"We can discuss him later. Will you join us?"

"I confess, Lord Atwood-I'm curious."

"You'll have to stop calling me that. Call me Mercury. It's a game, but rather an important one-we don't use the names of ordinary life here. All are equal. All seekers in the dark, aren't we? Our common goal is understanding, and we are all equally distant from it. Besides, you can't have Mr Smith the butcher or Mr Boggs the bank clerk stamping about in the astral stuff, knocking things over. Or Lord What's-his-name of What-have-you, for that matter. So-you need a new name."

"A nom de magicienne? Something Latin, I suppose?"

"As a matter of fact, I was thinking Venus."

Josephine thought that was very inappropriate, and said so.

Atwood smiled, and opened a door onto an upper gallery of a large library.

A wrought-iron staircase led down to the library's floor, where a little group of men and women stood, making conversation, or carrying out obscure preparations. A large circular table occupied the centre of the room. In the middle of the table there was an arrangement of spherical electrical lamps glowing in a variety of odd hues; the room was otherwise gloomy. A man in a black coat bustled around, wiping the gla.s.s of the lamps, adjusting their flames and nudging them in slight orbits around one another, with the care of an artist. Every time he moved a lamp, ripples of dim glinting light ran across the book-bindings on the walls of the room, shimmering like schools of fish.

There was a pattern painted on the parquet floor, in blue and red, green and purple and gold. It had something of the look of a star-map rendered by an astronomer in the grip of either hysteria or genius. Thick curving lines, with arrow-heads pointing in all directions; lines made of characters that Josephine couldn't recognise; a series of concentric circles, the outermost of which reached all the way to the feet of the bookshelves at the edge of the room. The table sat near the centre of these circles, nearly but not quite at the heart of the pattern.

On one wall there was an immense grandfather clock. In a corner there was an untidy collection of musical instruments; in another corner lay a heap of tools-a broom, paintbrushes in a bucket, a ladder, a rifle.

Atwood leaned over the railing. "Now, that's Jupiter down there, in the black dress. She has a temper, and considers herself one of the great brains of England-which she may very well be, for all I know! I don't consider myself more than a stumbler in the dark, after all-and so I make up for my deficiencies by having a circle of talent always around me. And that chap there in the green, the bald one with the philosophical beard, he's a theologian-he goes by Ura.n.u.s, when he's a guest here. The chap who resembles the Prime Minister goes by Neptune. Do you see the rules of the game? We have a vacancy for a Venus. Now that I think of it, we've never had a poet before! Ah, and the Indian fellow there-"

"Mercury." The woman Atwood had named Jupiter called up from below. Her voice was sharp, ringing, impatient. "Can we begin?"

Atwood glanced at Josephine and rolled his eyes. Then he turned back to the door behind them and performed a quick series of gestures with his hands, rather like the stations of the cross, and muttered something too quiet and quick for Josephine to hear.

He leaned over the balcony again. "It's safe," he said. "As safe as anywhere in London these days, anyway."

The woman he'd called Jupiter pointed at Josephine. "You invited a ninth, without telling me?"

"A happy coincidence. Can we squeeze her in, do you think?"

"I think you've been keeping me in the dark, Mercury, and you know I dislike that. Now, come down, and stop playing the fool."

"Wait," Ura.n.u.s said. "How do we know she's not one of theirs?"

Atwood sighed, turned to Josephine, and took both of her hands in his. "Are you," he said, "one of theirs?"

"I hardly know who you are."

"Well, that's good enough for me."

Atwood descended the staircase, and Josephine followed.

The man they'd called Ura.n.u.s grumbled but returned to his conversation. He was talking to a fat, pale young man in a turban; discussing the news of the campaign in Afghanistan, where the Army was encountering difficulties. Hangings all round. Crack of the whip. So on and so forth. She was both relieved and disappointed that their conversation was so utterly conventional.

It all reminded her in an odd way of her first arrival at Cambridge. The book-lined room and the stuffy opulence. The sense of ancient ritual and a club to which one was being admitted, on sufferance; the cast of eccentrics, bores, wits, and geniuses; the looming threat of Examination.

"Well," said Jupiter. She was arranging cards on the table, and rearranging the lamps, while the man in the black coat-who gave Josephine a business-like nod-arranged the chairs. The man who went by Ura.n.u.s and the young man in the turban were now talking about the depreciation of the rupee-or, at least, Ura.n.u.s was lecturing and the younger man was nodding. The turbaned man did not look Indian; the man Atwood had identified as Indian-solid and dark and white-haired-wore a bright red tie, and no turban.

Atwood took Jupiter's hand, smiling, and kissed it.

"Not now," she snapped. "You-Venus, if you're to join us. Has Mercury troubled himself to tell you anything? Or has he been playing his usual games?"

"He was ... intriguing."

"Hah," Atwood said.

"I'm certain he was. Are you a believer?"

"A believer, ma'am? I don't quite know. A believer in what?"

Jupiter raised an eyebrow. "Hmph. That's a fair answer to an unfair question, my dear. May the G.o.ds preserve us from believers, spoon-benders, table-rappers, psychometrists, levitators, mesmerists, tea-leaf readers! Well-all you must do is follow instruction. Please sit. There."

Josephine sat. Something about the woman's voice brooked no question. In Josephine's experience, where an occult fraternity had secret names, like Mercury or Jupiter, there were also hierarchies and t.i.tles and inner and outer circles. This was clearly the inner circle of something-or-other ... except perhaps for the young man in the turban, who had the air of a novice, a supplicant, eager to please. There would usually be a circle within the circle, two or three individuals who were first among equals: they might be very quiet, or they might boom and fizz with energy, but in either case they would be the sort of person who commanded attention. Atwood and Jupiter both fit the description well enough.

Ura.n.u.s and the young man in the turban sat down on either side of Josephine, and took her hands in theirs. The old man's hand was dry, and the young one's hand was damp.

Atwood sat across the table. He winked, then sat back, his face obscured by a lamp.

Josephine counted nine lamps, each glowing a different shade: golden orange, aquamarine, damask-red, sap green, amaranthine....

The business-like man in the black coat set up a camera on a tripod. Then he lit incense in a little brazier and sat down between Atwood and the Indian man, placing his hands over theirs.

"Your b.l.o.o.d.y chairs are b.l.o.o.d.y heavy, Mercury."

"Quiet," Jupiter said. She walked around the table.

The pale young man in the turban leaned in close and whispered. "I know that look. I'm new here too."

"h.e.l.lo. You must be, ah..."

"Saturn."

He had an odd, nervous laugh. She smiled politely.

"It's all a bit odd, isn't it? But Lord At-that is, Mercury's company has the most intriguing reputation. Doesn't it? I don't think we've met. Sorry. I'm rather nervous, frankly. One wants to make a good impression. Do you have any notion of what we're supposed to do?"

The scent of the incense filled the room. It was pungent; sweet and oily. Josephine's head began to swim.

"I don't know," Josephine said. "They're very secretive."

Another nervous laugh. The camera clicked.

Jupiter sat. "You, and you." She was looking at the camera, but she seemed to be addressing Josephine and the anxious young man in the turban. "Decide now: stay, or go. There is risk in staying. It will not be great, if you follow instructions, but it is there. I tell you this because there must be trust."

Josephine said nothing. She was a little alarmed; but she'd heard that sort of dire warning before. Mrs Sedgley often warned of the great peril that the members of the Ordo V.V. 341 faced, peering too deeply into the spirit world.

"I will stay," said the man in the turban.

"I did not say speak. I said stay or go. I hope you can follow instructions better than that! Now, look at the cards in front of you."

In front of Josephine was a white card, with three symbols on it. There was a black hexagram-somewhat off-kilter, in a way that appeared deliberate. Beneath it was a small circle, violet striated with black, and then a sort of cone made up of whirling lines. Mr Turban's card was roughly similar.

The camera clicked again.

"Please," Jupiter said, "Understand that our methods must be very precise. Everything must be done in the proper moment and in the proper way. We are engaged in a great experiment."

"Tonight," Atwood said, "we swim the aether."

"That," Jupiter said, "is a characteristically unhelpful way of putting it. We are engaged in a project of scientific investigation-you may consider it essentially astronomical-though we work not with telescopes and spectrographs, but with the will alone-will and perception. Do you understand what Mercury means by aether?"

"Our new Venus is a scholar," Atwood said, smiling. "Of course she does."

"Ah," said the man in the turban, "I think I read about this; something about electricity, or, or, I think I read about a scientist chap electrocuting a frog? Or was it a cat?"

"Nonsense," Atwood said, happily.

"In Aristotle," Josephine said, "it would be the fifth element; the stars and the planets are made of it."

"Its properties?"

"I'm afraid I wasn't expecting to be examined. Well, let's see: pure and unchanging. Airy and invisible. Eternal and perfect; not like the gross decaying matter of the earth. And whereas earthly matter rises and falls and moves in straight lines, the aether's nature is to move of its own accord in perfect circles, for ever; so the heavenly spheres go round and around, sun and moon and stars."

"Now, hold on," said the young man in the turban. "Do you-"

"Air and fire," Atwood said. "But we too are made of star-stuff. Our bodies are gross matter; our minds full of the chatter of newspapers and advertis.e.m.e.nts and train timetables and money and other nonsense; but our souls are made of the stuff of the heavens. And so we call across the void, each to each. If we can but pull back the veil, and take a peek behind it..."

"Mercury is a romantic," Jupiter said. "For tonight, all that is required of you is that you follow our instructions. And that if there is fear-and there will be fear-you do not falter. Now pay attention. Listen to the ticking of the clock. There will be a series of chimes; they will be your guide. You must not stray from the path..."

Josephine stared at her card. She felt the turbaned neophyte's-Saturn's-palm sweat rather horribly into hers. She struggled to remember Jupiter's instructions. Thank G.o.d that she and Saturn were excused from joining in the chant. Everyone else, eyes closed, hands entwined, chanted nonsense syllables. Over and over and over. If not for the perfect interweaving of their voices, she might have thought they were all improvising. Jupiter's sharp clipped voice set the pace rather like a metronome, intertwining with Atwood's drawl. One man at the table had a thick Yorkshire accent. The Indian fellow's accent was equally thick, and a woman whose face was obscured by a round and greenish electrical lamp sounded French. Jupiter's pencil scratched at the paper. Josephine couldn't see what she was drawing. The camera clicked at regular intervals. The incense was sweet, oily, dizzying. She wondered if it was drugged. The thought was a little frightening; not unpleasantly so. She listened intently to the grandfather clock that loomed behind her, just as Jupiter had instructed, awaiting the chimes. It clack-clacked in a somewhat irregular way, as if it was following several different cycles at once, some of which were faster than others. She kept expecting it to chime at any moment. She told herself to be patient, and to keep her breathing steady, her hands still. Saturn's hand really was very unpleasant to the touch. Ura.n.u.s' hand trembled. She tried to ignore both of them. Jupiter had been quite particular in her instructions: they must concentrate on the chime, on the chant, on the images on the cards before them. Very well; Josephine could do as instructed. But what was it all for? She'd heard of certain talented mediums who could project their astral selves among the stars, or to the moon, or at least who said that they could. Was that all this was? Would the lights come on soon and they would all stand around telling themselves that of course we had felt the most extraordinary sensation of departing from the body.... Or was this one of the more refined sort of fraternities, where it was understood that when one spoke of travel to the stars, it was of course not meant to be taken literally, nothing so vulgar; rather, one meant a spiritual awakening, a discovery of the recesses of one's own soul? Perhaps. Most likely. Atwood was no fool. How had he talked her into this, precisely, and distracted her from the reason she'd come here? The camera clicked. She realised that she'd drifted off for a moment, and sat up straight. There was now a low musical tone in the room, coming from no clearly identifiable corner; it sounded rather like a cello. There might be a cellist hidden somewhere, or perhaps a phonograph. The camera clicked again. The odd thing about the cello was that its tone was always descending, down and down for ever, yet never changing. The camera clicked. Jupiter's pencil scratched. The clock chimed and, as instructed, she shifted her attention to the orange sphere and closed her eyes. There was darkness for a moment, then a ray of violet light rose up from the infinite darkness below her into the infinite light above, and into it slowly descended the shadows of Mercury and Jupiter and Ura.n.u.s and the others, and she felt herself opening up to lend them her strength, and they revolved together as they descended-or perhaps they rose; she could not tell if those words had any meaning any more. De profundis, Atwood whispered, as if in her ear, ad lucem, while behind her the clock chimed again and again as if time itself poured brightly into the void like quicksilver.

When she opened her eyes it was pitch dark, and there was screaming and shouting in English and French and what was presumably Hindustani. There was broken gla.s.s in her lap. Something flopped on the table in front of her, scattering what was left of the lamps. She had a sense of having fallen so powerful that she was afraid to move for fear that she would find that her bones were broken. The thing on the table in front of her made a keening, fluttering sound. It was like nothing she'd ever heard before.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," someone shouted. "b.l.o.o.d.y b.u.g.g.e.ring b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, they-"

"No," Atwood said. "We did this."

"Novices." That was the Frenchwoman's voice. "Idiot novices."

"No." Atwood's voice. "No, no, no. What is that infernal noise? Who is that? Everyone stand away from the table, and stop shout-"

"b.l.o.o.d.y Gracewell," shouted Ura.n.u.s. "Another b.l.o.o.d.y error!"

"What," said Jupiter. Her voice was tight to the point of snapping. "What-is-that?"

Somebody swore. It sounded like they'd stumbled over the camera.

"What did we bring back?"

"Impossible!"

"Oh G.o.d-oh G.o.d, it's real."

"I have matches," Mr Turban said. "I have matches!"

The thing on the table lurched. Josephine felt something soft and lace-like brush her face. She screamed and jumped out of her chair.

"Light. Light!"

"All right, all right-wait-oh, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l-there!"

A match flared red.

The chimerical apparition that lay on the table, flopping in broken gla.s.s, was ... She didn't know what it was. It appeared shapeless at first-or perhaps she simply couldn't make any sense of its shape. Parts of it were a bright cobalt blue and parts of it were mottled indigo or pink-Josephine couldn't tell if she was looking at shimmering vari-coloured scales, or tattoos, or bruises, or blood, or clothing. In places it had the shine of scale, or enamel, or silk. Sharp ribs in a narrow chest heaved for air. It had a tangle of limbs, long, flailing, jointed in an irregular way-or perhaps they were broken. It lay in a heap of purple matter-folds of diaphanous silk and lace, a peac.o.c.k's tail, petals, the leaves of fern, the fronds of a jellyfish-bathed in shadow and flickering matchlight. She couldn't make sense of it. The face-oh G.o.d, there was a face!-had what she thought of as rather Chinese-looking eyes, except they were pupil-less, silvery, nacreous, blinking in what might be panic. It was screaming.

Mr Turban started sobbing like a baby. Jupiter slapped him.

Struggling on the table as if pinned there like a b.u.t.terfly. Were those things on its back wings? Just as she thought she was about to make sense of what she was seeing, the match went out.

Someone took her hand and pulled her away-he lit a match and she saw that it was Atwood, pointing to the stairs and mouthing up, up. She was too stunned to argue. When she turned to look back the-the apparition had rolled in its agony off the table and onto the floor, where the experimenters all crowded around it, obscuring her view, holding up matches-with the exception of the man in the turban, who'd fainted, and the man in the black coat, who'd gone to fetch the rifle from the corner of the room. Over the noise of the experimenters' astonished jabbering, she could still hear the creature screaming. She thought that she might never stop hearing it.

Atwood pulled her out into the corridor.

"What-"

"I don't know. Impossible. Unprecedented! More than I dared imagine. Is it dangerous? Most certainly. I have to think..." He laughed, running his hands through his hair. "Ha!-I was right to add you to our circle..."

Was it somehow her doing? She didn't know. She recalled nothing clearly. She remembered colours, darkness, motion; a great turning ring of light, and another, and another. She remembered straining, yearning, a homesick longing for the stars.

"Go home. Say nothing. Do you understand? Nothing."

Atwood put his fingers to her mouth. He'd cut them on the broken gla.s.s, and they smeared blood on her lips.

"Nothing," he said, in a tone of command.

He led her to the door.

She said, "I..."

"For your own sake, Josephine: say nothing. This is no game. Now go, before Jupiter decides to lock you up in the pantry."

He smiled suddenly. "You were splendid, though. Ha! At last!"

Then he practically shoved her out into the street and shut the door in her face.