Empire of Two Worlds

I’d heard of alchemists — alks — before, but naturally never seen one. They were something you threatened your children with. They were supposed to have evil magic powers and to indulge in nasty habits like sucking the blood from live babies. I didn’t know they really existed any more, but of course it would have to be in secret. There were city ordinances against “unauthorised or secret experimentation”, and popular fear of alks was strong.

“Alchemy is the only field of scientific endeavour left in the world,” Bec said quietly, trying to calm me. “Don’t believe what you hear about alks. Harmen doesn’t drink blood, and he can’t take away your will and make you his puppet by remote control. At least, I don’t think he can.” He gazed around him. “Just look at all this stuff! I bet this guy knows more electronics than anybody in the city.”

Some of the apparatus on the tables seemed to be modelled on discharge tubes of various shapes and sizes, some globular, some retort-shaped with several electrodes discharging into the same chamber. What was going on in those discharge tubes was weird, frightening, but kind of beautiful. Colours — all the colours you can think of. The discharge tubes — flasks, or whatever — seemed to have various substances in them which the electrical charges were acting on. In one, the stuff was splashing against the sides of the retort in colour changes of a definite sequence: black, red, white, then yellow with brilliant islands of green, then deep purple. It was hypnotic. I tore my eyes away, suddenly remembering the stories about how an alk can steal your will and put it in a little mechanical doll.

“What do you want here?” the alk demanded in gravelly tones.

“We’ve come to see what you can do, old man. What you know.” I sensed that Bec was unexpectedly discomfited in these new surroundings. He suddenly felt himself to be a clumsy mobster.

“You want instruction in the Hermetic Art?” Harmen seemed puzzled and wary.

“It’s on the level,” Tone said brightly. “They’re not here to bust you.”

“That’s right,” Bec answered. “Come on, tell us about it.”

While they were talking I noticed a screen in one corner of the room. The loud buzzing noise was coming from behind it. So I stepped over and peeped behind it.

There was a big, round globe. Every time the irregular buzzing noises sounded a massive jolt of power must have been flashed into it, because it boiled and glared with a brightness I’d never experienced before. Momentarily I was blinded. I staggered back, blinking. Harmen was expounding to Bec in high-flown language.

“Alchemy, or the Hermetic Art,” he said, “is the eternal science, older than any others and continuing after they die. With every exoteric advance in knowledge the alchemical operations can be refined and perfected further, the missing techniques can be devised anew and so the Great Work carried further forward on the path to completion.”

“And what would completion be?”

Harmen frowned slightly. “You want answers all at once? My own teacher did not divulge that until I had mastered four separate disciplines of experimentation.”

“So what? Tell me now.”

“You think it will help you? The aim of the Work is the Tincture, the Prima Materia, Hyle, the Sublime Substance that is neither mass nor energy and by the possession of which one can conquer space and time.”

Bec met this proclamation with a blank look. A faint derisory smile appeared on Harmen’s face.

The alk continued to drone on, but it was clear that Bec soon lost the drift for he suddenly interrupted: “Is it right that Tone got all those books from you?”

The other nodded. “I have amassed a fair library. Those history books I’m not interested in and didn’t mind parting with. The science and technology books I keep. The techniques that are applied to alchemy now come from the science that was developed about eight hundred years ago.”

He showed Bec a thick, ancient volume that he took out of a drawer. Stamped on the cover in old-style video-comp lettering was the title: Plasma Physics and the Secret Art.

“My library, however, extends right back to the primitive state of the art, beginning with the Emerald Table and containing such valuable works of instruction as The Sophic Hydrolith. I can carry a process through six stages, from the Raven’s Head to the Blood of the Dragon. But not, alas, to the Tincture. However, those operations refer to the pre-atomic stage of alchemy. The later manuals, such as the Plasma Physics and the texts on the dissociation of matter by high-frequency magnetic fields, have greatly extended the range of alchemical operations.”

I got the idea that Harmen was so pleased to talk about his work that it didn’t matter much to him that none of us grasped too well what he was talking about. Bec cut off the flow of words with a wave of his hand.