Many Dimensions, Charles Williams [black authors fiction TXT] 📗

had parted

from its original, they had allowed it. In which case a number of

Christopher Arglays must exist; the thought almost reduced him to

idiocy. But in the same way the past might, even materially, exist;

only man was not aware of it, time being, whatever else it was, a

necessity of his consciousness. “But because I can only be sequentially

conscious,” he argued, “must I hold that what is not communicated to

consciousness does not exist? I think in a line—but there is the

potentiality of the plane.” This perhaps was what great art was—a

momentary apprehension of the plane at a point in the line. The Demeter

of Cnidos, the Praying Hands of D�rer, the Ode to a Nightingale, the

Ninth Symphony—the sense of vastness in those small things was the

vastness of all that had been felt in the present. Would one dare wish

to be the Demeter? to be—what? Stone? yes, presumably stone. But stone

of an intense significance—to others; but to itself? Agnosticism

checked him; no one knew. No one knew whether the Demeter had

consciousness, or if so of what kind. Lord Arglay abandoned art and

returned to the question of time.

 

Frankly he was not going to risk perpetual recurrence. He had no

intention—his mind chilled suddenly within him as he thought of Giles

Tumulty. Would that insane scientist mind risking recurrence—for

someone else? If he could find someone who didn’t see the catch, he

would risk it quite happily, the Chief Justice thought, and stood up in

agitation. Some wretched laboratory assistant, some curator, some

charwoman even, anyone who would put that bit of gold on their heads

and try to will themselves back ten minutes. If his own thought was

right… Giles would watch the fellow thinking, doing, being, the same

thing for ever. But no—that would involve Sir Giles being there to give

him, whoever it might be, the Stone. Only a past Giles though, not the

present. The Giles whom the victim knew—there needn’t be a real Giles

at all. But then the victim would just disappear—he wouldn’t be there

at all. Well, Giles, he knew, would sacrifice anyone in creation just

to prove that. And would look, with a grin of pleasure, at the placards

announcing a sensational disappearance. In the horror of approaching a

conception of real hell Lord Arglay for the first time since his

childhood found himself almost believing in God from sheer fright.

 

He walked about the room. He had meant to try and think out the future

but this agony was too much for him. Who was the Palliser Giles was

working with? He flung himself at such works of reference as he

possessed—a Whitaker, a Who’s Who—and found him. Abel Timothy Palliser,

Professor of Relative Psychology at the University of Birmingham, born

1872, educated—and so on, unmarried. Career—and so on. Author of

Studies in Hypnotic Consciousness; The Mind as a Function of APproach;

the Discontinuous Integer. The titles, in his present state, seemed to

Lord Arglay merely sinister. He had a moment’s vision of two men

playing with victim after victim. Well, they wouldn’t succeed with him—they didn’t know of Sheldrake—they might trick Reginald, and though

Reginald was a besotted idiot, still even Reginald-“Ass,” Lord Arglay

said, “they’re in Birmingham,” and immediately went on, “How do I know

they’re in Birmingham? They may have taken a late train—but they

needn’t take a train! Fool that I am, this thrice infernal Stone will

do it for them! O damn the day when that accursed Giles-”

 

In the middle of the imprecation he stopped and made himself sit down.

A small voice within him said “Something must be done about this.”

After all, he might be wrong; the Stone might act in time in ways he

could not foresee. Or Chloe might have got Hajji Ibrahim’s words wrong.

His first impulse was to go to Sir Giles and stop whatever devilry

might be taking place. But, short of violence, it would be difficult to

stop Tumulty doing whatever he wanted. An alternative was to find out,

if he could, exactly what the powers of the Stone were, and the only

person who could tell him, so far as he could see, was Hajji Ibrahim.

At the moment, Lord Arglay realized, he himself was the passive centre

of the whole affair; the Government, the Embassy, Sir Giles, Reginald,

all their activities were communicated to him. It might be possible to

lay Sir Giles out; on the other hand, Giles was an awkward enemy and

might lay him out, and then the confusion would, he thought more or

less impartially, be worse. It looked like the Embassy first, and in

something under five minutes he was speaking to Hajji Ibrahim on the

telephone.

 

“I am Lord Arglay,” he said. “I wonder, Hajji, if you could spare me

ten minutes.”

 

“I will come at once,” the answer reached him. “You are willing to help

us, yes?”

 

“I am willing to talk to you,” the Chief Justice answered. “You will be

round here immediately? Good.”

 

It took him, however, when the Hajji arrived, more than ten minutes to

reach tactfully the two questions he was anxious to have answered. What

was the Stone? and what could it do?

 

“What is it in itself, I mean?” he urged. “Yes, Miss Burnett told me

its history—but what is it? Is it a new element?”

 

“I think it is the First Matter,” the Hajji told him, “from which all

things are made—spirits and material things.”

 

“Spirits?” Arglay said. “But this is matter”; he pressed a finger on

the Stone.

 

“Matter to matter,” Ibrahim answered, “but perhaps mind to mind, and

soul to soul. That is why it will do anything you ask it—with all your

heart. But you must will truly and sincerely.”

 

“In the matter of time,” Arglay, after a moment’s meditation, went on,

“can it transfer a man from one point to another?”

 

“Assuredly,” the Hajji said. “But you must remember that the Keepers of

the Stone have not for centuries of generations

laid hands on it, far less used it for such things. It has been kept in

profound seclusion, and now that it is loose I fear greatly for the

world. I think this Giles Tumulty has little reverence and few

scruples.”

 

“So do I,” Lord Arglay said grimly. “He has told you that he will

multiply it?”

 

“He has threatened us with the most awful and obscene sacrilege,” the

Hajji answered, trying to keep his voice calm. “He has sworn that he

will divide the Indivisible for his own ends.”

 

“But time-” Arglay, returning to his point, laid the problem before the

Persian but he got no satisfaction.

 

“I tell you since the Shah Ismail laid hands on it five hundred years

ago no one has desecrated it so,” Ibrahim insisted. “For he perished

miserably with all his house. How should I know in what manner the Holy

Thing permits itself to be used? Give me the Stone which you have and

let us seek the other.”

 

“Others,” Lord Arglay said. “The affair’s gone farther than you think,

Hajji. And it won’t be an easy thing to get it back from Giles without

worse trouble.”

 

“Cannot your Government seize it?” the other asked, but Arglay shook

his head.

 

“To be perfectly frank,” he answered, “I doubt if the Government would

go to extremes unless they realized something of its value. And then—I

hope for the best—but it’s no use blinking the possibility—then, if

they knew its value, they mightn’t very much want to give it back.”

 

“Ali Khan will raise all the deserts and bazaars against them,” Ibrahim

said-“Egypt and Arabia, Africa and Syria and Iraq and Iran and India

and beyond.”

 

“I dare say,” Arglay answered gloomily. “But Ali Khan won’t have the

Stone. And if it comes to raising the Government can do a little.

Besides, what do you suppose the other Powers would be doing—if the

whole of Islam was at war? No,

Hajji, I wouldn’t trust the Government so far as to tell them what it

can do.”

 

“I know,” the Hajji answered. “I did but seek for your thought. I have

told Ali Khan we shall never recover it by war.”

 

“What is worrying me,” the Chief justice went on, “is what devil’s

tricks Giles may be playing all this while and what I ought to be doing

to stop them.”

 

“Ask it if you will,” Ibrahim said.

 

“Eh?” Lord Arglay stared.

 

“Ask it to illuminate your mind and show you what your brother is doing

at this moment. The manuscripts tell us that it moves in the world of

thought as in the world of action. Only take care that you are not

snared in his thought so that your mind cannot return to itself.”

 

“If it can do all this,” Arglay said, “cannot it reunite itself and

return of its own virtue, if you will it so?”

 

“No,” the Hajji answered, “for it will do nothing for itself of itself,

neither divide nor reunite. One Stone has no power upon its Type unless

they are under the will of a single mind. Unless indeed-” He paused.

 

“Unless-?” Lord Arglay asked.

 

“Unless anyone should will that it and he should be with the

Transcendence,” Ibrahim said in a very low voice. “But I do not know

who would dare that; and if he presumed and failed he would be

destroyed and the Stone he held would be left in the world where he

failed. For the Stone is he, and will go where he goes and no farther.

But if he came to the End.. .. I do not know; these are very

terrible things.”

 

“And can none of the house of the Keepers,” the Chief justice asked,

“dare to will this thing to save the Stone from its enemies?”

 

“I have asked that,” Ibrahim answered, “but we know too little and too

much. We know we are not worthy, and we do not know what is its will.

Ali Khan desires to redeem the Stone

for the sake of his Faith and I for the honour of my house, and my

brothers in Persia for their glory or their peace, but we dare not

bring these things into the Transcendence.”

 

Lord Arglay was silent again. His mind told him the Persians meaning

but his being did not respond to it. Long since he had left these

questions aside, unless—as in rare moments he sometimes fantastically

hoped—the nature of law was also the nature of God. But if so it was

not in the Transcendence but in the order of created things. In a

minute or two he brought the talk back to the immediate necessities.

 

“Do you tell me,” he said, “that I can know what Giles is doing or

purposing?”

 

“The Traditions say so,” Ibrahim answered. “But it is a perilous thing

to undertake; for you must sink into the life of thought and you may

not easily return.”

 

“I am a worm and no man,” Lord Arglay said, “but if Giles can catch me

in his mental perversities-”

 

“Take care,” the Hajji interrupted him. “I think it is not your

strength that shall save you.”

 

The Chief Justice suppressed his words but he was conscious that a very

strong sense of pride was on tip-toe within him, anxious to defy Giles

and all his works. He waited till it had sunk down a little, and said:

“What shall I do then? For if any wretched charwoman is being trapped

to-night…” It was ridiculous, he thought at the same moment, how

his mind kept running on charwomen. Bat he had a vision of some thin,

rather harassed, grey-haired