“Pretty,” I said, “and very clever. What’s it good for?”
“Dip it in water.”
I looked around for some. Mrs. Jennings poured some into an empty cup, and I dipped it in.
It seemed to crawl in my hands.
In less than thirty seconds I was holding a full-sized umbrella in my hands and looking as silly as I felt. Bodie smacked a palm with a fist.
“It’s a lulu, Joe! I wonder why someone didn’t think of it before.”
Jedson accepted congratulations with a fatuous grin, then added, “That’s not all—look.” He pulled a small envelope out of a pocket and produced a tiny transparent raincoat, suitable for a six-inch doll. “This is the same gag. And this.” He hauled out a pair of rubber overshoes less than an inch long. “A man could wear these as a watch fob, or a woman could carry them on a charm bracelet. Then, with either the umbrella or the raincoat, one need never be caught in the rain. The minute the rain hits them, presto!—full size. When they dry out they shrink up.”
We passed them around from hand to hand and admired them. Joe went on. “Here’s what I have in mind. This business needs a magician—that’s you, Jack—and a merchandiser—that’s you, Archie. It has two major stockholders: that’s Ellen and me. She can go take the rest cure she needs, and I’ll retire and resume my studies, same as I always wanted to do.”
My mind immediately started turning over the commercial possibilities, then I suddenly saw the hitch. “Wait a minute, Joe. We can’t set up business in this state.”
“No.”
“It will take some capital to move out of the state. How are you fixed? Frankly, I don’t believe I could raise a thousand dollars if I liquidated.”
He made a wry face. “Compared with me you are rich.”
I got up and began wandering nervously around the room. We would just have to raise the money somehow. It was too good a thing to be missed, and would rehabilitate all of us. It was clearly patentable, and I could see commercial possibilities that would never occur to Joe. Tents for camping, canoes, swimming suits, traveling gear of every sort. We had a gold mine.
Mrs. Jennings interrupted in her sweet and gentle voice. “I am not sure it will be too easy to find a state in which to operate.”
“Excuse me, what did you say?”
“Dr. Royce and I have been making some inquiries. I am afraid you will find the rest of the country about as well sewed up as this state.”
“What! Forty-eight states?”
“Demons don’t have the same limitations in time that we have.”
That brought me up short. Ditworth again.
Gloom settled down on us like fog. We discussed it from every angle and came right back to where we had started. It was no help to have a clever, new business; Ditworth had us shut out of every business. There was an awkward silence.
I finally broke it with an outburst that surprised myself. “Look here!” I exclaimed. “This situation is intolerable. Let’s quit kidding ourselves and admit it. As long as Ditworth is in control we’re whipped. Why don’t we do something?”
Jedson gave me a pained smile. “God knows I’d like to, Archie, if I could think of anything useful to do.”
“But we know who our enemy is—Ditworth! Let’s tackle him—legal or not, fair means or dirty!”
“But that is just the point. Do we know our enemy? To be sure, we know he is a demon, but what demon, and where? Nobody has seen him in weeks.”
“Huh? But I thought just the other day—”
“Just a dummy, a hollow shell. The real Ditworth is somewhere out of sight.”
“But, look, if he is a demon, can’t he be invoked, and compelled—”
Mrs. Jennings answered this time. “Perhaps—though it’s uncertain and dangerous. But we lack one essential—his name. To invoke a demon you must know his real name, otherwise he will not obey you, no matter how powerful the incantation. I have been searching the Half World for weeks, but I have not learned that necessary name.”
Dr. Worthington cleared his throat with a rumble as deep as a cement mixer, and volunteered, “My abilities are at your disposal, if I can help abate this nuisance—”
Mrs. Jennings thanked him. “I don’t see how we can use you as yet, Doctor. I knew we could depend on you.”
Jedson said suddenly, “White prevails over black.”
She answered, “Certainly.”
“Everywhere?”
“Everywhere, since darkness is the absence of light.”
He went on, “It is not good for the white to wait on the black.”
“It is not good.”
“With my brother Royce to help, we might carry light into darkness.”
She considered this. “It is possible, yes. But very dangerous.”
“You have been there?”
“On occasion. But you are not I, nor are these others.”
Everyone seemed to be following the thread of the conversation but me. I interrupted with, “Just a minute, please. Would it be too much to explain what you are talking about?”
“There was no rudeness intended, Archibald,” said Mrs. Jennings in a voice that made it all right. “Joseph has suggested that, since we are stalemated here, we make a sortie into the Half World, smell out this demon, and attack him on his home ground.”
It took me a moment to grasp the simple audacity of the scheme. Then I said, “Fine! Let’s get on with it. When do we start?”
They lapsed back into a professional discussion that I was unable to follow. Mrs. Jennings dragged out several musty volumes and looked up references on points that were sheer Sanskrit to me. Jedson borrowed her almanac, and he and the doctor stepped out into the back yard to observe the moon.
Finally it settled down into an argument—or rather discussion; there could be no argument, as they all deferred to Mrs. Jennings’s judgment concerning liaison. There seemed to be no satisfactory way to maintain contact with the real world, and Mrs. Jennings was unwilling to start until it was worked out. The difficulty was this: not being black magicians, not having signed a compact with Old Nick, they were not citizens of the Dark Kingdom and could not travel through it with certain impunity.
Bodie turned to Jedson. “How about Ellen Megeath?” he inquired doubtfully.
“Ellen? Why, yes, of course. She would do it. I’ll telephone her. Mrs. Jennings, do any of your neighbors have a phone?”
“Never mind,” Bodie told him, “just think about her for a few minutes so that I can get a line—” He stared at Jedson’s face for a moment, then disappeared suddenly.
Perhaps three minutes later Ellen Megeath dropped lightly out of nothing. “Mr. Bodie will be along in a few minutes,” she said. “He stopped to buy a pack of cigarettes.” Jedson took her over and presented her to Mrs. Jennings. She did look sickly, and I could understand Jedson’s concern. Every few minutes she would swallow and choke a little, as if bothered by an enlarged thyroid.
As soon as Jack was back they got right down to details. He had explained to Ellen what they planned to do, and she was entirely willing. She insisted that one more session of magic would do her no harm. There was no advantage in waiting; they prepared to depart at once. Mrs. Jennings related the marching orders. “Ellen, you will need to follow me in trance, keeping in close rapport. I think you will find that couch near the fireplace a good place to rest your body. Jack, you will remain here and guard the portal.” The chimney of Mrs. Jennings’s livingroom fireplace was to be used as most convenient. “You will keep in touch with us through Ellen.”
“But, Granny, I’ll be needed in the Half—”
“No, Jack.” She was gently firm. “You are needed here much more. Someone has to guard the way and help us back, you know. Each to his task.”
He muttered a bit, but gave in. She went on, “I think that is all. Ellen and Jack here; Joseph, Royce, and myself to make the trip. You will have nothing to do but wait, Archibald, but we won’t be longer than ten minutes, wor
ld time, if we are to come back.” She bustled away toward the kitchen, saying something about the unguent and calling back to Jack to have the candles ready. I hurried after her.
“What do you mean,” I demanded, “about me having nothing to do but wait? I’m going along!”
She turned and looked at me before replying, troubled concern in her magnificent eyes. “I don’t see how that can be, Archibald.”
Jedson had followed us and now took me by the arm. “See here, Archie, do be sensible. It’s utterly out of the question. You’re not a magician.”
I pulled away from him. “Neither are you.”
“Not in a technical sense, perhaps, but I know enough to be useful. Don’t be a stubborn fool, man; if you come, you’ll simply handicap us.”
That kind of argument is hard to answer and manifestly unfair. “How?” I persisted.
“Hell’s bells, Archie, you’re young and strong and willing, and there is no one I would rather have at my back in a roughhouse, but this is not a job for courage, or even intelligence alone. It calls for special knowledge and experience.”
“Well,” I answered, “Mrs. Jennings has enough of that for a regiment. But—if you’ll pardon me, Mrs. Jennings!—she is old and feeble. I’ll be her muscles if her strength fails.”
Joe looked faintly amused, and I could have kicked him. “But that is not what is required in—”
Dr. Worthington’s double-bass rumble interrupted him from somewhere behind us. “It occurs to me, brother, that there may possibly be a use for our young friend’s impetuous ignorance. There are times when wisdom is too cautious.”
Mrs. Jennings put a stop to it. “Wait—all of you,” she commanded, and trotted over to a kitchen cupboard. This she opened, moved aside a package of rolled oats, and took down a small leather sack. It was filled with slender sticks.
She cast them on the floor, and the three of them huddled around the litter, studying the patterns. “Cast them again,” Joe insisted. She did so.
I saw Mrs. Jennings and the doctor nod solemn agreement to each other. Jedson shrugged and turned away. Mrs. Jennings addressed me, concern in her eyes. “You will go,” she said softly. “It is not safe, but you will go.”
We wasted no more time. The unguent was heated and we took turns rubbing it on each other’s backbone. Bodie, as gatekeeper, sat in the midst of his penacles, mekagrans, and runes, and intoned monotonously from the great book. Worthington elected to go in his proper person, ebony in a breechcloth, parasymbols scribed on him from head to toe, his grandfather’s head cradled in an elbow.
There was some discussion before they could decide on a final form for Joe, and the metamorphosis was checked and changed several times. He finished up with paper-thin gray flesh stretched over an obscenely distorted skull, a sloping back, the thin flanks of an animal, and a long, bony tail, which he twitched incessantly. But the whole composition was near enough to human to create a revulsion much greater than would be the case for a more outlandish shape. I gagged at the sight of him, but he was pleased. “There!” he exclaimed in a voice like scratched tin. “You’d done a beautiful job, Mrs. Jennings. Asmodeus would not know me from his own nephew.”
“I trust not,” she said. “Shall we go?”
“How about Archie?”
“It suits me to leave him as he is.”
“Then how about your own transformation?”
“I’ll take care of that,” she answered, somewhat tartly. “Take your places.”
Mrs. Jennings and I rode double on the same broom, with me in front, facing the candle stuck in the straws. I’ve noticed All Hallow’s Eve decorations which show the broom with the handle forward and the brush trailing. That is a mistake. Custom is important in these matters. Royce and Joe were to follow close behind us. Seraphin leaped quickly to his mistress’ shoulder and settled himself, his whiskers quivering with eagerness.
Bodie pronounced the word, our candle flared up high, and we were off. I was frightened nearly to panic, but tried not to show it as I clung to the broom. The fireplace gaped at us, and swelled to a monster arch. The fire within roared up like a burning forest and swept us along with it. As we swirled up I caught a glimpse of a salamander dancing among the flames, and felt sure that it was my own—the one that had honored me with its approval and sometimes graced my new fireplace. It seemed a good omen.
We had left the portal far behind—if the word “behind” can be used in a place where directions are symbolic—the shrieking din of the fire was no longer with us, and I was beginning to regain some part of my nerve. I felt a reassuring hand at my waist, and turned my head to speak to Mrs. Jennings.
I nearly fell off the broom.
When we left the house there had mounted behind me an old, old woman, a shrunken, wizened body kept alive by an indomitable spirit. She whom I now saw was a young woman, strong, perfect, and vibrantly beautiful. There is no way to describe her; she was without defect of any sort, and imagination could suggest no improvement.
Have you ever seen the bronze Diana of the Woods? She was something like that, except that metal cannot catch the live, dynamic beauty that I saw.
But it was the same woman!
Mrs. Jennings—Amanda Todd, that was—at perhaps her twenty-fifth year, when she had reached the full maturity of her gorgeous womanhood, and before time had softened the focus of perfection.
I forgot to be afraid. I forgot everything except that I was in the presence of the most compelling and dynamic female I had ever known. I forgot that she was at least sixty years older than myself, and that her present form was simply a triumph of sorcery. I suppose if anyone had asked me at that time if I were in love with Amanda Jennings, I would have answered, “Yes!” But at the time my thoughts were much too confused to be explicit. She was there, and that was sufficient.
She smiled, and her eyes were warm with understanding. She spoke, and her voice was the voice I knew, even though it was rich contralto in place of the accustomed clear, thin soprano. “Is everything all right, Archie?”
“Yes,” I answered in a shaky voice. “Yes, Amanda, everything is all right!”
As for the Half World—How can I describe a place that has no single matching criterion with what I have known? How can I speak of things for which no words have been invented? One tells of things unknown in terms of things which are known. Here there is no relationship by which to link; all is irrelevant. All I can hope to do is tell how matters affected my human senses, how events influenced my human emotions, knowing that there are two falsehoods involved—the falsehood I saw and felt, and the falsehood that I tell.
I have discussed this matter with Jedson, and he agrees with me that the difficulty is insuperable, yet some things may be said with a partial element of truth—truth of a sort, with respect to how the Half World impinged on me.
There is one striking difference between the real world and the Half World. In the real world there are natural laws which persist through changes of custom and culture; in the Half World only custom has any degree of persistence, and of natural law there is none. Imagine, if you please, a condition in which the head of a state might repeal the law of gravitation and have his decree really effective—a place where King Canute could order back the sea and have the waves obey him. A place where “up” and “down” were matters of opinion, and directions might read as readily in days or colors as in miles.
And yet it was not a meaningless anarchy, for they were constrained to obey their customs as unavoidably as we comply with the rules of natural phenomena.
We made a sharp turn to the left in the formless grayness that surrounded us in order to survey the years for a sabbat meeting. It was Amanda’s intention to face the Old One with the matter directly rather than to search aimlessly through ever changing mazes of the Half World for a being hard to identify at best.
Royce picked out the sabbat, though I could see nothing until we let the ground come up to meet us and proceeded on foot. Then there
was light and form. Ahead of us, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, was an eminence surmounted by a great throne which glowed red through the murky air. I could not make out clearly the thing seated there, but I knew it was “himself”—our ancient enemy.
We were no longer alone. Life—sentient, evil undeadness—boiled around us and fogged the air and crept out of the ground. The ground itself twitched and pulsated as we walked over it. Faceless things sniffed and nibbled at our heels. We were aware of unseen presences about us in the fog-shot gloom: beings that squeaked, grunted, and sniggered; voices that were slobbering whimpers, that sucked and retched and bleated.
They seemed vaguely disturbed by our presence—Heaven knows that I was terrified by them!—for I could hear them flopping and shuffling out of our path, then closing cautiously in behind, as they bleated warnings to one another.
A shape floundered into our path and stopped, a shape with a great bloated head and moist, limber arms. “Back!” it wheezed. “Go back! Candidates for witchhood apply on the lower level.” It did not speak English, but the words were clear.
Royce smashed it in the face and we stamped over it, its chalky bones crunching underfoot. It pulled itself together again, whining its submission, then scurried out in front of us and thereafter gave us escort right up to the great throne.
“That’s the only way to treat these beings,” Joe whispered in my ear. “Kick ’em in the teeth first, and they’ll respect you.”
There was a clearing before the throne which was crowded with black witches, black magicians, demons in every foul guise, and lesser unclean things. On the left side the caldron boiled. On the right some of the company were partaking of the witches’ feast. I turned my head away from that. Directly before the throne, as custom calls for, the witches’ dance was being performed for the amusement of the Goat. Some dozens of men and women, young and old, comely and hideous, cavorted and leaped in impossible acrobatic adagio.
The dance ceased and they gave way uncertainly before us as we pressed up to the throne. “What’s this? What’s this?” came a husky, phlegm-filled voice. “It’s my little sweetheart! Come up and sit beside me, my sweet! Have you come at last to sign my compact?”
The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein Page 10