“What’s hermetica?”
“Magical studies, named after the legendary founder of magic, Hermes Trismegistos — Thrice Great Hermes.” He reached up to the shelf and removed, with some effort, a large volume bound in black leather; Niall had time to read its title: Encyclopedia of Hermetic and Alchemical Sigils, before it was placed on one of the tables that stood in each angle of the hexagonal gallery. The book’s edges were uncut, and the handmade paper was thick and unglazed.
The old man clearly knew what he was looking for; he quickly located a page toward the end of the volume. “I think this is what you are looking for.”
The symbol on which he had placed his finger was unmistakably the same as the one on the pendant, in spite of some slight variations in shape.
Niall bent forward eagerly, then looked up, his face wrinkled in disappointment. “What language is that?”
“German.”
“And what does ‘rache’ mean?”
“Revenge. The text says that this is a sigil dating from the thirteenth century, representing revenge. The lower part represents the wings of a bird of prey. The upper part represents the horns of der teufel, the devil. The bird of prey is winging toward its prey, carrying a terrible vengeance on its back.”
As Niall stared at it, he felt a crawling sensation in the nerves of his scalp, as if someone had poured cold water over his head; it was like a premonition of danger. He examined the sigil intently, as if he could force it to give up its secret. “Does it say whether this was a famous symbol?”
“It doesn’t, but the answer is almost certainly no. A symbol like this would be known only to students of hermeticism.”
“Then how do you suppose Skorbo’s killers knew about it?”
“That is something I cannot answer.” He replaced the book on the shelf. “Perhaps they were students of magic.”
As he followed Steeg back toward the elevator, Niall experienced a deep sense of frustration. It seemed absurd to be surrounded by so much knowledge, and yet to be baffled by a simple question.
“Why should anyone want to study magic?”
“Because it is far older than natural science.”
“Yes, but. . . but surely it’s just a kind of superstition?”
“That is what most people believed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But in the twenty-first century, many anthropologists came to a different conclusion. They studied primitive tribes and concluded that some of them were able to perform certain feats of magic — rainmaking, for example.”
Niall shook his head. “Do you believe that?”
The old man smiled apologetically. “I do not believe or disbelieve. I am merely a machine. But Torwald Steeg was a rationalist, and he refused to believe it.”
As they stepped into the elevator, Niall asked: “And how is magic supposed to work?”
“All primitive peoples say the same thing — that magic is performed with the help of spirits.”
“But spirits don’t exist, do they?”
The old man smiled. “Torwald Steeg certainly did not think so.”
The sensation of descending brought a return of the feeling of nausea; waves of heat seemed to be rising from his stomach. Niall pulled a folding seat out of the wall and sat down.
“Are you feeling ill?”
“Just tired.” Niall closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. “One of Skorbo’s killers struck me with his will-force, like a spider.”
“Although he was, in fact, a human being?”
Niall controlled his impatience. “Of course.”
“I see.” It was at times like this that it was obvious that the old man was a machine; he had no power to register astonishment. “In that case, I have a suggestion that might help.”
The elevator rattled to a halt. As they stepped out, the old man politely held the door for a middle-aged woman in a tweed skirt; she gave them a tight smile as she stepped past them. In response to the silence around them, Niall automatically lowered his voice.
“Suggestion?”
The old man waited until they were outside before he spoke. “If your mind has been in contact with the mind of the killer, then he has left us a clue to his identity.”
“How?”
“Every event is bound to leave a trace — that is one of the basic principles of science. And it applies to mental as well as physical events.”
Niall shook his head in bewilderment. “But how could you see a mental trace. . . ?”
“It can be done — with the aid of the peace machine.” Again Niall’s scalp tingled, but this time with pleasurable excitement. It was the sensation he experienced every time he approached the tower, the excitement a child feels when he hears the words “Once upon a time. . .”
His expression must have betrayed his feelings. The old man said: “Do not be too hopeful. The art of self-reflection is difficult and dangerous. But you will have to learn sooner or later. Come.”
This time the old man led the way into the column. A few seconds later, they stepped into the hall of the peace machine.
This room was another of the Steegmaster’s magical creations. Like the library, it was far too large to be accommodated in the tower. It was a broad gallery, about a hundred feet long, whose walls were covered with a rich brocade of blue and gold. At regular intervals there were pedestals with busts and statues. But the city Niall could see through its round-arched windows was not the spider city; to begin with, it was bathed in a sunlight so dazzling that waves of heat shimmered over its houses. The square outside contained a market, whose stalls were covered with bright-colored canopies, and the people who crowded between them were also dressed in bright garments; many of them carried swords. The city was surrounded by turreted walls, and beyond these there were green hills with terraces and vineyards.
But Niall was now so familiar with this panorama of fifteenth-century Florence that he paid it little attention. His eyes were fixed on the machine of blue-colored metal that stood in the center of the gallery. This consisted of a bed or couch above which was suspended a blue metal canopy whose lower face was covered with frosted glass. Even to look at it made Niall feel serene and relaxed. This was the peace machine, invented in the mid-twenty-first century by Oswald Chater and Min Takahashi, and capable of inducing a state of consciously controlled relaxation equivalent to dreamless sleep.
But as he was about to climb onto the couch, the old man raised his hand.
“Wait. Before you do that it is important for you to understand the principles of controlled self-reflection. Please sit down.” He pointed to a bench that ran between the busts of Aristotle and Voltaire. “To enter the state without preparation could be highly dangerous.
“You know that the first thought-reading machine was invented in the early 2090s by a team at the University of Albuquerque, led by W. S. K. Sawyer. It was Sawyer who discovered that habit-memories have a molecular structure similar to that of DNA, and that an electric current can cause them to discharge. When you try to remember something without success, this is because you are too tired to cause the memory molecule to discharge.
“One day, an assistant of Sawyer’s named Carl Meiklejohn was amplifying the memory circuits of an albino rat, and feeding them through to his own temporal cortex by means of electrodes implanted in his scalp. Suddenly, he discovered that the rat had formed a strong attachment to a pretty lab assistant named Annette Larsen. Now it so happened that Meiklejohn himself was in love with Annette, but had been too shy to show his feelings. So he naturally enjoyed studying the rat’s feelings toward her. In fact, he enjoyed it so much that he began to make a habit of staying behind in the laboratory so he could play the memory circuits over and over again. One evening, when he was very tired, he fell into a half-sleep as he was playing the memory circuits. And in this state, he seemed to receive a strong impression that the girl was just as interested in him as he was in her. When he returned to his normal waking state, he was inclined to believe that he had been dreaming. But he had also noticed something else while he was half-asleep: that the girl had a circular patch of brown skin on her neck between her shoulder blades. The following day, he walked up behind her when she was peering down a microscope, and saw that she had a patch of brown skin precisely where he had seen it the night before. This so impressed him that he asked the girl to go out to dinner with him. She accepted, and that night they became engaged.
“Now Meiklejohn thought a great deal about this experience. He asked the girl if she had ever allowed the rat to walk over her shoulders and the back of her neck; she said of course not. In fact, she had seldom taken it out of its cage. So how could the rat’s memory contain the knowledge of the patch of brown skin? Now Meiklejohn reached an important conclusion. He recalled that the rat’s memory had also told him that Annette was interested in him, and that this had proved to be true. So was it possible that the rat’s memory contained far more than mere physical impressions of the girl: that because it was attached to her, it had somehow read her mind? And Meiklejohn, in turn, had read the rat’s mind when he was half-asleep, and therefore in a state of deep relaxation.