Anthony, Piers - Tarot 1 - God of Tarot Read online

  Piers Anthony

  God of Tarot

  Book I: The Miracle Planet Discovered

  Dedicated to the Holy Order of Vision

  * * *

  Author's Note:

  This quarter-million-word novel of Tarot is published in three segments. This is the opening portion of the larger work, establishing the situation and covering the first major vision. It has its own unity, so may be read alone, though it is hoped the reader will be interested enough to peruse Books II and III also.

  This novel relates to the author's Cluster series of adventures, with a number of interconnections, but is of quite a different nature; the two projects should not be confused.

  An appendix defines the Animation Tarot that is the basis of this novel. The complete table of contents reflects the thirty Triumphs of that deck, from Key 0 (zero) through Key 28 (twenty-eight), which are included in the appendix.

  The complex nature of this novel may lead to confusion in certain places, and some scenes may be offensive to certain readers. Yet there is a rationale: It is difficult to appreciate the meaning of the heights without first experiencing the depths.

  * * *

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  0 — Folly (Fool)

  1 — Skill (Magician)

  2 — Memory (High Priestess)

  ∞ — Unknown (Ghost)

  3 — Action (Empress)

  4 — Power (Emperor)

  5 — Intuition (Hierophant)

  6 — Choice (Lovers)

  7 — Precession (Chariot)

  8 — Emotion (Desire)

  Appendix: Animation Tarot

  * * *

  0

  Folly

  In 1170 A.D., Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant of Lyons, France, suffered a religious conversion, renounced his possessions, and wandered about the countryside in voluntary poverty. This obvious folly attracted both persecutions and followers, the latter called the "poor men of Lyons." In 1183 Pope Lucius III excommunicated the growing sect of "Waldenses," who appealed to the Scriptures instead of to papal authority, repudiated the taking of oaths, and condemned capital punishment. They never made the sign of the cross, as they refused to venerate the torture device on which Christ hung, or the painful and mocking crown of thorns. Nevertheless, the Waldenses prospered in Christian lands; many thousands of them settled in the Cottian Alps on the French-Italian border. Their dauntless missionaries covered southern France, southern Germany and northern Italy. But the Inquisition followed them, and they were savagely repressed over the course of several centuries. Their ministers had to go about in disguise, and it was hazardous for them to carry any of the literature of their faith, lest it betray them into torture and death. But it was hard to make the material clear without teaching aids, for many converts were illiterate and ignorant. Out of this impasse was to arise one of the most significant educational tools of the millennium.

  The setting is Earth of the near future. The pressures of increasing population and dwindling natural resources have brought the human scheme to the brink of ruin. There is not enough food and energy to support all the people.

  But a phenomenal technological breakthrough has occurred: matter transmission. People can now be shipped instantly to habitable wilderness planets orbiting distant stars. This seems to offer relief from the dilemma of mankind; now there is somewhere for all those people to go.

  This leads to the most massive exodus in the history of the species; so many people are leaving that within a decade no one will be left on Earth. Unfortunately, matter transmission requires a tremendous amount of energy. The planet's sources of power are being ravished. This has the peculiar side effect of reversing the technological level of human culture; people are forced to revert to more primitive mechanisms. Kerosene lamps replace electric lights; wood replaces oil; horses replace cars; stone tools replace metal ones. The industrial base of the world is shrinking as the most highly trained and intelligent personnel emigrate to their dream worlds. Yet the colonization program proceeds pell-mell, as such programs and movements have always done, heedless of any warnings of collapse.

  This is sheer folly. Mankind is like the beautiful dreamer of Tarot's Key 0—the Fool—walking northwest with his gaze lifted in search of great experience while his feet are about to carry him off a precipice. He will have a great experience, oh yes! What high expectations these new worlds represent! What a marvelous goal to reduce Earth's population painlessly to an appropriate level! But what disaster is in the making, because no reasonable controls have been placed on this adventure.

  Yet there are redeeming aspects. At least the Fool has dreams and noble aspirations, and perhaps the capacity to recognize and choose between good and evil. It may be better to step off the cliff, his way, than to stay at home without ambition. The folly of future Earth is a complex matter, with many very noble and frustrating elements that may after all salvage its greatest potential.

  This is the story of just one of those elements, a single thread of a monstrous tapestry: Brother Paul's quest for the God of Tarot.

  1

  Skill

  252 A.D.: Emperor Decius was in power only a year, but in this time he cruelly persecuted the bothersome Christians. He seized one devout youth and coated his whole body with honey, then exposed him to the blazing sun and the stings of flies and hornets. Another Christian youth was given the opposite extreme: he was bound hand and foot by ropes entwined with flowers, naked upon a downy bed, in a place filled with the murmuring of water, the touch of soft breezes, the sight of sweet birds, and the aroma of flowers. Then a maiden of exceptionally fair form and feature approached him and bared her lovely flesh, kissing and caressing his body to arouse his manhood and enable her to envelop him in the ultimate worldly embrace. The youth had dedicated his love to God; to suffer this rapture with a mortal woman would have polluted him. He had no weapon with which to defend himself, yet his skill and courage proved equal to the occasion. He bit off his own tongue and spat it in the harlot's face. By the pain of this wound he conquered the temptation of lewdness, and won for himself the crown of spiritual victory. Paul, himself sincerely Christian, witnessed these torments. Terrified, he fled into the desert, where he remained alone in the depths of a cave for the rest of his life. He thus became the first Christian hermit, and was known as Saint Paul the Hermit.

  The great blades of the windmill were turning, but the water was not pumping. Only a trickle emerged from the pipe, and the cistern was almost empty. It was a crisis, for this was the main source of pure water for the region.

  Brother Paul contemplated the situation. "It's either a lowering of the water table or a defect in the pump," he said.

  "The water table!" Brother James exclaimed, horrified. "We haven't pumped that much!" His concern was genuine and deeply felt; the Brothers of the Holy Order of Vision believed in conservation, and practiced it rigorously. All had taken vows of poverty, and abhorred the wasting of anything as valuable as water.

  "But there has been a drought," Brother Paul said. Indeed, the sun was blazing down at this moment, although it caused no distress to his brown skin. "We might inadvertently have overpumped, considering this special circumstance."

  Brother James was a thin, nervous man who took things seriously. His long face worked in the throes of inchoate emotion. "If it be God's will..."

  Brother Paul noted his companion's obvious anxiety, and relented. "Nevertheless, we shall check the pump first."

  The pump was a turning cam that transformed the rotary motion of the mill's shaft into piston motion in a rod. The rod plunged down into the well to operate the buried cylinder that forced up the water. Brot
her Paul brought out plumber's tools and carefully dismantled the mechanism, disconnecting the shaft from the vanes and drawing the cylinder from the depths. His little silver cross, hanging on a chain around his neck, got in his way as he leaned forward. He tucked it into his shirt pocket with a certain absentminded reverence.

  He sniffed. "I trust that is not hellfire I smell," he remarked.

  "What?" Brother James was not much for humor.

  Brother Paul pried open the mechanism. Smoke puffed out. "There it is! Our wooden bearing has scorched and warped, decreasing the pump's efficiency."

  "Scorched?" Brother James asked, surprised. He seemed much relieved to verify that the problem was mechanical, the result of neither the subsidence of the water level nor the proximity of hellfire. "That's a water pump!"

  Brother Paul smiled tolerantly. The deepening creases of his face showed that this was an expression in which he indulged often—perhaps more often than was strictly politic for a man of his calling. Yet there was a complementary network of frown-lines that betrayed the serious side of his nature; some of these even hinted at considerable pain. "Not all of it is wet, Brother. This cylinder is sealed. In a high wind, when the shaft is turning rapidly—wind power varies as to the cube of wind velocity, as you know—the bearings can get so hot from friction that they actually begin to char."

  "We did have very good winds yesterday," Brother James agreed. "Brother Peter arranged to grind flour for a whole week's baking. But we never thought the mill would—"

  "No fault of yours, Brother," Brother Paul said quickly. "It is quite natural and sensible to use the mill to best effect, and a strong wind makes all its chores easy. This is just one of the problems of our declining technology. I will replace the bearing—but we would be well advised to choke down on the mill during the next gale winds. Sometimes it may be better to waste a little good wind than to lose a bad bearing." He smiled to himself as he worked, considering whether he had discovered an original maxim for life, and whether such a maxim might be worth integrating into his life's philosophy.

  He fetched a suitable replacement bearing and proceeded to install it. His dark hands were strong and sure.

  "You are a magician," Brother James remarked. "I envy you your proficiency with mechanical things."

  "I only wish the spiritual were as easy to attain," Brother Paul replied. Now he was sweating with the pleasant effort. He was a thickset man of moderate height, with short black hair. He was inclined to chubbiness, but his muscles showed formidable delineation as he lifted the heavy unit into place.

  "Wouldn't it be better to have the pump on the surface, so that it could be serviced more readily?" Brother James asked as Brother Paul struggled with the weight of the descending cylinder. Brother Paul had drawn it up without trouble, but was now occupied with easing it into its precise place.

  "It would—but we would have no water," Brother Paul explained. "Surface pumps employ suction, which is actually the outside pressure of the atmosphere pushing up the fluid. That's about fifteen pounds per square inch, and that cannot draw water up more than about twenty-eight feet, what with friction and certain other inefficiencies of the system. Our water table is thirty feet down. So we employ a pressure pump set down near the water; that type of device has no such limit. It is more cumbersome—but necessary."

  "Yes, I see that now. It is more than harnessing the windmill to the pump; it has to be done the right way."

  "I suspect it is the same with the power of God," Brother Paul said musingly. "It is there, like the wind:" an immense potential, often ignored or unperceived by man. Yet it is real; we need only take the trouble to understand it. It is our job to harness that potential, to apply it more directly to the lives of men. But though we seem to have all the elements right, it will not work if they are not correctly placed and adapted to our particular situation—or if part of the mechanism is broken, even though nothing may show on the surface."

  "I don't regard that as an analogy," Brother James said. "It is the literal truth. The wind is God, and so is the water; we can not exist apart from Him. Not for a moment, not in the smallest way."

  Brother Paul paused in his labors to hold up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "You are correct, of course. Yet there must be a process of communication between the power above—" he lifted his right hand to the sky— "and the substance below." His left hand pointed toward the buried cylinder.

  "I would call that process 'prayer'," Brother James said.

  The reassembled pump worked. A full, pure flow of water emerged from the pipe, cascading into the storage tank and cistern. Brother James was ecstatic.

  Without further comment, Brother Paul walked back to his room, washed his hands, arms and face, and changed to his habit: the black robe with the reversed collar, the cross worn outside. He had a class to conduct, and he was overdue. When dealing with matters pertaining to the works of God on Earth, it was best to be punctual.

  Suddenly he brightened. "Air, Earth, Water, Fire!" he exclaimed. "Beautiful. Thank you, God, for sending me this revelation." To him there was no objection to conversing with God directly; in this case, familiarity bred respect, not contempt. The Holy Order of Vision encouraged contact with God in any fashion that seemed mutually satisfactory.

  The students were there before him: five young people from a nearby village. These orientation sessions were held periodically, when sufficient interest developed. As the massive energy and population depletion of Earth continued, the need for technological and social systems closer to nature intensified, so these sessions had become fairly regular. The Brothers and Sisters took turns conducting them, and this was Brother Paul's week.

  "Sorry I'm late," Brother Paul said, shaking hands all around. "I was delayed, if you will, by a superimposition of elements."

  One of the girls perked up. She was a slight, bright-eyed nymph with a rather pretty elfin face framed by loose, dark blonde tresses. She seemed to be about fifteen, although inadequate nutrition stunted the growth of youngsters these days, delaying maturity. A month of good feeding might do wonders for her, physically—and perhaps spiritually also. It was hard to be a devout individual on an empty stomach. At least it was hard for those not trained in this kind of discipline. "You mean something by that, don't you, sir?" she asked.

  "Call me Brother," Brother Paul said. "I am Brother Paul of the Holy Order of Vision. Yes, I had an anecdote in mind, and thank you for inquiring." It was always best to begin on a personal basis; early theology could alienate young minds. He was not trying to convert, but merely to explain; even then, it had to be done appropriately. People were more complex than windmills, but there were parallels.

  "Big deal," one of the boys muttered. He was a strapping lad, massive across the shoulders, but surly. He had not been stunted by hunger! Evidently he had been sent here, perhaps by parents who could not control him much longer. The Order Station was no reform school, but perhaps he would find enlightenment here. One never could anticipate the mechanisms of God, who was as much more complex in His devices as man was in relation to a windmill.

  "We have a windmill that we use to pump water from the ground, among other chores," Brother Paul said. "But friction caused a bearing to burn out. Does that suggest anything to any of you?"

  They all looked blank—three boys, two girls.

  "In our studies at the Order we place emphasis on the elements," Brother Paul continued. "Not the atomic elements of latter-day science—though we study those, too—but the classical ones. Air, Earth, Water, Fire: we find these manifesting again and again in new ways. They show up in personality types, in astrology, in the Tarot deck—their symbolism is universal. Just now I—"

  "The windmill!" the blonde girl said. "Wind is air! And it pumps water!"

  "From the earth," one of the boys added.

  "And it got burned," the surly one finished. "So what?"

  "The four elements—all together," the first girl said, pleased. She clapped her hands t
ogether in un-selfconscious joy. There was, Brother Paul noted, something very attractive about a young girl exclaiming in pleasure; perhaps it was nature's way of getting her married before she became a burden to her parents. "I think it's neat. Like a puzzle."

  "What good is it?" the hulking boy demanded.

  "It is an exercise in thinking," Brother Paul said. "As we seek parallels, coincidences, new aspects of things, we find meaning, and we grow. It is good to exercise the mind as well as the body. The ancient Greeks believed in that; hence we have the Pythagorean Theorem and the Olympic Games. We believe in it too. This, in a very real sense, is what the Holy Order of Vision is all about. 'Holy' as in 'Whole,' 'Vision' as in the vision of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, that converted him to Christianity. He is not to be confused with Saint Paul the Hermit. We are not a church, but rather a brotherhood. We wish to bring together all people, and teach them the Universal Law of Creation, to prepare the Earth for the new age that is dawning. We try to provide for those in need, whatever that need may be, counseling them or offering material aid. We place great emphasis on practical applications—even windmills, in this day of retreating civilization."

  "Hey, that's great!" the girl said. "Can anybody join?"

  Bless her; she was doing his job for him! "Anybody who wants to, after a student apprenticeship. We do have levels through which the novice progresses according to his ability and faith, and much of the life is not easy. You really have to understand the Order before you can know whether you want to be a part of it"

  "Why do you wear the robes and study the Bible and all that?" one of the other boys asked. He was brown-skinned, like Brother Paul: that amalgam of races this culture still chose to term "black." "Can't you just go out and do good without all the trappings?"