Andromeda Klein (23 page)

xiii.

When Byron the Emogeekian arrived at the hidden Temple of Thoth Hermes Mercurius Termaximus, that is, at the Children’s Annex of the International House of Bookcakes, Andromeda had his Sylvester Mouse books ready for him in three neat stacks of five.

“Check these out, please,” she said.

It was quite a good list, if she did say so herself.

She had started with Lovecraft’s
“The Dunwich Horror”
and Others
, and added, also from the fiction section of the Sylvester Mouse list,
Zanoni and The Sorry Tale
. That was for fun. Then there were
True and Faithful, Gems from the Equinox
, and
Nightside of Eden
, to which she had added Euclid’s
Elements
in one volume and
Babylonian Liver Omens
. From there she had gone to Crowley’s
Book of Thoth
, Westcott’s translation of the
Sefer Yetzirah
, and both of Mrs. John King van Rensselaer’s books on playing cards. She rounded the whole thing out with
On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead
, a mid-nineteenth-century edition of the
Rituale Romanum
, and, because of his professed interest in chaos,
S.S.O.T.B.M.E
.

Byron picked up
The Sorry Tale
, which was on top.

“‘A story of the time of Christ,’” he read aloud, “‘by Patience Worth. Communicated through Mrs. John H. Curran.’” He turned to the first page and read:

“Panda, panda, tellest thou a truth? Panda, thou whose skin is burned to saffron from desert’s blaze …”

“Is it a code?” he said.

“Everything’s a code,” said Altiverse AK, which was true enough. Andromeda was seated in one of the children’s chairs at one of the children’s tables, and the emogeekian was standing across the table from her, staring at her with an unreadable expression. He wasn’t dressed nearly as horribly as he had been the previous day, and actually would have looked relatively okay, other than in the respects in which he resembled a spider monkey, and the irredeemable wispy chin beard.

“It was dictated via Ouija board,” she said, “letter by letter, by a spirit named Patience Worth in 1917.” A mere curiosity, compared to the others, but worthy of being saved from the clutches of the “Friends” of the Library. She wished she could save them all, of course, but she’d had to prioritize, and to stick to a list that would be halfway coherent and defensible in case her scheme was ever found out. Of course, anyone who checked out
Nightside of Eden
would naturally also check out Lovecraft and
Gems from the Equinox
, she could say, if called to take the stand in her own defense at her trial, and it would take a slick lawyer indeed to poke holes in that argument.

“If anybody asks,” she said, “you can tell them you’re doing it for a research project.”

He was giving her the “Huh?” stare again.

Andromeda tried to explain the relation of
Liber 231
to the
Book of Thoth
and
Nightside of Eden
and why understanding the angel magic of Dee and Kelley required a knowledge of Euclid’s
Elements
as well as
Liber Loagaeth
, but she got very confused by the end and wasn’t sure even she understood what she was saying. There was an awkward pause, during which he finally sat down in the chair opposite her.

“You and your
libers,”
he said. “So if I read these books, I get to be in your coven?”

That creaky shuddering vibration that could be felt faintly but deeply and all over was the sound of the Universe rolling its eyes.

“You don’t have to read them,” she told him, adding that all that was required was that he check them out and keep them for at least a few days before returning them. “But you might want to read the Lovecraft, at least. Just to back up that Shub-Niggurath hobby of yours.” She had even bookmarked the beginning of “The Whisperer in Darkness” for him.

He nodded with a half-frown, pretending he intended to do it. “I’ll tell you one thing right now,” he said. “I am totally changing the name of my band to
Babylonian Liver Omens
.” Andromeda was getting pretty tired of people making fun of
Babylonian Liver Omens
around there, but she managed a weak smile in response. “Sot-bm-ee,” he said, pointing to
S.S.O.T.B.M.E
. “What’s that mean?”

“Sex secrets of the black magicians exposed,” she said. An important text in the Chaos tradition you claim to espouse, she thought, but didn’t say.

“Seriously?” he said in an astonished way, and started paging through it. “He’s salivating,” said Altiverse AK, adding: “Let’s see how many times we can make him rename his band.”

He had brought two things for her, one of which was rather pointless and the other of which was—well, in a perfect, less Andromeda world, it would have amounted to something like the best pickup line ever, though she sincerely hoped he hadn’t meant it that way.

The first thing was on his iPod.

“Choronzon,” he said, and he handed her his earbuds, obviously wanting her to listen. “Shub-Niggurath, the song.” She inspected the earphones for wax buildup or anything gross, but they were fairly clean. Her ears did not work very well with earbuds, however. The shape of her ears was all wrong, and the buds just would never stay in. And inside, of course, there was only disorganized collagen, so nothing was ever loud enough. She could barely hear the song, though what she could hear of it sounded like chaos, which was appropriate.

“Louder,” she said, pushing them in, and closing her eyes tightly to concentrate. “Louder. I can’t hear.”

“That’s as loud as it goes,” he said. “Boy, you must really be deaf.” She could barely make out what must have been the chorus, which seemed to be: “Shub-Niggurath—the song! Shub-Niggurath—the song! The goat with a thousand young!” So that really was the title; in spite of herself, she found that adorably stupid.

Byron told her he had made a CD of it for her, and he took it out of his bag. It was in a little sleeve that he had decorated with pentagrams and 666s in what was meant to look like dripping blood. The big mass of spiky blobs at the top, she realized after looking at it for a while, was the band’s name, Choronzon, the most illegible logo imaginable. She had to admit he could draw well, which she envied.

“There’s a special song at the end,” he said.

Altiverse AK said, “Oh goody,” and it was possible that that influenced that fact that Andromeda herself sounded way more sarcastic than she intended when she said: “I can’t wait.”

“You don’t have to take it,” he said, looking hurt, and Andromeda felt bad, and also thought, though she would never say it, You’re cute when you’re hurt. And he was, sort of almost, actually, even in spite of the near-beard. She said she didn’t mean it that way, and thanked him as graciously as she could and said she would listen.

He perked right up, looking a lot like Dave did when he saw you reaching for the treat drawer.

“Yes, let me know what you think,” he said. “I mean, if you want. You don’t have to. Only if you feel like it.”

The next thing he said was the thing she believed would be like the perfect pickup line in a world where pickup lines were ever good and where girls like Andromeda got them from people.

What he said was:

“Hey, want to see my
Necronomicon
?”

Okay, she thought, in the direction of Altiverse AK, which was saying “Oh brother” in a series of what would have been sputters if Alt AK had had physical lips and tongue and saliva with which to sputter. Okay, so he managed to put the emphasis on the wrong syllable (the
cron
rather than the
nom)
, something she would have previously thought almost impossible to do. But you have to admit, altithing, that a world where boys pop up and say “Want to see my
Necronomicon
?” every now and again is a better world than the one we previously thought we had.

He pulled it out of his backpack. Altiverse AK burst into derisive laughter, but Andromeda shushed it.

It was, in fact, the
Simonomicon
. The mass-market paperback was familiar, though not part of the IHOB’s collection. It had been a craze when it was published in the eighties, and it was everywhere: Savers always seemed to have a few ragged copies in the book section. But Andromeda had never seen one of the original limited, leather-bound editions of it in real life. Black with silver-gilt-edge pages, silver decorations, and a black ribbon bookmark, much like her own planned limited edition of
Liber K
. As she did with all important books, she sniffed it. And she had to admit, in response to a query from Altiverse AK, which had to rely on Primary World Andromeda’s reports to assess such things: it smelled amazing. Dusty, and rather darkly sweet, with an acrid bite around the edges. Hoax or not, it smelled like magic.

“Wow,” she said. “I’ve never seen one of these. You know it’s a fake, right?”

“Yeah,” said Byron. “It for sure is. I tried it out and it didn’t work at all.”

AAK’s laughter began again, nearly drowning out Andromeda’s own response; she was aghast.

“You’re not supposed to
try it out!”
she whispered when she had found her voice. “Are you insane?”

“Running off the rails on a crazy train,” he said enigmatically. “But what does it matter if it’s a fake, anyway?”

It was hard to explain why, and Andromeda was lost for words. Maybe because the line between
hoax
and
blind
could be exceedingly thin when it came to ceremonial magic? Maybe because fooling around with a graded system of imaginary initiatory gateways could still attract mischievous entities? Perhaps she would have to let him into her “coven” just so she could keep an eye on him and confiscate the book and prevent him from accidentally awakening something that could eat the world.

“Anyway, it’s for you,” he said, as though reading her mind. “Now you have to let me be in your coven.”

Andromeda was speechless, for a variety of reasons. It was a hoax, but it was a fun hoax, and hoax or not, it was a cool book. And it was worth quite a lot of money. She said “No, I couldn’t” a few times, and asked where he got it.

“The Internets,” he said. He must have lots of money floating around, she thought. If she had that kind of money, she would bleed the Internet dry of rare books, of course. Maybe she could get him to buy some of the Sylvester Mouse books when the “Friends” of the Library auctioned them.

As these thoughts were running through her head, the emomageekian picked up the
Rituale Romanum
and asked, “What’s this one?”

“The Roman Catholic ritual handbook, circa 1870,” she said matter-of-factly. “Now, that one
is
real.” She added that, as the weedgie knew quite well, the Catholic Mass and other rituals were extremely powerful and well-developed pieces of ceremonial magic and that it could be very useful to consult them when planning your own ritual practice or studying older writings on high magic.

“Ha,” he said. “It’s not.”

“What’s not what?”

“A powerful magic ritual. No way. The Catholic Mass is—” He paused, then said: “The Catholic Mass is like a gay man smiling at you and telling you you’re wonderful and that everything is going to be all right. And you sing folk songs. I’m Catholic. Trust me. Why, what are you, again?”

“Half Spinach U-turn, half Jewess,” she said. “And bacon. And Nothing.”

They argued back and forth about the matter, and he finally said, returning to his habitual question, that he would prove it by taking her to St. Brendan’s this Sunday if she would let him into her “coven.”

She bowed to the inevitable.

“Okay,” she said. “But you have to stop saying ‘coven’ and ‘mageek,’ and you have to shave off the lesbian beard.”

“Ha,” he said. “I shall be reporting
you
to the library police for that remark. Deal. Consider it shaven offen.”

So that was how Andromeda Klein ended up with a neophyte disciple, and a date to go to church in the name of magical research. “Wait till the dad gets wind of this,” said Altiverse AK, and it had a point. He must not be told, it said warningly. He must not. The only thing the dad hated more than places of worship was the Pentagon, or maybe McDonald’s.

Andromeda had been trying to draw a small stylish letter
bet
, to be printed on a piece of transfer paper so she could tattoo it on her inner upper arm, and it wasn’t going too well. She was only good at drawing geometric shapes. So she handed Byron the paper and pen and her Hebrew book and asked him. With no questions, he picked up the pen and dashed it off quickly, and it was just about perfect.

“Ergo, draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica adjuramus te per Deum,”
Byron mispronounced, reading from where he had randomly opened the
Rituale Romanum
. Andromeda hissed and put a finger to her lips, half librarian, half sign-of-Harpocrates, and she put another finger to his lips as well, and then pulled it back quickly because it almost looked like he was going to try to kiss it or something.