Free Black Easter by James Blish Page A

from
bonitas
to
patientia;
the T camerae of thirty attributes of things, from
temporis
to
negatio;
and the E camerae of the nine questions, from whether to how
great
. He centrepunched all three discs with the burin, pinned them together with a cufflink and finally asperged the assembled Lull Engine with holy water from the satchel. Over it he said:
    ‘I conjure thee, O form of this instrument, by the authority of God the Father Almighty, by the virtue of Heaven and the stars, by that of the elements, by that of stones and herbs, and in like manner by the virtue of snowstorms, thunder and winds, and belike also by the virtue of the
Ars magna
in whose figure thou art drawn, that thou receive all power unto the performance of those things in the perfection of which we are concerned, the whole without trickery, falsehood or deception, by the command of God, Creator of the Angels and Emperor of the Ages. D AMAHII , L UMECH , G ADAL , P ANCIA , V ELOAS , M EOROD , L AMIDOCH , B ALDACH , A NERETHON , M ITRATON , most holy angels, be ye wardens of this instrument.
Domine, Deusmeus, in te speravi. … Confitebor tibi, Domine, in toto corde meo. … Quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum
. … Amen.’
    This said, Father Domenico took up the engine and turned the circles against each other. Lull’s great art was not easy to use; most of the possible combinations of any group of wheels were trivial, and it took reason to see which were important, and faith to see which were inspired. Nevertheless, it had one advantage over all other forms of scrying: it was not in any strict sense, a form of magic.
    He turned the wheels at random the required number of times, and then, taking the outermost by its edge, shook it to the four quarters of the sky. He was almost afraid to look at the result.
    But on that very first essay, the engine had generated:
    PATIENCE/BECOMING/REALITY
    It was the answer he had both feared and hoped for. And it was, he realized with a subdued shock, the only answer he could have expected on Christmas Eve.
    He put the engine and the tools back in his satchel, and crept away into the bed. In his state of over-exhaustion and alarm, he did not expect to sleep … but within two turns of the glass he was no longer in the phenomenal world, but was dreaming instead that, like Gerbert the magician-Pope, he was fleeing the Holy Office down the wind astride a devil.

Ware’s period of recovery did not last quite as long as he had prophesied. He was visibly up and about by Twelfth Night. By that time, Baines – though only Jack Ginsberg could see and read the signs – was chafing at the inaction. Jack had to remind him that in any event at least two months were supposed to pass before the suicide of Dr Stockhausen could even be expected, and suggested that in the interim they all go back to Rome and to work.
    Baines shrugged the suggestion off. Whatever else was on his mind, it did not seem to involve Consolidated Warfare Service’s interests more than marginally … or, at least, the thought of business could not distract him beyond the making of a small number of daily telephone calls.
    The priest or monk or whatever he was, Father Domenico, was still in attendance too. Evidently he had not been taken in by the show. Well, that was Ware’s problem, presumably. All the same, Jack stayed out of sight of the cleric as much as possible; having him around, Jack recalled in a rare burst of association with his Bronx childhood, was a little like being visited by a lunatic Orthodox relative during a crucial marriage brokerage.
    Not so lunatic at that, though; for if magic really worked – as Jack had had to see that it did – then the whole tissue of metaphysical assumptions Father Domenico stood for, from Moses through the Kabbalah to the New Testament, had to follow, as a matter of logic. After this occurred to Jack, he not only hated to see Father Domenico, but had nightmares in which he felt that Father Domenico was