by C. L. Moore
"Can't we bargain?"
"No," Meg said. "There's nothing you can offer me that would be any inducement. I'll stick around, and enlist a salamander or something to get rid of you."
"Suppose I put a bullet into you?" Tarbell asked, taking his automatic from the coat. He leveled it. "You're flesh and blood. Well?"
The cat sat down, eyeing Tarbell steadily. "Try it," Meg said—
For no sensible reason, the reporter felt curiously frightened. He lowered the gun.
"I rather wish," Meg said, "that you had tried to kill me."
"Oh, hell," Tarbell grunted, and got up, the book in his hand. "I'm going to get another drink." Struck by a thought, he paused. "For all I know, you may still be a hallucination. A drunken one. In that case—" He grinned. "May I offer you a saucer of cream, Meg?"
"Thanks," said the cat appreciatively. "I'd like it."
-
Tarbell, pouring the cream, grinned at his reflection in the kitchen window. "Toujours gai, all right," he soliloquized. "Maybe I should put rat poison in this. Oh, well."
Meg lapped the cream, keeping her eyes on Tarbell, who was dividing his attention between his drink and the book. "I wonder about this," he said. "There doesn't seem to be anything magical about it. Do messages appear—like a clairvoyant's slate?"
The cat snorted delicately. "Things don't work that way," she said. "The book's got fifty pages. Well, you'll find an answer to every conceivable human problem on one of those pages."
Tarbell frowned. "That's—ridiculous."
"Is it? History repeats itself, and humans live a life of clichés. Has it occurred to you, Tarbell, that humanity's life pattern can be boiled down to a series of equations? Fifty of them, I think. You can find the lowest common denominator, if you go far enough, but that's far beyond human understanding. As I see it, the author of that book analyzed humanity's lives, boiled them down to the basic patterns, and expressed those equations as grammatical sentences. A mere matter of semantics," Meg finished.
"I don't think I get it. Wait a minute. Maybe I do. 13ab minus b equals 13a. '13ab' stands for eggs—Don't count your chickens before they are hatched."
"Muddy reasoning, but you have the idea," Meg acknowledged. "Besides, you forgot the hen."
"Incubator," Tarbell said absently, and brooded over the book. "You mean, then, that this has the answer to every known human problem. What about this: 'Werewolves can't climb oak trees'? How often does anybody meet a werewolf?"
"Symbolism is involved. And personal psychological associations. The third-but-last owner of that book, by the way, was a werewolf," Meg purred. "You'd be surprised how beautifully it all fits."
"Who wrote it?" Tarbell asked.
The cat shrugged, a beautifully liquid gesture. "A mathematician, of course. I understand he developed the idea as a hobby."
"Satan?"
"Don't give yourself airs. Humans aren't important. Earth isn't important, except to provide intellectual exercise to others. Still and all, this is a simple world, with too little of the uncertainty factor."
Tarbell started to laugh. After a while he said, "I just realized I was sitting here discussing semantics with a cat."
But Meg had vanished—
-
Familiarity with an enemy destroys wariness, and no doubt the cat knew that well enough. Obviously Tarbell should have been on guard. The fact that Meg had drunk his cream—the equivalent of bread and salt—meant nothing; cats are amoral familiars, by preference, immoral. The combination was perilous.
But Tarbell, his mind slightly hazy with whiskey, clutched the book like a buckler and felt safe. He was thinking about formulas of logic. "Matter of deduction," he muttered. "I suppose the ... author ... made a lot of graphs and things and arrived at his conclusions that way. Tested them by induction. Whew." It was a dizzying thought.
Again he examined the book. The white circle on the cover was luminous again, and there was a number visible there. Tarbell's stomach lurched.
Page 34.
He glanced around hastily, expecting anything; but the apartment seemed unchanged. Meg had not reappeared.
Page 34 said, "Canaries need oxygen."
Canaries?
Tarbell remembered. A few days ago, a friend had given him an expensive Roller canary, and he had not yet got rid of the creature. Its cage hung in a corner, covered with a white cloth. No sound proceeded from it.
Tarbell went over and pulled the cover away. The canary was in trouble. It was lying on the bottom of the cage, kicking spasmodically, beak wide open.
Oxygen?
Tarbell whistled under his breath and whirled to the windows, yanking them open one by one. The gusts of cold, fresh air made his head spin. He hadn't realized how drunk he was.
Whiskey, however, didn't account for the feeling of sick nausea in his stomach. He watched the canary slowly revive, and chewed at his lip. The air in the room hadn't been depleted enough to kill a bird. This wasn't a coal mine.
A coal mine—gas—yeah! Tarbell, grinning tightly, dropped to his knees beside the gas radiator. As he had expected, the cock was turned on full, and he could hear a soft hissing.
Meg didn't always depend on magic. And a cat's paws were handy little tools.
Tarbell closed the valve and made a circuit of the apartment, finding another open radiator in the bedroom. He attended to that. The canary recovered and peeped feebly. Tarbell threw the cover back over its cage and considered.
The book— The numerals on the cover had faded again. He felt a resurgence of panic. Ten references were allowed him. He had used two. That left eight—only eight. And Meg was a resourceful familiar, hell bent on revenge.
There was a thought stirring at the back of Tarbell's mind, but it refused to emerge. He relaxed and closed his eyes. After a while the thought came out of hiding.
In his hands he held a magical power whose potentialities were unlimited. The brown book had the answer to every human problem. If Napoleon had possessed it, or Luther, or Caesar—well! Life was a succession of problems. Men were handicapped by their inability to visualize the complete equation. So they made mistakes.
But this book, Tarbell thought, told the right answer.
Ironic that its powers should be wasted. That was what the situation amounted to. Ten references were allowed; after that, Meg would get her revenge, unhindered by the book's countermagic. What a waste!
-
Tarbell rubbed his temples hard. A gold mine had been dumped in his lap, and he was trying to figure out a way of using it. Any time danger threatened, the book would give the solution, according to the equation of logic. Then the magic was, so to speak, passive—
Not quite. If Tarbell faced financial ruin, that would certainly come under the classification of danger. Unless the meaning embraced only the danger of bodily harm. He hoped there were no such limitations.
On that assumption, if Tarbell faced ruin, the book would give a page number that would save him. Would it simply point out a way of returning to his former financial status? No. Because that status had already been proved unsound and dangerous by the mere fact of its cancellation.
Casuistic reasoning, perhaps, but with clever manipulation, Tarbell felt confident that he could play the cards close to his chest. He wanted money. Very well. He would place himself in a position where financial ruin was imminent, and the book would come to his rescue.
He hoped.
There were only eight page references left, and it would not do to waste them in making tests. Tarbell skimmed through the book, wondering if he could apply the messages himself. It didn't seem probable. "Say no to everything," for example. In special circumstances, that was no doubt good advice. But who was to know when those circumstances would arise?
Only the book, of course.
And—"An assassin awaits." Excellent advice! It would have been invaluable to Caesar—to most of the Caesars, in fact. Knowing that a murderer was in ambush, it would be easy to take
precautions. But one couldn't be on guard all the time.
The logic was perfect, as far as it went. But one element was ever lacking—the time-variable. Since that particular variable depended entirely on the life pattern of the book's owner, it was manifestly impossible for it to be any rational sort of a constant.
Meantime, there was Meg. Meg was murderously active, and determined on her vengeance. If Tarbell used the book—could use the book—to get what he wanted personally, he'd use up the eight chances left and leave himself unguarded against attack. Fame and fortune mean little to a corpse.
A red glow came from the window. A small, lizard-like creature crawled into view. There were suction pads on its toes, like a gecko's, and a faint smell of charring paint came with it as it scuttled over the sill. It looked like red-hot metal.
Tarbell looked at the book. It was unchanged. This wasn't a danger, then. But it might have been—if he hadn't turned off the gas. Introduce a blazing salamander into a gas-filled apartment, and—
Yeah.
Tarbell picked up a siphon at his elbow and squirted soda at the salamander. Clouds of steam arose. The creature hissed and fled back the way it had come.
Very well. Eight chances were still left. Eight moves in which to outwit—and destroy!— Meg. Less than that, as few as possible, in fact, if any chances were to be left. And it was necessary to leave a few, or Tarbell's status in life would remain unchanged. Merely escaping from danger wasn't enough. He wanted—
What?
He got pencil and paper and sat down to figure it out. Happiness was too vague—another variable, depending on the individual. Power? Women? Money? He had them all, in sufficient quantity. Security?
Security. That was a human constant. Security against the ominous shadows of the future. But one couldn't simply wish for security. The book didn't work that way. Abstractions were beyond its scope, seemingly.
What gave people security? Money was the first answer, yet that was not satisfactory. Tarbell tried a new tack. Who was secure?
Paisanos, on the whole, were more contented than potentates. However, Tarbell didn't want to be a paisano. What about Herrick, the publisher? Security? Well, no. Not when the world itself was unstable.
In the end Tarbell decided nothing. Perhaps the best solution was to get himself into the worst spot possible, and leave the rest to the book. And, if the book failed him ...
It might do just that. But Tarbell was a gambler. What was the worst thing that could happen now?
The answer was obvious. The loss of the book!
A fire was laid ready in the grate. Tarbell touched a match to a fold of newspaper, and watched the flames creep up till the hardwood was crackling. If he purposely rendered himself helpless, the book should logically reveal a panacea—a cure-all that would eliminate all his difficulties. It was worth trying.
Tarbell grinned at his own cleverness.
He threw the book into the fire, face up. The flames licked up hungrily. Instantly two numerals appeared on the white oval.
43
The ultimate answer! The cure for the loss of the book!
Tarbell plunged in his hand and snatched the volume out of the grate, amid a scattering of embers. The brown cover was slightly singed, but the pages were unharmed.
Breathing a little hoarsely, he crouched on his hams and turned to Page 43.
It said, with a certain touch of naïve malice:
"That's right."
Tarbell got up, face expressionless. He picked up his empty highball glass and smashed it against the wall. That done, he went to the window and looked out unseeingly at the night.
Seven references were left.
-
Tarbell slept well enough, untroubled by dreams, and with the book under his pillow. The next morning a cold shower and black coffee steadied him for the forthcoming ordeal. He had no illusions about what was going to happen. Meg had not given up.
It was late when he arrived at the Journal. Dusty sunlight slanted into the city room. Copy boys scuttled here and there with flimsies, and, all in all, it looked like a set for any motion picture involving newspaper life. Rewrite men were busy rewriting, and glass-paneled partitions toward the back hinted at irate editors ready to send out star reporters on perilous assignments. Tim Hatton, a cameraman, was moodily shaking dice in a corner.
"Hiya, Sam," he said around a cigarette. "Roll you a couple."
MacGregor, a Denver man who had grown old in harness, lifted a bald head from his desk to leer at Tarbell. "Tim Hatton has been going to movies," he said hoarsely. "Tim Hatton has been reading all about Charlie MacArthur and Ben Hecht. Man and boy, I've been writing copy all over the country, and not even with Bonfils have I known a guy more determined to be a newspaperman. Pretty soon he'll be telling you about his hangover, Tarbell, and offering you a drink out of that pretty little silver flask on his hip. Ah, youth." MacGregor returned to his work and ate a lemon drop.
"Sourpuss," Hatton said, pink around the ears. "Why don't he quit riding me?"
"Go out and snap a murderer," MacGregor said. "Push right through a cordon of police—pardon, harness bulls, I mean—and go into the building where Public Enemy Number One is cornered. I wish motion pictures had never been invented. These so-and-so cubs who come in here, wet behind the ears, expecting to find Eddie Robinson behind the city desk."
Tarbell was glancing through a still-damp copy of the Journal, wondering if Gwinn's body had been found yet. He said absently, "Them days have gone forever, Tim."
"So you say," Hatton grunted, and peered at his wrist watch. "I've got a date with Barney Donn in half an hour. Well?"
MacGregor said in a mechanical voice, "Barney Donn, Arnie Rothstein's successor, born February 3, 1892, Chicago beer baron under Capone, served time on a Federal tax rap, biggest gambler in Florida, left Hialeah a week ago. What's he doing here?"
"That's my job to find out," Hatton said. "He's news."
Tarbell put down the paper. "I'll go along. I used to know Barney." He didn't mention that once he'd blackmailed Donn for a couple of grand, and that he was vaguely worried about the gambler's appearance in Hollywood. Had Meg anything to do with this? Donn had a long memory. It might be wise to take the bull by the horns.
MacGregor crunched a lemon drop. "Remember Rothstein," he said sardonically. Hatton cursed him casually and picked up his camera.
"Ready, Sam?"
"Yeah." Tarbell dropped the Journal. Nothing in it about Gwinn. He hesitated, wondering whether he should check up on the obit file, but decided not to risk it. He followed Hatton out of the office, past the reception clerk, and watched the cameraman settle a mangled hat on the back of his head. Smoke drifted lazily from Hatton's nostrils.
The office cat gave Tarbell a start, but in a moment he saw that it wasn't Meg. But the creature gave him something to think about. He began to wonder what the familiar would try next.
He was at cross-purposes with Meg. Meg had little time, but lots of magic. Tarbell had little magic, but it was to his advantage to play for time. Meg had said she wouldn't outlast Gwinn. How long would she last? Maybe she'd grow more and more tenuous, till she finally vanished completely.
Meanwhile, he had the book.
But he wasn't certain yet of the best way to use it. He kept it handy, just in case Barney Donn was in Meg's employ. The gambler had a reputation for squareness, but he was a decidedly tough customer.
The hotel clerk took their names and said to go right up. It was a big hotel, one of the best in Los Angeles. And Donn had taken a suite.
He greeted them at the door, a stocky, swarthy man with a broken nose and a broad, toothy grin. "Jeez, Sam Tarbell," he said. "Who's the punk with you?"
"Hi, Barney. This is Tim Hatton. We're both on the Journal. And you can drop the colloquialisms—we'll give you the sort of write-up you want, anyway."
Donn chuckled. "Come on in. I got in the habit of using this lingo in Chi, and I can't break myself of it. I'm a Jeky
ll and Hyde. Come in, will you?"
-
Tarbell wasn't as relieved as he might have been. As Hatton went on into the apartment, he lingered a bit behind, touching Donn's sleeve. The gambler opened wide brown eyes.
"What's up?"
"What are you doing here?"
"Vacation," Donn said. "And I want to do some gambling out here. I hear nice things about it."
"That's the only reason?"
"Yeah. I get it. You're thinking—" Donn chuckled again. "Look, Tarbell. You put the squeeze on me once, but you won't do it again. I cleaned up my record, see?"
"So have I," the reporter said ambiguously. "Matter of fact, I'm sorry I had to ask you for that dough, but—"
"Money!" Donn said, shrugging. "It ain't hard to make. If you're thinking I hold a grudge, the answer is no. Sure, I'd like to get that dough back from you—just to square accounts—but what the hell! I never killed anybody in my life."
And, with that comforting assurance, he led the way into the next room.
Two men were sitting around a table, local gambling big shots, and they were watching Hatton do card tricks. The photographer was enjoying himself immensely. His cigarette was on the verge of burning his lower lip, and he shuffled and flipped the cards with remarkable dexterity.
"See?" he said.
"How about a hand?" Donn asked Tarbell. "We haven't played for years."
Tarbell hesitated. "O.K. A hand or two. But I'm not sticking my neck out." He knew that Donn was an honest gambler, or he might have refused outright.
Liquor was on the table, and Donn poured and passed the glasses. "I played a little on the plane, but I want to make sure my luck's holding in California. I had a good streak at Hialeah ... Stud, eh?"
"Ante?" Hatton was beaming.
"Five hundred."
"Uh!"
"Make it a hundred to start, then," Donn grinned. "Can do?"
Hatton nodded and took out his wallet. Tarbell did the same, flipping bills on the table and exchanging them for chips. The other two men silently drank whiskey and waited.
The first hand was mild, Donn winning the pot with a low straight, nothing wild. Hatton took the next hand, and Tarbell the third, which was satisfyingly fat with blue chips. He said, "One more, and I check out."