Free Watson, Ian - Novel 08 by The Gardens of Delight (v1.1)

he-she had
blown at her, in case it was a conjuration. “Is that guy demented! ”
                 “‘Demented’
merely means ‘out-of-one’s-mind’,” said Jeremy. “Actually, he is out of it. He’s into another state of
mind. And another state of body: a paradox one. I agree that the course he’s
set himself seems an extreme one. I wish I knew if people do really turn into
birds, or if the birds and beasts are all just ‘principles’, essences
incarnated from our ova banks . . . But no, they’re evolving—so they must have
bird and beast personalities of their own!”
                 “You’re
mad too. The superbeing has demented everybody.”
                 The
cavalcade was reaching its climax now. The beasts galloped round, egged on by
their riders’ heels and by rump-slapping. A goat cannoned into a griffin, into
a horse, into a unicorn. Of a sudden all the animals skidded to a halt in a lather . The riders leaped from their backs and sprinted toward
the pool of ladies. Egrets and ravens flapped their way into the air to avoid
the splashing, churning bodies. The pool foamed . . .
                 “No,
this isn’t madness,” said Sean. “It’s something a lot stranger. And coherent. If you’ve got the key.”
                 “As you have, Athlon smiled
Jeremy.
                 Sean
shook his head numbly. “I’ve got to think about this. I’ve got to get it right.
Come on, we must bypass this valley or we’ll end up . . . submerged in
enchanted waters. Mesmerized.”
                 Most
people are generally mesmerized all their lives long by instinctual programs,
he reflected. His own past life, before he had been ‘submerged’ in the
hyb-tank, seemed like an automatic, mesmerized routine now: his childhood in
Ireland, his psychological studies at Dublin and Chicago, his career with
EarthSpace . . . Here the mesmerism had simply become overt—obvious and
directed, by a superior guide. To what end? That everyone,
.having gone deeper into mesmerism, should gradually become unmesmerized . . .
But first one must submerge oneself. He resisted submergence, at least
in this particular pool, at this particular time.
                 “Come
on.”
                 ‘Athlon’:
he had, of course, known somewhere at the back of his mind of this secret sense
of his name in another language. There must have been some time when he had
found this out, and when it had amused him. Then he had disregarded it. Or had
he really? His own psychological studies—seen one way—could be interpreted as a
form of “The Work’: of psychic integration . . . Had he programmed himself to
undertake them because ... No! On the
other hand, he must have been aware of this link, subliminally at least . . .
                 Denise,
he truly believed, was innocent of any hidden meaning to her name. ‘Rock’, for
her, was simply part of nature: an ecological base. Yet a vein of Earthmagic
ran through her . . .
                 “‘Come
on,’ indeed! Wake up, Sean! We’re waiting for
     

 
SEVEN
                 “It’s Alchemy,” Sean explained. “That’s
what’s going on ; here—living alchemy. This whole
planet’s being run on alchemical lines—and somehow there’s the power available
to make this alchemy work! Isn’t that right, Jeremy?”
                They sat eating cherries—food for
thought—at the foot of an open meadow that ran up to the great pink and
rose-red cromlech which was their destination.
                 A
cromlech it was indeed, but an enormous one, well over a hundred meters high. Its flat table-top of stone rested upon four giant granite
legs that were honeycombed with little caves. Crystal tubes jutted from the
mouths of some of these caves, while more crystal tubes stuck up out of the
table-top like organ pipes—and above rose the stretched onion-dome