Free The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville Page A

timing was quite wrong, the official obstruction too implacable, when his urgent, incompetent wanderings had seemed doomed, he had asserted his will.
    As many times before, in the U.S., he had flexed the muscles of the mind. As Aleister Crowley had taught him. As he whispered spells when the rockets he made went up. He was used to carefully, intensely interpreting after all such actions, to see if or how the world had responded, in if any subtle ways.
    Now in Europe, no such assiduous parsing of aftermaths was necessary. Here the effects were astonishing.
    He would speak commands to the universe. He would say to the train guard, “You’ve already seen my ticket,” would strain to make himself slightly invisible to police, to make time drag enough for him to make his connections. He would have been delighted with an instant’s uncertainty, a stuttering of wheels on the track. Instead the officials would usher him to a fine seat. The police would release their grip, and stand back to let him run. The trainmight lurch right back to where it had been three or four seconds before.
    Do what thou wilt.
Magic was welling up here from below. It made him feel exhilarated but sick. Its deployment made him queasy.
Maybe I can even read minds here,
he thought.
    When he crossed the border, a few miles out to sea, when he came into French waters lugging his cobbled and home-tooled equipment, Jack had felt the presence intensify. Something in France was quite wrong or quite right.
    He had, of course, nudged Varian Fry’s mind, tweaked him to let Parsons visit.
    “Let’s give this one more try.” Jack spoke, in his absence, to Von Karman, his boss and friend.
    Theodore Von Karman took Jack to work in the Aeronautical Laboratory. Von Karman indulged and liked him, forgave him what he thought eccentricities with respectful good humor. Mostly they talked rockets and math, at first. Politics was to come. A disciple in the Ordo Templi Orientis, Jack was not accustomed to admiring the mass of humanity: Von Karman he could not fail to.
    Von Karman had looked sick as news had started to emerge from Europe. “It is trouble,” he said.
    It was Von Karman who told Jack, without knowing that he was doing so, that there were words in Prague that might alter the storm of Europe. A presence he might invoke. Von Karman thought it only folklore. Jack, though, knew the truth, because of his other teacher. Von Karmannurtured his mathematics, the rigor of his rockets; Crowley nurtured his spirit, taught him of the other laws. One told Jack of the power in Prague; the other gave him the insight to know that it was, indeed, power.
    Now Jack could not get to Prague. But now, too, there was this not-coincidence, this house of Surrealists. They, too, were faithful to revolt and objective chance. Perhaps in their presence he might find, speak words close in transmogrifying power to those he had originally sought and planned to articulate.
    “They want to set free the unconscious,” Fry had told him. “Desire.” He shrugged. “You’d have to ask them,” he added, but Parsons did not think he would. With that gloss he understood why Colquhoun would be in both this group and in Crowley’s order.
Their aims were the same.
    I’m leader of the Agape Lodge.
Anointed by the great wizard himself, the young scientist was Crowley’s chosen.
I’m an apostle of freedom. Like these guys. Here to help my friend.
    Jack Parsons was attuned to the unholy. He could tell there was magic from Hell in the ground of France, that someone was raising. He was certain that it could help him.
    So he checked his tools and dressed for dinner. When he entered the dining room, everyone turned to look, and he hesitated.
    Come on,
he told himself.
You’re here for a reason.
    —
    Painters, poets, anarchists, Reds. A poised blond woman gave Parsons her hand and introduced herself as Jacqueline Lamba. Jack nodded as politely as he could and followed her to meet her husband.
    André