At last its attention is somewhere else. If I control my emotions, it isn't so quick to notice my thoughts. But it was hard for me to post the last letter. Norman, youmustdo what I tell you. The two days end Sunday midnight. Then the Bay. Youmustfollow all directions. Tie the four white cords into a granny, a reef, a cat's-paw, and a carrick bend. Tie the gut in a bowline. Then add—
At last its attention is somewhere else. If I control my emotions, it isn't so quick to notice my thoughts. But it was hard for me to post the last letter. Norman, youmustdo what I tell you. The two days end Sunday midnight. Then the Bay. Youmustfollow all directions. Tie the four white cords into a granny, a reef, a cat's-paw, and a carrick bend. Tie the gut in a bowline. Then add—
He looked at the post mark. The place was two hundred miles east. Not on the railroad lines, as far as he could recall. That should narrow down the possibilities considerably.
One word from the letter was repeating itself in his mind, like a musical note struck again and again until it becomes unendurable.
Bay. Bay. Bay. Bay.
The memory came of a hot afternoon fifteen years ago. It was just before they were married. They were sitting on the edge of a ramshackle little pier. He remembered the salt smell, and the faintly fishy, dry-wood smell of the splintery old planks.
"Funny," she had said, looking down into the green water, "but I always used to think that I'd end up down there. Not that I'm afraid of it. I've always swum way out. But even when I was a little girl I'd look at the Bay—maybe green, maybe blue, maybe gray, covered with whitecaps, glittering with moon-beams, or shrouded by fog—and I'd think, 'Tansy, the Bay is going to get you, but not for years and years.' Funny, isn't it?"
And he laughed and put his arms around her tight, and the green water had gone on lapping at the piles heavy with seaweed.
He had been visiting with her family, when her parents were still alive, at their home near Bayport on the southern shore of New York Bay.
The narrow corridor suited itself to its victim's most cherished fear. It ended for her in the Bay, tomorrow midnight.
She must be heading for the Bay.
He made several calls—first bus lines, then railroad and air. It was impossible to get a reservation on the air lines, but tonight's train would get him into Jersey City an hour ahead of the bus she must be traveling, according to the deductions he made from the place and time of the postmarks.
He had ample time to pack a few things, cash a check on his way to the station—
He spread her three notes on the table—the one in pen, the two in pencil. He reread the crazy incomplete formula. He shook his head.
He frowned. Would a scientist neglect the millionth-and-one possibility? Would the commander of a trapped army disdain a stratagem just because it was not in the books? This stuff looked like gibberish. Yesterday it might have meant something to him emotionally. Today it was just nonsense. But tomorrow night it might conceivably represent a fantastic last chance.
"Norman, youmustdo what I tell you." The scrawled words stared at him.
He went out in the kitchen and got a ball of white twine.
He rummaged in the closet for his squash racket and cut out the two center strings. That ought to do for gut.
The fireplace had not been cleaned since the stuff from Tansy's dressing table had been burned. He poked around the edges until he found a piece of lodestone.
He located the recording of Scriabin's "Ninth Sonata" and started the phonograph, putting in a new needle. He glanced at his wrist watch and paced the room restlessly. Gradually the music took hold of him. It was not pleasant music. There was something tantalizing and exasperating about it, with its droning melody and rocking figures in the base and shakes in the treble and elaborate ornamentation that writhed up and down the piano keyboard. It rasped the nerves.
He began to remember things he had heard about it. Hadn't Tansy once told him that Scriabin called his "Ninth Sonata" a "Black Mass" and had developed an antipathy to playing it? Scriabin, who had conceived a color organ and tried to translate mysticism into music, and had died of a peculiar lip infection. An innocent-faced Russian with a huge curling mustache. Critical phrases Tansy had repeated to him floated through his mind. "The poisonous 'Ninth Sonata'—the most perfidious piece of music ever conceived—" Ridiculous! How could music be anything but an abstract pattern of tones?
And yet—while listening to the thing—one could think differently.
Faster and faster it went. The lovely second theme became infected, was distorted into something raucous and discordant—a march of the damned—a dance of the damned—breaking off suddenly when it had reached an unendurable pitch. Then a repetition of the droning first theme, ending on a soft yet grating note low in the keyboard.
He removed the needle, sealed it in an envelope, and packed it along with the rest of his stuff.
On an afterthought, he tore out of the big dictionary a page carrying an illustrated list of knots.
The telephone stopped him as he was going out.
"Oh, Professor Saylor, would you mind calling Tansy to the phone?" Mrs. Carr's voice was very amicable.
He repeated what he had told Mrs. Sawtelle.
"I'm glad she's having a rest in the country," said Mrs. Carr. "You know, Professor Saylor, I don't think that Tansy's been looking so well lately. I've been a little worried. You're sure she's all right?"
"How do you mean?"
It was then the other voice broke in.
"What's the idea of checking up on me? Do you think I'm a child? I know what I'm doing!"
"Be quiet!" said Mrs. Carr. Then, in her sweet voice. "I think someone must have cut in on us. Good-by, Professor Saylor."
The line went dead.
He picked up his suitcase and walked out.
X.
The bus driver they pointed out to him had thick shoulders and sleepy, competent-looking eyes. He was standing by the wall, smoking a cigarette.
"Sure, she must have been in my bus," he told Norman after thinking a moment. "A pretty woman, on the small side, in a gray dress, with a queer-looking silver brooch like you mentioned. One suitcase. Light pigskin. I figured her out as going to see someone who was very sick, or had been in an accident, maybe."
Norman curbed his impatience. If it had not been for the hour-and-a-half delay outside Jersey City, he would have been here well ahead of the bus, instead of twenty minutes late.
He said, "I want, if possible, to get a line on where she went after she left your bus. The man at the desk can't help me."
The driver looked at Norman. But he did not say, "Whatcha wanta know for?"—for which Norman was grateful. He seemed to decide that Norman was O. K.
He said, "I can't be sure, mister, but there was a local bus going down the shore. I think she got on that."
"Would it stop at Bayport?"
The driver nodded.
"How long since it left?"
"About twenty minutes."
"Could I get to Bayport ahead of it? If I took a cab?"
"Just about. If you wanted to pay the bill there and back—and maybe a little extra for the rubber he'd burn—I think Alec could take you." He waved in casual recognition at a man sitting in a cab just beyond the station. "Mind you, mister, I can't say for certain she got on the shore bus."
"That's all right. Thanks a lot."
In the glow of the street lamp Alec's foxy eyes were more openly curious than the bus driver's, but he did not make any comments.
"I can do it," he said cheerfully, "but we haven't any time to waste. Jump in."
The shore highway led through lonely stretches of marsh and wasteland. Occasionally Norman caught the sibilant rustle of the leagues of tall stiff seagrass, and a brackish tang from the dark inlets crossed by long low bridges. The odor of the Bay.
Indistinctly he made out factories and scattered houses.
"There's a dimout some places," Alec volunteered once. He was paying close attention to the road.
They passed three or four busses without Alec making any comment.
After a long while Alec said, "That should be her."
A constellation of red and green taillights was vanishing over the rise ahead.
"About three miles to Bayport," he continued. "What should I do?"
"Just get to Bayport a little ahead of her, and stop at the bus station."
"O.K."
They overtook the bus and swung around it. The windows were too high for Norman to see any of the occupants. Besides, the interior lights were out.
As they drew ahead, Alec nodded confirmingly. "That's her all right."
The bus station at Bayport was also the railway depot. Vaguely Norman remembered the loosely planked platform and packed cinders on the track side. The station building was dark, but there were several cars and a lone local cab drawn up, and there were some men standing around talking in low voices, and a couple of soldiers going back to camp.
He had time to scent the salt air, with its faint and not unpleasant trace of fishiness. Then the bus pulled in.
Several passengers stepped down, looking around to spot the people waiting for them.
Tansy was the third. She was staring straight ahead. She was carrying the pigskin suitcase.
"Tansy!" he said.
She did not look at him. He noted a black stain on her right hand, and remembered the spilled ink on his study table. Odd that it should still be there.
"Tansy!" he said. "Tansy!"
She walked straight past him, so close that her sleeve brushed his.
"Tansy, what's the matter with you?"
He had turned and hurried after her. She was heading for the local cab. He was conscious of a silence, and curious unfriendly glances. It made him angry.
She did not slacken her pace. He grabbed her elbow and pulled her around. He heard a remonstratory murmur behind him, and realized that a couple of the men were closing in.
"Tansy, stop acting this way! Tansy!"
Her face looked frozen. She stared past him without a hint of recognition in her eyes.
That infuriated him. He did not pause to think. Accumulated tensions prodded him into an explosion. He grabbed both elbows and shook her. She still looked past him, completely aloof—a perfect picture of an aristocratic woman enduring brutality. If she had yelled and fought him, the men might not have interfered.
He was jerked back.
"Lay off her!"
"Who do you think you are, anyway?"
She stood there, with maddening composure. He noticed a scrap of paper flutter out of her hand. Then her eyes met his and for one terrible moment—but one moment only—he saw rise up behind her a shaggy black form twice her height, with hulking shoulders, out-stretched massive hands, and dully glowing eyes.
Only a moment, though. Then she turned away. But he fancied that a great shadow followed hers. Then they swung him around and he could no longer see her.
In a queer sort of daze—for the kind of fear he had just experienced mixes badly with any other emotion—he listened to them jabber at him.
"I ought to take a crack at you," he finally heard someone say.
"All right," he replied in a flat voice. "They're holding my hands."
He heard Alec's voice. "Say, what's going on here?" Alec sounded cautious, but not unfriendly, as if he were thinking, "The guy's my fare, but I don't know anything about him."
One of the soldiers spoke. "Where's the lady? She doesn't seem to be making any complaint."
"Yeah, where is she?"
"She got in Jake's cab and drove off," someone volunteered.
"Maybe he had a good reason for what he did," said the soldier.
Norman felt the attitude of the crowd change.
One of the men holding him retorted, "Nobody's got a right to treat a lady that way." But the other one slackened his grip and asked Norman, "How about it? Did you have a reason for doing that?"
"I did. But it's my business."
He heard a woman's voice, high-pitched. "A lot of fuss over nothing!"
Grumbling, the men let him go.
"But mind you," said the more belligerent one, "if she'd stuck around and complained, I'd 've sure taken a crack at you."
"All right," said Norman, "in that case you would have." His eyes were searching for a scrap of paper.
"Can anyone tell me the address she gave the cab driver?" he asked at random.
One or two shook their heads. The others ignored the question. Their feelings toward him had not changed enough to make them co-operative. And very likely, in the excitement, no one had heard.
Silently the little crowd drifted apart. People waited until they got out of earshot before beginning to argue about what had happened. Most of the cars drove off. The two soldiers wandered over to the benches in front of the depot, so they could sit down while they waited for their bus or train. He was alone except for Alec.
He located the scrap of paper in one of the slots between the worn planks. It had almost slipped through.
He took it over to the cab and studied it.
He heard Alec say, "Well, where do we go now?" Alec sounded dubious.
He glanced at his watch. Ten thirty-five. Not quite an hour and a half until midnight. There were a lot of things he could do, but he could not do more than a couple of them in that time. His thoughts moved sluggishly, almost painfully.
He looked around at the dim buildings. The seaward halves of some of the street lamps were painted black. Up a side street there were signs of life. He looked again at the scrap of paper.
Then he made a decision.
"I think there's a hotel on the main street," he told Alec. "You can drive me there."
"Eagle Hotel" read the black-edged gold letters on the plate-glass window, behind which the narrow lobby with its half-dozen empty chairs was nakedly revealed.
He told Alec to wait, and took a room for the night. The clerk was an old man in a shiny black coat. Norman saw from the register that no one else had checked in recently. He carried his bag up to the room and immediately returned to the lobby.
"I haven't been here for ten years," he told the clerk. "I believe there is a cemetery about five blocks down the street, away from the Bay?"
The old man's sleepy eyes blinked wide open.
"Bayport Cemetery? Just three blocks, and then a block and a half to the left. But—" He made a vague questioning noise in his throat.
"Thank you," said Norman.
After a moment's thought, he paid off Alec, who took the money and with obvious relief kicked his cab into life. Norman walked down the main street, away from the Bay.
After the first block there were no more stores. In this direction, Bayport petered out quickly. Most of the houses were dark. And after he turned left there were no more street lights.
The gates of the cemetery were locked. He felt his way along the wall, behind the masking shrubbery, trying to make as little noise as possible, until he found a scrubby tree whose lowest branch could bear his weight. He got his hands on the top of the wall, scrambled up, and cautiously let himself down on the other side.
Behind the wall it was very dark. There was a rustling sound, as if he had disturbed some small animal. More by feeling than sight, he located a headstone. It was a thin one, worn, mossy toward the base, and tilted at an angle. Probably from the middle of the last century. He dug into the earth with his hand, and filled an envelope he took from his pocket.
He got back over the wall, making what seemed a great deal of noise in the shrubbery. But the street was empty as ever.
On his way back to the hotel he looked up at the sky, located the Pole Star, and calculated the orientation of his room.
As he crossed the lobby, he felt the curious eyes of the old clerk boring into him.
His room was in darkness. Chill salt air was pouring through the open window. He locked the door, shut the window, pulled down the blind, and switched on the light—a glaring overhead which revealed the room in all its dingy severity. A cradle phone struck the sole modern note.
He took the envelope out of his pocket and weighed it in his hand. His lips curled in a peculiarly bitter smile. Then he reread the scrap of paper that had fluttered from Tansy's hand.
Add a small quantity of graveyard dirt, and wrap all in a piece of flannel, wrapping widdershins. Tell it to stop me. Tell it to bring me to you.
Add a small quantity of graveyard dirt, and wrap all in a piece of flannel, wrapping widdershins. Tell it to stop me. Tell it to bring me to you.
Graveyard dirt. That was what he had found in Tansy's dressing table. It had been the beginning of all this. Now he was fetching it himself.
He looked at his watch. Eleven twenty.
He cleared the small table and set it in the center of the room, jabbing in his penknife to mark the edge facing east. "Widdershins" meant "against the sun"—from west to east.
He placed the necessary ingredients on the table, cutting a short strip of flannel from the hem of his bathrobe, and fitted together the four sections of Tansy's note. The distasteful, bitter smile did not leave his lips.
Taken together, the significant portions of the notes read:
Take four lengths of four-inch white cord and a length of gut, a bit of platinum or iridium, a piece of lodestone, a phonograph needle that has only played Scriabin's "Ninth Sonata." Tie the four white cords into a granny, a reef, a cat's-paw, and a carrick bend. Tie the gut in a bowline. Add a small quantity of graveyard dirt, and wrap all in a piece of flannel, wrapping widdershins. Tell it to stop me. Tell it to bring me to you.
Take four lengths of four-inch white cord and a length of gut, a bit of platinum or iridium, a piece of lodestone, a phonograph needle that has only played Scriabin's "Ninth Sonata." Tie the four white cords into a granny, a reef, a cat's-paw, and a carrick bend. Tie the gut in a bowline. Add a small quantity of graveyard dirt, and wrap all in a piece of flannel, wrapping widdershins. Tell it to stop me. Tell it to bring me to you.
In general outline, it was similar to a hundred recipes for Negro tricken-bags he had seen or heard about. The phonograph needle, the knots, and one or two other items, were obvious "white" additions.
And it was all on the same level as the mental operations of a child or neurotic adult who religiously steps on, or avoids sidewalk cracks.
A clock outside bonged the half-hour.
Norman sat there looking at the stuff. It was hard for him to begin. It would have been different, he told himself, if he were doing it for a joke or a thrill, or if he were one of those people who dope up their minds with morbid supernaturalism—who like to play around with magic because it's medieval and aesthetic. But to tackle it in dead seriousness, to open your mind deliberately to superstition—that was to join hands with the forces pushing the world back into the dark ages, to cancel the term "science" out of the equation.
But, behind Tansy, he had seen that thing. Of course, it had been an hallucination. But when hallucinations start behaving like realities, even a scientist has to face the possibility that he may have to treat them like realities. And when hallucinations begin to threaten you and yours in a direct physical way—
He reached out for the first length of cord and tied the ends together in a granny.
When he came to the cat's-paw, he had to consult the page he had torn from the dictionary. After a couple of false starts he managed it.
But on the carrick bend he was all thumbs. It was a simple knot, but no matter how he went about it, he could not get it to look like the illustration. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Very close in the room, he told himself. "I'm still overheated from rushing about." The skin on his fingertips felt an inch thick. The ends of the cord kept eluding them. He remembered how Tansy's fingers had rippled through the knots.
Eleven forty-one. The phonograph needle started to roll off the table. He dropped the cord and laid the phonograph needle against his fountain pen, so it would not roll. Then he started again on the knot.
For a moment he thought he must have picked up the gut, the cord seemed so stiff and unresponsive. Incredible what nervousness can do to you, he told himself. His mouth was dry. He swallowed with difficulty.
Finally, by keeping his eyes on the illustration and imitating it step for step, he managed to tie a carrick bend. All the while he felt as if there were more between his fingers than a cord, as if he were manipulating against a great inertia. Just as he finished, he felt a slight prickly chill, like the onset of fever, and the light overhead seemed to dim a trifle. Eye-strain.
The phonograph needle was rolling in the opposite direction, spinning faster and faster. He slapped his hand down on it, missed it, caught it at the edge of the table.
Just like a Ouija board, he told himself. You try to keep your fingers, poised on the planchette, perfectly motionless. As a result muscular tensions accumulate. They reach the breaking point. Seemingly without any volition on your part, the planchette begins to roll and skid about on its three little legs, traveling from letter to letter. Same thing here. Nervous and muscular tensions made it difficult for him to tie knots. Obeying a universal tendency, he projected the difficulty into the cord. And, by hand and knee pressure, he had been doing some unconscious table tipping.
Between his fingers, the phonograph needle seemed to vibrate, as if it were being pounded by infinitesimal hammers. There was a very faint sensation of electric shock. Unbidden, the torturesome, clangorous chords of the "Ninth Sonata" began to sound in his mind. Rot! One well-known symptom of extreme nervousness is a tingling in the fingers—often painfully intense. But his throat was dry and his snort of bitter contempt sounded choked.
He pinned the needle in the flannel for greater safety.
Eleven forty-seven. Reaching for the gut, his fingers felt as shaky and weak as if he just climbed a hundred-foot rope hand over hand. The stuff looked normal, but it was slimy to the touch. And for some moments he had been conscious of an acrid, almost metallic odor replacing the salt smell of the Bay. Tactual and olfactory hallucinations joining in with the visual and auditory, he told himself. He could still hear the "Ninth Sonata."
He knew a bowline backwards, and it should have been easier because the gut was not as stiff as it ought to be, but he felt there were other forces manipulating it or other mentalities trying to give orders to his fingers, so that the gut was trying to tie itself into a slip-knot, a reef, a half hitch—anything but a bowline. His fingers ached, his eyes were heavy with an abnormal fatigue. He was working against a mounting inertia—a dangerous, crushing inertia. He remembered Tansy telling him that first day—"There's a law of reaction in all conjuring—like the kick of a gun—" Eleven fifty-two.
With a great effort, he canalized his mental energy, focused his attention only on the knot. His numb fingers began to move in an odd rhythm, a rhythm of the "Ninth Sonata,"piu vivo. The bowline was tied.
The overhead light dimmed markedly, throwing the whole room into a sooty gloom. Hysterical blindness, he told himself in a despairing effort to maintain the appearances of sanity and scientific law. It was very cold now, so cold that he fancied he could see his breath. And silent, terribly silent. Against that silence he could feel and hear the rapid drumming of his heart, accelerating unendurably to the thundering, swirling rhythm of the music.
Then, in one instant of diabolic paralyzing insight, he knew thatthiswas sorcery. No mere puttering about with ridiculous medieval implements, no effortless sleight of hand, but a straining, back-breaking struggle to keep control offorces summoned, of which the objects he manipulated were only the symbols. Outside the walls of the room, outside the walls of his skull, outside the impalpable energy-walls of his mind, he felt those forces gathering, swelling up, dreadfully expectant, waiting for him to make a false move so that they could crush him.
He could not believe it. He had to believe it.
The only question was—would he be able to stay in control?
Eleven fifty-seven. He gathered the objects together on the flannel. The needle jumped to the lodestone and clung. It shouldn't; it wasn't that magnetic. He took a pinch of graveyard dirt. Between finger and thumb, each separate particle seemed to crawl, like a tiny maggot. He sensed that something was missing. He could not remember what it was. He fumbled for the formula. A current of air was blowing the scraps of paper off the table. He sensed an eager, inward surge of the forces outside, as if they knew he was failing. He clutched at the papers, managed to pin them down. Bending close, he made out the words "platinum or iridium." He jabbed his pen against the table, broke off the whole nib, and added it to the other objects.
He stood at the side of the table away from the knife that marked the east, trying to steady his shaking hands against the edge. His teeth were chattering. The room was utterly dark now except for the impossible bluish light that beat through the window shade.
Abruptly the strip of flannel started to curl like a strip of heated gelatine, to roll itself up from east to west,withthe sun.
He jerked forward, got his hand inside the flannel before it closed, drew it apart—in his numb hands it seemed like metal—and rolled it against the sun, widdershins.
The silence was intensified. Even the sound of his beating heart was cut off. He knew that something was listening with a terrible intensity for his command, and that something was hoping with an even more terrible avidity that he would not be able to utter that command.
Yet somewhere a clock was booming—or was it not a clock, but the secret sound of time? Nine—ten—eleven—twelve.
His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He kept on choking soundlessly. He could feel the walls giving way.
Then, in a dry, croaking voice, he managed: "Stop Tansy. Bring her here."
The walls were shaken as if they were at the center of a whirlpool. Darkness became absolute. There was an eruption of force from the table. He felt himself flung across the room.
Then the forces were gone. In all things, tension gave way to limpness. Sound and light returned. He was sprawled across the bed. On the table was a little flannel packet, no longer of any consequence.
He felt as if he had been doped, or were waking after a debauch. There was no inclination to do anything. Emotion was absent.
Outwardly everything was the same. Even his mind, with automatic rationality, could still wearily take up the thankless task of explaining his experiences on a scientific basis—weaving an elaborate web in which psychosis, hallucination, and improbable coincidences were the strands.
But inwardly something had changed, and would never change back.
Considerable time passed.
He heard steps mounting the stairs, then in the hall. They made asquish-squishsound, as if the shoes were soaking wet.
They stopped outside his door. There was a soft rap.
He crossed the room, turned the key in the lock—
A strand of seaweed was caught in the silver brooch. The gray suit was dark now and heavy with water, except for one spot which had started to dry and was faintly dusted with a white powder—salt. The odor of the Bay was intimate and close. There was another strand of seaweed clinging to one ankle against the wrinkled stocking.
And around the stained shoes, a little pool of water was forming.
His eyes traced the wet footprints down the hall. At the head of the stairs the old clerk was standing, one foot still on the last step. He was carrying a small pigskin suitcase.
"What's all this about?" he quavered, when he saw that Norman was looking at him. "You didn't tell me you were expecting your wife. She looks like she'd thrown herself in the Bay. We don't want anything queer happening in this hotel—anything wrong."
"It's quite all right," said Norman, prolonging the moment before he would have to look at her face. "I'm sorry I forgot to tell you. May I have the bag?"
"—only last year we had a suicide"—the old clerk did not seem to realize he was speaking his thoughts aloud—"bad for the hotel—" His voice trailed off. He looked at Norman, gathered himself together, and came hesitatingly down the hall. When he was a few steps away, he stopped, reached out and put down the suitcase, turned, and walked rapidly away.
Unwillingly, Norman raised his eyes until they were on a level with hers.
The face was pale, very pale, and without expression. The lips were tinged with blue. Wet hair was plastered against the cheeks. A thick lock crossed one eye socket, like a curtain half drawn, and curled down toward the throat, where it merged with a strand of seaweed. The dull eyes stared at him, without sign of recognition. And no hand moved up to brush the lock of hair away.
From the hem of the skirt, water was dripping.
The lips parted. The voice had the monotonous murmur of water.
"You were too late," the lips said. "You were a minute too late."
XI.
For a third time their exchange of conversation had come back to the same question. He had the maddening sensation of following a robot that was walking in a huge endless circle and always treading on precisely the same blades of grass as it retraced its path.
With the hopeless conviction that he would not get any further this time, he asked the question again: "But how can you lack consciousness, and at the same timeknowthat you lack consciousness? If your mind is blank, you cannot at the same time be aware that your mind is blank."
The hands of his watch were creeping toward three in the morning. The chill of night's lowest ebb pervaded the dingy hotel room. Tansy sat stiffly, wearing his bathrobe and big fleece-lined slippers, with a blanket over her knees and a bath towel wrapped around her head. They should have made her look child-like and perhaps even artlessly attractive. They did not. If you were to unwind the towel you would find the top of the skull sawed off and the brains removed, an empty bowl—that was the illusion Norman experienced every time he made the mistake of looking into her eyes.
The pale lips opened. "I know nothing. I only speak. They have taken away my soul. But my voice is a function of my body."
You could not even say that the voice was patiently explanatory. It was too utterly empty and colorless even for that. The words, clearly enunciated and evenly spaced, all sounded alike. They came with the regular beat of a machine.
The last thing he wanted to do was hammer questions at that stiff pitiful figure, but at all costs he must awaken some spark of feeling in the masklike face; he must find some intelligible starting point before his own mind could begin to work effectually.
"But, Tansy, if you can talk about the present situation, you must be aware of it. You're here in this room with me!"
The toweled head shook once, like that of a mechanical doll.
"Nothing is here with you but a body. 'I' is not here."
His mind automatically corrected "is" to "am" before he realized that there had been no grammatical error and shuddered at the implications of the trifling change in a tiny verb.
"You mean," he asked, "that you can see or hear nothing? That there is just a blackness?"
Again that simple mechanical headshake, which carried more absolute conviction than the most heated protestations.
"My body sees and hears perfectly. It has suffered no injury. It can function in all particulars. But there is nothing inside. There is not even a blackness."
His tired, fumbling mind jumped to the subject of behavioristic psychology and its fundamental assertion that human reactions can be explained completely and satisfactorily without once referring to consciousness—that it need not even be assumed that consciousness exists. Here was the perfect proof. And yet not so perfect, for the behavior of this body lacked every one of those little mannerisms whose sum is personality. The way Tansy used to squint and twist one little finger around another when thinking through a difficult question. The familiar quirk at the corners of her mouth when she felt flattered or slyly amused. All gone. Even the quick triple headshake he knew so well, with the slight bunny-rabbit wrinkling of the little nose, had become that robot's "No."
The sensory organs still responded to stimuli. They sent nerve impulses to the hindbrain or midbrain—or cortex—where they traveled about and gave rise to efferent impulses which activated glands and muscles, including the motor organs of speech. But that was all. None of those intangible flurries we call consciousness hovered around the webwork of nervous activity in the cortex. What had impartedstyle—Tansy's style, like no one else's—to every movement and utterance of the body, was gone. There was left only a physiological organism, without sign or indication of personality. Not even a mad or an idiot soul—yes! why not use that old term now that it had an obvious specific meaning?—peered from the gray-green eyes which winked at intervals with machinelike regularity, but only to lubricate the cornea, nothing more.
He felt a grim sort of relief go through him, now that he had been able to picture it in definite terms. But the picture itself—his mind veered to the memory of a newspaper story about an old man who had kept locked in his bedroom for years the body of a young woman whom he loved and who had died of an incurable disease. He had maintained the body in a miraculous state of preservation by wax and other means they said, had talked to it every night and morning, had been convinced that he would some day reanimate it completely—until they found out and took him away, and buried it. Had that body—
"Tansy," he was asking, "when your soul went, why didn't you die?"
"Usually the soul lingers to the end, unable to escape, and vanishes or dies when the body dies," the voice answered, its words as evenly spaced as if timed to a metronome. "But He Who Walks Behind was tearing at mine. There was the weight of green water against my face. I knew it was midnight. I knew that you had failed. In that moment of despair, He Who Walks Behind was able to draw forth my soul. In the same moment Your Agent's arms were about me, lifting me toward the air. My soul was close enough to know what had happened, yet not close enough to return. Its doubled anguish was the last memory it imprinted on my brain. Your Agent and He Who Walks Behind concluded that each had obtained the thing he had been sent for, and so there was no struggle between them."
The picture created in his mind was so shockingly vivid that it seemed incredible that it could have been produced by the words of a mere physiological machine. And yet only a physiological machine could have told the story with such total restraint.
"Is there nothing thattouchesyou?" he asked abruptly in a loud voice, gripped by an intolerable spasm of anguish at the emptiness of her eyes. "Haven't you a single emotion left?"
"Yes. One." This time it was not a robot's headshake but a robot's nod. For the first time there was a stir of feeling, a hint of motivation. The tip of a pallid tongue licked hungrily around the pale lips. "I want my soul."
He caught his breath. Now that he had succeeded in awakening a feeling in her, he hated it. There was something so animal about it, so like some light-sensitive marine worm blindly yet greedily wriggling toward the sunlight.
"I want my soul," the voice repeated mechanically, tearing at his emotions more than any plaintive or whining accents could have done. "At the last moment, although it could not return, my soul implanted that one emotion in me. It knew what awaited it. It knew there are things that can be done to a soul. It was very much afraid."
He ground the words out between his teeth. "Where do you think your soul is?"
"She has it. The woman with the little black eyes."
"Evelyn Sawtelle?" He was remembering a phone call.
"Yes. But it is not wise to speak of her by name."
His hand shot out for the phone. At that moment he had to do something definite, or lose control of himself completely. For too long he had sat impotently by, watching the ghostly and harrowing drama unfold. Now he had to strike out.
After a time he roused the night clerk and got the local operator.
"Yes, sir," came the singsong voice. "Hempnell 1284. You wish to make a person-to-person call to Evelyn Sawtelle—E-V-E-L-Y-N S-A-W-T-E-L-L-E, sir?... Will you please hang up and wait? It will take considerable time to make a connection."
"I want my soul. I want to go to that woman. I want to go to Hempnell." Now that he had touched off the blind hunger in her, it persisted. He was reminded of a phonograph needle caught in the same groove, or a mechanical toy turned on to a new track by a little push.
"We'll go there all right." It was still hard for him to control his breathing. "We'll get it back."
"But I must start for Hempnell soon. My clothes were ruined by the water. I must have the maid clean and press them."
With a slow, even movement she got to her feet and started toward the phone.
"But, Tansy," he objected involuntarily. "It's three in the morning. You can't get a maid now."
"But my clothes must be cleaned and pressed. I must start for Hempnell soon."
The words might have been those of an obstinate woman, sulky and selfish. But they had less tone that a sleepwalker's.
She kept on toward the phone. Although he did not anticipate that he would do it, he shrank out of her way, pressing close against the side of the bed.
"But even if there is a maid," he said, "she won't come at this hour."
The pallid face turned toward him incuriously. "The maid will be a woman." It was a little while before he got the implication of the words. "She will come when she hears me."
Then she was talking to the night clerk. "Is there a maid in the hotel?... Send her to my room.... Then ring her.... I cannot wait until morning.... I need her at once.... I cannot tell you the reason.... Thank you."
Norman was thinking: How can a physiological machine conceive and carry out even such a simple plan? Yet how could a conscious human being do it with such utter listlessness? Same paradox. He wondered if he ought to stop her. But an idea was growing in his mind.
There was a long wait, while he heard faintly the repeated ringing at the other end of the line. He could imagine the sleepy, surly voice that finally answered.
"Is this the maid?... Come at once to Room 37." He could almost catch the indignant answer. Then—"Can't you hear my voice? Don't you realize who is speaking?... Yes.... Come at once." And she replaced the phone in its cradle.
"Tansy—" he began. Then his eyes met hers, and once again he found himself asking a halting prefatory question, although he had not intended to. "You are able to hear and answer my questions?"
"I can answer questions. I have been answering questions for three hours." The lack of expression only made the irony more complete.
But—logic prompted wearily—if she can remember what has been happening these last three hours, then surely—And yet, what is memory but a track worn in the nervous system? In order to explain memory you don't need to bring in consciousness. Quit banging your head against that stone wall, you fool!—came another inward prompting. You've looked in her eyes, haven't you? Well, then, get on with it!
"Tansy, is that woman coming here because she's ... well, the same as you were?"
"Yes. But since you are present she will not speak of it."
"But if I weren't here—or if I hid myself?"
"She might respond to questioning." The hungry subanimal expression came back, and the tip of the tongue appeared between the lips. "If I make her speak ... if I make you believe—will we go back to Hempnell very quickly? Will you help me?"
"Yes." Of course he would. He wouldn't do anything else. But what good to say all that to a blank physiological machine beyond the reach of comfort? Besides, the maid should soon be here, and an unwholesome curiosity was eating at him.
"I'll leave the closet door just a little ajar," he said. "She probably won't notice. See?"
There were footsteps in the hall. The robot nod was his only answer.
"You wanted me, mum?" Contrary to his expectations, the voice was young, but very low. It sounded as if she had swallowed as she spoke.
"Yes. I want you to clean and press some things of mine. They're hanging on the edge of the bathtub. Go and get them."
The maid came into his line of vision, then. She would be very heavy in a few years, he thought, but she was handsome now, though puffed with sleep. She had hastily pulled on a dull-black dress, but her feet were in slippers and her hair was snarly.
"Be careful with the dress. It's wool," came Tansy's voice, sounding just as toneless as when it had been directed at him. "And I want them promptly at nine o'clock."
Norman half expected to hear an objection to this unreasonable request, but there was none. The girl walked rapidly out of the bathroom, the damp clothes hurriedly slung over one arm, as if her one object were to get away before she was spoken to again.
"Wait a moment, girl. I want to ask you a question." The voice was somewhat louder this time. That was the only change whatsoever, but it had a startling effect of command.
The girl hesitated, then swung around unwillingly, and Norman got a good look at her face. He could not see Tansy—the closet door just cut her off—but he could see the fear come to the surface of the girl's face as she turned, see the sleep-creased cheek pale.
"Yes, mum?" she managed.
There was a considerable pause. He could tell from the way the girl shrank, hugging the damp clothes tight to her body, that Tansy had lifted her eyes and was looking at her.
Finally: "You know The Easy Way to Do Things? The Ways to Get and Guard?"
Norman could have sworn that the girl gave a guilty start at that second phrase. But she only shook her head quickly, and mumbled, "No, mum. I ... I don't know what you're talking about."
"You mean you have never learned How to Make Wishes Work? You don't conjure, or spell, or hex? You don't know the Art?"
This time the "No" was almost inaudible. The girl was trying to look away, but failing.
"I think you are lying."
You could put any construction on those toneless words. The girl twisted, hands tightly clutching her overlapping arms. He wanted to go out and stop it, but curiosity held him rigid.
The girl's resistance broke. "Please, mum. We're not supposed to tell."
"You may tell me. What Procedures do you use?"
The girl's perplexity at the new word looked real.
"I don't know anything about that, mum. I don't do much. Just spells. Like now my boy friend's gone in the army, I do things to keep him from getting shot or hurt, and I've spelled him so that he'll keep away from other women. Honest, I don't do much, mum. And it don't always work. And lots of things I can't get that way." Her words had begun to run away with her.
"Very well. Where did you learn to do this?"
"Some I learned from ma when I was a kid. And some from Mrs. Neidel—she gets spells against bullets from her grandmother who had a family in some European war before the last one. But most women won't tell you anything. And some spells I kind of figure out myself, and try different ways until they work. You won't tell on me, mum?"
"No. Look at me now. What has happened to me?"
"Honest, mum, I don't know. Please, mum, don't make me say it." The girl's terror and reluctance were so obviously genuine that Norman felt a surge of anger at Tansy. Then he remembered that the thing beyond the door was incapable of either cruelty or kindness.
"I want you to tell me."
"I don't know how to say it, mum. But you're ... you'redead." Suddenly she threw herself at Tansy's feet. "Oh, please, please don't take mine! Please!"
"I would not take your soul. You would get much the best of that bargain. You may go away now."
"Oh, thank you, thank you." She hastily gathered up the scattered clothes. "I'll have them all ready for you at nine o'clock. Really I will." And she hurried out.
Only when he moved, did Norman realize that his muscles were stiff and aching from those few taut minutes of peering. The robed and toweled figure was sitting in exactly the same position as when he had last seen it, hands loosely folded, eyes still directed toward where the girl had been standing.
"If you knew all this," he asked simply, "why were you willing to stop last week when I asked you?"
"There are two sides to every woman." It might have been a mummy dispensing elder wisdom. "One is rational, like a man. The other knows. Men are artificially isolated creatures, like islands in a sea of magic, protected by their rationality and by the devices of their women. Their isolation gives them greater forcefulness in thought and action, but the women know. Women might be able to rule the world openly, but they do not want the work or the responsibility. And men might learn to excel them in the Art. Even now there may be male sorcerers, but very few.
"Last week I suspected much that I did not tell you. But the rational side is strong in me, and I wanted to be close to you in all ways. Like many women, I had not been awakened. I was not certain. And when I destroyed my charms and guards, I became temporarily blind to sorcery. Like a person used to large doses of a drug, I was uninfluenced by small doses. Rationality was dominant. I enjoyed a few days of false security. Then rationality itself proved to me that you were the victim of sorcery. And during my journey here I learned much, partly from re-examination of my own memories, partly from what He Who Walks Behind let slip." She paused and added, with the blank innocent cunning of a child, "Shall we go back to Hempnell now?"
The phone rang. It was the night clerk, almost incoherent with some sort of agitation, babbling threateningly about police and eviction. To pacify him, Norman had to promise to come down at once.
The old man was waiting at the foot of the stairs.
"Look here, mister," he began, shaking a finger, "I want to know what's going on. Just now my Sissy came down from your room white as a sheet. She wouldn't tell me anything, but she was trembling like all get-out. Sissy's my granddaughter. I got her this job, and I'm responsible for her."
He seemed genuinely concerned.
"I know what hotels are. I've worked in 'em all my life. And I know the kind of people that come to them—sometimes men and women working together—and I know the kind of things they try to do to young girls.
"Now I'm not saying anything against you, mister. But it was mighty queer the way your wife came here. I thought when she asked me to call Sissy that she was sick or something. But if she's sick, why haven't you called a doctor? And what are you doing still up at almost four? Mrs. Thompson in the next room called to say there was talking in your room—not loud, but it scared her. I got a right to know what's going on."
Norman put on his best classroom manner and blandly dissected the old man's apprehensions until they began to look very unsubstantial. Dignity told. With a last show of grumbling, the old man let himself be convinced. As Norman started upstairs, he was shuffling back to the switchboard.
On the second flight, Norman heard a phone ringing. As he was walking down the hall, it stopped.
He opened the door. Tansy was standing by the bed, speaking into the phone. Its dull blackness, curving from mouth to ear emphasized the pallor of lips and cheek and the whiteness of the toweling.
"This is Tansy Saylor," she was saying tonelessly. "I want my soul." A pause. "Can't you hear me, Evelyn? This is Tansy Saylor. I want my soul."
He had completely forgotten the call he had put in. It had been done in a moment of crazy anger. He hadn't even any clear idea of what he had been going to say.
He stepped forward. A low wailing sound was coming from the phone. Tansy was talking against it.
"This is Tansy Saylor. I want my soul."
He was almost there. The wailing sound had swiftly risen to a squeal, but mixed with it was an intermittent windy whirring.
He reached out to take the phone. But at that instant the phone twisted like a stumpy black worm, whipped tight to the skin, and dug into chin and neck just below the ear, like a double-ended black paw. The squeal became a muffled sucking.
If you tore that away, you would tear the face with it. He knew. He dropped to his knees and ripped the cord from the wall. Violet sparks spat from the torn wire. The loose end writhed like a wounded snake, whipped around his forearm, tightened spasmodically, then relaxed.
He stood up. The phone had fallen to the floor. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it now.
Tansy was still standing in the same place. Not an atom of fear showed in her expression. With the unconcernedness of a machine, she had lifted a hand and was slowly massaging cheek and neck. From the corner of the squeezed lips a few drops of blood were trickling.
The rack, he was thinking, would be too good for that woman. Or the scourge, or the wheel. So foully to attack a mere empty creature was an ultimate, unspeakable viciousness, like crushing a kitten under your heel. Perhaps the Boot, or the Funnel—
Swiftly the phantasmagoria of the Inquisition faded from his mind, as his first surge of anger spent itself and settled down to a steady hate.
"What did she say to you?" he asked evenly.
"She kept saying, 'Who is this? Who is this?' That was all. Then she stopped and the noise began."
"How did she sound?"
"She sounded very frightened."
"Good!" He smacked his fist against his palm. "Magic works," he said grimly. "We'll make it work better. She'll be more frightened after we begin."
"Perhaps you have already begun."
He did not understand at the time the significance of that toneless reply.
XII.
The rhythmic rattle and surge of the train had a soothing monotony. You could hear the engine puffing lustily. The wide, heat-baked, green fields swinging past the window of the compartment, drowsed in the noonday sun. The farms and cattle and horses dotting them here and there, looked equally somnolent. He would have liked to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to. And as for—She apparently never slept.
"I want to run over some things," he said. "Interrupt me if you hear anything that sounds wrong or you don't understand."
From the corner of his eye he noted the figure sitting between him and the window nod once.
It occurred to him that there was something terrible about an adaptability that could familiarize him even to—her, so that now after only a day and a half he was using her as a kind of thinking machine, asking for her memories and reactions in the same way that a man might direct a servant to put a certain record on the phonograph.
At the same time he knew that he was able to make this close contact endurable only by carefully directing his thoughts and actions—like the trick he had acquired of never quite looking at her directly. And he kept himself nerved up with the thought of what lay ahead, and his determination to regain what had been lost, and his hate. The present condition was only temporary. But if he once let himself start to think what it would mean to live a lifetime, to share bed and board, with that—blackness—coldness—vacancy.
Other people noticed the difference all right. Like those crowds they'd had to push through in New York yesterday. Somehow people always edged away, so they wouldn't have to touch her, and he had caught more than one following glance, poised between curiosity and fear. And when that other woman started to scream—lucky they had been able to lose themselves in the crowd.
The brief stopover at New York had provided him with some vitally necessary materials, though he still felt hampered by the lack of his library and notes. But he had been glad last night when it was over. The compartment seemed a haven of privacy.
What was it those other people noticed? True, if you looked closely, the heavy cosmetics only provided a grotesque and garish contrast to the underlying pallor, and powder did not wholly conceal the ugly dark bruise around the mouth. But the veil helped, and you had to look very closely—the cosmetics were practically a theatrical make-up. Was it her walk that they noticed, or the way her clothes hung—her clothes always looked a little like a scarecrow's now, though you could not put your finger on the reason. Or was it—
But that was what he must not think about.
"Magic is a practical science." He talked to the wall, as if dictating. "There is all the difference in the world between a formula in physics and a formula in magic, although they have the same name. The former describes, in terse mathematical symbols, some cause-effect relationship of wide generality. But a formula in magic is a way of getting or accomplishing something. It always takes into account the motivation or desire of the person performing the magic—be it greed, love, revenge, or what-not. Whereas the experiment in physics is essentially independent of the experimenter. In short, there has been little or no "pure"—nonpractical—magic, comparable to pure science.
"This distinction between physics and magic is just an accident of history. Physics is ultimately as practical as magic—but it possesses a superstructure of theory that magic lacks. Magic could be given such a superstructure by research in pure magic and by the investigation and correlation of the magic formulas of different peoples and times, with a view to deriving basic formulas which could be expressed in mathematical symbols and which would have a wide application. Most persons practicing magic have been too interested in immediate results to bother about theory. But just as research in pure science has ultimately led, seemingly by accident, to results of vast practical importance, so research in pure magic might be expected to yield similar results."
He waited a moment for comment, then went on.
"The subject matter of magic is akin to that of physics, in that it deals with certain forces and materials, though these—"
"I believe it is more akin to psychology," the voice interrupted.
"How so?" He still looked at the wall.
"Because it concerns the control of other beings, the summoning of them, and the constraining of them to perform certain actions."
"Good. That is very suggestive. Fortunately, formulas may still hold good so long as their reference is clear, though we are ignorant of the precise nature of the entities to which they refer. For example, a physicist need not be able to give a visual description of an atom, even if the term visual appearance has any meaning when applied to an atom—which is doubtful. Similarly, a sorcerer need not be able to describe the appearance and nature of the entity he summons. But the point is well taken. Many seemingly impersonal forces, when broken down sufficiently, become something very much like personality. It's not too far-fetched to say that it would take a science resembling psychology to describe the behavior of a single electron, with all its whims and impulses, though electrons in the aggregate obey relatively simple laws, just as human beings do when considered as crowds. The same holds true of the basic entities of magic, and to a much greater degree.
"It is partly for this reason that magical processes are so tricky and dangerous, and why their working can be so readily impeded if the intended victim is on guard against them—as your formulas have to our knowledge been nullified since Mrs. Gunnison stole your book. That one formula I used on Sunday night worked only because it was not anticipated thatIwould be the operator. And even at that its working was greatly hindered."
His words possessed for him an incredibly strange overtone. But it was only by maintaining a dry, scholarly manner that he could keep going. He knew that at the first touch of casualness or informality, the latent morbidity of the situation would engulf him.
"There remains one all-important consideration," he went on swiftly. "Magic appears to be a science which markedly depends on its environment—that is, the situation of the world and the general conditions of the cosmos at any particular time. For example, Euclidean geometry is useful on Earth, but there are regions—and it would be easy to imagine more—in which a non-Euclidean geometry is more practical. The same is true of magic, but to a more striking degree. The basic, unstated formulas of magic appear to change with the passage of time, requiring frequent restatement—though it might conceivably be possible to discover master-formulas governing that change. It has been speculated that the laws of physics show a similar evolutionary tendency—though if they do evolve, it is at a much less rapid rate than those of magic. It is natural that the laws of magic should evolve or change more swiftly, since magic depends on a contact between the material world and another level of being—and that contact is complex and may be shifting rapidly.
"Take astrology, for example. In the course of several thousand years, the precession of the equinoxes has put the Sun into entirely different celestial houses—signs of the Zodiac—at the same times of year. A person born, say, on March 22nd, is still said to be born in Aries, though he is actually born when the Sun is in the constellation Pisces. A failure to take into consideration this evolutionary change since the formulas of astrology were first discovered, has rendered the formulas obsolete and invalidated them for—"
"It is my belief," the voice broke in, like a phonograph suddenly starting, "that astrology has always been largely invalid. That it is one of the many pretended sciences which have been confused with true magic and used as a kind of window dressing. Such is my belief."
"I presume that may be the case, and it would help to explain why magic itself has been outwardly discredited as a science—which is the point I'm getting at.
"Suppose the basic formulas of physics—such as Newton's three laws of motion—had changed several times in the last few thousand years. The discovery of any physical laws at any time would have been vastly more difficult. The same experiments would give different results in different ages. But that is the case with magic, and explains why magic has been periodically discredited and has become repugnant to the rational mind. It's like what old Carr was saying about the run of the cards at bridge. After a few shuffles of a multitude of cosmic factors, the laws of magic change. A sharp eye can spot the changes, but continual experimentation, of the trial-and-error sort, is necessary to keep the crude practical formulas of magic in anything like working order, especially since the basic formulas and the master-formulas have never been discovered.
"Take a concrete example—the formula I used Sunday night. It shows signs of recent revision. For instance, what did the original, unrevised formula have in place of the phonograph needle?"
"A willow whistle of a certain shape, which had been blown only once," the voice told him.
"And the platinum or iridium?"
"The original formula mentioned silver, but a heavier metal serves better. Lead, however, proved altogether ineffective. I tried it once. It was apparently too unlike silver in other respects."
"Precisely. Trial-and-error experimentation. I have a modern substitute for the flannel wrapping which may prove more effective. Moreover, in the absence of thorough investigation, we cannot be sure that all the ingredients of a magic formula are essential in making it work. A comparison of the magic formulas of different countries and peoples would be helpful in this respect. It would show which ingredients are common to all formulas and therefore presumably essential, and which are not essential. I have in mind a method for making such a comparison."
There was a discreet knock at the door. Norman spoke a few words, and the figure drew down its veil and turned toward the window, as if staring stolidly at the passing fields. Then he opened the door.
It was lunch, as long in coming as breakfast had been. And there was a new face—coffee-colored instead of ebony. Evidently the first waiter, who had shown growing nervousness in his previous trips to the compartment, had decided to sacrifice the tip and send someone else.
With a mixture of curiosity and impatience, Norman waited for the reactions of the new-comer. He almost felt able to predict them. First a very quick inquisitive glance past him at the seated figure—Norman guessed they had become the major mystery of the train. Then a longer, sideways glance while setting up the folding table, ending with the eyes getting very wide; he could almost feel the coffee-colored flesh crawl. Only hurried, almost unwilling glances after that, with a growing uneasiness manifested in clumsy handling of the dishes and glassware. Then a too-pleasant smile and a hasty departure.
Only once Norman interfered—to place the knives and forks so they lay at right angles to their usual position.
The meal was a very simple one, almost ascetic. He did not look across the table as he ate. There was something worse than animal greediness about that methodical feeding. After the meal he put the left-overs into a small cardboard box, covered them with a napkin he had used to wipe all the dishes clean, and placed the box in his suitcase beside an envelope containing clippings from his own fingernails. The sight of the clean breakfast dishes had been one of the things which had helped to disturb the first waiter, but Norman was determined to adhere strictly to a complete set of taboos. They were an odd assortment, gleaned from his memories of Negro, Polynesian, and Indian practices. Of course, there might be no protection gained by observing taboos. But then again there might be. So he collected food fragments, saw to it that no knives or other sharp instruments pointed toward them, had them sleep with their heads nearest the engine and their destination, and enforced a number of other minor regulations. Eating in private satisfied still another taboo, but there was more than one reason for that.
He glanced at his watch. Only half an hour until Hempnell. He had not realized they were quite so close. There was the faint sense of an almost physical resistance from that region, as if the air were thickening. And his mind was tossing with a multitude of problems yet to be considered.
Deliberately turning his back, he said, "According to the myths, souls may be imprisoned in all sorts of ways—in boxes, in knots, in animals, in stones. Have you any ideas on this subject?"
As he feared, this particular question brought the usual irrelevant response. The answering words had the same dull persistence.
"I want my soul."
His hands, clasped behind his back, tightened. This was why he had avoided the question until now. Yet he had to know more, if that were possible.
"But where exactly should we look for it?"
"I want my soul."
"Yes." It was hard for him to control his voice. "But how, precisely, might it be hidden? It will help if I know."
There was a rather long pause. Then, "The environment of the soul is the human brain. If it is free, it immediately seeks such an environment. It may be said that soul and body are two separate creatures, living together in a symbiotic relationship so intimate and tight that they normally seem to be only one creature. The closeness of this contact appears to have increased with the centuries. Indeed, when the body it is occupying dies, the soul is usually unable to escape and appears to die, too, or to migrate to another level of being—I have no clear knowledge of that matter. But by supernatural means the soul may sometimes be divorced from the body it is occupying. Then, if it is prevented from re-entering its own body, it is irresistibly drawn to another, whether or not that other body possesses a soul. And so the captive soul is usually imprisoned in the brain of its captor, unable either to escape from or to control that brain, in immediate contact with the soul of the captor and forced to view and feel, in complete intimacy, the workings of that soul. Therein lies perhaps its chief torment."
Beads of sweat prickled his scalp and forehead.
His voice did not shake, but it was unnaturally heavy and sibilant as he asked, "What is Evelyn Sawtelle like?"
The answer sounded as if it were being read verbatim from the summary of a political dossier.
"She is dominated by a desire for social prestige. She spends most of her time in unsuccessfully attempting to be snobbish. She has romantic ideas about herself, but since they are too high-flown to find satisfaction, she is prim and moralistic, with rigid standards of conduct. She believes she was cheated in her husband, and is always apprehensive that he will lose what ground she has gained for him. Being unsure of herself, she is given to acts of maliciousness and sudden cruelty. At present she is very frightened and constantly on guard. That is why she had her magic all ready when she received the telephone call."
"I can't wait until tomorrow," he told himself. "I must begin with her this very afternoon."
Aloud, he asked, "Mrs. Gunnison—what do you think of her?"
"She is a woman of abundant vigor and appetites. She is a good housewife and hostess, but those activities hardly take the edge off her energies. She should have been mistress of a feudal domain. She is a born tyrant, and grows fat on it. Her appetites, many of them incapable of open satisfaction in our present society, nevertheless find devious outlets. Servant girls of the Gunnisons have told stories, but not often and then guardedly, for she is ruthless against those who oppose her or threaten her security."