With further expressions of thanks, Norman gathered up the sheets.
"Really no trouble at all," Carr assured him. "You gave me a very
exciting afternoon." He added wistfully. "I must confess that 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," Mr. 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 Carr, "that if I revolutionize the science
of sociology, you'll be the first to hear of it."
* * * * *
As soon as he was home, Norman 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
Carr's calculations, and carefully decoded the final equation.
"_C_--Notched strip of copper." He nodded. "_T_--Twirl
sunwise." He frowned. He would have expected them 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. And there was another even more difficult item. 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 the 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.
Now he was getting somewhere. With _Z_ he could place the charm in
the Gunnison house tomorrow night, and with _V_ activate it.
Conscious of a sudden reaction of weariness, he pushed back his chair.
For the first time since he had come into the house, he looked at her.
She sat in the rocking chair, face turned toward the drawn curtains.
When she had started rocking, he did not know. But the muscles of her
body automatically continued the rhythmical movement, once it had begun.
With the suddenness of a blow, longing for 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 dead-alive
imitation, this poor 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 he--"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 up there and take by force what was his!
The reaction was immediate. How could you take by force what was
without form or material being? How could you use open force against
someone who had your dearest possession as a hostage?
No, these repugnant occult formulas were his only hope, and he had
gotten his usual punishment for making the mistake of looking at her.
Deliberately he moved to the other side of the table, so his back was
to the rocking chair.
But he was restless, his muscles itching with fatigue poisons, and for
the moment, he could not get back to the work. All sorts of questions
were plaguing his mind.
* * * * *
Suddenly Norman spoke. "Why do you suppose everything has become
violent and deadly so abruptly?"
"What I believe they call the Balance was 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. This women's warfare was very much like
trench warfare or a battle between fortified lines--a state of siege.
Just as thick, 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 you were 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
realistic mind, there could only be 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 _whishing_ 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 there its force was broken. But his
shoulder, which took only the end of the blow, went numb.
Clawing at the chair arm 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.
She 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 her hand was the steel poker,
stealthily lifted from the stand by the fireplace, so as not to make
the slightest warning rattle.
There was life in her 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. And there was more than that.
With a low snarl she lifted the poker and struck, not at him, but
at the chandelier overhead. Yet, even as pitch darkness flooded the
tightly curtained room, he realized what that more-than-animal life was.
There was no one conclusive reason, but from a multitude of almost
indefinable impressions--too many to be realized separately--he knew
with chilling certainty that the bestial spirit animating Tansy's
body, the crude and unfinished soul conjured into her body--possessing
her body as it used to be said demons possessed the bodies of the
insane--was the same soul that had animated the stone creature that had
crept from the roof.
And then the darkness was complete.
There was a rush of soft footsteps. He ducked to one side.
Nevertheless, the _swish_ came perilously close. There was a sound
as if she 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 it 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 orientation 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
Tansy, 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.
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 human soul? What was it waiting for? Now even the
rapid breathing was no longer audible--it possessed cunning.
* * * * *
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. He 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 her 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, he 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 the large book he had
remembered was there. 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 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, 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 her warm body against his, the touch of it an instant check
to violence. He dared not harm it, and yet viciousness animated it 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 upon 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 her body away from him. Then he found her hair and forced back
the head so the teeth lost their grip. It dropped the knife and clawed
with both hands 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 impotent fury came from its throat.
Only too keenly aware of how close his muscles were to the trembling
weakness of fatigue, 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, and found a length of cord.