The world was topsy-turvy, and in the middle of it Minnie disappeared,
talking hysterically about reporting us to the authorities. I don't
mind admitting that I was worried.
And the experiments were not progressing. The trouble seemed to be
that the two varieties of demons--the aging and the youthing--were not
compatible; if one took up residence in a given section of an
organism, the other moved out. The more numerous destroyed the weaker;
there was no balance. We tested it again and again in the mice and
there was no doubt of it.
So far, only the youthing demons were free. But when Minnie left us,
it was only a matter of time. Our carriers--from Grand Rapids and from
the hotel--had spread to California and the East Coast, to the North
and to the South, throughout the country, perhaps by now through the
world. It would be slower with the aging demons--there was only one
of Minnie--but it would be equally sure.
Greco began drinking heavily.
"It's the end," he brooded. "We're licked."
"No, Greek! We can't give up!"
"We _have_ to give up. The demons are loose in the Earth, Virgie!
Those people in the headlines--they'll die of young age. So will
others--even plants and animals, and bacteria, as the demons adapt to
them. And then--why not? The air. The rocks, the ocean, even the Earth
itself. Remember, the entropy of the Universe is supposed to tend to a
maximum not only as a whole, but in each of its parts taken in
isolation. The Earth's evolution--reversed. Spottily, and maybe that's
worse, because some parts will evolve forward and others reverse, as
is happening in my own body. Heaven help the world, Old Virgie! And
not just the Earth, because what can stop them from spreading? To the
Moon, the other planets--out of the Solar System, for that matter; to
the other galaxies, even. Why not? And then--"
"_GRECO._"
An enormous tinny voice, more than human, filled the air. It came from
outside.
I jumped a foot. It sounded like the voice of a demon; then I got a
grip on myself and understood. It was a loudspeaker, and it came from
outside.
"_GRECO. WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE. COME ON OUT!_"
I had a stabbing sensation of familiarity. "The police!" I cried.
"Greco, it's the police!"
He looked at me wearily and shook his head.
"No. More likely the F.B.I."
* * * * *
Well, that was it. I got out--I didn't wait for permission from the
Greek.
I stopped at the door, and three searchlight beams hit me right in the
eye. There were cars all around the laboratory, but I couldn't see
them, not after those lights went on.
I froze, stiff; wanting to make sure they understood (a) that I wasn't
Greco and (b) that I didn't have a gun.
They understood, all right.
But they let me out.
They put me in one of the cars, with a slim gray-eyed young man in a
snap-brimmed hat sitting politely and alertly beside me, and they let
me watch; and what happened after that wasn't funny at all.
Greco didn't come out They shouted at him over the loudspeaker and
eventually he answered--his voice little and calm, coming out of
nowhere, and all he said was, "Go away. I won't come out. I warn you,
don't try to force your way in."
But he knew they wouldn't listen, of course.
They didn't.
They tried force.
And he met it in novel ways with force of his own. The door had locked
itself behind me; they got a fence post for a battering ram, and the
post burst into flame. They found an L-beam from an old bed frame and
tried that, and they were sorry they had done it; the thing melted in
the middle, splattering them with hot drops of steel.
The polite, alert young man beside me said, not so polite any more,
"What's he doing, you? What sort of fancy tricks has he got in there?"
"Demons," I said crazily, and _that_ was a mistake, but what else was
I to do? Try to explain Maxwell's equations to a Fed?
They were trying again--there were fifteen or twenty of them, at
least. They went for the windows, and the windows dissolved and rained
cherry-red wet glass on them. They tried again through the open frames
when the glass was gone, and the frames burst into fire around them,
the blue smoke bleached white in the yellow of the flame and the white
of the searchlights. They tried singly, by stealth; and they tried in
clusters of a dozen, yelling.
* * * * *
It was hopeless--hopeless for everybody, because they couldn't get in
and the Greek could never, never get out; for go away they wouldn't.
Not even when, with _poof_ and a yellow flare, the gas tank of one of
the cars exploded. All that happened was that the man in the
snap-brimmed hat and I leaped out, real quick; and then all the cars
went up. But the men didn't leave. And then the guns began to go off
without waiting for anyone to pull the trigger; and the barrels
softened and slumped and spattered to the ground. But the men still
had bare hands, and they stayed.
The Greek got wild--or lost control, it was hard to tell which. There
was a sudden catastrophic _whooshing_ roar and, _wham_, a tree took
flame for roots. A giant old oak, fifty feet tall, I guess it had been
there a couple of centuries, but Greco's demons changed all that; it
took flame and shot whistling into the air, spouting flame and spark
like a Roman candle. Maybe he thought it would scare them. Maybe it
did. But it also made them mad. And they ran, all at once, every one
of them but my personal friend, for the biggest, openest of the
windows--
And leaped back, cursing and yelling, beating out flames on their
clothes.
Jets of flame leaped out of every window and door. The old building
seemed to bulge outward and go _voom_. In half a second, it was a
single leaping tulip of fire.
The firemen got there then, but it was a little late. Oh, they got
Greco out--alive, even. But they didn't save a bit of the laboratory.
It was the third fire in Greco's career, and the most dangerous--for
where previously only a few of the youthing demons had escaped, now
there were vast quantities of both sorts.
It was the end of the world.