The next morning, while Joe takes Robert off for some play time in the woods, Charles takes you into his parlor.
The light of one's ousiarchs, he explains to you in a continuation of last night's talk, bestow not only prodigies and proclivities associated with each, but other unique gifts through a blending of their influence. So Frank, an adept of Lurga and Malacandra, blends the sternness of Mars with the piety of Saturn, tempering his talent for battle with mercy and proportion. So too Malacandra, in its discipline of mind and body, augments the power latent in Lurga, a planet of crushing judgement. "The Visage at the End of Time," Charles calls Saturn, and by wielding the doom of Lurga with the strength of Malacandra, Frank can force the most tenacious adversary onto his knees or even onto his face, simply through the exercise of will. Similarly, Joe, an adept of Arbol and Viritrilbia, can concoct a twin (a proclivity of Viritrilbia) made of light (a proclivity of Arbol).
You ask what a blending of your own ousiarchs might mean.
"That is for you to learn in your training," Charles says. "The glass by which their beams are blended, if twisted only a fraction, may refract their union into a different color. If you ask me to speculate—"
"You don't have to, sir."
"Well." He smiles. "Maybe I want to. Sulva is the Mirror," he goes on, "though often a veiled one, and his roads are mysterious and seemingly wayward. I am ... struck, though, at the coincidence that the Summa Personae should have fallen into your hands through not one but several unlikely and unrelated coincidences."
"Sir?"
"Never mind. Frank or Joe can explain. But our own astrologers—I use the word to refer to those of our Order who have most deeply studied the stars—have speculated that Sulva is hidden so often because he himself ferrets out that which hides or is hidden. If so, he complements Arbol, the wellspring of light, by exposing that which Arbol in his passivity cannot reveal. And Sulva may complement Kendandra—but here I remind you I am speculating— But he may complement Kenandandra by illuminating the hidden properties or possibilities inherent in the creations of the mind."
That strikes a harmonic chord in your memory, and you describe to Charles your experience in deciphering the sigils in the professor's books. He nods. "Yes, it may be as I described. But I repeat my caution. I am only speculating."
Still, your heart beats with excitement at the thought of unlocking the secrets of sigil-work. And if what Charles has speculated about Sulva is true—that it ferrets out the hidden—why then with Sulva's help you might ferret out the professor from his hiding place!
Some emotion must have shown on your face, for Charles says, "Don't be so quick, son."
"Sir?"
"To dream of the destination before you have packed your bag." You blush, and he pats your shoulder. "Anticipation is one thing," he says, "but impatience another. The straightest route is always the shortest, but it is often not the best." His expression turns grave. "Do you know what retrograde motion is?"
The phrase is vaguely familiar from your Astronomy class. "Is that when the planets go backwards?"
"Seem to go backwards in their motion across the sky, yes. We use the term to describe Stellae who fall from the path of wisdom. A Stellae never thinks he is going bad. No one ever thinks he is going bad. The worst anyone ever thinks of himself is that he is taking a brutal but necessary shortcut. But a star that cuts across the path of another, even in pursuit of a great good, breaks the dance, shatters the spheres, and ends by casting himself and—the grace of Eldil protect us all!—others into the Outer Void."
"Sir." You feel a cold and enveloping chill, and have the briefest vision of a black and bottomless vacuum sucking you down at infinite speeds into a nothingness that never ends.
Charles dispels the vision with a quick smile. "That is why we watch each other, nudging and perturbing each other, as the physical planets do, back into our traces. We will be with you always, son." He reaches to grip and hold your hand. "Just as you will be with us."
He draws you to your feet and embraces you. "Thank you, sir," you murmur as you fight back a sudden wetness in your eyes.
"I love you, son," he says. "I love you as though I have always known you."
--
"Heard you’re going to see Margaret," Joe honks later that night when you're all seated at the dining room table. It took only one day in Olympia for you to discover that Laverne is one of the rarest of cooks—one who makes mouthwatering dishes without being fancy about it—and she has left you all a piping-hot casserole in the middle of the table while she goes to the movies with some of her girlfriends. Of the four men she left behind, only Charles sits back, content to watch as you and Robert and Joe fight to be first to ladle out a portion.
"Who's Margaret?" Robert asks as he hovers a hand, waiting to grab the big spoon from Joe.
"You got a passport?" Joe asks.
"No." You slap at Robert's hand, but he gets the spoon anyway. "Never needed one before."
"Well, we'd have to fake you one anyhow." Joe bends over his plate, to inhale the scent with a dreamy expression.
"Why do you need a passport?" Robert asks.
"Because your bro's going to England."
"England?"
You finally get hold of the spoon. "Isn't it against the law to forge a passport?"
"Dude." Joe freezes with his fork halfway to his mouth. "You two just being alive is six kinds of being illegal. Besides, forgery is funner."
"Why does Will have to go to England?"
"Don't you want me out of the way?" you tease Robert, but a frown of concern, almost of fear, remains on his face. "We're joining the Stellae," you tell him.
"What?" Robert drops his fork with a clatter.
"Aw," says Joe. "Now you've gone and ruined the surprise."
"We're joining the Stellae?" Robert shouts.
"Everyone has to pay their keep," Charles says. He has finally got the spoon, and is dolloping out the casserole onto his plate. "I hope," he adds with a note of severity, "that the responsibility won't be too much for certain young men to handle."
"Whhoooooooaaa!" Robert bolts from the room.
"So we'll have to ship you to London under an alias," Joe continues over the yips and yelps and squeals of glee that echo from the living room. "How about something solid and sensible, like Helmut Bartelbaum."
"What?"
"Friedrich Eisenberg?"
"No!"
"Gebhardt von Hasselbach! That would make you a prince!"
"What's with the German names?"
Joe's expression falls. "There something wrong with German names?" he says in a freezing tone.
"Well, no. But—"
"Some of the greatest philosophers, the most sublime composers, the most exquisite poets, have had German names!"
"I'm not—"
"Immanuel Kant! Sebastian Bach! Wolfgang von Goethe! Franz Felix Liebesspruch!"
You can't help laughing at the last one. "Who?"
Joe leaps to his feet, his eyes ablaze. "I'll give you two seconds to wipe that silly grin off your face, Prescott, before I take you out back and beat you so hard your grandchildren will remember it!"
"That's Joe's real name," Charles says. He's been smiling mirthfully in his beard. "Franz Felix Liebesspruch. And he's convinced that one day that name will be inscribed in the company of those others."
You look at Joe, who with a shrug drops back into his chair. "You're German?" you exclaim.
He lunges across the table at you. "There something wrong with that?"
"N-no! I just thought you were, um, American!"
"If I am," he declares with lofty disdain, "I am as American as a hamburger, a frankfurter, or a wiener."
"Which is to say," Charles says, "he's adopted. So's Frank."
"What's Frank's real name?"
"Giuseppe."
"Giuseppe Liebe— Liebe—?"
"No," Joe says. "Giuseppe Boyardee."
"Really?"
"No." Joe snickers. "But I'll contribute a hundred bucks toward your funeral if you call him that to his face!"
--
Robert rejoins you, and it is explained to him that you have to go to London to begin your training while he will start his training in Olympia with Joe and Charles. But he also wants to help with the aliases, because he finds the idea "cool." "Why don't you and me switch names," he suggests. "I could be William and you could be Robert!"
"That's not much of an alias, especially if you keep the same last name," Joe says. "Maybe we should start with the last name. Me and Frank picked 'Durras' as a Latinate pun on 'Hardy', on account of everyone was calling us 'Frank and Joe' by then. You two have a favorite book or movie?"
You quickly shoot down Robert's suggestions—Stark, Rogers, Wayne, and Kent—but are stuck for your own idea until Charles, as he's clearing the table, says "How about Harrison?"
"Sir?"
"It's a patronym. 'Son of Harris'."
You feel a sudden lump in your throat, and look at Robert. He looks as stricken as you. But you can tell that your thoughts are as one. That's ... perfect.
"Okay, now for your first names," Joe says after you've murmured your agreement. "I think Robert's got something with the name swapping idea. That's what Frank and I did, sort of. 'Franz' is Frank and 'Giuseppe' is Joe, but we switched."
"I don't want to call Robert 'Will'," you reply. "That's my name. It's too weird."
"You've got other names, don't you? What's your middle name?"
"Martin." Joe looks at Robert, who says, "Jeffrey."
You look at each other as Joe smiles. "That was easy," he says.
--
Later that night, Joe pulls you onto the back porch. "Don't worry about Margaret," he tells you. "She's terrifying, but she isn't nasty." He shivers. "Be glad you're not going to see Father Ed. He's a Catilindrian!"
"What's wrong with Catilindrians?"
"Their planet. We call them the assholes of the Order."
"Why, what's their planet?"
Charles answers for him, calling through the nearby open window of his parlor. "Uranus!"
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