Darker Than You Think (17 page)

And
the modern physicists, Barbee knew, interpreted the whole universe in
terms of probability. The stability of atoms was a matter of
probability—and the instability, in the atomic bomb. The direct
mental control of probability would surely open terrifying avenues of
power—and the Rhine experiments had seemingly established that
control. Had April Bell, he wondered uneasily, just been born with a
unique and dangerous mental power to govern the operation of
probability?

Unlikely,
he told himself. But nothing at all, old Mondrick himself had
insisted, was completely impossible in this statistical universe. The
remotest impossibility became merely remotely improbable. Barbee
shrugged impatiently, and turned on the shower—the new physics,
with its law of uncertainty and its denial of all the comfortable old
concepts of matter and space and time, and its atom bombs, became
suddenly as disquieting as the dark riddle of Mondrick's death.

In
the shower, he fell to wondering what that terracotta lamp had meant
to Mondrick. What racial memory could be represented in the legend of
those Roman heroes mothered by the wolf bitch? Barbee couldn't quite
imagine.

He
toweled himself wearily, poured himself a generous nightcap and went
to bed with a magazine. His mind refused to be diverted, however,
from those disquieting channels. Why had Mondrick and his obviously
frightened companions taken such elaborate precautions at the airport
and yet failed to take enough? That must indicate, he thought, a
peril even greater than those four fearful men had believed.

Something
far more alarming than one exotic redhead.

If
April Bell were indeed a witch, his unwilling speculations ran on,
there might very reasonably be others —more powerful and less
charming to go dancing with. There might be other parapsychological
experimenters, to phrase it differently, busy discovering their
inborn gifts and developing scientific techniques for the mental
control of probability. If so, they might be organized, preparing for
the time to test their power, awaiting the appearance of an expected
leader —the Child of Night—to lead their Saturnalian
rebellion.

Barbee's
aching eyes had closed, and he pictured that coming dark Messiah. A
tall, lean, commanding figure, standing amid shattered rocks,
terrible and black in a long hooded robe. He wondered what manner of
being it could be—and why April Bell had smiled. Breathlessly,
he peered under the black hood to see if he could recognize the
face—and a white skull grinned at him.

He
awoke with a start—yet it wasn't the shock of that ghastly
dream that roused him, but rather the quivering intensity of some
vague eagerness that he couldn't quite define. A thin little pain
shuddered in the back of his head, and he took a second nightcap to
ease it. He turned on the radio, heard the oily beginning of a
singing commercial and turned it off again. He was suddenly
desperately sleepy—

And
afraid to sleep.

He
couldn't understand that dim terror of his bed. It was a slow,
creeping apprehension, as if he knew that the vague unease which
haunted him now would possess him entirely when he slept. But it
wasn't completely—fear. Mingled with it was that unresolved
eager yearning which had roused him, the breathless expectancy of
some obscure and triumphant escape from all he hated.

Neither
could he quite understand the way he felt about April Bell—and
that feeling was somehow a part of the other. He thought he ought to
have a shocked horror of her. After all, she was either the witch she
claimed to be, or else more likely a lunatic. In one way or another
she had almost certainly caused Mondrick's death. But the thing that
haunted him was his puzzled dread of that frightful, chained and yet
dangerous something she awakened in himself.

Desperately,
he tried to put her out of his mind. Certainly it was too late to
telephone her now. He wasn't sure he wanted to see her—though
that dimly dreadful yearning insisted that he did. He wound up his
alarm clock, and went to bed again. Sleep pressed upon him with an
urgency that became resistless.

And
April Bell was calling to him.

Her
voice came clearly to him, above all the subdued murmur of traffic
noises. It was a ringing golden chime, more penetrating than an
occasional beep of a driver's horn or the far clamor of a streetcar.
It shimmered out of the dark, in waves of pure light as green as her
malachite eyes. Then he thought he could see her, somehow, far across
the slumberous town.

Only
she wasn't a woman.

Her
urgent velvet voice was human, still. Her long, dark eyes were
changed, with that same exotic hint of a slant. Her white wolf coat
was evidently part of her now. For she had become a white she-wolf,
sleek and wary and powerful. Her clear woman-voice called to him,
distinct in the dark.

"Come,
Barbee. I need you."

He
was aware of the cracked, dingy plaster of his narrow bedroom, of the
steady tick of his alarm clock and the comfortable hardness of the
mattress beneath him and the sulphurous odor of the mills that came
through his open window. Surely he wasn't actually asleep, yet that
calling voice was so real that he tried to answer.

"Hello,
April," he murmured drowsily. "I'll really call you
tomorrow. Maybe we can go dancing again."

Strangely,
the she-wolf seemed to hear.

"I
need you now, Barbee," her clear voice replied. "Because
we've a job to do together—something that can't wait. You must
come out to me right away. I'll show you how to change."

"Change?"
he muttered heavily. "I don't want to change."

"You
will," she said. "I believe you have my lost heirloom—that
white jade pin?"

"I
have it," he whispered. "I found it with that murdered
kitten."

"Then
take it in your hand."

In
a numbed, groping, sleep-drugged way, Barbee thought he got up and
went to the chiffonier and fumbled in that box of odds and ends for
the tiny jade pin. Dimly, he wondered how she knew he had it. He
carried it back, and sprawled heavily on the bed again.

"Now,
Will!" Her vibrant voice called across the shadowy void between
them. "Listen, and I'll
tell
you what to do. You must change, as I have changed. It should be easy
for you, Will. You can run as the wolf runs, trail as the wolf
trails, kill as the wolf kills!"

She
seemed nearer in the misty dark.

"Just
let go," she urged. "I'll help you, Will. You
are
a
wolf, and your pattern is the jade pin in your hand. Just turn loose,
and let your body flow—"

He
wondered dimly how the mental control of probability could mold a man
into the four-footed kind of wolf she clearly meant, but his brain
seemed too numb and slow for thought. He clutched the pin and made a
groping effort to obey. There was a curious, painful flux of his
body—as if he had twisted into positions never assumed, had
called on muscles never used. Sudden pain smothered him in darkness.

"Keep
trying, Will." Her urgent voice stabbed through that choking
blackness. "If you give up now, halfway changed, it may kill
you. But you can do it. Just let me help, till you break free. Just
let go, and follow the pattern, and let your body change. That's
it—you're flowing—"

And
suddenly he was free.

Those
painful bonds, that he had worn a whole lifetime, were abruptly
snapped. He sprang lightly off the bed, and stood a moment sniffing
the odors that clotted the air in the little apartment—the
burning reek of whisky from that empty glass on the chiffonier, the
soapy dampness of the bathroom, and the stale, sweaty pungence of his
soiled laundry in the hamper. The place was too close; he wanted
fresh air.

He
trotted quickly to the open window and scratched impatiently at the
catch on the screen. It yielded after a moment, and he dropped to the
damp, hard earth of Mrs. Sadowski's abandoned flower bed. He shook
himself, gratefully sniffing the clean smell of that tiny bit of
soil, and crossed the sidewalk into the heavy reek of burned oil and
hot rubber that rose up from the pavement. He listened again for the
white she-wolf's call, and ran fleetly down the street.

Free—

No
longer was he imprisoned, as he had always been, in that slow,
clumsy, insensitive bipedal body. His old human form seemed utterly
foreign to him now, and somehow monstrous. Surely four nimble feet
were better than two, and a smothering cloak had been lifted from his
senses.

Free,
and swift, and strong!

"Here
I am, Barbee!" the white bitch was calling across the sleeping
town. "Here by the campus—and please hurry!"

He
heard her, and he had already started toward the campus, when a
sudden impulse of perversity made him turn back south, on Commercial
Street, toward the railroad yards and the open country beyond. He had
to escape the chemical fumes from the mills that lay in a burning
pall over the city, suffocating and intolerable. And he wanted to
explore this new existence, to find his powers and their bounds,
before he came face to face with that sleek she-wolf.

Loping
easily along the pavement in the silent warehouse district, he paused
to sniff the rich perfumes of coffee and spices that floated from a
wholesale grocery, and checked himself abruptly as a sleepy policeman
met him at the corner. Caught full in the street light, he turned to
run for the nearest alley—the bored cop would doubtless welcome
a bit of diversion and a chance to try his gun, and an unmuzzled gray
wolf would certainly be fair game.

The
officer merely yawned, however, staring straight at him, and flung a
foul-smelling cigarette butt before him on the street, and shuffled
wearily on his beat, pausing to try the warehouse door. Barbee
trotted back ahead of him, just to be sure. Still the cop didn't see
him. He ran on out the odorous street, too elated to wonder why.

He
crossed the railroad yards ahead of a smelly, pounding locomotive,
and loped west along the highway beyond, to escape the reek of wet
steam and cinders and hot metal. He dropped into the ditch beside the
acrid asphalt, and the earth felt cool and damp beneath his springy
pads.

"Barbee!
Why don't you come on?"

He
heard the she-wolf's call behind him, but he wasn't ready to heed her
yet. The night refreshed him with the clean chill of autumn. A breath
of wind swept away all the sharp traffic odors of the road and
brought him a delicious symphony of farmyard and woodland scents.