Alternating Currents (7 page)

‘Want to listen?’ Candace fished out and passed me a hyper-boloid long-hearer, but I didn’t need it. I remembered what the voices would be saying. There would be Connick denouncing me. Timmy Brown denouncing me. The kids denouncing me, all of them. Colonel Peyroles, denouncing me; Commander Whitling, denouncing me; even Knafti - denouncing me. All that hate and only one target.

Me.

‘Of course, Junior’ll fire you. He’ll have to, Gunner.’

I said, ‘I need a vacation anyway.’ It wouldn’t matter. Sooner or later, when the pressure was off, Junior would find a way to hire me back. Once the lawsuits had been settled. Once the Armistice Commission could finish its work. Once I could be put on the payroll inconspicuously, at an inconspicuous job in an inconspicuous outpost of the firm. With an inconspicuous future.

We slid over the top of a spiralling ramp and down into the parking bays of the scatport. ‘So long, honey,’ I said, ‘and Merry Christmas to you both.’

‘Oh, Gunner! I wish—’

But I knew what she really wished and I wouldn’t let her finish. I said, ‘He’s a nice fellow, Whitling. And you know? I’m not.’

I didn’t kiss her goodbye.

The scatjet was ready for boarding. I fed my ticket into the check-in slot, got the green light as the turnstile clicked open, entered the plane and took a seat on the far side, by the window.

You can win any cause if you care to pay the price. All it takes is one human sacrifice.

By the time the scatjet began to roar, to quiver and to turn on its axis away from the terminal I had faced the fact that that price once and for all was paid. I saw Candace standing there on the roof of the loading dock, her skirts whipped by the back-blast. She didn’t wave to me, but she didn’t go away as long as I could see her standing on the platform.

Then, of course, she would go back to her job and ultimately on Christmas morning to that nice guy at the Hospital. Haber would stay in charge of his no-longer-important branch office. Connick would win his campaign. Knafti would transact his incomprehensible business with Earth; and if any of them ever thought of me again it would be with loathing, anger, and contempt. But that is the way to win an election. You have to pay the price. It was just the breaks of the game that the price of this one was me.

<>

~ * ~

The Ghost-Maker

Mr Guinn was an amiable man but an alert one. Nevertheless, I had no difficulty in getting from him what I wanted. I had never thought of myself as a shrewd businessman, able to trick and extort; but obviously the foul treatment the Museum had given me had sharpened my wits, made me able to gain a victory where I chose. My credentials from the Museum - still, as far as he knew, perfectly valid - were most helpful, and I suppose that what finally decided him was my promise of the Museum’s mailing list in exchange for his. Naturally, I had no objection to making him that promise. I would have promised him Walter, the ninety-foot stuffed whale, and all fourteen meteorites out of the entrance hall if he had asked for them. It cost me nothing, after all.

At any rate, I had the subscription list to
Beyond.

Magazines like
Beyond
do not have the enormous lists of the smooth-paper giants of the publishing world; the list Guinn gave me was quite small enough to be workable. And when I made the obvious deletions - striking out all the saints’ names, all the addresses like Christchurch, Trinity Place and so on; all the names like Gottesman, Dorothy and their blessed etymological equivalents - I was down to a mere page. I packed my toothbrush, the holy water and such other items as I absolutely needed, and set out.

~ * ~

The first three or four names on the list were blanks. I waited an afternoon on the lower East Side and the better part of a day in Bensonhurst without turning up anyone over the age of fourteen. I was beginning to wonder if my theory, after all, was valid, when I began to approach pay dirt: name number five, a water-witch in Chelsea; number eight, a red-bearded old necromancer in a monstrous old house on the Jersey shore; number ten, a part-time ghoul who taught biochemistry in a New England university . . . and was the idol of the cleaning ladies because he never left messy bits of cadaver on his workbench. It was, they joked with him, as if he ate the corpses, he was so neat.

I think that I didn’t even need the cross or the holy water for these; the shock of confrontation, the realization that they had been tracked down where they thought they were un-findable, was enough. From each I took one thing, as the laws provide. A charm from the witch, a perfectly disgusting recipe from the ghoul; from the necromancer, a curious variation on the crystal ball, an opaque sphere that answered questions - opaquely. None of these were of any great value, but my theory was confirmed, and besides I learned a great deal from their reactions. I felt confident that when the one I sought turned up, I could handle him.

By Friday evening I was two hundred miles from the city, across the line from Pennsylvania, feeling as calmly certain of success as any man can feel. The next name on my list was number thirteen - happy omen! I had been looking forward to it, and when I saw the house I was doubly encouraged. I paid off the driver and, kicking rusted cans and torn copies of
The Nation
out of my way, reached the front door just at dusk.

No one answered my knock. I tried again, ignoring the fact that the door gave every indication of being on the point of collapse, and thumped it hard. No answer. This was in no way a disappointment; I had discovered early that, in my present occupation, it was best to learn as much as possible about the quarry before meeting them face to face.

I took the ball from my pocket and asked it if the person who inhabited the house would return within ten minutes. The ball’s answer was, ‘According to my information, no’, which was about as satisfactory as it could be, for there was a strong implication that the ball’s prophecy was hampered by opposing strong forces.

For safety, I allowed myself but five minutes to survey the house. It was an ancient frame structure, a potbellied stove in every room, sunset light filtering through cracks in the walls. The cellar was ankle-deep in mushrooms, and it appeared that the occupant of the house had been systematically tunnelling away the foundations. The indications were most promising.

I think, even now, that it is best if I don’t mention the man’s name. He was so clearly that which I sought that I paced the floor waiting for him: It seemed hours, but there was still an aura of sunset in the sky when I heard him at the door.

He was astonished to see me sitting in his living-room, but at once he knew what I wanted. The overnight bag, with its flask of holy water and other useful items, was by my hand; he pretended to ignore it, but I observed that he brought up short at the door.

‘Hell,’ he said bitterly. ‘Even here.’

I chuckled. ‘Yes, even here,’ I said. ‘Shall we get down to business ? Or would you like to pretend that you don’t know why I came?’

He smiled weakly. It was curious to see the pointed teeth in that round, mild face. ‘I might as well own up,’ he said. ‘You’ve got me. There are only two reasons why you would have tracked me down with all that stuff in your bag. One of them obviously doesn’t apply; if you were going to try to reform me, you wouldn’t be wasting time in talk. Therefore you want something. All right. One thing, though, if you don’t mind. How’d you locate me ?’

I could afford to be casual. ‘Simple,’ I said. ‘Elementary deduction. Farmers read
Country Gentleman;
bankers read the
Wall Street Journal.
There aren’t very many magazines dealing with magic and diablerie, after all. It would have been a lot more difficult to believe that magicians and diabolists would
not
subscribe to
Beyond.
All I did was eliminate the casual readers. You and your friends were left.’

‘Don’t call me a diabolist,’ he said sharply. ‘You’re lucky I’m not. You come across one of
them
boy, and he’ll eat you up. Sprinkled with the rosemary and garlic out of your suitcase and washed down with the jug of holy water. Simple magic, that’s all I do.’

‘Oh?’ Perhaps he was telling the truth; I couldn’t be sure. It was to some extent a disquieting thought - perhaps I had been treading on the thin edge of danger - but, after all,
he
was nothing to fear. He had said so himself. I shrugged. ‘ It makes no difference,’ I said. ‘I’ve got you. I won’t make any threats, but by the laws and the powers, I have a claim on you.’

Astonishingly, he laughed a little, and the muscles of his scalp twitched his woolly black hair into alarming shapes. ‘ Sure you have a claim. You’re entitled to one of my spells. Well, why not? What’s your pleasure? Card-reading, love potions, the gift of tongues ? The power to turn into an animal ? You only get one thing; name it. What do you want ?’

I said levelly, ‘ Revenge.’

He glanced at me in momentary alarm. ‘Bad revenge - killing, you mean. No. Can’t do it. I’d get in trouble.’ I made a gesture towards the bag, but, though he gulped and sweat showed brightly on his brow, he shook his head. ‘Nothing doing,’ he said. ‘ I don’t care what you’ve got in that bag, there isn’t
anything
you can do bad enough to make me use the arts to do someone harm. No.’

‘ But I’ve been humiliated!’ I cried. ‘ I’m a scientist - one of the greatest anthropologists alive, a fellow of the Museum, the author of three fundamental texts. And, because I had the wit to see what was clear before my eyes, because I said in public that magic is not superstition and not nonsense, I’ve been deprived of everything I’ve earned in thirty years. I
must
have revenge!’

He snapped his fingers. ‘Sure,’ he said in recognition. ‘I know who you are. Ehrlich, something like that, is that your name? I saw in the papers. Well, I can’t say I’m sorry you got in trouble. I’ve got enough headaches now, without any more people suspecting that people like me really do exist.’

I stared at him, aghast. The callousness of the lay public towards the gathering of data and its dissemination has always horrified me . . . though I suppose that, on this particular subject, he was scarcely a layman. But it was irrelevant. I said, ‘What you want makes no difference. I want revenge. I can compel you to give me the means to it.’

He shook his head.

I said angrily. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you don’t know any harmful spells ?’

‘Of course I do, real harmful. But I can’t use them. That’s
black
magic. I can’t show you how, either. Law of Equivalences: if I show you how, it’s the same thing as doing it myself.’

I thought quickly, wondering if he was lying. It was hard to believe that I had come so far, and this was the end of my plans. I said, ‘Perhaps I’ll keep going until I find a diabolist.’

He chuckled.

‘Well,’ I said in annoyance, ‘what else can I do? I am not a man to take this sort of thing lying down. I’ve suffered; Brandon must suffer too. I’ve been laughed at; I’ve been made to resign from the Museum; I’ve seen my life’s work thrown down the drain. Brandon did it. I can’t let him go on enjoying life.’

‘Oh,’ he said easily, ‘you don’t have to let him
enjoy
life. Nothing lethal, of course. But how about hives, for instance ? Three sentences and one pass of the hands, that’s all you need for hives. Or raise a plague of insects wherever he goes. Or you can scare him out of a year’s growth, if you like - I’ve got a pretty good spell for raising ghosts. One word and an amulet; I’ve even got the amulet right here. Or you can make him fall in love with the first person to pass by. Take your pick.’

It wasn’t what I had had in mind, of course. Still -

‘Tell me more,’ I said.

He nodded and rubbed his hands. ‘Glad to see you being reasonable,’ he said. ‘How about getting rid of that stuff first?’ I set the bag outside the door. When I came back he was sprawled carelessly on the couch, worrying the cork out of a bottle of California wine. ‘ Magic’s thirsty work,’ he said apologetically. ‘I thought we might have a little drink.’

From my point of view, it was a good development. On second thought, I could improve on it. I sent him for a bucket of spring water, and showed him the trick the water-witch had taught me of transforming the water into sidecars. From then on, things proceeded well, though I have some qualms still about the tiny blue ghosts of long-gone water-bugs and mice we conjured up for practice, and released upon the countryside. But he assured me they would cause no trouble.

He had to go to the spring for another bucket before we were through, but after all water is cheap.

~ * ~

Perhaps he became drunker than he planned, for he let slip a piece of information which I think he had meant to keep secret: the ghost-raising spell was infallible; it worked every time. With it, you could touch a mouldered bone and create before you the wraith of the being whose articulation had comprised the bone. Or you could touch a living, breathing creature, and evoke the ghost of it.

And once the ghost was evoked, the creature, perforce, was dead.

Of course, murder was not what I had in mind for Brandon, not quite. The offence had been great enough, but on the long trip back to the city I had leisure to reflect on my friend’s fear of the consequences of lethal magic, and to decide that I needn’t go that far. Brandon was a pompous fraud, but if I could make his life its own punishment by means of harassment, there was no need to risk unknown penalties.