Night & Demons (49 page)

It was past ten o’clock when Carter set the books aside and rubbed his head to clear it. The McElroys both looked up, half-startled as if by a broken spell.

“Done or giving up?” McElroy asked.

“Done, I think!’ Carter answered, snapping the light off. “It isn’t very long, you know. The pages are thick.”

The alcove door rattled, then banged shut as the inner door opened. Marcia Byrd had come back from the library; close behind her was a couple, neither of whom Carter knew very well though he had seen them.

“Bob,” the girl asked. “Is anybody in the lounge?”

“Don’t think so,” he answered, looking at Jeanette who shook her head.

The couple disappeared through the door beside the stairs leading to a comfortable room with a fireplace, the only place in the house the girls could entertain their dates. It was pretty much a first-come, first-served proposition since, although there was room for several couples, it was tacitly held to one at a time.

Marcia stayed downstairs and the four of them talked a while; McElroy got out a deck of cards and they played a few series of hearts, since Marcia didn’t know how to play bridge and it didn’t seem worthwhile to teach her then. A few more couples drifted in, kibitzed, and broke up again.

At a quarter of twelve Jeanette put everyone over with her second skunk hand in a row. Marcia went upstairs and McElroy tapped on the lounge door. Someone was liable to walk in without thinking at any time, but the possibility wasn’t a certain deterrent when the weather got too cold for riverbanking.

The boy opened the door almost immediately. He already had his coat on. The girl went as far as the alcove with him where he kissed her goodbye. She came back in a moment, shivering, and called, “Goodnight all” as she ran up the stairs.

“God, that’s all I needed,” Carter muttered as she disappeared.

“What’s that, Al?” McElroy asked with a curious frown.

“Didn’t you notice? Her sweater was inside out.”

McElroy roared and Jeanette giggled, but the laughter (though he joined it) made Carter all the more conscious of what he lacked.

“What do you think of the book,” McElroy finally asked.

“It scares the Hell out of me,” Carter answered frankly.

“Is it . . . . ?” Jeanette began. “I mean, what it sounded like?”

Carter nodded. Noticing McElroy’s lack of underðstanding he picked up the book and opened it at ranðdom. “Here, Bob, this is what we mean:

“‘On the western coast of the second continent, from the Tropic of Capricorn southward,’—literally, south of the southern solstial circle—‘the inhabitants catch great squid; the beaks are of first quality. These may be had for shining balls’—
spheris nitentibus,
damned if I know what it means—‘usually at one per eighty-four beaks, variations for quality. Care must be taken lest more than ten balls be dispensed in a locality and one of the chiefmen injure himself by excess. There are no beacons.’”

Jeanette was biting her lower lip gently; McElroy himself had a look of outright puzzlement. “But, what does it mean?” he asked.

Carter smiled grimly. “That’s what the next part tells:

“‘The Pathioni, whose ships call yearly at Rakka, import vast quantities of squid beaks for use in the cradles’—I’m not sure the literal meaning is quite what he meant—‘of their young. The vanes are of lesser suitðability and can not be profitably transported at this date. Without constant changes of the crushed materiðal their young are liable to a disease likely to blind them; the population is too great for the native supply to sufðfice.

“‘This area is far to the Southeast of Spain.’

“Now do you understand?” Carter finished.

“Who wrote this?” gasped McElroy, half-rising from his chair.

Jeanette was strangely calm. “It wasn’t one person, was it, Al?” she said quietly. “Is it all like that, two voices?”

Carter nodded in approval. “You noticed that right off? I had to read half a dozen chapters before I did. Yes, the notes, so to speak, were probably written by our friend Ezra, don’t you think. I’ve got a feeling I could guess where he returned from, now.”

“But then who wrote the rest?” McElroy demanded angrily, not so much disbelieving as refusing to believe.

Jeanette stood, unconsciously holding her hands out to Carter, where he slumped in a chair beside the desk. “Al, this is wonderful! Don’t you see, not only peace, but trade—we aren’t alone any more.”

“Not alone, not alone,” Carter repeated with grim humor, keeping his eyes fixed on the book. “Want to hear some more?

“‘Beacon 42 marks a source of first grade adipocere, 100 talents per year, plus varying quantities of lesser grades. Competition must be strictly controlled at risk of disaster from excess demands. Merchants desiring a billet must enroll with Setcor Coordination or face capital charges.

“‘The inhabitants of Harmozia bury alive 100 women or 200 young children every year in pits dug for the purpose. Within the space of the year the bodies are converted to pure adipocere by the action of the ground water which is of special virture in that locale. In return, the Rakkadim supply the princes of the city with pleasures of wonderful sort.

“‘It is said that in past ages when Shapur the Magnificent would have had the town razed, his troops were overwhelmed by the sands. It is likewise handed down that when the reigning prince became boastful at his immunity from Persia and would have taken a triple toll of his subjects to minister to his delight, the people called on their god whom they call Clutus. The earth swallowed much of the town, scattering the worshippers before the completion of the ceremony, but thereafter the levy have been fixed.’”

“Oh, dear God,” Jeanette whispered, and the words were a prayer. “200 children.”

“What the Hell is adipocere?” McElroy asked. “Is it a jewel?”

“Corpse-wax, bog butter, you know. What you get when you bury a body in warm, wet ground.” Carter rubbed his forehead with his palms, then continued. “I doubt it mattered whether the bodies went into the ground living or dead, so long as they had a nice layer of fat to start the reaction. The Harmozians didn’t know that, though, and I guess the Rakkadrim never got around to telling them. God!”

“But Al,” Jeanette faltered, “what do they do with it? Surely they don’t make candles of it like the Satanists.”

Carter grimaced. “That was in an earlier note. They eat it. Apparently it’s quite a delicacy.”

Jeanette went so pale that the only color in her cheeks was the yellow of the lamplight. McElroy’s Adam’s apple was working convulsively.

“Are there more like that?” Jeanette asked, her knuckles tight against her cheekbones.

“Some. I don’t intend to read them to you. There is one that interests me, though, if you wouldn’t mind listening?”

They nodded assent. Carter leafed back through the book and began to read, “‘Carven snail shells are of great value among the Garuli stars, but the trade in them must be actively discouraged since the Garuli claim a monopoly on the commodity and enforce it with their wonted savagery.

“‘The Garuli are unable to handle snail shells without mutual destruction. Therefore, work of distinguished artistry in this (to them) impossible medium commanded higher price. They offered fine gems in exchange for average work, and for especially striking pieces they could be induced to give the fabled anthrax, the stone of power.

“‘All trade was within the Epirotes, the Ligures and a people far west of Spain, dwelling between two continents. Some say that Semele was a queen of the Epirotes, not Thebes, and that following her death, her people massacred the next company of merchants. Since that time, far past, the Factors believe the trade has lapsed.

“‘Some claim that even today one who lets candlelight shine through a ruby in the moon’s sight, and who calls the Rakkadrim to haggle will be answered—but that race has a short way with fraud.’”

Carter shut the book and looked up. “Do you see why it interested me, Bob?”

McElroy rubbed his chin with his left hand, then turned to his wife and asked, “Honey, don’t we have a shell like that?”

Jeanette said nothing, only squeezed her hands together in her lap. McElroy took little notice, for he was glancing up at the little knick-knack shelf above the kitchen door, one of the few places not usurped by bookshelves. “Sure, there it is,” he said as he rose. Stepping to the shelf he took down the greybrown shell at one end of it and hefted it in his hand before setting it on the desk.

It was perhaps four inches through at the thickest point, just above the base, and rose to a spiral peak in about the same distance. The concentrated light of the reading lamp threw the delicate reliefs into sharp conðtrast. The artist had created a continuous strip picture following the bands of the snail’s growth, all the way to the peak where time had blurred them.

“I thought that’s what it was,” Carter mused. “I don’t remember seeing one anywhere else; you didn’t happen to pick it up in Milan, did you?”

McElroy shook his head. “No, I didn’t get it. Where did it come from, Jean?”

Instead of answering, Jeanette asked, “What are you going to do, Bob?”

“Dammit, I don’t know!” McElroy snapped back. “Where did it come from?”

“From Mexico,” Jeanette said, raising her eyes but not looking at either the shell or her husband beyond it. “From a little village called Iguala, south of Mexico City. I was going to bring it back for Mom—three years ago, you remember? The summer before we were married? But she died in the accident and I kept it.”

She began to cry, quietly, with her hands covering her face. After a moment she got up and strode swiftly into the lounge, closing the door behind her.

Both the men were uncomfortable. “She was pretty shook up about her mother,” McElroy said. Carter nodðded but privately questioned the explanation.

“What do you think?” McElroy went on, trying to break the awkwardness.

“I can’t say,” Carter answered, rubbing his left arm. “It’s a funny thing, though; I remember Barnes telling us in geology that one of the reasons you don’t find many fossil snails is that their shell is different from most animals: oysters, say. Aragonite, not calcite? It’s all calcium carbonate, but the crystals are different—harder but not as stable. I don’t know what it proves, except . . .”

“Except?” McElroy pressed.

“There’s no way in the world somebody in the fifteenth century could have found that out unless it was told to him.”

McElroy picked up the shell again, turning it in the light. “I wonder what it’s supposed to be?” he remarked. Then, looking straight at Carter, “What do you think?”

The lounger door opened and Jeanette stepped into the room. Calmly, without an attempt to smile, she said, “I’m sorry; I’m a little funny tonight, I guess.”

She sat down, looking at Carter rather than McElroy. “Shall I say what you’re thinking instead? You’re wonderðing what difference it could make, thousands of years later, even if this isn’t some horrible joke? And you don’t know.”

Carter shrugged, then gave a nod of assent. Jeanette was perfectly right, he didn’t know; and he wasn’t sure he wanted to learn any more than she did.

McElroy licked his lips before speaking again. Then he asked very carefully, “Well, why don’t we find out?”

No one answered him.

“Well, do you want to come?” McElroy persisted. “There’s a moon tonight, a full moon. We can get out on the roof through the upstairs kitchen so we’re above the trees. Why not?”

Carter said, “Jeanette,” half-question in his voice.

Jeanette spread her hands, palm up, and smiled at him. “Well, we started it, didn’t we? We might as well see it through. I’ll get my pendant.”

She got up and walked through the kitchen door, her skirts brushing Carter’s chair as she rounded the desk.

When Jeanette had disappeared toward the bedroom, McElroy asked, “What’s the matter, Al? You don’t really want to go through with it, do you?”

Carter got up and began running his fingertips over the spines of the books just to be moving. “It might be dangerous,” he finally said. “Ezra didn’t give a very glowðing account of the Garuli, you know. If they exist. And if they answer.”

McElroy only grinned. “No sweat there; we’ve got the goods, remember?”

He touched the shell, adding, “Why do you suppose they didn’t get it long ago? If it was made for them and that seems likely enough, doesn’t it?”

Carter bent down for a close look. “Maybe they packed up instantly when Epirotes got restless; afraid of more of the same elsewhere,” he suggested. “Or, it could have been fairly recently carven for all we know. The techðnique needn’t have been lost simply because the market dried up. If there ever was one.”

The door between kitchen and bedroom squeaked and McElroy said, “Damn. I forgot to tell her to look for candles.”

“I got them,” said Jeanette, holding up a long taper and a box of farmer’s matches as she came through the door. “That’s what took so long.”

She had put on her coat as well, a thigh-length suede affair that hugged her close. A looser fit would probably have been warmer, but she looked painfully beautiful as she was.

“You have a ruby?” Carter asked as McElroy went out to the hall closet to get their coats.

“Oh yes; hadn’t you seen it?” Jeanette replied. Reaching into a side pocket she brought out a thin silver loop to which had been fastened a ruby teardrop set in filagree. It was a good-sized stone, several carats at Carter’s unedðucated guess.

“It was my grandmother’s,” Jeanette explained. Shyly she added. “She gave it to me when we were married. I’m supposed to wear it after my first baby.”

Carter smiled. Sometimes it was nice to have someone that could talk to you freely, as much as having someone to talk to.

McElroy tossed Carter his ski parka and put on his own topcoat. Carter slipped on his gloves and then took the candle and matches from Jeanette who tied a scarf under her chin. McElroy picked up the shell carefully in one gloved hand, a little awkwardly because of the diffiðculty in judging pressure with gloves on. Finally he cupped his left hand under the shell and took the book in his right.