The Best of Margaret St. Clair

by Margaret St. Clair

  “Now, listen. There are two things you can do. The best one would be for you to go outside and talk to the ravens. If you promise them on your word of honor as a Christian gentleman that you won’t deliver any more anti—light sermons—I can’t see why you don’t like light, anyhow; light’s wonderful—if you promise them that, they’ll let you go.” She paused hopefully.

  The Reverend gave her a look.

  “Then we’ll have to make a break for it.

  “While you were in the washroom, I called the Temple copter.” She indicated the short wave radio on the other side of the little stone fireplace. “It’ll be here any minute. I think—well, we’ll try to get through.”

  The Reverend looked at her in silence for a moment. Fatigue had made shadows under her eyes, but they only made her look glamorous and desirable. She had never been more beautiful. She had betrayed her company for him; he loved her more than ever. He gave her a hug.

  “Nix, my dear,” he said. “Nix.”

  “N-n-n-n—”

  “Nix. Never.” His voice rang out, booming and resonant. “Run away from those devils and their ravens? Flee from those pagan night-lighters? Never! I will not.” He advanced toward the radio.

  “What are you going to do?” Mazda squeaked.

  “I’m going to contact the TVA,” he said without turning. “You have to fight fire with fire.”

  “Public power?” Mazda breathed. Her face was white.

  “Public power! Their line will be open all night.”

  He turned his face toward the rafters. “O Lord,” he boomed reverently, “bless this radio message. Please, Lord, grant that in contacting a radical outfit like the TVA I’m doing right.”

  The noise of prayer died away in the ceiling. He pressed a key and turned a switch. For a moment the room was utterly quiet. Then there was a soft flurry and plop at the window. The ravens, after all, were not deaf. They too had heard the Reverend’s prayers.

  Mazda spun round toward the sound. Before she could decide what to do, there was a series of tinkles from the chimney. It ended in a glassy crash. Something had broken on the stone hearth.

  Mazda screamed

  “Keep back!” she yelled at the Reverend, who had turned from the radio and was leaning forward interestedly. “Keep back! Don’t breathe! Damn those birds!” She was fumbling wildly with the wooden bracelet on her left wrist.

  “What is it?” he asked. He advanced a step toward the shards of glass on the hearth.

  “Get back. It’s a germ culture bomb. Parrot fever. I’m going to purify it. Stand back!”

  The Reverend Adelburg discounted most of this warning as due to feminine hysteria. He drew back a fraction of an inch, but still remained leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the glass.

  Mazda gave a moan of desperation. “I’ve got to do it!” she yelled. She slid her bracelet toward her elbow and gave it a violent twist.

  A strictly vertical flash of lightning appeared between the ceiling and the hearth. It was very bright and accompanied by a sizzling noise. A second later a sharp chlorine-like smell filled the air.

  Mazda’s artificial lightning died away. The room returned to its normal dim illumination. A faint curl of smoke floated above the pieces of broken glass on the hearth of the fireplace. There was no doubt that Mazda had purified the germ culture effectively. But the Reverend Clem Adelburg was stretched out on the floor flat on his back.

  Mazda ran to him. She tore open his white shirt front and laid her head on his chest. His heart was still beating, and his hands and feet were warm. But he was completely out—out more than any of the neon lights he had been trying to put out.

  Mazda got up, rubbing her hands. She couldn’t move him, and she didn’t know what she ought to do for him. She hoped he’d be all right. She knew he had a strong constitution. She went into the kitchen and got a towel.

  She came back with it and tied it to the poker. Carrying this homemade flag of truce in front of her, she opened the door and went out into the night.

  It was a dark night. From under the Joshua tree a darker shadow detached itself. ‘“Io, Mazda,” a harsh voice said.

  “Hello,” she replied. There was a glitter of beady eyes in the darkness around her. “Listen here, you birds,” Mazda said slowly, “we’ve always been on good terms, haven’t we? We’ve always got on together well. Are you really trying to do me and my boy friend in?”

  A bird cleared its throat. There was a noise of talons being shifted uneasily. “Well… no, Mazda. We like you too,” somebody said.

  “Oh, yes? Is that why you dropped the parrot fever bomb? Were you going to drop a dead parrot down the chimney and make it look as if we’d died a natural death? I wouldn’t call that bomb exactly a friendly thing.”

  “The bomb was just a warning,” said the harsh voice that had spoken first. “We knew you’d purify it. We have confidence in you. We don’t want to do you any harm personally. You can always get another boy friend.”

  “I want this one.”

  “You’ve had better ones.”

  “Yes, I know. But this is the one I want.”

  There was a silence. Then a bird said, “We’re sorry, Mazda. We only do what we’re sent out to do.”

  Mazda drew a sharp breath. “Hell’s canyon,” she said deliberately. “Rural electrification cooperatives. Public power.”

  There was a sound as of somebody’s tail feathers being plucked distractedly. “Mazda, I do wish you wouldn’t,” said the chief raven in a wincing voice.

  “I will, though. I’ll get in touch with the public power people. I don’t care about the ethics of it. I’m in love.”

  “Haw!” the raven jeered harshly. It seemed to have regained its aplomb. “That lightning flash of yours burned out every tube in the radio. You couldn’t sent a message to Parker to ask for a stick of chewing gum. You’re through.

  “We’ll give you half an hour. During any of that time you can come out unhurt. But after that you’re in for it too. This time we’re serious.”

  “What are you going to do?” Mazda cried.

  “You’ll find out.”

  Mazda went back to the house.

  The clock on the mantlepiece read twenty minutes to three. The ravens would probably give her a few minutes’ grace, so she had until ten or twelve minutes after the hour. Mazda knelt down by her consort and began to chafe his hands. When that didn’t help, she ran to the kitchen, got a handful of red feathers from the chicken they had had for lunch yesterday, and began burning them under the Reverend’s nose.

  At seven minutes to three the Reverend’s eyelids fluttered and the noise of a copter was heard in the sky. Mazda listened with strained attention, her eyes fixed on her consort. She longed to run to the window, but she was afraid of alerting the ravens. She could only wait.

  The copter appeared to be having difficulties. The whoosh of its helix changed pitch, the motor stuttered and coughed. Once the noise seemed to recede; Mazda was afraid the plane was going away entirely. She fingered her wooden blast bracelet nervously. But the copter returned. It landed with a thump that was almost a crash.

  The copter door opened and somebody jumped out. There was a sound of squawks, caws and rapid fluttering. A vigorous male voice said, “Ouch! Ouch! What the bloody hell!” More fluttering, then sandalled feet thudded rapidly along the path. Somebody pounded at the door.

  Mazda ran to open it. The man who stumbled across the threshold was a dark, stocky Indian who wore white duck pants and red glasses, and carried a three foot bow slung across his back. He was bleeding freely from half a dozen peck marks on his shoulders and breast. “Lord Mithras,” Mazda said prayerfully, “it’s Joe Buel! Joe!”

  “Mazda! Why didn’t you show a light? What are you doing here? What is all this?”

  Mazda told him. Joe listened intently, frowning more and more. “My word, what a mess,” he said when she had finished. He pushed his red glasses up on his nose. “Has the Reverend come to yet?�
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  They turned around. Clem’s eyes were open, but he was still lying on the floor. As they watched, he slowly closed his eyes again. “I guess he’s not ready yet,” Mazda said.

  She looked at the clock. It showed two minutes to three. “Let’s get him up and walk him,” she said harriedly. “It might help him to get back to normal. Oh, Mithras, how late it is!”

  The Reverend Adelburg was limp and slippery, but they managed to get him to his feet. As they guided his rubbery footsteps about the room, Mazda said, “I haven’t seen you since you were in Canada, Joe. Those nights in Saskatchewan! I didn’t know you were one of the Reverend’s men.”

  “Since 1955,” Joe answered briefly.

  “How come? I thought you danced Shalako at the pueblo one year.”

  “I did. But you should see Halonawa now. There’s a red and purple neon sign twenty feet high over the plaza. It reads, ‘Welcome to Halonawa, Home of the Shalako.’ After that I joined up with the Rev. A nice dark Christmas seems a wizard idea.”

  He plainly didn’t want to pursue the subject further.

  Mazda said, “If the Reverend revives in time, what’ll we do?”

  “Can you pilot a copter?”

  “I can drive a car.”

  “A copter’s really easier.” He gave her directions. “The motor’s missing a little, but I don’t think you’ll have any trouble. Orient yourself by Parker and the dam. The dam’s just north of us.

  “If the Rev comes to in time, make a break for it with him in the plane. I’ll create a diversion by climbing out the window and shooting at those bloody birds. I owe them some arrows, at that.”

  “I wish I knew what they had in mind,” Mazda said.

  At five minutes after three the Reverend’s withy body stiffened. His eyes opened. He raised his head and looked about him. “What a lovely day,” he said in a pleasant, conversational voice.

  Mazda’s face puckered. For a moment she seemed about to burst into wild tears. Then she blinked her eyes and shook her head defiantly. “He hurt his head when he fell, that’s all. He’ll be all right later. He’s got to be all right. And he may really be easier to handle this way than if he wasn’t goofed. He’s a stubborn man.”

  Joe had gone over to the table and was putting out the lamp. He handed his red glasses to Mazda. “Makes piloting easier,” he said. Then he opened the window on the left and swung himself out of it. He gave a high, passionate battle cry. There was a rush of feathers and some frenzied squawking. Joe’s bow began to twang.

  Mazda grabbed the Reverend by the hand. “Nice Christmas,” she hissed. “Come along.” Bent forward, one arm raised to shield her eyes, she pulled him after her at a run toward the door.

  The night had grown darker. The sky was heavily overcast. None the less, she could make out the improbable shape of the copter. “Hurry!” she said to Clem Adelburg. “Run!”

  Wings buffeted around her. Claws struck at her face, her cheeks, her hair. The Reverend Adelburg gave a cry of pain; Mazda had to use her free arm to wipe her own blood from her eyes. Then they were in the copter and the door was slammed.

  She turned the switch. The motor gave a cough and started. Mazda was trembling with excitement, but she followed Joe’s instructions. Slowly the copter rose.

  She had put on the red glasses before they left the house. As her eyes grew used to the darkness, she made out the glimmer of the river in front of her and the flat surface of Parker Dam. She wanted to go west, toward Los Angeles. The copter climbed a little. She tried to turn.

  Wings whizzed by her. Mazda grinned. She twisted the blast bracelet on her wrist. The tiny receptor within it vibrated. There was a flash of light, and the bird plumm eted to the ground.

  When it hit the sand there was a faint concussion. The floor of the copter shuddered. After a second the smell of almond extract tinged the air.

  The bird had been carrying a cyanide bomb. Mazda sent the copter a little higher. Her mind was a kaleidoscope of tumbling fears. The possibility of more bombs, of explosive bombs, of a kamikazi attack on the copter’s propeller, played leap-frog in her brain. And what about Joe? Dear Joe, he’d been wonderful in Saskatchewan. Had they got him yet?

  She looked back anxiously at the cabin. Joe had vaulted up on the roof and was standing with one foot planted on either side of the ridge pole, like a Zuñi Heracles. The thick clouds behind him had begun to be tinged with light from the rising moon; she could see that though his bow was ready and he had an arrow drawn nearly back to his ear he wasn’t shooting. His eyes were fixed intently on the sky.

  She followed the direction of his gaze. Very high up, so high that they looked no bigger than crows, seven of the big black birds were flapping rapidly northward in single file.

  For the next five minutes or so nothing at all happened. The copter plodded steadily westward toward Los Angeles, down low, along the line of the aqueduct. This apparent quies cence on the part of her opponents unnerved Mazda more than a direct attack would have done. She couldn’t believe that the PE&G would let her and Clem escape so easily.

  Suddenly along the sky in front of her there passed a vast flash of light. For an instant the desert was as bright and white as day. Then the darkness closed down again and thunder crashed.

  Mazda’s hands shook on the controls. The storm that was coming up might, of course, be merely a storm. Or it might have been sent by the Company. But if Nous… but if Nous, that enormous and somehow enigmatic power that operated from the far side of 3,000 A.D… IF NOUS HAD DECIDED TO STRETCH OUT ITS ARM AGAINST HER AND CLEM, THERE WASN’T A CHANCE IN THE WORLD THAT SHE AN D THE REVEREND WOULD CONTINUE TO LIVE.

  There was another prodigious lightning flash. The desert, the aqueduct, a line of power poles, a small square building, burned themselves on Mazda’s eyes. When darkness came back the Reverend, who had been sitting quite calmly and quietly beside Mazda all this time, stirred. “Wonderful fireworks,” he said approvingly.

  Mazda’s eyes rolled. “Clem, baby,” she said despairingly, “what’ll I do?” She looked around as if hunting an answer. Then the bottom of the heavens dropped out.

  The heaviest precipitation recorded to date in a cloudburst is two and a half inches in three minutes. What fell on the copter now was heavier. Inside of two seconds after the avalanche of water had begun to pour from the sky the copter was down flat on the ground, as if it had been pushed into the sand by a giant hand.

  The noise inside the cabin was deafening. It was like being a dried pea shaken within a drum. It beat along the body like hammers. Mazda, looking up open-mouthed, saw that the copter ceiling was beginning to bulge.

  The downpour— the cataract—stopped as suddenly as it had begun. There was a minute of dazed silence in the cabin. Then Mazda, pushing hard against the door in the warped copter body, got it open and scrambled out.

  The copter was deep in the sand. One blade of the propeller had been broken off entirely. The other hung limply parallel to the shaft.

  Mazda stood shivering. She took off her red glasses absently and dropped them on the sand. The sky had cleared. The moon was almost up. She reached inside the cabin and caught Clem Adelburg by the wrist. “C’mon,” she said. She had seen a building just before the cloudburst. They might be able to take cover in that.

  She struggled over the sand with the Reverend foll owing docilely at her heels. The building, once reached, turned out to be a Company substation, and Mazda felt a touch of hope. She could get in, despite the Danger and No Admittance signs, and the ravens might be deterred, even if only slightly, by their respect for Company property.

  The substation door would open to a verbal signal. Mazda twisted her blast bracelet twice on her arm, inhaled, and swallowed. “Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte,” she said carefully.

  Nothing happened. She cleared her throat and began again, a couple of notes lower. “Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte,” There was a faint click. “Calaveras, Colusa, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Fresno—”

>   The door swung wide. Mazda’s enumeration of the counties of California had worked. She took the Reverend by the hand and led him through the opening. “Stanislaus, Sutter, Tulare, Tuolmne, Ventura, Yuba, Yolo,” she said. The door closed.

  It was much darker inside the substation than it had been outside on the white desert, and the air was filled with a high humming that sounded, and actually was, exceedingly dangerous. Mazda put her arm around Clem’s shoulders. “Don’t move, baby,” she said pleadingly. “Don’t touch anything. Stay close to Mazda and be quiet.”

  The Reverend coughed. “Certainly, my dear,” he said in quite a normal voice, “but would you mind telling me where we are? And what has been happening?”

  Mazda went as limp as if she had been skoshed on the head. She clung to him and babbled with relief, while the Reverend stroked her soothingly on the hair and tried to make sense out of her babbling.

  “Yes, my dear,” he said when she had finally finished, “but are you sure you aren’t exaggerating a little? After all, we aren’t much worse off than we were in the cabin.”

  Mazda drew away from him slightly. “Oh, sure, everything’s fine,” she said with a touch of bitterness. “We’re in a place where if we move fast we’ll be electrocuted, the copter is down in the desert with a busted propeller, we haven’t anything to eat or drink, and Joe and I have killed so many ravens that when the Company does catch me they’ll do something special to make me pay for it. Outside of a few little bitty details like that, everything is real real george.”

  The Reverend had not listened with much attention. Now he said, “Do you hear a noise outside?”

  “What sort of a noise?”

  “A sort of whoosh.”

  Mazda drew in her breath. “Shin up to the window and look out,” she ordered. “Look out especially for birds.”

  He was at the high, narrow window only an instant before he let himself down. “There was only one raven,” he reported, “but there were a number of birds like hawks, with short wings. There seemed to be humps on their backs.”