The Serpent Mage (3 page)
Authors: Greg Bear
The flames danced with wicked cheer in the broad fireplace, and the embers glowed like holes opening onto a beautiful and deadly world of pure heat and light.
He drowsed, grateful that no new visions bothered him.
At midnight, the rewound grandfather clock in the foyer chimed and awoke him. The fire had died to fitful coals. He went up to his bedroom and sank into the cool, soft mattress.
Even in deep sleep, part of him seemed aware of everything.
One, the clock announced in its somber voice.
Two. (The house creaking.)
Three. (A light rain began and ended within minutes.)
Four. (Night birds…)
Five. (Almost absolute stillness.)
At six, the clock's tone coincided with the sound of a newspaper hitting the front door. Michael's eyes opened slowly. He was not in the least groggy. There had been no dreams.
In his robe, he went downstairs to retrieve the paper, wrapped in plastic against the wet. A man sang softly and randomly in the side yard of the house on the left. Michael smiled, listening to the lyrics.
"Don't cry for me, ArgenTEEEENA…" The man walked around the corner and saw Michael. "Good morning!" he called out, waving and shaking his head sheepishly. He was in his early forties, with abundant light brown hair and a face indelibly stamped with friendliness. "Didn't disturb you, I hope." He wore a navy blue jogging suit with bright red stripes down the sleeves and legs.
"No," Michael said. "Getting the paper."
"I was just going to do some running. You knew Arno and Golda?"
"I'm taking care of the house for them," Michael said.
"You sound like they're coming back," the man said, pursing his mouth.
Michael smiled. "Arno appointed me executor of the estate. I'm going to organize the papers…"
"Now
that's
a job." The man had walked in Michael's direction, and they now stood a yard apart. He extended his hand, and Michael shook it. "I'm Robert Dopso. Next door. Arno and Golda were fine neighbors. My mother and I miss them terribly. I was married, but…" He shrugged. "Divorced, and I moved back here. Momma's boy, I know. But Ma was very lonely. I grew up here; my father bought the house in 1940. Golda and Ma used to talk a lot. My life in a nutshell." He grinned. "Your name?"
Michael told him and mentioned he had just moved in the day before.
"I'm not bad in the fix-it department," Dopso said. "I helped Golda with odds and ends after Arno died. I might know a few tricks about the place… If you need any help, don't hesitate to ask. My wife kept me around a year longer because without me, she said, everything stayed broken."
"I'll ask," Michael said.
"Maybe we could walk or run together — whichever. I prefer running, but…"
Michael nodded, and Dopso headed down the street. "You were supposed to BEEE IMMORTal…"
Michael carried the paper into the kitchen. There, he ate a bowl of hot oatmeal and leafed through the front section. Most of the news — however important and ominous it might seem to his fellows — barely attracted his attention.
Then he came to a small third-page story headlined
CORPSES FOUND IN ABANDONED BUILDING
and his eyes grew wide as he read
:
The unidentified bodies of two females were found by a transient male in the abandoned Tippett Residential Hotel on Sunset Boulevard near La Cienega Sunday afternoon. Cause of death has not been established by the coroner's office. Reporters' questions went largely unanswered during a short press briefing. Early reports indicate that one of the women weighed at least eight hundred pounds and was found nude. The second body was in a mummified condition and was clothed in a party dress of a style long since out of fashion. The Tippett hotel, abandoned since 1968, once offered a posh Hollywood address for retired and elderly actors, actresses and other film workers.
He read the piece through several times before folding the paper and putting it aside. His oatmeal cooled in its bowl, half-finished.
The bodies might be a coincidence, he thought. As rare as eight-hundred-pound women were…
But in conjunction with a mummy, clothed in a party dress?
He called up the paper's city desk and asked to speak to the reporter who had written the piece, which had run without a byline. The reporter was out on assignment, he was told, and the operator referred him to a police phone number. Michael paced the kitchen and adjacent hall for several minutes before deciding against phoning the police. How would he explain?
He had to have a look at that building. Something nagged him about the address. Sunset and La Cienega… Barely five miles from Waltiri's house.
He went to the Packard and retrieved the concert program, then checked the glove box in the Saab to find a city map. He took both to Waltiri's first-floor office, dark and musty and lined with shelves of records and tapes, and tried to locate
Sunset Boulevard, the site of the Pandall Theater according to the concert program.
The address was less than half a block from the corner of Sunset and La Cienega.
Chapter Two
Michael walked briskly up La Cienega's slope as it approached Sunset, breathing steadily and deeply, taking pleasure in the cool night air and the darkness. He could be anonymous, alone without all the handicaps of loneliness; he could be almost anything — a dangerous prowler or a good Samaritan. The night covered all, even motives. To his left, the white wall of a hotel was painted with Mondrian stripes and squares. At the corner, he stood for a moment, looking across the street at the blocky, ugly Hyatt on Sunset, then turned right. His running shoes made almost no sound on the concrete sidewalk.
He passed the entrance of a restaurant built on the site where Errol Flynn's guest house had once stood and then spotted the Tippett building.
It rose more than twelve stories above Sunset, an aging Art Deco concrete edifice with rounded corners. Many of the windows had been knocked out, and black soot marks rose from several of the gaping frames. At ground level, it was surrounded by a chain-link fence. The lobby entrance had been blocked off by a chain-link and steel-pipe gate. A trash tube descended from the roof to a dumpster behind the fence.
The building made Michael uneasy. It had once been lovely. It stood out in this section of the Sunset Strip even now, in its present dilapidated condition. Yet it had been abandoned for over twenty years and, judging by the state of renovations, might continue that way for another twenty.
He stood before the gate and squinted to see the obscured address, limned in aluminum figures above the plywood-boarded doors: 8538. The 8 had been knocked askew and hung on its side.
The Tippet building stood on the site of the Randall Theater. Having confirmed that much, Michael looked around guiltily and glanced over his shoulder at the lighted windows of the Hyatt.
There was a patched hole in the fencing to the left of the gate; with very little effort, he could undo the wiring on the chain-link patch and crawl under.
"Odd place, isn't it?"
Michael turned his head quickly and saw a bearded, sunburned man with thick greasy hair and dirt-green, street-varnished clothes standing on the sidewalk a dozen yards away. "Yes," he answered softly.
"It's older than it looks. Seems kind of modern, don't it?"
""I guess," Michael said.
"Used to live there," the man said. "Don't live there now. Want to go in?" The man walked slowly toward him, face conveying intense interest and almost equal caution.
"No," Michael said.
"You know the place?"
"No. I'm just out hiking."
"Care to know about it?"
Michael didn't answer.
"Care to know about the two women found dead in there?"
"Women?"
"One big, a real whale, one a mummy. In the newspapers. You read about that?"
Michael paused to reflect, then nodded.
"Thought you might have."
"Did you find them?'*
"Heavens," the man said, coughing into his fist. "Not me. Someone who didn't know much. An
acquaintance
. Dumb to stay in that building for a night." He wrinkled his face up, expecting skepticism, and said, "It's full
of things
."
"Why do you hang around, then?" Michael asked.
"Because," the man said. He stood about two yards from Michael, and even at that distance his smell was rank — urine and sedimented sweat. "You know what their names were?"
"Whose names?" Michael asked.
"The women. The whale and the mummy."
"No," Michael said.
"I do. My
acquaintance
found it on a piece of rock next to them. Gave it to the police, but they didn't care. Didn't mean anything to them. Do you know French?"
"A little."
"Then you'd know what one of the names means. Sadness. In French. And the other…"
Michael decided to try for an effect. "Lamia," he said.
The man's face became a mask between surprise and laughter. "Gawd," he said. "Gawd, gawd. You're a reporter. I knew it. Odd time of night to be out looking for facts."
Michael shook his head, never taking his eyes off the man. He had not yet tried to read someone's aura on Earth. Now was as good a time as any. He found a festival of murmurs, a bright little coal of intelligence, a marketplace full of rotted vegetables. He backed away from the search, having come out with only one fact:
Tristesse
. The second name. It suited the guardian of Clarkham's gate. Bringer of sadness.
Lamia and Tristesse. Sisters…
Victims of the Sidhe, sacrificed by Clarkham to guard and wait… But how could they have found their way to Earth? And who had killed them — or
inactivated
them, since what life they had was dubious at best?
Abruptly and unexpectedly, Michael began to cry. Wiping his eyes, he glanced up at the Tippett building.
"Something wrong? I'm the one should be crying," the man said. "You're not a reporter. Relative, maybe? Jesus, no. None of them would have had relatives. Not the type."
"What do you care?" Michael asked sharply. "Go away."
"Care?" the man shrilled, backing away a step. "I used to
own
the place. OWN IT, God dammit! I used to be worth something! I'm not that God damn old, and I'm not so far gone I don't remember what it was like, having money and being a"— he lifted a hand with pinky extended, raised his eyebrows and waggled his head—"a big God damn citizen!"
Michael probed the man again and felt the sorrow and anger directly.
"Now everybody comes around here. God damn bank never does anything with it, never tears it down, never sells it. Can't sell it. Now there's people died here. Not surprising.
I'm going, all right. You figure it out. I've had my fill."
"Wait," Michael said. "When was it built?"
"Nineteen and forty-seven," the man answered with his back to Michael, walking away with exaggerated dignity. "Used to be a theater here, a concert hall. Tore it down and put this up."
"Thank you," Michael said.
The man shrugged his shoulders and waved away the thanks.
Michael put his hands in his coat pockets and leaned his head back to look up at the building again. High up near the top, one floor beneath a terrace, a faint red light played over a dusty pane of glass. It burned only for a moment.
Then, on the fourth floor, the red light gleamed briefly again in a broken and soot-stained window. All WLS still after that and quiet.
Michael shuddered and began the trek back down Sunset to La Cienega.
Chapter Three
Magic like that worked by the Sidhe was more difficult on Earth; humans could not work Sidhe magic. This much Michael had gleaned from his training in the Realm, Sidhedark. But were these facts or merely suppositions? Breeds — part human and part Sidhe — could work magic; the Crane Women and Eleuth had demonstrated that much. Clarkham, a Breed born on Earth, had nearly bested the Sidhe at their own game.
Michael himself had done things in the Realm that had no other name in his vocabulary but magic. He had even channeled the energies of a Song of Power to destroy Clarkham. And in the year since he had returned to Earth, he had learned that he could still apply Sidhe discipline and invoke
hyloka
, the calling-of-heat from the center of his body, and in-seeing, the probing of another's aura to gain information.
For the time being, he was content not to test the other skills he had learned in the Realm. He had not used
evisa
, or out-seeing, to throw a shadow; there had been no need.
Each morning, he went through his exercises in the spacious back yard. He jogged around the neighborhood holding his
kima
, the running-stick, before him, as the Crane Women had taught him. Several times he jogged with Dopso, who kept up a panting stream of questions and observations. Despite the man's obvious curiosity about Michael, and nonstop talk, Michael liked him. He seemed decent.
Each day, Michael investigated another cache of Waltiri's papers and began to make a catalog of what he found. Within a week, he had worked his way through the garage and knew basically what was in each file box — manuscripts, contracts and other legal documents, and correspondence, including a wooden box filled with love letters from Waltiri to Golda, written in German. Even though he had studied German after returning from the Realm, he was hardly fluent, and that handicapped him. He thought about hiring a German-speaking student and acquiring the language more rapidly tlirough in-seeing but decided to put that off for now.
He concentrated on the manuscripts. What little musical training he had acquired before he was thirteen — when he had put his foot down and refused to continue piano lessons — was of little aid in sorting out the Waltiri papers.
Michael recorded the names (if any), opus numbers and known associations of each musical manuscript. Most were scores for motion pictures; scattered throughout the four and a half decades' worth of work, however, were more personal pieces, even a draft of a ballet based on
The Faerie Queene
.
He spent hours in the garage and then began moving the sorted boxes of manuscripts into the dining room, where he stacked them along a bare wall.
There was no sign of a manuscript for Opus 45, The Infinity Concerto.
At night, he fixed himself supper and ate alone. One night a week he joined his parents for dinner, and the visits were enjoyable; occasionally, John would drop by the Waltiri house on one pretext or another, and they would share a beer in the back yard and talk about inconsequential things. Ruth never visited.
Michael did not tell his story to John, even with Ruth away. John seemed to sense that the time was not yet right for Ruth and that they should hear together when the time was right.
All in all, with the exception of the discoveries in the Tippett Hotel, it was still a peaceful time. Michael felt himself growing stronger in more ways than one: stronger inside, less agonized by his mistakes, and stronger in dealing with the ways of the Earth, which were not much like the ways of the Realm.
What impressed him most of all, now that he had gone
outside
and had a basis for comparison, was the Earth's sense of solidity and
thoroughness
. Always in the Realm there had been the sensation of things left not quite finished; Adonna's creation was no doubt masterful, and in places extremely beautiful, but it could not compare with the Earth.
While the Realm had been built to accommodate Sidhe — and keep them in line — and while it contained some monstrous travesties, it had seemed in many ways a gentler place than Earth. What cruelty existed in the Realm was the fault of its occupants. Given Sidhe discipline, Michael had found survival in the Realm proper rather easy. He doubted if survival would be quite so easy in similar situations on Earth.
The Earth seemed not to have been built for anybody's convenience; those who had come to it, or developed on it, made their own way and found and fought for specific niches. The Earth never stopped its pressures… Nor gave up its treasures easily.
Michael acquired a videocassette recorder out of the stipend paid by the estate and began renting tapes of the movies Waltiri had scored. Watching the old films and listening to the background music, he came to appreciate the old composer's true skill.
Waltiri's music was never obtrusive in a film. Rather than sweeping richly forth with some outstanding melodic line, it played a subservient role, underscoring or heightening the action on the screen.
Again and again one day Michael played John Huston's 1958 film,
The Man Who Would Be King
, reveling the first time in Bogart's Peachey Carnehan and Jack Hawkins's Daniel Dravot, the next in the fine black and white photography and the beautifully integrated matte paintings, and finally in Waltiri's subtle score, not in the least period or archaic but somehow just right for the men and their adventure. Michael enjoyed himself hugely; that one day seemed to put everything in perspective and set his mind aright. Suddenly he was ready to take on whatever might come, with the same impractical bravado of Carnehan and Dravot. He spent the next day gardening, whistling Carnehan's theme over and over again, pulling weeds and trimming back the rose bushes i ~ Cording to the instructions in an old gardening book in Golda's library.
As he trimmed, he thought of Clarkham's Sidhe woman, Mora, and of the way she had trimmed her roses, and of the rose turned to glass that she had given him, that still lay wrapped in cotton in a cardboard box in the guest bedroom.
His mood darkened the next morning, when again the newspaper proved to be a bearer of disturbing news. There was an in-depth article beginning on the left side of the front page and running on through section A for some two thousand words, describing waves of so-called hauntings in England, Israel and the eastern United States.
The phrase "intrusions into reality" occurred several times in the piece, but overall the tone was light. The conclusion was that the incidents had more to do with sociology and psychology than metaphysics. He read it through twice, then folded the paper over and stared out the kitchen window at the pink roses outside.
The phone rang. Michael glanced at his new watch — it was ten o'clock — and picked up the ancient black receiver. "Waltiri residence. Hello."
"Could I speak to Michael Perrin?" a woman asked, her voice crisp and resonant.
"Speaking," Michael said.
"Hello. My name is Kristine Pendeers. I'm with the music department at UCLA."
"How can I help you, Ms. Pendeers?" Michael said, assuming his best (and unpracticed) professional tone.
"You're organizing the Waltiri estate, aren't you? I've been talking with the lawyers, and they say you're in charge now."
"That's the way it's worked out."
"We have a project going here, rediscovering avant-garde music of the thirties and forties. We're interested in locating specific works by Arno Waltiri. Perhaps you've heard of them, or come across them… though I gather you haven't been working on the papers very long."
"Which papers?" Michael asked, though he hardly needed to; events were heading in a clearly defined direction: die dreams, the Tippett Hotel, the bodies of Lamia and Tristesse, the hauntings… and now this.
"You know, we haven't been able to find a single recording of the one we're really interested in, and our collection is extensive. And no scores, either. Just these fascinating mentions in memoirs and newspapers, and in this book,
Devil's Music
. That's by Charles Fort. Have you heard of it?"
"You're looking for Opus 45," Michael said.
"Yes! That's the one."
"I haven't found it."
"Is it real? I mean, it exists? We were beginning to think it was some sort of hoax."
"I have a concert program for the premiere," Michael said. "The music existed at one time. Whether it does now or not, I don't know."
"Listen, it's wonderful just having something about it confirmed. Do you know what a
coup
it would be to find it again?"
"If I find the score, what do you plan to do with it?"
"I hardly know yet," Pendeers said. "I didn't expect to get this far. I'm a connoisseur of film music, particularly from the thirties and forties. I must tell you that doesn't sit well with some of the music faculty here — in Los Angeles, of all places! Can we get together and talk? And if you find anything — you know, the score, a recording, anything — could you let me know… first? Unless someone else has priority, of course… I hope not."
"No one else has priority," Michael said. "Where shall we meet?"
"I could hardly ask to visit the house. I assume it's not all organized yet."
Michael made a quick decision. "Frankly, I'm over my head," he said. "I could use help. Why don't I meet you near the campus, and we'll talk about having UCLA lend a hand?"
"Wonderful," she said, and they set a time and place for lunch in Westwood the next day.
Over my head, indeed
, Michael thought as he hung up.
Kristine Pendeers was twenty-two, tall and slender with a dancer's build, and fine fair hair. Her eyes were green and eloquent, slightly hooded, one eyelid riding higher than the other as if in query. Her lower lip was full, her upper delicate; she seemed to be half-smiling most of the time. She wore jeans and a mauve silk blouse.
After less than fifteen minutes in her presence, Michael was already fascinated by her. His infatuations always came fast and died hard — the true sign of an immature romantic, he warned himself silently. But warnings seldom did any good.
They had chosen the Good Earth restaurant. She sat across from him in a double booth. A broad back-lit plastic transparency of a maple tree canopy hovered over them; since they were below street level, the effect was not convincing. Kris-tine had crossed her arms on the table, as if protecting the cup of coffee between them.
"My major problem is that I don't know much about music," Michael said. "I enjoy it, but I don't play any instruments."
She seemed surprised. "How did you get the position, then?"
"I knew Arno Waltiri before he died. We became friends.'
"What did he plan to have you do with the estate?" Her eyes gave her the appearance of being nonchalant and interested all at once.
"To get it organized and take care of things as they came up, I suppose," Michael said. "It's not really spelled out. We had a sort of understanding…" Having said that, he wasn't sure how true it was. But he couldn't say,
I'm being set up for something bigger
…
"Did he ever talk to you about Opus 45?"
The waitress interrupted with their lunch, and they leaned back to let her serve it.
"Yes," Michael said. He gave her a brief outline as they ate, explaining about Waltiri's collaboration with Clarkham — to a point — and the circumstances after the performance.
"That's fascinating," she said. "Now I see why the music is legendary. Do you think the score still exists? I mean, would he have… burned it, or hidden it away where no one would find it?"
Michael shook his head, chewing on a bite of fish. "I'll keep looking," he said.
"You know, this project I'm working on… it really goes beyond what I told you on the phone." She hadn't eaten much of her omelet. She seemed more inclined to talk than lunch. "We're — actually, it's mostly me. I'm trying to put film score composers back in their proper place in music. Many of them were as talented as anyone writing music today… more so, I think. But their so-called limitations, working in a popular medium, for mass audiences…" She shook her head slowly. "Music people are snobs. Not musicians — necessarily — but critics. I love movie scores. They don't seem to think — the critics and some of the academics, I mean — they don't seem to understand that music for movies, and not just musicals, shares some of the problems of scoring operas. I mean, it's such an inspired idea, full scoring for a dramatic performance." She grinned. "I'll ride that particular railroad any time you let me."
Michael nodded. "I love movie scores, too," he said.
"Of course you do. Why would Waltiri let you handle his estate if you didn't? You're probably a better choice than most of the people in my department." She held up her hands, exasperated at herself. "Look at this. I'm wasting food again. All talking and no eating."
"All singing, all dancing," Michael said with a smile.
She stared at him intently. "You have a very odd smile. Like you know something. Do you mind if I ask how old you are?"
He glanced down at the table. "That depends."
"I'm sorry. I'm intruding."
"No, not that," he said. "It's actually complicated…"
"Your age is complicated?"
"I'm twenty-two," he said.
"You look younger than that, and older too."
A silence hung over the table for several seconds.
"Have you gone to school?" Kristine asked.
"Not college, no."
She laughed and reached across the table to tap his hand with her finger. "You're perfect," she said. "Everyone says Waltiri was an inconoclast. You're living proof."
"You've talked to people who knew him?"
"Yes. It's part of the project. I know a composer named Edgar Moffat. He orchestrated Waltiri's movie scores and acted as his assistant in the fifties. He's working in Burbank now on the score for a David Lean film. You'll have to meet him. I've interviewed him several times in the last few months. He was the one who told me about the Waltiri estate. He didn't know your name, but he had heard rumors."
