The Magicians Read online

  The Magicians

  James Gun

  To Jeanne and R. T.

  who produced and named Casey

  The only trouble with magic is that it doesn't work.

  John Symonds

  PREFACE

  Back in the early days of science fiction—just 13 years after the founding of the first science-fiction magazine in 1926 and only a bit more than a year after John W. Campbell, Jr., became editor of Astounding Stories, changed its name to Astounding Science Fiction, and inaugurated the Golden Age—Campbell created a companion fantasy magazine named Unknown (renamed Unknown Worlds in 1941). But it wasn't just any fantasy magazine. In its first issue Campbell wrote, “Unknown will be to fantasy what Astounding has made itself represent to science fiction. It will offer fantasy of a quality so far different from what has appeared in the past as to change your entire understanding of the term.” What Unknown would publish was the fantastic concept treated realistically, magic as if it were a science, the supernatural considered as part of the natural world: what later became known as rationalized fantasy. It represented a clash of ideologies, an oxymoron, but in that internal conflict authors found the opportunity to create something new, often comic, sometimes insightful.

  The magazine lasted only 39 issues. It was discontinued in 1943 because of war-time paper shortages, but between 1939 and 1943 it published many classics of later fantasy, including Eric Frank Russell's “Sinister Barrier,” Robert A. Heinlein's “They” and “The Devil Makes the Laws,” Theodore Sturgeon's “It,” Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife and “Two Sought Adventure,” the first of his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, L. Ron Hubbard's “Fear” and “Typewriter in the Sky,” L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's “Harold Shea” novels later gathered into The Incompleat Enchanter, and de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall, Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think, and many others. Its passing was lamented by fantasy lovers.

  I was too young to publish anything in Unknown, but Horace Gold wasn't. He contributed “The Trouble with Water” and collaborated with de Camp on “None but Lucifer,” among others. So when Gold founded Galaxy in 1950, he soon thought of a companion fantasy magazine. It took him a little longer than Campbell—three years instead of a year and a half—but Beyond appeared in 1953. By that time I had published several stories in Galaxy, as well as a number in Astounding and other magazines. In fact, I was in the midst of my longest period of free-lancing and turning out a short story a week or a novelette every two weeks, or a short novel every four weeks, and working on my first two novels at the rate of ten pages a day. A. J. Budrys, assistant editor of Galaxy in 1953, later told me that Gold wanted to use my short novel “Wherever You May Be” (aka “The Reluctant Witch") in Beyond but needed a lead story for Galaxy (it was published in May 1953). A couple of months later I finished a short novel I called “Beauty Is a Witch.” Gold's first reaction (his first reaction to almost any story) was a rejection, and my agent, Harry Altshuler, sent it over to Fletcher Pratt, who was starting another fantasy magazine. Pratt wanted a change or two that I was prepared to make (even though he was going to pay only one cent a word, while Beyond, for which I had written the story, paid two), but before I could get started on the changes Gold asked for my short novel to be returned—he was desperate for a short novel to lead the May 1954 issue. Of such accidents are careers made—and broken.

  I sold Gold only one more story for Beyond, “The Beautiful Brew,” but Beyond lasted for only ten issues and was gone by January 1955. My short novel was published in May 1954. Gold changed the title to “Sine of the Magus.” That was his habit (and one that did not endear him to his writers), changing titles and sometimes parts of the story as well. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy wrote that “BFF sought to bring the same sophistication to fantasy as Galaxy had to sf. It succeeded to a large extent, and is generally acknowledged as the natural successor to Unknown....” The entry listed “Sine of the Magus” as one of the classics.

  Six years later I persuaded Dell Books editor Gail Wendroff to publish “The Reluctant Witch,” “The Beautiful Brew,” and “Sine of the Magus” (renamed “The Magicians") in a collection I called The Witching Hour, and six years after that Scribner's editor Burroughs Mitchell let me expand “The Magicians” into a novel.

  Between the publications of “Sine of the Magus” and The Magicians, fantasy had undergone a sea change. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings had redefined the sales potential of fantasy, Howard's Conan novels had been rediscovered, Ursula Le Guin had launched her Earthsea juveniles and Peter Beagle had published The Last Unicorn, and, perhaps most important, Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby and Peter Blatty's The Exorcist had become best sellers and, more significantly, successful motion pictures. What John Campbell in his introduction to Unknown had referred to as “anathema” had become a category even more successful than science fiction.

  The Magicians reflects that. In fact, the observant reader may detect in its pages certain sly references to Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. But The Magicians is in the tradition of Unknown. I had always enjoyed the romantic fantasies of Thorne Smith, particularly The Night Life of the Gods, and I wanted The Magicians to be published in the same tradition, but editors preferred to promote the novel for shivers and suspense. I'd prefer more smiles and maybe an occasional chuckle.

  James Gunn

  Chapter 1

  Magic has power to experience and fathom things which are inaccessible to human reason. For magic is a great secret wisdom, just as reason is a great public folly.

  - Paracelsus, De Occulta Philosophia

  The white letters on the corrugated black board spelled out:

  COVENTION

  October 30 and 31

  Crystal Room

  I chuckled. It never fails: hotel bulletin boards are like movie marquees; there always is something on them that is misspelled.

  The chuckle died away in the vastness of the hotel lobby like laughter in a church. I glanced around uneasily. My man hadn't come in. I had no reason to be uneasy—no valid reason anyway. I just didn't like the job. Not that it promised to be tough. It was too simple, really, and the old lady was paying too much. And I had the feeling that there were eyes watching me. There was nobody. I could swear to that. And yet I knew I was being watched. That's a switch. It's enough to give any private detective a neurosis.

  Hell! Why should anyone pay a thousand bucks just to find out some guy's name?

  Wood was crackling aromatically in the fireplace at the far end of the lobby. Easy chairs and sofas were arranged geometrically on a couple of large blue and red Oriental rugs. I made my way across the floor, my shoes going thump-thump, whack-whack, thump-thump, whack-whack as I walked from rug to marble and back again. Then I was at the desk. I leaned against it so that I could watch both doors my man might enter.

  The clerk at the desk looked up. He was a type; you've seen him. Thin, thirtyish, dressed in a dark suit and a bow tie, his bald head gleaming brighter than the floor, obsequious to his superiors, vindictive toward those placed under him. Unfortunately, he knew me.

  “Hello, Charlie,” I said.

  “Casey,” he said suspiciously. “What are you doing here?"

  “Business."

  “No trouble, Casey,” he said. “I'll have you tossed out of here. The management won't have you raiding rooms, snapping pictures. Our guests pay for service and privacy, and anybody who—"

  “Relax, Charlie,” I said. “Nothing like that."

  He subsided. I felt him sink back from his toes, but he didn't give up. “Since when have you had anything but divorce cases?"

  “I've come up in the world, Charlie. Who puts the notices on the board over there?"

  “Usually it's the convention management,” he said, “but t
his morning I did it. Why?"

  “Can't spell, either, eh?"

  He glanced at the board and back at me, his face impassive. “Nothing misspelled there."

  “Yeah,” I said. “I've always wanted to attend a covention.” It started out as a small joke, but when I got to the key word my voice broke and an unpleasant shiver went up my back.

  “Now's your chance,” Charlie said, “because that's what it is. If you qualify."

  “Qualify for what?"

  “As a member of the group."

  “What group is that?"

  Charlie shrugged.

  “You mean just anybody can walk in off the street and hold a meeting here?” I said. “For any purpose?"

  “Why not?” Charlie said. “They've got as much right as anybody. Particularly if they pay in advance."

  “Well, how do I know if I qualify if I don't know what they do?” I asked.

  “There's the man in charge now, just coming through the door,” Charlie said. “Why don't you ask him?"

  I turned my head toward the entrance on my right. Just inside the sliding glass doors, sighing shut behind, was a tall man with dark hair and graying temples. He looked slim and distinguished, though oddly attired for ten in the morning, in evening clothes. In his lapel was a five-pointed star, small, gold, engraved with symbols too small to read from where I stood. The description checked. He was my man.

  I started after him.

  “Casey—” Charlie began. He was warning me.

  I waved a reassuring hand back at him without looking and followed the back that was disappearing into the dark interior of an elevator that stood open. Above the opening a lighted sign that read “This Car Up” blinked dark. As the man I was following turned around, a heavy brass door closed between us. For a moment, before it closed, he looked directly at me.

  His eyes were deep and black and shiny. And I had the foolish notion that they still stared at me through the closed brass door, seeing, weighing, and discarding contemptuously before they turned their shocking intensity on something more worthy of their attention.

  The afterimage vanished. I shook myself and looked quickly at the bank of lights that registered the position of every car in the row of elevators. The light moved past M, A, and B, stopped at C, and then continued upward: 4, 5, 6...

  I shook myself, pulled my eyes from the hypnotic display, and stepped through the open doors of the car that was identified as the next one to head upward into the mysteries above. The doors closed, and I touched the button marked C. It lit up almost before my finger pressed it, a kind of electronic magic that always surprised me.

  We slid silently upward. Bricks alternated with painted metal. The car was filled with the cloying smell of a scented deodorant the management used to kill the scent of elevator shafts too long uncleaned. M, A, B. The first stop was mine. The doors parted in front of me and closed behind me, and I was in a red-carpeted hall facing a cream-colored corridor wall. Painted on the wall in gold was an arrow pointing to my right. Above it were two words: Crystal Room.

  I looked to my right. The Crystal Room had double doors, but only one of them was open. A dark back was just going through it. The young man who stood beside the door, neatly clothed in a camel-colored leisure suit, nodded respectfully to the man who was entering. A gatekeeper. The party was private.

  Keeper of the crystal door. Inside was something called a “covention” that sent unreasonable shivers up my back. And inside now was a nameless man—I couldn't mistake that back, as certain of its powers as any emperor—whose name was worth a thousand dollars to me and who had eyes like polished obsidian daggers.

  I shrugged the flat automatic in the shoulder holster into a more comfortable position and with that as assurance started after the guy who wore evening clothes in the morning. I nodded familiarly to the doorkeeper, who had broad shoulders, short hair, and a pleasant, sunburned face, and I started through the doorway.

  I stopped abruptly, as if I had walked into a glass wall. I rubbed my nose ruefully. Keeping up with these new technologies was getting ridiculous.

  “Where's your name card?” the doorkeeper asked.

  I looked at his left breast pocket. On a gummed card, with some other writing around it, a single name was printed: Charon. That's funny, I thought. Charon was the name of the ferryman who took dead souls across the river Styx to Hell; what a name for a gatekeeper. But while I was thinking I said, “Name card?” I snapped my finger. “I knew I forgot something. But you know me. Casey from Kansas City? Met you last year. Don't you remember my face?"

  He frowned as if I had said something ridiculous. “How would I remember your face?"

  That stopped me. He didn't say he didn't remember my face but that he couldn't; he didn't expect to.

  I began rummaging hopefully through the pockets of my brown tweed suit. “Maybe I've got the card in my pocket,” I said. There was only one way to go from here—back the way I had come—but I could make it graceful in the unlikely possibility that I ever came back. And then I felt something slick and rectangular in my right-hand coat pocket. Slowly I pulled it out. It was a name card.

  The young man looked at it and nodded. “Gabriel,” he said. “Wear it from now on. I can't let anybody in without a name card."

  I nodded mechanically and walked cautiously into the large room, but the invisible wall was gone. Just inside the door I stopped and turned the card over.

  In the center of the card was a circular seal. Imprinted blackly over it were two lines of type.

  “Call me GABRIEL,” it said, “or pay me five dollars."

  That was funny enough, but it wasn't the funniest part. There was no way the card could have got into my pocket. No one could have put it there. The suit had just come back from the cleaners. I had put it on before I came out this morning.

  “Gabriel,” I muttered to myself. I knew who Gabriel was: one of the archangels. Carried messages. Blew trumpets. That was a hell of a name for a man.

  Coventions. Brass doors with eyes in them. Invisible walls. Angels. I shivered. It was getting to be a habit.

  The Crystal Room was pleasant enough. It wasn't the biggest meeting room in the hotel, but it was one of the most attractive and it was private. A huge crystal chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling and gave the room its name. Two smaller chandeliers flanked the big one. The ceiling and walls were painted a deep rose and flocked like an old-fashioned whorehouse. The carpet on the floor was burgundy. The hanging crystals picked up rose and red, alternating, blending, flashing as they swayed gently and tinkled together.

  A stage had been installed at the far end of the room. It was draped in black like a bier, and black velvet provided a backdrop from ceiling to floor behind the stage. Several chairs were lined up neatly at the back of the stage. In front of them was a lectern. Between me and the platform were rows of wooden chairs; I counted thirteen rows of thirteen chairs each. A few of the chairs were occupied, but most of the people in the room were standing, clustered into small groups, conversing casually or in a few cases with animation. I looked them over carefully, but my man wasn't among them.

  The scene was typical of hundreds of professional meetings that take place in hundreds of hotel meeting rooms every day all over the country. Once a year men and women assemble to discuss their single shared interest, to talk shop, to listen to the latest advances in their professions, to raise standards, to elect officers. And to indulge in some heavy drinking, character assassination, and casual—and sometimes not so casual—sex.

  The men here were distinguished and well dressed, although none of them were in evening clothes: suits predominated, most of them dark, although among them was an occasional rebel with long hair and dressed in jeans and tank top. The women—there were more women than men—were all young and beautiful; not just ordinary beautiful but exquisitely, improbably beautiful. I had never seen so many beautiful women in one room before, not even when I tailed one wandering spouse backstage
at a musical comedy. Up close those faces had been a little the worse for greasepaint and the bodies a bit droopy with dissipation. I had the feeling that the faces and bodies I saw here would be as implausibly lovely up close and undressed as they looked from a distance.

  But what was their profession? Doctor, lawyer, college professor? In what profession do the women outnumber the men?

  If I moved a few steps to the right, I could get a better look at a truly spectacular Junoesque redhead. Like a fool, forgetting my reason for being there, I moved a few steps to the right. My foot caught in something. I stumbled. As I pitched forward my arms reached out for support. They closed around something softly rounded and yielding. It gasped. I looked up into a pair of blue eyes that were crinkled with sudden laughter. I was pressed tightly against a delightful figure.

  “You see?” the girl said in a soft, low voice. “Redheads are unlucky."

  “For whom?” I asked.

  “I don't think you will fall down now,” she said, “if you should let go."

  I straightened and let my arms drop. “I stumbled over something,” I said, and looked down at the dark red carpet suspiciously. There was nothing nearby that I could have stumbled over. I would have thought I was tripped but there was nobody nearby except the girl, and she was in front of me.

  “It's better to stumble than to fall,” she said. “Especially for La Voisin. She's a hag, really. You wouldn't believe. Fifty if she's a day."

  I took another look at the redhead. “You're right. I don't believe it."

  She shrugged as if what I believed was of no importance. For the first time I took a good look at the woman in front of me. She was only pretty. I might have thought her beautiful somewhere else, but the other women in the room had used up that adjective. Her blue eyes and dark hair provided an interesting contrast, but her features had small imperfections. I know: experts say that imperfections enhance beauty, but her eyes were too large, her nose was too small and turned up a little at the end; her mouth was too generous, and her chin, too stubborn. Now that I was straightened, she reached only to my chin. But her skin was smooth cream—I always found that peculiarly effective in a woman until I found out how much of it comes out of a bottle—and her figure was—well, I mentioned that before.