Vision of Tarot
Book II
The Miracle Planet Explored
Piers Anthony
Copyright © 1980 by Piers Anthony.
Cover illustration by Rowena Morill.
ISBN: 0-425-08097-8
CONTENTS
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author's Note:
I Discipline: 9
II Nature: 1O
III Chance: 11
IV Time: 12
V Reflection: 13
VI Will: 14
VII Honor: 15
VIII Sacrifice: 16
IX Change: 17
X Vision: 18
XI Transfer: 19
Appendix: Animation Tarot
Suit Cards
Court Cards
Triumphs
Nature
Faith
Trade
Magic
Art
Dedication
To the Holy Order of Vision
Acknowledgments
'SALEM'S LOT, copyright © 1975 by Stephen King. Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc. Used by permission of the author's agent Kirby McCauley.
THE DRAGONS OF EDEN, copyright © 1977 by Carl Sagan. Published by Random House, Inc. Used by permission of the publisher.
THE HISTORY AND PRACTICE OF MAGIC, by Paul Christian, copyright © 1973 by Citadel Press, a division of Lyle Stuart, Inc. Used by permission of the publisher.
REFLECTIONS OF THE CAUSES OF HUMAN MISERY, copyright © 1969, 1972 by Barrington Moore, Jr. Published by Beacon Press. Used by permission of the publisher.
RATIONALE OF THE DIRTY JOKE: AN ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL HUMOR, copyright © 1968 by G. Legman. Published by Grove Press, Inc. Used by permission of the publisher.
HUMAN SEXUALITY, 3rd Edition, by James Leslie McCary, copyright © 1978 by Litton Educational Publishing, Inc., a division of D. Van Nostrand Company. Used by permission of the publisher.
THE DEVIL AND ALL HIS WORKS, copyright © 1971 by Dennis Wheatley. Published by George Rainbird Limited for American Heritage Press. Used by permission of The Rainbird Publishing Group.
Author's Note:
This is the second volume of the three-part, quarter-million word novel of Tarot. Though this segment is unified around the religious and social theme, it is not a complete story in itself, and it is hoped the reader will be interested enough to read the first and third volumes. The first is God of Tarot, concerning the nature of the challenge; the third is Faith of Tarot, concerning the nature of Hell. Some reprise of the first volume may be helpful for those who have not seen it:
Brother Paul is a novice in the Holy Order of Vision, a liberal religious sect dedicated to the improvement of the state of man. His superior in the Order, the Reverend Mother Mary, sends him on a mission to Planet Tarot to determine whether the Deity manifesting there is or is not God. Brother Paul discovers numerous schismatic sects on the planet, often at odds; yet the rigors of colony life require all people to cooperate closely or perish. They must identify the true God. Brother Paul becomes the guest of the Reverend Siltz of the Second Church Communist, whose son has taken up with a Scientologist: a local scandal. Brother Paul encounters Amaranth, an extraordinarily pretty and forward worshiper of Abraxas, the snake-footed god. Brother Paul experiments with the notorious Animation effect, controlling it by means of tarot cards, but gets trapped in full-scale visions relating to his own base nature and past experiences that led to his conversion to the religious life. He realizes that his own soul may be likened to compost: the raw stuff of transition from death to renewal.
The present volume commences with Brother Paul's emergence from that play-like vision.
I
Discipline: 9
...he found himself reflecting—not for the first time—on the peculiarities of adults. They took laxatives, liquor, or sleeping pills to drive away their terrors so that sleep would come, and their terrors were so tame and domestic: the job, the money, what the teacher will think if I can't get Jennie nicer clothes, does my wife still love me, who are my friends. They were pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowl with in his dark bed, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another child. There is no group therapy or psychiatry or community social services for the child who must cope with the thing under the bed or in the cellar every night, the thing which leers and capers and threatens just beyond the point where vision will reach. The same lonely battle must be fought night after night and the only cure is the eventual ossification of the imaginary faculties, and this is called adulthood.
—Stephen King: 'Salem's Lot, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1975.
The landscape of Planet Tarot formed about them. They stood in a kind of scrub forest. A few large trunks rose from the underbrush, but these were dead and charred. Some fire must have swept through the area a decade past, destroying most of the large trees and all of the small ones, forcing the forest to start over. This was not necessarily an evil thing; after many years of fighting forest fires back on Earth, the authorities had realized that forest fires were part of nature's cycle, literally clearing out the deadwood to make place for fresh growth. The big stumps, here, might resemble buildings in the half light, and the forest was like a city, here was the raw material of the Animation just past.
Brother Paul looked behind him. They were actually in a hollow beside the clifflike face of a rocky ridge. Here was even more direct raw material; a moment ago it had seemed like a brick wall, and his companion—"
Brother Paul turned to the man. "I am not certain I know you," he said. Not in this world, anyway.
His companion was a colonist he had not encountered in the village, a tall, thin, handsome young man, bronzed and healthy. "I am Lee, Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints," he said. "I am one of the Watchers."
"Ah—Mormon," Brother Paul said. "At one time I mistook you for—" He broke off, not wanting to mention the Fed narc. "But that's irrelevant."
"Let's move out before the rent in the Animation fills in," Lee said. "We would not want to be trapped again." He led the way, walking briskly. But in a moment he added: "What we experienced appears to be a hitherto unknown aspect of Animation. I was once called a member of your sect, though I really can not claim to know anything about your religion. I gather this was a reinactment of the experience that brought you into that Order."
"Yes," Brother Paul agreed, surprised. "I was partially blind for several days, because, they said, I had stared into the sun too long. I think it was more subtle than that; my namesake the Apostle Paul was similarly blind after his conversion. Perhaps the drug and my general condition complicated it. The Holy Order of Vision took care of me, and treated me with the memory drug and kindness, phasing down the dosage of the one and phasing up the dosage of the other until I was stable again. I never did recover all my memories. But by then I knew my destiny. I have never regretted that decision."
Lee smiled, grasping the concept. "As the Apostle Paul joined the Christians he had persecuted—"
"So I joined the Order I had wronged," Brother Paul agreed. "In the process I became a Christian in the truest sense. I regret exceedingly that Sister Beth had to die in order to facilitate my conversion—"
"I am sure you have filled her place admirably," Lee said. "We can not know the meaning of God's every act. We only know that there is meaning. Why did God allow the Apostle Paul to stone Stephen? Had I been there, I would surely have deemed Stephen a better spokesman for Christianity than a lame epileptic Pharisee Jew." He smiled. "Which shows how little I would have known. Only God is omniscient."
"Amen," Brother Paul agreed, discovering new insight. "The Apostle Paul made Christianity what it is, to a considera
ble extent. He opened it up to the gentiles. That seemingly minor though controversial change made all the difference."
"It did indeed," Lee agreed. "Perhaps you also will benefit your sect and the world as the Apostle your namesake did."
"A ludicrous dream," Brother Paul said. "Only God knows what an imperfect vessel I am. How much of my Animation did you share?" Brother Paul found that he liked this man, and hoped the horrors of his personal Animations had not been shown to him. Some secrets were best kept secret.
"Just fragments of it, I think. A game called Tarot Accordian—I do not use cards for entertainment, but I do not pass judgment." He paused. "Do all these episodes represent past experiences in your life or are some allegorical?"
"Some are real; some are sheer fantasy," Brother Paul said, embarrassed. If Lee had seen any of the nightmare visions, he was evidently too discreet to admit it.
"I inquire," Lee said with a certain diffidence, "because something very strange happened to me, and I wonder whether you might explain it. I felt—it was as though another personality impinged on me. An alien consciousness, not inimical, not unpleasant, but rather an exceedingly well informed mind from a distant sphere using my body and perceptions—"
"Antares!" Brother Paul exclaimed.
Lee looked at him, startled. "How did you know?"
"I—cannot explain. But I met a creature from Sphere Antares. He said he might visit me here, or at least I wanted him to—" Brother Paul spread his hands. "A foolish expectation; I apologize."
"Foolish, perhaps. Yet it is an experience I seem to have shared. I don't profess to understand it, but I do not regret it; the alien has a cosmopolitan view I rather envy." He pointed ahead. "Look—there are the Watchers."
And there they were: Pastor Runford, Mrs. Ellend, and the Swami. "But where are the others?" Brother Paul asked. "The ones drawn into the Animations, as you were? We can't leave them..."
"No, we can't," Lee agreed as they came up to the Watchers. "Watchers, did you perceive the nature of the Animations we have experienced?"
Pastor Runford shook his head. "We did not."
Brother Paul was relieved. "We have—seen things too complex to discuss at the moment. Several people remain. We need to get them out before—"
Pastor Runford shook his head again, more emphatically. "We can not enter the Animation area. The young woman you call Amaranth went in to warn you about the storm, and—"
"I understand," Brother Paul said. "I'll go back and find them."
"I, too," the Swami said. "We had to retreat during the storm, but for the moment the effect seems to have abated."
Lee was already on the way. The three spread out, searching the landscape that had been a metropolis moments ago—and might be again if the Animation effect returned. Speed was essential.
They found Therion first. He was sitting beneath a tree, looking tired. "That was some scene you folks cooked up," he called.
"I did not arrange it," Lee protested. "I merely played roles assigned to me by the playwright. Some were diabolical—therefore I assumed they originated with you." He did not smile.
"I gather you two do not get along well," Brother Paul said.
"Few of us get along well with rival sects," Lee admitted. "That is the problem of this colony. It is the same all over Planet Tarot; our village is typical. Everywhere we co-exist with ill-concealed distemper. This man is a devotee of the nefarious Horned God—whom I would call Satan."
"A Devil-worshiper!" Brother Paul exclaimed. "That explains a lot!"
"The Horned God was great before any of your contemporary upstarts appeared," Therion maintained, walking with them. "You call him Satan—but that is your ignorant vanity. He is a God—and perhaps the true God of Tarot."
"Sacrilege!" Lee cried. "The Prince of Evil!"
"Listen, Mormon—your own sect is none too savory!" Therion snapped. "A whole religion based on a plagiarized fairy tale—"
Lee whirled on him—but Brother Paul interposed himself. "Doesn't your Covenant forbid open criticism of each other's faiths?"
"I never subscribed to that Covenant," Therion said. "Anyway, I don't find fault with all this hypocrite's cult-tenets. Take this business of polygamy—that's a pretty lusty notion. A man takes thirty, forty wives, screws them all in turn—"that's religion!"
"I have no wives," Lee said stiffly. "Because there aren't enough girl—Mormons on this planet, and none free in this village."
"But if there were, you'd have them, wouldn't you?"
"The matter is academic," Lee replied.
"But if it were not—if you had the chance to wed just as many young, pretty, sexy, healthy women as was physically possible, how many would you take?"
"One," Lee said. "Plural marriage is an option, not a requirement. A single woman, were she the right one, would be worth more than a hundred wrong ones. I will marry the right one."
"You're a hypocrite, all right," Therion said. "I wish I could conjure a hundred wrong women and show you up for—"
Further discussion was cut off by their discovery of Amaranth. She was standing by a streamlet, looking dazed. "Amaranth," Brother Paul said, struck by her beauty, afresh, though of course he had now had opportunity to appreciate her charms unhampered by any clothing. (Or had he...?) It had once been said that clothes make the man, but it seemed more aptly said that clothes make the woman. "Come on out before the Animation effect returns."
She looked at him with evident perplexity. "I don't know—don't know my part. Am I still the fortune teller?"
She was confused! "No," Brother Paul said. "We are back in the mundane world. You have no role to play."
"She is always playing a role," Therion muttered.
"What's this about roles?" the Swami asked.
Lee answered him. "It was as though we were in a play, each with his script. Each person could ad-lib, but had to stay within the part. We do not know who the playwright was."
The Swami seemed intensely interested, despite his former cautions about Animation. "To whom did the scenes relate?"
"Well, I seemed to be the central character," Brother Paul said. "Perhaps the others had scenes to which they were central in my absence—"
"No," Amaranth said. "I played my roles only for you. Between roles I—seemed not to exist. Maybe I was sleeping. I thought I had died when I jumped from that copter—"
Brother Paul was uneasy. "Perhaps we should not discuss it in the presence of those who were not involved."
"You must discuss it," the Swami said, his gaze fixed. "You are searching for the God of Tarot, for the colonists of this planet."
"It seems I got distracted," Brother Paul admitted.
"I agree with Brother Paul," Lee said. "We have experienced a remarkable joint vision whose implications may never be fully understood, just as the meaning of a person's dream may never be clear. We should maintain our separate experiences, like the members of a jury, until we are ready to make a joint report."
"Yes," Therion said.
The Swami looked from one to the other. "The Devil Worshiper and the Righteous Saint agree?"
"And so do I," Amaranth said. "No one not in it can understand it."
"An extraordinary unanimity," the Swami commented. "But I may have an insight. Is it not possible that the power of Kundalini—"
"Remember the Covenant," Therion reminded him gently. Yes, it was evident that these people had little patience with each other's philosophies! Therion had said he did not subscribe to the Covenant and had called Lee a hypocrite. It was becoming clear who the actual hypocrite was.
"I have not forgotten it!" the Swami said with understandable irritation. "But this power, however it may be named—call it the magic of Satan if you prefer—may be the controlling force of your visions. Brother Paul has the strongest psychic presence of your group, so it seems the play orients on him."
"Aura," Lee said. "He has aura."
"This is uncertain," Brother Paul said. "The reality of
all we have experienced in Animation is speculative—"
"No, I think he's right," Amaranth said. "There is something about you—"
"We forget the child," Therion said.
"One of the Watchers is a child?" Brother Paul asked.
"There was a child in the Animation, but I assumed she was a creature of imagination." Those Dozens insults...
"There were to be five Watchers," Lee explained. "Two outside, and three inside the Animation, representing poles of belief. The child was the third inside."
"I will search for her!" the Swami said, alarmed.
"We all will search, of course," Lee said. "We have wasted time; the Animation may close in at any moment."
They spread out, striding through the valley. Therion was farthest to the left. Then Lee, then Brother Paul, then Amaranth, and the Swami on the right. There was no sign of the child.
Therion and Lee drifted further left as the slope of the land changed; he could hear them exchanging irate remarks about each other's religious practices, faintly. The Swami disappeared behind a ridge. This region was more varied than it had seemed to be before; the mists had tended to regularize the visible features in the distance. Brother Paul and Amaranth were funneled together by a narrowing gully. Here the trees were larger; the fire must have missed this section.
It was dusk, and as the sun slowly lost its contest with the lay of the land the shadows deepened into darkness. Flashing insects appeared. They were not Earthly fireflies, but blue-glowing motes expanding suddenly into little white novas, then fading. In that nova stage they illuminated a cubic meter of space and were a real, if transient, aid to human navigation.
"What are those?" Brother Paul inquired.
"Nova-bugs. No one knows how they do it. Scientists shipped a few back to Earth, when they first surveyed this planet, but the lab experts said it was a mistake: the bugs possessed no means to glow. So—they don't exist, officially. But we like them."
"Isn't that just like an expert!" Brother Paul exclaimed. "He can't explain it, so he denies it." Yet this was true of people generally, not only experts. "Do you catch them and use them for lamps as the people used to do with fireflies?"