DREAMS OF SOPHIE ROSENCRUETZ "Where is Simon?" Sophie asked Smith, livid with rage. Diana had called her the night before, explaining what Simon was up to...the two of them had burst into Smith's office; Diana now echoed Sophie: "What have you done with him?" It was too early for widow's black, but Diana Benjamin had the foreboding that she would be attending Farber's funeral soon. Sophie was on the verge of violence against the man she loved. "And I don't give a shit if you are my boy- friend--something has happened; something terrible has happened...I'll hate you forever if you don't tell me!" Smith murmured under his breath, "If you do I'll turn you in for stealing experimental drugs...." Sophie turned white with fear, like salt or ash that had been burned to a fine powder. Seeing that her girlfriend was helpless, Diana whirled, reached out over the desk, grabbed Anselm Smith by the tie, choking him, and banged his head against the table repeatedly with muscles that had come from bailing hay on her Father's farm. "Tell us what happened to my boyfriend, goddamn you! We were going to get married, you know!" Sophie regained a little courage, spat, "If you turn me in...you knew; you're as guilty as I am! Now don't give me any more bullshit!" Diana started banging his head again, a rodeo queen wrestling a wild bull until Smith motioned her to stop, saying, "He...took AZOT." Smith clutched at his neck where the tie had cut into it. "After he took the drug he fled into the desert; we think he's dead, probably died without food or water while tripping out...God, I feel like I'm responsible!" Smith suddenly burst into tears. Diana toyed with his tie as though about to start pounding his head again, said, "Well, he ain't here, is he?" Smith sighed in exasperation. Just then a dozen Security cops came rushing through the door, lasers drawn, prepared for anything....Smith relaxed a little now as violence erupted all around. On seeing the Security cops Sophie dropped down behind the desk, a refuge safe from their laser fire. Even as Diana was punching out cops like the tomboy she was Sophie drew a laser from her purse and aimed it at Smith's head, saying, "Alright, not so fast now...I've got a hostage." All the cops backed off. Sophie and Diana marched down the hall, dragging Smith with them--but when they came to Farber's lab there were no samples of AZOT. Exasperatedly, Smith said, "All AZOT has been destroyed as too dangerous; now let me..." "If Two Ways wants you, he will find you!" a voice said from behind them. Startled, Sophie looked around: an old medicine man stood beside the helpless Smith, and--he had come out of nowhere. "I am an Agent of Destiny," Two Ways said. "I am the Keeper of the doorway between the twin worlds of science and magic which wind about each other like the strands of a cosmic chromosome. Sophie, your brother has passed through to the other side--and your destiny is linked with his; you must follow." He held out a peace pipe. There was a black powder in it, a crystallized night that seemed to contain stars. "This is the drug you seek: the Azot which will take you to a different world. You go to Phoenix now, lady, you go to a mystical city where fantastic creatures dwell...." Still suspicious, Sophie accepted the peace pipe, keeping the laser trained on Smith just in case he tried something....Two Ways held out a silver lighter on a golden chain for her, the sun and moon united etched on its cover. She drew in smoke which was bitter, harsh, acid. Diana gasped in astonishment: Sophie disappeared in smoke, dissolved as though a base metal burned by acid. Even as she screamed in utter dread and terror Two Ways exclaimed, "Hey, hey, hey!" and disappeared himself. Nothing was left of the Two. Not even shadow The world dissolved into rushing, rumbling, groanings around Sophie as the bizarre psychedelic drug flowed into her brain. Everywhere was motion, triangles, spheres, corkscrews which drilled through her body. But she felt no pain. She could see now with a mind that spanned galaxies, all time. She was just a crystal, a fractured thing, dancing in an ocean of light; then she condensed into a woman on the streets of Phoenix.... Sophie Rosencruetz looked around in wonder at the fantastic tiered city of light--false light, the false dawn of a heretical religion--it was evening, the red light of the setting sun smoldering on the horizon came from the west. Somewhere out there, she knew, her twin lurked, with the sort of telepathy only twins have. She had to get to him, had to get Two Ways to get them both out of this nightmare world. She studied her reflection in the mirror-like glass: She was wearing the black and white striped uniform of one of the Wisdom clones; on her skull was a silver egg, a psionic transducer. She felt her mind being programmed by it and succumbed to Raven dreams.... # RETURN TO TROGLODYTICA Traveling in the dim glow of phlogiston, Salamander and Smith crossed a small underground stream. It was warm, tingling where it touched the Salamander's legs. The two grew more animated as they waded, the dissolved vital spirits in the water as they grew closer to the center of the Earth soaking through their skins into their circulatory systems. They penetrated ever deeper into the labyrinth of serpent tunnels until they came to an immense grotto. At its center was a familiar figure. "Togra!" It was the woman of Farber's dream.... Salamander leapt toward her, violently embraced her--like a rapist rather than a lover; like the acid-possessed madman that he is, Farber thought from a hidden center in Salamander's mind. Smith disappeared; Salamander was alone with a beautiful woman--in her radiance he barely noticed the absence of Anselm. "What do you plan to do to me?" Salamander asked. "Take you away from here," Togra replied. "Take you back to the world from which you came: I could not find Two Ways, but I found someone else who trades in Azot." Then Salamander was a little afraid: His escape to Albion had been in the planning for months, but Farber had somehow reached out to touch Togra, possess her...like her, he was caught up in a game of cat-and-mouse between Day and Night; now it was his turn to be a little frightened: Day had some gambit in store to counter his death at Night's hands. The resurrection of Day was becoming as much a certainty as the resurrection of Jesus had been to the extinct Christianity; to the Gnostic, resurrection was only a symbol. "Come," Togra said, leading the way up and out of the labyrinth of tunnels and the streams that flowed beneath Phoenix, away from Phoenix. Salamander was silent, perhaps from fear of a magic greater than his; Farber, locked away in Salamander's unconscious, wanted to scream: He was finally beginning to understand the wonder and the terror which is Two Ways. # THE SHELTERING SKY ...was warped in multiple layers of crystal; the true sky almost invisible behind constellations which were the city lights. Sophie looked into the sky and felt that she partook of of its nature; mind telepathically controlled, she was herself Abyss, Chaos, Void as her thoughts were programmed by the little silver psionic amplifier--she was being controlled by the Overmind, by an entity in which every demon bird-man was a neuron. How long had she been like this, a small part of a telepathic gestalt which ruled the city with terror and fear? Yet now some magic touched her--then she saw her savior: Day. And on the first day there was darkness and light....Unlike Simon, she still took her Catholicism seriously. But this was a god who had been old when Apollo was still a dream....under his spell she took her ray-gun--not a laser, no such thing exists in an alchemical universe--plucked the little psionic device with its terrible mind-magic from her forehead and held the ray-machine to it. She pulled the trigger. In one blinding pulse of energy Sophie was free of the group mind. She would immediately begin her search for Simon, even if it meant nights, days without sleep--she was certain he was here because one of the clones (if that was the proper term for a homologous structure in an alien biology) had spotted him coming out of a transit-tube and he had been briefly held prisoner--until some mysterious interloper had rescued him.... She climbed on board her sky-cycle and rose on anti-grav fields. When she was about one hundred feet above the tallest building on the first level she cut in the turbos and with a whine was gone. Now she approached the Smith Apothecary. A few of the Wisdom-clones were there--Diana had tracked Farber this far....Yet if she came too close they would realize she was not one of them, that she had destroyed her mind-link. There was a clothing store at the corner of the street. Under the duress of her ray-gun she forced the proprietor to outfit her with a wig and some clothes to replace her Mind-Police uniform; sauntered back out onto the street corner. It was populated by the cheapest of prostitutes; for a moment she felt contempt--then remembered her last acid trip and felt at least a little sympathy: They were alpha females, driven to polyandry by their genetic makeup...then she shook her head; sociobiology was not a science in this world, despite Darwin's theory of the transmutation of species. Smith, was being questioned as Sophie spied on them. She watched Smith vainly trying to explain the equipment to manufacture acid to the Mind-Policewomen in their angelic guise of white and black stripes: the union of opposites--the central mystery of alchemy is the hierogamy of male and female.... Smith caught sight of her as the Wisdom-clones departed; she approached him, saying, "I am a...friend. Simon...Simon Farber; he was my brother." Smith's eyes widened. "I didn't know he had any sister! Are you sure you're not an impostor?" He lifted his cloak. Under it the Alkahest sprayer lurked. Sophie knew exactly how deadly the Universal Solvent could be...she hesitated, then decided on the truth: "He does...in an alternate world. I...we both...came here through the magic of Two Ways. May I come into your shop, Smith? I've come to take him home...." Smith stared as though his head were a great hollow thing and his eyes skull-sockets--even Smith had heard the legends of Two Ways; he was not about to cross such a powerful magician. Finally he said, "Very well...." Sophie sighed as she entered the little alchemist's shop with its shelves full of reagents, crucibles, alembics, glassware of all manner. "It's going to be a long story.... # End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.