I suddenly recalled what Angelo had said, the night before I left Sydney. We sanctify what we’re stuck with. Maybe that was the heart of it, for Mystical Renaissance. Most of the universe had been inexplicable, for most of human history – and MR had inherited the strand of the culture which had doggedly made a virtue out of that necessity. They’d stripped away – or fed through a cultural blender, in a kind of mock-pluralism – the historical baggage of most of the specific religions and other belief systems which had done the same, in their day … and then inflated what remained into the essence of Big-H itself. To sanctify mystery is to be “fully human.” Fail to do so, and you’re something less: “soulless”, “left-brained”, “reductionist” … and in need of being “healed.”

James Rourke should have been here. The Battle for the H-words was in full swing.

As we started back toward the hotel, I realized I’d meant to ask Lee a question which had almost slipped my mind.

I said, “Who are the Anthrocosmologists?” The term sounded as if it should have meant something to me, but – vague etymological inferences aside – it didn’t.

Lee was hesitant. “I doubt you really want to know. If Mystical Renaissance raise your ire…”

“They’re an Ignorance Cult? I’ve never heard of them.”

“They’re not an Ignorance Cult. And the word ‘cult’, of course, is terribly value-laden and pejorative; although I use it in the vernacular sense like everyone else, I really shouldn’t—”

“Why don’t you just tell me what these people believe, and then I’ll make up my own mind exactly how intolerant and condescending to be toward them?”

She smiled, but she looked genuinely pained, as if I was asking her to betray a confidence. “The ACs are extremely sensitive about … the way they’re represented. It was hard enough persuading them to talk to me at all, and they still won’t let me publish anything about them.”

The ACs! I feigned indignation, trying to mask my jubilation. “What do you mean, ‘let’?”

Lee said, “I agreed in advance to certain conditions – and I have to keep my word if I want their cooperation to continue. They’ve promised there’ll be a time when I can put everything on the nets – but until then, I’m on indefinite probation. Disclosing information to a journalist would destroy the whole relationship in an instant.”

“I don’t want to publicize anything about them. This is purely off the record, I swear. I’m just curious.”

“Then it won’t do you any harm to wait a few years, will it?”

A few years? I said, “All right, I’m more than curious.”

“Why?”