XXIX
WITH APPROPRIATE SEEMINGS laid on, and Svartalf indignantly back in the sample case, our community left the plant on a company carpet. It was now close to four. If my FBI shadow didn’t see me start home around five or six o’clock, he’d get suspicious. But there wasn’t a lot I could do about that.
We landed first at St. Olaf’s while Pastor Karlslund went in to fetch some articles. Janice Wenzel, seated behind us, leaned forward and murmured: “I guess I’m ignorant, but isn’t this appealing to the saints a Catholic rather than a Lutheran thing?”
The question hadn’t been raised at the conference. Karlslund was satisfied with making clear the distinction between a prayer?a petition to the Highest, with any spells we cast intended merely to ease a way for whoever might freely respond‑and necromancy, an attempt to force our will on departed spirits. (While the latter is illegal, that’s mainly a concession to public taste. There’s no reliable record of its ever having succeeded; it’s just another superstition.)
“I doubt if the sect makes any odds,” Ginny said. “What is the soul? Nobody knows. The observations that prove it exists are valid, but scattered and not repeatable under controlled conditions. As tends to be the case for many paranatural phenomena.”
“Which, however,” Dr. Nobu put in, “is the reason in turn why practical progress in goetics is so rapid :5 once a correct insight is available. Unlike the force‑fields of physics?gravitation, electromagnetism, and , so on?the force‑fields of paraphysics?such as similarity and ergody?are not limited by the speed of light. Hence they can, in principle, shift energy from any part of the plenum to any other. That is why a vanishingly small input can give an indefinitely large output. Because of this, qualitative understanding is more important to control than quantitative. And so, a mere three days after learning about the time variability of hell, we feel some confidence that our new spells will work . . . But as for the soul, I incline towards the belief that its character is supernatural rather than paranatural.”
“Not me,” Ginny said. “I’d call it an energy structure within those parafields. It’s formed by the body but outlives that matrix. Once free, it can easily move between universes. If it hangs around here for some reason, disembodied, isn’t that a ghost? If it enters a newly fertilized ovum, isn’t that reincarnation? If the Highest allows it to come nearer His presence, isn’t that salvation? If the Lowest has more attraction for it, isn’t that damnation?”
“Dear me,” Janice said. Ginny uttered a brittle laugh.
Barney turned around in the pilot’s seat. “About your question that started this seminar, Janice,” he said, “it’s true we Lutherans don’t make a habit o? calling on the saints. But neither do we deny they sometimes intervene. Maybe a Catholic priest or a Neo‑Chassidic rabbi would know better how to pray for help. But I couldn’t get any on short notice that I dared co‑opt, while I’ve known Jim Karlslund for years . . . Speak of the, er, pastor?” Everybody chuckled in a strained way as our man boarded with an armful of ecclesiastical gear.
We took off again and proceeded to Trismegistus University. Sunlight slanted gold across remembered lawns, groves, buildings. Few persons were about in this pause between spring and summer sessions; a hush lay over the campus, distantly backgrounded by the city’s whirr. It seemed epochs ago that Ginny and I had been students here, a different cycle of creation. I glanced at her, but her countenance was unreadable.
Wings rustled near, a raven that paced us. An omen? Of what? It banked as we landed and flapped out of sight.
We entered the Physical Sciences building. Corridors and stairwells reached gloomy, full of echoes. Desertion was one reason we’d chosen it, another being Griswold’s keys to each lab and stockroom. Karlslund would have preferred the chapel, but we were too likely to be noticed there. Besides, Ginny and Barney had decided in their plan‑laying that the religious part of our undertaking was secondary.
We needed someone whose appeal would be unselfish and devout, or no saint was apt to respond. However, they seldom do anyway, compared to the number of prayers that must arise daily. The Highest expects us to solve our own problems. What we relied on‑,what gave us a degree of confidence we would get some kind of reaction‑vas the progress we’d made, the direct access we believed we had to the Adversary’s realm and our stiff resolve to use it. The implications were too enormous for Heaven to ignore . . . we hoped.