Darker Than You Think

by Jack Williamson

  The sudden creak of bedsprings checked her. She whirled warily, greenish eyes blazing, silken ears lifted. Barbee heard Nora's sleepy voice—and a cold terror shook him, that he might be forced to injure her.

  "Sam?" she said. "Where are you, Sam?" Then she must have found him beside her, for the bed creaked again, and she murmured faintly. " 'Night Sam."

  When the breath sounds were regular again, Barbee whispered uneasily: "Why don't we need the keys?"

  "I'll show you," the white wolf said. "But first I'm going to explain a little of the theory of our free state— to keep you from killing yourself. You must understand the dangers—"

  "Silver?" he said. "And daylight?"

  "The theory joins it all together," the wolf bitch told him. "I don't know physics enough to explain all the technical ramifications, but my friend made the main point seem simple enough. The link between mind and matter, he says, is probability."

  Barbee started a little, remembering old Mondrick's lecture.

  "Living things are more than matter alone," she continued. "The mind is an independent something—an energy complex, he called it—created by the vibrating atoms and electrons of the body, and yet controlling their vibrations through the linkage of atomic probability—my friend used more technical language, but that's the idea of it.

  "That web of living energy is fed by the body; it's part of the body—usually. My friend is a pretty conservative scientist, and he wouldn't say whether he thinks it's really a soul, able to survive long after the body is dead. He says you can't prove anything about that."

  Her greenish eyes smiled secretly, as if she knew more than she said.

  "But that vital pattern, in us, is stronger than in true men—his experiments did prove that. More fluid, and less dependent on the material body. In this free state, he says, we simply separate that living web from the body, and use the probability link to attach it to other atoms, wherever we please—the atoms of the air are easiest to control, he says, because the oxygen and nitrogen and carbon are the same atoms that establish the linkage in our bodies.

  "And that explains the dangers."

  "Silver?" Barbee said. "And light? I don't quite see—"

  "The vibrations of light can damage or destroy that mental web," she told him. "They interfere with its own vibration. The mass of the body protects it, of course, when we are in the normal state. But the transparent air, when we are free, gives no shelter at all. Never let the daylight find you free!"

  "I won't." Barbee shivered. "But how does silver harm us?"

  "Vibration, again," the white wolf whispered. "No common matter is any real barrier to us in this free state. That's why we don't need Quain's keys. Doors and walls still seem real enough, I know—but wood is mostly oxygen and carbon, and our mind webs can grasp the vibrating atoms and slip through them, nearly as easily as through the air. Many other substances we can possess for our vehicles, with a little more effort and difficulty. Silver is the deadly exception—as our enemies know."

  "Huh?" Barbee gasped. "How is that?"

  Yet he scarcely listened, for something made him think of blind Rowena Mondrick, with her heavy silver rings and bracelets, her quaint old silver brooches and her silver beads, and the silver-studded collar she kept on her great tawny dog. Something lifted the gray shaggy fur along his spine, and something made him shudder.

  "Different elements have different atomic numbers and different periods of electronic vibration," the white wolf was saying. "My friend explained it all, but I don't remember the terms. Anyhow, silver has the wrong vibration. There is no probability linkage. We can't claim silver, to make it a path or a tool for our free minds. Instead, the electronic vibrations of silver clash with ours; they can shatter the free pattern. So silver's poison, Will. Silver weapons can kill us—don't forget!"

  "I won't," Barbee whispered uneasily.

  He shook out his gray fur, trying vainly to dislodge that clinging chill. The white she-wolf stood listening again to the breath-sounds in the house, poised alertly, one graceful forefoot lifted. He moved toward her quickly.

  "I won't forget," he said. "But I want to know the name of your physicist friend."

  She laughed at him suddenly, red tongue hanging.

  "Jealous, Barbee?" she taunted softly.

  "I want to know," he insisted grimly. "And I want to know the name of this expected Child of Night."

  "Do you, Barbee?" Her red smile widened before it sobered. "You'll find out," she promised, "when you have proved yourself. But now I think you understand our free state and its dangers well enough. Let's get to work, before Quain wakes."

  She trotted back to the study door.

  "Now you understand," she whispered, "and I can help you pass. My friend taught me how to smooth the random vibrations from the heavier elements in the wood and the paint that otherwise would be something of a barrier."

  Her greenish eyes fixed intently on the lower panels of the door—and Barbee remembered old Mondrick's lecture on probability. All matter was mostly empty space, he said; only the random collisions of vibrating atoms kept the little black lamp from falling through the seemingly substantial desk. Nothing in the universe was absolute; only probabilities were real. And the mind web, according to this theory of April's unknown friend, governed probability.

  "Wait," the she-wolf whispered. "Follow me."

  Before her greenish stare, the bottom half of the study door melted into misty unreality. For an instant Barbee could see the dark screws that held the hinges, and all the mechanism of the lock, as if in an X-ray view. Then the metal faded also, and the slender bitch glided silently through the door.

  Uneasily, Barbee followed. He thought he felt a slight resistance, where the wooden panels were. He felt as if something brushed his gray fur lightly as he stepped carefully through. He stopped inside with a stifled growl. The white wolf cowered back against his shoulder.

  For something in that room was—deadly.

  He stood sniffing for the danger. The close air was thick with odors of paper and dried ink and decaying glue from the books on the shelves, strong with the mothball reek from a closet, perfumed with the fragrant tobacco in the humidor on Sam's desk. It was musky with the lingering scent of a mouse that once had dwelt behind the books. But the queer, powerful malodor that frightened him came from the battered, iron-strapped wooden chest on the floor beside the desk.

  It was a piercing, musty reek, as if of something that had moldered for a very long time underground. It was alarming in a way he couldn't understand— though it reminded him of that undefinable evil scent about the Foundation tower. The white bitch stood taut beside him, frozen in her snarl, with hatred and stunned fear in her eyes.

  "It's there in that box," she whispered faintly. "The thing old Mondrick dug from the graves of our race in the Ala-shan—the weapon that destroyed our people once, and Quain plans to use again. We must dispose of it—somehow—tonight."

  But Barbee shook himself, retreating apprehensively.

  "I don't feel good," he muttered uneasily. "I can't breathe. That stink must be poisonous. Let's get back to the open."

  "You're no coward, Barbee." The bitch curled her lip, as if to stir him with a hint of scorn. "The thing in that box must be deadlier than dogs, or light, or even silver—our people could have dealt with all of them. We must get rid of it—or else our kind must die again."

  Crouching, white fur bristled, she moved toward the massive coffer. Unwillingly, sick with that unknown fetor, Barbee followed her. That lethal reek seared his nostrils. He swayed, shivering to an insidious chill.

  "Padlocked!" he gasped. "Sam must have expected—"

  Then he saw the narrowed eyes of the crouching bitch fixed upon the carved side of the green-painted chest, and he remembered her control of atomic probability. The wooden planks turned misty, revealing all the iron screws that fastened them. The screws dissolved, and the wide iron bands, and the heavy hasp. The white wolf growled, quivering t
o a cold ferocity.

  "Silver!" she gasped, cowering back against him.

  For inside the vanished wood was a lining, of hammered white metal, which refused to dissolve. The atoms of silver had no linkage with the web of mind. The reeking contents of the chest were still concealed.

  "Your old friends are clever, Barbee!" White fangs flashed through the she-wolf's snarl. "I knew the box was heavy, but I didn't guess it had a silver lining. Now, I suppose, we must look for the keys and try the padlock. If that fails, we must attempt to burn the house."

  "No!" Barbee shuddered. "Not while they're all asleep!"

  "Your poor Nora!" The white bitch mocked him. "Why did you let Sam take her?" Her red grin turned grave. "But fire is the last resort," she told him, "because the vibrations are so deadly to us. First we must search for the keys."

  They were creeping back toward the door and the faint murmurings of sleep from the bedroom beyond, when Barbee started to a sudden drumming clamor. To his acute senses, it seemed as if the whole house shuddered. Whimpering with shock, the white bitch sprang back from him toward Sam Quain's cluttered desk. That preemptory clatter paused, and he realized that it had been the telephone.

  "What fool is calling now?" the white bitch snarled, hoarse with urgency and terror. Barbee heard the bed groan again and the sleep-muffled sound of Sam Quain's voice. That silent room seemed suddenly a closing trap, and he was frantic to escape. The next ring of the phone, he knew, would finish waking Quain. He darted toward the dark opening in the locked door, calling back to his companion: "Let's get away—"

  But the snarling bitch was already crouching. One clean leap carried her to the top of the desk. Silently, before the telephone could ring again, she caught the receiver in her deft forepaws, and lifted it carefully.

  "Quiet!" she commanded softly. "Listen!"

  A breathless hush filled the tiny house. A clock ticked on the desk, oddly loud. Barbee heard Sam Quain's sleep-dulled voice again, uncertainly interrogative, and then his even breathing. The refrigerator motor in the kitchen stopped its muffled whirring. He heard the thin voice in the receiver, calling frantically: "Sam?" It was Rowena Mondrick. "Sam Quain— can you hear me?"

  Barbee heard an uneasy little groan from the bedroom, and then the heavy breathing of Sam Quain's tired, uneasy sleep.

  "Nora, is it you?" Barbee heard that small voice from the receiver on the desk, shrill with fright. "Where is Sam? Have him call me, won't you, Nora? I've a warning for him—tell him it's about Barbee."

  The white bitch crouched over the receiver, her long fangs bared as if to slash the instrument. Her silken ears were pricked up delicately to listen, and her slanted eyes were narrowed greenish slits of hate.

  "Who—?" Terror seemed to choke that tiny voice. "Sam?" it gasped faintly. "Nora? Won't you— speak—"

  A thin little scream came out of the instrument, so penetrating Barbee was afraid it would reach the bedroom. The receiver clicked as the frightened woman at the other end hung up. Leaving the receiver down, the white bitch sprang back to Barbee's side.

  "That wicked widow of old Mondrick's!" she gasped faintly. "The woman knows too much about us—she saw too much, before she lost her eyes. Her knowledge, I'm afraid, could make the thing in that green box more deadly to us than it is already."

  Her long ears flattened, and she snarled again.

  "There's another job for us, Barbee," she said softly. "I think we had better dispose of Rowena Mondrick, before she ever talks to Sam Quain."

  "We couldn't hurt an old blind woman!" Barbee protested sharply. "And Rowena is my friend."

  "Your friend?" the white bitch whispered scornfully. "You've a lot to learn, Barbee." Something seemed to clot her whisper, to turn it thick and slow. "When you're the very one she's trying to betray—"

  She swayed and sank down on the worn carpet.

  "April?" Barbee touched her icy muzzle anxiously. "What's the trouble, April?"

  The slender wolf shuddered where she lay.

  "—trapped!" Barbee had to crouch to hear her faint whisper. "Now I see why your old friend Quain went on to bed and left the back door open so invitingly. That green box is the bait—he must have known we couldn't get in it. And that old, evil thing inside it is the deadfall."

  Barbee had nearly forgotten that penetrating odor from the box, which at first had seemed so noxious. He raised his muzzle heavily to sniff for it again. It seemed fainter now, and it was almost pleasant. Drowsily, he sniffed again.

  "Don't breathe it!" the she-wolf whispered frantically. "Poison. Quain left it—to kill us." She shivered on the floor, and he could scarcely hear her whisper. "We must leave the box—and pay our visit to your dear friend Rowena. If we ever get out of here—"

  She lay limp and still.

  "April!" yelped Barbee. "April!"

  She didn't move.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Huntress in the Dark

  Barbee swayed beside the flaccid form of the slim she-wolf and awkwardly spread his four legs to keep from falling. He sniffed the odor of the thing in the wooden coffer. That was a secret thing, older than remembered history, which had lain long-buried under the Ala-shan with the bones of the race it had killed. It was going to kill him too. Yet somehow the emanations of it were now fragrantly sweet; drowsily, he wondered why it had ever seemed so foul. He inhaled again.

  He was going to sleep beside the sleeping bitch. He felt very tired, and that old, queer perfume seemed to ease away all his worry and strain and aching weariness. He breathed it deep, and prepared to lie down. But white wolf shivered on the floor, and he heard her tiny whisper: "Leave me, Barbee! Get out—before you die!"

  That awoke a faint awareness of her peril. He liked that ancient, strange perfume from the box behind them, but it was killing April Bell. He must get her out, to the open air. Then he could come back, and breathe it, and sleep. He caught the loose fur at the back of her neck, and dragged her laboriously toward the opening she had made in the locked door.

  A vague consternation took hold of him, and her limp body dropped from his relaxing jaws. For the way was closing. The dark screws and the metal of the lock appeared again, and then the ghostly outline of the wooden panels turned suddenly real. This quiet study room indeed had been a baited trap—his drowsy thoughts grasped that much. And the trap was sprung.

  Weakly, he blundered against the door. It flung him back, solid as it seemed. He tried to remember old Mondrick's lecture and that theory of April's friend. All matter was mostly emptiness. Nothing was absolute; only probabilities were real. His mind was an energy web, and it could grasp the atoms and electrons of the door by the link of probability. It could smooth the random vibrations which made the door a barrier.

  He pondered that, laboriously—but the door was still a barrier. The slender bitch lay still at his feet, and he braced himself to keep from going down beside her. The old, sweet fragrance of that thing in the box seemed to thicken in the air. He was breathing hard, his tongue hanging. That old perfume would end all his trouble and his pain—

  Faintly, the she-wolf whimpered at his feet: "Look at the door. Open the wood—I'll try to help—"

  Reeling, he stared at the solid-seeming panels. Gropingly, he tried to dissolve them again. Only probabilities were real, he remembered—but those were merely words. The door remained solid. He felt a faint quiver of effort in the she-wolf's body, and he tried to share her action. Slowly, in a fumbling way, he got hold of a curious, novel sense of extension and control.

  A misty spot came in the wood. Uncertainly, he widened it. The she-wolf shuddered at his feet and seemed to stiffen—and still the opening was too small. He tried again, swaying to the sweet caress of that perfume. The space came wider. He caught her fur, stumbled at the door, and sprawled through it with her.

  The effluvium of the box was left behind. For an instant Barbee wanted desperately to go back to it, and then a sick revulsion seized him. He lay on the floor in the narrow hallway,
shaken with nausea. Faintly, in the locked room behind him, he heard a telephone operator's impatient tones in the dropped receiver on Sam Quain's desk. Then Nora's voice sobbed suddenly through the house, muffled with terror and sleep: "Sam—Sam!"

  The bed groaned as Sam Quain turned uneasily, but neither quite awoke. Barbee staggered to his feet, panting gratefully for the clean air. Muzzling the still white wolf, he caught that foul malodor seeping under the door, and disgusted nausea staggered him once more.

  He lifted the she-wolf again and flung her limp body over his gaunt, gray shoulders. Lurching and trembling under her slight burden, he stumbled back through Nora's clean-smelling kitchen and pushed out through the unlatched screen.

  They were safely out of Sam's queer trap, he thought, uneasily shaking out his shaggy fur as he ran with the she-wolf on his back. He couldn't quite outrun the sickening memory of that lethal effluvium, but the clean chill of the night wind cleared it from his nostrils. His strength came back.

  He carried the white bitch back down the street to the campus and laid her on the white-frosted grass. The zodiacal light was already lifting its warming pillar of pale silver in the east. On the farms beyond the town he could hear roosters crowing. A dog was howling somewhere. The peril of dawn was near—and he didn't know what to do for April Bell.

  Helplessly, he started licking her white fur. Her slender body shivered, to his immense relief, and began heaving as she breathed again. Weakly, she swayed to her feet. She was panting, her red tongue drooping. Her eyes were dark with terror.

  "Thank you, Barbee!" She shuddered. "That was horrible. I'd have died there in your old friend's cunning little trap if you hadn't brought me away." Her feral eyes narrowed. "That thing in the box is deadlier than I ever dreamed. I don't think we can ever destroy it, really. We can only strike at those who hope to use it—until it is buried again—and forgotten as it was under those mounds in the Ala-shan."