Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (6 page)

“Just now,” she’d have to say, “in Las Vegas.” And then they’d really have to. It was easy to get married in Las Vegas. They didn’t even require a blood test. Just walk in, say who you were, and nobody would even ask for proof of anything, much less the proof of his divorce from Victoria which wouldn’t hold water in half of these United States and put him wrong in the eyes of God forever and ever. It wasn’t like he could really marry Alma anyhow, not in the Church.

Maybe that didn’t matter to her anyway. He’d asked her once what she was and she’d laughed and said, “Contrarian.” Probably some kind of Protestant, at least on paper. She and Gil had been married by an Army chaplain, a strictly civil service in the army hospital in Venice two days after the Armistice. He’d seen the certificate. Mitch had been one of the witnesses and someone with the unlikely name Iskinder Yonas Negasi had been the other.

But nobody would ask any questions in Vegas. Not that he and Alma were in a marrying place. It was just that saying they were married was much too close, treading too near the edge.

It was awkward. Which was probably why as soon as they’d gotten to their room, Alma had proclaimed she needed a bath. Not that she didn’t, it had been a long hot layover in Las Vegas, and the dress shields she’d unpinned from her flying blouse had been nothing but damp little wads. But then there had been a late dinner, hurrying before the dining room closed, and then she’d told him to go ahead and bathe, which he also needed, and by the time he’d come to bed, she’d been curled under the sheets, apparently sound asleep. He listened for a moment longer to her breathing, soft and steady in the dark, settling himself to sleep. It would be better in the morning.

H
e dreamed he stood in a wood in starlight, a light wind blowing across him, touching his face like cooling breath. He stood beneath trees, but it only took a moment to walk to the edge of the forest and look out, down a long hillside to a lake that whispered opaque like a blackened mirror in the starlight. It should have been frightening, and yet it wasn’t.

A white hound paced him, her long nose held high, looking up at him with blue eyes as bright as Alma’s. She snuffled at his hand and he bent to pet her, kneeling before her on the thick mat of pine needles, caressing her soft ears. “There, good girl,” he said. “There.” Her fur was like silk, warm beneath his hand.

She butted his hand, then got up and walked a few paces. She stopped, looking back at him expectantly.

“You want me to follow you?” Lewis asked bemusedly. “Ok. I can do that.”

He followed her under the eaves of the woods, through paths cast into deep shadow. Lewis couldn’t have said how long he walked or how far, the white hound glimmering like a star ever before him.

There was the sound of chanting, and he was in a room. It was no place he’d ever been before, but it was modern. Though candles were lit, illuminating precious little, there were electric lamps turned off, a chandelier with electric bulbs hanging dark from the ceiling. Four men and four women were there, standing in a circle around empty space, their identical white robes veiling their forms, their bare feet soundless on the thick oriental carpet.

He heard a growl and looked down. The white hound stood beside him, fur standing up on the back of her neck, and her teeth were bared. He looked where she did, at one who drew the eye. He was fifty, perhaps, tall and handsome, with the kind of rugged physique that aged well. He had dark hair threaded with gray, a square jaw, and his movements were purposeful and sharp, gesturing to thin air and speaking words that ought to be familiar but weren’t. He almost caught the sense of them, but not quite.

The hound butted his hand again, and her meaning was as clear as if she’d spoken. Look. Look at that one. Know him.

Unerringly, as though Lewis’ gaze had touched him, he looked across the circle and met Lewis’ eyes, his hand moving in a gesture that was far from random. It hurt. It burned. It was like taking a sudden blow to the chest that shoved him backwards, away from the room, away from the light….

L
ewis jerked awake, sitting up before he was even aware what he was doing, the sound of his own breath harsh in his ears. He could still almost feel it, like a blow to the solar plexus….

Alma rolled over and sat up. She was sleeping in her combinations, and a silk teddy in a pale pink that was probably supposed to match her skin, but the deep v at her neck was tanned a lot darker, while beneath the fragile lace trimmed edge her nipples showed through the cloth. “Lewis?”

He didn’t trust himself to speak yet, just sat breathing, bending forward over his knees.

Alma leaned against his back, her arm across him. “It’s just a bad dream,” she said quietly. “Just breathe and let it go.”

“Not just a dream,” Lewis muttered, scrubbing his hands across his face. “Not this time. It’ll happen.” He was too thrown to lie. “Sometimes I dream about things that come true.”

He felt her stiffen almost imperceptibly against him, but her hand was gentle on his shoulder, kneading the stiff muscle. “Like what?”

“I dreamed about you before I met you. Well, not about you, exactly. About the plane and about the airshow. I knew that if I went something good would happen.” Lewis rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I do it a lot.”

Alma took a deep breath, controlled, like she was taking off. “And this was a dream about something bad? Happening to you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and told her the dream, his heart slowing to normal as they talked, the quiet dark of the hotel room safe and anonymous around them. “I don’t know who that man was,” he said. “I’ve never seen him before in my life. But I will see him, I know that. And he’ll try to kill someone.” He looked at her sideways, her face pale in the reflected light from the street. “It’s ok if you don’t believe me, Al.”

“I believe you,” Alma said slowly. “I believe you completely.”

“You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“I think you have an untrained clairvoyant gift.” Alma squared her shoulders as Lewis blinked. “That’s unusual, but not unheard of. I’ve known a number of clairvoyants. They’re more uncommon than more typical energy projection mixes, and for some reason it’s less common in men than in women, but some of the best known clairvoyants in history have been men. I wouldn’t say you’re unique.”

“What?” Lewis sat up straight, the sheet pooling around his lap. She looked so awkward, sitting there in her thin teddy, biting down on her lower lip. He couldn’t snap at her. Lewis took a deep breath. “Are you some kind of Spiritualist?”

“I tried to tell you,” Alma said. “I was trying to. But it’s complicated. At first I didn’t know you well enough and then….”

“Then you were afraid I wouldn’t understand?”

Alma nodded.

Lewis reached for her hands, folded her strong fingers in his. He’d wanted answers, and he couldn’t complain now that he was getting them. “Ok. How about you start from the beginning?’

“When I met Gil he was already a member of a lodge, the Aedificatorii Templi. It wasn’t an old lodge, but it had a pedigree.” Alma looked at him as though wondering if she should continue. “Technically it’s an offshoot of the Golden Dawn, founded by people who left the Golden Dawn when there was a horrible schism about twenty five years ago.”

“We’re talking about a bunch of magicians here,” Lewis said slowly. “About black magic.”

“No!” Alma looked indignant. “I should hope you know me well enough to know that I’d never be involved in something like that, never! Magic isn’t black or white, Lewis. Not any more than a machine gun is, or an airplane. It’s a tool that serves its user, just like any other. And what it does, whether that’s good or bad, depends on what someone is using it for.”

Lewis nodded slowly. “My grandmother could find lost things,” he said. “It was a thing she did for people. She said it was a gift from God.”

“Exactly like that,” Alma said. “There are some people who have these gifts, and it’s their responsibility to use them for the good of the world, for the good of humanity. To serve God in whatever form one prefers by serving His creation.”

“In whatever form one prefers?”

Alma bit her lip again. “The world is a really big and complicated place, Lewis. Lots of different peoples have tried to find the divine, and have made names for it based on what worked for them in their culture and time. You’re Catholic, but do you, personally, really believe that all Presbyterians are going to hell?”

Lewis took a deep breath but didn’t look away. “No,” he said quietly. “I’ve known some good people who weren’t Catholic. Some really good people. I don’t believe they’re going to hell.”

“My dad used to say that you should judge people by their actions, not by how loud they prayed,” Alma said. “I bet you’ve known some churchgoing people who weren’t so good.”

Lewis snorted. “Oh yeah.”

Alma shifted, the light through the window making a stripe across her shoulder. “So that’s all I’m asking, Lewis. Wait and judge us by what we do.”

“We.” He didn’t need to ask. “You and Mitch and Jerry.”

“Me and Mitch and Jerry.” Alma nodded. “We’re what’s left of the lodge, of the Aedificatorii Templi. Some of them were killed in the war and some of them moved on. It’s just us now.”

“Just you.” It made sense. Lewis was absolutely certain she wasn’t making this up. It fit with the strangeness he’d seen, the odd sense that something was just a little off. He turned her hand over in his gently. “So what do you do?”

Alma let out a long shaking breath. “Not much, lately. So very little. Since Gil died….” She closed her hand around his. “Not much,” she said, “in terms of saving the world.”

Lewis looked at their linked fingers in the stripe of light across the bed. “Saving the world,” he said softly. It was absurd. Kings and dictators and presidents, demagogues and revolutionaries and anarchists with their guns, all lined up around the globe trying to tear humanity apart and against them what? This insignificant woman in her silk teddy? Mitch and his beloved passenger plane? Or Jerry with his missing leg and a doctorate in archeology?

“If we don’t,” Alma asked softly, “Who will?”

Lewis blinked. It was as though some enormous piece slid into place in silence, echoes deeper than his hearing could bear.

“It’s being part of something,” Alma said. “Something a lot bigger than we are, vaster than all our lives. We are builders of the Temple, guardians of the world, just like uncounted ones before us and yet to come. It may be that the battles we fight are small in the grand scheme of things, but you know that there’s no such thing as an insignificant battle. There’s no such thing as a fight that we can afford to lose. You learned that in the war, right? There’s no unimportant village.”

“Not when it’s yours,” Lewis said. The picture was there in his head, a cottage on the western front long since evacuated, long since abandoned to war. They’d sheltered there two days once, waiting for the weather to clear enough to get back to the aerodrome. Robbie had laughed because he’d carefully washed all the dishes they’d used, put them away in the cabinet. They’ll just get blown up when there’s shelling, Robbie said, but Lewis did it anyway. They might not. And someday maybe the people would come home. He was a guest in their house, an ally, maybe a friend. Guests don’t leave a mess behind them.

Alma saw the change in his face, even if she didn’t know the reason for it. “You do know,” she said quietly.

He nodded.

“It would be great to be part of a big movement,” she said. “I’d love to have all the bells and whistles, the pomp and circumstance and the beautiful things and everybody’s approbation. But we don’t have that. It’s just us. We do the little things, we mend what we can, shore up the walls. We do what needs doing.”

“Like being detached,” Lewis said. “When you’re sent on a mission with just a few men, and maybe nobody will ever know if you got through or not.” His eyes met hers. “But you do it right anyway.”

“For honor,” Alma said evenly, her eyes on his.

“For God.”

“That too.” She closed her eyes and squeezed his hand. “I’ve been worried about telling you this. But I knew I’d have to sooner or later.”

Sooner or later if they were serious. Sooner or later if he were someone she could love, not just a way of filling up the empty place in her heart with a hired man who didn’t matter. The thought made a tiny trickle of joy swell up inside him.

Lewis swallowed. “So what do you…do? Are you a clairvoyant?”

Alma smiled, and the light in her eyes could have powered Los Angeles. “Me? No. I can’t do any of the oracular stuff. I’m a strong ground. I’m not a half bad Hermeticist, but mostly I handle energy. Picking it up, putting it down, and anything that’s specifically geophysical.” Alma shrugged. “I’m a Taurus. May 17th. Pretty damn typical.” Her eyes flicked over his face. “You’re a lot more interesting.”

“Thanks.” He supposed that was a compliment. “And Mitch and Jerry?”

“Mitch is an Aries. He’s fire with a lot of earth in his chart. He’s a strong foil, a real powerhouse. Jerry’s a Cancer, July 5th. Cardinal water. He’s got a very fine touch, very good perceptions, a good hand with manipulation. He’s our scholar, but I imagine you’ve guessed that.” Alma smiled again.

“Yeah, I could have gotten there,” Lewis said. He didn’t want to ask it, but he did. “And Gil?”

Her smile faded. “Gil was a Libra. Balance and moderation in all things, or perhaps just being caught between. Stronger than Jerry but more finely focused than Mitch. He was our Magister, our leader.”

“And now who is?”

“Nobody.” Alma looked down at her lap. “We haven’t decided. We haven’t needed to.”

“Because you weren’t doing anything.” Lewis nodded. He could see how it shook out. And so it was time to change course. “So what about this translation Jerry’s doing? What does it have to do with all this?”

“Henry Kershaw was in the lodge with Gil before the war,” she said. “It was a lot bigger then, and a whole bunch of Air Corps types were involved. He moved on to a different lodge later, a richer one that was neutrally focused – interested in exploring magic for its own sake, to expand humanity’s knowledge rather than to channel the Work into specific positive directions. Scientific magic in its purest form. Try some things and see what works.” Alma snorted. “The problem with that is that sometimes the things you discover aren’t always put to good use. It’s like chemistry. There are an awful lot of good things that can be done. And then there’s the guy who invented mustard gas.” Her jaw tightened. “Right now Henry’s in a huge lodge here in LA. A lot of dabblers and movie types, people who want to be told they’ve got a lot of talent or who want to be involved with something forbidden and exciting.” She shrugged. “Not that it’s bad, but it’s not exactly a serious working group. They have beautiful costumes and do reenactments of ancient festivals, Bacchic revels with bathtub gin. I don’t have any objection to a few Bacchic revels,” she said, a mischievous expression crossing her face, “but a lot of what they’re up to is just overpriced parties. It doesn’t do any harm, but it’s not exactly the Great Work either.”