The Adept (19 page)

Then, suddenly, the pencil twitched, the eyelids fluttered and then opened to merest slits, and the pencil hand began sketching feverishly. In far finer detail this time, the foot of the hospital bed emerged from the shaded grey pencil strokes. And at the foot of the bed, not on the chart itself but writ bold on a strip of tape across the top of the clipboard holding the chart, could be read a name:
Talbot, Gillian.

As Peregrine wound down and the pencil stopped, Adam touched his hand again.

“Are you finished?” he asked softly.

At Peregrine’s dazed nod, Adam glanced at McLeod. “All right. When you’re ready, come back to full, waking consciousness. Take your time, because you’ve been pretty deep.”

He turned the sketch pad so he and McLeod could look at it as they waited for Peregrine to come back. After a few seconds, the artist let out a very heavy sigh and opened his eyes.

“Are you sure about this?” Adam asked, looking up at him and indicating the pad.

Peregrine rubbed a hand over his face, looked at the pad, and nodded.

“As sure as I
can
be, about this stuff. If the other is real, then this is, too. It felt the same.”

McLeod nodded and gave a sigh, rocking back in his chair.

“Right. Well, at least we can say that Gillian Talbot is a good English name. Do you suppose it would be too much to hope that she lives somewhere in the U.K.?”

“We can certainly give it a try,” Adam replied. “I won’t be up to it until I’ve had some sleep, but we should be able to narrow it down.”

Peregrine blinked, only now realizing what was being suggested.

“You don’t really mean that you’re going to try to
find
her?” he asked, appalled. “Besides,” he shook his head, “this doesn’t make sense. How can Michael Scot be a young
girl?”

Adam’s faint smile suggested that the latter was but one more notion about which Peregrine was going to have to readjust his thinking.

“We’ll discuss the psycho-sexual aspects of reincarnation on the way home,” he said dryly. “Meanwhile, here comes lunch—which you, my friend, have certainly earned with this piece of work.”

So saying, he closed the sketchbook and gave his attention to the meal being set before them—and to more specific discussion with McLeod of how to defuse the aspects of the case that really had no rational explanation, so far as the police and media were concerned. Peregrine, though he clearly longed to pursue his earlier line of questioning, kept his silence and merely tried to take it all in—which spoke well of his self-restraint, for times to come.

It was nearly three before Adam and Peregrine started back for Strathmourne. The Jaguar had been eating up the miles for perhaps ten minutes when the artist finally screwed up his courage, as Adam had known he would, to ask again how Michael Scot’s current body could possibly be female.

“I simply don’t understand,” he said. “Maybe I was mistaken. I mean, Michael Scot’s presence was unquestionably male. How could he be reincarnated as a woman? Isn’t sexual identity a vital part of an individual’s personality?”

“Speaking as a psychiatrist, of course it is,” Adam said.

“But when we enter the realm of the spirit, perhaps different rules have to apply. I put it to you that the human spirit, as
opposed to the personality, is intrinsically neither male nor female. Rather, it possesses the potential to be either.

Would you agree that the perfection of the spirit is to be regarded as an ongoing process of pursuing wholeness, with the ultimate goal of reunion with the Divine Light?”

The question took Peregrine slightly aback. “I—suppose so,” he said uncertainly.

“Very well, then,” Adam said. “Wholeness implies, among other things, completion—and balance. Now I ask you: How can any individual soul hope to become complete, unless life has been experienced in all its various aspects, including both kinds of sexuality according to nature?”

A glance in Peregrine’s direction revealed that the concepts were finding root, but he shook his head in dismay, not yet able to frame any answer.

“Let’s try another angle,” Adam began again. “I can see that this is difficult for you. You have yet to realize this on conscious levels, perhaps, but there are some aspects of the Light that one may best understand as a man, other aspects that one can come to know only as a woman. To put on femininity at such times is to put on the sacramental mask necessary if one is to enter into those chambers of the sanctuary.”

As he glanced again at Peregrine, the artist permitted himself a perplexed sigh.

“Let’s backtrack about five steps and get down to very basic concepts,” he said tentatively. “Have
you
ever reincarnated as a woman?”

“Certainly.”

“Have I?”

“No doubt.”

“Then why haven’t I
seen
any of the female incarnations, when I’ve looked at you—or in my portrait-gallery dream?”

Peregrine asked triumphantly.

“I suspect,” Adam said archly, “that it’s because you weren’t yet ready to deal with your feminine side at this level. The thought simply hadn’t occurred to you. I hasten to add that this is not meant as any reflection on your sexuality—I’m not saying this as a psychiatrist—but merely a statement of possibility, given your limited experience in these matters—at least in this one of
your
incarnations. You haven’t been at this very long, after all.

Give yourself time,”

Peregrine struggled with this revelation in silence.

“If—what you say is true,” he said at last, after some obviously difficult cogitation, “it rather looks as though I’m going to have to drastically revise my ideas about the nature of existence.”

At Adam’s slightly bemused nod of agreement, Peregrine sighed and ran a hand through his short, pale hair.

“All right. I’m not going to even pretend that I understand this; but for the moment, I’m going to take a leaf from your book and pretend that it’s true. If you say so, I’ll accept as a given that the wizard Michael Scot has been reincarnated as a young girl named Gillian Talbot, because that’s what I myself saw. But if his spirit
has
been reborn as you say, why did it answer to us at Melrose as Scot, and not as Gillian? Which person is he?”

“He’s both, of course,” Adam said. “You must understand that the individual is not merely brain, or mind, or spirit, but a complex interaction of all three functions simultaneously. The brain, obviously, is physical—part of a physical body. It’s the computer, if you like, that drives the physical body; but the information that it stores and processes—memory, and what is done with that memory—constitutes mind, an aspect of personality—and
that
can impinge on the purely spiritual soul. For it’s through the human experience of a given personality that the soul progresses in its journey toward the Light, life by life.

“I spoke a moment ago of the soul’s putting on a mask,” he went on. “We might think of personality as the mask that the soul wears in any given incarnation, suitable for the time and circumstances, one mask per life. An Adept such as Michael Scot learns to retrieve those masks and change them at will, to re-access useful aspects of earlier personalities. You can learn to do that, too. You’re already learning to see other people’s masks; that’s part of what makes you such a fine artist. You’ve caught glimpses of several of my masks.”
Peregrine nodded. Adam could tell by his expression that he was now thinking furiously.

“Some people can deal with pure spirit,” Adam resumed. “We sometimes call them saints or even gods. Most people, however, need more concrete points of reference. When we’re in our bodies, we’re all wearing our masks; and we tend to interact more effectively with other masked beings.

If a soul should be temporarily displaced from its present physical incarnation—as Scot’s was—resuming an earlier incarnation to seek help is far more useful than trying to interact as a purely spiritual entity. Which is precisely what he did, and why.”

“I’m going to have to think about this,” Peregrine said dubiously. “But don’t be surprised if it takes a little while for it all to sink in.”

He fell silent after that—they were nipping around the Edinburgh Ring Road now, heading for the Forth Road Bridge—and when he began nodding off, exhausted from his accumulated exertions, Adam at last could turn his thoughts to other aspects of the day’s events besides wrestling with Peregrine’s logic. There were aspects to the case surrounding Michael Scot that still did not quite add up.

Aside from the appalling violation of the soul of Michael Scot, and the need to rectify its effects in young Gillian, if possible, the most important question raised by the circumstances of the case at Melrose concerned the status of those responsible, and their apparent intention to go after Scot’s book of spells. Upon further reflection, Adam stood by his earlier conjecture that the thieves ·were neophytes. The muddled approach to their whole assault on Scot was a clear indication of their comparative inexperience.

On the other hand, he had crossed swords with the members of various black lodges often enough in the past to know that the Lodge-Masters of such fraternities were quite capable of allowing their more enterprising underlings a degree of apparent autonomy, whenever it served their own veiled purposes to do so. Was the summoning of Michael Scot no more than what it seemed: the ill-judged act of overly-ambitious apprentices? Or did it represent an opening gambit in a much more complicated chess, game? Adam was forced to admit that, on the basis of the information he possessed at the moment, he was in no position to say. And until he got some rest, he was not likely to improve on the situation. As they turned into the drive at Strathmourne, he became acutely aware of the leaden sense of fatigue he had been holding at bay for some hours now, born of the labors he had undertaken to liberate Scot and cleanse his burial site. And one glance at Peregrine, jerking back awake as Adam stopped the Jag and turned off the engine, was enough to confirm that the artist was similarly exhausted—and far less able to cope with the weariness.

“Thank you, Humphrey,” Adam said as the butler opened the door on their approach, ready to relieve them of their coats. “It’s been quite a day. I’d be very much obliged if you’d bring us tea in the library—and even more obliged if you could manage to provide some sandwiches to go with it.”

“I’m certain I can manage to put something together, sir,” Humphrey said, with every appearance of aplomb.

“And I lit a fire in the library about an hour ago. You should find it quite comfortable by now.”

As he followed Adam along the corridor toward the library door, Peregrine spared Humphrey a backward glance.

“He always seems to know just what you’re likely to want or need, doesn’t he?” he remarked wonderingly. “I hope you’re not going to tell me he reads minds. How does he do it?”

Tired though he was, Adam could not suppress a chuckle.

“No mind-reading—just ease of long habit, I suppose,” he said, gesturing Peregrine toward his now accustomed chair by the fireside. “If I know Humphrey, he’ll be up with the tray in a trice. Why don’t you have a seat and make yourself comfortable?”

Half an hour later, Peregrine found himself yawning uncontrollably over his tea.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said apologetically. “I can’t think why I should be so sleepy when it’s barely five o’clock. Granted, last night was a rather late one, and we were up and about early this morning, but that’s still no excuse for nodding-off in the middle of a sentence. And it’s only been a few hours since we ate, but I was absolutely ravenous! Anyone would think I’d been out digging ditches all day!”

Adam helped himself to another buttered scone, starting to feel more human.

“A common enough misconception. Most people don’t realize that psychic work can be far more exhausting than the roughest forms of manual labor.”

“Psychic work?” Peregrine caught himself short in the middle of another yawn. “But I haven’t been doing any work at all, psychic or otherwise.”

“Ah, but you have,” Adam replied. “What did you think you were doing, when you were making all those sketches?”

The question earned him an owlish look from Peregrine.

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Adam went on, “today you took a rather active part in what is turning out to be a significant psychic event. The fatigue you’re feeling now is a direct consequence of your participation. It’s something you’ll have to learn to deal with, if you think you ‘want to become any further involved in this business than you already are.”

Peregrine lifted his head. “Am I allowed to become further involved?” he said in surprise.

“Yes, you’re allowed—and encouraged, in fact. The way things are starting to move, I can’t promise I’ll be able to find time to explain everything that’s happening, perhaps until it’s all over, but I want you to understand the nature of at least some of what you’ve seen today—and what you may see me do in the future.”

Peregrine pursed his lips, breathing out in a low, soundless whistle as he turned his gaze to the fire, seeking a familiar anchor in the dancing flames.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this, Adam. Tell me what it is you really do—I mean, really do. I think I’m beginning to get a little scared.”