THE JEWEL OF PARADOX
A Visionary Spy Story by Gill Schwartz

 

 

Chapter Four

This is a turning point in the Alchemical Work.
The Prima Materia, the substance I am
called on to transform, has already been
identified and extracted from the morass of
day-to-day life. Then it was brought into Solutio,
to dissolve and meld its various components.
In Agitato I stirred and spun the Prima Materia
to blend and activate it.

Now it is readied to receive a new energy that
will empower this to become a transformative
Work, not merely a change of appearance.
Now I use my Philosopher's Stone
to catalyze the Work's ultimate gifts. .

The introduction of this germinating force is called:

SEMINATO or IMPREGNATION

 

 

They climbed the hewn-stone steps to the wide doorway. Beyond the thick, turn-of-the-century walls, the interior Hall was small, not overly clean and very simple. It was filled with curved rows of wooden folding chairs. Up front was a small elevated stage, barren but for a similar folding chair and an unstable looking card table with a green and gold cushion on it.

Although Jason's watch showed 7:03, the Hall was still nearly empty. He looked around bemused.

"I guess all these chairs show more people are expected. But I've got a hunch it might be a while before they show," Melissa said with a tight smile. She took charge and led the way to a forward row where they sat. The chairs were obviously designed for convenient folding, not for comfort.

Soon, a small man in a white sarong and dark jacket came out of the doorway to the side of the stage. He flicked on four huge overhead fans, walked around the Hall to light chunks of resinous incense in wall niches in each corner, then he left by the same doorway.

"I wonder if that's to aggravate the mosquitoes or drug us," Melissa sniped.

People kept circulating. Singles, groups, whole families, from grandparents to toddlers, would enter, sit, chat with friends, often exchanging nibblies, then leave again. But gradually, the Hall did fill.

The air grew misty, clouded with the incense. For part of Jason, the waiting became interminable. He mulled on his distress of being with Melissa. Another pointless assassination to carry out. Perhaps another unfulfilled possibility with this Wizard. He was ready for it all to be over with, to be merely more fragments floating around in his memory. The past, the only realm he felt safe with. Because he had survived it.

Yet another, deeper part of him was still felt connected to that radiant W.E.B. of grace. It gave him a trust, a faith that left him ready to be pulled up and out of this dark Whirlpool.

Finally, an elderly, dapper looking man came out of the same stage door and the background chatter dropped instantly. A short, chunky figure, he was elegant in a black silk knee-length robe over white Chinese-style pajamas. Long, well-kept locks of gray hair flowed from under his black sequined fez. The cappuccino-colored skin of his expressive face was wrinkled into an open smile.

He slowly mounted the stage's three steps with enthusiasm and pleasure, stepped up on the chair to sit, legs crossed, on top of the cushioned table. Seemed an odd way to present a talk, but Jason assumed Wizards could afford to be eccentric. For some long moments he sat there, eyes closed, head bowed, apparently gone within, his body gently settling into fuller relaxation. Jason followed his breath with his own as it slowed and gentled.

Melissa startled him as she grabbed at his arm to peer at his watch. "Dam near seven thirty and we're watching this old fart sleep. Too much!" she hissed. "But you know, I do feel high from that incense. They probably use it to make us think whatever he says is special," she snickered, and playfully pinched his arm.

Listening to her agitation confirmed for Jason that, for him, it really made no difference, how it went He was somehow suspended, poised between desperation and the hopeful anticipation that this could be part of his guidance. Waiting in that dispassionate dead center, that inner spacious null-place, he could witness. Everything was equidistant — killing this old man and flying back to the Order, or gaining illumination through him and being his disciple- and many other mutually contradictory possibilities surrounded him like beads to be selected and strung out on the cord of time.

And he knew, with a kind of cynical wisdom, that they were all equally pointless, without purpose or goal. Just the machinery called Jason Bardow carrying out its habitual programming. Stuff to keep him distracted while the Whirlpool carried him down. One thing was potentially as meaningless or as significant as the next. Unless he aligned with the W.E.B. here, in his life, there was no way of escape.

He listened to the rushings of the overhead fans, wind waves washing back and forth, chasing each other in a weaving pattern. He closed his eyes to contemplate the tidal counterpoint of sound. In the midst of all this, while the old man gathered himself, he was quiet, pain-and-anger free. His gut unclenched, softened. He floated in the wonderful, gentle calm.

Inwardly, Jason grew aware of an aura of aliveness radiating out of the old man before them. Tuning in with that energy, he was drawn even further inward, into that visionary part of himself he had recently come to appreciate more fully. He resonated with that energy and felt awakened, vitalized.

Jason sensed the Wizard open his eyes, and he opened his. The old man scanned the now nearly full room with kind familiarity, often nodding or smiling to one whose eyes he met. When his glance came to Jason's, first he smiled too. Then, seeming to catch something else, the Wizard looked into him rather than just at him. Jason felt it like a warmth brushing round inside him. The Wizard's expression shifted to serious. He nodded and gestured as if he were in discussion with someone. Then he brought his pensive look back to Jason's outer eyes and smiled at him kindly, nodding, with a look of recognition. He looked pleased.

"Yes, my friend. Yes...", he began speaking, his eyes still fixed on Jason's, his tone personal and intent. He coughed a few times and cleared his throat. As he spoke, he gazed from one to another in the audience, but often coming back to Jason.

"We have received the topic for our Talk this evening. Perhaps we would find it of interest to discuss this question of dedication. A question which touches us all deeply." His rich tenor voice was ripe with age and his honeyed accent gentled the edges off the consonants and tilted the vowels.

For some moments more he sat unmelodiously humming to himself, his head wagging from side to side. Strange, but all quite dignified and self- possessed.

"First, I must counsel you, my friend, I must advise you from the start that our viewpoint here is not the commercial one. We do not seek the common gold." He pointedly stared at Jason, his expression a gentle demand for total attention. For a moment Jason felt self-conscious, though he wasn't clear why. He was aware, though, that Melissa and he were the only Europeans in the Hall.

"There is no product here to buy or sell, nothing of mundane value. We are purely involved in soul-making. Believe me, if you find gold here, it is because you take part in its creation. And if you go out with the same lead you came in with, it is simply because you did not follow the means to transform it. Do I explain myself?" He grinned widely and gave a childlike clap.

"So, to take part in this soul-making, you must begin in innocence. You must accept the worthlessness of all your limited and lopsided efforts in trying to change this hopeless situation while being at odds with yourself. A concern that touches us all, our whole world, to the core.

"This soul-making we are involved in, this search for the meaning and wholeness in our lives, is of the most personal concern. It is a question of dedication, of self-devotion, we might say, because we must merge with our own shadow and reflection, the parts of ourselves that are hidden or rejected. Such a thing is possible, but only one who knows his own face and heart is capable of taking part in such a thing.

"No organization or society, school, church and suchlike, can bring one to the proper dedication. No one and no thing outside yourself can bring you to such a state. It is an inner action and only individuals have 'inners', if I explain myself." Jason listened to this with great readiness to hear.

"When we talk of dedication, it is this we mean. That you understand that as long as you put trust in anything other than what is essentially you and yours, looking outwardly for your needs, healings and answers, rather than into your true, whole self, then you are losing the way to that place of transformation. To be controlled by some thing outside you is not dedication, but possession, simply a kind of mania. When we talk about the

Call beyond the Spiral Festival we now celebrate, it is this inner calling we mean, of course.

"Dedication is the focus to reach the goal of soul-making. Leave everything else to be guided and provided for from Above. Aim yourself with that intention only, like a warrior throwing his spear, piercing the mark. But do not imagine that, because you are dissatisfied with your life as it is and so are motivated to change, that you envision this life of dedication is free of all these concerns and problems. You can not imagine its implications and possibilities, from what you've heard or perhaps fleetingly experienced.

"So...We have understood that this is not about profit and loss and that it calls for total dedication to your truth." The Wizard shifted and refolded his legs, gathered his wrinkled face into a grin and released a deep sigh.

He explained all this with an honest sympathy that made Jason stay open. It touched on some core part of him that came alive, that had been waiting to hear this. Waves of release expanded through his mind and body, relief and a kind of happy anticipation.

Jason glanced sideways and noticed that Melissa remained impatient, distant, sulking.

"This and That," the Wizard continued with enthusiasm. These are the stepped ways of the Spiral that take you up, then take you down again," he chuckled. "Of course, you have clung to the This and That until your mind has torn apart, leaving you aching and bleeding. And that has prepared you to receive these words.

"All your pretends, those self-dreams you must believe in order to survive. Enough! What you seek is beyond your present comprehension. It could never be what you imagine, not even by accident. Now, in your delusion of self-separation, it is as if you are other than your shadow and reflection. So you are frightened at the shimmerings at the edge of your awareness, a shimmering that is beyond the This and That. A place and state of mind that transcends duality's hold. An ending to the eternal partings and reunions with yourself. Your dearest friend, your total stranger. Know, this Other that you yearn for and that haunts is also you.

"Through dedication to your wholeness, you can learn to hold the This and That at the same time. That is a matter of Heart, a different way to hold them. It sets them free of the mind's cage of like and dislike, accept and reject. Then This and That can interplay, can dance. They can create new patterns and forms that will open wide the way to soul-making. Distinctions between the This and That don't disappear, but in the Heart way of holding them perception changes totally.

"We are drawn by the Light and pushed by the Dark. There is our guidance towards the Goal. Accept the utter hopelessness of all those fragmented pretends of your soulless self. Open to the utter wonderment of what awaits you when you and your Other become not-two. Then your base, leaden self will truly transmute into gold.

"You might find yourself dizzy at the mere taste of this truth. But this is the romance you seek in your life. This is the truest, highest adventure. Because when you and your Other -your shadow and reflection- are not separate but are thus joined, what fulfillment you will find. You will be One and can live out from your true-self, beyond the grasp of the Spiral. You will discover that your own aliveness is the source and goal of all that you seek.

"And from that state of being, wholesome relationship with others will naturally come of itself, unimpeded. Because for each of us these things are so. Across the gulfs of our separate forms and destinies, similar mysteries unfold."

In that moment, many of the teachings Jason had read, but never truly understood, came together.

A visionary knowing showed Jason and image of Jesus and Judas in that way, each being an offering to the other. Till then, he could only comfortably hold them each separately, only thus able to find sympathy for their individual uniqueness. But at that moment, holding them together in this consciusness that listening to the Wizard induced, he could comprehend full purpose in their roles towards each other. Not being opposed but complementary parts of the Divine Impulse. One bore the sorrow and one bore the pain. He could see them shifting places, self becoming other and other becoming self. Shadow became being and substance spirit's vessal. For them both, Jason knew, this was an offering up to Higher Purpose, an offering that allowed their fulfilling each other. As he beheld their two beings merge, a wondrous tremor swept through him at this holy paradox.

The old Wizard drew up his sleeve to glance at a heavy gold watch high up on his pudgy arm. "But now we touch on another point we might be guided to in some other talk." He joined the palms of his hands at his chest and slowly, reverently bowed from one side of the room to the other. He unceremoniously got down off the table descended the three steps and went back out through the stage side doorway. A buzz of enthusiastic talk flared up amidst coughs and the scraping of chairs as people jostled to leave the Hall.

Jason tingled with excitement, touched beyond his expectations. He glanced at his watch. Fifty-three minutes had passed with more ease and openness than he could remember since his childhood. He'd been in a wonderful, healing trance.

He eased back in the wood-slat chair, now somehow more comfortable, treasuring his state of mind. The Wizard's words and presence had left a satisfying truth with him. He'd been gifted, a precious seed planted in his waiting soil.

Maybe, Jason suspected, his inner turmoil had been a preparation to receive all this, a turning and preparing the soil as part of this soul-making. He recognized that behind his anger at the Abbot and the Order hid the futility of looking to anyone or anything else with expectations of its being a way to his fulfilling his aliveness.

For this planting too, I must prepare.
If left to the happenstance of random scattering,
the Seed might fall on sterile ground.
My Wizard's touch creates soil to nurture it.

 

"He made that so clear, so understandable," Jason thought, half-aloud.

"Clear?" Melissa almost snarled. "At first it seemed like some of the Order's teaching with the light and shadow sort of thing. And even some of the convent stuff. 'Let your eye be single,' and that kind of mysticism. But the more he talked, the more jumbled it got. I mean, we recognize the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, even if the 'intent of the heart' thing gets us off the hook. It seemed to get all muddled up in that merging he talked about.

"No, it wasn't clear to me at all. Sounded like that hoochy-koochy mysteries of the East stuff. Muddled and dangerous, I'd say. He's supposed to be a Wizard with spells and magical powers. Why doesn't he talk about those things instead of that incomprehensible 'soul-making'. It is wonderfully hopeless, she mimicked his voice, wagging her head from side to side. "I think it was all just P.R. for his Enlightour." She was really annoyed. he regretted letting her get to a bottle on an empty stomach. But not an unusual scene when we'd been together.

"You might be right," he said, to placate her, but a bit deflated and opened to a cynical turn of mind. "Maybe it was just his sales pitch and no other real point to it at all."

After some moments, they gave each other a 'whatever' shrug, rose, and followed the Wizard back through the stage side door to keep their rendezvous. They went down a narrow, dank smelling passageway, past a sink with a dripping faucet set low in the wall. They continued down to a door at its end with an amateurishly painted pink star on it.

They froze as they heard the old man saying from behind this door, not too gently, "I have explained to you at length, Mr. Kwim-Mu Abernathy, my attitude towards your Nearly Universal Brotherhood. It is a noble sentiment, no doubt, that moves your people. But I am not a sympathizer, none the less. Nor am I an anti-symapathizer. I accept it as it is in the twistings of the Spiral. But to continue to pressure me in this way..."

A deep and somewhat muffled man's voice interrupted, "We are simply asking for your further help in dealing with this threat of imperialism in Fu Ping. It will, eventually, effect us too."

"The only actions I have taken is to protect the people of Balangpur, which is my sworn obligation." The old man sounded exasperated. "And, to my view, there are really two threats of imperialism to Fu-Ping. Their slogans are different, but when you watch how they both effect life there, it is obvious. Both The People's Party, supported by our gracious northern mega-state, and the Western 'peace keepers' destroy the people of Fu-Ping, as they kill the forests, without conscience. I see no preferences to be made."

"Pardon my disagreeing with your kind self, but your Nearly Universal Brotherhood appears to be in alignment with the Peoples' Party and..." His voice dropped to a whisper, as if confiding a secret. They took a few stealthy steps closer to the door to hear better.

He stopped abruptly. Yes, they'd been heard, though they'd approached as quietly as training could demand. Jason mouthed "Damn," and stepped forward to softly knock on the door.

"Yes, please come in, my friends," the Wizard answered coolly. As they did, he shot them a sharp little smile from his cross-legged perch atop a dressing table across the narrow room. "So, you are the friends of Phineus that my secretary spoke with earlier.

"I am, as you know, Plang Mengli. This is a long time colleague of mine, Mr. Kwim-Mu Abernathy." He nodded towards the man seated facing him in the room's only other piece of furniture, a high-back chair. He was a large framed, muscular man with slicked down, straight black hair, dark skin, Arab features and wore a fine tailor-made suit. He smiled up at them with an expression of shrewd, patient interest.

"My secretary could not grasp your names, so kindly tell him them Plang requested.

"Jason Bardow" he responded.

"Melissa Alma" she said with some emphasis. The four of them nodded and smiled at each other.

He watched Plang's flowery gestures of face and hands with amusement as they talked.. Although his hands were near-square, they gave the impression of long, delicate fingers moving intentionally, craftily working in with his expressions and words. His thick, gray hair was shoulder length. His face was smooth shaven. Translucent, tawny skin set off his gray, slightly off-centered almond eyes. These were unexpectedly youthful and lively in such an age-wrinkled face. Jason guessed him to be in his well-preserved eighties.

"This gentleman," the Wizard indicated Mr. Abernathy with a coy smile, "this gentleman is trying to sell me an investment for my old age, as he says. But, as I have explained before," he emphasized with finality, "there are no profits to be made here, for myself or anyone else."

Mr. Abernathy heaved his weight up from the chair and moved to go. Though not a small man, Jason felt like one next to Mr. Abernathy's mass and energy. A huge revving engine waiting to engage. Then he turned back to the old man, his face taut, purposeful. "You realize that there is more than just our personal interests here. Please do reflect on what we spoke of.... But," he shifted his tone into good humor, "we have already taken enough of your patience. For now." He touched palms to his chest, bowed slightly to Plang, then smiled easily to Melissa and Jason. "It would be of pleasure to meet with you again," he told them and left.

"Yes," Plang said, turning his bright eyed attention to them with a grin, rubbing his hands. He nodded and smiled with satisfaction. "Your coming is auspicious for us. And all you see is yours," he intoned a formula of greeting.

"And, unfortunately, the message from my secretary was also not very detailed either."

Jason handed him the e-mail Phineus had sent after their talk, by way of introduction. The Wizard took it and read it with growing interest, then simple, unaffected delight. Jason watched him with a clench of guilt, a very unusual reaction for him. Usually he was enthused at the chance to live out of a fictional biography. He was so facile at rearranging the same fact to fit many assumed personalities and occasions, it was an added challenge to remember who he told what.

This assignment was the easiest in that way, and the falsest. There was no trouble in deceiving his old friend, Phineus, intoxicated as he was with his Wizard-teacher. And here he was deceiving the teacher himself. who he might minister the Sacraments to. Jason felt uncomfortably both deceitful and perversely pleased.

Jason explained that he'd contacted his old friend, Phineus about an introduction when he found that they would be in Southeast Asia on business. "He's certainly impressed with you," Jason told the Wizard. "In fact he's compiling a book from the tapes and pictures he gathered while he was here with you." A thoroughly pleased, innocent grin spread over the old man's face. "A book. Hmm. He mentioned in this letter. Perhaps with my picture on the cover. Very nice," he commented, pleased but restrained.

"But you must be certain," his tone grew serious," when you go back, tell Phineus to send me the full draft before he publishes. It is important not to start cutting or rearranging things out of my talks without realizing that every word and its place has significance."

He looked at Jason soberly as he spoke, and touched his own forehead, indicating with his eyes to attend to what lay beyond the words. Jason was drawn in and allowed himself to enjoy subtle feelings, a fuller awareness awakening in him. As if the Wizard were transmitting a higher consciousness to him.

Jason could sense it radiate around the Wizard, like an etheric bubble. Jason was very pleased to be there, in the Wizard's aura. This kind of awareness had grown clearer since his vision of the Cosmic Whirlpool. And now, with Plang grinning up at him like a little Buddha, he was certain of a deeper reality in all this.

The Wizard read his thoughts. "Eventually we realize that though we believe we have been stumbling on blind, we are really being led. Yes, my friend Jason, not only do we seek, but we are also being sought."

The old man's words were penetrating, self-sowing. They pushed the dross in Jason's mind out of the way. With the same powers he'd just used to read Jason's thoughts, his words, naked and pure, touched Jason's innermost parts.

I invite the seeker to unburden with a shift
In consciousness, awakening to the Mystery
In seeing with the Third Eye. Wonderment
Gives energy and purpose to the insemination.

"And you two," the Wizard inquired lightly, stretching open hands to them, changing his tone as well as the subject, "Are you also gathering material for a book. Or perhaps for another magazine article?"

Jason threw Melissa a glance. He answered. "No, our interests are more just personal curiosity. But we did read that article in KWIK. And I spoke with Phineus."

The old man paused. He moved his glance from Jason to Melissa, quizzically. "And how did you enjoy the talk?" he asked her.

"Well..." Melissa began, adopting a studious wrinkle in her brow, "I can't say I cared much for a lot of what you said. It seemed negative and confusing. I've studied a little theology. To me the point of it is to give people some hope. Your talk left me feeling there was nothing I could do and just no point in trying. I felt no hope in your talk at all. And no compassion."

"Yes, yes," he answered with syrupy tones, smiling benignly "we expect some little resistances. It is quite natural. It calls for a somewhat different point of view than the usual be happy approach. We take no offense. Or perhaps," he chuckled, "you feel that my talk was simply warm wind, as you say."

"Hot air," she corrected with a tight smile.

"Yes, of course, hot air," he repeated without reaction. "Though, perhaps Miss Alma, what you find as hot air, others might find expansive." He did a wiggly dance with his hands, like currents of air flowing back and forth.

"Could you just tell me simply what you were trying to say out there?" she demanded.

"Simply, yes. The search for God starts in the mirror and the closet. As does the search for the devil."

Jason grinned widely at the thumbnail teaching. Then he turned to give Melissa a sharp look, reacting to her tones. It didn't seem called for or professional. Apparently she had been touched too, with discomfort

"Sorry," she whispered to Jason. "Guess hunger's getting to me." She gave him her blaming grin.

He turned back to Plang. "I found your talk very worthwhile. There is something I wish you'd clarify, though. A couple of times you mentioned a Spiral. It caught my imagination. Is it something from your mythology?"

The Wizard looked at Jason oddly. "The Spiral," he said with slow emphases, "that swirls everything down along with it."

Jason was snapped back into his sense of being sucked him down into the oblivion of the Cosmic Whirlpool with strands of the radiant W.E.B. in his hands. In wonder, he realized he knew what the Spiral was, first hand. And the Wizard knew that he knew.

"Its your self-forgetting that keeps you trapped in the Spiral of time and circumstance, needing it, fighting it" Plang gently explained. "Your shadow is all that your pretend-mind cannot accept of you. All the parts of you that strain your tiny, social self-image. Your child-self and your god-self, your ruthless savage and your beloved self. All cast into the not-seen." He nodded at Jason with friendly knowing.

"And the reflection comes from being so inwardly ignorant that you desperately seek around you for glimpses of yourself. Unknowingly, you project your inner reality out to be mirrored back by the people and circumstance around you, imagining they are thus revealing you to yourself. So this whole realm is used as a looking glass." The old man majestically circled his index finger all around. "Every thing," he enunciated, "job or no job, love or no love, possessions or poverty. You use every thing to reflect that broken image you have of yourself. And, of course, mirrors can only distort even more by making things appear backwards from what they really are. So that everything you do or think inherently creates its own opposite and contradiction." He grinned like he'd told a good joke.

"Shadow and reflection personify our primal concerns in life -survival and self-esteem. They are the two grips the Spiral has on us, as long as we're still looking for the truth of our being outside of ourselves. That pretend-self, the one that is left over after the loss of shadow and reflection, can do nothing of what it imagines, not even by accident," he repeated the phrase from his Talk.

"But the barriers between the separated selves will naturally dissolve and all will become aspects of your wholeness when the Jewel of Paradox reveals your true face and heart." He touched one hand to his forehead and the other over his chest.

Jason was moved by the depth of what the old man shared. They looked at each other, eyes to eyes, open and connecting.

Melissa sharply cleared her throat.

"I am sorry," Plang turned to smile at her. "Were we making more hot airs? You have come this long tiresome distance to visit us," he to I'd her. Do you find something of interest here?"

"Well, yes, I would like to know why people come to hear you. What's all the fuss?" She shrugged.

He answered, almost sweetly. "Certainly there is really nothing to learn, no special technique or system. But if someone is ready, if they are prepared or if their resistance is lowered in some way, something might be transmitted to them. They can catch something from me, so to speak." He chuckled warmly.

"Sounds like it might be a germ kind of thing," she muttered.

"Yes, its rather a spiritual condition that I spread," he answered pleasantly. "And I wish that it would become a plague." He laughed with mischievous self-satisfaction.

The Lower mind cannot perceive the Higher.
What Third Eye can grasp in Oneness,
This and That still require symbol and metaphor
In my Work to foster the Seed's reception.

"But I sense there is something more specific that brought you. Why are you two really here?" the smiling old man persisted good-naturedly.

"We told you," Melissa answered curtly. "We're interested in some of those special things that article said you did. Casting spells, making magic, turning one metal into another, it said. But it didn't mention all this talking." Jason was a little touchy, too, with the Wizard's insistent prying, but he wished that Melissa had a better handle on her reactions.

"Oh yes. But your interests may not be your motives," the old man answered playfully, wiggling that index finger. "Never mind. I will tell you your purpose here."

He scurried down off the dressing table and took out a tattered blue and gold embroidered cloth bag from a drawer. "All the answers are in my Omen-bag," he confided, winking broadly. He squatted on the floor and scrambled through the bag. He took out a thick oblong book of rice-paper strips fixed together with two brass rings, its cover painted with jagged symbols in red and black. One by one, he extracted three small tops made of ivory or bone, the sides of their square bodies engraved with similar symbols as on the book.

He took out a small brass bowl, placed it on the floor before him and set the three tops spinning inside it one by one. Strangely, they never collided. With expectation, all three of them awaited the flat clunks of their dropping.

Plang examined the markings on their uppermost sides, then thumbed back and forth through the sheaf of papers. He smiled, started to speak, then faltered and the smile dropped. His expression darkened as he mouthed to himself what was written. Hesitantly, he went back to examine the tops, making little grunts of effort and puckering his forehead. He closed his eyes and rocked back and forth humming a litany to himself, making strange, half-formed hand gestures.

When apparently settled in his mind, he gathered himself with a sigh and opened his eyes to stare at them. He again began to grunt and wrinkle his face. Jason grew nervous. His thoughts flashed to his last assignment in Brazil. The penitant there had gotten wind of things and met him with matching intentions. The knife scar in Jason's gut served as a reminder that he was in that kind of ministry. Jason stared back at the Wizard without illusions. All possibilities must be recognized.

"So, the time has arrived," the old man finally said with a sigh. He struggled to his feet, as if suddenly weakened, aware of his fragility. He looked at their faces with curiosity.

"Your omens tell you anything interesting?" Melissa asked with mockery.

He nodded at her and answered with weariness, as though it were something they had already discussed. "As the Omens so clearly show, you have come to offer me release from the Realm of the Ten-thousand Things."

He crossed his hands at his chest, then opened them towards them in a gesture of offering, of honoring, with the strangest expression of tender bewilderment. "You come to assist in my Ceremony of Transition from Yi Yu."

My God, Jason thought in reaction to the phrase. He knows. That was their term, E.U., Jason felt certain. Melissa flinched and let out a gasp. "You are familiar with our Ceremony of Transition?" the Wizard asked.

"What's that Yi Yu?" Melissa hesitantly questioned.

Plang chuckled. "Oh, that is our term for this realm of dualities." He held his fists before him. "It means, if you have Yi -gold in one hand," he opened one hand, palm up, "then you have Yu -shit in the other." and he opened the other hand. He sure had that right. Gold in one hand and shit in the other. Jason grinned , but kept himself from laughing outright. "Of course, the Spiral would have you come now. Perfect. At the time of the Call too. Good, good. I have been waiting for you."

Melissa and Jason glanced at each other. He said, with forced seriousness, "No, Plang, we don't know about this Ceremony. We have told you..."

He broke into this disclaimer with a chant. "Release from the realm of This and That and the Ten-Thousand Things. It is shown by the Oracle that you are here to assist me in ending this bodily manifestation, if I explain myself." The old man did the arms to his chest bow towards his paraphernalia, then brusquely tossed it all back into his Omen bag.

The breath stuck in Jason's throat. "I'm afraid your sense of humor is a bit.., unusual for us," he said, trying to make light of it but not able to keep the tightness from his voice. "Are you trying to tell us that we're not welcome here?"

"Oh, no, dear friend," hePlang said with quick gentleness. "Don't deform yourself for this. You do not spin the Spiral. It is merely a matter of the way in which our lives are..." he bit his lip, searching for the word, "the way in which they interweave with each other. No blame. No blame at all." He chuckled, as if they now shared a singular secret.

Jason was literally beside himself. Part of him was in defensive reflex at being found out. Another part was jubilant with awe at the rightness about what was happening. A welter of the evokative conflicts imaginable. He felt both grief and lossloss and an unexpected rush of hope. He was certain that he had come to the right person for completely the wrong reasons. And he was uncertain as to what was really him and what was being spun out of yearning fantasy.

Melissa looked sullen, suspicious. "Now, wait a second. Are you telling us, to our faces, that we're here to kill you?"

Please," the old man crooned in long waves of oriental intonation, "please do not take this as a hurt." He lightly stroked her shoulder. She flinched back. "We only answer the needs of the Spiral," he said, gently.

"Soul-making is to follow your Call, wherever it leads. Then all we say or do brings us closer to the Mystery's unfolding. It becomes us, and we are of It."

This is primary teaching in Alchemy:
You are your own Path and Teaching.
You alone can grasp the wonderment
Of your Seed sprouting into fullness.

Jason was in greater confusion than before. Either the Wizard really was a master, able to face his own death in such an open, accepting way, or else they were being set up for Extreme Unction themselves. With their own participation.

"Listen, I tell you one thing," Plang said with intent to change the mood. "You mentioned hunger before. Tonight, this very night," his voice grew jovial, "there is a celebration for the Festival of the Call at the Royal Palace. Much good food. And all the notables will be there. You must be our guests."

Melissa brightened. "I'm certainly ready for a feast," she agreed. And Jason was glad for the change of subject.

Plang inquired about their hotel. He mentioned that it's manager was a follower of his and that any favor would be forthcoming if his name were mentioned. He cheerfully showed them out and down the passageway to the door into the Hall. "I will pick you up for the Feast then, precisely at ten," he assured them.

Melissa's face dropped. "Almost an hour," she moaned. "But I'm starving."

"Do not be distressed. At the Royal Feast there is always more than enough to eat, no matter how little food there is elsewhere," he assured her. "See you for after," he bid them heartily, and returned through the stage doorway.

Melissa and Jason stood looking at each other. He frowned at her, worried that her outbursts could jeopardize them. "Sorry for my display," she apologized. "But you know I always get nasty when I'm hungry. As long as we have to wait, I'd feel much mellower with a couple of drinks. And they might have something to munch at the Bar Attached." She used the throaty, insinuating tone she enjoyed. As they left the Hall, she clutched his arm and walked with her hips rolling foreword as if she carried something special in her groin, something precious, or a weapon. Nothing wrong that a little seductiveness couldn't take care of was the message she gave.

As they took another circuitous cycleshaw ride back and, finally, down the side-street of tiny shops to the Hotel Impeccable, Jason was relieved that she had nothing to say about his part in the meeting with Plang. They sat at a table in the Bar and drank and nibbled on bits of dried shrimp and oddly colored pastries served on little leaves. She refused to let him go up to the room for another quick shower. He didn't want to push her buttons, so he glumly watched her consume her Tears of the Prophet, feeling sticky and wanting very much to put on a fresh shirt too.

"He's certainly quirky enough, isn't he?" she commented dryly.

"He's just a harmless, strange old man," Jason soothingly assured her. "That whole Omen thing was a freak coincidence. And his talk with Mr. Abernathy made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with the N.U.B." Jason wasn't sure how much he believed what he said, and he surprised himself at how he protective he felt for the Wizard.

The Seed well set in nurturing soil,
Well tamped down to hold and protect.
New life begins to pulse and draw me
With next tasks and bright asperations.

"Yeh, odd maybe. But let's not underestimate him. Could be that he really did get our number, with that hootchy-kootchy bag of his or the grapevine. Whatever. He got the message."

Jason hesitated, uncertain how much of a chance he was willing to take with this. She was already lubricated enough to make things easier. He coaxed, "Let's drop for it now, and see what happens."

She lapsed into a monologue, mainly concerned with her looking foreword to meeting the King and other royalty, bubbling with their romantic possibilities, and complaining that the drinks were bigger and cheaper at the Hotel Angor Wat.

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Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2010