A Scatter of Stardust (3 page)

Vibration, perhaps? More vibration to switch it on and thus provide an avenue of escape from this living hell. The only avenue of escape. He wondered what had happened to break the circuit and shatter his dream.

“Thank you,” he said to the ship. “You did your best. Thank you.”

But he was not sorry that the ship had failed, that the dream circuit had been broken. He would not have liked to lie in the safe, snug world of illusion while the ship had nothing of comfort. It is bad to die alone.

Argonne had lived a solitary, dedicated life, and it was natural for him to have followed ancient custom. The personalizing and naming of weapons is not new. He looked at the four letters mounted above the instrument panel.

“Anne,” he murmured. “With an ‘e’.”

The girl he had never had, the wife he would never get, the dream he would never know again. The ship he had tried to save by running from those who would hurt her.

Anne!

Who had shown him Heaven.

This time he did not try to blink away his tears. They belonged. For around him something beautiful was dying.

Return Visit

“You know,” said the demon conversationally, “things have changed quite a bit since the old days.”

“They have?” Despite the pounding of his heart and an unusual shortness of breath Chris managed to appear as nonchalant as he intended. “Do tell,” he urged, and settling back in his chair lit a cigarette with fingers laudably steady. Which, all things considered, was quite a feat. The demon seemed appreciative.

“You’re a cool one,” he said admiringly. “You don’t seem a bit scared.”

“Why should I be scared?” Chris blew a careful smoke ring toward the pentagram he had chalked on his neutral colored Wilton. “You are the product of a carefully conducted scientific experiment and there is no more reason for me to be afraid of you than there would be for me to be scared of a bacteriological culture I may have bred on an agar plate. Had you not appeared when summoned I would have been disappointed. Why should I be terrified because my experiment was a success?”

It sounded logical enough and it would have been nice had it been wholly true, but it wasn’t and for a variety of reasons. A nice, normal, twentieth-century man just doesn’t conduct experiments, scientific or otherwise, calling for chalk marks scrawled on the carpet, braziers burning a redolent mixture of exotic herbs, assorted entrails and gooey internal liquids of freshly defunct organisms. Still more, they don’t conduct such experiments to the accompaniment of mystic gestures, symbolic sacrifices and memorized chants in a tongue-twisting language. And if they do, just for the curiosity of it maybe, or because they are bored enough or desperate enough to try anything once, and the experiment succeeds, then a little perturbation is to be excused.

Chris Neville was more than a little perturbed; he was scared from his scalp to his toenails. Sternly he reminded himself that there was absolutely no reason to be afraid. So what if his hidden guest did happen to look like a badly drawn impression of some medieval artist’s conception of an attendant of the lower regions? He couldn’t help the way he looked, could he? And his opening conversational gambit had shown promise.

“It’s all a matter of logic,” said Chris. “Logic and a scientific mind. After all, I expected you. That’s what the ceremony was for.” He inhaled again, letting smoke stream from his nostrils. The demon stared in frank admiration.

“Aren’t you afraid of burning yourself?”

“With this?” Chris took the cigarette from his mouth and examined it. “No, why should I?” He chuckled at the demon’s expression. “Of course! Tobacco smoking is comparatively recent; you wouldn’t have known about it.” He shook a cigarette from the pack, lit it and tossed it into the pentagram. “Try it for yourself.”

Dubiously the demon picked up the little white cylinder and stuck it in his mouth. Bravely he puffed. The results, to Chris, were educational.

“Did you have to do that?” The demon went into a fresh spasm of coughing, waving a petulant talon before his face. His scaly hide was already greenish but his red-rimmed eyes watered in a familiar way. Chris almost felt sorry for him.

“Take it easy,” he advised. “Don’t inhale to begin with. You’ll soon get used to it.”

“Maybe.” The demon puffed again, more cautiously this time. “Seems senseless to me,” he grumbled. “Breathing in a lot of smoke and fouling up your lungs.” He took a third puff. “Still, it’s not too bad when you get used to it.” He tried inhaling, held his breath, then grinned. “Hey! That’s not bad at all! But you should have warned me what to expect,” he said reproachfully. “You took me by surprise.”

“Sorry,” said Chris, registering his amazement. “But how was I to know that a little smoke would bother you?”

“That’s the trouble with this business,” snapped the demon. “No thought for others at all. There I was, just minding my own business when I get snatched away without so much as a by-your-leave. And when I arrive after a bitch of a journey, what happens? Nowhere to sit. Nothing to eat or drink. No courtesy, no consideration of my feelings at all.” He sniffed and stared around the apartment. “Still, as I said, things have certainly changed since the last time I was here.”

“So you said,” reminded Chris. “Twice.”

“So I have,” chuckled the demon. He squatted on the carpet and looked regretfully at the butt of his cigarette. “Got any more of these things?”

“Help yourself.” Chris tossed the package into the pentagram. “You have to set fire to one end and suck the other,” he explained. “Want me to do it for you?”

“I can manage,” said the demon. He held a cigarette in one talon, squinted down his nose and suddenly sent a tongue of flame spurting from between his lips. “Bet that surprised you,” he said cheerfully from behind a cloud of smoke.

“Why should it?” lied Chris. Desperately he sought to retain his nonchalance. “I’d say that it was due to a simple matter of your metabolism. You probably generate free hydrogen in your stomach and have a deposit of spongy platinum in your mouth. When you belch the catalytic action of the platinum sets the hydrogen alight” He shrugged. “Simple.”

“Clever, aren’t you?” sneered the demon. He appeared crestfallen.

“Just logical,” corrected Chris easily. “I have a scientific mind. I’m not like the old-timers you may have met.”

“You can say that again,” said the demon. “Things have certainly changed. The way you’re dressed for one thing, no robes covered with all those odd designs and other junk. Horrible taste, I always thought.” The demon puffed at his dwindling cigarette. “And you haven’t got any unhygienic fuzz hanging down your chest. Lots of other little details. Yes. things have certainly changed.”

“We’re not talking about me,” reminded Chris sharply. “We’re talking about things.”

“Well?” The demon seemed surprised. “The same thing, isn’t it?”

“No,” snapped Chris. He was beginning to feel annoyed. “It isn’t the same at all. I’m a man,” he pointed out. “Not a thing.”

“Wrong,” corrected the demon patiently. “I’m a man, you’re a thing.”

Logic, as Chris was discovering, had its drawbacks.

*

The demon was perfectly right, of course, it all depended on the point of view. It was a matter about which the early demonologists had probably ruptured blood vessels, but Chris was a modem man and could look at both sides of a problem. And it wasn’t important, not really. If the demon wanted to think of him as a thing then that was all right by Chris — provided the demon brought home the bacon.

The bacon, naturally, being that which would enable Chris to live the sort of life to which he wanted to become accustomed.

He wasn’t greedy, not more than normal, that is, but when a man is given the opportunity of getting everything and anything he wants then he can’t refuse. If he could then he wouldn’t be a man, he’d be a saint. And a saint, by definition, wouldn’t be sitting in a modern, self-service apartment chatting conversationally with a real, live demon.

Chris didn’t let the involved logic confuse him. He’d lost his initial fear of his guest. The demon, on closer acquaintance, seemed somewhat dumb, little better than a moron, certainly no match for an intelligent, sharp-witted product of the twentieth century commercial rat race. Striking a bargain with the visitor seemed, to Chris, to be about equal to the difficulty of stealing candy from a one-day-old baby. But even so he proceeded with due caution.

“It is true, isn’t it, that you cannot possibly escape from the pentagram while it remains intact?” The ancient parchment had said so but Chris wanted to be sure.

“That’s right.” The fact didn’t seem to worry the demon. “Now don’t you get any bright ideas about breaking it,” he warned. “If you do I’ll come after you, snatch you up and fling you into an eternal furnace.”

“Bunk,” said Chris. “Who are you trying to scare?”

“You don’t believe me?” The demon seemed abashed. “But it’s true.”

“How do you know?” Chris rose and stepped toward the chalked design. “I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve a notion all this snatching away business is plain propaganda. Let’s just break the pentagram and find out, shall we?”

“Don’t do that!” The demon was upset. “Please! If you do then you’ll ... “

“I’ll kill you?” Chris nodded, satisfied. “I thought so. The old-timers were too scared to be able to think straight. They called you up and then sweated blood thinking up ways and means to control you. It should have been obvious that you were more afraid of them than they were of you.”

“That isn’t so,” protested the demon. “Some of them were practically petrified. Why I remember one old man, Nostradamus I think he called himself, who almost threw a fit when he saw me.” Talons gleamed in the electric light. “I was treated with respect in those days.”

“That’s finished with,” snapped Chris. “I’m your boss now and don’t you forget it. One peep out of you and I’ll break the pentagram and let you suffer.” He resumed his chair, feeling a warm, inner glow of satisfaction. It was one thing to think that you were right but quite another to
know
it. Chris knew that he had the demon by the short hairs, if he had short hairs to have him by, that was.

“Smart guy,” sneered the demon, but he was beaten and he knew it. “Well, let’s get on with it. What do you want and what do you offer for it?”

“Not so fast.” Chris had no intention of being rushed. “Let’s swap a little information first. Want anything to eat? Drink?”

“I could use some more tobacco,” confessed the demon. “I’ve kinda caught the habit.”

*

Chris dug out a box of cigars he’d been given for a Christmas present and never touched. “Try these, they’ll last longer.” He found a bottle of whiskey he’d been saving for an emergency; he’d been saving it for all of a week now and an emergency was long overdue. He opened it, took a sip, felt the impact of the demon’s eyes. “Try some of this,” he suggested. He found a tumbler and filled it with the golden spirit. “Stoke up your fires a bit. Here.” He placed it together with the cigars just within the pentagram. His skin burned a little as he withdrew his hand.

“Thanks,” said the demon, he seemed mollified by Chris’s desire to please. A warty protuberance lifted over one eye as he tasted the whiskey. “This stuff comparatively recent, too?”

“You could say that,” admitted Chris. He glanced down at the hand he’d placed within the pentagram. The skin was red and looked as if it had been dipped in a weak acid. “Force field,” he said thoughtfully. “I should have guessed.”

“Uh?” The demon blinked over an empty glass. “You said something?”

“Just thinking,” said Chris. He didn’t want to give anything away, and what the demon didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. It was obvious now what all that mumbo jumbo, the spells, the smoke and chanting, the gestures had all been for. It was science, all right, but of rather a peculiar kind. Sounds, vibrations rather, coupled with guided mental energy and the use of unsuspected chemicals in unusual ways. Add them all together, regard them in the light of relationship symbology, stir in a little parapsychology and the demon was solely the product of natural forces.

A big game hunter, thought Chris. That’s what I am. Sending out my trap to snare a denizen from a coexisting world. Wisk him back here trapped in an intangible force field limited by the pentagram. Break the pentagram and woof! Demon is exposed to an alien environment. Demon can’t live in an alien environment so demon dies. Simple.

“Simple,” echoed the demon. Chris stared at him with a sudden suspicion that the creature could read his mind. Hastily he put it to the test.

“If it’s so simple then perhaps you can tell me how it is we can understand each other?” Grimly Chris concentrated on the multiplication tables.

“Something to do with the pentagram, I guess,” said the demon. “All I know is that I’m talking normally and that you sound to me like me.” He blinked and ran a forked tongue over his lipless mouth. “Some drink you’ve got here. More?”

“Sure.” Chris looked at the whiskey, hesitated, then dug out a bottle of cooking rum some transient friend had passed off to him at a bottle party. He detested rum, even good rum, and this stuff was strictly for charity. He tossed the bottle toward his guest. “Help yourself.”

Watching the demon attack the contents of the bottle made Chris more conscious of his power than before. Obviously the demon couldn’t read minds; the force field must also act as a translating device. The ancients, whoever they had been, had certainly stumbled on something when they had devised the demon-calling ritual. Properly investigated and handled it could even solve the problem of interstellar flight. A shuffling from within the chalk marks brought Chris back to the business at hand.

The demon swayed a little as he squatted on the carpet, the empty bottle clutched in one taloned claw. A discarded cigar had burned a hole in the Wilton and a little pool of sweat had trickled down from the scaled forehead. In the battle between the demons rum had obviously won.

“Well,” snapped the creature pettishly. “What are we waiting for? How about getting on with the business and letting me go home?”

It was, thought Chris, a good idea.

*

There were preliminaries. Aspirin, bicarbonate, strong black coffee, a hair of the dog which had bitten, and a couple of ice bags filled with cubes from the refrigerator. The force field seemed to be able to translate all these things to suit an alien metabolism; at least, the demon took them all, sullenly but taking them just the same. His recovery was amazing. While his guest muttered and mumbled to himself, Chris concentrated on making the most of his opportunity.