Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 5

  “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “I think you have an untrained clairvoyant gift.” Alma squared her shoulders as Lewis blinked. “That’s unusual, but not unheard of. I’ve known a number of clairvoyants. They’re more uncommon than more typical energy projection mixes, and for some reason it’s less common in men than in women, but some of the best known clairvoyants in history have been men. I wouldn’t say you’re unique.”

  “What?” Lewis sat up straight, the sheet pooling around his lap. She looked so awkward, sitting there in her thin teddy, biting down on her lower lip. He couldn’t snap at her. Lewis took a deep breath. “Are you some kind of Spiritualist?”

  “I tried to tell you,” Alma said. “I was trying to. But it’s complicated. At first I didn’t know you well enough and then….”

  “Then you were afraid I wouldn’t understand?”

  Alma nodded.

  Lewis reached for her hands, folded her strong fingers in his. He’d wanted answers, and he couldn’t complain now that he was getting them. “Ok. How about you start from the beginning?’

  “When I met Gil he was already a member of a lodge, the Aedificatorii Templi. It wasn’t an old lodge, but it had a pedigree.” Alma looked at him as though wondering if she should continue. “Technically it’s an offshoot of the Golden Dawn, founded by people who left the Golden Dawn when there was a horrible schism about twenty five years ago.”

  “We’re talking about a bunch of magicians here,” Lewis said slowly. “About black magic.”

  “No!” Alma looked indignant. “I should hope you know me well enough to know that I’d never be involved in something like that, never! Magic isn’t black or white, Lewis. Not any more than a machine gun is, or an airplane. It’s a tool that serves its user, just like any other. And what it does, whether that’s good or bad, depends on what someone is using it for.”

  Lewis nodded slowly. “My grandmother could find lost things,” he said. “It was a thing she did for people. She said it was a gift from God.”

  “Exactly like that,” Alma said. “There are some people who have these gifts, and it’s their responsibility to use them for the good of the world, for the good of humanity. To serve God in whatever form one prefers by serving His creation.”

  “In whatever form one prefers?”

  Alma bit her lip again. “The world is a really big and complicated place, Lewis. Lots of different peoples have tried to find the divine, and have made names for it based on what worked for them in their culture and time. You’re Catholic, but do you, personally, really believe that all Presbyterians are going to hell?”

  Lewis took a deep breath but didn’t look away. “No,” he said quietly. “I’ve known some good people who weren’t Catholic. Some really good people. I don’t believe they’re going to hell.”

  “My dad used to say that you should judge people by their actions, not by how loud they prayed,” Alma said. “I bet you’ve known some churchgoing people who weren’t so good.”

  Lewis snorted. “Oh yeah.”

  Alma shifted, the light through the window making a stripe across her shoulder. “So that’s all I’m asking, Lewis. Wait and judge us by what we do.”

  “We.” He didn’t need to ask. “You and Mitch and Jerry.”

  “Me and Mitch and Jerry.” Alma nodded. “We’re what’s left of the lodge, of the Aedificatorii Templi. Some of them were killed in the war and some of them moved on. It’s just us now.”

  “Just you.” It made sense. Lewis was absolutely certain she wasn’t making this up. It fit with the strangeness he’d seen, the odd sense that something was just a little off. He turned her hand over in his gently. “So what do you do?”

  Alma let out a long shaking breath. “Not much, lately. So very little. Since Gil died….” She closed her hand around his. “Not much,” she said, “in terms of saving the world.”

  Lewis looked at their linked fingers in the stripe of light across the bed. “Saving the world,” he said softly. It was absurd. Kings and dictators and presidents, demagogues and revolutionaries and anarchists with their guns, all lined up around the globe trying to tear humanity apart and against them what? This insignificant woman in her silk teddy? Mitch and his beloved passenger plane? Or Jerry with his missing leg and a doctorate in archeology?

  “If we don’t,” Alma asked softly, “Who will?”

  Lewis blinked. It was as though some enormous piece slid into place in silence, echoes deeper than his hearing could bear.

  “It’s being part of something,” Alma said. “Something a lot bigger than we are, vaster than all our lives. We are builders of the Temple, guardians of the world, just like uncounted ones before us and yet to come. It may be that the battles we fight are small in the grand scheme of things, but you know that there’s no such thing as an insignificant battle. There’s no such thing as a fight that we can afford to lose. You learned that in the war, right? There’s no unimportant village.”

  “Not when it’s yours,” Lewis said. The picture was there in his head, a cottage on the western front long since evacuated, long since abandoned to war. They’d sheltered there two days once, waiting for the weather to clear enough to get back to the aerodrome. Robbie had laughed because he’d carefully washed all the dishes they’d used, put them away in the cabinet. They’ll just get blown up when there’s shelling, Robbie said, but Lewis did it anyway. They might not. And someday maybe the people would come home. He was a guest in their house, an ally, maybe a friend. Guests don’t leave a mess behind them.

  Alma saw the change in his face, even if she didn’t know the reason for it. “You do know,” she said quietly.

  He nodded.

  “It would be great to be part of a big movement,” she said. “I’d love to have all the bells and whistles, the pomp and circumstance and the beautiful things and everybody’s approbation. But we don’t have that. It’s just us. We do the little things, we mend what we can, shore up the walls. We do what needs doing.”

  “Like being detached,” Lewis said. “When you’re sent on a mission with just a few men, and maybe nobody will ever know if you got through or not.” His eyes met hers. “But you do it right anyway.”

  “For honor,” Alma said evenly, her eyes on his.

  “For God.”

  “That too.” She closed her eyes and squeezed his hand. “I’ve been worried about telling you this. But I knew I’d have to sooner or later.”

  Sooner or later if they were serious. Sooner or later if he were someone she could love, not just a way of filling up the empty place in her heart with a hired man who didn’t matter. The thought made a tiny trickle of joy swell up inside him.

  Lewis swallowed. “So what do you…do? Are you a clairvoyant?”

  Alma smiled, and the light in her eyes could have powered Los Angeles. “Me? No. I can’t do any of the oracular stuff. I’m a strong ground. I’m not a half bad Hermeticist, but mostly I handle energy. Picking it up, putting it down, and anything that’s specifically geophysical.” Alma shrugged. “I’m a Taurus. May 17th. Pretty damn typical.” Her eyes flicked over his face. “You’re a lot more interesting.”

  “Thanks.” He supposed that was a compliment. “And Mitch and Jerry?”

  “Mitch is an Aries. He’s fire with a lot of earth in his chart. He’s a strong foil, a real powerhouse. Jerry’s a Cancer, July 5th. Cardinal water. He’s got a very fine touch, very good perceptions, a good hand with manipulation. He’s our scholar, but I imagine you’ve guessed that.” Alma smiled again.

  “Yeah, I could have gotten there,” Lewis said. He didn’t want to ask it, but he did. “And Gil?”

  Her smile faded. “Gil was a Libra. Balance and moderation in all things, or perhaps just being caught between. Stronger than Jerry but more finely focused than Mitch. He was our Magister, our leader.”

  “And now who is?”

  “Nobody.” Alma looked down at her lap. “We haven’t decided. We haven’t needed to.”


  “Because you weren’t doing anything.” Lewis nodded. He could see how it shook out. And so it was time to change course. “So what about this translation Jerry’s doing? What does it have to do with all this?”

  “Henry Kershaw was in the lodge with Gil before the war,” she said. “It was a lot bigger then, and a whole bunch of Air Corps types were involved. He moved on to a different lodge later, a richer one that was neutrally focused – interested in exploring magic for its own sake, to expand humanity’s knowledge rather than to channel the Work into specific positive directions. Scientific magic in its purest form. Try some things and see what works.” Alma snorted. “The problem with that is that sometimes the things you discover aren’t always put to good use. It’s like chemistry. There are an awful lot of good things that can be done. And then there’s the guy who invented mustard gas.” Her jaw tightened. “Right now Henry’s in a huge lodge here in LA. A lot of dabblers and movie types, people who want to be told they’ve got a lot of talent or who want to be involved with something forbidden and exciting.” She shrugged. “Not that it’s bad, but it’s not exactly a serious working group. They have beautiful costumes and do reenactments of ancient festivals, Bacchic revels with bathtub gin. I don’t have any objection to a few Bacchic revels,” she said, a mischievous expression crossing her face, “but a lot of what they’re up to is just overpriced parties. It doesn’t do any harm, but it’s not exactly the Great Work either.”

  Hollywood swimming pools and Bacchic revels were adding up to something in his head, something that looked a lot like Theda Bara dressed as Cleopatra with all the parts of the movie in that nobody could actually film. Lewis felt a slow blush rising in his face. “Like…what? Public gamahuching?”

  Alma turned bright red. “I’ve never done anything like that in my life. Truly.”

  “I never thought you did,” Lewis said quickly. Though the idea of Alma…. He ripped his head away from that train of thought. “So what does Kershaw need Jerry for?”

  “He says he has a curse tablet, a Roman artifact, and he wants Jerry to translate it.” Alma shrugged. “Don’t ask me why. Latin’s not exactly an obscure dead language. It’s not like Demotic or something really exotic that Jerry reads. He could find plenty of other people. Which is what makes me nervous. He’s willing to pay Jerry an awful lot of money and put him up like this.” She gestured to the ceiling of the Roosevelt Hotel.

  “For something that isn’t worth that much money.” Lewis nodded. “That would make me nervous too.”

  “I don’t want to say this to Jerry, but maybe Henry’s just doing him a good turn. Giving him work because he thinks he’s hard up because of his leg.” Alma shook her head. “Henry might do something like that. He was a nice guy, a good friend of Gil’s. Otherwise, I don’t see what the angle is.”

  “Unless this thing is stolen,” Lewis pointed out.

  “True.” Alma brightened. “Which would make sense. Jerry won’t go to the police and Henry knows it. But I don’t like to see Jerry get involved in something like that.”

  “I don’t see how you can stop him,” Lewis said.

  “I don’t either. But I can sure as hell guard him and make sure he doesn’t get in over his head.” Alma stretched out her legs, kicking them free of the sheet, bare and lovely and entirely distracting. “That’s why I said I’d come with him.”

  “Because you’re in a lodge together.” Lewis was trying to put it together. Like being a strike team, like being wingmen.

  “Because we’re family,” Alma said.

  Chapter Five

  Jerry paused in the lobby, bracing himself on his cane. There were too many stairs in the Roosevelt for his taste, two steps here up to the restaurant, three steps down to the sunken seating area, four steps to the ballroom’s foyer, never mind the elegant staircase that led to the mezzanine. He fished his watch out of his pocket, checking the time and getting breath and balance back. Three minutes till noon, and sure enough, a young Mexican in dark blue livery was making his way through the lobby. Jerry knew he wasn’t hard to spot, saw the moment the chauffeur spotted the cane, saw the flicker of his eyes as he confirmed the artificial leg. After that one glance, though, the young man met his eyes, pulling off his cap politely.

  “Dr. Ballard?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Kershaw sent me, sir. The car’s out front.”

  Jerry followed him through the lobby, aware that the younger man was holding back to match his pace, and let himself be handed into the back seat of a Packard sedan exactly the same shade of midnight blue as the chauffeur’s uniform.

  “I expected a Pierce Arrow,” he said, and the chauffeur’s mouth twitched once before he had it under control.

  “I believe Mr. Kershaw prefers a quieter ride, sir.”

  Touché, Jerry thought. The chauffeur put the car into gear, and eased it, purring, into the traffic. Jerry set his cane between his feet and leaned back against the cushions, trying to relax.

  It wasn’t just that he didn’t like Henry. He’d spent long enough in both academia and the Army to have learned how to deal — well, perhaps not comfortably, but efficiently — with people he didn’t care for. And it wasn’t just that Henry worked in a tradition that he considered unsound. That was Henry’s problem, and Henry’s lodge’s, and if they wanted to waste their time with amateur theatrics, that didn’t concern him. It wasn’t even a matter of trust, ultimately. Gil had trusted him in mundane matters, and for the rest, that didn’t matter unless he was going to share the work, and that was never going to happen. He’d told Henry that ten years ago, and he meant it still. And it wasn’t the money, Henry’d earned that — well, maybe he did envy what the money could buy, the freedom to travel, but he knew the business kept Henry from doing much more than buying up stray pieces that made it to the States. No, what was eating him was that Gil had always liked Henry, in spite of everything, in spite of his helping to break up the lodge the first time around, and these days he resented anyone Gil had known who was still alive when Gil was dead.

  And that was unsupportable: trite, sentimental, and exhaustingly pointless. Gil would have laughed in his face at the very idea, and Alma — No, better not to pursue that train of thought. Better not to pursue any of this, in fact, and keep his mind on the business at hand.

  If Henry said it was a curse tablet, that’s probably what it was. He’d also said it was Roman, but Jerry rather doubted that. Even if Henry’s Latin wasn’t up to the job, there must be half a dozen people in this fancy new lodge who could translate it. He was willing to bet that, along with the movie stars and the thrill-seekers who were there for the costumed naughtiness, there was an inner circle who knew what they were doing. If the tablet was Roman, and Henry wasn’t asking them about it, then there was something wrong about the tablet. If it wasn’t Roman — probably Henry didn’t recognize the source, and didn’t want to admit it to the others. He’d always been sensitive about having had to cut short his education.

  The Packard turned off the main boulevard onto a tree-lined street that wound up into the base of the hills. The houses were bigger here, with stone walls and iron gates — expensive houses, and getting more expensive the higher they went. Typical of Henry, he thought. But it was a hell of a place for a temple.

  They turned in at an open gate, between pillars topped conventionally with eagles. The drive curved sharply to the house, three stories of gleaming white stone with bright red tiles on the roof. The door was set back beneath a triple arch, and the chauffeur brought the car to a gentle stop and hopped out quickly to open the car door. Jerry swung himself out — he’d almost mastered the art of getting out of a car without a struggle, even if it meant moving in segments, like a camel — and as he got his cane braced under him, he saw Henry in the doorway. He hadn’t changed much, though perhaps the suit was even more carefully cut. He still had the beard he’d grown at the end of the War, trimmed now to a neat line that made him look like a Montenegrin
diplomat, and the thick wavy hair was subdued by a ruthless barber.

  “Welcome,” Henry said, and they clasped hands under the central arch. His hand was hard, callused: still working in the machine shop, Jerry thought, and managed a tight smile. Behind them, the Packard pulled away, and Henry waved toward the shadowed interior. “I appreciate your willingness to help.”

  “I was curious,” Jerry said frankly. “I still am. You never did explain what was so odd about this tablet that you couldn’t read it —”

  “All in good time,” Henry said, with a quick, wry smile that negated some of the pomposity.

  Jerry followed him down the hall, the knob of his artificial leg skittish on the tile floors. It was time Alma added another layer of rubber — past time, really, but they’d been in a hurry leaving Colorado. To either side, wide doors revealed expensive furniture, sunlight hanging in the still air; the sound of water was suddenly louder, and the hall opened onto a wide terrace that overlooked a semi-enclosed patio. A fountain played in the center, and outside a swimming pool glittered in the sun, and beyond it was a low-roofed pool house faced with a pillared loggia. Jerry tipped his head to one side, abruptly aware of a change in energy, and looked at Henry.

  “That’s your temple?”

  The other man shrugged. “It seemed — suitable.”

  “Oh, very.” Now that he looked more closely, Jerry could make out the symbols worked into the pool’s mosaic borders, could just sense the larger rosette of stones at the bottom of the pool itself. There were statues, too, set in the niches of the wall that defined the area. Most of them were copies, not unskillful, but one or two, the ones closest to the pool house itself, were true antiquities. “You didn’t.”

  “Let’s not argue,” Henry said. “My office is this way.”

  Jerry swallowed his objection, and followed. The office was at least half a library, two walls covered with floor to ceiling shelves, a third wall draped with heavy curtains. As he crossed the threshold, he felt the ghost of wards, but didn’t bother looking for the symbols.