called it, before rattling off a list of percussive-heavy songs that had been released in the past week. She missed the point. Music was the great communicator. It had nothing to do with fashion; it was part of the central nervous system, linking old memories and sensations and new ideas, joining everything of human experience up into one whole, a single bar releasing it in a torrent. Old music, new music, Gregorian chants, country and western tearjerkers or opera, it didn't matter; it was all power.
Right then, it was a barrier, blocking out all thoughts of what lay ahead. The best songs from his internal jukebox, the soundtrack to his life.
The tunnel curved down and up, and down again. Its serpentine progress reminded him of the tunnels beneath Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh and the Fabulous Beast that slumbered there. Like that site, it was a direct access to the force that bounded everything, but unlike Arthur's Seat this place had-or at least he expected it would have presence; intelligence; whatever it was that the Blue Fire encompassed. The Godhead, he supposed.
'Giants in the earth, you see,' he muttered, disturbed at how his words rattled off the walls with a force that changed their tone.
During his time with the wise men of the Culture, he had heard talk of the giants-the metaphor giants, not the real ones that existed in times past. The Culture had understood the power of stories for communicating vital, instructive information, and how metaphors imprinted on the subconscious much better than bald facts. And this metaphor was quite transparent to the trained eye: something like men, only greater, stronger, more vital, something to provide awe and wonder, and a little fear too, responsible for great feats of creation, now sleeping beneath the earth.
How could he explain something so monumental to a man like Veitch, who thought deeply about nothing? Veitch hadn't even grasped the enormity of what was being planned. Crossing over to the land of the dead was not some weekend jaunt; humanity had been barred from it for a reason. And only a higher power could grant access.
'Thomas the Rhymer.' The voice shocked him, and not because it used the name by which he had moved from humanity to legend, now rarely heard. It was American, barely above a whisper and faintly mocking; and it was familiar.
The empty tunnel ahead filled with a faint, drifting luminescence, like autumn mist caught on a breeze, and when it cleared a figure was leaning against the wall, a bottle of Jack Daniels clutched in one hand.
'Jim?' For a second, Tom forgot where he was. The face, angelic, thicklipped, framed by a lion's mane of hair, transported him back to the Whiskey on Sunset, when his bored wanderings had begun to show him a little meaning for the first time in centuries.
'They were good times, right, Scotty? Good times for poets. Peace, love and understanding. Not bread and brutality.' Morrison wandered forward shakily, his stoned smile unable to hide that troubling edge to his character. He tried to focus on Tom, but the cannabis laziness of his left eye kept hindering him. It was the charismatic Morrison Tom remembered from their long, rambling discourse about life and the universe and politics, not the one who had died bloated and bearded in a Parisian bathtub.
The sight was initially disorienting until Tom's razor-sharp mind cut through the shock. 'A memory,' he said dismissively.
'More than that, Tommy.' He proffered the bottle; Tom waved it away.
'A memory given shape.'
'You could be on the right road there. The road to excess.' He chuckled. 'Leads to the palace of wisdom, Tommy. But you still haven't hit that nail on the head.' Morrison lurched beside Tom and slipped a friendly arm round his shoulders.
Morrison's body had substance, and smelled of whiskey, smoke and sweat, just like the real Morrison had.
'I'm your…' He drifted for a moment while the drug thoughts played across his face. 'Not a guide, exactly. Not a muse. I'm an angel to you, Tommy. Yeah, an angel in leather.'
Glancing at him askance, Tom caught sight of a blue light limning his wild hair, a halo, not golden like the ones the mediaeval Christian artists painted believing it more fitting for a sun king, but its true colour. 'You're the voice of the Godhead. A form which my mind can communicate with.'
'Godhead? Yeah, well… whatever you say, Tommy. But I've gotta tell you, there's some serious shit a little way ahead. Blow your mind, Tommy. Better to turn back now. You sure you don't wanna drink?'
'I have to go on. I need information… more than that… a blessing.'
'It's your head, Tommy. I'll walk with you aways. You remember, you can turn back any time.'
'I need to speak to the giant.' There was a potency to the air-the effect of the Blue Fire, Tom knew-that made him almost delirious.
'No giants here, Tommy. But… yeah, maybe we can do that. Come on, let's go to the bar.'
There was a subtle shift in the air, as if paper scenery had been torn away in the blink of an eye. Suddenly Tom was standing in the Whiskey a Go Go, breathing in the familiar odours of stale beer and old smoke, thick with the LA streetlife of 1966. Krieger, Densmore and Manzarek were perched on stools at the end of the bar, chatting lazily with Elmer Valentine, the ex-vice cop who coowned the joint. Tom looked around, dazed. The stage was all ready for the first set of the night-at that point in their career, The Doors were the house band, yet to record their first album. 'Incredible,' he muttered. It was just as he remembered, only more so. How could it have been plucked from his mind when he was seeing detail he was convinced he had never noticed before: the woman with the bright red hair and headband marked out with astrological symbols, the bikers near the stage, like barrels with arms of oak, blue from tattoos.
'This was the start of things,' Morrison said, quietly; his voice rarely rose above a whisper. 'For you, for me, for a way of life. The last time of innocence, Tommy. When this innocence died, the last chance of the world went with it. After that, everything was just livin' on borrowed time. There had to be a change.'
Tom nodded. 'There did.'
Morrison ordered two shots of Jack. Tom eyed his suspiciously before knocking it back with one swift movement. He didn't know what he expected-a taste like fluffy clouds-but it burned the back of his throat and made him cough. 'Real.' He held the glass up to the light. 'I suppose I should have been prepared. I've wittered on about the impermanence of so-called reality often enough.'
'That's right, Tommy. You wish hard enough, you can live in any world you want. Nothing is fixed. It's like…' He went druggy-dreamy, his hand floating through the air. '… smoke. You see shapes in it. A face. A dog. You look away, look back, see something different.'
'Christ,' Tom sighed. 'I hope I don't sound like this when I'm off my face.'
'You know, you got all these people whinin' about how the world is a pile of shit,' Morrison continued. 'Well, it's their own fault. They want it different, they should do something about it. You can't trust your eyes, you can't trust anything, and a big wish can change it all. I ani the Lizard King, Tommy. I can do anything.'
Tom had to drag himself out of the seductive reality that had been presented to make him feel more comfortable. It was easy to slip into it, but wasn't that the point the Morrison thing was making? People settle for the reality shown to them when there could be a better one just a thought away. With an effort, he managed to retreat from his surroundings to gain perspective, and then things did begin to make more sense: he was in a place that allowed direct access to the force that lay behind the Blue Fire and it was communicating with him. He couldn't allow himself to be distracted, or this fake reality to take over.
'I want to talk about that, Jim.' He called the barman for another shot, but this time he sipped it slowly. 'All this…' He gestured widely. '… it reminds me of the last true happy time in my life, perhaps the only really happy time, when I thought there were values that mattered all around. There was an alignment between the things I held dear to me and the world without. I was always a hippie,' he smiled ruefully, 'even when I was a mediaeval spy.' His face hardened. 'But now… now there is something worth fighting for. A world to change. That's why I'm here, to appeal for the rules to be… not broken, bent slightly. For a good cause. For something worth believing in.' The illusion that was not an illusion closed in around him again. He eyed Morrison, who was staring into the coloured lights above the stage where the roadies fiddled with the settings on the amps. 'You always were a spiritual man, Jim. When you weren't being a drunken oaf and a bastard to women.'
'I was a product of my times, Tommy. Hell, you remember the fifties! But we're all flawed, aren't we? Even the greatest. There are no saints in this world. You just have to make sure the balance tips on the side of the angels, that's all. With our nature, that's the best you can hope. No saints, no heroes, just people who try their best
