"Of course," Tansy cut in. "You were quite right." Her fingers played
more rapidly with the cord. She did not look down at it.
Lightning showed flashes of pale street and trees through the window.
The patter of rain grew in volume. But through it he fancied he heard
the scrunch of paws on the drive. Ridiculous--rain and wind were making
too much noise.
His eyes were attracted to the pattern of knots Tansy's restless
fingers were weaving. They were complicated, strong-looking knots which
fell apart at a single cunning jerk, reminding him of how Tansy had
studied assiduously the cat's cradles of the Indians. It also recalled
to his mind how knots are used by the primitives to tie and loose the
winds, to hold loved ones, to noose far-off enemies, to inhibit or free
all manner of physical and physiological processes. And how the Fates
weave destinies like threads. He found something very pleasing in the
pattern of the knots and the rhythmic movements which produced them.
They seemed to signify security. Until they fell apart.
"Norman"--the voice was preoccupied and rapid--"what was that snapshot
you asked Hulda Gunnison to show you last night?"
He felt a brief flurry of panic. She was getting "very warm." This was
the stage of the game where you cried out, "Hot!"
And then he heard the heavy, unyielding _clump-clump_ on the
boards of the front porch, seeming to move questingly along the wall.
The sphere of alien thoughts began to exert an irresistible centrifugal
pressure. He felt his sanity being smothered between the assaults from
without and within. Very deliberately he shaved off the ash of his
cigarette against the edge of the tray.
"It was of the roof of Estrey," he said casually. "Gunnison told me
she'd taken a number of pictures of that sort and I wanted to see a
sample."
"Some sort of creature in it, wasn't there?" Knots flickered into being
and vanished with bewildering speed. It seemed to him suddenly that
more than twine was being manipulated, and more than empty air tied
and loosed. As if the knots were somehow creating an influence, as an
electric current along a twisted wire creates a complex magnetic field.
"No," he said, and then made himself chuckle, "unless you count in a
stray gargoyle or two."
* * * * *
Thunder ripped and crashed deafeningly. Lightning might have struck in
the neighborhood. Tansy did not move a muscle in response. "That was
a Lulu," he started to say. Then, as the thunder crash trailed off in
rumblings and there was a second's lull in the rain, he heard the sound
of something leaping heavily down from the front edge of the porch
toward that part of the wall where the large low window was set.
He got to his feet and walked toward the window, as if to look out at
the storm. As he passed Tansy's chair he saw that her rippling fingers
were creating a strange knot resembling a flower, with seven loops
for petals. She stared like a sleepwalker. Then he was at the window,
shielding her.
The next lightning flash showed him what he knew he must see. It
crouched, facing the window. The head was still blank and crude as an
unfinished skull.
In the ensuing surge of blackness, the sphere of alien thoughts
expanded with instant swiftness, until it occupied his entire mind.
He glanced behind him. Tansy's hands were still. The strange
seven-looped knot was poised between them.
Just as he was turning back, he saw the hands jerk apart and the loops
whip in like a seven-fold snare--and hold.
And in that same moment of turning he saw the street brighten like day
and a great ribbon of lightning split the tall elm opposite and fork
into several streams which streaked across the street toward the window
and the stony form upreared against it.
Then--blinding light, and a tingling electrical surge through his whole
body.
But in his mind's eye was indelibly traced the incandescent track of
the lightning, whose multiple streams, racing toward the upreared stony
form, had converged upon it as if drawn together by a seven-fold knot.
The sphere of alien thoughts expanded beyond his skull at a dizzy rate,
vanished.
His gasping, uncontrollable laughter rose above the dying
reverberations of the titan thunder blast. He dragged open the window,
pulled a bridge lamp up to it, jerked the cover from the lamp so its
light flooded outward.
"Look, Tansy!" he called, his words mixed with the manic laughter.
"Look, what those crazy students have done!" She _must_ be made to
think it was a joke. "Those frat men, I bet, I kidded in class. Look
what they dragged down from campus and stuck in our front yard. Of all
the crazy things--we'll have to call Buildings & Grounds to take it
away tomorrow."
Rain splattered in his face. There was a sulphurous, metallic odor.
Her hand touched his shoulder. She stared out blankly, her eyes still
asleep.
It stood there, propped against the wall, solid and inert as only the
inorganic can be. In some places the cement was darkened and fused.
"And of all mad coincidences," he gasped, "the lightning had to go and
strike it!"
On an impulse, he reached out his hand, and touched it. At the feel of
the rough, unyielding surface, still hot from the lightning flash, his
laughter died, and a grim lucidity flooded his mind.
"_Eppur si muove_," he murmured to himself, so low that even
Tansy, standing beside him, might not have heard. "_Eppur si
muove._"