The Birth of a new moon
Laurie R. King
Book 1 in the
Anne Waverley
Series
THE BIRTH OF A NEW MOON
Anne Waverly, university lecturer and sometime FBI consultant, lives with the curse of a tragic past—the horrific deaths of her husband and beloved daughter Abby in a mass suicide pact. No one knows what she has suffered better than Glen McCarthy, an FBI expert in cult behavior.
As a professor of new religious movements, Anne is called on by McCarthy over the years to help solve certain FBI cases and Anne, in an attempt to atone for the long-ago tragedy, has never refused him. Until now.
But Anne finds she can't say no to this particular case: a religious community out in the desert that looks as though it has the seeds of dangerous fervor. Slowly Anne works her way into the life of the community, and there meets two children, one of whom reminds her strongly of Abby, and suddenly she finds herself involved at a level that could be fatal…
With thanks to Jane-Marie Harrison and Paul Harrison, Bronwen Buckley, Jack from Freedom Independent Service, Alverda Orlando, and Mark Jacobs from Intertec Publishing.
And particular gratitude for the clever hands and eyes of Ken Orrett and Nathanael King, who brought to life the vision of Anne Waverly and Jason Delgado.
Section headings are taken from The Compound of Alchymie by Sir George Ripley, collected in Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum by Elias Ashmole in 1652 (reprinted in a facsimile edition by Kessinger Publishing Co., Kila, Montana, 1991). Some of the archaic spelling has been modernized by the current author.
Section definitions are from Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.
I
Praeparatio
prepare (vb) The action or process of making something
ready for use or of getting ready for some occasion,
test, or duty.
O Power, O Wisdom, O Goodness inexplicable;
Support me, Teach me, and be my Governor,
That never my living be to thee despicable…
Grant well that I may my intent fulfill.
Chapter One
In this country, we have the right to religious freedom. The nation was given its form by men and women who came here to escape religious persecution. When their descendents joined together in independence to frame a constitution, they recognized the right to freedom of religion as the very backbone of the nation: take it away, define just what a religion is permitted to look like and how the people may worship, and the entire basis of constitutional government is threatened. Argue as we might with Satanists or witches, followers of disagreeable mullahs or believers in the efficacy of comets to conceal alien spacecraft, from the beginning it has been made clear that, so long as the doctrine involved does not interfere with the country's legal system, a religious community has the right to define its own beliefs: In this country, heresy is not a concern of governmental agencies. Madness may even, at times, be a relative definition; after all, two thousand years ago the Roman government and the Jewish authorities judged a middle-aged rabbi to be criminally insane.
Still, laws must be obeyed, and the dance of what may and what may not be allowed keeps the courts very busy and law enforcement agencies torn between the need to intervene in a community that is behaving in an unlawful manner and the need to preserve the rights of individuals to act out their beliefs in any way short of the unlawful. For example, a community has the right to treat its children as adults when it comes to matters of worship and the determination of authority; it does not have the right to violate the state's child labor laws or treat minors as adults in matters of sexuality.
In investigating the legality of a community, the key element is information, accurately obtained and accurately interpreted. We have all seen the tragedies that occur when law enforcement personnel simply do not share a common language with a group of believers; the only choice in that situation is
From the notes of Professor Anne Waverly
The woman at the focal point of the tiered rows of red and blue seats in the lecture hall did not at first glance seem the type to hold the attention of two hundred and fifty undergraduates at the slump time of three in the afternoon. She was small and her hair was going gray, and her figure, though slim, was long past the litheness of youth. Her voice was quiet and deliberate, which in another speaker would have lulled the back rows to sleep, and the subject of her lecture was more cerebral than kept the average twenty-year-old on the edge of his chair.
The number of sleepers were few, however, and the percentage of spines inclined forward over the tiny writing surfaces attached to the chairs was high. There was an intensity in her that proved contagious, a vivid urgency in her voice and her body that overcame her undistinguished appearance and the torpor of the unseasonably early warmth of the day, transforming her limp into the stately pace of a sage and the wooden cane she leaned on into the staff of a prophetess.
In the eyes of her undergraduates, at any rate.
"What the hell is she talking about?" whispered the woman standing high up at the back of the hall, speaking to the man at her side. The two were not undergraduates; even if their age had not disqualified them, her skirt and blazer and his gray suit made them stand out in the denim-clad crowd.
The man gestured for her to be quiet, but it was too late; they had been noticed. A nearby girl glanced over her shoulder at them, then openly stared, and turned to nudge the boy next to her. The woman saw the girl's mouth form the word "narcs", and then she felt her temporary partner's hand on her elbow, pulling her out the door and out of the lecture hall. Professor Anne Waverly's voice followed them, saying "In fourth-century Israel this concept of a personal experience of God came together with the political—" before her words were cut off by the doors, and then the police officer and the FBI agent were back out in the watery sunlight.
In truth, neither was a narcotics officer, although both had worked narcotics cases in the past. Glen McCarthy made for a bench just outside the building and dropped into it. Birdsong came, and voices of students walking past; in the distance the freeway growled to itself.
"Did you understand what she was talking about?" Gillian Farmer asked idly, examining the bench closely before she committed the back of her skirt to it.
"Merkabah mysticism as one of the bases for early Christian heresies," Glen answered absently.
She shot him a dubious glance and settled onto the edge of the bench.
"And what is mer-whatever mysticism?" she asked, although she was less interested in the question than in the underlying one of how he came by his easy familiarity with the subject of Professor Anne Waverly's arcane lecture. She listened with half an ear as he explained about the Jewish idea of the merkabah, or chariot, mystical experience, the "lifting up" of the devotee to the divine presence. The scattering of early flowers and one lethargic bee held more of her attention than his words, and he either saw this or had little to say on the subject, because he kept the lecture brief.
After a moment's silence, the bee stumbled off and the subject Gillian really wanted to talk about worked its way to the surface.
"This whole thing has got to be unconventional, at least," she said finally.
"I suppose it looks that way."