The 37th mandala : a novel (41 page)

Of course, it was possible to think that despite their fashionable clothes, their lack of any overt affiliation with medieval systems of belief and quackery, these customers were really no different from the ones who flocked into Hecate's Haven hoping to become Cosmic Masters. His book was the equalizer, after all; if they bought into it, they were every bit as foolish as the neo-pagans and theosophists. On the other hand, maybe they were buying the book as a novelty, a bit of trendy kitsch to go with their mandala tattoos. Copies would circulate as freely as capsules of 37. It was a badge of hipness, as temporary as any, but during the course of the trend's popularity, there was an opportunity for Derek to climb to greater things. "Mandala Madness!" blared the cover of the
Bayrometer
, also available in stacks around the room. Once the mandalas faded from favor, his name would hang in the public's mind and his next project would benefit from his fame or notoriety. The mandalas were a stepping-stone to other and better things, not an end in themselves.

"Mr. Crowe?" said a fellow about his age or slightly younger, either prematurely bald or with shaven pate. He held a small packet in his hands. He wore odd, square little glasses and spoke with a slight lisp. "Bob Maltzman said I should introduce myself. I'm Neil Vasquez, your illustrator? I've been working on the concept for your mandala deck."

"Well, yes!" Derek said. "Come over here, I'd like to talk to you!"

Vasquez smiled nervously, dark eyebrows bobbing. He stepped around the table as the next person in line slapped down their copy for signing.

"Great to meet you! You did a fantastic job on the book, and this Tarot idea sounds terrific!" Derek was giddy, beside himself with tonight's success.

"I—I brought a prototype deck for you. These are probably smaller than what we'd end up using, but the quality's pretty good."

He laid the packet on the table, a deck of glossy cards not much bigger than standard playing cards. Crowe shuffled through them quickly. These mandalas were incredible, three-dimensional and lifelike, floating in a shimmering ether. They looked like photographs, with quicksilver shadings, colored in dark iridescence.

"You did these yourself?"

"They're computer generated. I've worked out a fractal program that does it, based on thirty-seven iterations of the same equation. I—it worked out so well, I started thinking, what if this is how the mandalas are generated? Like, if you see the universe as a vast processor crunching away until these things evolve. Of course, they'd do it in a dimension parallel to time, so they could sort of pop in and out of our dimension and do their stuff without really having to get stuck in it."

Derek said, "I had the impression they're more along the line of ancestral spirits, Ascended Masters, or something like that. But mine certainly isn't the last word on the subject."

"You see? You have real insight. I'd love to hear your suggestions."

"We should really ask the mandalas what they think." At that thought, he looked for Lenore. He hadn't seen her for a while. "I never got to tell you how much I admired your illustrations."

"Well, thanks, I'm glad. But these, I think, are light-years beyond the black and whites."

Derek spoke to the room. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the artist of
The Mandala Rites
! Neil Vasquez! Don't neglect to add his signature to your copy!" He turned to Vasquez, who looked flustered, smiling nervously, his entire skull flushed and mottled. "Put yourself right here next to me, Neil. We'll get an assembly line going."

"Wow," a girl said, leaning over the table. "Are these like Tarot cards?"

"That's right. We'll be putting them out shortly."

"Cool!" She started flipping through them, and soon others were craning to see over her shoulders.

Derek glanced over at Neil, who was blushing proudly.

"I think they're a hit," he said.

He wasn't sure how much time passed before Nina appeared at his elbow, placing a glass of wine at his side. "Are you ready for a break?" she asked.

His hand was cramping, so he gave a short nod and stood up. "Neil, why don't you stay?" he said. "Give them something extra for their money."

"We have another surprise," she said. "Etienne's waiting downstairs."

On the ground floor, there was scarcely room to move. People had begun to circle around on the dance floor more or less in unison. It was either that or not move at all, apparently. The lock-step pounding of their feet merged with the thrumming music. He found himself thinking of fan blades swinging around and around, slicing heavily at the air: monotonous, hypnotic, a droning rhythmic whir.

While he hesitated at the edge of the dance floor, someone took him by the arm. He turned, expecting another fan, another request for an autograph.

"If it isn't Derek Crowe, famous author," said Lilith. "Or should I say plagiarist?"

He couldn't quite hear her in the noise. "Lilith—I didn't expect you here."

"Did he find you?"

"What?"

"Your friend with one ear."

"One ... ear?" Derek went cold.

"Oh,
Chhith
!" Nina said. "Don't worry, Derek. Everything's taken care of."

"What—how did you know about him?" he asked Lilith.

"He gave me a lift tonight. He says you have something that belongs to him, which I don't doubt. You seem to have a lot of people's things. I didn't realize you had so many secrets, Derek. You were wise to hide them from me."

He was completely baffled. She couldn't possibly be referring to all the things he feared she meant.

"Could you excuse us?" Nina said firmly. "Mr. Crowe has to be somewhere else right now."

"Be my guest," she said.

"I'll catch up with you later," he called as Nina tugged him along.

"Don't bother," she replied. And he couldn't be sure of the words she added, the club was so noisy. Surely it was nothing to do with "Elias Mooney." He'd misheard her, out of guilt or paranoia. No one knew a thing about Elias. Not even Etienne and Nina.

He was growing intensely aware of the second skin he wore. It fit more comfortably than he would have believed. Was it insane to wear such a thing so close to his skin? No one suspected. It was utterly perverse! The way it rustled against him, tickling and tingling, tightening in places, was very strange, very pleasurable. A comforting, all-enveloping pressure that was more than slightly erotic, as if his entire body were an enlarging sex organ, blood-pumped, sensitive.

He found himself laughing as Nina led him downstairs past what had to be a guard or bouncer. He hadn't realized there was a basement until now. But this, clearly, was where it was all happening. The party within the party. The coolest of the cool were here, standing and kneeling before small displays of 
technology and multimedia art pieces, as if worshipping at the very latest altars.

His eyes were hooked briefly by one particularly incongruous sight among the blur of fashion: a pinch-faced, sad-eyed, clearly puzzled man dressed as if for a business meeting, in a shiny Hong Kong suit. He moved haltingly down the halls, peering into rooms. It was not so much the man who interested Derek, as the stack of papers he carried—typescripts, photocopies, even a few red and black notebooks of the sort Eli Mooney had filled with his rant. Derek's first and craziest thought was that these were his secret mandala files, stolen from his closet. Impossible! The man sidled on, vanishing around a corner, but not before Derek caught a glimpse of his own handwriting.

With a muttered excuse to Nina, he followed the man. His horror knew no bounds. They couldn't be his papers; how could they? How could some stranger have acquired them?

Chhith, he thought.

Derek looked around the corner and saw an alcove with a door in it. He pushed his way into a dark, purple-lit space. At first he saw ultraviolet patterns glowing and writhing under a black light—mandalas and creepers, vines and skeletons, dragons and carnivores with poisonous diamond eyes. As his pupils adjusted to the low light, he saw that the shapes were imprinted on the skins of two naked figures who coupled vigorously before a small but appreciative audience.

Just then, the sad-eyed man with the bundle of papers opened a door at the far end of the room. Derek saw his silhouette briefly, the bundle of papers clutched to his chest, then the door closed. He stepped in, averting his eyes from the couple who were working their way across the floor of the room. One hurled the other hard against the wall—nearly in his path—and they continued to fuck in a vertical position. Derek sidestepped them and continued on. It was a bad North Beach sex show, redone for the culture vultures. As he reached the far door, it opened under his hand. Etienne smiled in.

"There you are!" Etienne stepped in and closed the door. "I see everyone's warming up!"

Derek looked back and saw that the crowd he'd moved through, as if wearing blinders, was beginning to imitate the actors—if they were actors. The audience members had begun groping each other and seemed to be shedding their clothes, although given the dim light and the pounding of Derek's head, it was difficult to be sure of anything he saw.

"Charming, isn't it?" Etienne said.

"We think heterosexuality is
very quaint
," said Nina, emerging from behind Derek, sliding an arm around Etienne.

Derek felt as if some similarly jaunty response were mandatory. "Quaint but effective," he said. They all laughed together as they steered him out of the room.

"Yes," said Etienne, "sex still has its uses."

He must not appear to be terrified, but he was reluctant to let them lead him along anymore. Overhead, the din of pounding feet had settled into a softer, more rhythmic shuffle.

"You—you mentioned a surprise," he said uncertainly.

"Any guest of honor has certain duties," said Etienne.

"You are the master of ceremonies!" said Nina gaily.

"And it is time to fulfill yours. Everything is ready, even you must sense that."

Even I?
Derek thought. Was Etienne implying that he was obtuse?

"Of course," he answered.

They rushed him toward another door where two burly men stood guard. The bouncers opened the door and ushered them through.

Derek found himself in a large round room, lit only by a spotlight at the center. Mirrored walls curved around. At the center of the room sat a couch of oxblood leather, like a psychiatrist's sofa; and beside it was a padded armchair. It resembled a psychiatrist's setup.

Lenore Renzler lay on the couch. The chair was empty.

Derek took a few steps forward. "Lenore?" Her eyes were open; she lay there unblinking, without even glancing at him.

"She's in a trance," said Etienne. "Forgive me, I know you're quiet proficient, but I took the liberty of preparing her. To spare you the trouble."

Derek started to retreat, but Nina and Etienne each held an arm. "This really isn't my kind of thing."

"I realize it's not the therapeutic situation you're used to."

"I'm not a party hypnotist. I need privacy for my work. This goes against every professional ethic. I can't... can't possibly."

"But you must, Mr. Crowe. It's not entirely up to you, you know. They asked to speak to you."

"They?"

Lenore's head rolled toward him then, her eyes still gazing upward. "Hello, Derek."

"Hello, Lenore," he said softly. Nina and Etienne gently forced him into the chair.

"We are not Lenore," she said. "She will not speak tonight. It is
we
who have words for you now."

He ran his hands nervously up and down his sides, causing the skin beneath to crackle and prick. "I—I should have something to write with." He started to rise, as if he could flee under pretense of looking for a pen.

"No," said Etienne. "We speak not for the ages tonight—we speak for you alone. Your time has come." His voice was almost identical to Lenore's—distant, grainy, but growing closer and louder. Dozens of people ringed him in. Everywhere he looked, the mandala signs were glowing,
sak
so powerful they cast their light through clothing.

"My time," he repeated. The tramping overhead had grown indistinguishable from the music. He glanced at the ceiling and saw something bobbing there, something gray and glistening, acrawl with dark blotches moving crablike upon it, hissing and gaping and drooling down on him.

He did not quite register—or believe—what he saw. Not until he realized that someone must have slipped a dose of 37 into his drink. The hallucination was vivid as any he could imagine; and realizing it was only a vision freed him to watch it with remote fascination. A product of his mind and nothing more.

It was then, in the air above Lenore, that he saw the second shape swimming. Black arms; speckled eyes at the tips of radiant tendrils; a central mouth of lamprey fangs. It was bright as black crystal, as if an actual being had unfolded itself from 
nowhere and now dominated the room. He must congratulate his hosts on the spectacular special effects.

But when he turned to look for Etienne and Nina, he saw nothing of them—or of the crowd. A horde of mandalas filled the room like a jostling crowd, blotting out the pale human shadows; their tendrils dangled from the ceiling like the stinging arms of a multiform man-o-war, like poisonous party streamers strung from evil balloons.