Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (3 page)

 
          
He
was looking for something, that much he knew, but whatever it was, he did not
find it there
—
or at least, he did not recognize it if he did. More and
more as the weeks passed, Colin realized that this was not the place that he
belonged. He did not fit in here
—
not into this bustling
New York
, and certainly not among
the scraggly poets and alienated philosophers in the coffeehouses of the modern
Bohemia
.

 
          
Colin
instinctively disliked them and their rebellious culture even as he feared that
the emotion he felt came not from what they were but from a lack within himself.
The plaintive "folk" singers at places like Gerde's
Folk
City
only made him remember how
much he preferred the savagely constrained passions of opera to the almost
atonal folk music that filled
Folk
City
and venues like it.

 
          
But
as he found himself
—
against all training
—
dismissing those youngsters
who had never gone to war as a generation without discipline, he was finally
disturbed enough by his feelings of anomie to share them with the only other
exoteric member of his Order currently in
America
: Dr. Nathaniel Atheling.

 
          
It
was a raw grey day, and the wind whipping in off the river cut like a knife.
The yellow-brick bulk of
Bellevue
Hospital
looked unpleasantly
animate, as though at any moment it might get up and walk. This far downtown,
the
Brooklyn
Bridge
, not the
Empire
State
Building
, dominated the skyline.
Colin shivered as he hurried toward the glass doors marked ADMITTING.

 
          
Atheling
had been a member of the Order's Lodge in
Cairo
, but
Cairo
had not been his home. He'd
come to the
United States
immediately after the war;
one of the stateless persons that the global conflict had created. Atheling had
a medical background, making the transition easier
—
once he had re-qualified, he
had taken a staff position at
Bellevue
.

 
          
As
the rich and even the middle class continued forging inexorably uptown, Lower
East Side hospitals like Bellevue bore more and more of the brunt of the poor
and immigrant population's needs for physical as well as mental health care.

 
          
Like
that of most men his age, Colin's childhood had been scarred by the Great
Depression. Poverty was foreclosure and debt, clear-cut and easily recognizable.
He didn't think of what he saw here as destitution, but he knew it made him
uneasy. Odd to think of
America
as a country of the poor.

 
          
Dr.
Nathaniel Atheling had a small office on the third floor of the main building.
Colin found it without difficulty and knocked on the door.

 
          
Atheling
was a spare, slender man, closer to fifty than to forty. His dark hair was
several weeks late for a haircut, shot with early silver, and when he glanced
up Colin could see that his eyes were a curious light amber color, nearly gold.
The only thing at all out of the ordinary about his appearance was the scarab
pendant in bright blue
faience
that hung from a silver chain about his
neck, resting against his sober institutional necktie. He was seated behind a
desk covered with paper.

 
          
"Ah.
It's
three o'clock
. That means you must be Colin MacLaren," Atheling
said. His voice held no trace of any accent, and only a careful precision
hinted that English might not be his native tongue.

 
          
As
Colin closed the door behind him, Atheling raised his right hand in what might
have been a casual gesture. Certainly any of the Uninitiated who saw it would
mistake it for such, as they were meant to: it was the Salute given from an
Adept of a higher grade to one of a lower.

 
          
Reflexively
Colin returned the salute, lower to higher, and sat down in the uncomfortable
plastic chair on the other side of Atheling's desk.

 
          
"Forgive
me for receiving you in these surroundings, Dr. MacLaren, but my days are long,
and you had indicated that this was a matter of some . . . personal
urgency."

 
          
"A
neat way of putting it," Colin said. "And please, drop the title.
Call me Colin. It's a Ph.D., not a medical degree. I don't really feel
entitled."

 
          
"As
you wish, Colin. Now, if you were one of my patients, I'd ask you to tell me
what seems to be the trouble, and ask you to be honest, no matter how fantastic
the events seem to you. And I suppose that's still as good a way as any to
begin. ..."

 
          
That
meeting was the first of many
—
though Colin had gone first to Atheling as a Brother in the
Order, he'd quickly found friendship as well as spiritual guidance and sound
advice. It had been Nathaniel who had finally suggested that New York's
nearly-familiar streets might not be what Colin really needed, and had
suggested a course of sunshine and sea air, in a place as different from New
York as Colin could find.

 
          
He'd
also pointed out what Colin already knew: that in less than two years, Colin
had managed to dig himself a cozy rut ... or bunker
—
and it was mental
comparisons like this that had convinced Colin that Nathaniel's advice was
sound. He wasn't building to face the challenge of the future; he was retreating
from it in confusion and perhaps even fear. He needed to get out into the world
again; force himself to confront it as it was now and stop setting it against
the backdrop of his memories.

 
          
The
means were obvious. He was lecturing nearly every evening now, on wide-ranging
subjects that followed his lifelong interests, and he always felt most at home
at University. A long time ago
—
in a life that seemed now as if it had belonged to someone
else
—
he'd
even planned to make a career of teaching. Why not pick that place to reenter
his interrupted life? On a college campus he'd be immersed in the tidal surge
of the here and now, his daily life filled with youngsters whose eyes were
fixed on the future.

 
          
It
was a good solution, though it took a surprising amount of courage to
implement. In the fall of'59, Colin finally nerved himself to take the first
step.

 
          
Though
Colin's academic credentials were a little rusty after ten years spent first
with the Office of Strategic Services and then the Army of Occupation, they
were still fairly attractive to prospective employers, and the lectures he
gave, unorthodox though they were, were a point in his favor. In the end he was
able to choose among several offers. Mindful of Nathaniel's advice to take
something as far from what he was accustomed to as possible, he turned down
offers from
Columbia
University
and
Boston
College
, and signed a contract with
the
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
.

 
          
The
reluctance that he felt as the date approached to leave his cozy apartment to
its new tenant convinced him more than anything else that Nathaniel had been
right; Colin needed more of a change of scene than
New York
had been able to give him.
He needed to make a new start, in a new place.

 
          
California
.

 
          
The
silent campus
—
a vision in pale brick and prestressed concrete
—
had the ancient dreaming air
of a sun-drenched Athenian city. The highest visible point in the brilliant
Mediterranean-esque landscape that stretched before him was the
campanile/clock-tower which added its quaint Graustarkian accent to the
panorama of campus buildings that rose up beyond Sather Gate. There was no
traffic on Bancroft; the street scene was infused with that peculiar midmorning
hush that Colin MacLaren had already learned was a distinctive feature of the
San Francisco Bay Area. Only he mustn't call it the
San Francisco
Bay Area, Colin had also
already learned, just as he mustn't call the city across the bay
Frisco.
It
was "
San Francisco
"
—
everyone within a hundred
miles simply called it "the City," just as if no other city existed
—
and the "Bay
Area." If Colin meant to fit in here he'd do well to pick up the natives'
habits of speech as soon as possible.

 
          
And
he did mean to fit in here, Colin promised himself, into what pundits called
the modern Lotos-Land, the
Golden
State
. He was through with war in
all its forms
—
hot war, cold war, forgotten war, undeclared war
—
and meant to turn his back
on everything he'd learned from that most unforgiving of all teachers. As the
gospel hymn said, he wasn't going to study war no more. Here he would shake off
the ghosts of the past.

 
          
Here
and now, his life would begin again.

 
          
Colin
stood a moment longer on
Telegraph Avenue
staring at the lacy wrought
iron gate of the main entrance to the
University
of
California
at
Berkeley
campus. Despite its placid
appearance, there was an air of expectation about the campus, the sense of
great things afoot.

 
          
Realizing
he was in danger of loitering, Colin shrugged and took himself across the open
space that separated him from Sather Gate. Signs informed him that something
called
Sproul
Plaza
was under construction, to
be finished next year.

 
          
The
campus was enormous, stretching for miles in every direction. Within its bounds
were several stadia and athletic fields, a Greek Theater, and many of the most
brilliant minds in the arts and sciences. Though he'd been a
Berkeley
resident for a little over
a month, he'd been too occupied with tying up his affairs back East and
settling into his rented bungalow to take a trip over to the campus. He'd been
here last winter for a preliminary interview, but that had been in the depths
of the
California
winter, and it had rained
most of the time. Now he was seeing the university campus as it was meant to be
seen
—
a
canvas made of cement and stone for sunlight to paint upon. Though Tolman Hall
—
which housed the Psychology
Department
—
was all the way across the campus on
Hearst Avenue
, Colin relished the walk
through the quiet modern campus.

 
          
The
sleek modern buildings in concrete and pale brick that he passed oddly evoked
the air of a medieval university city while looking as if they were already at
home in the future. Few students were in sight as Colin crossed the walk.
Though Freshman Orientation began next week, as far as his body could tell, it
was still high summer here. Colin had left his ancient trenchcoat back in his
closet
—
he
hadn't been able to bring himself to wear a topcoat, and his jacket felt
uncomfortably warm, but something in his nature resisted appearing on campus in
informal dress. After all, Colin assured himself, the chancellor and the board
were known to be very conservative, and his future students would hardly
respect him if he were dressed like a beatnik. Psychology was a field where one
got enough odd looks anyway, without any need to cultivate personal
eccentricity.