Darker Than You Think (19 page)

"Why?"
he asked uneasily. "How can light be harmful?"

"I
used to wonder," she told him. "I talked about it once, to
one of us who has quite a name in physics. He told me his theory. It
sounds good—but we'd better look for that box."

Her
deft, slender forepaw opened the screen, and Barbee led the way
through the back door into the hot stuffiness of the little house.
The air was heavy with cooking smells and the sharpness of an
antiseptic Nora must have used to clean the bathroom and the warm
body scents of Sam and Nora and the child, all overladen with the
noisome, sickening rankness of the little dog he had killed.

They
paused in the narrow hall beyond the little kitchen, listening. A
clock ticked softly. The refrigerator motor started suddenly behind
them, so loud they started. Above its steady drumming, he could hear
Sam's strong, even breathing from their room and Nora's breath,
slower and more quiet. Pat turned uneasily on her bed in the nursery
and whimpered in her sleep: "Come back to me, Jiminy!"

The
she-wolf sprang toward the nursery door, snarling silently, but the
child didn't quite wake. Barbee had started after her, alarmed for
Pat. She turned back to him, her white fangs smiling.

"So
Quain's asleep!" A taut elation rang in her tone. "Quite
exhausted, I imagine. It's lucky you got that nasty little cur
outside—he must have counted on it to wake him if we came. Now
for the green box—I think it's in his study."

Barbee
trotted to the study door, and rose against it to try the knob with
his supple forepaws. It didn't yield. He dropped back to the floor
and turned uncertainly toward the white wolf.

She
stood listening, snarling toward the nursery, and he heard little Pat
whimpering in her sleep. A sharp pang of concern for the child struck
Barbee; a surge of his old loyalty to Sam and Nora impelled him to
abandon this queer project and get the wolf bitch out of the house
before she could harm them. That brief humane impulse died, however,
against the stronger urgencies of this exciting new existence.

"I'll
look for Sam's keys," he offered. "He must have them in his
trousers—"

"Wait,
idiot!" He had started toward the bedroom; the she-wolf's fangs
caught the scruff of his neck to stop him. "You'll wake him—or
trip some trap. His keys are probably protected with a silver ring
that it would poison us to touch. The padlock on that box is
silver-plated, I saw. And I don't know what other weapons Quain has
lying by his hand—deadly relics they dug up of that old war our
people lost.

"But
we don't need the keys."

Barbee
blinked at the locked study door, bewildered.

"Stand
still," she whispered. "I see I must tell you a little more
of the theory of this change of state—if Quain stays asleep.
Ours is a precious and useful power, but it has its limitations and
penalties attached. If you fail to regard them, you can very easily
destroy yourself—"

The
sudden creak of bedsprings checked her. She whirled warily, greenish
eyes blazing, silken ears lifted. Barbee heard Nora's sleepy
voice—and a cold terror shook him, that he might be forced to
injure her.

"Sam?"
she said. "Where are you, Sam?" Then she must have found
him beside her, for the bed creaked again, and she murmured faintly.
" 'Night Sam."

When
the breath sounds were regular again, Barbee whispered uneasily: "Why
don't we need the keys?"

"I'll
show you," the white wolf said. "But first I'm going to
explain a little of the theory of our free state— to keep you
from killing yourself. You must understand the dangers—"

"Silver?"
he said. "And daylight?"

"The
theory joins it all together," the wolf bitch told him. "I
don't know physics enough to explain all the technical ramifications,
but my friend made the main point seem simple enough. The link
between mind and matter, he says, is probability."

Barbee
started a little, remembering old Mondrick's lecture.

"Living
things are more than matter alone," she continued. "The
mind is an independent something—an energy complex, he called
it—created by the vibrating atoms and electrons of the body,
and yet controlling their vibrations through the linkage of atomic
probability—my friend used more technical language, but that's
the idea of it.

"That
web of living energy is fed by the body; it's part of the
body—usually. My friend is a pretty conservative scientist, and
he wouldn't say whether he thinks it's really a soul, able to survive
long after the body is dead. He says you can't prove anything about
that."

Her
greenish eyes smiled secretly, as if she knew more than she said.

"But
that vital pattern, in us, is stronger than in true men—his
experiments did prove that. More fluid, and less dependent on the
material body. In this free state, he says, we simply separate that
living web from the body, and use the probability link to attach it
to other atoms, wherever we please—the atoms of the air are
easiest to control, he says, because the oxygen and nitrogen and
carbon are the same atoms that establish the linkage in our bodies.

"And
that explains the dangers."

"Silver?"
Barbee said. "And light?
I
don't
quite see—"

"The
vibrations of light can damage or destroy that mental web," she
told him. "They interfere with its own vibration. The mass of
the body protects it, of course, when we are in the normal state. But
the transparent air, when we are free, gives no shelter at all. Never
let the daylight find you free!"

"I
won't."
Barbee shivered. "But how does silver harm us?"

"Vibration,
again," the white wolf whispered. "No common matter is any
real barrier to us in this free state. That's why we don't need
Quain's keys. Doors and walls still seem real enough,
I
know—but
wood is mostly oxygen and carbon, and our mind webs can grasp the
vibrating atoms and slip through them, nearly as easily as through
the air. Many other substances we can possess for our vehicles, with
a little more effort and difficulty. Silver is the deadly
exception—as our enemies know."

"Huh?"
Barbee gasped. "How is that?"

Yet
he scarcely listened, for something made him think of blind Rowena
Mondrick, with her heavy silver rings and bracelets, her quaint old
silver brooches and her silver beads, and the silver-studded collar
she kept on her great tawny dog. Something lifted the gray shaggy fur
along his spine, and something made him shudder.

"Different
elements have different atomic numbers and different periods of
electronic vibration," the white wolf was saying. "My
friend explained it all, but I don't remember the terms. Anyhow,
silver has the wrong vibration. There is no probability linkage. We
can't claim silver, to make it a path or a tool for our free minds.
Instead, the electronic vibrations of silver clash with ours; they
can shatter the free pattern. So silver's poison, Will. Silver
weapons can kill us—don't forget!"

"I
won't," Barbee whispered uneasily.

He
shook out his gray fur, trying vainly to dislodge that clinging
chill. The white she-wolf stood listening again to the breath-sounds
in the house, poised alertly, one graceful forefoot lifted. He moved
toward her quickly.

"I
won't forget," he said. "But I want to know the name of
your physicist friend."

She
laughed at him suddenly, red tongue hanging.

"Jealous,
Barbee?" she taunted softly.

"I
want to know," he insisted grimly. "And I want to know the
name of this expected Child of Night."

"Do
you, Barbee?" Her red smile widened before it sobered. "You'll
find out," she promised, "when you have proved yourself.
But now I think you understand our free state and its dangers well
enough. Let's get to work, before Quain wakes."

She
trotted back to the study door.

"Now
you understand," she whispered, "and I can help you pass.
My friend taught me how to smooth the random vibrations from the
heavier elements in the wood and the paint that otherwise would be
something of a barrier."

Her
greenish eyes fixed intently on the lower panels of the door—and
Barbee remembered old Mondrick's lecture on probability. All matter
was mostly empty space, he said; only the random collisions of
vibrating atoms kept the little black lamp from falling through the
seemingly substantial desk. Nothing in the universe was absolute;
only probabilities were real. And the mind web, according to this
theory of April's unknown friend, governed probability.

"Wait,"
the she-wolf whispered. "Follow me."

Before
her greenish stare, the bottom half of the study door melted into
misty unreality. For an instant Barbee could see the dark screws that
held the hinges, and all the mechanism of the lock, as if in an X-ray
view. Then the metal faded also, and the slender bitch glided
silently through the door.

Uneasily,
Barbee followed. He thought he felt a slight resistance, where the
wooden panels were. He felt as if something brushed his gray fur
lightly as he stepped carefully through. He stopped inside with a
stifled growl. The white wolf cowered back against his shoulder.

For
something in that room was—deadly.

He
stood sniffing for the danger. The close air was thick with odors of
paper and dried ink and decaying glue from the books on the shelves,
strong with the mothball reek from a closet, perfumed with the
fragrant tobacco in the humidor on Sam's desk. It was musky with the
lingering scent of a mouse that once had dwelt behind the books. But
the queer, powerful malodor that frightened him came from the
battered, iron-strapped wooden chest on the floor beside the desk.

It
was a piercing, musty reek, as if of something that had moldered for
a very long time underground. It was alarming in a way he couldn't
understand— though it reminded him of that undefinable evil
scent about the Foundation tower. The white bitch stood taut beside
him, frozen in her snarl, with hatred and stunned fear in her eyes.

"It's
there in that box," she whispered faintly. "The thing old
Mondrick dug from the graves of our race in the Ala-shan—the
weapon that destroyed our people once, and Quain plans to use again.
We must dispose of it—somehow—tonight."