Free Demons by John Shirley Page B

Thomas Jefferson was one of us. A few others you would know. But most kept to the shadows. There have been experiments, failed experiments. For example, we introduced LSD . . . and LSD was not supposed to become a street drug and what it led to—ah, we have our failures, you see. We yet hope to guide humanity to a global unity, a democratic unity, a United States of Earth.”
    “But not a unity controlled by the USA,” Nyerza hastened to add. “Controlled by representatives of all the nations. Yet far more powerful than the United Nations.”
    Mendel nodded and continued, “In our awkward way, and with many false starts, we slowly guide humanity to, we hope, an attitude of tolerance, of social justice, of respect for human rights, and, yes, to the end of war. Ultimately, to a condition that makes for a greater probability of Becoming Conscious on the part of more people. And, therefore, a condition of service to the Higher, which men often call God. . . . Now, have a glass of this regrettable chablis, and chew that over. You have answered our questions, and we have some work to do. God bless you, young man. Pray for us all.”
     
     
    As I write this now, it occurs to me that had anyone else told me the things that Mendel told me, any other time, the skeptic in me—the skeptic shielding the man who deeply yearns to believe—would have nodded politely but inwardly doubted every word. Despite my association with Visions magazine and my inner certainty that some kind of spiritual world is real, I have always been skeptical of most of what people claimed to be the manifestations of that world in our own. The Conscious Circle of Humanity? Another supposedly ancient, supposedly secret society? With anyone else, I’d have thought the man was trying to set me up for induction into a cult, or that he’d become delusional and sucked others, like Nyerza, into his delusions, as can happen with the charismatically mad.
    But there was a recognition in me, when he told me of the Conscious Circle—and implied his own part in it. There was a certitude in the very air, an understanding in me, a resonance with what he’d said that somehow transcended all doubts—though others had made similar, rather convincing claims in my presence about their own esoteric connections, and those others I had not believed. Here was the real thing, and it was the force of his being, the presence of the very consciousness that he described, that confirmed it to me. I felt it in the air as a man feels a powerful electric field around a hydroelectric generator. I felt it only when he chose to show it to me. But it was quite real.
    Later, I drew Paymenz aside. “You know what Mendel told me—about the Conscious Circle?”
    “I heard.”
    “Do they . . . take students?”
    “You would not have been told were you not a serious candidate.”
    “And—and you, Dr. Paymenz?”
    He heaved a great sigh. “Once, Nyerza was my student. Now, I am his student. I was truly conscious, or nearly, for a time. But I—I fell . I re-experienced the Fall of Man. I—do not wish to discuss how it came about. My own frailty. Complete consciousness is a burden as well as a kind of enthronement. I now . . . struggle to return to the kind of consciousness they have—Nyerza and Mendel. And I warn you, to waken, to really waken, is as painful as a birth. And some die in childbirth.”
    He would say nothing more.
    That night, I woke from a nightmare of a Sharkadian raging through an elementary school, and found Melissa gone from her cot. I got up and went down a hallway where only every second light was lit and even these flickered fitfully. I heard a cry from a room to the side and thought a demon had dragged her away to torture her to death there. I looked in, opening my mouth to shout, and saw Nyerza rearing naked over her on his cot, and it was he who cried out, and her face, turned to him, was like the Madonna. I hastened away, feeling shattered but hoping they