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

spire,
towering perhaps two hundred meters higher up into the sky. The base of that
spire was blue-veined marble, but the upper reaches became a flush of pink
granite. Out of the table-top there also grew that curving agave leaf—a leaf of
stone?—a hundred meters or more from its axil to its tip. On its ascent the
leaf transfixed an enormous burr, or nut husk. A feathery willow tree presided
over the table-top too, rooted in a tent-shaped lean-to of pink stone. Thus
stone became vegetation, and vegetation became stone, while marble became
granite: transmutations were at work . . .
                 The
whole structure reared up like a great petrified pink elephant, bearing a
fossilized howdah on its back with a full-sized tree for a frond-fan.
                 A
tiny figure was climbing up the agave leaf, using the saw teeth along the edges
as his stepladder. He was naked, not clothed, so unless the mysterious Knossos
had stripped for action it couldn’t be he . . .
                 “Well,
you can’t just come out and tell a bunch of technoscientists from Earth that —I mean, can you? Not right away,”
said Jeremy defensively. “But you’ve figured it out . . . Athlon old buddy. I
didn’t expect you to, quite so soon. It’s alchemy, all right.”
                 Sean
plucked another bunch of cherries from a bough which was simultaneously in
blossom and in fruit. He sucked the flesh and spat the stones far out,
wondering whether new trees would spring up there in time, invading the lambent
green of the meadow. Or not? Orchard and meadow were
quite distinct. One ended; the other began—just here.
                 “Alchemy?”
cried Muthoni. “You mean that business about transmuting lead into gold? Stuff
like that?”
                 “Or
transmuting people?” asked Denise,
eyes shining. Her hair was already spun into gold . . . “And plants and beasts
too?”
                 “Exactly!” Sean nodded. “That’s what alchemy was really
about deep down. It was about the search for the perfect human being—the
evolution of a higher being from any species, I suppose. Manufacturing gold was
just a smokescreen—only, all the retorts and alembics and distillation methods
of the alchemists happened to give rise to ‘genuine’ chemistry so the real
hidden meaning of what the alchemists called ‘The Work’—the Opus, the . . .”
(he squirmed) “the Athlon —got
channelled off into a bankrupt mysticism. This planet is an alchemical one. The superbeing has
reinstated alchemy as a going concern.”
                 “So
where are the laboratories?” asked Muthoni.
                 “I
wouldn’t be surprised if that cromlech-tower up there is one piece of
apparatus—and all the other rock-buildings too. But don’t you see , this whole world is the laboratory? Someone’s
laboratory. And the substances being transformed aren’t lead or tin or
mercury—but living beings! That cavalcade was riding round the bath of
rebirth. These are ancient symbols. Carl Jung wrote several superb works about
the archetypes involved. Some power—‘the God’—has actualized them . . . and
Knossos must have been obsessed by them! Here they’re all out in the open.
They’re in the landscape itself. That’s why they called you ‘nigredo’, Muthoni.
‘Nigredo’ is the first stage of ‘The Work’—a darkening process. I happen,” he
swallowed, “to know a bit about this because of the connection with Jung.”
                 Muthoni
threw up her hands. “You said that this world was landscaped after that Dutch
painter Bosch! You said this was his Garden of Delights.”
                 “And
it is! There’s a lot of very strange symbolism in old Hieronymus’s pictures.
Nobody really knows where he got it all from. Out of his own head, or from folklore—or from some secret mystical sect, or from astrology ...
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