulky to be supported by the strings of urban lights, the ornate masonry faulting along sheer lines to drift asunder, slowly rising and sinking to trail the metropolis skyline. A tremendous prehistoric bird appeared inside the hollow, broken church, seeming a remnant of some other lifetime. Simon dreamed of making love to a woman who had been in the church--or perhaps had been the Church. She was the twilight behind the imprisoned monster, she was Void: Stars shone in her flesh....The image was twisted by the t-tube: She seemed infinitely vast as she stretched across the world, caressing and whispering, stroking and murmuring. He drifted away from these phantasms, saw the confined antedeluvian bird-creature once more. It burst free of its stone prison, its substance dissipating into the night; like a mist it swelled past him. The transit-tube became an artery in a circulatory system, and the metropolis the heart of the bird. At last the images dissolved. The metropolis and the sky returned to their usual forms. It's over, Farber thought as his ascent slowed. But for how long? Salamander laughed: It's only just begun: the eating of corpses--your world is a corpse, Farber; you are a corpse even before your world dies.... A portal slid open; Farber and Smith exited at ground level, in the shadows of the great central cathedral where the Air-Children worshiped their strange gods. Smith led Farber to a shop directly beneath the massive cathedral, much like the widow Ting's; inside were all manner of glassware, reagents, and assayer's balances. The window was painted with a circle of Latin words: VISITA INTERIORA TERRA RECTIFICANDO INVENIES OCCULTUM LAPIDEM Pulling off his magnetic boots and gloves, Smith asked Farber, "What happened to you out there in the desert? When you were on Azot?" Farber suddenly found himself possessed once more by Salamander's mind. He spoke; he did not know what he was saying; there was no way to stop it: "There was a wind--a rushing, roaring noise. I was alone in the middle of the desert--I saw the Void; I saw into another world, where science has stripped itself of mysticism...." Smith laughed, saying, "Even in such a world I doubt there are no mystics. But you have had a long, harrowing day...you rest now; get some sleep: Remember, you are a wanted man--tomorrow we will smuggle you out of Phoenix, to Albion, where you will be safe at last from Diana's sorcery...." Farber wanted to scream, No! as he remembered Two Ways' warning never to leave Phoenix, but his mind was slowly being absorbed into the Other: the scientist was becoming a mystic. As the moon shone silver on the white sheets of his bed, Salamander thought, Acid contains light--the Fire-Children's heretical aphorism. But with the part of him that was still Simon Farber he realized that in this Universe the statement was literally true: Alchemists, following Newton's De Natura Acidorum, had condensed, solidified ether into burning, searing acid. And it burns the brain, he thought with his remaining Will as he drifted into dreams of Troglodyte rebellion: He was in the labyrinth of dragon's tunnels; somewhere in the gloom he encountered another: strong arms clutched him; the softness of a woman's body pressed against his own. "Who are you?" FArber asked, afraid. "Togra. Princess of Troglodytes--you remember me; we were lovers, once, for awhile, Salamander, when you lived among us...." Laughter. A baritone voice, almost like a man's voice--yet it was female. The voice of the Androgyne said, "Give me yourself. Give me your love." While their bodies were entwined he felt as though he was returning to the Void from which he had come. As he climaxed, he said but one word: "Void...!" "Void?" Togra said. "Isn't that what you Fire-Children call the place where worlds are generated? The Knowledge of Birth and Rebirth?" "I don't know," Farber replied, and thrust himself into her once more, recalling an acid dawn, a burning sky. "I will bring Two Ways to you, when the time comes." She took him by the hand, led him deeper into the Mysteries of Seduction. The dream became insanity: Farber was now completely the Salamander, remembering his childhood: The Salamander was with his father, an engineer from Atlantis who worked on the geothermal shafts. The young child strayed along the circular catwalk at the edge of the shaft, found a narrow hole, not man-made. Intrigued, he slipped into the tunnel. Then a terrible scraping and clanking reverberated behind him. He turned, saw that he was being pursued by a wild gnome. He ran, stumbled and fell several times. Finally, when he could no longer hear the gnome he stopped, listened awhile to make sure that it was not still pursuing. He realized he was lost. He went onward until he saw a faint light. It was chemical phosphorescence from a phlogiston globe at a Troglodyte's feet; the dweller in serpent-tunnels had seduced him into dreams of revolution--then, a child no longer, he led a gang of Troglodytes, but they rebelled against him. They beat him with lead pipes, abandoning him in an alley. When he awoke he rode the t-tubes to the upper-levels hoping to contact an old Fire-Child of his acquaintance, Miriam Benjamin; he wanted Ben to rescue him from the subterranean existence he was leading. He remembered mad and abandoned love in her shower.... Then suddenly, the scene shifted once more: He was no longer present in the world, he was a disembodied observer--the sky was water, shadows of waves rippling in the depths; the sun at zenith cast warm yellow light upon the land, an artificial sun: A golden city gleamed beneath him: Atlantis. His Father was there; his Mother comforted the grieving man. "He is dead," she said. "But don't grieve too long for him: He is no longer with us, but his spirit yet lingers. He has returned, I know: reincarnated as someone or something else." His father continued to weep: "In Phoenix you have religion to comfort you when one of you dies--but not here, not in New Atlantis. Our foundation is dedicated to discovering the hidden causes of all things--and we look for it in matter, not spirit. For you, death is a passage into a new life, but for us it is only cessation and emptiness. I am a scientist, like Bacon, our founder--to me, death is a real death. So let me mourn in peace, woman...." His Mother stood, silently descended the Mountain Gadis to the city below, leaving Father alone with his tears. Then he was awakened by Smith tapping his shoulder, saying, "Hurry...we've got to get you out of here before the psionic gestalt discovers where I've hidden you...." A sense of alarm rose in the awakened man: his absorption into Salamander was accelerating...but the Salamander suppressed Farber's fear, went with the alchemist Smith back through the t-tubes to the dragon-tunnels, alert with a magician's senses to the group-mind which ruled the city. Salamander's esper powers gave the two of them the power to elude the cloned recombinants; hiding in dark alleyways, descending in shadow. Then the two were in a dragon's tunnel, back in Troglodytica: And even in the caves there was the cold wind of evil magic. Farber shivered uncontrollably as he gave himself over to Salamander. The possession was now complete, and the wind from nowhere was like a hurricane.... # End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.