"Leave the fire alone," Charles said sharply to Kennedy. The little man
was going to douse it for the night.
There was a flash of terrified sense: "They beat you. If the fire's on
after dark they beat you. Fire and dark are equal and opposite." He
began to smile. "Fire is the negative of dark. You just change the sign,
in effect rotate it through 180 degrees. But to rotate it through 180
degrees you have to first rotate it through one degree. And to rotate it
through one degree you first have to rotate it through half a degree."
He was beaming now, having forgotten all about the fire. Charles banked
it with utmost care, heaping a couple of flat stones for a chimney that
would preserve the life of one glowing coal invisibly.
He stretched out on the sand, one hand on the little heap beneath which
five pounds of smokeless powder was buried. Kennedy continued to drone
out his power-series happily.
Through the chinks in the palisade a man's profile showed against the
twilight. "Shut up," he said.
Kennedy shivering, rolled over and muttered to himself. The spearman
laughed and went on.
Charles hardly saw him. His whole mind was concentrated on the spark
beneath the improvised chimney. He had left such a spark seven nights
running. Only twice had it lived more than an hour. Tonight--tonight,
it _had_ to last. Tonight was the last night of the witch-girl's monthly
courses, and during them she lost--or thought she lost, which was the
same thing--the power of the goddess.
Primitive aborigines, he jeered silently at himself. A life time wasn't
long enough to learn the intricacies of their culture--as occasional
executions among them for violating magical law proved to the hilt. His
first crude notion--blowing the palisade apart and running like
hell--was replaced by a complex escape plan hammered out in detail
between him and Martha.
Martha assured him that the witch girl could track him through the dark
by the power of the goddess except for four days a month--and he
believed it. Martha herself laid a matter-of-fact claim to keener second
sight than her sister because of her virginity. With Martha to guide him
through the night and the witch-girl's power disabled, they'd get a
day's head start. His hand strayed to a pebble under which jerked
venison was hidden and ready.
"But Martha. Are you sure you're not--not kidding yourself? Are you
_sure_?"
He felt her grin on the other side of the palisade. "You're sure wishing
Uncle Frank was here so you could ask him about it, don't you, Charles?"
He sure was. He wiped his brow, suddenly clammy.
Kennedy couldn't come along. One, he wasn't responsible. Two, he might
have to be Charles' cover-story. They weren't too dissimilar in build,
age, or coloring. Charles had a beard by now that sufficiently obscured
his features, and two years absence should have softened recollections
of Kennedy. Interrogated, Charles could take refuge in an imitation of
Kennedy's lunacy.
"Charles, the one thing I don't get is this Lee dame. She got a spell on
her? You don't want to mess with that."
"Listen, Martha, we've _got_ to mess with her. It isn't a
spell--exactly. Anyway I know how to take it off and then she'll be on
our side."
"Can I set off the explosion? If you let me set off the explosion, I'll
quit my bitching."
"We'll see," he said.
She chuckled very faintly in the dark. "Okay," she told him. "If I
can't, I can't."
He thought of being married to a woman who could spot your smallest lie
or reservation, and shuddered.
Kennedy was snoring by now and twilight was deepening into blackness.
There was a quarter-moon, obscured by over-cast. He hitched along the
sand and peered through a chink at a tiny noise. It was the small
scuffling feet of a woods-rat racing through the grass from one morsel
of food to the next. It never reached it. There was a soft rush of wings
as a great dark owl plummeted to earth and struck talons into the brown
fur. The rat squealed its life away while the owl lofted silently to a
tree branch where it stood on one leg, swaying drunkenly and staring
with huge yellow eyes.
As sudden as that, it'll be, Charles thought abruptly weighted with
despair. A half-crazy kid and yours truly trying to outsmart and
out-Tarzan these wild men. If only the little dope would let me take the
jeep! But the jeep was out. She rationalized her retention of the power
even after handling iron by persuading herself that she was only acting
for Charles; there was some obscure precedent in a long, memorized poem
which served her as a text-book of magic. But riding in the jeep was
_out_.
By now she should be stringing magic vines across some of the huts and
trails. "They'll see 'em when they get torches and it'll scare 'em. Of
course I don't know how to do it right, but they don't know that. It'll
slow 'em down. If _she_ comes out of her house--and maybe she
won't--she'll know they don't matter and send the men after us. But
we'll be on our way. Charles, you _sure_ I can't set off the explosion?
Yeah, I guess you are. Maybe I can set off one when we get to New
Portsmouth?"
"If I can possibly arrange it."