Page 42 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Cabalocracy and the Hall of Mirrors

note on the door directed me to the garage. That took me around the
side of house and down a narrow old driveway sprouting weeds in
the cracks. Capra obviously had no motor vehicle—but I knew that
already.
I did not know he had set up his garage as a combined bunker and
study. He let me in through a side door. An air conditioner mounted
in a rectangular hole cut in the unfinished walls kept up a steady
stream of cool air and white noise during my visit. Bookshelves and
filing cabinets lined three walls. A refrigerator and workbench
covered with packaged convenience food and beverages obscured
most of the unused garage door. The remaining space was filled with
a battered schoolteacher’s desk and a couple of chairs once part of a
dining room set. Lighting was half a dozen bare bulbs strung along
the ceiling; they emitted barely enough illumination for me to get a
look at my host and his habitat. Another door must have been to a
bathroom not permitted in the residential zoning code; but it was
closed.
Capra wore a faded blue jumpsuit and sandals. He was lean,
round-shouldered and sported an untidy mustache and goatee—the
sort that bald men affect to distract attention from their hair loss. A
pair of reading glasses on a chain hung on his narrow chest. I
gratefully observed that he did not smoke; neither did he have much
in the way of fingernails. His left hand remained in his pocket while
he extended the right. He did not shake my hand, but simply opened
his palm to simulate a greeting and to indicate, as would a haughty
headwaiter, the chair in which I was to seat myself.
Then to my amazement he picked up a wand from his desk and
waved it around me, up one side and down the other. It was attached
by a coiled wire to a box on the desk. Evidently the silence of that
scanner meant I had nothing forbidden on my person. Capra settled
into another chair and shot me a penetrating glance.
“Well, Mr. Dawes: to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?
You may speak freely. The air conditioner is but one of the
precautions I take to avoid being overheard.”
“Uh, thank you, sir.” That was delivered earnestly, with rising
eagerness. It should be easy not to appear boring or stupid, right? I
was a natural for this part. “I heard about your hall of mirrors essay
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