Mikey Hart stirred his coffee a couple of times, the spoon ringing against the side of the china cup like a chime. I sat in silence, willing him to start talking again. At last he did.
“Since you are willing to accept the possibility that liminal space may be more than a psychological construct, then it is not a great leap to ask you to accept the idea that those who are aware of liminal space as something that can be used, rather than merely experienced, would construct tools to enable them to better use it. Phineas House is one such tool. The kaleidoscopes and teleidoscopes you found are others. Phineas House was the brainchild of one Aldo Pincas.”
I nodded to indicate that the name was familiar to me, and Mikey went on without asking any questions. I liked that he accepted I would have come across the name in my own research.
“Now, again, I need to stop and lecture,” Mikey said with a rueful smile. “There are places where the use of liminal space is easier. This area—Las Vegas, New Mexico—is one. Physically it has useful qualities.”
I bit down on my lower lip to keep from spouting out what Domingo and I had deduced, wanting to hear whether Mikey would confirm our guesses.
“It is an area where mountains meet the plains,” Mikey said, “not gradually, with a fading into foothills, but comparatively abruptly. Another useful quality is the degree of geothermal activity simmering beneath the surface. If the pressure broke out into active eruption, it would not be as useful, but the hot springs offer a nice blend and emerge within a few yards of an icy mountain stream. The weather is also classically liminal—a temperate zone that experiences the seasonal borders, but is not defined by them. It is an area that knows both drought and flood; that is divided by a river, but not defined by that river.
“Moreover,” Mikey continued, “the dry places of the earth have always been especially transitional. Living things cannot exist without water, and so deserts regularly move between the appearance of death into the vitality of life. Desert plants bloom apparently from nothing after a rain. Brown shifts into green; then, as the water is withdrawn, it shifts back into brown once more. Human occupation only intensifies the situation, for frequent rituals meant to bring rain, meant to alter one state into its opposite, create liminal states.
“In Las Vegas specifically, the coming of humans only intensified the multiplicity inherent in the natural landscape. Because of the hot springs, a wide variety of native peoples shared the area in relative peace, each bringing their own customs and traditions. When the Spanish arrived, the complexity increased. Later, Las Vegas was part of Mexico, later still part of the United States. Each change was made in a fashion that increased the complexity of the situation without wiping out previous influences.”
I nodded and Mikey looked at me narrowly. “I can see from your expression that you’ve thought of some of these things yourself. I am impressed.”
“I hoped I wasn’t showing it quite so plainly,” I said, “but you’re right. I had wondered why Phineas House should be in Las Vegas, New Mexico, of all places. As history maps the world, Las Vegas has been passed by more than otherwise. In fact, it’s almost defined by the number of times it has been passed by.”
Mikey nodded. “That passing by is not accidental. Even before Aldo Pincas built the house that would evolve into this Phineas House in which we sit, the Las Vegas area was on what … Let me start over. Are you familiar with the concept of trade winds and currents—natural phenomenon that helped define how the ocean travel evolved?”
“A little. Enough to see what you’re getting at. You’re saying that Las Vegas is on the liminal current.”
“That’s about as close an analogy as I can give you,” Mikey said. “It’s nothing like, of course, but helpful in what I’m trying to explain. Aldo Pincas decided that he would like to be able to use the Las Vegas current more effectively. The city of Las Vegas was young then, hardly more than a tidy collection of adobes. Aldo found it easy to acquire the precise piece of land he wanted, and he built Phineas House. The House is placed to take advantage of all sorts of things. You’ve heard of feng shui?”
“Chinese geomancy,” I said. “It’s dreadfully trendy these days.”
“And most feng shui is nonsense, but like most occult sciences, it has a germ of truth to it. Aldo Pincas used feng shui—like techniques to harness the current. This didn’t prevent others from using it, but did weaken it—like running a stream through a mill wheel slows it down without stopping it.”
“I bet other liminal sorcerers, or whatever you want to call them, weren’t crazy about that.”
“They weren’t, but that only touches on what I’m telling you—though we may come back to it. Let me stay with Aldo for now.”
“Okay.”
“What Aldo had not anticipated was that in channelling the liminal current through Phineas House, he would slow the very force from which he wanted to benefit. Once he realized this, Aldo set out to make sure the part of the environment he could influence would create more dualities—thus the checkered history of Las Vegas. I won’t go into all the examples, but if you were to go and read the minutes of the meetings discussing the placement of the first rail line, you would discover Aldo’s influence. Later, he would encourage the split that lead to the creation of the two towns.”
I frowned thoughtfully, remembering that the Bible had listed Aldo’s date of birth as 1831. He would have been a man in his prime during the events Mikey was relating. It fit.
“What about the State Hospital—the one that treats mental patients. Did Aldo have something to do with that?”
“He and his son Amerigo were influential, yes. Pincas family members helped encourage the founding of the Normal University as well. There’s nothing like an institution of learning to intensify liminal space. That’s one reason that, for a town so small, Las Vegas has had so many. The nice thing, from the point of view of the Pincas clan, is that unlike geographical features, educational ventures tend to encourage the creation of other, competing ventures.”
For a moment I almost felt the fragmentation going on around me, as if I was a spider in the middle of a web of thin, flexible, but very strong strands. I understood why Mikey had been reluctant to use the trade winds analogy. Liminal space was more like a web spun by a host of spiders on LSD.
Mikey was studying me thoughtfully, and I suspected he had been aware of my insight, making me think what I had understood had not been intellectual, but actual perception. He did not comment, and I, eager that the tale of Aldo Pincas and Phineas House not be truncated, held my peace.
“Now, you must understand that Phineas House is not the only structure of its kind or the oldest or anything like that, but it is an important one. Aldo was a proud and arrogant man, and he was determined that his masterwork would not leave the control of his family. Therefore, he—to use another not completely accurate analogy—mixed into the very mortar of Phineas House bindings that would tie the House to one member of his family. Those bindings did not prevent others from benefiting from Phineas House, but only one person in each generation would possess the full power.
“Because this was a chancy thing to do, Aldo also made the House determined to care for and protect the person to whom it was bound. To ameliorate hurt feelings, Aldo set in place the tradition of trustees for Phineas House—and therefore of its partner. The trustees received certain benefits, and as these came to them through their fidelity to their trust, they had every reason to perpetuate the scheme.”
I nodded. “I’d forgotten. I realized when I saw the names of Colette’s trustees and then mine that you and I are probably related somehow.”
“That’s right,” Mikey said. “My father was your mother’s trustee, Amerigo Hart. His mother was Catarina, the youngest daughter of Amerigo Pincas, who, in turn, was the son of Aldo. Your great-great grandmother, and my grandmother were sisters. I suppose that makes us cousins by several removes.”
I grinned. “I must have lots of cousins. Amerigo Pincas and his wife had a mess of kids. The tendency seems to have decreased, though.”
“Actually, only in your line,” Mikey said. “It may be the House’s influence, indirectly. You see, the system worked well for several generations. Amerigo Pincas was a bit surprised when the House showed preference for Isabela over his first-born, a son named Urbano, but there was no fighting it. Urbano was as sensitive to liminal space as a man born blind is to color.
“However, when Isabela gave birth to identical twins, Pinca and Mercedes, Phineas House didn’t know what to do. That was a bad time, let me tell you. Eventually, the House was convinced to fix on Pinca, the elder of the twins by a minute or so. It’s said that her name was given to her specifically to assist. Initially, she was to have been named for Belinda, Isabela’s younger sister.”
I thought about the Bible chart. “It didn’t get better, though, did it? There were problems in the next generation, too.”
“Perceptive,” Mikey said.
“Well, I was helped by something Paula Angel said,” I admitted. “She told me that one of the reasons Colette had problems with her father was that while Phineas House had wanted nothing to do with him, it bonded with Colette. He resented this, and took it out on Colette.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Mikey said, “but there’s truth in what Pablita told you. Pinca married a Russian named Ivan Bogatyr. Their first born was a girl that, maybe for insurance reasons, they named Pinca as well. Phineas House liked young Pinca, but even the best efforts of a guardian cannot prevent death. When she was in her late twenties, Pinca Minor died in a road accident.
“Apparently, Pinca’s younger brother, Nikolai, expected Phineas House to take him on—this in spite of the fact that he had only the most minimal sensitivity for liminal space, hardly more than what is usual in the average person.”
“Then it is an inherited trait?” I asked.
“Yes. There is some evidence that the tendency to develop the sensitivity can be encouraged by environment—or, equally, discouraged by the same, but then biologists are discovering the same is true of many genetic traits. What a mother eats while the child is being carried can influence what genes turn on or off. A child who is never exposed to art, or is discouraged from making art, may never learn she has the potential to be a great artist.”
Mikey’s last sentence came so close to my own situation, I wondered if, as when he mentioned the terms “Queen of Mirrors” and “Mistress of Thresholds” to Maybelle Fenn, Mikey Hart wasn’t dropping a hint of sorts. I filed it away for future meditation.
Mikey went on without pause. “Growing up as he did in Phineas House, Nikolai had what little gift he possessed encouraged, but it didn’t amount to much. Therefore, the only one who was surprised when Phineas House passed him by and chose instead his infant daughter, Colette, was Nikolai himself.”
“There was another sibling, wasn’t there?”
“That’s right, a brother named Urbano. He had even less talent than his brother, and, perhaps as a reaction, developed an aversion to anything that smacked of the occult. At a young age, he married, left Las Vegas, and, except for an annual Christmas card, pretty much didn’t keep in touch with his family. Urbano Bogatyr died of liver cancer when he was fifty-one. He left a wife and a couple of children. I think they’re all still alive, though his wife would be quite elderly by now.”
It still felt odd to hear about people dying younger than me. I made yet another mental note, to get Mikey to give me as list of what had killed my various relatives. Up to this point, I’d lacked that vital information, and had never known whether I was at risk for, say, breast cancer or heart disease.
Of course,
I thought cynically,
knowing your grandfather died from being pushed down a flight of stairs isn’t helpful in quite the same way—though it does give insight.
“Again,” Mikey went on, “Phineas House may have played a role in Urbano’s desire to leave, in Nikolai having only one child. The House isn’t like a human or even a cat or dog, but it is certainly sentient in its own way. It was created to give order to something that, by its very nature, is outside of the usual order. It has been speculated that Phineas House was shaken by the birth of the twins, and from that point forward did what it could to assure that it would not be faced with a similar confusion.”
“I guess,” I said, hesitantly, “it could meddle easily enough, especially since the owners tended to live within its walls.”
“That’s right,” Mikey said. “In fact, I think that the selling of some of Phineas House’s property was done less because of financial need than in an effort to curtail the House’s growing power, its sense that it was entitled to shape the lives of those who lived within it and benefited from its power.”
I drummed my fingers on the sofa, trying to arrange a thought. “Does this happen frequently, I mean, with the other structures of this type?”
“Sometimes, but not in the same way. You see, Aldo Pincas created the situation by his strong desire to keep Phineas House in his personal line. The House was built with that desire in mind, and has ever since attempted to be faithful to that need.”