They both had coffee, which Vincent found to be a rather bitter, recycled-tasting restaurant blend; Julia had insisted on paying for her own. Impulsively, Vincent kept stirring his cup as they talked; she slurped her coffee and more than once sloshed over the edge of her cup during her animated gestures.
“But suppose, just suppose,” Vincent said, “that the neo-Satanist movement isn’t supposed to be true, or even believable. What if it’s more like a net to capture people with their own silliness? Certain people. To show them how gullible they can be? What if it’s a trick, a practical joke that has, well, backfired?”
Julia considered this for a moment. “Then whoever planned it was wrong from the start. If you have such power and influence, then you shouldn’t purposely mislead the public. Why not take them down the right path from the start?”
He sat in silence for a long moment. She seemed puzzled, but waited. “I’m Vincent Van Ryman,” he said in a soft voice.
And then, of course, he told her everything.
Vincent rented a hovercopter, and the two of them went alone up the California coast to the Point Reyes seashore. Julia had read a great deal and filled her conversation with interesting and exotic trivia, but she had never before left the boundaries of the Metroplex, nor had she ever been inside a hovercopter.
Vincent awkwardly worked the unfamiliar controls that lifted the vehicle from the mansion’s rooftop pad and swung around to the side of the building. He enjoyed watching Julia’s rapt attention as she splayed her fingers on the curved windowshield glass and peered out, wide-eyed, at the chesspiece buildings of the Metroplex from far above.
The copter shot northward, and the boundaries of the Metroplex faded into wooded hills and crowded tourist-filled seaside communities. The old road below wound precariously along the side of a cliff that plunged to the ocean. A few breakers against the rocks looked like tiny flecks of foam in a gigantic basin.
Vincent felt daring as he swooped the hovercopter down to skim barely above the surface of the choppy water, paralleling the cliff face. Spray bounced up and misted the windshield. Julia clapped her hands and laughed—nervously, it seemed.
Far ahead, partly surrounded by wads of fog rising in the morning heat, Vincent could make out the lighthouse on its tiny promontory jutting out into Drake’s Bay. The ocean rolled beneath the craft, and the sheer cliff beside them gave way to a wide expanse of beach next to a black honeycombed cluster of tide pools. Vincent flew ahead, then circled back; under the clear water the beach gradually sloped beneath the depths.
The hovercopter settled onto the sand, skittering pebbles and debris. From what he could see, the two of them were completely cut off in an area accessible only by air.
Julia jumped out of the craft and gleefully ran to the breakers. She kicked off her shoes and splashed up to her knees in the water, heedless of the rocks on the beach. Vincent laughed at her expression of shock. “It’s cold! It’s freezing cold!”
“Of course it is. It’s the ocean.”
She splashed out and tried to brush droplets of water from her calves. “But the ocean is supposed to be warm. ”
“Not at Point Reyes.” He turned back to the hovercopter and opened the storage compartment. “Come on. Let’s have a picnic.”
Vincent had gathered a lunch for just the two of them, even purchased a wicker picnic basket so that it would seem more like the real thing. Handing Julia the basket, he took the blanket out of the bottom shelf and spread it on the sand.
As they ate, Julia breathed deeply, looking around, staring at the tall beach grass and the sheer cliffs towering above them. Seagulls flew in the air.
After lunch, they went exploring together up and down the beach. Julia was fascinated with the tide pools, squatting on the rocks and looking into the orphaned puddles, poking her fingers at the small sea anemones, tipping over snails, and watching the thumb-sized hermit crabs crawl over the palm of her hand.
“I found you some seashells,” Vincent said. She accepted them reverently and put them in the pocket of her blouse.
Back at the copter, Vincent withdrew some equipment and began setting up on a tripod.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I want to capture this moment. So I can remember every wonderful detail of this day.” He paced off a distance and erected the beam-splitter on a second tripod, then returned to focus the holocamera’s laser on the splitter. Satisfied, he set the splitter on an automatic slow-scan, panning down the long beach and the ocean, following their footprints in the sand. Later, Vincent would pack up the camera and treasure the disk. Already he intended to project the hologram as a grand mural on the study wall.
“I’m very happy, Julia. Did you know that?” Vincent said with an alien tone of amazement in his voice.
She smiled and flipped her long blond hair behind her shoulders. “Yes. I gathered that.”
They made love on the blanket on top of the soft yielding sand. The seagulls flew overhead and cried righteous indignation at the brazenness. The waves pounded with a sensual power, a whispering, rushing sound that made everything perfect.
And everything was perfect. They didn’t even notice their stinging sunburn until that evening.
If he had pressed the point, Julia probably would have moved in with him anyway, but first she insisted that he publicly denounce the neo-Satanists and expose the sham.
In just a short time Julia had put another dimension into his life, showing him a world that didn’t always have to be dark, uncaring, self-centered. She gave him tenderness, she made him malleable again, she smoothed out the jagged edges of his personality.
At the next High Sabbat, Vincent commanded all the neo-Satanists to listen, and he confessed everything. “All of this”—he indicated the grotto, the robes, the relics, the symbols—“is the biggest practical joke in history. All of neo-Satanism is make-believe, fabricated—we concocted it one night when we were bored. We brainstormed all the Writings. We choreographed the rituals. We graphic-designed the symbols.”
He cracked open the display cases that held the relics. “The hoofprint in the linoleum—didn’t anybody realize there’s a three-century gap between the time when Faustus lived and when linoleum was invented? And this, the black claw of Satan… plastic. Plain old plastic.” He pulled off his High Priest’s robe and tossed it on the floor in disgust.
“Go home. Spend your time doing something worthwhile. Try to better the world, or better yourselves. We were just pulling your leg.” He turned his back and walked toward the exit alcove. “I’m disappointed at how easily you fell for it.”
Vincent left the sacrificial chamber, slipping into the dark and hidden catacombs that would take him to a mass-trans station, where he could catch a skipper back to the mansion before curfew. He had no desire to see any part of the tumult he had left behind….
Like a careening pendulum, once set in motion he turned against the neo-Satanists and became their most outspoken opponent. In a press release Julia had written, Vincent told the cult’s dark secrets and the sham. Normally reclusive, Vincent Van Ryman appeared on several news services and found himself quoted liberally in the current-events databases.
He sent a copy of the press release to Nathans with a note that said, “Sorry, Francois. But this has gone on long enough.”
Vincent had not spoken to the other man since meeting Julia, and he wanted to let Nathans settle down before trying to get in touch again. Now that Vincent spent his days with Julia, he had little time for anything else.
Sweating and precariously balanced on the eaves of his home, Vincent took down the gargoyles from the roof gables; Julia stood on the ground next to the sharp wrought-iron fence, apparently ready to catch him if he fell. Later, armed with paintbrush and scrubbing tools, she went about defacing all the pentacles from the mansion.