by Fritz Leiber
“Professor Saylor looks dead tired,” she said, peering at Norman anxiously. “I hope you haven’t been wearing him out, Linthicum.”
“Oh no, my dear, I’ve been doing all the work,” her husband told her.
She walked around the desk and looked over his shoulder. “What is it?” she asked, pleasantly.
“I don’t know,” he said. He straightened up and, winking at Norman, went on, “I believe that, behind these symbols, Professor Saylor is revolutionizing the science of sociology. But it’s a great secret. And in any case I haven’t the slightest idea of what the symbols refer to. I’m just being a sort of electronic brain.”
With a polite, by-your-leave nod towards Norman, Mrs. Carr picked up one of the sheets and studied it through her thick glasses. But apparently at sight of the massed rows of symbols, she put it down.
“Mathematics is not my forte,” she explained. “I was such a poor scholar.”
“Nonsense, Flora,” said Carr. “Whenever we go to the market, you’re much quicker at totaling the bill than I am. And I try to beat you, too.”
“But that’s such a little thing,” said Mrs. Carr delightedly.
“I’ll only be a moment more,” said her husband, returning to his calculations.
Mrs. Carr spoke across to Norman in a half-whisper. “Oh, Professor Saylor, would you be so kind as to convey a message to Tansy? I want to invite her for bridge tomorrow night — that’s Thursday — with Hulda Gunnison and Evelyn Sawtelle. Linthicum has a meeting.”
“I’ll be glad to,” said Norman quickly. “But I’m afraid she might not be up to it.” And he explained about the food poisoning.
“How too, too terrible!” observed Mrs. Carr. “Couldn’t I come over and help her?”
“Thank you,” Norman lied, “but we have someone staying with her.”
“How wise,” said Mrs. Carr, and she looked at Norman intently, as if to spy out the source of that wisdom. Her steady gaze made him feel uncomfortable, it seemed at once so predatory and so naive. It somehow wouldn’t have surprised him in one of his students, one of his girl students, but in this old woman —
Carr put down his pencil. “There,” he said. “I’m done.”
With further expression of thanks, Norman gathered up the sheets.
“Really no trouble at all,” Carr assured him. “You gave me a very exciting afternoon. I must confess you’ve aroused my curiosity.”
“Linthicum dotes on anything mathematical, especially when it’s like a puzzle,” Mrs. Carr told him. “Why, once,” she continued, with a kind of roguish indulgence, “he made all sorts of tabulations on horse races.”
“Er… yes… but only as a concrete example of the calculus of probabilities,” Carr interposed quickly. But his smile was equally indulgent.
Her hand was on his shoulder, and he had reached up his own to cover hers. Frail, yet somehow hearty, withered, yet somehow fresh, they seemed like the perfect aged couple.
“I promise you,” Norman told him, “that if I revolutionize the science of sociology, you’ll be the first to hear of it. Good evening.” And he bowed out.
As soon as he could hurry home he got out the code. “W’” was the identifying letter at the top of the first sheet. He thought he remembered what that meant, but he looked it up just to be sure.
“W — To conjure out the soul.”
Yes, that was it. He turned to the supplementary sheet covered with Cam’s calculations, and carefully decoded the final equation. “C — Notched strip of copper.” He nodded. “t — Twirl sunwise.” He frowned. He could have expected that to cancel out. Good thing he’d gotten a mathematician’s help in simplifying the seventeen equations, each representing a different people’s formula for conjuring out the soul — Arabian, Zulu, Polynesian, American Negro, American Indian, and so on; the most recent formulas available, and ones that had known actual use.
“A — Deadly amanita.” Bother! He’d been certain that one would cancel out. It would be a bit of time and trouble getting a deathcup mushroom. Well, he could manage without that formula if he had to. He took up two other sheets: “V — To control the soul of another,” “Z — To cause the dwellers in a house to sleep” and set to work on one of them. In a few minutes he had assured himself that the ingredients presented no special difficulties, save that Z required a Hand of Glory to be used as well as graveyard dirt to be thrown onto the roof of the house in which sleep was to be enforced. But he ought to have little difficulty in filching a suitable severed hand from the anatomy lab. And then if —
Conscious of a sudden weariness and of a revulsion from these formulas, which persisted in seeming more obscene than ridiculous, he pushed back his chair. For the first time since he had come into the house, he looked at the figure by the window. It sat in the rocking chair, face turned toward the drawn curtains. When it had started rocking, he did not know. But the muscles of its body automatically continued the rhythmical movement, once it had begun.
With the suddenness of a blow, longing f or Tansy struck him. Her intonations, her gestures, her mannerisms, her funny fancies — all the little things that go to make a person real and human and loved— he wanted them all instantly; and the presence of this deadalive imitation, this husk of Tansy, only made the longing less bearable. And what sort of a man was he, to be puttering around with occult formulas, while all the while — “There are things that can be done to a soul,” she had said. “Servant girls of the Gunnisons have told stories —” He ought to go straight to the Gunnisons, confront Hulda, and force the issue!
With a quick effort he subdued his anger. Any such action on h:s part might ruin everything. How could you use open force against someone who held the mentality, the very consciousness, of your dearest possession as a hostage? No, he had been all over this before and his course was set. He must fight those women with their own weapons; these repugnant occult formulas were his best hope and he had gotten his usual punishment for making the mistake of looking at its face. Deliberately he moved to the other side of the table, so his back was towards the rocking chair.
But he was restless, his muscles itching with fatigue poisons, and for the moment he could not get back to work.
Suddenly he spoke. “Why do you suppose everything has become violent and deadly so abruptly?”
“The Balance with upset,” was the answer. There was no interruption in the steady rocking.
“How was that?” He started to look over the back of his chair, but checked himself in time.
“It happened when I ceased to practice magic.” The rocking was a grating monotony.
“But why should that lead to violence?”
“It upset the Balance.”
“Yes, but how can that explain the abruptness of the shift from relatively trivial attacks to a deadly maliciousness?”
The rocking had stopped. There was no answer. But, as he told himself, he knew the answer already that was shaping in that mindless mind behind him. This witches’ warfare it believed in was very much like trench warfare or a battle between fortified lines — a state of siege. Just as reinforced concrete or armor plating nullified the shells, so countercharms and protective procedures rendered relatively futile the most violent onslaughts. But once the armor and concrete were gone, and the witch who had foresworn witchcraft was out in a kind of no man’s land —
Then, too, fear of the savage counterattacks that could be launched from such highly fortified positions, was a potent factor in discouraging direct assaults. The natural thing would be to sit pat, snipe away, and only attack if the enemy exposed himself recklessly. Besides, there were probably all sorts of unsuspected hostages and secret agreements, all putting a damper on violence.
This idea also seemed to explain why Tansy’s apparently pacific action had upset the Balance. What would any country think, if in the midst of a war, its enemy scuttled all his battleships and dismantled all his aircraft, apparently laying himself wide open to attack? For the realisti
c mind, there could be only one likely answer. Namely, that the enemy had discovered a weapon far more potent than battleships or aircraft, and was planning to ask for a peace that would turn out to be a trap. The only thing would be to strike instantly and hard, before the secret weapon could be brought into play.
“I think —” he started to say.
Then something — perhaps a faint whish in the air or a slight creaking of the floor under the heavy carpet, or some less tangible sensation — caused him to glance around.
With a writhing jerk sideways, he managed — just managed — to get his head out of the path of that descending metal flail, which was all he saw at first. With a shocking swish it crashed downward against the heavy back of the chair and its force was broken. But his shoulder, which took only the broken blow, went numb.
Clawing at the table with his good hand, he threw himself forward against the table and whirled around.
He recoiled from the sight as from another blow, throwing back his good hand to save himself from overbalancing.
It was poised in the center of the room, having sprung back catlike after the first blow failed. Almost stiff-legged, but with the weight forward. In stocking feet — the slippers that might have made a noise were laid by the rocking chair. In its hand was the steel poker, stealthily lifted from the stand by the fireplace.
There was life in the face now. But it was life that champed the teeth and drooled, life that pinched and flared the nostrils with every breath, life that switched hair from the eyes with quick, angry flirts, life that glared redly and steadily.
With a low snarl it lifted the poker and struck, not at him, but at the chandelier overhead. Pitch darkness flooded the room he had curtained tightly against prying eyes.
There was a rush of soft footsteps. He ducked to one side. Nevertheless, the swish came perilously close. There was a sound as if it had dived or rolled across the table after he eluded the headlong rush — he could hear the slur of papers skidding and the faint crackle as some drifted to the floor. Then silence, except for the rapid snuff-snuff of animal breathing.
He crouched on the carpet, trying not to move a muscle, straining his ears to catch the direction of that breathing. Abominable, he thought, how inefficient the human auditory system is at localizing a sound. First the snuffing sound came from one direction, then another, although he could not hear the slightest rustle of intervening movement — until he began to lose his sense of direction in the room. He tried to remember his exact movements in springing away from the table. As he had hit the carpet, he had spun around. But how far? Was he facing toward or away from the wall? In his zeal to avoid the possibility of anyone spying on them, he had blacked out this room and the bedroom, and the blackout was effective. No discernible atom of light filtered through from the night outside. He was somewhere on what was beginning to seem an endless expanse of carpet, a low-ceilinged, wall-less infinity.
And somewhere else on that expanse, it was. Could it see and hear more than he? Could it discern form in retinal patterns that were only blackness to Tansy’s sane soul? What was it waiting for? He strained his ears, but the rapid breathing was no longer audible.
This might be the darkness of some jungle floor, roofed by yards of matted creepers. Civilization is a thing of light. When light goes, civilization is snuffed out. Norman was rapidly being reduced to its level. Perhaps it had counted on that when it smashed the lights. This might be the inner chamber of some primeval cave, and he some cloudy-minded primitive huddled in abject terror of his mate, into whose beloved form a demon had been conjured up by the witch woman — the brawny, fat witch woman with the sullen lip and brutish eyes, and copper ornaments twisted in matted red hair. Should he grope for his ax and seek to smash the demon from the skull where it was hiding? Or should he seek out the witch woman and throttle her until she called off her demon? But how could he constrain his wife meanwhile? If the tribe found her, they would slay her instantly — it was the law. And even now the demon in her was seeking to slay him.
With thoughts almost as murky and confused as those of that ghostly primitive forerunner, Norman sought to grapple with the problem, until he suddenly realized what it was waiting for.
Already his muscles were aching. He was getting twinges of pain from his shoulder as the numbness went out of it. Soon he would make an involuntary movement. And in that instant it would be upon him.
Cautiously he stretched out his hand. Slowly — very slowly — he swung it around until it touched a small table and located a large book. Clamping thumb and fingers around the book where it projected from the table edge, he lifted it and drew it to him. His muscles began to shake a little from the effort to maintain absolute quiet.
With a slow movement he launched the book toward the center of the room, so that it hit the carpet a few feet from him. The sound drew the instant response he had hoped for. Waiting a second, he dove forward seeking to pin it to the floor. But its cunning was greater than he had guessed. His arms closed on a heavy cushion that it had hurled toward the book, and only luck saved him as the poker thudded savagely against the carpet close by his head.
Clutching out blindly, his hands closed on the cold metal. There was a moment of straining as it sought to break his grip. Then he was sprawling backward, the poker in his hand, and the footsteps were retreating toward the rear of the house.
He followed it to the kitchen. A drawer, jerked out too far, fell to the floor, and he heard the chilling clatter and scrape of cutlery.
But there was enough light in the kitchen to show him its silhouette. He lunged at the upraised hand holding the long knife, caught the wrist. Then it threw itself against him, and they dropped to the floor.
He felt the warm body against his murderously animated to the last limits of its strength. For a moment he felt the coldness of the flat of the knife against his cheek, then he had forced the weapon away. He doubled up his legs to protect himself from its knees. It surged convulsively down on him and he felt jaws clamp the arm with which he held away the knife. Teeth sawed sideways trying to penetrate the fabric of his coat. Cloth ripped as he sought with his free hand to drag the body away from him. Then he found the hair and forced back the head so the teeth lost their grip. It dropped the knife and clawed at his face. He seized the fingers seeking his eyes and nostrils; it snarled and spat at him.
Steadily he forced down the arms, twisting them behind it, and with a sudden effort got to his knees. Strangled sounds of fury came from its throat.
Only too keenly aware of how close his muscles were to the trembling weakness of exhaustion, he shifted his grip so that with one hand he held the straining wrists. With the other he groped sideways, jerked open the lower door of the cabinet, found a length of cord.
19
“It’s pretty serious this time, Norm,” said Harold Gunnison. “Fenner and Liddell really want your scalp.”
Norman drew his chair closer, as if the discussion were the real reason for his visit to Gunnison’s office this morning.
Gunnison went on, “I think they’re planning to rake up that Margaret Van Nice business and start yelping that where there’s smoke there must be fire. And they may try to use Theodore Jennings against you. Claim that his ‘nervous breakdown’ was aggravated by unfairness and undue severity on your part, et cetera. Of course we have the strongest defense for you in both cases, still just talking about such matters is bound to have an unfavorable effect on the other trustees. And then this talk on sex you’re going to give the Offcampus Mothers, and those theatrical friends of yours you’ve invited to the college. I have no personal objections, Norm, but you did pick a bad time.”
Norman nodded, dutifully. Mrs. Gunnison ought to be here soon. The maid had told him over the phone that she had just left for her husband’s office.
“Of course, such matters aren’t enough in themselves.” Gunnison looked unusually heavy-eyed and grave. “But as I say, they have a bad taste, and they can be used as an entering w
edge. The real danger will come from a restrained but concerted attack on your conduct of classes, your public utterances, and perhaps even trivial details of your social life, followed by talk about the need for retrenchment where it is expeditious — you know what I mean.” He paused. “What really bothers me is that Pollard’s cooled toward you. I told him just what I thought of Sawtelle’s appointment, but he said the trustees had overruled him. He’s a good man, but he’s a politician.” And Gnnnison shrugged, as if it were common knowledge that the distinction between politicians and professors went back to the Ice Age.
Norman roused himself. “I’m afraid I insulted him last week. We had a long talk and I blew up.”
Gunnison shook his head. “That wouldn’t explain it. He can absorb insults. If he sides against you, it will be because he feels it necessary or at least expeditious (I hate that word) on the grounds of public opinion. You know his way of running the college. Every couple of years he throws someone to the wolves.”
Norman hardly heard him. He was thinking of Tansy’s body as he had left it — the trussed-up limbs, the lolling jaw, the hoarse heavy breathing from the whiskey he had finally made it guzzle. He was taking a long chance, but he couldn’t see any other way. At one time last night he had almost decided to call a doctor and perhaps have it placed in a sanitarium. But if he did that he might lose forever his chance to restore Tansy’s rightful self. What psychiatrist would believe the morbid plot he knew existed against his wife’s sanity? For similar reasons there was no friend he could call on for help. No, the only way was to strike swiftly at Mrs. Gunnison. But it was not pleasant to think of such headlines as:
“PROFESSOR’S WIFE A TORTURE VICTIM. FOUND TEU55ED IN CLOSET BY MATE.”
“It’s really serious, Norm,” Gunnison was repeating. “My wife thinks so, and she’s smart about these things. She knows people.”
His wife! Obediently, Norman nodded.