Was it child abuse? Yes—but. But there was no sign of physical injury on the boy. And manipulation of belief is monstrously hard to prove compared with overt aggression or abuse. And even fourteen-year-olds have freedom of religion in this country. And despite any apprehension he might have felt when the two men came for him, Jason came out of the experience a willing participant.
Yes, but. Even at the moment when the truth of the alembic’s purpose first struck her, she had known that a prosecution based on that alone would be futile and short-lived. Certainly if she informed the local Child Protective Services of what was happening with one of their charges, it would set Change on its ear, and might even lead to the end of the fostering program, but was the responsibility for that a price she wanted to pay? She loathed the idea of doing nothing, but she knew without question that if she were to stay on with this investigation, she had to accept that Steven had the right, not to lock Jason into the alembic, but to ask Jason to submit to it.
Still, she needed a day, or perhaps a bit more, to assume this attitude. She could sense Anne Waverly stirring in the back of her mind, wanting to step in, sweep aside Ana Wakefield’s natural diffidence, and set things right. That would be disastrous, and she remained grateful as the day wore on that she did not meet Steven. She didn’t even want to see Jason or Dulcie until her fury had a chance to subside.
Steven believed, she told herself time and again; therein lay the difference. She reminded herself of that until she nearly believed it, and thought that she might look at Steven again with equanimity.
She got through her teaching day, distracted but functioning, but as soon as school was out she fled for the solitude of the desert. This time she took a bottle of water and a wide-brimmed hat, and she sat among the rocks, listening to the wind blow.
Late in the afternoon, another human being entered the landscape in the form of a desert rat whom Ana had seen two or three times before, once close enough to exchange a brief greeting. He was a prospector of some sort, she supposed, since he carried with him a small rock pick and a canvas sack. Perhaps he was gathering arrowheads or small petroglyphs to sell to tourists and collectors. He looked, however, like any of the other desert creatures she had seen—dull, dusty, leathery, and intent on his own business—and seeing him working his way along the hillside a mile off was like watching any other wild creature going about its business, unaware of being observed.
It was restful, leaning up against some rocks in the shade of an ironwood tree and following the man’s mysterious progress, his bendings and straightenings and the occasional long period when he stood, bent over something he had found, before either placing it in his sack or tossing it over his shoulder.
She could feel the tension ease from her body, the clamor in her head go quiet. She may even have slept briefly, or retreated into that inner place where there is no time, because she came out of her reverie to realize that the shadows across the dry wash were immensely long and the prospector was no longer there.
She stretched luxuriously and took a long drink of warm water, and then tentatively, as if touching a finger to a wound, she brought Steven to mind.
She still felt empty, but at some point in the last hours the feeling had changed slightly, turning from confusion and turmoil into a cool, focused determination, from bleakness to calm. The death of the Japanese boy might even have been an accident, she finally admitted, and his being dumped on the road the result of panic. Stupid, but human.
The desert had done its work. She would now be able to look Steven in the eye without flinching.
There was a new man at dinner.
In itself this was not unusual, but this was no visiting newcomer. On the contrary, he ate surrounded by a knot of high-ranking initiates, who hung on his words and gave all the signs of knowing him well. Ana had little doubt that the man wore a silver necklace beneath his shirt, if not a gold one.
“Who is that man?” she asked Dov over the warming tray of baked potatoes.
“That’s Marc Bennett. He used to live here for a little while, taught science until Dennis came and then he went back to England. He’s a close friend of Jonas—Jonas Seraph, the founder of the English community. Sort of his right-hand man. An important man in Change, anyway.”
“You’ll be glad to have him back, then.” “Oh, Marc’s not staying. It’s just a short visit.” Ana moved to a nearby table and watched Dov return to the group around the newcomer. A short visit might mean recreation or family matters, or peripheral to some kind of business trip. It could also be the work of a courier.
Steven did not lead the meditation that night, which had happened only twice since Ana had been there. Instead, Thomas Mallory took the central position, stumbling and stuttering his way with even more awkwardness than he normally displayed in public speaking. Marc Bennett was seated at the highest level of the row of meditation platforms across the hall from Steven, who sat unmoving the entire time. The whole Change community left the meditation hall unsettled.
She spotted Steven the next morning, too, still looking distracted, even troubled. He was walking with his hands locked behind his back and his head bent. Mallory was following him at a distance, also looking upset. As she watched, a third figure appeared: Jason on his morning run. Steven’s head came up and he thrust out a hand to beckon Jason over to him. They exchanged a few words, Steven clapped Jason on the shoulders, Jason resumed his run, and when Steven turned to watch him go, Ana’s silent presence must have caught the corner of his eye. He swiveled to face her across half a mile of scrub and rock and stood intent for what seemed a very long time. Then he half raised his left hand in a gesture of greeting, or benediction, and continued his walk. She ignored Mallory’s glare and set off in a different direction.
A high initiate, a close friend of one of the original four Change founders, arrives from England; Steven is troubled. Had Glen’s phone taps been discovered, or even suspected? Or had Steven just then learned about the Japanese boy’s death from this old Change member, sent to bring him news too sensitive to be overheard?
It fit all the circumstances, and Ana knew that she would have to get word to Glen of the possibility. The knowledge, even a strong suspicion, of official scrutiny would have powerful repercussions in the community; it was exactly the sort of paranoia trigger she dreaded. She reminded herself, too, that the general anxiety did not necessarily mean they feared her in particular, that she must take care not to be a victim of her own paranoia. That time in Utah she had given herself away, but those circumstances did not apply here. Change had a long way to go before its instability escalated into violence. This community was not about to turn on her.
She did not sleep well, but over breakfast she discovered that no one looked particularly rested, that all the adult faces revealed a heaviness and degree of preoccupation that she had not witnessed there before. Talking to the other members and listening carefully, though, she did not think they knew of a specific problem, simply that Steven, their center, was out of sorts, and therefore Change as a whole was unbalanced.
Rumors began to circulate. Steven was leaving Arizona. Steven was not leaving, he was ill; no, he had simply received bad news from his family. Steven and Marc Bennett had had a raging argument; Marc had slammed out furiously to return to England; Marc had not slammed out, he was scheduled to go back anyway.
Ana had the fact of the argument between the two men confirmed by Dominique, who overheard the raised voices if not the words, but she could find no truth in any of the other rumors except that Marc Bennett had left. The whole Change compound began to feel as if somewhere on the horizon a storm was stirring, making the inhabitants feel prickly and on edge.
So it was with great relief that after Ana’s last class, when she was sitting at her desk doing paperwork and thinking that she ought to go by the kitchen and put in some time there chopping vegetables or at least setting out plates, she heard a light tapping noise at the door and looked up into Jason’s face.
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He looked as old as Glen, this kid of fourteen. “Jason, how are you?”
“Okay. How’s the hand?”
In answer, she held it out and curled the fingers up until they touched the palm, then straightened them out again. The swelling was almost gone, the tenderness bearable unless she smacked it against something. She noticed that, half hidden by the doorjamb, his left arm cradled a basketball, and he was wearing sweats.
“Going to shoot a few baskets?”
“Yeah. It’s warm enough now to use the outside court, so we don’t have to quit every time people want to eat.”
“Maybe I’ll come down and watch for a while.”
She wasn’t sure, but she thought he looked pleased at the prospect. She doubted that was why he was there, but he seemed disinclined to say anything else, so she tried to bridge the gap by asking him, “How are you enjoying the mural? Has your teacher got you painting yet?”
She had thought it a harmless enough question, given the interest and talent that according to Carla he displayed, but she seemed to have hit it wrong again. She looked at his abruptly closed face, his eyes that had gone to study the corners of the room, and she sighed.
“I can’t paint,” he finally muttered.
“Maybe not, but that sketch of the quail on my coffee cup shows that you can certainly draw.”
“I mean I can’t. She won’t let me.”
“Your teacher? Why on earth not?”
“Steven thinks it’s a good idea if I lay off drawing and stuff for a while. But it’s okay, really. It’s just a stupid mural, anyway.”
“I beg your pardon,” she retorted in mock resentment. “I’ll have you know, the mural was my idea. Don’t call it stupid.” She laughed at his expression and waved away his embarrassed attempt at backtracking. “But look, Jason, let me get this straight: You like drawing?” He nodded. “You’re good at it.” A shrug, of course. “And you’d like to help on the mural but Steven said no.” A convulsion of shrug. “Did he tell you why?”
“Sacrifice.” He looked at her and misread the expression on her face. “That’s what he said.”
“Not punishment?”
“He didn’t say so.”
Heat and pressure, and if a child with great potential and few outlets likes to draw, you take that away from him to increase the pressure. What was next: no basketball and a cancellation of all morning runs? And his only advocate another newcomer who was in no position to raise a stink. Dear God, what an impossible situation.
“Well,” she said, “it seems like a massive waste to me. I know my classes could sure use some help in sketching things out—I’m actually the best artist in the bunch, heaven help us.” Jason seemed relieved by her willingness to let the subject slide. “You going down to the courts now?” she asked. “I’ll probably see you there.”
“Okay. Look, I just wanted to say,” he began abruptly, then stopped. “Um, I mean, the other day, I don’t know why I told Dulcie to come to you. It wasn’t your responsibility. It’s just that, well, she likes you, and I couldn’t think of anyone else in a hurry. So, thanks for taking care of her. I hope she wasn’t too much of a pain.”
“I was happy to help, Jason. Dulcie’s good people. But I hope,” she added deliberately, “that it doesn’t happen again for a while. She was very upset.”
“I know,” he said with a grimace. “She’s having nightmares again. Look, I’ve got to go. They’re waiting for me.”
Nightmares, again? “Right. I’ll come down in a bit.”
She did not manage to make it to the kitchen to help prepare for dinner that afternoon.
Marc Bennett was gone by dinnertime, and that evening Steven returned to his central position in the meditation hall. Ana could feel the relief washing around her when he rose from his second-highest platform and started confidently across the walkway to the leader’s perch. He seemed restored—a degree more intense, perhaps, but back in control of himself and his community. Change breathed a sigh of satisfaction and stepped back into its former path.
Ana did not. Perhaps her equilibrium had been too disturbed, reminding her what she was actually doing there; perhaps it was just the residue of her own inner tension, but she could still sense the storm in the distance.
It came, sooner than she had expected, and in a form she could not have anticipated.
The next morning when she took her walk, Steven was there. She had gone west this time, up to the hills on which the high wind-run generator stood, on the opposite side of the compound from the red-rock platform where she had met him before. He was seated to one side of the path, his face raised to the growing sun. Mallory was nowhere in sight.
She hesitated. When he gave no sign that he had noticed her, she decided to continue on her path. She drew even to him and was starting to pass him by, when he spoke.
“Good morning, Ana of the Sunrise. Strange, to be a child of the West, where the sun sets, and yet be so drawn to the early manifestations of light.”
“Well,” she said, not quite sure how she wanted to respond. He went on regardless.
“What do you make of your reading on the philosophy of chemistry?”
“The philosophy—? Oh, alchemy.” She raised her eyes to the distant hills, and thought briefly how fortunate it was that people saw only what they expected to see. Steven had no idea. She looked down at him again and smiled, then sat down on a relatively flat place a few feet away from him, her legs out straight, leaning back on her hands.
“Most of the things I’ve been reading raise more questions than they answer. If, as you say, it is possible actually to make gold, then why did the science fade into a mere quest for spiritual growth, and then die out entirely?”
“Disbelief breeds failure,” Steven said promptly. “‘Crush a fool in a mortar with a pestle, yet his folly will not depart from him.’ Everyone knows that men can’t possibly walk on red-hot coals without burning their feet to the bones, but people do. I did. And men can’t transform one substance into another, but they do. If, however, the person trying to firewalk is afraid, if he does not believe he can do it, he will indeed lose his feet.
“Alchemy was the beginning of scientific method, and the great irony is that the more the alchemists discovered about the nature of matter, the more improbable the whole thing seemed. Belief became divorced from intellect, and they have continued to move further apart. Until the two are rejoined, the Philosopher’s Stone remains an impossibility.”
“You seriously think that the scientist’s state of mind affects the result of an experiment?”
“It is not an experiment,” he said sharply. “It is a process. A Work. Ana, all matter is related. This is a thing the ancients knew and we Westerners rejected in our single-minded quest to take things apart. We are reaping the results now, in a world poisoned by our convenience products, in children distorted by our providing them food and no wisdom. The only hopeful trend of the last thirty years is the faint stirring of realization that everything is interconnected, that the ozone layer over Australia is depleted by air conditioners used on the other side of the world; that the prisons are full because kids in the ghettos don’t have basketball courts and trips to the beach; that women die of cancer because their mothers took the wrong kind of drug when they were pregnant.
“Ana, look: The medical world has admitted that a person’s attitude has a strong bearing on how he or she fights off a disease. Alchemy says precisely the same thing: that the material in the vessel needs to be healed of impurity by a person whose mind and heart are both turned in the same direction.”
Ana had been caught up in far too many sophomoric arguments on religion to fall into the temptation of pointing out his glaring flaw in logic, but it was not necessary, because Steven was off and running, and she had only to sit and feel the warmth of the sun on her face and chest.
“The alchemist was regarded as mad precisely because of this singleness of intent. His family went hungry, his clothes turn
ed to rags, while he stared into the glass alembic and waited for the nigredo to give way to the peacock colors of transformation, through the white albedo to the glorious red of the final stage. ‘I blew my thrift at the coal,’ George Ripley wrote, ‘my clothes were bawdy, my stomach never whole.’ It would all be worth it if he could only reduce the universe, all the millennia of creation, into this alembic in front of him. It is a feeling like no other. It is like being God.”
This was the first glimpse of the fanatic she had seen in Steven Change: It brought a sudden chill to the morning. Her words were impulsive and her voice harsher than she intended.
“‘Behold’”, she quoted at him, “‘I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem as men gather silver and bronze and iron and lead and tin into a furnace, to blow the fire upon it in order to melt it.’”
“Ezekiel’s God is an angry God. Remember, also, that ‘the city was pure gold, clear as glass.’”
“The God of Revelation can be angry, too. ‘I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire.’”
To Ana’s surprise, Steven threw back his head and laughed. “I know. I would make a lousy messiah. I’m far too softhearted.
“Which is why,” he said before she could react, “my dear Seeker Ana, I am sending you on a journey.
“In the very first conversation we had, you and I, I wondered aloud whether or not you had the commitment you needed to transform yourself. It was a natural enough question—most of the people who come here are so taken up with the pursuit of comfort and instant gratification that they will never go beyond what they are, will never learn that ‘No birth without labor’ and ‘Great heat, great gain’ are more than slogans. Most of the people who come here are content to warm their toes at the fire. They will never tear off their shoes and walk on the coals, because they are unwilling to submit themselves to the hotter, harder disciplines that Change requires.