hope are just rats in the walls," he said heavily, without looking up from his notebook. "And I have a horrible suspicion I'm standing on a used condom, but I'm afraid to raise my foot and look. Honestly, Henry, is this the best you could do? How much are we paying for this dump?"

"Practically nothing," Henry said smoothly. "The owner owes me a favour. It's not that bad ... All right, it is that bad, but then we're not planning to live here, are we?"

"What's the history?" said Mark. "Anything that might interfere with what we're planning?"

"The history is dubious, bordering on squalid, but nothing that need concern us," said Henry. "I came here a few years ago, with a girl I knew then. Jessica something. The owner rents this place out for new groups to show off their stuff, and the occasional hippie happening. Whole room is probably permeated with drug residues. Try not to breathe too heavily, and don't lick the walls."

"I can honestly say the thought had never occurred to me," said Charles. "Though I'm now having a hard time forcing it out of my mind. How long have we got the room for?"

"We'll have the whole building for ten days," said Henry. "More than sufficient."

"And in a dodgy neighbourhood like this, no-one is going to stick their nose in and ask questions," said Mark, rubbing his hands together briskly. "Perfect!"

Henry looked at Charles. "Are you happy about this? You've hardly left the Michael Scott Library for the past week. Did you turn up anything we ought to know about?"

Charles scowled. "Not really. The Babalon Working is nothing new. It's been around for ages, in one form or another. There's quite a bit about it in Dr. Dee's The Sigillum Aemeth, and of course Babalon is mentioned in the Book of Revelations, and not in a good way. The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that it's a very dangerous undertaking. I can't find a single report of anyone completing the ritual successfully."

"That's because they didn't have the information in my letters!" said Mark. "Come on, we have to do this! We can't turn back now! Not when we're so close to everything we ever dreamed of!"

"It's up to you, Charles," said Henry, ignoring Mark. "You're the brains. Do we go ahead, or not?"

Charles thought for a long moment, then shrugged. "Oh hell. Let's do it."

They were all very young then. It's important to remember that.

The vision changed again, to show us the Babalon Working. Only edited highlights, of course, but it was still pretty impressive. The lengthy ritual was designed to summon, hold, and physically incarnate one of the Transient Beings; not just a demon or spirit, but one of the real Powers and Dominations. The living embodiment of an abstract concept, in this case love or lust or sexual obsession. (Babalon was an old, old name, and no two sources could agree on exactly what it represented.) The three young men saw it only as a weapon they could use against those they perceived as the villains of the day, and those in the Authorities who might try to obstruct the forthcoming changes. The three young men were determined not to be stopped. They would bring about freedom by force, if necessary. Like most fanatics, they were blind to irony, and even if they had seen it, they probably wouldn't have cared. They were doing this for the greater good, after all.

The Babalon Working involved days of fasting for all three men, and almost continual chanting, drawing circles and pentagrams on the floor, and protective sigils and wards on the walls, along with the regular ingestion of sacred herbs and drugs. They guzzled thirstily at bottled water and sweated it all out again as they stamped then-way through ritual dances. They weren't allowed to sleep, or even rest. By the end of the sixth day they were all looking pretty ragged round the edges. They worked naked now, stinking from dried sweat and the human wastes that piled up in the room's corners. Their eyes were red and staring, their voices hoarse and pained from the endless chants, and their hands shook so badly the sigils they drew had to be traced over and over again to get them right. They were beyond hunger, beyond thirst, chemicals roaring through their veins, expanded thoughts clamouring in their minds. They staggered in spiral patterns across a floor covered in chalk-marks of all shapes and colours,