Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

Going through the Door … the metaphysical exercise of placing the mind or psyche on another level of awareness or experience, in order to find out what lies ahead, was often done through the medium of a dream. It demanded a state of intense concentration and projection, of which few were capable — and those few, not without long study.

“But of all the things I ‘saw,’” Vergil said, slowly, “the only thing that made sense was what my old teacher, Illiriodorous, said.” And he told him of that.

Clemens listened, combing his vast and flowing beard with his fingers. At length he said, as they approached the Pompeii Gate of the Naples city wall, “As to what you ‘saw’ making sense, you ought to know that often enough these sights make no sense at all until one experiences them in the flesh. Sometimes, not even then… not until later, looking back. And as for what Illiriodorous told you, certainly that makes sense, excellent sense. The act of looking into the virgin speculum is an act of catalysis. Whatever is done — anywhere, everywhere — is at once imprinted on the universal and omnipresent ether, which is present in each and every of us, as each and every of us is present in it. The rays of the sun are present everywhere, although it is true that one can see the sun only by its own light, as the wise Jews of Alexandria have reminded us — but one needs the lens of a burning-glass to concentrate the rays. The speculum majorum is such a concentrating agent, such a focus.

“But what Illiriodorous told to you is not in any way so important as what Illiriodorous did for you. It would have been a fatal act for you to have tasted his honey. That would have brought the metaphysical into too direct a contact with the physical. In the instant that you tasted it — had you done so — your psyche, soul, spirit, anima — call it what you will — that part of you which was there would have been trapped there, forever incapable of returning here. Your body might have lingered alive awhile, but it would have been a mindless, idiot thing.

“It would not have been the Vergil we know…”

And the Vergil he knew reflected, half-wryly and half-bitterly, that the Vergil Clemens knew was hardly the Vergil Clemens thought he knew. How many Vergils or parts of Vergil were there? this particular part of this particular one wondered.

Dusk was upon them. Torches flared, were set in sockets by the Pompeii Gate. Slowly, ponderously, the great portals began to swing shut. They spurred their mounts, cantered forward. A soldier shook his head, gestured at them, lowered his spear as they still came on. Then he flinched, darted back, speaking over his shoulder. They heard the words, “Vergil Magus! Hold! Hold!”

The massy doors halted. The soldier brought his spear to the salute, half grinned, apologetically, as they trotted through. The men twisted their heads to look, then once again put their shoulders to, pressed on. The gates shut with a clash of iron. The bolts were dropped. They were safe in Naples for the night — where “safe” was, would always be, a relative term.

“Let us be thankful, at least,” Clemens remarked, as they urged their mounts toward the livery stable at the foot of the Street of the Horse-Jewelers, “that the Vergil we know is still so well-known.”

Vergil did not voice his bitter and bewildered thoughts.

THE ADMIRALTY OFFICE had informed Vergil’s courier that Sergius Amadeus, Lord-of-the-Sea, commanding the Fleet of the South, would receive him and his request provided he arrived before noon.

Accordingly, well before that hour, the day after the puzzling interview with Queen Cornelia, he set out in state to pay his visit. No formality had been neglected. He wore his doctoral robes, and the golden chain signifying his rank as honorary member of the Senate; in one hand he carried the bag of purple silk, embroidered with the Imperial monogram, in which were his letters of state; and in the other was the bacculum, or wand, of hazel-wood, symbolic of his association with the Order. The Imperial Navy was not what it was, but ritual things were yet important.

He neither went afoot nor on horseback, but rode in a litter carried by six bearers, with two footmen preceding and two following; these four with staves in their hands. The whole team of ten had been selected and trained by a famous and luxury-loving old proconsul, Lentonius, when Governor of Lesser Nubia. Freed by virtue of a testamentary manumission, of old Lentonius, who also left them perpetual stipends, they hired out their services for special occasions.

They moved smoothly enough in the hilly, narrow streets, but on entering the broad and level range of Kings Way, they slipped immediately into their intricate and ritual pace, said to have been derived from that in use at the courts of the Can-daces, the Queens of Cush, whose territory was adjacent to that of Lesser Nubia. They took a step forward, halted, drew the other foot slowly up to an exact parallel; paused; stepped forward on the other foot.

So they made their slow, almost hieratic way through the crowded morning streets. The people responded in their individual ways — some by ignoring the sight; some with awe; some with fear; some with shouted comments (not always respectful), and with quips, taking advantage of that tradition of Naples which held that Fate and Fortune — having bestowed wealth or power — compensated those who received neither with the right to be free of tongue about either.

So they passed by fishmongers with baskets full of squirming sardines; processions of schoolboys off to take lessons in archery, swordsmanship, or harp-playing; porters bowed beneath loads of charcoal; peripatetic vendors of woven stuffs, displaying lengths of yellow broadcloth and striped cotton; a squad of gentlemen cross-bowmen marching out to a target shoot; swarms of children with dirty arms, dirty legs, and dirty noses, who had never seen the inside of a school and never would.

It was one of those — or so he thought — who came running up and jumped and darted to attract his attention, crying, “Lord! Lord!” A grubby boy who might have been ten, or perhaps a stunted twelve.

Placing his wand in his lap, the Magus began to grope automatically for a small coin, when the boy leaped up, seized the frame of the litter, and pulled himself in. The footmen broke pace and came to drag him out, but the boy eluded them.

“Lord!” he exclaimed. “Your house is on fire!”

“What!”

“For true, lord — it burns, it burns!” Vergil called to the bearers to let him down, to fetch him a horse; instead, at a word in their own language, they wheeled about in an instant — the fore footmen clearing a way with shouts and gestures — and set off, back the way they came, at an effortless run. Old Lentonius had trained them well.

Soon enough Vergil saw the plume of smoke; he could not have told exactly that it was his house, but it was in the right direction. Fire! He thought of his books, collected with infinite pains and expense from all the known world. Of his machinery and engines, constructed with loving labor over the course of the years — there were not three men alive who could reconstruct them; perhaps there were not even two. He ran over, in his mind, the experiments and works in progress — that of the speculum majorum had barely begun, was only one of many: there were some of such long duration and great delicacy that to interrupt them even briefly was to destroy them. He thought of his cunningly wrought water system, his globes of light, his automatons, homunculi, horlogues, his mandrakes, his instruments, equipment… his furniture and personal gear, his objects of art.… And he thought of his three master workmen: Tynus, Iohan, and Perrin, any one of whom was worth an Imperial ransom.