The Birth of a new moon

inhabitants and their peculiarities and characteristics. Jonas thought of this place as his workroom, where he might observe the principles of Change functioning. Which made Ana and everyone else here, in effect, his personal prima materia.

That kind of godlike vision of the world, ironically, depends on the adoration of others, to bring the venerated one food and carry out his wishes. Samantha Dooley had gotten tired of it and passed on, only to have her shoes filled by a born personal assistant to this small universe's CEO. Marc Bennett could strut and crow and order people about to his heart's desire, and Jonas would continue to treat him as a piece of furniture, because in Jonas's mind, that was what all people were.

Ana pulled her coat around her, feeling the cold as the sun went down and as the sudden thought hit her that perhaps Sami Dooley had not tired of her role; perhaps she had been pushed too far.

When was that large amount of nitrate fertilizer bought? She couldn't remember, but she was certain it had been for Britain, not Boston. Was it purchased shortly before the arguments started between Jonas and Sami? The two things might have nothing to do with each other, but she could feel the disquieting possibility of that fertilizer's purpose nibbling at the edges of her mind.

She knew Jonas had to have a human-sized alembic in the cellars, behind one of those three locked doors. What else could he use as his 'power nexus' for the conjoining with his moon-woman? What concerned her more, though, was the question of how he intended to apply the necessary heat. Would it be from six small brick furnaces such as those that had kept Jason warm during his solitary trial under Steven? Or was Jonas insane enough to think of something bigger, something more suited to the dramatic transformation of a man into a Philosopher's Stone? Something as explosive on the outside of the alembic as what was due to go on in the inside?

It was insane, sure, but Ana could not keep from wondering: Just how big a fire it would take to transmute a man into an immortal?

She had been right her first night here, terribly close to the truth: This really was Texas revisited, and Utah. Here she was again, with two young hostages in the hands of her enemy and the responsibility for the entire community on her shoulders; the difference was, this time she knew it. In Texas another woman, a far different Ana, had selfishly walked away from the only people who mattered to her, so engrossed in her own problems that she was blind to the signs, deaf to the warning bells, dangerously, murderously ignorant.

No more. She could see this man playing with his vision, turning it over in his big, hard hands, changing and shaping it until it matched his idea of perfection. A moment's fear, a sudden conviction that 'they' had infiltrated to his bosom and were about to take his Work away from him, and he would move instantly to set the final Transformation in motion. She could all but smell the danger, and her ears rang with the ghostly echo of gunfire, her nostrils twitched with the remembered stink of fresh blood and old death.

Her only hope was to keep her wits about her and to get help.

On her own, she could do little more than seize Jason and Dulcie and flee, evading the camouflage-clad guard and hoping to make it as far as the main road and the arms of the constabulary. But what then, when their abrupt departure was discovered and Jonas realized that his chance for immortality was slipping away from him? Would he grab out for another and set off on his ultimate quest? And if so, who would be Ana's substitute? The innocent Sara? Or perhaps young, blonde Dierdre? And what would it do to Jason and Dulcie when they eventually found out what their salvation had cost? What does it profit a man, that he gain his life and lose the world?

Ana could not both protect the two children and keep an eye on Jonas, not for long. She had to have help. She could try to break into the phone system, call Glen—but had he even received her last letter yet? And how long would it take him to set up a response in a foreign country? A long time, knowing governments; longer even than it would take her, a private citizen of a foreign country, to work her way through the local authorities until she found someone… Too long. Furthermore, although she longed to hear Glen's cold and competent voice, craved his presence with a lust stronger than sex, a single man on a white horse was not about to make much difference.

Once, long long ago, she had thought that fear was the energy that kept her persona together, a potential resource like pain or desperation that with acceptance and rigid concentration could be shaped and used. Not this kind of fear. This fear was too deep to be grasped, too slippery to be handled, too disorienting to be accepted; it left her utterly alone and directionless, wishing she could crumple into a corner and weep like a child.

That was not possible. She just had to pull herself together—the ghosts of murders past were getting in her way, obscuring her vision of what was and what she must do. Her only option was the same one she had been following since she arrived here, that of watch and wait. This was no time to lose control, and the all too obvious fact that she had no business being here, that she was no longer capable of doing this work, could not be helped. She would just have to shove her panic back into its box and do her best: there was no one else.

And think about it: Jonas wanted her voluntarily, which meant that he either had no wish to drag her into the alembic with him or, more likely, he could not envision the necessity. She needed to see the basement, to examine the alembic itself and to see if there was any sign of a nitrate bomb. She would have to convince him of her need to see his workshop, just as she had convinced him that he needed her as the key to his great transformation. Work herself in to his side, hope he left open his telephone or—better—that modemed computer, and get a message to Glen.

Yes, she had to have help. Agreed, there was no way she could do this alone for more than another few days. The best way of obtaining that help was the same way she always did: write a journal entry for Glen.

Only this time she'd have to make damned certain that nobody found it, because there would be no pretty subterfuge here. Write down the truth, in all its detail, and then she would either get herself a map of the estate and sneak off to a mailbox, or feed the pages through Jonas's scanner and slap the result into an e-mail to Glen. That would take less time than Jonas had been gone to urinate.

Buy time, call for help, act normal.

And the hardest of these is normality.

Chapter Twenty-nine

proposed article on theological synthesis

titles: Dream Logic

Signs and Portents

The Apocalyptic Mind

Intro: One of the eearier more frightening sides of religious synthesis is the apparent lack of rational thought, the willingness of the participants to embrace wildly disparate ideas and images and then to make great leaps in interpretation and meaning. To the apocalyptic mind, signs and portents abound, messages wait in the most obscure places, and the whole of creation pulsates with Meaning, for the one who can truly See. There is no coincidence, no casual link in the universe: everything is connected.

(Examples: —Judaism & the minutiae of kashrut rules—holiness is in the details

—Post-resurrection Christianity, sifting the life of Jesus for symbols and unseen prophecies

—Modern examples-Heaven's Gate, etc.)

To the apocalyptist, who literally awaits the Great Uncovering, all coincidence is synchronicity, all accident revelation.

(note: intro ideas of archetypal/depth psych?? Examples in therapeutic situations, or Biblical dream interp???))

… It is the same logic one finds in the interpretation of dreams, where all events are related, where enlightenment comes with the understandings of links and the symbols thrust up from the unconscious.

What would seem to most of us a coincidence of minor importance, to the searching mind becomes a road sign to holiness. The unpredictability of these minds makes it very difficult to forecast where Meaning will be found.

If we wish to understand, we must contrive to stand over this person and look over his (her) shoulder, listening to his inner dialogue and duplicating his close scrutiny of his surroundings, before we can even begin to predict his interpretation of events, his understanding of portents. Like the chemist who knows what reagent will set off a certain reaction in his beaker-and even then, the being human individuals rather than simple chemicals, the variables are great, and it is easy to be very wrong.

From the notes of Professor Anne Waverly