The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories (19 page)

Only I knew that Jasper was still working on his most cherished project. He occasionally would call me in for a consultation on some technical detail of graphics. He talked about producing the game himself. It had become an obsession with him. One day, he summoned me to his flat, just to report his progress to me.

‘I’m experimenting with a new chip called a Randomised Connector,’ he said. ‘It allows the computer to simulate the human mind in that it does not always act rationally, but is allowed to make bizarre shapes, or to choose from a number of alternatives. It simulates the activity of the human imagination, but you need to give it enough material to work on. It needs to be educated. The uncanny thing is that it would seem that you can train it to act in accordance with your own thoughts.’

‘Or perhaps your thoughts act in accordance with it?’ I asked.

‘That is a possibility.’

‘A frightening one.’

‘Is it frightening? I think it’s rather exhilarating. But no, I think we can be the controlling partners. You remember Gilbert Ryle’s critique of Descartes?’ Of course, I didn’t. I had barely heard of Descartes, let alone Gilbert Ryle, but that was Jasper’s way of establishing his superiority: he pretended to assume that you knew as much as he did. ‘Ryle called Descartes’ separation of mind and body “the concept of the ghost in the machine.” Ryle, being a thoroughgoing materialist, assumed there was no ghost. No soul, in other words, independent of the body; no mind, independent of the brain. But science has proved him wrong. Even, as early as the 1930s, the J.B. Rhine experiments were beginning to show that such things as telepathy and clairvoyance were a scientific reality. As one eminent biologist once said, if a ghost could act on a machine, the brain would be the right instrument to act on. So amazingly sensitive. And if our ghost, soul, spirit—whatever you call it—can act on our brain, and on other people’s brains through telepathy, why not the artificial brain of a computer? I tell you, that is the next frontier! We can inhabit cyberspace, not just through remote controls like a mouse or a games console, but directly with our own minds.’

He stopped. His face was flushed, his eyes bright. Were there tears in them? In which case, what was he crying about? At that moment, he looked and sounded like a prophet. He glanced at me to gauge my reaction. It must have been satisfactory because he then said in a quieter, almost furtive tone: ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet. Can you come here next Friday evening?’ I knew that this was an order not a request.

When he opened the door to me that Friday evening Jasper seemed a different person. The reticent, self-contained character who could be galvanised into high-flown enthusiasm had been replaced by someone anxious, tentative. He told me that Aidan Plimson would be arriving any moment now. The name was spoken as if it were someone I ought to have heard of.

‘I very much want you to meet Aidan,’ he added redundantly. ‘Aidan is an incredible person, absolutely brilliant in his way.’

‘As I am in mine,’ was the unspoken conclusion to the sentence, because admiration had not entirely deprived him of personal vanity. Actually, I think it had enhanced it: he seemed to look on the discovery and befriending of this Aidan Plimson as a brilliant achievement in itself. He spoke of him in the language of adolescent hero-worship, but I was sure there was no sexual attachment. It was power of intellect and personality that he seemed to be admiring. I asked Jasper who this Aidan Plimson was and what he did.

‘He has a bookshop in Coptic Street, near the British Museum. He’s a great authority on the occult.’

‘Is he a black magician or something, then?’

‘Don’t mock what you don’t understand. You’d be amazed by his intellectual depth. He’s opened a whole new world to me. I knew about it theoretically through writers like Frances Yates, but she was just an academic. She didn’t dare experience it. Aidan has shown me the reality.’

I wondered what this Plimson might be like, and whether I would be similarly overwhelmed. In my mind I pictured a dark, imposing figure, perhaps wearing a long black cloak lined with scarlet silk, like Count Dracula in the films. Absurd, I know. I suppose I was subconsciously preparing myself to resist his influence. I must have felt that anyone who could reduce a hard-boiled egoist like Jasper to abject subservience was dangerous.
On arrival he proved a great disappointment. Plimson was in his late thirties or early forties, of average height, fat with small hands and a shiny, pink skin. An insubstantial frizz of ginger hair crowned the top of his large head. He had cultivated the dandified ‘young fogey’ look: tweed suit, pearl-buttoned waistcoat, spotted bow tie. He wore glasses and had a habit of constantly adjusting them onto his small nose with his right index finger. His manner was benignly avuncular, or condescending, depending on your point of view. Mine was unfavourable.

He sat down on Jasper’s leather sofa and accepted, as he put it, ‘a glass of vino bianco, per favore, with just un smidgenette of Perrier.’ The fact that Jasper didn’t vomit at this was enough to tell you that he was under Plimson’s spell. I sat down opposite Plimson who, having accepted his drink, turned his attention on me.

‘Young Jasper tells me you’re a genius where computer graphics are concerned.’

I made some self-deprecating remark. He smiled and nodded, as if acknowledging that my modesty was a mere formality, albeit an acceptable one. He then went on to interrogate me on my line of work. Unwillingly, I was impressed. He had a good basic understanding of the subject, and his questions were astute and stimulating. Under his sympathetic guidance, I found myself articulating my theories about the future of computer graphics with more fluency than I thought I possessed. Though his appearance was against him, Plimson had an attractive voice, a bit plummy, but mellow and precise with a subtle variety of tone. I was not surprised to learn that he had pursued quite a successful career as a professional singer (light baritone) before devoting his energies to the book trade.

‘I still do the odd gig,’ he told us, pronouncing the word ‘gig’ very much in inverted commas, as if holding it metaphorically at arm’s length. ‘My trouble is, they will have these concerts in churches, and I can’t bear singing in a church. The draughts, my dear, and the people! The acoustics and the encaustics! It’s all too much for a white woman.’

Jasper even laughed at this. Plimson, without looking at him, held out his glass to be refilled. Jasper obliged. He was treating Jasper like a disciple already in his fold. I had the feeling that the interest he showed in me was that of a cult leader towards a potential convert, flattering but predatory. He made a little performance out of taking me into his confidence in front of Jasper.

‘You see, your friend here interests me strangely.’ He waved his hand in the direction of Jasper who looked on, stoically embarrassed. ‘He is a Renaissance man, that is to say he is both artistic and scientific. And like many of the great Renaissance men, he has the instincts of a Magus.’

‘What is a Magus?’ I knew this was the question he wanted me to ask, but I couldn’t help it.

‘A Magus is essentially a man who stands between two worlds, the world of the spirit and the world of appearance which you mistakenly call “the real world”. By means of his skill he tries to make the one influence the other and to hold power in both. It requires great discipline and a level head, but it can be done. The Magus is a man of power. He operates in the shadow and the light; that is to say, he uses both good and evil for his own purposes which transcend both good and evil. Have I confused you? I have. Let me put it this way. In all your computer games you rely on the principle of opposites, don’t you? You need an opponent to defeat or shoot down. And on the most fundamental level the computer uses a binary system, the zero and the one, positive and negative. The one has no validity or function without the other. It is this essential fact that the Magus has grasped. He uses both the left and right hand paths. The great seventeenth-century witch La Voisin advised her clients to say a Christian Mass for what they desired, and only if that failed to resort to the black variety. She herself was arrested coming out of Mass. So you see the notion of black and white magic is nonsense really. It is all just magic. There is no white without black. They coexist of necessity. The Magus makes use of both. He might have made the Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem or Compostela, but he went on the Black Pilgrimage too.’

Jasper was listening to all this stuff mesmerised. He asked: ‘What was the Black Pilgrimage? Where did they go to?’

‘Some went to Jerusalem and worshipped at Golgotha. To them it was the scene of the death of God and the triumph of the Lord of this world. That was rather crude; it was also dangerous. They were all too often found out and torn to pieces by the Christian mob. There were others who went to Chorazin where, according to legend, the Antichrist is to be born. Well, I’ve been, and believe me, my dear, there’s nothing. It’s a ruin. Just a few broken stones—black basalt mostly—and some even more broken peasants. But there were others still who were deeper adepts, and they went to the Black Cathedral.’

‘Where was that?’

Plimson smiled. You could tell that he had anticipated the question and that he was going to enjoy answering it. His fat body wriggled into a more comfortable position on the sofa and seemed to expand in doing so.

‘We tend to think of virtual reality as a modern invention, don’t we? One realises that nearly all the scientific discoveries of this century were anticipated by the Renaissance Magi. Look at Leonardo and his flying machines. The idea of creating an alternative virtual world by means of visualisation techniques was known to many of them.’

‘So the Black Cathedral was purely imaginary?’

‘It was imaginary, but not purely so. This is where we in our twentieth-century so-called scientific mind-set go disastrously wrong. The great maxim of Hermes Trismegistus from which everything else stems is
Ut supra, sicut infra
. “As above, so below.” In other words, anything that can be made to operate on what you call the imaginary plane, can be made to act on the physical plane. So the Black Cathedral may have been first conceived in the mind, but it had its reality in the material world. Our ideas of the relationship between spiritual and material are still terribly crude, far cruder in many ways than the old magicians. Look at Ryle’s facile sneer at the “ghost in the machine.” ’

I glanced at Jasper who smirked. I asked: ‘What was the purpose of this Black Pilgrimage?’

‘Power, naturally. You went alone but you would return with someone or something.’

‘What?’

‘A talismanic object of power or a familiar which would do your bidding. But that thing bound you to the Black Cathedral. When you possessed something from the Black Cathedral, the Black Cathedral would begin to possess something of you. Of course, that might be a sacrifice one is willing to pay, but you don’t get “out for nowt”, as they say in the North.’

This man was appalling. I was finding it difficult to stay in the same room with him; nevertheless a guilty fascination held me.

‘How do you get to this cathedral?’ I asked. ‘Or how does this cathedral get to you?’

‘Yes,’ said Plimson, nodding with schoolmasterish approval, ‘the latter question is the more appropriate. There are certain rituals and symbols to be adhered to. Power attaches to them by virtue of their antiquity and frequent use. Some, like poor old Jack Parsons, favour the so-called Babalon Working. You can find it in his
Book of the Antichrist
. Pretty crude stuff, though, but what do you expect from an American whose principal acolyte was L. Ron Hubbard? The real strategy is visualisation. Remember the saying of Paracelsus: “Resolute imagination is the beginning of all magical operations”—and that is where computer graphics are so useful. It is an artificial interior space. We have the means of constructing our own Black Cathedral.’

‘Why should we want to?’

‘Because it is a vessel of power,’ said Plimson. ‘And the one thing needful is power. Power over our own lives, and power over others.’

After that the conversation was diverted into less controversial areas. Once or twice, I caught Jasper and Plimson exchange a questioning glance. I thought that they might have been wondering whether I was a possible recruit to their cause. When Plimson rose to go he came over to me and put his hand heavily on my shoulder.

‘These are stirring times,’ he said portentously. I very nearly laughed. ‘Yes. Stirring times. Will you be part of them?’

I did not answer; I just sat there, longing for him to take his hand off me.

When he had gone, I wanted to question Jasper more about Plimson and how much he believed in all that stuff he had been giving us, but Jasper had reverted to his old self. He was once more secretive, aloof. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said. ‘There are some things I want you to do for me.’

During the next few weeks Jasper kept me busy. We did not meet, but he sent me a constant stream of e-mails and scans of old engravings. Some of these were of architectural details; others of cabalistic symbols, others of grotesque figures half-human, half animal. He was, he said, designing a ‘new version of an old game’. He wanted me to turn these engravings into computer graphics which could be used for the construction and decoration of a vast virtual structure. Let me admit that I guessed very soon that he was working on Plimson’s notion of the Black Cathedral, though how seriously and with what object, I had no idea. I did not ask; I simply told myself that it was all nonsense.

I should have taken it more seriously because I was disturbed by Jasper’s increasingly troubled relations with the management of Playtronics. His previous aloofness had been replaced by an active arrogance, and his aggression was matched by that of Sam Prentice, now on the board of directors, who, since his encounter with the mysterious dog, had revealed an edgy, paranoid side to his character. Most people in the firm recognised that Jasper’s waywardness had to be tolerated because of his creative brilliance, but Sam did not. ‘Talent is a privilege, not an excuse,’ he used to say. This may be true, but it doesn’t help you to deal with someone like Jasper.