Kirlian Quest (30 page)

"There
is
a certain healthy ambiguity, isn't there! I merely want to know enough about you so that I can converse meaningfully about your situation. I presume there are both choices and romances in your framework, perhaps in combination. What is meaningful to you?"

/For an animation, you're pretty demanding!/ Herald flashed through a half-damped lens.

"I heard that, Slash. I mean,
saw
it. If you don't care to work with me, you can still animate someone else."

/No, no one else!/ Herald assured him quickly. /You asked what was meaningful to me? It is my wife, my Solarian child bride, who was burned at the stake for Possession, when she only—/ Unable to continue, Herald instead projected the image of Psyche, beautiful, writhing in the flames in the court of Kastle Kade.

"This was real?" Brother Paul demanded, appalled. "In this far future, the age of intergalactic empire and the concourse of myriad sapient species via the miracle of the transfer of auras, this happens?"

/The chained Lady,/ Herald flashed, realizing that he had broken down almost completely. Slashes were not supposed to go into shock, but he had done it. No wonder he was in animation Therapy! /Oh, help me, Patriarch! I am unable to function without her, yet there is great need./

Brother Paul spread his hands in another timeless gesture. "In the face of such a loss, in such a manner, there is little I can offer. It is evident that the current of barbarism still surfaces in your society. Unless you have some futuristic mechanisms to turn back time itself, or to recover the dead."

/Is that the nature of the interpretation for this symbol?/ Herald inquired with bleak irony. /That I may have love only by reversing time or reanimating the dead?/

"No, surely not!" Brother Paul protested. “There is always some feasible way to find relief."

/Then show it me! This healer needs healing!/

"Perhaps a Tarot reading would help. The Tarot certainly helped
me
."

/Well, this
is
the Temple of Tarot! But no mere animation can satisfy me long. I need reality, not illusion./

"The images may be illusion; the things they reveal are reality, however camouflaged from our initial understanding. What mode of presentation do you prefer?"

/The Cluster five-spot satellite spread./

"I don't believe I am familiar with that one. Five cards?"

/It is an old layout,/ Herald said. /Goes back at least two hundred years./

"Not quite as far back as I go, it seems."

Herald made a flash of apology. /Sorry, Brother Paul, I keep forgetting. But I can describe it. First you deal the deck into five modes—/

"Let's do it as you describe it," Brother Paul said. An object appeared in his hand, and he offered this to Herald.

Herald glanced in perplexity. /What is this?/

"Why, the Cluster Tarot deck, as I understand it. Did I misconstrue your intent?"

Suddenly Herald caught on. /Oh, an archaic physical deck! We don't use those antiques anymore./ But as he spoke, he remembered that in special circumstances they
were
used. He had used stone picture cards to treat the Ast child, Smallbore of Metamorphic.

"What, then, do you use?" Brother Paul inquired mildly, his deck disappearing from his hand.

/We use the Cluster cube./ Herald lifted one tentacle, and a cube appeared in its coil. Abruptly he wondered whether the cubes of the Ancients could be related to this. No, that was too fantastic. Had the Ancients had Tarot, it would have been a completely alien Tarot, unrecognizable to today's minds. /One face per mode, discounting the bottom. For the actual reading, the Significator is set on the bottom, and the five others are—/

Brother Paul raised one limb in a protest like a benediction. "Please, this modern technology is beyond my comfort. Will you not oblige an animated anachronism by using the old-style cards?"

/Actually, this whole set is animation,/ Herald pointed out. /I can't even be sure I'm in my own body; it could be merely another animation. So we don't need to use a deck at all./

Brother Paul produced the cards again. "Still, friend, humor me."

Herald flashed acceptance. /You must shuffle for me, Brother. I am not facile with such artifacts./ Artifact... what would some culture three million years hence make of a Tarot cube? They might assume it was a form of food.

"But you must shuffle, or it is not your reading. Your touch must arrange the cards for the dealing."

/Since you are my animation, your shuffle is my shuffle./

The Solarian showed his teeth. "You have a cynical alien mind, Slash! Are you sure you require therapy?"

/I require my bride!/ Herald flashed with sudden pain.

"It is possible to marry other than flesh and blood. Your bride could be a Holy Order. You could give your life utterly to God."

/Shuffle, Man of God!/

Brother Paul shrugged and shuffled, riffing the cards through his human hands and fingers with remarkable expertise. "Now... five piles?"

/Yes. They signify DO, THINK, FEEL, HAVE, and BE./

Brother Paul dealt them out, placing five cards in a row on the table that appeared magically before him, then layering five more on top of these, building up the piles. "I do not quarrel with your interpretations, but I find them somewhat abstract. Might the five piles equate, on a lowbrow level, to the more conventional WORK, TROUBLE, LOVE, MONEY, and—would that last be SPIRIT?"

/AURA, really. They're allied. Take religion from spirit, and you have aura. But surely you know that, since you invented the Cluster deck, and these are mere aspects of the root-meanings of the suits./

"I fear my perspective differs, and perhaps my motive." Brother Paul looked down at the completed piles. "I presume the next step is to locate your Significator?"

/The King of Aura,/ Herald agreed. /Aura is the Suit of Artistry, and I am a heraldic artisan. But I am also the most intense aura of the contemporary scene, so I qualify on that basis too./

"The most intense aura of all time, as I understand it," Brother Paul said.

/I need no animation-figure to flatter what nature gave me!/ Herald flashed irritably. /And it isn't true. My bride, Psyche, was the most intense aura, at the time of her enhancement. And for all we know,
you
were higher than I, since you existed before Solarians measured aura. The historical analysts assigned you a figure of two hundred, but that could be conservative./

"Or generous. In any event, to no point, since I am long gone. Were I searching for historical figures to whom to assign leading auras, I would certainly consider THE figure, the ultimate Healer of them all."

/Who?/ Herald asked, curious. He had not realized that there was, or could conceivably be, any entity to whom the Patriarch looked up to.

"Jesus Christ, the Son of God."

For a moment Herald was at a loss. Then he located an obscure recollection. /Oh, you mean the prophet of an archaic Solarian religion. There is a footnote on him in the Temple background survey course, and I believe some of the Tarot symbols are related./

Brother Paul smiled, shaking his head in apparent wonder. "Viewpoints certainly do differ! Were you aware that He often healed the sick and dying by the mere laying on of hands?"

/
I
do that,/ Herald said. /It is the manner of Kirlian healing./

"Could you raise the dead?"

/No. But I doubt there would be much point, after the brain decayed. And I can't heal all the ill, for some ailments are purely physical. But if your Christ did these things, it only means he had a stronger aura than I do. There would not be any qualitative distinction./

"No qualitative distinction!" the Solarian cried. But he calmed himself. "I think we had better get on with the business at hand. Here is the King of Aura, in Pile Two, Trouble."

/Or Pile THINK, in my vernacular. That is an ill omen for the reading; my problem is FEEL./

"Perhaps the Tarot is telling you that the solution lies in your thinking rather than in your emotion."

/It is all an infernal superstition,/ Herald grumbled. /Thinking will not bring Psyche back, and I do not care to forget her./

"We can at least explore the possibilities."

/If we must. The Significator face is at the bottom facet of the cube, and the Problem Definition on the top facet. How this adapts to a physical layout—/ He paused. /Without the cube, I am not certain how—/

"Oh, we can adapt it," Brother Paul said. "I shall place the Significator card here, and cross it with Definition. We do deal the cards in order following the King of Aura, as they appear in the pile?"

/I suppose so. It is so hard to translate. The Tarot cube normally forms the whole display./

"It strikes me that you moderns have been spoiled by your technology. Tarot is not a thing to be assimilated from a platter. You must interact with it, your physical contact with the cards imbuing them with your personality. Only then can it work for you and give a true reading rather than a random collection of pictures." He studied the table and the cube that Herald had made appear. "We can lay down the remaining four cards in clockwise rotation, South, West, North, East, representing the four sides of your cube. The topology will be the same."

/I don't comprehend how—/

"Like this." And Brother Paul placed the cards, face down, a mock up. "You might perceive the pattern as a cross, or the four directions of the compass—" He broke off, glancing at Herald. "But those are forgotten concepts to you, aren't they?"

/How could they be?/ Herald asked sullenly. /Any concept you express has to be drawn from my own mind./

"Perhaps. But the unconscious is a tremendous wilderness. That is what the Tarot taps, that vast reservoir of knowledge and conjecture that lies within each person. Tarot is a tool to bring out truth that may otherwise be suppressed by the conscious mind because it may be unpleasant." He paused again, reflectively. "
Most
unpleasant," he murmured.

Herald felt a chill that was reminiscent of what he had felt on hearing the prediction of Smallbore of Metamorphic. /What happened to you, there on the Animation Planet?/ Herald, like sapients of the past two millennia, was quite curious about the mystical experience that had led to the creation of the famous Cluster deck.

But Brother Paul only smiled enigmatically. What answer could he give? For he was a mere animation of Herald's mind, and the ultimate secret of Tarot was not there.

Herald looked at the layout, and suddenly he saw that it did indeed duplicate the faces of the cube. It was as though the four sides had been spread out and detached, with the nether face half buried under the Definition card. Yes, this was after all comprehensible!

 

 

"Now I presume the four outer cards represent Past, Present, Future, and Destiny," Brother Paul said. "This is like a simplified Celtic layout, or a modified elemental one."

/Celtic? Elemental?/

"The Celtic was a very popular ten-card spread in my day, widely used for fortune-telling. It could hardly have derived from the ancient Celts, since they had faded from the scene long before the Tarot deck was created in the fourteenth century, despite what certain enthusiasts liked to claim. Legends of the great antiquity of Tarot abounded, but they seemed to be without substance. By 'elemental' I mean the classic Solarian elements, FIRE, AIR, WATER, and EARTH, not true elements at all by the definitions of science, but serviceable evocative composites equating to your DO, THINK, FEEL, and HAVE. Though of course you use five, not four, elements. As did the ancients."

/The Ancients!/

"I suspect we are on different tracks. My point is that this spread of yours is oriented on sets of five—five piles, five display cards, five suits—and so this is a very basic mechanism, like a distillation of the less precise mechanisms in use in my time. Tarot has indeed evolved."

Herald considered. He had thought of Tarot as a tool, not an aspect of the fundamental nature of things, but realized that he was in the presence of an entity who took it very seriously. It hardly seemed to matter that this was itself a Tarot animation; the personality and perspective of Brother Paul was making itself felt. In this framework, the Solarian was real, and had to be treated as real. /Let's go ahead with the reading,/ he flashed. /It may have something for me after all./

Brother Paul dealt out the cards, placing the Definition across the Significator, and the others clockwise around the outside, starting from the bottom. Now the layout had images, and possessed potential meaning. He contemplated it. "The King of Aura is defined by the Three of Aura, labeled Perspective. My, the meanings
have
changed since my day! However, this card is so appropriate it cannot be coincidental."

/Nothing about this spread is coincidental!/

Brother Paul smiled agreement. "Nothing about the Universe is coincidental. It is only our ignorance that makes things seem so. If we but understood the ways of God—"

/Do you seek to proselytize?/

"Oh, in the interest of knowledge and harmony— But I comprehend your objection. You do not wish to be burdened with my archaic concepts of religion, and certainly I do not wish to so burden you. We shall proceed with the reading." He glanced down. "Here below is the representation of the Past a card labeled Vision." He paused. "Ah, the vanity of the flesh! This
is
the card I developed, that caters to my overweening love of literature, which is the vision of imagination. A Fair Field Full of Folk."