A Scatter of Stardust

by E. C. Tubb

  “I would have done that in any case,” he said dully. Then: “Why didn’t you marry me when I asked?”

  “Because — ” She bit her lip, tears glistening in her eyes. “Oh, Mark, can’t you understand?”

  Holding the thing in his hand, he could understand well enough. Burn the charm and the charm and the love it was supposed to generate would die with it. But Sandra hadn’t destroyed the charm even though she had gained what she wanted, or what she had imagined she wanted. Did she refuse to marry him for fear that he didn’t really love her, that he was attracted to her only because of the charm?

  Surely she was woman enough to be wanted for herself alone? Was the charm, the thing she believed holding him to her, the thing which also kept them apart?

  Mark hoped that it was.

  He thrust the thing into his pocket and rose and looked down at her.

  “Get your coat,” he ordered. “Take me to Lefarge.”

  “But — ”

  “Take me to Lefarge.”

  *

  It was a long way through narrow streets and winding alleys to a small house with a lowering roof and a door heavily carved in mystic symbols. The dawn had strengthened as they walked, the city-bred birds greeting it as enthusiastically as their country cousins, and it was early day when they arrived. Mark stared at the house. Two windows flanked the door. Three windows ran below the low roof. All were closely shuttered.

  “Sandra, do you have a key?”

  “No. Shall I knock?”

  “And warn Lefarge?” Mark stepped to one of the lower windows and tried to peer into the room. Thick curtains blocked his view. He took the dagger from his pocket and forced the blade beneath the sash. The wood was old, rotten. It yielded to the pressure of the steel. Mark strained, moved the dagger, strained again. The lock yielded with a snap.

  The room was small, smelling of must and damp; a library from the books which lined the walls. Mark closed the window, drew the curtains and, by the flame of his cigarette lighter, found his way to the door. Sandra, breathing unevenly, was close at his side.

  “Do you know where his workroom is? You know what I mean.”

  “Upstairs.” She caught his arm. “Mark, do you know what you’re doing?”

  “I’m doing what has to be done.” He wasn’t exaggerating. The cold was like a nagging toothache and the hateful blur had drawn his nerves to screaming pitch.

  Sandra was afraid. He could tell it from the way she clutched his arm as they crept up the stairs. Her breathing was harsh and, when he gripped her hand, he found it moist with perspiration. Perhaps she had reason for her fear. She believed in a terminology he found ludicrous, but change the terminology...

  He opened a door at the head of the stairs and stepped into the past.

  The room was big, running the full length of the house, decorated and adorned with images and paintings, masks and idols which must have known the smoke of sacrificial fires in the darker parts of the world. A parody of an altar stood at one end, black candles beneath the homed visage of a goat, whose ruby eyes glittered as if from inner fires. Pentagrams and esoteric symbols marked the bare, wooden floor. Vigil lamps burned before nameless shrines.

  Mark stood looking, reminded a little of Sandra’s study, and yet to this her room had been a place of harmless make-believe. This place was vile. It reeked of animal waste and the smoke of pungent herbs. It stank of burnt offerings and smoldering incense. Things had been done in this room which no law, however tolerant, would have permitted.

  The other half of the room reminded him of an old-fashioned apothecary’s laboratory. Jars, boxes, containers were filled with powdered herbs, seeds, mummified remains of unidentifiable creatures, strange liquids and stranger pastes. Lefarge, Mark guessed, ran a prosperous business supplying the peculiar ingredients deemed essential to the proper observance of magical rites.

  He hunted through the room as Sandra stood, wide-eyed, by the door, then paused, baffled. What he looked for wasn’t in this room. It must be somewhere else in the house. The kitchen, perhaps?

  He led the way downstairs to the region at the back of the house where the kitchen would normally be.

  Lefarge was waiting for them.

  *

  He looked just as Mark remembered. The same thin, black hair hugging the narrow skull in an exaggerated widow’s peak. The same beard and moustache. The same deep-set eyes. He wore a dressing gown, tight belted around his waist. Embroidered slippers covered his feet. He was smoking a long, thin cigar.

  “Sandra!” He made a little bow. “And Mr. Conway! How delightful.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course.” Lefarge knocked ash from his cigar. He glanced at Sandra. “I confess that I had not expected this pleasure, my dear, but you are always welcome.” His eyes moved to Mark. “You, of course, I have been expecting for some time.”

  “Then you are not surprised?”

  “Naturally not. But this is no place for discussion. I suggest that we meet again this evening at the same place and with the same company as before.”

  “So that I can admit that I was wrong?” Mark shook his head. “Sorry, but I can’t do that.”

  “Indeed?” The tip of Lefarge’s tongue delicately moistened the comers of his mouth. “You know, Mr. Conway, I hardly think that you have any choice in the matter.” He examined the tip of his cigar. “Don’t you think that it’s getting rather cold? Colder than, shall we say, last night?”

  Mark shivered. Damn him, the man was right. He had been cold before but now it was growing worse. It took an effort to restrain his teeth from chattering. Sandra noticed it and caught at his arm.

  “Mark. Why not do as he says?”

  “No.” Irritably he shook off her hand. “I brought you here for a reason,” he said harshly. “I want to show you just how stupid a belief in magic is.” He looked at Lefarge. “All that rubbish upstairs; do you believe that its use is essential to gain concrete results?”

  Lefarge shrugged. He leaned casually against the large refrigerator in a comer of the kitchen. Smoke from the cigar veiled his face. From the uncurtained window came the sounds of a waking world. Prosaic sounds. Comforting.

  “I’ll put it another way,” snapped Mark. “Would you say that it was necessary for a radio engineer to utter an incantation every time he soldered a wire?”

  “The two things are not the same,” protested Sandra. “Mark, you — ”

  “I refuse to be dazzled by esoteric jargon.” He didn’t look at her. “If a thing serves no useful purpose to achieve a result then that thing is simply window dressing. Science is a method of dispensing with such window dressing. Magic will remain nonsense until such time as any magical experiment can be repeated at will and the results predicted — and then it won’t be magic, it will be science.”

  “You are shivering, Mr. Conway.” Lefarge’s voice was a feral purr. “Do you still insist that magic is nonsense?”

  “I do.”

  “And your vision, isn’t there a little something you would rather not look at? Still nonsense, Mr. Conway?”

  “You have done nothing I could not do myself, Lefarge. Our methods may differ but the results would be the same.”

  “Hypnotism?”

  “That and drugs and suggestion. I could hex a man so thoroughly that he wouldn’t know hot from cold, night from day. I could convince him that he was blind, deaf, crippled. I could make him doubt his very existence and give him illusions which would send him out of this world. Magic, Lefarge, or science?”

  “You are a stubborn man, Mr. Conway. How far must I go before you are willing to admit that in this world there are things you do not understand?” Lefarge leaned forward, pointing with the cigar, his back against the refrigerator. “I could kill you. You know that?”

  “I know it.”

  “And still you deny the existence of my powers?”

  “I only deny the existence of magic. I know exactly what you are doing and how you ar
e doing it. I can break your hex, Lefarge, and I can do it without incantations, the mixing of witch brews, ceremonies or the summoning of invisible powers. I can do it now.”

  “Impossible!” Sweat shone on the high forehead. “My power is too great for such simple breaking. I have allied myself to terrible beings and their strength is as my own. Be humble, man, before it is too late!” He actually believed every word he said. Mark listened to the stark conviction of his voice and wondered just how close the man was to insanity. He put his hand into his pocket.

  “You cannot break the spell which binds you,” insisted Lefarge. “Only I can do that with the proper safeguards and precautions, which must be used if the power is not to recoil.”

  “You are wrong.” Slowly Mark drew his hand from his pocket. Light from the window splintered against the polished blade, the brazen hilt of the dagger. “Magic is what you choose to call it,” he said gently. “I have come armed with my own magic of cold steel. Stand away from that refrigerator, Lefarge.”

  “No.”

  “Stand away!” His patience was exhausted; the time for playacting over. Roughly Mark pushed Lefarge to one side. He jerked open the big, white-enameled door. He bared his teeth at what he saw within.

  *

  It was a flat board, painted, covered with lines, signs, symbols, none of which he understood. He lifted it from the frost-covered shelf and set it on the table. Something moved sluggishly, and he crushed it with his thumb. He was sweating despite the waning cold. The blur left his sight.

  “How did you know I was terrified of spiders?” His eyes moved from Lefarge to Sandra. “Of course, you would have told him that.” Thoughtfully he studied the board.

  His photograph stared back at him, rimmed with melting frost, half-covered by the remains of a bloodstained handkerchief, the shreds of half a tie. Mingled with the scraps were strands of hair and nail clippings. About the photograph, resting on various symbols, were oddly shaped pieces of stone, the dried seeds of some plant, fragments of animal tissue he was unable to identify.

  Lefarge’s hex.

  It had worked, Mark could not deny that. By some means, not magical because magic was only the name given to the inexplicable unknown, an affinity had been established between himself and this board. An affinity so close that he had felt the numbing cold of the refrigerator, had sensed the horror of the spider glued by its legs to one side of his pictured eye.

  The spider he had seen in tremendous magnification when Lefarge had passed it before the portrait.

  Sympathetic magic some people would have called it, but Mark knew better. It had nothing to do with demons, incantations, ceremony, the mixing of esoteric brews, the exhortation of wizards and witches. It had nothing to do with mysterious powers with unpronounceable names. It was no more magical than hypnotism or dowsing for water. It was science, as yet a young and barely understood science, but a science just the same.

  “You know what this is?” He looked at Sandra, ignoring Lefarge, who stood watchful beside the open refrigerator. “It belongs to a science which people are only just beginning to investigate. Paraphysical science. Already we know that the relationship of certain symbols and objects seem to have a special significance. Not strange, really, when you consider a printed circuit in a radio set. What else is that but the relationship of special symbols? Would you call a radio set magical, Sandra?”

  “No.”

  “Then why assume that this thing, because as yet we do not fully understand it, is magical?” He reached out to touch the board and heard the sharp hiss of in-drawn breath. Lefarge, eyes wide with fear, tensed where he stood. Mark gestured toward him. “Look at him, your magician, your wizard. Look how he trembles. Would a man, claiming to control infinite power, be afraid of a painted board — if he could do as he claimed?”

  Lefarge made a choking sound.

  “Why are you afraid?” Mark stared him in the face. The deep-set eyes glared back at him, foam appearing at the comers of the thin lips. The man was almost insane with hate. Or was it fear?

  Mark smiled and, with slow deliberation, sliced off the pointed tip of Lefarge’s beard. He hesitated, the point of the dagger against the lobe of the other’s ear.

  “Should I take a little blood, Lefarge? I might need it for future use, just as you anticipated a need when you obtained some of my blood and hair. Does Sandra mean so much to you that you had to impress her?” The point of the knife dug deeper, a spot of blood appeared. Mark wiped it away with the soft tuft of hair.

  “Stay away from me, Lefarge,” he warned. “If you don’t I’ll show you what hexing really means.”

  *

  He stepped back, laughing as Lefarge ran from the room. Upstairs the sound of a slammed door echoed hollowly through the building. The wizard would be busy with his protective spells, Mark guessed, and said so. Sandra was not amused.

  “What are you going to do with it, Mark?” She pointed toward the board.

  “Keep it. Study it. Try to figure out just what it does and how it works, without any ridiculous appealing to demons. If Lefarge can use it, then so can I.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Perhaps not.” He drew paper from his pocket, began to note down the exact positioning of the various objects. “A dowsing rod does not work for everyone, but dowsing still works. They even sell the rods as engineering equipment in order to locate underground pipes.” He finished his scribbling, put away the paper. “Lefarge can prosecute me for its return if he likes. Somehow I don’t think that he will.”

  “No, Mark, he won’t prosecute.”

  “Not with what he’s got upstairs, he won’t.” He stretched, feeling wholly comfortable for the first time since the party. It was good to feel warm, good not to have a blur in his sight It was even better to know that he had been right all along and that magic did not exist aside from the conviction of its devotees. Lefarge had stumbled on something, a fragment of workable science which he had totally misunderstood, giving the credit to unnamed demons rather than to unsuspected natural law. He said so, then noticed Sandra’s expression.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, Mark. It’s Just that — ” She looked helplessly at him. “It’s just that you haven’t proved anything. Not really. Nothing at all.”

  He should have known. All his experience should have told him but he, like a blind fool, had overlooked the obvious. He had tried to convince her that no such thing as magic existed, that witchcraft was nothing but a pastime for fools.

  And he had forgotten that she was a witch.

  You can’t tell a person that what they believe in is ridiculous. You can’t take away something without offering something to take its place. Try it and you will fail. Sandra had become a witch because of certain reasons, and those reasons hadn’t changed. She was still what she had always been. Now, perhaps, she had lost her faith in Lefarge, but that was all. The big thing still remained. He had done nothing to shake her belief in that.

  He could argue, but arguments could work both ways. Altering the terminology didn’t alter the facts. She believed in certain powers, ridiculous things like spells and enchantments, hexes and love charms...

  He slapped his pocket. The thing was still there. He took it out and smiled into her eyes.

  “You believe in witchcraft,” he said. “That means you must believe in the power of this charm. Correct?”

  She nodded.

  “And if I burn it my love for you will vanish?”

  Again she nodded.

  “I want you to marry me, Sandra,” he said deliberately. “I have asked you before and I ask you now and I will ask you again — when I have burned this”

  “Mark! Please!”

  “Do you honestly think I would do it if I wasn’t sure?” He looked at her and felt the loveliness of her like a physical pain. He would never change. How could he ever change when he needed her so much?

  A gas cooker stood in the kitchen. He lit the main burner, waited
a moment, then threw the charm into the center of the flames. For a moment it held its shape, then the dry wood caught and burned with a leaping flame. In minutes the bundle was unrecognizable ash.

  Mark turned off the gas and looked at his watch. It was getting late, he had to get home, wash, shave, change and snatch some breakfast before getting to the office. He had little time.

  “Mark!”

  He had forgotten Sandra. She stood looking at him, eyes wide with anticipation. A nice enough girl, good skin, fine hair, not a bad figure either. A nice girl as girls went.

  She would make someone a good wife.

  He glanced at his watch again and hastily left the building.

  A modem magician on a date to heal a soul.

  Jackpot

  The sphere was two inches in diameter and of a blackness so intense it appeared a two-dimensional circle against the gray, crackle-finish of the test bench.

  “Something new?”

  McCarty crossed the compartment in three easy strides. He eased the pack from broad shoulders took the pipe from his mouth and poked the sphere with the stem. The thing was solid but light; the thrust of the pipe sent it rolling across the bench.

  “Careful!”

  Larman reached out a hand to form a barrier The sphere came to a halt. McCarty raised a bushy eyebrow.

  “Dangerous?”

  It was, Larman knew, a question tantamount to an insult. McCarty knew that Larman had better sense than to introduce anything dangerous into the ship. Only an idiot would deliberately court disaster and Larman was far from that.

  “Not dangerous,” he said stiffly. “Only curious.”

  “How can you be certain?”

  McCarty squatted and examined the sphere, sucking at his pipe as he did so. He never smoked it, only sucked it, and it was a habit which grated on his companion’s nerves. It was odd, thought Larman, how hateful that pipe made McCarty. His own habit, that of chewing gum was, of course nothing in comparison.

  “I’ve tested it,” said Larman. He stilled the unspoken protest. “Not in the ship. I assembled a test-rig outside and gave it the works. It’s as dangerous as putty.”