Conjure Wife (21 page)

What strangeness pressing on the heels of strangeness it was, Norman thought dreamily, not only to pretend to believe in black magic in order to overawe three superstitious, psychotic women who had a hold on his wife’s mental life, but even to invoke the modern science of symbolic logic in the service of that pretended belief. Symbolic logic used to disentangle the contradictions and ambiguities of witchcraft formulas! What wouldn’t old Carr say if he were really told “the entities referred to!”

And yet it had only been by invoking the superior prestige of higher mathematics that he had been able to convince Tansy that he could make strong enough magic to work against her enemies. And that was all in the best traditions of sorcery, when you came to think of it. Sorcerers always tried to incorporate the latest bits of information and wisdom into their systems, for prestige purposes. What was sorcery but a battle for prestige in the realms of mysticism, and what was a sorcerer but someone who had gotten an illegitimate mental jump on his fellows?

What a ludicrous picture it was, though (everything was beginning to seem hysterically laughable to his weary mind): a woman who half believed in witchcraft driven mad by three women who perhaps believed fully in witchcraft or perhaps not at all, their schemes opposed by a husband who believed not at all, but pretended to believe to the full — and was determined to act in every way in accord with that belief.

Or, he thought (his dreaminess verging toward slumber and the sweet mathematical simplicity of his surroundings wooing his mind toward visions of absolute space in which infinity was before his eyes), why not drop all these stuffy rationalizations and admit that Tansy had something called a soul and that it had been stolen by the thin witch Evelyn Sawtelle, and then stolen from her by the fat witch Hulda Gunnison, and that he was even now seeking the magic that would —

He jerked himself resolutely awake and back to the world of rationalizations again. Carr had shoved a paper toward him and had immediately started to work on another of the five sheets Norman had given him.

“You’ve already found the first underlying equations?” Norman asked incredulously.

Carr seemed annoyed at the interruption. “Surely. Of course.” His pencil had already started to dart about again, when he stopped and looked at Norman oddly. “Yes,” he said, “it’s the last equation there, the short one. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I’d find one when I started, but your entities and relationships seemed to have some sense to them, whatever they are.” And then he and his pencil were off again.

Norman shivered, staring at the brief ultimate equation, wondering what its meaning might be. He could not tell without referring to his code and he certainly didn’t want to get that out here.

“Sorry to be making all this work for you,” he said dully.

Carr spared him a glance. “Not at all, I enjoy it. I always did have a peculiar knack for these things.”

The afternoon shadows deepened. Norman switched on the overhead light, and Carr thanked him with a quick preoccupied nod. The pencil flew. Three more sheets had been shoved across to Norman, and Carr was finishing the last one, when the door opened.

“Linthicum!” came the sweet voice, with hardly a trace of reproachfulness. “Whatever’s keeping you? I’ve waited downstairs half an hour.”

“I’m sorry, dear,” said the old man, looking at his watch and his wife. “But I had become so absorbed—”

She saw Norman. “Oh, I didn’t know you had a visitor. Whatever will Professor Saylor think! I’m afraid I’ve given him the impression that I tyrannize over you.”

And she accompanied the words with such a quaint smile that Norman found himself echoing Carr’s “Not at all.”

“Professor Saylor looks dead tired,” she said, peering at Norman anxiously. “I hope you haven’t been wearing him out, Linthicum.”

“Oh no, my dear, I’ve been doing all the work,” her husband told her.

She walked around the desk and looked over his shoulder. “What is it?” she asked, pleasantly.

“I don’t know,” he said. He straightened up and, winking at Norman, went on, “I believe that, behind these symbols, Professor Saylor is revolutionizing the science of sociology. But it’s a great secret. And in any case I haven’t the slightest idea of what the symbols refer to. I’m just being a sort of electronic brain.”

With a polite, by-your-leave nod towards Norman, Mrs. Carr picked up one of the sheets and studied it through her thick glasses. But apparently at sight of the massed rows of symbols, she put it down.

“Mathematics is not my forte,” she explained. “I was such a poor scholar.”

“Nonsense, Flora,” said Carr. “Whenever we go to the market, you’re much quicker at totaling the bill than I am. And I try to beat you, too.”

“But that’s such a little thing,” said Mrs. Carr delightedly.

“I’ll only be a moment more,” said her husband, returning to his calculations.

Mrs. Carr spoke across to Norman in a half-whisper. “Oh, Professor Saylor, would you be so kind as to convey a message to Tansy? I want to invite her for bridge tomorrow night — that’s Thursday — with Hulda Gunnison and Evelyn Sawtelle. Linthicum has a meeting.”

“I’ll be glad to,” said Norman quickly. “But I’m afraid she might not be up to it.” And he explained about the food poisoning.

“How too, too terrible!” observed Mrs. Carr. “Couldn’t I come over and help her?”

“Thank you,” Norman lied, “but we have someone staying with her.”

“How wise,” said Mrs. Carr, and she looked at Norman intently, as if to spy out the source of that wisdom. Her steady gaze made him feel uncomfortable, it seemed at once so predatory and so naive. It somehow wouldn’t have surprised him in one of his students, one of his girl students, but in this old woman —

Carr put down his pencil. “There,” he said. “I’m done.”

With further expression of thanks, Norman gathered up the sheets.

“Really no trouble at all,” Carr assured him. “You gave me a very exciting afternoon. I must confess 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,” 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 him, “that if I revolutionize the science of sociology, you’ll be the first to hear of it. Good evening.” And he bowed out.

As soon as he could hurry home he 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 Cam’s calculations, and carefully decoded the final equation. “C — Notched strip of copper.” He nodded. “t — Twirl sunwise.” He frowned. He could have expected that 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. 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 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. And then if —

Conscious of a sudden weariness and of a revulsion from these formulas, which persisted in seeming more obscene than ridiculous, he pushed back his chair. For the first time since he had come into the house, he looked at the figure by the window. It sat in the rocking chair, face turned toward the drawn curtains. When it had started rocking, he did not know. But the muscles of its body automatically continued the rhythmical movement, once it had begun.

With the suddenness of a blow, longing f or 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 deadalive imitation, this 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 — “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 straight to the Gunnisons, confront Hulda, and force the issue!

With a quick effort he subdued his anger. Any such action on h:s part might ruin everything. How could you use open force against someone who held the mentality, the very consciousness, of your dearest possession as a hostage? No, he had been all over this before and his course was set. He must fight those women with their own weapons; these repugnant occult formulas were his best hope and he had gotten his usual punishment for making the mistake of looking at its face. Deliberately he moved to the other side of the table, so his back was towards the rocking chair.

But he was restless, his muscles itching with fatigue poisons, and for the moment he could not get back to work.

Suddenly he spoke. “Why do you suppose everything has become violent and deadly so abruptly?”

“The Balance with 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 that was shaping in that mindless mind behind him. This witches’ warfare it believed in was very much like trench warfare or a battle between fortified lines — a state of siege. Just as 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 the witch who had foresworn witchcraft was 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 be only 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 whish 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 its force was broken. But his shoulder, which took only the broken blow, went numb.

Clawing at the table 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.

It 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 its hand was the steel poker, stealthily lifted from the stand by the fireplace.

There was life in the 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.

With a low snarl it lifted the poker and struck, not at him, but at the chandelier overhead. Pitch darkness flooded the room he had curtained tightly against prying eyes.

There was a rush of soft footsteps. He ducked to one side. Nevertheless, the swish came perilously close. There was a sound as if it 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 the snuffing sound 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 direction 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 them, 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, a low-ceilinged, wall-less infinity.