Anthony, Piers - Tarot 2 - Vision of Tarot

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Piers Anthony

Vision of Tarot

Book II: The Miracle Planet Explored

Dedicated to the Holy Order of Vision

Acknowledgments

Company, Inc. Used by permission of the author's agent Kirby McCauley.

Random House, Inc. Used by permission of the publisher.

1973 by Citadel Press, a division of Lyle Stuart, Inc. Used by permission of the

publisher.

1972 by Barrington Moore, Jr. Published by Beacon Press. Used by permission of the

publisher.

RATIONALE OF THE DIRTY JOKE: AN ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL HUMOR,

of the publisher.

by Litton Educational Publishing, Inc., a division of D. Van Nostrand Company. Used

by permission of the publisher.

Published by George Rainbird Limited for American Heritage Press. Used by

permission of The Rainbird Publishing Group.

Author's Note:

This is the second volume of the three-part, quarter-million word novel of Tarot.

Though this segment is unified around the religious and social theme, it is not a

complete story in itself, and it is hoped the reader will be interested enough to read the

first and third volumes. The first is God of Tarot, concerning the nature of the

challenge; the third is Faith of Tarot, concerning the nature of Hell. Some reprise of

the first volume may be helpful for those who have not seen it:

Brother Paul is a novice in the Holy Order of Vision, a liberal religious sect

dedicated to the improvement of the state of man. His superior in the Order, the

Reverend Mother Mary, sends him on a mission to Planet Tarot to determine whether

the Deity manifesting there is or is not God. Brother Paul discovers numerous

schismatic sects on the planet, often at odds; yet the rigors of colony life require all

people to cooperate closely or perish. They must identify the true God. Brother Paul

becomes the guest of the Reverend Siltz of the Second Church Communist, whose son

has taken up with a Scientologist: a local scandal. Brother Paul encounters Amaranth,

an extraordinarily pretty and forward worshiper of Abraxas, the snake-footed god.

Brother Paul experiments with the notorious Animation effect, controlling it by means

of tarot cards, but gets trapped in full-scale visions relating to his own base nature and

past experiences that led to his conversion to the religious life. He realizes that his

own soul may be likened to compost: the raw stuff of transition from death to renewal.

The present volume commences with Brother Paul's emergence from that play-

like vision.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Discipline: Triumph 9

II. Nature: Triumph 10

III. Chance: Triumph 11

IV. Time: Triumph 12

V. Reflection: Triumph 13

VI. Will: Triumph 14

VII. Honor: Triumph 15

VIII. Sacrifice: Triumph 16

IX. Change: Triumph 17

X. Vision: Triumph 18

XI. Transfer: Triumph 19

Appendix: Animation Tarot

Discipline: 9

...he found himself reflecting—not for the first time—on the peculiarities

of adults. They took laxatives, liquor, or sleeping pills to drive away their

terrors so that sleep would come, and their terrors were so tame and

domestic: the job, the money, what the teacher will think if I can't get Jennie

nicer clothes, does my wife still love me, who are my friends. They were

pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowl with in his dark

bed, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another

child. There is no group therapy or psychiatry or community social services

for the child who must cope with the thing under the bed or in the cellar

every night, the thing which leers and capers and threatens just beyond the

point where vision will reach. The same lonely battle must be fought night

after night and the only cure is the eventual ossification of the imaginary

faculties, and this is called adulthood.

—Stephen King: 'Salem's Lot, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1975.

The landscape of Planet Tarot formed about them. They stood in a kind of scrub

forest. A few large trunks rose from the underbrush, but these were dead and charred.

Some fire must have swept through the area a decade past, destroying most of the

large trees and all of the small ones, forcing the forest to start over. This was not

necessarily an evil thing; after many years of fighting forest fires back on Earth, the

authorities had realized that forest fires were part of nature's cycle, literally clearing

out the deadwood to make place for fresh growth. The big stumps, here, might

resemble buildings in the half light, and the forest was like a city, here was the raw

material of the Animation just past.

Brother Paul looked behind him. They were actually in a hollow beside the

clifflike face of a rocky ridge. Here was even more direct raw material; a moment ago

it had seemed like a brick wall, and his companion—"

Brother Paul turned to the man. "I am not certain I know you," he said. Not in this

world, anyway.

His companion was a colonist he had not encountered in the village, a tall, thin,

handsome young man, bronzed and healthy. "I am Lee, Church of Jesus Christ Latter

Day Saints," he said. "I am one of the Watchers."

"Ah—Mormon," Brother Paul said. "At one time I mistook you for—" He broke

off, not wanting to mention the Fed narc. "But that's irrelevant."

"Let's move out before the rent in the Animation fills in," Lee said. "We would

not want to be trapped again." He led the way, walking briskly. But in a moment he

added: "What we experienced appears to be a hitherto unknown aspect of Animation. I

was once called a member of your sect, though I really can not claim to know anything

about your religion. I gather this was a reinactment of the experience that brought you

into that Order."

"Yes," Brother Paul agreed, surprised. "I was partially blind for several days,

because, they said, I had stared into the sun too long. I think it was more subtle than

that; my namesake the Apostle Paul was similarly blind after his conversion. Perhaps

the drug and my general condition complicated it. The Holy Order of Vision took care

of me, and treated me with the memory drug and kindness, phasing down the dosage

of the one and phasing up the dosage of the other until I was stable again. I never did

recover all my memories. But by then I knew my destiny. I have never regretted that

decision."

Lee smiled, grasping the concept. "As the Apostle Paul joined the Christians he

had persecuted—"

"So I joined the Order I had wronged," Brother Paul agreed. "In the process I

became a Christian in the truest sense. I regret exceedingly that Sister Beth had to die

in order to facilitate my conversion—"

"I am sure you have filled her place admirably," Lee said. "We can not know the

meaning of God's every act. We only know that there is meaning. Why did God allow

the Apostle Paul to stone Stephen? Had I been there, I would surely have deemed

Stephen a better spokesman for Christianity than a lame epileptic Pharisee Jew." He

smiled. "Which shows how little I would have known. Only God is omniscient."

"Amen," Brother Paul agreed, discovering new insight. "The Apostle Paul made

Christianity what it is, to a considerable extent. He opened it up to the gentiles. That

seemingly minor though controversial change made all the difference."

"It did indeed," Lee agreed. "Perhaps you also will benefit your sect and the

world as the Apostle your namesake did."

"A ludicrous dream," Brother Paul said. "Only God knows what an imperfect

vessel I am. How much of my Animation did you share?" Brother Paul found that he

liked this man, and hoped the horrors of his personal Animations had not been shown

to him. Some secrets were best kept secret.

"Just fragments of it, I think. A game called Tarot Accordian—I do not use cards

for entertainment, but I do not pass judgment." He paused. "Do all these episodes

represent past experiences in your life or are some allegorical?"

"Some are real; some are sheer fantasy," Brother Paul said, embarrassed. If Lee

had seen any of the nightmare visions, he was evidently too discreet to admit it.

"I inquire," Lee said with a certain diffidence, "because something very strange

happened to me, and I wonder whether you might explain it. I felt—it was as though

another personality impinged on me. An alien consciousness, not inimical, not

unpleasant, but rather an exceedingly well informed mind from a distant sphere using

my body and perceptions—"

"Antares!" Brother Paul exclaimed.

Lee looked at him, startled. "How did you know?"

"I—cannot explain. But I met a creature from Sphere Antares. He said he might

visit me here, or at least I wanted him to—" Brother Paul spread his hands. "A foolish

expectation; I apologize."

"Foolish, perhaps. Yet it is an experience I seem to have shared. I don't profess to

understand it, but I do not regret it; the alien has a cosmopolitan view I rather envy."

He pointed ahead. "Look—there are the Watchers."

And there they were: Pastor Runford, Mrs. Ellend, and the Swami. "But where

are the others?" Brother Paul asked. "The ones drawn into the Animations, as you

were? We can't leave them..."

"No, we can't," Lee agreed as they came up to the Watchers. "Watchers, did you

perceive the nature of the Animations we have experienced?"

Pastor Runford shook his head. "We did not."

Brother Paul was relieved. "We have—seen things too complex to discuss at the

moment. Several people remain. We need to get them out before—"

Pastor Runford shook his head again, more emphatically. "We can not enter the

Animation area. The young woman you call Amaranth went in to warn you about the

storm, and—"

"I understand," Brother Paul said. "I'll go back and find them."

"I, too," the Swami said. "We had to retreat during the storm, but for the moment

the effect seems to have abated."

Lee was already on the way. The three spread out, searching the landscape that

had been a metropolis moments ago—and might be again if the Animation effect

returned. Speed was essential.

They found Therion first. He was sitting beneath a tree, looking tired. "That was

some scene you folks cooked up," he called.

"I did not arrange it," Lee protested. "I merely played roles assigned to me by the

playwright. Some were diabolical—therefore I assumed they originated with you." He

did not smile.

"I gather you two do not get along well," Brother Paul said.

"Few of us get along well with rival sects," Lee admitted. "That is the problem of

this colony. It is the same all over Planet Tarot; our village is typical. Everywhere we

co-exist with ill-concealed distemper. This man is a devotee of the nefarious Horned

God—whom I would call Satan."

"A Devil-worshiper!" Brother Paul exclaimed. "That explains a lot!"

"The Horned God was great before any of your contemporary upstarts appeared,"

Therion maintained, walking with them. "You call him Satan—but that is your

ignorant vanity. He is a God—and perhaps the true God of Tarot."

"Sacrilege!" Lee cried. "The Prince of Evil!"

"Listen, Mormon—your own sect is none too savory!" Therion snapped. "A

whole religion based on a plagiarized fairy tale—"

Lee whirled on him—but Brother Paul interposed himself. "Doesn't your

Covenant forbid open criticism of each other's faiths?"

"I never subscribed to that Covenant," Therion said. "Anyway, I don't find fault

with all this hypocrite's cult-tenets. Take this business of polygamy—that's a pretty

lusty notion. A man takes thirty, forty wives, screws them all in turn—"that's

religion!"

"I have no wives," Lee said stiffly. "Because there aren't enough girl—Mormons

on this planet, and none free in this village."

"But if there were, you'd have them, wouldn't you?"

"The matter is academic," Lee replied.

"But if it were not—if you had the chance to wed just as many young, pretty,

sexy, healthy women as was physically possible, how many would you take?"

"One," Lee said. "Plural marriage is an option, not a requirement. A single

woman, were she the right one, would be worth more than a hundred wrong ones. I

will marry the right one."

"You're a hypocrite, all right," Therion said. "I wish I could conjure a hundred

wrong women and show you up for—"

Further discussion was cut off by their discovery of Amaranth. She was standing

by a streamlet, looking dazed. "Amaranth," Brother Paul said, struck by her beauty,

afresh, though of course he had now had opportunity to appreciate her charms

unhampered by any clothing. (Or had he...?) It had once been said that clothes make

the man, but it seemed more aptly said that clothes make the woman. "Come on out

before the Animation effect returns."

She looked at him with evident perplexity. "I don't know—don't know my part.

Am I still the fortune teller?"

She was confused! "No," Brother Paul said. "We are back in the mundane world.

You have no role to play."

"She is always playing a role," Therion muttered.

"What's this about roles?" the Swami asked.

Lee answered him. "It was as though we were in a play, each with his script.

Each person could ad-lib, but had to stay within the part. We do not know who the

playwright was."

The Swami seemed intensely interested, despite his former cautions about

Animation. "To whom did the scenes relate?"

"Well, I seemed to be the central character," Brother Paul said. "Perhaps the

others had scenes to which they were central in my absence—"

"No," Amaranth said. "I played my roles only for you. Between roles I—seemed

not to exist. Maybe I was sleeping. I thought I had died when I jumped from that

copter—"

Brother Paul was uneasy. "Perhaps we should not discuss it in the presence of

those who were not involved."

"You must discuss it," the Swami said, his gaze fixed. "You are searching for the

God of Tarot, for the colonists of this planet."

"It seems I got distracted," Brother Paul admitted.

"I agree with Brother Paul," Lee said. "We have experienced a remarkable joint

vision whose implications may never be fully understood, just as the meaning of a

person's dream may never be clear. We should maintain our separate experiences, like

the members of a jury, until we are ready to make a joint report."

"Yes," Therion said.

The Swami looked from one to the other. "The Devil Worshiper and the

Righteous Saint agree?"

"And so do I," Amaranth said. "No one not in it can understand it."

"An extraordinary unanimity," the Swami commented. "But I may have an

insight. Is it not possible that the power of Kundalini—"

"Remember the Covenant," Therion reminded him gently. Yes, it was evident

that these people had little patience with each other's philosophies! Therion had said

he did not subscribe to the Covenant and had called Lee a hypocrite. It was becoming

clear who the actual hypocrite was.

"I have not forgotten it!" the Swami said with understandable irritation. "But this

power, however it may be named—call it the magic of Satan if you prefer—may be

the controlling force of your visions. Brother Paul has the strongest psychic presence

of your group, so it seems the play orients on him."

"Aura," Lee said. "He has aura."

"This is uncertain," Brother Paul said. "The reality of all we have experienced in

Animation is speculative—"

"No, I think he's right," Amaranth said. "There is something about you—"

"We forget the child," Therion said.

"One of the Watchers is a child?" Brother Paul asked.

"There was a child in the Animation, but I assumed she was a creature of

imagination." Those Dozens insults...

"There were to be five Watchers," Lee explained. "Two outside, and three inside

the Animation, representing poles of belief. The child was the third inside."

"I will search for her!" the Swami said, alarmed.

"We all will search, of course," Lee said. "We have wasted time; the Animation

may close in at any moment."

They spread out, striding through the valley. Therion was farthest to the left.

Then Lee, then Brother Paul, then Amaranth, and the Swami on the right. There was

no sign of the child.

Therion and Lee drifted further left as the slope of the land changed; he could

hear them exchanging irate remarks about each other's religious practices, faintly. The

Swami disappeared behind a ridge. This region was more varied than it had seemed to

be before; the mists had tended to regularize the visible features in the distance.

Brother Paul and Amaranth were funneled together by a narrowing gully. Here the

trees were larger; the fire must have missed this section.

It was dusk, and as the sun slowly lost its contest with the lay of the land the

shadows deepened into darkness. Flashing insects appeared. They were not Earthly

fireflies, but blue-glowing motes expanding suddenly into little white novas, then

fading. In that nova stage they illuminated a cubic meter of space and were a real, if

transient, aid to human navigation.

"What are those?" Brother Paul inquired.

"Nova-bugs. No one knows how they do it. Scientists shipped a few back to

Earth, when they first surveyed this planet, but the lab experts said it was a mistake:

the bugs possessed no means to glow. So—they don't exist, officially. But we like

them."

"Isn't that just like an expert!" Brother Paul exclaimed. "He can't explain it, so he

denies it." Yet this was true of people generally, not only experts. "Do you catch them

and use them for lamps as the people used to do with fireflies?"

"We tried, but they won't glow when prisoned," she said. "They tend to stay away

from the village, too. This is an unusually fine display; some nights they don't show at

all."

"Smart bugs," Brother Paul said. Obviously if the novas performed when tamed,

there would soon be no wild ones left.

"You know," Amaranth said somewhat diffidently, "I was caught in the—the

play accidentally. I was only coming to warn you of the approach of the storm when

you didn't answer the intercom. Then—"

"I understand. You were not an assigned Watcher. I'm sorry you got trapped."

"That's what I wanted to say, now that I've got you alone. I'm not sorry it

happened. I got to show off my own Tarot deck in spite of the Covenant, and my

fortunetelling skills—"

"I believe you have omitted some material between those two," Brother Paul said

dryly. "I must apologize for—"

"No, don't apologize! I wasn't fooling when I said there's something about you,

aura or whatever. Was it during the Animation that I said that? Anyway, I meant it. I

have to study you to learn how you tamed the Breaker, but that's become more of an

excuse than—well, you're quite a guy, in and out of Animation."

"I should hate to think that all those scenes were under my control," Brother Paul

said. "Some were all right—"

"Like Sister Beth," she agreed. "I am not of your religion, but after that I wonder

whether—"

"But others—well, that one in the castle." He was forcing himself to clarify the

worst. "Did I rape you?" As though it were a casual matter!

"You never touched me," she assured him. "More's the pity. You can't rape a

willing woman."

Never touched her... That was worse yet. "Still, if it was my will that dictated

your participation—"

"I improvised some. It was my role to tempt you, and I tried, I really tried, but

Therion kept getting in the way. I like to dress and undress. I like men—well, not men

like that stuffed shirt Lee or the fake Swami, but men with guts and drives and—"

"Fake Swami?"

"He's not Indian. I mean not Indian Indian. He's American Indian. So all this talk

about Kundalini—"

"His origin doesn't matter," Brother Paul said, conscious again of his own mixed

ancestry. "If he sincerely believes in his religion—and I'm sure he does—"

"He's still a fake," she said.

"He's not a fake! He showed me the force he has—"

"How did we get on this subject?" she inquired, turning to him. "Let's kiss, and

see where we can go from there."

Brother Paul was taken aback. Freed from the limits of her Animation roles, she

was fully as forward. "Are you always this direct?"

"Well, yes. Haven't you noticed the way I dress? I've got the physical assets, and

I want it known before I get old and saggy and lose my chance in life. But I don't turn

on to many men like this. I'll admit there aren't many eligible men in this village,

maybe not on this planet. Most are like that old bore Siltz, dull and married and

guarding his son's virginity like an angry crocodile." Suddenly it was clear to Brother

Paul what her real irritation with Siltz was: his withholding of an eligible young male

from the matrimonial market. There were evidently a number of such families here so

that young men and women could not find each other. "The religious factor

complicates it so terribly—but even so, you're special. There's something about you—

maybe it is the aura the Swami talks about. The way you handled the Breaker! I mean

to seduce you, if it's not against your religion, and maybe you'll like it well enough to

want more. Once I have you hooked I'll see about landing you permanently. Is trial sex

against your religion? I can be more subtle if it is absolutely necessary."

"Well, the Holy Order of Vision does not specifically prohibit—it's regarded as

part of our private lives. But there is a certain expectation—well, as Sister Beth said—

Amaranth sighed. "She was a nice girl. Not like me. Was there really such a

woman in your past?"

"There really was," Brother Paul agreed. "She was not as pretty as you, but the

guilt of her death changed my life. I wish that change had been possible without such a

sacrifice—but I always come back to the fact that I can not pretend to comprehend the

will of God."

"That's what the Jehovah's Witnesses say when someone chides them about the

end of the world not arriving on schedule. 'Don't second-guess Jehovah!' I think it's a

copout. My religion is I.A.O., and no priestess of Abraxas is afraid of serpents, literal

or figurative, or the opinion of a sexist God. So if you ever change your mind, I do

give samples."

There was something at once horrifying and refreshing about her candor. It

helped to know exactly where one stood. "Maybe Abraxas will turn out to be the God

of Tarot," Brother Paul said. This conversation made him nervous, because Amaranth

was simply too attractive, in Animation and in life. More trying was that she had seen

him in his elemental being, as a lust-laden male, as a fringe-legal gambler, as a drug

addict. She had smelled the shit. She had seen the mask stripped from what he once

had been, now hidden behind the facade of a gentle religion—and she did not

condemn him. Was there another woman in the human sphere who, perceiving his

psychic nakedness, the filth of his essence, would not recoil? He had no present

intention of indulging her offer—yet he obviously had not felt that way in Animation!

Which was his true mind?

There was a scream—an extraordinary, unearthly, nape-prickling effort

reverberating around the landscape. Some wild animal—or worse.

"Bigfoot!" Amaranth exclaimed. Then, in dawning horror: "The child!"

Both of them broke into a run toward the sound. The terrain was rougher here, as

if to balk them now that they were in more of a hurry. There was a thick undergrowth

on the slope—tall weeds, small trees, dense bushes, and root-like projections whose

affinities he did not know. Nettles caught at his trousers and made tiny gouges in his

skin. He dodged to avoid a small glowing cloud at knee height, then discovered it was

only the flowering portion of a forest weed. One foot dropped into a hollow, sending

him stumbling headlong—until he fetched up against a horizontal branch he had not

seen in the dark.

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PiersAnthonyVisionofTarotBookII:TheMiraclePlanetExploredDedicatedtotheHolyOrderofVisionAcknowledgments'SALEM'SLOT,copyright©1975byStephenKing.PublishedbyDoubleday&Company,Inc.Usedbypermissionoftheauthor'sagentKirbyMcCauley.THEDRAGONSOFEDEN,copyright©1977byCarlSagan.PublishedbyRandomHouse,Inc.Usedbyp...

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